Slashdot Mirror

There's a lot going on here and it sounds like a neat project, but I just hope that beginners aren't misled. This is a complicated project and there's a lot of separate skills which would all have to be learned at once: masking/etching PCBs, fine-pitch SMT soldering, lots of pieces of code that all have to play together right.

Just hoping that newbies will realize that there are simpler electronics projects (relevant shameless plug) with much more instructional guidance they should start with before taking on something like this.

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

The purpose of the operating system is to act between the hardware, system abstractions, and the algorithms. But now that virtualization is taking over, the hardware responsibility of OSes is being minimized -- or centralized. Therefore, the advantages of one hardware platform can be more easily decoupled from those of an OS.

In my opinion, Sun was always known for rock-solid hardware, and this move toward hardware-agnostic computing means that Solaris gets just a bit less relevant today. Especially since cost is still a factor, and the hardware-specific advantages are disappearing...

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

It doesn't have to be a photo you posted... but someone else could have posted it and tagged you! You essentially have to start assuming that any digital photo taken of you will end up online with your name. Quite scary. Would be nice if there sere some sort of consent-based tagging, requiring your approval, but that's probably too complicated for Facebook to think about.

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

Nobody wants to run ethernet cable to their toaster... so I really think that making cheap Wi-fi chipsets is the answer here. Unfortunately it still costs at a very minimum $5+ to add wireless to something, so it's going to take a little while for a $2 light switch to get these.

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

Why not take on a bigger challenge, and focus on teaching? Run small mini-classes on various topics, teach programming at all kinds of different levels, how to solve engineering problems numerically, etc. Since it is an engineering/design school, you can provide some kind of (real-life or online) forum helping people use technology to solve problems. I suppose this will somewhat depend on how your college's schedule works, but you will find that students will make time for you if you're providing a useful service. You've got the hardware -- now you just need to find a niche to add the value.

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

You know, I'm a bit torn here.

I think it's really oppressive when governments do things like telling a company that they'd have to do something like this (which the government did *not* do)... But it's almost scarier that they're doing it on their own initiative as a company. It's like one of those many situations in which someone will self-regulate to a stronger degree than is necessary just to present the appearance that outside regulation is not necessary. I certainly believe that Google/YouTube has the right to do this, but not necessarily that they should. So is it better that this came from within rather than from external forces?

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

So, while we know that the Internet is designed to provide routing protocols that can handle damaged nodes and take them out of the loop, are we still building systems in place that depend on the Internet being able to move packets from A to B, in the midst of any sort of prolonged crisis?

Currently, real "main street" business already suffer when their net goes down even for half an hour, but that's usually when the last link between them and the ISP goes down.

But in a serious or prolonged emergency situation, I'd be more concerned about links in the middle going down.

So are people building safety systems (healthcare records, utility company systems, etc) that depend on the Internet working in order to do business? Just think of what happens when the phones go down and companies can't process credit cards... but much worse. How are these ISPs and Telcos even supposed to allow their network admins to work from home... if the net is down?

--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation! Free videos.

So, yes, this is silly, but ultimately this is just one example of a bigger phenomenon: people filing stupid lawsuits, where simply the burden of defending oneself is overwhelming / not worth it. This happens for many reasons: lawyers are expensive, court simply takes time, etc.

Is there some way we can modify the legal system so that these kinds of frivolous suits die quickly and cheaply? Like an online peer review thing, where there's an anonymous, rotating committee of reviewers who can triage filings and vote to reject them? This has its own problems too, of course -- the rule of the mob emerges.

So I'm not sure what the solution is, but it seems like we have to think about how to make it about two orders of magnitude cheaper/easier to defend oneself in court against frivolous suits.

--
Get started with electronics: Microcontroller kit for Linux/Mac/Windows. Do it with your kids!

Look for a simpler answer... maybe it's just not ready yet? Sure, everyone can guess and make up bad stuff, but ultimately it's going to get presented and read and voted on. Not that we're necessarily going to like it, but keep your pants on!

--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation! Free electronics videos.

Nobody has to agree to the GPL to use a GPL'ed piece of software -- only to gain additional rights like redistribution. All Mozilla really needs to do is to look at the Trolltech / Qt situation, and then look around and see real alternatives to their product (Opera / WebKit / etc), and they'll wake up and smell the coffee. There isn't enough justification for the EULA hassle just to "explain the license", and that will be worked around by developers and distributions.

