whembly wrote:

If you're going to keep sprouting this... I have to ask... do you own any Apple or Nike products?

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 whembly wrote:

If you're going to keep sprouting this... I have to ask... do you own any Apple or Nike products?

Not a one. I also make a point to (where possible) avoid products from Dow Chemical, Chevron, and Coca Cola (the last has actually had a truly surprising number of people killed for an outfit that advertises with a smiling Santa Claus.)

a truly surprising number of people killed for an outfit that advertises with a smiling Santa Claus. You'd think they'd be on the 'Naughty' list.)

 azazel the cat wrote:
Yes, Whembly, but it's been established that the world is full of varying degrees of good and bad; morality isn't so black and white. Not all crimes are equal.

 dogma wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

No, I alleged that the allies had communist members of the French Resistance killed.

The Allies did not have the Manouchian Group killed. The French* allowed them to be killed for sure, but not the larger group denoted by "Allies".


*The people, not the government.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

Same issue with the Muslim Brotherhood taking control over Egypt. "We" assume that freedom is always a good thing. It's not, if those free people hate us. Sometimes you need a dictator to keep scumbags in check.

Frazz, this is the sort of mindset that makes me knock America where possible. We back dictators, tyrants, and other assorted scum, even though we know it's wrong, and then complain that people shouldn't have democracy because they don't like us for having supported the regime that tortured and imprisoned them for all those years.

If the US doesn't want to be hated, they really need to rethink their foreign policies.

Supporting people overthrowing tyranny = good.

Supporting tyranny and oppression = bad.

 Jihadin wrote:
How about we supply both sides with weapons. Ensuring that if they don't use chemical weapons we kep supplying them with arms. That way we don't show favoritism to either side. Drive the Russian Federation/Putin nuts figuring out WTF we're doing. That way he pours more money and arms to Assad. That way Isreal can keep nailing suspected arms shipment to Hezballah. That way HazabalIAMANUT keep focus on Isreal and not throw support for Assaad so that way they can in turn buy weapons from North Korea so we....the US Navy can confiscate these shipments...think we've done it twice now...So Iran can step in in support of Assad and we supply the new bunkerbuster to Isreal with a hint to hit some "sites" so we can...Isreal and the US can see how effective it is......or we send in the Night Lords to kill them all....wait......Turkey looking to expand.....wait....Russian Federation wants access to the Meds......China can't get to the Med nor project military power there..so they are OUT.....I say offer Greece Syria so they can get their financial house in order to stay in the the EU instead of having a domino effect of the EU crashing......or we can..as some say put "Boots on the ground".......with Obamacare kicking off...and the US goes down the financial flush........flushing twice to make sure....so the EU collapse..the Med either chem or nuke itself into the stick age...EU has the 2nd Plague hit them.....UK can become the world power again....follow by Spain...France....Ireland.....why Ireland...why the Hell not...US then can afford to invade Mexico for cheap labor....also invest in Canada.....China goes to war with Russa....NK collapse when they try to luanch a nuke at South Korea but explodes on launch...The Emperor arrives and finds all of us "Heretics" besides those that embrace Paganism......damn...these drugs are gggooooooooddddddd after chemo

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 whembly wrote:

If you're going to keep sprouting this... I have to ask... do you own any Apple or Nike products?

Not a one. I also make a point to (where possible) avoid products from Dow Chemical, Chevron, and Coca Cola (the last has actually had a truly surprising number of people killed for an outfit that advertises with a smiling Santa Claus. You'd think they'd be on the 'Naughty' list.)

 Jihadin wrote:
Were they vampires?

 azazel the cat wrote:

NuggzTheNinja wrote:"We" assume that freedom is always a good thing. It's not, if those free people hate us. Sometimes you need a dictator to keep scumbags in check.

Three questions:
1. Can you clarify this? Because that sounds kinda fethed up, and I'd like you to expand on just what you mean so I'm not misinterpreting it.
2. You assume everyone who hates you to be a scumbag?
3. Assuming people do hate you, don't you think helping a dictator to keep them in check could be the cause of that animosity towards you?

 Frazzled wrote:

I'd bet good money you're typing on something made by those evil capitalists or their fellow travellers...

 BaronIveagh wrote:
You'd lose your bet. I built this machine myself, carefully selecting each part based on a background check of the companies and their suppliers.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

I'd bet good money you're typing on something made by those evil capitalists or their fellow travellers...

You'd lose your bet. I built this machine myself, carefully selecting each part based on a background check of the companies and their suppliers.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

3. Only if helping that dictator is why they hate me. When they hate me because I'm not a Muslim, then they get no sympathy from me.

 Frazzled wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

I'd bet good money you're typing on something made by those evil capitalists or their fellow travellers...

You'd lose your bet. I built this machine myself, carefully selecting each part based on a background check of the companies and their suppliers.

WHERE DO YOU THINK THE PLASTIC CAME FROM FLUFFY OR DID YOU DRILL THE HOLE, PULL THE OIL AND CRACK THE OIL YOURSELF THERE CHUMSTER???

Do you even know what Dow and Chevron make?

