Of course it's information. Just because some information is entertaining or informative or even useless to you personally doesn't change the fact it's information.
It does not matter if speech is entertaining vs informative. The U.S. Constitution makes no exception to the freedom of speech. It quite clearly says that Congress may make no law abridging the freedom of speech. It is the courts and Congress since the Constitution was signed that have both succeeded and failed to abridge our freedom of speech. Unfortunately the US Supreme Court has upheld that states' legislation concerning some obscenity is legal.
Your suggestion is absurd. A library's purpose is to make informational available to the public. Its purpose is NOT to provide a place to have sex. It's also NOT a place to eat 5 course meal. It's NOT a place to sleep for the winter. There are plenty of activities NOT suitable in a library. Looking at information however IS an activity that a library is intended to facilitate. The fact that you might be offended at this particular type of informational is inconsequential. Just like it should not matter if a vegetarian took offense at someone viewing pictures of pork chops at the library.The right not to be offended is not enumerated in the Constitution. The right to freedom of speech is a part of the Constitution.
Karen Sandler, the lawyer this article is about is also a programmer and has an engineering degree. She works for the GNOME foundation and before that the Software Freedom Law Center...I think she can find a few people who are also programmers to help her as well.
That's really rude. The lawyer this store is about, Karen Sandler, worked pro bono for the Software Freedom Law Center helping to protect people's software freedoms. Which would normally be considered a very good and moral thing around here, would it not? She currently works for the GNOME foundation.
I agree comment posters *seem* to acting very hypocritical today but it could be possible that a different set of people are objecting for a different set of reasons.
Also just to correct something which keeps being misrepresented in comments this laywer is a female. She also has an engineering degree and is a programmer. She intended to review the software herself with the help of fellow programmers.
Also people might be interested to know that she worked as a pro bono counsel for the Software Freedom Law Center from 2005 until 2011 and now works as an executive director for the GNOME foundation. She still accepts pro bono cases from the SFLC and is the SFLC treasurer.
There are some aspects that are redundant but there is a lot more that is not. Here are some major differences:
Arduinos do not run Linux. Their code is written in Assembly, C or C++ but WITHOUT the STL. There is no OS or kernel. It's pure monolithic code running on a Atmel Atmega328, ATmega2560 or similar processor. They support Analog I/O, Digital I/O, I2C, SPI, 1-wire, EEPROM, Serial communication via digital i/o lines or Serial over USB, typical 16Mhz clock speed and 8k of RAM, 32-256K of program storage. It probably uses slightly less power than the Raspberry Pi.
Raspberry Pi do run Linux. Their code is written in any language supported by an ARM 1176JZF-S CPU with a Linux kernel such as Assembly, C, C++ with STL, Python, Perl, etc. There is a OS such as Debian, Arch with more to follow and a Linux kernel. Code written is traditional Linux code running in a multi-tasking system such as Linux provides. It's run on an ARM 1176JZF-S CPU. They support Digital I/O I2C, SPI, Serial communication via digital i/o (gpio) lines, SD card support, composite video out, HDMI video out, RCA audio out. 700Mhz clock speed, 128-256MB of RAM, 1-32GB of program storage (depending of SD card size).
Unlike the Raspberry Pi, the Arduino cannot be developed on by itself. It requires another computer running Linux, OS X or Windows in order to develop on them.
The Gertboard is more akin to what an Arduino shield is for an Arduino. It's just something you plug into a Raspberry Pi to provide access to more of the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi's SOC and it has some convenience functionality like LEDs built-in. Like an Arduino shield, it's optional. You can still use GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi without it.
Google may have started in the US but they have offices in over 80 countries now.
An individual or group does not have to force their limited view of civility on other people. One group forcing their view of civility on others by removing pictures of self-expression is censorship. Since they are a private enterprise they are free to do this but that does not change that it's censorship.
How soon do you estimate that your company will be selling a computer based on the Allwinner A10? Besides more RAM, SATA II interface and higher CPU speed is there anything else that you think will make it more less superior than the Raspberry Pi? How much current do you estimate it will draw when idle vs fully utilized?
What kind of GPU does the Allwinner A10 use? Is it the Mail400GPU? Does there exist GPL compatible 3D accelerated linux drivers for it? Are the programmer datasheets for the GPU available?
On most distributions, for security reasons, an unprivileged user cannot run an X server that uses video hardware. For example X servers that use nvidia drivers need to read and write to/dev/nvidia0 which is usually only readable and writable by root and users in the video group. He would need to place his users in the video group (not allowed) or make the X binary suid (not allowed) in order to do what you describe.
