Absolutely, it still sees a lot of use.
It's still the standard way to take music to a mastering house for cutting, and even in the digital domain when people aren't burning data such as.wavs or.aiffs (many "computerless" DAWs only bounce to Red Book) it obviates all of the jitter and other issues associated with audio CDs as a master for duplication.
Consider mastering DVD audio with a 48kHz audio sample rate - you can't burn an audio CD at anything except 44.1. And the StellaDAT and some Pioneer decks support 88.2/96k on conventional tapes (use DDS to be sure).
I haven't even started on DDS drives for archival. DATs aren't going away.
P.S. The audio world is waiting for the "killer app" that allows you to stream in an audio DAT faster than real-time. DDS drives read up to 8x, and quite a few drives have audio-capable firmware. Remember when you could first rip a CD faster than it took to play? It seems archaic to pay hundreds an hour for mastering and waste the first hour striping in the album in real time. Perhaps the fact that this hasn't been addressed for a niche market with money to burn indicates that DAT is effectively "unsupported" nowadays..
It's not so much that Bombadil is neutral, just that the affairs of the mortals are so far below his care. It's not that he doesn't care about mortals themselves, he saves the lives of the Hobbits after all, but that they are as children to him with their little squabble over some bauble.
Isn't this basically an electrician with knowledge of niche product availability?
I can't imagine this qualifies you to build and install a soffit-mounted machine and code up some custom serial control. That's a service I would pay for.
It occurs to me that the AppleTV is the opportunity for Steve Jobs to put his money where his mouth is with regards to DRM. He has stated that the DRM in iTunes and its persistence is a response to strongarm tactics by the major record companies, and that he now believes it to be a negative thing. Apple hardware is never open, and I will interested to see the restrictions the AppleTV places on my use of my content. I believe that Apple's modern business model involves hardware support of software revenue streams. Recently I realised that all the non-geeks I know who bought a Mac in an Apple Store were upsold a.Mac subscription. Also, admiring the new "Cover Flow" feature in iTunes, I discovered that you need to register for an iTunes Music Store Account with your billing details to download album artwork for CD's you have ripped yourself. I resent this, but of course I relented, and now I am one click away from spending money at iTMS.
Steve Jobs has a lot of weight within the movie industry, with leverage he did not have in the initial music industry negotiations. He could back up his words on DRM and make the AppleTV a "must-have" accessory, even for those without a computer - much as the iPod was. I think that you would need to add PVR capabilities, maybe via a DVB tuner such as an Elgato plugged directly into the USB port on the back, and streaming support like FLV for GooTube et al. I can't imagine Real support, which is a shame while the BBC insist on that or WMV (which is even less likely). More likely though is that he will launch a content distribution network that will set alarm bells ringing everywhere from cable TV operators to Blockbusters and Netflix and retailers like Barnes & Noble and Virgin, with enough "concessions to the film industry" to secure Apple's bottom line and close off their technology from imitators and hobbyists alike.
Tried my luck on a Dell P4 with an ATI Radeon 9550 in there, and in fact the reason I got around to installing Vista is because I had just reformatted this machine to do something under XP and had graphics problems. XP would only give me 640x480/16cols, and installing ATI's Catalyst drivers munged the system so badly that starting over again was the best option. This was a clean install of XP aside from critical updates, hotfixes &.NET (.NET being required for the ATI driver/apps bundle, I think the Catalyst control panel applet is written in C#). I figured I'd try Vista, interested to see what the out-of-the-box graphics support was like, and how the card would perform for Aero, etc.
Installed okay (I do like the new image based install - first impression was impressive). First time boot to the desktop was, like XP, at 640x480/16col. Why can't MS drivers provide at least VESA resolutions? I had read up that ATI's drivers for Vista weren't ready or out of beta or something (this is about two weeks ago), and after the XP debacle I wasn't prepared to tempt fate. So I opened up the Device Manager, and through "Update Driver", Vista sucked down a new MS ATI graphics update. Rebooted and had all the resolutions supported by my monitor as I would expect, better than XP so far. Ran Windows Update for the first time, and the update list also included an MS ATI graphics update. Although I immediately suspected that Windows Update hadn't picked up that I had "manually" installed the driver update, I still let the Windows Update run (all patches downloaded in under 10 mins FWIW), and of course it fell over on the ATI update installation. "Failed". Cue more headaches. Rollbacks. Crap.
