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Like the PIII Coppermine CPUs that wouldn't even boot sometimes.

Or the randomly rebooting PII Xeons.

Or the voltage problems with certain PIII Xeons.

Or the memory request system hang bug in the PIII/Xeon.

Or the PIII's SSE bug whose 'fix' killed i810 compatability.

Or the MTH bug in the PIII CPUs that forced Intel customers to replace boards and RAM.

Or the recalled, that's right, recalled PIII chips at 1.13GHz.

Or the recalled (there's that word again) Xeon SERVER chips at 800 and 900MHz.

Or the recalled (that word, AGAIN?!) cc820 "cape cod" Intel motherboards.

Or the data overwriting bug in the P4 CPUs.

Or the P4 chipset bug that killed video performance.

Or the Sun/Oracle P4 bug.

Or the Itanium bug that was severe enough to make Compaq halt Itanium shipments.

Or the Itanium 2 bug that "can cause systems to behave unpredictably or shut down".

Or the numerous other P4/Xeon/XeonMP bugs that have been hanging around.

Yes, I did consider the possibility that there might just be some basis for the belief that Intel's products are superior. Having considered that, in light of the mountains of evidence to the contrary, I shall now proceed to laugh at you.

Ha ha ha.

Now go away, or I shall mock you again.

Like the PIII Coppermine CPUs that wouldn't even boot sometimes.

Or the randomly rebooting PII Xeons.

Or the voltage problems with certain PIII Xeons.

Or the memory request system hang bug in the PIII/Xeon.

Or the PIII's SSE bug whose 'fix' killed i810 compatability.

Or the MTH bug in the PIII CPUs that forced Intel customers to replace boards and RAM.

Or the recalled, that's right, recalled PIII chips at 1.13GHz.

Or the recalled (there's that word again) Xeon SERVER chips at 800 and 900MHz.

Or the recalled (that word, AGAIN?!) cc820 "cape cod" Intel motherboards.

Or the data overwriting bug in the P4 CPUs.

Or the P4 chipset bug that killed video performance.

Or the Sun/Oracle P4 bug.

Or the Itanium bug that was severe enough to make Compaq halt Itanium shipments.

Or the Itanium 2 bug that "can cause systems to behave unpredictably or shut down".

Or the numerous other P4/Xeon/XeonMP bugs that have been hanging around.

Yes, I did consider the possibility that there might just be some basis for the belief that Intel's products are superior. Having considered that, in light of the mountains of evidence to the contrary, I shall now proceed to laugh at you.

Ha ha ha.

Now go away, or I shall mock you again.

Like the PIII Coppermine CPUs that wouldn't even boot sometimes.

Or the randomly rebooting PII Xeons.

Or the voltage problems with certain PIII Xeons.

Or the memory request system hang bug in the PIII/Xeon.

Or the PIII's SSE bug whose 'fix' killed i810 compatability.

Or the MTH bug in the PIII CPUs that forced Intel customers to replace boards and RAM.

Or the recalled, that's right, recalled PIII chips at 1.13GHz.

Or the recalled (there's that word again) Xeon SERVER chips at 800 and 900MHz.

Or the recalled (that word, AGAIN?!) cc820 "cape cod" Intel motherboards.

Or the data overwriting bug in the P4 CPUs.

Or the P4 chipset bug that killed video performance.

Or the Sun/Oracle P4 bug.

Or the Itanium bug that was severe enough to make Compaq halt Itanium shipments.

Or the Itanium 2 bug that "can cause systems to behave unpredictably or shut down".

Or the numerous other P4/Xeon/XeonMP bugs that have been hanging around.

Yes, I did consider the possibility that there might just be some basis for the belief that Intel's products are superior. Having considered that, in light of the mountains of evidence to the contrary, I shall now proceed to laugh at you.

Ha ha ha.

Now go away, or I shall mock you again.

Like the PIII Coppermine CPUs that wouldn't even boot sometimes.

Or the randomly rebooting PII Xeons.

Or the voltage problems with certain PIII Xeons.

Or the memory request system hang bug in the PIII/Xeon.

Or the PIII's SSE bug whose 'fix' killed i810 compatability.

