that's why most distributions do this for you.

"and kids can go to non-government schools." can they? and are you really saying the US can't do public schools while every developed nation on the planet can?

it's a direct observable historic fact. intel was scaring away investors from AMD as far back as the k6 and k7 days leading directly to AMD not being able to start construction of a second factory until after the launch of the k8. had Intel played fair AMD would have had 2 factories up and running for the k8 and would have easily been able to acquire 40% marketshare. the market today would have have looked extremely different had that been the case.

they realized their mistake right away, which is why they started zen in 2012, right after launching bulldozer.

that's a easy answer: when performance no longer goes up when you change the ID to 'genuine intel'. changing that id should have NO effect on performance. the fact that it does is a CLEAR indication intel does things with the compiler it shouldn't be doing.

and you don't think that AMD would have been in a much strong position in terms of R&D if intel hadn't ruined their day continuously from say the k6 onward? intel is DIRECTLY responsible for AMD not being able to take full advantage of their success with the k8. their lack of production capacity can be directly related to intel scaring away investors because of their stranglehold on the OEM market.

2006 is long LONG after intel's abuse started. none of you are looking back far enough to see the real causes, and the extent of intel's abuse and damage to the PC market. for example intel was already scaring away investors at AMD in the days of the k6 and k7 because of their stranglehold on the OEM market. that lead directly to AMD not being able to get the money needed to start construction on a second factory and that meant that they didn't have a second factory up and running by the time they got to the k8. if AMD had been able to get the money for that second factory in time the market today would look VERY different. paying to much for ATI wouldn't have been anywhere near the problem that it was, and the phenom and phenom 2's would have easily been much better design because the far better R&D budget that would have been possible with a 40% market share instead of the 20% they got with the k8. even a 3d fab would have been in the cards. hell, with 2 or 3 fab's they would have been able to spend far more one new process technology and could have closed the gat with intel in terms of process technology, and they wouldn't (necessarily) have been stuck at 32/28nm when intel's got 14nm. that would have made them much more competitive even if they had released bulldozer exact as it is today.

"little more than strong hints in need of further investigation" i believe you got this quit wrong. there is uncertainty true. but man made climate change is a undeniable fact. the only uncertainty is in how much of one. and preparing for the worst case scenario for that seems only prudent to me. specially considering that this issue can be fixed for pretty much chump change now compared to what it could cost in the future.

sorry but those costs are only a tiny tiny fraction of the cost of internet connections. and south korea for example has nothing to link up to at all without expensive undersea cables linking it to Japan Europe and the US. your real problem is a lack of competition at the last mile. What you have a many regional mini-monopolies you have a choice of what? 2, maybe 3 ISP? on ADSL i have so many choices i dont even know them all, but i could name 8 big ones off the top of my head available nation wide. on cable you only have one (for the moment) but with the competition from ADSL they are kept reasonably honest. al thou now that they have speeds for up to 120/10 (close to 10 times whats achievable on average on ADSL) that could change of course. why do we have so many? because the government stepped in and forced network operators to allow 3de parties on their network at reasonable rates. result : we (the Netherlands) are position 8, without a large amount of fibre connections compare that to Belgium. slight smaller country, similar wealth and population density. they are next to the US on the ranking. their government didn't step in, their speeds are much slower and maybe more importantly they still have (strict) download limits which we haven't had, (not even for the cheapest connection) for years.

provided the level of technology hasn't gone down too far, or has sufficient recovered after a doomsday event, I'm guessing figuring how to read the dots of those disks isn't going to be all that much of a problem. provided they printen a ascii table on one side, it should be all set.

its encoded in English (and maybe German, French, Spanish and Chinese)? and on paper maybe? or maybe a clay tablet. or a golden one.

no, no, and no.