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..is that WHY, oh why do these sites keep logs like this about their users? Basic anonymous statistics and logging of unusual activities like port scans are fine for me, but why did they log up/downloads that they knew to be illegal in many (most?) countries?

What really bothers me is that even when they knew that the MPAA was coming to them and they started raising money to defend themselves why didn't they securely delete all the logs they had? Smells like a plea bargain or even something more rotten to me.. I hope I'm just too paranoid.

This wasn't the first time though, remember how Suprnova's logs were turned to MPAA too.

Also remember how Sharereactor also wanted donations and after raising $15k+ (and considerable ad revenue) it's owner simply vanished, the site was still shut down and nobody has heard from their donations since.

The only reasonable explanation that I've heard is that it's simply illegal to host a site without any logging in some countries. Similar sites in Sweden and Switzerland at least claim to have no logging whatsoever. Anyone know where Lokitorrent was physically hosted?

As a side note, here's a free tool to search for log files from EFF and an article at Ars Technica:
http://www.eff.org/osp/
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050210-4606 .html

Transmeta isn't doing the low heat processors anymore. Quoted from http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050105-4501 .html .

Just because they aren't manufacturing anymore doesn't mean they're exiting the business entirely. There just might not be a "Transmetta" anymore. Instead there will be something like an "Intel Pentium 5 using lowerpower Transmetta Technology" (well probably not, but you get the idea.)

Transmetta will be doing R&D for low power processors for years to come, I'm quite sure.

From what I've seen, it will be rather low horsepower compared to the current G5s, since it will be lacking deep pipelines, caches and other bits that give the G5 much of it's speed. That's not to say that it's not really a G5, it sounds like it will support the full G5 instruction set (including Altivec) and be a true 64 bit processor core, just not a particularly fast one.

The role of the G5 cores seems to be to handle higher order logic that prepares and parses out tasks to the very fast vector units (SPEs).

So it probably does make more sense to have it as a coprocessor in a Mac, at least until compilers and software writers routinely target the cell's SPEs -- if that day ever comes. More likely specialized code will need to be written, and particular subtasks pulled out.

I suspect things like physics libraries, sound & video processing libraries, plus apps like SETI@home would be quickly written to use the SPEs, but most other software wouldn't be.

Transmeta isn't doing the low heat processors anymore. Quoted from http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050105-4501 .html .

CPU manufacturer Transmeta, known for their low-power processors, is evaluating an exit from the CPU market. Instead of manufacturing chips themselves, their business focus would shift towards buzzwords: licensing their intellectual property and the formation of strategic alliances to utilize their processor design as well as their research and development skills.

Looks like slashdot is picking up Ars Technica's sloppy seconds.

Part II is up as well.

Indeed the Gnome Devs already have realized that Longhorn should be next targetted. In fact, they've almost rendered your second complaint null and void. Could anyone miss this story from three days ago? As noted: the Gnome devs have the underpinnings of Gnome successfully implemented over a generalized vector rendering library, which will have as a backend a hardware accelerated composition library. This integration is the second step in the FOSS answer to your second warning. The first was SVG icons, which have been fully functional since Gnome 2.4. I can't speak for KDE, but I imagine they're reacting similarly.

Apple got to the advanced desktop first. FOSS will be second. I'll be surprised if Microsoft doesn't come in a slow third. Heck, Reiser 4 will be ready with metadata delivery long before WinFS is.

Cheerleading session over.

As we noted over at Ars, Sybari doesn't make an AV engine. Their main product allows customers to plug in AV engines developed by other companies, and in fact can support multiple engines at once.

Of course, MS does have their own engine now, which they bought back in 2003.

RAID 0 on a Mac with Flash drives

The first is that it's at 4ghz. The P4 hasn't been able to reach that

This is meaningless when we don't know what is at 4Ghz. If it only means certain processing components, then Intel's already hit that. Even a lowly 2Ghz P4 already has two integer units each running at 4Ghz, because the P4 has a double-pumped integer core (scroll down to 'execution units').

There seems to be alot of confusion surrounding the Cell chip. This is not "just another processor", and it certainly has little to do with clock frequencies - the Cell is a whole new architecture, which might just be a glimpse into the future of computing.

