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Archived News - February
2001
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Please... It was totally wuss. But it did wake me up.
CNN says a preliminary magnitude of 7.0, but I'm skeptical...
Although I live 100+ miles from the "epicenter" it really was
a weenie quake. CNN is reporting that three people were injured. And I
know very few buildings even sustained superficial damage. In a state
of 4 million, I would say that's not too bad.
I just went back to sleep.
The first update to the content of this site in literally, years.
It all began with an email from Patrick C.
He had followed the greenfolder tweak on his Windows 2000 box and broke
it.
So out of guilt, I went through and redid it to bring it up to speed.
That bastard made me do work on my birthday: I'm to too happy about that.
But I am pretty high, so I guess it's "all good." 
That smiley guy just isn't big enough sometimes, you know?
Anyway, if you want to fuX0r your box up with crazy green icons, go take
a pull.
It's my birthday today so STFU!
SharkyExtreme has a great interview
with Drew Prarie, spokesperson for AMD. There's
a lot of information about the future of cpu's, including a little tidbit
about SMP (see below) support for Athlon processors (by way of the AMD
760MP chipset) in Q2 of this year.
Does anyone else find this ironic that SharkyExtreme, Mr. Anti-AMD, would
do an interview with AMD? It's the last place I'd look... Oh well, people
can change I guess...
If you didn't know, SMT is Simultaneous Multi Threading. It's a term
used to describe a processor (CPU) that can execute multiple threads within
the CPU while giving the operating system the impression that it is simply
a (faster) normal CPU. The basic explanation is that the cpu chip basically
has 2 cpu's inside. Of course it's much more complicated than that, but
you get the general idea...
So what? Intel has been working on SMT
(secretly... those bastards!) for their upcoming revision of the
Willamette (aka Pentirum 4) codenamed Foster. The SMT technology
goes under the codename Jackson.
Foster is scheduled to be released this summer (?) so I'm sure we'll be
hearing more about this as the time approaches.
You can compare this with SMP (Simultaneous Multi Processing) which is
hooking up many cpu's within the same machine. The operating system has
to handle the interaction beteen the cpu's in SMP.
The Register story is a good read, go
check it out!
There hasn't been anything news-wise going on lately...
NVidia is about to release their NV20
(GeForce3) chip for graphics cards. This should be sweet, especially since
the expected price for one of these bad-boys is in the $550 neighborhood.
See this CNet
story for more information.
Digit-Life had an interesting
interview
with Reinhart Fabritz from AMD. There's no date on the interview,
so I don't know how old it is.
According to this
CNet story, the Recording Industry (RIAA),
confident that they will get Napster
shut down, has begun targeting alternative Napster-like services. These
services, such as OpenNap,
differ from Napster, in that they are not owner/run by a corporation which
can be sued, but are run by many individuals. In response, the RIAA is
going after ISPs (Internet Service Providers). ISPs are a common target
of people who want to sue or stop something, but it would be too costly
for them to go after actual "offenders".
Security update for MS Outlook and Outlook Express? Microsoft has a patch
for it:
Here's the
Register story
Here's
the  Microsoft
security advisory
Newly released internal RAMBUS documents
show how RAMBUS conspired to conceal the truth about patents they held
before JEDEC (solid state technology
association) decided on SDRAM manufacturing standards.
"(The documents) clearly show that Rambus’
business objective was to manipulate the JEDEC standards to claim patent
coverage,” states Hyundai’s motion to have the documents unsealed.
These guys are dicks, but I'll let you draw
your own conclusions...
 Related
links:
My previous post about RAMBUS in court.
If you think the RIAA (Recording Industry
Association of America) was pissed before, check
this out. From the Washington Post story:
"One possible response by Congress could be
the creation a special license, known as a compulsory license, that would
allow Web sites to sell music online without seeking the permission of
each individual record company, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) said yesterday.