When you install distro X at home it probably installed your 1 local non-root user in the audio group, the video group, the cdrom group and a bunch of other groups that give you privileged access to hardware on the system. Any school sysadmin worth half his salary would never put all of his students in all of those groups. Schools tend to use AD, LDAP or NIS to centrally manage student users and groups. More than likely his lab machines have very few if any local users.
This ask Slashdot question doesn't have enough details to properly answer the question.
They already give certain members an option to disable ads. For people who have the choice there is a small box in the upper right-hand section of Slashdot that says:
Ads Disabled [*] Thanks again for helping make Slashdot great!
I don't know if it's based on excellent karma, an achievement (days read in a row), low uid or something else.
The "chained hashing" sounds handy but what keeps a tool from reading the entire log and write it back out, with some log entries removed, with a new chain-hash history that validates the entries that are left?
In your stand-alone system scenario what keeps a hacker from deleting those logs entirely or reading all the logs, removing the entries they don't want preserved, then writing them all back out, with a new hash-chain history?
No one. The study was not commissioned and it was not funded by a commercial 3rd party. If you read the actual study whitepaper it's quite interesting and would be helpful to companies which sell Android phones.
WDS seems to be a UK based company that sells consulting, training, testing and support services to wireless providers and equipment manufacturers.
If I were to guess the reason they did this whitepaper, it's could be to drum up more business for them. To download the whitepaper they want your contact info probably so they can have their sales guys call you if you work for a company which could use their services.
Not exactly. Google provides an open-source compatibility toolkit. Device manufacturers or anyone can use it to ensure their device is compatible and submit test results to Google. If a device manufacturer wants to use the Android name, which is optional, their device must pass the compatibility test. If a device manufacturer wants to license the Google Marketplace app, which is optional, they must pass the compatibility test. There is no requirement to install any google tracking service.
If your project needs more I/O pins than the Raspberry PI makes available and does not require the increased memory, storage and CPU available in the Raspberry PI then an Arduino might be better suited for you.
Also Arduino boards can be programmed in pure ANSI C. All the Arduino development library does is provide some functions, headers and libraries to make embedded programming more portable across several Arduino models of hardware. You can also write in pure C++ as well there's just not a STL library ported to the Arduino yet AFAIK.
There is a reason to do this. The hardware exists. People want to use that hardware with the Linux kernel. The inclusion of the wiimote driver within Linus' development linux kernel tree just means that driver has become good enough for Linus to redistribute it.
This is how the Linux kernel development process works. If someone writes a Linux driver for a piece of hardware they can usually get that driver into the main kernel tree if they follow the proper process. The Linux Kernel Mailing List FAQ covers this here: http://vger.kernel.org/lkml/#s2 It says that the driver must be tested successfully by other people. The code has be written against the latest kernel. Coding standards and best practices have to be followed. This driver has just as much right to be there as the SpaceTec SpaceBall 6dof driver or the Xbox gamepad driver.
In your opinion, under what circumstances should Linus incorporate a hardware driver into his kernel?
Generally when you compile the Linux kernel you have to choose which drivers you want to compile support for either as a module or inside the kernel. The addition of this wiimote driver just means an additional choice you don't have to choose. There are many joystick and gamepad drivers in the Linux kernel.
A bloat conscious person probably wouldn't compile support for any hardware he or she doesn't have.
As for security audits, I'm having trouble imagining who would do security audits of hardware they don't use or have. A corporation or individual hobbiest wouldn't. More than likely only the users of that hardware or the developers of that driver are going to be interested in auditing it. Possibly the distribution makers might but I doubt it. Can you describe who you had in mind that would be inconvenienced by the existence of yet another driver? Please remember this is a development kernel we're talking about. Between now and the time when distribution makers include this kernel could be considerably long. RedHat and Novell probably won't include this kernel for more than a year from now. In that time most of the serious bugs will work their way out.
I recommend this router based on its 680Mhz CPU, 128MB RAM and 32MB flash storage. It's also dual band (802.11abgn), a gigabit switch and has a USB port so you can turn it into a NAS. It was only $89 shipped from Newegg and came with dd-wrt already on it. I put openwrt on it and have been enjoying it ever since. It comes with a 2 year warranty which I immediately voided by soldering on my own serial port. *note* if you choose to solder on your own serial port be aware this is a 3.3volt serial port so do not plug it into your PC directly as the PC's 5volt serial port will fry your hardware. Plugging it into an appropriate 3.3volt serial dongle or an arduino's serial line will work however. The latter is what I chose to do.
