This is going to have all the same old problems, that every other ultra-small laptop/pda has either the handwriting reconition is lame or carry the keyboard is too difficult. The Palm folding keyboard is nice but almost the same size as this device. The VGA screen probably looks good, but XP is going to be pretty cramp on 640x480, it may run MSWord but by the time the start bar, window header, tool icons etc... fill the screen ther isn't going to be much room to read or write a document. If you want to watch DVD's get a DVD player, if you want hours of MP3s get an I pod, a VGA screen with hadwriting just isn't going to fly. MS's tablet computers with 1024x768 are going to be expensive ~$2000+ but you could actually use it as a coputer. Don't get me wrong I love small boxes but Windows/Linux can't ever happily exist on such a device. This isn't the first miniPC, there have been lots, but they are too expensive, too hard to use, and when people don't buy the price goes up and the company dies.
Either you need a superPDA (people will still compain abou the cost) and target it at things that are approriate to a small device, MP3, camera, portable video etc... Mini PC will never fly, laptop will always be cheaper and more useful, PDAs SHOULD NOT be PCs, or try and use PC OSs.
The Chinese, Russian, and German haven't reallye been developed the swedish, and dutch submarines are the really quiet ones using sterling engines, but this limits them to shallow, costal waters. Active mode is rarely used in historical systems, but this system is much lower in which a strong transmitter is used at a distance and closer sensors hear the echo so there isn't much chance of detection. I'm not quite sure how one knows if this is harmful to marine life, a loud noise to a creature that depends on sound for communications and navigation can't be too happy about someone yelling in thier ear.
The door has been opened and once opened can't be closed. By using said software you are agreeing to the ELUA, so they are free to enforce or add DRM elements when ever they wish. One wonders why DRM is in PC products and not Mac products, Roxio must be responding to the desires of the music/video industry when on the PC but ignoring on the Mac, if they decided to so so once the chances of it happening again are pretty much assured.
I remeber reading the original Simputer stuff
last year and that had very different goals than
those discussed now. People here are discussing
if a single poor farmer could afford such a device
and would it make his/her life measurable better?
The orginal concept as I understood it was that
there would be one simputer per town and a farmer
could get goverment aid, file paperwork, market
(as in vegeatble) prices, receieve email (as in
free communications as opposed to pay post) etc....
In short it was a common shared resource to connect small villages and help provide goverment services that didn't make it out to rural locations. It might start as one per town and as it bacame more usefull (demand raised) it would be one per neighborhood, one per street etc.... . These seem like very realizable goals and it would be either the combined resources of a town or the goverment that would pay (~$200) for the Simputer to enable services and communication with said town.
This seems like a reasonable goal and one that would actually help small rural villages and with time increase to helping a wide portion not only of the poor or rural but be a standard community device. It would be helpful to any community, even in the US or other "rich" countries. It might replace the phonebook at a payphone, so that the phone listings are always upto date easier to use as it could assume that you are looking for the Bill Smith in this neighborhood rather than all the Bill Smiths in NYC. It could provide info about local stores, resturaunts, movie times etc... or access to communications for the homeless for those traveling (most people want to get email while traveling but don't want to carry 7 lb laptop, 3 lb charger,......). The use has the best computer technology but most of that is in the form of desktops at homes of those well off, when you're out shopping, vactaioning or whatever, that desktop doesn't get you much, so a public data terminal would be a boost to every segment of the population. My countries in the world have email cafe's in every town, I haven't seen more than a couple anywhere in the US, I'm sure there are out there, but not enough to be able to assume that I could get info while not a t home.
The local phone companies need to start offering some sort of digital payphone so that I can keep in touch or lookup movie times after dinner etc.... I'd pay $.25 to $.50 just to know if I got new email, there is a huge market out there, everyone is just to afraid to put something in a shared area for fear that it will get vandalized.
This seems pretty typical, ignoring the color issue for the momment, you want to be able to put your hand in your pocket looking for a dime and find a dime without pulling out all the coins and sorting. Dimes aren't the easiest to sort from pennies, or at least I get pennies as often as dimes but atleast I can feel and tell that I only have quarters or nickels. So the same size was a poor start. The color comparison is OK only if the coins are new and the user isn't color blind, what are these coins going to look like in 5 years, there is a huge variation between a new shiny penny and a 6 month old one and then as they get older they get very dark, the change in the life of a penny is 10 time the difference shown between the 20 and 50 coins shown in the photo. The idiot that did this should be fired, from a very large cannon, the color of the cannon shouldn't matter;^).
