Intel sold XScale some processor sales properties to Marvell, but can still build stuff based on it for embedding in their own products. They sold the XScale PXA line, but kept the IXP and IOP lines. They announced the CE line almost a year after the sale, and they still have their own ARM license.
The Intel IOP and IXP lines (like the IOP331) of PCI-X and PCI-Express chips are based on ARM cores ("based on XScale technology").
Intel's RAID controllers use LSI chips that are based around ARM cores.
StrongARM actually came from Digital, which is now part of HP via Compaq. Intel got StrongARM as part of the Alpha patent lawsuits. That's why the name ended up changing.
It wouldn't surprise me if it was also still running on PPC or on IBM Power, and it wouldn't entirely shock me if they had it running on AMD Fusion or Freescale's MCP chips either. Apple is very big on portability, and that has served them well so far.
"The vast majority of end users" aren't going to buy a Windows PC and install some version of Linux on it. They'll either buy a PC (the vast majority of that vast majority of yours will do this) with Windows and leave it that way or (a small portion of your vast majority will do this) they'll buy a PC preloaded with Linux.
Those who actually know how to install and administer Linux themselves are probably savvy enough on Windows as well to check the hardware info.
Averages can be deceiving, can't they? Sometimes it's better to average the customer's happiness, which I think for docked computer devices as a whole would be below 50% satisfied customers, with most customer somewhere between 2 and 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being "totally satisfied".
HDMI, charger, and a USB hub for everything else. Meh. Docks always either break too quickly or far outlast the single device they were designed to take.
No, I'm not missing that you said "standard dock", but that's pretty much an oxymoron. Other than Palm and Handspring, it's nearly been impossible to get one manufacturer to standardize a dock for their multiple devices. Good luck getting several to agree to one.
Well, Mac has been 68xxx series, PPC, and Intel Xeon. OS X has worked on both PPC and Intel wioth AMD's 64-bit extensions. I wouldn't be surprised terribly if they changed platforms again someday if it was evident they could get a good deal and be competitive. They're already using ARM in several products and hosting the devel environments for those on OS X.
Windows has actually been on IA32, Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC, IA64, and AMD64. The Alpha, MIPS, and PowerPC versions were short-lived. The IA-64 version is being phased out in favor of the AMD64 version. Microsoft also has experience with ARM, MIPS, SH3, SH4, OMAP, and more, though, for CE/PocketPC/Windows Mobile/Windows Phone. The XBox 360 is PPC, too. If Microsoft thinks they can make enough money off of it, they'll put a Windows on it. They just need to see really big money.
Linux already runs on lots of ARM hardware, too. Not too many desktops are built around the combination yet, but there should be once someone builds a cheap desktop or laptop motherboard for this chip.
I'm not sure why there's all this talk on Slashdot about how many ARM chips get shipped vs. Intel and AMD anyway. Intel ships millions of ARM chips themselves. XScale is one of the brands of chips out there that uses an ARM core, and StrongARM is another (both Intel). Intel also has other CPUs and microcontrollers besides the IA32, IA64, ARM, and EMT64 chips. That's all beyond what your post was about, but it saves me another reply just for a rant.;-)
Most stores that sell computers have places to view web pages in the store, and that usually even includes printing things out (or you could write it on a notepad -- an actual, physical, paper one (THE HORROR!)).
Well, if you can't get a list of specs from the sales critter, try looking in the hardware info in Windows. If the won't let you do that, don't buy from them.
If you want to keep arguing about how you're right, go ahead. If you want to actually think for a minute and see that it's not a problem, just read the post again and take a breath.
Your issues assume that someone can't look at the specs online for a model that is at the store. Most brick-and-mortar computer and electronics stores actually do have websites. You can even print out the specs and take the paper to the store with you. Most of this information even happens to be on the box or in the spec book at the store. Many stores even really do have Internet (or at least Intranet to their own site which has different pricing than the public Internet site, but that problem was uncovered years ago) access at the store for customers to look online at specs and prices.
