Slashdot Mirror
Transmeta Unveiled in November?
terrified writes "This little blurb on Yahoo news this morning says that Linus is hinting at an announcement from Transmeta at the November Comdex in Las Vegas. " We need to set up some pools: When the secret will be revealed, and maybe some sort of pools for what the secret is. Transmeta employees who leak data to me will be given a cut if I win ;)
Just as a general observation, did anyone else find it amusing to see just how strikingly different in nature Linus' day and evening jobs are?
He got famous by starting a completely open project, in a very humble fashion, inviting anyone who felt like it to help turn it into something really useful. Everything in the spirit of cooperation and selflessly making things better for users everywhere. I think we can say he succeeded far beyond what he set out to do and that his work has affected the industry on the whole to no small degree.
Now he's an anchor of one of the most secretive companies in this industry. He can't even say anything about what he's working on or what the company is going to do. We only know the company grabs patents to the left and to the right and we anticipate that it's going to make a big splash someday.
Whether or not that is true remains to be seen, but hiring him was a good move by Transmeta. Legends are the only thing the company has, so far.
somehoe I doubt they will be able to live up the hype we have created for them.
Transmeta and Linus is just a puppet figure in a greater scheme. Read this:
"Torvalds and other people known to be involved with Transmeta, including Microsoft's co-founder Paul Allen and Chief Executive David Ditzel, have been careful not to reveal what the company is up to."
And:
"The combination of money from Microsoft's co-founder and know-how from Torvalds [...]"
(From Roland Moller, Helsinki newsroom +358-9-680 50 242, fax +358-9-680 2284, news@reuters.fi)
Let me see if I can get this straight: Linus went to work in a company that is also funded by Microsoft people, that until today did nothing but let Linus compile kernel code every day so that he can churn out an operating system that is "a serious threat to Microsoft", the very same company whose employees are funding him...
I think that Transmeta was set up by Paul Allen so that Linus could work on his Linux to artificially create competition to Microsoft, just so that they can claim they do have serious competition... (I doubt Paul Allen gave his money just to bet on both horses in this race.) Clever, if you ask me.
Isn't it interesting that until Linus joined Transmeta, hardly anybody heard about Linux, and a year after he did that, we see Linux on practically every computer store's shelves?...
Just food for thought.
| | |_/\_|_/\_ lala@interaccess.com '/~~\'/~~\ http://surf.to/lala
I was there. It was yesterday and yes, Transmeta did come up several times... the first question out of the audience after Linus spoke was "what does Transmeta do?"
Some crazy woman wanted to ask Linus something: She started talking about how information technology could be used for monitoring people and stealing their freedom. THEN she started claiming that in the '50's 3 million people had been implanted with a MICROCHIP (a microchip in the 50's!) and that just last week she spoke with a colonel who had refused a microchip. Then she furiously went on saying that soon all babies will be implanted and in the future it will be possible to remotely read anyone's thoughts with such a chip. At this point the audience was laughing their asses off. To this Linus simply replied, "well that was kind of an UFO talk, but.. I can' really reveal what Transmeta is doing (laughter from audience), but anyways, I think information technology will actually help people gain more freedom'
Later on someone was talking about how technology can help us to talk to old or sick people who can no longer talk, to which Linus replied 'talking to the dead, you mean?'. Then one of the panelists said 'Now I REALLY want to know what Transmeta is doing'
This is done in a bit of haste, sorry...
No new revelations of the mysterious Transmeta
Creator of the Linux Operating System, Linus Torvalds's employes creates some questions: Nobody knows what it does. Torvalds made one revelation to Tietoviikko today: He revealed when he will reveal what Transmeat does. The schedule for the announcement will be told in the Comdex trade show in mid-November.
No further information on Torvald's mysterious employes has spread to public. Transmeta has been suspected for example to be working on a highly efficient microprocessor. Or some other groundbreaking program. Transmeta's homepage at www.transmeta.com doesn't offer too many hints - not even in the source code for the page, which points out that there are no revelations on Transmeta there.
"My strongest guess is that Transmeta doesn't do anything", said Risto Siilasmaa, the CEO of information security company Data Fellows in the Information Society seminar held in Helsinki University on Wednesday. One possibility is that Transmeta's employees just hang around in their work place, and then sell the hyped-up company onwards for a good price.
