Windows 7 is supposed to run on lower-end hardware than Vista

...but it doesn't? Here's the article. I really don't need to say much here, but I feel it necessary to point out that Microsoft has been saying for a very long time now that Windows 7 will be faster, smaller, lighter than Vista. And then they go releasing the specs saying your video card will need to be just as powerful, but you'll need twice the RAM and an extra 1-5 GB of hard drive space for the OS alone. Sure, the OS may be faster, but it's definitely not smaller or lighter. As for me, I discovered the other day that I can boot Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty" from POST to desktop in less time than it takes to launch Microsoft Outlook. And Jaunty consumes less than 4 GB of hard drive space, less than 256 MB of RAM, and my desktop effects run fantastically on 64MB of video RAM. I'm not gonna go into a rant here because the numbers speak for themselves. Just saying.

What if AMD went out of business?

There are a slue of lawsuits being filed back and forth between the major computer and video processor manufacturers. Intel's suing NVidia claiming that NVidia doesn't have the right to make VPUs that integrate with specific, Intel-patented processor assistant technologies. A company called Techsearch is suing Intel because Intel's hardware is based on an archaic model that was patented years ago by another company called International Meta Systems (IMS) that has since gone under, and whose patents were purchased by Techsearch. AMD is suing Intel on anti-trust charges, trying to convince the courts that Intel is trying to be anti-competitive and own the world's computing platform design. A few years back, Intel finally manufactured a processor that marginally outperformed AMD's equivalent processor, and since then, rumors of AMD's demise have circled the Internet and geek culture. Buzz has also been passed around saying that AMD has a real knock-out product in its future, a set of integrated processor-based technologies that will blow Intel back out of the water, but that they do not currently possess the R&D budget to complete it. AMD's ultimate failure is like waiting for a bomb to drop because it would mean Intel's monopolization of the PC hardware platform. I, like many others, do not want to see AMD go out of business, and not just because of what that means for Intel. AMD has consistently produced absolutely amazing processors. I've used AMD for years, and would not go back by choice. Even with the Phenom product line, advertised as a failure by Intel, and which consistenly have lower benchmark scores than the Intel Core 2 lineup, I chose the Phenom X4 to build my latest computer with. I did this because it was a full $100 cheaper than the Intel Core 2 Quad that I had been eyeballing with distaste, and the benchmark score disparity is really quite minor, if consistent. AMD has always provided their processors at a lower price than the Intel equivalent, despite that they have always benchmarked better right up until the Phenom line, and the "more for your dollar" principle has always applied. But what would happen if AMD crashed? Could it actually benefit the computer market in the long run? I know this sounds crazy, but hear me out. In this dystopian fantasy world, AMD goes under and Intel monopolizes the computer processor market. Intel will inevitably have anti-trust charges brought against them. After litigation takes place, some amount of reparation will happen, potentially benefitting the owner(s) of the AMD namesake and its operational facilities. But Intel cannot necessarily be forced into outright paying AMD to continue operation, so it's very likely that they might be forced into unlicensing the patent on the x86 architecture. Long story short, AMD has always licensed this architecture from Intel, paying them regularly to continue to be able to produce processor chips that will perform beneath the same operating systems that have been in place above the Wintel *cough* I mean Intel platform all this time. In this manner Intel has always profited from AMD's success. But if the license no longer cost money, AMD's total cost of operations would be severely reduced, and the market would also be opened up to other, more independent developers. That means competition (which was the point of this legislation in the first place), and that's always good. I would venture to say that I would stop buying AMD hardware if there were another competitor that produced better hardware at the same cost. This new processor market is definitely something that benefits everybody, since competition becomes more possible, and competition is the predecessor of innovation: hardware continues to get better at a faster rate. But do we really want to spend two or three years under the reign of a monopolistic Intel to get there? On the other hand, Intel would have to play their cards well during this proposed AMD downtime. The fear goes that Intel would own the market and jack up their prices. Having no alternative to their products, the market would be forced to pay more and more and more for the same crappy products they've always produced, only they might end up being crappier than ever before because of the lack of competition. Intel would be safe from consumer brand-switching. However, if Intel knows or thinks in advance about the possible legislative resurgence of AMD (or other competitors), they would be wise to not do this. AMD, despite their license payments, have always managed to keep their prices lower, so even if their resurgence into the market greets us at the same prices as before their failure, AMD will still appear to even better for the dollar than they do now in reality. Any other competitors would be at the same advantage. This might even lead to a cycle where Intel is doused and bounces back. Who knows, though? This is all just speculation on my part. In all reality, I want Intel to succeed. But only if AMD does as well. The competition is what keeps me able to build a system for $1000 that Dell sells for $4000. My prices stay low and I have a satisfying option. Live long and prosper, AMD.

