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* pabs3 submits that to slashdot
* whitequark checks if the server could handle the load
<whitequark> thanks, btw.
<pabs3> lwn and #debian-arm too, since there are some ARM employees in the latter :)
<pabs3> whitequark: seems you are missing some info? "except for the graphics processor, see more on that below" but that is the 2nd last paragraph
<pabs3> maybe s/below/above/
<whitequark> yeah, should be above.
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<pabs3> whitequark: some feedback:
<pabs3> <p2-mate> mips is not royalty free :P
<pabs3> <p2-mate> and mips inc does hold some patents on the mips architecture
<whitequark> pabs3: any chances to discuss that?
<pabs3> jump on #debian-arm on irc.oftc.net
<pabs3> wikipedia and http://www.mips.com/company/about-us/patent-portfolio/ seem to confirm the patent part
<pabs3> LM32 would probably have been a better example
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<whitequark> yeah, I'll add a paragraph there
<rz2k> damn it, why we have two "opensource"-oriented irc networks?
<whitequark> the same reason we have qt&gtk
<whitequark> oss&alsa
<whitequark> etc.
<pabs3> hysterical raisins
* rz2k nearly said u mean one is bogus like hell and second one is barely usable?
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<rz2k> I should stop using kvirc, it eats my quotation marks.
<whitequark> pabs3: _raisins_?
<whitequark> that is, the berries?
<rz2k> bro, that was a language-based joke.
<whitequark> heh
* pabs3 prefers OFTC because Freenode have /mode +i by default
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<lekernel> whitequark: nice rant. now I can point everyone asking me about rpi to it.
<lindi-> I'd concentrate on the non-free GPU code that you need to boot it
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<whitequark> lindi-: technically, every Cortex-* chip has proprietary bootrom in some form or another
<whitequark> I'd say that practically any chip nowadays does
<whitequark> but yeah, the scheme that rpi has is off limits.
<whitequark> lekernel: you're welcome.
* xiangfu tweeted. whitequark's rpi post.
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<LunaVorax> Hi!
<pabs3> whitequark: how does LM32 boot?
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<whitequark> pabs3: there is no silicon LM32 implementations
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<lindi-> indeed
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<lekernel> whitequark: there are, but they aren't public
<lekernel> (lm32 license isn't gpl-style)
<whitequark> lekernel: then I doubt that bootrom would be public either
<Fallenou> well the bootrom is not a big problem is it ?
<Fallenou> as long as it is documented
<Fallenou> you cannot change it anyway
<whitequark> I agree. I was replying to lindi-
<viric> rpi was a lot meant to beat in price, isn't t?
<viric> it
<larsc> primarily it is a marketing campaign, I guess
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<viric> a marketing campaing with a product, though
<kyak> and why exactly would education need a "white box"?
<larsc> well I guess that always depends on what you want to teach. If you want to teach how to use and program a black-box SoC the rpi is probably not too bad
<larsc> if you want to teach how a modern SoC works from top to bottom, the rpi is probably not so good
<viric> I agree
<viric> a cheap blackbox soc, with enough degrees of freedom for many CS students
<viric> (and a huge effort marketing it)
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<kyak> then we agree that rpi is good for teaching how to work with SoC, and bad for teaching how SoC works.
<kyak> noone in his mind will use rpi to teach to SoC works, so rpi IS suitable for education
<kyak> s/to/how
<qi-bot> kyak meant: "noone in his mind will use rpi how teach how SoC works, so rpi IS suitable for education"
<kyak> hehe
<whitequark> to everyone about black boxes.
<whitequark> you see, the RPi isn't the cheapest or most accessible one.
<kyak> what is a cheaper alternative?
<whitequark> you have plenty of Allwinner boxes in very different form factors which have cases and accessories and still just a little bit more expensive
<whitequark> the link in the beginning mentions one.
<whitequark> I'm absolutely sure that an RPi won't survive a day without a case in a school environment.
<whitequark> and you need either WiFi (which isn't there), or wired Ethernet infrastructure (which isn't there either, or otherwise you won't need RPis), etc.
<whitequark> the TCO for RPi is far higher than the board cost.
<whitequark> so yeah, it's kinda usable in that sense, but what's the point
<kyak> so feel free to just say that rpi is shit due to technical flaws
<kyak> but your main point is about opennnes
<whitequark> for me, the whole "for education" point was about teaching computing from ground up, see also comparison to BBC Micro.
<viric> the old bbc micro?
<whitequark> because otherwise I don't see which problem does it solve at all.
<viric> what is a TCO?
<whitequark> if you need a cheap computer for schools, there are _plenty_ of options, you hardly need another crappy broadcom board
<whitequark> TCO = total cost of ownership
<viric> ok
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<paul_boddie> whitequark: Nice article! :-)
<paul_boddie> I agree with you about the relative openness of the BBC Micro, although there were proprietary bits in that, too. But at least they published the schematics.
