Never have I seen so much whining! A company puts its butt on the line, going up against the RIAA to provide this service. They provide huge amounts of bandwidth to accomodate full quality streaming (128kb/44KHz). Then they release a Linux client.
And what do we hear? "Hey, they want my email address-- I won't use anything that requires an email address" "They released it under the GPL but kept a library closed-- I won't touch it!" And last but not least, "How can we crack it so we can pirate all these CDs?!"
People, for once in your life stop looking a gift horse in the mouth and appreciate what someone has made available for you.
Obviously BMG and co. don't seem to appreciate the significance of what they're doing. Now it will be impossible to rip your favorite CD encoded with this technology for use on a portable MP3 player. I can't imagine Diamond and other companies will be too happy about this, considering it would make their devices useless except for older discs and MP3s sold online. Or maybe it would... Perhaps we just haven't heard about Diamond's deep investments in MP3.com;-)
Actually if you look around further, it appears that there will be two sets of drivers-- open source and binary only. The open source driver isn't so much a stop-gap measure as much as it is an opportunity for the open source community to take a whack at driver writing and stop the eternal grumbling about going open source/GPL. Granted, the specs for the EMU10K1 chip haven't been released, but as far as "normal" functions are concerned, the support has gotten at least an order of magnitude better. That, and bugs/problems are resolved with much greater speed. The original alpha drivers Creative released were very unreliable, and it was virtually impossible to know when they might be fixed.
I have to say that this all sounds somewhat convincing, but I think we're looking at it from the wrong perspective. People program because they enjoy programming.
This is self-evident, but it's necessary to consider it simply because from the business point of view, you put money into one side of the equation, and out comes code on the other. This is a more a situation of: If a tree grows in the forest, will it die if no one waters it? In the wild, we have countless examples of species that prosper without intervention, and in many cases, intervention or interference can kill the said species. Open source programmers produce an end product that benfits many, with little or no contribution from others. They may do better with help and more resources, or they may not. The fact is, they are a naturally-occuring resource and will continue to produce as long as they are able and willing. Likewise, short of contributing to this resource, there is little way of increasing their output. You might as well ask the tree in the forest to grow faster. You are in no place to make demands on the programmers out there. The reason open source succeeds is because not only can you contribute to the project by giving resources, you can also essentially "join the species", and increase the population of producing individuals. This is why projects can live beyond their current maintainer, and what makes open source so incredible. As long as there are interested, capable people, there is growth and increased quality, diversity, and output.
To come full-circle, businesses can take advantage of these resources, but only to a point. They can then add to the value of the resource by contributing themselves, and that's the missing link (IMHO) to legitimacy and the schedules people want.
I can't handle magazines, and to a lesser extent movies, for the same reason: advertising. Like many have mentioned, it has become blatant and in-your-face, sometimes even ending up as part of an "article".
What I really love are some of the electronic engineering trade journals that make a farcial attempt at impartiality with their articles where a particular application is discussed, as well as a solution. Different products are compared, and each are weeded out as having flaws except one. Surprise surprise, at the end of the article, we find a rep for the manufacturer of the "best" product has authored this sham.
There are a few magazines that seem to have escaped this trend-- Circuit Cellar and Nuts and Volts are a few examples I enjoy.
As to IDE vs. SCSI -- never go with straight IDE on a server. SCSI has the ability to lie to the OS and silently move data from sectors that have gone bad into sectors reserved for that purpose.
I'd like to point out that this is not necessarily true. It's more a function of the quality of the drive in general, rather than IDE vs SCSI. IDE drives to indeed have the ability to do just what you mentioned; both drives contain processors to run the drive, and if necessary, transparently map out bad sectors. To quote from Western Digital's IDE drive feature page:
"Embedded error detection and repair features that automatically detect, isolate and repair problem areas that may develop over the extended use of the drive..."
Welcome to hell;-) I work in a similar situation where I'm required to debug and maintain "applications" that use shell scripts (bourne) like they were free money. It's always invigorating to follow a shell script that chains through five other scripts, via rshell, to three other systems before completing its miracle mile back where it started. Makes it really interesting, especially since a lot of information is hard coded in (like hostnames), and if one script bombs, you never know which one it is. Another nifty trick I've seen here is to cut and paste your way to glory by copying the same cryptic routine over and over again with small variations on a theme.
And finally, don't forget to make it IMPOSSIBLE to call the scripts by hand, something in the style of: myscript BIG_RANDOM_NUMBER PI_TO_100_DIGITS MY_LIFE_STORY BILL_CLINTONS_FAVORITE_RESTAURANT.
Eagle is an excellent package! It has been around for several years on DOS and OS/2, with more recent ports to 'doze and Linux. It doesn't have some of the frills that the really really expensive packages have (gridless routing, simulation, etc), but it works very well otherwise. I've used it for a couple years and been very happy (using the full version).
