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Copyright Dispute of Silence |
6/30/2002 |
'The Sound of Silence' may have prompted engaging harmonies from Simon and Garfunkel – but a more literal appreciation of the absence of noise has prompted one of the more curious copyright disputes of modern times.
Mike Batt, the man behind the Wombles and Vanessa Mae, has put a silent 60-second track on the album of his latest classical chart-topping protégés, the Planets. This has enraged representatives of the avant-garde, experimentalist composer John Cage, who died in 1992. The silence on his group's album clearly sounds uncannily like 4'33", the silence composed by Cage in his prime.
Batt said last night: "I've received a letter on behalf of John Cage's music publishers. I was in hysterics when I read their letter.
"As my mother said when I told her, 'which part of the silence are they claiming you nicked?'. They say they are claiming copyright on a piece of mine called 'One Minute's Silence' on the Planets' album, which I credit Batt/Cage just for a laugh. But my silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence."
Original Article:
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=307449
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Athlon XP (Barton) Rating: Learn the New Formula! |
6/30/2002 |
This Chinese site (the same one that shared the confidential ATI slides with us last week (see this news story) shared with us some info, which allows us to derive a new formula and to calculate the rating of Athlon XP processors based on 0.13micron Barton core (it is none other but a Thoroughbred with 512KB L2 cache, which will be manufactured by UMC only and the mass production of which is planned for Q4 2002). Here is this formula:
Rating =3 x Frequency/2 + 100
The reverse formula is also very easy to derive, as you may see:
Frequency =2 x Rating/3 - 66
These formulas are very similar to those used to calculate the rating of Athlon XP processors on Thoroughbred and Palomino core (Rating = 3 x Frequency/2 – 500 and Frequency = 2 x Rating/3 +333, see this news story).
Full article with chart:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1025349410 |
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AMD roadmaps are genuine |
6/30/2002 |
"We learn from sources close to AMD in Europe that Chinese roadmaps we told the Web about at the end of last week are, indeed, genuine.
We don't know how they escaped from the paranoia net at AMD but that sort of thing happens at even the best regulated companies, you know.
What have we got here then?
Lets start with the workstation and server processor market which you can find here."
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/30060207.htm |
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SiS Xabre II Released Early? |
6/30/2002 |
As we learned from SiS’ earlier plans, the company was going to introduce their new Xabre II family supporting DirectX9 only next year. Moreover, they were only going to start sampling these products in the far away February 2003. Therefore, keeping in mind that SiS is usually "kind of slow", their mass production could appear postponed nearly until next summer.
However, as we learned from one of our unofficial sources, the chips have every chance to appear in the market a bit earlier, this year already. Although we are talking only about the chipset announcement here and not about the mass production. So, it is still most likely to start selling only next year, but in the beginning and not in the middle of the year as everybody has initially expected. By the way this chip will be manufactured with 0.13micron and the equipment for these production lines will be installed in Q3 2002. So, everything seems to make sense: in Q4 SiS starts making first 0.13micron wafers which are most likely to be the rumored Xabre II.
They also report that Xabre600 chip (275MHz chip and 600MHz (300MHz DDR) memory frequencies), the fastest Xabre solution, will come out in time: in Q3 2002. It will be manufactured with the same 0p.15micron technology, which is already used on half of all SiS’ production lines.
Original Article:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1025347787 |
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Computer-drawing program allows blind to 'see' |
6/30/2002 |
Frustrated by the difficulty of incorporating charts into his school reports, Hesham Kamel, a blind engineering student at the University of California at Berkeley, has designed a computer-drawing program that permits the visually impaired to create - and "see" - illustrations, graphics and other images on the screen.
Kamel, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, has set his sights on refining the prototype, dubbed Integrated Communication 2 Draw, into a viable commercial product.
"There's nothing else out there that can help me create and view graphics," said Kamel, 40, who lost his vision 17 years ago through a surgeon's error. "With the IC2D, blind people can use screen readers paired with voice synthesizers to literally hear text on the computer screen."
Taking advantage of the universal familiarity with the layout of a telephone keypad, the program divides the screen into nine squares, each labeled with the corresponding numbers "1" through "9." Moving from square to square is just like dialing a telephone number. Each time a user enters a square, he or she has the option of subdividing it into another three-by-three grid, zooming in on increasingly finer details in the drawing. The program is capable of repeating the progression 81 times for a total of 729 possible squares.
The recognizable keypad arrangement replaces the traditional computer staple of pull-down menus - which present a challenge to blind users - for controlling commands, shapes, lines and colors. When pointing a cursor at a particular cell, the navigator can ask for audio feedback that describes the location - for example, square 1 - or the shapes or pictures represented within.
The system can enable the blind to draw and create animations for school, pleasure or work, said Kamel, who has been showing off the evolving project at conferences on human-computer interaction and assistive technology since 1999, in the United States and Europe. He will present the latest model July 8-10 at a meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery in Edinburgh, Scotland.
When he describes his software, Kamel likes to involve the audience in an exercise that demonstrates the struggle the visually impaired face when drawing, particularly on a computer. Standing in the center of the room, palm extended toward his listeners, he asks them to point at his hand, close their eyes, move their finger to another object, then return it to its original position, site now unseen.
Full Article:
http://nandotimes.com/technology/story/451844p-3616614c.html |
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Video signal quality measured |
6/30/2002 |
"When tecChannel recently reviewed the Parhelia, they compared it against cards from a bevy of manufacturers in terms of analog VGA signal quality. Most importantly, tecChannel used instruments to capture the waveforms produced by each card. I'll post links below to their result pages. You'll have to click through to get their full-sized waveform pics.
On the whole, it appears Radeon and GeForce4 cards are reasonably similar in their signal outputs. They are not identical, but close. As with anything, there are exceptions where one particular card is significantly worse or better than the others. There is also the matter of price. On average, a Ti 4600 performs better than the lower-priced cards. That's one of those little hobgoblins we all hate.
The Matrox cards have superior output, at least in part. The G550 puts out a solid signal (especially considering its low price), but it's rivaled by some of the better ATI and NVIDIA implementations. The Parhelia, on the other hand, is very impressive. Its waveform looks almost pristine.
To help illustrate the differences between the various cards, I recommend using the Parhelia signal image as the reference. The closer a card is to matching the shape, height, and width of the Parhelia signal, the bettter the image quality of the card. Also, notice that the RGB signals of the cards are defined as colored lines. Ideally, these lines should stay tight together; keep an eye out for colors that sag or spike. Here are the results for the various cards:"
Full Article:
http://tech-report.com/onearticle.x/3747 |
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Case Mod: How to rubout for a mirror finish. |
6/30/2002 |
"I have seen a lot of people discussing how to rub out new paint, to get that supa shiny PimpRig worthy case. There is a lot of good information posted too, but I am going to show you exactly how I “rub out“ new paint. I have been doing this full time since 1986 and I feel that I am starting to get it figured out so trust me, don’t take any short cuts and let’s get to it.
Wet sanding and rubbing out new paint does require some products that can be harmful, if used improperly. Please read the directions and pay attention to the warning labels. Chemicals affect everyone the same, they don’t just warn everyone else, companies put those warnings on there for you."
Full How-To:
http://www.pimprig.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=69 |
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First Earth Images from New Aqua Satellite |
6/30/2002 |
NASA's recently launched Aqua satellite has returned enough data during its test phase to allow scientists to generate the projects first to pictures.
The onboard Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E), operated by the Japanese, produced Aqua’s first geophysical product: a global map of sea surface temperatures. In the image, ice and snow cover in white and yellow, desert areas in shades of green, other land areas in dark colors, and oceans in shades of blue.
The sea surface temperature map from AMSR-E is indicative of the high level of detail the microwave imager will routinely provide even in the presence of substantial cloud cover.
"After years of preparation on Aqua, I and hundreds of other scientists are thrilled to have the spacecraft launched and its Earth-observing instruments sending down high-quality data," said Claire Parkinson, the Aqua project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "If all goes as planned, these data will lead to improved weather forecasts and a better understanding of Earth's climate system -- especially the role of water in it."
Aqua is an international partnership between the United States, Japan and Brazil. The primary role of the spacecraft is to gather information about water in the Earth’s system.
Full Article:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/aqua_firstimages_020628.html |
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Pirate P2P Radio to Circumvent Fees? |
6/30/2002 |
"Streamer - pirate radio for the digital age
I'm publishing this in response to the closing of Audiogalaxy and the imminent closure of many net radio stations at the hands of the RIAA and CARP. This can't be closed. I never did like bullies.
Streamer is an internet radio program that allows anyone to broadcast streaming mp3 music, to an unlimited number of listeners, from an internet connection as humble as a 56k modem, and with the broadcasting pc being fairly untraceable.
It works by relaying the mp3 data stream from one listener to the next, forming a branching tree with the broadcasting pc at the base. This is different to the normal method where all the listeners connect to a central server, and it means you don't need lots of server bandwidth. There is also no limit to the number of listeners, since each new one provides more relay bandwidth to the network.
It's also fairly untraceable because each streamer 'host' doesn't reveal any information about whether it is actually the transmitter or not, or where it is getting it's signal from. And I plan to make it completely untraceable for broadcasters who wish. Tax that CARP!. I hope you get the idea.
This is a beta version, work in progress. There's no clever network optimisation yet, or stuff to handle when listeners leave without disconnecting other downstream listeners. You are likely to get disconnections for large audiences. It definitely works ok for half a dozen or so people though, all using 56k modems. Enough to play your tunes to your mates :-)"
Download streamer.zip
Check for updates regularly please, it doesn't happen automatically yet.
Original Article:
http://www.chaotica.u-net.com/page/streamer.htm |
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Newspro and Coranto |
6/30/2002 |
I had begun an archive of the Newspro and Coranto websites a month ago to help out all of the users of the scripts who have not been able to access the files or helpful content since the official (http://www.amphibianweb.com) website went down.
I, being a strong proponent of the Newspro and Coranto communities, decided that, in the interim, I would host the files so that those who needed access to the content would still be able to find it. I was met by heavy opposition from some people who claimed that I had no right to do this.
These users had been sending 20-50 emails to everyone at my ISP, all of the contributors to my website, etc. when they had absolutely no claim to the intellectual property itself. Needless to say my ISP and my attorney had been discussing the issue and I took the webpages down.
Yesterday I happened to find an article that stated that the files were being offered again. I followed the link and low and behold the same people who had been spamming my ISP and threatening to sue my website are now hosting the files only a few weeks later.
I find that they acted improperly throughout the entirety of this matter. I would have expected a lot more from people who (usually) contribute a lot to the Newspro and Coranto community. This has been a sad state of affairs for all of those who support and love Newspro/Coranto. It's hard to believe that those who will be contributing the most to Newspro/Coranto its development in the future can act in this manner and have such little class.
I have restored the pages and they are now available for everyone to use and download. Help keep Newspro and Coranto alive!
Newspro:
http://www.elektrik-sheep.com/newspro/
Coranto:
http://www.elektrik-sheep.com/coranto/
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World Cup Final to Be Watched by Record 1.5 Billion |
6/30/2002 |
The World Cup final between Germany and Brazil on Sunday will be watched by 1.5 billion giving it the biggest audience in television history, its Swiss broadcasters said.
"1.5 billion is the expectation for the final match -- accumulated for the 64 matches we expect more than 40 billion spectators," said Home Broadcast Services' (HBS) chief executive Francis Tellier on Saturday.
The figure -- around one in four of the planet's population -- is easily the largest ever viewership for a single TV program, according to HBS.
I'll be seeing all 1,499,999,999 of you in 2 and a half hours for the match.
Full Article:
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=entertainmentnews&StoryID=1148425 |
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ICANN Blocks Nomination of Average Users to Board |
6/30/2002 |
The group that oversees the Internet's name system voted on Friday to exclude ordinary Web surfers from its board in a move critics say allows mainstream interests to tighten their grip on the online world.
ICANN, or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, unanimously passed the resolution at its quarterly meeting, clearing one of the most controversial issues in the development of the four-year-old organization.
Under a radical new system, the online election of individual Internet users to the group's executive board has been abolished.
Instead, the 19-member board of directors will be drawn from representatives of technical, business, government and non-profit organizations. It will have ultimate say over future policy matters that govern the fundamental domain name system for the Internet.
ICANN, a non-profit group, oversees the process of doling out domain names with suffices such as .com to businesses and individuals.
Its chief executive Stuart Lynn said the vote was an important step for the global body as it would demonstrate to lawmakers that ICANN is committed to reform. ICANN has also faced criticism that it is overly influenced by American groups
Full Article:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/06/28/tech.icann.reut/index.html |
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Case Fan LED Light Mod |
6/30/2002 |
At first I was expecting a mod that I'd seen 1,000X before, but I really like the way he approached this, and how it turned out.
"This mod is very easy to do and make case fans more interesting and exciting. If you have a window in the side of your case or a blowhole this would be a perfect mod to do to any fan that you can see."
Take a look at the full article:
http://www.phlux.co.uk/articles.php?aid=21
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Final Fantasy XI Preview |
6/29/2002 |
With the recent announcement of the Final Fantasy XI beta in Japan, we decided to check in with IGN's resident Final Fantasy guru, David Smith, to find out just what we could expect from Square's next effort. For those of you who don't know (thanks to laboring under a rock on the planet Pluto), this next version of Final Fantasy will be the first massively multiplayer title in the series. (The team isn't releasing any new art as of this point -- the beta only started last week -- but this lengthy preview should serve as a comprehensive overview to the entire game. All present screens and art are from the console version.)
The story takes place in a world that mixes swords, magic, and technology on the beautiful planet known as Vana'Diel. In the past this world was blessed by the source of all things in the world, the Crystals. Together with their power, those that believed in the light fought against the monsters that followed darkness. The monsters destroyed the beautiful villages and cities, turning the lands into a vaste wasteland, and the water into deadly pollution.
Eventually, mankind was able to fight back the monsters and regain peace for their land. However, 20 year after the fighting, when people begin to forget the memories of the horrible war with the monsters, the scent of evil once again blows over the land of Vana'Diel. All is resting on the powers of the crystals.
Full Preview:
http://pc.ign.com/articles/363/363306p1.html |
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Moon rock at center of legal battle |
6/29/2002 |
"In a cross between science fiction and a children's tale, a moon rock gets dug up from its peaceful valley, flies aboard Apollo 17 to Earth, visits Honduras and winds up in a U.S. court.
"It's one of these curious little cases," said Keith Rosenn, a University of Miami law professor recruited by the judge as a consultant on Honduran law. "But it is a real case with grown men arguing about it."
The extensively traveled bit of cosmic geology couldn't care less where it ends up, but Justice Department lawyers and a Florida man who claims it are fighting for possession.
Technically, the encased, fingertip-sized rock is listed as the defendant in the case of "United States v. Lucite ball containing lunar material." For now, it is a prisoner, waiting to learn its fate from a federal judge busy with a fight over congressional redistricting."
Full Article:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/06/29/moon.rock.lawsuit.ap/index.html
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6/29/2002 |
"By now you may be questioning this article and its purpose. You may have come to the conclusion that there are no tips and hints laid out for you in a neatly packaged summary page. Life doesn’t work that way…sorry. There are no shortcuts and you can’t scan ahead to the benchmarks and the last page in hopes of understanding the big picture without actually seeing it. It isn’t about “free stuff” to be reviewer, or a moderator, or a news poster or the owner of the site itself.
If you’ve actually taken the time to read the previous 5500 or so words you may have picked up quite a few tips and tricks. They are there. I hope you did as you may be the one who replaces me.
Rather than fade away. Or stomp off in a digital hissy fit. Or try to take members away with me to another site. I choose to step down the same way I came in…with my best foot forward.
My other career demands my presence more and more. My personal life demands my presence more and more. And I feel its time for fresh eyes and a bit of a break for me. As a valued member of a site such as Icrontic you have to realize when you to place the good of the site ahead of yourself so it will be there when you return. I was given the privilege to share the Internet with some very talented and knowledgeable individuals. To my colleagues who write for other sites and places beyond….I thank-you for that privilege.
In this time the face of computer technology will change more often than Jekyll and Hyde but Icrontic will still be here. New reviewers may come and go and I hope you enjoy the work that they do. I may have a guest spot now and again and occasionally pop into the forums to “sweep up” a bit. I hope you learned something from me. I certainly did from you.
It really has been fun."