<whitequark> raspberry pi schematics are public
<whitequark> board layout isn't
<viric> I didn't know the bbc micro was any open
<paul_boddie> OK, I'm not sure the board layout was public for the BBC Micro, but they at least published a lot of technical details including the BOM in the manual, I think.
<whitequark> viric: it wasn't, but it was distributed with schematics and BOM
<viric> ok
<viric> well, many televisors were distribted with schematics, no? :)
<whitequark> and given the complexity of computers in that age, it was enough to figure out the rest
<viric> televisions?
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<whitequark> so the goal of having even the lower layer accessible was achieved
<viric> at the valve time, a lot came with schematics :)
<paul_boddie> I think the ULAs were all proprietary, which was probably less of an inconvenience on the BBC than it was on the Acorn Electron.
<whitequark> ULA?
<paul_boddie> Uncommitted Logic Array. The forerunner to FPGA technology.
<paul_boddie> There's a project and a book about reverse-engineering the ULA in the ZX Spectrum.
<wpwrak> the war cry of the martians in "war of the worlds" :)
<whitequark> ah. well, you could use a good microscope
<whitequark> given that it's OTP
<paul_boddie> Yes, that's what they did, I think. http://www.zxdesign.info/book/theZXSpectrumULA.shtml
<paul_boddie> The Electron's ULA takes the essentials from various discrete ICs and combines them into a single component. Acorn did actually document that in a vague "block diagram" kind of way, and the registers were all documented, of course, but replicating it is left as an exercise for the reader. :-)
<paul_boddie> But I guess that just comparing the amount of technical information in the manuals for those old computers to what you get with the Raspberry Pi shows that they are leagues apart.
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<paul_boddie> Some more material for whitequark's article: http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/09/raspberry-pi-insider-exclusive-sellout-to-sell-out/
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<whitequark> >How could we enable hacking while preventing cloning?
<whitequark> lolwhat
<whitequark> like if you *actually* need 7 years to make an rpi.
<whitequark> or that absence of gerbers prevents cloning.
<larsc> I thought you couldn't source the brcms on the rpi anyway?
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<whitequark> larsc: maybe a chinese company wishing to clone them could
<whitequark> they probably won't anyway, but that's another thing
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<viric> whitequark: they were afraid of qi-hw
<GNUtoo-desktop> who? tuxbrain?
<GNUtoo-desktop> hi btw
<viric> rpi people
<GNUtoo-desktop> ok
<GNUtoo-desktop> if rpi is the raspery py they can't be QI because of how their device is made:
<GNUtoo-desktop> *rasberry
<GNUtoo-desktop> They need a GPU "firmware" to boot the machine
<GNUtoo-desktop> which is proprietary....
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<paul_boddie> Yes, whitequark's article sums it all up pretty comprehensively.
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<viric> Is the nanonote opus-ready? :)
<viric> (quite an unfortunate name, here)
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<lekernel> haha they had problems with BGA routing
<lekernel> I guess wired reportards are now discovering what BGA means ...
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<larsc> the article was written by one rpi founders
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<whitequark> viric: define "afraid"?
<whitequark> for what reason?
<viric> qi-hw cloning rpi :)
<viric> ee hackers
<viric> I was just kidding
<whitequark> ah
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<whitequark> lekernel: is wired that bad?
* whitequark finds gigaom pretty competent
<lekernel> ah, gigaom... "The solar kit charges at a rate of 4 watts per hour and can hold 16 watts in its battery"
<lekernel> author is specialist of "renewable energy"
<viric> hold 16 watts?
<lekernel> that's my point :)
<viric> :)
<Fallenou> 21:02 < whitequark> lekernel: is wired that bad? < does it contain anything else than advertisment pages ?
<whitequark> lekernel: LOL
<whitequark> watts per hour
<whitequark> reminds me of how utility companies here measure energy in kW*h, which is technically correct, but quite fucked up.
<wpwrak> how so ?
<whitequark> wpwrak: correct or FU?
<whitequark> if latter, I just find it weird
<whitequark> probably because my physics class was before I ever needed to track grid energy usage
<viric> I'm fine with kW*h
<whitequark> well I always need to include 3600 coefficient, that drives me mad
<viric> for what? That translates easily to money :)
<whitequark> because I tend to calculate everything else in SI units
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<whitequark> and if you run a 20A device for 80s, then how much kWh will it be?.
<whitequark> *?..
<whitequark> well disregard that, it's just my pet peeve
<larsc> you could calculate the amount of money you have to pay per joule once and use that ;)
<viric> do you use m^3 for milk?
<viric> :)
<whitequark> if only the price of electricity was constant...
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<whitequark> viric: liters are translated to cubic meters with a 1e6 coefficient, that's way easier than dividing by 3.6.
