"It can even play back WAV files without any help."

Well, ZPUino does this for a long time (14.4KHz, stereo, and more), and it's also opensource (actually, BSD for hardware, and GPLv2/v3 for software). Runs at 96MHz, and it's fully customizable (even the chip is customizable: see SoundPuddle for example, or the Rectrocade synth).

What Arduino users were actually expecting (well, I was), was a proper IDE. I don't think writing proper applications for the Due platform with current Processing IDE is feasible. So far everyone has been quiet about this (there were rumours other IDE would be on the forge).

But the price tag is indeed attractive.

Alvie

Now I'm really feeling very very depressed.

Marvin

What is the rationale behind $1,370,590.00 ?

I don't have the time or patience to read all the legal gibberish, wondering if someone can elude me if:

a) The defendant took an unauthorized copy, and distributed it,
b) The defendant took an unauthorized copy, used it, and also distributed it,
c) The defendant took an unauthorized copy, and allowed others to retrieve it [and eventually used it]

Is "to make available" the same as "to distribute" ?

How you did:
Great job! You got every question right.

Duh. And no calculator needed. TFA is again biased.

Yes, I did try Firefox 7 and Chrome 14. Chrome is a bit faster than Firefox, but not fast enough.

It's a pity.

Sorry, I have to disagree with you, at least in the present time.

I've been using some Web apps (javascript, html5, you name all techs involved), like floorplanner and upverter, and I find them barely usable. My computer is not however a high-tech one (Core2 Duo T2300 @ 1.66 Laptop, with Nvidia GeForce Go 7300), but it's specs would be *more than enough* to run such simple applications.

Perhaps the problem is not JS itself, nor HTML5. Perhaps the problem is we're using a technology which was not meant, on the first place, to do what we are doing with it.

It will take some time (and some standards) before we get Web Applications that can actually behave like native ones. But, my friend, it's not the time yet.

At first glance, this looks like a normal routing with a 4-layer board. Eventually 6, if you add proper ground + power.

There's nothing indicative of PCB parameters, like drill sizes, clearances, blind/buried vias, minimum trace width, so on. Again, a simple look reveals nothing but common parameters for PCB.

Again, TFA is biased.

... on /. ? /. is about tech, geek, and nerds.

Not politics. Much less US politics.

Mod me -1 as you like, but I'm kinda tired that, despite most tech developments are made outside US, /. is still US-centric. And this actually is the way it is, because you wanted it to be this way.

Even most doctorates in US either are not US citizens, or were born abroad.

Alvie.

most passionate partisans will admit that its filesystem, which stashes vital files in a variety of arcane directories, can be baffling to users.

Isn't that [directories] what filesystems are to provide, so things can be well organized ?

Calling them, current UNIX/Linux filesystem hierarcy, "arcane", baffles me. Unless you're Poettering, of course. There is a good reason for things to be where they are, and, due to recent increase of embedded systems, a much more valid reason to split different levels of files across different filesystem hierarchies (read /bin vs. /usr/bin).

I can accept complains about "/opt" and "/usr/local" - they might not make much sense nowadays, but if you happen to need to bootstrap from a read-only 8Mb flash device, and need to have a somehow working system before you access some external data,

or

you have a huge shared filesystem where a few servers rely upon, and you don't want to replicate all system files,

then I see no reason at all to change this.

Actually, perhaps increasing the diversity of directories might come in handy (like in /usr/i686/lib + /usr/x86-64/lib + whatever you might need, and with eventual optimizations, and with eventual debug).

Or is this discussion only about directories which reside on the root of the filesystem ?

I actually had some conversation yesterday about this [having ARM powering microcontrollers and small embedded].

I don't think this will succeed, and I believe there are a few reasons for it. I also created an "Arduino" clone, based on a different processor, called ZPUino, and although the programming environment, libraries and so on can be nearly the same, specifics to the SoC are always tricky to implement and to provide viable alternatives.

Why standard ARM will not replace Arduino:

    * Lack of internal ADC
    * Power consumption
    * Latencies and jitter in execution path and in memory access path. This is very important.
    * Lack of proper GPIO and common Arduino devices (timers, PWM, so on, so on)
    * You cannot build one yourself.

Arduino follows the KISS model. Introducing complexity here is not welcomed. Arduino is meant to be used by non-experienced programmers, hardware hobbyists and DIY aficionados.

Why would you use an ARM, with a few megs RAM, a few megs flash, to blink a LED ?

Álvaro

I think the term "gates" is abused and misused here, and in other articles. Not everything that goes on chip is a "logic gate", not even "gate", and they ought to be simulated as well. Think about clock modulators, PLL's, DCMs, for example. Other more esoteric thing exists.

Doing a transistor-level simulation is also very expensive here. This is usually done on the low-level blocks only (and perhaps before going into silicon).

What you simulate most of the time is RTL - Register Transfer Level. This includes not only plain logic paths, but synchronous elements like memories, flip-flops, and others.

Being used to RTL simulation (I do a lot), those numbers are absolutely impressive. I often spend an hour simulating only a few microseconds. And the outputs of simulation are *huge* - imagine you have 1 million signals on the chip, and your freq. is 1MHz. This means you will retrieve 1 million * 1 million signal data for a one second simulation.

Álvaro

It's raining.

You know clouds often do that, don't you ?

Prepare for thunderstorm one of these days. Your bits will be electrified to death, your bytes will bite you and apocalypse will finally arrive.

Digital zombies. Hurry for canned tuna.

No rewind ?

Oh god, I was to buy one of these for Christmas.

Thank god you warned me.