User: reporter

Not Funny: Fascist Nation Makes Leap Into Space

On: China Plans Manned Space Flight October 15

Definitely, the Chinese advancement into space is alarming because the Chinese space agency is an integral part of the military agencies in China. By contrast, NASA in the USA is a civilian effort. The MSNBC article reports that the Chinese space effort is super-secretive and that its astronauts receive training via a military program.

As well, you can be sure that Taiwan supplied China with many of the key technologies that accelerated its space program. Numerous Taiwanese living in the USA have been arrested over the years on charges of spying on behalf of mainland China. Some of those arrests involved the theft of American aerospace technology.

To understand why the Chinese space effort is ominous, you need to read no further than the article, "China Detains Health Official for Publicizing AIDS Coverup". Within the same month that the Chinese express fascist pride at their ability to challenge democracies like the USA in space technology, the Chinese arrested and imprisoned a person who revealed an AIDS coverup. This person revealed information that the Chinese were trying to sell AIDS-tained blood products to Americans in 1993-1994.

... from the desk of the reporter

Ethnical Considerations in Spinning off SPS

On: Motorola To Spin Off Chip Division

In all the technical discussion, we have overlooked the ethical aspect of this spinoff. Clearly, the Semiconductor Products Sector (SPS) is not performing well, and Motorola could have simply downsized the division, firing thousands of loyal, hardworking American employees. However, instead of acting in this ruthless way, Motorola decided to spin off the SPS into a separate company so that it has a fighting chance to survive and to enable its employees to pay the house mortgage, braces for the kids, etc.

IBM did the same thing with its old printer division. IBM spun off the division into a separate company, Lexmark.

In this age where many companies like Sun, Cisco, and Intel favor H-1B workers and deliberately create a work environment with brutal, cutthroat competition, it is nice to know that some companies like Motorola and IBM still try to cling to some shred of humanity that once characterized the finest American companies.

... from the desk of the reporter

A Chance in a Lifetime for Open-Source Community!

On: Will Vanderpool Make Linux More Popular?

Right now, the open-source community has a golden opportunity to determine the direction of processor development at Intel. It is pondering how best to support virtual machines (VMs) and will integrate VM support into the upcoming processor called Vanderpool.

Would anyone in the audience be willing to start a GNU version of a virtual machine monitor (VMM)? Writing a VMM only takes tens of thousands of lines of code as opposed to tens of millions of lines for an operating system. The project could be done within a year. Take a cue from the work done on Disco, the VMM developed at Stanford University.

Then, we in the open-source community could feedback to Intel what we want in terms of support for VMM. We could even get help from our uncle, IBM. IBM invented VMs and VMMs back in the 1960s. Unlike Sun Microsystems, IBM has been a strong supporter of the open-source movement and Linux and would surely be willing to help in building a GNU version of VMM.

This is a golden opportunity for the open-source community to impact the future direction of processor development. Is anyone up to the challenge? Would anyone like to accrue the same fame that Linus Torvalds has?

... from the desk of the reporter

Other side of computing: Linux running on G5

On: Apple's Dual 2GHz By The Numbers

The article states the following.

It's clear from two weeks of testing that Apple's new Power Mac G5 dual 2-GHz machine is the fastest thing the company has ever produced.

The new G5 from Apple is more than merely "fast". It is a workstation in its own right. In "Byte of the Apple", "Businessweek" notes that the new Macintoshes are, in fact, UNIX workstations. The notebooks based on G5s are, in fact, portable UNIX workstations.

Steve Jobs, if he had any sense, would be marketing these machines as workstations instead of mere personal computers. With 64-bit processors, these machines are fully capable of handling engineering workloads like Verilog, HSPICE, fluid-dynamics simulation, etc.

Right now, a tidal wave of Linux-on-x86 machines is drowning Sun Microsystems in the workstation market. It sure would be nice to see a G5 take some market share bled from Sun Microsystems. In fact, it would be ideal to see a Linux-driven G5 take market share.

... from the desk of the reporter

Ethical Issues When Buying Commodities (like Pens)

On: When Word Processors Are Out: What's The Best Pen?

