Well, that is open for debate. Anyway, that particular news broadcast has around 1 million viewers, many of them business deciders (it is the late night financial news in Denmark).
A relatively high number of people seems to have viewed the clip, at least based on the number of people that have told me that they saw me on TV;-)
(Yes, I am the first guy in the clip, even though they forgot my middle name;-).
In related news, the DR radio (which I believe is Denmarks largest radio), had a 2 minute clip on FireFox too, around its release.
Please realize, that one would only employ this kind of power source, exactly because all other sources were infeasible.
Also, it might be better for the environment to digest a fly, than to produce solar panels, a battery, something like that. After all, we know for sure that the fly will eventually be totally biodegraded.
For what it is worth, I have used a Wikipedia article as references in my (not yet finished) Ph.D. thesis. More specifically http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_noise , which I needed for a discussion about radio signal propagation modelling (which I am not familiar with, otherwise I reckon I could have found a traditional reference).
And, yes, I believe you are quite right in your arguments.
I applaud this guy for sticking his head out (or nose, or wahtever you say in english). But I believe some of his myths are misunderstandings.
1. "If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
Clearly that is bogus. Constructive criticism is always appreciated. OK on that one.
2. "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"
This, most definitively is not a myth. He argues that only a few actuallky does this, and yes, he is right! But they point is, that you can actually do it. Or, if you can not do it, you can pay somebody else to do it. He seems to miss this point and writes "Most of the time, what really happens is that you tell the actual programmer about the problem and wait and see if he/she fixes it." An alternative is to pay that programmer to fix the problem. And, that is a lot easier to do with open source software. Even for large projects (apache, perl, linux), where there is a good chance that you can get a developer with the required knowhow to work for a reasonably pay.
This is not a myth, but rather the author is to restricted in perception here.
3. "All software should be free"
OK, here the author seems unable to make the basic distinction between free as in free-beer, or free as in free-spech. I adressed the money thing in the previous point. Wrt. free-speech, all software I use/depend on, is free. However, most of my games are not (and I even paid for them).
As the writer realizes, and perhaps his worst problem, is that the work he does can be copied. But, that just forces him to keep working. The Microsoft model of charging for breathing may very well be a thing of the past. But that does not mean that people are not ready to pay money for software that they can really benefit from. An obvious example for e.g. Linux is movie editing software (where people pay for MainActor) and 3D modeling programs (people pay for AC3D). Yes, eventually these areas will also be covered by open source program (insert shameless plug for kino, the Linux DV editor:-), but, hey, then he will have to develop another application. If you don't like change, the computer bussiness is a silly business to be in...
4. "Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"
Of course, this depends on your metrics. As I wrote, I have several commercial games. Most of these are "better" than the open source games I have access to. On the other hand, my primary criteria for "real-work" software is "will the time I invest in this tool, be accumulated for me, will I be able to use this tool as long as I like, for the purposes I wish?". Example: I used to use a windows 3.11 closed source program to manage my bank accounts. After having typed in all my transactions for about 2 years, this program was not available when I upgraded to windows 95 (and later Linux). No migration path. With Open Source software I know that I can always migrate my data. And, if I develop needs the program does not address, I can pay someone to extend/fix the program. Because that is my main metric, yes, open source software is always better! (To me!).
Because people do actually perceive this "myth" in the general sense, I give him a "so and so" on this.
5. "Scratching the personal itch"
I have to take a slight sidestep here. The author writes (under point 3):
"...it's also true that in many respects, Windows kicks Linux's ass in terms of usability and GUI refinements. It's widely recognized that the Linux desktop is still a work in progress playing catch-up to Microsoft.."
and
"The Gnome and KDE projects remain a bit of a mess, and while they are making great strides they remain far behind MS Windows in terms of real usability for the kind of "my grandma" users that Windows caters to."
This is BS, and negatively impacts my impression of the authors opinions in general. I have yet to see any grandma users that are more capable of anyth
Interesstingly, that is the same as the fundamental Muslims belive, and the Christians in Europe believed several hundred years ago-some probably still do.
If you want to use Linux, and your sources are DV, use Kino CVS. Given that the required programs are installed (mostly ffmpeg, dvdauthor, growisofs) you can export your movie from Kino to a finished DVD (with chapters) in a single step.
While this DVD will not have a menu, you can also export to an non-finished DVD, where all the chapters will be marked up, and you can exit the dvdauthor XML to include menus, etc.
