I had never seen a black rectangle with rounded edges before the iPhone! ... ...well unless you count the TV I had as a child. And the TV I have now. And probably half the electronics in my house.

The whole "trade dress" concept seems a bit silly to me in the first place but ti is beyond stupid when they can claim something as simple as their rounded rectangular design as being "trade dress".

Nothing rigorous that I've found. I've seen some things like a Mac user posting on a forum asking why Cubase was hitting harder on OS-X than Windows along with screenshots of the overall load meters that it has, but little in the way of details on methodology.

While I haven't done extensive looking, I haven't come across anything and it is something I'm interested in.

Sadly, there seems to be little interest in testing. People who own PCs can't really test it, outside of building a hackintosh, and Mac users are not very interested in testing particularly since many of them have a real need to believe their money was well spend and do not wish to do something which might challenge that idea.

If someone gave me the hardware and software I'd love to try it, but I own only a PC, and the DAW I use (Sonar) is Windows only.

The only thing I can point to with some newer data is a Sonar benchmark, conducted by their lead programmer, showing improvements in Windows 8 vs Windows 7. They found basically an across the board improvement, with no code recompile http://blog.cakewalk.com/windo... . Now that says nothing of cross platform (as I noted, Sonar is Windows only anyhow) but does indicate that MS continues to improve Windows' performance with regards to intensive time critical tasks like audio.

True, though there is some precedence. OS-X does not seem to be particularly zippy in the few cross platform app benchmarks that are to be found. A good example is DAW bench's test on Cubase, Protools, and Kontakt: http://dawbench.com/win7-v-osx.... What you see is that Cubase has a much more efficient engine than ProTools (no surprise) and that on Windows either one gets a lot more polyphony than the Mac. At any given buffer size (lower buffers are harder to deal with) Windows did better.

Pretty good test too since you are dealing with tools that have long been cross platform. Kontakt has been cross platform for its entire life, Pro Tools was Mac only until version 5 (1998ish), since when it has been cross platform, and Cubase has been cross platform since back in the DOS and Atari ST days. All the software has long development histories on both platforms, yet Windows gives superior results.

None of this means OS-X is unusable or anything, but it doesn't appear to have the performance Windows does, when pushed.

Or Malaysia or Thailand and so on.

Be careful when you get on the American hate high horse, you overgeneralize and you risk looking racist. ...

or maybe admit it is a bit more nuanced than "not a civilized country."

It manifests differently, but it is sexism all the same. Many of the "defender of women" types really do see women as weaker, inferior. These poor little flowers just can't, CAN'T stand up for themselves. They need guys to help them out so that things can be fair! So don't worry, fair lady, they'll protect you from the evil men... unless of course you disagree with them in which case they'll attack your fiercely for having "internalized misogyny" or some such. After all, you can't be strong enough to have your own opinions!

They don't believe they are sexist, but then people who are sexist/racist/etc rarely believe they are. Make no mistake though, that's what it is. While it might manifest as seemingly good intentions, it is actually a view of gender inferiority. I mean after all, if you truly believe that women are equal to men, just as capable, then you aren't going to think they need special champions. They can, and will, handle it themselves. It is only people who view them as weaker in some way that would think they can't handle themselves. It is pretty insidious.

I think people need to start calling them out on their bullshit. Sexism under the cloak of "equality" or "justice" is little better than sexism in the form of harassment.

In particular with regards to gender roles.

So, time was women were for making babies and raising said babies. Men were for protecting and providing for the women. That was the roles society prescribed and there wasn't a lot of deviation from it. You did see outliers that didn't conform, but by and large that's how things were basically due to necessity. You notice many animals follow a similar structure. It is what is needed for the survival of the species.

Well that all changed, of course. We now have the problem of too many humans, not too few. Also many of the household tasks that used to take a ton of time are now automated (try washing clothes by hand, it is a full time job almost). So society changed. Women didn't need to place their worth in their offspring anymore. They could choose to be what the wanted, do what they wanted, and still be valuable. It wasn't about popping out babies.

Well, this is the other side of that: Men's value now no longer needs to be in providing for a family. They can have a family, or not, they work, they can stay at home, etc, etc. For some men, that means staying single.

However, some people, like this dude, have a problem with that. They think that men should be required to be providers to be considered "real men", should be required to fill a particular role in society.

