No, the ramp of Dothan has not been all that spectacular, it was set to around October of last year, and it is only coming out. There were several speed path issues that were resolved, and it is due out on the 10th.
That said, it is still not what was promised last year, power consumption is higher, no new FSB as promised, and other problems. When it hits what was promised, it will probably be a year late.
There is more on The Inq here: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15749 http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15760 http:// www.theinquirer.net/?article=15768
And more coming soon, this story is far from over.
-Charlie
Disclaimer: I write for The Inq, but I did not do these stories.
I have both the mame version and the arcade game, and I can say with authority that it is not the same. Not even close. The 'feel' is way off.
Then the real fun of the game, stomping your friends, can't really be done on a PC. You just have to be able to shoulder the poor twit out of the way while you grab the valuable prizes.
I have a Robotron and a Smash TV downstairs. Took me 3 years to find a Smash TV, non-origional cabinet, crappy monitor, but it works! Happy happy, joy joy.
Now, there are only 2 questions left, can I ever make it by Scarface on a single credit, and does anyone have a set of the v8.0 roms to sell me.
I am pretty sure that the brainchildren who think that a.mail TLD will stop spam are the ones behind the.xxx/.sex domains. It doesn't take a leap of logic to think that if the first harebrained scheme works, the second is sure to get them laid. Rock on, do good, and move out of your parents basement.
Sorry to be so petty, but your basis for arguement is wrong. His arguement is on *2* lines, the last is his sig. If I wanted to be petty, I could say that his arguement is 1 line, with a line of quotes for context, and a line for a sig. Since I am above that I won't be that silly.
That New Scientist is basically repeating the Intel line on the Tech, which is to say nothing. You notice the entire article is basically saying that it is about virtualization, no specifics. It is pretty close to word for word what the Intel PR people will tell you. Journalism indeed.
I was at both IDF keynotes, and they gave demos, and did nothing much. I asked, they told me squat. I found out and wrote it up, I posted a link to my story above, I won't re-post the link.
It annoys me when Intel announces a tech, tells you it will be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but then won't talk about it if you ask. Kind of like a certain Unix vendor we all know....
Vanderpool is basically a re-optimization of priorities and costs. Read this for more: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14289 Intel won't say shit about it if you ask, I have several times. I was at both the IDF demos on it, and they said all of nothing technical. I found out anyway.:)
That said, what is Pellston and Foxton? I know one of them.....
At CES, they had one, and it was absolutely dwarfed by my Nokia 6360 phone. Take a look: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13578 While the phone is a 'big' one the laptop was thinner, and it weighed nothing. Very cool.
These ultra-light models don't click until you hold one, but when you do, you look at the standard ultra-lights and wonder how people use them.
Just to say so up front, I write for The Inquirer (www.theinquirer.net), and do a fair amount of hardware reviews. I also go to the trade shows and the like, and talk to other journalists. You learn a lot there.
You also go to parties afterwards and people get very drunk. You learn a lot more there:). You learn even more if you do not drink. I don't.
The things you learn are open secrets, all the vendors know what is going on, and all the writers and reporters do also. Some employees may not know thier bosses are not quite clean, but that is another issue.
I was talking to several DRAM vendors about benchmarking at CES, and was told, by name, and usually by several sources that certain web sites would not review a product without advertising dollars. In fact, advertising dollars could significantly skew the results of a review.
These were not offhand comments like 'we think that they don't like us', it was direct 'If we don't cough up the cash, they won't review us'. Several different sources in the DRAM and other industries told me similar things, and for the most part, 2 or 3 names kept coming up. No, I will not name them.
If you follow the hardware sites, you can pretty much pick up who is 'dirty'. When 5 sites review the same new video card, all with the same *yawn* benchmarks, and 4 get one result, and the 5th gets a different result, and praises the 'loser' in the commentary, what do you think is going on? I mean, it is rather obvious.
