|
|
|||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
| 2015 © KickAss Gear | |||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
| KickAss
Gear News Archive: June 2003
June 30th ATI Radeon 9800 Beats NVidia GeForce 5900 Many comparisons have come out over the last month between the top end cards from ATI and NVidia, but if you haven't had enough of the banter yet, check out OC-Addiction's new article. The 5900 does a good job, but in the end, the 9800 Pro comes out a little ahead when all is taken into consideration. Plus, it's $100 less expensive. NVidia has some real work on its hands if they want to regain the clear lead. And ATI is no sitting target. So let's get a-hoppin' NV! June 29th SCO Case Crumbles A legal scholar from the Free Software Foundation, Eben Moglen, takes aim at the recent SCO claims about the GNU/Linux operating system. His arguments are sound, and include the same elements as other legal analysts have discussed. SCO's biggest hurdle is the fact that they themselves distributed GNU/Linux under the terms of the General Public License (GPL), and can not now claim damages without violating the terms of the GPL. Basically, they're screwed by their own actions. Their lawyers knew this, and had them pull their version of GNU/Linux from their web site. But the damage was done, and all the bull spewing from them now is so much flatulence. I don't even think this legal case was undertaken to win, it was undertaken at the behest of Microsoft, who paid SCO tens of millions of dollars right before this all started. It's not hard to imagine that the entire purpose was to spread uncertainty about GNU\Linux amongst businesses that are using free software over Microsoft's extremely expensive Server products. Like many of Bill's recent endeavors, this one has failed, and may even come back to bite him as the facts in the case become more generally known. LAN Party Arcades Arcades that provide networked computers for gaming are becoming more popular, and prevalent. The idea has been around for awhile, but it looks as though it may be starting to take off, thanks to the popularity, and hardware-sucking nature of multiplayer games like Battlefield 1942, Counterstrike and Unreal Tournament 2003. Many families have PCs at home that are powerful enough for simple games, like the Sims, but lack the horsepower to play games like Battlefield 1942 in all their visual glory. Further, many households still don't have broadband internet access, and gaming on a 56K modem is far from smooth. As such, computer gaming arcades are becoming quite popular in certain areas of the country, and may expand to other areas if profits start to materialize. June 28th ATI Changes Drivers MUCH Faster than NVidia ATI released their new Catalyst 3.5 drivers during the week, and they have removed the 3D Mark-specific optimizations. NVidia, on the other foot, has coerced Futuremark into retracting their claim of "driver cheating", and has not posted updated drivers. It may be the case that ATI had fewer hard-coded optimizations which were easier to remove, or they may have been closer to a new driver release anyway. In either case, it doesn't matter much because ATI has come out of this debacle looking much better than NVidia. The PR and marketing teams at NVidia should be lined up at the wall and shot, figuratively of course. Well, you make up your own minds on the figurative part. One thing in NVidia's favor is the bug fix list on the Catalyst 3.5 drivers. It's huge in comparison with typical Detonator driver bug lists. This perpetuates the notion that ATI drivers are buggier than NVidia drivers. All in all though, ATI and NVidia fell into the privy, and ATI came out smelling like, um, not so much of a privy as NVidia did. So grab those new Catalyst drivers and git to gamin'! June 27th Music/Movie Boycott Brewing? The announcement by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) that they would start suing music and movie fans means the RIAA may now be facing a growing boycott of CDs and DVDs. The unfortunate thing about the situation is that it will probably be very difficult for the small percentage of fans that pay any attention to the news to get the vast majority of consumers to pay attention. A significant proportion of music and movie fans are totally engrossed in pop culture, and don't ever turn on the news or read the newspaper. Further, they probably avoid news web sites like the plague. They want entertainment, not news. The downside is that this group will be hard to recruit for the boycott, because they will never even hear about it. But if the vocal minority of music and movie fans work hard enough to get the news out by word of mouth, there is a slim chance that CD and DVD sales could suffer a few percent decline. This would amount to a significant loss of revenue, and would send an unmistakable message to the RIAA that the fans are not amused. June 26th The Legal Case Against SCO Anupam Chander, a law professor at UC Davis law school brings up four legal principles that work against SCO's court case with IBM. "The first principle is that a company cannot sell (or give away) a proprietary interest that they no longer
