xcb999.com

It goes without saying that instant messaging is a logical step for a social network–it’s an activity in which millions of Web users partake, and it would keep those coveted “user engagement” rates high. Facebook’s obviously not the first one to have this idea: A number of third-party Facebook Platform applications facilitate instant messaging between Facebook users, and Arrington notes that those developer programs would be effectively killed if Facebook launched an in-house rival.

That said, other major social networks have some kind of in-house instant-messaging functions now: MySpace operates MySpaceIM, for example, and AOL’s recent acquisition of Bebo will integrate the social network closely with its AIM client. If anything, it’s surprising that Facebook didn’t build something like this months ago.

Facebook representatives were not immediately available for comment.

Facebook plans to launch an instant-messaging application for members to embed on their profiles as early as next week, TechCrunch reported Friday.

Details are sketchy, but it appears that this will be a Web-based IM service that would allow Facebook users to chat with other people on their friends lists without needing to go through a third-party program. Additionally, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington detailed, the service would likely be based on the Jabber open-source platform, which would mean that third-party “universal IM” clients like Pidgin, Trillian, and Adium would be able to implement it.

The 17.1-inch Satellite P305-S8825 ($1,049) includes:

1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5550
256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 graphics
3GB RAM
320GB (5,400rpm) hard drive
DVD burner with Labelflash
Built-in Webcam and microphone
802.11a/g/n Wi-Fi
Four USB ports
Harman Kardon stereo speakers
One-year standard limited warranty.

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T8300
512MB NVIDIA SLi Dual GeForce 8600M GT graphics
3GB RAM
320GB (2 x 160GB, 7,200 RPM) hard drives
DVD burner with Labelflash
Built-in Webcam and microphone
802.11a/g/n Wi-Fi
Four USB ports
Fingerprint reader
Four Harmon Kardon stereo speakers with sub-woofer
Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
One-year standard limited warranty.

2.2GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-64
Integrated ATI Radeon X1250 graphics
3GB RAM
250GB (5,400rpm) hard drive
DVD burner with Labelflash
Built-in Webcam and microphone
802.11a/g/n Wi-Fi
Four USB ports
Fingerprint reader
Harmon Kardon stereo speakers
One-year standard limited warranty.

The 14.1-inch, 5-pound Satellite M305-S4822 ($949) includes:

The $1,149 Satellite A305-S6839 swaps the AMD processor for a 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 CPU, 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 discrete graphics, and a 320GB hard drive. And the $1,299 Satellite A305-S6845 provides a 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 CPU, 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 discrete graphics, and two 200GB hard drives.

Opting for the Satellite P305D-S8818 will save you 100 bucks and will buy a 2.1GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-62 processor and just 2GB of RAM. The P300 series also incorporates Toshiba’s Regza Link technology, which is basically HDMI-based control codes designed to better integrate TV and A/V sources using a single remote control.

1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5550
Integrated Intel GMA X3100 graphics
3GB RAM 250GB (5,400rpm) hard drive
DVD burner with Labelflash
Built-in Webcam and microphone
802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi
Three USB ports
Harman Kardon stereo speakers
One-year standard limited warranty.

For $200 less you can purchase the Satellite U405-S2820, with an older 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5550, just 2GB of RAM, and 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi.

Last week’s announcement focused on the new Satellite look (which Toshiba describes as “gray pinstripes set upon a field of black” and my colleague Dan Ackerman describes as “a distinct metallic sheen”), and the new Sleep and Charge feature, which lets you charge USB devices even if the laptop is powered off. This week’s news listed the full specs of 11 preconfigured Satellite models that are available at Toshiba’s site. We’ve listed all the details after the jump.

Throw down another $500 and you can get the Satellite X205-SLi6, with a 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9300, 400GB worth of storage, and a USB HDTV Tuner. The Satellite X205 series also boasts HDMI and S/PDIF connections as well as Dolby Sound Room for near-5.1 stereo surround sound.

For $100 more you can get the Satellite M305-S4826, which features a 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 processor but otherwise identical components.

Someone at Toshiba has taken PR 101, where you learn that two headlines are better than one and that a trickle of information is often better than a single splash (unless you’re Apple). Thus the handful of press releases that hit the wires this morning, which provide further details of the new Satellite lineup the company announced last week.

