may the force be with you

Slashdot | Google Earth Launching For Free: "Tuesday June 28, @02:23PM
'Google launches Keyhole 3 today, rebranded Google Earth, and are dumping the subscription rate (except for a $20/year 'plus' versions with prettier pictures) available soon at earth.google.com. The program lets you fly around a 3D globe, with overhead satellite photos, tilted 45-degree photos, 3D rendered buildings, and overlays that display everything from roads to hotels to bike routes. I have a lot of info and screenshots at InsideGoogle, and Search Engine Watch has a big writeup. With yesterday's Google Video release, this is shaping up to be a major week for the search giant.'"

Slashdot | The Lawsuit of the Rings: "Tuesday June 28, @11:31AM
'The New York Times' Ross Johnson reports that Lord of the Rings trilogy director, Peter Jackson, is suing New Line Cinemas for underpaying him by as much as $100 millon. The lawsuit filed Feb. 28 alleges that New Line committed fraud. Jackson 'reportedly receives about 20 percent of the gross revenue realized by New Line for the trilogy, minus expenses such as taxes.' Jackson's lawyer confirmed that of the more than $4 billion that New Line collected from revenues, merchandise and licensing, Jackson has received 'almost $200 million to date from New Line for the trilogy.' If the opening line doesn't make you want to read the article, I don't know what will: 'What if Frodo Baggins, instead of confronting the evil empire in 'The Lord of the Rings,' just got himself a lawyer and sued?''"

Tuesday, June 28 2005 @ 04:38 AM EDT
AMD has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel in US District Court for the District of Delaware. They allege in their complaint that "for over a decade, Intel has unlawfully maintained its monopoly by engaging in a relentless, worldwide campaign to coerce customers to refrain from dealing with AMD." They say that in the past several years, Intel's conduct has become "increasingly egregious" as AMD "has achieved technological leadership in critical aspects of the microprocessor architechture."

There will be an audio conference call at noon ET for analysts and the press. It will be available for 10 days thereafter on their website, if you use RealPlayer or Microsoft MediaPlayer. Speaking of monopolies. Here's an Open Letter from Hector Ruiz, AMD Chairman, President and CEO, and you can download the complaint [PDF] from that same page.

The press release says the European Commission "has stated that it is pursuing an investigation against Intel for similar possible antitrust violations" and is cooperating with the Japanese authorities, whose Fair Trade Commission of Japan (JFTC) recently ruled that Intel has "abused its monopoly power to exclude fair and open competition, violating Section 3 of Japan's Antimonopoly Act."

Here's the meat of the press release.

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AMD FILES ANTITRUST COMPLAINT AGAINST INTEL IN U.S. FEDERAL DISTRICT COURT

Complaint Details Worldwide Coercion of Computer-Makers, System-Builders, Distributors and Retailers from Dealing with AMD
Intel's Illegal Acts Inflate Computer Prices and Limit Choices for Businesses and Consumers -

SUNNYVALE, CA - June 28, 2005 - AMD (NYSE: AMD) announced today that it filed an antitrust complaint against Intel Corporation ("Intel") yesterday in U.S. federal district court for the district of Delaware under Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, Sections 4 and 16 of the Clayton Act, and the California Business and Professions Code. The 48-page complaint explains in detail how Intel has unlawfully maintained its monopoly in the x86 microprocessor market by engaging in worldwide coercion of customers from dealing with AMD. It identifies 38 companies that have been victims of coercion by Intel - including large scale computer-makers, small system-builders, wholesale distributors, and retailers, through seven types of illegality across three continents.

"Everywhere in the world, customers deserve freedom of choice and the benefits of innovation - and these are being stolen away in the microprocessor market," said Hector Ruiz, AMD chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer. "Whether through higher prices from monopoly profits, fewer choices in the marketplace or barriers to innovation - people from Osaka to Frankfurt to Chicago pay the price in cash every day for Intel's monopoly abuses."

x86 microprocessors run the Microsoft Windows(r), Solaris and Linux families of operating systems. Even Apple(r), a pioneer of the PC and one of the industry's enduring innovators, announced that it would switch exclusively to x86 processors to run Mac OS(r) software beginning in 2006. Intel's share of this critical market currently counts for about 80 percent of worldwide sales by unit volume and 90 percent by revenue, giving it entrenched monopoly ownership and super-dominant market power.

This litigation follows a recent ruling from the Fair Trade Commission of Japan (JFTC), which found that Intel abused its monopoly power to exclude fair and open competition, violating Section 3 of Japan's Antimonopoly Act. These findings reveal that Intel deliberately engaged in illegal business practices to stop AMD's increasing market share by imposing limitations on Japanese PC manufacturers. Intel did not contest these charges.

