I think it's a great idea to get those Crusoes into the mass market web server market. Transmeta has been so focused on the highly competitive sub-notebook market that they missed Cobalt selling RAQ servers hand over fist at amazing mark ups. Any concerns of power can be removed by noting that this things pack an AMD K6-2 450 and still sell for $1500 - $3600.
If Sun can sell a K6-2 450 at $3600, Transmeta has got to be able to find some room in there for profit.
The problem with the tech boom of the late 90's was that people didn't buckly down and release useless products, they took their sweet time about it.
If people would just get off their asses, and get those terrible websites out a bit faster then they can go out of business with much more authority and confidence, versus this current crop of companies who can't even handle their bankruptcies emotionally.
These lessons have been learned by the current crop of startups, and they have become tightly focused on synergies around expenditures. Meaning, they will blow money at a faster rate, and bring products to a market that doesn't want them that much faster.
I've read about some schools that have training in video game programming and apparently their grads are quite well regarded. There was a fast company story on one, DigiPen a little while ago, they seemed to think it was pretty good.
If you can't get right into the industry, perhaps these would be some ok options.
Wow, this is so wack. Tough to believe you took the time out from text-pipe-redirecting multi user source code compilers to write this gem.
I guess my point is that non-anti-aliased desktops look pretty ass. Does this matter on my server? Nope. Does this matter on my desktop for everyday use? Yup.
Why? Because I want to make sure that the laser surgery I'm doing on men's nads is accurate, and without anti-aliasing I can't do so. If you don't care about the health of testicles my friend, then carry on, otherwise please leave me to my work.
Does anyone know when we're going to start seeing standard anti-aliasing in the desktop? I keep reading stories talking about early dev. releases and then I scour every KDE and Gnome update to see if they've been included, but I've yet to see them widely distributed.
That's really what I'm waiting for before I make a real try on that Linux desktop as my everyday solution.
I've been compiling the latest AIM transports for Jabber lately and have been running into the same problems listed above. Could anyone comment on the potential workaround I've thought of here?
While we can't include the aim.exe with clients for legal reasons, I would doubt that the actual MD5 sums taken from that exe are protected under any copywright. Therefore, could we not have a server process as part of every jabber server that includes a request mechanism for getting the md5 sum for whatever version of aim.exe is current? Then, the server operator on his or her own downloads the aim.exe in question and stores it with their server. The server process can provide any needed MD5 sum to any of it's clients by directly examining this file.
Although North American businesses are far from immune to management quibbles, it seems like in a lot of cases that Japanese companies can get caught up in notions of duty and honour, and have difficulty making the quick decisions required in the computer/electronics markets today.
Growing up in the 80's, the Japanese could do no wrong and were wiping the floors with everyone with their improved production models and more efficient operations. Now it seems they have more trouble competing in the faster paced market. For example, I find it amazing that none of the top grpahics chipset makers are Japanese (it's even more amazing that two of them are Canadian).
Perhaps certain fast paced international markets are just not compatible with the Japanese style of management.
Is it just me, or is the main use of a hard link to the internet the "always on" availability? True, when I first got DSL I was blown away by the speed, but over time I started to use the internet in ways I never would have if I was connected over the phone.
I probably rather take an "always on" 128k line over a dial up satellite deal like this one. Maybe broadband would catch on more if providers were more focused on that aspect rather than competing on maximum available bandwidth.
"Many companies, consisting of people with bright ideas, sound business strategies, and clever products, were buried by Microsoft in such a rutheless fashion that Justice was forced, against their will seemingly, to take action."
It is a romantic notion that the economy exists to reward the best idea, the hardest worker or the one who seems to deserve to suceed in any situation.
In my opinion the economy should and does reward those who deserve it the most, those who are the best competitors in whatever categories the market deems most important. If people are going to buy windows because they saw a good ad on TV, then so be it, they pay for that decision. Who are we to artificially benefit a company that can't advertise properly just because they are smart or have a good product?
