RTLinux Boasts Single-Digit uSec Responsiveness

An anonymous reader writes "A Linux implementation delivering single-digit microsecond responsiveness on 64-bit dual-core AMD Opteron processors is being demonstrated at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston this week. From the article: "According to FSMLabs, an AMD Opteron 265 dual-core system running RTLinux can deliver guaranteed interrupt latencies of no more than five microseconds, with scheduling jitter of no more than eight microseconds, even with Linux under a heavy load." Heck, with numbers like that it seems like Linux could run circles around XP Pro for audio/video apps such as streaming, recording, and playback!"

Comments

Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but where are teh feature richs audio/video apps that are available on WinXP?

Re:Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on where you look:

http://linuxshop.ru/linuxbegin/win-lin-soft-en/tab le.shtml
http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/en/index.html

Enjoy

Re:Apps

[Vo0k]

Features always can be added. Compatibile apps can be written. That's the easy part. The real hurdle is getting an elephantine system like XP or Longhorn, with ready-made apps that are designed with such slow huge system in mind (that is, their design neglects possiblity of the system being much faster, so even system corrections won't speed them up) to act better. And if response times are shorter, to use them efficiently, the code MUST be faster. So compare difficulty of creating 200 lines of efficient, fast, lean code from scratch and then writing another 10000 lines of "any" code that should cooperate with it, but should be readable and flexible rather than ultra-fast, with difficulty of making 200 lines of existing sloppy code 5 times faster than they are, without breaking 10000 lines that depend on it.

Re:Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe Premiere Pro?
Apple Final Cut Pro?
Cakewalk/SONAR?

I won't see anything that compares to these, but I may have over looked.

Re:Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the other AC, in addition to SONAR, what about:
Cakewalk Project 5?
Steinberg Cubase?
NI Reaktor?
Rewire?
Any VSTs at all?

I acknowledge that this is a problem with which platforms particular companies are porting their software to, and is not a shortcoming of Linux itself, but I still can't change OS's for good until some serious professional music writing/performance/recording applications are ported...

Re:Apps

[SillyNickName4me]

You have a valid point that Linux is lackign some applications for music production, but the situation is not as bad as you seem to think, not by far.

The problem is more that if it isn't Cubase, many people don't recognize it as a midi recorder/editor/sequencer. There are alternatives, that may not be as extended as Cubase is, but are quite suitable for most projects. The first that comes to mind is ROsegarden.

With regards to multitrack recording/editing, take a look at Audacity, it seems to do really well, and offers more features then many will need.

Maybe I am a bit old fashioned, I actually use a real mixer and a stack of effect equipment for recording (all physical equipment, not virtualized).. This may make the mentioned software a bit more acceptable.

But the problem remains. People do not look for the specific functionality they need and try to find a solution that matches it well, instead they look for the program they know, or by lack thereof, something extremely similar.

Re:Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad /you/ think building RT, non linear audio-video edit suites is "the easy part".

BeOS

[VVrath]

Anyone know how this compares with BeOS? I was under the impression that (certainly for it's time) BeOS was the mutt's nuts for audio/video work.

Re:beos

[QuantumG]

I said it before, I'll say it again, hacking a realtime scheduler into Linux does not a realtime OS make. The hoops you have to jump through to make RTLinux perform means you can't possibly put it on the desktop. Building embedded systems where you get to control the hardware configuration 100% and then touting how lean and mean you've made it is all well and good, but it means nothing for the rest of us using commodity hardware.

Re:BeOS

[DRobson]

BeOS isnt a realtime operating system, that is it doesnt make any hard gaurantees about whether something will occur at a given time. That said it does go to some length to schedule time critical processes appropriately hence where it got its reputation for responsiveness; Used some weird voodoo magic in the scheduler I guess...

And yes, I'm a huge BeOS fan :)

Re:beos

[idlake]

beos actually has poor latencies and response times in a number of areas, it just accelled at scheduling and prioritisation

I have yet to see a better scheduler than the UNIX schedulers; it makes the best tradeoff for general purpose workstation, multiuser server, and compute use of any system that I have used. And it's not so much intelligent design that's responsible for that, but simply a quarter of a century of trial and error.

BeOS may have wowed you with great movie playback, but I suspect it was considerably worse in other areas.

Re:BeOS

[gilesjuk]

BeOS never got any decent MIDI apps. Steinberg were supposedly working on Cubase for it, but it never was released.

Re:beos

[Anonymous Coward]

BeOS exelled as a desktop operating system, where most operations are media related (GUIs are media intensive as well, not just A/V playback and gamming). Comparing it to a Unix or any unix like operating system whitch are basicly desinged to exell in servers tasks is pointless.

Re:beos

[izomiac]

The scheduling seems to be fitting for a desktop OS. BeOS can run servers, but not as well as Linux (hence the reason several BeOS sites eventually switched to Linux servers). For media it's amazing. Gaming seems to work pretty well (Quake 2 for BeOS normally doesn't use hardware acceleration, which until recently was unavailable, and still works fine). And BeOS is know for how responsive its GUI is. The system boots quickly and most applications start quickly (ported software usually takes much longer). Firefox (javascript specifically) even seems to run quite a bit faster under BeOS on dual boot machines (but it's probably just a testament to the programming skills of the BeZilla people). It seems to me that BeOS does better with that stuff because it's designed to be a desktop OS and not a server, so its scheduler is probably a little more fine tuned for that role.

Re:beos

[idlake]

It seems to me that BeOS does better with that stuff because it's designed to be a desktop OS and not a server, so its scheduler is probably a little more fine tuned for that role.

Yes. But is that a tradeoff worth making? A properly configured Linux system is probably indistinguishable from a properly configured BeOS system under normal desktop use. And who really needs to view 40 MPEG-4 streams at the same time on their desktop? Furthermore, many desktops are used for server-like purposes part of the time.

I think flexibility and generality are a better tradeoff in this case.

Re:beos

[Eric Smith]

The hoops you have to jump through to make RTLinux perform means you can't possibly put it on the desktop.

Why would you want to? None of my real-time applications are on the desktop; they are all embedded.

Re:beos

[Eric Smith]

I have yet to see a better scheduler than the UNIX schedulers;

The TOPS-10 scheduler on the DECsystem-10 was far better than any Unix scheduler I've ever seen. Modern Unix schedulers are written by people that never had to deal with a real multiuser timesharing system supporting varied workloads while still remaining responsive for interactive use. Nowdays it's assumed that the system is effectively supporting a single user, without considering that the single user would still want good interactive response even while he or she has some CPU-intensive and/or disk-intensive background processes running.

As an example, on an Athlon XP 2500 system with a 3ware RAID controller, running BitTorrent with only a few torrents will completely hose interactive response with Linux 2.6 and FreeBSD 4 kernels. (I haven't yet tried FreeBSD 5.)

Re:beos

[idlake]

Modern Unix schedulers are written by people that never had to deal with a real multiuser timesharing system supporting varied workloads while still remaining responsive for interactive use. [...] As an example, on an Athlon XP 2500 system with a 3ware RAID controller, running BitTorrent with only a few torrents will completely hose interactive response with Linux 2.6 and FreeBSD 4 kernels. (I haven't yet tried FreeBSD 5.)

Linux is not UNIX, and I believe all UNIX code was removed from BSD as well, so those are not UNIX schedulers.

Be that as it may, it sounds like your problem is not the scheduler. First, torrents are neither CPU nor disk bound. Second, I don't observe this behavior on my machines, and my Internet connection is very fast.

Re:beos

[izomiac]

A properly configured Linux system is probably indistinguishable from a properly configured BeOS system under normal desktop use.

I have to disagree with you there, an out of the box BeOS install is probably an order of magnitude more responsive than XP or Linux. Try maxing out your cpu and working with the GUI in Windows (I haven't tried it in Linux), the menus lag and the system becomes annoying to use. In BeOS it is quite difficult to emulate that effect (you usually have to boost the priority of the CPU sucking application).

Boot times are hardly comparable. I know that doesn't matter for a server or if you never turn off your computer, but it certainly is an issue for about half of desktop users (who do turn off their computer at least nightly) and laptop users. That also seems kinda like side-stepping the issue IMHO.

I tried opening a folder on the desktop in Windows & Linux, a very typical user action, it took at least half a second. In BeOS it was at most a tenth (I couldn't really judge the time from my letting go on the double click and the window appearing).

Those are some of the main reasons I use BeOS for my primary OS even though I have Linux and Windows installed. It can do 90% of what I want, and it does that quickly. BeOS has always been more like a tool, you use it if it does the job best, use something else if it doesn't. If I want to play a game I boot XP. If I want to make a disk image for QEMU that does funky things for my VPN (like make it quasi-p2p) then I use Linux. BTW, BeOS can run servers just fine, just not quite as well as Linux.

Re:beos

[Eric Smith]

Linux is not UNIX, and I believe all UNIX code was removed from BSD as well, so those are not UNIX schedulers.

They aren't AT&T code, but they are UNIX. UNIX is a trademark of The Open Group, and does not refer to any specific source code. Neither Linux nor FreeBSD are certified to comply with the Single Unix Standard, but both are at least mostly compliant. I suppose if you want to be picky, only AIX and Solaris are certified as "Unix 03", but I doubt that anyone reasonable person reading my posting would have assumed that I meant my usage of "Unix" to be that restrictive.

First, torrents are neither CPU nor disk bound.

Even if they are network-bound, they still shouldn't interfere with scheduling of non-network processes. But in my experience, they do.

Second, I don't observe this behavior on my machines, and my Internet connection is very fast.

I don't know what "very fast" is, but my internet connection is 100Mbps (peak).

Re:beos

[idlake]

They aren't AT&T code, but they are UNIX. UNIX is a trademark of The Open Group, and does not refer to any specific source code.

Well, my remark (obviously) referred to the original UNIX (as in "Research Unix") scheduler, not any software system that happens to carry the trademark but may have a completely different scheduler.

"First, torrents are neither CPU nor disk bound." Even if they are network-bound, they still shouldn't interfere with scheduling of non-network processes. But in my experience, they do.

Well, that suggests that it isn't a problem with the scheduler. But if it is, it's a problem with the Linux scheduler, not the UNIX scheduler.

I don't know what "very fast" is, but my internet connection is 100Mbps (peak).

Ours is faster, but it's pretty much academic at that point.

Er?

[DrEldarion]

Heck, with numbers like that it seems like Linux could run circles around XP Pro for audio/video apps such as streaming, recording, and playback!"

You say that like it's a hard mark to hit.

Re:Er?

[_Sharp'r_]

RTCore also supports zero-copy real-time networking on Ethernet and FireWire (1394) via the LNet extension. LNet enables hard real-time control of networked devices as well as facilitating the use of real-time networking to control data flow and perform fault recovery for enterprise applications.

With tools shipping to do this right now, this may actually make a nice impact in the feasibility of routers/fws/filters/LBs/etc... processing higher-level protocols at nearer wire speed.

Nice!

Re:Er?

[CRC'99]

But this would assume that decent, feature rich apps for doing this actually exist and are stable on linux - which we all know is currently a pipe-dream...

Re:Er?

[PsychicX]

Of course, it has little or no relevance to media and video processing, as those are related to throughput and bandwidth, not latency. Additionally, of course RTLinux does better -- as the name suggests, it's a real time OS. Normal Linux, Windows, OSX, etc. are not real time OSes, and such latencies are not necessary.

When you need a real time OS with ridiculously low latencies is when you have something mission critical. For example, a nuclear reaction being controlled. Say, interrupt 666 triggers when something goes horribly wrong, and if you enable a safety system within 10ms, nothing bad happens. It would be good to have a system that guarantees response in less than that time. That's the purpose of a real time OS like RTLinux. This is not appropriate, necessary, or indeed useful for desktop systems or workstations of any sort, or even servers.

Re:Er?

[Korgan]

Not true. The videolan client meets that criteria exactly. It runs headless on Linux and pretty much anything else. Streaming that in various formats (including MP4, DivX and so on) is as simple as getting the codex.

If it doesn't exist already, it wouldn't be hard to write a streaming module for mplayer. Whether that be streamed to pipe, file or socket. It can already read most codecs and if you have a license for the WMP Win32 DLLs, it'll handle that too.

There are a lot of options for Linux.

Re:Er?

[at_slashdot]

"which we all know is currently a pipe-dream..."

To assume that all people know as little as you do it's a big fallacy.

Re:Er?

[strider44]

If it doesn't exist already, it wouldn't be hard to write a streaming module for mplayer. Whether that be streamed to pipe, file or socket. It can already read most codecs and if you have a license for the WMP Win32 DLLs, it'll handle that too.
mplayerplug-in

Re:Er?

[abandonment]

Exactly - almost all of the large movie houses use Linux for their rendering pipelines (see http://linuxmovies.movieeditor.com/software/index. html for more) and there is a LONG list of software available for pretty much every task you could ever want regarding creating / editing / processing video on Linux.

Many of these tools are easily commercial quality and/or created by commercial companies for use on linux - and many of them are 'linux-only' which blows the 'not for linux' argument out of the water.

ignorance is bliss ;}

Re:Er?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean apps like
http://www.spectsoft.com/wiki/RaveManual/Products/ RaveHD
http://www.autodesk.com/flint
http://www.autodesk.com/smoke

to name three video apps off the top of my head. Just because you can't afford the apps doesn't mean they don't exist

Re:Er?

[abandonment]

http://linuxmovies.movieeditor.com/studio/index.ht ml

a list of major motion picture studios and the movies that have been produced on linux.

but NOO, there are no tools for video on linux ;}

Re:Er?

[stoborrobots]

Just because you can't afford the apps doesn't mean they don't exist
Hear, hear... And what's more, people who make those kinds of trollish complaints often mean that they can't pirate them via Kazaa/Gnutella/BitTorrent therefore they don't exist...

Re:Er?

[slazzy]

QNX makes a really nice RTOS.

Re:Er?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better, he says it as if Linux actually had any real audio/video apps.

Re:Er?

[adrianmonk]

Of course, it has little or no relevance to media and video processing, as those are related to throughput and bandwidth, not latency.

Probably mostly true, but not entirely. Consider the case when you're using a computer in a recording studio to record a bunch of musicians. In the old days, they used multitrack tape machines which could be configured so that each track could be individually set to record or to play back. Might then record a drum kit on 5 out of 16 tracks, and then come back and have someone else (the bass player, then instrumentalists, then singers) come and lay down tracks on top of that.

These days, tape is effectively dead, and people do this all with computers. And not, generally, with specialized kickass embedded computers, but with Windows machines or Macs.

So, what is the relevance of all this to latency? Well, when you are doing multitrack recording on a computer, you are doing something fairly unique: you are recording a track, but at the same time you are playing back the tracks that have already been recorded and the signal you are getting from the instrument or vocalist that you're recording right now. So, the (let's say) guitar player you're recording hears the drum and bass tracks that have been recorded as well as his own guitar, and all of this is coming through the computer.

Now, one little quirk about musicians (and I'm sure you'll understand once you think about it) is that they really hate hearing themselves in their headphones if what they're hearing is coming in 100 ms later than when they're making the sound. This tends to throw them off, because rhythm is an important part of music.

As a result, guys with workstations that are used for recording are to an extent after the lowest latency they can get their hands on. The only way to achieve this is with a minimum amount of buffering of the audio data and an OS that can handle servicing interrupts for the device driver quickly AND scheduling the audio software to run in time. Well, either that or a minimum amount of buffering and ridiculously over-specced computer so that the CPU is just so fast that it doesn't matter as much if the operating system sucks.

So, a system like this could be really great for a recording studio. That is, if Linux had pro-quality recording software and supported device drivers from pro-grade A/D and D/A converter manufacturers. (I'm not talking about your average Soundblaster Live here -- I'm talking about things that can around 16 channels of 24-bit, 192 kHz, both in and out, simultaneously. Hardware like that is fairly uncommon, and professional recording guys are not going to use a third-party driver -- they want something with support from the manufacturer of the hardware, because if the system dies in the middle of a session, they may have lost the chance to capture a performance that can never be reproduced.

My point (other than that Linux has a long way to go on the application software side of things for pro audio recording) is that latency can be a hugely important thing for audio -- if it's audio that involves live musicians or an audience in any way.

Re:Er?

[fbjon]

Linux could run circles around XP Pro for audio/video apps such as streaming, recording, and playback!

You say that like it's a hard mark to hit.

Yes, but Windows XP will run circles around Linux in those other uses of audio/video, not including streaming, recording, and playback.

Re:Er?

[rkww]

Hmm, how about Linux-based real time streaming of 4K 10bpp uncompressed RGB, colour-correcting under alpha masks on the way. That works out at about a Gigabyte per second.

Re:Er?

[wulfhound]

I should just point out that these kind of ultra low latency designs for audio DSP essentially require an unbuffered, 1-sample audio signal graph. Which is likely to be horrifically inefficient on desktop CPUs compared to the 64-1024-sample buffered graphs in common use. Meaning you'll need 3x as fast a CPU to get the same track and plug-in counts as before.

Re:Er?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Mplayer streams fine, you can give it the url to any http, ftp, rm, or whatever the windows asf stuff is.

I used to waste a friends bandwidth playing avis directly off his http server that way. And once did vcds inside rars over an ftp, but the ftp was mounted with lufs.

Re:Er?

[dwater]

...hard mark to hit....running cirles around...

Doesn't sound like it's even trying to hit the mark.

Re:Er?

[Dachannien]

Part of the point of an RTOS is to be able to control a process in many different ways with different priorities. For example, if you need extremely fine torque control on a motor, you can run the thread that controls motor torque as high-priority, and it will be guaranteed to update at a specified interval (assuming you don't overtax the system with other threads at the same priority), while you can run other threads on the same box that don't need a guaranteed update rate to do things like user interface at a low priority.

You could do this all with special control hardware, if you want - back in the day, this sort of thing was even done analog, which was a lot harder to tune but was as real-time as you could get - but with an RTOS all you really need is a fast x86 box with additional I/O capabilities to do the same thing. It's a cost-saver and/or a space-saver, depending on your application.

However.... When the system has to be failsafe (like enabling safety protocols), I would never trust the task to *any* system that runs the risk of crashing due to Unlikely Event X. People who design systems with safety features always design them such that if something unlikely and very bad happens, the system shuts down as safely as possible. For example, emergency stop buttons are always normally closed, so that if one of the wires going to the button falls off (a very unlikely event), the e-stop trips (and the buttons are designed such that they never short out if the button itself fails). A nuclear reactor should have hardware interlocks which shut the system down in a controlled fashion even if the normal control system fails altogether, with the last result probably being some gravity-driven system. One might use solenoids to hold the control rods in their mounting brackets, for example, so that if the power fails completely, the solenoids disengage, dropping the control rods into the reactor.

Re:Er?

[Korgan]

Yeah, I'm aware it can read streams, but can it output to a stream instead of say XVideo or SDL or FrameBuffer or whichever method people want to use?

I don't know if a plugin for that exists yet. If mplayer could output to a file or a socket, that would make it an almost complete utility in much the same way VLC is becoming. I use VLC for pretty much everything at home because of its streaming and cross platform abilities. The web interface makes it easy to manage the streams and playlists and the fact you can choose the codec of the stream is a huge bonus. DVDs using XviD, Music in MP3.

If IceCast added support for video streaming, that might start to move up my list too. Unfortunately, I like to watch movies on my TV as well as listen to music on my stereo.

Re:Er?

[lustforlike]

I don't record music, but dad does, so I know how important latency (or lack of it) is to recording audio. That said, they are talking about a completely different latency here - response time to interrupts - and it does not help with audio recording. Audio recording really doesn't need to respond to interrupts, it just needs to do one thing with as little delay as possible.

Re:Er?

[hyc]

Of course, M68000-based Ataris and Amigas have been excellent for this type of task for over two decades. x86 PCs and Macs have always had inferior clock stability, regardless of the OS on top. I suppose part of that may be because M68K hardware is more suited to embedded systems anyway, and part of that may be because the designers of those Atari and Amiga systems came from the arcade game culture, which is a ridiculously demanding programming environment to begin with, where responsiveness makes or breaks the game. (If the game is unresponsive, it gets unpopular fast, loses money fast...) I suppose that's why M68xx and Coldfire chips are still so popular for embedded systems.

Re:Er?

[donscarletti]

FWIW "codex" refers to an old style of manuscript with multiple pages bound together, an old style of book from the middle ages. The word you are looking for is "codec".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codec, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex.

I can't spell either, but I figured that straightening out the meanings might be interesting to some people.

Re:Er?

[slashdot.org]

For example, a nuclear reaction being controlled. Say, interrupt 666 triggers when something goes horribly wrong, and if you enable a safety system within 10ms, nothing bad happens. It would be good to have a system that guarantees response in less than that time.

Just wanted to comment that the requirement for real-timeness is usually a lot less spectacular then the good ole nuke example. It's usually more something like "interrupt 12 triggers when 14 out of 20 network receive buffers are full, and if you don't respond within 10 microseconds by freeing some of those up, the other 6 buffers are potentially going to be full and the network controller has no place to put incoming data, so it will drop anything coming in after that point".

Re:Er?

[Mprx]

Hardware: http://www.rme-audio.com/english/hammer/ (with stable third party drivers in ALSA) Software: http://ardour.org/ (still in beta but very useable)

Re:Er?

[caluml]

they really hate hearing themselves in their headphones if what they're hearing is coming in 100 ms later than when they're making the sound.

Well, the human can play along with the delayed recording. Of course, that means that any sound recorded is automatically 100ms too late.
Surely there is a means to write the live audio to the place where it was 100ms ago, thus cancelling out the delay?

Re:Er?

[gallir]

> For example, a nuclear reaction being controlled. Say, interrupt 666 triggers when something goes horribly wrong, and if you enable a safety system within 10ms, nothing bad happens.

It never occurs in nuclear plants.

Re:Er?

[Anonymous Coward]

adrianmonk:
they really hate hearing themselves in their headphones if what they're hearing is coming in 100 ms later

caluml:
Well, the human can play along with the delayed recording.

You didn't quite get the "hearing themselves" part, did you? I know firsthandedly that I can not play an instrument well or sing in tune while I hear a delayed echo of myself through headphones. Most people can't. Really!

This is in fact so impossible to normal hearing people, that some division in the (Norwegian) navy used it to outsmart people who tried to avoid the draft. People could simulate near deafness on various tests, but only the real deaf would not be thrown by the simple test: "Read this text into this microphone with these headphones on".

You can get used to it, but it sucks horribly.

Re:Er?

[Glock27]

Audio recording really doesn't need to respond to interrupts, it just needs to do one thing with as little delay as possible.

The actual issue is having other interrupts not delay the RT process by more than a specified amount.

Re:Er?

[Anonymous Coward]

But from the site:

For RME's digital audio cards of the DIGI series and the Hammerfall series, different drivers are available for Linux and other operating systems. Please note that there is no direct support from RME, neither written nor by telephone, as these drivers are not written
by RME.

Re:Er?

[Korgan]

Thanks for pointing out my fat finger syndrome. If you read my previous comments in this thread you would have seen I am aware Codec was the word I was looking for. Codex was a typo, not a misunderstanding of meanings on my part.

Re:Er?

[mhearne]

Linux is a true multi-tasking environment. But it just isn't for public use, because of the fact that it must be constantly maintained and configured.

Most of the folks who use Windows, just really don't want to be bothered with science, and most of the people who use Mac's are graphic artists.

There have been commercial offerings of Linux, notably Linspire, which was being sold by Wal-Mart. But if you'll take a closer look, Linspire is an imitation of Windows, rather than a great new product.

I don't think that Linux can be marketed as a commercial product - but it is great for students. You can use it to learn programming, playing games and there are literally hundreds of free educational programs available.

I don't think I would use Linux in a business environment. It's perfect for scientists however. That is, it isn't too great for ringing up purchases, but is very well suited for astronomers, physicists and students.

If you are using a Linux distro, take a look at your memory. Every bit of it seems to be in use, yet it's still a speedy machine. You really don't want the swap to work, because disk access seems like a failure.

Windows is still using the swapfile (it used to be named win386.swp) It really isn't neccessary anymore, and yet, there it is.

Linux is very speedy if it's tuned up right, it just requires more maintenance than most people want to do.

I am very happy with it.

Michael

Re:Er?

[Mprx]

But they've been in ALSA long enough, and used professionally for long enough, that any bugs remaining are probably not serious. This is a case where using third party drivers is very low risk.

Re:Er?

[Anonymous Coward]

or even read the rest of your orig post itself

Re:Er?

