Given the description of what the Pentium 5 will be like, the folks who make CPU heatsinks will have to work lots of overtime to develop a heatsink that cools this new CPU properly. This new CPU is going to make the Athlon 64 FX look positively cool-running in comparison.
I hate to say this, but VoIP is NOT yet a true replacement for your regular telephone service.
Today's telephone service for long distance calls is incredibly cheap by anyone's standards; look at the cost of long-distance calls in the first half of the 20th Century versus now on an inflation-adjusted basis and you'll note that calling anyone around the world is very cheap. For example, the 10-10-987 service from Telecom*USA allows you to call from the USA to anyone in Canada or Western Europe for an amazingly low rate of US$0.39 connect charge and US$0.03 per minute rate!:-) Rates like this were impossible even ten years ago.
Besides, I'm not sure if VoIP is such a good idea; it may not work well for people on dial-up Internet connections, and even if you have a broadband connection you still have to fight Internet latency problems.
Does anyone here remember Alvin Toffer's legendary book The Third Wave?
In one of the chapters of that famous book, Toffer mentioned the very concept of demassification of the media--the tremendous widening of choices to getting our entertainment and news. It started when the dramatic reduction in printing costs made it possible to have magazines that cater to more specialized audiences in the 1970's. By the 1980's, the rise of cable TV and videocasette recorders began to break the power of the television networks, along with low-cost desktop-publishing technology that really made extremely specialized magazines possible. In the 1990's, the rise of the commercial Internet, low-cost satellite TV and DVD's has caused a huge explosion in our choices of what we watch and read.
Think about it: the Jayson Blair scandal the brought down New York Times Editor-in-Chief Howell Raines happened because alternate means of disseminating news (the Internet and multiple cable news channels) made it impossible for the Times to squash the story, something they could have done as recently as ten years ago!
I wonder why haven't antivirus companies produced updates for mail server antivirus programs that promptly stamp out any messages that contain the executable to spread the virus. If that had been in place the propagation of this virus would have slowed down very quickly because email servers would reject any message that contains the specific executable file.
...They can demonstrate that DeltaChrome can perform almost like the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro at a fraction of the price. Such success could convince Dell and HP to offer it on their retail machines, and that could be a huge win for S3.
With the resources of VIA Technologies behind S3, they have the potential to be a major spoiler in the low to midrange market.
Unfortunately, I have an aversion to the Logitech Marble F/X trackball. Mostly because the way it was designed made configuring the functions on the device through Logitech's MouseWare software suite quite difficult to do. Not to mention the fact it takes quite a lot of practice to use that device properly, too. =(
I also don't like the MX500/MX700 mouse pointers, either. They have WAY too many buttons on the device and that makes configuring the functions on the mouse a bit hard to do for computer newbies.
I like my Logitech Wheel Mouse Optical--only two buttons plus scroll wheel. Lot easier to configure the functions of that mouse with MouseWare, that's to be sure. =)
What Microsoft is doing to help this Philadelphia high school is not much different than what the great industrial leaders of the early 20th Century did late in their lives.
Does anyone remember the name Andrew Carnegie? He made a massive fortune in the steel industry, yet late in his life his philatrophy was nothing short of astonishing. Thousands of libraries all over the USA owe their existance to Carnegie's endowment fund; Carnegie helped found the prestigious Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA; and of course, one of the greatest concert halls in the world (Carnegie Hall in New York City) was funded by him.
Bill and Melinda Gates has set up a foundation with US$17 billion (and still growing) in assets to provide educational aid and medical research around the world; the Gates Foundation is among the forefront of providing aid and research into combating AIDS in the African continent.
1. Develop the Orbital Space Plane so it can lift up to six astronauts (or its equivalent in cargo) to LEO. Because the OSP deletes the huge cargo area and the big main engines of the Space Shuttle, the vehicle can be very small and could be launched on top of an uprated Lockheed Altas V booster or possibly an uprated Ariane 4 booster.
2. Make the Shuttle-C vehicle a reality. This way, the Space Shuttle launch facilities can still be used, and we have a launch vehicle capable to lifting as much as 90,000 lbs. into LEO.
What's interesting is that the Soviets came very close to developing a true spaceplane that could be launched on top of a Proton rocket. Maybe these old Soviet plans should be dusted off and developed further with American aerospace know-how and turned into small spaceplane that could be lifted by the Atlas V booster?
