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Gear News Archive: August 2004
August 31st RIAA Forces Discontinuation of XMPCR Radio XM Satellite Radio was offering a really neat USB-connectable satellite radio unit for $50 with antenna included. The "XMPCR" would plug into any computer USB port, and give you satellite radio right on your computer. But that gave the Recording Industry Association of America the Heebee Geebees, who then promptly threatened XM Radio to discontinue the unit. The RIAA denies this, but I am certain that they didn't just ask nicely. XM Radio capitulated, and the product is gone. Now they sell on eBay for $400. Makes you kind of angry doesn't it? August 30th Taking the STEAM Out of Half Life 2 As some of you probably have done (and many of you could care less), I have downloaded the Valve STEAM application for managing Valve games online. The pesky little bugger loads on bootup, checks Valve's servers whether you want it to or not, and can actually halt the Windows bootup process if it can't find the server. Then it sits there like a festering sore on your task bar, mocking you... taunting you. In STEAM, you click on Half Life 2, and it will download the encrypted install file to your hard drive. STEAM then offers cryptic choices such as... "play games", and you click on the HL2 choice to see what's there. It tells you that Half Life 2 has been downloaded to your computer in locked form, and that it is "coming soon". Hmmm. I looked around and found the file designated "base source shared materials.gcf" in Valve\Steam\SteamApps\. It was almost 1.1GB in size, and it seems the extension gcf stands for the Half Life "game cache file". I'm starting to really resent this ATI - Half Life 2 cabal thing. First the 11 month wait, then the installation of the task bar applet from hell, then the additional wait, all the while pondering what STEAM is doing, sitting there... and watching me. It's downright unsettling. ATI Catalyst Drivers Have Doom3 Bug Scott at The Tech Report has a great article on the graphics bug in Doom3 that affects anisotropic filtering in the game. At first it looked like ATI might have been bending the rules to get better performance, but after careful analysis, Scott concludes that ATI's drivers simply have a bug that should be fixed soon. You can read all about it here. August 28th Half Life 2 Gone Gold? Rumors are swirling that HL2 has gone gold, or will on Monday, meaning the code has shipped to manufacturing. That typically means it's only 2 to 3 weeks before the game hits the stores. If you signed up for STEAM, Valve's download client, you can pre-download encrypted code for the game now, and your Radeon HL2 coupon will allow you to unlock the game when Valve releases instructions on how to input your activation key. When that will happen is anyone's guess, but considering how long Radeon owners have been waiting (11 months), Valve would do very well to allow unlocking starting on Monday. It would also help blunt the lead that the Doom3 engine is gaining over the HL2 engine by being more advanced, and first. What will give HL2 a big boost is the vastly improved physics engine, and deformable environments. Personally, I would rather have slightly lower video quality if the environment physics are drastically more realistic. Doom3 has a static environment, so I can't say if id has incorporated any deformability capabilities into the physics engine, but my guess is, they didn't. I have already downloaded the encrypted code; it should take you less than an hour if you have a good connection. The servers are quite busy, so you may have to try several times to get the download started. UPDATE: Turns out the rumor is false about going gold, but it probably isn't too far off, because the pre-download is available through STEAM. August 27th Microsoft Pulls WinFS From Initial Longhorn Release Microsoft has had to scale back it's plans for the next generation of Windows, Longhorn, also known as longway offhorn. The new file system, WinFS, will not be part of the initial release, but will be added later with a service pack... probably. The new graphical interface (Avalon), and the new networking interface (Indigo) will be included, but may be scaled back a bit. This is another clear indication that Microsoft has created a monster that they can barely contain. They stated today that the code base for Longhorn will be the same code that Microsoft is using for the Service Pack 1 release of Windows Server 2003. So Longhorn's code base is done, but it will take until 2006 to get everything else plus the kitchen sink crammed in there. The good news is that there will be 64-bit support. The way projects at Microsoft keep slipping, I wonder if they might not do better by just starting from scratch with Linux, and using their unlimited resources to make the most friendly version. Justice Dept Finally Cracking Down on