ladyada's comments

i seriously doubt BDmicro was even seen by Arduino its Yet Another Dev Board. and avrfreaks is (if you read the article) the anti-hero. you missed the most important one which is Processing.

by winning, 'this guy' means that it has become a standard development platform and test bed EVEN FOR people who do not in general use AVRs. not having a standard test bed for devices is such a massive annoying failure in electronics, its difficult to explain how much not having it sucks. its like you know how every programming language has stdin/stdout with print(f)? ok, then Arduino is the printf.

capacitive touch screens are not available on the hobby market

also, most people just think capacitive touch screens are better because apple told them. they are not significantly more precise, dont have Z-axis readings & multitouch is not that useful on a DIY device

Meanwhile, the electrical engineers have been waiting for Art of Electronics v3 for a decade... "its coming out real soon, its being edited right now!"

the driver is 'user land' libusb

In some alternate HN that existed 10 years ago someone posted "4 letters: LTCM" :)

there is an authentication scheme in the xbox/kinect. the authentication scheme is only required for the xbox to authenticate the camera, not the other way around (the camera only being usable with an xbox)

this is almost certainly not because microsoft loves us, but because their authentication scheme is done in hardware and the security of it is that the keys are in a chip that is a pain to decap and read. if they ever want to use the kinect with windows, they'll want to avoid any required authentication scheme where the keys are stored in software.

a hardware usb analyzer is just one of those things that's terribly expensive, not really even because of the hardware (its not that complicated) but because of the software which must be really good and this one runs on all OS's. I will admit I used this project as an excuse to get one but good electrical engineering tools cost in the thousands of $

you're welcome! we write a new tutorial every tuesday - some beginner, some advanced. if you subscribe to the blog rss feed you can get the notifications

lvr.com also has incredibly useful information. support jan axelson and buy one of her books, they're essential for any usb development!

you can probe USB commands, but that takes a lot of time. much faster to connect a usb analyzer and then 'replay' to see what commands do what.

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/09/kinect-hacking-video... (demo of analyzer)

http://github.com/adafruit/Kinect (USB log dump)

Before trying to read Infinite Jest, try to read all his other essays (and short stories). This is really helpful.

Be OK with the fact that you really aren't going to understand what happens the first time though, like at all. The book -must- be read twice, the first time in a bit of a haze, since even basic acronyms aren't expanded till 200 pages after they are first used. Its enjoyable the second time because there are hundreds of references you'll get from events that are expanded upon much later.

It really is a fantastic book, and its not nearly as confusing as most people think when read twice. :)

If you try to get new customers with price-cutting deals, you will get customers who want & expect price-cutting deals.

If you try to get new customers with quality goods at a fair price, you will get customers who will pay a fair price for quality goods.

im like the last person you should ask about embedded linux. ive done a smattering of projects but nothing detailed enough to advise :)

that said, i think the svideo thing is a 50/50 linuxwiki/TI problem. on one hand, the linux community loves to say "oh you know, just recompile the kernel" and on the other hand, TI should have made a completely ready-to-go bootimage one could download that demos -everything- on the board.

It is also a total PITA to get 'booted' since it comes blank you need to mkfs a sd card. if you have linux on a computer already, this is pretty easy. but what if you dont have a linux machine ready to go? if you're me you spend 2 days trying to maneuver something, giving up and borrowing a laptop. I've had an easier time getting freebsd onto a Mac SE/30!

In the end what i really wanted to do is use the S-Video port on the BB and after much googling, determined that there was no driver, no easy way to do it and i was basically SOL especially without onboard ethernet/wifi.

The BB is a great embedded SBC, it completely slaughters the (hopefully now completely dead) PC104 but right now I'm tinkering with a Chumby: Its not nearly as powerful but for $110 you get a full retail package, LCD, composite video out, speaker, wifi, & power adapter. In 2 seconds i was ssh'ed in and porting SDL-based graphical apps with ease.

y'see, thats why i got myself a pick and place! :)

(http://www.ladyada.net/wiki/mdcpickandplace)

its great for the "first 1000 or so" - if something gets popular i can send it off for manufacture - but only because i can bridge manufacture thru the never-ending-leadtimes. having trouble getting a fantastic oven tho. the apsgold's look nice but we dont have 220 :( had great luck with some common reflow plates if you can deal with single sided

When I was there, this was true, and probably still is. I did an MIT EECS MEng and I'll be honest with you: its probably not worth it if you dont land a TAship or RAship that covers all costs.

Getting into the MEng program is not done by application and decision, its purely 'decided' by your ugrad GPA. The theses dont have any sort of committee, just your advisor signing off. Many advisors cant/wont pay for your tuition unless you are the Bomb so the key is if you can get a TAship, just keep doing that. 1.5 to 2 years later, write a 40 page LaTeX paper about something and you get an MEng

Personally, I did it because you get to polish off your ugrad degree with a bunch of fantastic grad classes and if you play it right, the whole thing is free and comes with a stipend. its a bit more education and lets you stick around but I wouldn't say its thought of as a way to boost income or job status.

Two chargebacks a year? Thats quite a bit. Do you deal with a lot of sketchy places? Do you file a chargeback if you're not happy with the service?

Its been a while, but I recall that you -do- need to make an account - it gets created when you make your first purchase. But having to send people off to another site (where they get to reenter all their address info -again-) is a PITA and is not as 'professional'. Its getting more common... but if you made it through the hassle of getting a merchant account there is a bit of respectability there.

Also, we have encountered institutions (schools and businesses mostly) where there is strict policy that they may not use paypal.

How would a online merchant get PIN debit rates? I mean this in a very practical manner: I have never seen a merchant with any way to use a card as Debit - only as a credit card.

This is misleading. The 1.9% interchange fee is going the MINIMUM of many many different interchange fees especially Amex's and the vast number of 'rewards' cards. For online 'e-retail', expect at least 2.5% as well as many new and exciting monthly fees that have been recently added by visa/mc and your processor.

Going with a merchant account probably wont save you money, but it does increase your purchase rate since many people may not have a paypal account and don't want to deal with getting one.