What good is competition if consumers don't benefit. From bribery to compiler tricks to compromised benchmarking tools, integrated electronics has made sure the uniformed mass market doesn't recieve the full benefit of open market competition. I can't think of another industry that is manipulated so badly.
LOL, its true...I ask myself this everytime I pay my cable bill, my phone bill, and fill up my gas tank.
It's amazing, no matter how many companies offer the same basic services those companies all magically seem to be priced the same, they raise their rates in unison, etc.
Here in PA we have state mandated price control minimums on silly things like the price of a gallon of milk. No matter how much competition is afoot, the price cannot go below the price floor, zero benefit for the consumer.
Can't think of another industry that is manipulated this badly? How about the Oil industry? OPEC ain't exactly Unicef.
What amazes me about Intel is they don't have to play dirty, they have the resources to outspend the competition and beat them fair-and-square with simple good old fashioned over-engineering (USA vs USSR style of outspending gets you to the moon faster than the other guy).
But that isn't good enough for Intel. They got greedy, wanted even more for themselves, and so they do the shady stuff (legal or not, its not something we'd be proud to see our kids doing in school to beat a peer in the science fair) that garners them the attention and loathing from the people who care about corporate governance.
So they can't be happy enough that their super-duper 22nm based 3D xtors are going to enable ridiculous performance/watt metrics with IB...they got to go one step further and really push the boundaries of ethics and ensure everyone remembers Bapco is Intelco. Greed begats arrogance.