You are a Poophead

Mike,

I wonder with each article-tte I read by Fuad Abazovic just how much dumber a person can seem...*chuckle* I'll admit Fuad seems to scale new heights of just plain "dumbness" every time I read something he's hurriedly scrawled out without much thought - or else it's deliberate misinformation, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and just call him "thick."

AMD has never been in the MHz clockspeed race with Intel. The history of the Athlon is one of cpu efficiency, or "how to get more performance out of less MHz." Most people call this "IPC" (Instructions Per Clock) for short. AMD is committed to winning the performance race--that is, winning the race on how fast a given cpu can complete a given task (regardless of MHz.) That's performance--"MHz" is not. I thought everybody knew that but I can see Fuad doesn't. That's why an Athlon 2800 + running some 700MHz slower than a 3.06GHz HYPEr-Threading cpu by Intel can tear it up running x87 FPU code, for instance (running a single instance of Folding @ Home the fastest P4 Intel makes is no match for the Athlon XP 2800 +.) That's not to say the P4 doesn't eclipse the Athlon in other things, because it does. What it conclusively proves, however, is that "MHz doesn't make the cpu." That's been the Athlon's success story from day one.

The same will be true of Hammer. It's a difference of design philosophy, you see. Intel concentrates on long pipelines with gobs of memory bandwidth at very high MHz speeds to attain performance; AMD concentrates on sophisticated cpu architecture to gain performance--which holds many advantages over Intel's approach. Hammer was never *meant* to eclipse the P4 in MHz--it's meant to eclipse it in speed--that is, in application performance. I think Fuad will be amazed to see that an Intel HyperThreading cpu will need to be on average clocked *1 GHz* higher than an Athlon 64 simply to attain performance parity with it. For instance, to attain performance parity with an Athlon 64 or Opteron cpu running at an actual 3GHz clockspeed, a P4 will need to be clocked between 4-4.5GHz. As you can see what AMD is after is performance--not MHz.

I have faith that Fuad, bless his pea-pickin' little heart, will eventually be able to absorb such an elementary lesson...;)

Yours

Walt Covington
Email address supplied

Excuse me, Walt, but have you been living in a hole for the last 5 years, or have you only become a self-professed 'expert' in the last few months? The MHz race was very much entered by AMD, e.g. it is easy to remember the heady days when the Athlon was first to 1GHz. At the time, Intel was struggling with a P3 architecture that had run out of road, and thus they fell back in the race.

Now we see the tables reversed, the Athlon is quickly heading towards it's design ceiling, meaning that AMD are falling back. Just as when Intel were behind they were struggling to get the P4 out, AMD now seem to have the next 'trick card'. The point is that AMD, even with their 'trick card', are behind. If MHz were not important when AMD would have not invented, reinvented and then regurgitated the PR rating. Can you really see a company who aren't 'in the race' spending millions in rebranding and attempting to assure disties that they're not being conned?

Another thing, is that while you, Walt, seem to think that AMD have been pushing this 'design philosophy' thing for ever, the rest of us know that they are not yet mature as a CPU designing company. While the athlon made huge inroads with reliability and performance, the heat issues, and other 'unpolished corners' make the wise among us know why Intel CPUs cost that much more.

From reading the above, one might think I was an Intel supporter. Not so, I have never bought an Intel CPU in my life, and have 5 machines running Athlons in my home. I like their performance/price, and live with the heat. I don't, however, believe that this design that started out life at 500MHz, and which was very much entered in the MHz race, was designed originally to beat CPU's that were running at faster speeds through 'superior design'.

Through your conjecture and obvious lack of background on the subject, you have slurred the name of Fuad, quite publically. Unfortunately, you have also succeeded in making a complete twat of yourself. Please look back at the article (I can't remember which one it was) which says about AMD fan-boys doing more harm than good. You are one of these people.

So please shut up.

Matt Whitfield
Email address supplied

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Google hunts down "President Bush is demonstrating genuine leadership"

I support President Bush. I think he is doing a very good job.

You (Insert name here) are a liberal poophead.

Thank you,

TiminPhoenix

Ps I am sincere in my praise of the President, as to your poophead status, that remains in doubt. Have a swell day.

Email address supplied

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Governments promote outsourcing at their peril

Hey Letterman,

The series on IT outsourcing was indeed disturbing from the viewpoint of a techie-type person in the UK or US. However, I'm glad I waited to see the replies from the people of the East who are gaining these outsourcing contracts before I fully formed my opinion on the matter. (I very much value as many perspectives on an issue as possible when issues like this come up)

From the replies if was evident to me that outsourcing IT does more than save companies money. It is an opportunity for those Indians and Chinese and any others to improve their standard of living and learn technical skills. With their improved standard of living, they can help others in their own countries.

