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Transmeta

Transmeta Confirms Recall 74

Posted by CmdrTaco from the what-a-bad-day dept.
jbischof was the first to tell us that Transmeta has confirmed that they are recalling Crusoe, as we mentioned earlier. The statements says it's fewer then 300 NEC laptops, so it's not that huge of a deal after all. Of course the egg-on-face factor is still high.
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Transmeta Confirms Recall More

Transmeta Confirms Recall

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  • Re:Of course. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This just illustrates how technical and complicated designing/building processors is. We all like to bash Intel for whatever perceived flaws we can find; but the fact is, they (and other processor manufacturers) do good work. And Intel has to be given credit for their place in the industry. They've been very important, to say the least. I hope Transmeta recovers from this quickly. I think they're a great company; but in thinking that, I don't believe we have to declare their competition to be lousy "good-for-nothin's."

  • Re:translation for other architectures2 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Transmeta found an ideal niche to begin with.
    Small enough so as to iron out the problems, big enough as to make money and not competitive enough to be wiped out early.

    Its also got potential as a big market. *Thats* why they went for that market. They've also been SOOOO lucky. P4 recalls at the same time! "P4 has poor performance..its official" is the big news, not Transmeta glitch.

    As long as Transmeta fix it quickly and Sony etc. don't lose faith, they have it in the bag.

    Intel do NOT have X86 chips that consume that little. Its plans are not that likely to deliver that either, more likely they will speed step it down until it looks like it does and claim that as a marketing victory. (I can't see how they can do it without reducing the basic transistor count).
    You know what intel's press release will say: "our new Mobile Pentium consumes 700mhz performance making it faster and lower power than the competition."

    ... but not at the same time.

  • Or are we gonna treat Linus different than the other millions of H1B workers out there?
  • Hey, I resent that.

    Slashdot just sucks lately, and getting karma is just too easy to be a worthwhile game for a while. It was hard for a while, and Siggy had to fight to get his insightful comments modded up; that was entertaining.

    But if MEEPT!! was here (more) today (and not posting shit at -1) I guarantee you he'd be +5 material, yes siree.

    Dude, one time I got a +1 bonus on a new account in a day. Mostly from one post. (I think I did get enough karma from that one post to get the +1 bonus, actually...) Oh, and if you don't know how that's possible, then just understand that the karma system is much more whacked out than you think it is; it surprised me...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Well, there's still the pornographic stories that pop up occasionally.

    But trolls have never made up the majority of a large (>60 comment). The recent stories about the election have generated in excess of 500 and 1000 comments.

    Getting back on topic-- does anybody have any technical specifics on the Transmeta bug?
  • Fewer than 300 is not that big of a deal, IMHO...

    i hope this problem is not in the sony notebooks....
  • Russian being my first language, I can tell you that I cannot blame these people. Good grammar and speling, in English, are based mostly on memorization of every word. This reminds me of what English-speaking people think and say of Chinese and Japanese.

    Besides being fluent in Russian, I am also familiar with Ukrainian and French. In none of these other languages can something be spelled three different ways, have three different meanings, and yet be pronounced the same. In Russian, for example, everything is spelled the way it is pronounced. There are, of course, some words that are a bit confusing to spell, but they are pretty rare.

    English is such an illogical and exception-infested language, it is really ironic that most of the computers in the world use it to interface with people.

    --

  • Re:Fewer then 300: How many was "fewer"?
    by pen (slashdot@digdug.cx) on Thursday November
    30, @12:40AM EST http://GeekIssues.org/

    Besides being fluent in Russian, I am also
    familiar with Ukrainian and French. In none of
    theseother languages can something be spelled
    three different ways, have three different
    meanings,and yet be pronounced the same.

    English is not a language. It is a combination
    of several languages including French, Latin,
    German, Norwegian, Greek. It has the spelling
    and pronunciation rules of ALL those, so it's not
    as idiomatic as it seems. It might as well be,
    though, since there is no reasonable way to tell
    which original language a given word
    belongs to!