Philosopher Pekka Himanen, who also spoke at the Information Society seminary told that he has visited the front of Transmeta's office. The office building has darkened glasses and doesn't let visitors in.
Linus Torvalds placed his words carefully in Thurday on Transmeta announcements. "I can only say now that we will announce the schedule for the announcement at Comdex, but this can also be subject to changes", Torvalds said cryptically.
(Translated from http://www.tietoviikko.c om/cgi-bin/lueuutinen.cgi?id=45382)
--
Midgard Project - Open Source CMS
Their findings, scheduled to be released in November, reveal much about human interaction as it relates to the above factors, and is entitled, "Gullibility: We Can't Believe You Retards Fell For It!"
--
"I find your lack of faith disturbing." -- Darth Vader
trans- \Trans-\ [L. trans across, over.] A prefix, signifying over, beyond, through and through, on the other side, as in transalpine, beyond the Alps; transform, to form through and through, that is, anew, transfigure.
/may't*/ or (Commonwealth) /mee't*/ A prefix meaning one level of description higher. If X is some concept then meta-X is data about, or processes operating on, X.
meta -/me't*/ or
both definitions from dictionary.com
btw the name transmeta was almost supplanted by Interpseudo, Megareference, and PrestoChango!!!
The multiple personality processor is not a new idea of course, although doing it as a microprocessor may be.
... etc)).
The Burroughs B1700 (as I recall) was one such user-microprogrammable CPU, with standard microprograms to optimize the architecture for running ALGOL programs, or for COBOL programs, and so on. I seem to recall from the same era a nanoprogrammable machine -- the nanocode was horizontal (very wide instruction word) and that reprogrammed the architecture on which the (vertical) microprograms ran (which reprogrammed
Doing all this on a microprocessor would be pretty neat (I'm trying to remember if Intel's iAPX 432 Ada chip had some of this capability). Being able to do it on the fly (at a context switch, say) from a micro- or nano-program cache would be doubly so.
Whether applications (or even the kernel) could be compiled down to the microinstruction level would very much depend on the specific memory architecture - microprogram words might be a totally different size from the main memory and transferring data/code between the two different memories could be too much of a bottleneck to run the application that way. But it probably wouldn't be necessary: a really smart compiler will optimize the top level instruction set for the program and generate the appropriate microcode for that instruction set. (Some work was done on this on the micro/nano programmable machines of back in the late 70's - I haven't followed it since then.)
Of course, for any such chip, being able to run native x86/PPC/you-name-it binaries would fall out as a natural given appropriate swappable microcode. Given techniques developed for Java machines like JIT, those binaries could even be recompiled on-the-fly into better microcode for improved performance over what the orginal chip would give. The trick comes in managing all this, which is where someone with operating system expertise comes in.
-- Alastair
While I wonder what exactly it is that they do over there at transmeta I'm not going to enter into a pool or get too excited about it. Afterall they are just another company with some kind of product to push...can't be anything too terribly exciting there. The whole "we are top secret and we aren't telling you anything" is just a marketing gimick to raise attention. Guess what it worked! I'm even curious. Lets just hope whatever it is they do or make is as good as all the speculation makes it seem.
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
It's funny though. In the age of corporate memos leaking to the media, hype for everything from tacos to movies, Transmeta's (unintentionally?) pulled the greatest publicity stunt of all time: silence.
Werd.
As much as I'd like to think Transmeta will be coming out with some drastically different way of thinking of processors, I can't help but wonder if all of the hype is simply that, just hype. They do benifit greatly from the publicity caused by the secrecy, and it provides pretty much 'free advertising' for them. When I see it, I will whole heartedly cheer them on, but, as the saying goes.. "SHOW ME the MONEY!!!!"
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
The secret came out yesterday, as Representatives from transmeta unveiled the culmination of the past two years off effort: a pickle that glows green, yet is not radioactive nor toxic. The project was kept shrouded in secrecy because of the threat of Transmeta's space age glowing pickle technology becoming revealed to the public and other companies.
"We wanted to corner the market on glowing pickles, and because of the kind of cutthroat competition in this field, Transmeta had to do everything it could to keep it's intellectual property safe," said CEO of Transmeta David Ditzel.