I don't know about any free software that does GDSII, but here are a few lower-cost options... Ledit by Tanner Research. MyCAD by Agape. And GEdit by Alan Hastings. Sorry, no links but they shouldn't be hard to find. All are under $10K, and of them MyCAD is probably the best at around $2K, with a simulator, verification, and DRC available.
"but isn't $400 a little steep for a programmable remote control? I mean, for that price, couldn't you go out & buy an older Palm?"
Uhhh for $400 you could buy the nicest palm out there-- the Vx. Or two visors, providing you could actually get them shipped to you successfully. And had the patience to order and reorder (rinse and repeat) until they arrived...
This is exactly what a lot of people are thinking right now. I bought a SBLive several months ago because I saw that creative had released a driver for Linux. It was only later that I found that the driver was horribly crippled, and not open source.
People have been bugging them forever to open it, but their response has been that the functionality of the SBLive is "1/3 hardware, 1/3 software, and 1/3 DSP code" (these were the approximate words of the Creative person who replied).
Unfortunately, some of that code will likely stay closed, simply to protect their IP. All I can say is that whatever they open, it's about time! Creative has a policy of not responding to emails or posts to their newgroups, and so there were endless floods of frustrated, bewildered people. Nobody really knew what was going on behind the doors at Creative, and there was precious little in the way of authoritative info from them. It was only recently that they even put up a FAQ. I have to sympathize with them a little though... There were some people who flamed them mercilessly (publicly), and I'm sure there were even more who did it privately via email.
That may have a right to do whatever they want, but I object to the "open-ness" they're trying to take advantage of. Their "open" software is open like a supermarket is open. You can go in and handle or look at the goods, but don't try to go anywhere with them without paying! Truly open software gives you the right to modify and pass it around without restriction, something Sun's license fails miserably.
I saw it over the weekend... And BOY was I sick (no alcohol/drugs involved). The jerky, bouncing, amateurish shots brought me to the brink of hurling before I was 15 minutes into the movie. I spent most of the movie with my eyes closed. I can't say I missed much; both my friend and I thought it was one of the lamest movies ever. Over-played, and really pretty boring for all the hype. I've seen better footage from those "funniest home video" shows.
I do a lot of work with PPC embedded processors... IBM 403Gx stuff. I really enjoy using an assembler by Alfred Arnold called ASL, which targets just about every processor ever made;-) It supports macros and so forth, and works very well. For more info check out http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de:8000/as/as_EN.html
As far as PPC assembler being usable, I enjoy it more than any other processor I've used, including x86, 680x0, AVR, PIC, HC11, etc. And it really isn't too bad to optimize either...
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Never have I seen so much whining! A company puts its butt on the line, going up against the RIAA to provide this service. They provide huge amounts of bandwidth to accomodate full quality streaming (128kb/44KHz). Then they release a Linux client.
And what do we hear? "Hey, they want my email address-- I won't use anything that requires an email address" "They released it under the GPL but kept a library closed-- I won't touch it!" And last but not least, "How can we crack it so we can pirate all these CDs?!"
People, for once in your life stop looking a gift horse in the mouth and appreciate what someone has made available for you.
Obviously BMG and co. don't seem to appreciate the significance of what they're doing. Now it will be impossible to rip your favorite CD encoded with this technology for use on a portable MP3 player. I can't imagine Diamond and other companies will be too happy about this, considering it would make their devices useless except for older discs and MP3s sold online. Or maybe it would... Perhaps we just haven't heard about Diamond's deep investments in MP3.com ;-)
Actually if you look around further, it appears that there will be two sets of drivers-- open source and binary only. The open source driver isn't so much a stop-gap measure as much as it is an opportunity for the open source community to take a whack at driver writing and stop the eternal grumbling about going open source/GPL. Granted, the specs for the EMU10K1 chip haven't been released, but as far as "normal" functions are concerned, the support has gotten at least an order of magnitude better. That, and bugs/problems are resolved with much greater speed. The original alpha drivers Creative released were very unreliable, and it was virtually impossible to know when they might be fixed.
I have to say that this all sounds somewhat convincing, but I think we're looking at it from the wrong perspective.
People program because they enjoy programming.
This is self-evident, but it's necessary to consider it simply because from the business point of view, you put money into one side of the equation, and out comes code on the other. This is a more a situation of: If a tree grows in the forest, will it die if no one waters it? In the wild, we have countless examples of species that prosper without intervention, and in many cases, intervention or interference can kill the said species. Open source programmers produce an end product that benfits many, with little or no contribution from others. They may do better with help and more resources, or they may not. The fact is, they are a naturally-occuring resource and will continue to produce as long as they are able and willing. Likewise, short of contributing to this resource, there is little way of increasing their output. You might as well ask the tree in the forest to grow faster.
You are in no place to make demands on the programmers out there. The reason open source succeeds is because not only can you contribute to the project by giving resources, you can also essentially "join the species", and increase the population of producing individuals. This is why projects can live beyond their current maintainer, and what makes open source so incredible. As long as there are interested, capable people, there is growth and increased quality, diversity, and output.