possess. So even if companies purported to give UNIX rights to SCO, their supposed grant of interest would be void if they earlier had given the same rights to IBM or if they had otherwise relinquished them. Most experts agree that the legal case against IBM has been severely weakened by SCO's prior actions, and contracts with IBM. As such, their chances in court are very slim. I expect that they may try to settle out of court. I also expect their stock price to react accordingly. The RIAA is Coming for YOU You knew this was coming. Once the courts ruled that the RIAA (recording industry association of America) could not sue peer-to-peer software makers, it was inevitable that they would have to go after users instead. Well surprise, surprise; that's just what they have said they will do. They will troll the internet for P2P servers that have copyrighted song files on them, and sue the owners. Expect cherry picking to dominate the legal actions, since the idea isn't just to discourage file trading, but to recoup what the RIAA feels are its lost assets. So the RIAA will go after P2P entities that it feels will have plenty of money to cough up. Obviously, their not going to get much money out of file-trading college kids. That's harder than getting blood from a stone. The result will probably be opposite of what the RIAA expects; including hidden P2P servers that are 'member only' affairs, more physical file trading, and I predict reverse P2P, where the servers actively upload to a client, rather than permitting a download on request. Further, I expect a backlash against the music industry. You can't go after your fans with legal actions and not have it come back to bite you. Can you say, "shoot yourself in the foot?" June 25th Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 Out The Inquirer is reporting that the much awaited Win2K SP4 is out. You can find links to the downloads here. Now you have to ask yourself.... "Do you feel lucky, punk?". I'm not feeling particularly lucky today, so I think I'll wait long enough to see the horror stories poor in. GNU Author Slaps SCO Upside Head Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation and author of the GNU Public License, has responded to SCO's statements in an article you can find here. He points out the much misunderstood fact that Linux is only a kernel, while GNU is the remainder of the operating system. He urges people to remember that it is GNU/Linux, not Linux. Linux is just the kernel. He also points out how this complicates SCO's case, especially because they also produced a version of GNU/Linux and distributed it for profit. It's a good read that I can recommend for anyone interested in the case. June 23rd SCO Likens Linux to Communism There's no turning back for SCO. They have made their bed, and now they have to lay in it. The company that is suing IBM for $3 billion has said that using Linux is like communism, and we all know how bad that is. They have also said they are going after corporate Linux users: 'SCO spokesman Blake Stowell says his company's lawsuit will not put an end to Linux. "Linux could still be used; it just wouldn't be free," Stowell said. "These people are upset because they've been enjoying a free ride for some time. They're upset their free ride will potentially be gone."' Based on the information available to date, SCO will never be able to charge anyone for any distribution of Linux. A few lines of similar code won't make a case of IP theft amongst millions of lines of code. But SCO is forcing everyone else's hand. By the time this gets to court, many Linux and Unix programmers, as well as other advocates, will have more than enough evidence to show that SCO has misappropriated more code from Unix than other companies have. You can't make a version of Linux out of Unix without doing so, and that is exactly what SCO did. So by the time the story is complete, SCO will be as guilty, or more guilty of "stealing code" than any other Linux distributor will. And while they won't be in trouble for using the Unix code, they will be in violation of the Linux General Public License, which puts them in a very difficult situation. Linus Torvalds, the inventor of Linux, says that he thinks "SCO is full of it", and that there will be no slowdown in the adoption of development of the Linux operating system. June 22nd Mysterious Web Traffic Baffles Experts For over a month, the internet has been witness to a significant amount of mysterious data being sent from anonymous sources. Researchers have been unable to figure out what the code is supposed to do, or even get a general idea of where it is coming from. Some speculate that it is a hacker tool in development, whereas I prefer the "Total Information Awareness" scenario, wherein government hired hackers are honing their skills to spy on everyone and everything. June 19th Orrin Hatch is a Software Pirate Orrin Hatch is finding out how easy it is to be labeled a software pirate, just one day after he said that a method needs to be developed to remotely destroy the computers of those who ignore music and software copyrights. An unemployed system administrator was so outraged by Senator Hatch's comments that he decided to poke around the Senator's web site. He found that the Senator was using an unlicensed copy of Milonic's Java-based menu system on his web site. The license information in the source code had even been altered. Milonic's owner said: "They're using our code... We've had no contact with them. They are in breach of our licensing terms." Hatch will no doubt have his people scurry to fix the extremely embarrassing situation, but the damage is done. Orrin Hatch is one of the very software pirates that he himself wants eradicated. Analysis of SCO Situation For an in-depth discussion of the SCO-IBM lawsuit and related issues, check out this article here. This quote is quite telling: "If IBM starts to feel nervous about this suit, it will unleash its patent portfolio. SCO is certain to be violating a number of IBM patents. Unless some preexisting patent agreement exists between SCO and IBM, SCO surely will lose against IBM's
