Whooooosh!

The NSA is an intelligence gathering agency; they are not law enforcement. They have no jurisdictional boundaries to their operations. As a U.S. government agency they are supposed to have to observe some niceties insofar as operating in the U.S. and targeting U.S. citizens what with the Constitution and all. Their failure to always do that is where they've gone wrong. And, as you've indicated, they've probably collected so much information that its getting in the way of useful intelligence analysis. Too much can be worse than not enough. The other fun fact is that they and their allied agencies in other countries seemed to get around some restrictions by letting the "foreigners" do the spying on the domestics for them and then exchanging what they collected.

Was it also removed from Windows Server? The government procurement requirement for Posix only applied to server operating systems. Though in all the development I've done in the Federal space using C/C++, we never talked about or considered whether or not something we were calling was part of Posix or not. Of course, I work in the application space so maybe others did. Federal fondness for Java makes Posix moot in the application space now.

Who cares about Posix? It's a checklist item for government procurement but in practical terms means nothing. It's a subset API. Windows NT was Posix compliant.

I think a better solution is that once you've achieved cruising altitude that passenger can petition for a vote of all passengers to have specific annoying passengers literally thrown off the planes. No parachute, just a good heave. As annoying cell phone users are - shouting in their phones, etc. - seat kickers, loud drunks, crying babies and others deserve some sort of retribution too.

There is nothing in the post that provides any indication much less evidence that the money spent on this by APS came from anything that was in violation of the terms of their monopoly and rates. So unless you have special inside information you are not sharing, you've just proved the point that the term "ratepayer money" used in the summation is prejudicial and inflammatory. In the meantime you can share with me a justified outrage about their admitted lying.

Yes, the use of the term "ratepayer money" is prejudicial and inflammatory as well as misleading. That's pretty typical with Slashdot and almost every other source on the internet. However, the primary objection expressed is that APS lied. I, and others, object that APS, Exxon, Koch brothers and others astroturf their positions, i.e. they set up phoney "citizen" organizations and sites to push their views so people will not be aware of their financial interests in the debate's outcome. That's dishonest and does not contribute to honest open discussion and debate or to science. It's O.K. to promote a position that you benefit from - whether its financial or biological (like health), but it's not O.K. to use deceit to hide your motivations. What they are afraid of, I think, is that people will more closely examine their scientific methods and conclusions if they know you have a vested interest in a particular outcome.

Just to be preemptive, advocates on any side of any position can have a vested interest in a particular outcome. We should always be skeptical.

You're right (and sourcing Wikipedia) that it's FreeBSD and NetBSD, not OpenBSD. Other sources I've read have said that there is very little Mach 3 (except the kernel) left and Mac OS X is primarily *BSD these days . And you are right that Apple implemented most of the power savings. None of this changes my gist which is, Mac OS X is a desktop operating system that unlike Windows, manages battery life very well. So it is possible, isn't it?

On the second point about refactoring/re-engineering you've overlooked some facts. One is that Apple has releases like Snow Leopard that are primarily a refactoring of the previous version in order to set the stage for future improvements. They also replace frameworks (Cocoa versus Carbon) instead of layering one on the other (Windows API versus MFC). Microsoft, on the other hand just keeps piling it on and is, by Gates own words, more interested in features than fixing underlying issues. Linux and *BSD also do a good job of keeping things from gunking up by avoiding a lot of tight coupling of features to the OS kernel and each other.

So yes, Windows NT was not only new, it was MS's first full operating system. Windows was until then a GUI environment on a control program/monitor - not a full blown OS. However, NT is big and has gotten bigger thanks to Microsoft continuously adding on new tightly coupled layers, e.g. COM/ActiveX, Windows MFC and above, etc. Remember how MS argued to the EU that they couldn't remove IE from Windows because it was so tightly coupled to the OS? Relative to Apple and the *ix communities, Microsoft has not managed the underlying OS architecture very well and that makes it difficult for it to make non-superficial changes quickly.

