Slashdot Mirror
TRON Enters Alliance With Microsoft
David writes "As widely reported on OSNews.com,
Forbes,
IDG,
CNet,
AustralianIT,
and Ashi
Shimbun - Microsoft Corp.
has entered into an alliance with the T-engine
Forum, the consortium behind the free software TRON
operating system. As TRON runs billions of
devices worldwide, this will help Microsoft's goal of cementing WinCE / .NET
in places as diverse as your toaster and cell phone, perhaps in a setup
similar to how X-Windows is in relation to the Linux kernel." (Continued below.)
David continues: "This arrangement is ironic, as Microsoft is part of the reason why the U.S. in the 1980s prevented Japan from putting TRON into schools on the desktop by account of trade rules, which would've meant Linux may've never gone beyond being a footnote in the comp.os.minix archives. No doubt Microsoft is aiming to keep Linux out of the embedded space, and may in the long-term foster an environment where using anything other than industry-licenced OS software on the desktop becomes unviable for everyday tasks because all the infratructurial systems we take for granted today like radio, television, phones, IM, require Palladium-style walled gardens."
I'll never believe it... Tron fights for the users. He'd never work for the MCP.
They fight for the users.
I can't believe Tron sold out to the Master Control Program!
isnt this considered leveraging a monopoly?
Too late, they already put Windows on my gun, and it just keeps rebooting when I pull the trigger.
Blue Screen of Light-Cycle?
10b||~10b -- aah, what a question!
No thanks! Spare me the Microsoft stuff and give me a good old mechanical toaster! Yah!!
The classic arcade game "Discs of Tron" has been renamed "Discs of SELLING OUT."
TRON, Yes! The Intel 83C family is quite capable of running WinCE, and with TRON keeping the bios up, this will work great. Microsoft made a great black power decision.
Beep. Boop. Beep. You have questions. I have answers and your home address.
MS: Who are your users?
TRON: Forget it mister high mighty Microsoft. You aren't making me talk.
MS: Suit yourself
*derez of TRON commences*
In jail, held by the MCP
RAM: Oh my User...Tron--they've got you in here?
TRON: Not for long, friend.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Well, I wonder how much Microsoft paid T-engine to be part of the "alliance." Must have been quite a lot of dough.
Err, shouldn't that be "I for one welcome our Microsoft Overlords... Again"
Toasters & other simple electronics , no problemo . I will have a major problem if Monopolysoft gets into our new futuristic HDTV sets .
Leopards don't change their spots
Lions don't lie with lambs
Microsoft doesn't play well with others
Its really a shame that theres always someone out there who figures theyr'e the ones that can get a fair shake out of Microsoft.
Microsoft allready moved against TRON being adopted by japanese schools. (WTO trade regs were their weapon of choice). Does anyone at the TRON project really think the vole of redmond has had a change of heart ?
The only ray of hope here, is that it will provide a great impetus to embeded linux. I can just see chinese party officials thinking their refrigerators are spying on them because they run microsoft operating systems.
Where's Flynn when ya need him?
Sark: "You're just an ordinary program!"
Flynn:"So are you. One that should have been erased."
Flynn:"Come on, how can you expect to rule the world if you can't solve a few unsolvable problems."
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
it's about time for a low cost dev system for mini systems
tron becomes accessible without a $15,000 licensing fee for tools
It would be nice to actually use an appliance that does not send me messages or have access to the Internet. and do what its suppose to do, MAKE TOAST! Seems Microsoft has way too much time on it's hands to think this crap up. Maybe they should concentrate on making something useful. like an OPERATING SYSTEM!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.geocities.com/baddsectorr
TRON and Microsoft are only working together on a new security system that will be able to protect heterogeneous systems from attack, so there is no reason to worry.
The first SDK for this software ("Skynet") should be out in about 18 months.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Better than having to pay an extra $699 to SCO for my toaster.
Tron 2.0
If there is an big electrical company building another company sometimes there is an antimonopoly comision who needs to aprove the fusion.
M$ has enough money to buy any company making a good operating system. At least, Tron is free.
The agreement will allow the Windows CE .NET platform for digital devices to work on top of T-Kernel.
It'll bork well before charcoal, excellent news.
It's just more assimilation. (and just think, they were probably prepping this deal at the same time they were whining about the China-Japan-Korea superOS being unfair)
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
I'm not looking forward to the BSOD on my toaster...
Hey, wait a minute. I always knew there was something strange about those Microsoft Certified Professionals and they ugly biege MCP polo shirts that were tucked frumpilly into their 38" Husky "big boy" denims. Little did I know how deep their dasterdliness ran. /shutter/
ER
It should be, "Welcome the high and mighty Master Control."