Palestinian group says Syria OKs attacks on Israel

BEIRUT (AP) — President Bashar Assad's regime has given a Palestinian militant group the go-ahead to set up missiles to attack Israel in the wake of recent Israeli airstrikes on the Syrian capital, a spokesman for the group said Tuesday.
Syria has hinted at possible retribution against Israel since the Jewish state carried out the airstrikes over the weekend, although official government statements have been relatively mild. In that light, the Assad regime's decision to allow a minor Syria-based Palestinian group to prepare for attacks is largely seen as a face-saving gesture unlikely to escalate the confrontation with Israel.
"Syria has given the green light to set up missile batteries to directly attack Israeli targets," Anwar Raja of the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command told The Associated Press.
He said authorities also told the PFLP-GC that the group could carry out attacks independently without consulting Syrian authorities.
"Practically, the Syrian stand has always been supportive of the Palestinian resistance and Syria provides the Palestinian resistance with all capabilities including all kinds of weapons," Raja said.
When the revolt against Assad's rule began in March 2011, the half-million-strong Palestinian community in Syria largely stayed on the sidelines. But as the uprising shifted into a civil war, many Palestinians backed the rebels, while some groups have been fighting on the government side.
Those include the PFLP-GC, a small Damascus-based Palestinian militant faction that the U.S has designated a terrorist organization.
In the 1960s through 1980s, PFLP-GC militants hijacked an Israeli airliner, machine-gunned another at Zurich's airport, and blew up a Tel Aviv-bound Swissair plane, killing all 47 aboard. In 1987, a PFLP-GC guerrilla flew from Lebanon into Israel on a hang-glider and killed six soldiers before being shot dead.
While the group earned notoriety for its past attacks on Israel, it has been eclipsed in the past 20 years by the other Islamic militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Israel's government has not formally confirmed involvement in the strikes on Syria. However, Israeli officials have said the attacks were meant to prevent advanced Iranian weapons from reaching Lebanon's Hezbollah militia, an ally of Syria and foe of Israel.
The airstrikes raised the possibility of a wider regional conflict with Syria, which is already engulfed in a civil war that has killed more than 70,000 people, as its focal point.
Iran, a close ally of the Assad regime, has condemned the Israeli attacks and warned of possible retaliation.
But on Tuesday, Iran's foreign minister said it is Syria's Arab neighbors — not Tehran — who should respond to the Israeli strikes.
Speaking to reporters in Amman, Jordan, Ali Akbar Salehi said Arab nations "must stand by their brethren in Damascus."
The Israeli strikes were met with condemnation from Arab nations, even those who oppose Assad and support the rebellion against him, but the protests stopped there.
Iran is deeply concerned with the fate of the Assad regime, which has allowed Syrian territory to serve as a conduit for Iranian weapons and other support to reach their proxy, Hezbollah. Tehran has supplied cash and weapons to help the Syrian government in its efforts to crush the anti-Assad revolt.
Salehi warned of the possible repercussions if the government in Damascus was to fall.
"The fallout from a vacuum in Syria will have adverse effects on its neighbors and the whole region," he said. "There will be serious repercussions from a vacuum. It will be grave and nobody can predict the results."

Israel asks Russia not to sell Syria advanced S-300 air shield: officials

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has asked Russia not to sell Syria an advanced air defense system which would help President Bashar al-Assad fend off foreign military intervention as he battles a more than two-year-old rebellion, Israeli officials said on Thursday.
Citing U.S. officials, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Israel had told Washington that Syria had already began payments for a $900 million purchase of the S-300 and an initial delivery was due within three months.
The S-300 is designed to shoot down planes and missiles at 125-mile (200-km) ranges. It would enhance Syria's current Russian-supplied defenses, which did not deter Israel from launching devastating air strikes around Damascus last weekend.
"We have raised objections to this (sale) with the Russians, and the Americans have too," an Israeli official told Reuters.
There was no immediate comment from Moscow or Damascus.
In 2010, Russia backed out of a tentative S-300 sale to Iran that had been in the works for years. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev cited U.N. sanctions imposed that year over Iran's defiance of international demands to curb its nuclear program.
Israel and the United States, which threaten military attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities if diplomatic alternatives fail, had lobbied Moscow to drop the deal with Tehran.
ISRAEL ATTACKS
Israel bombed sites near the Syrian capital on Friday and Sunday which intelligence sources said held Iranian-supplied missiles destined for Hezbollah guerrillas in neighboring Lebanon. The heavy presence of Israeli warplanes in Lebanese airspace suggested they may have eluded Syrian defenses by launching long-range missiles across the border at the targets.
Assad accused his Israeli foe of attacking Syria in order to support the insurgency there - an allegation denied by Israel, though, like Western powers, it has urged his ouster.
Russia, however, has balked at such calls. It voiced "particular alarm" at Israel's air strikes, seeing a possible precursor for Western military intervention against Assad.
Robert Hewson, an IHS Jane's air power analyst, said that were Syria to receive the S-300 it would probably take several months to deploy and operate the system. But he suggested it would not pose a big challenge for Israel's hi-tech air force.
"It's a fairly well-established, fairly well-understood system, so there is a corpus of knowledge, particularly among Israel's friends, about how to deal with this system," he said.
Once activated, the S-300 could easily be spotted thanks to its distinctive radar signal, Hewson said, "and from there it's a fairly short step to taking it out. It's not a wonder-weapon."
Cyprus bought the S-300 and eventually positioned it on the Greek island of Crete. Israel, which has close ties with Nicosia and Athens, may have tested its jets against that S-300's capabilities during Mediterranean overflights, Hewson said.

Monster Rain wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

I'd bet good money you're typing on something made by those evil capitalists or their fellow travellers...

You'd lose your bet. I built this machine myself, carefully selecting each part based on a background check of the companies and their suppliers.

WHERE DO YOU THINK THE PLASTIC CAME FROM FLUFFY OR DID YOU DRILL THE HOLE, PULL THE OIL AND CRACK THE OIL YOURSELF THERE CHUMSTER???

