Microsoft has already limited the CPU cores and speed along with limiting max RAM installed on Netbooks running Windows 7 Starter so this is gonna hurt. Now that it's been proven they need anti-virus running too we'll have to see what kind of performance comparisons with Linux are going to get scripted for Microsoft. The big question should be what anit-virus software is running during the tests.
So, if the hardware people want out of the limits set by Microsoft then they will need to pay for the full version of Windows 7 too. That means higher hardware costs due to the need for increased performance to run Windows 7 safely and the higher cost of the OS. Another nice move pushing people to Linux Microsoft.
that board you linked to says that it's compatible with Intel Atom( x86 ) and so right there you are talking over 10W of power minimum. The beagle, IIRC, runs at less than 5W so as long as you don't need it to run in your hand or run for very long in your hand, other x86 based configurations would work.
The beagleboard or more specifically the ARM Cortex-a8 boards are very powerful with little power usage. That's why they are what's in the new smartphones like the iPhone GS and Motorola Droid amongst others.
good to hear the WH didn't get involved but sad to hear it really took that long. I know there are people in management who, for whatever reason, have been massively pro-Microsoft even when the engineers were saying no. Getting a good OSS policy past these people can be tough if not impossible. And I've seen this in the private sector too.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed you people were able to put together a policy that's fair but also very open to OSS. And thanks for such a thorough reply.
probably has more to do with who's now running the office of the President. Remember, in 2001 that same administration who sat on the 2003 memo canceled the hybrid vehicle DoT program and pushed forward the hydrogen vehicle program which stopped all US auto makers from continuing with hybrids and instead just made $1 million hydrogen prototypes. They were so pro business they felt it was best they decided what was bad for their business partners and what was best for the pockets of their business partners.
the current administration is still making mistakes but they are also doing some things right. We shall see if the DoD has figured this out. My guess is yes. I'd heard of some programs which had been failing and running up costs using Microsoft stuff and when that was swapped out for OSS, the projects started making real progress. There used to be alot of UNIX in the DoD but Windows found its way in and really depreciated the quality and reliability they used to have( where I once worked atleast ). Maybe they finally figured out it's time to stop being a sucker and go with what not only is often more reliable but is totally open for them to play in but also fix and bend to do things not originally intended. IMO
if your apartment manager is on-site, you might make a deal and have the DSL modem and a wireless router installed close to the distribution box if the signal is good enough there. The deal might include sharing some bandwidth with them.
I used the shipit CDs to hand out to users who were interested in trying it and although I'd not done it, had though of sending a CD to the Mayors IT person, County IT person and head of the school district. The stamped CD and printed sleeve would be seen as less of a threat if they weren't sure what it was. As opposed to ISO burned CDs and home made labels and sleeves.
good one. I browsed the article for what arch it was and was expecting ARM but didn't see it stated. ARM makes sense and the 40nm process has me wondering if it's Cortex a5 or a9 based.
how about those in some netbooks and a beowulf cluster of those?;-)
I was talking more about the "ARM" platform than the company so yes, if people don't know, ARM inc doesn't build the chips but only sell the design to companies who produce chips from those designs. Saying that, I think that ARM inc's design documents somewhat tie it to a process size or that's what I got from the Cortex-A5 article.
As far as some ARM based chips on 45nm now goes, which ones and who's using them? I thought TI was still 65nm and only read that Samsung was eventually to release a 45nm Cortex-A8 but haven't seen it anywhere yet. Freescale is on 65nm too. Any 45nm Cortex-A8 and A9 chips would be great for smartphones, smartbooks, and netbooks. 32nm would really be fantastic. Got anything we'll be seeing this year?
did I say that ARM inc made the chips somewhere? I was speaking more to the fact that ARM inc's designs are doing well on larger die processes, there's room for even better performance and power sipping along with Intel being forced to use die shrinkage to even play in the game.