CyberCrime I don't know what took them so long, maybe they were busy chasing down dangerous Democratic protesters in New York City, but the Ashcroft Justice Dept finally decided to go after Internet criminals. Over 100 arrests were made in cases involving everything from identity theft to businesses using viruses to attack competitors web sites. One person arrested had stolen more than $800,000 from victims in fraudulent eBay sales. What I didn't hear anything about was arrests of the people spamming me all day long for Xanex, Valium, Hydrocodone, and every other drug on earth. Maybe they come next. What you can be certain of is that these arrests don't even dent the surface. The Internet has become the modern version of the Wild West, and we don't even have Judge L Roy Bean, West of the Pecos, to protect us. August 26th AMD64 and XP SP2 Don't Mix I'm beginning to think that Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 2 wasn't ready for prime time. It's not just that the "breakage list" of programs that stop working is way over 200, or that some hardware was hobbled, like Firewire connections, but it is also not ready because folks are finding bugs throughout it, including a nasty drag and drop bug. But there's more. Remember that stuff about the NX flag in AMD64 chips, and "DEP", or data execution prevention? SP2 was supposed to activate that feature, and make use of it's improved security. The only problem is, when you install SP2 on an AMD64 machine, it might just end up continuously rebooting. Oh joy. I have XP on my AMD64 system, but I haven't made the mistake of trusting Microsoft to get it right, so I haven't seen this myself, thankfully. If you have your system behind a router, and you have up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spyware programs running, you will be fine without SP2. I'm dumbfounded by how long it took MS to get this service pack done. I don't see that much stuff in there. And on a side note, I wonder if Intel paid Microsoft to muck up DEP with AMD64 chips, or if they managed all by themselves? August 25th How is Microsoft Like the Bush Administration? Whatever the Bush Administration does, you can be sure the names of the proposed programs will be misnomers. When they call their relaxation of air pollution standards the "Clean Skies Act", you know they mean "Dirty Skies Act". When their school program is called the "No Child Left Behind Act", you can be sure poor kids will be left behind. When the water pollution standards are loosened, and they call it the new "Clean Water Act", you can be sure it's really the "Dirty Water Act". When they help organize the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" (same lawyers as the Bush Administration), you can be absolutely certain that they are really the "Swift Boat Veterans for Lies". This mis-naming is quite intentional, and pervades everything the Bush Administration does. Well the same holds true for Microsoft, particularly when they are attacking Linux. You can bet when a Microsoft sponsored comparison says "Windows is cheaper than Linux!", it really means "Windows is lots more expensive than Linux". In a recent comparison Microsoft's henchmen found, surprisingly, that Windows running on a Xeon machine was much cheaper than Linux running on a big mainframe. But they didn't tell you that the platforms were different, just that Windows was "cheaper to deploy". What surprises me is that this type of obfuscation works in America. I would like to think that we are an informed public, but if these tactics keep working for Microsoft and the Bush Administration, I may have to rethink that assumption. August 24th NVidia Gets Some 6800 Ultras to Market The NVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra cards (retail $550+) have begun to make it to distributors in retail format. The first we have been able to get a hold of are the somewhat error-plagued MSI NX6800 Ultra cards. The box is monstrous, and the card is very bulky indeed. I had to move hard drives around in my full tower ATX case to accommodate the 6800 Ultra. It also requires two power connectors. While I did not enjoy the physical installation process, I am loving the new video card. It beats the ATI X800 Pro by a significant margin. Now if I can get a hold of an X800XT Ultra card soon, we'll have a real showdown on our hands. August 23rd NVidia vs. ATI, Tables Turning? The Inquirer has an editorial on ATI's and NVidia's new video cards, and the graphics engines wars that are just heating up. Mr. Demergian suggests that NVidia has a significant lead over ATI in their latest round of chips, and he believes that this lead will increase over time as more games come out based on DX9, pixel shader 3.0, and the Doom3 and Half Life2 engines. NVidia NForce4 Chipsets The NForce4 series of chipsets will be ready before year end. There will be low-end and high end versions. At the high