Details gimme details.
on
Making the iPod
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Pretty lame article, but what do you expect from
Digital Chain magazine? Article has few details
and paints designers as making careful technical decisions when the answers are given (i.e. decided to use Toshiba 1.8" HD, well being that they are
the only ones making 1.8" drives this is hardly
careful engineering). They also push the custom ARM
processor, which isn't required the GUI is very simple, Firewire took some effort but would have on any processor. The iPod is a nice piece of HW but this is from Apple's Industrial Design (ID) group not from some external contract design house. EEtimes had a much superior article with
pictures, breakdown of components, bill of materials and costing which was well done and only a few weeks after the launch. Apple builds really nice HW but the guts of the iPod aren't special.
With linux for the iPaQ do we really need to discuss a platform with less memory, slower processor, less polished Linux port and (wait for it, wait for it) documentation in English (assuming most/.ers don't read chinese). Just buy the iPaQ and be happy.
Invented the concept of a metal box sheilding radio waves (Faraday Cage). All these guys did was add paneling (a 1960's technology, found in many basement family rooms). So what exactly in new 1867+1960=???
This is not only important for web surfing and the like but brings up the possibility of cheap non celluar phone access. This could spawn a whole new industry, this just needs to get repeated in a few cities so that it becomes trendy and will then be adopted country wide (be the first one in your neighborhood).
As ussual the scumbag lawyers screw things up with a benifit to no one. I'm 37 and have been an engineer for 16 years and I don't understand those "small print" licenses so I can't be expected to "follow the rules" either. Isn't an open source license just that I promise to share and give up personal right to submitted code ( and I have not stolen said code). They should give him his access back, if it makes the sharks (um, I mean laywers) happy, can't a parent or gaurdian accept the agreement for him??? If he's been valuable or even if he hasn't they should have found a work arround the open source movement is purely based on good will, and they ain't showing much. This is a pretty big suprise to me as I saw Apple as the good guys who did things right, in HW, SW and general practices, but this suggests otherwise.
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" - Ben Franklin
Is the big news that someone put a computer inside a computer case???? Ok its not the computer that it was designed for but not really that impressive. Slashdot needs to have seperate sections for real news and hey look at this! types of stories.
All this can be done without GPS, the satalittes and aircraft generally know where they are and since they are taking pictures and the farmers should be able to recognize their own fields, why exactly do they need GPS???? This might make things a little easier, but the easiest is to just furtalize evenly anyway, this whole we'll find bugs and only use insectisides in those places seems highly suspect, won't the bugs realize that there are other areas with less pesticides and go there, kinda like 3 card monty. GPS doesn't really help or suddenly make this feasable, NASA should be concerned with gett rockets up not inventing new ways to make themselves necessary. NASA should lauch satallites, Dept Ag should distibute photos, farmers should plan crops and control fields, we don't need to spend billions to grow corn that farmers are getting paid not to grow anyway. More technology to the people and stop major government projcets that don't work!!!!
Intel and IBM and others gain headlines every few weeks with these new mirical technologies, and evryone (who isn't technical enough), assumes that means that 100GHz pentiums (or put yor favorite processor here) will be out by Xmas. Transistors need to be atleast 10-100 times faster as a ring oscilator as they can be for a reliable gate (AND, XOR, NOT....). Oscillations are sine waves, digital gates require sharp transitions so you need to be a minimum of 10 slower to get reliable timing characteristics. There is also a world of difference between getting one transistor to work in the lab in nice quiet conditions and getting 400 million transistors working together on a chip (ALU, MMU, L1 cache, L2 cache......) by the time you factor all those and having balanced timing across a chip, means that a simple circuit at 100GHz yields a produces a 10GHz processor. Intell supposedly has P4 at 3GHz already so just to stay competitive 10GHz will be required in a couple of years no big deal, but certainly it will be a couple more years before 100GHz chips surface. The problem has been and continues to be logic is getting faster, but memory is only inching ahead, its like having a dragster that can hit 300MPH, but not having any roads without curves.
