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Former AMD CEO Named in Insider Trading Probe

Paul Lilly — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:09:47 -0500

According to an anonymous source, Hector Ruiz, 63-year-old former chief executive officer of AMD, is the unnamed "AMD executive" government prosecutors allege provided information to a defendant in the Galleon insider trading case, Bloomberg reports..

Ruiz, who stepped down as AMD's CEO last year and now serves as chairman of chip spinoff Globalfoundries, hasn't been charged with any wrongdoing in the case, nor do prosecutors say he profited from insider trading. But he is accused of discussing with Danielle Chiesi, who is alleged to be part of the Balleon insider trading ring, timing of the chip factory's spinoff in September 2008, ahead of the announcement of the deal.

"You know, we're gonna shock the hell out of everybody," the AMD executive told Chiesi, according a transcript of the September conversation included in court documents.

If the anonymous source turns out to be correct, Ruiz would be the highest ranking executive involved in the case. Other defendants in the case include IBM executive Robert Moffat and Rajiv Goel, who helped direct investments at Intel.

Image Credit: byu.edu

Randy Pitchford Talks Borderlands, Piracy, and Why He Doesn’t Trust Valve

Will Smith — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:30:00 -0500

We chat with Gearbox's CEO about the state of PC gaming, the problem with Steam, and a little game called Borderlands

From the first time we saw Borderlands, we were intrigued. By mixing a fast-paced first-person shooter with the procedurally generated weapon system of a loot-hoarding RPG like Diablo, and letting you play the game cooperatively with three of your pals, the kids at Gearbox have made a game we simply can’t wait to play. We went down to Plano, Texas to play the first three hours of the game and to chat with Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford about what the future holds for PC gaming, why Steam is not an ideal method of distribution, and why Randy loves Wal-Mart.

On Borderlands

Maximum PC: We see a lot of games developed simultaneously on multiple platforms, where the PC is very clearly a second-class citizen compared to the Xbox and PS3 SKUs. What have you guys done differently with Borderlands?

Randy Pitchford: The first thing is that we author our content on the PC. With Borderlands, we’re not porting the game to the PC, we’re starting there. The PC is our development platform.

The best-looking version of the game that you’re going to get is on PC. We target a high-end PC, but it’s scalable so you’ll still have a great experience on a 2-year-old PC. A 2-year-old PC will be comparable to the Xbox experience.

MPC: So people who can play Team Fortress 2 or Left4Dead will be in good shape to play Borderlands?

RP: Absolutely! We author on the PC, so the console versions are kind of reduced sets of the ideal content. Having said that, it is a first person shooter, which feels natural to play with the mouse and keyboard. Gearbox’s roots are in PC development, so we think a lot about that. We have a separate set of guys who are entirely focused on the PC version. Lots of games that are multi-platform don’t account for the mouse, in the menus, in the inventory screens, and the rest of the game.

For example, when we helped Activision bring Tony Hawk to the PC, they had this weird virtual keyboard. I didn’t need to use a joystick to navigate to the letter on the virtual keyboard because my PC already had a keyboard! We understand what people expect on the PC. With Borderlands, it’s different. We’re not porting the game to the PC, we’re starting there.

MPC: Borderlands is a multiplayer-focused game, but there aren’t any lobbies?

RP: All the modes that you can play are actually inside the game. In most games, you have the campaign, which is one thing, then you have competitive multiplayer, which is another. In Borderlands, if you want to play with a friend, you can just invite him to join you, but from that point on, there’s no lobby.

If a friend joins you, he’ll be doing your missions, he can take missions once he’s in the game, but you’re your game. Or, you can join him and take part in his experience. Or, you can start a game together, using the characters you’ve built up from other play sessions. Doing that doesn’t mean you’ve lost whatever progress you made when you were playing alone. Your character is persistent across all play sessions, if you want it to be. You can also create multiple characters. You can carry your character’s progression through all the games you play, or your friends, or whatever you want to do. You can move that persistent character around through all those different game experiences.

