Being a developer and enthusiast of linux audio, I admit it it is not something exceptional. Just a multi channel sample player driven by the serial port. But it is quite demanding in terms of resources.
we must be able to access about 300MByte of CD quality samples with low latency ( 10msec) and be able to play 16 simultaneous audio clips with virtually no delay.
The "audio server" software I wrote fires up about 4 threads, 2 for controlling the audio cards, 1 for monitoring the serial input and one thread that can comunicate with an external GUI where the operator can add/remove samples, edit parameters and asssign them to the various actions.
The box runs X-Window when the operator needs the GUI, but normally linux boots in text mode to save RAM resources.
The event logging on hard disk is done using lower priority threads so that it does not interfere with audio playback.
So tell me how to do all this stuff with a 386 with DOS, kinda hopeless eh ?;-) (plus.... good luck in finding drivers for 24 bit multi I/O audio cards)
Could we have implemented it by using a Windows Box ? Yes but why spend additional $$ for Windows licenses, bitch about instabilities, need to run the GUI all the time, binary sound card drivers issues, need to buy development tools like compilers etc. (no sorry, I do not want to use cygwin on Windows).
Anyway doing it purely with Linux using a digital multi I/O card would have been cheaper because those I/O cards (eg with 48-96 in/outs) cost only around $200-$300.
Anyway the current solution does its job well and perhaps in future we will go with a pure linux based solution.
Had you read the page then you would have discovered that the game is an ironic and joking way to describe tourism in the province. The truth is that during winter the slopes and lifts are really such overcrowded that it seems like being in the middle of a herd of sheeps. This is not to speak negatively about turists. I think a bit of humourism in life does not hurt, otherwise we will just all degrade boring droids with no soul.;-)
The industrial controller does not do that much in fact. Basically simple logic operations like if(sensor1==ON AND sensor2==OFF) then start motor 2 for 5 secs etc
We could have powered the game entirely by Linux by using multi I/O cards that can drive relays and sensors, but the automation control was already assigned to an other firm when I came into play and suggested a Linux box for doing the audio stuff.
The artist (a friend of mine, we live in the same town) is excited the flexibility and power of Linux and has alredy in mind to build more weird linux powered wooden sculptures, this time linux doing the automation stuff too.
Hehe that's kinda funny to see coverage of the Oetzi (aka the Iceman) on Slashdot.
I happen to be from that province where the Oetzi was found aka South Tyrol.
The museum where the iceman is exposed is located in Bolzano - Italy.
I was wondering if IBM wants to support Linux
in the multimedia field, specifically audio/video.
I hope not to hear the usual "linux has no future on the desktop".
I think hat Linux has a great future as a high-performance multimedia platform, but corporate world still seems to ignore it completely (audio even more than video)
Check out what the Linux Audio Developers are currently doing at www.linuxaudiodev.org, The Home of Linux Audio Development
The problem of people not sharing is common to ALL filesharing systems.
People do not share for several reasons mostly because:
- sharing eats some of your bandwidth which could be better utilized to to download.
- they are too stupid/too lazy to share
- they fear getting caught (if I share the RIAA has my IP addr, thus can track me down)
(or some may think: "When I only download, I risk less and I'm sure that I'm only one of the few not sharing, so it won't make a difference whether I share or not.".
The problem is that MANY are thinking the above way, thus all want to download but no one is willing to share.
But they do not realize that downloading is just as "illegal" as sharing files.
And tracking downloaders is not that hard at all:
Put up a very fast connection, share the current Top100 songs, and log all the IP-addrs of all downloaders.
Leave it running for several days/week, and you will collect TONS of IPaddrs.
LimeWire's "antifreeloader" stuff is almost 100% useless, since if an user does not want to share, he can always fake other users that he is sharing.
Just share a few useless systemfiles or other stuff. (big files filled with zeroes etc).
This will fool others that he is a "good citizen".
But what LimeWire achieved with this feature is nice marketing, something like
"We can block freeloaders, thus our client is better than others and an additional reason to use our client over others".
I've seen this message from users saying "I use LimeWire because it can block freeloaders while others can't" so many times and no one realizes that it will contribute very little to the overall network health.
Napster doesn't force you to share either but strangely enough there is plenty of content on that networks.
So I guess the success of a filesharing network depends from other factors rather than from "anti-freeloader" features, which can be easily "circumvented" even by a dummie.