<viric> I agree.
<whitequark> and have you ever seen milk sold by liter, not by package?
<wpwrak> maybe if you ask nicely, they'll send you your bill in MWs, and charge you for 1 MWs the same as for one 1 kWh ;-)
<wpwrak> actually, you should pay more, since it's a whole million !
<whitequark> MJs you mean?
<whitequark> ah, MW*s
<whitequark> lol
<whitequark> I'd send that idea to putin
<whitequark> who'll be our dicta^Wpresident for the next 18 years
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<viric> whitequark: milk sold by liter? sure
<whitequark> viric: yeah I understand what you mean, through I'm probably somewhat young and lived mostly in urban areas
<viric> :)
<viric> here we have trendy milk service machines, where you insert coins, and a tap gives milk.
<whitequark> cool
<whitequark> I won't really trust such a machine to provide non-rotten milk here, through
<larsc> i suppose they throw away whats left over every evening
<viric> I'm not a milk master
<viric> They change it every day
<viric> but I doubt they 'throw it away'
<viric> there are plenty of good things to do with milk.
<whitequark> larsc: that implies you actually care about it and do some maintenance.
<larsc> whitequark: that's a big problem in russia isn't it, nobody cares about anything
<whitequark> larsc: exactly
<viric> or care on very particular things, and nothing else.
<viric> It's just a matter of finding what does every russian care about
<whitequark> viric: looking at people around, I suppose it is "not giving a fuck about anything". so...
<viric> :)
<whitequark> well you could definitely distract people enough to strip they from the ability of not giving a fuck. you'd need a second WWII. I doubt you actually want it.
<larsc> but why is that, is everything so fucked up, that people gave up to care?
<viric> It could be bad feedback. People not caring on anything because other people don't care on anything.
<whitequark> yup, positive feedback plays a great role
<larsc> tragedy of the commons extreme
<whitequark> larsc: kind of. gave up, yeah
<whitequark> actually I won't really oppose some country dropping a thermonuclear bomb on moscow, even considering that I'm there
<whitequark> because I'm absolutely sick of it
<whitequark> everything around
<larsc> and no chance of leaving it behind?
<whitequark> sometimes you can't actually believe that there is a good world out there
<wpwrak> step 1: find a country that has low immigration barriers. step 2: learn the language. step 3: make enough money for the trip and whatever you need to get started. step 4: escape into the adventure :)
<larsc> whitequark: that's what you did?
<larsc> wpwrak:
<wpwrak> well, it looks a bit like that from the outside :) with less desperation, though
<whitequark> wpwrak: 1. australia 2. done 3. in progress 4. I won't leave some people behind. I'm trapped here for at least 2 yrs, and who knows what next.
<whitequark> desperation might be caused by the fact that I'm a bit drunk atm. might. or different causes.
<wpwrak> ah well, people have endured worse :)
<wpwrak> of course, 4 adds baggage
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<wpwrak> grmbl. brain still not working well enough to write a brute-forcer for finding an algorithm that picks the k-th (sorted) value from an unsorted n-vector :-(
<larsc> are you trying to find something that does it in less than n log n?
<wpwrak> yup
<larsc> i don't think that's possible
<wpwrak> and with very little overhead. has to run a lot of times in an avr.
<wpwrak> here's an example for n = 3, k = 2nd element (i.e., the median): http://pastebin.ca/2207660
<larsc> and you use n * log n compare operations
<wpwrak> the brute-forcer idea is to try all sequences of comparisons and pick one that yields the decision tree with the lowest depth. should still be doable up to at least n = 5.
<wpwrak> (compares) yes
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<larsc> but?
<wpwrak> oh, just need to wrap my hay-feverish brain around it, that's all
<larsc> so n and k are fixed?
<larsc> and you just want the code like above?
<wpwrak> yes
<wpwrak> k and n are build-time values
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<wpwrak> (well, the idea is to make it possible to generate variants with different k and n values. as opposed to manually cooking up such a function, as in my example)
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<mth> whitequark: is your server melting yet?
<Fallenou> a lot of moronic comments
<Fallenou> they don't even understand why it is so chip
<Fallenou> cheap*
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<Fallenou> I bet they got the main chip for almost nothing
<Fallenou> they work there god damn it
<Fallenou> it's almost a project of the company making the chip
<Fallenou> and so far they were right to invest on this project
<Fallenou> so much advertisement
<Fallenou> blog posts, tweets, facebook posts, conferences
<Fallenou> I wonder how much it would have cost to pay such a huge advertisement campaign
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<mth> it depends on what kind of education you're looking for: if you want to teach people application programming, R-Pi is fine, but if you want to teach them low-level programming or hardware design, it has serious problems
<mth> and if it's just about application programming, then the board should have been sold boxed, imo
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