Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 4th Aug 2012 00:54 UTC
This tweet from Tom Warren made me smile. So, it's 2012 and tablets are finally able to do what the Amiga did in 1985. Seems like a bit of a stretch to be excited about that, right? Sure, until I caught myself getting excited - only a bit, but still - by this piece of news. Update: removed me being an annoyed child.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Proper multi-user support is mostly a kernel - and filesystem - thing, the layers on top of that are merely an extension of kernel and filesystem functionality.
Yeap, the problem is that you have to present it to the user in a friendly and mobile-like way. Use cases for Phone/tablets are totally different than a PC.
For example, every time you lock/unlock your device, you will have to authenticate with your passcode AND your user. It's minor detail yes, but there's lots of minor details with you go multiuser.
To name one big technical issue: Android allows user level apps to run as a daemon in the background. If you go multi-user you have to keep running their daemons in the background even if the active user don't use them. It impacts directly on performance and energy consumption.
As I said before, there's lots of "details". Multiuser isn't trivial at all.
Member since:2006-02-15
For example, every time you lock/unlock your device, you will have to authenticate with your passcode AND your user.
Err, why would you have to do that? You'd unlock the device just as you do now, only that there could be a dropdown-menu in some corner for changing to another user. When logging in to Windows, for example, do you always type your username or do you just click on your avatar? Most people do the latter and there is absolutely no technical reason for why it couldn't work the same on Android. Similarly, instead of a password one could just use the same methods one uses already: a PIN, face unlock, gestures etc.
To name one big technical issue: Android allows user level apps to run as a daemon in the background. If you go multi-user you have to keep running their daemons in the background even if the active user don't use them.
Android could just as well kill the daemons when the user is changed and restart them when that previous user logs in the next time.
As I said before, there's lots of "details". Multiuser isn't trivial at all.
It's more trivial than you think. You're giving a lot of totally bogus "issues" as examples, like e.g. that one must always log in with a username and password, and I don't know if you are deliberately trying to make it look harder than it actually is or if you just don't really understand multi-user task - and filesystem - mechanics. If it is the latter I offer to explain things or I can point you to resources if you would like to know more.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2006-02-15
Does your Windows, Mac or Linux device slow down as you add more and more user accounts on it?
Of course the state would be saved in the permanent storage, there would be no benefit from keeping it in RAM at all times except when you switch users, and well, that's not something you do every few minutes. It doesn't consume resources after it's been saved to storage.
ext2/3/4 filesystem already handles that, Google only needs to check that Android itself uses those. It's not as large an issue as you seem to believe.
Proper multi-user support is mostly a kernel - and filesystem - thing, the layers on top of that are merely an extension of kernel and filesystem functionality.