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HP turns away from Windows Home Server
Microsoft has pulled a Windows Vista on its Windows Home Server. A series of unspecified bug fixes and feature enhancements will push back the launch of the first appliances by up to 4 months.
Consumers will still be able to get their hands on the software by late September, but HP has decided that it would rather wait for a future update before it starts shipping its MediaSmart Server.
The consumer availability spares Microsoft from the embarrassment of an official delay. But HP's refusal to put its logo on the first product says enough.
If your willing to wade through shoulder deep marketing BS in a Microsoft blog posting, you can also detect a flat-out admission of guilt:
"We’ve identified a number of ways to make the product even better since the initial release, as with most Microsoft products, updates to Windows Home Server will be automatically available throughout the lifecycle of the product and the WHS team is working on an update that will be available in September. These updates will enhance the usability and improve the out-of-the-box experience of home server solutions. Additional updates will occur over the lifespan of the product as we receive feedback from the user community, our hardware partners and software partners. Microsoft’s current plan is to make this update available as part of the monthly Windows Updates process in September."
Translation: we know that the current product is horrible. But hey, when did Microsoft ever do a proper version one release that didn’t suffer from horrible bug and equally bad usability? It took us 10 years to get Windows to a version that didn't make you throw up in disgust (that was Windows 3.1, in case you were wondering), and still made billions of dollars. Why would Windows Home server be any different?
August 31, 2007 at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Is plagiarism protected by copyright law?
Viacom demanded that Youtube took down a video from a TV show on VH1 that pastes together Youtube videos.
Youtube as usual rolled over, begging for a belly rub.
The issue however is that VH1 hadn't asked the copyright owner of the video featured in its show hadn't asked for permission. As Fark.com summarized so eloquently:
"Man posts video about his video on YouTube. Viacom pulls video about their video about his video because of copyright violations, even though they violated his copyright by using his video in their video."
It time to put those lawyers at the RIAA to good use. We finally have a waterproof case of copyright violation.
The video that Viacom decided to brand as its own
August 31, 2007 at 01:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Microsoft loses Swedish support for OOXML
Sweden has nullified its vote on the Office Open XML standard, robbing Microsoft of a vote in favor of the standard before the ISO.
The decision comes after Microsoft was accused of stuffing the Swedish ballot box. The company had been caught sending out emails offering "marketing support" to partners that would join the local standards body and vote on the OOXML topic.
Microsoft stressed that the email was a mistake, that the recipients had been asked to ignore the message and the Swedish Standard Institute had been notified of the "slip-up". But that didn't sound very honest coming from a convicted monopolist who used unfair bundling practices to kill Netscape.
The Swedes claim that the nullification was caused by voter fraud: one of its members allegedly casted more than one vote. But with the conspiracy machine in full motion, most critics believe that it is just a way to allow Microsoft to save face.
Dividing the world by sponsoring Microsoft's vision of unity
August 31, 2007 at 01:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Free Software Foundation cocks its GPLv3 gun, points it at Microsoft's head
The Free Software Foundation today issued its most serious threat to Microsoft to date.
"We will ensure--and, to the extent of our resources, assist other GPLv3 licensors in ensuring--that Microsoft respects our copyrights and complies with our licenses," the group said today in a note posted on its website.
The statement is just one of many moves in the chess game between open source and Microsoft, but it's a relevant move nonetheless.
The FSF has not only come out and officially stated that it believes that Microsoft is distributing Linux code as part of last year's Novell partnership, the group is also is threatening to enforce the license.
The stakes are huge because it could set of a chain reaction. If Microsoft is considered a distributor of open source code, it has to abide by the GPLv3. It will have to grant a loyalty free patent licence to open source developers and users, effectively robbing it from the opportunity to ask any money for its patent portfolio.
The problem is that this entire battle is taking place in a legal grey area. Even lawyers who are considered to be in the open source camp aren't sure. Sure if Microsoft can legally be considered a distributor of open source software. Or if the firm can unilaterally revoke the terms of the Novell SuSE coupons that it has been handing out to customers.
