No, I don't!

So, Intel was paying Dell essentially up to $1 Billion a year to not carry AMD just for fun? They were not going to go AMD anyway, even though they were so much faster, cooler and even cheaper?
Back in 2003-2004 we wanted to buy a few dozen servers for our lab at my University. My professor who had gotten the grant had gotten offers from various companies, Dell offering Xeon-based ones and others (HP and Sun I think?) offering Opteron-based. I was given remote access to a sample Dell server and a sample Opteron server (sorry I forget exactly what it was), and was asked to benchmark them. So, I benchmarked with the actual software we were using. The fact that the Xeons back then were 32bit while the Opterons were 64bit added to the speed difference and made a devastating difference. Sure, our natural language processing suite written in Perl was not getting much of the 64bit benefit, so it was "only" about 40% faster on the AMD server, but any of the computational-biology C code was over 2x faster. I gave my report and the Professor was going to go with an AMD server, when Dell came back and gave him a quote at less than half the price. They were actually selling each server less than what just the CPU was supposed to cost. I could not understand how they could do that. Well, now we know how.
Oh, to finish the story, the Professor told me he would go with Dell and buy more since they were so cheap and we would end up with more processing power. I warned him about the fact that the Dells were producing more heat and having even more of them would be a problem. It was hard to say no to such a good deal though, so the school bought the Dells. Then they had to wait for an upgraded electrical and air-conditioning system to be installed since the head/power requirements went up. It was a State University so it took almost a year. Also, the Dell file servers had a bunch of disks too close together and a dual Xeon throwing hot air over them, so a second disk would probably fail before the RAID array could restore from the previous disk failure. But most of those 100+ Dell servers are still running. Sure they are about as fast as a P4 that your knowledge-able friends made fun of even back then, but at least there is a LOT of them...
To return from the digression, my point when I started replying was that if the market was free, Intel would not have all that money and all those years (eternity for CPU manufacturing) to surpass AMD. AMD would have been the one selling and making money in the meantime, which would have meant more R&D for themselves to maintain a lead.
Anyway, let's hope we will never return to the thousand-dollar prices for desktop CPUs we were enjoying back in the good ol' Intel-only days.

I don't get your point. Isn't *THIS* a slip-up that is much worse than the SpaceX designed-to-be-expendable barges?

Wow, that is the understatement of the century. AMD at one point did decide not to be a "mini Intel" and become a technology leader. Do you realize that while AMD had a far superior product for several years, Intel threw money (and threats - as was proved) to every retailer/integrator/etc out there to not carry AMD (and did other "interesting" things such as rig their industry standard compilers etc). Intel was allowed to use strong-arm tactics that "scream" anti-trust and after many years an almost bankrupt AMD was allowed to accept a small payment and Intel went scot-free.
If you have a product that is far ahead of the competition, you should be allowed to capitalize on that. If you are illegally not allowed by thepowerful players, there should be some sort of protection for that, before it is too late. But I guess the DoJ was sleeping at the wheel...
You have to remember, the Athlon was getting a firm lead on the P3 and Intel got out the P4 as a "response". The P4, the processor now universally known as the biggest "dog" by virtually everyone (even in its final and much, much improved incarnations), eventually abandoned even by intel to go back to a saner P3-derived architecture, was actually welcomed with laurels, both by (most of) the press and the integrators. AMD put all this R&D effort and they got nothing out of it, instead the were bleeding money for years, while Intel was making money with the current situation being a very weak AMD next to a behemoth. It is too bad for us, because the sole reason Intel CPUs are affordable is AMD - I won't remind you how much Intel charged per-CPU before there was competition. The sole reason Intel CPUs are this fast (or even that their consumer products are 64bit) is AMD. I only hope in some miracle for AMD to survive and get some competition going, otherwise there will be no-one left to keep Intel in check and consumers will pay for it...
So, yeah, the greatest industrial robbery of all time has been largely forgotten. AMD just "failed to capitalize", they were "obsessed with being a mini Intel"...

Pearson was Apple's subcontractor. Apple was supposed to get $780 out of every ipad (yep, you heard right, retail+ price) and Pearson $200. I haven't seen the contract, but if the various news sources is correct, it is Apple who is basically making the offer by bundling software of their choice...

The name of the company that made these, was Shoup. I guess they would have changed that password to "AVS", but their (ridiculously easy) passwords are actually hardcoded, so it was too much work I guess...

We are not giving the state authority to destroy religions it disagrees with. But to gain a tax exempt status you have to be an organization that does some sort of charity or at least some sort of public good. As far as I know other tax-exempt churches do try to make at least a show of "giving to the people" and of being inclusive. The Church of Scientology does not. Why should it be tax-exempt?

I mean, how can you tell rock flakes from 3.3 million year old corn flakes...

I can understand things like "I pride myself in the fact that I have not watched more than one episode of the show" or "more than half an episode of the show", but you are basically telling us that you are an idiot. Judging things as bad by how popular they are is not in any way better than judging things as good by how popular they are.
Are you at least consistent? I mean maybe the "idiot" comment was harsh, I could perhaps call you a person of "strange principles", if you have also never watched things like LOTR, Avengers, Toy Story and you actually liked /. beta.

I don't think the problem is software patents. The problem is stupid patents. Like, I patent exactly the same thing everyone does, *but on a bicycle!*. The examiners seem to have completely forgotten the basic premise, which is that you cannot grant a patent to something that a person with an ordinary skill in the art could come up with based on prior art.
Of course to completely solve the problems a general patent reform would be required, which could address the software issue better among others, but even within the current framework things would be so much better if the USPTO applied some sanity.

Yes, it seems to me that instead of paying for hundred of lawsuits on ridiculous patents perhaps somebody should start going after the USPTO instead? No idea if there is any legal way to do it, but since all problems start from the USPTO itself, that's where any effort should be concentrated...

Is TFA like the summary? What does ISP-level net neutrality have to do with promotions and product placement? The whole REASON (yeah, feeble attempt at a pun) there is a discussion about net neutrality is that ISPs should ONLY do the transferring of packets, regardless of what they are, since that is what we are paying them for. Should they be allowed to inject promotions and ads somehow? WHY? HOW?
The summary then goes on mentioning something about rock and roll that is even more irrelevant... Unless the summary is completely wrong of course and TFA is an insightful diatribe...

Ok, if you give essential patents for free, won't you also have to give insignificant patents (e.g. slide to unlock) for free? I know Apple is not much related to this regardless the summary, but they, for example wanted to charge others something like $20 for insignificant design patents, when at the same time they wanted to get basic communications ones almost free...

I mean, for centuries there has been a movement to reform the spelling of English itself, to make it sort of consistent and thus easier to learn. Even though the movement was backed by important people and it was certainly not nearly a "departure" as a whole new language would be, it never gained any traction.
So, even forgetting about the unfeasibility and just starting to tackle your questions we do come to some moot points. E.g. "what characteristics would a new language need?" The main one is usefulness - what you will gain by learning it. So, a brand new language is the least useful. Then, other questions like "How could the language be made as easy as possible to learn coming from any linguistic background?" have no real answer, unless you optimize at least for some linguistic background. Do you want to make it a bit easier to East Asians, or you'd rather aim westerners better?

The problem would have gone smoothly if they had used tried technology. For example, instead of 747s they should have gone with DC-10s, as they have successfully been converted in the past even for interstellar travel. And you could always go with sharks of course... No missile deployment stands any chance against a sharknado... with lasers...