Recommended GTA01 images?

2009-04-04 Thread Mikko Rauhala
Hi

It seems that my FRs are suffering from additional HW woes to the usual
ones, and I just contacted my vendor with warranty questions.

Meanwhile, what's hot nowadays for a GTA01 if one wants the phone
functions to somewhat work, and yeah, suspend too preferrably?

-- 
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Musings on Android, OpenMoko and Linux on phones

2009-03-05 Thread Mikko Rauhala
I wrote a response on Android, OpenMoko, and Linux on phones in general
to a recent LWN article on Android, critical of their development phone
(in the latest weekly edition, not yet viewable by non-paying visitors).

Then I expanded that reply into an article in my blog (which has both
Finnish and English articles depending on the subject and my mood):
http://mjr.iki.fi/blog/index.php?/archives/43-Freedom-to-Phone.html
(Also links to the LWN article and stuff are to be found there.)

And since I'm making this posting anyway, I'll just reproduce the text
here too for your convenience, should you be interested in the read.
Cheers.

Freedom to Phone

I wrote a longish comment on Android, OpenMoko, and GNU/Linux on phones
as a response to an LWN article on Android (the linked article is
viewable by paid subscribers only until around March 11th I think, after
which it's free for all to read). As a quick summary, the article is
disappointed that the unlocked development version of the Android G1
phone doesn't allow installation of most of the applications from Google
App Store (due to DRM enforcement being impossible with the unlocked
phone, perish the thought…), and problems getting updated firmware
delivered for it (while the locked version does get updates). Anyway, I
decided to extend my reply into a blog article as well since it ended up
being a nice update on my views and hopes on these matters.

I'm of the opinion that both Android and OpenMoko are good for one
thing: getting commodity Linux-supporting phones out there on the
market, hopefully some of them working with wholly free software on the
Linux system side (like the OpenMoko Freerunner, for all its other
lackings [it being my current phone by the way, though no, I still don't
recommend it for the normal user], and unlike the G1). I would sincerely
hope OpenMoko, as the pioneer in this respect, will make it at least as
a hardware company with the abovementioned focus. Failing that, one
hopes some of the future Android hardware manufacturers will come out
with products that meet this criteria.

Hell, I wouldn't terribly mind it if OpenMoko became an Android phone
developer (in fact, a port of Android for their current phones is well
underway). Like other Android sellers, they'd probably have to sell
locked versions to gain access to those consumers not wanting to be shut
out from the majority of the (oppressive…) App Store, but as long as
there'd be a choice to get an unlocked phone with its freedom unimpaired
(be it under the "developer version" moniker like with the G1 or not),
I'd be sufficiently okay with that.

In the end, if any of these scenarios work out, we won't be unwillingly
limited to that wholly non-Linuxy Android thing that just happens to run
on the Linux kernel, or even OpenMoko's OpenEmbedded derivative which I
personally find somewhat inconvenient as well (though it at least uses
standard components such as X). Rather, those of us who want a truly
flexible GNU/Linux system with no silly restrictions and good app
compatibility on our phone could run something like Debian with the
more-GNU/Linuxy-than-Android freesmartphone.org phone stack (once that
matures, which wasn't quite yet when I tried it last fall). And
incidentally, props to OpenMoko for spurring the development of said
stack. I might not like their distro a great deal, but that doesn't mean
I don't appreciate their free software development efforts in general —
even if things go more slowly and erratically than one would like.

So here's hoping for commoditization of phone hardware and more free
Linux drivers for the embedded space as well. And sure, why not that
Android VM's port to X so we can run apps written for it, at least those
of the non-DRM'd variety, on our generic GNU/Linux/X11 phones ;)

PS: To be fair to the G1 and the Google team, it does seem surprisingly
low on proprietary stuff considering the earlier Open Handset Alliance
PR about everything being able to be closed up, "yay". The biggest (and
most problematic) piece is of course — tah-dah — the OpenGL driver
(which can be done without in a pinch, but one then wouldn't rather pay
for the GPU either), and there were a couple of others as well. Taking
an Android dev at his word on an IRC conversation on #openmoko,
apparently the dev team do try to influence openness in the actual
implementations as well, which is good, even if the success is limited.

PPS: Yeah, the Freerunner has a GPU with no OpenGL drivers so far at
least, but to be fair, the chip isn't so capable on that front that this
would be a big deal ;/ "Looked better on paper." It does do some stuff,
like mpeg-4 decoding with a patched mplayer, though all and all, it
ended up being more trouble than worth and is ditched in the next
generation of OM hardware. I just mention it so nobody else feels
obligate

Black SOD for a change

2008-12-16 Thread Mikko Rauhala
I tried to figure out how to put this stuff into
http://docs.openmoko.org/trac/ticket/1841 but I can't find any way to do
so on the page even when logged in. Maybe it's got something to do with
the top saying
"Warning: ". So
I'll just complain here and you can stick it where you like.

Okay; two Freerunner units, one restores semi-okay, one's screen
typically goes all black after an otherwise successful restore (not
before showing the appropriate display for a moment though), doesn't
recover, doesn't seem to react
to /sys/devices/platform/s3c2440-i2c/i2c-adapter/i2c-0/0-0073/
backlight/pcf50633-bl/brightness. The device remains accessible via
usbnet. Trying to restart X doesn't seem to do much. (I've used it
without suspend until recently, since everything about that has seemed
fucked anyway for a long time.)

Tried with these images w. opkg upgrade with Timo's recommendation, at
least somewhat works on the other device:
http://lists.projects.openmoko.org/pipermail/fdom-development/2008-December/000192.html
Also tried 20081212-testing on the problem one, same deal, after
restore, there's maybe a second of UI visibility, then instant black.

What the fuck? BSOD for a change? Should I just bitch to my EU retailer
for warranty replacement since it's just affecting the one unit at least
here? Or is it just that the software side is too fragile still with
races upon races and the code just happens to work with the other device
by chance? WSOD fixes that don't quite work right? What to try to narrow
it down, what data to put out (and where, really)?

(Yeah excuse me, I'm getting somewhat frustrated after spreading moko
awareness 'round here and trying to keep optimistic, but problems upon
problems with critical functionality where one has no idea whether the
device is just trash already or if it's maybe possibly still salvageable
sometime, somewhere, if the drivers actually worked, *sigh*.)

-- 
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The Finnish Pirate Party - http://piraattipuolue.fi/  
World Transhumanist Association  - http://transhumanism.org/  
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Re: Re: GPG for SMS?

2008-11-10 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On ma, 2008-11-10 at 11:42 +0100, Pander wrote:
> One might consider alternative (weaker) encryption of SMS which do not
> result increased number of characters compared to the original text.

Does not follow that it would be weak. You just need to do key setup
(with gpg perhaps) beforehand, as rhn said. Hell, for SMS you could
easily even use one-time pads, since there's generally not a whole hell
of a lot of data involved. But that would be somewhat overkill,
perchance.

> Also for texting on openmoko/android/qtextended an SMS module could be
> build. Huffman encoding could be used to increase the number characters
> per SMS and have at the same time (very weak) encryption.

Please don't confuse the issue by calling that encryption, even weak.
Optional compression might be useful sometimes though, but as Kieran
said, the use of proper networking is often better (as it's clear that
we're not talking about communicating with legacy devices at this
point). 

Of course, kludging around with SMS may be desirable for cost reasons
depending on local providers, and for power saving reasons (waiting on
SMS while in suspend etc...)

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Re: Android

2008-10-05 Thread Mikko Rauhala
su, 2008-10-05 kello 06:01 -0700, sampablokuper kirjoitti:
> On a different front, will it be possible to port Android applications (not
> the whole OS, just the apps) to distros running on Neo phones? For instance,
> if I had a FreeRunner, could I run  http://scan.jsharkey.org/ Scan  on it*
> now or soon (i.e. without having to wait for Android to be ported), and how
> much work would this be?

You need to modify the VM to target arm4 and use X11 for display (and
handle environment integration in a sufficient manner for the desired
apps). Probably one of the bigger pieces of porting work with the whole
system, since it's decidedly not just a recompile away. Probably not an
insane amount of work though either, but this is from a guy not doing
it.

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Re: (Some?) 3G support for Linux from Nokia - relevant for future models?

2008-09-18 Thread Mikko Rauhala
to, 2008-09-18 kello 10:14 +1000, Lorn Potter kirjoitti:
> Mikko Rauhala wrote:
> > Sure Nokia has some products which happen to be free software. That
> > doesn't make them committed to free software, what with being eg.
> > hostile to free formats,
> IANAL, but... (nor am I a spokesperson for Nokia)
> Nokia's position is that here are no 'free' codecs.
> _Everything_ has patents surrounding it.

Thing is, you don't get to first intimidate governments to implement
strong software patents, and then innocently use them as an excuse to
hinder free format adoption.

> > a strong opponent of independent software
> 
> Have you seen forum.nokia.com? or maemo.org? Know about 'Qt Everywhere'?

Somewhat, though not intimately. All of the people involved in these are
nevertheless also put into risk by - ta-dah - Nokia's actions in
legislation. (I personally have been in the same table with them in a
couple of ministry lobbying sessions on behalf of EFFI (EFF's Finnish
counterpart) and the local CS dept, and also otherwise followed their
actions closely in the previous EU swpat round.)

> > development in general through their patent lobby, very much clueless in
> > top level press comments about these subjects, 
> > and in general not being very consistent in what they're up to in this area.
> 
> Nokia employs thousands of _individuals_, we are not borg, nor do we
> all think and act the same.

Indeed, I understand that. However, what I originally said that Nokia
doesn't have any commitment to free software. You can't take issue with
that by stating that there are different opinions in different tentacles
of Nokia, and they're all doing their own thing. That really just
verifies the original statement. Commitment kind of implies a certain
amount of borginess.

I am also aware that the leeches^Wlawyers and management at Nokia are
mostly to blame for the bad, and many of the grassroots people might be
more reasonable. Doesn't really matter either, as the former make the
rules.

As an example of such a stand-up grassroots ex-Nokia fellow, I nominate
a friend of mine, http://liw.iki.fi/liw/log/2004-12.html#20041208b
(Yeah, it's almost 4 years old, but as you note at the end of your mail,
change happens slowly ;] )
 
> I have done my share of complaining about Nokia's software patents
> (directly to the Finns too!), the closed-ness of maemo and (for a year
> or so) Qtopia.

That's good, and on one hand I'm glad that there are such people at
Nokia. On the other, I'd kind of prefer them to abandon ship and let
Nokia become the closed Apple-like behemoth it somewhat seems to want to
be. Because more of them don't (see above url), I get the impression
that most of them don't really mind Nokia's policies _that_ much, so it
really doesn't seem that they'd be a source of much impetus for change.

In the final analysis, though, I admit I don't know which is the more
realistic approach to increasing total freedom and choice in the market.
Perhaps the "kinda-sorta for freedom" guys inside will have some clout
and will to use it eventually.

> Change _will_ happen. But it will happen slowly.

Indeed. Until then, however, I will include a disclaimer about Nokia's
less favourable policies whenever I must mention them doing something
nice for a change.

I think here's a good point to agree to disagree, but of course, I'd get
the final word in that case, so not all may agree - I tried to make it
fairly balanced as best I could though ;)

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Re: (Some?) 3G support for Linux from Nokia - relevant for future models?

2008-09-17 Thread Mikko Rauhala
to, 2008-09-18 kello 05:45 +1000, Lorn Potter kirjoitti:
> Mikko Rauhala wrote:
> > Personally I'll be loathe to buy Nokia products anyway, they're just way
> > too inconsistent with their policies and have no commitment to free
> > software whatsoever.
> 
> I would beg to differ. Trolltech is now part of Nokia, Qt and Qtopia 
> certainly are open source and I can tell you for certain, we are 
> committed to keeping them open source.

