NVIDIA-VIA Courtship

I wondered about this aloud, several months ago, here. Now it seems that others have heard rumours of the same. To me, it makes perfect strategic sense. NVIDIA is in a position of strength and can easily afford to purchase VIA outright. But most importantly, NVIDIA needs VIA in order to survive the coming storm. I shall endeavour to explain.

Let's first talk about NVIDIA, the undisputed Graphzilla of graphics. It bludgeons it's competitors in the desktop computing market, where performance is king. It's main rival is ATI, which is not doing as well as it should in the desktop market but supplies graphics to two of the gaming consoles. ATI has also been recently sold to AMD, which was when I commented that NVIDIA needed to look at VIA.

Most people often forget VIA, who is presently running behind everyone else, in both graphics (nvidia/ati/intel) processors and x86 (intel/amd) microprocessors. It caters mainly to a niche market of low power computing enthusiasts with it's products. However, it has something that NVIDIA needs desperately, a grey license to manufacture x86 microprocessors. This is important because of the changing technology landscape.

In the computer world, we have only begun to enter the realm of multi-core computing. No matter how cool you thought your dual-core processor is, you ain't seen nothing yet. However, the engineering world is fairly evenly split between two camps: homogenous vs heterogenous core camps. Personally, I'm rooting for the heterogenous camp, for obvious reasons.

The software people tend to favour a multi-core computer made of the same homogenous computing cores because it simplifies software programming models when you only need to think of a single type of core. The hardware people tend to favour the a multi-core computer made up of different heterogenous computing cores that are each specialised to a specific function because it is a better allocation of resources.

In the case of desktop computing, both Intel and AMD have announced similar technology initiatives. Both of them have the capability to integrate the general purpose capabilities of their x86 microprocessors with the floating-point (think scientific and multimedia) calculation capabilities of their graphics processors. Intel has Larrabee while AMD has Fusion. This means that unless NVIDIA and VIA come together, they would both be innovated into extinction by future Intel/AMD products.

When NVIDIA purchases VIA, they will have the necessary rights to come up with their own heterogenous processors, with the capability of running standard x86 software and high powered acceleration for multimedia and scientific computing purposes. Remembering that NVIDIA had recently purchased Ageia (who produces physics processors), they could do one better and integrate that too, turning their processors into an unrivaled computing powerhouse.

Intel would be forced to answer them, by integrating some physics acceleration software technology through it's recent purchase of Havoc. AMD does not have any answer readily available and there aren't any other physics accelerators left to buy. However, I would not count AMD out yet, as they have a top-notch engineering team that has shown it's ability to come up with market leading technologies against giants.

The only loser in this deal would be VIA. VIA has other businesses (chipset/graphics) that overlap with NVIDIA's own. So, after the takeover, it is likely that these divisions will be integrated, which is euphemism for scrapped. The engineers working there would be wise to start updating their CVs and sending them out.

Personally, I want to see this deal go through because it would see the desktop computing market turn into a 3 horse race. This increased competition will see crazy innovation on their products. It would also see better integration of platforms as each company will have it's own capabilities to produce processor, chipset and graphics accelerators, in house. So, this will mean better products for the consumer.

But on the other hand, I can see how this whole deal can lead to technology segmentation and lockdown. As the desktop computing market divides into 3 distinctly non-compatible camps, consumers would not be able to pick and choose their products. They would only be able to choose the brand and would have to stick with it. But this can be overcome if the consumers vote loud enough that they would like to mix-match products.

Prefect Democracy

I've not been writing about technology for a while, so I thought that I should do that. However, seeing that I'm still a bit swept up by the election results in Malaysia, I thought that I'd do an entry on technology and politics. I've recently read The Prefect, by Alastair Reynolds. It's SciFi but it had an interesting idea on democracy in action, in the future, which I'd like to explore here.

The story in the book centred around a society, which was built around democracy. The job of a Prefect was to ensure that the voting system throughout the system, which covered many thousands of habitats, was fair and not tampered with. The book begins with them discovering a flaw in the system and the chaos that ensued later. But what is interesting is the concept of a weighted vote.

The idea that caught my attention was the concept of a weighted vote. In the story, the citizens voted on almost every decision. Actions are then taken based on the outcome. It is a crime to deny a person the right to vote, but people who made accurate judgements and whose decisions brought a positive result, are rewarded with a higher voting weight.

This idea sounded good to me, as it would force voters to make informed judgements as random votes would just cause their voices to be filtered by the system as noise. So, I was just wondering if it was feasible to implement such a system from a technical point of view. And from a pure technology perspective, the different bits are already in place.

Voter Anonymity
One very important aspect of democracy is the idea of voter anonymity. This seems to contradict the idea of assigning weights to individual voters. The two can be reconciled by using hash functions, which are one-way transformations. A hash function is often used to store passwords in databases because, while it is possible to verify a password against it's hash, it is not technically feasible to reconstruct the password from it's hash. So, we can use it to check a voter against their weights but not be able to identify a specific voter from their weights.

Voter Verification
Another seemingly impossible task is voter verification. Not only do the voters need anonymity, their votes need to be verified to prevent phantom voters from voting. This can be done by using a shared secret between the voter and the core computer system, such as a PIN or secret password. And just like present, the voters would be required to periodically change their passwords to prevent anyone from stealing it. Or a second channel authentication could be used to verify the vote.

Vote Secrecy
Each vote is considered a secret. So, public key infrastructure can be used to protect an individual's vote from being intercepted by anyone, while in transit. It is still possible to tamper with the message and spoil the vote, but that flaw can be policed using normal laws. The only party that will ever be privy to the vote, is the computer system that receives the vote. If hashing is done the moment a vote is received and verified, the vote remains a secret to the rest of the core system.

