I realize that, but while Transmeta people seem to keep their mouth shut because they really enjoy their work, do you really think some mid-level manager is going to care?
Here Dave, make sure we have enought people to staff the canteen to server X people from 15 January.
Oh, Okay Jim, what's happenening?
We've just signed a new contract with some manufacture, but you can't tell anyone.
- Infact you should probably have some factor in there for the motivation of them, too.
Had anyone else heard the rumor about the Transmeta chip being low power consumpion before? I sure hadn't, and to me, it doesn't mesh well with the idea that it can run multiple instruction sets.
Surely this would require a large amount of memory, and isn't (fast) memory something of a killer for low powered devices?
If Transmeta can produce something that emulates other architectures, and uses a comparable amount of power to the low power versions of those architectures, it has to be one of the most impressive breakthoughs ever.
I do worry though - you know what they say -
A chip can be fast, cheap or effecient - pick any two.
Okay, I made up the quote, but I think it is slightly accurate at least, esp. in the early generations of a design.
What else.... Oh yeah.
If they are really going to announce this in January (or at Comdex), I don't think we will see it in use anywhere for a couple of year. If Tranmeta had contracts with fab plants somewhere, someone would have said something by now.
I doubt very much if you can go down to your local chip maker, and say "We want you to switch your plant to making our funcky new designs - forget about this multi-billion dollar contract you have", so they can't just get manufacturing facilities like that. It takes a long time to build a fab plant, too, and it's not like you can just convert a derelic factory to a state of the art chip fabrication plant.
For my money, it has to be the Apache Group. Nothing, not even Linux has done more for free softwear than Apache - sure Linux gets the press, and deserves it, but Apache is the killer app that has kept Unix relevent in a lot of places through the rise of NT.
Now we can say we are in the Post-Microsoft era (isn't it great to be able to say that?) Apache deserves credit for being the one piece of softwear that managed to gain marketshare when faced with MS giving away a direct competitor - IIS.
Not even Linux can claim that, and what is more, many would claim that the success of Apache has been on of the main reasons why MS has not successed in the Internet age.
People will look back on 1997-1999 in years to come, and talk about how Microsoft had destroyed Netscape (their previous competitor in the server business), but couldn't beat Apache - everything IIS could do, Apache could do, plus it could run on better hardware because of its openness.
What is more, Apache isn't created by the coding "Stars", but by a group of (reletitivly) human coders, and as such must be the best proof of the success of open source software
The thing that libGlade does not (yet?) seem to admit is that of extensibility. In order to support that it would probably be necessary to have some form of interpreter on the client that can run (bytecompiled?) code to either provide additional widgets or to provide some further local processing.
As I understand it libGLADE allows you to write the UI in XML, which will be translated to GTK widgets by the library. The signals from the widgets need to be caught by your program.
If this is correct (corrections please), then couldn't a generic signal handler be written to pass the signals back to the server computer (not the one the GTK/XML app is on, the REAL server)
Of course, this wouldn't allow upgrading of the GTK library, if that is waht you mean. (?)
I'm not sure what you want to be answered. Is there room in the market for a thin client application tool? Yes. (IMHO)
If you want my thoughts on current options, read on.
You seem to have decided on the idea of using a browser as a thin client. Is this just an assumption, or is there a good reason for it?
If you want (can) get away from the browser, there are plenty of "thin" client solutions - the question is, how thin do you want it?
Low Bandwidth X (LBX) is a possibility (and is even thinner than HTML), and then there are plenty of non-Standard application generator tools that will do something similar (Under windows, Delphi, VB, Powerbuilder, Oracle Forms), but the "Thin" client for these is "thicker" than HTML or X
Depending on your application, (please, no flames) ActiveX Forms may be suitable, but you seem to not want to go with Java, so I guess the same problems apply with Active X
XML based applications have a lot (as in - I think up new ideas every day) of potential. IE5 does some pretty cool stuff at the moment with XML, and the Mozilla GUI is "written" in XML.
My "Big Idea" (TM) at the moment (I should try for funding *S*) is to write a universal thin client that would use the libGLADE to build a GUI from a XML file delivered by HTTP. The button presses etc would be passed via the thin client framework to event handling code on the server using either CORBA or (my personal favourites) XML-RPC or SOAP
Anyway, there you go. If anyone decides to try coding it, please let me know - I might actually get around to doing some myself. *S*
secret investor firm to invest in our supper-dupper free software company to develop free software and provide kick-ass applications for users all around the globe.
is?
Theory 1: Transmeta is actually not building a chip at all, but has a new, increadible Linux distribution which the need Miguel to work on the GUI for.
