Coders wanted. Linux bring-up is done, needs USB and display to be more useful. Discussion happens on Freenode IRC #raspberrypi-internals
When this popular embedded platform has a fully functional open firmware to use instead of the proprietary bootcode.bin then I'll be a little more cheery about the success of the Raspberry Pi worldwide.
Cell phone communication (voice, text, videocall, location tracking) is fine and preferred for one-on-one communication. When there is a mass event (community bicycle race or marathon, and the oft-overused example of disaster scenario or improbable zombie apocalypse) then 2-way site radio can be as effective as the skill of the radio operators. It's not enough that licensed amateur radio operation has historically existed, there must be protections for operators to practice their skills and remain as effective as they would like to be. You might not like the 40ft antenna mast in your neighbor's back yard, but you'd be totally daft to scream "LA LA LA LA NOT LISTENING TO YOU LA LA LA NO YOU CAN'T BE A RADIO OPERATOR LA LA LA" covering your ears and rolling your eyes back at that same neighbor; as HOAs have been doing on your behalf for years.
Although most search engine hits reveal a predicted release date sometime in 2017, the news of Raspberry Pi 2 immediate release is real and is listed officially at http://www.raspberrypi.org/ras...
Settled on a Huawei U8686 (T-Mobile Prism II / Android 4.1.1) for $70usd new. What I've learned compared to the N900, follows.
Similar: - survive with screen protector a drop to concrete from pocket - small hi-res screen is unnoticeable size in pocket - replaceable battery - wifi / bluetooth / GPS - microSD storage expansion - standard SIM card
N900 is better: - Camera autofocus and flash with excellent optics quality (affects usefulness as 2D barcode scanner) - Keyboard and Resistive touchscreen work always even in rainy weather - Cellular carrier sees N900 as a "dumb phone" and no problem to use on cheap unlimited data plan ; Carrier forces upsell to new data plan if using Android OS - Already have one and don't want to buy another device - Most apps are free as in freedom with open source code and free software license - 16GB or 32GB storage internal comparable with most high-end phones to date
U8686 is better: - Make and receive calls consistently with instant and foolproof UI response - Integration with T-Mobile wifi hotspot call routing ; use this one a lot at home where there is Internet but no cellular coverage - Pinch/pull to zoom makes Firefox Mobile much more useful - On screen keyboard works smoothly with easy to configure text prediction - Majority OS marketshare at its release with Android - No moving parts
Not sure about: - Google Android manager allows to track your misplaced phone ; Admittedly this is both a great benefit and privacy concern - Low signal-to-noise App marketplace promoting a non-libre and advertising supported shit storm of apps that are diminishing in usefulness - U8686 bootloader is locked by default. Huawei honors requests for bootloader unlock code via a recently-discovered form letter. Alternative Android OS builds for this device by community are not yet available. - Where is wireless charging? Aftermarket product makers of either device, hello?
Summary: An improvement over the N900 should cost *less* than you paid originally for your N900, and to be a true improvement (at the same price) there would be *zero* binary blobs and proprietary softwares required. Can you make a truly libre phone OS run on cheap ($100) Android phone hardware?
A few refurb SanDisk Sansa Fuze or Clip players and an assortment of 2GB to 8GB uSD cards fills the need to enjoy FLAC based CD-quality music on-the-go. No, you don't need Rockbox (alternative firmware). Native vendor firmware plays 44KHz/16-bit/2-channel FLAC without issue. Labeling uSD cards is a little tricky, and for that task I'll cut an Avery 6737 label in half and write using an ultra-fine (0.5mm) tip pen. After a few insertion cycles of the storage card, the label settles enough that it does not bind on the socket. All of my music is stored and labeled this way and fits in an Altoids tin. Duplicity encrypted backups are stored offline on 1TB or 2TB rotational platter drives. The upfront cost of this setup is about equal or less than what I paid in the 1990's for a used portable CD player, NiCad batteries, and CD case storage.
