This is tough. I started with BASIC on my TI99/4a back in '82 or so. It was bad. The Extended BASIC was pretty good. I could do lots of graphics and animation which kept my attention and kept me wanting to program more and faster stuff. I briefly did a little Forth, then assembly language. Many years later I do Java primarily, some C, and some Python.
My son is 5 months old. I have a while before I have to deal with this, but I would prefer he learn a language without goto's (or at least doesn't need them much). It would probably help kids if they didn't need to worry about variable types. I don't want to have to explain the difference between a long and short to a 6 year old. Python comes to mind, but python have cool libraries that your kids would like? Graphics and animation appealed to me. I doubt they will want to jump into file I/O or database interfaces.
What ever happened to Logo? Another thought: what is used to program Lego Mindstorms? That would probably interest them.
I agree with this argument almost completely. Posting copywrited material is not just illegal, it's just plain wrong. It's Microsoft's stuff and they can do what they want with it. But the posts describing how to defeat the EULA should _NOT_ be removed, nor should links to the document be removed. Give them hell for suggesting those should be taken off.
The only disagreement I have with the poster is the car analogy. It's great, but needs to be expanded on. For example, in my experience Honda's are incredibly reliable. As I recall, they even had a commercial at one time suggesting it would be okay to weld the hood shut because they rarely need maintainance. I would bet if Honda's started welding the hoods shut, _some_ people would still buy them. I won't generalize who would buy them, but I would also be willing to bet that there would be a strong correlation between buyers of closed Honda's and buyers of closed software. In their mind, if it works they will buy it. The only thing we question is whether they are in their right mind:) Some people just don't realize that there are better alternatives available. Some people think its normal to reboot their computer every night. Some people only use Microsoft Word to write two page letters to grandma. And that's okay. Last night I described Microsoft's latest security exploit involving reading cookies of your machine and my non-technical wife was ticked. She went as far as suggesting getting rid of Windows and running Linux. This small incident tells me that Open Source, Linux, GNU, etc. is working and that monopolistic, closed source, screw-the-user software is on its way out. It will take a while, but momentum is increasing one user at a time.
I think may of us are often blinded by our own advocacy. When I read Emmett's final lines, "and Congress shall make no law," chills went up and down my spine. I love that phrase. There is a little "rural militia man" in all of us that makes us want to thumb our noses at govenment and Big Corporations. But when I recover my wits, I feel it's just plain wrong to post copyrighted material like Microsoft's screwed-up Kerberos spec, Metallica's "art", etc. I only say this because if I had some work that I valued and copyrighted, I'd be awfully mad if it ended up on some web site for the whole world to see without my permission. I also hope that if I had valuable information that could help a great many people, I'd have the strength to selfishly give it away like so many Open Source people have done.
These plug in CPU cards are popular is large-scale embedded systems. I used to design with these. Essentially you could take a passive ISA backplane with N slots and plug a CPU card in to drive the slots. 8 slots was typical, but we've had as many as 20. The problem with that many slots is impedance problems on the bus and cards not working because their slot isn't being driven properly.
Another popular solution was a dual passive backplane. This was 2 sets of ISA slots that you could plug 2 CPU cards into. Then you could bridge them internally with custom hardware or externally with parallel/serial/ethernet/etc.
I've been away from that work for a couple years now and with PCI, I don't know what is popular. PCI is a much different beast than ISA and you cannot just plop down PCI slots. As I recall, they actually used constructive interference on the bus (due to reflections at the ends with infinite impendance) to "build up" enough strength to drive the PCI card. Never designed any PCI stuff.
Often these went into 6U 19" rack chassis with removable harddisks and such.
That's a good tip. My only problem with solder paste is that it is expensive and it doesn't keep for very long. It gets expensive if you are only building 1 or 2 prototypes.
I had to build an embedded system about three years back. Our only constaints were 3" by 4", components on 1 side only, and very low power. The low power contraint killed everyone but the StrongArm. At 200MHz it didn't need a heatsink and didn't even get warm to the touch. It's core runs at 1.5 volts. It's very easy to hook peripherals up. It has serial ports (and I think USB), general purpose I/O ports, LCD port, and could take either static or dynamic ram. You had to load 3 or so registers to configure the memory waitstates, etc.