  • Intel is the second largest CPU-manufactorer.
    Guess who is the largest?
    Motorola.
    The have something like 53% procent marketshare against 25 % for Intel.
    Only problem is, that only 7% of all CPU's are used in PC's.
    The rest is used in ABS and onther systems....
  • Well, they actually recalled more than 50000 copies of Office 97 or Windows 98 (I don't know which it was) in Spain.
    There was a nasty virus on the Spanish version.
  • You know, having high karma doesn't mean you pander to the lowest common denominator, necessarily. It could mean your posts are well thought-out, and usually have good spelling and grammar.
    What it means is that if you have high karma, you write posts that moderators (i.e. the average slashbot) like to read. So if Taco pisses of the high karma people, he's going to reduce the amount of well-liked posts and drive down posting activity. It appears that this is what has happened.
    --Shoeboy
  • At least someone thinks so.. *sigh*

    Really, whomever got moderation points that day should've read the FAQ on moderating. If you're going to moderate down, at least give a good reason for it. "Troll" is for when someone's trying to start a flamewar.

    Honestly, people who don't know that a wink smiley means "just kidding" really have no business getting mod points.

    (Moderate this down to offtopic..)
  • Unix experence is also in high demand...
    And not that many people have the exposure Linus has.. Any employer would have automatic name recognition (This posably being a reason Transmeta hired Linus.. that and having a hand in Linux develupment for Transmetas chips)

    Slashdot might hire him :)

    or Linux Dot Com may want him on staff....
    He'd also fit well with Source Forge or FreshMeat.

    There are a number of places Linus would fit well..

    Hay... RMS dosn't have an MSCE eather but people pay him good money to be a consultent...
    (He dose this only just enough to pay the bills... his primary focuse is on the FSF.. all your domations make it posable for him to STAY focused on the FSF... so donate NOW..)

    I don't think Linus has any worrys...
    At worst he could work for a news agentcy as a tech corespondent :)
  • You probably can have Linux on it.. just don't be surprised if they add $80 - $90 or so to the end bill at the end of the semester for an OS reinstall.

    Magnwa
  • English is such an illogical and exception-infested language, it is really ironic that most of the computers in the world use it to interface with people.


    Very true... but not an excuse for supposedly educated native speakers to screw it up again and again and again.

  • Oh, yeah. This one just bugs the living shit outta me. It's not spelled with two o's in either the americian or english dictionary, so what's up with the misspelling? I've even seen it spelt that way in novels! Here's another one for ya: How do you spell wuss/woos? That is, a synonym for wimp/whimp?
  • I think this recall is going to hurt them, at least temporarily, because they're *not* established.
    I mean, look at their stock price. The day of their IPO, it was something like $50 a share. Now it's about $21. That's a hell of a slide in such a short time.
    I hope they make it back up (I'm planning to buy some stock in them), but this is going to hurt their credibility at lesat a little bit.

  • String corporateMistake( Corporation corp )
    {
    if ( OpenSourceCompanies.contains( corp ) ||
    corp.employeesLinusT()
    )
    return "Things will get better";

    else
    return "Ha Ha " + corp.getName() + " sucks just like MS,"
    " this incident is proof positive";
    }


    sorry, but this won't compile.... the last return is wrong. I think you ment:

    return "Ha Ha " + corp.getName() + "sucks just like MS, " +
    "this incident is proof positive";

    ok, So I am in a 100 level java programing class and I am about to go to the lab for it, and I am feeling like a syntax nazi, but it is fun :)

    Chris C.

  • The fact that they were prompt and up-front about getting back the bad chips without having to be hounded in the press reflects credit on Transmeta.
  • I hate when we they do that.
  • For and established company in an established market with an established product it's NOT that big of a deal. However, I for one am hoping that this gets off the ground and this initial go of product should have been much more stable so when it first tried to fly, it flew well.
  • Your right, its an old c trick that aparently never made it into java. Too bad it is pretty convenient.

