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How did this get modded down to 0?

Penguin Power on PS3? Probably. has some useful information.

With 7 SPUs on the PS3 Cell, that's 160-175 single-precision GFLOPS on Linpack. Even on double precision, at 8.5 GFLOPS it's still faster than a P4. Cell Broadband Engine Architecture and its first implementation-A performance view /insert obligatory "imagine a Beowulf..." here

This is going to be used for real work.

I think you are basically right, (that this is discriminatory, that regulators attention will be caught,) but I think there's nothing that can be done about it.

It's like the requirement that alternative currencies be pegged to the US dollar: "Good luck." Just imagine World of Warcraft struggling to peg Gold to the dollar. And every other virtual world, every other virtual currency. (Is World of Warcraft Gold taxable income? Are Lindens?)

Or it's like trying to tax trades on Warcraft.

It'll attract the attention of regulators, but... ... where will the regulators go, from there?

Personally, I see Organized Culture as our likely destination.

from Ars:

Less than a year after announcing the transition to an all-Intel architecture, Apple is almost there. The only PowerPC machines left are the Power Mac G5 and the Xserve, both of which await the arrival of the Intel Core 2 Duo (aka, Conroe and Merom), presumably this summer. At that point, Apple's 12-year dalliance with the PowerPC CPU will have come to an end. The king is dead. Long live the king!

Creative's ridiculous UI patent existing in NeXTStep has been well established, but here's a shot of it in an early MacOS beta from 1999.

yes but Xerox can sue apple for making a GUI interface that they made first =p

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gui.ars/3

apple invented the GUI......please...

According this ars story - http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2005/8/1 0/922 - it was filed about 5 months before Apple tried to file their own, back in 2002.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox360 -2.ars

The PPE is an extremely stripped down POWER design with significantly fewer resources than the G3 in the Revolution.

Higher resolutions tend to mask jaggies somewhat, except they also cause them to pop out and crawl much worse during movement. Additionally FSAA is easier at lower resolutions, obviously.

And the 1/6 processing power estimation assumes that that all three cores are at 100% utilization, which is a pretty bad assumption.

* The growing cost of development for games on next-gen platforms will increase demand from publishers to require new games to be deployed on many platforms.
* Increased cross-platform development will mean less money for optimizing a new game for any particular platform.
* As a result, with the exception of in-house titles developed by the console manufacturers themselves, none of the three major platforms (Xbox 360, PS3 and Nintendo Revolution) will end up with games that look significantly different from each other, nor will any platform show any real "edge" over the others. Many games will be written to a "lowest common denominator" platform, which would be two threads running on a single CPU core and utilizing only the GPU.

"XP Home support ending this year".


That's not true. Support for XP Home will end 2 years after the release of Vista. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060112-5970 .html

http://www.palm.com/us/products/smartphones/treo70 0p/index.html?creativeID=HmPg_BB|treo700p_announce ment&AID=10380937&PID=1511436

(link found via http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2006/5/ 15/3967 )

Is this really true? From what I can gather, Microsoft's brand isn't damaged much at all. Maybe it appears that way because of the skewed view we get here on /. but opinions aren't the same everywhere else.

No doubt, Slashdot isn't at all representative of society at large. However, it does seem Microsoft as a brand has been taking it in the shorts lately.

Bush is nominating Hayden to direct the CIA. Even though Hayden broke the law by spying on us, saying the 4th Amendment doesn't require probable cause. It does.

So Bush's government is derailing justice to protect his compiling vast complex databases of our private communications. In the hands of Iran/Contra conspirators.

After Bush's Justice Department agreed to drop their in-house investigation into Bush's NSA wiretap spying because Bush's NSA told them they didn't have security clearance, these lawsuits are the main obstacle to Bush spying on you as much as he can, taxpaid by you.

Next week, NSA whistleblower Chris Strom will reveal to the Senate how the NSA domestic spying goes even further than these latest exposures (despite Bush denial at every step). Probably spying on us with our satellites, which they scare us into paying for as part of that useless $BILLION Star Wars missile shield.

Feel safer?

I don't know who Vitaly Friedman is, but his submission (quoted in italics) is verbatim from the intro to the article about this on ArsTechnica posted yesterday.

You mean DualShake, not DualShock. "Dual" referred to the two analog sticks, which the DualShake has. "Shock" referred to the force feedback, which Sony removed from the DualShake.

According to Sony, this has nothing to do with their losing a patent case with Immersion Corporation and is because their motion sensing technology would be "confused" by the force feedback technology.

