Like I said in the below item, it’s a slow news day. This was further evidenced today by a story about the Google Chrome OS Netbook specifications, which, according to IBTimes, were leaked – to them, obviously. Together with the iPhone/NYC thing, this story gripped the internet and blogosphere today.
The IBTimes story is clearly a load of nonsense, as any sane person can see. However, the lack of news in these trying, quiet, and peaceful times in the blogosphere means that every shiny trinket, no matter if it’s gold or plastic, will gain massive mainstream attention. And yes, I get the irony of OSAlert reporting on it too. Don’t try to be smart.
IBTimes claims that Google’s Chrome OS Netbook, which as far as I know has not been confirmed by Google in any way, will be built using NVIDIA’s Tegra, and be powered by an ARM processor. Here we already see quite clearly that this story is nonsense, as Tegra is inherently tied to ARM – there is no ARM-less Tegra. It makes no sense to specifically mention it in the way IBTimes did (notice the “and”).
If the above didn’t trigger any alarm bells as to the validity of this story, this certainly should: IBTimes claims the netbook will sport a “10.1-inch TFT HD-ready multi-touch display”. Right. Furthermore, they say it comes with a 64GB SSD – which is yet another clear-cut indication that this is a bogus story, as (1) Chrome OS doesn’t need that much space, and (2) it would make the device needlessly expensive. It would also have 2GB of RAM, and all the other stuff you’d come to expect from a netbook.
Despite the obvious ridiculousness of the story, it made its way all around the web (and yes I get the irony already!), with many websites taking this stuff at face-value. As a result, I suggest we instate a new rule starting next holiday season: let’s shut down the internet from December 25 to January 1.
Who’s with me?
I agree news value is pretty low over the holidays. Not a big fan of the “ask readers general questions” tactic you’ve been using. Not sure what the answer is.
Maybe just topics sure to reignite flame wars, just to get it out of the way before non flamebait stories hit. I guess, in that light the kde 4 story works. But maybe a emacs vs vim thread or mike vs joel.
“OSAlert Asks: Are Unicorns Real?”
“OSAlert Asks: vi or Emacs?”
Edited 2009-12-28 23:59 UTC
My answer: butterflies.
Hey, I’ve got one! “Windows or Linux?”
Or maybe, “C++ vs Java vs C#”.
Nah, people, just enjoy the holidays! There will be a whole new year for the old flame wars…
Nah, Windows, Linux or Mac OS X would be better
Edited 2009-12-29 02:33 UTC
Too close to home! Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac OS flame wars happen every week on osnews.
hey hey hey, where’s Obj-C?
Obj C dev use is pretty much limited to desktop/ iphone app dev. Its actually a pretty cool language, just not in widespread use outside of apple platforms.
Edit Removed stupid flaimbait/joke comment with a semi-serious one. If we start a language war, lets make it clear that our tongues are in our cheeks.
Edited 2009-12-29 06:46 UTC
Yes, but they are stupid creatures that have no ability to comprehend probability. They play the dollar slots in Reno, chew tobacco, and root for the Cubs.
Thom! The public wasn’t supposed to know about the December 25 through January 1 “Google Holiday Season Timeout” (or GHOST) until late 2010!!!
It was one of Google’s best-kept secrets to revive in-store sales this way. It should definitely not have been broken to the people this way.
Oh well, now you all know. Thanks a lot for ruining everyone’s Google 2010 Christmas surprise!
Specs sounds reasonable to me. ARM+Tegra – good compromise between battery life and performance. Not everyone knows, what Tegra is, so ARM should be mentioned. And, see, no Windows can be installed! 64G is not too much, all netbooks with smaller storage are really useless. Google Gears use a lot of storage space, check youself.
Cortex family on the arm is a requirement for anything like this. arm11 won’t do it (or did they upgrade the tegra platform finally?)
Well, the ARM/Tegra part can be true (actually, that is a no-brainer), but 64 GB solid state disk is way overdone for a netbook which does not need any programs locally intalled, except a lean web browser. I would expect more like 2 – 4 GB SSD, as those are dirt-cheap, which is pretty much all that this thing is aimed at. If you want to get those devices for sub-200 US$ into the stores, your pure production costs can not exceed 100 US$ by much. A 10 inch display will already eat 30 US$, and 1 GB RAM costs 25 US$. That leaves you 45 US$ for main board, housing, processor, and SSD, which in my book cannot mean a “larger than 4 GB” SSD.
‘The Top N of X of YYYY’ year-end recap is a cheap, and potentially entertaining way out. Time tested, too.
Top Ten ‘Top 10 Topics of 2009’
– Top 10 OSAlert.com posts of 2009 by total comments
– Top 10 Operating Systems Stories of 2009
– Top 10 Operating Systems outside the norm
– Top 10 1980’s Computer Technologies Still in Pracitcal Use
– Top 10 Uses for TOPS10
– Top 10 Technologies for 2010
– Top 10 Tech Events of the Decade (Y2K-Y2K9) (arf?)
– Top 10 Legendary Computer Arguments – relevant in 2010?
– Top 10 Countries Making Most of Decade-long Technological Leap
– Top 10 “Fun Things” to do with your New Computer
Maybe next year?
You’re being sarcastic I hope, but CNN really is that desperate:
Top 10 Tech Fails of 2009:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/23/tech.fail/index.html
Top 10 Tech Trends of 2009:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/22/top.tech.trends.2009/index.html
Not happy with a mere ’09 recap and one shy of a Top Ten list, here are the Nine Worst Tech Movies of All Time:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/17/worst.tech.movies/index.html
Umm, that list of 9 worst tech movies, it’s funny, they list all notable tech movies of the last 30 years (with one or two exceptions), and Independence Day was not a tech movie.
And I always liked “Antitrust”
No, but Jeff Goldblum DID manage to take down an extraterrestrial fleet with a computer virus he seemed to just… have.
I cringed, for all the reasons CNN lists. It’s a failure of imagination and logic.
Hooray!
I own most of those , too. heh.
The worst one listed is Antitrust. OMG it is horrible.
I really don’t know how antitrust was bad. . . the plot was fine, there were no holes, the acting was at the very least adequate and, overall, not too unbelievable.
Please elaborate, if you will, exactly on what is bad about it.
<sarcastic> Hey! That rhymes! We should totally do that!</sarcastic>
some things were said that made good holiday news
even if you have to infer and make the news yourself
the biggest probably being the new snapdragon google phone
and that there is much talk about tegra 2
which, even if apple doesn’t use it in a netpad, many other companies WILL use it in many other things
the word on the street is that companies will be unofficially showing off tegra 2 products at CES, but tegra 2 itself will be officially announced later that month
now why would that be, what in january could possibly be bigger than CES
I have to take issue with Hackers being labeled as “bad”. Who doesn’t want to do “sh!t work” like scan and crack copyrights?
I’m just guessing that the egg nog has been spiked but most of the stories I’ve seen lately reek of a little too much holiday cheer. (What’s with writing “fail” instead of “failure”, lazy people?)
I’m sure by the end of 2010, we’ll see whether Google has made anything worthwhile or not. I think it doesn’t matter what machine it is, it’s going to require a lot of resources to make the web seem local. I seem to remember CPUs to directly execute LISP and other processor-intensive languages. Of course, we’ve come a long way from 6 MHz processors.
If anything, I hope that Google’s attempt will spur more creativity in operating system and browser design. Maybe, someone else could arrive with a new GUI for Linux and *BSD that isn’t derivative of the current messes.