Sorry but this wasn't a troll although I admit it does sound that way. The problem is that Microsoft did not support running any 16-bit software on the x86-64 machines even though the hardware is physically capable of running 16-bit software in a 16-bit compatibility submode while in the 'long' mode. Microsoft did support the 32-bit compatibility sub-mode but even that is not real good. Emulators that access the hardware (for performance reasons) such as VPC will not be able to use the 16-bit capability because it has not been supported by Microsoft. To run 16-bit software, the Microsoft Virtual PC would have to emulate the 16-bit capability in software and it does not have that ability. Unless Microsoft adds 16-bit emulation to Virtual PC or adds 16-bit support to their 64-bit OS, there will be no DOS, Win9x, or Win ME running under Virtual PC on 64-bit Windows since all of those offer 16-bit support as a part of the OS. Linux and BeOS, however, do support running 16-bit software on the 64-bit software when it is in long mode so perhaps a future linux 64-bit virtual pc will be able to support running Windows 9x. Now *that* would be ironic.
Why does this even matter? Well, there is a lot of 32-bit Windows software that uses 16-bit installers, for one example. Obviously none of that will install on 64-bit Windows. More importantly, enterprise sites use a lot of legacy software developed over many years that they will not just drop. Linux actually offers a better migration path to move to 64-bit while supporting legacy software than Windows does.
The driver situation is also a problem. Yes, new hardware will have 64-bit drivers but most existing hardware will not, especially peripherals.
Windows XP 64-bit edition has some major limitations. First, it uses a new driver model that means that all of the 32-bit drivers for your existing hardware will not work with the new Windows. Second, it has no support implemented for legacy 16-bit DOS or Windows apps which will therefore not run on it. The x86-64 cpus have support for running 16-bit software but Micrsoft chose not to enable it. These limitations don't exist for the 64-bit Linux versions. Microsoft ruled the 32-bit desktop but the 64-bit desktop should belong to Linux.
As an economic system, monopoly and communism are the same thing. It's all about top-down central control of everything.
Conversely, there is nothing communistic about eliminating a lot of outmoded IP laws relating to copyrights and such. Doing so wouldn't eliminate incentives for creative people but it would eliminate gouging by record companies and publishers who want to control distribution of content and collect tolls.
It's misleading to talk about Intel getting back in the game. The Intel market share in the US looks like it is increasing, not the other way around. Sure HP and IBM use a few AMD parts but if you go into any chain store, almost all of the computers will be using Intel and the ones using AMD will be using the old 32-bit AMD chips with weak hardware.
Those room-warming P4s may not be much next to an AMD64 but if almost no one offers AMD64 machines for sale, does it matter? People are still lapping up those P4s in droves. The INTEL marketing people are in the process of schooling everyone about how the technical capabilities of the product are waaaay less important than the advertising 'Intel-inside' co-op program, the blue men commercials, and the payola to opinion-makers.
Yes, I can put 'free' and 'enforce' in the same sentence. For example, I like that the government periodically checks to see that the gasoline pump that my local station uses really does dispense 1 gallon when it indicates 1 gallon dispensed. And if it doesn't, the government will 'enforce' the rules and compel the station to fix its pump. Or, for another example, I like that the government provides police to keep thieves from robbing the local supermarket blind. And they 'enforce' the rules so that a thief who is caught in the act will pay a penalty. That's all the EU is doing with Microsoft...and more power to them. In the long run, that means that people in the EU will have more choices and more and better technologies will prevail. In the US, the failure of goverment to maintain a competitive marketplace means that the purchaser will have only one 'choice' and it may not be a very good one.
It is ironic that the US, the supposed champion of the free-enterprise markets, was unable to do what the EU is doing...enforce a free and competitive marketplace.
If what this guy says is correct, it sounds as if we have been doing the right thing by increasing the carbon dioxide concentration in our atmosphere so that it will decrease the amount of heat being radiated out into space. When the sun's output drops precipitously, we will be a little bit warmer than we would have been otherwise. Maybe the ice will only reach to Denver instead of all the way to Dallas.
