New soft processor core paper publisher?

[rickman]

On 7/1/2013 7:09 AM, David Brown wrote:

On 01/07/13 09:07, rickman wrote:
On 7/1/2013 2:51 AM, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
rickman<gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

(snip)
The only fly in the ointment is that it isn't practical to combine an
x86 CPU with 4 GB of DRAM on a single chip. Oh well, otherwise a great
idea. That might be practical in another 5 years when low end computers
are commonly using more than 16 GB of DRAM on the board.

OK, but how about 4G of DRAM off chip, but in the same package.
Maybe call it L4 cache instead of DRAM. Use a high interleave so
you can keep the access rate up, and besides the cost of the wiring
isn't so high as it would be outside the package.

How is that any real advantage? Once you go off chip you have suffered
the slings and arrows of outrageous output drivers.


Making separate chips and putting them in the same package is the golden
middle road here. You need output drivers - but you don't need the same
sort of drivers as for separate chips on a motherboard. There are
several differences - your wires are shorter (so less noise, better
margins, easier timing, lower currents, lower power), you can have many
more wires (broader paths means higher bandwidth), and you have
dedicated links (better timing, easier termination, separate datapaths
for each direction). It is particularly beneficial if the die are
stacked vertically rather than horizontally - your inter-chip
connections are minimal length, it's (relatively) easy to have huge
parallel buses, and you can arrange the layout as you want.

Yes, there are some advantages to combining die within a package, but
there are lots of downsides too. The real issue is that it doesn't
solve any of the problems PCs are facing. The drivers might be a little
smaller, but they are still orders of magnitude bigger and slower than
staying on chip. How fast does level 1 cache run? At the processor
clock speed in all cases I've seen. Level 2 is a bit slower and I think
the main difference between level 2 and level 3 is not the speed, but
the complexity of the management (correct me if I am wrong). So even
level 3 cache runs at half the speed of the CPU or at minimum over a
GHz. Going off the die you won't get that sort of speed and you still
have the same SI issues of boards (like ground bounce) even if they
aren't as pronounced.

TI produced a version of their cell phone ARM chip which has the memory
chip soldered directly on top. That would be very close to a multichip
module. I don't know how popular it ended up being. They used it on
the BeagleBoard but I think for most apps and assembly houses this is
just *too* fancy.

Multichip modules just plain cost too much for most uses.

There is significant work being done in making chip packaging and driver
types for exactly this sort of arrangement. It is perhaps more aimed at
portable devices rather than big systems, but the idea is the same.

Do you know of anyone currently working to combine the CPU and main
memory? There are numerous reasons why this is a bad idea, even if they
are still separate chips. But that may change as requirements change.
Who knows? In the portable market there does seem to be a fat sweet
spot in the center of memory sizes where you could get by with a single
memory size. We may see a multichip module for that some day... but not
until it is actually solving some problem you can't get around using
separate packages.

--

Rick

 

[rickman]

On 7/1/2013 9:01 AM, Les Cargill wrote:

David Brown wrote:

There is significant work being done in making chip packaging and driver
types for exactly this sort of arrangement. It is perhaps more aimed at
portable devices rather than big systems, but the idea is the same.


This is what I was meaning - although I don't know enough deeply enough
about DRAM to know what the slings and arrows are.

DRAM still seem like magic to me, in a way. Magic I am used to, but
still....

Yeah, it *is* magic in a way. They have spent an awful lot of money
over the years optimizing the whole DRAM thing. When I studied
semiconductor physics many years ago in school I was told that the
cutting edge of this stuff was just measurements and the theory was
always lagging behind. The lab tries a bunch of stuff to measure the
results of varying the parameters and the factory gets to fine tune it.
With each new process generation they get to start again.

--

Rick

 

[rickman]

On 7/1/2013 1:46 PM, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:

rickman<gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

(snip, I wrote)

OK, but how about 4G of DRAM off chip, but in the same package.
Maybe call it L4 cache instead of DRAM. Use a high interleave so
you can keep the access rate up, and besides the cost of the wiring
isn't so high as it would be outside the package.

How is that any real advantage? Once you go off chip you
have suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous output drivers.

It must help some, or Intel wouldn't have put the off chip
in package cache on some processors. Pentium pro if I remember,
and maybe Pentium 2.

Yes it is off chip and requires drivers, but the capacitance will
be less than off package, the distance (speed of light) delay
will be less, and known. The drivers can be sized optimally for
the needed speed and distance.

That was a long time ago and it was more about the fact that PC makers
didn't know how to design high speed PCBs. So Intel wrapped all that up
in a module so the motherboard makers didn't have to think about it.
Selling the CPU on its own board along with the cache didn't make the
cache run faster, it just made it work! After all, it was still the
exact same circuit, it was just pre-fabbed.

The problem came back when the SDRAM got faster at higher clock speeds.
I remember all the theories of how this brand of memory module was
crap and that one was golden and how this motherboard could only take
RAM in two of the sockets before it went wonkey, blah, blah, blah... all
of it was caused by the motherboard makers not knowing how to design
high speed traces on a PCB. So the combos of MB and DRAM modules was a
hit or miss proposition.

I don't recall which generation of DRAM it was, but eventually they
moved to point to point signals so there wouldn't be any more
multi-driver busses which are very hard to design at 800 MHz.

--

Rick

 

[rickman]

On 7/1/2013 8:59 AM, Les Cargill wrote:

rickman wrote:
On 6/30/2013 12:03 PM, Les Cargill wrote:

I am examining the "isn't practical" premise, and trying to do that
without any preconceptions. I've seen ... high levels of integration
in real life before - stuff you wouldn't normally think of
as practical.

Of *course* i don't know for sure - I wasn't there when
it wasn't done...

I'm not saying you *can't* combine SDRAM and an x86 CPU. This may have
been done by someone at some point. I'm saying it isn't practical for
mainstream uses. It won't show up at Best Buy in the next five years.
But who knows beyond that? I think the PC market is headed for a
dramatic change within the next five years. Handhelds are taking
computing in a very new direction and the momentum is reaching the
critical point.

Interestingly, many people say they took considerable risk. It was
certainly disruptive.


Like who? What was the risk, that the calculator wouldn't work, they
wouldn't get the contract??? Where was the "considerable" risk?


Journalists, mainly. They're probably doing the usual; "constructing a
narrative". There's a general credo in storyteller spheres that SiVa is
all about doing crazy things .

Actually, there was little risk. Once they convinced the calculator
company that they could do it more cheaply it was an obvious move to
make. The technology was to the point where they could put a small CPU
on a chip (or chips) and make a fully functional computer. There was no
idea of becoming the huge computer giant. I am sure they realized that
this could become the basis of a very significant industry. So where
was the risk?



As the story was told, the risk was mostly in what they'd have to do to
adapt.

I don't know what that means.

The main reason why main
memory isn't on the CPU chip is because there are lots of
variations in
size *and* that it just wouldn't fit! You don't put one DRAM chip
in a
computer, they used to need a minimum of four, IIRC to make up a
module,
often they were 8 to a module and sometimes double sided with 16
chips
to a DRAM module.


If you were integrating inside the package, you could use any
physical configuration you wanted. But the thing would still have been
too big.

Yes, I agree, main memory is too big to fit on the CPU die for any size
memory in common use at the time. Isn't that what I said?


If you did, I missed it.

Uh, look above...

"The main reason why main memory isn't on the CPU chip is because there
are lots of variations in size *and* that it just wouldn't fit!"


Well, I got that eventually - although I suppose I got hung up on
"variations in size" - just pick one.

But it is *both* as well as the processing technology mismatch. The
trifecta!

Then why did you write "That's not generally the bottleneck"?


Because on most designs I have seen for the last decade or
more, the memory bus is not the processor interconnect bus.

What does that mean? I don't know what processor designs you have seen,
but all of the multicore stuff (which is what they have been building
for nearly a decade) is memory bus speed constrained because you have
two or three or four or eight processors sharing just one memory
interface or in some cases I believe they have used two. This is a
classic problem at this point referred to as the "memory wall". Google
it.



We're back to the interconnect bus vs. the memory bus distinction.
Interconnects must be arbitrated or otherwise act like "networks";
what I am calling a memory bus does not have to.

Sadly, now we have to distinguish between usage of these terms in
whether it's multicore or not.

FWIW, I have nearly avoided anything multicore in terms of my living
successfully so far that does not run shrink wrap.

I'm not sure what this means.

Phones and tablets are and will always be cheezy little non-computers.
They don't have enough peripheral options to do anything
besides post cat pictures to social media sites.

Ok, another quote to go up there with "No one will need more than 640
kBytes" and "I see little commercial potential for the internet for the
next 10 years."


Both of those are also true, given other constraints. I would say
the commercial potential of the internet has been more limited
than people would perhaps prefer.

What?? We left 640 kB behind before we left MS-DOS behind!!! The
Internet is the biggest commercial opportunity since the baby boom!

I'll bet you have one of these things as a significant computing
platform in four years... you can quote me on that!



We'll see - I can't find that today, and I have looked. Gave up in a
fit of despair and bought a netbook.

You can't find what today?

You *can* make serious control surface computers out of them, but
they're no longer at a consumer-friendly price. And the purchasing
window for them is very narrow, so managing market thrash is
a problem.

Desktops will
always be around just as "workstations" are still around, but only in
very specialized, demanding applications.


Or they can be a laptop in a box. The world* is glued together by
Visual Basic. Dunno if the Win8 tablets can be relied on to run that
in a manner to support all that.

*as opposed to the fantasy world - the Net - which is glued with Java.

I expect the death of the desktop is greatly exaggerated.

I don't know what the "death of the desktop" is, but I think you and I
will no longer have traditional computers (aka, laptops and desktops) as
anything but reserve computing platforms in six years.


We'll see. FWIW, the people that made this machine I am typing on now
no longer make desktops, so I see something coming. Not sure what, though.

That is the point. No one knows for sure or they would already be
there. As they push on the technology they make changes like DNA
evolving. Some survive some pass on. But with each generation we get
adaptation. When there is more severe pressure, there is greater
change. The change in technology provides fertile ground for mutations
and the change in computing happens faster giving use things we didn't
know we wanted. But we do want and we will change what we buy.

I just want a big screen and a keyboard... or so I think. I've been
thinking for the last few years a big flat TV would do nicely as my
screen and I can have a keyboard with me even more easily than my 17"
laptop. So why wouldn't a tablet with say a 128 GB flash drive make my
day? Right now the only limitation is the lack of support for Android
by the FPGA software vendors. I can't imagine that isn't going to
change soon.

I am pretty much a Luddite when it comes new technology.

Skepticism != Luddism.

Ok, I'm also a curmudgeon.

I think most
of it is bogus crap. But I have seen the light of phones and tablets
and I am a believer. I have been shown the way and the way is good.

Here's a clue to the future. How many here want to use Windows after
XP? Who likes Vista? Who likes Win7? Win8?


They're all fine, so far. No trouble with Win7 or Win8 here. Win8 is
far too clever but it works.

Ask around, very few here like anything after XP.

Is your new PC any faster
than your old PC (other than the increased memory for memory bound
apps)?

Yes. But my old PC is a 3.0GHz monocore.

The only reason I upgraded was that Silverlight stopped utilizing
graphics cards.

Silverlight was one of the first things I turned off! What does it do
that you or I need?

PCs are reaching the wall while hand held devices aren't.

There is more than one wall.

Uh, what?

Handhelds will be catching up in six years and will be able to do all
the stuff you want from your computer today. Tomorrow's PC's,
meanwhile, won't be doing a lot more. So the gap will narrow and who
wants all the baggage of traditional PCs when they can use much more
convenient hand helds? I/O won't be a problem.

Uh huh. Right

I think all the tablets
plug into a TV via HDMI and you can add a keyboard and mouse easily.

That's true enough. But that isn't all the I/O I would need. It isn't
even the right *software*.

Ok, what software do you need? It will be available on tablets running
either Android or who knows, MS may be able to throw their 600 pound
gorilla Windows into the tablet market. I mean, if the hardware keeps
pumping up and the market pressures squeeze Windows down to something
more like 2000 or XP in a couple more years it won't be the worst match
ever.

So
there you have all the utility of a PC in a tiny form factor along with
all the advantages of the handheld when you want a handheld.

If the FPGA design software ran on them well, I'd get one today. But I
need to wait a few more years for the gap to close.



Ironically, I expect Apple to sell desktops for quite some time. Other
than that, here's to the gamers.

Some years ago when the fortunes of Apple was less certain I predicted
that my friend who worked at a newspaper would be switching to a PC
because Apple would be going under. Then they came out with I guess the
iPod... wow! Then the iPhone, more wow! So my predictions of their
demise was a bit premature... The point though is that the newspaper
was full of Macs because the software was so much better for their needs
than anything on the PC. Newspapers, etc will be running desktops for
some time because they need the BIG screens. But the software gap has
closed. So the PC is suitable for graphic arts now. Once they learn
that they don't need the hunk of iron to power their 26" screens
anymore, they will be changing. In fact, they may "get it" before the
rest of us.

--

Rick

 

[David Brown]

On 01/07/13 23:26, rickman wrote:

On 7/1/2013 7:09 AM, David Brown wrote:
On 01/07/13 09:07, rickman wrote:
On 7/1/2013 2:51 AM, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
rickman<gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

(snip)
The only fly in the ointment is that it isn't practical to combine an
x86 CPU with 4 GB of DRAM on a single chip. Oh well, otherwise a
great
idea. That might be practical in another 5 years when low end
computers
are commonly using more than 16 GB of DRAM on the board.