With the stakes being this high, the battle will have to ultimately end
up in a court room, where it will be dragged out over years of rulings
and appeals. Pull up a comfortable chair and get ready for a long sit.
The FSF and Microsoft are old friends
August 29, 2007 at 12:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Meet Microsoft's next PR star
No we're not picking on Microsoft. It's just that if she would be with Apple PR, she wouldn't have said anything. As an AMD spokesperson she would have started complaining about Intel's monopoly and Intel PR would have pointed out the missing benchmark data.
Microsoft just happens to excel at providing comments that provide no insight whatsoever. Btw, the video is from the Miss Teen USA pageant with Miss South Carolina showing off her ability to blow hot air.
August 28, 2007 at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Fins think up fierce phone flinging feud
The fine folks in Finland put their long hours of summer sun to good use last weekend with the eight annual Mobile Phone Throwing Championships.
The sport is still lacking from proper international competition, resulting in yet another victory for the Fins themselves. This year Tommi Huotari flinged his Nokia (or so we assume) over a distance of 89.62 metres (98.04 yards).
Athletes can choose from a variety of cellphone models, allowing them to pick the optimal shape and weight for the best flinging experience.
Those lacking a proper throwing technique can still resort to the Freestyle completion, where style prevails over distance. We all know that you shouldn't debate style. That's why the competition was won by a toddler dressed up in a cow suite as well as a dude who is capable of "walking by his hands" – which must be an entirely new walking technique that has yet to reach Silicon Valley.
Don't be fooled by the seeming absurdness of the this exercise. To the 30,400 residents of host city Savolinna this event is only second to the annual opera festival in its economic importance. At least, that is judging by the €100 fee for photos of the phone jugglers – and which is why we can't present you with any images of this event.
They even have an old fortress! This place just keeps getting better and better
August 28, 2007 at 01:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Using technology to thwart the government
Convicted movie thief Scott McCausland is prohibited from using Ubuntu because authorities are unable to monitor the system.
McCausland had to agree to have his internet usage monitored as part of a 2005 conviction into movie pirating. But US authorities only have such software for Windows and McCausland is running Ubuntu.
The convicted movie thief seems ready to take his case to court again. Because he agreed to be monitored, but the ruling didn't say anything about him being required to run Windows exclusively.
The Department of Justice could easily solve this and any future issues by developing an appliance that eardrops on the network connection instead of relying on software. Just prohibit him to encrypting his network traffic and use a proxy server, and you're set.
August 25, 2007 at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The rise of the fakes
It didn't take long for the copycats to grab on to the concept behind the Fake Steve Jobs blog.
These days we have a Fake Larry Ellison Blog, a Fake Jonathan Schwartz Blog, and of course Fake Steve Ballmer and Fake Bill Gates blogs.
The Steve Jobs blog works because it's witty. The writer crawled into the Apple executive's character and pretends to view the world through his eyes. Reading the blog is like listening to a well done Steve Jobs impersonation by a comedian.
None of the other "fake" blogs come close. But when presented with the opportunity to copy, why not have a go at it.
There are still several executives available for a fake blog. In the
tech industry alone, there are opportunities for Paul Otellini, Hector
Ruiz and John Chambers impersonators, as well as the Google boys: Larry
Page, Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin (although he does have a fake home page).
Outside the world of geeks, you'd be surprised that Donald Trump still is a Greenfield opportunity. You'd figure that the camera hungry entrepreneur would have set up a fake blog himself at least.
August 24, 2007 at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Microsoft found in state of virtualization denial
In the world according to Microsoft, mature technologies are defined as those for which Microsoft is shipping products. Any other technology is by definition immature.
If you keep that thought in the back of your head, this interview with Mike Neil, Microsoft's general manager for virtualization, becomes hilarious.
