Bear in mind why Apple hasn't licensed these patents yet. If their side of the story (and their counter-suits) are to be believed, then it's because Nokia won't license them under Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (RAND) terms.
All indications that Apple wants to pay the same licensing fee that Sony, Motorola, etc have paid. Nokia on the other hand doesn't want the fee - they want to cross-license Apple's patents - which are far more valuable than any fee that other handset manufacturers have paid. Nokia is violating RAND by refusing to license the necessary patents to Apple as they have the other handset manufacturers. Under RAND terms, Apple is under no obligation to cross-license to get access to Nokia's patents, although they still have the option of doing so if they'd like (and here's a hint, they don't want to).
For that reason, even if Nokia has a stronger patent portfolio, it's anyone's guess how this will finally go. The larger GSM Association requires that all of this stuff be offered under RAND terms, so there may be consequences for Nokia if they keep this up.
I suppose the NYT could be right, in the sense that they see NVIDIA getting an x86 license out of this in the same way that conspiracy theorists see that the Apollo 11 landings were filmed on a soundstage.
There's nothing about remedy 17 or remedy 18 that would lead to NVIDIA getting an x86 license directly from Intel. In short:
17: Intel has to license its chipset buses to other companies (e.g. NVIDIA) so that they can make chipsets for Intel's newest CPUs. NVIDIA only has an AGTL+ license for older Core 2 CPUs, they don't have one for DMI (low-end and mid-range Core i3/i5/i7) or QPI (high-end Core i7).
18: Intel can't get in the way of AMD's efforts to spin off their fabs in to Global Foundries. Up until AMD and Intel inked their own settlement, Intel intended to enforce provisions of AMD's x86 license that required them to do the vast majority of production in-house, which wasn't going to be possible if they spun-off their fabs.
The only way NVIDIA could end up with an x86 license out of this is that remedy 18 would allow VIA to transfer their x86 license, and in reality Intel has never fully acknowledged them having one. VIA only gets away with it because they have a couple of patents that are critical to Itanium, and those patents should be expiring soon.
So I don't know why the NYT is claiming that NVIDIA is going to get an x86 license out of this. This seems to be wild dreaming, or an attempt to generate traffic with ridiculous claims.
On the other hand, at least the robot can be programmed to drive safely.
As a sociopath I take offense to that! We try to be safe drivers too you know; I don't know about you, but I don't want to get blood splatters all over my car.
The average person can dissapear quite effectively from pretty much anyone except the govt or groups with similar power.
As it turns out, you don't need to be the government to get access to restricted data. If you read TFA (it's a good read), there are a few instances where the Hunters managed to get data that they shouldn't have, and in fact very likely illegally obtained it. They got the license plate from his car and his flight itineraries, swearing up and down in both cases that it wasn't illegal (which is a strong sign that it in fact was).
You don't need to be the government to track someone, there are plenty of people willing to commit crimes to access the same resources to find you.
This is a bit off topic, but is anyone else tickled pink by Appulous's "troll bridge"? Due to the user load, they've implemented what amounts to a nerd-captcha on the front page to keep non-nerds out of the site. Since it's a nerd quiz, the questions are hilarious. Yesterday the question was how to join their IRC channel, and today it's how to rename a folder.
I'm sure someone is leaking the answers the first chance they get, but the notion of a nerd quiz to gain access to a site is a riot.
I don't think you quite understand. Outside of a very specific (and very old) version of the 360's firmware*, it's not possible to execute unsigned code on the 360. You cannot at this moment cheat on XBL through the use of any kind of unsigned code. The only ways to cheat involve taking advantage of exploits already in the game, and screwing with network connections.
The only thing MS is doing here is banning pirates, which isn't as noble as banning cheaters as some people here believe. But hey, MS can do what they want.
