For one thing, how do you know that a Windows port would be easy for Microsoft? And what would be the incentive? There is absolutely no reason for Microsoft to do that, because AMD is a perfectly good leverage tool. PPC would be no better than AMD at least. And without Microsoft, there's no mainstream OS, and thus no market. I don't see a lot of people clamoring for PPC Linux laptops when x86 seems to be doing just fine.
Also, how can you make a killing supplying something at mac mini cost to geeks? That market is very, very small. They exited the PC business, so entering it with a Linux-only offering won't make them anything.
It has also come to light more recently that IBM was in the dark on Apple's switch, and now that the mobile 970 chip is out, it makes you wonder what the real reason was. I think IBM was fully capable of supporting the design effort, but because they were only building the chip for Apple, they had to guess (conservatively) at what Apple would want. When Apple's demand was greater, it took a while to ramp up production, and those delays were unpleasant for both sides. The way Apple does business, they really needed a manufacturer who had a working stock of units to draw from, rather than asking someone to make more whenever they were needed. Intel fits well here.
There was also an interesting article about how this gives Apple access to Intel's XScale line for mobile units like the iPod. Very interesting commentary there, and I think there's a lot of truth.
The upshot of all this is that everyone knew it wasn't a big deal to IBM. It's probably nice to have Apple off their back, and it's not like 5 million units a year is going to make any difference to IBM. I just hope we starting getting some new discussions going because these same articles are getting old, but that probably won't happen until new information (new Apple machines) come out.
I don't think AMD has a compiler of their own. At least, I've never heard of it referenced before, and they seem to reference CodeWarrior on their website. Meanwhile, Intel's is more or less the de facto standard of x86 performance. That's why people pony up big bucks for it; it trounces GCC.
Isn't Prescott 32 stages nowadays? Silly Intel. Gotta have the bigger pipeline, huh?
And as a person who's designed a simple (can't do too much in 10 weeks) 2-issue out of order machine, let me tell you, that's fun stuff. Really makes you appreciate how insanely complex real processors are. And don't even get me started on their branch prediction...
AMD does not expect its competitor to support AMD products. AMD's products by nature conform to the same x86 instruction set as Intel's. If Intel's compiler were 'blind' in the sense that it just made x86 code, regardless of the processor, it should run fine. The problem is that Intel is intentionally crippling software that will be run on an AMD system. It doesn't cost Intel anything to 'support' AMD systems; at least, it doesn't require them to expend more money. It does, however, make AMD systems more competitive for Intel to make such a blind compiler, but that's what this whole thing is about, isn't it?
Personally, I think this is a bit of a grey area. Obviously, it seems wrong that Intel should be crippling software, but at the same time, they aren't making anyone use that compiler in the way they are making people not sell AMD products (maybe I'm wrong, I didn't read that enourmous legal document). Ultimately, this whole thing is secondary to the monopolistic discount allegations, anyway, so it would be nothing more than icing if it's true. It does make for a nice "they're big meanies!" finger-pointing fest, though, huh?
Absolutely, but at the same time, it has a lot to do with other parts of the architecture. Reordering is pretty critical for a deep pipeline like the Pentium 4 because you can't afford to sit and wait for 20 cycles to get your add result back. It is similar to branch prediction in this way. The shorter your pipeline, the less important reordering and branch prediction are for the hardware, especially if, as you point out, you can get a compiler that avoids nasty dependencies and hard-to-predict branches. PowerPC has a fairly short pipeline (rough guess, 12 stages?) whereas the current generation of Pentium 4's checks in at somewhere around 32 stages (these numbers are educated guesses -- I really can't remember off the top of my head), and thus dynamic scheduling is much less important. This comes at the expense of clock speed, but it's clear that too is becoming less of an issue.
The whole point of Itanium is that it doesn't deal with dependencies at all in hardware, thus making its scheduling very easy to implement (move these bits over here). It makes the compiler to all the hard work so it can just burn through instructions.