After reading the story on the A5, it sounds like the design documents for the design also relate to what process size is used. The A5 was said to be designed for 40nm process. So while the implementors may have a choice, they might have more work to do if they want to use a different process than the delivered design docs cover. That's what it sounds like from the A5 article.
the Cortex-A8 is out now on the 65nm process as are all the other low power device CPU's except Atom. Atom is currently on 45nm to get in the ballpark as the others but power usage is still pretty high. Cortex-A8 on 45nm should be in the pipeline soon and along with it, Cortex-A9. Those are going to shack the Atom up on price/watt and performance/watt. This is why Intel is moving Atom to 32nm ASAP but it's very expensive for them because they have to price the Atom low while at the same time use very expensive 32nm process space which they normally use for high profit desktop/server CPUs. So in 2011, along comes Cortex-A5 on 40nm so Intel would have to start looking at 2?nm processes to keep competing. I believe the ARM dude talks about this somewhat.
Size is a big deal and right now, Cortex-A8 on 65nm is rather large for smart phones. they pack some decent power for netbooks so I'm not sure what the delay is on that front. Cortex-A9 on netbooks would be very nice but I think they are just sampling now so it won't happen til next year( 2010 ).
ARM is a thorn in both Microsoft and Intel's sides and there is probably massive amounts of pressure on OEMs and manufacturers to stay away from it. Atleast on the netbook side. Remember, the head of the Thai Manufacturers Association said they fear Microsoft when talking about Linux on netbooks. ARM is an enabler for Linux so it too is a threat to Microsoft. But I sure hope the market gets to make the choice some how, some way.
lol, who's angry? it's the way it is, the way it was. I talk about "Microsoft shops" that way because I've had people tell me about things they wanted to do and when I mentioned an open source kit that did that, they've said, "we're a Microsoft shop".
And jeezus is dead, he's not going to help you or anyone else. IMO
but when it requires a multi-core and goobs of memory just to get slower performance, something is wrong. I've had to interface with Vista only a couple of times and both times I was blown away by now slow and unresponsive the system was and knowing that it was brand new technology under it. And the latest dealings with Vista had me running a Linux LiveCD to do some testing and the owner of the laptop was surprised at how quick Linux was when it was running from CD.
There's progress but what Microsoft has come up with doesn't really fit that picture. When Linux went from the 2.4 kernel to the 2.6 kernel there was a performance hit but you got so much that you didn't notice it took a few more MBs of memory to give it room to breath. Same goes for KDE versions but in all this when you ran it on old hardware, you really had to have a very memory constrained system to feel the pain.
What Microsoft pulled with Vista deserves to let them have to prove they did better than XP instead of giving them a pass and comparing to such a clunker as Vista. It's really difficult to keep giving them a pass on bad choices. And Vista still wanted me to reboot the computer for just plain dumb changes.
I look forward to finding out if Windows 7 is really an improvement over their last valid attempt at OS technology, Windows XP.
so you're saying that the OS( Windows XP ) is tied to the hardware it is on? I think I saw somewhere that Vista was 2x slower than XP and many have said that it was/is really bad. Not testing something because it's on old hardware? really?
Wow, the Windows market is quite strange indeed. I have and still do put operating systems on many different types of computer hardware even when they come with some other operating system.
in around 1997 there was a comparison of Windows NT in dual CPU mode and OS/2 and it showed that not only did OS/2 kick Windows butt but Windows sucked so bad at multiprocessing that OS/2 on 1 CPU ran faster than Windows on 2 CPUs. Once OS/2 and BeOS were blocked from gaining any survivable market share, the only motivation for making Windows better came from marketing and putting pretty icons on the desktop besides embedding feature after feature onto the OS to block multimedia and browser successes by other companies.
comparing Windows to Windows is so boring and only helps "Microsoft shops" who have never looked outside their restricted world. IMO.
except word out on the street is that Microsoft moved over the vast majority of the Danger employees who stayed over to Microsoft's Ping Project and left the Danger division seriously under staffed. It also is going around that Microsoft had been telling T-Mobile that everything at Danger was fine and they were putting much effort into improving the software. In other words, they were lying to T-Mobile to keep T-Mobile selling the products and paying lots of money when Microsoft was really just putting the division on life-support and biding their time in hopes that Project Pink would produce something Microsoft could move Danger customers over to.
