Slashdot Mirror

Do you remember the brand trust article that everybody was talking about not two weeks ago? Where did Lenova sit there? for reference: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060330-6491 .html from the site where you order the study (which im not about to do) http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt /0,7211,38694,00.html itemBose, Dell, IBM, Pioneer, Zenith, And Philips Have The Most Brand Potential Where is Lenova? Oh wait, its not there. Ok, so formerly, Thinkpads were being manufactured by a well know, respected, and establised company. Now they're being manufactured by a relatively unknown company. Clearly racism is the driving factor.

The ways in which the Finder sucks, are even worse in PathFinder. It looks like they've merged a web browser and a file browser -- how this deserves any part of the "Finder" name is beyond me.

Sony is planning to have an Operating System running constantly in the background.

An article published on April 1st by an Ars staff member that he had played 12 maps from the game, compiled from a series of disks that he'd recieved as part of a promotional kit. The article was a three page review of the game that said, while fun, it's not going to knock anybody's socks off.

What got me was that they're actually making the basic version not with poor users in mind, but with non-users in mind. They think that they can draw people with a cheap version in that wouldn't protest if we took away something as basic as MULTITASKING.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050910-5298 .html
"
First up, there's Starter Edition, which like XP Starter Edition, is a crippled (and lame) product aimed at the two-thirds world. It will limit users to three concurrent applications, and provide only basic TCP/IP networking, and won't be suitable for most games. The next step up is Home Basic Edition, which is really the sibling to today's Windows XP Home. However, as the name suggests, there's also Home Premium Edition, and this is where we start to split features like hairs and create a gaggle of products. HPE will build on the the Basic Edition by adding, most notably, the next-generation of Media Center capabilities, including support for HDTV, DVD authoring, and even DVD ripping backed up (of course) by Windows DRM. For non-corporate types, this is probably going to be the OS that most people use. It's similar to XP Pro in power, but with all of the added bells and whistles for entertainment. Well, most of them.

Windows Vista Professional Edition won't occupy the same spot that XP Pro occupies today, because this time it's truly aimed at businesses. It won't feature the MCE functionality that Home Premium Edition has, but it begins to provide the kind of functionality you'd expect in a business environment, such as support for non-Microsoft networking protocols and Domain support. But don't expect too many businesses to necessarily turn to PE. Microsoft is also planning both a Small Business Edition and an Enterprise Edition, which build upon pro by adding (seemingly minor) features aimed at appealing to each market. SBE, for instance, includes a networked backup solution, while EE will include things like Virtual PC integration, and the ability to encrypt an entire volume of information.

Last but not least, there's Ultimate Edition. Hey, I'm just glad that they didn't call it Extreme Edition. I'll leave it to Paul Thurrott, who has all of the details, to explain (and promote) this beast:

        The best operating system ever offered for a personal PC, optimized for the individual. Windows Vista Ultimate Edition is a superset of both Vista Home Premium and Vista Pro Edition, so it includes all of the features of both of those product versions, plus adds Game Performance Tweaker with integrated gaming experiences, a Podcast creation utility (under consideration, may be cut from product), and online "Club" services (exclusive access to music, movies, services and preferred customer care) and other offerings (also under consideration, may be cut from product). Microsoft is still investigating how to position its most impressive Windows release yet, and is looking into offering Ultimate Edition owners such services as extended A1 subscriptions, free music downloads, free movie downloads, Online Spotlight and entertainment software, preferred product support, and custom themes. There is nothing like Vista Ultimate Edition today. This version is aimed at high-end PC users and technology influencers, gamers, digital media enthusiasts, and students.
"

Unlike all the useless comments that recommend Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy, I'll point you towards a thread called "the 'neat application I stumbled across on the web' thread" over on the ArsTechnica OpenForum: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/t pc/f/99609816/m/1400961263

AFAIK, Apple only has a single kernel for each architecture (PPC or x86), that runs indifferently on 32-bit or 64-bit hardware. Clearly the kernel is then strictly 32-bit, however it allows some 64-bit applications to run.

ATM these 64-bit applications cannot call the GUI directly. You have to develop your interface separately as a 32-bit app, and then use IPC to communicate with the 64-bit backend. This is a little clunky to say the least.

This is one thing that Linux does very well. On a recent distribution like FC4, on x86_64 applications can be indifferently 32-bit or 64-bit, GUI or not GUI, there are no restrictions.