The 13.3-inch Satellite U405-S2830 ($1,149) includes these specs:

2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T8100
Integrated Intel GMA X3100 graphics
3GB RAM
250GB (5,400rpm) hard drive
DVD burner with Labelflash
Built-in Webcam and microphone
802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi
Three USB ports
Fingerprint reader
Stereo speakers (NOT Harmon Kardon, as on other Satellites)
One-year standard limited warranty.

The 15.4-inch Satellite A305D-S6831 ($949) includes:

And finally, Toshiba’s gaming line will get a refresh with the 17.1-inch Satellite X205-SLi5 ($1,999), which includes:

The capability to infer truths based on the data repository would be a welcome feature for Wikipedia, which doesn’t have an automated method for dealing with contradictions.

(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET News)

Hakia’s semantic search engine also indexes Wikipedia and other sources. However, Powerset returns a more comprehensive dossier of results for queries, based on deep analysis of Wikipedia pages and other content, and also provides new ways to navigate and discover facts on the individual Wikipedia pages. More details to come when Powerset officially launches its public beta version.

Powerset differs from Google and other mainstream search engines in that it linguistically parses sentences, finding subjects, verbs, objects, synonyms, and other elements using a highly sophisticated, language-independent parser licensed from Xerox PARC).

Metaweb
Another San Francisco Semantic Web start-up, Metaweb, was also a participant in the salon. The company’s Freebase is more similar to True Knowledge than Powerset.

Powerset then extracts and indexes concepts, relationships, and meanings, rather than keywords. (I wrote about Powerset when it first came out of stealth mode, in June 2007.)

(Credit:
True Knowledge)

Barney Pell (Powerset), William Tunstall-Pedoe (True Knowledge), Nova Spivack (Radar Networks), Paul Davison (Metaweb)

True Knowledge
I also got a look at True Knowledge’s search engine. Company CEO William Tunstall-Pedoe said the search engine is in private beta for now, with about 7,000 users.

Spivack said Twine has about 7,000 users in private beta, as well as 40,000 standing in line for access. Half of the users have created private Twines, with corporations and closed communities of interest using the service for collaboration.

Major enhancements are planned for the summer and fall, including allowing for complete customization of the user interface. “We have only surfaced a bit of the platform so far. Twine as a platform will integrate with other applications, such as blogs, catalogs, social communities, and corporate sites,” he told me.

Unlike Powerset and other search engines, Cambridge, England-based True Knowledge is building its own knowledge base. Users input facts, as in Wikipedia, but in a more structured manner. In addition, True Knowledge imports data from sources, including Wikipedia, in the form of discrete facts, such “Sacramento is the capital of California.”

Powerset gives wings to Wikipedia
I got a preview of Powerset’s search engine, which is due to go into beta in the coming weeks, according to co-founder and CTO Barney Pell and as reported by TechCrunch.

Queries, including those in natural language, are parsed for machine reading, and they access the repository of facts accumulated. True Knowledge can make inferences, such as in the following example.

Rather than trying to boil the search ocean, compete with Google, and deal with spam and 20 billion documents, Powerset has focused its initial efforts on giving wings to the 3 million pages of Wikipedia.

Radar Networks’ Twine
I also chatted with Nova Spivack, co-founder and CEO of Radar Networks. His company created Twine, an application combining bookmarking, blogging, and RSS reading, with an underlying semantic engine to tie the pieces of data together.

“It’s an enormous multiyear project,” Spivack said. It’s not like a Google beta or a 1.0 version masquerading as a beta.” The same could be said of the other Semantic Web services in the room. It’s going to be a very long beta cycle.

Powerset plans to index the Web at some point (at a significant cost, in terms of servers and bandwidth). For now–or more precisely, when the company allows the public access to its technology–Wikipedia users will be the beneficiaries of a powerful semantic index and user experience.

The Semantic Web has been just around the corner for a few years. It turns out that bringing a semantic layer of metadata to the Internet is like climbing a mountain in flip-flops.

