Free SATA cables for every reader

Subject: Free SATA cables

PC Nextday

All you need to pay for is the P&P. It's been like this for a week, I "bought" 20 of them.

X

Update
Yeah, we got rumbled. The freebies are all gone now. Letterman

Subject: The INQ's top 10 reasons to dislike Apple

Hello Adamson:

While flame baiting Mac users isn't the grand sport it once was, there's hardly any zealots left today, nevertheless I think I can include a few of my favorites for old time's sake:

Top 10 Reasons to Hate Apple: (According to me)

10. The favored computer of elite intellectuals....er, people who think they're elite intellectuals.
9. You're free to do anything you want on an Apple, as long as it uses hardware Steve Jobs approves of and you can find an app for it.
8. Apple: The premium price IS the Innovation!
7. Every new product is a deep, dark secret the Mac/Apple crowd wonder about for months while the rest of the world yawns.
6. Apple! The easy to use computer! Oh wait a minute, that was the 1980's.
5. Apple! The superior computer built out of the best quality components! Oh wait, that was the early nineties.
4. Apple! A PC with a New Age Bios!
3. You have to redecorate your house every two years to keep fashion with Apple.
2. They use to make computers, now they make iPods, and........stuff.
1. Steve Jobs (Like you didn't see that one coming!)

Rivendel

Subject: Too late

Apparently Conan is protected intellectual (!) property :

This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by NBC Universal

Sheesh. Whoever could have thought that Conan would need protection ?

Pascal

Subject: Nvidia seen cosying up to Intel

Well of course Jen-Hsun isn't stupid, what is he supposed to do, give AMD/ATI, his true competition, a free pass? Maybe, produce chips for them at cost because of INTC's “ambitions”? Ridiculous!

If you didn't see this coming with the ATI/AMD buyout you are as naïve and short sighted as Hector Ruiz. This unholy INTC/NVDA alliance would lead credence that an all out assault on DAAMIT has been brewing for quit some time. Business wise, it costs both INTC and NVDA nothing to obtain the monopoly everyone talks about drop in their respective laps by default. Fact: Those stupid rumors your Charlie (correctly) wrote about last year about INTC buying NVDA were, rightly, preposterous. At this juncture, however, INTC doesn't need to spend billions, and NVDA can hold on to it nuts. They can crush their respective competition together; corner the market by doing what they do best, individually. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place. The bottom line? It cost AMD 5 billion to put themselves in this position.

No mater how you cut this pie, it is indeed a dangerous scenario for the struggling AMD/ATI fighting a two front war against two very large and powerful adversaries with different agendas----presently. Truth is, after all, there is blood in the water, and both NVDA and INTC are on a serious roll. More to the point, as much as you can feel AMD's pain, not only will this happen, it makes perfect business sense.

Sparks

Subject: Ultraspeed...

How much did you folks get paid to run that article?

Their 270 -> 100,000 math doesn't make the tiniest bit of sense unless maybe they're using servers with at least five 10GB HBAs (kerching!) and bit-striped RAID10 storage (kerching! kerching!)

And booting from a SAN is nothing new. Whoopee.

Brad

Subject: more reasons

you forgot these:

11. DAMN expensive machines which have crapped specs
12. Movies DLed off iTunes have worse quality than a 700MB DVDRip
13. QuickTime Requires you to Pay for watching videos in Full Screen (WTF?)
14. Jobs is a sociopath
15. blaming Microsoft when they realise how screwed up Apple really is
16. can't game on iMacs
17. iPod Video doesn't support XviD/DivX and requires one to convert everything to H.264

i'm pretty sure there are many others but this is all that i can remember right now.

Raj

Subject: diskless server ehhhhh

For a normal boring dedicated server, i've been paying $170 per month. ultraspud is charging 349 pounds. Which last time I checked is a little more than $170. W/o doing the math probably three times more expensive.

Wait a second isn't a SAN just having a seperate box holding the hard disk which are just itching to break at the least oppurtune moment?

How does ultraspud's solution compare vs:
* RAID V
* RAM chip HDD (no hard disks)
* CF card (similiar to a flash stick)
* cluster server (supa cheap very reliable)

Lets see whether ultraspud catches on. Personally might move over from the dedicated server to the cluster server. Reliability being the most important consideration.

Kind Regards,
Dave

Subject: Physics

Collisions are great. So are explosions. But what I'd like to see done that would likely require quite a bit of allocated memory and extra processing power (aka a PhysX chip), would be interactive MAPS in a game. It's great that PhysX can enhance interactions with objects- that's overhyped anyways. what I want is a map in an FPS where by the end of a huge firefight, the map looks like, well, A HUGE FIREFIGHT TOOK PLACE. You can't tell me that jumping around in a wooden barn or a train depot or whatever and firing rockets and heavy weaponry at random wouldn't result in the near complete destruction of said location. Of course, players would undoubtedly do stupid things like run around shooting at random for the sole purpose of reducing the entire level to a pile of rubble, but hey- it's realistic. And all the damage should accrue over the course of the match so that everything has a look of being shot at. And yes, if the floor gets shot out from under me, or I shoot out a support column from the roof, it should come crashing down and crush me to death. Now that would add a whole new dimension to gameplay. And it would really tax the physics processor.