Sure Nokia has some products which happen to be free software. That
doesn't make them committed to free software, what with being eg.
hostile to free formats, a strong opponent of independent software
development in general through their patent lobby, very much clueless in
top level press comments about these subjects, and in general not being
very consistent in what they're up to in this area.

> Maemo is quite good. That is pure Nokia. Qt and Qtopia are good, that is 
> now from Nokia...

The tablet OS has significant proprietary portions, both third party and
in-house - the latter having insiders commenting that it's difficult
(when at all possible) to get the go-ahead to free the code properly.
Not to mention the target hardware platform pretty much requires binary
blob kernel code and such (last I checked anyway).

Not meaning to start a Nokia flamefest here, it was originally just a
side comment, but since we have a (paid) on-list representative here,
apparently a reminder of the other side of the coin is in order.

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(Some?) 3G support for Linux from Nokia - relevant for future models?

2008-09-17 Thread Mikko Rauhala
Bumped into the following:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/2008/09/17/dr-ari-jaaksi-on-maemo-5/

Relevantly "Nokia is now Gold Sponsor of Linux Foundation, has
contributed code today for 3G/HSPA cellular (data) connectivity for
OMAP3 to Linux kernel"

I would interpret this as there being a free driver solution for 3G
handset suitable chipsets now available, though perhaps I am missing
some details? Good for 04 (you know, whenever) getting UMTS, one might
hope?

Personally I'll be loathe to buy Nokia products anyway, they're just way
too inconsistent with their policies and have no commitment to free
software whatsoever. But, if something good comes out of them, that's,
well, "good".

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Re: Video on Freerunner?

2008-08-24 Thread Mikko Rauhala
Quoting Tim Dobson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> you tube video are possible on the free runner. though not instantly...

See my earlier mail on Youtube offering mp4 versions of their videos.
I still don't know if anyone's verified how balrog-kun's referenced
glamo-accelerated mplayer plays them (or if the glamo output has received
further finetuning). But anyway, there certainly is potential to play
youtube stuff more or less realtime.

http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2008-June/020056.html

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Re: SDHC 16GB 15MB/s card

2008-08-19 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ti, 2008-08-19 kello 18:06 -0400, Geoff Ruscoe kirjoitti:
> I am looking to upgrade my Micro SDHC card and I found:
> a 16GB Sandisk w / 15MB/s speeds.  This sounded like a winner to me,
> but I wasn't sure if it would work.
>
> The model number is: SDSDRH-016G-A11

Googling this model number finds an SDHC card. _Not_ a µSDHC card. It
will not fit mechanically.

Also, I haven't seen 16G cards (µSDHC ones) on the market yet, though
certainly they're coming. (By the way, a 15MB/s card is kind of overkill
on the FR, it can't manage half that - just for future reference, if you
find yourself wondering whether to spend extra bucks for card speed.)

Anyway, any µSDHC card "should" work. In case of unexpected
incompatibility, 1) finetune the Glamo SD clock and/or other settings
and report back 2) return the card and get a different model.

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Re: FR GPRS speed

2008-08-09 Thread Mikko Rauhala
la, 2008-08-09 kello 17:36 -0400, Jeff Davis kirjoitti:
> What's the highest internet speed the GRPS modem on the FR is capable
> of?  Wikipedia gives a very broad range for sub-EDGE technology.

It supports the max. plain gprs speed, theoretically 80kpbs.

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Re: cpu-speed limitations

2008-08-05 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On ti, 2008-08-05 at 14:10 +0200, Yorick Moko wrote:
> I guess it could even prevent car gps-navigation
> because displaying the map + speed and using text2speech would
> probable give some problems

Oh come on, it's not that bad. Also (AIUI) you can pretty much scroll
with the Glamo, only drawing newly visible portions of the map.

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S-Media's self-damaging NDA-happiness

2008-08-05 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On ti, 2008-08-05 at 12:55 +0100, Alex Kavanagh wrote:
> Does this scenario work well for S Media?

No. Their NDA-happiness does seem very stupid, as they don't seem to
have much of an edge against the bigger players besides their lack of
overt hostility to free software development. (Okay, possibly cost, but
I wouldn't know about that.)

As you may recall, it seems the plan is to ditch the chip for GTA03 and
just use a framebuffer. Not sure if that would've been different if
they'd just be more friendly - the drawbacks are still there, though as
pondered, they could've been mitigated more effectively at least. At
least being more open would've been an _effort_ to remain relevant in
this inevitably skyrocketing business ;]

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Re: firmware Re: IMEI

2008-08-03 Thread Mikko Rauhala
su, 2008-08-03 kello 04:12 -0700, Learning It kirjoitti:
> Do we have sources of firmware for GSM chipset?

No.

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Re: IMEI

2008-08-02 Thread Mikko Rauhala
la, 2008-08-02 kello 12:17 -0700, Learning It kirjoitti:
> Where is stored IMEI?

The GSM chipset.

> Could it be changed?

Not in any documented manner.

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Re: GPS application (was: Request for help: Would like community applications to show anddiscuss at LinuxWorld)

2008-07-30 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ti, 2008-07-29 kello 20:53 +0200, Marcus Bauer kirjoitti:
> I'm a huge Openstreetmap fan but until OSM is ready for routing this
> will take at least five more years, probably ten. 

That's probably true _if you drive a car_ (though even for that it can
be a handy help, especially in areas that don't happen to have lots of
turn restrictions, though you of course don't want to just blindly drive
listening to it anyway).

Us others want navigation too and are considerably less hampered by
OSM's current lackings. 'course, there are other projects than TangoGPS,
but it seems otherwise nice so one would like it to include this as
well. As long as I'm not coding it, it's not my call, of course :]

PS: Kudos for your work and all, but with all your hyperbole, jumping to
conclusions, accusations of lying and stuff, you might want to take a
step back for a breather if you want, you know, people to bother to
listen to you instead of just wanting to rant wildly.

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Re: The GTAs

2008-07-26 Thread Mikko Rauhala
la, 2008-07-26 kello 14:53 +0300, Timo Jyrinki kirjoitti:
> 2.5G = GSM with GPRS
> 2.75G = GSM with EDGE (=EGPRS)

Yeah, but FWIW, the whole G notation especially for fractions should be
taken out and shot ;]

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Re: Volume?

2008-07-25 Thread Mikko Rauhala
pe, 2008-07-25 kello 20:31 +0200, Aaron Sowry kirjoitti:
> Everyone I have spoken to using the GTA02 handset has mentioned large 
> amounts of echo when calling to/from another cellphone,

FWIW, I had this problem for most of my GTA01 use unless I tuned down
the volume manually from the slider present when calling. On the default
GTA02 image the problem isn't present out of the box, however. (Same
sim, same provider, so I rather doubt it's them suddenly starting to do
echo cancellation.) I presume the mixer settings in that are saner per
default, and apparently I should back them up before trying any
updating ;]

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Re: InvisibleShield discounts!

2008-07-23 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On ke, 2008-07-23 at 13:43 +0200, Bastian Feder wrote:
> Take them and use them wisely.
> (If you've used one, please write back to community there would be no
> discount code collision).

Meh. Please, when sharing discount codes, take the time to dish them out
yourself privately. The community list is stuffed enough as it is, and
throwing around one-use codes and notes about them being used publically
is somewhat superfluous.

I've got several codes too. E-mail me privately if you need them, that
is, are ordering only one shield - otherwise you'd get the same or
better discount already.

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Re: Reason for GPS problems found! / more patches

2008-07-22 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ti, 2008-07-22 kello 17:01 +0200, Alexey Feldgendler kirjoitti:
> On Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:25:45 +0200, Andy Green <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > static int sd_drive;
> 
> This doesn't seem like zero initialization to me.

Static is initialized to zero. But indeed, I too noticed this from the
patch, and would make it explicit to be more clear.

(Shan't bother to check if the C standard actually allows it to be
merely zeroed bits but nonzero when interpreted as an int...)

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Re: Reason for GPS problems found! / more patches

2008-07-22 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On ti, 2008-07-22 at 11:43 +0800, Simon Matthews wrote:
> Surely the hardware and software 'fixes' can only be seen as a total fix
> if they make the SN (signal to noise ratio) of the GPS the same as if
> the SD card is not present.

FWIW and IMAO, this definition of a "total fix" is impractical almost to
the point of uselessness. There will always be some noise in a tightly
packed product incorporating many high frequency sources. The question
is if the noise is significant (as it seems to have originally been).

Referring back a bit, it _is_ nice to hear though that the clock drive
tuning can improve the situation noticably even with SD clock on, should
probably give that a try myself one of these days. (Haven't tested GPS
in a while now, but it _would_ be nice not to have to send my unit in
for service :)

Again, kudos to the team for a job well done on all fronts, sw and hw,
with regard to this issue.

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Re: USB connector not Mini-AB?

2008-07-21 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ma, 2008-07-21 kello 10:24 +0100, Andy Green kirjoitti:
> We don't monitor ID pin yet to automate this, but we will. 

Funky.

> You need to provide some magic sysfs poking by hand at the moment to
> push it between host and device modes.
> ~  echo host > /sys/devices/platform/s3c2410-ohci/usb_mode
> ~  echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/neo1973-pm-host.0/hostmode

There was some discussion at some point if the Freerunner can be in host
mode without providing power _while_ charging from outside 5V (for some
special applications like robotics, obviously with special non-standard
cabling arrangements), but I don't know if that ended up with an answer.
Will only changing the usb_mode accomplish this?

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Re: USB connector not Mini-AB?

2008-07-21 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ma, 2008-07-21 kello 10:24 +0100, Andy Green kirjoitti:
> We don't monitor ID pin yet to automate this, but we will. 

Funky.

> You need to provide some magic sysfs poking by hand at the moment to
> push it between host and device modes.
> ~  echo host > /sys/devices/platform/s3c2410-ohci/usb_mode
> ~  echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/neo1973-pm-host.0/hostmode

There was some discussion at some point if the Freerunner can be in host
mode without providing power _while_ charging from outside 5V (for some
special applications like robotics, obviously with special non-standard
cabling arrangements), but I don't know if that ended up with an answer.
Will only changing the usb_mode accomplish this?

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Re: microSDHC class 4 or class 6?

2008-07-18 Thread Mikko Rauhala
pe, 2008-07-18 kello 15:14 -0500, Hans L kirjoitti:
> On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 2:26 PM, Andrew Burgess <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Can the Freerunner make use of the class 6 speed?
> >
> > If not I'll go for the max size.
> 
> According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital_card#SDHC
> Class 4 supports a minimum write speed of 4MB/s, and 6MB/s for class
> 6.  Not sure how fast the Freerunner is capable of writing though.

According to raster¹ the glamo (which is also the SD card controller)
bus speed is "7.3m/s" (I presume from context he means megabytes). This
with the cpu doing nothing else besides transferring data to or from the
card; thus in practice I don't think the class 4/6 distinction is going
to matter much on the FR. I would go for the size (and did, with my 8 GB
class 4 card).

But, I haven't experimented with the different classes, so grains of
salt and all.

¹ http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2008-April/016518.html

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Re: Reason for GPS problems found!

2008-07-15 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ti, 2008-07-15 kello 23:29 +0200, Joerg Reisenweber kirjoitti:
> The good news: *IF* all pans out, there's (or soon will be) a new kernel at 
> Andy branch that stops SD-card clock when SDcard is idle. We hope this will 
> almost cure the problem, at least reduce it to sth like "you can't GPS while 
> watching video from SD" or the like (hope you can cope with that ;).

