Micron has stock-convertable bond offerings almost every quarter; they are diluting the equity of stock holders rather than going to the banks, because their bond rating is sub-junk. But they are cash starved. I'd like to see what a fraud audit would show about their accounting.
DRAM production is not labor intensive, but it is resource intensive and sensitive to environmental and labor laws; Micron already produces a lot of it's DRAM off-shore. Manassass is not producing anything right now, and hasn't for about a year. They have a fab in Lehi, Utah that keeps Orin Hatch on their side, but which has never made a single chip--it is a multi-billion dollar white elephant.
The company is corrupt, inbred, and about to squeal on its own cartel to cut the best deal.
This seems to be a bit more complicated, but if you care to plow through 10,000 pages of FTC-Rambus trail documents, it boils down to:
-- collusion to kill RDRAM by falsely inflating pricing estimates AND production estimates to convince Intel and PC OEMs that RDRAM costs would not fall even if production ramped.
-- continued collusion to sell DDR-SDRAM below costs, at price parity with SDRAM (a public commitment by Micron, BTW).
-- A smear campaign managed by InQuest and CMP (paid for largely by Micron).
-- And finally, collusion to control DDR supply and prices once Intel announced it would release DDR-based chipsets for the P-4.
That's when Mikey Dell finally went crying to the Department of Justice; Dell sold RDRAM-based computers throughout, and was the last major OEM to drop RDRAM when Intel finally released the 865 and 875-based dual-channel DDR-based chipsets. Mikey got semi-screwed on RDRAM pricing, and slighly screwed on DDR pricing (after enjoying prices for SDRAM and DDR well below production cost for more than a a year).
Cartels are usually pretty inefficient and ineffective; the cartel members by definition are competitors-- witness OPEC. But yeah, I agree that overall the DRAM makers were incompetent, venal, and now about to rat each other out as fast as possible.
Yeah, it was pretty funny watching "TeamDDR" hoisted by their own petards-- they drove DDR down to price parity with SDRAM in the middle of the worst tech recession ever, and they tried to jack DDR prices after Intel finally threw in the RDRAM towel-- in early 2002, DDR prices quickly rose from sub-$2 for 128Mb PC2100 to over $4.00. They are back near their lows again (DoJ investigation has been going on for over a year).
The problem with the industry is overcapacity. The solution in a free market is for producers to become more efficient, or get out of the business. Micron or Hynix should have collapsed, but didn't because of government intervention and political connections. Micron lost money for 12 straight quarters before announcing a profit of $1 million (on sales of $1.1 Billion, OUCH). The only DRAM maker that made money throughout is Samsung--the one company that made RDRAM in volume, but even Sammy is losing money on DRAM now (making up for it in other kinds of chips, particularly flash, which Micron does not make).
For the good of the industry, Micron and Hynix should declare bankrupcy and exit. DRAM is not a strategic industry; it is a commodity, soon to be made largely in China, India, and other lowest-cost producers.
Yes, Dan Brown's Davinci
Code is bad--badly researched, badly written, and almost
plagerized, as documented by reader-reviewers on Amazon.com.
Unfortunately, it was the second Dan Brown book I read-- if you know anything about computers,
cryptography, or the internet, try to get through Digital Fortress
without trying to tear it in half.
It was an interesting read, but I thought you sounded a bit too much like Van Smith's infamous "intel will die soon" *article* at THG a few years back. I also think that changes in US tax code over the past couple of years has had an impact on the balance sheet-- they have to expense those stock options now.
The other missing information from such articles is some testimony from companies that have adopted Linux for truly mission-critical functions. I know first hand there are plenty, but they still seem to want to remain anonymous. One of the largest investment banks on Wall Street uses Linux for all transaction databases--the core of their business. But you won't see that published anywhere with attribution or the name of the bank.
It is the best China and the worst China we have ever known. Sorry they don't fit your notion of what a country should be. Neither do most of the United States' closest friends in the Middle East, or even East Asia.
China has been a cohesive country since 1949 after more than a century of colonialism, fragmentation, desperate poverty, war, and political instability. It has been "open" to the outside world only since 1980 (really, only since 1990).
Compare to the United States circa 1870, 1918, 1942, 1950s. Who could vote? How free was speech? How permissible was labor organizing?
The Leadtek TV2000XP Deluxe is a great tuner card, and for $48 from newegg.com (with free standard US shipping), it costs rougly 1/3 of what the Hauppauge PVR 250 costs. The tuner works well under linux.
Thanks. I just compiled 2.6.0 and installed it in Fedora Core 1. It is noticably faster booting, and loading Gnome/KDE. I only wish I hadn't borked all my USB devices (fixed now).