Even if Nintendo continues to fail in markets outside of Japan

This means that Nintendo's yearly profit was 22 percent of its net sales

Interestingly enough, Intel's latest project is being called "CORE". So yes, ARM is probably going to end up fighting CORE again.

I have seen some captchas that ask users in plain text to solve a simple arithmetic or logic problem. This is going to be far more accessible than anything relying on embedded media.

If you're sure that none of your users are blind or colorblind (which would be plausible only for an extremely small user base), then I suppose something like KittenAuth might be appropriate.

Streaming media

http://www.streamingmedia.com/patent/

But it now

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060312-6364 .html

Netflix vs blockbuster

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?typ e=internetNews&storyID=2006-04-06T014212Z_01_N0538 7732_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-NETFLIX.xml

The first patent, granted in 2003, covers the method by which Netflix customers select and receive a certain number of movies at a time, and return them for more titles.

So a common-sense business method is patentable?

"A Mac-user with common sense!"

It's not common sense. It's wrong.

Microsoft is in a unique position. Because it has a virtual monopoly, Microsoft makes more money when its software has a lot of security vulnerabilities. For those who are ruled by money, morality has no force; "Maximizing Shareholder Value" is the way they live their lives.

Microsoft makes more money if it pressures its programmers to work too fast, so that they are sloppy, and then releases buggy software. Many people are fascinated by computers, and easily accept the world that Microsoft has created for them.

Here's a story about a Microsoft VP saying, "Oh, the next Windows operating system will be secure": "Safety and security is the overriding feature that most people will want to have Windows Vista for" .

So, Microsoft is once again telling us "The next version of Windows will be the good one." Before, Microsoft said Windows XP was "Built to be Dependable".

However, Vista will NOT include virus protection. Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft's platform products and services division told CRN, an industry magazine this:

CRN: In terms of security, how do you compare security in Vista vs. security in Windows XP SP2?

Allchin: SP2 was a very good system but compared to Vista, it's night and day.

CRN: Is there going to be antivirus in Vista?

Allchin: No, there is not.

CRN: Why?

Allchin: It's a complicated answer as to why not.

CRN: Was the decision based on technical concerns?

Allchin: It wasn't technical.

CRN: Will Vista resolve security problems once and for all?

Allchin: I'm not going to claim perfection or near perfection, but I think we're unrivaled in the work we've done. I believe security will be a huge problem for the industry for years and years and years but this will change the landscape in a fairly dramatic way.

Once again, Microsoft is taking advantage of the fact that most of its customers have little technical knowledge. Mr. Allchin said that "security will be a huge problem for the industry for years and years and years".

Microsoft charges for OneCare Live. That's another way to make money. Make sloppy software, and then sell protection against the sloppiness.

Note the emphasis on "beta testing" in Mr. Allchin's statements in the CRN interview. Someone said that Microsoft's motto is "The whole world is our beta tester."

--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits and paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans get Iraq oil profits, and American citizens pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?

Thinkpads are well-built... near indestructible, actually, and from what I've seen that hasn't changed since the Lenovo takeover. But they...

• don't have DVI (what, it isn't 2001 yet?) and therefore can't drive big monitors well
• on most models, insist on taking up half the back panel with a gawdawful parallel port (oh, it's not even 1997 yet)
• and are housed in ugly angular cases made of 1992-look shiny black plastic

I will say in spite of all that I find them very pleasant to use (other than the unfortunate fact they're usually running Windows).

To get back on topic... I bought a W8610 MBP (2.16, 2GB, 7200). After using it for awhile I can hear the processor noise. But I can only surmise some units must be much, much louder than mine to cause the reactions we've seen all over the net. My dual 1.8 G5 chirp is much, much louder. Even if the G5 fan is running in the same room I can't hear the MBP. And, even in a totally quiet room, it's not bothersome at all. Certainly not worth returning a unit with no dead pixels or apparent other issues to "fix."

And the machine is fast. It stomps my G5 in anything interface- or video-related and is roughly the same in most CPU-bound operations. I'm ecstatic with that level of performance in a 5.5 lb 1" thick gorgeous laptop. Now if I could only add 4GB RAM.

Intel is of course not happy with the $100 laptop since that runs on the AMD Geode processor. Intel is of course focusing on the "fully featured" "community sharing" idea because they want to stop the idea that having a limited CPU is sufficient for most tasks. I think that is the elephant in the room here: For most common tasks, like web browsing, document editing, and e-mail, a top of the line processor is simply not really required. Ars Technica has said it well.

