If by "lumps of stainless steel" you mean Joulies, you missed that the Joulies have phase-change-material inside - probably the same stuff as this mug. This is why I said it was the same trick.

Yep - as jcochran says,it's just a repackaging in a dedicated mug. The Joulies web site says:

"Their polished stainless steel shells are full of a very special phase change material (an ingredient in food) that melts at 140F. When you put them in your coffee this PCM begins melting, absorbing a LOT of heat in the process and cooling your coffee down much faster than normal.

"Where does all that heat go? It’s stored right inside your Coffee Joulies. When your coffee reaches 140F (the perfect drinking temperature) the molten PCM begins solidifying again, releasing all that energy back into your coffee to keep it at a comfortable and delicious drinking temperature. The more heat you feed your Joulies, the longer they’ll keep your coffee warm."

This is just the same approach as Coffee Joulies, which is a former Kickstarter project. I have a bunch of these, they work well. No need for a custom mug.

The Intel compilers do NOT "phone home" for licensing. What they do "phone home" for is to send anonymous usage data. When you install, you're asked if you want to opt in to this - it is not enabled by default. Licensing is done entirely locally for single-user licenses. See http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/software-improvement-program for more information.

There's more to be annoyed about with this ad (which I have not seen, but I read about in the Globe). If the ad has Wahlberg saying "This is New England", then by "New England" they mean Massachusetts (Boston excluded), Connecticut and Rhode Island. Verizon abandoned northern New England (Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont) years ago, selling off their business to tiny Fairpoint Communications. Fairpoint, which has finally got most of their accounting issues straightened out, have admitted that while they will continue to serve existing FiOS Internet customers (TV was not offered), they are not expanding it anywhere. At least I got FiOS Internet while Verizon was building it out.

I don't know much about it, but my employer, probably a larger company than yours, specifies that we should use EMC's Syncplicity Enterprise (http://www.syncplicity.com/products/enterprise-edition) for secure cloud storage. It offers the option of keeping the storage in-house. Worth a look.

Yes, the side stories definitely add depth - I agree with you there. As for Redshirts, I would have been happier if he had stopped before the three codas. I had not read Old Man's War or, I think, much else of Scalzi's.

Does the "novel" form of the book just concatenate all of the serial chapters, or is the "re-establishment" text reminding readers of what happened before removed or thinned out?

And yes, I see I mistyped the name of the book in my initial comment.

I read this when it was released in serial form on Kindle. As noted, it's a collection of largely self-contained stories that form a greater story arc, which is not my definition of a serial. I too was not taken with Redshirts and I liked The Human Condition a bit better - some of the episodes are almost throwaways and don't really contribute to the narrative.

I was a bit disappointed that the ending didn't really resolve what I saw as major plot elements and, while it wasn't a cliffhanger the way Connie Willis' Blackout was, it left me dissatisfied. But overall I think it was worth reading and will probably read whatever comes next.

This is nothing new. As in decades-old. Back when I was at DEC in the 1980s we had auto-threading compilers that worked very well on standard application code. Today, Intel has been doing auto-threading in its C++ and Fortran compilers for more than a decade and it is very effective for a large class of applications. Intel's compiler also has features that help you tweak the code for better auto-parallelism, notably the Guided Auto Parallel feature introduced in 2010. Other compiler vendors also have auto-parallelizing compilers.

I've been in the industry for decades, and every couple of years someone comes out with yet another programming language or technique that is supposed to revolutionize application parallelization. This is just another one, and many years behind the rest of the industry from what I can tell.

Stock buybacks indeed make the shares more valuable. Paying dividends can entice some institutional investors to buy shares which they would not otherwise do. As long as Apple keeps sufficient cash on hand, this is a general win.

The fine article misrepresents the facts. The EU case was decided by a commission without legal process. As for the US cases, you can read the FTC decision at http://www.ftc.gov/os/adjpro/d9341/101102inteldo.pdf . Quoting:

The Respondent, its attorneys, and counsel for the Commission having thereafter
executed an agreement containing a consent Order, an admission by Respondent of all the
jurisdictional facts set forth in the complaint, a statement that the signing of said agreement is for
settlement purposes only and does not constitute an admission by Respondent that the law has
been violated as alleged in such complaint, or that the facts as alleged in such complaint, other
than jurisdictional facts, are true and waivers and other provisions as required by the
Commission's Rules.

The NYAG settlement can be read at http://download.intel.com/pressroom/legal/nyag/NYAG-Intel_Final_Signed_Settlement_Agreement.pdf As stated there, the settlement was to avoid further litigation costs, once the NYAG found that its case had "been eviscerated".

In none of the cases to date has Intel admitted any culpability. In none of the cases has Intel been compelled to change its business practices or modify its products. What can one conclude from this?

And one big thing you leave out - Intel was never "found guilty" of the alleged practices. Lots of high-volume innuendo, but the manufacturers who supposedly got pressured denied that it happened at all. Yes, Intel settled because it was costing too much to have to deal with the discovery and allegations. Look at the recent settlement with the New York State AG (that lawsuit was politically motivated, in my opinion, in exchange for AMD saying it would build a fab in NY.)

I wish AMD well, but they "got lucky" once with Opteron and have not been able, so far, to repeat that success. If you want to blame Intel for being a fierce competitor, fine. But nobody has been able to prove they did anything "monopolistic", despite repeated attempts.