countersuit." Unix is Not Proprietary Anymore Open source software advocate Eric Raymond has already collected 60 signatures from those who have legally seen Unix's source code without being asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement. This would undermine SCO's claim that Unix code is completely proprietary. If companies that owned the source code prior to SCO purchasing the rights had allowed free access to the source code, then it will be difficult for SCO to claim damages. The biggest irony so far in this case is that Microsoft, who had been scammed in the same way by the same people back in the late 1990's, would now pay them to do the same thing to IBM, and by proxy, Linux. June 19th The SCO Modus Operandi Forbes.com reports on the agenda, and the "SCOModus Operandi" of SCO in their law suit against IBM, and possible future (pre-emptive?) attacks on Linux in general. The article suggests that the "Linux crunchies" should wake up, smell the coffee, and pay more attention to what is really going on with the SCO law suit. Here is a tantalizing quote from the article: "They should wake up. SCO may not be very good at making a profit by selling software... But it is very good at getting what it wants from other companies. And it has a tight circle of friends... In 1996, SCO's predecessor company, Caldera, bought the rights to a decrepit version of the DOS operating system and used it to sue Microsoft... eventually shaking a settlement out of the Redmond, Wash., software giant. In 1997, Darl McBride, now SCO's chief executive, sued his then employer, IKON Office Solutions... and won a settlement that he says was worth multiple millions." "...As with the 1996 DOS lawsuit against Microsoft, in the current lawsuit over Unix and Linux this company aims to take a nearly dead chunk of old code, bought for a song, and parlay it into a windfall. Not only is the strategy the same--so are some of the players." The article is worth reading, especially, I suppose, if you consider yourself a Linux "crunchie". According to the Forbes article, SCO is basically owned and run by the "Canopy Group", who's chief executive is also chairman on SCO's board of directors, as well as the person who engineered the lawsuit against Microsoft in 1996. I'm often amazed at how slimy business practices are in the US. I expect that as more of these IP hijackings reach the courts, new laws will be written to make retroactive court action for "purchased" IP infringement impossible. Does Intel Threaten IT Journalists? Good question! For an intriguing look at why the Intel Itanium gets much more IT news-space than AMD's Opteron, go here. It has been shown quite clearly on hardware review sites that the Opteron outperforms the Itanium in almost every benchmark, and for much less money. Further, the Itanium requires extensive re-coding of applications to run properly, whereas the Opteron is much more forgiving, requiring a simple port of applications to the new processor. Further, the Opteron can run older, 32-bit applications at full speed, whereas the Itanium has a slow, 32-bit emulator built-in. So you have to ask yourself, how fast are the threats flying from Intel concerning ad revenues at various IT news sites? And you so-called IT journalists (mercenaries?)... shame on you. USB Kludging An odd little report in, of all places, the Bangkok Post, alleges that the "USB Forum" has played fast and loose with the USB 2.0 designation. If true, the Forum moved to boost sales of certain computer systems (laptops, etc) by changing the numbering/naming system for USB ports. They changed the name of USB 1.1 to "USB 2.0", while retaining the name USB 2.0 for USB 2.0. Clear enough? OK, so it's not clear. And considering that one runs at 12 Mbps, and the other at 480Mbps, it seems like a bit of a stretch. When this discrepancy began to surface as owners of new laptops found their USB 2.0 ports lacking speed, the USB forum clarified the situation by saying there were two flavors of USB 2.0. One was called "High Speed", and the other was called "Full Speed". Now it's much clearer, as Full Speed is obviously different from High Speed. Now that we've cleared that up, we can move on to murkier topics. June 18th Senator Hatch Wants to Destroy Your Computer Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah has never been known for his brainpower, but rather for his combativeness, inflexibility, and tenaciousness. Who needs brains if you're an ideologue? Well, now the Senator is on a new crusade, to develop a way to remotely destroy the computers of people who download music illegally on the Internet. Yes, it's true. None of the other Senators on the committee agree with him, so it's not anything that would come to pass, but the fact that a powerful Senator is wasting even one penny of taxpayer's money debating these kinds of scenarios is kind of scary in itself. One thing is certain; big business has the Republicans in their pockets, and in many ways now controls our government through the use of large donations to political groups... which brings us to our next story.... WestarGate, and Why It's Not a Scandal. Ever heard of Watergate? How about Whitewater? OK, now how about Westar? Draw a blank on that one? Me too until yesterday when I finally heard