Why do you assume that the unified interface will be nice? I have accounts at several [UK] banks; the Nationwide interface is good but the FirstDirect interface is bad. For example, to view up-coming payments with FirstDirect is a job of work - I think they want you to over-draw so they can charge you for it. As another example the Nationwide show your statement in what I would call correct chronological order - oldest at the top. Most banks however have latest at the top; and some (only some) of those allow you to reverse it but do not remember your preference for next time.

Factors like these determine my choice of which bank I use routinely; the others I only use for spreading the risk and being able to use more ATMs around. I bet though that a unified interface would not be the one that I would choose.

How TF can a bank know that you are going to make a "hypothetical purchase"?

No, I think he's being funny. Mod GP funny, someone, please.

Microsoft bought DOS from Seattle Computer Products [SCP} and hired its author, Tim Paterson, to port it to the PC. No doubt they copied many ideas from CP/M but not code directly. SCP had written it for their own personal computer and called it QDOS as a joke - "Quick and Dirty Operating System". Microsoft dropped the "Q" and said the "D" stood for "Disk". Gates may have contributed some code. See here

Later MS did a similar trick with Windows NT (the basis XP and every Windows since). They hired a team from DEC who brought the source code of VMS with them and combined it with some bits of OS/2 to make NT. See here

Both SCP and DEC sucessfully got damages out of Microsoft later, although just drops in the ocean for Microsoft.

It is believed that Gates' parents also pulled strings in IBM that got him the DOS contract.

"when IBM CEO John Opel heard Microsoft would get the contract, he said "Oh is that Mary Gates' boy's company?" since Opel and Bill Gates' mother served together on the national board of the United Way. Ref

Great advice. I thought that was part of the problem. I know a guy from China and he says that girls are in very short supply in some parts. Judging by the escort adverts in the UK, a lot of them have come here.

Indeed. As my wife doesn't know what an xor gate is, it's good enough for me.

Defining hackers as people who take control of your computer (in whatever form) for their own ends, then this scenario of a "secure walled garden" is a win for the hackers, not a win for security. My idea of security is to prevent exactly this crap happening.

Never mind that the hacker is a corporate entity listed on the stock exchange, they are still hackers. Never mind that they will claim that you agreed to this scenario by buying their kit (as if it will be possible to buy anything else, except similar rivals' kit) - that sounds just like an old style hacker claiming you agreed to their adware/botnet/malware by clicking on their email attachment.

I recently bought an Android tablet. I keep getting a full screen advert for some game pushed in my face without even a clear way to dismiss it. It is a game in the Android app store they want me to buy. It severely pisses me off; but it is not (by their definition) malware, it is "official". This takes place within what would be the "secure walled garden". I would rather take my chances in the shark pool - at least I am in control.

I don't know where to begin with what's wrong with this idea.

What is it they say about computer security? I remember - no system can be defended if the hacker has physical access. Real data centres have high security : guards, locked doors, and even inside the building the servers are within their own locked cages. Let me know me what hosting companies are proposing to house their servers in Joe Sixpack's basement, and I'll avoid.

I had heard of it, not sure how. This is Wikipedia (under Gulf of Mexico):-

I did not say I supported the theory, only that it was suggested. I am not a geologist. Clearly it is now out of favour.

There was a theory that the Gulf of Mexico is a meteor crater. About 1000 miles across.

It is probably as much to do with excercising a right. Like I have a second right of way from my property which I never need to use, but I do use it at least once per year just to maintain that right.

No. If you are looking at objects seen in the mirror you are focussing at the total distance of : you-mirror plus mirror-object
The mirror wraps the distance but does not reduce how far the light must travel or the object appears.

At last : all those hours I spent in school physics drawing light ray diagrams has come in useful.

You have not just spent too much time indoors, it has been in an echo chamber.

FTFA :

Doesn't that amount to the same thing? Not spending much time on distance focussing?

Where and how did "MASSIVE increase in Desktop Linux market share" come in to this? I never said anything about it, and never forsee such a thing happening either. WTF has it got to do with this topic?

More to the point, Microsoft are fanatical about trying to stop even a handful of people from using anything but Windows. Microsoft rate them as criminals, and are like some fat Roman emperor hearing that some people at the edge of the World are not sacrificing half their cattle and virgins twice a day in homage to him, and sending a legion there to exterminate them. Every user is "important" to Microsoft, no matter how few.