May 27th

Will You Still Love Intel, When it's 64?

Perhaps not, if Microsoft is correct about how AMD and Intel 64-bit chips work inside the box. In an interview at the Windows Supersite, Microsoft's Senior Vice President Bob Muglia was asked about 64-bit computing, and he said that AMD's chip was better than Intel's chip. In general the interview was very boring, with Bob droning on about DSI (dynamic systems initiative), Trustworthy Computing (what joy), and dot-NET (yawn). If this is the best MS can do with billions of dollars in development costs, they have some serious issues they need to deal with.

There was disappointment in Bob's answers concerning Windows 2000 SP5, which will only have security fixes, but no improvements to the OS as is the case with XP SP2. So there you have it, MS is letting 2000 wither on the vine.

But later in the interview it gets better, and yet more cryptic.  Bob gets all smiley and quiet as he says things like: "...there are some things that AMD's done that Intel hasn't done, and I'm sure Intel will continue to invest here, and will do a really good job. AMD led the way on this one. There's no doubt they led the way on this one."

So what's the bottom line good news here? Microsoft's vice president says that the AMD 64-bit chips are showing amazing promise, and that they can do things that 32-bit chips just can't.  In addition, he says with Windows64, even 32-bit applications run faster on AMD's Opteron and Athlon64 than they do on comparable 32-bit machines.  Basically, he's psyched, and that means MS is working hard to get Windows64 to market ASAP.

                                            Dr. John

May 25th

Will Longhorn be Called Windows?

Perhaps not, if the legal case about the trademark status of the name "Windows" continues to go poorly for Microsoft.  The company that makes the Linux knock-off that runs some Windows programs, formally known as Lindows, won an Appeals Court decision letting the case go to a jury.  At stake is nothing less than Microsoft's ownership of the name "Windows". 

In case you hadn't noticed the weird trend in the computer industry of making up odd names for new products, let me just bring up a few examples: Athlon instead of Athalon, Itanium instead of Titanium, Xeon instead of Xenon.  You get the idea. It all started with Intel of course.  They were having extreme difficulty trademarking the names 286, 386, and 486 for their processors, so when they got to the 586, they dropped the number thing and made up a name they could trademark without question: Pentium.  It sounded stupid then, but it's a household word today.

So my question of the day is, if Microsoft loses the court case over the trademark-ability of "Windows", will Bill make up a new, funny-sounding name for Longhorn that can't be challenged in court?  Microsoft forced "Lindows" to change it's name to "Linspire", so the irony would be exquisite if Linspire forced Microsoft to change the name of Windows.  Personally, I like Winspire, don't you?

Hell, maybe they'll call it Longhorn, and have a cow on the front of the box. Moooooo!

                                            Dr. John

May 23rd

Battlefield Vietnam Patch!

EA Games has finally released the much needed first patch for Battlefield Vietnam.  And yes, the "sort by ping" thing is fixed in the server list.  Phew!  Other small things have been improved, but I still got kicked last night for what it reported was a long ping, despite my average ping at the server being about 40ms.  I also still take damage if I walk down stairs too fast, and there is still some lag when engaging enemies at close quarters.  But I was able to seriously damage helicopters with 2 full M16 clips at close range, which seems more realistic than semi-impervious helicopters. It's a pretty small patch, so it only takes a few minutes to download.

                                            Dr. John

May 21st

ATI Beats NVidia to Market

Despite the fact that NVidia announced it's new line of video cards before ATI, it turns out that ATI is getting it's X800 Pro to stores first.  They are very scarce now, and cost well over $400, but at least they are starting to trickle out.  NVidia's FX 6800 Ultra, on the other hand, still hasn't even been listed at large distributors yet.  Things could change fast once NVidia's partners get enough chips, but ATI certainly wins the first-to-market award this time around.  I should note that the number of X800 Pro cards on order at the large distributor Tech Data is a measly 20! That is about as constrained as a supply chain gets.  I'll be interested to see which company ramps production faster. Also, ATI is currently only releasing it's Pro model, whereas most performance enthusiasts are awaiting the Ultra model slated for a late June release.