an NPR story on it, wherein the reporter was not talking so much about the scandal itself, but about the extreme "wimp factor" among the Democrats for not even bringing the subject up. If you thought that "Whitewater", a $30,000 land deal gone sour was worth talking about on the news for 7 years, you'll have to ask yourself, why isn't "Westar Energy" a scandal for the Republicans? Background: It all started last Summer, when documents turned up during an investigation at "Westar Energy" that directly implicated top Republicans in drafting legislation that would exempt Westar from certain Federal regulations as a quid pro quo for campaign donations. You can read about that here. Here is a quote: "The documents state that executives of Westar Energy wanted to use the tens of thousands of dollars in donations they made to Republicans to get "a seat at the table" of a House-Senate conference committee on the Bush administration's energy plan." The article continues: "Barton was one of the lawmakers assigned to the conference committee that finalized Bush's energy plan in 2002, and he introduced the exemption that would have freed Westar from unwanted regulatory oversight. The exemption was a critical component of Topeka, Kan.-based Westar's plan to split its regulated utility from the rest of its businesses. Kansas regulators had already barred the company from splitting in two, and Westar then tried to make its case at the federal level through Congress. Creating two publicly traded companies would free Westar's non-utility businesses from regulatory oversight and possibly allow the company to transfer more than $3 billion in debt to the utility. The utility then could try to pass those costs to its customers through rate hikes." CNN carried a similar story recently, here. So why isn't this a scandal? Because Democrats must file a formal complaint, and they are too spineless to do so. Until now... maybe. John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, is now asking for a formal investigation. The story is finally starting to take off after a year of languishing. One thing is very clear, this story is the tip of the iceberg, and there was much more hanky panky going on in Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force than just this Westar case. But all those meetings were secret, and we'll never know how many quid pro quos actually changed hands. SCO Targets Linus Torvalds SCO, in its desperate attempt to thwart Linux on Microsoft's behalf, is now attacking the inventor of Linux, and is accusing him of purposefully ignoring intellectual property rights during the creation of the open source operating system. You can read about the madness here. (Thanks Tom!) June 17th SCO Pulls IBM's License... IBM Yawns Late Monday, SCO announced that they were revoking IBM's license to use, develop and distribute AIX, IBM's version of Unix. IBM responded that their license was perpetual, irrevocable and fully paid. Sounds like the decades biggest IT industry legal action is shaping up. To make things more interesting, SCO has increased their damage claim against IBM to $3 billion. The most unusual thing about this case is that neither company seems to know precisely what the agreement they came to entails. Both have diametrically opposed views of what the contract states, which seems a little odd considering how much both companies must pay their army of lawyers. What the heck good are lawyers anyway if they don't know what the contracts they write mean? The one thing that almost everyone agrees on is the behind-the-scenes role that Microsoft is playing. Most analysts consider this a stealth attack on Linux, with Bill Gates pulling the strings. Most also agree that Bill has bitten off a much bigger bite this time than any of his previous crusades against competitors. I am virtually certain that Microsoft will fail in curtailing the adoption of Linux, and may leave a sour taste in the mouths of more Windows users. It wouldn't surprise me if this turned around to bite Bill in the ass, and end up destroying SCO in the process. Another casualty of Bill's War. June 16th SCO's Deafening Silence SCO gave IBM until midnight last Friday to settle the 1.5 billion dollar law suit surrounding the Linux operating system... or ELSE! That deadline has long since past, and rumors are that SCO's execs are franticly going over their options. Maybe that's something they should have hammered out on Thursday. Taking a quick look at just the headlines that come up on a Google news search, sorted by date, gives an intriguing picture of the situation as it stands now: IBM defies SCO's Unix deadline SCO may expand Linux case soon Q&A: SCO chief on why his company is suing over Linux SCO shares slump after IBM lawsuit deadline passes The World Wonders. The World Waits. Perhaps that is what SCO wants, but it reminds me of the Cuban missile crisis, with SCO representing Cuba. And now Linux developers are threatening to sue SCO over their additions to Linux, which do not adhere to the "General Public License" on which Linux is based. This is all getting a tad bizarre, as SCO is now threatening to expand its law suit to include other companies, and perhaps even Linux distributors, before they even make good on their IBM threats. We're all still waiting SCO! Can a Reliable Operating System be Made? Bill Gates would say no. But that's because his idea of an operating system includes everything plus the kitchen sink, as a way of squashing potentially competing products. The more crap you cram into