Originally, "The SCO Group" (TSG) that filed suit against IBM (and subsequently Novell) was a commercial company run by then-CEO Darl McBride. The original court case was presided over by Judge Kimball.
During that case there was a great deal of fancy footwork by TSG's lawyers (Boies, Schiller and Flexner LLC), who were hoping to get the case to a jury trial without having to turn over the specifics of their "evidence" to the Court and thus to IBM. Their tactic of not showing their hand had two aims: to bluff IBM into thinking that their case was stronger than it really was - and to hold back the most damaging accusations until they could be delivered in front of a jury without giving IBM the ability to prepare a response.
Duelling motions came to a head and eventually, after giving TSG all the lattitude he could, Judge Kimball announced that he would rule on an IBM motion to compel TSG to pony up their evidence. Before that could be discussed in a hearing [literally just a couple of days before] TSG filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. It is worth noting at this point that when TSG filed for bankruptcy they were technically and legally solvent, but the Bankruptcy Court accepted their petition regardless.
At that point everything on this thread of the story went a bit strange.
The Bankruptcy Court appointed one Judge Kevin Gross to preside over the bankruptcy. Judge Gross then appointed a Trustee to be the caretaker for the Chapter 11-protected TSG - and this Trustee was himself a retired Judge. [Sorry, this gentleman's name and that of his company escapes me].
From this point forward, the Trustee continue to try and fight the court case, all the while submitting invoices to TSG for their services. Although there was quite a bit of noise from this point forward, nothing substantive came of the appointment of this Trustee other than - in the opinion of this observer, anyway - the Trustee being able to milk the last of the liquid assets out of TSG and to push the company from not-quite-Chaper-11 through to brink-of-Chapter-7 bankruptcy.
At that point, with no more juice to suck out, the Trustee seemed to lose interest and the whole thing went quiet.
Until now, that is.
It's probably worth pointing out that the Trustee is itself a law firm, staffed, of course, with Law Clerks and Lawyers. Such an entity does of course go through brief periods of time when there is not enough work to keep every employee engaged on client-funded business. Rather than lay off an employee when that happens, the Firm will of course assign them activities which it hopes might have a future beneficial value. If miracles could happen and if TSG could prevail in even the tiniest part of an argument against IBM, then there would be a payout from IBM to the corpse. At that point, the Trustee would be able to reactivate any deferred invoices that they had accrued during the time that TSG has spent as a zombie.
In other words, the original gang of SCO Group folk (Darl McBride, Sanjay Gupta and friends) that filed the original complaint are long, long gone. The zombine is now being prodded along by the company of the Bankruptcy Court-appointed Trustee. Finally, this looks to have become nothing more than a time-card-filler for that law Firm, who occasionally have enough spare time on their hands to write another motion and prod the zombie...
Let's all hope a Court gives them a nice big slap for wasting Court time...
... is the West's reaction/response to what Erdogan has done in Turkey.
Nothing.
This is almost certainly because Turkey is geopolitically important to the West as part of NATO.
If you think about it objectively, you realise that western governments have not previously hesitated to apply sanctions to nations which mistreat minorities or suppress democracy in the way that Turkey has done. Yet no such outcry met these actions.
Much as we might be horrified at the thought, evidence on the ground suggests that as long as Erdogan supports the West with respect to Syria, acting as a buffer against regional economic migrants [i.e. refugees] - and of course having the potential to be a staging area for any form of military action in the region [ for example, Turkey was used as a launching point for air strikes against Iraq during both Gulf Wars] - then the West will simply turn a blind eye to this.
If we could find an "honest politician" who was also willing to talk about this "on the record", chances are they would tell us that the West will continue to do this because this would be the "least worst" option - that condemning Turkey for the Human Rights abuse would risk moving Erdogan away from NATO and towards Russia. Not something that the West would find appealing...
... the CEO of Uber wants to nationalize the overheads and expenses of having Gig workers [and get private tax-payers to pay for it], but wants to privatize the profits.
... it was a passable and enjoyable attempt at trying something a bit different.
Right now, one of the biggest problems with big studios is the expectations of shareholders and companies. We've reached the point where a major movie that doesn't crack a billion dollars is considered a flop. And that says it in a nutshell, because it tells us that the only thing the big studios care about is cranking out carbon copies with two-dimensional characters. "Taking a risk" is not an option for mainstream movie studios these days.
So we should welcome what Netflix are trying to do and applaud their successes. For other like me in the audience, more quality competition can only be a good thing.
And: I realised, a long time ago, that I rarely agree with film critics. As a result, I don't read reviews: if I see a trailer and it looks interesting, I'll see the movie.
Oh, one thing though [not strictly related to the original point]. For me, one of the real benefits of Netflix is that I don't have to drive a 35-mile round trip to get to a decent cinema, pay £15.55 for an adult ticket [a price literally just checked on Odeon's web site for a Black Panther screening] and be forced to sit adjacent to a small group of people who will noisily chomp popcorn, slurp drinks, talk and generally disturb the movie from start to finish.
As a keen amateur photographer, Iâ(TM)be been using Adobe CS for years. Each time a new release came out I would purchase the upgrade pack and migrate to the latest version.
That stopped with CS6, the last version that did not force the subscription model.
Apart from one small change, this has had zero impact on my creative workflow... The change has been that, as Iâ(TM)ve upgraded to newer camera bodies with new RAW formats, Iâ(TM)ve had to include a migration step to convert from the new RAW format to a lossless but supported equivalent so that I can actually work on my images using CS6.
Obviously as a solitary end user I have to accept that I have zero chance of forcing Adobe to change their practices, other than to stop buying their product. If we ever get to a point where other technology changes make it impossible for me to run i.e. CS6 [unlikely, but letâ(TM)s not ignore it] then I will look to migrate to a fully open source platform.
Ultimately, I find it reprensible that software companies think that they can âoerentâ software to me - in other words continue to change usage terms to whatever they want, all the while using the boilerplate âoeno warranty expressed or impliedâ language in their EULAs.
If a company wants me to buy or rent their product, then they need to stand behind it. If they are not willing to do that... then they can take a running jump.
Here's the hypothetical question for you, though. Let's suppose that your theory is correct and there are TLAs [Three Letter Agencies] requesting changes to product. How would they do that? Would they go to Microsoft and, despite not having access to the i.e. Windows 10 CVS, turn up and say, "We want you to patch this code into this file here?" Or is it more likely that they would go to Microsoft and say, "We'd like to modify this file to behave in this way?" [ Assuming, of course, that the NSA would ask in the first place. Not only do I expect that they could hack in if they wanted, I dare say they could have agents working there, if they'd want to].
If we then put that into context with the fight we're seeing Microsoft put up over i.e. access to customer data held in Ireland, we're looking at [politely] a company with double standards...
On the other hand, we do know that Microsoft have made wholesale changes to Windows 10 under the hood, so that the OS now reports much more of its activities back to Redmond than ever before. This is going to require all sorts of hooks into code that TLAs might not care about. Would a TLA want to know if you launched Excel or LibreOffice Calc? Probably not. Redmond would, though...
I would be willing to concede that there is something unpleasant at the heart of this. For my money, however, it's much more likely to be the way that Redmond have turned Windows 10 into a monitoring and advertising platform. They want to know what you're doing with their technology because they want to be able to sell that to other companies for profit. Judging by their quarterly returns, the strategy is paying off. [Or, I concede, they are taking a *lot* of money from Uncle Sam].