[NormalVisual]

Audio recording really doesn't need to respond to interrupts, it just needs to do one thing with as little delay as possible

Of course it has to respond to interrupts - the system too busy doing other things to spend ridiculous amounts of time polling the hardware to see if the sample buffers are full/empty, or to see if a MIDI message has arrived, etc.

Re:Er?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know firsthandedly that I can not play an instrument well or sing in tune while I hear a delayed echo of myself through headphones. Most people can't. Really!

I do work in a local church. When the organ-player plays the bells (in the clocktower) he actually uses a small midi-controller. (I always found it cool that the church was midi-controlled!)

Anyway, he actually wears hearing PROTECTION, to avoid hearing the delays bells.

Re:Er?

[BRonsk]

Well, as much as I hate it, I'll have to say that the problem you're talking about has nothing to do with real time. Real time is being able to give a response to a signal in a given time frame. What you are describing is just having a very high throughput btw your input and your output of your soundcard.

Re:Er?

[LWATCDR]

I suppose you could use RTL taskes for some multi-media functions but I have not seen it done.
You gave a good if rather extreme example of a real time system. Some other common ones would be the fuel injection, ignition system, and ABS in your car.

I have to wonder just what type of real-time application you would run on a duel CPU AMD system?
What ever it is it should be dang impressive.

Re:Er?

[arniepoo]

Safety critical systems like this would never rely on the OS for protection. Typically the shutdown of a system like this is handled entirely in hardware. The hardware is kept happy be a regular pulse from the controller. If the controller barfs then the pulse frequency changes and the hardware shuts the system down. That is my experience anyway. I have never worked on nuclear reactors and realise that shutting these down is a little more complicated.

Re:Er?

[Afrosheen]

Yeah and it needs to be mentioned that the Amiga and older (Falcon) Ataris were some of the first truly multi-tasking machines available for the desktop. By 'truly' multi-tasking I mean they had separate chips for each part of the system. They had a video chip, an audio chip, a drive controller chip, etc. and the OS just had to lay around and send commands to each one. This was way different than the IBM PCs at that time which were horribly limited in comparison. The way they worked was beneficial to musicians, particularly MIDI musicians, because the latency tended to be very low. This makes perfect sense for arcade hardware.

Re:Er?

[Anonymous Coward]

woo time travel!

Re:Er?

[SmittyTheBold]

Hardware like that is fairly uncommon, and professional recording guys are not going to use a third-party driver -- they want something with support from the manufacturer of the hardware, because if the system dies in the middle of a session, they may have lost the chance to capture a performance that can never be reproduced.

Have you noticed how little companies like DigiDesign actually support? It's pathetic. Basically, forget using any of the high-end features you might be getting a new computer for.

# Pentium 4 or Xeon systems with HyperThreading technology must have "Intel HyperThreading" in the system BIOS disabled.
# Dual processor machines may need to have network cards disabled for best performance

Re:Er?

[labratuk]

That is, if Linux had pro-quality recording software

Ardour.

...and supported device drivers from pro-grade A/D and D/A converter manufacturers. (I'm not talking about your average Soundblaster Live here -- I'm talking about things that can around 16 channels of 24-bit, 192 kHz, both in and out, simultaneously.

M-Audio delta cards have very good GPL'd drivers co-written by M-Audio engineers.

Re:Er?

[fandog]

100ms? In my experience, (mind you this is with playing guitar), anything over about 12 ms latency starts to get really annoying if you're actually trying to play in sync with other tracks while recording. 9ms is tolerable, 5ms is preferred, but I start getting funny pops and stuttering noises with the buffers that low... (start sounding like Linkin Park but without meaning to).

Re:Er?

[nerdyH]

Howdy. I'm the author of the LinuxDevices.com article on RTLinux, and I have also played around a bit with demudi, the debian music distribution. Demudi (and the red hat remudi anodyne) use a 2.4 kernel patched to reduce application latency. You run all the sound aps as the root user in demudi, and jackd keeps track of real-time performance. Here's a summary of my experience.

Local songwriter wrote an album of songs, bought a Walmart PC for $300 powered by a Celery 1800 processor. He bootlegged a copy of cubase from a pal. Couldn't figure out how to use it. He then downloaded a cheap copy of cool edit pro. Recorded a dozen songs -- they sounded awful. He comes to me for help.

We install Demudi, stick in an M-Audio Delta 440 card, a $200 sound card with hardware mixer/monitor and 1/4-inch TRS 4-in/4-out breakout box. We record six songs in three days, each with 10 tracks or so, even though we had only a tiny amount of experience using ardour. We master everything at 24/96, and downsample to cd quality for the final. It sounds great!

The trickiest part is actually the downsampling, because jackd shuts the whole thing down when the CPU fails to deliver on real-time guarantees. This becomes a royal pain. We resort to shutting down all unneeded linux services in order to get the final mixes downsampled. It's a pain, but it finally works.

And the results are good. A professional sound engineer with 20 years experience listens to the results, and comments, "How many tracks were you doing at a time? Sixteen on this song? It's remarkable, because the sound doesn't get brittle. Usually, with that many tracks, things go brittle at a certain point."

Despite the fact that demudi has a real-time kernel, there *is* perceivable latency in the monitors when using software monitoring, though. Luckily, Alsa does support RME cards, and M-Audio cards -- pretty much. With M-audio cards, you have to use the console alsamixer to get to all the features of the card. But it can be done.

I don't think RTLinux would be used for real-time audio, though, since you need the Linux apps to be real-time, not just the hardware interrupts. But I don't know.

I do think the work Ingo and MontaVista are doing with native real-time Linux will have a huge impact on the A/V and effects industries.

Re:Er?

[kisielk]

That's why most computer recording systems use the soundcard's clock which is designed to be very stable. Most pro soundcards accept a world clock input as well for true stability and synchronization with other equipment. It's not too hard to achieve 1 ms latency on modern hardware and still be in sync.

Re:Er?

[donscarletti]

It should have been obvious to me that this is the case since you spelled it right later on. Anyway, this is irrelevant since it is a good excuse for slashdotters to read wikipedia articles for the hell of it.

Re:Er?

[Anonymous Coward]

and its not like you need that kind of performance for video operations either--at either 29.97 or 30 fps you only need to handle a fairly small buffer in 1/30th of a second which is plausible with other existing operating systems.

Re:Er?

[ncc74656]

Heck, with numbers like that it seems like Linux could run circles around XP Pro for audio/video apps such as streaming, recording, and playback!"

You say that like it's a hard mark to hit.

Indeed. I can record two shows and play one without the machine breaking a sweat, and it's just an Athlon XP. Others are doing the same with even less-powerful processors.

Re:Er?

[Kazoo the Clown]

Heck, with numbers like that it seems like Linux could run circles around XP Pro for audio/video apps such as streaming, recording, and playback!"

You say that like it's a hard mark to hit.

It is as long as one insists on jamming all the GUI and graphics data through a TCP/IP bottleneck...

Re:Er?

[Anonymous Coward]

"So, a system like this could be really great for a recording studio. That is, if Linux had pro-quality recording software and supported device drivers from pro-grade A/D and D/A converter manufacturers. (I'm not talking about your average Soundblaster Live here -- I'm talking about things that can around 16 channels of 24-bit, 192 kHz, both in and out, simultaneously."

the software isn't there unless you make it yourself (sigh), but there are some pro audio interfaces out there that are semi-supported. rme's hdsp stuff (though not the firewire) for example - people have been using these with linux for years.

beos

[itzdandy]

beos did not handle media well because of low latencies, it handled media well because of thoughtful media system design. beos actually has poor latencies and response times in a number of areas, it just accelled at scheduling and prioritisation

A couple of things about this

[ReformedExCon]

First, it's on a desktop system with a desktop CPU running really fast. Getting 5us interrupt latencies is not a difficult feat for an RTOS. Yes, it may beat Windows XP's latencies, but on a desktop OS, latency isn't typically a big deal (does XP even claim to be realtime?).

Second, what are the limitations? How does RTLinux handle priority inversion? How does it stack up to something like OSE-RTOS or GreenHills? Just how preemptible are those ISRs?

And finally, what is the performance penalty? Just because you are servicing interrupts at lightning quick speed, it doesn't mean you get a boost in speed. It may mean you have to lower the priority of many system services.

I am skeptical of RTLinux's claims, though the numbers seem to be in order. Maybe it is just their actions in the past (FSMLabs) that has colored my opinion of them.

Re:A couple of things about this

[xenocide2]

NT does claim to be suitable for some soft-realtime applications. Most people knowingly waive it off as useless for anything more than trivial applications. NT makes no guarentees about service time, but it has been making strides in improving priority levels, etc. I'm not sure what XP adds to this, since I'm basically pulling this out of a textbook from an influential researcher and author.

RTLinux is generally in the same class. You mentioned that they're using a desktop beast, but those are actually mainframe/server systems they're benchmarking on! 256 CPUs, Opteron Dual Core chips, etc. These chips feature lots of stuff you can't afford in the bulk of embedded systems.

The only thing this appears to be useful for is low latency financial market trades. If they were going after the embedded system market, perhaps an embedded system benchmark would suit better.

Also, how can your RTLinux feature a RTCore based on ruggedized Linux or BSD? How much of this system is Linux, exactly? Perhaps a trademark litigation is in order over this?

Re:A couple of things about this

[dfjunior]

Anyone know how these numbers stack up against commercial RTOS's such as QNX, vxWorks, etc...?

That's the real litmus test, no?

Re:A couple of things about this

[CaptnMArk]

>Yes, it may beat Windows XP's latencies, but on a desktop OS, latency isn't typically a big deal (does XP even claim to be realtime?)

Scheduler latency may not normally be a big problem, but user interface latency is a problem and UI should be a (soft) realtime system.

Re:A couple of things about this

[Cochonou]

Getting 5us interrupt latencies is not a difficult feat for an RTOS.

Indeed. One year ago, I participated in the installation of a High Energy Physics (HEP) experiment. We were using PowerPC 604 CPUs running VxWorks (the commercial "industry standard" RTOS).
On that configuration, I was getting interrupt latencies always under 12 us (3 us average), and that was on a 300 Mhz CPU ! 5 us is hardly impressive on the kind of systems they are using.

However, what would be interesting would be to know how the system behaves under load. RTLinux has been known in the past to crumble when heavily loaded by low priority tasks. It might have gone better recently.

Note that RTLinux is not the only Real-time Linux implementation. There's also RTAI released under LGPL.

Re:A couple of things about this

[julesh]

Yes, it should, but UI latencies of 10ms or higher are not a problem. Most users wouldn't even notice a latency of 20-30ms. I think most OSs use a scheduling timeslice of 20ms -- you can reasonably expect to have that much latency before the app the user is interacting with is scheduled to run, and most users never realize. Much more than that is an irritation; serious usability problems start to appear at about 100ms, which is where users start wondering why the POS is so goddamn SLOW!

Re:A couple of things about this

[drgonzo59]

No its not. Once they make a claim that OS will respond in less than 1 micro second, they imply that it is a hard realtime system (i.e. guaranteed response in a certain period of time). If NT can make the same claim then it will be in the same class, otherwise it falls into the "soft realtime" system class (response in an average time).

Re:A couple of things about this

[mollymoo]

You mentioned that they're using a desktop beast, but those are actually mainframe/server systems they're benchmarking on! 256 CPUs, Opteron Dual Core chips, etc.

The AMD Opteron 265 is a dual-core processor. There was just one in the the test machine, it's not a huge mainframe/server system.

Re:A couple of things about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that 5us is mostly dominated by hardware latencies. E.g. interrupt dispatch latencies from timer source device to PICs. People have this misconception that the faster/newer the processor the lower the numbers!!! There is always a point whereupon slower systems perform, with respect to interrupt response times, as well as faster clocked systems.

Re:A couple of things about this

[ivan256]

And finally, what is the performance penalty? Just because you are servicing interrupts at lightning quick speed, it doesn't mean you get a boost in speed. It may mean you have to lower the priority of many system services.

The big limitation here is that interrupts that aren't handled naitively by RTLinux take a 30% latency hit. The CPU is, of course, held in interrupt context that whole time. Chances are there won't be RT drivers for most of the devices in your system, so overall your performance will suck unless all that's running is your real time app.

Disclaimer: All the testing I did was on the currently released version on a 32 bit Xeon. I don't know if they fixed it in this new version, but without a re-write I'd say they didn't.

Re:A couple of things about this

[CaptnMArk]

Actually, if you hope to achieve 100ms (preferably 50ms) on a loaded system, your idle system latencies should be below 10 or 20ms.

Re:A couple of things about this

[xenocide2]

huh, I thought that was a pretty huge number. Thanks for the tip.

Re:A couple of things about this

[radishes]

Nice sig.

Re:A couple of things about this

[Anonymous Coward]

How does it stack up to something like OSE-RTOS or GreenHills?

A little searching turned up: http://www.ghs.com/products/rtos/integrity_rtos_fe atures.html:

"With INTEGRITY, the highest priority interrupt is always serviced with absolute minimum latency. This results in latencies on the order of 140ns on a 233 MHz PowerPC. Similarly, context switches typically exhibit times on the order of 870ns, many times faster than most other RTOSes."

Multimedia

[4of11]

Why would you need fast interrupt speed for multimedia? If anything, a real-time kernel would reduce efficiency for multimedia. You need raw CPU for that, not fast interrupts. RTLinux is for applications where you need the computer to react really fast, like in science experiments.

Re:Multimedia

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people get this all wrong, when you investing into a real-time OS you dont seek primarly something that is "fast" , you seek something that is predictable, wich no desktop/server OS is, you cant for sure say when your application is going to get a timeslot due to many factors.

Re:Multimedia

[Arandir]

Realtime operating systems generally suck on the desktop and on server. There's a reason why RTLinux isn't the mainstream kernel.

Re:Multimedia

[kyb]

You need raw CPU for that, not fast interrupts

That's unfortunate - I cooked mine a while back.

Re:Multimedia

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm RT = ~100% devoted to MultiMedia processing - how does this slow things down?

Re:Multimedia

[MassacrE]

That isn't what RT means. RT has to do with starting processes at precise times, and is used in critical systems. When you bring in real-time requirements, you make sacrifices in other areas of efficiency.

So by having a real-time kernel, you wind up sacrificing the raw CPU power needed to make multimedia happen. What you want for multimedia is priority processing, which has nothing to do with realtime.

The lost efficiency for real-time kernel scheduling is why there isn't real-time scheduling built into mainline linux.

Re:Multimedia

[joebutton]

> Why would you need fast interrupt speed for
> multimedia? If anything, a real-time kernel would
> reduce efficiency for multimedia.

For watching DVDs etc that's correct, but for making music you *do* need low latency. You need to respond to musicians in *real-time*. The output from the bass player needs to be in the guitarist's headphones instantly, not 500ms later.

a/v doesn't need hard real-time

[Yanster]

>Heck, with numbers like that it seems like Linux
>could run circles around XP Pro for audio/video
>apps such as streaming, recording, and playback!"

To me the numbers announced are on par with hard real-time constraints, for which there are a lot more interesting and critical applications than a/v streaming, recording and playback!

How about anything the pure real-time kernels can do, such as running a car, plane, spaceship, etc ?

Re:a/v doesn't need hard real-time

[Anonymous Coward]

To me the numbers announced are on par with hard real-time constraints

One would hope so, from a hard real-time OS.

In any case, hard real-time does not mean "really low latency." It means "failure to meet latency guarantee is fatal." You can't necessarily make a soft real-time system hard real-time just by speeding it up, particularly if there are unbounded waits involved.

A better and more thorough explanation.

What about Windows, anyway?

[Sensible Clod]

I'd be interested in seeing the figures for XP X64 with SMP on the same system...

Re:What about Windows, anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Windows XP is not an RTOS. Nor is "regular" Linux. Comparing a non-RTOS to an RTOS is a pretty useless endeavor.

It could?

[Saven Marek]

Heck, with numbers like that it seems like Linux could run circles around XP Pro for audio/video apps such as streaming, recording, and playback!

It already has and for a long time now.

Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Well linux is designed to run multipal tasks, and on hardware that is designed to do the same its not surprising that it works out like that

One thing I've noticed;

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not into audio/video stuff at all, but my girlfriend is, she's a graduate from one of the most prestigious 3D colleges in Europe, classmates are working with Pixar, Saab, BMW and so on in 3D modelling. And other courses in that college were orientated around pro video, pro audio and other stuff with cutting edge computer needs.

And all these people I chatted with, did not ever give as much of a crap about hardware. They use applications, they use Final cut Pro, or Maya, or PRman, or Logic Audio, or Cubase or Digital performer or whatever, they all have apps they like. But they aren't seeing the hardware as any kind of big deal. If they need something done faster they get a new PC.

Linux needs to get the applications before it can boast about the microsecond speed advantages.

Re:One thing I've noticed;

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no clue what this is for, do you?

Re:One thing I've noticed;

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently the moderators do not either..

This isn't for the desktop (did you guys even RTFA?).

Ignorance is bliss, isn't it?

Re:One thing I've noticed;

[QuantumG]

The "moderators" don't take any responsibility for the bullshit comments appended by the person who submits the story. That'd be like they were editors or something.

Depends on the app in question

[vectorian798]

According to the article, this OS is touted for its extremely fast responsiveness, presumably to any interrupts from external devices (since it is targeted at an embedded platform) etc. because of the way it 'reserves' the CPU for such activities.

This decreases latency (response time to some stimulus, in the most general definition) but does not increase the total throughput.

For embedded applications such as perhaps a data acquisition system that might want to sample one external circuit's output when another circuit sends a line high, this is perfect because the system can react extremely quickly and thus increase the accuracy of the data.

However, it is conceivable that because of processor reservation, you will lose some of the power available to you. Thus, you cannot say for sure that it can run circles around XP based on simply this feature...especially for a feature like encoding a video which doesn't depend much on interrupts.

There might be other reasons for why Linux is a better platform for streaming, playing, recording, or encoding video. But I doubt this is it. Real-time OS's are aimed at embedded applications, usually systems that combine both external hardware and software...

Re:Depends on the app in question

[hackerjoe]

There might be other reasons for why Linux is a better platform for streaming, playing, recording, or encoding video. But I doubt this is it. Real-time OS's are aimed at embedded applications, usually systems that combine both external hardware and software...

Two things. First, low latency at the expense of a little throughput is actually quite important for pro audio recording, and especially for applications like software synthesizers; it really sucks when there's a half-second delay between twiddling a knob or pressing a key and hearing the effect that has.

Second, there's a much better reason that RTLinux is irrelevant, even to the pro audio stuff that wants a real-time kernel: real-time processes in RTLinux can't access the Linux kernel, they can only access the RTLinux core. This means they would need special drivers for audio, MIDI, and so on, and any access to the file system or any other normal OS or userland service would have to go through a pipe to a non-realtime server -- super annoying.

This is why Linux audio developers are still pushing for at least soft-realtime performance in the stock kernel. RTLinux is good at what it does, but it's really only practical for systems that are deployed on limited hardware, such as telecoms systems and other embedded systems, where the appropriate drivers can be built into the application.

Re:Depends on the app in question

[Sycraft-fu]

Usually RTOSes actually have a decreased responsivness, from a user perspective. IF you want to mess with a simple one some day try QNX. I think they still ahve a nice little demo disk you can load. What I found, was that it was nice and all, but it was somewhat slow to respond to my requests. The reason, of course, was that I got no higher priority than anything else.

Well normally for desktop, and espically for AV work, you want a boost on that. You want the video app to get time when it needs it, even if it starves another application. You'd want higher responsivness to it's requests for things on disk and response to user commands then some network process running in the background.

I think an RTOS would probably be the worst choice for an AV workstation.

Vanilla 2.6

[Lussarn]

I think vanilla 2.6 is great when it comes to responsiveness (not counting microseconds though). I Even though I have world of warcraft eating 100% CPU in a window the overall responsiveness of the desktop environment doesn't change. same goes if you decide to start up 5 simultaneously playing movies in mplayer. Way better than 2.4 ever was.

News flash:

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently it is. Despite all the latency patches for the 2.6 linux kernel "(X) Preemptible Kernel (Low-Latency Desktop)", "[*] Preempt The Big Kernel Lock", and that Timer frequency thing, linux handles A&V like CRAP. None of the Debian/RH machines I use at work are any better than my home (Gentoo) machine, either.

I love linux, but Windows handles A/V like a champ (with the exception of, perhaps, editing the two, bug I have no experience in this area...) And I'm not going to go out and buy a dual core opteron just so my linux box can play video and sound without stuttering under a load.

Try playing WoW on a dual head setup with video playing on one screen and the game in the other. Windows handles it amazing well, while linux chokes horribly. This can be somewhat alleviated by reniceing the process, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the whole "low latency desktop" thing, doesn't it?

IMHO, audio is perhaps the one place where choice hasn't helped linux.

Re:News flash:

[Lussarn]

Try playing WoW on a dual head setup with video playing on one screen and the game in the other

I do that every day, works great for me.

Re:News flash:

[Effugas]

How are you playing WoW on Linux?

One of the WINE branches?

Using something native (Jack), I've achieved 32 bytes at a time, double period (quite a bit less than 1ms of audio), stable on Linux.

Re:News flash:

[Lussarn]

Regular wine works best for wow, just grab latest. Use OSS for sound (or alsa OSS emulation) and use -opengl switch for wow.

Re:News flash:

[Alioth]

What do you have? A Pentium-60? My almost 3 year old PC (which runs Linux) handles video and sound simultaneously just fine. Handles video, sound and a game simultaneously just fine also. I'm using Xine for most video/sound (mainly because Xine plays my iTunes AAC music library out of the box). My Linux system isn't anything special - Fedora Core 2 with the stock kernel.

Re:News flash:

[labratuk]

I hate to post "works for me"s, but I can run my PII 400MHz at near full load (compiling at nice 10) and play a video smoothly at the same time. Have been able to since the late 2.4 kernels.

Haven't done anything special to my system.

RTlinux - lunix runs as lowest priority

[MonsterMasher]

I use rtLinux at work (university biomed research) and we use this to collect data and drive equipment on a tight schedule. Regular linux runs as the lowest priority. Development at this level is tricky - I learned not to development code on test system because I got tired of rebooting and restarting editors when I screwed up. :)

Multimedia? o_O

[soccerisgod]

Am I the only one who thinks ScuttleMonkey's comment on this story is a bit...out of place? Why would you need one-digit microsecond scheduling jitter for multimedia applications?

For 'real' real-time applications, this is gold though, especially now that many more people realize Linux' potential in this area - heck, even the good folks over at Windriver have realized that now, and they used to laugh at us Linux folks.

Re:Multimedia? o_O

[Tim C]

That's not ScuttleMonkey's comment - everything in italics is written by the original submitter. If that's not the case, then the posting editor is putting words in the original submitter's mouth, and we all know that none of them would ever do that. The editor's comments appear in normal text, generally after the submitter's (apart from the "So-and-so writes..." bit, obviously).

As for the comment itself, it's FUD, pure and simple. Yes, it certainly out performs XP in terms of real-time response. XP is not and never will be a real-time OS, and MS has never claimed that it is. More importantly though, it is extremely unlikely that the submitter has any data to back up that supposition, whether it relate to required latencies for multi-media operations or to XP's real-time capabilities and latencies.

Apples to apples?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, with numbers like that it seems like Linux could run circles around XP Pro for audio/video apps such as streaming, recording, and playback!
Umm.. why compare a REAL TIME operating system to Windows?

Re:Apples to apples?

[2Bits]

Are you new here? We compare everything to Windows. Bashing MS/SCO/..., kissing the ass of Google/Apple/..., are a daily sport here.

Re:Apples to apples?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you new here?
Nope. But I was temporarily banned at one point from posting because too many of my posts were (in my opinion, unfairly and unjustifiably) modded down. It seems like any post supporting X when the moderator supports Y is modded down here (especially when we're talking about Windows, DRM, piracy.. etc.)

They can't silence the anonymous coward..

RAGE AGAINST THE (SLASHDOT) MACHINE!

Real time is not only about how fast

[Tetard]

"no more than 5 microsecs" is fine, but -- how the sustained rate, and what about garanteed completion time ? (they have a low boundary too: they shouldn't execute too fast either).

Linux Rocks!

[Entertainment Watch]

Windows could not even handle what I wanted to do when developing http://www.entertainmentwatch.com./ Linux was the only way to go to use Mambo, which rocks hardcore!