If you're not dealing with Best Buy, Fry's, CompUSA, Electronics Superstore, Office Depot, Office Max, Staples, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, or some similarly large chain (all of which have specs and prices online for what they sell in the stores) and are not dealing with a mom-and-pop place with enough brains to have Internet access in their store, then why are you buying at that particular brick-and-mortar store?
Also, if you find a laptop model in a brick-and-mortar store that is popular enough to have an out-of-box running display for you to try, you should be really suspicious if you can't find that model online at the manufacturer's site or at least some other store's site.
I know laptops are less expensive (and sometimes actually cheaper, as in cheaper builds and materials) than they used to be, but it's still not a cheeseburger. If you're spending hundreds of dollars on something you'll be using for hours or tens of hours a week, perhaps it's worth more of your time to research than walking into the store and checking the key pitch and travel before buying.
Perhaps you should buy a laptop that is compatible with the software, or spend $20 on a good MiniPCI card that works with your OS.
Besides, unless you're selling that PC to a customer, you just put an improperly licensed version of Windows 7 on your system. I know that the biggest difference between OEM and retail is that Microsoft doesn't do tech support for OEM versions. Technically, though, you're supposed to buy retail to use any time you're not actually using Windows as an OEM item on a PC for resale.
To be really legit, you should have paid close to double that much for Win 7 Home, and close to three times as much for Win 7 Pro or Win 7 Ultimate.
If you have questions about the OEM licensing for Windows, check out the Microsoft OEM and Volume Licensing FAQ. There are links from there to the actual licenses and license guides.
Since a truly legit copy of Windows costs as much as a decent mid-range desktop or low-end laptop, I'd recommend specifying the proper hardware from the start or replacing the nonfunctional peripheral hardware with something that works for the software you're planning to use.
Chances are you'll never have problems with your OEM copy, but don't let Microsoft know you have a habit of violating their licenses. Especially don't try to resell your OEM license for use on some other PC by advertising it widely. Microsoft could cause you quite a bit more frustration than swapping out a PCI or MiniPCI card.
If they have the very best code, keeping code proprietary might give them an advantage. This is especially true if all the companies that trail in quality also keep their inferior code closed. Only one company can have the best, though. Everyone else who keeps their code private and proprietary is holding on dearly to their relative disadvantage to the leader as much as any advantage they have over last place.
What opening the source does is get other people (that you don't have to pay because someone else is paying them or they're doing it for themselves) to help take away the competitive advantage of your rivals by putting a larger engineering and software development team behind the quality of your code.
Even if the open project still isn't the very best on the market, it will overtake competitors one by one until it is near the top. Only the best and brightest development teams will be able to keep up with the advancements, and they will often need more in-house or contract developers to do so. That's money they are spending that gets assigned to their product's cost center in the company budget.
People who actually care about not being locked in to the vendor's support system for the software part of a project (whether it's all software or software that requires hardware as in the current case) will see an incentive to buy the product that can be improved by the public. If something mostly works but starts inferior to other options, it's sometimes still a good investment to back someone who backs your interests in return by giving you more chances to get the code improved.
#4 is true in the very short term, until the eyeballs under the white hats see it and fix it. Open source does have security benefits, but they don't apply instantly. Someone needs to write and check in the code.
If he can't spec which company's wireless hardware he wants in his laptop before he buys he's already way behind. They put that information right on the web page for the laptop model usually, and it pays to check it.
Many of these things are still MiniPCI, in which case you remove screw or maybe two in order to swap the cards. If you're buying a laptop with networking hardware integrated on the mother board and it doesn't meet your needs, you're just asking to need USB.
Which Dell laptops? My old Inspiron 6000 works great out of the box with several distributions, especially Mandriva (who knew using a distro known for its hardware detection would help with detecting and setting up hardware? Hmmm...). Then again, I got one with the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG. As I understand it, Dell still sells plenty of models with newer versions of the Intel wireless hardware, which has been well-supported for years.
