You can find cheap PICKit 2 on EBay. You can also find cheap AVR programmers, JTAG interfaces and you may even find cheap (E)EPROM/PAL/GAL/PIC/AVR/8X51 programmers like the TL866 which is supported both under Windows and (using a 3rd party project) under Linux.
You can buy PICKit 2 + TL866 + AVR programmer + JTAG for less than 200$ and it'll open you a very vast choice of devices... more than needed for an hobbyist.
On the other hand, if you want to work with FPGA, you'll be toast with your mac as Xilinx and Altera both support Linux and Windows but no Mac...
Linux UI is not that poor... don't mix Linux and the apps... I'm quite sure that The Gimp on your Mac will give you the same time loss than The Gimp on Linux... it's not Linux' fault but the Gimp's fault.
For coding tasks, Linux is on par (or sometimes superior) to the other OS... Netbeans, Eclipse, Microchip's MPLABX and even Arduino are all supported on Linux...
For electronics (and this article is about electronics after all), you've Eagle (one of the leader in PCB design), FPGA tools (see above, not available under Mac), SPICE simulation,...
And Linux is very ressource-efficient and work on pretty much any hardware... I don't think that the same can be said of MaxOSX...
Bipolar transistors and FET works on very different principles. For example, the input capacitance of a FET is much higher which can bring some problems in "high frequency" (sometimes, not so high) designs.
FET are also more sensitive components (Vgb can get quite high due to static electricity and lead to component destruction) and may need special driver circuits (for example to make the switch faster).
And, don't forget that more and more of "today's" components are SMD only... which makes using them on a breadboard, a perfboard or a stripboard either difficult or impossible.
It's Slashdot so let's pretend that no one here plays World of Warcraft (update done using Bittorrent protocol) or any other big game using that protocol for update distribution...
And let's pretend that no one here uses Linux which uses Bittorrent to distribute the ISO as it allows both faster transferts and less charge on the distribution's servers.
Many people use bittorrent for legal purposes... but sometimes, they don't even know that they are using it !!!
Given the FTDI debacle, I think that their claim is correct. If you buy some chinese "arduino" using a fake FTDI and it gets bricked by the FTDI driver, Arduino don't want people turning against him saying "look, your boards don't work".
You may call it Induino (as some Chinese clones do), you may say it's Arduino compatible, the only restriction is that you may not say it's an Arduino unless aproved by Arduino project... seems quite fair to me...
You should care because what made Arduino's success is it's software and numerous libraries, work of a whole community that is being stolen by Arduino.org/Arduino SRL.
Arduino SRL don't have much community support so you will probably only see real improvements on Arduino.cc/Arduino LLC side...
As a matter of fact, when you look at both github projects, you will see the respective commits : Arduino.org - new firmware for Yùn - rebranding (removing of references to Arduino.cc
that's nearly all changes
Arduino.cc - new "plugin" system to add boards easily... Think of these Digispark, ESP8266, Galileo, Edison,... which until now required special builds of Arduino IDE - many bugfixes (including regression from 1.5.3, still not fixed in arduino.org's IDE) - beter support for using old code in new IDE...
In other words, in the long term, Arduino.org will be the loser... Even if they "win" at court, arduino.cc will only have to change it's name and people will follow... You can't expect any good community support for Arduino.org product... And if you're using Arduino instead of bare-bone Atmel AVR, it's because of the software (and the numerous libraries and other), not because Arduino is "superior"...
If you go to Arduino.cc on archive.org, you may find early boards which bear the name Arduino but - don't bear Martino's name (the guy behind Smartprojects SRL which since renamed to Arduino SRL and opened arduino.org) - bear the name of two other founders which are behind arduino.cc (which exists since the beginning) and Arduino.LLC - bear the name Arduino which proves that the name Arduino was used before involvment of Smart Projects
So, I think the case is pretty clear : Smart Project is hijacking the name Arduino in bad faith, trying to steal the work of a whole community for his own profit. The fact that it acted so when Arduino.cc was beginning to allow other companies to build arduino boards (for example for US Market) give a clear motivation for doing so...
