In a move that could potentially push AMD out of business(!), Intel has announced drastic price cut in its quad core range of processors. The popular Q6700 series process will now cost $266 down from $530. Price cuts are also offered on other processors, but is not drastic as Q6700 range.

This surprise move by Intel is going to immediately push quad core adoption. Intel’s manufacturing process costs are cheaper than AMD and hence AMD might find it difficult to compete in this area. Also AMD posted a net loss of $358 million for Q1 2008. So this Intel move could be a "terminator" move for AMD! Who knows, Intel might have plans to acquire AMD

Multi core processor power is yet to be completely utilized. We might see a sudden influx of game engines which makes use of multi core architecture.

Here is a summary of the Quad core price cut,

The complete list of Intel price cut is available here (PDF).

There was a lot of rumour in the blogsphere (TechCrunch, Gizmodo) that solid state drives has a higher failure rate compared to harddisks. I found it hard to believe since it was quite obvious that harddisks with moving parts will have a higher failure rate than SSD drives.

Now Dell has confirmed my doubt and denies that SSD failure rates are high,

Our global reliability data shows that SSD drives are equal to or better than traditional hard disk drives we’ve shipped. Beyond that, return rates for SSDs are in line with our expectations for new technology and an order of magnitude better than rates reported in the press.

The vast majority of our customers who purchased these drives appreciate the benefits that SSD drives offer: increased durability, fast start up, better reliability and improved access times.

Dell also points out that the research firm avian securities didn’t even contact them! This reminds me of the research papers released by some guys in India against pepsi and coca cola saying that their beverages are full of pesticides!

Finally the much awaited Windows Vista service pack 1 is available for download! The complete service pack download is over 420MB(!) so don’t even think of downloading it over dialup. This service pack mainly consists of quality improvements, support for emerging hardware and standards and infrastructure optimization.

When Windows vista was released there were many who thought it would be a failure. Who would want to upgrade from the stable Windows XP? But Windows vista went on to sell over 100 million copies and has in turn become the fastest selling operating system in history! One of the areas where Windows Vista is much better than XP is the system security. Microsoft had invested a lot of effort in improving security architecture of Windows and it is beginning to payoff.

What is inside Windows Vista SP1?

1. Quality improvements
Windows Vista initially supported around 13,000 hardware components. With SP1 this number is increased to 54,000 components. Application and device compatibility improvements are many in Windows SP1.

Reliability improvements in SP1 include networking reliability improvements (for WiFi and IP6) and improvements to NTFS and EFS.

Performance enhancements include major speed/bandwidth improvements while accessing network shares, faster file copy (upto 45% faster!), improved battery life for laptops and faster access to compressed folders.

There are also a number of security improvements including support for new security standards.

2. Support for emerging hardware and standards
This include enhanced support for 64bit computers, support for new filesystem called exFAT and has support for Direct3D 10.1. The new standards supported include the wireless standard 802.11n, SHA 256 and SSTP (secure sockets tunnel protocol).

3. Infrastructure optimization
Windows vista SP1 introduces a concept called hotpatching. This allows updates to core components even when they are in use! This will definitely reduce the number of restarts required during an upgrade. Windows auto update is made smarter to deal with transient errors such as sharing violations and power failures. There are also a couple of improvements to Windows management such as enhanced network diagnostic tool and ability to configure disk defragmenter on a volume basis.

There are a number of programs that may not work once Windows Vista SP1 is installed. These include BitDefender AV,Fujitsu Shock Sensor,Jiangmin KV Antivirus 10, Jiangmin KV Antivirus 2008, Trend Micro Internet Security, Zone Alarm Security Suite, Iron Speed Designer, Xheo Licensing. Free Allegiance, NYT Reader, Rising Personal Firewall and Novell ZCM Agent. Windows Vista SP1 also won’t work with certain hardware which include audio/display drivers from Realtek and Intel.

It is better to use Windows update instead of downloading the SP1 directly. Windows Update can detect driver problems before installation. My advise is to wait for a couple of days before applying SP1 patch. There could be serious compatibility issues with certain hardware and software.

