Solution: put the button inside the case, maybe directly on the motherboard. If you're serious about security, the case is going to be physically locked anyway.
No kidding. Where is the issue where when you can just do this? You'd think the the general population of people who will be loading their boxes with alternate operating systems could figure this out.
And what if we actually like using non-x86 architectures? ARM is becoming increasingly popular - I already have 2 different ARM devices, both running Linux. It's only a matter of time until ARM makes it's way into the desktop/server market. Even now, there's a lot of interest in running Linux (proper GNU/Linux with an X server) on tablets.
You joke, but there's already a lightweight Qt-based desktop environment called Razor-QT that runs quite nicely on the RasPi, though it is still a bit rough around the edges since it's still in development. If all else fails, the KDE project could probably assimilate it.
We're discussing an American problem on an American blog. What did you expect?
What do you mean American problem? The patent situation is a problem affecting multinational technology companies around the world. One of the key points about the whole Samsung vs Apple case was that there were different outcomes in different countries. Also, I'm fairly certain Slashdot doesn't count as a blog, and the Americanness of it is rather questionable as well.
...my unreplaceable one-of-a-kind Nokia N900 becomes irreparable, to come up with a phone worthy as its successor.
Pretty much any (GPL-compliant) Android phone with an unlocked bootloader can run any Linux-based OS you want. And while this company has just started, the KDE project is nearing version 2.0 of Plasma Active, which runs on top of Mer (a fork of Maemo/Meego that Jolla will almost certainly also be basing their OS on).
We already install Linux on desktops that come pre-installed with Windows - I'm surprised there aren't more people installing Mer on their Android phones.
No one expects wearable computing to replace desktops. No one expects tablets or smartphones to replace them either, but that hasn't stopped them from becoming popular.
Wearable computing, like smartphones/tablets, is about providing seamless access to technology when you're away from the computer. It seeks to supplant the smartphone, not the desktop.
1) MATLAB is much faster at solving most problems.
This is a pretty major issue of your working with non-trivial amounts of data (e.g. image processing). One of the main reasons for this is that the current version of Octave is only single-threaded; it can't take advantage of the extra cores that even modern phones have. Apparently multi-threading can be enabled by recompiling it, but that's a fairly large demand for the average user...
I still have some simple apps I wrote back then, and timing one just now it took a full 2 seconds to start, and that was constant no matter how many times I ran it. That said, they did target.NET 3.0, so it's likely that they fixed that in one of the later versions with some kind of caching.
So instead of having Maemo (and or the subsequent versions of something like that) we have a less open Android platform as what remains of that idea.
We also have its legacy: Meego, Mer, etc. Mer has been used as the basis for some KDE-based mobile phone OSs (still in alpha), so I think it's only a matter of time before we see this going somewhere.
I tried using WPF in my late teens, and I gave up after writing 2 or 3 applications. The reason was performance: where a WinForms app starts (virtually) instantaneously, a blank WPF form took about half a second, which is *not* a trivial delay in terms of responsiveness. I later found Qt when doing some C++ development, which achieves the same separation of code and (XML-based) GUI, with none of the performance issues. Frankly, Microsoft would have done better to fork it (it is open source, after all) and implement exceptions properly. (Important function calls like connecting signals to slots (events and event handlers in.NET) should not fail silently and only output messages to the console).
From memory, there are plenty of GPIO pins for use by extensions - those could easily be used for whatever interface you wanted, and since they're literally direct lines to the CPU you're not getting better speed than that.
Is the perception context-dependant though? I never visualise numbers (trying to visualise an abstract concept just limits you to 3 or fewer dimensions), but trying to do so just now I used number lines for addition/subtraction, and perpendicular lines for multiplication/division. Once I reach complex numbers, everything just becomes a vector.
Re:interestingly lawyers do this anyway
on
Hacking the Law
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· Score: 1
I agree entirely. Having spent a few years studying law, one of my earliest observations was that 'reasonable' was code for 'let the courts figure it out'.