I had been dreaming of building a new Linux-based version myself, but never had the time. For those of you thinking about building your own, think again. The StrongArm's pins are.05" pitch apart. I was able to do it, but it's very hard and we had a $3000 solder station. Hint: you can't help but put too much solder on and bridge pins. Just heat them all up with the iron and suck off the excess with solder wick. Use lots of flux too.
Oh, debugging the thing is a bitch. It has a nice JTAG port, but sometimes you just have to use a logic analyzer. haahahaha - with a cache, out-of-sequence execution, and jump instructions embedded in the machine code, it's a nightmare. Luckily the thing is so easy to configure you shouldn't have to resort to that too much. Pray you don't.
Now I write Java code. Sigh - I want to build hardware again...
Amazon's defense will be interesting to watch. They are definitely walking on eggshells since any defense of their use of the patent may be used by their competitors to defend the competitor's use of Amazon's patents.
that's interesting, but the print is only going to be a good as the digital image. In other words, why do I need 2000 dpi (or whatever it is for 35mm film) when my image is only 600dpi (for example)?
I bought my wife an HP Photosmart 1100xi. Printing with photo paper is amazing. You really can't tell the difference between it and the original picture from 1' away or more. You have to look closely to determine which is the original image.
pretty slick guys. you ought to try partnering with some of these photo processing companies to have film processing automagically uploaded to your account. I had been using Wolf Camera and getting my photos on CD, but their quality is horrible. Almost all our pictures have a red line through them.
Some photography studios are like vultures in hospital maternity wards. As soon as my wife had our baby, they started throwing flyers at us advertising their services which is pretty much a lame picture of your hour-old baby. It must be the drugs, but *everybody* buys into it. We did. Of course, the next thing everybody wants is for the pictures to be on the web so friends and relatives can see them. Most have this service too. BUT NONE HAVE ONLINE PROCESSING! I tried the processing and its really cool. The only thing I couldn't find was a function to remove "red-eye". I'm sure its there but slightly disguised in the color manipulation options.
Good job.
Re:Is Anybody Really Using Java? (Honestly!)
on
Swing
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· Score: 2
Absolutely. When I consulted for BellSouth about a year ago, Java was mandated over C++ for all new development.
At the Internet startup that I work now, Java is also the language of choice. We are moving away from all Microsoft products. Of course we are a little concerned over Sun's grip on Java right now, but I strongly believe it will be standardized by IBM without Sun. Once standardized we will move to "standard Java" and away from any proprietary form.
To me, it's not so much it integration with web-stuff, but how easy it is to write large, complex, ever-evolving programs. As most of us probably know, the requirements for our projects are constantly changing. I find Java easy to re-use and easy to change/modify. I programmed C++ for 10 years and never felt comfortable with exceptions, re-usable code, and GUI APIs. Java is good at all those.
Your point regarding the speed of Java is an excellent point, but there are many ways to optimize java. For example, when writing a GUI app you always dedicate one thread to handling user actions and spawn worker threads to perform the behind-the-scenes work, right?
These two databases serve very different purposes. In a system I designed for a company we are going to use postgresql for the primary database which is not connected to the internet. It can provide stored procedures, transactions, triggers, etc.
Then, nightly, it dials into the net and uploads the day's changes to our web-server running MySQL. The web database doesn't need transactions, triggers, etc. but it does need speed.
Just use the right product for the job. Don't get bent/blinded by one you happen to like.
they [B&N] are the ones going around and causing all the independents to close down.
How are they doing this? Applying illegal or unethical business practices? Or are they offering larger, nicer stores, cheaper prices, and Starbuck's coffee? Your quote implies one business luring customers away from other business is a bad thing. That's business. If you can't take it, find another.
Personally, when I want to buy something I look for the cheapest price and good service. If B&N has something cheaper than Mom's Books then I'll probably buy at B&N. It's up to Mom to offer something more than B&N. It's not B&N's fault that Mom can't compete.
I understand what you are saying; I just don't blame Big Business. In Atlanta, we had an awesome bookstore called Oxford Books that had everything and lots of strange stuff. You could browse all day. But they went out of business because they weren't moving all their stock. They frequently over-ordered books that only a few people would buy. Is that B&N's fault?
