Well I can only answer that with an anecdote, but from a friend that worked for awhile at a GS to get some extra cash the answer to that question would depend on this one...is there any porn on the drives? MP3? Movies? how about pics of your GF? because he said that roughly half the guys he worked with had USB HDDs that had batch files that looked for anything they might want to snatch, which would explain why you always here of the CP guys getting busted by GS, they trip over the files looking for stuff to snatch.
While I haven't done this personally, in fact i pride myself on not knowing a damned thing about what is on a customer's PC as i don't snoop I just do my job, I can say i have seen this behavior at other shops in the past I even had a creepy coworker that used to brag about how large his MP3 and porn video collection was because he snatched any chance he got. Just one more reason to ask around and find out the rep of the shop you are going to AND to use encryption, hell even something as simple as a password protected zip or rar file would block most of these guys because they are looking for easy targets.
Personally after seeing that the transfer went fine I ask what the customer wants done with the drive and if they don't want it it gets boot and nuked and stuff in the spare drawer and since I keep an old machine in the corner just for that job it isn't a hardship. Many of the newer minitowers can't hold but a single drive at a time so I often end up with a pile of 80Gb-300Gb drives that i then use on refurbed machines for the poor, but it really creeps me out to think there are guys snooping around people's computers just looking for stuff to snatch, its too much like going through someone's underwear drawer...yuck.
Or just keep an eye out by the dumpsters. You'd be amazed how many time companies would just sit computers out without even bothering to wipe squat. I've gotten to be friends with the handyman for my apt building and since he works also at some of the city buildings as well as a few businesses and he picks up any machines they are tossing because he knows i refurb PCs for poor folks and it just blows my mind how many times I've found CC numbers, tax forms, you name it on these machines.
Hell he called me once to bring out my truck because one of the local telecos were tossing their old towers when they upgraded. i got nearly 40 towers with nothing but the windows password between me and ALL their data. Of course being an honest man I simply nuked the drives and did clean installs but if I'd have been a bad guy the amount of data I'd have would have been insane. So think about that when you are giving your data to some company, you never know if they just sit their old machines on a curb somewhere.
But I have yet to see anyone recover data from a 3 pass DoD (sure a single zero out will do it, but I've found more companies will hand me machines if I tell them i'll DoD the machine) so please don't go for that insane "hey we'll shoot the drive!" kinda crap as there are a LOT of poor folks hurting in this economy and those old PCs can really help folks. So please just wipe and freecycle, its better for the environment and better for the poor folks around you.
I think Neil DeGrasse Tyson explained it simply, I paraphrase "We are made out of the most common elements in the universe. Only the height of arrogance would say that life couldn't happen anywhere but here". Of course the bigger problem would be that if you actually DID have a race that was able to master space and time what would you talk about? Check out his thoughts here, quite interesting.
That is actually quite simple friend. You see they have a few kernel devs who are quite militant in their love of GPL, for instance the one often cited I make fun of over religious zealotry when it comes to ABIs who says, and I quote "I hope those that use non FOSS drivers have them broken constantly" and it really only takes one or two of those types working on a key subsystem to really make life a living hell for Valve. i mean Linux already has some pretty severe problems with the graphics subsystem (Mozilla going so far as to disable any GPU based acceleration on Linux) so honestly it really wouldn't take much to throw a serious wrench in the system.
But as i said the year after release should be quite interesting. anyone who has paid attention to the Linux community knows its pretty well split in half, with the Linus pragmatists on one side and the RMS GPL zealots on the other, so it will be interesting to see what will happen. And never underestimate nerd rage, the zealots had such a screaming shitfit over mono most of the distros dropped it and i could see similar outrage causing problems because after all if the distros don't include it and it becomes a royal PITA to install Steam on Linux who will want to use it?
Well the problem with GPGPU is the same as Win 8, you have just slaughtered backwards compatibility with literally hundreds of thousands of programs! I agree with you completely that GPGPU is the FUTURE, but sadly that future looks to be several years away still, at least 2 or 3 and that's being generous. Look at how few user level programs touch the GPU at all, hell even the user level video converters are just NOW embracing GPUs and the majority are using CUDA not OpenCL. And the few tests I've seen between Streams and CUDA show the ATI chips leaving artifacts that simply aren't there in CUDA. while I agree that is the future and this will of course be fixed, that doesn't help them today.
The problem is if their own roadmaps are to be believed (And AMD has never been great about keeping to the roadmap timetable so if one were to go by history the roadmap is off by a year, maybe more) then the truly revolutionay chips, the ones were vector GPUs have completely replaced VLIW which is what they'll need to get true GPGPU performance, are not gonna be landing until 2014 at the earliest. That is a good 2 years down the road while they are getting curb stomped by Intel, that's not good.
So my argument still stands, they had no less than 2 products that could have filled the gaps while giving PD and Excavator time to mature but the previous CEO blew it. Brazos is frankly an excellent mobile chip, we are talking 9w singles and 18w duals and that is WITH a HD 6290 built in. If they would have taken that chip, added two to four more cores and maybe a little more midrange GPU? Well there you go, they have the entire low to midrange laptop market covered. Hell even now I'm seeing tons of sub $500 laptops with Brazos dual cores so that would have added to their share by giving the OEMs more midrange chips to go with the lower end Brazos at a VERY competitive price since Brazos is a simpler chip to make.
And then you have Thuban which was doing VERY well in both the business and economy gamer roles and thanks to flipping off cores and/or bad cache was getting nearly 100% yields. And never underestimate how big a selling point core unlock was, I had quite a few customers that chose AMD simply for the shot at a "free" upgrade. On some chips like the late model Deneb and Zosma I was having VERY good luck with core unlocks, in fact with Zosma quads I was finding you had a better than 50% chance of getting a free hexacore and nearly 75% chance of getting a free 5 core.
But if you do video encoding look at the Thubans friend, you can often find them dirt cheap (I built my oldest a new Thuban 1045T kit and the whole shebang with an HD4850 and Win 7 HP was less than $460) and they can chew through video like nobody's business. This is of course not even counting the frankly crazy OCing headroom which I can say if you pair a Thuban with a $30 hyper N520 the amount of OCing room is just insane, I got nearly a 1GHz OC on my 1035T with air cooling and no volt increase before i dropped back to defaults simply because with 6 cores...meh why bother? It already chews through video without breaking a sweat! BTW if you want the easiest OCing while still saving power? look at the Asrock boards, the new OCing tool is so simple any kid could use it and they also come with IES which turns off phases at idle AND Xfast USB which seriously kicks the snot out of USB 2 and USB 3.
But unless PD comes out at least 35% faster than Thuban with a more reasonable price i'll have no choice but to look at Intel, simply because i have to do what is best for my customers and the entire BD line is frankly a bad buy, even Liano is a better deal from a consumer standpoint. Their prices are simply too high for too little performance and unless AMD can figure out a way to get all this current software to run well on the new design it may be Windows 9 before software catches up. That is a hell of a long time to wait and my customers want good performance at a good price NOW, and BD just isn't it. This is why I still can't understand why they
This brings up an interesting question though: Is it even possible to create Linux compatible DRM? The only way I could see it working would be if one forked the kernel and then created one with their own proprietary hooks but even that would be iffy since with GPL V2 you have to share your changes with those that receive the binary.
Personally I just don't see how it would be possible to create Linux DRM without getting bit in the ass by the GPL. I'm sure there are many companies that would LIKE a DRMed Linux, but so far the only way found to do so is to use hardware locks like key signing and eFuses, but it does bring up a really good question...if the ONLY way for Linux to finally become an OS for the masses would be to add DRM, could it be done? Would the community allow it, or would they sabotage it at every turn even if it meant never getting above a couple of percent?
Frankly this is why I find the Linux Steam client most interesting, because as we all know there is a VERY vocal section of the community that believes the four freedoms should be held above all, lets call them the RMSers, and then you have a section that thinks as long as you are free not to take it if you wish then its all okay, call them the Linusites. So I think it will be interesting to see which side gains the upper hand over this in the next year or two because I'm sure it will be quite a battle. Personally I'm pulling for the Linusites as I believe true freedom is the freedom to choose what is best for YOU, not to have some group decide what is best for all, which seems to be the position of the RMSers.
