I have been saying that nothing is going to happen to MS for a long time. The reason has nothing to do with MS's legal team or the merits of the case, but everything to do with simple economics.
When it was announced that MS would not be broken up, MS's share price soared. No surprise there. The Nasdaq also rose dramatically. That's a bit more of a surprise, but a large part of the computer industry depends on the release of WinXP to drive sales, so it also makes sense. The Dow Jones also rose quite a bit. That's a surprise. The Dow Jones is supposed to be an INDUSTRIAL index, so it shouldn't be affected that much by MS's fortunes.
That's the whole story. You (for the American audience) / They (for the rest of us) elected a president on an economics ticket. The US economy is on the verge of a recession. From the above it is clear MS's fortunes in the near future will have a large part in determining whether a recession occurs or is avoided. There is no way Bush will allow the court to hurt the economy by hurting MS.
I had a similar discussion with a friend of mine a while back about LEGO vs computers. When we grew up we played with LEGO, but kids growing up today play with computers. I think this is a much greater problem that the LEGO/Meccano debate. Our current generation is growing up with no understanding of mechanical systems. You can get computer programs to design LEGO structures without ever touching a LEGO block!
I also don't think much of modern LEGO. The sets I grew up with had hundreds of little pieces that could be used to make all sorts of things, but the modern sets have a few large pieces that can only really make one design. This is a pity. In fact, if you look at the really good LEGO models on the 'Net, they use lots of small pieces rather than a few big pieces.
I am a lecturer in the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at the University of Pretoria (imagine having to write that on every document that asks for where you work!). I can't claim to be an expert on all our computer labs, but I'll try to give a quick rundown of what is going on in the engineering labs.
We use Intel/AMD machines almost exclusively because workstations from Sun, HP and the like are just too expensive (+/- R8.14 = $1 and the purchasing power of the R4 in South Africa is only roughly equivalent to the purchasing power of $1 in the USA according to the latest Big Mac Index http://www.economist.com/markets/Bigmac/Index.cfm) .
The main engineering labs that are used by all engineering students runs Windows and only Windows. This is the lab for the people who don't really want to know about computers, but have to.
The labs for our department (especially the computer engineering labs) use both Windows and Linux. We have Windows because it allows us to train our students in the most common operating system. Linux is there to give our students exposure to *nix, and a couple of other reasons like parallel processing (Mosix and PVM). Most of the time the machines are in Linux.
Staff and postgraduate students: A surprising large number of the staff members and postgraduate students are starting to switch over to Linux on their machines. I have a couple of friends in the Mechanical Engineering Department and a large number of them are starting to move to Linux as well.
The computer engineering students who are regularly in the labs almost exclusively use Linux. These are the real computer nuts who are studying computers because they love it. So knowing Linux is a type of honour that only the most enthusiastic students master.
So from my (very limited) perspective, I am seeing a major move towards Linux in our department.by the people around me.
Please note that these are MY opinions and any agreement with the policies of my employer are purely coincidental
Why don't they just port to Linux? I know that most people use Windows, but that will probably change with time if all the current Microsoft rubbish continues. That way, Kodak can claim to have been ahead of the trend, and won't have to worry about Microsoft's tax.
A couple of comments here have assumed that this transistor technology will find its way into CPUs. This is not the case.
Firstly, the power consumption is way too high. 1 mA * 1 million (a ridiculously small number of transistors for a CPU) = 1000 A !!
Secondly, the article says nothing about the size of the transistor, so you can assume it's pretty big, at least compared to the transistors in your typical CPU.
Thirdly, the article compares these babies with InP and GaAs technologies. These are both very fast technologies where the transistors are big.
Lastly, fiber and cellular systems are listed as typical applications. These are applications with relatively low integration densities (English: big transistors) where high speed is more important than anything else.
So don't expect to see this technology used in a CPU.
We had a lecturer round here a while back who told the following story about FORTRAN and C.