It does sound plausible that it'd be "okay" with sufficient SD buffering
at least. Interesting to see how it pans out.

To give a more visible voice to some ponderings that have been on the
IRC channel, I'll toss this followup question out here: Can the SD bus,
when active, additionally be (stably) underclocked (when GPS is in use
or maybe just when getting a fix) and, of course, would this have any
effect?

> We're about to verify a hw-fix so you could even watch video and still
> have GPS positioning during that.

Excellent. One would hope official retailers *cough*pulster*cough* would
be able to perform such an operation, once verified; perhaps allow for
fixes being done by local hw-capable people (sadly not me) without
voiding warranty...

> And *please* don't try weird reworks and maybe break your FR by doing so 

Yeaah sorry about that tinfoil quip ;]

And cheers for keeping us in the loop with this issue.

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Re: Reason for GPS problems found!

2008-07-15 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ti, 2008-07-15 kello 13:58 +, Ole Kliemann kirjoitti:
> On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 01:52:36PM +0200, Marcus Bauer wrote:
> > who needs SD cards anyway ;-p
> 
> I need it for one single reason... to store map data for gps... o_0

Indeed that's a biggie... Here's hoping any kludgy but
not-very-cumbersome fix will be found. (Let's wrap the µSD in tinfoil!)

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Re: GPS

2008-07-13 Thread Mikko Rauhala
su, 2008-07-13 kello 03:48 -0700, Russell Sears kirjoitti:
> The current software drivers do not save any state between GPS locks, so 
> the GPS device is needlessly re-downloading information from the 
> satellites each time it turns on.  Downloading the data seems to require 
> a much better/more consistent signal than calculating the phone's 
> current position.

Doesn't just seem to, it does need a better signal. And yeah, being able
to restore that data and/or get it from the network should provide much
quicker first fixes. From #openmoko:
 cold start: like 10 minutes for a fix
 agps data feeded immediately after start: fix in 1 minute or less
 between 2 tall buildings, btw

Anyway, as for the GPS problems some are having, I got a fix relatively
quickly on a phone another guy had problems with from the first Finnish
group batch. The difference mostly that he used some of the frontends
and I grepped the device node directly. So there might've been some
software glitches at work with eg. gsmd getting confused at the chip
output (which includes large amounts of those spurious error messages
and stuff). (Of course, it _might_ have been a flaky but not
consistently faulty connection too; we'll keep an eye on the device if
it starts acting up again.)

So anyone who's having GPS problems should probably make sure it's
hardware by checking out the GPS chip output at the lowest level by
doing something like:

echo 1 > 
/sys/devices/platform/s3c2440-i2c/i2c-adapter/i2c-0/0-0073/neo1973-pm-gps.0/pwron
grep GPGGA /dev/ttySAC1

And seeing if there'll be fix-looking data within, say, 10 minutes to be
sure, on a decent exposure of the sky. (You can do that remotely in a
screen session and then attach to it with "screen -dr" from the OpenMoko
terminal to make it easier to type it in but still get the output from
the Neo.) See http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GPS on what a fix looks
like.

Hope this helps someone.

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Re: SanDisk micro SDHC 8GB card under testing

2008-07-11 Thread Mikko Rauhala
pe, 2008-07-11 kello 15:44 -0600, Joe Pfeiffer kirjoitti:
> Checking you're right.  I could swear I saw early on that the
> whole reason jffs2 was used on the GTA01 was because SD didn't do
> that.  So anybody know why it was used?

Bee-cause the internal flash is not SD but raw flash, on both Neos?

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Re: SanDisk micro SDHC 8GB card under testing

2008-07-11 Thread Mikko Rauhala
pe, 2008-07-11 kello 15:17 -0600, Joe Pfeiffer kirjoitti:
> Well...  using an inode-based filesystem like ext2 or ext3 is a really
> bad idea, since you end up rewriting some of the blocks a *lot*.
> Journalling the metadata, as ext3 does it, does make things even worse
> as you say.  Using a purely journalled FS like jffs2, on the other
> hand, is a really good idea since it's designed to avoid exactly those
> flaws.

SD does wear-leveling. JFFS2 is redundant on those, though probably
generic leveling isn't quite as efficient than what a leveling
filesystem can manage on raw flash. (Slapping leveling on leveling isn't
likely to improve things much, I would think...)

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Re: FR Max downlink bandwidth

2008-07-06 Thread Mikko Rauhala
su, 2008-07-06 kello 16:01 +0200, Diego Fdez. Durán kirjoitti:
>  What is the max downlink bandwidth of FreeRunner?

80k for the 4 downlink timeslots. In theory. Practice, you can get >50.

>  It's just curiosity, I'm going to use FreeRunner to keep open a SSH
> session to my server's control server and latency is the critical thing.

Then why're you talking bandwidth? Latency is always bad with gprs.
0.5-1s usually. SSH is not pleasant but usable; done that semiregularly
over gprs for quite a while.

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Re: Dual Band GSM

2008-07-05 Thread Mikko Rauhala
la, 2008-07-05 kello 14:01 +0200, Sean Lynch kirjoitti:
> Does anyone know if there are any plans for a Dual Band GSM openmoko
> phone? It'd be nice to have an 850/900 phone for use in the States or
> in Europe.

You're confused. The phones are triband 850/1800/1900 and 900/1800/1900,
called 850 and 900 models for short because that's where they differ.
(In hindsight, this probably invites the confusion for people who don't
know GSM.)

The upshot, generalizing horribly much, is that either phone will work
on both sides of the pond in densely populated areas (where 1800/1900
service is common), but not necessarily in the more rural areas of the
"wrong" side (where 850/900 is commonly needed).

One _does_ hope future models will be quad for increased flexibility
(GTA03?).

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Maximizing the GPRS through compression and caching

2008-07-03 Thread Mikko Rauhala
pe, 2008-07-04 kello 11:50 +1200, Ben Wilson kirjoitti:
> I wonder how feasible/effective it would be to do some extra realtime 
> compression on the GPRS data link?
> Make a connection to your home Linux box to terminate the compression 
> and connect you out to the internet from there.

Yeah I have often done something to this effect when surfing over GPRS;
do an ssh -C -L tunnel to a web proxy (or even nowadays use the generic
socks tunneling of ssh -C -D). That's an easy if not quite as generic
solution as full-blown compressed VPN. (I'm not sure if the dropbear
client supports -D, I don't think so; but anyway.)

For web browsing, there's more to be done by using a smart proxy on both
the client and the intermediary computer; see the ideas at
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Server:WebProxy

I have some ugly and partially buggy (the Twisted integration part
spesifically) python code that does the HTML diffing (well, it splits on
> and identifies and transmits line ranges; uses ssh -C to provide usual
compression and encryption). I will probably debug it a bit at some
point here since hey, my Freerunner is shipping to me tomorrow. Perhaps
hopefully also add rdiff support for non-ML/text data (yes, I did check
the special algo was markedly more efficient for ML/text in several
interesting test cases at least). However, I'm not convinced I'll have
the motivation to polish it up as suitable for general consumption, and
would appreciate if an interested party stepped up (hell, even if they
didn't use my hacked-up code at all but rather just ran with the general
idea).

Oh yeah, the code? It's not up anywhere at this point, since it's not
useful as is. I can send to interested parties on request, and if I get
it functional, I'll certainly post it up.

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Re: My word on GPRS (was: How Slow Is Fast?)

2008-07-03 Thread Mikko Rauhala
to, 2008-07-03 kello 16:15 -0400, Nkoli kirjoitti:
> On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 4:02 PM, Mikko Rauhala
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Umh. Disappointing. Is this really the best it can do or best
> that has been coaxed out of it so far?
> 
> This is the case with all gprs/edge capable phones - it has nothing to
> do with the neo specifically. 3G radios can maintain both voice and
> data at the same time; 2 and 2.5G radios cannot.

I know that, but that the signaling of an incoming voice call won't
necessarily make it through if the GPRS is in constant use was news to
me.

To be fair, I don't have a clue if my previous GPRS phones have also
actually behaved in this manner hidden from me...

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Re: My word on GPRS (was: How Slow Is Fast?)

2008-07-03 Thread Mikko Rauhala
to, 2008-07-03 kello 21:35 +0200, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer kirjoitti:
> Note though, once someone wants to call you while you are not idling, i.e. 
> during a long wget, you will not get any call notifications. Instead, the 
> network will think you are not reachable and -- if configured -- send you to 
> the voice mailbox.

Umh. Disappointing. Is this really the best it can do or best that has
been coaxed out of it so far?

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Re: FreeRunner and Rogers/Fido question

2008-07-03 Thread Mikko Rauhala
to, 2008-07-03 kello 12:24 -0600, Todd Courtnage kirjoitti:
> I'm confused in whether EDGE is 3G or 2G.  On the Wikipedia page:
> "While EDGE is part of the 3G standard, some phones report EDGE and 3G
> network availability as separate things, notably the iPhone."

So's Wikipedia. And everyone else as well since 3G is just a blanket
marketing term for a bundle of technologies.

EDGE does, at its fastest, reach speeds sometimes coined as 3G, but is
mostly considered 2G anyway. Does any of it matter? No.

> Paint me confused.  :-)  Can I (in theory, at least) access Rogers' EDGE
> network, and hence get data/internet access on the FreeRunner?

EDGE is a beefed-up GPRS. You _should_ be fine, only at lower speeds.

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Re: not being able to use Skype is a big problem

2008-07-03 Thread Mikko Rauhala
to, 2008-07-03 kello 12:45 -0500, Forrest Sheng Bao kirjoitti:
> PS: If you wanna call a traditional telephone from a VoIP client,
> there must be a company providing the service to bridging Internet and
> telephony network, right?

Yes.

> Do you have such open source solutions?

A service is not "open source" per se, though there are certainly many
VOIP to POTS bridging providers who use standard protocols. I use
diamondcard (for the very little I have need for such a thing), mostly
because Ekiga offered it by default (though I've since changed to
Twinklephone - the wonders of standard protocols!)

You can presumably use Asterisk to set up such a service, if that's what
you're asking - it's rather unclear.

> I think the company need to pay money to telephony service operator.
> Who will pay it?

Umm, the users?

You seem to be rather confused about open source, open protocols and
services that can be accessed using the above, to be frank. These are
three different things, though go well together.

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SIP clients (was: that #/¤ Skype thing)

2008-07-03 Thread Mikko Rauhala
to, 2008-07-03 kello 09:15 +0100, Alastair Johnson kirjoitti:
> Joerg Reisenweber wrote:
> > You might try to crosscompile twinklephone.com.
> 
> linphone is probably easier.

Maybe. Twinkle does ZRTP for proper call encryption though, so there's
at least that reason to use it as a base...

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Re: Battery life & case design

2008-07-01 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ti, 2008-07-01 kello 14:35 +0200, Arne Zachlod kirjoitti:
> Im not sure, but I think with an even thicker phone there will be more 
> no-geeks who dont care about the freeness who wont buy the phone only 
> because its thick and heavy (and such a phone would be heavy).

Actually reading the text you would have noticed he was suggesting for
someone (maybe Openmoko, maybe not) to produce a large battery back as
an optional accessory, so your criticism misses the point entirely.

For myself, I would be at least somewhat interested (depending on bang
per buck, of course; it's not a must-have for me), for largely the
reasons the OP mentioned. That is, simply for getting to have more of it
on more of the time doing useful stuff. 

Power management is obviously important regardless, as is getting decent
standby time with the default battery. (If anyone would like to offer a
short summary to the community on how cpufreq and suspend are
progressing, that would be interesting.)

