Apples, pears and completely bananas

Partially insane
MacHeads are unreasonable, illogical, and quite frankly, partially insane. But the same can be said for the extremists on the both the Intel & AMD fronts, however they are vastly diluted by the sane PC users :P
Keep up the great work!
Regards,
Mike

Xenophobia
there have been a couple of artciles/letters recently which have attacked the britishness of the inquirer.
isnt it time that the yanks realised that the world does not revolve around them?
Name supplied

Tin helmets
Doesn't surpires me... How many of these devices have a proper shield surounding the electronics. Not even a simple Feraday cage type mesh around the circuitry.
I've seen many people totaly interested in pure acrillic casing saying its pretty but then complain that the WiFi dies for no reason or they hear noise on the cordless phones. It's call harmonic frequencies that are present in the same spectrum that these devices function at.
Anyway the reason why its not done usually is because its much cheaper to produce than having to put a metal shield around every oscillating circuit.
I remember the first time I opened an old Sparc 5 system, every sub component had its own sheild. Now people wonder why these boxes go for half a year before it even begins to slow down because of memory leaks. Anyway in 5 years those systems only crashed once because the Hard Drive failed and needed to be replaced, but since the system was running for 3 years straight without crashing I would say that shielding is a highly under rated component which should be included in all electronics.
Daniele Bastianello

The grunts of Og
Forgive me for intruding on your mirth. Language is not really there to enjoy. It's there to use for communication. It's only when you can reach a common agreement on how to express concepts that you can then have fun with the overall structure --unless, of course, your idea of fun is little more than mental masturbation.
We no longer utilize the grunts of Og or the groaning bards of Chaucer because language evolves as new groups are included in its coverage and common understanding needs to expand.
So while boffins and punters and voles, oh my, may seem witty on your side of the screen, on this side, I suspect to many of us, it's only half as witty as you imagine --except perhaps to those who are only half as witty to start. (Although if you are most often addressed by letter writers who can't spell, I'd have to guess that they, indeed, are your target audience.)
But don't think of stopping your romp through the language china shop on my account. (As if you would...) Old colloquialisms shouldn't be allowed to die. That primal moment when, in the middle of reading something you thought might be important, you stop to narrow your eyes and murmur "WTF!?" under your breath is timeless.
-O'B.

Distress alleviated
I'd just like to direct Mr. Loren Babcock ("Boffin speak, punter talk comes under attack") to this url, which might alleviate his distress at your colloquialisms. http://english2american.com/
Here, he could find the definition of "punter" as: punter n. The nearest equivalent to an omnisex version of bloke. A punter is usually a customer of some sort, but this need not be the case. I believe that originally a punter was someone placing bets at a racecourse. However, as the language developed natural progression decreed that, as the greater proportion of the British public were susceptible to a flutter, it described almost all of us. However, because of the word's gambling roots, punters are regarded slightly warily and shouldn't be taken at face value. In the US, the punter is the member of an American Football team charged with punting the ball a decent distance.
Unfortunately, the writer only refers to American Football, not Canadian, which might serve to set my Northern Neighbor off on another rant.
Yours,
J.K. Cullum

WikiWord
Gents,
I'm surprized and amused that your "tech savy" readers were not able to locate the above mentioned phrases on Wikipedia (as disambiguous entries) for both English and British usages. Ah well, they were Canadians, eh.
Boffin:
A boffin is British slang for a scientist.
Punter:
In British English, a colloquialism for:
1. A customer of a prostitute.
2. A customer of any business, the usage being primarily found in London and Essex.
Even my personal favorite -
Vole: A nickname for Microsoft coined by The Inquirer website.
Yes, even the Inquirer has an entry on Wikipedia. As well as the EvGirl!
Saludos,
Jilbert

Correspondence on this matter now well closed. Ed.

Apple's pairs
While I fully agree with your opinion that apple is simply milking their ignorant, sheepish followers with their Bose-like new accessory, don't be too eager to assume that it is impossible to produce high quality, low cost speakers. My fostex fe167e based folded pipes give anything I've heard for less than a couple grand a really hard time, all for less than $200. I'll grant that they are 3 feet tall, weigh about 40 lbs each, and were built in my buddy's wood shop, but hey, if want cheap, high end stuff, you'd better be building your own stuff. Like my $300 tricked out dac, valve pre-amp, and $300 monobloks. All it really takes is a little ingenuity, and you can save a boatload of cash.
But there's the rub, isn't it? What sheepish Apple cultist has enough ingenuity buried inside their shriveled, consumerist souls to create anything anymore? I guess Apple, that last bastion of creativity and beauty in the computer world, has finally sold out.
Oh well, too bad. If adventurous tweakers, like the guys over at XtremeSystems.org didn't exist, then maybe I'd be worried. However, the open, free nature of the PC platform has facilitated far more innovative and interesting solutions than anything Apple can or will ever produce themselves. Unlike Apple, we merry tweakers will always push the edge without concern for sales figures or profit margins.
Farewell Apple. You were a little bit interesting for a while there, but nobody needs to spend twice as much just to be cool, especially when we can spend less to create something far cooler ourselves.
Thanks to all the guys at the inquirer for giving us a fresh look at all that goes on in the tech world, free from corporate constraints and stodgy journalism.
Josh