The last point is not as easy as point and click, and will take some time, but if you want to use Linux, I think its the best/easiest solution at the moment.
Whenever we get visitors they can never find their way around. As a consequence, the administration have begun putting signs up that are printed on a printer.
So much for that.
Sorry if I sound like some old weiner, but it _is_ annoying. Staff and students can find their way around, but guest trying to locate someone have to look at a large number of pretty offensive "pyxlings", and it does not really help the faculty, when they want to give the impression of some kind of serious work going on here. I have had people been really put off by it.
OK, this is a first for me; Audacity is a great application, but do we need announcements on/.?
Really, what exciting new features makes that neccesary?
OK, part of it is envy. I contribute to a number of projects (beginplug) including kino - the greatest DV editor for Linux (endplug) and would love for/. to carry news about its releases. But isn't that what Freshmeat is for...?
In Europe a number of passively heated houses have been built during the last decade. In DK about 100 houses are to be built that will require the equivalent of about 625 KWh of electrical energy to heat them for a whole year. This is for a rather cold climate. Most of the heat is from the sun; ie, the sun shines on the house, warms it up (through window panes, etc)
These houses use about 300 mm of rock wool insulation (600 mm in the roof) and have heat exchanger systems that heat the water you bathe in from the heat in the house, etc.
I am currently building a totally normal house (with active heating) - it will require about 6-8 times as much energy in a year, but this is still a lot less than houses build 10-20 years ago. We pay a lot for energy over here - I guess that helps motivate saving it.
But if you loose, you will have to pay "something". Remember, you not only have to pay the court, you also (in that case), have to pay KISS for their troubles, and your own laywer.
This stuff quickly adds up.
I still think its a _lot_ cheaper than the US, but you need "some money" up front.
> How come companies like Kiss cant'be punished by Law?
But, they can.
You need a Danish representative if you want to prosecute them in Denmark. But it should be possibly to prosecute them in the US too. I suppose the FSF can do this.
Well, a bit of a misleading subject in my first headline there, I do believe that mplayer have established that they are voilating the GPL, should have read "unclear if intentionelly violating".
Another point: Kiss is not a large company. And, their headquarters are in Denmark. If you have tried to reach them within the last 2 (two) weeks, chances are, everybody may have been on holiday!.
This may sound absurd to US citizens, but no danish worker have less than 5 weeks of paid vacation, every year. Most have 6 + more if you have kids, move, stuff like that. When I return to the office Monday, it will have been 16 days since I last was there, and that goes for all my colleagues as well.
First off, please note that KISS offers download of the uCLinux kernel and busybox software sources very prominently at the same place where you download firmware for the players.
Secondly: The people of KISS have never tried to hide that they were using GPL'ed software. Mabbe we should give them just one more chance to comply before getting all carried away...
At least one group lacks between the "pro" group he defines, and the "priest".
His pro group basically don't care about the platform they are running.
What about us that don't really care about what platform other people are running - as long as we are free to make our own choice? I do prefer Linux to other platforms, because it fits me, and I agree with the license. But I am not a "priest" - what choice other people make only affects me indirectly (if 99.99% choose windows, my choice of Linux gets harder). I do not care what my friends and relatives run. As long as I do not have to support it - if they want support from me, they must run something I want to support.
What am I? An amateur?
That said, I think the article is silly anyway.
State of sensor networks
on
Spray-On Computers
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Its interessting to reflect a bit on current technology when discussing "science fiction" like this.
Reseachers at Berkely have developed a single chip sensor node called the spec
. Although this node lacks sensors, it clearly demonstrates the potential of the approach, even using existing technology and implements the basic platform for a sensor node in 5 mm (thats 2.379E-5 cubic furlongs for the metricly challenged). This node have very low power requirements and are capable of communication of more than 10 meter at 19kbps.
This year the ACM holds its first international conference on sensor systems, SenSys 2003. A number of problems will most likely be adressed by this conference, moving the sensor network research forward.
Personally I think the visions are quite viable. It is correct that power sources (esp. batteries) are a major trouble, but there are many sources to be investigated, and solutions will be found. The worst problem with sensor networks are probably privacy (you thought RFID's were bad? How about sensors that you can not see, that communicates encrypted on unknown random spread spectrums freqs?) - Vernor Vinge have written a couple of (science fiction) books, where sensor networks are used in ways that will be a bit scary to the average privacy-aware slashdot reader....
