Paxville spanked.

[keith]

I dunno - he says he wants to get into "services" in a big way but there's

Well, like everyone else he wants to grow up. Like a bird leaving the
nest, that means going into the unkown.

only one company that's made a go of that -- you know who --

HP? ;-)

and with a *LOT* of depth in high power creative talent to back it up. Even
Digital Equipment, who had a big services orgn. eventually wilted - they
didn't have the sufficient fundamental talents to solve customer
problems...

I don't think that was DEC's problem at all. They had *totally*
incompetent management. They drive the company into the ground faster
than even Carly *tried* to do with HP.

and I'm not sure Mikey has any at all... farting higher than
his ass IYAM.

Could be, but I still think he's got somone in Intel soiling pants.
Whatever his aspirations are, he still needs Intel to jump hoops.

 

[keith]

Hmm, these new rear wings look suspiciously like fenders to me.

Maybe, but I don't think I want to lock wheels "flimsey fenders" or not
(forgetting the aerodynamic issues if they decide to try tire-tag).

Yes it
was my impression that was one of the reasons for the FIA acquiring the AMD
computers - to do some basic aero research. I assume they're going to
arrange things so that the GP2 cars can't run faster than the F1s.

Restrictor plates? ;-)

 

[keith]

Huh? AMD in CFD? I don't think they have anything to match the pure aero
career people - possibly "facilitating" hooking up with the right software
vendors and the guys who know how to work it. There are a whole bunch of
out-of-work motorsport engineers hanging around since tobacco was banned.

Hire a few aero-PhD's? They gotta be cheap these days. ;-)

 

[George Macdonald]

Hire a few aero-PhD's? They gotta be cheap these days. ;-)

No on-the-job practical experience - it takes the right motivation and a
couple of years from PhD to company value. At F1 teams, PhD or not, they
start on the nightshift if they get in the door at all - that's hard to
take. I don't think the FIA had any trouble picking up a couple of the
right guys who were on err, gardening leave.

 

[George Macdonald]

Well, like everyone else he wants to grow up. Like a bird leaving the
nest, that means going into the unkown.

I'm still wondering what his relationship is with EMC - I'd though he might
have a go at a takeover there as leverage into the network services... but
then I'm not sue how successful SAN has been so far.

HP? ;-)


I don't think that was DEC's problem at all. They had *totally*
incompetent management. They drive the company into the ground faster
than even Carly *tried* to do with HP.

That too but they lacked the depth for real business consulting services,
which is where YKW scores - at one time they probably had more talent than
even they needed... enough to swarm over any problem anybody had; if they
couldn't solve it it was err, intractable. At that end of the business,
the "client" only comes to the "consultant" with the "dirty" problems where
he's stumped - that takes real depth of knowledge & talent to handle.
DEC/Digital never had it in-house - same for CDC, Univac, Burroughs and all
the other used-to-bes.

Could be, but I still think he's got somone in Intel soiling pants.
Whatever his aspirations are, he still needs Intel to jump hoops.

To tell the truth I think AMD might be better off without him - devalue
their product by selling it off for nickels & dimes.

 

[YKhan]

It's been an amazing ride with Intel's engineering having been eclipsed
for several years, but who wudda thunk AMD could do in Intel's
marketeering department? ;-) CNBC aside, Intel *doesn't* get it.

Really the biggest test of all, isn't it? Outshining Intel's engineers
-- no big deal. Outshining Intel's marketeers -- impressive stuff.

Yousuf Khan

 

[keith]

Really the biggest test of all, isn't it? Outshining Intel's engineers
-- no big deal. Outshining Intel's marketeers -- impressive stuff.

s/impressive stuff/*priceless*/

;-)

 

[keith]

That too but they lacked the depth for real business consulting services,

No, the bigh probem was that they were taken over by the uber-arrogant
know-nothings. Some (DEC) internals blamed it on hiring a pile of
ex-beamers when the Cambridge Scientific Center and the "Burlington Mall"
(I think that was the one) closed. I just blame it on total incompetence.

