If I were to rephrase your statements slightly"
"The lion inches towards the hapless innocent doe, just about to pounce, while the doe cowers in fear trying to escape, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping."

"Because there's no selfish reason to help."

Your line of thinking has destroyed our world because it is based on hubris - our collective notion that it is our moral or "human" duty to interfere, to rescue, to meddle, and we sleep well at night thinking that "we have made it right" and have "made a difference". Very often, we are just meddlers, and only sleep well at night because we just ended up fueling our egos with our self-righteous acts.

Why don't we just stop judging everything around us and just try to lead a life in which we are honest and true to ourselves - for a change? I argue the world will be a better place for all of us.

Okay, I get what you were trying to say earlier. Fair point too - because AMD64 was a vastly superior design and more importantly, a vastly more pragmatic design compared to what Intel was trying to shove down people's throats. Goes to show what hubris can do.

I'm not 100% sold on your recommendation of Intel dropping Atom and adopting ARM though. x86 is still very attractive to corporate clients and others who value legacy support and enterprise support. Business upgrade cycles are often very slow, and the only reason why iPads have even made inroads in the corporate market (and they are quickly doing so) is because there were no x86 and Windows alternatives. That's again why I say that the new wave of Atom Clovertrail Windows 8 tablets would be a very interesting battle in the business sector.

The other alternative - which is Intel adopting ARM would be a bad strategic move for Intel. Or perhaps I'm being too conservative in my thinking and perhaps it is a really bold idea.

What are you even talking about? Since when did Intel miss the "64 bit era" as you put it? Sure, Itanium was a failure and Intel sunk billions of dollars trying to make it work. However, Intel could afford that mistake and still continue chugging along. As things stand today, Intel absolutely dominates the 64 bit market. In fact, except for Intel, AMD, and the IBM Power chips, there is no other game in town as far as 64 bit is concerned, and in this market, Intel probably has 80% or 90% market share, and has the best performance and performance per watt numbers.

So, I'm not sure which 64 bit era you are talking about, and how Intel missed it.

As far as Atom is concerned, yes, Intel is struggling quite a bit. However, Intel is trying to scale down its power consumption while ARM is trying to scale up its performance. Sooner or later, the two shall meet and it will be a very interesting battle. I wouldn't write off Intel so soon yet. In fact, the upcoming Clovertrail based Windows 8 tablets should be a very interesting launch. Take a look at the Thinkpad Tablet 2 for example. It should be a very interesting tablet for corporate customers or for users who want x86 along with Windows 8 Pro along with 3G and LTE mobility and a full-size USB port and with 8-9 hrs battery life.

I'm not saying Intel will win or lose, and it needs be relentless in improving power efficiency to even be a viable alternative to ARM. However, to say that Atom has already lost the race is a bit premature.

I once read somewhere that a superiority complex usually arises from an inferiority complex. Something else I remember is that "we despise most in others that which we hate in ourselves". As I get older and come across more instances of arrogance and humility, I realized that these statements usually hold true even if they sound a bit glib.

This is not just true for ignorance but true for most vices and weaknesses, in my experience. If you find yourself having a really strong reaction at some quirk or weakness you observe in someone else, chances are that you either consider that a weakness in yourself, or you used to and now think you have overcome it. We only feel superior because we feel we overcame certain weaknesses so when we notice it in someone else, we feel they are inferior or less evolved or weak or something similar. It is just a way of patting ourselves in the back.

The problem is often worse in nerds and geeks because we often don't even have regular conversations. (I'm not even sure non-nerds and non-geeks do for that matter.) When we interact with others, it is mostly an information sharing exercise or an exercise in sharing trivia or exotic information tidbits, to show off our awesome information databank. How many of us truly try to listen to someone, try to understand someone? I've personally found that the hardest thing to do in my life. It is so much easier to mask ignorance by just talking a lot and sounding knowledgeable and opinionated. We build our careers and our lives inside these bulwarks.

Dont' be so quick to dismiss Intel from the race. Intel is already shipping Medfield at 2GHz which has the same peak and idle power consumption as other ARM chips. It still lags the very high end ARM chips in performance but is very competitive when compared to mid range ARM phones and chips - in terms of performance, price, power - everything.

You will soon see Clovertrail based Windows 8 tablets by the end of this month. Again, Clovertrail is able to hold its own against the top end ARM tablets, which is why so many vendors are using it.

