... Lightpeek will probably be an important technology for those seeking the best performance for a long time.
The reason USB 3.0 will be dominant is that it will for certain be much cheaper than an advanced fiber-optical cable which is bendable. I for one am concerned still how bendable it is - my guess is that it will be nowhere as safe as USB, and it will likely be substantially more expensive. Lightpeek might replace all other cables, and Intel might push it in their devices, but will others who now will have to pay Intel royalties every time? USB 3.0 is free to use and a much safer bet, however we will likely see both in premium machines. USB 3.0 will be fast enough for most people for now. We can also assume there will be an USB 4.0 coming when the demand actually gets there as they will accept paying Intel the royalties for the premium machines where they can recover the cost and at the same time earn money, but cannot recover the cost when we want that speed in a budget machine... My guess is that USB will remain relevant until we remove the cables permanently, maybe something like lightfleet (http://lightfleet.com/) but a version which would not get interrupted by someone walking in between or something.

Reading the article they talk about an older simpler problem not mentioning a birthdate resulting in probability of 1/3. This was wrong just as well as the Tuesday not being relevant.
The calculations in both cases failed to take into account that we did not know which boy where older as well. The list should not have been:
boy / boy
boy / girl
girl / boy
girl / girl ( impossible)
resulting in 2/3 probability the other was a girl and 1/3 for a boy. This is however wrong... It should have been listed as:
boy (1) / boy (2)
boy (2) / boy (1)
boy / girl
girl / boy
girl (1) / girl (2) (impossible)
girl (2) / girl (1) (impossible)
Resulting in 2/4 for both boy and girl giving the real result of 50%.

There are no indication as to whether the boy listed was the younger or older.

Adding the Tuesday information will now correctly not make any difference.

There is also another important difference. Music and movies are made to express something, they are usually not made upon demand.
Software on the other hand should be made because someone needs it. Anyone needing the software enough should be willing enough to pay the price to get it done, with open source, this additional work may be provided back to the community to ensure the company don't need to develop the same software again when ten versions later a serious problem is found in the old version. If they did not contribute back, they would now need to do the work again, but having contributed the code most likely made sure all the aspects the company needed has been taken care of, and even improved!

Software developers in the Open Source world do not expect to be selling millions of versions of any software - they expect to get a request for providing the functionality that a company demands, get paid for making what is needed, and move on to the next demand. The continuous improvement of the code base make Open Source the clear winner in the long run. There will not be any room for a Software company thinking the old way of make once, sell everywhere anymore.

Music and Movies on the other hand...

From experience I totally agree:
I myself tried to learn linux 3 times before I finally moved to the platform. I had my then had Redhat 5.2, SuSE, Mandrake, and some others before dropping out - the interfaces worked well, but I did not understand the fundamentals - expecially things like why I could not execute my programs etc - which I later on learned was - my programs where not in path and thus I had to make them executable and then use ./ and other issues.

All solutions - Ubuntu, Redhat, Slackware, etc use entirely different package managers etc. This was another huge problem for me - I was learned the Redhat way and had no understanding of how I could install things myself when I needed. This is a major issue.

Through my Linux experience in school which essentially was more about creating some basic C programs etc, I had yet no understanding of the way the system worked, why there was a /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin and so on, and I was close to drop Linux altogether.

I did make one last attempt - Linux from Scratch http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ : Finally a project that helped me make sense of all the Unix systems!! It took me only one single week despite having to recompile all the code! The compilation time was time to learn the fundamentals - partitioning, file system considerations, Linux Standard Base : why some things are to be in /bin, others in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin or /opt and so on.

As soon as I had finished the basic Linux from Scratch program, I had learned enough to use ANY Linux system; I moved to Gentoo at the time to make sure I did not forget what I had learned and improve some more. Today I use Redhat ES for servers and mostly Ubuntu for desktop.

1) Open Source is mainly a replacement of "built in house/customized software" than packaged software. You are approaching people who want full control rather than a generalized solution.
2) By returning the changes to the community, they can ensure other improvements done can be implemented cheaply in the future.
3) Other people and organizations may find that the new base is a start point for their organization too, and use it with or without modifications.

These steps are valuable for consultants, companies who want control and save money, etc. However, when a project grows quickly or is of a kind that is critical many people would desire someone to ensure them that next time they upgrade their solution it does not cause problems, or can be quickly resolved by someone, or someone who are liable to fix the issues should they occur in their system, then it might go to a new level for the maintainers:

4) The real money for a development company will not be there until sufficient amount of people or organizations want to pay for support.

Face it - Open Source is about mass customization. It is also about making the common a commodity - do not expect to sell things that are common needs for everyone for a massive price forever (word-processors, base operating systems, etc), The money will only come from supporting these application when the base is big enough.

Assuming you can sell your software to enough companies, you might not be interested in Open Sourcing it out - a large part of it all is weather you believe you will gain more on support by obtaining a larger number of users, or if you think the selling to and supporting less people bring more value.

