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You are such a fucking loser your monger.

I'll give you a rundown of the categories on that page, in case you are too lazy to read it.

Linux on POWER
Linux on Intel processor-based servers
Linux on AMD processor-based servers
Linux on Mainframe

The Linux s390 and PPC and PPC64 (and even m68k) architecture maintainers all work for IBM. The POWER5 processor had features designed with Linux in mind to better suit its low level memory management system. The IBM Linux guys go do Linux bringup and verification on sample silicon.

Oh also, the Linux IA64 maintainers work for Intel and HP, both companies have quite a few staff doing Linux (especially ia64) work. SGI has a lot of staff working on the kernel alone.

Sun these days is probably not supported as well, but why would you buy a sparc server running Linux when you could buy an Altix, or a POWER5 (or zSeries if you want a real mainframe)? You would have to be insane. The only reason sparcs are still being sold is the solaris on sparc legacy.

XEN does for the Intel platform what OpenPower does for the Power platform.

IBM's robocode is the same deal. IBM has a great tutorial introduction, teaching Java through the application of these interfaces.

I am of course happy to see more of such programs, and with the MIT name behind it, perhaps it will inspire some perl hackers to get involved in *duck* a *duck* real *duck* programming *duck, ouch* language.... :-)

I love the way these robot challenges express the ideas of OO so well! I am entering my 32.6mb robot which has enhanced path finding, fuzzy logic, target identification, runs its own internal byte code sniffers, and a few JNI calls to terminate any other java processes. It is a sith robot of course! *vroom ksssszzzwwww pow pow*.

I just gotta check the rule book before I submit... :-)

this sounds like Robocode from IBM, http://www.robocode.net has a large following. We used this in my 1st year as a programming project. My friend's was powerful... it would learn you and never loose.

it's not hard to do. There is a set API, and everything is there. It's like lego,... which makes it fun too.

try this

Bottom line is that most XML parsers are crap. There are some good ones though (such as expat) but you can still do a lot better even with fairly simple binary encodings.

Making free software depend on IBM patents, and making the defense of free software against lawsuits depend on IBM willingness to assert those patents against whoever would sue free software developpers or users (see the IBM pledge : http://www.ibm.com/ibm/licensing/patents/pledgedpa tents.pdf) gives IBM a lot of leverage on whatever happens with free software.

Furthermore, free software has been able to compete successfully with Microsoft, and to contain to some extent Microsoft software power, a thing no corporation was able to do, including IBM.

From an economic perspective, when two economic activities are complementary, and actually done by different corporations, each business sector will try to commoditize the neighboring business so that more money and profit remain available for its own activity. Commoditization of complementary business is also a way to reduce its control, and to be freer ans more secure when it comes to managing a business strategy.
This is the case for software vs services, or for hardware vs software. IBM business is mostly based on hardware and services, and software publishing is only a minor part. But software stand between the two main business activities of IBM, and gives too much leverage to whoever controls software publishing, not to mention the profit. Supporting free software is a way of commoditizing software, and thus leave more control space and profit for IBM. If in addition it gives IBM some control over basic software (especially the operating system), all the better.

So it is IBM best interest to actually get software patents and the control that goes with them, and to make some of those patents available to free software developement.
But, mind you, it is certainly not a gift or a donation. Just good business strategy.

Epiphan makes a product called VGA2USB ($399) and then buy a usb keyboard with a touchpad on it. (ibm sells one for $100). This way you'd just have your laptop (which you would probably have out anyways) and then one keyboard/mouse combo. It's not perfect, but it'll get the job done for $500.

The JPEG standard specifies 2 entropy coding methods; Huffman coding and arithmic coding. As arithmic coding is patented it is not in use. The patents for this arithmic coding called Q-coding http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/426/mitchel l.html are in hands of IBM. Perhaps they will allow OSS to use this patent along with the 500 other patents recently allowed? http://www.ibm.com/ibm/licensing/patents/pledgedpa tents.pdf The particular variant of arithmetic coding specified by the JPEG standard is called Q-coding. This variant has the advantage of not requiring any multiplications in the inner loop. Q-coding was invented a few years ago at IBM, and IBM has obtained patents on the algorithm. Thus, in order to use the JPEG arithmetic coding process, you must obtain a license from IBM. It appears that AT&T and Mitsubishi may also hold relevant patents.