Full Farewell:
http://www.icrontic.com/index.php?page=public/articles&articleId=216 |
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Music Companies Convicted of Price Fixing |
6/29/2002 |
"Two music companies that joined forces to sell recordings of the opera stars known as the Three Tenors illegally fixed prices, an administrative law judge ruled.
The judge ordered subsidiaries of the French corporation Vivendi Universal to stop its anticompetitive practices. The other company, Warner Communications, a unit of AOL Time Warner, reached an accord with the Federal Trade Commission last year.
Judge James P. Timony's decision, filed June 20, was announced today by the commission.
Vivendi's Universal Music Group denied any wrongdoing and said it would appeal the decision, which is subject to review by the full commission.
The case involves a 1998 recording of the tenors Luciano Pavarotti, José Carreras and Placido Domingo, who have performed every four years during World Cup soccer finals.
Their fourth World Cup concert, Thursday night in Japan, was billed as their last together. No plans to issue a recording have been announced."
Full Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/29/business/media/29TENO.html |
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Nokia Wins Nokia.me.uk Cybersquatting Case |
6/29/2002 |
"Phone company Nokia has won the first case against a cybersquatter regarding .me.uk domains.
The Finnish phone company wrote to the domain name holder from London asking him to hand over nokia.me.uk.
However, he wrote back claiming that he had registered the domain name in question because his nickname was "Nokia".
Fair enough, you might think.
Snag is, he then asked Nokia (the phone company, that is) if they'd be prepared to buy the domain - for a price.
It's at this point that Nokia sought to reclaim the domain under Nominet's Dispute Resolution Service.
Conceivably, the cybersquatter in this case might, just might, have got away with the nickname story - if only he hadn't also registered vodafone.me.uk, orange.me.uk, virgin.me.uk, bmw.me.uk, nissan.me.uk and sony.me.uk at around the same time."
Full Article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/25946.html |
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Mandrake Reveals 64-Bit Hammer Support |
6/29/2002 |
MandrakeSoft today announced they are cooperating with AMD to port Mandrake Linux to the forthcoming eighth-generation AMD AthlonTM and AMD OpteronTM processor-based platforms.
Delivering on its commitment to innovative development in the Linux arena, the MandrakeSoft research and development team has begun work on adapting the Mandrake Linux operating system to run optimally on the upcoming AMD processors.
AMD is collaborating with MandrakeSoft to ensure rapid porting and commercial availability of Mandrake Linux for 64-bit AMD Athlon and AMD Opteron processors. AMD Athlon and AMD Opteron processors, based on x86-64 technology, have been designed to support large, intensive workloads providing high-performance solutions for desktops, workstations and servers. The new processors can benefit customers by providing 64-bit application support, while also offering optimized, native support for 32-bit Linux applications to provide a smooth transition from a 32-bit to a 64-bit environment.
"This new generation of AMD Athlon and AMD Opteron processors is extremely exciting. A version of Mandrake Linux dedicated to these powerful 64-bit processors can certainly accelerate MandrakeSoft's growing adoption in the Linux corporate market" said Jacques Le Marois, CEO of MandrakeSoft.
"The 64-bit version of Mandrake Linux optimized for the upcoming eighth-generation AMD Athlon and AMD Opteron processors can provide enterprise customers with a powerful, reliable and easy to install and use Linux distribution", said Robert Stead, Director of European Marketing, AMD.
Full Article:
http://www.amdzone.com/releaseview.cfm?ReleaseID=905 |
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Microsoft Security Fix Also Changes the EULA... Takes Away Your Rights |
6/29/2002 |
Last night I got security bulletin MS02-032 from Microsoft concerning Windows Media Player; there is a patch that fixes all previous vulnerabilities and three new vulnerabilities. As I started the installation of the patch, the End User License Agreement box popped up. Normally I don't even read these things, but this time I did. There was a fairly standard preamble followed by some bullet points; here is the text of the second point:
" * Digital Rights Management (Security). You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management ("Secure Content"), Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer. If we provide such a security update, we will use reasonable efforts to post notices on a web site explaining the update. "
These security related updates sound more like version upgrades to the OS, since new functionality is added, and Windows Media Player will be used as an agent to download and install the new software "automatically." Normally security updates are announced by email containing a link to the website where the patch can be downloaded. There was no mention of which website Microsoft will use to post notices of new or upgraded software that was automatically downloaded to your computer while you were listening to a webcast using Windows Media Player, or how a user will know when to check the website to find out what has been added to the OS.
I have never been a Microsoft basher and have been using MS software since I bought my first computer in 1988, but this is really disappointing. Clearly the Media Player is going to be used for a purpose for which a service pack would be more appropriate. Even if the purpose is to install an automatic update utility, the owner of the computer should be in control and not be subject to "Things That Happen Behind Your Back." I don't think a firewall will help either--you must allow Media Player content to pass through in order to use it.
A funny/ironic/sad point is that the security bulletin reads in part:
" - An information disclosure vulnerability that could provide the means to enable an attacker to run code on the user's system and is rated as critical severity ".
It looks to me like that's exactly what the patch does.
Original Article:
http://bsdvault.net/article.php?sid=527&mode=&order=0 |
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FORD DROPS APPEAL - 2600 VICTORY AFFIRMED |
6/29/2002 |
Ford Motor Company has officially and unconditionally conceded its complete, utter, and perpetual loss on the merits of the FORD v. 2600 "FuckGeneralMotors.com" case. Ford has dismissed its appeal to the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, meaning that Ford has completely given up all attempts to reverse the victory that 2600 Enterprises won on December 20, 2001. The mutually agreed dismissal papers were officially entered by the Sixth Circuit on June 27, 2002.
In the words of another FORD from Michigan -- former President Gerald Ford, "Our long national nightmare is over."
2600, which has given up nothing other than an extremely improbable claim for getting its attorneys' fees back from FORD, has expressly reserved the right to point "FuckGeneralMotors.com" anyplace whatsoever that 2600 pleases -- including at the FORD homepage -- at any time whatsoever, with or without notice.
Of course, the plan in March, 2001, when the lawsuit arose, was to point the address someplace more suitable than the FORD homepage, probably as soon as mid-April or early May, 2001. In other words, the lawsuit has actually delayed 2600's prior plans (several other domain names that were part of the same project have been re-pointed several times, while FuckGeneralMotors.com has remained pointed at FORD). Now that the lawsuit has been won, 2600 will be soliciting suggestions during the H2K2 conference, for the best place to point the Domain Name. Ultimately, this just proves how silly and counterproductive FORD's litigation strategy always has been from the beginning.
In December, 2001, Judge Robert Cleland of the Eastern District of Michigan, dismissed FORD's lawsuit in its entirety for "failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted" -- which means that even assuming every single allegation in FORD's pleadings to be true (but the allegations weren't all true), FORD still had no legal right whatsoever to prohibit 2600 from pointing FuckGeneralMotors.com at FORD's homepage.
Needless to say, FORD did not like that outcome. Neither did a lot of other intellectual property interests all over the world. Indeed, a google search will reveal a number of PowerPoint(tm) presentations published on the Web (e.g., http://austlii.edu.au/hkitlaw/resources/Pun_IP.pdf) by various intellectual property lawyers, emphasizing that the decision is being appealed. Well, now it isn't.
Full 2600 Article:
http://www.2600.com/news/display.shtml?id=1225 |
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Microsoft Longhorn, 3GIO to change PC rules |
6/29/2002 |
"A source close to Intel and Microsoft's plans tells us that plans are well advanced for the successor to Windows XP.
But the source, who works for a third party vendor, tell us that Microsoft will make the bold – perhaps foolhardy step – of making Longhorn incompatible with all previous operating systems.
And the introduction of 3GIO at the same time will also upset the third party applecart and probably end users too.
Although Longhorn does not officially debut until spring 2004, it's expected that in autumn next year, both Intel and Microsoft will give strong indications of their plans.
The reason for making the OS non-backward compatible is that both Intel and Microsoft believe that only by taking this radical step can they give a huge impetus to the PC business.
Their thinking is that people are not interested in small incremental changes such as increased clock speeds or tweaking of the operating system, and hope to persuade the entire industry and the user base to move to much improved features on both the hardware and software front."
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/28060215.htm |
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AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.67 GHz) Throughbred Spotted |
6/29/2002 |
VR Zone:
"AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67Ghz) based on 0.13 T'Bred core is spotted in Japan. The spec code/batch is AXDA2000 AIRGA 0225 matches its counterpart, Athlon XP 2200+ which is currently on sale. The color however looks just like the Palomino which is dark brown. This one runs at 1.60V VCore and the way to unlock is the same as the Athlon XP 2200+. Who knows, this may prove to be a better overclocker than the Athlon XP 2200+."
VR Zone fails to mention that all of the info and pics regarding this are here:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/hotline/20020629/etc_tbaxp2000.html |
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Taking the Ocean's Temperature |
6/29/2002 |
Scientists find a better way to gauge the high seas.
Even though over seventy percent of the earth’s surface is ocean—more than one billion-billion tons of water—oceanographers still know very little about it. Compared to the sophisticated data collection and information technologies used for atmospheric research, science’s ability to forecast, or even record, ocean conditions remains antiquated.
An international collaborative effort, called the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment, last month announced plans to improve the process. The group intends to tie together a world-wide army of oceanographic floats and satellites in order to get an unprecedented daily view of the high seas. Organizers say these new space and water-based systems will fill the longstanding gap in ocean monitoring abilities that has prevented our ability to better understand the ocean and forecast its constantly changing face.
According to Neville Smith, chair of the project’s international steering team, plans began to form in 1998 as a number of satellites that would provide a wealth of needed ocean data got ready to launch. The satellite Jason-1, launched by NASA last December, uses an altimeter to precisely measure aspects of ocean-surface topography, such as surface conditions, circulation and sea levels. Satellites soon to launch will measure surface winds and other phenomena.
But satellites alone are not enough, says Phil Sharfstein, the data manager for the U.S. component of the assimilation experiment, based at the Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanographic Center in Monterey, CA. "The main problem is that there's just not that much data out there," he says. For example, satellites can measure current sea levels, but predicting future levels requires information that a satellite can't collect, such as salinity and deep-sea temperatures.
Full Article:
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_schrope062802.asp |
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Argonne Develops Device to Detect Hidden Nuclear Weapons, Materials |
6/29/2002 |
Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory's Technology Development Division have invented a wafer that can detect neutron radiation from concealed nuclear weapons.
An inexpensive handheld device that incorporates the wafer could eventually be used in airports by law enforcement agencies or by weapons inspectors. "Generally, you shouldn't be detecting neutrons at all, and if they're there, it's probably coming from something that people shouldn't have, whether it's a weapon, a radioactive source, or fissionable material," says research group leader Raymond Klann.
The fingernail-sized wafer, about 200 microns thick, is made of gallium arsenide, a semiconducting material similar to silicon. An active area in the center, about 5 millimeters in diameter and between 10 and 20 microns thick, is coated with boron or lithium. When neutrons strike the coating, they produce a stream of charged particles that's easy to detect with commercial detectors.
The wafers operate at room temperature, can be powered by batteries, can withstand relatively high levels of radiation, and do not degrade over time. They're made with conventional microchip fabrication techniques and can be tailored to different uses by varying the coating material and the thickness.
The wafer becomes more effective if the active area is etched with holes about 3.5 microns in diameter, creating a "pock-marked" effect, Klann said. The group is experimenting with various hole depths, ranging from 1 to 20 microns.
Adjustments in the coating can make the wafer position-sensitive, so that it can detect not only whether there are neutrons, but also which direction they're coming from, Klann said. By employing several of the devices, users can narrow the location of suspicious materials to within a few feet.
The wafers have been fabricated in facilities at the University of Michigan and Kansas State for about $100 each. Combining the wafer with off-the-shelf electronic components, Klann can build a palm-size detector for less than $2,000.
Full Article:
http://smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=4045 |
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GamersDepot Interviews Matrox about the Parhelia |
6/29/2002 |
"GD: Under which scenarios do you think we'll see the performance advantage of Parhelia over the current crop of video cards?
Kamran/Matrox
"Well, with three monitors hooked up, I’d say we beat everyone else by a factor of everything versus nothing. But for traditional setups, our performance advantage will kick in with image quality settings pushed to the max. It is well understood that Matrox opted for pushing the envelope on the features and quality side rather than on the clock rate side. We feel that we achieve great performance in the default quality modes, and so wanted to sustain that great performance with quality pushed to the max. There have been quite a few benchmarks run on our card that are now public and I think that the conclusions that have been drawn are that with FAA-16x enabled we usually beat the highest scores that other video cards can provide with their maximum AA quality set."
He went on to say that the Matrox also out-performs computer systems without video cards installed by a factor of 10 to 0 and my little kitty laptops.
Full Interview:
http://www.gamersdepot.com/interviews/matrox/001.htm |
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FTC to search engines: Disclose paid links |
6/29/2002 |
Internet search engines that take money from Web sites in exchange for prominent placement should make that practice clearer to Web users, federal regulators said Friday.
Many search engine Web sites, including AltaVista, LookSmart and AOL Search, give preferred placement to paid advertisers. The Federal Trade Commission said that prime space can confuse Web users who are looking for the best response to their search, rather than ads for sites that paid up front.
The commission's decision came in response to a complaint from consumer advocacy group Commercial Alert, which is backed by activist Ralph Nader.
Full Article:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/06/28/search.engine.ads.ap/index.html |
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eBay still a victim of fraud |
6/29/2002 |
"Joseph D'Amelio thought he'd found a great deal on eBay: a 2000 Porsche 911 for $50,000.
After talking to the seller and getting a copy the car's title sent to him in advance, he wired the money to an escrow company--and fell victim to an elaborate scam. But the seller had actually hijacked a legitimate eBay member's account and set up a fake escrow service.
Out the money and angry at eBay, the Atlanta resident is vowing to never shop there again: "This wasn't $50. This was $50,000. But there was no help," said D'Amelio, who said he got form letters back from eBay when he alerted them to the fraud. "They're useless in a bad situation. I tell everybody to stay away from eBay."
D'Amelio's complaint strikes at the heart of the small but persistent problem of fraud at eBay. Although the company downplays fraud as affecting only one one-hundredth of one percent to one-tenth of one percent of all auctions, eBay's business model rests on buyers and sellers trusting each other. A whiff of a scam, and the deal is off--and eBay loses not only the commission, but also, in cases like D'Amelio, a once loyal customer.
And D'Amelio, who once bought a $2,000 Cartier watch off eBay, is just the kind of big-ticket buyer eBay wants to attract."
Full Article:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-940445.html
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New Apache worm starts to spread |
6/29/2002 |
Security experts are rushing to decode a worm program that exploits a 2-week-old flaw to infect computers running vulnerable versions of the popular open-source Apache Web server application.
The worm is thought to be capable of spreading only to Web servers running the FreeBSD operating system, an open-source variant of Unix, that haven't had a patch applied for the recent flaw. Although few people have reported the worm, it is thought to be infecting vulnerable Web servers worldwide.
"It is spreading," said Domas Mituzas, a systems developer for Baltic information-technology firm Microlink Systems and the first to report the new worm. "It hit us from Poland, and the comments are in Italian, so it could be from any part of the world."
From his early analysis of the worm, the 19-year-old Lithuanian programmer believes it was designed to create a flood net--a collection of compromised servers that can be used in a denial-of-service attack to overwhelm a target with data.
Full Article:
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-940585.html?tag=fd_top
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Carmack apologizes to Matrox & pushes OpenGL2.0 |
6/28/2002 |
Information received from id Software's Public Finger Service:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: John Carmack
Email:
Description: Programmer
Project:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
June 27, 2002
-------------
More graphics card notes:
I need to apologize to Matrox -- their implementation of hardware displacement
mapping is NOT quad based. I was thinking about a certain other companies
proposed approach. Matrox's implementation actually looks quite good, so even
if we don't use it because of the geometry amplification issues, I think it
will serve the noble purpose of killing dead any proposal to implement a quad
based solution.
I got a 3Dlabs P10 card in last week, and yesterday I put it through its
paces. Because my time is fairly over committed, first impressions often
determine how much work I devote to a given card. I didn't speak to ATI for
months after they gave me a beta 8500 board last year with drivers that
rendered the console incorrectly. :-)
I was duly impressed when the P10 just popped right up with full functional
support for both the fallback ARB_ extension path (without specular
highlights), and the NV10 NVidia register combiners path. I only saw two
issues that were at all incorrect in any of our data, and one of them is
debatable. They don't support NV_vertex_program_1_1, which I use for the NV20
path, and when I hacked my programs back to 1.0 support for testing, an
issue did show up, but still, this is the best showing from a new board from
any company other than Nvidia.