OK, but how about 4G of DRAM off chip, but in the same package.
Maybe call it L4 cache instead of DRAM. Use a high interleave so
you can keep the access rate up, and besides the cost of the wiring
isn't so high as it would be outside the package.

How is that any real advantage? Once you go off chip you have suffered
the slings and arrows of outrageous output drivers.


Making separate chips and putting them in the same package is the golden
middle road here. You need output drivers - but you don't need the same
sort of drivers as for separate chips on a motherboard. There are
several differences - your wires are shorter (so less noise, better
margins, easier timing, lower currents, lower power), you can have many
more wires (broader paths means higher bandwidth), and you have
dedicated links (better timing, easier termination, separate datapaths
for each direction). It is particularly beneficial if the die are
stacked vertically rather than horizontally - your inter-chip
connections are minimal length, it's (relatively) easy to have huge
parallel buses, and you can arrange the layout as you want.

Yes, there are some advantages to combining die within a package, but
there are lots of downsides too. The real issue is that it doesn't
solve any of the problems PCs are facing. The drivers might be a little
smaller, but they are still orders of magnitude bigger and slower than
staying on chip.

The drivers are not a big issue - they are /much/ smaller and lower
power than you need for separate packages. With die-on-die stacking,
you need to drive your inter-chip buses over a length of perhaps 2 mm,
compared to at least 20 cm on a motherboard. That's a factor of 100
difference. The inter-chip "buses" are far shorter than on-die buses.
And as I explained above, there are many other factors making the buses
far faster for die-on-die as compared to motherboard buses.

The biggest issue with die-on-die stacking is getting the power into the
part, and getting the heat out. Modern fast memory modules come with
heat sinks and even fans - even without their driver circuits they still
need a lot of power.

How fast does level 1 cache run? At the processor
clock speed in all cases I've seen.

L1 cache is often slower than the processor clock, but wider than the
cpu (especially for instruction cache). As always, details vary for
different architectures.

Level 2 is a bit slower and I think
the main difference between level 2 and level 3 is not the speed, but
the complexity of the management (correct me if I am wrong).

You are wrong. L3 runs at slower clock speeds and larger latencies than
L2 - these are hierarchical. Depending on the architecture, L3
bandwidth might well be similar to L2 by using wider buses, but memory
always has a tradeoff between speed, power-consumption and area. The
reason you have different cache levels is to have different points in
that trade-off curve.

Additionally, different cache levels will have different types of
associativity, and different ways of dealing with inter-cache coherence
and multiple processors. The details here vary between architectures.

So even
level 3 cache runs at half the speed of the CPU or at minimum over a
GHz.

L3 cache typically runs at far less than half the CPU clock on fast
processors.

Going off the die you won't get that sort of speed and you still
have the same SI issues of boards (like ground bounce) even if they
aren't as pronounced.

It is true that you will not get quite the same speeds if you go
off-die, and you will see some SI issues (your lines no longer lie
across power-planes, for example). But the whole point is that you get
far faster buses, for much lower power, than if the memory was on the
other side of the motherboard. /That/ is the comparison you need to
make, not the comparison to on-die memory.

Note that many processors have had off-die cache over the years -
sometimes as separate chips, sometimes as separate dies within the same
package.

TI produced a version of their cell phone ARM chip which has the memory
chip soldered directly on top. That would be very close to a multichip
module. I don't know how popular it ended up being. They used it on
the BeagleBoard but I think for most apps and assembly houses this is
just *too* fancy.

Multichip modules just plain cost too much for most uses.

Chip-on-chip packaging is a definite hit for systems that need to be
small (that's the main reason for this package, rather than speed). Any
assembly house that is happy with these fine-pitched BGA's should be
able to handle chip-on-chip. But you are right that it is an extra cost.

Die-on-die stacking inside packages is in common use inside memory chips
- both dynamic ram and flash chips use it. But in the great majority of
cases so far, these are symmetrical - you have multiple identical dies.

The challenge for cpu manufactures is to have different types of die in
the same package, and especially for such high-power dies.

There is significant work being done in making chip packaging and driver
types for exactly this sort of arrangement. It is perhaps more aimed at
portable devices rather than big systems, but the idea is the same.

Do you know of anyone currently working to combine the CPU and main
memory? There are numerous reasons why this is a bad idea, even if they
are still separate chips. But that may change as requirements change.
Who knows? In the portable market there does seem to be a fat sweet
spot in the center of memory sizes where you could get by with a single
memory size. We may see a multichip module for that some day... but not
until it is actually solving some problem you can't get around using
separate packages.

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/24/3d_chips/>

In big systems, there will always be off-package memory as well of course.

 

[Les Cargill]

rickman wrote:

On 7/1/2013 8:59 AM, Les Cargill wrote:
rickman wrote:
On 6/30/2013 12:03 PM, Les Cargill wrote:

I am examining the "isn't practical" premise, and trying to do that
without any preconceptions. I've seen ... high levels of integration
in real life before - stuff you wouldn't normally think of
as practical.

Of *course* i don't know for sure - I wasn't there when
it wasn't done...

I'm not saying you *can't* combine SDRAM and an x86 CPU. This may have
been done by someone at some point. I'm saying it isn't practical for
mainstream uses. It won't show up at Best Buy in the next five years.
But who knows beyond that? I think the PC market is headed for a
dramatic change within the next five years. Handhelds are taking
computing in a very new direction and the momentum is reaching the
critical point.

We'll see. The problem I see now is connectivity. FireWire is ebbing
out. Perhaps USB3.0 will be the bus of choice, or Thunderbolt.

<snip>

Phones and tablets are and will always be cheezy little non-computers.
They don't have enough peripheral options to do anything
besides post cat pictures to social media sites.

Ok, another quote to go up there with "No one will need more than 640
kBytes" and "I see little commercial potential for the internet for the
next 10 years."


Both of those are also true, given other constraints. I would say
the commercial potential of the internet has been more limited
than people would perhaps prefer.

What?? We left 640 kB behind before we left MS-DOS behind!!!

To an extent. I found it unusual to need more than
realmode levels of memory prior to Windows.

The
Internet is the biggest commercial opportunity since the baby boom!

I must respectfully disagree. 90% of of it is noncommercial for one.
Compared to the PC Revolution, it's just not one.

It's Facebook, Twitter and Google plus online retail.

I dunno - some friends of mine are doing quite well in that general
arena ( not in Web stuff, and I don't want to say who they are ) but
I just couldn't see doing it.

I'll bet you have one of these things as a significant computing
platform in four years... you can quote me on that!



We'll see - I can't find that today, and I have looked. Gave up in a
fit of despair and bought a netbook.

You can't find what today?

A tablet I want to buy.

<snip>

We'll see. FWIW, the people that made this machine I am typing on now
no longer make desktops, so I see something coming. Not sure what,
though.

That is the point. No one knows for sure or they would already be
there. As they push on the technology they make changes like DNA
evolving. Some survive some pass on. But with each generation we get
adaptation. When there is more severe pressure, there is greater
change. The change in technology provides fertile ground for mutations
and the change in computing happens faster giving use things we didn't
know we wanted. But we do want and we will change what we buy.

I know what I want to do with one. It's not there today. And the
audience for mobile devices doesn't appear to me to want to do any heavy
lifting with them.

You can, for example, do recording with an iPad, but the "dock" for it
is $3000. I don't think I can write 'C' programs to do signals
processing with one. I've yet to see a Tcl interpreter for one.

There is Python at least.

I just want a big screen and a keyboard... or so I think. I've been
thinking for the last few years a big flat TV would do nicely as my
screen

We do that now with the netbook.

and I can have a keyboard with me even more easily than my 17"
laptop. So why wouldn't a tablet with say a 128 GB flash drive make my
day? Right now the only limitation is the lack of support for Android
by the FPGA software vendors. I can't imagine that isn't going to
change soon.

We'll see. I am not sure how much of Linux is missing
from Android; other than that it shouldn't be too bad. You will
need a big ole screen, though.

I am pretty much a Luddite when it comes new technology.

Skepticism != Luddism.

Ok, I'm also a curmudgeon.


I think most
of it is bogus crap. But I have seen the light of phones and tablets
and I am a believer. I have been shown the way and the way is good.

Here's a clue to the future. How many here want to use Windows after
XP? Who likes Vista? Who likes Win7? Win8?


They're all fine, so far. No trouble with Win7 or Win8 here. Win8 is
far too clever but it works.

Ask around, very few here like anything after XP.

I've seen that and I don't see the problem. You can still buy XP if
you don't have it.

Is your new PC any faster
than your old PC (other than the increased memory for memory bound
apps)?

Yes. But my old PC is a 3.0GHz monocore.

The only reason I upgraded was that Silverlight stopped utilizing
graphics cards.

Silverlight was one of the first things I turned off! What does it do
that you or I need?

Netflix. When I was working remote, that's how I consumed Netflix.

PCs are reaching the wall while hand held devices aren't.

There is more than one wall.

Uh, what?

I/O.

Handhelds will be catching up in six years and will be able to do all
the stuff you want from your computer today. Tomorrow's PC's,
meanwhile, won't be doing a lot more. So the gap will narrow and who
wants all the baggage of traditional PCs when they can use much more
convenient hand helds? I/O won't be a problem.

Uh huh. Right

I think all the tablets
plug into a TV via HDMI and you can add a keyboard and mouse easily.

That's true enough. But that isn't all the I/O I would need. It isn't
even the right *software*.

Ok, what software do you need? It will be available on tablets running
either Android or who knows, MS may be able to throw their 600 pound
gorilla Windows into the tablet market.

Maybe.

I mean, if the hardware keeps
pumping up and the market pressures squeeze Windows down to something
more like 2000 or XP in a couple more years it won't be the worst match
ever.

that is true. I don't believe we'll see that though.

So
there you have all the utility of a PC in a tiny form factor along with
all the advantages of the handheld when you want a handheld.

If the FPGA design software ran on them well, I'd get one today. But I
need to wait a few more years for the gap to close.



Ironically, I expect Apple to sell desktops for quite some time. Other
than that, here's to the gamers.

Some years ago when the fortunes of Apple was less certain I predicted
that my friend who worked at a newspaper would be switching to a PC
because Apple would be going under. Then they came out with I guess the
iPod... wow! Then the iPhone, more wow! So my predictions of their
demise was a bit premature... The point though is that the newspaper
was full of Macs because the software was so much better for their needs
than anything on the PC.

Right.

Newspapers, etc will be running desktops for
some time because they need the BIG screens. But the software gap has
closed. So the PC is suitable for graphic arts now.

Except that Adobe threw a cow in the Photoshop well...

Once they learn
that they don't need the hunk of iron to power their 26" screens
anymore, they will be changing. In fact, they may "get it" before the
rest of us.

That's entirely possible.

--
Les Cargill

 

[Eric Wallin]

On Monday, July 1, 2013 1:46:02 PM UTC-4, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:

It must help some, or Intel wouldn't have put the off chip
in package cache on some processors. Pentium pro if I remember,
and maybe Pentium 2.

Not sure I'd pick Intel as the poster child of engineering excellence.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 30/06/13 16:36, Les Cargill wrote:

Tom Gardner wrote:
On 29/06/13 17:58, Les Cargill wrote:
Tom Gardner wrote:
On 29/06/13 03:15, Eric Wallin wrote:
snip

Speedy installation: I get a fully-patched installed
system in well under an hour. Last time MS would
let me (!) install XP, it took me well over a day
because of all the reboots.

Speedy re-installation once every 3 years: your
files are untouched so you just upgrade the o/s
(trivial precondition: put /home on a separate
disk partition). Takes < 1 hour.

And things like virtualbox make running a
Windows guest pretty simple. I'm stuck with a
Win7 host for now because of one PCI card, but
virtualbox claims to be able to publish PCI cards to
guests presently but only on a Linux host.

I'm not going to comment on Win in a VM,
because I only use win98 like that

But shortly before XP is discontinued (and MS shoots
its corporate customers in the foot!), I'll be
putting a clean WinXP inside at least one VM.


It works well.

Does MS squeal about putting its o/s inside a VM?

Not in my experience. Even OEM versions can be activated.

They certainly stop me re-installing my perfectly
legal version of XP on a laptop, even though I have
the product code for that laptop! They sure do make
it difficult for me to use their products, sigh.


That's bizarre. I know the activation process is unreliable;
that's why you may have to call the phone number on some
reinstalls.

Completely bizarre and ridiculous. MS said it was
Samsung's problem (even after 25 mins spent explaining
what was on the screen), Samsung said it was MS (correctly
IMHSHO) Only possible solution was to get a replacement
disk from Samsung - for the same price as the WinXP!
Why MS was insisting that I have a Samsung-specific
disk to install on a Samsung computer is beyond me.

Linux installation was, of course, trivial and fast,
and the machine became much more responsive too!

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 01/07/13 00:32, rickman wrote:

On 6/29/2013 5:14 AM, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 29/06/13 02:02, rickman wrote:
On 6/28/2013 5:11 PM, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 28/06/13 20:06, rickman wrote:
I think the trick will be in finding ways of dividing up the programs
so they can meld to the hardware rather than trying to optimize
everything.

My suspicion is that, except for compute-bound
problems that only require "local" data, that
granularity will be too small.

Examples where it will work, e.g. protein folding,
will rapidly migrate to CUDA and graphics processors.

