Comment Re:Imagine that (Score 1) 333
Comment Re:Developing countries, not US (Score 1) 620
Comment Re:Don't forget consoles! (Score 1) 1200
No it's not. There is a VLIW-like processor made by Intel, and it's the Itanium processor (well, Itanium 2 nowadays). It is not a "pure" VLIW processor though, as it is both VLIW and superscalar. VLIW instructions have a fixed size (in the case of the Itanium, each bundle/long word can feature as much as three instructions, although two is the average). On the other hand, x86 processors have really two parts: one which I would call a "front-end", which receives the CISC instruction. Its only purpose is to decode them, and decompose them into micro-operations/micro-instructions. The latter are the "RISC-like" instructions which are really executed and fill the pipeline.
Comment Re:What's wrong with this article (Score 1) 828
This is a shame, because the interview does address this issue through questions from the journalist.
Comment Re:Copyright is an arbitrary social convention (Score 1) 438
Copyright was a legal construct the printers (not the writers!) lobbied for in order to increase their profits
I know how the "copyright" equivalent was created in the late 1700s in France. Beaumarchais was tired of printers and publishers ripping him off. He created the "author's right" (which is slightly different from the copyright US and UK countries use) to be protected against publishers and printers who would sell his work without giving him a cut of the profits. When it came to public execution of his plays however, he had no problem, because he felt a play should be... well, played, and that it somehow belongs to the public.
Later on, this right given to authors to control how they want their work to be distributed became more and more distorted.