...except that they released their Windows client under GPLv3 as well?

With only a single developer being employed at the company for the native GNU+Linux port, of course the arguement can be made that they did a cost-benefit analysis and determined that crowd-sourcing development talent and time from the Internet would yield a superior product that improves faster. This is not a testament to small numbers of GNU+Linux users, but rather the efficiency of modern Free Software development methodologies. The fact that they GPLv3-ed their Windows client is further proof of this fact.

Here in the Netherlands, I receive a monthly cost of about 7 euros per month for my HSPA+ connection with Vodafone NL. This is with a prepaid SIM card, anonymous (they do not ask for name, ID card, or address, much less an SSN equivalent). Sure, the handheld computer itself will indeed cost 400 to 600 dollars for a non-contract ownership, but it's a mistake to think of it as anything other than a computer purchase. Similarly speced laptops cost this much, so why wouldn't a much smaller form factor not cost at least this much, if not far more considering the engineering feats required to make the computer fit in your hand?

Your estimations of paying for "data capable plan" in the USA are wildly off as well. Non-contract obligations for T-Mobile USA (with FlexPay) start at $60/month last I checked, and this provides unlimited SMS and HSPA+ data connections (although with speeds slower than generally available in The Netherlands).

Maybe you should think about leaving the two largest, most blatantly evil telecom corporations in the USA (Verizon or AT&T) and begin to analyze costs and benefits associated with locking yourself into 2-year contracts to get a simple mobile Internet plan. Almost any other country has prices wildly below your USA-based figures, and even if you play your cards right in the USA you will be paying far less.

It's interesting to note, that while Debian has traditionally supported more CPU microarchitectures than any other mainstream GNU+Linux distribution out there, they have decided to officially stop supporting multiple microarchitectures with the release of Squeeze. The dropped architectures are alpha, hppa, and arm, the latter of which is replaced by the new "Embedded" ABI of ARM, which Debian calls armel.

Although kfreebsd-i386 and kfreebsd-amd64 have been added, these are not true new CPU microarchitectures in and of themselves, as they are compiled to standard x86 and x86_64 respectively, but obviously with the fairly radical change of not using Linux at all with a different GNU libc requiring all packages to be recompiled. This is the same situation as we have traditionally seen in the never-officially-released hurd-i386 port of Debian (which makes sense to call Debian GNU I suppose, as the Hurd kernel is part of the GNU project already) which seems to be missing so far with Debian 6.0 so far, pending a decision to potentially drop it as well.

All in all, amazing work by all in the Debian project. It remains an incredibly impressive feat that such a project can have no corporate oversight or ownership yet maintain such an impressively influential, relevant, and useful place in the operating system ecosystem. Even with dropping a couple of architectures, Debian still supports more computer types than most people even know exists, and continues to provide package updates that many many other operating systems base their repositories from. Also wonderful to see the website be updated!!

This is not news, because it's not true. Five years is nowhere near long enough for any change to occur in an input device which almost every desktop and laptop workstation uses. Think about it: all they point to are the Wii controller and touch screens on smart phones. These are horrible indicators for gaging the future of general purpose computer trends.

The Wii is a gaming console, and the iPhone is a cell phone. They are devices which fit into a very specific market and therefore have evolved to have input mechanisms that work well within that market. Not to mention that both of these examples are not comparable in any way: TVs/projectors aren't touchscreens, and iPhones don't point at anything.

If you expect us to believe the mouse is going away so soon, then you need to show us the currently available viable alternative that not only fulfills the functionality of the mouse, but surpasses it. To believe that such a method of input is not only available now, but also will be inexpensive enough to acheive market dominance over a device which basically every desktop/laptop user has grown accustomed to... it's just plain silly.

This seems like more of a troll statement to get clicks or news coverage than anything else.