The flip side of it is I get accused of bias just about ever day. Other than it getting rather old, it is usually not worth commenting on. I get accused of loving AMD, loving Intel, and being a liberal weenie and a republican nazi over the same article.
The truth of the matter is I get what hardware I can from who I can, and write about it. I bitch out HP all the time for blatant management stupidity, but I can't recall ever reviewing one of their products badly. I buy a lot of them with my own money. Strangely, they won't talk to me.
I also review a lot of AMD gear, and almost no Intel stuff. Why? AMD sends me things when I ask, without any pain or hoops to jump through. Intel won't. I know they can, friends in the industry have intel sending truckloads of chips to them on offhand remarks. I would almost say they don't like me or want me near thier products. If I ever do get one, I will write about it fairly though, I think that is what they are afraid of.
Last but not least, I know at least 3 of The Inq writers, me included, have been offered money to do something, or not do something. All the ones that I have heard of turned them down. At CES in January, a vendor who I know and like tried to hand me a wad of bills. I (politely) turned him down, even though it was probably more money than I had seen in a month, and it would have made the difference between another day of dollar menu items and water, and the not totally cheap buffets in vegas. Others have been offered 6 digits to do things. Personally, I don't know why he turned that one down.
What it all comes down to is ethics. Once yousell out, you are done. How can you trust them ever again? Easy you can't. That is why I turned down the money, and why the site puts reporting first. If it were any other way, I would be gone.
Other sites make other decisions, and they quickly get the reputations that they deserve. The community knows, and if you look closely, you can pick out who is clean fairly easily, it isn't all that hard.
I read this as a 2000W VoIP phone, not a model 2000W. At first, I was thinking, what, a range of about 20 miles on this baby, battery life of almost a minute. Not only that, but you turn it on, and you lose bladder control, and suddenly can't turn left. Free guide to microwave induced cancers included, get them all and you win a discount on the next model!
Seriously though, this looks like fun, I'll have to ask the Zyxel people for one, they make cool WiFi stuff.
Oh, the old bodygaurd, gun and zealots out to get them speech again? Hmm, lawsuits, threats, letters and other things failed to prop up the stock price this round, I guess that is one of the few remaining cards left to play.
What is curious is that they would because it bought them nothing more than derisive laughter last time, why would it suddenly play well now? Guess they never learn.
Yep, I can see the deviants plotting his untimely death now: Linux Enthusiast (LE) 1: Dude, check out my new background. LE2: Cool. LE1: Wanna go get stoned? (1) LE2: No, we have better things to do. LE1: Like what? LE2: They just came out with a patch to perl, it updates the version by 0.0.03!!!! LE1: Whoa! LE2: Fire up the torrent, THEN lets get stoned! LE1: Yah.
There you have it, INDISPUTABLE proof that they are out to kill poor Darl in horrible and painfull ways. It has nothing to do with personal insecurity and needing a large steel object as a standin for shattered masculinity.
-Charlie
(1) do not read anything into this about the behavior of any of the prominent open source coders I live with and hang out with. Please.
These events happened yesterday, and this is the stock market we are talking about. It was more than 15 min ago, and the traders saw a shiny thing between now and then, it will have no bearing on today's trading.
They have how much in the bank, and are losing how much a quarter? Lets toss out a few pseudo-facts. Ambulance chasers will take a case if there is money backing it or they know they have a decent shot at prevailing. No one in their right mind will invest in SCO any more.
Those things said, some simple math will tell you when they will 'give up' due to lack of funds. Some more complex math, basically interpolating based on increasing quarterly losses put them at 'giving up' a few quarters earlier. If you were an SCO customer right now, would you renew your support contracts based on the fact that they will be there to answer the phone in a year?
Smart money says this lawsuit will make the few remaining clients they have run to the hills, and they will go away quite quickly.
AutoZone: How do you know what we are running? SCO: Ummmm AutoZone: Shall I repeat? SCO: Umm....Magic?
