A student was charged today after alerting his school principal of a serious security vulnerability affecting the school district's computer network. Allegedly, the student used false credentials and gained access to a file with SSN#'s, Addresses, Phone Numbers, and various other personally identifying information about district employees. He then emailed the school principal to alert someone in authority that there was a problem.
He now faces 3 felonies. I have to ask: What kind of world do we live in when a student finds a security weakness, regardless of method, and instead of keeping it to themselves, gives it to someone who can do something about it, and instead of being thanked, is instead charged with felony computer crimes?
I wonder how the District Attorney sleeps at night.
Intel Corp cut the price of select quad-core and dual core CPU's today. Amazingly, also making the cut were Pentium Dual Core and select Xeon series processors.
Why? Pure speculation here, but you can bet your nickers on two contributing causes. Intel posted its Q3 financial information this week. And what a Q3 it was. And then there is Nehalem.
Intel's newest baby, which is perhaps their most important architecture change in company history. Of course you don't want old stock sitting around. Cut the prices of current chips to OEM and consumers alike, and clear out inventory!
Anyway, here are the current price drops, by product series:
X3220 (2.40GHz, 8MB L2, 1066MHz FSB) $188
X3210 (2.13GHz, 8MB L2, 1066MHz FSB) $188
The bigger question yet is: What will this mean for rival AMD? Only time will tell. Quad core price cuts don't have much affect. However, mainstream PCs use mainstream CPU's, which are still dual-core, and out-selling quad-core chips because of profit margin and user value. It's all about the end user. If you make it cheap, they will buy. Looks like we're almost there, too. Perhaps 2009 will see mainstream, mid-range, and low-end email/web-browsing computers for Mom & Pop, with quad core CPU's for under $500.
INTEL PLANS TO launch one of its last batches of Core 2 mobile processors towards the end of December, according to hot sauces in the Taiwanese rumourmill. Apparently December 28th is the launch date for a Chipzilla line up which should include five faster, lower energy consuming processors – set to guzzle no more than 35W – aimed at the ultra thin and portable notebook market.
The line up would probably also count the much whispered about 2.93GHz Core 2 Duo, dubbed the T9800, and also the 2GHz Core 2 Quad Q9000, the firm's first normal power quad-core processor for notebooks. The chips will purportedly fetch $530 and $348 respectively (in bulk), pushing them more towards high-end and mainstream models.
Three lower-end processors, the 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo P9600, 2.66GHz T9550 and 2.53GHz T8700, priced at $348, $316 and $241 respectively would be updates for cheaper processors. Getting into the Christmas spirit, Intel has decided that as well as releasing its new line, it will also slash prices on current top-end Core 2 Duo P8600 processors by $32, pushing them down to $209 in January 2009.
Assuming current industry speculation and rumor is correct, ATI, the graphics subdivision of AMD, and NVIDIA, are expected to begin production of their next generation graphics processors by June of 2009.
Instead of using 45nm technology, as previously thought, both chip giants will be using 40nm fabrication, in an effort to reduce manufacturing costs and increase product yields, in their never-ending battle for GPU dominance.
Both of the chips, ATI's RV870, and NVIDIA's GT216, are rumored to be released almost a year after their previous generation brethren. Has the breakneck pace of 6 month product launches come to an end? Have the GPU giants realised that only a small base of their customers can afford 2-3 GPU purchases a year? Will the next Radeon or Geforce set a course for 12-18 month product cycles, similar to Intel/AMD microprocessors? Only time will tell.