A fellow Slashdotter asks the following.

What [pen] do [sic] the geeks of Slashdot use for writing?

Pens, like toothpaste and batteries, are a commodity. Most pens are identical in function, quality, and price.

So, which pen do we buy? In general, when we purchase a commodity, we should base our decision almost solely on ethical issues. What ethical issue? The issue is the country where the pen is manufactured. When we buy products made in a particular country, we indirectly lend our support to its value system. In particular, we should avoid products that are "Made in China" (which includes "Made in Taiwan" and "Made in Hong Kong"). You can find many reasons for avoiding products "Made in China" by visiting Amnesty International and Tibet Online".

You can also find some reasons at CNN. According to "Kill and cull: China rejects doctor's testimony", the Chinese forcibly remove the organs and skin from non-consenting prisoners on death row. Sometimes, Chinese "doctors" remove all the skin while the prisoner is awake and conscious. The bulk of the customers who receive these organs come from Taiwan.

... from the desk of the reporter

O.J. Simpson trial versus SCO trial

On: SGI Code Changes Not Enough, Says SCO

Here is the key quote.

In response, SCO's director of public relations, Blake Stowell, told vnunet.com: "Making minor amendments to its XFS file system doesn't cure the breach. SGI must do more as outlined [in the August letter] to cure all of their breaches."

In addition to outlasting the murder trial of O. J. Simpson, the trial of SCO vs. Linux Allies will be far more complicated and cost millions of dollars in expert witnesses.

In the trial of O. J. Simpson, the issue was simple. Did Simpson have a motive to kill his wife and did he kill his wife?

In the SCO trial, we are dealing with subtle technical issues and shades of gray. How does one define "minor amendment"? Certainly, no one on the jury will have a clue. The only exposure that an average American has to an operating system (OS) is the color pictures representing icons in Windows. She has no knowledge of kernel-level code.

What will happen is that SCO, IBM, and (apparently now) SGI will subpoena expert witnesses to support or refute the claim that something is a "minor amendment" to the kernel code, but the jury will be dazed as it tries to figure out who is telling the truth on something that the juror has no knowledge. The professors at Carnegie-Mellon University will earn a small bundle of money in serving as expert witnesses in the geek equivalent of the "trial of the century". The court itself will need to hire computer-science professors to explain the intricate details of how an OS works.

Above all, you will see bearded and balding 50-year-old programmers waxing nostalgic about the parts of UNIX that they coded.

... from the desk of the reporter

HIV-Smallpox Interplay =~ Asthma-Measles Interplay

On: Smallpox Vaccine Could Prevent AIDS

The fascinating quote is below.

Based on the natural history or spread of HIV in Africa, Weinstein and Alibek proposed that declining immunological responses to smallpox -- due to the elimination of the disease and the discontinuation of immunizations -- may have been associated with the emergence of HIV.

This observation bears an uncanny resemblance to the observation that eliminating various childhood diseases causes a person to later become susceptible to other illnesses. Please visit the web site, "MEDIA REPORTS ASK THE QUESTION: IS THE CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE? ". In "Plagued by Cures", "The Economist" observes that the incidence of asthma rose sharply after the elimination of measles, for example.

I would wager good money that Dr. Raymond Weinstein has stumbled onto the cure for AIDS. Please read "Smallpox Vaccine Could Prevent AIDS". All previous attempts tried to attack HIV directly but failed because the virus (1) mutates too rapidly for vaccinations to succeed or (2) cleverly hides in remote cells that anti-viral drugs cannot reach. On the other hand, this proposal by Weinstein to use smallpox vaccination to close the door (i. e. the CCR5 receptor) to HIV infection instead of killing the virus directly just might stop HIV infection.

I am optimistic.

... from the desk of the reporter

SPARC64-V Buys Time For Sun: It's Critical Now

On: Merrill Lynch Rips Sun

The key quote is the following.

Sun's mistakes are well documented, but the biggest one is believing that what made them successful in the past would make them successful in the future."