We have laws that codify the relationships between entities and describe punishments for those who don't respect those laws. Those same laws should be used by Microsofts competitors just as they use them, and do it without the help of a technically clueless DOJ.
If Bush is really going to carry out his mandates, most of which I don't agree with, then he will drop the case against Microsoft, something I do agree with.
Why? Because it's a waste of taxpayers money at best, and at worst it's a clumsy and dangerous artificial attempt at "making things right." The government tried to sue IBM for something like 20 years, and by the time they got ready to do so, the market had done the work it is supposed to do and IBM was on it's way out. What was the result? Millions of dollars in wasted legal fees.
Microsoft is already less important in many critical ways (data interchange formats, server and web server market share, etc.) and if any of us are ANY good at what we do then that trend will continue.
The estimates on the lifespan of this case are ten years, we've been through three. By the time any rememdies could be in place if they are still necessary then WE should be sued for letting Microsoft sit on a decaying monopoly and doing nothing about it. THAT's anti-competitive.
I'm an AMD fan (and they're hot, so they can use all they can get, HAH! ouch) so I'm glad to see AMD finally getting going on the high end laptop market. For comparison to the 25W and 29W power consumption, here's some Intel mobile power consumption data:
Original Mobile Celeron 266: 5.8 W Mobile Pentium III @ 650 Mhz 7.9 - 14 W depending on load (speedstep technology)
And previously from AMD:
Mobile K6-II @ 400 mhz: 12 Watts Mobile K6-III @ 450? mhz: avg. 12 watts probably more.
So again, AMD comes out heavy on the power usage, and probably heat. Unfortunately my Pentium II laptop is already heating my groin area too much when I'm working with it on my lap, don't need another 20 W of power getting transmitted down there.
Would somebody PLEASE make a good looking PC case, and not just one that's just a goddamn beige box with some coloured plastic stuck on the outside, or a face painted on the front.
Let's get some cubes in there, maybe a wall hanging thing, a flat case that screws into the bottom of your desk, SOMETHING NEW.
That's all, except I'd be the first in line to buy one.
Ok listen here, this is AMERICA. When we start to persecute those who like a little spam in their porn, who's next? The very framers of our hallowed constitution so many years ago?
If we start with the little people, the men and women of otherwise fine moral upstanding nature who just happen to enjoy copulation with meat products in all its varied depravity, then who among us can truly claim to be an AMERICAN?
Come on people, this is what/. is all about. It's Your Rights Online, it's your right to receive lewd ASCII art for FREE! Don't let evil companies like AOL take that away from you.
I think it was Mark Twain that said "When you lose the freedom of expression, then you're just fucked." Weighty words indeed.
That's a good point about firewalls, that's an important use of this OS. However, I would have though it would be easier to lock down a firewall machine with existing the existing OS than audit the whole thing? It's my understanding that this audit will attempt to make the OS more secure for more "dangerous" tasks, where more ports need to be open, more applications are running and generally the machine is used for more things.
In that case, then I think SMP starts to become a necessity for any major server OS, otherwise it'll never be put on any of the really big machines that could benefit from all the enhanced security.
Here's the main point, before we even get started: This project should be scrapped, there are easier and better ways to do what is being done here.
Now the reasons.
1. The fact that you need to go back and hand audit libc calls for "subtle" errors means that the wrong language is being used for the majority of these tasks.
For these types of ultra secure tasks, there should be extremely limited cases, and ideally no class of errors that would be "subtle" when it comes to standard library calls. I would suggest that C is not a good language to write a secure operating system in, because it very obviously requires too much manual labour to weed through the subtleties of it's operation.
2. The proper approach seems to be a very limited operating system, perhaps in C, with a virtual machine over that which is proven secure, thereby giving at least strong security to every application then running ontop of that VM.