Your work is honestly quite inspiring; I would never have imagined that a single person could reverse engineer the graphics driver like that. Thank you so much for your contribution to the FOSS community.:)
I think it took me 1/2 hour of re-booting before I finally purged nouveau from my system to clear the way so that the Nvidia driver could attach.
I'm curious why it took you this long. It took me a total of 5 minutes, and this was the first time I'd even used Debian (previously used Ubuntu and its derivatives exclusively) - just searched for the relevant package and removed it.
Ironically I ended up reinstalling it because the non-free binary drivers for my card don't support 3.0.x kernels.
If you DIY you can probably accomplish a lot for under $10k and the pros would probably charge you 10x that for similar functionality.
This is probably the best advice you'll get on the topic. Systems targeted to the average consumer have a price proportional to their coolness/desirability, because that's what the market will pay. Components targeted at the DIY crowd are sold at cost, though in other cases you may get a better deal simply by taking an existing consumer product and repurposing it. In a nutshell, the hacker spirit is key to keeping your costs down.
I suggest you look at some of the home automation standards, and learn how to work with an Arduino* (these are great if you're comfortable with C but have virtually no electronics experience). Those two alone will handle pretty much every form of interaction with the physical environment you can think of. (If Arduino's aren't powerful enough, use a Raspberry Pi or a Beaglebone.) The user interface can be handled by grabbing some cheap, Chinese Android tablets (they can be had for as little as $80, though keep in mind they won't be GPL compliant), and using either a custom app or a simple HTML5 interface. (The same interface could easily be made available on any existing Android devices.)
* The cost of the parts for an Arduino is a fifth of the retail cost. Most wireless chips do tend to be a bit pricier, more so if you go for a shield, and the SMD packages are a pain to solder. The easiest way to handle connectivity is probably a single wireless device per room, with all other nodes there sending data through it via wired (I2C) connections. (Don't forget to shield these if they're next to the mains!) Ethernet would be easier and cheaper if you make that device a RasPi (since they cost about as much as an Arduino with built-in Ethernet) , but then you need to ensure you've got the requisite cabling (which IMO is well worth the additional effort).
You're going to want a low power system to act as the server; to coordinate all the data being received, to act as a file server, etc. A Raspberry Pi might be a good fit for this if you don't need much storage (no SATA support currently), or maybe something more like a Sheeva plug. Alternatively, you could combine this with the HTPC if you go down that route (just keep in mind that you're going to need an unobtrusive way to connect it to that monster network).
Also, make sure you document everything. You're going to want this in ten years time when one of the nodes isn't working and you have no idea what exactly you did. Keeping backups of the source code and schematics goes without saying.
You could easily do a lot of cool stuff with a budget of ~$500 (excl. tablets and HTPC); the only real limits are your ability and imagination.
What are the ethical ramifications of programming them to get pleasure from serving us? If they don't want to be free (consider the house elves in the Harry Potter series), there aren't as many issues.
A 3cm gap around the perimeter is a huge gap and will require large quantities of air to sustain the pressure.
Does anyone know how long the system can actually maintain the levitation for? The article had nothing on it, and it seems like the key weakness of this system: if you're house runs out of air before the quake is over, you're in trouble.
Frankly, I'm more interested in the fact that they're using a Qualcom chip instead of a Tegra. All the Tegra series devices can be reflashed and repartitioned using nvflash, but only if the manufacturer decides to release 128-bit AES key. It'll be interesting to see how this one can be flashed, if at all. Asus released a fastboot-based method of reflashing the prime, but as I understand it doesn't support repartitioning.
Addendum: To those of you wondering why you'd want to be able to repartition the device, consider that Linux runs rather well on it and gets insane battery life compared to x86. If you can only reformat existing partitions, then you lose access to somewhere between 2 and 5 GB of smaller partitions.
Slashdot Mirror
Solution: put the button inside the case, maybe directly on the motherboard.
If you're serious about security, the case is going to be physically locked anyway.