RTLinux is Unfair by Design

[Rick Richardson]

http://www.fsmlabs.com/rtlinux-is-unfair-by-design .html

Re:ok great..

[MonsterMasher]

Well - stop rebooting it! It's not windows which need a reboot after every application ran!

Really, My development machine at work has an uptime of 35 days, at that was a reboot because my cdrom burner went off and never came back.

Anything else think...

[gorim]

That its ridiculous that RTLinux needs to run on a dual-core AMD Opteron in order to achieve those latencies ? How many RTOS *can't* do that ? How many embedded systems will be created out of dual-core AMD Opterons, considered that they are usually made out of bottom dollar hardwares ?

Re:Anything else think...

[slashdot.org]

That its ridiculous that RTLinux needs to run on a dual-core AMD Opteron in order to achieve those latencies ?

Yes. I think for anyone that has done embedded systems for a while that's laughable.

Before I start on my rant I will say that (a) the last time I've looked into Linux as a potential embedded OS has been a while (1-2 years) and (b) a fair amount of elitism can't be denied when it comes to talking about RTOSs.

Having said that, I never understood why people are so hot on making Linux an embedded RTOS. The kernel is NOT designed to be an RTOS. The distributions/tools are not designed for embedded.

Last time I looked at RTLinux, it would have been more accurate to call it a very small RTOS kernel that ran Linux as a sub-process. You needed to write/port your own drivers for devices that needed real-time response. The Linux kernel itself was not real-time.

The last version of the Linux kernel itself that I looked at was not designed to be re-entrant/pre-empted in a way that's required for a true RTOS. However, the multi-processor "#ifdefs" seemed to make it possible to create a kernel which locked at a much "lower" level. I think Robert Love's patches took advantage of that and from what I understand those are now incorporated into the main source tree (but I'm by no means a regular lkml reader), which IMHO was a more promising path to take. Although I still don't think it's making Linux a viable RTOS...

Re:Anything else think...

[slavemowgli]

Give Ingo Molnar's RT preemption patches or the I-Pipe approach a look some day. "1-2 years" ago can be a long, long time when it comes to Linux... :)

Not for your desktop

[AceJohnny]

Don't hope you'll get this on your desktop anytime soon. This is RTLinux. Know what RT meants? Real-Time. That's a system in which you can guarantee the responsiveness.
But there's a catch: at development, you control all aspects (hardware and software) of that system. If just one component fails real-time requirements, you card castle crumbles.
In a desktop system, you can't control all aspects. That video card you just bought just added a little latency to your system, and it's not realtime. What is that program?
Never heard of it, but it fails RT requirement.

So, this is cool... but in the embedded systems field. Don't start comparing it to Windows XP and thinking you'll get it on a desktop Linux.

Re:Not for your desktop

[grimJester]

So, this is cool... but in the embedded systems field. Don't start comparing it to Windows XP and thinking you'll get it on a desktop Linux.

Of course, if people stopped drooling over performance numbers and actually considered what they need, they might come to the conclusion that no one cares whether anything on a desktop computer reacts in 5 or 50 milliseconds.

Then again, I guess there's nothing new about geeks going to great lengths for a performance improvement that is unnoticable to a human observer.

Re:Not for your desktop

[grimJester]

Argh.. Micro, not milli. Kinda reinforces my point that the difference is irrelevant...

Re:Linux Rocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

much bigger websites are run on windows.. do you have any clue what you're talking about.. ::opens rediculous looking website::

No, you don't.

Software or hardware?

[allanj]

5 us latency is good and all, but that is VERY fast hardware. A better measure would be using a system somewhat comparable to an advanced industrial controller, which is where RTLinux is meant to be used, IMHO. Something like a 667 MHz VIA processor board(no affiliation) is rather high-end in that respect - rate it on such a system, and your numbers will actually mean something.
To those who compare this to XP - you've completely missed the mark. XP is not, will never be, and has never been claimed to be realtime. There really is no comparable offering from Microsoft at the moment, with Windows CE coming closest in terms of realtime capability. I doubt that 5 us is within reach on ANY hardware with WinCE, though.

Re:Software or hardware?

[RAMMS EIN]

``5 us latency is good and all, but that is VERY fast hardware.''

Perhaps, but from a manufacturer whose CPUs have traditionally had slow context switches. That goes for any x86 CPU, by the way.

Re:Software or hardware?

[can56]

I've written RTLinux applications on boxes using the 633 MHz Via cpu, and found the typical interrupt latency was ~10 usec. About the same latency as on a box with a 3.2 GHz P4, which indicates the limitation is not the cpu speed, but with the interrupt controller circuitry.

Re:Software or hardware?

[julesh]

you've completely missed the mark. XP is not, will never be, and has never been claimed to be realtime.

"you can easily add real-time capabilities and optimize Windows XP embedded to meet your real-time needs"

http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/getstart/prodov erview/features/xp/realtime/default.aspx

Although it seems MS prefers to sell WinCE for those with RT requirements:

"a number of significant changes made to the kernel of Windows CE 3.0 have greatly enhanced real-time performance to withstand the most demanding real-time applications"

http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/prevver/ce3/ce3 overvw/realtime/default.aspx

Re:Software or hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

"a number of significant changes made to the kernel of Windows CE 3.0 have greatly enhanced real-time performance to withstand the most demanding real-time applications"

So, it seems the time quantum has been changed from 25 millisec to 1 millisec. Hardly 5 usec.

Re:Software or hardware?

[gregorio]

Yes, hardly 5us, more like 2,9 us average: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/dnce30/html/realtimecapabilities.as p

Re:Software or hardware?

[gregorio]

In fact, the Interrupt Service Routine latency for Win CE 3.0 on very slow (100MHz) x86 hardware seems impressive: 2.9 us average latency.

You can find the data here.

Already Speedy

[Doc Ruby]

Icecast on Debian Linux already has great performance for streaming, if not "realtime" interrupts . But I do wonder about loads people have seen with standard datacenter server HW. For example, how many 128Kbps streams can a P4/4.3GHz/128K-cache/512MB-RAM Icecast2 server stream from the local filesystem (preencoded to 128Kbps MP3) to a 100Mbps ethernet, if that's all it's running under the Debian v2.6.10-5-686 kernel/OS?

Re:Already Speedy

[Wonko]

Icecast on Debian Linux already has great performance for streaming, if not "realtime" interrupts

I have no idea why you would need anything remotely like 5 microsecond latency for "streaming." When you stream media you have a buffer at the client end. If you are a bit late with a single packet it shouldn't make any difference.

But I do wonder about loads people have seen with standard datacenter server HW. For example, how many 128Kbps streams can a P4/4.3GHz/128K-cache/512MB-RAM Icecast2 server stream from the local filesystem (preencoded to 128Kbps MP3) to a 100Mbps ethernet, if that's all it's running under the Debian v2.6.10-5-686 kernel/OS?

I would hope this machine would be more than up to the task of saturating a 100Mb link. You need very little CPU and very little disk throughput. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a 486 with a PCI 100 megabit NIC could do the job just as well.

Re:Already Speedy

[Anonymous Coward]

..not to mention that there's no such thing as a "P4/4.3GHz/128K-cache" processor.
Yeah, I know - don't feed the trolls..

10,000,000 clock cycles?

[Karma Farmer]

Am I the only person who thinks that taking a 10 million clock cycles or more for a dual core chip to respond to an interupt seems like a long time?

Re:10,000,000 clock cycles?

[Briareos]

Am I the only person who thinks that taking a 10 million clock cycles or more for a dual core chip to respond to an interupt seems like a long time?

What 10 million?

5 usec (that's micro-seconds[1], not milli-seconds) is 1/20,000th of a second, so if you take a 2 GHz CPU it's more like 2,000,000,000 clock cycles * sec^-1 divided by 20,000 sec^-1=100,000 clock cycles...

[1] which should have a mu instead of an u before the second, but SlashDot doesn't seem want to display µ...

Re:10,000,000 clock cycles?

[Briareos]

Ugh... of course, 5usec is 1/200,000th of a second, so it's actually 10.000 clock cycles... *slaps himself*

Re:10,000,000 clock cycles?

[KillShill]

unfortunetly (or fortunetly) you're also the only person to have read the fine article.

Re:10,000,000 clock cycles?

[jmv]

It says 5 microseconds, while the clock period is around 500 ps. That's 10,000 cycles, not 10 million.

Re:10,000,000 clock cycles?

[J. Random Luser]

No, you're not the only one mate. Scuttlemonkey musta got some good crack ;-)

Just consider that 5.1 = 6 channels at 96khz sample rate 24bits/sample, means each bit in a serial stream is about 60nS. Sure you can thread your processes, use asynchronous buffer blocks, but I've only mentioned audio. Throw video into the mix as well, then consider what is needed to keep DAC noise low. Oh, sorry it was streaming he mentioned. How many simultaneous streams at 2400kb/s? Ah, internet streaming, of course "you have to expect droputs".

The 888/24 is one of Digidesign's legacy interfaces, ie. no longer supported. The spec figure for clock jitter is less than 40 picoseconds RMS 22Hz-22kHz, D/A SNR 107dB unweighted Find me some hardware running Linux with figures like that and we'll talk multi-media.

Re:10,000,000 clock cycles?

[can56]

I think you have *way* too many zeros in your comment -- a 1Ghz machine runs 1,000 clock cycles in a microsecond (multiply by N for a N-GHz cpu). However, I agree that it sucks that thousands of clock cycles are required to respond to an interrupt, even one generated by the cpu itself (such as by the internal clock).

Re:10,000,000 clock cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming it's a 2.0 GHz processor, 5 microseconds would be 10,000 clock cycles, not 10,000,000. And a fair portion of those 5 microseconds is probably spent before the interrupt routine even gets to start.

Moreover, having a second core doesn't make interrupt handling latency decrease; each interrupt runs on only 1 core.

Re:10,000,000 clock cycles?

[cnettel]

Yeah, cause you really want the CPU to pump any kind of I/O with no buffering, byte by byte. Heck, even the memory access itself will generally be done in cache lines of 64 bytes or so.

Still, of course, a multi-threaded system won't be able to do real time for every single sample in an audio stream. Video is far easier, you only 30 FPS or so, so all you need is to do the page switch with some accuracy.

Re:10,000,000 clock cycles?

[kasperd]

Moreover, having a second core doesn't make interrupt handling latency decrease

In fact it may even increase the interrupt latency. The fact that a single CPU system could process a network interrupt faster than a dual CPU system was one of the reasons the Horseshoe cluster was build using single CPU systems.

Re:10,000,000 clock cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have an real life application that needs that kind of latency, then your system level design needs more work. A little bit of extra hardware assists or intellegences on your I/O side of things could easily remove that requirement in most cases pushing your hardware cost, complexity way down. I woulnd't even speculate the low MTBF of the dual AMD system - both electrical/cooling etc.

Old news for morons, opinion that doesn't matter

[BarryNorton]

Heck, with numbers like that it seems like Linux could run circles around XP Pro for audio/video apps such as streaming, recording, and playback!

This writer has no idea what he's talking about and launches into a trolling that doesn't even make sense... what's new, this is Slashdot!

Everyone is convinced

[StarKruzr]

that "real time = real fast."

Often, nothing could be further from the truth.

I wonder why this seems to escape Slashdot article authors.

Wait... nevermind ;)

Re:Everyone is convinced

[Technician]

that "real time = real fast."

Often, nothing could be further from the truth.


What's missed here is a Real Time OS is being compared to Windows XP. Windows anything is not a real time OS. It keeps getting pushed into real time use, simply because it is there, but it is not the best tool for the job. Having an OS respond in real time to interupts is like having a mouse that doesn't freeze for several seconds at a time on a busy system. (if you run Windows, you know what I'm talking about.) Using Windows in a real time environment such as video encoding, or such almost always produces the ocasional jump or glitch because Windows is not a real time OS. Interupts get ignored during such things as a disk access.

Re:Everyone is convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, "real time" != "real fast", real time just means "predictable".
The important thing is not to respond fast, but to ALWAYS respond within a KNOWN delay.

Re:Everyone is convinced

[Xiaran]

that "real time = real fast."

Yes. I used to work on hard realtime applications and it is a very specific term that doesnt really have anything to do with speed, but with assurances that response will happen in a certain time period.

An example of a hard realtime system I heard of once that didnt require a lot of fast responses was on a oil rig. Im not 100% sure what this system did but it had to do it every hour to an oil pump. If it *didnt* do this thing every hour then "bad things happened". Typically these bad things involved pipes exploding and people catching fire.

Re:Everyone is convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows CE 3 and later are true real time systems.

Re:Everyone is convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

The genius who has created nothing of worth in this field in StarKruzr speaks!

Hey StarKruzr - stfu.

You're nothing but a forums board poster at best who has too much time on his hands with no education in this field or skills in it.

RTOS are 'real fast' by comparison to others that are not.

Another arstechnica loser talking out his ass.

Re:Everyone is convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

To correct the last post:

Windows anything is not a real time OS

1) Windows CE 3, 4, 5, were all RTOSes.

2) There are realtime extensions available for Windows XP and Windows XPe that effectively make Windows XP a realtime system, likely in the same way RTLinux could be used to make desktop "Quake running" Linux into a realtime system.

3) RTOSes are not magical. When you want to have hard realtime response to hardware, you end up sacrificing performance of something else. Likely this will be non-essential to your realtime performance, like UI response, disk transfer rate, something. CPU cycles don't come for free, they have to come from something else.

Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

While those two have their place (VxWorks moreso than QNX), most embedded systems on the market today run some variety of iTron or OSE-RTOS. GreenHills gets the military stamp of approval, and Symbian and Linux pick up the slack in the cellular handset market.

RTLinux is a nice concept, but for the most part it is destined for the research labs of the OEMs rather than your next piece of electronics.

Re:Not really

[MerlinTheWizard]

Uh huh. So you say. I think you should take a look at that: http://www.linuxdevices.com/

Apparently, lots of people don't realize yet how much Linux is being used commercially in the embedded market, and its use is just growing.

Re:Not really

[MerlinTheWizard]

First off, you can go back to sleep in peace, for I am neither hurt nor feel inadequate (and if I did after reading your vomit-like prose, *that* would be definitely inadequate). And Linux is definitely not "my OS". I wonder what "owning an OS" would mean anyway...

Lol, yet another big troll like I love them, who doesn't know any better than insulting people and does not care to do some basic research on the topic... I should not even reply to this, but what the heck, this could at least help readers decide for themselves before giving the benefit of the doubt to the ruder one.

Just to name one company, which, by the way, is implanted worldwide: FSMLabs. Its activity revolves around RTLinux and RT-BSD. And you'd have found its name very quickly if you had cared to look at the site I mentioned a little bit. It even has the news about RTLinux the original author of this Slashdot article talks about... Anyway, even though RTLinux seems to be used most in research projects, it does have practical industrial and medical applications as well. Just take a look there, for instance: http://www.fsmlabs.com/case-studies.html

Of course, you may not feel the need to check this out, nor check out your own sources. Heck, you don't even feel compelled to post as anything else than an anonymous coward...

but....

[countach]

>Heck, with numbers like that it seems like Linux
>could run circles around XP Pro for audio/video
>apps such as streaming, recording, and playback!"

Yeah, but how feasible is it to run RTLinux just to watch DVDs?

Re:Linux Rocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

look here
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=162012&c id=13544696
he is just whoring for karma to get a link to entertainmentwatch

mod him down, he is destroying the spirit of slashdot

NOT primarily for audio/video stuff

[drgonzo59]

Microsecond resolution and RT environment is not for audio/video. You can run your audio and video with the regular Linux kernel. Would you really notice a microsecond delay on a 60 fps (60Hz) frame rate? - I don't think so.

But usecond resolution would be usefull for higher-frequency data processing and control.

Re:NOT primarily for audio/video stuff

[Petersson]

But usecond resolution would be usefull for higher-frequency data processing and control.

Right, that's useful for real-time data processing, but there's no point in using it for control of anything mechanical since every switch, every solenoid, every servo is so damn slllooowww compared to usec latencies.

Re:NOT primarily for audio/video stuff

[jmv]

Audio doesn't need microseconds, but 1-5 milliseconds is important for some applications. Unfortunately, Linux isn't yet there (dunno whether others are). Even with the latest RT preempt patches, I'm having problems with 1 ms latency. Also, prior to 2.6.12, you couldn't even get real-time priority (required even for 20ms latency) when running as a user (non-root).

Re:NOT primarily for audio/video stuff

[Sycraft-fu]

With Windows it depends on your audio card and API. If you have a consumer card and use DirectSound or MME it's 30ms at least. With pro cards and ASIO or WDM KS it's often configurable. The one I have can be set anywhere between 64 and 2048 samples for it's buffer. That translates to about 1.5ms to 46ms for 44,100Hz and 0.6ms to 21ms for 96,000Hz.

As a practical matter when I set Sonar to it's lowest latency mode, with the drivers at a 64 sample buffer at 96,000Hz it reports the effective latency as 1ms in WDM KS mode. In ASIO mode, it claims 0.7ms lattency at 96,000Hz.

I don't have any way to test Sonar's claims, but I don't have any reason to doubt them either. Also not sure how well it'd handle heavy use, you might get droupouts, though it plays back a track just fine with that setting.

I believe on both Windows and Mac with ASIO compatible software and hardware, 1-2ms latencies are very attainable. I personally don't mess with it since I don't do live recording, but the software and hardware seems to claim it can handle it.

Re:NOT primarily for audio/video stuff

[atrizzah]

You should try RTLinuxFree. It's reportedly better than the preempt packages, and much further along in development

Re:NOT primarily for audio/video stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

You make it sound like transistors are slow.

Re:NOT primarily for audio/video stuff

[labratuk]

Also, prior to 2.6.12, you couldn't even get real-time priority (required even for 20ms latency) when running as a user (non-root).

Eh? Linux has had posix draft capabilities since kernel 2.4.

Re:NOT primarily for audio/video stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? Linux has had posix compatibility since 1.0, at least.

Re:NOT primarily for audio/video stuff

[jmv]

Yes, but a user process is not allowed to set the scheduler to real-time priority The reason is that an infinite loop can usually hang the system. Only 2.6.12 (with rt-rlimits) allows a constrained real-time scheduling even to normal users.

Re:NOT primarily for audio/video stuff

[jmv]

But does it support my RME Hammerfall soundcard? I doubt it.

Re:NOT primarily for audio/video stuff

[HR]

I hate those mechanical transistors!

Re:NOT primarily for audio/video stuff

[labratuk]

Hmm. My understanding was that the realtime-lsm has worked for a while.

Re:ok great..

[Ray Alloc]

You just boot once, and then let it run.
Linux is not windoze, it doesn't need to reboot everytime you want to do something.

API is limited, too

[j1m 5n0w]

RTLinux, last I checked, was a real time OS completely unlike Linux that was able to run a Linux system as a subtask, much the same as Xen would. Linux tasks would have the same scheduling latency they would normally have, but programs running on RTLinux would have higher scheduling precision. However, you give up a lot in order to achieve low latency - the system doesn't have many of the features most programs would expect to be present, so don't expect, say, Open Office or Firefox to benefit from running on such a system.

On the other hand, maybe my understanding is wrong or out of date (if so, then someone please correct me).

umm...

[mk_is_here]

From TFA: FSMLabs will demonstrate its real-time Linux operating... Flying Spaghetti Monster? Umm.. Intelligent Designed OS... Great

Re:umm...

[mrjb]

For those wondering what he's talking about, here is a link.

Ehem

[Knome_fan]

"Most of the major studios use Linux -- such as DreamWorks with more than 1,500 Linux desktops and 3,500 Linux servers. The MovieEditor Conference is an all-day event on computer-based filmmaking in downtown Los Angeles on August 3rd. Studio technology chiefs and other experts discuss ongoing work using Linux in feature animation and visual effects. Presented in collaboration with LinuxMovies.org."

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/27/ 1551250&tid=126&tid=106

5usec is to slow

[jurt1235]

It has to go down to 3usec just to keep up with my double click speed.

Good points

[jd]

Also, I'd like to see how RTLinux stacks up against other Real-Time Linux systems - TimeSys does a very nice software real-time and RTAI seems to be doing very nicely on the hard real-time.

Of course, all of these would be a lot MORE real-time if someone would update that damned PPS patch, so we had a good nanosecond clock to work with. When you get to single-digits, small fluctuations (which can't be in units smaller than 1) will be relatively large to the blocks you're working with (in this case, units of 5, making fluctuations smaller than 20% unmeasurable and fluctuations greater than 20% likely).

With a working PPS patch, you'd have a thousand times greater accuracy on the clock, therefore random errors would be a much smaller - and much more quantifiable - amount of the time spent, allowing for better adjustment and therefore better Real-Time.

Now, would anyone NEED nanosecond accuracy? Hell, no. Would it be COOL to have nanosecond accuracy, just because? Well, of course! So long as it didn't detract from anything, then anything geekier is automatically sexier.

Commodity hardware

[can56]

I've been using the GPL version of RTLinux for years now, in high-speed data logger and control systems in the geophysics and biomedical fields. The problem (difficulty) is not commodity hardware (we've used off-the-shelve P1:P4, AMD, and Via boxes), it's writing the RTLinux drivers, or kernel modules, to communicate with and control the devices, such as a/d cards, serial devices, etc. That is, you can't take an application written for a non-RTLinux system, plop it on an RTLinux box, and expect hard realtime response -- you have to rewrite it.

QNX

[RAMMS EIN]

Does anyone know how this compares to actual real time OSes like QNX RTOS?

Re:QNX

[HermanAB]

QNQ, VxWorks, Nucleus etc.: A few hundred clock cycles ISR response time.

Does anyone replying here actually DO MM?

[poptones]

You DO need realtime responsiveness as soon as you start doing mulitmedia OUTSIDE THE STUDIO. Sitting on your ass in your bedroom ripping DVDs doesn't require realtime response, but processing video LIVE does.

So does mixing audio. Because high or unpredicatble interrrupt latency leads directly to longer buffer times needed to overcome jitter, which is a pain in the ass when you are laying down tracks. Every new track based on the previous tracks gets just a little more skewed, which you have to stop and correct.

morons

[Madd Scientist]

"Heck, with numbers like that it seems like Linux could run circles around XP Pro for audio/video apps such as streaming, recording, and playback!"

i really hate when people confuse network latency with CPU latency or driver latency or poor software running on the application layer.

Oh slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

RTLinux Boasts Single-Digit uSec Responsiveness

Huh???

Re:Linux Rocks!

[J. Random Luser]

slashdot will destroy his spirit, or at least it's destroyed his homepage already...

Mod up

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not flamebait, this is clearly insightful.

RTLinux was not created for video streaming and playback or so BT doesn't have to nano-correct his beats; it's for sensitive/critical systems where waiting 30 seconds for you car or medical monitoring device to boot up is not going to fly.

Strange: I can't find the source

[Rogerborg]

At FSMlabs. There's an RTLinuxFree, but why settle for the crippled version when the source for RTLinuxPro should be available.

I've emailed them asking them what they've done to satisfy section 3 of the GPL version 2. I await their reply with interest.

Re:Strange: I can't find the source

[DaveV1.0]

From the FSMLabs website:

FSMLabs' RTLinuxPro is a tested and validated, hard real-time, POSIX operating system that runs embedded Linux as an application platform...

...FSMLabs patented dual-kernel technology boosts performance and productivity by preventing non-real-time code from interfering with real-time performance...

From this, I gather that RTLinuxPro is an operating system that runs either beside or under neither an embedded Linux kernel.

They do offer RTLinuxFree, which is available with the source. This leads me to think that they are using a customized kernel with chunks removed and replaced by binary kernel modules, ala Nvidia, for RTLinuxPro and a standard kernel for RTLinuxFree.

It looks to me like they have complied with the GPL.

Re:Strange: I can't find the source

[10Ghz]

How do you know it's not available? There are other distribution-methods besides the web, you know.

And does the GPL say that the source must be available to everyone, or does it say that the source must be available to the users of the software?

Re:Strange: I can't find the source

[DaveV1.0]

From the GPL V2:

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

1. Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
2. Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
3. Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

To me, this reads as providing the source to the user. And, FMSLabs does do that.

Re:Strange: I can't find the source

[Aim Here]

"And does the GPL say that the source must be available to everyone, or does it say that the source must be available to the users of the software?"

Generally, you only need provide source to the people you distribute to. However if you're a commercial distributor of GPL software and you hand out a binary with no accompanying source code, then you have to also make an offer to provide source to any third party for the next three years.

