"Mmm... ugly, non-portable, AND obscure. A winning combo. QT can at least be used on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, etc.:)"
FLTK can be used on Windows, MacOS, Linux (and anything running X11...). As for "ugly"- that'd be the default UI look and feel. You can produce NICE looking UI code with FLTK (Witness "Post Office", a mail program using FLTK as the GUI lib (http://www.tarball.net/postoffice)- it looks as polished as many commercial products.) and the default UI look and feel is about to get an update with the 2.0 release that is currently in development.
Don't get me wrong, Qt is nice. Qt, however, is much, much larger (even with Qt Embedded) than FLTK (2 or so Mb versus 200-400k for FLTK!) and requires special pre-processors to make the code go.
A PDA can hold books, documentation, specialized application software, personal notes, appointments, and play calculator- all of which will take up vastly less space than the notebook, daily organizer, and calculator. If you can afford one, it's NOT pointless. If not, well, you CAN fall back to what you suggest.
That run off of LP or Natural Gas. They're a little largish, but produce something like 10kW of electricity and enough waste heat to act as a pre-heater for your hot water system. They've been selling them for people over on the West coast for past couple of years. Now the GE system's unique in that it's designed to run off of Methane and thereby allowing you to use biomass sources to power the unit instead of LPG/NG- which would be a pretty "green" system indeed.
Try running an internal combustion generator in an enclosed space with you in it. They'll most likely be planting you in the ground when they find you later. Try doing that with this and you'll be around to tell the tale because it does specifically have no emissions other than water.
What it boils down to is that the effect is nice, but it blocks out my viewing of the content while I'm in the middle of reading it!
This is analogous to pushing an advert right in the middle of a news item in a newscast without waiting for it to be finished. This is not going to work very well because it's the worst of all worlds.
" The banner ads that are doing their best to be the most annoying shit on the planet are the internet equivalents of the short informercials trying to get you to buy their stupid compilation CD, or handy-dandy new gadget that is "Only available through this special TV offer! Buy now! Operators are standing by!" If they don't see sales jump immediately, they're going to cancel those TV commercials (or pull their banner ads from an ad network)."
And I tend to turn the channel when those sorts of things are going. If they're short spots in the ad spots for television shows, I'm more likely than not going to go do something else for 10-15 minutes. Many people are that way.
If you don't, you're paying something like 75-150 per year for a subscription to the ones that don't spam you.
All I ask is for these clowns to view it like any other advertising- they don't get "click-throughs" with TV, print, or billboards, why in the hell should they insist on it with the Web? Just because it's doable doesn't mean that they're going to get a useful metric from it.
The utility companies (read: Gas and Electric companies) are looking for ways to differentiate themselves in a time of deregulation. This is a way of doing it, either by partnering with these people and billing for them, or paying for it themselves and using it for their needs as well as the customer's (as part of an energy management system).
Expansion is only an issue if you're having to do it alone- they're planning on having parties with similar interests as theirs but not the resources/technical knowhow to help them do the expansion.
They're planning on re-opening the markets they were able to buy, but also planning on doing expansion into markets that xDSL or Cable isn't offered yet. With plans of partnering with the rural power companies, they could concievably offer service to areas that would not normally see xDSL or Cable service. The latencies might be moderatly high, but they could work out some pretty usable stuff all the same for people that'd never see anything resembling broadband.
Bandwidth is a relative concept. For what you're talking about, it's the correct usage of the term.
For video, "low bandwidth" takes on a slightly differing meaning. 200kbps for a 640x480 plus audio video stream is something like 1/10 the bandwidth of what it'd take pushing it raw. And it can do 56kbps QCIF resolution feeds fairly well.
On2 owns the patents for VP3. They're granting rights to anyone that wants to use the source and produce a codec for their platform. They're granting the rights to the patents for people that make improvements to the system so long as they don't break stream compatibility with the open source code in their CVS repository.
On the bottom, there is this link to the official site at www.vp3.com. The code's under a slightly modified MPL license- if you want much of anything in the way of support, you'll be paying them $395 for the "certified" version. Otherwise, it's as free and open as Mozilla is right now without the GPL license on some parts of it.
