Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the getting-duh-money dept.
rak3 writes "Transmeta has received $88 million in investments from AOL, Gateway, Compaq, and Sony among others. Now where's my Sony Vaio with Crusoe inside :) " Wow - pretty cool - congrats to Transmeta.
Add to the above the question: How long is it taking for the INS to process Green Card applications at the California office, these days?
I'm sure that many people would be prepared to make offers...
At the time that Linus was completing his Master's, there was a joke going around that Linus would wind up walking in to the offices of some UNIX-related company, and say (Finnish/Swedish accent mandatory):
Hello, my name is Linus Torvalds. I have come here to work at your company. Please show me where my desk is.
(The assumption being that there's no particular point in resumes, interviews, or any such stuff...)
Jokes and offers aside, life isn't usually that simple...
-- If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
If I remember correctly, in the initial release Transmeta said something about the chips being made available only to manufacturers. The question is, are they going to use all the new loot to ramp up production, and if so, can John Q. Linux (ha) get his hands on one?
No, I'm afraid I don't have any links handy... this is off the top of my head. As to whether a consumer would care about the 400-500 Intel-equivalent-MHz performance, consider that affordable laptops (roughly defined as costing less than $2.5K) don't have Intel or AMD processors running faster than 500MHz. Christopher A. Bohn
Hey, the IOpener runs QNX... done right, Grandma can use Unix...
---
Nope.. they got it right..
by
eshefer
·
· Score: 2
Transmeta IS taking on Intel - Intel is taking the mobile market seriously (as well it should, it has a much higher profit margin than desktop processors), both with X86 chips and Strongarm (which intel got when they bought Digital's fabs and development foundries.)
Not that I want an AOL-only set-top box, but the possibility of AOL sending out millions of under-$100 single-purpose set-top PCs in the mail instead of CDs is kinda kicky.
Ok, so maybe I'm living in fantasy land a little bit. At least they'd be more useful than those stupid CDs...
I'll say. I've already got as many drink coasters as I'll ever need. Maybe AOL set-tops can be used as trivets!
Re:Looks like Dave is king
by
um...+Lucas
·
· Score: 2
Transmeta's been filing patents for years, which led to the immense speculation about what in the world could they be doing. It didn't mean that they've told the world exactly what they were up to, they just filed patents to protect the important stuff, and all the news writers said "well these are the patents they've been issued, and this is who they're hiring... What could they be doing?"
No... I wish transmeta had held off on announcing anything until they had manufacturers lined up behind them saying "this product will be available on this date". it would have been so much more substantial than them simply saying "here's our chip, everybody!"
-detachable keyboard/mouse -size of legal pad -wireless networking -standards standards standards (TCP/IP, etc) -no "service committment" (i.e., just the webpad no contracts)
-under $500
I could use this to run remote X sessions from my desktop anywhere in the house. It would totally ROCK!! --
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Actually, it was only a couple of years ago that the power utilization of the CPU fell below that of the display for a brief time. Since then, Intel's relentless push for faster and newer processors has more than counteracted more efficiency in other components and more power capacity from prismatic LiIon batteries.
Haven't you noticed that battery life has *fallen* over the past few years after hitting a peak of nearly 8 hours a while back, we're now back down to 2-3 hours on the heavies, and only an hour or so on the ultralites?
I worked for Dell's laptop group a couple of years ago, and can attest to the fact that the 300 MHz mobile Deschutes (P-II) processor had less than half the battery life of some of our earlier mobile Pentium products - and the CPU was the only significant difference from a power point of view.
Can you imagine how long the batteries in a Sony 505 would last if you could use a two-year old mobile pentium instead of the room heater you have to buy now? I for one would gladly trade 400 MHz of clock for all-day battery life...
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
-- "The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last./ post
...maybe we could begin to have overclockable laptops.
Due to the variable clock-rate of the Curso chip and the new chipset needed to drive it. I highly doubt that over-clocking would be a possiblity.
But I could be wrong...
-- If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
Re:This is going to be one HOT stock!
by
paRcat
·
· Score: 2
Read their page. I quote:
Transmeta Corporation is a privately held Company. The Company presently has adequate funds available to support its operations as well as immediate access to cash to support future growth, and therefore, is not seeking new investments. While we do see a public offering as a viable alternative for financing future growth, at the present time the Company has not set a timetable for a public offering and can not predict when the stock may be available to the public. If and when the Company were to decided to pursue a public offering, information would be available on the Web site. We would suggest that you stay tuned to the Web site for future news.
um, what kind of mid-range laptops are you talking about?
