Sorry, a PDA really shouldn't be considered an embedded device... it's really a computer by any definition.
The fact is that a huge portion of the embedded market is either stuff that requires 4bit ucontrollers or smaller or require hard realtime performance which really, Linux isn't well suited for despite the support of things like mklinux.
One thing I notice professionally is that embedded RTOS's like VxWorks tend to have fewer security updates than Linux. This has left me with an impression that supporting an embedded Linux system could actually be quite costly.
Hmmm, I wonder if decrypting VOIP would be easier than other information sources? G.729 voice encoding with a code book size of N (I forget what the standard uses), and then all those nice expectations about band limiting and male/female voice bands, lack of abrupt discontinuities...measuring packet delays to estimate encryption key size...
I'd really like to see a business report on the global cost of security measures. I.e. all the forgotten passwords, all the time wasted figuring out that some security measure was silently put in place, all the scrutinizing of systems & code, all the new wonderous fix it products, all the infestations of viri and other crud of the net, all the heavy retro fixes (ever fixed up a TCP/IP stack?)...
Seriously, I suspect the cost out weighs the cost of a breach; if not locally, then globally. The fact is that the paranoid world of security eats up an insidious amount of resources.
Unfortunately, it's a cat & mouse game where one leads to the other; i.e. a bad apple leads to more security, and more security challenges a bad apple...
It's not a tax dodge. The very wealthy get the priviledge of pointing their money at what they wish for the public good, and it is this that is in place of paying taxes. If they didn't do this then similar amounts would just end up being taxed from them and then it goes into whatever the government decides. Some of the very wealthy use this avenue to immortalize themselves (how many libraries...etc have been named after major financial donars?).
So, in some regards, sure, kudos to Bill to giving some major coin to some good humanitarian causes, but lets keep it in perspective.
Really? So, you unfortunately get run over by a bus, and Joe Coder ends up supporting or finishing your code. You're telling me there's no value in comments? There's no value in describing the intent of your wild funky convoluted code? I strongly suspect that Joe Coder would rather hack off his fingers than spend time trying to decode both the operation and intent of your code.
Unless my time to market demands are measured in minutes, I would not hire you. I'd greatly appreciate your embedded programming skills, but as an employer you are going to cost me too much money when it comes to supporting your code.
The truth is that good or bad code is NOT self documenting because all it tells you is what the code will do. It does not tell anyone what the intention of the code is.
The intention of the code and the code itself, which is an interpretation of that intention, may not be in agreement. Which is why well documented code provides a clear indication of the intent of the code.
Really, it's irrelevant how good a programmer you are. The real skill is being able to translate between designs & implementations...and back and forth. Since that takes time even for the quickest people, real design documentation and code comments that explain the intent of the code save time, frustration, and money.
I don't think so... perhaps in one sense, yes, but in general the nice thing about being filthy rich is that you can essentially decide exactly where your tax dollars are spent, and really, fundementally, this is all that Billy boy is doing.
Yes, and it amazes me that anyone would consider removing the morse requirement.
Benefits of Morse code: 1) Lowest signal to noise ratio of any communications system. 2) Lowest power requirements. 3) Lowest bandwidth requirement. 4) You could in theory make a transmitter out of any very simple electrical circuit (perhaps limited range, but...). 5) An operator can still twitch out a message even if they can speak or they're batteries are low.
I.e. for emergency communications this is simply the best fail safe method.
Removing the requirement is just as silly as removing the navigation by sextant requirement (cough, o' they did that one too!).
Anyhow, I'm not a HAM, but it seems to me they're just lowering the entry barrier for little benefit.
Hmmmm, true for a certain subset, but there are holes in this. E.g. You're assuming that the most valuable thing in life is money and that some genius level ideas are not better off being left alone.
self documenting code. It has to be said, and hammered and said, and hammered.
The fact is that code is an implementation of a design's ideas and as a translation of those ideas it can misinterpret or even be erroneous. The idea of commenting code is to state what the intention of the code is (and hopefully there is a design document to back that up as well). And incase anyone doesn't get the point of that it's called comprehension and verification.
I won't bother as to why people tend to not do this and why it usually adds massive maintenance costs and simply blows chunks wrt. quality....grrrr.
You forgot to mention that this is also an instance of where the uber rich have an advantage over the less greedy. Namely, that they can choose where some of their tax dollars go. And that, amigo, is all this is...directed taxes that actually buy benefit to the provider.
"It's a sick world, what can I say, artificial phonies, I hate 'em I hate 'em...." The Ramones
Uhuh...only if they forget to test the system before deployment. Have you ever taken a look at military standards? Do you honestly think that any ordinance system is ever deployed without extensive testing, verification and general proving?
