Went from Jaunty to Karmic on a Dell Mini 9 (both were the Netbook Remix editions) and was greeted with no wireless and no microphone in Skype. The former is a documented issue with the Broadcom drivers and has a fairly straightforward workaround if you're within reach of a wired ethernet connection. The latter appears to be a problem with Skype 2.1.0.47 (current version in Medibuntu for Karmic, and a "beta" no less) and PulseAudio. So far, the workarounds for the latter appear to be to downgrade Skype or remove Pulse.

Amazon never had the first mover advantage. Sony easily beat Amazon to market. Amazon obviously had more success, however. The Kindle runs Linux and Java. There's no excuse for failing to support unicode fonts in that environment. We're not even talking about poor interface issues for right-to-left languages. Most users for whom the Kindle's latin-only fixation is a problem would be well pleased if the Kindle just used a Unicode font!

A physical DVD, purchased from a brick and mortar store in central Shanghai (the city with the highest cost of living in China, AFAIK) retails for 7RMB*, which approximately USD1.03. Of course this is a "fake" DVD, but it includes full color printing on the DVD itself as well as a full-color jacket insert. I'll grant that the quality of the printing is of lesser quality than a legitimate DVD, but factoring in rent, wages, payoffs, returns (yes, they accept returns for defective merchandise), I don't think the production of a physical DVD approaches USD1.50.

* I've seen as low as 5RMB and as high as 12RMB, but the former are from street sellers and the latter for shops that have a largely foreign clientele.

Not to take away from your point, but according to the Chicago Sun-Times report, the driver requested a breathalyzer test on the scene, but the officer claimed he didn't have a breathalyzer device in his squad car. The driver only refused the test later, at the police station.