Can we get to the right answer? Maybe. But I think it would take someone sitting on the network between you and MS who is willing and able to intercept all that traffic and reverse-engineer it. Short of that, I don't see how we'd find out...
Well, OK, but please let's be fair. The lyrics I link to, above, are those of the original writer.
I'm not denigrating on the alternatives you offer, but it's hardly the same, is it? If the original post had been "Just pointing out that there are unofficial versions of the UK's National Anthem which involve meddling with other countries..." then we could probably agree that as a possibility for just about *any* nation...
You make some really interesting points around retpoline, but I wonder if this latest from Intel fails to account for this because they are being disingenuous, or because they continue to be a bunch of idiots?
We're seeing similar problems to this with other very-long-established technologies, such as Windows [with Windows 10]. Things that have worked for decades up until W10 are breaking, or they are breaking in new and frustrating ways.
For example, I have a triple-screen setup and using removable SSDs via a caddy unit, I can boot my computer into 2 different W10 instances, as well as multiple Linux builds. The 2 W10 instances behave in completely different ways, despite being set up, by me, with EXACTLY the same approach [scripted]. On one of them the Task Bar keeps relocating itself around the desktop, on the other it remains static. I've been back-and-forth with Microsoft and they don't know why...
At the root of the problem I suspect they have changed something in W10, written by someone no longer at the company, possibly poorly documented and possibly with unknown consequences.
Maybe Intel are having similar issues... A decision was made a very long time ago to do something insecure and stupid with speculative execution, but the person who made that decision is no longer with the company, so a new Team are trying to fix it and simply don't know what they're doing...
I honestly don't know what the source is, but I do know that I am seeing "existing" functionality break with much greater frequency on core platforms like this. It just smacks of carelessness...
In the specific case of Brexit, there are two different challenges to consider.
The first is whether or not *any* foreign government had the ability to influence the preferences of the British people when it came to the vote. I notice that much discussion is being given to the potential for Russian meddling, but I also note that nobody batted an eye when Barak Obama not only made very pro-Brexit comments, but also made it very clear that if Britain elected to vote to leave, then Britain would be put to "the back of the queue" when it came to negotiating a trade deal with the US.
Or how about the fact that the government of the day spent literally millions of pounds of Tax-Payers money to fund their part of the campaign, by physically posting their views to every single household in the country via a mail-dropped leaflet. This was clearly an attempt at influencing public opinion, and the money to do so was spent only by the "Remain" campaign, because that happened to be the position taken by the Prime Minister of the day [not even the "Government of the Day", seeing as how numerous ministers favoured leaving].
So the first issue is a pretty specious point, really. However accurate and however valid the point is, it's largely irrelevant to point to some underhand foreign government meddling in the Brexit vote when the standing UK Government of the day were tilting the odds so far the other way...
The second point concerns the foundation of democracy itself. The final Brexit vote was split 52:48 (%) in favour of leaving the EU. This vote, which was operated on 100% democratic principles [i.e. of "one person, one vote" - and not the "first pass the post" method used for UK General Elections], was a significantly stronger vote in favour of an outcome than any UK General Election in living memory. For example, when David Cameron [who was Prime Minister at the time] won his second term in office, he secured 44% of the popular vote.
44%. The Brexit vote secured 52% - an outright majority. Yet Cameron was returned to Government with a large majority... Even more curiously, nobody demanded a recount or a second General Election even though he only won 44% of the vote... [OK, cheeky argument, since the two events were handled under different rules]. But the point stands.
You only have to look at the way that political elites have reacted to the vote - one in which the British people had the temerity to vote for what they actually wanted - to see how important this vote was. Since the decision was made the EU has gone out of it's way to try and bully, cajole, frighten or threaten the UK into having a second Referendum to overturn the first decision.
Whether or not you agree with the decision to leave the EU, this external force from the EU, which is a million times worse than any influence Russia could have brought to bear, must be resisted at ALL costs. If the UK caves then there is nothing to stop the EU from becoming a totalitarian state - which might sound a bit melodramatic, but consider the significance of a state which simply sets aside democratic decisions because they are not what the elite wants.
We would do well to remember that the more we allow ourselves to be torn up by this, the better it is for Russia or any foreign state with an axe to grind.
Hilary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 Presidential Election, but didn't undermine the electoral process with protest court cases. The UK should look to that example and respect the decision.
And if the UK or other countries want to make material improvements, then there is nothing to stop them from putting more effort into stamping out voting fraud, is there? Don't see much on that topic...
If you take an interest in this sort of thing, there are glimpses of technologies that have been under development since the 1980s that are beyond even what is hinted at here.
For example, there is plenty of evidence and acknowledged testing to show that we have working examples of things like Pulse Wave Detonation Engines, or Pulse Detonation Engines. These leave very characteristic contrails in the sky, which look like a chain of doughnuts connected by a thin central line. We know the technology has been made to work, but there is no acknowledgement of anything in use. Designed for reliable running at speeds of up to Mach 6...
Or what about âExternal combustion chambersâ(TM)... Picture an aero foil wing shape with a series of bleed nozzles on the upper surface through which fuel is carefully sprayed... The air moving over the wing section creates a contoured shape where it separates from the wing - still in laminar flow - such that the shape of the separated, moving air forms the upper surface of a combustion chamber... Much [much] lighter and simpler than conventional engines.
Or look at the latest commercial offerings from Rolls Royce and others, in which airliner engines actually pump neat fuel through turbine blades to help cool the engine, with micro-fine holes on the blades themselves acting as injectors...
Itâ(TM)s worth bearing in mind that even the Stealth Fighter used 1960s/70s technology to fly...
I would be *amazed* if this technology hadnâ(TM)t been designed, developed and tested. Whether it has been put into widespread use is another matter, but as hostile groups [even terrorists] develop the capability to predict the orbits of LEO surveillance satellites, it suddenly makes more sense to launch a plane, in an un-predictable pattern, to surveil a target.
But, this being the US, itâ(TM)s even more likely that there answer to this sort of question would be to develop all of these technologies - and more. Why have one option in the playbook when you can afford several?
I think we're in vehement agreement on two subtly different aspects of this story. I agree with you that we're primarily discussing components which degrade with time [specifically batteries in this instance]. But that is only a major problem if the battery cannot be easily replaced.
What I have tried to observe is that many items of consumer electronics sold today have been specifically designed so that they cannot be easily repaired [i.e. through the replacement of a failing battery]. My perception of this is that such a restriction encourages people to buy replacements instead of getting a repair.
Indeed, in mid-December, I had to take my Mac Mini to the Apple Southampton Store in the UK, because High Sierra had bricked it [a file system formatting issue]. Whilst I was waiting for that to be repaired, I sat and listened to another customer raising concerns that their iPhone [I'm not sure if it was a 5 or 6] could not hold a charge for a full day. The Apple representative went out of their way to discourage the customer from asking for a replacement battery and tried instead to sell them a new phone. The reply was, "Why should I junk a perfectly good handset, that does all I want and need, which cost me £500 and for which a replacement battery should be £50... just because you want me to buy a new iPhone for £700 or more?"
The point here being that if we allow ourselves to believe that such components cannot be easily repaired or replaced, we allow ourselves to be locked in to forced replacement cycles. This is the reason that I think that the ability to "repair" is absolutely related to planned obsolescence.
There are models in the Dell XPS laptop range that solder components to the motherboard...
Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 is glued together.
Samsung Galaxy Tabs are glued together.
But please don't let the facts get in the way of your prejudice.