So I'm pretty down on ATI and Windows. ATI drivers for XP are crap, and MS support for the ATI cards seems to vary (I haven't experienced the same kind of problems on every ATI equipped XP install). Don't update the drivers under Vista through the Device Manager, get them via Windows Update or else open up a whole new can of worms.
But! I am getting over 1MB/sec down on a 10Mb/sec line. i.e. "close to theoretical maximum for my connection". Likewise this box under XP and every other XP machine on the network maxes out around 300KB. I can't explain this either, but others who have tried point to the fact that Vista is supposed to have a completely new TCP/IP software stack. I confess that I find it difficult to believe that this is making such a difference, but Occam's razor and all that.
And! Remote Desktop Connection for Mac OS X, which hasn't been updated since 2004 but runs fine under Rosetta on an Intel Mac, works perfectly with Vista. (I'm a bit worried about drawing attention to this actually;o)
So I haven't reformatted it yet, but I don't know if I'll be keeping it for up to 120 days. The screen fading in and out to ask "Cancel", or "Allow" is going to give me a seizure. It really is annoying, and Apple have done really well with their ad campaign - even when a machine is better set up, the user is going to see this message and think of Apple at least once or twice an hour. MS should have plain ripped off the OS X "GUI sudo" process - MS cocked this up on Vista and everybody is going to end up disabling it, Apple's implementation is unobtrusive and intuitive. Sorry, but a feature that could theoretically improve security but really needs to be disabled for usable lightly demanding day-to-day operation is about as useful as SELinux.
It's such a pain to eject removable drives under Windows, I was amazed that they haven't touched the "Eject Hardware" system tray applet. It's just the same as under XP: my mother doesn't know it exists, or that she might need to do anything before pulling out her USB stick; left and right clicks show two different menus (where else in Windows - or any other MS app for that matter - is that the case?), the right click menu contains only a single option, whi
News for Nerds. Prussiks matter.
on
Caves on Mars?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Respect to you Ray. I've seen you take a lot of flack for your efforts to keep us all abreast of the proceedings, of issues that should concern us all. And it's nice to see that the community could have been of help. All the best.
Such as a SCSI-II enclosure with a 1.6" opening for a DAT drive. That's proving harder than tracking down a 5 1/4" floppy drive. That took me three months, and not for want of trying.
I've been with T-Mobile UK for about 3 years on a voice + BlackBerry plan.
The plan itself is(was?) basically the best contract for data in the UK. No-one offers an unlimited data plan, as seem to be readily available everywhere else. All that's on offer in the UK is 'fair-use' limits, past which the provider may (at their discretion) levy a charge of £1.50-£5.00/MB. All the network operators in the UK set their fair-use limit at 5MB (the last time I renewed my contract, this time last year, this was still the case), except for T-Mobile, who set it at 50MB. This sole fact was the deal-decider in my case.
I initially had a BlackBerry 7230, but I couldn't do anything useful with it (this was pre BlackBerry OS 4) - not even Over The Air installs until I upgraded the handset firmware. The first time I took it to the US however, it was like having a new device - I was even able to tether it to my Windows laptop as a USB modem. I realised then that the functionality of my device was seriously limited on my 'home' territory network.
When I upgraded my contract, I also got a handset upgrade from the 7230 to an 8700g, and the first thing I wanted to do was install Opera Mini.
One thing to note is that there are two BlackBerry browser applications. One is an 'enterprise' browser, and the other is intended to be branded by the network operator. On a consumer tariff (i.e. without a BES contract ), you cannot access the enterprise browser at all, and can only use the branded browser. This is also the case on BlackBerry on the O2 network that I have seen. I don't know if the two browsers share the same code-base, but the lesser functionality of the branded browser is well documented. I have never seen the ability to change the homepage (typically your network providers portal selling ringtones etc.), and on my old 7230, the menu option to switch the browser out of WAP to HTML was locked unless you blindly entered an arcane 'cheat-code' on the correct page. It must be said that the browser on the 8700 is considerably better, supporting JavaScript and CSS out of the box, but it is still a pick'n'mix of standards support. Also considering the download limits, Opera Mini with its pre-compression of pages looked like a good bet, and I downloaded it and it ran very nicely for a month or two until it notified me of a new update. Attempting to upgrade Opera Mini failed. It appeared to install, but would fail to connect to the network. I restored the BlackBerry from a backup, and then uninstalled the old (beta?) Opera Mini before attempting a clean install. Same problem. I tried it a bunch of ways over the course of a week, and even managed once or twice to speak to some T-Mobile support staff with half a clue, but eventually I gave up on it (under advisement: one quote was literally "Give up, it's not going to work.")
