December 31st

Perhaps for the first time in history, Intel is selling it's expensive processors for less than cheaper-to-make, similar speed AMD processors. With the advent of it's new "XP" (Athlon-4) processor, AMD upped the ante by increasing the price of the new CPU to above Pentium4 prices (at the same MHz rating).  This is where the AMD performance rating system comes in.  By rating the processors on a performance scale, rather than pure MHz, AMD is able to sell inexpensive processors at a premium price.  Intel, on the other hand, is selling it's expensive processors at rock-bottom prices.  Indeed, while AMD is making a handsome profit on Athlon XP sales, Intel is no-doubt losing money on it's 0.18 micron Pentium4. Intel will only be able to make money if it can hurry the transition to 0.13 microns, which will significantly reduce the cost to produce each CPU.

But by then AMD may have a 0.13 micron processor ready to go, in which case the MHz/price wars will continue unabated. One thing is clear, right now AMD is winning the sales war, in part because Intel can't make enough 0.18 micron Pentium4s to meet demand. 

                                   Dr. John  

Van's Hardware

We want to wish you all a very happy and safe New Year.  The year 2001 was a very interesting one for hardware, software and gaming.  Next year should be even more interesting.  I for one am very eager to get my hands on Unreal 2!  

Happy New Year all!

                            KickAss Gear Crew

December 30th

Intellectual property. It means different things to different people. For content providers it is a safety net, or security blanket. For consumers, it is increasingly becoming a pain in the ass. Let's face it, as consumers we would like to get as much of our entertainment without paying as possible. But content providers need to get paid. Personal computers and the Internet lie at the crossroads of these conflicting forces.

This places the personal computer squarely in no man's land in the midst of this epic battle of content control vs. entertainment dollars spent. In the background, content providers and their cronies have been working at shifting the balance to their favor. As it stands now, personal computers are almost entirely unregulated digital recording devices. Digital entertainment providers want this to change... now.  As such, copy protection schemes which had originally been targeted at CD and DVD burners may find their way onto computer hard drives in the near future. 

The scheme known as CPRM or "Content Protection for Recordable Media" is the name of the method for locking down the personal computer's ability to record digital content, and it may be applied to hard drives in the near future. The "Security Systems Standards and Certification Act" (SSSCA) is legislation that is intended to secure all digital recording devices, with the end result being that even fair use copying is blocked.

Keep your eyes and ears open, because there may come a time when all new hard drives have CPRM included, making it impossible to store any copyrighted material on your hard drive. That's the time to run out and buy the last remaining unprotected hard drives on store shelves. Also keep in mind that if enough people write angry letters to their senators and Congressperson, such legislation may become too risky to pass. The lobbyists for the entertainment industry hammer away at Congress every day. Maybe it's time to add your voice to the fray.

                                    Dr. John  

The Register 

Hale Landis

The Senate

The House of Representative

December 28th

"Light-brown please" is all you say, and the bread lowers itself into the 'Toasterific 2002', the heat coils engage, and in no time, perfect toast pops out.  "Your... light... brown... toast... is ready", the Toasterific replies with a Steven Hawkins accent. 

It's not bad science fiction, it's bad science fact.  Talking toasters are on the way. So are talking cars, talking dishwashers, talking cell phones, talking TVs and talking toilets.  Actually though, I was kind of hoping we'd get to talking computers first.  But talking cell phones and appliances could have their benefits.

"Pop up the burning toast Hal"..... "Hal.... pop up the burning toast!".

"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that" (crackle, hisssss).

                                    Dr. John  

EBN

December 23rd

The Windows patches flow from Redmond like diarrhea from a baby, and there's no end in sight. Now MS has released a second patch in so many weeks for their "secure" operating systems. This security hole affects Windows 98, 98SE, Me and XP, but apparently not Windows 2000.  This little bit of information is going to make certain that virtually no large corporations migrate from 2K to XP for at least another 6 months to a year, if not longer.  

The most recently discovered security hole (one of dozens discovered over the last several years in MS operating systems), could allow a hacker to remotely gain complete control over your computer system.  No biggie.  

