Just for sake of a reasonable theological argument:

1) The bible clearly puts limits to what god can do: e.g. He can't lie, He can't break his own laws, etc. in short: The biblical god has some limitations.

However, the biblical god can control the outcome, the result he desires will come to pass.

2) What name would you give the ability to cause whatever you desired as the final result regardless of what anyone else tried to accomplish?

Imagine that: Whatever outcome you desired, regardless of what anyone actively did to try to prevent it, their efforts will be in vain and in fact usually end up causing the outcome that your desired?

The ability to control the result is much more limited then (absolute) omnipotency, but for all desired intents and purposes it is as close as one could reasonably get. I don't think the term omnipotency is meant to be taken as an absolute ability but more as a relative ability so that whatever else happens, god has the ability to control the *end result* regardless of *the path* we decide to follow towards it?

To quote Kevin Smith: God had a sense of humor? :D

"If carbon-12 is expected to remain the standard, and the scientitific community therefore prefers an integer divisible by 12, then we suggest using [the cube of] 84,446,886. Then 1 gram would be the mass of exactly 18 [times the cube of] 14,074,481 carbon-12 atoms. Consequently, 1 amu would be exactly 1/(2 x 3^2 x 1,667^3 x 8,443^3) gram, and 1 mole of any entity would be exactly [the cube of] 84,446,886 of those entities."

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.3743,y.0,no.,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx

BIOS is crap and should be removed from the PC, replaced by EFI most likely.

What I don't know or understand is why Apple choose EFI over OpenFirmware?

It was not openness that won. It's never openness that wins.

Very visible continuous progress is needed to become popular. Visible continuous progress is better then openness. Openness can be a way to obtain continuous progress, but openness is neither required nor sufficient.

Amiga was advanced, but it did not develop anywhere, it was so advanced but somehow no-one could be found to take it the next step forward. So it became stagnant while PC developed. We can see the same thing with Apple, a 1995 Mac was nearly identical to that of 1985. Only after Jobs came back, taking with him a whole team from NeXT, did the Mac go anywhere fresh. We even have seen this with Microsoft IE 6, which started out great, but then nothing No-one there to take the next step.

To many who want conserve what they have, and not enough who want to move progressively forward. To take the next step, especially with a successful, advanced product is scary and the results are uncertain. One needs to have amazing self-confidence to be able to take the next step again, and again, and again Most people's fear, uncertainty and doubt will prevent them from making the next step consistently, often waisting millions of dollars and many months on aimless research and development in the process. Sometimes even leading to products which are then canceled with in a few months.

The best strategy seems to be to take the next (often obvious) step with a product on a regular schedule (every few months, at most once a year). Occasionally this step should be a leap, but it does not have to be every time. If you are able to, it also seems to help to only talk about actual deliverable products and implemented features: Don't announce products which are not ready for production, don't talk about features not yet implemented (anyone remember Longhorn?). Any progress is better then no progress, even minimal progress is better then the disappointment of vaporware. So keep your plans private/secret until you are ready to deliver an actual product.

Well, it did help that Apple replaced its own senior staff with people from NeXT... even as high as the CEO, then iCEO, Jobs. Structurally it seems more like if NeXT had bought Apple, then the reverse.

Surely it is your choice to buy a iProduct from Apple or to buy it somewhere else?

As the consequence of the choices you make you will get particular freedoms. And like all freedoms, any freedom brings with it some limitation. **Absolute freedom does not exist.**

We make a choice because of what we expect to be the consequence of this choice: The freedoms **and** limitation we think we can accept. So, If you don't accept the consequence then you should choose differently.

In old eastern germany you did not have the freedom to voice your opinion, but if you did people would listen. In current germany you have the freedom of expression, but now nobody listens anymore unless you are a VIP.

Freedom without at least some limitions does not exist. You never choose for or against some particular freedom, the choice is always about the freedoms you do want, and the freedoms you don't want.

Well Microsoft, that is what you get when you don't build your own hardware like Apple does.

Microsoft should get out of the software business and start designing their own computers together with their own software. Want Windows? Buy that WinBox from Microsoft!

That way you know what kind of hardware is needed and you can drop support for all kinds of crap.

Let Dell, HP, etc try selling computers without an usable OS.

Even nowerdays people believe wierd nonsense and myths... like that one about how people once believed that the earth was flat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_mythology

What else that is commonly believed will turn out the be wrong?

I always thought that "being brilliant" was a proper subset of "being dangerous"?

The real problem I think is that to many managers still want/need to handle programming as predictable production work, instead of inherently unpredictable design work.