The JPEG standard specifies 2 entropy coding methods; Huffman coding and arithmic coding. As arithmic coding is patented it is not in use. The patents for this arithmic coding called Q-coding http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/426/mitchel l.html are in hands of IBM. Perhaps they will allow OSS to use this patent along with the 500 other patents recently allowed? http://www.ibm.com/ibm/licensing/patents/pledgedpa tents.pdf The particular variant of arithmetic coding specified by the JPEG standard is called Q-coding. This variant has the advantage of not requiring any multiplications in the inner loop. Q-coding was invented a few years ago at IBM, and IBM has obtained patents on the algorithm. Thus, in order to use the JPEG arithmetic coding process, you must obtain a license from IBM. It appears that AT&T and Mitsubishi may also hold relevant patents.

This one is also very very good, and free.

Linux can also be run on an iSeries. -- Info here

The list of patents is included in this document (pdf).

Perhaps another possible explanation of this is IBM has some technoligies it wishes to put into Open Source projects and it can't see them being accepted unless they do something like this? Also nice to note that at the parents url it says this is not a one off event.

Subject to the exception provided below [that IBM can revoke this pledge for people who try to assert patent claims against OSS], and with the intent that developers, users and distributors of Open Source Software rely on our promise, IBM hereby commits not to assert any of the 500 U.S. patents listed above, as well as all counterparts of these patents issued in other countries against the development, use or distribution of Open Source Software.

I don't remember them being bad guys; it was before my time, and probably most others.

Yeah, most people die at age 40.

They only have three software products http://www-306.ibm.com/software/index.html, and none are even games!! Let alone porn.

and they make those crappy, has-been, power processors used in cheap, lame-ass machines http//www.apple.com, http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/

I don't remember them being bad guys; it was before my time, and probably most others.

Yeah, most people die at age 40.

They only have three software products http://www-306.ibm.com/software/index.html, and none are even games!! Let alone porn.

and they make those crappy, has-been, power processors used in cheap, lame-ass machines http//www.apple.com, http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/

But if any body read the actual patents , you will realize that all of them are OS patents, espically when it comes to multiprocessing.
To be honest, I think this is somehow related to that SCO case crap, they are trying somehow to piss them off, by telling them "You dont sue us, CAUSE ALL YOUR BASE IS BELONG TO US ....."

There's a lot of hardware patents dealing with pretty basic processor and system stuff such as:

• Pipelined two-cycle branch target address cache
• High performance multichannel DMA controller for a PCI host bridge with a built-in cache

• Quick loading of run time dynamic link library for OS/2

Seems to me that IBM has had a bit of a clear out of its patent closet and decided to make all the old, lame and stale patents that are past their sell-by-date available to the FOSS community instead of putting them in the bin. I suspect that even for proprietary s/ware IBM would not challenge the use of any of these patents.

Both the zSeries and S/390 series.

The way the licence is worded (as I understand it anyway) they help protect IBM and other Open Source software. If you use "Open Source software A" with one of IBMs patents in it and decide to leverage your own patents against "Open source software B" then IBM can make life difficult for you by revoking your right to use the patent in software A.

I guess it's a sort of "mutually assured destruction" which should stop discourage people from firing their lawyers off willy nilly.

The only thing I can think of is that strictly speaking such a revocable patent licence of any sort might make it unuseable under the current GPL.

Oh wait! They don't need to because open source programmers are already using them, have been for decades, and don't really give a shit at this point.

Haha. But seriously - you're wrong. Take a look at the list

A lot of these are thing that OSS hasn't touched in big ways yet (like cpu architecture, encryption, neural networks). This is not an indemnification but an invitation for OSS to implement these ideas. Kudos IBM.

IBM hereby commits not to assert any of the 500 U.S. patents listed below, as well as all counterparts of these patents issued in other countries, against the development, use or distribution of Open Source Software.

In order to foster innovation and avoid the possibility that a party will take advantage of this pledge and then assert patents or other intellectual property rights of its own against Open Source Software, thereby limiting the freedom of IBM or any other Open Source Software developer to create innovative software programs, the commitment not to assert any of these 500 U.S. patents and all counterparts of these patents issued in other countries is irrevocable except that IBM reserves the right to terminate this patent pledge and commitment only with regard to any party who files a lawsuit asserting patents or other intellectual property rights against Open Source Software.

By first reading it is better than irrevocable. It is revocable only in the case that you take action against a free software project. Free software developers would seem to be able to use these 500 patents as a form of patent defence by saying: "Sue us and leave yourself liable to being stomped by IBM." Unfortunately you will have to convince IBM to litigate in your defence.

IBM hereby commits not to assert any of the 500 U.S. patents listed below, as well as all counterparts of these patents issued in other countries, against the development, use or distribution of Open Source Software.