Mike Rowe has given some good talks about the shortage of skilled labour in the US and what a problem it is. This kind of thing can't be outsourced since, well, the labour is needed in the US. I suppose it could be replaced with H1Bs but that doesn't seem to be happening.

Most of it is stuff like plumbing that isn't glamorous, and even can be dirty, but it is necessary and will continue to be necessary. Eventually robotics may advance to the point of replacing it, but not in the foreseeable future.

Here manslaughter is a Class 2 Felony. That means 4 years minimum sentence (or 3 years minimum if there are mitigating circumstances), 10 year maximum (12.5 if there are aggravating circumstances). This is presuming first time offence, and only one count. A repeat offence can bring it up to as much as 35 years.

So no, doesn't look higher to me. Remember there's a difference between maximum and minimum. When a sentence is "up to" that means "the absolute maximum a court may sentence for a given offence." Usually, there's a fair bit of range in a sentence since the idea is a judge will consider the factors of the individual case.

I mean when someone breaks in to your house, you should go to jail right? After all, your home security sucks. I don't care if you think it is good, it sucks. Virtually nobody bothers with good home security.

So you should go to jail if someone breaks in... ...or maybe you should reexamine this "blame the victim" attitude so many geeks have with regards to hacking.

This was a transformer that failed. ALL power plants that make AC power use those. Nuclear, coal, hydro, wind, doesn't matter, they all use transformers. So even if nuclear went away, transformers would be all over the place. They are how we change AC voltages from one to another.

Serious question here. I mean if things are truly as bad as you claim they are, where police just arrest and beat people regularly for no reason, then why don't you move somewhere that is not the norm? I mean I can understand staying if you wish to work to make things better, but you imply in your post that you do not, that you wish to not fight back. Fair enough. However the fact that you can freely and without worry post this on a public forum means you live in a place free enough not to restrict you from leaving. So why stay?

Were I in such a situation where I feared the police to that point, and believed I could not affect change (or didn't wish to try), I'd get out ASAP. I'd work on getting a job and moving as soon as circumstances allowed.

So why do you choose to stay, if it is that bad?

When you are polite and friendly this not only makes things smoother with people who are nice, but it really annoys the jerks who are looking for an excuse to cause you trouble because they don't have one.

A minor story about that: I was coming back from Canada from visiting my parents. I made the mistake of declaring on the customs form that I had meat, which I did, a pack of beef jerky fully sealed, manufactured in the US. So instead of going right through the automated line, I had to go see an agent. This dude had a huge chip on his shoulder. It was pretty clear to me he'd like nothing better than for someone to get annoyed and belligerent with him so he could make their life suck. No such luck here, I smiled, was polite answered the questions and after a bit, was on my way to the next segment.

He'd marked to have my bags searched (at airports in general, and the border especially they can search your bags for any or no reason). So I had to head to the search area. Well I was nice and polite to the agent there who clearly thought this was moronic and gave my bag the most half-assed quick search ever before saying "Thanks you are good to go."

I got to go through with a minimal inconvenience (10 minutes max) and got the satisfaction of him getting to be frustrated with being able to do nothing. I'm not saying it always work, of course, but it works more often than not. Makes your life easier and you get the added satisfaction of making jerks sad.

One is you might notice said officer has been fired and arrested however the second is you might notice the parent never said it never happens, just that it doesn't often happen. When someone says something is rare, and you find one counter example, you haven't done anything to disprove their assertion.

You really can't see any difference? Then you are just being obtuse. Yes if you tried to trespass in a religious building and be offensive, there'd be a response. In particular, they'd tell you to leave and call the police. However this was not in a Mosque, no Muslims were forced to attend. This was something people were doing on their own. However the crazies felt the need to respond.

I've heard about precisely zero cases of Jews going after pig BBQs in the US. Seems they are not very concerned about what you are doing on your own. If you don't respect their religion, oh well, so it goes.

Stephen Fry put it very well:

"It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."

You might recall that during the whole "draw Mohammad" controversy South Park took it on. While the were not allowed to show Mohammad at all, they did show people literally shitting on Jesus, the American flag, and so on. They received zero threats in relation to that, there was no action taken against them.

It's not like Christians didn't know either, it is a major syndicated TV show that is produced in the US.