The point is that people who are most likely to use the Google browser Office apps are those who are using MS Office already. And those are using it in two places, work and home. And they have MS Office installed in both places. The whole point of the move by MS is to protect its already installed user base form migrating to Google browser-based Office, not to recruit new users.
I expect that a lot of corporations will force their employees to use the MS web apps, they just had to wait for MS to release them.
The only thing I can imagine is that they will use the Chapter 11 filing to argue that they cannot pay Novell and this will give them time to sling a bit more mud before their bank account hits zero.
In addition to the "ringle" CD, the following must be included:
1. - A self-destructing DVD, which will auto-destruct after a week, or 3 viewings, whichever comes first.
2. - A Blue-Ray DVD player with a slef-destruct mechanism which activates in case the inserted disk is not deemed "genuine" by the SONY servers (broadband connection required).
3. - An additional CD containing only the mandatory rootkit, without which the 3-song + ringtone CD cannot be played.
Most corporations have large numbers of desktops which are left on 24/7 but they sit idle from 5PM to 9AM. In such a case idle power becomes an issue. That is, of course, unless the desktops are busy doing their share of work for various botnets.
AMD did try to play a different game when they announced Fusion and Torrenza. Intel played dirty by turning back the clock to a time when people were addicted to the single-core benchmarks (i.e. framerates) and chose the perfect timing: AMD's cash reserves were the lowest after the ATI merger. Intel are hard-pressed to kill AMD now, before they open their new fabs. (Malta, NY ?) and are capable of meeting demand. And maybe that anti-trust lawsuit has some real basis, otherwise Dell would certainly not bother to sell AMD chips, especially now that they are no longer the fastest performers.
The article states that with 3 processors one gets better performance, latency wise, because in a triangle configuration any processor cache is just one hop away.
You can have 4 processors in a tetrahedron configuration and still have any processor one hop away. Of course it will take 3 hypertransport connections per processor just for the internal communications, so a 4th connection is needed for at least one processor to connect to the northbridge. The quad-core Opteron will have a maximum of 4 hypertransport connections, is that right ?
The GPS system is capable of being re-programmed such that it will give the wrong coordinates to all but the
US military. If GALILEO stays independent and keeps giving the correct coordinates a significant advantage is lost. I don't think the US military will accept that, so the getting the systems to work together may very well mean they will give the same wrong coordinates should the US military want that. I don't see the Europeans oposing such a demand.
I looked at the abstract of the actual paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0609024 and it looks like they discuss a case where the black hole does not really form, the domain wall that collapses in their model evaporates and a singularity does not form. This does not quite address the case of dropping an object into an already-formed black hole, but it sounds good for a press release, especially since the neighbors at Fermilab have made a habit of it.
The article takes the usual approach at looking at only one side of the problem. Most of the time "fanboys" are so vocal not out of love for the underdog, but out of being fed up with the arrogance of the corporate monopolist: "You don't know what you like, so it is our duty to tell you what to like. Love our product, buy it and shut up. Why ? Because everybody else has done that". In fact AMD had almost no fanboys until they relesed the K6, but it wasn't that that caused the fanboys to become both numerous and vocal. It was the arrogance of Intel telling everyone what great favour they are doing everybody by shoving the Celeron down their throats. Intel's attitude was "Everyone has bought a Celeron, so what are you waiting for ?", while at the same time experimenting with the product. They were experimenting in downgrading a product and expected people to foot the bill. And incredibly large numbers of ignorant cunsumers happily swallowed the crap that Intel was feeindg them. They were blisfully unaware of the fact that they were financing a monopolist's attemtp to figure out how much can they lower the quality of a product and keep people happy to buy it. Surprisingly or not, they were very happy as long as Intel told them that the Celeron is good for them.
Fanboys are simply capable to think for themselves, and do not like to be treated as computer illiterates by sales people who themselves are proud of being computer illiterate. That is why they buy a product for its features, not because Dell, MS or Intel told them that it is good for them.
