Insightful post. Completely off-topic but, still, you make some damned good points.

Probably not but, then again, I wouldn't be surprised to learn you were not far from the truth. In fact, I've always had a BIG problem with how Linux has been implemented on these netbooks. It seems as if most of the OEMs just sort of threw any old thing on these machines, and that optimizing the installs for the machines was an afterthought (if they even thought of doing it at all). I have sort of a pet theory on why Linux on many netbooks was half-baked: my guess is that the manufacturers were probably looking to use XP (or some other flavor of Windows) all along, but the price point would have put the retail cost of the products over what they were aiming for. Someone gets the big idea to throw on Linux, using the OS as leverage; they knew that the last thing Microsoft wanted was to lose out on a potentially burgeoning market due to being caught with their pants down (Ballmer and company MUST have dominance in all things IT-related, not just desktops), And that MS would pull out the stops to keep anyone not named Microsoft from even gaining a foothold. Apparently, the ruse worked: XP OEM licenses (as we all know by now) were offered for a song. Everybody wins: the OEMs get their Microsoft OS for next to nothing, keeping the retail price at a reasonable level ; and Microsoft, in keeping XP around for just a little while longer, gets to use it as a stopgap measure until Windows 7 goes RTM and hits the store shelves. IOW, I believe Linux got used, and that there was no real commitment on the part of the OEMs to doing it right in the first place.

First of all, if Intel + AMD's integrated graphics on the CPU suck, then NVIDIA's niche will not be only high end, it will be mid range too. But AMD is definitely going to support its discrete business, its making them money, its a great product at the moment. Intel, well its safe to say all their products absolutely suck. But, Intel has massive "persuasion" when it comes to spending millions "convincing" companies to support Intel products.

Secondly, while integrating CPUs and GPUs will be possible, you will not get two high performance parts combined into one, ever. NVIDIA has a current answer to that, GPU in the chipset (the venerable ION/MCP7A chipset driving many Atom-based systems, and _every single shipping Apple machine_ (paired with dGPUs in higher end parts), and while in the future they will have issues on the Intel front with legal issues, they will definitely find ways around it (pushing Tegra probably).

Why is NVIDIA's outlook not too bright? In all honesty, how often does not having an open source driver impact your average Joe? Virtually never. How useful will an entirely open driver actually be for the majority of Linux users? Have you ever looked into a graphics driver? Think its easy to tweak and fix? Their driver support on Linux right now is pretty damn solid with their blob. In most cases, it just "works". And yes, there are cases where it does not, but you give me any piece of software for Linux, and I'll give you a case where it doesn't work. Opening the source will not magically solve this issue.

The real message to gather from TFA is all those wonderful references to the fact that WORKSTATION LINUX IMPLEMENTATIONS MAKE NVIDIA MONEY. Lots of money. A lot more money than your friend buying a 9400GT to throw in a *nix-based HTPC. They are going to go after that market, first and foremost. Guess what? It's working. The Quadro lines are the only viable workstation choice for Linux CAD/DCC, and CUDA on Linux is sweet too.

AMD/ATI tried to push this entire open source movement, but its really hurting them. If they put half of that effort to making their driver rock solid in linux as a BLOB, they could really push into the market with their amazing 5xxx line of cards.

That, plus you have to remember that this plugin was being installed without user's knowledge in the first place. Where I come from, anything which installs something on your machine without the knowledge or consent of either the owner or the admin is generally considered a Bad Thing (tm). It would have been nice for Microsoft to have been upfront about installing the plug-in in the first place, and the security hole was a glaring example of why.

Something I've never understood about online advertising: a marketer puts up ads on a website, and people go out of their way to avoid/block those ads because they find them "annoying" and "always getting in the way". So what does the marketing department do? That's right; they find ways to make the ads even more obtrusive and annoying! I guess I could never understand how getting in the faces of unwilling viewers (who are actively trying to avoid you) is supposed to bring in more sales. There seems to be some ass-backward logic at work here.

Instead of working on "targeting" ads, maybe they should work on forms of advertising which don't somehow annoy the hell out of the majority of people who are likely to see those ads. Maybe something like "opt-in" advertising? I'm no expert so I don't know. All I know is that the present way of advertising seems rather self-defeating IMHO.

Why is it interesting to study anything? Science is a way of describing the physical world around us. Clearly you lack appreciation for such knowledge. Perhaps join the apes? They don't seem too interested in science either.