Do you even know what Dow and Chevron make?

His keyboard is made of wood.

Frazzled wrote:BARONIVEAGH KILLS TREES! WHY DO YOU HATE MOTHER NATURE SO???

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Actually it's made of 100% recycled materials, mostly aluminum and typewriter parts, but also a wireless keyboard that had been discarded as 'broken' due to the keys being worn. In addition, you do know that Dow and Chevron are not the only sources of those goods, right?

Further, trees are a renewable resource, particularly native hardwoods, which my parents own a tree farm of.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Given those press releases, you may start needing a diagram to keep track of who's supporting who now. Interestingly enough, that does put AQ and Israel on the same side. Politics and strange bedfellows indeed.

 Frazzled wrote:
If there is any plastic - and all that "recyclable materials" is plastic it was made by one of your hated companies. You lose Bondo.

Bond: I guess you expect me to beg for my life.
Bad Guy: No Mr. Bond I expect you to die!

 BaronIveagh wrote:
According to the circuit board, the plastic came from Nagase Plastics Co, who's supplier is JX Nippon Oil. The recycled material is aluminum. and old typewriter keys.

The construction of the Yetagun pipeline in Myanmar has been linked to 'severe human rights abuses' by Burmese troops. The company stated it 'was not aware of such abuses.' However critics claim that such foreign investment by Nippon Oil and other multinationals: 'provides a crucial source of support to the junta, allowing it to ignore demands that it return Burma to civilian rule and end human rights abuses.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

That's a shame - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Oil#Connection_to_human_rights_abuses

 BaronIveagh wrote:
I have a Soyo flatscreen monitor, Teac speakers, Hitachi hard drives, an IBM DVD drive (sadly, this area has a lot of questionable manufacturers, IBM was about the best) nvidia video cards (scored surprisingly high), took a gamble on an Asus MB (the information on their suppliers was incomplete but the ones listed scored well). RAM was sadly Kingston (some of their suppliers are questionable, particularly for solder) case is Apevia, power supply is a 1k watt Apevia that came with case


For off the shelf units, VeryPC is generally rated the highest for ethics, but they're UK based.

Hitachi, save your face, drop the case!
directly sign the letter >

Japanese electronics company Hitachi is failing to uphold human rights throughout its supply chain – while migrant workers are mistreated and Malaysian human rights defenders exposing this behaviour are facing aggressive legal action, Hitachi keeps refusing to use the means at its disposal to make its supplier Asahi Kosei drop the legal case and respect workers' rights.

Update 27 june 2011: Electronics company sues human rights defender for $3.3 million

Take action today and write to Hitachi

At the Asahi Kosei operated plant in Malaysia migrant workers from a number of Asian countries are set to work, including workers from Burma. These workers are generally treated abominably, having to put up with disproportional wage deductions, lack of sick leave, withholding of their passports, retaliatory confiscation of their belongings if they protest, etc. In January 2011, a group of 31 Burmese workers protested about their labour and employment conditions. Despite having valid work permits and contracts subsequently two of them were taken under false pretence to the airport to be deported - but managed to escape at the very last moment. At the time of writing, Thiha Soe and Aung San are in hiding.

Malaysian human rights defender Charles Hector and fellow labour rights activists concerned themselves about the treatment of the Burmese workers deployed at Asahi Kosei’s Selangor plant. In February 2011, Charles Hector wrote a letter to Asahi Kosei. When the company failed to respond, Hector posted information received from the affected workers on his weblog.

In retaliation, Asahi Kosei has taken aggressive legal action against Charles Hector, accusing him of libel, and demanding an outrageous sum for compensation ($ 3.3 million). Several hearings have taken place - the dates for the full trial are expected to be fixed shortly.

In support of migrant workers and human rights defenders, tens of labour rights groups from all over the world have expressed their concerns over Asahi Kosei’s treatment of the Burmese workers and the aggressive legal action against Charles Hector. Click here for the public statement that was signed by more than 80 organisations.

Until this date, Asahi Kosei, Hitachi, as well as other buyers, refuse any dialogue with the labour groups and migrant advocacy groups concerned. There has been no improvement of the treatment of the Burmese workers after Asahi Kosei Malaysia filed the lawsuit against Charles Hector.

GoodElectronics, makeITfair as well as other labour rights groups have written to brands known to be sourcing or to have sourced from Asahi Kosei Malaysia. To see this letter, click here. So far, Philips, Seagate and Toshiba responded, with –unsubstantiated- claims that they are no longer sourcing from Asahi Kosei Malaysia. Their companies’ names are, however, still listed on Asahi Kosei’s website. Other buyers did not respond.

At its 65th Annual General Meeting, held on 12 March 2011 in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian Bar unanimously carried a motion in support of human rights defender Charles Hector referring to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders. To read more click here.

For more information on case against Charles Hector click here.

GoodElectronics is now specifically addressing Hitachi as a major and well-known buyer of Asahi Kosei. On its website Hitachi emphatically presents its corporate social responsibility vision, speaking of “the building of a prosperous and vibrant society”, of “disclosing information openly and transparently in order to maintain and develop a relationship of trust with its various stakeholders, and acting responsibly towards them through various means of communication”, and about “undertaking business based on the principles of fairness and sincerity, acting with the utmost respect for human rights and pursuing a high sense of corporate ethics in the global business market which encompasses diverse cultures, morals, ethics, and legal systems”. Moreover, Hitachi is member of the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) and has a responsibility to live up to the EICC code of conduct.

