I was fairly sure that the reason that BAE got the contract was because of their minature laser gyros being the only things accurate enough and small enough to fit in a Segway, probably something to do with their research into cruise missiles. There were a couple of public domain papers about their work in that area doing the rounds a while back, but my memory may have failed me and/or it's not ready for use in a consumer device yet.
If you get given one, yank out the Laser Inertial Gyro microchips for use in your own projects. (Made by BAE Systems, a company like Lockheed Martin but with more tea and less money.)
Well worth the effort of nicking one, assuming you happen to have decent systems integration skills _and_ a criminal bent. You could have not only the worlds first fly by wire RC helicopter, but one made entirley of stolen parts.
Didn't they try something like this at all those dot com companies? Oh, look how well it worked for them.
Let's face it, the only reason anyone does any work at work is because it's marginally less tedious than the alternative activities that you can engage in until 5pm. Excluding the ones in the stationary cuboard with your secretary of course.
You can fold and rotate them into iPaq-style format, they keyboard however is essential for SSH. The Z also has a decent stylus control system, great handriting recognition and an ok on screen keyboard.
If you don't use SSH on a regular basis, then a Zaurus may not be for you anyway.
And don't complain about pollution. Modern, working cars don't pollute enough to make a difference either.
How about efficiency then? That BFO power station can convert fuel to power a damn sight more efficiently than your petrol engine, even after transmission and the motor take their cut. It also allows you to use whichever fuel source (gas, oil, nuclear) that happens to be cheapest that week.
The only thing stopping them building a 400 bhp electric car is the fact that power storage densities are too low. It won't be that long however before a battery powered two seater is beating your tank-sized SUV off the lights. Before you run it over that is.
It started with this, certainly. At some point (probably when IBM failed to buy them out) SCO started going off on a bender about the whole Linux community being thieves.
At this point, the company having distributed Linux becomes rather more significant.
No one _forced_ SCO to release code without checking it, and the fact that they did reflects badly on their professionalism as a software company and even worse on their due diligence that they are meant to exercise in protecting their shareholders. If their code was eaten by the GPL then that was their fault.
What other companies thinking of dabbling with GPL software will think will most probably depend on who wins the FUD war and how it gets written up in 'PHB Weekly' rather than the actual facts. Unfortunatly Microsoft employs lots of people like Stef (yes, the UF one) where as OSS software is championed by people more interested in Quake than golf.
...and those problems are nearly always the users. Networks are stuffed full of leeching goits who deliberatly try and minimise the ammount they upload, making P2P much less useful.
The best P2P solutions are ones run where bandwidth is excessive (DC on campuses for example, where 1mb/sec upload was no skin off the nose of the user with 100mb/sec internally) or private groups (like my local SSH+DC system that only has 6 users).
Freenet seems to be pretty good at enforcing people to be altuistic and not selfish, as well as taking away any worries about traceability or culpability. It also helps that the person inserting the content is not the one mirroring it to the users - everyone shares the load equally which keeps it managable. Try putting up real live files on Kazaa and see how fast your connection gets nuked. It wouldn't surprise me if long after the current generations of P2P clients had collapsed under the weight of their own users self centeredness that only that one was still going.
Nope, CeBit is a massive marketing wank fest and very little of real substance gets done - you know, little details like 'price' and 'availability' aren't mentioned. They normally manage to keep the engineers away from it, but we conned ourselves some free tickets by using so many buzzwords our boss thought that were merketdroids:o)
The SL-C760 was one of the models I had a play with at CeBit, and the screen is so good that it cannot be described.
They already had a working OZ build for it, so that should be available publicly soon if not already.
The form factor is nice, it fits great in a hand just like a palm, but when you need a keyboard (ssh anyone?) this arrangement is much better than the pull out version on the 5500. They even remembered to put a | key on it this time:o)
They were having a few speed problems with the XScale (it was running about the same as the Arm 206's in the 5500) but they may have fixed that.
Build quality is fine, much more robust than the 5500, same good mix of CF and SD/MMC. Much better battery life as well. Not sure whatll happen with the arm-compiled packages that are in such surplus for the 5500 though - maybe someone will write an emulation layer.
On the whole, definatly a winner, especially for Linux/UNIX admin types - go out and buy one now!
Because of better understanding of flow equivalence it's much easier than it used to be to test models in small windtunnels.