Everytime I read about this non-sense about Android, I think about Apple.
- No competitng app store possible - App competing with Apple removed from Apple App Store without any explanation - iTunes locks similar to Google Account but made worse by supra - Inability to install 3rd party firmware (cyanogen or other)...
There is no way you could remember a 4096 bits RSA key... Anyone in court will agree If the files are encrypted using someone else's private key, there is no way that you can know or have that key... you only have the public key available. This could also be easily established in a court... You can't give out something that you never had access to in the first place... The only more "sensible" part is about your private key that you didn't take with you... Even then, if they don't require you explicitely to have that key on your computer, they can't require that you hand it to you...
The one time pad idea is clearly an attempt to fold the system. You had to take the extra steps of generate it, split it in two parts,... This is far more likely to send you to jail than not taking with you the USB-key on which your private key is stored...
You want to bring some document to someone IN NZ, ask him to send you his PUBLIC key. You want to be able to bring some document OUT OF NZ, keep your PUBLIC key on your computer.
And have NO PRIVATE KEY with you...
When asked to decrypt, you're just mathematically unable to do so... And any computer expert will be able to confirm what you say.
If enough people take that way, they'll eventually understand that it's futile to require password.
Except that this driver which disables the clones is only there for less than one month... before you had no way of detecting if the chip was a fake or not... Maybe even FTDI didn't know until recently when they found out that "write-check" weakness...
So, you may have been in business for years, sold hundred of thousand devices with the clone with no way to detect it... until this recent driver update...
You should say to the buyer of a 1000$+ 3D Printer that if it's expensive tool stops to work, it's because a 2$ clone of a 3$ chip disabled by a driver update...
Do you open your printer and check the marking on all chips to see if any of them is a counterfeit ?
Don't forget that we are not speaking about a finished product (the 3D printer *IS* genuine) but a very small part inside of it... among many other similar small parts...
And no company is safe when it's about counterfeited components... Do you remind the Capacitor debacle with ASUS motherboards ?
I'm not even sure that refusing to work with a clone would be a valid solution...
Their use of FTDI VID/PID is a way of saying "use the same driver than this device" and definitively not representing as an FTDI chip.
On the other way, many of these clones have printings that mimic the one of a genuine FTDI chip (same logo/reference number/...) and THAT is counterfeiting.
But they are free to make a clone, with a different printing, a different reference ("XXCloner CFT232R" for example) exposing the same VID/PID... they won't be authorized to use the USB certified logo (neither would the finished product). But if they are not pretending to be a FT232R from FTDI, it's definitively not counterfeilting.
VID/PID spoofing can't even be said as a way to breach copyright at the driver level as there are free drivers (Linux for example) that use the same VID/PID pair.
You may compare that VID/PID problem with Ethernet addresses... the first 3 bytes make a number assigned to a specific manufacturer. But lmots of hardware allow to change the ethernet address using another vendor number. It's very often seen in routers and Wifi-routers where it allows to show on the WAN port the Ethernet address of some LAN computer.
Except that in their driver, they intentionally wrote the code to brick the clones. It's not accidental but intentional and, AFAIK, THAT makes a huge difference in court.
It's the difference between accidental injuries and murder.
Someone bought a device for their kid... that may be a complete device (toy for example) or one of these wonderful Arduino kits that you may find on EBay (with lots of sensors, components,... a nice storage box,...) That don't mean that he does know anything about electronics... My grand-father bought me my Tandy (Radio-Shack) Electronic kit when I was a boy and he didn't know anything about electronics (only basic electric circuits : mains -> switch -> light bulb).
And YOU (or FTDI) expect that he'll understand that if it stops working, it's because of a clone IC when he don't even know what is the difference between a resistor and a capacitor ?
Someone other bought a 800$ 3D printer... and suddently, it stops working because a 3$ chip inside is not a genuine one... And YOU expect that he'll be able to understand the issue and that he won't be angry at YOU for bricking his 800$ tool ???