Modern DSPs are pretty sweet, but 8 instructions per cycle is a luxury realized only because DSP is by nature a very repetitive exercise, so tons of resources can be poured into very sophisticated operations such as what you mention above. The pipelines aren't where Itanium's complexity lies. Instead, it is very feature rich elsewhere (supports both Endians, x86 emulation, etc.).
Itanium is definitely a brilliant architecture in many ways, and lessons will have to be learned from it some day. It takes a little history to know why it's called "Itanic," however.
The Itanium was designed to change the way processors worked. Most processors today are some sort of dymically scheduled behemoth that are capable of detecting instruction collisions on the fly, and reordering instructions for optimal parallelism and thus performance in the light of those collisions. Itanium takes a completely different approach. It is an extremely wide processor that has absolutely no collision detection or reordering. All of the work in this respect is placed on the compiler's shoulders. In theory, a good compiler could make this chip very, very fast, and in reality, as you see, this can be the case. So why did it fail? Intel hyped the hell out of this processor, and then missed their release date by a full two years. That is microprocessor suicide in the land of Moore's law. So, when Intel delivered a chip too late that failed to perform the way they marketed it to, the chip died. In recent years, Itanium has really come around, but it's hard to escape your past in this industry.
Other relevant problems for adoption are tied to this need for a good compiler. Making a compiler as smart as it needs to be for Itanium to live up to its potential is not cheap, and Intel is not known for just giving away such technology. I'm sure the fees to license Intel's compiler are nontrivial, and that does not encourage development. Realistically, Itanium will never become a desktop chip just because of the massive adoption effort that would go into such a switch.
One thing to note, however, is that other chips aren't that far away. You suggest that a 2ghz or 3ghz Itanium would be incredibly fast, and I agree, but I seriously doubt Intel can ramp it that fast. Also, the Opteron specs you show are for 2.0ghz, and I believe Opteron is up around 2.6 or 2.8 ghz nowadays.
Ultimately, Itanium is a great design, but wrapped in a poorly executed initial implementation. It does teach a good lesson that compilers can really help improve chip performance, and down the road, architectures that take this into account may reign supreme. But I wouldn't look to Itanium to do any more than instruct us for the future. She is not a desktop chip.
Microsoft has already given its side of the story and was found to be conducting illegal monopolistic practices in its antitrust suit. It doesn't meant that they are good people, but they do deserve to at least give their side of the story. I don't like Intel very much right now, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't hear them out. "Innocent until proven guilty." It's not something to be forgotten.
But I do hear you. I am also very surprised it has taken this long for Intel to be questioned.
So, giving the consumer a wide array of choices is more important than maintaining property rights? Essentially, the gov't is punishing Intel for being successful
This is in fact exactly the opposite of what I am saying. I stated above that there cases when the customers' choices are limited, such as when Wal-Mart comes in and drives down prices, that are beneficial to the customer. But in the case of AMD and Intel, it is a very different situation. Instead of Intel gaining market share by having a better product, it is using its position in the market to muscle AMD out. It is not doing this with a better product, but rather by threatening the middle man who stands between Intel and the consumer. That is the allegation, and that is what is illegal. In no way is the government punishing Intel for being successful. If Intel receives punishment, it will be for using its success to create an unfair marketplace.
This is a case of the government punishing Intel for being too successful, and handing money/customers/business to AMD because they are less efficient/cannot compete
I'm not saying AMD deserves handouts any more than I'm saying Intel deserves to be punished. In fact, AMD won't get any 'handouts' regardless of the outcome of this case. In fact, Intel is perfectly welcome to give price breaks for people who buy a lot of Intel products. Intel is perfectly welcome to underprice AMD. What Intel cannot do is give specific price breaks to people who do not sell AMD products. Don't you see the difference? It's when Intel mandates what the vendors do regarding Intel's competitors' products that they cross into illegal territory, and that is when the consumer loses.
This has nothing to do with the US Government taking pity on smaller companies and just taking property from Intel. I have no idea where you got that idea. This is about whether or not Intel is manipulating the market by changing their prices for different people based on whether or not those people do business with AMD.
