OLPC discovers a particular area might be in the market.
Nonsense. OLPC wasn't started for business reasons, it was started for philanthropic reasons.
Intel rep hears about this at the board meeting.
Nonsense. Negroponte started shouting his idea to the four winds before there was solid analysis to support the notion that a $100 laptop could be produced.
Intel rep phones home.
Nonsense. Many companies have been waiting for the strategic time when the cost of components matches the purchasing power of poorer countries. That is now only barely possible.
Intel parachutes in with free ClassmatePCs.
Nonsense. It takes a couple years to bring a PC product like that to market. You have no good data to indicate Intel hasn't been toying with ultra-low cost portables for a while.
Essentially, Intel gets to rip off all of OLPC's market research, for lack of a better term.
Also an inaccurate term. OLPC did lousy market research which is why they are having trouble. Not because of competitive threats from Intel and Asus.
Classmate is Intel and Microsoft's response to OLPC, out of fear that an entire generation of children might grow up without them.
I realize it is all the rage on Slashdot to re-iterate the groupthink that Classmate was begat of a conspiracy between Intel and Microsoft, but it is not. Classmate is an Intel product. The version of Classmate that can run Windows is more expensive because it must have more flash and more RAM.
Meanwhile, they were still building and promoting the Classmate the whole time.
Is there ANYTHING wrong with that? Classmate is a more powerful and more expensive system than XO. It is a better fit for older kids and it simply has more computing potential. There simply isn't going to be one, and only one, machine for every child not in a wealthy developed country.
So before you go mouthing off about how OLPC is the one keeping laptops out of the hands of children, keep in mind all of what I said so far and then keep in mind that these kids were getting ZERO laptops prior to Negroponte's efforts and that Intel and others had no interest in this shit whatsoever prior to the OLPC project (at which point Intel realised there was a metric fuck-ton of profit to be made of the destitude children of the third world).
First, that is a load of shit. What makes Negroponte different is that he was vocal about it. Everybody had interest, but there was no practical way to deliver the product. Remember, they were mouthing off about a $100 laptop. That didn't materialize. The laptop is $200 with a high rate of failure.
Second, you make it sound like if Negroponte had started this 10 years earlier, third world kids would have had machines 10 years earlier. The most important factors of this whole "laptops for kids" thing are the price of components and the purchasing power of the countries involved. So while you think, unfounded, that nobody took notice of the market until Negroponte, the truth is somewhat more economical: all these companies were doing studies on these emerging markets and realized the price point at which one could profitably sell a system at, and what these places could pay, had not yet reached parity. We are at the early cusp of when the price at which a laptop can be made reaches the price at what can be afforded.
There was much saber rattling about a $100 laptop to which the "big guys" scoffed at. Why? Because they knew that the component price alone would exceed that cost. The price will EVENTUALLY get to that point, at which point you're going to say "see you were wrong!" As anyone who bought an IBM PC 5150 for $8000 can tell you, cost goes down over time.
You got one thing right...there's no failure of capitalism here. It's working as well as it always does.
Yes. Intel used its free market right to leave an idiotic organization that is more obsessed with being the only solution than with getting systems into the hands of the world's poor. Seriously, why would OLPC care if Intel was working with ASUS?
Wind power is the least environmentally damaging of all and takes up the least amount of space, but depending on your idea of beauty they could fuck up your view somewhat.
I'm not so sure about least environmentally damaging, but let's address the space issue: Gigawatt reactors are fairly typical and take up about 100 acres. You would need 17,000 acres of windfarm to match that, and it would only match it when the wind is blowing. So if we assume we need 3 locations to get 1GW of base load, suddenly we need 51,000 acres of wind farm to produce the base load of a 100 acre reactor.
Again I say WTF.
IIRC about 10% more than what is used to generate the required amount of power, since the complete absence of wind across even half a continent is an extremely rare occurance (ie: has never been recorded) there is no need to transport it that far.
"complete absence" is a red herring. Just because there is wind blowing doesn't mean its enough to make use of it.
The white and light cyan areas do not have enough wind for economical wind generation. The next bluer area is unlikely to have enough wind. Certainly not enough for companies to risk investment.
Going to the 3rd blue area, can you see any areas of more than half the continent where wind energy would have to be transported? I know I do.