What I would like to see (as a consumer) is the wider adoption of 96KHz/24-bit FLAC playback capability on portable devices. CD quality isn't good enough for me to justify paying more than the cost of a local live show for it. I can barely notice the difference between CD-quality and a higher resolution signal, but I -do- notice the difference. I.e most people do not notice when they crank up the volume of a player beyond the line input level of a stereo system, and I do know this, it is grating to my hearing and detrimental to enjoying music. Worst yet about our economy today of buying and selling music, most of this music is damaged by the compression methods to the point where not many people can tell the difference anymore. It all sounds like shit at playback no matter what you do to it.
The Gathering Mono (instrumental group from Japan) Captain Beefheart Frank Zappa Nathan Fake Mew / And the glass handed kites (album) Muse Radiohead ELP
and there's always Brian Eno / Mike Oldfield, but honestly I haven't got the patience for it.
To be fair you should probably give Sonic Youth a listen; Musically brilliant and "recent", though not anything similar to Pink Floyd.
I've heard Coldplay is similar to Pink Floyd, just kidding.
Nick, ever the rational one, the only member to be with the band through its entire career, said "Hey You, It's One of My Turns to speak right now, and Let There Be More Light on this subject. Remember, Childhood's End, and we're at Chapter 24 of our careers. If only you would overcome your Flaming temper, we could Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun and watch our sales go into Interstellar Overdrive. Remember a Day before today when we were young and were the Masters of Rock? When we shone like the sun? Today's market is The Thin Ice, or to put it in other words, The Narrow Way, and if we don't let them sell online, you may as well plant us now six feet under in Granchester Meadows."
When I travel nowadays I'm increasingly worried that some effect of mine will not pass muster at a security checkpoint. My options would be: 1. Do not take that flight 2. Hand over the item to TSA douchebags 3. Pay extra to check the item
I do work at a cinema. Your "friend" is talking fantasy. The standard for years past and years to come is and will continue to be Film. Who would have access to a full color movie-capable scanning laser projection system? I can find no evidence to support the claim that any audience in cinematic history has had their faces BURNED from laser projection, not even to say that this has ever existed in a cinema. For those curious about what the !@#$ top poster is going on about and how the Microvision scanning laser projection technology relates to cinema... Maintaining a cinema projector lamp house light source is MUCH LESS expensive for equal hours in operation than the light source for a consumer LCD or DLP projector. It's also much more incredibly bright than anything on the consumer market. Theaters will not be interested in the Microvision technology for showing their movies, because it will not be bright enough and you would inherit all the annoying problems of having a digital print anyways. Film is preferred over Digital because you can pick up a film in a multiplex and move it between booths and platter systems quite readily. Being able to readily move a print around is how you maximize profits... are there really any kids awake at a 9pm showing to go see the latest Disney movie about talking cats and superhero hamsters? Adding lasers into the picture doesn't offer anything lucrative even at a Theater set up for digital projection. Theaters using film projectors often use a consumer projector for on-screen advertising, and so the Microvision technology looks pretty good for this if it is bright enough to fill the screen (from a pretty long throw distance). It doesn't have to be high definition or anything, just watchable and cost less than the existing gear to maintain. Digital equipped theaters would still use their cinema projectors to display advertising because it is cheaper to do so. The Microvision technology will primarily appeal to the home theater market segment, where enthusiasts are paying much higher costs than real cinemas to maintain their projection system light source. After the SHOW WX gains momentum as a first generation product, expect to see this technology compete with consumer projection systems, and to become invasive just as the camera has on cell phones and media devices.
With a simple firmware update to the latest and greatest from SanDisk, your Sansa Fuze and/or Sansa Clip get manufacturer sanctioned support for ReplayGain-capable FLAC and Vorbis.
I've owned a Clip, and now a Fuze. These are my "go to" devices, I confidently recommend them for the minority of portable media player consumers who don't want an iPod.
If you don't like the firmware on the Clip or Fuze, you can be a nerd and compile and use a work-in-progress version of Rockbox alternative firmware. It works quite well on the Fuze, and I'm not sure about the Clip. I think the SanDisk firmware is equivalent-or-better than a mostly-functioning Rockbox build. Fanatics insist that Rockbox will work on their portable media player purchase... okay choice is nice, but I am happy with the vendor firmware support of FLAC and Ogg Vorbis.