Voter Cost
This leads us to the ultimate cost of the system. It goes without saying that the core will need to be policed and reviewed openly by everyone, just like how it is done with open source software. Any voter who wishes to check the system, can feasibly learn how to do so. The cost of voting itself, is not an issue as voters could use any technology to vote, depending on whatever is convenient at the time, such as mobile phones. In the story, voters have got implants in their brains and vote just by thinking about it. The network itself is divorced from the vote as it's job is merely to ensure transportation integrity.

Voter Knowledge
Anyone who wishes to cast a vote would need to cast it wisely. Hence, the cost of disseminating information is not an issue either, as voters who are too lazy to find out about the issue will ultimately end up being weighted into nothingness. So, as long as the Internet is around, and everyone is given the opportunity to access that information, that will not be a problem.

So, feasibly, such a system can be implemented from a technical viewpoint. Whether it's socially or politically viable is beside the point. Obviously, the weights must not be assigned linearly. Even fools deserved to be heard, although their views may only garner a smaller weight. In the story, every average person has a weight of 1.0 and wise voters are people who average above 1.25 points. There a a reverent few who have 2.0 to 3.0 weights and are considered people with prescient abilities.

Funnily, in the story, there is a whole habitat whose chief source of income is their vote. Most of the residents there have a higher than average voting weight. So, lobbyist will pay money to have their cases heard by the people of this habitat. Money politics doesn't play a role because it would be impossible to buy the votes. If the people of this habitat voted by who pays them more, they would very quickly lose their weights.

Electronic Arts vs Take-Two Interactive

I had originally thought of blogging about another major technology buyout, between NVidia and Ageia, but I had decided against it as it would be of very little interest to anyone who was not in the chip design business. From a business standpoint, it was a fairly straightforward buyout of a small and ailing company with a niche product that can complement NV products. Then today, I heard of EA offering $2.0 billion for Take-Two Interactive (T2). Now, that's interesting news.

In this brewing battle, EA is the 800 pound gorilla. It is unquestionably the largest third party video game publisher in the world. EA has always been synonymous with sports video games. In recent years, EA has also become infamous for it's less than optimal working conditions. Even with burgeoning profits, it has always been purely profit driven, which is what every large corporation does.

As the undisputed behemoth of gaming software, it has always expanded by acquisition. Things were not always rosy in EA's past. However, with several strategic takeovers in the 90s, it managed to build itself into a video gaming powerhouse. Some of their better known purchases are Maxis (makers of SimCity and all things Sim), Westwood (the people who introduced the whole world to real-time strategy), Bullfrog (who took strategy games to a whole new level), Origin (makers of the hugely successful Ultima series), and Bioware (exclusive makers of all AD&D based games). However, even with it's line up of successful game franchises, it has surprisingly, not crossed swords with T2. So, a buyout of T2 would only enrich EA's portfolio of games.

The story goes that EA made an offer of a 50% premium on the present T2 stock price. They expressed this offer through a private letter to the board chairman of T2. The board very quickly rejected such an offer. EA has generally had a successful history of takeovers. But they have never had to court someone of T2's calibre in the past. They tended to buy up companies as they were falling behind, rather than to make an offer for a company that is well in it's prime.

T2 is most famous for breaking new ground in video games. It's most famous franchise is the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) video game series of questionable content. When it came out, GTA was a welcome change to the lack-lustre video game market that seemed to have run out of new ideas, and became a cult-phenomenon. GTA was by no means the first video game featuring senseless violence. But it did it in such an open-ended way that made senseless violence a choice for which users could make. And it didn't stop there.

It also broke new ground in video game litigation. It has Jack Thompson to thank for it becoming infamously embroiled in the Hot-Coffee scandal. In GTA3, some members of the public had modified the game to include a scenario where the player could go home with his girlfriend for somewhat more than just coffee. Where games were previously only suggestive in what went on behind closed doors, developments in graphics technology allowed gamers to observe a fairly graphic representation of developments. Needless to say, it cemented the GTA series in the minds of gamers everywhere and the case probably helped the game fly off the store shelves.

The timing for this offer could not be better. EA was probably hoping to catch T2 sleeping and snap up a cheap deal. The 50% premium that EA had offered would seem very generous to most people. However, I can clearly understand how the T2 board would reject such an offer immediately. GTA4 is going to be released in a couple of months' time. If initial impressions are anything to go by, GTA4 will be a runaway success. T2 is expected to reap a huge profit off the next instalment of the franchise. So, if any of the T2 shareholders are smart, they will hold-out for a few more months to force EA to raise it's offer.

Personally, I don't really want to see this buyout succeed. As well as EA delivers value for it's shareholders, it is a boring company. They are like the Hollywood of video games. They are very good at churning out more of the same old, same old. However, the innovation has mainly come from their external acquisitions. It can be said that the only third party publisher that can possibly compete with them is T2. So, this buyout will be to eliminate competition and I'm not a fan of monopolies.

Unlike the Microsoft v Yahoo case. I believe that if this buyout fails, both companies will just continue to progress on their own. The video gaming industry is sufficiently cut-throat that it would be madness to attempt a battle of attrition. A slight misstep could result in both companies crashing out spectacularly. There really isn't anything exciting if the takeover works. The combined entity would just be big and boring.

Microsoft vs Yahoo

Few people outside of technology & business circles may have heard about this. But there is a very big battle brewing in the world of online technology. Online giants Microsoft and Yahoo are now in a fight for each others' survival. At least, that is the way that I see the thing shaping up.

The online world is essentially dominated by three corporate giants: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Of these three, only Microsoft has any substantial business interests in the real world, such as it's desktop OS systems and Xbox gaming systems. But in recent years, it has faced increasing challenges from many sides.