The key for a successful is better network routing, caching, avoidance of useless traffic/flooding , upload bandwidth limitation, educating people to share and making them aware of the consequences of freeloading, bundling upload bandwidth channels, etc etc.
Some clarifications on the websearcher hosted on Gnutella.it
:
A few folks accused me of promoting freeloading and giving back nothing to the gnutella community.
First gnutella.it was born for the following reasons:I'm italian and when I discovered that the gnutella.it domain was still available,
(In June 2000 I believe), I registered it and put up infos related to the Gnutella technology in italian. (before some jerk would have used it for something different)
A bit later I wrote a nice MySQL + PHP + C++ engine which acts as a gnutella web search engine ad that permits you to download directly from a browser.
Just as the zillions out there, but with a few special features (cached+realtime search,sorting,timelimiting etc).
It became quite good and the most read italian newspaper "Il Corriere della Sera" interviewed me , writing an article about it.
see here (hehe nice publicity for free:-) )
Eventually downloading from gnutella via a webbrowser became so popular and easy (thanks to gnute.com , mp3board.com and others), that the network began to feel the load of these browser-freeloaders.
I want to point out that the goal of this searcher was not to permit the folks to leech off the gnutella network without giving back anything.
Some have me put in the same league as gnute.com and mp3board.com.
That's just plain wrong !
The LimeWire folks worte such a notice on their pages too, but after a clarification they corrected the stuff.
On my site I've placed notices (even on each search result page) that you should contribute to the Gnutella network using a servent and share files, otherwise there would be no files.
But why worry about webbased-freeloaders ?
BearShare and LimeWire block now browser downloads, rendering all gnutella web search sites basically useless, since as soon as you try to click on a download link, you get redirected to a HTML page which informs you not to freeload and use a standalone client instead.
So basically all these sites, suddenly promote gnutella, which is a good thing.
And in fact this has caused a boost in terms of # of gnutella users , the download success rate (less "Busy" signals) has increased and compared to a few months ago, you find now much more stuff on gnutella.
I'm currently working with the authors of BearShare to find a way to make gnutella web search working again and reliable.
This will require a few things like sending out informations (in the query_hit packets) whether or not the user DESIRES to share his files with browsers. And incorporating some protection from mp3 leeching sites (like gnute.com , mp3board.com etc) since this service can be easily abused.
Another way to use a gnutella web search like Gnutella.it is to use a Gnutella client which supports drag'n drop as BearShare does.
That way you can use the web searcher to search for files, and most of times it finds much more stuff than a regular standalone client because it caches a huge amount of links to files. (the drawback is that some liks could be a bit outdated, but you can look at the age of the file to estimate its reliability).
As soon as you find a link, you can drag it into BearShare which in turn will try to download it.
It will not get blocked since the download does not occur via browser.
And if the download succeeds, then the file will get automatically shared and made available to others.
For modem users it is perhaps more lightweight in terms of traffic to use the web searcher and drag the links into BearShare, since you will save bandwidth comprising search / searchreply and host connection traffic.
If you share files, then ONE single host connection will suffice and you will still be reachable by other gnutella users.
That way you will be able to devote almost all of your limited modem bandwidth to downloads/uploads.
(although the whole process is a bit messier than using a gnutella client alone)
I admit that Gnutella has its drawbacks and may be viewed as crappy and unreliable compared to napster.
But I think the protocol has many possibilities to become a nice and efficient distributed filesharing protocol. (check out the gnutella developer forum: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_gdf )
Plus I have not seen a truly distributed filesharing protocol yet, which works much better than gnutella and does not depend from a central entity.
Every centralized filesharing system will sooner or later get attacked (or bought out) by the various RIAA/MPAA etc.
So only decentralized system will survive over the long term.
Yes, freenet may become much nicier and efficient, but they have a long way to go until this becomes reality, plus without searching capabilities, freenet will not be that useful.
(if you are searching for files, you need the key first, and there is no way to search for keys on freenet).
One combination would be to use Gnutella to store keyfiles (with some fulltext extensions) so that you could search on gNet for filename->key mappings and then download the real content off the freenet network.
The important thing is IMHO to become indipendent from centralized filesharing systems (ala Napster,Imesh, etc), at this point users will choose the system that works best AND is easy to use. Unfortunately the holy grail has not been found yet. But I think we are not THAT far away from an easy to use, efficient and distributed system which will attract millions of "Joe Average" users.