* And even then, you still can't run unsigned code within the normal OS. It's basically a way to load another OS, such as Linux, which means you have the PS2/PS3 situation
Speaking of Brazilian power failures, Brazil had another major power failure yesterday. Power from the Itaipu dam was cut off, which apparently put millions of people in the dark as it generates something like 14GW. Itaipu blames the Brazilian grid, meanwhile Brazilian officials aren't sure what it was, but are protesting any idea that it was sabotage/hacking. Paraguay and Uruguay also get power from Itaipu and were similarly affected.
Seriously, you're going to make this argument in 2009?
Being able to sell music in a reasonable manner hasn't been a problem for 10 years. eMusic, CD Baby, etc gladly cater to the independents, and there are ways to roll your own solution. If you make music and want to sell it, there's nothing stopping you from doing it right now. That is in my book a free and fair market.
Just because you don't like who the industry decides to back with advertising dollars, doesn't mean that it's not a free market. People are in fact voluntarily spending their money on big-label acts like Britney Spears.
I don't know why the editors didn't include a link to it, but AnandTech has a much better review of the SATA 6G-equipped motherboard and its performance; one that actually gets around to doing real-world tests and not just synthetic tests. It turns out that the 6G Marvell controller is slower than the standard Intel ICH10 controller in virtually all cases. Until someone integrates SATA 6G in to a proper motherboard chipset, it's not just performance limited, it's performance degrading.
It's a fairly complex issue among Nintendo fans, but I'll try to break it down.
When it was launched, the DS was an experimental console, Nintendo's so-called "3rd leg". Nintendo had no significant faith in it, but threw it out there anyhow as an experiment while working on a proper Game Boy.
One consequence of this is that the components of the DS weren't necessarily picked as they would have been for a handheld designed to match the long life of a Game Boy. Nintendo made the DS underpowered, with a 66MHz ARM9, 4MB of RAM, and a 3D rasterizer that was hard-capped at 2048 polygons per frame with only nearest-neighbor texture filtering. Granted this sounded more impressive in 2004 than it does now, but they could have (and would have) used more powerful components if they expected the console to last.
As it stands, the hardware isn't as powerful as a Nintendo 64 or a PS1, and most attempts at full-3D games are downright pitiful because of this limit (the good ones, like Mario Kart, use a lot of sprites to hide this, but that strategy only works for certain kinds of games). So you're left largely with 2D games. And I like 2D games, but a certain degree of monotony sets in after a while as no one is pushing any boundries, not to mention the sheer amount of shovelware the platform generates.
Compounding this issue is the fact that Nintendo did finally do something about the hardware this year with the DSi, ramping up the clock speed of the ARM9 to 133MHz, and quadrupling the RAM to 16MB. Performance-wise, this is a token change, especially since the 3D rasierizer is still capped at 2048 polygons per frame. The additions were mainly to give the console enough extra umph that it can play with its camera.
But at the same time, it creates a clear difference in hardware classes, one Nintendo is going to exploit. There will be (and in fact may already be released) DSi-only games, which pisses off the DS Lite owners to no end, because they are now faced with being unable to play all new games for the thinnest of reasons. These people aren't going to buy the DSi, both because unlike the DS Fat to DS Lite transition the new console isn't clearly better for their needs (the Lite's screens were much better, and it was actually pocketable), and because they resent the upgrade treadmill.
Meanwhile in Sony-land, manufacturing technology has finally caught up with the ridiculously overbuilt PSP, which was an absolute brick when launched. The Go has some pricing/design issues, but fundamentally it finally gets Sony's near-PS2 hardware down to a size and battery life on-par with the DS. So DS owners are looking across the field at a handheld that's nearly a next-gen part, and they want that - they want some solid 3D games in their handheld gaming diet. Of course the grass isn't really greener on the other side since North American PSP game development has slowed to a crawl (and so few of the games are gems in the first place), but the hardware potential is clearly there.
This brings us to TFA. A new DS variant signals that Nintendo is remaining committed to the DS for at least another year, as they don't want to commission a new design and have it languish on the shelves. So this means that any hope of a "DS2" just got pushed back to at least 2011, which is pushing the frustration level over the top. The enthusiasts see what the PSP, the iPhone, etc are doing, and they want a DS with proper 3D capabilities, while Nintendo is signaling that they don't intend to deliver it any time soon. They don't want to abandon the platform, so they do the only thing they can do given their situation: they complain. And thus you have TFA.
