Only a retard or a Republican brownshirt (or both) believes that Al Gore claimed to have "invented" or taken any personal role in the technological development of the Internet.

Al Gore would probably have a better claim than this guy (if he actually made such a claim, which he didn't).

Give yourself root on an OS X system (easy peasy) and see how "locked down" the OS is to you. You can delete stuff, you can compile programs, you can replace modules, you can install kernel extensions, etc. Are there some locks on the system? Obviously. Are they "total"? Only if you have the hacking skills of my mom.

Microsoft is actively developing Windows 8 for ARM.

Also, the current MacBook Airs (with SSD boot devices) are already darn close to your description of an instant-on laptop.

Who said anything about running "old ARM apps"? (I'm not an idiot; I don't think that you can run old Newton apps on an iPad just because they both have ARM processors.) I was answering your question about why anyone would care whether OS X was running on ARM or Intel: because apps compiled for Intel processors wouldn't run on an ARM CPU (at least not without some performance-sucking battery-draining deal-killing emulation layer).

OS X is nowhere near "totally locked down".

But to answer your question, it matters to anyone who wants to be able to run apps written and compiled for a different CPU.

Um... the A4 and A5 are ARM chips. That's what they're talking about this hypothetical MacBook Air running on.

"A more likely scenario is a MacBook Air based upon iOS with a built-in touchscreen."

An iPad with a keyboard? Not likely. But what kind of processor would make most sense to put in such a device? How about one that iOS already runs on: ARM.

OK, a nice little project... but why would you want to put a touch-screen on a desktop computer? Does a regular monitor not have enough fingerprints on it? Do your shoulders not get tired enough from reaching for the screen to point at things? Is Windows not frustrating enough using a mouse, so you want to use a blunt finger tip that covers up what you're trying to point at? There's a reason why the TabletPC architecture never caught on (vs the iPad which did): the OS wasn't matched properly to the input device. Replacing the stylus with a finger, and mounting the screen vertically just compounds those problems.

Did you by chance mean "McCarthy"? Gen. Douglas McArthur was no fan of Communists, but it was Sen. Joe McCarthy who is know for anti-Commie witch hunts.

Apparently my employer could be a terrorist organization, because we use PGP and VPN technology routinely. Sure, the boss says it's for HIPAA compliance, but that's what you'd expect a terrorist to say, isn't it?