Those who are serious about learning logic design for custom integrated circuits and gate arrays should learn Verilog, or better yet SystemVerilog. Python is great and all but the logic tools are built around Verilog and VHDL and require static typing. Once one knows Verilog and VHDL, then Python, Perl, etc. can be used to dynamically abstract and stamp out repetitive stuff better than the native HDL languages.
I recall having to learn Scheme and Fortran in first year CS after already knowing Basic & Pascal. Scheme was good for some theory on functional programming and recursion but not very practical for side projects (like web-apps and such). Today I think Python or Java would be a good first language and I think new programmers should be brought up to speed on OOA/OOD/OOP ASAP. PHP might be another good option, which would tie in with HTML. I think young people should be taught a pragmatic language that allows them to get whatever pet project they can dream up off the ground. More and more these pet project would likely be a web-based app.
Optical networking in free space for data transfer is nothing new.
A company called fSONA offers fiber-like connectivity up to 7km and 2.5Gbps. Looks like they target military, federal service providers and enterprise customers.
"point-to-point laser signal is extremely difficult to intercept, and therefore secure" -- http://www.fsona.com/solutions.php
Just because there's not many GWT WebApps on the public Internet doesn't mean companies aren't using GWT behind corporate firewalls. The GWT forum is very active and there are postings from various big name companies there.
SpectaReg.com appears to use the GWT and was born from an intranet WebApp (i.e. runs on corporate networks). This enables System on Chip developers (like digital logic designers and embedded software engineers) to reduce costs and improve quality by automating addressable register interfaces. It's a pretty slick WebApp for generating code and documentation from single-source design specifications.
In his opinion: 'I think you only need two kinds of people to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds'.
Nerds is a pretty general term. I would argue that you also need the proper mix of creative nerds, tech nerds, marketing nerds and management nerds. Guess I best read the essay and see if Nerds is decomposed into sub-classes.
Some hard stats on this would be good. Certainly there is tons of resources available for the self taught programmer. I find it hard to believe there aren't more kids programming today than there was back when there was one or two pets for a whole school. Not to mention lego mindstorm, PHP, and Python. One thing you can be sure of is that the number of kids using goto statements has declined over the years.
Marketing is not as hard as one might think. Of course marketing should be started from day one... marketing is not merely advertising, it's goal is to understand your customer and ensure that you are providing what the market needs to solve their problems. Here are some suggestions to get you started:
Read some good books on the subject (Innovators Dilemma, Crossing the Chasm, Tales from the Tornado,...)
Answer these questions on your website and in your literature:
What is you typical customer profile?
Why would they buy?
What pains does your product solve for them?
Who are your competitors?
What differentiates you from your competitors?
Prepare a press release that announces your company and your product (by answering the abovementioned questions). Work from examples that have been put out by other companies in the past. Then email a bunch of editors for publications & media in your domain about one to two weeks before the press release goes on the wire.
"Protection would last for four years, enough time to establish a market and about the time required to process a regular patent application today."
Four years sounds better than 20 especially because software moves so quick... is four years too short or too long? What happens if someone has a brilliantly novel and innovative idea but is ready way before the market will accept the new technology? Say the inventor maxes out his credit card just to get to year four when the market is starting to pick up... then along comes GiantCompany who takes the idea and makes billions. This would make a case for trade-secrecy.
A better prior art database with an intelligent search and natural language processing might be advantageous. With software patents maybe the source code itself could be submitted and stored in a giant revision control system. A super-compiler / analyzer could characterise software and cross reference with patent application, search for prior art, maybe even access the novelty and innovation. This could speed up the whole patent system take some of the nonsense out of software patents, reduce bunk claims, and cut out the lawyer middleman. Then again it would all depend on how "fairly" the system was built and evolved.
Perhaps a dual licensing model would allow you to make some money. Have source code open and available for free. Educational institutions, non-profit orgs and evaluators can use this... commercial user must buy a license. Non-commercial licensers must provide you with any modifications / improvements they make. Commercial users could get a more stable and better supported version. Also you could charge for services, training,...
Not sure how profitable this would be, but it might be better than a pure open source model. Anyone heard of people being successful under this model?
Yes, bigger is better for economies of scale. By Moore's law everyone will eventually have a 45nm process. First to market with a 45nm process doesn't say innovation to me, unless the yields are excellent and unmatchable by others. My view is that the fabs don't innovate much other than in an industrial manufacturing sense... to risky... leave the physics innovation for the academic institutions. Suppliers of manufacturing and process control equipment (i.e. smaller companies) likely provide a good chunk of the fab innovations.
