It isn't terribly complex now that geniuses like Knuth have spent literally decades simplifying it for you, sure. Step deeper into the world and you'll be truly amazed at how deep it is... and likely staggered that it works as well as it does.
+1. Programming isn't terribly complex if you always do it with your training wheels on, and if you never write anything that hasn't been written a hundred times before.
That's really a key issue. Most "standalone" things people want are not made of plastics, except for toys.
Yes, that's a key issue, but it's not the key issue. The key issue is that a 3D printer is not like a microwave oven. It is more like a home chop saw. A 3D printer is the tool that any self respecting geek needs in their workshop, but nobody needs it in the kitchen sitting next to the microwave. The market segment that actually needs a 3D printer is large and growing. It consists of tinkerers, model builders, open sourcerers, progressive artists, parents who want to give their children a leg up on a career path, and so on. Not mom and pop. Not attention deficit teenagers. Not granddad, not the homemaker. In other words, not the general population, but still a multi-billion dollar market that continues to grow exponentially.
The linked article is not about the demise about of the home 3D printer industry, never mind the general additive manufacturing market, it is about how one company misread the wind direction and blundered its way out of a once-dominant market position. Osborne computer comes to mind as one of the many instructive examples from history. The home 3D printer market train won't stop just because one of the passengers fell off.
Ignoring the obvious "that word doesn't mean what you think it does" regarding "decimate"
It is you who ignores the obvious: languages change. See decimate "properly" vs "generally". What does the word really mean? Not so obvious. If you want to come across as anal then by all means uphold the "proper" (or ancient) meaning. But if you wish to be understood, consider accepting the generally understood meaning.
No it isn't. Clock frequency scaling hit a wall, most probably temporarily, but process size shrinking just keeps steaming on with areal density doubling every 2-3 years. Miraculously, photo lithography still works at 10 nm. Nanoimprint is likely to take over from there at 7nm and 5nm, the latter expected around 2020. According to Wikipedia. I say 2024. In the intervening 8 years, it's entirely believable that graphene process technology will become commercially feasible, getting us down to 1 nm wire size with switching frequencies well over 100 GHz. After that, what? 3D processors? Organic? Who know. No doubt, something The point is, no wall has been hit yet, there's a long way to go.
Slashdot isn't even dead yet... Despite their attempts with BETA.
They handled it well considering the amount of gratuitous abuse they got instead of feedback. The as-built doesn't actually suck, though the early betas certainly did.
If adoption of the OS comes even close to 50% in Russia, wouldn't that mean that it would be a viable (as in lots of apps) OS for the rest of the world?
Not a foggy chance in hell of getting any share at all in Russia, or anywhere else, with the current license issues.
the OS in linux often depended upon certain libraries being certain versions.
Huh? Why have I never seen that in all these years?
Windows usually doesn't give a crap as to what Qt I have installed. Thus I install the one that I want and not worry about breaking the OS itself.
I think you have that backwards. I have two different versions of QT installed right now, and both work fine. Break the OS itself? You're not talking about Linux. Not sure what you are talking about.
technically it seems Win 10 is pretty good. What kills it for me it's the hideous mobile-like UI but mainly the spying and blatant pushing of Ms' own products inside of Windows itself.
How about the forced updates and surprise reboots? How about notification popups in the middle of full screen slide presentations? How about the endless stream of malware infections? How about the zillion horrible annoyances that one tends to forget about until they bite you?
How about not being able to look at the source when you want to know what's wrong with it?
You appear to be conflating the term "hardware" with "hardware design", which weakens your argument and makes it hard to discern what your argument actually is.
I'm sorry. In general I work with lawyers and other specialists on this stuff and I guess I missed the level that a nonspecialist can understand.
This is not about specialist or non-specialist (you would be in the latter group). This is about clarity.
if a large number of people use copyright-based licenses on functional things and behave as if they work, we might convince courts that they do work, and then we lose a large swath of freedoms that we have now.
It still seems perfectly appropriate to rely on copyright protection for the expression of a design, or for the non-specialist, the plans and technical description. I don't see how that is different from what practitioners are doing today, or how that should change, or actually, what point you are making. Obviously, only madmen would want to lose their freedoms, but it is far from clear how enforcing copyright on hardware designs would lead to that. Rather the opposite, if copyleft, which upholds the original rights granted by a creator, becomes standard in the open hardware community as it is in the software community.
OK, I totally buy into the proposition that open hardware could make it harder for the spooks to invade my space. But however important that issue is, I just don't see that as "the real question" about open hardware. According to me, the real question is about freedom in all its forms, that is: freedom to tinker, to experiment, to improve, to control one's own computing devices, to know what my computing devices are really doing, to do with them what I will within the boundaries of the law. In other words, the exact same questions that make free/open software such an important issue.