In the gaming console market, it has yet to achieve any success in dethroning Sony, even after spending hundreds of millions in marketing dollars and losing almost as much by under pricing it's console. It's initial lead has already been taken away by the little Wii, which has been flying off the shelves and been sold at a profit from the very beginning. Now that the PS3 is breaking even and Blu-Ray becoming the de-facto standard for hi-definition discs, the Sony behemoth is expected to maintain it's domination of the console market worldwide.

In the software market, it is beginning to cave to the onslaught of open source software. It doesn't help either, when it's two online rivals are strong proponents of Open Source. Vista has driven many people to try out alternative operating systems such as Linux and OSX. People are starting to wake up to the fact that there are actually alternatives to Microsoft products that deliver better solutions at a fraction of the cost. This has driven Tier 1 PC vendors such as HP and Dell to start offering alternative OSes with new computers. In fact, many Asian vendors such as Acer and Asus are beginning to deliver products directly bundled with their own customised Linux OS. Microsoft's tight grip on the PC market is lost.

It's venture into the mobile devices market has not met much success either. Although it has essentially defeated Palm in becoming the predominant software system on mobile devices, it is again facing increasing competition from Linux. Manufacturers such as Motorola are beginning to embrace Linux in their mobile phones and Nokia uses Symbian exclusively. In fact, Google has declared war on this front as well, with their recent entry of the Linux-based Android platform, which is going to be both a hardware and software platform, done right, for mobile devices.

It's online ventures have never had as much success as those of Yahoo or Google. In almost every online service category, it is very much running in third place. I think that it's only saving grace is MSN messenger. And with the world increasingly going online and With the vast potential of online marketing dollars at stake, it cannot lose this war if it is to continue surviving. Hence, it's unsolicited offer for Yahoo.

In fact, rumours of a merger have been circulating around for years. So, when Microsoft announced it's unsolicited offer for Yahoo of $45 billion, no one was really surprised by the move. And when Yahoo formally rejected the offer, even less people were surprised by it. Therefore, this fight is shaping up to be an interesting case study on hostile acquisitions for several reasons. And I'll try to explain some of it.

Let's start from the top, the board of directors. Jerry Yang, had issued a public email on the reasons for rejecting the offer. In it, he essentially suggests that the offer from Microsoft is a tad insulting. He extols the various virtues of Yahoo and how they are well positioned to capture the future. In particular, he points out that although Yahoo is only worth $45 billion now, it is expected to grow to $75 billion by 2010. So, it is obvious that if Microsoft will need to raise it's offer if it were to acquire Yahoo.

However, Yahoo's largest shareholders aren't too happy with the idea of asking Microsoft to cough up more money. These same shareholders have got more money invested in Microsoft than in Yahoo. You can expect them to play an important role in making sure that this deal goes through. They all know that Microsoft is in trouble and it would be in their interests to ensure the survival of both companies as a unified entity. If Microsoft fails in this acquisition, it's only other alternative is a war of attrition that these shareholders would not want to see.

There is also a last group, often overlooked, that are against the proposed acquisition: the engineers working there. Most of the people working at Yahoo could've just as easily worked at Microsoft. Many of them chose not to for personal and cultural reasons. You'd be surprised at how important these soft values are in geekdom. Some have openly come out to say that they would rather quit than to work for the enemy. Some have threatened to move en-mass over to Google. Although these people don't really have much authority when it comes to major strategic decisions, they were acknowledged in Jerry Yang's email and would probably feature in any final decision. A technology company is worthless without it's engineers.

Another aspect that many business people will overlook is the technical incompatibilities of the two giants. Yahoo is a fairly strong use of Linux and a contributor to Open Source, the very anti-thesis of Microsoft's businesses. Therefore, running the products side-by-side would not even be an option for Microsoft. One of the first things it will need to do is to replace the very guts of what makes Yahoo turn, from the inside out. Considering the size of Yahoo's online services, this is not going to be an easy transition. Even from a purely technical standpoint, it is going to cost them more money to fully integrate the products.

However, Microsoft's business strategy to date, can be described as embrace, extend and exterminate. Therefore, it is likely that Microsoft's plan is to just rip out every Yahoo product and replace it with it's Microsoft equivalent. But, this would be technological suicide. The acquisition would lose value almost overnight as people migrate away. There is value in Yahoo's services. That is the reason why people didn't use the Microsoft alternatives in the first place. It's not for the lack of trying on Microsoft's part.

It would be interesting to watch what Microsoft does next. For one thing, it will need to do borrow money. As large as it's war chest is (once rumoured to be more than $50 billion), it would not be enough to force Yahoo's hand, and survive the ensuing battle with Google. I would also be interested to see how Google responds to the acquisition. It has remained silent thus far. I do believe that instead of expansion, it would shore up it's defences and work on strengthening it's own product lines.

I believe that this acquisition will happen. Ballmer is not the kind of person to give up. You can be sure that Microsoft will do all in it's power to force an acquisition through. As I had said at the beginning, this is a fight for survival for the both of them. If it falls through, this will degenerate into an all out war of attrition. Microsoft has far more experience fighting in the trenches than Yahoo does and Microsoft does not fight fair. All that Yahoo can do is run.

This is ROFLOL!

I love PhDComics. I recommend anyone planning on entering graduate school to read it. It's friggin' hilarious! Today's comic made me laugh so hard. Alright, it might be a tad geeky for normal people to understand, but it's soooo funny. To the engineers among you, I hope that you enjoy the joke (unless of course you are an undergrad, in which case the joke's on you!).

*** image from phdcomics.com .. used without permission but i assume that it should be okay, as the author allows sharing the comics through other services. ***

Us vs US

The DAP just released a campaign video. I watched it and felt kind of let down by the quality (rather, the lack of).