If that is the biggest mistake, then the second biggest mistake is the processor-design team. According to "Sun's processor plans slip a notch", the schedule of the UltraSPARC processors has slipped again. The processor-design team has 2 characteristics: chronically behind schedule and chronically behind the performance curve. Right now, the UltraSPARC III is being crushed, performance-wise, by the Power4+ and the SPARC64-V, according to SPEC".

Yet, McNealy stubbornly clings to the UltraSPARC III. If he knew how to run Sun, he would immediately scrap the UltraSPARC III and successors and tell his server team to use the SPARC64-V. He could come out with an E15K that just barely competes against the p690 in about 2 months. The SPARC64-V is instruction-set compatiable with the UltraSPARC III and vastly outperforms it, and modifying the E15K and other Sun servers to use the SPARC64-V is a simple matter.

Time is extremely critical. Sun itself claims that it will lose about 10 cents per share for the first quarter. 10 cents per share means a loss of about $300 million. Extrapolating to the full fiscal year means a loss of about $1.2 billion. In order to compensate for that loss, Sun will need to fire about 6000 employees.

The only conceivable reason that McNealy refuses to abandon the UltraSPARC III is that he fervently supports a workforce weighted in favor of H-1B workers. Sun has many H-1B employees, and they built the UltraSPARC III. By contrast, Fujitsu uses native workers (i.e. Japanese citizens), and they built the SPARC64-V. (IBM also prefers American citizens or permanent residents, and they built the Power4).

McNealy better put aside his ego and go with the SPARC64-V. It is the fastest, safest route to boosting Sun's fortunes. In the future, he should consider giving preference to American workers, not H-1B workers. There is no evidence to suggest that H-1B workers are better than American ones; indeed, H-1B workers might actually be destroying Sun as evidenced by the horribly designed UltraSPARC III.

Most importantly, the SPARC64-V will buy time for McNealy. Maybe 1 year or 2 years of breathing room. Then, he can make the hard decision of spinning off the processor-development group and transforming Sun into a niche player that focuses on two areas: software applications and highend-servers that use Fujitsu processors (or, gasp, IBM processors) designed by native talent. Other possibilities have been thoughtfully outlined by Merrill Lynch, the premier American investment company.

... from the desk of the reporter

Key Question: Collapsing or Expanding Universe

On: Dark Matter's Profile Discovered?

Scientific theories bounce back and forth between two possible fates for the universe. One possibility is that it expands forever, and all usable energy fades away into useless entropy. The other possibility is that the universe eventually collapses back into a singularity, and everything will explode back into space and time, ad infinium.

Do the new revelations about dark matter now prove that there is sufficient mass (both regular matter and dark matter) to cause the universe to collapse back into a singularity? Will SlashDot appear again in the new universe that emanates from the next Big Bang?

if Google==StarTrek Computer, then Microsoft==M5

On: Is Google's Future: Star Trek?

Here is the key quote.

The NLP required for this is far off, but it sure will be cool when we get there.

This degree of natural language processing (NLP) is far beyond the current state of the art. Google, with its miniscule research budget, is not likely to invent the technology any time soon even though Google appears to favor H-1B workers over American workers.

Here is where Microsoft steps into the picture. Microsoft is currently building a R & D laborary that is the equal of the former Bell Laboratories before the breakup of Ma Bell. Like the old Ma Bell, Microsoft is a monopoly and earns monopoly profits that it invests into research. Microsoft is investing $6.8 billion into research and is hiring an additional 5000 researchers. Microsoft is conducting the kind of long-term R & D that once characterized Thomas J. Watson Laboratory at IBM and will surely snare a Nobel Prize or two.

Right now, American Ph.D. graduates who want to work on long-term research in industry choose Microsoft as their #1 pick for employer.

Microsoft will create the NLP search engine of the future and will bury Google.

... from the desk of the reporter

SCO's Case has Merit BUT Linux will Still Prosper

On: SGI's Letter to the Linux Community

The key quote in the SGI letter is the following.

Over the past four years, SGI has released over a million lines of code under an open source license. Throughout, we have carried out a rigorous internal process to ensure that all software contributed by SGI represents code we are legally entitled to release as open source.