The problem is that if we use copyright licenses on hardware, we actually endanger the freedom of the user.
You appear to be conflating the term "hardware" with "hardware design", which weakens your argument and makes it hard to discern what your argument actually is. On the other hand, I am sure of my position: the rights and restrictions of whichever license the creator of an original work deemed suitable for distribution of their creative work should be respected whether I agree with them or not.
The real question is whether or not the combination of Edward Snowden and Donald Trump will provide the necessary impetus for critical mass to finally be achieved.
It is hard for me to see why that is in any sense a "real question" in regards to open hardware.
...in general we should not use copyright-based licenses on hardware, lest the courts begin to consider this to be normal practice and create case law that supports it...
Why should using copyright-protected hardware designs to produce physical hardware be any different from using copyright-protected software in a commercial enterprise? The object in either case should be to preserve the freedom of the user to use it for whatever purpose they wish.
This sounds like a good early step towards a more technologically free future.
Momentum has been building in the open source hardware space since way back. Opencores.org started in 1999 and now has a library of cores, some of which are in commercial use. That project is now forked as librecores.org, paralleling the Openoffice/Libreoffice split, to move project control into the hands of community contributors. Several initiatives are aimed at freeing up the FPGA toochain, including this toolchain project and this FPGA development board for Raspberry PI. Low cost ASIC manufacturing is available through educational institutions and commercial prototyping services are well within the reach of crowd-funded projects. Though it ramps up more slowly than the now-dominant open source software sector due to the higher cost base and more firmly entrenched proprietary barriers, it now seems clear that open source hardware is set to be the Next Big Thing.
I have no idea whether OSHWA is an important part of this landscape at the moment, but it's hard to see how this initiative could hurt. For the time being, the FOSSi Foundation appears considerably more substantial.
Slashdot Mirror
It isn't terribly complex now that geniuses like Knuth have spent literally decades simplifying it for you, sure. Step deeper into the world and you'll be truly amazed at how deep it is ... and likely staggered that it works as well as it does.
+1. Programming isn't terribly complex if you always do it with your training wheels on, and if you never write anything that hasn't been written a hundred times before.
That's really a key issue. Most "standalone" things people want are not made of plastics, except for toys.
Yes, that's a key issue, but it's not the key issue. The key issue is that a 3D printer is not like a microwave oven. It is more like a home chop saw. A 3D printer is the tool that any self respecting geek needs in their workshop, but nobody needs it in the kitchen sitting next to the microwave. The market segment that actually needs a 3D printer is large and growing. It consists of tinkerers, model builders, open sourcerers, progressive artists, parents who want to give their children a leg up on a career path, and so on. Not mom and pop. Not attention deficit teenagers. Not granddad, not the homemaker. In other words, not the general population, but still a multi-billion dollar market that continues to grow exponentially.
The linked article is not about the demise about of the home 3D printer industry, never mind the general additive manufacturing market, it is about how one company misread the wind direction and blundered its way out of a once-dominant market position. Osborne computer comes to mind as one of the many instructive examples from history. The home 3D printer market train won't stop just because one of the passengers fell off.
No, 7, because 0 is the broadcast address
Decimate is an English word. Perhaps you meant "that is what it means in the context of ancient Roman military discipline."
Ignoring the obvious "that word doesn't mean what you think it does" regarding "decimate"
It is you who ignores the obvious: languages change. See decimate "properly" vs "generally". What does the word really mean? Not so obvious. If you want to come across as anal then by all means uphold the "proper" (or ancient) meaning. But if you wish to be understood, consider accepting the generally understood meaning.
Probably just resting.
Moore's Law is dead. Lone gone and buried.
No it isn't. Clock frequency scaling hit a wall, most probably temporarily, but process size shrinking just keeps steaming on with areal density doubling every 2-3 years. Miraculously, photo lithography still works at 10 nm. Nanoimprint is likely to take over from there at 7nm and 5nm, the latter expected around 2020. According to Wikipedia. I say 2024. In the intervening 8 years, it's entirely believable that graphene process technology will become commercially feasible, getting us down to 1 nm wire size with switching frequencies well over 100 GHz. After that, what? 3D processors? Organic? Who know. No doubt, something The point is, no wall has been hit yet, there's a long way to go.
Article says "signs of recovery" not "recovery". That said, I don't see how a slower decline is a sign of recovery either.
Slashdot isn't even dead yet... Despite their attempts with BETA.
They handled it well considering the amount of gratuitous abuse they got instead of feedback. The as-built doesn't actually suck, though the early betas certainly did.
