These days the OS components are getting laess and less tied to specific hardware. Even "drivers" are tending towards generic code that is adapted with hardware adaptation layers (HALs).
What is more interestin, however, is that hardware capability is getting richer. Gate arrays etc allow you you build far more intelligent hardware requiring less software control from the main CPU. That makes for more efficient processing.
Errr, so don't run dog desktop applications.... that's where much tighter slicker code like Opera come in to play.
Devices like the i.MX31, used in the Foleo, have some very interesting media processing capabilites. Enough to do movie playing etc. ARM is what mobile is about and as mobiles become more capable, the ARM parts will grow more peripherals.
I have a psion 7 running Epoch and an old CPU. This is a very handy form factor. I've been hoping for a new release but sadly Psion is no more. I think this is it.
It is pointless trying to stuff productivity applications into a PDA format. Try doing word even simple processing on a PDA or blackberry.
This is also much more like what an OLPC should be. ARM == low power & cost relative to an x86. I think OPLC got it wrong when they went x86 - which looks like it was done solely to support Windows. Linux runs great on ARM (there are probably more Linux devices using ARM than x86).
MS does not play fair and don't improve the industry. At one time they might have been great, but now they no longer ar and instead use destructive practices to keep their position.
MS so often serve up an inferior product backed by huge money and marketing without really understanding the product space.
Look at Windows Mobile (WinCE). I believe this is now making a tiny profit fore MS, but for approx 8or 9 years MS just threw money at WinCE. Companies producing good stuff were driven out of business. This pattern of destructive practice has been played out so many times: Borland, Netware,...
It might not matter if they had a half-decent product range. MS has a history of storming into a new area with little understanding and causing a lot of damage.
Some years back, myself and a three others went to Redmond to meet with a new MS group formed to enter into a new industry. We came from the industry leaders and had approx 25 years of experience between us. We understood very well how to program for the industry. The MS guys had no experience, but the manager dude had spent approx 1 month reading up on the industry. They presented their APIs which we explained would not work and would be close to impossible to program to. The MS manager dude basically said that it did not matter: programmers would do whatever they said. Well the MS APIs got released and were a complete disaster causing pain for many people for a few years.
No bother as to whether they're doing something better, just using their weight to body-slam anyone else.
I see the same thinking with C#, Embedded.NET, Silverlight, Zune,...
Can I throw away my punch cards? Card punching is one skill I don't think I'll need any more.
C is as important now as it ever was, if not more so. We hear Moores Law blaah blaah, write everything in C# blaah blaah, but that's nuts. Sure PCs are getting more powerful and you can (almost) design a UI with a thread per pixel, but people forget that Moores Law is a wave you can ride both ways.
The obvious fact is that you get more gruntier computers so you can bloat up PC code without too many concerned people. However, the other factor is that small microcontrollers are getting cheaper. Less than 50c will buy you an 8MHz micro that can control appliances etc. You can program that in C, but bloatware won't fly.
Get in the shower. Too hot? Set it cooler quickly. Now it's too cold so you set it hotter. Now it's too hot again....
Any feedback system is prone to instability, depending on gain, feedback speed etc. This is a problem as old as automatic control systems.
A traffic advice/control system can use two simple mechanisms to prevent oscillation: (1)Firstly, really fast feedback. If people get routing updates in seconds rather than tens of minutes, then they will tend to get good routing. Remember that only a limited number of people will be able to take an offramp etc and get rerouted within, say a minute. So long as the rate of rerouting is slower than the feedback, the system should not oscillate. (2) Selective rerouting. The system can reroute portion of the traffic down alternate routes. It does not have to be all or nothing. Essentially this provides a way to set gain.
Being a parent has always been hard, but I think it is getting harder. There is growing social and peer pressure for kids to start doing things they are really not equipped to handle. Society is treating kids like mini-adults which they are not.
Teenagers (13..18) were once considered kids in their emerging years. Now they are treated like adults. The new emerging group are the "tweenagers", a term that started out refering to 10 to 12 year olds, but now extends as low as 8 or even 6.
