P4 Meltdown A False Alarm?

John Oram sent me a link to a bit Charlie wrote at Mike's inquirer showing an LGA Pentium 4 that had welded itself to the motherboard contacts.  Charlie suggested that the catastrophe was due to a thermal throttling failure.

 

However, I think this P4 disaster doesn't have anything to do with thermal monitoring. The burn patterns do not originate from the die, but from the contacts.  If the die produced the heat necessary to melt the metals in the pads/contacts as shown in the photo, then all the inner contacts would have been destroyed first and the package would almost certainly be scorched from the inside out.  Also, the package itself has residue primarily along its edges and none under the the die itself.

That wrecked CPU was almost certainly destroyed by water leaking into the LGA socket and shorting out contacts and triggering electrolysis. Considering that the water cooler failed prior to the problem, this explanation makes the most sense.

The Mysterious, Disappearing C7-M Article is Back!

Albeit with a few edits.  It seems that "controversy" is my middle name!

Van Pens VIA C7-M Article

An article that I wrote about the VIA C7-M processor has been published today at VIA Arena.  VIA's itty-bitty, 90nm IBM SOI x86 CPU holds a lot of promise for notebooks, Microsoft Origami, handheld PCs, thin clients, blade servers, network attached storage and other applications where low heat and ultra low power draw are important.

Milosevic Found Dead in United Nations Prison Cell

The odds are favorable that the former Serbian president was assassinated.  His lawyer claims that Mr. Milosevic's death might be due to poisoning.  However, the UN is refusing to permit a medical team selected by Mr. Tomanovic, Mr. Milosevic's lawyer, to examine the body.  Despite the pointed conflict of interest, the UN is only allowing its own team to perform an autopsy on Mr. Milosevic.  While government minions across the world chant the mantra, "nothing to hide, nothing to fear," as they roll out a global surveillance state, the UN leadership demonstrates it has no intention of applying such notions on itself.

 

So was Slobodan Milosevic guilty for crimes against humanity?  When a man is constantly attacked in the mainstream media, as this posthumous article further demonstrates (while trying to make death by natural causes seem plausible), the truth is probably far from what we have been told. 

 

With his death, the UN International Criminal Tribunal charged with determining his guilt will prematurely disband near the end of lengthy proceedings that have dragged on for over four years.  Despite UN prosecutor's claims to the contrary, some court reports indicate that Mr. Milosevic often humiliated his UN adversaries.  Mr. Milosevic had subpoenaed President Clinton to appear as a witness, which, if successful, would have forced the former U.S. President to testify at the Tribunal before the defense rested its case this coming summer.

Buy Our House! SOLD!

We have made an offer on a house and can now be more aggressive about selling our 3288 sq. ft. (quoted from plans) home in Round Rock, Texas, the eighth safest city in the U.S. according to Morgan Quitno Press, an independent research firm quoted by CNN and other media outlets.

 

Our loan is assumable, so the total cost to the buyer for our four-year-old home should be well under $158,000.  Please visit the link above for more information.

What Gives With Google?

For many years a Google search for "Van Smith" would logically yield Van's Hardware Journal as the number one hit.  Although we have not been very active in recent years, we at one time had a quarter-million unique visitors each month and we still have a PR6 ranking.  Very recently, a friend indirectly brought to my attention that our site was still landing at the top of Google searches for my name.

 

But no more.

 

Although Yahoo searches still return this site at the top of a "Van Smith" search, starting in the last couple of weeks or so Google suddenly doesn't list our site at all on the first search page.  Instead, very obscure links appear at the top of the list including a strange pro-Iraq War hit at number 2.

 

At the time that I made the original Google discovery a little over a week ago, MSN still returned our site at the top of its searches.  However, now it does not.  In fact, our site does not show up until the fifth search page with even secondary links from the OSMark forums appearing ahead of VHJ!  Such a reordering is plainly illogical.  

 

So in the course of a couple of weeks, our website has suddenly gone from the number one hit when conducting a directly relevant search to becoming deeply buried by two major search engines.

 

Google has recently come under scrutiny for agreeing to censor searches in China.  This practice has escalated with the search giant banning a mainstream news website from its worldwide search engines.

 

Is Van's Hardware Journal now falling victim to rejiggered search engines designed to bury politically sensitive websites?

 

In any case, once I finish moving my family, I intend to gradually revitalize this site.

'Homeland Security' Opening Snail Mail

And to hell with the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.  The Constitution is "just a #$#$ #$&%# piece of paper!" our leaders appear to believe.  Mainstream Propaganda Media declares the Constitution a "living document" and that strict interpretations are antiquated.

 

Of course, we all have known since the "Patriot Act" that Big Brother Uncle Sam considers all of our email to be his property.  Although the decree also violates the 4th Amendment, the Patriot Act allows, though color of law, Homeland Security to read any and all email sent by anyone to anybody.

 

I've wanted to write a "one-time pad" email program for a long time, but have not been able to get around to it.  The relentless march of our government towards tyranny renews that impulse regularly.

 

"One-time pad" (OTP) encryption is unbreakable if a source of truly random numbers is available.  Up until recently, a good source of "entropy" (randomness) was not widely available for personal computing applications.  Now, however, VIA's C3 and C7 processors include hardware-based entropy engines that are virtually fire hoses of random bits.  What's extra nice is that this entropy geyser is very easy to tap.

