[conspire] HP Melt Down

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Edward Cherlin (echerlin at gmail.com):

> Aha, a counterexample to my hypothesis.

For a wild moment, there, I thought you were referring to my mention of
Andreessen's shiny pate.  ;->

> I was trying to explain to a former classmate earlier this week that
> the WSJ editorial page is wrong _by definition_ as the mouthpiece of
> the Masters of the Universe against everybody else.

It's almost distressing, isn't it?  Just when you think you've
identified a weathervane that reliably points in the wrong direction, it
lets you down.

> Back on topic. Hardware increasingly consists of jellybean parts such
> as FPGAs and ARM microprocessors, which are about to eat Intel's lunch
> due to astonishingly low power requirements, highly scalable
> multiprocessor architectures (not ARM-specific) and relative openness
> of architecture and licensing. Among the narrow exceptions are ATI and
> Nvidia 3D graphics hardware and some kinds of hybrid analog/digital
> wireless chips.

I think you have that exactly right, indeed (including the narrow
exception for specialised processors).  I've been looking forward to the
referenced lunch-eating for a while.

> When there are prototypes of the XO-3 tablet, I will take up this
> topic again.

Hmm, here's the 'concept' prototype.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/22/olpc-shows-off-absurdly-thin-xo-3-concept-tablet-for-2012/
(Apparently, it was promised to be available in 2010, then delayed,
delayed....)

> Just so. Let me recommend to everybody's attention Open Firmware by
> Mitch Bradley, now used in Sun, Apple, and OLPC computers under GPL.

It is indeed a damned site better than UEFI (yuck).