There's little bickering at the open source community level between WR and MV -- the engineers and management teams believe in getting useful fixes back into community mainstream source, if for no other reason than to reduce the size of their patchsets they have to maintain, and because it's good for credibility and the community. MV and WR are going after the same customers, who want a common feature set. It's good for embedded application developer customers to have a choice of distros (MV, WR, TimeSys, roll-your-own), since each has different licensing, QA methodologies, chip vendor relationships, development services teams, toolchain and toolset support. In the end each embedded Linux distro vendor will have successes and the whole ecosystem of Linux embedded applications AND the open source community will thrive.
Companies actually get business done by partnering with other companies -- business relationships. Business relationships allow the companies to divide the problem solving space up. For example, telecomm company T is tired of having 6 internal Linux development teams (say 40 people overall) for their product line all learning and solving the same problems over and over, and tries to collect them into one team. While they do this they also consider an OS vendor that might be able to do the same thing. They decide that forming a businesz partnership with an OS vendor will let them reduce duplication and waste and headcount, so that their engineers can focus on writing good telecomm system and application code, instead of being OS and distribution people. It may end up saving them money and headcount and be more responsive in their Telecomm marketplace. The OS Vendor may also have a stronger relationship with vendors of new CPU chips and splitting up the arch-specific/arch-generic parts of the kernel. In-depth expertise about the general OS stuff no longer needs to reside and be expensed at T, instead it can reside at the OS Vendor. This makes shareholders and managers happier.
The rocket chassis was designed to survive the forces expected during launch and the supersonic drag during boost and coast phases. The avionics mounting frame from the picture actually has one side removed, which is bolted back into place prior to launch, then that framed unit is bolted into the cylindrical rocket body. I don't have any worries that this rocket is going to spontaneously disassemble; it will require something significantly wrong and unexpected.:)
apt-get dist-upgrade takes a lonnnnnng time -- the AMD 5x86 isn't terribly fast at decompressing things, but the real limtations are: 1) we have 32MB RAM, which is partly used for a/tmpfs, and 2) we have a 128MB CompactFlash card as the IDE drive, and flash block erase is terribly, terribly slow. Also, during any upgrade, I have to keep wiping all the unnecessary files like/usr/share/doc/* and the like. And gcc-3.3 is right out! (No self-hosting!)
Us folks on the PSAS team just launch-tested our next airframe, LV2. We have one silly video of this launch where the camera gets blown over at http://psas.pdx.edu . In April we hope to have video from onboard our next planned flight. This will feature the new avionics package.
As a combination significant birthday and 1.9 year anniversary (how's that for geeky?), my wife and I selected for her a Canadian Diamond from EKATI.
EKATI mines their diamonds in the Canadian Arctic, a couple hundred miles NorthEast of Yellowknife. The mine was set up via agreement with the local First Nations people. Yes, it's strip mining, but the impact is being mitigated as part of the environmental agreements with the government. The mining equipment is huge!
All of the processing, cutting, polishing are done in the local area. Native people with an interest have had the opportunity to learn how to evaluate, cut and polish the stones.
We paid a premium, perhaps 50% more than untracked (likely South African) diamonds. It is a very fine diamond as far as the ratings go. Along with the diamond came a detailed assay and certificate of authenticity from the Canadian government. The waist of the diamond is also laser etched with a polar bear, Ekati trademark, a unique serial number. Overall it was as special an item as we hoped it would be and we felt it is worth the higher price -- because we wanted to really know the history of the stone.
We purchased the diamond on a trip to Vancouver, BC -- don't forget to get your Goods & Services Tax refunded if you live in the US.
My wife was born in the Northwest Territories, so it is a little piece of home that she wears on her finger, and something that she finds reminds her how special a person she is... which was the point, entirely.:)
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There's little bickering at the open source community level between WR and MV -- the engineers and management teams believe in getting useful fixes back into community mainstream source, if for no other reason than to reduce the size of their patchsets they have to maintain, and because it's good for credibility and the community. MV and WR are going after the same customers, who want a common feature set. It's good for embedded application developer customers to have a choice of distros (MV, WR, TimeSys, roll-your-own), since each has different licensing, QA methodologies, chip vendor relationships, development services teams, toolchain and toolset support. In the end each embedded Linux distro vendor will have successes and the whole ecosystem of Linux embedded applications AND the open source community will thrive.
Companies actually get business done by partnering with other companies -- business relationships. Business relationships allow the companies to divide the problem solving space up. For example, telecomm company T is tired of having 6 internal Linux development teams (say 40 people overall) for their product line all learning and solving the same problems over and over, and tries to collect them into one team. While they do this they also consider an OS vendor that might be able to do the same thing. They decide that forming a businesz partnership with an OS vendor will let them reduce duplication and waste and headcount, so that their engineers can focus on writing good telecomm system and application code, instead of being OS and distribution people. It may end up saving them money and headcount and be more responsive in their Telecomm marketplace. The OS Vendor may also have a stronger relationship with vendors of new CPU chips and splitting up the arch-specific/arch-generic parts of the kernel. In-depth expertise about the general OS stuff no longer needs to reside and be expensed at T, instead it can reside at the OS Vendor. This makes shareholders and managers happier.
The rocket chassis was designed to survive the forces expected during launch and the supersonic drag during boost and coast phases. The avionics mounting frame from the picture actually has one side removed, which is bolted back into place prior to launch, then that framed unit is bolted into the cylindrical rocket body. I don't have any worries that this rocket is going to spontaneously disassemble; it will require something significantly wrong and unexpected. :)
Abducted by aliens? Only if we're lucky!
I want to believe.
apt-get dist-upgrade takes a lonnnnnng time -- the AMD 5x86 isn't terribly fast at decompressing things, but the real limtations are: 1) we have 32MB RAM, which is partly used for a /tmpfs, and 2) we have a 128MB CompactFlash card as the IDE drive, and flash block erase is terribly, terribly slow. Also, during any upgrade, I have to keep wiping all the unnecessary files like /usr/share/doc/* and the like. And gcc-3.3 is right out! (No self-hosting!)
-- guy that does the flight computer
Scare your republican friends. Go as a weapon of mass distraction... er destruction.
Us folks on the PSAS team just launch-tested our next airframe, LV2. We have one silly video of this launch where the camera gets blown over at http://psas.pdx.edu . In April we hope to have video from onboard our next planned flight. This will feature the new avionics package.
As a combination significant birthday and 1.9 year anniversary (how's that for geeky?), my wife and I selected for her a Canadian Diamond from EKATI.
:)
EKATI mines their diamonds in the Canadian Arctic, a couple hundred miles NorthEast of Yellowknife. The mine was set up via agreement with the local First Nations people. Yes, it's strip mining, but the impact is being mitigated as part of the environmental agreements with the government. The mining equipment is huge!
All of the processing, cutting, polishing are done in the local area. Native people with an interest have had the opportunity to learn how to evaluate, cut and polish the stones.
We paid a premium, perhaps 50% more than untracked (likely South African) diamonds. It is a very fine diamond as far as the ratings go. Along with the diamond came a detailed assay and certificate of authenticity from the Canadian government. The waist of the diamond is also laser etched with a polar bear, Ekati trademark, a unique serial number. Overall it was as special an item as we hoped it would be and we felt it is worth the higher price -- because we wanted to really know the history of the stone.
We purchased the diamond on a trip to Vancouver, BC -- don't forget to get your Goods & Services Tax refunded if you live in the US.
My wife was born in the Northwest Territories, so it is a little piece of home that she wears on her finger, and something that she finds reminds her how special a person she is... which was the point, entirely.