Undeterred I next tried to install Google Maps for BlackBerry. This installed cleanly, and provided useful feedback. On first launch, the BlackBerry firewall prompts appeared as expected, and once permitted, it would begin to negotiate a connection. However, Google Maps grabs some of its data over HTTPS. No go. Back on the phone to T-Mobile, it took me two days to get a clear confirmation from someone that knew what they were talking about: "No secure connections allowed".
I gave up trying to extend the functionality of my handset at this point, and resigned myself to treating the BlackBerry as a black box. Not to detract from the device, I wouldn't change to a handset running anything apart from BlackBerry OS, it is unmatched in the marketplace and does what it does very well - these restrictions are imposed by the network operator.
The next time I was in the US, I noticed that I was on an EDGE network. Althought the 8700g is EDGE capable, there are no EDGE networks in the UK, and so I had previously only had GPRS(or even GSM only in some remote parts of Scotland and Wales). Fired up the still installed Opera Mini and Google Maps - worked like a charm, and speed
Two things rub me about the AppleTV. Firstly, the networking hardware:
It has 802.11 (n!) wireless and 100BaseT ethernet. I think it's a bit tight not to have Gig-Ethernet, surely for the sake of pennies, and it appears that the wireless is only capable as a client. It's a shame that it doesn't seem like it can be used to create or extend a network, like the old Airport Express. I can see the business argument for making you buy another unit, however, I could be wrong about this.
Secondly, especially with the announcement of this product, I ask myself again "Why the hell haven't Apple bought Elgato already?". Their eyeTV tuners cater for terrestrial, cable and satellite broadcasts over USB and Firewire, and the lack of any conventional broadcast capability is the most glaring omission from the AppleTV. It's a perfect fit with any of the Elgato boxes, and the eyeTV software is very 'iLife-like', and even includes Front Row integration. I doubt that the Elgato functionality could be hacked into the AppleTV box, even though there's a USB port on the back begging to be connected to a tuner (a self-contained solution - perhaps even usable as a PVR without a computer). The hardware and software should be all integrated, and from where I'm standing the smartest thing that Apple could do is simply buy Elgato and knock the corners off the setup - it's nearly all there already.
Disclaimer: I think the Elgato eyeTV 410 is the best realised peripheral I have bought this millenium.
When Vista is released to the public, it will not ape all the features of Apple's OS X until R2 (codenamed Fiji), scheduled for release in 2008. Innovation will be part of a subsequent product "Vienna", still over 3 years away at a minimum. Although of course if it were to be delivered inside 5 years, you might feel justifiably ripped off if you purchased Vista, as it can be assumed that similar upgrade conditions from XP to Vista will apply re Vista to Vienna.
The article is a bit light on detail, there's a webcast of the presentation on AMD's Investor Relations site (needs a login (BugMeNot doesn't work) and it's WMP or Real only. And it's apparently four hours long. The most interesting thing for me was the mention of "Hybrid Graphics":
According to AMD, notebooks with hybrid graphics will include both discrete and integrated graphics processors. When such notebooks are unplugged, their integrated graphics will kick in and disable the discrete GPU. As soon as the notebook is plugged back into a power source, the discrete GPU will be switched on again, apparently without the need to reboot. AMD says this technology will enable notebooks to provide the "best of both worlds" in terms of performance and battery life.
It also looks like they're also extending the Fusion concept along Cell-like lines, with additional cores for non CPU or GPU purposes. Their road map through 2008 only talks about up to quad core, although I assume this means CPU cores (I'm not sure that I would accept a CPU+GPU on a single die branded as a 'dual-core' chip). I think the Cell has eight cores, but due to yield issues not all are enabled in a PS3, and they are not all functionally equivalent. I don't know if this is the case for the Cell-based IBM blades, though. The roadmap basically looks like periodic refreshing of the product line reducing power consumption with each iteration, which is where I think Intel have got a head-start on AMD. However, if AMD can sort out the yield issues, and compilers and developers begin to take advantage of these "associate" cores in Cell and future AMD architectures, then maybe Intel will have turned out to have missed a trick, as they did with x86-64.