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Re: Inter-Freerunner Connectivity

2008-06-29 Thread Mikko Rauhala
su, 2008-06-29 kello 13:22 -0400, Charles Pax kirjoitti:
> In what ways can two Freerunners plausibly communicate? Which is the
> fastest for data transfer?

Wifi.

> Can they connect via WiFi without a separate router? I've seen some
> discussion over how the Freerunner cannot be used as an access point.

Yes.

>  Does this mean two Freerunners wouldn't be able to create a network
> of just themselves?

No.

> Can they connect through USB with one being the host and the other
> behaving as if it were connected to my desktop (as an external hard
> drive or whatever)?

Yes.

> Is there another type of USB networking they can do?

What it does by default. You know, USB networking instead of mass
storage.

> Is there enough control over the GSM chipset to communicate directly
> (without using the mobile phone network) between two Freerunners?

No.

> This would violate some FCC regulation, right?

Yes and quite possibly kill someone.

> And just for fun... Would there be any practical purpose for
> communicating through the headphone/mic jack?

No.

> I'm assuming they can connect via bluetooth and that they can can make
> phone calls to each other :)

Yes.

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Re: The glamo chip and its future

2008-06-28 Thread Mikko Rauhala
la, 2008-06-28 kello 12:25 +0200, Yorick Moko kirjoitti:
> I have no idea if it will be slow but youtube video's should be
> possible.

Yeah, their standard videos are such low resolution and quality it could
well be possible reasonably... And also:

> Maybe you would have to encode it to mpeg-4 though, don't know if it
> will work through flash.

Youtube does provide higher quality mp4 video nowadays; you can get at
the download links from eg. keepvid.com service. So if the mp4 files
downloadable are ones that the Glamo chip can decode, that's our
solution; just code a youtube viewer that shows the mp4 versions.
(Somebody with a Freerunner please feel free to verify if this works :)

> nice post about the video acceleration:
> http://unadventure.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/accelerating-in-my-pocket/

Indeed.

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Re: The glamo chip and its future

2008-06-28 Thread Mikko Rauhala
la, 2008-06-28 kello 09:43 +0200, Michael Stather kirjoitti:
> At least this is what I read, 
> since neither read 2D or 3D acceleration is possible.

That is quite an overstatement of the problems. At least Xv and mpeg4
accelerations are possible with available software. I don't know exactly
how much accelerated support there otherwise is, but at least seems from
public statements that basic stuff like blitting/solid fills/rotation
etc is there. So please, while the Glamo is no panacea, and the
bandwidth issues are real enough, no FUD that nothing is possible with
it.

Also, while this is purely speculative, balrog-kun (the guy responsible
for mpeg-4 acceleration) at least at some point had some ambitions on
doing basic 3d acceleration support, but that would probably require
running in QVGA mode even if that pans out. (The Glamo is not really
designed for VGA displays even if it can drive one.)

> So I wonder why this was done that way (since the older model had a much 
> larger bandwidth), and whether it's changed for the next release.

It is public information that the Glamo is off the table for GTA03 due
to it not panning out quite as well as was originally hoped.

As for why, I can only speculate. The short specs without the caveats
were attractive enough, they got permission to do a free driver, and the
Glamo provided an extra SD controller (though limited by its bus) which
was necessary with the wifi chip requiring one.

> I mean e.g. games (3D games, or emulators) are IMHO an important part of the 
> functionality of such a smartphone.

For fast-paced games you might want to use QVGA mode to alleviate the
bandwidth issues, but IMAO on such a small screen that isn't a bad deal
anyway (for fast-paced games spesifically). Something like scumm
adventure games should be fine in higher resolution, but that isn't a
promise as I don't have a GTA02 myself yet (the order _is_ in :).

Realize that the GTA03 will apparently be dumb framebuffer again, like
GTA01. While that speeds up pure blitting to the screen from the main
memory, do not expect wonders from it either.

Where future devices go, we shall see. The reality is that most high-end
embedded graphics stuff is closed as hell. What with Android and even
Nokia announcing preliminary plans for Linux phones, there are quite
enough high-profile companies doing this stuff with no regard for real
openness (witness Android FAQ and partner list, and Nokia's Maemo).

I for one would like OpenMoko to differentiate in this respect and stay
the course even with the difficulties it may pose.

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Re: No WLAN AP functionality

2008-06-28 Thread Mikko Rauhala
la, 2008-06-28 kello 11:31 +0200, Atilla Filiz kirjoitti:
> Why can't we use madwifi? I thought our wifi chips were atheros.

All Atheros are not created equal. Madwifi is for Atheros' a5k series
softmac laptop chips. This is a 6k series hardmac embedded chip.

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No WLAN AP functionality

2008-06-27 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On pe, 2008-06-27 at 10:47 -0500, Hans L wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 2:49 AM, Flemming Richter Mikkelsen
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Is it possible to use the WiFi in the FreeRunner as an access point?

Sadly no, as it's a hardmac chip and the proprietary firmware lacks this
feature. You should be able to use ad hoc mode for most purposes, albeit
not always as conveniently.

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Re: Fast questions about GTA03

2008-06-27 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On pe, 2008-06-27 at 13:56 +0200, Lucas Bonnet wrote:
> Sean Moss-Pultz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > I encourage you to get involved today. We need your help. Waiting for 
> > GTA03 is a possibility of course, but keep in mind how long it took us 
> > to go from 01 to 02.
> 
> Sure, how can we help?

If I may interject, I would presume Sean here is talking about buying
what's available now (instead of next year, even with the GTA03 not
being a major improvement anyway in most respects), and, you know,
running with it.

I'll be having my summer vacation starting today, and when I get my FRs
from Pulster, that'll hopefully revitalize my motivation to code a bit
on that mldiff/rsync proxy and a realtime net-shared shopping list thing
I've been thinking about.

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Re: upgrade memory card

2008-06-24 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ti, 2008-06-24 kello 17:02 -0400, Nicholas Dube kirjoitti:
> Will the FR be able to support 16GB SDHC microSD cards?

If it supports SDHC (and I hear it does) it supports at least up to 32GB
cards. That is an artificial limit in the spec, by the way, so
controllers _may_ be able to be coaxed into doing higher by driver
software if the spec will be revised in a straightforward manner in the
future (that is, through the removal of said limit).

(Personally I've a 8GB Sandisk in my 1973, but of course the card
controller is different in the FR.)

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Re: GPS

2008-06-23 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ma, 2008-06-23 kello 09:02 +0200, Francesco Cat kirjoitti:
> the FreeRunner will have a true GPS integrated, not only an AGPS
> system, wouldn't it?

You misunderstand what AGPS means. Yes, it can work without assistance
data. (I don't know if there is software support for assistance at this
point, come to think of it...)

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Re: openmoko and pci express voice modems

2008-06-17 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ti, 2008-06-17 kello 18:53 +0100, Al Johnson kirjoitti:
> On Tuesday 17 June 2008, Matt Flax wrote:
> > I would like to know whether it is possible to plug a pci express voice
> > modem into a laptop and then use openmoko to make mobile calls from the
> > laptop ?
>
> It ought to be possible, though probably not out of the box. It seems like an 
> odd thing to do, but I'm sure you have a reason.
[...pondering how you could make calls from a Neo through a laptop]

I figured he meant running the OM software on the lappie to operate the
voice modem as a phone.

Which should be doable with some hacking to accommodate possible
differences between the pci express card and the chip arrangement of a
Neo. Majorly, would the card present itself as an audio interface or
transfer PCM on the serial interface?

As currently the OM dialer is Qtopia, the question becomes if it has
support for the required I/O strategy or would one have to hack it (I
don't know).

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Re: speech -> text on FR?

2008-06-15 Thread Mikko Rauhala
su, 2008-06-15 kello 16:07 -0700, Ajit Natarajan kirjoitti:
> I see a speech project on the OM projects page.  To me, it seems like 
> the project is attempting command recognition, e.g., voice dialing. 

Feasible especially if the user trains the command words in advance.
(Didn't check if it does that; it is doable to some extent otherwise too
but the difficulty rises markedly...)

> However, it would be great if the FR can function as a rudimentary 
> dictation machine, i.e., allow the user to speak and convert to text.

A pipe dream. Save your dictations as audio and postprocess them
elsewhere.

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Re: moko running everything as root

2008-06-15 Thread Mikko Rauhala
su, 2008-06-15 kello 16:39 +0200, Joerg Reisenweber kirjoitti:
> YEP, exactly. Really wonder whether ssh is open to GPRS :-o (I had to fire up 
> GPRS to check, my simcard doesn't allow right now. shame on me :-/ )
> For sure it's no good idea to run the web-browser as root.

Last I checked yes. So, you know, I pretty quickly set a root
password :]

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Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 - product management, features & assumptions

2008-06-10 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ti, 2008-06-10 kello 14:59 -0400, Ken Young kirjoitti:
> > but surely that's just a result of the current buzz - is UI animation
> > really a *necessity* in the long-term (or medium-term) future of the
> > mobile phone market?
> 
> This is especially true because if the GTA03 tries to be an iPhone
> clone, it will be at best a half-assed iPhone clone. 

I don't usually do "me, too"s, but I'll make an exception. This
no-nonsense observation warrants attention from the OM powers that be.

Indeed if you try to take on the iPhone where its strengths lie at this
point, you will fail. Freedom and openness have their own strengths.
Concentrate there until you have the resources to spread a wider net
properly.

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Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)

2008-06-09 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ti, 2008-06-10 kello 08:52 +0800, Carsten Haitzler kirjoitti:
> but beyond gta03 it's an open book and who knows - we may likely
> pull out a lower res screen. it is in fact very likely something will be a
> lower res in later products as there is just so much more choice there below
> vga.

As a >=VGA advocate (for all the stated reasons; web browsing,
terminals, better maps, text reading etc.), yes, a lower resolution
model may be quite okay.

Personally though, it'd be a shame if in the future, for instance, I'd
have to pick between UMTS-capable and VGA-resolution OM phones, in the
scenario that you put out an UMTS phone with a lesser resolution with no
new high-resolution model imminent... The features are to some extent
complementary in the sense that more resolution makes the better
bandwidth and latency more useful (aside from just wanting both features
for their own sake, of course ;).

I _could_ actually see the point in making GTA03 a QVGA phone though,
since it wouldn't apparently offer much more than an 02 in the way of
other features. It could be the display cost-cut version of GSM OM
phones...

(Personally though, I would've gone straight 3G after GTA02 to get one
of those beasts out reasonably fast, since GSM is, well, aged, and
lacking 3G is starting to be a major misfeature. But I don't claim to
have done market studies on the case...)

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Re: Android on Freerunner ... Would it be possible ?

2008-05-30 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On pe, 2008-05-30 at 11:47 +0200, NeoSleg wrote:
>I'm hust wondering if it would be possible to install Android on
> freerunner when they will be out ... I don't really know if Google
> plan to give their system to the public or only distributed with new
> devices ...

As has been said before, Google's development image is compiled for a
newer revision of ARM and is thus unusable on the Neo. (There is
speculation that they've intentionally limited the audience for newer
devices of their partners, but no real information.)

If they'll later release their sources as free software as they have
promised (well, the promises have included wording like "most of" and
such, so we'll see if they'll really follow through with true
freedom...), at that point the system should be portable to the Neo.
Being a VM platform that just happens to run Linux at the bottom,
probably their jitter will require some work in addition to simple
recompilation, but shouldn't be an unreasonable amount of work.

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Re: multi-tutch?