Popular stories are not necessarily stretched and reinvented in order to increase sales.
There are some exceptions to the rule. Osamu Akimoto's famous manga series Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Kouen-mae Hashutsujo has been around since 1976, with nearly 140 different collected tankoubon reprint volumes printed! This series, best known by its short name Kochikame, is mostly episodic in nature, and if you want to know what is the latest fad or fashion trend in Japan you definitely want to read this series (Akimoto-san has a keen eye for current Japanese culture).
Akimoto-san is probably one of the true still-active legends of Japanese manga, along with the likes Rumiko Takahashi (Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2, and now Inu-Yasha) and a few others.
When Sergei P. Korolev developed the R-7 rocket that eventually launched Sputnik and Vostok, it proved to be a pretty tricky thing to do, especially considering the size of the rocket. It took three tries before they got a successful flight--and it was a real leap of faith to get Sputnik 1 into space considering the somewhat marginal reliability of the rocket at the time.
Hold it right there. Didn't they just finish engine testing for SpaceShipOne recently?
I still will put my money on the White Knight/SpaceShipOne combination to win the prize first, though I wouldn't put it above Armadillo Aerospace to pull off an upset if they can get a successful unnmanned flight working within the next 45 days or so.
From reading the Thompson Commission report on the Apollo 1 fire, what happened was that between having WAY too much flammable material exposed inside the Command Module and the fact the escape hatch took too long to open, small wonder why when the fire broke out the astronauts inside never had a chance--they were goners in under 15 seconds.
That's why when the newer AS-204 Command Module was built they made sure there was very little (if any) exposed flammable material inside the spacecraft, the breathable air while on the ground was changed into a mix of nitrogen and oxygen, and the hatch was redesigned so it could be quickly opened.
Despite clearly obvious problems with the capsule, crew training, safety issues, and a host of other nagging issues, nobody in management said time out -- let's slow down and make sure we are doing this right. There was enormous pressure to keep things on track for getting on the moon.
You have to remember at the time the Apollo 1 fire happened we were in a serious race with the Soviet Union to get a man to the moon. In the haste to get the speed up the Apollo program the issues of the exposed flammable materials, 100% oxygen atmosphere, and slow-opening hatch were tacitly ignored.
Unfortunately, the same haste also caused tragedy with the Soviet space program. Soyuz 1 (the design of which was to eventually become the Soviet equivalent of the Apollo Command Module for their program to fly to the Moon) was launched with cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov in April 1967 well before it was properly tested on the ground. When one of the solar panels on Soyuz 1 could not deploy Komarov could not control the spacecraft properly. The return to Earth was essentially an out-of-control re-entry that resulted in the tangling of the parachute and the Soyuz capsule crashed into the steppes of Kazakhstan at around 400 mph, killing Komarov instantly from the impact. Like the Apollo program, it wasn't until the middle of 1968 that the Soviets finally flew Soyuz 3 successfully.
The final report on the loss of Columbia reminds me a lot of the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts in January 1967. =(
It appears that NASA frequently ignored safety warnings about the fragility of the shuttle tiles, and it appears that in a way that the switch to a more environment-friendly external tank foam material in 1997 may have contributed to the accident due to the fact the new foam had a tendency to shed material at an alarming rate. It reminds me a lot about the issues that caused the Apollo 1 fire in the way NASA engineers tacitly ignored the serious fire dangers of exposed wiring, flammable materials and 100% oxygen atmosphere on the ground.
I think right now the reason why Linux security breaches are rare is the fact it's not yet really considered "cool" to hack Linux servers.
If I were an al-Qaeda terrorist with lots of computer knowledge, I would find a way to show that hacking into a Linux machine and causing serious damage isn't so hard after all--especially now with more and more large-scale computers running Linux.
What happened in Brazil reminds me so much of the 1960 Soviet tragedy where over 150 (?) technicians working on what was the prototype of one of USSR's more successful ICBM's were killed when they were forced to work on a fuelly-fuelled rocket with technical problems and the rocket literally blew up on the launch pad. =(
This is why when technicians working on launch rockets at Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg AFB usually do their work with the rocket unfuelled, and take extreme safety measures when a rocket is fuelled.
