What about consumer electronics (washing machines, microwaves, smartphones, routers, AP's) or critical industrial systems
where I would image RTOS to be necessary (VxWorks, QNX) ? I can't imagine Windows CE dominating in those spaces.

You seem to be missing something here.

We're not talking about the target. We're talking anout the platform on which the program for the target is built.

This is where the editors, version control system, compilers, linkers, profilers, prom burners, in-circuit emulators, etc. are running. The operating system here has no more to do with the operating system on the target (other than supporting the tools that build it) than the operating system on the mainframe where Gates and Allen developed Altair BASIC had to do with the BASIC language or the guts of their interpreter.

But you see you are in the Windows CE embedded niche. Your vision is clouded.

I'm not in a "windows CE embedded" niche and the grandparent poster is right.

It's not an issue with the target. It's an issue with the platform(s) supported by the development tool vendors and the chip manufacturers.

For instance: With Bluetooth 4.0 / Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), two of the premier system-on-a-chip product families are from Texas Instruments and Nordic Semiconductors.

TI developed their software in IAR's proprietary development environment and only supports that. Their bluetooth stack is only distributed in object form - for IAR's tools - with a "no reverse engineering" and "no linking to open source (which might force disclosure)". IAR, in turn, doesn't support anything but Windows. (You can't even use Wine: The IAR license manager needs real Windows to install, and the CC Debugger dongle, for burning the chip and necessary for hooking the debugger to the hardware debugging module, keeps important parts of its functionality in a closed-source windows driver.) IAR is about $3,000/seat after the one-month free evaluation (though they also allow a perpetual evaluation that is size-crippled, and too small to run the stack.)

The TI system-on-a-chip comes with some very good and very cheap hardware development platforms. (The CC Debugger dongle, the USB/BLE-radio stick, and the Sensor Tag (a battery-powered BLE device with buttons, magnetometer, gyro, barometer, humidity sensor, ambient temp sensor, and IR remote temp sensor), go for $49 for each of the three kits.) Their source code is free-as-in-beer, even when built into a commercial product, and gives you the whole infrastructure on which to build your app. But if you want to program these chips you either do it on Windows with the pricey IAR tools or build your own toolset and program the "bare metal", discarding ALL TI's code and writing a radio stack and OS from scratch.

Nordic is similar: Their license lets you reverse-engineer and modify their code (at your own risk). But their development platforms are built by Segger and the Windows-only development kit comes with TWO licenses. The Segger license (under German law), for the burner dongle and other debug infrastruture, not only has a no-reverse-engineering clause but also an anti-compete: Use their tools (even for comparison while developing your own) and you've signed away your right to EVER develop either anything similar or any product that competes with any of theirs.

So until the chip makers wise up (or are out-competed by ones who have), or some open-source people build something from scratch, with no help from them, to support their products, you're either stuck on Windows or stuck violating contracts and coming afoul of the law.

(Stupid touchpad...)

  - If this deviation is the result of burning fossil fuels, they are expected to run out in about 800 years - after which the temperature might crash toward the "Ice age already in progress" as the excess carbon is removed from the atomsphere by various processes, or simply be overwhelmed by the orbital mechanical function if it remains.

Does this scenario count as supporting or opposing anthropogenic global warming?

The percentages come from looking at all studies, papers, research, etc. and determining the number one one side or the /i?

When the administrators of research funding withhold future grants from scientists who publish papers questioning some aspect of the current global warming scenario, while giving additional funding to scientists who publish papers supporting it (or claiming some global-warming tie-in to whatever phenomenon they're examining), the count becomes skewed. This is political action, not science.

This happened in the '70s with research into medical effects of the popular "recreational" drugs - before such research was effectively banned. Among the resuts were a plethora of papers where the conclusions obviously didn't match the data presented and a two-decade delay in the discovery of medical effects and development of treatments. Only NOW are we finding evidence that PTSD might be aborted by adequate opate dosages in the weeks immediately following the injury, or that compounds in marijuana may be a specific treatment for it - as they are for some forms of epilepsy and may be for some cancers, late stage parkinsons, and so on.