 

While there are a few programs that claim to use OTP, unless the key is truly random -- and the only way to reliably achieve this for large bitstreams is through hardware-based RNGs (random number generators) -- the ciphertext is potentially breakable.

 

If you know of any VIA-optimized OTP email programs, please let me know.

Giggling Elmo Asks Toddlers 'Who Wants to Die?'

The grim talking book for toddlers is reminiscent of Wal-Mart's Kid Connection branded, tugboat-shaped crib-toy that whispers into your baby's ear "I hate you" amid soothing ocean sounds.  What would "Buy America" Sam think of this?  Heads would roll, I tell ya, heads would roll!

Hit [F5], Go to Jail

What a "refreshing" felony.  Link gratis Jesse.

Follow the Money

John Oram writes "See if you find your local Democratic or Republican representatives listed at this site."

Border Agents Fired Upon Again

Our border with Mexico is a war zone.

Weather Modification Snafu?

A well defined number "2" appeared briefly in the eye of Hurricane Wilma as the storm made landfall on the south Florida coast last fall.  The Doppler echo structure is so nearly perfect that it is hard to imagine the "2" was a result of a natural phenomena.  Can anyone identify the font?

Beast System Propaganda

Slowly ramping up...  Hell will become a ski resort before this computer enthusiast "gets chipped."

 

Eisenhower, the late U.S. President who warned the American People about dangers of the Military-Industrial Complex, is reported to have said, "History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."  Ike should have added "or the stupid" to that list.

Without God There is No Freedom

This is a note that I sent to a friend who frequently wears t-shirts bearing blatant Satanic slogans and who goes by Satanic monikers in some Internet communications.

Why don't you get "666" tattooed on your forehead and be done with it?  :)

Actually, the Mark of the Beast will be a microchip/device that you will be forced to have integrated onto/into your body that will allow the Beast to track and control everything that you buy or sell.  The chip will enable the Beast to monitor when you logon to your computer or to take this "privilege" away at his whim.  The Beast will know what you are viewing on the Internet and what you say to you girlfriend in your email.  Your chip will have to be scanned when you travel, when you check out a book at the library, when you go to the doctor and as you walk down the street.  You might very well even be monitored scrupulously enough so that the Beast will know when you enter or leave your house or when you get up in the morning and go to bed at night.  Nothing will escape his Eye, or at least that is in his plan known as the "Beast System."

Even in my most depraved, incoherent states, I can't imagine this sounding cool to anyone except our Overlords.  Our politicians, both Democrat and Republican alike, seem to be hell-bent on establishing the type of ubiquitous surveillance state required by the Beast.  Bush, through the Patriot Acts and various Homeland Security initiatives, is rolling out huge portions of the Beast System, so true Satanists worship Bush.  All others devil worshipers are simply pretenders.  Of course, I write that somewhat tongue-in-cheek knowing your antipathy for the current President, but there is literal truth in those statements...

The Beast seeks to abolish Free Will.   Christ brought to mankind a message that enabled true Free Will, the type of self determination that led to the birth of our nation.  Free Will requires Truth.  Free Will requires God.  Destroy one, you destroy them all.

Without God, without Truth, you are left with the rule of man which inevitably leads to enslavement. 

 

Without God there is no Freedom.

Christ knew what he was talking about, friend.  Christ was the Son of God.

Buy Our House! SOLD!

To our great disappointment, the arrangement that we had made for our move to a home in the country has fallen through.  Consequently, we cannot afford to sell our house for less than $165,000.

'OpenSourceMark Version 1 Beta 8b VIA Edition' Source Code Now Available

I have posted the full source code to OpenSourceMark Version 1 Beta 8b VIA Edition.  Please see the OpenSourceMark SourceForge project page.

Buy Our House! Now Marked Down!

We are moving and are aggressively selling our 3,288 square foot, four-year-old house on an oversized 120'x100' lot for only $165,000 $159,999.

'OpenSourceMark Version 1 Beta 8b VIA Edition' Now Available

I have posted a new version of OpenSourceMark on the OpenSourceMark SourceForge project page.  You can read more about the release here.

 

And, yes, I am happy to report that it looks like VIA will be using OpenSourceMark as a primary benchmark for promoting their new C7 processor.

 

The SourceForge site has been very unstable over the last week, so downloading the new release might require patience.  SourceForge has gotten a major facelift in the last couple of weeks, so that might be the cause of the recent site issues.

Buy Our House!

We are moving and are aggressively selling our 3,288 square foot, four-year-old house on an oversized 120'x100' lot for only $165,000.

'OpenSourceMark Version 1 Beta 8 VIA Edition' Now Available

I know that we haven't been posting much lately, but follow the link above to see one reason why we have been busy.  You can also get a sneak peek at VIA C7 performance numbers.

Nils Dahl: Nukes, Centaur and Kexi

This item is amusing only because it says, in part, exactly what I said some years ago - about Al Quaida making lots of its money from opium production in Afghanistan, among other things.  You might like to read a 'real professional intelligence expert's words' on the same thing.  After all, what the heck do I know?  Love all those Opteron supercomputers too.

