I work in the Engineering Department. Engineering is indeed a very important aspect of my work. However, Information is even more important part of my responsibilities.
I prefer to be called Information Technology because that is what my work ultimately affects. Information acquisition, refinement, verification, processing, analysis, synthesis, storage, distribution, and protection are my specialties. In a way, that makes me the most knowledgeable person in the company.
I am a Druker's "knowledge worker".

The State of Washington can do many many things to sue just about anyone it wants.
Check this out:

1. Long arm jurisdiction,
2. Territorial jurisdiction,
3. Jurisdiction in personam,
4. Jurisdiction in Rem,

The State of Washington can bring up a case under any of the above.

People don't complain when Cisco, Juniper, etc integrate their routing/switching/firewall features with ASICs.
Why should databases be different?
Given the hardware prices and wide interest in FIPS-type security requirements, Oracle might as well be selling appliances. It will come to this sooner or later.

Who says you have to make GSM phone calls?
T-Mobile G1 can do VoIP just fine.

For better or worth, software development is nothing like video games. Performance, the topic of obsession for video gamers, is oftentimes an afterthought in industrial software development. Security, reliability, maintainability, computability, clarity receive higher priority almost each and every time. In order to understand this, of course, you have to spend a few too many years in software development. The truth about performance is rarely taught in CS university course, and almost never understood by CS students. I too was a fresh CS grad over a decade ago (I actually remember the time when Slashdot was popular) and despised, if not hated, Java. I adored C, optimized parts of the code in assembly, and though I knew everything there is to know. Boy was I silly. I was forced by my employer to deal with Java parts in a huge mixed codebase in 2000. I accepted Java in 2003 when it finally started producing decent benchmarks on the brand new Linux test equipment. Since then, I worked on many diverse problems, broadened my software architecture experience, and came to appreciate Java's design. I don't think I can design a better platform myself. I know that James Gosling is a freaking generous because I remember when I though he was a fool. Software design should never focus on fixed performance cost factors. Moore's law will marginalize fixed performance factors in a matter of years no matter how high in absolute value these fixed factors are.

But don't take my word for it. Listen to my elder colleague Charles E. Leiserson from MIT - Why study algorithms and performance?

Unfortunately, writing a program that would validate system calls is much much easier said than done. It takes no time what so ever to say it. If you actually start writing a program like that, you will quickly realized that this will be The most complicated problem of your life. Take a look at the NSA SELinux codebase. SELinux actually implements an extremely limited functionality to validate system calls. SELinux configuration cannot be controlled from the user space, so it is useless in any environment where you actually want to leave some security decisions to users. Also remember, if you create a workaround to give users some control over SELinux configuration, nothing will stop a malicious program run by a user from using the workaround you created without the user's knowledge. You need at least 3-tier architecture to implement a usable security. Moreover, you will have to analyze sequences of system calls in bundles and not just do an analysis call by call. Solving problem after problem, you will end up writing a virtual machine in pretty much the same way it is written for Java. It took more than 10 years for Java developers to implement their virtual machine solution - they started around 1992 and the most functional J2SE 1.4 appeared in 2002. It makes no sense what so ever to write a virtual machine yourself.

MySpace generation needs mobile communication devices to be promiscuous with. Security is one of the top design priorities, and Google just hit a jackpot with Android.

There is nothing simple about solving the system call validation problem. You actually end up writing a VM.

You are also forgetting about the problem of arbitrary memory pointers. You don't have to break into the privileged kernel mode in order to break security. All you have to do is to read or write what you are not allowed to access.

Crosscompile your application for ARM and push it on your Android phone with adb.

The trick with mobile devices is that users want to run hundreds of thousands of untrusted programs from application markets. Native code leads to viruses, trojan horses, keyloggers and all kinds of nasty things. Users have to have a protection mechanism. Java with its multilayer security is perfect for mobile applications.

If you are talking about servers, I have a newsflash for you. The majority of servers hardly use even 50% of their processing capacity on average. Java overhead at this stage of CPU development is negligible. Green movement will benefit more from saving the resources spent on development and maintenance of native code.