    -tony

    Here is an example:

    #include

    int main( void )
    {
    char *str = "A"
    "B";

    printf( "value='%s'\n", str );

    exit (0);
    }

    output:

    > value='AB'
  • Maybe I'm just seeing things... but with quotes like "uses elaborate software instructions rather than hardware to perform certain functions" and the last line about Intel "already [having] chips on the market that consume about the same amount of power", I came away with the impression of a serious Intel bias. Both seem to deliver the impression that Intel's solution is better (eg, not "elaborate" [ie, falt-prone], and without this particular problem). Does Intel hold a stake in Yahoo? If so, arent't they required to make note of it?
  • Actually, they passed a new law this year. You can transfer your H1B to a different employer within 2 weeks of applying to have it transfered.

    forge
  • With all the hype that there has been for Crusoe, i would have assumed that Transmeta would have checked for all possible bugs before letting this loose on the word (i.e. the slashdot community).
  • Actually, if people could read and look at more than the "Gee this is 600MHz and that's 700Mhz so the 700MHz must be better" then they'll do fine. The fact of the matter is Intel's speedstep sucks. I DO NOT want a laptop that gets slower as soon as it is unplugged. Transmeta's dynamic throttling approach is MUCH better. (And I've used both of them, the overall performance on the Crusoe is fine on my Vaio C1VN).

    On the flip side supporting other architectures has the potential to be a dream for developers. Imagine for a moment a Transmeta chip that can select what architecture to boot as and what HD to load the OS from based on this... It could be the ultimate low-budget testing environment... test x86, Sparc, PPC, and Alpha on the same box =)

    Of course they'll probably never do this, but I can dream...

    .technomancer

  • Sony Recalls Crusoe Notebooks after NEC

    November 30, 2000 (TOKYO) -- A defect in a certain manufacturing batch of U.S. Transmeta Corp.'s energy-saving "Crusoe" microprocessors has affected major PC makers in Japan. Sony Corp. confirmed the defect after NEC Corp. decided recall.

    The defect was identified in the "TM5600" Crusoe microprocessor that operates at a clock speed of 600MHz. When a certain set of conditions (such as the operating voltage) are met, the Level 2 cache operates in error.

    Hitachi Ltd., which just launched its model with that version of Transmeta's CPU on Nov. 27, said it is making utmost efforts to identify the problem.

    Full story at http://www.asiabiztech.com/wcs/frm/leaf?CID=onair/ asabt/cover/118386 [asiabiztech.com]

  • yah gee besides making computers affordable and putting one in every home i guess they are good for nothing

    Intel makes computers? Wow, I didn't know that.

    I wonder if the make the Macs that their "spokespeople" (aka Blue Man Group) use?


    --

  • Intel makes computers? Wow, I didn't know that.

    It's a relatively unknown fact that Intel is the biggest manufacturer of computers in the world. These are, of course, white-box PC's which are OEM'd to companies who brand them sell them with support. (Not to mention the motherboard and chipset/CPU business...)
  • Im only wondering if it is within the Sony PVG-C1VN series VAIO's (I bought one the day before the recall was confirmed and price on the unit jumped 45 USD (Hmmm)) Because when I get it the very first thing I am going to do it wipe Windows ME off the drive providing Windows 2000 runs the drivers and a few of the selected software packages and, of course, install Debian. I will be disappointed if it does not work but a recall probably means a replacement after a couple of weeks. The good question of "How did these pass QA control?" is indeed a valid one.

    "Install a non-Microsoft operating system? *whipcrack* Independent Thought Violation! Go to Detention!" - said laughing a bit by a fellow perl hacker at my work after we discussed the recall.

    www.krackintoshlabs.org --(Ill keep the saga of my new laptop posted there)

  • Perhaps you have to work with brokerage companies to understand that most of those dealer types really don't know anything... The way they trade is, buy if something gets + press previously unexpected and you hear about it "early," sell for the - press case.

    It's not like they understand anything about what they read. Nor do they understand that the market has become a huge positive feedback loop --with too many players making the shortest of short-term bets -- to remain stable. That's about half of why old-style capital markets are on their last legs, finally.

  • Aside from the obvious PR burn, their biggest loss is this [yahoo.com]: an 18% drop in their stock price in one day. Ouch.