It is too early to tell what the performance is going to be like, because they
don't yet support a vertex object extension, so the CPU is hand feeding all
the vertex data to the card at the moment. It was faster than I expected for
those circumstances.
Given the good first impression, I was willing to go ahead and write a new
back end that would let the card do the entire Doom interaction rendering in
a single pass. The most expedient sounding option was to just use the Nvidia
extensions that they implement, NV_vertex_program and NV_register_combiners,
with seven texture units instead of the four available on GF3/GF4. Instead, I
decided to try using the prototype OpenGL 2.0 extensions they provide.
-------------
Follow-up to article
http://www.elektrik-sheep.com/news/fullnews.cgi?newsid1025078566,12472,
To read his full report:
http://finger.planetquake.com/plan.asp?userid=johnc |
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Texans Chip in to Rescue Stranded Chicken-Hypnotist |
6/28/2002 |
From the "so absurd it couldn't have been made up" category
----
LONDON (Reuters) - The plight of an Alaskan chicken-hypnotist whose circus tour was cut short in Edinburgh when a charity shop sold her bicycle by mistake has tweaked heartstrings as far afield as Austin, Texas.
Emily Harris left the 1,200-pound ($1,800) bicycle inside the shop this week and found it was missing after she came out of a fitting room. A shop assistant had sold it for 10 pounds.
Now a group of Austin engineers, who read about her loss on the Internet, have raised $525 to help the 25-year-old from Palmer, Alaska, buy a new bicycle and resume her tour.
"There's been tons of layoffs here, Austin's been hit pretty hard with the technology sector, so we're just looking to do something to cheer ourselves up," software engineer Lawrence Hartley, who started the impromptu fundraising, told Reuters.
Hartley said he and his friends had identified with Harris after reading that her star act consisted of hypnotizing chickens and making them play the piano.
"We're all pretty much not quite normal. We identify more with a chicken-hypnotist than with the normal world," he said.
Full Article:
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=humannews&StoryID=1145489
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30 Years of Atari |
6/28/2002 |
Slashdot: "Atari was officially incorporated 30 years ago. While many thought Atari started the video game business, that was not correct, it was Magnavox and its Odyssey console designed by Ralph Baer that would be the first. Atari would be the company that would put videogames on the map right from the start back in 1972 with the release of PONG, its coin-op arcade machine first setup in Andy Capps Bar in California, the game was a smash hit and people begin lining up first thing in the morning at Andy Capps just to get inside and play games on this magic box with a TV inside. Atari would then release its VCS (Video Computer System aka The Atari 2600) and launch Atari from its meager $500 starter capital beginnings into a $2 billion dollars in sales monster in 1982. Atari would later fall to the wayside to be replaced by Nintendo, then Sega, and othes that followed. Atari is still around in a small way, and still keeping the name and spirit alive to this very day, 30 years later. 'Have you played Atari today?'"
----
Yes, some of actually remember playing Atari...ah, Pole Position...
Full Article:
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/06/28/1710226.shtml?tid=127 |
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Mountaineer Saved by the Bell |
6/28/2002 |
"BOGOTA, Colombia - A hiker is stranded in South America's Andes mountains when a blizzard begins. He reaches into his backpack for his cell phone -- only to find his prepaid minutes are up.
The Colombian mountaineer slowly begins freezing to death, surviving for 24 hours with his only warmth coming from carefully measured dozes of brandy. Then suddenly, at above 12,500 feet, Leonardo Diaz hears a familiar ring.
Out of nowhere, a phone company solicitor is calling on his cell phone, asking if he would like to buy more time. "
--------
Saved by greedy solicitors...reminds me of how I was saved from a life of poverty and impotence thanks to spam
Full Article:
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=humannews&StoryID=1145512 |
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DirectX 9 arriving in October, hurting AIT's R300 |
6/28/2002 |
"Industry sources have confirmed that Microsoft's DirectX 9 is likely to arrive in October, quite a while later than ATI's R300 Nvidia-buster.
A few months ago we thought that Microsoft might manage to get DirectX 9 out of the door in September but the schedule has slipped a full month.
This echoes the nasty situation with DirectX 8.1 last year, when ATI shipped beta versions of this version with its first Radeon 8500 .
The problem last time round was that if you didn't have the guts to get your virtual registry screwdriver out, the only other way to install the newer application program interface (API) was to reinstall Windows.
It's unclear how ATI will solve the problem with DirectX 9, as it readies its R300 and RV250 cards for a mid-July launch."
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/28060207.htm
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Sirius Prepares for Long-Awaited National Launch |
6/28/2002 |
"After multiple delays, Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. will complete the long-awaited nationwide launch of its 100-channel digital music, news, sports and talk radio service on Monday.
Sirius' debut comes eight months after that of its only competitor in the nascent industry, XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. , but a month ahead of its own most recent schedule.
That stepped-up launch has left the companies making the receivers for Sirius struggling to keep up. Retail inventories are still thin and the initial sales promotion will be muted, Sirius executives said.
"We think if we're too loud too early and there's not enough product on the shelf, we'd be driving our customers in, and our competitor would have more product available than we do," Stan Kozlowski, Sirius' senior vice president of retail distribution, told Reuters.
Sirius had already launched its three satellites and was broadcasting live demonstrations at major conventions before XM had a single satellite off the ground. "
-----
But I say, why are we paying for radio?
Full Article:
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=technologynews&StoryID=1146813 |
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Accelenation Reviews MediaXP |
6/28/2002 |
"The Media XP is nothing more then a device that installs in a 5 ¼ inch drive. The faceplate of the Media XP is the typical beige color that we know and love oh so much, luckily for those of you who like to paint your case, the front cover is easily remove able.
Unlike other similar drive bay accessories such as the Soyo Sigma Box, the Media XP provides more then just front mounted USB and Firewire ports. While the Media XP has front mounted USB 2.0 and Firewire connectors, it also provides front audio and flash memory readers.
Starting on the top row of the Media XP is the infrared receiver (the red thing) for the included Win DVD & Win Rip remote, SD (San Disk), Sony Memory Stick, and Compact Flash reader/writer. On the bottom portion of the Media XP are your headphone, microphone, Optical SPDIF output, USB 2.0, and Firewire ports."
Full Review:
http://www.accelenation.com/?doc=158&page=1 |
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Intel to delay DDR 333 plans |
6/28/2002 |
"THE DDR 333 chipsets that Intel told its customers would be introduced later this year may be put on ice, Taiwanese wire Digitimes reports.
That's because of slack sales of its 845G and 845E chipsets, according to the story.
Intel told its OEM partners at the beginning of this month that it would introduce the 845PE and 845GE chipsets, both of which support DDR 333.
If the reports are true, that is likely to affect other chipset manufacturers and also memory manufacturers."
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/28060216.htm |
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Japanese magnetic wood blocks radio signals |
6/28/2002 |
"...Japanese scientist, Hideo Oka and his team from Iwate University in Morioka, Japan, has developed a special magnetic wood that can effectively block common radio signals.
According to a report in The New Scientist, Oka tested his wooden panels against GSM frequencies - 900MHz and 1800MHz as well as against 2.4GHz. This means the panels will block signals used for both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (802.11). Hence Mr Oka envisages this latest invention as proving useful for keeping wireless Internet signals inside a building so that competitors can't hack into a corporate LAN.
The panels contain magnetic ferrite sandwiched between layers of wood and the Iwate team believe such panels can readily be manufactured commercially. It could also solve the problem of mobile phones accidentally going off mid-act in the theatre."
Full Article
http://www.theinquirer.net/27060211.htm |
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SCSI drives performing poorly on Windows XP |
6/28/2002 |
REPORTS ON THE 2CPU forums and elsewhere suggest that SCSI systems only give very slender performance gains over IDE with Windows XP, leading some corporate users to complain that the problem lies in the operating system rather than the drives.
One IT director told the INQUIRER today: "I've just bought an expensive SCSI RAID system for my development PC at work that runs XP.
"After installing it, I noticed only a modest performance improvement over the previous IDE system after spending £1500."
After reading this thread on 2CPU, he said: "Compared to W2K (Windows 2000), the same hardware runs slower by a factor of two or three".
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/28060204.htm |
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Microsoft Longhorn, 3GIO--No Backwards Compatibility |
6/28/2002 |
A SOURCE CLOSE to Intel and Microsoft's plans tells us that plans are well advanced for the successor to Windows XP.
But the source, who works for a third party vendor, tell us that Microsoft will make the bold – perhaps foolhardy step – of making Longhorn incompatible with all previous operating systems.
And the introduction of 3GIO at the same time will also upset the third party applecart and probably end users too.
Although Longhorn does not officially debut until spring 2004, it's expected that in autumn next year, both Intel and Microsoft will give strong indications of their plans.
The reason for making the OS non-backward compatible is that both Intel and Microsoft believe that only by taking this radical step can they give a huge impetus to the PC business.
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/28060215.htm |
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2600 Victory over Ford Upheld |
6/28/2002 |
"Ford Motor Company has officially and unconditionally conceded its complete, utter, and perpetual loss on the merits of the FORD v. 2600 "FuckGeneralMotors.com" case. Ford has dismissed its appeal to the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, meaning that Ford has completely given up all attempts to reverse the victory that 2600 Enterprises won on December 20, 2001. The mutually agreed dismissal papers were officially entered by the Sixth Circuit on June 27, 2002.
...
In December, 2001, Judge Robert Cleland of the Eastern District of Michigan, dismissed FORD's lawsuit in its entirety for "failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted" -- which means that even assuming every single allegation in FORD's pleadings to be true (but the allegations weren't all true), FORD still had no legal right whatsoever to prohibit 2600 from pointing FuckGeneralMotors.com at FORD's homepage. "
Full Article:
http://www.2600.com/news/display.shtml?id=1225
Why does Ford suck you say,
http://www.fordreallysucks.com/more_info.html |
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Internet Group Leaves Ordinary Surfer High and Dry |
6/28/2002 |
"The group that oversees the Internet's name system voted on Friday to exclude ordinary Web surfers from its board in a move which critics say allows mainstream interests to tighten their grip on the online world.
ICANN, or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, unanimously passed the resolution at its quarterly meeting, clearing one of the most controversial issues in the development of the four-year-old organization.
Under a radical new system, the online election of individual Internet users to the group's executive board has been abolished.
Instead, the 19-member board of directors will be drawn from representatives of technical, business, government and non-profit organizations. It will have ultimate say over future policy matters that govern the fundamental domain name system for the Internet. "
Full Article:
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=search&StoryID=1144772 |
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World's Oldest Photo Analyzed, Preserved. |
6/27/2002 |
The Faint 8-inch by 6.5-inch (20-cm by 16.5-cm) image of the French countryside, captured by Joseph Nicephore Niepce on a thin pewter plate, has been undergoing a high-tech check-up by scientists at the Getty Conservation Institute in a joint project with French photo conservationists.
“If you think of all the history of photographs, the development of film and television, they all come from this first image,” said senior Getty scientist Dusan Stulik.
“This is the grand, grand-father of all those technologies. This is the beginning. That is why it is so exciting,” Stulik said.
Using X-rays, multi-spectral imaging and infra-red spectrometers, the scientists sought to unlock the mysterious chemical processes by which the image was made.
“This was the first scientific analysis done on the plate ... and we did it without even touching the object.
“We are really glad to report that the object is in a good state of preservation. The Getty is also developing a new enclosure filled with inert gas, to stop corrosion and oxidation, so we will preserve the image not for 50 years, but for a number of centuries,” Stulik said.
Full Article:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/772860.asp |
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Direct X 8.1B Download: |
6/27/2002 |
DirectX 8.1b Redist Install
This download provides the end-user Redistributable that developers may include with their product. The redistributable license agreement covers the terms under which developers may use the Redistributable. If you choose to distribute the Redistributable Code, you must include the files as specified listed in the Redist Directory Read Me file.
For More Information - http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx
Version - 8.1b
Release Date - 25 Jun 2002
Estimated Download Size/Time @28.8 - 25,171 kb / 2h
System Requirements
- The DirectX 8.1b Redist download supports Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
- This package requires 25.7 MB of free space to download.
Operating System - Windows 98 & 2000 & Windows Me, Win XP
Download Now
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?ReleaseID=40153&area=search&ordinal=15 |
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Publishers Sue Gator Over Web Ad Tactics |
6/27/2002 |
"A group of Web publishers filed suit in federal court this week against the scrappy Internet ad network Gator Corp., charging that Gator sells ads on their Web sites without authorization and pockets the proceeds.
"Gator Corp. is essentially a parasite that free rides on the hard work and investment" of the publishers, said the lawsuit, filed Tuesday by a dozen large publishers in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.
The irate publishers include The Washington Post Co., the New York Times Co., Dow Jones & Co., Tribune Interactive, Gannett Co., Knight Ridder Digital, Condenet and American City Business Journals Inc.
Their complaint is the latest in a series of legal scrapes involving Gator, which offers consumers free software and, in exchange, displays ads on the screens of their computers.
In a similar court action earlier this month, one of Gator's advertisers, DietWatch.com, was ordered to stop displaying ads that appeared when Gator users visited rival site WeightWatchers.com. The court ordered DietWatch to pay $25,000 to Weight Watchers."
Full Article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52132-2002Jun26.html |
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Microsoft Set to Invest $750 Million in China |
6/27/2002 |
Microsoft to set to invest $750 million in China over the next three years in a deal outlined today.
Chief executive Steve Ballmer signed a memorandum of understanding with China's State Development Planning Commission (SDPC) during a two-day visit this week, Reuters reports.
Ballmer told reporters the deal with China covers a "wide variety of fronts: outsourcing, exports, local training, development, just to name a few."
"We want the Chinese industry to grow, " said Balmer. "The success of Microsoft in every market, including China's, is highly dependent upon the growth of local industry. What's good for the local industry in every country is good for Microsoft."
------------------
Balmer then went on to say, "We really just want them to pay for our software. There are so many people there, we figure that if we can get at least one or two to stop pirating then the rest will conform."
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/27060218.htm |
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Beware the Bandwidth Police |
6/27/2002 |
Authorities investigating the theft of high-speed Internet cable service yesterday seized modems and other computer equipment from homes in Toledo and surrounding suburbs.
Members of the Toledo police computer crimes task force and FBI agents served search warrants at 13 residences, including an apartment, a condominium, and single-family houses. Investigators believe cable modems that connect Buckeye Express customers to the Internet were altered, allowing computer users unauthorized access to excessive amounts of bandwidth.
Bart Beavers, a member of the task force based out of the FBI office in Toledo, said search warrants obtained for six other residences were not served because the occupants were not home or for various other reasons.
Task force members, assisted by area police departments, had search warrants for six residences in Sylvania Township, four each in Toledo and Sylvania, three in Oregon, and one each in Monclova Township and Perrysburg.
Full Article:
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Site=TO&Date=20020627&Category=NEWS03&ArtNo=106270073&Ref=AR |
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Pledge of Allegiance ruled unconstitutional |
6/27/2002 |
For the first time ever, a federal appeals court declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional Wednesday because of the words "under God" added by Congress in 1954.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the phrase amounts to a government endorsement of religion in violation of the Constitution's Establishment Clause, which requires a separation of church and state.
"A profession that we are a nation 'under God' is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation 'under Jesus,' a nation 'under Vishnu,' a nation 'under Zeus,' or a nation 'under no god,' because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion," Judge Alfred T. Goodwin wrote for the three-judge panel.
Full Article:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/06/26/pledgeofallegiance.ap/index.html
Court's Decision:
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0016423P.pdf |
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Cyber-Attacks by Al Qaeda Feared |
6/27/2002 |
Late last fall, Detective Chris Hsiung of the Mountain View, Calif., police department began investigating a suspicious pattern of surveillance against Silicon Valley computers. From the Middle East and South Asia, unknown browsers were exploring the digital systems used to manage Bay Area utilities and government offices. Hsiung, a specialist in high-technology crime, alerted the FBI's San Francisco computer intrusion squad.
Working with experts at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the FBI traced trails of a broader reconnaissance. A forensic summary of the investigation, prepared in the Defense Department, said the bureau found "multiple casings of sites" nationwide. Routed through telecommunications switches in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Pakistan, the visitors studied emergency telephone systems, electrical generation and transmission, water storage and distribution, nuclear power plants and gas facilities.
