Slashdot Mirror
Transmeta Details Continue to Unravel
KrisJon writes "Redherring has some info on Transmeta's pending announcement of its product line." It comments about Torvald's keynote today (and it says he won't spill the beans, but that The Transmeta Website should update and actually contain content tonight). Update by RM: as of 9 p.m. EST there was new content on Transmeta's Web site. Not much, but more than it had before. Read the HTML for the secret message.
This change is only for the worst, everyone. We all thought that the Crusoe would be our salvation, that Transmeta and Linus would invent something that would destroy Microsoft and all that is non-open source. In short, we looked to Transmeta for our salvation. But we will not find it. Why? It is as simple as it is shocking: The transmeta homepage once carried an announcement that it was y2k compliant.
That announcement is no longer there!
Let the mourning begin.
-Denor
I finally figured out Linus's connection! According to the secret message, come January we will "have access to all of the real details". In other words, the information is going to become open. But then, if you turn to the processor's name, Crusoe, you'll quickly realize as I did that it's just an anagram for SOURCE. Transmeta's processor is going to be OPEN SOURCE!
Hallelujah!
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
[doc brown voice] "...The only problem with a Slashdot effect is that you never know when one's going to strike!"[/doc brown voice]
[marty mcfly voice] "We do now! January 19th, 2000! 12:00am! http://www.transmeta.com!" [/marty mcfly voice]
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
Some years ago I worked with a Systems Engineering Laboratories SEL 32. This was a very high-end minicomputer, in the form of a six-foot hunk of 19-inch rack, chock full of circuitry. Just under 1 Megabuck.
The computer itself was made of wire-wrapped socket boards stuffed full of standard chips, then tied together by a big backplane and some ribbon cables. It had downloadable firmware. Part of the standard documentation was the complete set of diagrams for the circuitry and complete listings of the firmware. You could get the listings of the OS if you wanted them.
So it was an totally open-source machine, at least to the customers. You could hack the OS, or use it as a base to write your own system. you could change the firmware. You could even rewire the beast itself.
Our hardware maintainence man was ex of SEL's own customer engineering (i.e. onsite-repair) department. He had a few tales to tell.
It seems that a bit over half their production was delivered to designated loading docks at apparently abandoned warehouses, and was gone the next day. The bills were paid. And they never had to go fix 'em. (Or almost...)
One time he DID have to go fix one. And they flew him there in an airplane with blacked-out windows, which did quite a few manouvers during several hours of flight. Then they took him from the plane to the building in a tent tunnel.
It seems the computer was very popular with the No Such Agency, for doing cryptography. They could fix it themselves, using generic parts. They could hack on it to add stuff they didn't want out of their sight and into the industry. And they could be sure that did exactly what they thought it did.
Or at least they could usually fix it. Which is why my collegue ended up in spookland for an afternoon.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way