    Plus, no fewer than two major manufacturers were toying with the idea of launching Transmeta notebooks and later changed their mind. This certainly isn't going to help them change their minds back in the other direction...

    --
    "Give him head?" [pdqsolutions.com]
  • Yes, fewer than 300. 284 [yahoo.com], to be precise.

    --
    "Give him head?" [pdqsolutions.com]
  • Sell your stock. This thing is going nowhere. Yeah this is a troll. But an accurate one. And YOU think amazon is overvalued?

  • Don't forget "loose", as in:

    "I hope I don't loose any money on Transmeta stock."
  • 22. Who builds Transmeta's Crusoe processor solution? The hardware piece of the Crusoe Processor solution, the VLIW chip, is fabricated and packaged by IBM's Microelectronic Division. The Code Morphing software is developed and distributed along with the processor by Transmeta as a complete solution. --from FAQ, transmeta.com

    A manufacturing defect is still Transmeta's problem

    So, isn't a manufacturing defect ultimately IBM's problem? Well, Transmeta's gotta deal with the bad press, but I wonder what IBM's DPM is?

  • Rival Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - news) already has chips on the market that consume about the same amount of power -- roughly 1 watt -- as the Transmeta chip, which is aimed at mobile computing and other wireless, handheld devices requiring long battery life.

    Sheesh, we all know that they're talking about the SA, but this seems like it was written to make Joe User think that Intel's x86 chips run that light...
  • I would have to say that this is an unfair comparison. Transmeta's problem was a manufacturing problem in which they are stepping up to the plate and fixing. Everyone makes mistakes. Intel's problem was an architectural problem, showing the weakness in the PIII design. It was also a bad move (I'm sure not condoned by many of Intel's engineers, but as all bad companys Intel is driven by Marketing as opposed to smart people) to release a chip that obviously was not designed to go that fast, nor was it properly tested.

    In short, there is nothing wrong with the Crusoe, just a small manufacturing problem. There is most definatly something wrong with the PIII 1.13ghz to the point that it had to be discontinued. The number of units recalled is irrelevant - the chip just failed.
  • But when this sort of thing happens to Intel, it usually involves many thousands of chips, like that whole deal with the FDIV flaw from way back when.

    J

  • 300 Processors. That's almost 100 times as many as Intel had to recall.

    Transmeta's goal is to emulate Intel but do better.

  • $6000? That seems kinda steep... I got my MCSE for around $790 I think. That was the 6 exams plus the exam cram books.

    Hell, if I can pass all 6 with nothing more that some books and an NT workstation to dink with, anybody can.

    Besides, I'm fairly sure that Linus is a smart guy.

    Besides, good programmers are much more valuable in the long run than MCSEs. I only got mine because I was looking for a job fresh out of school and needed a piece of paper to prove I knew something. Funny thing is, after getting that cert, I work in a place where we have linux on our desktops. Strange world...

  • When I saw that subject line, I thought at first that you meant exactly the opposite: that Transmeta has had such good press thus far that they can afford to "take a hit" like this. I suspect that is closer to the truth.

    My personal experience is that a lot more "average people" have heard of Transmeta than you might think (enough to surprise me, at least). They've had some press from the Wall Street Journal, IIRC, and other widely read publications.
  • Nov. 29, 4:00 PM:
    Possible Crusoe and Recall?

    you have to give him the benefit of the doubt here.

    he could be talking about a logical AND bug.

    Kawaldeep

  • Basically everyone's 2 least favorite groups have dwindled and there's not much left except a few slashbots going patents are bad, linux rocks, patents are bad, linux etc...

    Actually, my impression is that there's been a big drop in the number of mediocre +1 posts. ("Linux is good. Micro$hit is bad. Metallica is bad, too.") You may be right about what drove them away, though.

    I dunno - maybe people have just gotten tired. How many times can you have the same arguments again and again? For instance, this is effectively the third Transmeta story today (counting the Daisy story). What's left to say?