The same happens when the editors of a journal and their selection of reviewers systematically approve and publish only research supporting the current paradigms, to the point that scientists with contrary resuts must find, or create, other journals or distribution channels (which can then be smeared as non-authoritaive, creations of the fossil fuel industry, right-wing politicans, or conspiracy nuts - and their articles LEFT OUT OF THE COUNT). Again, this is politics, not science.

Then there's the question of the methodology of the count itself. What is counted as "support for" versus "opposition to"? What does it count as a scientific paper? Were well-established research methods used? Was it reviewed? By whom? Was it done by scientists with no established position on the issue, by scientists supporting one side, by pollsters, by an advocacy group, by politicians? (Hell, was it done at all? Truth is the first casualty of politics, and fake polls are one of the commonest murder weapons.)

For an instance: How would you interpret the study behind the Scientific American article that seems to indicate:
  - Planetary temperatures have tightly tracked a function of three orbital-mechanics effects on the earth's orbit and axial orientation - up to the time of human domestication of fire.
  - That occurred as the function was just starting to inflect downward into the next ice age.
  - The deviation amounted to holding the temperature stable as the function slowly curved downward. (Perhaps a feedback effect - more fires needed for comfort in colder winters?)
  - This essentially flat temperature held up to the industrial revolution, when the temperature began to curve upward, overcoming the gradually steepening decline of the function.
  - If this deviation is the result of burning fossil fuels, they are expected to run out in about 800 years - after which the temperature might crash toward the "Ice age already in progress" as the excess carbon is removed from the atomsphere by various processes, or simply be overwhelmed by the orbita

Not in the short haul because the mass that creates the gravity well usually stays within that galaxy. Long haul, as in several trillion years, the two black holes will orbit as before when they both were just stars, but the gravitational waves they emit is a loss of system energy and they will slowly spiral into each other until they merge. But that may take longer for most of them than the universe is old. We are actively looking for the gravity wave that would indicate two such black holes have merged as it will have a distinct waveform.

Cheers, Gene

In twenty-four hours this will go from "illegal" to "high demand professional camera service" for promotions, events, etc.

Sorry, that's already illegal (according to the FAA).

Just a few weeks ago the FAA issued an interpretation of existing rules that declared illegal any commercial use of video from a drone.

Actually, and this was only my 2nd position east of the river, I am in north central WV. And I probably work too cheap when I do, because I don't mind "keeping a hand in". And while I can walk to fishing water, the fish seem to have a different little black book than I used in western SD's Black Hills 50 some years ago. But I have enough hobbies to keep me out of the bars, which also counts heavily. Deer hunting, and I like venison, is spotty as I can no longer run up and down on these right in your face hills, and I can't find a boot that is both comfy and keeps my diabetic (I'm a DM-II for the last 30 years) feet warm. But I still hit the range, punching paper to "keep a hand in".

Speaking of fishing, one of my 2 year jobs was in N.W. NM., Farmington TBE. So yes, I have fished the world famous San Juan River below the Navajo Dam. Its barbless hook rules there, and its crazy, you have to wear long johns inside your chest waders 3 miles below that dam as its 600 feet deep and a bottom dumper. In 115F air temps, the water is maybe 35F, and the 12" Brown you just pulled in feels like he's frozen solid when you grab him to unhook and release. But he put up a fight all out of proportion to his size. You can't help but give them a salute as you place them back in the water.

Its been quite a ride so far, and I don't regret too much of it in the long view although my first wife had a stroke at 34 and died. With 3 kids, that was a rough couple years before I found some help willing to say I do.

But I'll not bore with a really long winded session of blowing my own horn.

Hotlanta is someplace I might like to visit, for 2 or 3 days... But an old uncle once said that company was like fish, should be thrown out after 3 days. ;-)

Cheers, Gene

I dont get it. The average depth of oil/gas wells here in Oklahoma is approx 5,000 ft. The typical depth of earthquakes here in Oklahoma is approx 16,000 ft. I'm not seeing a connection between the two.

First: You're looking at the wrong wells. What's the depth of the injection wells?