How about an application for, say, real time strategy? Easy- if you've got a tank battle going on, the grass doesn't really live. And the trees fall down. And a nuclear bomb completely destroys the landscape.

Interactive, permanently damaged landscapes and maps are the perfect application for PhysX, and I could see a well designed FPS like the one described above really taking off.

NP

Subject: Conan goes to Intel, Santa Clara

This guy needs to write for you.

MH Deighton

Subject: Conan visits Intel

Cant believe they actually let Conan visit their HQ. It has to be the least inspirational place I have ever seen.

Mike

Subject: Jedis

The plural of Jedi is Jedi, not Jedis... pfft SB

Subject: it's not about the time zones

I never knew the fedex logo had a white arrow in it.. thanks for pointing that out.. AT least one thing about that article was accurate.

ZaBahamas

Subject: Prices rise, but...

The prices might be going up, but on OCUK they have a 24" glossy Samsung display available for pre-order for under £400 !! Incredible !!

Azcn

Subject: Apricot

Ahhhh

Now there was a computer company. I loved them, what a great crew. Oh well.

Apart from the nostalgia, I'm showing my age. Didn't James Blackledge die not long ago?

I still have my Apricot Xen stored safely away.

all the best
Jeremy

Subject: Timezone letters

It was amusing reading how many people wrote in to correct you about the FedEx article and the time zones. Guess they didn't catch the humor. :)

Keep up the good work! ;)

Cheers,
John

Subject: Shareholders ask AMD questions

I totally agree with TWolf message concerning the "tsunami" of new products and the S939 neglected owners.

Best regards
Franco Giola

Subject: Judas

"...Similar clock speeds, gee wow! I thought that with two different marchitectures, you take the best that each marchitecture can offer..."
"...It is like comparing the running speed of two persons, one with a long stride and slow repetition speed, another with a short stride and fast repetitions. Of course if you restrict the little guy to slower repetitions it is unfair..."
Rock Judas

I see his point, but it could also be argued that comparing processors of the same speed, and using similarly configured systems allow for a simple estimation of how processors based on the same architecture perform at higher speeds. From this test it can be surmised that Intel would need a ~6% clock speed advantage to beat an AMD chip. something that comparing servers from various vendors, using different parts would not allow you to do. This kind of comparison helps particularly if you're pricing out parts, and trying to get the most bang per buck, and not just going for raw speed. I mean we can't all afford $1,000 video cards.

Again he has a point, but what we could really use are a few more data points that include the highest spec'd parts from both camps to see what effect the processor has on performance, and what effect the rest of the system does. After all I've seen few if any benchmark tests where system performance scales linearly with processor speed. Because of that I would assume that either marchitecture regardless of clock speed advantage would perform within +-1% of the highest clocked part from the competition. Which is exactly why picking processors of the same speed has it's own defensible merits.

Matt

P.S. apparently I've been reading this rag for so long that I'm using the term "marchitecture" without realizing that's not a real word. :)

Subject: US extradition

Hi Nick,

I'm really glad someone influentual is actually sitting up and taking notice of this. After all, whatever happened to that old-fashioned idea that there was no rule without accountability? And does it work the other way around: If a US citizen breaks European laws, do we have a right to extradite him/her/it? If not, why not?

Until I have the ability to vote US presidents (and their associated nick-nacks) in and out of office, why should I be subject to their laws? Not every country on the planet has bent over and sacrificed public interest, so the media corporations can milk us for the rights we used to enjoy for free before DRM (e.g. Canada, Sweden).

The next thing you know, China will be hauling all of us up on charges of criticism against its government (after all, what on earch *is* wrong with mowing dissident students down with tanks?) Where does it end? Why don't we just dispense with local government and just become part of the US? If we do that though, I want equal say in which clown they elect for President...

Europe needs to get tough and start acting in its own interests for a change, instead of behaving like the bullied monkey of the US. We can quite easily bring the US to its knees with a block on import/sale of products, whose manufacturers violate European laws (e.g. Microsoft). We can also refuse to support the DMCA, and forbid region-encoding (like Australia does). That's just the tip of the iceberg. All we need is a European government with some balls.

Oliver

Subject: recycled PCs for dominica

it seems 20.000 pounds too expensive to me

Sam

Subject: Christianity

How can you people, supposedly journalists, not recognize that the Christian Science Monitor is an international newspaper with content that is largely independent of the religious beliefs of Christian Science?? Furthermore, in that you weren't born yesterday it seems you might be aware that there's a difference between the Christian and Christian Science religions. Go get an education.

By the way, I recognize that this whole thing was the idea of a reader who conflated three separate entities. But you should know better than to come up with ridiculous titles like "Even good Christians reject DRM."

PS: Did you know there's a difference between a Grease Monkey and a Monkey?