Many Linux bigots have criticized the involvment of American companies in the development of Linux because, according to the bigots, the companies will end up in controlling the development of Linux. However, a benefit of involving American companies is that they ensure that any new Linux code will be free of copyright infringement. You can be sure that IBM, SGI, and a host of other American companies ensure that they employees (under threat of employment termination) will not submit code that represents theft of intellectual property.

The same cannot be said of lone programmers working on their own. There really is no way for Linus, all by himself, to verify that each submitted piece of Linux code neither violates copyrights nor represents theft of intellectual property. This issue is particularly worrisome in the case of lone programmers or commerical companies based in China (which includes Taiwan province and Hong Kong). The Chinese regularly steal intellectual property or infringe copyrights: e. g. rate of software piracy in China is 90%.

The lawsuit by SCO against IBM certainly has some merit in the sense that Linux code likely contains some infringing code. Still, as the open letter by SGI implies, replacing the infringing code is a simple matter. We could easily get a Ph.D. student in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University to quickly re-write any disputed code in Linux. It really is that simple.

Furthermore, SCO itself distributed all the Linux code under the GNU Public License (GPL). If the GPL is enforceable, then SCO does not have a case. From both angles (enforceability of the GPL and the super ease of re-writing the disputed code),the case by SCO will not destroy Linux. Linux will still prosper and dominate the UNIX market, destroying Sun Microsystems. The only entity that might suffer is IBM; it might cough up a few million dollars in penalties and fire several employees who released the disputed code into Linux distribution.

... from the desk of the reporter

But it is GOOD NEWS for Linux and Democracy

On: South Korea Jumps To Open Source Software

Finally, a large government has adopted this kind of standard.

The Korean decision to move to open source was likely motivated by last week's surprise decision by NTT to migrate its server setup from Solaris to Linux and to aggressively develop Linux. NTT joined the Open Source Development Laboratory to improve Linux code, according to "NTT Mulls Joining Global Consortium For Linux Development".

Despite all the racist Korean hatred against the Japanese, the Koreans habitually emulate the Japanese. For example, all the Korean chaebols like Samsung are duplicates of the conglomerates that operated in pre-WWII Japan. Samsung emulates most of the technological trends of its Japanese competitors. Further, NTT commands wide respect in Korea itself, and its decision to support Linux certainly spurred the Koreans to follow suit.

The only losers in this whole affair are Microsoft and, of course, Sun Microsystems. As a company, Sun Microsystems may not survive past 2005, given that it is now expected to lose about $1 billion in FY2004. (reference: "Sun warns of hefty loss")

On a side note, the Koreans supporting Linux is good news for democracy in Korea. Korea has been a totalitarian dictatorship up until about 10 years ago; Korea still has the largest and best equipped military force in Asia. Since Linux is open-source, it would be impossible for the Korean government (or any other government, for that matter) to arbitrarily stick a piece of spy software into Linux to monitor its citizens.

Hopefully, the Koreans will abandon that conspiratory project with the Chinese to develop an independent operating system (OS) that is incompatible with Linux. (reference: "Asian trio to replace Windows") Such an OS would be a convenient place for the Chinese (including the Taiwanese and Hong Kongers) to stick a piece of spy software to monitor its citizens.

... from the desk of the reporter

Internet Beats Any Dead Tree for Information

On: Is the Internet Your Source of Knowledge?

How much do you rely on the Internet for information?

I rely almost exclusively on the Internet for information. In general, the Internet provides the same level and the same quality of information as regular physical media like newspapers. The difference is that the Internet is more easily accessed due to search-engines like AltaVista.

Before the Internet, when I discuss with my colleagues (at the American political institute with which I am affiliated) important issues, I often have a difficulty time in locating key references on which I based my analyses. Locating references took an enormous amount of time and entailed driving to the university library, looking up data in the microfiche, and finding the key news article.

After the Internet, I just need to go on-line and search for what I want. For example, using Internet references, I created the compelling web page about Taiwanwithin only about 3 days. I was able to quickly locate the news articles that I had previously read. No more driving to the library. Everything is on-line.