Funny enough, Ars Technica reviewed an iPod nano, and dropped it from 9 feet onto concrete. It damaged, but didn't kill the iPod. They had to run it over with a car, and then amazingly enough, drop it some more, before it stopped playing the song.

When it comes to the current versions of WMA/WMV, Microsoft does insist that those formats be used with its systems.

whoops. I missed the ars technica link. To repeat the interesting part (at least it was interesting to me), heavy cell phone use only doubles the normal 1 in 100,000 chance of developing this type of cancer. Not much to worry about.

As far as I can tell from the chatter, only W-B seems dead-set on using ICT. Fox has decided against it, University probably won't, and Disney likewise seems to be leaning on the side not activating ICT (for now). A few weeks ago Sony surprised me by also opting out.

I'm not sure why the media companies are trending so softly on this issue... most people with analog HDTVs won't know the difference between the degraded and full-resolution versions anyway, and the video-philes who would catch on are likely too small a group to really impact the companies.

Me, I'm so disgusted with the whole DRM mess that I feel absolutely no compulsion to get HD in any form. Perhaps as my current technology begins to wear out I'll find myself spending more time in the real world, with its amazing "true to life" resolutions and frame-rates.

"All of those cables connecting your TV and other video/audio components together, can go away with UWB. "

As long as the analog hole remains open, those cables aren't going anywhere for tons of slashdotters.

Ah, of course, sorry - I actually meant "Quartz 2D Extreme", not "Quartz Extreme". Description here.

My response to that would be that Apple markets it's products, while Microsoft's product is marketing.

Gee, that sounds profound. But does it mean anything, or is it another of those "How many slums will we bulldoze to build the Information superhighway" expressions that _sound_ neat but mean nothing? I'm betting on the latter.

Btw - you do realize that video you linked to isn't a real ad, but a parody video made by Microsoft to laugh at their own packaging, don't you?

And this video is a great demonstration of what I said in my previous post-- Microsoft packages its products like I'd package the contents of my kitchen trash when it's time to empty it. But Apple packages its products like its high art, precisely _because_ it is a boutique PC^W Digital Media company.

PS. Neal Stephenson has dealt with what we're discussing here _far_ more comprehensively in "In the beginning was the command line". IPod packaging is nothing new, check out his very valid points about the packaging of Word. However, for all the dorkiness of Microsoft's packaging, it does not take away from the fact that the products are aimed at a much wider market than Apple and millions find them useful.

Microsoft would have to be insane to create a bunch of different versions of Vista.

They are releasing seven different versions, so maybe they are insane.

> Lack of hibernation in Mac OS, in my opinion, hurts.
> I'm hoping it's one of the things they add for 10.5.

I wouldn't count on it. From the looks of things, the Intel-based Macs boot plenty fast. With boot times around 20-30 seconds, I don't think Apple's engineers will find it worth their time to add hibernation.

Claria will have nothing to sell when it comes out.

I wonder how long it will take for Vista to be adopted by the majority of the Windows-using population. According to this article, as of last year at this time, only 40% of corporate users were using Windows XP. It could be several years before Vista reaches the point where even half of the Windows market. According to this graph, about 15% of Windows users still aren't on XP. Of course, the data could be skewed. Still, it makes me think that spyware will be with at least some Windows users (perhaps the least technically-savvy, and therefore least equipped to deal with spyware) for a long time to come.

Ars has some info: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060324-6453 .html They are calling it FUD. I tend to agree.

No, instead, AT&T would like provide increased quality of service to those web sites who pay for the privilege. . . . Would a site like Google need to pay each of them to ensure high bandwidth throughout the US? And what about overseas?

I'm currently setting up Windows 2000 on Q, but it seems to be very slow

Last year, Ars Technica talked about how newer OS's are leveraging fast GPUs for advanced graphics. The main problem is the bottleneck between system memory and GPU/VRAM. One solution is to move the bottleneck to the other side of the backing store.

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 13
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 14
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 15

Last year, Ars Technica talked about how newer OS's are leveraging fast GPUs for advanced graphics. The main problem is the bottleneck between system memory and GPU/VRAM. One solution is to move the bottleneck to the other side of the backing store.

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 13
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 14
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 15

Last year, Ars Technica talked about how newer OS's are leveraging fast GPUs for advanced graphics. The main problem is the bottleneck between system memory and GPU/VRAM. One solution is to move the bottleneck to the other side of the backing store.