I consider Vorbis to be dead-on-arrival codec for music sales. The way storage prices go, and Sansa player compatibility, I've shifted toward buying CDs for archival as FLAC/cue. What's the point of buying music in Vorbis format?
The real strength of Vorbis is in games development. Avoiding a license fee by using a free format like Vorbis is a huge win for Rockstar Games in example, where Ogg Vorbis is used for all the game music... or at least that's how I remember it.
The "win" for the FLAC format is driven not by it being the most efficient. Its popularity is driven by being good enough, nearly first in availability, being stable and having few restrictions to implement (leading to wider user base). You can't say it sounds better than the competitors, it was in the right place at the right time.
Theora is late to the scene as a general video storage format. The encoder is not (yet) fine-tuned, and so it isn't good enough. There are few restrictions but development is on-going, which loses out to existing and stable "good enough" implementations of other standards (xvid, x264, flv container). There is no on-going format war because whatever DRM-free format Apple (as a consumer acceptance monopoly) chooses will be the new de facto portable media format. The only door that can be left open is if Apple rejects ALL non-DRM format playback, which hasn't happened yet.
Vorbis and Theora share the fate of being ignored or unwanted by the majority iPod-using crowd.
Behind the scenes, Dirac (a freely licensed non-Xiph video codec) is posing a huge win as a video archival format. Its use offers clear advantages to broadcasting operations. The demand is there for support on big-ticket editing equipment.
I observe that FLAC and Dirac are to be successful, while Vorbis and Theora reap gradual improvements along the way. Improvements in Theora encoding alone are not enough to make it a competitor to h264. You're just going to have to cheer along with everyone else who want a low to medium bandwidth video codec that is simply "good enough", but without the irksome licensing restrictions.
Embedded streaming audio and video playback on the "web" do offer opportunity for Theora and Vorbis ubiquity. It's the only market cornered by a standards body (W3C) that might actually enable player acceptance comparable to the size of the iPod user base.
I too bought a KWGR614 on the premise that it was open source licensed firmware code. It was like selling a budget level automobile without brakes. "Here, these are the blueprints for everything except the brakes, why don't you design those yourself?"
The default firmware was awful (from a user perspective), and no OpenWRT nor DD-WRT developers are interested in going near its SoC processor. Everything at the time it was released had been based on the Broadcom CPU and Linksys firmware.
We have developers and an interest in Linux-on-wifi-router today because the Linksys firmware is user friendly. This isn't the ground-up approach some Free Software or Linux fantasies are made of. The product would have sold well with or without Linux compatibility. The WRT54G worked well and could be modified, and this fact sold many extra units of product, leading to a new market of firmware-modding buyers.
It's not exactly exciting for Netgear to be releasing this new Linux-friendly product this year. Keep in mind that their last such product was a certifiable failure. This time around they have learned from a past mistake, and promise compatibility with existing "mainstream" firmwares (DD-WRT, Tomato).
What is exciting IMO is that this move further helps to legitimize small Linux-based projects in existing techie business applications. In markets where you depend on products being available 5-10+ years for purchase, shopping for the cheapest / fastest Linux compatible wifi router hardware "flavor of the month" is not an option. The specs of this router are not the important factor here! It is most important that Netgear is offering a long-term product and is accepted by the businesses who rely on repeat purchases, of a Linux-compatible wifi product.
Scenario: Mom asks you to install Ubuntu on her Dell computer setup.
Problems:
1) Open Source libata driver for the SATA optical drive causes frequent timeouts and hangs. Looks like a problem with the Ubuntu kernel. Tell Mom it's just like Windows XP, there are problems which will be updated and fixed "eventually".
2) Dell printer not supported by CUPS and open source drivers. There is no support from Dell, but a 20 minute Google search effort turns up the model is a re-branded Lexmark. The Ubuntu community forums detail a process to install proprietary Lexmark drivers for Debian GNU/Linux. Tell mom it's just like Windows XP, some printers need a certain version of driver for the device.
3) Displayed video is incorrect on Dell LCD display. Search Google for about a solid hour to find an answer. Looks like an Ubuntu problem with an open source driver. Tell Mom that there's nothing wrong with her computer, even though the screen is completely black for the whole boot process.