 

And just fyi, I expect to buy a Centaur system late this year.  The motherboard will have to have Firewire and usb 2.0 - ideally - or I can get a card for Firewire.  Well, hopefully this year.  Should be fast enough to run the next build of Suse Linux.  Sometime soon, a database front end called Kexi will reach version 1.0 as a standalone app running under KDE - and that is what I want.  The Kexi version integrated into KOffice will come a bit later, as usual.

 

Oh, Kexi is supposed to be a clone of ACCESS that is somewhat easier to use.

 

I have updated my system.  I just got Opera 8.01 for the old pentium 166 computer.  Works a lot faster and better than IE 5 does.

-- nils dahl

 

Nils wrote the note above in mid-July.  A foreboding postscript to it is a follow-up article suggesting a possible nuke attack this weekend.

Happy 8th Birthday, Flora!

I love you.

Photo of the Day II

The same fireworks photograph that won Photo of the Day at Steve's Digicams for July 14th also won POD for July 18th over at the Imaging Resource.

Photo of the Day

I snapped a few fireworks photographs at CJ's Fourth of July party and sent one of the pictures to Steve's Digicams, a popular digital camera review site.  The picture won Photo of the Day for July 14th.  The unretouched, full-sized version of the 8-megapixel photograph can be found here.

 

I took the picture with a Minolta Dimage A200, an 8-megapixel fixed-lens digital camera.  The Minolta A200 is one of the best all-around "all-in-one digicams" (versus digital SLRs) available today.  Other noteworthy fixed-lens digital cameras are the Panasonic FZ20 and FZ5, and the Fuji FinePix F10.

 

A camera that could have been at the top of my list is the Canon PowerShot S2 IS, which, unfortunately, is hindered by excessive image noise.  Another camera that falls just short of the top is the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H1 which is brought down by a relatively mediocre lens, reliance upon Sony's proprietary Memory Shtick Pro and excessive in-camera processing.

GtkPerf Benchmark Released

Marius sends us a link to what appears to be a promising benchmark for measuring GTK+ 2d user interface performance.  This Debian-based benchmark should also be helpful for testing Linux-based thin clients.  A few of GtkPerf's tests might be useful for porting to COSBI, especially the Linux version of OSMark.  The original link to Marius' news item is here.

COSBI Source Code Snapshot

Here is the full source code for OpenSourceMark v1 Beta 7a and all of the other COSBI programs.  I've got the OpenGL tests in this snapshot which I accidentally left out of Beta 6.  The zipped file is about 30MB.

 

To build the executables you will need to install the following freely available libraries:

• Graphics32

• ZipForge Personal Edition

• GLScene

The latest version of OSMark was compiled in Delphi 2005, but the program should also compile in Delphi 7 if you comment out the "Priority" method call for the thread classes.

 

If you just want to run the latest version of OpenSourceMark and don't need the source code, you can get it here.  You can read much more about Beta 7a in the May 27th and May 31st news bytes below.

 

If you want even more information about COSBI, please visit COSBI's forums.

C7-M Mobile Processor: Give it to the Ole' Guard

John Oram wants to get VIA's head honchos riled up.  He writes:

Today I was at a California city's police department. We are going to upgrade their desktop position computers and operating system for the Orbacom TDM-150 circa 1984 8086-class CPU proprietary radio control system.

So the "consultant" asks about using small footprint desktop computer. I said no problem. Only caveat I recommended is to add 2GB of system RAM whether they use W2k or XP with the proprietary software - which you could use with a 500MB hard drive and have plenty of room for temp files. Consultant and IT manager say "City has site license for XP" & I said go for it. Then the consultant tells me he is going to use a 2+GHz Intel P4 in the smallest Dell box. I said okay but it will get way hotter than other options now available like VIA C7-M.

Immediately he starts on a tear about non-Intel CPU's being incompatible with everything. So I stopped him and asked him the last time he tried a non-Intel CPU? He finally admitted he hadn't tried anything non-Intel in over ten years. I laughed at him and asked him how old his home refrigerator was? I changed the subject 'cause I could see he was not happy with me pushing him on his expertise in front of the head IT person for the city.

I am a part of the SurvPC discussion list. Where lots of ole' hardware buffs talk about making early iron work with later software (Linux & MS being primary). I get that same line of pigheaded nonsense from the list members who bought a 80286-8MHz or 80386-16MHz and had a minor issue. But really their "knowledge?" about a possible problem comes from an article they remember they read from some techy publication in that era.

Same sort of media fixation on a potential error like Intel had with the math calculations on one of their early 1990's CPU. By the way I never met anybody in state govt with big databases or engineering calculation software that had a replicate-able issue.

FUD is the life blood of the tech journals, bloggers, and is picked up as gospel by the pseudo-techy gatekeepers...

 

Maybe if we rile up Via's bosses, somebody could wake up to how the real world views non-Intel. Tell those high-paid not-invented-here folks to seed a few of their prize new toys into the hands of the really old journalist - the folks who were pecking at keyboards in the early 1980's. I can give ya names, but I'm sure you probably know 'em as well or better than me.

I go through this same daily waltz around the Maypole with the seven companies we rep for CA & NV.