Unfortunately, due to the lack of manuevering propellants on the Mars Global Surveyor, I don't think you'll get many more good pictures of the Face of Mars from MGS. What we've seen so far is pretty much the best MGS can do with its black and white camera at 1.5 meters/pixel resolution.
What I do want, however, is both daytime and nighttime IR pictures of the Face taken at multiple angles from the Mars Odyssey 2001 orbiter, plus pictures taken of the Face with the stereoscopic camera from the Mars Express orbiter that will arrive at Mars the end of this year. That way, we can finally debunk the whole idea of the Face being an artificial construct once and for all without having to wait for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in early 2006 with its camera that can resolve down to 30 cm/pixel.
I think the Walt Disney Company should definitely thank its moviegoers this summer for turning Finding Nemo and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl into such huge hits. =)
Finding Nemo of course had superb reviews from newspapers and TV reviewers that convinced moviegoers to see the movie more than once. Pirates of the Caribbean found its success not because of its reviews (which were generally positive but somewhat mixed), but because moviegoers were pleasantly surprised at how much they enjoyed the film and it was this positive reaction that resulted in considerable repeat business.
It appears that the MPAA is not realizing that even without SMS on cellphones, people ARE going to find out why a movie is subpar just from reading sites like RottenTomatoes.com or AintItCool.com (despite the fact Harry Knowles has been wine and dined by the industry his site can frequently rip a movie to confetti and smaller very quickly).
Besides, look at two of the truly big hits of this summer (Finding Nemo with over US$320 million in revenues and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl with over US$260 million in revenues): both movies succeeded massively because they both are the type of movies that audiences WANT to see again and again for the sheer enjoyment of movies. It appears almost every other film has seriously missed the mark in terms of repeat patronage.
This is the reason why I check Windows Update at least 4-5 times per week and also run McAfee VirusScan 7.0 with both AntiVirus and Firewall functions active under Windows 2000 Professional (SP4).
I was wondering why the VirusScan program was running up a lot of messages about port probes being blocked until I heard about the Blaster worm yesterday.
It's things like that that should encourage Windows 2000/XP and even Linux users to be very vigilant for any security issues. People forget that commercial distributions of Linux aren't paragons of security, either; the default configuration install often has vulnerabilities that can be easily exploited.
I believe it is high time for the DoJ to go after SCO for violating antitrust laws by abusing patent and copyright laws.
For those who don't know, the US Government successfully sued the United Shoe Manufacturing Company in the 1940's because the Feds said United Shoe was abusing patent laws to keep out competitors (United Shoe held several critical patents on machines that help assemble shoes). SCO is trying to act like United Shoe, and the Feds aren't going to stand for such bullying tactics.
Remove Windows Media Player from Windows XP editions sold in Europe.
The download for Windows Media Player 9.0 is over 10 MB anyway, so that's a one-time inconvenience for most users, and a minor one at that for those with broadband connections.
By the way, RealOne and QuickTime 6.0 player downloads aren't small in size anymore--they are 10 MB and bigger. =:-O
Sorry, the An-225 isn't going to work--it's way too heavy a plane and I'm not sure if you want to put a rocket motor in the back for a 35 degree climb to 50,000 feet.
The An-124 is more than big enough, since the space plane is going to be quite small anyway and that reduces the need for a large launch plane.
I think people are starting to realize that audio/video editing has extremely high demands on CPU time.
This is going to become even more important by 2010 because I actually expect people by then to be burning high-capacity optical discs with HDTV data (720p/1080i uncompressed video) on home machines, and gawd will THAT need a huge amount of CPU processing power.
I think introducing some radically different architecture will never work out (intel kind of proved that), amd is going the right direction innovating inside the box.
You can say that again. What plagued the Itanium CPU was that in order to take full advantage of the CPU you had to essentially write code from scratch, which is an extremely expensive investment, to say the least. It didn't help that the Itanium CPU pricing is somewhere out in the stratospshere, too. =( Small wonder why it took quite a while before the first Linux distributions that support Itanium native mode finally shipped.
With the Athlon 64 CPU, not only can you run current legacy x86 code unmodified, but it's a pretty straightforward step to modify current x86 code to support x86-64 instructions. This is Linux is already running in x86-64 native mode, and don't be surprised that Microsoft will likely have x86-64-native versions of Windows XP Home/Professional and Windows 2003 Server shipping before the end of 2003.