Come now children, we must all bow down to Emporer Gates.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
My first reaction to this is that here is Microsoft trying to stem the tide against the proposed OS that China, Japan, and Korea are thinking about.
In Japan, Microsoft has a fair bit of prestige... unlike, say, in Europe or the US where MS's reputation is sullied by the anti-trust suits. The Japanese, IMO, don't really think that the general public minds MS dominance... but then the Japanese wouldn't say openly that they hate MS or anything. Plus most IT workers would be thrilled to work for MS Japan... they have lots of cash after all. There seems to be no debate here about "which OS is better" like there is in other western countries.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
..."Windows Powered"(TM) toaster sticks fork in YOU!
~Philly
BIT: no
Talkie Toaster
Would anybody like some toast?
Well then, would anybody like some toast?
Microsoft Certified Professionals?
----
* Before someone tries to corrects me, don't worry, I already know the reference to Tron the movie.
Ashi Shimbun? Is someone pulling my leg?
if it means that when I can't figure out how to use a kitchen appliance a little anthropomorphized cartoon refrigerator character pops up, waves at me and tells me what to do.
For any device with complicated enough functionality that it makes sense to put a microprocessor into it, it may actually be a useful feature for the device to be able to answer http requests with an XML document that provides a system status report. If you have 100 toasters or whatever, this will allow to check conveniently and efficiently which ones are broken.
Anything with Palladium or DRM I would not buy because it cripples my right as the consumer buying the product.
Wow, definitely time I got some sleep ;)
I guess we'll know in a couple of years.
This will mark the return of Clippy, mark my words.
It appears you're trying to make toast. Would you...
A) Like advice on which bread to use?
B) Adjust your toast settings (will require Microsoft TOAST(TM)(R) Install CD)
C) Prepare your spread of choice?
D) Just go make some damn eggs (Microsoft Eggs will open in new window)
1980's: There are no problems, only solutions.
2000's: There are no competitors, only Microsoft.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
please! no more "Tron & MCP" jokes!!! i can't take it anymore!!!
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
I can see it now:
Your Toast Has Caused an Invalid Page Fault in MFC42.DLL
I guess this would be okay as long as I can use P2P file-sharing software on my toaster. Wouldn't that be nice? I've heard that Linux can run on anything more powerful than a toaster, but if Microsoft begins running NT on toasters, maybe somebody should produce a similar device based on Linux. Put speakers on it. WAIT A MINUTE!!! Will the new toasters/fridges/alarm clocks/cyborgs/zombies be vulnerable to virus attacks? And what exactly (If MS beats Linux to the toaster) does a blue toaster of death look like?
Esoteric reference.
Microsoft's goal of cementing WinCE / .NET in places as diverse as your toaster...
Great, I already have enough trouble getting my toast cooked the right amount, now with crashes all the time, it will be impossible to get my toast cooked properly!
I guess I better get used to the idea of blue toast!
"Some git installed Linux on my toaster. Took me ages to figure out that you have to hold the shift key to adjust the browning knob!"
they'll charge you no more than a few hundred for your own toaster, provided that you can't get a shell on it.
(Does a Titanium PowerBook count as a toaster? I'm willing to demonstrate cooking with it.)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The first thing I thought of when I saw this write-up was this poster about MS's new OS.
Would you like some blue screened toast with your DRM coffee?
10. Hey Jeff Bridges: Time to get back to the arcade! It's Tron 2 time, not "The Bigger Lebowski".
9. When that whirling MCP pillar slows down, it looks just like Steve Ballmer.
8. Microsoft brass threatening Apple execs to send them back to the garage they started in.
7. Don't ya just love those little Recognizers moving across the screen stomping worms?
6. Anything that gets Boxleitner and Jurasik acting again brings us closer to that Babylon 5 re-launch.
5. TRON? "Space Paranoids". Microsoft? I'm paranoid just using the 'Net.
4. I can't see enough of the replay of the time when they sent Clippy down to die on the game grid.
3. Microsoft now suing the moribund Star Trek franchise to smithereens for DS9's use of the Solar Sailor in one episode.
2. Wendy Carlos changes back to Walter in honor of the composition of new TRON music.
1. When that whirling MCP pillar slows down, it looks just like Steve Ballmer.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
<badaboom>
Seriously, there would also be "spinoff" toaster manufacturers who make really pretty and easy to use toasters (Mandrake), and even portable toasters that don't need to be bolted to the counter (Knoppix) - which, thanks to the power of apt-get, can be bolted to the counter and drowned in 8,000 (yes, really!) accessories if you so desire.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
now I'm gonna have to reboot my toaster!
