First, when you spout right-wing extremist conspiracy theories based on inconclusive "lipread" evidence, you show just how far you've gone down the rabbit hole.

Second, she was the first lady. Who cares what she apparently said one time at a memorial service? How about the thousands of public comments and speeches she made that are not in any way left-wing, extremist or America-hating?

I actually feel sorry for you.

Yup, totally agree. The real story here is that Intel's notebook and desktop CPU dominance are soon to be challenged. They've stumbled around with x86 desktop performance for close to a decade now. If Apple is able to drive 90% improvements from last year's iPad to this year's version and nearly equal Intel's ultrabook chips in the process, what do you think they pull off with a move to ARM on Macbooks with 1-2 years of further development and the luxury of a heatsink and fan to boot? I would be shaking in my boots if I owned shares of INTC.

I dunno. How willing would you be to die for the cause of freedom? That's what it takes and people there feel free enough in their daily lives that it doesn't seem worth the effort.

Well, what would you do? Continue to distribute modified copies of copyright software you don't have legal rights to? If EA wants to kill off its old online games, let em. Just pisses off 900,000 potential customers who'll now have one more reason to think twice about supporting them in the future.

I suppose if there are enough people who are lonely and clueless enough to invite a stranger into their homes to suggest ways to randomly spend money on tech gadgets, then by all means. This will not be happening in my household any time in the foreseeable future, but maybe this seemingly desperate move in some way helps BestBuy find a way to stop the beating that Amazon is putting on them.

So I have no idea if this would work, but I imagine that if I was told to build a drone capable of thwarting this laser attack, I'd deploy a simple lightweight mirror on a retractable arm that would track the location of the ship and position the mirror such that from the ship's perspective, all that is visible is the mirror.

Speaking as as big Amazon spender who does practically no shopping at Wal-Mart brick and mortar or online, the very best thing that can happen is that Wal-Mart will hold their own in this war. One thing we know is that when faced with a virtual monopoly in any field or domain, large corporations will screw over the consumer again and again.

Just like you or I could (except in much higher volume). Unless a special arrangement is made, they don't get anything other than minority voting rights, a share in stock price appreciation and (at least eventually?) dividends.

You mean my 5 shares of IBM *don't* give me access to their entire patent portfolio? Crap, back to the drawing board...

The most hilarious part of that wiki entry is the Virginia proposal requiring drivers to rapidly disassemble their car and hide the parts behind bushes at the first sign of livestock. Would have become law if not vetoed by the Governor.

It fascinates me that we haven't really progressed at all as a species in 120 years. People will be up in arms at the first sign of autonomous vehicles crashing, even if and when they're literally proven to be say 100x safer than humans. You will have websites popping up with virtually every autonomous car crash listed accompanied by grizzly photos and conspiracy forums with like-minded loons swearing that they're spawned by the devil. Politicians will write crazy laws that effectively ban them. Then a few years will pass and society will move on. Rinse and repeat for the next technology to intrude into our lives.

It's just the President's Russian friends making sure he's safe from Obama's wiretaps.

Don't necessarily disagree, but the problem is that often externalities (like pollution, cost of healthcare, etc.) are not paid for by incumbent technology/solution. Due to historical reasons, grandfathering, lax regulations and whatnot, the cost of the incumbent solution is artificially low which means any possible solution *looks* more expensive in comparison, even if it's cheaper overall.

Sorry, but the math doesn't support your view that Intel was better off spending $15B on this acquisition at this late stage versus actually having an innovation program internally or purchasing a whole slew of early bets (most of which don't pay off.)

MobileEye today only has about 500 employees, of which maybe half are Engineers. It's likely that only a small team of ~30-50 was involved in building out the majority of the technology that makes up the core of its IP. With $15B, Intel could have funded 200 fifty person teams, each for a full decade. Given that the investment would have been done over time and various investing and culling strategies would have been employed, even with a very small success rate, I contend that Intel could have researched their way to early leadership in the autonomous vehicle market and maybe a dozen others with the same level of investment they poured into MobilEye.

Let's say the average full-time Engineer costs $150k/year (all in, including health care and benefits). For $15B, Intel could have employed 10,000 such Engineers for a whole decade for the amount of money they spent on this questionable acquisition. Now you know what the cost of not spending on R&D is.

Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh... everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?