That $25 board contains a ASMedia asm1061 sata 3 chipset. I could find no benchmarks of it alone. However looking at the design it is unlikely to do much better than the Marvel chipset talked about in this article. The reason for this is that the card uses only a single pci-express lane. As the article discussed, this is also Marvel's biggest weakness. PCI-Express 2.0 has a maximum bandwidth of 500MB/sec per lane. That is ~ 400MB/sec usable by the device after pci-express overhead is taken into account. Any fast SATA 3 controller card will need a minimum of x2 PCI-Express 2.0 lanes if not more. The really good cards use 8 lanes but 2 is a minimum IMO.
Just look at that card for a second. It's got 1 review @ 1 star and that complains it causes his windows install to BSOD. Also that card only has a single sata3 port. Any more would be just even more ridiculous given the setup.
If anyone can find some benchmarks of this chipset I'd love to see them.
Every cheap sata 3 controller cards I've come across all contain the same (or similar) Marvel chipset as the article's author is complaining about. They also all use only a single PCI-Express lane instead of multiple lanes like the expensive and fast controller cards do.
To get good SATA 3 performance you will need to spend ~ $160 or more for a controller card with a decent chipset and multi-lane PCI Express support. If you actually look at all the cheap SATA 3 controller cards for sale on Amazon (or Newegg) you'll find they're all quite similar.
Here's some examples from Amazon in the price range you mentioned:
Slashdot Mirror
Of course it's information. Just because some information is entertaining or informative or even useless to you personally doesn't change the fact it's information.
It does not matter if speech is entertaining vs informative. The U.S. Constitution makes no exception to the freedom of speech. It quite clearly says that Congress may make no law abridging the freedom of speech. It is the courts and Congress since the Constitution was signed that have both succeeded and failed to abridge our freedom of speech. Unfortunately the US Supreme Court has upheld that states' legislation concerning some obscenity is legal.
Your suggestion is absurd. A library's purpose is to make informational available to the public. Its purpose is NOT to provide a place to have sex. It's also NOT a place to eat 5 course meal. It's NOT a place to sleep for the winter. There are plenty of activities NOT suitable in a library. Looking at information however IS an activity that a library is intended to facilitate. The fact that you might be offended at this particular type of informational is inconsequential. Just like it should not matter if a vegetarian took offense at someone viewing pictures of pork chops at the library.The right not to be offended is not enumerated in the Constitution. The right to freedom of speech is a part of the Constitution.
As I understand it that is the speed of the UI updating. The video, as you can clearly see, is running at full speed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFZGpES-St8 OSCON 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_pRH8lzaQo Freedom: From my heart to the desktop
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcWlD2Y6HNM OSCON 2010 Free Software on Medical Devices: Unchain My Heart
Karen Sandler, the lawyer this article is about is also a programmer and has an engineering degree. She works for the GNOME foundation and before that the Software Freedom Law Center...I think she can find a few people who are also programmers to help her as well.
That's really rude. The lawyer this store is about, Karen Sandler, worked pro bono for the Software Freedom Law Center helping to protect people's software freedoms. Which would normally be considered a very good and moral thing around here, would it not? She currently works for the GNOME foundation.
I agree comment posters *seem* to acting very hypocritical today but it could be possible that a different set of people are objecting for a different set of reasons.
Also just to correct something which keeps being misrepresented in comments this laywer is a female. She also has an engineering degree and is a programmer. She intended to review the software herself with the help of fellow programmers.
Also people might be interested to know that she worked as a pro bono counsel for the Software Freedom Law Center from 2005 until 2011 and now works as an executive director for the GNOME foundation. She still accepts pro bono cases from the SFLC and is the SFLC treasurer.
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/about/team/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_pRH8lzaQo
There are some aspects that are redundant but there is a lot more that is not. Here are some major differences:
Arduinos do not run Linux. Their code is written in Assembly, C or C++ but WITHOUT the STL. There is no OS or kernel. It's pure monolithic code running on a Atmel Atmega328, ATmega2560 or similar processor. They support Analog I/O, Digital I/O, I2C, SPI, 1-wire, EEPROM, Serial communication via digital i/o lines or Serial over USB, typical 16Mhz clock speed and 8k of RAM, 32-256K of program storage. It probably uses slightly less power than the Raspberry Pi.
