Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Do Not RIP Yet (Score 1) 23

Having just started working for RIM at their Sunrise FL development center so do I!
I must confess that until I joined the company I was not all familiar with their phone products. My family and I had recently got Samsung Galaxy series smart phones on AT&T, to replace our "dumb" tracphones. Now I have a company issued Blackberry curve as well. The curve has a smaller screen, and a built in keyboard, it's not in the same "market class" as my Samsung Galaxy smart phone (Blackberry DOES make larger phones that ARE). I am very impressed by the Curve though. Voice quality is very good, it doesn't sound "digitized" like the Samsung does (on the SAME network). Also the battery life is very good. I have to charge the Sammy every day or it will go dead, even if hardly used. The Curve can go days between charging. I've been told that the Blackberry firmware is heavily optimized for battery life. BTW President Obama has a Blackberry (his choice).

Comment Re:Even if this was true... (Score 1) 1009

Who says you can't make a socket for a BGA chip? Just wait till Augat or someone like them gets wind of this and engineers a nice socket for the bugger.
It WILL happen. There already ARE sockets for BGA memory chips for the device programmer market. The LGA chips are very nearly BGA as it is, the only difference is the pads are gold plated instead of solder balls. Another solution might come from the guys at Smardtboards. They make BGA breadboards that are easy to solder to.

Back in the good old days of home built PC's (1980's) most motherboards were sold with CPU chips already installed in sockets. When they started selling them without CPU's people started crying about price fixing, but got over it. I wouldn't mind buying a tested motherboard with a cpu in place. There might be fewer choices such as better featured mother boards coming with the more expensive processors and visa versa..

Finally, if this gives AMD a shot in the arm, even better. The only thing I don't like about their CPU's is the higher power draw compared to Intel.

Comment Me too (Score 2) 289

I agree with Linus, I'm back to KDE after the Gnome2 to Gnome3 transisiton. While the default KDE settings may not be optimal, some distros (such as Mint) have chosen more sane defaults for THEIR implementation of KDE. I'd suggest that Linus try Mint 13 KDE, but since he probably knows how to tweak things to his liking he can use any distro he likes. I've also tried Kubuntu, but Mint is closer to my desired configuration out of the box.

Comment Not bad, but... Teensy3.0 is also nice. (Score 1) 130

Once again Arduino has taken a nice chip and cut off it's legs while mounting it on an compatible platform. It looks like almost half of the Due CPU's available IO pins are NOT accessible on the board (unless you are good at soldering fine wire to .4mm spaced pins by hand). They did the same thing on the Arduino Mega with the atmega1280 and atmega2560 parts (leaving out at least 16 of the IO pins, including the XCK signals so you CAN'T use the usarts in SPI mode!).

If you want to go ARM, you might consider the Teensy3.0 which DOES make all of the I/O pins available (though you will have to solder some wires to pads on the bottom of the board, but at least the pads are there!). The Teensy 3.0 is also about $15 cheaper than the Due.

Comment Something funny is going on (Score 1) 615

While I don't have too much trouble with my routers (I have two in my house since one can't cover the whole house) I DO have issues with my garage door opener. Most of the time I can open it from the street, but sometimes I have to hold the transmitter right next to the door before it will open. It's almost as if a phantom jamming station goes on the air at specific hours of the day! The batteries in the transmitters are up to snuff, and one transmitter is buit into our Dodge Caravan and runs off the car's electrical system. All of the transmitters have the same problem at random times.

Comment fllying? (Score 1) 612

Do you still have an active Pilot's license? Myself I've never gone beyond my SEL private license and gave up flying after my daughters were born (due the the cost of insurance). Did you give up after the accident with the Beechcraft (those Bonanza's were sometimes nicknamed "twin tailed Doctor killers") or did you continue flying? Do you still follow what's going on in aviation? If so what do you think of Rutan's Spaceship One?

Slashdot Top Deals

"Look! There! Evil!.. pure and simple, total evil from the Eighth Dimension!" -- Buckaroo Banzai

Working...