Ah, that's very unfortunate for AMD/ATI. ATI exists the mobile graphics market right at the moment when it starts heating up.
Does the sale preclude ATI from developing new mobile graphics platform in the near future?

AMD owns ATI. Thus, it is technically AMD/ATI.
Have you ever hear of NVidia (besides the Tegra we have yet to see) being paired with hand-held devices?
It is coming. New batteries, more efficient chips, more powerful cellphones. Everyone who's someone will be in that market

You are talking pure nonsense.
First, for many devices it is not about speed, it is about security. Java provides a very robust security framework to run untrusted code. If you were to make a similar security framework for C/C++, you would end up with Java.
Second, if Java runs too slow for you - buy a better CPU.
Third, I doubt you realize how many productions systems are running Java. My department alone is running a multi-million dollar platform all on Java.
Last, you actually can run C/C++ code on Android. You can run ARM assembly, C-Sharp, and Python too. But don't tell anyone.

If NVidia does not want a piece of Android business, it is NVidia's loss.
And AMD/ATI gain.
My money is on the Linux community figuring out how to incorporate NVidia support into Android with or without NVidia's corporate blessing. Heck, a few of NVidia engineers belong to Linux community too.

I agree, Simon's description of human decision making is just a good lens through which to explain some facet of human behavior. But mathematics is too just a good lens through which to explain some facets of objects overall and computer science in particular!

In no way is mathematics absolute - especially mathematics in computer science. In many ways, mathematics is just a continent way of thinking about things. Ocean waves do not really follow Fibonacci sequence. It is just convenient for us to think they do. Nature in general knows nothing about our mathematical tricks, so in a way mathematics exists only in our heads. Our brain attempts to recognize and match sequences often times fooling itself along the way. Take, for example, the sound a mechanical clock makes. Your brain makes you to believe that you are hearing ticks and tacks, even though the clock makes only one pitch sound.

With the first assumption introduced, or with the first approximation made, the strict logic breaks in every mathematical line of reasoning. Yes, you can have a very nice and straightforward proof that the sum of angles in a triangle is pi, but you had to assume that the parallel lines never cross. The assumption you made, however, is not at all accurate. It is just too convenient to think that the parallel lines never cross. Some people believe that the parallel lines never cross, others believe in god. Both fool themselves. Remove the erroneous assumption about parallel lines and all mathematical proofs in Euclidean geometry people worked hard to create become a worthless illusion. The fact that this illusion was "good enough" to make common engineering tasks work does not mean that this illusion is true, much less absolute. Mathematics actually has a name for such illusions - models. Models are whatever your brain makes them be.

Who can actually trust "mathematical" proofs used in computer science?! Every algorithm analysis has to be reduced to asymptotic approximations right away because it is way to hard and inconvenient to make precise calculations. Many algorithms have to be analyzed in terms of expectation (making a hidden assumption along the way that the probability distributions are normal). With so many assumptions and approximations how can anyone actually believe that the result obtained is absolute? In a basic case, you read an analysis that tells you that quicksort runs in NlogN order time. Is this analysis in any way absolute? Not really (quicksort may as well run in N^2 order time). Convenient? Maybe. This analysis is certainly trying to convince you to believe in something that may or may not be true.

Just because algorithm analysis uses mathematical symbols does not mean it is more reliable that Simon's line of reasoning. Very recently, many financial institutions believed that sophisticated mathematical formulas are absolute. They were convinced that they had it all figured out. Look where it got them.

The author of the article should study a Noble prize-winning work "Administrative Behavior".

There is nothing secret about human cognition. The fact that software engineering relies on human resources and not on binary logic is in no way a limitation. Many modern algorithms rely on heavily on probability and work with uncertainty. Herbert A. Simon built a solid framework for understanding human decision making process. This framework is just as solid as mathematical formulas behind computer science.

Blizzard is welcome to do with its property whatever it pleases.
In a way Blizzard is no different than the NFL. Heck, the NFL does not let people play with the game statistics halting fantasy league applications.
Fans have to remember that they are just the consumers of someone else's product. It is not about sports. It is not about role playing. It is simply a product that is sold on the market. All you do is buy into it.

This is probably another application of the Benford's law.