Don't blame Big Business. Instead, try zigging while their zagging.
I understand what you are saying and I agree that Sun doesn't owe us anything. But I believe the sarcasm comes from the fact that (early on) Sun touted their community license as "open source" when, in fact, it is not. The approved "open sources" licenses are here.
Have you looked at RTEMS lately? It is real time, has a TCP/IP stack, and all source is available (although I'm not sure if it's "open source"). It is maintained by the Army so it's pretty much public domain. It compiles under gcc nicely. The EFI332 group is using it to build a fuel-injection system.
Holy cow! Are you serious? You got a 3000 page doc in Word???? Honestly, back in the Word95 days about 300 pages was all that was possible before the program complained or crashed. I'm not at all suprised that _any_ program would take a long time to paginate 3000 pages (but 3 hours is a bit long). My Framemaker doc was about 300-400 pages of real content followed by 1200+ pages of dynamic links to source code. What was great is that all the source was visible and I could scroll through it fairly quickly even down at page 1000 or so (it would take about 1/2 second to display the footer w/ the page number in it). Scrolling through a doc in Word with just 20 or 30 pages of graphics, tables, blah, is frustrating as hell.
Does your doc have lots of graphics, tables, and/or equations?
A good word processor for Linux would be really nice. I've been burned by MSWord so many times that I'm getting used to the smell of smoke.
The primary feature it *must* have is compatability with Word documents. There are just too many users of Word to ignore their documents. The resume import was a good test since it usually involves frames and styles.
My favorite word processor of all time is Framemaker. And now they have a Linux version!. I don't care if it's not open as long as it works. It writes it documents in ODMA (an open document language) so it's input/output is open. If Adobe stops supporting it, then any other product that can read ODMA can read your doc. It also outputs to XML.
More features that need review:
import of equations and tables from Word
anchors! can you control what they are stuck to? how far will they float?
BIG DOCUMENTS! Framemaker still flew in a doc that was over 400 pages w/ many pics/code/equations/tables. Word chokes after about 50 pages of heavy tables/equations.
good HTML export. Tables/equations again...
Add Wordperfect and Framemaker to the next review.
-tim
Re:Alice Cooper on Muppet Show..
on
Muppets Sold
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· Score: 1
Of all the Muppet Show episodes I saw (and I'm sure I saw darn near all of them), the Alice Cooper episode sticks out in my mind the most.
It was great! All the "monster" muppets were fawning all over him like he was a god. They followed him everywhere he went and he always acted a little uncomfortable (intimidated?) around them.
Abit introducing an entirely new distro is dumb. Why can't they just write kernel modules for the specific peripherals on their MB?
If we had a GNU/Linux standard for the core libs things we be so much simpler for everyone - even the Linux gurus. Imagine....
RedHat Linux 9.0! --Featuring GNU/Linux std.libs ver 2.0 --Cool App 1 --Cool App 2 --kernel modules for Abit, Asus,... --kernel modules for SB Live,...
App writers could write to the std.lib version and be assured the libraries they need are included in the distro (or include them themselves). An install program would detect your hardware, test it against all the kernel mods, and install the correct ones. If you want bleeding edge stuff, go to the OEM web site like we have to do now.
Wait. Forget all that. That sounds too much like Windows.
Zoom. Some player manufacturers put this only on higher-end models; I have no idea why. To create a product ghetto, I suppose. Once nice thing is that the Apex (apparently, I haven't been able to verify this personally) will use 16x9 enhancement information for a sharper zoom even on a lousy 4x3 television. A thoughtful touch. I couldn't find a way to pan the zoom window, though.
Just use the arrow keys to pan. Works great. The zoom is really sharp on "The Matrix" but pixelizes bad in lower-res movies. Cool feature.
I just looked through my archives and I don't have the schematics. But the thing is really easy to use. They have a development kit that includes a fully built system using all the peripherals and they documented the design completely. We just copied their design leaving off the pieces we didn't need.
