Perhaps the most surprising thing to me when reading the iFixit article was that their Mac Pro's PSU was only 450 watts. Granted, most enthusiast PSUs are way over-specced (a hangover from the days when even major manufacturers blatantly lied about their wattage ratings), but that still sounds much smaller than I'd expect for a dual-GPU system. The FirePro D300 is basically a professional version of the well-known Radeon HD 7870 gaming card, and that card has a TDP of 175 watts. This one may be clocked lower, as is the case with the FirePro W7000 based on the same silicon, so let's say 150 watts maximum. Take 300W for both GPUs, and another ~125W for the Xeon CPU, and you're pretty close to the limit.

This also implies that upgraded Mac Pros must have a different, larger PSU. No matter how good Apple's engineering is, there's no way they managed to fit a 12-core Xeon and two power-hungry Tahiti GPUs within a 450W envelope. So if someone is thinking about saving ~$1000 by buying the cheapest Mac Pro and adding the Xeon 12-core themselves, it might not be such a good idea.

Overall this is a very clever and efficient design. Hopefully it will get some PC manufacturers thinking about alternatives to the absurdly outdated ATX form factor. There is no reason aside from inertia (and patents?) why DIY PC parts could not be oriented around a unified thermal core design. You'd have to come up with a new standard for motherboards, graphics cards, interconnects, and PSUs... but it could be done.

Do power users want external thunderbolt devices for everything not crammed into the case? I doubt it; I certainly wouldn't.

90% of all the DIY systems I see have no expansion cards other than GPUs. With two high-end GPUs already on board, what else is the average user, even the average enthusiast, going to need? Some people complain about not being able to cram HDDs into the case, but this is old-fashioned thinking. The modern method is to keep most of your data on a NAS or file share, and access it over the network as needed. Internal storage is only for the most speed-critical elements, like the OS and its related files. With Gigabit Ethernet, there is little sacrifice involved in most use-cases. About the only case I can think of where you need faster-than-Gigabit access to multiple terabytes of data is if you're editing uncompressed HD video. So the question then becomes whether it makes more sense to ask this small subset of users to add a Thunderbolt RAID device, or inconvenience everyone with a larger and more cumbersome machine for their sake. Apple chose the former, and I can't say I blame them.

I understand that the reviewer was restricted by the ultra-low price point set by his employer, but the result is that this is a really poor selection of SSDs, many of them obsolete, and is not particularly reflective of the market today. For instance, he reviewed the Crucial M4 (release date: early 2011), but not the newer Crucial M500, which according to reviews has both RAID-style NAND redundancy and a bank of capacitors to protect against power failure. The M500 isn't even all that expensive on a per-GB basis, though it isn't available in the ultra-small sizes the reviewer apparently needed because of his very limited budget.

There are other, even more glaring, omissions. No mention of any Samsung drive? Nothing from SanDisk? These are two of the biggest SSD vendors, and both have a good reputation for reliability. Leaving out their products makes this roundup almost worthless.

The SSD market is advancing so fast that reviewing drives over 2 years old is going to give an extremely misleading impression of the current state-of-the-art.

If you were willing to budge on the form factor, shop for bargains, and substitute various components (such as a Quadro card instead of the FirePro, as suggested in the article), then you probably could build a comparable DIY system cheaper. But people who buy the Mac Pro really don't care about that. Businesses, in case you haven't noticed, tend not to go with DIY systems for the most part. They prefer having them purpose-built by OEMs. This system is aimed squarely at businesses in the creative sector: graphics design, modeling, rendering, and so forth. (Presumably a lot of them will be dual-booting with Windows 7.)

You'd be hard-pressed to build a system that has this much power at the same low noise levels (remember, you've got two graphics cards with about a 200W TDP each, plus a powerful Xeon CPU). You might be able to pull it off with the right case (most likely a Silverstone FT02 or FT04) and some careful use of fan controllers, but this would be a lot bigger than the Mac Pro, and you'd likely need to keep it under your desk instead of on top. No DIY system is going to match the Mac Pro's combination of high power, very low noise, tiny footprint, and excellent fit-and-finish. It just isn't possible within the limitations of the standard form factors of DIY parts.

Also, I think "as small as we can" is bogus. If this is supposed to be a business product who gives a fig about smallness. Make it functional and normal looking.

Desk space is often limited in professional environments. There are advantages to having a system that fits into a small cylinder, rather than a giant full tower.

How can you write about IT project management failures in sci-fi movies and not mention Jurassic Park?