My own conclusion:
Ubuntu is a hit-or-miss installation for Dell hardware owners. Mostly miss. The open source or closed source nature of a driver does not factor into user acceptance. The user is uncomfortable when their hardware is "broken" due to a missing or incompatible driver.
I do not see any text supporting that ADNRs are not able to be scratched by diamond. It may be possible that the two materials (diamond and ADNRs) are able to scratch one another. AFAIK the Rockwell test is used for naturally occurring substances anyways.
Has the Rockwell test been accepted for non-natural substances?
"This is your captain speaking. I've been advised to take a south route through Ft. Lauderdale due to a missle launch, so expect to see some fireworks after the turbulence. I'll keep you all advised..."
(later on)
"Ladies and gentlemen if you look over the left wing you'll see the rocket, it's quite a sight."
(people jump over to left windows, plane rolls a few degrees)
now, please tell me if you think those names somehow indicate that the respective products are desktop computer operating systems.
"Ubuntu hoary hedgehog" makes just as much sense as "Apple OSX Tiger" or even "Microsoft Windows Longhorn".
Acutally, I take the names to mean:
Tiger - endangered species in (some) parts of the world Longhorn - the bull(y) of the market Hedgehog - secure from predators and perhaps fond of cheese chili dogs and/or blue in colour
Slashdot Mirror
Open firmware: https://github.com/christinaa/...
Coders wanted. Linux bring-up is done, needs USB and display to be more useful. Discussion happens on Freenode IRC #raspberrypi-internals
When this popular embedded platform has a fully functional open firmware to use instead of the proprietary bootcode.bin then I'll be a little more cheery about the success of the Raspberry Pi worldwide.
...and who could forget this memorable tribute (Bill Paxton Pinball) https://features.slashdot.org/...
Or, people would like to be able to own homes in areas unblighted by rooftop antenna towers.
Chimneys, satellite TV or ISP dishes, HDTV antennas, wind vanes, flag poles, roof-mounted security lights, rain gutter systems, skylights, solar panels.
You forgot these things we should also get rid of, just to be fair.
Why not just use a cell phone?
Cell phone communication (voice, text, videocall, location tracking) is fine and preferred for one-on-one communication. When there is a mass event (community bicycle race or marathon, and the oft-overused example of disaster scenario or improbable zombie apocalypse) then 2-way site radio can be as effective as the skill of the radio operators. It's not enough that licensed amateur radio operation has historically existed, there must be protections for operators to practice their skills and remain as effective as they would like to be. You might not like the 40ft antenna mast in your neighbor's back yard, but you'd be totally daft to scream "LA LA LA LA NOT LISTENING TO YOU LA LA LA NO YOU CAN'T BE A RADIO OPERATOR LA LA LA" covering your ears and rolling your eyes back at that same neighbor; as HOAs have been doing on your behalf for years.
We should be singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" considering the copyright status of "Happy Birthday" puts it off-message.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Although most search engine hits reveal a predicted release date sometime in 2017, the news of Raspberry Pi 2 immediate release is real and is listed officially at http://www.raspberrypi.org/ras...
If anyone has questions, would be happy to answer them!
Timed out frequently (script not responding) and not exactly playable on my 2.2GHz core2duo 2GB ram laptop with Firefox 28.0 on Ubuntu Linux 14.04
What are system requirements?
Settled on a Huawei U8686 (T-Mobile Prism II / Android 4.1.1) for $70usd new. What I've learned compared to the N900, follows.