On a side note, some of the complaining in this case is a product of just how silly this change is. The DS screen is only 256x192 pixels, which even at the original 3" size was pretty coarse (dot pitch: 0.24mm, and your head maybe a foot away). At 4" diagonal, this only gets worse. You end up with a screen with a dot pitch of 0.3175mm, and with your head at the same distan
This strikes me as desperation. Solid Oak Software obviously can't sue the violator, who is China proper, so they're suing any 3rd party they can find.
As far I can tell, the ZDNet China site is basically the same thing as Download.com, CBS American freeware/shareware/trialware download site. If this is the case, then CBS isn't directly making any money off of offering the software since they aren't selling it (they do however get ad money). It's freeware, and CBS would have no way of knowing that it contained copyright-infringing code. To add insult to injury, Solid Oak wants the full price ($40) of their own filtering software awarded to them as damages, for each copy downloaded from ZDNet China.
If this goes to trial and Solid Oak were to win, it would end up being a precedent-setting event. What Solid Oak is basically arguing is that 3rd parties are fully liable for any copyright violations in the software they distribute. That would immediately make download sites such as Download.com, FilePlanet, and MajorGeeks an impossible thing to offer. And who knows, maybe even Linux mirrors would be liable if some Linux component/package was found to be violating copyright?
If Solid Oak has their way, the idea of rehosting free (as in beer) software is dead.
Kudos once again to Slashdot for being so on top of things. MMS was launched nearly 24 hours ago, if it was going to crash AT&T's network it would have (notice the use of past-tense), not will it. This is an interesting topic, but don't post an article speculating about some future event some 24 hours after it happened.
Anyhow, for the matter at hand, did it crash AT&T's network? No, but it got close. Where I am 3G was damn near unusable all Friday afternoon, and even EDGE was slow. I'm told by the silly people that actually pay AT&T's exorbitant fees for their it's-not-quite-data services (SMS/MMS) that SMS and especially MMS have been unreliable today. People are able to send, but not necessarily receive. Some of this I'm sure goes back to network issues, while other parts are probably just AT&T's SMS/MMS servers being overwhelmed.
Although to be fair to AT&T, I doubt anyone could have done significant better. Certainly there's room for improvement, but iPhones are data-hogs. Anyone else (e.g. Verizon) would be facing similar network issues if they suddenly flipped a switch that let nearly 10 million hogs suddenly consume even more bandwidth.
As Gabe of Penny Arcade said it best: Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad.
Ultimately it catches up to anything. Forums, blogs, and now Wikipedia. I'm not sure this is a good change for Wikipedia, but at some point you have to do something to stop the fuckwads from completely tagging the place.
Because the ability to run unsigned code directly on the hardware (e.g. not sandboxed as a user of the OS) is both great for homebrew development and the fundamental building block of a pure software loader for pirated games, this development is going to scare the hell out of the bean counters and the department heads. They're going to have to deploy most (if not all) of the tricks left in their bag of countermeasures, otherwise inside of a year the 360 will end up like the Wii and the Xbox 1 - completely and utterly cracked open for piracy.
As the Free60 homepage has already noted, MS has deployed an update to the first stage of the bootloader, something they've never done before. Such an update is risky because if it fails there is no chance for recovery, it's the equivalent of failing at a BIOS update on a PC. However it's also an effect update; it blocks the only publicly known low-level security hole in the 360, so systems with the new bootloader are fully locked down. Adding even more fuel to the fire is that this was probably one of Microsoft's last unused countermeasures, as no one in the 360 hacking community is immediately aware of any other similar countermeasures. MS may have just played their trump card as far as DRM on the 360 is concerned.
