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- AMD to remove deceptive Barcelona benchmarks on website - 2007-07-05 18:29:23-04
A day after I blasted AMD for posting deceptive on Barcelona, AMD is promising to release "honest Barcelona benchmarks". As of Thursday afternoon 7/5/2007 the misleading Barcelona numbers are still posted on AMD's website but AMD is promising to release updated numbers in the coming weeks with Barcelona 2.0 GHz scores (slated for September 2007 release) instead of "simulated Barcelona 2.6 GHz scores". AMD argued that the charts were created by AMD much earlier in the year, but that's really a terrible excuse since they're now heavily promoting the misleading information. The charts might have been made earlier in the year but they were "CONFIDENTIAL" and only shown to a few people but Kristopher Kubicki of DailyTech has brought it... 
- Facebook growing up and out with teens and grads - 2007-07-05 19:17:12-04
It's not any surprise, but comScore has some new numbers reflecting the changing demographic of the Facebook community. People of means, the grown-ups, are flocking to Facebook, as well as teenagers escaping MySpace orbit. As Facebook migrates beyond its core college demographic it will need some customization for each of its major demographic segments to some degree. What's appealing to teenagers isn't the same as what will keep the 35+ segment happy, which is now the biggest unique monthly user segment. On the other hand, having an applications platform solves many of the problems of creating more unique experiences for each demographic. Even so, the core social networking platform, dealing with friends, networks and profiles, should continue to evolve and... 
- As promised...installing SUSE image gallery - 2007-07-06 01:48:33-04
Better late than never, I guess. Here's an image gallery from my SUSE install. I've been pounding the heck out of my laptop the last few days working on scheduling and wrapping up classes and I have to say that my initial impressions have certainly been borne out - Speedy, reliable, stable. I really like the resizable application button, easy multimedia (just install VLC from the repository and all is well, no Automatix to be found), and snappy application response. One niggle: Google Docs crawls in Firefox. I mean really crawls. Switching to SeaMonkey made the problem go away. Pretty wacky. One request before you get started: If this is your first time installing Linux, do it on a machine... 
- Bias is a wonderful thing - 2007-07-06 03:15:55-04
When Theo de Raadt went public last week with comments about bugs in the Intel Core Duo I believed everything he said - and for two reasons: (1) he's the key developer for OpenBSD - the most security aware small systems Unix available - and therefore highly credible on x86 hardware and related security issues; and, (2) everything I know about how the core duo and its successors got resurrected from the discard pile to meet the AMD performance challenge predisposes me to believe first that errors could have been made and, more importantly, that Intel's executive would have had a high tolerance for shortcuts like those affecting the no execute bit. Many slashdotters, a site which attracts lots of... 
- Xbox 360 unreliability costs Microsoft $1 billion - 2007-07-06 03:19:08-04
Microsoft's Xbox 360 games console just took a huge step away from profitability yesterday when the company announced that it will take a $1 billion charge to cover manufacturing defects and the additional burden of giving consumers an extended warranty. Will the Xbox ever turn a profit? Microsoft's quite used to fixing problems retrospectively, but it seems that hardware repairs are a lot more expensive than pushing out software updates for buggy software. In particular, the "three flashing lights error message of death" has caused gamers a significant amount of headache, with some having to return their consoles to Microsoft for repair several times. Microsoft now claims to have identified "a number of factors" which contribute to the consoles unreliability, although it... 
- LiveStation: A Joost killer in Silverlight clothing - 2007-07-06 03:51:33-04
Microsoft is unveiling LiveStation which is an application that will enable live television on the desktop. The project uses Silverlight technology and has been touted as Microsoft's attempt at a "Joost killer". I think this is fairly old (the earliest reference I can find is 44 days ago on P2P File sharing)but I just caught it today and there seems to be a swarm of news around it including Mashable, Steve Clayton, D'Technology Weblog, and Ars Technica. As other people have noted, the big news with LiveStation is that it's using Silverlight and could very easily become Silverlight's killer app. The project is a combined effort by Microsoft Research and Skinkers, a communication platform company. The final version is due... 
- Day 6 of the old coffee-in-the-keyboard trick - 2007-07-06 06:00:12-04
Here we are in the the sixth day of my coffee-in-the-keyboard adventure. Here's a quick review of the situation: My post describing day 1 presented how I stupidly allowed coffee to slosh into my new laptop and did my best to engage Dell Computer's service department in the hopes of getting Dell to honor it's "on-site, next business day" service contract. My post describing day 2 presented my experiences working with Dell's service department to determine what was going to be done and when. My post on day 3 presented my experiences with a really great tech, Steven Buczak of Qualxserv. Steve came to my office and did the usual things an excellent service tech does: He produced the required... 