Copyright was intended to "encourage the arts" not grant special rights to publishers over works that were funded by the public.

Indeed. Copyright was originally to protect authors from publishers.

Securitization tranching assumed financial disasters were statistically independent. In a panic they are not. They teach this in Probability Statistics 101. Goldman Sachs realized this and made a fortune off the the so-called junk-tranches.

How about they update the game ... it's so 20th century.

Instead of the boat, car and dog, the player tokens are now leading members of the Republican and Democratic parties.

You can no longer buy properties, but you can repossess them.

If you find you are running short of cash, and you are the biggest player, you can apply for a government bailout (because you are too big to fail), and all the other players have to repay a portion of your bailout for the next 100 years, every time they pass "Go".

The "chance" cards will be named "Bernies", and each one involves you giving vast sums of money to some shady person with a pronounced nose who doesn't work on Saturdays. But beware, because within the "Bernie" cards is the "go to jail for 135 years card".

The "community chest" cards will be named "Reforms", for example the "healthcare reform" card, where you have to pay even more taxes to subsidise people who aren't even playing the game.

We could call it Obamapoly ?

I have another theory why devs sometimes don't "drop everything" for an interview; if developers are anything like electronic engineering technicians (my specialty) then, when they're in the middle of an issue, they are on this creative and/or logical train of thought. I can tell you from personal experience that the last thing a tech wants is to have that train of thought disturbed; I tend to become rather curt if I'm disturbed in the middle of, say, dealing with some inverse Fourier transform or (especially!!!) troubleshooting a critical system. It's almost like bugging a brain surgeon in the middle of an operation; sometimes you'll stand a good chance of throwing him off track, even if only temporarily. It's not that I'm naturally rude (I usually end up feeling like a real jackass for being rude and wind up apologizing anyway); it's just that the interruption can be annoying if you're in the middle of an intensive task. Don't get me wrong, I'm not justifying the lack of communication. I'm simply stating what I believe (in my experience) to be part of the reason for that lack of communication.

"If an emergency happens, that what what a cell phone is for : VoIP isn't meant to be your only phone, it's a significantly cheaper supplement to a cell phone." If an emergency happens to knock out those cell towers upon which those phones rely, your cell phones won't be worth a plug nickel (unless we're talking about sat phones, which are pretty cost-prohibitive for the average Joe). In my state (which is coastal and lies in the typical Atlantic hurricane path) no one in his right mind would depend on cell phones to do the job when it comes to emergency communications. There's always VHF, UHF, and (in limited markets) 800Mhz networks; but those rely upon repeaters, as well as antennas mounted (usually) on towers hundreds of feet in height. The repeaters at each tower site usually have backup generators but what happens when the antennas (or even the towers themselves) are severely damaged by the disaster (it's happened before)? At this point your only other means of reliable communications are those crusty old ham operators and their backup power-enabled, shortwave sets. Maybe that's why the Hospital Commission and the Disaster Preparedness division in our state both hired our company to install low band communications equipment in various areas around the SC Lowcountry.

Can we have an "AMEN!" from the audience? I've already said this in an earlier post in this thread but it's a point which bears repeating. The keyword-laden resume and the certs just seem (IMHO) to be the bare minimum to get past the HR gatekeepers who will turn down an otherwise talented applicant simply because his bullet points didn't give them a warm, fuzzy feeling. I often wonder how many potential stars have had the proverbial rug pulled from beneath them simply because some nitpicking secretarial type saw the resume without actually READING it (and wouldn't even know what the hell they were looking at if they did)?

I blame a lot of this on companies who rely too much on HR to screen the resumes. When you submit a resume in hopes of scoring an interview, the first person to see it is the "Gatekeeper" in HR. Oftentimes that HR drone doesn't know the first damned thing about the industry for which the company is hiring, so they'll often read a resume a little differently from the hiring manager (who would at least have a clue). HR just scans the resumes and relies on bullet points and keywords; as a result a lot of talent can be completely overlooked because someone who otherwise might just have the chops didn't use the right words or format. Many people have found that careers can be affected by some nitpicking secretary so some will "pad" their resumes just to get by the clueless gatekeeper. In fact, I've even heard the argument that a lot of folks aren't necessarily getting their certs for the job itself; instead, they're getting them just to get past HR.