Similar:
- survive with screen protector a drop to concrete from pocket
- small hi-res screen is unnoticeable size in pocket
- replaceable battery
- wifi / bluetooth / GPS
- microSD storage expansion
- standard SIM card
N900 is better:
- Camera autofocus and flash with excellent optics quality (affects usefulness as 2D barcode scanner)
- Keyboard and Resistive touchscreen work always even in rainy weather
- Cellular carrier sees N900 as a "dumb phone" and no problem to use on cheap unlimited data plan ; Carrier forces upsell to new data plan if using Android OS
- Already have one and don't want to buy another device
- Most apps are free as in freedom with open source code and free software license
- 16GB or 32GB storage internal comparable with most high-end phones to date
U8686 is better:
- Make and receive calls consistently with instant and foolproof UI response
- Integration with T-Mobile wifi hotspot call routing ; use this one a lot at home where there is Internet but no cellular coverage
- Pinch/pull to zoom makes Firefox Mobile much more useful
- On screen keyboard works smoothly with easy to configure text prediction
- Majority OS marketshare at its release with Android
- No moving parts
Not sure about:
- Google Android manager allows to track your misplaced phone ; Admittedly this is both a great benefit and privacy concern
- Low signal-to-noise App marketplace promoting a non-libre and advertising supported shit storm of apps that are diminishing in usefulness
- U8686 bootloader is locked by default. Huawei honors requests for bootloader unlock code via a recently-discovered form letter. Alternative Android OS builds for this device by community are not yet available.
- Where is wireless charging? Aftermarket product makers of either device, hello?
Summary: An improvement over the N900 should cost *less* than you paid originally for your N900, and to be a true improvement (at the same price) there would be *zero* binary blobs and proprietary softwares required. Can you make a truly libre phone OS run on cheap ($100) Android phone hardware?
A few refurb SanDisk Sansa Fuze or Clip players and an assortment of 2GB to 8GB uSD cards fills the need to enjoy FLAC based CD-quality music on-the-go. No, you don't need Rockbox (alternative firmware). Native vendor firmware plays 44KHz/16-bit/2-channel FLAC without issue. Labeling uSD cards is a little tricky, and for that task I'll cut an Avery 6737 label in half and write using an ultra-fine (0.5mm) tip pen. After a few insertion cycles of the storage card, the label settles enough that it does not bind on the socket. All of my music is stored and labeled this way and fits in an Altoids tin. Duplicity encrypted backups are stored offline on 1TB or 2TB rotational platter drives. The upfront cost of this setup is about equal or less than what I paid in the 1990's for a used portable CD player, NiCad batteries, and CD case storage.
What I would like to see (as a consumer) is the wider adoption of 96KHz/24-bit FLAC playback capability on portable devices. CD quality isn't good enough for me to justify paying more than the cost of a local live show for it. I can barely notice the difference between CD-quality and a higher resolution signal, but I -do- notice the difference. I.e most people do not notice when they crank up the volume of a player beyond the line input level of a stereo system, and I do know this, it is grating to my hearing and detrimental to enjoying music. Worst yet about our economy today of buying and selling music, most of this music is damaged by the compression methods to the point where not many people can tell the difference anymore. It all sounds like shit at playback no matter what you do to it.
Try:
The Gathering
Mono (instrumental group from Japan)
Captain Beefheart
Frank Zappa
Nathan Fake
Mew / And the glass handed kites (album)
Muse
Radiohead
ELP
and there's always Brian Eno / Mike Oldfield, but honestly I haven't got the patience for it.
To be fair you should probably give Sonic Youth a listen; Musically brilliant and "recent", though not anything similar to Pink Floyd.
I've heard Coldplay is similar to Pink Floyd, just kidding.
Nick, ever the rational one, the only member to be with the band through its entire career, said "Hey You, It's One of My Turns to speak right now, and Let There Be More Light on this subject. Remember, Childhood's End, and we're at Chapter 24 of our careers. If only you would overcome your Flaming temper, we could Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun and watch our sales go into Interstellar Overdrive. Remember a Day before today when we were young and were the Masters of Rock? When we shone like the sun? Today's market is The Thin Ice, or to put it in other words, The Narrow Way, and if we don't let them sell online, you may as well plant us now six feet under in Granchester Meadows."
[x] Apply memes
A) ...as the prince of Bel-Air.
B) I see what you did there.
C) It's over 9000
Mod parent up!
When I travel nowadays I'm increasingly worried that some effect of mine will not pass muster at a security checkpoint. My options would be:
1. Do not take that flight
2. Hand over the item to TSA douchebags
3. Pay extra to check the item
It's enough to discourage me from plane travel.
I do work at a cinema. Your "friend" is talking fantasy. The standard for years past and years to come is and will continue to be Film. Who would have access to a full color movie-capable scanning laser projection system? I can find no evidence to support the claim that any audience in cinematic history has had their faces BURNED from laser projection, not even to say that this has ever existed in a cinema.