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Given the description of what the Pentium 5 will be like, the folks who make CPU heatsinks will have to work lots of overtime to develop a heatsink that cools this new CPU properly. This new CPU is going to make the Athlon 64 FX look positively cool-running in comparison.
Folks,
:-) Rates like this were impossible even ten years ago.
I hate to say this, but VoIP is NOT yet a true replacement for your regular telephone service.
Today's telephone service for long distance calls is incredibly cheap by anyone's standards; look at the cost of long-distance calls in the first half of the 20th Century versus now on an inflation-adjusted basis and you'll note that calling anyone around the world is very cheap. For example, the 10-10-987 service from Telecom*USA allows you to call from the USA to anyone in Canada or Western Europe for an amazingly low rate of US$0.39 connect charge and US$0.03 per minute rate!
Besides, I'm not sure if VoIP is such a good idea; it may not work well for people on dial-up Internet connections, and even if you have a broadband connection you still have to fight Internet latency problems.
Does anyone here remember Alvin Toffer's legendary book The Third Wave?
In one of the chapters of that famous book, Toffer mentioned the very concept of demassification of the media--the tremendous widening of choices to getting our entertainment and news. It started when the dramatic reduction in printing costs made it possible to have magazines that cater to more specialized audiences in the 1970's. By the 1980's, the rise of cable TV and videocasette recorders began to break the power of the television networks, along with low-cost desktop-publishing technology that really made extremely specialized magazines possible. In the 1990's, the rise of the commercial Internet, low-cost satellite TV and DVD's has caused a huge explosion in our choices of what we watch and read.
Think about it: the Jayson Blair scandal the brought down New York Times Editor-in-Chief Howell Raines happened because alternate means of disseminating news (the Internet and multiple cable news channels) made it impossible for the Times to squash the story, something they could have done as recently as ten years ago!
I wonder why haven't antivirus companies produced updates for mail server antivirus programs that promptly stamp out any messages that contain the executable to spread the virus. If that had been in place the propagation of this virus would have slowed down very quickly because email servers would reject any message that contains the specific executable file.
...They can demonstrate that DeltaChrome can perform almost like the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro at a fraction of the price. Such success could convince Dell and HP to offer it on their retail machines, and that could be a huge win for S3.
With the resources of VIA Technologies behind S3, they have the potential to be a major spoiler in the low to midrange market.
Unfortunately, I have an aversion to the Logitech Marble F/X trackball. Mostly because the way it was designed made configuring the functions on the device through Logitech's MouseWare software suite quite difficult to do. Not to mention the fact it takes quite a lot of practice to use that device properly, too. =(
I also don't like the MX500/MX700 mouse pointers, either. They have WAY too many buttons on the device and that makes configuring the functions on the mouse a bit hard to do for computer newbies.
I like my Logitech Wheel Mouse Optical--only two buttons plus scroll wheel. Lot easier to configure the functions of that mouse with MouseWare, that's to be sure. =)
Folks,
What Microsoft is doing to help this Philadelphia high school is not much different than what the great industrial leaders of the early 20th Century did late in their lives.
Does anyone remember the name Andrew Carnegie? He made a massive fortune in the steel industry, yet late in his life his philatrophy was nothing short of astonishing. Thousands of libraries all over the USA owe their existance to Carnegie's endowment fund; Carnegie helped found the prestigious Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA; and of course, one of the greatest concert halls in the world (Carnegie Hall in New York City) was funded by him.
Bill and Melinda Gates has set up a foundation with US$17 billion (and still growing) in assets to provide educational aid and medical research around the world; the Gates Foundation is among the forefront of providing aid and research into combating AIDS in the African continent.
I agree with your assessments.
What we really need is the following:
1. Develop the Orbital Space Plane so it can lift up to six astronauts (or its equivalent in cargo) to LEO. Because the OSP deletes the huge cargo area and the big main engines of the Space Shuttle, the vehicle can be very small and could be launched on top of an uprated Lockheed Altas V booster or possibly an uprated Ariane 4 booster.
2. Make the Shuttle-C vehicle a reality. This way, the Space Shuttle launch facilities can still be used, and we have a launch vehicle capable to lifting as much as 90,000 lbs. into LEO.
What's interesting is that the Soviets came very close to developing a true spaceplane that could be launched on top of a Proton rocket. Maybe these old Soviet plans should be dusted off and developed further with American aerospace know-how and turned into small spaceplane that could be lifted by the Atlas V booster?