The CSIRO also identified the base load issue as a red-herring - hint: in a geographically large country such as Australia, the US, or Canada, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
??!!?!11! WTF? How many turbines would we have to construct to take advantage of all the 'somewheres' around? How much environmental damage are we willing to do in the name of wind power providing base load? I hope that is a very poor interpretation of their argument, whatever it is. Australia, the US and Canada are all very large countries. I don't think that argument truly respects the difficulties in transporting "base loads" from the northern midwest where the wind is blowing down to Southern California where it isn't.
Wind & Hydro provide the base load for other renewables (solar, tidal, wave, geothermal)
Wait, aren't the waves and tides always moving somewhere? What about geothermal?
A Robert Epstein was fooled for over two months into an online relationship with a chatbot. The interesting thing here is that Robert Epstein is actually an expert himself on this technology
Link? Closest I could find is this http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-truth-about-online-da written by Dr. Epstein. But that has nothing to do with being fooled by a chatbot. It would be quite shocking if he was fooled seeing as he is a psychologist and he designs AI tests.
This is nothing new. AI researchers were fooled into thinking Eliza was the first psychotherapist who really understood them.
AMD said there was a bug that only affected the 2.4GHz Phenom. Read this and note where they say:
AMD already issued a fix to all of its motherboard/system partners, so if you already own a 790FX motherboard or plan to buy a Phenom system, make sure to update the BIOS. 9500 (2.2 GHz) and 9600 (2.3 GHz) parts are unaffected by the errata.
Now we learn that the slower parts were affected as well.
Apparently contradicting prior AMD statements on the matter, Saucier flatly denied any relationship between the TLB erratum and chip clock frequencies. He also said there's no relationship between clock speeds and the performance degradation caused by the BIOS-based fix for the erratum.
I imagine that is where the article got the information.
You mean as opposed to wholesale? I bought them from the OLPC G1G1 program under the same terms and conditions I would have expected from any vendor.
No you didn't.
Education is the target market for the XO.
Nice punt. North America is not a target market for XO. It is being offered here purely out of necessity.
Or rather, I'll service what needs to be serviced and replace what needs to be replaced. Unlike most notebook computers offered at this price point, the XO is intended to be user-servicable by untrained technicians; the stated goal is to make it maintainable by the kids themselves.
That's nice, but... Despite what is intended, it is not user-serviceable. More here.. In other words, if anything breaks you can't get spare parts, and you probably will not be able to reassemble it once you take it apart.
Oh, so now we're talking about ASUS? Okay. Because the Eee PC is designed to be a ultra-light-weight laptop computer and not an educational tool. It's not designed for kids. The target market for that device (and similar ones) is people who do most of their work on a desktop machine but want something portable for light-duty work.
Do not allow facts to cloud your opinion.
I don't think the XO's will play Halflife; I'm not too worried about that.
Yeah, you beat that strawman to a pulp. Bad, bad strawman! Take that!
They also might not be the best choice for watching YouTube videos, shopping at Amazon, etc.
Translation: they will not grow with the students. Bravo! Gold star for you.
I'm fully expecting the now-plus-three-years version of the XO to be fully compatible with the ones I'm getting.
Are you expecting the current XO to be compatible with the now plus 7 year XO? Memory and storage have consistently shown themselves to be the most valuable upgrades available.
1. Did you buy the XO retail? 2. Is North America a target market for XO? 3. What are you going to do when one of those XO machines needs service or replacement? 4. Why not go with the Asus Eee for the same price?
I think you poorly served the students at your school. You saddled them with a machine that cannot play video or flash well, is not field upgradeable, cannot plug into a larger monitor, and has a very short warranty.
Except that in your example both Intel and its suppliers are trying to make a profit so the analogy is flawed.
Except in my case Intel is one of the key suppliers. They will already be making a small margin on the components they make, they don't need to further mark up the product to make a profit.
Quanta are actually producing this at a reduced margin.
Let me translate that: Quanta are actually producing this at a profit.
Make no mistake, even today neither XO laptop nor classmate could be sold at these prices without incurring huge losses, if it were a commercial activity which corporations or economically "sane" individuals would undertake.
I think I can boil your entire argument to that one statement. It is incorrect. The XO is a commercial activity through which corporations are making a small profit on.
On the other hand, it was an attempt to correct market's failure-- this used to be a segment which market was uninterested in serving (perhaps still is).