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely, it still sees a lot of use. .wavs or .aiffs (many "computerless" DAWs only bounce to Red Book) it obviates all of the jitter and other issues associated with audio CDs as a master for duplication.
It's still the standard way to take music to a mastering house for cutting, and even in the digital domain when people aren't burning data such as
Consider mastering DVD audio with a 48kHz audio sample rate - you can't burn an audio CD at anything except 44.1. And the StellaDAT and some Pioneer decks support 88.2/96k on conventional tapes (use DDS to be sure).
I haven't even started on DDS drives for archival. DATs aren't going away.
P.S. The audio world is waiting for the "killer app" that allows you to stream in an audio DAT faster than real-time. DDS drives read up to 8x, and quite a few drives have audio-capable firmware. Remember when you could first rip a CD faster than it took to play? It seems archaic to pay hundreds an hour for mastering and waste the first hour striping in the album in real time. Perhaps the fact that this hasn't been addressed for a niche market with money to burn indicates that DAT is effectively "unsupported" nowadays..
I can see the protests now: "Not above my back yard".
i.e. like Switzerland.
Did any new standard supplant X10 in this field?
Isn't this basically an electrician with knowledge of niche product availability?
I can't imagine this qualifies you to build and install a soffit-mounted machine and code up some custom serial control. That's a service I would pay for.
It occurs to me that the AppleTV is the opportunity for Steve Jobs to put his money where his mouth is with regards to DRM. .Mac subscription.
He has stated that the DRM in iTunes and its persistence is a response to strongarm tactics by the major record companies, and that he now believes it to be a negative thing.
Apple hardware is never open, and I will interested to see the restrictions the AppleTV places on my use of my content.
I believe that Apple's modern business model involves hardware support of software revenue streams.
Recently I realised that all the non-geeks I know who bought a Mac in an Apple Store were upsold a
Also, admiring the new "Cover Flow" feature in iTunes, I discovered that you need to register for an iTunes Music Store Account with your billing details to download album artwork for CD's you have ripped yourself. I resent this, but of course I relented, and now I am one click away from spending money at iTMS.
Steve Jobs has a lot of weight within the movie industry, with leverage he did not have in the initial music industry negotiations. He could back up his words on DRM and make the AppleTV a "must-have" accessory, even for those without a computer - much as the iPod was. I think that you would need to add PVR capabilities, maybe via a DVB tuner such as an Elgato plugged directly into the USB port on the back, and streaming support like FLV for GooTube et al. I can't imagine Real support, which is a shame while the BBC insist on that or WMV (which is even less likely).
More likely though is that he will launch a content distribution network that will set alarm bells ringing everywhere from cable TV operators to Blockbusters and Netflix and retailers like Barnes & Noble and Virgin, with enough "concessions to the film industry" to secure Apple's bottom line and close off their technology from imitators and hobbyists alike.
I similarly had problems with video on Vista.
.NET (.NET being required for the ATI driver/apps bundle, I think the Catalyst control panel applet is written in C#).
;o)
Tried my luck on a Dell P4 with an ATI Radeon 9550 in there, and in fact the reason I got around to installing Vista is because I had just reformatted this machine to do something under XP and had graphics problems.
XP would only give me 640x480/16cols, and installing ATI's Catalyst drivers munged the system so badly that starting over again was the best option. This was a clean install of XP aside from critical updates, hotfixes &
I figured I'd try Vista, interested to see what the out-of-the-box graphics support was like, and how the card would perform for Aero, etc.
Installed okay (I do like the new image based install - first impression was impressive).
First time boot to the desktop was, like XP, at 640x480/16col. Why can't MS drivers provide at least VESA resolutions?
I had read up that ATI's drivers for Vista weren't ready or out of beta or something (this is about two weeks ago), and after the XP debacle I wasn't prepared to tempt fate. So I opened up the Device Manager, and through "Update Driver", Vista sucked down a new MS ATI graphics update. Rebooted and had all the resolutions supported by my monitor as I would expect, better than XP so far. Ran Windows Update for the first time, and the update list also included an MS ATI graphics update. Although I immediately suspected that Windows Update hadn't picked up that I had "manually" installed the driver update, I still let the Windows Update run (all patches downloaded in under 10 mins FWIW), and of course it fell over on the ATI update installation. "Failed". Cue more headaches. Rollbacks. Crap.
So I'm pretty down on ATI and Windows.