The European Commission has stated that it is pursuing an investigation against Intel for similar possible antitrust violations and is cooperating with the Japanese authorities.

"You don't have to take our word for it when it comes to Intel's abuses; the Japanese government condemned Intel for its exclusionary and illegal misconduct," said Thomas M. McCoy, AMD executive vice president, legal affairs and chief administrative officer. "We encourage regulators around the world to take a close look at the market failure and consumer harm Intel's business practices are causing in their nations. Intel maintains illegal monopoly profits at the expense of consumers and computer manufacturers, whose margins are razor thin. Now is the time for consumers and the industry worldwide to break free from the abusive Intel monopoly."

The 48-page complaint, drafted after an intensive investigation by AMD's lead outside counsel, Charles P. Diamond of O'Melveny & Myers LLP, details numerous examples of what Diamond describes as "a pervasive, global scheme to coerce Intel customers from freely dealing with AMD to the detriment of customers and consumers worldwide." According to the complaint, Intel has unlawfully maintained its monopoly by, among other things:

*Forcing major customers such as Dell, Sony, Toshiba, Gateway, and Hitachi into Intel-exclusive deals in return for outright cash payments, discriminatory pricing or marketing subsidies conditioned on the exclusion of AMD;

*According to industry reports, and as confirmed by the JFTC in Japan, Intel has paid Dell and Toshiba huge sums not to do business with AMD.

*Intel paid Sony millions for exclusivity. AMD's share of Sony's business went from 23 percent in '02 to 8% in '03, to 0%, where it remains today.

*Forcing other major customers such as NEC, Acer, and Fujitsu into partial exclusivity agreements by conditioning rebates, allowances and market development funds (MDF) on customers' agreement to severely limit or forego entirely purchases from AMD;

*Intel paid NEC several million dollars for caps on NEC's purchases from AMD. Those caps assured Intel at least 90% of NEC's business in Japan and imposed a worldwide cap on the amount of AMD business NEC could do.

*Establishing a system of discriminatory and retroactive incentives triggered by purchases at such high levels as to have the intended effect of denying customers the freedom to purchase any significant volume of processors from AMD;

When AMD succeeded in getting on the HP retail roadmap for mobile computers, and its products sold well, Intel responded by withholding HP's fourth quarter 2004 rebate check and refusing to waive HP's failure to achieve its targeted rebate goal; it allowed HP to make up the shortfall in succeeding quarters by promising Intel at least 90% of HP's mainstream retail business.

*Threatening retaliation against customers for introducing AMD computer platforms, particularly in strategic market segments such as commercial desktop;

*Then-Compaq CEO Michael Capellas said in 2000 that because of the volume of business given to AMD, Intel withheld delivery of critical server chips. Saying "he had a gun to his head," he told AMD he had to stop buying.

*According to Gateway executives, their company has paid a high price for even its limited AMD dealings. They claim that Intel has "beaten them into 'guacamole'" in retaliation.

*Establishing and enforcing quotas among key retailers such as Best Buy and Circuit City, effectively requiring them to stock overwhelmingly or exclusively, Intel computers, artificially limiting consumer choice;

*AMD has been entirely shut out from Media Markt, Europe's largest computer retailer, which accounts for 35 percent of Germany's retail sales.

*Office Depot declined to stock AMD-powered notebooks regardless of the amount of financial support AMD offered, citing the risk of retaliation.

*Forcing PC makers and tech partners to boycott AMD product launches or promotions;

*Then-Intel CEO Craig Barrett threatened Acer's Chairman with "severe consequences" for supporting the AMD Athlon 64(tm) launch. This coincided with an unexplained delay by Intel in providing $15-20M in market development funds owed to Acer. Acer withdrew from the launch in September 2003.

*Abusing its market power by forcing on the industry technical standards and products that have as their main purpose the handicapping of AMD in the marketplace.

*Intel denied AMD access to the highest level of membership for the Advanced DRAM technology consortium to limit AMD's participation in critical industry standard decisions that would affect its business.

*Intel designed its compilers, which translate software programs into machine-readable language, to degrade a program's performance if operated on a computer powered by an AMD microprocessor.

source: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050628043815368

Slashdot | AMD Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Intel: "Tuesday June 28, @09:53AM
'As reported on GrokLaw, AMD has just filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel. AMD states in its press release that the complaint details '... how Intel has unlawfully maintained its monopoly in the x86 microprocessor market by engaging in worldwide coercion of customers from dealing with AMD. It identifies 38 companies that have been victims of coercion by Intel - including large scale computer-makers, small system-builders, wholesale distributors, and retailers, through seven types of illegality across three continents.''"

