EU fines are due immediately - Intel already paid that off in full.

zeitgeist's source material

Poetry. Don't stand between a man and his rigid worldview. Much better to serve as a living example of the alternative!

CEOs are acting just like individuals do, except with amplified powers and priorities. In my personal life, I am free to do anything that is not explicitly illegal. In legal grey areas, I assess the risk vs. reward and proceed accordingly. With the corporate veil, corporate size bank accounts, and attorneys on staff, CEOs have more leeway than an individual to venture into the grey area. Human history is largely composed of people violating existing rules and either getting away with it or not...Judging morals is like armchair quarterbacking.

"Pure profit" may be reaching a little. Having personally financed several independent albums, my experience is that physical media manufacturing constitutes ~10% of the cost of creating an album of music at a professional level on a bare bones budget. "Recovering a fraction of production expenses" may be a more appropriate designation for any revenues generated!

Why oh why, must a post coming from a place of deep experience not offer any alternative options? The purpose of this discussion thread? May we please have a suggestion?

I would like to counter with:
If you think you can get away with not spending money on your woman, your misconception will be corrected.

I second this - the phasers are wonderful.

That is true for all endeavors - it's not what you do, but rather how you do what you do.

I'm romantically attached to this notion, but am having difficulty producing an example of an idea having a thought. Do you have any you can share with the class?

the meaning of life is to give life meaning.

I'd agree with this. The intellectual territory discovered in the 20th century is absolutely immense. It's like looking for water, and discovering an ocean - there is a LOT of filling in left to do with our current framework before the next frontier.

Physics is a good example- mankind is still struggling to apply quantum theory, 90+ years after its discovery. And it's not because the applications are limited - the applications will be fundamentally transformative. Complaining that we can't find other oceans is a little premature when we haven't even built a freaking ship to sail on the one we've found yet...

And physics is just one of many areas where the current state of theory and potential stand off on the horizon, mocking our feeble minds and capabilities. Maybe we as a species are just adapting to the realities of technological innovation, since it's much more common now. Which makes innovation the static starting point for whatever comes next to disrupt the pattern. Whatever that is, it's going to be similarly disorienting, in a different way.

Holy crap, I can't believe the work environments some people put up with. I have never worked in a place like that, and would rather downscale my monetary ambitions and serve coffee than expose my mind to that poison every day. You get the gold star for horror stories, but dude! This life is too short for that. I've got to agree with shadowofwind that this may be the reality in that particular industry, but I'm in s/w engineering in USA in a very big corp. and am treated extremely well, and work with intelligent, ethical people.

Agreed, coordinates are the map and not the territory-

I have never before heard a serious conversation pitting the respective benefits of trannys vs. tubes in this context...