Notice I got modded down for daring to ask a question instead of just blindly following groupthink? and I already know that Valve games don't have any other DRM but lets be honest, what makes Steam such a great platform is all the OTHER games you can get besides Valve games. I just looked through my game collection on Steam and other than the HL and Portal games (which is 6 out of over 30) everything I have in Steam is third party and I would assume that many here are the same way.
So I still wonder how many games the linux Steam client will have because if all they end up with is a handful of indies (which frankly you can buy without needing Steam) and Valve it'll be an awfully short list of games compared to what is on Windows. And again if they only have say 15% of what is in the Windows client why wouldn't one just dual boot and only use Windows for gaming? if you are geeky enough to install and maintain Linux then dual boot is nothing to you and as you pointed out if they are using some sort of D3D to OpenGL translation then you will take a speed hit, so what is the value? Will the games have a bigger discount?
In the end I truly do hope it works out, hell I wouldn't even mind Steam becoming the appstore for Linux. I mean imagine if you could buy everything from games to Photoshop, all from one location and they all run on Linux? That would be nice and would certainly make Linux easier to use for the masses. Again my worry is what of all those third party games that don't JUST use Steam? Has anyone done a count? How many of the other major AAA studios use more than Steam DRM?
Actually I'd say this is one strength MSFT has, in that you can simply skip any version you don't like thanks to the long support cycles. Me personally with the exception of the XP Home nettop I have at the shop managed to skip XP (I never cared for the Fisher price UI) by going from Win2K to XP X64 (great OS, and easy peasy to kill the Fisher price and just have a server 2K3 workstation) to Win 7. Since Win 7 is supported until 2020 i'll skip Win 8 and if they haven't straightened up maybe Win 9 as well, and why not? Software that runs on Win 7 will be plentiful I'm sure as long as its supported, just as XP software is still plentiful, and since I bought a hexacore with plenty of RAM and HDDs there really is no reason to deal with Win 8 except to learn just enough to work on it which can be done from a VM.
So just skip Win 8, if history holds it'll be a turkey in the Trek odd even tradition anyway and by the time support runs out on Win 7 the machine will be seriously long in the tooth anyway so there really is no rush. of course that is the reason for the whole "Hail Mary" feeling of Win 8 in the first place, X86 is mature and people just don't change boxes every couple of years like they did during the MHz wars while ARM is going through its own MHz wars so MSFT desperately wants in on that action. I personally don't think they have a prayer, Android and iOS are too mature and without some sort of emulator so you can run Windows programs MSFT really doesn't have a selling point over Android and iOS, but at least those of us on X86 can just sit this one out.
Hell use the serial number from the keyboard or monitor or some other item that won't be going anywhere. Personally I recommend one of the many password safes that will generate tough passwords for you but in a pinch there are literally dozens of killers passwords all around you. While I don't use nor personally care for hotmail that password is pretty weak, no wonder he got pwned.
This is also very informative, at least for me, as it gives me one more reason to avoid Win 8 as i had no idea everything in their new appstore was tied to hotmail. So Barance thanks for submitting this article, most grateful. Sorry about the poor bastard that tried Hotmail and got pwned but there is a good reason why many of us avoid hotmail like the clap.
as for feeling sorry for MSFT? the only thing I feel sorry for them for is they are stuck between a rock and a hard place, but that was their own design and shortsightedness so i am having trouble feeling sorry for it. What I mean is that they really need a hold in mobile because the desktop is mature tech and won't be gaining anymore but the only reason people buy Windows is for Windows programs which of course don't run on anything but x86. But of course this is their own fault as Cutler originally designed WinNT to be portable and if they would have maintained that focus instead of going Wintel they wouldn't be screwed out of mobile as they are now as the Windows programs could have run on ARM, or MIPS, or any other chip.
Sorry I didn't make myself clear, I meant on the Steam sales, which will have a big list of games with NO warning EXCEPT if you click on the titles and then scroll down to that point. There is also no checkbox so you can tell friends and family "This user prefers only Steam" and thus will let them know not to buy me Steam+ games. I got burnt by this myself when i bought Bioshock II off one of those big lists without checking and it turned out to be tied to GFWL (A royal PITA) and then got burnt again when my oldest bought me Riddick: Dark Athena (great game BTW, pants wetting on the stealth) and it turned out to have TAGES.
So I'm sorry that I didn't make myself clear but they really do make it more of a PITA than it should be. What should happen is there should be a checkbox in the settings that lets me choose which DRM I approve and disapprove and that list should be sent to those in my friends list so they too know what i want and don't want. Then on the sales Steam could still show me those games, just make them greyed out so that to add them I would have to purposely click through a "yes i know this is on my no no list" because unless it was just some incredible game for a buck frankly I would skip over all those that had more than Steam DRM. This of course is even worse with presents as you don't want to insult the person and make them feel bad by not accepting their gift, especially if its an Xmas or Bday present.
That is not gonna be the problem friend, the problem is there are a TON of AAA titles that use Steam PLUS some other DRM, and of course while the other will work just fine on Windows because Linux has a kernel that changes too often and doesn't allow kernel level DRM they simply won't work on Linux now or ever. So far I've seen SecurROM, TAGES, Starforce, and GFWL all used on Steam games.
You see THIS is where your line of thinking breaks down. on the one hand you're thinking that just because Valve does something magically all these other publishers are gonna give up what has worked just fine for them, hire Linux devs (not cheap) and completely port their games to this new system while at the SAME time giving up their DRM which again has worked just fine for them in the past. And you also assume that Linux users won't care while at the same time thinking this will bring mainstream (aka those that currently use Windows or OSX) users into the Linux fold. Well those that care about the four freedoms won't care, but then again I doubt they'll accept Steam DRM but mainstream users? they very much WILL care when they find out they have access to less than say 30% of the Steam catalog while the Windows users have 100%. Your little "Missy Janes Magical Mystery Adventure" is actually something that will be trivially ported. those games like the Bioshock series, F.E.A.R series, Riddick series, and dozens of others that use Steam + DRM? Not so much and while folks wouldn't give a shit about some indie game for the most part they WILL care if they can't play the latest AAA title.
While I truly hope you are correct I just can't see game publishers and developers in a dead economy wasting the not inconsiderable cost of porting and removing their DRM for such a small percentage. if you can get every Linux user, or even the majority? Maybe. But of course there are many in the camp that won't give up the four freedoms for anything, much less the chance to pay for a game, so this is doubtful. In reality I bet other than Valve and indie games you won't see very much in the Steam Linux catalog and if that's the case it really isn't gonna make much of a difference. After all really how hard is it just to dual boot into Windows if you want to play a game and use Linux for everything else?
I want to know how they are gonna divide the games, will the Linux guys only be able to buy from a special Linux section? The reason I ask this is the one criticism I have for Steam is on their big sales it is often difficult to see at a glance which games use ONLY Steam DRM, and there are plenty of games on steam that use TAGES, SecuROM, even GFWL ON TOP of Steam. of course since all of these require kernel hooks Linux simply won't allow none of these games will be available.
It will be an interesting experiment to see how the Linux community reacts because no matter how you slice it Steam IS a form of DRM, its just a form of trivial DRM most of us, at least on the Windows side, have no problem with. But with so many in the Linux community being almost religious in their hatred of all things DRM it will be interesting to see if they will allow or tolerate Steam being on Linux.
I'll say congrats to all the Linux users out there but I bet you're gonna be in for some nasty fights with the zealots in the coming months and of course i bet RMS rails against this like its the antichrist. It does bring up an interesting question though: Are you willing to accept the publishers terms in order to gain share? after all linux will never become a mainstream OS if the users can't have the games and programs they want and many of the publishers have made it clear they will NEVER release their stuff under GPL or give up DRM, and considering what happened to Loki they probably have a point. Will Linux users compromise? Or will the side that treats GPL as a religion simply overpower the pragmatists? Time will see but I bet in either case it will bring up some most interesting questions and help determine which direction Linux goes. In either case congrats Linux fans, and don't forget to be ready for the big Steam sales, man you will be able to load up on games during those!