Anyhow, the point of all of this is that this is an excellent and quite scary example of increasingly improved DRM systems being deployed. It's taken just shy of 4 years to crack open the 360 to just this point, and MS has shown the ability to lock it back down with a single update*, one that they'll undoubtedly bake in to new games too in order to snuff out as many vulnerable 360s as possible. In spite of the fact that no DRM system thus far is perfect, this is clear example of where the future of DRM lies: it's going to get better.
Pay close attention to what happens to the 360, because where Microsoft succeeds with DRM is going to show up in other systems. The Zune, the iPhone, the next generation of consoles, cable set top boxes, etc, are all looking for the holy grail of DRM. And every time they fail, they get a little bit closer. With enough failures under their belts, one of these days they may no longer fail.
* The lack of the ability to fully update the bootloader is the biggest flaw in the Xbox1 and Wii. In the case of the Wii, boot1 has a signing bug and is hardcoded - any system with the faulty boot1 can ultimately be cracked by replacing boot2 with a vulnerable loader, such as BootMii
TFA says that the Intel chipsets will be limited to 8 lanes instead of 16 to give Nvidia an advantage for thier own chipsets.
If that's what TFA says, then it's full of it. The design of Bloomfield/P55 is such that there are 16 PCIe lanes coming straight from the CPU, and then another 4 lanes coming off of the P55 chipset, routed back up to the CPU through whatever interconnect Intel is using (it is in effect just a Southbridge, with the Northbridge integrated in to the CPU). This is because Bloomfield was intended to be used with a single x16 PCIe slot, it's a mid-range product. Nehalem/X58 is Intel's high-end product, and it has a much faster QPI connection coming off of the CPU to interface with a proper Northbridge to feed more PCIe lanes.
So what you have to do is split the 16 lanes in to two sets of 8 lanes, and then use those lanes to make two x16 slots that only have half the bandwidth they're supposed to (something the PCIe standard allows). That's why the Intel chipsets will be limited to 8 lanes.
The NVIDIA chipset mentioned is the NF200, which is a PCIe bridge. It would sit at the end of the 16 lanes coming from the CPU, and in turn offer 32 lanes (2x16) for PCIe slots. This gives you the full 16 lanes of bandwidth to each slot, but it doesn't get you any more bandwidth to the CPU. You still only have 16 lanes of bandwidth to the CPU. The only advantage to using a bridge chip is that it means the full bandwidth of the CPU can be dynamically allocated to a single PCIe slot, and that two PCIe devices can communicate with each other at full speed (the NF200 also has a few SLI commands that make sending data out from the CPU faster by automatically replicating it to the two slots). This does little to solve the fact that you have too little bandwidth in the first place, which is why you won't see the NF200 used too much. Plus bridges add latency and complexity to motherboard designs.
As for why a license is needed at all: because NVIDIA says so. Their products won't work in SLI mode unless they see a license or a NF200 bridge chip (which is an automatic buy-in for SLI). It's a scummy system really, the license doesn't actually do anything. At best it means some token testing was done to make sure SLI worked, when if you build to PCIe spec it would work anyhow.
Ours is to sell domain names to raise funds for organizations who can effect change
Just how many domains do they think they're going to be selling? At competitive rates you'd have to sell tens of thousands just to keep a single person employed to maintain the TLD, never mind having some money to give away.
I'd expect it to be like any other OS X release: Full support as long as it's the leading version, followed by limited support (just security updates) when it's the previous version, and finally all support is dropped when it's two versions back. So its support life would be as long as 10.6 is the leading version.
The FTC/DOJ would be far more interested in Schmidt since he's not just on both boards, but he's an employee for one of the companies. The primary issue they're seeking to prevent is collusion, which is would usually be accomplished by company employees sitting on each others' boards. A common 3rd party board member on two similar companies is also an issue, but it's not nearly as pressing of an issue since they aren't an employee.
Or to put this another way, they're handling one thing at a time.
Slashdot Mirror
Bear in mind why Apple hasn't licensed these patents yet. If their side of the story (and their counter-suits) are to be believed, then it's because Nokia won't license them under Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (RAND) terms.