The agreement sounds close to Sun's "Community" license:
2.2 CUSTOMER agrees not to distribute the HARDWARE INFORMATION in any form, other than for CUSTOMER's own internal, non-commercial, research purposes.
2.3 CUSTOMER grants to COMPAQ a non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide, unrestricted license to sell, duplicate, use, market, sub-license, distribute and create derivative works of DERIVATIVE HARDWARE.
Incidentally, I have designed an embedded system using the SA-1100. It is a really cool chip. It needed no glue-logic at all to work with SRAM, DRAM, LCD, serial, etc. All the timing, delays, etc. are programmable. And JTAG is great if you cannot afford a bazillion dollar ICE.
So the HW license isn't a heartache for me since I wouldn't base my design from theirs anyway, but off my old one instead. As long as the Linux distro they are offering is GPL'd...
Even assuming that some would use DeCSS only to view copyrighted motion pictures which they lawfully possessed, and thus arguably not infringe plaintiffs' copyrights, the record clearly demonstrates that the chief focus of those promoting the dissemination of DeCSS is to permit widespread copying and dissemination of unauthorized copies of copyrighted works.
To me, it sounds like he doesn't care what DeCSS was designed to do, but what he perceives its popular use is. Does DeCSS even perform the copying operation? Or do you need additional code? Others suggested that there are other products that can copy a DVD (fully encrypted) or rip one into VCD files. Don't there pose a more serious threat than a piece of code that breaks the encryption?
Interesting though: it sounds to me like he claims that it is legal to play a DVD that you legally acquired using DeCSS. But since you cannot be trusted not to copy it, DeCSS is now illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
This is tough. I started with BASIC on my TI99/4a back in '82 or so. It was bad. The Extended BASIC was pretty good. I could do lots of graphics and animation which kept my attention and kept me wanting to program more and faster stuff. I briefly did a little Forth, then assembly language. Many years later I do Java primarily, some C, and some Python.
My son is 5 months old. I have a while before I have to deal with this, but I would prefer he learn a language without goto's (or at least doesn't need them much). It would probably help kids if they didn't need to worry about variable types. I don't want to have to explain the difference between a long and short to a 6 year old. Python comes to mind, but python have cool libraries that your kids would like? Graphics and animation appealed to me. I doubt they will want to jump into file I/O or database interfaces.
What ever happened to Logo? Another thought: what is used to program Lego Mindstorms? That would probably interest them.
-tim
I agree with this argument almost completely. Posting copywrited material is not just illegal, it's just plain wrong. It's Microsoft's stuff and they can do what they want with it. But the posts describing how to defeat the EULA should _NOT_ be removed, nor should links to the document be removed. Give them hell for suggesting those should be taken off.
:) Some people just don't realize that there are better alternatives available. Some people think its normal to reboot their computer every night. Some people only use Microsoft Word to write two page letters to grandma. And that's okay. Last night I described Microsoft's latest security exploit involving reading cookies of your machine and my non-technical wife was ticked. She went as far as suggesting getting rid of Windows and running Linux. This small incident tells me that Open Source, Linux, GNU, etc. is working and that monopolistic, closed source, screw-the-user software is on its way out. It will take a while, but momentum is increasing one user at a time.
The only disagreement I have with the poster is the car analogy. It's great, but needs to be expanded on. For example, in my experience Honda's are incredibly reliable. As I recall, they even had a commercial at one time suggesting it would be okay to weld the hood shut because they rarely need maintainance. I would bet if Honda's started welding the hoods shut, _some_ people would still buy them. I won't generalize who would buy them, but I would also be willing to bet that there would be a strong correlation between buyers of closed Honda's and buyers of closed software. In their mind, if it works they will buy it. The only thing we question is whether they are in their right mind
I think may of us are often blinded by our own advocacy. When I read Emmett's final lines, "and Congress shall make no law," chills went up and down my spine. I love that phrase. There is a little "rural militia man" in all of us that makes us want to thumb our noses at govenment and Big Corporations. But when I recover my wits, I feel it's just plain wrong to post copyrighted material like Microsoft's screwed-up Kerberos spec, Metallica's "art", etc. I only say this because if I had some work that I valued and copyrighted, I'd be awfully mad if it ended up on some web site for the whole world to see without my permission. I also hope that if I had valuable information that could help a great many people, I'd have the strength to selfishly give it away like so many Open Source people have done.