For the manufacturing end of things the costs are enormous. A bunch of companies joining together to partner on a fab says that manufacturing isn't what differentiates them from the pack. What really differentiates would be the analog, digital logic and software design that define the chip's design. The methodology for creating chips, verifying and validating functionality is a differentiator too. To me this is where the innovation occurs that has the most impact on society -- at an abstract level that is independent of manufacturing processes.
Subsystem (aka IP) development can actually be done in someone's basement or garage using a simulator and FPGA for prototyping. From your garage you could theoretically create and prototype an IP subsystem worth hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing revenue. It's the manufacturing process that costs the most and this is one area where you don't want to take big risks.
They must have done something right... some combination of image, cost, and core-values. Seems Intel stives to have all employees aligning with these values. That 1994 Pentium bug could have really damaged the brand, but they managed it by apologizing, recalling and replacing at a cost of $300 million.
Yes innovation is great... The only problem is that larger companies and organizations are slow to innovate. Massive infrastructure and bureaucracy stifle innovation.
What about a custom processor and compiler generator that is optimized to your software algorithm / application? Seems this is what Tensilica is doing.
Sysem-on-Chip (SoC) makes sense when you want high-volume production of electronic systems with specialized hardware / software / programming framework. For example a chip that is a generic platform for a cell phone, with USB, Bluetooth, WiFi, GSM, camera, MPU, DSP, GPS circuitry. Typically the physical and data-link layer processing for this kind of application can not be done in a off-the shelf microprocessor. Putting discreet chips for physical and data-link alongside a discreet microprocessor could be more expensive than a specialized SoC. The more you can put in a single, high-volume chip the greater the economies of scale. A circuit board with fewer chips is cheaper in many senses. Potentially 5 different smart-phone manufactures could use the same chip (or modular chip sub-systems) -- what differentiates them would be the way they program things to offer functionality to the end-customer.
As a SoC developer, looking for solutions to help improve dev-team productivity, I'm finding that there is a new breed of tools emerging called Electronic System Level (ESL) tools. These tools help to automate tedious low-level work and facilitate co-development of various aspects of SoC development. When interacting with hardware from a microprocessor, or even for communicating between multiple microprocessors I generally use memory-mapped registers. SpectaReg, a new tool from Productivity Design Tools looks pretty cool. During a recent demo PDTi showed how SpectaReg captures high-level speculations and generates HDL logic, a C hardware abstraction layer API, register-map documentation in HTML and PDF formats, and a self-checking test bench for the logic.
Open source can lead to innovation. Consider the case where you want to create a new webapp and provide some sort of service to the world. Your value-add is your differentiated innovation. By using an open source webserver, XML parser and such you are able to innovate more quickly because you don't need to create your own webserver and XML parser. Instead you can begin creating your application by applying, integrating and extending open source tools that have been tested by many.
The open source stuff benefits the whole society, and your differentiated and innovative application -- built on open source -- benefits your customers.
What I want to know is how do organizations make money in the open source world? A service model seems the most obvious, but then again development services seem best suited for areas with cheap labour (i.e. China & India).
Eventually, I could see IP and code as a sort of currently... perhaps that is where things are going. Even computer geeks need to eat and buy stuff from time to time though.
Someone in the PR field once commented on the over usage of the word 'leverage' in the tech world, and how much she disliked the word.
In a financial sense someone is leveraged if they are utilizing debt, or derivatives for investment purposes. This will amplify the extent of losses or gains. See Investopedia's definiton.
In a technology sense I think of leverage as using something or someone to make it easier to reach a goal. This is analogous to using a lever to make it easier to lift something. Utilizing a particular technology may make it easier to create or develop something, just as a lever makes it easier to lift a large rock.
Recently I took the dive and started a startup. I considered patents but decided against -- as a small company patents are very expensive and are not a sure thing. Aside from legal and filing fees you have to have $$ to go after anyone who infringes. Someone in the VC world once told me that if a patent-holder comes after you for infringement it means they are worried about you, validating that you are on the right track. In the end, it seems to that patents only benefit big corporations and of course lawyers, making it tough for smaller innovative companies.
RE: "Also, Canada has the second largest oil reserves in the world." Yes, sir, Mister President, I do believe Canada is intending to use weapons of mass destruction against us.
No need for the ole' weapons of mass destruction tactics... I imagine US multinationals already own the majority of it:)
Slashdot Mirror
Those who are serious about learning logic design for custom integrated circuits and gate arrays should learn Verilog, or better yet SystemVerilog. Python is great and all but the logic tools are built around Verilog and VHDL and require static typing. Once one knows Verilog and VHDL, then Python, Perl, etc. can be used to dynamically abstract and stamp out repetitive stuff better than the native HDL languages.