Actually Apple is, and this is coming from someone who doesn't actually own anything Apple except and old B&W G3 I got free to play with PPC, truly innovative in ONE area...removing DUMBSHIT ideas! I mean look at the Windows tablets and WinCE...ohhh boy was that name appropriate! Here you have devices that are controlled completely differently from other devices so what does MSFT do? Why make little desktops with teeny tiny start icons and everything! What a truly DUMBSHIT idea that was! Now of course we are gonna get to see dumbshit thinking again come Oct where they just flip that and instead of putting the desktop on the cell phone they put the cell phone UI on the desktop, because hey, if it was stupid ONE way then the other way must be smart right?...Facepalm.
So I give the late Jobs and Apple credit where credit was due, Jobs had a knack for looking at things and saying "That is a totally dumbshit idea, so don't DO that!" and making things all about simplicity. Its like this story I read and never forgot about the guy working on iDVD and what happened when he heard Jobs was gonna check on their progress: "So we had all these mockups with cool menus and effects, yet he walks right past them to the whiteboard and drew a box. He said "This is what I want, its a box. When you drop a video in it a button that says burn pops up" and he walked out while we just stood there shocked" because of course they were thinking about all the "cool shit" they could pile in but all the extra shit would mean a learning curve and irritation, Jobs just wanted something simple that worked.
So if you ask how Apple has innovated that would be my answer, Jobs knew what was dumbshit and what wasn't and how to make things functional yet simple enough even a child could use. And frankly considering how many truly dumbshit ideas we see in the tech world apparently that was a rare gift indeed.
Exactly, anybody that thinks if Oracle wins it'll do shit is deluded. Google has already spent nearly a billion bucks on Android development and have completely curb stomped MSFT and is neck and neck with Apple for control in what will arguably be the PC of the 201Xs, the all important mobile space. Now does ANYBODY truly believe that Google would risk screwing that if Android takes a penalty? Nope they'll eat the cost because that is the SMART thing to do, all those Android devices are using Google apps and making them craploads of money in search so no way in hell they are gonna risk screwing that up.
In the end this entire case will end up a tempest in a teacup. From the way the judge has hinted he sure as hell isn't wanting to award anywhere near what oracle wanted so more likely they will get somewhere between...oh say 30 million and 150 million, which may sound like a lot but to a supermegacorp like Google will just be written off as a cost of doing business and that will be that. They'll still have Android, they'll still be co-ruler of mobile, they'll still make mountains of money.
Actually the odds are better that you kid will be killed by a car (77 to 1), drowning in a bathtub ( 685,000 to 1 ) slipping and killing himself/herself in the shower (2,232 to 1) even being struck by lightning (576,000 to 1 ) hell they even have better odds of dating a supermodel (88,000 to 1) or striking it rich on antiques roadshow ( 60,000 to 1). Here is the source so I'd say out of ALL the things we parents ACTUALLY have to worry about BSE is pretty damned low on the list. Not saying that can't change, not saying we shouldn't do our best to protect the food supply, just saying panicking is probably pretty unwarranted ATM.
Oh don't get me wrong, i'm not saying what both Intel and AMD have managed to pull off isn't impressive, what I'm saying is those gains affect the user less and less and I can see them running into a wall like they did with MHz in say the next 5 years, maybe less as i'm sure the drop to single digits will be a royal bitch and a half.
And while you are correct that most of the newer high speed Intel and AMD chips can reach 4GHz on air cooling, hell i got my Thuban X6 1035t to over 3.5GHz before i realized that with 6 cores it was just pointless ePeening, but the default speeds still seem to be 2.6Ghz-3.5GHz on the desktop and the laptops even slower, with both Intel and AMD selling 1GHz-2.2GHz with 1.6GHz-1.8GHz seeming to be the sweet spot, again because of power and heat.
In the end i just haven't seen anything in the last couple of revs from either bunch that would give me a compelling reason to say upsell a customer who already has a quad desktop or a dual core laptop. What I'm saying is while both Intel and AMD race down to the single digit wall frankly unlike the MHz wars there just hasn't been any real gains that the end user can FEEL, unlike during the MHz wars were a two year old desktop or laptop felt like a dinosaur running modern programs now even 6 and 7 year old chips are running all the popular apps without breaking a strain.
In a way its a credit to both Intel and AMD, who have both made chips so insanely powerful that no app can bring them down, I just don't see how they are gonna keep people upgrading when all the end user gets is maybe 20 or 30 minutes extra battery (which will probably be taken by the manufacturer simply making the battery thinner) or a little more OCing headroom...when the apps aren't even slamming the CPUs at default speeds. I just see this race as a game of diminishing returns until someone can actually come up with a "killer app" that makes all this power worth it.
I can answer that friend...its an INTEL CPU isn't it? for some reason FF since version 5 has run a LOT shittier on AMD CPUs than it has on Intel. in fact with V 9 I even placed it side by side, a 2.2Ghz Pentium 4 with no HT which is obviously ancient and placed it against both a Bobcat APU (dual core 1.6GHz) and a Deneb quad and frankly on many metrics such as page load and responsiveness the P4 FF won.
So don't ask me as i'm not the guy that compiles it, but SOMETHING they are using down the line makes it run like shit on AMD. BTW FF is the ONLY browser I've found that isn't CPU agnostic, I tried Chrome, Dragon, QTWeb, Safari, and Opera and NONE of them seemed to show any difference between the Intel and AMD chips, only FF. damned if I know what they did but I wish they'd undo it, and I can confirm that whatever it is also affects Pale moon so its obviously something in the core since Pale moon compiles from source.
Wow...it sounds like they are getting screwed as bad as the music artists. maybe its time for the scientists to get together and say 'fuck the gatekeepers" and have their own free peer reviewed journal? After all artists have found ways around the gatekeepers by using the massive distribution power of the web so I don't see why scientists couldn't do the same. After all the ONLY reason these assraping publications have any "prestige" is because scientists give them that prestige, so if they scientists were organized and gave their support to a free online journal these guys would dry up without content.
Considering how many idealists there still are in academia this sounds like a worthy goal to me and I hope they do rise up against this system, because from your description it sounds like shit.
Well I have a Bobcat based EEE PC (the 1215B, supports 8Gb of memory, great netbook) and it games nicely. there are even videos on youtube of people playing Crysis and Modern Warfare on the chip at default laptop resolutions. I play a little C&C 4 and Generals on mine but since when i'm out I usually don't have a mouse trying to game with a trackpad ain't my thing, great chip though, makes for a good netbook or HTPC.
And the patch is just that, a patch, and the weird as hell way they implemented hardware hyperthreading (which is really what it is, as you have these "half cores" with no FP except for a shared unit) means MSFT is gonna have to do the serious kernel mojo to get them to function and they have said that won't be until Win 8. so everyone on XP,Vista, or 7? will cripple their machine by using Faildozer. you can see this is the case by looking up the benches where they "kill" half the cores (aka turn off hyperthreading and give each core its own FP unit) because suddenly performance JUMPS by up to 40%! The really inexcusable thing is they are trying to sell a quad with HT as an octocore, even intel doesn't try that bullshit.
In the end even though I've been supporting AMD in my shop since the Intel compiler rigging came out if they don't come out with a worthy successor to Thuban by the time stocks are depleted I'll have no choice but go Intel, as there simply isn't a single selling point for Faildozer. The chips are too expensive, the performance across the board is WORSE in nearly every benchmark compared to Thuban in fact the only one that can compete is the 8 series which is more than double the price of the Thuban and is comparably priced with the i5 that curb stomps it, and frankly its power usage really isn't any better than Thuban.And as you pointed out the final insult is they cripple the 4 and 6 series so there is no chance of core unlock, the one feature they made them a good value. in every review i've seen the reviewer even remarked the 4 series is completely pointless, the performance is worse than Thuban while getting stomped by even the Pentiums
But to me the sad part is this isn't Intel's doing, its all AMDs fault. they could have kept Thuban going which gave them nearly 100% yields and covered Thuban, Deneb, and Athlon, all with a single chip, kept faildozer for servers as that is the ONLY place where integer heavy loads are the norm, and then concentrated on Bobcat for mobile, adding more cores and a faster GPU for more upscale mobile devices. Instead they bet the farm on a chip that won't work worth a fuck on ANY Windows besides 8 which from the talk will probably be another Vista...sigh. Thuban was doing well, core unlock gave many a reason to buy, and Brazos selling as fast as they can crank them out, so lets bet the farm on a chip that was already suffering problems and the early chips showed lousy performance and power usage...facepalm. I have to wonder if Intel isn't gonna have to "accidently" slip them the old Core series plans just to keep them from killing themselves and leaving Intel in a monopoly position, because it is obvious the PHBs at AMD don't have a fricking clue what they are doing! hell the only NICE thing I can say is they fired Dirk who was the man behind Faildozer but his replacement hasn't fired back up the Thuban line NOR has he come up with a replacement for Brazos, so WTF AMD? Hell you can't even brag about how long your sockets last because AM3+ is only getting ONE more chip then its toast and you already announced that FM1 is gonna be replaced by non compatible FM2!!! Frankly this company couldn't be more badly run if Intel hired the board.