So is there NOT a reason to blame Microsoft for any of this? I guess you also don't remember all the talk about Microsoft trying to get the Danger product moved onto a Windows platform instead of it's BSD and Java platform. Microsoft is well known for either buying a competitor and shutting them down or buying them and dictating the product be ported to Windows. They bashed the engineers at SoftImage for a few years on dropping the UNIX versions of their software even though they did get a Windows version running. Customers and engineers didn't want Windows and wanted to keep the UNIX versions. Microsoft finally sold the company and walked away with its tail between its legs and you can see by what the film industry uses that Windows was not welcome much in that environment. BSODs really piss off people who spend hours crunching data and don't see BSODs or the like on nix boxes. IMO
holy cow, they still need a fan on those things? Can't wait to hear these things rattling around after a couple of years when the bearings start going out. They should release an ARM version IMO.
people often don't realize the difference between Opera and Firefox. While they both are browsers, Firefox is also an application foundation. The XUL engine in Firefox allows for a very rich application foundation based on web interfaces and standards. And it allows alot of additional features to be added to Firefox but like everything, these things use CPU cycles and memory.
Opera and Firefox are very different forms of browsers. So maybe it would be better to compare Gecko-only based browsers to Opera - something like Skipstone( http://www.muhri.net/skipstone/ )
Here's where you can get an overview of what XUL is and does and how it's an application base and how Firefox could be considered a XUL application:
Microsoft gutted Danger and left it on life support but all the while they lead their customers( T-Mobile and users ) to believe Danger was thriving and doing fine. Wow, doesn't that sound like Paulson in early 2007 having stated that the banking system was just fine? The difference, Paulson really was clueless while Microsoft knew darn well they'd pulled most of Dangers developers over to their project Pink.
This is what should be up in lights with flares and fireworks and not anything about how bad/good cloud computing is. But once again, there is Microsoft at the wheel and yet the press is saying "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain".
And this interesting in tying this to cloud computing sounds eerily familiar since I just read how Steve Ballmer was bashing IBM for not running their business correctly. Basically, paying too much attention to software and cloud computing and he's all amped about this right when yet another Microsoft failure proves how bad they are at this. Could be spin control so watch for more of the same if it is.
so when Vista screws up and won't get the time from the BIOS correctly and even though you have it set to automatically get time from an NTP server it too fails, the only option for "fixing it" is to manually set the time.
There are soooo many things in Windows which repair is just a repairing of the symptoms and the cause if left to repeat again at some unknown time/date. And, only Microsoft can fix these because they are the only ones with access to the source.
"never really fixed it"... must have been stated by someone who's not repaired a Windows box or works for a PR firm.
<quote><p>what is funny is that you never heard this regarding fuel cell powered cars</p></quote>
<p>That's false. In <em>who killed the electric car</em> a tech lead at Honda on the FCP program tells us that fuel cell powered cars are at minimum 15 years away (IIRC) and it hasn't been that long since.</p> </quote>
As much as I appreciate what Chris did with that, it is not mainstream press. I think recently there were some hydrogen fuel cell prototypes going across America and the press didn't mention how fuitless it is without a number of technical break-throughs. _This_ is what I'm talking about.
<quote> <quote><p>What also surprised me about this '10 years out thing' was that one of the often talked about features of algae is that it grows so fast and in so little space. Those things should make it faster and cheaper to find a suitable strain yet it sounds like they are making excuses for how hard it is and how long it's going to take.</p></quote>
<p>The focus now is on actually engineering the algae, because the USDOE already proved that breeding algae is fruitless.</p> </quote> intersting and I'll keep my eyes open for data on that since it's the first I heard of that.
<quote> <quote><p>When you look at what the auto industry is doing, they are designing completely new systems and taking 10 years to do it( Chevy Volt ) and with a price so high very few will be sold.</p></quote>
<p>You mean like the <strong>$85,000</strong> hybrid Durango which was cancelled shortly after introduction for "lack of interest"? Yeah, no kidding, I can buy a crapload of gas for $35,000.</p> </quote> A hybrid truck is this early in the game is stupid. Look at the CD on those things, they are air plows as designed today with those huge flat grills/front ends. Ground clearance in trucks also hurt any kind of effort in fuel efficiencies. So how much efficiency are you really going to get? Really? Like I said, hybrids in trucks are dumb, stupid, and wrong if you really want to put out a high mileage vehicle using hybrid tech.