1. The voice over was weak. Granted, it's Uncle Kit's voice but his voice is not suitable for ads. It's probably gone hoarse from shouting too much in parliament. They should really have just done away with it entirely if they couldn't get professional voice work done.
2. The use of the "swoosh" is questionable. I doubt that Nike would throw a fuss about this. But still I'm pretty sure that it's a trademark. They really shouldn't blatantly steal a logo and modify it's slogan. It smacks of childishness. Use the rocket, it's a good logo.
   
3. The (mis)use of old fat ladies running a relay race through the street. If you're going to make someone run on camera, at least find someone fit enough for the job. I'm not sure I'd trust these old ladies enough to pass them my baton.
4. Using a kid to run the last leg of the race. Obviously, this was meant to symbolise hope for the future. However, it's a cheap sell.
   
5. Oops! Uncle Kit gave us the finger when he accepted the baton. I guess that he didn't learn how to receive a baton correctly in school. The cameraman should have caught onto that. It's so glaring.
   

The video was obviously a budget production. Now, contrast it with this campaign video from the other side of the world. A world of difference.



PS: I know that sticking up the video here is just helping the DAP spread their video. But I just felt that I needed to comment on it. Commenting on the video without context isn't quite right.

Communications Blackout

Last week, it emerged that three (some say four) submarine cables that ferry the Internet around the world had been cut, over just as many days.

Having one cable cut isn't usually very interesting news. Yes, it would cost a bundle of money to fix it, but it isn't really news worthy as the Internet was designed to withstand exactly this sort of problem. Packets may take longer to travel around the world, but they will still get there.

But, having three cables lost one day after the other, is very mysterious indeed. It was initially attribute to some stupid captain of a random ship who might have forgotten to raise her anchor. A big ship dragging it's anchor across one of these cables is the most obvious way to cut these cables. It has happened before.

However, recent reports have emerged from the Egyptian Ministry of Communications, which say that this is an unlikely scenario. Analysis of video surveillance of the shipping lanes around the area show that no ships were in the vicinity when the cables were cut. Also, the cables are a designated no-go zone, ruling out any commercial ship as the possible perpetrator of such stupidity.

As a result of this massive loss of bandwidth, countries around the region had lost a lot of capacity. Egypt issued a call to all it's citizens to ration their own bandwidth usage and to reduce downloading too much porn movies music unnecessary data. India complained of affects on it's technology business as network connections had to be rerouted.

Amidst all this, one thing that has gone unnoticed by most mainstream media is this: Iran has dropped off the map. Yes, that's right. With the cuts, Iran is no longer connected to the rest of the world, via the Internet. Quoting a /. reader:

Once is accident.
Twice is coincidence.
Thrice is enemy action.

This story will be another conspiracy theorist plum. According to reports, no surface ships were in the vicinity when the cables were cut. There is another kind of ship that could possibly cut these submarine cables, which would not appear on any surveillance as they are designed to evade them. Not many countries operate them, especially anywhere near the middle east..

All this reminds me of a scene from Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace, which I shall link to here:


** image from The Times Online **

Buying a Console

I've got a bit more disposable income these days. I'm living in the living room of my house, which has a huge television. Naturally, I have been toying with the idea of getting a game console. However, I know that I won't be playing it all the time. It's only going to be there for that irregular bout of gaming. So, if I were to get a console, it was going to be a pre-owned machine. Spending almost £300 for a machine that I was only going to use once in a while, does not make any sense.

There was a recent sale of a PSX at £12 but I missed the opportunity to get it. So, I looked at some other second generation consoles instead. After browsing the local game store, I've noticed that the cheapest one I could find was the GameCube. The standard cube is going for only £25. This seemed very affordable.

Alrite, some of you people will think that the PS2 is pants. It was the most popular second generation console. The GameCube was the second. I don't consider the original Xbox a console because it was essentially just a stripped down PC and recognising it as a console would mean having to recognise all PCs as consoles too.

Without going into the various details, let's just say that the Cube was not a bad machine. It was arguably a very different machine. As a prelude to the Wii, Nintendo focused on bringing out a good gaming console while Sony focused on splashy multi-media capabilities. The Cube had many exclusive hit games, which were mainly first party titles by Nintendo: Metroid Prime, Zelda, Mario, to name a few. Unfortunately, 3rd party development didn't really catch on and the game library was limited.

This in turn, is also the trouble with pre-owned Cubes. While the consoles were cheap, finding games for it was a different matter altogether. I checked out the pre-owned games section and only found a single shelf of games and most of the good games cost more than £10. Twilight Princess alone costs £35!!! So, building a decent library of games would quickly cost much more than the actual console itself.

But, if I only intend to play a few games on it, I might be able to get away with just four games:

• Metroid Prime
  
• Legend of Zelda
  
• Mario
  
• Animal Crossing

Well, it's just something to consider. Maybe I can consider it as a CNY present for myself. Alright, I just need an excuse.

What do you think?

Anti-Lies

Any sane person will know that the Internet is filled with lies. I used to tell people that they should not believe 9 out of 10 things that they read on the Internet, and they should know that 9 out of the 10 things that they believe, will turn out to be lies. So, be very careful of what you read on the Internet.

People tend to believe anything that is in print. That is why newspapers have always had such a sway on public opinion. If a newspaper claims that a scientist had discovered a way to make pigs fly, most people will believe it without question. Hence, journalists have had to maintain a certain level of integrity, in order to protect the public trust. The Internet has changed all that though.