Second: The depth of the well doesn't particularly matter, as long as it connects the water to a fault system. The water spreads out through the fault, turning it into a hydraulic jack the size of a small eastern state or so. The faults aren't purely horizontal and the pressure (except for an added component at greater depth from the weight of the water above it) is the same everywhere.

So of course the earthquakes take place at the usual depths where the "last straw" rock finally gives way.

This was on Gizmag yesterday... like many of Slashdot's articles...

Give it a rest.

Slashdot is not an investigative journal or a follower-and-repeater of press releases. It's a bunch of nerds pointing out interesting stuff to each other, and talking it over, with a few nerds vetting the postings before they go up on the "front page".

That means, like Wikipedia, it's not generally a primary source. It also means that, for real news items, it is generally about a day behind.

If you want news in a timely fashion, go read Gizmag and a bunch of other acutal reportage sites. If you're willing to wait a little bit and then talk it over with a crowd of acquaintences (some of whom might actually know more about it than the newsies), this is the place for you.

Is the end result graphene, a lattice of carbon atoms, or not? What exactly is a "substitute carbon nanosheet" if not graphene itself?

It sounds to me like they're hedging because they haven't fully characterized what they get.

As I undetstand it, producing carbon fiber from plastic consists of stretching a plastic (such as rayon - a string of carbon hexagons joined by oxygen links, or polyacriolnitrile - a carbon backbone with a C2N group hanging off every other carbon) so the long-chains are alligned, then baking off the other elements (hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen). This leaves just the carbon backbones (with additional carbon-carbon bonds from the loss of the hydrogen and whatever. Result: long, narrow, straight or crumpled ribbons of graphite-like hexagons, in a bundle, perhaps with occasional crosslinks, side-bumps, and other debris.

So I'd think that, if they did this on a surface, with something that didn't polmerize in two dimensions, they wouldn't end up with the nice, clean, carbon chicken-wire fence of graphine. Instead they'd end up with little graphine patches and strips, interconnected irregularly, and not restricted to an atom-thick plane.

But I'd expect the result to, like graphene, conduct well and be very strong. Just not as strong and conductive as a perfect graphene layer, perhaps with some odd electrical activity from the deviations from the regular structure acting as "impurities', and higher resistance due to shorter mean free paths for charge carriers as they bump into these irregularities.

[suggests] relocate[ing] GitHub (servers, company and all) outside the US to avoid those DMCA take downs? ... Next question: what country would be most friendly to Open Source yet resisting the insatiable hunger of the copyright trolls?

How about Antigua?

Antigua recently won a suit against the US over its ban on online gambling (a major source of foreign exchange income for the country). As a penalty, the WTO awarded Antigua the right to freely distribute "American [copyrighted] DVDs, CDs and games and software", up to $21 Million per year.

GitHub doesn't charge for the software it distributes (getting revenue mainly from things lik companies storing their OWN, PRIVATE repositories on their servers). So I'd think a company like GitHub, incorporated, owned, and hosted there, would consume $0 of the $21MM/year allocation, and could freely and legally distribute copyrighted material with US copyright holders - at least until the year after the US congress finally repeals the anti-online-gambing laws.

Oh that DMCA was issued by Cyveillance ...

According to an Ausdroid "excllusive", a "Qualcomm representative" has already:
  - repudiated and retracted the takedown notices,
  - promised they will pursure any issues directly with the project maintainers.
  - appologized to the project maintainers.

Unfortunately, this was in a communication with Ausdroid and apparently not in a form that would let GitHub over-the-holiday staff put the repositories back up immediately.

That's a pity. Many of the contributors to open source projects are volunterers with day jobs. This makes three-day weekend holidays "prime time" for a hackfest. Taking down the repositories over such a period is a serious hit to productivity. If they'd done it early in the week, rather than just before a three-day holiday, their error could have been corrected in hours rather than (exceptionally important) days.

(Fortunately, since the revision control system is git, where each checkout is a full copy of the repository, the hit is mainly impeeding inter-member cooperation, rather than bringing all work on the projects to a screeching halt.)