All indications that Apple wants to pay the same licensing fee that Sony, Motorola, etc have paid. Nokia on the other hand doesn't want the fee - they want to cross-license Apple's patents - which are far more valuable than any fee that other handset manufacturers have paid. Nokia is violating RAND by refusing to license the necessary patents to Apple as they have the other handset manufacturers. Under RAND terms, Apple is under no obligation to cross-license to get access to Nokia's patents, although they still have the option of doing so if they'd like (and here's a hint, they don't want to).
For that reason, even if Nokia has a stronger patent portfolio, it's anyone's guess how this will finally go. The larger GSM Association requires that all of this stuff be offered under RAND terms, so there may be consequences for Nokia if they keep this up.
I suppose the NYT could be right, in the sense that they see NVIDIA getting an x86 license out of this in the same way that conspiracy theorists see that the Apollo 11 landings were filmed on a soundstage.
There's nothing about remedy 17 or remedy 18 that would lead to NVIDIA getting an x86 license directly from Intel. In short:
17: Intel has to license its chipset buses to other companies (e.g. NVIDIA) so that they can make chipsets for Intel's newest CPUs. NVIDIA only has an AGTL+ license for older Core 2 CPUs, they don't have one for DMI (low-end and mid-range Core i3/i5/i7) or QPI (high-end Core i7).
18: Intel can't get in the way of AMD's efforts to spin off their fabs in to Global Foundries. Up until AMD and Intel inked their own settlement, Intel intended to enforce provisions of AMD's x86 license that required them to do the vast majority of production in-house, which wasn't going to be possible if they spun-off their fabs.
The only way NVIDIA could end up with an x86 license out of this is that remedy 18 would allow VIA to transfer their x86 license, and in reality Intel has never fully acknowledged them having one. VIA only gets away with it because they have a couple of patents that are critical to Itanium, and those patents should be expiring soon.
So I don't know why the NYT is claiming that NVIDIA is going to get an x86 license out of this. This seems to be wild dreaming, or an attempt to generate traffic with ridiculous claims.
As a sociopath I take offense to that! We try to be safe drivers too you know; I don't know about you, but I don't want to get blood splatters all over my car.
As it turns out, you don't need to be the government to get access to restricted data. If you read TFA (it's a good read), there are a few instances where the Hunters managed to get data that they shouldn't have, and in fact very likely illegally obtained it. They got the license plate from his car and his flight itineraries, swearing up and down in both cases that it wasn't illegal (which is a strong sign that it in fact was).
You don't need to be the government to track someone, there are plenty of people willing to commit crimes to access the same resources to find you.
Nah, it's fine. Since you can't get on Live you can't download stuff to fill up the drive anyhow.
This is a bit off topic, but is anyone else tickled pink by Appulous's "troll bridge"? Due to the user load, they've implemented what amounts to a nerd-captcha on the front page to keep non-nerds out of the site. Since it's a nerd quiz, the questions are hilarious. Yesterday the question was how to join their IRC channel, and today it's how to rename a folder.
I'm sure someone is leaking the answers the first chance they get, but the notion of a nerd quiz to gain access to a site is a riot.
I don't think you quite understand. Outside of a very specific (and very old) version of the 360's firmware*, it's not possible to execute unsigned code on the 360. You cannot at this moment cheat on XBL through the use of any kind of unsigned code. The only ways to cheat involve taking advantage of exploits already in the game, and screwing with network connections.
The only thing MS is doing here is banning pirates, which isn't as noble as banning cheaters as some people here believe. But hey, MS can do what they want.
* And even then, you still can't run unsigned code within the normal OS. It's basically a way to load another OS, such as Linux, which means you have the PS2/PS3 situation
Speaking of Brazilian power failures, Brazil had another major power failure yesterday. Power from the Itaipu dam was cut off, which apparently put millions of people in the dark as it generates something like 14GW. Itaipu blames the Brazilian grid, meanwhile Brazilian officials aren't sure what it was, but are protesting any idea that it was sabotage/hacking. Paraguay and Uruguay also get power from Itaipu and were similarly affected.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/11/11/brazil.blackout/index.html
Seriously, you're going to make this argument in 2009?