Freebase is an community-built database with a large corpus of open data sets, including Wikipedia and MusicBrainz. Powerset includes some Freebase-structured content in its index, and True Knowledge could add Freebase data to its knowledge repository.

Tuesday night, Semantic Web mountain climbers Powerset, Radar Networks, and Metaweb participated in a salon at Powerset’s San Francisco office, where I talked with them about their product plans.

NREL: Record Makes Thin-Film Solar Cell Competitive with Silicon Efficiency

Thin-film cells made from CIGS hit over 19 percent efficiency in NREL labs, rivaling traditional silicon.
Shell, Virent form joint venture to convert crops to biogasoline | Chron.com/Houston Chronicle

Forget ethanol. Here come hydrocarbons from plants. Shell and Virent to make ‘biogasoline.’
Technology Review: More-Powerful Solar Cells

MIT spin-off 1366 Technologies (see Green Tech blog coverage) shoots for more efficient solar cells through manufacturing innovations.
Pay for the Power, Not the Panels | The New York Times

What’s a PPA (power purchase agreement)? The New York Times explains how new forms of financing plays a critical role in getting solar adopted.
JPMorgan acquires carbon offset firm ClimateCare | Reuters

Carbon market consolidation. JPMorgan expands its environmental strategies by buying carbon offset company Climate Care.
DONG Energy and California-based Project Better Place to introduce environmentally friendly electric vehicles in Denmark | Project Better Place

Project Better Place has signed a letter of intent with Denmark to install a network of battery stations for electric cars, following a similar pledge from Israel.
GreenFuel Nearly Finished with Phase One for First Commercial Factory | Greentech Media

Possibly the first commercial-scale algae fuel plant.

A sampling of
green-tech news thus far this week, touching on solar cells, carbon markets, biofuels, and electric
cars.

Security software: necessary evil or just evil? I tend to think it’s the latter, though many would argue it’s very necessary and not evil at all. If you fall into that camp (or know a tech doofus who does), check out this deal from Newegg: Panda Internet Security 2008 (3-user edition) shipped to your door for zero dollars. Well, actually, for $40, but you get it back in rebate form.

(Credit:
Newegg)

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

Get this 3-user security suite free after rebate.

The Panda package bills itself as a “total security solution,” offering anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-phishing, anti-spam, and possibly anti-matter and anti-depressants (checking on those). It also offers rootkit protection, a two-way firewall, parental controls, and loads of other false-hope–er, safety–features.

CNET hasn’t reviewed the suite, but four users spoke up about it on the product page. As with most security suites, some loved it, others hated it. If you don’t mind waiting to get your money back and do want hardcore protection against the horrors of the Internet, you can’t beat free. The rebate deal [PDF] expires Aug. 16.

Duke Energy buys into wind.

Oil Shock: Analyst Predicts $7 Gas, "Mass Exodus" of U.S. Cars - Environmental Capital - The Wall Street Journal
In two years, oil will be priced at $200 a barrel, translating into about $7 per gallon, pushing 10 million U.S. drivers off the road, mostly low-income people.
Freedom Prize Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy Announce Awards to Lessen America’s Oil Dependence - Press release
Following other prize programs like the X-Prize and Solar Decathlon.

Note to readers: I’ll be on vacation the week of June 30, returning to the CNET
Green Tech blog on July 7.

A sampling of green-tech news with quick commentary.

(Credit:
GE)

Duke Energy buys wind developer for $240 million - Cleantech.com
Duke appears to be serious about boosting its renewable-energy business, while still building new coal power plants.
California Will Offer Plan to Cut Harmful Emissions - The New York Times
California lays out aggressive targets for greenhouse emissions through energy-efficient appliances and getting 33 percent of its electricity from renewable sources.
Mercedes prepares for the future - The Sun
Carmaker is planning a
car that turns itself off at a red light to avoid needless idling. I like that idea.
Citing Need for Assessments, U.S. Freezes Solar-Energy Projects - The New York Times
This is a blow to solar companies, particularly several start-ups that have plans to lease public land for solar-power plants.
DuPont and SFC Smart Fuel Cell Develop First Portable Power System for U.S. Army - press release
More methanol fuel cell power packs.
Save 70% on Electricity, and See the Results with Smart USB-programmable Power Strip - TreeHugger
Your PC controls a power strip via a USB connection to shut down peripherals.
Wind farm to be built off Delaware shore - CNN
It would be the first off-shore wind farm in the U.S. A project in Long Island was canceled because of economics; Cape Wind in Massachusetts has opposition but is still in the running.