So all of you who were wise enough to stick with Windows 2000.... good call.  To all of those of you who were tempted by the siren song of XP... tsk tsk tsk. You should no better by now.  Remember, you're dealing with Microsoft, king of the monopolies, not some down-to-earth, reputable company.

                                    Dr. John  

Patch Central

Happy Holidays from KickAss Gear!

We want to wish everyone out there a very happy holiday, and a fantastic New Year.  Drive safe, and be merry!  We'll see you all in the next year (sheesh, is it 2002 already!?:)

The KickAss Gear Crew

December 18th

Scott at The Tech Report has a very nice roundup of all the new P4 chipsets available, including Intel's SDRAM and DDR DRAM options, stacked up against the DDR-capable offerings from VIA and SiS.  Who wins?  You know deep in your heart who lost... but you'll have to read on to find out who won!

But since we are talking about, (cough) the Pentium 4, rather than the Athlon XP, I expect only subdued excitement on the part of the reader (stop drooling Matt!).  But it's nice to keep track of how the "other half" lives.

                                    Dr. John

December 16th

Well, you actually knew that using Microsoft's Internet Explorer to securely surf the web was somewhat analogous to using a colander to carry water, but now you can plug some of those leaky holes with a new security patch for IE 5.5 and 6.0.

And where can you get said patcheroo? At the great Satan of Software themselves, of course. And who needs to worry about such mundane matters?  You do if you have Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6.0 loaded on your system.   

What.... me worry???

The patch and associated warnings, disclaimers, and Microsoft's legal loopholes can all be found in one neat package, here. Enjoy!

                                    Dr. John  

PS, you might want to back up your hard drive first, you know, because it's a Microsoft patch, and all that.

December 15th

AMD must be giving the Wall Street whackos the willies.  There's no other explanation for the "reverse think" the folks at Prudential are using to justify their sell recommendation on AMD stock.   Something along the lines of "AMD is only doing well because Intel can't make enough P4 chips".

It couldn't be because the Athlon XP is faster and cheaper than Pentium 4 chips running at much higher clock rates.  It couldn't be because the P$ is only affordable when coupled with SDRAM, while the Athlon XP works with faster DDR DRAM.  It couldn't be because AMD has become the vastly preferred chip among PC enthusiasts and gamers.  No, the anal-ysts must be right again.  AMD couldn't make a better product than Intel, right? 

                                    Dr. John

The Inquirer 

The Street 

Prudential

December 13th

While we haven't had the experience yet ourselves, many folks with Windows XP are having big problems with the new 23.11 NVidia drivers. The machine I'm working on to write this story is running with a VIA motherboard (KT133A), an NVidia card (GF2 pro), and Windows 98SE, rather than Windows XP. So it's probably something to do with the new Windows XP drivers.  This same thing happened after Windows 2000 came out, so it's not much of a shock. NVidia probably missed something about XP driver etiquette, and they'll fix it in the next panic update.

But I also don't think it's possible to make a perfect operating system update if you don't let the programmers concentrate on the actual operating system exclusively.  If XP programmers have to worry about Internet browsers, media players, digital video editors and all sorts of dot Net crap, they really are at a disadvantage from the inception.  But this particular problem is most likely an NVidia driver glitch, which was supposed to be a performance enhancement.

                                    Dr. John

The Inquirer

The Register

December 11th

Federal Judge J.F. Motz (sort of like the applesauce of olden days) has awoken from his jurist prudent slumber and noticed that the "Microsoft remedy" for all their bad, monopolistic behavior was actually just another example of the same.  Microsoft wanted to give $1 billion worth of MS software and PCs to schools around the country as a way of saying "we're sorry".  But Apple computer meekly raised it's hand, and instead of asking if they could go to the bathroom, they boldly suggested that the giveaway would erode Apple's last stronghold in the computer arena. Apple still is the preferred platform in many schools throughout the country, so the move by MS to give away a billion worth of IBM-compatible rigs and MS bloatware would certainly shift the balance of power in this last sacred Mac bastion. 

So now the remedy may be modified such that MS will just give $1 billion, and the schools get to buy what they prefer.  It sounds a little better, but have you compared PC and Mac prices recently?  Most schools will realize they can get more PC for the buck, than they can with MacInstuff.

