Tried it, use it, and it doesn't do it for me for two main reasons:
The UI: I have been using photoshop for a few years now, and therein lies the problem: GIMP's UI just is counter-intuitive for PS users, even dabblers like me. Whilst some people prefer GIMP's UI, I'm not one of them. Imperfect as PS might be, I can use it fairly easily.
Camera RAW: CS2 works superbly with my D70, allowing me to get the best out of the camera. GIMP just doesn't cut it in this area yet no matter what I add to it.
Photoshop is *the* one application keeping me on Windows at home. I have tried GIMP, and I do use GIMP on my work-provided machine for occasional stuff that I need to do at work, but if Photoshop worked well on Linux I'd be there.
It's also worth mentioning that I wouldn't expect to shell out again to buy CS2 for Linux, seeing as I already have a license to use it on Windows. I realise this is not something that Adobe will countenance given their reluctance to allow CS2 users to migrate to Mac without wanting a pound of flesh, but I thought I'd mention it all the same.
I have a Zaurus SL-C1000 and 760, and also have had a 5500. I do understand what you're saying about Qt/Embedded (now just called qtopia), but it's horses for courses: an X11 handheld device isn't what everyone wants... I disagree that the apps aren't optimised for small screens: to me, it's an excellent UI. Opie seems to look exactly the same, surely imitation is the sincerest form of flattery;-)
The best thing about QTopia is that it has a *superb* web browser, namely Opera and if you don't like that browser you can use Netfront, too. These are both optimised for handheld browsing and are one of the two reasons I stick with Qtopia...
..the other reason is that I sync to outlook. Oh, the shame of admitting that on slashdot!
There are alternatives, too. If you don't like what Qtopia offers, try PdaXRom. If that isn't available for your device, they might be interested in moving it onto the device so just ask.
And if you want to run X applications, use PocketWorkstation or better still a combination of X/Qt and Pocketworkstation, which gets rid of the frankly sucky use of VNC.
Isis publishing has been releasing compressed format audio books for a couple of years. It makes sense, after all would you prefer 1 disc, or 11 discs, if you're manufacturing and shipping the things? OK, they currently use WMA, but at least they're trying:-)
If you put the stuff out on CD it will be ripped, end of story (no pun intended). If you can reduce your costs significantly and provide the same thing, then why not do it? It's not like audio books need --alt-preset extreme applied to 'em, is it?
MP3s of audio books are excellent for long car journeys, etc, so more power to the elbow of those making them: I'll keep buying them.
...by "write to them", I think the author means write to your local MP. James Purnell only responds to his own constituents, so use the writetothem website and make your voice heard.
Anyone in the UK really should take the time to write to their MP. Already this week we've seen a report in the Times saying that a labour MP is proposing to extend Copyright to be 100 years......"to protect the artist".
How they can say that with a straight face is beyond me. I guess the record industry makes it easier for them?
I wrote to my MP on Tuesday, and got a response the next day thanking me for my concerns, stating that he has read up on, and now understands the issue, and that they will discuss it with the Labour MP that is proposing the bill.
It might be mere platitudes to keep me oppressed, but it might just work. We are supposed to be in a democracy, although with the EU constitution "no" votes from France and the Netherlands, one does wonder if the hierarchy will merely push it through no matter what the public says.
No doubt someone will point out that this is EU policy which will need to be enacted in UK law, but all the same, make yourself heard. I did, and boy do I feel good about it:-)
I bought a 17" Samsung Syncmaster 172V in the January sales. I unboxed it, hooked it up, loaded a photo to work on, boxed it back up after fifteen minutes messing and disbelief, and returned it to the store.
The reason? Viewing angle, contrast (or lack of) and gamut.
Sharpness was superb -I could love that. It almost made me keep it.
Contrast I could just about live with, but then I couldn't. I do a lot of image editing, and I wasn't sure what the monitor was reproducing was on the screen.
Gamut: the colour space of cheaper LCDs appears to be quite a bit smaller than even a cheap CRT. This only bites you when you run them side by side and see stuff in the CRT that isn't there in the LCD.
The killer: viewing angle. By raising my head 1 inch, bright reds washed out towards white. Lowering it washed out to black... I can't live with that... Every time I played with levels or a curve, I'd be unsure whether the monitor was showing me what the results really were.