To begin with, it might be useful with some background on the ps2 architecture - there are a couple of really great in-depth articles at Ars Technica; Sound and Vision: A Technical Overview of the Emotion Engine and The PlayStation2 vs. the PC: a system-level comparison of two 3D platforms.

What made the ps2 so awesome was that it was custom-built specifically for multimedia-processing, which requires completely different processing environments than general-purpose computing. Normal PCs are made for computing where you have a large number of instructions working on a small data-set (such as a spreadsheet) - this requires large data-caches close to the CPU, while instructions are streamed continually from RAM. Media-processing is the other way around; you have "simple" operations (like doing the calculations for a single pixel), which are run on a large set of data - so you wouldn't really need any data-caches. The ps2 did exactly this; it removed almost all the caches (only a few tiny ones were left), but it had a totally insane bus bandwidth. To borrow an analogy from the mentioned Ars Technica article:

"Here's a goofy example to help you visualize what I'm talking about: imagine a series of large buckets, connected by pipes to a main tank, with a cow lapping water out of each bucket. Since cows don't drink too fast, the pipes don't have to be too large to keep the buckets full and the cows happy. Now imagine that same setup, except with elephants on the other end instead of cows. The elephants are sucking water out so fast that you've got to do something drastic to keep them happy. One option would be to enlarge the pipes just a little (*cough* AGP *cough*), and stick insanely large buckets on the ends of them (*cough* 64MB GeForce *cough*). You then fill the buckets up to the top every morning, leave the water on all day, and pray to God that the elephants don't get too thirsty. This only works to a certain extent though, because a really thirsty elephant would still end up draining the bucket faster than you can fill it. And what happens when the elephants have kids, and the kids are even thirstier? You're only delaying the inevitable with this solution, because the problem isn't with the buckets, it's with the pipes (assuming an infinite supply of water). A better approach would be to just ditch the buckets altogether and make the pipes really, really large. You'd also want to stick some pans on the ends of the pipes as a place to collect the water before it gets consumed, but the pans don't have to be that big because the water isn't staying in them very long."

So, what does this have to do with the Cell? The Cell takes this concept even further. Cell systems are made up of multiple processors, called APUs (Attached Processing Units), which are connected using an insanely fast data bus. Each APU can be programmed to handle one specific task, and then pass the data on to the next APU for a different task. By doing this, you can just put in more processors to increase the throughput of the system. This works especially good for multimedia processing, which can be pipelined like this pretty easily. Here are a couple of snippets from the Wikipedia entry:

"While the Cell chip can have a number of different configurations, the workstation and PlayStation 3 version of Cell consists of one "Processing Element" ("PE"), and eight "Attached Processing Units" ("APU"). The PE is based on the POWER Architecture, basis of their existing POWER line and related to the PowerPC used by Apple

There seems to be alot of confusion surrounding the Cell chip. This is not "just another processor", and it certainly has little to do with clock frequencies - the Cell is a whole new architecture, which might just be a glimpse into the future of computing.

To begin with, it might be useful with some background on the ps2 architecture - there are a couple of really great in-depth articles at Ars Technica; Sound and Vision: A Technical Overview of the Emotion Engine and The PlayStation2 vs. the PC: a system-level comparison of two 3D platforms.

What made the ps2 so awesome was that it was custom-built specifically for multimedia-processing, which requires completely different processing environments than general-purpose computing. Normal PCs are made for computing where you have a large number of instructions working on a small data-set (such as a spreadsheet) - this requires large data-caches close to the CPU, while instructions are streamed continually from RAM. Media-processing is the other way around; you have "simple" operations (like doing the calculations for a single pixel), which are run on a large set of data - so you wouldn't really need any data-caches. The ps2 did exactly this; it removed almost all the caches (only a few tiny ones were left), but it had a totally insane bus bandwidth. To borrow an analogy from the mentioned Ars Technica article:

