No, not in real. But if you read the article, you'd notice that this wasn't something that quite fit your palm (unless you have a huge hand). It was a PC104 board. There are at least XScale-400 boards that are a lot smaller, and probably less powerhungry, albeit not as powerfull.
1GB of storage seems a bit overkill, unless it is a separate disc (solid-state) for storing hi-res images taken of some "target".
I do not think XP+.NET is a good choise, why? To answer your points:
1) Device drivers - no, Windows might have great support for peripherals and devices. Unfortunatly the stuff used in UAVs isn't quite the same that you buy from your computershop. Communication hardware is not often what you use in HAM-radio, but small, light, efficient modules (for example those found on http://www.microhardcorp.com). The one thing you might benefit from, in a driver-way, is in the GPS hardware. All these things need to be A) power efficient, B) low weight.
2) This was about an autonomous vehicle, so compare apples to apples. Ofcourse there isn't help from the ground except perhaps during takeoff and landing, which is usualy found on UAVs.
3) This I might give you - I don't know.NET imageprocessing capabilities. On the other hand, I do not think it would be any more difficult at all in C. Asm would perhaps need more effort..
4) Again.. this is autonomous. I would like to argue that this particular design is quite much *less* robust because of the huge amount of "unnessery" code that is in XP and.NET. Any fatal program bug is in this case truly fatal, at least for the airframe when it comes down.
And yes, there is a lot of knowledge a team need to build one of these - airodynamics, electronics, mechanical engineering, software, to some degree artificial intelligence (desicion making) and more. On the other hand, not at all trying to downplay their efforts, this one doesn't quite yet seem to compete with those used for surviliance by the military.
And I think they wouldn't have used anything MS in the creation, with perhaps the exception on Flight Sim for testing, where it not funded by MS.
Despite of my perhaps a little bit negative post, I whole heartedly wish the team congratulations and a bow for their achievment - it's not an easy project.
I'm not sure if you can remove configuration tools totally from windows, but I know that all such, including "Settings" (or similar) folder entry in the menu can be removed in gnome.
A corporation will most likely make an own distribution (set of pakages), and if config-tools isn't desired, they will not be included.
I think FSF or EFF would need to have some deep-pocketed bodyguards to be able to enforce its patents and even more, after that being able to take a retaliation countersuit..
Oh, and I doubt MS (which seems to be the biggest threat) even would consider cross-lisencing if FSF or EFF would be in the other end.
I'd like to argue that opensource has one of the best chances of survivability against frivilous patents - commit logs from CVS etc.. What I mean is that opensource has a lot easier to prove prior art than most companies that has records that often aren't as accurate or trustworthy.
No offense, but you seem to miss a little bit of the point as well.. I agree that perhaps XUL should have to be accepted on a site-basis, *but* XUL was made so that you could make web-applications (that follow theme) and therefore a remote web-site needs to be able to execute XUL on the client machine, even without menubars.
MS is supposably bringing something much similar to XUL in Longhorn, XAML I think it was called (out of memory).
That acctually is a bad feature, because it make people making webpages think that is is ok not to make 100% correct pages.. Only to annoy people not using IE.. (Mozilla, Opera, ever growing cellular-phone market, etc.)
I don't know what is legacy OS in your opinion, but I know a lot of companies are using Windows 2000, and it isn't legacy. Even more, it is still _supported_ by MS which would mean that they violate their support promise if they don't release IE patches for it as well.
And when it comes to other legacy, like Win98 - I'd like to see you run your WinXP if you'd have a Pentium 233MHz.. (I don't, but I know people who do). This is the problem when the browser is tied to the OS.. FireFox can be updated no matter what OS or version (as long as it ran in the first place).
Either way---say what you will, but windows has always been more responsive on the desktop.
And Linux has been more responsive in the server-room. A server doesn't even need a desktop.
A desktop user like you might not care if your scheduler degrades after you have 800 processes running, but I can assure you people dealing with large server systems does. Windows is in large part more responsive on the desktop since it is in part intergrated into the kernel - the downside being that what would be a application crash can bring down the whole OS. Also you have less privilege separation. (windows desktop is "unsafe" area, but that is another story).
(What directX equivalent is there on Linux?)
OpenGL, SDL, OpenAL for starters. Guess what they all can do that DirectX can't?! Yepp, run on different systems and architectures, be it Linux, Windows or a Mac.