Just my opinion.
-tim
These plug in CPU cards are popular is large-scale embedded systems. I used to design with these. Essentially you could take a passive ISA backplane with N slots and plug a CPU card in to drive the slots. 8 slots was typical, but we've had as many as 20. The problem with that many slots is impedance problems on the bus and cards not working because their slot isn't being driven properly.
Another popular solution was a dual passive backplane. This was 2 sets of ISA slots that you could plug 2 CPU cards into. Then you could bridge them internally with custom hardware or externally with parallel/serial/ethernet/etc.
I've been away from that work for a couple years now and with PCI, I don't know what is popular. PCI is a much different beast than ISA and you cannot just plop down PCI slots. As I recall, they actually used constructive interference on the bus (due to reflections at the ends with infinite impendance) to "build up" enough strength to drive the PCI card. Never designed any PCI stuff.
Often these went into 6U 19" rack chassis with removable harddisks and such.
-tim
That's a good tip. My only problem with solder paste is that it is expensive and it doesn't keep for very long. It gets expensive if you are only building 1 or 2 prototypes.
-tim
I had to build an embedded system about three years back. Our only constaints were 3" by 4", components on 1 side only, and very low power. The low power contraint killed everyone but the StrongArm. At 200MHz it didn't need a heatsink and didn't even get warm to the touch. It's core runs at 1.5 volts. It's very easy to hook peripherals up. It has serial ports (and I think USB), general purpose I/O ports, LCD port, and could take either static or dynamic ram. You had to load 3 or so registers to configure the memory waitstates, etc.
.05" pitch apart. I was able to do it, but it's very hard and we had a $3000 solder station. Hint: you can't help but put too much solder on and bridge pins. Just heat them all up with the iron and suck off the excess with solder wick. Use lots of flux too.
I had been dreaming of building a new Linux-based version myself, but never had the time. For those of you thinking about building your own, think again. The StrongArm's pins are
Oh, debugging the thing is a bitch. It has a nice JTAG port, but sometimes you just have to use a logic analyzer. haahahaha - with a cache, out-of-sequence execution, and jump instructions embedded in the machine code, it's a nightmare. Luckily the thing is so easy to configure you shouldn't have to resort to that too much. Pray you don't.
Now I write Java code. Sigh - I want to build hardware again...
-tim
Amazon's defense will be interesting to watch. They are definitely walking on eggshells since any defense of their use of the patent may be used by their competitors to defend the competitor's use of Amazon's patents.
-tim
that's interesting, but the print is only going to be a good as the digital image. In other words, why do I need 2000 dpi (or whatever it is for 35mm film) when my image is only 600dpi (for example)?
I bought my wife an HP Photosmart 1100xi. Printing with photo paper is amazing. You really can't tell the difference between it and the original picture from 1' away or more. You have to look closely to determine which is the original image.
-tim
pretty slick guys. you ought to try partnering with some of these photo processing companies to have film processing automagically uploaded to your account. I had been using Wolf Camera and getting my photos on CD, but their quality is horrible. Almost all our pictures have a red line through them.
Some photography studios are like vultures in hospital maternity wards. As soon as my wife had our baby, they started throwing flyers at us advertising their services which is pretty much a lame picture of your hour-old baby. It must be the drugs, but *everybody* buys into it. We did. Of course, the next thing everybody wants is for the pictures to be on the web so friends and relatives can see them. Most have this service too. BUT NONE HAVE ONLINE PROCESSING! I tried the processing and its really cool. The only thing I couldn't find was a function to remove "red-eye". I'm sure its there but slightly disguised in the color manipulation options.
Good job.
Absolutely. When I consulted for BellSouth about a year ago, Java was mandated over C++ for all new development.
At the Internet startup that I work now, Java is also the language of choice. We are moving away from all Microsoft products. Of course we are a little concerned over Sun's grip on Java right now, but I strongly believe it will be standardized by IBM without Sun. Once standardized we will move to "standard Java" and away from any proprietary form.