Theory 2: Microsoft has seen the light and are going to open source Windows, and need Miguel to fix the bugs - after all, he has some experience with GNOME. *S*.
That was a JOKE!
But seriously, I do wonder who it is - I doubt Red Hat, because they tend to announce things like that. I suppose it is a company and not VC funding, though. Intel or Oracle, maybe?
is the way they have white papers about how their search engine works.
It is hosted on the original (stanford) google site at http://google.stanford.edu/long321.htm and is really intersting if you are into that kind of thing (I am).
There are a whole lot of great papers on there, which in unique, because all the other search engines keep their crawling strategies etc very secret.
The point isn't that a bad programmer produces bad code that is horrible to maintain!
The point is that VB lets a bad (or lets say average programmer produce a program quicker and probably better than say Python/GTK or something.
Unfortunatly, companies can't always find talented programmers, and for those untalented programmers, and for simple programs, VB is better. I guess it could be argued that if everyone used C and Perl and command line interfaces it would get rid of a lot of the crappy coders around, but that isn't likely to happen.
Yes, those "1 week" projects end up growing into huge, unmaintainable messes, but that happens in any language (Mozilla anyone?), and is more a factor of project management than the language.
Sure, having the best tech is great, but Playstation kicked N64, because it had the better games.
Also, that article seemed to claim that:
Nintendo64 suffered in the battle with Playstation because it was the last major 64-bit system to market -- after Sega Saturn and long after Playstation.
Hu? Playstaion is only 32 bit, isn't it?
I hate to say it, but Win CE might be a big advantage to those (Dreamcast & MS thingo) that use it, because then PC games can be easily ported.
The Playstation 2 does look nice, thought, doesn't it? *S*
The point was made that it used to be neccesary to hand optimise code on CISC chips, but on RISC chips it has been to complex for quite a long time, and most modern compilers are better at it than humans, and the optimising by the compiler was done very differently (now that is a technical term - I can't remember the details) on RISC chips compared to CISC.
I'm always annoyed by some commercial Windows compiler makers who take a long time to add instructions for the new instruction sets in MMX etc chips. I would imagine that these hybrid chips would be even worse - having to add stuff to a RISC targeted compiler might take even longer.
Of course, I may be way off track here - I slept though most of Uni.
I've worked for a MS Certified Solution Provider. They are licenced to give copies of any MS product to their employees (at least where I worked)
MS is also providing the resources and incentives to be a MS developer. Have you ever seen the MSDN website? It is really, really good - a better resource for developers than anything except dejanews. (Okay, so it has a little to much eye candy, but still)
MS does pretty good promotions to do their developer exams, too - Trips to conferences in the US (from Australia), stuff like that.
They "pay" (in the form of discounted softwear) solution developers to get their developers certified - and developers don't mind the automatic doubling of market worth for a MCSD.
Believe me, I'm 2 years out of Uni, make AUS$90K (which is HUGE money here - a uni graduate makes 27-32K), and are bored senseless by the work. I'd do anything to do interesting work on Linux, but I can't find any work like that here, even if I take a 50% pay cut.
(BTW, for all you Aussies, did you see the SGI ad in Tuesdays Australian for Linux developers in Melbourne? Who's applying? - I'm in Adelaide, and can't move at the moment)
The other point is that MS is putting out some really cool stuff at the moment, eg SOAP, their XML support in IE5, etc, and under Linux you have to produce it yourself, or maybe use Java. (please IBM, Java2? Please!)
As for VB, say what you will (and I won't argue with you - I use Delphi), but it does allow less skilled "programmers" to produce reasonable programs quickly.
Anyway, the point I'm making (sorry for rambling!) is that I'm sure these startups do exist, but don't underestimate MS. Microsoft understands it needs mindshare and it is going after it.
Since when is HTML code? And those little Javascript things that you can use in front page aren't too bad, anyway.
Sure, Frontpage puts out some nasty nested tables sometimes, but have you ever looked at handwritten code for something like Slashdot? It isn't that much different. (No insult intended, guys *S*)
I don't like the way that it sticks that META information in it, but apart from that it isn't that bad.
Anyway, the point is that it isn't code, and I doubt it is going to slow down the rendering on any computer anyway - that is limited by your download speed, the design of the page, and the browser you are using.
Does anyone know if that (#*$*#ing) regional encoding scheme used in DVD movies is implmented in hardware, and if there is a way around it?