Being able to sell music in a reasonable manner hasn't been a problem for 10 years. eMusic, CD Baby, etc gladly cater to the independents, and there are ways to roll your own solution. If you make music and want to sell it, there's nothing stopping you from doing it right now. That is in my book a free and fair market.
Just because you don't like who the industry decides to back with advertising dollars, doesn't mean that it's not a free market. People are in fact voluntarily spending their money on big-label acts like Britney Spears.
I don't know why the editors didn't include a link to it, but AnandTech has a much better review of the SATA 6G-equipped motherboard and its performance; one that actually gets around to doing real-world tests and not just synthetic tests. It turns out that the 6G Marvell controller is slower than the standard Intel ICH10 controller in virtually all cases. Until someone integrates SATA 6G in to a proper motherboard chipset, it's not just performance limited, it's performance degrading.
It's a fairly complex issue among Nintendo fans, but I'll try to break it down.
When it was launched, the DS was an experimental console, Nintendo's so-called "3rd leg". Nintendo had no significant faith in it, but threw it out there anyhow as an experiment while working on a proper Game Boy.
One consequence of this is that the components of the DS weren't necessarily picked as they would have been for a handheld designed to match the long life of a Game Boy. Nintendo made the DS underpowered, with a 66MHz ARM9, 4MB of RAM, and a 3D rasterizer that was hard-capped at 2048 polygons per frame with only nearest-neighbor texture filtering. Granted this sounded more impressive in 2004 than it does now, but they could have (and would have) used more powerful components if they expected the console to last.
As it stands, the hardware isn't as powerful as a Nintendo 64 or a PS1, and most attempts at full-3D games are downright pitiful because of this limit (the good ones, like Mario Kart, use a lot of sprites to hide this, but that strategy only works for certain kinds of games). So you're left largely with 2D games. And I like 2D games, but a certain degree of monotony sets in after a while as no one is pushing any boundries, not to mention the sheer amount of shovelware the platform generates.
Compounding this issue is the fact that Nintendo did finally do something about the hardware this year with the DSi, ramping up the clock speed of the ARM9 to 133MHz, and quadrupling the RAM to 16MB. Performance-wise, this is a token change, especially since the 3D rasierizer is still capped at 2048 polygons per frame. The additions were mainly to give the console enough extra umph that it can play with its camera.
But at the same time, it creates a clear difference in hardware classes, one Nintendo is going to exploit. There will be (and in fact may already be released) DSi-only games, which pisses off the DS Lite owners to no end, because they are now faced with being unable to play all new games for the thinnest of reasons. These people aren't going to buy the DSi, both because unlike the DS Fat to DS Lite transition the new console isn't clearly better for their needs (the Lite's screens were much better, and it was actually pocketable), and because they resent the upgrade treadmill.
Meanwhile in Sony-land, manufacturing technology has finally caught up with the ridiculously overbuilt PSP, which was an absolute brick when launched. The Go has some pricing/design issues, but fundamentally it finally gets Sony's near-PS2 hardware down to a size and battery life on-par with the DS. So DS owners are looking across the field at a handheld that's nearly a next-gen part, and they want that - they want some solid 3D games in their handheld gaming diet. Of course the grass isn't really greener on the other side since North American PSP game development has slowed to a crawl (and so few of the games are gems in the first place), but the hardware potential is clearly there.
This brings us to TFA. A new DS variant signals that Nintendo is remaining committed to the DS for at least another year, as they don't want to commission a new design and have it languish on the shelves. So this means that any hope of a "DS2" just got pushed back to at least 2011, which is pushing the frustration level over the top. The enthusiasts see what the PSP, the iPhone, etc are doing, and they want a DS with proper 3D capabilities, while Nintendo is signaling that they don't intend to deliver it any time soon. They don't want to abandon the platform, so they do the only thing they can do given their situation: they complain. And thus you have TFA.