Of course, we still must be careful to discern rubbish information and valid information. There are many "National Enquirer" types of news sources of the web. We must be careful to stick to the best sources: "Washington Post", "The Economist", "Amnesty International", etc.

... from the desk of the reporter

2 Lessons from UHDTV: Adult Videos and H-1Bs

On: Ultra High Definition Video

High [sic] Definition Porn
YES!
oh, and Star Trek will look nice as well.

There are 2 unusual lessons from the development of digital video. The first lesson is that pornography is the driver of improvements in video equipment -- from VCRs to HDTVs. Adult video is something that you simply must see -- with the eyes. If the resolution improves by 50%, then the porn video becomes 50% better. Adult video is a multibillion industry if you measure all the videos produced in the world.

The second lesson is that there is simply no justification, whatsoever, for allowing H-1B workers to work in the United States of America (USA). Allow me to explain.

We are all familiar with the comparison between the UltraSPARC III and the SPARC64-V. The management of Sun Microsystems says that it absolutely must have H-1B employees in order to build the "best" microprocessor, the UltraSPARC III. By comparision, Fujitsu hires almost exclusively native employees (i. e. Japanese citizens) and used native employees (not foreign workers) to build the SPARC64-V. It implements the same insruction set that the UltraSPARC III implements but significantly outperforms the UltraSPARC III on 3 key benchmarks: SPECint2000, SPECfp2000, and TPC-C. Please verify the performance characteristics of the SPARC64-V at the web site for SPEC and the web site for TPC-C.

Another interesting example is high-definition television (HDTV) Please read "The History and Politics of DTV".

The typical foreigner claims that H-1B workers help to give American companies a technological edge to create whole new industries. The typical foreigner claims that foreign workers helped the Americans to leapfrog the Japanese in the area of HDTV. The Japanese had established an HDTV standard prior to 1989 and had begun broadcasting HDTV programs by 1989, but this standard was based on analog techniques. In the 1990s, the Americans developed an HDTV standard based on digital techniques. The foreigners claim that foreign brainpower helped the USA to leap ahead of Japan.

Not really. Once the HDTV standard based on digital techniques was established, the Japanese (and the Koreans) commercialized the technology. Most of the HDTV products that you see in the USA are manufactured in Japan (and Korea).

The lesson here is that, "even if" terminating H-1B employment may diminish American innovation and simultaneously increase innovation in India (for example), the Indians may not be able to effectively commercialize the technology. Given the superiority (e.g., low rate of software piracy) of Western society, the Americans would be able to out-commerialze any innovation that appears in India before the Indians achieve commercialization.

The phrase "even if" is used because there is simply no evidence to suggest that terminating H-1B employement will diminish American innovation. Innovation is a hard thing to predict -- for the very reason that creativity is hard to predict. For example, Japan was initially ahead in HDTV by using analog techniques in the 1980s; at the time, many "experts" predicted that the USA would fall permanently behind in HDTV technology. Nonetheless, the USA raced ahead in HDTV by using digital techniques. Now, Japan is ahead again by pushing the envelope of HDTV technology to create ultra HDTV.

... from the desk of the reporter

Many Players in Search-Engine Market:Consolidation

On: Amazon to Take on Google?

The market for search engines has a very low barrier to entry. Now, Amazon is creating a search engine and is joining the ranks of Google, Yahoo, Overture Services, AltaVista, Lycos, AskJeeves, Microsoft, etc. Please read "Google and VMWare take Microsoft Very Seriously".

Is the search-engine business of sufficient size to support 8+ players? Given the fact that the search engines of several of the players are very similar, the answer is "probably not". The market for search engines will undergo consolidation, and the main survivor will probably be Microsoft. It has an R&D budget that none of the other competitors can match.

You can be sure that Google is rapidly working towards an initial public offering (IPO) while there is still a chance for an IPO.

... from the desk of the reporter

NTT's Plans: Good for Linux but Bad for Sun

On: NTT Joins OSDL

Within Japan, NTT laboratories have the same respect (among researchers) that AT&T laboratories once had before the breakup of Ma Bell. NTT joining the Open Source Development Laboratory (OSDL) to develop Linux will surely help to raise Linux's visibility and acceptance among Japanese high-technology companies. Moreover, NTT's work aggressively developing Linux at the OSDL will help to ensure the ultimate failure of Chinese attempts to recruit Japanese and Korean researchers to build an independent operating system (OS) that is incompatible with Windows or Linux. Please read "Asian trio to replace Windows".

