If you don't have objective proof of somebody performing poorly, why should you be able to endanger that person's living?

In any case, nowadays any company worth its salt has performance appraisals, that way people that could do better are offered the carrot of bonuses and raises

Bad analogy. Kia =/= Honda whereas a Compaq PC-compatible == Mac in terms of reliability. Here's a better analogy:

So Honda announced a bunch of new Acura models.

Cool. I was looking at buying a new Civic for $15k. Can I buy one of those new Acuras for that price? I don't see any listed here or on acura.com. (shrug). I guess I'll buy the Civic instead of the overpriced luxury model. (i.e. I'll buy the mass-produced Compaq instead of the luxury Mac. I'm not rich.)

Quaero ergo cogito?

Behemouth size?

Big Blue ain't as big as it used to be? And vs MS it's smaller.

Who's being shut out of the market with Ubuntu?
Who's being trampled on?

IBM is mainly a hardware vendor, and I see no problem with them competing on that level and reletively little for the software. Will IBM machines force users to keep Ubuntu installed and keep other OS installs off of their machines?

Ubuntu is already free. How is IBM's use of it reducing the cost? Also if you look closely the cost isn't zero for IBM, far from it. IBM still has to do support work and programming for the Ubuntu platform same as they'd have to do with MS.

Those two statements are contradictory, you know. There's nothing magic about them, so if you call them magic then you clearly don't know what they "do".

Do you call Protestant ministers' collars "magic collars"?

crap. you made me spill my beer! LOL

you can't compare quiet, scheming bigots to a whole nation full of war protestors who actually show up themselves, not speak through well funded media mouthpieces.