<quote> <quote><p>Maybe it's going to be some guys/gals in their backyard and garage who'll figure out the algae process because those in the industry really don't want it to be successful just like the current EV market?</p></quote>
<p>The process is already pretty well figured out. The problem now is getting some competition. They could likely break even on it today; with some subsidies like corn it would be profitable. Without subsidies, corn into fuel would not be profitable. Stop the corn subsidies, and you'll see algae fuels.</p></quote> </quote>
Another great plan by Bush and clowns and they are talking now about increasing ethanol percentages again. If algae oil is break-even that forget subsidies other than facility financing so we get more competition as you mention.
IIRC, Pickens wanted to leverage NG for an immediate move from foreign oil to locally produced fuel and in parallel with that, bring in more EVs powered by wind power with nuclear mixed in. It is/was a 10 year plan IIRC. Unfortunately, the problem with nuclear energy in the US is that our government and legal system caters to industry. Industry wanted and got to design and build their own designs over and over and every one of them was different. Most of them were huge and extremely costly to build, repair, and/or modify since each was a different design. IIRC, the French used the same medium size design and I doubt that could be done in the US even if attempted a 2nd time.
what is funny is that you never heard this regarding fuel cell powered cars and you didn't list that. So why is this group setting the bar so far out there if they really think they're going to continue getting investments? Sounds like something you'd be saying if you did not want people, industry, governments investing. So who was it that said it's so far out there?
What also surprised me about this '10 years out thing' was that one of the often talked about features of algae is that it grows so fast and in so little space. Those things should make it faster and cheaper to find a suitable strain yet it sounds like they are making excuses for how hard it is and how long it's going to take.
Sounds alot like how the big auto companies constantly said how hard it is to make electric cars, how nobody wants the, and how they'd have to pay people and give them the cars before they'd use EVs. If you look at any EV club across the country(US) you'll see people and even highschool kids are converting standard cars into usable EVs for from $3,000 to $18,000. When you look at what the auto industry is doing, they are designing completely new systems and taking 10 years to do it( Chevy Volt ) and with a price so high very few will be sold. It's as if they don't want people using EVs or else they'd be selling optional conversions of existing body designs and tooling.
Maybe it's going to be some guys/gals in their backyard and garage who'll figure out the algae process because those in the industry really don't want it to be successful just like the current EV market?
from that sounds of it, Microsoft couldn't turn Danger into a WinMo platform so they gutted it of employees instead of spinning it back off since they'd rather have it dead than spreading more Java but not dead before they had Pink out the door. So when you fire everyone from the top downward, you end up with people who's job is to turn the lights off when the doors get locked for good. they're not motivated much nor are they skilled in all of what used to be required to run the shop. Auto-pilot mode comes to mind.
So maybe the backup system needed to be checked or a CRON job verified or maybe the computer in Joe Fired's office was part of the backup process in some little way but important enough that the whole job was failing every night.
As I said, Microsoft tried to replace the Danger stack with Microsoft software but it wasn't going to work or got too much backtalk( thinking of Softimage ) and threats of everyone leaving if they had to port to the WiMo pile/stack. They moved anyone who'd go, over to Pink and left the rest to keep life support systems running. oops, they failed.
With Ballmer publicly saying that WinMo has been a failure, he's hearing the press say WinMo 6.5 is a yawn and expectations are that the Sony PS3 will eclipse MS XBox, and recently reading about how he's telling people that IBM doesn't know what they are doing....There's probably a new monkey-boy dance going on inside his office we'd probably love to see. It might be too dangerous being so close as to record it.
Will Microsoft ever make any profits from anything outside of MS Windows and MS Office? Ballmers 8-Ball still seems to be telling him something very different from what everyone else is seeing.
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Microsoft has already limited the CPU cores and speed along with limiting max RAM installed on Netbooks running Windows 7 Starter so this is gonna hurt. Now that it's been proven they need anti-virus running too we'll have to see what kind of performance comparisons with Linux are going to get scripted for Microsoft. The big question should be what anit-virus software is running during the tests.
