Mom is that you?

maybe uses Intel VPro as a vector?

Debian-kit. Full GNU system no chroot.

All of these companies make packaged solutions. It would be like taking a Ford motor, Toyota transmission and Honda body and hiring engineers to put it together. It doesn't make the job easier. When you bring in engineers they all have the same basic skills but have specialties due to their day to day workloads. They can tell you how their software works but it doesn't mean they can just 'fix' your software.

What this will do is encourage people to make their own HTPC. With Steam's new game pad and hopefully AAA game titles throwing something like XBMC along side it would make a pretty decent living room PC for a lot less than paying the Windows license. The drivers could be added to desktop distributions making those who already use Linux on the desktop happier and those sitting on the fence more likely to make the jump. Game developers already don't care about Windows but the PC game market is profitable and if Valve makes porting from console to SteamOS simple (which shouldn't be that bad since next gen consoles are x86 based) then more titles will show up on SteamOS before Windows. It's basically a role your own console. You can cheap out and put together an AMD APU setup with a couple GB RAM for a bit over $100 and play most games a mid to low res. When you consider that Xbox360 maxes out at 1080i/720p you could easily get that on AMDs next chips. Or you can just carry over all your Steam library and buy a card like the Radeon 7850 going for
TL;DR It will be better than you think.

Tell that to BlackBerry.

Google SSHFS

This. With all the aggregate data used in the day to day life of a trader how exactly does this one tweet become the defacto reasoning for the price change?

When you have that many people who all know the value of the all mighty dollar don't kid yourself. Do you really think some contractor waltzed in threw a number like that out for just the software and got it? It's just like any company, the CXO might not have any clue what Java, HTML or the Internet is for that reason but try asking him or her for a couple million with just a smile and see what happens. There is no way 600+Million USD was given directly to a bunch of code monkeys, it went through many, many hands before the first can of Mountain Dew was cracked I personally guarantee it.

So if the specs were open people could make their own GPU's using those specs? Well no they couldn't. The second they got to market they would be shutdown faster then the materials got shipped. So how could you take advantage of the patented spec's if they were open sourced?

Most people will take it to BestBuy/ FS where they lug their old, dusty box up to the counter. The tech smirks and waits for it.

Cust: "I want to upgrade my PC to 8!"
Tech: "OK!, I will have to charge you $40 to look at it and clean it out, $60 for DDR2/DDR RAM that hasn't been made for 4 years, $50 for a PCIe GPU (you do want the fancy desktop right...?), $150 for the Windows 8 DVD, $100 to backup your old docs and viruses, and $150 to put windows and your viruses back on!"
Cust: "Umm where is your computer dept again?"

True, but now Microsoft got what they wanted. IMHO Microsoft did what they did to get a rock bottom price. Now they can just have it as a European sattelite office and close one down somewhere else. Same payroll just different people charging the taxes.

If anything Microsoft could just leave an office or just change the name on the building. The government would just really care about employing their constituents and bringing/keeping tax money into the country.

Compressed cypher text should be quite easy to crack shouldn't it?

Most compression algorithms use a dictionary, if you knew approximately the dictionary was in the data stream it should make it fairly easy to guess the key wouldn't it?

Compressed English for example would have many similar dictionaries amongst most digests. Knowing the most common dictionary entries statically analyzing the cypher text would result in a clear text digest which in turn would be trivial to reveal the message.

Of course I welcome any insight from anyone more knowledgeable since I am not well versed in cryptography.

I would bet the farm that Microsoft has been passing some types of loans Nokias way or at least contracts that indicate Microsoft has joint ownership of the bread and butter. If anyone was to buy Nokia aside from Microsoft it would likely be for something less than table scraps and you would be lucky to get stationary and office supplies.