Slashdot Mirror
A Motherboard That Doesn't Require An OS
An anonymous reader submits a link to this review of "motherboard that allows access to your multimedia devices via a special BIOS. No operating system required! Good for a home entertainment PC I guess." The review says that it will come bundled with a TV tuner card, too.
Just when I overclock mine, they cancel Martha Stewart.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yeah, it is so hard to come by an OS these days. I mean, they are SO expensive!
This will cause the death of linux. I mean what's better than a free OS? NO OS!
Show me an OS that doesn't require a motherboard, then I'll be impressed.
Well, everybody knows that BIOS stands for Built-In Operating System (bla bla, old Neal Stephenson joke)
Bios used to mean, basic input output services. Now I guess it means basically inoperable operating system...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
I'm sure I read something on Slashdot a while back which was meant to be very worrying, like Microsoft proposing standards for BIOS which lock people ever more into Windows. That Soyo is playing with a motherboard which requires no operating system, I rather wonder if the CEO of Soyo will be taking to carrying a gun and checking into hotels using an assumed name because he feels someone from Redmond considers this all very unsavory and threatening and intends to bump him off.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Does anyone know if they're going to be porting Duke Nukem: Forever to run on BIOS.
No operating system required! Good for a home entertainment PC I guess." The review says that it will come bundled with a TV tuner card, too
Hmm, let's see: a computer with a small piece of dedicated software in ROM, a TV tuner card and a monitor? Last I checked, I could get that sort of device, minus the messy VGA and keyboard cables, and with about zero boot time, at K-Mart for about $100, and with a bigger screen too.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Bah. It's Obviously Slashdotted.
So now you have to flash your bios every time a new codec-version is released?
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
when bios stops meaning basic input output system and it means built in operating system.
If you can't play Solitaire on it, it's not an OS.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
No, it's a BIOS. Bi means two, so it's twice the OS as MS media center!
No, according to MS, an operating system *MUST* include the following:
...
a) GUI
b) web browser
c) media player
d) text editor
e) solitaire
f) metadata filesystem
g) NSA backdoors
h) severely restricted CLI
i) device driver incompatibilities
j) minimum 128M memory footprint
k) MSN beg screens
and finally
l) royalties for MS
This may not be a complete list, feel free to add (but not subtract from) it.
...Every screen is a blue screen.
Wow, so there is no board required? Do you just plug it right into your head?
...until an OS is loaded. PC users may feel constrained by the total lack of choices in software, but Mac users should feel right at home.
But It Only Shows Bad Ideas Often Succeed By Intrigue Or Stealth.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
... ant tell him it really was Built In Operating System after all.
Don't you mean 'Badly Implemented Operating System' - i.e. the future Microsoft BIOS? Or is that 'Bastardized Input Output System'?
PC Makers reinventing the wheel? What about 90% of Linux Software Developers ;)
--note to the anal: this is a "joke", intended to make one "laugh"
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Could you imagine what would happen if Microsoft got a hold of this.
Welcome to Windows 2008 BIOS PRO.... You have 78 critical BIOS updates to perform.
To uninstall Internet Explorer: Replace chips 45- 1035 and solder points 20, 40, 30, and 90. (At least you would be able to uninstall it I guess).
When installing Real player: It permanently writes spyware to part of your flash memory and then charges you for it.
Hey look no pointless curley braces or semicolons... just like Python
Say it with me: OpenFirmware
Better yet: Sing it with Mitch Bradley : Firmware, Open Firmware...
But does it run Linux?
I mean...
Does it support Ogg Vorbis?
Er, wait...
Shit. I'm out of material.
It's not ressources, but resources.
The BIOS is just enough code to start the machine. I would imagine that at this point, BIOS calls represent a relatively small portion of the BIOS compared to the code needed for booting from USB Mass storage, 1394 mass storage, the network, etc etc, not to mention the goofy interfaces that people occasionally put on their BIOS as if I needed a GUI to set up my motherboard. If they want to add value, they could put useful help messages in there instead of shit like "2: Sets this option to 2".
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What are you talking about? Mike D and Ad Rock are NOTHING without MCA.
if it blinks 12:00 then it's a vcr.. ;)
it is not extream, but extreme.
No, it's ex-stream!
std::cout.~ostream();
Actually, after l, there is...
M) Clippy