"Here's a goofy example to help you visualize what I'm talking about: imagine a series of large buckets, connected by pipes to a main tank, with a cow lapping water out of each bucket. Since cows don't drink too fast, the pipes don't have to be too large to keep the buckets full and the cows happy. Now imagine that same setup, except with elephants on the other end instead of cows. The elephants are sucking water out so fast that you've got to do something drastic to keep them happy. One option would be to enlarge the pipes just a little (*cough* AGP *cough*), and stick insanely large buckets on the ends of them (*cough* 64MB GeForce *cough*). You then fill the buckets up to the top every morning, leave the water on all day, and pray to God that the elephants don't get too thirsty. This only works to a certain extent though, because a really thirsty elephant would still end up draining the bucket faster than you can fill it. And what happens when the elephants have kids, and the kids are even thirstier? You're only delaying the inevitable with this solution, because the problem isn't with the buckets, it's with the pipes (assuming an infinite supply of water). A better approach would be to just ditch the buckets altogether and make the pipes really, really large. You'd also want to stick some pans on the ends of the pipes as a place to collect the water before it gets consumed, but the pans don't have to be that big because the water isn't staying in them very long."

So, what does this have to do with the Cell? The Cell takes this concept even further. Cell systems are made up of multiple processors, called APUs (Attached Processing Units), which are connected using an insanely fast data bus. Each APU can be programmed to handle one specific task, and then pass the data on to the next APU for a different task. By doing this, you can just put in more processors to increase the throughput of the system. This works especially good for multimedia processing, which can be pipelined like this pretty easily. Here are a couple of snippets from the Wikipedia entry:

"While the Cell chip can have a number of different configurations, the workstation and PlayStation 3 version of Cell consists of one "Processing Element" ("PE"), and eight "Attached Processing Units" ("APU"). The PE is based on the POWER Architecture, basis of their existing POWER line and related to the PowerPC used by Apple

There seems to be alot of confusion surrounding the Cell chip. This is not "just another processor", and it certainly has little to do with clock frequencies - the Cell is a whole new architecture, which might just be a glimpse into the future of computing.

To begin with, it might be useful with some background on the ps2 architecture - there are a couple of really great in-depth articles at Ars Technica; Sound and Vision: A Technical Overview of the Emotion Engine and The PlayStation2 vs. the PC: a system-level comparison of two 3D platforms.

What made the ps2 so awesome was that it was custom-built specifically for multimedia-processing, which requires completely different processing environments than general-purpose computing. Normal PCs are made for computing where you have a large number of instructions working on a small data-set (such as a spreadsheet) - this requires large data-caches close to the CPU, while instructions are streamed continually from RAM. Media-processing is the other way around; you have "simple" operations (like doing the calculations for a single pixel), which are run on a large set of data - so you wouldn't really need any data-caches. The ps2 did exactly this; it removed almost all the caches (only a few tiny ones were left), but it had a totally insane bus bandwidth. To borrow an analogy from the mentioned Ars Technica article:

"Here's a goofy example to help you visualize what I'm talking about: imagine a series of large buckets, connected by pipes to a main tank, with a cow lapping water out of each bucket. Since cows don't drink too fast, the pipes don't have to be too large to keep the buckets full and the cows happy. Now imagine that same setup, except with elephants on the other end instead of cows. The elephants are sucking water out so fast that you've got to do something drastic to keep them happy. One option would be to enlarge the pipes just a little (*cough* AGP *cough*), and stick insanely large buckets on the ends of them (*cough* 64MB GeForce *cough*). You then fill the buckets up to the top every morning, leave the water on all day, and pray to God that the elephants don't get too thirsty. This only works to a certain extent though, because a really thirsty elephant would still end up draining the bucket faster than you can fill it. And what happens when the elephants have kids, and the kids are even thirstier? You're only delaying the inevitable with this solution, because the problem isn't with the buckets, it's with the pipes (assuming an infinite supply of water). A better approach would be to just ditch the buckets altogether and make the pipes really, really large. You'd also want to stick some pans on the ends of the pipes as a place to collect the water before it gets consumed, but the pans don't have to be that big because the water isn't staying in them very long."

So, what does this have to do with the Cell? The Cell takes this concept even further. Cell systems are made up of multiple processors, called APUs (Attached Processing Units), which are connected using an insanely fast data bus. Each APU can be programmed to handle one specific task, and then pass the data on to the next APU for a different task. By doing this, you can just put in more processors to increase the throughput of the system. This works especially good for multimedia processing, which can be pipelined like this pretty easily. Here are a couple of snippets from the Wikipedia entry:

"While the Cell chip can have a number of different configurations, the workstation and PlayStation 3 version of Cell consists of one "Processing Element" ("PE"), and eight "Attached Processing Units" ("APU"). The PE is based on the POWER Architecture, basis of their existing POWER line and related to the PowerPC used by Apple

The Mac forum at Ars Technica has a long, continuing post about Altivec optimizations and how they should be used. The thread started more than two years ago and still gets relevent points and questions added to it. It's an amazing resource if you're interested in starting.