-Charlie
(Note: I know that isn't exactly what Nmap is for, but I thought it was funny and topical) (Note2: Isn't is sad that disclaimers like this must exist on Slashdot for the sarcasm impared?)
1) If its in Prescott, Intel isn't saying so. Just because it isn't stated doesn't mean it isn't there. I was saying last year that Prescott was 64 bit, and looks like I was right. Those same people told me with certainty that it was there.
3) It just makes things harder to exploit, but that true of everything. Every place I have heard about sells it as 'virus stopper'. It does NOT do this. Slows it down, yes, but stops, no. That is what I was referring to.
4) BS. You have to switch to PAE mode, but that isn't 64bit mode. I thought it wasn't there? Everyone I talked to said in no uncertain terms that is was 64-bit only, I trust them over you.
5) It only requires the kernel change, no apps need the recompile. If a program expects to have all memory writeable, and tries to function under those conditions, anything that stops it, regardless of how small the patch necessary is, will break these programs.
7) It will typically change exploits from allowing elavation of privelege to a DOS. The 'typically' is what I have a problem with. If you put it against current virii/exploits, you are right, but then again, all of those are patched against. It is the future ones I worry about, and if there is a way around it, it will be exploited. For that reason I say the people touting this as a panacea are shortsighted at best.
By my count, you are wrong on 4.5 out of 5 corrections, so I don't feel a burning need to backpedal here, sorry.
I can't be specific, but lets just say my day job is writing from The Inquirer, and I was the one who said Prescott was 64-bit and used AMD64 more than 6 months ago. I can say with authority that it is there, it is just a question of when Intel decides to bless us with it.
1) It is also in Prescott 2) It needs OS support, specifically XP SP2, which isn't out yet. 3) It doesn't really do what it is meant to, I have seen several 'theoretical' discussions on how to circumvent it. Think of it as another hoop to jump through for the black hats. 4) You need to be in 64-bit mode to use it 5) 4) requires a recompilation anyway, why not do it right with the right tools when you recompile? 6) I know of at least one vendor using to bid against intel on contracts now. 7) Oh yeah, this will do a lot of good. Really. When has a white paper ever lied? 8) The more you know about things like this, the more you want to move into a cabin in Montana and live off the land.
Umm, having been at the CXG event, and seeing how it was set to be the largest female gaming event ever, I think you are off here. It wasn't that that they were not allowed to play in the 'male' tourney, I have actually never heard of an event that excluded women, but simply that is was less profitable for them.
What I mean by that is there was a women only tourney that, if memory serves, paid out as well as the other 'general' competitions.
Now, would you compete against 50 of the best, or 7 of the best if money was awarded to the top 10 finishers? Only 2 guesses, so think hard about this one.
The one thing I am not sure about is if participating in one excluded you from the other.
Lastly, it turned into a massive clusterfsck anyway, the CS tourneys were pretty much shut down, and there was bad blood all around. People were pointing fingers left and right, and I was there till 3am watching it all happen. Happy days for the staff at CXG. There are several good writeups available, look them up if you care.
-Charlie
P.S. The funniest part of the event was watching the odd head spin around and track one of the women like they were on fire. Usually followed by 'A g.. A gi.. a.. a...'. It didn't happen often, but it did, and it was beyond funny.
When you saw the first picture, your first question was 'Wonder how well she does', or 'Does she frequent my server', right? There was never a thought about non-stick cooking spray and gravity boots, correct?
Come on, why pick on the women for having sexual names, I kind of LIKE the attitude, and think it should be encouraged.
I thought about latency, but with a link that fast, it will probably be point to point, and using high quality componentry (Are there low quality 2.5Gbps components?), so latency will be about as low as possible. Also, since it is a demo, you probably won't have it be cross country, most likely it will be in the same building, or between offices of the company selling it. Either way, latency will be tolerable.
That said, if the company set up a transcontinental link for a demo, good for them, but damn they must have money to burn.