Which one is he???
a) sensitive blonde
b) tough yet caring brunette
c) quiet one with goatee and ghetto jewelry
d) funky hair
e) the other one, who needs more publicity
Yes, I find this very disturbing. Nintendo should not have any rights to the hardware, if indeed the equipment violates patents/copyrights it shouldn't be sold, but the seller should be able to sell off memory, wires and other components to recoup some of their lost value, I don't see how Nintendo has any right of ownership to this device. I don't see show this violates DMCA, anyway it might allow copying of games but it also allow creation of games, having a copy capability shouldn't over rule the ability to use as a development device, this been the same argument that allowed the VHS recorder to be allowed even though it allowed persons to copy VHS tapes and the Supreme Court allowed VHS recorders on this argument. I don?t have a problem with them requiring that no coping be allowed but not them claiming that this device breaks DMCA or that they own the hardware that they should have no rights to. Other than keeping scumbags in business (lawyers) does this really help Nintendo???? The cost of the lawyers to write this letter is probably much less than the amount of possible lost revenue. The GBA is selling very well, the games have been a little slow to come out, but they are getting plenty of money for these flash cartridges, and I?m sure making some big time $$$ do they really think that this is going to put any dent in their sales?
What do these companies hope to gain? All this market research stuff seems pretty worthless to me. These firms may watch where I surf, but the only real thing they want/need to know is where I'll spend my next purchase. I may surf porn all day and then buy music, I don't generally surf/purchase in any sort of direct proportion, and I suspect most people don't. I may do some research before buying a DVD player, but what I may look at and what I buy may or may not come from watching my surfing habits. So they get lots of information but does it really have any worth to a retailer???? Noticing that I frequent/. probably doesn't help sell anything. I am constantly amazed that people expect to make money off the internet, the internet has grown only becasue things are free or maybe cheaper than in the real world, people don't expect to have to pay for info on the web, and many only use the web to get info on store purchases, the prices may not be as good but having the item in my hand rather than waiting for Mr UPS is what matters!
The real question is does the language fit the application. There are many reasons to choose one langague over another but those listed wouldn't be on my top 100. Easy to use IDE is brand spedific not inherient to the language. Simplified GUI design is generally a vendor implementation issue as well but the languaue may have better multi-platform suport than another. Multiple inherience is applicable in some applications but not that often, operator overloading is a nice buzzword, but not gnerally usefull. The rest is more buzzwords than anything else. The poster doesn't mention what sort of product it is so any advice listed would only be general purpose at best and probably not address this appplications special needs. There are no perfect solutions, at least not in any world that I'm familiar with;-). So you generally have to settle on the language/solution with the fewest drawbacks.
It seems to me the the best language has much more to do with maturity, ability to get programmers with experience in language X, number of palforms supported (with weighting to platforms most commonly expected to be used). Next on the list would be quickest development time, debugging suport (if you happen to be a programmer than occationaly makes mistakes). Other things to consider would be support libraries, that may have a large portion of your project alraedy solved. The whole "write once, run anywhere" really turns out to be "write once, debug everywhere" and never beleive that what is right for one platformn is going to work best on all platforms, windows != linux != MacOS !=.... . You are either stuck with being lame on all platforms or have builds targeted at each different platform.
The list used seems to show that the poster's boss doesn't really understand program management, so the best suggestion I could make is clean up your resume and use moster.com.
Color screen at 160x160 is like a box of Crayolas with only 6 colors. Color is nice but with the device at $400/550 already the price has to hit $500/650 min and this decreses battery life/talk time so I estimate that color treo will be a major failure they may sell but not many will use them. Although I could be wrong, common sense is no quarentee of being right.
Kinda makes those $800 NASA toliet seats look like a sweet deal. Wouldn't a $1.50 PIC do about the same thing and allow the purchase of $998.50 worth of cold, frosty beer?