Anyone care to share desktop impressions? What is the BIG reason to run this kernel if you are a linux desktop user with standard hardware. Speed? Stability? Security?
We need to run 4 and sometimes five separate machines that are not networked together--each box is on a separate network. We used to put 4 or 5 mid-towers in each cubicle. A nightmare in terms of space, power, wiring, KVM switchboxes.
Now each cubical or office has one box, with 4 or 5 NICs installed, 4GB of RAM, running Linux as a host OS, and 4 or 5 virtual machines. The NICs are dedicated for each guest OS, not in promiscuous mode, and each guest runs on its own partition, not a virtual drive. It runs all day, and if a guest OS misbehaves, it is simple to reboot. We could not do this without VMWare.
You can still buy a mostly-manual Minolta X-370, but they are made in China now by "Seagull."
You can go for used on Ebay and get a Minolta X-570 or X-700. I pefer the X-570--heavier body, better metering, and cheaper used. Late model X-700 have more plastic, which is good in terms of weight but not as nice a feel. Neither is too far from production that parts would be a problem, and they aren't old enough to be a classic like the XD11/XD7 or XK1. I like minoltas because the lenses are very good for the $ and they widely available new and used-- anything with an MD mount will work.
You will tend to pay a premium for Nikons, but they still make a great manual SLR.
Don't know where you live, but Penn Camera on the East Coast US has clean,serviced used cameras.
Or leave it at home. Do you really *need* a TV, PC, laptop, 500W sound system, dvd player, PS2, Xbox, etc. in your dorm room?
Put a TV+FM tuner card and a DVD in your PC and a decent sound card. Get better-quality 5.1/6.1 surround speakers for the PC. One device replaces many, and with an LCD uses little power.
"Oh, yes, and another thing - they actually had the nerve last week to AUTOMATICALLY renew my RHN subscription... without my permission."
They tried to do the same to me, just before the EOL the products they were trying to steal my money for. FORTUNATELY, the credit card I used to pay for RHN last year was stolen and canceled. I need to find a pickpocket in London and thank him for preventing this theft. When RH couldn't charge my card, they sent me a very legalistic letter telling me I had to uninstall RHN and up2date. I've used RH since 5.2. No more, and I'm moving ever server and workstation at work to Debian.
The Fedora Project is a bone (pun intended) for the "devoted enthusiast base." It is little better than Rawhide, the core is support for only 9 months, it has nothing behind it.
As of yesterday, there is no RedHat Linux. That says it all.
From what I've read, the most importance Russian assistance was crew training. The capsul appears based on Soyuz, but was extensively modified and made in China. The LM-2F is based on the DF-5 ICBM with strapon solids (similar to Titan). The pictures I've seen of the Jiuquan launch complex show it is huge-- if you see a picture, look at the flame buckets at the main pad used for this launch--they are massive, comparable to what we used for Apollo and what the Soviets used for Energa. It looks like the Shenzhou-V was stacked in an assembly building, and then slow-tracked to the launch gantry, like the US did with Apollo. This is no threadbare space program, and the appear to have built for a very ambitious effort.
using RH7.3, and don't have that particular problem, but the behavior reminds of an earlier install where I had manually partitioned and set up physically separate/boot,/home,/usr,/etc. Turned out my/home was almost full (all those kernel downloads). Do a df -h and see what your space looks like.
Do you know how few profs I had that actually used the assigned text? More often, they were so worried about not being fired for "grade inflation," that they used a secret text or supplemental reading. Inevitably, the first midterm would be based largely on supplemental readings (or worse, footnotes in the supplemental readings) or some text not even on the course syllabus. The goal is to get a bell-curve grade distribution so the prof. can ensure 10% As, 10% Fs, etc.
As a survival skill, I learned to visit the profs office regularly and find out what books they had relevant to the class, especially the ones that were heavily bookmarked. I then checked these out of the library. One problem-- you will not be popular after the first midterm when you destroy the grade curve.
Or you could just try to make sure you only study under profs with tenure.
A bunch of dot.bomb hucksters, with not one shred of Unix experience between them. Most Mormons I know are upstanding and ethical to a fault, but clearly there are exceptions. Shame.
Slashdot Mirror
Micron has stock-convertable bond offerings almost every quarter; they are diluting the equity of stock holders rather than going to the banks, because their bond rating is sub-junk. But they are cash starved. I'd like to see what a fraud audit would show about their accounting.
DRAM production is not labor intensive, but it is resource intensive and sensitive to environmental and labor laws; Micron already produces a lot of it's DRAM off-shore. Manassass is not producing anything right now, and hasn't for about a year. They have a fab in Lehi, Utah that keeps Orin Hatch on their side, but which has never made a single chip--it is a multi-billion dollar white elephant.
