I don't put much faith in Michael Dell, to be honest. He said that he wouldn't mind selling AMD chips if there was demand. Well... there's demand. Just the deal he gets is probably too sweet to change.

Squeaky Microsoft relationship gets the grease, ya know.

Art is kinda cute, wonder if it should be tossed to puzzleboxmuck...

Mmm, I've been wondering as much myself - the AMD issue's a very good point. Despite almost monthly claims of considering their processors, nothing's come of it. Still, it's an interesting turnaround from the guy who once asserted, around the time Jobs returned to Apple, that he'd "sell the company and give the money back to the shareholders." Of course, one should perhaps also remember that Jobs used to tout an Intel laptop (Toshiba, I think) running OpenStep, once he returned.

Quite an amusing reverse takeover, it has to be said. For all the ill that's spoken of Gil Amelio, I can't help but feel he's come in for rather more criticism than perhaps he's due - after all, he took the step of cancelling the interminable Copland project, and setting the process going of finding an outside source for Apple's next generation OS. And, IIRC, initiated the first iMac project, though I could be mistaken on that.

I should take a look in on the MU*s again sometime.. it's been quite a long time, and I certainly used to enjoy my role.

Interesting tale of sweet revenge, but what in the heck is a White Van Man, and why are they so obnoxious?

Ahh, the White Van™ is the small (ie non-articulated) commercial vehicle category of choice in the UK, often the pushiest drivers of all, particularly knowing they're insured to the hilt and have a mission, if not driving skills. Almost always white, and seldom seen at less than 70mph outside urban areas.

Though I'm sure avon_deer or kuma_chan would be able to explain much more colorfully. ^_^

Coming to the end of season 27 of Doctor Who...

!

I had no idea it ran that may seasons! But then--if they do two seasons a year (?)...I mean, only 13 eps this season? That's like half a good ol', SUV driving, Texas sized US of A season!

Ah well. I less then 36 hours me an my local Who watching group'll be properlly wow'ed, I'm sure :) (We all converge at our place, as we have that 100" screen for Tursi's DLP projector. Now that's how to watch the Doctor :D )

Ohh, yes! An 8' screen would have to seriously rock with the good Doctor. ^_^ I really want a front projector when I can swing it - I'd like a good sized display for the odd film or TV show, and it's got the pleasant benefit of being a good deal easier to heft into and out of storage. ^_^ (Or even to friends' places, though I suppose you'd probably have to be gentle with it, to avoid wrecking the ferociously expensive bulb)

The suspense, the suspense! I'm waiting to start downloading the finale.. soon, soon.. breathe in, breathe out.. ^_^

So, will the real story of "bad wolf" be revealed? What/who is it? It sounds, from the hidden text on the Bad Wolf site's disclaimer, as if it's the Doctor behind these messages, but why? There's plenty of Rose/Red Riding Hood symbolism.. but why? I can't help but feel Captain Jack's at the core - there's still this missing two years unaccounted for, and we've seen RTD's been good at tying together hitherto unrelated episodes. And what of Adam's little secret? That surely wouldn't go undiscovered very long.

No question, I'll be pleading with the family for the box set as a birthday present. ^_^

*squee* It's downloading now! ~happy panda~ About two hours to go..

It seems the first 26 seasons spanned a bit over 500 episodes, each about 25 minutes. I can't remember whether they were shown in one bloc in the year, but I think they may've been along Spring/Winter lines in two blocs. The longer format now has meant fewer multi-part storylines, which were fairly common - I'm still not sure, but I think I prefer the new format, with more per week. (But I definitely could do without those trailers! Agh! Talk about spoilers.. come on, we're going to watch next week anyway :)

It doesn't surprise me that Dell would say that, though. Right now PC manufacturers are a bit pissed off at Microsoft, since PC manufacturers know that one of their biggest drivers to sell people new hardware is the availability of an OS upgrade that wants more power. With Longhorn getting pushed further and further back and with its feature set shrinking by the day to get some sort of delivery date, there's a distinct possibility that their sales will be soft until 2006, and then Longhorn won't do enough to move the hardware even when it is released. Dell may honestly never intend to offer OS X on his machines, but this is a great way to tell Microsoft to get off its ass. :)

Could well be - just look at the nigh monthly rumblings they issue about looking at AMD processors - in which case it's actually worked. ^_^ It seems the expected (latest estimate, at any rate, given how long it's telescoped) release of Longhorn was the end of 2006, which led to Jobs placing Leopard around the same time.

In the past few days, we've learned the former's shifted to Summer 2006. ^_^ I dare say they'll make it this time, as it sounds like there's been a great deal of trimming back in the project's scope.

Meanwhile, there's Tiger, today. ^_^ (Like Exposé, Spotlight's essentially quite a simple idea - but it really works well. It's not that the search is so deep, but that the required metadata is automatically indexed immediately, so everything (on local drives only, which is, for me, a major limitation. Easy enough for Apple or a third party to redesign, but presumably that route was chosen to avoid bringing office LANs to their knees) is searchable as soon as it's been saved, with no extra effort by the application or user)

Ah, if only AmigaOS could find a sugar daddy.. or RISC OS, for that matter. But the barrier to entry in the computer market, whether in computers per se, or just operating systems, is so drastically high, and I don't really see most people in CompUSA et al really caring what's driving their computer. Still, greater diversity would be good to see - and at least the whole desktop/office/server shebang's properly alive again, with OS X leading Apple back from its benign condition, and Linux reminding people of the world of open source, as well as providing a solid platform for many purposes. A far better state of affairs than the dark days of the early 90s and late 80s, to be sure, even if the diversity in desktop/laptop processors isn't exactly blossoming. (But who knows? With no backwards binary compatibility to worry about, maybe Apple can help Intel sprout into areas not dominated by the wretchedly crusty x86 ISA. And with a little more thoughtfulness than Itanium.. *cough* :)