That guess is highly accurate. I'm the only software engineer here, and all of the embedded work I've done in the past has been on OS-less targets. This time around, that simply isn't an option due to time constraints and peripheral connectivity issues. The only truly embedded OS I've personally used before is QNX. QNX is great, but way too expensive. In fact, VxWorks and pretty much all of the usual suspects just cost too much, and are overkill for what we need.
Based on cost, board support and driver availability, GUI development options, use in similar applications and V&V documentation, Linux is turning out to be the best choice.
All of my friends who've worked on embedded systems have done so in larger companies -- companies that can afford to staff people to sustain a Linux distribution. Here, "sustaining" can't mean hiring somebody to write and apply kernel patches. We're small now, and will continue to be small (on the software side) for years. "Sustaining" to us means finding a vendor that will provide adequate support for a frozen version of their OS for the next five years.
And that's my worry with Linux. Releases come often, and the vendor I'm looking at most closely has a "Current version plus the previous two" policy. If they release aggressively, that could mean our platform is obsolete in three years. Yes, we'll still have source code, but we'll have to hire somebody to maintain it.
As far as I can tell, there are no experts. There are only people who sell both consulting services and operating systems, and they quickly suggest hiring them to do all sorts of sustaining work. Other people that I've talked to chose an OS because of some specific make-or-break reason, and never revisited the choice.
I guess the ultimate question I have for the Slashdot universe is, "How long do you think an embedded Linux provider is going to stay in business and continue selling Linux-based services?"
I know the answer will probably be, "Forever because Linux is teh sexy", but I'm hoping that some grizzled veteran will tell me a war story about the true cost of software maintenance -- for any of the big embedded OS's.
I have a friend who works at Apple (I know, it's impossible to ever believe it when people claim things like this) and has beta-tested the iPod mini, shuffle and nano. Apple has an internal beta program in which employees take the products home, use them for at least several weeks, and collect bug/annoyance reports.
It's not entirely normal usage since these people have to hide the products as best they can, but it should have been enough to identify a problem with screen-scratching.
So while this problem and others may have slipped through, Apple does make an effort to do real-world testing on things.
I think another problem is that people refuse to change when they are accused of sending unclear e-mail. Insisting that people should be able to understand you won't help them actually understand you.
Compatibility, choice and quality are critically important to consumers and Harmony provides all of these to users of the iPod and over 70 other music devices including those from Creative, Rio, iRiver and others
Now that all products are being rolled into one, I'd like to suggest that any product with a screen and four input buttons be required to have Tetris on it. Phones, TV's, music players -- all of it. You could probably put Tetris on a chip (TOC) using the tiniest amount of space and power, and just roll it into everything. It should be as essential to chip design as a clock.
There have been countless times that I've been stuck somewhere for hours, had an electronic device with buttons and a screen, and could not play Tetris. So much boredom could have been avoided.
Columbia has great wireless access. Campus is small, so it's easier, but I'm hooked up basically everywhere on campus. Of course, once I cross the street I'm high and dry, and the law school uses MAC filtering. Ah well.
I chose the "grab the absolute latest release and build it myself" option, on my dual-usb iBook. I began the process at around 10:00am. It's still going.
Also, be sure to have XCode installed first.
And, for some reason it decided to build an X11 package, even though I installed Panther with X11, and XCode with the X11 SDK.
Anyway, don't do it if you need your computer for anything other than surfing for a day.
I have a pretty small blog that is mainly just random stuff. I have like 30 readers, all of whom are my friends. A few weeks ago, I got about 15 posts on a single entry. Each one was identical, and blatant porn spam. My site has low googlerank, and the only way people find it is by searches on fairly obscure words and phrases.
Anyway, I broke into mySQL to delete the comments, and then added an IP ban for the originating ISP's. MT-Blacklist seems like a much cooler idea. Thanks!
Offtopic: if you really enjoy This American Life, consider getting a subscription from Audible.com. Without listener support, TAL (and public radio in general) won't last.
And the sound quality is better than live recording would be, as well.
That suit was settled in January 2000, and Caldera -- now The SCO Group -- was paying up to $1,500 a month to store the documents. In October, the company persuaded U.S. District Judge Dee Benson to order their destruction.
I gather from that bit of the article that Caldera, now the SCO Group, has ordered the shredding to reduce expenses by $1500 per month.
Sure, the dollar amount will be low to negligable, but filing a claim will let the RIAA know that you felt cheated by their practices, and want retribution. If nobody files, then it'll pretty much be business as usual because the industry will see that consumers don't really care that much. If they get millions of claims, they will at least get the message that people are watching them. And future suits could be picked up more easily if lawyers see that there is a large, active class to sue on behalf of.