Slashdot Mirror
Being a developer and enthusiast of linux audio, I admit it it is not something exceptional. Just a multi channel sample player driven by the serial port. But it is quite demanding in terms of resources.
;-) .... good luck in finding drivers for 24 bit multi I/O audio cards)
we must be able to access about 300MByte of CD quality samples with low latency ( 10msec) and be able to play 16 simultaneous audio clips with virtually no delay.
The "audio server" software I wrote fires up about 4 threads, 2 for controlling the audio cards, 1 for monitoring the serial input and one thread that can comunicate with an external GUI where the operator can add/remove samples, edit parameters and asssign them to the various actions.
The box runs X-Window when the operator needs the GUI, but normally linux boots in text mode to save RAM resources.
The event logging on hard disk is done using lower priority threads so that it does not interfere with audio playback.
So tell me how to do all this stuff with a 386 with DOS, kinda hopeless eh ?
(plus
Could we have implemented it by using a Windows Box ?
Yes but why spend additional $$ for Windows licenses, bitch about instabilities, need to run the GUI all the time, binary sound card drivers issues, need to buy development tools like compilers etc. (no sorry, I do not want to use cygwin on Windows).
Benno Senoner
AFAIK a PLC from SAIA (swiss manufacturer)
http://www.saia-burgess.com
Anyway doing it purely with Linux using a digital multi I/O card would have been cheaper because those I/O cards (eg with 48-96 in/outs) cost only around $200-$300.
Anyway the current solution does its job well and perhaps in future we will go with a pure linux based solution.
Benno Senoner
Had you read the page then you would have discovered that the game is an ironic and joking way to describe tourism in the province. The truth is that during winter the slopes and lifts are really such overcrowded that it seems like being in the middle of a herd of sheeps. This is not to speak negatively about turists. ;-)
I think a bit of humourism in life does not hurt, otherwise we will just all degrade boring droids with no soul.
Benno Senoner
The industrial controller does not do that much in fact. Basically simple logic operations like
if(sensor1==ON AND sensor2==OFF) then start motor 2 for 5 secs
etc
We could have powered the game entirely by Linux by using multi I/O cards that can drive relays and sensors, but the automation control was already assigned to an other firm when I came into play and suggested a Linux box for doing the audio stuff.
The artist (a friend of mine, we live in the same town) is excited the flexibility and power of Linux and has alredy in mind to build more weird linux powered wooden sculptures, this time linux doing the automation stuff too.
Benno Senoner
I happen to be from that province where the Oetzi was found aka South Tyrol.
The museum where the iceman is exposed is located in Bolzano - Italy.
Here's the homepage:
www.iceman.it
or alternatively see here:
www.provinz.bz.it
cheers,
Benno.
www.linuxaudiodev.org The Home Of Linux Audio Development
I hope not to hear the usual "linux has no future on the desktop".
I think hat Linux has a great future as a high-performance multimedia platform, but corporate world still seems to ignore it completely (audio even more than video)
Check out what the Linux Audio Developers are currently doing at www.linuxaudiodev.org, The Home of Linux Audio Development
Benno.
People do not share for several reasons mostly because:
- sharing eats some of your bandwidth which could be better utilized to to download.
- they are too stupid/too lazy to share
- they fear getting caught (if I share the RIAA has my IP addr, thus can track me down)
(or some may think: "When I only download, I risk less and I'm sure that I'm only one of the few not sharing, so it won't make a difference whether I share or not.".
The problem is that MANY are thinking the above way, thus all want to download but no one is willing to share.
But they do not realize that downloading is just as "illegal" as sharing files.
And tracking downloaders is not that hard at all:
Put up a very fast connection, share the current Top100 songs, and log all the IP-addrs of all downloaders.
Leave it running for several days/week, and you will collect TONS of IPaddrs.
LimeWire's "antifreeloader" stuff is almost 100% useless, since if an user does not want to share, he can always fake other users that he is sharing.
Just share a few useless systemfiles or other stuff. (big files filled with zeroes etc). This will fool others that he is a "good citizen".
But what LimeWire achieved with this feature is nice marketing, something like
"We can block freeloaders, thus our client is better than others and an additional reason to use our client over others".
I've seen this message from users saying "I use LimeWire because it can block freeloaders while others can't" so many times and no one realizes that it will contribute very little to the overall network health.
Napster doesn't force you to share either but strangely enough there is plenty of content on that networks.
So I guess the success of a filesharing network depends from other factors rather than from "anti-freeloader" features, which can be easily "circumvented" even by a dummie.
