[clug] Re: Bing use by Linux enthusiasts

[Robert Edwards]

Kim Holburn wrote:
> On 2009/Jun/30, at 9:36 AM, Hugh Fisher wrote:
>> Kim Holburn wrote:
>> That's just silly, only two of those companies have on-going monopoly 
>> cases.  The others are ancient history and they were found guilty in 
>> many cases of things that are no longer relevant to us today or were 
>> US specific.
>>
>> So you would have boycotted AT&T and IBM back when C/SQL/etc first
>> came out but not now? Fair enough.
> 
> The AT&T case AFAIK was about a telephone monopoly in the US.  The IBM 
> case about a monopoly on mainframes.  Neither really relevant to their 
> monopoly cases.  Those cases were not much to do with that software and 
> certainly not now.  Microsoft is trying to use things like bing to get 
> into the search market.  It will probably try and use it's desktop 
> monopoly somehow.
> 
>>> Both the intel and MS cases are pretty serious in that they have 
>>> seriously nobbled the competition world-wide and are still actively 
>>> doing it.
>>
>> So you refuse to use Intel CPUs, and encourage others to do likewise?
> 
> No, I have used computers based on lots of different chips.  I'm just 
> sad that it's nearly all x86 now.  When there's reasonable competition I 
> might.  When would that be?  Intel has it pretty sewn up now don't you 
> think?  The amount of money required to break into that market is 
> phenomenal.  Add the difficulty of getting software to work on a new 
> chip and the software lag.
> 

If you are into small CPUs (that probably won't run Erlang...), Alistair
and Peter (who spoke at CLUG last week) and I have been playing with
Jennic IEEE802.15.4/Zigbee based modules recently. These things are
small, low power and very capable (much more CPU grunt than an Arduino
or it's successors).

What is even more interesting (to me), is that the CPU in the Jennic
modules (never properly identified) is based on the Beyond BA-12, which,
in turn, is derived directly from the OpenRISC (OR) 32-bit CPU from the
OpenCores project. The Open Source GCC/binutils/GDB toolchain for the OR
is the same tool chain that Jennic supply for their modules.

So, if you are interested in developing small-scale stuff (it can run an
IPv6 stack, but only UDP, not TCP...) then the Jennic is a very cheap,
low-power, capable, connectable (built-in wireless) and "open" module
(mine were about $32 each for 5 off).

Cheers,

Bob Edwards.