So, for me, a cheap LCD was no good. An LCD that does appeal is the Samsung 213T, but given the price of those compared to a CRT capable of doing an arguably better job of displaying images for photo work, I can't justify one.
Shame, really. the form factor appeals, but the technology isn't quite there yet for me.
This is nothing new, and has been affecting people for many years already.
The BBC, to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday book by creating a new version (and making a program about it).
This project's output was a laser disc that required a BBC micro (ask your grandad) and a special reader to decode... In the spirit of portability, it seems that the original documentation describing all formats used was consigned to/dev/null, and so the ability to view these discs was rapidly diminishing as people got rid of the specialist readers, and the BBC micros...
Thankfully, someone did something about.
The full article is an interesting read, and the warning is there for everyone to see...
Hopefully people will learn from such experiences, but would you bet on it?:-)
I echo the welcomes to our new quadraplegic wired overlords, but have to ask the obvious question:
where does this lead the eminent scientist Kevin Warwick, who really is a cyborg (not just an attention seeking media whore) and has contributed *so* *much* to such computer/human interfacing?
Will he have to resign his post as "world's only true cyborg" that he dubbed himself?
Will he now have to get a life?
(For the hard of thinking, I do not think much of Kevin Warwick, and am glad to hear that technology is being used to embiggen* people)
*embiggen is a trademark of Jebediah Springfield
Nirvana for me is currently the HP Jornada 720
on
Palmtop Nirvana?
·
· Score: 1
Well, I like PDAs. No, correction, I *love* PDAs. Not physically you understand, but they're fabulous devices that appeal to the gadget freak in me, and help to get me organised by being a fun toy to play with that happens to help me sort my life out.
I've had a fair range of devices: Psion 3a, Psion Siena, Psion 3c, Psion 3mx, Psion 5, Psion 5MX Pro, HP Jornada 620, HP Jornada 680, HP Jornada 720, Rex, Rex Pro, iPaq 3830 and another iPaq whose model number escapes me.
Psion were great. They ruled. However, they stagnated, never updated to follow the market and pulled out of the market disgracefully. Microsoft once stated that Psion were their biggest "risk" (or something like that) and they've killed the handheld PC.
I've come to the conclusion that, to be useful, PDAs need a keyboard otherwise they're just a glorified posing tool/gaming device/thing which beeps nicely. The 1MB Psion Siena was more use than the vastly more expensive iPaqs to me in terms of organisation and PDA duties.
The rex, whilst an interesting gadget, was soon consigned to the cupboard.
HP has a long history of handheld devices, or palmtops as they used to call them. The 620lx was a fair stab at a decent HPC, but suffered from WinCE 2. The 680, with a decent keyboard, good colour screen, good battery life and WinCE2.11 was a real Psion 5 killer: or at least it was for me.
The Jornada 720 is slightly less stable than the 680, but a lot faster. It's basically the same OS, and it's a superb device for most tasks I care to chuck at it.
Microsoft no longer supports the HPC form factor. After killing Psion, they reckon no-one wants one. A crying shame...
The 720 does everything I want and more, and is a fantastic tool as well as a stunningly neat gadget.
Admittedly, the Zaurus stuff from Sharp looks hellishly interesting but at the moment they're just too expensive to justify shelling out on... And the 720 does what I want, and satisfies the technolust.
Well, the BBC has rightly identified this risk, and is politely telling MS, and the other "controlled" DRM pay-per-hour-encoding people where to shove their technology.
DIRAC, the BBC-technology project to bring a new, royalty and patent free open source codec into life, has got to be worth looking into.
Surely someone with an ounce of intelligence in Hollywood could put 2+2 together and make 4. ie, Hollywood has money. DIRAC looks good, and could do with industry support and resources...
As our American cousins would say, "you do the math".
A friend has just had a lucky escape - she rolled the car at 70mph on the M1 in England. (Long story, but in short a lorry swerved into her lane, she yanked the wheel then it all goes a little bit fuzzy...)
Her Samsung x05 laptop surprisingly refused to do anything after this.
I took it apart last night, removed snapped off bits of plastic, screws and other conducting stuff from the middle......it now boots quite happily.