Popular stories are not necessarily stretched and reinvented in order to increase sales.
There are some exceptions to the rule. Osamu Akimoto's famous manga series Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Kouen-mae Hashutsujo has been around since 1976, with nearly 140 different collected tankoubon reprint volumes printed! This series, best known by its short name Kochikame, is mostly episodic in nature, and if you want to know what is the latest fad or fashion trend in Japan you definitely want to read this series (Akimoto-san has a keen eye for current Japanese culture).
Akimoto-san is probably one of the true still-active legends of Japanese manga, along with the likes Rumiko Takahashi (Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2, and now Inu-Yasha) and a few others.
Wrongo.
When Sergei P. Korolev developed the R-7 rocket that eventually launched Sputnik and Vostok, it proved to be a pretty tricky thing to do, especially considering the size of the rocket. It took three tries before they got a successful flight--and it was a real leap of faith to get Sputnik 1 into space considering the somewhat marginal reliability of the rocket at the time.
Hold it right there. Didn't they just finish engine testing for SpaceShipOne recently?
I still will put my money on the White Knight/SpaceShipOne combination to win the prize first, though I wouldn't put it above Armadillo Aerospace to pull off an upset if they can get a successful unnmanned flight working within the next 45 days or so.
From reading the Thompson Commission report on the Apollo 1 fire, what happened was that between having WAY too much flammable material exposed inside the Command Module and the fact the escape hatch took too long to open, small wonder why when the fire broke out the astronauts inside never had a chance--they were goners in under 15 seconds.
That's why when the newer AS-204 Command Module was built they made sure there was very little (if any) exposed flammable material inside the spacecraft, the breathable air while on the ground was changed into a mix of nitrogen and oxygen, and the hatch was redesigned so it could be quickly opened.
Despite clearly obvious problems with the capsule, crew training, safety issues, and a host of other nagging issues, nobody in management said time out -- let's slow down and make sure we are doing this right. There was enormous pressure to keep things on track for getting on the moon.
You have to remember at the time the Apollo 1 fire happened we were in a serious race with the Soviet Union to get a man to the moon. In the haste to get the speed up the Apollo program the issues of the exposed flammable materials, 100% oxygen atmosphere, and slow-opening hatch were tacitly ignored.
Unfortunately, the same haste also caused tragedy with the Soviet space program. Soyuz 1 (the design of which was to eventually become the Soviet equivalent of the Apollo Command Module for their program to fly to the Moon) was launched with cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov in April 1967 well before it was properly tested on the ground. When one of the solar panels on Soyuz 1 could not deploy Komarov could not control the spacecraft properly. The return to Earth was essentially an out-of-control re-entry that resulted in the tangling of the parachute and the Soyuz capsule crashed into the steppes of Kazakhstan at around 400 mph, killing Komarov instantly from the impact. Like the Apollo program, it wasn't until the middle of 1968 that the Soviets finally flew Soyuz 3 successfully.
The final report on the loss of Columbia reminds me a lot of the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts in January 1967. =(
It appears that NASA frequently ignored safety warnings about the fragility of the shuttle tiles, and it appears that in a way that the switch to a more environment-friendly external tank foam material in 1997 may have contributed to the accident due to the fact the new foam had a tendency to shed material at an alarming rate. It reminds me a lot about the issues that caused the Apollo 1 fire in the way NASA engineers tacitly ignored the serious fire dangers of exposed wiring, flammable materials and 100% oxygen atmosphere on the ground.
I think right now the reason why Linux security breaches are rare is the fact it's not yet really considered "cool" to hack Linux servers.
If I were an al-Qaeda terrorist with lots of computer knowledge, I would find a way to show that hacking into a Linux machine and causing serious damage isn't so hard after all--especially now with more and more large-scale computers running Linux.
What happened in Brazil reminds me so much of the 1960 Soviet tragedy where over 150 (?) technicians working on what was the prototype of one of USSR's more successful ICBM's were killed when they were forced to work on a fuelly-fuelled rocket with technical problems and the rocket literally blew up on the launch pad. =(
This is why when technicians working on launch rockets at Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg AFB usually do their work with the rocket unfuelled, and take extreme safety measures when a rocket is fuelled.
