Meanwhile, ruthless competition is keeping the big airlines from passing any of that increase on to passengers, who are not willing to pay more for tickets.

To the Editor: You mention a factor in the decisions of many schools not to rank: the ruthless competition that develops among students.

In coming years, he said, the United States and its contractors will confront "ferocious, relentless, ruthless competition" for a shrinking weapons market.

But it undermined the financial health of the industry by subjecting it to ruthless competition and manic mergers.

Now ruthless competition is no longer confined to the actual lion's den.

If any industry has been in deeper trouble than the long-distance sector, it may be the wireless business, where ruthless competition has sent stocks plunging.

It is Overreach's rejection of those tradition moral and ethical standards, his embrace of ruthless competition, that makes him a villain.

Yet, its up-to-the-minute veneer features ruthless competition and sexual freedom.

"If Darwin's theory of evolution were true, there would be in every species a constant and ruthless competition to survive," he writes.

And it is here, deep down amid its gold-bearing detritus, that a ruthless competition is being waged.