So bloodless coups are pretty much the norm in Australia?

Depends on what time of the month it is...

The current model of, wait 3 or 4 years between versions, and charge $300 for it doesn't work, because nobody wants to drop $300 all at once, and they also don't want to have to buy a new computer, to get the price discounted.

The richest and most successful software company will get right on it, random internet person!

You'd think everyone knows, but I still get the occasional pompous wanker saying things like "Vista is shit! I emailed Bill Gates to let him know he's lost a customer!"

Unsurprisingly, those of us online, posting on a tech site, know more about MS than the average idiot.

Yeah, we're all really worried about that.

Oh wait, no we're not.

Are you worried that the government will find out where you drive to? After all, they built the roads. Are you worried that the government will track your eating habits? After all, they built the sewerage system.

This is a public infrastructure system allowing ANY business to compete on a level playing ground. Good for the people, good for business. Not only would I expect this to make 'net access cheaper, but I'd expect a lot more ISPs to spring up, either as additions to existing companies or as stand alone businesses. It's amazing what you can do when the cost of infrastructure is removed from the equation.

An analogy: A publisher has choices of transport. They can hire an existing company to ship their books/magazines or they can buy their own trucks and hire drivers. They don't have to invest in building actual roads. This is the same thing. No ISP has to cough up the cash to lay fibre or get gauged by those with the cash that do.

"Alien Being! They said you was hung!"

"They was right!"

While Seamonkey users were excluded from the trial, so I didn't see it, the Seamonkey and Firefox built in search is US only. I've turned it off because it only returns US-centric results. My home page is google.com.au, and there is no way (that I can see) of changing the built in search to match

Seamonkey users were excluded, also, and there was much rejoicing.

(Actually, I didn't mind what I saw on my colleague's work PC, but I still think Google shouldn't copy Bing, and Bing shouldn't copy Google. Choice is good, and choice disappears when the options are interchangeable.)

So nothing I don't already have enough of in XP then basically. Thanks for answering my question.

Are you kidding? 7's security is no better than XP? 7's performance is no better than XP's? XP's stability and reliability is no better than XP? Seriously?

How is randomly moving all the buttons I've spent 9 years memorizing improving productivity?

Because you no longer have to remember anything. It doesn't matter where they are. I have no idea where they are in 7 - it doesn't matter. That's why it's a boost in productivity. You type the first couple of letters, you don't have to click buttons, you don't have to navigate menus. They're still there if you want to live in the past, but others of us don't want to stagnate with a decade old interface.

MS missed the boat on that one, and wants us all to keep doubling our processing power

Jesus Christ, what are you gonna do for an encore? Make a BSOD joke? How about a clippy reference? 7 performs better than Vista on the same hardware. Vista SP2 performs better than XP SP3 on the same hardware. Yet you want to stay with your old, inefficient, slow, resource hungry XP, claiming the newer systems need double the processing power? What are you, 12?

Four Gigs of RAM just so I can boot up and access the internet?

My old Athlon64 3000 with 1GB of RAM ran Vista brilliantly. It runs 7 even better. If we're going to just make shit up, why would anybody run Ubuntu when it needs 12GB of RAM just to make it to the logon screen?

Maybe you should just get off my lawn now

You seem very confused, you're on my lawn. I've been using computers since I first got a Commodore Vic 20 thirty years ago. I can categorically state, backed by independent benchmarks, XP is the slowest OS Microsoft ever released. This pinnacle of bloat is what you pretend is somehow a pinnacle of UI and efficiency goodness. You're living in fantasyland.

I shall pretend that Vista never happened.

I don't understand this mindset at all. Having used Vista from 2007 until I switched to 7 in 2009, there is virtually no difference (apart from the quicklaunch melding into the taskbar). There is no real noticeable functional, operational, or performance difference. And while 7's performance benchmarks better than Vista SP2, Vista SP2 benchmarks better than XP SP3 (personal experience backs this up).

Why are you going to pretend Vista never happened? I'd like to pretend XP never happened. I stuck with Win2k until 2005 when my new hardware didn't support it (the Win2k install wanted the floppy driver disk for the SATA HDD controller, when no floppy drive was in the machine). I suffered through XP for 2 years until I was able to upgrade to Vista, and what a breath of fresh air it was.

Security, stability, reliability, performance, improved UI allows better productivity, and developments made in software platforms/frameworks over the last 9 years provides a basis for future improvements.

XP is great if you want productivity to stagnate, though. Your call.

That's a stupid comment to have made and you're a fool to have said it.

But it's annoying and time-consuming to hunt around for things and figure out how they're done now

So don't. Hit the windows key and type the first few letters of what you used to do in XP. This isn't new to Windows 7, Windows has behaved like this for almost four years.

but I did skip Vista entirely and am very glad I did.

As I said, that's stupid comment to have made, and you're a fool to have said it.

That sounds like a complete fabrication.

You're not even describing Dubai, let alone Istanbul. Did you pluck that anecdote from Glenn Beck?

For whatever reason, we don't seem to use a metric equivalent very often here in Australia, though what we use is similar to your GPM.

Virtually every vehicle is measured in litres per 100km. For example, when I bought my car brand new back in 2006, it was rated at 5.5 litres per 100km of city driving, 4.4 litres highway driving (I was supposed to get 900km on a 40 litre tank, though in practice I get closer to 840km on the highway.)

In the western US it's not unheard of to find yourself 100 miles from any gas station.

Growing up, we used to drive from Tamworth to Canberra (~850km, depending on your route) to visit relatives, and petrol stations were very few and far between. And if it was after 8pm, they were all closed, which was hell for our thirsty 1976 Cressida.

Two things:

5. Quantum Mechanical Atheistic Evolution- Natural selection is entirely unguided and random - the only thing limiting evolution is death of bad mutations.

There is NOTHING random about natural selection. NOTHING. Genetic variations are SELECTED. That's the point. Nobody that know anything about evolution believes it's random, and only those trying to discredit evolution say it is. This version as you present it is believed by no one, it's merely a strawman that creationist like to point at and discredit.

I'd expect in Australia they should at least be teaching the myths of the natives in an ancient history class!

Yes, we do. All throughout primary school we're taught the aboriginal myths about the rainbow serpent creating the countryside, the quinkins, how the kangaroo got it's tail, how the rosella got it's colours, etc. But we are a predominantly christian country, so besides the normal curriculum we get "scripture" - usually half an hour per week where the classes split up into catholic, protestant, and "neither".