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 13
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 14
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/ 15

Owning a 360 I've got to say that I look forward to a portable device from Microsoft. The 360 is showing to be a great network device and the potential it has makes me salivate. PS3 looks good too, from what I can see, and the PSP is very nice; options are always good though. Many services are already lined up with PlayForSure so there is content already.

Don't get confused, you will pay for 99% of the content. Don't think that any of these devices with DRM free - don't even look at one if that is your deal. Really, they are putting that upfront as well. Still, there are all kind of subscription services that do and will take advantage of Microsoft's size.

I for one welcome our new, seamless content delivery overlords!

Not really, but it is exciting because we've been asking for this for ages. Apple, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo? are in the game. I like Microsoft's model the best though: they are allowing different content providers to use their devices and allowing other hardware manufactures to use their DRM. It makes Microsoft have to produce the best hardware (we shall see) and gives the consumer the choice of content providers. Apple gives you no choices (more are coming) and Sony likely will try to corner the market on hardware (and they own a few content companies).

Provide these devices and keep the DRM off of our computers. Then I'll be happy.

I'd like to add... A default windows xp install does not have photoshop, framemaker, pagemaker, visio, access, quickbooks, a pdf converter either.

The article also states: "I also knew my way around UNIX and that allowed me to use Internet applications I hadn't used previously." This is WRT MacOSX. Why couldn't this be a Positive for Ubuntu also? Does it not share the Unix design?

"Windows XP comes preinstalled on every computer manufacturers' products with the exception of Apple." see http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060108-5928 .html
http://xtops.de/

Not to forget: http://pioneercomputers.com.au/ sells systems with Linux preinstalled.

I don't know. Ars technica ran an iPod over and it still worked.

So let me get this straight. They want to dissallow breaking DRM via DMCA like measures, but force companies to open up their DRM for anyone to use. It seems like some sort of bad compromise is being attemped between having DMCA like measures and making sure there is healthy competition.

The real question is why have DMCA like measures in the first place? They don't stop content from being pirated anyhow, and just assist the industry in nickel and diming us.

This sounds like a government solution to a government created problem, as Apple hasn't done anything to my knowledge to abuse their position. If the government is protecting DRM from being reverse engineered, they are the ones screwing up fair use and turning the market lopsided, and Apple is perfectly within their rights under the law.

• All first titles are expected to be limited to a single layer.
• There are two Blu-ray modes: Movie Mode (used for high definition films) and BD-J Mode (a fully programmable mode that includes interactive features, like games and Internet connectivity). Both modes can be used on the same disc.
• Sony and MGM titles will be encoded on the discs at 1080/24p. The user will set the player to convert this native resolution as required to match the capability of his or her display.
• At this time Sony has no immediate plans to implement the Image Constraint Token (ICT). (
  That is, they can always turn it on in the future on a per-title basis.)
• All of the Sony and MGM titles will initially be encoded using MPEG-2, at a variable bit rate, but up to a maximum of 30Mb/sec.
• When other codecs exceed MPEG-2 at all data rates, Sony will begin using them.
• On the audio side, all Sony and MGM titles will include both conventional Dolby Digital and DTS soundtracks. Dolby data rate is still unconfirmed. DTS data rate will be 1.5Mb/sec. Additionally all Sony/MGM releases will include a 5.1 uncompressed PCM audio track. (To make sense of these audio formats, Todd B. has written a nice summary here).
• The first Sony and MGM titles will each have a hidden Easter Egg containing several setup test patterns-- a sweep, a standard SMPTE pattern including, among other things, a PLUGE, color bars, and a resolution monoscope.

The Blu-Ray group also summarized what they announced at CeBit in this PDF.

Highlights:

• Two types of Blu-ray Disc video players will be available: a "BD Player" type and an Internet connected player. The most fundamental feature difference is that one supports Internet connections and the other does not. Either player type can be produced and marketed from day one. The internet connections may be used for firmware upgrades. Toshiba has said in their HD-DVD players you can simply burn an image onto a CD-ROM to do the same thing.
• From the beginning, all models of either player type support playback of interactive BD-Java
  content. (This had been something that was supposed to be delayed in the hardware).

A source at a studio has said that current "Special Edition" content for Blu-Ray discs is being ported over to a High Def signal. It won't be only the movies that are in HD.

