Is there intelligent life at AMD?

Shouldn't they direct their efforts into determining if there is intelligent life at AMD?

Paul R. Engel

You archaic old fool
Michael Jackson rejects gaol for music pirates

Gaol? Come on! How many people still use that spelling of Jail? How many people still know what it means?

Regards,

Sukhjinder Sidhu

Western countries should return their lotra (loot)
HP tells Taiwan to get off China's case

Hi,

I have been reading articles on INQ for quite some time now, and I really appreciate your efforts to bring most up-to-date news to us. It is a must read for me everyday. However, after reading a recent article "HP tells Taiwan to get off China's case" and you said in the last paragraph "Perhaps if Taiwan returned all the beautiful artefacts in the Taipei museum that were originally housed in Beijing, China will give up its claims and let the Taiwanese people live in peace", I am sadden by this comment.

Taiwan is not a communist country, as most people know already, and the reason why Taiwanese do not want to be united with China is that China is still a communist country which brain-washed its people with false hope. And the reason why China won't give up Taiwan is partly because Taiwan is an island with many economics advantages. To ask Taiwan to return the artefacts from the Taipei museum, I suggest all those westerner museums to return all those artefacts that you have forcely taken away during Qing Dynasty period. Maybe China would be more friendly to you all when you do that. And maybe those Chinese newspaper would start putting you in their news source list.

Best Regards,

James Lee

[I agree. When I visited Ahmedabad in India some years back, I found it incredible that the Raj had ripped out one beautifully crafted stone sculptured window and bunged it in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in a clear act of looting, which comes from the word "lotra". Also, the Greeks should get their marbles back as well. And I did point out that the big difference between Taiwan ROC and China is that the former is a democracy and the latter totalitarian. We Scots managed to get our Stone of Scone back from the English only a few years ago. Ed.]

Don't shove stuff down my throat
Retail radio tags should have an off switch

If they try to put one on my palate? I do not want them sticking an RF prod down my throat, since they cannot read RFID devices through the armour I usually wear. Strange?? Not at all, with sharp pointy things all over, I get the space I demand in everyday life, I never get crowded in the underground, but if the escalator is broken, those 365 steps are a little problem?

Should that be pallets?

For this reason, the initial uses for RFID tags will be on crates and palates, and in general large chunks of supplies.

Just a quick note on your concerns re. retail radio (RFID) tags -- I think you're maybe overly concerned about the security issues vis-a-vis retailers/corporations and government use of RFID to track individuals and their purchases and habits.

At the end of the day, even if RFID chips do not have an 'off' switch, it should be fairly simple to design a device to kill RFID chips. A number of alternative methods could be used - you could take advantage of the susceptibility to higher energy RF fields to kill the RFID chips (basically using a low power microwave oven designed to radiate certain RF frequencies), or you could use a handheld RFID reader to locate RFID chips on clothing and then physically break them (they are very sensitive to physical damage). Admittedly this second method is not always practical - for example if an RFID chip was embedded in the heel of your shoes you're not going to be able to bend or break the tag.

I would agree though that it should be the responsibility of the retailer to deactivate these tags for customers, therefore not requiring any effort or expense on the part of customers.

Philip Parker

Disabling RFID tags ought to be quite easy. They are powered by an externally-generated field and their job is to emit signals, so they certainly can't be shielded. I'll bet a nice strong signal would bork one of the little buggers quite nicely. I think a quick ride in a microwave oven would be satisfactory for many items.

Of course, you probably shouldn't put your brand-new DVD player in the microwave, but I don't think many people carry their DVD players around with them when they go shopping. Portable electronic items would be a problem, though.

Jude

Tesco spies on shoppers

It's specifically in the Tesco store on Newmarket Street, Cambridge, apparently. And at the Extra store in Sandhurst, Berkshire, they're using tags on DVDs.

Not /every/ Tesco - not yet. And one would hope they're happy to describe their policy on CCTV and such, if you ask.

What if you take something from a shelf and then put it back again? OTOH, if you're met outside the store with a pack in your pocket whose tag says it didn't go through the till...they don't /need/ to do the body cavity search. You hope.

Mind you, I remember the Guardian unfussily passing on a reader's advice in Notes and Queries that whenever you send a fax - I think this was ten years ago or more - it gets silently copied to GCHQ. Um, how? And why? And how sick must they be by now of fax spam?