As it happens, though, I think you're statement does point to one truth... Apple, I think it is fair to say... really started the practice of assembling consumer electronics in a way that made repair or upgrade next-to-impossible. As a result of this, Apple customers have purchased replacement product instead of repairing their devices, which has led [however minimally] to increases in Apple products. I think other companies have seen this and decided to copy Apple, not because what they have done is correct, but because it has helped boost Apple's profits.
So I think you are entirely unreasonable and factually inaccurate if you try to claim that this practice is unique to Apple. But I think that you are likely correct if we translate your claim to be, "Apple started the practice of making it exceptionally difficult to repair or upgrade their products... and the rest of the industry has followed..."
If you look at the trends in consumer electronics over the last few years, designed-in obsolescence has become a feature from a range of different classes of device and a broad range of vendors.
For example, consider laptop/netbook computers, which arrive with major components such as CPUs, batteries, RAM and storage all soldered and/or glued in place. All of this makes it much harder to upgrade or use these products in a versatile way.
The same is true for almost all class of tablet, although I'd note that some Android devices [phones and tablets] do come with micro-SD card slots, which do allow for storage upgrades and flexibility.
On the desktop we are moving away from the "assembled" style of computer offered by Dell or Gateway from the 90s and 00s and now we seem to be trending towards all-in-one systems where, once again, everything is soldered or glued down and the potential for upgrades of individual components is virtually non-existent.
Or in the software business, where the latest editions of software are no explicitly programmed so that they cannot be operated on older generations of processors [which, ironically, may not have some of the vulnerabilities found with more modern chips] but with the net effect of forcing people to upgrade what might have been perfectly reasonable hardware just if they want to run modern software. Nor is this limited to Operating Systems - the same deadly embrace includes things like graphics cards and driver stacks and the compatibility demanded by "modern" games... all of which force upgrades to new GPUs, which in turn force upgrades to new OS editions... which force upgrades in hardware.
The hard part about this - for consumers at least - is that this sort of change is a "self-fulfilling prophecy" from the perspective of a tech company. This is because the companies that follow the trend will make more sales, be more profitable and thus displace those companies who had been willing to put the customer first. In other words, we have a situation in which market forces [profits for manufacturers] actually induce and encourage them to adopt practices which will be harmful to consumers in the long run.
Our society anticipated that situations like this might come to be from time to time, setting up regulatory institutions of government to ensure that consumer rights were protected and that facilities such as "right to repair" and "right to upgrade" were included. Unfortunately we are slowly but surely seeing these protections eroded, either by cuts to those agencies and/or [witness the recent actions of the FCC dumping telecoms disputes on the FTC] woefully overloaded.
We are told that in a capitalist environment, market forces win out and thus the consumer is protected because the market demands that only the best companies survive to offer the best products or services to people. Unfortunately, as we've seen with consumer electronics, the consumer now has virtually no worthwhile protection from any of these questionable practices.
We should applaud what France are trying to do here, and we should hope that this drives positive change.
The Consumer Electronics Industry has been sorely in need of a "Weinstein Moment" for a while now. Forced Upgrades, inability to repair and built-in-obsolescence have been spreading like cancer throughout the modern technology world, making a few companies super-rich at the expense of millions or billions of consumers' pockets.
that States are now hard at work to write their own net neutrality legislation at the State level. Bearing in mind just how much money the big telcos have just spent paying on "lobbying" to have the FCC overturn the Obama Net Neutrality legislation, the idea that States could push back against this by enacting their own laws must really chafe.
So maybe what is going on here is simply a measure, pushed for by the cable lobby, to grant them access to federal infrastructure and thus perform an end-run around anything individual states can do? The devil will be in the detail, as always...
That solution might have worked maybe 20 years ago, when the likes of Cyrus produced chips that were plug-compatible with the Intel PCs of the day.
Unfortunately, however, since AMD and Intel use chips with different pin layouts, motherboard with sockets that fit Intel chips simply won't fit an AMD chip of any kind... Were it only that simple!
In fact, of all the components to be found inside the modern PC, the processor is the one restricting factor: I can buy from a wide range of manufacturers if I want to change a motherboard, sound card, graphics card, RAM, optical drive, power supply, SSD or hard drive... but if I want a CPU, then I have no choice but to go to the same manufacturer for which the socket fitted to my motherboard was designed.
Yes, I might be able to swap both motherboard and CPU [at considerable expense], but in my circumstances the case I am using - an Impactics fanless case specifically chosen because it is completely silent - may be a limiting factor. If I can find a decent AMD motherboard that supports the Mini-ITX standard, however, I will definitely consider it... And, of course, if there is an AMD processor out there which has equivalent on-chip graphics to the HD Graphics 630 found on my 7700T and which is currently driving my monitors...
Another random thought here... Thinking about all the manufacturers of systems - Dell, HP, Lenovo, Apple, the list goes on - who currently have tens of thousands of built machines sitting in warehouses, or in shipping containers in transit, or in stores waiting to sell... which have this bug in them.
What would happen if the general public collectively decided, "Nope. Not going to buy it with a bug in there. We'll wait for new generation processors, thanks..." ???
Sadly, I think this is unlikely to happen, but I wonder if something like that could get the channel integrators to put enough pressure on Intel to offer replacements? And, if you were a channel integrator, what would you do with all your Intel stock that you haven't already fitted to a system?
Unfortunately, I think you may be right with respect to the amount of time and effort that it will take Intel to address the problem. Although to be honest, I don't know how extensive the redesign would be, how long it would take to run the test simulations, or the amount of lead time between taping out and shipping in volume.
The issue, though, is the alternative. With something like a new television or a washing machine, if you buy a defective product and discover the fault within a reasonable time period, then you take the faulty product back to the store and claim either a replacement or a refund, sometimes both depending on the price of the replacement product.
That is much harder to do when, basically, the only "replacement" I could use would be a pin-compatible chip. If the socket designs were common or changed infrequently, that might help me, but, sadly, my challenge is compounded because I am reliant upon the integral GPU in my chip to drive my displays [as are, for example, almost all modern laptops]. The challenge, therefore, is that the avenue of "replacement" - at least with off-the-shelf parts - is a non-starter. This almost certainly is the opposite of the case had the failed component been a optical drive, PSU, RAM, discrete GPU, discrete sound card or even motherboard. The chances are that I could get a replacement for pretty much *any* component other than the CPU.
I haven't discussed it here, but what about any buyers who have purchased computers from resellers in which specific performance goals were stipulated in a purchase contract agreement and which, with the changes now being wrought, won't be met? [ OK, stupidly narrow use case, but I offer it to try and illustrate the question on liability. This is Intel's problem, plain and simple. Trying to palm off the responsibility of the fix on to the OS guys is despicable].
All of these questions, however, are not germane to my original question. It's not what Intel choose to do *now* that matters quite so much as what they *didn't do* when they knew of the issue but it was otherwise witheld. I think [IANAL] that their actions in this time window may [and I'm hopeful here] force them to "do the right thing" and support the customers that they have shafted.
MetricT's company might not be all that influential as a single company - we just don't know. But there is nothing to stop all the major cloud providers from agreeing to join forces in a class-action lawsuit against Intel - and they have the backing and clout to make sure they get it.
The challenge for Intel here is that the harm is done. They need to repair both the reputational harm and the actual damage this incident has caused.
It took Apple a couple of days to figure out the damage being done by the iPhone battery issue [they likely got data directly from their sales channel and saw an immediate decline in sales] but Intel face the same hurdle here. Remember, though, that Intel are shielded from immediate effects because they only sell to integrators and channel partners. It might take 3 months before they actually saw sales diminish.