Overall, the things I talked about are pretty latency insensitve. Anything sized enough to take more than an eyeblink will have latency pretty well masked. It may take a second to start the transfer, but after that, you will only see the speed. Actually, with that level of bandwidth, everything will be an eyeblink, so things like window draw rate, and menu fade in and fade out tend to take precedence.
Now, never having had a 2.5Gbps link for my very own, I can't conclusively say that I am right, but I am an arrogant SOB, and this is my reality, so I will go with my gut and say it won't be an issue. You can also tell the person that it is just a quick demo you whipped up, and you can make the latency go away on a production system:).
Lastly, about that not having a link like that, I write for The Inquirer, so if they want me to test it, I would be more than happy to do so. I live less than a block from a major metropolitan telco CO, so it is eminently doable. I will break my one reviewing rule and say that if you give it to me for a minimum of 36 months, I will accept the bribe and gaurantee whomever provides the link, even if it is *SHUDDER* Qwest, a great review. I will even break out the thesaurus for big words. Let me know people.
Ok, there is one thing that will impress the computer savy and admin types, that is real time remote disk mirroring. 2.5Gbps ~= 300MBps, or roughly the bandwidth of an ultra320 SCSI drive. Set up a single channel raid array with 9 drives on an U320 card plugged into a PCI-X slot. Mirror it to the other end of the link.
Then use the server for your daily uses, say file sharing or whatever. Demo the server playing DVDs, streaming across the network, capturing realtime video etc. Do both reads and writes.
When they ask what this has to do with the link, casually point out that all disk activity is happening simultaneusly on the other end of the link, and if the building is hit by an errant meteor or something, no data will be lost.
Then pull the plug on the raid array, and let the mirror take over remotely. If that does not impress them, they are not technical enough to understand what the point is anyway.
From the current list of comments, every one here is, umm, bench racing. No one seems to have actually seen one, much less spent any quality time with one of these things. That said, most of your comments are way off.
I have seen and played with them on 2 occasions, and they are rather nice. I was skeptical when I first heard about them, then I saw one at Comdex: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12780 I saw one again at CES, and talked to the Acer guys. They take this very seriously as do the Ferarri people.
There is a lof of thought that went into this box, and it shows. It really has to be seen to be understood. The paint looks insanely good, I have never seen a laptop that looks this nice.
The laptop itself is pretty nondescript, I think Enderle must be on crack to give up his T40, the nicest laptop I have ever reviewed for it.
Overall, give this thing a chance, it is a really unique laptop that looks damn good. Hunt one down in a store, you will be impressed.
Thanks. I was reading Groklaw at about 4am and read the latest 'charges', or lack thereof, then went on to some of the 'news' sites. I noticed a severe lack of factual coverage on the 'news' sites, and did what I do best, went on a rant. I think it turned out fairly well:). Either way, it was fun to write.
Forgive me if I get a little bored by this 'revelation', I wrote about it in September:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11668
And I followed it up a week later with this:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11781
Ok, people seem to not taken me seriously then, so I'll reiterate. Prescott has 64 bit extensions built in. They use the AMD64 instruction set. This is because MS twisted their arm into it.
The question of when they turn it on is more a political one than a technical one, and that I don't know the answer to right now, most likely because Intel does not know either. They are in one hell of a bind. If Prescott is 64 bit, why should I pay 5x as much for an Itanic again? Oh yeah, a marginal performance gain on FP code, but a loss on Int. Whoopty-#&%^#-ding-dong.
It will be announced at IDF, count on that. When you can buy it, good question. My guess is that it will be an inticement for the first Prescott/EE buyers.
-Charlie
(As a self-plug, if you read the Inq, you would know these things:) )
Slashdot Mirror
No, the ramp of Dothan has not been all that spectacular, it was set to around October of last year, and it is only coming out. There were several speed path issues that were resolved, and it is due out on the 10th.
That said, it is still not what was promised last year, power consumption is higher, no new FSB as promised, and other problems. When it hits what was promised, it will probably be a year late.