Every laptop I've used since 486 days has been quite high on heat. Sure, some are better than others, but most now have a fan installed in them. That makes then loud, and less battery efficient.
Consider: The Crusoe-700 is supposedly comparable to a PII-400. So you've got a trade off in the power dept. But how many applications are you going to run on a web pad that requires a high-end PIII? Even a full-fledged laptop isn't really going to need that kind of power. Games don't look terribly good on LCD's, so where is the power going to go? Unused, IMHO.
Now, how many handhelds have a PII-400 in them? None. Personally, I'd love that much power in a little touch screen wireless pad that I can carry around with me. And the fact that it can last 12 hours rocks. It's also going to be lighter. (S3's is supposed to be 2 pounds)
I think Transmeta has a lot going for them. This is a groovy little niche, and I think they've got a great plan.
I'll take one. If you don't want one, then that's more for me.:)
The Transmeta chip is an emulation chip, I believe
Correct.
and thus get's away from the ancient x86 architecture.
Partially correct. It escapes some of the external hardware architecture, but that's really not much of an issue for a non-IO-heavy system. The transmeta cpu actually executes x86 instructions. Although another instruction set could be developed, this would provide little improvement over emulation of x86. (at least according to initial tests as reported by Linus.)
The real question is: who's pissed in their pants more, OS vendors like Microsoft or chip vendors like Intel?
Anyone have the scoop on what the money's going to be used for? Just more bigger faster marketing, or do they plan on branching out/diversifying their products...? Massive hiring spree or massive tech spending? Both?
How about some editorial Consistency???
by
stergios
·
· Score: 2
So last week Cmdrtaco has to be begged to publish a message regarding the 80% haircut in all linux stocks. Today, a private company get's an $80M 5th round, and for some reason known only to hemos and taco it warrants an immediate message.
These guys have no editorial integrity.
Notice how Dell is not on the list
by
LordNimon
·
· Score: 2
Dell has a funding organization call Dell Ventures specifically intended to fund companies like Transmeta. The fact that they are not funding Transmeta is just more evidence that Dell is nothing more than Intel's sex slave. Dell doesn't do anything that Intel doesn't want them to. I wouldn't even consider Dell a technology company, because they don't do any original research. The fact that Dell sells computers is just a coincidence - they could be selling toasters without needing to hire new people.
-- And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
well, we've heard many arguments, much hype, and several good points about the crusoe. my question is when can we get some reviews of this beast to evaluate whether it's been worth this much of our time? it looks to be cool from the specs and such, but if we believe specs than Windows 2000 is the most stable, fastest operating system on the planet. i honestly hope, for linux's sake, that the crusoe ends up surpassing expectations. can it? it'll be difficult. the most important thing is the price...they have to keep it under $100 for the low end one, while remaing quake3-able. who knows, maybe it will take over the Celery or K6.
Massive production on this chips should be along shortly with all this cash they have now.
If they can produces these chips in large numbers, they will be extremely cheap for the average user I am willing to bet.
--
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Re:Just wait for Torvalds to leave
by
istartedi
·
· Score: 2
Ever occur to anyone that Linus might be getting bored with Linux? I mean, if I had worked on a *NIX clone for the past 10 years, I think I'd be bored. Code morphing low-power CPUs are new, exciting, different. Linux could end up being just a small part of his day. Also, the fact that it depends so much on him has been cited as a weakness. Maybe Linux will be turned over to a successor or some kind of committee (sp?).
-- For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
First posting aside... It looks like after 20 years of the PC business, some real contenders are rearing their heads to do battle with the big boys, and they have a serious fighting chance.
Now, if we could just do that with our government....
-- "See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
The Transmeta chip is an emulation chip, I believe *check article twice* and thus get's away from the ancient x86 architecture. This approach is much like Apple's constant changing of processor architecture, but this relies on a hardware emulator in the chip. Sounds like a lot of speed loss but the benchmarks will prove the point. Of more intrest, lower voltage means lower heat. If this processor doesn't produce as much heat, maybe we could begin to have overclockable laptops. As it stands right now, I'm running a CPU idler (rain) for my laptop (dell inspiron 7500), but it is still too hot to handle. Anyone out their use the built-in functions for "CPU throttling?"