So, if the hardware people want out of the limits set by Microsoft then they will need to pay for the full version of Windows 7 too. That means higher hardware costs due to the need for increased performance to run Windows 7 safely and the higher cost of the OS. Another nice move pushing people to Linux Microsoft.
LoB
that board you linked to says that it's compatible with Intel Atom( x86 ) and so right there you are talking over 10W of power minimum. The beagle, IIRC, runs at less than 5W so as long as you don't need it to run in your hand or run for very long in your hand, other x86 based configurations would work.
The beagleboard or more specifically the ARM Cortex-a8 boards are very powerful with little power usage. That's why they are what's in the new smartphones like the iPhone GS and Motorola Droid amongst others.
LoB
good to hear the WH didn't get involved but sad to hear it really took that long. I know there are people in management who, for whatever reason, have been massively pro-Microsoft even when the engineers were saying no. Getting a good OSS policy past these people can be tough if not impossible. And I've seen this in the private sector too.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed you people were able to put together a policy that's fair but also very open to OSS. And thanks for such a thorough reply.
LoB
probably has more to do with who's now running the office of the President. Remember, in 2001 that same administration who sat on the 2003 memo canceled the hybrid vehicle DoT program and pushed forward the hydrogen vehicle program which stopped all US auto makers from continuing with hybrids and instead just made $1 million hydrogen prototypes. They were so pro business they felt it was best they decided what was bad for their business partners and what was best for the pockets of their business partners.
the current administration is still making mistakes but they are also doing some things right. We shall see if the DoD has figured this out. My guess is yes. I'd heard of some programs which had been failing and running up costs using Microsoft stuff and when that was swapped out for OSS, the projects started making real progress. There used to be alot of UNIX in the DoD but Windows found its way in and really depreciated the quality and reliability they used to have( where I once worked atleast ). Maybe they finally figured out it's time to stop being a sucker and go with what not only is often more reliable but is totally open for them to play in but also fix and bend to do things not originally intended. IMO
LoB
if your apartment manager is on-site, you might make a deal and have the DSL modem and a wireless router installed close to the distribution box if the signal is good enough there. The deal might include sharing some bandwidth with them.
LoB
I used the shipit CDs to hand out to users who were interested in trying it and although I'd not done it, had though of sending a CD to the Mayors IT person, County IT person and head of the school district. The stamped CD and printed sleeve would be seen as less of a threat if they weren't sure what it was. As opposed to ISO burned CDs and home made labels and sleeves.
good to see they've not given it up entirely.
LoB
good one. I browsed the article for what arch it was and was expecting ARM but didn't see it stated. ARM makes sense and the 40nm process has me wondering if it's Cortex a5 or a9 based.
;-)
how about those in some netbooks and a beowulf cluster of those?
LoB
I was talking more about the "ARM" platform than the company so yes, if people don't know, ARM inc doesn't build the chips but only sell the design to companies who produce chips from those designs. Saying that, I think that ARM inc's design documents somewhat tie it to a process size or that's what I got from the Cortex-A5 article.
As far as some ARM based chips on 45nm now goes, which ones and who's using them? I thought TI was still 65nm and only read that Samsung was eventually to release a 45nm Cortex-A8 but haven't seen it anywhere yet. Freescale is on 65nm too. Any 45nm Cortex-A8 and A9 chips would be great for smartphones, smartbooks, and netbooks. 32nm would really be fantastic. Got anything we'll be seeing this year?
LoB
did I say that ARM inc made the chips somewhere? I was speaking more to the fact that ARM inc's designs are doing well on larger die processes, there's room for even better performance and power sipping along with Intel being forced to use die shrinkage to even play in the game.
After reading the story on the A5, it sounds like the design documents for the design also relate to what process size is used. The A5 was said to be designed for 40nm process. So while the implementors may have a choice, they might have more work to do if they want to use a different process than the delivered design docs cover. That's what it sounds like from the A5 article.
LoB
the Cortex-A8 is out now on the 65nm process as are all the other low power device CPU's except Atom. Atom is currently on 45nm to get in the ballpark as the others but power usage is still pretty high. Cortex-A8 on 45nm should be in the pipeline soon and along with it, Cortex-A9. Those are going to shack the Atom up on price/watt and performance/watt. This is why Intel is moving Atom to 32nm ASAP but it's very expensive for them because they have to price the Atom low while at the same time use very expensive 32nm process space which they normally use for high profit desktop/server CPUs. So in 2011, along comes Cortex-A5 on 40nm so Intel would have to start looking at 2?nm processes to keep competing. I believe the ARM dude talks about this somewhat.