So what about the IT people in our countries who are being replaced? They have a choice. They can whine, or they can educate themselves and keep themselves competitive. Our countries are fortunate enough to have so many innovative people. New things are created, the market for them booms, causing people to flock to the industry for high wages and returns, the market becomes saturated, demand falls, prices fall, and then the industry must cut costs by outsourcing to other nations, which brings to the rest of the world the knowledge and then the benefits of the technology which they could not afford to buy like we can.

Each time the outsourcing starts, the people in our countries must increase their levels of education, which leads to more innovation and amazing technology. It's a cycle.

Thanks for printing different perspectives on issues. The more perspectives, the more truth becomes evident.

Michaela Stephens
Email address supplied

I have to give your piece on outsourcing credit for stirring up what will be a long debate, but in my opinion, the article suffers from a lack of focus. Surely, IT professionals have to live with change at the rate of Moore's law or even faster.

Technological change is a major driver of globalization; none of these statements, of course, are new. Why then, adopt such a protectionist attitude towards outsourcing?

Most of the world's laptops are produced in Taiwan for compelling cost and infrastructure reasons - are you seriously going to petition Dell, HP and the like to keep production in the USA or other economies where costs are higher?

If countries such as India, Russia and the like can offer similar compelling reasons for outsourcing, why begrudge them?

Knowledge industries are a major spur for any developing or newly industrialising economy. Furthermore, the flexibility and cost savings that are provided to outsourcing firms and governments means that they can better weather the current downturn and keep costs low, which means further growth and investment in their home economies.

This naturally comes at the cost of some short term unemployment, but no good reason is offered as to why educated IT professionals will be permanently marginalised. I won't accuse your publication of any racism or ill will towards newly industrialised nations - IT professionals are understandably nervous after the heavy cutbacks and the two year bear market. However, complaining about the proper functioning of free trade is not the solution and smacks of double standards.

Peter Mathenge
Email address supplied

Outsourcing is on the way in both hardware (first), services and software. The small parenthesis I'd like to have here is that China, the rogue fourth wheel of the devil triumvirate will soon find itself as the IT warehouse and greymatter of the capitalistic and equally evil West.

Communist China serving as foundation for the whole western capitalist economy.... That's something Mao wouldn't have thought of...

Also as a sociology student, I see outsourcing as a smoother way to distribute wealth in the world. All the outsourcing countries are tier-2/tier-3 countries (except Canada and Australia) and outsourcing is a legal/acceptable way to improve the conditions of living down there at the expense of pure capitalism.

So whether it is a good thing or a bad thing depends on which side of the hill we're standing.

I live in Mauritius and I am a freelance IT journalist. Our country (1 million ppl) is banking on IT to create 20,000 jobs in three years. If we fail then, doom and gloom might just be what awaits us ahead.

Désiré Athow
Email address supplied
Mauritian Online site for Computer and IT professionals

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Verizon DMCA ruling "threatens constitutional rights"

You wrote in "Verizon DMCA ruling "threatens constitutional rights"

"Sheesh. At least you've got a constitution"

But everyone at all levels of government in the US ignores the Constitution. 95-99% of everything the government does is not permitted or authorized by the Constitution.

The Income Tax amendment was fraudulently enacted. This is proved by certified documents from every state that voted on that amendment. See _The Law That Never Was_ (2 vols) by Larry Beecraft.

The Federal Reserve Banking system created by Congress in 1913 is unconstitutional since the Constitution says only Congress has the power to coin money which can be made of only silver or gold and Congress is not authorized to delegate its authority.

Also, the Constitution says that no-one shall serve simultaneously in two branches of government, but Congress is filled with lawyers who are members of the Bar and hence officiers of the court. So each of those lawyer representatives is unconstitutionally a member of both the judicial and executive branches of government.

The Federal Reserve Bank is not federal (it's a private corporation) - See where it's listed in the Phone book - not in the Blue Federal Government Offices section.

it has no reserves (it just prints money and then lends the printed money to FedGov and charges 6% interest per year on it. payable in gold).

The Federal Reserve has increased the national debt 5 trillion dollars in the last 3 years by printing money and putting it into circulation to make up for lost liquidity from the stock market collapse.

it's not a bank.

Congress through The Homeland Security Act , The Patriot act and the "Our Lady of Peace" Act has repealed the entire Bill of Rights, theoretically impossible. But the Supreme Court routinely lets this stuff pass in addition to saying the Constitution is a 'living' document (ie The Constitution and the Bill of Rights don't mean what they say").

The US is now the physical incarnation of the Nazi 4th Reich. The concentration camps have been built and FedGov is just waiting for an opportunity to fill up the camps via mass roundups of the civilian population.

See "American Gulag, Concentration Camps in America" by Texe Marrs (get it at http://www.texemarrs.com).

See also Alex Jones' websites: http://www.prisonplanet.com http://www.infowars.com, http://www.propagandamatrix.com

DF
Email address supplied