Depends. Does it scrape off small bits of wood to make a smooth and level surface? Does it incline to allow one to move a weight to a higher level with less energy?;-)
Flash (the authoring tool) can now produce HTML 5 Canvas + JavaScript. Flash Player (the runtime) was produced for years because there was no other viable option for running the output of Flash.
The output right now pretty much sucks, but they're working on it. The Flash IDE is pretty nice, so if people who have invested time in learning it can eventually put the output onto a standard web page without requiring a plugin on the client, I'm sure that's what most people will be smart enough to do.
Also, Adobe has done a lot of work on standardizing the SWF format and even the save format used by the Flash IDE. Macromedia's versions used to just dump a memory image to disk to save a Flash project. Now you can save it as an XML file that can be worked on with a node editor, text editor, XSLT, or whatever. The SWF format targeted at the Flash Player is even published so that other players can be written to the exact spec, although HTML 5 + JavaScript will hopefully be the dominant output from the IDE soon.
Now, I don't see the multi-hundred dollar Flash development system itself becoming open source any time soon. Adobe does have some tools they've put in the open realm, though. The quality of clones both open and closed of the IDE is improving. There are scores open source tools that output to SWF now that could also output to HTML 5. One programming language I've worked in (haXe even targets SWF, JavaScript+HTML DOM, or the Neko VM selectably (but with different libraries and some differences in capability for each).
I'd bitch about that whole "you hanging me" part. I don't really care about the rope, unless it's old enough to break. Then I'd care if you wanted to update it.
Not just open protocols and open standards, but open source to implement them. That's a big deal, too. Everyone should see the benefits of open standards and open protocols. Open source is a subtler and less commonly chosen solution.
Wow. Just, wow. They have four browsers open on one PC at the same time, using a benchmark written by Microsoft, and they expect a valid benchmark result? WTF?
I'm pretty sure that paying other companies out of your huge cash warchest to file false and frivolous lawsuits against a rival company in order to make that company less competitive while it is tied up in court would be considered abusing your power in the market. It remains to be seen that's what's going on, but if it's true, I'm sure Microsoft could get in some serious trouble (besides what the courts themselves could do if they find out these are malicious suits filed without grounds).
I'm no expert on the matter, but I am hopeful for the tech like most geeks. From what I understand from reading articles about other work in the field and watching documentaries about it, 30% is common in the lab and even 50% or 60% is expected from some of the current work, but breakdown is rapid. The breakdown, in most cases, is caused by being exposed to sunlight and creating electricity from the exposure. Sometimes the efficiencies are down to 5% to 15% in a matter of hours or days.
Highly efficient silicon cells have been prototyped and tested up to around 40% as well. A combination solar heat engine and fuel cell of a sort has been shown on paper to work at up to 60%, but has yet to be tested even as a prototype from what I've been able to find. Some multi-junction semiconductor photovoltaics made from a small number of different alloys to widen the wavelength range are said to have the theoretical capability of 60% or even 70% over the whole solar spectrum, but the data is not yet from actual cells -- not even prototypes (it's being extrapolated from work with LEDs).
A rapid breakdown of a solar cell from exposure to solar energy is obviously bad. The main benefit as I understand it to this particular work over other developments using novel materials is that they've figured out a possible way how to deal with that problem. It works for them so far in the prototype, and hopefully it works in production systems.
The article even says they're hoping to get close to total efficiency (within the ranges of wavelengths it can use) of energy conversion with additional development. Even if they can get us a consistent range of 60-80% of a decently wide range of wavelengths my mind boggles at the applications.
Slashdot Mirror
C with first-class strings? Yeah, right. ;-)
You night want to do some study of your own.
Intel sold XScale some processor sales properties to Marvell, but can still build stuff based on it for embedding in their own products. They sold the XScale PXA line, but kept the IXP and IOP lines. They announced the CE line almost a year after the sale, and they still have their own ARM license.