- News to know: AMD pulls benchmarks; Windows patches; Xbox's $1 billion glitch - 2007-07-06 06:19:13-04
Notable headlines: George Ou: AMD to remove deceptive Barcelona benchmarks on website. David Berlind: In search of...a benchmarking fix. Ryan Naraine: On deck: Critical Microsoft Office, Excel, Windows patches. News.com: Sprint breaks up with high-maintenance customers. See image right: Sprint's Dear John customer letter (click to enlarge). Microsoft sings 'O Canada' amid immigration challenges. Larry Dignan: Microsoft's Xbox hardware failures prove costly. News.com: Mozilla releases Firefox 3 Alpha 6. Robin Harris: Disk drive life depends on...luck. Laser innovation speeds up hard disks. U.K. jails trio who incited terrorism over Web. Ryan Stewart: LiveStation: A Joost killer in Silverlight clothing. Christopher Dawson: As promised…installing SUSE image gallery. Gallery (right): Installing SUSE 10.2. TechCrunch: Sphere Quietly Nailing Its Business Model. Computerworld: VMware... 
- Microsoft: We're not a party to GPLv3 - 2007-07-06 07:22:54-04
Microsoft says it's not a party to the third version of the General Public License and assumes it's not under any legal obligations under the license. The statement, made on Thursday, is the first remarks on the GPLv3, which was released in its final form June 29. Here's what Microsoft says: While there have been some claims that Microsoft's distribution of certificates for Novell support services, under our interoperability collaboration with Novell, constitutes acceptance of the GPLv3 license, we do not believe that such claims have a valid legal basis under contract, intellectual property, or any other law. In fact, we do not believe that Microsoft needs a license under GPL to carry out any aspect of its collaboration... 
- Facebook visitors up 89% - 2007-07-06 07:35:04-04
We probably didn't need comScore's latest findings to tell us that Facebook has seen massive growth since it first opened up the site beyond registered college students, but it does help to have the data to prove it. According to a comScore's data, recording activity on the social networking site from May 06 to 07, unique visitors in the US grew by 89% to a total of 26.6 million per month. Raw page views grew to 15.8 billion, up 143 percent versus May 2006. Visitors averaged 186 minutes at the site in May 2007, which marked a 35-percent increase versus the same month last year. So who are these new visitors? They're primarily not 18-24 year olds, who inevitably made... 
- AMD drags feet on taking down bogus benchmarks - 2007-07-06 08:08:27-04
There's been a lot of controversy and debate when I exposed AMD for posting deceptive benchmarks on Barcelona and it lead to an announcement from AMD that they would take down the deceptive benchmarks and post honest scores. There's just one problem; AMD intends to take their time taking down the grossly misleading scores. In fact we may not see anything change for a few weeks until newer "honest scores" are posted. After a lengthy back and forth email discussion with AMD yesterday where I tried to reason with AMD that it would be best to remove the deceptive scores immediately, I've been informed that they "will ultimately be down" and that AMD will be sure to alert me when they are... 
- Nokia adds Skype and Adobe Flash support to the N800 Internet Tablet - 2007-07-06 08:10:36-04
My Mobile Tech Roundup podcast co-host Kevin Tofel had a chance to see and play with the N800 and Skype while at the Digital Experience event a couple of weeks ago. James just posted that Nokia was quick to deliver on the promise of Skype for the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet with the newly available firmware. You can download and install the firmware now and you will find that Skype is included. There is currently no video camera support, but that may come in a future update. Credit: jkOnTheRun.com As you can read at Maemo.org other improvements include Adobe Flash 9 browser plug-in (take that Apple iPhone), support for Secure Digital cards up to 8 GB in capacity (now I... 
- The Vista driver outlook gets a little brighter - 2007-07-06 09:11:50-04
I've been watching for the past six months as PC hardware makers deliver updated drivers to make their products work with Windows Vista. Lately, the trickle has turned into a steady stream: Creative has released 32–bit and 64–bit Vista drivers for virtually all of its current product line. (And despite what you may have read, they're not charging customers for those drivers.) I've tried the Audigy SE drivers here, and they deliver full 5.1 surround sound. Nvidia and ATI delivered video driver updates in June. Gamers and home theater fanatics are still grumbling (the lack of overscan capability in Nvidia's drivers is especially annoying), but the updates do represent significant progress. Realtek just last week posted driver updates (32-bit and 64-bit) for their... 