Some of the probes suggested planning for a conventional attack, U.S. officials said. But others homed in on a class of digital devices that allow remote control of services such as fire dispatch and of equipment such as pipelines. More information about those devices -- and how to program them -- turned up on al Qaeda computers seized this year, according to law enforcement and national security officials.
Unsettling signs of al Qaeda's aims and skills in cyberspace have led some government experts to conclude that terrorists are at the threshold of using the Internet as a direct instrument of bloodshed. The new threat bears little resemblance to familiar financial disruptions by hackers responsible for viruses and worms. It comes instead at the meeting points of computers and the physical structures they control.
Full Article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50765-2002Jun26.html |
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Salon in Economic Trouble: |
6/27/2002 |
Salon Media Group Inc. said on Wednesday it has been unable to make a profitable business around its provocative Internet magazine and its auditors had "substantial doubt" about its ability to continue as a going concern.
After years of losses and more recent struggles with sagging revenues that have forced Salon to reduce its staff and cut salaries for remaining workers, the company said it was looking to raise funding but might have to shut down if that bid failed.
"Due to a weak U.S. economy in general and limited visibility of advertising activity, (Salon) is unable to accurately predict if and when it will reach cash-flow break even," the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Salon, which has won numerous awards for its thoughtful articles on topics from politics to sex, said it has recently suffered a sharp decline in revenues, which fell 50 percent in the fiscal year ended in March, to just $3.6 million. Its advertising revenues over the same period tumbled 68 percent to $1.9 million.
Full Article:
http://reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=search&StoryID=1138596 |
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Intel holding back on Banias chipset licences |
6/27/2002 |
A report in Taiwanese newspaper The Economic Times suggests that Intel's Banias notebook processors, which as we've reported debut in the first quarter of next year, may not get third party chipset support for quite some time.
The paper claims that Intel is being coy about licensing Banias to third party chipset makers such as SIS and ALI, instead keeping its patents and its secrets to itself as the chips gradually get pushed into the markets.
As reported here, Banias will use Montara GM and Odem chipsets but the paper claims Intel is delaying authorisation to give it a clear field for the first half of next year.
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/27060204.htm |
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Strange Rumors about Hammer |
6/27/2002 |
We came across a very interesting rumor from Taiwan over at Digitimes. According to this rumor, AMD is considering the possibility to modify the design of its upcoming 64bit Hammer (K8) chips, and to be more exact to modify the integrated memory controller, which might acquire the support of the new DDR II memory standard (currently it supports only DDR333). Maybe it will also get dual-channel memory support as well. They explain this decision with the fact that K8 CPU are expected to start spreading worldwide only in 2003 (because of some problems with 0.13micron SOI process), and by that time DDR II is expected to arrive to the market. They also claim that this modification will affect the launching schedule for the Hammer processors and they will be postponed from October until December 2002.
To tell the truth, these rumors sound a little bit strange to us. First of all, it is very risky to start redesigning the chip, even slightly, half a year before its mass production, especially since the problems with the manufacturing technology do exist (the current Hammer samples work only at 800MHz instead of the desired 2GHz). And it would be especially risky to start making some major changes in the design, such as introducing the second memory channel.
However, all these rumors are not ungrounded and demonstrate the main bottleneck of hammer CPUs: poor scalability in terms of memory support caused by the integrated controller. Honestly, I didn’t like the idea from the very beginning, although AMD engineers know what they are doing, I suppose. As for the into about the delayed launching, you can simply disregard this info, because both months, October and December belong to Q4 when AMD was actually planning to release its 64bit desktop ClawHammer CPUs.
Full Article:
http://xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1025082699
Digitimes Article:
http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/Article.asp?datePublish=2002/06/25&pages=09&seq=59 |
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More Chinese AMD secrets hit the Web |
6/27/2002 |
WE'RE STILL trying to find out from Advanced Micro Devices whether a Chinese site indeed has published its future roadmaps through to the end of next year.
But while the marchitecture labs at AMD are wriggling on the horns of that dilemma, the same site seems to have posted yet more pictures concerning its future plans.
These now appear to show an Athlon MP at 2600+ using a .13 micron processor slated for Q4 of this year.
But it will be the Opteron and Hammer chips that attract most attention, we suspect.
In a slide called "Server and Workstation Processor Cores", we see an Opteron M3400 at 130 nanometers and using SOI technology, with 1MB of level two cache and socket 940 for the first half of 2003.
And the Athlon ??? – that would be Ultra or Super – at M4000 comes in at M4000 with 256K cache and Socket 754, while the MP 2800+ will use the Barton core, have 512K level two cache, and a 266MHz front side bus.
Later in 2003, AMD will position its M4400 to supersede the M4000, while it will have a Barton based chip at 2800+ with 512K.
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/27060206.htm |
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FIC: No "Fusion Reaction" Happened |
6/27/2002 |
We have recently told you about the world’s first mainboard based on ATI IGP320 – FIC AT31 Fusion (see this news story). Today we are going to address this topic once again, because there appeared first benchmarks of this solution on this web-site. Unfortunately, we were very much disappointed with what we saw.
To begin with, the mainboard appeared very slow in the tests working with the memory subsystem. Firstly, it was completely defeated by NVIDIA nForce 2200-D in the test involving integrated graphics accelerators. Moreover, its memory subsystem performance didn’t improve at all when we installed an external graphics card (GeForce4 Ti4600), while by nForce the improvement was evident.
During 3DMark 2001 SE tests in Direct3D the mainboard refused to work with an external graphics card. And when the integrated graphics core was involved, the mainboard refused to run 3DMark2001 in 1600x1200 mode. Although this mode is not the proper setting for integrated graphics cores, because of their low performance, nForce 220-D still managed to complete this test even though not at all successfully.
In all other benchmarks, including games and other serious applications FIC AT31 Fusion lost to all rivals even with an external graphics card. As for the mainboard’s stability, the new solutions our colleagues from GamePC site were pretty disappointed with it. We didn’t manage to figure out what actually the problem was. Maybe it was the incorrect functioning of the chipset North and South Bridges, because FIC used VIA 686B for the South Bridge.
Full Article w/ Links:
http://xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1025097746 |
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Palladium Clues May Lie In AMD Motherboard Design |
6/27/2002 |
A two-year-old whitepaper authored by AMD and encryption firm Wave Systems may offer additional clues to the design of PCs incorporating Palladium, Microsoft's new security initiative.
Wave, based in Lee, Mass., has partnered with Microsoft rival Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Verisign and RSA Data Systems, among others, in creating the EMBASSY verification system, originally pitched as a tool for e-commerce. In August of 2000, Wave and AMD authored a whitepaper on how the solution could be integrated into a motherboard using AMD's Athlon microprocessor, which a Wave executive said is now entering field trials overseas.
"Wave and AMD are developing a Trusted Client reference platform to enable trust and security to be delivered to the PC," the whitepaper reads. "By integrating Wave's EMBASSY Trusted Client system into AMD's Athlon motherboard reference design, we will deliver a template for building cost optimized Trusted Client PCs."
The paper is authored by researchers Kevin R. Lefebvre and Bill Chang of Wave, and Geoffrey Strongin, who is spearheading AMD's Palladium work. Strongin said Monday that the company had begun work on a Palladium-type solution before Microsoft approached the company. AMD and Wave announced a partnership in March 2000.
Full Article:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,282114,00.asp |
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Xbox 'mod' chip gets killed off |
6/27/2002 |
One of the companies making Xbox "mod chips"--add-on components that modify the game machine so it can run illegally copied discs and homemade software--has gone out of business, possibly because of legal pressure from Microsoft.
The information site for Enigmah-X, the second Xbox mod chip to go into commercial circulation, was replaced late Tuesday with a brief message: "After speaking to lawyers we feel that we must not do this project anymore. There are many other chips and methods for guys to play with anyway so have fun and good luck to everyone out there."
Enigmah and Microsoft representatives did not respond to repeated requests for comment. However, in May, shortly after the first Xbox mod chip went on sale, a Microsoft representative said the company was investigating legal avenues for shutting down such operations.
Full Article:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-939663.html |
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Court rejects appeal in eBay fraud suit |
6/27/2002 |
A California appeals court on Wednesday affirmed a previous court ruling that eBay can't be held liable for the sale of fake sports memorabilia on its site.
The decision stems from a case filed two years ago by a group of eBay buyers who charged that eBay knew about the sale of the phony merchandise and did little to stop it. The California Court of Appeal in San Diego rejected an appeal of a decision last year by a state Superior Court judge to dismiss the case.
"We conclude appellants cannot state a cause of action against eBay...because their allegations reveal eBay did not sell or offer to sell the collectibles at issue," the appellate court said in its decision. "Additionally, we conclude imposition of...liability on eBay in this particular case is inconsistent...because appellants' causes of action ultimately hold eBay responsible for misinformation or misrepresentations originating with other defendants or third parties."
eBay attorney Rob Chestnut declined to comment on the decision. Krause & Kalfayan attorney James Krause, who represented the eBay buyers who sued eBay, was not available for comment.
Full Article:
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-939743.html?tag=fd_top
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Microsoft Discloses Security Flaws |
6/27/2002 |
Microsoft Corp. disclosed Wednesday that it has found three security flaws — one critical — in its popular Internet audio and video software.
The flaws were found in Windows Media Player versions 6.4, 7.1 and in its newest Windows XP operating system. The most serious flaw can allow an attacker access to the user's system with the ability to add, change or delete data and perform other functions.
The company has posted on its Web site a software ``patch'' for users to download.
In addition, Microsoft said it has found four security flaws in its e-commerce Web-site building and management software. Two flaws were rated as critical.
The vulnerabilities affect Commerce Server 2000 and Commerce Server 2002, and could allow attackers to run commands of their choice. Microsoft has also posted a patch for those programs.
Full Article:
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?SLUG=MICROSOFT-FLAWS
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Glitch tears down AOL home pages |
6/27/2002 |
America Online confirmed Wednesday that a "hardware error" caused a "small amount" of people to lose personal home pages hosted on the Internet giant's servers.
Those affected were people using AOL Hometown, a free service that lets them publish and design personal Web pages. Hometown users began noticing the effects of the glitch last week when they tried accessing their file transfer protocol (FTP) pages and found nothing. FTP is a popular means of publishing content on the Web.
This not the first time in recent memory that technical problems left some Hometown users brooding in the dark. In February, a routine server upgrade caused problems for people accessing and uploading files onto Hometown pages. AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham denied any connection between the latest issue and the previous server upgrade problems.
"We regret any inconvenience this has caused and will work with users to help them create new pages with our free Web publishing tools," Graham said.
Full Article:
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-939689.html?tag=fd_top
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Reality check: Does adware work? |
6/27/2002 |
"There's virtually no authoritative research to point (to in support) for or against adware, so companies are feeling as they go," said Deborah Moscardelli, assistant professor of marketing at Central Michigan University and one of the few academics to study the effectiveness of so-called interstitial ads such as pop-up and pop-under ads. "So far all we can say is that it may aid in brand awareness, but it also has an irritation factor because some consumers feel it's intrusive. You could say adware is a lot like TV advertising in that way."
Large corporations rarely authorize adware campaigns outright, instead farming out "new media" purchases through agencies specializing in Internet advertising. Through this indirect model, many stalwarts of corporate America are investing in adware--especially industries whose customers use the Internet for research before making a purchase, such as the travel, financial services and automotive businesses.
Fearful of a backlash from privacy advocates, representatives at dozens of the nation's top advertisers refused to talk about adware or said they were unsure whether their companies used it. But consumers who have downloaded ad-supported software on the Internet will quickly notice pop-up ads from Travelocity, Priceline.com, Thrifty, United Airlines, American Express, Honda, DaimlerChrysler and Toyota. Retail companies such as Lancome and L'Oreal are experimenting with the trend, as are technology heavyweights like Microsoft, Oracle, Sprint and Verizon.
Full Article:
http://news.com.com/2009-1023-938263.html |
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nVIDIA NV30 (GeForce 5) to be delayed? |
6/27/2002 |
nVIDIA's next generation GPU based on their NV30 architecture could be delayed according to an article at ZD's ExtremeTech.
"Nvidia Corp.'s next-generation NV30 could miss this year's launch window "for all intents and purposes," a Wall Street analyst said Wednesday.
In downgrading the stock of Nvidia, Santa Clara, Calif., Prudential Securities' Hans Mosesmann said he wanted to prepare investors for the "worst-case" scenario, that shipping volumes of the NV30 or "GeForce5" could be pushed out until 2003.
"While Nvidia's execution track record is impeccable and longer term prospects are quite good, we would rather stay on the sidelines until more data points are available regarding the new product launch," Mosesmann wrote.
In an email to ExtremeTech, Mosesmann said that he didn't reduce the company's share price target, but did downgrade the stock to a "Hold". Prudential does trade shares of Nvidia stock, and also assisted in a public offering of Nvidia stock.
"I didn't cut numbers officially, but wanted to set expectations to worst case. My guess is (that) NV30 or NV31 will miss this year for all intents and purposes," Mosesmann wrote. NV31 is considered to be a GeForce4 with an integrated AGP8X interface. "
Full Article:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,286670,00.asp
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AMD roadmap – a 4400+ Clawhammer |
6/26/2002 |
A chinese website has posted what appears to be an authentic AMD roadmap which shows its plans for its future Clawhammer and Opteron chips.
The single page also shows that it may be the fourth quarter before Barton is launched, while it shows a Thoroughbred 2400+ at 1.93GHz slated for the third quarter, which as everyone knows starts at the end of June.
The Clawhammer appears to run at 2GHz or above, and is dubbed the 3400+.
But a further iteration of the Clawhammer chip,ll ated for the first half of next year has an M4000+ on the roadmap, while this will up to the M4400+ by the second half of 2003.
Full Inquirer Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/26060223.htm
Chinese Website with Benchmarks:
http://www.myhard.com/20020626/amd_roadmap_0625.gif |
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Serial ATA on the Horizon |
6/26/2002 |
Seagate's first native Serial ATA drives will be based on the new Barracuda ATA V drives, says Bernard Eisman, product marketing manager in the personal storage division. The Serial ATA-based drives will include a different drive chip set than the Ultra ATA 100-based Barracuda drives and also include a larger buffer (8MB, up from 2MB).
The company expects to ship Serial ATA-based Barracuda ATA V drives in 80GB and 120GB sizes. Despite the new interface and performance-enhancing buffer size increase, the Serial ATA-based drives will likelcle.rry just a $10 premium over their Ultra ATA 100 siblings, Eisman says.
The importance of native support has to do with the drive's throughput, Paulsen says. Current ATA 100-based hard drives reconfigured to work with Serial ATA will require a bridge technology that translates parallel data streams into serial and back. That could cause a hit to the drive's overall performance, he says.
Despite Seagate's native Serial ATA support, today's existing PC's don't have the required interface, which means you'll need an add-in card for your current PC. Seagate has yet to decide whether to bundle Serial ATA add-in cards with its drives, Eisman says.
The Serial ATA Working Group has said it expects chip set and motherboard manufacturers to begin implementing Serial ATA support by 2003, according to Paulsen.
Faster, Cleaner
Serial ATA technology promises to improve the speed at which a hard drive can transmit data. The current industry-standard interface is Ultra ATA 100, which offers up to 100-megabyte-per-second throughput; Serial ATA will begin with transfer rates of up to 150 MBps and will eventually reach a level of up to 600 MBps. Maxtor launched ATA 133 drives last year, but Maxtor was the only manufacturer to implement the standard on its drives, and few motherboard vendors adopted it, opting to wait instead for Serial ATA.
Other benefits of Serial ATA technology include a better cable system. The Serial ATA cable--which carries both data and power to the drive--requires lower voltage to transmit signals, meaning it can transfer data from smaller and lower-powered PC components. The cable is also more flexible and much thinner than ATA 100's ribbon cable, which permits better airflow within the PC and more compact designs.
Full Article:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,102252,tk,dn062502X,00.asp |
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Universe is 'Cosmic Latte' |
6/26/2002 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - First they said it was green. Then they admitted a mistake and called it beige. Now the astronomers who figured out the color of the universe have a proper name for the shade: Cosmic Latte.
Johns Hopkins University astronomers Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry picked the name from numerous e-mail entries that included Cosmic Cream, Astronomical Almond and even Primordial Clam Chowder.