any operating system, especially when it's cobbled together as an afterthought, the less reliable it is going to be. Some day we'll all look back at the various versions of Windows from the late 1990's and early 2000's as an extinct beast, and one we can hardly believe we ever relied on. But what about that reliable operating system we all dream about? I'm not sure we can count on Bill to do the right thing, but that, as surprising as it may sound, doesn't mean we are out of luck. Of course there is Linux, which is more reliable, and growing daily (despite Microsoft's and SCO's recent attempts). But is there anything else? Actually, there are several other options. BeOS may or may not continue on, after the Department of Defense pulled their support for it's continued development. But there is also QNX's "Neutrino" operating system for mission critical applications. It is very small, and virtually 100% reliable. It also runs on most CPU platforms, from x86 to MIPS to PowerPC. The latest version also has a graphical user interface. If you are interested in playing around with Neutrino, you can download a free evaluation copy here. For more information, check here. June 12th SCO Gives IBM a Friday Deadline SCO announced that they would give IBM until Friday to settle the 1.5 billion dollar law suit over Unix, or have their Unix license revoked. SCO alleges that IBM incorporated portions of Unix code into their version of Linux, and that this violates IBM's license agreement. SCO's President was quoted as saying "If we don't have a resolution by midnight on Friday the 13th, the AIX world will be a different place... We've basically mapped out what we will do. People will be running AIX without a valid license." (AIX is IBM's version of Unix for x86-type processors). IBM countered; "IBM believes that our contract with regard to AIX is irrevocable and perpetual and there is nothing further to discuss." Sounds like a big court battle brewing here. It would probably be a slam-dunk for IBM except that SCO has a secret admirer known as Microsoft. Bill Gates hates Linux, and this is the best chance he's come across so far to hurt some of the only competition to his Windows operating system. Microsoft is the only company that has paid SCO for a Unix license during this current attack on Linux (to help fuel the war chest) and it's no surprise that the first target is IBM, one of the biggest companies to back Linux to date. Bill Gates gets to sit back and watch all the fun, without getting his hands dirty. Hell, Bill never gets his hands dirty, he pays other people to do that. I will be shocked if IBM caves. If they don't give in, what will SCO's next move be? A court injunction against IBM? June 11th The Worm Turns on SCO Bob Cringely's suggestion last week that the "Unix code" found in Linux may have been put there by SCO itself, rather than by other programmers as SCO has alleged, may in fact be true. SCO is suing IBM for the supposed infraction, and is intimating that it may go after Linux distributors as well. But if it can be shown that the code in question was put there by SCO, who then tried to sue IBM for the infraction, then SCO's goose is cooked. According to a source close to SCO, "parts of the Linux kernel code were copied into the Unix System V source tree by former or current SCO employees... [they] basically re-implemented the Linux kernel with functions available in the Unix kernel to build what is now known as the Linux Kernel Personality (LKP) in SCO Unix." This story has gotten quite complicated, and may get even more so as further information comes out. We might have to wait until any of this makes it to court to get all the details. Until then, it will be a case of accusation and counter-accusation, without much factual information being offered. But things aren't looking too rosy for SCO at present. June 10th NVidia Ready for Athlon-64 Debut This Fall NVidia is working hard at making new and improved chipsets for the upcoming Athlon-64 processor, due out this Fall. There will be NForce3 chipsets, and the new Crush K8 chipsets. The Crush chipset will be a single chip design for Athlon-64 and Opteron CPUs. It will support AGP 8X, USB 2, ATA-133, NVidia S-ATA Raid, NVidia Gigabyte Ethernet, PCI 2.3, AC 97 and hypertransport. Now if motherboard makers can just get the hardware onto store shelves in time for the Athlon-64 debut, things should be just peachy. June 7th Huge UT2003 Mod Contest! Epic Megagames, Atari and NVidia have announced a modding competition called "Make Something Unreal" with the top prize set at $50,000. Total prize awards are said to come to one million dollars. This has got to be the best opportunity I've seen in a long time for starving modders and modder-wanabees to get noticed, and actually generate some cash at the same time. Epic has all the information you could ever want on how to get started modding. They will be giving away prizes in various categories, so if you're interested, check out the web site... and git goin! Unreal Tournament 2003 comes with the full Unreal Editor, so if you own the game, you've already got the tools you need to get started. June 6th Did SCO Put the Unix in Linux? An article by Bob Cringely suggests that SCO is the guilty party that put portions of Unix code into Linux in their Unix-Linux unification program. SCO has been working on combining Unix with Linux in order to make their product line more popular. Now it looks like they are trying to point fingers at others, and sue them for the very coding that