Netflix will be carrying both Blu-Ray and Hd-DVD discs at launch.

If you have a video card that says it will support HDCP, you may be disappointed. It looks like no current video cards on the market will really support HDCP. From Ars: "With regards to shipping cards, they are correct: no matter what a box's feature list may say, no video card supports HDCP fully at this time. Why? They have not been completely programmed. Until the specifications for the access control system are completely finished, implementing pro

Discussed here: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/t pc/f/174096756/m/861001028731/r/260005028731#26000 5028731

They don't have working Blu-Ray drives, and in fact the specs there are changing. (latest news: no degradation on analog HDTV sets, which is good

Actually, my understanding is that the drives will still include the ability to degrade resolution with analog output--Sony is just promising that in the interests of promoting the format they won't set the flag to activate this feature in their own movies...at least, not right away. Once Blu-Ray wins out over HD-DVD, of course, all bets are off.

The first good reason to hope for a long, long format war....

Kinda sorta - Microsoft licenses its DRM for any portable player, but not for any personal computer operating systems. MS could license WMA DRM for iPods, but then Mac users wouldn't have any way to play (or burn) the files on their Macs.

...Amit Singh from IBM and kernelthread.com (slashdotted 16 times for excellent technical articles on various bits of internals of Apple hardware and Mac OS X) has his own legacy boot solution as well. From a rejected submission:

It appears that Amit Singh of IBM Almaden Research Center, of kernelthread.com and author of Mac OS X Internals, has devised a method to allow legacy, or BIOS-based, booting on Intel-based Macs, which they're calling "BAMBIOS". This means operating systems that currently only support legacy booting, such as many Linux distributions that don't yet support EFI, or things like Windows XP and the forthcoming Windows Vista (the 32-bit version of which will lack EFI support), will now be able to run on Intel-based Macs without modification (and completely legally). There is also another solution from "narf2006", described here and shown in this flickr set of photos. narf2006's solution is awaiting verification by Colin for the $12,000 pot. Time to get that MacBook Pro you've been waiting on for the best of both worlds, everyone...

So even if narf2006's solution isn't real, Amit's solution most certainly is, since he has a great deal of credibility. One way or another, we'll all be able to boot Windows directly on our Intel-based Macs.

This will be great news for people interested in Windows gaming on an Intel-based Mac (who really need the direct video access) and/or people who just want to do it NOW; however, a virtualization solution running under Mac OS X, such as VMware or Parallels, will be the real holy grail for most users. Most people don't want/need/care about the highest graphics and I/O performance; just the ability to run Windows side-by-side with Mac OS X at a speed that is more than usable, and to also have some capability to seamlessly share things like clipboards and files between the environments (as a nice VM environment would most certainly do). Not to mention not having to reboot.

In any case, even dual booting will be a welcome capability. It remains to be seen how convoluted the process is...

Also, I just spoke with Colin Nederkoorn (the guy running the contest) moments ago, and narf2006's solution has NOT been submitted to him yet. He said that narf2006 said he's "cleaning it up" and will be submitting it "later this week". So, no one, including Colin, has actually seen this solution working yet. Also, he apparently hasn't been in communication with Amit on the BAMBIOS solution as yet...

There are a number of utilities that allow you more control over Windows paging. notably at Sysinternals which has PageDefrag and CacheSet.

There are also a couple of registry tweaks you can try: DisableExecutivePaging and LargeSystemCache. Arstechnica has a guide at http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/memory-1.ars which is useful. No hard data on whether this actually made any difference or not, of course.

Once you pointed me in the right direction I was able to google the quote.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060306-6322 .html

"The market forces that exist today make it unrealistic to spend $200 million on a movie. Those movies can't make their money back anymore. Look at what happened with 'King Kong.'"

"It's no accident that the 'small movies' outclassed the spectaculars in this year's Academy Awards. Is that good for the business? No--it's bad for the business. But moviemaking isn't about business. It's about art! In the future, almost everything that gets shown in theaters will be indie movies."

I had my suspicions this would not be hacked - unless there's a flaw in ssh, you need to come through the web server, which is running as a user with no file or directory ownership. If this machine had, say phpNUKE running on it, it would have been a much juicier prospect.