To come full-circle, businesses can take advantage of these resources, but only to a point. They can then add to the value of the resource by contributing themselves, and that's the missing link (IMHO) to legitimacy and the schedules people want.
I can't handle magazines, and to a lesser extent movies, for the same reason: advertising. Like many have mentioned, it has become blatant and in-your-face, sometimes even ending up as part of an "article".
What I really love are some of the electronic engineering trade journals that make a farcial attempt at impartiality with their articles where a particular application is discussed, as well as a solution. Different products are compared, and each are weeded out as having flaws except one. Surprise surprise, at the end of the article, we find a rep for the manufacturer of the "best" product has authored this sham.
There are a few magazines that seem to have escaped this trend-- Circuit Cellar and Nuts and Volts are a few examples I enjoy.
As to IDE vs. SCSI -- never go with straight IDE on a server. SCSI has the ability to lie to the OS and silently move data from sectors that have gone bad into sectors reserved for that purpose.
I'd like to point out that this is not necessarily true. It's more a function of the quality of the drive in general, rather than IDE vs SCSI. IDE drives to indeed have the ability to do just what you mentioned; both drives contain processors to run the drive, and if necessary, transparently map out bad sectors. To quote from Western Digital's IDE drive feature page:
"Embedded error detection and repair features that automatically detect, isolate and repair problem areas that may develop over the extended use of the drive..."
Welcome to hell ;-) I work in a similar situation where I'm required to debug and maintain "applications" that use shell scripts (bourne) like they were free money. It's always invigorating to follow a shell script that chains through five other scripts, via rshell, to three other systems before completing its miracle mile back where it started. Makes it really interesting, especially since a lot of information is hard coded in (like hostnames), and if one script bombs, you never know which one it is. Another nifty trick I've seen here is to cut and paste your way to glory by copying the same cryptic routine over and over again with small variations on a theme.
And finally, don't forget to make it IMPOSSIBLE to call the scripts by hand, something in the style of:
myscript BIG_RANDOM_NUMBER PI_TO_100_DIGITS MY_LIFE_STORY BILL_CLINTONS_FAVORITE_RESTAURANT.
Eagle is an excellent package! It has been around for several years on DOS and OS/2, with more recent ports to 'doze and Linux. It doesn't have some of the frills that the really really expensive packages have (gridless routing, simulation, etc), but it works very well otherwise. I've used it for a couple years and been very happy (using the full version).
I don't know about any free software that does GDSII, but here are a few lower-cost options...
Ledit by Tanner Research. MyCAD by Agape. And GEdit by Alan Hastings. Sorry, no links but they shouldn't be hard to find. All are under $10K, and of them MyCAD is probably the best at around $2K, with a simulator, verification, and DRC available.
"but isn't $400 a little steep for a programmable remote control? I mean, for that price, couldn't you go out & buy an older Palm?"
Uhhh for $400 you could buy the nicest palm out there-- the Vx. Or two visors, providing you could actually get them shipped to you successfully. And had the patience to order and reorder (rinse and repeat) until they arrived...
This is exactly what a lot of people are thinking right now. I bought a SBLive several months ago because I saw that creative had released a driver for Linux. It was only later that I found that the driver was horribly crippled, and not open source.
People have been bugging them forever to open it, but their response has been that the functionality of the SBLive is "1/3 hardware, 1/3 software, and 1/3 DSP code" (these were the approximate words of the Creative person who replied).
Unfortunately, some of that code will likely stay closed, simply to protect their IP. All I can say is that whatever they open, it's about time! Creative has a policy of not responding to emails or posts to their newgroups, and so there were endless floods of frustrated, bewildered people. Nobody really knew what was going on behind the doors at Creative, and there was precious little in the way of authoritative info from them. It was only recently that they even put up a FAQ. I have to sympathize with them a little though... There were some people who flamed them mercilessly (publicly), and I'm sure there were even more who did it privately via email.
That may have a right to do whatever they want, but I object to the "open-ness" they're trying to take advantage of. Their "open" software is open like a supermarket is open. You can go in and handle or look at the goods, but don't try to go anywhere with them without paying! Truly open software gives you the right to modify and pass it around without restriction, something Sun's license fails miserably.
I saw it over the weekend... And BOY was I sick (no alcohol/drugs involved). The jerky, bouncing, amateurish shots brought me to the brink of hurling before I was 15 minutes into the movie. I spent most of the movie with my eyes closed. I can't say I missed much; both my friend and I thought it was one of the lamest movies ever. Over-played, and really pretty boring for all the hype. I've seen better footage from those "funniest home video" shows.
I do a lot of work with PPC embedded processors... IBM 403Gx stuff. I really enjoy using an assembler by Alfred Arnold called ASL, which targets just about every processor ever made ;-) It supports macros and so forth, and works very well. For more info check out http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de:8000/as/as_EN.html
As far as PPC assembler being usable, I enjoy it more than any other processor I've used, including x86, 680x0, AVR, PIC, HC11, etc. And it really isn't too bad to optimize either...
Larry