Or the MTH bug in the PIII CPUs that forced Intel customers to replace boards and RAM.

Or the recalled, that's right, recalled PIII chips at 1.13GHz.

Or the recalled (there's that word again) Xeon SERVER chips at 800 and 900MHz.

Or the recalled (that word, AGAIN?!) cc820 "cape cod" Intel motherboards.

Or the data overwriting bug in the P4 CPUs.

Or the P4 chipset bug that killed video performance.

Or the Sun/Oracle P4 bug.

Or the Itanium bug that was severe enough to make Compaq halt Itanium shipments.

Or the Itanium 2 bug that "can cause systems to behave unpredictably or shut down".

Or the numerous other P4/Xeon/XeonMP bugs that have been hanging around.

Yes, I did consider the possibility that there might just be some basis for the belief that Intel's products are superior. Having considered that, in light of the mountains of evidence to the contrary, I shall now proceed to laugh at you.

Ha ha ha.

Now go away, or I shall mock you again.

" So RedHat has dropped the desktop..."

I don't think they want to drop the coporate desktop. It seems that is where companies like MS made a lot of money. When Linux catches on there, I assume Redhat wants to be the cheaper alternative with a strong brand name.

Still, I suspect the embedded market is growing with healthly profit margins. Redhat has been interested in this market for a while. I think they bought eCos around 1999. It was already open source (they really bought Cygnus which developed eCos).

They could not but implied that it was common knowledge.

It's not like they never had problems in the past.

They could not but implied that it was common knowledge.

It's not like they never had problems in the past.

I submitted this story over a month ago, but it was rejected by the editors. The technology is already available in the Athlon64s, and Prescott versions of the Pentium4, but require service pack 2 for windows. Not sure if linux supports the feature.

So...anyone want to take bets on how many people actually buy a license?

I was curious as to why they would do this. MS Services for UNIX is the likely reason, but my theory is that after working for over twenty years to come up with an operating system and only managing to come up with Windows XP, they wanted to see how an OS is supposed to work.

Apple did the same thing... well, no, they bought a company that owned UNIX licenses and used an open-source kernel.

McNealy has been spewing FUD since SCO first announced their lawsuit. This guy's talk prior to the lawsuit would imply that Sun was not just responding opportunistically. They knew about it beforehand, and maybe even contributed to it.

See this article for some McNealy FUD right after SCO started this. Such as:

"We think open source is wonderful and good, but we also believe in copyright and the rule of law," McNealy said.

"We paid a big, big bag of money a decade ago to get IP (intellectual property) rights to do what we wanted to do with Solaris," he said at a press conference announcing a new line of Intel-based servers on Monday. "We've got a free and clear SCO license. Your audit committee won't get a letter if you are using Solaris." said Sun chairman Scott McNealy.

Compare that to HP's response at the same time:

"HP is unaware of any intellectual property infringement within Linux. The complaint is focused on alleged inappropriate behavior by IBM, it is not about infringement by Linux itself of SCO's IP rights."

and Larry Ellison was quick to point to Microsoft as one of the groups behind the scenes:
"All Bill (Gates) says is, 'Give me the opportunity to innovate,' and once again Bill is innovating," Ellison said during a press conference announcing an alliance between Oracle and Sun to promote Sun's Intel-based servers. "You've seen advanced bundling and now you are seeing extreme litigation...They know a lot about extreme litigation."

And, she said, the fact that DVD decryption keys were widely available online in programs like DeCSS did not make Hollywood's attempts to block copying useless.

"This is equivalent to a claim that, since it is easy to find skeleton keys on the black market, a dead bolt is not an effective lock to a door," she wrote.

She doesn't want to get it. She completely fails to address the underlying issue of being able to have a good backup of something that you purchased. In her mind, DeCSS is a skeleton key, and CSS is a deadbolt, and yet a skeleton key can unlock a deadbolt? Bad analogy judge, bad.

A quick google shows an article from the end of December detailing the plans for dual layer drives that are due to come out soon. And this is why I don't have a DVD burner yet

News.com.com has a little more commentary and some background for those who aren't in the know. Thanks to the DMCA, seems like an open and shut case to me. The judge seems to think they are violating both the letter and the spirit of the law:

321 has argued that since consumers who buy a DVD have the right to access their own movie, it would not be illegal to help them access it by using 321's software.