If adoption of the OS comes even close to 50% in Russia, wouldn't that mean that it would be a viable (as in lots of apps) OS for the rest of the world?
Not a foggy chance in hell of getting any share at all in Russia, or anywhere else, with the current license issues.
They're all deal killers and I barely got started.
the OS in linux often depended upon certain libraries being certain versions.
Huh? Why have I never seen that in all these years?
Windows usually doesn't give a crap as to what Qt I have installed. Thus I install the one that I want and not worry about breaking the OS itself.
I think you have that backwards. I have two different versions of QT installed right now, and both work fine. Break the OS itself? You're not talking about Linux. Not sure what you are talking about.
Well, maybe this one from Nokia[1] will be good. Maybe it will have sdcard, unlockable rom, decent battery life, good radio. Who knows.
[1] The real Finnish company, not the Microsoft zombie
People that matter use iPhones.
Right, because moms matter.
Postgres is unbelievably amazing, especially considering the low, low price of nothing at all.
technically it seems Win 10 is pretty good. What kills it for me it's the hideous mobile-like UI but mainly the spying and blatant pushing of Ms' own products inside of Windows itself.
How about the forced updates and surprise reboots? How about notification popups in the middle of full screen slide presentations? How about the endless stream of malware infections? How about the zillion horrible annoyances that one tends to forget about until they bite you?
How about not being able to look at the source when you want to know what's wrong with it?
No grass to mow here, see, and you don't even have to pretend to be nice!
Actually, this is the special corner of hell where people go to be punished for being stupid enough to rely on Microsoft.
You appear to be conflating the term "hardware" with "hardware design", which weakens your argument and makes it hard to discern what your argument actually is.
I'm sorry. In general I work with lawyers and other specialists on this stuff and I guess I missed the level that a nonspecialist can understand.
This is not about specialist or non-specialist (you would be in the latter group). This is about clarity.
if a large number of people use copyright-based licenses on functional things and behave as if they work, we might convince courts that they do work, and then we lose a large swath of freedoms that we have now.
It still seems perfectly appropriate to rely on copyright protection for the expression of a design, or for the non-specialist, the plans and technical description. I don't see how that is different from what practitioners are doing today, or how that should change, or actually, what point you are making. Obviously, only madmen would want to lose their freedoms, but it is far from clear how enforcing copyright on hardware designs would lead to that. Rather the opposite, if copyleft, which upholds the original rights granted by a creator, becomes standard in the open hardware community as it is in the software community.
Sad for you if you don't understand that politics affects technology.
OK, I totally buy into the proposition that open hardware could make it harder for the spooks to invade my space. But however important that issue is, I just don't see that as "the real question" about open hardware. According to me, the real question is about freedom in all its forms, that is: freedom to tinker, to experiment, to improve, to control one's own computing devices, to know what my computing devices are really doing, to do with them what I will within the boundaries of the law. In other words, the exact same questions that make free/open software such an important issue.
The problem is that if we use copyright licenses on hardware, we actually endanger the freedom of the user.
You appear to be conflating the term "hardware" with "hardware design", which weakens your argument and makes it hard to discern what your argument actually is. On the other hand, I am sure of my position: the rights and restrictions of whichever license the creator of an original work deemed suitable for distribution of their creative work should be respected whether I agree with them or not.
The real question is whether or not the combination of Edward Snowden and Donald Trump will provide the necessary impetus for critical mass to finally be achieved.
It is hard for me to see why that is in any sense a "real question" in regards to open hardware.
...in general we should not use copyright-based licenses on hardware, lest the courts begin to consider this to be normal practice and create case law that supports it...
Why should using copyright-protected hardware designs to produce physical hardware be any different from using copyright-protected software in a commercial enterprise? The object in either case should be to preserve the freedom of the user to use it for whatever purpose they wish.
This sounds like a good early step towards a more technologically free future.
Momentum has been building in the open source hardware space since way back. Opencores.org started in 1999 and now has a library of cores, some of which are in commercial use. That project is now forked as librecores.org, paralleling the Openoffice/Libreoffice split, to move project control into the hands of community contributors. Several initiatives are aimed at freeing up the FPGA toochain, including this toolchain project and this FPGA development board for Raspberry PI. Low cost ASIC manufacturing is available through educational institutions and commercial prototyping services are well within the reach of crowd-funded projects. Though it ramps up more slowly than the now-dominant open source software sector due to the higher cost base and more firmly entrenched proprietary barriers, it now seems clear that open source hardware is set to be the Next Big Thing.
I have no idea whether OSHWA is an important part of this landscape at the moment, but it's hard to see how this initiative could hurt. For the time being, the FOSSi Foundation appears considerably more substantial.