In addition, if you’re playing with friends in the cooperative mode, you can also compete with them. There are a couple of ways to do this: One is the duel, where you can smack someone in the head, then if that person smacks you back, you can just throw down right there. It’s just a quick way to go, “Alright bitch, I’ve had enough of you—let’s see who’s got it.” There are also arenas, which are like the Thunderdome from the Mad Max franchise. You go into the arena and you can set up a more organized competitive match. Instead of a free-for-all deathmatch, you can play a kind of rocket arena or team DM.

MPC: But a team deathmatch would be two players vs. two players, right?

RP: Yeah, the arena is designed specifically for… specifically for… a type of battle. It’s like fighting in a Quake map. It’s not a random world, it’s like a duel.

MPC: Like Rocket Arena?

RP: Exactly! Rocket Arena is a huge influence. We’ve never had a commercial Rocket Arena, just mods.

MPC: So how do you do with the different levels in the game? Say I’ve been playing a while and I’m level 40, but my buddy is new and level 10. Can we play together?

RP: If you guys want to do that, go for it! It depends on whose game you’re playing in. If you’re playing in his game and you’re playing in the newbie area, you’ll essentially be a god, killing everything. But, you’ll also leech off most of the experience and rewards. So it will be a hard way for the low-level guy to grind. You can help people through the harder areas by doing that, just like you can in WoW or other games, and that’s fine! A lot of games won’t allow that, but you paid your $60, so we think you should be able to play with whoever you want.

MPC: Obvious influences: Diablo and World of Warcraft…

RP: Yes

MPC: Hardcore first-person shooters…

RP: Yes

MPC: Something with cars?

RP: Actually, I was having a hard time explaining that. We use vehicles kind of the same way Halo uses vehicles. There are some missions that are vehicle-centric, and there are interludes with big Road Warrior–style combat, but it’s not a racing game. Vehicles are kind of like gravy.

Settlements, like this one, serve as quest hubs in Borderlands. Places where you'll come to get new missions, upgrade your gear, and recharge your health.

MPC: What happens when you beat Borderlands?

RP: If you go through the story missions, and you’ve beaten them all, and ended the story, you have a couple of choices. You can go back and complete the optional missions, and level up your character and become more powerful and get better gear. Alternately, if you’ve completed the story, you can replay the game, but everything’s harder, and all the bosses are tougher.

The other thing is that you can reach the level cap (level 50), and there are some end-game content places where it’s fun to grind for gear. We’re not announcing anything yet, but I can hint that there will be DLC for Borderlands, as well.

MPC: For PC too?

RP: Yeah, for all platforms.

MPC: How are you going to do downloadable content for PC? You’re not using Steam or Games for Windows.

RP: I did say we’re not doing Games for Windows. We haven’t said anything about Steam yet.

On the State of PC Gaming

MPC: What’s your feeling about the health of the PC as a platform for games?

RP: It’s tricky, right? It’s a very powerful platform and it’s very flexible.

MPC: You mean the technology and the widening gap between Xbox 360 and PC’s capabilities?

RP: The longer the generation goes with the consoles, the more the extreme side of the PC will have an advantage, from a technology perspective. The other thing is that the PC is a very flexible platform, we can build PCs of a lot of different types. Another angle to that is that it’s a very accessible platform, it invites a lot of different development activities. However, the biggest games in the world are very costly to produce.

MPC: $30M-$40M for some AAA titles, right?

RP: It’s becoming very difficult to rationalize that on the PC alone. When you’re sitting in my seat, you want to make sure that you’ve thought through your business model, and want to make sure that you make at least as much as you spend. Because if we don’t make as much as we spend, we don’t get to do it again. That would suck.

As you add more players to your co-op game, Borderlands ramps up the difficulty. With four players, expect to fight lots of baddies, and a ton of Badass bosses, the game's uber-difficult elite characters.

MPC: We don’t want you guys delivering pizzas. That would be bad.