Illston disagreed, saying CSS was plainly a way to protect copyright holders' rights, as envisioned in copyright law.

I do think 321 makes some cool software. It will be sad to see them lose this one...

So, again, you're getting more music for your money these days.

...Or not.

IBM is in a much better position than HP. The Power 4 processor from IBM still maintains backwards compatibility all the way to their PPC 604e's. In the past, Sun and TI may have been able to make a good processor. Many people were eagerly waiting for the UltraSparc 3, since the USparc 2s had been suffering computing performance wise for some time. Instead of getting a processor that was competitive with others, we got the USparc 3. Soon after that, the normally secretive processor roadmap was discussed to try to appease current Sun customers that they would be fixing the computing discrepency. Even though we all know that benchmarkings are seriously flawed, "incredible throughput" and "perform very well" aren't metrics which you can compare the systems from these different manufacturers.

In 2004, we will see how well the USparc 4 will perform economically for Sun.

And Security. Dropping someones' closed drivers in your kernel means you cannot do an effective audit. You can *never* be certain you've not bee backdoored.

Would Intel do this? maybe, maybe-not. But no one expected it from Borland's interbase

is this paranoid? maybe, maybe-not....

CNN has an interesting article titled Bluetooth: back with a vengeance from the business perspective rather than a pure tech perspective. Toyota and DaimlerChrysler putting Bluetooth into cars? It must be dead.

CNET also has some news from IDF including a piece on its ultrawideband strategies. Some interesting quotes from the article:

Intel's (chief technology officer Pat) Gelsinger stressed that ultrawideband is not meant to be a competitor to already established wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Ultrawideband allows higher amounts of data to be wirelessly transferred than Bluetooth but has a smaller range than Wi-Fi.

On top of the ultrawideband foundation will be various wireless interface technologies, such as wireless USB and wireless 1394, so devices with USB and 1394 built in can connect, then send and receive data. Ultrawideband could support Bluetooth, Gelsinger said, but even further down the road, it could ultimately replace Bluetooth.

Meanwhile, Enderle says:

At the Intel Developer Forum on Wednesday Intel announced the company was giving up on the deadlocked Ultrawideband IEEE task group and going it alone with a derivative offering they are calling Wireless USB. This initiative, for them, does everything that Bluetooth does and, effectively means that for PCs Bluetooth is all but dead.

Was Enderle at the same conference as everyone else?

All I can say about Bluetooth is that my Mac syncs just fine with my Nokia 3650, and I've never had to punch in a new contact into my phone directly. Different technologies have different uses: my Palm Pilot connects to my Mac via USB, my iPod via Firewire, my phone via Bluetooth. And because all those technologies work together through my Mac, I have identical data for my Address Book and Calendar on all four of those devices.

CNN has an interesting article titled Bluetooth: back with a vengeance from the business perspective rather than a pure tech perspective. Toyota and DaimlerChrysler putting Bluetooth into cars? It must be dead.

CNET also has some news from IDF including a piece on its ultrawideband strategies. Some interesting quotes from the article:

Intel's (chief technology officer Pat) Gelsinger stressed that ultrawideband is not meant to be a competitor to already established wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Ultrawideband allows higher amounts of data to be wirelessly transferred than Bluetooth but has a smaller range than Wi-Fi.

On top of the ultrawideband foundation will be various wireless interface technologies, such as wireless USB and wireless 1394, so devices with USB and 1394 built in can connect, then send and receive data. Ultrawideband could support Bluetooth, Gelsinger said, but even further down the road, it could ultimately replace Bluetooth.

Meanwhile, Enderle says:

At the Intel Developer Forum on Wednesday Intel announced the company was giving up on the deadlocked Ultrawideband IEEE task group and going it alone with a derivative offering they are calling Wireless USB. This initiative, for them, does everything that Bluetooth does and, effectively means that for PCs Bluetooth is all but dead.

Was Enderle at the same conference as everyone else?