It won't lessen the impact when it comes.
The best thing Intel can do right now is to prepare a recall or offer a trade-in and get ahead of the negative publicity. Only their greed and their hubris is stopping that.
A lot of people are commenting on the fact that Intel's CEO sold the maximum permissible amount of company stock [or options - it isn't clear which] *after* Intel were notified of the bug and *before* this was made public.
But I'm interested in this for a slightly different reason. In mid-December 2017 I purchased a new computer system. I had been saving up for it for a very considerable period of time... It is based around the Core i7-7700T processor, which I now understand to be one which will be impacted and likely to "slow down" as the patches for Windows and Linux are deployed.
But Intel knew that the chip that I would be buying was materially defective. Whilst I accept that they have taken steps to apply corrective software fixes, that doesn't detract from the fact that I could have chosen to defer my purchase until a "clean" chip was released. Here we have the CEO saying "no recall", yet how are Intel's actions any different from i.e. the Ford Motor Company / Firestone Tire issue?
Are Intel claiming that they have no legal obligation to sell working product? Or to take appropriate steps to notify customers in a timely manner? If they knew about this in October, has it *really* taken this long to get patches ready and come clean? And what about all the product already in the supply chain?
I would be *very* interested to see any data from Intel's distributors or channel suppliers to get a better handle on shipment volumes in the time slot in question. Very interested to know if Intel made a push to "get rid" of known bad stock. Very interested to know what the lead time is for good silicon.
Anyone got any real-world experience of these scenarios?
Mr Trump the President has already learned how hard it is to drive change through the morass of government bureaucracy. Hopefully *President* Trump will come to his sense.
Mr Trump the Businessman might be extraordinarily wealthy by comparison with the proverbial Joe Average. But in comparison with Jeff Bezos, one of Amazon's largest shareholders, he's barely a nickel-and-dimer. Taking cheap shots like this at a *very* successful businessman is a good way to provoke someone in to responding.
Something tells me that Mr Trump wouldn't fare so well if this escalated into a commercial conflict with Mr Bezos.
For those not familiar with either the term or the practice, here's a primer:-
Imagine you think that Bitcoin is in a bubble and hugely over-priced. All it would take would be a sharp pin to burst the bubble and the price will plummet... Well, good for you if you don't have any in your portfolio, but how can you use that to make a shed-load of money?
You sell short in the hope of starting a run. Here's how it works. You go to the market and you sell say, $100,000,000 of Bitcoin that you don't actually possess... Markets will allow you to do this, as long as you settle all your accounts by the end of the current trading period [i.e. by market close on the day]. So what happens is this:
You have no cash to buy, and no Bitcoins, but you "sell", $100,000,000 of coins in to the market at say 20% below the currently trading price. Let's keep the numbers simple - imagine the prevailing price was $20,000/coin and you sell for, ooh... $16,000, which is the 20% drop point. The sheer size of your transaction - perhaps done because you've seen a couple of other big sales do the same thing - spooks the market. Suddenly all the traders who have been buying in to the currency are worried and they want out as quickly as possible. They start to offer their holdings for sale at steep discounts, each sale taking place way below the buying price.
In no time the price of Bitcoins falls through the floor... Everyone wants to sell, nobody wants to buy. Except, perhaps, the suckers who had "buy orders" programmed into their trading platforms if ever the price was "foolish" enough to dip below their target price. Suddenly all those folk with automated buy positions get their trades executed, even while the price continues to tank.
You watch the price plummet. $19,000, $18,000, $17,000, $16,000, $15,000. Eventually it hits $14,000 and the "dead cat bounce" starts - the price starts to look soooo stupidly attractive that more nuanced traders begin to buy back in. The price rallies. You buy enough coins to cover the "sale" you made at the beginning of the day. Except that you "sold" for $16,000, but you bought back in at $14,500...
Now let's do the math and figure out how much you made [before transaction fees]. You "sold" $10,000,000 at $16,000 each, which means that you sold 625 coins. Then the price dropped to $14,500 and you bought 625 coins to cover your earlier sale. But because you only had to pay $14,500 for them, you actually pay out $90,625,000. So you've made $9,375,000 with "Other People's Money" - all in a single day.
Congratulations, you've just passed "Banking 101"....
Oh, and for those who read this and think, "That's all well and good in theory, but it would never happen in practice..." I'd remind you that roughly 20 years ago, "Black Wednesday" happened, which absolutely devastated the value of UK Sterling on international exchange rates - and in the process made George Soros, who bet "against" the Pound in *exactly* the way I've just described here, a billionaire.
Until the practice of "short selling" - what I've just described in this post - is made illegal, there is *nothing* to stop this happening with Bitcoin, or with any other traded commodity. Bitcoin is no longer operating like a currency [if it ever truly did], but is now operating exactly like a "bubble" commodity, just like the dot-com boom, like antique cars, like works of art, like vintage wine.
It's difficult to know for sure, but this event has all the hall-marks of someone attempting to burst the bubble and make a killing. I reckon if there was some short selling in this window that someone might have made a noteworthy profit, but unlikely what we saw George Soros make. Whoever it was, they'll get it right next time...
We get questions related to this topic [and on the general subject of "is the password dead yet?"] coming round on slashdot with a regular if somewhat infrequent basis. But one of the interesting things we seem largely unable to agree on [which is perhaps why the password remains so popular] is: "What, realistically, can we replace them with?"
Tokens can be expensive and easily lost.
Biometrics can be defeated [see iPhoneX face recognition, for example] and, worse, if your biometric signature actually *is* cracked, then it's not easy for you to "change your biometric password", short of surgery of some kind. A bit extreme, perhaps?
Way back in 1950, an American science-fiction writer, E. E., "Doc" Smith recognized this in his space opera, "First Lensman", observing that "anything that science can devise and synthesize, science can analyze and duplicate".
It is genuinely difficult to see where this paradigm will evolve next, but in simple terms it looks as though any solutions based on physical tokens will be too expensive for mainstream adoption; that biometric solutions should be treated with great scepticism from a strength capability and even more scepticism from a personal integrity perspective. That doesn't leave us a whole lotta choices...
The first person to properly crack this is going to have the potential to become seriously wealthy...
Now fast forward to approx 16 minutes and 54 seconds from the start of the broadcast. You will see that the vehicle is at an indicated altitude of 6km [the approximate height of Kilimanjaro] and is travelling at 939kp/h [OK, not quite 1,000, but I hope you'll agree, close enough for examination of this point.
Absolutely *nothing* that you go on to point out is wrong - especially, though you don't say it, that kinetic energy increases with the square of the velocity, not merely the velocity [so it takes us [much] more energy to get from 26000km/h to 27000km/h than it does to get us from say 1000kmh to 2000km/h.
Fortunately, we can offset some of that additional cost by virtue of the fact that the vehicle continues to burn fuel [and thus shed mass] at a prodigious rate throughout the launch.
What interested me was to look at something along the lines of a maglev-assisted launch from a cost-benefit perspective to see if it made realistic sense, given what we know about Musk's other businesses.
I'm happy to conclude the answer remains that it's not viable if that's the answer, though. I was just curious...
Slashdot Mirror
Originally, "The SCO Group" (TSG) that filed suit against IBM (and subsequently Novell) was a commercial company run by then-CEO Darl McBride. The original court case was presided over by Judge Kimball.
