I think you mean at the top.

For one thing, if they don't expose it they can change it anytime they want. Translating to micro-ops isn't a huge performance hit, so being able to improve the underlying architecture without worrying about compatibility is something of an advantage.

Yes, but that's what banks call two-factor security these days. Password and mother's maiden name are two factors, right?

Other business models work for certain products. It hasn't been viable to charge money for a browser since the 1990's. No one is going to take a browser training course. No one needs to hire an enterprise browser deployment specialist.

As a grad student in CS who has also worked in industry, I've never directly used any but the most basic of math (matrix multiplication etc.). The reason math is important for programmers is that it teaches you to think. It doesn't really matter what kind of math you take - as a programmer you're unlikely to ever use it directly, and even if you do you really only need to know the practical aspects. What's important is that you take something that makes you prove things and think analytically. Those ways of thinking are what is important for all computer scientists and programmers.

The slashdot crowd sits in front of a computer. All day. Every day. Why have a phone that does stuff other than making calls when you have a computer in front of you all the time?

If you have a keylogger, the attacker also has your machine password, and can get your ssh keys. SSH is great, but it doesn't protect you from keyloggers.

Gnash is all fine and good, except that it's a piece of shit and doesn't work. Just like open-source Java.

Look, I like open source as much as the next guy (more, probably), but more than anything I like working software. Google can either spend lots of man-hours making Gnash work properly with all the Flash out there on the web today, and then spend more man-hours keeping it up-to-date as Adobe adds new features that various popular websites take advantage of, or they can just partner with Adobe and use real Flash, spending just a few man-hours to integrate it into their system. Google is a business, and while they may make some choices ideologically, in most cases they need to use the best tool for the job. In this case, that tool is Flash.

A router is still a computer. An IP address identifies a computer. Whether that computer has other computers connected to it, and forwards traffic from those computers using its IP address, is an entirely separate matter.

Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest and Stein. Anyone who wishes to call him or herself a computer scientist must have a copy of this.

If it's a bulk mailing that you didn't opt into, it's spam. There's no requirement that the email is commercial.