Greg In The Desert

New Mexico Business Weekly has an article on Intel’s Fab 11X build out. This is the factory I work for.

When Intel Corp. finishes upgrading its chip-making factory in Rio Rancho next year, it will operate one of the world’s largest clean rooms.

The company started a $2.5 billion upgrade to its Fab 11X manufacturing complex early this year to produce Intel’s next generation, 32 nanometer chip technology. The new chips are smaller and faster and consume less energy than Intel’s current 45 nanometer chip technology.

When the upgrade is complete, Fab 11X will include 400,000-square-feet of clean room space, said Tim Hendry, vice president of the Intel Technology Manufacturing Group and the Fab 11X plant manager.

“It will be the largest clean room operated by Intel globally, and one of the largest in the world in general,” Hendry said. “The corridor that runs along the outside edge of the clean room is a quarter-mile long.”

Sometimes I have to walk the distance of that factory frequently. It’s a good way to get exercise. Read the whole article at New Mexico Business Weekly.

• Under 35? Hurray for the meltdown! – MSN Money – If you're 35 or older, the financial crisis may seem to have no upside. Your retirement funds, home equity, job prospects and credit lines have withered so much that it's hard to focus on anything but what you've lost.
  If you're young, though, the biggest threat to your future financial security isn't the current crisis. Your greatest risk is that fear will cause you to miss some once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
• Al Jazeera English – Europe – Italians hold anti-mafia protest – Tens of thousands of people have marched through the streets of Naples to commemorate the victims of mafia violence and demand an end to organised crime in southern Italy.

  Demonstrators, many clad in white, held banners and pictures of relatives killed by mafia gangs, as the names of some 900 mafia victims were read out through loudspeakers on Saturday.

• Tech Trader Daily – Barron’s Online : Dell: Dude, What Did You Do With Your Cell Phone? – Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Bros., asserts in a research note today that the company’s first attempt was basically rejected by the carriers as too, well, Dell-like.

  He asserts that Dell showed a prototype to the carriers, but that they weren’t all that impressed. “From our conversation with supply chain and industry sources, it appears that it ultimately came down to lack of carrier interest and small subsidies, making it difficult for Dell to make a profit,” he write. “In our view, the last thing Dell needs is to enter another money losing business as it seeks to preserve its operating margins of 5%-6%.” (Which he notes compares to Hewlett-Packard at around 11%, and Apple and IBM at 15%.)

• Part of Biosphere 2 to get boost from sun to run things – Biosphere 2, the giant terrarium in Oracle, plans to use the sun's energy to operate a portion of the facility.

  Solon Corp., a solar-panel manufacturer with a factory in Tucson, is donating more than $200,000 in solar panels to the research center.

• Report: BofA CEO wants to repay TARP money by 2010 – New Mexico Business Weekly: – Bank of America Chairman and CEO Ken Lewis said he’d like to repay the government’s $45 billion investment in his bank later this year or in early 2010.

  “In terms of paying it totally back then you’re probably talking about sometime late this year or sometime early next year when we see the economy improving,” Lewis told the Charlotte [N.C.] Observer this week.

• New Mexico Independent » New Mexico’s brave new world of film and TV — courtesy of you! – Gov. Richardson liked the idea of luring movies and TV to New Mexico so much that he expanded the incentives package — increasing what had been a 15 percent film production tax rebate to 25 percent. The Democratic governor also led the charge to relax state sales taxes on the industry, and he added a program to subsidize the training of New Mexico residents in so-called “advanced below-the-line” crew positions — a subsidy that amounts to a reimbursement of half of the trainees’ wages.
• Goodbye Google | stopdesign – Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.
• PETA: Ingrid Newkirk’s Unique Will – a. That the “meat” of my body, or a portion thereof, be used for a human barbecue, to remind the world that the meat of a corpse is all flesh, regardless of whether it comes from a human being or another animal, and that flesh foods are not needed;
• Was Eliot Spitzer Taken Out Because He Was Going to Bust AIG? | PEEK | AlterNet – Today in Slate Eliot Spitzer has a short op-ed that speaks volumes about what is going on, and indirectly, if you follow the money, what happened to him. Plainly stated, Spitzer brings the AIG Ponzi Scheme one step closer to the revered establishment when he explains how the bailout money was funneled straight into the top players, with Goldman Sachs being the name that comes up again and again. These top players already got bailout money, and Goldman is looking at zero losses at this point, while regular Americans are being asked to make concessions or just plain losing everything. here are the biggest financial entities in the world, making billions on what appears to have been nothing but air traded back and forth, and having gutted the American people they are walking away with 100% return to their stockholders.
• Despair over financial policy – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com – To this end the plan proposes to create funds in which private investors put in a small amount of their own money, and in return get large, non-recourse loans from the taxpayer, with which to buy bad — I mean misunderstood — assets. This is supposed to lead to fair prices because the funds will engage in competitive bidding.

President Obama has introduced a logo to go with the $787 US stimulus plan. the Franklin D. Roosevelt Works Progress Administration (aka The New Deal), which is often compared to the current stimulus program, also had a logo.

With the current financial catastrophe going on, I’ve decided to invest in myself. I have signed up for Pragmatic Studio’s IPhone Development Studio, 10 November through 13 November in Denver.

The $1800 early bird registration certainly wasn’t cheap, and it isn’t being paid for by my company. I’m tried of this “teach myself programming” that I’ve done most of my life. I want some real instructed programming-on-the-Mac training. I can’t seem to get that anywhere in New Mexico, the local colleges don’t seem to offer it.

I’m mostly a VBA guy (and some RealBasic) so I need to brush up on my Objective-C. I started going back through Beginning Mac OS X Programming and should be able to get through it by the time the class starts. Only problem with this particular title is it covers Xcode 2 and there’s some pretty big changes with Xcode 3.

I ordered my MacBook Pro. I must say it’s a stupid name but the specs are pretty good. Should be considerably faster than my current 1GH TiBook. A lot of people have been whining and bitching about the specs. Yes It will be eventually replaced with something with better specs, but for now this is the fastest laptop Apple has and I want it.

One thing that’s interesting is that Apple never refers to the processor as the Centrino Duo, as Intel does. They only call it Core Duo. Perhaps Centrino would suggest that this laptop is not a “pro” laptop. I suspect in 6 months they will be putting in whatever the next Pentium M processor is in the Pro version and moving the Centrino into the regular MacBook.

Update 01/13/06 6:15AM:

According to AppleInsider, the MacBook Pro should start shipping on or after February 7th.

Biosphere 2, that lovable Earth environment within Earth environment is for sale. Bioshphere 2 is located in Oracle, Arizona. How much? Well they don’t seem to be saying. But it cost the current developer 200 million dollars to get it to where it is now so, uh, you will need a few million.

If you don’t recall, the whole idea in the Biosphere was to encapulate humans in a earth like bubble and see if the could manage the production of food, water and oxygen like one might do on mars or other inhospitable planet. That didn’t work out too well and they had to get help from “the outside”. Some saw that as a utter and complete failure, some saw it as a learning experience. I agree with the former. They did this 3 times.

I would also like to note that it’s annoying that their website resized the browser to full screen for no apparent reason.