Reached for comment at his home, Transmeta employee Linus Torvalds had this to say:
"I didnt want to work on something that was directly related to Linux."
The pickle technology developed at Transmeta is clean and amenable to mass production. With the release of this product, Transmeta establishes itself as one of the leading high tech pickle vendors.
"From now on, when you say -glowing pickle-, the one thing that will come to mind is -transmeta-. They will corner the market with their extremely solid product," says market analyst Reddy Terwal.
The glowing pickle product, incidentally, will be named "This product is not named yet".
--
Seriously though folks, does _ANYONE_ know what the hell is going on in there? Do you think that just maybe, perchance, this great secrecy is a nice little PR move to get people excited?
Remember the simpsons episode where "gabbo" came to springfield? The only ads they ran for him either went "Gabbo is COMING!!" or "gabbo.. Gabbo.. GABBO!!", about 3 second soundbytes. Somehow, it smells the same way for this whole Transmeta thing.
-Laxative
My guess is they've been slaving away on the technology behind the next generation of gaming, a new breed of interactive fiction with incredible lifelike gameplay.
Though shadowy contacts with Transmeta's sinister agents I have managed to obtain this transcript, which should hopefully convey some the raw excitement on offer.
Transmeta Adventure
An Interactive Next-Generation Gaming Experience
by Linux Torwald and David Ditzy
You are in a cave there is BILL GATES here!!!
What do you want to do now TELL ME!
> smell bill
BILL GATES smell of POO!!!
> shoot bill
You shoot the BILL GATES with GUN! He disappears in a puff of smoke! Very good!
(Your score has gone up by two points.)
> release new software release beating windows
Yes! You have won!! and You get yoghurt!
(--end of transcript--)
Apparently the full version will also feature a section where you have to get the treasure and successfully negotiate a maze of twisty little stock options, all alike. Personally I can't wait.
(Look, none of us have a clue what's they're doing, so why not fill this article up with off-topic rubbish? Well that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.)
--
Honestly, the last time I heard this much speculation, pointed silence, and rumer-mongering around Slashdot was....
....April Fools?
Call me cynical, but I got played for a sap then, and I don't really intend to this time around.
Transmeta may come out with something Really Cool - but until They say something official about it, it doesn't really affect me.
As I understand the term, "vaporware" is an announced but not (and possibly never to be) released product, publicized in order to "compete" with an existing product. The idea is to prevent buyers from purchasing the existing product while waiting (maybe forever) for the release of yours. To skip the usual anti-MS rhetoric, I consider Sony's PS2 and Nintendo's Dolphin projects to be vaporware competition to Sega's Dreamcast (even though I am holding out for PS2 myself).
If Transmeta is vaporware, what existing product are they competing with? They aren't pre-empting sales of any existing product, because no one knows exactly what product Transmeta is supposed to be better than. Vaporware, no. Not hype either, because they aren't promoting whatever they're doing themselves, a wierd sort of anti-hype. What we're seeing (and generating for that matter) is "Buzz", all coming from outside sources who want to know what's going on.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
.. to have Transmeta get all the Linux nerds frothing at the mouth to go to this year's Comdex.
This is the best advertising stunt going - wish I had thought of it.
A little planning goes a long way...
Oh comeon, your plasma is only worth a cookie or two, get real. If you were really serious you would sell one of your lungs for COMDEX.
You set up a company, keeping secret exactly what it is you are working on. You raise Venture Capital. You hype like mad [but see below...]. You raise more and more VC. You float the company in one way or another. You hype the price up an dup and up. You sell your stock. You announce "Oh shit. Our vapor product didn't work so we are abandoning it but we'll be back later". You then wait a little while, start up another company and continue the process - those who found the company make an absolute FORTUNE out of this. It's been done many times before, and it'll be done again.
The only thing unique about Transmeta's approach is that they themselves do not publically hype, they just reply on Linus' devoted followers to do that for them - seems to have paid off bigtime, folks.
No doubt this will be marked as flamebait or a troll...
Someone I know listened to Linus' talk
in Helsinki a few days ago, and apparently
someone asked him about NSA's implant chip
that can be used to read peoples minds.
Linus replied: "Well, I really can't talk about the things Transmeta does"
Slashdot already had a preview of our product. It was posted to get reaction without there be criticism of our product. Now all the bugs are almost worded out and you can know!
