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I'm not sure why, but a couple of links were removed from the edited post. I haven't yet used MS Office 2003, so I'm not in a position to say whether or not the PC World review 'sums things up pretty well' (not my words) or not. Some of the other edits do clarify, however. As for the "spectacular-conglomeration dept.", if that referred to this post, a tip of the hat to simoniker.

For anyone who cares, here's how it looked as submitted, with an additional Google link for PC Pro article to bypass their registration page. The interesting thing is that PC Pro changed the headline which was definitive about shutting out Macs to something less than absolute.

The first users of MS Office 2003 are weighing in and the response is decidedly mixed. The new Outlook has received a favorable response but the mantra seems to be there's little reason to upgrade unless you absolutely need the new features. Microsoft probably heard this in beta trials and has adopted the curious strategy of denigrating previous versions of Office as "too hard to find things" and having a "clunky" interface. Meanwhile, Bill Gates dismissed the open source competition. One of the new features - self-destructing documents - seems to have caused some confusion because 'Microsoft says the new feature is not designed to remove all traces of a file' and MS spokesman Mike Pryke-Smith says, "The message will still be in various places." E-mails will not self-destruct. Another problem is the permissions technology called Information Rights Management that will shut out Mac users (Google link). PC World has a long and detailed review of Microsoft Office 2003 (single-page).

This guide is mostly a compendium to help users of Microsoft products in migrating to free and open source software equivalents that they might not be familiar with.

In other words, if you've already decided to migrate and don't know much about where you're going, then this will help you. That seems to be insufficient. You need to know more about your destination (and where you're starting from) before you activate a migration.

Such a document is educational, but is not the only set of information that someone needs.

What's needed is an objective survey of organizations that have made a migration, including details of the work mix, what glitches they had to overcome, hidden training costs of moving, extra savings they hadn't anticipated from the move, etc.

Motivation for considering a migration is remarkable because it isn't trumpeted loudly by a particular company that stands to profit if you migrate. Competing organizations that have made a successful migration have little incentive to alert you to any advantages they might have gained from making such a migration. In fact, they can profit by keeping you in the dark if they have obtained a migration advantage.

Just how objective are the big IT consulting firms stand in such evaluations? A recent Gartner recommendation seems to resemble a long list of Why Not To migrate. And certainly there are genuine pitfalls. But IT consulting firms are not foolproof in their evaluations and recommendations nor are they immune to influence.

• what we did right,
• what we did wrong,
• what kind of business we do,
• how much did we save,
• how long did it take.
• would I do it again?

I'm thinking of case studies like Ernie Ball, but including other businesses, too.

The Good students at have decided this will not stand.

A link for the unclued.

Darl said they will get additional $8M from Microsoft this quarter as well.

Good news is that IBM claim Rise of Linux totally Unstoppable.

Here is an article titled "Firm's attempt to down hyperlinks an attack on free speech, says EFF" which discusses how Diebold is using the DMCA to force ISP's to remove links to internal memos that were leaked regarding Diebold's crappy software and business practices. You can read the internal memos, for now, here.

Here is an article titled "Firm's attempt to down hyperlinks an attack on free speech, says EFF" which discusses how Diebold is using the DMCA to force ISP's to remove links to internal memos that were leaked regarding Diebold's crappy software and business practices. You can read the internal memos, for now, here.

Yes, like the Alpha, RIP.

And to further feed an unhealthy addiction to chipr0n, take a look at the 8-way Power5 shown at the Microprocessor Forum with 144 MB of cache - more space in cache than was on my whole disk in the early 1980's - but with a little bit more bw and less latency.

Huge powerpc with multiple core

= 9J =

People are using bluetooth to make new friends

If I'm bored like on a train or something I sometimes look around the bluetooth neighbourhood, there are usually a few other devices close by. A few days ago I visited one of our company's other offices, a colleague (OK he's a Bluetooth developer) there knew I'd arrived before he saw me because his PC notified him when my phone suddenly came within range!

Bluetooth joke (funny)

The EFF has taken on defense of another alleged filesharer. Here is a snippet:
Los Angeles, California - EFF today announced that it will defend Ross Plank of Playa Del Rey, California, against a wrongly filed complaint, among the 261 copyright infringement lawsuits the recording industry has filed against individuals.

The federal lawsuit filed against Plank in Los Angeles accuses him of making hundreds of Latin songs available using KaZaA filesharing software earlier this summer. Plank does not speak Spanish and does not listen to Latin music. More importantly, his computer did not even have KaZaA installed during the period when the investigation occurred.