The damage done to the clone is made intentionnally (doing something knowing that it'll hurt a clone and not affect an official IC is clearly intentionnal)... And the damage is not done to the vendor but to the consumer...
The move is clearly made with the intent to hurt the final (unknowing) consumer and not someone really responsible for the use of a clone. What is destroyed is not only one component but the whole thing it is enclosed into... And given the form factor, it's often beyond possible repair. Most people don't even have a soldering Iron, you except that they have a reflow oven to solder a new SMD part ?
What if Samsung (or Motorola) got a way to disable all radio subsystems in iPhones because iPhone non compliance with their mobile patent portfolio, making suddently all iPhone unable to connect to mobile network ?
Nothing prevents you to use 3rd party encryption on your Android phone (and I'm not speaking about 3rd party system)... and I seriously doubt that Google will be able to do anything about data crypted by 3rd party system.
On Android, you work on a system of service provider/consumer. Your contact list ? you've an application acting as contact provider and other as contact consumer (reader/writers).... If you want to protect them, nothing prevents you to use a different default contact provider which uses an encrypted container. Same for most of the phone features...
On iPhone, you can only trust Apple's word... like we did when it was about geolocation data...
The linked article cite the following patents : - Auto-correction/completion on keyboard entry... Il looks quite similar to the autocompletion that you find in some Japanese IME under Linux... which sometimes allow both conversion to kanjis and completion. Auto-correction is quite old on the wordprocessor scene - transformation of email & phone numbers to link AFAIK, most forums and webmails already convert email to link for a long long time. As for Phone number, the extension is quite trivial - slide to unlock it's mimicking a physical (door) lock... so nothing real new...
Maybe judge Koh has enough of these bogus patents claims and other similar tactics from Apple...
In Belgium, you have a "certificate of good living and behaving" (approximate translation) that can be requested when you want to get a job.
Teachers (and other people who have to work with children) have to give a special version of that document. At first, it included some (very) invasive background checks (in the neighbourhood for example), now, it has been trimmed down... But if you've been a sex offender (or some other severe criminal records) in the past, you won't get it, even if you've had your records cleaned.
In about any countries, if you want some "top secret" accreditation, I don't think that it matters if your criminal records have been purged or the time has been served...
In these specific situation, there are no right to be forgotten...
Another problem may arise when the offender is minor (less than 18 years)... All records are hidden... I know of some school director (he explained this to me directly, it's not some vague rumor) who got a child put in his school by a court... He didn't know why (records sealed because it was a minor)... Until that guy did it again, in his new school... He was assaulting (sexually) younger children !!! But no way for the school to prevent it as they weren't allowe'd to know in the first place.
So, I think that for criminal offenses, there should NOT be a right to be forgotten... Minor offenses don't make it to the news anyway... Same for bad records related to the profession.
Not regular army but a terrorism/guerilla kind of army...
If you count the prices of the missiles launched at Israel, you'd have enough to get food to most of the Palestinians, to repair most of the buildings, to create medic centers, schools,...
And they prefer to create martyrs than go to a safe place when Israelian raids come... They want to get the whole world destroying Israel... They want to use US against Israel...
They prefer to choose war, to kill the Jews that are thought about as worse than dogs by the Muslims. Quran and other clearly say "you may not trust a non-muslim"... If you're Christian, better be warned, we are the next target on the list... well, maybe after agnostics...
Slashdot Mirror
You can find cheap PICKit 2 on EBay. You can also find cheap AVR programmers, JTAG interfaces and you may even find cheap (E)EPROM/PAL/GAL/PIC/AVR/8X51 programmers like the TL866 which is supported both under Windows and (using a 3rd party project) under Linux.
You can buy PICKit 2 + TL866 + AVR programmer + JTAG for less than 200$ and it'll open you a very vast choice of devices... more than needed for an hobbyist.
