Windows, properly set up and configured, is NOT the BSOD nightmare it used to be. It's entrenched and will be a very hard slog to fight against. For those wanting to change, there's a super-polished, UNIX user friendly, open-source running contender in Apple's OS X.
How many of you own Apple notebooks? How many have blown away OS X to put a PPC linux distro on there?
The fact is that Windows isn't that bad, and Linux is going to do a whole lot better on the desktop if we want to make inroads there. Linux is already taking over places where the user experience is negligible or tightly controlled, for example, in the embedded, RTOS, and industrial worlds.
Fun article, but Microsoft moves forward, too. If Vista is a marketing success, then MS will dominate for a long time on the x86 desktop.
UWB, while exotic, is not impossible to duplicate.
I wonder how long plans for a primitive device make it out onto the Net - I'm reminded of the early Van Eck devices. Initially people thought they were science fiction or a joke....
Those little appliancs all looked bad, and didn't have any brand identification behind them.
Put them in a pretty white box with a bright GoOgLe logo, and you have the makings of something very powerful.
People aren't buying a web terminal or an interface, they're buying a gateway to use Google.
If it turns out to be true, it's a potentially brilliant move for Google. How does Google make all those megabucks? Advertising. They made it work, bigtime. What's advertising about? Eyeballs. Google is brilliant for putting the -right- eyeballs with the -right- ads.
This could be the first thing with the -opportunity- to seriously hurt Microsoft since Navagator and Java.
I'm sure the partnership with google is a viable mechanism to support Wikipedia into the future. The text only ads aren't overly intrusive and are automatically added based on keyword selections in the page. Seems to be a natural fit...in fact, I'd take a guess that rumors of google's involvement are why donations are down.
..and if you looked, you'd realize most of the options that are there are just as well tailored to a silent-ish server. You're not going to get silent when drives are running, but you can come very close. As I pointed out, a quick call and it's easy to do a one-off just for that application.
Happy 06, and not from the marketting department.:-)
I got sick of not having what you described, so I partnered with a company to make them. (obviously I have a commercial interest).
You can see one of our cases reviewed on EPIAcenter.com right now.. I think it's pretty close to what you want, and if it isn't, a few minutes on the phone can have it customized any way you want.
Boot off flash and NFS mount a partition to a server in another room and you have your perfectly silent PC.
The power supply is a hybrid; get a DC/DC converter from a company like mini-box.com, then get one of their external notebook-style power adapters.
With the bazillion GUI toolkits out there..
on
Why Use GTK+?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
a better question might be.. "why use a gui"
For in house stuff I've been on a command line, or straight GLUT kick if I need to display graphics or data in a quick and dirty fashion. Obviously that's not going to work for everything, but you'd be suprised how far it goes.
Are there any cross platform (linux, mac, windows) GUI RAD tools ala Builder, yet?
Japan has lead in automation because of a limited pool of workers. Thus, they have much more incentive to invest in heavy next-generation levels of automation. The opposite extreme is China, where there is a near infinite supply of very cheap labour available. Thus, no incentive at all to innovate. If you can hire people at near subsistance level wages, they are very capable machines properly engineered.
This is more to the core of why Japan has lead innovation vs. population density. They're a very small nation geographically and population wise, running against much larger, much more resource and energy rich competitors.
People don't work like that though. Do you think the LASIK industry is predicated on people liking wearing glasses? They do a good job of hiding my broken nose.
You know what I'd really like? The same interface I have now, on a 30" LCD that costs $1000. Hell, make that three of them. I'm using three 17" LCDs right now and two notebook computers next to me. What does joe sixpack want bad? a 60" plasma TV.
That I suspect is what the future will bring.
You want my predictions for 10 years?
Great big, high resolution displays, and probably several of them.
A wireless keyboard sitting in front of that display.
A wireless mouse sitting right next to it.
Next to that monster display will be a pad of engineering paper, and a pencil.
A big plasma TV on the wall, perhaps displaying video conferencing.
No guarantees on where the computer is - probably nowhere to be seen.
Perhaps a PDA or remote storage device capable of wireless networking.
That's the future. What's on the screen will probably look very much like what is there now.
1 DVD is about ~5gb.. probably not that long before 1000 movie collections start floating around.. then 10,000.. or more.
Once storage and transmission technologies work themselves out there will be a tremendous renaissaince of video content generation. Not the crappy stuff we have now, HD video. For everything. When we've filled up the media then, who knows. 3D video. pr0n will find an application.
Right now, we still can't beat that old station wagon full of removable media just yet.
People don't need 'training'. They are not animals. Some percentage of ALL human populations are quite capable, and quite good at, self-learning. All that is required is access to information. Don't believe me? Watch kids interact with a library sometime. If these people have access to the right tools, some of them will realize it can be used to make their lives easier.