Looks like they missed the point.

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

Yes, this is crazy, but from reading the comments I think there are two things that need to be separated.

1) This is bad because there is massive prior art,
OR
2) This is bad because it is a patent on a software concept.

Which one is it? Number one seems to indicate legitimacy of the current patent system, and number two does not -- very different ideas, but I think slashdotters are conflating the two at the moment.

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

For the last decade or so, it seems like the rendering side was abstracted away into either DirectX or OpenGL, but if the author is correct, those abstractions are no longer going to be a requirement.

While I don't know a lot more about the various other rendering techniques that the article mentions, it seems like there might be an opportunity emerging to develop those engines and license them to the game companies.

I suspect that game companies won't want to get into the graphics rendering engine design field themselves, but there's real possibility for a whole new set of companies to emerge to compete in providing new frameworks for 3D graphics.

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

For copyrightable material, "Works created by an agency of the United States government are public domain at the moment of creation."

But here, for patentable material, it's clear that that is not the case. The theory goes that since the taxpayer paid for it, the taxpayer should get the rights to it. It's essentially always the case that the inventors will "assign" the work to the organization... but should NASA really be able to hold a competitive IP position when we're all forced to pay for its work?

Think of the private spaceflight organizations, for example, who might want to enter similar fields. They're already being forced to pay for NASA's research (via taxes), but they're being excluded from the result, while the opposite (NASA forced to pay for private company XYZ's research without a return of IP) is not happening.

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

In any negotiation, it's important to think about one's alternatives. At least in the open source case, there's a good alternative -- recompiling without the restrictive / undesirable parts. Sure, branding power will suffer, but this community in particular will understand.

Ever heard of BATNA?

--
Hey code monkey, learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

I found an article that has much more information about the actual mechanism of the TiO2 anti-bacterial effect.

The nice thing is that the titanium acts as a catalyst, so ideally it isn't consumed in the reaction.

The bad thing is that this requires UV light (below 385nm), which is really only present from "ordinary fluorescent lights" because they have bad phosphor coatings. All fluorescent lights really generate tons of UV, which is downconverted to visible via that white phosphor coating on the glass. But some UV escapes, and that's the stuff that triggers this anti-bacterial reaction. So good for anti-bacterial, but bad for skin cancer.

In any case, maybe this is the kind of thing where some dedicated UV lights could turn on when no people were in a given room, and that would make for the best of both worlds?

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

Everyone makes it much easier than matching IP addresses... As the article discusses, many people use Google logins for e-mail and other services. This is a much more reliable way to track all of your information.

What I'd like to see is some significant differentiation between logged-in and logged-out states and the level of anonymity that is provided in each case.

But really, if you're voluntarily storing your stuff on someone else's server with the known understanding that they're parsing it for ad matching, what kind of privacy expectations do you really have?

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

If the tech community makes enough buzz about this, it's likely that we can put the pin back in this grenade. Nobody is going to want to support violating the sanctity of The Internet in an important U.S. election year!

There already exists a process for getting a name from an I.P. address, and that process thankfully requires court action / subpoena of ISP. Let's keep them in the loop, and make this tracing a relatively hard thing to get, with lots of human approvals needed.

Hopefully, this proposed short-circuiting of the judicial branch will just help the United Nations -- totally overstepping its proper bounds -- slide into further irrelevance. Even if the U.N. does serve a proper function in today's world, this certainly is way beyond its domain.

--
Hey code monkey, learn electronics! Microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

IT managers are supposed to do more than direct management of people and projects. They're supposed to have a grasp of overall organizational goals, and to fairly assess how IT can be used to make the organization more efficient or effective.

Of course, as with so many things in life, people are generally interested in protecting themselves. So it can become a policy to protect ones own budget, and to (artificially?) propose new projects as reason to grow or at to at least maintain a department's size. Diminishing returns, anyone?

Still, managers are supposed to add value by seeing the bigger organizational picture. Ask yourself if the front-line IT workers can handle that themselves.