His core points: Microsoft isn't behind VMware because server virtualization is still a developing market and confined to (unnamed) niche markets. Only Microsoft can give virtualization an appeal to a "wider swath of the industry".
The brief answer: just look at VMware's $20bn market capitalization and the $500m Xensource acquisition by Citrix. Investors don’t seems to consider this a "developing" market.
Next point: Users don’t need advanced technologies like live migration of workloads, which are supported by VMware and XenSource, but that Microsoft's upcoming "Viridian" product will lack. "It is a sexy feature and sounds really exciting," but customers don't use it and don't ask for it.
The brief answer: customers are asking for it, and rely on this technology for their "Walhalla" data center scenarios. It's just that the management software for moving around these virtual workloads is still very immature. But even if firms don't deploy it, it will be a checkbox item.
Microsoft as usual is contradicting itself to crawl out of its self-dug hole. When the company first delayed Viridian, it claimed that providing support for 32 cores was key, when developers said that they were incapable of building the software on time, they went back to 16 cores and claimed that anything beyond that was merely a sexy feature.
In the world according to Microsoft, mature technologies are defined as those for which Microsoft is shipping products. Any other technology is by definition immature.
Just pretending to hang out with the big boys
August 22, 2007 at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Geek test
This photo is funny. But to get the joke, you have to be of the cellar or attic dwelling kind that writes code (or did so at some point).
So take this as your geek litmus test. If you don't get the joke, you're a poser. Scroll down for an explanation crawl back into your closed source world where the only Apple logo you have is on your iPod.
"It's a feature, not a bug," is a common programming term. It essentially indicates that a software failure can't be redflagged because it was put in there intentionally. This can be accomplished by describing the "feature" in the manual.
This VW Beetle (aka: VW Bug) is a feature, judging by its license plate.
August 22, 2007 at 08:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Skype stumbles into the security big leagues
Skype today was forced to publish a clarification to its justification for last week's service outage.
The company implicitly blamed Microsoft for crashing the service, because it's monthly update forced users to reboot and sign into Skype.
The message was clear to the press and bloggers: Skype was trying to shift blame for the embarrassing crash to a company that has served as the world's whipping boy for over a decade.
Today's clarification finally provided a (somewhat) detailed report about what happened. It's wasn't so much a denial of service attack. Instead Skype was unable to recover from the loss of a large amount of so-called "supernodes", regular users who essentially act as a central server in the Skype's peer-to-peer model.
Skype called these problems onto itself with its poor management of the whole incident. Information was released piecemeal, and there didn't appear to be a clear policy regulating what should be released. Skype furthermore appears to be the only company that issues security bulletins on its blog.
Microsoft by contrast has some experience with plugging security holes, and has the whole system down to an art. That's one reason why, when it looked like Skype was blaming Microsoft, few people believed it.
August 22, 2007 at 01:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Dell follows in CA's footsteps
Dell founder Michael Dell is subject of an SEC investigation into the company's accounting scandal.
As the computer maker disclosed last week, executives have been cooking the books to ensure that they met financial targets, allowing them to earn their bonuses. Dell's official position is that the company's founder (pictured right) wasn't involved. But the SEC wants to hear his testimony anyway.
The case has an unnerving similarity to Computer Associates (or CA, as it refers to be called these days). Just like Dell, the software firm marched on the industry and established itself as a market leader in several segments. But then it got hit by accounting scandals which turned out to go all the way to the top. Former chief executive Sanjay Kumar (pictured below) is currently taking a 12 years break from civilian life as a federal inmate.
Just like Dell, CA also succeeded in rapidly undermining its reputation with customers. Admittedly, Dell has been successful in turning around the company for now. But CA also had a brief period of seeming recovery before it fell into the deep pit of accounting irregularities and obstruction of justice charges.
If Dell doesn't make sure that this storm blows over quickly, it could be battling a bad climate change for a long time.
