The PC industry is built around an idea of almost infinite variation: different Wi-Fi adaptors, different Ethernet chipsets, different GPUs, different USB3 controllers. This variety is then reflected in the systems available from manufacturers—and more importantly, it's reflected in the way the systems are actually built. … The big reason that HP wants to get out of the PC business is that it's simply not very profitable for HP—and that's true for all the major PC OEMs, Cupertino excepted. Cheap PCs are certainly important for making computing accessible, but they also mean that PC vendors have made themselves vulnerable: endless price cuts and a failure to emphasize the value of a quality product have cut revenues and slashed profitability. Desperate to compete on pricing and pricing alone, the mass-market PC OEMs have ended up cutting their own throats.
Ars technica explains
why the PC industry is having such a difficult time trying to build a competitor to the MacBook Air.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear
on Sep 5, 2011 -
316 comments
High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is currently the most common form of digital transmission protection for high definition digital multimedia, requiring an unbroken chain of licensed products for content to play back for
TV systems and
computers.
A possible "master key" was posted online earlier this week, and created quite a stir around the potential of this leak or reverse engineering. Intel, who
developed the initial specification,
has confirmed the validity of the "master key", but instead of coming up with a new protection scheme, will use "legal remedies, particularly under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)." In essence,
the threat of legal action, rather than cryptography, is [Intel and the media companies] real tool against unapproved uses of digital content. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Sep 17, 2010 -
84 comments
Wired reports a US Intelligence Analyst has been arrested in connection with the "
Collateral Murder" video released by
Wikileaks. According to the article, SPC Bradley Manning was turned in by former hacker
Adrian Lamo based on concerns about Manning's threat to leak an additional 260,000 classified embassy cables.
posted by uaudio
on Jun 7, 2010 -
80 comments
Grandpa laces up his skates: How would a single core, 3.8 GHz
Pentium 4 670 from 2005 compete against the latest offerings of AMD and Intel? How about a 2007 quad-core, the 2.4 GHz
Core 2 Quad 6600?
The Tech Report finds out in a
Huge 14-way Roundout, including a
price-performance evaluation (
2nd perspective). For the release of AMD's new midrange DirectX 11 graphic card, the somewhat disappointing
ATI Radeon HD 5830, they've done
Something Similar, this time pitting older cards, including a
Nvidia GeForce 7900 GTX from 2006, against the newcomer and today's top performers.
(aggravation warning: hardware review sites love their multi-page layouts)
posted by Monday, stony Monday
on Mar 1, 2010 -
36 comments
US plans to 'fight the net' revealed "Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads.
"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.
posted by Postroad
on Jan 27, 2006 -
25 comments
The announcement that Apple was moving to Intel hardware was the first move in Intel's take-over of Apple, according to
Robert Cringely, giving Intel a platform to compete head-to-head with Microsoft.
"This scenario works well for everyone except Microsoft. If Intel was able to own the Mac OS and make it available to all the OEMs, it could break the back of Microsoft. And Apple/Intel could easily extend this to the consumer electronics world. How much would it cost Intel to buy Apple? Not much." More.
posted by bobbyelliott
on Jun 10, 2005 -
57 comments
Well, it's an old rumor, but many sources (including the
NYT,
WSJ,
Wired, and many rumor sites) are reporting that Steve Jobs will be announcing a switch to Intel at the
WWDC tomorrow. The WSJ claims Apple will be switching to x86 processors, while others speculate Intel will simply be manufacturing PPC chips, or only processors for a tablet PC. If the rumors are true, and it seems like they are, what of the Intel DRM
recently announced? Are we destined to have DRM hardwired into our computers no matter where we turn?
Curiously, the
major rumor site has remained mum on the matter. Your best bet to follow the drama will probably be
MacRumors, who will be providing live updates from Steve-o's keynote tomorrow.
posted by keswick
on Jun 5, 2005 -
111 comments
Think you're in full control of your computer?
Think again.