Cloud Computing - IT'S A REALLY BAD IDEA, GUYS!

My CS instructor is a believer in cloud computing, and after reading an article that he sent to me singing the praises of cloud computing, I wrote this in rebuttal of my argument. For the record, I really like my CS teacher. He's intelligent and funny and he seems to know what he's doing. I just disagree on this one point. So I thought I'd post what I wrote here, just to continue the argument I started a while back.

---

In truth, this article only goes to further my dislike of the concept. When we centralize processing power, when it becomes a utility that we buy into, a few things happen:

1. The center becomes an obvious and frequent target for malicious crackers who want my data.
2. Centralized processing providers become a corporate entity, and they become exactly as inefficient and careless as other corporations providing any other product or service (more detail in a moment).
3. The economy on the whole takes a downturn.
4. The experience of the individual computer user is unfairly diminished, as is the value of the non-cloud system we currently have.

In fuller detail... Data Mining I work for a company called Multimedia Games. We develop video slot machines, mostly for Indian casinos on reservations. When you play these video slots, you're really playing Bingo cleverly disguised to look like video slots. Since we are bound by a lot of legal restrictions, Bingo must be played exactly by the rules, and that means that multiple people need to be playing at once to get a game result (winners/losers), and that means that a network is involved. We have a rack of servers installed at each casino that plays the games and sends the win/loss data to the playerstations, then records financial data, gameplay data, marketing data, and a ton of other data related to casino-specific needs in a database. This data is crucial to the continued operation of my company and the individual casinos. Also due to high regulation, we go through tons of measures to make sure that this data remains secure. To host this data on shared devices or virtual machines in the public domain (meaning The Internet, not in the copyright sense), would be an extremely dangerous move with risks that propose a serious danger to our business. This is a specific case, but it's a bad idea in general. Any time that you gather data onto one set of centralized servers, those servers become an immediate target for crackers who want that data for malicious purposes. Hardly a month (or a week) goes by without some kind of attack or security failure on an email server or MySpace or Facebook or an operating system in general becoming public knowledge. Technology is not infallible. In fact, when it comes to security, the best we can do is make it difficult on attackers. No amount of protection will keep out a person with enough knowledge and determination, and that alone is reason enough to distrust a centralized, utilitized data center. Corporate Inefficiency I'll use Dell as an example here. They used to be a small company reknown for their quality computers at affordable prices, backed by a solid warranty and service center. This, of course, attracted more and more customers, and these days, almost 50% of the PC market is populated with Dell desktops and laptops. Dell has infiltrated the corporate workplace and constantly battles Hewlett-Packard for workplace market share domination. Dell became huge, and decided, as corporations inevitably will, to cut costs. Their hiring policy is now one where most entry level positions last six months before that wave of employees is fired and a new team is brought in. It keeps them from having to give raises to the largest segment of their employees. Their computers are no longer stable pieces of hardware, often installing 130 watt power supplies that bust every time there's a mild surge in power, and frequently pass excess power to their motherboards, which are made with cheap capacitors with a tendancy to explode, necessitating the purchase of an entirely new computer with surprising regularity. As an employee of a consumer electronics repair facility for two years, I can safely say that 75% of the computers we repaired were Dells, which is inconsistent with their market share, further proving their inefficency. In addition, Dell has failed to conform to well-defined computer hardware standards as a form of lock-in. The power supplies that fail all the time do not meet ATX form factor (or mini-ATX, or micro-ATX, or BTX or any other standard), which means that when one breaks, you have to pay over $100 to buy another low-wattage PSU straight from Dell. It's a way of monopolizing one's own product, despite the fact that better products exist through a million other means. It's unfair to the consumer, especially when you consider that most of their technical support is outsourced to foreign countries, which decreases customer satisfaction, but increases profit. The point is that once people adopted Dell as a trusted name, Dell grew and grew and grew until they were too large to sufficiently support their operation. This will undoubtedly happen to cloud computing within a few years of its widespread adoption. By adopting this plan of allowing corporations to run our operations, we open ourselves up to this kind of reduced functionality and constant problems, which in turn affects our own ventures. Once we're locked into contracts, or, more likely, once it becomes too expensive a prospect to move our data back onto our own private server operation, the company providing a cloud service essentially owns our business operation and controls it fully. The only goal they need to make is to ensure that the cost of keeping data and load-balanced processing through them is cheaper than