                                    Dr. John

The Inquirer

There is a post over at OK Hardware in Europe which says there is a VIA chipset-GeForce3 bug with the Detonator-4 (21.83) drivers. You can read about it here. We have not encountered this problem yet.

December 9th

Have you noticed a distinct lack of new PC games this holiday season?  Have you wondered why so few new PC games are available before Xmas?  Is it just possible that this is going to be an Xbox Xmas? That's my guess.  Game developers know where the money is, and that's in new console games.  The newest thing around is the Xbox, and kids everywhere will be demanding a new Xbox for Xmas, and of course they'll need some new games to go along with it.

The end result is fewer games written for the PC, and longer waits for the few new games that make it out.  On top of that, most of the better game developers will be tempted to leave the PC arena altogether, and head for the greener pastures of console game development.  A popular console game like Halo can reap 10 times the profits made on a similar PC game.  And it's all a matter of money when you get right down to it.  Microsoft wants you to buy all your games, and all your gaming hardware, directly from them, and they've got enough money to make it happen.

                                    Dr. John

December 7th

For the answer to this question, check out the video card duke-out at The Tech Report. The results are quite interesting, and should make the owners of both cards quite satisfied with their choice.  The Radeon 8500 excels at rendering point sprites, utilizing it's vertex shader, and when rendering high polygon count scenes.  But the Ti500 wins in almost every game benchmark, and in some cases, it won by a significant margin.

Neither card is a slouch, and both have very forward-looking features which should help them age almost as well as fine wines.  

                                        Dr. John

Rambus, weep your hearts out.  Intel is more interested in DDR-II, 400MHz double data rate memory than it is in the proprietary, ethically challenged memory known as Rambus.  At the JEDEC meeting in Hawaii this week, Intel and several memory makers urged the standards body known as JEDEC to move quickly beyond the as yet unfinished DDR-II standard, and adopt a modified 600MHz DDR-IIa standard.

The tentative DDR-IIa standard is the first to emerge from the new "Advanced DRAM Technology" alliance (ADT), forged by Intel in the wake of the Rambus-JEDEC memory debacle.  But some memory makers are worried that the IIa standard is not pin compatible with the DDR-II standard, which could lead to the kind of confusion that  both motherboard makers and consumers hate. 

                                         Dr. John

By the way, can you guess which memory design company is the only one NOT welcome at JEDEC meetings anymore?  It's tough being outcasts, isn't it Dave and Avo?  Remember the Rambus motto: "We never stop litigating".

EBN

December 4th

If reports are correct, AMD has been successful in producing 0.13 micron "Hammer-type" 64-bit processors. The word is also out that AMD is selling more Athlon XP processors (originally called the Athlon-4) than expected, in part because of Intel's shortage of Pentium 4 chips.  AMD stock has risen from about $8 to a little over $14 a share in the last two months, but you can be sure it will go up even faster if their sales continue to climb at Intel's expense.

But for those of you who would rather read a parody on Intel, I found this piece that will also please Star Trek fans.

                                         Dr. John

As you may have noticed (or maybe not!), we have been out of commission for over a week.  The transition to a new server with totally different software was the culprit.  But the real kicker is this.  The web site worked fairly well switching from one operating system to another, but when the Linux firewall was replaced with a Microsoft firewall, everything went kablooy. And that is despite the fact that now the entire system is using MS software exclusively.  My thanks go out to Steve and Chris for efforts above and beyond the call of duty.  

                                         Dr. John

Now that you've forgotten all about that so-called invention by Dean Kamen which had been code-named "Ginger"... it's back, and this time you get to see what it is and what it does.  In fact, it's a really, really expensive gyroscopic, computer-controlled scooter.  Hmmm, do I want to spend $3000 so I don't have to walk?  How can I lock it up when I get somewhere so that thieves won't steal it?  What happens if the gyro jams while I'm leaning forward?  How do I hold my umbrella if it's raining outside? What is so damn tough about walking and getting a little exercise?  Beats me.  Cool technology, but not such a good invention.  Future cities will be built around it? In a pigs eye!

                                         Dr. John