-Charlie
There is more on The Inq here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15760/ www.theinquirer.net/?article=15768
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15749
http:/
And more coming soon, this story is far from over.
-Charlie
Disclaimer: I write for The Inq, but I did not do these stories.
I have both the mame version and the arcade game, and I can say with authority that it is not the same. Not even close. The 'feel' is way off.
Then the real fun of the game, stomping your friends, can't really be done on a PC. You just have to be able to shoulder the poor twit out of the way while you grab the valuable prizes.
-Charlie
I have a Robotron and a Smash TV downstairs. Took me 3 years to find a Smash TV, non-origional cabinet, crappy monitor, but it works! Happy happy, joy joy.
Now, there are only 2 questions left, can I ever make it by Scarface on a single credit, and does anyone have a set of the v8.0 roms to sell me.
Damn it, now I have to go play.......
-Charlie
I am pretty sure that the brainchildren who think that a .mail TLD will stop spam are the ones behind the .xxx/.sex domains. It doesn't take a leap of logic to think that if the first harebrained scheme works, the second is sure to get them laid. Rock on, do good, and move out of your parents basement.
-Charlie
Sorry to be so petty, but your basis for arguement is wrong. His arguement is on *2* lines, the last is his sig. If I wanted to be petty, I could say that his arguement is 1 line, with a line of quotes for context, and a line for a sig. Since I am above that I won't be that silly.
-Charlie
(Yes, for the slow, this was sarcasm)
That New Scientist is basically repeating the Intel line on the Tech, which is to say nothing. You notice the entire article is basically saying that it is about virtualization, no specifics. It is pretty close to word for word what the Intel PR people will tell you. Journalism indeed.
I was at both IDF keynotes, and they gave demos, and did nothing much. I asked, they told me squat. I found out and wrote it up, I posted a link to my story above, I won't re-post the link.
It annoys me when Intel announces a tech, tells you it will be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but then won't talk about it if you ask. Kind of like a certain Unix vendor we all know....
-Charlie
Vanderpool is basically a re-optimization of priorities and costs. Read this for more:
Intel won't say shit about it if you ask, I have several times. I was at both the IDF demos on it, and they said all of nothing technical. I found out anyway. :)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14289
That said, what is Pellston and Foxton? I know one of them.....
-Charlie
At CES, they had one, and it was absolutely dwarfed by my Nokia 6360 phone. Take a look:
While the phone is a 'big' one the laptop was thinner, and it weighed nothing. Very cool.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13578
These ultra-light models don't click until you hold one, but when you do, you look at the standard ultra-lights and wonder how people use them.
-Charlie
Just to say so up front, I write for The Inquirer (www.theinquirer.net), and do a fair amount of hardware reviews. I also go to the trade shows and the like, and talk to other journalists. You learn a lot there.
:). You learn even more if you do not drink. I don't.
You also go to parties afterwards and people get very drunk. You learn a lot more there
The things you learn are open secrets, all the vendors know what is going on, and all the writers and reporters do also. Some employees may not know thier bosses are not quite clean, but that is another issue.
I was talking to several DRAM vendors about benchmarking at CES, and was told, by name, and usually by several sources that certain web sites would not review a product without advertising dollars. In fact, advertising dollars could significantly skew the results of a review.
These were not offhand comments like 'we think that they don't like us', it was direct 'If we don't cough up the cash, they won't review us'. Several different sources in the DRAM and other industries told me similar things, and for the most part, 2 or 3 names kept coming up. No, I will not name them.
If you follow the hardware sites, you can pretty much pick up who is 'dirty'. When 5 sites review the same new video card, all with the same *yawn* benchmarks, and 4 get one result, and the 5th gets a different result, and praises the 'loser' in the commentary, what do you think is going on? I mean, it is rather obvious.
The flip side of it is I get accused of bias just about ever day. Other than it getting rather old, it is usually not worth commenting on. I get accused of loving AMD, loving Intel, and being a liberal weenie and a republican nazi over the same article.