During that case there was a great deal of fancy footwork by TSG's lawyers (Boies, Schiller and Flexner LLC), who were hoping to get the case to a jury trial without having to turn over the specifics of their "evidence" to the Court and thus to IBM. Their tactic of not showing their hand had two aims: to bluff IBM into thinking that their case was stronger than it really was - and to hold back the most damaging accusations until they could be delivered in front of a jury without giving IBM the ability to prepare a response.
Duelling motions came to a head and eventually, after giving TSG all the lattitude he could, Judge Kimball announced that he would rule on an IBM motion to compel TSG to pony up their evidence. Before that could be discussed in a hearing [literally just a couple of days before] TSG filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. It is worth noting at this point that when TSG filed for bankruptcy they were technically and legally solvent, but the Bankruptcy Court accepted their petition regardless.
At that point everything on this thread of the story went a bit strange.
The Bankruptcy Court appointed one Judge Kevin Gross to preside over the bankruptcy. Judge Gross then appointed a Trustee to be the caretaker for the Chapter 11-protected TSG - and this Trustee was himself a retired Judge. [Sorry, this gentleman's name and that of his company escapes me].
From this point forward, the Trustee continue to try and fight the court case, all the while submitting invoices to TSG for their services. Although there was quite a bit of noise from this point forward, nothing substantive came of the appointment of this Trustee other than - in the opinion of this observer, anyway - the Trustee being able to milk the last of the liquid assets out of TSG and to push the company from not-quite-Chaper-11 through to brink-of-Chapter-7 bankruptcy.
At that point, with no more juice to suck out, the Trustee seemed to lose interest and the whole thing went quiet.
Until now, that is.
It's probably worth pointing out that the Trustee is itself a law firm, staffed, of course, with Law Clerks and Lawyers. Such an entity does of course go through brief periods of time when there is not enough work to keep every employee engaged on client-funded business. Rather than lay off an employee when that happens, the Firm will of course assign them activities which it hopes might have a future beneficial value. If miracles could happen and if TSG could prevail in even the tiniest part of an argument against IBM, then there would be a payout from IBM to the corpse. At that point, the Trustee would be able to reactivate any deferred invoices that they had accrued during the time that TSG has spent as a zombie.
In other words, the original gang of SCO Group folk (Darl McBride, Sanjay Gupta and friends) that filed the original complaint are long, long gone. The zombine is now being prodded along by the company of the Bankruptcy Court-appointed Trustee. Finally, this looks to have become nothing more than a time-card-filler for that law Firm, who occasionally have enough spare time on their hands to write another motion and prod the zombie...
Let's all hope a Court gives them a nice big slap for wasting Court time...
... is the West's reaction/response to what Erdogan has done in Turkey.
Nothing.
This is almost certainly because Turkey is geopolitically important to the West as part of NATO.
If you think about it objectively, you realise that western governments have not previously hesitated to apply sanctions to nations which mistreat minorities or suppress democracy in the way that Turkey has done. Yet no such outcry met these actions.
Much as we might be horrified at the thought, evidence on the ground suggests that as long as Erdogan supports the West with respect to Syria, acting as a buffer against regional economic migrants [i.e. refugees] - and of course having the potential to be a staging area for any form of military action in the region [ for example, Turkey was used as a launching point for air strikes against Iraq during both Gulf Wars] - then the West will simply turn a blind eye to this.
If we could find an "honest politician" who was also willing to talk about this "on the record", chances are they would tell us that the West will continue to do this because this would be the "least worst" option - that condemning Turkey for the Human Rights abuse would risk moving Erdogan away from NATO and towards Russia. Not something that the West would find appealing...
But this is just guesswork.
... the CEO of Uber wants to nationalize the overheads and expenses of having Gig workers [and get private tax-payers to pay for it], but wants to privatize the profits.
My, what a complete surprise...
... it was a passable and enjoyable attempt at trying something a bit different.
Right now, one of the biggest problems with big studios is the expectations of shareholders and companies. We've reached the point where a major movie that doesn't crack a billion dollars is considered a flop. And that says it in a nutshell, because it tells us that the only thing the big studios care about is cranking out carbon copies with two-dimensional characters. "Taking a risk" is not an option for mainstream movie studios these days.
So we should welcome what Netflix are trying to do and applaud their successes. For other like me in the audience, more quality competition can only be a good thing.
And: I realised, a long time ago, that I rarely agree with film critics. As a result, I don't read reviews: if I see a trailer and it looks interesting, I'll see the movie.
Oh, one thing though [not strictly related to the original point]. For me, one of the real benefits of Netflix is that I don't have to drive a 35-mile round trip to get to a decent cinema, pay £15.55 for an adult ticket [a price literally just checked on Odeon's web site for a Black Panther screening] and be forced to sit adjacent to a small group of people who will noisily chomp popcorn, slurp drinks, talk and generally disturb the movie from start to finish.
As a keen amateur photographer, Iâ(TM)be been using Adobe CS for years. Each time a new release came out I would purchase the upgrade pack and migrate to the latest version.
That stopped with CS6, the last version that did not force the subscription model.
Apart from one small change, this has had zero impact on my creative workflow... The change has been that, as Iâ(TM)ve upgraded to newer camera bodies with new RAW formats, Iâ(TM)ve had to include a migration step to convert from the new RAW format to a lossless but supported equivalent so that I can actually work on my images using CS6.
Obviously as a solitary end user I have to accept that I have zero chance of forcing Adobe to change their practices, other than to stop buying their product. If we ever get to a point where other technology changes make it impossible for me to run i.e. CS6 [unlikely, but letâ(TM)s not ignore it] then I will look to migrate to a fully open source platform.
Ultimately, I find it reprensible that software companies think that they can âoerentâ software to me - in other words continue to change usage terms to whatever they want, all the while using the boilerplate âoeno warranty expressed or impliedâ language in their EULAs.
If a company wants me to buy or rent their product, then they need to stand behind it. If they are not willing to do that... then they can take a running jump.
This could be an interesting edge case.
Here's the hypothetical question for you, though. Let's suppose that your theory is correct and there are TLAs [Three Letter Agencies] requesting changes to product. How would they do that? Would they go to Microsoft and, despite not having access to the i.e. Windows 10 CVS, turn up and say, "We want you to patch this code into this file here?" Or is it more likely that they would go to Microsoft and say, "We'd like to modify this file to behave in this way?" [ Assuming, of course, that the NSA would ask in the first place. Not only do I expect that they could hack in if they wanted, I dare say they could have agents working there, if they'd want to].
If we then put that into context with the fight we're seeing Microsoft put up over i.e. access to customer data held in Ireland, we're looking at [politely] a company with double standards...
On the other hand, we do know that Microsoft have made wholesale changes to Windows 10 under the hood, so that the OS now reports much more of its activities back to Redmond than ever before. This is going to require all sorts of hooks into code that TLAs might not care about. Would a TLA want to know if you launched Excel or LibreOffice Calc? Probably not. Redmond would, though...
I would be willing to concede that there is something unpleasant at the heart of this. For my money, however, it's much more likely to be the way that Redmond have turned Windows 10 into a monitoring and advertising platform. They want to know what you're doing with their technology because they want to be able to sell that to other companies for profit. Judging by their quarterly returns, the strategy is paying off. [Or, I concede, they are taking a *lot* of money from Uncle Sam].
Can we get to the right answer? Maybe. But I think it would take someone sitting on the network between you and MS who is willing and able to intercept all that traffic and reverse-engineer it. Short of that, I don't see how we'd find out...