Take action today; write to Hitachi to say you expect Hitachi to:
use its leverage as customer of Asahi Kosei to immediately and unconditionally drop the legal case against Charles Hector
ensure that labour rights and standards are upheld throughout the Hitachi supply chain
migrant workers ‘s rights are upheld and respected in Hitachi’s supply chain
ensure justice is done to Thiha Soe and Aung San and the other affected workers
respect human rights defenders.
Please sign the protest letter. This letter will go out to the Hitachi for its refusal to take sufficient action on this issue, thereby causing harm to migrant workers set to work at Asahi Kosei in Malaysia, as well as to human rights defender Charles Hector.

The ATNC Monitoring Network and a group of labour activists in Hong Kong will protest against Hitachi for its connivance in labour abuses at its supplier, Asahi Kosei in Malaysia. Mr. Charles Hector, a Malaysian human rights defender, lawyer and blogger was sued by the Japanese-owned electronics company Asahi Kosei for alleged defamation after Hector posted messages of rights violations against Burmese migrant workers at the company. Asahi Kosei demanded a compensation of USD 3.3 million (about HKD 25.7 million) for reputation damage. Despite protests from labour rights groups, Hitachi has not responded to the public. The full trial of the case is scheduled on 24-26 August. Asian Transnational Corporation Monitoring Network calls on Hitachi to use its influence to demand Asahi Kosei to drop the case.

In February 2011, Mr. Hector published a series of blog posts in which he faulted the company for unfair treatment of a group of 31 Burmese migrant workers. These workers had to put up with not getting sick leave, non-payment of their wages, threats of deportation, removal of their possession such as electrical equipments and cooking utensils, and being cut off of electricity in their lodgings. A few daring workers lodged complaints against their employer at the Malaysian National Human Rights Institution (SUHAKAM) and the Labour Department. Mr. Hector documented and commented upon this situation on his blog.Asahi Kosei argued that those workers are supplied by an outsourcing agent and not on their direct payroll, and thus the company is not responsible for what happened to them.
In retaliation, it also sued Charles Hector for alleged reputation damage.

Defamation claim should not be abused to restrict freedom of expression. It is a matter of public interest to ensure the grievances of any persons whose human rights have been violated can be heard. Without it, there is no access to justice. If any person or organisation which brings legitimate grievances of migrant workers to the attention of the public risks lawsuit, the already precarious state of the migrant workers will most certainly deteriorate even further. Employing scared tactics of retaliation and litigation would not help any enterprise’s reputation; rather it laid bare the company’s lack of tolerance and inability to deal with criticism. By showing a complete lack of sincerity in tackling the violations exposed and only focusing on silencing the whistleblower, Asahi Kosei is hurting its own image much more than whatever Charles Hector could have done.

Although the lawsuit was filed by Asahi Kosei, it is incumbent on Hitachi to rectify the problems at its supplier. Last June, the United Nations Human Rights Council endorsed a set of global guiding principles for business, the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, designed to ensure that companies do not violate human rights in the course of their transactions and provide redress when infringements occur, including the protection of human rights defenders. The UN Guiding Principles request companies to mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to their operations by their business relationships, including relationships with business partners and entities in their supply chain.1

As a world leading company in the electronics business, Hitachi should take the lead in ensuring compliance to human rights and respect of freedom of expression throughout its supply chain Regrettably, Hitachi has so far shown no commitment to rectify the rights violations at its supplier. We hereby demand Hitachi to:

1.Request Asahi Kosei to withdraw the lawsuit against Mr. Hector immediately and unconditionally, who has brought legitimate concerns regarding violations to the attention of the company and the public.

2.Engage in a serious dialogue with workers, their representatives, the media and human rights defenders to ensure adequate identification and remediation of any violations of labor rights and basic human rights that have occurred at Asahi Kosei.

3.Ensure the immediate reinstatement, with full rights and benefits, of the Burmese workers, especially those currently in hiding and not yet allowed to go back to work in Asahi Kosei’s factory.

4.Request that in order to avoid future concerns of labor and human rights violations, Asahi Kosei cease using these labor supply agents, and instead employ the 31 Burmese workers directly under Asahi Kosei.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia

In December 2006, Nvidia, along with its main rival in the graphics industry AMD (which had acquired ATI), received subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Justice regarding possible antitrust violations in the graphics card industry.[15]
Forbes magazine named Nvidia its Company of the Year for 2007, citing the accomplishments it made during the said period as well as during the previous 5 years.[16]
On January 5, 2007, Nvidia announced that it had completed the acquisition of PortalPlayer, Inc.[17]
In February 2008, Nvidia acquired Ageia Technologies for an undisclosed sum. "The purchase reflects both companies' shared goal of creating the most amazing and captivating game experiences," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia. "By combining the teams that created the world's most pervasive GPU and physics engine brands, we can now bring GeForce-accelerated PhysX to twelve million gamers around the world."[18]
In April 2009, a court consolidated multiple class action suits into one case, titled The NVIDIA GPU Litigation.[19] NVIDIA agreed to replace faulty chips in or reimburse purchasers who already spent to get their laptop repaired. Nvidia also gave replacement laptops to many users in lieu of making a repair. The replacements and payments were not made until the settlement was finalized in 2011. Users were required to show proof of purchase and mail in their original faulty laptop. The chips were present in a number of Dell and HP laptops, as well as two Apple MacBook Pro models. Although the settlement cost Nvidia millions of dollars, many of the individuals were unhappy with the settlement, and multiple websites and blogs reflected this. The website entitled Fair Nvidia Settlement[20] was one such site.

