We Told You So!

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Posted on 01-01-2007

Speaking to an invited party of bloggers and Web developers at Seattle headquarters, Mr Gates of Bill fame happily said, "DRM is not where it should be," as blogger Steve Rubel reported it. "In (sic) the end of the day incentive systems (for artists) make a difference." And then came the pronouncement: "But we don't have the right thing here in terms of simplicity or interoperability."

Blogger Michael Arrington said Gates' short-term advice for people wanting to transfer songs from one system to another was to "buy a CD and rip it."

Now Suw Charman, of the Open Rights Group, said it was a "bit rich of Bill Gates to make his comments, given how much DRM is stuffed into Vista." And we know how much MS swears by DRM anyway...

But we told you so. We told you last month Mr Gates had become more amiable, more matter-of-fact, and, in general, more prone to telling things the way they are. See?

"You'd Have To Be Nuts"
Reporters from British online tech tabloid The Register caught Intel executives in an unusual, perhaps inebriated, mood where they, in a manner not befitting them, verbally pooh-poohed the competition. Intel "vowed to overwhelm AMD" with a regular "cadence" of product releases that run on a "tick-tock" fashion: Intel will slap a new architecture upon the market (the tock), then follow up with a less dramatic manufacturing process, core, voltage, and cache shifts (the tick).

From our perspective, 65nm is kind of old news," said Intel manufacturing chief Tom Franz. Lofty perspective, we'd say. But you'll have to hand it to Intel: AMD happens to be truly behind, looking to move to 45nm in 18 months. But the Intel execs talked about the 18-month plan "as a figment of AMD's imagination."

"They are so dreadfully behind," said Intel senior vice president Pat Gelsinger. (Pure, unadulterated scorn. Not good.) And here's where it hotted up: Gelsinger went on, "You'd have to be nuts" (to think AMD will come close to beating Intel to any manufacturing milestones).

Salvo #3: "I was very pleased to read that a number of analysts have downgraded AMD."

To our surprise, there hasn't been a peep from the other side yet. Perhaps AMD execs are more graceful. (Or maybe they just don't want to highlight the beating.)

Here We Go Again…
Every time Yahoo! releases its list of year's most-searched-for items, we talk about it here. What's worse, every time the list is released, it's the same person on top. Even the headline is the same: "Oops she did it again." So there you go-you know who we're referring to without our having to spell it out.

Here are the eight celebs who made it to the top-ten list, with the millions of pages that mention them (in brackets).

10: Lindsay Lohan (2.9): The most influential person of 2006 based on US newspaper column inches! Debate raged over her substance abuse, and her being a role model for young women.

9: Pamela Anderson (7.1): We'll bet it's something to do with the science of pneumatics.

8: Chris Brown (1.3): For his music. We haven't listened to any of it-and we're hoping it's not horrible.

7: Beyonce Knowles (1.2): We aren't too much into the R&B scene, so we're not sure why she figures here.

5: Paris Hilton (11.6): For her on-camera antics, we presume. Once a star...

4: Jessica Simpson (6.5): Seems to have released a few interesting videos. Some people call her ugly.

3: Shakira (2.2): You know a civilisation is on the decline when the butt-shaking abilities of a woman drive the world to seek her out.

1: You-know-who (9): You know a civilisation is on the decline when it's nothing that drives the world to seek information about someone.

Footnote: type in "britney google" into Google and go to the first non-sponsored result. The horror of it all will come forth.

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