Well, OK, but please let's be fair. The lyrics I link to, above, are those of the original writer.
I'm not denigrating on the alternatives you offer, but it's hardly the same, is it? If the original post had been "Just pointing out that there are unofficial versions of the UK's National Anthem which involve meddling with other countries..." then we could probably agree that as a possibility for just about *any* nation...
This statement *really* surprised me. Curious, I went to look:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...!
I can't see it for looking. Care to point it out?
Thanks
You make some really interesting points around retpoline, but I wonder if this latest from Intel fails to account for this because they are being disingenuous, or because they continue to be a bunch of idiots?
We're seeing similar problems to this with other very-long-established technologies, such as Windows [with Windows 10]. Things that have worked for decades up until W10 are breaking, or they are breaking in new and frustrating ways.
For example, I have a triple-screen setup and using removable SSDs via a caddy unit, I can boot my computer into 2 different W10 instances, as well as multiple Linux builds. The 2 W10 instances behave in completely different ways, despite being set up, by me, with EXACTLY the same approach [scripted]. On one of them the Task Bar keeps relocating itself around the desktop, on the other it remains static. I've been back-and-forth with Microsoft and they don't know why...
At the root of the problem I suspect they have changed something in W10, written by someone no longer at the company, possibly poorly documented and possibly with unknown consequences.
Maybe Intel are having similar issues... A decision was made a very long time ago to do something insecure and stupid with speculative execution, but the person who made that decision is no longer with the company, so a new Team are trying to fix it and simply don't know what they're doing...
I honestly don't know what the source is, but I do know that I am seeing "existing" functionality break with much greater frequency on core platforms like this. It just smacks of carelessness...
In the specific case of Brexit, there are two different challenges to consider.
The first is whether or not *any* foreign government had the ability to influence the preferences of the British people when it came to the vote. I notice that much discussion is being given to the potential for Russian meddling, but I also note that nobody batted an eye when Barak Obama not only made very pro-Brexit comments, but also made it very clear that if Britain elected to vote to leave, then Britain would be put to "the back of the queue" when it came to negotiating a trade deal with the US.
Or how about the fact that the government of the day spent literally millions of pounds of Tax-Payers money to fund their part of the campaign, by physically posting their views to every single household in the country via a mail-dropped leaflet. This was clearly an attempt at influencing public opinion, and the money to do so was spent only by the "Remain" campaign, because that happened to be the position taken by the Prime Minister of the day [not even the "Government of the Day", seeing as how numerous ministers favoured leaving].
So the first issue is a pretty specious point, really. However accurate and however valid the point is, it's largely irrelevant to point to some underhand foreign government meddling in the Brexit vote when the standing UK Government of the day were tilting the odds so far the other way...
The second point concerns the foundation of democracy itself. The final Brexit vote was split 52:48 (%) in favour of leaving the EU. This vote, which was operated on 100% democratic principles [i.e. of "one person, one vote" - and not the "first pass the post" method used for UK General Elections], was a significantly stronger vote in favour of an outcome than any UK General Election in living memory. For example, when David Cameron [who was Prime Minister at the time] won his second term in office, he secured 44% of the popular vote.
44%. The Brexit vote secured 52% - an outright majority. Yet Cameron was returned to Government with a large majority... Even more curiously, nobody demanded a recount or a second General Election even though he only won 44% of the vote... [OK, cheeky argument, since the two events were handled under different rules]. But the point stands.
You only have to look at the way that political elites have reacted to the vote - one in which the British people had the temerity to vote for what they actually wanted - to see how important this vote was. Since the decision was made the EU has gone out of it's way to try and bully, cajole, frighten or threaten the UK into having a second Referendum to overturn the first decision.
Whether or not you agree with the decision to leave the EU, this external force from the EU, which is a million times worse than any influence Russia could have brought to bear, must be resisted at ALL costs. If the UK caves then there is nothing to stop the EU from becoming a totalitarian state - which might sound a bit melodramatic, but consider the significance of a state which simply sets aside democratic decisions because they are not what the elite wants.
We would do well to remember that the more we allow ourselves to be torn up by this, the better it is for Russia or any foreign state with an axe to grind.
Hilary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 Presidential Election, but didn't undermine the electoral process with protest court cases. The UK should look to that example and respect the decision.
And if the UK or other countries want to make material improvements, then there is nothing to stop them from putting more effort into stamping out voting fraud, is there? Don't see much on that topic...
If you take an interest in this sort of thing, there are glimpses of technologies that have been under development since the 1980s that are beyond even what is hinted at here.
For example, there is plenty of evidence and acknowledged testing to show that we have working examples of things like Pulse Wave Detonation Engines, or Pulse Detonation Engines. These leave very characteristic contrails in the sky, which look like a chain of doughnuts connected by a thin central line. We know the technology has been made to work, but there is no acknowledgement of anything in use. Designed for reliable running at speeds of up to Mach 6...
Or what about âExternal combustion chambersâ(TM)... Picture an aero foil wing shape with a series of bleed nozzles on the upper surface through which fuel is carefully sprayed... The air moving over the wing section creates a contoured shape where it separates from the wing - still in laminar flow - such that the shape of the separated, moving air forms the upper surface of a combustion chamber... Much [much] lighter and simpler than conventional engines.
Or look at the latest commercial offerings from Rolls Royce and others, in which airliner engines actually pump neat fuel through turbine blades to help cool the engine, with micro-fine holes on the blades themselves acting as injectors...
Itâ(TM)s worth bearing in mind that even the Stealth Fighter used 1960s/70s technology to fly...
I would be *amazed* if this technology hadnâ(TM)t been designed, developed and tested. Whether it has been put into widespread use is another matter, but as hostile groups [even terrorists] develop the capability to predict the orbits of LEO surveillance satellites, it suddenly makes more sense to launch a plane, in an un-predictable pattern, to surveil a target.
But, this being the US, itâ(TM)s even more likely that there answer to this sort of question would be to develop all of these technologies - and more. Why have one option in the playbook when you can afford several?
I think we're in vehement agreement on two subtly different aspects of this story. I agree with you that we're primarily discussing components which degrade with time [specifically batteries in this instance]. But that is only a major problem if the battery cannot be easily replaced.
... just because you want me to buy a new iPhone for £700 or more?"
What I have tried to observe is that many items of consumer electronics sold today have been specifically designed so that they cannot be easily repaired [i.e. through the replacement of a failing battery]. My perception of this is that such a restriction encourages people to buy replacements instead of getting a repair.
Indeed, in mid-December, I had to take my Mac Mini to the Apple Southampton Store in the UK, because High Sierra had bricked it [a file system formatting issue]. Whilst I was waiting for that to be repaired, I sat and listened to another customer raising concerns that their iPhone [I'm not sure if it was a 5 or 6] could not hold a charge for a full day. The Apple representative went out of their way to discourage the customer from asking for a replacement battery and tried instead to sell them a new phone. The reply was, "Why should I junk a perfectly good handset, that does all I want and need, which cost me £500 and for which a replacement battery should be £50
The point here being that if we allow ourselves to believe that such components cannot be easily repaired or replaced, we allow ourselves to be locked in to forced replacement cycles. This is the reason that I think that the ability to "repair" is absolutely related to planned obsolescence.
There are models in the Dell XPS laptop range that solder components to the motherboard...
Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 is glued together.
Samsung Galaxy Tabs are glued together.
But please don't let the facts get in the way of your prejudice.
