Slashdot Mirror

AmiMoJo writes: The author of the popular cURL utility has been receiving requests for help from frustrated car owners having difficulty with their infotainment systems... [B]ecause his email address is listed on the "about" screen, as required by the cURL license, some desperate users are reaching out to him in the hopes of finding a solution.
It sounds annoying to receive complaints like "why there delay between audio and video when connect throw Bluetooth and how to fix it." But though he rarely answers them, Stenberg writes that "I actually find these emails interesting, sometimes charming and they help me connect to the reality many people experience out there."

In a post titled "I have toyota corola," Stenberg says "I suspect my email address is just about the only address listed. This occasionally makes desperate users who have tried everything to eventually reach out to me. They can't fix their problem but since my email exists in their car, surely I can!"

Hyrum writes "The Subversion team is proud to announce the release of Subversion 1.5.0, a popular open source version control system. The first new feature release of Subversion in almost 2 years, 1.5.0 contains a number of new improvements and features. A detailed list of changes can be found in the release notes. Among the major new features included in this release is merge tracking—Subversion now keeps track of what changes have been merged where. Source code is available immediately, with various other packages available soon."

codemachine writes "SanDisk has released its new iPod rival: the new Sansa e280 music player. It has twice the capacity of the iPod nano at a similar price. Even better, it can be expanded through its mini-SD slot, and comes with an FM tuner. The device is said to work well with both Windows and Linux, without adding any drivers. Some work on reverse engineering this product line has already begun. Might this be a great alternative MP3 player for Linux users?"

PlayerBlog.com writes "The crew at Rockbox, the venerable open source replacement firmware project for Archos audio players, has put together an effort to port their firmware to the popular iRiver H1xx-series of devices. In the wake of iRiver's much-maligned (and delayed) attempts to update their proprietary firmware, this is excellent news."

PlayerBlog.com writes "The crew at Rockbox, the venerable open source replacement firmware project for Archos audio players, has put together an effort to port their firmware to the popular iRiver H1xx-series of devices. In the wake of iRiver's much-maligned (and delayed) attempts to update their proprietary firmware, this is excellent news."

A moron asks: "Web pages change and disappear all the time. For legal and historical purposes, I need to have accessible archives of the websites I maintain. I'm basically looking for a do-it-yourself version of Internet Archive's Way Back Machine which provides a simple versioning system and accessibility through web interface. Is there already software that does this? If not, what ideas does Slashdot have to make such a system possible? How should it work? What existing tools can be used together to make a workable system?"

"There are all sorts of tools out there that will archive web pages, and each have other necessary features such as making links relative. I don't always have filesystem access to pages, so tools that rely on such access won't work. There are some obvious tools that do part of the job such as:

• curl
• wget
• httrack

But grabbing pages is only part of my, and I suspect many other peoples needs. The other pieces include intelligently archiving the pages, and making them accessible. If a page or a page element hasn't changed, there is no need to store multiple copies. The archives need to be easy for end users to navigate, search, and link."

elinenbe writes "Rockbox, the open source firmware for the Archos Recorder, Player, FM, Recorder V2, and now the Neo can play grayscale videos at over 60FPS. A demo version of the DOOM3 intro along with a few other sample clips have been made so far. This is the Archos that was NOT designed for movies, but for MP3s -- go Rockbox!"

bagder writes: "The guys in the Rockbox project have just released the first working firmware replacement for the Archos portable hard disk-based MP3-players. The software is all GPL. Every tiny bit was reverse engineered, disassembled and then re-written from scratch. You can go download your own firmware right now!"

bagder writes: "The guys in the Rockbox project have just released the first working firmware replacement for the Archos portable hard disk-based MP3-players. The software is all GPL. Every tiny bit was reverse engineered, disassembled and then re-written from scratch. You can go download your own firmware right now!"

slazar asks:"I accidently reversed the polarity on the DC power input on my Archos Jukebox 6000. Smoke rose and now it won't charge anymore. I opened it up and found that a chip had been fried. Could any of you possibly tell me what a certain chip is and who makes it? The chip I need to replace has been damaged beyond recognition. This chip is a 8-pin surface mount chip, on the same board as the Stop, play, plus and minus buttons. It is nearest the stop button. It is also near the chips labeled ' IR 1F ', ' I 385-2 2AUXV ', and ' IR 022H 3XSD F7416 '. The chip is on the same side as the LCD connector. The reverse side of the board is depicted here. A great website depicting the Archos taken apart is here, except that it doesn't have the picture I need. I have tried contacting Archos but they are completely unwilling to help me. Any compassionate hardware hackers out there?"

slazar asks:"I accidently reversed the polarity on the DC power input on my Archos Jukebox 6000. Smoke rose and now it won't charge anymore. I opened it up and found that a chip had been fried. Could any of you possibly tell me what a certain chip is and who makes it? The chip I need to replace has been damaged beyond recognition. This chip is a 8-pin surface mount chip, on the same board as the Stop, play, plus and minus buttons. It is nearest the stop button. It is also near the chips labeled ' IR 1F ', ' I 385-2 2AUXV ', and ' IR 022H 3XSD F7416 '. The chip is on the same side as the LCD connector. The reverse side of the board is depicted here. A great website depicting the Archos taken apart is here, except that it doesn't have the picture I need. I have tried contacting Archos but they are completely unwilling to help me. Any compassionate hardware hackers out there?"