Story (it's been long enough for the guilty to fined new identities): We
had a VAX 11/780 on our test floor (albeit with Fairchild clothes on it -
part of the contract). DEC *refused* to service it on our floor. They
*refused* to accept a PO to replace a failed disk drive. It went to VPs
of all companies concerned and the only resulution was to take out a
service contract with Fairchild, which turned around and took out a SC
with DEC (with a >20% adder). Any issues had to be reported to Fairchild,
who than had to call in DEC. *NUTZ!* We would have had no problem
sellign DEC hardware, and would have gladly serviced it. Money is money,
ya' know.

which is where YKW scores - at one time they probably had more talent
than even they needed... enough to swarm over any problem anybody had;
if they couldn't solve it it was err, intractable. At that end of the
business, the "client" only comes to the "consultant" with the "dirty"
problems where he's stumped - that takes real depth of knowledge &
talent to handle. DEC/Digital never had it in-house - same for CDC,
Univac, Burroughs and all the other used-to-bes.

Well, there is the little ATC "problem". Not even the biggies do
everythign right. Some problems really are intractable, particularly
those that grow without bound during the implementation phase.

To tell the truth I think AMD might be better off without him - devalue
their product by selling it off for nickels & dimes.

Oh, I've felt that way for a few years. Who needs to deal with an ego
like that? There are real customers out there; pnes who still believe
that main street is two-way.

 

[George Macdonald]

Well, there is the little ATC "problem". Not even the biggies do
everythign right. Some problems really are intractable, particularly
those that grow without bound during the implementation phase.

Hmm, it takes a real expert to say "I don't know";-)... and of course there
are many intractable problems which have "good" creative good-enough
solutions.

Oh, I've felt that way for a few years. Who needs to deal with an ego
like that? There are real customers out there; pnes who still believe
that main street is two-way.

Not the govt. apparently. Every govt. facility I've seen is polluted
with Dells.

 

[Felger Carbon]

Not the govt. apparently. Every govt. facility I've seen is polluted
with Dells.

George, every PC World "quality" survey shows Dell at the top and HPaq
and whoever the third competitor is (Gateway??) firmly in the pits.
If the PC World survey is right, who else's product would you expect
to see at Govt offices, or private offices for that matter? People
aren't stupid, and Dell's market share grows and grows and is still
growing.

I am _not_ a fan of Dell's product, because I detest hot-running
desktop CPUs. I have two desktops; they both use 90nm AMD chips. I
use (to Robert Redelheimer's disgust) integrated video to keep heat
down in my cases.

But Dell's business plan is working very well indeed. Dell
stockholders are _very_ satisfied. I'm an unabashed fan of that
business plan, if not it's product.

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

I am _not_ a fan of Dell's product, because I detest
hot-running desktop CPUs. I have two desktops; they both
use 90nm AMD chips. I use (to Robert Redelheimer's disgust)
integrated video to keep heat down in my cases.

I'm hardly disgusted. Just disappointed.

If you're serious about keeping heat down, make sure those
AMD CPUs do the STOP-GRANT thing. The Northbridges have to
be programmed to enter the lowest-power modes. Perhaps your
chipset drivers do this, perhaps not. It can be difficult to
tell with leaky CPUs having high idle power, but you should
notice a large difference (10+'C) in CPU temperature between
idle and a simple infinite loop.

But Dell's business plan is working very well indeed.
Dell stockholders are _very_ satisfied. I'm an unabashed
fan of that business plan, if not it's product.

Yes, it's important to be able to distingish the
effective from the desireable.

-- Robert

 

[keith]

No on-the-job practical experience - it takes the right motivation and a
couple of years from PhD to company value. At F1 teams, PhD or not, they
start on the nightshift if they get in the door at all - that's hard to
take. I don't think the FIA had any trouble picking up a couple of the
right guys who were on err, gardening leave.