ATI drivers for XP are crap, and MS support for the ATI cards seems to vary (I haven't experienced the same kind of problems on every ATI equipped XP install).
Don't update the drivers under Vista through the Device Manager, get them via Windows Update or else open up a whole new can of worms.
But!
I am getting over 1MB/sec down on a 10Mb/sec line. i.e. "close to theoretical maximum for my connection". Likewise this box under XP and every other XP machine on the network maxes out around 300KB. I can't explain this either, but others who have tried point to the fact that Vista is supposed to have a completely new TCP/IP software stack. I confess that I find it difficult to believe that this is making such a difference, but Occam's razor and all that.
And!
Remote Desktop Connection for Mac OS X, which hasn't been updated since 2004 but runs fine under Rosetta on an Intel Mac, works perfectly with Vista. (I'm a bit worried about drawing attention to this actually
So I haven't reformatted it yet, but I don't know if I'll be keeping it for up to 120 days. The screen fading in and out to ask "Cancel", or "Allow" is going to give me a seizure. It really is annoying, and Apple have done really well with their ad campaign - even when a machine is better set up, the user is going to see this message and think of Apple at least once or twice an hour.
MS should have plain ripped off the OS X "GUI sudo" process - MS cocked this up on Vista and everybody is going to end up disabling it, Apple's implementation is unobtrusive and intuitive. Sorry, but a feature that could theoretically improve security but really needs to be disabled for usable lightly demanding day-to-day operation is about as useful as SELinux.
It's such a pain to eject removable drives under Windows, I was amazed that they haven't touched the "Eject Hardware" system tray applet. It's just the same as under XP: my mother doesn't know it exists, or that she might need to do anything before pulling out her USB stick; left and right clicks show two different menus (where else in Windows - or any other MS app for that matter - is that the case?), the right click menu contains only a single option, whi
Who here knew rock-climbers were nerds?
It's not a meltdown, merely what we call an "unrequested fission surplus".
Terminal in Leopard has tabs.
Respect to you Ray.
I've seen you take a lot of flack for your efforts to keep us all abreast of the proceedings, of issues that should concern us all.
And it's nice to see that the community could have been of help.
All the best.
Such as a SCSI-II enclosure with a 1.6" opening for a DAT drive.
That's proving harder than tracking down a 5 1/4" floppy drive. That took me three months, and not for want of trying.
That's okay, it'll be here tomorrow.
Same here.
OmniWeb
And amazingly, against all the free competition, worth the money.
And FWIW, nothing is as slow as Firefox on OS X. (Flock doesn't count).
I've been with T-Mobile UK for about 3 years on a voice + BlackBerry plan.
The plan itself is(was?) basically the best contract for data in the UK. No-one offers an unlimited data plan, as seem to be readily available everywhere else. All that's on offer in the UK is 'fair-use' limits, past which the provider may (at their discretion) levy a charge of £1.50-£5.00/MB. All the network operators in the UK set their fair-use limit at 5MB (the last time I renewed my contract, this time last year, this was still the case), except for T-Mobile, who set it at 50MB. This sole fact was the deal-decider in my case.
I initially had a BlackBerry 7230, but I couldn't do anything useful with it (this was pre BlackBerry OS 4) - not even Over The Air installs until I upgraded the handset firmware. The first time I took it to the US however, it was like having a new device - I was even able to tether it to my Windows laptop as a USB modem. I realised then that the functionality of my device was seriously limited on my 'home' territory network.
When I upgraded my contract, I also got a handset upgrade from the 7230 to an 8700g, and the first thing I wanted to do was install Opera Mini.
One thing to note is that there are two BlackBerry browser applications. One is an 'enterprise' browser, and the other is intended to be branded by the network operator. On a consumer tariff (i.e. without a BES contract ), you cannot access the enterprise browser at all, and can only use the branded browser. This is also the case on BlackBerry on the O2 network that I have seen. I don't know if the two browsers share the same code-base, but the lesser functionality of the branded browser is well documented. I have never seen the ability to change the homepage (typically your network providers portal selling ringtones etc.), and on my old 7230, the menu option to switch the browser out of WAP to HTML was locked unless you blindly entered an arcane 'cheat-code' on the correct page.
It must be said that the browser on the 8700 is considerably better, supporting JavaScript and CSS out of the box, but it is still a pick'n'mix of standards support. Also considering the download limits, Opera Mini with its pre-compression of pages looked like a good bet, and I downloaded it and it ran very nicely for a month or two until it notified me of a new update.