No kidding. Where is the issue where when you can just do this? You'd think the the general population of people who will be loading their boxes with alternate operating systems could figure this out.
And what if we actually like using non-x86 architectures? ARM is becoming increasingly popular - I already have 2 different ARM devices, both running Linux. It's only a matter of time until ARM makes it's way into the desktop/server market. Even now, there's a lot of interest in running Linux (proper GNU/Linux with an X server) on tablets.
You joke, but there's already a lightweight Qt-based desktop environment called Razor-QT that runs quite nicely on the RasPi, though it is still a bit rough around the edges since it's still in development.
If all else fails, the KDE project could probably assimilate it.
http://goatse.ch/
You keep using US terminology.
We're discussing an American problem on an American blog. What did you expect?
What do you mean American problem? The patent situation is a problem affecting multinational technology companies around the world. One of the key points about the whole Samsung vs Apple case was that there were different outcomes in different countries.
Also, I'm fairly certain Slashdot doesn't count as a blog, and the Americanness of it is rather questionable as well.
...my unreplaceable one-of-a-kind Nokia N900 becomes irreparable, to come up with a phone worthy as its successor.
Pretty much any (GPL-compliant) Android phone with an unlocked bootloader can run any Linux-based OS you want. And while this company has just started, the KDE project is nearing version 2.0 of Plasma Active, which runs on top of Mer (a fork of Maemo/Meego that Jolla will almost certainly also be basing their OS on).
We already install Linux on desktops that come pre-installed with Windows - I'm surprised there aren't more people installing Mer on their Android phones.
No one expects wearable computing to replace desktops. No one expects tablets or smartphones to replace them either, but that hasn't stopped them from becoming popular.
Wearable computing, like smartphones/tablets, is about providing seamless access to technology when you're away from the computer. It seeks to supplant the smartphone, not the desktop.
Flash still seems to use ALSA directly instead of PulseAudio. It was a lot easier to simply replace it with Gnash than to change the config.
1) MATLAB is much faster at solving most problems.
This is a pretty major issue of your working with non-trivial amounts of data (e.g. image processing). One of the main reasons for this is that the current version of Octave is only single-threaded; it can't take advantage of the extra cores that even modern phones have. Apparently multi-threading can be enabled by recompiling it, but that's a fairly large demand for the average user...
I still have some simple apps I wrote back then, and timing one just now it took a full 2 seconds to start, and that was constant no matter how many times I ran it. .NET 3.0, so it's likely that they fixed that in one of the later versions with some kind of caching.
That said, they did target
So instead of having Maemo (and or the subsequent versions of something like that) we have a less open Android platform as what remains of that idea.
We also have its legacy: Meego, Mer, etc. Mer has been used as the basis for some KDE-based mobile phone OSs (still in alpha), so I think it's only a matter of time before we see this going somewhere.
Wow, I actually understood some of that. And they said I'd never have a use for anything we learnt in linear algebra...
I tried using WPF in my late teens, and I gave up after writing 2 or 3 applications. The reason was performance: where a WinForms app starts (virtually) instantaneously, a blank WPF form took about half a second, which is *not* a trivial delay in terms of responsiveness. I later found Qt when doing some C++ development, which achieves the same separation of code and (XML-based) GUI, with none of the performance issues. Frankly, Microsoft would have done better to fork it (it is open source, after all) and implement exceptions properly. (Important function calls like connecting signals to slots (events and event handlers in .NET) should not fail silently and only output messages to the console).
From memory, there are plenty of GPIO pins for use by extensions - those could easily be used for whatever interface you wanted, and since they're literally direct lines to the CPU you're not getting better speed than that.
Is the perception context-dependant though? I never visualise numbers (trying to visualise an abstract concept just limits you to 3 or fewer dimensions), but trying to do so just now I used number lines for addition/subtraction, and perpendicular lines for multiplication/division. Once I reach complex numbers, everything just becomes a vector.
I agree entirely. Having spent a few years studying law, one of my earliest observations was that 'reasonable' was code for 'let the courts figure it out'.