It's worth noting that the Wii controller will support rumble technology along with motion detection. Personally, I'm curious if the hastely-added "motion" technology wasn't the only reason force feedback was removed, and if it weren't also due to battery concerns, since the new controller is wireless. I have a feeling that the motion feedback was added for three reasons:

1. To try and steal some thunder from the Wii.
2. To try and provide a reason why they removed the force feedback function due to the ongoing lawsuit with Immersion Corporation.
3. Because when the controller contained force feedback technology, the battery life in the wireless controller was far too short.

Although this is all wild speculation on my behalf.

1991, when they dropped out of the computer business.

2. When was the last Electronic Arts layoff?

Feb. 2006 , 5% of EA's Redwood City workforce was laid off. This followed the 2005 layoffs in LA.

It's still got a bluray drive in the cheap version, it just doesn't have HDMI+HDCP, so you can't watch (some of) your bluray discs in full resolution.

I don't know any people who accepts any crap being thrown at them. Be it hardware issues or software. I don't really know what you're trying to say with this point.

I'll try to explain what I'm trying to say: In my experience, PC users will simply put up with and accept most problems their computer have, while Mac users will whine about every little imperfection.

I mentioned some examples of this. Somebody I know has a IBM laptop whose escape key fell off after less than a year. He didn't do anything about it, after all, it still works. At my workplace, somebody's Dell bluescreened regularly about twice a week. He didn't do anything about it for half a year, then replaced a few hardware parts and when that didn't help, he simply had a new Dell ordered to replace the crashing machine. A former girlfriend of mine simply did not start her PC for a few months after she caught a virus and didn't know what to do about it. A friend's dad has three external CD burners at home, none of them connected to his PC. He tried to install them, and when one didn't work, he simply bought the next one. He has wireless internet, but when he couldn't get it to work with a Nintendo DS, he simply bought one of Nintendo's USB thingies instead. Another former girlfriend has an IBM laptop whose battery only lasted for about ten minutes after half a year of usage. Did she complain to IBM? Nah, she simply doesn't use it unplugged anymore. She bought a bluetooth USB stick, and when it didn't work after a few tries, she put it in a drawer never to be seen again. I had to install her wifi card after she wasn't able to do it for a few months and finally simply stopped trying. Most PC users don't actually seem to expect their stuff to work, and they aren't surprised or annoyed if it doesn't.

Mac users, on the other hand, write pages upon pages of blog entries because their Macs make an almost inaudible sound when the energy consumption of their Macs changes, they scream bloody murder if their tranparent Cubes aren't perfectly clear and they generally whine about whatever little problem they can find.

Of course, this is just my own experience. I'm simply saying that in my experience, most PC users would be better off if they expected a little more of their computers. Reading online blogs about Macs doesn't really give you a good impression of the quality of Apple's products because Mac users will complain about every little imperfection.

So, we can expect the intel version of the G5 desktops out in July or latest August 2006, since that is when the next Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) takes place.

Even though Pentiums and Xeons have shared the same core since P6 (Pentium 2), Intel has reserved some workstation/server features (like multiple processors) for the Xeon platform (AMD does the same for Athlon/Opteron).

So if Apple still wants dual-processor options for the PowerMac's successor, then they will very likely use Woodcrest (Xeon). However, the emergence of dual-core and the availability of Intel "Extreme" CPUs might mean Apple does not need more than one processor anymore for their "pro" desktops. Also, Intel offers "low end" workstation platforms that use Pentium CPUs with worstation chipsets (ECC memory, worstation graphics cards, PCI-X, PCIe x4/x8). Example: E7230 chipset.

My revised predictions: iMac will use Core 2 Duo. PowerMac (Mac Pro?) will use Core 2 Extreme (no more dual-processor) with a workstation chipset (ECC, workstation graphics cards, PCIe x4 and x8 slots). Xserve will use dual-processor Xeon (Woodcrest). I'm hoping Apple will offer another non-pro desktop (besides iMac and Mac mini) that uses Core 2 Duo.

DisplayPort has only a negligble bandwidth lead over DVI. The total raw capacity of DisplayPort is 10.8 Gbps versus 9.9 Gbps for a dual-link DVI connection (or a "type B" HDMI connection).

Here's a spec comparison (includes bandwidth) of DisplayPort, LVDS, DVI, and HDMI (I believe it's from VESA):

http://www.audioholics.com/news/uploads/DisplayP ortDVIHDMIcompared.gif

> OS 9 had a ton of viruses and they had even a smaller market share than OS X.

Here are some actual market share figures. OS X (post 2001) is lower than Classic.

Your Government's surveillance programme hates competition.

But they do love shopping in a free market:

FBI buys illegally acquired phone records for investigations

They chose speed with the system... and according to the the Arstechnica article, precision isn't a priority either. So I think he'll opt for C, the open ended option that wasn't in the prepared speech.

It's amazing that there was a whole day of down time just to add text messaging.

I know that it isn't fashionable to not cheer on /. when Apple wins something, but in this case they clearly won against consumer rights, so maybe, just maybe, this time around we shouldn't cheer for Apple.