And on a final note, piledriver? Has the SAME weird FP shared between two integer problem so again the ONLY place you'll see real gains is Windows 8 which again most of those not using touchscreen devices HATE. So if you want to skip Win 8 your ONLY choices are Thuban or go Intel, that's it. Liano is overpriced and too hot, Bobcat is a decent chip but as I said they can't keep a 1.65GHz dual cor
Define "break computers" because if you mean "makes the computer unusable" then yes it does, which is why I switched to Comodo Dragon. You see what I found is that starting with FF V5 the CPU spikes would literally make the entire PC unresponsive, at least with some of the low power machines i have to support. Its a browser guys, a minute plus 100% CPU spikes is simply unacceptable, maybe they did something that makes the compiler not like AMD, as I don't seem to notice this problem being QUITE as bad on P4s, but in any case that's what it does. And a few hours? I've been waiting since FF 5 for this problem to be ironed out and no joy. I've tried regular FF, FF ESR, and Pale Moon and ALL have this same bug which tells me it is somewhere in the core FF code.
And as for your assertion that they will get a bug automatically simply by using an old browser that would possibly be true IF they didn't have an AV or were using one that doesn't scan pages before load like MSE, but since there are several free AVs out there that not only scan the page before load but sandbox the entire browser to protect the system if they are using one of those, both Avast and Comodo CIS just to name two free ones I know about, then that risk is virtually non-existent as it would have to both defeat the scan before loading AND jump the sandbox, no small task.
Personally I think its Gecko as you didn't really hear the complaints until they tried to bolt all the Chrome goodies onto gecko and i honestly think the old gal just can't take it. I mean sure there were memory leaks but after they finally manned up and admitted it with FF 3 they were making progress with them but then it seemed that Chrome came out and started gaining and since then its been nothing but a "me too!" fest and FF has suffered for it. All I know is I can fire up FF 3.6 and its usable on my low power devices, fire up FF 11 and its stuttering and CPU slamming and "senior moments" will make you want to pull an Elvis with the PC.
Then what you want is Firefox Extended Support Release or ESR which is just that, bug fixes and security updates. It will be supported until FF 17 which at the rate they are going will be about a year, maybe a year and a half.
There is a MUCH better tool out there than those downloader apps for FF, it isn't free but it works on just about every site, even those that the FF plugins choke or refuse to see. its called Jaksta Streaming Video Capture and the nice thing is it isn't tied to ANY browser, so it only runs when YOU are wanting to capture instead of adding bloat to the browser. its quite nice.
But as other have said FF has become a pale Chrome imitation and if I wanted Chrome I'd fricking run Chrome! I personally gave up around version 7 for Comodo Dragon which is Chrome without the phone home, because while i still have FF installed and try it with each release frankly it runs like shit on both my nettop and my netbook. Hell even on my hexacore it will have what I call "senior moments" where the UI will just freeze for a few seconds, not enough to make me kill the program but just enough to piss me off. With the Dragon even on a 2004 Sempron its responsive and snappy and when I close tabs I get the memory back which FF has yet to master.
So while I keep hanging onto this vain hope that Firefox will come back, I have a feeling the glory days of FF are behind it. You can't be #1 just by badly aping someone else and that is what IE and FF have been doing, playing follow the leader with Chrome. Frankly I don't know what they did between 3.6 and 5 but whatever they did was a doozy as I can't run it on low power devices like my netbook without it bitchslapping the cores and sucking down the battery like a drunk at a free minibar. If you are gonna rip off Chrome FF devs, how about ripping off its lack of CPU slamming and nice use of resources huh?
Which is why I'm starting to wonder if we haven't just about reached as far as we can go, at least as far as single chips that is. I mean there is still some room with Bobcat style designs, where you make a simpler CPU and then you could add more cores, i personally would love say a sub 25 watt 6 core bobcat with a low midrange GPU built in, but even that will only buy you a few more years.
Personally I can see a day coming when people only buy a PC when the previous one dies. I know that in my own family we have already reached this point, my GF has a triple core that probably spends 85% of its time barely above idle as the most intensive thing she does is FB games, even with me and my two boys being what most would call "hardcore' gamers I just don't see any games coming down the pipe that will cause us to have to replace the two hexacores and the quad anytime soon, just maybe replacing the HD4850s we currently run for some HD5850 or HD6850s when the price drops, and honestly even playing shooters I rarely see more than 2 cores of my hexacore getting stressed.
So I have to wonder if in 5 years either Intel or AMD will be able to come up with enough changes to make an announcement like TFA even worth noting. We have pretty much hit the wall on MHz, I've found for consumers pretty much anything dual or better will spend more time idling than under load, hell even my low end E350 netbook is more than adequate for any tasks I have on the road, so throwing more cores is basically for ePeen bragging rights more than anything, and as you pointed out they are reaching pretty damned near the limit on shrinkage, so where to go? the apps certainly aren't keeping up with CPU power anymore and if the specs on the PS4 are to be believed even the next gen consoles will be about like a midrange desktop 3 years ago, so where?
While it may not be good for the chip makers i have to say i'm currently enjoying the hell out of this "golden age" of computing, where I can enjoy even the latest games on 3 year old hardware with great graphics and in everything I do I have cycles to spare. I just don't see anything coming down the pipe that would get me truly excited for the new chips, it does look like we are about to hit another plateau.
Well that was the nice thing about socket AM3, in that you could use AM3 chips in AM2 or AM2+ sockets., the other nice thing is one can still get AM3+ which will take AM3 chips and supports DDR 3 and SATA 6 so it isn't like you have to take older RAM to use the older chip on the AMD side, the one i built for the oldest for example has 8Gb of DDR3 while my X6 is running on a board with 8Gb of DDR 2 (since i already had the RAM I simply got a board to support it while taking the newer AM3 chip).
But on the Intel side...well since Core2 frankly they've been gouging IMHO, they know they have a big enough lead they can get away with it. Hell we are only now seeing socket 775 Pentium Ds in the $20 range whereas you can buy Phenom I quads for less than $60 in many places.
The big problem on the Intel side though is the socket roulette they have played of late, i mean for awhile there there were no less than 4 different sockets being supported! LGA 1155 seems to be the sweet spot ATM for Intel chips but frankly who knows how long that one will last.
In the end frankly if you want to go Intel you just have to bend over and get one of the more expensive units anyway so any price drops will be moot as most of the lower chips in Intel's line are crippled so you really aren't doing yourself any favors going for the lower SKUs unless you are just building say an office box. this is one thing that has really pissed me off of late with Intel, if you want to differentiate based on cores, speed, or whether it has HT or not? Not a problem with that. But killing important features like virtualization or enhanced speedstep really makes it difficult to know which chips are crippled in what way and makes it a PITA, as those that got bit by MSFT's first version of XP Mode found out.
But as long as the supplies hold i think I'll stick with AM3+ on the desktops, simply because the chips are dirt cheap and it has support for the latest features while still giving good bang for the buck. on the Intel side I'd probably wait until Haskell (I believe that's the name) or if I absolutely had to have one the Core i5 laptops seem to be a good value. But you are right that the Intel pricing frankly just isn't great, even when the older lines aren't doing so hot they simply refuse to lower prices.
I guess when you win most of the benchmarks you don't have to care, maybe they are doing it on purpose as another poster said to keep AMD alive to keep the governments off their ass, who knows. I'm starting to think that is the case the more i think about it, as with AMD stuck with faildozer it would be pretty trivial for Intel to take the entire low end just by selling the older line at a discount.