Under a compulsory license, a Web site would have to make a royalty payment
to the music labels for each song or album sold. The fees would be set
by either Congress or the U.S. Copyright Office, which is a division of
the Library of Congress."
Apparently, some members of Congress don't think that the music industy
has come up with a suitable alternative for users who use services such
as Napster to download music online.
If you didn't know, the RIAA is embroiled in a heated legal battle with
Napster over its service allowing users to swap music.
Related
links:
 The
Register's take on this story
The worlds primary domain registrar Network
Solutions, now owned by Verisign,
has admitted to selling user information to marketing firms for profit.
CNet reports,
"If you're a business with a domain name, Network
Solutions is bundling the information you submitted when registering your
Web site and selling it to marketers." It's so kind of them
to ask permission and then to offer to pay users whose information they're
selling... oh no wait, they didn't do either of those things...
If you don't recall, a
while back Network Solutions pissed some people off by taking ownership
of domain names whose registrations had expired and then auctioning them
off for profit. The
official press release. Score!
This is a big one. If you're in the memory business, this is THE big
one. From the CNet article, "Rambus,
which designs high-speed memory chips, will square off this week against
chipmakers Micron Technology and Hyundai
in a German court case that will, along with the outcome of other pending
cases, send shockwaves through the entire memory market."
This article gives a good account of the recent history of the memory
industry.
Let the news mooching (aka "link whoring"?) continue!
 EBN
is reporting that Intel has accelerated
plans to introduce a DDR (SDRAM) compatible chipset for its Pentium
4 processor. The chipset, codenamed Brookdale was last slated
for a Q1 2002 release, but has since been updated to an October 2001 release.
Intel plans to coordinate the Brookdale chipset's release with thier new
(0.13 micron process) version of the Pentium 4 codenamed Northwood.
Intel still plans to introduce a RAMBUS
chipset for Pentium 4 (Tehama-E).
Related
links:
iXBT-news
report
on Intel accelerating plans for Brookdale release.
Register article
(link from Ace's)
on "Jackson" technology in upcoming Pentium 4 processor allowing
SMT (Simultaneous Multi-Threading)
My apologies for the lack of updates, but I got disconnected from my
internet service for 3 days. You see, when I can't browse the web for
news, it makes it hard for me to steal news links from other sites. It's
just that simple.
btw - if any of you would like a list of suggestions on how to spend your
time when you're on-hold waiting for the ATT @Home rep, let me know...
A few examples of what I did on the 23 hours I waited to get my service
back up and running are: taking a shower, watching tv, and sleeping.
A few other tips: own a hand-free headset (also good for adult "sex-chat"...
nevermind).
Sign up for a dial-up connection and dig that old 33k modem out of the
attic - hotmail is better than no mail.
Related
links:
ATT @Home support
A great place to go for help, especially when you can't connect to the
internet... huh?
3D Spotlight has put up an in-depth article on how to improve your system
startup times. Yeah, maybe they can tell me why it takes half-an-hour
for my win2k box to boot. A good reference, definitely go
check it out.
Related
links:
3DSpotlight's
other tweakin' guides - these guys to an awesome job.
This news is a little old (Feb 2), but still worthy.
Kinda like when your crack-house neighbors finally get busted by the police.
From the
EBN story, "The
Federal Trade Commission has launched a preliminary investigation
of Rambus Inc. for possible antitrust
violations stemming from the company's dealings with the JEDEC
standards deliberation body." The JEDEC is an industry consortium
that decides memory manufacturing standards. There probably won't be anything
that comes out of this, (your neighbors won't serve any time), but it's
still cool to get a glimpse of a shimmer of hope of justice  .
If you don't understand the industry's beef with RAMBUS, I'll sum it up
for ya':
1. RAMBUS joins JEDEC and helps form standards for the manufacturing of
DRDRAM and DDR SDRAM. At that time, they concealed the fact that they
own patents on much of the technology that will be needed to manufacture
both types of memory. This is against JEDEC by-laws.