Reynolds numbers are roughly matched (by changing temperature and flow speed) to test in smaller-than-life wind tunnel tests, and it's now possible to do this for a much larger range of real word conditions (by using colder tunnels and high/low pressure and high velocity flows) with much smaller (ie cheaper) wind tunnels. It's also done much more accuratly, up to and including equivalent tests for supersonic and hypersonic flows. You just can't test a hypersonic (M5+) flow in a large wind tunnel, it would need a huge mass flow rate.
Combine this with the availability of cheap supercomuter time and the fact that your 3D models can be used for aerodynamic testing, systems integration _and_ CAD/CAM (so you only need to build one virtual model and not four - saving a huge heap of cash) and you have a sharp decrease in the need for large wind tunnels.
When capitalism works, you can't tell the diference from communism.
The problem is that both systems are open to huge abuses - just it's slightly harder to abuse capitalism in a manner which will stop it perpetuating (as has been demonstrated rather well). In a long run you need a liberal mix of both systems to form a sustainable and fair system of government.
It's not even like a _farmer_ can be expected to be able to readily identify GM seeds anyway - it could have just been a naturally occuring resistant mutation.
I can see them now, scurrying way with a seed sample to their subterranian gene sequencing plant (all farmers have one of these, didn't you know?) and cackling madly as they identify the seeds they found and work out the best way to rip of Monsato's IP.
I have a couple of machines here, and found that installing Gentoo didn't take very long to install at all - around a day all told, including X (but not including KDE).
Most of that time however was hands off, and after the first 30 minutes or so I was back in at a functional console anyway - with emerge working no less - so that I could install emacs and pan and get on with work whilst it was compiling. If that doesn't excite you then just install it from inside Knoppix and you can work in OpenOffice or KMail (just remember to use nice -n 19 on emerge!).
As for old and slow machines, it took about 2 days to install it onto a PII 350 via ssh for a friend (about 200 miles away) including X and fluxbox. Since only 1 reboot is required I found it perfectly possible to do all of the configuration work for him, including a basic setup of X+fluxbox, without too much effort (mostly by copying my own config files). When coupled with scren (allowing the installee to watch and interact with your session) this seems to be a pretty good way to get people started.
I was once stopped by a policeman in Maine for having the sheer cheek to walk between two towns - it was only about 8 miles and it was a lovely day.
Having explained to him that I was quite enjoying walking and declining his offer of a lift, I swear that he was tempted to shoot me for being a dirty communist.
This whole car free thing might not work until attitudes change a little:o)
In addition, NASA does lots of Scientific Visualization, materials engineering, simulations, data acquisition and other stuff that is not directly related to embedded flight control systems. Lot's of good science that's not just "Office Stuff".
My biggest hope is that they will pick up Octave over the closed source Matlab.
Octave is already really good, but needs more libraries written for it, and NASA are really good at things like CFD libraries for numerical tools...
It wouldn't make the folks at Mathworks happy, but they deserve it:
I can buy Matlab (full license) for UNIX
I can buy Matlab (student license) for Windows
I can't buy Matlab (student license) for UNIX
Given that all that is required is a quick recompile as their code is already UNIX safe, this really gets my goat.
I just wish DZ had gotten further off the ground nearly as much as I wish OZ or the Sharp rom were based upon X11.
First slashdot want X dead, then they want it on everything...
Have to agree though, it would be great to X forward apps off my Z onto my desktop (like Qplot) - I know you can install a X server for OZ, but you can't forward Opie based apps AFAIK.
Essentially, the same way the fire department has implied permission to save your house and pets should your house catch fire when you are unreachable.
But they don't have implied permission, they have explicit permission from an elected government (at least here). In this case the people doing this are akin to a band of vigilantes, something that civilised socienties all over the world have rejected in the real world.
Although I would like to hear a cashier go, "That makes $0.88 change sir." Pick out two quarters then,... *pause*.... and just stare blankly at the change</i> <br><br> Well, if there was an 18C coin and no 20/10C coin that would happen, as 25+25+18 != 88.
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I was fairly sure that the reason that BAE got the contract was because of their minature laser gyros being the only things accurate enough and small enough to fit in a Segway, probably something to do with their research into cruise missiles. There were a couple of public domain papers about their work in that area doing the rounds a while back, but my memory may have failed me and/or it's not ready for use in a consumer device yet.
If you get given one, yank out the Laser Inertial Gyro microchips for use in your own projects. (Made by BAE Systems, a company like Lockheed Martin but with more tea and less money.)