So now instead of parents having to deal with 14 year olds asking for adult treatment, they're now dealing with 8 year olds asking for padded bras "because everyone else has them".
Marketers will do everything they can legally do to create revenue. They have advertising and other forces on their side. Parents have no more tools than they have ever had. Marketing has got more agressive and will continue to do so.
Added to that, most parents are willing to just go with the flow. Typically these days most parents work (as opposed to 40 or 50 years ago when many many mothers did not). Most parents don't have the time or inclination to spend with their children to give them the guidance that they need.
So if the parents don't give the guidance, and soceity increasingly tolerates aggressive marketing, where is the control going to come from?
Apart from cranking out Pentiums, Intel don't know what they want. They have made various attempts at diversification but always end up selling things off.
They bought Dialogic (a communications company), then sold it off. They bought StoringARM (a communications/mobile chiop), extended that to the PXAxxx XScale architecture, then sold that off.
if it had to make a profit to stay alive like Palm did.
Windows CE/Windows Mobile was running at a huge loss, but has now broken even. Tactics like that do tend to allow you to destroy traditional competition in the long run. Linux-kerneled devices are growing faster than ever and MS does not have a recipe to destroy them.
Adding complexity generally makes systems more fragile and more prone to attack.
Exisgting conductors use either bus-bars (hunks of metal) or cables. These are pretty reliable and well understood. Sure they can break and corrode, but they are by no means fragile. So-called "high temperature" superconductors still need cryogenic cooling which means a more complex system to maintain (pumps, piping, etc etc)
Gee I wonder which system is more likely to break down due to natural events (earthquake, flooding etc) or direct human sabotage (bomb, ax-wielding pipe hacker)?
MS have pushed tablets three or four times and they've always failed (starting way back around 1990). The reason: this is one of Bill Gate's pet areas of interest and immense effort goes into these failures. In fact all their business areas bleed money except for selling XP + Office to corporates. This has been so for a long time. Perhaps if other business units had to make money they'd think a bit more and create better products.
MS direction is not set by listening to the market, but by Bill's ego. This is what happens when you have a virtual monopoly.
I have a Windows and Linux box. I'm pretty careful with browsing on the Windows box because of malware concerns. On the Linux box I just click anything... nothing to worry about.
Slashdot Mirror
What is more interestin, however, is that hardware capability is getting richer. Gate arrays etc allow you you build far more intelligent hardware requiring less software control from the main CPU. That makes for more efficient processing.
Oh how things have changed...
It would run pretty slow though.
Instead of just complaining (and earning -ve mod points), provide a link and earn +ve mod points instead.
Devices like the i.MX31, used in the Foleo, have some very interesting media processing capabilites. Enough to do movie playing etc. ARM is what mobile is about and as mobiles become more capable, the ARM parts will grow more peripherals.
It is pointless trying to stuff productivity applications into a PDA format. Try doing word even simple processing on a PDA or blackberry.
This is also much more like what an OLPC should be. ARM == low power & cost relative to an x86. I think OPLC got it wrong when they went x86 - which looks like it was done solely to support Windows. Linux runs great on ARM (there are probably more Linux devices using ARM than x86).
Not enough O2 and you die. Too much and you die (approx 2 atmospheres partial pressure IIRC).
Water too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Strange
Most drugs are poisons if taken in excessive quantities too
what kind of backward planet full of ugly beings does she come from?
That will tell you why it crashed.
MS so often serve up an inferior product backed by huge money and marketing without really understanding the product space.
Look at Windows Mobile (WinCE). I believe this is now making a tiny profit fore MS, but for approx 8or 9 years MS just threw money at WinCE. Companies producing good stuff were driven out of business. This pattern of destructive practice has been played out so many times: Borland, Netware,...
It might not matter if they had a half-decent product range. MS has a history of storming into a new area with little understanding and causing a lot of damage.
