Google is already a big company, and globally recognized. Isn't that good enough? This American obsession with growing and growing without end needs to stop.

Because time and time again, the companies that stop growing start dying... there are precious few that can just continue to do what they do forever on, and there are probably none in the fast-changing tech world.

If you aren't growing, it means you're not doing new things that people want, and in the world where hundreds of other companies are trying new stuff, your old moneymaker product will slowly turn into trash.

But, we also benefit from this desire to grow -- Google could've been satisfied with their massive PC search profits and never tried to get into mobile. So could've Microsoft. The only alternative to iOS would've still been Blackbeery.

And so they are in Canada, too. Maybe "everywhere" really means "Europe"?

You have confused performance per watt with total power consumption. ARM is very good at the latter, but is by no means the best at the former.

Performance per watt isn't a single number that can be compared to tell the full story. In an envelope desired by small portable devices, ARM has a significant edge in performance per watt over Intel's Atom.

In server market, Intel has an edge, of course, as they have chips specifically designed for those kinds of high-power workloads. ARM is still a few years away from having anything designed for similar use.

Market share numbers in both categories reflect this.

real kindles and amazon prime give you instant video on tablets along with free borrowing of a lot of books

Amazon Prime gives you instant video on anything, including the TV, which is really where you want to watch things anyway.

I love Prime, but "a lot of books" is an extreme exaggeration. I still have to buy all the books I want to read, since not one of them has ever been free to borrow.

They can, they should, and they must. They have a legal obligation to maximize profits.

That statement sounds like it came from somebody who learned about business laws from reading Cryptonomicon.

If only "maximizing profits" was such a simple formula, we wouldn't need all these expensive boards of directors and CEOs to run companies. Unfortunately, it's rarely clear what actions lead to increasing profits, and it's even less clear what "maximum" profits are. It's not even clear how far in the future are we need to look for our estimates!

A board can look at opinion polls, and determine that trying to ban a competing product will destroy enough of the consumer goodwill that it's not worth it in the long run, especially since the next-gen Samsung product would come out shortly after. That same board might decide that trying to ban a competing product will create short-term spike in that product's sales, hurting their at the time when they are about to launch a new product of their own. Considering that such an attempt might even fail to produce the ban, the overall result might be quite detrimental to their profits.

It's really not clear at all, in my opinion, that attempting to ban Galaxy SIII is in the best interest of Apple shareholders. So, to respond to your statement -- "they can" -- yes, "they should" -- matter of opinon, "they must" -- certainly untrue.

You have a point, it's not very easy to get more than 2% now. But, isn't getting 2% with money tied down for 5 years still better than giving it to the car dealer?

What can you get me with Intel offerings that can do the same, at that price?

Probably nothing. The problem is that AMD hardly makes anything on selling you that whole setup, and there are too few of you who need something like that to make it up in selling huge volumes.

It's not that their stuff is awful. It's just that they can't sell the cheap stuff at enough of a profit, and they don't have expensive stuff to make up for it.

The business side of the company is failing.

The modern engineer basically exists because standardized people were needed for us in industry. Engineers don't decide the technical details of their implementation; they don't decide what to implement. Hence they're mental laborers.

What kind of an experience did you have to make you say this?

Which third party? I haven't seen one that catered to intelligent people and didn't have some pretty wild ideas on how to do things.

There's nothing rewarding about giving a large chunk of cash to somebody when a loan was available for 2% or less... It's extremely easy to invest that same cash into something that pays more than that interest.

It's the exact same premise as your house loan which you say is for tax purposes. The loan interest is so affordable that the benefits you get from having the loan are higher than the payments you make in interest.

The house loan and its benefits are complicated, but it's still the same basic math -- can I make more money by keeping some cash with me and getting a loan, or not?

And for those shows that you really want to watch as they come out, there's Amazon and Google, selling them at $2 an episode, or, usually, $15 a season.

$15 for a season is pretty reasonable, considering the alternative (paying cable much much more).

high STATISTICAL probability that they MIGHT be

Errr.. what, now? "Might be" is already an indication of probability, although a very vague one. It doesn't make sense to say that something has a "90% of maybe" chance of being right.

In other words, what you wanted to say is that the test can show that there is a high probability of being virus free, but it can't prove it.

but ARM has 8 (32-bit) general purpose registers, and a few specialized ones, some of which are only available in certain operating modes

That's not correct.

http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.dai0245a/index.html

2. Register set

The ARM register set consists of 37 general-purpose registers, 16 of which are usable at any one time. The subset which is usable is determined by the current operation mode.

People act like we can actually compete with a country that doesn't have to deal with the EPA, OSHA and Social Security or the FLRA.

The whole point is that a country that doesn't have those things will have unhappier populace with a lower standard of living, and therefore less time and inclination to innovate and go the extra mile to make something of their own work.

That's why we can't compete in mindless assembly and raw materials, but we're still doing pretty damn good in everything else.

Also note that it's already illegal in Canada to wear a disguise while committing a crime (Section 351), so this is a clarification of the criminal code, not a change.

That doesn't sound right. Of course it's illegal to wear a mask while committing a crime, since it's illegal to commit a crime wearing anything at all (or nothing at all, for that matter).

My understanding is that this increases the punishment of wearing a mask while committing a crime, but it doesn't make it any more illegal than it already is.