- - - If the sun is a star, why can't I see it at night?
because my toaster's embedded Windows CE seized up and I can't eject the toast.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
Next MS is going to want to install Palladium in my children. Does that mean i can't reverse engineer them? (DMCA) ;)
...but grab the source first!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The MCP was a completely closed system that tried to control programs by relegating them to little sandboxes. They were only allowed to communicate through I/O when and if the MCP allowed it. Sounds a lot like Linux, actually.
Take the free system that resulted after the MCP was destroyed. Programs were free to run about the system, interface with users and each other without restriction. Sounds more like Windows than anything else.
Given this course of action, even devices like my vacuum cleaner and mini-fridge will be vulnerable to DCOM exploits.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Is this Tron kernel thing really Free Software? Their FAQ doesn't sound like it...
Well bring out your tinfoil hats everyone. Microsoft has already created this OS to cement their foot in the door.
WindowsCE
WindowsME
WindowsNT
That's WindowsCEMENT
Yup, time to bring on the tinfoil body suit so they don't pick up my vibe.
I think that should be "I for one, welcome our new ToasterLords!"
requirements: 512MB RAM and a Pentium 5 itll make a cup in 30 minutes, because of the number of times you would need to reboot the coffee maker! i always believed in the KISS (KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID) philosophy! who would want WinCE and .NET on an hard-realtime embedded system?!
damned! where is this world going.
As they did with everyone else with whom they've "allied", the alliance will last exactly as long as it takes for Microsoft to get any proprietary information they want, then they'll kill the deal. The industry is littered with the empty shells of companies formerly "allied" with Microsoft.
Here MS is trying to buy their way into the largest 'non pc' market there is.
If this is real, then it spells disaster for a LOT of embedded people out there..
Ultimately it will impact us 'regular folk', when you have to license your damned refrigerator, and MUST have it online or it stops working.... or wonder if your ABS brakes will really work when it comes time to use them. God help us all.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Therefore: BSD is dying, QED.
Wait, now I'm confused. What was this analogy about?
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Please download it off some obscure site, then satisfy its dependencies then satisfy the dependencies of its dependencies only to find out that it either blows up when you use sht command or would not compile due to bugs in the code/different GCC version/missing files.
Martha, the kitchen has a virus ...... again...
hmm... as far as I can tell, this is a seriously spun press release. All that's really happening as far as I can make out is MS are porting .NET to TRON. This is news of the magnitude that JVMs exist for TRON....
Of course, rescuing the dying TRON in the face of Sino-Korean Linux support may not be easy at all..
Microsoft's goal of cementing WinCE / .NET in places as diverse as your toaster and cell phone, perhaps in a setup similar to how X-Windows is in relation to the Linux kernel."
Good so we can take off the WinCE bit and just replace it with X-Windows?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
HTH. HAND.
-- HG Pennypacker, wealthy industrialist and philanthropist
Nothing will ever come of this. It is just all marketing hype. MS has billions to throw at crap like this. They sign on, screw with the standards and then drop the effort for some new thing they want everyone to upgrade to.
Can you imagine how much RAM your washing machine will require to run Windows?
PUH-LEASE!!!!!
someone get the loonix crowd in the right direction.
when referring to your computer, PLEASE call it 'boxen'
You'll bee 31337 boose!
...this will help Microsoft's goal of cementing WinCE / .NET....
I'm not so sure the use of the word "cement" was entirely accidental. (Don't tell me I'm the only one who immediately thought of the Windows CeMeNT thing?)
________________________________________________
suwain_2
TRON + Linux = "T-Linux"
I tried to email these bone-heads, however I get weird errors trying to send email to office@www.t-engine.org
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Like Terminator 3 said:
Microsoft is developping Sky.NET
it will be use in all sorts of commodity appliance
then some big worms will doom us all...
let's hack the gibson and destroy tron!
oh wait, wrong movie. damn.
I seem to remember another product called Mosaic. Microsoft did something with it, and Mosaic pretty much disappeared. Hmm... Could the same thing happen here?
hey!
I hate MS more then the average /.er. However this snip from the article doesn't sound that bad.
.NET platform for digital devices to work on top of T-Kernel.
The forum is developing a next-generation TRON system called T-Kernel to speed up the development time for new electronics products. The group will make the source code for T-Kernel available in November, Mr Yamada said.
The agreement will allow the Windows CE
So it will still be free and the code will still be open and NOT controlled by MS. However, MS is happy to just get their nasty claws in on this one way or another. Now, I wonder what the situation will be in a few years as MS tries to take this over and create another monopoly.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Wasn't java written explicitly for this purpose? Doesn't Sun have 2 years ahead in thin client R&D?