The two of us at www.apogee.us can say "what ever" 'til we turn green in the face. Then have a prospect at a trade show or especially an existing customer, say the same blinkin' thing; Gabriel's Trumpets Blow, Spotlight in the sky come on, and, everybody in management goes "obviously them folks is brillant" - and skip over the fact we have said "what ever" for five years running at the top of our lungs :-(

Now whether anybody actually gets off their high-paid lazy backsides and DOES something; anything; or, even appear to think about a game plan to accomplish the ideas - that's a whole different kettle of fishes <BG>

As you can tell I get paid commission and do NOT like to lose any deals!

OpenSourceMark Used in Major Athlon X2 System Review

Bill O'Brien used the latest version of OpenSourceMark as his lead-off benchmark in his review of the CyberPower Ultra Workstation 3000.  See yesterday's news item for more about Bill.  You can download Beta 7a in that same news byte.

VIA Introduces The C7-M Mobile Processor

Perhaps even more impressive however is the unique Twin Turbo design which changes the power consumption and clock speed of the CPU on the fly according to the required CPU utilization. CJ Holthaus, Director of System Validation at Centaur Technology demonstrated this technology on a 1.5GHz system. When the system was idle the speed sat just under 600MHz. When he opened a CPU intensive program it shot up to the full 1.5GHz. But most alluring of all, when he opened an MPEG2 movie the MHz remained at 599.82MHz whilst still producing perfectly smooth playback. A member of the audience also bravely put his finger on the processor after the heat sink and fan had been removed. It was not hot to touch and CJ revealed that they were actually not needed. The C7-M is manufactured using the 90nm system-on-insulator (SOI) process to produce the tiny 30mm2 processor die which only requires minimal cooling.

Memorial Day

John Oram writes us:

I was in the US Army as a chopper crew-chief during the Vietnam Era. I watched grammar school friends go overseas to never return. I left the Army Reserves because I opposed how politicians rhetoric used "freedom" to defend their imperialistic facts.

The present Bush Inc administration has at its core the same people who were the political fools in charge during the Vietnam Era. Slowly, ever so slowly, facts are creeping out from under flat rocks that expose the out right lies of the petrochemical barons and their hired political henchmen.

The only light I see at the end of the present political tunnel is even some of my friends who were staunchest supporters of Bush Inc - no matter what absurd excuse he offered to justify his weird world views - say GWB has crossed over and sold his soul to the televangelism fringe bigots like Pat Roberts and Tom Dulay. Always remember no one is more self-righteous than a reformed; no matter what they are reforming from...

Felt and Colson

In an email to us today, James Blasius pens:

I am surprised that Chuck Colson, former Nixon staffer caught up in the Watergate scandal and now prison minister, is upset that Mark Felt, deputy director of the FBI, helped root out Nixon's wrongdoings. ""When any president has to worry whether the deputy director of the FBI is sneaking around in dark corridors peddling information in the middle of the night, he's in trouble" he says.

I am disappointed in Colson. As the Bible says, a man can have only one master. In Colson's case, the choice is (or was) for Nixon or for the truth. If a Christian chooses another master than the truth, he is in serious danger.

"For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God." (John 3:20-21)

James ends with a quote from Ephesians 5:11: "Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them."

COSBI OpenSourceMark version 1 Beta 7a

This new beta version of OpenSourceMark corrects issues encountered with certain AMD CPUs when running the Mandelbrot test.  Specifically, I have reduced the thread count from 32 down to twice the number of logical processors in the system. 

 

Many thanks to Bill O'Brien for invaluable help on the strange, enigmatic and frustrating Mandelbrot headache.  In addition to running his own fascinating website, Bill writes for PC Magazine and CMP.  Back during benchmarking's more honest days, Mr. O'Brien crafted the original tests for PC Labs, the benchmark development shop for PC Magazine.  This means that Bill holds a place in the tiny pantheon of benchmarking demigods.

 

Scores from Beta 7a are comparable with scores from Beta 7 except for the mobile tests where the baseline system is now a Dell Inspiron 600M equipped with a 1.5GHz Pentium-M (Banias) and a 52.2 Watt-Hour battery.  The new mobile baseline reference system was necessary because the previous baseline, a 1.6GHz efficeon, had performance scores so low that the performance scores for all other systems became very large when normalized against the efficeon.  Therefore, with the efficeon serving as the reference system, performance was overwhelming the battery life component of the overall score for almost all other systems.  The Banias-based Dell notebook is a much more balanced and relevant baseline, especially since the Transmeta efficeon is essentially defunct.

 

If you find any bugs, please post them at COSBI's forums.

OpenSourceMark Version 1 Beta 7 fails on NVIDIA nForce 2

Bill reported a failure that he encountered in Beta 7 during the Mandelbrot test.  We have duplicated this failure only on nForce2-based motherboards, but no other north bridges have failed so far.  We have successfully tested Beta 7 on north bridges from Intel, VIA, AMD and Transmeta.

 

Bill also let us know of a bug in the Result Viewer with Intel chips having L3 caches.  The simplest workaround is to run OSMark from a batch file.  This will dump results into a file and exit the program when finished.

 

If you find more bugs, please post them at COSBI's forums.  You can download COSBI OpenSourceMark Beta 7 here.