Here in Australia, we are part of some useless (ie, non US & non Europe) region, so we can't get many DVDs (although it does seem to have improved in the last couple of months)
I'd buy a DVD player, if I could play US movies on it.
A DVD recorder would be even better, of course.....
Firstly, Niven is the best because his ideas are the best. Unfortunatly, he gets so tied up in his ideas that he forgets to write an intersting story around them. Pournell keeps the story going.
Secondly, when I said "the best", I should have said IMHO
Thirdly, (flamebait warning) what is the competion? AC Clarke? Have you ever read Rama? Eeek, that was bad. Poul Anderson is pretty good, but he doesn't have the depth of work Niven does.
Anyway, I looked at the list of books you said you liked. Dream Park - written with Simon Barnes (and Pournell?) The Ringworld books - with Pournell, I think. So were the Mote books.
Please note I don't have my collection here, so I can't check. I think the original Ringworld book may have been just Niven, but I enjoyed the other ones more, anyway.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think Gibson is overrated?
He deserves credit for Neuromancer simply for being the first cyberpunk author, but there are plenty who do it better than him now. (Neal Stephenson & Bruce(?) Sterling for two)
His collabaration with Sterling on "The Difference Engine" (I think that was what it was called) was okay.
Perhaps he is one of those authors (ala Larry Niven & Jerry Pournell (sp?)) who produces better work in colabaration.
Talking of Larry Niven, how come we never see any reviews of his books on here? Even if Kim Stanely-Robinson is now the king of future histories, Niven is still the best hard SF author ever.
Slashdot Mirror
I realize that, but while Transmeta people seem to keep their mouth shut because they really enjoy their work, do you really think some mid-level manager is going to care?
Here Dave, make sure we have enought people to staff the canteen to server X people from 15 January.
Oh, Okay Jim, what's happenening?
We've just signed a new contract with some manufacture, but you can't tell anyone.
- Infact you should probably have some factor in there for the motivation of them, too.
--Donate food by clicking: www.thehungersite.com
Had anyone else heard the rumor about the Transmeta chip being low power consumpion before? I sure hadn't, and to me, it doesn't mesh well with the idea that it can run multiple instruction sets.
Surely this would require a large amount of memory, and isn't (fast) memory something of a killer for low powered devices?
If Transmeta can produce something that emulates other architectures, and uses a comparable amount of power to the low power versions of those architectures, it has to be one of the most impressive breakthoughs ever.
I do worry though - you know what they say -
Okay, I made up the quote, but I think it is slightly accurate at least, esp. in the early generations of a design.
What else.... Oh yeah.
If they are really going to announce this in January (or at Comdex), I don't think we will see it in use anywhere for a couple of year. If Tranmeta had contracts with fab plants somewhere, someone would have said something by now.
I doubt very much if you can go down to your local chip maker, and say "We want you to switch your plant to making our funcky new designs - forget about this multi-billion dollar contract you have", so they can't just get manufacturing facilities like that. It takes a long time to build a fab plant, too, and it's not like you can just convert a derelic factory to a state of the art chip fabrication plant.
--Donate food by clicking: www.thehungersite.com
For my money, it has to be the Apache Group. Nothing, not even Linux has done more for free softwear than Apache - sure Linux gets the press, and deserves it, but Apache is the killer app that has kept Unix relevent in a lot of places through the rise of NT.
Now we can say we are in the Post-Microsoft era (isn't it great to be able to say that?) Apache deserves credit for being the one piece of softwear that managed to gain marketshare when faced with MS giving away a direct competitor - IIS.
Not even Linux can claim that, and what is more, many would claim that the success of Apache has been on of the main reasons why MS has not successed in the Internet age.
People will look back on 1997-1999 in years to come, and talk about how Microsoft had destroyed Netscape (their previous competitor in the server business), but couldn't beat Apache - everything IIS could do, Apache could do, plus it could run on better hardware because of its openness.
What is more, Apache isn't created by the coding "Stars", but by a group of (reletitivly) human coders, and as such must be the best proof of the success of open source software
--Donate food by clicking: www.thehungersite.com
This is pretty impressive for such a low power CPU - a Motorola Coldfire @ 90MHz. My old 586-120 wouldn't play MP3s with that low CPU usage (62%)
I bet everyone will want a kit one to make a MP3 player out of. What I want to know is:
How can I telnet into a Nomad MP3 player? That would be cool! *S* ~joke~
What do you mean by:
As I understand it libGLADE allows you to write the UI in XML, which will be translated to GTK widgets by the library. The signals from the widgets need to be caught by your program.