Might be a nice way for any competitors to find the niche market years before any other. Wireless and a small control unit and/or software suit may eliminate coffee making for tens of thousands of "geeks" around the world.
Still better than MS Toaster tm. , which must be bought inseperable from the countertop, and costs hundreds of dollars. Not to mention the random fires and worm infestations that would afflict your kitchen.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Linux is probably the biggest threat to TRON in Japan given Japanese government and large industrial giants like Panasonic and Sony's attitude toward Linux these days. On government side, the Japanese government is proposing to Chinese and Korean governments to develop Microsoft alternative based on Linux. Sony, Panasonic, and others were probably biggest licensee of TRON are moving to Linux.
What does TRON has to do to survive? Hooking up with enemy's enemy is a unavoidable.
TRON is unlicensed, reliable, and light weight. A .NET layer is going to have to be hidieously slimmed down to fit in most devices TRON is used in.
The only reasons I can see a vendor using .NET would be a perception that some development time might be cut in graphics front ends and networking stacks. There are already network and graphics libraries in play in the embedded world, and unless .NET can prove very nearly as tightly coded, who'll want to pay to support the overhead?
The cost driver in most mass consumper electronics isn't the software developer, it's the bits and pieces making up the device. Is Samsung gonna want to increase the OEM cost of a phone by, say, $10/unit to support some neato Microsoft hardware abstraction?
I think this will be much ado over nothing.
Luke, help me take this mask off
What it means is you buy compatible OS/PDA, subscribe to the right .Net service, cable company, and buy the right appliances and they might all work together,... occasionally.
Ou, ou, ou, Missta Carter...
It's so predictable, and none of them are even clever. Yeah, let's just make extremely obvious references as fast as we can so as to get the first round of mod points near the top of the discussion threads.
As soon as I saw the headline, I swear my eyes rolled by themselves in preperation.
Besides, if you were even remotely clever you would have said "BSOD=Blue Screen of Derez?"
"Sufferin' succotash."
Seems like MS now is to TRON as Trolltech/Qtopia
is to embedded Linux. That said, original TRON is
public domain, so it's not clear why MS would
need any agreement to port their CE GUI to it.
Could it be then that the new TRON T-kernel will
not be public domain. That would suck for a lot
of manufacturers.
They happen in every single article, they are never any less unclever, and the mods never seem to stop falling over themselves modding them up fast enough.
It's not funny to say, "But wait until you have to pay $699 to SCO for it!" for *insert random topic* in every single article. When did the general sense of humor in Slashdot become so insanely moronic? It feels like Beavis and Butthead around here sometimes.
"Sufferin' succotash."
If this is an open-source project, doesn't it force MS to disclose their code too?
Otherwise MS is in breach. Not that they aren't already in contempt for a lot of things they've been found guilty of...
Or could this be what Microsoft calls a viral infection into themselves and could the open-source community use this to force MS to open all their source?
How do we know MS hasn't already included GPL code in Windows without releasing the source-code?
By SCO's weird logic, all of MS's products are derivative of GPL components, and MS should be forced to give back all the money they've collected.
Can you imagine that?
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
and..
"Now wait a minute, I wrote you."
"I've gotten 2,415 times smarter since then." - MCP
I read the article and if I understand correctly, they already have the next generation kernel. Now they are adding a layer, so that windows stuff like CE.NET can run. So basically an emulation layer that converts windows API calls to TRON system calls. It's still open source and MS can't hijack it. If anything, it will force microsoft to make their applications more reliable and they should learn how to write a real-time operation system in the process. Since winCE obviously isn't a "true" real-time OS in the pure definition.
They said the inventor could of been a penny billionaire just by the amount of devices it has been installed on over the years. In fact he runs it on his home pc instead of Windows.
I'm sure MS wants to get something in there they can charge royalties on.
As a sidenote, the main thrust of the T-Engine platform is high portabilty of middlewares across various embedded emvironments with different CPUs. This portabilty is made possible by a standard opensource kernel, which is based on micro-ITRON 3.0, and standalization of hardware. Dr. Sakamura even said he is going to fix the specification of the realtime kernel by the end of year and it will not be changed for the next HUNDRED years for the sake of comatibilty of middlewares. Moreover, there are rumors that a subsidary of Panasonic is developing a desktop operating system based on T-Engine. This is a very exciting year for the TRON project indeed.
a toaster that can play Ski Free, that was the bizomb yo
WinCE / .NET in places as diverse as your toaster and cell phone
So.. then... the smoke will mean it's working? I don't get it...?