If Linux developers don't stop diddling around with something that was solved years ago, Linux will just go away.
Linux developer base is quite large and the developers like to "diddle" around to find the best/most effective solution, not the one that takes the least amount of time to make, like it often tends to be when deadlines are pushed in companies.
Linux doesn't even have a program that can do half of what programs like dreamweaver can do.
I admit that there is nothing quite like dreamweaver for Linux, but I'm convinced that Quanta can do more than half.:P Anyway, as Linux gets more acceptance, programs like Dreamweaver will eventually be ported.. what will you say then?
For the developer, what app is as integrated as Visual Studio? KDevelop? Pshaw.
Are there any development tools that is more restricted to one platform and project management than VS?
KDevelop and Anjuta might not be as integrated, but they can use CVS, SubVersion etc. and compile on Linux even for Windows (or the other way around). Oh, and they are free.
I'm not flaming you---but the article. Users don't give a shit about schedulers if there's no applications with them.
No, not at all:P You know, there are alot of people that acctually are interested in kernel-schedulers, allthough they do not tend to be your average desktop user. More over, one place where schedulers matter most, ie. in servers, there is absolutely no shortage of applications on Linux.. I'd more like to say there is a shortage of applications in this are for Windows, if anything.
Somehow I find this memo a bit in contradiction with MS as we know today. Let's see..
On growth and costs:.... Make no mistake -- we must grow our revenues to grow profits....
At some point I think a company, especially one that has saturated the computer market, cannot just grow profits. Especially at a time when an OS and Office-suite is starting to become a comodity.
On the need to innovate:... We are filing for over 2,000 patents a year for new technologies, and we see that number increasing.
As I remember history, the most innovative things that they have done has been some other companys innovation that got bought or copied. Besides, in my book and USPTO's poor job I don't see the number of patents necessary have to do anything with the number of innovations a company makes.
On Microsoft's share price:... the end of FY98. Our stock was around $25 then, as it is now, and we have more than doubled our operating profits since....
This in it self should be a sign that something is wrong with the market and that MS enjoys the benefits of control that comes with being a (illegal) monopoly.
On aiming products at various markets: "Our products must also be better segmented for different users with different needs.
This is perhaps the most contradicting of them all.. It would really be nice to see them offer something that isn't "one fits all" as they have done so far.
On perceptions of Microsoft: "We must also work to change a number of customer perceptions,
No, you need to work on your products and flaws of them - preceptions will change by themself as a result. Noone has made a huge PR-campaign about how secure for example Apache is - it is a preception that has come as a result of companies using it and finding it out for themselves. For the most part same goes with Linux and much other OSS.
On avoiding the trappings of size: "Nothing solves 'big company' ills quite like a strong focus on accountability for results with customers and shareholders.
So far I haven't seen them feel being accountable to anyone but shareholders. Last time I checked the EULA it explicitly says that they aren't accountable for anything (but bad media). And what comes to support - I have called MS support perhaps twice, both time hanging up and giving up (on the support) after waiting in line for 15+ min.. So much for support.
All in all, they have quite a lot they could do better, but not all of those thing will make expenses go down. In fact quite few will, at least in short term.
Even more, don't you find it interesting that the claim the worst problem is P2P networks, while the "worst" areas/countries is those that has the least internet availability? Just doesn't sum up to me..
of the core routers on the internet would have to have an entry for each and every discreet IP address on the internet... 4 Billion+ addresses, lets say 16 bytes each, that's 64 GIGAbytes of RAM, just for the routing table!
Naaw, that's nothing... Just wait until we have IPv6:P
Some things just feel natural.. Finland for example is a totally metric-based land, still on water we use nautical miles (~1.8km) and knots as speed. Funny, but feels "right" when you are used to it.
Congrats on the quality flamage, but you're lost on my point and yours. Mine was that OSS rarely creates anything original, but merely plays catch up to the efforts of others. I don't particularly care about neither your want nor need to use any particulat product as the point was already made.
While I agree that much of OSS is playing catchup, there is a reason - you have to start somewhere, and until you have surpassed the competitor, you are playing catchup. This however by no means means all OSS software does this, there are quite much original too.
As to your comments on Word and how it works, Word may be retarded in many regards, but guess what in all professional settings you need to use it or effortlessly interoperate with it.