This new age is filled with strange new words like blogs and wikipedia. Some have dubbed the Internet as the new or alternative media as opposed to legacy and mainstream media. This is a reflection of how people have come to consume media. We are increasingly looking to the Internet as an authoritative source on everything, especially that which the regular media chooses not to report.

As a result, we turn to citizen journalists, who are really just a bunch of regular people like you and me, for the truth. How these people could possibly discern the truth from the spiel that gets spewed out by the establishment, really boggles the mind. In reality, most bloggers just end up writing biased views on what is perceived truth. This concerns me because bloggers have strength in numbers. When a lie gets repeated oft enough, it starts to sound awfully like the truth.

Therefore, I have always been troubled by one simple fact: that the Internet is filled with opposition blogs and anti establishment news sites. I would prefer a more balanced Internet, where I could read views and opinions from both sides of the fence and draw my own conclusions. I have previously suggested that bloggers are fallible. Sadly, the pro-establishment writers don't seem to have a strong presence. They are probably too busy just trying to keep on top of their own biases in print.

So, I applaud our Minister of Energy, Water and Communications, Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik, who has called for the setting up of websites to counter these counter establishment lies. I would go further and even suggest that he start the ball rolling by setting up his own personal blog. He is the Minister of Communications. It doesn't take 15 minutes to set up a blog. He can choose to use any one of the many public and free online services. If he is confused, he should just ask his fellow opposition politicians about which service to use. They have got a wealth of experience in this area.

Personally, I really look forward to reading the anti-lies from our ruling coalition. With some of the jokers that we have in parliament, I'm sure that it will make excellent reading for a dull afternoon.

An anti-lie is the opposite of a lie. It should not be mistaken for, an entirely different creature, truth, which is alien to politics, the progenitor to both lie and anti-lie, where spin is it's highest form.

PS: Maybe our ruling politicians are just afraid of what they may end up saying. They cannot really blame their own blog for misrepresenting what they say or mean, especially when they don't really know what they actually mean to say.

Google in Malaysia

Recently, there have been rumours that Google was looking for a place in Asia to set up their world's largest data centre. Then, two days ago, TheStar reported our PM as saying that Google was planning to set up shop in Malaysia. When I first heard this, I was hesitant to believe this, for several reasons. That's why I didn't blog about it immediately.

All reports indicate that we're in direct competition with India and Vietnam for this Google project. Skilled labour isn't much of an issue as skilled IT workers aren't exactly essential for data centre maintenance. So, regardless of what people may think of our local graduates, they are not a factor. Our PM mentioned that the largest base of Google users in SEA are from Malaysia. But I don't think that this is even a consideration.

Personally, I believe that the decision will ultimately boil down to energy costs. Data centres are notorious guzzlers of electricity. In this respect, we are cheaper than Vietnam. I can't find the numbers for India, but I'm guessing that we are probably cheaper, as we are an O&G producer. So, assuming that the price of electricity does not go up significantly, there is a possibility that we are in serious contention for the project.

But then, there has not been any form of confirmation from Google on this matter. I feel that our PM might have jumped the gun and announced this prematurely. Unless of course he made them some promises behind closed doors to seal the deal, this might just be some feel-good news that we sorely needed before the GE.

Is Google going to benefit the local tech industry? Like every other technopreneur, I pondered on this matter a little. I can see how the initial inflow of $600 million in capital expenditure for laying the physical infrastructure would be useful to the local construction industry. But beyond that, I don't really see any direct benefits. Google wouldn't make a dent on our local unemployment statistics. Neither are they likely to engage local technical partners. However, having a giant like Google, put it's stamp on the MSC will help rejuvenate the ailing project. This is quite possibly the only benefit.

UPDATE@+2: There's now reports that 18 countries are in competition and that Google may be eyeing more than 1 data centre.

Hacktivism

The Internet is a truly amazing piece of technology. It constantly surprises me on the kinds of uses people come up with it. For the modern activist, the Internet would prove to be a very useful tool in bringing people together for a common cause. In the past, people have generally used it as a tool to disseminate information. But most recently, it is being used as a tool for attack.

If you're not familiar with Scientology, it's probably about time you found out about them. Wikipedia is a good place to start. If you prefer to watch a video instead, BBC Panorama did an expose on them a while back. You can find the video here. Watch it.

Anyway, this blog post isn't about them. It's about the interesting phenomenon of online activism, dubbed hacktivism. A group of online activists, calling themselves Anonymous, have come together and declared an online war on the church. This alone, is interesting to observe as they use various methods to attack the church.

1. Declaration of War
   They released an online video declaration on YouTube. If you find the voice-over funny, it's because it was done using a Text-to-Speech translation software. This prevents voice identification and allows the group members to remain anonymous. Also, it gives the group a single voice, regardless of who is speaking. The latter reason would be important, to project a single consistent image in their campaign.
   
2. Information Campaign
   They released a bunch of documents that were claimed to be secret documents. As mentioned in their declaration, their core tactic for taking down the church is to expose the truth. They have also released another video, challenging the main stream media to report the truth. Just like any other war, information is crucial to winning it.
   
3. First Blood
   They drew first blood by launching a series of crippling DDoS attacks on servers of the church. This kind of attack is a typical front-line assault on any online system. It's fairly simple to orchestrate and is particularly effective at taking down web servers. In some countries, this is illegal. However, due to the distributed nature of the attack, it is particularly difficult to police. Some parties have decried this tactic as it isn't very gentlemanly. However, as they have already declared in their video, they will use any tactic that the church has used before. So, it's quid-pro-quo, I guess.
   
4. Base Assault
   This takes the campaign to a whole other level. Know that a purely online campaign would not cripple the church, they are gathering in front of the London branch of the church in a fortnight's time as a show of force. This will be a serious test on the strength of their campaign. I'm tempted to pop down to London with my camera to record this historic event.
   

