Some has stated (and rightly so) that we should call our congresspeople an voice our opinions. Even provided a nice little link to congressional contact information. I would say we should send letters, and not a form letter or e-mail. Form letters, e-mails and online petitions are not taken seriously. Take an hour and (neatly) put pen to paper describing your stance. Hundreds of pounds of post making its way to D.C. has an undeniable veracity.

I also think FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski needs a few thousand letters of support on his current path.

While the connotation of a white, fluffy cloud floating along in cyberspace is diametrically opposed to a big, black lump of iron sitting in a server room, these two are essentially the same. Big Iron and terminals have returned, but now we call them clouds and netbooks (or smart-phones.)

You answered your own question. The K8 product line beat anything Intel was pushing during that time frame. It should have given AMD a sizable portion of the market share. The performance was that much better. In a free market, the obviously better product should take the market share, and as fast as the IT market moves, there should have a perceptible wave in market share and profit flowing into AMD. Who knows where AMD R&D would have gone with the influx of cash.

...part of the price premium means you're getting a laptop built by a highly skilled workforce with a keen eye on tolerances.

Were it not that we had to pay a premium for this...

GURPS?

You can always become a teacher in the inner city or work 2 years for Peace Corps or any of the other methods the government has setup for most or all of your loan to be FORGIVEN.

It has probably been said before, but it bares repeating. TANSTAAFL, let this be your first real world example that. There are alternative ways to replay your loan. For an example:

Load Forgiveness Programs

I always wondered how my life would have changed if I had gone this route. I have this romanticized vision of working in dangerous, tropical climates with hot, altruistic babes with advanced degrees. I find a nice one and after a few years toiling away at toughest job we ever loved, we enter private industry and are bowled over by the size of our first paycheck. And since we were have a large portion of our loans out of the way and are accustomed to spartan living, we start building a roc sized nest egg. The naivete of youth.

The sex. Because you cannot have a good spy story without the sex. Apparently, everyone in this game has sex with everyone else. And all the female characters are named "Pussy Galore."

I am still on the fence about this and "by definition stupid" just does not do it for me. Patents were made to protect the effort and investment spent on innovation. If I build a new, novel system, I want to recoup my initial investment and make some profit without worrying about some other company copying my idea just for the cost of implementation. So is a software patent stupid because you cannot invent a new, novel system that is purely developed in software?

Let there be a widget A that does novel thing X via purely solid state components. Let there be a widget B that does novel thing X via software. If widget B is just a COTS PC, and the software was developed before widget A, is widget B not patentable. Two systems exist that do a novel thing. One is patentable because its build of components but the other is not because its a program that runs on a computer? Yes, its a generalized thought experiment and not a real world example, but I think it represents the question.

1360899 / 655973 > 2

Have you every had a problem finding something off the menu in a web browser? Sure, I lose things in Office all the time, but I cannot remember the last time I had a problem finding something off the menu bar in Firefox.

Do not fume about it. Do not rage on a forum about it. Do not send you buddy and e-mail pointing out the stupidity of their comments. Make a press release containing the facts and release it.