Name supplied

The scandal that is CD-RW

Hi Mike,

I have several quite interesting things to ask the public about CD writers and their greedy manufacturers. Remember when CD-RW was 1x-4x only? Since then we got 1x-10x media, and 4x-10x media that could not be written on using older recorders otherwise capable of writing at 4x speed. I was wondering what was the cause for such a cut but I think that I have grasped it now.

We also got 4x-12x CD-RW media later and that has become the official range for so called High-Speed CD-RW. Since the difference from 10x to 12x is minimal, and it is still High-Speed technology I was expecting that the manufacturers provide us with some firmware update that will enable our writers that carry High-Speed logo (for example 24x/10x/40x Teac, Plextor, etc) to write the full range of High-Speed media at the maximum possible speed.

I was wrong of course, they are the greedy sort of people that won't give anything for free. They started selling new writers that had 12x for CD-RW in specifications and nobody suspected anything. Now for the worst part - Ultra-Speed media showed up on market, top writing speed for CD-RW at 24x. My friend brought one here and I have inserted it in my Teac 24x/10x/40x writer (CD-W524E) to see if I can write it.

I have got latest firmware update for it (1.0E) that is said to enable reading of those disks but not writing. I fired up latest version of Nero (5.5.10.35 at that moment) and I was surprised to see that I can write Ultra-Speed CD-RW media at 4x. I scratched my head for a while about it and then decided to contact Teac technical support. After waiting 4 days for response from German Teac site I have got 2.7MB email which had PDF manual for the drive attached to it.

I got pissed off since I haven't asked for it - I am not an idiot that can't find and download one itself plus I already had it and read it several times. Here is what I have asked them:

begin
When trying to write to Verbatim ultra-speed RW media (16x-24x) I am offered only 4x writing speed. Is there a way to write these disks at 10x?

Another question: High-speed CDRW is from 4x-12x, why this writer capable of writing high-speed media can't write them at 12x?

end

And here is their answer:

begin
Hello,

The drive will support Ultra Speed discs in the read mode only. Since the drive does not support Ultra Speed discs for recording, the drive will only record at 4X.

The drive is a 24X10X40 drive, CDRW discs can only be written at 10X.

Thank you,

Tech Support

end

I guess you are laughing your ass off right now. But pay attention to this sentence: "Since the drive does not support Ultra Speed discs for recording, the drive will only record at 4X."

Now, since I have and use my common sense I analyze and deduce the following:

Claim #1: Since the drive does not support Ultra Speed discs for recording Conclusion #1: drive CANNOT write Ultra Speed discs

Claim #2: the drive will only record (Ultra Speed discs) at 4X Conclusion #2: drive CAN write Ultra Speed discs

Now, conclusion #1 is false since I can write them at 4x speed. Let's analyze further:

If it can write Ultra-Speed CD-RW media at 4x regardless of the fact that they are declared at 16x-24x, then it surely can write them at 10x!

Remember that first there were 4x-10x only CD-RW media and then after a while they started selling 1x-10x ones? It proves that the media itself was not that different at all and that the (greedy) manufacturers imposed 4x lower limit to force people to throw away their 4x writers and buy faster ones. So far, I have seen only 16x-24x Ultra-Speed CD-RW media (Verbatim). Why not 12x-24x, 4x-24x or even 1x-24x? Because you should throw away your 12x capable writer and buy 24x capable one of course!

By digging around I have found out that CD & DVD recorders have so called write strategy tables in their firmware. Those tables contain entries for various media types and manufacturers. When you insert blank CD or CD-RW into your writer it reads ATIP information from the media and does the lookup into the table. If it finds an entry it will use the strategy from the firmware, if not - it defaults to generic 4x writing strategy. So, supporting new media types is just a matter of simple firmware modification.

While I am not sure about the possibility to upgrade CD-RW writing speed from 10x to 12x (it may require hardware modifications) I can guarantee that good old 24/10x/40x writers should be able to write Ultra-Speed CD-RW media at 10x speed.

After all, as a buyer I believe that I should have the right to decide on my own when I am going to buy something new and not to be forced into it by greedy manufacturers.

I am expecting you to run a story about this.

Best regards,

Igor Levicki

[The above should be enough to spark attention Igor, Ed.]