> Maybe [snip]

Or, no.

Thing is, early computers were immensely different than the computers we have today. Addressing modes weren't fully thought out, instruction sets were esoteric and more suited for hand assembly, and even just getting information to/from memory wasn't quite what you'd expect. Both delay-line and drum memory were delay based, you had to have extremely tight timings to get the word you wanted.

Linux leverages many modern conveniences and paradigms. Without heavy modification, it cannot run on anything older than a M68000/i80386 processor with appropriate support hardware, and the older you go, the more you have to gut, change and cripple.

http://imgur.com/xhAvC - yeah, systems programming at 6AM can get kinda whacky.

It's a header file for a standardized interface. All this stuff needs to be the same for any *NIX-like operating system to be *NIX-like, otherwise, you're making an incompatible operating system. To make source-compatible operating systems you need to have common interfaces, and those interfaces lie in the header files. Saying that this is copyright infringement is like saying that they patented a hole in the wall as a way of getting in and out of a room.

Hell no. Being in a highly competitive degree program at one of the best schools in the nation for it, cheaters not only hurt themselves in the long run, but everyone else in the class. In my analog signals class, there is a large contingent that cheats on the homework and artificially inflates their grades. This class is also heavily curved, and since analog signals are not my strong suit, I ended up getting bit by the cheaters by dragging my letter grade down.

Cheaters in a university very rarely hurt just themselves.

With modern integrated circuits, especially those in a PC, voltage levels are typically about 0-1.85V, so you're off quite a bit there. Now, voltage with no current means no power consumed, think about a capacitor. If you charge it up and then disconnect the terminals, it will remain charged to that voltage, but there's no current (open circuit) so no power is consumed.

CMOS (based on MOSFETS) works similar to this. The gate of a MOSFET works on capacitance (technically electric field, hence the field effect in the name), and ideal CMOS circuits only use power when they are switched from one state to another (vs TTL which each gate will use power when in 0, but will not use power when in 1).

Memory is always active in standard PC systems. Sure, having more modules will draw more current. Memory modules typically will take a max of 1000mA when doing heavy operations, and at they typical 1.85V that most of these modules are, that's about two watts of burst power, but nominal draw is much lower. Overall two memory modules in a system is a small percentage of the overall TDP of a notebook system.

Unless you've got books that have indestructible pages, I bet you're page flips take about half a second to do, which is exactly comparable to the Kindle 2's page flip.

Um, Sony's library has their own DRM lock-in. Both can read plain text. You fail there. If you don't want to have DRMed content don't shop at either store.

They both have different things for different users. You want the touch screen? Get the Sony. Want a free-to-use EDVO modem? Get the Kindle.