Quite true, but that brings us to another of Linux's double-edged swords. Windows and Mac OS have many years between each monolithic release, whereas typical distributions make new semi-major releases twice a year. Great for geeks like me who like the bleeding edge, another headache for developers who have to cope with constantly shifting goalposts.

Let's face it, one of the things all Linux evangelists like to emphasise is the opportunity to use whatever you want and even build it yourself if you want to. But it's maddening for developers to create something that will work on every kind of linux desktop in existence. From political choices of free vs. non-free, to preferred distribution, version numbers, favourite window manager and a host of other choices, no two desktops will be the same. Linux isn't an operating system, it's an operating eco-system. Taking Google as an example, today I tried to install Google Earth on my Ubuntu 9.04 laptop to no avail, despite it having installed without a hitch on my Xubuntu 7.04 Pentium III plaything in my room back in my parent's house. The exact same version of the program with dramatic differences depending on where you try it, that quickly becomes a support nightmare.

Now for the dedicated GNOME/KDE/xfce/whatever volunteer this does not pose much of a problem because your target audience has broadly the same machine makeup as you do, but for a commercial developer looking for a good ROI it quickly becomes untenable. Windows and Mac OS provide a devoloper with a guaranteed stable platform development-wise, and as such are much safer bets.

I agree that the only way Linux can make itself more attractive to commercial desktop program developers is with a mighty amount of consolidation, but the problem is that I don't think it will happen. The great OS wars that went before the dominance of Windows had winners and losers because they were systems of a closed nature, and so if you held with a losing team they closed down because it wasn't economically viable and you had to move to something more mainstream, thus consolidating the market. With Linux a project will never close down as long as someone like it more than something else.

If we do accept that, we are still left wondering why the (possibly fake) Asus site is so polished and the windowsisbetter site is so crap by comparison. If someone is pulling a prank, I don't understand his reasoning.

www.asus.co.uk redirects directly to uk.asus.com, but if you go to for example http://www.asus.co.uk/eeepc/1000HE/, you will arrive at a marketing page designed to cater to British buyers. So it almost looks like some yahoo in British marketing decided to do this without be told to. "Taking initiative", I believe it's called...

The video is hosted at collaborationpeople.cdnetworks.us, so obviously it's on their account with CDnetworks (a content delivery network). CollaborationPeople, as someone has already found out and which seems to jar with the whois for collaborationpeople.com (a password protected site), is associated with this Michael Sharp fellow. So that corroborates the whois theory of who is behind the site. However, as someone mentioned, the two powerpoints only have that name because they were exported form PP to pdf, and they certainly never mention Microsoft. Now, whatever motivated mr. Sharp to make that site, I don't know. It's still looks gloriously bad even though it's linked from the Eee page. However, I'm sure someone at Asus reads Slashdot, so I expect a statement to arrive soon.

The point is that any percentage is simply too much. We're talking about the possibility of saving human lives here (even one more life saved is a victory), not arguing over statistical expetancies.

Two extremist countries with nukes does not a world war maketh. At worst, the aforementioned two countries will cause extreme devastation to their regional neighbours, at which point the rest of the world will be royally pissed off and resolve to teach them what a real good strategic nuclear attack feels like, thus turning them in extremist ex-countries.

Much like the rest of North Korea, in other words.

I hardly think anyone in China would forget losing a city. If anything, the propaganda machine would make sure to constantly remind the populace of it in order to encourage national unity. It's a pointless discussion anyway, because the NK leaders are nuts, but not in a lacking-self-preservation-instincts kinda way. In fact they're very good at preserving themselves. Also, forget Hong Kong. Bejing and Shanghai are where it's at, bigger and closer to North Korea!

Strictly speaking I think America went to war with Japan because the Japanese attacked them first. American volunteers had been helping out in China before that, but that's a far cry from an official declaration of war.

But if they do have the backing of the Communications Act of 1934, that means they're acing lawfully. Something which renders castle doctrines invalid.