Yes you'll need to audit that first limited OS and kernel, and yes it'll probably be in C, but let's limit the scope of that code severely. Plan to take a huge performance hit on running everything on that VM but make sure that it's totally secure, do whatever it takes to make sure that everything running on it is protected from itself and other programs. This is the only possible way to make an extensible operating system that is in any way secure, otherwise any software that is later added to the system will either need to be painstakingly audited or not installed. Performance should be a minor concern at this point as VMs can later be optimized, and security should be of prime importance.
3. After they finish all this auditing, we're left with a non-SMP capable OS with limited software of a similarily secure nature to use it with.
What is the point? Why bother if you aren't even going to put in SMP?
4. Theo is obviously so closed minded that no efficiency ideas are ever going to occur to him.
Witness his response to the question about distributed kernels - (in summary) "I have no idea what they are, but they're not useful to me." Great.
It is my opinion that people of this caliber of programming should be spending their time at doing more useful, or perhaps better thought out work.
I've been reading with interest for some time now the developments in Quantum computing, and it seems that researchers are now faced more with engineering problems rather than theoretical ones. No one is really questioning the computing abilities of quantum devices in theory, we're just waiting to see how they could be built.
My problem is then with the field of computer science in general and why there isn't much computational theory being done with quantum devices in mind. Coming from a comp. sci. theoretical backgground most of the heads in the field are either ignoring quantum computing or scoffing at it, while keeping their heads stuck in the P=NP sand and hoping it will all go away.
Does anyone out there have any info, preferrably links, to theoretical work going on with regard to quantum devices?
Just what is Redhat's business model? Long term, how are you ever going to build a business as successful as people were predicting Redhat was going to be, selling something that is free?
Sure, they can sell some CDs and some training, that's could amount to a pretty successful business, but not a software empire like Microsoft or anything of that magnitude. This is the reason that RH's share price is tanking hard.
I personally think Redhat is a good thing to have around because they employr programmers that work on things I use, but as a business they reek.
Well, the inevitable comparisons to the movie might as well start now.
I found that they took alot of the ideas from the movie and did them with less style and in a cheesier manner than the movie did it. I thought the effects were distracting because they looked so computery, and what the hell was the idea with that guild navigator, it looked like some kind of retarded squid with huge earlobes. I also thought the acting wasn't as good as the movie, although the movie's nothing special in that department either.
However, I still ain't hating it. Mostly because I like the story and they have the luxury of taking their time with it so things develop alot more realistically.
This seems to be another classic case of the marketing for a product determining it's destiny rather than technical specs. ReplayTV had that 30 second skip button that they weren't advertising properly, and as a result it seems Tivo's catchy campaigns have done the damage.
Does anyone know what the health of Tivo is in comparison? Does this failure speak at all of the health of this type of product? I'd like to get a Tivo but would be pissed if I got stranded.
Why is it that the states are the absolute last to get new consumer devices? Game consoles, cell phones, etc. About the only thing we get first on this side of the ocean is movies, and those usually reek.
In this truly global economy, why aren't things globally launched, and if their aren't enough units then why aren't they launched right here in the sweet U.S. of A. more often?
It's been nothing but bad news for Transmeta lately, two product cancellations in two weeks, poor performance numbers and just a general lack of direction in getting to market.
AND YET, they debut on the market yesterday and beat expectations, even after an increase in the initial pricing. And we all though the investment community has wised up.
There was a related study done of amnesiacs who hated tetris and then were forced to play tetris. Not only did they remember that they hate tetris, but over 73% of them asked to be made an amnesiac again so that they could forget that the evil Russians had ever made the game.
Amongst female college students, over 70% of them dreamed of tetris, but failed to improve. However, Dr. Stickgold hypothesised that the over 14 hours of daily Minesweeper play might have interfered.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's a great idea to get those Crusoes into the mass market web server market. Transmeta has been so focused on the highly competitive sub-notebook market that they missed Cobalt selling RAQ servers hand over fist at amazing mark ups. Any concerns of power can be removed by noting that this things pack an AMD K6-2 450 and still sell for $1500 - $3600.