He challenged a student to write a piece of C code to perform a task that the student could select. The student spent days optimising his code so that it would run as fast as possible. When he was finished he took his code to the lecturer for comparison. While the student was watching the lecturer coded the entire algorithm (a couple of minutes) without bothering to optimise it. The lecturer's FORTRAN code was faster!
So don't knock FORTRAN; for mathematical tasks it is still the fastest language available.
The major studies conducted so far have found no link between use of a cell phone and cancer.
Yet people will complain bitterly about the perceived risk.
Every single study ever conducted (no exceptions) has found that using a cell phone while driving (without a hands-free kit) DRAMATICALLY increases you chance of having an accident.
Yet people the same people who complain about cell phones causing cancer using their phones while driving.
Mmmmm, last time I checked the vast majority of the stuff I could download free for Windows was not written by Microsoft. It was written by the same type of people who wrote Linux. I don't see how the availability of third party free software can be used as a defense for Microsoft.
Many companies I've worked for including the one I do work for surely purchase MS based servers, but that doesn't mean that the company who purchased them will be running Microsoft on them. E.g. we've purchased hundreds of Compaq Proliant servers with MS only to wipe the entire contents of it and place a Unix base system on it.
Problem is that unless the those MS servers are pirated (unlikely with Compaq), you have still payed MS for their server software! Which is pretty much all they want anyway - your money.
Look at MS. It is successful because it provides what people want, and Linux is not because it doesn't. I myself am a web designer and graphic artist, and I use photoshop, cakewalk for music, and expect good drivers for my synthesisers, graphics tablets, and so on. I don't see them, or the software, on linux. MS provides me with what I want.
I disagree. You won't find those drivers for Linux because Microsoft can lean on the hardware companies, making it very difficult for many of them (especially the more specialised ones) to supply Linux drivers and stay in business. You won't find a lot of software for Linux for the much the same reason.
In other words, a large part of the reason why there is so little available for Linux is because of Microsoft's monopoly. So far from proving your point, this example actually proves the opposite!
"Since there are not large numbers of developers familiar with Linux development already, you will have to spend some extra money getting them the training they need."
Mmmm, I heard a rumour that many Microsoft developers are using Linux. Don't know if it's true or not, but it does make you think!
I live in South Africa and this scares me. What is going to happen if this is allowed to set a precedent? Will the FBI and another American law enforcement agencies start hacking into computers and stealing data instead of trying to obtain search warrants? And what is to stop them hacking into my computer and stealing all my data if they merely suspect I am guilty of a crime? Where does it end?
Well if nothing else, at least we are starting to see some more Unix clones for desktop machines. This is probably due in no small part to the existence of Linux for PCs.
Cores are small(ish) blocks preforming simple functions, which can be compiled to a number of devices including (significantly) FPGAs. So why is this significant? This is significant because FPGAs are significant.
FPGAs are programmable hardware devices. Traditionally, custom hardware has been lightning quick, but frightfully expensive (design and fab costs), and restricted to the task it was designed for. These disadvantages are overcome by FGPAs' reprogrammability.
Now one can purchase a standard chip (FPGA), design a custom hardware system on it, and program it with something as simple as a serial port cable. The fact that the chip is standard significantly lowers the cost (design and manufacturing). The fact that the chip is programmable means that it can be reprogrammed to perform a new task at any time. In other words, one gets the speed of hardware (well almost), with the reprogrammability of software, at a resonable cost.
This opens up all sorts of opportunities like an FPGA co-processor card for a computer. This card could be used to perform high speed processing of data by loading the appropriate core. An MP3 core could be used to encode or decode MP3's without any intervention from the processor. Later the same card could be used for image processing by loading another core. Complex (possibly custom) external interfaces (such as a multitrack harddrive recorder) could also be implemented when needed. All of this can be done while leaving the processor free to do it's job.
Outisde a computer virtual instruments such as oscilloscopes, multimeters, logic analysers, signal generators, spectrum analysers, etc. could all be implemented on the same FPGA card by just changing cores.