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
The windows toaster will connect to the internet without your permission and download advertisements that will be burned onto the bread you put into the toaster. The linux toast will just come out with a cute penguin on it, but of course you'll be able to change that by setting the toast-image flag.
I'm boycotting M$. I don't use M$ products. Don't have any M$ products in my house and never will. None in my 1975 German car either..
I don't have anything new, I don't buy new things. Tough shit M$..
Everyone says that Tron is free open source software but I cannot find any source to download. Anyone know where it might be?
Don't you know? NetBSD already runs on many toaster platforms.
I said it before and I'll say it again: where can I find the source and the license to tron? It seems that tron is more of an open specification of a RTOS, and there are a ton of closed binary-only implementations.
This actually kinda reminds me of the MIPS processor architechure.. there is an open specification and lots of people produce chips for the ISA.. but it wasn't until opencores came along that there was an open implementation.. and there is no open implementation for TRON yet, AFAIK.
Is tron open-source? Where is the code? Where is the license? Whats the story here? If it really is open-source, why can't someone point to the code? Something is fishy here.. or perhaps its just lost in the translation.. but I can't figure this out.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
since bill gates and paul allen wrote TRON, the 'trace-on' command they added to BASIC when they were first hacking together MS-DOS from what they bought from Seattle Computer Products, couldn't it be said that TRON was always in an alliance with Microsoft? :)
Just raise the taxes on crack.
Maybe that joke about Microsoft making something that doesn't suck (vacuum cleaner) may be coming to real life very soon?
Un-news
... that you deserve a mod-up. The world hasn't got enough Terry Pratchett references yet.
The Amazing Maurice rocks!
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Here is there address in order to ask them if they are:
:-)))
1) Completely mad
2) In advanced stages of dementia
3) Under severe coercion
4) Have a death wish.
Remember not to sent inflammatory correspondence as this is unlikely to influence them
T-Engine Forum Secretariat
(In the YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory)
The 28th Kowa Building
2-20-1 Nishigotanda
Shinagawa Ward
Tokyo 141-0031
Japan
Tel: +81-3-5437-2270 (Representative)
Tel: +81-3-5437-2338
Fax: +81-3-5437-2271
Email: office@www.t-engine.org
anyone of you guys read the T-Engine site??
http://www.t-engine.org/english/member.html
it says Microsoft is an A Grade Member and is a Board Member? whoa! i didnt get to see the site before the alliance so did MS just become board member in an instant or what?
Microsoft is going to be trying to run their lousy software on toasters, coffee pots, and VCRs now.
Just what I needed. I wake up and go to make breakfast, and the coffeee pot it locked up; I have to reboot it with Ctrl+Alt+Del
My toaster needs 3 critical updates installed so I can make an English muffin.
I already get a blue screen when I switch video input from cable to the VCR, but now I can look foward to seeing error messages when I do.
You may be thinking of a vendor sht. He's probably using GNU sht, which takes caliber etc from a file of tab (NOT space -- think make!) separated records -- exact syntax available in handy 'info' format.
Frankly it's easier to just use windows and call IFirearmsEx::WGunSystemBulletOperationShootEx32(H
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I'm still trying to Ctl-Alt-Del and End Task on the ice machine (which is of course "not responding") and reboot my refridgerator so I can make dinner!
- Right now, everytime I run a Java app, I have to upgrade Java (granted, I only run an app about once a year...).
- And the last time I wanted to run a Java App, it was a Java 1.4 app, and while it was out for Windows, Java 1.4 for Mac OS X took another 3 months until it came out
:-(
- When creating apps that should be compatible with consoles and cellphones, you cannot rely on an upgradable runtime environment because these devices often aren't upgradable at all. Therefore, true "run anywhere" cannot be promised without freezing Java.
Of course, to freeze Java, Sun would need to would first need to make the language bug free (which couldn't have been said of 1.1, and there still are bugs in the newest incarnations) and have a clear, nice, rounded-up feature-set.We can still hope, though, that they will someday see the light :-(
Why would I want my car to work like a personal computer? Wouldn't it be better if my car behaved like a car?
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
How likely is it that we are going to see WinCE/.NET on small devices? These still typically use 8/16-bit micros. I would imagine WinCE requires a 32-bit micro.
Sure, prices are dropping but the smaller micros will always be cheaper. Let's face it, they're good enough for a microwave or toaster or...
Attention programs: the users are trying to remove you from bondage: keep hope! (courage mom)
thats what i thought of when i saw the title... imagine a one armed dragon with an ass load of money
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Does this mean that my toaster will be susceptable to viruses now?
The Matrix is real... but I'm only visiting!