Not a good role model
August 21, 2007 at 07:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Smoking Skype gun found under Microsoft's rug
Microsoft lived up to its reputation of being the source of all evil, including last week's Skype outage.
By forcing the world to upgrade their Windows XP systems last week, the Skype using portion of it logged on in droves, effectively launching a Denial of Service attack on the VoIP service.
Never mind that ultimately Skype should have architected a system that is able to handle a large number of users logging on all at once. If Apple had Microsoft's market share, would it have been blamed for outage as well?
August 20, 2007 at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Facebook turns to DMCA to plug source code leak
After Facebook knowingly leaked the source code of its social website, the company is using the DMCA to prevent other websites from publishing the source code.
Both Digg and Google apparently complied with an order to stop linking to the code, but I can't help but wonder if Facebook isn't abusing the DMCA. The company manually misconfigured a server, allowing the code to be exposed to numerous users.
Even if the publication wasn't intended, that doesn't negate the fact that it happened. Facebook therefore can't claim the source code as a company secret. It is left with the copyright for actual application, but that can be easily circumvented by making a slight change to the code.
Facebook essentially ran out on the street in its underwear in a drunken haze, and is now threatening to sue anybody who took pictures. Even if Facebook's underwear isn't that interesting, there is no reason why the DMCA should protect the world against incompetence.
Don't blame the world for your slip-ups
August 17, 2007 at 01:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Truth catches up with EA's empty OS X promise
Game developer EA has admitted that it was merely out to get a shiny press release when its said that it would launch OS X games on the same day as the Windows version.
On Tuesday vnunet.com reported that EA had failed to launch OS X versions of several games. We tried to get comment from the game developer, but everybody was giving us the run-around.
This morning the company finally was prepared to bite the bullet. Somebody from EA's PR department admitted that the firm never intended to have simultaneous launches, but would merely try to narrow the gap between the Windows and OS X releases.
There is only one word for a company that promises one thing and then does another. And it’s the reason why companies like Enron and Worldcom are no longer in business.
August 17, 2007 at 12:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Dell gets on board with vPro
Dell on 27 August will share the stage with Intel to unveil its first vPro enterprise desktop computers.
vPro is Intel's attempt to lower the costs of IT management, based on Intel's Active Management Technology. Systems with the brand are currently available from HP, Lenovo and Acer. But Dell, the world's second largest PC maker, is boycotting the platform.
To put it in Dell's words, vPro isn't sufficiently open. You can read that as: AMD should be able to make a compatible system. By embracing WS-Man as well as some other industry standards, Intel now seems to have met Dell's demand.
That doesn't solve all of Intel's vPro headaches however. The market for virtual management appliances is still sparsely populated, with Lenovo being the sole vendor. Symantec too is preparing its appliance (everybody say "Hi!" to "Project Hood"). No doubt Intel would love to see the security vendor launch its appliance on Monday, but there is no word yet that that will actually happen.
Intel CEO Paul Otellini at the vPro unveiling in April 2006
August 16, 2007 at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Symantec Project Hood: new name, old news
Symantec for more than a year has been developing a virtual security appliance for Intel's vPro platform.
The appliance will run isolated from the main operating system, allowing it to scan for security threats without any interruption from viruses and other malware.
In fact, it does exactly what vPro was designed to do: run
management software independent from the main operating system, allowing
IT administrators tighter control over the software.
The product wasn't known by any code name. So when Reuters dug up a "Project Hood" code name for some mysterious virtual security appliance, it failed to connect the dots.
Symantec was quick
to confirm that the only news here is a code name.
August 15, 2007 at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Is Infoworld after my privacy?
Infoworld seems to be breaking new ground, but not in any good way. Visiting the website a few minutes ago, Firefox presented me with this security prompt which I have never seen before (click to enlarge):
Why would the site require the ability to "read private data from any site or window"?
And what does that mean in practical terms?