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Well I can only answer that with an anecdote, but from a friend that worked for awhile at a GS to get some extra cash the answer to that question would depend on this one...is there any porn on the drives? MP3? Movies? how about pics of your GF? because he said that roughly half the guys he worked with had USB HDDs that had batch files that looked for anything they might want to snatch, which would explain why you always here of the CP guys getting busted by GS, they trip over the files looking for stuff to snatch.
While I haven't done this personally, in fact i pride myself on not knowing a damned thing about what is on a customer's PC as i don't snoop I just do my job, I can say i have seen this behavior at other shops in the past I even had a creepy coworker that used to brag about how large his MP3 and porn video collection was because he snatched any chance he got. Just one more reason to ask around and find out the rep of the shop you are going to AND to use encryption, hell even something as simple as a password protected zip or rar file would block most of these guys because they are looking for easy targets.
Personally after seeing that the transfer went fine I ask what the customer wants done with the drive and if they don't want it it gets boot and nuked and stuff in the spare drawer and since I keep an old machine in the corner just for that job it isn't a hardship. Many of the newer minitowers can't hold but a single drive at a time so I often end up with a pile of 80Gb-300Gb drives that i then use on refurbed machines for the poor, but it really creeps me out to think there are guys snooping around people's computers just looking for stuff to snatch, its too much like going through someone's underwear drawer...yuck.
Or just keep an eye out by the dumpsters. You'd be amazed how many time companies would just sit computers out without even bothering to wipe squat. I've gotten to be friends with the handyman for my apt building and since he works also at some of the city buildings as well as a few businesses and he picks up any machines they are tossing because he knows i refurb PCs for poor folks and it just blows my mind how many times I've found CC numbers, tax forms, you name it on these machines.
Hell he called me once to bring out my truck because one of the local telecos were tossing their old towers when they upgraded. i got nearly 40 towers with nothing but the windows password between me and ALL their data. Of course being an honest man I simply nuked the drives and did clean installs but if I'd have been a bad guy the amount of data I'd have would have been insane. So think about that when you are giving your data to some company, you never know if they just sit their old machines on a curb somewhere.
But I have yet to see anyone recover data from a 3 pass DoD (sure a single zero out will do it, but I've found more companies will hand me machines if I tell them i'll DoD the machine) so please don't go for that insane "hey we'll shoot the drive!" kinda crap as there are a LOT of poor folks hurting in this economy and those old PCs can really help folks. So please just wipe and freecycle, its better for the environment and better for the poor folks around you.
I think Neil DeGrasse Tyson explained it simply, I paraphrase "We are made out of the most common elements in the universe. Only the height of arrogance would say that life couldn't happen anywhere but here". Of course the bigger problem would be that if you actually DID have a race that was able to master space and time what would you talk about? Check out his thoughts here, quite interesting.
That is actually quite simple friend. You see they have a few kernel devs who are quite militant in their love of GPL, for instance the one often cited I make fun of over religious zealotry when it comes to ABIs who says, and I quote "I hope those that use non FOSS drivers have them broken constantly" and it really only takes one or two of those types working on a key subsystem to really make life a living hell for Valve. i mean Linux already has some pretty severe problems with the graphics subsystem (Mozilla going so far as to disable any GPU based acceleration on Linux) so honestly it really wouldn't take much to throw a serious wrench in the system.
But as i said the year after release should be quite interesting. anyone who has paid attention to the Linux community knows its pretty well split in half, with the Linus pragmatists on one side and the RMS GPL zealots on the other, so it will be interesting to see what will happen. And never underestimate nerd rage, the zealots had such a screaming shitfit over mono most of the distros dropped it and i could see similar outrage causing problems because after all if the distros don't include it and it becomes a royal PITA to install Steam on Linux who will want to use it?
Well the problem with GPGPU is the same as Win 8, you have just slaughtered backwards compatibility with literally hundreds of thousands of programs! I agree with you completely that GPGPU is the FUTURE, but sadly that future looks to be several years away still, at least 2 or 3 and that's being generous. Look at how few user level programs touch the GPU at all, hell even the user level video converters are just NOW embracing GPUs and the majority are using CUDA not OpenCL. And the few tests I've seen between Streams and CUDA show the ATI chips leaving artifacts that simply aren't there in CUDA. while I agree that is the future and this will of course be fixed, that doesn't help them today.
The problem is if their own roadmaps are to be believed (And AMD has never been great about keeping to the roadmap timetable so if one were to go by history the roadmap is off by a year, maybe more) then the truly revolutionay chips, the ones were vector GPUs have completely replaced VLIW which is what they'll need to get true GPGPU performance, are not gonna be landing until 2014 at the earliest. That is a good 2 years down the road while they are getting curb stomped by Intel, that's not good.
So my argument still stands, they had no less than 2 products that could have filled the gaps while giving PD and Excavator time to mature but the previous CEO blew it. Brazos is frankly an excellent mobile chip, we are talking 9w singles and 18w duals and that is WITH a HD 6290 built in. If they would have taken that chip, added two to four more cores and maybe a little more midrange GPU? Well there you go, they have the entire low to midrange laptop market covered. Hell even now I'm seeing tons of sub $500 laptops with Brazos dual cores so that would have added to their share by giving the OEMs more midrange chips to go with the lower end Brazos at a VERY competitive price since Brazos is a simpler chip to make.
And then you have Thuban which was doing VERY well in both the business and economy gamer roles and thanks to flipping off cores and/or bad cache was getting nearly 100% yields. And never underestimate how big a selling point core unlock was, I had quite a few customers that chose AMD simply for the shot at a "free" upgrade. On some chips like the late model Deneb and Zosma I was having VERY good luck with core unlocks, in fact with Zosma quads I was finding you had a better than 50% chance of getting a free hexacore and nearly 75% chance of getting a free 5 core.
But if you do video encoding look at the Thubans friend, you can often find them dirt cheap (I built my oldest a new Thuban 1045T kit and the whole shebang with an HD4850 and Win 7 HP was less than $460) and they can chew through video like nobody's business. This is of course not even counting the frankly crazy OCing headroom which I can say if you pair a Thuban with a $30 hyper N520 the amount of OCing room is just insane, I got nearly a 1GHz OC on my 1035T with air cooling and no volt increase before i dropped back to defaults simply because with 6 cores...meh why bother? It already chews through video without breaking a sweat! BTW if you want the easiest OCing while still saving power? look at the Asrock boards, the new OCing tool is so simple any kid could use it and they also come with IES which turns off phases at idle AND Xfast USB which seriously kicks the snot out of USB 2 and USB 3.
But unless PD comes out at least 35% faster than Thuban with a more reasonable price i'll have no choice but to look at Intel, simply because i have to do what is best for my customers and the entire BD line is frankly a bad buy, even Liano is a better deal from a consumer standpoint. Their prices are simply too high for too little performance and unless AMD can figure out a way to get all this current software to run well on the new design it may be Windows 9 before software catches up. That is a hell of a long time to wait and my customers want good performance at a good price NOW, and BD just isn't it. This is why I still can't understand why they
This brings up an interesting question though: Is it even possible to create Linux compatible DRM? The only way I could see it working would be if one forked the kernel and then created one with their own proprietary hooks but even that would be iffy since with GPL V2 you have to share your changes with those that receive the binary.
Personally I just don't see how it would be possible to create Linux DRM without getting bit in the ass by the GPL. I'm sure there are many companies that would LIKE a DRMed Linux, but so far the only way found to do so is to use hardware locks like key signing and eFuses, but it does bring up a really good question...if the ONLY way for Linux to finally become an OS for the masses would be to add DRM, could it be done? Would the community allow it, or would they sabotage it at every turn even if it meant never getting above a couple of percent?
Frankly this is why I find the Linux Steam client most interesting, because as we all know there is a VERY vocal section of the community that believes the four freedoms should be held above all, lets call them the RMSers, and then you have a section that thinks as long as you are free not to take it if you wish then its all okay, call them the Linusites. So I think it will be interesting to see which side gains the upper hand over this in the next year or two because I'm sure it will be quite a battle. Personally I'm pulling for the Linusites as I believe true freedom is the freedom to choose what is best for YOU, not to have some group decide what is best for all, which seems to be the position of the RMSers.