The real bug up Sun's Ass over Itanium
Hey,
Ya wanna know what I think is the real bug is up Suns Ass over Itanium and Solaris? Here's how I heard it. Granted..... I wasn't there.
In Intel's fabs, there is a software package that keeps track of every single wafer, where it is, how many wafers in a lot, blah blah blah. However, there is a different software package that controls the tools themselves. Keeps track of the different product recipes, starts the tool processing, blah blah blah. The control software running on intel's Fab Tool control servers? Solaris.
Well, it use to be anyway. I can't remember the damn Solaris version numbers, but in one of the revs, I recall that Sun initially announced that THEY would not be supporting Itanium on that version, or anymore for that matter.
Bummer, because at the same time, intel was upgrading their tool control servers to.... Itanium. GREAT, no more freekin upgrades to the damn software that by now controls EVERY FREEKIN TOOL IN THE FAB, in all the fabs for that matter. Copy Exactly, don't ya know?
GREAT MOVE SUN. So intel had to rework their plans, and now allthose Itanium servers all run on ole Bill Gates offerings. No more software licensing for Sun. How much do ya think that Solaris contract was worth? Yeah, allot.
Of course, at the same time, if Solaris wasn't going to support Itanium, then there's also less reason for intel to support Solaris in any further versions of reworks of Itanium either. OK, call it revenge if you want, we already all know that intel is supposedly no angel, right?
So NOW, that ole (Mr Stupid) Scott has come to his senses, and changed his mind, and now that Solaris once again supports Itanium, NOW it's all intel's "fault" that their not on board the Sun "train" ;.
I can just imagine that hypothetical potential meeting between Scott and Paul Otellini now.....
"Wait, Wait, I know...... let's run out and change all the software on our Fab servers AGAIN, and WAIT.... I know, I know..... let's run out and change our design for Montecito again, just to please you Scotty. After all, after you screwed us, and pissed us off so badly, why WOULDN'T we be pleased to help you out now?"
In a freekin pigs eye they would..... IMO, I wouldn't be surprised if Intel probably said "Screw you Scott, and Yo moma..... ummm I mean, and Yo Operating System, Too".
Like I said, I wasn't there. It's just the story I "heard", around the coffe break table. But it's an interesting, or at least, amusing story..... No?
Name witheld from any publicity please.

Mac Pack
Ok, if after all the letters I have written to the Inquirer you haven't figured out that I am a Mac fan than you guys need to go back for "Obvious" lessons.
That said I find it hard to swallow the $599 base tag of this machine. We got the mini, the Mac Pro will come out sooner or later, and where is just the Mac. The headless iMac that Apple refuses to sell us that is what I want.
And where in the world did the "1.5GHz Core Solo cheapo" come from. This is not a chip I can find any info on. Is Apple under-clocking this chip, are they getting special chips from the 'Zilla? Inquirering minds want to know. At least all six of us.
The other thing I was thinking of was this. Maybe Intel has been putting aside all it's defects and blems you know the ones that won't run at a higher speed than 1.5 or the Dual core models with a bad core. Kinda like the old 386 SX. ;)
Regards
Paul

Bridge moving
If Intel moved the entire northbridge inside the CPU, would the system then be much different from AMD's ?
However AMD doesn't supply memory controllers with Chipkill or memory RAID, so what is the uptime on an Opteron system?
91%? (IBM's figure for EEC protected memory). Will Intel have to give up on advanced memory features and platform flexibility in order to achieve performance? Is performance the only thing people want?
In fact IBM noticed that you don't need Chipkill if you move the computer into a cave 150 feet below...
regards
Tomas

USBees
At the bottom of the page of the Microsoft "usb drive giveaway" is this:
"This offer is available in the US only"
I'm confused!! Is it available to UK residents??
If you bother to log on with passport (I got my missus to) you have to give every detail of your private life away to get the damn thing eg email/telephone numbers etc.
Regarding privacy, I wouldn't advise filling it in either because they can track you and add your details to a sneaky database associated with your ip address. Don't be caught out!
Neil

Dell freezeth over
Like many others, I've been following this "Dell getting AMD" story/rumor for quite a while now. Something that Dell has always said is that there "is no demand" for AMD.
I had a customer in my store today, and when I found out he worked for Dell, I talked about how I'm very up to date on what the industry is doing, and that it might be interesting to see the outcome of this AMD Intel anti-trust trial. He mentioned that many people in Dell have been wanting AMD for a long time.
I find it kind of interesting how Michael Dell says one thing, yet (as we all know) that customers and even Dell's employees have been demanding them for a long time! It all smells of rotten fish to me.
Name supplied

Sniff. µ