Although other responses to this question have said that even Tremor isn't fast enough, I'd like to mention that Nicholas Pitre on the tremor list has been working a lot on optimizing the tremor decoder since its release. I'd encourage people with one of these boxes and willing to tinker to check out tremor from the Xiph.org CVS server, look through the tremor mail archives, and see if Tremor is still too slow.
Grammar Nazi sez: The comma means that the clause which follows it is a descriptive clause. It is there to describe the item preceding it, not to distinguish it from other items.
I once asked the electronics guru at the university satellite lab where I used to work why were were launching a 386 when we could have stuck a more modern processor (like a StrongARM or something) on the main board. He pointed out that older style chips were preferrable because the gates and interconnects were all bigger. A bigger gate was less likely to get triggered or flipped (if it were in a register or something) by a stray particle of cosmic radiation. Low tech chips were easier to certify for space use because of this.
I'm sure we could have gotten faster chips rated for space, but we were on a tight budget, so the 386 was it.:)
Actually, no one cares if Fraunhofer (actually Thomson is the one managing the money end) charges for their decoder software since almost no one uses it anyway. On the other hand, people are a little perturbed that you still have to pay Thomson for a patent license even if you write your own decoder.
This is not the case with Vorbis. Xiph.org decided to charge for Tremor in the past, but there never was (and never will be) any restrictions on third-party encoders/decoders. Another person wrote a free integerized Vorbis decoder while Tremor was still proprietary, (though there were some concerns at the time about whether the decoder would produce output equivalent to the floating-point decoder). The Vorbis format is completely open and not hindered by patents, whereas Vorbis software can be licensed however the author wishes.
It's a StrongARM ~200MHz CPU. One way to lower the price of a chip is to axe the floating-point support because it saves silicon. For most things, the FPU doesn't matter, but for audio processing it sucks unless you take the time to rewrite your code to not do floating point math. It can be done, but it takes some careful consideration.
Nearly every moderately priced handheld device I can think of does not have an FPU, so this isn't a limitation specific to the Zaurus.
Actually, Emmett says they were cool with it. None of the people who had licensed the code earlier have to pay any money from this point on, so they are pretty happy, actually.
Actually, I read "anti-Slashthink" posts nearly as frequently as I read the "Slashthink" posts you are blasting.
The readership of this site (at least those who speak up) is not nearly so biased as you portray. You are raging against a demographic that is several years out of date. It's time to move on...
P.S. Please don't use the reverse psychology moderation trick anymore. It's become very trite. Take you negative mods like a man.
Well, (assuming it does violate the EULA) this would be a lot like suing individuals who have MP3s they got from a friend. It would be perfectly within the IP owner's legal rights to sue and a public relations disaster if they did. (Yes, I realize that copyright and EULA enforcement are two different beasts, but in this case would look very similar to an outside observer.)
Any company that tries to sue a kid for taking a soldering iron to their Xbox is going to look like a big mean ogre to the public. Instead, expect that Microsoft will agressively prosecute the modchip distributors/manufacturers. No one has any sympathy for businesses, so they are safe to target (and more efficient too).
I just wanted to agree with the Antec recommendation. In January I put together a new system and for the first time decided to buy a nice Antec case online rather than buy the cheapest thing sold at the local Fry's.
I was very impressed with how easy the case was to work in. I was constantly surprised by little features like quick release side panels, included drive rails, a removable hard drive bracket, and easily movable fans. The case was definitely worth the $90.
I'd say just give your customer the source code and let them worry about it. They can do with it what they want. Open source doesn't have much to do with this because no one is distributing the application to a larger audience anyway.
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IN SOVIET RUSSIA, Internet invents Al Gore!
Well, you see, back in 1917...
I'd piss on a sparkplug if I thought it would help me check my email!
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See subject. :)
First Post from Outer Space!
...that this is my new favorite type of nonsense post. Thanks.
I think you swapped around all of the distro descriptions. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to sort them out. :)
Although other responses to this question have said that even Tremor isn't fast enough, I'd like to mention that Nicholas Pitre on the tremor list has been working a lot on optimizing the tremor decoder since its release. I'd encourage people with one of these boxes and willing to tinker to check out tremor from the Xiph.org CVS server, look through the tremor mail archives, and see if Tremor is still too slow.
Yes it is way cheap, but you have some really wonderful clauses in the licensing:
At least the license converts to a permanent license if you graduate (your parting gift!).
http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/
They are doing the port incrementally.
Grammar Nazi sez: The comma means that the clause which follows it is a descriptive clause. It is there to describe the item preceding it, not to distinguish it from other items.
I'm sure we could have gotten faster chips rated for space, but we were on a tight budget, so the 386 was it. :)
You'd just have non-functional, impossible to debug (or maintain) shite instead.
This is not the case with Vorbis. Xiph.org decided to charge for Tremor in the past, but there never was (and never will be) any restrictions on third-party encoders/decoders. Another person wrote a free integerized Vorbis decoder while Tremor was still proprietary, (though there were some concerns at the time about whether the decoder would produce output equivalent to the floating-point decoder). The Vorbis format is completely open and not hindered by patents, whereas Vorbis software can be licensed however the author wishes.
Nearly every moderately priced handheld device I can think of does not have an FPU, so this isn't a limitation specific to the Zaurus.
Actually, Emmett says they were cool with it. None of the people who had licensed the code earlier have to pay any money from this point on, so they are pretty happy, actually.
f1rst p0st for all my homiez in #vorbis!
(I always wanted to try and fp my own story.)
The readership of this site (at least those who speak up) is not nearly so biased as you portray. You are raging against a demographic that is several years out of date. It's time to move on...
P.S. Please don't use the reverse psychology moderation trick anymore. It's become very trite. Take you negative mods like a man.
But won't you need a lot of monkeys and typewriters?
Wrong, that's trademarks that expire if you don't enforce them. Otherwise the entire GIF fiasco would have been a non-issue.
There is so much irony here, I think we've all become numb to it.
Any company that tries to sue a kid for taking a soldering iron to their Xbox is going to look like a big mean ogre to the public. Instead, expect that Microsoft will agressively prosecute the modchip distributors/manufacturers. No one has any sympathy for businesses, so they are safe to target (and more efficient too).
I was very impressed with how easy the case was to work in. I was constantly surprised by little features like quick release side panels, included drive rails, a removable hard drive bracket, and easily movable fans. The case was definitely worth the $90.
I'd say just give your customer the source code and let them worry about it. They can do with it what they want. Open source doesn't have much to do with this because no one is distributing the application to a larger audience anyway.