So, are you even willing to go so far as to say that Word might not be the best, but that we are in a fileformat lockin situation? What happends if MS decides to discontinue Word on Mac (which was an issue not so long ago (if memory serves right), allthough it din't happend)? Would this make Mac inferior to Windows?
Lastly, every day there seems to be more and more OSS software that works also on Windows (and Mac). Gaim, Gimp, Php, Apache, OpenOffice and more.. I am still convinced that OSS is more cross-platform comaptible in comparsion to comercialy developed software, in large part due to development cost versus income being a non-issue for OSS.
So from paragraph 1, it seems as though the applicant (the one wishing to do a raid, for example) will need to demonstrate to "competent judicial authorities" that there is a clear and present danger of evidence being destroyed.
Competent - like the people at USPTO should be? Still we see all these ridiculous patents.
Additionally, as per paragraphs 2 and 4, applicants will also need to provide assurance that, in the event the defendent is found not to be infringing, compensation for injury caused by whatever actions taken is provided.
I have a problem with this, what happens when you have a company that is like SCO - they won't be in buissness anymore when the "compensation for injury" part kicks in?
You know what I would like to see... is that Microsoft just pull all copies out of all of Europe and then let Europe experience the horror of trying to use Linux.
Me too! There would be an initial but after would follow the first time of real competition and an environment where vendors (there are alternatives to windows *and* linux) would have to compete with quality and price.
Sure Linux is good for us nerds, but lets see how much of an uprise there is when the internet market in Europe takes a dive because the mom and pop shops can no longer use the ineternet to place orders and mom and dad can no longer buy their goods off line because they can't figure out how to launch the internet browser.
Seems it is a long time since you have tried linux (or have you ever)?
You guys all have Microsoft to thanks for the advancement of the internet on the masses and if you think anything else you are crazy and blind. The internet would still be something that is used in the back of corporations down in the basement if it wasn't for Microsoft giving everybody a PC that they could easily use.
I think we have Mosaic (former) and Netscape (later) to thank, when everything started on Windows, OS/2 and Solaris. IE wasn't an usable product until version 4. Likewise, when the competition to MS from Netscape was won, so did the development of IE also slow down.
Btw - I never ever heard that MS gave anything away for free (unless it strengthen their lockin).
Slashdot Mirror
No, not in real. But if you read the article, you'd notice that this wasn't something that quite fit your palm (unless you have a huge hand). It was a PC104 board. There are at least XScale-400 boards that are a lot smaller, and probably less powerhungry, albeit not as powerfull.
1GB of storage seems a bit overkill, unless it is a separate disc (solid-state) for storing hi-res images taken of some "target".
You do not *need* XP to write complex code..
.NET imageprocessing capabilities. On the other hand, I do not think it would be any more difficult at all in C. Asm would perhaps need more effort..
.NET. Any fatal program bug is in this case truly fatal, at least for the airframe when it comes down.
I do not think XP+.NET is a good choise, why?
To answer your points:
1) Device drivers - no, Windows might have great support for peripherals and devices. Unfortunatly the stuff used in UAVs isn't quite the same that you buy from your computershop. Communication hardware is not often what you use in HAM-radio, but small, light, efficient modules (for example those found on http://www.microhardcorp.com). The one thing you might benefit from, in a driver-way, is in the GPS hardware.
All these things need to be A) power efficient, B) low weight.
2) This was about an autonomous vehicle, so compare apples to apples. Ofcourse there isn't help from the ground except perhaps during takeoff and landing, which is usualy found on UAVs.
3) This I might give you - I don't know
4) Again.. this is autonomous. I would like to argue that this particular design is quite much *less* robust because of the huge amount of "unnessery" code that is in XP and
And yes, there is a lot of knowledge a team need to build one of these - airodynamics, electronics, mechanical engineering, software, to some degree artificial intelligence (desicion making) and more. On the other hand, not at all trying to downplay their efforts, this one doesn't quite yet seem to compete with those used for surviliance by the military.
And I think they wouldn't have used anything MS in the creation, with perhaps the exception on Flight Sim for testing, where it not funded by MS.
Despite of my perhaps a little bit negative post, I whole heartedly wish the team congratulations and a bow for their achievment - it's not an easy project.
but personally I would have used something a little bit more realtime that uses somewhat less power.