  • Does the last paragraph of Reuters article seem a bit strange to anyone but me? I think that a random (and misleading) comment about the power consumption of mobile Intel chips is a wierd "by the way" to throw in at the end of two screens of a Transmeta story.

    Transmeta screwed up today...Oh and Intel has chips that make Transmeta pointless anyway.

    What's there angle? I'm not a Transmeta fan, but come on.
  • Now Intel is gonna jump all over this one,
    You mean the makers of the Pentium, with the infamous FPU bug? The folks who were so embarrassed by it that all of their processors now have the ability to load bugfix microcode at boot time? Which, by the way, might be part of what's going on with the Crusoe chips. The story opens with: [emphasis mine]
    Transmeta said in a statement that the recall would take in ``fewer than 300'' NEC computers at risk of failing
    if the user reinstalled operating software.
    This suggests to me that the units in question might already include some bugfix code, which would be subject to being wiped out by a certain well-known operating system's scorched-earth treatment of custom bootloaders like LILO or GRUB.


    --------------------
    SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.

  • Knowing the stock market when word of this gets out I would say they are going down, especially becuase people are jumpy about tech stocks. The only thing that might happen is no one outside the geek community finds out in which case everything stays at 200% ipo but my guess is they are in for some rocky times, especially becuase the chips don't really give you that much.
  • You don't understand the code morphing idea. The reason why they don't post any numbers is that their compilation can find optimizations in the code that are particular to a specific code seqeuence. The speed boost is only a result of natural repetition in code and the optimizations that the compiler can make.
  • still couldn't match the power of GORTICIAN [mp3.com].

    Despite IBMs reticence, and this setback, Crusoe chips continue to be very compelling. The dopest web tablet at Comdex was in Be's suite: a wireless, color, touchscreen web browser that weighed less than two pounds, with a battery life of six hours. It was powered by a Transmeta Crusoe, and was running BeIA [be.com]. BeIA, of course, is the nicest embedded OS for web devices, packing complete WWW functionality in only 6 meg of memory...

  • Just three-hundred laptops. Really no big deal. No, none at all. Come on Linus, what gives?
  • Well, now...hype or not, it's unrealistic to expect a startup company releasing a new product to successfully eliminate every possible bug. I haven't heard yet exactly what prompted the recall, but given various implementations (by other companies) there are bound to be glitches.
  • from the press note: "Rival Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - news) already has chips on the market that consume about the same amount of power -- roughly 1 watt -- as the
    Transmeta chip, which is aimed at mobile computing and other wireless, handheld devices requiring long battery life."

    What? Where? Whit the same power?
  • You do realize that the reason that it is called 'BogoMIPS' is that it is a bogus measure of system or processor speed. It is only used for internal timing.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • It also bears stressing that all modern CPU's, and that does include Intel, have extensive "microcode" layer to actually drive the chip. It's perhaps something of a simplification, perhaps a bit nit-picky, but "uses elaborate software instructions rather than hardware" is quite misleading.

    They BOTH use elaborative software instructions on top of hardware, but the hardware on a Crusoe chip is more advanced allowing many tricks the Intel chips couldn't dream of. And Intel provides a kludgy way to fix the CPU microcode through BIOS-loaded "patches" of which they've released quite a few to BIOS-authors already.

    This could ofcourse be just the reporter not being that technologically knowledgeable and buying the Transmeta hype about "software processor" instead of bias, as well.
  • He could be out of a job if Transmeta doesn't turn things around.

    He could always go to work at Intel :)
  • Is this a foundry issue? This is one of the several weaknesses of Transmeta: that they had such a hard time getting a foundry to manufacture their chips, earlier this year, so perhaps this is indicitive of less than top-notch quality.
  • The P3 1.13 GHz recall affected only 200 parts (i.e. less than this Transmeta recall), but that doesn't stop AMD and TMTA stock-holding slashbots from bringing it up on a daily basis.

    Of course it's brought up on a day-to-day basis. It was STUPID. Listen, Transmeta has a flaw in a few hundred chips. The *FIRST* chips Transmeta has mass-marketed. What, they get no slack? They're not doing too bad, considering they've come up with a chip that is competitive(on some grounds) with the likes of Intel. The Giant. That's nothing to sneeze at; they're doing a good job.