I do think there are some aero-engineers (with PhDs) that would
know what to do with "unlimited" CPU cycles. I didn't mean to imply
newly-minted PhDs. ;-)

 

[Tony Hill]

Huh? AMD in CFD? I don't think they have anything to match the pure aero
career people - possibly "facilitating" hooking up with the right software
vendors and the guys who know how to work it. There are a whole bunch of
out-of-work motorsport engineers hanging around since tobacco was banned.

With sufficient money I'm sure that AMD could find themselves enough
competent engineers with expertise in this area, particularly if they
have the FIA helping do a bit of scouting for them. Now, mind you,
it's not entirely clear from a little press release just who did what
work, but it does certainly indicate that AMD was involved as more
than just a computer supplier.

 

[Tony Hill]

Not the govt. apparently. Every govt. facility I've seen is polluted
with Dells.

No surprising at all, who else are they going to use? HP? Well, ok,
some departments definitely do use HP systems, but that entails a
whole other set of potential problems. They definitely aren't going
to be using IBM/Lenovo systems now that it's a Chinese company. Who
else is left? Gateway/eMachines? Apple?!

Nope, Dell it is for the most part. As with many other companies in
the industry, Dell has succeeded at least in part due to the
incompetence of many of their competitors.

 

[Rob Stow]

With sufficient money I'm sure that AMD could find themselves enough
competent engineers with expertise in this area, particularly if they
have the FIA helping do a bit of scouting for them. Now, mind you,
it's not entirely clear from a little press release just who did what
work, but it does certainly indicate that AMD was involved as more
than just a computer supplier.

I was wondering, "What's in it for AMD?" with regards to doing
(or paying for) work for a sport more boring than watching paint dry.

And then I started wondering if this is all just a test bed for
compilers, engineering software, etc. - things that have the
potential to eventually lead to profitable things.

I can't, however, fathom why AMD would buy advertising on race
cars or on the track-side billboards. I have difficulty
imagining that the kind of people who sit at home watching cars
go round and round in circles are the kind of people AMD thinks
they can sell processors to. Now if AMD was in the beef jerky,
beer, or gun industry ...

 

[Rob Stow]

No surprising at all, who else are they going to use? HP? Well, ok,
some departments definitely do use HP systems, but that entails a
whole other set of potential problems. They definitely aren't going
to be using IBM/Lenovo systems now that it's a Chinese company. Who
else is left? Gateway/eMachines? Apple?!

Nope, Dell it is for the most part. As with many other companies in
the industry, Dell has succeeded at least in part due to the
incompetence of many of their competitors.

In days of yore, back when I was working for the "Correctional
Service of Canada", I made the mistake of including some Dell
quotes in a proposal for replacing all of the old DEC desktops at
the facility where I worked with more modern boxes. The chill in
the air was palpable at the regional IT headquarters and I ending
up toeing the line and getting more DEC's. It was even suggested
that building the new boxes myself or buying from white-box
vendors would be preferable to Dell.

However, when Compaq took over DEC it wasn't long before the
resistance to buying Dells crumbled. Dell hadn't gotten any
better - except at marketing - but Compaq just couldn't hold a
candle to the quality of the hardware and support we had gotten
used to from DEC. I think Compaq was still better than Dell for
the first few years after they took over DEC, but they pissed us
off royally by not even attempting to reach the quality standards
for hardware and support that we had been taking for granted
from DEC.

 

[George Macdonald]

George, every PC World "quality" survey shows Dell at the top and HPaq
and whoever the third competitor is (Gateway??) firmly in the pits.
If the PC World survey is right, who else's product would you expect
to see at Govt offices, or private offices for that matter? People
aren't stupid, and Dell's market share grows and grows and is still
growing.

Well at that size, I would not give one company all of my business for a
start - there's no need to... one of the IT fallacies.

As for surveys, I don't know what to make of them and I'm not sure which
one you're referring to - this fairly recent one
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,118514,pg,3,00.asp puts
EMachines in first place and Dell in 5th.

From my personal POV we seem to agree - I have zero interest in having one
of Intel's current crop of space heaters aywhere near me.

