Intel are humans, AMD are Vulcans

So, as Intel hold the largest portion of the video chipset market, with their very mediocre integrated solutions in desktop and notebook motherboards, what does that make them ? (Nvidia and ATI only hold a minor portion of the global video chipset market).

Intel are absolutely everywhere, so I guess we can see them as humans, meddling in everyone's affairs, overbreeding and capable of incredible destruction and ineptitude.

AMD must be the Vulcans, technologically great, but outnumbered by their primitive Intel/Human neighbours.

Rgds
Stan

AMD headed for early 65 nano Chartered rollout

Chrissakes - our yields still suck !

Thanks for putting a nice pimp spin our screw ups.

I knew I could count on you to help me look good and get richer !

Suing and Puking and Gestapo Raids at Dawn - Hector

Ballmer brainwashes kids

OK, I'll give ol' Steve "Forrest Gump" Ballmer the benefit of the doubt not buying iPods, but forbidding his kids from using Google to search? That is hardly free-market thinking, now is it?

If I had a superior product, I'd want to showcase it, and let people see how much better it is. If I have an inferior product, I'd not want anyone to see how much better the other product(s) are.

Steve always says that, "Searches are like a box of chocolates - you never know what you won't get."

Jim

1GHz Chinese Dragon chip "as good as 2GHz Pentium"

An article about a new Chinese CPU refers to "tens of millions of trannies." I am confused. Does this mean that is the number of transvestites who worked on producing the chip, or to its intended market? I am not a transvestite but I may be interested in the CPU if it can run Linux.

Please clarify. Thank you.

Name, address supplied

[Transistors. Ed.]

Sounds like your talking about AMD Athlon chips. I am sure the little red commies put their brains together and made a decent chip. Now Wal-Marts everywhere will sell it (Dragon based CPU clones) for them since China has Wally world and the rest of the USA consumer good sector in their pocket.

Free enterprise they call it. I call it big business with no sense of patriotism. Their bottom line is the almighty dollar, screw anyone or any country that gets in their way.

Have a great Day
Glenn

US government takes Microsoft side in Euro antitrust case

Your assertion that Microsoft was convicted of being a monopoly is incorrect. It is legal for any company in the US to be a monopoly; pretty much every company with over 66% market share in a given economic segment is legally a monopoly.

However, the rules on business practices change drastically once a company is/becomes a monopoly, which is what the US government found Microsoft guilty of violating.

Also, on the point of the EU's fines, frankly I think Microsoft should refuse to pay them. The fact of that matter is that there are not enough computer experts in the world to install a Linux distro for every computer in Europe, much less coerce it them all to work properly.

If Microsoft simply stops distributing Windows in Europe, any and every version, people are going to have start buying their computers and OSes from overseas. Massive tariffs and taxes abound, tax payers start complaining about the hit to their wallet, EUcrats feel the pressure, etc. Maybe then then the EU would learn that aggressive displays of its rabid anti-Americanism are a bad idea.

Name not supplied

Microsoft joins OpenDocument Group

"some think that it is all a cunning plan to destroy the OpenDocument standard from within"

Of course it is. Just check the history of tools that MS has acquired : none of them have survived the acquisition intact, and the great majority have been mangled beyond recognition (and usefulness).

MS has a track record as high as the Empire State Building in this matter. IE ? Sank Netscape and torpedoed the HTML standard. Today what do you read on forums ? "I don't care which browser is more secure, IE works everywhere, the others do not". Chalk up a victory for the Borg.

Windows Media Player ? Introduced and improved until all other models became footnotes in the Grand Scheme. Once that happened, MS was free to insert DRM, nobody was the wiser. Another victory for the Borg.

Lotus had the first office suite, that MS obviously had to take over. Initial versions of Excel and Word were clunky bugfests, but MS got it going anyway, and improved it until 1-2-3 and Ami Pro simply gave up and lied down in the grave MS had lovingly crafted for them. Then Word got bloated with feature creep to become the hog it is today. Yet another victory for the Borg.

And the list goes on : look how bad PowerPoint ended up. Look how bloated and slow FrontPage is. Every software that MS has been able to design for Joe Public is a heavyweight, disc- and CPU-gobbling pile of unwieldy code.