Notice I got modded down for daring to ask a question instead of just blindly following groupthink? and I already know that Valve games don't have any other DRM but lets be honest, what makes Steam such a great platform is all the OTHER games you can get besides Valve games. I just looked through my game collection on Steam and other than the HL and Portal games (which is 6 out of over 30) everything I have in Steam is third party and I would assume that many here are the same way.
So I still wonder how many games the linux Steam client will have because if all they end up with is a handful of indies (which frankly you can buy without needing Steam) and Valve it'll be an awfully short list of games compared to what is on Windows. And again if they only have say 15% of what is in the Windows client why wouldn't one just dual boot and only use Windows for gaming? if you are geeky enough to install and maintain Linux then dual boot is nothing to you and as you pointed out if they are using some sort of D3D to OpenGL translation then you will take a speed hit, so what is the value? Will the games have a bigger discount?
In the end I truly do hope it works out, hell I wouldn't even mind Steam becoming the appstore for Linux. I mean imagine if you could buy everything from games to Photoshop, all from one location and they all run on Linux? That would be nice and would certainly make Linux easier to use for the masses. Again my worry is what of all those third party games that don't JUST use Steam? Has anyone done a count? How many of the other major AAA studios use more than Steam DRM?
Actually I'd say this is one strength MSFT has, in that you can simply skip any version you don't like thanks to the long support cycles. Me personally with the exception of the XP Home nettop I have at the shop managed to skip XP (I never cared for the Fisher price UI) by going from Win2K to XP X64 (great OS, and easy peasy to kill the Fisher price and just have a server 2K3 workstation) to Win 7. Since Win 7 is supported until 2020 i'll skip Win 8 and if they haven't straightened up maybe Win 9 as well, and why not? Software that runs on Win 7 will be plentiful I'm sure as long as its supported, just as XP software is still plentiful, and since I bought a hexacore with plenty of RAM and HDDs there really is no reason to deal with Win 8 except to learn just enough to work on it which can be done from a VM.
So just skip Win 8, if history holds it'll be a turkey in the Trek odd even tradition anyway and by the time support runs out on Win 7 the machine will be seriously long in the tooth anyway so there really is no rush. of course that is the reason for the whole "Hail Mary" feeling of Win 8 in the first place, X86 is mature and people just don't change boxes every couple of years like they did during the MHz wars while ARM is going through its own MHz wars so MSFT desperately wants in on that action. I personally don't think they have a prayer, Android and iOS are too mature and without some sort of emulator so you can run Windows programs MSFT really doesn't have a selling point over Android and iOS, but at least those of us on X86 can just sit this one out.
Hell use the serial number from the keyboard or monitor or some other item that won't be going anywhere. Personally I recommend one of the many password safes that will generate tough passwords for you but in a pinch there are literally dozens of killers passwords all around you. While I don't use nor personally care for hotmail that password is pretty weak, no wonder he got pwned.
This is also very informative, at least for me, as it gives me one more reason to avoid Win 8 as i had no idea everything in their new appstore was tied to hotmail. So Barance thanks for submitting this article, most grateful. Sorry about the poor bastard that tried Hotmail and got pwned but there is a good reason why many of us avoid hotmail like the clap.
as for feeling sorry for MSFT? the only thing I feel sorry for them for is they are stuck between a rock and a hard place, but that was their own design and shortsightedness so i am having trouble feeling sorry for it. What I mean is that they really need a hold in mobile because the desktop is mature tech and won't be gaining anymore but the only reason people buy Windows is for Windows programs which of course don't run on anything but x86. But of course this is their own fault as Cutler originally designed WinNT to be portable and if they would have maintained that focus instead of going Wintel they wouldn't be screwed out of mobile as they are now as the Windows programs could have run on ARM, or MIPS, or any other chip.
Sorry I didn't make myself clear, I meant on the Steam sales, which will have a big list of games with NO warning EXCEPT if you click on the titles and then scroll down to that point. There is also no checkbox so you can tell friends and family "This user prefers only Steam" and thus will let them know not to buy me Steam+ games. I got burnt by this myself when i bought Bioshock II off one of those big lists without checking and it turned out to be tied to GFWL (A royal PITA) and then got burnt again when my oldest bought me Riddick: Dark Athena (great game BTW, pants wetting on the stealth) and it turned out to have TAGES.
So I'm sorry that I didn't make myself clear but they really do make it more of a PITA than it should be. What should happen is there should be a checkbox in the settings that lets me choose which DRM I approve and disapprove and that list should be sent to those in my friends list so they too know what i want and don't want. Then on the sales Steam could still show me those games, just make them greyed out so that to add them I would have to purposely click through a "yes i know this is on my no no list" because unless it was just some incredible game for a buck frankly I would skip over all those that had more than Steam DRM. This of course is even worse with presents as you don't want to insult the person and make them feel bad by not accepting their gift, especially if its an Xmas or Bday present.
That is not gonna be the problem friend, the problem is there are a TON of AAA titles that use Steam PLUS some other DRM, and of course while the other will work just fine on Windows because Linux has a kernel that changes too often and doesn't allow kernel level DRM they simply won't work on Linux now or ever. So far I've seen SecurROM, TAGES, Starforce, and GFWL all used on Steam games.
You see THIS is where your line of thinking breaks down. on the one hand you're thinking that just because Valve does something magically all these other publishers are gonna give up what has worked just fine for them, hire Linux devs (not cheap) and completely port their games to this new system while at the SAME time giving up their DRM which again has worked just fine for them in the past. And you also assume that Linux users won't care while at the same time thinking this will bring mainstream (aka those that currently use Windows or OSX) users into the Linux fold. Well those that care about the four freedoms won't care, but then again I doubt they'll accept Steam DRM but mainstream users? they very much WILL care when they find out they have access to less than say 30% of the Steam catalog while the Windows users have 100%. Your little "Missy Janes Magical Mystery Adventure" is actually something that will be trivially ported. those games like the Bioshock series, F.E.A.R series, Riddick series, and dozens of others that use Steam + DRM? Not so much and while folks wouldn't give a shit about some indie game for the most part they WILL care if they can't play the latest AAA title.
While I truly hope you are correct I just can't see game publishers and developers in a dead economy wasting the not inconsiderable cost of porting and removing their DRM for such a small percentage. if you can get every Linux user, or even the majority? Maybe. But of course there are many in the camp that won't give up the four freedoms for anything, much less the chance to pay for a game, so this is doubtful. In reality I bet other than Valve and indie games you won't see very much in the Steam Linux catalog and if that's the case it really isn't gonna make much of a difference. After all really how hard is it just to dual boot into Windows if you want to play a game and use Linux for everything else?
I want to know how they are gonna divide the games, will the Linux guys only be able to buy from a special Linux section? The reason I ask this is the one criticism I have for Steam is on their big sales it is often difficult to see at a glance which games use ONLY Steam DRM, and there are plenty of games on steam that use TAGES, SecuROM, even GFWL ON TOP of Steam. of course since all of these require kernel hooks Linux simply won't allow none of these games will be available.
It will be an interesting experiment to see how the Linux community reacts because no matter how you slice it Steam IS a form of DRM, its just a form of trivial DRM most of us, at least on the Windows side, have no problem with. But with so many in the Linux community being almost religious in their hatred of all things DRM it will be interesting to see if they will allow or tolerate Steam being on Linux.
I'll say congrats to all the Linux users out there but I bet you're gonna be in for some nasty fights with the zealots in the coming months and of course i bet RMS rails against this like its the antichrist. It does bring up an interesting question though: Are you willing to accept the publishers terms in order to gain share? after all linux will never become a mainstream OS if the users can't have the games and programs they want and many of the publishers have made it clear they will NEVER release their stuff under GPL or give up DRM, and considering what happened to Loki they probably have a point. Will Linux users compromise? Or will the side that treats GPL as a religion simply overpower the pragmatists? Time will see but I bet in either case it will bring up some most interesting questions and help determine which direction Linux goes. In either case congrats Linux fans, and don't forget to be ready for the big Steam sales, man you will be able to load up on games during those!