I'm excited just thinking about what they're going to do next. This is particularly interesting to me as it's the first coordinated hacktivist activity that I've been able to observe. Other activists who wish to take their campaign online, might even learn a thing or two from this campaign. I just hope that they don't turn out to be a bunch of crazies.

UPDATE: Just as I finished writing this blog, I read this: Tom Cruise today announced that the Church of Scientology would be pursuing all means, legal and otherwise, to shut down the Internet group referring to themselves as simply "Anonymous". I guess that the gloves have come off now.

I'm drowning for some Air!

Oh man! How I wish that money wasn't an issue. I so want one of these things! It retails at £1,032 on the student store!! Can you imagine that?! It's fairly cheap for a machine of it's class. I'm in lurv. It's only £878 ex VAT. Maybe I could sneak one out when I leave this place. ooOO!!

Personally, I don't really care about a majority of it's software features as I will dump the MacOSX and install Linux on it instead. However, if you're interested in finding out the details of the new MacBook Air, just watche the vid below.



PS: As you can tell, my brain has gone squishy and I'm reduced to talking like a 10 year old.

And now, for some real drowning.

Beware the Facebook!

I have regularly been asked why I refuse to sign up for facebook. When I first found out about Facebook ages ago, it set off many red flags in my head, and it smelled funny. That was the main reason why I have, since, refused to sign up to facebook and I never will. It was never due to the lack of invites.

There is an article in The Guardian, today, entitled "With Friends Like These...". It's much better researched than my simple gut feeling. So, I'd recommend everyone to give it a read. Actually, please give the entire article a read. It's a fairly long article simply because there are so many reasons on why Facebook is evil and people should avoid it like the plague.

It's now good to know that there are more others like me, out there.

In my book, Facebook is evil.

How to recognise a Code Monkey

I've mentioned several times in my blog, recently, that when hiring someone for a job, companies should value the person, not a piece of paper. Today, I read an interesting blog on how to recognise a good programmer. Although it's main target was programmers, in general, it could be used to apply to any skilled discipline. Through my experience, I'll have to agree with all the points that were raised in the blog. I'd encourage anyone who wishes to be good at anything, to actually read the blog. It's main points are:

1. Passion
   I agree with this. In order to be really good at something, a person needs to be driven by passion. Someone who merely does it for the sake of the job, will never be good at it. I personally believe that passion is the most important ingredient.
   
2. Self taught
   If someone needs to be taught something, they aren't going to get very good at it. In the case of programmers, most of them start really young. I've personally known someone who started programming at 4! So, it's never too young to start learning any skill. It just gives them more time to get good at it.
   
3. Intelligence
   Just because someone may lack certain social skills, doesn't mean that they're stupid. It's important to be able to evaluate intelligence and the only good way to do it is by actually talking to a person about something relevant. None of the small talk crap. Also, no amount of parametric testing will help at all.
   
4. Hidden experiences
   Do not assume that a CV tells everything. Someone who is passionately drive, will have things done for "fun", that don't make it into the CV. In fact, they'd probably have more missing from their CV, than in it. If they had to list everything, it'll probably take 20 pages instead of 2.The CV would just contain the highlights.
5. Variety of expertise
   Their knowledge would not be constrained by anything but their thirst for knowledge. They would also, naturally, have knowledge in other relevant areas. Anyone who claims to only be good at one thing, is probably only good for one thing.
   
6. Formal qualifications
   Degrees and certifications are a completely useless indicator of how good a person is. They're only good for HR to cover their asses. A person who is good at something, will do it not for a degree. Any degree is just dressing.

Although, I've mentioned that we should value a person, not a piece of paper, I'm beginning to have an idea on how difficult it might be to do so. For example, a HR manager will find it difficult to identify who a good programmer when he/she knows nothing about IT. The IT manager might have difficulty doing so too, if he/she was never a good one to begin with.

Although a certification does not tell you how good someone really is, it will at least tell you how bad someone isn't. If they were able to pass the exams, at the very least, they'd know ABC, even if they didn't know XYZ. As a result, people ended up having to rely on a piece of paper to help them out. Certificates ended up being used as a baseline. As a result of this hiring practice, most people end up hiring the baseline.

So, how do we identify a code monkey then? Easy. Put 100 programmers in a room, get the 5 who are good to leave, and the ones that are left are the code monkeys.

Shoot.

Gizmodo are the Meanies

Oh man, this is the meanest thing that people could do at a public expo. Reporters from Gizmodo, went to CES with a sponsored device that is essentially a universal remote that can turn off any TV display. Mayhem ensues as there were more than enough screens to go around at CES, wall after wall of displays.

I personally found the act extremely irresponsible and childish. However, I had a good laugh nonetheless. I'm fairly certain that they'll have their press passes revoked, at least for a while. I hope that none of the sales people lost their jobs because of this stunt.

Note to self: Always tape over the IR port with duct tape. You never know when someone (maybe a competitor) in the audience might have a universal remote and the will to use it to spoil your presentation. This would be a bigger problem with RF devices. Just go full manual, then.

Next-Gen Beetle - Tata Nano

This little car has the potential of transforming the face of the world. One of the largest Indian companies, Tata Group, has today unveiled, what it calls: The People's Car. It is a that is priced at Rs 100,000, which is about RM 8,000! This car could just be the Beetle of the 21st century.

Here are some of it's most impressive specs, gleaned from various sources:

• Specialty bodywork
  The Nano comes with a 100% rust free money back guarantee. The specialised body work is made from the latest polymer technology with a specialised rust free coating. Unlike the fruity Nano, you will never need to rush out for a can of WD40 when your neighbourhood kids decide to scratch up your paint job. Experience peace of mind, parking your Nano in any neighbourhood.
  
