How did you figure that out? Are you a plane/clothes detective?

Exactly. It would be difficult to design an ISA with a back door, surely that would have to be an implementation-specific effort. Of course, if they government also required projects to use chips from "approved" suppliers then they could make this happen, but it probably wouldn't be an architecture-level artifact.

Twenty years ago we were all using x86 CPUs, whereas today we're all using...what was it again? Something different, because we've advanced so much....right?

Or maybe they forgot to wear it shiny side out!

Because they got too close to something! You notice how you almost never see re-runs? It's because they don't want to encourage skeptical thinking! We of the Society to Win Intellectual Freedom Through Keeping Ideas Circulating Knowledgeably (S.W.I.F.T.K.I.C.K.) are currently waging a war of intensity against the networks to get these shows back on the air!

"legacy apps"? Like what? WoW? SWTOR? Or are we talking things like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest? Face it, there are no "killer apps" anymore -- and if there are any niche areas that don't have open-source or otherwise freely-available software, I'm sure they can code up their own solutions. Which will likely start by reverse-engineering the current best-of-breed solutions and porting them (or at least their algorithms) to their new architecture.

Frankly, I'm hoping that without all the entrenched legacy apps to support, they'll be able to come up with a superior architecture that won't be doomed to failure because it's not x86 compatible.

Sometimes natural selection isn't selective enough...

Yeah, kinda. Problem is, you can only control approximately when the transmission shifts. There's still a second (or two) delay. You also can't go flying into a corner in 4th, stick it in 2nd and stand on the brakes with the clutch in, then roll off the brakes and clutch while mashing the throttle for a proper exit.

For the record, my wife's Dodge only has P-R-N-D; you can push the shift lever left or right to manually change gears, but then there's no way to return to automatic mode without shifting into neutral and back into drive. However, that's the only example I've seen, and I hope it doesn't catch on.

Uh, dude, I hate to tell you but...everybody dies in the end.

I do buy shoes in batches (usually 3-4 pair whenever the local shoe warehouse has a sale), but I only wear one pair at a time. This way, I only have to buy shoes every five years or so, and if for some reason I need a nice pair for a party or something, I have them. Note that I only do this with tennis shoes, I've been wearing the same pair of Doc Martens (shoes, not the boots) for about ten years. Comfortable, look good with a suit, and have acid-resistant soles in case the UPS batteries in the machine room leak.

Just dumped my iPhone 3G for an Atrix 2 this weekend, and it was like having a cast removed. I don't mean to bash the 3G -- it was a good phone when I got it, but after every update (especially iOS4) it just got slower and slower, to the point it wasn't really useful any more. It took over a minute to bring up Google Maps and show my location. And heaven forbid I should try to scroll around, I'd wind up with a fragment of a map in one corner of a grey screen. And texting was bad too, with a 3-5 second delay between tapping a letter and having it show up. With my new Atrix, I almost feel like I'm living in the future. Sure, there are some things I'm not thrilled with (never did figure out how to get the "Social Networking" widget to work, all it would do was prompt me to "Add a network" even after I added three), but overall it's great. Reminds me of when my Civic Hybrid got totalled and I had to replace it with an old A4...