Sounds like a lot of speed loss but the benchmarks will prove the point
Transmeta has already said that a 700MHz Crusoe will perform comparably to 400MHz Pentium II, but that the average user won't notice (and I tend to agree).
Of more intrest, lower voltage means lower heat.
Which means laptops without fans -- another (tiny) reduction in the power demands.
Christopher A. Bohn
-- cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
Maybe I'm just blind...
by
Master+Switch
·
· Score: 3
But I don't see the point of Transmeta. Sure, maybe five years ago when Transmeta was just beginning, a low power X86 chip was in need. But, today, I don't see the point. The biggest Power hog for most moderate performance laptop devices(including so called web-pads) isn't the CPU, it's the damn backlit color display. Shaving wattage off of cpu requirements will not gain you much in laptop time. Now, you can say that the super fast laptop chips are power hogs, no one will argue that a PIII mobile running at 600+ MHZ isn't a serious lap heater. The problem is that Transmetta doesn't seem to be able to compete with the high speed chips. So, that targets Transmetta at the midrange laptop device, which again, doesn't suffer from CPU drainage, as much as it suffers from screen power drainage. Now, what happens when the battery manufacturers start to make inroads into higher power density batteries, well, power consumption becomes less of a worry. Now, you could argue that the Transmetta chip could be targeted at devices other than laptops, but here we find that X86 compatablility is a non-issue. Most cell phones use ARM's, PDA's use either MIPS or Motorla 68K variants. You don't need to run PC binaries on these devices. Since power consumption isn't a problem for these chips, what would be the push to use Transmetta chips here? It certaintly wouldn't be performance, since that is not what Transmetta touts as a selling point. It wouldn't be cost either, since ARM's, M68K's, and MIPS variants are all dirt cheap, and can be had from various suppliers, all of whom have a proven track record of delivery. So, no real market in the midrange laptop arena, no market in the high end laptop arena, no market in the PDA and Cell Phone arena. Hmmmm, what market is the Transmetta CPU targeting then? Now, it's cool technology, but I just don't see a strong market for it. I sure hope I'm wrong.
-- -Master Switch, one more element in the machine
Re:Linus Leaving Soon? I think not...
by
DreamerFi
·
· Score: 3
The H1B rules have some set aside for people who are considered to be 'exceptionally' valuable to the US, and as far as I know Linus has one of those, so his employment is not relevant to his visa status. Also, I suspect that if Linus wanted a green card, all he'd have to do is drop a hint, and the immigration services would roll out the red carpet...
Can anyone say "Crusoe-based AOL set-top box that just might be running Linux inside"?
Not that I want an AOL-only set-top box, but the possibility of AOL sending out millions of under-$100 single-purpose set-top PCs in the mail instead of CDs is kinda kicky.
Ok, so maybe I'm living in fantasy land a little bit. At least they'd be more useful than those stupid CDs...
-=-=-=-=-
--
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
Doesn't seem like THAT much.
by
Asparfame
·
· Score: 3
Lots of stock market gurus are beginning to assert that wireless technology will be the the next booming market as the Internet is now.
Companies all over the planet are making billions off of the Internet. Cisco made $500 billion in only 10 years! If Transmeta is going to be such a fore-runner in the field of wireless, a field that will supposedly be exploding in value in the near future, why is 90 million dollars a lot?
I'd expect there to be several sets of "handcuffs" to hold him at Transmeta for a while yet, notably:
I'm sure that Linus has a bunch of stock options, but. Stock option plans tend to have some stipulations.
They tend to vest over time.
Thus, if Linus has options to $20M of shares, it is fairly likely that he only has part of that now, and that leaving now would cost him big.
Those options that aren't vested are lost if he leaves.
At this point, Transmeta stock isn't publicly traded.
Repeat after me: Not Publicly Traded.
I've gotten phone calls from people (morons!) who want to buy Transmeta stock who thought that my Speculations About Transmeta indicated that I actually owned shares.
Despite the "excitement," there is no public market in the stock. Any stock that has vested in Linus Torvalds' hands doesn't have a market in which to sell it.
The theory that the stock is somehow "worth something" is only made true when there is actually a public market in Transmeta stock. Maybe that will happen next year; I suspect it won't be this year.
For those that didn't know, Linus Torvalds is Finnish. He is not an American citizen. And so, his employment at Transmeta is at the "sufferance" of the INS, under an H1B visa.
If Linus walks away from Transmeta, he will very likely not wind up employed by a US company, as he would be asked, fairly shortly, to return to Finland.