No, prior to this point in time the market simply could not produce a computer cheaply enough. If it were not for the dot-com explosion of the late 90's, the market would still not be able to produce a computer cheaply enough. You may want to look a few years back and notice that we were promised a $100 laptop and the current rhetoric shouts "just wait until we can scale up." That's another way of saying the market still cannot produce a computer that cheap. It's all a matter of timing. We are on the cusp of when catering to this market is economically viable.
This is why they waited until the orders started coming in for OLPC.
??? Um, learn a little something before trotting out crap like that. Designing these things takes a long time. If Intel had waited until OLPC orders were coming in, they would have nothing right now.
My point is that WINTEL's coy protestations about ideals of free market is clearly a smoke-screen. So please don't drag economic theory into this morass.
A few points: 1) There is no "Wintel" conspiracy going on here; 2) Not sure where you're getting free market protestations (sounds like a strawman) but the only difference between XO and Classmate is who is getting the profits. OLPC is not a hardware manufacturer.
I am however pleased that in round one (creating a market) OLPC is a clear winner.
*eyeroll* whatever. Don't let the facts get in the way of this.
My only worry is whether the movement would stay alive for the next round.
You're not paying attention then. Despite all the OLPC fanboyism, there are numerous manufacturers trying to make cheap laptops for this market. Asus, Via, Intel and AMD are all players in this market.
True, XO is not trying to make a profit. But its suppliers are. XO doesn't actually make any hardware. Everything is outsourced. So, no, it doesn't make sense. The fact that they couldn't produce the laptop for less than DOUBLE what they had planned should make this fairly obvious.
Further, as I've said before, there is nothing preventing you from getting the Classmate PC with Linux installed. It can even come pre-installed.
If MS and Intel want to seriously get -- and STAY -- in the game of providing system for the developing world, that's great. The concern is that they'll produce just enough press releases for the XO to stop getting orders it needs to stay viable, then once the XO is basically dead, MS/Intel say "oh, well now that we look at the market, we really think tour new $500 design is more appropriate". Then it would take another year or three for the XO or something similar to get back into production. Anyone with more than a few months of experience in the computer industry is familiar with this pattern.
And anyone who has more than a few months of experience in economics knows that the third world is fairly inelastic in their demand for computers so this argument is complete nonsense because these people simply cannot buy a $500 computer. The difference between what they will pay and what they can pay is very narrow. The $150-250 range is the sweet spot between what can be produced and what can be afforded.
The rules of monopoly simply don't apply in the third world for non-essential goods. At the end of the day, you don't really need a computer.
So all this conspiracy theory nonsense is just... well, nonsense. Intel and MS are not colluding to push out XO. The classmate PC can come with Linux pre-installed.
They're not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, they're doing it because they see a competitor they want to eliminate.
I call false dichotomy. They could also be doing it because it is an emerging market they want to enter. Also, ClassmatePC comes with Linux as a (cheaper) option. Further the target markets are slightly different. XO is aimed at primary school children while the more capable (and slightly more expensive) Classmate is aimed at secondary school children.
Not quite, in hl1 you literally walked across black mesa, you experience ever bloody foot.
In HL2 you did have a few, fade to black then a few hours later, moments.
Yeah 'cuz in HL1 the military special forces don't ambush you after you fight a bunch of ninja guys, knock you out, carry you away and you wake up in a trash compactor some time later weaponless... Oh, wait...
How do you benchmark a processor when there are no motherboards that support it?
Simple, you test it on a motherboard that supports it. "But wait," you say, "the article said no motherboard does." Yeah, they often get it wrong, welcome to slashdot. While Intel does not have a chipset that officially supports 1600MHz, there are X35 boards out there from manufacturers such as Asus and Gigabyte that have bumped the FSB frequency anyway. Somehow, even under load, the platform is stable.
Slashdot Mirror
The Classmate PC doesn't run Sugar, the XO's UI. Instead, it runs Windows.
Hey don't let the facts get in the way of your religion. My apologies if that makes 3/4 of your comment an uninformed rant.
The rest of your comment is similar nonsense. Either untrue, unfounded speculation, personal bias or nostalgic mis-remembering.
So please spare me the cost of parts bullshit
Tell you what. I'll spare you the cost of parts bullshit if you answer one question:
Where is the $100 laptop?
Put up or shut up.
OLPC discovers a particular area might be in the market.