I do agree there is a pain changing passwords constantly, and I can't say I like it any better where am working with two separate rolling passwords every 2 months.
I did however obtain a great tip on the net previously: Find yourself a 8 letter pass-phrase but leave two spots empty: example "_phrase_", "Phra__se" or something. Memorize the phrase except for the 2 letters you left out - this give you 3600 alternative passwords combinations to choose from! And you can write down these two letters. : Q!, : W*, and so on. Nobody can guess your phrase, so the password is still quite safe!
I am using one phrase for work, another for my personal stuff. Now every time I update my password I simply update these letters.
Sure, I am still at times typing the wrong password right after I have changed one, but after two tries I am sure to remember that I changed it, and what combination I changed to after last one.

How can we talk about the statistics of people having accidents without talking about the statistics of people driving the car in the first place?
How many young people buy a Toyota vs old people? Toyota has typically been cheap and easy to maintain and repair. This is something typically elder people value much more than young people who rather go for something looking good instead. The article also mention the statistics are more skewed against immigrants than Americans, however Toyota is not an American car, and there are other American cars. Immigrants are thus far more likely to using a foreign car than someone born in the country of Ford and GM. The statistics may just as well be representative of the demographics buying Toyota rather than saying anything meaningful about the accidents.

- Beware of statistics; it can easily be abused to fool people to believe in lies

That was exactly the problem that is being corrected here. kilo=1000 for everything.
We don't need more bastardized standards like 1 mile = 1.609344 kilometers, 1 mile [nautical, International] = 1.852 kilometer.
k=1000 no matter what we measure. It is is combined with anything like -gram, -meter, -joule or whatever. There is no need for k in computers meaning 1024.
This is what now has been corrected. The unit 1024 had to be given another name, as it for certain it is not kilo.

First. In a democracy, do you think that the winning party be it republican or democrats AFTER being elected will ask the people what the majority think before doing what they believe in?
Ubuntu in this case represent an elected distribution just like democrats or republicans, you are free to choose a different party if you don't believe in the decisions made by the one you currently use, and this works much better in this case as you have close to endless alternatives to choose from.
And this is only about the layout. I would be surprised if no windows like theme(s) were included as alternative in the base system - choose it if you want.

And then - who votes in a democracy? As far as for most countries, it is not the people but their representatives - thus if people already voted Ubuntu to be the leading party, they are in power to vote on your behalf until you change party - is that not so? I for one cannot say I see many places where any true democracy exists, only the quasi forms created where representatives votes on our behalf.

Internet is a neutral technology; a tool that may be used for good and bad, it has done nothing in itself to improve peace or cause war.
- Internet is used by people to obtain war technology causing proliferation
- Internet is right now causing tension between US and China which are accusing each other of Internet warfare
- Internet could potentially be used to to send commands for setting of weapons from across the world
- It has been demonstrated Internet hackers could get access to power plants, cause it to malfunction, and cause minor and major "accidents"

How can anyone nominate a TOOL that may be used for good and bad for a peace price when the side of bad is just as big as that of good???
I completely fail to see how Internet in itself have done anything for peace.

I am skeptic about online applications, unless of course the application can be cached or the Google doc server application in fact is running on the netbook.
I am however totally agreeing that Open Office is way to heavy for a Netbook. I do however myself usually use Abi-word and Gnumerics when finding OO too heavy.
How does Google Docs compare to Abi-word?

Notice that there is a DUAL license of MySQL. Whatever EVERYBODY have contributed to MySQL are not squarely GPL but are also the full property of whoever owns the Commercial license.
This mean that Oracle after buying MySQL can take EVERY technology incorporated into MySQL and mix it with Oracle, then leave the project either dead, or simply maintaining it is as bait. If you contribute to MySQL from that point on, you know you are giving away whatever you do to Oracle... In other words. MySQL is dead as soon as Oracle owns the MySQL. GPL only keeps the leftovers.

Then there may be no way to determine who and from where someone posted the content.

On the other side: oppressive regimes are likely to block sites like this to begin with, if they could access through for example Freenet, blocking the content from the citizens is likely much harder. This include content like in these cases where information is about supposed free countries.

--
9/11 - Also known as the day US helped overthrow the Democracy in Chile inserting the dictator Pinochet as head of state.

By having one wikileaks in a place not covered by US laws and another covered by US laws. What is the law for placing subdomains with a separate hosting provider broad by the way? Lets say us.wikileaks.org was hosted in France and www.wikileaks.org was hosted in the USA?

Another option might be to place a wikileaks on Freenet, and simply place references to the content on the wikileaks website.

To mention Bing as a better alternative to Google in this case might not be an improvement at all - sure Bing might currently have a better privacy policy than Google, but certainly must follow the same governmental regulations as long as they are based in USA. What might be much smarter is to start looking for a search engine that is outside of reach for the Patriot Act, meaning looking for a search engine outside of US boarder.

I live in Canada where the Patriot Act does not exist, however, Google and Bing and the other big ones most likely still will hide themselves behind the Patriot Act for information gathering purposes. I would love to know good search engine alternatives existing in Canada or Europe that also got good privacy policies. Or maybe there are ok search engine(s) in Freenet???