Nvidia’s Kepler/GK104 chip has an interesting secret, a claimed Ageia PhysX hardware block that really isn’t. If you were wondering why Nvidia has been beating the dead horse called PhysX for so long, now you know, but it only gets more interesting from there.

Sources tell SemiAccurate that the ‘big secret’ lurking in the Kepler chips are optimisations for physics calculations. Some are calling this PhysX block a dedicated chunk of hardware, but more sources have been saying that it is simply shaders, optimisations, and likely a dedicated few new ops. In short, marketing may say it is, but under the heat spreader, it is simply shaders and optimisations.

The market has treated hardware PhysX like an unexplained sore that shows up a week after a night you can’t remember through a tequila induced haze. Numbers vary about the absolute magnitude of PhysX’s overwhelming success, but counts of 2011 game releases supporting hardware acceleration range from a low of two to a high of six. The snowball has pretty much stopped rolling, or to be more accurate, it never started, all the developers SemiAccurate spoke with indicate that their use of PhysX hardware acceleration was a cash flow positive experience, but we didn’t talk to all six listed.

With this new bit of information, one big question is answered, but specific hardware implementations details are a bit murky. Is the ‘hardware block’ dedicated to physics calculations when there are some being issued, or is it a AMD/GCN like multiple instruction issue? Is it just shaders with an added op or two that speed up math routines heavily used by physics simulations? How much die area is spent on this functionality? This isn’t very clear, and given the marketing materials Semiaccurate has seen, explanations will only serve to impede the impending hype.

That said, SemiAccurate is told Kepler/GK104 will be marketed as having a dedicated block, and this will undoubtedly be repeated everywhere, truth not withstanding. Luckily, since most of the target audience isn’t technically literate, it may “become fact” through the VIECOOCDF (Vast Internet Echo Chamber Of Often Repeated Dubious Facts). Lowering the collective intelligence can be profitable if not ethical. Luckily, the story doesn’t end here, it gets much worse.

This part ties in to the story SemiAccurate published a few weeks ago saying that Nvidia would win this generation. A lot of people have been asking about Kepler/GK104 performance and if it is really that good. The short story is yes and no, depending on your views on some very creative ‘optimisations’ around physics.

We stated earlier, Kepler wins in most ways vs the current AMD video cards. How does Nvidia do it with a $299 card? Is it raw performance? Massive die size? Performance per metric? The PhysX ‘hardware block’? Cheating? The easy answer is yes, but lets go in to a lot more detail.

GK104 is the mid-range GPU in Nvidia’s Kepler family, has a very small die, and the power consumption is far lower than the reported 225W. How low depends on what is released and what clock bins are supported by the final silicon. A1 stepping cards seen by SemiAccurate had much larger heatsinks than the A2 versions, and recent rumours suggest there may be an A3 to fix persistent PCIe3 headaches.

To date, an A3 spin has not been confirmed, but if it is necessary, it will likely push out the late March/early April release date by at least a month. One other possibility is for Nvidia to pull an Intel and release cards without the official PCI SIG stamp, adding it when A3 silicon is available. In any case, the number of PCIe3 supporting computers on the market is minimal, so functionally speaking, it doesn’t matter. You may loose a small bit of theoretical performance, but for a mid-range part, it is unlikely to be noticeable. Marketing is a completely different story though, one not closely tied to the reality most of us live in.

The architecture itself is very different from Fermi, SemiAccurate’s sources point to a near 3TF card with a 256-bit memory bus. Kepler is said to have a very different shader architecture from Fermi, going to much more AMD-like units, caches optimised for physics/computation, and clocks said to be close to the Cayman/Tahiti chips. The initial target floating among the informed is in the 900-1000MHz range. Rumours have it running anywhere from about 800MHz in early silicon to 1.1+GHz later on, with early stepping being not far off later ones. Contrary to some floating rumours, yields are not a problem for either GK104 or TSMC’s 28nm process in general.

Performance is likewise said to be a tiny bit under 3TF from a much larger shader count than previous architectures. This is comparable to the 3.79TF and 2048 shaders on AMD’s Tahiti, GK104 isn’t far off either number. With the loss of the so called “Hot Clocked” shaders, this leaves two main paths to go down, two CUs plus hardware PhysX unit or three. Since there is no dedicated hardware physics block, the math says each shader unit will probably do two SP FLOPs per clock or one DP FLOP.

This would be in line with the company’s earlier claims of a large jump in compute capabilities, but also leads to questions of how those shaders will be fed with only a 256-bit memory path. Given the small die sizes floating around, it is unlikely to be Itanium-esque brute forcing through large caches. The net result is that shader utilisation is likely to fall dramatically, with a commensurate loss of real world performance compared to theoretical peak.

In the same way that AMD’s Fusion chips count GPU FLOPS the same way they do CPU FLOPS in some marketing materials, Kepler’s 3TF won’t measure up close to AMD’s 3TF parts. Benchmarks for GK104 shown to SemiAccurate have the card running about 10-20% slower than Tahiti. On games that both heavily use physics related number crunching and have the code paths to do so on Kepler hardware, performance should seem to be well above what is expected from a generic 3TF card. That brings up the fundamental question of whether the card is really performing to that level?