Nonsense. OLPC wasn't started for business reasons, it was started for philanthropic reasons.
Intel rep hears about this at the board meeting.
Nonsense. Negroponte started shouting his idea to the four winds before there was solid analysis to support the notion that a $100 laptop could be produced.
Intel rep phones home.
Nonsense. Many companies have been waiting for the strategic time when the cost of components matches the purchasing power of poorer countries. That is now only barely possible.
Intel parachutes in with free ClassmatePCs.
Nonsense. It takes a couple years to bring a PC product like that to market. You have no good data to indicate Intel hasn't been toying with ultra-low cost portables for a while.
Essentially, Intel gets to rip off all of OLPC's market research, for lack of a better term.
Also an inaccurate term. OLPC did lousy market research which is why they are having trouble. Not because of competitive threats from Intel and Asus.
Classmate is Intel and Microsoft's response to OLPC, out of fear that an entire generation of children might grow up without them.
I realize it is all the rage on Slashdot to re-iterate the groupthink that Classmate was begat of a conspiracy between Intel and Microsoft, but it is not. Classmate is an Intel product. The version of Classmate that can run Windows is more expensive because it must have more flash and more RAM.
Meanwhile, they were still building and promoting the Classmate the whole time.
Is there ANYTHING wrong with that? Classmate is a more powerful and more expensive system than XO. It is a better fit for older kids and it simply has more computing potential. There simply isn't going to be one, and only one, machine for every child not in a wealthy developed country.
So before you go mouthing off about how OLPC is the one keeping laptops out of the hands of children, keep in mind all of what I said so far and then keep in mind that these kids were getting ZERO laptops prior to Negroponte's efforts and that Intel and others had no interest in this shit whatsoever prior to the OLPC project (at which point Intel realised there was a metric fuck-ton of profit to be made of the destitude children of the third world).
First, that is a load of shit. What makes Negroponte different is that he was vocal about it. Everybody had interest, but there was no practical way to deliver the product. Remember, they were mouthing off about a $100 laptop. That didn't materialize. The laptop is $200 with a high rate of failure.
Second, you make it sound like if Negroponte had started this 10 years earlier, third world kids would have had machines 10 years earlier. The most important factors of this whole "laptops for kids" thing are the price of components and the purchasing power of the countries involved. So while you think, unfounded, that nobody took notice of the market until Negroponte, the truth is somewhat more economical: all these companies were doing studies on these emerging markets and realized the price point at which one could profitably sell a system at, and what these places could pay, had not yet reached parity. We are at the early cusp of when the price at which a laptop can be made reaches the price at what can be afforded.
There was much saber rattling about a $100 laptop to which the "big guys" scoffed at. Why? Because they knew that the component price alone would exceed that cost. The price will EVENTUALLY get to that point, at which point you're going to say "see you were wrong!" As anyone who bought an IBM PC 5150 for $8000 can tell you, cost goes down over time.
You got one thing right...there's no failure of capitalism here. It's working as well as it always does.
Yes. Intel used its free market right to leave an idiotic organization that is more obsessed with being the only solution than with getting systems into the hands of the world's poor. Seriously, why would OLPC care if Intel was working with ASUS?
It is a foolish generalization, and decent-educated people ought to reject it.
Yes, quite right.
Now, why don't you take all this energy you have and go around shouting about how the word "gay" is misused to mean "homosexual."
Santa shows up and heats up a joint?!
Rock on, reefer Santa, rock on!
The publisher has no power to pass laws.
*hangs head low* Ahhh, youthful idealism. I miss it so.
Wind power is the least environmentally damaging of all and takes up the least amount of space, but depending on your idea of beauty they could fuck up your view somewhat.
I'm not so sure about least environmentally damaging, but let's address the space issue: Gigawatt reactors are fairly typical and take up about 100 acres. You would need 17,000 acres of windfarm to match that, and it would only match it when the wind is blowing. So if we assume we need 3 locations to get 1GW of base load, suddenly we need 51,000 acres of wind farm to produce the base load of a 100 acre reactor.
Again I say WTF.
IIRC about 10% more than what is used to generate the required amount of power, since the complete absence of wind across even half a continent is an extremely rare occurance (ie: has never been recorded) there is no need to transport it that far.
"complete absence" is a red herring. Just because there is wind blowing doesn't mean its enough to make use of it.