This company might just be dishing out source CDs alongside their binaries, in which case they don't need to provide the rest of the world with source code.

Re:Strange: I can't find the source

[dfghjk]

Perhaps you should buy it so that you qualify for the source distribution then.

Re:Strange: I can't find the source

[Rogerborg]

Or perhaps someone who has bought it and received the source would like to share it.

Well I suppose it should be clarified

[Sycraft-fu]

There are high-end commercial tools that are available for a lot of money, and some major production houses use them. However here's one for you: Find a Linux alternative to Final Cut. Basically you need a solution for around $1300 dollars that is a full featured SD/HD editor, effects, DVD authoring and so on. Oh and it also needs to be easy to use (Final Cut is extremely user friendly).

Now on the Windows side, you can get software that plays in the same league. It's questionable if it's as good as Final Cut, but it's in the same Ballpark. Sony Vegas would be one, the Adobe Video Suite would be another. Basically, if you are an individual or small orginization looking at doing smaller budget work, there are reasonably priced solutions to meet your needs. They are professional, powerful, and easy to use (I particularly like Vegas). They are also flexable in that you can do DV work, streaming media, HD (consumer and pro) and so on. You can fully produce a web demo in RealMedia in the same program you make a show for broadcast.

Now look at those Linux utilities listed. Some of them are just plain wrong (Fusion for example lists only Windows 2000 and XP as supported OSes, not Linux). Most of the ones that are real are in the "if you have to ask it's too expensive category" as in they don't even list prices on the web, it's a "contact us for a quote" situation, in fact I couldn't find prices for any commercial editor. One of the few programs I actually could find a price on was Shake (which is Apple and thus also works on OS-X) and it's $3000 and it's JUST a compositor. Vegas and Final Cut and the like do compositing as well, admittedly not near to the level of Shake, but they do it well enough for most low level work.

Now as for the free software, well if there's good stuff out there, I've never seen it. The AV editing situation on Linux is abysmal last time I tried. Maybe I was just unlucky, maybe I've never been pointed to the right products, but even when I got stuff working, it was a distant second. I tried the Planet CCRMA Fedora image, which has everything you need all installed (it's designed to give you an AV workstation) and all configured, and I found that Vegas installed on vanilla Windows was much better.

So it seems that you can use Linux, when you go really high end, but then the OS isn't so much of a big deal. You are likely buying enterprise Linux (most of the stuff only provides support under things like RHEL) and thus paying for licensing anyhow, and the software cost is enough to dwarf the OS cost. Many times it's even turnkey solutions (meaning they provide the entire hardware/software package).

Great, but what about the rest of us? What if you work for a school and want to do online education videos? What if you are a band that wants to make low-budget music videos? What if you are a film student that wants to make indy digital videos?

It seems that Linux would be the way you'd want to go since the whole free thing, but it seems the tools available for it are the very least suited. They just don't match up to the commercial tools for Mac and Windows, and the commercial tools are things you might actually use later. If you go on to work broadcast TV, it's a good chance you may run into a Final Cut workstation. Even some Hollywood movies are being done in Final Cut these days. Not likely you are going to find a Cuisene station, to them it's worth the grand or two in software and OS licenses to have something that easier to use and more powerful. Please also note that it's the ONLY free video editor listed on the site you linked to.

So I guess when I have a choice between Vegas, which does multi-track audio and video editing, effects, titles, compositing (somewhat simple but not bad) motion tracking, audio effects, streaming input output, DV input/output, MPEG input/output, and so on for like $400-500 all in one easy to use package, or Cuisene which works only with DV and is hard to use, Ardour for sound which is a pain and lacks effects, probably something like POVray to render 3d effects since nothing built in and so on for free, I'll take Vegas. The $500 plus a $100 for Windows is worth it for the fact that I can just easily get shit done.

Re:Well I suppose it should be clarified

[che.kai-jei]

as a film maker i agree that the available apps arent as available as one would wish.

that linux list?

thats muscley studios flexing. showing the horrible vertical proprietary solution providors of old that they are sick and tired. im lookingh at you, you AVID assholes.

you conventiently omit AVID from your list. final cut pro will never beat AVID - some of the expensive apps you mention in combination are adequate replacements with the massive amounts of financial muscle and high end in house bespoke IT support the studios wield.

what you are doing? comparing apples to the causes of the franco-prussian wars.

as a programmer and free software advocate i take exception to your whining about software because i get the feeling you should know better.
which lone programmer writes a FC Pro beater on linux to scratch his "need an editing soloution itch"?
your sentiment however does represent multimedia creator users' needs.
i am irked by the fact that the big companies havent open sourced any of their general puprose tools like ILM promised to.
http://cgw.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cf m?Section=Articles&Subsection=Display&ARTICLE_ID=1 18664

however if the market is there a smart guy may hire a team of great programmers to come up with an AVID beater.

also the mac OSX intel move may change thigs around for these products which were mac/win only.

Re:Well I suppose it should be clarified

[Korgan]

For an absolutely massive rant, have you considered that maybe its just not been a priority yet? Linux is only just getting around to starting to become a common Desktop, and even then some would argue its still miles behind MacOSX as far as usablility goes. Not to mention that until recently its really only been a server or office workstation platform.

There are commercial products available for Linux, and they're there because commercial organisations (like Weta Digital, or Pixar) decided they wanted something that met their needs and made it happen or (in some cases) paid someone to make it happen.

As there are more and more people that move to Linux and that want simple video editors, people will start to get involved and create projects for it. People are going to move to Linux for reasons other than video editing first though. Whether it be cost, security, reliability or whatever. As that happens, companies like Adobe/Macromedia and so on will start taking it seriously and will be more likely to port their products.

Its when the bigger companies start taking it seriously that the community will start coding serious alternatives. I'd love an equivelent of iMovie for my Gnome desktop. But I'm realistic enough to know that it won't come until there are enough people that want it first. Or till a coder with the time, patience or need decides to scratch an itch themselves.

As frightening as I think it might be, I wouldn't be surprised if Linspire or one of the more consumer targetted distro's were the first to start coding in that direction.

If you want consumer desktop with video editing, without sacrificing security and reliability, use MacOSX. Your only Linux options are to buy or wait till someone with the ability gets fed up enough to do something about it themselves.

Re:Well I suppose it should be clarified

[dahlek]

I'm a Linux user/lover, but the man has a point - the free tools just aren't up to their commercial cousins. There are many video processing tools around for linux, great for batch, non-interactive, operations. tovid is one of many that makes converting videos from one popular format to another very easy for example...

But if you want to do even SIMPLE cutting and pasting of video from a GUI, good luck! avidemux comes close, but has silly restrictions, mpeg files for example - some need to be manually multiplexed outside of the application.

Other projects like kino can only work on a subset of files, and are geared towards a specific purpose, like bringing in dv video. But what if I want to edit commercials out of a video that I just recorded from my DVR? Or, intersplice a family videos with scenes from movies or something "art-see"?

You can usually accomplish anything in linux, but when it comes to video, it takes a bunch of tools, mostly built around the same basic back-end programs (ffmpeg, transcode, mencoder, etc.)

There are many tasks where the shell is more efficient, but editing video isn't one of them ;) Don't get me wrong, I love how much of linux is based around the idea of front-ends to back-end shell applications, but in this case, nonone has succeeded in making a comprehensive and usable front-end yet.

On a final rant-note, I've never tried Cinerrela (sp?) - the last time I considered it I was shocked at the specs it required...

Re:Well I suppose it should be clarified

[Kjella]

what you are doing? comparing apples to the causes of the franco-prussian wars.

as a programmer and free software advocate i take exception to your whining about software because i get the feeling you should know better.

The grandparent claims Linux is great at video/audio editing, and the parent points out considerable and valid critisism of that claim. If anything, it is the grandparent that is "comparing apples to the causes of the franco-prussian wars" when he equates a few high-level tools used by studios with the video/audio editing market in general.

Yes, it is an unfair comparison to compare free software to the vast amounts of commercial software. Except when you claim that Linux is ready to replace Windows. Pointing out that you can't get something to match FCP at roughly the same price is simply a statement of fact, and not unfair in any way.

To make an analogy, assume your car dealer is selling rusty 20 year old Skodas and Rolls Royce. He might have very competitive prices within his market, but it doesn't mean he's in any position to replace your average person who wants an average car. See?

Kjella

Re:Well I suppose it should be clarified

[che.kai-jei]

i see, thanks. congratulations it is also the first analogy i have ever 'got', here on /.

Re:Well I suppose it should be clarified

[dahlek]

Seems I may have spoken too soon - LiVES seems to offer what I want, basic cutting and pasting features, without silly restrictions. It also offers much more, effects and whatnot, that I haven't had a chance to play with, but thus far, I'm impressed - all I wanted was cutting and pasting, but now I may have to raise my expectations :)

It can also output to specific formats, like (s)vcd compliant mpeg files, so this may indeed be the a "virtualdub" like app for linux.

Heard of VLC player

[anandsr]

It is the best player available for windows. It is the only player that can play crippled DVDs and VCDs without crashing and it is the only one that can handle partially downloaded files. It also handles a very large formats as opposed to a very small subset provided by the proprietory vendors.

I am sure we will get other apps soon. Its not like the Movie industry is switching to Windows for their movie production.

Re:ok great..

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, so everyone is agreed XP is good enough, linux is good enough.
But rebooting is no good for RT.

more questions and answers

[Exter-C]

Interesting questions that this raises. How does that compare to intels EM64-T based XEON processors on the same distribution. Then how does it compare to Windows, Mac OSX and other operating systems. Its useful to get a comparison for people that are not really familiar with the performance of alternative operating systems.

Re:ok great..

[julesh]

I know you're trolling and all, but I have boot times of less than twenty seconds for my P-II/400. This beats every other consumer OS that will run on the system. If I were to strip out as many services as possible, I could get that down to about 5 seconds, although I wouldn't have a very useful system.

But...

[FST777]

What about smartphones then? It will need a real-time OS, since I still want to pick up my phone while my kernel is recompiling (or watching a movie for that matter).

That being said, is there any complete open source product out there with such guaranteed latencies?

QNX

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen another RTOS, QNX http://www.qnx.com/, achieve 7usec interrupt latencies on a P100.

RTlinux looks like it has some catching up to do.

Slashdotted?

[tuxlove]

Apparently their website can't guarantee 9us response time... Hope it's not running their product. ;)

Complied with the GPL maybe

[Rogerborg]

But I wonder if they're going to be paid a visit by the Linux trademark police.

Re:Complied with the GPL maybe

[DaveV1.0]

Actually, it may be very difficult to enforce the Linux trademark because it has not been enforced to date. Granted, I am not a Trademark/Patent/Copyright lawyer, but I have read about the laws and cases.

It will be interesting to see what happens if a dispute goes to court. Non-enforcement of trademarks errodes the basis for the claim, which is why it is "tissue" and not "Kleenex ®" and why they are "photocopies" and not "Xeroxes ®".

Of course, FSMLabs may (already have) pony up the money for a trademark license.

RTLinux patented

[Joh_Fredersen]

Doesn't RTLabs, claim to hold a "patent" on running the Linux Kernel as a 'task' under a 'real time' kernel?
http://www.fsmlabs.com/openpatentlicense.html
http://www.aero.polimi.it/~rtai/documentation/arti cles/moglen.html

Maya is already on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Your point is taken since most commercial apps aren't on Linux but how about checking all your facts? Maya has been available on Linux in both GUI and renderfarm forms for a couple years...

Colleges and what not will often (although not always) follow the most popular platform. This is usually Windows (even when Macs are equally capable). Few people are going to stick their neck on the line by mandating Linux in such environments and there would be a backlash because people want to be taught in the same environment as everyone else.

The only time you will see a sea change is if it starts from the top and people start have Linux forced upon them whether they like/want/need it or not.

It's much rather X than Linux

[RAMMS EIN]

I don't think all of that has much to do with Linux. Yes, video update speed has traditionally been slow and irregular on Linux. However, if you go and analyze what's going on, you see that it involves quite a number of context switches and too many copies and (colorspace) conversions, most of them related to X. Copying and colorspace conversion are obviously expensive, but context switches can be expensive, too (they are on x86).

Much of the expensive stuff can be eliminated by using features such as XVIDEO and OpenGL, which (1) allow you to write directly to the video hardware, avoiding copying and some context switches, and (2) handle a lot of stuff in hardware (colorspace conversion, windowing, and for OpenGL even rendering).

With well working XVIDEO support or OpenGL support, it's not uncommon for things to run faster and smoother under Linux than they do under Windows. So it seems that X provides not only the problem, but also the solution.

Re:ok great..

[10Ghz]

Serious question: why should the computer be up & running (and consuming electricity) when you are not using it? So you could show off your uptime-figures? And my computer is pretty loud so I don't want to have it running when it's not needed.

Re:ok great..

[JabberWokky]

Yes, but my laptop shuts itself off in my backpack after the fan has been blocked and it overheats or the battery runs down. Terribly annoying.

Maybe I should run 'modprobe unrealistic_expectations' like most Linux users on Slashdot? It should load up modules 'fantasy_usage_scenarios', 'readit_inapost' and 'snd_fanboywhine'.

Heck, even servers get reboots now and then to load new kernels. Unless you like running insecure code...

--
Evan

Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HLEP!

[J_Omega]

In the university lab where I help to research the development of NQR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NQR) to detect explosives/narcotics/bioagents, our main experimental system's computer is a Pentium 90 MHz running Windows 3.11 and DOS.

We boot into 3.11 because the operational code was developed using Borland C++, but need to exit 3.11 into DOS for the "RT" interrupt capability of the driver for a A/D data acquisition board. You can imagine the hassles that this has given us. It has become a problem just to upload data to our servers.

Our main problem in upgrading the system is that the board hasn't been supported for years, a driver for anything past DOS was never developed, which was proprietary. AFAIK, the company doesn't even exist, and so its unlikey that we could even find someone who might have the code for us to inspect.

IANACoder of much of anything extensive beyond MatLab scripts, and so the idea of myself (or anyone else currently in the lab) wrtiting a new driver for the A/D board. Furthermore, I wouldn't even know where to start to point someone in that direction.

So, I've a muti-part question here, and any input would be appreciated.
1) Would this "rt" linux be up to the task, assuming that drivers are available. (I'd guess that it would, but that's a guess.)
2) How hard would it be, in general, to write a linux driver for this vague hardware?

The easiest solution to our problem might be a complete revamp of the experimental system, but this would cost us well beyond what our current research funding is. Note that wikipedia link, we're one of the few groups worldwide doing NQR research. Such little interest in the field means little funding available, so we'd prefer to be able to reuse as much of the current system as possible.

Any thoughts, ideas, recommendations? Thanks!

Inevitable T-Shirt

[ShagratTheTitleless]

RTLinux Men Do It In uSeconds.

Or maybe not.

It is for systems control, not video response

[Dingo_aus]

RTLinux is not a desktop distribution. It is designed for systems control. Like robots that build cars, small delays in response time could see welds done in the worng spot etc. This way with RTLinux, you can move robotic arms faster without fear that the OS will update too slowly to catch the data about where the arm is etc. It really has little to do with watching videos on WinXP. Most Linux distros IMO already do that better ;)

RTlinux ~ Audio/Visual

[DeckerDel]

The services real time processing provides are often not required by the needs of an application. This is the case when low-latency servicing of events is needed but the complexity and potential deadlocks of a real time os are not desired. Video/Audio recording is an example of an application that needs low latency but not necessarily real time os services.

AFAIK (well just from reading this)
http://www.linuxdevices.com/cgi-bin/board/UltraBoa rd.pl?Action=ShowPost&Board=realtime&Post=6&Idle=0 &Sort=0&Order=Descend&Page=1&Session=

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[DaveV1.0]

a) You should be able to do what you want with this, and possibly any, version of real time Linux. The real question is what what level of responsiveness do you need?

b) Get the make/model info for the card and see if there isn't already a driver for it. If there isn't, it may be possible to get a driver written, either by finding documentation on the card, or reverse engineering the DOS drivers. Any more of an answer is kind of moot because there isn't enough information in your post.

Could you use a different/newer/supported card for this experimental system?

I do

[Sycraft-fu]

We solve this in a number of ways. For most live stuff the answer is simple: Don't use a computer. You can crow about a realtime system all you want, I'll take a video switcher any day for live video please and thanks.

For audio recording, the software takes care of this. The latencies are known to the software (if it's worth a shit) quite precisely. I tool aorund with MIDI and frequently I'll use a combination of hardware and software synths. The software ones are rendered directly to a wav file, the hardware one is recorded digitally via S/PDIF. Now normally I run my setup with pretty conservative buffering, there's about 50ms of input latency, which is an extremely noticable amount of latency. Yet, when all is saind and done and the tracks are loaded up in multi-track, you hear no latency. Why? Well the software knows about the input latency and corrects for it.

The importace of low latency comes in to play when you are doing sound on sound, musicians monitoring themselves via the software. Then it needs to be low, or they'll get screwed up. No problem, a good audio setup can get 5ms or less of latency. If you really wnt low latency, again screw the computer. Monitor via your mixer, just have the computer record.

Also I'm not so sure a RTOS is what you want. Remember RTOS is all about gaurenteeing time slices to all devices. It basically says you will get a time slice of at least x ms a minimum of every y ms. Ok, great, but what if your critical device needs more time? What if your sound input needs 2x ms to service it or needs it every y/2 ms? A non-realtime system can put off other stuff to do that, a RTOS can't since the whole design is reliable scheduling.

Re:I do

[Detritus]

Remember RTOS is all about gaurenteeing time slices to all devices. It basically says you will get a time slice of at least x ms a minimum of every y ms.

That's just one way of designing a real-time OS. The goal is for all tasks to meet their deadlines. There are many ways to do that, including conventional priority-based scheduling.

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[adtifyj]

The best long term solution would be to revamp the system, with some precautions to prevent this from happening again. A few alternatives are:

• work with an engineering faculty to design the replacement board,
• require spec's as part of the manufacturing contract, or
• that the specifications are placed in escrow to be released if the company goes into bankrupcy, or is no longer able to provide duplicates at specified rates.

If you need to keep the existing card, find some modern hardware that has a suitable bus. It is probably an ISA card, so your choices may be limited by that; a quick search on Froogle shows that they can still be purchased in modern motherboards.

I suspect that any version of Linux could be suitable, provided you run it with minimal background tasks. Consider running the program on Linux 2.0 in single-user mode. It sounds like that would be an improvement on the current setup :)

Also, you may find that your existing DOS drivers work on Linux using dosemu .

Good luck.

Stupid & Pathetic

[Donny Smith]

> Heck, with numbers like that it seems like Linux could run circles around XP Pro for audio/video apps such as streaming, recording, and playback!"

Heck, with brain like that it seems you could run circles around a tree without realizing you're not getting anywhere.

Just look at his piece-of-shit submission - the only interesting part is one that was copied from TFA and the rest is a "I'm a moron" type of comment that tells everyone how stupid and clueless the submitter (and the editor) is.

If had any brains and if he bothered to spend just 10 minutes to make a quality submission, he'd have read an article or two related to RT OS and he would:
a) compare RTLinux to published latency figures of some other (open or proprietary) soft- or hard-RT OS
b) would not make that idiotic Windows XP comment since it is completely irrelevant
c) would make a link to best of those reference articles that he reviewed prior to submitting the story

Being such, the article only does a good job in making tons of likely-minded folks gather at /. and make "m$ suckz" and so-called "Funny" comments.

The editor should have edited out the stupid Windows XP comment or replace it with something meaningful. Not having done that, he hasn't done his job and I can only pass to him same compliments that I had for the submitter.

Everyone, learn how to skip stupid submissions, it's a great way to save time not stupefy yourself.
The problem is that on certain days you can skip pretty much everything.

A case of RTFS?

[Anonymous Coward]

The sumbission says "no more that 5us". Naively, I think this means that you are guaranteed (to a high confidence level), no more than 5us. Maximum. No more. Ceiling latency. Sustained rate lower than.

And how can you guarantee completion time? It depends on the task you are mentioning. However, it will block the system for other process interruption no more than 5us.

NOTE: OS's are complex beasts, and the identification of corner cases is nearly impossible, but you can have a high confidence that 99.9% of the ways in which a system can operate in combination with applications means less than x time to the next insertion point for the CPU scheduling.

FSM Labs?

[Junior J. Junior III]

According to FSMLabs,

Further proof that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is capable of intelligently designing not just biological organisms, but computer technology as well. Well done, FSM, I'd like to shake your noodley appendage.

Opteron Embedded Processors?

[neildiamond]

Wow I can't wait for my microwave to run 64bit code! Right now, nothing make more sense than Opteron for embedded work.

Re:Opteron Embedded Processors?

[HermanAB]

Good idea. With an Opteron processor, you can eliminate the magnetron and generate the microwaves from a 1/4 sine wave look-up table... ;-)

Mobile Basestations

[Anonymous Coward]

These sort of response times are good for applications on the L2 and L3 level of mobile base stations. There is still no way the L1 can be run on anything which isn't an array of 16 or 32 very fast DSPs.

A question...

[benjcurry]

I gather that RTL is mainly beneficial for servers, etc. But would this low latency also benefit desktop users and the responsiveness of the UI? I mean, are clicks, etc. also of the type of interrupt that would be handled more quickly???

Re:A question...

[statusbar]

I gather that RTL is mainly beneficial for servers, etc. But would this low latency also benefit desktop users and the responsiveness of the UI? I mean, are clicks, etc. also of the type of interrupt that would be handled more quickly???

Please re-read your parent post...

Real Time is all about guaranteed times from interrupt to processing.

It doesn't really help servers - servers have different issues that are bigger bottlenecks.

In addition RTLinux does not let your normal user tasks have 'real time' priority - there are special real time tasks that get loaded into the kernel, and only those special tasks with limited capabilities are allowed to have real time constraints.

RTLinux would definitely help properly written media programs achieve lower input to output latency without having the worry that a screensaver would cause an audio glitch.

--jeff++

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[Kavli]

Have you checked out COMEDI?
(http://www.comedi.org/)

Comedi is a generic programming framework for most current DAQ-boards. If your board is obsolete, but still have the HW-specs for it, writing a driver is always possible. The package includes examples for how to accomplish this.

Further; if you need RT-scheduling, it supports RTAI.

Correct

[typical]

A couple more points:

* Single-digit microsecond latency is completely overkill for the general-purpose application stuff he's talking about.
* Much as I like RTLinux (and much as I dislike Windows), RTLinux is a *real-time extension* for Linux. It is not stock Linux. It is most comparable to something like RTX, a real-time extension for Windows.
* Many people here seem to have a "real time systems are like regular systems, just *better*!" impression. Real time systems (and this *includes* RTLinux) make *serious* sacrifices to gain in one particular area -- latency. There is a reason that people don't use real-time systems on a day-to-day basis. They generally impact throughput greatly. They have very tough constraints on what you can do -- you can't just "run Quake as a real-time task under RTLinux" -- you're limited to doing not much else besides memory manipulations and some very limited forms of I/O in real-time. Real-time systems exist to do things like control work, where you don't give a damn about much of anything but the latency in telling a servo to change speed. They suck for most other things.
* Linux (not RTLinux, totally different applications) *is* arguably better in the latency department. My co-worker at work is doing some simulation work that depends on something that someone else wrote that really should have been done using real-time code. He's working in a truly real-time environment (with PLCs and high-speed motors involved). He's using Windows XP, and sees worst cases of something like 20 millisecond latency even with realtime scheduling on a high-speed box -- IIRC, Linux 2.6 can currently get around a quarter that. (FWIW, 2.4 had significantly worse latency than Windows.)

The editor should have edited out the stupid Windows XP comment or replace it with something meaningful. Not having done that, he hasn't done his job and I can only pass to him same compliments that I had for the submitter.

My concern is that it leads to even more misperception of real-time systems.

Remember, people. The preempt patches for Linux are a good thing for pretty much everyone -- 2.6 impacts general-purpose application latency at a level that a humany might pick it up (audio, video games, whatever). RTLinux is a completely different beast, and is a toolkit for designing highly specalized systems. There are damn few people on here who need to use RTLinux, and those who do know who they are.

Re:15 clock cycles?

[HermanAB]

I tend to think of Real-Time ISRs taking about 15 cycles to respond. However that can typically only be achieved with a super complex Real-Time OS that looks like this:

for(;;)
{
/* do your stuff */
...
}

For the love of Christ people, it's a RTOS

[typical]

Okay, I'm going to clear this up near the top of the article.