The next generation WordPress (2.5) is going to be released soon and a release candidate is now available for download. I did a test drive of this version and the first thing I noticed is that it looks a lot more "whiter" than the previous version. Some may call it the modern design, but In my option, the earlier look and feel was easier to navigate! For example check out the homepage,

As you can see, WordPress 2.5 uses google blog search instead of technorati for incoming links! The good thing is that you can now edit this. Another advantage of this feature is that now you can disable all the latest WordPress news and WordPress blog feeds. You don’t a need a plugin to do that!

Following are the major cool new features in WordPress 2.5,

Improved Write Post screen

Now it is easier to add various types of media to your post. Images, videos and audio files can be easily inserted. There is also a media library and a gallery feature available. But for majority of WordPress users who use tools like Windows Live Writer, this may not be important!  The write toolbar can be used in "simple" or "advanced" mode.

Tag Management

WordPress 2.5 now offers full tag management similar to category management. But surprisingly you cannot select a tag the way you select a category. You need to explicitly type in the tags in create post screen. The tag screen allows you to quickly see the posts under a specific tag. Also Blogroll is now moved under Manage section as links and link categories.

Faster Dashboard

One major improvement I noticed is that the dashboard now loads faster compared to the earlier dashboard. It can be made faster by removing all the unnecessary feeds on the dashboard such as incoming links and WordPress news. This alone probably is worth the upgrade to WordPress 2.5!

Don’t port your live blog to WordPress 2.5 yet! There could be serious security issues or bugs which needs to be ironed out. Wait till the production quality WordPress 2.5 is out. I would wait till WordPress 2.5.1 is out!

Tim Berners Lee (creator Word Wide Web) has created a map indicating the growth of Internet as part of his interview at BBC. Click on the image below for a larger version. From the BBC blog by Rory,

But there is also a parched area on one side of the map described as "wasted arid lands". Among its features are the "Patent Peaks" and the "Proprietary Pass". And right at the centre of this gloomy landscape is something called the "Tor of Cism". For the life of me, I can’t work out what that means, but I have a feeling Sir Tim might have been passing on a coded message.

Actually "Tor of Cism" is a reference to Microsoft and the color coded Giants is a reference to Google. As you can see Tor of Cism leads to proprietary pass!

The original PDF can be downloaded from here.

In his intervew to BBC, Tim Berners Lee (creator WWW) explains his position on the plans by ISPs to track online user behaviour.

Q. A lot of companies are now trying to get a lot of data about their users which they can then market on to advertisers. Do you have a view?

Different people have different attitudes. I myself feel that it is very important that my ISP supplies internet to my house like the water company supplies water to my house. It supplies connectivity with no strings attached. My ISP doesn’t control which websites I go to, it doesn’t monitor which websites I go to.

Many of the major ISPs around world are toying with the idea of tracking the online behaviour their customers. Basically the tracking program will look at the sites visited by users. This online profile is worth a lot of money and a lot of advertising groups will be interested in this data. Currently search engines such as Google and other Web services have this type of data. But even google doesn’t have the clickstream data as it doesn’t monitor which links we click on the results!

One major problem with the ISP tracking is the problem of privacy and security. Currently the online advertising company Phorm is behind the UK ISP (BT, Virgin and Talk Talk) partnership for intercepting web surfing habits. In past Phorm was involved in the adware and spyware business. These guys may even get hold of userid/password for your various accounts including bank accounts! How scary is that?

This online profiling seems to be a big step towards content filtering and things are only going to get worse. In future, you we may even see ISPs pushing advertising to the end users by manipulating the content returned to the user.

This is a dangerous trend and I sure hope that ISPs and Phorm are not going to get away with this. If not, this will be quickly adopted by all the ISPs. There is too much money to be made!

The only way to fight this is to boycott all the ISPs participating in this. If you don’t have an alternate ISP, opt out from this service (It appears that ISPs in UK cannot force this on you unless you give explicit permission!)