Now we are confronted with the pathetic spectacle of spyware pushers fighting amongst themselves over which gets to infect a Windows system. Kind of like burglars fighting over who gets to leap in through the homeowner's open Window and get the jewelry. Just when we think that Window's reputation cannot possibly get any lower, it does, thanks to things like this.
I don't watch TV very much but I went to their website and read their "Latest Action Alert" for an ABC show called "Life as we know it":
[begin excerpt from Parents TV Council] " * Student Dino plots to take his girl friend Jackie's virginity. Viewers see the youngsters in his home while his parents are away; a shirtless Dino is half-lying across Jackie and he puts his hand into her pants. He says, "just take 'em off.... Doesn't it feel good to you?" Jackie says: "Yes. It feels too good. I don't trust myself to take them off." Dino responds: "So let me take them off." He starts to take her pants off, and before she stops him viewers are granted a glimpse of her underwear. In a later scene Jackie is relenting; she tells Dino, "My parents are going out of town tonight...And I was thinking maybe it was time for us to, ya know, do it." They make plans to get together later.
* Dino and Ben pressure their friend Jonathan to say whether he would prefer to have sex with his own mother or with his own father.
* Dino observes his mother, in her bra, kissing his hockey coach as they undress each other.
* Jonathan's parents also contribute to the pervasive smuttiness. Jonathan is shown in the bathroom shaving, when his mother knocks on the door. He tells her he's shaving, but his father calls out, "God, Mary, give the kid a break. He's probably masturbating." Jonathan says, "Hey! I can hear you! Go away! And I'm shaving!" His father then says, "Whatever. It's all good. Take your time, son."
etc.
[end excerpt from Parents TV Council]
This stuff seems pretty over-the-line and is not appropriate for young teens though that is the audience that it is aimed at. It looks like the Parents TV Council picks on FOX as much as they do on ABC, CBS, and NBC so they are not just a bunch of Republican do-gooders. More power to 'em.
The electronic machine should print out a ballot that would show every vote cast by the voter which said voter would then deposit in a sealed ballot box. The ballot boxes would normally not be counted, unless a recount were needed, but a statistical random sample of them *could* be counted during every election to validate the process. Any significant discrepancy between the random sample and the electronic results would be automatic ground for a full manual recount.
This illustrates very well how companies abuse the patent process to their own ends. This is obviously prior art, obvious, and in wide use. Yet Microsoft will focus an army of attorneys and carpetbaggers on the patent examiner's office and shower the process with money to persuade the patent examiner that they should be granted an exclusive franchise to use this, while denying it to everyone else. Then Micrsoft will point to this as another example of its 'intellectual property' that must be protected.
I don't like nuclear power. It is very expensive, creates highly toxic waste in large quantities, and contributes to global warming by releasing large quantities of heat into the environment. But nuclear power is here now and we need to deal with all of the waste that has already been produced or the waste will deal with us. Putting the waste in a large centralized cask farm as suggested by the author of the paper is not a safe solution to the problem for even the short term since there are innumerable ways that the containment could be breached by acts of man, acts of God, or by all sorts of accidental 'uh-ohs'.
No Yucca mountain is not perfect and perhaps its containment will not last for 200,000 years but it is a heck of lot better than anything else that has been dreamed up. No, the waste cannot be made safer by encapsulating it in ceramics, even if that were possible today. No, it wouldn't be a good thing if we extracted all of the plutonium out of the waste since the world is awash in plutonium now and the process of chemically extracting plutonium from waste has created additional massive quantities of highly toxic liquid waste for which the only current storage 'solution' is to put it in large underground tanks.
Say no to building any more cask storage pads. Say yes to Yucca. If you don't want to do Yucca, you should have been out protesting against nuclear power plants 30 years ago. Saying no to Yucca now is like getting rid of your cat's litter box. Not very smart.