What the heck are you talking about?

On the first page, it says "Part II can now be found here."

Of course, it's only been up since ... July 2003.

OK, they've been delinquent with part 3. But to say that "only part I ever came out" is a flat-out lie, and one easily to discover, using the link you so helpfully provided.

Ars do you read slashdot?

I don't see why they should. If you want to get ahold of them, posting a slashdot comment is not the way to do it. Hint: if you go to the first page of that guide (or any page in it, for that matter), the by-line is an email link to the author.

What the heck are you talking about?

On the first page, it says "Part II can now be found here."

Of course, it's only been up since ... July 2003.

OK, they've been delinquent with part 3. But to say that "only part I ever came out" is a flat-out lie, and one easily to discover, using the link you so helpfully provided.

Ars do you read slashdot?

I don't see why they should. If you want to get ahold of them, posting a slashdot comment is not the way to do it. Hint: if you go to the first page of that guide (or any page in it, for that matter), the by-line is an email link to the author.

...had a guide on capturing analog video, said to be the part of a 3 part series, going over each capturing, cleaning, and compressing. Only part I ever came out - Ars do you read slashdot? - I am waiting on the last guides for some advice on how to preserve these rotting home VHS tapes.

Meanwhile, does anyone else have advice on capturing and cleaning video since we are already talking about compression? What settings are good for capturing and what sort of software exists to clean up VHS and give it the appearance of more clarity? I am using a WinTV card as Ars recommended it.

I don't think MS is worried about Apple overtaking Windows and Office, which are still the crown jewels. Keep in mind that we're talking about a company that just posted $10B in profits last quarter. Reread that statement: $10B in profit, not revenue. Wow.

MS should be worried about the present media file format wars, which it could very well lose. Overall, I think the number of Windows customers MS stands to lose to Apple is probably negligible. I'd like to see a more open, multi-platform world -- I type this from a PowerBook -- but the realist in me sees predictions of MS's demise as premature.

No, it was not in the Mozilla suite (aka Seamonkey). In fact, it still isn't. It was first seen in Internet Explorer on Macintosh, then (with a lot of refinement) in Mac OS X 10.0, then copied almost pixel by pixel (with an improvement in behaviour) to Firefox.

Is it a big deal? No. But at least don't refute its history.

Internet Explorer for Mac Release Dates (IE 5 was March 2000)
Mac OS X 10.0 Review, Page 10 "The real fun starts when you select "Customize Toolbar..." from the "View" menu (or shift-click the toolbar widget in the window title bar). The contents of the window are replaced by a palette of toolbar widgets shamelessly reminiscent of Internet Explorer's toolbar customization feature."
Independent Mac OS X 10.1 Release Date Mac OS X was released on March 24th, 2001, with a suggested retail price of $129 and a version number of 10.0.
First Customize Toolbar In Any Mozilla Product A few of the features new to this release include: Customizable toolbar.
Phoenix 0.1 Release Date (September 23rd, 2002; over a year later)

No, it was not in the Mozilla suite (aka Seamonkey). In fact, it still isn't. It was first seen in Internet Explorer on Macintosh, then (with a lot of refinement) in Mac OS X 10.0, then copied almost pixel by pixel (with an improvement in behaviour) to Firefox.

Is it a big deal? No. But at least don't refute its history.

Internet Explorer for Mac Release Dates (IE 5 was March 2000)
Mac OS X 10.0 Review, Page 10 "The real fun starts when you select "Customize Toolbar..." from the "View" menu (or shift-click the toolbar widget in the window title bar). The contents of the window are replaced by a palette of toolbar widgets shamelessly reminiscent of Internet Explorer's toolbar customization feature."
Independent Mac OS X 10.1 Release Date Mac OS X was released on March 24th, 2001, with a suggested retail price of $129 and a version number of 10.0.
First Customize Toolbar In Any Mozilla Product A few of the features new to this release include: Customizable toolbar.
Phoenix 0.1 Release Date (September 23rd, 2002; over a year later)

...if iCal got clubbed in the face with a truncheon.

