I went to buy a chair from Microsoft. I was excited that they had a chair for sale. It was a cushion on a pair of legs, but inbetween the cushion and the legs of the chair was something labeled "seat" that appeared to be a conglomerate of ridiculously overengineered crap held up by other ridiculous overengineered crap as deep as the eye could see, powered by a datacenter on the moon. I think there was an x86 assembly interpreter written in visual basic in there somewhere, holding up the seat cushion. Still, I was happy to have a chair. Then I needed a pencil, so I went to Apple. I was excited that they had a pencil for sale. It was a graphite rod with thick yellow paint around it, but between the yellow paint and the graphite rod was something labeled "wood and erasor" that appeared to be a conglomerate of ridiculously overengineered crap held up by other ridiculous overengineered crap as deep as the eye could see, powered by a datacenter on the moon. I think there was an entire purpose-built operating system in there, somewhere, that seemed to be used just to make the edges of the wood and eraser rounder. Still, I was happy to have a pencil. Then I needed a paperclip, so I went to the open source and free software community. I was excited that the open source and free software community had a paperclip. They didn't even charge money for it, they just asked me to press some special buttons on a keyboard until it built itself. It was a wire of steel with a bend at one and and a bend at the other, and between the two bends was something labeled "middle of steel wire" that appeared to be a conglomerate of ridiculously overengineered crap held up by other ridiculously overengineered crap as deep as the eye could see, powered by a small handful of nerds who seemed impossible to get in contact with but were able to bend reality to your will if you did. I think there was an entire purpose-built scripting language in there, that ended up only being used to call out to shell functions to make sure that the paperclip was bent at just the angle I configured it to be. Still, I was happy to have a paperclip. Then I needed a coffee mug coaster, so I went to Goo ...