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Gear News Archive: February 2002
February 26th Will Linux be Your Next OS? There's not doubt about it. Linux is getting better all the time. And when something free gets better and better with time, that's got to be a good thing. Some IT analysts think Linux is about to become a much more mainstream operating system. The newest distributions of Linux, such as Red Hat 7.2, are very easy to install and use. But the question is, will Linux just be your second 'freebie" OS, or will it become your main OS? Most people have invested hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in Windows software. I personally have spent tens of thousands of dollars on Windows based software over the years. Much of that software gets used on a daily, or at least weekly, basis. I won't be able to find Linux programs that do the same thing as Sigmaplot (scientific graphing), Refman (bibliography software), Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat, and many other programs that perform specialized tasks. So it seems to me that one major hurdle that Linux needs to clear is the application hurdle. Either Linux-based programs that perform such specific tasks need to be written and marketed at a comparatively low price, or a Windows-emulator for Linux will have to be produced. Short of that, Linux will remain a server OS (and a second, free OS) for the foreseeable future. FCC Approves Ultra Wide Band Wireless UWB, or Ultra-Wide-Band technology is go. The FCC recently approved the commercial application of this interesting technology. UWB can be used for "ground penetrating radar", secure wireless communications, and car collision avoidance devices. UWB is a method of sending brief, high-information content pulses at many different radio frequencies. The only problem is, there is the possibility that UWB devices may interfere with radio, TV, cell phones and global positioning systems. So for now, the FCC has limited which radio frequency ranges that UWB devices can use. (Thanks Kris!) February 24th Microsoft XP Media Player = Spyware! If you have Windows XP, Microsoft is tracking your CD and DVD playing habits with Windows Media Player. That's correct. Microsoft's newest operating system (which I have been recommending people avoid like the plague) tracks your disk playing habits, and sends the information directly to MS central without your knowledge or consent. For those of you who don't like be watched by Big Brother (= Microsoft), you will either want to uninstall Windows XP, or at the very least disable "cookie support". For those who don't mind, don't give it another thought. Here is a quote from the article. "Privacy advocates said the media player's capabilities fly in the face of Microsoft's "trustworthy computing" initiative, a new dedication to security and privacy that the company announced last month. This is a new level of profiling that I think is dangerous," Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) legislative counsel Chris Hoofnagle told NewsFactor. "Microsoft says it's concerned about privacy, but where is your ability to control information about yourself?" As usual, MS downplays this as "no big deal". Hell, nothing is a big deal to Bill, he can buy his way out of anything. But this will add to the tarnish that has despoiled Bill's pet operating system since it's debut. The newest OS has been criticized for it's incorporation of "passport" and ".net" services, which give Bill a piece of each online shopping pie. This is another piece of bad news for Bill, who is now being threatened by the courts with the possibility that he will have to reveal the source code for all Windows operating systems. Still want to upgrade to Windows XP anyone? Thanks for the heads up Michael! February 23rd Comcast is Watching You! Comcast cable Internet subscribers have been spied on by Comcast marketing droids for who knows how long now. They tracked your every move on the Internet, and for all anyone outside the company knows, they sold the information they obtained to other companies who could then spam you, or otherwise try to target you with marketing. Quite despicable, and perhaps illegal according to Congressman Edward Markey (D). Indeed, I have Comcast cable here, and have always wondered what the little program called tgcmd was doing running in the background (hit Ctrl/Alt/Del to get to the task manager, and you'll see tgcmd if you have Comcast's service). Perhaps now I know what it is doing. Comcast has now promised to stop spying on their loyal customers. How nice of them to relinquish Big Brother status so quickly. Abit's Got Style Abit's new batch of motherboards are coming with some little niceties that make their enthusiast-targeted mainboards even better. First off, the box now comes with a convenient handle for carrying them around. Not sure if it's needed, but it makes the package look more substantial. Inside you'll find greatly improved packaging, including plastic forms which hold everything in place so it doesn't all bounce around. Next you'll see that Abit has included very high quality black 80-conductor IDE cables (2), which look great.