As it happens, though, I think you're statement does point to one truth... Apple, I think it is fair to say... really started the practice of assembling consumer electronics in a way that made repair or upgrade next-to-impossible. As a result of this, Apple customers have purchased replacement product instead of repairing their devices, which has led [however minimally] to increases in Apple products. I think other companies have seen this and decided to copy Apple, not because what they have done is correct, but because it has helped boost Apple's profits.
So I think you are entirely unreasonable and factually inaccurate if you try to claim that this practice is unique to Apple. But I think that you are likely correct if we translate your claim to be, "Apple started the practice of making it exceptionally difficult to repair or upgrade their products... and the rest of the industry has followed..."
If you look at the trends in consumer electronics over the last few years, designed-in obsolescence has become a feature from a range of different classes of device and a broad range of vendors.
For example, consider laptop/netbook computers, which arrive with major components such as CPUs, batteries, RAM and storage all soldered and/or glued in place. All of this makes it much harder to upgrade or use these products in a versatile way.
The same is true for almost all class of tablet, although I'd note that some Android devices [phones and tablets] do come with micro-SD card slots, which do allow for storage upgrades and flexibility.
On the desktop we are moving away from the "assembled" style of computer offered by Dell or Gateway from the 90s and 00s and now we seem to be trending towards all-in-one systems where, once again, everything is soldered or glued down and the potential for upgrades of individual components is virtually non-existent.
Or in the software business, where the latest editions of software are no explicitly programmed so that they cannot be operated on older generations of processors [which, ironically, may not have some of the vulnerabilities found with more modern chips] but with the net effect of forcing people to upgrade what might have been perfectly reasonable hardware just if they want to run modern software. Nor is this limited to Operating Systems - the same deadly embrace includes things like graphics cards and driver stacks and the compatibility demanded by "modern" games... all of which force upgrades to new GPUs, which in turn force upgrades to new OS editions... which force upgrades in hardware.
The hard part about this - for consumers at least - is that this sort of change is a "self-fulfilling prophecy" from the perspective of a tech company. This is because the companies that follow the trend will make more sales, be more profitable and thus displace those companies who had been willing to put the customer first. In other words, we have a situation in which market forces [profits for manufacturers] actually induce and encourage them to adopt practices which will be harmful to consumers in the long run.
Our society anticipated that situations like this might come to be from time to time, setting up regulatory institutions of government to ensure that consumer rights were protected and that facilities such as "right to repair" and "right to upgrade" were included. Unfortunately we are slowly but surely seeing these protections eroded, either by cuts to those agencies and/or [witness the recent actions of the FCC dumping telecoms disputes on the FTC] woefully overloaded.
We are told that in a capitalist environment, market forces win out and thus the consumer is protected because the market demands that only the best companies survive to offer the best products or services to people. Unfortunately, as we've seen with consumer electronics, the consumer now has virtually no worthwhile protection from any of these questionable practices.
We should applaud what France are trying to do here, and we should hope that this drives positive change.
The Consumer Electronics Industry has been sorely in need of a "Weinstein Moment" for a while now. Forced Upgrades, inability to repair and built-in-obsolescence have been spreading like cancer throughout the modern technology world, making a few companies super-rich at the expense of millions or billions of consumers' pockets.
That needs to change.
We know, from reports such as this one:-
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...
that States are now hard at work to write their own net neutrality legislation at the State level. Bearing in mind just how much money the big telcos have just spent paying on "lobbying" to have the FCC overturn the Obama Net Neutrality legislation, the idea that States could push back against this by enacting their own laws must really chafe.
So maybe what is going on here is simply a measure, pushed for by the cable lobby, to grant them access to federal infrastructure and thus perform an end-run around anything individual states can do? The devil will be in the detail, as always...
At the very least...
That solution might have worked maybe 20 years ago, when the likes of Cyrus produced chips that were plug-compatible with the Intel PCs of the day.
... but if I want a CPU, then I have no choice but to go to the same manufacturer for which the socket fitted to my motherboard was designed.
Unfortunately, however, since AMD and Intel use chips with different pin layouts, motherboard with sockets that fit Intel chips simply won't fit an AMD chip of any kind... Were it only that simple!
In fact, of all the components to be found inside the modern PC, the processor is the one restricting factor: I can buy from a wide range of manufacturers if I want to change a motherboard, sound card, graphics card, RAM, optical drive, power supply, SSD or hard drive
Yes, I might be able to swap both motherboard and CPU [at considerable expense], but in my circumstances the case I am using - an Impactics fanless case specifically chosen because it is completely silent - may be a limiting factor. If I can find a decent AMD motherboard that supports the Mini-ITX standard, however, I will definitely consider it... And, of course, if there is an AMD processor out there which has equivalent on-chip graphics to the HD Graphics 630 found on my 7700T and which is currently driving my monitors...
Another random thought here... Thinking about all the manufacturers of systems - Dell, HP, Lenovo, Apple, the list goes on - who currently have tens of thousands of built machines sitting in warehouses, or in shipping containers in transit, or in stores waiting to sell... which have this bug in them.
What would happen if the general public collectively decided, "Nope. Not going to buy it with a bug in there. We'll wait for new generation processors, thanks..." ???
Sadly, I think this is unlikely to happen, but I wonder if something like that could get the channel integrators to put enough pressure on Intel to offer replacements? And, if you were a channel integrator, what would you do with all your Intel stock that you haven't already fitted to a system?
Unfortunately, I think you may be right with respect to the amount of time and effort that it will take Intel to address the problem. Although to be honest, I don't know how extensive the redesign would be, how long it would take to run the test simulations, or the amount of lead time between taping out and shipping in volume.
The issue, though, is the alternative. With something like a new television or a washing machine, if you buy a defective product and discover the fault within a reasonable time period, then you take the faulty product back to the store and claim either a replacement or a refund, sometimes both depending on the price of the replacement product.
That is much harder to do when, basically, the only "replacement" I could use would be a pin-compatible chip. If the socket designs were common or changed infrequently, that might help me, but, sadly, my challenge is compounded because I am reliant upon the integral GPU in my chip to drive my displays [as are, for example, almost all modern laptops]. The challenge, therefore, is that the avenue of "replacement" - at least with off-the-shelf parts - is a non-starter. This almost certainly is the opposite of the case had the failed component been a optical drive, PSU, RAM, discrete GPU, discrete sound card or even motherboard. The chances are that I could get a replacement for pretty much *any* component other than the CPU.
I haven't discussed it here, but what about any buyers who have purchased computers from resellers in which specific performance goals were stipulated in a purchase contract agreement and which, with the changes now being wrought, won't be met? [ OK, stupidly narrow use case, but I offer it to try and illustrate the question on liability. This is Intel's problem, plain and simple. Trying to palm off the responsibility of the fix on to the OS guys is despicable].
All of these questions, however, are not germane to my original question. It's not what Intel choose to do *now* that matters quite so much as what they *didn't do* when they knew of the issue but it was otherwise witheld. I think [IANAL] that their actions in this time window may [and I'm hopeful here] force them to "do the right thing" and support the customers that they have shafted.
We'll see, I guess...
MetricT's company might not be all that influential as a single company - we just don't know. But there is nothing to stop all the major cloud providers from agreeing to join forces in a class-action lawsuit against Intel - and they have the backing and clout to make sure they get it.
The challenge for Intel here is that the harm is done. They need to repair both the reputational harm and the actual damage this incident has caused.