The Intel IOP and IXP lines (like the IOP331) of PCI-X and PCI-Express chips are based on ARM cores ("based on XScale technology").
Intel's RAID controllers use LSI chips that are based around ARM cores.
StrongARM actually came from Digital, which is now part of HP via Compaq. Intel got StrongARM as part of the Alpha patent lawsuits. That's why the name ended up changing.
Hell, even Wikipedia's article about XScale knows this stuff.
It wouldn't surprise me if it was also still running on PPC or on IBM Power, and it wouldn't entirely shock me if they had it running on AMD Fusion or Freescale's MCP chips either. Apple is very big on portability, and that has served them well so far.
"The vast majority of end users" aren't going to buy a Windows PC and install some version of Linux on it. They'll either buy a PC (the vast majority of that vast majority of yours will do this) with Windows and leave it that way or (a small portion of your vast majority will do this) they'll buy a PC preloaded with Linux.
Those who actually know how to install and administer Linux themselves are probably savvy enough on Windows as well to check the hardware info.
Yes. Let's find the Goldilocks dock. ;-)
Averages can be deceiving, can't they? Sometimes it's better to average the customer's happiness, which I think for docked computer devices as a whole would be below 50% satisfied customers, with most customer somewhere between 2 and 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being "totally satisfied".
Umm, "The Orange Box" was available for the PC. I own a copy. If you mean Xbox 360 version, it may be clearer to say so.
HDMI, charger, and a USB hub for everything else. Meh. Docks always either break too quickly or far outlast the single device they were designed to take.
No, I'm not missing that you said "standard dock", but that's pretty much an oxymoron. Other than Palm and Handspring, it's nearly been impossible to get one manufacturer to standardize a dock for their multiple devices. Good luck getting several to agree to one.
Well, Mac has been 68xxx series, PPC, and Intel Xeon. OS X has worked on both PPC and Intel wioth AMD's 64-bit extensions. I wouldn't be surprised terribly if they changed platforms again someday if it was evident they could get a good deal and be competitive. They're already using ARM in several products and hosting the devel environments for those on OS X.
Windows has actually been on IA32, Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC, IA64, and AMD64. The Alpha, MIPS, and PowerPC versions were short-lived. The IA-64 version is being phased out in favor of the AMD64 version. Microsoft also has experience with ARM, MIPS, SH3, SH4, OMAP, and more, though, for CE/PocketPC/Windows Mobile/Windows Phone. The XBox 360 is PPC, too. If Microsoft thinks they can make enough money off of it, they'll put a Windows on it. They just need to see really big money.
Linux already runs on lots of ARM hardware, too. Not too many desktops are built around the combination yet, but there should be once someone builds a cheap desktop or laptop motherboard for this chip.
I'm not sure why there's all this talk on Slashdot about how many ARM chips get shipped vs. Intel and AMD anyway. Intel ships millions of ARM chips themselves. XScale is one of the brands of chips out there that uses an ARM core, and StrongARM is another (both Intel). Intel also has other CPUs and microcontrollers besides the IA32, IA64, ARM, and EMT64 chips. That's all beyond what your post was about, but it saves me another reply just for a rant. ;-)
Most stores that sell computers have places to view web pages in the store, and that usually even includes printing things out (or you could write it on a notepad -- an actual, physical, paper one (THE HORROR!)).
Well, if you can't get a list of specs from the sales critter, try looking in the hardware info in Windows. If the won't let you do that, don't buy from them.
If you want to keep arguing about how you're right, go ahead. If you want to actually think for a minute and see that it's not a problem, just read the post again and take a breath.
Your issues assume that someone can't look at the specs online for a model that is at the store. Most brick-and-mortar computer and electronics stores actually do have websites. You can even print out the specs and take the paper to the store with you. Most of this information even happens to be on the box or in the spec book at the store. Many stores even really do have Internet (or at least Intranet to their own site which has different pricing than the public Internet site, but that problem was uncovered years ago) access at the store for customers to look online at specs and prices.