Attempting to upgrade Opera Mini failed. It appeared to install, but would fail to connect to the network. I restored the BlackBerry from a backup, and then uninstalled the old (beta?) Opera Mini before attempting a clean install. Same problem. I tried it a bunch of ways over the course of a week, and even managed once or twice to speak to some T-Mobile support staff with half a clue, but eventually I gave up on it (under advisement: one quote was literally "Give up, it's not going to work.")
Undeterred I next tried to install Google Maps for BlackBerry. This installed cleanly, and provided useful feedback. On first launch, the BlackBerry firewall prompts appeared as expected, and once permitted, it would begin to negotiate a connection. However, Google Maps grabs some of its data over HTTPS. No go. Back on the phone to T-Mobile, it took me two days to get a clear confirmation from someone that knew what they were talking about: "No secure connections allowed".
I gave up trying to extend the functionality of my handset at this point, and resigned myself to treating the BlackBerry as a black box. Not to detract from the device, I wouldn't change to a handset running anything apart from BlackBerry OS, it is unmatched in the marketplace and does what it does very well - these restrictions are imposed by the network operator.
The next time I was in the US, I noticed that I was on an EDGE network. Althought the 8700g is EDGE capable, there are no EDGE networks in the UK, and so I had previously only had GPRS(or even GSM only in some remote parts of Scotland and Wales). Fired up the still installed Opera Mini and Google Maps - worked like a charm, and speed
Google Base?
Two things rub me about the AppleTV.
Firstly, the networking hardware:
It has 802.11 (n!) wireless and 100BaseT ethernet. I think it's a bit tight not to have Gig-Ethernet, surely for the sake of pennies, and it appears that the wireless is only capable as a client. It's a shame that it doesn't seem like it can be used to create or extend a network, like the old Airport Express. I can see the business argument for making you buy another unit, however, I could be wrong about this.
Secondly, especially with the announcement of this product, I ask myself again "Why the hell haven't Apple bought Elgato already?". Their eyeTV tuners cater for terrestrial, cable and satellite broadcasts over USB and Firewire, and the lack of any conventional broadcast capability is the most glaring omission from the AppleTV. It's a perfect fit with any of the Elgato boxes, and the eyeTV software is very 'iLife-like', and even includes Front Row integration. I doubt that the Elgato functionality could be hacked into the AppleTV box, even though there's a USB port on the back begging to be connected to a tuner (a self-contained solution - perhaps even usable as a PVR without a computer). The hardware and software should be all integrated, and from where I'm standing the smartest thing that Apple could do is simply buy Elgato and knock the corners off the setup - it's nearly all there already.
Disclaimer: I think the Elgato eyeTV 410 is the best realised peripheral I have bought this millenium.
brainfarts == word of the year, so far.
Don't fucking bother then. Apologies my friend, I thought your post had more value than to languish at 0 all day, but I don't have any mod points.
Mod parent something. Not sure what, but they're not my points.
In my experience the trouble stems from badly written DTDs/Schemas.
Vindicated.
When Vista is released to the public, it will not ape all the features of Apple's OS X until R2 (codenamed Fiji), scheduled for release in 2008. Innovation will be part of a subsequent product "Vienna", still over 3 years away at a minimum. Although of course if it were to be delivered inside 5 years, you might feel justifiably ripped off if you purchased Vista, as it can be assumed that similar upgrade conditions from XP to Vista will apply re Vista to Vienna.
The most interesting thing for me was the mention of "Hybrid Graphics":It also looks like they're also extending the Fusion concept along Cell-like lines, with additional cores for non CPU or GPU purposes.
Their road map through 2008 only talks about up to quad core, although I assume this means CPU cores (I'm not sure that I would accept a CPU+GPU on a single die branded as a 'dual-core' chip). I think the Cell has eight cores, but due to yield issues not all are enabled in a PS3, and they are not all functionally equivalent. I don't know if this is the case for the Cell-based IBM blades, though.
The roadmap basically looks like periodic refreshing of the product line reducing power consumption with each iteration, which is where I think Intel have got a head-start on AMD. However, if AMD can sort out the yield issues, and compilers and developers begin to take advantage of these "associate" cores in Cell and future AMD architectures, then maybe Intel will have turned out to have missed a trick, as they did with x86-64.
And don't forget about StringBuilder
Do you really need thread-safe access to your buffer?
Every little helps.