“We’re busy running out of time”, said the lyrics.
Actually, the whole lyrics to that song just ring so true to me. Never really liked the song itself, though.
I expect to post the promised (on the mailing list) blog entry by tomorrow.
Here is my own report about what happened at FOSDEM. Actually so many things went on I probably missed some.
Getting there
For this second time at FOSDEM, I tried to get a shared devroom with other projects, but there were so many requests we only had a booth. We probably wouldn't have had enough material alone for two days anyway. Besides, manning a booth itself is already quite demanding.
<p> Usual question: "I've dd'ed the image to somewhere and now it doesn't boot". Usual advice: "You have to make it bootable by using makebootable". Usual reaction: "Ehm, ok how do I do that?". Since this type of question comes up quite frequently, let me try to explain a bit of background on that pseudo-mystical tool "makebootable", how you can get it and how you can manually make a partition bootable without even needing makebootable.
<p> Out of no real particular motivation I wanted to build a native GCC4 for Haiku. We've had a GCC 4.1.2 cross-compiler for a pretty long time now, but since there were some issues with GCC4 built Haiku installations and especially since there never was a native toolchain for GCC4 based Haiku, it has always been a second class citizen. You could experiment around with it and we've had hybrid builds able to use software for both GCC2 and GCC4 Haiku on the same install, but since you had to use the cross-compiler to build GCC4 Haiku apps it's always been a bit less convenient that just building for GCC2 Haiku.
This is the first time I blog on Haiku site. During the development of the Haiku Bluetooth Stack I have been posting on my blog, while the development was centered hardcore parts, and deeply related to the technology and the specification books. I guess writing all that here would have been spamming the community:)
This time there is something that user community might be affected in terms of usability and so on.
Oliver Ruiz Dorantes:
http://urnenfeld.blogspot.com/2008/11/5th6th-milestone-phase-1-reached.html
has recently committed:
http://cia.vc/stats/author/oruizdorantes
the last parts and completed phase 1 of Haikuware’s bluetooth bounty:
http://www.haikuware.com/bounties/bluetooth-bounty
As such, he was transferred the bounty’s pool of $1820.47 (he also received some RAM for his hardware donated by haikuware admin thenerd). The bounty fell a little short of the $1950 he requested, but all in all I think he’ll be happy with that sum.
I’d like to thank all the bounty contributors that made this possible, as well as Oliver for the hard work he put in to give Haiku the code for a functional bluetooth base!
I just finished (finally) consolidating the two R2-related RFCs that I’ve written and revising them, and I’d appreciate comments, criticism, etc. You can get it from this link. If you have an opinion on what Haiku should look like, I’d genuinely appreciate your input. :)
Last week I received a mail telling me MSI wanted to hear from me what I wanted on their next products on their forum. Frankly, I didn’t even remember having an account on that forum, where I registered to help someone on a BeOS SMP question. So I jumped in and started telling what I, as an Haiku developer, really expected from a hardware manufacturer, trying to explain, with humour but determination, why open hardware is so important to me.
Then after some other’s post I replied a second time, first to someone mentioning the need for HDMI support on why I didn’t agree because of DRM, then a maybe-rantful-but-oh-so-true digression about the availability of specifications. Sadly, neither post are available for your reading pleasure, a moderator found them to be “rubbish” and removed them altogether, who obviously doesn’t use alternative Operating Systems, never wrote a driver with only uncommented Linux code as reference, doesn’t live in France, and never saw a TV set manual from before 1980.
Since my views weren’t welcome there, I’ll try to at least make them clear here, and either MSI (and other vendors) read them or not, but I’m used to the latter anyway. Please note that was the act of a moderator, which might or might not be part of MSI, nor reflect their own policy (I wish).
I have some happy news: I’ll be able to start coding the cheap hardware for Open Source catalog soon, I expect by the middle of the coming week.
For reasons of personal preferences as well as sharpening a salable job skill, I’ll be doing it in Python. I have a friend who is an expert web programmer who could advise me on the design of the database schema.
I will also start by reviewing the available Python code libraries to find components that I can reuse.
Matt Zehner, a teacher at Branham High School in San Jose, sponsors the school’s SPARE e-Waste recycling program: Students Promoting Awareness of Recycling and the Environment.
Their focus is on putting discarded hardware back into productive use so it doesn’t enter the waste stream, as many electronic products are full of toxic materials like lead and arsenic.
His club was featured in the Cambrian Times' article Branham High School club masters art of turning trash into treasure.