their own programmers did. This story can't get any stranger... can it? Mars Rovers Set to Launch NASA will be launching two spacecraft to Mars this month, one on June 8th (Sunday), and one on June 28th. The craft will be carrying new Mars rovers which will act as remote geological survey labs. You can read up about all the details, and even watch the launches on the web at this site here. ATI Will Continue Making Cards ATI has announced officially that they will continue to make video cards 'in-house'. Company officials said they were changing their distribution channel structure somewhat, but that they were not going to farm out all board production. This means that both ATI built boards, and third party assembled Radeon cards will continue to be available. Now if ATI can just boost production to meet demand, everything will be peachy. With NVidia still effectively out of the 3D video card business, ATI has it's work cut out for it to provide enough chips to satisfy 3rd party board makers. June 5th ATI to Stop Making It's Graphics Cards? In the graphics card business, there are two models for getting the finished product to market. In one model, you just make the chips and write the drivers, but you don't assemble the cards themselves (think NVidia). In the other model, the company makes the chips and assembles the finished boards (think ATI). When 3dfx changed models in mid-stride, from a chip vender to a board maker, the company quickly tanked. Now, ATI is thinking of making the opposite transition, from a video board maker to a chip vender. This move would put NVidia and ATI in a much similar situation, where they need to work out deals with video card makers to get their chips to market. But with NVidia being AWOL for the last few months, ATI is the only real game in town for video card makers. Companies like Asus have been starved for a supply of high-end graphics chips since the death of the original GeForce FX, so this will be good news for them. But! ATI has been unable to manufacture enough chips to meet market demand in recent months, and this move, if true, will make that shortage even worse. So, say goodbye to "built by ATI", and say hello to "powered by ATI". GeForce FX: "Ultrashadow" Advantage? Dave at Hot Hardware has a post of an interview with Brian Burke of NVidia discussing how their new "ultrashadow" technology will give GeForce FX cards an advantage over the Radeon 9800 in Doom III and derivative games. Major Internet Explorer Patch Microsoft has released another security patch, which they say covers another serious flaw discovered in their internet browser software. You can get the patch here. What a surprise. June 3rd NVidia and FutureMark Disappoint Everyone FutureMark, the makers of the "3D Mark 2003" 3D video benchmark, has released a press statement "clarifying" it's position on the "cheats" in NVidia's latest GeForce FX video drivers. They now call them "application specific optimizations". The general reaction on the web is that NVidia bullied FutureMark into retracting their cheating claim. While I'm not sure that NVidia has that much clout, I do expect that a bit of the carrot and stick might have been involved. In this regard, I expect NVidia to (quietly) become a member in good standing in FutureMark's very expensive "beta program". There is actually very good news here, despite all the invectives flying on the web. Regardless of whether NVidia cheated, or optimized, or whatever, they were caught, and they know everything they do will be under the microscope from now on. FutureMark knows that this whole debacle isn't good for them either, so they will probably work more closely with NVidia in the future to make sure that everybody plays by the same rules. In my opinion, the end result will be more scrutiny of benchmarks and how they measure performance, which is good for everyone involved. It is very interesting to note that similar "application specific optimizations" were found with the drivers for Trident XP4 graphics chips. Their "optimizations" almost doubled performance in 3D Mark 2001se. Apparently, every company who's products have been examined to date have some 3D Mark-specific optimizations. June 2nd IBM Owns Every PC, and You Will All Pay! A story at the Inquirer has me wondering if some kind of mass IP insanity has set into the IT industry. It really started full-throttle with Rambus, who said they owned patents to all forms of PC memory, years after the memory was on shelves for sale. More recently, we've seen SCO whining that they own parts of the kernel of Linux, many years after Linux began circulating around the world. Both Rambus and SCO are banking on squeezing royalty payments out of as many suckers as possible. Well... now we hear that IBM has been going after large and medium PC makers, saying that there are "IBM patented inventions" in every PC, and IBM wants back royalties for all those PCs sold over the years since 1985. What's going on? If IBM felt that PCs sold by other companies were infringing on patents, why didn't they start saying so in 1987 when Compaq and others started making PCs? This seems like a lawyer-driven initiative, and the result will probably be a loss of corporate prestige for IBM as they ruffle everyone's feathers. If the story persists on IT news sites and in forums and message boards, IBM will certainly make many businesses and consumers angry, which never helps the bottom line. I will be interested to see if other news sources pick up this story or not. Copyright 2003, KickAss Gear |