Well more cache is a good thing an unmamafacurable chip or an overly pricey chip is really bad. The yeilds on a 464 sq mm chip will be really low, thats 21.5mm on a side assuming a square die and they ussually are. 25.4mm=inch means that this is very nearly a square inch. I'm working on a 10mm x10mm chip now and we expect a ~40% yeild just due to area. SRAM is twice as likely to fail as general logic so large caches L1 or L2 just go to reducing yeild. The larger the chip failures go up exponentially. An example of this would be you wanting to make a table out of pine so you go to the lumber yard and buy some wood, you get what you get and some pieces have wholes or knots that would ruin you table so you toss those. If you make a small table you may be able to get the table by avoiding the knots, but as the table gets bigger your ability to find a good full size peice deceases to the point that every peice of wood has at least one knot so you can never make a knot free table. If you get 20 defects per wafer and you only get 50 die per wafer you will probably get 30 chips (60% yeild) if your die increase to 30 per wafer you may only get 10 (33% yeild). If the die grows to 20/wafer you may get none (0% yeild). All wafers cost pretty much the same so yeild*wafer cost pretty much sets the cost, the lower the yeild the higher the cost. HP has done some interesting work in making chips with extra resources, such that problems can be avoided, route around the defect, they are quite a ways from making this work but this is probably what the future of silicon is going to look like. The other big factor in cost is testing and the more complex a chip the longer the test, its getting to the point that testing costs are out weighting silicon costs, so a self repair chip can help both yeild and testing issues.
http://www.parallaxinc.com
is a great place to check out they sell PIC chips
with thier develoment systems which are much better than the stuff from Microchip. They also have the basic stamps and the PIC clones from Scenix (now some other name) that run at upto 100Mips. There are PIC webservers down to blinking leds. Parallax has also started selling wireless conections, so they are more or less a one stop shop for any low end projects. The poster didn't mention what exactly he is interested in there are as many different types of hardware as there are interests, and as with many types of engineering there is a lot of not so exciting study and debug required (SW guys think HW is trivial and HW guys think SW is trivial) so its best to concentrate on what interests you and concentrate on that, this is the only way to survive the boring and frustrating times. If interested in MP3 there are MP3 player kits, if networking there are remote webservers, if robotics... well you get the idea.
Slashdot Mirror
This is going to have all the same old problems, that every other ultra-small laptop/pda has either the handwriting reconition is lame or carry the keyboard is too difficult. The Palm folding keyboard is nice but almost the same size as this device. The VGA screen probably looks good, but XP is going to be pretty cramp on 640x480, it may run MSWord but by the time the start bar, window header, tool icons etc ... fill the screen ther isn't going to be much room to read or write a document. If you want to watch DVD's get a DVD player, if you want hours of MP3s get an I pod, a VGA screen with hadwriting just isn't going to fly. MS's tablet computers with 1024x768 are going to be expensive ~$2000+ but you could actually use it as a coputer. Don't get me wrong I love small boxes but Windows/Linux can't ever happily exist on such a device. This isn't the first miniPC, there have been lots, but they are too expensive, too hard to use, and when people don't buy the price goes up and the company dies.
Either you need a superPDA (people will still compain abou the cost) and target it at things that are approriate to a small device, MP3, camera, portable video etc... Mini PC will never fly, laptop will always be cheaper and more useful, PDAs SHOULD NOT be PCs, or try and use PC OSs.
The Chinese, Russian, and German haven't reallye been developed the swedish, and dutch submarines are the really quiet ones using sterling engines, but this limits them to shallow, costal waters. Active mode is rarely used in historical systems, but this system is much lower in which a strong transmitter is used at a distance and closer sensors hear the echo so there isn't much chance of detection. I'm not quite sure how one knows if this is harmful to marine life, a loud noise to a creature that depends on sound for communications and navigation can't be too happy about someone yelling in thier ear.
The door has been opened and once opened can't be closed. By using said software you are agreeing to the ELUA, so they are free to enforce or add DRM elements when ever they wish. One wonders why DRM is in PC products and not Mac products, Roxio must be responding to the desires of the music/video industry when on the PC but ignoring on the Mac, if they decided to so so once the chances of it happening again are pretty much assured.
I remeber reading the original Simputer stuff last year and that had very different goals than those discussed now. People here are discussing if a single poor farmer could afford such a device and would it make his/her life measurable better? The orginal concept as I understood it was that there would be one simputer per town and a farmer could get goverment aid, file paperwork, market (as in vegeatble) prices, receieve email (as in free communications as opposed to pay post) etc....