COSBI OpenSourceMark version 1 Beta 7

I've updated OpenSourceMark quite a bit since beta 6.  Here is a list of changes in the new version (which can be downloaded from the main link above):

• The benchmark is now compiled in Delphi 2005 Update 3.  This is the first released build done in Delphi 2005.

• OSMark now uses the most recent GLScene and Graphics32 libraries.  The failures seen in Beta 6 when using the newest ATi Catalyst drivers are now fixed.  

• The following tests are newly threaded for Beta 7: BandwidthBP64 (memory bandwidth test using block prefetching along 64-byte strides), MemLatency (a memory latency test conducted across two 16MB integer arrays where random elements are copied from the source array to random destinations in the target array) and Encrypt/Decrypt (an AES encryption/decryption test using Gladman code).

• There are now three new tests, all of which are threaded and all of which were recommended by Kalumba: PNGOut (a popular utility for generating PNG image files), 7zip (a very popular archiving tool that provides extremely high compression levels) and Upx (a utility for compressing executables that are automatically decompressed at runtime).

• The Encrypt/Decrypt test is now normalized against a 1.33GHz VIA C3, which means that the VIA chip will get about 1,000 on this test.  While the rest of the tests remain normalized against a 3.4GHz HyperThreading Pentium 4-Northwood system, I set the AES test apart because the C3 is so much faster than the P4 at encryption/decryption that the overall score for VIA's processors were being skewed upwards by a large amount.  Consequently, the 3.4GHz P4 reference system now has an overall score that is slightly lower than 1,000 since its Encrypt/Decrypt score is now a puny 16.  You will find scores for the reference system in the Result Viewer.

• The Mobile Tests are now functional.  There are two mobile tests.  The "normal" test, which is run if "Max Power Draw" is unchecked, generates a performance score and then spawns an individual test, sleeps a minute, spawns the next test, sleeps a minute... until the battery is depleted.  If "Max Power Draw" is checked, the sleep periods are eliminated.  Both tests generate three scores: performance score, battery life score and overall mobile score.  The overall mobile score = ( performance score + battery life score) / 2.  The reference system is a Sharp Actius MP30 with a 1.6GHz Transmeta efficeon.  Additional instructions are shown when these tests are run.

• I've added theme music to the About page which can be called up by the respective button or by clicking on the logo.

• Dothan L2 cache size is now reported correctly.

• Athlon 64 Winchester cores are now identified properly.

• Threaded tests are now in red.

Thanks to its object-oriented design with fully encapsulated data together with its broad array of threaded tests, OpenSourceMark is one of the best benchmarks available for evaluating NUMA systems like those based upon AMD Opterons.  OSMark is also very useful for showing the performance benefits from the new dual-core CPU designs now appearing from Intel and AMD.

 

Don't forget that you can view graphs of individual test results by either clicking on the graph of the test result segment or by clicking on the grid column header for the test.  The grid also sorts results by the clicked test.  The normal graph is restored by clicking in the same place again on either the graph or the grid. 

 

Look at "sample_commandline.bat" to see how to script OSMark through 3 Official Runs.  Change "i" to a much higher number like 100 for a very robust system stress test.

 

We had thousands of downloads of Beta 6, but we still have not reached critical mass where this benchmark is used widely.  Please promote OpenSourceMark. 

 

I write and run benchmarks and analyze their results for a living.  As a veteran computer hardware analyst and as a CPU R&D engineer, I can honestly state that OSMark has matured into an outstanding benchmark that fares very well when compared with any commercial benchmark, while COSBI OpenSourceMark has the tremendous advantage of being 100% verifiable due its open source nature.

 

At work we have used OpenSourceMark to conduct experiments to dramatically improve processor performance.  We use it daily as a core benchmark for performance testing, functional testing, system level testing and stability testing.  We also use COSBI OpenSourceMark for debugging platform issues, performance optimizing platform settings and many other purposes.  COSBI OSMark has proven to be an invaluable tool.

 

And you can get it for free along with all of the source code.

 

Installing OpenSourceMark is quick and easy and doesn't contaminate system files and doesn't fool around with the registry.  Just download the zipped file and unzip the folder to wherever you want.  To run the benchmark, double-click on "CosbiOpenSourceMark.exe".  If you want official scores, click the "Official Run" button.  If you want the best scores possible, check "Process Idle Tasks" and "Defragment drive".

 

The reference scores were generated at a screen resolution of 1024x768x32 @ 75Hz.  As with nearly all benchmarks, screen resolution impacts scores.

 

I am planning for two more betas before the version 1 Gold.  The Beta 8 will incorporate the thin client test module.  Beta 9 will be for bug fixes, GUI polishing, documentation, integrated help, etc.

 

If you find any bugs, please post them at COSBI's forums.  And please help us out by contributing code to OpenSourceMark.

Arizona Declares Whooping Cough Outbreak

In March, we reported a whooping cough outbreak in the Austin, Texas area.  Since then, a few mainstream media stories have appeared on the subject.  In this latest article linked above, Arizona has declared a statewide whooping cough outbreak and is requesting $500,000 to combat it.