Those computers mean access to information on AIDS, mathematics, weather information to help with crops, the ability to communicate and organize governments that are not corrupt.
I would like to see a program like this in every country of the world, period.
This is because in order to handle (without blowing head gaskets or detonation) the increased charge density provided by forced induction, they must use a lower static compression ratio. Lower compression ratio generally equals less efficient combustion.
Tell that to the hundreds of people with turbocharged 10:1 (or higher) honda engines. It requires more careful ignition management and fuel control, all possible with modern electronics. In fact, it is not uncommon for engines to maintain their existing fuel effficiency or even get better MPG after turbocharging than before, provided your foot doesn't make extensive use of the new power.
SBC boards are hideously expensive. They're rated for industrial environments, specialty, low volume items with a lot of engineering in them.
Mini ITX is completely self contained, reasonably low power, and the big innovation was snap-on DCDC converters from a variety of companies. Mini-box.com is the only place I know offhand that sells them. There's a couple really slick models with compact flash drives, PCMCIA slots, dual ethernet boards.. and they're all under $200. Just add ram!
From my experience, they're also very rugged.
Great linux support too.
What more do you want?
My company makes a very small enclosure for these; there are lots of others out there as well. Once it's tucked away, you probably won't have to look at it again. That was the biggest problem I saw when specing these systems, so I turned it into an opportunity.
In my experience, the engineering degree puts you above people with CS in the interview process early in your career. The core bits are crossed over, such as algorithms and discrete math. It is likely an engineering grad, especially an EE, will have taken more advanced mathematics courses than a CS grad - or at least, the default path through is much more math intensive.
Maybe I am wrong, but that is my experience. Exceptional people always stand out no matter what their majors, but you need to get to the point where you have that opportunity.
Another key point: It is very easy for a EE with a strong C++ or SQL background to apply for a develoepr job on high level systems. (Communications programming, DBA). It is very difficult for a CS person to apply for hardware engineering, firmware engineering, or control system positions.
If the university is even making the announcement, they do not take those programs seriously as a core component of their charter. This will impact how your degree is initially recieved, and may impact the quality or opportunities offered to you while you are there.
Transfer to another school soon (is January too soon?). This will minimize the complications of getting a degree granted from another institution - most have minimum credit requirements.
Makes me wonder if this is a sign of times to come, though. Engineering enrollment is way down across the board; if you're looking at a low income and questionable employment oppportunities out the door, why would you do that to yourself when the alternatives are potentially easier.
The biggest obstactle to the adoption of DSP computing has been price to entry. A modern compiler for a TI series DSP is thousands of dollars. That buys a lot of commodity hardware to hack on.
If they're going to keep the development toolchain open, this could be a very potent package indeed. Part of me doubts that is going to happen, given the nature of the business.
I design and deploy custom data logging solutions, signal conditioners, etc.
Computer at the end of the chain should not be a consideration whatsoever. The system under monitoring should be completely seperate; by the time the computer is involved, it should be recieving a conditioned, pre-amplified, or digital data stream over a galvanically/optoisolated connection.
If the introduction of a computer device causes a problem, there are other issues to consider.
Pick up a fanless mini-itx board, get yourself one of the snap-on DC/DC converter kits from mini-box.com, or similar, put it in a nice box and away you go. I've made 3 of these so far and they work great, and are acceptably silent with quiet drive.
If you want to go to the next level, boot the mini ITX board off compactflash and NFS mount your media off a server in the basement. This is what I did to get around some heat issues. Works like a CHARM.
Fast enough for a great MythTV box, not sure why this is such a revelation.
Even in the western world, I can't help but wonder what might come out of the widespread adoption of a $100 notebook computer. Not only would this put computers in the hands of people who might not otherwise have the opportunity, but it would also put them in a lot of places where they're not cost effective right now.
Increased accessibility to communication would be the obvious one, it would become VERY interesting if that played off into productivity and creativity growth as well.
wouldn't it obviate the need for embryonic stem cell research with all of it's accompanying moral and ethical controversies?
More interesting will be what will happen when China, Russia and other countries who are advancing stem cell research develop cures and better treatments than are available in North America. How many people would change their tune, if, for example, a cure for prostate cancer or heart disease came out of such research?
Slashdot Mirror
Windows, properly set up and configured, is NOT the BSOD nightmare it used to be. It's entrenched and will be a very hard slog to fight against. For those wanting to change, there's a super-polished, UNIX user friendly, open-source running contender in Apple's OS X.
How many of you own Apple notebooks? How many have blown away OS X to put a PPC linux distro on there?