For a very good overview about the subject and a much better article than the one in the /. blurb, head over to arstechnica:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060501-6715 .html

"The legislation in question originally contained consumer-friendly provisions that would force technology companies to make their DRM schemes interoperable. This would have a potent effect on the dominance of Apple and iTunes, of course, since the Cupertino company has so far proved unwilling to license its Fairplay technology to anyone else. The non-interoperable nature of Fairplay has been crucial to the success of Apple's online music store, which has leveraged the popularity of the iPod to become the biggest seller of digital downloads on the Internet. ...
        * Previously, "information needed for interoperability" covered "technical documentation and programming interfaces needed to obtain a copy in an open standard of the copyrighted work, along with its legal information." Now this has been changed to "technical documentation and programming interfaces needed to obtain a protected copy of a copyrighted work." But a "protected" version of the work can't be played back in a different player, which means interoperability won't be attained with this clause.
        * Previously, the only condition for receiving information needed for interoperability was to meet the cost of logistics of delivering the information. Now, anyone wanting to build a player will have to take a license on "reasonable and non discriminatory conditions, and an appropriate fee." When using information attained under such a license, you will have to "respect the efficiency and integrity of the technical measure."
        * DRM publishers can demand the retraction of publication of the source-code for interoperable, independent software, if it can prove that the source-code is "harmful to the security and the efficiency of the DRM."

You can find more details about the revised legislation at Ars.

Basically, it looks as though companies can keep measures of protection and no longer need to worry about interoperability as long as the songs themselves can be copied. I wonder if the new provisions will affect any Microsoft DRm standards at all...

from Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060501-6716 .html

If you are upgrading an existing sustem to run IE7, your IE6 settings will be imported, and if you happen to have set the rarely touched AutoSearch feature to something other than Microsoft's service, why, IE7 inherits the heathen setting without complaint.

"No, haven't they already said that? Like hundreds of times? And does it really matter?"

Well they say a lot things and then contradict themselves. They also say java is already open sourced as they define open source. Sun executives don't live on the same planet as you and I do. They make up their own definitions as they go along. Here is a nice diagram of sun's strategy.

Does it matter? I think it does. I mean I just tried for a couple of days to get java 1.5 loaded on to ubuntu PPC. Is there a reason why it has to be so difficult? Doesn't it help Java programmers if the JRE and the JDK can be redistributed freely.

technically, if you listen to the cd with your girlfriend, it's considered piracy.

we are the ones who are responsible for educating ourselves!

This is true.

chewing out carlson just continues the idea that we are not to blame. [...] if anyone is "hurting america", it is stewart, for implying that any media source a responsibility to do anything other than report whatever they want.

That's ridiculous. The Crossfire guys weren't presenting themselves as entertainers; they were allegedly trying to do a serious political show. However, Stewart's critique was that it was fake journalism, a hypocritical farce. I grant that consumers should eat Doritos responsibly, but that doesn't mean that Frito Lay can say that they fill your fruits and vegetables requirement.

ZFS actually is a ver good file system.

Here is the ars technica low-down on what ZFS does differently and why that's such a good thing.

arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051117-5595.html

The right link is this one.

Only one number off. So close, and yet so far.

Features cut from Firefox 2:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060430-6701 .html

The correct arstechnica link is here: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060430-6701 .html

Two that quickly come to mind are FEMA's registration for disaster relief and the online courses for most schools.

That's weird - I just specced a mid-range system for a friend (lowest of the low-end 64-bit system) and squeezed in under Dell's discounted price for a comparable system by almost $150. If he had bought a Dell and refused the 24-month internet subscription and other gotchas, he would have paid $250 or more over the price of the NewEgg system I specced. Just for reference, it was almost identical to the Ultimate Budget Box that Ars Technica publishes regularly.

My friend added a few bells and whistles where he wanted more power (a little more RAM, a better CPU) and managed to beat a comparable Dell system in price. Because he's switching from Win2K to WinXP, he had to buy the OS, but it was still cheaper overall.

Before posting conspiracy theories and such, you may want to read what others have to say.

Check out Ars Technica's Aperture 1.0 reviwe:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/aperture.ars

There's a good list of bugs at ars's review of aperture

The one people complained about most is the thumbnails not matching the actual image (and there's reports of this happenning in iPhoto too).

Ummmm....not really. If it doesn't support CableCard....MOVE ON.

Don't be silly. CableCARD readers won't be sold to such vendors. The content providers won't allow open-source DVR software that might output an unencrypted video stream. Read more about it here.

Welcome to the brave new world where you're no longer able to build your own consumer electronics devices.

Personally I'd love to have this kind of power in Unix, but you'd have to redesign all the config file formats and the command-line utilities from the ground up... it would be cool, but it wouldn't really be Unix any more.

