One big reason why things are the way they are, is that corporate types want somebody to blame when things go pear-shaped. There's not many linux companies of enough size to handle that. Just RedHat and SuSe.

Hmm, well then they better not have too close a look at any of MS or Apple's EULAs. They're all "no indemnification" and all that. Good luck suing MS or Apple, or even getting a response unless you already paid out the ass for a support contract.

The simple fact of the matter is that when it comes to big companies and technology, the ones making the "corporate" decisions are blithering idiots. Think about it: where are the smartest people you know working? Either they are actually getting (fun) shit done (eg, engineers solving problems), or they are in charge of their own startups (and how many startups go with MS?). Also, as someone else mentioned, there are some other large factors known as "mindshare" (why do you think MS gives deep discounts to college students) and bribes. If there were any justice in this world, MS would have gone out of business ten years ago due to everyone seeing through their BS. The depressing reality is that PT Barnum was right (and even that is a good example of mass ignorance: Barnum didn't say that, his opponent Hull did).

The reason is this:

Management, even if totally technically clueless, can roughly evaluate an older sysadmin based on how his career has progressed in terms of size of site administered, etc. It's not a great metric, but a person running a 2K desktop, 20K compute farm installation is a pretty safe bet just based on the trust that their current management has in them.

That same management, faced with a coder who worked on a 10 MLOC project, has absolutely no basis to evaluate if he was a star or a negative contributor. They can ask for a code sample, but they have no way to judge it unless they already have an expert coding staff (in which case they are no longer technically clueless.)

So programming jobs bi-furcate into the $200K+ jobs in which firms are able to identify experts, and the rest (hire the cheapest) where the firms cannot test for quality.

This is basic science. You are like a person saying "in high school, I got to have sex with 160lbs women, but now I only get sex with 180lbs women, so Anthropogenic Women Largening is obviously happening." Now me, I still bag the baseline 115 in La Perla, so scientifically (based on sample size) the effect you are whining about is just not happening.

You simply do not understand weather at all. Your rudimentary facts about humidity and temperature differentials and winds and stuff prove you are a fool. Every basic weather site explains that if the temperature goes up, the snow goes away. Even an 9 year old can understand this: it's 90 degrees outside, therefore no snow. Simple logic therefore proves that if there is snow, AGW is false.

HTH

As I am sure you know, the military holds a unique position in any government (they have the guns, and thus the ability to effect change unilaterally.) That's why we severely constrain what a soldier can do when representing himself as a soldier. In the old days, "crossing the Rubicon" was automatic treason, not an expression of freedom.

That's the key point. As soon as Alice or Bob lose isolation (e.g. by deciding on a stock trade,) the state collapses and there is no information from the future.

Under the simple interpretation, nothing "goes back in time." It's essentially two Schrodinger's cats (A & B) being in a superimposed state for several nano-seconds. Then V adds a constraint, and eventually the A, B, and V information bubbles interact and collapse into an observed state that the scientists record.

The meta-computer that runs our universe probably printed a log message like 'ATOMIC MERGE-OP unexpected long delay on eval: d=7m, t=23ns.' If scientists persist in this sort of research, the person running this universe will probably just ^C the app.

Most people use the term "most people" as shorthand for "me and the people I associate with."

In reality, in the USA, "most people" either have to make a hard choice to buy a $20 game or have no problem at all paying $70.