If this is correct (corrections please), then couldn't a generic signal handler be written to pass the signals back to the server computer (not the one the GTK/XML app is on, the REAL server)
Of course, this wouldn't allow upgrading of the GTK library, if that is waht you mean. (?)
I'm not sure what you want to be answered. Is there room in the market for a thin client application tool? Yes. (IMHO)
If you want my thoughts on current options, read on.
You seem to have decided on the idea of using a browser as a thin client. Is this just an assumption, or is there a good reason for it?
If you want (can) get away from the browser, there are plenty of "thin" client solutions - the question is, how thin do you want it?
Low Bandwidth X (LBX) is a possibility (and is even thinner than HTML), and then there are plenty of non-Standard application generator tools that will do something similar (Under windows, Delphi, VB, Powerbuilder, Oracle Forms), but the "Thin" client for these is "thicker" than HTML or X
Depending on your application, (please, no flames) ActiveX Forms may be suitable, but you seem to not want to go with Java, so I guess the same problems apply with Active X
XML based applications have a lot (as in - I think up new ideas every day) of potential. IE5 does some pretty cool stuff at the moment with XML, and the Mozilla GUI is "written" in XML.
My "Big Idea" (TM) at the moment (I should try for funding *S*) is to write a universal thin client that would use the libGLADE to build a GUI from a XML file delivered by HTTP. The button presses etc would be passed via the thin client framework to event handling code on the server using either CORBA or (my personal favourites) XML-RPC or SOAP
Anyway, there you go. If anyone decides to try coding it, please let me know - I might actually get around to doing some myself. *S*
I wonder who the
is?Theory 1: Transmeta is actually not building a chip at all, but has a new, increadible Linux distribution which the need Miguel to work on the GUI for.
Theory 2: Microsoft has seen the light and are going to open source Windows, and need Miguel to fix the bugs - after all, he has some experience with GNOME. *S*.
That was a JOKE!
But seriously, I do wonder who it is - I doubt Red Hat, because they tend to announce things like that. I suppose it is a company and not VC funding, though. Intel or Oracle, maybe?
Also, what it Migel's company called?
Usually, on Slashdot I'm the one defending MS, but this is ridiculous!!
Bill Gates did not invent BASIC - it has been around since the 1960s
I don't think he even coded it - I know he & Paul Allen bought MS-DOS of another guy.
I, for one would
- LOVE
to see one of thse codeing contests the Bill Gates takes part in. A URL, or a reference somewhere would be nice.I do agree with the basic point of what you are saying, though.
I never knew that.
Once I find my Linux Oracle CD I'm going to try one. I'd hate to think how much RAM it needs, though.
It is hosted on the original (stanford) google site at http://google.stanford.edu/long321.htm and is really intersting if you are into that kind of thing (I am).
There are a whole lot of great papers on there, which in unique, because all the other search engines keep their crawling strategies etc very secret.
Of course, it isn't ready for commercial quality code yet.
The point is that VB lets a bad (or lets say average programmer produce a program quicker and probably better than say Python/GTK or something.
Unfortunatly, companies can't always find talented programmers, and for those untalented programmers, and for simple programs, VB is better. I guess it could be argued that if everyone used C and Perl and command line interfaces it would get rid of a lot of the crappy coders around, but that isn't likely to happen.
Yes, those "1 week" projects end up growing into huge, unmaintainable messes, but that happens in any language (Mozilla anyone?), and is more a factor of project management than the language.
Try telling that to management, though!
One of the first big sites that did. They used to let people know about it, too, but now I can't find any mention on their site about it at all.
I was going to post these in my previous post, but I had to find the URL
http://www.haveland.com/cgi-bin/getpovb.pl?searc h=Single%3A&submit=List+all+Single+Resu lts Slow Site Don't Slashdot it!!!
A Beta PSX2 takes 5 seconds to render an image that takes a K6-III 400MHz 19 sec, and a 500 Mhz Alpha 21264 26 seconds
Also, that article seemed to claim that:
Hu? Playstaion is only 32 bit, isn't it?I hate to say it, but Win CE might be a big advantage to those (Dreamcast & MS thingo) that use it, because then PC games can be easily ported.
The Playstation 2 does look nice, thought, doesn't it? *S*
I remember learning a bit about this in class.
The point was made that it used to be neccesary to hand optimise code on CISC chips, but on RISC chips it has been to complex for quite a long time, and most modern compilers are better at it than humans, and the optimising by the compiler was done very differently (now that is a technical term - I can't remember the details) on RISC chips compared to CISC.