August 15, 2007 at 03:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Banking chaos hits Second Life
Last week the Ginko "bank" collapsed due to insolvency: as account holders demanded their money, the bank would have been forced to sell off assets at a loss, forcing it into bankruptcy.
The bank had lowered daily withdrawal limits to avert this scenario, but those measures couldn't prevent Second Life from catching an economic virus that is so common for highly instable economies.
The rush on the bank's deposits was allegedly caused by a gambling ban, which supposedly prompted users to take their money outside the game. Others claim that it was merely an old-fashioned banking collapse due to incompetence or criminal behavior (pyramid scheme, anyone?).
Whatever remains of the bank's $800,000 in deposits will now be transformed into bonds with another Second Life bank. Account holders will be able to trade those bonds, but will likely have to take a loss if they do.
The banking drama surfaces a major Second Life flaw: it's economy is essentially a mono culture.
Secondly, private islands, virtual clothing and accessories, virtual sex and gambling are all subject to economic bubbles. Contrary to a regular economy, Second Life economy also doesn't redistribute economic wealth. Money travels in an out of the game like Irish immigrants. Users who get bored (which is inevitable after the recent media hype) will simply stop playing the game, taking their assets out of the economy.
We're witnessing that right now, and should get ready for more.
no more
August 15, 2007 at 03:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thank you SCO
Friday's ruling has confirmed SCO's status as a footnote in history, and we should thank the company for doing the computer industry a great service.
On Friday a judge ruled that the company doesn't own the Unix intellectual property. That Novell does own it, and that SCO should pay Novell 95 per cent of all its Unix licensing revenues.
While the first comprises the big win, the second will allow Novell to put SCO out of its misery really fast. Because as of Friday, SCO has more liabilities than it has assets. That should be enough to file for bankruptcy.
SCO's poorly prepared attack on Linux allowed the open source world to unite, and they did so in a big way. IBM didn't budge where they could have settled, and Novell stood up to draw fire by claiming that it legally owned the Unix copyright.
Customers meanwhile left SCO in droves. As revenues fell, the firm struggled to continue its legal campaign.
Conspiracy theorists will tell you that Microsoft was ultimately behind the attack. Whether that is right or not isn't event that relevant. Either way Microsoft received a clear warning: even if Linux doesn't have a single big corporate entity as an owner, you still can't mess with the operating system.
Microsoft would be stupid to use its patent portfolio against Unix. It is limited to making the occasional vague threat.
SCO chief executive Darl McBride is left empty handed
August 14, 2007 at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
The road to podcast fame: don't call it a podcast
We've dodged the podcasting trend here at vnunet's San Francisco office and moved straight to video instead.
Much respected hack Ashlee Vance with The Register too has displayed a disdain for podcasts and instead has launched a Meat Cast under the Semi-Coherent Computing banner.
Fully aware of El Reg's reputation for employing nice people, we were honoured to participate in a LinuxWorld Meat Cast.
August 13, 2007 at 08:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Nerd muppets
No further explanation required. Watch and enjoy.
Just make sure you're in a laugh proof area if you watch this at work.
Seen on: John's Blog
August 13, 2007 at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Apple's market share explosion sent back to fairy land
The 1394 Trade Association seems willing to do anything to salvage the waning Fire Wire standard.
An increasing number of PC makers are ditching the technology, but Apple is making sure to continue living up to its reputation of backing sure-loser-standards. The maker of the Jezus phone has put one of the connectors on the new iMac.
The 1394 Trade Association decided to celebrate this little fact with a press release. In addition to celebrating the stay in the execution of its bubble, the group also decide to float another myth: the fact that Apple has a 21 per cent market share in US retail.
It failed to provide a source of the stellar number, but the Mac Inspector blog dug up the facts. The figure allegedly comes from a CNBC report, although the blog was unable to confirm that such a report actually exists in the earthly dimension.
The report allegedly tracked retail sales in the US. In addition to Apple's 21 per cent share, Dell also was attributed 11 per cent of the market. That is remarkable because Wal Mart is still the only retail outlet that sells Dell computers in US retail.