In order to foster innovation and avoid the possibility that a party will take advantage of this pledge and then assert patents or other intellectual property rights of its own against Open Source Software, thereby limiting the freedom of IBM or any other Open Source Software developer to create innovative software programs, the commitment not to assert any of these 500 U.S. patents and all counterparts of these patents issued in other countries is irrevocable except that IBM reserves the right to terminate this patent pledge and commitment only with regard to any party who files a lawsuit asserting patents or other intellectual property rights against Open Source Software.

By first reading it is better than irrevocable. It is revocable only in the case that you take action against a free software project. Free software developers would seem to be able to use these 500 patents as a form of patent defence by saying: "Sue us and leave yourself liable to being stomped by IBM." Unfortunately you will have to convince IBM to litigate in your defence.

First, look for interesting ones here...

Then go to google and search for "patent XXXXXXX" where XXXXXXX is the patent #.

Looks like most are pretty old/obvious. Newest one released is from 2002. Find the most interesting ones (or most obvious, for that matter) and post it here!

IBM's Legally Binding Commitment Not To Assert the 500 Named Patents Against OSS

The pledge will benefit any Open Source Software. Open Source Software is any computer software program whose source code is published and available for inspection and use by anyone, and is made available under a license agreement that permits recipients to copy, modify and distribute the programs source code without payment of fees or royalties. All licenses certified by opensource.org and listed on their website as of 01/11/2005 are Open Source Software licenses for the purpose of this pledge..

Subject to the exception provided below, and with the intent that developers, users and distributors of Open Source Software rely on our promise, IBM hereby commits not to assert any of the 500 U.S. patents listed above, as well as all counterparts of these patents issued in other countries against the development, use or distribution of Open Source Software.

In order to foster innovation and avoid the possibility that a party will take advantage of this pledge and then assert patents or other intellectual property rights of its own against Open Source Software, thereby limiting the freedom of IBM or any other Open Source Software developer to create innovative software programs, or the freedom of others to distribute and use Open Source Software, the commitment not to assert any of these 500 U.S. patents and all counterparts of these patents issued in other countries is irrevocable except that IBM reserves the right to terminate this patent pledge and commitment only with regard to any party who files a lawsuit asserting patents or other intellectual property rights against Open Source Software

The release includes detail on licensing.

The release includes detail on licensing.

IBM Pledges 500 U.S. Patents To Open Source In Support Of Innovation And Open Standards

here

SOI is not patented by IBM. Only certain components of IBM's SOI technique are patented. Their most important patented SOI component is their SOI FET Design to Reduce Transient Bipolar Current.

Intel will most likely use their own SOI technology without needing "permission" from IBM.

Tom's Hardware has some good information about thermal loss. Notice that an idle AMD Winchester (SOI Athlon 64) loses only 3.2 watts, while the more recent P4 chips are losing > 34 at idle.

Notice that you compared the "Cool 'n' Quiet" versions of the AMD Winchester to the older P4s (D0 stepping) without Enhanced Halt State. The same page you referenced shows a 3500+ Winchester without "Cool 'n' Quiet" technology losing 11.1 watts when idle and a "more recent" 3.4GHz P4 550 chip (E0 stepping with Enhanced Halt State) losing 13.4 watts.

This number changes at load to 30 watts for the Winchester and 100+ watts for the P4.

Only for the fastest (3.8GHz) P4. The previously-mentioned 3.4GHz P4 550 (E0 stepping) loses 73.6 watts and a slower Prescott (3.0GHz) loses 59.3 watts.

I know the new Winchesters are a lot cooler than the new P4s at load, but you seemed to be greatly exaggerating in your comparison (especially at idle).

Although most /. readers probably won't care, dual core CPU's are already on the market in the form of the UltraSPARC IV CPU from Sun Microsystems. Sun also happen to be sporting the most ambitious multi-core project going in the form of Niagara, which although initially an 8-core system has apparently been seen running Solaris 9 with 32 independent CPU cores.

In addition to this, the POWER 5 CPU is also available with multiple cores, fully supporting Linux.

Also of note is that the Opteron dual-core CPU's from AMD are apparently going to be pin-compatible with the current Opteron processors (by current,I mean, the latest socket 939 (I think) systems, not the original Opteron 2xx or whatever).

This is really of most use for the data center right now, but as more applications wrap their heads around paralelizing themselves, multi-core CPU's on the desktop will become more popular.