To me, it's not so much it integration with web-stuff, but how easy it is to write large, complex, ever-evolving programs. As most of us probably know, the requirements for our projects are constantly changing. I find Java easy to re-use and easy to change/modify. I programmed C++ for 10 years and never felt comfortable with exceptions, re-usable code, and GUI APIs. Java is good at all those.
Your point regarding the speed of Java is an excellent point, but there are many ways to optimize java. For example, when writing a GUI app you always dedicate one thread to handling user actions and spawn worker threads to perform the behind-the-scenes work, right?
That's my opinion, YMMV.
-tim
These two databases serve very different purposes. In a system I designed for a company we are going to use postgresql for the primary database which is not connected to the internet. It can provide stored procedures, transactions, triggers, etc.
Then, nightly, it dials into the net and uploads the day's changes to our web-server running MySQL. The web database doesn't need transactions, triggers, etc. but it does need speed.
Just use the right product for the job. Don't get bent/blinded by one you happen to like.
-tim
One only needs to visit IBM's developerWorks occassionally to see their interest in Linux, Java, XML, etc. Their Linux page is here.
-tim
How are they doing this? Applying illegal or unethical business practices? Or are they offering larger, nicer stores, cheaper prices, and Starbuck's coffee? Your quote implies one business luring customers away from other business is a bad thing. That's business. If you can't take it, find another.
Personally, when I want to buy something I look for the cheapest price and good service. If B&N has something cheaper than Mom's Books then I'll probably buy at B&N. It's up to Mom to offer something more than B&N. It's not B&N's fault that Mom can't compete.
I understand what you are saying; I just don't blame Big Business. In Atlanta, we had an awesome bookstore called Oxford Books that had everything and lots of strange stuff. You could browse all day. But they went out of business because they weren't moving all their stock. They frequently over-ordered books that only a few people would buy. Is that B&N's fault?
Don't blame Big Business. Instead, try zigging while their zagging.
-tim
I understand what you are saying and I agree that Sun doesn't owe us anything. But I believe the sarcasm comes from the fact that (early on) Sun touted their community license as "open source" when, in fact, it is not. The approved "open sources" licenses are here.
-tim
- The GNU General Public License (GPL);
- The GNU Library or `Lesser' Public License (LGPL);
- The BSD license;
- The MIT license (sometimes called called the `X Consortium license');
- The Artistic license;
- The Mozilla Public License (MPL);
- The Qt Public License (QPL).
- The IBM Public License.
- The MITRE Collaborative Virtual Workspace License (CVW License).
- The Ricoh Source Code Public License.
- The Python license.
- The zlib/libpng license.
Other conforming licenses include the IJG JPEG library license and the OPL (OpenLDAP Public License).-tim
Have you looked at RTEMS lately? It is real time, has a TCP/IP stack, and all source is available (although I'm not sure if it's "open source"). It is maintained by the Army so it's pretty much public domain. It compiles under gcc nicely. The EFI332 group is using it to build a fuel-injection system.
-tim
I'm amazed that no question regarding his opinion on Java didn't make it through moderation.
Does he feel Java is a competitor? or just another implementation to solve a different set of problems (e.g. web-programming)?
Or maybe this is in the FAQ?
-tim
Holy cow! Are you serious? You got a 3000 page doc in Word???? Honestly, back in the Word95 days about 300 pages was all that was possible before the program complained or crashed. I'm not at all suprised that _any_ program would take a long time to paginate 3000 pages (but 3 hours is a bit long). My Framemaker doc was about 300-400 pages of real content followed by 1200+ pages of dynamic links to source code. What was great is that all the source was visible and I could scroll through it fairly quickly even down at page 1000 or so (it would take about 1/2 second to display the footer w/ the page number in it). Scrolling through a doc in Word with just 20 or 30 pages of graphics, tables, blah, is frustrating as hell.
Does your doc have lots of graphics, tables, and/or equations?
-tim
A good word processor for Linux would be really nice. I've been burned by MSWord so many times that I'm getting used to the smell of smoke.
The primary feature it *must* have is compatability with Word documents. There are just too many users of Word to ignore their documents. The resume import was a good test since it usually involves frames and styles.
