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On The Transmeta Patents
Ari Levien sent us an article over at CNet that talks about the Transmeta Patents and what they might be up to. You're never gonna believe it: a chip that will emulate the x86.
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Although all the information released to date about the Transmeta technology is concentrating on its ability to run x86 (or any other) chip-specific code, surely the ultimate goal is to run native code on this fast cheap hardware. If it run x86 code at high speed, then Transmeta have a potential revenue stream from day one. But hey, that doesn't really explain what Linus's role in all this does it.
Say that in parallel to developing the x86 compatability, Transmeta are also developing a native code environment. What operating system would be the easiest to port to such a new environment, and who would you want on board to do it for you? Duh...
That's all been resolved now.
Apparent Linus stubled across project "herring" at TransMeta. He had believed that is was the company's project to keep the press and competitors off the trail of what they were working on.
In reality project "herring" was a super-secret project for the US military to turn penguins in the ultimate killing machine. Reports surfaced of emperor penguins with machine guns embedded in their eye sockets and tactical nukes implanted in their bulbous bellies.
The project was cancelled after the army decided to test the work and dropped 1000 of the altered penguins from a B-52 bomber over the Nevada desert. They apparently didn't realize that penguins couldn't fly and the horror of 1000 penguins impacting like water ballons quickly resulted in the project's cancellation.
Thus ended, Linus was able to return to work where the penguins now deliver mail.