I looked at the unofficial Ohio results and was surprised to see that while there were 5,574,476 votes cast, there were only 5,481,804 votes recorded for president, including votes cast for all of the many candidates. That theoretically means that either 92,672 voters (1.7% of all the votes cast) did not vote for a presidential candidate or their vote was not counted. Personally, I find it hard to believe that 1.7% of Ohioans did not vote for a presidential candidate, especially since there were 10 to choose from on the ballot. I also noticed that most of the small counties voted for the democrat in numbers comparable to their 2000 vote but there were massive new numbers of republican votes. For example, little Mercer county cast 5212 votes for the democrat in 2000 but only 4924 votes for the democrat in 2004. Bush's total, though, went from 12,485 votes in 2000 to a much better 15,022 votes in 2004 which is a 20% improvement. Now, there is no doubt that Mercer county really loves President Bush but a 20% improvement in that lovin' stretches credibility. Generally, that seems to be the pattern in both Florida and Ohio. Bush did a LOT better in the areas he already was doing good in and that overcame his loss of votes in those areas that didn't love him so much. Bush even alluded to this when he was asked why he was campaigning in the Florida panhandle where he typically racked up 2:1 vote margins and he stated that their plan was to make it 3:1. It seems doubtful to me, though, that there was any new wave of Bush voters in 2004 who didn't vote in 2000 since the Bush voters were already turning out in big numbers in 2000 to vote for the morally-clean Mr. Bush to show their dislike of the tainted Gore-Clinton crew. Mr Diebold probably deserves the credit.
The multi-core chips that AMD demoed a couple of months ago will offer even better improvements than the RC4 results when software, particularly the OS, is optimized for them. Okay, for Windows that might be a while since Microsoft is still working at just getting a version of Windows out that supports x86-64. But for Linux...the possibilities are pretty big. If it is done right, even old non-optimized 32-bit apps should see an huge increase in speed.
The Opteron 148 that was in the article is a nice processor but AMD has been selling it for at least a year now, and it isn't even the fastest Opteron.
When they arrive on an airplane to visit, he takes them aside and fingerprints them like criminals. In his debate, he suggested that their low-priced prescription medications would 'kill ya.' Now, he is blocking them from reading his website. He needs to get out more. There's an entire world beyond those Texas borders, Mr. President, that we need to get along with. We all share the same little planet, after all.
Wouldn't this help the bad guys quickly identify who in that passing stream of tourists is an american? Why would that be good? Right now, we are not the most popular fish in the sea in some places and putting tags around our neck which electronically identify us to anyone with a scanner doesn't seem very bright. Am I missing something?
This is a great summary of the problem with tabbed browsing. It seems that if your b) 'keyboard focus' problem is fixed than the a) 'dialog pop' problem would no longer be a problem since the user would not be able to enter text into the dialog box until the focus was changed to the tab which originated the dialog box, thus exposing the spoof.
...that they would even think they could charge more just because of improvements to underlying silicon architecture. An Athlon 64 3500+ provides performance equivalent to about $10,000 or so Intel 8086 logic chips and the 8086 chip *was* the chip that launched Microsoft. Since MS-DOS 1.0 sold for about $100, maybe we should all be paying $1,000,000 a copy to run MS-DOS 1.0 on the Athlon 64. Windows XP would cost more, of course.
Everyone has heard the arguments about how those little embryos are not really little people but just 'embryos.' I'm sure the Romans had really great arguments about why it was fine to kill slaves in their Coliseum in Rome because the slaves were not really people but just 'slaves.' And those many civilizations which practiced human sacrifice in the name of spiritual good for the whole were certainly convinced that they were doing no wrong. But try as we might to obscure the issue, those little embryos of a handful of cells are just as much a human life to be protected as the person sitting next to you...and deep down we all know that. Killing embryos to obtain their stem cells to improve our health is no different than killing prisoners to extract their organs so that others might have better health. It is immoral to improve our own health at the expense of other lives. Stem cells may have therapeutic value but they need to be obtained from methods other than breeding people to obtain them.