If Sun can sell a K6-2 450 at $3600, Transmeta has got to be able to find some room in there for profit.
Are you using the streamsicle?
The problem with the tech boom of the late 90's was that people didn't buckly down and release useless products, they took their sweet time about it.
If people would just get off their asses, and get those terrible websites out a bit faster then they can go out of business with much more authority and confidence, versus this current crop of companies who can't even handle their bankruptcies emotionally.
These lessons have been learned by the current crop of startups, and they have become tightly focused on synergies around expenditures. Meaning, they will blow money at a faster rate, and bring products to a market that doesn't want them that much faster.
Get ready for the new, really new, economy!
I've read about some schools that have training in video game programming and apparently their grads are quite well regarded. There was a fast company story on one, DigiPen a little while ago, they seemed to think it was pretty good.
If you can't get right into the industry, perhaps these would be some ok options.
I've been reading about all sorts of uses for these carbon nanotubes, the most recently being hyperdense packaging of gases for energy use.
A good summary of some of those uses, and other resources can be found here.
Wow, this is so wack. Tough to believe you took the time out from text-pipe-redirecting multi user source code compilers to write this gem.
I guess my point is that non-anti-aliased desktops look pretty ass. Does this matter on my server? Nope. Does this matter on my desktop for everyday use? Yup.
Why? Because I want to make sure that the laser surgery I'm doing on men's nads is accurate, and without anti-aliasing I can't do so. If you don't care about the health of testicles my friend, then carry on, otherwise please leave me to my work.
Does anyone know when we're going to start seeing standard anti-aliasing in the desktop? I keep reading stories talking about early dev. releases and then I scour every KDE and Gnome update to see if they've been included, but I've yet to see them widely distributed.
That's really what I'm waiting for before I make a real try on that Linux desktop as my everyday solution.
I've been compiling the latest AIM transports for Jabber lately and have been running into the same problems listed above. Could anyone comment on the potential workaround I've thought of here?
While we can't include the aim.exe with clients for legal reasons, I would doubt that the actual MD5 sums taken from that exe are protected under any copywright. Therefore, could we not have a server process as part of every jabber server that includes a request mechanism for getting the md5 sum for whatever version of aim.exe is current? Then, the server operator on his or her own downloads the aim.exe in question and stores it with their server. The server process can provide any needed MD5 sum to any of it's clients by directly examining this file.
Make sense?
Although North American businesses are far from immune to management quibbles, it seems like in a lot of cases that Japanese companies can get caught up in notions of duty and honour, and have difficulty making the quick decisions required in the computer/electronics markets today.
Growing up in the 80's, the Japanese could do no wrong and were wiping the floors with everyone with their improved production models and more efficient operations. Now it seems they have more trouble competing in the faster paced market. For example, I find it amazing that none of the top grpahics chipset makers are Japanese (it's even more amazing that two of them are Canadian).
Perhaps certain fast paced international markets are just not compatible with the Japanese style of management.
Is it just me, or is the main use of a hard link to the internet the "always on" availability? True, when I first got DSL I was blown away by the speed, but over time I started to use the internet in ways I never would have if I was connected over the phone.
I probably rather take an "always on" 128k line over a dial up satellite deal like this one. Maybe broadband would catch on more if providers were more focused on that aspect rather than competing on maximum available bandwidth.
While we're at it, can we get some independent academic research into other unquestioned numbers such as losses due to piracy?
These estimates get quoted in a couple articles, then stated in court and suddenly they're real and no one wants to question them.
"Many companies, consisting of people with bright ideas, sound business strategies, and clever products, were buried by Microsoft in such a rutheless fashion that Justice was forced, against their will seemingly, to take action."
It is a romantic notion that the economy exists to reward the best idea, the hardest worker or the one who seems to deserve to suceed in any situation.