I am in no way saying that the US Government is going to help companies out with financial handouts. Where are these handout ideas coming from? This is antitrust litigation, not grants. And what do AMDs CEOs have to do with this? We're talking about whether or not Intel is illegally influencing the market. AMD might be doing poorly because of their CEOs, but that has nothing to do with this debate, because we're talking about whether or not Intel is doing something illegal.
Intel is absolutely a monopolistic company. They don't have a total monopoly, but they have enough market share that they can influence the market in these ways. This isn't like econ class where someone either is or isn't a monopoly. It's not like Intel is just moving across the street from AMD. Intel is perfectly welcome to compete in AMDs markets. The issues is if Intel tells its vendors they can either receive price breaks or they can sell AMD products. I think you are still thinking of this too much as a retail thing. Take Petsmart for example. Petsmart moving next to Petco is fine. What would be unfair is if Iams told both companies that they would receive a 10% rebate as long as they didn't sell Kibbles and Bits. Doesn't that seem shady? It has no effect on the consumer except to say that they will no longer have the option of buying Kibbles and Bits.
How will it hurt the consumers? I would argue that allowing AMD into the market at Dell would create more performance pressure for both companies. What is stopping Intel from producing poorer quality chips for Dell right now, since they have no other competition? It has been shown in many benchmarks that AMD is just as strong if not stronger in performance, but they still don't appear in Dells.
I see this as lose-lose the way things exist right now. If Intel weren't creating this pressure, and there will still no AMD chips in Dells, then I would absolutely agree that AMD is an inferior product.
The difference is that giving vendors incentives not to carry products in no way helps the consumer. To use your example, if Wal-Mart comes into a town and undercuts all the small businesses, the reason they are successful is because they are providing the same service to a customer (vending goods) at a lower price. The customer gains because they pay less for the same service. Sure, this may limit the number of choices the customer has, but the number of choices is not directly related with utility. This is still natural competition, and Wal-Mart is able to provide customers with the lowest prices, which is still good for the consumer.
To relate this to AMD and Intel, it's perfectly fine for Intel to offer up better performing products at lower prices to drive AMD out of business. If they do so, it's because they make a better product and the customer wins. However, that is not what Intel is doing here. Intel is saying that if a vendor sells AMD products, then Intel will effectively charge that vendor more to sell Intel products. Thus, selling AMD products means that vendor makes less money on Intel products than if that vendor sold only Intel products. This has no benefit to the customer. The prices the customer sees are the same because they are set by the market. All that happens is that Intel artificially eliminates AMD from the market by manipulating the channels through which the customer gets the product, which serves to limit competition by aritificially limiting choice.
Naturally limited choice is a perfectly legitimate thing, because the consumer still benefits. It is artificially limited choice that is bad for the end customer.
There's a big difference between that and this AMD/Intel situation. It's one thing for a vendor to give you incentives for highlighting their products over a competitor's product. That's just marketing and advertising, and perfectly normal. I don't see a problem either. It's quite another situation for a vendor to tell you that you will only get their incentives if you stop selling or limit the sale of their competitors' products. That is a monopolistic practice, because they are artificially limiting the customer's choice, instead of just trying to influence it. I do have a problem with that.
This does sound pretty damning, but I still want to hear Intel's side of this story. Personally, I've always preferred AMD chips over Intel chips, and I think that if AMD is successful here, it will do great things for that company. I will, however, take these claims with a grain of salt. Many people identify with AMD as the underdog with an undersung product (I sure do), and are often quick to side with them. Intel may have legitimate reasons behind all of their business practices, and since these comments and 'facts' have come through what I like to call "the AMD filter," I would like to see the story through "the Intel filter" as well. Perhaps then we will be able to see glimmers of the truth, and be able to decide fairly if Intel really did overstep their bounds. I know who I'm rooting for, but it doesn't make it any less important to gather the facts.