Intel is hard to feel sorry for...
on
Crossroads for Intel
·
· Score: 1, Informative
In recent years, Intel has come out with the PIII with the built-in ID number, the Itanium which ran existing 32-bit software very slowly, and the P4 which has probably boosted electricity consumption worldwide to meet its voracious appetite while increasing room temperatures and air conditioning demand. Intel has allied itself with most of the major computer makers through all sorts of sleazy schemes to the point that most of the computers for sale are 'Intel Inside' machines. The largest maker, Dell, does not offer a single machine using a non-Intel chip. Millions of users have actually had to build their own machines from components if they wanted to use non-Intel parts, such as those by AMD. If General Motors dominated the car business like Intel dominates the computer business, we would have to buy a whole box of Chrysler or Toyota parts and put them together if we wanted to drive something besides GM.
So yes, Intel is at a 'crossroads' of sorts, but it is of their own making. Actually it is more like a fork in the road and Intel took the wrong turn back about the time of the Pentium.
This is a significant erosion of privacy. Governments require you to provide a lot of information for all sorts of things. Now, they are using new technology to make all of this information available to anyone anywhere in the world with a casual 2-minute search. Where will this stop? Tax records, medical records, personal property records, lawsuits, judgments, military records, etc. may all soon be posted online in this way. This is a first step towards that sort of future where anyone can easily sniff out all sorts of information about anyone. That will be a great tool for stalkers, criminals, identity thieves, etc. but for the rest of us, the loss of even a fig leaf of privacy will make our lives less enjoyable. An obvious first step would be to only provide this sort of information for people who are deceased.
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What will happen when Iceberg B-15A collides with the Drygalski ice tongue?
A) Tsunami
B) Earthquake
C) Catastrophic rising sea levels
D) Global warming
E) Global cooling
F) A and C
G) C and D
H) C and E
I) Bump and yawn
My money is on 'I'.
Sorry but this wasn't a troll although I admit it does sound that way. The problem is that Microsoft did not support running any 16-bit software on the x86-64 machines even though the hardware is physically capable of running 16-bit software in a 16-bit compatibility submode while in the 'long' mode. Microsoft did support the 32-bit compatibility sub-mode but even that is not real good. Emulators that access the hardware (for performance reasons) such as VPC will not be able to use the 16-bit capability because it has not been supported by Microsoft. To run 16-bit software, the Microsoft Virtual PC would have to emulate the 16-bit capability in software and it does not have that ability. Unless Microsoft adds 16-bit emulation to Virtual PC or adds 16-bit support to their 64-bit OS, there will be no DOS, Win9x, or Win ME running under Virtual PC on 64-bit Windows since all of those offer 16-bit support as a part of the OS. Linux and BeOS, however, do support running 16-bit software on the 64-bit software when it is in long mode so perhaps a future linux 64-bit virtual pc will be able to support running Windows 9x. Now *that* would be ironic.
Why does this even matter? Well, there is a lot of 32-bit Windows software that uses 16-bit installers, for one example. Obviously none of that will install on 64-bit Windows. More importantly, enterprise sites use a lot of legacy software developed over many years that they will not just drop. Linux actually offers a better migration path to move to 64-bit while supporting legacy software than Windows does.
The driver situation is also a problem. Yes, new hardware will have 64-bit drivers but most existing hardware will not, especially peripherals.
Windows XP 64-bit edition has some major limitations. First, it uses a new driver model that means that all of the 32-bit drivers for your existing hardware will not work with the new Windows. Second, it has no support implemented for legacy 16-bit DOS or Windows apps which will therefore not run on it. The x86-64 cpus have support for running 16-bit software but Micrsoft chose not to enable it. These limitations don't exist for the 64-bit Linux versions. Microsoft ruled the 32-bit desktop but the 64-bit desktop should belong to Linux.