Further, NTT joining the OSDL is extremely bad news for Sun Microsystems. NTT currently uses Solaris to run its group servers, but NTT is clearly committed to migrating all its servers from Solaris to Linux. NTT is the beginning of the Linux avalanche that will lock Sun computer systems out of the telecommunications market. (reference: " NTT Mulls Joining Global Consortium For Linux Development")

... from the desk of the reporter

Blasphemy = Truth: True Inventor of Microprocessor

On: 30th Anniversary of the Microcomputer

Sometimes, historical facts challenge our cherished views of reality. The first microcomputer is the MCM/70, not the Altair 8800, but many engineers want to believe that the Altair 8800 is the first microcomputer.

The field of microprocessors has a similar controversy. Intel frequently portrays itself as the inventor of the microprocessor because, supposedly, Ted Hoff and Frederico Faggin invented it when they were Intel employees.

In 1978, the United States Patent Office (USPTO) granted Texas Instruments a patent for a version of a microprocessor developed by Gary Boone, an employee. He had filed the patent in 1971.

In 1990, the USPTO granted Gilbert Hyatt a patent on another version of a microprocessor; he had initially filed the patent in 1970. His work pre-dates the work by Hoff and Faggin.

In 1996, the USPTO rescinded the patent granted to Hyatt and designated Gary Boone as the official inventor of the microprocessor. In short, neither Hoff nor Faggin are the first inventors of the microprocessor, yet we in the Slashdot community have heaped undeserved praise on them.

For further information, please read "Micro, Micro: Who Made The Micro?", "1970s -- The Altair/Apple Era", and "Processor Talk".

... from the desk of the reporter

Human Behavior: Selfishness' not Only Factor

On: Socionomics: the Science of History and Social Prediction

So everyone should be a rational economizer, busy calculating their individual costs and benefits, and acting accordingly. Right?

Wrong. Human economic motivation is driven by two principal impulses: selfishness and compassion. Still, there is considerable variation across societies.

First consider Western society. Capitalism and free markets are essentially driven by selfishness. Each consumer and producer wants to maximize her own gain, regardless of the outcome to other consumers and producers. Adam Smith claims that selfishness is the only driving force. Is he right? Of course, not. Western consumers frequently prefer to buy environmentally friendly products that are neither the cheapest nor the highest quality. When organizations like the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition advertise that certain companies receive a failing grade on how they recycle used computers, those failing companies suffer a drop in sales. Furthermore, Western consumers frequently donate money and time to organizations like Amnesty International (AI) yet receive no product or service in return. So, clearly, compassion is a strong component of economic motivation.

However, the degree of selfishness and compassion varies across societies. Consider Taiwanese society. When Westerners like the Americans withheld investments from China after the brutal incident at Tienanmen Square in 1989 in order to force Beijing to change, the Taiwanese immediately seized this window of opportunity and poured money and technology into China, completely thwarting any American economic sanctions. (reference: "Reality of Taiwan") Note also that all the Taiwanese companies mentioned in the environmental study done by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition received failing grades. Why? Most Chinese in China (which includes Taiwan province and Hong Kong) simply do not care about the environment. They prefer to buy the cheapest product even if it damages the environment. Since the main customers of the Taiwanese companies do not care about the environment, those companies will do nothing to protect the environment. As for human-rights organizations like AI, most Chinese reject its principles. The Chinese are overrepresented in the business and engneering colleges of American universities but are underrepresented in meetings of AI. (You can verify this fact by just attending an AI meeting.) So, clearly, compassion is almost non-existent as a component of economic motivation in Chinese society.

Other societies fall somewhere between the two extremes of Western society and Chinese (or Taiwanese) society.