The scientists said Cosmic Latte was an "interesting suggestion because 'latteo' means 'Milky Way' in Galileo's native Italian."
Full Article
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=humannews&StoryID=1135097
How and Why This Matters
http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~kgb/cosspec/ |
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U.S. Army Plans New Center to Develop Military Nanotech |
6/26/2002 |
The United States Army is reaching out to academia and industry to build a technology research campus that will simultaneously help armaments developers exploit nanotechnology and shepherd to the marketplace nanotechnology applications and products.
The partnerships have not been established yet. The Army is soliciting proposals for research from universities and businesses.
The U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) at New Jersey’s Picatinny Arsenal near New York City is committed to nanotechnology, said Mark Mezger, nanotechnologies program coordinator at the arsenal. The hope, he said, is that the Army’s investment in nanotechnology combined with industry and academic research will lead to a “Nano Valley” in northern New Jersey.
“The federal government has about $1 billion in nanotechnology research in place, and that’s a lot of research activity,” he said. “The Army needs some sort of process by which we can monitor all of the different nanotechnologies going on out there, determine which ones will help us and transition those from the laboratory and develop them, so we can put them in the hands of weapons developers.”
The research must have a military application, Mezger said, but the commercialization component is critical.
Full Article:
http://smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=4030 |
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Intel vs. AMD: The Chess Battle |
6/26/2002 |
The German publication c't magazine have decided to test the Intel dual Xeon 2.4GHz machine against a dual Athlon 2GHz machine in 55 chess matches.
You can watch the event unfold here:
http://www.heise.de/ct/schachduell/
Current Results: (4:23am PST)
Intel: 18 Games Won
AMD: 19 Games Won
Games Left: 18
Go check it out for current results! |
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SEC Sues Teen over Fake Bloomberg Internet Story |
6/26/2002 |
"U.S. regulators on Tuesday sued a 17-year-old who posted a phony story on Internet sites under a Bloomberg journalist's name, hoping to boost the stock price of a drug company in which he had just invested.
Benjamin Snyder, from Lawrenceville, Georgia, confessed to stealing the pen-name of the financial news company's John Rega to try to inflate Viragen International Inc.'s shares, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said.
"He didn't make any profits but we still sued him because his conduct was outrageous. We will come down hard and fast on anyone who tries to exploit the Internet to defraud investors," said John Stark, the SEC's head of Internet enforcement.
U.S. regulators issued a cease-and-desist order, prohibiting the teenager from a repeat performance. Stark said they had not fined the student because he had confessed to his misdemeanors and no investors had been involved.
In the fake article, the high school student revealed Viragen had been working on a top-secret anthrax treatment called Vivox, which had just received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration."
Full Article:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/internetreport/bloomberg_dc_1
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Counterfeit Intel CPU's Making a Comeback |
6/26/2002 |
"A new breed of Intel Pentium 4 boxed processors have entered the Indian market. The difference this time is that these chips are not overclocked nor remarked. They are all the best of breed out of Intel factories!
But Intel or its authorized agents have not packed them!
Intel sells its processors in two packages. One is the OEM or the tray, where the bare CPU is shipped in trays sans connectors, cables, coolers or manuals. The latter is the boxed or retail versions. The retail versions have the aforementioned menagerie, which makes life easier for the average assembler in South Asia who sells between five to five hundred PCs a month.
The boxed processors are hugely popular in countries in Asia, Africa and many parts of Europe where the PC builder market is significantly larger compared to the branded players like HPQ, Dell & Co.
The average difference between the boxed and tray versions in the official transfer price list to distributors from Intel is about three per cent. Not a great difference on the Celeron processors that sell less than hundred US Dollars! However on a Pentium 4 processor the difference can be significant in a market place where the typical margins are less than two per cent."
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/26060201.htm |
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Scientists Chart a New Path Toward Quantum Computing |
6/26/2002 |
"A group of scientists have published what they believe is the most logical path toward creation of a quantum computer, and small tech figures largely into the development of the device.
Traditional computing is limited by transistors, which can have only two states – they are either on or off. But atoms or molecules in a quantum computer can dwell in several different states simultaneously, increasing exponentially the rate at which complex calculations can take place or the volume of information that can be stored.
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Massachussetts Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan published a paper Thursday in Nature magazine showing how best to use ion traps, or electromagnetic microdevices that capture ions and permit scientists to manipulate them, in construction of a quantum computer.
Much research on ion traps and quantum computers has centered on the idea that many ions could be manipulated within a single trap. The new research builds on earlier studies that suggest using several interconnected ion traps.
"For technical reasons, it’s a lot harder to manage a lot of bits in one trap, which is why we are making this," said David Wineland, a NIST scientist who co-authored the paper.
Wineland said he has worked on ion traps for 30 years, and that the other authors of the paper – David Kielpinski at MIT and Christopher Monroe at the University of Michigan – were affiliated with NIST when the idea for the research first started to take shape.
"What we are trying to point out is we have at least a straightforward path to building a large device. That isn’t to say there aren’t a lot of technical problems, but at least we have a straightforward concept of how this might work," Wineland said."
Full Article:
http://smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=3975&keyword=ion&summary=1&startsum=1 |
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New AMD info from PC Expo 2002 |
6/26/2002 |
Clawhammer will be named the Athlon, but will have a suffix (like XP)
Barton will be coming out and will have 512K Bus speed wasn't specified but I'm sure it'll be 166Mhz.
AMD predicts by the end of 2003, 50% will be 64-bit and by end of 2004, near 100%.
The Clawhammer will be coming out in December of 2002.
There is no DDR-2 support yet, but they assured me that they will support new technology as they see fit.
nVidia, SiS, Ali, VIA all have chipsets coming for the Hammer.
The Tbred will go up to 2600+ and then Barton will take over and go maybe until 2800+, AMD wants to cater to Socket A still.
The Clawhammer will debut at greater than 3000+, but the clock speed is undetermined and yes the samples were running at 800mhz.
Full Article, Several Pics:
http://www.aselabs.com/articles.php?articleid=26 |
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John Carmack on the Matrox Parhelia and Doom 3 |
6/26/2002 |
Information received from id Software's Public Finger Service:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to id Software's Finger Service V1.5!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: John Carmack
Email:
Description: Programmer
Project:
Last Updated: 06/25/2002 15:38:48 (Central Standard Time)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
June 25, 2002
-------------
The Matrox Parhelia Report:
The executive summary is that the Parhelia will run Doom III, but it is not performance competitive with Nvidia or ATI.
Driver issue remain, so it is not perfect yet, but I am confident that Matrox will resolve them.
The performance was really disappointing for the first 256 bit DDR card. I tried to set up a "poster child" case that would stress the memory subsystem above and beyond any driver or triangle level inefficiencies, but I was unable to get it to ever approach the performance of a GF4.
The basic hardware support is good, with fragment flexibility better than GF4 (but not as good as ATI 8500), but it just doesn't keep up in raw performance.
With a die shrink, this chip could probably be a contender, but there are probably going to be other chips out by then that will completely eclipse this generation of products.
None of the special features will be really useful for Doom:
The 10 bit color framebuffer is nice, but Doom needs more than 2 bits of destination alpha when a card only has four texture units, so we can't use it.
Anti aliasing features are nice, but it isn't all that fast in minimum feature mode, so nobody is going to be turning on AA. The same goes for "surround gaming". While the framerate wouldn't be 1/3 the base, it would still probably be cut in half.
Displacement mapping. Sigh. I am disappointed that the industry is still pursuing any quad based approaches. Haven't we learned from the stellar success of 3DO, Saturn, and NV1 that quads really suck? In any case, we can't use any geometry amplification scheme (including ATI's truform) in conjunction with stencil shadow volumes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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Inquirer Confirms Radeon 10,000 (R300) and 128-bit Color |
6/25/2002 |
We had been guessing for quite some time that the next generation ATI R300 video card would be called the Radeon 10,000. This is still uncertain until the card is officially, but when it is launched it will implement 128-bit colour.
"According to our sources, the 128-bit implementation will make multitexturing applications look better and you will be able to have 32-bits per colour. This is amazing since it enables you to have 16.7 milion combnations per colour. In current 32-bit color you just have 8 pixels per colour, giving just 256 variations of colors.
128-bit precision should be part of the DX 9 specification and if you want your hardware to be DX 9 compatible you need to have this precision inside. This leads us to the conclusion that Nvidia NV30 will also have support for 128-bit floating point precision.
128-bit floating point colour will bring more cinematic reality in effects used in games and everything will look lovely, we're told."
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/25060213.htm |
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Matrox Parhelia Might Not Be Ready for Primetime |
6/25/2002 |
Anandtech:
"The boards we received were final hardware and were running at final clock speeds. The first board we tested ended up dying on us after a little over 24 hours of testing. Early in its testing (before any 3D tests were run), the fan failed due to a loose wire, which may have damaged the core. Remember that an overheating core reduces the life of a chip and we believe that this may have been the cause of the card's failure. Matrox attributed the loose fan cable to the card being handled a lot before it was shipped to us in order to ensure that it would work properly."
I can imagine how pleased you would be if the manufacturer physically handled all of your computer components before they sent them to you. We wonder how much "handling" has to be done to cause the fan to fail. If this was a solid, stable product, then why would such handling be necessary in the first place? Also, note how hard Anandtech tries to play this off. On an unrelated note Matrox is sponsoring a rather large advertisement on Anandtech.com
Tom's Hardware:
"And so, the test sample finally got to our lab on Friday, June 21. The initial tests got off to a good start, when our system choked on a VESA VGA bug in Parhelia, which appeared in connection with the DOS boot manager (XOSL) in our testing systems. More on that later."
The Mysterious Non Working Demos:
"The guys from Matrox were there showing off their Matrox Parhelia 512 but it wasn't available at the time for showing. I went past the display very fast and just snapped a quick picture when the Matrox guy all of a sudden stopped me and started questioning me. He wondered why I took a picture of the displays when there was nothing on the screen and he thought I was up to something. He obviously thought I was going to joke around about how the displays were not running and bad mouth Matrox but I meant no harm when taking the picture. I just wanted to let you guys the readers know that Matrox was there. It was just a shame that they were not running at the time."
http://www.explosivehardware.net/articles/amdxptour/index.shtml
"and Matrox was on hand with their Parhelia-512 but it wasn't doing anything. Talking to the Matrox rep, I was told that they'd been having a few problems with their early beta videoboards, but was assured that Matrox was well on its way to solving them."
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1132
All of these coincidences lead us to believe that the Matrox Parhelia might not be ready for primetime just yet. While the product has been officially released we wouldn't be surprised if there are more delays until the retail version hits stores. |
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Microsoft to reveal plans for Office, Tablet PC |
6/25/2002 |
Microsoft, looking to expand its desktop software monopoly into new areas, on Tuesday will announce plans for a new version of its cash cow, Office, and the launch of the first Tablet PC systems.
Jeff Raikes, Microsoft group vice president, will make the announcements during a keynote speech Tuesday at the TechXNY conference in New York.
Raikes will announce that the new Office version, being developed under the name Office 11, is scheduled to ship by mid 2003. That version will include better support for Extensible Markup Language (XML), an industry standard for data description and exchange and a key technology behind Microsoft's .Net Web services plan.
The current version of Office, Office XP, shipped last summer.
Raikes will also demonstrate the next version of the company's Outlook messaging software.
The new XML capability of Office is intended to make it easier to link desktop programs, such as spreadsheets and word processing documents, into corporate data stored in customer relationship management and other business systems.
Raikes, in his keynote, will discuss boosting the productivity of what the company terms "knowledge workers," or typical PC users in large companies. The software maker sees features that integrate Office programs into larger corporate data systems as a key reason for large companies choosing Office over competitors such as Sun Microsystems StarOffice or OpenOffice.
"We pay very close attention to competitors and what's happening broadly in the market. Customers (say) their Office tools are fundamental to their productivity. Continuing to make sure the capabilities of Office advance to help them connect to business systems and data…That's what is most important," Raikes said.
Full Article:
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-938986.html |
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Seagate serves up 60GB on a platter |
6/25/2002 |
Hard drive maker Seagate Technology claimed a new record for cramming data onto a disk, announcing a new line of 3.5-inch drives that can fit 60 gigabytes on a single platter.
Seagate's 120GB, dual-disc Barracuda ATA V drives will be the first to support Serial ATA, a new type of connection for transferring data to and from a hard drive. Seagate will also make standard Barracuda ATA V drives.
Current drives top out at 40GB per platter, which are stacked up like flapjacks to make a complete hard drive, and density has been doubling roughly every year. But there are signs the density curve may slow a bit to keep pace with storage demand, said Jim Porter, president of research firm Disk/Trend.
"The capacities per drive are going up faster than the market has an appetite for," he said. "The industry may say, 'OK, it certainly doesn't make much sense to double the capacity per platter every year; maybe we should increase it 50 percent this year.' The industry may settle on 60GB per platter this year, considering that's enough to meet demand."
Full Article:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-938939.html
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Sun to push UltraSparc V past 3GHz |
6/25/2002 |
"Sun Microsystems' UltraSparc V, two generations out from the newly introduced processor at the heart of the company's servers, will debut at 1.8GHz and extend past 3GHz, the company is expected to disclose Tuesday.
Facing the imminent arrival of Intel's Itanium processor, Sun is taking the offensive by letting David Yen, general manager of Sun's Processor Products Group, uncloak some of the company's plans Tuesday. These future-looking "roadmaps" are a key part of computing companies' efforts to convince customers, software companies, industry analysts and others that a company such as Sun has strong product plans.
According to a presentation Yen is expected to make Tuesday, the UltraSparc III will reach 1.2GHz, a smidgen faster than the 1.05GHz products expected soon from Sun. UltraSparc IV then will debut at 1.2GHz and run to 2GHz. Sun didn't release a schedule for the improvements.
The UltraSparc V, designed to have a dual personality to handle different types of workloads, is set to debut at 1.8GHz and run beyond 3GHz."
Full Article:
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-938995.html?tag=fd_top |
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Microsoft Working on Hybrid Xbox Project |
6/25/2002 |
"Microsoft Corp. has been quietly working since last fall on a device combining its money-losing Xbox video game console and with its digital video recorder, technology magazine Red Herring reported on Tuesday.
The publication also cited a source as saying internal Microsoft estimates showed that the software giant would lose $750 million on the Xbox game console this fiscal year and $1.1 billion in the next fiscal year, ending June 2003.
That compares with an estimate given to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in 1999 that the Xbox project could lose $900 million over eight years, author Dean Takahashi said.
Takahashi recently released a book, "Opening the Xbox," about the early history of the Microsoft console, part of a broader strategy by the software maker to move away from its reliance on PC software into digital entertainment.
Representatives of Microsoft were not immediately available for comment.
At the Xbox's cost of about $325, Red Herring reported, Microsoft loses at least $150 on each box, which retails for $199 but is sold wholesale to stores for $175."
Full Article:
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessionid=MTTCFA53AQZSMCRBAEKSFEYKEEATIIWD?
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Matrox Parhelia a Flop? |
6/24/2002 |
"Earlier today a well-known German website disclosed their Matrox Parhelia numbers. The pages seem to have been removed at this time. While we cannot legally give you the content, as it is copyright material, we can certainly discuss what we have seen.
Aquanox - Parhelia was beaten by ATI's 128MB 8500 and the Ti4600 nearly doubled the score.
Comanche 4 - Parhelia not breaking the 30FPS barrier at 1024x768 while the Ti4600 broke 40.
Jedi Knight 2 - At 1024x768 the Parhelia was about 30% behind both the 8500 and the Ti4600.
3DMark2002 SE v330 - Just breaking into the 7000s while their test system was breaking 10K with the Ti4600. The 8500 dusted it again as well.
Quake 3 Arena - Parhelia lagging way behind both cards and not even giving deathmatch playable frame rates at 1600x1200 in my opinion.
At this point I am really wondering what Matrox was thinking. I know full well that they have explained that their Parhelia will be the card for tomorrow, but while it is currently not keeping pace with the current generation's GPUs, across the board, you have to wonder. Triple head gaming is not going to save Matrox this time round if what we saw is correct. I can certainly understand their reasons with not wanting to give the [H] a card at this point."
The NDA is lifted tomorrow on the Parhelia so we will be seeing tons of results to compare its performance to. This does not bode well for Matrox.
