The Register: Intel 'Going for AMD's balls'

Pentium 4 yields are 'excellent', Intel sources told The Register today and the chip will hit 2GHz in January - up to three months earlier than planned.
...
"Expect to see P4 much earlier than on the roadmap - we're aggressively going for AMD's balls on the speed front. DirectX 8 is ready and lots of apps and games have been optimised, many more than for the PIII launch, which was a real cockup."

Good to see that the Intel source has such a good grasp of the nuances of the English language ;-)

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: My Glamorous Life - but in this case s/Glamorous/Depressed/ and beautifully written and so poignant.

Sony's AIBO 2nd generation

The new AIBO ERS-210 is a highly interactive entertainment robot with voice recognition capabilities AIBO has its disposal.
With its built-in camera, AIBO can take a photo for you to see what AIBO was watching at that moment.
With a full set of extras, you can teach AIBO to be the entertainment robot of your dream.

Order Start on November 16th [price £1500]

Not much technical spec about the wee beast available yet. I wonder if it still has the same 64-bit MIPS processor as the 1st generation? [Update: looks like it has]

The Register: Casio chooses Crusoe

Japanese consumer electronics company Casio has confirmed it will next week unveil a new member of its Casiopeia PDA family, this time based on Transmeta's Crusoe CPU.

As announced on Friday last week the Gateway Connected Touch Pad is the AOL Net appliance. The Register covers the story.

The Register has a 4 page article about Microsoft's big picture: Whistler, Blackcombe and .NET - interesting news on page 3:

But Microsoft doesn't want you to upgrade to Whistler. Although the company plans to sell some upgrades, it won't encourage you to buy them. Instead, Microsoft says you'll get a better OS if you just buy a new computer with Whistler preinstalled.

My students may remember the comments I made last Friday on Micro$oft's obsoleting qualities!

I agree with Karl-Martin - the ThinkNIC looks very nice.

How To Write Unmaintainable Code

In the interests of creating employment opportunities in the Java programming field, I am passing on these tips from the masters on how to write code that is so difficult to maintain, that the people who come after you will take years to make even the simplest changes. Further, if you follow all these rules religiously, you will even guarantee yourself a lifetime of employment, since no one but you has a hope in hell of maintaining the code. Then again, if you followed all these rules religiously, even you wouldn't be able to maintain the code!

I'm half-watching Elton John's concert from Madison Square Garden. The BBC are broadcasting highlights from the concert. It takes me back. All the old classics from the back catalogue performed live with special guests like Kiki Dee, Billy Joel, Ronan Keating, Bryan Adams. It's just finished. Time to post this or I'll miss a Sunday posting.