 

Whooping cough is caused by bacteria.  Also known as "pertussis," the recent outbreaks have been spreading northwards from states bordering Mexico.  Whooping cough had been very uncommon in the United States, but the influx of illegal aliens into border states has been vectors for this respiratory malady that can sometimes be fatal, particularly in young babies.

 

As we reported months ago, when we approached our doctor in January he refused to test our children for whooping cough despite the clear cut evidence that we presented.  We have since discovered that our experience is not unique.  Prior to the publicly announced outbreak, we have been told that a nurse in the Austin area recognized that her children had contracted pertussis, but her pediatrician refused to test them for the disease despite the mother's insistence.

AGEIA Supports Xbox 360 with Physics Libraries

AGEIA let us know that, in addition to the recently announced NovodeX Sony PlayStation 3 support, the company also provides equal support for the upcoming Microsoft Xbox 360.  The fabless chip designer is perhaps best known for its PhysX dedicated Physics Processing Unit (PPU) and the Mountain View, California company's NovodeX physics libraries are very powerful tools for game designers seeking to make a quantum leap forward in realism with next generation game titles.

 

Although details regarding the Xbox 360's processor are minimal, it is likely that the NovodeX toolkit will bring greatest benefits to the PlayStation 3.  The PS3's Cell processor design is highly parallel but very "loose" and utilizing all of the hardware resources requires difficult, explicit programming effort.  AGEIA's NovodeX physics libraries come to the rescue of PS3 game designers by tackling the headaches of Cell programming by providing rich physics effects essentially for free in terms of processing overhead.

 

While the Xbox 360's triple-core IBM developed processor is almost certainly a more balanced approach for a gaming CPU, the IBM-Sony-Toshiba Cell chip will likely allow the PS3 to eclipse the Xbox 360 in physics intensive titles.  With equal NovodeX support for both platforms, the physics performance delta between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 will narrow, but, more importantly, AGEIA's contributions mean that it is more likely that game developers will include sophisticated physics effects in upcoming games since porting of physics code should be transparent thanks to NovodeX.

AGEIA to Develop Physics Libraries for PlayStation 3

In the upcoming battle between Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3, a huge chink in the armor of the otherwise impressive sounding PS3 is the very loose parallel architecture of the IBM-Sony-Toshiba Cell processor.  Unlike the XBox 360's traditional 3-way multicore design that is easy to code to, the Cell processor will be difficult to utilize at anywhere near its peak theoretical throughput without very significant programming investment.

 

However, help is on the way.  AGEIA, the makers of a highly Cell-like physics processor dubbed "PhysX," has announced that it will be porting its powerful NovodeX physics engine to Cell.  With NovodeX, Playstation 3 designers should be able to easily add highly complex physics effects to their games without taking much of a performance hit.  Such optimizations should allow for startling levels of realism never before seen in the console gaming word and will likely raise the bar for what gamers expect from new gaming systems.

 

AGEIA's NovodeX libraries alone should ensure that PS3 titles will have superior game physics than any other contemporary console gaming system.

 

In software that does not leverage NovodeX, the Xbox 360 should easily trump the PS3 in titles that demand raw processing power, especially considering the write-once-port-many mentality necessary in the high-pressure game development world that makes it very difficult to budget the time and coding effort necessary to extract the potential from unique hardware like Cell.

 

With AGEIA's help, Sony's upcoming PS3 console has suddenly become much more competitive with Microsoft's Xbox 360.

Justice Day

National ID Card Passes 100-0

In a highly unpopular move, the United States House of Lords voted unanimously in favor of legislation calling for the establishment of a National ID Card.  King George is expected to sign the bill into law when it crosses his desk later this month.

 

Americans who do not obtain their Nation ID Cards will be faced with many restrictions.  In addition to being barred from driving, flying and train travel, they will also not be able to open bank accounts nor will they be allowed to enter federal buildings.  It is highly likely that nearly every aspect of living in the United States will be negatively impacted for those who attempt to resist the National ID Card since the card will likely be demanded in every big box retailer as identification.

 

Meanwhile, a Cessna 150, an airplane not much larger than a child's kite, puttered slowly into restricted airspace over the nation's capital causing widespread government initiated pandemonium.

Fight the National ID Card!

Contact your Senator.

Fascist UN Bars Taiwanese Journalists

Exposing the organization's fascist, globalist, feudalistic nature, only "formally registered" media existing in countries that are "recognized by the United Nations General Assembly" are allowed to cover UN events.

E-Mail Bombed

Several VHJ email accounts have been bombed by virus laden messages that appear to originate from an XO IP address in Massachusetts (possibly Cambridge, Massachusetts).  The huge number of 75kB messages is enough to fill up our email accounts in a matter of a few hours.
 

Consequently, many emails to us have bounced over the last few days.  If we have not responded to messages that you sent us during this time, please try to resend them.

Inq Drops the Ball with Rambus Commentary

Mike Magee's computer industry insider news magazine, the inquirer, is one of the few websites that I consider essential and I check that site several times daily.  I know Mike pretty well and in a business that is crawling with sell-their-mother-into-slavehood-for-an-ad-contract, deceitful moneygrubbers, Mike is an honest man and, in that proud, independent tradition, a good Scotsman. 

 

However, the anonymously authored Rambus piece posted yesterday on the inquirer is a disservice to Mike's fine organization.