All I can say about Bluetooth is that my Mac syncs just fine with my Nokia 3650, and I've never had to punch in a new contact into my phone directly. Different technologies have different uses: my Palm Pilot connects to my Mac via USB, my iPod via Firewire, my phone via Bluetooth. And because all those technologies work together through my Mac, I have identical data for my Address Book and Calendar on all four of those devices.

Sun's expanded license permits Sun to use some software from Unix System V Release 4 for software components called drivers, which let computers use hard drives, network cards and other devices. Sun needed the software for its version of Solaris that runs on Intel servers, Sun spokesman Brett Smith said.

Funny, this seems to be one of those double standards. People like ESR and Linus are praised and recognized as the fathers of OSS, heros among their kind, but as soon as they say something offensive you disown them.

We're just doing the same thing with their opinions that we do with their code: using the good parts, and ignoring or patching over or suggesting changes to the bad parts. In either case, if our "heros" produce something good we get to share it and if they produce something bad we're not constrained by it, because they're our "leaders" only insofar as most of us like their ratio of good to bad output. It's not like they pay our salaries or collect our membership dues or won lots of our votes. Sweet deal, isn't it? This isn't as big an advantage with opinions as with source code (after all, there's no such thing as a "closed source" opinion, and with a few exceptions everyone's opinions are free to differ from their employers') but it's still pretty nice.

To the people who are used to this mindset, ESR doesn't have to say "these comments are solely my own" any more than Linus has to say "Red Hat is not required to keep this patch out of my kernel", because it's almost too obvious to waste words on. With that said, however, I agree that ESR should be making those sorts of disclaimers. He's a lot less humble than Linus about who he claims to be speaking for, and he's often speaking to audiences who aren't of the same mindset and who might assume he has more "official" authority than he does.

Apple has $4.8 billion in total assets

Total assets are a far cry from cash, and include land/improvements, office equipment, machinery, etc... as well as cash. Also included would be investments in other companies, which Apple has been known to do.

From the CNET article:
One of the key ways Yahoo plans to make money from its search platform is to charge companies for more rapid and frequent inclusion into its index--a program called paid inclusion.

Read: "Google is still king". I want an objective search engine, not one where companies can pay for placement. It seems very stupid of Yahoo! to introduce a product that is flawed this way, if they really want to take on Google. Google has the advantage of currently being considered the best search engine by almost everyone, so Yahoo! needs a superior product if they are serious about getting more popular.

There's more than Google. How about Amazon ? They're profitable as of the last year, and publicly traded as well.

There's more than Google. How about Amazon ? They're profitable as of the last year, and publicly traded as well.

I wonder if he still feels that was a good strategic move? Likely so. I guess MS could have screwed them over even worse.

Sheesh. I was just thanking our lucky stars that open source software has the wherewithall to wander around neutered organizations like the UN and the US Gov. "Open Source's Local Heroes" | The Economist "Se Abla Open Source?" | c|net

...any more than IBM would ditch Power4/5 architecture, just because they have a commodity market x86 chip with 64-bit address extensions (Opteron).

In the 'big iron' enterprise market against RISC where Itanium is beating everything handily (check out the latest TPC-C list Top 10 where Itanium holds spots 1,3,4,7,10 (5 out of the Top 10 are Itanium systems running a mix of Linux, HP-UX and Windows on HP and NEC systems), Itanium is gradually out-selling all of the big RISC opponents like Power4. Note that IBM is certainly not spending the money to put up an Opteron cluster for the TPC-C test(no 32-way or 64-way scaled solutions for it on the horizon) even if they got good enough results (which they wouldn't) if they can't beat Itanium 2 right now with the high-margin Power 4. No doubt they'll have a run at Itanium again this year with Power 5.

But there's no way that Opteron OR a 64-bit Xeon plays in the big high thoughput space, so people that assume Intel would get rid of Itanium simply don't know what they're talking about.

As for Itanium not selling, That's funny. Itanium sold over 100,000 cpus last year which is a big number for the enterprise server market (That's more than some other major RISC processors sold in 2003 (like Power 4)). If you don't believe me Google "Itanium" "100,000" and "Otellini" and you'll see lots of links to Intel pres Paul Otellini's announcement back in Nov that Intel would ship over 100,000 Itanium processors in 2003.