Size is a big deal and right now, Cortex-A8 on 65nm is rather large for smart phones. they pack some decent power for netbooks so I'm not sure what the delay is on that front. Cortex-A9 on netbooks would be very nice but I think they are just sampling now so it won't happen til next year( 2010 ).
ARM is a thorn in both Microsoft and Intel's sides and there is probably massive amounts of pressure on OEMs and manufacturers to stay away from it. Atleast on the netbook side. Remember, the head of the Thai Manufacturers Association said they fear Microsoft when talking about Linux on netbooks. ARM is an enabler for Linux so it too is a threat to Microsoft. But I sure hope the market gets to make the choice some how, some way.
LoB
lol, who's angry? it's the way it is, the way it was. I talk about "Microsoft shops" that way because I've had people tell me about things they wanted to do and when I mentioned an open source kit that did that, they've said, "we're a Microsoft shop".
And jeezus is dead, he's not going to help you or anyone else. IMO
LoB
but when it requires a multi-core and goobs of memory just to get slower performance, something is wrong. I've had to interface with Vista only a couple of times and both times I was blown away by now slow and unresponsive the system was and knowing that it was brand new technology under it. And the latest dealings with Vista had me running a Linux LiveCD to do some testing and the owner of the laptop was surprised at how quick Linux was when it was running from CD.
There's progress but what Microsoft has come up with doesn't really fit that picture. When Linux went from the 2.4 kernel to the 2.6 kernel there was a performance hit but you got so much that you didn't notice it took a few more MBs of memory to give it room to breath. Same goes for KDE versions but in all this when you ran it on old hardware, you really had to have a very memory constrained system to feel the pain.
What Microsoft pulled with Vista deserves to let them have to prove they did better than XP instead of giving them a pass and comparing to such a clunker as Vista. It's really difficult to keep giving them a pass on bad choices. And Vista still wanted me to reboot the computer for just plain dumb changes.
I look forward to finding out if Windows 7 is really an improvement over their last valid attempt at OS technology, Windows XP.
LoB
so you're saying that the OS( Windows XP ) is tied to the hardware it is on? I think I saw somewhere that Vista was 2x slower than XP and many have said that it was/is really bad. Not testing something because it's on old hardware? really?
Wow, the Windows market is quite strange indeed. I have and still do put operating systems on many different types of computer hardware even when they come with some other operating system.
LoB
in around 1997 there was a comparison of Windows NT in dual CPU mode and OS/2 and it showed that not only did OS/2 kick Windows butt but Windows sucked so bad at multiprocessing that OS/2 on 1 CPU ran faster than Windows on 2 CPUs. Once OS/2 and BeOS were blocked from gaining any survivable market share, the only motivation for making Windows better came from marketing and putting pretty icons on the desktop besides embedding feature after feature onto the OS to block multimedia and browser successes by other companies.
comparing Windows to Windows is so boring and only helps "Microsoft shops" who have never looked outside their restricted world. IMO.
LoB
so they've fixed perceived performance. That's a good selling point and the fact you're only comparing it to Vista says that it really still sucks.
I thought it was funny to read that they were comparing Windows to Windows. BFD, it just sounds like marketing to me.
LoB
except word out on the street is that Microsoft moved over the vast majority of the Danger employees who stayed over to Microsoft's Ping Project and left the Danger division seriously under staffed. It also is going around that Microsoft had been telling T-Mobile that everything at Danger was fine and they were putting much effort into improving the software. In other words, they were lying to T-Mobile to keep T-Mobile selling the products and paying lots of money when Microsoft was really just putting the division on life-support and biding their time in hopes that Project Pink would produce something Microsoft could move Danger customers over to.
