How much does Intel pay you? [Not enough, Ed.]

You're an idiot and a shill
Just be honest and tell us how much intel has paid you for this article. Without their strongarm. not undifferent from the mob who would pick up your trash for $20k a month or burn down your business, intel has done that for years and overcharged consimers in the computer world by billions.

If yoy are not getting money- then you are a bigger fool than your article indicates. If chips were meant to be overclocked then the engineers would mark them at higher speeds and sell them at higher prices. Overclocking is forcing the chip to do something differtn that what was intended.

It is not unlike a chemical process that idf you use more heat at a certain point then you end up with a different chemical. I can go to Fry's in Dallas at any point and all the sales people will tell you how much intel reps will come ion and pay them money to push their ships.

This is wrong and even with Bush,Inc. in DC it is still wrong. As a former brand manager with P&G we did not have to pay and bribe people and then use retibution to crush our opposition- we used PRODUCT QUALITY.

What an idiot you are and a shill.

Tom Brock
Dallas, Texas

The Second Amendment to
US Constitution
Quoth 'Jason' in your letters page at this address under Reading the RIAA-ot act: "RIAA is behaving like a school bully"

"Our Second Amendment to our Constitution affirms in plain English the individual '... right to keep and bare(sic) arms shall not be infringed', yet I can't carry and bare(sic) any sort of anything most anywhere, let alone 'Federal' property".

I suppose states of partial dress or even short-sleeved shirts may be frowned upon in government departments, but infringing on American's rights by disallowing them the freedom to wear t-shirts seems overly restrictive for a government which prides itself on the notion of freedom. I suggest Jason and others similarly inconvenienced write to their senators and attempt to redress the situation immediately!

Peter Lindsey

Hello Mike,

I am wading into a major hornet's nest with this one, so you do not have to publish this.

Jacob is another person who has not read the US Constitution. Here is the Second amendment in its entirety:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

As you can see while the "right to bear arms…" quote is stated in the Amendment, it is preceded by the statement "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state…" The "well regulated…" clause often is missed by the general public or left out by the various pro-gun lobbies. That clause has been confirmed by the US Supreme court, the final arbiter of the Constitution, to mean that the Federal and State governments have the right to regulate the sale and ownership of firearms in the US. This is not my personal opinion, but simple fact spelled out in more than half a dozen Supreme Court rulings going back to the 1870s.

This is why not one gun control law in this country has ever been declared unconstitutional. Not a single one, period.

Some notes.

There are three major types of amendments to the US Constitution: ones that define Individual Rights (Amendments 1, 4 & 5), ones that define the scope of Federal Government's powers (Amendments 12, 16 & 17) and those that define the relationship between the State and Federal Governments (Amendments 10, 13 & 23). The Second Amendment to the US Constitution is not an Individual Rights amendment but one that falls somewhere between second and third categories.

The "well regulated militia" has evolved into the state police agencies and National Guard units in the fifty states.

History

The Second Amendment relates, in part, to the beginning of the US Revolutionary War. In 1775, the British Royal governor of the Massachusetts Colony, fearing an armed insurrection, ordered the seizure of the colonial militia's armories across the territory. His decision resulted in the skirmishes in Lexington and Concord that started that war and lead to the eventual separation of the American Colonies from the British Crown.

"But isn't this to be expected? Our Second Amendment to our Constitution affirms in plain English the individual '... right to keep and bare arms shall not be infringed', yet I can't carry and bare any sort of anything most anywhere, let alone 'Federal' property."

I am gonna get reamed for this one...

Jeremy

Ethics, integrity in games journalism
Games journalists unethical and lack integrity

Mike and Justin,

Just recently, I stumbled on to your articles about the state of gaming journalism published at theinquirer.net and ojr.org.

From 1995 to 2000, I was a paid freelance game reviewer for Computer Gaming World and Computer Shopper magazines, and the Gamespot and the former C/Net Gamecenter Web sites.

Greg Kasavin, who's quoted in the Online Journalism Review article, was my "boss" when I wrote for Gamespot. He's mostly correct when he says, "Our reviewers are completely distanced from the developers and publishers."

I was given a bit more freedom to interact with game publishers and designers because, unlike most reviewers, I had a journalism degree and several years of experience in the news media. However, the primary reason I got out of game reviewing was because of the influence the Web had on producing reviews.

When I first started writing for CGW magazine in 1995, the Web was in its infancy. As new games came out, CGW FedExed them to its reviewers. In most cases, they had at least two weeks to submit a review. I considered two weeks to be the minimum amount of time needed to play a game and write a decent review. By the time CGW hit the stands, most of the games it reviewed had been on the shelves for a month or two, if not longer.

CGW boasted that it reviewed only finished games, not betas or pre-release versions. That was a good policy. Reviewing anything other than a boxed, off-the-shelf version of a game ran the risk of damaging one's credibility by failing to catch the last-minute changes that publishers inevitably made before the commercial version was released.

As the Web grew and access to it became common among gamers, the competition to publish reviews the instant a game hit the shelves became more and more intense. The time given to review a game dropped from two weeks to one week. Less scrupulous Web sites had no problem reviewing beta games to scoop established sites such as Gamespot and Gamecenter. The distinction between reviews and previews -- never well understood by the gaming public -- began to blur even more.

That's when I decided to get out. Other than a couple T-shirts, the closest thing I ever got to a free perk as a game reviewer was the free games a few game publishers sent me. Most of these games were not in the genre I reviewed (primarily historical war games). Thus, they either sat unopened or were given away to friends.