Also, this is cribbed directly from Mac OS X. Good job, fellas. How about coming up with something new and better for once?

1. Enable 128 bit WEP with a hand-entered string of characters that are not likely to be guessed. A string of all 1's or some other silliness doesn't cut it. 2. Stop broadcasting the SSID. 3. Enable MAC address filtering. 4. Change your WEP keys from time to time.

Actually, this is one of the most frequently mentioned myths which float around. There are several reason's why it is completely wrong:

1. The Mach micro kernel itself is based on bsd 4.2BSD and 4.3BSD. Though it has evolved into something different than the original bsd kernels, so has NET, Open, and others.
2. The Mach micro kernel only handles very low level functions and does not handle all the functions most think of when they name "what an OS does?" such as I/O, networking, file system support, and high level API's. In osx all this is done by a FreeBSD derived kernel (10.4 will be fbsd 5.2 based iirc).

In order to clarify a bit, you can refer to this Ars Technica brief cover of this FAQ.

Craigslist is also fairly popular, and if you have one in your city you can arrange a pickup.

There were rumors that Prescott had the hardware for IA32e. Something to do with the number of pins.

I read about it at Ars Technica. I'd link to the article, but I've really got to stop reading slashdot and go to my dinner theater performance.

well, and full games. of course.

did you think this was 1995? the internet is a valid and often-used distribution medium for games at this point--so why not offload some bandwidth onto the customers? Valve and Blizzard get it.

However, the mini-Mac is not a cpu, and doesn't use a G5. But from recent testing, it's close enuf for mundane purposes.

The weakest links I see are the notebook hard drive (I'm guessing the Cube fiasco prevented them (politically) from a slightly different form factor with a "real" HD), and they could have spent the extra buck and added a second Firewire port.

Looking at the mini-Mac as a computer system, rather than as a cpu, I'm hard pressed to come up with a single comparable product (and yes, I include the operating system in the context of "computer system") anywhere else in the marketplace, While it would be nice to see an x86 "Cube" with a more substantial 3.5" HD quietly sporting an AMD64 cpu, Firewire (USB2 has about half the throughput for sustained data transfer), USB2, and 802.11_+Bluetooth capability, it ain't gonna happen -- except as some bizarre sort of artificial fireplace log, merrily heating the room.

Due to the "small AND quiet" constraints I have imposed on my definition of this market niche, you're going to be looking at an Intel-based cpu, probably the recently announced Sonoma Centrino, which has a couple of low-power variants (low power means less heat to dissipate) of adequate performance.

If Intel would mass-market a Sonoma set-top box with 802.11_, Firewire (connect to camcorders and external HDs), a BT keyboard+mouse/trackball, BT media remote, component video, DVI, and HD tuner + disc player (HD disk burning is not really necessary for the consumer market, IMHO), THEN there would be some SIGNIFICANT competition in this (very large) market niche.

But I don't see this happening anytime soon for two reasons:

Intel's pathological fear of Firewire will make it push USB2 and miss the camcorder video crowd

Where are they gonna get software to match OS X and iLife? From Microsoft (and still be cheap)? Linux-based OS and GUI solutions are feasible, but where are the INTEGRATED, easy-to-use consumer apps for Linux?

Infact I'm pretty sure DVDs use MP3 for the soundtrack.

I'm pretty sure you're misinformed. DVDs have multiple standards for audio, ranging from PCM to Dolby Digital and DTS 6.1 encoding - but none of them are so much as based on MP3. (What you're likely thinking of is all the DVD rips you used to download from Suprnova, where the original AC3 audio had been remuxed and recompressed into MP3 to shrink the total file size.)

In additon, the realtime ATRAC encoders in MiniDisc recorders are known to be quite good, while it wouldn't be surprising in the least if the realtime MP3 encoders in portable players wasn't all that great. Yes, it's not the the format or the bitrate but the encoder itself that really dictates the quality of your output.

Ars Technica covers the 'why' of the design.

One might ask that question for every OS. For the Amiga (being still in beta), the answer is definitely yes, but the real clue is given on Page 5 where you see the reviewer using the Amiga's media player to listen to the immortal "Every OS Sucks" by 3 Dead Trolls in a Baggie!

this article is worth checking.