This is like voting. Everybody, please cast your vote against the RIAA!
You can assume all snowboard jackets are waterproof... Pants, on the other hand, seem to just soak it up.
I ride with my iPod in a zippered inner pocket, and it's been fine (despite many spills, yard sales, and track switches during snowstorms).
Generally, when you fall on a board, the areas that take the most force are your wrists, knees, butt or face. Your torso doesn't usually slam into the ground with much force.
IBM has a software based solution (unfortunately only available as a Windows DLL) that is very impressive. I evaluated it for a project, but it wound up costing too much. Still, you could try contacting their lab in Israel.
I doubt you will find an open source echo canceller, since acoustic echo cancellation is pretty difficult (and has generated many, many patents). Nearly everyone uses a different, proprietary algorithm.
If you want to make one yourself, set aside about 10 months.
Here's some math:
uncompressed 5.1 channels = 6 x 24 x 96000 = too big for USB
of course, their spec sheet says that dolby decoding is done on the card, so a real dolby signal would be sent over USB in compressed form. they also mention something about "dynamic bandwith allocation", and claim that their compression will support raw 5.1 channel sound parallel to an AC-3 stream.
the bad part of all this is that the advanced features of the audigy chip (channel effects, mixing) probably aren't being used. creative says "host based processing" for effects, mixing, and time synching. so, i'd expect some processor load if your game relies on some fancy EAX moves.
The scientists' goal is to create an engine that will operate at 10 percent efficiency -- that is, 10 times better than batteries operate.
uhh... i thought that batteries were more efficient than internal combustion, which is at least 25% (as far as i know). are they actually claiming that a battery operates at 1% efficiency? i could have sworn it was closer to 90%.
I don't really like the idea of the FBI being able to randomly decrypt any of my files, but your standard criminal isn't going to just walk into a police station and confess to their crimes.
In the old days, I'm sure big crime networks used codes to transfer sensitive information, and I bet police spent time trying to crack those codes or find an interpreter. This doesn't seem too different to me.
True, HQX is just an encoded file. However the article is true when it states that the new IE will AUTOMATICALLY launch an HQX'ed application after it gets unstuffed.
I went to the website set up by the author (http://pardeike.net/danger.hqx), and IE did indeed launch the application "danger".
Needless to say, that kind of behaviour is totally insane.
Slashdot Mirror
That guess is highly accurate. I'm the only software engineer here, and all of the embedded work I've done in the past has been on OS-less targets. This time around, that simply isn't an option due to time constraints and peripheral connectivity issues. The only truly embedded OS I've personally used before is QNX. QNX is great, but way too expensive. In fact, VxWorks and pretty much all of the usual suspects just cost too much, and are overkill for what we need.
Based on cost, board support and driver availability, GUI development options, use in similar applications and V&V documentation, Linux is turning out to be the best choice.
All of my friends who've worked on embedded systems have done so in larger companies -- companies that can afford to staff people to sustain a Linux distribution. Here, "sustaining" can't mean hiring somebody to write and apply kernel patches. We're small now, and will continue to be small (on the software side) for years. "Sustaining" to us means finding a vendor that will provide adequate support for a frozen version of their OS for the next five years.
And that's my worry with Linux. Releases come often, and the vendor I'm looking at most closely has a "Current version plus the previous two" policy. If they release aggressively, that could mean our platform is obsolete in three years. Yes, we'll still have source code, but we'll have to hire somebody to maintain it.
As far as I can tell, there are no experts. There are only people who sell both consulting services and operating systems, and they quickly suggest hiring them to do all sorts of sustaining work. Other people that I've talked to chose an OS because of some specific make-or-break reason, and never revisited the choice.
I guess the ultimate question I have for the Slashdot universe is, "How long do you think an embedded Linux provider is going to stay in business and continue selling Linux-based services?"
I know the answer will probably be, "Forever because Linux is teh sexy", but I'm hoping that some grizzled veteran will tell me a war story about the true cost of software maintenance -- for any of the big embedded OS's.
I have a friend who works at Apple (I know, it's impossible to ever believe it when people claim things like this) and has beta-tested the iPod mini, shuffle and nano. Apple has an internal beta program in which employees take the products home, use them for at least several weeks, and collect bug/annoyance reports.
It's not entirely normal usage since these people have to hide the products as best they can, but it should have been enough to identify a problem with screen-scratching.
So while this problem and others may have slipped through, Apple does make an effort to do real-world testing on things.
Actually, "Ivy League" was a term coined by a sports editor who didn't like the new sports league. It stuck, originally to the dismay of the schools.