Let's be clear - ARM is still the king when it comes to mobile phones and tablets, but while it is trying to dramatically increase processing power while slowly increasing power consumption, Intel is doing exactly the opposite - it is trying to dramatically decrease power consumption while slowly decreasing performance.

Let's also be clear about one more thing - Intel is the king when it comes to performance and sheer processing power. Even the highest end ARM chip doesn't even begin to compete with say, a mid-range Intel laptop chip.

Another thing to consider is that in most of these handheld devices, display power consumption is quickly becoming the biggest factor - CPU/GPU power consumption is a clear second - which also gives Intel a bit of an edge, along with its manufacturing superiority.

Who will meet in the middle first - is anyone's guess. All I am saying is that it is too early to count Intel out of this race. Intel is clearly worried and wants to own this space. The next couple of years will be extremely interesting.

What would make it even more interesting, is if Intel bought out a big ARM player or did a cross-licensing agreement to compete with Qualcomm.

A teacher - any teacher - has to undergo a state level certification before she or he can even teach. This is above and beyond their academic degrees. Do you hear them arguing and debating about egocentric parasites who created the system? Perhaps, but even though they argue about it, they just go and get the certification and then move on in their lives with the real act of teaching.

Firstly, I want to clarify that I didn't mean to come across as strongly as I did in my previous post. Was just having a bad day and felt like a rant.

I completely agree with you about building a reputation. My only point was that *if* a certification happens to give you an additional stamp on your resume, why waste time and energy even arguing about it - just go get the certificate and get it over and done with. There are plenty of such certifications and "licenses" and exams (many even at a state level) that many professionals have to get under their belt.

I only hear this line of reasoning (only intellect and performance matters - certifications don't) from software professionals. From my perspective, it sounds silly even to have this argument. While all certifications are not created equal, there are many that have a good reputation in professional circles. It seems incredibly foolish to wantonly not get the certification based on the argument that it is not "necessary". Of course it isn't. But that is besides the point.

I'm sorry if I come across as rude but this is the kind of nonsense that I only see in the software development industry. You're offering your services as an expert tradesman. If your professional or commercial circumstances require that you get a certificate or a degree just so people can cut to the chase and know that you are more reliable than the thousands of other pretenders, just go get the certificate, even if it means nothing more to you than toilet paper.

Do you hear a doctor strutting about in pride about how she or he did not need to get a medical degree and can still heal patients?

The worst part about this is that most certificates cost a few thousand dollars at best. It is a pittance compared to what a degree from a university costs. It is even way less than what anyone in just about any industry (other than the software industry) is gladly willing to spend if it means they get a competitive advantage in their career. Are you seriously telling me that you are that unwilling to invest in a profession or trade that you intend to pursue for the rest of your life??

Come on, man!

For the record, this is nothing against you or OP. I'm not judging you or anything. Just a general rant.

You fail to mention that this is the base-bottom price. The high-end iPad (64GB storage, 3G connectivity) costs $830 - and this is without any accessories, not even a cover. Here's the way I see it, and I say this without any bias: The iPad is going to face very stiff competition at two ends of the spectrum.

At the low end, it will start facing serious competition from $200-$300 Android 4.0 and 4.1 tablets, many of which have extremely good screens, construction quality, and an equally good number of apps in the Android app store. Look at the recently announced Nexus 7. It has an IPS display, similar pixel density as the iPad3, 8hr battery life, Tegra3 CPU, and is priced at an extremely competitive $200. And it runs Android 4.1 Jellybean which is quite slick based on initial reviews.

At the high end, it will start facing competition from ultrabooks and x86 based Win8 Pro tablets. If you are already paying $900 for a media consumption device that lacks the capability of running heavy-weight apps, you might as well pay a hundred bucks more and get an ultrabook or an x86 tablet that can do everything and will give you a viable laptop replacement alternative. What would be a very interesting would be a dual core Intel Medfield (Clover Trail?) Surface tablet or even a non-Surface tablet. It would run all your x86 and Windows apps, give you the same battery life and standby life as an ARM chip, and would outperform the best ARM chip in the market. Core for core, the 1.6Ghz single core Medfield that is shipping with the Lava phone is head to head with the much touted Tegra 3 or Exynos or Snapdragon, and has very similar power consumption and standby numbers. The only place they will lag is in the graphics horsepower, which is probably why you will mostly see 1366x768 screen res. i3/i5 tablets would not be very viable as their power consumption is still too high - although I'm sure this won't stop big vendors from coming out with ridiculously heavy Win8 Pro i3/i5 tablets with cooling vents and what-not.