On a side note, some of the complaining in this case is a product of just how silly this change is. The DS screen is only 256x192 pixels, which even at the original 3" size was pretty coarse (dot pitch: 0.24mm, and your head maybe a foot away). At 4" diagonal, this only gets worse. You end up with a screen with a dot pitch of 0.3175mm, and with your head at the same distan
It's on Intel's roadmaps, but bear in mind it's 2+ generations down. You'd be looking at a 22nm Atom at the earliest.
The A5 will be outdated and replaced by the time Intel gets the Atom in to phones. So the A5 doesn't really change anything.
This strikes me as desperation. Solid Oak Software obviously can't sue the violator, who is China proper, so they're suing any 3rd party they can find.
As far I can tell, the ZDNet China site is basically the same thing as Download.com, CBS American freeware/shareware/trialware download site. If this is the case, then CBS isn't directly making any money off of offering the software since they aren't selling it (they do however get ad money). It's freeware, and CBS would have no way of knowing that it contained copyright-infringing code. To add insult to injury, Solid Oak wants the full price ($40) of their own filtering software awarded to them as damages, for each copy downloaded from ZDNet China.
If this goes to trial and Solid Oak were to win, it would end up being a precedent-setting event. What Solid Oak is basically arguing is that 3rd parties are fully liable for any copyright violations in the software they distribute. That would immediately make download sites such as Download.com, FilePlanet, and MajorGeeks an impossible thing to offer. And who knows, maybe even Linux mirrors would be liable if some Linux component/package was found to be violating copyright?
If Solid Oak has their way, the idea of rehosting free (as in beer) software is dead.
Kudos once again to Slashdot for being so on top of things. MMS was launched nearly 24 hours ago, if it was going to crash AT&T's network it would have (notice the use of past-tense), not will it. This is an interesting topic, but don't post an article speculating about some future event some 24 hours after it happened.
Anyhow, for the matter at hand, did it crash AT&T's network? No, but it got close. Where I am 3G was damn near unusable all Friday afternoon, and even EDGE was slow. I'm told by the silly people that actually pay AT&T's exorbitant fees for their it's-not-quite-data services (SMS/MMS) that SMS and especially MMS have been unreliable today. People are able to send, but not necessarily receive. Some of this I'm sure goes back to network issues, while other parts are probably just AT&T's SMS/MMS servers being overwhelmed.
Although to be fair to AT&T, I doubt anyone could have done significant better. Certainly there's room for improvement, but iPhones are data-hogs. Anyone else (e.g. Verizon) would be facing similar network issues if they suddenly flipped a switch that let nearly 10 million hogs suddenly consume even more bandwidth.
No.
It's MIPS. The GBA emulator is a port of the PSP's GBA emulator, since the PSP's CPU was also MIPS.
As Gabe of Penny Arcade said it best: Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad.
Ultimately it catches up to anything. Forums, blogs, and now Wikipedia. I'm not sure this is a good change for Wikipedia, but at some point you have to do something to stop the fuckwads from completely tagging the place.
Because the ability to run unsigned code directly on the hardware (e.g. not sandboxed as a user of the OS) is both great for homebrew development and the fundamental building block of a pure software loader for pirated games, this development is going to scare the hell out of the bean counters and the department heads. They're going to have to deploy most (if not all) of the tricks left in their bag of countermeasures, otherwise inside of a year the 360 will end up like the Wii and the Xbox 1 - completely and utterly cracked open for piracy.
As the Free60 homepage has already noted, MS has deployed an update to the first stage of the bootloader, something they've never done before. Such an update is risky because if it fails there is no chance for recovery, it's the equivalent of failing at a BIOS update on a PC. However it's also an effect update; it blocks the only publicly known low-level security hole in the 360, so systems with the new bootloader are fully locked down. Adding even more fuel to the fire is that this was probably one of Microsoft's last unused countermeasures, as no one in the 360 hacking community is immediately aware of any other similar countermeasures. MS may have just played their trump card as far as DRM on the 360 is concerned.