I think another problem is that people refuse to change when they are accused of sending unclear e-mail. Insisting that people should be able to understand you won't help them actually understand you.
Too bad Harmony is only compatible with Windows.
Now that all products are being rolled into one, I'd like to suggest that any product with a screen and four input buttons be required to have Tetris on it. Phones, TV's, music players -- all of it. You could probably put Tetris on a chip (TOC) using the tiniest amount of space and power, and just roll it into everything. It should be as essential to chip design as a clock.
There have been countless times that I've been stuck somewhere for hours, had an electronic device with buttons and a screen, and could not play Tetris. So much boredom could have been avoided.
Columbia has great wireless access. Campus is small, so it's easier, but I'm hooked up basically everywhere on campus. Of course, once I cross the street I'm high and dry, and the law school uses MAC filtering. Ah well.
Who's Bill Joy?
I chose the "grab the absolute latest release and build it myself" option, on my dual-usb iBook. I began the process at around 10:00am. It's still going.
Also, be sure to have XCode installed first.
And, for some reason it decided to build an X11 package, even though I installed Panther with X11, and XCode with the X11 SDK.
Anyway, don't do it if you need your computer for anything other than surfing for a day.
I have a pretty small blog that is mainly just random stuff. I have like 30 readers, all of whom are my friends. A few weeks ago, I got about 15 posts on a single entry. Each one was identical, and blatant porn spam. My site has low googlerank, and the only way people find it is by searches on fairly obscure words and phrases.
Anyway, I broke into mySQL to delete the comments, and then added an IP ban for the originating ISP's. MT-Blacklist seems like a much cooler idea. Thanks!
Offtopic: if you really enjoy This American Life, consider getting a subscription from Audible.com. Without listener support, TAL (and public radio in general) won't last.
And the sound quality is better than live recording would be, as well.
I gather from that bit of the article that Caldera, now the SCO Group, has ordered the shredding to reduce expenses by $1500 per month.
Sure, the dollar amount will be low to negligable, but filing a claim will let the RIAA know that you felt cheated by their practices, and want retribution. If nobody files, then it'll pretty much be business as usual because the industry will see that consumers don't really care that much. If they get millions of claims, they will at least get the message that people are watching them. And future suits could be picked up more easily if lawyers see that there is a large, active class to sue on behalf of.
This is like voting. Everybody, please cast your vote against the RIAA!
You can assume all snowboard jackets are waterproof... Pants, on the other hand, seem to just soak it up.
I ride with my iPod in a zippered inner pocket, and it's been fine (despite many spills, yard sales, and track switches during snowstorms).
Generally, when you fall on a board, the areas that take the most force are your wrists, knees, butt or face. Your torso doesn't usually slam into the ground with much force.
I doubt you will find an open source echo canceller, since acoustic echo cancellation is pretty difficult (and has generated many, many patents). Nearly everyone uses a different, proprietary algorithm.
If you want to make one yourself, set aside about 10 months.
It's a million times better than, "We searched you because you're brown."
I think he probably means organic as in hydrocarbon, not as in seafood slurry.
But there's no mention on Google of any links between Sprint and McEwan, or Sprint and Fullerton.
Yup.
the card uses USB 1 (point something).
Here's some math:
uncompressed 5.1 channels = 6 x 24 x 96000 = too big for USB
of course, their spec sheet says that dolby decoding is done on the card, so a real dolby signal would be sent over USB in compressed form. they also mention something about "dynamic bandwith allocation", and claim that their compression will support raw 5.1 channel sound parallel to an AC-3 stream.
the bad part of all this is that the advanced features of the audigy chip (channel effects, mixing) probably aren't being used. creative says "host based processing" for effects, mixing, and time synching. so, i'd expect some processor load if your game relies on some fancy EAX moves.
The scientists' goal is to create an engine that will operate at 10 percent efficiency -- that is, 10 times better than batteries operate.
uhh... i thought that batteries were more efficient than internal combustion, which is at least 25% (as far as i know). are they actually claiming that a battery operates at 1% efficiency? i could have sworn it was closer to 90%.
anybody know differently?
I also am not a biologist, but as far as I know:
Just because something's made of DNA, it isn't necessarily a virus. Not any random string of protein can reconfigure a cell.
In the old days, I'm sure big crime networks used codes to transfer sensitive information, and I bet police spent time trying to crack those codes or find an interpreter. This doesn't seem too different to me.
But that's just me.
True, HQX is just an encoded file. However the article is true when it states that the new IE will AUTOMATICALLY launch an HQX'ed application after it gets unstuffed.
I went to the website set up by the author (http://pardeike.net/danger.hqx), and IE did indeed launch the application "danger".
Needless to say, that kind of behaviour is totally insane.