Well worth the effort of nicking one, assuming you happen to have decent systems integration skills _and_ a criminal bent. You could have not only the worlds first fly by wire RC helicopter, but one made entirley of stolen parts.
Didn't they try something like this at all those dot com companies? Oh, look how well it worked for them.
Let's face it, the only reason anyone does any work at work is because it's marginally less tedious than the alternative activities that you can engage in until 5pm. Excluding the ones in the stationary cuboard with your secretary of course.
This site works fine for me with Mozilla 1.3 on Linux.
What troubles me is why doesn't Microsoft just buy SCO outright?
So that when SCO looses MS can run away _very_ fast to avoid all of the shit hitting the fan.
"We're very committed to respecting the intellectual property rights of others" said J. Allard from Microsoft.
This guy must be a new hire who skipped employee orientation or something. Did anyone else feel the need to laugh when they read that?
The irony is that although Microsoft sell you the hardware, you still can't run Windows* on it, just Linux.
:o)
Nice to see that Microsoft are taking the whole antitrust thing seriously and rolling out subsidised Linux based terminals
*Yes, except for the cut down version of the 2K kernel it ships with, I know.
You can fold and rotate them into iPaq-style format, they keyboard however is essential for SSH. The Z also has a decent stylus control system, great handriting recognition and an ok on screen keyboard.
If you don't use SSH on a regular basis, then a Zaurus may not be for you anyway.
And don't complain about pollution. Modern, working cars don't pollute enough to make a difference either.
How about efficiency then? That BFO power station can convert fuel to power a damn sight more efficiently than your petrol engine, even after transmission and the motor take their cut. It also allows you to use whichever fuel source (gas, oil, nuclear) that happens to be cheapest that week.
The only thing stopping them building a 400 bhp electric car is the fact that power storage densities are too low. It won't be that long however before a battery powered two seater is beating your tank-sized SUV off the lights. Before you run it over that is.
It started with this, certainly. At some point (probably when IBM failed to buy them out) SCO started going off on a bender about the whole Linux community being thieves.
At this point, the company having distributed Linux becomes rather more significant.
Its not asking them to check everything, just check the things that they were _selling_.
No one _forced_ SCO to release code without checking it, and the fact that they did reflects badly on their professionalism as a software company and even worse on their due diligence that they are meant to exercise in protecting their shareholders. If their code was eaten by the GPL then that was their fault.
What other companies thinking of dabbling with GPL software will think will most probably depend on who wins the FUD war and how it gets written up in 'PHB Weekly' rather than the actual facts. Unfortunatly Microsoft employs lots of people like Stef (yes, the UF one) where as OSS software is championed by people more interested in Quake than golf.
...and those problems are nearly always the users. Networks are stuffed full of leeching goits who deliberatly try and minimise the ammount they upload, making P2P much less useful.
The best P2P solutions are ones run where bandwidth is excessive (DC on campuses for example, where 1mb/sec upload was no skin off the nose of the user with 100mb/sec internally) or private groups (like my local SSH+DC system that only has 6 users).
Freenet seems to be pretty good at enforcing people to be altuistic and not selfish, as well as taking away any worries about traceability or culpability. It also helps that the person inserting the content is not the one mirroring it to the users - everyone shares the load equally which keeps it managable. Try putting up real live files on Kazaa and see how fast your connection gets nuked. It wouldn't surprise me if long after the current generations of P2P clients had collapsed under the weight of their own users self centeredness that only that one was still going.
Nope, CeBit is a massive marketing wank fest and very little of real substance gets done - you know, little details like 'price' and 'availability' aren't mentioned. They normally manage to keep the engineers away from it, but we conned ourselves some free tickets by using so many buzzwords our boss thought that were merketdroids :o)
The SL-C760 was one of the models I had a play with at CeBit, and the screen is so good that it cannot be described.
:o)
They already had a working OZ build for it, so that should be available publicly soon if not already.
The form factor is nice, it fits great in a hand just like a palm, but when you need a keyboard (ssh anyone?) this arrangement is much better than the pull out version on the 5500. They even remembered to put a | key on it this time
They were having a few speed problems with the XScale (it was running about the same as the Arm 206's in the 5500) but they may have fixed that.
Build quality is fine, much more robust than the 5500, same good mix of CF and SD/MMC. Much better battery life as well. Not sure whatll happen with the arm-compiled packages that are in such surplus for the 5500 though - maybe someone will write an emulation layer.
