Subject: OiNK

Shouldn't your headline be 'OiNK shutdown by Pigs"?

:o)

Phil Martin

Subject: AMD must be poor!!!

Hi Mike,

Not sure if I’m emailing the right person, sorry if I wrong.
Just want to rant a little about my arguments with DAAMIT last week!

My dear old Ma has a PC made up from my cast aways, only thing she bought a few years ago was an ATI All In Wonder 9600Pro so it could be her TV / recorder as well. For some reason the sound went a bit weird so I thought I’d try reinstalling the drivers etc with the latest versions. Having been a PC gaming addict for 15years (approx) and having played with graphics cards since the TNT2 days I thought this would be easy. Not so.

AMD make available the drivers and media software on their site, four separate downloads which must be installed in order. These include essential items like the TV tuner driver etc. The second software package asks for the original ATI installation disk at which I laughed! How old is this card?! Since when do you keep them that long?? Especially when you include moving house in that time frame!

So I ring the UK customer service line, which is very unobvious on the web site, and they tell me I have to BUY a new installation disk. “Why?” I say, “The DVD player software is licensed so if you have lost the disk and sleeve you must buy a new one” they tell me. “I don’t want DVD player software, I want me TV card to work again!” I tell them. So DAAMIT respond with “the DVD player software has a license fee and you need the player software to be able to install the rest of the Media software”.

Well I don’t feel to good about that, I have the card to use the PC as a telly and I can’t because DAAMIT feel I can only if I have their DVD license!! I didn’t buy it for DVD playing so why am I being forced to need that software when it isn’t even needed technically for the use of the TV tuner??!!

Am I right to feel wronged or just little PC hobbyist out of his depth, dear Inq?

A replacement disk is $20 I was told, can AMD not afford to give me that for my poor old Ma?

Regards

Matt from Devon

p.s. Ta for all the entertaining reads on the Inquirer.

Subject: Everywhere Girl sighted again

Hi there, I'd like to report another sighting of the everywhere girl, I

found her on the cover of a brochure published by the Austrian Chamber of

Labour. Have a look at it here.

Greetings from your reader

Martin Heel

Subject: Compiler helped AMD

Compilers helped AMD to 2.5GHz Opteron scores

Gentlemen, I would say you are late at least a week

Beside, you should know that compiler didn't help Barcelona 2Ghz to piss off Intel in basic_rate throughput. However, it has de facto helped Intel to be somewhat less pissed off (see my link).

Regards,

John Belush

Subject: Crossfire
You are missing a feature that I find very interesting about CrossfireX:

The high end noisy GPU(s) is/are shut down when when just reading your email or browsing the internet and only your motherboard GPU is in use. this results in less power/heat and a silent PC.

Pete

Subject: Broken website

Hey Inquirer dudes (and dudettes?)

Your main page at http://www.theinquirer.net/ is showing a big fat ERROR. You might want to fix it ASAP like.

Brian Lang

Pacific Customs Brokers

Subject Bad Experience

Hi Mike

As a reader of The Inquirer for many years, I have always enjoyed the professionalism of the site and the articles. So for good reason The Inquirer have been my news site of choice.

But today I had a very bad experience when I read this article by Wily Ferret.

This is the kind of article I would expect from Toms Hardware, which is coloured by who that pays the most. So I hope it is not the case here, i.e. Intel paid for the article.

I am really disappointed to this kind of garbage on The inquirer.

The whole article is terrible, but these three sentences clearly shows no resource done by Wily Ferret what so ever:

"Nobody quite knows what DTX is supposed to be for."

"But is anyone really crying out for these things?"

"The DTX spec appears to bring nothing new to the table, ..."

If he had done just a minimum of resource by searching the web, he would have found very good articles that addresses why DTX was created, why there is a need for it, and why is it revolutionary.

He is completely missing the whole point of DTX, which is lowering the PCB manure factoring costs and avoiding a vendor lock in by e.g. Shuttle.

I hope to hear a comment from you about this.

Paul Hales is CC'ed to this email, in case this email should have been addressed to him.

Best regards,

Martin Jeppesen

Subject: funny people!

read users comments on your article! Thought of firing back at them to read again and understand the point. But, oh boy, there are so many funny people out there, Andrew! Guess we must ask them to learn english before commenting. must be them americans!

btw, ur article had a good point.

Sid

Subject: BT shenanigans

A year ago you and others ran a story suggesting that new spam-busting technology implemented by BT would allow them to spot both professional spammers and infected PC / botnet users and take appropriate action.

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/6328/127/

A year later it might be worth doing a follow-up story to find out (a) how many professional spammers accounts have been closed down, and (b) how many infected users have been contacted to tell them about their trojans. And also to find out (c) how many outgoing spam emails from BT servers have been blocked. Given the current blacklist rating of BT Internet's IP ranges, I suspect the answer is 0, 0 and 0.

Andrew

Subject: She's definitively everywhere!

Look it's the everywhere girl!

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/benefits/gsthst/menu-f.html

j0um

Subject: Newegg, rotten?