The LCD screen shows solid white (however all works fine on an external monitor) and, from inspecting the LCD panel, I reckon that either a connector or cable is damaged, that's all.
The car (a Peugeot 206 cc - like a baby slk with a metal folding roof) is completely written off, there's not a straight bit of the car left and my friend had to be cut out of it. She did tell the rescue people that they only had to push a button to open the roof, so at least she's got a sense of humour still. She's got a broken hand and a fractured skull.
I think that the laptop surviving that is pretty good:-)
It was indeed. Good to see the Merkins claiming a British invention as their own a mere 6 years after the first one was installed and available to the public on this side of the pond.
And this one, from Barclays, really was the first one in the world. Although a patent in the 1930s was applied for...
Quite how a history of the ATM can be quite so blinkered is slightly staggering, but then again I shouldn't be disappointed to find anything I read is badly researched nowadays. journalism is a shoddy business.
...for what is technically known as "an age", especially in the terms of technology!
My KDC-PSW9524 (trips off the tongue that, thanks kenwood) has Trubass, SRS-WOW, you name it. It's been in my car for coming on for 18 months now. Perhaps it was a prototype unit that fell through a wormhole?
However all the effects, without exception, make the unit sound bloody awful on a decent amp and speaker setup with well encoded MP3s. They're crap gadgets that should be nowhere near your audio path. Of course, the truly anal would argue that using MP3 is akin to worshipping satan, but they just need to get out more.
Cheers, nick.
Re:Scooby Snacks: Think of the butter
on
SCOoby Snacks
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Small but important point - SCO doesn't appear able to prove with specifity what has been misappropriated into Linux.
From the "millions of lines of code" that are apparently SCO's IPR that are in Linux, they're now down to disputing the contents of 17 files in AIX.
To continue your analogy, SCO are claiming that they provided the butter used. They originally tried to claim that the majority of the cake was theirs.
However, they do not own the rights to all butter and butter making mechanisms. They may not even own any - ask Novell.
It is also conceivable that another hard working independent dairy churned its own butter. Let's call the maid at that dairy "Linus" shall we?:-) . Some of the churning wasn't great, and has his own unique idioms in it showing its true origin...
SCO in my opinion do not have any basis to their legal claim, and will probably disappear up their own behind, perhaps with some players facing criminal charges. They no longer appear to have any product but are a litigation factory. They're making a grab for cash which may turn out to be illegal...
The plaintiff is claiming that the DCMA has been violated because the device is circumventing security.
It is.
However, this is closing the door after the horse has bolted and the plaintiff should be facing a class action for claiming that something is secure despite having a massive loophole that allows someone to force the door to open without the right, programmed remote control!
The DCMA is being used to try to get these things off the market because of the stupidity of the manufacturers in creating a basically insecure device and marketing it as secure.
The manufacturers shoudl be strung up - this stinks...
The interface in some cars is called OBDII (On board diagnostics) - see ODBII.com, which incidentally claims that all cars sold in the US after 1 Jan 96 have to be compliant...
Now the protocol that they use is something else. There's many flavours, but at least you can start hacking should you be feeling brave:-)
There is, of course, open software to help and naturally it's on sourceforce here.
You run the risk of injury just climbing into your car.
A well modded car will be unique, satisfying, should give better performance, might give better fuel economy (really) and allows the tuner to tune to meet their requirements. You want lazy low down torque? Fine. You want all top-end BHP madness? Done.
Some cars already have this built in. Sorry to harp on about the Subaru Impreza turbo, but it's what I know about;-)
Hold 3000 rpm in second gear for 5 seconds, then floor the accelerator. You'll find boost is capped at around 11PSI as opposed to the normal 15PSI.
Reason? The car thinks that it might be being subjected to an emissions test, and opens the wastegate at lower boost. Lower boost = less air = less fuel = better emissions (verrrry simply put)
Have to agree with this. On non-forced induction cars, all you're doing is removing any safety margin built into the current map by playing with timing. Advancing ignition may give some benefits but runs the risk of det, or pre-ignition, or pinking, or pinging, or knocking or whatever your locality calls it;-)
With a turbo on the car, things start getting more interesting as you can get more air into the engine, which means it'll need richer fuelling to achieve anywhere near stoich (or even safety;-) ) but runs the risk of det again which'll knacker your engine pretty damn quickly.