The intensity of the electromagnetic fields that are needed to send a sizable amount of energy is strong enough to induce serious eddy currents in the conductive interior of the human body. It would be nice to get rid of the rat's nest of power cables under my desk, but I wouldn't want to live inside a microwave oven either.
Of course, they may have discovered a way to send the energy using thalaron (did I spell it correctly ?) rather than electromagnetic radiation, but, if I remember correctly, that one is harmful too.
The 50K$ they are talking about is obviously for the prototype. The one they built already walks on 2 legs, the one they want to send "will be a four-legged device ". Plus the one built on the lab can always be made with off-the shelf parts, and TFA does not even attempt to say that the one they will send up will cost 50K$.
Remember when NASA pushed the "cheaper, faster, better" program too far? It was
crowned by the hugely successful Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander missions. Not to mention the European Beagle 2, other readers did that already.
A space mission costs a lot because you get only one shot at it. And even if everything goes well and the vehicle achieves soft landing, it must survive long enough to produce useful data. Building radiation-tolerant equipment is not cheap.
If the infringement is real, how comes they did not already "fu***'n kill Google" ? But if M$ manages to use the patent threat to fool people into signing licence agreements then those people will put the rope around their own neck. They will pay M$ for software M$ dos not own and did not even bohter to sell them, and by the time they wake up the agreement will still be in place. Yes, many people have said that the M$ coupons have no expiration date. And Eben Moglen has already
debunked their "be very afraid" tour on Groklaw:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200705170 83516872
What I mean by "discarding non-interesting stuff" is not actually delete the data from disk. If this were the case, what need would be for 15 PB of storage ? The thing is that what the LHC people (and the whole physics community) want very badly is some signature of new physics. That means either Higgs, or supersymmetric partners of known particles, or even microscopic black holes (most people are skeptical about that, but look anyway at: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?r awcmd=f+a+thomas+and+giddings&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=
to see how many times it has been cited. That gives an idea of how many papers have been written on the subject)
The "non-interesting stuff" will be used to improve current limits on experimental data, but if nothing genuinely new will be found it is very likely that the LHC will be the last large particle accelerator ever built.
The main difference between the LHC data and the Internet is that all that 15 PB of data will come in a standard format, so a search is much easier to perform. In fact most of the search will consist on discarding non-interesting stuff while attempting to identify the very rare events that may show indications of new particles (Higgs for example). The Internet is a lot more diverse, the variety of information dwarfs the limited number of patterns LHC is looking for, so "no search available" for LHC data sounds more like "no search needed".
I'm sure that an important contribution comes from M$ who will not sit back and watch OLPC educate the kids in developing countries in using Linux and FOSS. M$ wants them hooked on Windows. Also, a slightly faster CPU can easily make Intel's laptop more attractive than AMD's offer. A serious loss now is worth a lot more later when the market will be able to absorb the cost of Windoze.
If I remember correctly, Google uses a large number of Linux servers. A half million of them is the number one typically hears. SCO tried to extort them and got nothing. If MS got a real patent infringement case, how comes they did not already sue Google into non-existence ?
Remember that AMD is now concentrating almost entirely on increasing its manufacturing capacity, so it can profit from its current position as performance leader. Maybe with both fabs, 36 and 30 (converted to 38), at full capacity producig 65 nm parts AMD will want to manufacture ATI chipsets for the Athlon on its own factories. And maybe will manufacture a few graphic chips as well.
If the governments want to collect money, they can always tax the receiver. They don't care that you get spammed, they get their money anyway. Take the UK television tax. You have to pay the BBC even if you don't watch them ever !
http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/international/bbc.htm l
One should not forget that politicians have their own agenda and this may influence the fate of the bill. What if a tiered internet allows them to cut costs in campaigning over the Net ? Guarded optimism sounds appropriate at the moment.
... what will actually happen to Alienware. One can be pretty sure that Intel has already put a lot of pressure to have Alienware make Intel-only machines. Let us see how this new story correlates with Intel launching new chips. Maybe Dell want a really good deal for Conroe chips and Intel want a premium price.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is that people who are most likely to use the Google browser Office apps are those who are using MS Office already. And those are using it in two places, work and home. And they have MS Office installed in both places. The whole point of the move by MS is to protect its already installed user base form migrating to Google browser-based Office, not to recruit new users.