- Medsphere begin again - 2007-07-06 09:23:37-04
Two years after throwing over its founders and making a public domain code base proprietary, Medsphere is seeking a new CEO and a new start with the open source movement. "The community edition licenses are on the Web site – we have a version under Mozilla and then we have a GPL on the OpenVista server, and the appliance is out there," said senior vice president Frank Pecaitis (above). It was the release of OpenVista on SourceForge by company co-founders Scott and Steve Shreeve in late 2005 that precipitated a crisis of firings and lawsuits. CEO Ken Kizer's decision to resign this year, for unrelated reasons, may be the start of some healing. We can hope so, because VistA, the public... 
- FCC fights the open source concept - 2007-07-06 09:44:42-04
With today's release of new rules for Software Defined Radios, it should be clear that the FCC under chairman Kevin Martin (right) is dedicated to proprietary models, and a determined foe of open source. The final FCC language shows disdain for the open source concept, fearing that anything which can be seen can be hacked, while code which is secreted can be secured. The SDR Forum and the Software Freedom Law Center are being polite about it, but every decision engineered by Martin has favored narrow, proprietary interests over open source and the public interest. It's time someone said so. The Bush Administration preference for monopoly and central control goes across the policy board, of course. But the elites who... 
- Are Microsoft's patent lawyers really this dumb? - 2007-07-06 09:47:57-04
Are Microsoft's patent lawyers playing possum? Or are they really as clueless about what makes open-source software tick as they seem? Consider the latest patent-related statement Microsoft published to its Web site on July 5 a statement claiming it is not party to the GPLv3 and is not bound by it. "While there have been some claims that Microsoft's distribution of certificates for Novell support services, under our interoperability collaboration with Novell, constitutes acceptance of the GPLv3 license, we do not believe that such claims have a valid legal basis under contract, intellectual property, or any other law. In fact, we do not believe that Microsoft needs a license under GPL to carry out any aspect of its collaboration with... 
- Under the hood: FCC site shows pix of iPhone with back cover off - 2007-07-06 09:59:39-04
Since the period of confidentiality Apple has requested of the FCC for displaying images of the iPhone has now expired, this means that the FCC site can show all sorts of iPhone photos taken during the testing and documentation process for the device. Some of these photos are available within a PDF file posted on the FCC site here. But why go to the PDF when I've picked out the most interesting shots? Not only will I show you the Radio Board Shield and the WiF and GSM Radio I/O (above), but gettaloada these: That's the Applications Processor Board (sounds like a university admissions body), and the SIM Connector. That's the back covers removed, and the naked iPhone. And... 
- Microsoft ups ante on GPLv3 in apparent challenge to license's reach - 2007-07-06 10:11:38-04
Any attempt to tag Microsoft as being "it" on its support coupons for Novell SUSE Linux, and therefore now fall under the terms of the new open source license, will apparently be fought ... or at least sidestepped. Despite assertions that the new GPLv3 released June 29 closes loopholes with GPLv2, and therefore binds Microsoft as a Linux distributor of some kind, appears headed to legal -- not to mention PR -- brinkmanship. Microsoft said Thursday that it is not affected by the new license, even if it's partner Novell and the users of SUSE Linux are. Can't touch me with that GPL license business, they seem to be saying. "In fact, we do not believe that Microsoft needs a... 
- iPhone Diary Day 8: A hacker's handbook (updated) - 2007-07-06 10:25:16-04
Besides gadget freaks, the other big group clamoring for the iPhone has been hackers. Since the Apple TV was hacked so easily it has given hackers an extra incentive to take a shot at opening iPhone's closed fortress. Here's a quick rundown of the hacks currently underway for iPhone: iPhone firmware posted If you're really interested in hacking the iPhone the best place to start is to download the iPhone restore image. The ipsw file is actually a zip file, just rename it .zip and unarchive. You will get two disk images, a system software dmg and a user dmg. The system software dmg is password protected Pay as you go plan Crafty activators have already discovered how you can... 
- E-mail SMS to iPhone - 2007-07-06 10:29:15-04
The Unofficial Apple Weblog has posted 6 Things You Need to Know about iPhone SMS. Handy info to know in general but the tip that jumped out as a good workaround for getting information onto the phone instantly is that you can email a text message directly to the phone. You're limited to 160 characters (Twitter users should feel right at home) but for a quick phone number, address, or directions it might come in handy. Send your text message to phonenumber@cingularme.com (e.g. 7035551212@cingularme.com, just use the numbers, no hyphens, etc). Keep your message brief. Both the subject line and the message arrive on the iPhone. I know I've been a tad iPhone obsessed. Regular non-iPhone blogging will resume shortly.... 
