I have a Zuk Z2, it's been doing this for over a year now. Zuk is a small phone company that got eaten by Lenovo. Poor quality software but the Z2 is a great hardware platform and the custom ROMs are in great shape.
Apart from physical size, the Mi Box has this thing beat. Same price, 4K + HDR, Google Cast, but it's also an Android TV box with support for running apps, games etc. Any ideas?
Boards in that sort of arrangement are common as muck and have been for a long time. Then when you want to use it, first you need a baseboard which is beyond the construction capabilities of most hackers (Variscite don't show you the back of the board which will have several specialised, very fine-pitch header connectors) and once you break out the "real-world" connectors, you've got a much larger beast. If you want something to hack around with, go for a SOM like an RPi, or a Wandboard, or an ODroid, or a BeagleBone, or a Cubieboard, or an OLinuXino, or any of a huge number of other products.
This is like the smart-phone chicken-and-egg from a few years ago. When most smartphones ran WinCE, the smartphone market was small because WinCE was crap. Then Blackberry and Apple made devices that people wanted to use, and created the smartphone mass market.
Java ME is crippled by the carriers. The requirement to shag about with carrier approvals to get access to the network, or Bluetooth, or the local filesystem means that it's nigh on impossible to create useful, widely-used applets- about the only thing you can do is games. Imagine re-submitting your approval to basically every carrier on the planet, for every little revision you make: it only makes sense for specific vertical applications. Java ME can't recover from this, it's never going to be more than a niche solution even though it was intended to be the One Platform For All.
With Apple you have to jump through hoops to get into the MFi program and pay them a tithe for the privilege, but at least once you're there you know your product will work, and continue to work, without carriers getting in the way.
I'm still waiting to see how this will play out on Android, and hoping that the carriers don't screw it up. Now Oracle is throwing a spanner in the works as well and it's not looking too good. But if Android fails to establish an unfettered platform for useful apps, then we're back to Java ME (which is nowhere)... I'm actually casting an eye sideways at WP7, and the temperature in hell is rapidly decreasing.
That Roving Networks product only gives you firmware to cover the Apple devices' "unique discovery and pairing sequence" - you still need to join the Made For iPod program to be allowed to buy authentication co-processors.
Personally I think that if you're smart enough to make a device that does something useful and communicates over Bluetooth, then you're smart enough to handle the Apple authentication sequence. I've done it, which proves that you don't need to be very smart at all!
I guess that this product might be for people who don't want to communicate over Bluetooth, but if they join the MFi program, then they can use serial or USB as they see fit.
So I vote a fail for Roving Networks - I just don't see who that product could be useful for.
Yep, you've got to "Validate" as part of the install.
Personally, I wouldn't bother. My install crashes when I try to log into Slashdot. How crap is that?
This thing runs on a TI DM320 SOC. Which means, you can't get a processor data sheet. You can't know how the DSP peripherals work. You can't change the codecs etc.
TI is like the Microsoft of the hardware world - they want to keep the marketplace "monetized" so everything is based on NDAs, licensing, and secrets. It's odd, because if TI were to be more open with their product documentation, it would ultimately lead to more sales of their chips etc - although it would spell the end for "IP companies" like Ingenient who supply the closed-source codecs for this product.
Why bother? I think it's kind of inappropriate to even put GNU/Linux on this thing, when the interesting bits are all locked down.
Not to say that the people at IPONZ are monkeys, but recently there were vacancies advertised for technical advisors to the patent office, and I was interested in applying (imagine! Slashgeeks in the patent office!). Then I looked at the pay... at NZ$35k - 40k, it's about half of what a decent techie should expect to get paid. Certainly it's not going to attract really good people to the position.
Is the pay for patent office people that bad in other countries as well?
The copyright modification as proposed allows people to make copies for personal use. Big Deal. It ALSO has standard DMCA-like wording about copy protection and reverse engineering. So we have a right to make a copy, but if there is copy protection, then there is no legal means to make that copy. It's still an ass.
Still, the bit about limiting liability for ISPs at least shows some thought went into it.
See the proposed amendments
Slashdot Mirror
I have a Zuk Z2, it's been doing this for over a year now. Zuk is a small phone company that got eaten by Lenovo. Poor quality software but the Z2 is a great hardware platform and the custom ROMs are in great shape.