the cost of returning operations to our own servers and network. In addition, a corporation must focus its attention on the customers that generate the most profit, and ignore customers that use the service, but also belong to niche markets. This can be seen in Netflix, with their on-demand digital viewing service. Up until recently, it required an Internet Explorer ActiveX control to work. People who know that this is a major security flaw complained about it. They want it to work in Firefox. Netflix has now accomodated for that by using Microsoft Silverlight instead, but nobody likes Silverlight, and this is an obvious example of instituting the DRM that nobody likes via a corporate partnership with a company that nobody likes. Still, Mac users cannot use this service, and neither can Linux users, so both of those niche markets are ignored. A centralized cloud computing service would only end up doing the same thing with more devastating results. "What? You don't like the way this all works because you're a Mac/Linux/Firefox user? Tough! You don't pay this company enough for us to care!" Economic Downturn Because of this country's corporate, enterprising outlook on literally everything, we have come to the conclusion that spending less money is the equivalent of doing better business, but this is sometimes untrue. One example that they cite in the article is that of the expense of IT professionals and the cost of running a data center. The suggestion that is made there is that if we unify our data center into one center for thousands of companies, we can pay one group of IT professionals instead of a thousand, thus lessening expense overall. The problem with this line of thinking is that it puts 999 companies worth of IT professionals out of a job. If a company needs to cut expenses, it should cut expenses related to product and physical material. It should use less paper or turn off its workstations at night or settle for cheaper workstations (since, as the article says, we're only utilizing 10-30% of their processing power anyway). It should not dispose of human capital. When citizens get paid, citizens then have money to put back into the economy. Reducing jobs is the last thing we want to do. Have we learned nothing from the current recession? When we outsource to other countries, the United States as a whole loses money because we're paying US money to foreigners, removing the cash from our economy entirely. It's only a natural Step Two, if you will. Once we've centralized a ton of data centers into one in America, a company will realize that they can just move that data center overseas, pay people less to maintain it, and not have to worry about environmental stipulations that cost money in the States. Everything about the cloud computing concept screams, "Failed economy!" Don't you think it possible (and very ironic) that the very things that allow us to be a developed country could turn us into a third-world country? Diminished User Experience When something new happens technologically, it doesn't take long for it to reach the entire community of tech users. It extends into both the workplace and the home. Currently, less than 25% of Internet users have broadband access, and this statistic does not include the nearly 50% of computer users who do not have Internet access at all. If the cloud computing concept ever hit home en masse, it would be detrimental to the vast, vast majority of computer users. Also, no matter how you cut it, there is simply no way to make centralized processing work for gamers, whose demand would be that 120 images in 1920x1080 resolution be passed to their computer over the Internet, decompressed, and displayed on their monitors every second. No broadband connection exists that can carry that kind of data that quickly, and even then, the user is still utilizing most of his CPU's power to decompress and display data. Not to mention the fact that Time Warner is about to impose download caps to make money off of people who don't know any better. Cloud computing will likely screw over anybody with this type of connection plan. Since cloud computing in the home means that a computer would require a broadband network connection, laptops would lose their primary purpose - portability. If I can't use my laptop without an Internet connection, then why even bother with one? If I can't go to a job site in Middle of Nowhere, Texas and access my data, what's the point in a laptop? There are a ton of reasons that cloud computing is a really bad idea, but the funny thing about all of it is that cloud computing already exists on a much smaller and safer scale. I utilize this for myself. I run a Linux server out of my home with a dynamic DNS address that always points to my server, despite the dynamic IP address that my provider supplies me with. I run various forms of connection back to that server - it runs Apache, an FTP server, a Samba file share, and an SSH server - but the most important is X window forwarding over SSH. It's fast enough to use, if a little slower than actually being in the presence of my computer, but I can always access my hard drive and every program running on that server as long as I have an Internet connection. But even when I don't, my client computer can still run software and save data until such a point that I can transfer the data back to the server. There's little reason for an attacker to attack my computer because I am only one person who does not store sensitive info on my hard drive. It's much better to attack, say, Google, to gather user data from millions of accounts and years of usage. I can use my server from anywhere, and I definitely benefit from this in ways that I could never benefit from an actual cloud computing service like the one defined in the article.