There was some discussion on the developer lists about getting them to allow us to release an OGG video stream using their codec. Right now, they're supposedly looking at re-working their license to make it where something like that might happen.
Otherwise, the best you can do with the current license is make a VP3 player/stream codec for Linux (Which wouldn't be a bad thing- I've seen the technology in action with RealPlayer 8 on Linux, playing some unbelievable streams from news.com.).
Standard VHS quality audio is encodable in something like 40-60kbps. It's nowhere near hi-fidelity. Now, stereo hi-fi stuff would probably require something like 300-400kbps for the video and audio as it'd need an MP3-like audio stream present.
http://www.vp3.com has the real goods- Had you looked at the link on the bottom of On2's website, you'd have seen the link for the Open Source release of VP3. Open Source doesn't mean that they can't still be selling the versions of the codec that are "certified" (as in supported- they're offering limited support for the open source release...).
It appears to handle a QCIF sized feed over a 56kbps link and it does do VHS quality feeds in 200-500kbps feeds.
RealNetworks licensed the technology and Neww.com appears to be using the codec which is managing a better than VHS feed at about 200kbs with a framerate around 16-18fps.
While it's not 100 percent effective, it DOES stop most types of small arms fire (Especially some of the new body armor types- they'll stop stuff like 12ga. sabot slugs at point-blank range.).
If you're talking about a Star Wars shield generator type affair, you're going to find it's going to be easier for us to make beam weapons for a while yet as the technology to make useful, efficient force fields is still essentially in the stone age level of development.
You won't be seeing QNX on Z80-like machines, it's intended for larger systems. In fact, you'll find very few OSes on that end of the spectrum with about half of them being DIY type affairs.
It boils down to what you're calling embedded systems. And Linux IS used quite a bit up higher on the food chain. I know, I have been using it for years in the context of embedded systems.
Trip and impale your buddy with your pike/sword...
And so forth.
Besides, this isn't a personnel carried device- it's a Humvee/Bradley mounted device. One's an eximer the other something solid-state. Both are going to be too large for people to carry.
Linux will fit into spaces as small as a floppy and do very useful embedded tasks while being that trimmed down. You might also want to note that many embedded applications aren't needing rate monotonic scheduling, etc. like QNX offers (which is what you're referring to)- a substantial amount of embedded systems need a stable OS that provides some network and maybe some file support. QNX does this well, but at a rather large per-unit price for most embedded systems. Linux also does it well and offers NO costs other than providing source code for extentions to the kernel, etc.- and in many cases you don't need to alter the kernel or provide drivers as people have already done that for you.
No, I'm not saying Linux is a panacea for embedded system designs, but QNX isn't the ultimate answer either. For things that QNX is a good candidate for, choose it, or the open sourced RTEMS (Which does a very good job of the realtime things). For everything else, why spend the cash on something that you'll never use even 10% of the functionality of?
...in the commercial OS as well- you just don't get to see those. And the who'll fix it argument, well, I've seen both sides- the closed source route DOES NOT insure things will get fixed.
"The patent office doesn't have to understand the technology. Look, its like this. If they have a question to grant or deny a patent - they typically grant. There policy recently with high-tech concepts/ideas is grant the patent, and let the courts handle the mess."
It is part of the requirements of their job to understand something about the technology. If they don't, how are they supposed to grant a Patent on it- rubber stamp it? And don't rely on the courts to sort it out- it's not really their job to understand the technology either so they won't know that someone in the USPTO rubber stamped something.
Somewhere along the time of when the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (ORBA) of 1990 is when things started really going downhill. It was at that point in time that the USPTO started operating more along the lines of a private business (mandated by ORBA) instead of an agency. With them being understaffed for the job, combined with them deriving a good portion of thier budget from Patent grants, etc. it's a recipe for disaster.
The patent examiner is supposed to be a professional in the field in question. They're supposed to be able to assess the claims on their merit, etc. If it's an obvious patent it's not supposed to get past the examiner stage.
There really isn't anything novel here other than TiVo and others made it possible to do things that only much more expensive professional systems are capable of.
There really shouldn't have been a grant on this "Patent".