2008-05-29 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On to, 2008-05-29 at 17:20 +0200, Bastian Muck wrote:
> I have a little idea. Imagine, you put your finger somewhere on the 
> right side of the screen. The "average" point is also somewhere at the 
> right side. When you put another finger e.g. at the left side the 
> "average" point jumps somewhere to the middle. This "jump" is where we 
> could guess, that at least two fingers touch the screen.

Yes, this idea has been bounced around on the IRC at least (not to
belittle you coming up with it also :] ). One could indeed do limited
multi-touch emulation, recognizing quick drags and extrapolating the
position of the second finger to be at the point twice the distance from
the drag startpoint as the drag endpoint. AFAIK nobody is actually doing
that and it has its limits as you indicate (no way to reliably know
which finger is moving after the dual-tap and such); however, the way is
clear for somebody interested to experiment...

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Re: multi-tutch?

2008-05-28 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ke, 2008-05-28 kello 17:17 +0200, Jan Stöckel kirjoitti:
> hey given pro-linux.de (german news site)is right, MPX
> http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/mpx/ is now a part of Xorg, and I can
> remember that the display of the freerunner was ready for multituch,
> [...] Or I am completly wrong and it isn`t possible ?

Yes. It isn't.

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Re: Gaming on Openmoko?

2008-05-10 Thread Mikko Rauhala
la, 2008-05-10 kello 11:06 +0200, Tomas Gustavsson kirjoitti:
> I do not know if this is true but I read somewhere that dosemu wins over
> dosbox in performance any day. Does anyone knows if this is true?

It is true.

The reason it is true is that dosemu runs the program code natively on
the host processor, whereas dosbox does emulation.

On an ARM cpu, the former approach is unlikely to work.

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Re: microSD support

2008-05-09 Thread Mikko Rauhala
pe, 2008-05-09 kello 21:57 +0100, Mo Abrahams kirjoitti:
> Although the point is moot if there aren't any manufacturers exploiting
> that.

Well, you know, there's a reason for that besides the SD Card
association's artificial limit. 32 gigabyte "standard" form factor SDHC
cards have only just been prototyped anyway, not to mention that the
smaller micro/miniSDs max out considerably sooner.

With 32 gig SDHC cards coming out, though, I kind of expect the
association to revise the spec to remove the cap. Otherwise, well,
manufacturers will likely just start ignoring it... We'll see.

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Re: microSD support

2008-05-09 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On pe, 2008-05-09 at 16:48 +0200, thomasg wrote:
> There's a list of supported microSDs for GTA01 on the wiki. I'm pretty
> sure that there wil be no difference in GTA02.
> http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Supported_microSD_cards

Actually GTA01 is not a good comparison in this case because the microSD
reader in GTA02 is hooked up to the GPU, as opposed to the SoC, so it's
quite a low-level difference. (I have an 8 GB one in my GTA01 myself.)

That said, Joachim verifying a 4 GB card working gives good reason to
assume pretty much any SDHC will.

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Re: community Digest, Vol 77, Issue 11

2008-04-28 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On ma, 2008-04-28 at 13:23 -0400, Ken Young wrote:
> Much of the recent discussion on the hardware list has centered around
> what would be the easiest way to *remove* the glamo from future
> revisions of the Freerunner.   It sounds like the folks most intimately
> familiar with the situation think that the glamo will never be useful.

Be that as it may, doesn't mean its mpeg4 decoding shouldn't be taken
advantage of on the Freerunner, especially given the bandwidth
limitations. Which was pretty much the point.

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Re: Video Playback virtually impossible on Neo Freerunner? (Re: Video of Qt 4.4 on Neo1973: brings iPhone like graphics)

2008-04-28 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On ma, 2008-04-28 at 09:26 -0500, Tim Shannon wrote:
> But isn't it still limited by the bandwidth available from the micro
> SD card?  Maybe I misunderstood that.  

Yes it is. It's just that sending mpeg4 packets to the glamo takes just
a _tiny_ bit less bandwidth than sending entire uncompressed frames.
(Also the CPU will have more time to spend for doing the I/O.)

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Re: Video Playback virtually impossible on Neo Freerunner? (Re: Video of Qt 4.4 on Neo1973: brings iPhone like graphics)

2008-04-28 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On ma, 2008-04-28 at 16:13 +0200, Jens Fursund wrote:
> Is mpeg-4 decoding in the Glamo chip only video? Or could we use it to
> decode audio as well to decrease CPU-time, thereby having more
> batterytime for playing mpeg4 audio?

Video only.

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Re: Video Playback virtually impossible on Neo Freerunner? (Re: Video of Qt 4.4 on Neo1973: brings iPhone like graphics)

2008-04-28 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On ma, 2008-04-28 at 13:59 +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> What if you could use one of those 'coming very soon' Laser projection 
> device(s) connected to USB ?

You'd be looking at 12 Mbit/s max for the USB1.1, not fun.

Really peeps, face it, seems that the sane way to do non-crappy video on
the Freerunner is to get driver support for that Glamo mpeg-4 decoding
(remember, the hardware is capable). Hopefully everyone's grasping at
straws makes OM bump up the priority a bit (though again, for now there
are certainly more important things to do).

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Re: Video Playback virtually impossible on Neo Freerunner? (Re: Video of Qt 4.4 on Neo1973: brings iPhone like graphics)

2008-04-24 Thread Mikko Rauhala
to, 2008-04-24 kello 19:20 +0800, Carsten Haitzler kirjoitti:
> the graphics chip (glamo) can decode mpeg4
> itself, but we dont have the time or resources to do this properly ourselves.
> you are free to do it yourself as we provide all the code, but you would need 
> to
> reverse-engineer the graphics chip or hope that graphics documentation can be
> made public. right now you need an NDA to see the docs.

Righto. Of course, I'll be still buying the phone regardless, but I
would hope OM toss some resources this way _after_ getting the system
otherwise mass-market operational (or yeah, at least get the mpeg
decoding part independently and publicly documented as was alluded to as
a possibility with the glamo anyway). Leaving it totally unsupported in
these conditions would be somewhat downletting. (Again, talking extended
duration here, I don't mind it being unsupported for now.)

And for my two cents, screw "properly" if it gets too much in the way. A
device node that takes ioctls for geometry and mpeg-4 packets to decode?
If that's what it takes to get the functionality... And hey, any crappy
implementation would at least provide information for Somebody Else to
perhaps make it cleaner.

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Re: Don't ship GTA02v5 without the rework

2008-04-19 Thread Mikko Rauhala
pe, 2008-04-18 kello 21:57 -0400, Kevin Dean kirjoitti: 
> I have to say, I'm baffled by that sentiment. GTA02v5 is fully
> functional, the only "problem" is that it's not as efficient as it
> could be, just like every other product on the planet.

Hear hear. For fuck's sake, people. "Boohoo, there's gonna be a better
version down the line." Where the hell have you lived your tech lives?
This is how it _always_ is, and blowing any piece of admitted
suboptimality so out of proportion Escher would be proud is _not_ the
way to encourage an open development process.

Don't like a couple of LEDs being slightly brighter than strictly
necessary? Okay, there's the Perfect v6 coming up. Oh wait, it still
doesn't have wake-on-bluetooth (I'm almost sorry for mentioning this bit
of old news since it may stir up yet another storm in a teacup - again).
And it won't, too much reworking would be involved. So you'd better just
skip the FreeRunner altogether, you know, to get the perfect phone.

Don't think that's comparable to the lack of a minor power saving hw
feature? Well, there's this new Atheros AR6002 wifi chip that's more
power efficient than Neo's AR6001, so clearly, since we _already know_,
as many are stressing over the fucking LED thing, that the FreeRunner is
using a suboptimal solution, they should just scrap that piece of shit
and rebuild using this more power-efficient chip.

Of course, this all will mean that they'll never get any actual products
out, since there's always room for improvement especially in our
fast-paced tech world, but hey, it's all to satisfy the people who want
their phones Just Perfect.

And the point was? Yeah, the point. There was one here somewhere, let me
look for it. Oh yeah. Here it is:

Nothing. Will. Ever. Be. Perfect.

Get over it. Not to say you shouldn't wait for v6 if it would grind your
soul inside every time to see the led blink on a v5. Please do. Just
leave the rest of us in peace. Oh, and hope that the OM guys won't ever
think of a cheap way to make FR again slightly better and start
producing a v7. Why, that would mean that your phone would instantly
become useless crap, wouldn't it. Wouldn't it?

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Re: Will Freerunner have DUN support?

2008-04-17 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On to, 2008-04-17 at 10:20 -0600, Brad Midgley wrote:
> The bluez daemon for this, dund, stands in as a virtual modem, so the
> underlying network connection could be provided by gprs, wifi, pan, or
> even another dun.

Oh my. Indeed, I forgot to mention another fun example of what you can
do, which you touch upon here: Have the FreeRunner share its wifi access
with a nearby 1973 through bluetooth ;)

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Re: Will Freerunner have DUN support?

2008-04-17 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On to, 2008-04-17 at 17:48 +0200, Federico Lorenzi wrote:
> Things get way more interesting with the FreeRunner however. Don't
> have a Wireless network card? Well...

Indeed. The great thing about an open phone like this is that it's
possible, for simpler cases even easy to network it any way you like (it
does get a little more complex the more interfaces you want to use, and
of course, writing a good GUI interface to support the flexibility might
be hard...)

Anyway, as to the original question, yeah, want to use the phone's GPRS
connection over Bluetooth DUN and/or BNEP? Not a problem. Want to use
the connection through a USB cable? Sure. Over an ad-hoc wifi network
(sadly, FreeRunner's chip not supporting access point mode)? Why not.
Use FreeRunner's Wifi interface from the USB-attached computer to talk
to a local wireless network? Yeah, that's what you already implied ;)

All of the above, simultaneously? But of course! Expect to tune a bit
though.

Presumably the OM guys or Somebody(TM) will crack up a light GUI for the
simple cases of BT and USB tethering. Since this is slightly relevant,
I'll mention some braindumping of mine and some others on the wiki on
the subject: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Talk:USB_Networking

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Re: FreeRunner Pricing and PVT update

2008-04-14 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On ma, 2008-04-14 at 13:29 +0200, "Marco Trevisan (Treviño)" wrote:
> I agree, I'll buy one soon too, but what's the maximum capacity actually 
> supported (I've seen the wiki, but there are no so much tests)? I'd like 
> to buy an 8Gb Mini-SD card...

I have a 8 GB one (Sandisk) in my Neo right now. Well, not mini. Micro.
Different things.

The SDHC spec theoretically goes up to 2048 GB, however an arbitrary cap
of 32 GB has been (at least for now) set by the SD Card Association
according to Wikipedia. Go figure. Anyway, at least up to the 32 GB mark
new cards should work, let's see if they'll break the spec again at that
point to sell new devices...

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Re: Loosing your moko

2008-04-09 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ke, 2008-04-09 kello 22:48 +0200, Flemming Richter Mikkelsen kirjoitti:
> Some information about the users (like GPS tracks) can in some
> countries be illegal unless the user wants this (even if the user is
> the thief). Information retrieved illegally can not be used to put the
> thief in jail and I believe that in some places in the US, the thief
> might put you through a lawsuit and win (you always hear crazy stories
> from the US legal system).

While we're being not completely US-centric, I'll remind that illegally
acquired information being inadmissible isn't a global loophole either.

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Re: Data over normal GSM call

2008-04-08 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On ti, 2008-04-08 at 17:16 +0200, Tilman Baumann wrote:
> Maybe CSD is billed like a voice call. I never used it, but i don't 
> remember any special charges for that.

Doubtful for the US "drop your pants and bend over, please" carriers'
"minutes"; I presume the original poster was in this situation from
his .edu account and mention of AT&T.