I expect that a lot of corporations will force their employees to use the MS web apps, they just had to wait for MS to release them.
The only thing I can imagine is that they will use the Chapter 11 filing to argue that they cannot pay Novell and this will give them time to sling a bit more mud before their bank account hits zero.
In addition to the "ringle" CD, the following must be included:
1. - A self-destructing DVD, which will auto-destruct after a week, or 3 viewings, whichever comes first.
2. - A Blue-Ray DVD player with a slef-destruct mechanism which activates in case the inserted disk is not deemed "genuine" by the SONY servers (broadband connection required).
3. - An additional CD containing only the mandatory rootkit, without which the 3-song + ringtone CD cannot be played.
4. - A Betamax tape, just for the heck of it.
Most corporations have large numbers of desktops which are left on 24/7 but they sit idle from 5PM to 9AM.
In such a case idle power becomes an issue. That is, of course, unless the desktops are busy doing their share of work for various botnets.
AMD did try to play a different game when they announced Fusion and Torrenza. Intel played dirty by turning back the clock to a time when people were addicted to the single-core benchmarks (i.e. framerates) and chose the perfect timing: AMD's cash reserves were the lowest after the ATI merger. Intel are hard-pressed to kill AMD now, before they open their new fabs. (Malta, NY ?) and are capable of meeting demand. And maybe that anti-trust lawsuit has some real basis, otherwise Dell would certainly not bother to sell AMD chips, especially now that they are no longer the fastest performers.
The article states that with 3 processors one gets better performance, latency wise, because in a triangle configuration any processor cache is just one hop away. You can have 4 processors in a tetrahedron configuration and still have any processor one hop away. Of course it will take 3 hypertransport connections per processor just for the internal communications, so a 4th connection is needed for at least one processor to connect to the northbridge. The quad-core Opteron will have a maximum of 4 hypertransport connections, is that right ?
The GPS system is capable of being re-programmed such that it will give the wrong coordinates to all but the US military. If GALILEO stays independent and keeps giving the correct coordinates a significant advantage is lost. I don't think the US military will accept that, so the getting the systems to work together may very well mean they will give the same wrong coordinates should the US military want that. I don't see the Europeans oposing such a demand.
I looked at the abstract of the actual paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0609024 and it looks like they discuss a case where the black hole does not really form, the domain wall that collapses in their model evaporates and a singularity does not form. This does not quite address the case of dropping an object into an already-formed black hole, but it sounds good for a press release, especially since the neighbors at Fermilab have made a habit of it.
The article takes the usual approach at looking at only one side of the problem. Most of the time "fanboys" are so vocal not out of love for the underdog, but out of being fed up with the arrogance of the corporate monopolist: "You don't know what you like, so it is our duty to tell you what to like. Love our product, buy it and shut up. Why ? Because everybody else has done that". In fact AMD had almost no fanboys until they relesed the K6, but it wasn't that that caused the fanboys to become both numerous and vocal. It was the arrogance of Intel telling everyone what great favour they are doing everybody by shoving the Celeron down their throats. Intel's attitude was "Everyone has bought a Celeron, so what are you waiting for ?", while at the same time experimenting with the product. They were experimenting in downgrading a product and expected people to foot the bill. And incredibly large numbers of ignorant cunsumers happily swallowed the crap that Intel was feeindg them. They were blisfully unaware of the fact that they were financing a monopolist's attemtp to figure out how much can they lower the quality of a product and keep people happy to buy it. Surprisingly or not, they were very happy as long as Intel told them that the Celeron is good for them. Fanboys are simply capable to think for themselves, and do not like to be treated as computer illiterates by sales people who themselves are proud of being computer illiterate. That is why they buy a product for its features, not because Dell, MS or Intel told them that it is good for them.