Intel has just quietly added one of the necessary components of Microsoft's (and the TCG/TCPA's)
DRM
technology, Palladium, to the PC platform. Some say this is a move against
rampant Chinese software piracy,
others think it's a power grab by the
content producers. Left unchecked, content and software producers will
have the final say in how you use your computer,
fair use be damned.
posted by id
on May 28, 2005 -
55 comments
Apple to switch to Intel processors, at least according to John Dvorak in a brief article over at PC Magazine. No mention in the article of the massive amount of effort required to re-write every piece of mac-compatible software for x86 architecture, or the unlikeliness of developers to be willing to do so having just optimized for OSX, but then, this piece seems to be mostly just bold, unsupported predictions.
posted by jonson
on Mar 21, 2003 -
33 comments
E-mail is trespass? A disgruntled employee's emails to his former co-workers are a legally actionable form of 'trespass to chattels', says Intel. Have you ever trespassed to chattels? Should you fined or even jailed for it? 3 lower courts in Claifornia have said 'yes' to all or part of that last question. (linked to in a thread today, but it deserves it's own).
posted by Jos Bleau
on Aug 14, 2002 -
12 comments
Has anyone read "Swimming Across" by Andy Grove? It appears to be pretty far from the traditional "look-at-me, revel in my vision, I'm an uber-CEO," self-promotional book; he never even gets into his Intel career, apparently. Instead it's
an account of Grove's childhood in Hitler and Stalin's Hungary and the story of how he came to America. The book has been
getting great reviews, from people as diverse as
Tom Brokaw, Elie Wiesel and Monica Seles. Still, the cynic in me says that no matter how dramatic the tale, when you're a Fotune 500 CEO, you always have other motives. Perhaps I'm just too cynical. So again, has anyone read it? What did you think?
posted by emptyage
on Nov 26, 2001 -
3 comments
Where Apple goeth, the industry will follow . . . eventually.
"Intel is finally inciting the death of the floppy drive and is calling on PC manufacturers big and small to stop supplying the once-capacious 1.44MB removable drive in the latter half of 2002." I remember the first 3.5 inchers (weren't they 400k) with my first Mac in '84. Yet another era passes.
posted by fpatrick
on Oct 4, 2001 -
42 comments
It's officially the 20th of November (some places) and the P4 NDA's have lifted. Here come the reviews!
Anandtech gives it poor marks. On a lot of tests it gets creamed.
HardOCP is more kind, but does a much less comprehensive test against a must less formidable competitor.
GamePC gives it a "thumbs down".
I'm still waiting for Tom Pabst's review; I expect it to be brutal.
posted by Steven Den Beste
on Nov 19, 2000 -
6 comments
Athlon + DDR: Bert McComas is a
very highly respected analyst of the CPU and memory industry, and I always read his articles with great interest.
Intel has announced that they don't expect the P4 to be a significant part of their business until late 2001. According to McComas, if they don't change that plan, AMD is going to eat them for lunch, because the P3 is no longer competitive. The performance/price ratio for the new AMD stuff has to be seen to be believed. I think Intel is in major trouble, because informal reports are that a 1.5GHz P4 is about the same power as a 900 MHz P3.[more>
posted by Steven Den Beste
on Oct 31, 2000 -
4 comments
Israel to make 1.7Ghz Pentium Intel ordered it's plant in Israel to drop everything and produce 5,000 Pentium 4 wafers, each containing 200 Pentium 4's. Each chip will be rated at 1.7Ghz, a good .7Ghz from AMD's 1Ghz chip.
posted by dominic
on Jul 10, 2000 -
2 comments
Intel royally fucks over one of its best customers. We don't ordinarily get into hardware here, but what's important about this is that this has a damned good chance of putting ASUS out of business. (And just two weeks after I put an ASUS mobo into my computer, sob. Fortunately,
mine is not one of the ones involved.)
If Intel has any honor (or wants to maintain any kind of reputation) they're going to completely cover ASUS's losses on this, which could easily top a billion dollars. I wonder if they will.
Anyone want to lay odds on when the first lawsuit gets filed? (Or who will sue whom?)
posted by Steven Den Beste
on May 13, 2000 -
5 comments
Speaking of retrotech, the latest group of space shuttle jockies just
upgraded the Hubble to a rockin' Intel 486 chip, replacing the apparently inadequate 386 that previously provided the brains to the wobbly eye in the sky.
posted by grant
on Dec 28, 1999 -
0 comments