While this is still some way off the development of free, customizable cores is a big step in the right direction. One of the big obstacles to this dream is the very high cost (many thousands of dollars) and limited versatility of commercial cores. Open cores will help solve these problems. CPU cores (such as the ARM core mentioned here) ares just one example of potentially useful cores. There is also an need for PCI, SDRAM, and a number of other basic cores (see http://www.opencores.org for more examples).
Who knows? In a few years you might not even buy a CPU anymore! You could just buy a programmable chip which can be programmed to perform any task imaginable as required. Upgrading would be as simple as downloading new cores. And because it's hardware it will be much faster than any CPU! (I can dream can't I?;)
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There's a little company in Pretoria (in South Africa) called 5DT that has been producing data gloves that can be used as a mouse for quite a while now. Check out these links.
Their homepage.
Their hardware page (includes data gloves).
One of the data glove pages.
When it was announced that MS would not be broken up, MS's share price soared. No surprise there. The Nasdaq also rose dramatically. That's a bit more of a surprise, but a large part of the computer industry depends on the release of WinXP to drive sales, so it also makes sense. The Dow Jones also rose quite a bit. That's a surprise. The Dow Jones is supposed to be an INDUSTRIAL index, so it shouldn't be affected that much by MS's fortunes.
That's the whole story. You (for the American audience) / They (for the rest of us) elected a president on an economics ticket. The US economy is on the verge of a recession. From the above it is clear MS's fortunes in the near future will have a large part in determining whether a recession occurs or is avoided. There is no way Bush will allow the court to hurt the economy by hurting MS.
I also don't think much of modern LEGO. The sets I grew up with had hundreds of little pieces that could be used to make all sorts of things, but the modern sets have a few large pieces that can only really make one design. This is a pity. In fact, if you look at the really good LEGO models on the 'Net, they use lots of small pieces rather than a few big pieces.
We use Intel/AMD machines almost exclusively because workstations from Sun, HP and the like are just too expensive (+/- R8.14 = $1 and the purchasing power of the R4 in South Africa is only roughly equivalent to the purchasing power of $1 in the USA according to the latest Big Mac Index http://www.economist.com/markets/Bigmac/Index.cfm) .
The main engineering labs that are used by all engineering students runs Windows and only Windows. This is the lab for the people who don't really want to know about computers, but have to.
The labs for our department (especially the computer engineering labs) use both Windows and Linux. We have Windows because it allows us to train our students in the most common operating system. Linux is there to give our students exposure to *nix, and a couple of other reasons like parallel processing (Mosix and PVM). Most of the time the machines are in Linux.
Staff and postgraduate students: A surprising large number of the staff members and postgraduate students are starting to switch over to Linux on their machines. I have a couple of friends in the Mechanical Engineering Department and a large number of them are starting to move to Linux as well.
The computer engineering students who are regularly in the labs almost exclusively use Linux. These are the real computer nuts who are studying computers because they love it. So knowing Linux is a type of honour that only the most enthusiastic students master.
So from my (very limited) perspective, I am seeing a major move towards Linux in our department.by the people around me.
Please note that these are MY opinions and any agreement with the policies of my employer are purely coincidental
If the DMCA unconsitutional, why doesn't someone challenge it in court?
Why don't they just port to Linux? I know that most people use Windows, but that will probably change with time if all the current Microsoft rubbish continues. That way, Kodak can claim to have been ahead of the trend, and won't have to worry about Microsoft's tax.
Firstly, the power consumption is way too high. 1 mA * 1 million (a ridiculously small number of transistors for a CPU) = 1000 A !!
Secondly, the article says nothing about the size of the transistor, so you can assume it's pretty big, at least compared to the transistors in your typical CPU.
Thirdly, the article compares these babies with InP and GaAs technologies. These are both very fast technologies where the transistors are big.