......). The use has the best computer technology but most of that is in the form of desktops at homes of those well off, when you're out shopping, vactaioning or whatever, that desktop doesn't get you much, so a public data terminal would be a boost to every segment of the population. My countries in the world have email cafe's in every town, I haven't seen more than a couple anywhere in the US, I'm sure there are out there, but not enough to be able to assume that I could get info while not a t home.
In short it was a common shared resource to connect small villages and help provide goverment services that didn't make it out to rural locations. It might start as one per town and as it bacame more usefull (demand raised) it would be one per neighborhood, one per street etc.... . These seem like very realizable goals and it would be either the combined resources of a town or the goverment that would pay (~$200) for the Simputer to enable services and communication with said town.
This seems like a reasonable goal and one that would actually help small rural villages and with time increase to helping a wide portion not only of the poor or rural but be a standard community device. It would be helpful to any community, even in the US or other "rich" countries. It might replace the phonebook at a payphone, so that the phone listings are always upto date easier to use as it could assume that you are looking for the Bill Smith in this neighborhood rather than all the Bill Smiths in NYC. It could provide info about local stores, resturaunts, movie times etc... or access to communications for the homeless for those traveling (most people want to get email while traveling but don't want to carry 7 lb laptop, 3 lb charger,
The local phone companies need to start offering some sort of digital payphone so that I can keep in touch or lookup movie times after dinner etc.... I'd pay $.25 to $.50 just to know if I got new email, there is a huge market out there, everyone is just to afraid to put something in a shared area for fear that it will get vandalized.
This seems pretty typical, ignoring the color issue for the momment, you want to be able to put your hand in your pocket looking for a dime and find a dime without pulling out all the coins and sorting. Dimes aren't the easiest to sort from pennies, or at least I get pennies as often as dimes but atleast I can feel and tell that I only have quarters or nickels. So the same size was a poor start. The color comparison is OK only if the coins are new and the user isn't color blind, what are these coins going to look like in 5 years, there is a huge variation between a new shiny penny and a 6 month old one and then as they get older they get very dark, the change in the life of a penny is 10 time the difference shown between the 20 and 50 coins shown in the photo. The idiot that did this should be fired, from a very large cannon, the color of the cannon shouldn't matter ;^).
Pretty lame article, but what do you expect from Digital Chain magazine? Article has few details and paints designers as making careful technical decisions when the answers are given (i.e. decided to use Toshiba 1.8" HD, well being that they are the only ones making 1.8" drives this is hardly careful engineering). They also push the custom ARM processor, which isn't required the GUI is very simple, Firewire took some effort but would have on any processor. The iPod is a nice piece of HW but this is from Apple's Industrial Design (ID) group not from some external contract design house. EEtimes had a much superior article with pictures, breakdown of components, bill of materials and costing which was well done and only a few weeks after the launch. Apple builds really nice HW but the guts of the iPod aren't special.
With linux for the iPaQ do we really need to discuss a platform with less memory, slower processor, less polished Linux port and (wait for it, wait for it) documentation in English (assuming most /.ers don't read chinese). Just buy the iPaQ and be happy.
Faraday, Michael (1791-1867)
Invented the concept of a metal box sheilding radio waves (Faraday Cage). All these guys did was add paneling (a 1960's technology, found in many basement family rooms). So what exactly in new 1867+1960=???
This is not only important for web surfing and the like but brings up the possibility of cheap non celluar phone access. This could spawn a whole new industry, this just needs to get repeated in a few cities so that it becomes trendy and will then be adopted country wide (be the first one in your neighborhood).
"Bitten the Dust" is a bit strong of a way to describe a merge isn't it!!!!
As ussual the scumbag lawyers screw things up with a benifit to no one. I'm 37 and have been an engineer for 16 years and I don't understand those "small print" licenses so I can't be expected to "follow the rules" either. Isn't an open source license just that I promise to share and give up personal right to submitted code ( and I have not stolen said code). They should give him his access back, if it makes the sharks (um, I mean laywers) happy, can't a parent or gaurdian accept the agreement for him??? If he's been valuable or even if he hasn't they should have found a work arround the open source movement is purely based on good will, and they ain't showing much. This is a pretty big suprise to me as I saw Apple as the good guys who did things right, in HW, SW and general practices, but this suggests otherwise.
