...how and to what extent this "ballot screen" is going to be forced on people. I manage a lot of Windows computers at work and the last thing I want is an automatic update suddenly presenting my users with the invitation to choose a new browser, which they won't be able to take up anyway because they lack the administrative privileges to install one.

Here's hoping there's a quick and easy way to disable this with group policy or registry tweaks. What makes sense for Joe Sixpack or Granny Crabapple is not necessarily wanted in a corporate/managed environment.

So does that mean that if I break a web site's terms of service then my access is still 'authorized'? Authorized by whom?

Who gets to decide which browsers are included in this "ballot screen"? Based on what criteria?

If it's simply going to be the top 5 or whatever based on current market share then this is simply cementing the status quo rather than helping competition and innovation, and if any any every browser gets a look in then what's to stop SuperSpywareBrowser2009 from appearing in the choices?

What the fuck are you talking about? Solaris IS GPL.

Nope, OpenSolaris is released under the CDDL, a license similar to the Mozilla Public License and widely believed to have been deliberately selected for its incompatibility with the GPL.

Rogers, one of Canada's big ISPs, also chimed in and explained that new regulations might limit its ability to throttle P2P uploads

No. Net Neutrality ensures no discrimination based on traffic source or destination. This has nothing to do with Quality of Service filtering, which is discrimination based on traffic type. They can still throttle my P2P all they like, they just can't throttle my access to YouTube because YouTube didn't pony up some "high traffic site fee".

Which was done with Vista.

No it doesn't. If you install Vista with all the defaults then you are a member of the Administrators group. You still have to go out of your way if you want to start out with a plain old unprivileged user.

Anyway, Administrator accounts are the default and therefore what 99% of users are going to be using.

And only when Microsoft change this will Windows be half way towards being secure.

Point is, managers manage people. You are there to code.. not them. The only technical details they need to do their job is: how long it will take, how many people can work on it efficiantly, what tasks are dependant on it, risks, and benifits.. and you are there to provide them with that info.

A manager who does not grasp at least the fundamentals of the job(s) that the people under him/her do may not believe or understand subordinates when they give estimates of time/manpower/risks/benefits/etc.

Someone who doesn't have a bit of knowledge of coding is more likely to say "yeah yeah, you can do that in half the time or I can hire this guy in India who says he can".