First it was D*Star, those goofy french are making our proprietary stuff illegal. Now we hear HDMI is dead, this new DRM crap will replace it.

Puleze will someone with some common sense filter these articles, get 'em out of the front page, and let the technical people make technically necessary products so we can have progress.

I am tired of people taking working stuff, making it worse, and blaming everyone for not buying into their stupid ideas.

I've built many robots, (Hero-1, other homebuilt ones, etc). I've been involved with robot clubs since the early 80s. Very little has changed!

My first robot was run off a parallel card plugged into my Heathkit H-8. simple h-bridge some bumpers, and I was set. worked pretty good but the dang cord was a problem.

The next robot had an on board Z80 processor. It also had a CRT and a dozen batteries. It weighed a ton, used relays and transistors to control the motor.

The Hero had an on board 6809 (I guess one of the accessories had a second 6800 I think, so technically it was 2).

I used various 8 bitters for many other robots, always trying to solve the power problem, finding more and more efficient processors, so I could use less battery.

I switched to a tinyboard (8088) for one, it ran DR-DOS, and turbo pascal!

Even the handyboard processor was good, and has a great library (interactive C).

Basic stamps have come and gone for various projects.

Aurdrino's are pretty current.

Which one of the above processors will run anything from M$? I don't think any. Right, all 8 bit processors. I see very few robots with more than an 8 bitter even in the 21st century!

Someone needs to convince the robot builders to switch to 32 bit processors (ARM, maybe beagle board, or anything else) and then there *might* be a market for an OS that runs robots. Trouble is, it'll be Linux or Android running it, since the robot builders are a little more scrappy.

 

They already fly slower. A 737-NG was designed to fly at Mach 0.72 to 0.78 (some will argue 0.82, but they are usually grumpy old guys). Currently many of the airlines prefer to use cost index (IE CI20). see: http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/45399/ Most passengers don't notice it, but in crowded airspace (IE New York TRACON) the controllers hate it.

First Microsoft has a lot of explaining to do as why anyone should license the FAT file system.

TomTom didn't write the code, they licensed it from, well not sure. They are following the gpl, and that is the end of the story. Microsoft needs to be talk to the licensor, not suing one of their own customers, besides.

Microsoft didn't learn squat from their puppet SCO.

This isn't the strategy of a company in it for the long haul.

Back in the day Mattel used to sell spy ware infested programs (Printshop). It was hard to
use and just funky as can be. It got better over the years, but the spyware would make me
not want it.

My daughter got my boys a Fisher Price digital arts and crafts studio (more Mattel software).
It barely installed (see amazon reviews, not too many people can get the POS installed). Wow
what a pile of crap. Hardly usable. The kids can draw their pictures but can't print them, it
takes tricks to save, print and recover them. Way less than intuitive. Makes it obvious they
don't think kids understand computers, turns the multitasking machine back to one task at a time
DOS like.

Okey so now they think they can build a game that will be as popular as some people who get the
net. Good luck with that. Watch it be built by committee, with featuritis explosis (every
feature a group marketing dorks can imagine added on). It will be unusable, to the point where
people will complain, and marketing will blame everyone else.

They should shut up, and pay the kids who know what they are doing, and keep marketing out.