Actually Apple is, and this is coming from someone who doesn't actually own anything Apple except and old B&W G3 I got free to play with PPC, truly innovative in ONE area...removing DUMBSHIT ideas! I mean look at the Windows tablets and WinCE...ohhh boy was that name appropriate! Here you have devices that are controlled completely differently from other devices so what does MSFT do? Why make little desktops with teeny tiny start icons and everything! What a truly DUMBSHIT idea that was! Now of course we are gonna get to see dumbshit thinking again come Oct where they just flip that and instead of putting the desktop on the cell phone they put the cell phone UI on the desktop, because hey, if it was stupid ONE way then the other way must be smart right?...Facepalm.
So I give the late Jobs and Apple credit where credit was due, Jobs had a knack for looking at things and saying "That is a totally dumbshit idea, so don't DO that!" and making things all about simplicity. Its like this story I read and never forgot about the guy working on iDVD and what happened when he heard Jobs was gonna check on their progress: "So we had all these mockups with cool menus and effects, yet he walks right past them to the whiteboard and drew a box. He said "This is what I want, its a box. When you drop a video in it a button that says burn pops up" and he walked out while we just stood there shocked" because of course they were thinking about all the "cool shit" they could pile in but all the extra shit would mean a learning curve and irritation, Jobs just wanted something simple that worked.
So if you ask how Apple has innovated that would be my answer, Jobs knew what was dumbshit and what wasn't and how to make things functional yet simple enough even a child could use. And frankly considering how many truly dumbshit ideas we see in the tech world apparently that was a rare gift indeed.
Exactly, anybody that thinks if Oracle wins it'll do shit is deluded. Google has already spent nearly a billion bucks on Android development and have completely curb stomped MSFT and is neck and neck with Apple for control in what will arguably be the PC of the 201Xs, the all important mobile space. Now does ANYBODY truly believe that Google would risk screwing that if Android takes a penalty? Nope they'll eat the cost because that is the SMART thing to do, all those Android devices are using Google apps and making them craploads of money in search so no way in hell they are gonna risk screwing that up.
In the end this entire case will end up a tempest in a teacup. From the way the judge has hinted he sure as hell isn't wanting to award anywhere near what oracle wanted so more likely they will get somewhere between...oh say 30 million and 150 million, which may sound like a lot but to a supermegacorp like Google will just be written off as a cost of doing business and that will be that. They'll still have Android, they'll still be co-ruler of mobile, they'll still make mountains of money.
Actually the odds are better that you kid will be killed by a car (77 to 1), drowning in a bathtub ( 685,000 to 1 ) slipping and killing himself/herself in the shower (2,232 to 1) even being struck by lightning (576,000 to 1 ) hell they even have better odds of dating a supermodel (88,000 to 1) or striking it rich on antiques roadshow ( 60,000 to 1). Here is the source so I'd say out of ALL the things we parents ACTUALLY have to worry about BSE is pretty damned low on the list. Not saying that can't change, not saying we shouldn't do our best to protect the food supply, just saying panicking is probably pretty unwarranted ATM.
Oh don't get me wrong, i'm not saying what both Intel and AMD have managed to pull off isn't impressive, what I'm saying is those gains affect the user less and less and I can see them running into a wall like they did with MHz in say the next 5 years, maybe less as i'm sure the drop to single digits will be a royal bitch and a half.
And while you are correct that most of the newer high speed Intel and AMD chips can reach 4GHz on air cooling, hell i got my Thuban X6 1035t to over 3.5GHz before i realized that with 6 cores it was just pointless ePeening, but the default speeds still seem to be 2.6Ghz-3.5GHz on the desktop and the laptops even slower, with both Intel and AMD selling 1GHz-2.2GHz with 1.6GHz-1.8GHz seeming to be the sweet spot, again because of power and heat.
In the end i just haven't seen anything in the last couple of revs from either bunch that would give me a compelling reason to say upsell a customer who already has a quad desktop or a dual core laptop. What I'm saying is while both Intel and AMD race down to the single digit wall frankly unlike the MHz wars there just hasn't been any real gains that the end user can FEEL, unlike during the MHz wars were a two year old desktop or laptop felt like a dinosaur running modern programs now even 6 and 7 year old chips are running all the popular apps without breaking a strain.
In a way its a credit to both Intel and AMD, who have both made chips so insanely powerful that no app can bring them down, I just don't see how they are gonna keep people upgrading when all the end user gets is maybe 20 or 30 minutes extra battery (which will probably be taken by the manufacturer simply making the battery thinner) or a little more OCing headroom...when the apps aren't even slamming the CPUs at default speeds. I just see this race as a game of diminishing returns until someone can actually come up with a "killer app" that makes all this power worth it.
I can answer that friend...its an INTEL CPU isn't it? for some reason FF since version 5 has run a LOT shittier on AMD CPUs than it has on Intel. in fact with V 9 I even placed it side by side, a 2.2Ghz Pentium 4 with no HT which is obviously ancient and placed it against both a Bobcat APU (dual core 1.6GHz) and a Deneb quad and frankly on many metrics such as page load and responsiveness the P4 FF won.
So don't ask me as i'm not the guy that compiles it, but SOMETHING they are using down the line makes it run like shit on AMD. BTW FF is the ONLY browser I've found that isn't CPU agnostic, I tried Chrome, Dragon, QTWeb, Safari, and Opera and NONE of them seemed to show any difference between the Intel and AMD chips, only FF. damned if I know what they did but I wish they'd undo it, and I can confirm that whatever it is also affects Pale moon so its obviously something in the core since Pale moon compiles from source.
Wow...it sounds like they are getting screwed as bad as the music artists. maybe its time for the scientists to get together and say 'fuck the gatekeepers" and have their own free peer reviewed journal? After all artists have found ways around the gatekeepers by using the massive distribution power of the web so I don't see why scientists couldn't do the same. After all the ONLY reason these assraping publications have any "prestige" is because scientists give them that prestige, so if they scientists were organized and gave their support to a free online journal these guys would dry up without content.
Considering how many idealists there still are in academia this sounds like a worthy goal to me and I hope they do rise up against this system, because from your description it sounds like shit.
Well I have a Bobcat based EEE PC (the 1215B, supports 8Gb of memory, great netbook) and it games nicely. there are even videos on youtube of people playing Crysis and Modern Warfare on the chip at default laptop resolutions. I play a little C&C 4 and Generals on mine but since when i'm out I usually don't have a mouse trying to game with a trackpad ain't my thing, great chip though, makes for a good netbook or HTPC.
And the patch is just that, a patch, and the weird as hell way they implemented hardware hyperthreading (which is really what it is, as you have these "half cores" with no FP except for a shared unit) means MSFT is gonna have to do the serious kernel mojo to get them to function and they have said that won't be until Win 8. so everyone on XP,Vista, or 7? will cripple their machine by using Faildozer. you can see this is the case by looking up the benches where they "kill" half the cores (aka turn off hyperthreading and give each core its own FP unit) because suddenly performance JUMPS by up to 40%! The really inexcusable thing is they are trying to sell a quad with HT as an octocore, even intel doesn't try that bullshit.
In the end even though I've been supporting AMD in my shop since the Intel compiler rigging came out if they don't come out with a worthy successor to Thuban by the time stocks are depleted I'll have no choice but go Intel, as there simply isn't a single selling point for Faildozer. The chips are too expensive, the performance across the board is WORSE in nearly every benchmark compared to Thuban in fact the only one that can compete is the 8 series which is more than double the price of the Thuban and is comparably priced with the i5 that curb stomps it, and frankly its power usage really isn't any better than Thuban.And as you pointed out the final insult is they cripple the 4 and 6 series so there is no chance of core unlock, the one feature they made them a good value. in every review i've seen the reviewer even remarked the 4 series is completely pointless, the performance is worse than Thuban while getting stomped by even the Pentiums
But to me the sad part is this isn't Intel's doing, its all AMDs fault. they could have kept Thuban going which gave them nearly 100% yields and covered Thuban, Deneb, and Athlon, all with a single chip, kept faildozer for servers as that is the ONLY place where integer heavy loads are the norm, and then concentrated on Bobcat for mobile, adding more cores and a faster GPU for more upscale mobile devices. Instead they bet the farm on a chip that won't work worth a fuck on ANY Windows besides 8 which from the talk will probably be another Vista...sigh. Thuban was doing well, core unlock gave many a reason to buy, and Brazos selling as fast as they can crank them out, so lets bet the farm on a chip that was already suffering problems and the early chips showed lousy performance and power usage...facepalm. I have to wonder if Intel isn't gonna have to "accidently" slip them the old Core series plans just to keep them from killing themselves and leaving Intel in a monopoly position, because it is obvious the PHBs at AMD don't have a fricking clue what they are doing! hell the only NICE thing I can say is they fired Dirk who was the man behind Faildozer but his replacement hasn't fired back up the Thuban line NOR has he come up with a replacement for Brazos, so WTF AMD? Hell you can't even brag about how long your sockets last because AM3+ is only getting ONE more chip then its toast and you already announced that FM1 is gonna be replaced by non compatible FM2!!! Frankly this company couldn't be more badly run if Intel hired the board.