This is where the plot gets interesting. How applicable is the “PhysX block”/shader optimisations to the general case? If physics code is the bottleneck in your app, A goal Nvidia appears to actively code for, then uncorking that artificial impediment should make an app positively fly. On applications that are written correctly without artificial performance limits, Kepler’s performance should be much more marginal. Since Nvidia is pricing GK104 against AMD’s mid-range Pitcairn ASIC, you can reasonably conclude that the performance will line up against that card, possibly a bit higher. If it could reasonably defeat everything on the market in a non-stacked deck comparison, it would be priced accordingly, at least until the high end part is released.

All of the benchmark numbers shown by Nvidia, and later to SemiAccurate, were overwhelmingly positive. How overwhelmingly positive? Far faster than an AMD HD7970/Tahiti for a chip with far less die area and power use, and it blew an overclocked 580GTX out of the water by unbelievable margins. That is why we wrote this article. Before you take that as a backpedal, we still think those numbers are real, the card will achieve that level of performance in the real world on some programs.

The problem for Nvidia is that once you venture outside of that narrow list of tailored programs, performance is likely to fall off a cliff, with peaky performance the likes of which haven’t been seen in a long time. On some games, GK104 will handily trounce a 7970, on others, it will probably lose to a Pitcairn. Does this mean it won’t actually do what is promised? No, it will. Is this a problem? Depends on how far review sites dare to step outside of the ‘recommenced’ list of games to benchmark in the reviewers guide.

Ethically, this could go either way, and in a vacuum, we would be more than willing to say that the cards are capable of very high performance. The problem is that the numbers that Nvidia will likely show off at the launch are not in a vacuum, nor are they very real, even considering the above caveats. Nvidia is going out of their way to have patches coded for games that tend to be used as benchmarks by popular sites.

Once again, this is nothing new, and has been done many times before. One example that is often mentioned is Starcraft II’s use of stencil buffers. People with inside knowledge of that game’s development have said that Nvidia gave Blizzard help in coding some parts of the game during the final ‘crunch’ period. The code is said to heavily use stencil buffers to fix some issues and patch over minor glitches. Again nothing unusual, AMD, Intel, and almost everyone else does this on a case by case basis, especially for AAA titles released in conjunction with new hardware.

Since Nvidia’s Fermi generation GPUs are very good at handling stencil buffers, they perform very well on this code. Again, this is normal practice, Nvidia put in the effort and now reaps the benefits, good for them. What is odd about this case, is that several knowledgeable sources have said that the code actually net decreases performance on both cards. The above tale may be anecdotal, but Starcraft 2′s release code sure seemed to use stencil buffers a lot more than you would expect, unreasonably so according to many coders. This however doesn’t constitute proof in any way, but it fits what SemiAccurate has seen Nvidia do in prior cases.

More to the point is antialiasing (AA) in Batman: Arkham Asylum. If you recall, AMD stated complaining about that game’s AA routines upon release. They directly stated that if AMD cards were detected, the game would disable AA for non-technical reasons. (Note: The original post that TechPowerUp refers to has the pertinent sections in the comments, not on the front page. It takes a little searching to find the post that also talks about several other games having similar ‘bugs’.) It goes on to state that if the card IDs were changed, the AA in the game functioned correctly on ATI hardware.

Short story, this turned in to the proverbial “epic pissing match”, with Nvidia claiming that it was Eidos that owned the code, and they were free to do with it as they feel fit. This is technically true. Unfortunately, emails seen by SemiAccurate directly contradict this. Those emails state unequivocally that Eidos should not change code written by Nvidia and provided to Eidos as a part of Batman: Arkham Asylum. At the point they were questioned on why, Eidos says they could not do anything due to advice of their attorneys.

Since it was the attorneys objecting, not the coders, we can only speculate that this was due to Nvidia’s financial sponsorship of the game, not any technical reason. Since sources tell SemiAccurate that Batman: Arkham Asylum only uses standard DirectX calls to implement AA, and it appears to function if the graphics card IDs are changed, this seems to be nothing other than Nvidia directly sabotaging their competition and not allowing AMD remove the lockout. Go and re-read the statements from AMD/ATI, Nvidia, and Eidos, then draw your own conclusions.

Why do we bring these two cases up in a Kepler article? Well, we hear that it is happening again. Both AMD and Nvidia have developers that they can and do ‘embed’ at game companies. This is an old and quite legitimate practice for GPU and non-GPU hardware companies. Everyone does it. It can be done ethically or not, with net performance gains for the end user or not, and with the intent to hurt or harm. In general, the more marketing money involved, the more most developers are willing to go out on a shaky ethical limbs.

One last really good example, tesselation. High end Fermi cards, GF100/110/GTX480/GTX580 are heavily biased toward geometry performance. Since most modern GPUs can compute multiple triangles per displayable pixel on any currently available monitor, usually multiple monitors, doubling that performance is a rather dubious win. Doubling it again makes you wonder why so die area was wasted.

Since Nvidia did waste that die area, helping games show that prowess off is a good thing for users, right? Look at Crysis 2, a AAA title that is heavily promoted by Nvidia, it positively flies on Fermi based cards, but performance on AMD GPUs is far less impressive. Why? The amazing detail in things like the concrete blocks, brick walls, and vast expanses of realistically modelled water. Breathtaking isn’t it? All thanks to Nvidia’s efforts to make the game experience better on their hardware. How could this be interpreted as anything but a win for users by a reasonable observer?

Nvidia is said to have around 15 developers they can embed at companies to help ‘optimise’ their code, ‘fix bugs’, and work out ‘performance problems’, even if those problems are not on Nvidia hardware. The count for other companies is less clear, but unlikely to be much different. Sources tell SemiAccurate that about half of them are currently working at Eidos on, wait for it, a patch for the recently released Batman: Arkham City game. Since Both the original and and the new Batman games are flag bearers for Nvidia’s hardware/GPU PhysX acceleration, it doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots. Since neither the patch or Kepler based video cards are out yet, we can only wait to see what the end result is.