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" - Ben Franklin
Didn't Don Ho invent this? I remeber hearing about this twenty years ago.
Tiny Bubbles
Is the big news that someone put a computer inside a computer case???? Ok its not the computer that it was designed for but not really that impressive. Slashdot needs to have seperate sections for real news and hey look at this! types of stories.
All this can be done without GPS, the satalittes and aircraft generally know where they are and since they are taking pictures and the farmers should be able to recognize their own fields, why exactly do they need GPS???? This might make things a little easier, but the easiest is to just furtalize evenly anyway, this whole we'll find bugs and only use insectisides in those places seems highly suspect, won't the bugs realize that there are other areas with less pesticides and go there, kinda like 3 card monty. GPS doesn't really help or suddenly make this feasable, NASA should be concerned with gett rockets up not inventing new ways to make themselves necessary. NASA should lauch satallites, Dept Ag should distibute photos, farmers should plan crops and control fields, we don't need to spend billions to grow corn that farmers are getting paid not to grow anyway. More technology to the people and stop major government projcets that don't work!!!!
Intel and IBM and others gain headlines every few weeks with these new mirical technologies, and evryone (who isn't technical enough), assumes that means that 100GHz pentiums (or put yor favorite processor here) will be out by Xmas. Transistors need to be atleast 10-100 times faster as a ring oscilator as they can be for a reliable gate (AND, XOR, NOT ....). Oscillations are sine waves, digital gates require sharp transitions so you need to be a minimum of 10 slower to get reliable timing characteristics. There is also a world of difference between getting one transistor to work in the lab in nice quiet conditions and getting 400 million transistors working together on a chip (ALU, MMU, L1 cache, L2 cache ......) by the time you factor all those and having balanced timing across a chip, means that a simple circuit at 100GHz yields a produces a 10GHz processor. Intell supposedly has P4 at 3GHz already so just to stay competitive 10GHz will be required in a couple of years no big deal, but certainly it will be a couple more years before 100GHz chips surface. The problem has been and continues to be logic is getting faster, but memory is only inching ahead, its like having a dragster that can hit 300MPH, but not having any roads without curves.
Which one is he???
a) sensitive blonde
b) tough yet caring brunette
c) quiet one with goatee and ghetto jewelry
d) funky hair
e) the other one, who needs more publicity
Yes, I find this very disturbing. Nintendo should not have any rights to the hardware, if indeed the equipment violates patents/copyrights it shouldn't be sold, but the seller should be able to sell off memory, wires and other components to recoup some of their lost value, I don't see how Nintendo has any right of ownership to this device. I don't see show this violates DMCA, anyway it might allow copying of games but it also allow creation of games, having a copy capability shouldn't over rule the ability to use as a development device, this been the same argument that allowed the VHS recorder to be allowed even though it allowed persons to copy VHS tapes and the Supreme Court allowed VHS recorders on this argument. I don?t have a problem with them requiring that no coping be allowed but not them claiming that this device breaks DMCA or that they own the hardware that they should have no rights to. Other than keeping scumbags in business (lawyers) does this really help Nintendo???? The cost of the lawyers to write this letter is probably much less than the amount of possible lost revenue. The GBA is selling very well, the games have been a little slow to come out, but they are getting plenty of money for these flash cartridges, and I?m sure making some big time $$$ do they really think that this is going to put any dent in their sales?
What do these companies hope to gain? All this market research stuff seems pretty worthless to me. These firms may watch where I surf, but the only real thing they want/need to know is where I'll spend my next purchase. I may surf porn all day and then buy music, I don't generally surf/purchase in any sort of direct proportion, and I suspect most people don't. I may do some research before buying a DVD player, but what I may look at and what I buy may or may not come from watching my surfing habits. So they get lots of information but does it really have any worth to a retailer???? Noticing that I frequent /. probably doesn't help sell anything. I am constantly amazed that people expect to make money off the internet, the internet has grown only becasue things are free or maybe cheaper than in the real world, people don't expect to have to pay for info on the web, and many only use the web to get info on store purchases, the prices may not be as good but having the item in my hand rather than waiting for Mr UPS is what matters!