The company does that with its search, does it with Gmail, does it with Reader, does it with Picasa, does it with Docs, and the list goes on. In fact, Google is probably the largest online firm in the world that does as much as it can to get you off its pages. Doesn’t that seem at all counterintuitive?

In essence, this is a company that has the guts to let you do what you want and hope that you will come back because the service is much better than anything else available.

Why is that? Why has Google always been a company that has single-handedly taken the tried and true mentality of Web site owners for years and turned it upside down. On top of that, why has the company been able to succeed if conventional wisdom suggests that should never happen?

Have consumer interests changed or is Google just a search engine and, thus, a place where the inherent task of the service is to move people along? According to one Google representative, the counterculture was bred out of the company’s drive to get people out of the way on search.

And while it’s plain to see Google (and, obviously, other search engines) employing this “push” mentality to search, it may not be so easy to see on its other services. For example, I’m not too sure how that push mentality relates to Gmail at face value. But when you consider the fact that you can set up a Gmail account and use it on any other service, it quickly bears fruit. What about Picasa? Sure, you keep coming back to use the service, but it’s for a reason–you want a better-looking picture and get out of there as quickly as possible.

And it’s this idea of speed and the length of time you can get in and get out that makes this counterculture so interesting. Although certain services attempt to do the same thing as Google, the speed with which you can find or do exactly what you want and be on to the next thing is easily what sets Sergey and Larry’s company apart.

But perhaps most fascinating is the inherent risk that piggybacks on the counterculture mentality Google is so quick to mention. After all, if just about every Web site on the Net says users should be kept on those pages for fear of losing them to something better, what does it say about Google when it wants users to go out and find something?

But if nothing else, this counterculture speaks to something that many in this business simply don’t want to mention–readers and Web surfers simply aren’t trusted and need to be lured into more and more pages so they will stay at the site. Simply put, the average Internet user isn’t trusted and never has been. And yet, when they finally are trusted, good things happen to the company who trusts them.

Maybe because the old idea of keeping people on the site isn’t necessarily the best way to go. Perhaps users want to use a service that acts as a means to an end instead of a vehicle of infinite knowledge. Maybe users are sick and tired of sticky services and want nothing more than to bounce around the Web in search of the very best content no matter where it is.

Google is on to something with its counterculture and should be followed by more companies than just search engines. The Internet has changed and no site is safe from the perils of stickiness.

In the world of online services and editorial content, a term known as “stickiness” becomes the rallying cry of Webmasters and marketers alike. In essence, these people are fearful that if they lose visitors on the site, they’ll never get them back. But for some reason, Google doesn’t feel that way. In fact, it’s more than happy to send you out in the wild.

But if nothing else, Google has shown that trust can go a long way and it shouldn’t be abandoned because the Old Guard subscribed to a faulty belief that users need to be kept on a site for as long as possible. Everything on the Internet is a means to an end and never the end itself. Every single person reads editorial content, searches Google, modifies pictures, and listens to music for a reason. And to think that a particular site is that reason is both misguided and dumb.

It’s important to stress the tough material used in the build: 1,000 denier Cordura material, a heavyweight nylon with a urethane coating to protect from water, abrasian, and grime. Make no mistake about it: these are some of the toughest bags you can get.

Chrome Corsair

(Credit:
Chrome Bags)

The Vega draws inspiration from the classic “musette” bags used to feed cyclists in the middle of a big race. Since weight is everything to these pros, the bags have to be minimalist and utilitarian, and the Vega is no different. It’s light, tough, and can easily fit up to a 15-inch laptop.