You are still thinking von Neumann. Any application can be broken down
into small units and parceled out to small processors. But you have to
think in those terms rather than just saying, "it
doesn't fit". Of course it can fit!

Regrettably not. People have been trying different
techniques for ~50 years, with varying degrees of
success as technology bottlenecks change.
The people working in those areas are highly
intelligent and motivated (e.g. high performance
computing research) and there is serious money
available (e.g. life sciences, big energy).

As a good rule of thumb, if you can think of it,
they've already tried it and found where it does
and doesn't work.

So you are saying that multiprocessors are dead on arrival?

No I'm not - I'm saying what I wrote.

Don't invent strawman arguments.

I don't think so. No one I have seen has started the design process from scratch thinking like they were designing hardware.

How does a bee hive work? How about an ant farm? How do all the cells in your body work together? No, the fact that the answer has not been found does not mean it does not exist.


Consider a chip where you have literally a trillion operations per
second available all the time. Do you really care if half go to waste?
I don't! I design FPGAs and I have never felt obliged (not
since the early days anyway) to optimize the utility of each LUT and
FF. No, it turns out the precious resource in FPGAs is routing and you
can't do much but let the tools manage that anyway.

Those internal FPGA constraints also have analogues at
a larger scale, e.g. ic pinout, backplanes, networks...


So a fine grained processor array could be very effective if the
programming can be divided down to suit. Maybe it takes 10 of these
cores to handle 100 Mbps Ethernet, so what? Something like a
browser might need to harness a couple of dozen. If the load slacks
off and they are idling, so what?

The fundamental problem is that in general as you make the
granularity smaller, the communications requirements
get larger. And vice versa

Actually not. The aggregate comms requirements may increase, but we
aren't sharing an Ethernet bus. All of the local processors talk to
each other and less often have to talk to non-local
processors. I think the phone company knows something about that.

That works to an extent, particularly in "embarrassingly parallel"
problems such as telco systems. I know: I've architected and
implemented some

It still has its limits in most interesting computing systems.

Well, the other approaches are hitting a wall. It is clearly time for a change. You can say this or that doesn't work, but they have only been tried in very limited contexts.

The solutions you were proposing have been studied in
considerable detail by many people since the 1970s.
And those people were highly motivated, highly intelligent,
and not constrained by pre-existing commercial
considerations. In some cases there are good theoretical
reasons why they were unlikely to be successful.

Those that do not understand history are condemned to
repeat it.

If you want to go off down a blind alley, fine.
I prefer to go down alleys that are poorly explored.

I'm sort-of retired (I got sick of corporate in-fighting,
and I have my "drop dead money", so...)

That's me too, but I found some work that is paying off very well now.
So I've got a foot in both camps, retired, not retired... both are fun
in their own way. But dealing with international shipping
is a PITA.

Or even sourcing some components, e.g. a MAX9979KCTK+D or +TD

Yes, actually component lead time is a PITA. The orders are very "lumpy" as one of my customer contacts refers to it. So I'm not willing to inventory anything I don't have to. At this point that
will only be connectors.


I regard golf as silly, despite having two courses in
walking distance. My equivalent of kayaking is flying
gliders.

That has got to be fun!

Probably better than you imaging (and that's recursive
without a terminating condition). I know instructors
that still have pleasant surprises after 50 years

I did a tiny bit of kayaking on flat water, but now
I wear hearing aids

One of my better kayaking friends has a cochlear implant with an external processor. She either wears her older back up processor or none at all.


I've never worked up the whatever to learn to fly.

Going solo is about as difficult as learning to drive
a car. And then the learning really starts

Yes, but it is a lot more training than learning to drive and a lot more money.

Over here most clubs have a fixed-price-to-solo scheme
including membership and up to 100 flights for around $1000.

That cost is not too dissimilar to the cost of learning
to drive a car.

It is also a lot more demanding of scheduling in that you can't just say, "Dad, can I drive you to the store?"

That's very true. Gliding is a social activity:
you can't just turn up and fly, everybody helps
everybody get airborne.

It seems like a big investment and not so cheap overall.

Not in money. In the UK club membership is $500/year,
a launch + 10 mins instruction is $10, and an hour
instruction in the air is $30. The real cost is time:
club members help you get airborne, and you help them
in return. Very sociable, unlike aircraft with air
conditioning fans up front or scythes above.


But there is clearly a great thrill there.

0-40kt in 3s, 0-50kt in 5s, climb with your feet
above your head, fly in close formation with raptors,
eyeball sheep on a hillside as you whizz past
below them at 60kt, 10-20kft, 40kt-150kt, hundreds
and thousands of km range, pre-solo spinning at
altitudes that make power pilots blanche, and
pre-solo flying in loose formation with other
aircraft.

Let me know if you want pointers to youtube vids.

Not at this time. I'm way too busy with other things including getting a hip replacement.

Good luck with the replacement. As far as I can
tell the key points are to get implants that
have a proven long-term success rate (not easy
since manufacturers frequently introduce new
types with minimal testing), and a surgeon that
that specialises in this operation (i.e. isn't
increasing their CV/resume)

 

[rickman]

On 7/12/2013 12:19 PM, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 01/07/13 00:32, rickman wrote:
On 6/29/2013 5:14 AM, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 29/06/13 02:02, rickman wrote:

You are still thinking von Neumann. Any application can be broken down
into small units and parceled out to small processors. But you have to
think in those terms rather than just saying, "it
doesn't fit". Of course it can fit!

Regrettably not. People have been trying different
techniques for ~50 years, with varying degrees of
success as technology bottlenecks change.
The people working in those areas are highly
intelligent and motivated (e.g. high performance
computing research) and there is serious money
available (e.g. life sciences, big energy).

As a good rule of thumb, if you can think of it,
they've already tried it and found where it does
and doesn't work.

So you are saying that multiprocessors are dead on arrival?

No I'm not - I'm saying what I wrote.

Don't invent strawman arguments.

I'm trying to understand what you are saying. You wrote a bunch of
general stuff. Any application to the conversation?

Actually not. The aggregate comms requirements may increase, but we
aren't sharing an Ethernet bus. All of the local processors talk to
each other and less often have to talk to non-local
processors. I think the phone company knows something about that.

That works to an extent, particularly in "embarrassingly parallel"
problems such as telco systems. I know: I've architected and
implemented some

It still has its limits in most interesting computing systems.

Well, the other approaches are hitting a wall. It is clearly time for
a change. You can say this or that doesn't work, but they have only
been tried in very limited contexts.

The solutions you were proposing have been studied in
considerable detail by many people since the 1970s.
And those people were highly motivated, highly intelligent,
and not constrained by pre-existing commercial
considerations. In some cases there are good theoretical
reasons why they were unlikely to be successful.

Those that do not understand history are condemned to
repeat it.

If you want to go off down a blind alley, fine.
I prefer to go down alleys that are poorly explored.

There is the fallacy to your argument. The fact that some 30 or more
years ago, things were tried using existing technology and A was found
to be a better path than B. That is not the same as saying path B is a
"blind alley".

Path A has been followed and has shown great promise, but that path is
coming to an end of easy travel. Technology has changed and now Path B
is starting to look better all the time.

--

Rick

 

Hey all,

Here's a short demo of HIVE running at 160MHz and one core doing some PWM with the Cyclone FPGA board LEDs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL6e-QtsRRs

Eric W.

 

[rickman]

On 7/1/2013 9:26 PM, Les Cargill wrote:

rickman wrote:
On 7/1/2013 8:59 AM, Les Cargill wrote:
rickman wrote:
On 6/30/2013 12:03 PM, Les Cargill wrote:

I am examining the "isn't practical" premise, and trying to do that
without any preconceptions. I've seen ... high levels of integration
in real life before - stuff you wouldn't normally think of
as practical.

Of *course* i don't know for sure - I wasn't there when
it wasn't done...

I'm not saying you *can't* combine SDRAM and an x86 CPU. This may have
been done by someone at some point. I'm saying it isn't practical for
mainstream uses. It won't show up at Best Buy in the next five years.
But who knows beyond that? I think the PC market is headed for a
dramatic change within the next five years. Handhelds are taking
computing in a very new direction and the momentum is reaching the
critical point.



We'll see. The problem I see now is connectivity. FireWire is ebbing
out. Perhaps USB3.0 will be the bus of choice, or Thunderbolt.

That's a very different system level problem. It has nothing to do with
the actual computing.

Phones and tablets are and will always be cheezy little non-computers.
They don't have enough peripheral options to do anything
besides post cat pictures to social media sites.

Ok, another quote to go up there with "No one will need more than 640
kBytes" and "I see little commercial potential for the internet for the
next 10 years."


Both of those are also true, given other constraints. I would say
the commercial potential of the internet has been more limited
than people would perhaps prefer.

What?? We left 640 kB behind before we left MS-DOS behind!!!

To an extent. I found it unusual to need more than
realmode levels of memory prior to Windows.

Ok, if you don't want to use Windows, then don't. But the market is for
GUI OS and apps. That is what drives processor design.

The
Internet is the biggest commercial opportunity since the baby boom!


I must respectfully disagree. 90% of of it is noncommercial for one.
Compared to the PC Revolution, it's just not one.

You can disagree all you want. But the Internet is big business, has
created huge *new* markets and has changed the way nearly *all*
businesses operate. It is irrelevant if it is used for other purposes
and the PC revolution BI (before Internet) was nothing compared to what
it is with the Internet. I think it will prove to be bigger than the
telephone or the TV in terms of impacting our lives. In fact, it is
well on the way to replacing both. As evidence, I submit that the
states are all clamoring for a new Federal law allowing them to tax
Internet sales and making vendors collect the state tax even if they are
only in other states. Clearly they feel the Internet has become a major
commercial presence and this is only the retail impact. When was the
last time you got a data sheet delivered to you by a salesman?

It's Facebook, Twitter and Google plus online retail.

I don't know what you mean. What is "it" in this context?

I dunno - some friends of mine are doing quite well in that general
arena ( not in Web stuff, and I don't want to say who they are ) but
I just couldn't see doing it.


I'll bet you have one of these things as a significant computing
platform in four years... you can quote me on that!



We'll see - I can't find that today, and I have looked. Gave up in a
fit of despair and bought a netbook.

You can't find what today?



A tablet I want to buy.

I'm the same way, I need a laptop. But I use my girlfriend's tablet
from time to time because it is there when my laptop isn't and it comes
on instantly while my laptop takes a couple of minutes to fire up and
shut down.

We'll see. FWIW, the people that made this machine I am typing on now
no longer make desktops, so I see something coming. Not sure what,
though.

That is the point. No one knows for sure or they would already be
there. As they push on the technology they make changes like DNA
evolving. Some survive some pass on. But with each generation we get
adaptation. When there is more severe pressure, there is greater
change. The change in technology provides fertile ground for mutations
and the change in computing happens faster giving use things we didn't
know we wanted. But we do want and we will change what we buy.


I know what I want to do with one. It's not there today. And the
audience for mobile devices doesn't appear to me to want to do any heavy
lifting with them.

You can, for example, do recording with an iPad, but the "dock" for it
is $3000. I don't think I can write 'C' programs to do signals
processing with one. I've yet to see a Tcl interpreter for one.

There is Python at least.

That is your personal preference, not the real market.

I just want a big screen and a keyboard... or so I think. I've been
thinking for the last few years a big flat TV would do nicely as my
screen

We do that now with the netbook.

Yeah, a netbook is just a tablet with a built in keyboard and screen,
both nearly unusable. I'd be willing to bet that netbooks were a flash
in the pan, popular at first but sales either flatlining or falling off.

and I can have a keyboard with me even more easily than my 17"
laptop. So why wouldn't a tablet with say a 128 GB flash drive make my
day? Right now the only limitation is the lack of support for Android
by the FPGA software vendors. I can't imagine that isn't going to
change soon.



We'll see. I am not sure how much of Linux is missing
from Android; other than that it shouldn't be too bad. You will
need a big ole screen, though.

Any flat screen TV will be much better than my laptop or desktop.

I am pretty much a Luddite when it comes new technology.

Skepticism != Luddism.

Ok, I'm also a curmudgeon.


I think most
of it is bogus crap. But I have seen the light of phones and tablets
and I am a believer. I have been shown the way and the way is good.

Here's a clue to the future. How many here want to use Windows after
XP? Who likes Vista? Who likes Win7? Win8?


They're all fine, so far. No trouble with Win7 or Win8 here. Win8 is
far too clever but it works.

Ask around, very few here like anything after XP.


I've seen that and I don't see the problem. You can still buy XP if
you don't have it.

I'm very resistant to paying Microsoft any more money than I have to. I
may get a new laptop soon. One thing holding me back is that I have to
pay Bill Gates another $50 for the latest OS I really don't want.

Is your new PC any faster
than your old PC (other than the increased memory for memory bound
apps)?

Yes. But my old PC is a 3.0GHz monocore.

The only reason I upgraded was that Silverlight stopped utilizing
graphics cards.

Silverlight was one of the first things I turned off! What does it do
that you or I need?


Netflix. When I was working remote, that's how I consumed Netflix.

You can't use Netflix without Silverlight? wow.

PCs are reaching the wall while hand held devices aren't.

There is more than one wall.

Uh, what?



I/O.

I can't see that as important. How does I/O impact PCs significantly?
Where is the bottleneck?

Handhelds will be catching up in six years and will be able to do all
the stuff you want from your computer today. Tomorrow's PC's,
meanwhile, won't be doing a lot more. So the gap will narrow and who
wants all the baggage of traditional PCs when they can use much more
convenient hand helds? I/O won't be a problem.