2. Once memory standards are agreed upon, RAMBUS then reveals that anyone
manufacturing either of the new memory types, or chips which control memory
would have to pay RAMBUS licensing fees.
RAMBUS also (intentionally) charges significantly more for DDR SDRAM licenses
than for RAMBUS DRDRAM licenses. Many feel this is to "encourage"
manufacturers to go the DRDRAM route, or to "punish" those who
don't.
"Greed is good." right?
Related
links:
The Register
article on the above story
The Reg is reporting this
exploit in email programs: "The
Privacy Foundation has recently learned of an exploit that allows
the sender of an email message to see what has been written when the message
is forwarded with comments to other recipients. We have nicknamed this
problem "email wiretapping" because the exploit allows someone to surreptitiously
monitor written messages attached to forwarded messages."
Huh... that's wierd... Just another way to "enhance your experience"
I guess. I've never liked JavaScript and I never will.
Related
links:
Privacy
Foundation privacy advisory
with instructions on how to disable JavaScript (and other stuff) in your
email program
 Darth
at GotApex? has just done a review of
the Asus A7M266 motherboard. It's for
AMD Athlon and Duron processors and the main deal with this board is it
supports DDR SDRAM.
He got his 1.2GHz Athlon to 1404MHz (dirty bas...) which is pretty cool.
fyi: I guess "Apex" is the nickname of the main guy over there...
GotApex? I have no idea what that's supposed to mean...
Related
links:
Asus
A7M266 page
Update: The
Register is
reporting that Microsoft has confirmed
that Windows Whistler will be named Windows XP. Read the
article here.
My money was on "Windows.NET" but I guess that's why I'm not
in marketing.
I'm too lazy to read what this
is about, but I have the feeling I will be quoting Adam Sandler soon,
"Who were the marketing wizards that came up with THAT one?"
In other "news":
I added a My Hardware page if any of you are interested
in the hunk-of-junk I call my "box."
I've been making some progress on my game. If you like turn-based strategy,
or as our President would say, "strategery," games, you can
take a look here.
Oh yeah, I "lubed" up my keyboard and now I can type faster...
heh heh...
You see, about every 4 years I take my keyboards apart and wash them.
What I just noticed is that I had washed off the tiny bit of lubricant
on the bottom of the keys. So I took my keyboard apart again and used
some... uh... "handgun
lube" (don't ask)... uh yeah, that's it, and now it's as smooth
as silk!
Do you have sticky keys? I suggest you do the same.
I just caught this when I was over on Insane Hardware: LittleWhiteDog
has done their own guide on How-To make a (DOS) bootdisk. This is a great
article with lots of screen-shots to show you what you need to do. Definitely
worth a look.
I've added the link to the bootdisk page, so
you can get to it when you need to.
ps I really like LittleWhiteDog,
they run a quality site over there...
*On a personal note, I've been listening to "Thank
you" by Dido - It's like someone took the "Stan"
song by Eminem and surgically removed the crap. I'm probably not the
world's biggest Eminem fan. I'm listening to the DJ FX sublte tease remix
of Thank you... the original version is a bit short...
I was over on 3D Chipset this morning
when I saw a link to the PCStats
voting page. I was looking for 3D Chipset when lo-and-behold (huh?) I
see this:
I hate PCStats, and I would never ask anyone to vote for my site, but
67 of you went ahead and did it anyway. I love you guys!
You know what, from now on, whenever anyone talks sh*t about my fans,
I might actually stick up for you guys... nah!
And don't forget to take a look at 3D chipset
- they've got a lot of video card related news!
btw - I set up my own mailserver in the basement (shhh! don't tell @Home...).
Anyway, I'm offering a "SPAMMERS special": 1 Million outgoing
emails per month for only $19.95! You can put any from and return adress
you want!
I wonder if I can get ahold of a real spammers email by doing this...
let's see if anyone takes the bait...
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