    Now, the reason why everyone got sooo pissed at Intel is that they reached too far. They just COULDN'T stand having a slower-clocked processor than their rival, AMD. So, they did absolutely everything they could to make sure they had the highest clock.

    These things included:
    - Increasing voltage, a common overclocker's trick - not something chip companies should have to do on a regular basis.
    - Disabling those parts of the PIII that didn't work at a high voltage(which parts escape me).
    - "releasing" a processor, even though they could, at MOST, deliver a few hundred at press-time. I mean, this is the worst of it. They couldn't beat AMD on a clock-speed basis, so they rounded up a few hundred PIIIs that with a lot of work(and luck) were supposed to run at 1.13GHz, just so they could say "yeah, we're faster, go suck a pole".

    Arg.
    Dave


    Barclay family motto:
    Aut agere aut mori.
    (Either action or death.)
  • Everybody immediately thought design flaw. That would be bad bad bad. A manufacturing glitch is not such a problem.

    Hey! Who manufactures these chips for Transmeta anyhow? I see a potential scapegoat here... :)
  • The point-zero software problem is *not* a good thing, and it's not really a valid excuse for this situation. It's an industry-wide embarrassment that Transmeta is no more immune to than any other company. If anything, this proves that they do not walk on water no matter how famous any of their employees happen to be.

    I honestly don't think it makes Transmeta look particularly good to mention that certain companies are notorious for treating their customers very poorly indeed when problems arise. If you think that it's OK for a company to foist defective products on the public and then not take any responsibility for them, then I wish you everything you expect.

  • Are you serious or just trolling? Intel bought StrongARM from DS over three years ago.
  • I don't think Transmeta is well established enough for this to greatly affect them. When this sort of thing happens to Intel or Sun, it's a big deal. But Transmeta hasn't really gained a lot of attention (meaning the average person hasn't heard of them). I think Transmeta will still do fine out of all of this.

    By the way, why is it only the NEC laptops with the problem? Shouldn't it affect all or none of the Crusoe's?

  • It is only the NEC's because (as it said in the article [echo "READ IT"]) it was only part of a limited batch. It is no biggie.

    Intresting comment to note:
    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/11/29/20112 33&cid=162 [slashdot.org]

    Macx
  • If you can't differentiate between the Transmeta twirlie and the Debian curl, you're a moron.

  • Low-Power Recall (Score:3)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Wednesday November 29, 2000 @04:54PM (#592799) Journal
    But this is a recall which required less power and required fewer resources than other recalls...

  • What do you expect? (Score:3)

    by CaptainCarrot ( 84625 ) on Wednesday November 29, 2000 @05:03PM (#592800)
    Hey, this is version 1.0 of a product with a significant software component. Of course it doesn't work right!

    It could have been worse. If Transmeta were more like M$ they'd have shipped several million units before announcing the problem, and then charged you for an "upgrade" to fix the bug. If they were more like Intel they'd just deny that anyone should care, and you'd have to show that you had a good reason for caring before they'd replace the chip.

  • Re:hmm (Score:3)

    by VAXman ( 96870 ) on Wednesday November 29, 2000 @05:58PM (#592801)
    The P3 1.13 GHz recall affected only 200 parts (i.e. less than this Transmeta recall), but that doesn't stop AMD and TMTA stock-holding slashbots from bringing it up on a daily basis.

    Plus, consider that this is TMTA's first product: their batting average is 0.000, but Intel's is about 0.950. IMHO, this is a major blemish for TMTA which will take years to overcome, and will greatly dissuade fence-sitting OEM's who were considering using TMTA parts.

  • Re:Manufacturing defect (Score:3)

    by VAXman ( 96870 ) on Wednesday November 29, 2000 @06:03PM (#592802)
    A manufacturing defect is still Transmeta's problem: it's a quality control problem. The designer of the CPU writes test vectors to test the chips. If it was indeed a manufacturing problem it means they didn't properly engineer test vectors to screen the chips. Intel's DPM is ludicrously low (500, IIRC), and with 300 defects, Transmeta would have had to ship 600,000 parts to reach Intel's quailty level (somehow I doubt they shipped 600,000 parts).
  • I don't think Transmeta is well established enough for this to greatly affect them.