Original Article:
http://www.hardocp.com
Update: TheInquirer Has this to say
http://www.theinquirer.net/24060221.htm |
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Intel Pentium 4 Mobile 2.0GHz Released |
6/24/2002 |
Intel Corporation today announced it has begun shipping the world's first microprocessor designed for mobile PCs to operate at 2 gigahertz (GHz) — or two billion cycles per second. The new Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor – M delivers outstanding performance for business and consumer laptops, enabling a richer Internet experience, faster digital media, increasing business productivity and new applications such as wireless gaming.
Intel's commitment to designing high performance processors, chipsets and wireless solutions for every type of mobile PC is helping to grow the worldwide mobile segment. In the last 12 years, Intel has delivered more than 100 million mobile processors. Industry analyst firm Gartner Group predicts that over the next four years, laptop sales will grow at almost twice the rate of the overall PC market.**
"Systems based on the new 2 GHz Mobile Pentium 4 Processor – M provide businesses and consumers with the horse power to tackle the most demanding compute, communications, digital and multimedia applications," said Anand Chandrasekher, vice president, Intel's Mobile Platforms Group. "It took the industry 11 years to reach 1 GHz in mobile computing. We've doubled that frequency to 2 GHz in only 15 months."
Press Release:
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20020624comp.htm?iid=Homepage+Update_020624b&
Product Page:
http://www.intel.com/homepage/land/02ww26.htm?iid=Homepage+Feature_text&
Review:
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/index.cfm?go=news.view&news=2443 |
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Yamaha to etch graphics, logos on CD-Rs |
6/24/2002 |
Electronics giant Yamaha says it has come up with a solution for what to do with all the empty space that is often left on recordable CDs after you have burned your music, photos or data onto them: laser-etch a logo.
Yamaha's CRW-F1 drive, which went on sale in Japan earlier this month, is the first CD-RW drive that is able to burn images directly onto a CD-R disc. All CD, CD-R and CD-RW drives user laser beams to read and (where appropriate) write data as a series of tiny dots on the surface of a special material sandwiched between two transparent plastic discs. Usually these dots are only noticeable by the interference patterns they produce, which create rainbow effects when held up to the light.
What Yamaha has done with the CRW-F1 is to introduce a technology it calls DiscT@2TM, which allows the laser to tattoo graphics, text and designs onto the unused outer portion of any CD-R disc. Obviously, if a disc is filled with data there will be no space to etch the graphics, but according to Allen H. Gharapetian, general manager of Yamaha multimedia products division, most people usually burn less than 350 megabytes of data -- or 60 minutes of audio -- on a blank disc.
"This leaves ample room for adding text and graphics to the disc," Gharapetian said. He added that the process eliminates the need for cumbersome stick-on labels, which peel off in the heat, become illegible when wet, or cause the CD to spin unevenly. Creating a laser-etched logo takes less than a minute, according to Gharapetian.
Full Article:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-938739.html
Yamaha Product Info Page:
http://www.yamaha.com/yec/multimedia/customer/features/feat_prodsCRWF1_1.html |
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Beware of .Net sticker shock |
6/24/2002 |
"Companies planning on moving their old programs to Microsoft's new .Net software plan had better prepare for sticker shock: Making the conversion could cost roughly half of the original development cost, Gartner says.
According to a new cost model devised by Gartner, the cost of moving older Windows programs to .Net may range from 40 percent to as much as 60 percent of the cost of developing the programs in the first place.
That may come as a blow to penny-pinching information systems departments in big companies, even those very familiar with Windows programming.
Typically, moving to a new software release isn't so costly. But, warns Gartner's Mark Driver, .Net isn't just a new release of Windows.
"People mistakenly assume the cost of upgrading will somehow be the same as going from one version of a well-established product to another. That's definitely not the case (with .Net)," said Driver, who devised the cost model.
Ari Bixhorn, Microsoft's product manager for Visual Basic.Net, disputed Gartner's conclusions. He said most conversions to .Net are about 95 percent error-free, meaning they can be completed at a cost much lower than what Gartner estimates.
Gartner, however, considered factors other than code conversions in its analysis, such as training and lost productivity. Bixhorn said he didn't see either training or productivity problems as much of a concern."
Full Article:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-938434.html |
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Evidence found of lake, catastrophic flood on Mars |
6/24/2002 |
Geologists at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum have discovered a large former lake in the highlands of Mars that would cover an area the size of Texas and New Mexico combined, and which overflowed to carve one of that planet's largest valleys. The findings appear in the June 21 issue of the journal Science.
The flood channel, Ma'adim Vallis, is more than 550 miles long and up to 6,900 feet deep, making it larger than Earth's Grand Canyon.
"Imagine more than five times the volume of water in the Great Lakes being released in a single flood, and you'll have a sense of the scale of this event," said Ross Irwin, a geologist in the museum's Center for Earth and Planetary Studies (CEPS) and the paper's lead author.
Mars is now a cold desert planet but its many dry valleys could indicate that water once flowed on its surface. Recent results from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft have found evidence of water trapped in the near surface of the polar regions.
"The size of this lake-1,400 miles long-suggests Mars was warmer and wetter than previously thought," said Robert Craddock, a CEPS geologist and co-author of the paper.
Full Article:
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0206/23marslake/ |
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Apple Pays "Real" Users |
6/24/2002 |
Windows "Switchers" Were Solicited, Paid
It turns out that Apple's latest ad campaign, in which former Windows users explain why they moved to the Mac, is less than honest. Contrary to comments made by CEO Steve Jobs last week, Apple solicited the ex-Windows users featured in the ads--the users didn't approach the company first. Furthermore, the participants were paid to be in the ads and will receive royalties each time their ad airs. I don't think any of this would be noteworthy if Jobs hadn't implied that the users approached Apple instead of the other way around.
Original Posting:
http://www.wininformant.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=25671 |
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The Big Secret: Microsoft Wants to Own Your Computer |
6/24/2002 |
"Computer security is enough of a worry that the software colossus Microsoft views it as a threat to its continued success: thus the apocalyptic Bill Gates memo in January calling for a “Trustworthy Computing” jihad. What Gates did not specifically mention was Microsoft’s hyperambitious long-range plan to literally change the architecture of PCs in order to address the concerns of security, privacy and intellectual property. The plan, revealed for the first time to NEWSWEEK, is... Palladium, and it’s one of the riskiest ventures the company has ever attempted. Though Microsoft does not claim a panacea, the system is designed to dramatically improve our ability to control and protect personal and corporate information. Even more important, Palladium is intended to become a new platform for a host of yet-unimagined services to enable privacy, commerce and entertainment in the coming decades. “This isn’t just about solving problems, but expanding new realms of possibilities in the way people live and work with computers,” says product manager Mario Juarez.
Because its ultimate success depends on ubiquity, Palladium is either going to be a home run or a mortifying whiff. “We have to ship 100 million of these before it really makes a difference,” says Microsoft vice president Will Poole. That’s why the company can’t do it without heavyweight partners. Chipmakers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have signed on to produce special security chips that are integral to the system. “It’s a groundswell change,” says AMD’s Geoffrey Strongin. “A whole new class of processors not differentiated by speed, but security.” The next step is getting the likes of Dell, HP and IBM to remake their PCs to accommodate the system."
It looks like the Linux Community is going to need to make their own hardware and wear aluminum foil on their heads to keep safe from Microsoft in the future. :/
Full Article:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/770511.asp |
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Best Buy wants GeForce small claims moved to higher court |
6/24/2002 |
"Customers who filed cases in US small courts against Best Buy over what's claimed to be an error in pricing on a GeForce 3 TI1200 are facing a tactic from the retail store that could squish their claims.
Best Buy has filed an application to have all small claims moved to a Minnesota district court, and has given some interesting reasons for the switch.
In a court document filed in the last week, Best Buy lawyers say they want the case moved "because of the potential complicated nature" of the claims and because they can't find an adequate representative in Washington State.
Lawyers in Washington State ain't gonna like that bit of the filing.
The really odd thing that the court application, a copy of which we have, mentions the GeForce 3 but as any fule kno, the product in question was a GeForce 4, which presumably got Best Buy into bother with Nvidia for posting the thing on its site before the product was released."
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/24060207.htm
Hypothermia Followings:
http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/articles/bestbuy_gf4deal.html |
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NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200 Roundup - June 2002 |
6/24/2002 |
"It wasn't too long ago that we crowned NVIDIA's GeForce4 Ti 4200 the best GPU under $200. As impressive as the faster members of NVIDIA's flagship line happen to be, it is the attractive low price of the Ti 4200 that gives it so much attention. And it doesn't look like its price/performance ratio will be threatened anytime soon.
If you've been following any of the news floating around since Computex you will know that NVIDIA is supposed to release NV30 along with AGP 8X versions of their current GPUs towards the end of this year, and nothing more. If this holds true, then it means that the Ti 4200 will go unthreatened by NVIDIA until next Spring when NV31 will replace it.
Competition from ATI has been relatively non-existant, with the Radeon 8500LE unable to hold a candle to the Ti 4200. Soon enough we'll see the introduction of the RV250 core from ATI which will be targeting the same market as the Ti 4200 although we're expecting performance to be equivalent at best at this point. From what we heard at Computex a couple of weeks back, a 300MHz RV250 should offer performance that's marginally better than the stock Radeon 8500. Looking back to our last review that compared the two GPUs, that should put the RV250 pretty close to the Ti 4200.
Our point here is that investing in a Ti 4200 today doesn't pose much of a risk; at worst your card will be slightly outperformed or at best you'll miss out on an AGP 8X version of the card by the end of the year, either way you can't really lose. It's rare that we're able to look what's going on in a particular market and pinpoint the absolute perfect time to jump on a product, but this happens to be one of those cases. If you're looking for anything more expensive however, the best move is definitely to wait; R300 and Parhelia are right around the corner not to mention the elusive NV30."
Full Round-Up:
http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1643 |
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Microsoft Brings Instant Messenger to Cellphones |
6/24/2002 |
"Users of Instant Messenger can keep receiving messages, even when they are not logged on to their personal computer, as Microsoft and eight European mobile operators expanded the service to cellphones on Monday.
A message sent from a PC to a user who is 'off-line' will automatically be forwarded to his mobile phone in the form of a short SMS text message. Replies from a mobile phone will land back in the Instant Messenger dialog box on the computer. Mobile phone users will be charged per message received or sent.
Operators in Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria, Turkey and Norway, with a combined total of 31 million customers, launched the service on Monday, in conjunction with Microsoft's internet services unit MSN.
Microsoft is the only company bringing an Instant Messenger to European mobile phones, but America Online and VoiceStream, owned by Germany's Deutsche Telekom, have brought AOL's Instant Messenger to phones in the United States since November.
MSN Instant Messenger has 13 million users in Europe and 46 million worldwide. It competes head to head with AOL Instant Messenger whose users generate some 1.2 billion messages a day.
U.S. mobile subscribers need special phones with bespoke AOL software to use the messaging service. AOL and VoiceStream provide a special version of Nokia's 3390 phone. Soon AOL's software will also come with the new SGH-r225M from South Korea's Samsung Electronics. "
Full Article:
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessionid=TXMNGCEITWHTCCRBAEZSFEYKEEATIIWD? |
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New Pentium 4-M breaks 2GHz barrier |
6/24/2002 |
Intel will break the 2GHz barrier for notebook PCs on Monday with the launch of a new Pentium 4-M chip.
The new 2GHz Pentium 4-M chip, which also comes along with a 1.9GHz Pentium 4-M and a handful of mobile Celerons, meet's Intel's internal target for shipping a 2GHz mobile chip by mid-year.
Although the PC market overall has lurched into the doldrums again, notebooks have fared better than desktops in a variety of markets for some time.
Notebook shipments are expected to grow 17 percent year over year in 2002 from 2001, said Anand Chandrasekher, vice president and general manager of Intel's Mobile Platforms Group, citing a study from Gartner.
Intel's new Pentium 4-M and Celeron chips will be offered in new notebooks issued by a slew of PC makers on Monday. Starting prices on new machines from companies such as Dell Computer and Hewlett-Packard will range from $1,299 for a 1.33GHz Celeron machine to about $2,000 for a 2GHz notebook, Intel representatives said.
Full Article:
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-938554.html?tag=fd_top
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UK shortage hits Pentium 4 sales |
6/24/2002 |
"Resellers in the UK tell us that they're having difficulty sourcing enough 2.26GHz Pentium 4s to supply demand.
One resellers said he'd had Pentium 4s on order with his Intel UK distributor for some weeks and finally received a few dozen on Friday, which he expected to sell out by the end of the day.
But he described the 2.53GHz Pentium 4s as "paper launched", saying that while it was hard to get sufficient supply of the 2.26GHz parts, the higher speed parts were almost impossible to obtain."
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/24060202.htm |
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Site Steals Flash Games |
6/24/2002 |
A French Gaming Website has stolen hundreds of Flash games from many respected Flash Websites including FlashArcade, CleverMedia, Shockwave.com, and Warner Brothers. The Website: http://www.flash-game.net/ http://www.flashparadise.com/ http://www.flash-games.net/ http://www.t45ol.com/
A Brief List of Stolen Files:
Stolen from Cartoon Network: DBZ Mission to Namek, Dexter's Bubble Juggle, Dragon Ball Z, Marvin the Martion vs. The Earth, Samurai Jack
Stolen from Debreuil Digital Works: Game #113, Minefield of Death
Stolen from evolver.co.uk: Way of The Stick
Stolen from eDesign.uk.com: Bowling, 3D Crates
Stolen from FlashArcade.com: Bubble Trouble, Cable VS DSL, Gopher It, River Kayak, Something Fishy 3, Spinsect, Worm Food, Zig Zag
Stolen from Hotwheels: Figure 8
Stolen from Icon-Nicholson: SnowCraft
Stolen from Joe Cartoon: Osama Sissy Fight, Torpedo Joe
Stolen from MiniClip: Dancing Ant, Space Fighter Rebellion, Wacky Faces, War On Terrorism
Stolen from Newgrounds.com: Big Brown Bary, Crazy Shuttle, Pico's School, Police Bike, Rock Paper Scissors, Sag Way, Samurai Asshole, Wasted Sky
Stolen from Octopi.com: Fishing Fever, What A Shot, Across the Middle (Octane Games), Word Up, GutterBowl
Stolen from Orisinal: Aim & Fire, Among the Clouds, Dare Dozen, Silent Water
Stolen from Sega: Super Monkey Ball Mini
Stolen from Shockwave.com: One-on-One Basketball Challenge, Tamale Loco
Stolen from UltimateArcade.com: Diamond Chaser, Ping AI, Conundrum, Word Search 2000
Stolen from Warner Bros: The Matrix
CleverMedia has issued a response here:
http://www.clevermedia.com/stolengames/
If you want to let the site know how you feel about this you can email them:
remove@t45ol.com, yuyan@t45ol.com, felix@NEO45.com, info@t45ol.com, admin@envolz.com |
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The SpaceCase |
6/23/2002 |
We have the great pleasure of bringing you another great EPIA-Based PC project. Bart Banaan in the Netherlands has created a custom case made of Plexiglass - if there were a competition for number of lights crammed in a PC we're sure Bart would win easily! In Bart's own words he wanted the LED's to be "near burning your eyeballs". Weext- only imagine he's trying to avoid seasonal affective disorder next winter!
He's managed to squeeze much more than bright lights in there, too - there's also a very nifty looking LCD panel (much larger than you normally see in PC projects). The construction pictures are very informative and he planned his project well - enjoy. We've included over 50 hi-res pictures in the SpaceCase Gallery. You can contact Bart at bart.banaan@12mov.nl and us at feedback@mini-itx.com. Do you have a Mini-ITX based project we should be seeing here?
Full Article:
http://www.miniitx.com/projects/spacecase/default.asp |
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'White box' makers fill niche, fuel optimism |
6/23/2002 |
"Plexus is not listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Plexus could not have swung an initial public stock offering even on the most drunken days of the technology investment binge. On a good day, Plexus has two employees.
But Plexus is helping to fuel the regeneration of U.S. commerce in an old-fashioned, surefire way, filling crannies in the world's vast menu of products and services, adding value to Maryland's gross state product and keeping Dell Computer and Hewlett Packard a little worried.
Plexus is one of hundreds of American companies that make no-name, "white box" servers and personal computers.
I guess I knew this industry existed. But I had no idea it was so big and important until two weeks ago, when IDC, a technology-research firm, was obliged to sharply increase its estimate for global computer sales last year because of surging white-box volume.