I don't understand what is wrong with countering one 'business tactic' with another 'business tactic.' If Intel really is strongarming AMD out of the market with illegal rebates and incentives based on how much business a vendor does with AMD, how is it wrong of AMD to start an investigation? If Intel is coloring within the lines, then AMD looks like a desperate struggling beggar, and Intel is all the better for it. But if AMD's allegation are true, then don't they have the right to fair competition?
A monopoly doesn't mean that a company has 100% of the market, it just means that they have an overwhelming majority such that they can exert pressures against smaller companies by threatening customers. This is not the same as Intel underpricing AMD because they have a better capacity than AMD. That is legitimate business, and a gain from having the kind of production capacity that Intel has (an economy of scale). The allegation here is that Intel is witholding incetives only for people who specifically buy AMD products, meaning that Intel is using its position in the market to limit competition by not only providing incentives to use Intel products, but to provided disincentives to use AMD products. That seems like a pretty shady deal to me. Doesn't that strike you as disgusting and abhorrent?
It continually amazes me that Microsoft can get away with following an industry. They have done it from day 1, nearly 25 years ago, in purchasing QDOS. They mooched from IBM and Apple to make Windows. They continually release products that are just copies of someone else's idea (Acryllic, etc.). I mean, it's clearly an excellent way for them to run their business from a financial perspective, because no one can really argue with their profit margins. However, six years between OS and browser releases, incorporating features that people have released long before them is just inexcusable. How long can this be maintained?
My guess is that they have so much legacy code, hardware, etc. to support that they just can't develop at a reasonable pace anymore. Will Windows eventually buckle under its own weight? I'm becoming increasingly skeptical that Longhorn will validate this platform. Unfortunately, their near-monopoly gives them the freedom to be so mediocre. Here's to hoping I'm surprised in 2006.
Of course the RIAA wants the market to change! 40% of downloads are illegal (same article you're referencing), which is a tremendous amount of lost revenue. The problem is they cannot create a business model that can compete with "free" because they are obsessed with control. If the RIAA wants to regain some of that lost market share, they need to create a system open enough to be attractive to people who get completely DRM-free music at no cost but the time they spend. That means that 1) the methods must be convenient, and 2) the music must be usable for the person's fair use.
Those people who come into your record store willing to pay $1 more to get it on iTunes are a great example. That dollar saves them the time to drive to your store, buy the album, and drive home. Cost is not just about money. Convenience plays a big factor, and if they just want to burn the CD and listen to it on their iPod, then what fair use are they sacrificing? It suits their needs. On the other side of the coin, P2P networks may be free, but it may take a significant time investment to find and download all of the songs on an album in good quality.
My whole point is that the RIAA is proposing a P2P model that does not cater to the huge portion of the market that wants the convenience of being able to download music and put it on their iPod. If this market had competition, then we might be in better shape, but yeah, that is a pipedream. We can at least get competition from the end distributors like iTunes, but that too is subject to the RIAAs licensing. Ultimately, the RIAA just needs a more novel solution than rebranding the same crap as P2P if they want to gain their market share back.
It very well may be that this site is purely for legal precedent. However, claiming that it failed because it is a P2P network that doesn't serve illegal content isn't a valid argument. The P2P part of it is just the distribution model. iTunes could incorporate a similar distribution network with a rewards system and with Fairplay, and I'm sure it would be just as successful as the current incarnation of iTunes. The flaw in this system is not catering to the mass market. But perhaps that is just as much Apple's fault for refusing to license Fairplay?
As for joining and 'returning songs', I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that. Are you suggesting people join, buy songs, and then ask for a refund because the system isn't working to their tastes? It's clearly stated that the songs come with DRM, and it's also not required that you be a server, you just can in exchange for some cash. The cash you receive is directly proportional to the amount the network utilizes your collection, which can be 0 if you so choose.
Really, I think this would be a great system if they opened it up a little more. Some way of incorporating Fairplay would be nice. The point, however, is that what they've got will fail, and I don't believe it will make any difference in the RIAA's fight against P2P.
Well, and this is pure, unbridled speculation, it seems that they are using a set format and bitrate (WMA, though I don't know the rate). This means they can an MD5 hash or similar to verify authenticity. I'm aware that MD5s can be spoofed, but I'm not sure how practical it is to do. It's a very legit problem, however, and certainly something that iTunes does not suffer from.