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"Mmm... ugly, non-portable, AND obscure. A winning combo. QT can at least be used on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, etc. :)"
FLTK can be used on Windows, MacOS, Linux (and anything running X11...). As for "ugly"- that'd be the default UI look and feel. You can produce NICE looking UI code with FLTK (Witness "Post Office", a mail program using FLTK as the GUI lib (http://www.tarball.net/postoffice)- it looks as polished as many commercial products.) and the default UI look and feel is about to get an update with the 2.0 release that is currently in development.
Don't get me wrong, Qt is nice. Qt, however, is much, much larger (even with Qt Embedded) than FLTK (2 or so Mb versus 200-400k for FLTK!) and requires special pre-processors to make the code go.
A PDA can hold books, documentation, specialized application software, personal notes, appointments, and play calculator- all of which will take up vastly less space than the notebook, daily organizer, and calculator. If you can afford one, it's NOT pointless. If not, well, you CAN fall back to what you suggest.
You get this if you're coming in from thier site as well...
This will go as long as you've got fuel and will work under conditions (like sub-zero temperatures) that would mess up the ordinary UPS.
That run off of LP or Natural Gas. They're a little largish, but produce something like 10kW of electricity and enough waste heat to act as a pre-heater for your hot water system. They've been selling them for people over on the West coast for past couple of years. Now the GE system's unique in that it's designed to run off of Methane and thereby allowing you to use biomass sources to power the unit instead of LPG/NG- which would be a pretty "green" system indeed.
Try running an internal combustion generator in an enclosed space with you in it. They'll most likely be planting you in the ground when they find you later. Try doing that with this and you'll be around to tell the tale because it does specifically have no emissions other than water.
What it boils down to is that the effect is nice, but it blocks out my viewing of the content while I'm in the middle of reading it!
This is analogous to pushing an advert right in the middle of a news item in a newscast without waiting for it to be finished. This is not going to work very well because it's the worst of all worlds.
" The banner ads that are doing their best to be the most annoying shit on the planet are the internet equivalents of the short informercials trying to get you to buy their stupid compilation CD, or handy-dandy new gadget that is "Only available through this special TV offer! Buy now! Operators are standing by!" If they don't see sales jump immediately, they're going to cancel those TV commercials (or pull their banner ads from an ad network)."
And I tend to turn the channel when those sorts of things are going. If they're short spots in the ad spots for television shows, I'm more likely than not going to go do something else for 10-15 minutes. Many people are that way.
If you don't, you're paying something like 75-150 per year for a subscription to the ones that don't spam you.
All I ask is for these clowns to view it like any other advertising- they don't get "click-throughs" with TV, print, or billboards, why in the hell should they insist on it with the Web? Just because it's doable doesn't mean that they're going to get a useful metric from it.
The utility companies (read: Gas and Electric companies) are looking for ways to differentiate themselves in a time of deregulation. This is a way of doing it, either by partnering with these people and billing for them, or paying for it themselves and using it for their needs as well as the customer's (as part of an energy management system).
Expansion is only an issue if you're having to do it alone- they're planning on having parties with similar interests as theirs but not the resources/technical knowhow to help them do the expansion.
They're planning on re-opening the markets they were able to buy, but also planning on doing expansion into markets that xDSL or Cable isn't offered yet. With plans of partnering with the rural power companies, they could concievably offer service to areas that would not normally see xDSL or Cable service. The latencies might be moderatly high, but they could work out some pretty usable stuff all the same for people that'd never see anything resembling broadband.
Bandwidth is a relative concept. For what you're talking about, it's the correct usage of the term.
For video, "low bandwidth" takes on a slightly differing meaning. 200kbps for a 640x480 plus audio video stream is something like 1/10 the bandwidth of what it'd take pushing it raw. And it can do 56kbps QCIF resolution feeds fairly well.
On2 owns the patents for VP3. They're granting rights to anyone that wants to use the source and produce a codec for their platform. They're granting the rights to the patents for people that make improvements to the system so long as they don't break stream compatibility with the open source code in their CVS repository.
On the bottom, there is this link to the official site at www.vp3.com. The code's under a slightly modified MPL license- if you want much of anything in the way of support, you'll be paying them $395 for the "certified" version. Otherwise, it's as free and open as Mozilla is right now without the GPL license on some parts of it.