I'll let you in on a little secrect. Lack of high speed options for internet are situated closer to the cities than you think. My two options are either satellite (useless as VPN's don't function worth beans due to latencies, not to mention that they haven't been cost effective for a home user), and a T1 or Fractional-T1 (cost inhibited for a home user).
There's wireless network near the area, but is off by about 20km. And those boys aren't shakin' too quickly to get further out. BTW, this is near Ottawa, "Silcon Valley North" home to some major telecom gear manufacturers.
Yes, the north and various regions need satellite and more so affordable satellite, but the applications will always be restricted due to latencies.
So, when my friends and I are amusing ourselves by tossing around in email hypothetical approaches to terrorism... we really ought to be billing the NSA for our research efforts! Kewl, beer money!
Pure cruft...why can't sheeple think beyond what everyone else is barking?!?
Anyhow, there's a flip side to this scenario: One of the big bad boys pushing Linux will by the API specs and push the concerned projects ahead. All because it suites their business needs and will make them money.
And. Even if this doesn't happen, nothing has changed in terms of the old clean room approach that seems to have been pretty successful so far.
I've found it a bit less stable on my G4 PowerMac. Safari inparticular has choked a couple of times. And the system hung this morning...possible a driver issue, but I haven't dug into the logs yet.
No kidding, I was (half) joking about this just prior to our last round of layoofs. The shareware I've seen for MacOSX is hillarious: e.g. a GUI'd util to renice your processes to "BOOST PERFORMANCE without UPGRADING your box." Actually, I'm still laughing at that one. The thing is, I bet the programmer is making money on it (think it was $20 a pop!).
A more challenging example is that there are FAX managing programs for $90 (US) that are just front ends to open source fax S/W. Actually, I think Panther even does this.
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Sorry, a PDA really shouldn't be considered an embedded device... it's really a computer by any definition.
The fact is that a huge portion of the embedded market is either stuff that requires 4bit ucontrollers or smaller or require hard realtime performance which really, Linux isn't well suited for despite the support of things like mklinux.
One thing I notice professionally is that embedded RTOS's like VxWorks tend to have fewer security updates than Linux. This has left me with an impression that supporting an embedded Linux system could actually be quite costly.
Hmmm, I wonder if decrypting VOIP would be easier than other information sources? G.729 voice encoding with a code book size of N (I forget what the standard uses), and then all those nice expectations about band limiting and male/female voice bands, lack of abrupt discontinuities...measuring packet delays to estimate encryption key size...
I'd really like to see a business report on the global cost of security measures. I.e. all the forgotten passwords, all the time wasted figuring out that some security measure was silently put in place, all the scrutinizing of systems & code, all the new wonderous fix it products, all the infestations of viri and other crud of the net, all the heavy retro fixes (ever fixed up a TCP/IP stack?)...
Seriously, I suspect the cost out weighs the cost of a breach; if not locally, then globally. The fact is that the paranoid world of security eats up an insidious amount of resources.
Unfortunately, it's a cat & mouse game where one leads to the other; i.e. a bad apple leads to more security, and more security challenges a bad apple...
It's not a tax dodge. The very wealthy get the priviledge of pointing their money at what they wish for the public good, and it is this that is in place of paying taxes. If they didn't do this then similar amounts would just end up being taxed from them and then it goes into whatever the government decides. Some of the very wealthy use this avenue to immortalize themselves (how many libraries...etc have been named after major financial donars?).
So, in some regards, sure, kudos to Bill to giving some major coin to some good humanitarian causes, but lets keep it in perspective.
Sorry, but the obscenely rich directing their "tax" dollars is not an act of altruism.
Really? So, you unfortunately get run over by a bus, and Joe Coder ends up supporting or finishing your code. You're telling me there's no value in comments? There's no value in describing the intent of your wild funky convoluted code? I strongly suspect that Joe Coder would rather hack off his fingers than spend time trying to decode both the operation and intent of your code.
Unless my time to market demands are measured in minutes, I would not hire you. I'd greatly appreciate your embedded programming skills, but as an employer you are going to cost me too much money when it comes to supporting your code.
The truth is that good or bad code is NOT self documenting because all it tells you is what the code will do. It does not tell anyone what the intention of the code is.
The intention of the code and the code itself, which is an interpretation of that intention, may not be in agreement. Which is why well documented code provides a clear indication of the intent of the code.
Really, it's irrelevant how good a programmer you are. The real skill is being able to translate between designs & implementations...and back and forth. Since that takes time even for the quickest people, real design documentation and code comments that explain the intent of the code save time, frustration, and money.