If you're not dealing with Best Buy, Fry's, CompUSA, Electronics Superstore, Office Depot, Office Max, Staples, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, or some similarly large chain (all of which have specs and prices online for what they sell in the stores) and are not dealing with a mom-and-pop place with enough brains to have Internet access in their store, then why are you buying at that particular brick-and-mortar store?
Also, if you find a laptop model in a brick-and-mortar store that is popular enough to have an out-of-box running display for you to try, you should be really suspicious if you can't find that model online at the manufacturer's site or at least some other store's site.
I know laptops are less expensive (and sometimes actually cheaper, as in cheaper builds and materials) than they used to be, but it's still not a cheeseburger. If you're spending hundreds of dollars on something you'll be using for hours or tens of hours a week, perhaps it's worth more of your time to research than walking into the store and checking the key pitch and travel before buying.
Perhaps you should buy a laptop that is compatible with the software, or spend $20 on a good MiniPCI card that works with your OS.
Besides, unless you're selling that PC to a customer, you just put an improperly licensed version of Windows 7 on your system. I know that the biggest difference between OEM and retail is that Microsoft doesn't do tech support for OEM versions. Technically, though, you're supposed to buy retail to use any time you're not actually using Windows as an OEM item on a PC for resale.
To be really legit, you should have paid close to double that much for Win 7 Home, and close to three times as much for Win 7 Pro or Win 7 Ultimate.
If you have questions about the OEM licensing for Windows, check out the Microsoft OEM and Volume Licensing FAQ. There are links from there to the actual licenses and license guides.
Since a truly legit copy of Windows costs as much as a decent mid-range desktop or low-end laptop, I'd recommend specifying the proper hardware from the start or replacing the nonfunctional peripheral hardware with something that works for the software you're planning to use.
Chances are you'll never have problems with your OEM copy, but don't let Microsoft know you have a habit of violating their licenses. Especially don't try to resell your OEM license for use on some other PC by advertising it widely. Microsoft could cause you quite a bit more frustration than swapping out a PCI or MiniPCI card.
If they have the very best code, keeping code proprietary might give them an advantage. This is especially true if all the companies that trail in quality also keep their inferior code closed. Only one company can have the best, though. Everyone else who keeps their code private and proprietary is holding on dearly to their relative disadvantage to the leader as much as any advantage they have over last place.
What opening the source does is get other people (that you don't have to pay because someone else is paying them or they're doing it for themselves) to help take away the competitive advantage of your rivals by putting a larger engineering and software development team behind the quality of your code.
Even if the open project still isn't the very best on the market, it will overtake competitors one by one until it is near the top. Only the best and brightest development teams will be able to keep up with the advancements, and they will often need more in-house or contract developers to do so. That's money they are spending that gets assigned to their product's cost center in the company budget.
People who actually care about not being locked in to the vendor's support system for the software part of a project (whether it's all software or software that requires hardware as in the current case) will see an incentive to buy the product that can be improved by the public. If something mostly works but starts inferior to other options, it's sometimes still a good investment to back someone who backs your interests in return by giving you more chances to get the code improved.
#4 is true in the very short term, until the eyeballs under the white hats see it and fix it. Open source does have security benefits, but they don't apply instantly. Someone needs to write and check in the code.
If he can't spec which company's wireless hardware he wants in his laptop before he buys he's already way behind. They put that information right on the web page for the laptop model usually, and it pays to check it.
Many of these things are still MiniPCI, in which case you remove screw or maybe two in order to swap the cards. If you're buying a laptop with networking hardware integrated on the mother board and it doesn't meet your needs, you're just asking to need USB.
One with a Sony battery?