My favorite word processor of all time is Framemaker. And now they have a Linux version!. I don't care if it's not open as long as it works. It writes it documents in ODMA (an open document language) so it's input/output is open. If Adobe stops supporting it, then any other product that can read ODMA can read your doc. It also outputs to XML.
More features that need review:
import of equations and tables from Word
anchors! can you control what they are stuck to? how far will they float?
BIG DOCUMENTS! Framemaker still flew in a doc that was over 400 pages w/ many pics/code/equations/tables. Word chokes after about 50 pages of heavy tables/equations.
good HTML export. Tables/equations again...
Add Wordperfect and Framemaker to the next review.
-tim
Of all the Muppet Show episodes I saw (and I'm sure I saw darn near all of them), the Alice Cooper episode sticks out in my mind the most.
It was great! All the "monster" muppets were fawning all over him like he was a god. They followed him everywhere he went and he always acted a little uncomfortable (intimidated?) around them.
God I miss Jim Henson.
-tim
Abit introducing an entirely new distro is dumb. Why can't they just write kernel modules for the specific peripherals on their MB?
... ...
If we had a GNU/Linux standard for the core libs things we be so much simpler for everyone - even the Linux gurus. Imagine....
RedHat Linux 9.0!
--Featuring GNU/Linux std.libs ver 2.0
--Cool App 1
--Cool App 2
--kernel modules for Abit, Asus,
--kernel modules for SB Live,
App writers could write to the std.lib version and be assured the libraries they need are included in the distro (or include them themselves). An install program would detect your hardware, test it against all the kernel mods, and install the correct ones. If you want bleeding edge stuff, go to the OEM web site like we have to do now.
Wait. Forget all that. That sounds too much like Windows.
-tim
Zoom. Some player manufacturers put this only on higher-end models; I have no idea why. To create a product ghetto, I suppose. Once nice thing is that the Apex (apparently, I haven't been able to verify this personally) will use 16x9 enhancement information for a sharper zoom even on a lousy 4x3 television. A thoughtful touch. I couldn't find a way to pan the zoom window, though.
Just use the arrow keys to pan. Works great. The zoom is really sharp on "The Matrix" but pixelizes bad in lower-res movies. Cool feature.
I just looked through my archives and I don't have the schematics. But the thing is really easy to use. They have a development kit that includes a fully built system using all the peripherals and they documented the design completely. We just copied their design leaving off the pieces we didn't need.
Here is a link to Intel's hardware development tools
Here is a link to build your Linux cross-development tools
-tim
2.2 CUSTOMER agrees not to distribute the HARDWARE INFORMATION in any form, other than for CUSTOMER's own internal, non-commercial, research purposes.
2.3 CUSTOMER grants to COMPAQ a non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide, unrestricted license to sell, duplicate, use, market, sub-license, distribute and create derivative works of DERIVATIVE HARDWARE.
Incidentally, I have designed an embedded system using the SA-1100. It is a really cool chip. It needed no glue-logic at all to work with SRAM, DRAM, LCD, serial, etc. All the timing, delays, etc. are programmable. And JTAG is great if you cannot afford a bazillion dollar ICE.
So the HW license isn't a heartache for me since I wouldn't base my design from theirs anyway, but off my old one instead. As long as the Linux distro they are offering is GPL'd...
-tim
What were you like as a teenager? What group of kids did you hang out with? What were your feelings about geeks/nerds at that age?
This is the part that hurts:
Even assuming that some would use DeCSS only to view copyrighted motion pictures which they lawfully possessed, and thus arguably not infringe plaintiffs' copyrights, the record clearly demonstrates that the chief focus of those promoting the dissemination of DeCSS is to permit widespread copying and dissemination of unauthorized copies of copyrighted works.
To me, it sounds like he doesn't care what DeCSS was designed to do, but what he perceives its popular use is. Does DeCSS even perform the copying operation? Or do you need additional code? Others suggested that there are other products that can copy a DVD (fully encrypted) or rip one into VCD files. Don't there pose a more serious threat than a piece of code that breaks the encryption?
Interesting though: it sounds to me like he claims that it is legal to play a DVD that you legally acquired using DeCSS. But since you cannot be trusted not to copy it, DeCSS is now illegal.
-tim