Here in Finland we're mostly billed by minute (though there are
_optional_ US-like plans), and CSD calls indeed cost pretty much the
same as voice calls. I presume the situation may be similar in many
other (esp. EU) countries as well, which is good for us if we want to do
eg. those encrypted phone calls or cheaper international calls via
VOIP/CSD, but doesn't help the original poster.

> The Wikipedia article about CSD has some hints about running voice 
> modems via GSM too.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_Switched_Data

A quick glance finds mostly mentions of 1st gen analog mobiles having
been used with modems, and notably "At the same time, the speech
oriented audio compression used in GSM actually meant that data rates
using a traditional modem connected to the phone would have been even
lower than with older analogue systems."

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Re: Data over normal GSM call

2008-04-08 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On ti, 2008-04-08 at 16:02 +0100, Andy Green wrote:
> I think you're right, but just a thought if you could issue ready-coded
> GSM codec frames, you can put the data direct in there for >1KBytes/sec

Yeah, but you can't.

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Re: Data over normal GSM call

2008-04-08 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On ti, 2008-04-08 at 10:22 -0400, Dan Staley wrote:
> I have plenty of cell minutes (not to mention free calls between certain
> numbers...) but I dont want to pay for a data planso I figure if I
> wanted to, I could just have my phone call my computer and transfer data
> over the line.

There has been talk of it (especially in connection to encrypted
phonecalls). The archives have a lot of it.

To summarize, you can't transfer very useful amounts of data over a GSM
voice call since we can't bypass the GSM chip's audio codec for those.
Obviously you can get some data through, but the highest anyone's gone
was IIRC ~1k using some kind of funky phonetic coding, but I believe
there was no exact reference to this either, let alone code (which would
be rather complex).

You could perhaps do stuff like update GPS coordinates through DTMF or
something like that, but for larger data transfer needs you really want
a data plan.

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Re: Speeding up browsing and lightening the traffic load

2008-04-08 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On ti, 2008-04-08 at 11:30 +0200, Sander van Grieken wrote:
> > Over the last weekend, I've been working a bit on a prototype proxy
> > doing streaming html/xml diffs (dubbed mldiffs) based on a shared cache,
> > largely as described here: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Server:WebProxy
>
> "improvement: it would be better NOT to modify the client, but instead have 
> a 'reassembly proxy' on the client, so that all http clients/user agents 
> benefit without hacks. The reassembly proxy could then inject a cookie to 
> keep track of page versions."

Yeah that's actually pretty much what I've done so far. Using a custom
header, to be exact.

> Also, with pictures the proxy pair could detect on the second load it has 
> already sent the 'crappified' image and send a diff with the 
> next 'progression' of the image. That way the user can get the full quality 
> image with 2 or 3 page refresh actions.

Mm, that mechanic could work, if hopefully one could distinguish between
reloads and arriving on the page again at a later time. Besides a
timeout.

> > Image crappification support would be good, but I don't know, it would
> > really require inserting javascript or at least mucking with the (x)html
> > to work nicely with a browser knowing nothing of this. (You know,
> > something along the lines of click the image the first time, and you'll
> > get a better version; second time does what it normally does.)
>
> No need for hacks with the two-proxy scenario

I was mostly thinking along the lines of "transform img reference to a
crappified one, along with a surrounding link to a page version where
this image is the full-quality one", or "add javascript to pop up a menu
when image is clicked to load the full quality image or just do whatever
the original page wants to do when the image is clicked".

Exactly this sort of hacks are necessary for this sort of fine-grained
tuning without modifying the browser.

> It might even be extended to a session manager that keeps your (XMPP, IRC, 
> etc) sessions open even when switching from Wifi to GPRS or vice versa. This 
> would make possible 'handovers' when losing Wifi coverage. The server and 
> client proxies just reconnect over the other channel while the endpoints will 
> not disconnect.

Now this is an excellent idea, but I'm not so sure if it should be an
extension of this. First, a mobile diffing proxy is useful in many
places where one might not need those other things, and second, it's
less important to keep a single session going all the time with web
browsing.

Also, such a session manager would be rather simple on its own, which is
always a nice thing for maintainability. The web proxy could perhaps
just be routed through it, though; it would make things smoother for it
too in some situations.

Should really also check if someone's already done that sort of thing,
one would think someone might've...

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Re: Unofficial poll: Do you want 3G in the proposed successor, GTA03?

2008-04-07 Thread Mikko Rauhala
On ma, 2008-04-07 at 14:00 +0200, Federico Lorenzi wrote:
> First off, this is by no means official in any way. Vote on [1] if you
> _think_ 3G is essential for a successor to FreeRunner

Interesting choice of words; this discourages everyone who doesn't think
3G is essential from voting, even though the vote itself has other
choices. :]

Personally, for my two cents, for the successor it pretty much is
essential. I will buy at least one if not two Freerunners into my family
(having already one 1973). The GPRS will provide basic connectivity well
enough; having a slow net is infinitely better than none at all.

For the successor to be an attractive enough _upgrade_ to that, it'll
pretty much have to have 3G (UMTS). EDGE, not really worth it, unless
it's somehow a lot sexier in other ways. And there is the thing that
they're already starting to talk about running down the 2G networks here
in Finland... (Sure, it'll be just talk for years, but anyway, for
confidence in longevity and all that jazz.) Oh yeah, in light of what
they're talking about replacing it in rural areas, 900 MHz support for
UMTS would be nice as well ;P

Now, for HSDPA, it isn't really essential (though obviously _nice_).
Basic old-school 384k UMTS would be quite an okay tradeoff.

Anyway, for now, still anxious for the Freerunner. Cheerio.

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Speeding up browsing and lightening the traffic load

2008-04-07 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ma, 2008-04-07 kello 11:24 +0200, Erland Lewin kirjoitti:
> IMHO, the Opera Mini design (compressing and optimizing web pages
> before sending them to the phone) is excellent, because it saves
> traffic (=money) and speeds up loading.
>
> I'm not aware of any open source alternative with the same design.

Over the last weekend, I've been working a bit on a prototype proxy
doing streaming html/xml diffs (dubbed mldiffs) based on a shared cache,
largely as described here: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Server:WebProxy

Sadly, going by track record, I probably will not have the energy to
productize the thing, but maybe it'll provide inspiration and/or a basis
for someone to do so. I do intend to get at least the mldiffs going
(currently just need to debug the interproxy communication, other stuff
is done) and hopefully add rdiff support for non-ml content (during
testing I found the mldiffs to be notably better for markup content so I
started with that). Then I'll put the (python/twisted) source out there
(if someone's really interested for it now, feel free to ask).

Image crappification support would be good, but I don't know, it would
really require inserting javascript or at least mucking with the (x)html
to work nicely with a browser knowing nothing of this. (You know,
something along the lines of click the image the first time, and you'll
get a better version; second time does what it normally does.) I'm not
sure if that's something I want to tackle with. OTOH, simple
crappification controlled from a configuration key on the client might
be doable with my concentration levels, we'll see.

Oh yeah, the interproxy communication thing would need some work as
well, currently being plain http. My intent is to personally use ssh -C
for a transport service, so I'll get "for free" persistent protocol
compression (on top of the ml/rdiff) and encryption for the over-the-air
part. Someone more proficient in twisted would likely easily write a
nice compact persistent custom protocol with internal async muxing and
stuff.

Annyway, thought I'd mention this even though, as said, my proxy is in a
prototype stage, because, you know, this being an open phone, there's no
need for one to limit oneself to proprietary solutions, even if there's
not a free one available right this instant.

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Re: 3 nets

2008-03-30 Thread Mikko Rauhala
su, 2008-03-30 kello 18:19 +0200, Alexander Frøyseth kirjoitti:
> Just one question, will it be able to watch movies on it?

You can play them on the GTA01 even, if you're willing to transcode the
movie to a reasonably low bitrate (while also prerotating it) before
watching. For suggested mencoder parameters that I found to provide
quite adequate results for a small screen, see
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Video_Player

The Freerunner will have accelerated rotation and scaling at least,
probably also motion compensation for some formats (or at least I heard
about Xvmc work being done at some point on the IRC channel, I believe).
Subject to driver development I have the impression that the Glamo chip
is able to further accelerate mpeg4 playback, however, what with the
beefed up CPU and the hw scaling and rotation one should already be able
to play more video files "out of the box" without crappifying them
beforehand as is mostly necessary for the GTA01. (Note that when
decoding with the CPU versus a dedicated chip, the battery will
generally deplete faster even if the CPU is up to the job, though.)

So, umm, yeah; don't expect too much, but at the very least we have
decent quality pre-transcoded QVGA video playing _now_ on the GTA01's,
so things aren't looking bad from where I'm standing.

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Re: Aspect of FreeRunner

2008-02-16 Thread Mikko Rauhala
It is widely known that the case of the Freerunner at least on the
outside is exactly the same as GTA01, and it would be prohibitively
expensive and time-consuming to change that.

(Personally I think the case is okay, even if not perfect; having the
screen less deep would be nice for instance.)

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Re: proprietary firmware/Rant

2008-02-09 Thread Mikko Rauhala
la, 2008-02-09 kello 11:42 -0500, Christopher Earl kirjoitti:
> I am concerned with the GTA02, as of right now the wifi Firmware does
> not support monitor
> mode( http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.handhelds.openmoko.kernel/865 ).
> I am a Security tester and I *Must* have this function. 

I can see how that would be a bummer in your case. Hope Atheros will get
around to it, that part being in the proprietary portion :I

Personally I miss AP mode more for sharing Neo's GPRS connection (or
even a host computer's connection via USB) to wlan clients. But at least
this can probably be worked around with adhoc mode, if a bit less
conveniently.

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Re: Neo unusable for playing ogg

2007-12-26 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ke, 2007-12-26 kello 17:07 +0100, Flemming Richter Mikkelsen kirjoitti:
> As far as I know, Vorbis supports real time scaling of the quality.

I don't know about that. Theoretically, one hears, it supports bitrate
peeling, but AFAIK nobody's implemented that anywhere.

Anyway, on the larger issue of playing ogg, the pulseaudio sound server
seemed to take quite a lot of CPU when I tried playing music, though
this was a long while ago... ogg123 from command line using direct alsa
was a lot better. Wonder if something could be optimized here without
losing functionality?

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Re: need someone to develop this....

2007-12-01 Thread Mikko Rauhala
Quoting GWMobile <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> [...] same as a public printing therefore I think it would still be 
> patentable.

If it wasn't old. Don't know if there are patents on it though.
Hopefully not, as those should go the way of the dodo anyway.

Not to say the OP couldn't have reinvented it personally (I don't know;
if so, good on him, and that would just go to show why patents are bad...)

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Gphone and 850, perspectives

2007-11-06 Thread Mikko Rauhala
Pheef.

I'll just say my piece on these current events, among other things in
the hopes of getting some perspectives to people, perhaps calming some
storms a bit if lucky.

850 MHz:
1) Sucks for NA people, for sure. Luckily I have no intention of
traveling there (well, maybe Canada sometime), but I feel the pain of
those stuck there.
2) It _does_ seem like a big blunder on the part of FIC.
3) Hardly screws up the whole project, even if it is a blow.
4) No use crying over spilled milk. (Exception: Those who cry direct to
FIC, and not on lists, about returning phones should IMAO be
accommodated; they bought a quad-band device, even if it was a
development one. However, in the interest of expediency, it'd be nice if
those devices could find new homes directly instead. A wiki-page for
"I'll buy your triband GTA01 off you", perchance?)
5) Let's hope they can make a 850-capable triband in some reasonable
timeframe afterwards. (Or of course full quad, but seemed from Michael's
comments that the former was somewhat more likely, even if it's not
guaranteed either.)

