Intel engineers are stupid

Thanks for your ongoing work to provide both information and wit in an easily digested package :-)

I've been reading a lot about the AMD Hammer, and its prospects for the corporate world and must admit to being skeptical that corporate desktops or servers are where the Hammer might find a niche for itself. I've done a lot of thinking about 64-bit ever since I worked for a Fujitsu-owned company years ago and had a serious chat over beers in Japan about why anyone would want 64-bit.

I understand that the corporate world has some need of 64-bit computing, particularly for databases, but in truth, almost all binaries run on Sun systems are STILL 32-bit to this very day despite 10(?) years of shipping 64-bit product... so it seems to me that AMD had better get Sun (Cobalt?) or Dell onboard as a manufacturer of servers or they won't have a market in the corporate space.

However, taking a lateral tack, it would seem to me that the burgeoning world of Digital Video production might be a prime target. Remember Video-On-Demand from the 90's?? Remember that the main concern was where the hell all the content would come from? Well, the obvious answer is from the consumers themselves (much like SMS and Reality TV). All that's needed for such content is a DV camera and a PC with editing suite... and because you're hefting around 2GB+ files all the time, 64-bit might have a serious advantage! So desktop systems aimed at the world's amateur film makers would seem an obvious market, and there are many such folks with smaller budgets that fit the Apple price-range and not that of the Itanic.

The coprorate version of this is Digital Hollywood, where render-farms and DV editing suites are needed in large numbers for SPFX and animated films.

So my advice to AMD would be to concentrate on the DV and Digital Effects market typically owned by Apple/SGI (and to some extent Sun)... make a Hammer Mac! AMD also obviously needs the kind of marketing muscle in that world of which only Apple/Jobs are capable.

Warmest regards and keep up the great work,

Paul

Subject: Office 11 won't work with any old Windows .

Geeze...

Wonder how many microsoft shares Paul Seid has?

As for his comments I feel that he is completely missing the point. The gist of the microsoft decision seems to be that they don't want to BOTHER making Office 11 compatible with 98 or ME. This begs the question as to who is driving the "consumer forces"? Microsoft, or consumers? This decision is a further illustration of Microsofts monopolistic practices and is forcing people on an upgrade path they may not need. Rather than criticizing corporations for the operating system they are using, I suggest that a major corporation should closely examine their needs and evaluate whether the upgrade to Office 11 is even necessary. As for the point about a corporation running Win95... who made the bunk product in the first place? Hopefully consumers will vote with their wallets on this one and choose alternative products that are maturing as the Office 11 release date looms closer.

Regards,

Burt Carver

Subject: Intel banned from selling Itanic chips .

I was hoping you'd use this opportunity to expose intel for what it is but I was severely disappointed.

Innovation ? They innovated marketing schemes to sell more and more of their crappy products to people who didn't need them believing they did.

WHat has intel innovated ? The idea of stamping a bigger number next to the Mhz symbol on their outdated, aging x86-based scrap which they inherited from IBM, BTW ? OK, that may be a bit of oversimplification...

They couldn't fab a design handed to them by HP for 5 years ! So stupid are their engineers ( I wouldn't even want to bring the word competent into the conversation). Then they got handed the Alpha technology by compaq recently.

They stole ARM technology from DEC who had licensed it and developed their own products around it. As a settlement, DEC handed them their IP for a mere $100 million !

inhell is the h/w version of m$, thriving solely on monopoly and restrictive trade practices and their vice-like grip on the balls of dell and capellas.

No, I am NOT a h/w engineer and I never worked for inhell or its competitors.

Subject: Castlerain.com "scandal"

i saw they apoligized on their site, maybe you oughta cut them some slack eh?

Chris

Subject: Castlerain.com

The bit on how Castle Rain pinches content from you brought back memories..

Back in 99 when I was at VA Linux, someone sent an email letting VA know that the domain/site slashroot.org was for sale. Well, flattery being the the sincerest compliment to CmdrTaco, et. al, I had a look at the site and noticed that all the articles, and there were loads, were bylined by the fellow who tried to sell the site to VA. It was almost all Linux oriented as you would imagine, some of it hardware but lots of informative how-to's. 'My this fellow's sharp' you must have thought I was thinking. Nope. I googled a line out of one of the articles and found it elsewhere, written by someone else. Hmmm. Article after article, the same thing.

So, using a nom de plume Hotmail or Yahoo account at home so that I wouldn't be tied to VA in name or IP, I notified all the original authors and waited about 5 days. One by one, articles were removed from slashroot.org. Most of the authors thanked me profusely and some fantasized on what they would like to do to the bastard if they saw him in person. After many of the articles were gone, I sent a cryptic note to the perpetrator, letting him know I was watching him and would finger the rest of the authors if he didn't remove the content and that I knew he was trying to generate hits to sell ad space eventually and sell the site for $$$. Well, it being 1999 of course, I knew he had a decent chance of getting what he was looking for then especially how rabid the interest in things Linux-y. His reply was both funny and sad- he was clearly shaken by his experience and promised he learned his lesson- no more plagiarism, and it was clearly written by a young guy- I would guess about mid teens. I think he likely had some communications with lawyers the way he apologised. :-) I replied and let him know that he did some nice design and should use his talents for creating original content (like Superman to Lux Luthor: "Use your evil genius for good!" ;-) Within the month, all the article links on his site were broken, and a few months after that the site was gone completely.

cheers
Kevin

(BTW- the current owner of slashroot.org is not the one from '99. That fellow was someone in Atlanta.)

Subject: Mac OS , Tru64 more robust than Windows and Linux, report claims

Concerning you article "Mac OS , Tru64 more robust than Windows and Linux, report claims"

Are these systems more robust? Or are they just not as much an object of hate (or knowledge) for hackers? Being a Mac user I like to believe the first, but your sentence "In other words, no-one could be bothered to attack Netware, Irix and AIX because they're too low key." indicates that you are actually talking about the number of "bothers" rather then a more objective number of actual weaknesses. If there were just as many hackers trying to find holes in the Mac systems, how would we then stack up? Just a point to ponder.

Anyway, I always enjoy you site.

Jacob

Email addresses withheld for safe keeping. µ