Apart from physical size, the Mi Box has this thing beat. Same price, 4K + HDR, Google Cast, but it's also an Android TV box with support for running apps, games etc. Any ideas?
Boards in that sort of arrangement are common as muck and have been for a long time. Then when you want to use it, first you need a baseboard which is beyond the construction capabilities of most hackers (Variscite don't show you the back of the board which will have several specialised, very fine-pitch header connectors) and once you break out the "real-world" connectors, you've got a much larger beast.
If you want something to hack around with, go for a SOM like an RPi, or a Wandboard, or an ODroid, or a BeagleBone, or a Cubieboard, or an OLinuXino, or any of a huge number of other products.
Haven't you heard that Windows Explorer is getting a ribbon? I call that trash.
When I eliminated all the ones in my code I discovered that the OS calls I was making were themselves leaking. At that point I threw in the towel.
So you wrote code with only zeroes?
This is like the smart-phone chicken-and-egg from a few years ago. When most smartphones ran WinCE, the smartphone market was small because WinCE was crap. Then Blackberry and Apple made devices that people wanted to use, and created the smartphone mass market.
Java ME is crippled by the carriers. The requirement to shag about with carrier approvals to get access to the network, or Bluetooth, or the local filesystem means that it's nigh on impossible to create useful, widely-used applets- about the only thing you can do is games. Imagine re-submitting your approval to basically every carrier on the planet, for every little revision you make: it only makes sense for specific vertical applications. Java ME can't recover from this, it's never going to be more than a niche solution even though it was intended to be the One Platform For All.
With Apple you have to jump through hoops to get into the MFi program and pay them a tithe for the privilege, but at least once you're there you know your product will work, and continue to work, without carriers getting in the way.
I'm still waiting to see how this will play out on Android, and hoping that the carriers don't screw it up. Now Oracle is throwing a spanner in the works as well and it's not looking too good. But if Android fails to establish an unfettered platform for useful apps, then we're back to Java ME (which is nowhere)... I'm actually casting an eye sideways at WP7, and the temperature in hell is rapidly decreasing.
That Roving Networks product only gives you firmware to cover the Apple devices' "unique discovery and pairing sequence" - you still need to join the Made For iPod program to be allowed to buy authentication co-processors.
Personally I think that if you're smart enough to make a device that does something useful and communicates over Bluetooth, then you're smart enough to handle the Apple authentication sequence. I've done it, which proves that you don't need to be very smart at all!
I guess that this product might be for people who don't want to communicate over Bluetooth, but if they join the MFi program, then they can use serial or USB as they see fit.
So I vote a fail for Roving Networks - I just don't see who that product could be useful for.
Yep, you've got to "Validate" as part of the install. Personally, I wouldn't bother. My install crashes when I try to log into Slashdot. How crap is that?
This thing runs on a TI DM320 SOC. Which means, you can't get a processor data sheet. You can't know how the DSP peripherals work. You can't change the codecs etc. TI is like the Microsoft of the hardware world - they want to keep the marketplace "monetized" so everything is based on NDAs, licensing, and secrets. It's odd, because if TI were to be more open with their product documentation, it would ultimately lead to more sales of their chips etc - although it would spell the end for "IP companies" like Ingenient who supply the closed-source codecs for this product. Why bother? I think it's kind of inappropriate to even put GNU/Linux on this thing, when the interesting bits are all locked down.
Not to say that the people at IPONZ are monkeys, but recently there were vacancies advertised for technical advisors to the patent office, and I was interested in applying (imagine! Slashgeeks in the patent office!). Then I looked at the pay... at NZ$35k - 40k, it's about half of what a decent techie should expect to get paid. Certainly it's not going to attract really good people to the position. Is the pay for patent office people that bad in other countries as well?
The copyright modification as proposed allows people to make copies for personal use. Big Deal. It ALSO has standard DMCA-like wording about copy protection and reverse engineering. So we have a right to make a copy, but if there is copy protection, then there is no legal means to make that copy. It's still an ass. Still, the bit about limiting liability for ISPs at least shows some thought went into it.
See the proposed amendments