It took Apple a couple of days to figure out the damage being done by the iPhone battery issue [they likely got data directly from their sales channel and saw an immediate decline in sales] but Intel face the same hurdle here. Remember, though, that Intel are shielded from immediate effects because they only sell to integrators and channel partners. It might take 3 months before they actually saw sales diminish.
It won't lessen the impact when it comes.
The best thing Intel can do right now is to prepare a recall or offer a trade-in and get ahead of the negative publicity. Only their greed and their hubris is stopping that.
A lot of people are commenting on the fact that Intel's CEO sold the maximum permissible amount of company stock [or options - it isn't clear which] *after* Intel were notified of the bug and *before* this was made public.
But I'm interested in this for a slightly different reason. In mid-December 2017 I purchased a new computer system. I had been saving up for it for a very considerable period of time... It is based around the Core i7-7700T processor, which I now understand to be one which will be impacted and likely to "slow down" as the patches for Windows and Linux are deployed.
But Intel knew that the chip that I would be buying was materially defective. Whilst I accept that they have taken steps to apply corrective software fixes, that doesn't detract from the fact that I could have chosen to defer my purchase until a "clean" chip was released. Here we have the CEO saying "no recall", yet how are Intel's actions any different from i.e. the Ford Motor Company / Firestone Tire issue?
Are Intel claiming that they have no legal obligation to sell working product? Or to take appropriate steps to notify customers in a timely manner? If they knew about this in October, has it *really* taken this long to get patches ready and come clean? And what about all the product already in the supply chain?
I would be *very* interested to see any data from Intel's distributors or channel suppliers to get a better handle on shipment volumes in the time slot in question. Very interested to know if Intel made a push to "get rid" of known bad stock. Very interested to know what the lead time is for good silicon.
Anyone got any real-world experience of these scenarios?
... shouldn't throw stones.
Mr Trump the President has already learned how hard it is to drive change through the morass of government bureaucracy. Hopefully *President* Trump will come to his sense.
Mr Trump the Businessman might be extraordinarily wealthy by comparison with the proverbial Joe Average. But in comparison with Jeff Bezos, one of Amazon's largest shareholders, he's barely a nickel-and-dimer. Taking cheap shots like this at a *very* successful businessman is a good way to provoke someone in to responding.
Something tells me that Mr Trump wouldn't fare so well if this escalated into a commercial conflict with Mr Bezos.
Pass the popcorn.
For those not familiar with either the term or the practice, here's a primer:-
Imagine you think that Bitcoin is in a bubble and hugely over-priced. All it would take would be a sharp pin to burst the bubble and the price will plummet... Well, good for you if you don't have any in your portfolio, but how can you use that to make a shed-load of money?
You sell short in the hope of starting a run. Here's how it works. You go to the market and you sell say, $100,000,000 of Bitcoin that you don't actually possess... Markets will allow you to do this, as long as you settle all your accounts by the end of the current trading period [i.e. by market close on the day]. So what happens is this:
You have no cash to buy, and no Bitcoins, but you "sell", $100,000,000 of coins in to the market at say 20% below the currently trading price. Let's keep the numbers simple - imagine the prevailing price was $20,000/coin and you sell for, ooh... $16,000, which is the 20% drop point. The sheer size of your transaction - perhaps done because you've seen a couple of other big sales do the same thing - spooks the market. Suddenly all the traders who have been buying in to the currency are worried and they want out as quickly as possible. They start to offer their holdings for sale at steep discounts, each sale taking place way below the buying price.
In no time the price of Bitcoins falls through the floor... Everyone wants to sell, nobody wants to buy. Except, perhaps, the suckers who had "buy orders" programmed into their trading platforms if ever the price was "foolish" enough to dip below their target price. Suddenly all those folk with automated buy positions get their trades executed, even while the price continues to tank.
You watch the price plummet. $19,000, $18,000, $17,000, $16,000, $15,000. Eventually it hits $14,000 and the "dead cat bounce" starts - the price starts to look soooo stupidly attractive that more nuanced traders begin to buy back in. The price rallies. You buy enough coins to cover the "sale" you made at the beginning of the day. Except that you "sold" for $16,000, but you bought back in at $14,500...
Now let's do the math and figure out how much you made [before transaction fees]. You "sold" $10,000,000 at $16,000 each, which means that you sold 625 coins. Then the price dropped to $14,500 and you bought 625 coins to cover your earlier sale. But because you only had to pay $14,500 for them, you actually pay out $90,625,000. So you've made $9,375,000 with "Other People's Money" - all in a single day.
Congratulations, you've just passed "Banking 101"....
Oh, and for those who read this and think, "That's all well and good in theory, but it would never happen in practice..." I'd remind you that roughly 20 years ago, "Black Wednesday" happened, which absolutely devastated the value of UK Sterling on international exchange rates - and in the process made George Soros, who bet "against" the Pound in *exactly* the way I've just described here, a billionaire.
Until the practice of "short selling" - what I've just described in this post - is made illegal, there is *nothing* to stop this happening with Bitcoin, or with any other traded commodity. Bitcoin is no longer operating like a currency [if it ever truly did], but is now operating exactly like a "bubble" commodity, just like the dot-com boom, like antique cars, like works of art, like vintage wine.
It's difficult to know for sure, but this event has all the hall-marks of someone attempting to burst the bubble and make a killing. I reckon if there was some short selling in this window that someone might have made a noteworthy profit, but unlikely what we saw George Soros make. Whoever it was, they'll get it right next time...
We get questions related to this topic [and on the general subject of "is the password dead yet?"] coming round on slashdot with a regular if somewhat infrequent basis. But one of the interesting things we seem largely unable to agree on [which is perhaps why the password remains so popular] is: "What, realistically, can we replace them with?"
Tokens can be expensive and easily lost.
Biometrics can be defeated [see iPhoneX face recognition, for example] and, worse, if your biometric signature actually *is* cracked, then it's not easy for you to "change your biometric password", short of surgery of some kind. A bit extreme, perhaps?
Way back in 1950, an American science-fiction writer, E. E., "Doc" Smith recognized this in his space opera, "First Lensman", observing that "anything that science can devise and synthesize, science can analyze and duplicate".
It is genuinely difficult to see where this paradigm will evolve next, but in simple terms it looks as though any solutions based on physical tokens will be too expensive for mainstream adoption; that biometric solutions should be treated with great scepticism from a strength capability and even more scepticism from a personal integrity perspective. That doesn't leave us a whole lotta choices...
The first person to properly crack this is going to have the potential to become seriously wealthy...
On this one point, I think you may find that you are wrong.
Check out the latest SpaceX launch cast on Youtube, which you can find here:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Now fast forward to approx 16 minutes and 54 seconds from the start of the broadcast. You will see that the vehicle is at an indicated altitude of 6km [the approximate height of Kilimanjaro] and is travelling at 939kp/h [OK, not quite 1,000, but I hope you'll agree, close enough for examination of this point.
Absolutely *nothing* that you go on to point out is wrong - especially, though you don't say it, that kinetic energy increases with the square of the velocity, not merely the velocity [so it takes us [much] more energy to get from 26000km/h to 27000km/h than it does to get us from say 1000kmh to 2000km/h.
Fortunately, we can offset some of that additional cost by virtue of the fact that the vehicle continues to burn fuel [and thus shed mass] at a prodigious rate throughout the launch.
What interested me was to look at something along the lines of a maglev-assisted launch from a cost-benefit perspective to see if it made realistic sense, given what we know about Musk's other businesses.
I'm happy to conclude the answer remains that it's not viable if that's the answer, though. I was just curious...