He said mitigated, not prevented. I've (unintentionally) measured the oscillating light output of an incandescent while I was developing an optical trigger circuit for my last job, the intensity dropped by ~20% for this particular bulb (20W desk lamp) during the AC zero crossing. The flickering was 100Hz (funnily enough) - higher than most peoples' periphery will notice.

I think your maths suffered from one to many G&Ts..

single:

    2.00 - 0.55 = 1.45 GP (72.5% selling cost)
    1.45 - 0.50 = 0.95 NP (47.5% selling cost)

double:

    3.00 - 1.10 = 1.90 GP (63.3% selling cost)
    1.90 - 0.50 = 1.40 NP (46.7% selling cost)

erm.... yeah its not like Samsung produces billions of other chips. They must be terrified.

Good for life after transiently being really, *really* bad....

...because unlike you he obviously isn't a moron. I also didn't have to scroll last time I looked on apple.co.uk.

They could sit on them until DDR3 supporting devices get "old".

If you have a cd and a serial, they can reconnect you to your account. You have hard proof of ownership which they will use to restore your account if you ask.

I believe you missed the X-Com joke.

Actually the beryllium is primarily used for another purpose. It is a low Z material which means that when it gets into the plasma (via wall ablation) and ionises, it only has a few electrons to lose. Lots of electrons = lots of bremsstrahlung = significant energy loss. Also very high Z impurities which don't fully ionise lead to even more significant loses through line emission. High Z pollution of the plasma can lead to a radiative collapse of the plasma. For more info see here:

http://www.carolusmagnus.net/papers/2005/docs/koslowski_operational_limits.pdf