Industry analysts had long noted a discrepancy between reported sales of assembled computers and sales of components such as Intel Pentium microprocessors and Western Digital hard drives. Shipments of the parts often seemed to add up to more than shipments of the wholes.
IDC says it solved the mystery. The extra components were not revenue-inflating fictions or obsolete scrap. Instead, the parts were making their way into millions of machines flying way under the radar of analysts used to thinking that Dell, IBM, Hewlett, Acer, Gateway, Samsung, Toshiba, NEC and Fujitsu owned most of the personal computer business."
Full Article:
http://sunspot.net/business/bal-bz.hancock23jun23.column?coll=bal-business-headlines |
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Moby Attributes Sales Slide To The 'Pearl Jam Effect' |
6/23/2002 |
Fans Just say the album sucks..
" Moby recently shared his ideas on record sales, charts, and the role technology has on the industry. Moby's new album, 18, is currently at Number 35 on the Billboard 200 album chart, selling approximately 32,000 copies last week. The album was at Number 15 two weeks ago, and has been decreasing in sales. Moby says 18 is suffering from "Pearl Jam Effect."
"I described the 'Pearl Jam Effect' as being a phenomenon wherein bands who have very technically savvy fans will see their records do poorly in the charts, whereas bands/artists who have less technically savvy fans will do quite well on the charts," explained Moby in a recent journal entry on his website. "This is owing to the fact that bands/artists with technically savvy fans will have a lot of fans who will end up downloading music or burning CDs where as less tech-savvy fans will end up buying their CDs."
Full Article:
http://launch.yahoo.com/read/news.asp?contentID=209387 |
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ClawHammer Motherboards in Stores? |
6/23/2002 |
"The Japanese stores, which are known for being the first ones in the world to start selling early products, were noticed showing two new MSI mainboards for the not yet announced ClawHammer processor from AMD. These mainboards are working samples and will not be sold. They are simply demonstrated as some kind of fetishes in the so called “future technology museum”.
The mainboards are called K8A Gem (MS-6589) and K8H Gem (MS-6702). The first one uses a chipset developed by AMD, AMD-8000, and the second one is based on VIA Technologies K8HTA core logic.
These MSI products boast a few very interesting peculiarities, which we are going to discuss now. Both mainboards are equipped with a socket marked as Socket754. supposedly, the marking will remain valid for the future products as well.
We have to point out slightly unusual PCB design of the K8A Gem mainboard based on AMD chipset (you can see the pictures here). The two DIMM slots available on the board are located not on the right of the processor socket, as they actually should but above. As for the expansion slots location it appeared completely outstanding and we have never come across anything like that until today."
Full Article:
http://xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1024799522 |
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NeverWinter Nights Review: |
6/23/2002 |
"One of the oldest questions in history is, "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" One of the oldest answers to that question was given by Aristotle, who stated that it was, in fact, the chicken. The philosopher postulated that while a chicken is an actual chicken, an egg is potential chicken. Since actuality always precedes potentiality, the chicken came first.
BioWare, however, eschews Aristotelian logic by offering actuality and potentiality in a single package. Its Neverwinter Nights is an excellent single-player RPG -- there's the chicken. But with its toolset and Dungeon Master client, it offers the potential for an unlimited amount of fantastic multiplayer gaming -- there's the egg. This incredibly ambitious product has gone through nearly five years of development, and although it's not the best-looking RPG on the market, it's well worth the wait.
Based on BioWare's Aurora Engine, Neverwinter Nights is the company's first 3D RPG. Many longtime fans of the developer feared that the gameplay they cherished in the Baldur's Gate series would be lost in the transition to a modern engine. They needn't have worried, as the game plays and controls just how you'd think a 3D Baldur's Gate game should. When played using the default camera zoomed all the way back, it's totally BG. Fans of EverQuest can change the camera and zoom in for a view they're more familiar with."
Full Review:
http://www.gamespy.com/reviews/june02/neverwinter/# |
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Knight-Rider LED Mod |
6/23/2002 |
Knight Rider, a cult TV series from the 80's, starred a gallant crime fighting hero who didn't exist, (!), and a talking car with a mind of it's own called KITT. The car, a black Trans Am, had one cool visual feature, it's front sensor, a red scanning light panning back and forth. This effect has proven so popular, it appears in various guises in numerous TV shows and films. Of course, if it looks cool then it doesn't take long before the PC modding community starts to add it to their repertoire of eye candy. So without more ado let's move on to my version of the "Knight Rider" effect.
This circuit has proven to be so versatile that I decided to make several variations of it and hopefully you should find one that takes your fancy. Due to the numerous permutations of the circuit, I have stuck to building it on a PCB. Of course you can build it on stripboard if you prefer but I will leave the design of that layout up to you. If you have never made a PCB before or find the prospect too daunting, I will be producing a beginners guide to making PCBs soon. It is really easy and generally quicker than using stripboard. It took me less than 1 hour to produce all the PCBs in this article. Read on...
The different versions are:
1. The basic or classic effect. This uses 10 leds for the display.
2. The "gated" version. This is the the same thing but the leds only light when there is a control input. Intended for use with the motherboards HDD led. The idea being that the display only operates during HDD activity. This uses the 10 led display.
3. The basic circuit using 20 leds. This produces a dramatic visual variation by having the leds scanning in opposite directions simultaneously.
4. The "gated" version with 20 leds producing the same effect as number 3.
5. HDD activity meter. This produces an indication of the actual amount of HDD activity. I have produced this as a separate article to make it easier for web crawlers to find. This circuit also comes in four variations.
Full Old Skool Action:
http://www.bit-tech.net/article/82/1 |
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ATI A3 Powered FIC AT31 Fusion First Look |
6/23/2002 |
"Initial results from the ATI A3 based FIC AT31 Fusion are mixed. While 2D and 3D quality and DVD playback are excellent, 3D performance definitely lags behind the 420 chipset. Overall performance is greater than in the 3D realm comparatively, but it is certain that at this stage memory bandwidth needs to be increased.
Without a Southbridge from ATI the older VIA 686B is used. We are eager to see what the ATI Southbridge will offer in features and performance. The excellent built in sound of the nForce will be hard to beat, but we may find out soon if the Southbridge is ready this Summer as expected.
A full conclusion about the ATI A3 and the FIC AT31 Fusion would be premature at this point. Further testing in Windows XP and driver updates will help clear the picture up. If memory performance can be enhanced and 3D performance increased then ATI and FIC will have a successful product on their hands. 3D performance may very well be closer to that of the nForce 220 chipset, and we hope secure a board based on it to test with. We will be performing more tests soon on this chipset and hope to have bios and driver updates from both ATI and FIC soon so that we can come to a thorough conclusion. We will also look closely at the unique features that ATI has in their drivers, as well as look at performance with an add in AGP video card."
Full Article:
http://www.slota.com/reviews/chipsets/ati/a3/index.shtml |
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True AMD XP 2200+ Unlocking Revealed |
6/23/2002 |
"Ankur Patel from Xtreme Systems let me know that they have found a way to unlock the Athlon XP 2200+. The L3 bridges had to be connected, and upon further testing the L1 bridges are connected by default, as AMD had originally told me. This is why when I used the pencil trick they did not unlock by connecting the L1s. Now this makes me wonder how some Thoroughbreds have unlocked by connecting the L1's when these guys claim the L1's are connected and the L3's are the bridges that need connecting.
I have found thru my own testing and OPPAINTER will concur...that testing of the 5 L1 bridges with a multimeter conclusively shows that those bridges are indeed connected and don't need the traditional pencil or conductive ink/rear defogger kit treatment. They all show continuity when tested.
Strange, no matter which KT333 board I tried none could unlock the CPU with the L1's connected. There's more going on here than meets the eye, and I do hope that once more people get their hands on the 2200+ the more we will find out. I urge you to tell me your results and full details about the board used, bios, and unlocking method so we can solve this mystery. There's a Scooby snack in it for you. :)"
Overclocking Forum Discussion:
http://64.247.35.92/forums/showthread.php?s=e6babbecb1b5179b35890c98180e7dbc&threadid=1261
AMDZone:
http://www.amdzone.com/ |
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The fundraiser ends, and the next stage begins (Kuro5hin) |
6/22/2002 |
The first Kuro5hin fundraising drive is officially over, and by any measure, it's been a fantastic success. Altogether you contributed over $37,000 in memberships, donations, and text ads, along with perhaps another $2500 in donation pledges, and an unknown amount in pay-by-mail memberships. I should be able to report a final "grand total" in a few weeks.
This incredible response has caught the attention and imagination of innumerable webloggers and the online media, including The Register, Wired News, and C|Net.
What just happened? What does it all mean? What do we do now? Below I'll take a stab at explaining it clearly.
Over the course of past week, I've seen a lot of explanations both here and around the net of exactly what we were raising money for.
I think the clearest way I can put it is: you just purchased Kuro5hin.org.
Full Article:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/6/21/10533/6651
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It Takes a Village to Save a Site |
6/22/2002 |
Begging for funds to keep your bankrupt site afloat rarely works. Unless you're Rusty Foster, whose tech community site Kuro5hin just raised $35,000 -- and a few eyebrows -- in less than a week.
"I gotta say, I'm quite impressed at what they've pulled off," said Slashdot.org founder Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda.
Slashdot's site, along with its free source code, inspired Foster to found Kuro5hin in December 1999 as a similar forum for "technology and culture from the trenches."
But a string of disappointing ad models led Foster to post a long missive on Monday titled "We're Broke: The Economics of a Web Community." Enumerating his income and expenses, Foster asked readers to help him meet the site's $70,000 annual operating budget.
"This has been coming for a while. We didn't have any money coming in," Foster said by phone from Peaks Island, Maine, where he and his wife relocated from San Francisco last year.
Full Article:
http://wired.com/news/business/0,1367,53386,00.html |
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IBM Shares Slide to Low Unseen Since Late 1998 |
6/22/2002 |
International Business Machines Corp. shares slid for the fifth straight day on Friday to a low not seen in nearly four years as investors bet that the No. 1 computer maker will miss current earnings estimates due to depressed tech spending.
IBM, which sells everything from personal computers to computer services to software, reflects the extended downturn in the technology industry, analysts say, and that means its quarterly and annual results won't measure up.
Lehman Brothers and SoundView Technology Group on Friday joined other Wall Street investment banks that took action earlier this week, such as Morgan Stanley, and lowered forecasts for the Armonk, N.Y.-based company.
IBM's stock, which has lost ground each day this week, fell on Friday by nearly 4 percent, or $2.83, to $68.75 -- its lowest level since October of 1998.
Full Article:
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessionid=KMATPRKZTGZHQCRBAEKSFEYKEEATIIWD |
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Kremlin Web site stands up to hackers |
6/22/2002 |
Almost 100 hackers have tried to break into Russian President Vladimir Putin's new Internet Web site in the first 24 hours of its existence but none has yet succeeded, the Kremlin said on Friday.
And after three months of checks by the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information, the presidential administration is certain the www.president.kremlin.ru site, unveiled Thursday, is almost hacker-proof.
"Some 500,000 people have visited the site and there have so far been 96 attacks by hackers, but none of them has succeeded," a Kremlin spokesman said.
Hackers try to break into Web sites for a variety of reasons including defacing content and cracking confidential financial information, but the Kremlin did not know what motivated those who tried to penetrate the presidential site.
"It could be anyone, in any country," the spokesman said.
Even You!
Full Article:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/06/21/kremlin.internet.reut/index.html
Wired thinks otherwise:
Kremlin Site Vulnerable to Attack (http://wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,53412,00.html) |
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RV280 – Another ATI Chip |
6/22/2002 |
One more short news story about ATI. As we read over here, the company is planning to release one more chip aka RV280. In fact, it will be a modified RV250 chip supporting AGP 8x interface. Unfortunately, no other details about this solution have been disclosed. They also claim that ATI could have added AGP 8x support to their RV250 chip, too, however, the company thinks that this is still too early because "new interface needs more polishing" that is why they are planning to release this chip only in Q4 2002.
As you remember, SiS sticks to a totally different opinion: the first SiS648 based samples (supporting AGP 8x) are already shipping to the mainboard manufacturers and the cards based on Xabre chips (also supporting AGP 8x) are about to appear in stores any day. However, granting the supporting of your own graphics cards is much easier to implement than to make sure the interface in general works fine. So, maybe ATI is right...
Original Article:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1024677939 |
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ATI to cut prices to make way for new RV250 |
6/22/2002 |
ATI Technologies will cut the prices of its Radeon 8500, 7500 and 7000 graphics chips next week, hoping to more clearly differentiate the older products from its new RV250 chip, set to be launched on July 17.
According to sources, the upcoming RV250 is an updated version of the Radeon 8500 chip. However, given that it integrates the TV-out decoding function, the chip is smaller in size, thus reducing the production costs of both chip and graphics card manufacturers. Other features like the four-pipeline architecture and AGP 4x support remain unchanged.
ATI most likely is making the move to differentiate its product lines, avoiding the market overlap problem previously experienced by other chip companies.
Full Article:
http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/Article.asp?datePublish=2002/06/19&pages=06&seq=36 |
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U.S. Currency to Change? |
6/21/2002 |
In keeping with their strategy of maintaining the security of Federal Reserve notes by enhancing the design of U.S. currency every seven to ten years, the Department of the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing (Bureau) and the Federal Reserve Board today announced plans to release the next generation of redesigned notes, with improved security features to deter counterfeiting.
The new design, referred to as NexGen, affects the $100, $50, and $20 notes. Circulation of the NexGen series could begin as early as fall 2003 with the introduction of the redesigned $20 note. The $100 and $50 notes will follow in twelve to eighteen months. Consistent with past design changes, the NexGen notes will remain the same size and use similar portraits and historical images to maintain an American appearance. The NexGen designs will include the introduction of subtle background colors. While color is not in itself a security feature, the use of color provides the opportunity to add additional features that could assist in deterring counterfeiting. The introduction of additional colors will also help consumers to identify the different denominations.
The new series will retain current security features, including watermarks similar to the portrait and visible when held up to a light, enhanced security threads that glow under ultraviolet light, microprinting, and color-shifting ink that changes color when the note is tilted.
The purpose of the currency redesign is to stay ahead of advanced computer technologies used for some types of counterfeiting. According to the U.S. Secret Service, $47.5 million in counterfeit money entered into circulation in fiscal year 2001. Of this amount, 39 percent was computer generated, compared with only 0.5 percent in 1995.
The redesign of $10 and $5 notes is still under consideration, but a redesign of the $2 and $1 notes is not included in the plans for the NexGen series. Release of NexGen notes will have no effect on money already in circulation. These notes will co-circulate with older series notes. The U.S. government has never recalled or devalued its currency.
Full Article:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/press/other/2002/20020620/ |
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New nVIDIA Detonator Drivers 30.2x Preview |
6/21/2002 |
Nvidia really got its skates on on this one and sent us an updated driver within 36 hours from our original story.
The updated driver appears to deliver 500+ 3dmarks compared to 28.32 and that difference with and without the splash screen is quite small.
If you run each test 3 times it's 50 to 100 points different which is also not that significant, at least according to Nvidia.
We have some results and detailed charts on our graphics reference platform which includes the best of the Geforce 4 TI 4600 with Gainward 750 XP name on it, Athlon 2000+ the good old Epox 8KHA KT266A board and 3Dmark 2001 SE 330 patched.
Nvidia is likely to post the updated driver quite soon, but whether it's 30.20 or 30.2x, who really knows?
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/21060214.htm |
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Apache Still Not Patched? Hackers post Apache attack tools |
6/21/2002 |
Ever since security vulnerabilities were discovered in some Apache web servers, hackers have been having a field day, it seems, trying to penetrate the exposed defences.
Yesterday, some postings revealed that the fix issued by Apache, (http://httpd.apache.org/), following an earlier flawed attempt to plug the hole posted on the Security Focus Bugtraq bulletin board, was also itself flawed. And last night a group of hackers made some tools to exploit weaknesses in the servers publicly available.
The hacker group, known as Gobbles Security, posted its program on BugTraq (http://online.securityfocus.com/archive/1/277830/2002-06-18/2002-06-24/0), claiming it had released the software to demonstrate it was still possible to exploit the flaw exposed on the site on Monday and subsequently "fixed" by Apache. The program attacks Apache Web servers running OpenBSD, and is "very ./friendly."
"All scriptkids/penetration testers should be able to run it without any trouble. My God have mercy on our souls," said the mischievous group's posting.