Gphone/Android:
1) Gphone/Android is still vapor, Neo/OpenMoko works as a rudimentary
phone already at least (using it as my daily phone myself since my ages
old phone died a week ago or so). The vapority of Android also makes any
statements (including mine here) about it very much guesswork.
2) The Open Handset Cabal isn't really very open in its attitudes as
witnessed http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/android_faq.html
3) Google's actual phone product seems likely to not offer users the
benefits of an open platform, just the system developers. This is
indicated by the FAQ above and Google's interest in pushing ads to
users.
4) Android-using system developers seem to also otherwise be pretty much
encouraged to go proprietary as much as they like (and partners like NTT
DoCoMo do like). Also considering the presence of parties like Nvidia,
proprietary drivers are probably very much in game.
5) I would personally like, and expect, the OpenMoko team to push on;
the people here have earned my trust with respect to trying to maximize
freedom also for the indie developers and users, even if there have been
other sorts of issues on the way.
6) That said, if the core of Android will indeed be free, it should be
possible to grab useful stuff from it over to OpenMoko (for instance the
announced VM plus libraries) for compatibility and all that jazz, if the
platform will reach relevancy. Integration work would be required, of
course; it'd not be gratis.
7) Also, if/when there is a free core Android system to speak of
available, it shouldn't likely be overly difficult to port to the Neo.
Thus a Neo purchase is protected in relevance even in the case that
Android is all that it's hyped up to be and blows OM out of the water.
(Not implying anything about the likelyhood of said occurance, merely
pointing out that purchasers of the designed to be Linux-friendly Neo
aren't really threatened to "lose" anything here.)
8) In the same spirit as above, in the event that at some point in the
future FIC/OM would see Android rather than OpenMoko as the way to move
forward, I would hope and expect them to continue making sure there are
as free and open as possible mobile computing solutions available.
Meaning, they'd hopefully would continue the good work they've done in
designing the Neo, more spesifically the GTA02, not require (or ship
with) proprietary stuff on the Linux system side, with many in-house
developed free drivers to boot. If Android takes off, there will
certainly be largely proprietary offerings based on it (as there are
ones based on Qtopia). It is crucial that there will also be
freedom-maximizing products, be they OpenMoko or Android based. (Heck,
one could imagine an OM-branded 100% free Android system. But that's
getting ahead of things again; let's reiterate that Android is vapor,
and I'm still rooting for OpenMoko, merely not fanatically so.)

The road ahead will perhaps be more interesting than especially those
with heavy personal investments on OpenMoko would like. Let's try and
make the best of it.

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Re: Community Update

2007-11-01 Thread Mikko Rauhala
to, 2007-11-01 kello 06:00 -0500, Doug Sutherland kirjoitti:
> If this one is only sending raw data ie no actual coordinates then
> it makes no sense to use that part.

*sigh*

1) Yes, it pretty much sends raw data.
2) Yes, it can make sense not to have a bazillion CPUs on board from
various perspectives.
3) Also you can do a bit more magic if you get the raw data in a known
format.
4) It's suboptimal in this case mostly because of the proprietary
protocol in which this raw data arrives (the calculations necessary
shouldn't indeed be a problem given a known (reverse-engineered) data
format), and the provided driver being proprietary...
3b) ...which is quite possibly not only a licensing question (though to
be sure, it is that too) but also a legislation issue at least when
moving across US borders.
4) Not too sure on this count, but my impression is that the chip for
the GTA01 was pretty much fixed at the point where this was going to be
also a mobile Windows phone. Somebody correct me if my impression is
wrong, please.

And finally,

4b) The GTA02 will have a different chip that does have an integrated
processor and talks NMEA over serial (and reportedly might also be
coaxable to give raw data as well in some format)

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Re: Neo to act as a bluetooth remote control?

2007-10-18 Thread Mikko Rauhala
to, 2007-10-18 kello 09:38 +0100, Al Johnson kirjoitti:
> It was in the wiki last I looked. I expect there'll be more than 1 
> implementation unless it gets a plugable backend to connect to hid, bemused 
> and whatever other methods are out there.

I actually have a draft of a networked remote control app written in
python. It still requires cleaning up that I haven't really gotten
around to (especially the command interface and error handling, and, oh
yeah, packaging), but it basically works. You can define button sets and
what commands to run on the local or a remote host (through ssh, for
instance). You can run it either locally on the Neo or over X11 on the
host to be controlled, so you don't necessarily need python on the Neo.

I added a link to the wiki wishlist.

Download at http://mjr.iki.fi/software/remote-0.9.0.tar.gz

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How to keep running & presentations in Finland

2007-10-13 Thread Mikko Rauhala
la, 2007-10-13 kello 10:10 +0100, Joseph Heenan kirjoitti:
> Possibly silly question, but how did you manage this? For me, the qtopia 
> images seemed to completely empty the battery within about 5 hours 
> without even making any calls so I feel I'm missing an obvious trick :)

I'm not who was asked, but I manage it by keeping it plugged in often :]

I will be going back to OpenMoko though as soon as the gsmd issues are
fixed. I have to admit that not being able to use it as a rudimentary
phone has decreased my motivations for doing much development for it
(though I did do that draft of a workstation remote control app).

Or, at the latest, for the OpenMoko presentations I'll be doing
(independent of FIC and OpenMoko inc.) in Helsinki, Finland. FUUG will
host a seminarish thing hereabouts on October 21st, and the student
association of the University of Helsinki in association with FLUG (and
possibly FUUG, I forget) hold monthly Linux theme nights, with November
14th being my OpenMoko talk. These talks will most probably have a lot
in common in practice :]

I'll be posting my notes for interested parties.

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Re: 3G status within the US?

2007-10-09 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ma, 2007-10-08 kello 22:47 -0400, Steve kirjoitti:
> I wonder why this update can't be done in the field. 

"Field" means "you". The GSM chip is upgradable by people with the
necessary equipment, which will likely mean FIC, and hopefully any
co-operating outlets in the future.

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Re: 3G status within the US?

2007-10-08 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ma, 2007-10-08 kello 13:51 -0700, ian douglas kirjoitti:
> I'm disappointed that this isn't something that's field-programmable.

Well, as it is the GSM chip we're talking about, you might primarily
take it up with the local authorities; FCC, I believe.

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Re: 3G status within the US?

2007-10-08 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ma, 2007-10-08 kello 11:50 -0700, ian douglas kirjoitti:
> Does anyone currently have a Neo working in the USA? As I understand it, 
> AT&T and TMobile are the only compatible networks here for 3G, but I'm 
> curious what the status is on getting 3G working here in America.

To be clear, the 3G status of the Neo is a resounding "does not, will
not". The Neo is a 2G GSM phone.

The SIM compatibility issue is a different one. Hopefully TI fixes that
and the Neo can be upgraded if necessary in a reasonably accessible way.

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RE: Apple's heavy hand an opportunity for Linux smartphones likeOpenMoko

2007-09-28 Thread Mikko Rauhala
pe, 2007-09-28 kello 19:52 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] kirjoitti:
> In my humble opinion, and I know I'm going to take a lot of arrows for
> this, FIC needs to halt the GTA02 work and re-form factor the design to
> have a larger, glass protected screen.
> 
> There is only about a six month window here that Apple has left open. 
> Someone will clone this form factor and slap an OSS stack on it (QTopia?)
> and I'd like to see FIC/OpenMoko be the first out of the gate.

One has to wonder what are you on to think this would even be possible
in your time frame (let alone actually desirable as a huge extra
diversion). This is not constructive criticism and said arrows will be
well deserved.

(FWIW, personally, I like the Neo design ok, though the touchscreen
could be less deep; not killer, but need to design stuff not to require
too much edge or especially corner touching, for finger use.)

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Re: Neo 1973 certification in Russia (Rostest)

2007-09-20 Thread Mikko Rauhala
to, 2007-09-20 kello 10:02 +0200, Alexey Feldgendler kirjoitti:
> However, I envision it can be a hard time certifying a piece of phone  
> hardware without the accompanying software. If the software can be changed  
> by the user any minute, the phone at any given time may or may not comply  
> to various regulations (like, e.g., speaking the GSM protocol correctly).

Again, that part is handled by the GSM chip, which has closed firmware.

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OM Camera - a new angle

2007-09-18 Thread Mikko Rauhala
Hoy

I've recently bought a digital pocket camera, a Panasonic DMC-LZ7. It's
a pretty good one, as pocket cameras go, and eats std. AA batteries and
SD memory cards. So far so good, and bear with me for a moment. This
will get relevant at some point :]

The camera has a simple video mode, as they often do nowadays. Now, I
don't expect wonders from a pocket cam in the video department, but
there are a couple of things that struck my eye eventually.

Panasonic advertises that the maximum video length varies with memory
card. Support says 2G is the maximum. The actual camera, on the other
hand, seems to have a hard-coded limit of 15 minutes, when it stops,
with space to spare on my 2G SD. Ah well, it's a corner case anyway to
want so much video on that device. A bit dishonest, though.

Then comes the part which really pisses me off: Panasonic has crippled
the camera so that you can't use zoom or focus functions while recording
video. Now, I know this is not a camcorder. I don't expect it to record
good quality video - just something casual once in a while. However,
maybe I'm gullible, but I do not fucking expect Panasonic to maliciously
lock me out of basic camera controls when recording.

Presumably, this is all due to some sort of petty marketing policy to
intentionally cripple the software on consumer goods with the goal to
increase demand for their other devices. As someone having a clue or at
least a half, I'm not particularly itching to buy a Panasonic camcorder
after this; if they're willing to cripple basic functionality like this,
who knows what any given Panasonic product will refuse to do for me!
Almost reminds me of Apple. Well, scratch the almost.

Now, for the relevant part. I want an open digital camera. So, hey,
OpenMoko guys (or somebody else in the consumer device business and into
openness), when you're well on your way to having revolutionized the
mobile handset market, consider building one or twelve.

While of course not any sort of priority especially this early in the
game, such companion devices to the phones would fit into the Open
Mobile Kommunications theme quite nicely, especially with bluetooth
(and/or wifi) for easy integration with the cells - something
conspicuously lacking from all but the highest end cameras I could find.
(I do realize that some eventual OM phones will also likely have
integrated cameras, but they will also be behind the real pocket cams,
never mind real cameras, in quality and flexibility for a long while
yet.)

Meanwhile, I was happy to hear that the GTA02 can provide 100 mA on the
USB port in host mode. It will likely make accessing USB cams in general
a whole lot easier from the phone when necessary...

PS: Did I mention that I'd suggest being careful buying Panasonic if you
don't want crippled products? Good.

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Re: ATI to provide specs (was: Re: SMedia 3362)

2007-09-10 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ma, 2007-09-10 kello 15:20 +0800, Harald Welte kirjoitti:
> guys, as I indicated before, we already have the best possible support
> from Smedia.  Not only have we some promises or statements, but we
> actually have signed a contract with them, binding them to support us
> to the utmost level.
> 
> As indicated previously, this agreement includes a statement that
> OpenMoko will work on to-be-publicized documentation on the SMedia chip,
> which will be jointly released at some point.

This to-be-publicized documentation bit is something that I at least
haven't noticed anywhere yet, and makes the deal better than I thought
(and note that I've been pro-SMedia choice already, as long as you get
to publish free drivers). I (as I think probably many others who've
commented on the suboptimality of the deal) thought the free drivers
would have to speak for themselves as for documentation to the wider
audience.

> Do you really prefer to get a device that does not have any working
> driver at all, but with a thousand-page manual (rather than the other
> way around: first have FOSS Drivers, and then get the docs as soon as
> our incredibly small team finds time to do so)?