In addition, Abit has enclosed several wire ties, and some stick-on wire clips for keeping your wiring neat and out of the way. Such little perks should be welcome additions for home PC enthusiasts who build and upgrade their own systems. February 16th Windows XP Activation Really Cracked? Sure, there is the Warez cracked copy of Windows XP (Devil's own), and there are plenty of corporate versions that just need a volume license number, but for the most part, all of the previous attempts to actually "crack" the XP activation code have fallen short. Now there is a little program called "Keygen" which supposedly will crunch numbers as long as is required to generate valid hardware-linked activation codes for Windows XP. If true, this program will likely become the method of choice for casual XP pirates, because it seems the most resistant method to being circumvented by Microsoft's next service pack for XP. I personally will not upgrade to XP until I have no alternative. Either Windows 98SE or Windows 2000 will offer all the functionality that anyone could need in an OS, without the hassle-overhead of the activation code, dot Net, passport, and other crap that makes XP so much less attractive. NVidia Stock Drops on SEC Probe NVidia stock has been going up up up. But now it's turning downward after the Securities and Exchange Commission announced it was looking into possible insider trading, accounting irregularities, and other possible problems at the computer/graphics chip firm. The other bad part for NVidia, besides the stock price drop, is that more scrutiny may turn up additional problems that were undiscovered previously. Ever since Enron's disastrous demise, accountants have probably changed the way they do business. But pre-Enron accounting practices could still turn out to haunt many corporations that get audited, or scrutinized by the SEC. Rambus Removed from Philadelphia Stock Exchange Rambus Inc., in it's constant striving to become the most hated IP company in the world, has succeeded in getting itself removed from listings at the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. Quite a fall from those heady days when they thought they had the computer memory industry by the garbanzos. But hey, they still make the memory for the Playstation 2! Wanna bet Sony won't incorporate Rambus in the PS/3? February 15th 3D Mark 2001SE Madonion.com has released the newest version of 3DMark 2001, known as "second edition". This updated video benchmark program has improved hardware support, a few new scenes, and DX8.1 support. So if you haven't upgraded to Direct X 8.1 yet, you'll need to download that from Microsoft in order to run the updated benchmark. February 13th HAL Haunts Microsoft HAL is Microsoft's Hardware Abstraction Layer, and it's driving people crazy with driver problems. Apparently, sometimes the mere act of trying to load a driver for things like a new network card can cause the computer to issue an error message that the "data is invalid". At this point, according to MS, you need to run the "repair XP" utility to fix the problem, while some users have claimed that reinstalling XP is the only way to fix the problem. As MS continues to clamp down their operating systems to be more "secure" and fully "copy-protected", expect more such problems to arise. Microsoft Copyrights Copy Protection OS The fully copy-protected PC is just around the corner. I assume this new MS operating system will be the successor to Windows XP. Not only would the fully protected PC only load "signed" drivers and applications, but it also would not load any copyrighted material without proper authorization. You can see where this is going, and I can only think that MS is going to give Linux a boost here. Below are a few tidbits concerning the technology. "Recently,
Microsoft was awarded a patent for what they call a Digital Rights
Management (DRM) Operating System, designed to protect copyrighted
software or content from duplication. The patent application seeks to protect "a computerized method for a digital rights management operating system comprising: assuming a trusted identity; executing a trusted application; loading rights-managed data into memory for access by the trusted application; and protecting the rights-managed data from access by an untrusted program while the trusted application is executing."