The company is corrupt, inbred, and about to squeal on its own cartel to cut the best deal.
This seems to be a bit more complicated, but if you care to plow through 10,000 pages of FTC-Rambus trail documents, it boils down to:
-- collusion to kill RDRAM by falsely inflating pricing estimates AND production estimates to convince Intel and PC OEMs that RDRAM costs would not fall even if production ramped.
-- continued collusion to sell DDR-SDRAM below costs, at price parity with SDRAM (a public commitment by Micron, BTW).
-- A smear campaign managed by InQuest and CMP (paid for largely by Micron).
-- And finally, collusion to control DDR supply and prices once Intel announced it would release DDR-based chipsets for the P-4.
That's when Mikey Dell finally went crying to the Department of Justice; Dell sold RDRAM-based computers throughout, and was the last major OEM to drop RDRAM when Intel finally released the 865 and 875-based dual-channel DDR-based chipsets. Mikey got semi-screwed on RDRAM pricing, and slighly screwed on DDR pricing (after enjoying prices for SDRAM and DDR well below production cost for more than a a year).
Cartels are usually pretty inefficient and ineffective; the cartel members by definition are competitors-- witness OPEC. But yeah, I agree that overall the DRAM makers were incompetent, venal, and now about to rat each other out as fast as possible.
Yeah, it was pretty funny watching "TeamDDR" hoisted by their own petards-- they drove DDR down to price parity with SDRAM in the middle of the worst tech recession ever, and they tried to jack DDR prices after Intel finally threw in the RDRAM towel-- in early 2002, DDR prices quickly rose from sub-$2 for 128Mb PC2100 to over $4.00. They are back near their lows again (DoJ investigation has been going on for over a year).
The problem with the industry is overcapacity. The solution in a free market is for producers to become more efficient, or get out of the business. Micron or Hynix should have collapsed, but didn't because of government intervention and political connections. Micron lost money for 12 straight quarters before announcing a profit of $1 million (on sales of $1.1 Billion, OUCH). The only DRAM maker that made money throughout is Samsung--the one company that made RDRAM in volume, but even Sammy is losing money on DRAM now (making up for it in other kinds of chips, particularly flash, which Micron does not make).
For the good of the industry, Micron and Hynix should declare bankrupcy and exit. DRAM is not a strategic industry; it is a commodity, soon to be made largely in China, India, and other lowest-cost producers.
Yes, Dan Brown's Davinci Code is bad--badly researched, badly written, and almost plagerized, as documented by reader-reviewers on Amazon.com.
Unfortunately, it was the second Dan Brown book I read-- if you know anything about computers, cryptography, or the internet, try to get through Digital Fortress without trying to tear it in half.
It was an interesting read, but I thought you sounded a bit too much like Van Smith's infamous "intel will die soon" *article* at THG a few years back. I also think that changes in US tax code over the past couple of years has had an impact on the balance sheet-- they have to expense those stock options now.
The other missing information from such articles is some testimony from companies that have adopted Linux for truly mission-critical functions. I know first hand there are plenty, but they still seem to want to remain anonymous. One of the largest investment banks on Wall Street uses Linux for all transaction databases--the core of their business. But you won't see that published anywhere with attribution or the name of the bank.
It is the best China and the worst China we have ever known. Sorry they don't fit your notion of what a country should be. Neither do most of the United States' closest friends in the Middle East, or even East Asia.
China has been a cohesive country since 1949 after more than a century of colonialism, fragmentation, desperate poverty, war, and political instability. It has been "open" to the outside world only since 1980 (really, only since 1990).
Compare to the United States circa 1870, 1918, 1942, 1950s. Who could vote? How free was speech? How permissible was labor organizing?
Awesome post for anyone one interested in using a TV tuner card and gaining PVR functions under linux. Thanks, just wish I had mod points.
The Leadtek TV2000XP Deluxe is a great tuner card, and for $48 from newegg.com (with free standard US shipping), it costs rougly 1/3 of what the Hauppauge PVR 250 costs. The tuner works well under linux.
Thanks. I just compiled 2.6.0 and installed it in Fedora Core 1. It is noticably faster booting, and loading Gnome/KDE. I only wish I hadn't borked all my USB devices (fixed now).
Nothing, aparently.
Anyone care to share desktop impressions? What is the BIG reason to run this kernel if you are a linux desktop user with standard hardware. Speed? Stability? Security?
We need to run 4 and sometimes five separate machines that are not networked together--each box is on a separate network. We used to put 4 or 5 mid-towers in each cubicle. A nightmare in terms of space, power, wiring, KVM switchboxes.