Anyhow, the point of all of this is that this is an excellent and quite scary example of increasingly improved DRM systems being deployed. It's taken just shy of 4 years to crack open the 360 to just this point, and MS has shown the ability to lock it back down with a single update*, one that they'll undoubtedly bake in to new games too in order to snuff out as many vulnerable 360s as possible. In spite of the fact that no DRM system thus far is perfect, this is clear example of where the future of DRM lies: it's going to get better.
Pay close attention to what happens to the 360, because where Microsoft succeeds with DRM is going to show up in other systems. The Zune, the iPhone, the next generation of consoles, cable set top boxes, etc, are all looking for the holy grail of DRM. And every time they fail, they get a little bit closer. With enough failures under their belts, one of these days they may no longer fail.
* The lack of the ability to fully update the bootloader is the biggest flaw in the Xbox1 and Wii. In the case of the Wii, boot1 has a signing bug and is hardcoded - any system with the faulty boot1 can ultimately be cracked by replacing boot2 with a vulnerable loader, such as BootMii
If that's what TFA says, then it's full of it. The design of Bloomfield/P55 is such that there are 16 PCIe lanes coming straight from the CPU, and then another 4 lanes coming off of the P55 chipset, routed back up to the CPU through whatever interconnect Intel is using (it is in effect just a Southbridge, with the Northbridge integrated in to the CPU). This is because Bloomfield was intended to be used with a single x16 PCIe slot, it's a mid-range product. Nehalem/X58 is Intel's high-end product, and it has a much faster QPI connection coming off of the CPU to interface with a proper Northbridge to feed more PCIe lanes.
So what you have to do is split the 16 lanes in to two sets of 8 lanes, and then use those lanes to make two x16 slots that only have half the bandwidth they're supposed to (something the PCIe standard allows). That's why the Intel chipsets will be limited to 8 lanes.
The NVIDIA chipset mentioned is the NF200, which is a PCIe bridge. It would sit at the end of the 16 lanes coming from the CPU, and in turn offer 32 lanes (2x16) for PCIe slots. This gives you the full 16 lanes of bandwidth to each slot, but it doesn't get you any more bandwidth to the CPU. You still only have 16 lanes of bandwidth to the CPU. The only advantage to using a bridge chip is that it means the full bandwidth of the CPU can be dynamically allocated to a single PCIe slot, and that two PCIe devices can communicate with each other at full speed (the NF200 also has a few SLI commands that make sending data out from the CPU faster by automatically replicating it to the two slots). This does little to solve the fact that you have too little bandwidth in the first place, which is why you won't see the NF200 used too much. Plus bridges add latency and complexity to motherboard designs.
As for why a license is needed at all: because NVIDIA says so. Their products won't work in SLI mode unless they see a license or a NF200 bridge chip (which is an automatic buy-in for SLI). It's a scummy system really, the license doesn't actually do anything. At best it means some token testing was done to make sure SLI worked, when if you build to PCIe spec it would work anyhow.
Just how many domains do they think they're going to be selling? At competitive rates you'd have to sell tens of thousands just to keep a single person employed to maintain the TLD, never mind having some money to give away.
I'd expect it to be like any other OS X release: Full support as long as it's the leading version, followed by limited support (just security updates) when it's the previous version, and finally all support is dropped when it's two versions back. So its support life would be as long as 10.6 is the leading version.
The FTC/DOJ would be far more interested in Schmidt since he's not just on both boards, but he's an employee for one of the companies. The primary issue they're seeking to prevent is collusion, which is would usually be accomplished by company employees sitting on each others' boards. A common 3rd party board member on two similar companies is also an issue, but it's not nearly as pressing of an issue since they aren't an employee.
Or to put this another way, they're handling one thing at a time.
Let's try this again (note to self: need more coffee):
With enough force and against a particularly non-flat object, absolutely.
With enough force and against a particularly against a non-flat object, absolutely.
That makes absolutely no damned sense. At some point it has to hit the carrier's network, otherwise the phone can't receive it in the first place.