Which Dell laptops? My old Inspiron 6000 works great out of the box with several distributions, especially Mandriva (who knew using a distro known for its hardware detection would help with detecting and setting up hardware? Hmmm...). Then again, I got one with the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG. As I understand it, Dell still sells plenty of models with newer versions of the Intel wireless hardware, which has been well-supported for years.
Of which "the UI" do you speak?
How is "it remains to be seen" getting ahead?
Depends. Does it scrape off small bits of wood to make a smooth and level surface? Does it incline to allow one to move a weight to a higher level with less energy? ;-)
Flash (the authoring tool) can now produce HTML 5 Canvas + JavaScript. Flash Player (the runtime) was produced for years because there was no other viable option for running the output of Flash.
The output right now pretty much sucks, but they're working on it. The Flash IDE is pretty nice, so if people who have invested time in learning it can eventually put the output onto a standard web page without requiring a plugin on the client, I'm sure that's what most people will be smart enough to do.
Also, Adobe has done a lot of work on standardizing the SWF format and even the save format used by the Flash IDE. Macromedia's versions used to just dump a memory image to disk to save a Flash project. Now you can save it as an XML file that can be worked on with a node editor, text editor, XSLT, or whatever. The SWF format targeted at the Flash Player is even published so that other players can be written to the exact spec, although HTML 5 + JavaScript will hopefully be the dominant output from the IDE soon.
Now, I don't see the multi-hundred dollar Flash development system itself becoming open source any time soon. Adobe does have some tools they've put in the open realm, though. The quality of clones both open and closed of the IDE is improving. There are scores open source tools that output to SWF now that could also output to HTML 5. One programming language I've worked in (haXe even targets SWF, JavaScript+HTML DOM, or the Neko VM selectably (but with different libraries and some differences in capability for each).
I'd bitch about that whole "you hanging me" part. I don't really care about the rope, unless it's old enough to break. Then I'd care if you wanted to update it.
Not just open protocols and open standards, but open source to implement them. That's a big deal, too. Everyone should see the benefits of open standards and open protocols. Open source is a subtler and less commonly chosen solution.
Wow. Just, wow. They have four browsers open on one PC at the same time, using a benchmark written by Microsoft, and they expect a valid benchmark result? WTF?
I'm pretty sure that paying other companies out of your huge cash warchest to file false and frivolous lawsuits against a rival company in order to make that company less competitive while it is tied up in court would be considered abusing your power in the market. It remains to be seen that's what's going on, but if it's true, I'm sure Microsoft could get in some serious trouble (besides what the courts themselves could do if they find out these are malicious suits filed without grounds).
I'm no expert on the matter, but I am hopeful for the tech like most geeks. From what I understand from reading articles about other work in the field and watching documentaries about it, 30% is common in the lab and even 50% or 60% is expected from some of the current work, but breakdown is rapid. The breakdown, in most cases, is caused by being exposed to sunlight and creating electricity from the exposure. Sometimes the efficiencies are down to 5% to 15% in a matter of hours or days.
Highly efficient silicon cells have been prototyped and tested up to around 40% as well. A combination solar heat engine and fuel cell of a sort has been shown on paper to work at up to 60%, but has yet to be tested even as a prototype from what I've been able to find. Some multi-junction semiconductor photovoltaics made from a small number of different alloys to widen the wavelength range are said to have the theoretical capability of 60% or even 70% over the whole solar spectrum, but the data is not yet from actual cells -- not even prototypes (it's being extrapolated from work with LEDs).
A rapid breakdown of a solar cell from exposure to solar energy is obviously bad. The main benefit as I understand it to this particular work over other developments using novel materials is that they've figured out a possible way how to deal with that problem. It works for them so far in the prototype, and hopefully it works in production systems.
The article even says they're hoping to get close to total efficiency (within the ranges of wavelengths it can use) of energy conversion with additional development. Even if they can get us a consistent range of 60-80% of a decently wide range of wavelengths my mind boggles at the applications.