So is there NOT a reason to blame Microsoft for any of this? I guess you also don't remember all the talk about Microsoft trying to get the Danger product moved onto a Windows platform instead of it's BSD and Java platform. Microsoft is well known for either buying a competitor and shutting them down or buying them and dictating the product be ported to Windows. They bashed the engineers at SoftImage for a few years on dropping the UNIX versions of their software even though they did get a Windows version running. Customers and engineers didn't want Windows and wanted to keep the UNIX versions. Microsoft finally sold the company and walked away with its tail between its legs and you can see by what the film industry uses that Windows was not welcome much in that environment. BSODs really piss off people who spend hours crunching data and don't see BSODs or the like on nix boxes. IMO
LoB
convert that puppy to take a Gumstix Overo line of CPU/SoC boards and that's exactly what I'm talking about but with an updated CPU.
Wouldn't it be nice to get a folding keyboard setup with an ARM CPU socket/slot baseboard for whatever this Eee Keyboard usage pattern really is?
LoB
holy cow, they still need a fan on those things? Can't wait to hear these things rattling around after a couple of years when the bearings start going out. They should release an ARM version IMO.
LoB
"just compare Opera to Firefox"
people often don't realize the difference between Opera and Firefox. While they both are browsers, Firefox is also an application foundation. The XUL engine in Firefox allows for a very rich application foundation based on web interfaces and standards. And it allows alot of additional features to be added to Firefox but like everything, these things use CPU cycles and memory.
Opera and Firefox are very different forms of browsers. So maybe it would be better to compare Gecko-only based browsers to Opera - something like Skipstone( http://www.muhri.net/skipstone/ )
Here's where you can get an overview of what XUL is and does and how it's an application base and how Firefox could be considered a XUL application:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XUL_tutorial
LoB
Microsoft gutted Danger and left it on life support but all the while they lead their customers( T-Mobile and users ) to believe Danger was thriving and doing fine. Wow, doesn't that sound like Paulson in early 2007 having stated that the banking system was just fine? The difference, Paulson really was clueless while Microsoft knew darn well they'd pulled most of Dangers developers over to their project Pink.
This is what should be up in lights with flares and fireworks and not anything about how bad/good cloud computing is. But once again, there is Microsoft at the wheel and yet the press is saying "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain".
And this interesting in tying this to cloud computing sounds eerily familiar since I just read how Steve Ballmer was bashing IBM for not running their business correctly. Basically, paying too much attention to software and cloud computing and he's all amped about this right when yet another Microsoft failure proves how bad they are at this. Could be spin control so watch for more of the same if it is.
LoB
so when Vista screws up and won't get the time from the BIOS correctly and even though you have it set to automatically get time from an NTP server it too fails, the only option for "fixing it" is to manually set the time.
There are soooo many things in Windows which repair is just a repairing of the symptoms and the cause if left to repeat again at some unknown time/date. And, only Microsoft can fix these because they are the only ones with access to the source.
"never really fixed it"... must have been stated by someone who's not repaired a Windows box or works for a PR firm.
LoB
<quote><p>what is funny is that you never heard this regarding fuel cell powered cars</p></quote>
<p>That's false. In <em>who killed the electric car</em> a tech lead at Honda on the FCP program tells us that fuel cell powered cars are at minimum 15 years away (IIRC) and it hasn't been that long since.</p>
</quote>
As much as I appreciate what Chris did with that, it is not mainstream press. I think recently there were some hydrogen fuel cell prototypes going across America and the press didn't mention how fuitless it is without a number of technical break-throughs. _This_ is what I'm talking about.
<quote>
<quote><p>What also surprised me about this '10 years out thing' was that one of the often talked about features of algae is that it grows so fast and in so little space. Those things should make it faster and cheaper to find a suitable strain yet it sounds like they are making excuses for how hard it is and how long it's going to take.</p></quote>
<p>The focus now is on actually engineering the algae, because the USDOE already proved that breeding algae is fruitless.</p>
</quote>
intersting and I'll keep my eyes open for data on that since it's the first I heard of that.
