Circuit Rider Version 5.4

by Jim Scheef

One Laptop Per Child – Get yours now!

You have a unique opportunity right now to make a difference and at the same time acquire a groundbreaking piece of technology. What began as the “$100 Laptop” is now called the XO Laptop and costs $200. Manufacturing economies of scale are expected to bring the cost back down to the original target, but even at twice the original goal, this is an amazing piece of technology. Will it replace your current notebook? Of course not. It was never intended for the mass market in developed countries, but the XO does contain some interesting technology, nonetheless, particularly in the screen, power management, and the automatic wireless grid networking.

By the time you read this it may be too late. Between November 12 and November 26, the OLTP Foundation is offering a “Give One Get One” opportunity, but I’m going to write this as if the offer will be extended. This is the first, and possibly only, time the XO laptop is available to the general public. For $399 you get to send an XO to a child in a developing country and, at the same time, receive one for your own inner child. When mine arrives, I’ll bring it to the next general meeting. The donation part ($200) is tax deducible and as an extra inducement, T-Mobile is giving a one-year subscription to each “Give One Get One” donor/buyer. In theory the T-Mobile HotSpot subscription is worth nearly as much as the whole deal. I hope some of you will take advantage of this opportunity. If you have no interest in your own XO, then consider making a simple donation. This is a worthy project.

One reason I think OLTP has some chance of success is the reaction from Intel. The XO uses an AMD processor and with the potential for sales of hundreds of millions, Intel is finally taking notice. After snubbing the project in the beginning, they have now joined the board. Intel has also designed a product called the Classmate PC, which they claim costs $200 to manufacture. From the one picture I’ve seen, this is a more traditional laptop.

Please consider buying one so mine will not the only one around. We really need three to get the networking running in a meaningful way. So please let me know if you buy one.

Server Virtualization

As the economy falters, there will be increasing pressure to use VM technology. This is bad news for Microsoft as they cannot use their monopoly to shut this down. Their only defense is to do VM's better than anyone else. Such competition, like we have not seen in the personal computer space for years, will benefit all of us. Server 2008 (Longhorn) is claimed to have built-in virtualization (believe it when it ships), but it will be another 6 months after the OS ships before this technology will be available. That may be too late for Microsoft. Microsoft’s traditional approach to anything new, the three E’s (embrace, extend, extinguish), will not work here as hypervisors will replace the OS in many cases. Eventually much of the hypervisor will be in the motherboard as BIOS extensions just as some of the virtualization is already in the processor silicon. Much of this is for servers only where video is irrelevant. Desktop virtualization is further off (I think).

The 30-year mark

While we may not have appreciated it at the time, 1977 was a seminal year for the computer industry. That year saw the introduction of the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model One, the Commodore PET, and the Apple II. My “other computer club” celebrated the anniversary of the Commodore PET by having the designer, Chuck Peddle, speak at our Vintage Computer Festival East event last summer. Almost unnoticed was the thirtieth anniversary of Digital Equipment Corp.'s PDP-11/780, the first VAX computer and its operating system, Virtual Memory System, which you probably know as VMS. Did you know that Windows NT was designed by one of the same guys who designed VMS? As relations with IBM grew worse, Microsoft hired Dave Cutler from DEC. He became the program leader on NT. The first few iterations of NT bore a striking resemblance (internally) to VMS. Now in its sixth (depending on how you count) version, it is said that NT has lost much of its VMS-ness, but the security model of NTFS with the very granular access control list (ACL) for each file or object came right out of VMS as did many other features. Only the newest Linux file systems offer the same control.

VMS became OpenVMS in the early 90’s when open standards first became so fashionable. It remains far more popular today than you would ever imagine – both as a vintage OS and among current commercial users. DEC’s crowning achievement for VMS was probably clustering. This allowed a group of VAX machines of varying sizes and configurations to work as if they were a single, much larger, system. This allowed a company to grow their computing power as needed without discarding older machines, which bred loyalty that has outlived Digital itself.

More than a few years back, a few of us were lucky enough to see and hear Ken Olsen speak at a special meeting. I believe we were still the WCMUG at the time. Even if he did screw up when he said no one needed his own computer, his concept of the “minicomputer” was the right one for the time.

Domestic Spying Immunity

Should our Congress-people give the telephone companies a get-out-of-jail-free card on domestic spying? You know my opinion: Congress must hold their feet to the fire so we can learn the real story about all the communications-based domestic spying. We certainly will not get the full story by asking the White House. Are we a country of laws or are some people and, by extension, entire branches of government above the law? What do you think? Let me know at jscheef@dacs.org.

Links:

“Give One Get One”http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/index.php

“Other computer club”http://www.midatlanticretro.org/

Chuck Peddle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Peddle

Commodore PET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET

VAX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vax

OpenVMS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openvms



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