Of course, the developing scandal about ATI's latest trilinear "optimizations" has put a bit of a damper on the new card release, but remember folks, this is the graphics card industry, where things can get hot enough to burn you.

                                            Dr. John

May 20th

Microsoft Funded Study Slams Torvalds/Linux

The conservative spin tank known as the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (oh brother) says that Linus Torvalds could not have invented Linux so quickly, so he must have stolen it.  Yep, that's the breadth and depth of their insightful analysis of the long history of Linux development.  They go so far as to say that Torvalds must have stolen code from the existing operating system Minix, which was the OS that Linux was first written on. That is like saying that because you used C++ to code a program, that you stole C++ code. 

Once it became known that the study was funded by Microsoft (who's SCO strategy was failing), any credibility the report might have had has evaporated.  But that hasn't stopped people who don't know what they are talking about from playing the story up, like Stephen Shankland at CNET.  And in case you're wondering what other kind of places Microsoft funds, how about the ultra-conservative American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute. Damn, you might as well just fund the RNC, Bush/Cheney, and the whole Republican party for crying out loud!

For a nice summary of the pitiful nature of the allegations, go here.

                                            Dr. John

May 19th

Massive CPU Showdown

Scott at the Tech Report has a very massive CPU comparison posted, including the new Opteron 250 processors at 2.4GHz.  Scott shows how they stack up to Intel's best, including dual Xeons and Pentium 4 Extreme Editions.  And guess who won? Here is a telling quote:

"If I were building (or, implausibly perhaps, buying) my ultimate workstation right now, I'd want a pair of Opteron 250s beating at the heart of it. The benchmarks speak volumes. For single-processor systems, the Opteron 150 looks like the fastest x86 CPU on the planet. In a multiprocessor configuration, the Opteron 250 scales up very well, even without the benefit of an optimal memory configuration, a NUMA-aware OS, or 64-bit extensions."

Sorry Intel, you just can't keep up with AMD anymore.  Oh how the mighty have fallen.

                                            Dr. John

May 17th

DX9 Games On the Way

Now that the E3 conference is over, it is pretty clear that Half Life 2 received the most attention. It looks as though the game might ship on September 1st, which is still a long Summer away. But Doom III may be closer, with an estimated ship date of June 1st! Both games will use DX 9 more fully than any other games, and will tax current hardware more than their predecessors as well. DX9 games will run on older hardware, but they won't be using pixel shaders with older video cards, so the games will look a lot like current games if you use a GeForce4 card, for example. 

In order to run these games with full visual detail, you'll need a DX9 compliant video card like a Radeon 9500 or higher, or a GeForce FX card. Rumors still abound that Half Life 2 is optimized for the Radeon, but not the GeForce FX. If you are wondering if your hardware will run Doom III and HL2 with high detail settings, you're not alone. The basic rule is that if your current system runs Far Cry with full detail, it can also handle upcoming games.

                                            Dr. John

May 15th

Buy No Gas Next Wednesday

Wednesday has been designated "stick it to them day" by a grass roots movement trying to send a message to the oil companies.  The letter circulating on the internet says that everyone  should avoid buying any gasoline or other petrol product on Wednesday, May 19th. The letter suggests that you forward it to everyone you know.  I doubt it will catch on, but just for the heck of it, I'll fill up on Monday.

                                             Dr. John

May 13th

Premier Pro 7 Windows Compatibility

I recently bought the Canopus ACEDVio video capture card, which comes bundled with Adobe Premier Pro version 7.  A nice little package that I was going to use on my new video editing computer to get my old High8 video tapes converted to edited DVDs.  But when I went to install Premier Pro on the new computer (AMD FX51/NForce3), the installer said that it could not install on an "older" operating system.  I was using Windows 2000 with service pack 4 installed.  I was a tad irritated, and figured it was some kind of mistake, until I read the system requirements.  It clearly states that Premier Pro version 7 will only install under Windows XP. 