On the whole, definatly a winner, especially for Linux/UNIX admin types - go out and buy one now!
It's definatly PDA and not subnotebook size (smaller than the iPaq).
Because of better understanding of flow equivalence it's much easier than it used to be to test models in small windtunnels.
Reynolds numbers are roughly matched (by changing temperature and flow speed) to test in smaller-than-life wind tunnel tests, and it's now possible to do this for a much larger range of real word conditions (by using colder tunnels and high/low pressure and high velocity flows) with much smaller (ie cheaper) wind tunnels. It's also done much more accuratly, up to and including equivalent tests for supersonic and hypersonic flows. You just can't test a hypersonic (M5+) flow in a large wind tunnel, it would need a huge mass flow rate.
Combine this with the availability of cheap supercomuter time and the fact that your 3D models can be used for aerodynamic testing, systems integration _and_ CAD/CAM (so you only need to build one virtual model and not four - saving a huge heap of cash) and you have a sharp decrease in the need for large wind tunnels.
A wise man once said:
When capitalism works, you can't tell the diference from communism.
The problem is that both systems are open to huge abuses - just it's slightly harder to abuse capitalism in a manner which will stop it perpetuating (as has been demonstrated rather well). In a long run you need a liberal mix of both systems to form a sustainable and fair system of government.
It's not even like a _farmer_ can be expected to be able to readily identify GM seeds anyway - it could have just been a naturally occuring resistant mutation.
I can see them now, scurrying way with a seed sample to their subterranian gene sequencing plant (all farmers have one of these, didn't you know?) and cackling madly as they identify the seeds they found and work out the best way to rip of Monsato's IP.
I have a couple of machines here, and found that installing Gentoo didn't take very long to install at all - around a day all told, including X (but not including KDE).
Most of that time however was hands off, and after the first 30 minutes or so I was back in at a functional console anyway - with emerge working no less - so that I could install emacs and pan and get on with work whilst it was compiling. If that doesn't excite you then just install it from inside Knoppix and you can work in OpenOffice or KMail (just remember to use nice -n 19 on emerge!).
As for old and slow machines, it took about 2 days to install it onto a PII 350 via ssh for a friend (about 200 miles away) including X and fluxbox. Since only 1 reboot is required I found it perfectly possible to do all of the configuration work for him, including a basic setup of X+fluxbox, without too much effort (mostly by copying my own config files). When coupled with scren (allowing the installee to watch and interact with your session) this seems to be a pretty good way to get people started.
I was once stopped by a policeman in Maine for having the sheer cheek to walk between two towns - it was only about 8 miles and it was a lovely day.
:o)
Having explained to him that I was quite enjoying walking and declining his offer of a lift, I swear that he was tempted to shoot me for being a dirty communist.
This whole car free thing might not work until attitudes change a little
In addition, NASA does lots of Scientific Visualization, materials engineering, simulations, data acquisition and other stuff that is not directly related to embedded flight control systems. Lot's of good science that's not just "Office Stuff".
My biggest hope is that they will pick up Octave over the closed source Matlab.
Octave is already really good, but needs more libraries written for it, and NASA are really good at things like CFD libraries for numerical tools...
It wouldn't make the folks at Mathworks happy, but they deserve it:
I can buy Matlab (full license) for UNIX
I can buy Matlab (student license) for Windows
I can't buy Matlab (student license) for UNIX
Given that all that is required is a quick recompile as their code is already UNIX safe, this really gets my goat.
I just wish DZ had gotten further off the ground nearly as much as I wish OZ or the Sharp rom were based upon X11.
First slashdot want X dead, then they want it on everything...
Have to agree though, it would be great to X forward apps off my Z onto my desktop (like Qplot) - I know you can install a X server for OZ, but you can't forward Opie based apps AFAIK.
Essentially, the same way the fire department has implied permission to save your house and pets should your house catch fire when you are unreachable.
But they don't have implied permission, they have explicit permission from an elected government (at least here). In this case the people doing this are akin to a band of vigilantes, something that civilised socienties all over the world have rejected in the real world.
Although I would like to hear a cashier go, ... *pause* .... and just stare blankly at the change</i>
"That makes $0.88 change sir." Pick out two quarters then,
<br><br>
Well, if there was an 18C coin and no 20/10C coin that would happen, as 25+25+18 != 88.