Here's a wind atlas of the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_wind_power_map.png
The white and light cyan areas do not have enough wind for economical wind generation. The next bluer area is unlikely to have enough wind. Certainly not enough for companies to risk investment.
Going to the 3rd blue area, can you see any areas of more than half the continent where wind energy would have to be transported? I know I do.
The CSIRO also identified the base load issue as a red-herring - hint: in a geographically large country such as Australia, the US, or Canada, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
??!!?!11! WTF? How many turbines would we have to construct to take advantage of all the 'somewheres' around? How much environmental damage are we willing to do in the name of wind power providing base load? I hope that is a very poor interpretation of their argument, whatever it is. Australia, the US and Canada are all very large countries. I don't think that argument truly respects the difficulties in transporting "base loads" from the northern midwest where the wind is blowing down to Southern California where it isn't.
Wind & Hydro provide the base load for other renewables (solar, tidal, wave, geothermal)
Wait, aren't the waves and tides always moving somewhere? What about geothermal?
A Robert Epstein was fooled for over two months into an online relationship with a chatbot. The interesting thing here is that Robert Epstein is actually an expert himself on this technology
Link? Closest I could find is this http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-truth-about-online-da written by Dr. Epstein. But that has nothing to do with being fooled by a chatbot. It would be quite shocking if he was fooled seeing as he is a psychologist and he designs AI tests.
This is nothing new. AI researchers were fooled into thinking Eliza was the first psychotherapist who really understood them.
I guess you could carefully craft input to trigger it as a denial of service attack...
Yup. That's what we in the business call a "security issue."
You mean as opposed to wholesale? I bought them from the OLPC G1G1 program under the same terms and conditions I would have expected from any vendor.
No you didn't.
Education is the target market for the XO.
Nice punt. North America is not a target market for XO. It is being offered here purely out of necessity.
Or rather, I'll service what needs to be serviced and replace what needs to be replaced. Unlike most notebook computers offered at this price point, the XO is intended to be user-servicable by untrained technicians; the stated goal is to make it maintainable by the kids themselves.
That's nice, but... Despite what is intended, it is not user-serviceable. More here.. In other words, if anything breaks you can't get spare parts, and you probably will not be able to reassemble it once you take it apart.
Oh, so now we're talking about ASUS? Okay. Because the Eee PC is designed to be a ultra-light-weight laptop computer and not an educational tool. It's not designed for kids. The target market for that device (and similar ones) is people who do most of their work on a desktop machine but want something portable for light-duty work.
Do not allow facts to cloud your opinion.
I don't think the XO's will play Halflife; I'm not too worried about that.
Yeah, you beat that strawman to a pulp. Bad, bad strawman! Take that!
They also might not be the best choice for watching YouTube videos, shopping at Amazon, etc.
Translation: they will not grow with the students. Bravo! Gold star for you.
I'm fully expecting the now-plus-three-years version of the XO to be fully compatible with the ones I'm getting.
Are you expecting the current XO to be compatible with the now plus 7 year XO? Memory and storage have consistently shown themselves to be the most valuable upgrades available.
1. Did you buy the XO retail?
2. Is North America a target market for XO?
3. What are you going to do when one of those XO machines needs service or replacement?
4. Why not go with the Asus Eee for the same price?
I think you poorly served the students at your school. You saddled them with a machine that cannot play video or flash well, is not field upgradeable, cannot plug into a larger monitor, and has a very short warranty.
It's not DOUBLE.
It's 180 dollars.
$399 + $25 shipping buys two. Looks like the price is $199 dollars. Which is within 1% of DOUBLE.
One of the first google hits is this: http://www.techspot.com/news/27662-olpc-price-reaches-200-per-unit.html
Anyhow, just because the press said it was a hundred dollar laptop it doesn't mean it was a main objective, and and exact amount.
Who said it was a hundred dollar laptop? Re-writing history are we?
Except that in your example both Intel and its suppliers are trying to make a profit so the analogy is flawed.
Except in my case Intel is one of the key suppliers. They will already be making a small margin on the components they make, they don't need to further mark up the product to make a profit.
Quanta are actually producing this at a reduced margin.
Let me translate that: Quanta are actually producing this at a profit.
Make no mistake, even today neither XO laptop nor classmate could be sold at these prices without incurring huge losses, if it were a commercial activity which corporations or economically "sane" individuals would undertake.
