pinkyand

How does Watson compares to the Google technology in your opinion ?

A 256MB RAM, in volume, would cost about $2.5-5 in volume. If that's the only difference between Android with 512MB(which is very usable) and FirfoxOS device, that doesn't sound like a lot.

Also opera/opera-mini offers much better performance on mobile than mobile firefox,and opera mini is very light on ram(maybe 30MB-40MB). So while i haven't tried, i wouldn't be surprised to learn that running opera mini on a 256MB android offers better performance than FirefoxOS.

You are definitely right,we have less of that spirit.

But we do have such projects that organize huge amounts of people(although the details of this organization differ - because it appears that networks of companies works better).

Curing cancer,green energy and keeping moore's law can be seen as such projects.

The biggest problem the tech behind this has always suffered ,is being able to convince DRAM manufacturers to manufacture using their technology.

This doesn't seem to have changed.

Sure there's a huge problem with the quality and the reliability of appliances.Basically everything's shit, or there's are high end products which are a bad deal, economically.

But solving that is much, much bigger than just open-sourcing embedded code.

Also

>>Oh I'm well aware. Version control with something other than zip files isn't compatible with the mindset of embedded developers :P

That's one thing the mbed default IDE(web ide) does well - it gets people to use version control.

Technically ,the nice thing about this is that they use an event based model. Your system is divided into event-manager threads which communicate with each other using events(and of course interrupts create events). When they are activated by an event , they do their stuff rapidly - and go to sleep. Only a single thread is allowed at a time. There are also event priorities to manage a case of multiple events happening at the same time, and a scheduler to manage that.

This enables both low power systems(since both threads and scheduler are always asleep unless there's a new event - unlike traditional rtos, where usually the scheduler needs to wake up periodically quit often to check which process's turn is now and give it to him).

And since threads are run to completion, you only need a single stack(instead of stack per task), which saves a lot of ram, which is critical in those kinds of systems, both in terms of price and in terms of sleep power(since even in sleep you need to power the ram and the smaller the ram the better) which usually is the biggest component in total power consumption.

The GPLv3 model, i.e the need to release all your source, isn't compatible with the mindset of embedded product manufacturers, which are highly afraid of copying.

Until you solve this mindset problem(god knows how), GPLv3 isn't a workable solution.

Linux also means higher hardware costs and bigger size and worse peripheral selection. Those are critical parameters in this market.

Nothing is binding it to those protocols.

For example it's already supporting this:

http://developer.mbed.org/users/dudmuck/code/SX1232/

As to why someone posts on quora:

http://www.quora.com/What-s-my-incentive-to-post-answers-on-...

I'm sure that some of that also applies to HN.

Not sure. A lot of the success of Samsung in the smartphone market is due to vertical integration. They save around 10-15% of bill-of-materials cost reduction due to this, they sometimes have unique components(like being first with HD-oled display), they have more control over manufacturers(as a condition for using a Qualcomm processor, they wanted the processor to be made at a Samsung fab), They are less exposed to tight supply in components like ram/flash, And who knows what other benefits they have due to this.

Those advantages are a big reason to why they have better access to carriers - meaning much better marketing - and the reason behind their ability to push volumes, create brands, and manufacture so many variants to compete better than others.

Than what happens ? who takes control of the west bank ?

Most likely answer is a big mess, other militant groups and tribes(hamulut) fighting for control. kind like a civil war.And than who ever wins, you got a new terrorist organization. Hopefully we get one that is willing to work with Israel. But we might not.

But a civil war with the purpose of peace, by peaceful citizens ? Maybe that'll work.

According to an article in the british medical journal ,nalmefene in alcohol misuse is bad medicine. I haven't got access but that's the replies to the article, by doctors:

http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g1531/rapid-responses

Another place is a the most recent review of alcohol dependency drugs:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24825644

There's only medium evidence for nalmefene use, and the results speak of an average reduction of 2 days of heavy drinking per month and average reduction of 1 drink per day. Not that big.

And democracy also means elections, multiple parties and not murdering your opponent party.

Please, no simplified propaganda on HN.

And a year after that, Hamas killed the members and support of the other party(fatah), and established a dictatorship. Without that, who knows, the fatah might have been in power today.

Yes , a civil war would be awful, but maybe as a result we'll see democracy in Gaza and a chance for peace with Israel.

On the other hand, is there any other realistic scenario where Hamas is replaced by a peaceful party? Or even Hamas being transformed into a peaceful party ? I'd love to hear a realistic one.

How? If Gaza was democratic, like before the 2007 Hamas coop d'etat, I can see how educated people would help.How would they matter? i'm pretty sure if you asked today, almost everyone in Gaza would prefer the Hamas to just go away.

If we judge from history, what they need now is some sort of civil war.

Severe depression is a kind of "extreme chronic pain".

A survey is one way. Not very accurate , but it's a start.

One way is just go into the community of the open source project you're interested in and ask for projects ideas.

Also searching for "project name" AND "project ideas" could sometimes lead to good results. for example [1].But of course before choosing a project in such way , it's better to understand a bit more about complexity and scope.

[1]https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ISIS/ProjectIdea...

What about deploying parcel lockers ? is it just not perceived as comfortable enough by people ? or the economics aren't that good ?

While this is not peer-review , it's interesting :

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/43231.wss

Which country?

Opera mini is a great browser and very very lightweight in ram.

I really think that if the goal of firefox os was to create smartphones affordable to everyone , they should have gone with opera mini - they've would've got better performance at lower costs.

Wasn't there research showing that in channels mixed with tcp traffic , high tcp traffic can effectively block MinimaLT traffic, effectively creating DoS?

Zak, what about design reuse of pcb modules likes circuits.io does? Any plans?

> AndroidWear OEMs are iterating faster with a wider range of options.

That's the critical point.Both ecosystems are starting from a similar point. AndroidWear is iterating faster. And since watch apps are probably much simpler to build than phone apps, we'll probably won't see a big difference between the app ecosystems. And there's probably little that can be patent protected.

Probably the only difference would be that your phone will determine which watch you'll use. But the watches will pretty much be the same.

The problem with a lot of the data in electronic medical records is that they are not structured but in natural language. This is exactly where Watson can help.

That's a good idea , but it could be greatly improved by offering lawyers(which are surely time strapped) , a tool like RegexMagic[1] , which really simplifies the learning needed and lets one easily understand complex regex's.

[1]http://www.regexbuddy.com/

I was refering to three passengers sharing. Versus two passengers sharing it's a cost decrease of 33%. Maybe over one time trip it doesn't matter much, but if you're doing it alot ,for many 33% of their total transportation budget starts to matter.

But the end goal is to replace a large part of private transportation. And with car occupancy of 3 passenger and a drivers ,maybe cars start to get special road rights(as a tool to decrease traffic - it's part of some future roads in israel).

At that point, with UBER running a large part of the traffic and being able to create optimal routes, together with special road right , the difference in delay might not be that big versus driving , and you don't need to drive.

Yes, there are many if's here, as in all visions. but it might come to pass.