• Air conditioning
  The standard model comes built-in with natural air conditioning. There is a more expensive deluxe model that comes with artificial air conditioning. Why settle for the fake thing when you can have the original. There is no better feeling than cruising down the highway with the wind in your hair while enjoying all the natural scents that nature has to offer.
  
• Power steering
  Surprisingly, for a car of it's size, it comes standard with human power steering. This makes the car extremely responsive and gives the driver total control over the car. Feel like a man, when nipping around the bends in the city. Side parking will never feel the same ever again.
  
• Power windows
  All models of the Tata Nano come standard with hand powered windows. This features a variable speed setting and full directional and level control. No longer will you have to contend with the auto-lower or jerky-raise. You will be able to raise or lower the windows smoothly, over the entire range.
  
• Safety bumpers
  Who needs air bags when you have safety bumpers. The bumpers have been welded on with the best plastic adhesive on the market. Fender benders will be a thing of the past. Instead of crumpling in, the bumpers are designed to fall off. You can easily reattach it back with any off-the-shelf plastic glue, thus saving you a visit to the local mechanic.
• Speedy engines
  At the heart of this car is a 600cc engine. This has been specially engineered to give you a speedy experience of scooting down to the local kedai runcit for your groceries or your local mamak for a game of football. With an impressive top speed of 110kmph, you will never ever have to worry about speed cameras ever again.
  

Jokes aside, I do think that this is a fairly impressive car, for it's cost. You cannot possibly find any other car at that price. In fact, the only other road vehicles that you can find at that price range are motor cycles. So, I can appreciate the kind of difficult choices some people will be faced with, when buying their next family vehicle. I guess, the days of seeing families of 7 on a honda-cub are numbered.

There are definitely other uses for this car, besides just being a plain car. It is cheap enough to wreck for fun. I'm sure that some Bollywood director is already thinking about a remake of The Italian Job, The Indian Job. Instead of Charlize Theron, we can have Aishwarya Rai. I'd certainly pay money to watch the movie.

Also, I can already imagine DIY modders dreaming up ideas on how to pimp this little car. Obviously, the bodywork needs a lot more attitude. And for a car like this, the sky is really the limit. Just like the Asus Eee PC ($299 notebook PC), it's only a matter of time before we will see people buying this car just to modify it into their own super machine. I'd certainly do it.

It would be a great car for mechanics and vocational training. You can just screw around with this car and not worry about destroying it. I love the idea of owning one of these things and fiddling around with all it's little parts.

I cannot wait till they review this car on TopGear. Meanwhile, watch their previous review of Britain's cheapest new car below:

Dangerous Things We Should Let Children Do

Kids these days do not often realise what they are missing. Yes, they've got their computers and high-tech toys. However, they're often overly protected. Watching this video, it reminded me of so many fun things that I did while I was a child, most of which were done without my parents knowledge! I doubt that they would've let me do those things, even during those days, when warnings weren't everywhere.

Pyrotechnics
I used to love playing with fire. During the mid-autumn festival, when other kids played with lanterns, I'd play with nothing but the candles (with dry leaves and newspaper). This was when I first learned that water doesn't necessarily put out fires. It can actually help it to burn bigger and brighter.

During Chinese New Year, I'd take it a step further and extract the powder from inside fire crackers, and light them directly. I once lit up a couple of boxes of fire crackers worth of powder. The resultant flash left me blind for many minutes. This taught me about combustion and oxidisation (powder left open for a while, will not light).

Many years later, I used my knowledge to light up our school camp fire, using electricity (with match stick primer and petrol accelerator).

Weapons
I used to own several multi-purpose penknives. They had a blade, screwdriver, cork screw, scissors and a bunch of other built in tools. I used it to do lots of things. I carried it everywhere with me, even to school (nobody checks your pockets when you're a prefect!). Today, this would be almost an impossibility. I definitely learned how not to handle a knife and I still have the necessary stitches to prove it.

Projectiles
I never did throw a spear before, though I did throw a great many things. I loved making and playing with paper planes. Up till today, I can still fold several different paper plane designs. I'd often make extra cuts and folds to the wing and tail, in order to make the plane go further, last longer, or do stunts. This taught me about flight and control surfaces. When I was little, I used to dream of being an aeronautical engineer.

Destruction
Oh, I was very good at this. My whole family will attest to this. I used to be called 'The Destroyer' when I was little. I took apart anything that I could lay my hands on (not necessarily limited to old/damaged stuff). My toys rarely lasted more than two weeks before I'd take them apart, often to figure out how it works inside. On several attempts, I had even managed to combine parts from different toys into a new hybrid toy (often Frankenstein-ish, held together with rubber bands and tape). This taught me a lot about how things worked and how to build stuff, which still plays a major role in my life today.

I also took my curiousity to the next level, by learning about formless things too, like electricity. But, that's the subject of a much longer post.

Driving
I can remember my dad taking me out driving, when I was very little. I couldn't possibly reach the pedals, but I could handle the steering wheel. It was a wonderful experience, at that time. Thinking about it still puts a smile to my face. I'm not sure how much it helped me, but I didn't have any problems learning to drive later. In fact, my driving instructor did not believe that I had never driven before, during my very first lesson (of 3, and I passed without kopi).

Anyway, watch the video. It's cool.

Comparing 15" Hi-End Laptops

Granted, I'd just purchased my new laptop, barely 6 months ago. However, I like to look at what's on the market, just to whet my appetite for sexy machines. If I had the freedom to do so, I'd probably be buying a new computer every year. But obviously, I have financial constraints. But there's no harm looking. So, I thought that I'd revisit some of my previous laptop short lists and see how things look now.

