• (nodebb)

    "Elswhere in the Antipodes" ... where the Antipodes are depends on where you are. It's literally (in this context) "the opposite side of the world from you".

  • Trust Me I'm Not a Robot (unregistered)

    "What's wrong with a pleasant 72 degrees?" (in an American accent)

  • (nodebb)

    No problem, the problem with not being able to reboot can be fixed by rebooting.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Athanasius

    There are the Antipodes Islands in New Zealand, but Canberra isn't part of those either.

  • Windows (unregistered)

    I'm often surprised at how many pieces of what should be no-brainer, ready-and-reliable pieces of appliance-style hardware use Windows as an OS. Why not Linux? I'm going to guess that it's mostly because of 1) being grandfathered in 2) it might be easier to code graphical displays in 3) people who buy them don't feel safe not using Windows.

  • Worf (unregistered)

    That's basically the reason - Windows is easy to make a graphical app for in a relatively standardized environment. Linux by itself is not - you have to deal with graphical environments (X, Wayland, etc...), graphical toolkits (QT, GTK, ...) and other things. And a bigger problem is lack of API stability - making updates a tricky process.

    This is changing though, because a Linux standard environment is available - Android. Though it still has update problems and lack of long term support.

    A lot of these appliances need to run for a long time - years, and support is generally minimal, so you need an API that stays stable for years and a base OS that keeps the basic APIs available. Android by itself is good for about 3 years, but then you need to upgrade the base OS, which is not a trivial process on a PC since a PC is not a supported platform for Android. And you don't want to have to deal with API instability because you likely can't rewrite the entire app to use the new APIs (not enough money) after the old API got deprecated.

    Windows is relatively easy by comparison - it runs on x86 hardware, the APIs have been around for decades and generally work the same, so if you've got a bunch of Windows XP kiosks, you could just upgrade them to Windows 10 (if it runs on the hardware) and have almost no software changes.

  • Nick (unregistered) in reply to Windows

    I suspect (with a certain amount of second-hand experience) that its because Windows drivers for the off-brand graphics cards and displays used by these devices are easy to come by, whereas Linux drivers require a little more effort...

    This is particularly true for appliances that include touch-screen and non-HID-compliant keypads.

    Source: My wife spent several years working with a company that produced giant LED billboards (like the ones in Times Square), and I got to hear a lot of the shenanigans that go on around those devices.

  • ismo (unregistered) in reply to Trust Me I'm Not a Robot

    Nothing wrong, 72C is normal sauna temperature here in Finland. Granted, we do not have our cloths on then :-)

  • markm (unregistered) in reply to ismo

    And you only have to take the heat for a few minutes. Then (if I understand correctly) you run and jump into a snowbank naked to cool off.

    I never understood that until I had to make a business trip to Tampa in the summer. That was "only" around 38 C (100 F), with nearly 100% humidity, and after a short walk outdoors I'd have loved to have found a snow bank...

  • Argle (unregistered)

    Lyle, I see what you did there with the caption.

  • eric bloedow (unregistered)

    this reminds me of an old TV show, i think it was the original Hawaii 5-0: some crooks were using a laser to melt the gold bars in a vault so that the gold would flow down a hole in the floor and they could catch it and make new gold bars...BUT this made the big thermometer outside the bank show very high temperatures!

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