Of those journalists who hammered Rambus back during the days of the Intel i820, Rambus' $500 a share cloud-walk and world domination delusions, my work probably hit the Mountain View, California-based company the hardest.  One of my articles was credited by Reuters, Bloomberg, MSNBC, etc. for deflating Rambus stock by more than $150 in a single day.

 

Contrary to the inquirer piece, I didn't write articles condemning Rambus because the company was arrogant, although many of its representatives certainly were.  I wrote my articles because I wanted our readers to know the truth.  My articles hurt Rambus so badly because the company lied all the time and many of the company's falsehoods were very easy to demonstrate, as were the fabrications spouted by those who peddled Rambus stock, a group that held truth in about the same lowly regards as Rambus did.

 

Perhaps worst of all, many Rambus investors were driven into a frothy feeding frenzy.  Dreaming of unlimited riches and seeing any Rambus critic as a threat to their treasure trove, some Rambus investors went over the edge sending an almost endless stream of abusive and even threatening emails.  When large sums of money are at stake, people can get very nasty.

 

Of course, some of the caustic email originated within Rambus itself.  Relatively recently I received an insulting note from Richard Crisp.  The good Mr. Crisp was perhaps the most important Rambus player involved in the JEDEC SDRAM scandal.  Mr. Crisp was Rambus' representative on that industry standards consortium and was therefore witness to his company's purported machinations.  Some allege that the Mountian View, California IP company deceived the other JEDEC members into incorporating Rambus patents into the emerging SDRAM and DDR SDRAM standards.  Worse still, some claim that Rambus later patented ideas discussed in JEDEC meetings.  In both cases, critics maintain that Rambus tried to then hold the entire DRAM industry hostage to these ill-gotten patents.

 

These allegations are consistent with Rambus' evidence-shredding behavior documented in court.

 

But much of my work focused on exposing Rambus's dishonest performance claims for RDRAM when coupled with Intel's torpid i820 chipset.  Moreover, Rambus and Intel colluded to suppress competing SDRAM technology that would have been both much cheaper and faster performing.

 

From the beginning, I pointed out the benefits of Rambus RDRAM technology like its lower pin count and higher per pin bandwidth.  But from a PC standpoint in the 133MHz FSB P!!! era, RDRAM was ridiculously expensive and underperforming despite Rambus' very loud claims to the contrary.  And their host organism, Intel, shouted just as loudly in pushing Rambus' agenda regardless of the where the truth may lie.

 

That is not to say that Intel always supported Rambus on every fronts.  Publicly, Intel was contractually bound to push Rambus at nearly all costs, but in private signals were not always so clear.

 

I remember an instance early in the history of the Rambus saga when I got the distinct impression that Intel wanted me to continue to expose their lil' parasite's tactics.  On a fine spring day in beautiful Springdale, Arkansas, I leaned against the counter in my kitchen while I argued over the phone with Intel's Minister of Desktop Processor Propaganda, George Alfs.  As I stared at the repeating pattern of squares set out by the white ceramic tile floor, George did what George always does: manipulate.  Perpetually wielding both the carrot and the stick (I think he broke his stick over my head several times while dealing with me through the years), George was harshly critical of a recent article that I wrote about Intel, yet was very complimentary about my Rambus work.  Intriguingly, the Rambus article was far more damaging to that company compared with the relatively minor impact that my Intel piece had on Chipzilla.

 

Contrary to the inq piece, it wasn't the company's failure to engage journalists nor its arrogance nor its naive ineptitude.  Rambus was skewered by several of us in the media because the memory designer had a blatant disregard for the truth as it unabashedly sought to conquer the DRAM market.  Greed and dishonesty mix to make a toxic cocktail and we wrote to protect our readerships from this poisonous brew.

 

The DRAM manufacturers' price fixing spider web is condemnable, but it has nothing to do with Rambus' dirty past.  Just because Pol Pot killed more people doesn't make Vlad the Impaler a nice guy.

 

So journalists from the inq and elsewhere, be mindful of the past and strive for accuracy.  Don't paint history with a euphemistic white wash.  If we do not preserve a faithful record of the past, we are abandoning one of our most important responsibilities and are betraying our readers as well as our own progeny.  In these critical times, we must hold onto the truth with all or our might.

Global Surveillance State Underway

Governments are building a "global registration and surveillance infrastructure" in the US-led "war on terror", civil liberty groups warned yesterday.

The aim is to monitor the movements and activities of entire populations in what campaigners call "an unprecedented project of social control".

Anti-AMD Austin-Area Environmental Group Should Join Minuteman Project

An Austin-area environmental group is complaining about chipmaker AMD's plans to build new headquarters facilities in Southwest Austin.  The group maintains that AMD's 60-acre parcel, currently zoned for commercial development by the City of Austin, is located over the Barton Springs Recharge zone and therefore threatens the local aquifer.

 

While most green groups readily agree that development and expanding population are the biggest menaces to our ecosystem, none has made the obvious connection that illegal immigration is therefore one of the single greatest threats to the health of the United States' environment.