For those interested in UAVs, there is a lil' specs library/gallery of them at http://www.uavforum.com
Noticed after I submitted than the link was missing, and posted again the link.. sorry
I'm not sure if you can remove configuration tools totally from windows, but I know that all such, including "Settings" (or similar) folder entry in the menu can be removed in gnome.
A corporation will most likely make an own distribution (set of pakages), and if config-tools isn't desired, they will not be included.
It would stop anyone from suing them, even if they contracted it out.. That's (one of) the bad thing with patents.
Someone pointed this link out a few days ago, but I have to put it here again..
Here is what Stallman said about just this little guy vs. Big Corp in his seminar.
I suggest you read it and see if you still is of the same opinion.
I think FSF or EFF would need to have some deep-pocketed bodyguards to be able to enforce its patents and even more, after that being able to take a retaliation countersuit..
Oh, and I doubt MS (which seems to be the biggest threat) even would consider cross-lisencing if FSF or EFF would be in the other end.
I'd like to argue that opensource has one of the best chances of survivability against frivilous patents - commit logs from CVS etc..
What I mean is that opensource has a lot easier to prove prior art than most companies that has records that often aren't as accurate or trustworthy.
No offense, but you seem to miss a little bit of the point as well.. I agree that perhaps XUL should have to be accepted on a site-basis, *but* XUL was made so that you could make web-applications (that follow theme) and therefore a remote web-site needs to be able to execute XUL on the client machine, even without menubars.
MS is supposably bringing something much similar to XUL in Longhorn, XAML I think it was called (out of memory).
That acctually is a bad feature, because it make people making webpages think that is is ok not to make 100% correct pages.. Only to annoy people not using IE.. (Mozilla, Opera, ever growing cellular-phone market, etc.)
Funny how many mention the clone "feature" missing.. It is absolutely the single most annoying "feature" in IE in my opinion.
I don't know what is legacy OS in your opinion, but I know a lot of companies are using Windows 2000, and it isn't legacy. Even more, it is still _supported_ by MS which would mean that they violate their support promise if they don't release IE patches for it as well.
And when it comes to other legacy, like Win98 - I'd like to see you run your WinXP if you'd have a Pentium 233MHz.. (I don't, but I know people who do). This is the problem when the browser is tied to the OS.. FireFox can be updated no matter what OS or version (as long as it ran in the first place).
And Linux has been more responsive in the server-room. A server doesn't even need a desktop.
(What directX equivalent is there on Linux?)A desktop user like you might not care if your scheduler degrades after you have 800 processes running, but I can assure you people dealing with large server systems does.
Windows is in large part more responsive on the desktop since it is in part intergrated into the kernel - the downside being that what would be a application crash can bring down the whole OS. Also you have less privilege separation. (windows desktop is "unsafe" area, but that is another story).
OpenGL, SDL, OpenAL for starters. Guess what they all can do that DirectX can't?! Yepp, run on different systems and architectures, be it Linux, Windows or a Mac.
If Linux developers don't stop diddling around with something that was solved years ago, Linux will just go away.Linux developer base is quite large and the developers like to "diddle" around to find the best/most effective solution, not the one that takes the least amount of time to make, like it often tends to be when deadlines are pushed in companies.
Linux doesn't even have a program that can do half of what programs like dreamweaver can do.I admit that there is nothing quite like dreamweaver for Linux, but I'm convinced that Quanta can do more than half. :P Anyway, as Linux gets more acceptance, programs like Dreamweaver will eventually be ported.. what will you say then?
For the developer, what app is as integrated as Visual Studio? KDevelop? Pshaw.Are there any development tools that is more restricted to one platform and project management than VS?
I'm not flaming you---but the article. Users don't give a shit about schedulers if there's no applications with them.KDevelop and Anjuta might not be as integrated, but they can use CVS, SubVersion etc. and compile on Linux even for Windows (or the other way around). Oh, and they are free.
No, not at all :P
You know, there are alot of people that acctually are interested in kernel-schedulers, allthough they do not tend to be your average desktop user.
More over, one place where schedulers matter most, ie. in servers, there is absolutely no shortage of applications on Linux.. I'd more like to say there is a shortage of applications in this are for Windows, if anything.
At some point I think a company, especially one that has saturated the computer market, cannot just grow profits. Especially at a time when an OS and Office-suite is starting to become a comodity.
