And when he gets there he decides that what we really need is more H-1B visa recipients, to keep the pace of innovation going at Microsoft.

While it is true that we are turning out idiots at an incredible pace, bringing more aliens to take the jobs is hardly a long term solution. What is needed is a change in the education system, as all changes made in the last twenty or so years seem to be in the wrong direction. The total accumulated knowledge is estimated to double each ten years, yet the average high school graduate  does not seem to know what continent the city of London is considered part of. Many are unable to realize that Paris is a city and not a country. A few weeks ago it was pointed out in a public television program that only 23% of recent college graduates could find the country that this country is involved in a war with on a globe (standard globe, standard markings) Teachers are complaining that they are not getting help from the parents, whereas when I went to school, the parents were only responsible for providing proper motivation, a good breakfast, and transportation to and from the school building. Teachers today work approximately two-thirds the time (or less) of an average worker in any other profession, yet become indignant when reminded of it, and are always complaining about their salaries. Clearly, we aren’t going to get any help from teachers.

Perhaps what is needed is for Mr. Gates to break loose with much more of that fortune he tries to convince us that he is trying valiantly to give away, and come up with scholarships for those students who wish to continue in the math and science fields. These should be advertised early - as to elementary students.  If students knew early on how expensive higher education is, and the rate at which it continues to rocket upward in price, they just might - by the time they reached high school - have a clue about how nice it would be to have their college paid for when they arrive.

There are entirely too many stupid people out there now, and so using any sort of tough love methods will not work. The tragically uninformed will have to take up all those ‘jobs’ that the Bush Administration and NAFTA have opened up at exciting places like McDonald’s and Wendy’s.

At least a change for the future will make the next generation a bit more able to cope in the world of tomorrow.

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Tags: h-1b visa, bill gates, microsoft, scholarships, educational change

In a small blurb on ZDNet today, the under-the-radar release of the newest Phenom and Opteron chips with stepping code B3 is reported. The B3 stepping fixes the possible stall that was shown with the earlier processors. For those not up on all the minutiae, the first quad cores had a small bug that could, under certain conditions, cause the processor to stall. There was a BIOS fix that was issued almost immediately, but a performance hit was noted.

The new B3 versions of Opteron and Phenom chips have the letters “GH” at the end of the product number. Credit: Anandtech

This new revision of the chip has no performance problems, but is being released at the same 2.3 GHz speeds as the older processors. The thing that has most people eschewing the line is the lack of clock speed. Everyone is awaiting news of those 3 GHz parts coming down the pike. The AMD fans need something to cheer for soon, and having just a few of the ‘black’ version high clock speed pieces to lust after would do the trick. It would energize the market, and spur renewed interest by motherboard manufacturers (In case you haven’t noticed, AMD motherboards are in the minority by a fair margin, after enjoying the lion’s share of the market for several years). 

It may be that not much press will be given to these parts until they ship in volume, as the big news from AMD right now is the triple core chips, which seem to be headed straight into yeoman duty for Dell and HP desktops.

Perhaps with a few new people in the top spots and a good run of midrange processors AMD can make yet another return to the performance zenith.

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Tags: amd, phenom, opteron, b3 revision, dell, hp, triple core phenom, phenom 8000 series

In an interview with Microsoft, Reuters reports that there is no movement toward a change to a Blu-ray player for the Xbox 360. This is odd, as moving to a medium of higher density would make sense, with the titles expected soon to need more than the space of  one standard DVD.

will this one find its way to the Smithsonian?

In that same article the Microsoft person contacted stated that eventually there would be a move to Blu-ray, as that would be a natural move. How strange that Microsoft isn’t using its clout to keep HD DVD as the standard for Xbox. Perhaps Toshiba was not willing to pay enough tribute to the oracle at Redmond.

Toshiba has really made some big mistakes here, not the least of which is removing HD DVD from the market completely. As I had stated before, it is a format that had no serious flaws, it was simply the wrong horse to back. The total cost to Toshiba for this mistake is estimated to be around 1 billion dollars. Toshiba is a huge conglomerate, but a billion dollar mistake is not pocket change to any non-government entity.

With at least one studio supporter of HD DVD, and a few hundred thousand drives sold as backup and distribution possibilities, HD DVD could have lived a normal, albeit compacted life span. As a backup medium, it might actually have had a very long life - the drives being less expensive to produce, and the small number of discs needed to do a backup of large hard drives would have been spectacular reasons for this usage.

can’t you imagine a single disc holding 15GB as backup, that costs under $120?

One thing that no one is willing to divulge is if anyone is going to release the post-mortem on HD DVD. Was its demise simply a matter of timing? Did the big push in the last three months of 2007 help or simply delay the inevitable? Many times a push such as the one noted gets so many units in the hands of the public that ‘critical mass’ is achieved, and the technology takes hold. On the other hand, the extreme price cuts may have convinced the movie studios that margin could never be restored, and HD DVD would remain a loss leader.

Toshiba has chosen to eat the loss, but it really should shop the technology around a bit, before destroying the assembly lines. After all, anyone who has read about, or remembers the Edsel  knows that it too, was a product that was basically good yet failed to impress the public.

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Tags: toshiba, hd dvd, microsoft, xbox 360