As for why Transmeta hired him, I would tend to think that they wanted something more than just a marketing figurehead.
Suggesting that he's a worthless figurehead is decidedly "flameworthy;" I don't have to be part of the Linus Personality Cult to find that distasteful.
Long and short is that there are a number of reasons why Linus is not likely to leave Transmeta tomorrow.
-- If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
AOL + Gateway + Crusoe + Linux = Wireless Web Pad
by
Booker
·
· Score: 4
AOL and Gateway are working together to make a linux-based wireless web pad with a Gecko based browser - I guess this means it'll have a Crusoe chip in it. Cool! Maybe they'll tuck 'em into magazines for free....
AOL release is here and the Gateway release is here
---
Amazing how CNET gets things wrong!
by
Merlin_
·
· Score: 4
"Transmeta, which aims to take on Intel in the processor market, announced that it has received $88 million [snip]".
I guess that the author of this story on CNET was not at the Transmeta press conference way back when. Transmeta is _not_ looking to take on Intel. They specialize in the mobile market, where Intel has not made serious efforts. Looks to me to just be sensationalist journalism. And 88 Million is nothing much for a chip company considering that Transmeta has been running on Angel money for the last 5 years... a lot more than 88 million.....
--
Remembering your name in the morning is already a good start...
Slashdot Mirror
I am rather thinking of the longer term of "a few more years."
(Answers available here. )
Add to the above the question: How long is it taking for the INS to process Green Card applications at the California office, these days?
I'm sure that many people would be prepared to make offers...
At the time that Linus was completing his Master's, there was a joke going around that Linus would wind up walking in to the offices of some UNIX-related company, and say (Finnish/Swedish accent mandatory):
(The assumption being that there's no particular point in resumes, interviews, or any such stuff...)Jokes and offers aside, life isn't usually that simple...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
If I remember correctly, in the initial release Transmeta said something about the chips being made available only to manufacturers. The question is, are they going to use all the new loot to ramp up production, and if so, can John Q. Linux (ha) get his hands on one?
--
Four-digit slashdot ID. Recognize.
I think Transmeta has a lot going for them. This is a groovy little niche, and I think they've got a great plan.
:)
As long as the pricing is right.. I'd _love_ a linux palmtop that didn't make my hand too warm
Your Working Boy,
No, I'm afraid I don't have any links handy ... this is off the top of my head. As to whether a consumer would care about the 400-500 Intel-equivalent-MHz performance, consider that affordable laptops (roughly defined as costing less than $2.5K) don't have Intel or AMD processors running faster than 500MHz.
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
---
Transmeta IS taking on Intel - Intel is taking the mobile market seriously (as well it should, it has a much higher profit margin than desktop processors), both with X86 chips and Strongarm (which intel got when they bought Digital's fabs and development foundries.)
--------------------------------
Ok, so maybe I'm living in fantasy land a little bit. At least they'd be more useful than those stupid CDs...
I'll say. I've already got as many drink coasters as I'll ever need. Maybe AOL set-tops can be used as trivets!
Transmeta's been filing patents for years, which led to the immense speculation about what in the world could they be doing. It didn't mean that they've told the world exactly what they were up to, they just filed patents to protect the important stuff, and all the news writers said "well these are the patents they've been issued, and this is who they're hiring... What could they be doing?"
No... I wish transmeta had held off on announcing anything until they had manufacturers lined up behind them saying "this product will be available on this date". it would have been so much more substantial than them simply saying "here's our chip, everybody!"
My dream come true would be a "webpad" with:
-detachable keyboard/mouse
-size of legal pad
-wireless networking
-standards standards standards (TCP/IP, etc)
-no "service committment" (i.e., just the webpad no contracts)
-under $500
I could use this to run remote X sessions from my desktop anywhere in the house. It would totally ROCK!!
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Haven't you noticed that battery life has *fallen* over the past few years after hitting a peak of nearly 8 hours a while back, we're now back down to 2-3 hours on the heavies, and only an hour or so on the ultralites?
I worked for Dell's laptop group a couple of years ago, and can attest to the fact that the 300 MHz mobile Deschutes (P-II) processor had less than half the battery life of some of our earlier mobile Pentium products - and the CPU was the only significant difference from a power point of view.
Can you imagine how long the batteries in a Sony 505 would last if you could use a two-year old mobile pentium instead of the room heater you have to buy now? I for one would gladly trade 400 MHz of clock for all-day battery life...
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
...maybe we could begin to have overclockable laptops.