The fact is that Windows isn't that bad, and Linux is going to do a whole lot better on the desktop if we want to make inroads there. Linux is already taking over places where the user experience is negligible or tightly controlled, for example, in the embedded, RTOS, and industrial worlds.
Fun article, but Microsoft moves forward, too. If Vista is a marketing success, then MS will dominate for a long time on the x86 desktop.
UWB, while exotic, is not impossible to duplicate.
I wonder how long plans for a primitive device make it out onto the Net - I'm reminded of the early Van Eck devices. Initially people thought they were science fiction or a joke....
Those little appliancs all looked bad, and didn't have any brand identification behind them.
Put them in a pretty white box with a bright GoOgLe logo, and you have the makings of something very powerful.
People aren't buying a web terminal or an interface, they're buying a gateway to use Google.
If it turns out to be true, it's a potentially brilliant move for Google. How does Google make all those megabucks? Advertising. They made it work, bigtime. What's advertising about? Eyeballs. Google is brilliant for putting the -right- eyeballs with the -right- ads.
This could be the first thing with the -opportunity- to seriously hurt Microsoft since Navagator and Java.
I'm sure the partnership with google is a viable mechanism to support Wikipedia into the future. The text only ads aren't overly intrusive and are automatically added based on keyword selections in the page. Seems to be a natural fit. ..in fact, I'd take a guess that rumors of google's involvement are why donations are down.
..and if you looked, you'd realize most of the options that are there are just as well tailored to a silent-ish server. You're not going to get silent when drives are running, but you can come very close. As I pointed out, a quick call and it's easy to do a one-off just for that application.
:-)
Happy 06, and not from the marketting department.
I got sick of not having what you described, so I partnered with a company to make them. (obviously I have a commercial interest).
You can see one of our cases reviewed on EPIAcenter.com right now.. I think it's pretty close to what you want, and if it isn't, a few minutes on the phone can have it customized any way you want.
Boot off flash and NFS mount a partition to a server in another room and you have your perfectly silent PC.
The power supply is a hybrid; get a DC/DC converter from a company like mini-box.com, then get one of their external notebook-style power adapters.
a better question might be.. "why use a gui"
For in house stuff I've been on a command line, or straight GLUT kick if I need to display graphics or data in a quick and dirty fashion. Obviously that's not going to work for everything, but you'd be suprised how far it goes.
Are there any cross platform (linux, mac, windows) GUI RAD tools ala Builder, yet?
Japan has lead in automation because of a limited pool of workers. Thus, they have much more incentive to invest in heavy next-generation levels of automation. The opposite extreme is China, where there is a near infinite supply of very cheap labour available. Thus, no incentive at all to innovate. If you can hire people at near subsistance level wages, they are very capable machines properly engineered.
This is more to the core of why Japan has lead innovation vs. population density. They're a very small nation geographically and population wise, running against much larger, much more resource and energy rich competitors.
Best comment I've read in awhile. :)
People don't work like that though. Do you think the LASIK industry is predicated on people liking wearing glasses? They do a good job of hiding my broken nose.
You know what I'd really like? The same interface I have now, on a 30" LCD that costs $1000. Hell, make that three of them. I'm using three 17" LCDs right now and two notebook computers next to me. What does joe sixpack want bad? a 60" plasma TV.
That I suspect is what the future will bring.
You want my predictions for 10 years?
Great big, high resolution displays, and probably several of them.
A wireless keyboard sitting in front of that display.
A wireless mouse sitting right next to it.
Next to that monster display will be a pad of engineering paper, and a pencil.
A big plasma TV on the wall, perhaps displaying video conferencing.
No guarantees on where the computer is - probably nowhere to be seen.
Perhaps a PDA or remote storage device capable of wireless networking.
That's the future. What's on the screen will probably look very much like what is there now.
Charging for a DVD codec that's optimized for their hardware is just stupid
It's only stupid if nobody pays.
1 DVD is about ~5gb.. probably not that long before 1000 movie collections start floating around.. then 10,000.. or more.
Once storage and transmission technologies work themselves out there will be a tremendous renaissaince of video content generation. Not the crappy stuff we have now, HD video. For everything. When we've filled up the media then, who knows. 3D video. pr0n will find an application.
Right now, we still can't beat that old station wagon full of removable media just yet.
Bullshit.
People don't need 'training'. They are not animals. Some percentage of ALL human populations are quite capable, and quite good at, self-learning. All that is required is access to information. Don't believe me? Watch kids interact with a library sometime. If these people have access to the right tools, some of them will realize it can be used to make their lives easier.
Those computers mean access to information on AIDS, mathematics, weather information to help with crops, the ability to communicate and organize governments that are not corrupt.