RP: We learn something each time, and we get better each time, so we want to make as much as we spend at minimum to keep going. We need to make a lot more than we spend if the pattern continues, in that the cost of the next project is much more than the cost of the previous project. So anyway, what does that mean? How healthy is the PC platform? I believe the PC has a hard time being a dominant gaming platform, because of the advantages it has. Because it’s such a powerful, flexible platform, it’s also less accessible, to ordinary folks.

MPC: There can be a high expense to them too.

RP: It can be expensive, but you can amortize your investment in a PC in a lot of different ways. Everyone uses email, browses the web, and watches YouTube on their PC, but you can’t really do that on a $250 console. You’re not just buying a PC as a gaming platform. You can rationalize that cost in a bunch of different ways. The big problem though, is the flexibility of the platform. It becomes a real challenge to push things because it’s difficult to know whether your customer has a high-end gaming machine or a 4-year-old computer with Intel integrated graphics. Ultimately though, that versatility of the platform means the PC won’t be the dominant platform, but it also means it will never go away.

MPC: Unless people stop making PC games.

RP: Which is very unlikely. Games will change, but we’re always going to amuse ourselves with whatever tools we have.

The sexiest bit of Borderlands is its procedurally generated weapon system, which combines thousands of variables to create monster weapons, like this shotgun that shoots flaming razor blades.

MPC: How worried are you about piracy?

RP: I think I look at piracy a little differently than most people. It sucks as a content creator who has invested a lot of, not just our money, but our souls, our creativity, and our time, to know that someone’s stolen something. That feels bad.

Part of it is price point, part of it is convenience, but part of it is that the bootleg, stolen stuff is harder to get now. There was a period of time when I could type in the name of a song and I’d find a website with it on there. Today, I have to use Bittorrent and all this other stuff.

MPC: You have to speak that language.

RP: I’m comfortable speaking that language, but a lot of people aren’t. Any computer savvy person is going to be able to pirate, but the question is “Can your mom pirate a song?”

MPC: But she has the option of paying the $0.89, and that’s easier for her.

RP: Amazon has made it super easy. On the videogame industry, especially on the PC side, we kind of suck on all three points. Our retail experiences are sometimes less convenient and less trustworthy than the alternative. There’s a ton of risk as a retail customer—half the time you don’t even know if that game is going to run on your PC.

Then there’s the DRM issue, which makes us even more skeptical of retail sales. DRM has been handled terribly for so many years. For example, false negatives are a disaster for everyone. I’d much rather have a false positive, and allow thieves to play, than prevent a paying customer from playing my game. The industry has destroyed a lot of good will with DRM problems.

MPC: You’ve had issues with this in the past?

RP: The more control we have, the better off we are. If you look at Hell’s Highway, there was virtually no DRM. We put our foot down on that, and they said “Ok, we’ll go your way.” Still, that’s not an ideal situation, because we released it and it was immediately stolen. Release and steal wasn’t good.

On Steam, Games for Windows, and Wal-Mart

MPC: The download services, like Steam, are helping make it easier to buy games though, right?

RP: I’ll tell you what. Steam helps. As a guy in this industry though, I don’t trust Valve.

MPC: Because they’re competitors?

RP: Right.

MPC: You guys have worked with them a lot!

RP: I know. And I, personally, trust Valve. But I’m just saying, honestly, I think a lot of the industry doesn’t.

Rocket launcher-equipped vehicles in Borderlands not only let you travel quickly across the game world, they also open a whole world of vehicular combat, giving entirely new meaning to the phrase road rage.

MPC: So you think Valve should spin off Steam?

RP: They should! It would be much better if Steam was its own business. There’s so much conflict of interest there that it’s horrid. It’s actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win.

I love Valve games, and I do business with the company. But, I’m just saying, Steam isn’t the answer. Steam helps us as customers, but it’s also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that’s not totally fair. Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service its providing. It’s exploiting a lot of small guys. For us big guys, we’re going to sell the units and it will be fine.

MPC: What about Microsoft?

RP: Microsoft has every single one of us running Windows, and it could solve this [distribution] problem in a second if done right. It’s not hard, but either the company doesn’t know how to do it, or it’s not willing to invest, or it’s got other priorities. Gamers can see the prioritization. Microsoft is focused on the console platform. For the time being, that’s nice, because some of us aren’t sure we want Microsoft to control [distribution]. Frankly, at this point, I’d rather trust Best Buy and Wal-Mart.