Due to the variable clock-rate of the Curso chip and the new chipset needed to drive it. I highly doubt that over-clocking would be a possiblity.
But I could be wrong...
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
Read their page. I quote:
Transmeta Corporation is a privately held Company. The Company presently has adequate funds available to support its operations as well as immediate access to cash to support future growth, and therefore, is not seeking new investments.
While we do see a public offering as a viable alternative for financing future growth, at the present time the Company has not set a timetable for a public offering and can not predict when the stock may be available to the public. If and when the Company were to decided to pursue a public offering, information would be available on the Web site. We would suggest that you stay tuned to the Web site for future news.
So it doesn't look likely any time soon.
um, what kind of mid-range laptops are you talking about?
:)
Every laptop I've used since 486 days has been quite high on heat. Sure, some are better than others, but most now have a fan installed in them. That makes then loud, and less battery efficient.
Consider: The Crusoe-700 is supposedly comparable to a PII-400. So you've got a trade off in the power dept. But how many applications are you going to run on a web pad that requires a high-end PIII? Even a full-fledged laptop isn't really going to need that kind of power. Games don't look terribly good on LCD's, so where is the power going to go? Unused, IMHO.
Now, how many handhelds have a PII-400 in them? None. Personally, I'd love that much power in a little touch screen wireless pad that I can carry around with me. And the fact that it can last 12 hours rocks. It's also going to be lighter. (S3's is supposed to be 2 pounds)
I think Transmeta has a lot going for them. This is a groovy little niche, and I think they've got a great plan.
I'll take one. If you don't want one, then that's more for me.
The Transmeta chip is an emulation chip, I believe
Correct.
and thus get's away from the ancient x86 architecture.
Partially correct. It escapes some of the external hardware architecture, but that's really not much of an issue for a non-IO-heavy system. The transmeta cpu actually executes x86 instructions. Although another instruction set could be developed, this would provide little improvement over emulation of x86. (at least according to initial tests as reported by Linus.)
-p.
The real question is: who's pissed in their pants more, OS vendors like Microsoft or chip vendors like Intel?
Anyone have the scoop on what the money's going to be used for? Just more bigger faster marketing, or do they plan on branching out/diversifying their products...? Massive hiring spree or massive tech spending? Both?
Can your IM do this?
So last week Cmdrtaco has to be begged to publish a message regarding the 80% haircut in all linux stocks. Today, a private company get's an $80M 5th round, and for some reason known only to hemos and taco it warrants an immediate message.
These guys have no editorial integrity.
Dell has a funding organization call Dell Ventures specifically intended to fund companies like Transmeta. The fact that they are not funding Transmeta is just more evidence that Dell is nothing more than Intel's sex slave. Dell doesn't do anything that Intel doesn't want them to. I wouldn't even consider Dell a technology company, because they don't do any original research. The fact that Dell sells computers is just a coincidence - they could be selling toasters without needing to hire new people.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
well, we've heard many arguments, much hype, and several good points about the crusoe. my question is when can we get some reviews of this beast to evaluate whether it's been worth this much of our time? it looks to be cool from the specs and such, but if we believe specs than Windows 2000 is the most stable, fastest operating system on the planet. i honestly hope, for linux's sake, that the crusoe ends up surpassing expectations. can it? it'll be difficult. the most important thing is the price...they have to keep it under $100 for the low end one, while remaing quake3-able. who knows, maybe it will take over the Celery or K6.
unless of course he used some of that new found wealth to contract out the source maintenance...
Remember, Transmeta is maintaining a distribution called Mobile Linux, right?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Massive production on this chips should be along shortly with all this cash they have now.
If they can produces these chips in large numbers, they will be extremely cheap for the average user I am willing to bet.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Ever occur to anyone that Linus might be getting bored with Linux? I mean, if I had worked on a *NIX clone for the past 10 years, I think I'd be bored. Code morphing low-power CPUs are new, exciting, different. Linux could end up being just a small part of his day. Also, the fact that it depends so much on him has been cited as a weakness. Maybe Linux will be turned over to a successor or some kind of committee (sp?).
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Now, if we could just do that with our government....
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
The Transmeta chip is an emulation chip, I believe *check article twice* and thus get's away from the ancient x86 architecture. This approach is much like Apple's constant changing of processor architecture, but this relies on a hardware emulator in the chip. Sounds like a lot of speed loss but the benchmarks will prove the point. Of more intrest, lower voltage means lower heat. If this processor doesn't produce as much heat, maybe we could begin to have overclockable laptops. As it stands right now, I'm running a CPU idler (rain) for my laptop (dell inspiron 7500), but it is still too hot to handle. Anyone out their use the built-in functions for "CPU throttling?"
