117714046
submission
ttsiod writes:
After reading an interesting article from an NVIDIA Engineer, about how he used a dirt-cheap FPGA board to code a real-time ray-tracer, I got my hands on the same board — and "compiled" a dual-core SPARC-compatible CPU inside it... basically, the same kind of design we fly in the European Space Agency's satellites.
I decided to document the process, since there's not much material of that kind available. I hope it will be an interesting read for my fellow Slashdotters — showcasing the trials and tribulations faced by those who prefer the Open-Source ways of doing things... Just read it and you'll see what I mean.
87153895
submission
ttsiod writes:
My old tablet died, and I bought a new one... Just like it's predecessor, I wanted to run a Debian chroot inside it — that would allow me to apt-get install and run things like Privoxy, SSH SOCKS / VPN tunnels, Flask mini-servers, etc; and in general allow me to stay in control.
But there was no open-source way to do this... and I could never trust "one-click roots" that communicate with servers in China...
It took me weeks to reverse engineer my tablet — and finally succeed in becoming root. The journey was quite interesting, and included both HW and SW tinkering. I learned a lot while doing it — and wanted to share the experience with my fellow Slashdotters...
I am sure you guys will enjoy reading this :-)
Cheers!
17685938
submission
ttsiod writes:
Back in 2001, I coded HeapCheck, a GPL library for Windows (inspired by ElectricFence) that detected invalid read/write accesses on any heap allocations at runtime — thus greatly helping my debugging sessions. I published it on my site, and got a few users who were kind enough to thank me — a Serbian programmer even sent me 250$ as a thank you (I still have his mails). After a few years, Microsoft included very similar technology in the operating system itself, calling it PageHeap. I had more or less forgotten these stuff, since for the last 7 years I've been coding for UNIX/Linux, where valgrind superseeded Efence/dmalloc/etc. Imagine my surprise, when yesterday, Googling for references to my site, I found out that the technology I implemented, of runtime detection of invalid heap accesses, has been patented in the States, and to add insult to injury, even mentions my site (via a non-working link to an old version of my page) in the patent references! After the necessary "WTFs" and "bloody hells" I thought this merrits (a) a Slashdotting, and (b) a set of honest questions: what should I do about this? I am not an American citizen, but the "inventors" of this technology (see their names in the top of the patent) have apparently succeeded in passing this ludicrous patent in the States. If my code doesn't count as prior art, Bruce Perens's Efence (which I clearly state my code was inspired from) is at least 12 years prior! Suggestions/cursing patent trolls most welcome.