RTLinux is a *Real Time Operating System*, a tiny kernel that runs the Linux kernel. It has a rather sexy interfact that allows you to write the non-RT code that interacts with it in the regular, Linux way. You also don't need to hassle with Wind River salesmen to use it. This makes it good.

There seems to be a significant misperception here as to what an RTOS is, and the extremely misleading article summary makes it worse.

An RTOS is an extremely specific tool designed to allow someone to write code with very harsh restrictions on it with very low latency. This is almost always used for control applications (telling servos when to fire accurately). You can't "run Quake in RTLinux" and just get more accurate times -- code running as real-time in RTLinux can do very little besides memory manipulation, basic computation, and some extremely limited I/O. RTOSes are powerful tools for solving a very limited set of problems which very few people on Slashdot have.

RTLinux lets you write very simple, limited code that runs in a real-time mode, and run it on the same machine as regular Linux applications. And communicate with them. That's it. Doesn't do anything to improve the regular ol' Linux applications.

RTOSes give very low latency to the code they run -- something happens, code to handle it gets fired off very quickly. Microsecond latency (*not* millisecond) is completely overkill for the kind of general-purpose video or whatever work that people here are thinking of, unless you're trying to build some sort of specialized embedded system that does something to a real-time feed -- and your hardware's going to be very specially designed for this.

There's a good reason that we don't use RTOSes in day-to-day work. They have bad throughput, and you can't *do* very much with them in real-time. They're good if you specifically have a latency constraint from the time one sensor triggers to the time I/O goes out to another device. They aren't going to avoid audio dropouts on your GNOME desktop. Real-time is a *bad thing* from most people's standpoint -- oh, and they're really easy to accidentally hang.

If you want something to get excited about for general purpose use, look at the preempt patches for 2.6. 2.6 Linux has better latency than Windows XP (2.4 had worse). This is not RTLinux, this is regular-ol-Linux-which-can-run-Quake. My understanding is that ALSA and JACK represent improvements in the general-purpose latency area.

Unless you are designing application logic for robotic control systems, or are interfacing with PLCs, RTLinux really doesn't benefit you (okay, I'm sure there's someone out there that has a different application, but Joe Hacker with his Gentoo box doesn't benefit directly from this).

Every time realtime systems come up on Slashdot, misperceptions of 'em seem to get worse.

Re:For the love of Christ people, it's a RTOS

[Anonymous Coward]

It has a rather sexy interfact

I don't know what that is, but I want some!

Re:For the love of Christ people, it's a RTOS

[absaxena]

Thanks typical, as soon as the I read the headline on this one, I knew there would be someone knocking some sense about what an RTOS is.

Re:For the love of Christ people, it's a RTOS

[Anonymous Coward]

mmm, I remember FSMLabs (Finite State Machine Labs) RTLinux being used for jet engine testing over at Pratt & Whitney: http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2570821322. html
They were using the linux 1394 layer to move masses of data to/from the test stand and RTLinux had full environmental control. The engine was for the new joint-strike fighter. IIRC, the engineers at P&W were *very* impressed with the amount of data that could be moved, and the very short response times.

Re:For the love of Christ people, it's a RTOS

[Anonymous Coward]

The above poster makes many good points, but he could not be any more wrong about RTLinux being low throughput and limited to simple tasks.

You can do lot more with RTLinux than just "very simple, limited code that runs in a real-time mode". In kernel space you can do complex tasks but RTLinux also supports hard realtime in user space via the PSDD interface. You can run large complex code + I/O all in hard real time in user space.

In my job we use RTLinux to run complex gas turbine simulation in hard real time doing lots (400 + channels of A/D, D/A, frequencies, etc) of hard real time VME base and PCI I/O

Re:For the love of Christ people, it's a RTOS

[corvair2k1]

Well said. This is true for a lot of the more specialized articles that come about on Slashdot, like the one about invention of the 100Ghz transistor that spouted lots of theories about a 100 Ghz processor being in development.

It's usually pretty useless to read most of the comments in this type of story, although there will usually be at least one really good post that knows the actual implications. Like yours.

Re:For the love of Christ people, it's a RTOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, for a RTOS guru you completely missed a offtopic rant on how Slashdotters don't know the difference between hard real-time vs soft real-time and how WindRiver isn't a true hard real-time OS. Stupid people ripped off BSD source, turned off the nice kernel lock, wrapped a hack-designed scheduler around it and sell it for millions. Punks...

But uhh, RTOS's are also used extensively in VoIP server environments where there are a lot of embedded DSP work. Or anything networking related on the data plane... I actually would think a lot of Slashdot ppl actually know about RTOS environments now that I think about it.

If you just want better latency

[typical]

If you *do* want to do high priority stuff on your box, both (regular) Linux and (regular Windows, without getting RTX or any Windows RTLinux equivalents) have "realtime" scheduling options (see the "Realtime" option in Windows Task Manager, or the sched_setscheduler(2) man page under Linux). These aren't actually hard realtime, but give you all the fun of being able to lock up your box (as per realtime systems do) without losing the ability to still run general-purpose applications. You won't get single-digit microsecond latency, but you won't be worrying about audio dropout either, and you get to do fun things like use general-purpose libraries, use sockets, use virtual memory and all the other stuff that you can't do in real-time code under RTLinux.

I Can't Believe It Hasn't Been Said...

[_Neurotic]

Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these!

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[NullProg]

So, I've a muti-part question here, and any input would be appreciated.
1) Would this "rt" linux be up to the task, assuming that drivers are available. (I'd guess that it would, but that's a guess.)
2) How hard would it be, in general, to write a linux driver for this vague hardware?


A stock linux kernel will do everything you want. No need for RT extensions, DOS wasn't/isn't/doesn't. I take it your borland code just calls inb() outb(). This is easily ported to linux. The hard part will be getting the board vendor to give you the firmware commands.

Read this article to get started:
Write a Linux Hardware Device Driver

Enjoy,

faster machines

[32771]

I find myself wondering about my perception of this timing business in general. I still think about usecs being fast, but nowadays machines run at lets say 2GHz.

That means that one cycle takes 0.5 nanoseconds. While cycles are easily measurable with the CPU internal cycle counter, I'm still stuck in usec land.

If you wonder how many cycles fit into 5 usec with a 2GHz Processor you find that the OS has 10000 cycles to spare.

While I'm happy that RTLinux is faster than WindowsXP (but not surprised (it says realtime damnit)) I wonder what its doing with all those cycles.

We may reach that mark...

[Pneuma ROCKS]

with our new 6.8GHz 1TB RAM and 2TB HDD laptops.

Re:less latency for a given process

[natmakarvitch]

use the 'chrt' (think "change real-time attributes) utility (Debian: 'schedutils' package)

beware: chrt'ing a badly implemented application may provoke a kernel hang

--
WebDSign: thrust the Web by trust

Thank god for FIFO buffers

[Inoen]

I don't know of any I/O devices since the 1960's that don't have an internal buffer. If you're using the CPU to read one bit at a time, you have pretty much reduced your brand new AMD CPU to an RS232 port. One that uses 100+ watt, mind you.

Back to GP's post; It has been noted that it is in fact 10.000 cycles and not 10 million. I still think that is a lot. IIRC, an interrupt took about 30 cycles on the Amiga, or 300 including swithing thread context.

Or did i miss what the fuss is all about?

RT pedants missing the point

[CoughDropAddict]

Yes, the submitter's jab at Windows XP is somewhat inflammatory and misguided, but so are the comments of all the self-proclaimed RT experts who always seem to come out of the woodwork at the first mention of "real-time."

The RT experts say "multimedia isn't real-time." Multimedia is absolutely real-time. If you miss a deadline for supplying the sound card with an output buffer, you get clicks and dropouts. If you miss a deadline for pulling input buffers, you lose recorded data. No, it won't launch a nuclear missile, but it is clearly a real-time operation.

The RT experts say "but multimedia doesn't need scheduling latencies that low." It's true that single digit usec latencies are beyond what most multimedia systems require, but single-digit msec responses would be extremely welcome. In fact, if you've ever followed JACK (JACK Audio Connection Kit) development, you'll discover a community of people who invest significant effort tuning their kernels and environment exactly so they can get these kinds of latencies. If you're dragging sliders on a mixer while playing back a multi-track recording, you care very much about latency. If you're using your computer as a real-time effects processor, you care very much about latency.

This is why the XP comment, while somewhat inflammatory, has some truth to it: the lower-latency your operating system, the more useful it is for these kinds of tasks. Who cares if it calls itself a "real-time" operating system or not -- what I care about it what's on my desk!

The RT experts say "no fair comparing RT Linux with Windows XP, a non-realtime system." I'm not sure why we take it as a given that this dichotomy must continue to exist. Why do we accept that general purpose operating systems can sit on an interrupt for an unbounded amount of time? If a high-priority interrupt comes in, I want it right now!

Computers are really fast these days, but latencies do not decrease in proportion to CPU speed. What good is my 20GHz Pentium VII if arbitrary drivers still grab locks for tens or hundreds of milliseconds?

Rehashing the same old lines isn't insightful, it's backward-looking. Yes, I know that "real-time is about guaranteed deadlines." But current CPUs are so fast they could probably render a mandelbrot set before they give me the CPU and I wouldn't notice. But as long as they're holding these locks, I'll never see the benefit.

It's spelled Gonzalez

[Anonymous Coward]

> from the speedy-gonzales-makes-his-linux-debut dept.

Even though some people choose to spell their last name with an "S" at the end (like the U.S. Attorney General) and even used this form in the naming of cities in Texas and Louisiana, the traditional spelling for the name in Spanish is González.

That said, there's no "official" grammar for names and everyone is free to call him/herself whatever they want. But in Spanish-speaking countries I've never seen this name spelled with "S" at the end and it's a very common name there. Plus, the creators of Speedy Gonzalez stuck to the original spelling as well.

My theory...

[RecycledElectrons]

My theory has always been that if the GUI responds, the user will get much less frustrated. So...why don't make the OS Kernel and the GUI run in real time?

Imagine if you never again had Windows lock up so badly that you could not find out who was hogging the processor, and kill the process.

Andy Out!

WTF mods?

[SmittyTheBold]

It's not "funny," it's true.

VSTs

[Thalagyrt]

Ardour looks nice, but does it support VSTi, DXi, RTAS, or AU? I don't see support for any of those virtual instrument formats that are very important in music production, for me and many others. It makes it pretty much useless for anything other than vanilla audio recording.

Sequencing low latency MIDI is MUCH easier with VSTi instruments, as is making changes, since you aren't forced to re-record the track as audio from your device every time you make a change. The reason I say it's better to re-record the tracks after changes is to normalize sound, and get the mix at least somewhat right so you know what it's going to sound like. Quite often a live feed is too quiet to be used for an actual recording, and normalizing audio realtime is pretty much impossible. Compression is a different story, which can have a similar effect, but not exactly.

Also in general with VSTis you can get much better sound than with an external device, since you have a program that's designed to make whatever type of sound you're using very, very well. For example, the Bosendorfer grand piano VSTi, or Steinberg's The Grand both produce much better sound than anything I've ever heard from an external device, save for a real piano.

I do quite a bit of music production, and I can't work without VSTis. This software would be fine for recording 100% live sound, but that just isn't the case 99% of the time you're doing music production. Not only are VSTis important, but also VST effects and DX effects for audio post processing realtime while recording. That pretty much makes it unusable for me, and most other producers out there.

Still, it looks like a promising piece of software to bring Linux/BSD into the recording world, and as a beta I can understand it's still going through improvements, but the features I mentioned are key and currently only avaliable in Windows/MacOS. That's really the only thing keeping me from running FreeBSD as my main operating system.

Re:VSTs

[Mprx]

VSTs/VSTis are supported only through WINE, so it's not totally reliable. The others are not supported.

Re:VSTs

[Thalagyrt]

Neat. I didn't see that mentioned anywhere on the site. Maybe if it becomes more reliable in the future I'll check it out. That really depends on WINE though, so it may take a while. I'd love to get away from Windows with Vista coming out sometime soon and all. I've been thinking of getting a Mac, since all the software I use is also avaliable there - I want to wait till the Intel Macs come out if I do get one. Thanks for the info about Ardour though, I'll definitely have a look at it.

Re:VSTs

[runderwo]

All of the formats you mentioned are kept secret by their respective vendors, some are encrypted, and some are covered by patents. Hell will freeze over before open source software will be able to interoperate with them, and this is a purely ARTIFICIAL limitation imposed by the vendors who create them.

You could call this a failing of open source (that you are unable to use formats from vendors who are hostile to open source). But what would you have us do? Maybe the answer lies in eliminating such vendors as a dependency, but that would take someone else to produce high quality virtual instruments.

Re:VSTs

[Thalagyrt]

Actually I'm pretty sure the format for VST, DXi, AU, and RTAS is in fact open. I've seen several open source projects with VST support built in. Audacity comes to mind off hand, and it supports VST in Windows, Linux, and MacOS. Native on MacOS and Windows, WINE on Linux and BSD.

Also, if it was truly a closed format and developers had to license the format to use it, you wouldn't see free VSTs around - Who would want to pay to license a technology when they're releasing their project for free? Granted, the free VSTs are nowhere near as good as the commercial ones, but it is possible, they do exist, and they aren't made by people hacking or reverse engineering the format.

If you'd like to have a look at what I'm talking about, take a look at this post. Also, if you'd like a look at the SDK info for VST, have a look here.

The VST format is an open format, and if more people did get around to trying to create hosts for it, it would be possible. Creating an API to host VSTs can be done from the same documentation, you simply have to write code to parse the input generated by the VST plugins.

Granted, running them on Linux or BSD would require WINE, as I've said before, but it is possible.

As for DX, RTAS, and AU - those aren't nearly as commonly used as VST. Also, pretty much any plugin avaliable in those three formats is also avaliable as a VST. I'm well aware the DX is a closed format, and I'm unsure as to the open/closed nature of RTAS and AU.

Re:VSTs

[runderwo]

The VST itself is a closed source program. Yes, you can create one for free using the SDK (at least if you use Windows). And you can implement a VST host, which is exactly what was done and requires WINE to run the VST interpreter inside the plugin. To not require an emulation hack would require enough information to replace the VST interpreter component with an open implementation. That is what will never happen, and why emulation hacks will always be required when dealing with these closed formats. There's really nothing that can be done besides to implement an open virtual instrument format and encourage designers to migrate to it. And users should be aware that this barrier is the fault of the vendors, not the fault of open source developers.

Re:VSTs

[runderwo]

Sorry, I had the VST confused with another format. It does appear that the only problem with the majority of VST plugins is that they are closed-source by their respective authors and that is what necessitates WINE. Hmmm..._______

Re:VSTs

[Thalagyrt]

Exactly. It would be really nice if they were ported to Linux and BSD, but since it isn't mainstream in the market yet it isn't going to happen for some time. And sadly it won't be mainstream until this becomes avaliable. Also, most of the closed source VSTs contain upwards of 4 gigabytes of sound data. I wouldn't want to have to download that much for one instrument.

It's one of those things where A isn't going to happen until B, and B isn't going to happen until A. I'd really like if they were avaliable in native formats, and there was some software such as Cubase SX which I'm very used to using. If that happened, then you'd see VSTs start becoming avaliable for Linux almost instantaneously. Developers would start porting them fairly fast to keep up with the new release of software.

Currently the best thing out there is what Mprx mentioned, and even then it's only in beta and doesn't have any effect capabilities... yet. Hopefully that will change some day though.

Meanwhile, I'll keep using Windows for my recording purposes. :-\

They satisfy it by not giving you anything

[p3d0]

The GPL just says if you give the binary, you must give the source too.

Re:They satisfy it by not giving you anything

[Rogerborg]

No. No, it doesn't "just" say that.

Re:They satisfy it by not giving you anything

[p3d0]

Do you have a point?

Re:Everyone is convinced StarKruzr = L O S E R

[Anonymous Coward]

StarKruzr = arstechnica L O S E R.

You're simply another carrot brain from arstechnica forums, with their usual 10 below plantlife IQ.

Do us all a favor and stfu.

Here's the problem:

[Sycraft-fu]

I don't give a shit why. I don't care if it's "not a priority" or whatever other excuse you have. I care what's available, what you can do. This orignally started from some highly uninformed person claiming that a RTOS is ideal for AV work (it's not). Someone else than claimed that Linux easily beats Windows for MM speed, someone else responded that it was irrelivant because of lack of apps. That lead to a post with the list to my post.

My point is that the parent is right. In consumerland there is a derth of video apps that are useful. There are a couple that are toys maybe, but no serious apps. Past that there are only extremely expensive solutions. It's like going to buy a home theatre system and finding that there's guys selling expensive audiophile grade components, guys giving away old boomboxes, and nobody selling a consumer reciever.

So I, and others, don't care WHY Linux lacks those kind of apps, only that it does. The grand parent seemed to be under the mistaken impression that the list there provided a good alternative to what is available for Windows. No, not so much.

Re:Here's the problem:

[Korgan]

Against my own better judgement, I'm going to respond to this. I know its just begging for trouble but sometimes...

Firstly, sit back, relax and take a deep breath. The language and tone of your post suggests you're getting yourself worked up over an issue that makes absolutely no difference at all to whether you use Linux or not.

Secondly, given you don't care WHY Linux doesn't have the kind of apps you've talked of suggests that not only have you not really spent any useful time looking, you're not really interested in finding them anyway. Which suggests to me that even if there is an A/V app that meets your criteria (and after my comments yesterday I went looking and found several) you wouldn't be interested in them anyway because they're not familiar brands that you're used to on Windows or where ever.

As such, I suggest you stick with what you know and use those brands on Windows or MacOSX that you are familiar with already. Obviously, a GNU/Linux distro is not going to be in your list of wants for a good long while, with or without the AV software. I see no point in continuing a discussion with a mind thats already closed itself off and has become unreasonable as a result.

Have a nice day.

MOD PARENT UP

[runderwo]

Please mod parent up; real world experience in this area is sorely lacking.

Actually, Windows can beat it...

[RhettLivingston]

with the right trick which may or may not be what they used here. When you have a dual core or even just a hyperthreaded processor, you can get Windows XP to have sub microsecond response times for a single process by locking that process to one of the cores (whether real or virtual, doesn't matter) and forcing all other processes to the other. Windows still runs fine on the other core. I saw this trick presented at a conference by someone who was working on a budget and had to interface to real time flight hardware. One of my engineers implemented and verified it before I even got home. It was really very simple and a useful trick for someone needing to have very quick response times from a single process.

QNX - 4us on a Pentium 233

[Animats]

QNX reached 4us interrupt latency back on the Pentium 233. In 2001, QNX had 4us interrupt response on an iPaq back in 2001.

This isn't that impressive for RTLinux, which is really a scheme for loading applications as loadable kernel modules running without memory protection. RTLinux is an obsolete approach; the more recent Linux variants from Lynuxworks and Montevista have a much cleaner approach, based on the low-latency fixes in the 2.6 kernel.

Appropriate Use?

[Kaenneth]

Would RT OS's be good for use in a heavy duty router? I would imagine IP/ATM packet routing would be best with the smallest possible latency, but you couldn't predict exactly when a packet will arrive over a specific interface. I'm thinking of something like a streaming video network (IP telephony, on-demand video, etc.), or even a gaming network, where lag means virtual death.

also, I imagine acheving low response times for interupts would be fairly easy on a multiple core system, if you just set aside all but one core for responding to interupts.

If I recall correctly, from years ago, there was an thing in the Windows NT HAL that allowed you to designate which CPU would handle interrupts...

I was thinking about this recently, thinking that if I had complete control over a dual core system, I would have all 'long' processes run on one CPU, with infrequent context switches for best efficency, while the other CPU would get all the 'short' execution time threads, for interupts and such. particularly in respect of the per-core memory cache. that way, receiving a network packet, moving the mouse, etc. would not interrupt things like video encoding/decoding, etc. but would still be quick... of coarse, each thread would have to be labeled for the scheduler to assign them appropriatly, but I think the real gains would be in keeping the cache consistant, the device drivers memory would always be in one core, and the long processes memory would remain on it's core. When I used a 2 cpu system to recalculate a large numerical database (2 gigabytes of pure numbers, back on a P-Pro 200x2 system with a whopping 256 megs of ram) The windows CPU meter would continutally switch which CPU was doing the non-multithreaded calculations. But I suppose that helped distribute the CPU heat evenly at least.

It's called 'Jahshaka'

[abandonment]

There is a very cool open-source linux app called 'jahshaka' that provides a complete compositing / editing / rendering solution for Linux

http://www.jahshaka.org/

Re:It's called 'Jahshaka'

[Sycraft-fu]

Well, on an inital look, it's better than what else is out there, at least the UI looks ok. However trying it, it's very problematic. The UI isn't as intuitive as you might think. The documentation is rather lacking and is incorrect (what they show things looking like aren't what they look like). However the bigger problem is it seems to be able to input very few formats, or at least the kinds that would be useful. It won't load WMVs, which isn't a huge supprise (though on Windows it wouldn't be hard to add calls to the Windows routiens for doing so) but it also won't load DV AVIs.

Those are AVIs with DV video and PCM audio. It's an extremely simple format, and a widely used one. A large number of DV capure apps capture to this format. Well, seeing as it doesn't have it's own capture app that I can find, I'm not sure how you get DV in to it.

So, it essentially looks like more of the same. It's certianly a nicer interface than most, and the GL support is cool, but ultimately it has problems with what are basic tasks in commercial editors. Really, you should be able to sit down and within 5 minutes have some DV loaded in your editor.

APK++!!

[StarKruzr]

WHEE!

You really have no idea what you're talking about. Take a RTS course and get back to me.

You could start by reading this: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/wce/p lan/realtime.mspx

Real-time is about timeliness, NOT speed. Speed can support the goal of timeliness, but often in real-time systems (especially embedded ones) the hardware you're working with is in fact *not* faster (or even as fast as) your standard consumer desktop. Think the processing hardware for, say, the guidance system of a missile. You wouldn't want to run Windows Vista on that, trust me.

(Of course, this might be a bad example because depending on the implementation, there might not be any operating system AT ALL)

Are you going to chase me down and reply with vitriol to every comment I post? Finally! A reason to read /. again!

Re:APK++!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the f is APK++? You obviously have gained your share of enemies over time and have to make assumptions.

I'm talking about you Mr. arstechnica talk alot and who simply quotes others, but knows next to nothing about this field himself (meaning you).

You have accomplished nothing worth using or seeing online yourself have you StarKruzr. StarKruzr = L O S E R. Talk alot loser.

WinCE has 2.1 us better avg. latency

[Anonymous Coward]

ironically, the closed source windoze demons actually tout an interrupt latency of nearly half what RTLinux has, but we will see no mention of that here save in nested comments that have little chance of getting modded up.. http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=162012&c id=13548224

I remember when

[flyingrobots]

QNX had these kinds of numbers on a 486...

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[adrianmonk]

We boot into 3.11 because the operational code was developed using Borland C++, but need to exit 3.11 into DOS for the "RT" interrupt capability of the driver for a A/D data acquisition board. You can imagine the hassles that this has given us. It has become a problem just to upload data to our servers.

Our main problem in upgrading the system is that the board hasn't been supported for years, a driver for anything past DOS was never developed, which was proprietary. AFAIK, the company doesn't even exist, and so its unlikey that we could even find someone who might have the code for us to inspect.

Is there a real reason you have to stay with this data acquisition board you're using already? Is it even a PCI card, or is it ISA (wouldn't be surprising at all in a Pentium 90 machine)? Can it even plug into a modern computer? What if the old board you have now breaks -- can it even be replaced? If you're going to make a major change, you might as well get fully up to date in the process.

To that end, have you thought about just calling up National Instruments and seeing what they have to offer? They specialize in exactly this type of product. They have a wide variety of data acquisition hardware and software, and they support a wide variety of operating systems and programming languages. It's possible they may even make a turnkey solution that already does what you need to do or can be programmed to do it easily.

The patent is GPL'd

[tepples]

From the license: "use of the Patented Process is permitted, without fee or royalty, when used by software licensed under the GPL." Mr. Stallman would have absolutely little or no problem with this patent, just as he has little or no problem with copyrights that are licensed freely.

Hard versus Soft Realtime

[juergen]

Beware the difference between hard RT and soft RT applications/OSes.