More articles on Ross Plank and his 'wrongful accusal' at Wired, The Reg, The Inq, DSP Reports, and p2pnet.net.

How long has one computer ever been useful for you? Five years? Ten? Good luck keeping that thing functional once everything from Intel/AMD is DRM-approved.

Five or ten years is a long time. There might be some non-DRM competetion to Intel/AMD by then.

"And /. calls this a trouncing?"

No, they stole that headline from the inq:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12130

Both the G5 and the AMD64 are great chips, but they really only represent the intrustion of 64 bit computing in the popular consciousness, not the actual beginning of 64 bit computing.

Compare their performance with the last Alpha chip, development of which was cut off years ago, and tell me again how the best is being brought to us.

Even as Intel picks the carcass of Alpha to revive the still-born Itanium series, the killed off Alpha chip line has performance that embarrasses HP into covering it up.

Both the G5 and the AMD64 are great chips, but they really only represent the intrustion of 64 bit computing in the popular consciousness, not the actual beginning of 64 bit computing.

Compare their performance with the last Alpha chip, development of which was cut off years ago, and tell me again how the best is being brought to us.

Even as Intel picks the carcass of Alpha to revive the still-born Itanium series, the killed off Alpha chip line has performance that embarrasses HP into covering it up.

read this and let me know how that "cognitive dissonance" is treating you.

From Infoworld Dell delivers Linux cluster deep in the heart of Texas

Dell's list price of a configuration similar to Lonestar is $1.9 million, with services and installation charges expected to bring the total cost to around $3 million, a Dell spokeswoman said.

From the Inquirer: University of Texas kyboshes MacNN's cluster story.

Cost of supercomputer only part of $38 million

By INQUIRER staff: Tuesday 14 October 2003, 17:09

THERE'S MORE THAN MEETS the eye to a story published by MacNN and reported here today about the cost of a Dell cluster versus an Apple Mac OSX cluster.
See Dell Intel cluster costs 30 times more than Apple system.

Tina Romanella de Marquez, communications and development manager at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), says that the $38 million mentioned by MacNN is for far more than just a supercomputer.

She said: "The $38M total you refer to was not for a single supercomputer. It was announced in February for a total package that included:

"The establishment of the new Institute for Computational Engineering & Sciences (ICES) at UT, including:

our new endowed faculty chairs in ICES at UT
additional funding for the research endowment and the visiting scholars endowment in ICES
he completion of construction of the ACES building (the 4th floor) for use by ICES and TACC

"and the establishment of a terascale distributed computing infrastructure at UT, hosted by TACC, including:

two supercomputers at TACC (the cluster you refer to, and the other IBM system
two massive storage systems at TACC
three leading-edge components to increase UT's networking infrastructure
increases in operations funding over five years for ICES and TACC".

She adds: "There are many more things that were needed to create ICES and establish a terascale distributed computing architecture at TACC. This point was made by TACC Director, Jay Boisseau, during the Lonestar dedication ceremony. The value of the specific computer referred to was approximately $3.0 million. And, no tuition funds were used in this process. Most of the money did not even come from UT. The package included $8M in discounts and donations from about 10 leading technology vendors, and over $15M from a generous foundation." And, she continued: "The VaTech number ONLY includes the actual computer, not the cost of the building, power, cooling, people, or anything else needed to actually operate it."

So that comparison goes out the window, then.

This retraction of the original story should put an end to this discussion: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12114

University of Texas kyboshes MacNN's cluster story

It is.

Perhaps with the link I gave that slashdot ate.

So your assertion that widespread filesharing would allow people to sample more music, and subsequently buy more music is the complete and utter opposite of what is actually happening!

I said nothing of the sort! I said there's no proof illegal file sharing is responsible for the decline in music sales. I also said there were other factors at work that likely have a larger and more verifiable affect on music sales than file sharing.

I am aware of studies purporting to demonstrate file sharing increases music sales. For example, Report: File Sharing Boosts Music Sales from July 21, 2000, which references a Jupiter Communications report with such quotes as "Napster usage is one of the strongest determinants of increased music buying," and "the SoundScan study shows that music sales dropped off before Napster launched and does not take into account the shift from brick-and-mortar music stores to online CD sales." What the??!!?? That kinda supports what I was saying. Good thing I can link to a supporting reference.