Cloud Computing Follow-up

Ramsey replied via Twitter regarding my post on cloud computing: I think the new in cloud computing is the idea of a cloud OS that keeps most of the data intensive parts on a server. this would in theory allow someone with an old computer or a netbook to run a fast effiecent OS. The cool part comes when they starts shareing the load, as in all of the computers running that os make up the cloud in some small way. Speeds unimaginable! My response follows: When the data-intensive parts of computer operation reside on the Internet, everybody's speed slows down because...

1. Even if there's a remotely operating OS, my netbook still needs a client OS to connect to what that server OS is outputting. My netbook runs perfectly quickly with a decent Linux OS on it. Windows 7 supposedly runs pretty quickly, too. But I don't want to have to pay for a licence to two operating systems just to use one computer. Windows is too pricey already, and that's a huge reason why Linux netbooks sell. A Windows licence makes up 20% of the cost of a Windows netbook. It makes up more than 50% of the cost of a cheap-ass E-Machine. And you'd like to raise that even higher just so I can make my data vulnerable and out of my control?
2. If the data resides locally on my computer, then all of that data must be transferred across the net to get to a server where the data can be processed. Considering the generally atrocious upload speeds offered by most ISPs (and hopefully I'm not on some kind of cellular network doing this), my computing speed will decrease drastically, and that's the opposite of what you propose, and the opposite of the direction technology should be heading.
3. If the data resides on the net, on some server in the cloud, and it can be processed on the same server that my data and the data of hundreds of other people is being processed, then my data must wait until its place comes up in the queue of data processing. It would take some pretty powerful equipment to make that happen. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that I don't want to have to pay for that service when I'm perfectly capable of making it happen on my own.

And there are a plethora of reasons why cloud computing is either bad or not viable.

• In 2008, 61.5 million users in the United States were connecting to the Internet via some type of broadband access. That sounds like a big number until you consider that 248.2 million users are online. That means that the rest of these computers connect via dial-up or some other slow connection. Translation: less than 25% of Internet users are connecting via broadband, and that's not even considering the number of people who are not online at all, but still use a computer at home. Generalized cloud computing is not viable, at least not in the sense that it's mandatory.
• In the setup that I described in my previous post, my data is still being passed through the cloud of the Internet, but resides on hardware that I own and control. In the popular cloud computing concept, it's on hardware that I have zero control over, and which other folks' data is also residing. This makes it an immediate target for data miners who want my data. Nothing technological is impermeable, not even my setup. But with my setup, there is less likelihood of an attack because I am only one person. This is the same reason why Mac OS X, while proven to be less secure technologically than Windows, is still a safe alternative to Windows. There are fewer people to attack. A successful general attack for Windows will yield a higher success rate than the same type of attack for Mac. If, say, Google were to have a cloud computing service with millions of users, that's a better place to attack than my single-user setup on my personal hardware. Someone would practically need a personal vendetta to even bother with mine.
• Even with broadband access, cloud computing is still slow. X forwarding is fast enough to use, but not fast enough to be my ideal method of using a computer. I use it because it's convenient, because I can manage a web server from my cell phone or from work. Because I can write documents or stream music or move my files around on my home computer even when I'm not there. But do I dare try to browse the web using a remotely operating browser? Do I try to do any amount of image editing remotely? Do I game? Of course not! Because even though my server has a 2 Mbps upload speed (roughly 250 KBps), that's still not fast enough to transfer that much visual data back and forth at a constant rate, much less all of my input. Cloud computing will take a very long time to be able to catch up to that.