In my opinion the economy should and does reward those who deserve it the most, those who are the best competitors in whatever categories the market deems most important. If people are going to buy windows because they saw a good ad on TV, then so be it, they pay for that decision. Who are we to artificially benefit a company that can't advertise properly just because they are smart or have a good product?
We have laws that codify the relationships between entities and describe punishments for those who don't respect those laws. Those same laws should be used by Microsofts competitors just as they use them, and do it without the help of a technically clueless DOJ.
If Bush is really going to carry out his mandates, most of which I don't agree with, then he will drop the case against Microsoft, something I do agree with.
Why? Because it's a waste of taxpayers money at best, and at worst it's a clumsy and dangerous artificial attempt at "making things right." The government tried to sue IBM for something like 20 years, and by the time they got ready to do so, the market had done the work it is supposed to do and IBM was on it's way out. What was the result? Millions of dollars in wasted legal fees.
Microsoft is already less important in many critical ways (data interchange formats, server and web server market share, etc.) and if any of us are ANY good at what we do then that trend will continue.
The estimates on the lifespan of this case are ten years, we've been through three. By the time any rememdies could be in place if they are still necessary then WE should be sued for letting Microsoft sit on a decaying monopoly and doing nothing about it. THAT's anti-competitive.
I'm an AMD fan (and they're hot, so they can use all they can get, HAH! ouch) so I'm glad to see AMD finally getting going on the high end laptop market. For comparison to the 25W and 29W power consumption, here's some Intel mobile power consumption data:
Original Mobile Celeron 266: 5.8 W
Mobile Pentium III @ 650 Mhz 7.9 - 14 W depending on load (speedstep technology)
And previously from AMD:
Mobile K6-II @ 400 mhz: 12 Watts
Mobile K6-III @ 450? mhz: avg. 12 watts probably more.
So again, AMD comes out heavy on the power usage, and probably heat. Unfortunately my Pentium II laptop is already heating my groin area too much when I'm working with it on my lap, don't need another 20 W of power getting transmitted down there.
It's just common sense.
Would somebody PLEASE make a good looking PC case, and not just one that's just a goddamn beige box with some coloured plastic stuck on the outside, or a face painted on the front.
Let's get some cubes in there, maybe a wall hanging thing, a flat case that screws into the bottom of your desk, SOMETHING NEW.
That's all, except I'd be the first in line to buy one.
Ok listen here, this is AMERICA. When we start to persecute those who like a little spam in their porn, who's next? The very framers of our hallowed constitution so many years ago?
If we start with the little people, the men and women of otherwise fine moral upstanding nature who just happen to enjoy copulation with meat products in all its varied depravity, then who among us can truly claim to be an AMERICAN?
Come on people, this is what
I think it was Mark Twain that said "When you lose the freedom of expression, then you're just fucked." Weighty words indeed.
That's a good point about firewalls, that's an important use of this OS. However, I would have though it would be easier to lock down a firewall machine with existing the existing OS than audit the whole thing? It's my understanding that this audit will attempt to make the OS more secure for more "dangerous" tasks, where more ports need to be open, more applications are running and generally the machine is used for more things.
In that case, then I think SMP starts to become a necessity for any major server OS, otherwise it'll never be put on any of the really big machines that could benefit from all the enhanced security.
Here's the main point, before we even get started: This project should be scrapped, there are easier and better ways to do what is being done here.
Now the reasons.
1. The fact that you need to go back and hand audit libc calls for "subtle" errors means that the wrong language is being used for the majority of these tasks.
For these types of ultra secure tasks, there should be extremely limited cases, and ideally no class of errors that would be "subtle" when it comes to standard library calls. I would suggest that C is not a good language to write a secure operating system in, because it very obviously requires too much manual labour to weed through the subtleties of it's operation.