For me it wasn't that I didn't have Windows XP, we always have a shrink-wrapped box or two of XP here, it was the principle of the thing.  I still prefer Windows 2000 SP4 over XP SP1 for numerous reasons, but now I was going to be forced to change my system to Windows XP.  The process of installing XP and all the software that I had already put on the system took the better part of a day. 

Now something seems amiss here. To my knowledge, there isn't any significant functional difference between 2000 SP4 and XP SP1, so there is no good reason why Premier Pro would require Windows XP. I have been looking into the situation, but can't find much info. I'm wondering if Microsoft offers companies kickbacks if they make their latest software require Windows XP. Anyone out there know why Premier Pro 7 only loads on Windows XP? I'd love to hear from you.

                                              Dr. John

May 11th

New ForceWare Drivers Ready

NVidia has finally released new ForceWare drivers for NForce chipset motherboards. All NForce chipsets (1, 2 and 3) are supported in unified driver files. New drivers are available for Windows XP/2000, and Me/98SE. You can grab them here. The version is now up to 4.24, and there is a fairly long list of updates that you can find at the update site.

                                              Dr. John

Battlefield Vietnam Patch Nears

EA and DICE have announced that the first, and much needed patch for Battlefield Vietnam is nearing completion, and should be released shortly.  The notorious ping-sort problem has been fixed, and the LAW kit now has the M14 rather than the M60. Based on the list of fixes, it looks like they got most of the really annoying problems. The announcement came at the end of April, so my guess is the patch will be out very soon.

May 10th

Intel's Prescott P4

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not happy with Intel of late.  Their decisions have not been driven by engineers, but by marketers. And while some folks suggest that Intel is hitting design limits and that the new 90 nm fabrication process did not scale as well as hoped, all those assessments fail to take into account poor design decisions. I'll say it again just for fun, Intel made excessively long instruction pipelines to allow high GHz operation, while compromising performance and driving heat dissipation up.  It's a poor design, not an inherent limitation on chip circuitry. 

Benchmarks have been out for awhile on Intel's first 90 nm chip, Prescott, and the opinions on the chip range from lackluster to awful. So Intel is shifting gears, and as I mentioned yesterday, will concentrate on dual-core CPUs.  It will be interesting to see who's dual-core design is more elegant, AMD's or Intel's. I should also take a swipe at AMD for the recent report that some of their server chips have had CPU fans die at extraordinary rates. AMD had better not blow their entry into the server market with crappy fans. Forget about saving pennies guys, and buy some decent fans for your CPUs!!

                                               Dr. John

May 9th

Intel in Shambles

Intel is so big, that even when everything goes wrong, and they blow every major endeavor they undertake, and their much smaller competition beats them to major technological advances, they still manage to persevere. They've got the bucks to burn on billion dollar abandoned projects... mainly thanks to all you folks blindly buying Intel chips willy nilly all over the place. Wanna Dell?

So history repeats itself with the abandonment of the Tejas processor project at Intel. Apparently, Intel is feeling the heat of it's poorly designed processors, literally, because current heat sinks and fans are monstrous. Intel now says (after AMD's announcements of course) that they too would be concentrating on dual-core CPUs which piggy back two CPUs into a single die.  Of course AMD said they had dual-core Opterons in the works many months ago, and the word is they are very far along on that project. 

So once again, AMD forces Intel to drop their plans for chips with few upgrades, and slightly less heat dissipation, in favor of a major upgrade to dual-core CPUs.  By the time this decade is over, almost all major advances in chip technology will have been driven by AMD R&D efforts, with Intel dragging their feet behind, and begrudgingly adding the same advances a year after AMD develops them. If it wasn't so pitiful, it would be funny.

                                               Dr. John

May 8th

Bill Gates Loves AMD-64

At this years Windows Hardware Engineering Conference Bill Gates didn't plug Longhorn, but rather exclaimed his new found love of AMD's 64-bit processors. It looks like Bill is finally getting serious about Windows-64, which will support AMD's 64-bit processors, as well as Intel's imitation 64-bit chips. This is very good news for Athlon-64 or Opteron owners, and should also boost Microsoft's bottom line next year. As I've said many times, Bill isn't going to make any money on LongHorn for a LongTime, so he might as well churn out a 64-bit Windows to tide himself over.