MK

Subject: Superdupersonic FedEx

What all those silly readers who wrote in about the time zone change failed to realize is that the FedEx jet left Indiana travelling EAST. Now try and tell me that arrival time isn't impressive, even WITH the time zone change. Silly readers.

H.G. Ills

Subject: Fedex Super Duper Technology

I think the big joke here is on the people who sent in responses. Notice that people will tell you the time difference between Cali and Indy is anywhere between 2 and 4 hours?

A portion of Indiana was on Central time, since you can consider a few parts of Indiana to be a Chicago suburb (Chicago is Central time). A portion of Indiana did not follow the arguably ridiculous idea of Daylight Saving Time, so "half" the time they were on Cental time and "half" the time they were on Eastern time. And then you have portions of Indiana on Eastern time...

But hey, now they standardized it and they're all on Eastern time.

If you ask me, they should keep half the US on Daylight time and the other half on regular time. That way we'd only have two stinkin' time zones to deal with.

BWT, California = Pacific, then you have Mountain (+1), Cental (+2), and Eastern (+3), so there you have it, it's 3 hours from Cali to Indy.

Karancevic

Subject: The Christian WHO?

No one in America listens to the Christian Science WTF Monitor. It's run by the clueless. Their opine plus five bucks will get you a dollar cup of coffee.

Randy

Subject: FedEx

Is it possible to supersonically parcel post some humour to the "It's the time zones" bandits...? "Really...? Time zones...? Wot are they, then...?", I'm sure the Inq scribes were asking when the letters started pouring in.

I'm going to go way out on a limb here and take a wild guess that the Inq probably suspected that FedEx didn't have supersonic transport.

The observation can probably be loosely categorized as humour...not fall on the floor humour, but more like Seinfeld observational, non-funny humour.

Now you know where Dubya voters come from...

Joe

Subject: Diskless booting

.. remembers remote booting DECclusters from a SAN many, many, many years ago....

Rich Wargo

Subject: Even good Christians reject DRM

I'm not sure where Panos is getting his information, but my system:

Athlon 64 3700 (San Diego) @ 2.8GHz (Stock: 2.2GHz)
1GB of DDR400 RAM (Dual Channel)
X1600XT

Does just fine. I know, I know, that is a lot better than most laptops, but seriously, it isn't a very good rig for running Vista, considering how much RAM Vista uses. Oh wait! Vista uses a lot of RAM?

*Note: The following has nothing to do with the email I am referring to, but is just a general rant because I am tired of hearing anti-Vista propoganda.

/Begin Rant

Damn, let me go back and think of how much XP used (after I optimized it by the way.) I believe it was 35-40% at the lowest I could ever get it, and right now, Vista is idling at 65%, yet I have SQL 2005, IIS, and all other kinds of shit running.

The lowest I ever got Vista (without any optimization) down to, was 50%. Just a note, though, that the RAM usage after optimizing was HIGHER than without optimization.

/End Rant

Now, back to the subject at hand. Of course the Intel 945G is going to slow the whole thing down; that's like putting grandma in a race car. If I remember correctly, the 945G chipset has a decent core clock speed that rivals my old X700, and also has 200+ MB of "shared" RAM. Not sure what the shared part means, so this could kill my whole argument, but my current X1600XT has 256MB of RAM and it does just fine.

Yes, I know, I proved nothing and my argument means nothing, but I got that off my chest and now I feel better.

Regards,
Mark

P.S. What the squilbert do you expect the battery life to be with Aero on? It's OBVIOUSLY something that takes more resources. Windows XP didn't have Aero, so that's nothing to compare to unless you turn Aero off. Oh, I think the article states that with Aero off, the battery life is equal or better than XP. Surprise.

P.S.S. What's up with all the FedEx emails? Don't these people know the Inquirer is known for their witty humor?

Subject: IBM layoffs

You might ask Mr Cringley how IBM will do the layoffs and still have the personnel for L and Q level security work for HPC/Defense work. The NNSA and DARPA let G and lower security levels be contracted out but NO ONE gets the L or Q level security clearance that is not a direct employee. H's and J's are nearly always regular employees but can be contract with special dispensation from the DOE and FBI.

Some programs that will be involved the the SeaStar chip (IBM makes it) for the Cray XT3 and XT4 and Cascade projects, all Blue Gene work, the P7 development work, Roadrunner which in turn entails some of the Cell BE personnel. Personnel that are involved in the P5,P6 programs and much of military electronics R&D are also required to have security clearances.

IBM has one of the highest numbers of employees with top level security clearances in the US. That includes information management personnel on the software side who make the hardware go. For them to become contract employees the National Security Act of 1947 would have to be amended.(remember Ethel Rosenberg, contract employee along with Mr Greenglass) Ask him for the name of his druggist(you want to get your drugs there too) because the only way IBM can lay off and rehire that many people as contract employees is to do a complete house cleaning at Armonk. I have a couple of introductory texts on geology and anatomy he may use. I have lent them in the past to young people who didn't know their backside from a hole in the ground.

Of course this could be the creation of some dunce in human relations who has no idea of how the company really works and considers the law to be an inconvenience.

Ed Hinders