On the other hand, if you want to work with FPGA, you'll be toast with your mac as Xilinx and Altera both support Linux and Windows but no Mac...
Linux UI is not that poor... don't mix Linux and the apps... I'm quite sure that The Gimp on your Mac will give you the same time loss than The Gimp on Linux... it's not Linux' fault but the Gimp's fault.
For coding tasks, Linux is on par (or sometimes superior) to the other OS... Netbeans, Eclipse, Microchip's MPLABX and even Arduino are all supported on Linux...
For electronics (and this article is about electronics after all), you've Eagle (one of the leader in PCB design), FPGA tools (see above, not available under Mac), SPICE simulation, ...
And Linux is very ressource-efficient and work on pretty much any hardware... I don't think that the same can be said of MaxOSX...
Bipolar transistors and FET works on very different principles. For example, the input capacitance of a FET is much higher which can bring some problems in "high frequency" (sometimes, not so high) designs.
FET are also more sensitive components (Vgb can get quite high due to static electricity and lead to component destruction) and may need special driver circuits (for example to make the switch faster).
And, don't forget that more and more of "today's" components are SMD only... which makes using them on a breadboard, a perfboard or a stripboard either difficult or impossible.
What about some high pressure cleaner ? More pressure and can sustain water stream much longer...
It's Slashdot so let's pretend that no one here plays World of Warcraft (update done using Bittorrent protocol) or any other big game using that protocol for update distribution...
And let's pretend that no one here uses Linux which uses Bittorrent to distribute the ISO as it allows both faster transferts and less charge on the distribution's servers.
Many people use bittorrent for legal purposes... but sometimes, they don't even know that they are using it !!!
They didn't get rid of it...
The Yùn has that awful pinout, the Yùn mini don't
But Uno has that awful pinout, Micro and Nano don't...
Yùn mini is nothing new, it's a Yùn made breadboard friendly like the Nano is a Uno breadboard friendly.
Given the FTDI debacle, I think that their claim is correct. If you buy some chinese "arduino" using a fake FTDI and it gets bricked by the FTDI driver, Arduino don't want people turning against him saying "look, your boards don't work".
You may call it Induino (as some Chinese clones do), you may say it's Arduino compatible, the only restriction is that you may not say it's an Arduino unless aproved by Arduino project... seems quite fair to me...
It looks like it won't stay "sold out" for too long : Adafruit has agreed to a partnership to produce the Arduino boards in US.
You should care because what made Arduino's success is it's software and numerous libraries, work of a whole community that is being stolen by Arduino.org/Arduino SRL.
Arduino SRL don't have much community support so you will probably only see real improvements on Arduino.cc/Arduino LLC side...
As a matter of fact, when you look at both github projects, you will see the respective commits :
Arduino.org
- new firmware for Yùn
- rebranding (removing of references to Arduino.cc
that's nearly all changes
Arduino.cc ... which until now required special builds of Arduino IDE ...
- new "plugin" system to add boards easily... Think of these Digispark, ESP8266, Galileo, Edison,
- many bugfixes (including regression from 1.5.3, still not fixed in arduino.org's IDE)
- beter support for using old code in new IDE
In other words, in the long term, Arduino.org will be the loser... Even if they "win" at court, arduino.cc will only have to change it's name and people will follow... You can't expect any good community support for Arduino.org product... And if you're using Arduino instead of bare-bone Atmel AVR, it's because of the software (and the numerous libraries and other), not because Arduino is "superior"...
If you go to Arduino.cc on archive.org, you may find early boards which bear the name Arduino but
- don't bear Martino's name (the guy behind Smartprojects SRL which since renamed to Arduino SRL and opened arduino.org)
- bear the name of two other founders which are behind arduino.cc (which exists since the beginning) and Arduino.LLC
- bear the name Arduino which proves that the name Arduino was used before involvment of Smart Projects
So, I think the case is pretty clear : Smart Project is hijacking the name Arduino in bad faith, trying to steal the work of a whole community for his own profit. The fact that it acted so when Arduino.cc was beginning to allow other companies to build arduino boards (for example for US Market) give a clear motivation for doing so...
