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"... singling out Microsoft when every other company does the same thing, is blatant hypocrisy."

I am CERTAINLY not saying only Microsoft is abusive. The U.S. government has invaded 24 countries since the 2nd world war, and killed people and destroyed their property in each of them.

Consider also the Enron fraud, the WorldCom fraud, and the Tyco fraud.

Those who want corruption want stupid patents so they can scare others away from working in their area of technology. They don't care if they sometimes lose a few court cases due to stupidly weak patents. In general, taking something to court is so expensive that the corrupters win just because of the threat.

A major way those who want corruption destroy government effectiveness is by starving the agencies of operating funds. That's what happened to the patent office. The corrupters won't allow hiring of enough people to do the job well.

For a discussion of starving the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, regulates the stock exchange), see this article: Keeping the SEC on a Starvation Diet. The corrupters don't want their stock manipulations discovered. They want more of this: Enron fraud, this: WorldCom fraud and this: Tyco fraud.

They are corrupting the IRS (U.S. Internal Revenue Service, collects taxes), too. The corrupters definitely do NOT want their tax returns to be audited, so they arrange that there is not enough money for audits: Bush Request for IRS Not Enough, Report Says

They are corrupting the courts. Those who want corruption spend huge amounts to get lazy judges elected, and work for the defeat of judges who do a good job.

Another major way that corruption of the courts is accomplished by not giving the courts enough money to operate. A 2003-06-24 op-ed article by Charles Williamson, then president of the Oregon State Bar, in The Oregonian, the Northwest's largest newspaper, said, "The crippling loss of nearly one-third of their staff have left our courts unable to hear criminal cases such as car theft, shoplifting, prostitution, fraud and identity theft."

The Bush administration has been appointing heads of government agencies who reduce the role of those agencies. After they destroy the effectiveness of the agencies, they go back to running their businesses, and the corruption gives them more profit.

The book Other People's Money discusses corporate corruption. It's excellent. Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After: A Prelude to the Fall of U.S. Power in the Middle East?, by Dilip Hiro is an excellent book about the corruption that led to the most recent U.S.-Iraq war.

The corruption is extremely widespread. The books mentioned above and the 3 movies and 34 books reviewed in this article are not enough to tell the story: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

In general, most Americans don't want to know how corrupt their government has become. Most don't read books. The TV news they watch is heavily influenced by the corrupters. For example, GE, one of the largest sellers of weapons, owns NBC, one of the major ways Americans get their news.

This subject is important. Tens of thousands of employees and investors have lost their entire life savings because of the corporate fraud in the United States. If the corruption isn't stopped, it can happen to you.

Anyone who reads some of the books about the Enron fraud and the WorldCom fraud and the Tyco fraud, will learn that the fraud is accomplished partly by deceptive trading. It is not only the authors of the books who think that Merrill Lynch was involved in deceptive trading; the SEC and FBI think that too, as the links in the grandparent comment, to U.S. government web sites, show.

Look at this quote from the linked article: "Chen Ming-tai, TSE president, said Fubon dealers made the mistake by injecting NT$7.7 billion from one of their international clients [Merrill Lynch] into the market to purchase various stocks issued by 282 companies at the highest prices of the day."

Who selected the 282 companies? If you have read the books about the fraud, it is easy to guess that they were all losing Merrill Lynch investments that the company wanted off its books. That's only a guess, but it is an educated guess, given what has aleady happened. On the other hand, it is not easy to understand some of the deceptions. Sometimes investigators have required months to uncover the sneaky behavior.

Look at this quote from the BBC article linked in the grandparent comment: "A Taiwanese stock brokerage that mistakenly bought $255 [Million U.S. dollars]..." That is more than a quarter of a billion dollars! How is it possible that the financial instruments of 282 companies can be selected by one keystroke error? How is it possible that someone who was "unfamiliar with the company's new computer trading programme" could spend $255,000,000 with a single keystroke error?

A situation has been arranged in which we are not allowed to know the name of the employee who supposedly made the error. My guess is that the employee on whom this is blamed is not aware of any error. That would mean that this could easily be a story invented by his managers.

If you read the books about the frauds, you will read about literally hundreds of deceptive practices such as the one I am suggesting here.

Many people in the U.S. seem to want to be ignorant and stay ignorant about the corruption, as is seen by reading some of the responses to the grandparent comment.

The "stock market" is heavily involved in deliberate government corruption.

The Bush administration has been appointing heads of government agencies who reduce the role of those agencies. After they destroy the effectiveness of the agencies, they go back to running their businesses, and the corruption gives them more profit.

Another way they corrupt government is to starve the agencies of operating funds.

For a discussion of starving the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, regulates the stock exchange), see this article: Keeping the SEC on a Starvation Diet. The corrupters don't want their stock manipulations discovered. They want more of this: Enron fraud, this: WorldCom fraud and this: Tyco fraud.

This is all part of extremely widespread corruption in the U.S. government. Even the 3 movies and 34 books linked in this article are not enough to tell the story: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

They are corrupting the IRS (U.S. Internal Revenue Service, collects taxes), too. The corrupters definitely do NOT want their tax returns to be audited, so they arrange that there is not enough money for audits: Bush Request for IRS Not Enough, Report Says

They are corrupting the patent office the same way. That's why there are so many crazy patents.

The EFF apparently does not realize that the crazy patents are caused by deliberate corruption. Not allowing enough money for an agency to do its job is a deliberate strategy of those who want corruption in the U.S. government. When corrupters don't want government oversight, they just reduce the operating funds. Those who want corruption don't mind if they destroy a thousand things to get one thing they want.