MPC: But you can’t think brick and mortar retail is the future?

RP: The thing I love about the digital method is that I’m buying a credential. When I buy a credential, I can log in from any terminal and my content can follow me, but I don’t care who I buy it from. I’d rather buy it from someone whose only interest is serving me. I’m cool with it being a digital retailer, but I want that to be their only business. And then I’ll really trust them.

Of course, I’m kind of joking when I say that I want Wal-Mart to control it. What I’m really saying is that brick and mortar stores work because they give the customer the retail experience he wants. At the end of the day, their only business is retail, and if they fail to serve their customer, they die. I think if we’re more convenient than stealing it, and we, as a culture, are learning that stealing software is still theft. We all want to be good people, we don’t want to be criminals.

As you progress in the game, you'll be able to customize your character, specializing in one or two of the six main weapon archetypes. The upshot? As you progess in the game, you'll be able to do even more damage with that machine gun that fires grenades instead of bullets.

MPC: Given the opportunity, most people choose to do the right thing.

RP: We need to improve the convenience thing, and we need to figure out who controls the digital distribution stuff. I think it depends on the model. If they’re slicing a piece of all of us off, that sucks. It depends how much the piece is. There’s a fair piece and an unfair piece. How much service are they offering? Are they creating opportunity for us to manage some of those resources themselves? We’ll bear the burden of the cost of the service, but we want more of the reward. Are they creating that opportunity for us or is the only way their way?

The best example is that I can go to this place using Vista to buy software from Microsoft. But, I can also fire up my browser, whether it’s Internet Explorer or Mozilla, and I can go to any retailer in the world and purchase something. That’s really neat. Amazon has somehow figured something out, as have Apple and others, and made it really convenient for me to buy songs. They have that interface exactly right for the way I want to consume that. It seems like it’s not that hard to do. We’re not there yet, it’s still 2009, but we can see it and know that it’s possible.

Google CEO Spurns Murdoch's Paid Content Plan

Pulkit Chandna — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:49:19 -0500

Of late, Google has found it very difficult to be in the vicinity of an agreement with people from the publishing industry. The trend persisted on Thursday, when Google CEO Eric Schmidt again spurned Rupert Murdoch’s stated plan to begin charging for all online content owned by News Corp. He believes that it is highly unlikely that internet users will be willing to pay for accessing general news items on the internet given the nimiety of free news sources on the internet.

"In general these models have not worked for general public consumption because there are enough free sources that the marginal value of paying is not justified based on the incremental value of quantity. So my guess is for niche and specialist markets ... it will be possible to do it but I think it is unlikely that you will be able to do it for all news," Schmidt said while addressing the Royal Televison Society Convention in Cambridge, England, via video link. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch had said in August that News Corp. websites may become paid by the middle of next year.

Image Credit: The Age

Intel, Dell, and HP are Predicting a Tech Recovery for the Remainder of 2009

Justin Kerr — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 10:29:00 -0500

Stronger than expected demand for microprocessors has prompted Intel to raise its Q3 forecast from $8.1 billion to $9.2 billion, and the good news is they aren’t the only ones predicting better times ahead. Both HP and Dell are forecasting Q3 revenues to rise, though this news comes hot on the heels of disappointing year to date earnings.

On Thursday, Dell reported a 23 percent drop in Q2 profit, but still managed to beat the street estimates. CEO Michael Dell claims, “if current demand trends continue, we expect revenue for the second half of the year to be stronger than the first half”. Rival Hewlett-Packard reported a similarly depressing drop in profit of 19 percent for the first half of the year, but is also expecting the trend to reverse itself soon.

The PC Industry is expected to benefit from the economic stimulus package in China, as well as what appears to be the start of an economic recovery in the U.S. Windows 7 is also expected to help move PCs in the consumer sector, but businesses will likely put off upgrading for at least a year or more.

