A microprocessor is the brain of a mouse

Subject: Vista Compatibility

I think another thing that is hurting Vista adoption (that's worth mentioning) is the lack of official Quicktime & Real Player support. Quicktime & Real are applications that some take for granted & imagine Windows should come with by default. I was not pleased to learn that neither works well on Vista (despite what the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor told me)

I switched to Vista last week & it's been more frustrating than any previous Windows release that I can remember. The drivers for my TV tuner are below the quality of XP (choppy video vs smooth video) & I get messages that the drivers for my 7950GT just decided to stop working (strange).

The UI is very nice, but without proper application & driver support I understand why adoption rates are slow.

Shaun

Subject: Iran filters immoral phone messages

Ni Nick! .... and if the MMS Telecommunication System comes from SIEMENS they can see were you are on earth and there can send a beautiful hot laser beam from a Satellite to you! :)

You can and will stay "cool" .... if you use the right words in your next MMS! ;)

O by the way, have I told you what the difference is of the "Soziale Marktwirtschaft" and the "US Freie Marktwirtschaft"

Yeah that's it, "god" will send us a hot laser beam from a satellite for any true word! :)

Frank-J. Bebber

Subject: the good doctor

Mr. Watson crashes on one of my older machines on about a weekly basis. I get the aformentiond prompt concerning Watson's death, the system will lock up, and stay that way unless I kill the good doctor.

I guess this is what happens when you keep Windows on a machine for the good part of a decade without ever doing a clean install.

Jeff

Subject: GRID

Maybe because we all moved over here? :)

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org

ibnarabi

Subject: Racketeering

Surely this is racketeering (and extortion) and therefore illegal.

RIAA collect money from anyone broadcasting any music without the consent of the artist that produced the music. Then it refuses to release the money unless the artist joins their organisation.

Isn't someone going to challenge this in the Supreme Court?

David

Subject: Computer Mouse

Hi there

Recently I found information about IBM building supercomp with 4096 processors to simulate half of the mouse's brain. Three thoughts occurred:

1) If it needs so many processors to simulate just a half of the brain, then maybe there is way to do it in opposite direction. Sill there might be problems with drivers to play WoW on MrWhiskers Duo.

2) Isn't it ironic that there are thousands of computer mice, but without any brain. There might be deeper meaning to this although I don't want to compare it to customers who buy Vista ;)

3) Whole thing is like 42 with catch 22: The Big Blue people designed supercomputer similar to Deep Blue, to simulate mouse's brain. Future development would be that this brain would design Deep Thought that would design Earth where people are used to make computation and whole thing would be operated by mice. Hm... Or did it already happen? It is mind-boggling perspective.

Marcin

Subject: grid.org shuts

A while back I saw on the grid.org website that they were having trouble getting people to make use of the data they had collected for cancer research. The drug companies wouldn't touch it (so I seem to remember) because they wouldn't be able to patent whichever chemical they ended up producing. So, while grid.org could certainly continue to collect data, there might not be a whole lot of point.

It's really too bad. I've known a few people - relatives and relatives of friends - to go down to that horrible disease.

Take care,
Patrick

Subject: Weird

Please do post if you evert learn why they shut this down. I already hear conspiracists clamoring!
Antoine Dubuc

Subject: Right Wing Inq

I am shocked and appalled, now that your correspondent, Alex, has pointed out in his letter that you have been feeding me right-wing propaganda on your site. The fact that I never noticed it surely indicates deliberate deception on your part, further compounding the sin. I think some floggings may be in order. Shame on you ;-)

Jozsef Izsak

Subject: AMD & Intel...

It seems its too late for AMD at the moment…. You know it makes me mad that people are still dumb enough to not know that an AMD Athlon 64 2.0ghz trounces over a 3.0ghz P4… You can see it on Ebay where people are still paying out the nose for a clunky Pentium 4, yet an Athlon 64 goes for either less or equal amount.