As an economic system, monopoly and communism are the same thing. It's all about top-down central control of everything.
Conversely, there is nothing communistic about eliminating a lot of outmoded IP laws relating to copyrights and such. Doing so wouldn't eliminate incentives for creative people but it would eliminate gouging by record companies and publishers who want to control distribution of content and collect tolls.
It's misleading to talk about Intel getting back in the game. The Intel market share in the US looks like it is increasing, not the other way around. Sure HP and IBM use a few AMD parts but if you go into any chain store, almost all of the computers will be using Intel and the ones using AMD will be using the old 32-bit AMD chips with weak hardware.
Those room-warming P4s may not be much next to an AMD64 but if almost no one offers AMD64 machines for sale, does it matter? People are still lapping up those P4s in droves. The INTEL marketing people are in the process of schooling everyone about how the technical capabilities of the product are waaaay less important than the advertising 'Intel-inside' co-op program, the blue men commercials, and the payola to opinion-makers.
Yes, I can put 'free' and 'enforce' in the same sentence. For example, I like that the government periodically checks to see that the gasoline pump that my local station uses really does dispense 1 gallon when it indicates 1 gallon dispensed. And if it doesn't, the government will 'enforce' the rules and compel the station to fix its pump. Or, for another example, I like that the government provides police to keep thieves from robbing the local supermarket blind. And they 'enforce' the rules so that a thief who is caught in the act will pay a penalty. That's all the EU is doing with Microsoft...and more power to them. In the long run, that means that people in the EU will have more choices and more and better technologies will prevail. In the US, the failure of goverment to maintain a competitive marketplace means that the purchaser will have only one 'choice' and it may not be a very good one.
It is ironic that the US, the supposed champion of the free-enterprise markets, was unable to do what the EU is doing...enforce a free and competitive marketplace.
If what this guy says is correct, it sounds as if we have been doing the right thing by increasing the carbon dioxide concentration in our atmosphere so that it will decrease the amount of heat being radiated out into space. When the sun's output drops precipitously, we will be a little bit warmer than we would have been otherwise. Maybe the ice will only reach to Denver instead of all the way to Dallas.
The IBM Web Browser version of Mozilla doesn't seem to be vulnerable.
Now we are confronted with the pathetic spectacle of spyware pushers fighting amongst themselves over which gets to infect a Windows system. Kind of like burglars fighting over who gets to leap in through the homeowner's open Window and get the jewelry. Just when we think that Window's reputation cannot possibly get any lower, it does, thanks to things like this.
I don't watch TV very much but I went to their website and read their "Latest Action Alert" for an ABC show called "Life as we know it":
[begin excerpt from Parents TV Council]
" * Student Dino plots to take his girl friend Jackie's virginity. Viewers see the youngsters in his home while his parents are away; a shirtless Dino is half-lying across Jackie and he puts his hand into her pants. He says, "just take 'em off.... Doesn't it feel good to you?" Jackie says: "Yes. It feels too good. I don't trust myself to take them off." Dino responds: "So let me take them off." He starts to take her pants off, and before she stops him viewers are granted a glimpse of her underwear. In a later scene Jackie is relenting; she tells Dino, "My parents are going out of town tonight...And I was thinking maybe it was time for us to, ya know, do it." They make plans to get together later.
* Dino and Ben pressure their friend Jonathan to say whether he would prefer to have sex with his own mother or with his own father.
* Dino observes his mother, in her bra, kissing his hockey coach as they undress each other.
* Jonathan's parents also contribute to the pervasive smuttiness. Jonathan is shown in the bathroom shaving, when his mother knocks on the door. He tells her he's shaving, but his father calls out, "God, Mary, give the kid a break. He's probably masturbating." Jonathan says, "Hey! I can hear you! Go away! And I'm shaving!" His father then says, "Whatever. It's all good. Take your time, son."
etc.