Anyway, just my thoughts. I do think that HP is correct in not supporting Win8 RT - it cannot carve our a niche for itself when it is getting hammered by Win8/x86 on one end, and Android/iOS/ARM on the other.

You need a helicopter parent to help you out with that one.

Write a simple well-documented modular program, teach them to step through it, and let them have fun.
Even better if the program does something interesting (from a sales person's perspective, not yours), and if they can interact with the program by tweaking some constants or by tweaking a formula. Finally, you could even record a video that teaches them to step through code instead of you having to conduct a class time and again.

I can't think of a good example though - something a sales person would find interesting and/or hard to do normally. Any ideas?

+5 Insightful.

In a way, I see a parallel between how open a country should be with how open software should be. The fundamental philosophy behind the two things is the same, in my humble opinion. Just like software, a country, especially the USA, will NOT go bankrupt or even lose its income earning potential if it recognizes that intellect and intellectual property should be nurtured and left free, not be caged and locked away. I may sound over the top while making this comment, but there are very few countries that can pull this off, and the USA is probably one of the very few. Look at any country that has a static population that doesn't travel much or even one that is from the old world, and you will see all the negative things amplify over time - corruption, narrow mindedness, bureaucracy, laziness, to name a few.

If a society does not embrace change or becomes too insular, it will die or will become slow and sluggish to a point of no return. This has happened to societies time and again - look at China and India or even many of the European countries that are slowly sliding down the slope such as Greece. They were once great nations only because they actively traveled and traded and moved about freely - over time, when they stopped doing so, their societies rotted to the point where other puny nations and kingdoms walked all over them. Even after countless wars etc, the seeds they left in the form of systemic corruption, bureaucracy, etc. sustain themselves for thousands of years.

It is sad to see that so many countries still fail to see the danger of insulating themselves from immigrants or from other cultures. At the end of the day, the intelligent, the dynamic, the risk takers, the people who keep a society alive, will get what they want one way or the other. They are also the ones who have the gumption to leave behind everything they know and that is comfortable into an unknown culture. I've often wondered why countries are brain dead enough to not see this obvious fact.

Actually, you are wrong. I'm not speaking for overclockers and in fact, I'm not even one. However, extreme overclocking is very valuable. It tells normal overclockers how much headroom they can expect (at least relative to another chip), it gives an indication of how robust the chip design and the process technology is.

Your car analogy is completely wrong as well. A ricer analogy would be someone who uses a fancy case but does nothing to improve the internals. The analogy would be someone who takes a stock engine and tries to rev it to the maximum possible rpm by using any means. I imagine that many people would find this a valuable metric especially when they are comparing various engines, especially for specialized needs such as drag racing.

IMO, the Trinity is a truly compelling offering from AMD, after a long long time. Yes, it trades lower CPU int/float performance for higher GPU performance when compared to Ivy Bridge, but this tradeoff makes it a very attractive choice for someone who wants a cheap to mid-priced laptop that gives you decent performance and decent battery life while still letting you play the latest bunch of games in low-def setting. Its hitting the sweet spot for laptops as far as I am concerned. I'm also fairly sure it will be priced about a hundred bucks cheaper than a comparable Ivy Bridge - that's how AMD has traditionally competed. Hats off to AMD fror getting their CPU performance to somewhat competitive levels while still maintaining the lead against the massively improved GPU of the Ivy Bridge. All this while they're still at 32nm while Ivy Bridge is at 22nm.

Having said that, what I am equally excited about is the hope that Intel will come up with Bay Trail, their 22nm Atom that I strongly suspect will feature a similar graphics core that is there in Ivy Bridge. Intel has always led with performance and stability, not with power efficiency and price, so they need to create something that genuinely beats the ARM design, at least in the tablet space if not in the cellphone space.

A 300% increase in salary for a 60% increase in living expenses. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.
Going to california, I am, brother. Hope to meet some gentle people there.

Musing aside, I still stand by my original belief that if one is good at her job and is willing to work hard, there's money to be made, respect to be had, and happiness to be enjoyed. Yeah, you can join finance and count your money and pretend to be a leet trader by drinking single malts and what not, but if you're doing it only for the money, you're missing out, man.

Oh yeah, one more thing. In today's world, you have to be willing to relocate.