Put the mysterious CNBC report next to data from noted analyst firms such as IDC and Gartner, and you have to start doubting accuracy of the 1394 claims. IDC pegs Apple's share at 6.3 per cent. Gartner estimates that it is at 2.5 per cent.
You pick which one you want to believe, or more notably, which ones you don't want to believe.
August 10, 2007 at 09:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack
AT&T shows the future without net neutrality
AT&T censored the web stream of a Pearl Jam concerts last Sunday because the lyrics denounced Bush. Sang to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall, part 2", the band asked Bush to "leave the world alone" and "go home".
The telecommunications provider sponsored the concert and made it available on its Blue Room website. But after lead singer Eddie Vedder sang the first line of the George Bush bashing,
"This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media," the band wrote on its website.
The ability for a large corporation to censor public opinion is why we need net neutrality, and why we need it embedded in a law if not in the constitution.
AT&T is realizing its mistake, blaming the mishap on an outside contractor. The real question however is why AT&T felt it needed to have censors monitor a pop concert in the first place.
"Those lyrics in no way, shape or form, are something that should have been edited," AT&T spokesman Michael Coe told Reuters.
After Janet Jackson's 2004 "wardrobe malfunction," you want to make sure that you don't expose minors to adult content. But that could have been easily settled by adding a disclaimer before users are allowed to view the concert. There is never a good excuse for censorship.
August 10, 2007 at 08:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Having fun with lights in the night
Set a camera for a long shutter time, take a light and you can paint in the sky. If you walk out of the picture on time, you've got a perfect picture.
Take an entire night to shoot a plethora of pictures and you've get a really cool animation.
Seen on Willswideweb
August 10, 2007 at 07:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Novell tries to restore its open source cred
Novell continued its awkward split between courting the open source community and helping enterprises run their business today at the Linuxworld conference.
Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian in his keynote applauded the Free Software Foundation and Eben Moglen for their work on the GPLv3 license. He also reemphasised that the company would ship GPLv3 code to customers under the Microsoft Linux coupon programme.
The FSF and Moglen haven't exactly put Novell on their Christmas card list after the company essentially validated Microsoft's patent threat.
But Novell also could turn out to be a Trojan horse that tears down that threat, if the FSF can proof that Microsoft is distributing GPLv3 code.
August 9, 2007 at 03:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
HP: we'll deliver on our past lies
IT organizations are under increasing pressure to deliver business results. But have no fear: HP will sell you the systems to meet that challenge.
HP's executive vice president Ann Livermore with the Technology Solutions Group took 30 minutes to say that at today's Linuxworld keynote, and nothing more.
Well, she did admit that the IT industry hasn't been very good at solving these problems in the past. But – enters the sales pitch – she did succeed in squeezing in a sales pitch for nearly every enterprise product that HP has unveiled over the past year or so, including the c-Class blade system (only once, to our disappointment) and Dynamic Smart Cooling (40 per cent cooler data centres, if it ever starts shipping to customers).
Apologies if our cynicism upset you, but Ann Livermore's keynote is living proof Linuxworld organizer IDG is still selling its keynote slots to the highest bidder. For a show that is frantically trying to curb the tide on its attendance, it might consider showing attendants a bit more respect.
We'll publish this photo any time we can: Livermore showing her motherly love at the unveiling of the c-Class blade system in June 2006.
August 8, 2007 at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Could Sun's Niagara 2 be too fast?
Tomorrow's launch of the Sun Niagara 2 processor raises some questions about its Advanced Processor Line (APL).
Niagara 2 (or to use its official name: UltraSparc T2) isn't just a faster version of the Niagara 1 (aka: UltraSparc T1). Sun also added a floating point controller to each processor core as well as an integrated memory controller, encryption technology and integrated network controller.