[end excerpt from Parents TV Council]
This stuff seems pretty over-the-line and is not appropriate for young teens though that is the audience that it is aimed at. It looks like the Parents TV Council picks on FOX as much as they do on ABC, CBS, and NBC so they are not just a bunch of Republican do-gooders. More power to 'em.
Buying a Linux license from SCO is pretty high on the list of useless/worthless things to buy so perhaps there's some other stuff they might buy.
The electronic machine should print out a ballot that would show every vote cast by the voter which said voter would then deposit in a sealed ballot box. The ballot boxes would normally not be counted, unless a recount were needed, but a statistical random sample of them *could* be counted during every election to validate the process. Any significant discrepancy between the random sample and the electronic results would be automatic ground for a full manual recount.
This illustrates very well how companies abuse the patent process to their own ends. This is obviously prior art, obvious, and in wide use. Yet Microsoft will focus an army of attorneys and carpetbaggers on the patent examiner's office and shower the process with money to persuade the patent examiner that they should be granted an exclusive franchise to use this, while denying it to everyone else. Then Micrsoft will point to this as another example of its 'intellectual property' that must be protected.
I don't like nuclear power. It is very expensive, creates highly toxic waste in large quantities, and contributes to global warming by releasing large quantities of heat into the environment. But nuclear power is here now and we need to deal with all of the waste that has already been produced or the waste will deal with us. Putting the waste in a large centralized cask farm as suggested by the author of the paper is not a safe solution to the problem for even the short term since there are innumerable ways that the containment could be breached by acts of man, acts of God, or by all sorts of accidental 'uh-ohs'.
No Yucca mountain is not perfect and perhaps its containment will not last for 200,000 years but it is a heck of lot better than anything else that has been dreamed up. No, the waste cannot be made safer by encapsulating it in ceramics, even if that were possible today. No, it wouldn't be a good thing if we extracted all of the plutonium out of the waste since the world is awash in plutonium now and the process of chemically extracting plutonium from waste has created additional massive quantities of highly toxic liquid waste for which the only current storage 'solution' is to put it in large underground tanks.
Say no to building any more cask storage pads. Say yes to Yucca. If you don't want to do Yucca, you should have been out protesting against nuclear power plants 30 years ago. Saying no to Yucca now is like getting rid of your cat's litter box. Not very smart.
I looked at the unofficial Ohio results and was surprised to see that while there were 5,574,476 votes cast, there were only 5,481,804 votes recorded for president, including votes cast for all of the many candidates. That theoretically means that either 92,672 voters (1.7% of all the votes cast) did not vote for a presidential candidate or their vote was not counted. Personally, I find it hard to believe that 1.7% of Ohioans did not vote for a presidential candidate, especially since there were 10 to choose from on the ballot. I also noticed that most of the small counties voted for the democrat in numbers comparable to their 2000 vote but there were massive new numbers of republican votes. For example, little Mercer county cast 5212 votes for the democrat in 2000 but only 4924 votes for the democrat in 2004. Bush's total, though, went from 12,485 votes in 2000 to a much better 15,022 votes in 2004 which is a 20% improvement. Now, there is no doubt that Mercer county really loves President Bush but a 20% improvement in that lovin' stretches credibility. Generally, that seems to be the pattern in both Florida and Ohio. Bush did a LOT better in the areas he already was doing good in and that overcame his loss of votes in those areas that didn't love him so much. Bush even alluded to this when he was asked why he was campaigning in the Florida panhandle where he typically racked up 2:1 vote margins and he stated that their plan was to make it 3:1. It seems doubtful to me, though, that there was any new wave of Bush voters in 2004 who didn't vote in 2000 since the Bush voters were already turning out in big numbers in 2000 to vote for the morally-clean Mr. Bush to show their dislike of the tainted Gore-Clinton crew. Mr Diebold probably deserves the credit.