Those who want corruption will introduce bills that, if passed, would give the EFF what it wants, with the secret understanding that the bills won't get passed.

For a disussion of starving the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, regulates the stock exchange), see this article: Keeping the SEC on a Starvation Diet. The corrupters don't want their stock manipulations discovered. They want more of this: Enron fraud, this: WorldCom fraud and this: Tyco fraud.

They are corrupting the IRS (U.S. Internal Revenue Service, collects taxes), too. The corrupters definitely do NOT want their tax returns to be audited, so they arrange that there is not enough money for audits: Bush Request for IRS Not Enough, Report Says

The Bush administration has been appointing heads of government agencies that have agreed to reduce the role of those agencies. When they have destroyed the agencies, they will go back to running their businesses, and the corruption will give them more profit.

This is all part of extremely widespread corruption in the U.S. government. Even the 3 movies and 34 books linked in this article are not enough to tell the story: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

That's interesting that you say it is a new McCarthyism. I had come to the same conclusion. We are seeing a general social breakdown in the United States. Consider the Enron fraud and the WorldCom fraud and the Tyco fraud, for example. Large companies are self-destructing.

The U.S. government is another example: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government

McCarthyism cannot be blamed on McCarthy. He was just one crazy person. There are always crazy people. It was the people who participated and didn't speak up that changed McCarthy from one crazy man to a social movement called McCarthyism.

The AC post above this comment (now at -1) is so typical. Something terrible happens in technology, and, instead of talking about the technology, technically knowledgeable being attacking each other!

The parent post is exactly right: "I'm an EE in Microelectronics, and I had been very disappointed in Intel's tricks to get MHz up."

Intel agrees! The whole point of abandoning the Pentium 4 is that Intel is dissapointed, also. Certainly the engineers at Intel did not know it would happen this way.

The Inquirer article says the same thing: "The heat dissipation/power consumption problems the company has had with the first 90nm desktop Pentium 4, 'Prescott', may well have convinced it that if it's to bring multi-core CPUs to market, its needs to completely rethink the architecture of those cores."

Not very long ago, AMD had 8 to 10 percent of the desktop market, now the share is closer to 50 percent.

Intel has not been doing well. I've had extensive conversations with people who work for Intel, including people who help design Intel microprocessors. In my opinion, it seems that Intel is suffering from years of bad management. Intel has been a company that treated its employees badly, and now the entire company is suffering.

The self-destruction of Intel seems to me to be related to the self-destruction of other U.S. companies, like Enron and WorldCom and the Tyco . It is my understanding that the self-destruction of these companies is related to a general social breakdown that is happening in the United States. I've written a draft of an article about the problems: Social Breakdown in the United States. (This is only the May 7, 2004, 12:46, draft version.)

The problems with family in the U.S. are much, much worse than you are saying. Even when there is no divorce, a high percentage of families are disfunctional. For example, both U.S. President George W. Bush and U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney are alcoholics. Dick Cheney has two DUIs and George W. Bush one:

Bush DUI, 1st record of arrest
Bush DUI, 2nd record of arrest
Cheney DUI, 1st DUI arrest record
Cheney DUI, 2nd DUI arrest record

Most people have little experience with alcoholics. If you know one, ask him or her about this. Alcoholics say that it requires "4 to 6 years" of driving drunk before they get a DUI. (DUI means "Driving Under the Influence of an intoxicating drug.) They will tell you that "once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic".

While you are talking to a (recovered) alcoholic, ask them about the other characteristics of alcoholics, such as the black-and-white thinking ("You are either with us or against us") of George W. Bush. Alcoholics are often very socially engaging and likable. At other times, alcoholics are often very angry and violent, for example, consider the war in Iraq that even hawks agree serves no purpose. It's easy to find alcoholics and recovered alcoholics in the United States. Anyone can go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. In the small city of Portland, Oregon, USA, there are 27 AA meetings each week, three each day.

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton's parents were violent alcoholics. You can read the book. Bill Clinton's misuse of sexuality is typical of alcoholism-influenced families.

Family life is so stressful in the U.S. that children turn to drugs to try to cope:

"The daughter of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was arrested... ... while allegedly trying to buy the anti-anxiety drug Xanax." (Jeb Bush is George W. Bush's brother.) Why was she willing to break the law to buy a drug to become less anxious? Because living in her family is very anxiety-producing?

George W. Bush's daughters seem to be imitating their alcoholic father: "Barbara and Jenna Bush were both charged ". Ask yourself, why do these teenage women feel they need a drug like alcohol so badly that they are willing to break the law?

Don't try to talk about this with most Americans, however. They have been told many times that the U.S. is a "Superpower" and that "The U.S. is the best country in the world". (My father says that, for example.) Most of them are unwilling to look at the problems and therefore don't truly love the United States. There is so much pain in the life of many Americans that looking at one more problem would be an overload beyond their ability.

The disfunctionality of families in the U.S. has created a social breakdown that affects everything in U.S. life. For example, consider breakdowns of large companies such as the Enron fraud and the WorldCom fraud and the Tyco fraud.

The disfunctionality of families in the U.S. has created corruption in the U.S. federal, state, and local governments:

Those who want corruption in the U.S. federal and state governments arrange that there is not enough money to do the work. This is happening throughout the United States. Here is a quote from an article written by the president of the Oregon State Bar Association:

"The c