Enron the Culprit in Memory Price Increase? According to some industry analysts, Enron's collapse was a good part of the reason for the increase in memory prices recently. While this may seem like a stretch, the analysts have some good reasons for thinking the way they do. Enron was getting involved in many more things than energy over the last several years, and one of the areas they were exploring was "DRAM Price Risk Management". This was a service that provided price and supply guarantees for big memory purchasers. Here is an excerpt from Enron's web site: "Declining PC demand and inventory surplus in the supply chain have driven the semiconductor market to new depths. During this period of extreme price volatility, price protection has become very important. As Enron has done in other markets, EBS offers customized risk management products such as swaps, options, and collars that address the unique issues technology markets face and offer price risk protection. These tools can be used to reduce price risks associated with electronic components such as DRAM, flash memory, and LCDs." Well, apparently, many DRAM producing and consuming companies had signed up with Enron's program, and when Enron bit the dust, so did the DRAM services. According to analysts, this forced big memory consumers to buy up large inventories on the spot market to ensure supplies. So there you have it. Enron didn't just mess up the stock market, and investor confidence, it also caused the recent memory price hikes. And you thought the Enron debacle hadn't affected you personally! February 6th You Wanna GeForce
4?? Even though at the time of this writing, NVidia's web site still says "Be here February 6th 2002" rather than announcing the GeForce 4 video card, the non-disclosure agreements have expired, and the reviews are posted!! So is the GF4 a revolutionary new answer to ATI's Radeon 8500 card??? Actually, no. It has boosted core and memory speeds, one extra vertex shader, a slightly improved pixel shader, and improved loop-back texturing. That's about it. So in essence, it's a much faster GF3 Ti 500 with an extra vertex shader. Oh, and it's got dual VGA/DVI outputs! Very nice. Check out The Tech Report for all the poop on the new features ("let them eat vertex shaders"... I love it! :). Benchmark results?? Check out Tom's. You'll quickly see that ATI has some real catch up to do! Also, check out HotHardWare's review here. PS, Don't buy a GF3 Ti card now. If you are in the market for a new video card, it will be worth the wait for a GF4 card. February 3rd NVidia, NVidia Everywhere, but Nary a GF4 in Sight If you check out NVidia's web page, you'll notice they are teasing us (thanks for the heads up Jess). Something REALLY BIG is scheduled for February 6th. We can all guess. It's the GeForce 4 card. But I have a couple of questions. The Titanium series GF3 cards just debuted several months ago, and have been in very short supply ever since. How can NVidia make enough TNT-2 (yes, they still make those things), GF2, GF2MX, GF3 Ti 200, GF3 Ti 500, Xbox, PS/2, and now iMac MX chips to meet demand, while all at the same time, churning out lots of new GF4 chips?? I don't think they have the ability to pull it off. At least not to the satisfaction of customers. nForce motherboards were delayed, GF3 Ti cards, especially the Ti 500 ones, never filled the supply channels with product, and now with NVidia supplying parts for the Xbox, I'm beginning to think they are overextending themselves. They sure must be doing something right though, or they wouldn't have taken over most of the video chip market in the last two years. Many folks are wondering if the GF4 will have any "Voodoo" technology built in (after buying all their patents and getting their engineers too). Probably not. The next generation after the GF4 will probably include the first bits of 3dfx tech in the chips. February 2nd VIA PCI Patch?? The Tech Report, known for it's not-so-friendly attitude toward VIA products, says that a patch has been made for VIA chipsets which "improves PCI burst rates". Supposedly, many people are having difficulties with everything from sound cards to SCSI controllers on VIA chipset motherboards because of the PCI burst rate problem. In particular, IDE and SCSI drive performance is supposed to suffer greatly compared with Intel chipset motherboards. While we have had our share of problems with VIA-based motherboards, we never seemed to have as much trouble as reported at the Tech Report. But when they mentioned the PCI patch for VIA Southbridge chipsets that is supposed to alleviate the 'problem', I thought it was worth a look see. I happen to have a VIA Southbridge on my motherboard (Asus A7V133), and I also have an Adaptec 29160N SCSI controller, so I should have this problem. (If I do, I can't tell). So I downloaded and applied the patch, and much to my surprise (not), there was virtually no change in disk performance. Values were all very close, and any differences would not be statistically significant. I certainly didn't see the 20% performance boost they were describing. Maybe it will work better with the IDE controllers, but I did not test that possibility yet. Patch (From Tech Channel, Denmark: 546 KB)
Copyright 2002, KickAss Gear |