The real question is does the language fit the application. There are many reasons to choose one langague over another but those listed wouldn't be on my top 100. Easy to use IDE is brand spedific not inherient to the language. Simplified GUI design is generally a vendor implementation issue as well but the languaue may have better multi-platform suport than another. Multiple inherience is applicable in some applications but not that often, operator overloading is a nice buzzword, but not gnerally usefull. The rest is more buzzwords than anything else. The poster doesn't mention what sort of product it is so any advice listed would only be general purpose at best and probably not address this appplications special needs. There are no perfect solutions, at least not in any world that I'm familiar with ;-). So you generally have to settle on the language/solution with the fewest drawbacks.
.... . You are either stuck with being lame on all platforms or have builds targeted at each different platform.
It seems to me the the best language has much more to do with maturity, ability to get programmers with experience in language X, number of palforms supported (with weighting to platforms most commonly expected to be used). Next on the list would be quickest development time, debugging suport (if you happen to be a programmer than occationaly makes mistakes). Other things to consider would be support libraries, that may have a large portion of your project alraedy solved. The whole "write once, run anywhere" really turns out to be "write once, debug everywhere" and never beleive that what is right for one platformn is going to work best on all platforms, windows != linux != MacOS !=
The list used seems to show that the poster's boss doesn't really understand program management, so the best suggestion I could make is clean up your resume and use moster.com.
Color screen at 160x160 is like a box of Crayolas with only 6 colors. Color is nice but with the device at $400/550 already the price has to hit $500/650 min and this decreses battery life/talk time so I estimate that color treo will be a major failure they may sell but not many will use them. Although I could be wrong, common sense is no quarentee of being right.
Kinda makes those $800 NASA toliet seats look like a sweet deal. Wouldn't a $1.50 PIC do about the same thing and allow the purchase of $998.50 worth of cold, frosty beer?
The best would be:
"The Linux Kernel Hacker's Guide to Talking to Girls"
Well more cache is a good thing an unmamafacurable chip or an overly pricey chip is really bad. The yeilds on a 464 sq mm chip will be really low, thats 21.5mm on a side assuming a square die and they ussually are. 25.4mm=inch means that this is very nearly a square inch. I'm working on a 10mm x10mm chip now and we expect a ~40% yeild just due to area. SRAM is twice as likely to fail as general logic so large caches L1 or L2 just go to reducing yeild. The larger the chip failures go up exponentially. An example of this would be you wanting to make a table out of pine so you go to the lumber yard and buy some wood, you get what you get and some pieces have wholes or knots that would ruin you table so you toss those. If you make a small table you may be able to get the table by avoiding the knots, but as the table gets bigger your ability to find a good full size peice deceases to the point that every peice of wood has at least one knot so you can never make a knot free table. If you get 20 defects per wafer and you only get 50 die per wafer you will probably get 30 chips (60% yeild) if your die increase to 30 per wafer you may only get 10 (33% yeild). If the die grows to 20/wafer you may get none (0% yeild). All wafers cost pretty much the same so yeild*wafer cost pretty much sets the cost, the lower the yeild the higher the cost. HP has done some interesting work in making chips with extra resources, such that problems can be avoided, route around the defect, they are quite a ways from making this work but this is probably what the future of silicon is going to look like. The other big factor in cost is testing and the more complex a chip the longer the test, its getting to the point that testing costs are out weighting silicon costs, so a self repair chip can help both yeild and testing issues.
I can see the new T-Shirt from ThinkGeek.com now, replace the old:
Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
will now read:
Go away of I will replace you with a small monkey with a telepathic mouse.
Get yours now before their all gone!!!!!
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"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" - Ben Franklin
http://www.parallaxinc.com is a great place to check out they sell PIC chips with thier develoment systems which are much better than the stuff from Microchip. They also have the basic stamps and the PIC clones from Scenix (now some other name) that run at upto 100Mips. There are PIC webservers down to blinking leds. Parallax has also started selling wireless conections, so they are more or less a one stop shop for any low end projects. The poster didn't mention what exactly he is interested in there are as many different types of hardware as there are interests, and as with many types of engineering there is a lot of not so exciting study and debug required (SW guys think HW is trivial and HW guys think SW is trivial) so its best to concentrate on what interests you and concentrate on that, this is the only way to survive the boring and frustrating times. If interested in MP3 there are MP3 player kits, if networking there are remote webservers, if robotics ... well you get the idea.