Lastly, fiber and cellular systems are listed as typical applications. These are applications with relatively low integration densities (English: big transistors) where high speed is more important than anything else.
So don't expect to see this technology used in a CPU.
He challenged a student to write a piece of C code to perform a task that the student could select. The student spent days optimising his code so that it would run as fast as possible. When he was finished he took his code to the lecturer for comparison. While the student was watching the lecturer coded the entire algorithm (a couple of minutes) without bothering to optimise it. The lecturer's FORTRAN code was faster!
So don't knock FORTRAN; for mathematical tasks it is still the fastest language available.
Yet people will complain bitterly about the perceived risk.
Every single study ever conducted (no exceptions) has found that using a cell phone while driving (without a hands-free kit) DRAMATICALLY increases you chance of having an accident.
Yet people the same people who complain about cell phones causing cancer using their phones while driving.
Go figure....
Mmmmm, last time I checked the vast majority of the stuff I could download free for Windows was not written by Microsoft. It was written by the same type of people who wrote Linux. I don't see how the availability of third party free software can be used as a defense for Microsoft.
Problem is that unless the those MS servers are pirated (unlikely with Compaq), you have still payed MS for their server software! Which is pretty much all they want anyway - your money.
I disagree. You won't find those drivers for Linux because Microsoft can lean on the hardware companies, making it very difficult for many of them (especially the more specialised ones) to supply Linux drivers and stay in business. You won't find a lot of software for Linux for the much the same reason.
In other words, a large part of the reason why there is so little available for Linux is because of Microsoft's monopoly. So far from proving your point, this example actually proves the opposite!
But that's just my opinion!
Mmmm, I heard a rumour that many Microsoft developers are using Linux. Don't know if it's true or not, but it does make you think!
I live in South Africa and this scares me. What is going to happen if this is allowed to set a precedent? Will the FBI and another American law enforcement agencies start hacking into computers and stealing data instead of trying to obtain search warrants? And what is to stop them hacking into my computer and stealing all my data if they merely suspect I am guilty of a crime? Where does it end?
Well if nothing else, at least we are starting to see some more Unix clones for desktop machines. This is probably due in no small part to the existence of Linux for PCs.
FPGAs are programmable hardware devices. Traditionally, custom hardware has been lightning quick, but frightfully expensive (design and fab costs), and restricted to the task it was designed for. These disadvantages are overcome by FGPAs' reprogrammability.
Now one can purchase a standard chip (FPGA), design a custom hardware system on it, and program it with something as simple as a serial port cable. The fact that the chip is standard significantly lowers the cost (design and manufacturing). The fact that the chip is programmable means that it can be reprogrammed to perform a new task at any time. In other words, one gets the speed of hardware (well almost), with the reprogrammability of software, at a resonable cost.
This opens up all sorts of opportunities like an FPGA co-processor card for a computer. This card could be used to perform high speed processing of data by loading the appropriate core. An MP3 core could be used to encode or decode MP3's without any intervention from the processor. Later the same card could be used for image processing by loading another core. Complex (possibly custom) external interfaces (such as a multitrack harddrive recorder) could also be implemented when needed. All of this can be done while leaving the processor free to do it's job.
Outisde a computer virtual instruments such as oscilloscopes, multimeters, logic analysers, signal generators, spectrum analysers, etc. could all be implemented on the same FPGA card by just changing cores.
While this is still some way off the development of free, customizable cores is a big step in the right direction. One of the big obstacles to this dream is the very high cost (many thousands of dollars) and limited versatility of commercial cores. Open cores will help solve these problems. CPU cores (such as the ARM core mentioned here) ares just one example of potentially useful cores. There is also an need for PCI, SDRAM, and a number of other basic cores (see http://www.opencores.org for more examples).
Who knows? In a few years you might not even buy a CPU anymore! You could just buy a programmable chip which can be programmed to perform any task imaginable as required. Upgrading would be as simple as downloading new cores. And because it's hardware it will be much faster than any CPU! (I can dream can't I? ;)