Re:They only forgot one thing - power
on
Spray-On Computers
·
· Score: 1
Assuming batteries are the only relevant power source only tells how little you know of this research area. There are so many ways to get power in controlled environments, and even in uncontrolled environments.
Secondly; these things use very very little power. Check the spec http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jhill/spec/index.htm for an example of _current_ hardware.
While you can emulate the CPU, RAM, etc, you run into problems when emulating the sensors and the radio. Although you can write code to emulate these too, at some point you need to run your stuff on the nodes/motes, and there you are quite limited.
That said, the atmel cpu used on current motes supports at least a single serial port, and have digital outputs, so you could hook up a terminal to the serial port or a lcd display and use this.
Sometimes you use all the ports and pins for something else and then you fall back on the leds. I am working with a mote where both serial ports a populated (with Bluetooth radios) but this mote have 4 leds, and have it output 46 different debug messages (obviously there are duplicates, but I kind of guess what the actual messages are from my general feel of what state the application is in) and 55 different error messages (these are easy, as they are only given when the node crashes, so I can flash patterns forever).
Obviously I have a perl program to decode the messages:-) - although one gets quite familiar with the most typical problems...
One of my collegaues have actually ordered one. It is based on an arm processor running uLinux & IIRC you can actually flash the firmware youself, and it is running some sort of mplayer. (AFAIK, the software is somewhere to be found on their homepage.
That is true, but the world is moving towards digital capture. Even for stuff like taping broadcasts, more and more people use external inexpensive boxes that converts the analog signal to a DV signal, like the Canopus boxes do. Its $200 and gives much better quality and reliability as I understand it.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that is open for debate. Anyway, that particular news broadcast has around 1 million viewers, many of them business deciders (it is the late night financial news in Denmark).
;-)
;-).
A relatively high number of people seems to have viewed the clip, at least based on the number of people that have told me that they saw me on TV
(Yes, I am the first guy in the clip, even though they forgot my middle name
In related news, the DR radio (which I believe is Denmarks largest radio), had a 2 minute clip on FireFox too, around its release.
Please realize, that one would only employ this kind of power source, exactly because all other sources were infeasible.
Also, it might be better for the environment to digest a fly, than to produce solar panels, a battery, something like that. After all, we know for sure that the fly will eventually be totally biodegraded.
For what it is worth, I have used a Wikipedia article as references in my (not yet finished) Ph.D. thesis. More specifically http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_noise , which I needed for a discussion about radio signal propagation modelling (which I am not familiar with, otherwise I reckon I could have found a traditional reference).
And, yes, I believe you are quite right in your arguments.
I applaud this guy for sticking his head out (or nose, or wahtever you say in english). But I believe some of his myths are misunderstandings.
:-), but, hey, then he will have to develop another application. If you don't like change, the computer bussiness is a silly business to be in...
1. "If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
Clearly that is bogus. Constructive criticism is always appreciated. OK on that one.
2. "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"
This, most definitively is not a myth. He argues that only a few actuallky does this, and yes, he is right! But they point is, that you can actually do it. Or, if you can not do it, you can pay somebody else to do it. He seems to miss this point and writes "Most of the time, what really happens is that you tell the actual programmer about the problem and wait and see if he/she fixes it." An alternative is to pay that programmer to fix the problem. And, that is a lot easier to do with open source software. Even for large projects (apache, perl, linux), where there is a good chance that you can get a developer with the required knowhow to work for a reasonably pay.
This is not a myth, but rather the author is to restricted in perception here.
3. "All software should be free"
OK, here the author seems unable to make the basic distinction between free as in free-beer, or free as in free-spech. I adressed the money thing in the previous point. Wrt. free-speech, all software I use/depend on, is free. However, most of my games are not (and I even paid for them).
As the writer realizes, and perhaps his worst problem, is that the work he does can be copied. But, that just forces him to keep working. The Microsoft model of charging for breathing may very well be a thing of the past. But that does not mean that people are not ready to pay money for software that they can really benefit from. An obvious example for e.g. Linux is movie editing software (where people pay for MainActor) and 3D modeling programs (people pay for AC3D). Yes, eventually these areas will also be covered by open source program (insert shameless plug for kino, the Linux DV editor
4. "Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"
Of course, this depends on your metrics. As I wrote, I have several commercial games. Most of these are "better" than the open source games I have access to.