Uh huh. Right

I think all the tablets
plug into a TV via HDMI and you can add a keyboard and mouse easily.

That's true enough. But that isn't all the I/O I would need. It isn't
even the right *software*.

Ok, what software do you need? It will be available on tablets running
either Android or who knows, MS may be able to throw their 600 pound
gorilla Windows into the tablet market.

Maybe.

What do you think Windows 8 is about? Getting the OS to look like
tablets and users used to the look and feel they will get on tablets
when MS starts pushing Windows into that market.

I mean, if the hardware keeps
pumping up and the market pressures squeeze Windows down to something
more like 2000 or XP in a couple more years it won't be the worst match
ever.


that is true. I don't believe we'll see that though.

How can MS *not* follow this route? They put out paired down versions
of Windows for netbooks. They will continue to improve and streamline
the product until they can provide a decent version of Windows for
tablets and then it will be a footrace with Android.

So
there you have all the utility of a PC in a tiny form factor along with
all the advantages of the handheld when you want a handheld.

If the FPGA design software ran on them well, I'd get one today. But I
need to wait a few more years for the gap to close.



Ironically, I expect Apple to sell desktops for quite some time. Other
than that, here's to the gamers.

Some years ago when the fortunes of Apple was less certain I predicted
that my friend who worked at a newspaper would be switching to a PC
because Apple would be going under. Then they came out with I guess the
iPod... wow! Then the iPhone, more wow! So my predictions of their
demise was a bit premature... The point though is that the newspaper
was full of Macs because the software was so much better for their needs
than anything on the PC.

Right.

Newspapers, etc will be running desktops for
some time because they need the BIG screens. But the software gap has
closed. So the PC is suitable for graphic arts now.

Except that Adobe threw a cow in the Photoshop well...

Once they learn
that they don't need the hunk of iron to power their 26" screens
anymore, they will be changing. In fact, they may "get it" before the
rest of us.


That's entirely possible.

--

Rick

 

[Les Cargill]

rickman wrote:

On 7/1/2013 9:26 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
snip

We'll see. The problem I see now is connectivity. FireWire is ebbing
out. Perhaps USB3.0 will be the bus of choice, or Thunderbolt.

That's a very different system level problem. It has nothing to do with
the actual computing.

But it remains as the most significant issue with things like
handhelds and tablets.

Phones and tablets are and will always be cheezy little
non-computers.
They don't have enough peripheral options to do anything
besides post cat pictures to social media sites.

Ok, another quote to go up there with "No one will need more than 640
kBytes" and "I see little commercial potential for the internet for
the
next 10 years."


Both of those are also true, given other constraints. I would say
the commercial potential of the internet has been more limited
than people would perhaps prefer.

What?? We left 640 kB behind before we left MS-DOS behind!!!

To an extent. I found it unusual to need more than
realmode levels of memory prior to Windows.

Ok, if you don't want to use Windows, then don't. But the market is for
GUI OS and apps. That is what drives processor design.

No, I went in for Windows just like everybody else... I mean
that the real justification for all that power and memory was
the GUI.

I was using DOS machines for Real Work(tM) first, then as a
home computing appliance.

The
Internet is the biggest commercial opportunity since the baby boom!


I must respectfully disagree. 90% of of it is noncommercial for one.
Compared to the PC Revolution, it's just not one.

You can disagree all you want. But the Internet is big business, has
created huge *new* markets and has changed the way nearly *all*
businesses operate.

I just don't see that. outside of the models more or less spread
by Amazon, nothing's changed. And that is a dynamic Sears Roebuck
Catalog enabled by credit card payment and shipped by a FedEx style
shipper rather than by rail.

Enterprise apps are still trench warfare, when they work at all.

It is irrelevant if it is used for other purposes
and the PC revolution BI (before Internet) was nothing compared to what
it is with the Internet. I think it will prove to be bigger than the
telephone or the TV in terms of impacting our lives. In fact, it is
well on the way to replacing both.

It *has* replaced the telephone, but with an almost identical thing.
Those who say it can replace TV are rather missing the point.

Content development has converged around cable. There are still two
planes of content - DOCSIS and IP. There's still over the air TV,
but is rather limited.

There's a little cross pollination - the show "Children's Hospital"
transitioned from purely online to cable on Cartoon Network, but
Rob Cordry was on a cable show before.

As evidence, I submit that the
states are all clamoring for a new Federal law allowing them to tax
Internet sales and making vendors collect the state tax even if they are
only in other states. Clearly they feel the Internet has become a major
commercial presence and this is only the retail impact. When was the
last time you got a data sheet delivered to you by a salesman?

Earlier this year.

It's Facebook, Twitter and Google plus online retail.

I don't know what you mean. What is "it" in this context?

The internet.

I dunno - some friends of mine are doing quite well in that general
arena ( not in Web stuff, and I don't want to say who they are ) but
I just couldn't see doing it.


I'll bet you have one of these things as a significant computing
platform in four years... you can quote me on that!



We'll see - I can't find that today, and I have looked. Gave up in a
fit of despair and bought a netbook.

You can't find what today?



A tablet I want to buy.

I'm the same way, I need a laptop. But I use my girlfriend's tablet
from time to time because it is there when my laptop isn't and it comes
on instantly while my laptop takes a couple of minutes to fire up and
shut down.

Dunno about that - the lappie we use is up in less than a minute. It's
not stored in a cold-down state - it's suspended.

We'll see. FWIW, the people that made this machine I am typing on now
no longer make desktops, so I see something coming. Not sure what,
though.

That is the point. No one knows for sure or they would already be
there. As they push on the technology they make changes like DNA
evolving. Some survive some pass on. But with each generation we get
adaptation. When there is more severe pressure, there is greater
change. The change in technology provides fertile ground for mutations
and the change in computing happens faster giving use things we didn't
know we wanted. But we do want and we will change what we buy.


I know what I want to do with one. It's not there today. And the
audience for mobile devices doesn't appear to me to want to do any heavy
lifting with them.

You can, for example, do recording with an iPad, but the "dock" for it
is $3000. I don't think I can write 'C' programs to do signals
processing with one. I've yet to see a Tcl interpreter for one.

There is Python at least.

That is your personal preference, not the real market.

A market is nothing more than an aggregation of individual
preferences. I would say that a preference for tablets
indicates that the ... preferr-er does very little with the thing.

This being said, a tablet makes a fine touchscreen remote
for real computers, but that's got problems as well.

I just want a big screen and a keyboard... or so I think. I've been
thinking for the last few years a big flat TV would do nicely as my
screen

We do that now with the netbook.

Yeah, a netbook is just a tablet with a built in keyboard and screen,
both nearly unusable. I'd be willing to bet that netbooks were a flash
in the pan, popular at first but sales either flatlining or falling off.

I expect that then we'll go without.

and I can have a keyboard with me even more easily than my 17"
laptop. So why wouldn't a tablet with say a 128 GB flash drive make my
day? Right now the only limitation is the lack of support for Android
by the FPGA software vendors. I can't imagine that isn't going to
change soon.



We'll see. I am not sure how much of Linux is missing
from Android; other than that it shouldn't be too bad. You will
need a big ole screen, though.

Any flat screen TV will be much better than my laptop or desktop.

This has its challenges as well.

<snip>

I've seen that and I don't see the problem. You can still buy XP if
you don't have it.

I'm very resistant to paying Microsoft any more money than I have to. I
may get a new laptop soon. One thing holding me back is that I have to
pay Bill Gates another $50 for the latest OS I really don't want.

Understood.

Is your new PC any faster
than your old PC (other than the increased memory for memory bound
apps)?

Yes. But my old PC is a 3.0GHz monocore.

The only reason I upgraded was that Silverlight stopped utilizing
graphics cards.

Silverlight was one of the first things I turned off! What does it do
that you or I need?


Netflix. When I was working remote, that's how I consumed Netflix.

You can't use Netflix without Silverlight? wow.

Right. It's kind of disgusting.

PCs are reaching the wall while hand held devices aren't.

There is more than one wall.

Uh, what?



I/O.

I can't see that as important. How does I/O impact PCs significantly?
Where is the bottleneck?

What is your printer connected to? what on a tablet does data collection
- whether SCADA, audio, video? Can you do graphics on a tablet? Basic
signals processing? FPGA development?

Wifi isn't all that good for this - it's fine for lowerish bandwidth
file dragging but you can't do real work with it.

<snip>

Ok, what software do you need? It will be available on tablets running
either Android or who knows, MS may be able to throw their 600 pound
gorilla Windows into the tablet market.

Maybe.

What do you think Windows 8 is about? Getting the OS to look like
tablets and users used to the look and feel they will get on tablets
when MS starts pushing Windows into that market.

They don't think of it that way. They think in terms of
"what do we have to do to unhorse Apple."

I mean, if the hardware keeps
pumping up and the market pressures squeeze Windows down to something
more like 2000 or XP in a couple more years it won't be the worst match
ever.


that is true. I don't believe we'll see that though.

How can MS *not* follow this route? They put out paired down versions
of Windows for netbooks. They will continue to improve and streamline
the product until they can provide a decent version of Windows for
tablets and then it will be a footrace with Android.

But they've shown again and again that they cannot
get out of their own way. Anything that runs Windows has to
support third party peripherals, so they can't nail
down things in the same way Apple has.

<snip>

--
Les Cargill

 

[rickman]

On 7/14/2013 10:33 AM, Les Cargill wrote:

rickman wrote:
On 7/1/2013 9:26 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
snip

We'll see. The problem I see now is connectivity. FireWire is ebbing
out. Perhaps USB3.0 will be the bus of choice, or Thunderbolt.

That's a very different system level problem. It has nothing to do with
the actual computing.



But it remains as the most significant issue with things like
handhelds and tablets.

I can't say I understand. How does a desktop or notebook have any
better connectivity? Firewire is easy to add to any tablet or even a
phone. They don't include it because it is not of interest to tablet or
phone users. Ethernet is done over Wifi. So what is missing?

Phones and tablets are and will always be cheezy little
non-computers.
They don't have enough peripheral options to do anything
besides post cat pictures to social media sites.

Ok, another quote to go up there with "No one will need more than 640
kBytes" and "I see little commercial potential for the internet for
the
next 10 years."


Both of those are also true, given other constraints. I would say
the commercial potential of the internet has been more limited
than people would perhaps prefer.

What?? We left 640 kB behind before we left MS-DOS behind!!!

To an extent. I found it unusual to need more than
realmode levels of memory prior to Windows.

Ok, if you don't want to use Windows, then don't. But the market is for
GUI OS and apps. That is what drives processor design.



No, I went in for Windows just like everybody else... I mean
that the real justification for all that power and memory was
the GUI.

I was using DOS machines for Real Work(tM) first, then as a
home computing appliance.

I think you are making a rather arbitrary distinction with no value.
First, I have any number of apps that require memory far beyond 640 kB.
Anything manipulating images which goes in spades for video. Most of
my technical programs can't run in 640 kB. Even my editor is using 9 MB
of memory at the moment. I often open files in it that are MBs large.

Sure, needing 4 GB of memory is because of the OS, but your implied
usability of DOS is simply absurd. DOS could be used in the early days
because no one dreamed of what we would be able to do.

The
Internet is the biggest commercial opportunity since the baby boom!


I must respectfully disagree. 90% of of it is noncommercial for one.
Compared to the PC Revolution, it's just not one.

You can disagree all you want. But the Internet is big business, has
created huge *new* markets and has changed the way nearly *all*
businesses operate.


I just don't see that. outside of the models more or less spread
by Amazon, nothing's changed. And that is a dynamic Sears Roebuck
Catalog enabled by credit card payment and shipped by a FedEx style
shipper rather than by rail.

I can only think you are blind. My purchasing is totally different now.
I price shop easily and mostly buy online. Before the Internet it
required trips to the local stores just to see what they had and what it
cost. I used to get a 10 lb. (4.5 kg) Computer Shopper to try to find
bargains. Shopping online has opened up many modes of purchasing that
just didn't exist before. That is only the retail side. You seem to
think the Sears catalog is the same as online purchasing. The states
were never worried about the loss of revenue from Sears, lol!

Businesses conduct business over the Internet that would have been
*much* more expensive and impractical with dedicated services. My
girlfriend works for one of the medical labs. All of their computers
connect by VPN to order and report lab results over the Internet.
Otherwise they would need direct phone lines and it would not be nearly
as functional or practical.

I can't believe you don't see how the Internet is transforming the
entire world! This will be bigger than the phone or TV in my opinion.

Enterprise apps are still trench warfare, when they work at all.

It is irrelevant if it is used for other purposes
and the PC revolution BI (before Internet) was nothing compared to what
it is with the Internet. I think it will prove to be bigger than the
telephone or the TV in terms of impacting our lives. In fact, it is
well on the way to replacing both.

It *has* replaced the telephone, but with an almost identical thing.
Those who say it can replace TV are rather missing the point.

Content development has converged around cable. There are still two
planes of content - DOCSIS and IP. There's still over the air TV,
but is rather limited.

Yes, and cable TV will end up the loser with cable companies being
Internet providers. But that is a ways off. TV is just so popular that
cable TV will be with us for some time yet.

There's a little cross pollination - the show "Children's Hospital"
transitioned from purely online to cable on Cartoon Network, but
Rob Cordry was on a cable show before.