With the Impreza, which is my weapon of choice, the map is incredibly rich before doing anything... The general concensus is that this is done to keep engines from going bang, as out of the box they'll come with between 218 and 275BHP from a 2 litre engine, along with a 3 year warranty.
Tune them simply and carefully and for a little money you'll see high 200s from them. Beyond that, my opinion is that your internals will need some consideration - particularly con rods and those little gudgeon pins which hold your piston heads on.
The fact that people have done what manufacturers think is impossible is a cause for some small celebration in my eyes, and allows the little guys to stick a finger in the air to those who would have them only use franchised dealers with the necessary hardware to talk to the ECUs...
You may find this interesting, particularly if you're into rallying at all and have heard of both Subaru and Prodrive, who prepare rally subarus and also make a performance pack for road-going cars.
The new high performance Impreza (STI VII) Prodrive Performance Pack uses a piggy back chip to "fool" the ECU into allowing more boost on its turbo.
The reason? Prodrive don't know how to re-program the OEM ECU correctly.
A third party has hacked a tool to reprogram the ECU - something no-one else has managed. This largely is the work of one guy, who has done something that is apparently not possible:-)
Rumour is that Prodrive will be using the ecutec tool to reprogram ASAP.
Another mate has reverse engineered the ECU for older models and is blowing chips to give increased performance...
I've got a 2000 model year Subaru Impreza Turbo. The connector on it is a standard ODBII type connector, but the signals aren't OBDII. Have a search and you'll find some resources for that particular car (or I can help out). There's also quite a few resources detailing the "official" ODBII standard.
With my ECU, I can monitor the engine and its sensors in real time, and also actually change the map. Not yet done that part of it, as that's getting a little fast'n'furious, but sometime I may have a play when I'm sure exactly what every part of the map does.
If you want more info, I have a hotmail account. Look at my user name and you'll guess the address:-D
Slashdot Mirror
Tried it, use it, and it doesn't do it for me for two main reasons:
The UI: I have been using photoshop for a few years now, and therein lies the problem: GIMP's UI just is counter-intuitive for PS users, even dabblers like me. Whilst some people prefer GIMP's UI, I'm not one of them. Imperfect as PS might be, I can use it fairly easily.
Camera RAW: CS2 works superbly with my D70, allowing me to get the best out of the camera. GIMP just doesn't cut it in this area yet no matter what I add to it.
Photoshop is *the* one application keeping me on Windows at home. I have tried GIMP, and I do use GIMP on my work-provided machine for occasional stuff that I need to do at work, but if Photoshop worked well on Linux I'd be there.
It's also worth mentioning that I wouldn't expect to shell out again to buy CS2 for Linux, seeing as I already have a license to use it on Windows. I realise this is not something that Adobe will countenance given their reluctance to allow CS2 users to migrate to Mac without wanting a pound of flesh, but I thought I'd mention it all the same.
The best thing about QTopia is that it has a *superb* web browser, namely Opera and if you don't like that browser you can use Netfront, too. These are both optimised for handheld browsing and are one of the two reasons I stick with Qtopia...
There are alternatives, too. If you don't like what Qtopia offers, try PdaXRom. If that isn't available for your device, they might be interested in moving it onto the device so just ask.
And if you want to run X applications, use PocketWorkstation or better still a combination of X/Qt and Pocketworkstation, which gets rid of the frankly sucky use of VNC.
Isis publishing has been releasing compressed format audio books for a couple of years. It makes sense, after all would you prefer 1 disc, or 11 discs, if you're manufacturing and shipping the things? OK, they currently use WMA, but at least they're trying :-)
If you put the stuff out on CD it will be ripped, end of story (no pun intended). If you can reduce your costs significantly and provide the same thing, then why not do it? It's not like audio books need --alt-preset extreme applied to 'em, is it?
MP3s of audio books are excellent for long car journeys, etc, so more power to the elbow of those making them: I'll keep buying them.
...by "write to them", I think the author means write to your local MP. James Purnell only responds to his own constituents, so use the writetothem website and make your voice heard.
My MP responded the next day... I am impressed.
Anyone in the UK really should take the time to write to their MP. Already this week we've seen a report in the Times saying that a labour MP is proposing to extend Copyright to be 100 years... ..."to protect the artist".