For those curious about what the !@#$ top poster is going on about and how the Microvision scanning laser projection technology relates to cinema...
Maintaining a cinema projector lamp house light source is MUCH LESS expensive for equal hours in operation than the light source for a consumer LCD or DLP projector. It's also much more incredibly bright than anything on the consumer market. Theaters will not be interested in the Microvision technology for showing their movies, because it will not be bright enough and you would inherit all the annoying problems of having a digital print anyways.
Film is preferred over Digital because you can pick up a film in a multiplex and move it between booths and platter systems quite readily. Being able to readily move a print around is how you maximize profits... are there really any kids awake at a 9pm showing to go see the latest Disney movie about talking cats and superhero hamsters? Adding lasers into the picture doesn't offer anything lucrative even at a Theater set up for digital projection.
Theaters using film projectors often use a consumer projector for on-screen advertising, and so the Microvision technology looks pretty good for this if it is bright enough to fill the screen (from a pretty long throw distance). It doesn't have to be high definition or anything, just watchable and cost less than the existing gear to maintain. Digital equipped theaters would still use their cinema projectors to display advertising because it is cheaper to do so.
The Microvision technology will primarily appeal to the home theater market segment, where enthusiasts are paying much higher costs than real cinemas to maintain their projection system light source. After the SHOW WX gains momentum as a first generation product, expect to see this technology compete with consumer projection systems, and to become invasive just as the camera has on cell phones and media devices.
With a simple firmware update to the latest and greatest from SanDisk, your Sansa Fuze and/or Sansa Clip get manufacturer sanctioned support for ReplayGain-capable FLAC and Vorbis.
I've owned a Clip, and now a Fuze. These are my "go to" devices, I confidently recommend them for the minority of portable media player consumers who don't want an iPod.
If you don't like the firmware on the Clip or Fuze, you can be a nerd and compile and use a work-in-progress version of Rockbox alternative firmware. It works quite well on the Fuze, and I'm not sure about the Clip. I think the SanDisk firmware is equivalent-or-better than a mostly-functioning Rockbox build. Fanatics insist that Rockbox will work on their portable media player purchase... okay choice is nice, but I am happy with the vendor firmware support of FLAC and Ogg Vorbis.
I consider Vorbis to be dead-on-arrival codec for music sales. The way storage prices go, and Sansa player compatibility, I've shifted toward buying CDs for archival as FLAC/cue. What's the point of buying music in Vorbis format?
The real strength of Vorbis is in games development. Avoiding a license fee by using a free format like Vorbis is a huge win for Rockstar Games in example, where Ogg Vorbis is used for all the game music... or at least that's how I remember it.
The "win" for the FLAC format is driven not by it being the most efficient. Its popularity is driven by being good enough, nearly first in availability, being stable and having few restrictions to implement (leading to wider user base). You can't say it sounds better than the competitors, it was in the right place at the right time.
Theora is late to the scene as a general video storage format. The encoder is not (yet) fine-tuned, and so it isn't good enough. There are few restrictions but development is on-going, which loses out to existing and stable "good enough" implementations of other standards (xvid, x264, flv container). There is no on-going format war because whatever DRM-free format Apple (as a consumer acceptance monopoly) chooses will be the new de facto portable media format. The only door that can be left open is if Apple rejects ALL non-DRM format playback, which hasn't happened yet.
Vorbis and Theora share the fate of being ignored or unwanted by the majority iPod-using crowd.
Behind the scenes, Dirac (a freely licensed non-Xiph video codec) is posing a huge win as a video archival format. Its use offers clear advantages to broadcasting operations. The demand is there for support on big-ticket editing equipment.
I observe that FLAC and Dirac are to be successful, while Vorbis and Theora reap gradual improvements along the way. Improvements in Theora encoding alone are not enough to make it a competitor to h264. You're just going to have to cheer along with everyone else who want a low to medium bandwidth video codec that is simply "good enough", but without the irksome licensing restrictions.
Embedded streaming audio and video playback on the "web" do offer opportunity for Theora and Vorbis ubiquity. It's the only market cornered by a standards body (W3C) that might actually enable player acceptance comparable to the size of the iPod user base.