That said, developers really have no excuses for not having blazing fast "dual-core aware" apps... a multi-processor system purchased today provides about as much performance as a dual core system... so it's not like a wild new technology where application developers have to wait for SDK's or test hardware. Multiple cores, HyperThreading CPU's or multiple physical processors are all just additional CPU's from the operating systems perspective, and are developed for using the same tried and true thread libraries (pthreads, etc).

Multi-thread those apps people! There are so many instances, especially when writing GUI apps, where an extra thread or two thrown in the right direction can really improve the user experience.

Of course, a big problem is just how developers learn to program. Everyone learns their "Hello World!", then goes from there... but this is all very linear in approach. Finding good programmers who can think of an application in terms of what many parallel threads should (or shouldn't) be doing isn't easy... but I digress.

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/dw_blo g_comments.jspa?blog=317&entry=65728

The guy built a client server system for his doorbell! And then, big surprise, it didn't work.

If this makes sense to you, you might like RUP... otherwise, try something simpler! :)

I've told this story from time to time in my public lectures and I've decided to retire this tale, but before I do, I'll preserve it for reference in my blog.

My wife and I designed and built a home a few years ago, and being an alpha geek I just had to fill it with all sorts of automated elements. I hired a contractor to pull the wires (he put about 5 miles of Cat 5 wires in the walls) but as CTO/CIO of the home, I installed the rest of the network. Shortly after I booted the house for the first time, we invited some friends over for dinner. They arrived at the appointed time, rang the doorbell - but we never heard it. They knocked on the door - and we didn't hear that either - so they finally called us on their cell phone, while standing at the front door.

My doorbell had crashed.

Now, doorbells have very simple use cases: you push the button, it rings a tone inside the home. However, my implementation of said doorbell was a bit more complex, and I failed my user base by having the bones of the underlying technology stick through. You see, the doorbell sends a signal to our PBX system, which I hacked to extract events (such as the doorbell being pressed). That event gets routed to an application server - running a non-Macintosh, non-Linux operating system, I might add - which has a deamon that intercepts various events (such as from the PBX, the security system, and so on) and in this case would send an event to the A/V subsystem, where a seasonally-appropriate and pleasant tone would sound through the home. Alas, I failed to use Rational's own tools (Purify in this case) and I had a memory leak in my application server. The solution was to reboot that server, which brought the doorbell back to life.

I have a very demanding customer (my wife) who really doesn't like to have my software lying around on the floor, and so she was at first annoyed and then amused at the incident. The good news is that I've ripped out the first implementation (I'm not saddled by legacy software here) and my doorbell now works as any good little doorbell should, with all the complexity hidden below the surface.

Yet another example of why the primary task of the software development team is to engineer the illusion of simplicity.

ibm.com

Of course, you can go to an IBM reseller and get a year old solution for about 25% of the original cost for a machine. Why mess around when you're building a server. Ostensibly a company will be using this to either make money directly or support the making of money in some other area of the business, so why mess around?

There's not much need for the Trusted Computing features on these chips since they are mostly used in relatively closed platforms like cell phones and PDAs. It's mostly a matter of getting the chip count down. Eventually however the same integration will show up in desktop computers.

Ironically most work integrating TC into the OS is being done on Linux. Microsoft seems to have given up on NGSCB (aka Palladium); its web site hasn't been updated for a year. Linux projects include tcgLinux, as well as the Applied Data Security Group at the University of Bochum in Germany. There's also the Enforcer project which uses the TC chip to provide TripWire-like modification detection functionality.

We need a new platform, period. And I don't mean AMD64 and all those 64 bit platforms that are all popular right now. 64 bit processing power is simply not needed and slows things down, as the article mentions, due to memory stuffs. 32 bit integers and pointers are perfectly alright. Current Intel processors are as bloated as Windows Longhorn 2 + SP 3 is gonna be. I, and others, have been saying to just calm down, strip the CPU, and come out with much smaller dies. RISC is a great technology, but few RISC vendors are doing it right.

I quote http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/pa-m icrohist.html?ca=dgr-lnxw01MicroHistory:

Why not do that again? Intel and AMD have plenty of money to afford this effort. With a very good, simplistic design, plenty of registers, lots of cache, small die size, this would become a beautiful and fast chip. It might even drive the chip speeds up with the hand-tuning to Intel's dreaded 4Ghz. (Note: AlienWare has been selling 4Ghz AMD computers for a while now).

Well yeah, I can get a SMT laser diode overnighted to me, so the idea is nothing new.

Where the real action is, is the possible connection with the Cell processor, whos premise kindof relies on onboard gigabit+ . I think we all assumed gb/copper, but now...