<quote>
<quote><p>When you look at what the auto industry is doing, they are designing completely new systems and taking 10 years to do it( Chevy Volt ) and with a price so high very few will be sold.</p></quote>
<p>You mean like the <strong>$85,000</strong> hybrid Durango which was cancelled shortly after introduction for "lack of interest"? Yeah, no kidding, I can buy a crapload of gas for $35,000.</p>
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A hybrid truck is this early in the game is stupid. Look at the CD on those things, they are air plows as designed today with those huge flat grills/front ends. Ground clearance in trucks also hurt any kind of effort in fuel efficiencies. So how much efficiency are you really going to get? Really? Like I said, hybrids in trucks are dumb, stupid, and wrong if you really want to put out a high mileage vehicle using hybrid tech.
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<quote><p>Maybe it's going to be some guys/gals in their backyard and garage who'll figure out the algae process because those in the industry really don't want it to be successful just like the current EV market?</p></quote>
<p>The process is already pretty well figured out. The problem now is getting some competition. They could likely break even on it today; with some subsidies like corn it would be profitable. Without subsidies, corn into fuel would not be profitable. Stop the corn subsidies, and you'll see algae fuels.</p></quote>
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Another great plan by Bush and clowns and they are talking now about increasing ethanol percentages again. If algae oil is break-even that forget subsidies other than facility financing so we get more competition as you mention.
LoB
IIRC, Pickens wanted to leverage NG for an immediate move from foreign oil to locally produced fuel and in parallel with that, bring in more EVs powered by wind power with nuclear mixed in. It is/was a 10 year plan IIRC. Unfortunately, the problem with nuclear energy in the US is that our government and legal system caters to industry. Industry wanted and got to design and build their own designs over and over and every one of them was different. Most of them were huge and extremely costly to build, repair, and/or modify since each was a different design. IIRC, the French used the same medium size design and I doubt that could be done in the US even if attempted a 2nd time.
LoB
what is funny is that you never heard this regarding fuel cell powered cars and you didn't list that. So why is this group setting the bar so far out there if they really think they're going to continue getting investments? Sounds like something you'd be saying if you did not want people, industry, governments investing. So who was it that said it's so far out there?
What also surprised me about this '10 years out thing' was that one of the often talked about features of algae is that it grows so fast and in so little space. Those things should make it faster and cheaper to find a suitable strain yet it sounds like they are making excuses for how hard it is and how long it's going to take.
Sounds alot like how the big auto companies constantly said how hard it is to make electric cars, how nobody wants the, and how they'd have to pay people and give them the cars before they'd use EVs. If you look at any EV club across the country(US) you'll see people and even highschool kids are converting standard cars into usable EVs for from $3,000 to $18,000. When you look at what the auto industry is doing, they are designing completely new systems and taking 10 years to do it( Chevy Volt ) and with a price so high very few will be sold. It's as if they don't want people using EVs or else they'd be selling optional conversions of existing body designs and tooling.
Maybe it's going to be some guys/gals in their backyard and garage who'll figure out the algae process because those in the industry really don't want it to be successful just like the current EV market?
LoB
from that sounds of it, Microsoft couldn't turn Danger into a WinMo platform so they gutted it of employees instead of spinning it back off since they'd rather have it dead than spreading more Java but not dead before they had Pink out the door. So when you fire everyone from the top downward, you end up with people who's job is to turn the lights off when the doors get locked for good. they're not motivated much nor are they skilled in all of what used to be required to run the shop. Auto-pilot mode comes to mind.
So maybe the backup system needed to be checked or a CRON job verified or maybe the computer in Joe Fired's office was part of the backup process in some little way but important enough that the whole job was failing every night.
As I said, Microsoft tried to replace the Danger stack with Microsoft software but it wasn't going to work or got too much backtalk( thinking of Softimage ) and threats of everyone leaving if they had to port to the WiMo pile/stack. They moved anyone who'd go, over to Pink and left the rest to keep life support systems running. oops, they failed.
With Ballmer publicly saying that WinMo has been a failure, he's hearing the press say WinMo 6.5 is a yawn and expectations are that the Sony PS3 will eclipse MS XBox, and recently reading about how he's telling people that IBM doesn't know what they are doing....There's probably a new monkey-boy dance going on inside his office we'd probably love to see. It might be too dangerous being so close as to record it.
Will Microsoft ever make any profits from anything outside of MS Windows and MS Office? Ballmers 8-Ball still seems to be telling him something very different from what everyone else is seeing.
LoB