The Corsair bag looks strikingly similar to Chrome’s popular single-strap messenger bag, but with a few key changes. Conceptually, the bag is built for versatility on and off the bike. To facilitate this, the Corsair is significantly lighter than the standard messenger and features an easily adjustable strap mechanism with an integrated bottle opener (same with the Vega). The strap itself is made of five bar seatbelt webbing to save weight while still retaining its durability and shape. Like the Vega, the bag is made to fit a standard 15-inch laptop, and Chrome sells an external laptop sleeve as well for added protection.

(Credit:
Chrome Bags)

Chrome started with a couple of guys in Boulder, Colo., who set out to built a bag that could stand a lifetime of daily abuse. Eight years later, the operation is now based out to San Francisco, where Chrome bags have become the staple of bike messengers, students, and packrats alike. Today, Chrome also announced its sojourn into the techie commuter market with the release of two stripped-down, laptop-friendly bags: the Vega and Corsair.

Chrome Vega

Both the Vega and Corsair bags are available now in a variety of colors on the Chrome Web site for $80 each, with full reviews on CNET.com coming soon.

(Credit:
Chrome Bags)

Chrome debuts new Corsair and Vega commuter bags

You have various games to choose from. Seen here is ‘Lost in Migration,’ a game that challenges your cognition skills.

I’m a happy owner of a Nintendo DS and one of my favorite games for it is Brain Age, which lets you do a variety of small puzzles and arithmetic to hone your mental fitness. If you don’t feel like shelling out $130 for Nintendo’s hardware, there’s Lumosity from Lumos Labs, a Web service that offers a similar multitude of small mental exercises that run right in your browser and are actually really fun.

The real hook of the service is the stats tracking, which will keep track of your mental scores indefinitely and do analysis of your cognitive prowess based on how you’ve been scoring in each title. Like Nintendo’s Brain Age series, it gives you some of this information in a four-way chart, as well as plenty of line charts that hopefully are getting better each day.

‘Speed Match’ was my favorite game of the bunch, forcing you to remember if what you're looking at is the same as what came before it. (click to enlarge)

At $80 a year, Lumosity isn’t exactly cheap when compared with Nintendo’s Brain Age series, but you don’t need to buy any extra hardware and the creators continue to add new games. There’s also a two-week free trial you can play without entering any credit card information.

The other games were not nearly as memorable, including one that has you type in the direction of the middle bird seen in flying formations (apparently to test reaction time), as well as a mine-sweeper-like game that has you navigate a garden to get to a flower while avoiding space aliens.

Lumosity comes with nearly a dozen “games” to play, with each one working out a different aspect of your mental prowess, including memory, cognitive control, processing speed, and the all-important attention. As you play, your scores are tracked and grouped together in an progress chart that you can dig into and try to figure out what’s been improving–or what needs some work. Games will also let you know when you haven’t performed as well as you usually do by tracking your historical performance.

Following bird watching my heart rate went up about 30 beats with Speed Match, a game that pits you against a variety of symbols in the hopes of figuring out whether the symbol you’re looking at is the same one that came before. To navigate you simply have to use your keyboard’s arrow keys. It’s quite a bit more fun than Word Bubbles, another game that makes you type words that start with the three letters they give you. Scrabulous players will mop the floor with this one.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Earlier today I started out my brain-training session with a game called Bird Watching. It’s meant to track your attention, but it ends up being a very strange mashup of Nintendo’s Duck Hunt meets hangman, where the goal is to not only shoot a picture of the bird that pops up on the screen for half a second, but also remember the letter that flashes in the center of the screen. These letters begin to fill out the name of the bird, and it’s your job to guess before you’ve captured all the letters–a process that (hopefully) uses a number of parts of your brain.

Despite all the setbacks, it’s still possible to argue that Ruiz leaves AMD a better place than it was before he took over. Sure, investors might have preferred to lose a little bit less than $6 billion in six years, but AMD is a brand that corporate executives know just as well as hard-core gamers, AMD’s main audience prior to 2002.

“A lot has changed at AMD since then,” an AMD representative wrote in response to e-mailed questions about Ruiz’s expectations last year. One thing that hasn’t changed since then is the company’s continued pattern of losses. But AMD has laid off thousands of workers and revamped its executive circle, which has strengthened the team around Meyer to the point where the board of directors feels the timing is now right for the succession, according to the representative.