On the need to innovate:As I remember history, the most innovative things that they have done has been some other companys innovation that got bought or copied. Besides, in my book and USPTO's poor job I don't see the number of patents necessary have to do anything with the number of innovations a company makes.
On Microsoft's share price:This in it self should be a sign that something is wrong with the market and that MS enjoys the benefits of control that comes with being a (illegal) monopoly.
On aiming products at various markets: "Our products must also be better segmented for different users with different needs.This is perhaps the most contradicting of them all.. It would really be nice to see them offer something that isn't "one fits all" as they have done so far.
On perceptions of Microsoft: "We must also work to change a number of customer perceptions,No, you need to work on your products and flaws of them - preceptions will change by themself as a result. Noone has made a huge PR-campaign about how secure for example Apache is - it is a preception that has come as a result of companies using it and finding it out for themselves. For the most part same goes with Linux and much other OSS.
On avoiding the trappings of size: "Nothing solves 'big company' ills quite like a strong focus on accountability for results with customers and shareholders.So far I haven't seen them feel being accountable to anyone but shareholders. Last time I checked the EULA it explicitly says that they aren't accountable for anything (but bad media). And what comes to support - I have called MS support perhaps twice, both time hanging up and giving up (on the support) after waiting in line for 15+ min.. So much for support.
All in all, they have quite a lot they could do better, but not all of those thing will make expenses go down. In fact quite few will, at least in short term.
Just myEven more, don't you find it interesting that the claim the worst problem is P2P networks, while the "worst" areas/countries is those that has the least internet availability? Just doesn't sum up to me..
Naaw, that's nothing... Just wait until we have IPv6 :P
If you look closly at the picture of the nVidia cards, you'll notice that they are double-high - ie. eating a total of 4 card-slots.
Notice any similarities between:
domain: windowsfordevices.com
organization: DeviceForge LLC
and
domain: linuxdevices.com
organization: Device Forge LLC
?
windowsfordevices.com has nothing to do with MS - it's just a communitysite like linuxdevices or sourceforge.
Some things just feel natural..
Finland for example is a totally metric-based land, still on water we use nautical miles (~1.8km) and knots as speed. Funny, but feels "right" when you are used to it.
At the webfirm I'm on most of designers use Dreamweaver, and later clean the html by hand.
As browser most use FireFox together with the excellent Webdev extension.
While I agree that much of OSS is playing catchup, there is a reason - you have to start somewhere, and until you have surpassed the competitor, you are playing catchup. This however by no means means all OSS software does this, there are quite much original too.
So, are you even willing to go so far as to say that Word might not be the best, but that we are in a fileformat lockin situation? What happends if MS decides to discontinue Word on Mac (which was an issue not so long ago (if memory serves right), allthough it din't happend)? Would this make Mac inferior to Windows?
Lastly, every day there seems to be more and more OSS software that works also on Windows (and Mac). Gaim, Gimp, Php, Apache, OpenOffice and more.. I am still convinced that OSS is more cross-platform comaptible in comparsion to comercialy developed software, in large part due to development cost versus income being a non-issue for OSS.
Competent - like the people at USPTO should be? Still we see all these ridiculous patents.
I have a problem with this, what happens when you have a company that is like SCO - they won't be in buissness anymore when the "compensation for injury" part kicks in?
There would be an initial bump .... was what I meant, sorry.
Me too! There would be an initial but after would follow the first time of real competition and an environment where vendors (there are alternatives to windows *and* linux) would have to compete with quality and price.
Sure Linux is good for us nerds, but lets see how much of an uprise there is when the internet market in Europe takes a dive because the mom and pop shops can no longer use the ineternet to place orders and mom and dad can no longer buy their goods off line because they can't figure out how to launch the internet browser.Seems it is a long time since you have tried linux (or have you ever)?
You guys all have Microsoft to thanks for the advancement of the internet on the masses and if you think anything else you are crazy and blind. The internet would still be something that is used in the back of corporations down in the basement if it wasn't for Microsoft giving everybody a PC that they could easily use.I think we have Mosaic (former) and Netscape (later) to thank, when everything started on Windows, OS/2 and Solaris. IE wasn't an usable product until version 4. Likewise, when the competition to MS from Netscape was won, so did the development of IE also slow down.
Btw - I never ever heard that MS gave anything away for free (unless it strengthen their lockin).