I'm always annoyed by some commercial Windows compiler makers who take a long time to add instructions for the new instruction sets in MMX etc chips. I would imagine that these hybrid chips would be even worse - having to add stuff to a RISC targeted compiler might take even longer.
Of course, I may be way off track here - I slept though most of Uni.
Corrections are of course welcome. *S*
Yep, they announced it a while ago.
It is called Kylix, but no one knows much about it. It is supposed to be relased next year, though... Sweeeettt!
I've worked for a MS Certified Solution Provider. They are licenced to give copies of any MS product to their employees (at least where I worked)
MS is also providing the resources and incentives to be a MS developer. Have you ever seen the MSDN website? It is really, really good - a better resource for developers than anything except dejanews. (Okay, so it has a little to much eye candy, but still)
MS does pretty good promotions to do their developer exams, too - Trips to conferences in the US (from Australia), stuff like that.
They "pay" (in the form of discounted softwear) solution developers to get their developers certified - and developers don't mind the automatic doubling of market worth for a MCSD.
Believe me, I'm 2 years out of Uni, make AUS$90K (which is HUGE money here - a uni graduate makes 27-32K), and are bored senseless by the work. I'd do anything to do interesting work on Linux, but I can't find any work like that here, even if I take a 50% pay cut.
(BTW, for all you Aussies, did you see the SGI ad in Tuesdays Australian for Linux developers in Melbourne? Who's applying? - I'm in Adelaide, and can't move at the moment)
The other point is that MS is putting out some really cool stuff at the moment, eg SOAP, their XML support in IE5, etc, and under Linux you have to produce it yourself, or maybe use Java. (please IBM, Java2? Please!)
As for VB, say what you will (and I won't argue with you - I use Delphi), but it does allow less skilled "programmers" to produce reasonable programs quickly.
Anyway, the point I'm making (sorry for rambling!) is that I'm sure these startups do exist, but don't underestimate MS. Microsoft understands it needs mindshare and it is going after it.
Why doesn't the cosulate want to know about you?
If you are a citizen and over 18, you should be able to vote.
Frontpage produces code now??
Since when is HTML code? And those little Javascript things that you can use in front page aren't too bad, anyway.
Sure, Frontpage puts out some nasty nested tables sometimes, but have you ever looked at handwritten code for something like Slashdot? It isn't that much different. (No insult intended, guys *S*)
I don't like the way that it sticks that META information in it, but apart from that it isn't that bad.
Anyway, the point is that it isn't code, and I doubt it is going to slow down the rendering on any computer anyway - that is limited by your download speed, the design of the page, and the browser you are using.
5 minutes, 3 answers.
That's quicker than looking for it myself.
Well done, people
Does anyone know if that (#*$*#ing) regional encoding scheme used in DVD movies is implmented in hardware, and if there is a way around it?
Here in Australia, we are part of some useless (ie, non US & non Europe) region, so we can't get many DVDs (although it does seem to have improved in the last couple of months)
I'd buy a DVD player, if I could play US movies on it.
A DVD recorder would be even better, of course.....
In three ways:
Firstly, Niven is the best because his ideas are the best. Unfortunatly, he gets so tied up in his ideas that he forgets to write an intersting story around them. Pournell keeps the story going.
Secondly, when I said "the best", I should have said IMHO
Thirdly, (flamebait warning) what is the competion? AC Clarke? Have you ever read Rama? Eeek, that was bad. Poul Anderson is pretty good, but he doesn't have the depth of work Niven does.
Anyway, I looked at the list of books you said you liked. Dream Park - written with Simon Barnes (and Pournell?) The Ringworld books - with Pournell, I think. So were the Mote books.
Please note I don't have my collection here, so I can't check. I think the original Ringworld book may have been just Niven, but I enjoyed the other ones more, anyway.
I agree that Niven's short stories are his best. The best way to read Niven is to get an anthology of his short stories & read them as a novel.
When he writes novels by himself he tends to drift a bit - that is why I like him with Pournell.
I've read some Gred Egan, and didn't think he was great. I'll find something by Connie Willis and try it.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think Gibson is overrated?
He deserves credit for Neuromancer simply for being the first cyberpunk author, but there are plenty who do it better than him now. (Neal Stephenson & Bruce(?) Sterling for two)
His collabaration with Sterling on "The Difference Engine" (I think that was what it was called) was okay.
Perhaps he is one of those authors (ala Larry Niven & Jerry Pournell (sp?)) who produces better work in colabaration.
Talking of Larry Niven, how come we never see any reviews of his books on here? Even if Kim Stanely-Robinson is now the king of future histories, Niven is still the best hard SF author ever.