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/21060212.htm |
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Andale to provide eBay sales data |
6/21/2002 |
"Auction management company Andale plans to roll out a new service this summer that will help auction users determine what's selling and what's not on eBay.
The new auction tracking service is one of several new products Andale plans to unveil at the eBay Live convention Friday in Anaheim, Calif. The tracking service, which the company plans to roll by the end of August, will provide Andale customers with the average price an item has sold for and how many units have sold over a particular period of time.
"We're finally starting to give merchants and buyers some price history and price transparency," said Munjal Shah, chief executive officer of Andale. "The goal is to democratize access to this information because we think it will drive trading."
Andale is not the first company to try to provide market data on eBay. Companies such as Strong Numbers and Worthguide provided similar information in the past, but found little appetite for the service among eBay sellers. WorthGuide has since closed its site and Strong Numbers was sold to Income Dynamics last fall."
Get those premenstrual Barbies while they're still hot.
Full Article:
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-938131.html?tag=fd_top |
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Secret Service probes school hackings |
6/21/2002 |
Students at universities in four states may have been monitored by "spyware" placed on computers by online criminals to capture passwords and credit card numbers, a public safety officer at one of the schools involved, said Thursday.
A month ago, agents with the U.S. Secret Service notified Arizona State University officials that some of their computers may have been compromised, said Lt. John Sutton of the university's Department of Public Safety. The Secret Service seized almost 20 hard drives from computers at the university and are currently analyzing them for clues as part of the investigation, he said.
"We are looking to see if some type of software was installed on them that would allows someone from the keyboard or from a remote location to identify keystrokes and grab personal information," he said.
The investigation has encompassed compromised computers at universities in Arizona, Texas, Florida and California, Sutton said. It's believed that many of the computers had the software loaded onto the system by someone sitting at the keyboard, he added.
Agents of the U.S. Secret Service's San Francisco bureau would not immediately comment on the investigation.
Full Article:
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-938126.html?tag=fd_top |
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"Harry Potter" DVD protection goes poof |
6/21/2002 |
Technology that prevents people from copying DVDs to videotape has disappeared from some versions of Warner Bros.' "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," raising new questions about Hollywood's anti-piracy plans.
Like most other film studios, Warner Bros. includes anti-copying technology on DVDs to prevent digital-to-digital recording, for example, to a computer hard drive. This is considered a crucial defense against the looming "Napsterization" of Hollywood, as high-speed Internet connections and powerful video-compression technology increasingly make it possible for ordinary consumers to swap high-quality versions of feature-length movies online.
Most DVDs also include a separate encryption layer that interferes with recording to analog devices such as VCRs. Although typical DVD buyers are unlikely to make and redistribute videotape copies in large numbers, savvy computer users can easily create digital files from analog signals, opening the door to the file-swapping nemesis. As a result, the movie studios have been lobbying heavily to place restrictions on pending digital technology, such as high-definition TV sets, to hamper or even prevent analog recording, a move aimed at addressing what the industry has come to call the "analog hole."
Full Article:
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-938008.html?tag=fd_top |
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Microsoft testing home entertainment PC |
6/21/2002 |
Microsoft has shipped an early trial version of "Freestyle"--its new entertainment-centric PC design--to some beta testers, a company representative confirmed Thursday.
PCs equipped with a remote control and an early, pre-beta release of the Freestyle software were sent to a small group of testers that have been accepted into the Freestyle beta program, said Jodie Cadieux, marketing manager for Microsoft's eHome division. She said comments from the advance test will help decide the nature and release date of a full beta version of Freestyle.
Announced early this year at the Consumer Electronics Show, Freestyle is a part of Microsoft's eHome strategy to shift personal computing to the living room. PCs equipped with Freestyle software and hardware add-ons would act as a digital entertainment jukebox, distributing music, video and photos throughout a networked home.
Full Article:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-938110.html |
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Rates and Terms for Webcasting and Ephemeral Recordings Decided |
6/21/2002 |
Soma Fm's Reaction:
"The final decision on webcasting rates have been published on the Library of Congress's site. To say the results are disappointing is an understatement. While the rates were effectively cut in half, that still means that to stay on the air, SomaFM will have to pay about $500 a day in fees to the RIAA. Just to expose you to new music that you wouldn't hear anywhere else. Just to help you buy more records. Do they just not get it, or is the RIAA just greedy?
To quote from their announcement: The most significant difference between the CARP¹s determination and the Librarian¹s decision is that the Librarian has abandoned the CARP¹s two-tiered rate structure of 0.14¢ per performance for ³internet-only² transmissions and 0.07¢ for each retransmission of a performance in an AM/FM radio broadcast, and has decided that the rate of 0.07¢ will apply to both types of transmission. Some of the rates for noncommercial broadcasters have also been decreased, and the fee webcasters and broadcasters must pay for the making of ephemeral recordings has been reduced from 9% of the performance fees to 8.8%"
The RIAA is just greedy. Plain and simple.
http://www.somafm.com
Library of Congress Webcasting Rates and Pricing
http://www.copyright.gov/carp/webcasting_rates_final.html |
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AMD: Expect the ClawHammer After Christmas |
6/21/2002 |
"AMD has stated that we will begin shipping processors from the Hammer family in the fourth quarter, and PC manufacturers will begin introducing machines in the first quarter. There is not expected to be a Hammer-powered desktop PC available before Christmas."
AMDZONE:
"Toni is in investor relations at AMD. Now this isn't really news to me, but it may be to some people. AMD has positioned Hammer, or more specifically Clawhammer on their roadmap in the Q4 2002 to Q1 2003 spot. While I do think we will have a Clawhammer release before the end of the year, the chances of getting systems from major vendors before 2003 may be slim. White box guys may have it first, and it may be possible for the DIY crowd to get a hold of it. We will have to see how it goes, and this far off it is tough to tell."
Original Posting:
http://www.amdzone.com
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Intel desktop CPUs through to Q2 2003 |
6/20/2002 |
It's evident from the latest set of Intel roadmaps we've seen that the firm is executing on scaling up its Pentium 4 platform successfully.
Although executives at the firm have repeatedly said that it will have a 3GHz processor by the end of the year, the latest roadmaps still peg the chip at 2.80GHz. We'd expect that to change as the engineers tweak the architecture, however.
By the third quarter, Intel will have completely phased out the .18 Pentium 4 with only 256K of cache, while the last P4 at the 130 nanometer level and with only 256K of cache, at 1.80GHz, will disappear during the third calendar quarter.
Full Article with Tables:
http://www.theinquirer.net/20060210.htm |
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Parhelia 512 better than Geforce 4 Ti? |
6/20/2002 |
Some forum users on the very unbiased Matrox Users Resource Center Forum have been touting their newly snapped screen shots from Matrox's new Parhelia graphics card. Screen shots include Unreal Tournament and the recently leaked Unreal Tournament 2003 version which is now considered an illegal warez file.
When asked how the Matrox Parhelia 512 compares to the GeForce 4 Ti4400 OC' at 4600 a user said:
"You are very correct, I have a GF4 Ti4400 clocked to 4600 speeds, and ALSO have an ATI built 8500.
The Parhelia feels smoother overall, I don't get the chugs in games that I normally see even with the GF4, so it's my thinking that the sustained framerate is an advantage for the Parhelia.
Turn on AA on the GF4 and it's not very smooth at all. Parhelia stays strong and steady with FAA on (as a matter of fact, I leave it on all the time, and it's just so damned smooth, you would have to use one to see what I mean). Anisotropic performance hit will depend on the game, and the Parhelia's trilinear and mipmapping is even more accurate to my eyes than anything I have seen yet."
For the Forum Posting and some Amazingly Large Screenshots Go Here:
Forum (http://forums.matroxusers.com/) |
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AMD's Athlon MP 2100+ vs. Intel's Xeon 2.4GHz - Database Server Comparison |
6/20/2002 |
"As we've mentioned before, there's not much to get you excited when talking about the Athlon MP 2100+; it's a 66MHz clock speed increase that we've had on the desktop side for three months now. The performance boost that you get in dual processor environments over the "old" 2000+ is around 4% in some of the best case scenarios, which were illustrated by our database server tests. It's not the Athlon MP 2100+ that we should be focusing on however, it is AMD's strategy going into 2003 that requires our attention.
You've probably heard by now that AMD's Barton core will be released according to AMD's current roadmap. The Barton core will not employ Silicon on Insulator technology; it will simply use the current 0.13-micron process that was introduced with Thoroughbred. The only modification going into Barton will be the use of a 512KB L2 cache which is desperately needed by the current Athlon. Because of the exclusive L2 cache architecture employed by the K7 core and the very large L1 cache, Barton will have more data cache available than the Xeon, despite the fact that both processors will have a 512KB L2 cache.
By the end of this year Barton will be introduced as an Athlon XP processor and in the following months you will see the core transition to the MP line as well. The Barton MP core will be the entry-level workstation and server CPU of choice as it will be much cheaper to produce than the Opterons that will be available.
Until then, the Athlon MP is clearly still quite competitive in the server market but Intel will be able to claim an even more significant performance lead with the introduction of a 533MHz FSB Xeon part. The large-cache Xeon MP processors are also running without competition from AMD at this point and they will continue to do so until sometime in the first half of next year when we expect to see Opterons with 1MB L2 caches. In fact, until 2003 we won't see any serious action from AMD in the server market with the exception of Thoroughbred MP. It seems to be taking all of the kings men to lift that Hammer..."
Full Article:
http://anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.html?i=1641 |
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MPAA uses crawler to sniff out Pirated content |
6/20/2002 |
Ranger is a piece of software that acts like an Internet search engine. It is the latest, most far-reaching weapon in the movie industry's constant and escalating battle against movie piracy.
Hollywood watched in horror as Napster corroded the music industry -- last year, worldwide revenue from CD sales dropped 7 percent as billions of songs were legally and illegally downloaded from the Internet. The movie studios -- led by their lobbying group, the Motion Picture Association of America -- is determined not to let that happen to them.
"We are trying to stem the tide as best as we can," said Jack Valenti, president of the MPAA. "I worry about the future."
Some say the studios are unfairly targeting them.
Internetmovies.com is suing the MPAA because Ranger tagged the Web site as a movie pirate last year, which prompted the company's Internet provider to cut off access. The owner of the Web site is positioning his suit as a David-vs.-Goliath struggle.
Full Article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5144-2002Jun18.html |
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Mild mannered janitors gang up to boo Yahoo |
6/20/2002 |
Disgruntled janitors at Yahoo HQ have launched their own web site to complain about the low wages they receive for keeping the Internet company's offices clean.
Over at boohooyahoo.com, the janitors complain that subcontractor Team Services, Inc pays some of them "less than $16,000 per year, with no healthcare cover. "We work hard, we do quality work – but earn poverty wages with no health care for ourselves or our families," says Francisco Casteneda on the site.
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/20060215.htm
Website:
http://www.boohooyahoo.com/ |
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Microsoft's Mac Hebrew snub prompts Israeli AntiTrust complaint |
6/20/2002 |
"Microsoft's refusal to provide Hebrew support in its Macintosh Internet Explorer browser or Office suite has prompted a complaint to Israel's antitrust department.
It's a fascinating story which raises as many cultural questions as does it does political - all the more so, as we discovered last week, since neither Apple nor Microsoft want to confront the issue.
Hebrew writers have long complained that Microsoft Office for the Mac doesn't support the script: even though it's drawn from the Windows codebase which does support Hebrew, and many other right-to-left scripts to boot. The lack of support wasn't fixed in Office 2001:mac, and despite rich language support for developers in Apple's Mac OS X, Microsoft says it has no plans to add Hebrew to Office v.X:mac.
Even though it wouldn't cost Microsoft a cent, says Dov Cohen, a law student who formed the National Academic Macintosh Administrators group to lobby for Hebrew support in Microsoft products."
Full Article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/25742.html |
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Chip, board designers differ on preferences, concerns |
6/20/2002 |
"Operating systems provide another point of contrast between the two groups. Sixty-seven percent of chip designers use Solaris, while 30 percent use Windows 2000 and 22 percent use Windows NT. In contrast, board designers overwhelmingly favor Windows 2000 and Windows NT. But both designer groups said they expect a big increase in Linux usage over the next two years — from 31 percent to 64 percent for chip designers, and from 6 percent to 28 percent for board designers.
Chip designers today said they're mostly designing at 0.18 microns, but 48 percent said they're already working on 0.13-micron designs. In two years, 65 percent expect to be using 0.18-micron processes, and 60 percent expect to be using 0.10-micron or finer processes."
Okay so in two years 65% are using .18 microns and 60% are using .10 microns or less. So 65% + 60% = 125% I wouldn't be surprised if the writer just made this entire article up.
Full Article:
http://www.eedesign.com/story/OEG20020619S0047 |
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Intel won't produce AMD clone |
6/20/2002 |
"A report quoted senior Intel executive Paul Otellini as saying the firm would not produce a 64-bit backward processor compatible with 32-bit code.
Paul Otellini, speaking at a meeting in New York earlier today, said Intel's future was firmly in the Itanium camp and he confirmed earlier INQUIRER reports that Madison is slated for next year and will include 3MB and 6MB caches.
It is already testing Madison, according to the report on news.com.
Intel said at its spring Developer Forum earlier this year that there was no possibility of it dumping the Itanium 64-bit processor, which has been ten years in the making.
Last year we exclusively reported here that a "skunkwotoma22 in Beaverton was working on a processor that could, like AMD's future Clawhammer and Opteron families, run existing 32-bit code."
Full Article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/19060235.htm |
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And Now... AMD Inside? |
6/20/2002 |
The chip wars of the next three years will differ from those of the 1990s, in which two companies -- Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and Advanced Micro Designs (AMD) -- fought to make the faster PC processors.
Now, AMD is branching out from its PC roots to tackle the embedded chip market, where the battles of the future will be waged to design the smallest chips with the lowest power consumption, greatest design flexibility and most reasonable cost.
Analysts say it is unlikely that a single company will be able to dominate the market for embedded processors , the low-cost microchips that are the brains of smaller, non-PC devices like handhelds, mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and a gaggle of other gadgets.
Full Article:
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/18276.html |
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U.S. Investigating Memory Chip Industry |
6/20/2002 |
U.S. antitrust officials are investigating the $12 billion global memory chip industry, which has been bleeding losses amid cut-throat price competition, the Department of Justice said on Wednesday.
The world's top four makers of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, confirmed that they were caught up in the U.S. probe, which appeared to focus on the sharp price swings that have battered the industry since last fall.
Those targeted include South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co and Hynix Semiconductor Inc, Micron Technology Inc of the United States, and Germany's Infineon Technologies AG. Together they accounted for 70 percent of the DRAM market last year.
Micron, the world's second-largest maker of computer memory chips, said it received a demand for information from a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Micron said it would cooperate with the probe, but denied it had violated any laws. A grand jury considers whether enough evidence exists to bring criminal charges.
"The DRAM business is highly competitive and subject to extreme volatility," Micron Vice President of Corporate Affairs Kipp Bedard said in a statement. "Competitive forces in today's market have led to DRAM prices reaching unprecedented lows."
Full Article:
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessionid= |
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Burst.com accuses Microsoft of theft |
6/20/2002 |
In a new suit that echoes earlier charges from Netscape, Sun Microsystems and others, Microsoft is accused of bullying companies out of using Burst.com products and stealing the streaming company's technology.
The suit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claims Microsoft's upcoming video encoding and decoding product, Corona, includes Burst's patented video-delivery technology. The company also alleges that Microsoft pressured partners and customers, including Intel and RealNetworks, into dropping support for Burst technology. And it claims Microsoft intentionally caused Burst's products to be incompatible with Windows software.
In the complaint, lawyers for Burst said Microsoft's actions have caused the company "serious and continuing damage and have deprived consumers of valuable new technologies that threatened to disturb Microsoft's strategy to maintain and expand its operating system's dominance to the delivery of high-quality video over the Internet."
Burst said Microsoft gained access to its streaming technology while the two companies were trying to negotiate a deal for the rights to it. Burst said those talks fell through and instead Microsoft took the technology and put it in Corona.
A Microsoft spokesman said company executives could not comment on the suit's specifics because they had just received it, but he defended the technology in Corona.
"Microsoft has innovated with digital media technologies in Windows for more than 10 years," Jon Murchinson said in a statement. "The fast streaming technology coming in Windows Media Corona is an example of work by Microsoft to deliver an even more compelling streaming experience to users."
Full Article:
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-937501.html?tag=fd_top
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