--
Hey code monkey, learn electronics! Microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

It may seem a bit "retro" to be using a character LCD for information display, but from a user interface perspective, there's lots of data that is still textual (e-mail subjects, news, etc) that is nice to have outside of the main work area of our primary monitor displays. Even as resolutions have increased particularly for desktop monitors, the idea that there's a separate device dedicated for a separate stream of information can be a useful notion because it's a "zero-click" way of getting to that knowledge, without dedicating primary monitor real estate there or making annoying popups.

There's really just a lot of information streams that don't deserve sexy RGB pixels on one's display, and the mental association of looking at a specific gadget to get a specific stream of information is a strong one. Until we have ultra-cheap projectors everywhere and make better use of display surfaces, this is a step in that direction.

--
Electronics kits for the digital generation! Microcontroller, LCD, gcc compiler, and more.

They've got videos too.

If you want to know about digital electronics and microprogramming, try a Nerdkit.

I know everyone's going to make comments about OOXML being not a truly open/free/libre format, but there's something bigger going on...

Just to get access to published standards themselves on http://www.iso.org/iso/store.htm costs easily $50 to $150 each! Can someone please tell me how that makes any sense at all? How can we have global standards if people can't afford to even read them? Am I the only one who thinks this might be a bit hypocritical?

--
Hey code monkey... learn digital electronics!

Not via regulation or per-category taxes that artificially manipulate, but by consumers adjusting their buying habits as costs change. If SUVs are too expensive to own, people will stop buying them and trade to more fuel-efficient vehicles. Is that really too crazy to ask?

Also interesting to see whether the trend of people sensing safety while in those large vehicles will continue... Not so easy to go back to sedans while there are so many dangerous SUVs (tanks) out there on the roads, eh?

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics!

In any big bueracracy, specifically government, there's really little incentive to be more efficient (or even more correct). Particularly with government, like the TSA, this is an example of people trying to secure jobs for themselves and their department.

This can happen in the corporate world, too: feeling the need to spend one's entire budget just so that it won't get cut in the following year. But at least there's likely to be someone who might find and correct that inefficiency. In government, there's incentive to keep it growing all the way up to the top.

So the next time you see some policy that doesn't make sense, think about who just got to keep their job because of its existence.

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics!

They talk about trouble with communications while underwater, but the Skin effect describes how in a conductive media (say, seawater), various frequencies of electromagnetic waves are attenuated with distance. In short, high frequencies travel less distance into the material than lower frequencies. This is why the requirements for shielding of different electronics can be very different -- higher operating frequency implies thinner shielding. And of course it's also why submarines use very low frequencies to communicate. (See also LORAN positioning system.)

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics!

Everyone loves unlimited bandwidth and being off-the-meter. But by selling bandwidth with zero incremental usage cost, they're really just having the light users subsidize the heavy users. That's what really causes problems like this. Sure, bandwidth is cheap, but the whole reason that they're having problems that require traffic shaping is that their bandwidth is NOT unlimited.

I know consumers (myself included) enjoy not having to think about bandwidth usage, but maybe there could be a better pricing model that more appropriately sets the costs of the bandwidth for heavy users.

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics!

Let's just be clear here... while the article and summary are calling it "automated" stats collection, there's still very much a person in the loop at every data collection instant. That is, a human still has to indicate and record any sort of statistically-relevant event. All they've done is to make it so that can go instantly right into a digital form rather than onto a piece of paper.

What would be cool is if the data collection were to be truly automated! Detect all sorts of things unobtrusively, whether through cameras, positioning systems for the ball or the players, etc.

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics!

Sure, there's complicated software systems, but when something has to deal with hardware too, there's just a lot more to think about in every action. That's why engineers make abstractions -- enough to keep their part of a particular project in their head.

But shouldn't the "safe mode" limits be independent of the particular operation as much as possible? In software engineering, the people writing test cases are often not the same as the people developing the code, and for the reason that they want to match both to the spec, not to each other.

--
Hey code monkey... want to learn electronics?

While the article and summary want to scare IT workers ("Oh, oh -- can you hear your job going away?"), perhaps it's time to get back to the big picture: Information Technology is supposed to help people do their jobs more efficiently. So, while the article does much to suggest that server-side stuff might be getting "outsourced" to the cloud, people still need to interface with it. It'd be nice to see client systems taking steps forward in terms of reliability and ease of use, but nothing monumental is changing on that side of the equation.