If the purported patch does change performance radically on specific cards, is this legitimate GPU performance? Yes. How about if it raises performance on Kepler cards while decreasing performance on non-Kepler cards to a point lower than pre-patch levels? How about if it raises performance on Kepler cards while decreasing performance only on non-Nvidia cards? Which scenario will it be? Time will tell.

How many other games have had this level of attention and optimisation gifted upon them is another open question. One thing we can say is that the list of benchmarks shown off by Nvidia where Kepler has an overwhelming advantage all support PhysX. This is not to say that they are all hardware/GPU PhysX accelerated, they are not, most use the software API.

This is important because it strongly suggests that Nvidia is accelerating their own software APIs on Kepler without pointing it out explicitly. Since Kepler is a new card with new drivers, there is no foul play here, and it is a quite legitimate use of the available hardware. Then again, they have been proven to degrade the performance of the competition through either passive or active methods. Since Nvidia controls the APIs and middleware used, the competition can not ‘fix’ these ‘problems with the performance of their hardware’.

Going back to Kepler, we see that this happy and completely ethical game is going to be starting round 3, or round 17, depending on how you count. Nvidia appears to be stacking the playing field to both cripple the competition and raise their own performance. Is the performance of Kepler cards legitimate? Yes. Is it the general case? No. If you look at the most comprehensive list of supported titles we can find, it is long, but the number of titles released per year isn’t all that impressive, and anecdotally speaking, appears to be slowing.

When Kepler is released, you can reasonably expect extremely peaky performance. For some games, specifically those running Nvidia middleware, it should fly. For the rest, performance is likely to fall off the proverbial cliff. Hard. So hard that it will likely be hard pressed to beat AMD’s mid-range card.

What does this mean in the end? Is it cheating? Is it ethical? Is Kepler/GK104 going to be worth the money? Will it beat AMD’s 7970? These are all subjective decisions for you to make. What software will Nvidia show off as benchmarks to promote Kepler’s performance? That list is a little narrower. What will happen to sites that dare to test software that is not ‘legitimately accelerated’? No idea, but history offers some clues. One thing you can say for sure is that the information released prior to and with the card is unlikely to be the whole story. Legitimacy, performance, honesty, and ethics are unlikely to resemble the official talking points, and the whole truth is likely to be hidden from prying eyes for very partisan reasons. Big grains of salt around this one people, be very skeptical of everything you hear, and take nothing at face value

ASUS scraped the bottom of the barrel in a Tweet yesterday showing an Asian model turning her back to the camera while opening a Transformer AIO. "The rear looks pretty nice. So does the new Transformer," ASUS tweeted. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA....except not.
The Tweet was promptly deleted (and hopefully the13 year old social media coordinator who tweeted it has crawled back into whatever he cave he came from), but it's still left bad vibes with lots of potential customers. "Women aren't decorations," tweeted one user. "It's just stupid to alienate potential laptop buyers with this kind of idiotic grade school kind of joke," said a commenter on Gizmodo.
Now, compliments are always nice, but I'd say this tweet goes too far in objectifying this woman's behind. I'm not going to stop loving ASUS products just because of a little goof up, but I expect better jokes next time on the Twitterscape. Kapeesh?

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

That's a shame - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Oil#Connection_to_human_rights_abuses

I didn't buy the thing, someone else did and then threw it out. Or would you have had me let them throw it out and contributed to toxic non-biodegradable pollution?

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
If there is any plastic - and all that "recyclable materials" is plastic it was made by one of your hated companies. You lose Bondo.

Bond: I guess you expect me to beg for my life.
Bad Guy: No Mr. Bond I expect you to die!

According to the circuit board, the plastic came from Nagase Plastics Co, who's supplier is JX Nippon Oil. The recycled material is aluminum. and old typewriter keys.

It's a very old logitech. I couldn't say off hand where their current stuff comes from.

I have a Soyo flatscreen monitor, Teac speakers, Hitachi hard drives, an IBM DVD drive (sadly, this area has a lot of questionable manufacturers, IBM was about the best) nvidia video cards (scored surprisingly high), took a gamble on an Asus MB (the information on their suppliers was incomplete but the ones listed scored well). RAM was sadly Kingston (some of their suppliers are questionable, particularly for solder) case is Apevia, power supply is a 1k watt Apevia that came with case


For off the shelf units, VeryPC is generally rated the highest for ethics, but they're UK based.

 Frazzled wrote:
Any plastic you have comes from evil chemical and petroleum companies. You can't escape us. We're everywhere, in everything. We're hydrocarbons, building better worlds.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

http://goodelectronics.org/urgent-appeals/hitachi

In December 2006, Nvidia, along with its main rival in the graphics industry AMD (which had acquired ATI), received subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Justice regarding possible antitrust violations in the graphics card industry.

Analysts were puzzled about the nature of the investigation. Unlike the memory industry--the subject of recent DOJ investigations into anticompetitive practices--there are only two main players in the market for add-in graphics technology. Nvidia and ATI, now part of AMD, have always been thought of as fierce competitors not inclined to work together outside of industry standards associations, said Dean McCarron, an analyst with Mercury Research.