The truth of the matter is I get what hardware I can from who I can, and write about it. I bitch out HP all the time for blatant management stupidity, but I can't recall ever reviewing one of their products badly. I buy a lot of them with my own money. Strangely, they won't talk to me.
I also review a lot of AMD gear, and almost no Intel stuff. Why? AMD sends me things when I ask, without any pain or hoops to jump through. Intel won't. I know they can, friends in the industry have intel sending truckloads of chips to them on offhand remarks. I would almost say they don't like me or want me near thier products. If I ever do get one, I will write about it fairly though, I think that is what they are afraid of.
Last but not least, I know at least 3 of The Inq writers, me included, have been offered money to do something, or not do something. All the ones that I have heard of turned them down. At CES in January, a vendor who I know and like tried to hand me a wad of bills. I (politely) turned him down, even though it was probably more money than I had seen in a month, and it would have made the difference between another day of dollar menu items and water, and the not totally cheap buffets in vegas. Others have been offered 6 digits to do things. Personally, I don't know why he turned that one down.
What it all comes down to is ethics. Once yousell out, you are done. How can you trust them ever again? Easy you can't. That is why I turned down the money, and why the site puts reporting first. If it were any other way, I would be gone.
Other sites make other decisions, and they quickly get the reputations that they deserve. The community knows, and if you look closely, you can pick out who is clean fairly easily, it isn't all that hard.
-Charlie
I read this as a 2000W VoIP phone, not a model 2000W. At first, I was thinking, what, a range of about 20 miles on this baby, battery life of almost a minute. Not only that, but you turn it on, and you lose bladder control, and suddenly can't turn left. Free guide to microwave induced cancers included, get them all and you win a discount on the next model!
Seriously though, this looks like fun, I'll have to ask the Zyxel people for one, they make cool WiFi stuff.
-Charlie
Oh, the old bodygaurd, gun and zealots out to get them speech again? Hmm, lawsuits, threats, letters and other things failed to prop up the stock price this round, I guess that is one of the few remaining cards left to play.
What is curious is that they would because it bought them nothing more than derisive laughter last time, why would it suddenly play well now? Guess they never learn.
Yep, I can see the deviants plotting his untimely death now:
Linux Enthusiast (LE) 1: Dude, check out my new background.
LE2: Cool.
LE1: Wanna go get stoned? (1)
LE2: No, we have better things to do.
LE1: Like what?
LE2: They just came out with a patch to perl, it updates the version by 0.0.03!!!!
LE1: Whoa!
LE2: Fire up the torrent, THEN lets get stoned!
LE1: Yah.
There you have it, INDISPUTABLE proof that they are out to kill poor Darl in horrible and painfull ways. It has nothing to do with personal insecurity and needing a large steel object as a standin for shattered masculinity.
-Charlie
(1) do not read anything into this about the behavior of any of the prominent open source coders I live with and hang out with. Please.
These events happened yesterday, and this is the stock market we are talking about. It was more than 15 min ago, and the traders saw a shiny thing between now and then, it will have no bearing on today's trading.
-Charlie
They have how much in the bank, and are losing how much a quarter? Lets toss out a few pseudo-facts. Ambulance chasers will take a case if there is money backing it or they know they have a decent shot at prevailing. No one in their right mind will invest in SCO any more.
Those things said, some simple math will tell you when they will 'give up' due to lack of funds. Some more complex math, basically interpolating based on increasing quarterly losses put them at 'giving up' a few quarters earlier. If you were an SCO customer right now, would you renew your support contracts based on the fact that they will be there to answer the phone in a year?
Smart money says this lawsuit will make the few remaining clients they have run to the hills, and they will go away quite quickly.
-Charlie
I can just see it in the courtroom:
AutoZone: How do you know what we are running?
SCO: Ummmm
AutoZone: Shall I repeat?
SCO: Umm....Magic?