Yes, there are always ways to circumvent restrictions, but what is the benefit I get from this over either acquiring the songs illegally or by purchasing them legally from iTunes and being able to use the songs directly? Burning and re-ripping not only is a hassle, but it loses quality in the process. That is not a compelling reason for me or any other iPod user to switch to this. The point is not whether or not it can be done, but whether or not it's a viable business model. Geeks are not the mass market (and frankly, most I know wouldn't be willing to sacrifice the quality). How many people do you think would be willing to do this instead of just using iTunes?
So the RIAA is at least trying to tap into a fantastic resource for content distribution, albeit five years too late. The problem, as with all current implementations of "legal" online music stores, is that this is going to be too restrictive. As with most/.'ers and most folks in general, if I purchase music, I expect to be able to use it however I like. Most troublesome to the geeks is that it forces Windows and WMA. Most troublesome to the mass market is that it doesn't support the iPod. How can you expect mass-adoption if you don't even support the media player with the largest market share?
This service's restrictions will keep it from being a major player, and until the RIAA gets it that no one will change until they open up their restrictions, piracy will always be huge, and the one music store that supports the most popular player will remain the most popular option (and only option for many) for purchasing legal music.
To understand the draft you have to understand the time during which our founding fathers granted the government such a privilege. The government needed a draft to help ensure it had the necessary military strength to survive attacks and invasions. The draft was created for defensive purposes. Thus, it is important that it exists in the event we need to defend our country. Moreover, such defense the price of citizenship. Being a citizen of this nation, with all of the benefits it brings, comes at a cost, and taxes don't always cover that. Someone has to defend our country.
The problem comes when the draft is used to support offensive measures. The 'war on terror' may be propagandized as 'defending' our nation from terrorists, but in truth it's an offensive strike. Instating a draft for an offensive effort is much harder to justify, and in such a case, I agree with you. I shouldn't have to fight a war I don't believe in. But frankly, it's a lot easier to believe in a war when you and your home are being threatened. You just have to remember that your citizenship comes with duty.
This article has to own the record for fewest posts for a front page article. Wow.
Does anyone own one of these newfangled gizmos? Are there any plans to release a legit English version in the US?
Does anyone want it with the nasty DRM it has?
Slashdot Mirror
For one thing, how do you know that a Windows port would be easy for Microsoft? And what would be the incentive? There is absolutely no reason for Microsoft to do that, because AMD is a perfectly good leverage tool. PPC would be no better than AMD at least. And without Microsoft, there's no mainstream OS, and thus no market. I don't see a lot of people clamoring for PPC Linux laptops when x86 seems to be doing just fine.
Also, how can you make a killing supplying something at mac mini cost to geeks? That market is very, very small. They exited the PC business, so entering it with a Linux-only offering won't make them anything.
There was also an interesting article about how this gives Apple access to Intel's XScale line for mobile units like the iPod. Very interesting commentary there, and I think there's a lot of truth.
The upshot of all this is that everyone knew it wasn't a big deal to IBM. It's probably nice to have Apple off their back, and it's not like 5 million units a year is going to make any difference to IBM. I just hope we starting getting some new discussions going because these same articles are getting old, but that probably won't happen until new information (new Apple machines) come out.
Absolutely zero. What OS would they run? The Linux market is far too small to dedicate resources to such a project.
Amazing. Thanks for the info, though I did enjoy pretending to be in the loop. ;)
Don't forget Metrowerks.
And as a person who's designed a simple (can't do too much in 10 weeks) 2-issue out of order machine, let me tell you, that's fun stuff. Really makes you appreciate how insanely complex real processors are. And don't even get me started on their branch prediction...
Personally, I think this is a bit of a grey area. Obviously, it seems wrong that Intel should be crippling software, but at the same time, they aren't making anyone use that compiler in the way they are making people not sell AMD products (maybe I'm wrong, I didn't read that enourmous legal document). Ultimately, this whole thing is secondary to the monopolistic discount allegations, anyway, so it would be nothing more than icing if it's true. It does make for a nice "they're big meanies!" finger-pointing fest, though, huh?