For all Malcolm's talk about "chaos theory", the failure of the park was a very predictable result of (1) relying heavily on IT for mission-critical systems, and (2) putting all of this IT infrastructure in the hands of one guy, that the CEO knows is disgruntled! Any project manager with half a brain should have seen it coming. But Hammond, who "spared no expense" on everything else, apparently couldn't be bothered to hire a competent CIO, or spring for a real IT team.

A general rule of project management, not only in IT but in other fields as well, is that you should never have critical, undocumented knowledge that is in the possession of only one employee. The reason is obvious: if that employee quits, or is fired, or gets hit by a bus, or is eaten by a Dilophosaurus, you're completely screwed. All mission-critical systems should be covered by multiple people and should be properly documented.

I don't believe this. Not for a second. Aside from the fact that the NSA is under fire and would say anything to save their precious surveillance programs, why would it make any sense for China to do something like this?

Think about it. China's interests are often at odds with ours, but they are also one of our major trading partners, and a huge chunk of their GDP comes from making goods for export. Their leaders may be ruthless, but they're not insane – quite the opposite, they seem to be very effective at advancing their geopolitical goals. But a "cyber-attack" on US civilian electronics by China would not advance their goals in any way. Instead it would be a dramatic setback.

Imagine that China did something like this and managed to pull it off. So, millions of US computers and other devices are bricked, causing billions of dollars in economic damages and other disruptions. But what then? First of all, sensitive US military equipment won't be affected, since it is deliberately designed to be a hard target. Secondly, once it comes out who is responsible (and it will come out, one way or another), China's whole export industry is ruined – they've just demonstrated in the most vivid way possible that their trade goods cannot be trusted. They're now dealing with a pissed-off US (and probably EU as well) that is boycotting them, passing trade sanctions, and considering military action. How exactly is this in their best interests, compared to business as usual?

Where in the world is serious stuff being done on any of these platforms? Just asking...

Firewall and NAS solutions are often based off of FreeBSD. See, for example, m0n0wall and its derivatives, as well as the popular FreeNAS.

One big advantage of BSD for NAS applications is that it can support ZFS. (Linux attempts have been half-assed, largely due to licensing conflicts.) You really want ZFS if you are building a robust, reliable NAS device.

For the record, I don't see what's not to be impressed about with the libertarian arguments? They hit the nail on the head, IMO, as to why forcing a technology change via govt. regulation yields poor results

My argument is a pragmatic argument against this specific regulation. The libertarians oppose all government product safety/efficiency regulations on principle, which is, IMO, an absurd position.

Did you know that the U.S. car companies once had an agreement to not compete with each other on safety features? There was no effective way, short of regulation, for anything to be done about this. How was the average car consumer to know that there might be features that would increase safety, but that these features were not available because of an agreement made in a smoke-filled room somewhere?

Look at the dramatic increase in the average quality of cars since the 1970s. Back in the 70s, the average car was a gas guzzler and a death trap. They had a very short lifespan (often, the odometer only had 5 digits, because no one expected them to last to 100,000 miles) and they lost half their value as soon as you drove off the lot. Modern cars are superior in virtually every way: safety, fuel efficiency, performance, durability. And it is federal regulation that is largely responsible for these changes. We basically made it illegal for car companies to sell cut-rate crap, so they stopped.

And I'm sure you have something more than anecdotal data to back that assertion up right?

This NYT article contains a long discussion on why CFLs often do not live up to their claims.

In the 2007-8 tests, five of 29 models failed to meet specifications for such categories as lifespan, luminosity and on-off cycling and were removed from Energy Star's list of qualified products. Because of performance concerns, the government is expanding the watchdog program, vowing to test samples of 20 percent of the thousands of certified bulb models each year.

And this only applies to Energy Star certified bulbs – not the countless inexpensive bulbs sold without this certification.

Even the defenders of CFLs admit that they have to be carefully babied in order to work properly: limited on-off cycles, no vibration, no recessed fixtures, dimmers only if both the dimmer and bulb are specially designed. How is this supposed to be a viable product for the ordinary home user?

I'm not particularly impressed by the libertarian arguments, but I do think that these regulations were phased in a bit too soon. A delay of 5 to 10 years would probably make more sense.

CFLs really suck. I've tried quite a few different brands, and have tried to like them, but they just seem to have some flaws that can't be fixed. First, and most annoyingly, none of them come on immediately - they start out extremely dim when the switch is flicked, and take 30 seconds to a minute to completely warm up. Secondly, no CFLs made in the past five years come anywhere close to meeting their life expectancy – most of them burn out faster than incandescent bulbs. (I have a couple of old CFLs in a tableside lamp that are still going strong after nearly 10 years, but once the production lines switched to China, quality went to complete crap.)