-Charlie
(Note: I know that isn't exactly what Nmap is for, but I thought it was funny and topical)
(Note2: Isn't is sad that disclaimers like this must exist on Slashdot for the sarcasm impared?)
" Try to get your facts correct. Corrections:"
Ok, in order:
1) If its in Prescott, Intel isn't saying so.
Just because it isn't stated doesn't mean it isn't there. I was saying last year that Prescott was 64 bit, and looks like I was right. Those same people told me with certainty that it was there.
3) It just makes things harder to exploit, but that true of everything.
Every place I have heard about sells it as 'virus stopper'. It does NOT do this. Slows it down, yes, but stops, no. That is what I was referring to.
4) BS. You have to switch to PAE mode, but that isn't 64bit mode.
I thought it wasn't there? Everyone I talked to said in no uncertain terms that is was 64-bit only, I trust them over you.
5) It only requires the kernel change, no apps need the recompile.
If a program expects to have all memory writeable, and tries to function under those conditions, anything that stops it, regardless of how small the patch necessary is, will break these programs.
7) It will typically change exploits from allowing elavation of privelege to a DOS.
The 'typically' is what I have a problem with. If you put it against current virii/exploits, you are right, but then again, all of those are patched against. It is the future ones I worry about, and if there is a way around it, it will be exploited. For that reason I say the people touting this as a panacea are shortsighted at best.
By my count, you are wrong on 4.5 out of 5 corrections, so I don't feel a burning need to backpedal here, sorry.
-Charlie
"Sources, please. Or is this just FUD?"
I can't be specific, but lets just say my day job is writing from The Inquirer, and I was the one who said Prescott was 64-bit and used AMD64 more than 6 months ago. I can say with authority that it is there, it is just a question of when Intel decides to bless us with it.
-Charlie
1) It is also in Prescott
2) It needs OS support, specifically XP SP2, which isn't out yet.
3) It doesn't really do what it is meant to, I have seen several 'theoretical' discussions on how to circumvent it. Think of it as another hoop to jump through for the black hats.
4) You need to be in 64-bit mode to use it
5) 4) requires a recompilation anyway, why not do it right with the right tools when you recompile?
6) I know of at least one vendor using to bid against intel on contracts now.
7) Oh yeah, this will do a lot of good. Really. When has a white paper ever lied?
8) The more you know about things like this, the more you want to move into a cabin in Montana and live off the land.
-Charlie
Umm, having been at the CXG event, and seeing how it was set to be the largest female gaming event ever, I think you are off here. It wasn't that that they were not allowed to play in the 'male' tourney, I have actually never heard of an event that excluded women, but simply that is was less profitable for them.
What I mean by that is there was a women only tourney that, if memory serves, paid out as well as the other 'general' competitions.
Now, would you compete against 50 of the best, or 7 of the best if money was awarded to the top 10 finishers? Only 2 guesses, so think hard about this one.
The one thing I am not sure about is if participating in one excluded you from the other.
Lastly, it turned into a massive clusterfsck anyway, the CS tourneys were pretty much shut down, and there was bad blood all around. People were pointing fingers left and right, and I was there till 3am watching it all happen. Happy days for the staff at CXG. There are several good writeups available, look them up if you care.
-Charlie
P.S. The funniest part of the event was watching the odd head spin around and track one of the women like they were on fire. Usually followed by 'A g.. A gi.. a.. a...'. It didn't happen often, but it did, and it was beyond funny.
When you saw the first picture, your first question was 'Wonder how well she does', or 'Does she frequent my server', right? There was never a thought about non-stick cooking spray and gravity boots, correct?
Come on, why pick on the women for having sexual names, I kind of LIKE the attitude, and think it should be encouraged.
-Charlie
I thought about latency, but with a link that fast, it will probably be point to point, and using high quality componentry (Are there low quality 2.5Gbps components?), so latency will be about as low as possible. Also, since it is a demo, you probably won't have it be cross country, most likely it will be in the same building, or between offices of the company selling it. Either way, latency will be tolerable.