Some years back, myself and a three others went to Redmond to meet with a new MS group formed to enter into a new industry. We came from the industry leaders and had approx 25 years of experience between us. We understood very well how to program for the industry. The MS guys had no experience, but the manager dude had spent approx 1 month reading up on the industry. They presented their APIs which we explained would not work and would be close to impossible to program to. The MS manager dude basically said that it did not matter: programmers would do whatever they said. Well the MS APIs got released and were a complete disaster causing pain for many people for a few years.
No bother as to whether they're doing something better, just using their weight to body-slam anyone else.
I see the same thinking with C#, Embedded .NET, Silverlight, Zune,...
This is a subtle point that adjusts end of quarter shipping policies for a lot of international companies.
Of course this all depends on if you can believe a fanboy site.
See. She did something right for HP.
C is as important now as it ever was, if not more so. We hear Moores Law blaah blaah, write everything in C# blaah blaah, but that's nuts. Sure PCs are getting more powerful and you can (almost) design a UI with a thread per pixel, but people forget that Moores Law is a wave you can ride both ways.
The obvious fact is that you get more gruntier computers so you can bloat up PC code without too many concerned people. However, the other factor is that small microcontrollers are getting cheaper. Less than 50c will buy you an 8MHz micro that can control appliances etc. You can program that in C, but bloatware won't fly.
Any feedback system is prone to instability, depending on gain, feedback speed etc. This is a problem as old as automatic control systems.
A traffic advice/control system can use two simple mechanisms to prevent oscillation:
(1)Firstly, really fast feedback. If people get routing updates in seconds rather than tens of minutes, then they will tend to get good routing. Remember that only a limited number of people will be able to take an offramp etc and get rerouted within, say a minute. So long as the rate of rerouting is slower than the feedback, the system should not oscillate.
(2) Selective rerouting. The system can reroute portion of the traffic down alternate routes. It does not have to be all or nothing. Essentially this provides a way to set gain.
I feel safe already!
Teenagers (13..18) were once considered kids in their emerging years. Now they are treated like adults. The new emerging group are the "tweenagers", a term that started out refering to 10 to 12 year olds, but now extends as low as 8 or even 6.
So now instead of parents having to deal with 14 year olds asking for adult treatment, they're now dealing with 8 year olds asking for padded bras "because everyone else has them".
Marketers will do everything they can legally do to create revenue. They have advertising and other forces on their side. Parents have no more tools than they have ever had. Marketing has got more agressive and will continue to do so.
Added to that, most parents are willing to just go with the flow. Typically these days most parents work (as opposed to 40 or 50 years ago when many many mothers did not). Most parents don't have the time or inclination to spend with their children to give them the guidance that they need.
So if the parents don't give the guidance, and soceity increasingly tolerates aggressive marketing, where is the control going to come from?
They can figure out whether you're sitting in a chair or jying in bed
They bought Dialogic (a communications company), then sold it off. They bought StoringARM (a communications/mobile chiop), extended that to the PXAxxx XScale architecture, then sold that off.
What Intel needs is a bit of long term thinking.
Windows CE/Windows Mobile was running at a huge loss, but has now broken even. Tactics like that do tend to allow you to destroy traditional competition in the long run. Linux-kerneled devices are growing faster than ever and MS does not have a recipe to destroy them.
One bit of feedback that MS gets is that many people find the standard sticker price far too high.
Exisgting conductors use either bus-bars (hunks of metal) or cables. These are pretty reliable and well understood. Sure they can break and corrode, but they are by no means fragile. So-called "high temperature" superconductors still need cryogenic cooling which means a more complex system to maintain (pumps, piping, etc etc)
Gee I wonder which system is more likely to break down due to natural events (earthquake, flooding etc) or direct human sabotage (bomb, ax-wielding pipe hacker)?
That free will just lasts a few milliseconds! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug_zapper
MS direction is not set by listening to the market, but by Bill's ego. This is what happens when you have a virtual monopoly.
I have a Windows and Linux box. I'm pretty careful with browsing on the Windows box because of malware concerns. On the Linux box I just click anything... nothing to worry about.