I think I can boil your entire argument to that one statement. It is incorrect. The XO is a commercial activity through which corporations are making a small profit on.
On the other hand, it was an attempt to correct market's failure-- this used to be a segment which market was uninterested in serving (perhaps still is).
No, prior to this point in time the market simply could not produce a computer cheaply enough. If it were not for the dot-com explosion of the late 90's, the market would still not be able to produce a computer cheaply enough. You may want to look a few years back and notice that we were promised a $100 laptop and the current rhetoric shouts "just wait until we can scale up." That's another way of saying the market still cannot produce a computer that cheap. It's all a matter of timing. We are on the cusp of when catering to this market is economically viable.
This is why they waited until the orders started coming in for OLPC.
??? Um, learn a little something before trotting out crap like that. Designing these things takes a long time. If Intel had waited until OLPC orders were coming in, they would have nothing right now.
My point is that WINTEL's coy protestations about ideals of free market is clearly a smoke-screen. So please don't drag economic theory into this morass.
A few points: 1) There is no "Wintel" conspiracy going on here; 2) Not sure where you're getting free market protestations (sounds like a strawman) but the only difference between XO and Classmate is who is getting the profits. OLPC is not a hardware manufacturer.
I am however pleased that in round one (creating a market) OLPC is a clear winner.
*eyeroll* whatever. Don't let the facts get in the way of this.
My only worry is whether the movement would stay alive for the next round.
You're not paying attention then. Despite all the OLPC fanboyism, there are numerous manufacturers trying to make cheap laptops for this market. Asus, Via, Intel and AMD are all players in this market.
True, XO is not trying to make a profit. But its suppliers are. XO doesn't actually make any hardware. Everything is outsourced. So, no, it doesn't make sense. The fact that they couldn't produce the laptop for less than DOUBLE what they had planned should make this fairly obvious.
Further, as I've said before, there is nothing preventing you from getting the Classmate PC with Linux installed. It can even come pre-installed.
Microsoft and Intel want to make money, which they will likely not be able to do in the long run, at the prices the XO goes for.
And your evidence for this is what exactly, other than your person incredulity? Every one of the suppliers for the XO's parts has a profit motive.
In the case of the classmate PC, Intel makes the board, the flash, the support chips and the CPU. They can afford to take a smaller margin on that.
If MS and Intel want to seriously get -- and STAY -- in the game of providing system for the developing world, that's great. The concern is that they'll produce just enough press releases for the XO to stop getting orders it needs to stay viable, then once the XO is basically dead, MS/Intel say "oh, well now that we look at the market, we really think tour new $500 design is more appropriate". Then it would take another year or three for the XO or something similar to get back into production. Anyone with more than a few months of experience in the computer industry is familiar with this pattern.
And anyone who has more than a few months of experience in economics knows that the third world is fairly inelastic in their demand for computers so this argument is complete nonsense because these people simply cannot buy a $500 computer. The difference between what they will pay and what they can pay is very narrow. The $150-250 range is the sweet spot between what can be produced and what can be afforded.
The rules of monopoly simply don't apply in the third world for non-essential goods. At the end of the day, you don't really need a computer.
So all this conspiracy theory nonsense is just... well, nonsense. Intel and MS are not colluding to push out XO. The classmate PC can come with Linux pre-installed.
They're not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, they're doing it because they see a competitor they want to eliminate.
I call false dichotomy. They could also be doing it because it is an emerging market they want to enter. Also, ClassmatePC comes with Linux as a (cheaper) option. Further the target markets are slightly different. XO is aimed at primary school children while the more capable (and slightly more expensive) Classmate is aimed at secondary school children.
Not quite, in hl1 you literally walked across black mesa, you experience ever bloody foot.
In HL2 you did have a few, fade to black then a few hours later, moments.
Yeah 'cuz in HL1 the military special forces don't ambush you after you fight a bunch of ninja guys, knock you out, carry you away and you wake up in a trash compactor some time later weaponless... Oh, wait...
How do you benchmark a processor when there are no motherboards that support it?
Simple, you test it on a motherboard that supports it. "But wait," you say, "the article said no motherboard does." Yeah, they often get it wrong, welcome to slashdot. While Intel does not have a chipset that officially supports 1600MHz, there are X35 boards out there from manufacturers such as Asus and Gigabyte that have bumped the FSB frequency anyway. Somehow, even under load, the platform is stable.