I am _not_ a fan of Dell's product, because I detest hot-running
desktop CPUs. I have two desktops; they both use 90nm AMD chips. I
use (to Robert Redelheimer's disgust) integrated video to keep heat
down in my cases.

I'm not sure the integrated video buys you a lot of heat credits - add-in
cards can be had which do not tax a modern case for heat exhaust. The 90nm
CPUs are certainly not going to be a source of trouble either. I think
Robert's main comlaint was to do with running video refresh cycles across
the main memory and HT interface, which does seem a bit daft. Does your
system have a local frame buffer in, or hanging off, the integrated video
controller?

But Dell's business plan is working very well indeed. Dell
stockholders are _very_ satisfied. I'm an unabashed fan of that
business plan, if not it's product.

We've been over this before but I don't see what in partcular there is to
like... or dislike. Like a lot of current business plans it's founded on
short-term thinking and shakey foundations - no need to delve into details
but it's simply not sustainable... and it could be self-destructive.

 

[George Macdonald]

With sufficient money I'm sure that AMD could find themselves enough
competent engineers with expertise in this area, particularly if they
have the FIA helping do a bit of scouting for them. Now, mind you,
it's not entirely clear from a little press release just who did what
work, but it does certainly indicate that AMD was involved as more
than just a computer supplier.

I just realized that Web site is Bernie's place so hard to get anything
beyond PR. I just don't see AMD employing expert racing CFD people for
that one area of expertise... and I'm pretty sure that in-house expertise
is what Max is after... IOW people who can "credibly" refute claims by
teams that new regs are impractical. FIA/Max is clearly moving towards a
spec racing series, much in the same framework as NASCAR.

I'll try to see if I can get better info but my bet is that AMD donated the
hardware and provided the liason to suitable software providers; FIA picked
up the guys to work it, either as employees or, possibly, as a
sub-contracted job. This is a highly specialised field which can take
years to get the hang of and learn all the "tricks".

 

[George Macdonald]

No surprising at all, who else are they going to use? HP? Well, ok,
some departments definitely do use HP systems, but that entails a
whole other set of potential problems. They definitely aren't going
to be using IBM/Lenovo systems now that it's a Chinese company. Who
else is left? Gateway/eMachines? Apple?!

Chinese... schminese! What the hell's the difference? Oh yeah Dell is
going to provide a bunch of low-pay jobs in N. Carolina... b-b-but isn't
that also where Lenovo's U.S. operations, with high-pay jobs, is based?
When you look at the content of the systems, it's all Chinese mfr anyway.

 

[George Macdonald]

I was wondering, "What's in it for AMD?" with regards to doing
(or paying for) work for a sport more boring than watching paint dry.

That's a highly personal POV. Is it more boring than err, hockey,
baseball, cricket, football of any of its genres, or any other sport?

And then I started wondering if this is all just a test bed for
compilers, engineering software, etc. - things that have the
potential to eventually lead to profitable things.

The software already exists from any of the usual CAD/CFD suppliers... in
32-bit and AMD64 versions.

I can't, however, fathom why AMD would buy advertising on race
cars or on the track-side billboards. I have difficulty
imagining that the kind of people who sit at home watching cars
go round and round in circles are the kind of people AMD thinks
they can sell processors to. Now if AMD was in the beef jerky,
beer, or gun industry ...

This is F1, not NASCAR... though AMD has hooked up with NASCAR too. F1 has
the largest global TV audience of any sport, with the sole exception of the
World Cup which only happens once every 4 years. Many of the people who
watch F1 are interested in the technology behind it, in all its many
facets. As for NASCAR, had you missed the fact of its huge current
success, which goes far beyond the redneck crowd? It dwarfs any other U.S.
sport in spectator/viewer numbers, though it's not to my taste.

I think AMD's interest here is well illustrated by Intel's fury at being
on-upped by AMD? From another angle, why do you think tobacco so loved to
display its logos on racing cars of all genres?