Showing posts with label port. Show all posts
Showing posts with label port. Show all posts

21 April 2008

Why Ubuntu on ARM Could be a Rich Seam

You may have heard of the ARM architecture, but you may not know just how widespread it is:

ARM today announced that the total number of processors shipped by its Partners has exceeded ten billion. The company developed its first embeddable RISC core, the ARM6 processor, in 1991, and its semiconductor Partners currently ship almost three billion ARM Powered processors each year.

So news that Ubuntu is being ported to the architecture is pretty cool:

A Nokia-sponsored project is porting Ubuntu Linux to the ARM architecture. The "Handheld Mojo" team has completed ARM builds of Feisty Fawn (dubbed "Frisky Firedrake") and Gutsy Gibbon ("Grumpy Griffin"), with Hardy Heron compilation starting soon.

02 July 2007

Porting the Genomic OS

The genome can be thought of as an operating system; it runs on the cell's hardware platform (which is generally created by the operating system in perhaps the most impressive kind of biological bootstrapping). An interesting question is whether you can port the genomic OS from one kind of hardware to another. The answer is "yes":

Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) today announced the results of work on genome transplantation methods allowing them to transform one type of bacteria into another type dictated by the transplanted chromosome. The work, published online in the journal Science, by JCVI’s Carole Lartigue, Ph.D. and colleagues, outlines the methods and techniques used to change one bacterial species, Mycoplasma capricolum into another, Mycoplasma mycoides Large Colony (LC), by replacing one organism’s genome with the other one’s genome.

The next stage is to hack the genomic OS:

The ability to transfer the naked DNA isolated from one species into a second microbial species paves the way for next experiments to transplant a fully synthetic bacterial chromosome into a living organism and if successful, “boot up” the new entity. There are many important applications of synthetic genomics research including development of new energy sources and as means to produce pharmaceuticals, chemicals or textiles.

It also allows all kinds of synthesised nasties, as the team behind the work recognise:

Dr. Venter and the team at JCVI continue to be concerned with the societal implications of their work and the field of synthetic genomics generally. As such, the Institute’s policy team, along with the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), were funded by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for a 15-month study to explore the risks and benefits of this emerging technology, as well as possible safeguards to prevent abuse, including bioterrorism. After several workshops and public sessions the group is set to publish a report in summer 2007 outlining options for the field and its researchers.

Heavy stuff.

16 May 2006

Royal Society of Twits

So, the Royal Society has spent three years putting together a study into the "best practice in communicating the results of new scientific research to the public," and come up with 24 pages of patronising, anachronistic codswallop.

At a time when the prospect of making a large chunk of all human knowledge freely available online is at least feasible (even if there are massive forces of reaction ranged against it - but then I do like a challenge), their Royal Socships can think of nothing better than fretting over whether scientific research is the kind of stuff 'you would wish your wife or servants to read'. As if there were any choice in the matter in the age of the Internet.

The result of those three years of deep cogitation boils down to deciding, well, we'll just keep all this tricky science stuff to ourselves, eh?, and maybe feed a few crumbs to those press johnnies from time to time to keep the public quiet. After all, just because the hoi polloi paid for most of it, doesn't give them any right to see the damn results, oh no. Now, do pass the port - clockwise, mind.