RTLinux is a hardtime microkernel, running the whole Linux kernel as a low priority task. RTLinux' *own* tasks (or just interrupt handlers) are very limited, and have lots of restrictions communicating with the standard Linux kernel und userspace, which in itself does *not* run with realtime capabilities (I simplified a bit). The promises (latency) made by RTLinux are absolute, barring hardware faults, and are therefore suitable for high precision control applications, think nuclear, chemical production plant, mobile phone radio control, etc.

Audio/Video and Games are usually classified *soft realtime*. Nothing catastrophic happens at a missed deadline. Linux can be made to schedule certain tasks at (soft) realtime priority optimizing for low latency, instead of maximizing overall system throughput. There's nowhere the low latency or reliability of RTLinux, but it doesn't need to be, and A/V applications can use all the standard libraries and infrastructure of Linux (or Windows XP).

Re:stupidest comment ever

[antispam_ben]

I got a 89 cent Atmel AVR microprocessor that has sub-microsecond interrupt response time, but I dunno if it has the bandwidth for video or even audio processing.

Re:ok great..

[MonsterMasher]

  "Serious question: why should the computer be up & running (and consuming electricity) when you are not using it? So you could show off your uptime-figures?"

It goes into power save mode if not using for 20 minutes. Saves switch/powersupply/harddrive ware&tare. And I like to work from home evenings/latenight/weekends over net.

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[J_Omega]

a) Interrupts on the system (for the DAQ board as well as others) should be responsive to within 20uS. Futher experimentation, that we cannot currently do, would be possible with responsiveness under 10uS.

b) Don't have the specs on me, I just lobbed the questions out there before the post was pushed too far into the past. AFAIK, there's no driver for it except for DOS. There wasn't even one for Win 3.11. The documentation we have is minimal, so perhaps reverse engineering it is the way to go.

Yes, we could use other cards. The problem is that we don't currently have the funding for the changes.

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[J_Omega]

Yes, revampng the entire system would be ideal!! We're so low on funding, ATM, that that isn't a real viable solution here though.

We (our lab) are a part of the Electrical Engineering dept. here. We have considered just redesigning/rebuilding everything ourselves, and may do just that. That would come sometime in the future, probably past my duration in the lab. (I just want to get my MS done, and get out.)

Yes, it is an ISA card. The PC itself isn't so much an issue though. IIRC, we've actually got a duplicate mobo in storage in case the current one fails.

dosemu... never came to mind. That's a great idea which I wouldn't have though of! (why I asked here on /.) Thanks! I'll be looking into it.

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[J_Omega]

Nice! Thanks much for that link. I'd not heard of, let alone looked at, COMEDI.

A cursory glance at the supported hardware doesn't show the device. We _may_ have the HW specs for ours, so this could (should) be something for us to investigate.

Thanks for the input, Kavli!

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[J_Omega]

I think we're stuck in DOS mainly because that's the only working driver that was developed.

As for why we use Borland... the original code was developed by my research prof, that was his perrogative at the time (over 10 years ago.) I've avoided making changes to it as much as possible because it is a spaghetti mess, and generally works. With a complete system revamp or change in OS, I'd think that a complete rewrite would be doable.

Getting the firmware from the vendor is indeed a problem; the main issue is that the manufacturer went bankrupt years ago (?) and I've been unable to track down where their old code might exist, if it even does.

Enjoy?? ;) Thanks

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[J_Omega]

The reason we have to stay with the current board is mostly financial - we've currently no major source of funding needed to revamp the system.

It is indeed an ISA card. As somoene posted, there are still mobos out there with ISA slots, but we do have a backup mobo just in case ours horks.

We've looked at N.I. products, we just can't currently afford them from what I've seen.

Thank you!

[J_Omega]

I just want to thank people for giving me some direction on this, so... Thank You!

On a personal note, I've been working in the lab for 5 years now as a grad student. That's five years (instead of two) for a M.S. in ElecEng. Sometimes I've had funding, other times I (and others here) have not been as fortunate.

The issue with the PC/Board/System has been around since I've been here. I've pushed for a system overhaul since my start. The post on /. just gave the opportunity to ask you folks for some input.

Personally, I've basically given up on seeing things change while I'm here. With the combo of the time I've been (stuck) here, financial difficulties, etc... I just want my degree and to get out of here (hopefully in Dec.) To that end, I'll just deal with the equipment as-is for a few more months. The ideas and directions that you all have pointed me towards will basically give my research prof and students who follow me some good ideas. At least I hope that's the case.

Thanks again, folks! Its really much appreciated.

You're terrible at this.

[StarKruzr]

Anyone who reads this and knows the way you write knows that it's you, Alex. No one misformats sentence syntax quite like APK2005+++SR9.

You tried pulling this same trick back on Ars and no one bought it then either.

Hey... what's OSY?

In fact, why don't you tell us all about this?

You're terrible at this. Like your showing here?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=161862&thresho ld=-1&commentsort=0&tid=146&mode=thread&cid=135528 83

If that is to whom you refer as apk++, then you most certainly got yourself into a jam, student, and got your behind reamed.

There at that url above, You couldn't show any of the readers here anything you'd done when you were asked by apk there to do so. You could produce nothing at all that is noted at all anywhere online because you are not at the stage yet.

With your arrogance, name calling, and profanity like you use? I agree as was said at the above url about you that You never will most likely as that person stated.

StarKruzer = poor little 'Paduan Learner' at best it appears.

(You tried to take on a 'Sith Lord' from what I read here at that URL above, after I took your advice and started following your posts as you accused me of initially).

Ha, you had to walk out of that one with your tail between your legs boy and were left speechless. No doubt because when it came down to cases and evidences of accomplishment, you had squat.

You got SPANKED!

I did not know who you were referring to, but now I do from taking your advice and following your postings here.

What a great laugh it was watching you get destroyed.

Finish that degree and get some real world practical experience boy. As you see you need it.

Your narrow minded "jedi" view (academia only, paduan learner) wasn't even close to a match for someone that has decades of practical real world experience on you. Anyone reading that url above can see that.

As far as that jaylittle thing? I just took a peek at that too, and went farther into google for more on it and I turned up quite the laugh at apk vs. arstechnica and its 'anonymous luser hordes' trying to take him on.

You had best take a peek at this page then, where both a PHD (apparently from that first url above the degree level you are still attempting to achieve as a mere student still), which counts for next to zero until you have worked in this field as a pro imho as well.

Here, below, your arstechnica pals got totally annihilated at WindowsIT pro mag forums as well:

http://www.windowsitpro.com/articles/index.cfm?art icleid=41095&cpage=124

In fact it got so bad that jay little got run off and it is quoted so in the second posting down by this APK person, quotes of your pal Jay Little being run right off like a bad dog.

And, from what I read there?

Then the forums master at Windows IT pro mag and dr russinovich phd had to try edit out apk's posts because they and all of arstechnica could not get the better of him.

They all got exposed here at slashdot for doing it.

Shaming them both and rightfully so.

You arstechnica students, you're nothing but big talking arrogant underachievers that talk a great deal but as to something to show others that they can use or things that have proven useful to others online for their gain in performance or other areas?

You have nothing to show. Just loads of bull.

Real world results count, don't you understand that boy?

Go out, do something useful with your time talker, before you get spanked again like that first url above clearly shows.

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[joemontoya]

If the department doesn't have the money to totally revamp the system, then they probably can't afford a port job over to another OS - which would cost far more in the commercial world than the cost of a new A/D board and a new PC.

If the vendor that supplied the board is now defunct, then you would have to reverse engineer the driver - which could take a lot of time and resources, depending on how much you know about the hardware and how complex the system is. The board is probably an ISA bus interface and you would be hard pressed to find a modern motherboard with ISA slots.

One of the posters above recommended National Instruments, their development suite is great for data acquisition - but it's gonna cost some bucks.

A lot of A/D hardware vendors offer good support for linux, writing drivers for linux is a lot easier than writing them for windows.

My suggestion would be to keep the system limping along until the A/D board dies. Money that "just isn't there" has a tendency to appear when a system someone needs goes to shit.

No I'm not at all closed to this

[Sycraft-fu]

I'm always, always open to other options. If you have software to suggest, suggest it, I'll go and try it. I'm not real enamoured to spending lots of money on media production software.

The reason I made such a detailed post in the first place is every time on Slashdot I commit the heresy of saying an OSS solution isn't up to a commercial solution, I'm attacked as not knowing what I'm talking about. People then go and point out the same programs I've tried and so on.

I grow weary of people telling me that Linux is as good or better than Windows, then when I talk about what I need to switch, saying I need to make tons of compramises. Like with the orignal post that got me started, the implication seems to be that Linux is great for AV work, since Hollywood uses it and looks here's an advocacy site about it. Ok but here I'm being asked to make a sacrafice one way or another: Either I choose to sacrafice massive amount of money to get a super-high end solution, or I choose to sacrafice tons of ease of use and functionality to get a free one.

However my challenge is real: Show me apps that will do what I want. I'm honestly intrested to know. Someone else suggested Jahshaka. It's certian'y one that should be on that advocacy site as it's a much better designed editor than the one listed. Unfortunately, I found out that while it's better, it's still more of the same and totally unsuited for what I do.

That doesn't mean I don't want to hear options though, maybe you know of something I don't. I don't claim to know about all the software out there. I don't claim to know about even a small fraction. If you really do know an OSS video suite that plays on rougly the same level as the low-end PC/Mac ones, please tell me, I'll load it up tomorrow.

However the flip side is don't get mad if I tell you that, indeed, it's NOT an equivalant product and give you reasons why. Also don't suggest I should be willing to make massive compramises simply in the name of openness.

I use Firefox because it's honestly a better product than IE, not because it's OSS. I use FreeBSD for my webserver because I believe it's honestly a better web platform than Windows. I don't use OSS AV tools because they are worse solutions than commercial ones, much worse. It's not about ideaology, it's about usability and usefulness.

So please, enlighten me to these better Linux AV apps. This is an honest request. I apparantly lack the knowledge to find them, since I have tried, and what I've come up with has been unacceptable.

Can't you even TRY

[StarKruzr]

to disguise your writing style?

Why do you do this third-person "ROFLOMG APK SURE SHOWED YOU" thing? Perhaps it's because everyone sees that you are a raving lunatic and no real people will back you up, so you have to make people up?

I note you didn't actually address anything I said about RT systems, either.

(Also, I actually spent three years as a field service engineer for Fujifilm before returning to school to get my Ph.D. [got bored], but I'm sure your thirteen years of flipping registry entries and designing alarm clocks in Delphi is far superior to that)

It doesn't look like anyone thinks you slapped anyone else down, either. In fact just about everyone at WITPro seems to think you're a 50-amp power tool.

"APK manages to create the impression that MR just didn't know why this could be a problem, until he was rescued by APK's superior knowledge. But there's no actual evidence of any of this, it's just innuendo."

That seems to be your M.O. most of the time, doesn't it?

Re:Can't you even TRY

[Anonymous Coward]

STUDENT? You don't even QUALIFY for an answer... go finish your degree BOY, and then? Get @ LEAST a decade of professional experience in it, & finally /lastly?

Get some things of note done in this field, and then??

Then maybe, we'll talk...

* :)

Because till then? You're LITERALLY beneath my notice...

(After all - you've done a load of nothing I can see or anything I asked that you could show me you have done that was noted as 'good' etc./et all by others in this field... have you??)

APK

P.S.=> Decided to see what was going on here due to some folks I know who wrote me on it, & yes, they are "stirring up the sauce" but, that's ok: This BOY, a mere STUDENT? Easy-meat!

See, if anybody goes MY way, then student-boy here (who thinks he is John Carmack's second-coming as far as skills in this field) says they're me!

A wee bit paranoid are we, master of profanity, & yet "knows-it-all" because he SAYS he is a PhD student in this field... lol, anyone who's a pro, has GOT to be laughing their A$$ES off by now I imagine!

Boy, listen: Like I told you in the other thread?

You are in for one HELL of a surprise imo when you FINALLY get out there in the REAL WORLD outside of classroom labs, in academia, lol...

All I can say about that...

Well, that & answer my questions from over here, ok:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=161862&thresho ld=-1&commentsort=0&tid=146&mode=thread&cid=135528 83

Especially the FIRST ONE I ASK, that you keep avoiding...

Now, why is that? I know why:

You're A LOT OF TALK, & NO ACTION (or proveable accomplishment in this field, & that's because you're just a greenie/noob/student)... lol!

* Thanks for writing me on this one guys, it's fun tearing this 'arstechnica know-it-all blowhard with no accomplishments in this field to date we can see' apart... big fun!

apk

apk apk apk+++++

[StarKruzr]

I'm 26, dumbass.

And yes, I DO know more than you about real-time systems, especially with respect to real-time scheduling. What do YOU know about real-time scheduling, Alexander?

Also, anyone who was even remotely secure in their own abilities would not feel it necessary to engage in calling someone "boy," "beneath their notice," "master of profanity," (what the hell?) "easy meat," "greenie/noob/student," etc. etc.

You must be overcompensating for SOMETHING. I wonder what it is?

Also, I'll have published at least two technical reports by the end of the year, one on a security audit of a cooperative storage pool and the other on a real-time scheduling algorithm. The latter may be presented at a conference; we'll have to see how far we get with it.

I have to say I find it highly amusing that your sole metric of whether or not someone is successful in the field of computer science is whether or not they have created an artifact of software that people download from a consumer website.

Re:apk apk apk+++++

[interiot]

You must be overcompensating for SOMETHING. I wonder what it is?

Living at home. With his 70-year old mother. Don't keep replying to him though, you're just feeding the trolls. One of his other threads went on for OVER THIRTEEN MONTHS. The man is insane.

I mainly just want to know if he at least has a small enough job to cover his broadband expenses.

Re:apk apk apk+++++

[Anonymous Coward]

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157615&thre shold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=95&mode=thread&pid=1322 5084

You had to back down to apk there and said you would be cool to him. A typical treacherous whimp arstechnica move. Hilarious that was.

apk trashed you badly there with facts as he has your arstechnica colleague here as well.

Yes, I read that about your debate with APK over there at that url from this site, interiot, and apk totally kicked your ass using facts as he always does.

Accurate verifiable ones. Unlike yours.

To wit:

From this url and its content, where Jeremy Reimer and your arstechnica crew tried to say it was his mother he lives with?

apk stated first of all, it was his father's address here:

http://www.windowsitpro.com/articles/index.cfm?art icleid=41095&cpage=124

And proved that much because jan = john in european languages, his ancestry/lineage.

It seems you arshole technica dolts make your usual blunders and are, as apk stated, uncultured boors.

Bad mistakes on that note once more by arstechnican libellers.

The fact apk is smart using a single address to centralize any postal mail rather than pay for p.o. boxes and such makes sense to myself also. I do the same while I travel.

It is a fact that in the U.S.A. you can centralize your mailing address and it is wise to do so imho.

Just as apk did such in the manner that he does as he travels on contracts through out the United States.

Once again interiot and arstechnica per their usual look stupid yet again.

Score apk 50, arstechnica 0 (or, in StarKruzr's case -1 over here where he started an attack on apk and was destroyed):

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=161862&cid=135 32123

This reminds me of when Mace Windu and his 3 Jedi knight fellows tried to attack Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious.

You narrow minded single focus dogmatic view 'jedi' (as StarKruzr calls himself in his profile here) are no match for a Sith Lord in apk.

Or, do the facts show any differently? I read all of those url posts and know you, in all of your anonymous luser arstechnica hordes hound him only to your own demise each and every time online.

Do you like punishment and humiliation? Keep coming at him.

apk just does you in every time easily.

Re:apk apk apk+++++

[interiot]

Wow, another anonymous APK supporter shows up. APK sure has a lot of people who support him these days...

Don't kid now, APK-supporter. I bet if I called APK's number right now, you'd pick up.

Re:apk apk apk+++++

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead and call apk interior brain rot. You can explain to him why you got your behind whooped here by apk himself at this url

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157615&thre shold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=95&mode=thread&pid=1320 9803

Re:apk apk apk+++++

[Anonymous Coward]

Still bitter over getting tko'd by apk I see interiot? He did knock you right the hell out in that url cited above, and you said like the beaten little arstechnica bitch you are you would chill on the crap you were handing him. So much for your level of honesty interiot, you're now just another arstechnica liar who got what he had coming for attacking this guy and he just knocked you flat out once again. You are sick in the head interiot.

Re:apk apk apk+++++

[interiot]

Oh, c'mon, being sophmoric is no fun. Be entertaining in other ways, puleaze?

Re:apk apk apk+++++

[interiot]

It seems like you're still playing to a wider audience. There isn't one. The article is 6 days old, everybody else has left (eg. sort comments in reverse chronological order... we're the only ones still commenting).

I'm still here because you're kind of quirky and fascinating sometimes. But you're too predictable now, it's no fun. C'mon, dance.

Re:apk apk apk+++++

[Anonymous Coward]

Take your anti-paranoia medication interiot. Obviously you are forgetting to do so. Before you do though, I would read this again:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=162012&cid=135 79749

Just to refresh your memory of how you got yourself whipped with facts and lied about being cool to that person, when you turned around and tried to attack them again. You are so paranoid you think it is he as myself writing you. That is what you get for lying, making so many enemies that you dont know who this is, and also being humiliated as you were there above in that link for it.

Re:apk apk apk+++++

[interiot]

You're completely different from other people, so I wanted to try to figure you out. I feel some benevolence towards you (I'm pretty far outside the social mainstream myself), yet the unrelenting irrational and unstable aspects of your comments make it difficult to feel anything but annoyance.

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[NullProg]

No, you mis-understood my original message.

As for why we use Borland... the original code was developed by my research prof, that was his perrogative at the time (over 10 years ago.) I've avoided making changes to it as much as possible because it is a spaghetti mess, and generally works. With a complete system revamp or change in OS, I'd think that a complete rewrite would be doable.

Borland turbo C/C++ code was popular during the 90's. The professors code is still portable to Linux/Win32 whatever. Its just that Windows/Linux etc. does not allow you to open the ports without permissions. Did you not read the link I provided in the original post?

You just need to author a quick device driver between the Linux kernel and your Borland code. In other words, change your inb/outb calls to read/write to a simple kernel driver that you can write yourself.

Do you not understand how a CPU interacts with the attached devices ? Just curious.

No flame intended.
Enjoy,

YOU started this, now finish it, and yourself...

[Anonymous Coward]

From THIS url, where you started this up with me, is why I ask the question of you, first no less, in the 2nd URL below:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=161862&cid=135 32123

A direct quote from YOU, student boy, there from that URL above:

"My God. (Score:-1, Flamebait) by StarKruzr (74642) on Sunday September 11, @12:42PM (#13532123)

No one listen to this guy. He spent several months on Ars Technica trying to convince everyone he was some kind of super programmer, but it fell apart pretty fast when it became clear that he actually didn't know his ass from his elbow."

---

You were rated a -1 no less, Mr. doctoral student (noob, so you say, but I am not seeing doctoral levels of intelligence here, am I?), vs. my parent thread to it rated @ +4 (interesting/informative) regarding this field, no less, trying to help advise others...

Especially STUDENTS like yourself.

Well, you sow the wind? Reap the whirlwind of your own 'arstechnica blowhard hot air', below, & just answer the question I asked you, first. Stop evading it!

That is, unless you like looking like a fool that is, which you already do via your evasions.

So, let's see you FINISH it, and in doing so answering the question I asked you?

You will FINISH YOURSELF RIGHT OFF, & with your OWN words...

This is always SO very easy for me to do to the likes of you boy as well as your arstechnica pals in the past 5 years as you hound me around...

I figure it THIS way:

You all must love embarassment of yourselves, or just have not learned your lesson yet. Your choice.

Ah, ANYWAYS:

JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION RIGHT HERE AT THE TOP OF THIS URL, BECAUSE YOU KEEP EVADING IT:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=161862&thresho ld=-1&commentsort=0&tid=146&mode=thread&pid=135492 82

Simple right? Well, not w/out embarassing the HELL out of yourself I imagine.

(Come on now, You said you were "intelligent" & a doctoral student in this field... so, show us what that's done for you IN THIS FIELD, vs. what I have shown you as a SMALL SAMPLING OF WHAT I HAVE? Especially after you made the initial statement about me that you did above, starting this WHOLE thing).

Let's see you finish it, and yourself, by answering that simple question in the 2nd URL above. That's all.

Anyone's free to read the 2nd URL, & see what "Mr. Big Talker" here was asked of me, a VERY simple question!

(A simple question it wouldn't take an "intelligent arstechnican doctoral student" like this one in StarKruzr to answer either I would think, lol!)

That 2nd URL?

Well, that's simple where I show otherwise vs. your initial post to me, attempting to insult me, etc., & ask you to show what you've done better in this field...

A mere STUDENT BOY like yourself, no less. You talk awful big, & startup the fights, but cannot back up your b.s.!

So... Back up your b.s. STUDENT BOY. You talk like you're "the second coming of John Carmack" no less...

BUT, as anyone can see? When push comes to shove, what do folks here see out of you??

They see "Run, Forrest, Run" outta you, BOY.

* :)

(See, one of the FIRST things your Daddy should have taught you, assuming you even know him, is to learn to be able to back up your statements, or be looked upon as another 'arstechnica blowhard', ok? That, or to avoid getting your ass kicked)

I imagine a big talker like you does it on forums boards, but in the REAL world?

You're just a backstabbing, gossipping little nerdy woman instead of a man...

Don't like that?

Well, you started this: I am just going to finish it, by letting YOU finish yoursel

This is awesome.

[StarKruzr]

My reply to your lunacy is in the original thread.

Re:This is awesome.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, mine is there to you as well:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=161862&cid=135 64253

See there...

APK

P.S.=> You never answered or faced up to my questions here or there, but even if you attacked me first (no question, you did) in THIS url:

"It was more about me GREATLY enjoying trolling the hell out of you because you're an imbecile who enjoys belittling others." - by StarKruzr (74642) on Tuesday September 13, @02:15PM

I never "belittle" anyone, or attack anyone, until first attacked...

After all - You attacked me first here, did you not?

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=161862&cid=135 32123

?

You're just a kid! Albeit, an arrogant one, but I can overlook it!

You'll learn otherwise, sooner or later... apk

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[adrianmonk]

We've looked at N.I. products, we just can't currently afford them from what I've seen.

Hmm, well, would something like this fit your needs and your budget? I think these things are meant for robotics, and the sampling rate on the A/D is going to be a really low sampling rate (I think 65 Hz) and low resolution (around 10 bits), but that might be good enough for some purposes.

Re:ok great..

[Anonymous Coward]

They give PhDs to drooling monkeys now, or what?

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[J_Omega]

No, it unfortunately wouldn't. We need a DAQ that is 16-bit or better, with a sampling rate no less than 100 kHz. Oh, and it has to have two input channels.

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[J_Omega]

I only briefly browsed the link you gave me on writing linux drivers, but bookmarked it for future reference. It seemed to be considerably over-my-head for right now. I'll need to sit down and really study the article, since it does seem well organized and informative.

That makes some sense to me, the intermediate quicky device driver between the kernel and the old Borland code. If I understand this right then, would this be the "easy" way to get around manually changing the code from the inb/outb calls into the linux-required reads/writes?

Do you not understand how a CPU interacts with the attached devices ? Just curious.

Correct! Fundamentally, I do not understand it, as it is something I've never studied. To me, a device driver is just some vague in-between code that allows the OS kernel to speak directly to hardware, somehow magically - a translation layer so that the kernel can "talk" to the device without knowing exactly what the hardware expects to "hear". ie. a kernel-to-hardware Babelfish.

No flame taken! Seriously, thanks for giving me a direction for at least learning a bit more how the low-level stuff operates. This is all new to me.

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[adrianmonk]

We need a DAQ that is 16-bit or better, with a sampling rate no less than 100 kHz. Oh, and it has to have two input channels.

Hmm, well, these days there are boards that do that that are a dime a dozen. Namely, pro audio cards. The newest generation of cards does 192 kHz sampling rate at 24-bit resolution, and I've never seen a card that has fewer than two input channels. For example, just pulling something off the top of my head, the M-AUDIO Audiophile 192. The list price for this card is $200. Street price might be closer to $180. There are tons of other similar cards available, and some of them even have Linux drivers if that's a direction you are interested in going (and if you want to do the research).

The nice thing about these cards is that since they're pro, they even have differential inputs for common mode noise rejection, if you need that. Of course, the big down side is that whatever you have that's driving these inputs has to be able to drive something that looks like an audio input. I have no idea what kind of circuit you've got going in your lab, what kind of voltage range it has, what kind of impedence it expects, and all that.