Also of interest might be this article over at Ars Technica: "A guide to ripping and encoding music". It discusses some of the more practical aspects of music ripping and encoding.

This thing reminds me of the Espresso PC that came out ~ 4 years ago.

Paul Thurrott is on my jackass filter. He acts like he's respected Windows authority. My favorite Thurrott brain fart was his diss of Ars Technica in response to Ars announcing the OEM availability of Windows Media Center Edition.

Here's part of the diss:

Ars Technica's continued insistence on referring to "retail shrink-wrapped" versions of XP MCE 2005, despite corrections from both official sources at Microsoft and from me, speaks volumes about the site's credibility. That said, enthusiasts who are willing to put up with a lot of missing features (and willing to lie about their status as system builders, ahem) can, in fact, purchase the OEM version (not a supported retail version) of XP MCE 2005 from online resellers

He believes that he can attack our credibility because he believes that the word "retail," which never appeared in the original report, excludes the likes of the thousands of hardware and software sites that do, in fact, sell OEM materials to anyone...

Mr. Thurrott is likely unaware of the fact that our audience is well accustomed to the practice of buying OEM hardware...

Mr. Thurrott, nonetheless, reported that we had received corrections from Microsoft and failed to act on them. This is, unfortunately, a lie. How Mr. Thurrott claims to know who has and has not contacted us remains a mystery, but his willingness to make false statements about the actions of our publication are rather alarming. Mr. Thurrott is correct that he himself had e-mailed us with his own account, but Mr. Thurrott does not work for Microsoft (despite mean-spirited rumors), and Mr. Thurrott has also been incorrect in the past...

More importantly, if Mr. Thurrott cares to cast aspersions on the credibility of Ars Technica, he might consider his own credibility when he decides to label as liars the thousands and thousands of people who legally and ethically purchase OEM products.

That's not totally a ridiculous idea. The ExpressCard is based on PCI-Express x1 - so the bandwidth is pretty sweet. It's not going to reach full 8x AGP but it will blow the socks off of a PCI video card. We're talking PCI (132MB/s) versus PCIe (~310MB/s).

Of course bottlenecks on a PC are everywhere... You are quite correct about CPU power being overrated. I would add that for high end work it matters more what kind of bandwidth and latency you can get from your memory, rather than just size. An interesting example is the PS2, on which arstechnica has a great article.
Memory bandwidth/latency is why chips with on-die cache beat the @)#*$)@# out of their predecessors... So if i could get your 4ghz cpu with 512mb of on-die sram i'd take that one :-D

I quote from this page:

"Current large screen OLED devices consume far more power than LCDs [..]"

So it appears that OLED seems to have a problem with power efficiency in addition to the longevity of its pixels. Definitely not a good sign. The article I quoted from also specifies 2008 as the date when OLED might enter mass-production. Still a long way off, in other words.

As for SED, take a look at this article: Toshiba's SED TV at CES. First (big) TVs released this year, with production ramping up next year.

Also, I disagree with what you say about OLED being superior to SED and FED because it doesn't have the dead-pixel problem. SEDs and FEDs can have multiple electron emitters per pixel, and phosphors have a tendency to last a very long time (just look at CRTs)

So SED is available this very year, uses less power than comparable displays (one-third of a plasma display) and won't wear out within 5 years. FED might be released in a few months or years and will exhibit pretty much the same benefits as SED. OLED will be released in 2008. If we're lucky.

It's not the cables, it's how you cable. Kentucky bred a cabling strategy for their cluster. The Big Mac project at VT was supposed to release a software package that made cluster cabling easier, IIRC, but I can't find it anywhere.

It's because XP problems are often totally random. See, one of the fundemental issues with XP is it thinks its smarter than you. That means, that under certain conditions, it does some totally weird things. For example, I recently tried to figure out why one of my XP machines suddenly became unable to connect to our wireless network. It'd go into a continuous cycle of getting and losing the connection once every few seconds.

Long story short, it turns out this "bug" was actually a feature. You see, if Windows XP is connected to a network that isn't broadcasting its SSID, and it sees one that is, it'll try to disconnect and join the other one. This happens even if the non-broadcasting connection is the only one in your "preferred networks" list. What had happened, of course, is that our neighbor had just got a wireless network, and forgot to turn of SSID broadcasting like you're supposed to. This particular machine was the only one within range, and as a result, freaked out.