(Better start saving up for that PS? if this homeboy files!)

Well yeah, I can get a SMT laser diode overnighted to me, so the idea is nothing new.

Where the real action is, is the possible connection with the Cell processor, whos premise kindof relies on onboard gigabit+ . I think we all assumed gb/copper, but now...

(Better start saving up for that PS? if this homeboy files!)

An "Economy" p275 with a single 1GHz POWER4+, 1GB RAM, 36G disk, 16 meg graphics adapter, and no optical drive is a mere $5,575 - bump it up to a 1.45GHz chip, 2 gigs of ram, a DVD drive, and a (sweet 1600x1200 20") TFT panel with a 128 meg card, double the price. Go for the dual-1.45 setup with 4 gigs of RAM and two HDDs and you're looking at a cool $15,993. Granted, that box will utterly spank just about anything else that you can fit under your desk, but it's just a little pricier than what Apple offers. Kind of like comparing an F2004 to an Enzo...both lust objects, but still totally different orders of magnitude.

Well, there is the the real thing when it comes to POWER/POWERPC, but then there's no real competition (even though they are closer to Apple than Intel's machines) since their lowend machine outdoes Apple's high-end machines, and only goes upward in quality when at higher end models. If you were wondering, they *do* run linux if you cant stand AIX. To top it off, they dont have the secrecy or zealotry of Apple, so they Just Work.

They still make Tape Drives that can record amounts that are larger than hard drives. This one can record 800GB on a single tape.

IBM does too!

It was pretty nice for running PCI development boards on the road.

IBM 2003 Annual financial report Services accounts for 48% of GROSS revenue, hardware 32%, and software 16%. However, this is a bit misleading as a large percentage of the hardware and software sales are driven by the services people.

Open source can't survive in this market because nobody of consequence really wants it to.

Open source can't survive in this market because nobody of consequence really wants it to.

Here's three free, current programming environments that are suitable for introducing programming (that no one seems to have mentioned yet.)

1. Design by Number

Created by John Maeda of MIT, this is a very simple graphics-oriented programming language. Maeda created it for artists and there an associated book. Like a sparse Logo, it keeps everything to a bare minimum. Has a web applet that allows interpreted programming to try it out.
DBN web site

2. Processing

DBN is no longer maintained, and a more complex graphics language emedded in Java (with a single-line interpreter for ease of use) has been developed by Ben Fry and Casey Reas of MIT.
Processing web site

3. Robocode

Developed at AlphaWork at IBM, this is a Java environment for programming your own virtual robots that then shoot each other. Has a 2d battle arena in which little tanks move and shoot. (Classic idea, just a nice implementation). You can program as much or as little intelligence as you wish. Designed for teaching Java.
Robocode web site

I thought .NET was supposed to be language agnostic -- ie, it was SOAP. [although, document/literal, as opposed to early SOAP that was rpc/encoded]

I wasted way too much time before I found a decent explaination of the different SOAP encoding styles

IBM History

From what I've read, porting MFC-based utilities (such as game editors) is more of a pain than switching 3D APIs.

It's really not all that difficult if you use something like wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows). Slashdot has covered the MFC and wxWidgets comparison before. If your interested, IBM has written an article on Porting MFC applications to Linux. Just let it be known, it is something being done. I've personally converted applications directly from MFC to wxWidgets with very little difficulty and really very little code change. However, none of the apps had non-standard interfaces.

MFC is history anyway. Just something to think about.

Here is my understanding from a look at the site (I could be wrong):

IBM donated the servers and software infrastructure (server software, libraries, etc). United Devices wrote the client (screensaver) that links each node into the grid (presumably using IBM libraries to talk to the grid).

IBM grid infrastructure (main page, devel) contains several components. I haven't looked at them all, but it seems most components run on a variety of platforms including AIX, Linux and Windows. In fact the few server components I looked at only run on AIX and Linux.

Here is my understanding from a look at the site (I could be wrong):

IBM donated the servers and software infrastructure (server software, libraries, etc). United Devices wrote the client (screensaver) that links each node into the grid (presumably using IBM libraries to talk to the grid).

IBM grid infrastructure (main page, devel) contains several components. I haven't looked at them all, but it seems most components run on a variety of platforms including AIX, Linux and Windows. In fact the few server components I looked at only run on AIX and Linux.

Why not just contact these guys for legal counsel. Apparently they are a sucker for hopeless legal causes and will work for a sliding scale of percentages of any settlement when suing multi-billion dollar adversaries if your own funds don't quite cover the costs...