Now each cubical or office has one box, with 4 or 5 NICs installed, 4GB of RAM, running Linux as a host OS, and 4 or 5 virtual machines. The NICs are dedicated for each guest OS, not in promiscuous mode, and each guest runs on its own partition, not a virtual drive. It runs all day, and if a guest OS misbehaves, it is simple to reboot. We could not do this without VMWare.
You can still buy a mostly-manual Minolta X-370, but they are made in China now by "Seagull."
You can go for used on Ebay and get a Minolta X-570 or X-700. I pefer the X-570--heavier body, better metering, and cheaper used. Late model X-700 have more plastic, which is good in terms of weight but not as nice a feel. Neither is too far from production that parts would be a problem, and they aren't old enough to be a classic like the XD11/XD7 or XK1. I like minoltas because the lenses are very good for the $ and they widely available new and used-- anything with an MD mount will work.
You will tend to pay a premium for Nikons, but they still make a great manual SLR.
Don't know where you live, but Penn Camera on the East Coast US has clean,serviced used cameras.
including the fact that their up2date servers are slow as shit.
I always wondered what their enterprise customers thought when they tried to download from ftp.redhat.com and pulled 30kbps over their T3.
Or leave it at home. Do you really *need* a TV, PC, laptop, 500W sound system, dvd player, PS2, Xbox, etc. in your dorm room?
Put a TV+FM tuner card and a DVD in your PC and a decent sound card. Get better-quality 5.1/6.1 surround speakers for the PC. One device replaces many, and with an LCD uses little power.
You'll still *need* the PS2/Xbox I suppose.
"Oh, yes, and another thing - they actually had the nerve last week to AUTOMATICALLY renew my RHN subscription ... without my permission."
They tried to do the same to me, just before the EOL the products they were trying to steal my money for. FORTUNATELY, the credit card I used to pay for RHN last year was stolen and canceled. I need to find a pickpocket in London and thank him for preventing this theft. When RH couldn't charge my card, they sent me a very legalistic letter telling me I had to uninstall RHN and up2date. I've used RH since 5.2. No more, and I'm moving ever server and workstation at work to Debian.
Grok? What time capsule did you crawl out of?
The Fedora Project is a bone (pun intended) for the "devoted enthusiast base." It is little better than Rawhide, the core is support for only 9 months, it has nothing behind it.
As of yesterday, there is no RedHat Linux. That says it all.
no text
They just killed their brand. There is no "RedHat Linux." Think about that. At least the Coca-Cola company had the sense to bring "Coke Classic" back.
This is a major screwup from a marketing perspective. They are going to eat the Fedora, support or not.
I was thinking the same thing. I've used RH since 5.2 (ugh) and have paid for the up2date service and each major *.0 release. That ends now.
I've been looking for an excuse to use Gentoo. Thanks, RH!
From what I've read, the most importance Russian assistance was crew training. The capsul appears based on Soyuz, but was extensively modified and made in China. The LM-2F is based on the DF-5 ICBM with strapon solids (similar to Titan). The pictures I've seen of the Jiuquan launch complex show it is huge-- if you see a picture, look at the flame buckets at the main pad used for this launch--they are massive, comparable to what we used for Apollo and what the Soviets used for Energa. It looks like the Shenzhou-V was stacked in an assembly building, and then slow-tracked to the launch gantry, like the US did with Apollo. This is no threadbare space program, and the appear to have built for a very ambitious effort.
I can see the headline now: "12-year-old busted by RIAA turns to crack sales, prostitution to pay fine."
This RIAA thing is seriously fucked up.
Heard this on NPR's "Computer Guys" today. Whoa.
using RH7.3, and don't have that particular problem, but the behavior reminds of an earlier install where I had manually partitioned and set up physically separate /boot, /home, /usr, /etc. Turned out my /home was almost full (all those kernel downloads). Do a df -h and see what your space looks like.
Do you know how few profs I had that actually used the assigned text? More often, they were so worried about not being fired for "grade inflation," that they used a secret text or supplemental reading. Inevitably, the first midterm would be based largely on supplemental readings (or worse, footnotes in the supplemental readings) or some text not even on the course syllabus. The goal is to get a bell-curve grade distribution so the prof. can ensure 10% As, 10% Fs, etc.
As a survival skill, I learned to visit the profs office regularly and find out what books they had relevant to the class, especially the ones that were heavily bookmarked. I then checked these out of the library. One problem-- you will not be popular after the first midterm when you destroy the grade curve.
Or you could just try to make sure you only study under profs with tenure.
http://www.sco.com/company/execs/
A bunch of dot.bomb hucksters, with not one shred of Unix experience between them. Most Mormons I know are upstanding and ethical to a fault, but clearly there are exceptions. Shame.