Oracle Founder Joins the Elite $1 Salary Club

Pulkit Chandna — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:11:13 -0500

CEOs have drawn a lot of flak in recent times for their fat paychecks, forcing some CEOs to accept pay cuts. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is the latest tech honcho to have his base salary trimmed down dramatically to $1. According to a regulatory document filed by his company on Friday, Larry Ellison will receive only $1 as his base salary during fiscal 2010, which began on June 1. The erstwhile richest man in the world is currently fourth on Forbes’ list of world’s most affluent people. Last year, he received a base salary $1 million, which only amounted to 1.2 percent of his total annual income. Ellison, who founded Oracle in 1977, owns a 22.7 stake in Oracle.

Image Credit: Cratchit

Survey: IT Industry to Take the Lead in Economic Recovery

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:26:04 -0500

Many financial savants grabbed their crystal balls and went into hiding when the economy went into freefall. Now that there are signs of recovery, they are again gazing into their crystal balls with renewed hope. According to many of them, including IMF’s chief economist Olivier Blanchard, the recession is behind us.

Tech honchos now believe that the IT industry would lead the recovery. According to a survey conducted by KPMG, two thirds of the 130 CEOs that were surveyed believe the IT industry would recover quicker than the US economy. Furthermore, a vast majority of CEOs feel 2010 would bring glad tidings for their industry. One can expect lesser job cuts in the near future as more than two thirds of tech bosses are not too keen on cost cutting.

Image Credit: ProgressOhio

"End of an Era" as Intel Chairman Craig Barrett to Retire in May

Mark Edward Soper — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:21:43 -0600

With the announcement of Craig Barrett's retirement in May, one of Intel's last links with the pre-PC era will vanish. Barrett's career at Intel started in 1974, when Intel was just seven years old and was introducing the first general-purpose microprocessor, the 8080. The 8080's descendents included the first 16-bit processor, the 8086, and the IBM PC's processor, the 8088. The IBM PC and its many descendants enabled Intel's rise to processor dominance.

Barrett became Intel's CEO in 1998, taking over for the legendary Andy Grove. Barrett's tenure as CEO saw the development of Intel's first Celeron economy CPU and high-end Pentium III processors, the introduction of the Pentium 4, diversification into communications chips, development of new Xeon and Itanium server processors, and the introduction of the Centrino portable chipset/processor technology.

During this period, Intel received formidable challenges from AMD's Athlon and Athlon XP, and frequently saw its processors beaten by AMD's processors in real-world performance tests. Barrett became chairman of Intel in 2005, and during his tenure as chairman, saw Intel retake the performance crown from AMD with the introduction of the Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, and Core i7 processor lines.

Barrett, 70, is retiring at a time in which Intel, like other technology companies, is facing tough times, and announced last week that it's closing two fab plants in the US as well as three assembly test facilities in Malaysia and the Philippines, affecting over 5,000 employees.

What was the first Intel product you used? Was it a processor, motherboard, chipset, network adapter, or something else? Looking back at Barrett's long career, what do you think were Intel's biggest hits - and misses? Hit Comment and tell us.

Yahoo's CEO Hunt Comes to An End

Andy Salisbury — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:30:55 -0600

Given that Jerry Yang has been gone as long as he has, it’s nice that Yahoo’s Board has finally stepped up and named a new CEO. Who’s the new suit that’s going to fill the shoes? Carol Bartz, formerly of Autodesk.

Who is this Carol Bartz, one might ask? Well, according to Roy Bostock, Yahoo’s Chairman, “She is the exact combination of seasoned technology executive and savvy leader that the board was looking for, and we are thrilled to have attracted such a world-class talent to Yahoo. The board is united in its view that her energetic and decisive leadership style, coupled with a proven track record of driving growth, operational excellence and shareholder value, is exactly what Yahoo needs to get back on a path toward achieving its full potential.”

Her main challenge as new CEO will be turning around a struggling media company whose services are used by hundreds of millions of people. Ms. Bartz, we wish you the best of luck and we look forward to seeing what you do with the place!

Image Credit: Autodesk