As evidence, I submit that the
states are all clamoring for a new Federal law allowing them to tax
Internet sales and making vendors collect the state tax even if they are
only in other states. Clearly they feel the Internet has become a major
commercial presence and this is only the retail impact. When was the
last time you got a data sheet delivered to you by a salesman?



Earlier this year.

Ok, I see I'm talking to a bigger luddite. What were they selling,
buggy whips?

It's Facebook, Twitter and Google plus online retail.

I don't know what you mean. What is "it" in this context?



The internet.

That's still not clear.

I dunno - some friends of mine are doing quite well in that general
arena ( not in Web stuff, and I don't want to say who they are ) but
I just couldn't see doing it.


I'll bet you have one of these things as a significant computing
platform in four years... you can quote me on that!



We'll see - I can't find that today, and I have looked. Gave up in a
fit of despair and bought a netbook.

You can't find what today?



A tablet I want to buy.

I'm the same way, I need a laptop. But I use my girlfriend's tablet
from time to time because it is there when my laptop isn't and it comes
on instantly while my laptop takes a couple of minutes to fire up and
shut down.





Dunno about that - the lappie we use is up in less than a minute. It's
not stored in a cold-down state - it's suspended.

Assuming the computer is not in it's bag... If it's not I have to
remove it, remove the power pack, plug it in, open the lid and in a few
seconds it prompts me for a password, a few more seconds (well a large
few) it gives me the UI screen and starts connecting to the Wifi, then a
few more seconds and the email program figures out it is connected...
all in all it is well over a minute before it is ready for me to use.
You just have to pick up the tablet then push a button and swipe a
finger across the screen... you're in. HUGE difference.

We'll see. FWIW, the people that made this machine I am typing on now
no longer make desktops, so I see something coming. Not sure what,
though.

That is the point. No one knows for sure or they would already be
there. As they push on the technology they make changes like DNA
evolving. Some survive some pass on. But with each generation we get
adaptation. When there is more severe pressure, there is greater
change. The change in technology provides fertile ground for mutations
and the change in computing happens faster giving use things we didn't
know we wanted. But we do want and we will change what we buy.


I know what I want to do with one. It's not there today. And the
audience for mobile devices doesn't appear to me to want to do any heavy
lifting with them.

You can, for example, do recording with an iPad, but the "dock" for it
is $3000. I don't think I can write 'C' programs to do signals
processing with one. I've yet to see a Tcl interpreter for one.

There is Python at least.

That is your personal preference, not the real market.



A market is nothing more than an aggregation of individual
preferences. I would say that a preference for tablets
indicates that the ... preferr-er does very little with the thing.

You don't get it. That is the point. The tablets do what most people
want. Therefore they will become the dominant form of computing...

This being said, a tablet makes a fine touchscreen remote
for real computers, but that's got problems as well.

Lol!

I just want a big screen and a keyboard... or so I think. I've been
thinking for the last few years a big flat TV would do nicely as my
screen

We do that now with the netbook.

Yeah, a netbook is just a tablet with a built in keyboard and screen,
both nearly unusable. I'd be willing to bet that netbooks were a flash
in the pan, popular at first but sales either flatlining or falling off.



I expect that then we'll go without.

You'll go without eating???

and I can have a keyboard with me even more easily than my 17"
laptop. So why wouldn't a tablet with say a 128 GB flash drive make my
day? Right now the only limitation is the lack of support for Android
by the FPGA software vendors. I can't imagine that isn't going to
change soon.



We'll see. I am not sure how much of Linux is missing
from Android; other than that it shouldn't be too bad. You will
need a big ole screen, though.

Any flat screen TV will be much better than my laptop or desktop.



This has its challenges as well.

What are you talking about?

I've seen that and I don't see the problem. You can still buy XP if
you don't have it.

I'm very resistant to paying Microsoft any more money than I have to. I
may get a new laptop soon. One thing holding me back is that I have to
pay Bill Gates another $50 for the latest OS I really don't want.



Understood.

Is your new PC any faster
than your old PC (other than the increased memory for memory bound
apps)?

Yes. But my old PC is a 3.0GHz monocore.

The only reason I upgraded was that Silverlight stopped utilizing
graphics cards.

Silverlight was one of the first things I turned off! What does it do
that you or I need?


Netflix. When I was working remote, that's how I consumed Netflix.

You can't use Netflix without Silverlight? wow.


Right. It's kind of disgusting.

I don't know how I have managed to live without Netflix. Oh, that's
right, I'm a Luddite!

PCs are reaching the wall while hand held devices aren't.

There is more than one wall.

Uh, what?



I/O.

I can't see that as important. How does I/O impact PCs significantly?
Where is the bottleneck?



What is your printer connected to? what on a tablet does data collection
- whether SCADA, audio, video? Can you do graphics on a tablet? Basic
signals processing? FPGA development?

I don't have any trouble with any of these... what are you talking about?

Wifi isn't all that good for this - it's fine for lowerish bandwidth
file dragging but you can't do real work with it.

Yes, I am totally unable to work...

Ok, what software do you need? It will be available on tablets running
either Android or who knows, MS may be able to throw their 600 pound
gorilla Windows into the tablet market.

Maybe.

What do you think Windows 8 is about? Getting the OS to look like
tablets and users used to the look and feel they will get on tablets
when MS starts pushing Windows into that market.




They don't think of it that way. They think in terms of
"what do we have to do to unhorse Apple."

Uh, that is a bit silly. Of course they consider competition, but they
need a plan based on what they expect will woo the user.

I mean, if the hardware keeps
pumping up and the market pressures squeeze Windows down to something
more like 2000 or XP in a couple more years it won't be the worst match
ever.


that is true. I don't believe we'll see that though.

How can MS *not* follow this route? They put out paired down versions
of Windows for netbooks. They will continue to improve and streamline
the product until they can provide a decent version of Windows for
tablets and then it will be a footrace with Android.


But they've shown again and again that they cannot
get out of their own way. Anything that runs Windows has to
support third party peripherals, so they can't nail
down things in the same way Apple has.

That is not obvious. Why does a tablet have to support an external SCSI
drive? You will never be able to connect it.

Windows can run on a tablet just fine once the trim it down to the
slower processors and (slightly) smaller memory.

The problems with Apple "nailing" down the units are just that,
problems. A friend has an iPhone and he borrowed my netbook so he could
do backups. His laptop had problems with iTunes and Apple wouldn't
support it. With a tablet he would be able to get third party products
to make it work. I try not to make proclamations, but I'm pretty sure I
will never buy an Apple computing device. I don't like their closed
approach.

--

Rick

 

[Les Cargill]

rickman wrote:

On 7/14/2013 10:33 AM, Les Cargill wrote:
rickman wrote:
On 7/1/2013 9:26 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
snip

We'll see. The problem I see now is connectivity. FireWire is ebbing
out. Perhaps USB3.0 will be the bus of choice, or Thunderbolt.

That's a very different system level problem. It has nothing to do with
the actual computing.



But it remains as the most significant issue with things like
handhelds and tablets.

I can't say I understand. How does a desktop or notebook have any
better connectivity? Firewire is easy to add to any tablet or even a
phone.

Is it? I've only see the Ainol Novo 9 with Firewire built in. I
suppose that depends on what you mean by "added to".

They don't include it because it is not of interest to tablet or
phone users. Ethernet is done over Wifi. So what is missing?

Data collection I/O. Maybe that will evolve to over Wifi, but
I have yet to see that. Maybe I should do that; I have
though t about it. But every time I look at it, it costs too much
unless you get into large retail establishments. And you can
stand up a desktop to do it, and pull files over Wifi.

Phones and tablets are and will always be cheezy little
non-computers.
They don't have enough peripheral options to do anything
besides post cat pictures to social media sites.

Ok, another quote to go up there with "No one will need more than
640
kBytes" and "I see little commercial potential for the internet for
the
next 10 years."


Both of those are also true, given other constraints. I would say
the commercial potential of the internet has been more limited
than people would perhaps prefer.

What?? We left 640 kB behind before we left MS-DOS behind!!!

To an extent. I found it unusual to need more than
realmode levels of memory prior to Windows.

Ok, if you don't want to use Windows, then don't. But the market is for
GUI OS and apps. That is what drives processor design.



No, I went in for Windows just like everybody else... I mean
that the real justification for all that power and memory was
the GUI.

I was using DOS machines for Real Work(tM) first, then as a
home computing appliance.

I think you are making a rather arbitrary distinction with no value.
First, I have any number of apps that require memory far beyond 640 kB.
Anything manipulating images which goes in spades for video. Most of
my technical programs can't run in 640 kB. Even my editor is using 9 MB
of memory at the moment. I often open files in it that are MBs large.

Sure, needing 4 GB of memory is because of the OS, but your implied
usability of DOS is simply absurd. DOS could be used in the early days
because no one dreamed of what we would be able to do.

We've gained video, audio and things like Photoshop. If you include the
Commodore computers from that time frame, we really haven't gained that,
either.

Compared to what was gained by pre-Windows PCs, that's a rather
short list. And those were not unique; just cheaper.

Pre-Windows PCs made a measurable impact on the
economy. Post and peri-Windows, not so much. 'Course
we use Linux for what we used DOS for before.

The
Internet is the biggest commercial opportunity since the baby boom!


I must respectfully disagree. 90% of of it is noncommercial for one.
Compared to the PC Revolution, it's just not one.

You can disagree all you want. But the Internet is big business, has
created huge *new* markets and has changed the way nearly *all*
businesses operate.


I just don't see that. outside of the models more or less spread
by Amazon, nothing's changed. And that is a dynamic Sears Roebuck
Catalog enabled by credit card payment and shipped by a FedEx style
shipper rather than by rail.

I can only think you are blind. My purchasing is totally different now.

Yeah - it's back to the Sears Roebuck catalog model. C'mon - this is
not a difficult concept.

I price shop easily and mostly buy online. Before the Internet it
required trips to the local stores just to see what they had and what it
cost. I used to get a 10 lb. (4.5 kg) Computer Shopper to try to find
bargains.

So make that a disc instead of a printed catalog. Same
thing. And make it to where you could download a .iso of
the disk...

Shopping online has opened up many modes of purchasing that

just didn't exist before. That is only the retail side. You seem to
think the Sears catalog is the same as online purchasing. The states
were never worried about the loss of revenue from Sears, lol!

That's because Sears charged all the applicable taxes. If you'll recall,
it was considered *better* when you did not have to wait
the six weeks for a simple retail purchase, and retail began
to consume much more real estate.

As to "multiple trips", call ahead. That's what I did and still
do. This only fails because the minions of retail establishment
have lousy communications skills.

Businesses conduct business over the Internet that would have been
*much* more expensive and impractical with dedicated services.

No, they would not have. I don't think you've thought this through.
For example, WalMart has an online system that offers "in store
pickup." You basically get back some of the cost of inventory risk.

The advantages of stuff over the Internet is much more
subtle. The vast majority of say, Amazon is the giant
flea market of a million booths.

My
girlfriend works for one of the medical labs. All of their computers
connect by VPN to order and report lab results over the Internet.
Otherwise they would need direct phone lines and it would not be nearly
as functional or practical.

No doubt. But one for the first things I did for my
employer in 1994 was to help us use a T1 line for
the same purpose.

I can't believe you don't see how the Internet is transforming the
entire world! This will be bigger than the phone or TV in my opinion.

Emphasis "will be". It's been five years out for fifteen years now

Enterprise apps are still trench warfare, when they work at all.

It is irrelevant if it is used for other purposes
and the PC revolution BI (before Internet) was nothing compared to what
it is with the Internet. I think it will prove to be bigger than the
telephone or the TV in terms of impacting our lives. In fact, it is
well on the way to replacing both.

It *has* replaced the telephone, but with an almost identical thing.
Those who say it can replace TV are rather missing the point.

Content development has converged around cable. There are still two
planes of content - DOCSIS and IP. There's still over the air TV,
but is rather limited.

Yes, and cable TV will end up the loser with cable companies being
Internet providers. But that is a ways off. TV is just so popular that
cable TV will be with us for some time yet.

I expect so; yes. The hot thing now is long-form stuff like Mad Men or
Justified. that's not something that can exist in an an Internet-only
model. The capitalization doesn't work.

There's a little cross pollination - the show "Children's Hospital"
transitioned from purely online to cable on Cartoon Network, but
Rob Cordry was on a cable show before.

As evidence, I submit that the
states are all clamoring for a new Federal law allowing them to tax
Internet sales and making vendors collect the state tax even if they are
only in other states. Clearly they feel the Internet has become a major
commercial presence and this is only the retail impact. When was the
last time you got a data sheet delivered to you by a salesman?



Earlier this year.

Ok, I see I'm talking to a bigger luddite. What were they selling,
buggy whips?

Sensors and actuators. The people I work with build real machines
that do real work.

<snip>

Dunno about that - the lappie we use is up in less than a minute. It's
not stored in a cold-down state - it's suspended.

Assuming the computer is not in it's bag... If it's not I have to
remove it, remove the power pack, plug it in, open the lid and in a few
seconds it prompts me for a password, a few more seconds (well a large
few) it gives me the UI screen and starts connecting to the Wifi, then a
few more seconds and the email program figures out it is connected...
all in all it is well over a minute before it is ready for me to use.
You just have to pick up the tablet then push a button and swipe a
finger across the screen... you're in. HUGE difference.

Wow, mine does none of that. You open the lid, it brings up
the login and you're done in less than a minute.

We'll see. FWIW, the people that made this machine I am typing on now
no longer make desktops, so I see something coming. Not sure what,
though.