Absolutely, but at the same time, it has a lot to do with other parts of the architecture. Reordering is pretty critical for a deep pipeline like the Pentium 4 because you can't afford to sit and wait for 20 cycles to get your add result back. It is similar to branch prediction in this way. The shorter your pipeline, the less important reordering and branch prediction are for the hardware, especially if, as you point out, you can get a compiler that avoids nasty dependencies and hard-to-predict branches. PowerPC has a fairly short pipeline (rough guess, 12 stages?) whereas the current generation of Pentium 4's checks in at somewhere around 32 stages (these numbers are educated guesses -- I really can't remember off the top of my head), and thus dynamic scheduling is much less important. This comes at the expense of clock speed, but it's clear that too is becoming less of an issue.
The whole point of Itanium is that it doesn't deal with dependencies at all in hardware, thus making its scheduling very easy to implement (move these bits over here). It makes the compiler to all the hard work so it can just burn through instructions. Modern DSPs are pretty sweet, but 8 instructions per cycle is a luxury realized only because DSP is by nature a very repetitive exercise, so tons of resources can be poured into very sophisticated operations such as what you mention above. The pipelines aren't where Itanium's complexity lies. Instead, it is very feature rich elsewhere (supports both Endians, x86 emulation, etc.).
The Itanium was designed to change the way processors worked. Most processors today are some sort of dymically scheduled behemoth that are capable of detecting instruction collisions on the fly, and reordering instructions for optimal parallelism and thus performance in the light of those collisions. Itanium takes a completely different approach. It is an extremely wide processor that has absolutely no collision detection or reordering. All of the work in this respect is placed on the compiler's shoulders. In theory, a good compiler could make this chip very, very fast, and in reality, as you see, this can be the case. So why did it fail? Intel hyped the hell out of this processor, and then missed their release date by a full two years. That is microprocessor suicide in the land of Moore's law. So, when Intel delivered a chip too late that failed to perform the way they marketed it to, the chip died. In recent years, Itanium has really come around, but it's hard to escape your past in this industry.
Other relevant problems for adoption are tied to this need for a good compiler. Making a compiler as smart as it needs to be for Itanium to live up to its potential is not cheap, and Intel is not known for just giving away such technology. I'm sure the fees to license Intel's compiler are nontrivial, and that does not encourage development. Realistically, Itanium will never become a desktop chip just because of the massive adoption effort that would go into such a switch.
One thing to note, however, is that other chips aren't that far away. You suggest that a 2ghz or 3ghz Itanium would be incredibly fast, and I agree, but I seriously doubt Intel can ramp it that fast. Also, the Opteron specs you show are for 2.0ghz, and I believe Opteron is up around 2.6 or 2.8 ghz nowadays.
Ultimately, Itanium is a great design, but wrapped in a poorly executed initial implementation. It does teach a good lesson that compilers can really help improve chip performance, and down the road, architectures that take this into account may reign supreme. But I wouldn't look to Itanium to do any more than instruct us for the future. She is not a desktop chip.
But I do hear you. I am also very surprised it has taken this long for Intel to be questioned.
This is in fact exactly the opposite of what I am saying. I stated above that there cases when the customers' choices are limited, such as when Wal-Mart comes in and drives down prices, that are beneficial to the customer. But in the case of AMD and Intel, it is a very different situation. Instead of Intel gaining market share by having a better product, it is using its position in the market to muscle AMD out. It is not doing this with a better product, but rather by threatening the middle man who stands between Intel and the consumer. That is the allegation, and that is what is illegal. In no way is the government punishing Intel for being successful. If Intel receives punishment, it will be for using its success to create an unfair marketplace.