Come to think of it, this is probably the same problem that plagued another one of my XP machines. I spent months trying to figure out why it'd randomly drop its connection, and finally gave up, assumed it was a hardware problem, and replaced the PCI wifi adapter with a small USB keychain one. Since it worked, I assumed that the USB dongle got better reception. Now I realize that the problem was just the opposite --- since the USB dongle got *worse* reception, it was out of range of a competing network.

I have lost tens of hours to this single damn bug, as well as $60 bucks buying new hardware I didn't need. All because some idiot programmer at Microsoft thought he could make a piece of software smarter than me. Whoever wrote the "Wireless Network ZeroConfiguration" for XP deserves a special place in hell!

You should mean the M series, because there is a lot more to it than PM and variable clock, something the regular Pentium line has had for years. Read this [arstechnica.com] article and you'll realize just how much went into it. kh

You should mean the M series, because there is a lot more to it than PM and variable clock, something the regular Pentium line has had for years. Read this [arstechnica.com] article and you'll realize just how much went into it. ogo

on desktop.

pretty fast if they want to compete. Reviews such as this one> clearly shows how the Pentium-M currently competes against the A64 and top of the line P4's using an "ok" desktop motherboard from AOpen

There's a much longer, better trailer for this movie out on the net. I saw it a few months ago via the Ars Technica forums. Supposedly it was shown at a comic convention and subseequently leaked onto the net.

The story of the trailer goes like this: Miller refused for years to allow anybody to make a movie based on his graphic novels. Robert Rodriguez took it upon himself to make a very short (less than 5 minute) film based on a situation from the comic, and sent it to Miller. The film was very well done, and had Josh Hartnett in the leading role. Rodriguez sent this to Miller and said something like, "This is the kind of movie I want to make. If you like it, give me a call. If not, here's a nice gift to show your friends." Miller liked it, and the rest is history.

That five minute short is at the beginning of the leaked trailer. I'm sure anyone with some google skills could find it. Otherwise you could get a membership to the Ars Lounge and ask somebody in there.

There's a much longer, better trailer for this movie out on the net. I saw it a few months ago via the Ars Technica forums. Supposedly it was shown at a comic convention and subseequently leaked onto the net.

The story of the trailer goes like this: Miller refused for years to allow anybody to make a movie based on his graphic novels. Robert Rodriguez took it upon himself to make a very short (less than 5 minute) film based on a situation from the comic, and sent it to Miller. The film was very well done, and had Josh Hartnett in the leading role. Rodriguez sent this to Miller and said something like, "This is the kind of movie I want to make. If you like it, give me a call. If not, here's a nice gift to show your friends." Miller liked it, and the rest is history.

That five minute short is at the beginning of the leaked trailer. I'm sure anyone with some google skills could find it. Otherwise you could get a membership to the Ars Lounge and ask somebody in there.

You should mean the M series, because there is a lot more to it than PM and variable clock, something the regular Pentium line has had for years. Read this article and you'll realize just how much went into it. co

You should mean the M series, because there is a lot more to it than PM and variable clock, something the regular Pentium line has had for years. Read this article and you'll realize just how much went into it. is

"How did Bungie whore themselves out? Because they got acquired by the company who makes the main platform they target with their games?"

No, because they changed the main platform for their games to the company that acquired them.

Bungie did Mac games first and foremost. Minotaur and Pathways Into Darkness were Mac-only. Marathon was originally Mac-only, later ported to Windows. Myth was released for Mac and PC on the same day. And the world's first glimpse of Halo was a demo run live on a Mac, shown at MacWorld '99. After being acquired by Microsoft in 2000, Bungie had to promise they would still bring Halo to the Mac. Halo was released for the Xbox in late 2001. It finally appeared on the Mac in December 2003.

Not only that. Any band that records their concerts to CD to sell after the show has to pay a patent royalty to Clear Channel. Pretty sick, eh?

1. IBM selling its PC business
2. Cell workstations
3. POWER5 amazing benchmark records
4. IBM incents Linux on Power app development
5. Launches a Power architecture coalition
6. IBM and Red Hat begin certifying apps for Linux
7. IBM ups its Desktop Linux push

Are you trying to imply that browsing the web with IE is the only way to get hacked?
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