Things I've noticed that can cause security risks on a web server:
a) allows write access under the document root - many CMS (Content management systems) have such a mechanism to cache images like avatars (which honestly should go in the database), but say a hacker uploads a script instead of an image (I sure hope it's getting validated...) and by knowing the structure of the CMS can execute the script as the web user (www on mac) - whee - you've got at least limited system access (and could at minimum deface other avatars). This is one reason why 99% of my web servers are read only by www (and not owned by www) - only the writing required directories like an avatars directory is owned by www and permissions are 200 or 600 (for UNIX noobs, it's set by the chmod command - 3 columns of read=4, write=2, execute=1 - add them, first is user, second is group, third is other) - write or read/write only by the www user. 777 permissions, requirements given by such CMS as MDPro is terrible advice and definitely not needed. btw, instead of chmod, you could use ACLs on Tiger - see this article on Ars Technica

b) runs as root (e.g. cgi-bin)

c) runs with X windows and other apps open (say rlogin - if you can write a .rhosts file to /Library/Webserver you can log in as www without needing a password... I've used .rhosts hacks on UNIX for a long time - ever since I learned I was exploited that way during my introduction to UNIX in the late 1980s - that and tucking away mini-user change executables with the 's' bit set if I'm given root for an instant - like thru an exploit).

Never mind that the AMD K7 was a carbon copys of the P6 microarchitecture, with incremental tweaks most probably applied to account for P6 shortcomings found in the field. That's an euphemism for `AMD stole Intel's field experience.' The K8 core is only an incremental tweak of K7, the major feature being the on-die memory controller.
So really, AMD can't blame Intel for using P6-derived cores since they're doing the same (not to mention the ethics of stealing a competitor's design). Also, their incremental tweaks aren't really that significant -- process technology changes account for the larger share of performance increase.

Intel tried to raise the bar with the P4 designs, applying some risky design features like hyperpipelined design, and unfortunately the strategy didn't work out all that well, in no small part due to power issues. Moreover they had to endure fanboy cries of `designed by marketing!', but that's the price one pays for exploring new ground in computer architecture. Meanwhile AMD will be content to follow on Intel's successful footsteps as they've always done.

That ars technica article is denial at its best.
"intel faster? CANNOT BE!!!111"

And pray tell, where does Hannibal write that? I did read:

For the record, I do actually expect Intel to regain the performance crown from the Athlon with Conroe.

and

So yeah, I expect Conroe to beat the current Athlon64 architecture, all things being equal.

but most importantly

But until independent benchmarks come out, there's no way to know the extent of Conroe's advantage. I really don't expect it to be as big and unambiguous as these benchmarks suggest, but of course I could very well be wrong.

But then again spouting nonsense is so much more fun than an actually RTFA.

Umm, I suggest you RTFC (comment), as the grandparent was in fact referring to a link posted in another comment to arstechnica, not the original anandtech article.

As pointed out by Ars http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060307-6334 .html I think we should wait and see for the more objective benchmarks. Anyway 2006 will be a good year for CPUs

Oh? Development for the PS3 isn't more complex and time-consuming and therefore more expensive than developing for the 360? That comes as a surprise to me, since PS3today.com found differently in October of 2005 (they referenced a Japanese article about Japanese developers leaving the PS3 for the 360).

Furthermore, developers for the PS3 need to code their own online service, adding to dev time/cost.

Finally, the 360 has enough similarities to development for PCs that there has been a larger base of developers for it -- requiring less time, then to learn how to develop for an entirely new architecture.

Maybe you should bother doing some research of your own before you prove yourself a moron. PS3 games are more expensive to develop than 360 games. Disagree? Why not find ANY information to the contrary (I'll give you a hint: it doesn't exist) and post it in reply, rather than responding like the mouth-breather you seem to be?

The only real bad point here is that Apple still only ships 512MBs RAM by default.

My favorite is the stuff Apple used to say about integrated graphics cards back when the PPC Mini was shipping (From the Graphics page):

Go ahead, just try to play Halo on a budget PC. Most say they're good for 2D games only. That's because an "integrated Intel graphics" chip steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM. You'd have to buy an extra card to get the graphics performance of Mac mini, and some cheaper PCs don't even have an open slot to let you add one.

Other than the graphics card it's got a nice amount of raw CPU power, especially if you get the dual-core version or upgrade the single-core version by replacing the processor. It'd be great to buy a bunch of these for an Xcode build farm. Of course Xcode doesn't yet support cross-architecture distributed builds, so you'd have to be using all-Intel Macs for it to work well. Hopefully Apple will fix this in the near future.