Sun's Analysis of .NET

There is no doubt that Microsoft has come to the same conclusion as everyone else in the industry: The Java platform is an excellent technology that enjoys tremendous success. Rather than embracing the cross-platform, vendor neutral solution which is the Java platform, like most of the industry, Microsoft is still pushing a single platform, vendor specific solution. The .NET platform is an improvement for Visual C++ and Visual Basic programmers, but it is yet another proprietary Microsoft platform which will tie the developer to Windows, albeit possibly a .NET-ized notion of Windows.

Sun's analysis of Microsoft .NET vs. J2EE: How Do They Stack Up?

Current ruminations about .NET in various forums are reminiscent of the fable of the three blind men attempting to identify an elephant: It's perceived as very different things, depending on your perspective. Some see .NET as Microsoft's next-generation Visual Studio development environment. Some see it as yet another new programming language (C#). Some see it as a new data-exchange and messaging framework, based on XML and SOAP. In reality, .NET wants to be all of these things, and a bit more.

Sharky Extreme - PC - Articles - Intel Pentium 4 Unveiled

The Pentium 4 processor has several new features from its Intel NetBurst Micro-Architecture that boost performance over the older P6 micro-architecture: a 20 stage pipeline, improved dynamic execution, double clocked ALUs, level 1 trace cache, a quad-pumped 100MHz system bus, and SSE2.

I'm watching the BBC coverage of the US Presidential elections right now. It's a close call but as a foreigner I have to say that Gore seems to me to be the better bet. Thanks to Jim [hbwt] for the The Complete Bushisms link:

"It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet." -- Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000

"I will have a foreign-handed foreign policy." -- Redwood, Calif., Sept. 27, 2000

"This case has had full analyzation and has been looked at a lot. I understand the emotionality of death penalty cases." -- Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 23, 2000

"States should have the right to enact reasonable laws and restrictions particularly to end the inhumane practice of ending a life that otherwise could live." -- Cleveland, June 29, 2000

VLIW at IBM Research

Very-Long Instruction Word (VLIW) architectures form the basis for an alternative way to organize processors. In contrast to the trend towards having hardware to perform complex decisions regarding scheduling the machine-level instructions in a program, VLIW architectures perform such scheduling at compilation time. This transfer of complexity from hardware to software (processor to compiler) leads to simpler, more efficient, and easier-to-design processors, while at the same time exploiting the versatility of software to handle the more difficult tasks.

There's a nice interactive DAISY Tutorial demo too that helps explain the technique.

From the Frequently Asked Questions About DAISY (October 12, 2000):

How similar is DAISY to Transmeta?

According to their white paper, Transmeta uses dynamic binary translation to convert x86 code into code for Transmeta's internal architecture. This is similar in concept to the current version of DAISY which converts PowerPC code into code for an underlying DAISY VLIW machine. DAISY was developed at IBM independently of Transmeta. The DAISY research project focuses less on low power and more on achieving instruction level parallelism in a server environment and on convergence of different architectures on a common microprocessor core. A more detailed comparison of the DAISY and Transmeta approaches will be possible after Transmeta publishes their techniques in more detail.

V.C. Forsaking the Internet

In an increasingly inhospitable environment, many dot-com companies that seemed destined to rule the world only a few months ago are abruptly dying off.

ArsDigita Systems Journal: Managing Software Engineers

Why an article on managing people? And one written by someone with training in computer science rather than business administration? There are thousands of books on the best ways to manage people. Many of these books are excellent, having been written by people who've devoted their lives to the discipline.

Software engineering is different.

A thought provoking article. I don't necessarily agree with the Greenspun's 70+ hours of work per week as the way to produce great software but well worth read. Readers' comments are tacked on to the end of the article and there's a slashdot discussion in full tilt too.

The Register: Transmeta helping out AMD, MS with Sledgehammer coding?

An extremely low-key triple alliance of Microsoft, Transmeta and AMD has been working quietly to ensure Microsoft software will support AMD's 64-bit Sledgehammer chip from the word go. This despite public claims by Microsoft execs that Sledgehammer will be playing decidedly second fiddle to Intel's Itanium.

Also The Register: Transmeta IPO raises $273 Million

The Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor webpage has links to some PDF documents that overview the architecture of the P4. Clocking at >= 1.4GHz why does it apparently perform less well than a P3 or an Athlon? http://www.smeed.org/580 has details of that story.

