Sunday, August 18, 2002

LAWSUIT CHARGES PENTIUM 4 IS NO BETTER THAN AMD ATHLON OR PENTIUM III Intel, PC Makers Sued Over P4 Performance A small group of PC owners has quietly filed a class action lawsuit against Intel, Gateway, and Hewlett-Packard alleging the companies misled them into believing the Pentium 4 was a superior processor to Intel's own Pentium III and AMD's Athlon. The complaint--Neubauer et al v. Intel et al--was filed June 3 in the Third Judicial Circuit in Madison County, Illinois. The case is in limbo awaiting a ruling on whether it belongs in a state or federal jurisdiction, and has not yet achieved class action status. It came to light this week after a copy of the complaint was sent to PCWorld.com anonymously. The plaintiffs claim the companies deceived the public when marketing Intel's flagship processor and allege that it is "the material fact that there is no benefit to consumers in choosing the Pentium 4 over the Pentium III." The complaint alleges that "the Pentium 4 is less powerful and slower than the Pentium III and/or the AMD Athlon." From Slashdot | Discuss 12:03:58 PM    comment []

"LIVING IN THE BLOG-OSPHERE." Steven Levy of Newsweek writes: Zack, with his 28 readers a day, isn’t part of Weblogging’s “A list,” an intricate mutual back-scratch society that includes clever curmudgeons, high-tech avatars and angry ankle-biters who ferociously snipe at traditional media. He is, however, a truer representative of the blogging boom that’s making people into instant publishers, newshounds and public diarists—and helping the Internet make good on some of its heady promises of personal empowerment. Indeed, with a new blogger joining the crowd every 40 seconds, Weblogs are officially the explosion du jour on the Net. Most estimates peg the current number at a half a million Weblogs, depending on how you define the term, but “my suspicion is that there are even more,” says Cameron Marlow, an MIT graduate student who’s studying the phenomenon. That’s a startling contention, especially since most coverage of the so-called Blog-osphere (the name given to the collective alternate universe consisting of all active Weblogs) seems to focus on A-listers like pundit Andrew Sullivan, gadfly Mickey Kaus or former MTV veejay Adam Curry. Even the various computer-generated lists that purport to probe what’s happening on Planet Blog don’t go beyond the 10,000 or so most popular ones, rated by the numbers of links to and from the various sites. But the bigger story is what’s happening on the 490,000-plus Weblogs that few people see: they make up the vast dark matter of the Blog-osphere, and portend a future where blogs behave like such previous breakthroughs as desktop publishing, presentation software and instant messaging, and become a nonremarkable part of our lives. Read the rest of the article here. Dave comments on the article: "Weblogs are a realization of the intention of the Web, to make publishing accessible and inexpensive for anyone with a computer who wants to participate." 11:55:52 AM    comment []