News for Thursday, 27 November 2003

A small startup called NetCell Corp anounced they had developed a new RAID managing chip way faster than everything that exists at the moment.
They anounced that the chip is RAID 0, 1 and 5 compatible and can reach 200 MB/s for serial acces reading and 110 MB/s for writing. The Turbo Disk chip will cost $79 per unit if you buy 10,000 of them.
As we are speaking about a startup, we'll wait and see if it is true..

The French Videolan's multimedia player keeps being optimized. With 0.7.0 version, which is still in beta test1 version, their developpers worked on the core to enable a better navigation in the video and a better handling of subtitles. A hard job's also been done on the interface.
For the moment, no compiled version for Mac OS X, yet a complete package shall come in no time.
To see what's been modified from 0.6.2
D/l binaries and sources
upd : the compiled version for OS X is now available.

ZDnet reported a very funny news.
The Los Angeles county sent the HDs manufacturers a request begging them to ban the terms of master/ servant, which would be synonymous of discrimination according to them.
It seems the industry has had a good laugh.
One may also wonder if among the acres that have been burning there as of late, there wasn't also a bit of weed...

May sound obvious to some of our US readers... or perhaps you'd be surprised to know that the first French TV on DSL offer is to be officially launched by the Internet provider Free. To read more about it please go to the French version of hardmac.com : macbidouille.com, or d/l Free press communication, in French also:
CP_Free.pdf

The world od CPUs for PC, dominated by Intel (by far) and AMD is a mercyless one. To have a top of the notch CPU faster than your competitor's impacts the sales of the whole line, even on lower end units.
To try and counter the release of Athlon 64 FX from AMD, Intel whose public version of their 64 bit CPU isn't ready yet, let out of their bag a "Pentium IV Extreme Edition". This CPU frequency is of 3.2 GHz like that of others P4s. Yet it also uses 2 Mo L3 cache, by which it gains from 5 to 10% performances as compared to the "cacheless" version.
Its only default is its price. It costs over 1,000 Euros (almost twice as much as classical 3.2 P4s). Good news for the kids of high wages families :) who spend their all day playing, performances in games are increased by 15 to 20%.
If we talk about this, our point is to show:
- a commercial war has no shame to be ridiculous [do real wars fear it either ?].
- Intel seems to finally have lost their past ability to have their CPU frequency increased on demand just to overcome their competitors.

Our correspondant in Beijing (sounds so pro :)) tells us about counterfeiting in China:

To answer your article on real/false Creative products, I must tell you this already exists in China. You find everything on Shanghai's black market (it was even displayed publicly at first, but now the same thing has been hidden a bit in small shops). The police know it but won't interfere as China, though nobody talks about it, is the only country where the army and the police own their own factories(over 1,000), which mainly produce counterfeited products, and even most of those shops I told you are owned by policemen. The economic importance of this is so heavy it's not close to ending. The way of selling it has been modified yet nothing else changed. Yet price and quality of the copies have been raising significantly as of late ; yet 2 euros for a Matrix Revolution that may be found Shanghai for 4 months????? And there are also real products, maybe stolen, yet really manufactered in factories where the big ones delocalized their production. I even wonder if, when you buy a DVD in a Chinese shop, shich is 100% similar to the original one, in a shop belonging to the police, you would be annoyed by the Frenche customs. My lawyer says a court wouldn't be hostile.

Buit what do the RIAA, the BSA and majors in general do ??