Microsoft has a business model that demands it make big bucks selling the OS because it doesn't own the hardware business. They've also been incented to tightly couple applications and features to the OS in order to preserve their market advantages. That has led it to where it is now which is an OS that doesn't manage power use very well and is difficult to change. The bottom line is that Windows performance in terms of power management is due to Microsoft's decisions and is not due to the fact that its a desktop OS.

A little Bill Gates philosophy that helps explain how Windows got this way: http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html

Mac OS X is a desktop operating system - OpenBSD. And no, I don't experience any lag as things "wake up". So now what do you say? Windows simply doesn't consider power management as a priority. Why does it keep polling every connected hard drive? It's an antiquated core with features continuously layered on. It needs a rewrite from ground up.

Every survey I've seen. So I'm questioning the GP's sweeping assertion. The iPhone has a 90% brand retention rate when buyers replace the current phones. Android users tend to experiment more so none of the android manufacturers can match that. It doesn't really mean Apple is better or worse, it's just that you can't claim Samsung is obviously better - unless you are just expressing a personal opinion. JD Power consistently finds that the Apple iPhone ranks first in satisfaction. Consumer Reports depends on the question they are asking and their mood so they have results for everybody's taste. JD Powers http://www.phonearena.com/news/J.D.-Power-ranks-Apple-first-in-US-customer-satisfaction-followed-by-Nokia-and-Samsung_id41087 ACSI http://www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=281:press-release-may-2012&catid=13&Itemid=357

It's about performance as well as improvements to the overall chip architecture. RAM addressing is not yet an issue for phones or tablets. A couple of links you might want to read about this: http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/17/inside-apples-64-bit-ios-7-and-the-prospects-for-a-64-bit-android http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/09/review-with-the-iphone-5s-apple-lays-groundwork-for-a-brighter-future/3/

My you are full of unsupported assertions today. "Most every tech company has been caught". Really? Any evidence? "Samsung ... the good guys" You must be kidding. They copy and they clone. Apple does gold so Samsung does gold. Apple sells a 64-bit phone with a 64 bit operating system and conversion tools to take advantage of it. Samsung announces that they'll be building 64 bit phones too, one day. Of course unless Android is converted to 64 bit that will be pointless and there is nothing from Google indicating that is going to happen any time soon. Chrome OS seems to be more important to them these days anyway. And finally, "their hardware is still clearly the best". Evidence or just your opinion based on your limited experience? I've tried Apple, Nokia, HTC and Samsung and liked Samsung the least hardware wise. Consumer Reports and other customer satisfaction survey's I've seen don't rate Samsung all that highly. Apple leads the pack in every survey I've seen.

But they did enter into an agreement with AMC. AMC provided the product definition and description and set the price. People bought the AMC product at the AMC price, not an Apple product. If I buy a PS3 and find out that it's DRM'd all my gaming, it's Sony's fault not Best Buy's.

Do you really think that people think Apple produces "Breaking Bad"? Really? Do you think that Apple doesn't provide an accounting to the providers of which Apple ID's bought their shows and more? Nonsense. You really haven't a clue, do you? And as for the "greed" and "making as much money as possible" (from content), you obviously don't get Apple's business model. They make the big bucks on the hardware. The content sells hardware. You don't have to get any of your content from iTunes in order to use it on any idevice. Those companies that sell their stuff on iTunes pay a 30% cut to Apple on a price they set themselves. That's much less a markup than a retail store. If a content provider wants to give it away, i.e. price = 0$, Apple charges nothing to anyone. That's not exactly greedy. It's taking a long view - giving up maximum profit on content in order to maximize profit over the long term. All for profit companies try to make as much money as possible. It's what stockholder expect managers to do. If they don't, the managers get fired. The stockholders are primarily fund managers with our pension and 401k dollars so I hope they demand profitability. Do you think companies are in business to be nice? Do you believe in unicorns and Santa Clause. Grow up.