We have a long way to go before cloud computing becomes a viable option. I'd rather just stick to a configuration where it's a possibility for me when I need it, my data is as secure as I make it, where I have total control over it, and where I do not try to exceed its limitations. I can't let my computer usage slow me down. When I'm thinking faster than my computer is, isn't my comuter made unneccessary?

Cloud Computing - IT'S NOT NEW!

Cloud Computing - It's the new buzzword that profiteering hopefuls like Google and Microsoft have been using lately to sell products and services on the Internet that they have not fully developed. Cloud computing is the concept that your data will be kept on some server or set thereof somewhere in the "cloud." The "cloud" is meant to mean "somewhere in the Internet where you have restricted access, but can use certain portions of on your personal computer, provided you can supply proper credentials." An example of this that is already implemented: Google Docs. Also: Zoho. These are web-based pieces of software that let you work on various types of documents that you might ordinarily use MS Office or OpenOffice to work on. Your data is stored on their server, and when you log in, you can access the stuff that belongs to you. It can be edited, printed, exported locally, or imported from a local file. This is pretty cool, and I've used both of these services before. Still, I have my reservations about agreeing to malleable terms of service and then storing whatever personal information online. It just seems like a really good opportunity for data miners. Nothing is uncrackable. You need only look as far as a decent computer security blog to see that what we perceive as impenetrable is really completely insecure when under the influence of the right people. The other thing that bothers me is that, like "Web 2.0," the terminology has become a marketing buzzword meant to indicate something like "the way of the future." It's intended to arouse and excite. I have no doubt that some people jump onto this concept like nothing else when it becomes more popular simply because it matches a definition for "cloud computing" that they never had to begin with. And the truth of the matter is that cloud computing is not a new idea. It's been around for years. Offhand, I couldn't give you a number of years, but it's been in use for longer than I've been using it. That's right. I've been using cloud computing for some time now, and it's a pretty cool thing. A friend of mine turned me on to a little thing called X forwarding. Perhaps this terminology requires some explanation. I run Linux at home as my primary operating system. My particular distro uses the X window system, which is pretty common. X is what allows windows to appear on my desktop in various forms, in accordance with the description provided by whatever software is using those windows. X treats the relationship between computer and monitor as a server/client relationship. And it supports "server" forwarding. That is, it will send the graphical definition for what a window is supposed to look like to any other X server with proper credentials. What this means I can do is be on my laptop, or be on the computer at work, or head over to a friend's house, or go to the library (assuming I can install some basic software on it), and run some free and open source software called XMing. It's an X server for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Then I establish a connection between that computer and my server through SSH (easily done with another FOSS app called Putty), and then I type the name of the program that I want to bring across the Internet. Voila! I am running a program on a remote processor, accessing my remote drives, and working with my own remote data. I have cloud computing. The best thing? All FOSS. Doesn't cost me a thing. Microsoft is talking about introducing a paid-for service like this called Azure, and while I haven't done extensive research into it, it seems likely and plausible that you'll be locked into their software when using it. That is to say, the whole reason "cloud computing" has become a marketing buzzword is that it really does have profit potential. If Microsoft or Google can get you paying for their specialized "cloud" service, then you get stuck into using their software, fearing transistion into another format or service. I'm glad I already operate more or less on the fringe of this stuff. Oh, and I know what most people will think when they read this. It's too difficult for Joe the Plumber to use. Well, it might currently be too difficult for Joe to set up for the first time, but if someone were to set this up properly for Joe to begin with (for a small fee, I'm sure), he could use it just fine.