Also, of course, these cards don't have a software framework that comes with them that's set up for experimentation. You're going to have to open the device and read the audio data out of it. That might be fine if all you care about is data collection and you aren't doing anything else on the computer (like analyzing the data and using it to control things) at the same time. But if your needs are more complex, then that's probably not the road you want to go down.

Re:apk beats another arstechnica loser again

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, another arstechnica loser shows up and gets his butt beaten by apk again. Arstechnicans sure lose too many posts on technical issues these days and always do.

Don't kid now, Arstechnica loser. I'd bet if anyone looks at this url they'd have your number down pat and your arstechnica losing debates ways down pat also!

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t= 2608

That is an analysis about how losers from arstechnica operate like gossipping women rather than how men should from someone named Santilli and a totally accurate analysis of their women like ways when beaten in technical confrontations about this field as interiot was by apk here

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157615&cid= 13218667

Interiot, do kindly explain how apk got the better of you there with facts interiot and you backed off like a dog with his tail between his legs?

Interiot the poor little arstechnica loser with not even half of apk's experience in this field couldn't take the humiliation of losing to apk so he now lies after saying he would be cool to him and instead tries to attack him behind his back.

Interiot = lying whimp and coward with no honor.

Re:Finally! maybe? Who wants to write a driver? HL

[J_Omega]

That's a really neat idea, AdrianMonk! I'll have to pass that suggestion around the lab, and see what other's thoughts are.

Yes, we would need differential inputs. We'd be able to design a new input circuit if needed, but we've plenty of lego-like parts that we could probably make that work quickly. Everything is matched to 50 Ohm right now.

We do do control, but not quite realtime, so that shouldn't be an issue.

The downside is that this would cover only maybe 50% of the research we do. I think we'd PREFER a DAQ that can handle up to 13 MHz, although that'd be rare. The soundcard idea is a good one though, for some stuff!

Thanks again!

Re:apk apk apk+++++ GROW UP! apk

[Anonymous Coward]

How on earth can you say that, since You don't even know me, and yet try to pester me as you do nearly non-stop... evidences thereof are below where you have done so, repeatedly here @ slashdot, & for no good reason.

Only to be destroyed by simple facts. Is this what bothers you. Beating yourself after you started trouble with myself?

Truly man, that's hilarious you try to judge me ontop of it.

"yet the unrelenting irrational and unstable aspects of your comments make it difficult to feel anything but annoyance." - by interiot (50685) on Wednesday September 21, @12:53PM

What irrational about pointing out that you & yours constantly start crap with me as is evidenced here:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157615&thre shold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=95&mode=thread&pid=1322 5084

& here as well

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157615&cid= 13216924

as well as here:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156306&cid= 13103631

You only beat yourself into the ground here in front of others here with actions like those. Don't you understand that?

(Anyone is free to read those exchanges where you INSISTENTLY say you want to add me to your "foes" list for no good reason, got beaten with facts regarding Opera, etc. as well also (which on BOTH, again, YOU started the argument with myself) & I simply trashed you with facts on regarding Opera, etc. & more.)

That IS where you stated you'd 'chillout' on this childish hounding of myself by you. Including the picking on of my writing style &/or spelling or grammar which is the lamest of the lame once you're beaten with technical facts & a TYPICAL arstechnica/osy forums member antic when trashed by facts in discussions online.

That's right - It's TYPICAL Arstechnica/OSY b.s. & you're ALL known for it, e.g. here, where I didn't do the judging & study of yourselves, but others did:

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t= 2608

You're a classic example of those points, guilty of just about ALL/EACH of them regarding your antics towards myself as evidenced in the URL's prior to that one, in fact.

You stated, in the first URL above iirc, that you would ceasefire against me... however, in even later/other threads here?

(Such as this one)

Well, you broke your 'truce' with me & word.... You just kept it up AGAIN in other posts (as well as your paperlined.org libel & innacurate errors about me... why on earth would you do that, anyways?)

You have problems man. Serious issues.

Above all - Can't you stick to your word, which you stated in that url above about steering clear of myself here?

Why develop this insane & highly inaccurate libellous profile you have about me on your paperlined.org site anyways also?? You had to have errors in it pointed out to you and you corrected them, but still do that... why?

What are you trying to prove or do in that, other than make yourself appear to be some sick, obsessed lunatic to others here??

(Doesn't look too good/in your favor now, does it? Facts after all, are facts & undeniable... mainly if they are, as I point out, YOUR own words & actions/activities regarding myself)

APK

P.S.=> NEWSFLASH: Normal people? Drop things.

You evidently are not a normal human being mentally... there's little question of that.

Now, I am doing the judging of you, but I base it on facts, & your own actions + activities here & elsewhere...

Re:apk apk apk+++++ GROW UP! apk

[interiot]

The fact that so many people have written songs about you, made petitions about you, written webpages about you, etc. indicates that there's wide agreement that you're different. It's not just me saying that.

I'm not part of some vast ars/osy conspiracy. I don't know them at all. I talked with them after seeing your somewhat different posts (this post is the first time I responded to you... I didn't know about Ars forums or Jeremy or anything at that point), googling about you, and finding they had similar sentiments. But before that post, I didn't know anything about you or them.

I don't mean to pester, sorry. It's just that I'm strangely compelled to try to figure you out, but annoyed by the fact that you view the world so differently.

Re:apk apk apk+++++ GROW UP! apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"The fact that so many people have written songs about you, made petitions about you, written webpages about you, etc. indicates that there's wide agreement that you're different. It's not just me saying that." - by interiot (50685) on Thursday September 22, @03:59PM

Ever heard the saying "consider the source"? Well, now you have... & making libellous statements as folks from arstechnica like Jay Little & Jeremy Reimer have?? Well, want to see what & where it got them??

See here, 2nd post down, where their own ISP/BSP's & HOSTING PROVIDERS agreed with me, & burned them BOTH for it @ Windows IT Pro magazine forums:

http://www.windowsitpro.com/articles/index.cfm?art icleid=41095&cpage=124

Jay Little was also removed from his hosting provider there on page 124, see the facts on that as well, for violating his terms of service with CrystalTech.com for it... as well as making his "PETITION" (childish/insane) that "APK MUST BE PUT TO DEATH"... for what?

He came & attacked me @ Windows IT Pro forums, made SO many technical blunders & mistakes (as well as saying he hacked my system (b.s.) & got my sourcecode (more b.s.)) he was run off from there, & pursued me to another forums I went to, & burned himself SO badly on technical issues in his first 3 postings there & had others from arstechnica (dosfreak) chastize him for it.

He's lost all credibility/standing he had in this field imo. He blew it & made SO many mistakes, it is no small wonder he resorted to childish antics... he only ended up paying for it.

Jeremy Reimer was busted by his ISP Shaw.ca for email harassing me as well, impersonating me on his website forums (which he admitted to & is quoted there no less), making up libellous pictures & songs about me!

This is the behavior of a sane, rational, mature 33 year old? Answer me that.

Need more? Read that page's 2nd post by myself, it is ALL there & you can verify my statements there easily enough. They are fact.

No conspiracy theory paranoia here, just facts - care to dispute those?

Yes, and as far as the "Arstechnica/OSY" viewpoint? LOL, so what & who cares?? After 5 years of them keeping this up, it will only end up with the ones doing it looking childish, immature, stupid, & possibly worse should I care to pursue it in other ways.

Above all:

Don't you possess enough intelligence to realize that if someone has to do childish things like impersonate me on his website forums, make edited pictures of me libelling myself, as well as libelling me in a childish song which he ripped off from South Park no less??

Come on!

LOL - "Wake up, smell the coffee", & realize you're not fooling ANYONE with that crap.

(All of which is fact & Reimer paid for it with his ISP Shaw.ca email harassing me also & was stopped in it)

Why are they doing this? I am not sure, I think they are sick in the head to be honest about it!

See, I have taken those same people, who attacked me first EVERY TIME as you have here, & sent them into the scrap heap SO many times with facts & in technical debate @ spots other than this online? It is almost scary how easy it was.

They are just still stinging in humiliation is my guess, having to resort to childish antics like the ones I mention above... they only end up paying for it.

They keep it up, not I... just as YOU have here in fact. You're not fooling anyone!

APK

P.S.=> I have trouble believing you when you say you apologize, or will stop this lunacy on your end attacking me here, because you said you'd stop before... have you?

What irrational about pointing out that you & yours constantly start crap with me as is evidenced here:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157615

Re:apk apk apk+++++ GROW UP! apk

[interiot]

The "Memory Hoax" thread is still going, 14 months since it started. I don't really believe you want to be left alone.

Dude, that's not just a random song. 1) He knows how to actually play and sing, which is impressive enough, and 2) he spent enough time to do a decent recording about you. 98% of the people here couldn't do that, and if they could, wouldn't do it for some random person on the internet. Jeremy thinks you're "special", dude, admit it.

Heck, I spent $35 on background checks on you. Can't believe I did that, but whatever.

Re:apk apk apk+++++ GROW UP! apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this about yourself? I snagged it from your "paperlined.org" site online:

http://www.paperlined.org/bio/fucked_up.html

---------

"sort of like autism (antisocial, high IQ, some sensory sensitivities), though not nearly as severe as autism
doesn't like to look eye-to-eye with others
doesn't like to touch others
preoccupation with things
need a certain level of stimulation to function properly (though not nearly as bad as autism)
not any relatives to autism, except for sensory integration dysfunction or autistic spectrum
Visuospatial thinking preferred
These autistic traits may be beneficial for some disciplines like science, mathematics, engineering
though not these:
Poor use and understanding of nonverbal communication (i.e., facial expressions and body language) [as far as I can tell... I'm not very bad at these]
Poor understanding of abstract thought, metaphors, and symbolism
Peculiar clothing and food preferences
aspbergers
mild level of pedantic language... more anal than others, and like humor more than others, but not outside of normal
orderly things have appeal [oh hell yes]
INTP (introvert, intuition, thinking, perceiving) [oh hell yes]
high-functioning autism
intelligent, gifted, hard workers when interested in a task, though they can be extreme procrastinators when not, and excellent problem solvers
they may appear somewhat removed or disconnected at times, especially in situations of sensory overload, or extreme perceived social pressure such as a party
look into these more:
Pervasive developmental disorder"

---------

I see from it, that you DO have problems & consider yourself mentally troubled... aspbergers, or autism on your end it seems.

Seems I was correct - you have mental problems & issues as I suspected!

APK

P.S.=> That alone, your own words once again, explain a GREAT DEAL about you... apk

Bye.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bye.

Re:apk apk apk+++++ GROW UP! apk

[interiot]

It turns out it's just regular old ADD, though persisting into adulthood, and with an extra dose of touch-sensitivity and sound-sensitivity.

Any other pages I should remove?

Re:apk apk apk+++++ GROW UP! apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"It turns out it's just regular old ADD, though persisting into adulthood, and with an extra dose of touch-sensitivity and sound-sensitivity." - by interiot (50685) on Thursday September 22, @09:06PM

You have problems. Mental/medical ones... but, that's not MY fault man! So don't ride me about that.

(No wonder you've given me hassles about the length of some of my postings, it makes sense now).

Again, I cannot help it if you have problems with longer posts then, that is something on YOUR end to get help with.

If my postings bother you, especially in YOUR particular case?

I strongly suggest you should not read them is all... as I have before. BUT, following me around here as you have, attempting to pester me as you have here:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157615&thre shold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=95&mode=thread&pid=1322 5084 [slashdot.org]

& here as well

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157615&cid= 13216924 [slashdot.org]

as well as here:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156306&cid= 13103631 [slashdot.org]

You only beat yourself into the ground here in front of others here with actions like those. Don't you understand that?

(Anyone is free to read those exchanges where you INSISTENTLY say you want to add me to your "foes" list for no good reason, got beaten with facts regarding Opera, etc. as well also (which on BOTH, again, YOU started the argument with myself) & I simply trashed you with facts on regarding Opera, etc. & more.)

That IS where you stated you'd 'chillout' on this childish hounding of myself by you. Including the picking on of my writing style &/or spelling or grammar which is the lamest of the lame once you're beaten with technical facts & a TYPICAL arstechnica/osy forums member antic when trashed by facts in discussions online.

That's right - It's TYPICAL Arstechnica/OSY b.s. & you're ALL known for it, e.g. here, where I didn't do the judging & study of yourselves, but others did:

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t= 2608 [storageforum.net]

You're a classic example of those points, guilty of just about ALL/EACH of them regarding your antics towards myself as evidenced in the URL's prior to that one, in fact.

You stated, in the first URL above iirc, that you would ceasefire against me... however, in even later/other threads here?

(Such as this one)

Well, you broke your 'truce' with me & word.... You just kept it up AGAIN in other posts (as well as your paperlined.org libel & innacurate errors about me... why on earth would you do that, anyways?)

You have problems man. Serious issues.

Above all - Can't you stick to your word, which you stated in that url above about steering clear of myself here?

Why develop this insane & highly inaccurate libellous profile you have about me on your paperlined.org site anyways also?? You had to have errors in it pointed out to you and you corrected them, but still do that... why?

What are you trying to prove or do in that, other than make yourself appear to be some sick, obsessed lunatic to others here??

(Doesn't look too good/in your favor now, does it? Facts after all, are facts & undeniable... mainly if they are, as I point out, YOUR own words & actions/activities regarding myself)

APK

P.S.=> Why keep a "profile" of me there @ paperlined.org then? Have you also been diagnosed for "obsessive/compulsive" type disorders as well?? That also, would explain much!

Your paperlined.org profile of myself?

Well, that's be

Re:apk apk apk+++++ GROW UP! apk

[interiot]

No wonder you've given me hassles about the length of some of my postings, it makes sense now

Name me one person who's willing to read through any forum post that is several pages long. People will sometimes read through a whole New Yorker column, but won't do it for forum posts. You're right, you're free to post whatever you want. But there's no way other people are going to read the whole thing.

Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you expect

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got a point, I tend to be verbose (BUT, often with reason)!

I can freely concede THAT much easily.

BUT, on the converse? Well, I am going to answer this question from YOU:

"Name me one person who's willing to read through any forum post that is several pages long." - by interiot (50685) on Friday September 23, @11:43AM

Well, the mods for one... they've modded me up 10-15 times (& NOT JUST FOR USELESS (imo) "Karma Points" but for the posts I did that rated +1 or better, for technical reasons of "interesting &/or informative) so far on various posts I have made & usually with good results & in a SHORT timeframe here (less than 6 months iirc)

So they, for one, must have read my posts in their entirety!

Bloated posts or not.

See, again, your imposing YOUR IDEAS on me, and thus, anyone else! Your standards? They're NOT everybody else's man... realize it. For your OWN good.

(BUT, my postings? Do bloat, but with reason - I tend to quote others as I have you above, to not miss any details of a person' posting when I am helping them in forums for example... other times, I use quotes as evidence of a person's words/motivations OR for proof from others as to my statements).

This 'posting methodology' whatever you want to call it on my end, however, has a "down-side":

It bloats my posts. Some folks don't dig it, but... if you know this, avoid my postings is all. I seem to do OK, & get modded up well enough here, so I go with it.

I tend also, to run @ 1600x1200 resolutions - what looks "LONG" to others? Doesn't here to me. It fits on a single page here, everytime.

So, truly, I am attempting to see your "pov" (point-of-view), especially if you have ADD/dyslexia or whatever it is you have. That's NOT your fault, you didn't ASK "give me ADD" I am sure.

AND, I understand about your "brevity" in postings point you said once to me here which I interpreted as an attack! And, it was imo.

There is merit to it however, in that point of yours, but not if you are chasing detail as I often am wont to do...

(& usually, I do, to make a point & will repeat the same idea a diff. way to make said points & to "hammer home" my idea (supporting facts, quotes, etc./et all)).

So, please, see MY point-of-view on that note.

On THAT particular account, especially in YOUR case (not something you asked for or probably can TOTALLY control?), I understand.

We will have to "agree to disagree" here on THIS account. I try for brevity, sometimes it is NOT possible.

However, your outright attacking me several times here which I & others noted in this post parents post as well as other postings of mine here @ slashdot?

Dude, it's WRONG! If you don't dig my posts, don't read them, very simple. BUT, attacking me for it? Come on...

APK

P.S.=> In ANY event, I am going to ask again: Can you be cool to me or what? You stated once here:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157615&thre shold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=95&mode=thread&pid=1322 5084

Technical facts-wise there? I know I got the better of you on.

BUT, in the end, near the TOP OF THAT VERY URL NO LESS, you also stated it was 'done & over with' cease hostilities, etc. with me.

BUT, then I see you're keeping this rather STRANGE profile of myself on your paperlined.org & have to question if you've been also diagnosed with any "obsessive-compulsive" disorder as well as ADD in the past. You're not showing me otherwise with that, it's almost "stalker-like" imo.

However, ever after you stated that? You just went & 'broke truce' on that account with me in several posts after that one. Other threads.

NOW, Honestly?

I don't LIKE arguments, especially those that startup name calling

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[interiot]

Well, the mods for one... they've modded me up 10-15 times

Oh, thank goodness for the holy mods. They never get things wrong. In fact, I definitely deserved every positive mod I've received, and it makes me deleriously happy every time I get one. All 435-440 times (I carefully keep count, you see).

You've got a point, I tend to be verbose (BUT, often with reason)!

No, really there is no good reason. If it's a good idea, it can be explained in a much shorter post, and it really doesn't take that much time/effort to express your ideas concisely.

If it's a really stupendously great idea that needs extensive writeup, then it doesn't deserve to be stuck deep inside a forum, it should be put on a webpage so people can Digg it. (that's a good suggestion actually... go and troll digg, it would make me happier if there were fewer trollish posts here on Slashdot)

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[interiot]

Haha. Since you're counting, my user page currently shows 17 net positive moderations over the past three days. So if you want to allege that moderations are a value of worth, then 10-15 mods for over a month isn't really something you should mention.

But, like I said, mods aren't really something to base your self-worth on. Moderators have just as many failings as any other person. For instance, this comment didn't deserve +3, because it only takes 3 clicks from the main article to see the EULA, but half of the people are too lazy to do it.

There you go. If you want to do non-trollish karma whoring, that's one secret. Give them solid information, especially when it SEEMS hard to get the info, but half the time, it's super-easy, especially when you just post information you got off of wikipedia.

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[Anonymous Coward]

"10-15 mods for over a month isn't really something you should mention." - by interiot (50685) on Friday September 23, @04:36PM

I rarely post here. I am certain my posts count is FAR less than your own... so, this is good you were modded up that way, but it's also a "numbers game" too, & you have greater 'surface area' in that dept. because of more posts than I have.

BUT, like you said, moderation is not "all" & I tend to agree... but, I do have to point out, it was others looking @ this situation between yourself & myself (as well as others etc.).

The "Karma Points" thing? It honestly doesn't interest me man... I am just here to gain, & give (gotta do both imo, to grow & help others as well). I don't logon because it makes you EXTREMELY trackable... & I do have a group (which by now, you're aware of it) who has made it a point to pursue me to various sites online just to start crap up with me.

They have asked me repeatedly (as you have) to logon as myself here... no way, it makes you way, WAY too trackeable. Like I told members of their group here before??

YOU want me to logon here? NO way jose, that would be perfect for you to track & harass me with it... I am not with that. You want me? YOU have to find me... must frustrate the hell out of them, lol, & good riddance I say.

After all - I do NOT go looking for arstechnica/osy folks online to bother them, but I can cite NUMEROUS times they have done the same to myself... again, want proof? It's EASY for me to provide in bookmarks of this I have.

(All kinds of shit, like ADMITTEDLY having impersonated me on their forums, sung & wrote libellous songs about me, making goofy edited photos of myself in some strange attempt to mock me, email harassing me (for which 2 of them were burned by their ISP's for), putting up a "petition" that I should be put to death (very stupid), & more... including 1 of them in Jay Little being kicked from his hosting provider CrystalTech.com for violating his "terms of service" with them while doing all of the above from his site on their servers).

Way too many people, including ISP/BSP admins, agreed with me on those accounts, so nuff said on that.

It's (imo & those of others doubtless) wrong, & pretty nuts on their end... truly. I try to avoid trouble, but, if it comes my way & I am NOT in the 'wrong'? I will not just 'back off' like a dog with a tail between his legs. To me, & this is just a point-of-view I have gained because of where I had lived in my youth?

That's dying the death of a coward, & running... you do that? You run the rest of your days.

Plus, in YOUR case?

The situation with you having "ADD" does tend to complicate things as far as the length of my postings for you no doubt, and your ability to possibly stick it thru on them to their full length...

So, I can see this being troublesome for you & it is NOT some 'fault of yours' that you can just take a pill for & correct I am guessing (I don't have that so I don't understand exactly what it is or how it is treated)... all I can say, is what I said:

If you don't like my posts? Man, simple - don't read them man!

(Especially if you find them troublesome... & by the same token, you've really gotta try to realize 1 thing - I am not you man, so imposing your views on me? Come on! Riding me for what YOU personally consider "the standard" for the way of doing things online? That's pretty questionable... especially attacking me repeatedly as you have & I noted earlier on, & most especially when you stated you'd cut it out)

Citing it again here:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157615&thre shold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=95&mode=thread&pid=1322 5084

There's little question of who got the better o

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[interiot]

Okay, so do you agree that I have much more experience posting here? And then will you pay attention to my suggestions that people don't read comments as long as yours? (heck, just look at how many +3 moderations I've gotten from 1- and 2-sentence posts)

Hrm. I wonder why it is that 95% of people log in to comment, and yet don't fear harassment? Perhaps it's the content of your specific messages, and not the actions of any other person, that is the difference?

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like my posts? Man, simple - don't read them man! Can you not understand that??

Apparently not, if you write things like this to me & about me:

http://paperlined.org/apps/slashdot/anonymous_APK. html

Are you sick in the head? What is this weirdo stalker profile of me you are keeping there on your site??

I think you've been diagnosed with FAR MORE than just ADD before... probably some obsessive-compulsive mental disorder as well since you apparently try to libel & stalk me... that's sick man, it really is.

And, lol, you're attempting to 'diagnose me' with some mental disease which we already know here YOU have in "ADD" (b.s.) which you admitted to here no less & took the page down out of shame (or said you were going to)?

That's a HUGE laugh...

However, we already KNOW you have mental problems. That guess of mine would probably be NO surprise to anyone.

(and then when I got the better of you regarding Opera in the URL below etc.? Where in the end, I simply asked you to find a test as I used that showed Opera knocking BOTH IE & FireFox the heck out & in more areas than both of them in said test... you could not produce such a test that showed differing results than the one I used!)

"Okay, so do you agree that I have much more experience posting here?" - by interiot (50685) on Saturday September 24, @06:08PM

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157615&cid= 13216924

Especially after reading THAT here? No, I don't agree about THAT @ all. You're only like 1/3rd into this field by comparison to myself..

See, what YOU fail to realize by trying to impose YOUR standards on others?

Most people don't bother others regarding their posting style here (or on things like grammar/spellchecking etc. as you do... they can draw someone's meaning of their words via the context wherein they are used is why - you can't, you're mentally deficient (literally & admittedly so)).

If you're sick in the head this way, & you admitted it no less? Please, don't try to impose your views on others. You have the problem, not anyone else.

(AND, it truly IS you with the problem, because you have ADD, literally & admittedly so).

Also, I note You get modded up +, lol, for "Karma Points" etc., again, this does not impress me one iota...

They're USELESS imo. They're simply an inducement to post here as a specific ID, making YOU trackeable as hell...

I don't need or want that.

All I wish to gain here is knowledge & to share mine in return for what I get here. That's all, simple.

"Karma Points", sheesh... they're not being modded up for technical interest or otherwise pertinent information.

Plus, I wonder... I really do specifically in THIS field (computer science), I truly wonder which of us knows more than the other regarding it & has more experience in it... the URL in my P.S. proves that for me in & of itself.

I think the post URL's I put up already evidence this for me here, & in earlier url's I posted in this exchange between yourself & myself, & rather easily.

(Also, about using forums & like items (like technical chats even) around it? Oh, I wonder who's been @ that longer as well?? To me, this isn't what counts really however as it does for you, but how much what you write helps others really!)

So... once again, I ask you again, can you chill out or what?? You said you would, & then started RIGHT up again!

What's wrong with you??? Oh, that's right: I know already - You have ADD & think everyone should cater to YOUR ideas of writing... b.s.!

(Sorry to burst your bubble, but do YOU speak for ALL of slashdot?)