Now MS is getting into OpenSource documents ? The better to blow it up from within, my dear. MS was also part of the Java team for a while, but the relationship ended when MS couldn't get its way. Then Sun sued and won against MS tactics, which is the only case where MS was not able to impose its own version.

If the Open Source guys don't pay careful attention, their initiative will be as bastardised as HTML is today - and the Borg will win again.

Pascal

Father of Net regrets the double slash

So (Sir) Tim Berners-Lee would write web server address backwards? Of course he would - he *IS* British after all and that's the way we do things over here.

Years ago when I was at University (note *University* and not "Uni" :-) UK CS departments were linked by the "Joint Academic Network", or JANET, and address there were always of this form ... i.e. UK.AC.OX.CS - I think the argument for this was that at each level of DNS lookup you simply stripped of the suffix by moving a pointer past the first "." in the address and using that as the new string.

This clearly correct and superior form was then trashed by a load of Americans etc who drive their cars on the wrong side of the road (worse than that they drive on the pavement which is where pedestrians should be) and thus thing things should be the other way around.

Name, email address supplied

Microsoft Vista

Hi Mike,

So, Vista is not only delayed (again) but 60% of it needs re-writing?

Pah!

What have Microsoft been doing for the past five years - hand-making x-box 360s until they had enough to put out as an initial shipment?

Not only does this OS sound like it will be the biggest disaster of all time, it will be bloated and nothing but an excuse for the hardware and software manufacturers to profiteer. 2GB Ram required if you need your system to move quicker than a two-legged pony - and how many gigs of HDD space for the footprint alone?? Oh - and my tft needs junking because it doesn't support HDCP (few do so far!) Even if I play nice and remortgage my house so I can afford all of the new hardware, it's questionable that I will have total control of the digital content which I own due to the amount of DRM that's being crammed into this bloated monstrosity.

No wonder MS is advising people to migrate to dual-core processors right now - by the time Vista is finished, we'll need those to get the OS off the ground, let alone do anything useful with it. Oh, but wait - quad cores are coming early next year... Time for that second mortgage, I guess.

Vista may or may not have cost MS as much as it cost the US to land the first man on the moon - but at least the maths was done well enough that the vehicle could actually lift off the ground. Vista seems to be stalling on the launch-pad time and time again.

At this rate, the more I hear about Vista the less I want it.

How about an advertising slogan, MS? You can have this one for free. Vista - overdue, overbloated and over here - eventually!

John Parlato

Wi-fi open and shared. Ignorants!

The incompetent ignorant people continue reigning our lives!! If someone has his wifi open and shared it means that he intends to do exactly that. I do and many friends of mine have it opened so that anyone can use it!! If you don't want others to be using your stupid bandwidth then lock it!!!

Name supplied

The Xbox 360

Hello!

I read the article yesterday concerning the console forecasts which predicted the Xbox 360 as a long term loser.

Of course, I also expected to read Microsoft fanboy responses today from the mailbag posting, and I wasn't disappointed.

First off, I am not in the corner of either, because eventually, I will own both consoles.

That said, I have one question for those who think that the Xbox 360 will be and is such a phenomenal success:

Where the hell do I buy one?

In the graphics race, we see ATI and Nvidia throwing paper launches around and when actual hardware is asked for, you may find one or two in a briefcase, locked in a safe, under ice, in Atlantis. The Xbox 360 launch reminds me of this in a way, albeit a little different, but still, the amount of consoles available at launch and even now, will be the downfall. I live in Grand Rapids, MI, and I have never seen an Xbox 360 on the shelf in Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, Target, Wal-Mart, Meijer, EB Games (my Sunday rounds).

Personally, I believe that MS should have had more available to sink their hooks in to the people...the PS3 waiting people, and fuel the desire to own the Xbox 360 with both hype AND availability.

Microsoft COULD have gone for the throat of Sony while the back door was open for a new console. The delays of the PS3 are only good things for the competition, right? Not always. With the new inclusion of the 60g HDD in the PS3, I am starting to think that Sony isn't the bleeding and dying console maker in this round. They are able to sit back and watch the Xbox 360 succeed and fail...all while building their machine that is going to hit all the spots that the 360 has, and a few more that the 360 can't because it is in the box already.

Sony has the luxury of holding off Microsoft with vaporware and promises, and that alone should scare Microsoft to death.

Dan Collins