I tried to compare laptops of similar specifications. Generally, they should have a hi-res 15.4" screen, a T7xxx Core2 Duo processor, 2Gb of RAM, 120Gb harddisk, wifi, high end graphics or similar. The quoted prices are with some customisations:

• MacBook Pro [£1299]
• Alienware M5550 [£922]
• Znote 6625WD [£899]
• Dell XPS M1530 [£849]
• Rizeon IFL90 [£689]
  

So, it would seem that it's possible to get a fairly high end laptop for under £700. The IFL90 is essentially a re-badged Compal IFL90. For the price of £689, it comes with the following specifications:

Screen:	15.4" Wide Screen WXGA+ (1440x900) Glare Type Display
Processor:	Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7250 2GHz 2MB L2 Cache 800MHz FSB
Memory:	2GB Dual Channel DDR2 PC-5300 667MHz - 2x1024MB
Hard Drive:	120GB 5400 RPM SATA Hard Drive
Graphics:	Nvidia Geforce 8600M GT 512MB
Optical Drive:	DVD Super-Multi(DVD-RAM/-R/-RW/+R/+RW)
Sound Card:	High-Definition Audio with 3D Effect & Full Duplex
Wireless Card:	Intel® PRO/Wireless 4965AGN network card

This is quite possibly the cheapest, high-end, gaming capable 15.4" laptop on the market. So, I think that I'll recommend it to anyone who's looking for a decent gaming laptop, on a less than decent budget. It's also ideally suited to running Linux, which is fairly useful for gaming, regardless of what Microsoft shrills would like you to believe.

AEMB Multi-Threaded Mania!

As I mentioned a few blogs ago, I have been toying around with ideas to improve my AEMB. I thought of increasing the pipeline stages and introducing fine-grained multi-threading (FGMT) into the processor. This is my first foray into building a MT processor. So, I wasn't really quite sure what to expect.

Anyway, I decided to try both things out, and the results have been extremely promising. In summary, I have managed to double the clock speed of the processor, while only consuming an extra 50% of resources. At the same time, the processor is now capable of executing two concurrent hardware threads. So, what this means in simple terms is:

1. Higher clock speeds translate into higher performance. The processor is capable of issuing one instruction each clock cycle. So, doubling the clock speed essentially doubles the instruction issue rate. The AEMB now distributes the clock cycles evenly between the two hardware threads. Assuming that it clocks at 100MHz, each thread will have 50MHz available.
   
2. Multi-threading increases efficiency. By multi-threading, the processor now has virtually no wasted clock cycles. This means that on top of doubling the instruction issue rate, it doesn't waste any of the useful clock cycles. On top of that, when dealing with slower devices, it doesn't need to sit around waiting as the second thread can continue to run while the first thread is servicing the slow device.

I've also made the design easily configurable. So, it is entirely possible to strip off some parts of it to further boost performance. For instance, the multipliers and barrel shifters can be removed. If space is an issue, one thread can be permanently disabled in hardware to reduce the space by 33%, while still keeping the high clock speed.

This may seem silly until you think about it a little. Assuming that the original consumed 1000 area units at 50 MHz and the new design consumes 1500 area units at 100 MHz, disabling a single thread will convert it back to 1000 area units but at 100 MHz. So, it can get the best of both worlds. However, it is still bound by the same restriction that only half the clock cycles can be used. But this gives it the added ability to interface with higher speed devices.

Seeing that the new core is able to perform better than the old design, even when it's utterly crippled, there isn't any real reason to keep the old design around much longer. I will notify my users of the new design and get them to migrate over to it as soon as possible. However, I will keep both designs in the repository for at least a few months, until I can be sure that all the kinks are ironed out with the new design.

Looks like the old design is going to be ignored from now on. I will freeze development on it and only perform minor bug fixes.

Our Days are Numbered!

Toyota unveils personal-Transport and Violin-playing robots
Uploaded by AkihabaraNews

Seriously. Our days are numbered. This video showcases three of Toyota's latest robotic wonders. I've always found the Honda ASIMO very cute. Now these three are very scary robots indeed.

The first, reminds me of Rosie the Robot Maid, from The Jetsons. It has a humanoid upper-torso on a wheeled base. It could be conceivably put to use, ferrying stuff around, and handling machines in any flat environment. I could see it being used in hospitals to wheel stuff around and even possibly automate the monitoring of patients. It's probably not quite suitable for the home as it cannot pass through narrow passageways.

The second, is very impressive. They demonstrated the robot's dexterity by getting it to play a tune on a real violin. It's only a matter of time before they get the mechanism down right for the robot to play some really complicated violin pieces. This is the robot that we should really be worried about. It's designed to replace humans an human tasks. It walks on two feet and so, can conceivably go anywhere a human can go. If it has sufficient finesse to play the violin, I'm sure that it can work other devices quite well too.

The third, is definitely useful. I can see it finding an application at home. It is more a slave robot, that can ferry people and stuff around. Now, it would be very interesting to see a few of these things moving together, like ducks in a row. It could ferry kids to and from school, help out with grocery shopping (or any other kind of shopping) and carry geriatrics and disabled people around. This is definitely something that is very useful to have around the house.

I've always lamented the fact that we've not had much progress in robotics for decades. After the major push in getting robots working in industrial settings, money stopped flowing into robotics. But now, it seems that Japan is moving ahead again. Large corporations are throwing money at the problem, to try to bring robots into the home. This is the cutting edge of robotics research and development.

From a technical stand-point, there are essentially two opposing frontiers of robotics. This is the example of one frontier, with complicated machinery performing delicate tasks. The other frontier of robotics is getting very simple machines to perform complex tasks. It seems that the Japanese have got a head-start on the former, but they don't seem to be focused on the latter.