2. The proper approach seems to be a very limited operating system, perhaps in C, with a virtual machine over that which is proven secure, thereby giving at least strong security to every application then running ontop of that VM.
Yes you'll need to audit that first limited OS and kernel, and yes it'll probably be in C, but let's limit the scope of that code severely. Plan to take a huge performance hit on running everything on that VM but make sure that it's totally secure, do whatever it takes to make sure that everything running on it is protected from itself and other programs. This is the only possible way to make an extensible operating system that is in any way secure, otherwise any software that is later added to the system will either need to be painstakingly audited or not installed. Performance should be a minor concern at this point as VMs can later be optimized, and security should be of prime importance.
3. After they finish all this auditing, we're left with a non-SMP capable OS with limited software of a similarily secure nature to use it with.
What is the point? Why bother if you aren't even going to put in SMP?
4. Theo is obviously so closed minded that no efficiency ideas are ever going to occur to him.
Witness his response to the question about distributed kernels - (in summary) "I have no idea what they are, but they're not useful to me." Great.
It is my opinion that people of this caliber of programming should be spending their time at doing more useful, or perhaps better thought out work.
Moderate at will.
I've been reading with interest for some time now the developments in Quantum computing, and it seems that researchers are now faced more with engineering problems rather than theoretical ones. No one is really questioning the computing abilities of quantum devices in theory, we're just waiting to see how they could be built.
My problem is then with the field of computer science in general and why there isn't much computational theory being done with quantum devices in mind. Coming from a comp. sci. theoretical backgground most of the heads in the field are either ignoring quantum computing or scoffing at it, while keeping their heads stuck in the P=NP sand and hoping it will all go away.
Does anyone out there have any info, preferrably links, to theoretical work going on with regard to quantum devices?
Just what is Redhat's business model? Long term, how are you ever going to build a business as successful as people were predicting Redhat was going to be, selling something that is free?
Sure, they can sell some CDs and some training, that's could amount to a pretty successful business, but not a software empire like Microsoft or anything of that magnitude. This is the reason that RH's share price is tanking hard.
I personally think Redhat is a good thing to have around because they employr programmers that work on things I use, but as a business they reek.
Well, the inevitable comparisons to the movie might as well start now.
I found that they took alot of the ideas from the movie and did them with less style and in a cheesier manner than the movie did it. I thought the effects were distracting because they looked so computery, and what the hell was the idea with that guild navigator, it looked like some kind of retarded squid with huge earlobes. I also thought the acting wasn't as good as the movie, although the movie's nothing special in that department either.
However, I still ain't hating it. Mostly because I like the story and they have the luxury of taking their time with it so things develop alot more realistically.
This seems to be another classic case of the marketing for a product determining it's destiny rather than technical specs. ReplayTV had that 30 second skip button that they weren't advertising properly, and as a result it seems Tivo's catchy campaigns have done the damage.
Does anyone know what the health of Tivo is in comparison? Does this failure speak at all of the health of this type of product? I'd like to get a Tivo but would be pissed if I got stranded.
Why is it that the states are the absolute last to get new consumer devices? Game consoles, cell phones, etc. About the only thing we get first on this side of the ocean is movies, and those usually reek.
In this truly global economy, why aren't things globally launched, and if their aren't enough units then why aren't they launched right here in the sweet U.S. of A. more often?
It's been nothing but bad news for Transmeta lately, two product cancellations in two weeks, poor performance numbers and just a general lack of direction in getting to market.
AND YET, they debut on the market yesterday and beat expectations, even after an increase in the initial pricing. And we all though the investment community has wised up.
There was a related study done of amnesiacs who hated tetris and then were forced to play tetris. Not only did they remember that they hate tetris, but over 73% of them asked to be made an amnesiac again so that they could forget that the evil Russians had ever made the game.
Amongst female college students, over 70% of them dreamed of tetris, but failed to improve. However, Dr. Stickgold hypothesised that the over 14 hours of daily Minesweeper play might have interfered.