Capitalism only works under the original auspices that no company is large enough to own a significant portion of a large enough market to prevent others from entering and competing. You need lots of players, or you run into issues. Look at car makers - originally there were literally hundreds, now there's 3-4 mass producers per main producing countries (US, Japan, Germany, Korea) although there the numbers are skewed to a single large producer, with no locally owned major production in most other countries. France has Citroen and Renault, and Italy Fiat, which are still somewhat in the running.

Cars are a bad example though, as there are still enough players to allow some choice, even if the three collude to keep feature parity at a low level. Better examples are for instance sodas - you can buy either Coke or Pepsi products in a lot of places, but no one else. The places that are exclusive are large chains, like McDonalds, Wendy's, Burger King, etc. Also vending machines in areas with captive audiences, like schools and entertainment venues. These practices lockout everyone else, and while there are small vendors that occasionally spring up, the big two companies will buy up any that break through the barrier they've erected. If they weren't allowed to acquire anyone once they owned more than 5-10% of the market, we wouldn't have one 900# gorilla, one 400# gorilla, an almost gorilla and maybe some tiny bottlers here and there. You will see the same thing happening with beer brewers, it just hasn't had a chance to get there yet and additional restrictive laws on advertising and marketing actually slow down this process.

That would imply that everyone works on a standard set of hardware and base software.....

That would be rendering anything in OpenGL. That is a true statement, but not an ops/second type of use case I was looking for, and Linux beats both handily, IIRC. So Windows still isn't a top performer there, either, it merely is better than OSX in that category.

I will admit that on Lion / Mountain Lion, that the GUI seems a little slower and more likely to block. I can't help but think that this is related to the switch to Grand Central and old cold that wasn't properly migrated to the new process. I also know for a fact that slightly misbehaving SMB can completely lockup OSX, I've experienced this personally, but instead of digging for the exact cause, I removed the old Ubuntu box from the network. I also know that VNC occasionally locks up for me. But I have personal known challenges on the machines exhibiting these issues, and cannot say for certain that the problem wholly lies with OSX. Another machine I have exhibits no such issues.

My last go round with W7 didn't leave me with any better impressions though.

While unstated, the implied question was for equivalently optimized code. I would have taken MS SQL vs best in breed on *nix, for example, although I know personally that one doesn't fit the bill. LDAP? Nope. Ray tracing? Nope. Video rendering - nope.

Perhaps they can also ask them at the same time why Windows also performs so poorly on the same hardware in comparison with several other OSes. There's no case I know of where Windows performs more operations per cycle than both Linux and OSX. (I'm waiting for a response here to show some cases where Windows actually is a better performer, it'd be interesting to actually see such a case)

Progreria is not actually an aging process, although it has many of the appearances of aging. It's actually a defective protein encoding that weakens cells and shortens cell lifespans. This is not a process that occurs during normal aging. So the finding confirms what you'd expect to find in the cells of progeria affected individuals.

Nope - not even allowing you to login anonymous is consent.

The creators of the SSN had 2 specific declarations: the SSN was never to be used as an ID, and the SSN was never to be used for any other purpose than SS. When banks, financial institutions, and the gov, started using them for other purposes (Tax IDs anyone?) the entire original use got subsumed and stuff hit the crapper.

I'd give them 1 letter to fix the problem - after that - they can see me in court. I didn't enter into any agreement with them, and they are slandering/libeling me by stating I have bad credit and propagating that out. There are slander / libel laws out there, use them.

Actually, currently, anyone can open it that has access to it, much like the mail. The government sponsored carriers now allow the government to read all - they didn't even dare do that with regular mail.

I generally already know what time it is when I leave for a place, so I really don't bother looking at the clock while I'm on my way there. It won't help me get there faster, and may cause an accident. I also use alarms (on the phone) for things I can't miss. Most of this happens automatically via calendar events done via my computer(s). My watch can't match this functionality.

No, what you said was:

I disagree, it's because they found out they were already aware of the time and they didn't need to check their watch. Hardly ever. A watch is one more thing to carry, to deal with, and manage and maintain. The trouble wasn't worth it as they wore out. I have a couple of nice watches left. Each will cost almost as much as my phone to service. I have already donated the rest.

I'm not sure why you care. What's your obsession with time? Will it help the meeting pass faster, get you out earlier, by knowing the time? If you're going to leave anyways, nothing says "you're wasting my time" like getting up in the middle of a meeting and leaving without giving a reason. If you're going to give a reason and leave, then it doesn't matter whether you check your phone or not.

They do have these wonderful things called websites, where you can search for a book, reserve or hold it, extend your checkout time, and even read reviews about it and see how it compares with other authors you may like. Maybe you should try it out sometime, it's almost like shopping for an e-book.

I don't cart around "pleasure" reading. I generally don't have time for it while I'm out.

It's going to be interesting what you think when you actually start working.

Hmm - seems you're collecting. That is at odds with reading, where things might get bent or used.

I tend to search reference books for specific items. Search works out much better digitally. I may skim a paper copy, but at this point I don't need to read but small sections of books related to my immediate field, as I could probably write good chunks of most of them. I tend to read recently published papers more, as they on the whole have more interesting things in them. Also, my screen real estate tends to be bigger than most reference books I have with sufficient pixel density, allowing me to see things in greater detail without grabbing a magnifying glass. In fact, I have zoom capabilities built in that will exceed any book's capabilities.

Pleasure is kicked back, relaxing, with a good book. I don't get to do that often enough nowadays. And I can read it outside on bright days, or in relatively dim light, without having to strain to see what's on the page or having a 700 lumen spotlight burning a hole in my retinas. E-ink needs backlight in dim settings, but it's far better than some of these cheaper LCD screens.

That would be encryption with the keys available to everyone. After all, anyone can open an envelope. Hence the reference to a theft prevention device that destroys the intended target, or a safe that potentially cannot be opened in a reasonable amount of time.

Why do you assume that? Regarding wristwatches, they're losing out because how often do you really need to know the time? People stopped wearing them because they're redundant. I found myself already knowing the time from the last look at my cell, and never consulted my watch anymore. I think you have to be neurotic or a timekeeper to need to keep an eye on the time to that extent.

My local library has 10s of thousands of books, for free, including recent offerings. I can only read 1 book at a time, same as you. What good does it do me to have 100 in my hands at a time? It's irrelevant when pleasure reading

For travel or reference books, it's a different story, then the clear win is for the e-device.

I have and can read on one just fine. In some ways it's better than a book for pleasure reading, in others, it's not. I'll give you an example: you can't rapidly flip through an e-book looking for that one particular section, you know roughly where on the page it is an kind of what it looks like, but not the exact wording. (ie, search is going to take longer because you're going to have to evaluate every single one to see if it's the right section) This is especially true for those with near photographic memories. Also, pleasure reading is usually 1 book at a time, so an e-reader's ability to carry 100s is irrelevant for most time spans spent reading. It is better if you're going on a long trip with lots of down time, for example. In the living room, this generally doesn't matter.

Nice extension of my statement. However, I still hold that a newspaper has a better format for skimming the news and getting more out of it than a news website. The latter is more suitable for the most recent news, the most popular, the most.... whatever.