I would like to see a program like this in every country of the world, period.
This is because in order to handle (without blowing head gaskets or detonation) the increased charge density provided by forced induction, they must use a lower static compression ratio. Lower compression ratio generally equals less efficient combustion.
Tell that to the hundreds of people with turbocharged 10:1 (or higher) honda engines. It requires more careful ignition management and fuel control, all possible with modern electronics. In fact, it is not uncommon for engines to maintain their existing fuel effficiency or even get better MPG after turbocharging than before, provided your foot doesn't make extensive use of the new power.
Most of the micros I work with have less than 16k of flash (program) memory, and 1k of SRAM for variables and stack space is a luxury.
It's bad enough you need to use 512 byte blocks to write to MMC cards.
Cheap, robust, available wireless would be a real boon.. we have robust and available, but definately not cheap.
I'm not referring to BSc engineers, either - these are guys with Ph.Ds who spent most of their academic careers writing software.
I think I found your problem..
SBC boards are hideously expensive. They're rated for industrial environments, specialty, low volume items with a lot of engineering in them.
Mini ITX is completely self contained, reasonably low power, and the big innovation was snap-on DCDC converters from a variety of companies. Mini-box.com is the only place I know offhand that sells them. There's a couple really slick models with compact flash drives, PCMCIA slots, dual ethernet boards.. and they're all under $200. Just add ram!
From my experience, they're also very rugged.
Great linux support too.
What more do you want?
My company makes a very small enclosure for these; there are lots of others out there as well. Once it's tucked away, you probably won't have to look at it again. That was the biggest problem I saw when specing these systems, so I turned it into an opportunity.
Disclaimer: I have a BSc. EE
In my experience, the engineering degree puts you above people with CS in the interview process early in your career. The core bits are crossed over, such as algorithms and discrete math. It is likely an engineering grad, especially an EE, will have taken more advanced mathematics courses than a CS grad - or at least, the default path through is much more math intensive.
Maybe I am wrong, but that is my experience. Exceptional people always stand out no matter what their majors, but you need to get to the point where you have that opportunity.
Another key point: It is very easy for a EE with a strong C++ or SQL background to apply for a develoepr job on high level systems. (Communications programming, DBA). It is very difficult for a CS person to apply for hardware engineering, firmware engineering, or control system positions.
If the university is even making the announcement, they do not take those programs seriously as a core component of their charter. This will impact how your degree is initially recieved, and may impact the quality or opportunities offered to you while you are there.
Transfer to another school soon (is January too soon?). This will minimize the complications of getting a degree granted from another institution - most have minimum credit requirements.
Makes me wonder if this is a sign of times to come, though. Engineering enrollment is way down across the board; if you're looking at a low income and questionable employment oppportunities out the door, why would you do that to yourself when the alternatives are potentially easier.
The biggest obstactle to the adoption of DSP computing has been price to entry. A modern compiler for a TI series DSP is thousands of dollars. That buys a lot of commodity hardware to hack on.
If they're going to keep the development toolchain open, this could be a very potent package indeed. Part of me doubts that is going to happen, given the nature of the business.
I design and deploy custom data logging solutions, signal conditioners, etc.
Computer at the end of the chain should not be a consideration whatsoever. The system under monitoring should be completely seperate; by the time the computer is involved, it should be recieving a conditioned, pre-amplified, or digital data stream over a galvanically/optoisolated connection.
If the introduction of a computer device causes a problem, there are other issues to consider.
Pick up a fanless mini-itx board, get yourself one of the snap-on DC/DC converter kits from mini-box.com, or similar, put it in a nice box and away you go. I've made 3 of these so far and they work great, and are acceptably silent with quiet drive.
If you want to go to the next level, boot the mini ITX board off compactflash and NFS mount your media off a server in the basement. This is what I did to get around some heat issues. Works like a CHARM.
Fast enough for a great MythTV box, not sure why this is such a revelation.
Even in the western world, I can't help but wonder what might come out of the widespread adoption of a $100 notebook computer. Not only would this put computers in the hands of people who might not otherwise have the opportunity, but it would also put them in a lot of places where they're not cost effective right now.
Increased accessibility to communication would be the obvious one, it would become VERY interesting if that played off into productivity and creativity growth as well.
Might even make e-books mainstream.
I bet RIM is wishing that being didn't design the patent system. ..maybe his noodly appendage is an antenna
wouldn't it obviate the need for embryonic stem cell research with all of it's accompanying moral and ethical controversies?
More interesting will be what will happen when China, Russia and other countries who are advancing stem cell research develop cures and better treatments than are available in North America. How many people would change their tune, if, for example, a cure for prostate cancer or heart disease came out of such research?