Their secret knock (knock pause knock pause knock knock knock) is very likely to be the main rythme of some song...
As such, it can be seen as a copyright violation of that song... And phi sigma sigma could be liable for damage to that song author...
So, they try to get that hidden as fast as possible before some musician recognize his own property.
Except that Apple pushed Nokia in Panic then Google pushed Apple aside...
Everytime I read about this non-sense about Android, I think about Apple.
- No competitng app store possible ...
- App competing with Apple removed from Apple App Store without any explanation
- iTunes locks similar to Google Account but made worse by supra
- Inability to install 3rd party firmware (cyanogen or other)
Why don't EU first attack the worst offender ?
There is no way you could remember a 4096 bits RSA key... Anyone in court will agree
If the files are encrypted using someone else's private key, there is no way that you can know or have that key... you only have the public key available. This could also be easily established in a court... You can't give out something that you never had access to in the first place...
The only more "sensible" part is about your private key that you didn't take with you... Even then, if they don't require you explicitely to have that key on your computer, they can't require that you hand it to you...
The one time pad idea is clearly an attempt to fold the system. You had to take the extra steps of generate it, split it in two parts, ... This is far more likely to send you to jail than not taking with you the USB-key on which your private key is stored...
You want to bring some document to someone IN NZ, ask him to send you his PUBLIC key.
You want to be able to bring some document OUT OF NZ, keep your PUBLIC key on your computer.
And have NO PRIVATE KEY with you...
When asked to decrypt, you're just mathematically unable to do so... And any computer expert will be able to confirm what you say.
If enough people take that way, they'll eventually understand that it's futile to require password.
The kind of guns used by these terrorists is ALREADY banned... that didn't prevent them from having such guns.
Except that this driver which disables the clones is only there for less than one month... before you had no way of detecting if the chip was a fake or not... Maybe even FTDI didn't know until recently when they found out that "write-check" weakness...
So, you may have been in business for years, sold hundred of thousand devices with the clone with no way to detect it... until this recent driver update...
You should say to the buyer of a 1000$+ 3D Printer that if it's expensive tool stops to work, it's because a 2$ clone of a 3$ chip disabled by a driver update...
Do you open your printer and check the marking on all chips to see if any of them is a counterfeit ?
Don't forget that we are not speaking about a finished product (the 3D printer *IS* genuine) but a very small part inside of it... among many other similar small parts...
And no company is safe when it's about counterfeited components... Do you remind the Capacitor debacle with ASUS motherboards ?
I'm not even sure that refusing to work with a clone would be a valid solution...
Their use of FTDI VID/PID is a way of saying "use the same driver than this device" and definitively not representing as an FTDI chip.
On the other way, many of these clones have printings that mimic the one of a genuine FTDI chip (same logo/reference number/...) and THAT is counterfeiting.
But they are free to make a clone, with a different printing, a different reference ("XXCloner CFT232R" for example) exposing the same VID/PID... they won't be authorized to use the USB certified logo (neither would the finished product). But if they are not pretending to be a FT232R from FTDI, it's definitively not counterfeilting.
VID/PID spoofing can't even be said as a way to breach copyright at the driver level as there are free drivers (Linux for example) that use the same VID/PID pair.
You may compare that VID/PID problem with Ethernet addresses... the first 3 bytes make a number assigned to a specific manufacturer. But lmots of hardware allow to change the ethernet address using another vendor number. It's very often seen in routers and Wifi-routers where it allows to show on the WAN port the Ethernet address of some LAN computer.
Except that in their driver, they intentionally wrote the code to brick the clones. It's not accidental but intentional and, AFAIK, THAT makes a huge difference in court.
It's the difference between accidental injuries and murder.