(Credit:
Tom Krazit/CNET News)

AMD's CEO Hector Ruiz is stepping down from his CEO spot; he'll remain the chairman of the company.

Ruiz’s greatest legacy to the processor industry might still be off in the future. His decision to file an antitrust lawsuit against Intel in 2005–and work a short rant about illegal monopolies into just about every speech since–has the larger chip company on the run around the world as governments take a closer look at Intel’s business practices during the past decade. Any trial resulting from that case in the U.S. still appears to be years away, however.

Ruiz was right, in a sense: graphics technology is going to be an ever-increasing part of a PC’s arsenal and will probably one day end up getting integrated into the main processor like so many other discrete components from the past. Intel and Nvidia know this, and are spending tons of time and money improving the performance of their graphics products and finding new ways to unlock that performance.

So perhaps it’s fitting to remember the words of football legend Bill Parcells when assessing Ruiz’s legacy: “You are what your record says you are.”

Leaders are judged on many things after their moment in the sun passes. Ruiz brought some stability to AMD–at least in the public eye–after decades of swashbucklin’ quote-makin’ Jerry Sanders. His personal story, rising from a poor town on the Texas/Mexico border to lead a Fortune 500 company, is inspirational both on its merits alone and on Ruiz’s stubborn reluctance to play up his ability to overcome adversity as if he was filming a segment for Dateline.

(Credit:
AMD)

AMD succumbed to the classic innovator’s dilemma: once it was clear Opteron was a hit, especially in dual-core format, AMD failed to come up with a worthy successor.

(Credit:
Ina Fried/CNET News)

Ruiz with Dell's Michael Dell in 2006, just after the companies signed their historic agreement to partner on servers.

Ruiz introduces AMD's Barcelona processor in September 2007. Already very late, Barcelona wouldn't ship for another six months due to a separate problem.

It insisted on an integrated quad-core design for its third-generation Opteron processor, claiming that its customers were eager for such a design. But the project suffered from countless delays, and AMD allowed Intel to have the quad-core segment of the server market all to itself for more than a year, destroying the hard-earned pricing value that AMD had attached to Opteron for several years.

In just more than six years with Ruiz as the leader of AMD, the chip company has lost a staggering $6.3 billion according to generally accepted accounting principles. He announced plans to step down Thursday as part of what the company is calling a planned succession to new CEO Dirk Meyer, even though Ruiz was under the impression as recently as December 2007 that he would be around this entire year.

Hector Ruiz accomplished many important things during his tenure as the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, but no executive can escape the bottom line.

Once it was also clear that Intel had regained its footing after botching the Itanium strategy and the switch to dual-core processors, AMD panicked and spent $5.4 billion it didn’t have on ATI Technologies in order to find its next big thing in graphics technology.

All four major server vendors (Hewlett-Packard, Dell, IBM, and Sun Microsystems) have a relationship with AMD. Just about every major PC vendor in the world has a product based on AMD’s chips, with the notable exception of Apple. Corporate purchasing departments don’t shake their heads in confusion at seeing AMD’s name on a purchase order, and consumers are quite used to seeing AMD-based systems on the store shelves at Best Buy and other stores alongside Intel systems.

In short, Ruiz made AMD relevant to a much wider segment of the computer buying population than it was before he became the company’s CEO, and for sticking to his guns with AMD’s bet-the-farm strategy for its Opteron chip. For that, he deserves credit. But the events that led to his demise are equally easy to chronicle.

But his tenure was chaotic, a roller coaster ride up and down the stock market charts that saw AMD arrive on the world stage and fall just as quickly off to the side. Running the No. 2 company in an expensive, fast-moving industry dominated by an American institution is not an easy job, and Dirk Meyer will have his hands full during the next several years. Ruiz will remain at AMD as chairman, but he’s leaving a day-to-day role at the company at a time when it is trying to get back to basics, to focus on execution and discipline rather than trying to take down giants.

But with Thursday’s results, AMD has now written off $2.5 billion of goodwill related to that ATI purchase, basically admitting that it can’t attach that $2.5 billion to anything of value related to the acquisition. That’s an awful lot of money, and it has to come from somewhere, forcing AMD to raise capital from outside investors to keep the lights on.