And then there is CD sales fall despite drop in downloads from October 07, 2003. Huh? The fight against file sharing was supposed to help music sales. But if less downloads doesn't equal more sales, maybe more downloads doesn't equal less sales. My mind has been blown!

News.news.com.com has Study: File sharing boosts music sales from May 3, 2002 which has numbers from different sources supporting both sides. Maybe the issue isn't as clear as more download==less sales. Seems there isn't much solid support for your assertions or your gratuitous use of ALL CAPS and Bold and BOLD ALL CAPS. (I'm kidding with you now. Can you tell?)

Here's the part where I do something you'll never see from the jokers at the RIAA...admit I was wrong. I did a little more research, and it seems my numbers on sales for the last few years where a little off.

Of course, that does not change the framework of the discussion or go to refute any of the heart of my comment. Correlation does not prove causation. File sharing on the internet started to get big about 3 years ago. Music sales started to drop about 3 years ago. The economy went into the tank about 3 years ago. The stock market hit a peak and started a downward spiral about 3 years ago. My neice was born about 3 years ago. A lot of thinks happened about 3 years ago. That does not show any cause-and-effect.

I stand by my claim, there is no proof, no evidence file sharing is responsible for the drop in music sales. I'm not saying that isn't the case; I'm saying the RIAA hasn't proved it is the case.

But wait! Perhaps I was wrong, but not in the way you suppose. RIAA piracy arguments, figures just don't add up from April 20, 2003 has a couple things to say on the issue. It seems the SoundScan numbers for music sales dropped for the first time in 2001. (SoundScan started tracking sales in 1991.) But the RIAA numbers show sales dropped in 1997. What gives? Well, SoundScan does not poll all retails and sources of legal music trade. The RIAA does not represent all artists and music publishers. So I guess the question is moot. Before we can discuss causes for a drop in music sales, we'd have to establish such a drop has indeed happened. Not only are the various industry groups highly suspect as dependable sources of information, but they don't agree with each other.

The sales figures for 2002 from SoundScan and RIAA differ by 20%. The drop in music sales was less than 10%. It's noise. It's reporting error. The pro-file sharing lobby is playing nice by accepting the premise that music sales have gone down. I a

It's still there and it has the same md5 sum mentioned in this article.

Looks likes VALVe seems to think other wise.

As someone has stated, "it's like VU and Valve has a war between them or somthing."

I believe you're mentioning Intel's forthcoming Prescott, which should be released in 2004? Or at least in the semi-near future, where as the New 'Scientist' article is talking about an architecture due to launch five years from now. Prescott is the one I believe that has the above mentioned qualities.

I came from the Inquirer to this /. debate tonight...

What a nice company Lexmark is!

Before folks get on the Sun-is-doomed bandwagon, take a look at some of the latest offerings from Sun. While it probably does not yield the huge margins of big-iron, the lower-end systems that have recently come out are extremely price competitive. In fact, the x86 servers (the v60 and v65) came in much lower than Dell/HP and most of the white-box vendors for a recent price quote that we did. They seem to finally have their head on straight for the lower end of the market.

Now if only they would come out with an Opteron-based lower end board. The Inquirer had a good article about how Sun and IBM could use the Opteron/AMD64 platform to effectively smother Itanium cutting out both Intel and HP at the same time.

The Inquirer also has an article predicting the doom Sun. It references an article by Eric S. Raymond at Newsforge found here.

The Inquirer also has an article predicting the doom Sun. It references an article by Eric S. Raymond at Newsforge found here.

Seems the court interpreter or something got it wrong:
Get the latest here!

It was a mistake from a spokesperson, apparently. See here.

you [theinquirer.net]

So, what the fuck's with AMD and asian bondage slaves?

Here you go

I still prefer AMD chips for some reason.

We are talking R&D in computer technology, not a supply-chain, where, to paraphrase Scott McNealy, the only focus is to ship more bananas at a cheaper price (with a bruise on it.)

And here's what your fav R&D company has innovated.

Bull indeed.

cheers- raga

We are talking R&D in computer technology, not a supply-chain, where, to paraphrase Scott McNealy, the only focus is to ship more bananas at a cheaper price (with a bruise on it.)

And here's what your fav R&D company has innovated.

Bull indeed.

cheers- raga

to make a Dell Jukebox? You have to wonder sometime

I wonder what effect this story has had as it leaked into mainstream news over the weekend.