But, by outsourcing/concentrating the server-side administration to the "cloud", you might free up IT workers to do less grunt work and do more in terms of process innovations, making the whole enterprise more efficient. IT workers will have to think about how they can make the business operate more efficiently, and be creative and get it implemented. Are today's IT workers ready for that level of thinking?

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics!

There are some standards defined for what makes any particular act of copyright violation to be a criminal act. These are clearly defined in 17 USC 506. But to summarize, it requires willful infringement, plus one of either 1) financial gain, 2) total value over $1,000, or 3) pre-release of material in preparation. Criminal infringement does not apply to the casual downloader. There are still valid questions as to whether the punishment matches the crime, but these criminal laws are targeting the big fish.

--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation!

The original article is here here.

Something cool is that while traditional semiconductor lasers have an output wavelength that is very much controlled by the bandgap energy of the material, here the laser is substantially tunable by adjusting the plastic's thickness. (Of course, this is just adjusting the energy states too, but it seems more tunable.) From the paper, "Tuning the film thickness (45-160 nm) enabled access to lasing wavelengths across a 45 nm spectral window (434-479 nm)."

While it's not real-time electrical tuning over that kind of bandwidth, it's still pretty cool. Tunability is especially useful for detectors of various chemicals, and now this is getting into the wavelength range where more biological substances start to have their spectrographic signatures.

--
Electronics kits for the digital generation!

Shouldn't governments be particularly sensitive about not having a role in picking economic winners and losers?

Beyond that, their stance seems relatively well founded. Take a look at the new privacy policies for Google Health... saying that they might release your records in some situations when required to do so by law.

But, I think the summary doesn't make it sufficiently clear that this is just government IT departments, not all information technology in Canada. Private citizens and businesses can still do as they wish.

--
Electronics kits for the digital generation.

There are stories like this all the time, but tech people still have trouble convincing most users that end-to-end encryption is important. How is it that it caught on for the web (credit card payments over SSL), but still barely for personal communications (gpg, encrypted IM)? Even in the situations where it's easy to use encryption, many users still can't be made to care -- especially if it's not something enabled by default. Maybe just that those doing the sniffing are suitably quiet about it...
--
Electronics kits for the digital generation.

I saw a video for something called a "LiPo Sack", a bad that people who use these high-density batteries can use to keep the batteries in while they're charging. Cool video of batteries exploding!
--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

I've been looking for a new web host recently, and I'm consistently attracted to ones based on the Virtual Private Server concept -- your own box within another box. The multicore economics argument is definitely tied in here, where we can balance demand not just within our own enterprise, but between different consumers of computing time.

Beyond that, I don't really get it... if I have a certain computational workload X, I'd probably prefer to use more cores temporarily rather than pace the work longer over a smaller number of cores. Can they really make the cost incentives enough to fight that? They're really trying to change the model from paying for hardware to paying for cycles, but it's not clear why that should imply a time factor.
--
Get your code outside the computer! Microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

I love when I can actually RTFA and still have no idea what the product is. So I found these videos of Jazz which should be helpful. But this is one of those "platform" things where they aren't actually selling anything... But my interpretation is that they're essentially trying to put together a code repository (ala Subversion) with Bugtraq with mailing list with instant message.

--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

If somebody were to take a look at a company that implemented telecommuting, and took a big step back to look at the big picture, there's one big thing that will stand out: the kinds of work that various employees (including those "left behind in the office") do will change because of telecommuting.

With the way that telecommuting has taken hold, it's often the case that the work that needs to be done by department XYZ hasn't changed... but that there are some things that are difficult from remote offices. This means that those parts of the new telecommuter's job will have to be moved to an in-office employee. So yes, it makes sense that telecommuting comes with this price.

The real question is whether companies use telecommuting as a reason to change processes, such that it isn't just redistributing work, but changing the nature of the work itself. Since this article just refers to a single company, it's pretty clear that they haven't thought about redefining processes -- just reassigning work and locations. But hopefully more companies are as they move down this road.

--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

This is a neat concept car. Out of everything I've heard about, the most likely to actually make it to the market is the Terrafugia Transition, which is aimed at people who have both drivers' and pilots' licenses. Not VTOL, but more realistic too.