But I don't see the point of Transmeta. Sure, maybe five years ago when Transmeta was just beginning, a low power X86 chip was in need. But, today, I don't see the point. The biggest Power hog for most moderate performance laptop devices(including so called web-pads) isn't the CPU, it's the damn backlit color display. Shaving wattage off of cpu requirements will not gain you much in laptop time.
Now, you can say that the super fast laptop chips are power hogs, no one will argue that a PIII mobile running at 600+ MHZ isn't a serious lap heater. The problem is that Transmetta doesn't seem to be able to compete with the high speed chips. So, that targets Transmetta at the
midrange laptop device, which again, doesn't suffer from CPU drainage, as much as it suffers from screen power drainage. Now, what happens when the battery manufacturers start to make inroads into higher power density batteries, well, power consumption becomes less of a worry.
Now, you could argue that the Transmetta chip could be targeted at devices other than laptops, but here we find that X86 compatablility is a non-issue. Most cell phones use ARM's, PDA's use either MIPS or Motorla 68K variants. You don't need to run PC binaries on these devices. Since power consumption isn't a problem for these chips, what would be the push to use Transmetta chips here? It certaintly wouldn't be performance, since
that is not what Transmetta touts as a selling point. It wouldn't be cost either, since ARM's, M68K's, and MIPS variants are all dirt cheap, and can be had from various suppliers, all of whom have a proven track record of delivery.
So, no real market in the midrange laptop arena, no market in the high end laptop arena, no market in the PDA and Cell Phone arena. Hmmmm, what market is the Transmetta CPU targeting then? Now, it's cool technology, but I just don't see a strong market for it. I sure hope I'm wrong.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
The H1B rules have some set aside for people who are considered to be 'exceptionally' valuable to the US, and as far as I know Linus has one of those, so his employment is not relevant to his visa status. Also, I suspect that if Linus wanted a green card, all he'd have to do is drop a hint, and the immigration services would roll out the red carpet...
Can anyone say "Crusoe-based AOL set-top box that just might be running Linux inside"?
Not that I want an AOL-only set-top box, but the possibility of AOL sending out millions of under-$100 single-purpose set-top PCs in the mail instead of CDs is kinda kicky.
Ok, so maybe I'm living in fantasy land a little bit. At least they'd be more useful than those stupid CDs...
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
Companies all over the planet are making billions off of the Internet. Cisco made $500 billion in only 10 years! If Transmeta is going to be such a fore-runner in the field of wireless, a field that will supposedly be exploding in value in the near future, why is 90 million dollars a lot?
There's no reason for a sig here.
Thus, if Linus has options to $20M of shares, it is fairly likely that he only has part of that now, and that leaving now would cost him big.
Repeat after me: Not Publicly Traded.
I've gotten phone calls from people (morons!) who want to buy Transmeta stock who thought that my Speculations About Transmeta indicated that I actually owned shares.
Despite the "excitement," there is no public market in the stock. Any stock that has vested in Linus Torvalds' hands doesn't have a market in which to sell it.
The theory that the stock is somehow "worth something" is only made true when there is actually a public market in Transmeta stock. Maybe that will happen next year; I suspect it won't be this year.
There was a Slashdot story on this; see Workers - Including Linus - Left in Limbo by INS
If Linus walks away from Transmeta, he will very likely not wind up employed by a US company, as he would be asked, fairly shortly, to return to Finland.
Suggesting that he's a worthless figurehead is decidedly "flameworthy;" I don't have to be part of the Linus Personality Cult to find that distasteful.
Long and short is that there are a number of reasons why Linus is not likely to leave Transmeta tomorrow.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
AOL release is here and the Gateway release is here
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"Transmeta, which aims to take on Intel in the processor market, announced that it has received $88 million [snip]".
I guess that the author of this story on CNET was not at the Transmeta press conference way back when. Transmeta is _not_ looking to take on Intel. They specialize in the mobile market, where Intel has not made serious efforts. Looks to me to just be sensationalist journalism. And 88 Million is nothing much for a chip company considering that Transmeta has been running on Angel money for the last 5 years... a lot more than 88 million.....
Remembering your name in the morning is already a good start...