Whether Apple innovates in the hardware department is debatable. But they are pretty good fortune tellers. Let me count the tools they brought first to the home PC user.
1. 64 bit computing
2. Bluetooth
3. Firewire
4. 802.11b/g
5. USB
6. DVD/CD Writeable [got tired of linking]
.
.
.
100,000,000. SCSI

Whether Apple innovates in the hardware department is debatable. But they are pretty good fortune tellers. Let me count the tools they brought first to the home PC user.
1. 64 bit computing
2. Bluetooth
3. Firewire
4. 802.11b/g
5. USB
6. DVD/CD Writeable [got tired of linking]
.
.
.
100,000,000. SCSI

News.com article
Intel's 64 bit extensions are compatible with AMD's. You will be able to run the same 64 bit OSes on them. Intel's 64-bit capable Xeons are Noconas, which are Prescotts in a Xeon package.

I work for Intel, but I do not speak for Intel. My opinions are not necessarily the opinions of Intel Corporation.

Alorie Gilbert CNET News.com PeopleSoft intends to add 1,000 workers to its staff in Bangalore, India, by the end of the year, accelerating the software maker's plan to tap the country's low-cost labor force.

Seriously though, the problem is not the bundling of Windows - most non-geek people actually want it bundled for convenience. Rather, it is the clause in Microsoft's OEM agreements that says "if you want to ship any PCs with Windows at all, you must include an OS with *all* of your PCs".

That's why Dell are shipping their new 'OS free' nSeries with FreeDOS included in the box (but not installed) - it's a clever sidestepping of their contract with MS. Of course MS should never be allowed put this sort of clause into an OEM contract in the first place.

Shuttle can do what they do only because they don't sell PCs with Windows at all.

That is one of the arguments of Real's ongoing suit against Microsoft (they sued 18 Dec 2003): "Other charges allege that Microsoft used contractual restrictions and financial incentives to "force PC makers to accept Windows PC operating systems with the bundled Windows Media Player and to restrict the ability of PC makers to preinstall or promote competing digital media players." - CNet News

Actually, IBM isn't pushing one particular distribution. IBM threw its weight behind supporting UnitedLinux 1.0--i.e. RedHat, SuSE, Connectiva and... uh... SCO. Oh well.

Obviously the strategy will need to change soon, not least because UnitedLinux is deader than NetBSD, thanks to SCO.

Dean Campaign Says It Spammed

• Linux was good good enough for Amazon.com back in 2001. They replaced SUN and HP with linux.

• HP helped Amazon migrate its customized software from the earlier servers to the Linux servers that dish up Web pages as well as to higher-end HP Unix servers for the heavy-duty systems nearer the heart of the operation, Balma said. "They're basically an all-HP shop."

After all, Microsoft wants to ease the minds of consumers and investors.

It's just as possible that the leak is part of an intentional PR stunt, just like large government bureaucracies do. There's a lot of ego involved and you can't just close up shop overnight without softening up some of the bigger egos. I can think of several reasons why it would make economic sense to leak.

• Free publicity at a time where F/OSS, especially Linux, is gaining lots of positive attention.
• MS is failing to force NT and 2000 users into the unfavorable prices and licenses surrounding XP and 2003. Publicity of a leak can help scare those currently on the fence into signing before they finish evaluating Linux, OS X or BSD.
• MS just suffered the loss of the trademark lawsuit. Windows is a generic term like post or door or lintel. This prevents coverage
• MS would rather no one notice that they now have appointed one of their own lawyers to chair the U.S. Bar Association's anti-trust section.
• There is yet another set of serious exploits loose for NT+2000+XP+2003.
• MS needs to keep the press from covering more secure OS's and tools.

Basically, for the enterprise, Linux wasn't really an option until 2.6. With 2.6 only in its infancy, Linux still isn't an option. Solaris is though, 'cause it's got the features, the performance, the reliability, and it has been thoroughly tested on the anvil of time.

This article seems to show that Sun have made a very strong commitment to support Opteron based servers.

To quote; "The move does send a message, though, said Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff. "It certainly shows they're bloody serious about Opteron," he said, adding that it's likely Kealia's 59 employees are probably the largest concentration of Opteron specialists outside AMD."