That is the point. No one knows for sure or they would already be
there. As they push on the technology they make changes like DNA
evolving. Some survive some pass on. But with each generation we get
adaptation. When there is more severe pressure, there is greater
change. The change in technology provides fertile ground for mutations
and the change in computing happens faster giving use things we didn't
know we wanted. But we do want and we will change what we buy.


I know what I want to do with one. It's not there today. And the
audience for mobile devices doesn't appear to me to want to do any
heavy
lifting with them.

You can, for example, do recording with an iPad, but the "dock" for it
is $3000. I don't think I can write 'C' programs to do signals
processing with one. I've yet to see a Tcl interpreter for one.

There is Python at least.

That is your personal preference, not the real market.



A market is nothing more than an aggregation of individual
preferences. I would say that a preference for tablets
indicates that the ... preferr-er does very little with the thing.

You don't get it. That is the point. The tablets do what most people
want. Therefore they will become the dominant form of computing...

My point is that they don't do anything - beyond post captioned
cat videos. They're Barbie fashion accessories.

This being said, a tablet makes a fine touchscreen remote
for real computers, but that's got problems as well.

Lol!


I just want a big screen and a keyboard... or so I think. I've been
thinking for the last few years a big flat TV would do nicely as my
screen

We do that now with the netbook.

Yeah, a netbook is just a tablet with a built in keyboard and screen,
both nearly unusable. I'd be willing to bet that netbooks were a flash
in the pan, popular at first but sales either flatlining or falling off.



I expect that then we'll go without.

You'll go without eating???

We still use brick and mortar for buying food.

and I can have a keyboard with me even more easily than my 17"
laptop. So why wouldn't a tablet with say a 128 GB flash drive make my
day? Right now the only limitation is the lack of support for Android
by the FPGA software vendors. I can't imagine that isn't going to
change soon.



We'll see. I am not sure how much of Linux is missing
from Android; other than that it shouldn't be too bad. You will
need a big ole screen, though.

Any flat screen TV will be much better than my laptop or desktop.



This has its challenges as well.

What are you talking about?

you have to put a large screen TV on something. if it's more than six
feet away, you lose any advantage from it being a large screen.

<snIP>

You can't use Netflix without Silverlight? wow.


Right. It's kind of disgusting.

I don't know how I have managed to live without Netflix. Oh, that's
right, I'm a Luddite!


PCs are reaching the wall while hand held devices aren't.

There is more than one wall.

Uh, what?



I/O.

I can't see that as important. How does I/O impact PCs significantly?
Where is the bottleneck?



What is your printer connected to? what on a tablet does data collection
- whether SCADA, audio, video? Can you do graphics on a tablet? Basic
signals processing? FPGA development?

I don't have any trouble with any of these... what are you talking about?

On a *tablet* you do those? No, you have to
at least have a laptop.

Wifi isn't all that good for this - it's fine for lowerish bandwidth
file dragging but you can't do real work with it.

Yes, I am totally unable to work...


Ok, what software do you need? It will be available on tablets running
either Android or who knows, MS may be able to throw their 600 pound
gorilla Windows into the tablet market.

Maybe.

What do you think Windows 8 is about? Getting the OS to look like
tablets and users used to the look and feel they will get on tablets
when MS starts pushing Windows into that market.




They don't think of it that way. They think in terms of
"what do we have to do to unhorse Apple."

Uh, that is a bit silly. Of course they consider competition, but they
need a plan based on what they expect will woo the user.

I think you give them much more credit
than is deserved...

I mean, if the hardware keeps
pumping up and the market pressures squeeze Windows down to something
more like 2000 or XP in a couple more years it won't be the worst
match
ever.


that is true. I don't believe we'll see that though.

How can MS *not* follow this route? They put out paired down versions
of Windows for netbooks. They will continue to improve and streamline
the product until they can provide a decent version of Windows for
tablets and then it will be a footrace with Android.


But they've shown again and again that they cannot
get out of their own way. Anything that runs Windows has to
support third party peripherals, so they can't nail
down things in the same way Apple has.

That is not obvious. Why does a tablet have to support an external SCSI
drive? You will never be able to connect it.

Right.

Windows can run on a tablet just fine once the trim it down to the
slower processors and (slightly) smaller memory.

One can hope. For now, I run VMs of XP and other M$ OS
offerings, hosted by Win7.

The problems with Apple "nailing" down the units are just that,
problems. A friend has an iPhone and he borrowed my netbook so he could
do backups. His laptop had problems with iTunes and Apple wouldn't
support it.

Yep.

With a tablet he would be able to get third party products
to make it work. I try not to make proclamations, but I'm pretty sure I
will never buy an Apple computing device. I don't like their closed
approach.

I quite agree. So that leaves us with the forces opposing
the death of the desktop...

--
Les Cargill

 

[rickman]

On 7/14/2013 12:37 PM, Les Cargill wrote:

rickman wrote:
On 7/14/2013 10:33 AM, Les Cargill wrote:
rickman wrote:
On 7/1/2013 9:26 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
snip

We'll see. The problem I see now is connectivity. FireWire is ebbing
out. Perhaps USB3.0 will be the bus of choice, or Thunderbolt.

That's a very different system level problem. It has nothing to do with
the actual computing.



But it remains as the most significant issue with things like
handhelds and tablets.

I can't say I understand. How does a desktop or notebook have any
better connectivity? Firewire is easy to add to any tablet or even a
phone.

Is it? I've only see the Ainol Novo 9 with Firewire built in. I
suppose that depends on what you mean by "added to".

I'm saying the makers could include it easily if there was a demand.
Firewire is a specialty interface for high end cameras. I don't think
there is much need for it now that USB 3.0 is standard on new machines.

They don't include it because it is not of interest to tablet or
phone users. Ethernet is done over Wifi. So what is missing?



Data collection I/O. Maybe that will evolve to over Wifi, but
I have yet to see that. Maybe I should do that; I have
though t about it. But every time I look at it, it costs too much
unless you get into large retail establishments. And you can
stand up a desktop to do it, and pull files over Wifi.

You mean USB? What data are you collecting? Do you have to keep
limiting your replies to bits and pieces rather than explaining
yourself? Exactly what needed connectivity is missing from tablets and
phones?

Phones and tablets are and will always be cheezy little
non-computers.
They don't have enough peripheral options to do anything
besides post cat pictures to social media sites.

Ok, another quote to go up there with "No one will need more than
640
kBytes" and "I see little commercial potential for the internet for
the
next 10 years."


Both of those are also true, given other constraints. I would say
the commercial potential of the internet has been more limited
than people would perhaps prefer.

What?? We left 640 kB behind before we left MS-DOS behind!!!

To an extent. I found it unusual to need more than
realmode levels of memory prior to Windows.

Ok, if you don't want to use Windows, then don't. But the market is for
GUI OS and apps. That is what drives processor design.



No, I went in for Windows just like everybody else... I mean
that the real justification for all that power and memory was
the GUI.

I was using DOS machines for Real Work(tM) first, then as a
home computing appliance.

I think you are making a rather arbitrary distinction with no value.
First, I have any number of apps that require memory far beyond 640 kB.
Anything manipulating images which goes in spades for video. Most of
my technical programs can't run in 640 kB. Even my editor is using 9 MB
of memory at the moment. I often open files in it that are MBs large.

Sure, needing 4 GB of memory is because of the OS, but your implied
usability of DOS is simply absurd. DOS could be used in the early days
because no one dreamed of what we would be able to do.



We've gained video, audio and things like Photoshop. If you include the
Commodore computers from that time frame, we really haven't gained that,
either.

Compared to what was gained by pre-Windows PCs, that's a rather
short list. And those were not unique; just cheaper.

Pre-Windows PCs made a measurable impact on the
economy. Post and peri-Windows, not so much. 'Course
we use Linux for what we used DOS for before.

The
Internet is the biggest commercial opportunity since the baby boom!


I must respectfully disagree. 90% of of it is noncommercial for one.
Compared to the PC Revolution, it's just not one.

You can disagree all you want. But the Internet is big business, has
created huge *new* markets and has changed the way nearly *all*
businesses operate.


I just don't see that. outside of the models more or less spread
by Amazon, nothing's changed. And that is a dynamic Sears Roebuck
Catalog enabled by credit card payment and shipped by a FedEx style
shipper rather than by rail.

I can only think you are blind. My purchasing is totally different now.

Yeah - it's back to the Sears Roebuck catalog model. C'mon - this is
not a difficult concept.

Ok, you seem to think that dynamic web pages findable by search engines
are no improvement over waiting literally weeks for catalogs to be
mailed out *if* you know about the company to request them from. One of
the very first impacts of the Internet was the elimination of printed
data sheets by PDF files. I remember when web sites started making them
available, semiconductor companies wanted you to register so they could
retain the info they got when you called to ask for a data book. Now
they use incentives to get you to register.

I price shop easily and mostly buy online. Before the Internet it
required trips to the local stores just to see what they had and what it
cost. I used to get a 10 lb. (4.5 kg) Computer Shopper to try to find
bargains.

So make that a disc instead of a printed catalog. Same
thing. And make it to where you could download a .iso of
the disk...

You refuse to accept that the time factor makes a *huge* difference. I
can't tell you how many times I heard "you will have it in 10 to 14
days" or "two to three weeks" or even longer. That's mail order.
Internet is a very different world with rapid info, online help chat and
interactive information.

Shopping online has opened up many modes of purchasing that
just didn't exist before. That is only the retail side. You seem to
think the Sears catalog is the same as online purchasing. The states
were never worried about the loss of revenue from Sears, lol!


That's because Sears charged all the applicable taxes. If you'll recall,
it was considered *better* when you did not have to wait
the six weeks for a simple retail purchase, and retail began
to consume much more real estate.

The sales tax was charged only if they operated in your state. Many
mail order businesses were not in state. Now the Internet is *huge* and
the states are feeling the pinch in their wallet. Mail order could
never do that.

As to "multiple trips", call ahead. That's what I did and still
do. This only fails because the minions of retail establishment
have lousy communications skills.

Businesses conduct business over the Internet that would have been
*much* more expensive and impractical with dedicated services.

No, they would not have. I don't think you've thought this through.
For example, WalMart has an online system that offers "in store
pickup." You basically get back some of the cost of inventory risk.

The advantages of stuff over the Internet is much more
subtle. The vast majority of say, Amazon is the giant
flea market of a million booths.

You aren't even listening to what I am saying. Actually the In Store
Pickup is strictly an Internet thing. I don't remember anyone doing
that before you could order on the Internet.. actually that's not
correct. Many years ago Sears had "catalog" stores in towns where they
didn't have a regular store. You ordered from the catalog and they
delivered to the store, two to three weeks later! The Internet turned
this into two to three days if not in stock!

My
girlfriend works for one of the medical labs. All of their computers
connect by VPN to order and report lab results over the Internet.
Otherwise they would need direct phone lines and it would not be nearly
as functional or practical.


No doubt. But one for the first things I did for my
employer in 1994 was to help us use a T1 line for
the same purpose.

Which would be impractical for many applications which would require
such high speed lines for every office in the system at a cost of many
thousands if not millions per year. I know, I've priced a T1 line.
That line would then be special purpose not allowing them to access any
other resource.

I can't believe you don't see how the Internet is transforming the
entire world! This will be bigger than the phone or TV in my opinion.



Emphasis "will be". It's been five years out for fifteen years now

Lol, it is here now if you just open your eyes. How long did it take
for the phone or the auto to be universal and pervasive? Some 50 years
or more I think. The Internet is not even 20 yet and has already
transformed us all.

Enterprise apps are still trench warfare, when they work at all.

It is irrelevant if it is used for other purposes
and the PC revolution BI (before Internet) was nothing compared to what
it is with the Internet. I think it will prove to be bigger than the
telephone or the TV in terms of impacting our lives. In fact, it is
well on the way to replacing both.

It *has* replaced the telephone, but with an almost identical thing.
Those who say it can replace TV are rather missing the point.

Content development has converged around cable. There are still two
planes of content - DOCSIS and IP. There's still over the air TV,
but is rather limited.

Yes, and cable TV will end up the loser with cable companies being
Internet providers. But that is a ways off. TV is just so popular that
cable TV will be with us for some time yet.



I expect so; yes. The hot thing now is long-form stuff like Mad Men or
Justified. that's not something that can exist in an an Internet-only
model. The capitalization doesn't work.

Can't say, I haven't worried about most TV for some time now. But there
is no reason why cable TV needs to be the distribution method of TV.
Higher speed Internet suffices just fine. The only question is what
economic model to use and that can be the same as used for cable.

There's a little cross pollination - the show "Children's Hospital"
transitioned from purely online to cable on Cartoon Network, but
Rob Cordry was on a cable show before.

As evidence, I submit that the
states are all clamoring for a new Federal law allowing them to tax
Internet sales and making vendors collect the state tax even if they
are
only in other states. Clearly they feel the Internet has become a major
commercial presence and this is only the retail impact. When was the
last time you got a data sheet delivered to you by a salesman?



Earlier this year.

Ok, I see I'm talking to a bigger luddite. What were they selling,
buggy whips?



Sensors and actuators. The people I work with build real machines
that do real work.

So why couldn't you get a data sheet off their web site? I am sure the
sales person wanted to meet you, but that is still no reason to require
you to get a piece of paper rather than a PDF. The last time I asked
for a data sheet on paper they sales person has to use his printer. I
stopped asking after that.

Dunno about that - the lappie we use is up in less than a minute. It's
not stored in a cold-down state - it's suspended.