Let's hope the Asian carp doesn't take hold in Lake Huron.
I recall having to learn Scheme and Fortran in first year CS after already knowing Basic & Pascal. Scheme was good for some theory on functional programming and recursion but not very practical for side projects (like web-apps and such). Today I think Python or Java would be a good first language and I think new programmers should be brought up to speed on OOA/OOD/OOP ASAP. PHP might be another good option, which would tie in with HTML. I think young people should be taught a pragmatic language that allows them to get whatever pet project they can dream up off the ground. More and more these pet project would likely be a web-based app.
Optical networking in free space for data transfer is nothing new. A company called fSONA offers fiber-like connectivity up to 7km and 2.5Gbps. Looks like they target military, federal service providers and enterprise customers. "point-to-point laser signal is extremely difficult to intercept, and therefore secure" -- http://www.fsona.com/solutions.php
This conjured up recollections of Lars and the Real Girl for me too, as dangitman mentioned.
Just because there's not many GWT WebApps on the public Internet doesn't mean companies aren't using GWT behind corporate firewalls. The GWT forum is very active and there are postings from various big name companies there.
SpectaReg.com appears to use the GWT and was born from an intranet WebApp (i.e. runs on corporate networks). This enables System on Chip developers (like digital logic designers and embedded software engineers) to reduce costs and improve quality by automating addressable register interfaces. It's a pretty slick WebApp for generating code and documentation from single-source design specifications.
...there is the age old game of Operation. Zzzzzztttt!
> Java is strongly typed 100% of the time
With Jython or Groovy you've essentially got dynamically typed Java.
In his opinion: 'I think you only need two kinds of people to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds'. Nerds is a pretty general term. I would argue that you also need the proper mix of creative nerds, tech nerds, marketing nerds and management nerds. Guess I best read the essay and see if Nerds is decomposed into sub-classes.
Some hard stats on this would be good. Certainly there is tons of resources available for the self taught programmer. I find it hard to believe there aren't more kids programming today than there was back when there was one or two pets for a whole school. Not to mention lego mindstorm, PHP, and Python. One thing you can be sure of is that the number of kids using goto statements has declined over the years.
"Discover magazine tells of a recently discovered gigantic virus, Mimivirus..."
I knew Mimi was promiscuous. Yep, she gets around and likely has several viruses and bacterium... but I didn't know she had a virus named after her.
Marketing is not as hard as one might think. Of course marketing should be started from day one... marketing is not merely advertising, it's goal is to understand your customer and ensure that you are providing what the market needs to solve their problems. Here are some suggestions to get you started:
Read some good books on the subject (Innovators Dilemma, Crossing the Chasm, Tales from the Tornado, ...)
Answer these questions on your website and in your literature:
What is you typical customer profile?
Why would they buy?
What pains does your product solve for them?
Who are your competitors?
What differentiates you from your competitors?
Prepare a press release that announces your company and your product (by answering the abovementioned questions). Work from examples that have been put out by other companies in the past. Then email a bunch of editors for publications & media in your domain about one to two weeks before the press release goes on the wire.
Best of luck to you!
Four years sounds better than 20 especially because software moves so quick... is four years too short or too long? What happens if someone has a brilliantly novel and innovative idea but is ready way before the market will accept the new technology? Say the inventor maxes out his credit card just to get to year four when the market is starting to pick up... then along comes GiantCompany who takes the idea and makes billions. This would make a case for trade-secrecy.
A better prior art database with an intelligent search and natural language processing might be advantageous. With software patents maybe the source code itself could be submitted and stored in a giant revision control system. A super-compiler / analyzer could characterise software and cross reference with patent application, search for prior art, maybe even access the novelty and innovation. This could speed up the whole patent system take some of the nonsense out of software patents, reduce bunk claims, and cut out the lawyer middleman. Then again it would all depend on how "fairly" the system was built and evolved.
Perhaps a dual licensing model would allow you to make some money. Have source code open and available for free. Educational institutions, non-profit orgs and evaluators can use this... commercial user must buy a license. Non-commercial licensers must provide you with any modifications / improvements they make. Commercial users could get a more stable and better supported version. Also you could charge for services, training, ...
Not sure how profitable this would be, but it might be better than a pure open source model. Anyone heard of people being successful under this model?
Yes, bigger is better for economies of scale. By Moore's law everyone will eventually have a 45nm process. First to market with a 45nm process doesn't say innovation to me, unless the yields are excellent and unmatchable by others. My view is that the fabs don't innovate much other than in an industrial manufacturing sense... to risky... leave the physics innovation for the academic institutions. Suppliers of manufacturing and process control equipment (i.e. smaller companies) likely provide a good chunk of the fab innovations.