It's true that gaming journalism needs to grow up and become more professional. The video and computer gaming industry is large enough now that the days of relying on poorly paid hobbyists to write reviews should end. However, the idea that hobbyist reviewers are more open to corruption than paid professionals is, for the most part, a myth.

The issue of greatest importance in gaming journalism is not whether the reviewers are tainted by publishers, but whether readers of gaming Web sites and magazines are getting accurate, well-written and well-researched critiques of the games they're buying. Based on my experience, they're not.

Patrick C. Miller
Grand Forks, North Dakota

Power fuels debate
Mitsubishi releases kilowatt home fuel cell

I'm a retired Chief Engineer from American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC, now owned by Disney). I've handled a lot of commercial and residential electrical projects over the years, including solar electrical generation using roof-mounted panels.

Not only is 1 kw extremely low, there's no demand reserve available. When you first turn on a motor (a vacuum cleaner for example) there's a startup surge for a few seconds while the motor comes up to speed. That demand can be four or five times the operating current. What happens as you pull more current than the power generator can supply is that the *voltage* drops (source impedance, crowbar current limiting, whatever). I remember doing a solar electrical panel installation in Hawaii -- everything was fine until one of the techs needed to use the drill press. We started the drill press and the entire system's line voltage dropped from 120 volts to something like 40 volts for several seconds while the motor came (slowly) up to speed. (Nice system overload test though.)

It might be possible to gang several fuel cells together for more surge current capability but that of course defeats the cost effectiveness of the system. If you could use these things to instead push power back onto the electrical grid then somebody down the street could use your surplus power when they needed it.

A different minor problem -- these alternative power sources aren't synchronized very well to "line frequency" (60 hertz here in the U.S., I think you guys are on 50). Thus all your electric clocks run off speed. I had one installation where the clocks all lost 10 minutes every day.

Peter

Postman Pat and his Black and White Fact
Intel's PAT more like a turbot than a turbo

"IF YOU CAN MAKE a Springdale 865 motherboard miraculously transform into a board that's got the "turbo" power of a Canterwood 875 motherboard with a simple BIOS upgrade, then there's something wrong in the Pentium 4 paradise. "

Well, that's just the problem, isn't it? You can't miraculously transform an 865 into an 875P. You can run the 865 with faster memory timings, certainly, but that doesn't automatically make it an 875P.

Intel has never made a secret of the two differences between the 875P and the 865:

1. The 875P has the additional pins necessary to support ECC memory.

2. The 875P is speed-binned silicon that Intel certifies will operate reliably at the faster memory timings.

So, if you choose to operate an 865 at the faster memory timings, one of three things will be true. From best to worst:

1. That particular 865 chipset was tested by Intel and found to be capable of operating at the faster memory timings, but Intel had sufficient 875P chipsets to meet demand already, so they labeled it an 865.

2. Intel never tested that particular 865 chipset, so it may or may not be capable of running reliably at the faster memory timings. What percentage of 865 chipsets are tested, and of those what percentage are capable of running at 875P timings? Only Intel knows, and they're not saying. Given that Intel is very, very good at producing chipsets, the percentage of 865 chipsets capable of running reliably at the faster memory timings may be nearly 100%, but then again it may be much lower.

3. Intel tested that particular 865 chipset, and found that it was not capable of operating reliably at the faster memory timings.

So, how much risk are you willing to take with your data? Using the 865 with 875P memory timings amounts to overclocking the chipset, with the risks that are always present when one overclocks. You may get away with it. I'm sure Intel builds a lot of slack into their chipsets. It wouldn't surprise me if most or all 865 chipsets were capable of using the faster memory timings most of the time. But "most of time" isn't quite the same as "all of the time", is it?

There's certainly no guarantee if one overclocks the 865, and memory problems can be quite subtle. It's possible to corrupt data without realizing one has done so until much too late. No one who understands the issue would argue that an overclocked 865 chipset is as reliable as an 875P, unless that 865 just happened to be one that passed Intel's tests but was labeled as an 865 anyway. But how would one know that?

Unless they are exhaustively testing each 865 chipset to guarantee that it can operate reliably at the faster timings, I think motherboard makers who offer this BIOS option are doing their users a disservice. And I think you are doing your readers a disservice by leading them to believe that overclocking the 865 chipset to 875P levels is risk-free.

Robert Bruce Thompson

Environmentally Correct Canary Van
Solar, wind powered van runs Windows OS

"I wanted to do something to help demonstrate a commitment to our fragile environment, by showing that no emission vehicles are a practical reality if you are prepared to make some sacrifices"

There's no such thing as a zero-emission-vehicle, especially if you are charging from the mains. That power must come from some other root source, and then be transmitted with some inefficiency.

Please consider the total lifecycle of your project. From the industrial chemical usage in making your expensive batteries, with their short lifetime, and the very energy and chemical intensive manufacuring of semiconductor solar cells (which only recently got to lifetime energy payback). Considering the reduced utility your van provides, I'd put it as an environmental step backward over a modern liquid fueled vehicle.

Name supplied

Furry Dice in the back of PCs
Majority of overclockers go Intel, not AMD

I think your original headline and the emails you've had miss the point. As the article went on to say, PCWorld are going after "mod-ders" and not "oc-ers" .... to use the usual car analogy, I suspect they are going to be doing the equivalent of Halfords selling go faster stripes and fancy fog lights to make cars look "kewl" rather than high performance engine components that a specialist car upgrade shop would do.

Anyone know where you install the furry dice on a PC?

David Shepherd