:-)
How they can say that with a straight face is beyond me. I guess the record industry makes it easier for them?
I wrote to my MP on Tuesday, and got a response the next day thanking me for my concerns, stating that he has read up on, and now understands the issue, and that they will discuss it with the Labour MP that is proposing the bill.
It might be mere platitudes to keep me oppressed, but it might just work. We are supposed to be in a democracy, although with the EU constitution "no" votes from France and the Netherlands, one does wonder if the hierarchy will merely push it through no matter what the public says.
No doubt someone will point out that this is EU policy which will need to be enacted in UK law, but all the same, make yourself heard. I did, and boy do I feel good about it
I (am || can speak) French, you inconsiderate clod!
Anyone else remember trailblazer from the Commodore 64???? This would be a superb platform to implement the game concept on.
I bought a 17" Samsung Syncmaster 172V in the January sales. I unboxed it, hooked it up, loaded a photo to work on, boxed it back up after fifteen minutes messing and disbelief, and returned it to the store.
The reason? Viewing angle, contrast (or lack of) and gamut.
Sharpness was superb -I could love that. It almost made me keep it.
Contrast I could just about live with, but then I couldn't. I do a lot of image editing, and I wasn't sure what the monitor was reproducing was on the screen.
Gamut: the colour space of cheaper LCDs appears to be quite a bit smaller than even a cheap CRT. This only bites you when you run them side by side and see stuff in the CRT that isn't there in the LCD.
The killer: viewing angle. By raising my head 1 inch, bright reds washed out towards white. Lowering it washed out to black... I can't live with that... Every time I played with levels or a curve, I'd be unsure whether the monitor was showing me what the results really were.
So, for me, a cheap LCD was no good. An LCD that does appeal is the Samsung 213T, but given the price of those compared to a CRT capable of doing an arguably better job of displaying images for photo work, I can't justify one.
Shame, really. the form factor appeals, but the technology isn't quite there yet for me.
This is nothing new, and has been affecting people for many years already.
/dev/null, and so the ability to view these discs was rapidly diminishing as people got rid of the specialist readers, and the BBC micros...
:-)
The BBC, to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday book by creating a new version (and making a program about it).
This project's output was a laser disc that required a BBC micro (ask your grandad) and a special reader to decode... In the spirit of portability, it seems that the original documentation describing all formats used was consigned to
Thankfully, someone did something about.
The full article is an interesting read, and the warning is there for everyone to see...
Hopefully people will learn from such experiences, but would you bet on it?
Cheers,
Nick.
I echo the welcomes to our new quadraplegic wired overlords, but have to ask the obvious question:
where does this lead the eminent scientist Kevin Warwick, who really is a cyborg (not just an attention seeking media whore) and has contributed *so* *much* to such computer/human interfacing?
Will he have to resign his post as "world's only true cyborg" that he dubbed himself?
Will he now have to get a life?
(For the hard of thinking, I do not think much of Kevin Warwick, and am glad to hear that technology is being used to embiggen* people)
*embiggen is a trademark of Jebediah Springfield
Well, I like PDAs. No, correction, I *love* PDAs. Not physically you understand, but they're fabulous devices that appeal to the gadget freak in me, and help to get me organised by being a fun toy to play with that happens to help me sort my life out.
;-)
I've had a fair range of devices: Psion 3a, Psion Siena, Psion 3c, Psion 3mx, Psion 5, Psion 5MX Pro, HP Jornada 620, HP Jornada 680, HP Jornada 720, Rex, Rex Pro, iPaq 3830 and another iPaq whose model number escapes me.
Psion were great. They ruled. However, they stagnated, never updated to follow the market and pulled out of the market disgracefully. Microsoft once stated that Psion were their biggest "risk" (or something like that) and they've killed the handheld PC.
I've come to the conclusion that, to be useful, PDAs need a keyboard otherwise they're just a glorified posing tool/gaming device/thing which beeps nicely. The 1MB Psion Siena was more use than the vastly more expensive iPaqs to me in terms of organisation and PDA duties.
The rex, whilst an interesting gadget, was soon consigned to the cupboard.