Zope Newbie News - 2000 11 08

In what way is an open-source developer more of a professional than a closed-source developer? Software engineering is one where experience is more important than raw IQ power. By contributing to open-source you help to teach newcomers. You contribute more because you are helping to spread knowledge. It's one thing to make a fire and cook a meal for a hungry person. It's another thing altogether to teach that person how to make a fire, how to cook, and encourage that person to teach others. Code, document, and teach.

There's a discussion thread in full tilt on one of my local teaching newsgroups at Strathclyde. One of the contentious issues is the fact that few staff seem to interact with their students. The answer is quite simple, most universities operate A PERVERTED ACADEMIC REWARD SYSTEM found on the Tomorrow's Professor Postings website:

"The more time faculty spend on teaching, including hours in the classroom, the lower the pay. This relationship holds true for all types of institutions except for the percentage of time spent on teaching for faculty in liberal arts colleges. Conversely, the more time spent on research and the greater scholarly productivity, the greater the pay ... These results support the view that teaching activity and productivity are at best neutral factors in pay, at worst negative predictors of pay... If research and scholarship are valued more highly in promotion and tenure, taking time away from research to devote to teaching may adversely affect faculty careers."

BTW, the Tomorrow's Professor Postings website is a valuable source of opinions and facts.

"SUPERTRAITS" OF EXCELLENT TEACHERS

"Supertraits" of Excellent Teachers: A Taxonomy

• Intrapersonal Intelligences
• Optimism
• Expressiveness
• Enthusiasm
• Sociability/ friendliness
• Empathy
• Availability / generosity with time with students
• Being a good listener and valuing student ideas
• Interpersonal Intelligences
• Organization
• Leadership
• Ability to inspire
• Rigor
• Conscientiousness

Extropia.com | A Case Study in Open Source Software

The Register: Compaq cools on Transmeta Crusoe

Transmeta ... strategy is really based on sales of its lower-performance 3x00 family of chips, the ones aimed at Web pads and Net appliances rather than notebooks. Getting the Crusoe 5x00 family in big brand laptops grabs Transmeta headlines, but it's clearly a tough sell. Much better to get chips into boxes where x86 compatibility and state-of-the-art clock speeds aren't issues, but long battery life is.

ArsDigita Systems Journal: What can we learn from Jakob Nielsen?

The goal of this article is to pick out the most interesting stuff from Nielsen's book, leave out stuff that would be obvious to our readers (e.g., "frames suck"), and tie Nielsen's material to related ideas.

A link to Open Source DAISY via Hack the Planet

IBM's DAISY binary translator is now Open Source. Basically it's a fast PowerPC emulator for a hypothetical VLIW architecture. Anybody want to run Mac OS X on IA-64?

Very interesting!

Dallas Semiconductor Corp: Wearable Java Computer News Release

DALLAS - - Dallas Semiconductor (NYSE: DS) today announced a new wearable, Javaª computer with ample storage for safekeeping all the technology-based credentials of an individual. The DS1957B Java-powered iButton on a 2-in-1 Fob serves as both a physical key for touch and go access to buildings and a computer key for secure network log-on as well as trusted e-signatures for the Internet. Inside the 16mm steel-encased iButton is a Java computer with a 64 kbyte ROM and 134 kbyte RAM that can store over 30 certificates with 1024-bit keys using ISO X.509v3, the most widely recognized public-key certificate format. In addition, the DS1957B can store hundreds of user names and passwords, a color ID picture and the application programs of many different service providers.

I was invited to give a talk at The Computer Club of the Senior Studies Institute at Strathclyde. They thought that The Ubiquitous Chip I gave in December last year would be an appropriate topic so I repurposed that content! It seemed to go well. It was nice for a change to be talking to a room full of people who thought I was young ;-)

My favourite bits from the talk were the predictions I had dug out. For example:

Patterson's Predictions

...It is plausible that we will see improvements in the next 25 years at least as large as those seen in the past 50. This estimate means that one desktop computer in 2020 will be as powerful as all the computers in Silicon Valley today...

and Ritchie's Predictions

...Specialised [low cost] information devices... will be scattered around the home and office and connected via a mobile phone network while travelling... The PC will have to be replaced by devices that are considerably simpler to use... Perhaps one of the striking aspects of the next decade will be that the growth of the personal computer will be checked, and a whole range of other devices will be adopted.

This was the first talk for the Computer Club and we joked at the start that I was setting the standard by which the others would be judged. So they should be in for some really excellent talks ;-). Several digital photos were taken so I'll link to these once they're up on the SSI web-site.