Raspberry Pi do run Linux. Their code is written in any language supported by an ARM 1176JZF-S CPU with a Linux kernel such as Assembly, C, C++ with STL, Python, Perl, etc. There is a OS such as Debian, Arch with more to follow and a Linux kernel. Code written is traditional Linux code running in a multi-tasking system such as Linux provides. It's run on an ARM 1176JZF-S CPU. They support Digital I/O I2C, SPI, Serial communication via digital i/o (gpio) lines, SD card support, composite video out, HDMI video out, RCA audio out. 700Mhz clock speed, 128-256MB of RAM, 1-32GB of program storage (depending of SD card size).
Unlike the Raspberry Pi, the Arduino cannot be developed on by itself. It requires another computer running Linux, OS X or Windows in order to develop on them.
The Gertboard is more akin to what an Arduino shield is for an Arduino. It's just something you plug into a Raspberry Pi to provide access to more of the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi's SOC and it has some convenience functionality like LEDs built-in. Like an Arduino shield, it's optional. You can still use GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi without it.
I also have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and enjoy it for couch-side web browsing a lot.
Agreed. I put ICS on a Samsung Fascinate I owned and the phone seems faster and more responsive than it was with Froyo or Gingerbread.
Google may have started in the US but they have offices in over 80 countries now.
An individual or group does not have to force their limited view of civility on other people. One group forcing their view of civility on others by removing pictures of self-expression is censorship. Since they are a private enterprise they are free to do this but that does not change that it's censorship.
How soon do you estimate that your company will be selling a computer based on the Allwinner A10? Besides more RAM, SATA II interface and higher CPU speed is there anything else that you think will make it more less superior than the Raspberry Pi? How much current do you estimate it will draw when idle vs fully utilized?
What kind of GPU does the Allwinner A10 use? Is it the Mail400GPU?
Does there exist GPL compatible 3D accelerated linux drivers for it?
Are the programmer datasheets for the GPU available?
On most distributions, for security reasons, an unprivileged user cannot run an X server that uses video hardware. For example X servers that use nvidia drivers need to read and write to /dev/nvidia0 which is usually only readable and writable by root and users in the video group. He would need to place his users in the video group (not allowed) or make the X binary suid (not allowed) in order to do what you describe.
When you install distro X at home it probably installed your 1 local non-root user in the audio group, the video group, the cdrom group and a bunch of other groups that give you privileged access to hardware on the system. Any school sysadmin worth half his salary would never put all of his students in all of those groups. Schools tend to use AD, LDAP or NIS to centrally manage student users and groups. More than likely his lab machines have very few if any local users.
This ask Slashdot question doesn't have enough details to properly answer the question.
They already give certain members an option to disable ads. For people who have the choice there is a small box in the upper right-hand section of Slashdot that says:
Ads Disabled [*]
Thanks again for helping make Slashdot great!
I don't know if it's based on excellent karma, an achievement (days read in a row), low uid or something else.
The "chained hashing" sounds handy but what keeps a tool from reading the entire log and write it back out, with some log entries removed, with a new chain-hash history that validates the entries that are left?
In your stand-alone system scenario what keeps a hacker from deleting those logs entirely or reading all the logs, removing the entries they don't want preserved, then writing them all back out, with a new hash-chain history?
No one. The study was not commissioned and it was not funded by a commercial 3rd party. If you read the actual study whitepaper it's quite interesting and would be helpful to companies which sell Android phones.
WDS seems to be a UK based company that sells consulting, training, testing and support services to wireless providers and equipment manufacturers.
http://www.wds.co/enlightened/whitepaper.asp (whitepaper)
http://www.wds.co/expert-services/index.asp (reference to what they do)
If I were to guess the reason they did this whitepaper, it's could be to drum up more business for them. To download the whitepaper they want your contact info probably so they can have their sales guys call you if you work for a company which could use their services.
Not exactly.
Google provides an open-source compatibility toolkit. Device manufacturers or anyone can use it to ensure their device is compatible and submit test results to Google. If a device manufacturer wants to use the Android name, which is optional, their device must pass the compatibility test. If a device manufacturer wants to license the Google Marketplace app, which is optional, they must pass the compatibility test. There is no requirement to install any google tracking service.
http://source.android.com/faqs.html#is-compatibility-mandatory
If your project needs more I/O pins than the Raspberry PI makes available and does not require the increased memory, storage and CPU available in the Raspberry PI then an Arduino might be better suited for you.