Assuming the computer is not in it's bag... If it's not I have to
remove it, remove the power pack, plug it in, open the lid and in a few
seconds it prompts me for a password, a few more seconds (well a large
few) it gives me the UI screen and starts connecting to the Wifi, then a
few more seconds and the email program figures out it is connected...
all in all it is well over a minute before it is ready for me to use.
You just have to pick up the tablet then push a button and swipe a
finger across the screen... you're in. HUGE difference.



Wow, mine does none of that. You open the lid, it brings up
the login and you're done in less than a minute.

You never have to plug it in? That's pretty good. Atomic power? Even
so that is still more than an order of magnitude longer than a tablet.
The tablet is also there when the laptop is not. Do you drag the laptop
with you when you leave the office or house? Do you take it upstairs
when you go to bed in order to read your novel in bed? Do you take it
on the deck when you want to relax with a glass of iced tea and browse
the web on a break?

The difference in size and convenience is very significant. The phones
are still phones first and Internet devices second. But they top the
list in terms of availability. I *always* have my phone with me as do
many. By comparison, the laptop is an albatross in a bag with a
shoulder strap.

We'll see. FWIW, the people that made this machine I am typing on
now
no longer make desktops, so I see something coming. Not sure what,
though.

That is the point. No one knows for sure or they would already be
there. As they push on the technology they make changes like DNA
evolving. Some survive some pass on. But with each generation we get
adaptation. When there is more severe pressure, there is greater
change. The change in technology provides fertile ground for
mutations
and the change in computing happens faster giving use things we
didn't
know we wanted. But we do want and we will change what we buy.


I know what I want to do with one. It's not there today. And the
audience for mobile devices doesn't appear to me to want to do any
heavy
lifting with them.

You can, for example, do recording with an iPad, but the "dock" for it
is $3000. I don't think I can write 'C' programs to do signals
processing with one. I've yet to see a Tcl interpreter for one.

There is Python at least.

That is your personal preference, not the real market.



A market is nothing more than an aggregation of individual
preferences. I would say that a preference for tablets
indicates that the ... preferr-er does very little with the thing.

You don't get it. That is the point. The tablets do what most people
want. Therefore they will become the dominant form of computing...



My point is that they don't do anything - beyond post captioned
cat videos. They're Barbie fashion accessories.

That is silly and totally inaccurate. You clearly have not seen anyone
actually using them. You won't be able to remain ignorant of them long.
They are popping up everywhere. I am seeing about half as many
tablets as laptops at Panera Bread these days and the numbers are
growing fast.

This being said, a tablet makes a fine touchscreen remote
for real computers, but that's got problems as well.

Lol!


I just want a big screen and a keyboard... or so I think. I've been
thinking for the last few years a big flat TV would do nicely as my
screen

We do that now with the netbook.

Yeah, a netbook is just a tablet with a built in keyboard and screen,
both nearly unusable. I'd be willing to bet that netbooks were a flash
in the pan, popular at first but sales either flatlining or falling
off.



I expect that then we'll go without.

You'll go without eating???


We still use brick and mortar for buying food.

Ah, so you won't go without.

and I can have a keyboard with me even more easily than my 17"
laptop. So why wouldn't a tablet with say a 128 GB flash drive
make my
day? Right now the only limitation is the lack of support for Android
by the FPGA software vendors. I can't imagine that isn't going to
change soon.



We'll see. I am not sure how much of Linux is missing
from Android; other than that it shouldn't be too bad. You will
need a big ole screen, though.

Any flat screen TV will be much better than my laptop or desktop.



This has its challenges as well.

What are you talking about?



you have to put a large screen TV on something. if it's more than six
feet away, you lose any advantage from it being a large screen.

What? My laptop in my lap is the smaller than the TV (I am planning to
buy) on the wall. The TV has higher resolution.

You can't use Netflix without Silverlight? wow.


Right. It's kind of disgusting.

I don't know how I have managed to live without Netflix. Oh, that's
right, I'm a Luddite!


PCs are reaching the wall while hand held devices aren't.

There is more than one wall.

Uh, what?



I/O.

I can't see that as important. How does I/O impact PCs significantly?
Where is the bottleneck?



What is your printer connected to? what on a tablet does data collection
- whether SCADA, audio, video? Can you do graphics on a tablet? Basic
signals processing? FPGA development?

I don't have any trouble with any of these... what are you talking about?



On a *tablet* you do those? No, you have to
at least have a laptop.

Which of these can't you do on a tablet? What is your point? How does
a tablet limit what you can do?

--

Rick

 

[Les Cargill]

rickman wrote:

On 7/14/2013 12:37 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
snpi
Is it? I've only see the Ainol Novo 9 with Firewire built in. I
suppose that depends on what you mean by "added to".

I'm saying the makers could include it easily if there was a demand.
Firewire is a specialty interface for high end cameras. I don't think
there is much need for it now that USB 3.0 is standard on new machines.

Could be. It's not there yet.

They don't include it because it is not of interest to tablet or
phone users. Ethernet is done over Wifi. So what is missing?



Data collection I/O. Maybe that will evolve to over Wifi, but
I have yet to see that. Maybe I should do that; I have
though t about it. But every time I look at it, it costs too much
unless you get into large retail establishments. And you can
stand up a desktop to do it, and pull files over Wifi.

You mean USB? What data are you collecting? Do you have to keep
limiting your replies to bits and pieces rather than explaining
yourself? Exactly what needed connectivity is missing from tablets and
phones?

Audio, video, the like. I've said that multiple times... other stuff
you'd need a PCI card for.

I have a small harddisk recorder that has ADAT Lightpipe
spigots on it - you can record 16 tracks with it. I've produced
and recorded several people's albums with it.

Then there's video - although that's less problematic because
the main ones of those I've seen have SD cards, although I don't
know how I'd do a combined live audio/video thing to where the video
could fit on an SD card. But last time I tried that, it was
with Hi-8. Striped SMPTE to the audio track on the cameras and
synced it all back up in post.

Never mind all the industrial stuff you used to be able
to do with PCs and is now much harder to do with COTS gear.


<snip>

I can only think you are blind. My purchasing is totally different now.

Yeah - it's back to the Sears Roebuck catalog model. C'mon - this is
not a difficult concept.

Ok, you seem to think that dynamic web pages findable by search engines
are no improvement over waiting literally weeks for catalogs to be
mailed out *if* you know about the company to request them from. One of
the very first impacts of the Internet was the elimination of printed
data sheets by PDF files. I remember when web sites started making them
available, semiconductor companies wanted you to register so they could
retain the info they got when you called to ask for a data book. Now
they use incentives to get you to register.

But you kept current catalogs in a bookshelf. That's the only real
difference now - you don't have two tons of paper to pore
over.

I price shop easily and mostly buy online. Before the Internet it
required trips to the local stores just to see what they had and what it
cost. I used to get a 10 lb. (4.5 kg) Computer Shopper to try to find
bargains.

So make that a disc instead of a printed catalog. Same
thing. And make it to where you could download a .iso of
the disk...

You refuse to accept that the time factor makes a *huge* difference. I
can't tell you how many times I heard "you will have it in 10 to 14
days" or "two to three weeks" or even longer. That's mail order.
Internet is a very different world with rapid info, online help chat and
interactive information.

But that's why you had the local rep; you could order parts
from them directly. They'd sometimes drive them over...


<snip>

The advantages of stuff over the Internet is much more
subtle. The vast majority of say, Amazon is the giant
flea market of a million booths.

You aren't even listening to what I am saying. Actually the In Store
Pickup is strictly an Internet thing. I don't remember anyone doing
that before you could order on the Internet.. actually that's not
correct. Many years ago Sears had "catalog" stores in towns where they
didn't have a regular store.

Right.

You ordered from the catalog and they
delivered to the store, two to three weeks later! The Internet turned
this into two to three days if not in stock!

Agreed. That's what I was driving at.

My
girlfriend works for one of the medical labs. All of their computers
connect by VPN to order and report lab results over the Internet.
Otherwise they would need direct phone lines and it would not be nearly
as functional or practical.


No doubt. But one for the first things I did for my
employer in 1994 was to help us use a T1 line for
the same purpose.

Which would be impractical for many applications which would require
such high speed lines for every office in the system at a cost of many
thousands if not millions per year. I know, I've priced a T1 line. That
line would then be special purpose not allowing them to access any other
resource.

No, the T1 went to a PBX and a Cisco router. Worked great. The far end
of the PBX path was another big PBX across the continent. I'm sure it
cost a couple thousand a month, but before that we were eating up a lot
of long distance.

I can't believe you don't see how the Internet is transforming the
entire world! This will be bigger than the phone or TV in my opinion.



Emphasis "will be". It's been five years out for fifteen years now

Lol, it is here now if you just open your eyes. How long did it take
for the phone or the auto to be universal and pervasive? Some 50 years
or more I think.

Probably something like that.

The Internet is not even 20 yet and has already
transformed us all.


Enterprise apps are still trench warfare, when they work at all.

It is irrelevant if it is used for other purposes
and the PC revolution BI (before Internet) was nothing compared to
what
it is with the Internet. I think it will prove to be bigger than the
telephone or the TV in terms of impacting our lives. In fact, it is
well on the way to replacing both.

It *has* replaced the telephone, but with an almost identical thing.
Those who say it can replace TV are rather missing the point.

Content development has converged around cable. There are still two
planes of content - DOCSIS and IP. There's still over the air TV,
but is rather limited.

Yes, and cable TV will end up the loser with cable companies being
Internet providers. But that is a ways off. TV is just so popular that
cable TV will be with us for some time yet.



I expect so; yes. The hot thing now is long-form stuff like Mad Men or
Justified. that's not something that can exist in an an Internet-only
model. The capitalization doesn't work.

Can't say, I haven't worried about most TV for some time now. But there
is no reason why cable TV needs to be the distribution method of TV.
Higher speed Internet suffices just fine. The only question is what
economic model to use and that can be the same as used for cable.

It might be; that remains to be seen. The people who own the
content aren't that interested in "over the Internet" though.

<snip>

Sensors and actuators. The people I work with build real machines
that do real work.

So why couldn't you get a data sheet off their web site? I am sure the
sales person wanted to meet you, but that is still no reason to require
you to get a piece of paper rather than a PDF. The last time I asked
for a data sheet on paper they sales person has to use his printer. I
stopped asking after that.

Lol! That's pretty good. No, these guys were not set up for that. I
was rather shocked myself. I dunno what the story really was; the
project engineer just told me to meet with the guy.

Dunno about that - the lappie we use is up in less than a minute. It's
not stored in a cold-down state - it's suspended.

Assuming the computer is not in it's bag... If it's not I have to
remove it, remove the power pack, plug it in, open the lid and in a few
seconds it prompts me for a password, a few more seconds (well a large
few) it gives me the UI screen and starts connecting to the Wifi, then a
few more seconds and the email program figures out it is connected...
all in all it is well over a minute before it is ready for me to use.
You just have to pick up the tablet then push a button and swipe a
finger across the screen... you're in. HUGE difference.



Wow, mine does none of that. You open the lid, it brings up
the login and you're done in less than a minute.

You never have to plug it in? That's pretty good. Atomic power?

Nukular. No, it plugs in, but that has nought to do with how long it
takes to wake up.

Even
so that is still more than an order of magnitude longer than a tablet.
The tablet is also there when the laptop is not. Do you drag the laptop
with you when you leave the office or house?

Only when we're traveling.

Do you take it upstairs
when you go to bed in order to read your novel in bed?

Absolutely not. I still use paper books.

Do you take it
on the deck when you want to relax with a glass of iced tea and browse
the web on a break?

Sure. it's easy to use in that way, and there's a keyboard/"mouse".

The difference in size and convenience is very significant. The phones
are still phones first and Internet devices second. But they top the
list in terms of availability. I *always* have my phone with me as do
many. By comparison, the laptop is an albatross in a bag with a
shoulder strap.

I barely even use my phone. And it's a flip, not a smart phone.

<snip>

My point is that they don't do anything - beyond post captioned
cat videos. They're Barbie fashion accessories.

That is silly and totally inaccurate. You clearly have not seen anyone
actually using them. You won't be able to remain ignorant of them long.
They are popping up everywhere. I am seeing about half as many
tablets as laptops at Panera Bread these days and the numbers are
growing fast.

Right. Most people don't do much, beyond shop and travel. Hey, if
it works for you, then awesome, but it won't cut it for me.

<snip>

We still use brick and mortar for buying food.

Ah, so you won't go without.


and I can have a keyboard with me even more easily than my 17"
laptop. So why wouldn't a tablet with say a 128 GB flash drive
make my
day? Right now the only limitation is the lack of support for
Android
by the FPGA software vendors. I can't imagine that isn't going to
change soon.



We'll see. I am not sure how much of Linux is missing
from Android; other than that it shouldn't be too bad. You will
need a big ole screen, though.

Any flat screen TV will be much better than my laptop or desktop.



This has its challenges as well.

What are you talking about?



you have to put a large screen TV on something. if it's more than six
feet away, you lose any advantage from it being a large screen.

What? My laptop in my lap is the smaller than the TV (I am planning to
buy) on the wall. The TV has higher resolution.

Oh - I thought you'd meant something else, like using the TV as a
monitor. I've thought about that but it doesn't work very well.

<snip>

On a *tablet* you do those? No, you have to
at least have a laptop.

Which of these can't you do on a tablet? What is your point? How does
a tablet limit what you can do?

Oh my.