end, there will be a chipset with dual PCI-Express video cards and dual processors. That's one way to boost sales, tempt everyone who can afford it to buy 2 processors and 2 video cards for each system. August 19th Intel's Hot New Processors Legit Reviews has a story on Intel's overheated socket 775 processors, and the lack of cooling solutions available currently. Apparently, combining Intel's excessively hot CPUs with the quirky design of socket 775 motherboards have made designing high-capacity coolers difficult. So for now, you haven't got any really good choices. On the other hand, AMD's new 939-pin Athlon 64 CPUs have many excellent, compatible coolers already on the market. SCO No Go No Mo IBM has filed more counterclaims against SCO, and these look pretty damaging. In particular, IBM claims that SCO has directly copied over 3/4 of a million lines of code from IBM's version of Linux, and then distributed it in violation of the GPL (general public license). Turning the tables can be great fun. This ironic flip flop on who stole who's code will be fun to watch in court. Both sides will be claiming the exact same thing, and there's no way to tell how the court will rule on the counter-claims. But if I were going to bet on who had the better argument, I'd have to go with IBM. They stuck with the GPL, whereas SCO flagrantly violated it, then said it was unconstitutional because it didn't make anyone any money. (Funny, I hadn't seen that clause in the constitution that said every action must make money). My guess is that this summary judgment motion by IBM will be upheld in court, mainly because SCO's actions have been so blatantly illegal. August 18th Windows XP SP2 Breakage List Explodes (1/4 are MS products) Ouch! The list has now grown to over 200 programs that don't work after installing Windows XP Service Pack 2. And this vast swelling of the list has occurred in just a few days after the initial, cautious release of SP2 by Microsoft. New additions to the busted list include Photoshop Elements, Nero burning software, WordPerfect Office 11 (which I use), Command and Conquer Generals, Microsoft Office 11, Outlook 2000, 2002 and 2003, and Microsoft Word XP (which I use). I counted 50 Microsoft products that are broken and rendered useless by... a Microsoft security patch. Only Microsoft could achieve that dubious distinction among software makers. August 17th SCO's McBride Upbeat as Customers Flee Of course we all know that SCO pretty much gave up on trying to sell Unix products after they became a litigation company, but they keep rolling out product updates nonetheless. Recently Darl McBride was quoted as saying "We have a huge installed base and have shipped millions of operating systems, many of which are still running today. So that business model is very sound. We think that the upside on the core customer base is very enticing, independent of the lawsuit." On the same day, Africa's largest medical management company, Medscheme, announced it was replacing it's SCO Unixware servers with new servers running... Novel's SuSE Linux. August 16th Service Pack 2 Breakage List Grows Microsoft has posted a list of programs that get broken when XP Service Pack 2 is installed. The list includes 50 programs, and 7 games, and seems to be growing day by day. Some of my favorites are AutoCAD, Norton Antivirus, and Microsoft SQL Server. All in all, Microsoft's SP2 ended up breaking 6 Microsoft products, such as MS Systems Management Server 2003 and Visual Studio .NET. You'd think they could have come up with a patch for their own 6 products by now, since they actually wrote the Service Pak themselves. Didn't they? August 14th NVidia Lights On, Nobody Home I have been waiting diligently for over 2 months for a single NVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra to arrive here. Even one. But no dice. All distributors still list them as backordered. They have been backordered since the day they were announced. Yesterday was supposed to be the ship date, but that has been postponed again, for the 5th time. Now the ETA reads as Jan 1st, 2010, which means; "we have no idea when this thing will materialize". ATI has managed to trickle new cards to market over the last several months, and perhaps NVidia is doing the same with small numbers of cards at retail outlets. But when it comes to buying 6800 Ultra cards at hardware distributors, forget it. They aren't there. This is the worst example of a phony product launch I've ever witnessed. NVidia announced new products before ATI, despite being further behind on the manufacturing process. By missing the launch of Doom3, NVidia has completely blown their chance to regain the speed crown in PC graphics. So what else is new (not)? August 13th Nobody Likes Intel Intel is really starting to take flak recently, after stumbling repeatedly and turning from innovator to AMD wanna-be. Wil Harris has an article at The