I'm not going to argue about it being a good idea to wait until Sun have sorted out their operating system on the new platform though.

at least its not Palladium!

Not one for conspiracy theories, but...

...if I were a major software company that had a new product I wanted to push companies to buy instead of an old software product that they cling to, "leaking" sourcecode of the "old" product that could potentially show its security flaws would certainly work in my favor. Not to say that that's actually happened, but that was among the first theories I came up with after doing some reading this week.

After reading Jones' opinion piece, his assertions don't add up, either for governments or companies contemplating open source products. Being able to see exactly what you're buying/getting before deployment makes a lot more sense than a welded-hood approach. If trust is an issue, I think you'd have an easier time getting your questions answered with an open source development group than having to navigate a Sales/Marketing monolith.

Errr, Microsoft called it viral.

Microsoft license spurns open source

What, like the IBM Netfinity 5500 I have at home as my server? It's about 2.5 feet x 2.5 feet x 3 feet. It was a christmas present after the 3 year warranty expired.

123 pounds of Linuxy goodness... :) Hell to get upstairs though.

Sounds like your company can afford it, so this company might point you in the right direction, they assistedMunich and Paris in open source solutions.

I can come over to your house, give you a CD, tell you how to put my CD in your drive, rip it, and burn your own copy. That's legal, in part due to the levies on recordable media in Canada (which go to the artists, though none of that money has ever been distributed; that's another story).

I can't, however, make a copy for you. Weird, but true, from my understanding.

So - the question in Canada is: under which of these two scenarios does P2P filesharing fall? Apparently, the downloading is not illegal, but the sharing is illegal.

The expanded contents of the zip file is around the size of a single CD. This points to the contents being originally distributed from Microsoft on CD-rom.

Microsoft has made so much fuss about retaining control of the source code. In May 2002, under oath at the antitrust hearing Jim Allchin, group vice president for platforms at Microsoft, stated that, because the Windows operating systems contained inherent flaws, disclosing the Windows operating system source code could damage national security and even threaten the U.S. war effort.

It's going to be interesting if it is subsequently found that Microsoft itself has been distributing said source code over the internet in zip format.

By the way, In February 2003, Microsoft signed a pact with Chinese officials to reveal the Windows operating system source code. Bill Gates even hinted that China will be privy to all, not just part, of the source code its government wished to inspect.

Dispite gaining more favored trading status with the USA, there remains many embargos over technology transfers which could put the US at future risk.

Either Jim Allchin lied under oath, to prevent code revelation being any part of the settlement, OR the Microsoft corporation is behaving traitorously, by exposing national security issues to foreign governments.

The exposure of Microsoft source code put users at risk because of the inherent design and implimentation flaws built into the source code.

In comparison open source development practices enables open source distributions and users to evaluate the source code from the start. This forces developers to build in security from the early outset of each project or risk abandonment for more secure alternate solutions. End users can particpate in the development process.

Except that the trade-off is that it made P2P downloading legal in Canada. I don't mind paying the levy as long as I can legally download from P2P. Distributing, on the other hand, is illegal.

and a related article:

Canada deems P2P downloading legal

I'm in Canada and I've sampled a number of songs from the binary newsgroups: alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.* as the law allows me to (for now)

That's not a P2P service, obviously, but from the ISPs own newservers. So wouldnt the ISP make a better target? After all, arent they distributing content to 900,000+ subscribers (according to the article)?? Think of the damages one could claim against an ISP if they were found guilty of copyright infringement on that scale.

Why pick out 29 individuals to pursue legal recourse? Because it's about fear and publicity. These 29 people are not likely to have the inclination, resources, or will to fight an expensive legal battle. Like the RIAA cases, they will settle for a couple thousand $ and a press conference where they tearfully apologize for thier wrongdoings. Fellow canadians who do not follow the legal aspect of such issues closely will simply hear 'file sharers get sued' and freak out and think the downloading music is wrong: mission accomplished. Will the press make the point that personal copying in Canada is LEGAL when reporting these stories? Possibly, but I'm not betting on it.

(If anybody is going to contest this, at least do a search first on previous Slashdot stories. This has been covered many times and even the Copyright Board of Canada has ruled that downloading is legal, but distributing is not.)