Your work is honestly quite inspiring; I would never have imagined that a single person could reverse engineer the graphics driver like that. Thank you so much for your contribution to the FOSS community. :)
I think it took me 1/2 hour of re-booting before I finally purged nouveau from my system to clear the way so that the Nvidia driver could attach.
I'm curious why it took you this long. It took me a total of 5 minutes, and this was the first time I'd even used Debian (previously used Ubuntu and its derivatives exclusively) - just searched for the relevant package and removed it.
Ironically I ended up reinstalling it because the non-free binary drivers for my card don't support 3.0.x kernels.
It also runs on Linux (under WINE).
If you DIY you can probably accomplish a lot for under $10k and the pros would probably charge you 10x that for similar functionality.
This is probably the best advice you'll get on the topic. Systems targeted to the average consumer have a price proportional to their coolness/desirability, because that's what the market will pay. Components targeted at the DIY crowd are sold at cost, though in other cases you may get a better deal simply by taking an existing consumer product and repurposing it. In a nutshell, the hacker spirit is key to keeping your costs down.
I suggest you look at some of the home automation standards, and learn how to work with an Arduino* (these are great if you're comfortable with C but have virtually no electronics experience). Those two alone will handle pretty much every form of interaction with the physical environment you can think of. (If Arduino's aren't powerful enough, use a Raspberry Pi or a Beaglebone.) The user interface can be handled by grabbing some cheap, Chinese Android tablets (they can be had for as little as $80, though keep in mind they won't be GPL compliant), and using either a custom app or a simple HTML5 interface. (The same interface could easily be made available on any existing Android devices.)
* The cost of the parts for an Arduino is a fifth of the retail cost. Most wireless chips do tend to be a bit pricier, more so if you go for a shield, and the SMD packages are a pain to solder. The easiest way to handle connectivity is probably a single wireless device per room, with all other nodes there sending data through it via wired (I2C) connections. (Don't forget to shield these if they're next to the mains!) Ethernet would be easier and cheaper if you make that device a RasPi (since they cost about as much as an Arduino with built-in Ethernet) , but then you need to ensure you've got the requisite cabling (which IMO is well worth the additional effort).
You're going to want a low power system to act as the server; to coordinate all the data being received, to act as a file server, etc. A Raspberry Pi might be a good fit for this if you don't need much storage (no SATA support currently), or maybe something more like a Sheeva plug. Alternatively, you could combine this with the HTPC if you go down that route (just keep in mind that you're going to need an unobtrusive way to connect it to that monster network).
Also, make sure you document everything. You're going to want this in ten years time when one of the nodes isn't working and you have no idea what exactly you did. Keeping backups of the source code and schematics goes without saying.
You could easily do a lot of cool stuff with a budget of ~$500 (excl. tablets and HTPC); the only real limits are your ability and imagination.
What are the ethical ramifications of programming them to get pleasure from serving us? If they don't want to be free (consider the house elves in the Harry Potter series), there aren't as many issues.
Because not all women are feminists.
A 3cm gap around the perimeter is a huge gap and will require large quantities of air to sustain the pressure.
Does anyone know how long the system can actually maintain the levitation for? The article had nothing on it, and it seems like the key weakness of this system: if you're house runs out of air before the quake is over, you're in trouble.
Welcome to EE, where we have male-to-male adaptors and the like.
Frankly, I'm more interested in the fact that they're using a Qualcom chip instead of a Tegra. All the Tegra series devices can be reflashed and repartitioned using nvflash, but only if the manufacturer decides to release 128-bit AES key. It'll be interesting to see how this one can be flashed, if at all. Asus released a fastboot-based method of reflashing the prime, but as I understand it doesn't support repartitioning.
Addendum: To those of you wondering why you'd want to be able to repartition the device, consider that Linux runs rather well on it and gets insane battery life compared to x86. If you can only reformat existing partitions, then you lose access to somewhere between 2 and 5 GB of smaller partitions.