I too bought a KWGR614 on the premise that it was open source licensed firmware code. It was like selling a budget level automobile without brakes. "Here, these are the blueprints for everything except the brakes, why don't you design those yourself?"
The default firmware was awful (from a user perspective), and no OpenWRT nor DD-WRT developers are interested in going near its SoC processor. Everything at the time it was released had been based on the Broadcom CPU and Linksys firmware.
We have developers and an interest in Linux-on-wifi-router today because the Linksys firmware is user friendly. This isn't the ground-up approach some Free Software or Linux fantasies are made of. The product would have sold well with or without Linux compatibility. The WRT54G worked well and could be modified, and this fact sold many extra units of product, leading to a new market of firmware-modding buyers.
It's not exactly exciting for Netgear to be releasing this new Linux-friendly product this year. Keep in mind that their last such product was a certifiable failure. This time around they have learned from a past mistake, and promise compatibility with existing "mainstream" firmwares (DD-WRT, Tomato).
What is exciting IMO is that this move further helps to legitimize small Linux-based projects in existing techie business applications. In markets where you depend on products being available 5-10+ years for purchase, shopping for the cheapest / fastest Linux compatible wifi router hardware "flavor of the month" is not an option. The specs of this router are not the important factor here! It is most important that Netgear is offering a long-term product and is accepted by the businesses who rely on repeat purchases, of a Linux-compatible wifi product.
Scenario: Mom asks you to install Ubuntu on her Dell computer setup.
Problems:
1) Open Source libata driver for the SATA optical drive causes frequent timeouts and hangs. Looks like a problem with the Ubuntu kernel. Tell Mom it's just like Windows XP, there are problems which will be updated and fixed "eventually".
2) Dell printer not supported by CUPS and open source drivers. There is no support from Dell, but a 20 minute Google search effort turns up the model is a re-branded Lexmark. The Ubuntu community forums detail a process to install proprietary Lexmark drivers for Debian GNU/Linux. Tell mom it's just like Windows XP, some printers need a certain version of driver for the device.
3) Displayed video is incorrect on Dell LCD display. Search Google for about a solid hour to find an answer. Looks like an Ubuntu problem with an open source driver. Tell Mom that there's nothing wrong with her computer, even though the screen is completely black for the whole boot process.
My own conclusion:
Ubuntu is a hit-or-miss installation for Dell hardware owners. Mostly miss. The open source or closed source nature of a driver does not factor into user acceptance. The user is uncomfortable when their hardware is "broken" due to a missing or incompatible driver.
Mom's conclusion:
The Ubuntu Hardy "bird" logo is "pretty".
I do not see any text supporting that ADNRs are not able to be scratched by diamond. It may be possible that the two materials (diamond and ADNRs) are able to scratch one another. AFAIK the Rockwell test is used for naturally occurring substances anyways.
Has the Rockwell test been accepted for non-natural substances?
I missed the HHG2TG reference, where was it?
"Another important concern with dry ice is ventilation. You want to make sure the area is well-ventilated. "
Have you considered the many possibilities that asphyxiation has to offer?
Belgium, man. Belguim!
flying in to Florida for the Hitchhiker's movie:
"This is your captain speaking. I've been advised to take a south route through Ft. Lauderdale due to a missle launch, so expect to see some fireworks after the turbulence. I'll keep you all advised..."
(later on)
"Ladies and gentlemen if you look over the left wing you'll see the rocket, it's quite a sight."
(people jump over to left windows, plane rolls a few degrees)
"Apple Macintosh"
"Microsoft Windows"
now, please tell me if you think those names somehow indicate that the respective products are desktop computer operating systems.
"Ubuntu hoary hedgehog" makes just as much sense as "Apple OSX Tiger" or even "Microsoft Windows Longhorn".
Acutally, I take the names to mean:
Tiger - endangered species in (some) parts of the world
Longhorn - the bull(y) of the market
Hedgehog - secure from predators and perhaps fond of cheese chili dogs and/or blue in colour
...but this one goes to 11!
makes our cars faster.
in 2041, maybe it really will.
s/Neuromancer/Neurofinancer/
just something that came into mind. cheers.