Well, Apple is pushing an open API that will run on lots of hardware, while nvidia is pushing an API tied to their hardware. I think everyone would benefit with a widely supported open API.

Yes, but having "your CAD software [..] be updated to take advantage of that specific hardware" mostly means writing things to use parallel cores, and to leverage the graphics processors through OpenCL (and OpenGL, for the graphics-specific stuff.) This is stuff that a software author would want to do to help future-proof their code, in general, I think.

This was my immediate reaction, as well. Analog computers do some things extremely well, and faster than could be done digitally. Absolute accuracy may not be possible, but plenty-good-enough accuracy is achievable for a lot of different types of problems. Back in the 1970s I worked for a small company as their chief digital/software guy. The owner of the company was wizard at analog electronics, and instilled in me a solid respect about what can be done with analog computing.

That the more government/less government axis is not a particularly useful way to define the red/blue divide.

I think the Tea Party is an unholy marriage of the John Birch society, the KKK, and some behind the scenes money.

By that definition, every republican elected in my lifetime is a left winger.

Too true. "Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony."

That's true right up until it generates a huge wasteland, and starts to poison the seas. Nuclear should only be used as a transitional source. I guess, in theory, a reactor could be made safe, but I doubt it could in practice.

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is." - Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

Unless your logic analyzer can show you ringing or capacitance / inductance problems on the digital signal lines, this is not really true. "Digital" signals on a circuit board are analog after all, and are subject to a lot of the same gremlins that plague an all analog circuit. This sort of thing doesn't always matter in a digital circuit, but you need a good scope to find them when they cause problems.

I have one of those liquid cooled G5s. It's been an audio recording workhorse. It's going to be retired soon, but it's still going strong. I look for leaks every so often, but I've never found evidence of one. I hear that there are faster machines available these days :-)

BSD was built before there was any thought about building embedded system with Unix. iOS, and OS X before it, have been pretty battery-conscious, but BSD, not so much.

...it's still worth reading The Last Policeman.

You mean just like cash, at least in amounts > $10,000, in the U.S.?

But this violates Hofstadter's Law

You mean just like every other major manufacturer? The Foxconn jobs are highly desired, anyway.

Don't most major US companies hold a lot of assets in overseas subsidies?

You mean just like every other major manufacturer? If you're arguing that the patent system should be reformed, I totally agree with that. Until that time, shouldn't they play the game?

If you say so.

Well then their sales will suffer, right? Oh... wait...

What is "compatible hardware" in this case? Are you talking about the 1990s clones?

This is a moot point now, as there is no distribution of the OS other than the Apple store. It's been an "upgrade" market for the OS rather than a "purchase" market for a long time.