Hey there Magee,

I have some beef with newegg.

First, what happened to 'free shipping' at that site?

They used to have free shipping on everything, but now it is harder to find than an iPod in Arkansas.

Second, trying to surf newegg.com from the little Caribbean island that I am currently situated in, I can't.

It seems that somewhere along the line, newegg is not allowing 'outsiders' to view their pages.

If I use a proxy to hide my IP then all works fine.

So, is the egg blocking all developing (poor) countries, or just this little Caribbean paradiso?

I understand they don't ship outside the U.S., but can't I even look from outside the U.S?

As an American abroad, shouldn't they allow me to see what I might buy when I travel home?

Third, Newegg's customer service is going south imho. I've been buying from them for many years and have told everyone how great they are.

Now, the last two times I've ordered from them they've canceled my order because they could not get 'shipping address confirmation' from my credit card.

Yes, I did write 'shipping address confirmation' (as opposed to billing address confirmation which is customary.)

In essence, newegg wanted to be able to call my bank and confirm that the address I wanted my parts sent to was listed on my credit card - no gift giving from newegg I suppose.

How can they expect anyone to have every address they'll be shipping to listed with their credit card company. I checked if this was possible to even do, shipping address confirmation, and my credit card issuer thought the whole thing sounded so ridiculous she transferred me to the fraud department.

In an effort to get this last order through I spent an hour on the phone in a three way with Bank o' Merica and Newegg and by the end of the call my bank representative was laughing because she never heard of any merchant needing to confirm the shipping address. Both the bank and I agreed that there is something wrong with the egg since many businesses would soon be out of business if 'shipping address confirmation' became necessary. An Egg manager stepped in and approved my purchase, but told me that they'd not do it again.

Newegg now will only deliver to my billing address and any attempt to ship to an address other than my permanent residence is canceled within hours.

Lastly,

Is this news?

thnx,

Rotten Egg.

Subject: Re: Stolen music on iPods

Andrew,

Digital is stealing, analogue is just making a copy for later listening? You have to be kidding.

You steal a vinyl record. It is analogue. It is also stealing. There is very little technology or time involved in turning analogue recordings into digital recordings. I could do that on my Mac 5 years ago. You can buy a kit in retail stores for $60 right now to turn

your old cassette purchases into digital files. You can hook a VCR up to an $80. adapter and turn your old purchased videos into DVD's. You can even digitally record your vinyl collection with that $80. adapter. Is it stealing to turn old purchased recordings into digital files? The Labels seem to think so. Is it stealing to record a live act digitally or with an analogue recorder? Every major recording act seems to think so.

I don't know how many concerts/live shows you've been to lately, but the first announcement they usually make is no recordings.

Al Williams

Subject: About the MPAA Cracker

Aah sire!

In a long time I read a story on The Inquirer that brought a smile to my face. A genuine one at that. Ecstatic perhaps. Theres a saying - Revenge is best served cold. Yep, I agree but in this case a nice cup of sweetend mulled wine along with it would do. ;-)

Aarmath

Subject: Everyone is lazy then

"It's somewhat astonishing to contemplate that mathematicians even got so lazy as to trust the inner workings of closed software algorithms" - that's like saying accountant's shouldn't use Excel; they should work out your tax using an abacus. Or IT hacks shouldn't use Word; they should just scribe some random un-spellchecked nonsense out and publish that. Oh no wait that happens at L'Inq already.

As a part time mathematician I would be lost without commercial programs such as Mathematica that produce results that are of so much higher quality than the open source equivalents. You can?t solve every mathematical problem using pen and paper; many equations can only be solved numerically. That?s why we use these wonderful tools known as computers. We?re not lazy.

Aon

Subject: Ubuntu

I read your article with great interest because my son, Michael, who is studying at Stirling Uni, has just downloaded the latest release of Ubuntu.

He phoned me to tell me how great it was, and that he was thinking of changing over to use it full time. The only problem is that there seems to be no drivers for his Canon ip3000 printer or his Canoscan 4400f scanner!!

Is there any point whatsoever in producing a package like OpenOffice (which my lad is really impressed with and he says does everything he needs), and then not making drivers available which will enable users to print or scan their documents. Why would they go to the trouble of having the document format approved as an international standard if hardly anybody can print them onto paper?

From what I find on Google there are lots of printers/scanners which do not have linux drivers available.

Can you explain this apparent nonsense?

Keep up the good work.

Peter Andrews

Subject: Thank you

It warms my heart.

Seeing the posers stand up to defend a pathetic format on a pathetic device warms it still further. Good quality tape will beat any lossy compression format any time.

cheers

bangskij

Subject: Intel VIIV

If you check all the new chipsets from Intel and all the new processors spec. You can see that they all have Intel VIIV. Intel has just decided to integrate this technoligy in evereything. You should now this.

Kim Olsen

Subject: Gibbons

Since a dead horse feels no pain, let me take a whack.

My customers laughed when I suggested Gutsy Gibbon, much preferring the security promised by the staid and serious Whistler and Longhorn. That felt good. Thanks.

Jozsef