                                               Dr. John

May 6th

PC Obsolescence Looms

The story out in the last few days is that the Athlon XP will never have "PCI-Express" support for upcoming graphics cards.  That basically means that the Athlon-64 is the way of the future, and that by next year the older model will be gone, or relegated to a Duron-like existence at the low end. Of course, everyone is waiting to see what PCI Express does for increasing video bandwidth, and what the new PCI-Express motherboards will be like. Other upcoming hardware improvements will also likely make current hardware obsolete, including dual-layer DVD burners with twice the capacity, and BTX power supplies and motherboards, with different power levels than current ATX style ones.

By this time next year, computers will be looking quite different than they are now, and by then, Windows 64 will be out to compliment the Athlon-64 (or the P-4 64-bit imitation chip, if you prefer).

                                               Dr. John

May 5th

Web-Board Message Board Gone

Our aging message board computer has died a long overdue death. You'll have to re-register to get back on. Doh! You can find the new message board here. It should be up and running later today.

May 4th

EA to Make 'Desert Combat' Killer

Electronic Arts (EA) and Digital Illusions have announced a new game, tentatively called Battlefield-2, which will battle for the game niche now occupied by the "Desert Combat" mod of the original Battlefield 1942.  The Desert Combat mod replaced the WWII era weapons of BF 1942 with modern, up-to-date weapons, and recast the game in the Middle East to depict modern wars such as Desert Storm. This made the mod as popular online as the original game.

Perhaps EA took note of Desert Combat's popularity, and decided to take it on with Battlefield-2, which will pit the US against China and a Mid-East Coalition. The game will be based on a new and greatly improved game engine. Materials will have "penetration" values for different weapons, so that you can't hide from an RPG inside a tent! There will be a new physics engine for vehicles, and the weapons will be be state-of-the-art. 

The engine is said to be able to handle up to 100 players at a time, and will adjust map size based on the number of current players. The game will also have commander and grunt modes, so that some players will direct teammates from a command post, rather than engaging the enemy directly. 

You can read more about the upcoming game here.

                                               Dr. John

May 2nd

Unofficial Windows 98SE Service Pack; Dangerous?

An enthusiast has released Service Pack 1.5 for Windows 98SE, which is supposed to include 70 hot fixes and a solution to the 512MB memory limit, among other things.  You can download the unofficial update here. It's free, which is very nice.

But beware, it destroyed a perfectly functional Windows 98SE system here, which is now locked in an endless registry-failure reboot cycle.  You get what you pay for! 

                                                 Dr. John

Diebold is "Reprehensible": Official Says

California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has decertified 1/3 of the electronic voting systems in California, made by the now infamous company, Diebold. Shelley was quoted as saying: 

"They broke the law, their conduct was absolutely reprehensible. We will not tolerate deceitful tactics engaged in by Diebold and we must send a clear and compelling message to the rest of the industry: Don't try to pull a fast one on the voters of California because there will be consequences."

Diebold lied repeatedly to California voting officials about the security of their e-voting machines, and about the status of Federal approval.  

Last year in a Republican fund-raising letter, the head of Diebold was quoted as saying that Diebold was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." 

Fascinating.

                                                 Dr. John

May 1st

321 Studios Stands Up for Your Fair Use Rights 

The small software company 321 Studios has gone to bat for American consumers by lobbying Congress to protect your fair use rights against music and movie studios, and game developers that want to sue you for making backup copies of your disks. Indeed, they got a hearing scheduled for May 12th at 10am.  Now they are asking you to chip in and help by writing your Senators and Congressperson, asking them to support vigorous fair use laws. If you happen to be in the Washington DC area (like us!), you can even go to the Rayburn Building, Room 2123 at 10am on May 12th, and give them a piece of your mind.

Senators

Congresspersons

                                                 Dr. John