The multi-core chips that AMD demoed a couple of months ago will offer even better improvements than the RC4 results when software, particularly the OS, is optimized for them. Okay, for Windows that might be a while since Microsoft is still working at just getting a version of Windows out that supports x86-64. But for Linux...the possibilities are pretty big. If it is done right, even old non-optimized 32-bit apps should see an huge increase in speed.
The Opteron 148 that was in the article is a nice processor but AMD has been selling it for at least a year now, and it isn't even the fastest Opteron.
When they arrive on an airplane to visit, he takes them aside and fingerprints them like criminals. In his debate, he suggested that their low-priced prescription medications would 'kill ya.' Now, he is blocking them from reading his website. He needs to get out more. There's an entire world beyond those Texas borders, Mr. President, that we need to get along with. We all share the same little planet, after all.
the box might be small but the idea looks big. Next will come the console-like games and then...
Wouldn't this help the bad guys quickly identify who in that passing stream of tourists is an american? Why would that be good? Right now, we are not the most popular fish in the sea in some places and putting tags around our neck which electronically identify us to anyone with a scanner doesn't seem very bright. Am I missing something?
This is a great summary of the problem with tabbed browsing. It seems that if your b) 'keyboard focus' problem is fixed than the a) 'dialog pop' problem would no longer be a problem since the user would not be able to enter text into the dialog box until the focus was changed to the tab which originated the dialog box, thus exposing the spoof.
...that they would even think they could charge more just because of improvements to underlying silicon architecture. An Athlon 64 3500+ provides performance equivalent to about $10,000 or so Intel 8086 logic chips and the 8086 chip *was* the chip that launched Microsoft. Since MS-DOS 1.0 sold for about $100, maybe we should all be paying $1,000,000 a copy to run MS-DOS 1.0 on the Athlon 64. Windows XP would cost more, of course.
Everyone has heard the arguments about how those little embryos are not really little people but just 'embryos.' I'm sure the Romans had really great arguments about why it was fine to kill slaves in their Coliseum in Rome because the slaves were not really people but just 'slaves.' And those many civilizations which practiced human sacrifice in the name of spiritual good for the whole were certainly convinced that they were doing no wrong. But try as we might to obscure the issue, those little embryos of a handful of cells are just as much a human life to be protected as the person sitting next to you...and deep down we all know that. Killing embryos to obtain their stem cells to improve our health is no different than killing prisoners to extract their organs so that others might have better health. It is immoral to improve our own health at the expense of other lives. Stem cells may have therapeutic value but they need to be obtained from methods other than breeding people to obtain them.
In recent years, Intel has come out with the PIII with the built-in ID number, the Itanium which ran existing 32-bit software very slowly, and the P4 which has probably boosted electricity consumption worldwide to meet its voracious appetite while increasing room temperatures and air conditioning demand. Intel has allied itself with most of the major computer makers through all sorts of sleazy schemes to the point that most of the computers for sale are 'Intel Inside' machines. The largest maker, Dell, does not offer a single machine using a non-Intel chip. Millions of users have actually had to build their own machines from components if they wanted to use non-Intel parts, such as those by AMD. If General Motors dominated the car business like Intel dominates the computer business, we would have to buy a whole box of Chrysler or Toyota parts and put them together if we wanted to drive something besides GM.
So yes, Intel is at a 'crossroads' of sorts, but it is of their own making. Actually it is more like a fork in the road and Intel took the wrong turn back about the time of the Pentium.
This is a significant erosion of privacy. Governments require you to provide a lot of information for all sorts of things. Now, they are using new technology to make all of this information available to anyone anywhere in the world with a casual 2-minute search. Where will this stop? Tax records, medical records, personal property records, lawsuits, judgments, military records, etc. may all soon be posted online in this way. This is a first step towards that sort of future where anyone can easily sniff out all sorts of information about anyone. That will be a great tool for stalkers, criminals, identity thieves, etc. but for the rest of us, the loss of even a fig leaf of privacy will make our lives less enjoyable. An obvious first step would be to only provide this sort of information for people who are deceased.