LED bulbs are far better – when implemented correctly, they're pretty much indistinguishable from incandescents. But they are also very expensive – about $15 for the Cree bulbs at Home Depot, which are the cheapest ones I've found that have decent online reviews. Hopefully in a couple of years the manufacturing process will mature so that the price will go down without compromising quality.

As of 2013 there is still no way to get a light bulb that combines the low cost and high quality of an incandescent. As long as that remains the case, the new regulations will be resented by many people.

Securing a system for novice users isn't really that hard. The two most important steps are: (1) make sure they're running as a limited user, and (2) have them run a decent, but lightweight, anti-malware program. You've already indicated that you are doing this. For the user account, I strongly recommend not even giving them the admin password so they won't be tempted (or socially engineered) into using it. You should set up remote access so you can get in if they need help with something that legitimately requires it. For anti-virus, Microsoft Security Essentials works pretty well - it's lightweight and free. Not 100% perfect, but nothing is.

DO NOT install the Java Runtime unless it's absolutely necessary. Having this crap in the browser is the #1 vector of malware infections today! If the user absolutely needs it for one or several specific sites, use a whitelist. (Or, if it's for a non-web application, disable the web plugin using the control panel.)

Watch out for the Adobe junk, too - Flash Player and Adobe Reader are major malware vectors these days. Unfortunately, you can't usually skip Flash and PDF support entirely. Therefore, I suggest having the user use Chrome instead of IE. Chrome has its own version of Flash which is automatically kept up to date. And you don't need Adobe Reader, since there is a built-in PDF viewer in Chrome (which you can also associate with the .pdf file extension if you want). Install Adblock Plus for Chrome for some added peace of mind (not to mention a better browsing experience). Uninstall IE (or at least hide/remove the icon) so the user won't be tempted to run it.

However, concerns are being raised that this is a temporary boom that may hurt AMD in the long run, since gamers, their core consumer group, may not be able to acquire the cards and instead opt for Nvidia

Concerns? Sounds like concern trolling to me. Since when is it a bad thing that your products are so popular that you can barely keep them on the shelf, and they're selling well above MSRP? Most vendors would kill to attain that level of popularity. It's not just due to short supply, either – the Tahiti GPU (7950/7970/280X) is about 2 years old, and was being deeply discounted up until the recent boom.

Personally, I think this is great. AMD has been chronically short of funds for R&D, and hopefully the recent boom in high-end GPUs will give them a much-needed infusion of cash. A competitive market is good for everyone, even if you're an Intel/Nvidia fan.

I do not know what UK laws are in this area, but I do know that US laws specifically state that unsolicited merchandise is legally considered a gift. Think about it: if things didn't work this way, you could wind up being billed (and having your credit report dinged) for "debts" you never agreed to! Alternatively, if companies could get away with sending you more expensive merchandise than you actually ordered and then billing you for it (or demanding, after the fact, that you take the time and trouble to send it back to them), then you'd be opening the door to merchants committing all kinds of bait-and-switch scams.

This seems to have been a genuine accident, and sucks for Zavvi, but they should not be allowed to threaten or instigate any legal action against the receivers. Even demanding the recipients mail it back with postage paid by the company is still requiring them to perform unpaid work (packaging, driving to the post office, etc.) for something they didn't do and aren't responsible for.

The Mozilla foundation could perhaps negotiate a cut-rate or even free license, yes. That's doable. But then what happens when someone else decides they would like to adapt Firefox? Now they can't, because they don't have permission to use those patented parts. It breaks the open-source development model: The code may be free, but you can't legally do much with it unless the MPEG LA grants permission, and they aren't going to give a free license to every five-employee company, let alone hobbyists and home users, and especially when many users are commercial. Plus that's only for the major browsers - are all the many obscure ones supposed to go begging for a free license and sublicensing (hah!) rights too? The only way out of this would be for the MPEG LA to simply relinquish all patent rights entirely, and that's not going to happen.

The browser itself doesn't need to perform the patented decoding steps. All of that can be offloaded to hardware on any modern video card or SoC. The browser just gets the H.264 stream, sends it to the hardware decoder via the appropriate API (DXVA, VAAPI, or whatever), and gets the frame data back. All the patented stuff is done by a black box for which the manufacturer has already paid the requisite royalties.

Anyway, this may become irrelevant if the Supreme Court rules software patents invalid in the upcoming case. I'm thinking the ruling will probably be made on narrower grounds, but we can still keep our fingers crossed...