This is a case of the government punishing Intel for being too successful, and handing money/customers/business to AMD because they are less efficient/cannot compete
I'm not saying AMD deserves handouts any more than I'm saying Intel deserves to be punished. In fact, AMD won't get any 'handouts' regardless of the outcome of this case. In fact, Intel is perfectly welcome to give price breaks for people who buy a lot of Intel products. Intel is perfectly welcome to underprice AMD. What Intel cannot do is give specific price breaks to people who do not sell AMD products. Don't you see the difference? It's when Intel mandates what the vendors do regarding Intel's competitors' products that they cross into illegal territory, and that is when the consumer loses.
This has nothing to do with the US Government taking pity on smaller companies and just taking property from Intel. I have no idea where you got that idea. This is about whether or not Intel is manipulating the market by changing their prices for different people based on whether or not those people do business with AMD.
I am in no way saying that the US Government is going to help companies out with financial handouts. Where are these handout ideas coming from? This is antitrust litigation, not grants. And what do AMDs CEOs have to do with this? We're talking about whether or not Intel is illegally influencing the market. AMD might be doing poorly because of their CEOs, but that has nothing to do with this debate, because we're talking about whether or not Intel is doing something illegal.
Intel is absolutely a monopolistic company. They don't have a total monopoly, but they have enough market share that they can influence the market in these ways. This isn't like econ class where someone either is or isn't a monopoly. It's not like Intel is just moving across the street from AMD. Intel is perfectly welcome to compete in AMDs markets. The issues is if Intel tells its vendors they can either receive price breaks or they can sell AMD products. I think you are still thinking of this too much as a retail thing. Take Petsmart for example. Petsmart moving next to Petco is fine. What would be unfair is if Iams told both companies that they would receive a 10% rebate as long as they didn't sell Kibbles and Bits. Doesn't that seem shady? It has no effect on the consumer except to say that they will no longer have the option of buying Kibbles and Bits.
How will it hurt the consumers? I would argue that allowing AMD into the market at Dell would create more performance pressure for both companies. What is stopping Intel from producing poorer quality chips for Dell right now, since they have no other competition? It has been shown in many benchmarks that AMD is just as strong if not stronger in performance, but they still don't appear in Dells.
I see this as lose-lose the way things exist right now. If Intel weren't creating this pressure, and there will still no AMD chips in Dells, then I would absolutely agree that AMD is an inferior product.
To relate this to AMD and Intel, it's perfectly fine for Intel to offer up better performing products at lower prices to drive AMD out of business. If they do so, it's because they make a better product and the customer wins. However, that is not what Intel is doing here. Intel is saying that if a vendor sells AMD products, then Intel will effectively charge that vendor more to sell Intel products. Thus, selling AMD products means that vendor makes less money on Intel products than if that vendor sold only Intel products. This has no benefit to the customer. The prices the customer sees are the same because they are set by the market. All that happens is that Intel artificially eliminates AMD from the market by manipulating the channels through which the customer gets the product, which serves to limit competition by aritificially limiting choice.
Naturally limited choice is a perfectly legitimate thing, because the consumer still benefits. It is artificially limited choice that is bad for the end customer.
There's a big difference between that and this AMD/Intel situation. It's one thing for a vendor to give you incentives for highlighting their products over a competitor's product. That's just marketing and advertising, and perfectly normal. I don't see a problem either. It's quite another situation for a vendor to tell you that you will only get their incentives if you stop selling or limit the sale of their competitors' products. That is a monopolistic practice, because they are artificially limiting the customer's choice, instead of just trying to influence it. I do have a problem with that.
This does sound pretty damning, but I still want to hear Intel's side of this story. Personally, I've always preferred AMD chips over Intel chips, and I think that if AMD is successful here, it will do great things for that company. I will, however, take these claims with a grain of salt. Many people identify with AMD as the underdog with an undersung product (I sure do), and are often quick to side with them. Intel may have legitimate reasons behind all of their business practices, and since these comments and 'facts' have come through what I like to call "the AMD filter," I would like to see the story through "the Intel filter" as well. Perhaps then we will be able to see glimmers of the truth, and be able to decide fairly if Intel really did overstep their bounds. I know who I'm rooting for, but it doesn't make it any less important to gather the facts.