On the other hand, my primary criteria for "real-work" software is "will the time I invest in this tool, be accumulated for me, will I be able to use this tool as long as I like, for the purposes I wish?". Example: I used to use a windows 3.11 closed source program to manage my bank accounts. After having typed in all my transactions for about 2 years, this program was not available when I upgraded to windows 95 (and later Linux). No migration path. With Open Source software I know that I can always migrate my data. And, if I develop needs the program does not address, I can pay someone to extend/fix the program. Because that is my main metric, yes, open source software is always better! (To me!).
Because people do actually perceive this "myth" in the general sense, I give him a "so and so" on this.
5. "Scratching the personal itch"
I have to take a slight sidestep here. The author writes (under point 3):
"...it's also true that in many respects, Windows kicks Linux's ass in terms of usability and GUI refinements. It's widely recognized that the Linux desktop is still a work in progress playing catch-up to Microsoft.."
and
"The Gnome and KDE projects remain a bit of a mess, and while they are making great strides they remain far behind MS Windows in terms of real usability for the kind of "my grandma" users that Windows caters to."
This is BS, and negatively impacts my impression of the authors opinions in general. I have yet to see any grandma users that are more capable of anyth
Interesstingly, that is the same as the fundamental Muslims belive, and the Christians in Europe believed several hundred years ago-some probably still do.
I personally don't.
If you want to use Linux, and your sources are DV, use Kino CVS. Given that the required programs are installed (mostly ffmpeg, dvdauthor, growisofs) you can export your movie from Kino to a finished DVD (with chapters) in a single step.
While this DVD will not have a menu, you can also export to an non-finished DVD, where all the chapters will be marked up, and you can exit the dvdauthor XML to include menus, etc.
The last point is not as easy as point and click, and will take some time, but if you want to use Linux, I think its the best/easiest solution at the moment.
Disclaimer: I have contributed code to Kino.
Actually that is pretty f*cking annoying.
Whenever we get visitors they can never find their way around. As a consequence, the administration have begun putting signs up that are printed on a printer.
So much for that.
Sorry if I sound like some old weiner, but it _is_ annoying. Staff and students can find their way around, but guest trying to locate someone have to look at a large number of pretty offensive "pyxlings", and it does not really help the faculty, when they want to give the impression of some kind of serious work going on here. I have had people been really put off by it.
I like Kino - so much that I actually contributed to it. Lots of people seem to like Cinerella There are a lot of other projects.
Did I write anything that indicated that Kino is or will be a replacement for Premiere?
That said, I would personally rather use Kino.
Hmmm. Kino is not KDE software. Actually it uses gtk2 - and I even think some Gnome2 stuff (although it is in the process of getting removed)
OK, this is a first for me; Audacity is a great application, but do we need announcements on /.?
/. to carry news about its releases. But isn't that what Freshmeat is for...?
Really, what exciting new features makes that neccesary?
OK, part of it is envy. I contribute to a number of projects (beginplug) including kino - the greatest DV editor for Linux (endplug) and would love for
I thought that they had trouble keeping the respect in the eyes of the population?
What are they thinking? Will the British population react favorably to this?
In Europe a number of passively heated houses have been built during the last decade. In DK about 100 houses are to be built that will require the equivalent of about 625 KWh of electrical energy to heat them for a whole year. This is for a rather cold climate. Most of the heat is from the sun; ie, the sun shines on the house, warms it up (through window panes, etc)
These houses use about 300 mm of rock wool insulation (600 mm in the roof) and have heat exchanger systems that heat the water you bathe in from the heat in the house, etc.
I am currently building a totally normal house (with active heating) - it will require about 6-8 times as much energy in a year, but this is still a lot less than houses build 10-20 years ago. We pay a lot for energy over here - I guess that helps motivate saving it.
Mads Bondo Dydensborg
The thing is, KISS actually _are_ present on the US market. And, FSF is perhaps stronger/more used to the situation in the US, then FSF Europe.
Mads Bondo Dydensborg
But if you loose, you will have to pay "something". Remember, you not only have to pay the court, you also (in that case), have to pay KISS for their troubles, and your own laywer.
This stuff quickly adds up.
I still think its a _lot_ cheaper than the US, but you need "some money" up front.
Mads Bondo Dydensborg
> How come companies like Kiss cant'be punished by Law?
But, they can.
You need a Danish representative if you want to prosecute them in Denmark. But it should be possibly to prosecute them in the US too. I suppose the FSF can do this.