    Well... their stock got beaten down by 25% today, so I would say it has a pretty big effect.

  • Egg on face (Score:3)

    by update() ( 217397 ) on Wednesday November 29, 2000 @04:56PM (#592804) Homepage
    The statements says its fewer then 300 NEC laptops, so its not that huge of a deal after all. Of course the egg-on-face factor is still high.

    Sure, recalling 300 units wouldn't be a big deal for a nuts-and-bolts company like Fairchild. But for a company that's relies on buzz as much as Transmeta does, egg on the face is a major deal.

    (Thinking that over a little, maybe I'm being too harsh -- I mean, Transmeta is trying to leapfrog Intel, not start yet another Internet pet food company, and they deserve credit for thinking big. Still, they profit tremendously from their high public profile and that's going to hurt them here.)

    Completely off topic: Does it seem to other people that Slashdot is shrinking back to its pre-Columbine (pre-post-Columbine?) scale? Except for flamebait articles about the election, most stories are down to ~100-200 +1 posts. It's nice not feeling like if you don't post on a story in the first minute there's no point bothering.

    Come to think of it, the continuous real-time dick measuring contest called Advogato.org has turned into a desert, at least in the posting area, and LinuxWorld (which I think is underrated) and Linux Today forums are mostly empty, too. Are we seeing a trend here?

  • Taco Quality Seal (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29, 2000 @04:54PM (#592805)
    Nov. 29, 9:37 AM:
    Normally I sae this sort of stuff ..

    Nov. 29, 10:24 AM:
    from the screwing-with-carniore dept.

    Nov. 29, 3:19 PM:
    from the now-thats-a-wierd-thing-to-do dept.

    Nov. 29, 4:00 PM:
    Possible Crusoe and Recall? (uh, yeah)

    And now, Nov. 29, 9:37 PM:
    .. to tell us that Transmeta has confirmed that we they are recalling Crusoe .. The statements says its fewer then 300 NEC laptops, so its not that huge of a deal after all ..

    This calls for the creation of the CmdrTaco Quality Seal! The first one is given to JeffK [somethingawful.com]! Only awarded to sites with a minimum of spelling and grammar errors.

    You might, however, also employ a grammar & spelling nazi.

  • Poor Linus (Score:5)

    by Shoeboy ( 16224 ) on Wednesday November 29, 2000 @04:46PM (#592806) Homepage
    He could be out of a job if Transmeta doesn't turn things around.
    My sister is trying to get out of being a social worker and she can't get another job because she doesn't have Windows or Office 2000 experience.
    Let's face it - Linus doesn't either.
    I'm willing to put up $500 bucks to help pay the $6000 cost of MCSE training in the event Transmeta folds - how about you guys?
    C'mon, we can't leave Linus out in the cold after all he's done for the open source community.
    --Shoeboy

  • How to feel (Score:5)

    by ffatTony ( 63354 ) on Wednesday November 29, 2000 @05:43PM (#592807)
    String corporateMistake( Corporation corp )
    {
    if ( OpenSourceCompanies.contains( corp ) ||
    corp.employeesLinusT()
    )
    return "Things will get better";

    else
    return "Ha Ha " + corp.getName() + " sucks just like MS,"
    " this incident is proof positive";
    }

  • Manufacturing defect (Score:5)

    by Trongy ( 64652 ) on Wednesday November 29, 2000 @05:04PM (#592808)
    The press release makes it sound like a manufacturing defect (it only affected a single batch of chips) rather than a design defect. It doesn't sound like a huge problem. All the companies produce defective chips; they should never make it past quality control.
    Compared with Intel's famous fdiv bug which was a design fault and affected all pentiums at that time, this is relatively minor.

    I'd say that the biggest loss in this case would be due to the bad publicity that Transmeta has received.

    Chris

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