Jon Peddie, a longtime graphics industry watcher with Jon Peddie Research, said he hasn't heard any complaints from customers of Nvidia or ATI about anticompetitive practices such as price-fixing. He noted that the graphics cards from each company that offer similar performance often cost roughly the same. This could potentially come off as price-fixing, but really reflects the nature of a two-supplier business, he said.

Although the settlement cost Nvidia millions of dollars, many of the individuals were unhappy with the settlement, and multiple websites and blogs reflected this. The website entitled Fair Nvidia Settlement[20] was one such site.

Big grains of salt around this one people, be very skeptical of everything you hear, and take nothing at face value

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

So sexism, objectification of women, human rights abuses, labour abuses, causing harm to a competitor's product and anti-trust practices are all examples of "carefully selecting each part based on a background check of the companies and their suppliers"?

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

So its ok to re-use or recycle something that has a dubious history, despite you naming Western companies that you try and avoid because of this, as well as saying that you were "carefully selecting each part based on a background check of the companies and their suppliers"? So is it ok to by products from less reputable manufacturers second hand because you are not directly financing them?

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Guess they fixed that problem:

http://www.ethisphere.com/wme/

Hitachi was named among the Most Ethical by Ethisphere 2 years in a row for 2011 and 2012.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
I might also point out that I purchased my hard drives in 2010. I don't list 'psychic' on my employment history. I do grant that the supplier, in this case, should have investigated it's own subcontractors better.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

In December 2006, Nvidia, along with its main rival in the graphics industry AMD (which had acquired ATI), received subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Justice regarding possible antitrust violations in the graphics card industry.

And if you click on that 15..

In light of the class action lawsuit that accused hardware makers Nvidia and ATI of fixing prices to keep video card prices artificially high, Nvidia proposed a $1.7M settlement.

The settlement, which is pending court approval and would resolve all claims against Nvidia, would see that $1.7 million sum split amongst those that bought hardware directly from ATI or Nvidia websites between December 4, 2002 and November 7, 2007.

Of the $1.7 million, Nvidia has offered to pay $850,000 of the figure. It is assumed that ATI would pay the remaining sum, thought the company has yet to confirm this. After that payment, Nvidia will not need to provide any other compensation, such as legal fees.

Nvidia also announced that it has settled a related price fixing case filed by individuals who bought Nvidia hardware from non-direct vendors. Under the agreement, those individuals will receive a total of $112,500 in exchange for dropping all charges.

However, that $112,500 will only go out to those who filed suit on their own, as the court denied a request classify the indirect purchase case as a class-action lawsuit, which would have encompassed anyone who purchased hardware from a non-direct vendor during the allotted time frame.

Class actions charged against NVIDIA and ATI (now AMD) reveal that the two companies may have staged a competition over the past half-a-decade or so. A judge read out an email which suggested price fixing was rife in the graphics card market. That follows a class action of 51 different plaintiffs, now combined into one, and across different legal jurisdictions, alleging cartel behaviour not only in graphics chips, but flat panels and CRTs too.

In other words, NVIDIA and ATI may have been fixing prices of their products for a while now, it is believed that they held secret meetings to discuss staged competition, chart out prices, timings of product launches among other things. These pseudo-competitions staged provided improved sales among other things. A PDF File available to us at this point shows that the two indulged in conspiracy to mutually benefit from staged competition, so as to:
Fix, stabilize, and maintain prices of products in the US Market.
Artificial inflation of product prices.
Provided, are charts that show price-spread between NVIDIA and ATI products. Three major time-scales: Before the 'conspiracy period', during and after a federal grand jury launched an investigation and issued subpoenas to both companies:

Although the settlement cost Nvidia millions of dollars, many of the individuals were unhappy with the settlement, and multiple websites and blogs reflected this. The website entitled Fair Nvidia Settlement[20] was one such site.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
The employee in question was likely fired. And a single tweet by an idiot does not make a company a haven of sexism and the objectification of women.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Yes, because I looked into the companies responses to those allegations and if any of them went to court and what the finding was. I might point out that the lawsuit that was filed against the Hitachi subcontractor supposedly on behalf of the Workers was dismissed. This is why they were able to file suit on the grounds of libel as his assertions had been found groundless in a court of law. Eventually both parties agreed to settle in the defamation case, IIRC.

Under the agreements, the companies will pay up to $37 million just to compensate government and other public entities for damages.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced a $553 million multistate settlement with seven major technology corporations alleged to have illegally conspired to artificially inflate prices for liquid crystal display (LCD) screens used in televisions, computer monitors and laptops. New York state taxpayers may receive upward of $11 million, in addition to restitution to compensate consumers affected by the scheme, the attorney general's office said.
The corporations-which include Chi Mei Innolux, Chunghwa Picture Tubes, Epson Imaging Devices, HannStar Display, Hitachi Displays, Samsung Electronics and Sharp, and certain affiliated entities of each corporation-agreed to pay over $538 million to settle antitrust claims brought on behalf of consumers, government entities and other public entities by a multistate group of eight attorneys general and private class-action attorneys.
Separately, five of the companies agreed to pay over $14 million to settle civil fine and penalty law claims brought by the states in their law enforcement capacities. The corporations also agreed to engage in antitrust compliance programs and to cooperate with the states' ongoing prosecution of other industry participants.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

So its ok to re-use or recycle something that has a dubious history, despite you naming Western companies that you try and avoid because of this, as well as saying that you were "carefully selecting each part based on a background check of the companies and their suppliers"? So is it ok to by products from less reputable manufacturers second hand because you are not directly financing them?

Didn't buy a thing to make the keyboard. Please wrap your brain around that concept.