> this number has fallen to near zero, sez our informant. He gives as the
> main reason -- Taiwan -- which he regards as "ruthless," "engaged in unfair
> crooked practices," with "three sets of books" (for the firm, the
> government, and the customer) to fool everybody, etc.
It's not stealing, it's "reverse engineering", right? Actually, Taiwan has an amazingly efficient developmental state, which regularly cooks the books to make sure finance flows to the industrial base. Apparently Taiwan has something like the third-highest rate of per capita consumption of machine tools on the planet, higher even than Germany and about twice as high as the USA (see http://www.mmsonline.com/consump/percap.html).
Anyone know what the deal is with Via Technologies? Paranoia Inc. -- er, Intel -- claims they're stealing PC133 technology, whatever the heck that is. Does this mean cheap clones of the Pentium II and Athlon are on their way?
-- Dennis