Also Arduino boards can be programmed in pure ANSI C. All the Arduino development library does is provide some functions, headers and libraries to make embedded programming more portable across several Arduino models of hardware. You can also write in pure C++ as well there's just not a STL library ported to the Arduino yet AFAIK.
There is a reason to do this. The hardware exists. People want to use that hardware with the Linux kernel. The inclusion of the wiimote driver within Linus' development linux kernel tree just means that driver has become good enough for Linus to redistribute it.
This is how the Linux kernel development process works. If someone writes a Linux driver for a piece of hardware they can usually get that driver into the main kernel tree if they follow the proper process. The Linux Kernel Mailing List FAQ covers this here: http://vger.kernel.org/lkml/#s2 It says that the driver must be tested successfully by other people. The code has be written against the latest kernel. Coding standards and best practices have to be followed. This driver has just as much right to be there as the SpaceTec SpaceBall 6dof driver or the Xbox gamepad driver.
In your opinion, under what circumstances should Linus incorporate a hardware driver into his kernel?
Generally when you compile the Linux kernel you have to choose which drivers you want to compile support for either as a module or inside the kernel. The addition of this wiimote driver just means an additional choice you don't have to choose. There are many joystick and gamepad drivers in the Linux kernel.
A bloat conscious person probably wouldn't compile support for any hardware he or she doesn't have.
As for security audits, I'm having trouble imagining who would do security audits of hardware they don't use or have. A corporation or individual hobbiest wouldn't. More than likely only the users of that hardware or the developers of that driver are going to be interested in auditing it. Possibly the distribution makers might but I doubt it. Can you describe who you had in mind that would be inconvenienced by the existence of yet another driver? Please remember this is a development kernel we're talking about. Between now and the time when distribution makers include this kernel could be considerably long. RedHat and Novell probably won't include this kernel for more than a year from now. In that time most of the serious bugs will work their way out.
I recommend this router based on its 680Mhz CPU, 128MB RAM and 32MB flash storage. It's also dual band (802.11abgn), a gigabit switch and has a USB port so you can turn it into a NAS. It was only $89 shipped from Newegg and came with dd-wrt already on it. I put openwrt on it and have been enjoying it ever since. It comes with a 2 year warranty which I immediately voided by soldering on my own serial port. *note* if you choose to solder on your own serial port be aware this is a 3.3volt serial port so do not plug it into your PC directly as the PC's 5volt serial port will fry your hardware. Plugging it into an appropriate 3.3volt serial dongle or an arduino's serial line will work however. The latter is what I chose to do.
http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/buffalo/wzr-hp-ag300h
That $25 board contains a ASMedia asm1061 sata 3 chipset. I could find no benchmarks of it alone. However looking at the design it is unlikely to do much better than the Marvel chipset talked about in this article. The reason for this is that the card uses only a single pci-express lane. As the article discussed, this is also Marvel's biggest weakness. PCI-Express 2.0 has a maximum bandwidth of 500MB/sec per lane. That is ~ 400MB/sec usable by the device after pci-express overhead is taken into account. Any fast SATA 3 controller card will need a minimum of x2 PCI-Express 2.0 lanes if not more. The really good cards use 8 lanes but 2 is a minimum IMO.
Just look at that card for a second. It's got 1 review @ 1 star and that complains it causes his windows install to BSOD. Also that card only has a single sata3 port. Any more would be just even more ridiculous given the setup.
If anyone can find some benchmarks of this chipset I'd love to see them.
Every cheap sata 3 controller cards I've come across all contain the same (or similar) Marvel chipset as the article's author is complaining about. They also all use only a single PCI-Express lane instead of multiple lanes like the expensive and fast controller cards do.
To get good SATA 3 performance you will need to spend ~ $160 or more for a controller card with a decent chipset and multi-lane PCI Express support. If you actually look at all the cheap SATA 3 controller cards for sale on Amazon (or Newegg) you'll find they're all quite similar.
Here's some examples from Amazon in the price range you mentioned:
StarTech PEXSAT32 $38
* Marvell 9128 Chipset
* PCIe x1 lane
Sybausa SY-PEX40032 $32
* Marvell 9128 Chipset
* PCIe x1 lane
ASRock 2-Port SATA 3.0 $26
* Marvell 9123 Chipset
* PCIe x1 lane
HighPoint RocketRAID 622 $39
* Marvel 9128 chipset
* PCIe x1 lane