The key for a successful is better network routing, caching, avoidance of useless traffic/flooding , upload bandwidth limitation, educating people to share and making them aware of the consequences of freeloading, bundling upload bandwidth channels, etc etc.
cheers,
Benno
Gnutella.it
: A few folks accused me of promoting freeloading and giving back nothing to the gnutella community.
First gnutella.it was born for the following reasons :I'm italian and when I discovered that the gnutella.it domain was still available,
(In June 2000 I believe), I registered it and put up infos related to the Gnutella technology in italian. (before some jerk would have used it for something different)
A bit later I wrote a nice MySQL + PHP + C++ engine which acts as a gnutella web search engine ad that permits you to download directly from a browser. Just as the zillions out there, but with a few special features (cached+realtime search,sorting,timelimiting etc).
It became quite good and the most read italian newspaper "Il Corriere della Sera" interviewed me , writing an article about it. see here (hehe nice publicity for free :-) )
Eventually downloading from gnutella via a webbrowser became so popular and easy (thanks to gnute.com , mp3board.com and others), that the network began to feel the load of these browser-freeloaders.
I want to point out that the goal of this searcher was not to permit the folks to leech off the gnutella network without giving back anything.
Some have me put in the same league as gnute.com and mp3board.com.
That's just plain wrong !
The LimeWire folks worte such a notice on their pages too, but after a clarification they corrected the stuff.
On my site I've placed notices (even on each search result page) that you should contribute to the Gnutella network using a servent and share files, otherwise there would be no files.
But why worry about webbased-freeloaders ?
BearShare and LimeWire block now browser downloads, rendering all gnutella web search sites basically useless, since as soon as you try to click on a download link, you get redirected to a HTML page which informs you not to freeload and use a standalone client instead.
So basically all these sites, suddenly promote gnutella, which is a good thing.
And in fact this has caused a boost in terms of # of gnutella users , the download success rate (less "Busy" signals) has increased and compared to a few months ago, you find now much more stuff on gnutella.
I'm currently working with the authors of BearShare to find a way to make gnutella web search working again and reliable. This will require a few things like sending out informations (in the query_hit packets) whether or not the user DESIRES to share his files with browsers. And incorporating some protection from mp3 leeching sites (like gnute.com , mp3board.com etc) since this service can be easily abused.
Another way to use a gnutella web search like Gnutella.it is to use a Gnutella client which supports drag'n drop as BearShare does. That way you can use the web searcher to search for files, and most of times it finds much more stuff than a regular standalone client because it caches a huge amount of links to files. (the drawback is that some liks could be a bit outdated, but you can look at the age of the file to estimate its reliability).
As soon as you find a link, you can drag it into BearShare which in turn will try to download it. It will not get blocked since the download does not occur via browser.
And if the download succeeds, then the file will get automatically shared and made available to others.
For modem users it is perhaps more lightweight in terms of traffic to use the web searcher and drag the links into BearShare, since you will save bandwidth comprising search / searchreply and host connection traffic. If you share files, then ONE single host connection will suffice and you will still be reachable by other gnutella users. That way you will be able to devote almost all of your limited modem bandwidth to downloads/uploads. (although the whole process is a bit messier than using a gnutella client alone)
I admit that Gnutella has its drawbacks and may be viewed as crappy and unreliable compared to napster.
But I think the protocol has many possibilities to become a nice and efficient distributed filesharing protocol. (check out the gnutella developer forum: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_gdf )
Plus I have not seen a truly distributed filesharing protocol yet, which works much better than gnutella and does not depend from a central entity.
Every centralized filesharing system will sooner or later get attacked (or bought out) by the various RIAA/MPAA etc. So only decentralized system will survive over the long term.
Yes, freenet may become much nicier and efficient, but they have a long way to go until this becomes reality, plus without searching capabilities, freenet will not be that useful. (if you are searching for files, you need the key first, and there is no way to search for keys on freenet). One combination would be to use Gnutella to store keyfiles (with some fulltext extensions) so that you could search on gNet for filename->key mappings and then download the real content off the freenet network.
The important thing is IMHO to become indipendent from centralized filesharing systems (ala Napster,Imesh, etc), at this point users will choose the system that works best AND is easy to use. Unfortunately the holy grail has not been found yet. But I think we are not THAT far away from an easy to use, efficient and distributed system which will attract millions of "Joe Average" users.
We will see ....
cheers,
Benno.
Gnutella.it