you must consult with Imagination before you change it.

Yes. And what happens then?

I haven't in general met many professors (or EEs) who understand much about intellectual property.

OK. Can we see your agreements, please? Because that did sound very much like trolling for additional intellectual property to add to your portfolio.

People who read this article have pointed out three open CPU designs in addition to the one that I remembered.

While your product might be "production ready", please keep in mind that open projects are very often written to a higher standard than commercial ones, and the researchers involved are no less professional than your own developers. And their projects come with fewer intellectual property issues than yours.

It's only "free" for academia.

Not even them. This is a lure for universities to create tech that they are not allowed to produce in hardware, but the company that provided the original tech can monetize.

The patent terms are whatever they want them to be. In general "reasonable" and "patent" don't happen together much. And "tiny", well I really doubt it.

Having a company provide funds for a research grant and then reap the patent royalties isn't in general a good thing for society. The student researchers get paid like slave labor (if they get paid at all) and put what may be the best idea of their lives in some company's pockets.

It's very common these days for companies to allow universities to use their technology at the cost of tying the company into the university's patent revenue. And of course this is often publicly-funded research, so not only is the taxpayer paying for the development of patents used to sue that same taxpayer, the patents go directly to a company from academia.

The net effect is to feed intellectual property centered companies at the expense of the technology sector in general and small technology companies in particular.

if everything is automated, there is no more poor or middle class

besides, a poor country like the philippines: everyone has a maid and a driver. even the maids have maids and drivers

having people work for you is not proof of being rich. it's a proof of overpopulation

if a disease can spread because it can find enough vectors since not enough vaccinate, you are also giving the disease time and space to tinker, and perhaps evolve a new strain that existing vaccines don't protect against

so: yup. but that's less superrich killing and more superstupid killing us

i always thought it would make a great conspiracy dystopian story where the superrich, with everything automated, don't need us anymore

so they simply kill us all off

the earth reduced to 700,000 souls from 7,000,000,000 in a matter of days (some sort of highly infectious agent?)

Hitchens says it best:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...

Modern phones and tablets have thge same problem as PCs - they fall victim to loads of crap and bloatware. Don't burden your smartphone with shit and it will stay stable. If you're having trouble doing that use one with a smaller softewaremarket such as the Jolla. If you're unsure about which phone to take I'd actually recommend that one.

Brilliant, that's what!

but they still don't seriously threaten our society

exactly because we have vaccines, you fucking moron

and if not enough vaccinate, the diseases find vectors to proliferate again, AND they have a chance to get lucky and develop new strains that can get around our exisitng vaccines, threatening everyone period

everyone has to get vaccinated. if not, the person is ignorant, irresponsible and dangerous to all of our health. if you don't agree with that statement, you don't know what the fuck you are talking about and/ or you are blindly selfishly irresponsible

you have no freedom to choose something that threatens other people's lives (nevermind your own)

i see it as the genius of biochemical warfare by plants

our livers have been in an evolutionary arms race with plants for hundreds of millions of years. they make a substance that kills, maims, disorients, or deters us. one up plants. our livers do their best to mop it up. one up animals. rinse repeat

perversely, we've developed a taste for some of those substances. like cayenne pepper or horseradish, as a paradoxically enjoyable taste. or heroin or cocaine, as a disorienting drug

in a way, the plant still wins when we get addicted to them, like these bees. drug use is just slow motion suicide. it might not kill us immediately, but it brings us back for more, and more and more, to finish the job

science!

you can't explain it