And on a final note, piledriver? Has the SAME weird FP shared between two integer problem so again the ONLY place you'll see real gains is Windows 8 which again most of those not using touchscreen devices HATE. So if you want to skip Win 8 your ONLY choices are Thuban or go Intel, that's it. Liano is overpriced and too hot, Bobcat is a decent chip but as I said they can't keep a 1.65GHz dual cor
Define "break computers" because if you mean "makes the computer unusable" then yes it does, which is why I switched to Comodo Dragon. You see what I found is that starting with FF V5 the CPU spikes would literally make the entire PC unresponsive, at least with some of the low power machines i have to support. Its a browser guys, a minute plus 100% CPU spikes is simply unacceptable, maybe they did something that makes the compiler not like AMD, as I don't seem to notice this problem being QUITE as bad on P4s, but in any case that's what it does. And a few hours? I've been waiting since FF 5 for this problem to be ironed out and no joy. I've tried regular FF, FF ESR, and Pale Moon and ALL have this same bug which tells me it is somewhere in the core FF code.
And as for your assertion that they will get a bug automatically simply by using an old browser that would possibly be true IF they didn't have an AV or were using one that doesn't scan pages before load like MSE, but since there are several free AVs out there that not only scan the page before load but sandbox the entire browser to protect the system if they are using one of those, both Avast and Comodo CIS just to name two free ones I know about, then that risk is virtually non-existent as it would have to both defeat the scan before loading AND jump the sandbox, no small task.
Personally I think its Gecko as you didn't really hear the complaints until they tried to bolt all the Chrome goodies onto gecko and i honestly think the old gal just can't take it. I mean sure there were memory leaks but after they finally manned up and admitted it with FF 3 they were making progress with them but then it seemed that Chrome came out and started gaining and since then its been nothing but a "me too!" fest and FF has suffered for it. All I know is I can fire up FF 3.6 and its usable on my low power devices, fire up FF 11 and its stuttering and CPU slamming and "senior moments" will make you want to pull an Elvis with the PC.
Then what you want is Firefox Extended Support Release or ESR which is just that, bug fixes and security updates. It will be supported until FF 17 which at the rate they are going will be about a year, maybe a year and a half.
There is a MUCH better tool out there than those downloader apps for FF, it isn't free but it works on just about every site, even those that the FF plugins choke or refuse to see. its called Jaksta Streaming Video Capture and the nice thing is it isn't tied to ANY browser, so it only runs when YOU are wanting to capture instead of adding bloat to the browser. its quite nice.
But as other have said FF has become a pale Chrome imitation and if I wanted Chrome I'd fricking run Chrome! I personally gave up around version 7 for Comodo Dragon which is Chrome without the phone home, because while i still have FF installed and try it with each release frankly it runs like shit on both my nettop and my netbook. Hell even on my hexacore it will have what I call "senior moments" where the UI will just freeze for a few seconds, not enough to make me kill the program but just enough to piss me off. With the Dragon even on a 2004 Sempron its responsive and snappy and when I close tabs I get the memory back which FF has yet to master.
So while I keep hanging onto this vain hope that Firefox will come back, I have a feeling the glory days of FF are behind it. You can't be #1 just by badly aping someone else and that is what IE and FF have been doing, playing follow the leader with Chrome. Frankly I don't know what they did between 3.6 and 5 but whatever they did was a doozy as I can't run it on low power devices like my netbook without it bitchslapping the cores and sucking down the battery like a drunk at a free minibar. If you are gonna rip off Chrome FF devs, how about ripping off its lack of CPU slamming and nice use of resources huh?
Which is why I'm starting to wonder if we haven't just about reached as far as we can go, at least as far as single chips that is. I mean there is still some room with Bobcat style designs, where you make a simpler CPU and then you could add more cores, i personally would love say a sub 25 watt 6 core bobcat with a low midrange GPU built in, but even that will only buy you a few more years.
Personally I can see a day coming when people only buy a PC when the previous one dies. I know that in my own family we have already reached this point, my GF has a triple core that probably spends 85% of its time barely above idle as the most intensive thing she does is FB games, even with me and my two boys being what most would call "hardcore' gamers I just don't see any games coming down the pipe that will cause us to have to replace the two hexacores and the quad anytime soon, just maybe replacing the HD4850s we currently run for some HD5850 or HD6850s when the price drops, and honestly even playing shooters I rarely see more than 2 cores of my hexacore getting stressed.
So I have to wonder if in 5 years either Intel or AMD will be able to come up with enough changes to make an announcement like TFA even worth noting. We have pretty much hit the wall on MHz, I've found for consumers pretty much anything dual or better will spend more time idling than under load, hell even my low end E350 netbook is more than adequate for any tasks I have on the road, so throwing more cores is basically for ePeen bragging rights more than anything, and as you pointed out they are reaching pretty damned near the limit on shrinkage, so where to go? the apps certainly aren't keeping up with CPU power anymore and if the specs on the PS4 are to be believed even the next gen consoles will be about like a midrange desktop 3 years ago, so where?
While it may not be good for the chip makers i have to say i'm currently enjoying the hell out of this "golden age" of computing, where I can enjoy even the latest games on 3 year old hardware with great graphics and in everything I do I have cycles to spare. I just don't see anything coming down the pipe that would get me truly excited for the new chips, it does look like we are about to hit another plateau.
Well that was the nice thing about socket AM3, in that you could use AM3 chips in AM2 or AM2+ sockets., the other nice thing is one can still get AM3+ which will take AM3 chips and supports DDR 3 and SATA 6 so it isn't like you have to take older RAM to use the older chip on the AMD side, the one i built for the oldest for example has 8Gb of DDR3 while my X6 is running on a board with 8Gb of DDR 2 (since i already had the RAM I simply got a board to support it while taking the newer AM3 chip).
But on the Intel side...well since Core2 frankly they've been gouging IMHO, they know they have a big enough lead they can get away with it. Hell we are only now seeing socket 775 Pentium Ds in the $20 range whereas you can buy Phenom I quads for less than $60 in many places.
The big problem on the Intel side though is the socket roulette they have played of late, i mean for awhile there there were no less than 4 different sockets being supported! LGA 1155 seems to be the sweet spot ATM for Intel chips but frankly who knows how long that one will last.
In the end frankly if you want to go Intel you just have to bend over and get one of the more expensive units anyway so any price drops will be moot as most of the lower chips in Intel's line are crippled so you really aren't doing yourself any favors going for the lower SKUs unless you are just building say an office box. this is one thing that has really pissed me off of late with Intel, if you want to differentiate based on cores, speed, or whether it has HT or not? Not a problem with that. But killing important features like virtualization or enhanced speedstep really makes it difficult to know which chips are crippled in what way and makes it a PITA, as those that got bit by MSFT's first version of XP Mode found out.
But as long as the supplies hold i think I'll stick with AM3+ on the desktops, simply because the chips are dirt cheap and it has support for the latest features while still giving good bang for the buck. on the Intel side I'd probably wait until Haskell (I believe that's the name) or if I absolutely had to have one the Core i5 laptops seem to be a good value. But you are right that the Intel pricing frankly just isn't great, even when the older lines aren't doing so hot they simply refuse to lower prices.
I guess when you win most of the benchmarks you don't have to care, maybe they are doing it on purpose as another poster said to keep AMD alive to keep the governments off their ass, who knows. I'm starting to think that is the case the more i think about it, as with AMD stuck with faildozer it would be pretty trivial for Intel to take the entire low end just by selling the older line at a discount.