Well, my theory is that I am better able to absorb the costs of those three days than the judicial system is. If even a tiny fraction of people contested these things, the judicial system would be so overwhelmed as to force change. I take civic pride in being among the tiny fraction.

I wonder if this could be used to fabricate aerogels using something akin to a hot piezoelectric print head.

It actually can be done on the fly, though this, as you say, produces significant cognitive load. Speaking for myself, being in unfamiliar social situations where the stakes are high can be very draining. Also speaking for myself, my facility with reading other people has improved greatly. The cognitive burden is much less in middle age than it was when I was in school.

Would like to know when & where the t-shirts will be available. Three of us went anyway & chatted.

No. You misheard. Indiana Jones seemed to have caught a bit of a sniffle . But it's easily misunderstood, what with the scots accent and all.

The reference

Well-lit, with something big and heavy and well-anchored to chain to. A proper bike rack would do.

Not being that familiar with the area around UTA, where would be the most secure place to park a scooter nearby?

May I suggest you contact your state congresscritters, and take the matter up with them?

Yes! From a hardware standpoint, anyway. Understanding this is key.

It's not just "in the card", it's in the CPU (SoC or System on a Chip in ARMese). The card is essentially just a carrier/socket for the CPU/RAM, which in ARM-land is typically soldered one-on-top-of-the-other directly onto the motherboard.

The division-of-labor between motherboard and CPU is different with ARM versus x86. ARM is more integrated, mostly because this is a good thing in typical ARM applications. A lot of what would be regarded as the duty of the motherboard in x86-land moves to the CPU in ARM. An ARM motherboard is going to be mostly about providing physical connectivity to the rest of the system.

The point of the card is to enable the development of the rest of the system (which takes significant engineering effort) without being tied to the current hotness in the ARM world. From the hardware design standpoint, it lets you hedge your bets for the future.

Your point about the software platform not benefiting from the engineering decision to put the CPU/RAM on a card/carrier is certainly true. You are correct that a given, say, Linux installation will not appreciate having a different CPU stuffed in, because of all the driver issues you mention. That said, it is also the case that the bet-hedging that modularizing the CPU/RAM buys applies to the software also. If, say, the open-source Mali driver never takes off, and Intel suddenly drops a good open source PowerVR driver, you could switch from the AllWinner A10 to a TI CPU and pivot quickly. If, say, NVIDIA provides a good open source driver for their GPU, you could go that way. The ARM driver situation is kindof at a tipping point at present. It's hard to guess who's going to be the first manufacturer to provide a suitable open source environment. Whoever does, while delivering something "good enough" from a hardware standpoint (which is constantly changing), made widely available in smaller quantities, at a reasonable price, stands to gain a significant market advantage. The Allwinner A10 is very close, if they could just be made to understand the importance of getting their cedarx and Mali drivers open sourced.

Meantime, though, the work of designing tablets and notebooks and netbooks and servers and routers and other form factors can proceed. Sourcing screens and keyboards and touchpads and touchscreens and batteries and designing enclosure molds and all that stuff takes time too, and can be happening in parallel.

My understanding (which is certainly from a distance) is that the goal is to use the leverage of (large) sales to prompt better cooperation.

Because all the peripherals mentioned are part of the CPU, which in x86 terms has an integrated southbridge. As far as I am aware, ARM and PCIe don't go together in the same sentence. I'm guessing PCIe would require more bandwidth and/or more power than would be available in most likely use scenarios.

Mali may currently be proprietary, but I'd say in 6 months to a year, that won't be the case anymore. Just my subjective feeling.

I personally am mulling the notion of ripping out the motherboard from a Thinkpad 600 and replacing it with an ARM motherboard. The TP600 is still a great form factor and case design.

In my opinion, Intel and AMD were both caught flat-footed by the rise of ARM. Both used to build ARM CPUs and both divested themselves of those divisions. D'oh!

I'd say neither wants to kill the x86 goose that lays their golden eggs. They are accustomed to the sort of margins which ARM will never offer. Embracing the creative destruction ARM offers would mean becoming a different sort of company.

Incidentally, FYI AMD is offering embedded versions of their Brazos CPUs.

It's an attempt to create a standardized form factor for open/modular highly portable inexpensive computing device CPUs. It intends to do for these markets what the AT/ATX motherboard/case design and ISA/PCI buses and Socket 3/5/7 did for the desktop computing market. Additionally, it is doing this with openness (libre open source software stack) clearly an important design criterion, besides the technical/performance ones.

Will it take time to mature? Yes. But less than one might think. It's farther along than might appear.

Will it therefore fail, by missing out on the window for Cortex A8? No. It's modular enough to continue even after the Cortex A8 CPU is obsolescent. The Allwinner A10 was chosen in part because it is currently available and cheap.

This will open up niche markets which the major manufacturers are not servicing. High-resolution debian ARM netbook? Can be done. 7" Netbook? Can be done. Pixel Qi Tablet? Can be done. Desktop ARM terminals? Can be done.

I've been following this project for a while now, and it is going in a direction which I believe in. I am getting tired of proprietary ARM hardware and software.