Someone bought a device for their kid... that may be a complete device (toy for example) or one of these wonderful Arduino kits that you may find on EBay (with lots of sensors, components, ... a nice storage box, ...) That don't mean that he does know anything about electronics... My grand-father bought me my Tandy (Radio-Shack) Electronic kit when I was a boy and he didn't know anything about electronics (only basic electric circuits : mains -> switch -> light bulb).
And YOU (or FTDI) expect that he'll understand that if it stops working, it's because of a clone IC when he don't even know what is the difference between a resistor and a capacitor ?
Someone other bought a 800$ 3D printer... and suddently, it stops working because a 3$ chip inside is not a genuine one... And YOU expect that he'll be able to understand the issue and that he won't be angry at YOU for bricking his 800$ tool ???
The damage done to the clone is made intentionnally (doing something knowing that it'll hurt a clone and not affect an official IC is clearly intentionnal)... And the damage is not done to the vendor but to the consumer...
The move is clearly made with the intent to hurt the final (unknowing) consumer and not someone really responsible for the use of a clone. What is destroyed is not only one component but the whole thing it is enclosed into... And given the form factor, it's often beyond possible repair. Most people don't even have a soldering Iron, you except that they have a reflow oven to solder a new SMD part ?
What if Samsung (or Motorola) got a way to disable all radio subsystems in iPhones because iPhone non compliance with their mobile patent portfolio, making suddently all iPhone unable to connect to mobile network ?
Nothing prevents you to use 3rd party encryption on your Android phone (and I'm not speaking about 3rd party system)... and I seriously doubt that Google will be able to do anything about data crypted by 3rd party system.
On Android, you work on a system of service provider/consumer. Your contact list ? you've an application acting as contact provider and other as contact consumer (reader/writers).... If you want to protect them, nothing prevents you to use a different default contact provider which uses an encrypted container. Same for most of the phone features...
On iPhone, you can only trust Apple's word... like we did when it was about geolocation data...
The linked article cite the following patents :
- Auto-correction/completion on keyboard entry...
Il looks quite similar to the autocompletion that you find in some Japanese IME under Linux... which sometimes allow both conversion to kanjis and completion. Auto-correction is quite old on the wordprocessor scene
- transformation of email & phone numbers to link
AFAIK, most forums and webmails already convert email to link for a long long time. As for Phone number, the extension is quite trivial
- slide to unlock
it's mimicking a physical (door) lock... so nothing real new...
Maybe judge Koh has enough of these bogus patents claims and other similar tactics from Apple...
In Belgium, you have a "certificate of good living and behaving" (approximate translation) that can be requested when you want to get a job.
Teachers (and other people who have to work with children) have to give a special version of that document. At first, it included some (very) invasive background checks (in the neighbourhood for example), now, it has been trimmed down... But if you've been a sex offender (or some other severe criminal records) in the past, you won't get it, even if you've had your records cleaned.
In about any countries, if you want some "top secret" accreditation, I don't think that it matters if your criminal records have been purged or the time has been served...
In these specific situation, there are no right to be forgotten...
Another problem may arise when the offender is minor (less than 18 years)... All records are hidden... I know of some school director (he explained this to me directly, it's not some vague rumor) who got a child put in his school by a court... He didn't know why (records sealed because it was a minor)... Until that guy did it again, in his new school... He was assaulting (sexually) younger children !!! But no way for the school to prevent it as they weren't allowe'd to know in the first place.
So, I think that for criminal offenses, there should NOT be a right to be forgotten... Minor offenses don't make it to the news anyway... Same for bad records related to the profession.
Palestinians have an army...
Not regular army but a terrorism/guerilla kind of army...
If you count the prices of the missiles launched at Israel, you'd have enough to get food to most of the Palestinians, to repair most of the buildings, to create medic centers, schools, ...
And they prefer to create martyrs than go to a safe place when Israelian raids come... They want to get the whole world destroying Israel... They want to use US against Israel...
They prefer to choose war, to kill the Jews that are thought about as worse than dogs by the Muslims. Quran and other clearly say "you may not trust a non-muslim"... If you're Christian, better be warned, we are the next target on the list... well, maybe after agnostics...