HP has a long history of handheld devices, or palmtops as they used to call them. The 620lx was a fair stab at a decent HPC, but suffered from WinCE 2. The 680, with a decent keyboard, good colour screen, good battery life and WinCE2.11 was a real Psion 5 killer: or at least it was for me.
The Jornada 720 is slightly less stable than the 680, but a lot faster. It's basically the same OS, and it's a superb device for most tasks I care to chuck at it.
Microsoft no longer supports the HPC form factor. After killing Psion, they reckon no-one wants one. A crying shame...
The 720 does everything I want and more, and is a fantastic tool as well as a stunningly neat gadget.
Admittedly, the Zaurus stuff from Sharp looks hellishly interesting but at the moment they're just too expensive to justify shelling out on... And the 720 does what I want, and satisfies the technolust.
For now
Well, the BBC has rightly identified this risk, and is politely telling MS, and the other "controlled" DRM pay-per-hour-encoding people where to shove their technology.
DIRAC, the BBC-technology project to bring a new, royalty and patent free open source codec into life, has got to be worth looking into.
Surely someone with an ounce of intelligence in Hollywood could put 2+2 together and make 4. ie, Hollywood has money. DIRAC looks good, and could do with industry support and resources...
As our American cousins would say, "you do the math".
A friend has just had a lucky escape - she rolled the car at 70mph on the M1 in England. (Long story, but in short a lorry swerved into her lane, she yanked the wheel then it all goes a little bit fuzzy...)
...it now boots quite happily.
:-)
Her Samsung x05 laptop surprisingly refused to do anything after this.
I took it apart last night, removed snapped off bits of plastic, screws and other conducting stuff from the middle...
The LCD screen shows solid white (however all works fine on an external monitor) and, from inspecting the LCD panel, I reckon that either a connector or cable is damaged, that's all.
The car (a Peugeot 206 cc - like a baby slk with a metal folding roof) is completely written off, there's not a straight bit of the car left and my friend had to be cut out of it. She did tell the rescue people that they only had to push a button to open the roof, so at least she's got a sense of humour still. She's got a broken hand and a fractured skull.
I think that the laptop surviving that is pretty good
Cheers,
Nick.
It was indeed. Good to see the Merkins claiming a British invention as their own a mere 6 years after the first one was installed and available to the public on this side of the pond.
e r_ machine
And this one, from Barclays, really was the first one in the world. Although a patent in the 1930s was applied for...
Quite how a history of the ATM can be quite so blinkered is slightly staggering, but then again I shouldn't be disappointed to find anything I read is badly researched nowadays. journalism is a shoddy business.
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Automatic_tell
Cheers,
Nick.
...for what is technically known as "an age", especially in the terms of technology!
My KDC-PSW9524 (trips off the tongue that, thanks kenwood) has Trubass, SRS-WOW, you name it. It's been in my car for coming on for 18 months now. Perhaps it was a prototype unit that fell through a wormhole?
However all the effects, without exception, make the unit sound bloody awful on a decent amp and speaker setup with well encoded MP3s. They're crap gadgets that should be nowhere near your audio path. Of course, the truly anal would argue that using MP3 is akin to worshipping satan, but they just need to get out more.
Cheers,
nick.
Small but important point - SCO doesn't appear able to prove with specifity what has been misappropriated into Linux.
:-) . Some of the churning wasn't great, and has his own unique idioms in it showing its true origin...
From the "millions of lines of code" that are apparently SCO's IPR that are in Linux, they're now down to disputing the contents of 17 files in AIX.
To continue your analogy, SCO are claiming that they provided the butter used. They originally tried to claim that the majority of the cake was theirs.
However, they do not own the rights to all butter and butter making mechanisms. They may not even own any - ask Novell.
It is also conceivable that another hard working independent dairy churned its own butter. Let's call the maid at that dairy "Linus" shall we?
SCO in my opinion do not have any basis to their legal claim, and will probably disappear up their own behind, perhaps with some players facing criminal charges. They no longer appear to have any product but are a litigation factory. They're making a grab for cash which may turn out to be illegal...
You are a troll, and I claim my $5.
Cheers,
Nick.
From the article: Its devisers, Robert Hayes and Johan Feenstra...
:-D
Slightly interesting fact: fenestra is latin for Window.