I don't think so... perhaps in one sense, yes, but in general the nice thing about being filthy rich is that you can essentially decide exactly where your tax dollars are spent, and really, fundementally, this is all that Billy boy is doing.
So, I don't think so...
Yes, and it amazes me that anyone would consider removing the morse requirement.
...).
Benefits of Morse code:
1) Lowest signal to noise ratio of any communications system.
2) Lowest power requirements.
3) Lowest bandwidth requirement.
4) You could in theory make a transmitter out of any very simple electrical circuit (perhaps limited range, but
5) An operator can still twitch out a message even if they can speak or they're batteries are low.
I.e. for emergency communications this is simply the best fail safe method.
Removing the requirement is just as silly as removing the navigation by sextant requirement (cough, o' they did that one too!).
Anyhow, I'm not a HAM, but it seems to me they're just lowering the entry barrier for little benefit.
Hmmmm, true for a certain subset, but there are holes in this. E.g. You're assuming that the most valuable thing in life is money and that some genius level ideas are not better off being left alone.
Ironically, this in itself sounds like a price, no?
self documenting code. It has to be said, and hammered and said, and hammered.
The fact is that code is an implementation of a design's ideas and as a translation of those ideas it can misinterpret or even be erroneous. The idea of commenting code is to state what the intention of the code is (and hopefully there is a design document to back that up as well). And incase anyone doesn't get the point of that it's called comprehension and verification.
I won't bother as to why people tend to not do this and why it usually adds massive maintenance costs and simply blows chunks wrt. quality....grrrr.
Think I'll go toss some ice on that nerve...
Wonderfully insightful! Thank you for sharing that as it highlights what the internet should be about; i.e. facilitating understanding.
Cheers
You forgot to mention that this is also an instance of where the uber rich have an advantage over the less greedy. Namely, that they can choose where some of their tax dollars go. And that, amigo, is all this is...directed taxes that actually buy benefit to the provider.
"It's a sick world, what can I say, artificial phonies, I hate 'em I hate 'em...." The Ramones
Evidently, Dim really is dim.
Nuf.
Uhuh...only if they forget to test the system before deployment. Have you ever taken a look at military standards? Do you honestly think that any ordinance system is ever deployed without extensive testing, verification and general proving?
I'll let you in on a little secrect. Lack of high speed options for internet are situated closer to the cities than you think. My two options are either satellite (useless as VPN's don't function worth beans due to latencies, not to mention that they haven't been cost effective for a home user), and a T1 or Fractional-T1 (cost inhibited for a home user).
There's wireless network near the area, but is off by about 20km. And those boys aren't shakin' too quickly to get further out. BTW, this is near Ottawa, "Silcon Valley North" home to some major telecom gear manufacturers.
Yes, the north and various regions need satellite and more so affordable satellite, but the applications will always be restricted due to latencies.
All the good ideas eh....
Well, the real embedded community is still wincing over WinCE (and how apt a name was that..."wince"... bang on...).
Why can't I stop laughing?!?
Actually, the one thing we could do that is very often overlooked is to stop having so many offspring. More people equals more energy demand.
Problem? What problem? Marketing and modern media have ensured that the average person's attention span is no more than 5 seconds.
Besides, imagine the spin: "We continue to Innovate into the 21st century."
You don't even need to mention MHz, pipeline, or any of yesterday's lingo...get with it baby!
So, when my friends and I are amusing ourselves by tossing around in email hypothetical approaches to terrorism ... we really ought to be billing the NSA for our research efforts! Kewl, beer money!
Pure cruft...why can't sheeple think beyond what everyone else is barking?!?
Anyhow, there's a flip side to this scenario:
One of the big bad boys pushing Linux will by the API specs and push the concerned projects ahead. All because it suites their business needs and will make them money.
And. Even if this doesn't happen, nothing has changed in terms of the old clean room approach that seems to have been pretty successful so far.
I've found it a bit less stable on my G4 PowerMac. Safari inparticular has choked a couple of times. And the system hung this morning...possible a driver issue, but I haven't dug into the logs yet.
No kidding, I was (half) joking about this just prior to our last round of layoofs. The shareware I've seen for MacOSX is hillarious:
e.g. a GUI'd util to renice your processes to "BOOST PERFORMANCE without UPGRADING your box." Actually, I'm still laughing at that one. The thing is, I bet the programmer is making money on it (think it was $20 a pop!).
A more challenging example is that there are FAX managing programs for $90 (US) that are just front ends to open source fax S/W. Actually, I think Panther even does this.
...of course you have to first find the right fingers to break...and that may cost you a tad more than $20.