Please do the driver first :] As said, I suspect people at this point
just didn't know/realize that docs _are_ in the pipeline as well.

> What I personally don't understand about this entire debate on our
> community list:  You have very prominent people of the FOSS movement,
> particularly the Linux community in this project.  Notably Werner and
> myself.  Given my track history of clinging to every last word of the
> GPL, and my stance with regard to binary-only drivers or other
> abominations of the hardware industry:  Why don't you trust us to do
> proper research and chose the vendor that works best for us, given all
> the circumstances?

Indeed, I can sympathize with this point. I think you're trustworthy
guys especially as to providing the most freedom that you can, and I can
see how it can become frustrating that every call you make is heavily
questioned - from that spesific viewpoint where you should by all rights
have the most credibility!

So, please, members of the community, have a little confidence in the OM
team.

> In GTA01, the only freedom related issue that we have is the Global
> Locate (now Broadcom).  Given the start of OpenMoko (alternative
> software for a Windows smartphone that FIC was building) we didn't have
> any influence on that one.

Good that you mentioned this, because I think this bit likely hasn't
gotten the most publicity either.

> Starting with GTA02, we have a very firm openness policy for all our
> hardware components.  Our future designs will follow the same line - and
> we're trying to continuously to push the borders any further.  We make
> our position at chip manufacturers very clear.  And we're having very
> fruitful discussions and results that I am proud of.

And well you should.

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Re: Video decoding in GTA-02

2007-09-08 Thread Mikko Rauhala
la, 2007-09-08 kello 13:00 +0100, Ian Stirling kirjoitti:
> At least on trivial tests I did - it seemed to play youtube videos just 
> fine on mplayer at 320*240.

Indeed. Software playing will probably take a bit more power, sure, but
that aside, the Neo's youtube capabilities already partially exceed
(*sigh* at the obligatory comparison) the iPhone's. (At least from what
I've heard the latter has access to a limited subset of videos
transcoded to H.264 spesifically for Apple.) There are some scaling and
rotation issues (what with them requiring CPU power), but those can
presumably be hw-assisted on the GTA-02 GPU anyway.

'course, a simple GUI for youtube playing will be required (prior to
gnash being workable on the Neo, and perhaps preferrable phone-UI-wise
afterwards too). Using youtube-dl and mplayer, shouldn't be a big
project. Not that interested in youtube myself, though.

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Video decoding in GTA-02

2007-09-07 Thread Mikko Rauhala
There, remembered to change the subject line...

pe, 2007-09-07 kello 14:33 -0700, Ted Lemon kirjoitti:
> On Sep 7, 2007, at 1:19 PM, Raphael Jacquot wrote:
> >> - At least several hours of H.264 playback.
> > possibly doable but I don't believe the current hardware can handle it
> 
> The point here is that for the GTA02, if the video hardware supports  
> hardware playback of H.264, we need a driver that allows us to take  
> advantage of that.   You're right that it's a nonstarted on the  
> GTA01, but that's okay.

It doesn't. It does one of the simpler MPEG-4 profiles, don't recall the
details. (One of the S-Media models does H.264, but no VGA.)

Can't really feel much pain for that, personally.

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Re: Apple is going to beat all competitors

2007-09-07 Thread Mikko Rauhala
pe, 2007-09-07 kello 13:35 -0700, Shawn Rutledge kirjoitti:
> It's easy to think first of doing it over a data connection.  But I
> can imagine more of a signal-processing approach.

This has been hashed to death. Short of it: the GSM codec actively tries
to throw away anything that doesn't sound like speech. This is not very
analog encryption friendly, and we can't bypass the codec for voice
calls since that's in the closed TI firmware.

This is also a repeat, but for new people, I'll mention that
cryptophone.de does a proprietary encryption-capable GSM phone (through
GSM data); though the protocol is their own, they apparently have it
documented, and welcome others to do compatible implementations. (Their
source is also available, but for purely review and verification
purposes; it's not free and anyone doing a reimplementation would be
wise to avoid looking at it.) Thus for anyone interested in doing
encrypted calls with the Neo, it would perhaps be worth considering
using their ready-made protocol to leverage their installed base.

I haven't reviewed their protocol though, nor am I highly qualified to
do that. Also, there's the usual potential future issues with the
protocol being controlled by a single firm; basically that's just
something to consider for those who eventually get hacking on this.
Sadly, it's too big a project for me.

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Re: Apple is going to beat all competitors

2007-09-07 Thread Mikko Rauhala
pe, 2007-09-07 kello 21:49 +0200, Jens Fursund kirjoitti:
> All this sounds really good, but am I wrong when I say that the GPS has
> been cancelled for GTA02?

Yes you are, and please don't quote an entire message for a short
comment like this.

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Re: Apple is going to beat all competitors

2007-09-07 Thread Mikko Rauhala
pe, 2007-09-07 kello 20:18 +0200, roby kirjoitti:
> In my opinion software can make the difference.. I think openmoko
> should go in the direction of providing things not possible in a
> closed phone..

Indeed.

Comparing to the iPhone is useless, and the Neo will not be in direct
competition with it for a while yet at least. Hell, it wouldn't be the
anti-iPhone if it was taking iPhone head on on iPhone's terms. It would
be just another iPhone.

The way I see it, the Neo will almost certainly be a niche product at
first, so woeing about "oh no, it's less expensive now to sell your
freedom to Apple (still with a 2 year contract on your soul unless you
hack it), so the Neo will only be a niche product" fails to impress me.
That's where you start. That's where Linux started. A niche. But that's
a niche that can actively make it a better product, potentially rather
quickly too.

Hell, a simple app for encrypted voice calls over GSM data will
instantly make it the cheapest, most transparent secure cellular, adding
it on the top of the shopping list of another niche. I'm sure there are
other killer features that add a niche at a time. And those add up.

The iPhone is laughably limited on the software side, and what's worse,
intentionally. Functionally besting it in most software categories isn't
too difficult. (The GPS is another advantage, though it's unfortunate
about the most useful maps not being freely available. Still, there's
stuff to do with that.)

And when there's a functional upper hand, with no arbitrary limits or
costs for trivial services, then it's time for the big push to ordinary
people. (Not that one shouldn't do some pushing before that, either.)

Who me? Certainly not with OpenMoko or FIC.

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Re: GTA02 GPS (was Re: gpsd and AGPS)

2007-09-04 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ti, 2007-09-04 kello 23:27 +0800, Harald Welte kirjoitti:
> Just to clarify this:  We have both GTA02 prototypes with GL/Broadcom
> and with a a competing firmware-based AGPS solution.  

Thanks for the clarification, and apologies for spreading the premature
"word out on the street" that the change was pretty much decided
already.

I appreciate the more-than-usually difficult decision process with the
chip, and Ian Stirling's reverse-engineering work so far. (While my
particular family would most likely continue to enjoy a
reverse-engineered driver on the GTA01 for quite a while, it does
undoubtedly lessen the motivation to do so quite a lot if the work will
not be useful on GTA02...)

Access to more raw GPS data, such as with the Hammerhead, would
certainly be a bonus if indeed said reverse-engineering would succeed
(and I have no doubt it would, given some time and effort); on the other
hand, FIC likely couldn't ship a fully free solution by default anyway,
at least in/through the US (maybe elsewhere as well depending on
contractual obligations), so it would remain a sort of blemish on the
otherwise free OpenMoko.

Anyway, keep up the good work (I'll take Harald's word for it ;), Ken,
with the gllin build, and the OM team with the hard calls. I would
encourage Ian to continue working on the Hammerhead RE, but again, no
one can really blame one for losing motivation at least until the
situation clears up. Especially what with pretty much volunteer work and
all (I presume).

Cheers all around,

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Re: SMedia 3362

2007-09-01 Thread Mikko Rauhala
la, 2007-09-01 kello 17:19 +0100, Giles Jones kirjoitti:
> I wouldn't know since I've not looked into such things. But ATI have  
> mobile GPUs and are open sourcing desktop drivers, maybe they would  
> do the same for their mobile devices?

ATI's intentions to open source their GPU drivers have been greatly
exaggarated. They have mostly made vague statements about supporting
Linux / open source [OSes] better. And noise has been made for a while.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to actually deliver. (Shame
on AMD.)

And of course, even if they freed such "commodity" drivers, some PHB
could well be persuaded to keep a tight lid on their super-secret
embedded stuff. But of course, it'd be a step forward.

Oh, incidentally, I don't really know the market situation of free
software friendly low-power GPUs either. It's just an educated
assumption on my part that this is likely to be the best deal OM are
likely to get in this area. I pretty much trust the OM guys to feel the
same way, since, well, they picked the SMedia.

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Re: SMedia 3362

2007-09-01 Thread Mikko Rauhala
la, 2007-09-01 kello 16:31 +0100, Giles Jones kirjoitti:
> On 1 Sep 2007, at 16:07, Ian Stirling wrote:
> > Unfortunately, documents are only available under NDA.
> >
> > This means that only FIC can write the drivers.
> 
> Seems like an odd choice of unit then for an open source phone.

You're implying there are better choices...

With chip manufacturers being jealous of every bit of information on how
to actually use their chips, we're unfortunately lucky that the OpenMoko
guys at least are allowed to write free drivers themselves after
(presumably) signing the NDA to get the specs.

This is not really new for the Neo either; never mind GTA01's GPS chip,
even the LCD screen doesn't have free docs. Signs of the times...

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Re: RF systems in Neo

2007-09-01 Thread Mikko Rauhala
la, 2007-09-01 kello 11:55 +0200, Alexey Feldgendler kirjoitti:
> 4 RF systems? GSM/GPRS, Bluetooth, WiFi, what's the fourth?

GPS

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Re: T-Mobile [EMAIL PROTECTED]

2007-08-17 Thread Mikko Rauhala
to, 2007-08-16 kello 23:09 -0400, Richard Boehme kirjoitti:
> Does anyone know how we can get the GTA02 onto this program? It seems
> like we would be a natural fit, as GTA02 has Wi-Fi. Can any one just
> contact T-Mobile about it and apply for developer status and say that
> we want to be a part of the Hotsopt at Home program?

There was someone interested in doing that on the #openmoko channel
once, and I believe he found out that handover to/from wifi would
require access to protocols that the GSM chip doesn't (at least
documentedly) provide. One of those things for which you'd want the GSM
firmware source...

Apparently you'd still need something like a SIP provider that would
allow you to route calls to a GSM number if you want to be transparently
reachable via both wifi and GSM. None of this fanciness required, of
course, for simply having your calls initiate via wifi when available,
but then you'll lose the call if you wonder out of range. I believe I
saw someone starting work on that on #openmoko.

Disclaimer: I'm relaying this information from memory, and don't have
personal experience or knowledge of the GSM side of this matter.

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Re: What's the real scope of hardware openness?

2007-08-07 Thread Mikko Rauhala
ti, 2007-08-07 kello 17:34 +0200, Luca Dionisi kirjoitti:
> I don't know for sure if they write sentences like that one without
> having a clue.

They probably don't, you just don't have a clue what they're actually
talking about (for example, not talking about power).

Anyway, let me try to be helpful here in giving you some personal
insight about yourself: You obviously lack all necessary technical
background to understand the issues properly at all. Your obvious hatred
of telcos doesn't exactly help, since it apparently completely blinds
you to rational arguments why schemes such as the one you're proposing
are extremely difficult to scale in sane ways, let alone with limited
power. And no, dismissing them as telco FUD without any grounds isn't a
proper argument.

Thank you, have a nice day, and let's get back to this when you
understand what a radio is and how it's different from a p2p network,
shall we? HTH and cheers.

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