Slashdot | T-Engine Enables Ubiquitous Computing: "Tuesday June 28, @08:13AM
'A Japanese-government sponsored research consortium that include five chip makers and 17 other Japanese high-tech firms, has announced that the T-Engine, a ubiquitous computing platform is ready for prime time. The engine is featured in a IEEE Computer Society article (PDF) and discussed more on Windley's Technometria. The system is based on the iTron real-time OS and includes multiple boards for different applications.'

"

Space Ring Could Shade Earth and Stop Global Warming By Robert Roy Britt Senior Writer posted: 27 June 2005 02:14 pm ET

A wild idea to combat global warming suggests creating an artificial ring of small particles or spacecrafts around Earth to shade the tropics and moderate climate extremes. There would be side effects, proponents admit. An effective sunlight-scattering particle ring would illuminate our night sky as much as the full Moon, for example. And the price tag would knock the socks off even a big-budget agency like NASA: $6 trillion to $200 trillion for the particle approach. Deploying tiny spacecraft would come at a relative bargain: a mere $500 billion tops. But the idea, detailed today in the online version of the journal Acta Astronautica, illustrates that climate change can be battled with new technologies, according to one scientist not involved in the new work. Mimic a volcano All scientists agree that Earth gets warmer and colder across the eons. A delicate and ever-changing balance between solar radiation, cloud cover, and heat-trapping greenhouse gases controls long-term swings from ice ages to warmer conditions like today. Earth's Atmosphere An illustration of the ring of particles or spacecraft casting a shadow on equatorial Earth. To keep the particles in place, gravitationally significant shepherding spacecraft might be employed. They would herd the particle much like small moons keep Saturns rings in place. Credit: Star Technology and Research, Inc. Those who are often called experts admit to glaring gaps in their knowledge of how all this works. A study last month revealed that scientists can't pin down one of the most critical keys: how much sunlight our planet absorbs versus how much is reflected back into space. Nonetheless, most scientists think our climate has warmed significantly over the past century and will grow warmer over the next hundred years. Various studies claim the planet is destined to warm by anywhere from 1 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit over the next few centuries. Seas will rise dramatically, the scenario goes, inundating coastal cities. But another group of scientists argue that the temperature data supporting a warming planet is not firm and that projections, based on computer modeling, might be wildly off the mark. Either way, perhaps our fate is more in our hands than we might have imagined. "Reducing solar insolation by 1.6 percent should overcome a 1.75 K [3 degrees Fahrenheit] temperature rise," contends a group led by Jerome Pearson, president of Star Technology and Research, Inc. "This might be accomplished by a variety of terrestrial or space systems." The power of scattering sunlight has been illustrated naturally, the scientists note. Volcanic eruptions, such as that of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991, pumped aerosols into the atmosphere and cooled the global climate by about a degree. Other researchers have suggested such schemes as adding metallic dust to smoke stacks, to flood the atmosphere and reflect more sunlight back into space. In the newly outlined approach, reflective particles might come from the mining of Earth, the Moon or asteroids. They'd be put into orbit around the equator. Alternately, tiny micro-spacecraft could be deployed with reflective umbrellas. A ring created by a batch of either "shades the tropics primarily, providing maximum effectiveness in cooling the warmest parts of our planet," the scientists write. An early version of their idea was presented but not widely noticed in 2002. Eccentric but reassuring Those researchers who don't buy the argument that global warming is occurring at any significant rate nor that humans are largely to blame may warm up quickly to the new idea. Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK, tracks climate research and the resulting media coverage. He's among the small but vocal group that goes against mainstream thought on the topic of global warming. "I don't think that the modest warming trend we are currently experiencing poses any significant or long-term threat," Peiser told LiveScience. "Nevertheless, what the paper does show quite impressively is that our hyper-complex civilization is theoretically and technologically capable of dealing with any significant climate change we may potentially face in the future." Peiser also notes that the Kyoto Protocol, a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, is estimated to cost the world economy some $150 billion a year. He also sees a broader rationale for supporting the seemingly bizarre manner of managing Earth's temperature budget. "I believe that this mindset, despite its apparent eccentricity, is actually rather reassuring," Peiser said. "It provides concerned people with ample evidence of the extraordinary human ingenuity that, as so often in the past, has helped to overcome many predicaments that were regarded as impenetrable in previous times." He also sees an ultimate big-picture reasoning to look favorably on the notion of controlling Earth's climate. "Whatever the cost and regardless of whether there is any major risk due to global warming," Peiser said, "it would appear to me that such a space-based infrastructure will evolve sooner or later, thus forming additional stepping stones of our emerging migration towards outer space." source: http://www.livescience.com/technology/050627_warming_solution.html