Risto Siilasmaa (CEO of DataFellows) commented the issue at the Information Society-seminar (which Linus Torvalds attended) in Helsinki on Wednesday: "My strongest guess is that Transmeta doesn't actually do anything."
There is some speculation that Transmeta's employees just hang around at their office and sell the company for a good price after this fuzz. Finnish philosopher Pekka Himanen mentioned that he has actually been in front of Transmeta's office and stated that the office has darkened windows and no visitors are allowed there.
I think that's exactly what the original poster meant. Transmeta is an upstart company with some new idea in working.. perhaps a good idea. An announcement for their new project would hit the news with as much chance as any other technical announcement of being hot and discussed by many. Instead, they have Linus answering "I can't tell you it's a secret" to every interviewer asking him what he does for a living.. result: everybody knows transmeta before they even come out with a product in their hands. And what's more.. everybody is curious to see what Linus is been up to all this time. What better publicity could they possibly get?
Nick Moraitakis
-- say with me: i'm a monkey child
This would doubtless do a good job of popping the ``Internet Bubble,'' and could result in an overall market bloodbatch as people re-examined the non-existent value of other enterprises that have seen bloated valuations due to peoples' miscomprehension of the use of "e-Business."
It would, however, be rather less fun for the principal participants, as it would be a downright fraud to issue an IPO to a thus-worthless company and then walk away with a bundle of dollars.
The above interpretation of matters also would not survive the scrutiny required by an IPO. See RHAT 424B1 Filing and S1.
I'm still biased towards the material I wrote way back when on Transmeta; it seems nearer accurate than anything publicized before or since...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I think it will be a processor that can change it's personality by reloading microcode. If they do it right, I can imagine a processor that can support multiple personalities simultaneously. Imagine each process on the system running under a different personality by having multiple sets of microcode loaded and switching between them as processes are switched. One process could run linux or windows with a x86 microcode loaded while another could run MacOS with a 68K microcode loaded. Each of these processes would provide a virtual machine to run applications. On-chip cache memory densities have gotten to the point where I think this might be possible. It would be the ultimate in emulation.
The lunatic you are talking about is Rauni-Leena Luukkanen-Kilde. She is claiming for example that the US government has some aliens in its posession. Her books sell very well, I think.
I think the seminar was great. It was great to see Linus and the CEO of Datafellows throw some opinions on oss vs. proprietary and a few other things. Linus was just repeating his view that over time the basic software will have enough features so that comsumers won't be willing to pay for new versions anymore. Then the competition will catch up and bring down prices evetually to the reproduction level which in the case of software available on the net is about zero. He also said that software companies can continue generating revenue by selling support services, tailoring business and creating new/better software for new needs. So nothing new there but a lot of media was there so good for them. Linus was also repeating his "Linus' law" which in my view is just the Maslow's hierarchy of needs in a new package.He said that the consumers, not technologists, will decide what technology will spread. Perhaps everything will be possible technologically at some point in time, but people will decide what kind of technology is needed.
Siilasmaa was worried about the lower investments in information society in European Community vs. North America. This will lead to many problems in Europe. The investments in IT are rising 14 % pa in NA and 11 % in Europe.
If you want to go to comdex, first you have to register at Comdex's Website and use the priority code: LINUX (Cool, eh?!) This code will get you into "the exhibits, keynotes, and Millenium Perspectives; the SuperSession; and Sm@rt Solutions." for free... Still $595 for the Linux Business Solutions Expo, but, on Monday, Nov. 15, 6:30pm, Linus Torvalds is giving his keynote...
Warning, if you don't already have a hotel to stay, be forwarned, the prices around town skyrocket when comdex is in town. Get a hotel room off the strip, like at a Station Hotel/Casio, or a Boyd Hotel/Casino Good L
1.3L, 3 moving parts, 280 HP, no Turbos, wanna Race? RotaryNe
Willy Dog says they will announce a new operating system, and a new chip to run it on. It will be way cool, and manage to swing the binary compatibility thing with existing apps from a bunch of other OS's and processor families. ... it could happen!
And instead of a silicon chip, it will use a greenish gel containing DNA-based computing elements. And when it crashes, the gel turns blue -- the blue goo of death (BGOD)