:).
That said, if the company set up a transcontinental link for a demo, good for them, but damn they must have money to burn.
Overall, the things I talked about are pretty latency insensitve. Anything sized enough to take more than an eyeblink will have latency pretty well masked. It may take a second to start the transfer, but after that, you will only see the speed. Actually, with that level of bandwidth, everything will be an eyeblink, so things like window draw rate, and menu fade in and fade out tend to take precedence.
Now, never having had a 2.5Gbps link for my very own, I can't conclusively say that I am right, but I am an arrogant SOB, and this is my reality, so I will go with my gut and say it won't be an issue. You can also tell the person that it is just a quick demo you whipped up, and you can make the latency go away on a production system
Lastly, about that not having a link like that, I write for The Inquirer, so if they want me to test it, I would be more than happy to do so. I live less than a block from a major metropolitan telco CO, so it is eminently doable. I will break my one reviewing rule and say that if you give it to me for a minimum of 36 months, I will accept the bribe and gaurantee whomever provides the link, even if it is *SHUDDER* Qwest, a great review. I will even break out the thesaurus for big words. Let me know people.
-Charlie
Ok, there is one thing that will impress the computer savy and admin types, that is real time remote disk mirroring. 2.5Gbps ~= 300MBps, or roughly the bandwidth of an ultra320 SCSI drive. Set up a single channel raid array with 9 drives on an U320 card plugged into a PCI-X slot. Mirror it to the other end of the link.
Then use the server for your daily uses, say file sharing or whatever. Demo the server playing DVDs, streaming across the network, capturing realtime video etc. Do both reads and writes.
When they ask what this has to do with the link, casually point out that all disk activity is happening simultaneusly on the other end of the link, and if the building is hit by an errant meteor or something, no data will be lost.
Then pull the plug on the raid array, and let the mirror take over remotely. If that does not impress them, they are not technical enough to understand what the point is anyway.
In that case, stream porn.
-Charlie
From the current list of comments, every one here is, umm, bench racing. No one seems to have actually seen one, much less spent any quality time with one of these things. That said, most of your comments are way off.
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I have seen and played with them on 2 occasions, and they are rather nice. I was skeptical when I first heard about them, then I saw one at Comdex:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=1278
I saw one again at CES, and talked to the Acer guys. They take this very seriously as do the Ferarri people.
There is a lof of thought that went into this box, and it shows. It really has to be seen to be understood. The paint looks insanely good, I have never seen a laptop that looks this nice.
The laptop itself is pretty nondescript, I think Enderle must be on crack to give up his T40, the nicest laptop I have ever reviewed for it.
Overall, give this thing a chance, it is a really unique laptop that looks damn good. Hunt one down in a store, you will be impressed.
-Charlie
Thanks. I was reading Groklaw at about 4am and read the latest 'charges', or lack thereof, then went on to some of the 'news' sites. I noticed a severe lack of factual coverage on the 'news' sites, and did what I do best, went on a rant. I think it turned out fairly well :). Either way, it was fun to write.
-Charlie
Forgive me if I get a little bored by this 'revelation', I wrote about it in September:
:) )
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11668
And I followed it up a week later with this:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11781
Ok, people seem to not taken me seriously then, so I'll reiterate. Prescott has 64 bit extensions built in. They use the AMD64 instruction set. This is because MS twisted their arm into it.
The question of when they turn it on is more a political one than a technical one, and that I don't know the answer to right now, most likely because Intel does not know either. They are in one hell of a bind. If Prescott is 64 bit, why should I pay 5x as much for an Itanic again? Oh yeah, a marginal performance gain on FP code, but a loss on Int. Whoopty-#&%^#-ding-dong.
It will be announced at IDF, count on that. When you can buy it, good question. My guess is that it will be an inticement for the first Prescott/EE buyers.
-Charlie
(As a self-plug, if you read the Inq, you would know these things