--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

It's true that corn is a pretty poor feedstock for ethanol generation. But I think most people (farmer subsidy lovers) think that ethanol has come into focus because of its potential as a fuel *replacement* for gasoline.

Let me remind you why we have a demand for ethanol in the first place: a replacement for MTBE, a gasoline anti-knock additive (letting the engine run at higher compression ratios, and thus more efficiently) which was found to be leeching into groundwater and concentrating. MTBE is being phased out, and ethanol is a replacement chemical. Whether or not ethanol will be used as an energy source is irrelevant. It's critical today as a fuel additive for gasoline. Beyond that, it's a pretty inefficient energy carrier. Switchgrass may do better, but we're not there yet.

--
Electronics kits for the digital generation! Free videos -- click here.

So EMI will no longer farm out its enforcement duties to the RIAA. That's the entire point of the article. There's nothing to imply that they won't continue to protect their intellectual property. Just don't get all excited, now.

There's a few things that still have to change:
1) Copyright should be reduced in duration.
2) The penalties must be adjusted to be reasonable.
3) People must come to respect the rights of property holders, not violate them blindly. Copyright has lots of negative impliciations when well beyond the term of commercial viability, but I believe that copyright can be adjusted to accomodate both that and the property rights of the creator.
4) Slashdot-crowd must abandon the notion that "not-for-profit" redistribution of someone else's work should be permitted without permission of the rights holder.

--
Our microcontroller kit. Your code. Instructional guide and free videos.

If people weren't forced into a single public school system, competing schools could emerge and fill the need for a competent education system. However, as it is, everyone is forced to pay into the failing public system. With vouchers, at least, they could take those education dollars and go elsewhere. And yes, I realize that this is not an easy step to take -- emerging competing schools would require lots of investment. But the point of a free market for just about anything is that people with different needs can find (or create!) different solutions.

Schools aren't like sewers -- there are no physical requirements that there be only one system.

--
Our microcontroller kit. Your code. Learn digital electronics today.

Don't forget that most open source software comes with big warnings that there are absolutely no warranties. Do most consumers really expect the same from their hardware? While open hardware sounds great for me personally and probably much of the Slashdot crowd, the companies behind it need to have a very different focus than normal mass-market hardware. That is, they either need to choose to offer zero warranties on damage resulting from a user's actions, OR they can put a lot of effort into supporting and encouraging developers (which is what my company chooses to do). I'm not sure if we're ready to have mass-market expectations and developer-friendly devices meet.

Side note: I'm excited about openmoko, the open hardware (and open source software) cell phone. Waiting for the second revision, which will include 802.11.

--
Our microcontroller kit, guide, and free videos. Your GCC compiler. Learn digital electronics today!

Can we please redefine copyright law as being applicable only when a protected work is copied between two people? This way, reselling a used CD would still be OK (right of resale, copyright law does not apply). And making a copy from one media format to another, or a temporary copy to RAM, or a backup copy, or transcoding, would all be legal and not under copyright law either, because there would not be any exchange between two people.

I suspect that this is how copyright was originally intended to apply, and I think it makes more sense. Let people do what they want with their media, as long as they don't copy and distribute it to another person. Thats when copyright law should apply.

--
Our microcontroller kit. Your gcc compiler. Learn digital elecronics!

I am totally shocked that even Diebold could screw up this badly, making systems that crash under normal usage conditions. But the design philosophy they took is the wrong one. Look at the complexity behind these things! Keep it simple and they might have done much better. Why base something like this off of Windows CE? How many megahertz do I need to do a voting machine? Seriously, all of this extra hardware and software means more abstraction (which is considered a good thing in the computer science world), but it also means more abstractions that can be misinterpreted and misused. For a system whose job is so simple, keep the product equally simple.

--
Coder? Want to learn electronics? Microcontroller kits.

Don't voluntarily install untrusted executable files! Period! There is no vulnerability without the user thinking that they want what's inside.

Facebook has nothing to do with the existence of this vulnerability. In fact, the browser-based app model explicitly is nice because of the sandbox effect, where such apps are very limited in what they can touch on your local machine. But when you convince people to break out of that sandbox by installing a local app, you can certainly kiss your computer goodbye.

--
Our microcontroller kit. Your gcc compiler. Learn digital electronics.