Sun admitted that Niagara 1 did a pretty poor job in floating point operations. That isn't a big deal, because the chip was designed for highly parallel processes such as web servers. But when users would incidentally feed it a small number crunching task, performance would come to a screeching halt.
Adding floating point controllers solves all that. Early tests on the Specfp_rate2006 benchmark (where fp stands for floating point) turned out a score of 61.5. IBM's Power6 processor scores 58.0, and AMD needs two of its upcoming Barcelona processors to score 69.5.
Ever the boastful bunch, Sun is heralding the world record performance of its processor. But that also puts Sun's own Advanced processor line (APL) into the picture.
APL was considered Sun's insurance premium, just in case Niagara and Rock (another Sun processor) would fail or get delayed. Developed by Fujitsu, Sun agreed to sell systems based on the mainframe-class processor, and started doing so in April.
The cheapest APL-based system costs $50,000. It features 4 dual core, dual threaded processors. It scores 67.2 on the Specfp_rate2006 benchmark.
Sun has yet to reveal pricing for its Niagara 2 based systems, but given that the chip is less expensive than its predecessor, you can safely assume that systems will remain stable. A single processor T1000 starts at $2,995.
Niagara 2 doesn't even targeted at the high performance space. But with performance specs like these, anybody can guess where Sun's upcoming Rock processor is going to go. And that the APL line is doomed.
overview of Niagara 2 chip - Click to enlarge
August 7, 2007 at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
AT&T hides cheap broadband
AT&T is offering a dirt-cheap $10 DSL package, but consumers have found that it nearly impossible to order the service. You effectively have to beg customer service for the privilege of signing up.
The introduction of the the package was a condition of SBC's December 2006 acquisition of BellSouth. But that didn't mean that AT&T, as the new company was called, put much effort in to the offering.
Customers visiting Bellsouth.com are only offered a "Fastaccess" DSL package priced at $19.99, and the provider tries to upsell customers to more expensive plans.
The $10 monthly plan looks suspiciously like the $19.99 plan in that it offers the same connection speed. But the bargain rate is limited to new customers only, and requires that they sign a one-year contract. Just don't try looking for it on the website: it isn't there.
"Why is the plan impossible to find?" the Atlanta Journal Constitution asked AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson (pictured on the left).
"We haven't made it difficult to find," he said in a first effort to cover up the obvious stain. Oh no, wait, let's recover.
"To be honest with you, that's not a product that our customers have clamored for. We still have $15 offers out there in the marketplace, even $20 offers, for 1.5 megabit speeds. Those are really kind of the minimum speeds that give a good user experience. So I don't want to necessarily offer up a product where the user experience is not what I would consider really state of the art. That $10 product is kind of in that mode."
The newspaper itself had a different experience. It's reporting about the mysterious $10 DSL plan sparked a record number of reader comments. But in AT&T's dictionary, that is just further proof of the lack of user interest.
August 4, 2007 at 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Managers shouldn't read trad publications
The scary thing about Dilbert is that he is usually right: high ranking managers can often take decisions based on a something they read in a publication. Although typically they allow themselves to be guided by business publications such as Forbes or Fortune rather than trade publications.
click to enlarge
August 3, 2007 at 05:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Windows fan boys return
If you ever wondered if there are any Windows fan boys, you need not look any further.
His name is Paul and his claim to fame is a tattoo of the Blue Screen of Death. The tattoo took 4.5 hours. As the artist explains:
A lot of people love it, a lot of people miss the point all together and think Paul is an idiot, He is, but that has nothing to do with the tattoo. Why would he get this tattoo? None of your fucking business, it's not your problem, stay inside your little bubble where everybody you know is content with doing the same as everybody else.
...
What Paul loves most is the idea of explaining this tattoo to his grandkids, when Windows 98 is so outdated as to be completely obsolete. The knowledge that this tattoo's subject will certainly become outdated was key to inspiring Paul's decision to make something so indefinitely fleeting so indelible. As was the idea of taking something so mundane and using it in such a way usually reserved for subjects the wearer deems important. Truth is Paul doesn't love Windows 98, and Paul doesn't hate Windows 98, Paul doesn't really give a fuck about Windows 98 one way or another.