The intensity of the electromagnetic fields that are needed to send a sizable amount of energy is strong enough to induce serious eddy currents in the conductive interior of the human body. It would be nice to get rid of the rat's nest of power cables under my desk, but I wouldn't want to live inside a microwave oven either. Of course, they may have discovered a way to send the energy using thalaron (did I spell it correctly ?) rather than electromagnetic radiation, but, if I remember correctly, that one is harmful too.
The 50K$ they are talking about is obviously for the prototype. The one they built already walks on 2 legs, the one they want to send "will be a four-legged device ". Plus the one built on the lab can always be made with off-the shelf parts, and TFA does not even attempt to say that the one they will send up will cost 50K$. Remember when NASA pushed the "cheaper, faster, better" program too far? It was crowned by the hugely successful Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander missions. Not to mention the European Beagle 2, other readers did that already. A space mission costs a lot because you get only one shot at it. And even if everything goes well and the vehicle achieves soft landing, it must survive long enough to produce useful data. Building radiation-tolerant equipment is not cheap.
If the infringement is real, how comes they did not already "fu***'n kill Google" ? But if M$ manages to use the patent threat to fool people into signing licence agreements then those people will put the rope around their own neck. They will pay M$ for software M$ dos not own and did not even bohter to sell them, and by the time they wake up the agreement will still be in place. Yes, many people have said that the M$ coupons have no expiration date. And Eben Moglen has already debunked their "be very afraid" tour on Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200705170 83516872
What I mean by "discarding non-interesting stuff" is not actually delete the data from disk. If this were the case, what need would be for 15 PB of storage ? The thing is that what the LHC people (and the whole physics community) want very badly is some signature of new physics. That means either Higgs, or supersymmetric partners of known particles, or even microscopic black holes (most people are skeptical about that, but look anyway at: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?r awcmd=f+a+thomas+and+giddings&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=
to see how many times it has been cited. That gives an idea of how many papers have been written on the subject)
The "non-interesting stuff" will be used to improve current limits on experimental data, but if nothing genuinely new will be found it is very likely that the LHC will be the last large particle accelerator ever built.
The main difference between the LHC data and the Internet is that all that 15 PB of data will come in a standard format, so a search is much easier to perform. In fact most of the search will consist on discarding non-interesting stuff while attempting to identify the very rare events that may show indications of new particles (Higgs for example). The Internet is a lot more diverse, the variety of information dwarfs the limited number of patterns LHC is looking for, so "no search available" for LHC data sounds more like "no search needed".
I'm sure that an important contribution comes from M$ who will not sit back and watch OLPC educate the kids in developing countries in using Linux and FOSS. M$ wants them hooked on Windows. Also, a slightly faster CPU can easily make Intel's laptop more attractive than AMD's offer. A serious loss now is worth a lot more later when the market will be able to absorb the cost of Windoze.
I find it funny that at the end of a story questioning Google's position I found some ads by none other than ... Google !
If I remember correctly, Google uses a large number of Linux servers. A half million of them is the number one typically hears. SCO tried to extort them and got nothing. If MS got a real patent infringement case, how comes they did not already sue Google into non-existence ?
Remember that AMD is now concentrating almost entirely on increasing its manufacturing capacity, so it can profit from its current position as performance leader. Maybe with both fabs, 36 and 30 (converted to 38), at full capacity producig 65 nm parts AMD will want to manufacture ATI chipsets for the Athlon on its own factories. And maybe will manufacture a few graphic chips as well.
If the governments want to collect money, they can always tax the receiver. They don't care that you get spammed, they get their money anyway. Take the UK television tax. You have to pay the BBC even if you don't watch them ever ! http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/international/bbc.htm l
One should not forget that politicians have their own agenda and this may influence the fate of the bill. What if a tiered internet allows them to cut costs in campaigning over the Net ? Guarded optimism sounds appropriate at the moment.
Why is that ? Because I did not install it to begin with ! :-)
... what will actually happen to Alienware. One can be pretty sure that Intel has already put a lot of pressure to have Alienware make Intel-only machines. Let us see how this new story correlates with Intel launching new chips. Maybe Dell want a really good deal for Conroe chips and Intel want a premium price.