Feenstra could conceivably be a nederlandisation of fenestra.
And this technology might be used as computer displays for popular graphical user interfaces?
The guy was destined to do this!
Cheers,
Nick.
The plaintiff is claiming that the DCMA has been violated because the device is circumventing security.
It is.
However, this is closing the door after the horse has bolted and the plaintiff should be facing a class action for claiming that something is secure despite having a massive loophole that allows someone to force the door to open without the right, programmed remote control!
The DCMA is being used to try to get these things off the market because of the stupidity of the manufacturers in creating a basically insecure device and marketing it as secure.
The manufacturers shoudl be strung up - this stinks...
Yes! There's loads of information out there...
:-)
The interface in some cars is called OBDII (On board diagnostics) - see ODBII.com, which incidentally claims that all cars sold in the US after 1 Jan 96 have to be compliant...
Now the protocol that they use is something else. There's many flavours, but at least you can start hacking should you be feeling brave
There is, of course, open software to help and naturally it's on sourceforce here.
Plenty more information out there - just google.
You run the risk of injury just climbing into your car.
A well modded car will be unique, satisfying, should give better performance, might give better fuel economy (really) and allows the tuner to tune to meet their requirements. You want lazy low down torque? Fine. You want all top-end BHP madness? Done.
It could even have a special emmissions test mode
;-)
Some cars already have this built in. Sorry to harp on about the Subaru Impreza turbo, but it's what I know about
Hold 3000 rpm in second gear for 5 seconds, then floor the accelerator. You'll find boost is capped at around 11PSI as opposed to the normal 15PSI.
Reason? The car thinks that it might be being subjected to an emissions test, and opens the wastegate at lower boost. Lower boost = less air = less fuel = better emissions (verrrry simply put)
Have to agree with this. On non-forced induction cars, all you're doing is removing any safety margin built into the current map by playing with timing. Advancing ignition may give some benefits but runs the risk of det, or pre-ignition, or pinking, or pinging, or knocking or whatever your locality calls it ;-)
;-) ) but runs the risk of det again which'll knacker your engine pretty damn quickly.
With a turbo on the car, things start getting more interesting as you can get more air into the engine, which means it'll need richer fuelling to achieve anywhere near stoich (or even safety
With the Impreza, which is my weapon of choice, the map is incredibly rich before doing anything... The general concensus is that this is done to keep engines from going bang, as out of the box they'll come with between 218 and 275BHP from a 2 litre engine, along with a 3 year warranty.
Tune them simply and carefully and for a little money you'll see high 200s from them. Beyond that, my opinion is that your internals will need some consideration - particularly con rods and those little gudgeon pins which hold your piston heads on.
The fact that people have done what manufacturers think is impossible is a cause for some small celebration in my eyes, and allows the little guys to stick a finger in the air to those who would have them only use franchised dealers with the necessary hardware to talk to the ECUs...
You may find this interesting, particularly if you're into rallying at all and have heard of both Subaru and Prodrive, who prepare rally subarus and also make a performance pack for road-going cars.
:-)
The new high performance Impreza (STI VII) Prodrive Performance Pack uses a piggy back chip to "fool" the ECU into allowing more boost on its turbo.
The reason? Prodrive don't know how to re-program the OEM ECU correctly.
A third party has hacked a tool to reprogram the ECU - something no-one else has managed. This largely is the work of one guy, who has done something that is apparently not possible
Rumour is that Prodrive will be using the ecutec tool to reprogram ASAP.
Another mate has reverse engineered the ECU for older models and is blowing chips to give increased performance...
It's "sort of" open ;-)
:)
A law has been passed recently in the US mandating that these interfaces have to be made public. Which is nice again
Certainly ;-)
:-D
I've got a 2000 model year Subaru Impreza Turbo. The connector on it is a standard ODBII type connector, but the signals aren't OBDII. Have a search and you'll find some resources for that particular car (or I can help out). There's also quite a few resources detailing the "official" ODBII standard.
With my ECU, I can monitor the engine and its sensors in real time, and also actually change the map. Not yet done that part of it, as that's getting a little fast'n'furious, but sometime I may have a play when I'm sure exactly what every part of the map does.
If you want more info, I have a hotmail account. Look at my user name and you'll guess the address
Cheers,
Nick.