It seems that there has been a lot of news coverage which is sympathetic to SCO. So, imagine a day trader who thinks maybe SCO has a 10% chance of getting $3billion from IBM; SCO should then be worth $300million. These people do not understand that the chance of SCO coming out of this with $3billion is not 50%, or 10%, or 2%. It in fact an amount indistinguishable from 0%. As people start to realize this, SCOX is going to go down. Certainly groups with an interest in SCO's lawsuit can sell the stock back and forth to each other and keep the price up, but they can't do it forever.

Speaking of "to close websites and stiffle free speech", see this.

" DIEBOLD ELECTION SYSTEMS has brandished lawyers' threats to take down that pesky citizens activist website blackboxvoting.org. It seems they charged copyright infringement regarding materials on other websites that blackboxvoting.org merely linked to, despite such links having been ruled legal by appellate courts in other instances. "

No doubt. Very smart marketing people. The fact that HP did this just made me forget that they recentlylaid off a shitload of people but somehow managed to afford two brand new gulfstream fives that they really needed because their other private jets were 3 YEARS OLD.

My main info source

There are mobile Athlon-64 CPUs.

From The Inquirer:

"First, off AMD has a mobile Athlon 64 reference design which includes 256MB of PC 2000 memory, the K8T400 chipset, and an ATI M9 graphics card. The mobile chip will be launched in September."

The Expense will be as much at Intel's lucrative server business as it will be AMD's.

AMD created the 3DNow! extensions to the 80x86 instruction set architecture (ISA), also known as IA-32. They were a significant improvement over the original set of MMX extensions. However, later, Intel created the SSE (and SSE2) extensions. Guess what? AMD was forced to incorporate them into its future chips in addition to the 3DNow! extensions. Ignoring the SSE extensions would have cost AMD dearly in terms of marketshare. The fact of the matter is that Intel sets the global standard for the IA-32 ISA.

Now, AMD has created its own x86-64 extensions to the IA-32. You can be sure that Intel has created a different set of 64-bit extensions (which we shall call "INTEL-64") to the IA-32. After all, why would Intel support AMD in any way? Once Intel activates the INTEL-64 extensions in the upcoming Prescott, AMD will be forced to go back to the drawing board to incorporate the INTEL-64 into all future chips. The current Athlon64 will be like the K-5 -- interesting but without a future.

AMD will probably take an additional 2 years to produce an INTEL-64-compatiable chip. By that time, Intel would have locked 90% of the 64-bit desktop market with Prescott.

The worst news is for Sun. With Prescott, Intel has a 64 bit chip that will be significantly faster than the UltraSPARC III/IV. Right now, the Pentium 4 crushes the UltraSPARC III in performance. Please review the performance characteristics of the Pentium 4 at the SPEC web site. Since Prescott (successor to the Pentium 4) will be faster than its predecessor, Prescott will clean UltraSPARC's clock. Moreover, the number of applications that will run on Prescott -- the heir to the software empire of the x86 -- far exceeds the number of applications that run on UltraSPARC III/IV. On the key TPC-C benchmark, Prescott will clearly deliver outstanding performance, compared to the UltraSPARC III/IV.

In short, when Intel activates the INTEL-64 extensions in Prescott, Intel will force (1) AMD back to its usual state of borderline bankruptcy and (2) Sun into being a software company.

... from the desk of the reporter

You should read the memo, it's Intel that rule the Heat-Top.

DF reports confirmed our magical number of 103 W consumption and we reckon that the primary focus of the Intel team is to make it less hot or otherwise to buy some company that would produce water cooling for it. -- TheInq

And this isn't even news, they rule the top with their top-of-the-line P4s too.

So the joke is on Intel. For now.

So firstly, Prescott is 64-bit and Intel needs a 64-bit version of Windows to run on it 'cause hell will freeze over before they use AMD's 64-bit instruction set.

And then Intel start lecturing Asian countries about being obediant little consumers, and buying Windows, and not cutting off their nose to spite their face by investing in Linux.

What was the first bit again? Oh that's right ... Intel needs Microsoft big-time or their Prescott will fail. Hmmmmmm.

1) this component with never run on Linux or OS/X desktops (let alone other desktops).

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8820

"It looks like the software will only be available for consumer electronics devices. Reading between the lines, it looks like the software will only be available to manufacturers for inclusion in media devices based on Linux. There is certainly no sign of a free download for PCs."

1) this component with never run on Linux or OS/X desktops (let alone other desktops).

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8820

NZheretic Aka David Mohring.