... from the desk of the reporter

Threat to Athlon64: Prescott (not Pentium 4)

On: Athlon 64 Debuts

Unfortunately for AMD, the upcoming Prescott by Intel could kill the Athlon64 -- and the UltraSPARC III. Please read "Prescott has 64-bit compatibility built in".

AMD created the 3DNow! extensions to the 80x86 instruction set architecture (ISA), also known as IA-32. They were a significant improvement over the original set of MMX extensions. However, later, Intel created the SSE (and SSE2) extensions. Guess what? AMD was forced to incorporate them into its future chips in addition to the 3DNow! extensions. Ignoring the SSE extensions would have cost AMD dearly in terms of marketshare. The fact of the matter is that Intel sets the global standard for the IA-32 ISA.

Now, AMD has created its own x86-64 extensions to the IA-32. You can be sure that Intel has created a different set of 64-bit extensions (which we shall call "INTEL-64") to the IA-32. After all, why would Intel support AMD in any way? Once Intel activates the INTEL-64 extensions in the upcoming Prescott, AMD will be forced to go back to the drawing board to incorporate the INTEL-64 into all future chips. The current Athlon64 will be like the K-5 -- interesting but without a future.

AMD will probably take an additional 2 years to produce an INTEL-64-compatiable chip. By that time, Intel would have locked 90% of the 64-bit desktop market with Prescott.

The worst news is for Sun. With Prescott, Intel has a 64 bit chip that will be significantly faster than the UltraSPARC III/IV. Right now, the Pentium 4 crushes the UltraSPARC III in performance. Please review the performance characteristics of the Pentium 4 at the SPEC web site. Since Prescott (successor to the Pentium 4) will be faster than its predecessor, Prescott will clean UltraSPARC's clock. Moreover, the number of applications that will run on Prescott -- the heir to the software empire of the x86 -- far exceeds the number of applications that run on UltraSPARC III/IV. On the key TPC-C benchmark, Prescott will clearly deliver outstanding performance, compared to the UltraSPARC III/IV.

In short, when Intel activates the INTEL-64 extensions in Prescott, Intel will force (1) AMD back to its usual state of borderline bankruptcy and (2) Sun into being a software company.

... from the desk of the reporter

News: IBM Crushing Sun at the High End of Market

On: Sun's Schwartz Speaks Out on Linux, SCO

Jonathan Schwartz is downsizing the importance of Linux and is upsizing the importance of Solaris due to one reason: collapsing sales of Sun servers that run Solaris. According to "Sun's lead in Unix servers sales shrinks", Sun's share of the UNIX market collapsed from 42.3% to 35.6%, but IBM's share skyrocketed from 17.8% to 22.8%. In "The Dell of Software?", even "The Economist" questions the survivability of Sun. Almost as if to confirm the worst doubts that "The Economist" mentions about the company, Sun announces that it will fire 1000 employees. Please read "Sun to lay off 1000".

According to "IBM steals server sales from Sun", IBM has been handily defeating Sun in its bread-and-butter market. As Sun's share of the UNIX server market shrinks, Sun itself shrinks. The worst is yet to come.

... from the desk of the reporter

Google and VMWare take Microsoft Very Seriously.

On: Microsoft Works on Search Capabilities

Unfortunately for Google, the market for doing Internet searches has a low barrier to entry. Just look at all the search engines that appeared after Yahoo. There is AltaVista, Lycos, AskJeeves, etc. Still, the search engine at Google sports advanced sorting and presentation algorithms that the aforementioned search companies could not match 3 years ago. Why? Those companies simply were interested in bringing any kind of search capability to market as soon as possible, regardless of how simple the search capability might be. Back then, we were in the midst of the Internet craze, and time-to-market was critical for delivering the unprofitable company to an initial public offering (IPO).

Now, times are different. Companies like Yahoo and especially Microsoft are aggressively investing in building the kinds of complex yet user-friendly search capabilities that Google has. Microsoft will soon have a search engine that rivals or exceeds the capabilities of Google's search engine. Google is doomed.

