The Amazing Unlockable CPU

I just found this article on Engadget about a CPU unlocking program started by Intel about 9 months ago. This program has drawn considerable fire in the comments section of reporting websites such as Atomic PC, Tom's Hardware, and of course the Engaget page, but the commenters are...misdirected. Many comments read something like this "It's like getting a corvette and finding out after you paid for it that it can only do 60mph until you pay to unlock it up to 120mph!" That example is flawed because that's illegal and because sports cars are actually kind of like that. What Intel is doing is telling consumers that they are getting a processor that has 2 threads of execution that run at 2.8GHz and 3MB of L3 cache for $X. Intel also says that for an additional $50 you can unlock 2 more threads and 1MB of cache on this CPU after purchase giving you 4 threads running at 2.8GHz and 4MB of L3 cache. That is not illegal or unethical.

Manufacturing a CPU, or anything else with nano meter sized transistors, is challenging and expensive. The smallest piece of debris on the silicon can damage the chip being manufactured. To increase the number of chips a manufacturer can sell, they determine which parts of the chip work and which parts don't. They will have some flawless chips and some with defects that can be worked around to make a flawless chip. Lets say you have a 4 core CPU but there is a manufacturing defect in one of the cores. You could throw it out as defective, or you could disable that core and market it as a 2 or 3 core chip. The customer never knows the difference, but that isn't important because they got exactly what they paid for.

Unlocking a CPU is not a new idea. Certain models of AMD CPUs have been unlockable with the right kind of motherboard for a long time, although it hasn't a guaranteed upgrade. Intel is taking CPUs that have features that are known to be working and disabling them making a CPU that will be sold for less but is guaranteed to be upgradable. I think that most people who participate in this program will not be satisfied with their upgrade. Most of the programs people use only need 1 core to run smoothly once they have loaded. More cores is better for multitasking, but how many people REALLY multitask? Having word, email, and a web browser with 10 tabs open is hardly multitasking because you can only use one of those programs at once. Thus you really only need 1 core and throwing more cores at these programs won't result in a noticeable speed increase. A real upgrade for people would be to turn the processing speed up. Upgrading from 2.8GHz to 3.6GHz would be a very noticeable improvement. That's called overclocking and it is still more or less free.

Will this be a useful product in the future? Probably not, but I bet that we'll see more of it. I'm sure that many people would prefer to do a cheap and easy upgrade rather than buy a new computer or install a new processor to try to get a faster computer.

Disclaimer: I am an Intel employee, but I do not speak for or represent Intel in any way in my comments. This information is all public knowledge, just intelligently assembled.

Angry Birds Did Not Improve My Productivity

Back in the day when I had both free time and friends, I played tons of First Person Shooter video games at LAN parties. I stopped playing video games to make more time for studying and haven't played them seriously for at least 7 years, that is, until Angry Birds was released for PC. Instead of programming I played over 100 levels of bird flinging, pig killing awesomeness, practically drooling on myself. I noticed that I had neglected my wife all night and realized that I have a weakness toward simple video games. When a person is extremely busy they have to look for small and quick distractions to keep them sane. Little games are great for this and so are web comics or blogs, used in moderation. If given too much attention they can overcome your willpower to work on important things. I deleted Angry Birds from my PC because I knew it would be an ongoing problem for me. Everyone has to know their own limits and take appropriate action to avoid negative consequences of video games and other distractions.

ICANN Haz .xxx Domain?

Good luck finding someone who has used the Internet for a while and hasn't stumbled into some sexually explicit content. The new .xxx top level domain that ICANN has approved gives further credibility to the porn industry. The only way that I would ever be in favor of creating a red light district on the Internet is if there were a way to completely eradicate sexually explicit content everywhere else. If that were possible, all someone would have to do is download a web filter, filter .xxx domains, and pick a garbage password and forget it. Problem solved, you'll never see Internet porn again! Children would be protected, and marriages would not fail because of Internet pornography viewing. The beauty of the Internet is that no government currently has the ability to regulate it, but the problem with that is no one can enforce "law" making moving all that objectionable content to .xxx domains impossible. Therefore I will NEVER be in favor of a red light district. The .xxx domain speaks only of the depravity of the human race.