Mads Bondo Dydensborg
Well, a bit of a misleading subject in my first headline there, I do believe that mplayer have established that they are voilating the GPL, should have read "unclear if intentionelly violating".
Another point: Kiss is not a large company. And, their headquarters are in Denmark. If you have tried to reach them within the last 2 (two) weeks, chances are, everybody may have been on holiday!.
This may sound absurd to US citizens, but no danish worker have less than 5 weeks of paid vacation, every year. Most have 6 + more if you have kids, move, stuff like that. When I return to the office Monday, it will have been 16 days since I last was there, and that goes for all my colleagues as well.
First off, please note that KISS offers download of the uCLinux kernel and busybox software sources very prominently at the same place where you download firmware for the players.
Secondly: The people of KISS have never tried to hide that they were using GPL'ed software. Mabbe we should give them just one more chance to comply before getting all carried away...
At least one group lacks between the "pro" group he defines, and the "priest".
His pro group basically don't care about the platform they are running.
What about us that don't really care about what platform other people are running - as long as we are free to make our own choice? I do prefer Linux to other platforms, because it fits me, and I agree with the license. But I am not a "priest" - what choice other people make only affects me indirectly (if 99.99% choose windows, my choice of Linux gets harder). I do not care what my friends and relatives run. As long as I do not have to support it - if they want support from me, they must run something I want to support.
What am I? An amateur?
That said, I think the article is silly anyway.
Its interessting to reflect a bit on current technology when discussing "science fiction" like this.
Reseachers at Berkely have developed a single chip sensor node called the spec . Although this node lacks sensors, it clearly demonstrates the potential of the approach, even using existing technology and implements the basic platform for a sensor node in 5 mm (thats 2.379E-5 cubic furlongs for the metricly challenged). This node have very low power requirements and are capable of communication of more than 10 meter at 19kbps.
This year the ACM holds its first international conference on sensor systems, SenSys 2003. A number of problems will most likely be adressed by this conference, moving the sensor network research forward.
Personally I think the visions are quite viable. It is correct that power sources (esp. batteries) are a major trouble, but there are many sources to be investigated, and solutions will be found. The worst problem with sensor networks are probably privacy (you thought RFID's were bad? How about sensors that you can not see, that communicates encrypted on unknown random spread spectrums freqs?) - Vernor Vinge have written a couple of (science fiction) books, where sensor networks are used in ways that will be a bit scary to the average privacy-aware slashdot reader....
Assuming batteries are the only relevant power source only tells how little you know of this research area. There are so many ways to get power in controlled environments, and even in uncontrolled environments.
for an example of _current_ hardware.
Secondly; these things use very very little power. Check the spec http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jhill/spec/index.htm
While you can emulate the CPU, RAM, etc, you run into problems when emulating the sensors and the radio. Although you can write code to emulate these too, at some point you need to run your stuff on the nodes/motes, and there you are quite limited.
:-) - although one gets quite familiar with the most typical problems...
That said, the atmel cpu used on current motes supports at least a single serial port, and have digital outputs, so you could hook up a terminal to the serial port or a lcd display and use this.
Sometimes you use all the ports and pins for something else and then you fall back on the leds. I am working with a mote where both serial ports a populated (with Bluetooth radios) but this mote have 4 leds, and have it output 46 different debug messages (obviously there are duplicates, but I kind of guess what the actual messages are from my general feel of what state the application is in) and 55 different error messages (these are easy, as they are only given when the node crashes, so I can flash patterns forever).
Obviously I have a perl program to decode the messages
Mads Bondo Dydensborg
Company homepage is here.
One of my collegaues have actually ordered one. It is based on an arm processor running uLinux & IIRC you can actually flash the firmware youself, and it is running some sort of mplayer. (AFAIK, the software is somewhere to be found on their homepage.
The FAQ is
here.
And, a homepage for kissdvd (the player?) - you need flash. So, that will probably survive a looong time...
Mads Bondo Dydensborg
That is true, but the world is moving towards digital capture. Even for stuff like taping broadcasts, more and more people use external inexpensive boxes that converts the analog signal to a DV signal, like the Canopus boxes do. Its $200 and gives much better quality and reliability as I understand it.
Mads Bondo Dydensborg
Well, you can _almost_ do what you want. With Kino installed, you can plug in your DV cam and start editing away to your hearts content.
I don't know if it is possibly to add icons automagically, but I guess it would be. No idea how to do it though?
Mads Bondo Dydensborg