I hope both Qualcom and some of the affected projects bring actions against Cyveillance, if only to make them leery of issuing anti-FOSS takedowns at such sensitive times.

The DMCA does not allow you to refuse to process notices due to unpaid processing fees.

Does it allow somethig like this?

1) OSP charges the takedown filer a $1,000 (or $10,000, or whatever) fee to process a notice.

2) The fee is waived if the alleged infringer fails to file a counter-notice.

3) If a counter-noitce, is filed, the takedown filer is notified, perhaps with a check-box list of the alleged imfringer's claim(s), but DOES NOT RECIEVE THE CONTACT INFORMATION until the fee is paid (or satisfactory payment arrangements made).

4) The fee (or the bulk of it, or a pro-rata share) is waived if the takedown filer notifies the OSP, in a timely fashion, that it does not wish to pursue the takedown at this time and the OSP may put-back the material immediately, rather than waiting for the statutory time.

Assuming the OSP may legally withhold the counter-filing contact information pending payment without jepoardizing the safe harbor, this could be implemented entirely by an OSP. A troll operation would have to pay up to get the information needed to pursue its extortion. The OSP would not be stiffed for its fees if the trolls want to move on to the next step (and could still pursure collection even if the trolls DON'T pay up after the counter-notice is filed).

It would have the advantage (over "losing filers get a big financial hit" approaches) that it does not create a financial incentive for copyright claimants to pursure an iffy or bogus suit in order to avoid a large fine or damages payment.

The other side of that coin is:

Is the new opportunity worth the hassle of starting over in some locale where the COL is 3 times higher, your rights are much more restricted, no big game hunting because of the population density precludes the use of even a bow and broad heads, despite the fact that you'll wreck a car a year running into said big game, and its 4 hours to someplace where drowning a worm might get you fish for dinner.

That occurred to me when a head hunter called me, offering 10% more to be the Chief Engineer at a tv station in the top 25 market. But it would have come with all of the above limitations. Even at 200%, which said tv station could well afford, it wasn't worth it to me.

Basically I had found my place back in 1984. I can walk to hunt deer or fish, COL is 1/2rd that of the big city, the house that came with the girl I married in 1989 has been paid off for 15 years, and stayed here till I retired 12 years ago. Technically, my reputation for being able to walk on water when the boat has already sank has been well established, and I still get yells for help occasionally. As a technician who can actually fix things, I am a C.E.T. & have what used to be a 1st phone license before the commission threw us under the bus, we are a dying breed, literally, and I find that I have, at nearly 80 yo, inherited some of the local radio broadcasters, because the engineer they were calling when the cash cow laid down and went dry, had died.

But the surprising detail most find hard to believe is that I am not a "papered" engineer, I have an 8th grade education, but was good enough with electronics that I quit school in the middle of my freshman year in high school, mostly due to health/allergy problems, and went to work fixing what was then these new-fangled things called televisions. Circa 1948-49. And yet the medical help locally available is pretty good. In early June, about a month ago, I woke up, just barely conscious and couldn't breath, on the bedroom floor while trying to tie my shoes to take the better half out for dinner, a pulmonary embolism that damned near punched my ticket. The better half, sitting in the car waiting, finally came back in to see what the holdup was & called 911. They got me to the local shop, started the clot-buster, and shipped me off to a larger facility. I am not 100% yet, but getting there, and TBT I feel better now than I have in years.

The guy from ultrasound looked at my heart with its blown up 2x right half as it was trying to pump into the blockage, for about an hour. I presume looking for places that ought to be bypassed or stented, couldn't find any and said once its shrunk back to normal, you ought to be good for another decade. 2-3 months to shrink again. Sort of feels like getting a warranty renewal but there is no such thing in life.

So I'll be here to pester you folks for a while yet, offering my comments on having observed life for nearly 80 years now. Some comments will come from my experience as a working joat, I am a decent mechanic and am now playing with smaller CNC machinery. I've also made some furniture & remodeled a few guns over the last 50 years.

I rather enjoy being close to the biggest frog in the pond, even if the pond is just Pedersons Puddle. It has its advantages.

Cheers, Gene