For the manufacturing end of things the costs are enormous. A bunch of companies joining together to partner on a fab says that manufacturing isn't what differentiates them from the pack. What really differentiates would be the analog, digital logic and software design that define the chip's design. The methodology for creating chips, verifying and validating functionality is a differentiator too. To me this is where the innovation occurs that has the most impact on society -- at an abstract level that is independent of manufacturing processes.
Subsystem (aka IP) development can actually be done in someone's basement or garage using a simulator and FPGA for prototyping. From your garage you could theoretically create and prototype an IP subsystem worth hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing revenue. It's the manufacturing process that costs the most and this is one area where you don't want to take big risks.
Just tried to but the damn things are too stuck. What kind of glue are they using? Now where's that utility knife.
The Intel brand was ranked #5 for Business Week's 2005 Global Brands Scoreboard just below Coke, Microsoft, IBM & GE, with a brand value of $35.6 billion.
They must have done something right... some combination of image, cost, and core-values. Seems Intel stives to have all employees aligning with these values. That 1994 Pentium bug could have really damaged the brand, but they managed it by apologizing, recalling and replacing at a cost of $300 million.
Yes innovation is great... The only problem is that larger companies and organizations are slow to innovate. Massive infrastructure and bureaucracy stifle innovation.
What about a custom processor and compiler generator that is optimized to your software algorithm / application? Seems this is what Tensilica is doing.
Sysem-on-Chip (SoC) makes sense when you want high-volume production of electronic systems with specialized hardware / software / programming framework. For example a chip that is a generic platform for a cell phone, with USB, Bluetooth, WiFi, GSM, camera, MPU, DSP, GPS circuitry. Typically the physical and data-link layer processing for this kind of application can not be done in a off-the shelf microprocessor. Putting discreet chips for physical and data-link alongside a discreet microprocessor could be more expensive than a specialized SoC. The more you can put in a single, high-volume chip the greater the economies of scale. A circuit board with fewer chips is cheaper in many senses. Potentially 5 different smart-phone manufactures could use the same chip (or modular chip sub-systems) -- what differentiates them would be the way they program things to offer functionality to the end-customer.
As a SoC developer, looking for solutions to help improve dev-team productivity, I'm finding that there is a new breed of tools emerging called Electronic System Level (ESL) tools. These tools help to automate tedious low-level work and facilitate co-development of various aspects of SoC development. When interacting with hardware from a microprocessor, or even for communicating between multiple microprocessors I generally use memory-mapped registers. SpectaReg, a new tool from Productivity Design Tools looks pretty cool. During a recent demo PDTi showed how SpectaReg captures high-level speculations and generates HDL logic, a C hardware abstraction layer API, register-map documentation in HTML and PDF formats, and a self-checking test bench for the logic.
Open source can lead to innovation. Consider the case where you want to create a new webapp and provide some sort of service to the world. Your value-add is your differentiated innovation. By using an open source webserver, XML parser and such you are able to innovate more quickly because you don't need to create your own webserver and XML parser. Instead you can begin creating your application by applying, integrating and extending open source tools that have been tested by many.
The open source stuff benefits the whole society, and your differentiated and innovative application -- built on open source -- benefits your customers.
What I want to know is how do organizations make money in the open source world? A service model seems the most obvious, but then again development services seem best suited for areas with cheap labour (i.e. China & India).
Eventually, I could see IP and code as a sort of currently... perhaps that is where things are going. Even computer geeks need to eat and buy stuff from time to time though.
Someone in the PR field once commented on the over usage of the word 'leverage' in the tech world, and how much she disliked the word.
In a financial sense someone is leveraged if they are utilizing debt, or derivatives for investment purposes. This will amplify the extent of losses or gains. See Investopedia's definiton.In a technology sense I think of leverage as using something or someone to make it easier to reach a goal. This is analogous to using a lever to make it easier to lift something. Utilizing a particular technology may make it easier to create or develop something, just as a lever makes it easier to lift a large rock.
Recently I took the dive and started a startup. I considered patents but decided against -- as a small company patents are very expensive and are not a sure thing. Aside from legal and filing fees you have to have $$ to go after anyone who infringes. Someone in the VC world once told me that if a patent-holder comes after you for infringement it means they are worried about you, validating that you are on the right track. In the end, it seems to that patents only benefit big corporations and of course lawyers, making it tough for smaller innovative companies.
RE: "Also, Canada has the second largest oil reserves in the world." Yes, sir, Mister President, I do believe Canada is intending to use weapons of mass destruction against us. No need for the ole' weapons of mass destruction tactics... I imagine US multinationals already own the majority of it :)