Social Media: My Conversion

I just read "Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky. It is a terrible book and horribly repetitive, but it convinced me embrace social media and stop hating it. The most important idea that stuck in my mind after reading it is that personal restraint has to be a part of social media. The public nature of social media exposes the author in ways they never have been before. What they write is available to the whole world and is not likely to go away any time soon. Where does your Facebook status go when you post it? Facebook's servers, i.e., out of your control forever. Anyone interested in learning about you now knows that you think your cat is adorable.

I have always seen social media as blogs with no substance or grammatical correctness, the Wild West of the Internet where anything goes because there are no rules. Facebook statuses like "chilin wit my homies" make me cringe because they are completely unnecessary! The only people that care about my status updates are the "homies" I'm "chilin wit". Social media is a way for an individual to publish for a audience that is genuinely interested in their life, but the broader audience of the Internet must always be considered. You might think that your boss is an idiot, and it might be important to your immediate audience to know about it, but remember that what you say is very public despite any illusion of privacy. Find your niche, be creative, have fun, express your unique perspective! Show the world the best of yourself, but be responsible.

Interview from The Green Show - Rouge Sys Admins

Show Us Your Papers!

The entertainment industry needs to find other ways to monetize their products or change their business model to cope with the new challenges the internet has produced. They have replaced fair use with Gestapo tactics trying to put themselves on your computer and tell you what you can and can't do with your legally purchased media. Instead of suing alleged pirates tracked through sketchy ISP traces, they should be focusing on developing good content that people want to purchase in high quality format. I watched a poor quality version of the third Narnia movie a few days ago and it was great! Has the movie studio lost anything from me? Absolutely not! Despite my distaste for the industry, I'm going to purchase the Bluray when it is released and I'll probably pick up a copy of Inception too. (I watched it at a friend's house. It was awesome!) I'll purchase a good product because I enjoy having high quality things, but I'll use it in my own way within fair use. To the entertainment industry: Deal with it.

Women in the Workplace

I believe that men and women should get all of the education they can. Men should be educated so they can be good providers for their families and women so they can raise their children. Therefore, women should only study cooking, sewing, child development, and family dynamics. Absolutely not! Those are all fine things to study but engineering, math and the hard sciences are too. If America needs a new generation of engineers to compete with developing nations, then no one would be better to raise them than mothers that have hard science degrees. I love it that my wife will have degrees in Civil Engineering and Mathematics because I intend to instill in my children a desire to pursue an education in the hard sciences. I have seen the influence a good mother has on children and it is worth much more to me than an extra salary. There are some women in the workplace that should be in the home until their children are raised properly. Work will always be there, but children will not.

Not Your Grandma's Internet

Technology and electronics have become far too diverse for one person to participate actively in every area. I feel like the old fart of the computing world because I don't care about social networking and can't play games on my phone.  Sure, I built my wicked fast desktop, and I've got more monitors than you can shake a stick at, but no gadgets. I was pretty slick learning to type in 8th grade, but my little brothers have been pwning me in video games since they were 6. It's kind of like high school where there are 30 clubs and you can realistically only join 2 or 3. As more people join the tech community even more niches will develop and hardware and software will be developed to support them. Our little world will continue shrinking and diversifying, and there isn't anything you can do about it. People stick to their own interests and groups in real life and they will increasingly do the same thing online. The only thing you can do is find your group and learn to enjoy the ride.

Genealogy: The Slippery Slope to Robot Domination

Long ago---the 1970s---genealogy was done by looking through family archives and visiting cemeteries in foreign countries linking deceased relatives. Genealogists could only dream of an easier way. Today the old tactics are still valuable, but searching enormous databases of extracted data from immigration records, birth and death certificates, marriage licenses and other legal documents is much more efficient. Computers have not yet been taught to make the connections between names and records that humans can, but they will be. To us that doesn't seem as remote or ridiculous as the idea of searchable databases did to people in the 70s. When computers can do that work, people will not be surprised and will return to looking through cemeteries trying to make the most difficult links. Well, until we find a way to make computers do that too. "I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords."