--
Les Cargill

 

[rickman]

On 7/15/2013 6:57 PM, Les Cargill wrote:

rickman wrote:
On 7/14/2013 12:37 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
snpi
Is it? I've only see the Ainol Novo 9 with Firewire built in. I
suppose that depends on what you mean by "added to".

I'm saying the makers could include it easily if there was a demand.
Firewire is a specialty interface for high end cameras. I don't think
there is much need for it now that USB 3.0 is standard on new machines.



Could be. It's not there yet.


They don't include it because it is not of interest to tablet or
phone users. Ethernet is done over Wifi. So what is missing?



Data collection I/O. Maybe that will evolve to over Wifi, but
I have yet to see that. Maybe I should do that; I have
though t about it. But every time I look at it, it costs too much
unless you get into large retail establishments. And you can
stand up a desktop to do it, and pull files over Wifi.

You mean USB? What data are you collecting? Do you have to keep
limiting your replies to bits and pieces rather than explaining
yourself? Exactly what needed connectivity is missing from tablets and
phones?


Audio, video, the like. I've said that multiple times... other stuff
you'd need a PCI card for.

Yes, you've *said* it but still not explained it. Every tablet and
phone I've ever seen has an earphone jack and mic input. I have no idea
why you would need a PCI card for audio I/O.

What is lacking in the video outputs of tablets? If you need video
input I'm sure there are any number of USB interfaced cameras. I can't
imaging how PCI would provide any sort of interface for a camera that
you can't do with USB...

That's what I mean by you aren't explaining yourself.

I have a small harddisk recorder that has ADAT Lightpipe
spigots on it - you can record 16 tracks with it. I've produced
and recorded several people's albums with it.

So? There are any number of highly specialized pieces of equipment that
you can't connect to laptops, etc. They are a tiny market compared to
the rest of computing. You are talking about niche markets. I'm
talking about mainstream. I've already said that PCs won't go away,
even desktops will remain for those who want the highest performance at
any cost. The rest of us can get on without the cumbersomeness of full
sized computers and laptops.

Then there's video - although that's less problematic because
the main ones of those I've seen have SD cards, although I don't
know how I'd do a combined live audio/video thing to where the video
could fit on an SD card. But last time I tried that, it was
with Hi-8. Striped SMPTE to the audio track on the cameras and
synced it all back up in post.

Never mind all the industrial stuff you used to be able
to do with PCs and is now much harder to do with COTS gear.

"All" the industrial stuff? What about it? Again, that is a tiny
market compared to the consumer market. The server market is fairly big
and they are starting to change over to ARM CPUs to conserve power. I
don't know that what they are using is really much like a standard
desktop and hasn't been so for a long time.

I can only think you are blind. My purchasing is totally different now.

Yeah - it's back to the Sears Roebuck catalog model. C'mon - this is
not a difficult concept.

Ok, you seem to think that dynamic web pages findable by search engines
are no improvement over waiting literally weeks for catalogs to be
mailed out *if* you know about the company to request them from. One of
the very first impacts of the Internet was the elimination of printed
data sheets by PDF files. I remember when web sites started making them
available, semiconductor companies wanted you to register so they could
retain the info they got when you called to ask for a data book. Now
they use incentives to get you to register.



But you kept current catalogs in a bookshelf. That's the only real
difference now - you don't have two tons of paper to pore
over.

You dismiss the tremendous advantages of having data sheets on the
computer. The original data sheet costs so little to publish and
updates are nearly free. They are available immediately on the web and
you don't need a book, much less a book case to hold them, you just plop
them into your portable and they go where ever you go. I guess you are
still doing work like you did over 20 years ago. I work very
differently now and I design hardware. I am nearly portable with
everything I need in my computer bag. I still need to get one of those
USB logic analyzers/oscilloscopes and I won't be tied to anything bigger
than my laptop. In five years it will be anything bigger than my tablet.

I price shop easily and mostly buy online. Before the Internet it
required trips to the local stores just to see what they had and
what it
cost. I used to get a 10 lb. (4.5 kg) Computer Shopper to try to find
bargains.

So make that a disc instead of a printed catalog. Same
thing. And make it to where you could download a .iso of
the disk...

You refuse to accept that the time factor makes a *huge* difference. I
can't tell you how many times I heard "you will have it in 10 to 14
days" or "two to three weeks" or even longer. That's mail order.
Internet is a very different world with rapid info, online help chat and
interactive information.



But that's why you had the local rep; you could order parts
from them directly. They'd sometimes drive them over...

Yep, that was the day. Now they are happy to meet me and deliver stuff,
but what do they have to deliver? I'm meeting a vendor tomorrow morning
and it will be breakfast and talk... no data sheets, no paper of any
kind I expect.

The advantages of stuff over the Internet is much more
subtle. The vast majority of say, Amazon is the giant
flea market of a million booths.

You aren't even listening to what I am saying. Actually the In Store
Pickup is strictly an Internet thing. I don't remember anyone doing
that before you could order on the Internet.. actually that's not
correct. Many years ago Sears had "catalog" stores in towns where they
didn't have a regular store.

Right.

You ordered from the catalog and they
delivered to the store, two to three weeks later! The Internet turned
this into two to three days if not in stock!



Agreed. That's what I was driving at.

My
girlfriend works for one of the medical labs. All of their computers
connect by VPN to order and report lab results over the Internet.
Otherwise they would need direct phone lines and it would not be nearly
as functional or practical.


No doubt. But one for the first things I did for my
employer in 1994 was to help us use a T1 line for
the same purpose.

Which would be impractical for many applications which would require
such high speed lines for every office in the system at a cost of many
thousands if not millions per year. I know, I've priced a T1 line. That
line would then be special purpose not allowing them to access any other
resource.



No, the T1 went to a PBX and a Cisco router. Worked great. The far end
of the PBX path was another big PBX across the continent. I'm sure it
cost a couple thousand a month, but before that we were eating up a lot
of long distance.

I don't know where you are going with this. Are you suggesting that the
Internet doesn't make this horribly obsolete and absurd? With the
Internet you plug in and you can be connected to everything and
everybody in the world! Your T-1 couldn't do that!

I can't believe you don't see how the Internet is transforming the
entire world! This will be bigger than the phone or TV in my opinion.



Emphasis "will be". It's been five years out for fifteen years now

Lol, it is here now if you just open your eyes. How long did it take
for the phone or the auto to be universal and pervasive? Some 50 years
or more I think.

Probably something like that.

The Internet is not even 20 yet and has already
transformed us all.


Enterprise apps are still trench warfare, when they work at all.

It is irrelevant if it is used for other purposes
and the PC revolution BI (before Internet) was nothing compared to
what
it is with the Internet. I think it will prove to be bigger than the
telephone or the TV in terms of impacting our lives. In fact, it is
well on the way to replacing both.

It *has* replaced the telephone, but with an almost identical thing.
Those who say it can replace TV are rather missing the point.

Content development has converged around cable. There are still two
planes of content - DOCSIS and IP. There's still over the air TV,
but is rather limited.

Yes, and cable TV will end up the loser with cable companies being
Internet providers. But that is a ways off. TV is just so popular that
cable TV will be with us for some time yet.



I expect so; yes. The hot thing now is long-form stuff like Mad Men or
Justified. that's not something that can exist in an an Internet-only
model. The capitalization doesn't work.

Can't say, I haven't worried about most TV for some time now. But there
is no reason why cable TV needs to be the distribution method of TV.
Higher speed Internet suffices just fine. The only question is what
economic model to use and that can be the same as used for cable.


It might be; that remains to be seen. The people who own the
content aren't that interested in "over the Internet" though.

I don't know what you are talking about. They don't *understand* the
Internet, but they know they have to adapt to it or become the next
Blockbuster. I spent a couple of hours the last couple days watching TV
on the computer as this is the only way I can watch it. Turns out it
works pretty durn well. Same commercial model so the economics are very
similar.

Sensors and actuators. The people I work with build real machines
that do real work.

So why couldn't you get a data sheet off their web site? I am sure the
sales person wanted to meet you, but that is still no reason to require
you to get a piece of paper rather than a PDF. The last time I asked
for a data sheet on paper they sales person has to use his printer. I
stopped asking after that.



Lol! That's pretty good. No, these guys were not set up for that. I
was rather shocked myself. I dunno what the story really was; the
project engineer just told me to meet with the guy.

Dunno about that - the lappie we use is up in less than a minute. It's
not stored in a cold-down state - it's suspended.

Assuming the computer is not in it's bag... If it's not I have to
remove it, remove the power pack, plug it in, open the lid and in a few
seconds it prompts me for a password, a few more seconds (well a large
few) it gives me the UI screen and starts connecting to the Wifi,
then a
few more seconds and the email program figures out it is connected...
all in all it is well over a minute before it is ready for me to use.
You just have to pick up the tablet then push a button and swipe a
finger across the screen... you're in. HUGE difference.



Wow, mine does none of that. You open the lid, it brings up
the login and you're done in less than a minute.

You never have to plug it in? That's pretty good. Atomic power?

Nukular. No, it plugs in, but that has nought to do with how long it
takes to wake up.

Ok, then you either leave it plugged in at a fixed location or you have
to spend time plugging in it each time you fire it up. That is the
difference. Tablets and phones are designed to be portable rather than
transportable. Big difference. Today's notebooks are just one step
away from the Compaq "portable" of the late 80's.

Even
so that is still more than an order of magnitude longer than a tablet.
The tablet is also there when the laptop is not. Do you drag the laptop
with you when you leave the office or house?


Only when we're traveling.

That again is my point. The tablet and phone are there with you where
ever you go. That makes a HUGE difference to most people.

Do you take it upstairs
when you go to bed in order to read your novel in bed?

Absolutely not. I still use paper books.

The e-paper books are actually easier to read than books in my opinion.
You don't have to hold them open to a page and I think they have
better contrast. Plus, every book is a "large print" edition if I want
it to be.

Do you take it
on the deck when you want to relax with a glass of iced tea and browse
the web on a break?


Sure. it's easy to use in that way, and there's a keyboard/"mouse".

I find the laptop a bit awkward anywhere I haven't set up for it. It
needs a sizable place to sit and I have to move to *it* rather than
holding it where I want to be. My girlfriend lounges in a
beanbag/wicker chair with her tablet which she could never do with her
laptop.

The difference in size and convenience is very significant. The phones
are still phones first and Internet devices second. But they top the
list in terms of availability. I *always* have my phone with me as do
many. By comparison, the laptop is an albatross in a bag with a
shoulder strap.


I barely even use my phone. And it's a flip, not a smart phone.

Ok, you haven't found the need, but that doesn't mean the market isn't
there, you are just an outlier.

My point is that they don't do anything - beyond post captioned
cat videos. They're Barbie fashion accessories.

That is silly and totally inaccurate. You clearly have not seen anyone
actually using them. You won't be able to remain ignorant of them long.
They are popping up everywhere. I am seeing about half as many
tablets as laptops at Panera Bread these days and the numbers are
growing fast.



Right. Most people don't do much, beyond shop and travel. Hey, if
it works for you, then awesome, but it won't cut it for me.

Yes, I can see that. You don't do the things that most people do.

We still use brick and mortar for buying food.

Ah, so you won't go without.


and I can have a keyboard with me even more easily than my 17"
laptop. So why wouldn't a tablet with say a 128 GB flash drive
make my
day? Right now the only limitation is the lack of support for
Android
by the FPGA software vendors. I can't imagine that isn't going to
change soon.



We'll see. I am not sure how much of Linux is missing
from Android; other than that it shouldn't be too bad. You will
need a big ole screen, though.

Any flat screen TV will be much better than my laptop or desktop.



This has its challenges as well.

What are you talking about?



you have to put a large screen TV on something. if it's more than six
feet away, you lose any advantage from it being a large screen.

What? My laptop in my lap is the smaller than the TV (I am planning to
buy) on the wall. The TV has higher resolution.


Oh - I thought you'd meant something else, like using the TV as a
monitor. I've thought about that but it doesn't work very well.

I *am* talking about using the TV as a monitor. It will be over my desk
as a huge monitor and will swing out a bit so it can be seen from the
living room furniture to watch TV.

On a *tablet* you do those? No, you have to
at least have a laptop.

Which of these can't you do on a tablet? What is your point? How does
a tablet limit what you can do?


Oh my.

I guess this conversation is about over. It is clear that you think the
market is based on what you want from computers. It is very much *not*
like what you want. Most people prefer to never touch a keyboard.
They much prefer to use a touch screen because it is *there* when they
need it where ever they are. If you think the market is going to
continue to demand more and more desktop and laptop computers you will
be surprised over the next few years and PCs are shoved aside by tablets
and phones. Even Dell is pushing their tablets now.

--

Rick

 

[Les Cargill]

rickman wrote:

On 7/15/2013 6:57 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
snip

I guess this conversation is about over. It is clear that you think the
market is based on what you want from computers. It is very much *not*
like what you want. Most people prefer to never touch a keyboard. They
much prefer to use a touch screen because it is *there* when they need
it where ever they are. If you think the market is going to continue to
demand more and more desktop and laptop computers you will be surprised
over the next few years and PCs are shoved aside by tablets and phones.
Even Dell is pushing their tablets now.

I certainly appreciate your enthusiasm. No offense; I did not intend
to inspire exasperation.

--
Les Cargill

 

[Eric Wallin]

Just wanted people to know that my Hive processor now has 8 stacks, somewhat different opcodes, a UART, and I implemented a single thread simulator for it in Excel.