A monopoly doesn't mean that a company has 100% of the market, it just means that they have an overwhelming majority such that they can exert pressures against smaller companies by threatening customers. This is not the same as Intel underpricing AMD because they have a better capacity than AMD. That is legitimate business, and a gain from having the kind of production capacity that Intel has (an economy of scale). The allegation here is that Intel is witholding incetives only for people who specifically buy AMD products, meaning that Intel is using its position in the market to limit competition by not only providing incentives to use Intel products, but to provided disincentives to use AMD products. That seems like a pretty shady deal to me. Doesn't that strike you as disgusting and abhorrent?
My guess is that they have so much legacy code, hardware, etc. to support that they just can't develop at a reasonable pace anymore. Will Windows eventually buckle under its own weight? I'm becoming increasingly skeptical that Longhorn will validate this platform. Unfortunately, their near-monopoly gives them the freedom to be so mediocre. Here's to hoping I'm surprised in 2006.
Those people who come into your record store willing to pay $1 more to get it on iTunes are a great example. That dollar saves them the time to drive to your store, buy the album, and drive home. Cost is not just about money. Convenience plays a big factor, and if they just want to burn the CD and listen to it on their iPod, then what fair use are they sacrificing? It suits their needs. On the other side of the coin, P2P networks may be free, but it may take a significant time investment to find and download all of the songs on an album in good quality.
My whole point is that the RIAA is proposing a P2P model that does not cater to the huge portion of the market that wants the convenience of being able to download music and put it on their iPod. If this market had competition, then we might be in better shape, but yeah, that is a pipedream. We can at least get competition from the end distributors like iTunes, but that too is subject to the RIAAs licensing. Ultimately, the RIAA just needs a more novel solution than rebranding the same crap as P2P if they want to gain their market share back.
As for joining and 'returning songs', I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that. Are you suggesting people join, buy songs, and then ask for a refund because the system isn't working to their tastes? It's clearly stated that the songs come with DRM, and it's also not required that you be a server, you just can in exchange for some cash. The cash you receive is directly proportional to the amount the network utilizes your collection, which can be 0 if you so choose.
Really, I think this would be a great system if they opened it up a little more. Some way of incorporating Fairplay would be nice. The point, however, is that what they've got will fail, and I don't believe it will make any difference in the RIAA's fight against P2P.
Well, and this is pure, unbridled speculation, it seems that they are using a set format and bitrate (WMA, though I don't know the rate). This means they can an MD5 hash or similar to verify authenticity. I'm aware that MD5s can be spoofed, but I'm not sure how practical it is to do. It's a very legit problem, however, and certainly something that iTunes does not suffer from.
Yes, there are always ways to circumvent restrictions, but what is the benefit I get from this over either acquiring the songs illegally or by purchasing them legally from iTunes and being able to use the songs directly? Burning and re-ripping not only is a hassle, but it loses quality in the process. That is not a compelling reason for me or any other iPod user to switch to this. The point is not whether or not it can be done, but whether or not it's a viable business model. Geeks are not the mass market (and frankly, most I know wouldn't be willing to sacrifice the quality). How many people do you think would be willing to do this instead of just using iTunes?
This service's restrictions will keep it from being a major player, and until the RIAA gets it that no one will change until they open up their restrictions, piracy will always be huge, and the one music store that supports the most popular player will remain the most popular option (and only option for many) for purchasing legal music.
This market needs competition! Be creative, RIAA!
The problem comes when the draft is used to support offensive measures. The 'war on terror' may be propagandized as 'defending' our nation from terrorists, but in truth it's an offensive strike. Instating a draft for an offensive effort is much harder to justify, and in such a case, I agree with you. I shouldn't have to fight a war I don't believe in. But frankly, it's a lot easier to believe in a war when you and your home are being threatened. You just have to remember that your citizenship comes with duty.
This article has to own the record for fewest posts for a front page article. Wow. Does anyone own one of these newfangled gizmos? Are there any plans to release a legit English version in the US? Does anyone want it with the nasty DRM it has?