There was some discussion on the developer lists about getting them to allow us to release an OGG video stream using their codec. Right now, they're supposedly looking at re-working their license to make it where something like that might happen.
Otherwise, the best you can do with the current license is make a VP3 player/stream codec for Linux (Which wouldn't be a bad thing- I've seen the technology in action with RealPlayer 8 on Linux, playing some unbelievable streams from news.com.).
Standard VHS quality audio is encodable in something like 40-60kbps. It's nowhere near hi-fidelity. Now, stereo hi-fi stuff would probably require something like 300-400kbps for the video and audio as it'd need an MP3-like audio stream present.
http://www.vp3.com has the real goods- Had you looked at the link on the bottom of On2's website, you'd have seen the link for the Open Source release of VP3. Open Source doesn't mean that they can't still be selling the versions of the codec that are "certified" (as in supported- they're offering limited support for the open source release...).
It appears to handle a QCIF sized feed over a 56kbps link and it does do VHS quality feeds in 200-500kbps feeds.
RealNetworks licensed the technology and Neww.com appears to be using the codec which is managing a better than VHS feed at about 200kbs with a framerate around 16-18fps.
It's called body armor or vehicular armor.
While it's not 100 percent effective, it DOES stop most types of small arms fire (Especially some of the new body armor types- they'll stop stuff like 12ga. sabot slugs at point-blank range.).
If you're talking about a Star Wars shield generator type affair, you're going to find it's going to be easier for us to make beam weapons for a while yet as the technology to make useful, efficient force fields is still essentially in the stone age level of development.
You won't be seeing QNX on Z80-like machines, it's intended for larger systems. In fact, you'll find very few OSes on that end of the spectrum with about half of them being DIY type affairs.
It boils down to what you're calling embedded systems. And Linux IS used quite a bit up higher on the food chain. I know, I have been using it for years in the context of embedded systems.
Trip and shoot your buddy with your rifle/SAW...
Trip and impale your buddy with your pike/sword...
And so forth.
Besides, this isn't a personnel carried device- it's a Humvee/Bradley mounted device. One's an eximer the other something solid-state. Both are going to be too large for people to carry.
Linux will fit into spaces as small as a floppy and do very useful embedded tasks while being that trimmed down. You might also want to note that many embedded applications aren't needing rate monotonic scheduling, etc. like QNX offers (which is what you're referring to)- a substantial amount of embedded systems need a stable OS that provides some network and maybe some file support. QNX does this well, but at a rather large per-unit price for most embedded systems. Linux also does it well and offers NO costs other than providing source code for extentions to the kernel, etc.- and in many cases you don't need to alter the kernel or provide drivers as people have already done that for you.
No, I'm not saying Linux is a panacea for embedded system designs, but QNX isn't the ultimate answer either. For things that QNX is a good candidate for, choose it, or the open sourced RTEMS (Which does a very good job of the realtime things). For everything else, why spend the cash on something that you'll never use even 10% of the functionality of?
...in the commercial OS as well- you just don't get to see those. And the who'll fix it argument, well, I've seen both sides- the closed source route DOES NOT insure things will get fixed.
"The patent office doesn't have to understand the technology. Look, its like this. If they have a question to grant or deny a patent - they typically grant. There policy recently with high-tech concepts/ideas is grant the patent, and let the courts handle the mess."
It is part of the requirements of their job to understand something about the technology. If they don't, how are they supposed to grant a Patent on it- rubber stamp it? And don't rely on the courts to sort it out- it's not really their job to understand the technology either so they won't know that someone in the USPTO rubber stamped something.
Somewhere along the time of when the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (ORBA) of 1990 is when things started really going downhill. It was at that point in time that the USPTO started operating more along the lines of a private business (mandated by ORBA) instead of an agency. With them being understaffed for the job, combined with them deriving a good portion of thier budget from Patent grants, etc. it's a recipe for disaster.
The patent examiner is supposed to be a professional in the field in question. They're supposed to be able to assess the claims on their merit, etc. If it's an obvious patent it's not supposed to get past the examiner stage.
There really isn't anything novel here other than TiVo and others made it possible to do things that only much more expensive professional systems are capable of.
There really shouldn't have been a grant on this "Patent".