AMD should have been SHOUTING from the rooftops of the inefficient Pentium 4 when it had the chance… AMD should have been shouting as loud as they could about the mhz myth that Intel had thrown out.

AMD shouldn't have left it up to the fanboys to keep them going… If everyone knew, then AMD would have been able to steal a HUGE chunk of Intel… but no one knew… everyone still thought mhz mattered… and its obvious on Ebay they still do. Now it seems too late…pity.. I AM still an AMD fanboy, .. and I do think you get bang for your buck.

Wes

Subject: Grid.org shutdown

That's really quite strange. My machine was still running the task on workunits it had downloaded (it completes them at the rate of 3-4 per day). In the members forum, there was discussion of a new client that was being readied for release in late Q2 and they were asking for beta testers. Currently the members forum is down; so, I can't look to see if there is any new news.

To me it sounds like one of the following occured:

1. The new client didn't work -- was a complete failure.

2. A critical component of the server farm died and the decision was made not to fix it, perhaps due to lack of funds.

3. Funding suddenly and unexpectedly dried up.

4. United Devices pulled their license.

Oxford University still has the research page on their website with links to the grid.org project and download site. It doesn't seem as though Oxford thought the project was complete!

Michael Necaise

Subject: Dr Watson taking a dive

I think this may well be something to do with the whole business of new XP patches deliberately screwing with systems. I too had never seen Dr Watson crash, until after a recent patch-frenzy - now it's done it at least 5 times, most of the time somehow relating to Creative's EAX control panel, but other things too.

I think the (not so) good doctor needs struck off.

Brutix

Subject: RIAA stamps hard on independent radio stations

Nick.. I believe there are a few senators in the Seattle, Washington area that are fighting against this. I believe they're trying to only have a certain percentage of taxing toward advertising income. If they are successful, it would mean that smaller radio stations would be hurt a lot less than if they were charged per song, per user. Most smaller internet stations don't even have advertisements, so it would benefit greatly.

In my honest opinion, they're starting to shoot themselves in the foot. They practically give away music to air radio stations, and they have no idea how many are listening aside from revenue gathered by the stations themselves. If they start charging and putting people out of business... they're going to cause an uproar of people who are sick of their bullshit. Internet radio is too stable and widely used by people who work and don't feel like using the ad-infested garbage on air. If they take it away and make it only to be listened to with advertisements... who knows what will happen?

They're over-stepping their boundaries every day. Granted, I understand that some lines must be drawn... but, who isn't to say that their rules and prices were a little to rediculous to begin with? What ever happened to live performances that made them worth listening to.. rather than being forced into buying 1 song in a pile of crap CD? Half of them don't even go on tour anymore even after they complain about record sales being low. OR, you could be like Metallica and come up with a bullshit album and blame it's low numbers on MP3's.. when other artists are doing JUST fine.

Right now we can be rolling down the road, and get caught smoking a joint while drunk and driving recklessly... then pay our fines over the phone without even going in to court. AND, at the same time... have LESS fines and court costs than if our CHILDREN had mp3's stored on their PC.

Burger them. They're going too far.

mataroo

Subject: F/AE-18G growler

For the gentle man who wanted the link to the growler here is the link at Boeing's website.

AS to Read if that is his real name there often are immediate carry overs from the HPC market to the desktop or at least the workstation. For example the Sun Ultra 40 is a workstation version of one node of Gauss

The Ultra 40(2xopteron256) defeats the Fujitsu R540 (number 1 ranked Intel based machine Xeon 5160) on a consolidated basis by 7.28 to 6.42 and by 189.81 to 10.17 The test used is spec.org's SPECapc SM Unigraphics NX 3 which is designed to test the absolute limits of a workstation design.

The Ultra 40 also beats the top AM2 configuration. These are the Feb 1 2007 rankings.

www.spec.org/gpc/Feb1_07

Ed Hinders