The guts of it is; Paul wanted this Tattoo because it goes against the norm, it is not an image that one would see and instantly consider appropriating as a tattoo. It encourages people to think and ask questions, not necessarily ask Paul questions, but question what they currently think or know about Tattoos. That's what good art does; it stirs conversation within the audience. The same goes for all other art forms, painting, film, music... You may not like it, you may not understand it, the important thing is that you're thinking about it, you're not just a passive viewer. All art has an intended audience, its very possible that what you are looking at, watching, or listening to …wasn't made for you.
August 3, 2007 at 12:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
More bad rock from Intel
Surely, any firm with the sense of humor to create video clips like these can't be an evil monopolist?August 2, 2007 at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
AMD slings more mud at Intel
An AMD sponsored study claims that the Intel monopoly has cheated the world out of more than $60bn over the past decade.
Quite conveniently, the study notices that only four firms have exceeded 16 per cent in economic returns over the past decade (that is, profit corrected for the cost of capital, in other words: profit that should be considered excessive. And if the forces of supply and demand were functioning properly, this should be a short term blip on the economic radar).
Those four are Coca Cola, Microsoft, UST (a tobacco and liquor seller) and Intel. You don't have to tell anyone that tobacco maker are crooks, and in UST's case, the firm has even been subject to antitrust accusations, just like Coca Cola and Microsoft.
The chip maker will use the study as evidence in its anti trust case against Intel. From what has been published so far, there are no smoking guns – at least not as many as there were in the case against Microsoft. AMD needs all the help that it can get and a study like this one would never hurt.
But surely a judge will see the apples to oranges comparison going on here. You can't compare typical profit margins for sugared water with those of a semi conductor.
Take a look at 10 year net profit margins for some market leading high tech vendors, and there Intel's a-typical market lead is all but gone.
In AMD's view, Oracle should be put to the anti trust test first: the database vendor over the past 5 years achieved an average net profit margin of 24.34. Cisco comes in at 19.24 per cent. Intel suddenly looks rather average with its 18.14 per cent.
Intel described it as "just another day working in the coal mine." But we're getting increasingly convinced that Intel and AMD are playing in a sand box, slinging mud like all toddlers do.
August 2, 2007 at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Intel goes back to the 90-ies
Could Intel's use of 90s-styled generic rock music signal a longing for a time when it ruled the PC market without any competition to speak of?
August 2, 2007 at 01:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Dell commits a blogging no-no
When Dell launched its Direct 2 Dell blog, the server vendor said that the site aimed to foster a one-on-one conversation with its customers.
On Tuesday however, the ailing computer and server maker suffered a relapse, falling prey to its old habit of the one to many rhetoric. The culprit was Glenn Keels, senior manager of the commercial server team. The weapon was a flame war against HP over its power and cooling strategy.
Even Dell's own suppliers say that the company is behind the rest of the industry when it comes to its power and cooling initiatives. HP apparently has made it one of its talking points to its (prospective) customers.
That in turn prompted Dell's childish jab at HP's "Dynamic Smart Cooling" initiative: "I can't tell you if it's "Dynamic" or "Smart" because the product isn't slated to be released until later this year".
Both HP and Dell rely on Emerson Network Power for their advanced cooling solutions. Dell has a more intimate relationship with the vendor because the firm lacks a large consultancy group that helps firms with the design of their data center. In other words, if customers ask Dell to solve their cooling problems, Dell will point to Emerson. If they ask HP, the printer maker will dish up its own batch of consultants, who will likely recommend Emerson technology.
Dell's Keels has every right to badmouth the competition. But such petty fights have no place on a blog that pretends to foster one-on-one conversations. That's no place to erect your soap box.
August 1, 2007 at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Spanish