NewScientist is reporting that scientists have discovered complex nanoscale structures that have successfully protected rats from anthrax.

So, with this protecting them, we can't use anthrax on these rats now? Pity.

We all know that anything that helps protect a politician is funded fully, quickly...

Soko

And yet cases are going against them, and further lawsuits are being brought against them, in their overzealous pursuit of profit:

• RIAA Chan case dismissal
• High Court Bounces Latest RIAA Effort
• RIAA lawyers bully witnesses into perjury
• Oregon RIAA Victim Fights Back; Sues RIAA for Electronic Trespass, Violations of Computer Fraud & Abuse, Invasion of Privacy, RICO, Fraud

It's not in the millions by any stretch, but as these things gain momentum, the RIAA is going to be defending itself on a thousand fronts and undoubtedly as more and more cases make their way into the headlines, they will find themselves on the losing end, as more and more people abandon CDs and pick up music for free on-line.

It's not a victory yet, but this could be the biggest blow, if it's found that RIAA members were busy fudging the evidence to get their own way. If they're in the right, why the deception? Because they know they have alosing battle on their hands unless they stack the deck. This one thing may come back to bite them hard.

Nope, sadly, not yet.

AM2 uses DDR2 memory. It is expected to become cheaper and more available than DDR when most companies move their production to make it. I don't want to fob you off with a cheap RTFM, but there is no easy alternative to reading what Tom's Hardware / AnandTech / Ars Technica have to say about the matter.

It looks like google displayed their name with a new font. As it turns out you can't copyright a font (nor patent it). You can trademark the name of a font (or not in MS's case, but not the shape of the glyphs (characters) themselves. That's the reason you see a font named "times new roman" and it looks just like "times roman". (The hints that are what make a font look good as it is redered are separate from the shape and a different story.) Of course IANAL (I just ended up learning more about fonts and IP than you'd think was necessary working on a publishing system).

According to this article, they've only recently hit 20%. That's a long way from 50%. It's certainly a respectable number, but Intel could easily keep them at bay by employing illegal tactics.

"Now perhaps with the next version of OS X, there will be feature parity, but as of yet nothing's been announced except "Quartz Extreme 2D" which turned out to be vaporware."

How is something that shipped in the last version of the OS vaporware?

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 14

"From early accounts, it sounds an awful lot like Gdrive, the still-as-yet-publicly-unannounced storage service from Google."

So wait, you're comparing Microsoft's only-barely-announced product with Google's as-yet-unannounced product? How about we wait for actual implemented features before we get all excited?

Nevermind, I can't help myself.

Personally, the GDrive would be more helpful to me, because I'm storing so much of my information with Google anyway. The more I have invested in a system, the more that system is worth to me, and all that. Of course, someone who's using Hotmail and all the other Microsoft services would most likely be better served with their offering, if they're integrated.

(but if you just haven't gotten an invitation, that's no excuse. email me and I'll send one to you.)

ICANN will approve anything that isn't commercially viable and anything that could not possibly compete with dot com.

To help people manage all their contact information online, the Internet's key oversight agency is considering a ``.tel'' domain name. If approved, the domain could be available this year.

You can already do all of those things with a myriad of software applications and you can do it from websites on ANY TLD. This is just like saying that you should only stream video from websites that end in dot tv.

Just like dot museum and dot aero, this TLD, dot tel is a sham to make people think ICANN is approving new TLDs like they are being asked to do.

What we need are viable commercial alternatives like dot lawyer, dot doctor, dot medical, dot auto, dot realestate, dot construction, dot design, and others that reflect real business categories. That would increase competition on the web and that is good for everyone.

Not only is promoting competition good for everyone, it is one of the prime directives of ICANN's Memorandum of Understanding. Many on ICANN's Board of Directors cater to big business who wants to maintain the advantage they have in owning premium domain names. They want opportunity, then they want to shut the door on anyone coming after them.

More on my blog.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060416-6607 .html

I suspect that Apple has some sort of licensing agreement with Adobe regarding PDF in Quartz, though maybe not according to this article:

"Quartz does not use Postscript as its internal graphics representation language. Instead, it uses Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) standard which is a superset of Adobe Postscript. PDF has several advantages over Postscript, including better color management, internal compression, font independence, and interactivity. (Check out the PDF specs for more information.) PDF is also is a free and open standard, which saves Apple from paying Postscript licensing fees."

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/1q00/macos-x-gui/ma cos-x-gui-4.html

Anyone else more in the know care to comment?

This even above and beyond the fact that Apple makes most of it's money from hardware, blah, blah.

This past IDF saw the unveiling of some significant details about this new microarchitecture, which was formerly called "Merom" but now goes by the official name of "Core."