It Takes Two to Tango

It takes two to Tango, but it takes three to develop good software. The user, programmer, and middle management execute an intricate dance where all are happy, or at least one is not. Users want reliability and new features, but not overwhelming changes. Programmers want their software to be useful and different, but don't want to fix bugs. Middle management wants to be profitable, but not look bad for missing deadlines. If you release too many features too quickly, or if the software is buggy it won't be financially successful. If you spend too much time fixing bugs you will miss deadlines. If you try to capture a different market with a major GUI change then you tick off your current user base. Windows Vista is an excellent example of this process failing. Vista missed 3 ship deadlines and was not well liked by Windows users. In contrast Windows 7 was released on time and is now the best selling operating system ever. Huge companies can step on their dance partner's toes occasionally, but dancing well is imperative for the success of a small company.

1337 H4x0rz

Real hacking is an art. A black art, but still an art. No one can sit down at a computer and say to their self "I wonder what Pixar is working on in their data center right now?" and then break in and poke around. It would be a trivial task if you could traipse around a network knocking on doors until one opened, but important networks aren't like that today. IT professionals and programmers have learned through hard experience and public embarrassment that they can't trust anyone on their networks. If a network is valuable it is highly secured. Our networks have become an extension of us. Misbehavior on a network can lead to very real consequences. The most recent wave of copyright infringement lawsuits have shown that it is possible for file sharers to leave digital footprints that can be traced right to their real front doors. If a hacker is determined and educated in computer architecture and network communication, they will eventually find a weak spot and penetrate the network defenses. It won't be done overnight, or probably in a few weeks, but it can be done. Once they are in they can do whatever they want until they are detected; if they ever are detected. There will always be a need for security professionals to help keep our networks safe. This need will only increase as the earth becomes more connected and people move more and more personal information online.

Your Private Moon Tour

Man hasn't returned to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. That isn't about to change, but the first private vehicle could be going in 2013. This private exploration--if successful--will demonstrate that any resources available on the moon can be available to corporations with enough money. A whole new economy will emerge for moon goods or perhaps services like moon tours. Imagine that! Renting a lunar rover to go check out that crater you saw in a telescope. These ideas are all somewhere in the future, but doors are beginning to open now which will make it real tomorrow.

The Passive Revolution

Did you tweet about the demonstrations in Egypt? Welcome to the revolution! Wait what? The idea that you can start a revolution from your twitter account is absurd. Social media applications (twitter, facebook, foursquare, and the like) have become essential communication tools. The Iranian demonstrations last year proved that they can be used to organize people behind a cause, but twitter employees weren't out in the street shouting. The people were. Tinting your twitter avatar green is, and always will be, a passive show of support! If you want a revolution, tweet or facebook your buddies about it and get on a plane to Egypt. Get out in the street and be heard.

There's no such thing as 'the social media revolution'

WikiLeaks -- Organized Crime Ring?

Tick off a government or two and get picked up on whatever charges they can manage against you? Just release a large encrypted file with a promise that if anything happens to you, you'll release the key. Who knows what is in there. It's kind of like extortion in a way, but could it actually be used as extortion? Say some shady banker 'wikileaks' sensitive documents about his client's tax evasion status. Say one of those clients was an extremely rich celebrity.
WikiLeaks: "Give us a million dollars or we'll go public with our dirt and ruin your image."
Celebrity: "No."
WikiLeaks publishes a little encrypted bomb.
Celebrity: "Ok I'll pay. Just don't hurt me!"
No one but WikiLeaks knows if the data in the bomb was garbage or actually damaging. I don't know if celebrities are scared of anything, but corporations are.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1348859/WikiLeaks-Banker-Rudolf-Elmer-arrested-revealing-tax-evaders-account-details.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/wikileaks-insurance-file/

Time Management and the Internets

I remember when I didn't have an internet connection. My computer seemed so uninteresting. It did productive tasks like word processing and solving difficult math problems. Times have changed, now my computer is 20 times faster and I don't do anything except extremely important and interesting things like surf the web. The internet, it seems, is a mixed bag. The world has access to more information than ever before but it doesn't seem to have made us any better as a people. When I look around in my classes I see people harnessing the power of the internet to explore the world around them! I mean to play flash games... Can we use our time more wisely? Can we use these new tools to become a better people? I don't know, but I'm going to go spend some quality time with my wife.