Inquirer which blasts Intel's knee-jerk reactions to AMD, and how they are playing catch-up to AMD on numerous fronts. Here is Wil's burning question: "So the major question is, just why is Intel constantly mis-reading the market, and failing to spot these new trends? Exactly whose job is it, within Intel, to keep an eye on new trends and spot new openings? More to the point, whose job is it to keep an eye on the competition, and where did he get his degree in arrogance from?" Wil, meet the Intel marketing department, which runs the show, and doesn't even let visitors feed the engineers through the bars. August 11th Windows XP SP2 Only Breaks a Few Things The reports coming out so far look fairly good for Windows XP Service Pack 2. There are those seemingly mandatory problems, like dropping firewire speeds by 8 times, and problems with DivX and standalone firewalls, like Zonealarm. But overall, the problems aren't as numerous as many had anticipated. Everyone is watching the forums and waiting to see how things develop. But there isn't anything in SP2 that I absolutely need right now, so I'm going to keep waiting and watching. August 9th Pentium 4 OBSOLETE According to David Berlind, the executive editor at News.com, Windows XP SP2 renders all Intel-based computers obsolete. This may come as a tiny surprise to Intel fans, but there isn't a single Intel processor on the planet now that can make use of SP2's DEP (data execution prevention), whereas all Athlon64, Opteron, and even wimpy Sempron processors, all can take advantage of the new anti-virus security feature. Windows XP Service Pack 2 includes support for the NX flag in AMD CPUs, which prevents viruses and Trojans from executing themselves from certain areas of memory that previously were vulnerable. So Mr. Berlind suggests that all companies cancel any outstanding Intel orders, because nobody wants to get stuck with obsolete hardware. You can either wait for Intel to add NX flag support later this year, or buy AMD now. August 8th XP Service Pack2 Released to Manufacture They actually pulled it off. Well, sort of. According to many of the reviews, lots of stuff is really half-assed in XP Service Pack 2, including the clunky, underpowered firewall. But who cares, no one who knows what they are doing will even use the SP2 firewall. If you don't have your system locked down with a real firewall, your just asking for trouble. I'm not installing it until I hear all the horror stories. Plus, I have DVD X Copy (evil!) on my system for backing up my DVD's, and I want to hear from folks who have similar copying software on their systems before updating my system. I'm not going to be another one of Bill's guinea pigs again this time! Intel Discontinues Pentium 4EE 3.2GHz As they prepare to put out some chips that might give AMD's Athlon FX and Opteron 150 a little work out, Intel is canning it's failed P4EE 3.2GHz chip. The thing cost about $1000, and couldn't keep up with the less expensive AMD offerings, even with 2MB of L2 cache. Maybe you guys at Intel want to make that pipeline a little longer? You could get a 5GHz chip to run as slow as a 2GHz AMD chip if you make it long enough! What surprises me is that Intel has been able to keep so many loyal customers, and even companies like Dell, onboard for so long as they flounder with CPU and socket upgrades that are driving everyone crazy. Their BTX motherboard design is so bad no one wants to use it, including Intel, who found out how dumb it was to move the memory sockets so far from the CPU. Even Dell is thinking of switching to AMD chips for some of their servers, and that's really saying something. August 6th Dell Thinks Intel Stinks Too Confirming my allegations against Intel, Dell has begun complaining to the chip giant about the shoddy stuff they are trying to pawn off on the world. A Dell rep was rumored to have said that: 1) Nocona gives little or no additional performance gain in 64-bit mode, and just adds more memory addressing, and is really a micro-date update to an existing design. 2) Dell is also unhappy with the implementation of PCI Express in Intel's 'Hindenburg' (Lindenhurst) chipset. 3) Unlike AMD's Opteron, the
Intel Nocona may be marketed by Dell just for databases and for data
centers. A 36-bit memory address limitation of Nocona just doesn't compare to