Unfortunately, due to the lack of manuevering propellants on the Mars Global Surveyor, I don't think you'll get many more good pictures of the Face of Mars from MGS. What we've seen so far is pretty much the best MGS can do with its black and white camera at 1.5 meters/pixel resolution.
What I do want, however, is both daytime and nighttime IR pictures of the Face taken at multiple angles from the Mars Odyssey 2001 orbiter, plus pictures taken of the Face with the stereoscopic camera from the Mars Express orbiter that will arrive at Mars the end of this year. That way, we can finally debunk the whole idea of the Face being an artificial construct once and for all without having to wait for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in early 2006 with its camera that can resolve down to 30 cm/pixel.
I think the Walt Disney Company should definitely thank its moviegoers this summer for turning Finding Nemo and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl into such huge hits. =)
Finding Nemo of course had superb reviews from newspapers and TV reviewers that convinced moviegoers to see the movie more than once. Pirates of the Caribbean found its success not because of its reviews (which were generally positive but somewhat mixed), but because moviegoers were pleasantly surprised at how much they enjoyed the film and it was this positive reaction that resulted in considerable repeat business.
Sheesh.
It appears that the MPAA is not realizing that even without SMS on cellphones, people ARE going to find out why a movie is subpar just from reading sites like RottenTomatoes.com or AintItCool.com (despite the fact Harry Knowles has been wine and dined by the industry his site can frequently rip a movie to confetti and smaller very quickly).
Besides, look at two of the truly big hits of this summer (Finding Nemo with over US$320 million in revenues and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl with over US$260 million in revenues): both movies succeeded massively because they both are the type of movies that audiences WANT to see again and again for the sheer enjoyment of movies. It appears almost every other film has seriously missed the mark in terms of repeat patronage.
This is the reason why I check Windows Update at least 4-5 times per week and also run McAfee VirusScan 7.0 with both AntiVirus and Firewall functions active under Windows 2000 Professional (SP4).
I was wondering why the VirusScan program was running up a lot of messages about port probes being blocked until I heard about the Blaster worm yesterday.
It's things like that that should encourage Windows 2000/XP and even Linux users to be very vigilant for any security issues. People forget that commercial distributions of Linux aren't paragons of security, either; the default configuration install often has vulnerabilities that can be easily exploited.
I believe it is high time for the DoJ to go after SCO for violating antitrust laws by abusing patent and copyright laws.
For those who don't know, the US Government successfully sued the United Shoe Manufacturing Company in the 1940's because the Feds said United Shoe was abusing patent laws to keep out competitors (United Shoe held several critical patents on machines that help assemble shoes). SCO is trying to act like United Shoe, and the Feds aren't going to stand for such bullying tactics.
Remove Windows Media Player from Windows XP editions sold in Europe.
The download for Windows Media Player 9.0 is over 10 MB anyway, so that's a one-time inconvenience for most users, and a minor one at that for those with broadband connections.
By the way, RealOne and QuickTime 6.0 player downloads aren't small in size anymore--they are 10 MB and bigger. =:-O
Sorry, the An-225 isn't going to work--it's way too heavy a plane and I'm not sure if you want to put a rocket motor in the back for a 35 degree climb to 50,000 feet.
The An-124 is more than big enough, since the space plane is going to be quite small anyway and that reduces the need for a large launch plane.
I think people are starting to realize that audio/video editing has extremely high demands on CPU time.
This is going to become even more important by 2010 because I actually expect people by then to be burning high-capacity optical discs with HDTV data (720p/1080i uncompressed video) on home machines, and gawd will THAT need a huge amount of CPU processing power.
I think introducing some radically different architecture will never work out (intel kind of proved that), amd is going the right direction innovating inside the box.
You can say that again. What plagued the Itanium CPU was that in order to take full advantage of the CPU you had to essentially write code from scratch, which is an extremely expensive investment, to say the least. It didn't help that the Itanium CPU pricing is somewhere out in the stratospshere, too. =( Small wonder why it took quite a while before the first Linux distributions that support Itanium native mode finally shipped.
With the Athlon 64 CPU, not only can you run current legacy x86 code unmodified, but it's a pretty straightforward step to modify current x86 code to support x86-64 instructions. This is Linux is already running in x86-64 native mode, and don't be surprised that Microsoft will likely have x86-64-native versions of Windows XP Home/Professional and Windows 2003 Server shipping before the end of 2003.