Internet-search tools is not the only market with a low barrier to entry. Another such market is the market for virtual machines. Consider the virtual machine monitor (VMM) sold by VM Ware. It did excellent marketing of a very simple idea -- and a very old idea. VMM was invented by IBM and has been around since the 1960s. The theory of VMM has been well documented and understood in the scientific literature. VMWare took the idea of VMM and simply applied it to the x86 chips. VMWare's genius is in marketing its product as though it were a revolutionary breakthrough. Most of its customers bought the marketing campaign with hook, line, and sinker.

Microsoft is now investing millions of dollars in VMMs and purchased the key VMM technologies from Connectix. Microsoft has succeeded in creating a VMM that rivals or exceeds the capabilities of the VMM sold by VMWare. VMWare is doomed.

Unlike both Google and VMWare, Microsoft has an R&D budget of billions of dollars. Microsoft can defeat both Google and VMWare in their respective markets. Despite public declarations to the contrary, both Google and VMWare are warily aware of Microsoft's R&D might and are working quickly towards an IPO while there is still chance for an IPO. If you buy stock in either Google or VMWare, you might as well just burn the money. It will be worthless.

... from the desk of the reporter

"Indiana Jones" says that Lucas has still got "it"

On: Principal Photography on Star Wars III Complete

Lucas' stroytelling prowess seems to have diminished with the ensuing decades after Jedi, but have they diminished this much?

The legions of fans of "Indiana Jones" would disagree. George Lucas co-created "Indiana Jones", and its stories exceed the quality of the stories of "Star Wars". The former has less sci-fi gadgetry and more human quality than the latter. The exception might be Star Wars IV.

... from the desk of the reporter

Processor-Intensive SW: Engineering Applications

On: Intel Demos New P4 'Extreme Edition'

This "extreme" version of the chip has to be aimed at a very niche market, at least for the next couple of years until more processor intensive software catches up.

The processor-intensive software is already here. It is called HSpice, Verilog, fluid-dynamics simulation, etc. The Pentium 4 has done nicely in the engineering workstation market, and the "Extreme Edition" should do even better.

Please check the SPEC web site for a performance evaluation of the Pentium 4's floating-point (FP) performance. In particular, it outperforms the UltraSPARC III even though the latter has a 2-to-1 advantage in the width of its databus -- 64 bits versus 32 bits.

What changed the x86 chips from also-ran losers in FP performance to the kings of the hill? SSE.

The SSE extension to the x86 instruction set architecture (ISA) opened up a whole new world of applications for the Pentium III and successors. Older Pentiums were saddled with a FP stack that hurt their performance. The SSE extension established a directly addressable bank of 8 128-bit registers or 32 32-bit registers for FP operations. As a result, the Pentium 4 outperforms the UltraSPARC III on video applications.

At 3.2 GHz, the "Extreme Edition" of the Pentium 4 should help the Pentium 4 to capture even more of the engineering workstation market. Nowadays, the first-choice workstation among engineers in Silicon Valley and Boston's Route 128 is Linux running on a fast Pentium/Athlon, not Solaris lumbering on a slow UltraSPARC III.

... from the desk of the reporter

Serious Implication for SCO vs. Linux and Friends

On: British Court Issues Bizarre Copyright Ruling

This British case has serious implications for the legal battle between SCO and Linux (and its supporters like IBM). If Navitaire wins, then SCO can claim (at least in England) that Linux code infringes on the functional ideas in SCO's UNIX. In other words, there is no way for a graduate student from Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU) to simply re-write the allegedly infringing code in Linux in order to remove the infringing aspect of the original code. Why? The re-written code would still function in the same way as the infringing code.

There is the distinct possibility that Linux will be stopped dead in its tracks in England. Then, of course, the only market where Sun and its Solaris operating system can earn money is England since Linux would be nonexistant there.

... from the desk of the reporter

GPL'ed Version vs. Sun's Package

On: Sun Tries Subscription Software Pricing

The announcement by Sun almost begs the following question. Does anyone have a comparison of the new Sun package and the equivalent software under GPL (GNU Public License)? The latter is free, but the former is not. Is the former a sufficiently big improvement over the latter to justify a charge of $100 per employee.

Most Web servers run Apache. You can get a more expensive web server from Sun, but does it have a significant advantage over Apache?

... from the desk of the reporter