AMD's 40-bit Opteron, which has strong features such as hypertransport, and the on-board memory controller. Unfortunately, "Intel Inside" now means... it stinks. August 5th XP Service Pack2 Canceled No, not really, it was just delayed again, indefinitely, right before it was supposed to be released, with no reason offered. I don't think I need to say anything more, except, sheesh. Intel Sucks, AMD Great Perhaps a bit harsh, but it's how I feel. Here is a telling snippet from The Inquirer, discussing Anand's recent benchmarking of Intel vs. AMD: "First our friends at Anadtech proved that the Athlon 64 marchitecture beats the hell out of Intel's Pentium 4. It was shocking to see that 3000+ 512 KB cache AMD chip is actually just one frame slower then 3.4 Exscream Edition CPU. The price difference is $830 as EE costs $988 while a 3000+ costs $158, according to Pricewatch. All other Athlon socket 754 3400+, socket 939 3500+, 3800+, FX51 and FX53 all 939 are faster than EE 3.4." I have been saying for years now that Intel's tendency to screw customers by making expensive, long pipeline chips just so they would run at higher MHz ratings, while actually benchmarking slower, was going to come back to bite them in the butt. It has. Intel's design philosophy comes as much from their marketing department, as from their in-fighting engineers. AMD is pure engineering. I'll take AMD any day. August 4th Judge Tries to Close Barn Door After Barn Burns Down The small company that made a name for itself by selling DVD and game copying software, 321 Studios, will close down due to the law suits and recent legal ruling against it. It's really a shame that the RIAA (recording industry assoc. of America) and MPAA (motion picture assoc. of America) have this much clout in the marketplace, it kind of reminds me of the old Trusts from the turn of the last century. Of course, tens of thousands of people already have purchased these programs, and it looks as though folks are spreading them around on peer to peer networks. So despite the RIAA's and MPAA's best efforts, and the courts collusion with them, the horse left the barn a long time ago, and they aren't going to get it back. Of course they could subpoena 321 Studios for their customer list, and then sue all the customers. Hmmm. Sounds like a typical MPAA plan. NVidia Cards Kick ATI's Butt in Doom3 It's true, NVidia finally has a video card that beats all ATI cards in a particular game, the brand new Doom3. The reason is that ATI has concentrated all it's efforts on DirectX performance, ignoring Open GL performance. Now that Doom3, an Open GL 1.5 game, is out before Half Life2 (a DirectX 9 game), NVidia has it's first advantage in well over a year. Of course there is one little, itsy, bitsy problem. NVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra cards are still backordered almost everywhere. They are absent at major distributors, even after 3 slips on the release date. Right now, distributors simply have them listed as "past due". NVidia is acting like they are stuck in molasses, which is hard to understand considering the size of the company, and the importance of their video card line. August 3rd Intel Shows World How Not to Implement PCI-Express According to reports, Intel's first PCI-Express capable motherboards work fine except for... yep, PCI-Express video cards. Reminds me greatly of the first batch of AGP motherboards and graphics cards back in 1999. What a mess that was. I've been wondering how painful the switch back to PCI graphics cards was going to be, and I guess now we know. Very painful for Intel, and very irritating for potential customers who don't know what to do. Wait? The answer to that question is a resounding yes. Intel's recommendation on their ill-fated motherboards? Use the cheap on-board integrated graphics. That will go over well with PC enthusiasts. Let's hope that other chipset makers do a better job than Intel when it comes to supporting upcoming PCI-Express video cards. Doom III For All Today? Apparently, some folks have been able to grab a hold of Doom3 on store shelves in the last few days, despite id requesting that retailers hold off until today. Yesterday a friend went to Best Buy mid-morning, and there was a rack of Doom3 on display. As he got there are tried to grab one, the manager came walking over and said that they were not allow to sell them yet. The rack was wheeled away. A few minutes earlier, and it could have been different. So that old saying about the 'early bird' may just be true. August 1st 2004 Whistleblower Fired Over Boss' Solitaire Habit Another whistleblower has been fired, despite many whistleblower protection laws. This time, Vernon Blake of the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) was fired for documenting that his boss spent 70% of his office time playing solitaire, and another 20% checking the stock market. When Vernon, the sysadmin for ALDOT, documented and reported the abuses (and the complete lack work by his boss), he was immediately fired. His boss still has his job, but apparently can't play solitaire anymore, because ALDOT removed all Windows games from ALDOT computers after firing Vernon. It's no wonder that people still don't turn in corrupt supervisors and managers; the whistleblower laws are being ignored by prosecutors and the courts. Too bad most of the taxpayers of Alabama don't get to hear this story, it apparently has only been carried in a few local newspapers. Copyright 2004, KickAss Gear |