APK

P.S.=> "Hrm. I wonder why it is that 95% of people log in to comment, and yet don't fe

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[interiot]

Get rid of the illusions/delusions already (since I know you're not able to speak for everyone here, most people don't have 'ADD' as you admittedly really do, & thus you have trouble with longer postings)...

Your posts are hugely abnormally longer than anyone else's. Nobody replies to a two-sentence post with a 40-sentence post. If you really don't believe me, I can do the work required to calculate a histogram for you, but it really should be obvious without that.

As many as 10% of boys have ADD, it's not a major debilitating problem. You're free to complain about it if you really enjoy doing that, but since ADD's impact is fairly minimal, it's kind of pointless.

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, here goes, you're no longer going to get the "mentally challenged treatment kid gloves" from me, anymore.

"Your posts are hugely abnormally longer than anyone else's." - by interiot on Sunday September 25

So is my penis, ok? LOL, Whatever... I hope THAT is not another of your shortcomings, in being homosexual, because that's ALL I need right now, some nutjob who has THAT problem... & being gay? It's FAR from normal, no questions asked!

Above all: What you write, especially coming from YOU?

That IS TRULY hilarious!

I mean - dude, you're a nutjob (admitted one in interiot no less who knows he's not right in the head)!

One doing the judging of others who aren't 'touched' as he is? Especially about something HE PERSONALLY has issues with due to his "delicate mental condition", no less??

That's rich! OMG...

With YOU being the one having the problems mentally, and apparently ashamed of it, simply because of me posting evidences of your starting things with me here, FIRST?

(Care to deny that? Answer that question...)

No "I have ADD (b.s. crap imo) & did not see it" type avoidance of it either, ok?

Answer THAT question -> Did you, or did you not, startup with me here??

Also - I suppose YOU have elected yourself as "the spokesman for SLASHDOT" & are now 'president of the standards bureau for posting' & how to structure grammar & spelling, here, right???

New news everyone:

'Heck, must be INTERIOT is KING of slashdot'

( How I should write/post, man... got 1 thing to say to you, OK mental boy?? Again - drink in & digest this:

You don't like what I write here? Don't read it! (Simple, but apparently NOT for a mentally challenged nutcase like you!)

So, instead of CONTINUALLY hassling me, nutjob? Get a life!

That is what the MAIN point is, here - you're NOT right in the head, you admit it, and then put up b.s. about me (keeping your weirdo profile of me on your site no less, that's sick freak)?

Then, lol, hilariously trying to 'diagnose me' here:

http://paperlined.org/apps/slashdot/anonymous_APK. html

With some condition, & it turns up YOU are the one 'touched in the skull' (with a hammer most likely)??

OMG, the "pot calling the kettle black" shit, ROTFLMAO!

Yes, now there is NO doubt of it - You have mental issues...

You DEFINITELY are not "normal". LOL, I love the "10% of boys have ADD" bullcrap - the 'misery loves company' I am part of the 'team' & 'jump on the bandwagon' shit... Especially after I tried to be understanding of it? You had this coming.

SO, that's it: The "kid gloves" with you? They're just dead-up off!

You mistake my being nice, trying to understand I was dealing with a mentally challenged person in you, for weakness. Newsflash BOY - it's not, & that is done now. You truly are one F-d up human being - a miserable one, that likes to try to bring THAT problem of your being a human wreck, onto others. THAT's in addition to obviously being somekind of a genetic error - a mental aberration.

Hey again - Don't LIKE that?

Then, take my advice - quit hassling me & reading my postings here if you don't like them... right??

Point-blank:

You're being f'd up brain doesn't allow you to concentrate longer than 5 seconds to write a posting, or read one that is longer than 2 sentences fully apparently! OR, allow you to remember promises & statements you make also, like saying you'd cut the crap with me, here:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157615&thre shold=1&commentsort=0&tid=95&mode=thread&pid=13224 172#13225084

I mean, lol, WHY ELSE THEN, DID YOU STARTUP WITH ME (yet again

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[interiot]

I mean, lol, WHY ELSE THEN, DID YOU STARTUP WITH ME (yet again) after you said you'd stop then right there in that URL above?

I'm not avoiding any questions. Check everyone's responses to you. Did they ever respond to all your points, or do they always skip things? Most likely they respond to the top parts and the bottom parts, if anything (psychology experiments show that we remember the first part and last part of a list the best).

If you're read my post, you won't find a promise anywhere. I specifically say "my perception is that the discussion goes downhill quickly if anything is said that you don't agree with". I'm extremely leery to discuss anything remotely technical, because technical things are 100% true or 100% false, but you don't seem to care. You still cling to an idea once someone challenges you on it, because you don't like being challenged. Even on these nontechnical issues, even once I show you a histogram of post length, you're still going to make it about me personally. With your personality and temper, it's really pretty tough to discuss things with you.

I've learned to ignore the background noise of the constant negative gibberish you write, and focus on the new stuff, but it's still very difficult to discuss things with you.

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've learned to ignore the background noise of the constant negative gibberish you write" - by interiot (50685) on Monday September 26, @09:52AM

What gibberish is this? The fact I post facts about you, showing clearly you like to keep on pestering myself?? Or, is this NOT the case here next below in the URL's of your own words & attacks upon myself??

In ADDition to that? Your keeping this nutso "profile" of myself on your paperlined.org site as you have here:

http://paperlined.org/apps/slashdot/anonymous_APK [paperlined.org]. html

Then, lol, hilariously trying to 'diagnose me' here, with some condition, & it turns up YOU are the one 'touched in the skull' (with a hammer most likely) & having mental ADD related issues??

OMG, the "pot calling the kettle black" shit, ROTFLMAO! Yes, now there is NO doubt of it - You have mental issues... more than just what you admit to, after all, look how you're acting doing this attempted ordering about of myself:

Get over it - you have 'control freak' issues apparently. You can't control me, BOY!

Fact is - You're DEFINITELY mentally addled, this much you admitted to (albeit begrudgingly so, & then removed the page where you yourself in your BIO prove you have mental difficulties):

"It turns out it's just regular old ADD, though persisting into adulthood, and with an extra dose of touch-sensitivity and sound-sensitivity." - by interiot (50685) on Thursday September 22, @09:06PM

http://www.paperlined.org/bio/fucked_up.html

---------

"sort of like autism (antisocial, high IQ, some sensory sensitivities), though not nearly as severe as autism
doesn't like to look eye-to-eye with others
doesn't like to touch others
preoccupation with things
need a certain level of stimulation to function properly (though not nearly as bad as autism)
not any relatives to autism, except for sensory integration dysfunction or autistic spectrum
Visuospatial thinking preferred
These autistic traits may be beneficial for some disciplines like science, mathematics, engineering
though not these:
Poor use and understanding of nonverbal communication (i.e., facial expressions and body language) [as far as I can tell... I'm not very bad at these]
Poor understanding of abstract thought, metaphors, and symbolism
Peculiar clothing and food preferences
aspbergers
mild level of pedantic language... more anal than others, and like humor more than others, but not outside of normal
orderly things have appeal [oh hell yes]
INTP (introvert, intuition, thinking, perceiving) [oh hell yes]
high-functioning autism
intelligent, gifted, hard workers when interested in a task, though they can be extreme procrastinators when not, and excellent problem solvers
they may appear somewhat removed or disconnected at times, especially in situations of sensory overload, or extreme perceived social pressure such as a party
look into these more:
Pervasive developmental disorder"

---------

Those are your own words, about yourself, after all!

I also think you have somekind of 'obssessive-compulsive' disorder... but, then again, I'm no psychoanalyst/psychologist, so I don't judge based on professional experience or expertise. However, what I thought was extremely FUNNY, was you attempting to 'diagnose me' with mental difficulties, the POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK!

ROTLMAO! Yup... sorry, but it is VERY funny!

I say that, just on your behavior towards myself, which has been this weirdo pursuit of myself online, & lying about NOT being in the mix with others you cited (Jay Little & Jeremy Reimer from OSY/Arstechnica) for instance... they were "put to rest" with ease.

I can most likely do the same with you, but know what? I will let you, do yourself, completely in. Via your own actions/words.

I have to ask again:

Why el

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[interiot]

What gibberish is this?

Constant insults, references to ADD, etc. These aren't part of a conducive, normal conversation. The only way anyone can have a normal conversation with you is to ignore this background noise. (this isn't just me talking... examine all your threads from the past... people might respond to this stuff when they first meet you, but quickly realize it's pointless, that you're not going to change, and they start only responding to the more coherent parts of your posts, if they continue talking at all.)

The reason I bring some of these things up about you, is because there are things about your posts that are clearly (in a statistical sense) very much outside the range of normal posts. Most aren't terminal, and can be accomodated for (but are things you might want to note). A few ARE terminal (like your post length, there's no way you can ever expect anyone to respond to several posts a day that are each several pages long), and those I'm suggesting you correct, so that we can actually have a conversation.

Though it's probably useless... no matter what, you're never going to want anyone to suggest that technical ideas you have might be slightly incorrect. That's one part of you that I haven't been able to figure out yet. You're obviously scientific-minded, and have some skill. Yet, you steadfastly want to never change your opinions once someone discusses alternative theories with you. I don't know how you've gained techincal skills, when you approach things, steadfastly thinking that everything you know is 100% correct. That doesn't seem conducive to gaining technical skills.

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're NOT bothered by facts? When then, did you remove the page about you 'diagnosing yourself' with ADD then??

Answer that, in addition to this question:

Why are you trying to tell me how to write, what makes you the 'authority' here on THAT note? Please - show me the PhD in English you have, ok? Show us ALL that!

"I've learned to ignore the background noise of the constant negative gibberish you write" - by interiot (50685) on Monday September 26, @09:52AM

What gibberish is this? The fact I post facts about you, showing clearly you like to keep on pestering myself?? Or, is this NOT the case here next below in the URL's of your own words & attacks upon myself??

In ADDition to that? Your keeping this nutso "profile" of myself on your paperlined.org site as you have here:

http://paperlined.org/apps/slashdot/anonymous_APK. html

Then, lol, hilariously trying to 'diagnose me' here, with some condition, & it turns up YOU are the one 'touched in the skull' (with a hammer most likely) & having mental ADD related issues??

OMG, the "pot calling the kettle black" shit, ROTFLMAO! Yes, now there is NO doubt of it - You have mental issues... more than just what you admit to, after all, look how you're acting doing this attempted ordering about of myself:

Get over it - you have 'control freak' issues apparently. You can't control me, BOY!

Fact is - You're DEFINITELY mentally addled, this much you admitted to (albeit begrudgingly so, & then removed the page where you yourself in your BIO prove you have mental difficulties):

"It turns out it's just regular old ADD, though persisting into adulthood, and with an extra dose of touch-sensitivity and sound-sensitivity." - by interiot (50685) on Thursday September 22, @09:06PM

http://www.paperlined.org/bio/fucked_up.html

---------

"sort of like autism (antisocial, high IQ, some sensory sensitivities), though not nearly as severe as autism
doesn't like to look eye-to-eye with others
doesn't like to touch others
preoccupation with things
need a certain level of stimulation to function properly (though not nearly as bad as autism)
not any relatives to autism, except for sensory integration dysfunction or autistic spectrum
Visuospatial thinking preferred
These autistic traits may be beneficial for some disciplines like science, mathematics, engineering
though not these:
Poor use and understanding of nonverbal communication (i.e., facial expressions and body language) [as far as I can tell... I'm not very bad at these]
Poor understanding of abstract thought, metaphors, and symbolism
Peculiar clothing and food preferences
aspbergers
mild level of pedantic language... more anal than others, and like humor more than others, but not outside of normal
orderly things have appeal [oh hell yes]
INTP (introvert, intuition, thinking, perceiving) [oh hell yes]
high-functioning autism
intelligent, gifted, hard workers when interested in a task, though they can be extreme procrastinators when not, and excellent problem solvers
they may appear somewhat removed or disconnected at times, especially in situations of sensory overload, or extreme perceived social pressure such as a party
look into these more:
Pervasive developmental disorder"

---------

Those are your own words, about yourself, after all!

I also think you have somekind of 'obssessive-compulsive' disorder... but, then again, I'm no psychoanalyst/psychologist, so I don't judge based on professional experience or expertise. However, what I thought was extremely FUNNY, was you attempting to 'diagnose me' with mental difficulties, the POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK!

ROTLMAO! Yup... sorry, but it is VERY funny!

I say that, just on your behavior towards myself, which has been this weirdo pursuit of myself o

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[interiot]

If you're NOT bothered by facts? When then, did you remove the page about you 'diagnosing yourself' with ADD then??

Because it's personal information. I also don't usually want my social security number, bank account numbers and PINs, etc. posted on the internet, even though they're facts.

I didn't diagnose myself with ADD. Multiple doctors have. I wasn't completely convinced that ADD fully explained the sound- and touch-sensitivity issues I have, but a kindergarten teacher who's a friend and who deals with ADD kids constantly, reassured me that the medical diagnosis was accurate.

Why are you trying to tell me how to write, what makes you the 'authority' here on THAT note? Please - show me the PhD in English you have, ok? Show us ALL that!

1) I'm not an authority. Simple, basic, statistics are. I'll get you the histogram in a day or two, depending on how boring work is today. 2) I'd like to converse with you, but it's very difficult, especially when you embed the questions you actually want answered deep inside a mass of text. 3) You'll be able to converse with other posters much more effictively also.

More to the point, I'm a bit of a social outcast myself. I'm becoming less so over time. I've recognized a lot of un-useful quirks in my behavior that were easy to change, and helped me fit in with others much more. I see a few things in your posts that, if changed slightly, would make you fit in with other people much better. I promise you that part of my feelings are benevolent (but don't promise that I will always be benevolent on the whole, because annoyance sometimes takes over).

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh really? Ever consider that others feel the same??

"Because it's personal information. I also don't usually want my social security number, bank account numbers and PINs, etc. posted on the internet, even though they're facts." - by interiot (50685) on Monday September 26, @11:19AM

That you yourself actually spent money, & ran a "background check" on me???

Right here:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=162012&cid=136 24996

"Heck, I spent $35 on background checks on you. Can't believe I did that, but whatever." - by interiot (50685) on Thursday September 22, @05:31PM

I don't know if THAT's the truth, or not, OR how you could do THAT without my authorization... but I don't appreciate that either.

After all, the ADD stuff I mentioned:

Fact is - You're DEFINITELY mentally addled, this much you admitted to (albeit begrudgingly so, & then removed the page where you yourself in your BIO prove you have mental difficulties):

"It turns out it's just regular old ADD, though persisting into adulthood, and with an extra dose of touch-sensitivity and sound-sensitivity." - by interiot (50685) on Thursday September 22, @09:06PM

http://www.paperlined.org/bio/fucked_up.html [paperlined.org]

---------

"sort of like autism (antisocial, high IQ, some sensory sensitivities), though not nearly as severe as autism
doesn't like to look eye-to-eye with others
doesn't like to touch others
preoccupation with things
need a certain level of stimulation to function properly (though not nearly as bad as autism)
not any relatives to autism, except for sensory integration dysfunction or autistic spectrum
Visuospatial thinking preferred
These autistic traits may be beneficial for some disciplines like science, mathematics, engineering
though not these:
Poor use and understanding of nonverbal communication (i.e., facial expressions and body language) [as far as I can tell... I'm not very bad at these]
Poor understanding of abstract thought, metaphors, and symbolism
Peculiar clothing and food preferences
aspbergers
mild level of pedantic language... more anal than others, and like humor more than others, but not outside of normal
orderly things have appeal [oh hell yes]
INTP (introvert, intuition, thinking, perceiving) [oh hell yes]
high-functioning autism
intelligent, gifted, hard workers when interested in a task, though they can be extreme procrastinators when not, and excellent problem solvers
they may appear somewhat removed or disconnected at times, especially in situations of sensory overload, or extreme perceived social pressure such as a party
look into these more:
Pervasive developmental disorder"

---------

Those are your own words, about yourself, after all!

I also think you have somekind of 'obssessive-compulsive' disorder... but, then again, I'm no psychoanalyst/psychologist, so I don't judge based on professional experience or expertise. However, what I thought was extremely FUNNY, was you attempting to 'diagnose me' with mental difficulties, the POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK!

ROTLMAO! Yup... sorry, but it is VERY funny!

You wrote it & posted it up (then, removed it).

I know that in order to gain my current job however? I had to pass thru one of those, since I work for a financial organization in a position of responsibility (forensics job). That?

I am laughing about, hugely, once more... thanks for that laugh!

In fact, I had to get some folks fired on this job already... felt BAD about it @ first, but... they (like you) brought it on themselves - they were thieves, and breeding discord (finger-pointing started, etc.)

(Must not have returned how you like apparently, eh? Apparently nothing for you to retaliate with!)

* :)

APK

P.S.=> O

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[interiot]

Oh really? Ever consider that others feel the same??

You live with your parent(s). That's useful information for others to know.

I don't know if THAT's the truth, or not, OR how you could do THAT without my authorization... but I don't appreciate that either.

Of course it's the truth. I have no need to spin an increasingly bizarre alternate versions of reality. On this page, click on "view details", and you can see the various kinds of reports that anyone can buy. For the criminal background check, I ordered from someone else because they were cheaper.

I don't live with my parents, nor do I have any criminal background, so there's no need for you to spend money on that (though I do have two major vehicle accidents [1] [2]). My address isn't too hard to figure out, since I have various domains registered.

You're free to put any info about me up on your website, I suppose. But most people don't care about me. On the other hand, I have quite a few people stopping by my APK page, mostly by way of various Google searches.

In terms of your pot/kettle/black comment, yes, I agree that we're somewhat alike. As I said, that's most of the reason that I'm still talking to you and haven't grown completely bored yet.

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, no I don't "live with my parents" & haven't in ages, dude.

E.G. -> My mail is centralized to my father's home addresses, for good reason - it saves money & I don't own a home!

In fact, I travel all over the U.S.A. quite regularly, & I like it - it's like a paid vacation really!

(This makes sense rather than buying P.O. Boxes etc., Dollar$ & cent$ in fact, believe me, try it out yourself one day especially if you LIKE travel!).

I do, & I move A LOT, & have for years!

Work is why.

This makes as I said above?? Big time dollars & cents... lol, man, you don't contract for a living do you??? If you did, you might understand - you move quite a lot!

IN fact, in the last 3-10 years? Just to give you examples?? I've lived & worked in:

Mobile Alabama, Savannah Georgia, A brief tour/stint in Jacksonville Fla. (short job), Columbus Ohio, Buffalo NY (short job for a bank on Check21, consultation VB vs. Delphi), Dale Indiana (this was VERY beautiful imo), Long Island NY (Massapequa, &/or Syosset for most of 2003) & BEFORE that? Atlanta Ga. for many years (1995-1999 (nearly 2000))

It's been fun. Where to next? Not sure, wherever job market takes me! It's never too long between tasks, although 2002 scared me JUST a wee-bit!

Anyhow:

The point's not to put up facts about you, as you mention... I only make sure mine are accurate! They come from YOUR mouth & YOUR behavior in fact... like I said earlier:

I let YOU do YOU in... you defeat yourself.

Now, also: Why would I BOTHER spending on a 'background check' on you?

Heck boy - You did that yourself for me with all I needed to see with your own words, cited again in my P.S. below is all...

Bottom-line is, you are not right in the head man. Just a fact. One you gave me.

You put them up in your BIO section, I only saw them there after looking @ the lunacy you posted about ME on your page here:

http://paperlined.org/apps/slashdot/anonymous_APK

lol! Flaky stuff imo, & as I noted above? Way, way off about me on many accounts... some of which like saying I have narcissistic something or other, and you admitting your fruity in the brain with ADD?

Hell, that's funny man, it TRULY is!

"Dr. Arham Asylum" ought to be your nick here, lol, NOT "interiot"!

I mean, lol, your attempting to "diagnose me" is droll after all, you're the one with the mental hassles...

Also, again - care to show me your PhD in psychiatry &/or psychology?

Also, since you don't like my writing here & startup shit with me over it... how about that PhD in English too??

LOL! Hey, again: Instead of picking on my writing style, and commanding me or trying to on how to write (which the mods here often mod up etc. for interesting or informative)? DON'T LIKE WHAT I WRITE?? DON'T READ IT!

After all - The VERY FACTS ABOUT YOURSELF you put up on YOUR site no less?

WELL, as I noted & you removed now from your website, that proved to me, you (oddly enough) have the mental problems. Why pull the page down I wonder?

In your case, judging also by your behavior here, trying to tell me how to write etc.?

Pretty bad ones imo, because they're mental in nature man!

I can see why you think you can tell others how to write, you make massive mistakes for one, & cannot hold a train of thought properly... after all, from the descriptions of your symptoms?

I can see that happening! I tend to make longer postings, & according to YOU? They are "Too Long"...

Funny though: They often, when I post & don't get caught up with a nut like you attacking me here? Seem to get modded up quite a bit for "interesting & informative" rather than MERE "karma points" as you get.

Oh well... nuts abound!

APK

P.S.=> I just use your own words against you is all... you do yourself in, right here:

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[interiot]

Well, after your attempts to make up a lawyer, I don't know whether to believe you that you have a job. But it would be interesting to know if your job(s) are going well for you.

Re:Name 1 person you asked? Simple not who you exp

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know, that Jeremy Reimer (of you OSY site there @ pegasus3d.com no less) admitted to impersonating me on his website? Right here:

http://www.windowsitpro.com/articles/index.cfm?art icleid=41095&cpage=124

--------------

"Anyway the "APK" registered here is just an affectionate clone of the original. In fact I prefer him to the original." - Jeremy Reimer - March 25, 2005

--------------

That's right. See for yourself there, it's plain-jane quotes of his own words (my favorite tactic along with facts)...

Sad!

Read on, that part about him ONLY gets better as we go... This is so others can consider the source & all that... it's arstechnica/osy hilarity, @ its finest! I posted that earlier here anyhow, your ADD mental problems must have prohibited you from recalling it, right?

Well there tis again for your reference!

Plus, all that, in ADDition to his ISP busting him for email harassing me as well... he's touched! Remind YOU of anyone, hehe?

It's ALL there on that page url above anyways.

E.G. -> Some weird stuff, almost as bad as your 'secret admirer' internet weirdo psycho stalker profile you keep of ME on YOUR site... that's creepy stuff man, honestly! I hope you realize that... this from YOUR site, about me:

http://paperlined.org/apps/slashdot/anonymous_APK [paperlined.org]

lol! Flaky stuff imo, & as I noted above? Way, way off about me on many accounts!

Some of which like saying I have narcissistic something or other, and you admitting your fruity in the brain with ADD? Hell, that's funny man, it TRULY is!

Jeremy Reimer also wrote childish libellous songs about me, & more too (like edited photos etc.)... & the strange part, the really weird part??

The guy's 33 years of age - the "sheer maturity" of Arstechnica/OSY forums people, lol, eh?

Like I said, it's up there @ that URL!

Ah, anyhow:

Oh & Yea - My job's just fine. I like it! Forensics stuff, & data security etc. in nature MOSTLY...

PLUS, There is no "making up lawyers" in my world, not @ all. I keep one on retainer in fact, it's worth it just in case etc. & for GOOD reasons!

(This is because I enter into contracts & early on a decade or so ago? Well, I got burned once pretty bad, being told I would get one wage, & then being paid, lol (got suckered) minimum wage one time because my headhunter burnt me, I never signed off a contract with him (written one, all verbal)).

Shit like that, lol, (I can laugh about it now, my bad, it was 10 years back now)? Teaches you lessons!

I do have work though, pretty cool job (not coding as much as I would like to be doing) but more "forensics" in nature, & for a HUGE financial firm (which shall remain nameless, I don't give out that kind of info., not until job is done/thru etc. @ least). :)

* Risk mgt./Anonymity & all that... unlike your posting your personal weirdness about me here (which is WAY off base stuff... flaky actually, but coming from you, after I know now you do have mental issues & probably are on somekind of meds (are you?)) here in my P.S. below & the other paperlined.org url about me above... lol, Well, man... I dunno about you! Again - "Dr. Arkham Asylum" would be a GOOD nickname/handle for you imo, lol!

(Especially with YOUR trying to 'diagnose me' medically on your page url up there on your site, lol... that's CERTAINLY rich! Pot calling the kettle black? Oh, lol, hell yea, absolutely!)

I would like to see your PhD in Psychiatry &/or Psychology first though, might lend credence to your bottom-line @ that URL above about me on your site, lol!

* :)

(And, again - if you don't like what I write? Heck, again - ADD & all on your end, so I have to repea