 

Like much of Western Europe, the natural growth of the United States is relatively low, yet America's population continues to soar and a large component of this population growth is due to the rising influx of illegal immigrants.  Despite the American Government's so-called "War on Terror," our country's borders are as porous as ever.  Since 2000, the nation's illegal immigrant population has exploded from 8.4 million to 10.3 million a year ago despite a sagging economy.  If trends hold, that number is close to 11 million strong today.

 

Ignoring the impact to wages and job availability, 11 million additional people, contributing mainly to urban growth, have no doubt taken a toll on the American environment.  Since 14 percent of the illegal immigrant population is concentrated in Texas alone, that means that the Lone Star state bears a burden of an additional 1.5 million people that it would not otherwise have to support if America's borders were as secure as one would hope, especially if foreign terrorist dangers are as imminent as our federal government maintains.

 

The roughly one-million cars used by illegal immigrants in the state of Texas is, alone, no doubt significantly deleterious to the state's air and water quality. 

 

Of course, automotive borne pollution is small considering the amount of solid waste generated by 1.5-million people together with the pollution from power plants producing the energy consumed in their households.  And then there is the urban development required to house and supply this population along with the expanding road system required to carry the increased automotive traffic, all issues very near to the core that motivates the anti-AMD lobby.

 

Pragmatically, perhaps one of the most potent efforts that an environmentally concerned person should join is combating the human flood flowing over our borders.  This flood is rapidly pushing the illegal immigrant count up to 10% of Texas's total population.  This percentage is no doubt already much higher in the state's urban areas like Austin where the effects of overcrowding are manifest on the area's road system.

 

Consequently, the activist group calling itself the "Minuteman Project" might be the most potent, positive citizens-based environmental force in that state.  This group of activists is currently patrolling the southern Arizona border in what appears to be a largely successful effort to curb illegal immigration in that area.

 

So though they may initially seem strange bedfellows, the "Stop AMD" green group might find its interests better served it if linked arms with the Minuteman Project and began patrolling the Texas-Mexico border.

No king but King Jesus

U.S. Government Coast-To-Coast Sweep Arrests 10,340 in One Week

"Operation Falcon" imprisons over 10,000 people last week.

Pandemic Influenza Strain Sent to 5,000 Labs

Thousands of pathology labs across 18 countries are scrambling to destroy vials of a deadly flu strain sent to them for unknown reasons.

 

Samples of the dangerous 1957 H2N2 pandemic flu strain was sent from a U.S. company to 5,000 labs in 18 countries.  Nearly 99 percent of the laboratories are in the United States.  Included in proficiency kits routinely sent for certification tests, the reasons are unclear why Meridian Bioscience sent out a variety of influenza that killed between 1-million and 4-million people half a century ago.  The Cincinnati, Ohio based firm had been contracted by the College of American Pathologists to provide an influenza A sample from its stockpile for the kits, but for unknown reasons Meridian Pathology sent out the deadly 1957 strain.

 

Shipments of the kits began last year and ended in February.  The samples can be killed through incineration or by chemicals.

VIA Releases UniChrome Driver Source to Linux Community

In a move that will strengthen its position in the Linux world, VIA Technologies released the Linux and Xorg driver source code for its UniChrome integrated graphics cores.  The drivers work with VIA's popular CLE266 and new CN400 chipsets featured in the Taiwanese company's line of diminutive and feature rich miniITX motherboards.

Go, Matt, Go!

Arkansas's pride and joy quarterback wows the NFL with his unworldly athletic ability.  Here are the numbers:

• Height: 6-6¼

• Weight: 242

• 40 time (hand-timed): 4.37 and 4.39

• 40 time (electronic): 4.40

• Vertical jump: 39.5 inches

• Standing broad jump: 10 feet, 9 inches

In a cynical world hardened by the relentless onslaught of athletes involved in criminal activities, the only problem that Matt Jones got into at Arkansas was breaking curfew: prior to a road game, Coach Houston Nutt caught Matt up late in his room reading the Bible.

Centaur Beats Intel Again...

But finished behind National Instruments.

School Killings and the Explosion of Psychotropic Drugs

This brings us to 16-year-old Jeff Weise who, on Monday, March 21, killed his grandfather and his longtime companion, and then went to the school on Red lake Indian Reservation where he killed nine people and wounded seven before, like Harris and Klebold, killing himself. Weise was on Prozac, a medication for depression. Harris and Klebold were both on various mind-altering medications. Not only did they not help them, but the question is whether they may have actually contributed to these acts of murder? How many of the other young killers, dating back to 1997, were also being medicated? And, while we’re at it, how many young suicide victims were likewise being medicated?

Something is terribly wrong in this nation when we can experience a succession of seemingly senseless school killings and not begin to ask whether the national obsession with drugging an estimated six to seven million school children isn’t a contributory factor?

“Why is 80 percent of the world’s methylphenidate (Ritalin and Adderall) being fed to American children?” asked Dr. William B. Carey when he appeared before a House panel investigating the wide use of psychotropic drugs in 2003. “These drugs have the potential for serious harm and abuse,” noted Rep. Michael N. Castle (R-DE). “They are listed on Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act. “

Japanese Schoolbooks and Propaganda

It [a Japanese history textbook] refers to the Japanese slaughter of some 300,000 civilians in the Chinese city of Nanjing as an "incident", rather than the "massacre" it is known as elsewhere...