You sound like a back-end programmer that is bitter his crappy HTML table-generator doesn't cut it anymore.

1. It's W3C not WC3.
2. Why should a non-geek care about W3C standards? They can still code in any broken HTML they feel like if the browser displays it properly. The only reason they'd care is if they're trying to pass it off as professional or paid work. In which case they should work to the quality their client requires or stop lying about their skills

All UI programming is complicated and tricky, this is well known. As languages become more and more abstracted from the nitty-gritty details of interacting with the OS, they become more and more focused on abstract concepts such as objects and their interactions. HTML defines objects (nodes, their attributes, types), CSS and JS define how they interact. If you are so narrow-minded in regards to the tools you use to define or implement your solution then I'm afraid you don't have a very bright future in this field.

Try your hand at some real UI programming for local applications for a while and you'll realise that HTML/CSS/JS is really the UI toolkit you wish you always had. See how long it takes you to write a UI engine to achieve custom behaviour it would have taken an hour or two to achieve using HTML/CSS/JS.

Bullshit. Those people that Microsoft employ already had degrees / education in the field they work in.

You think that if Microsoft wasn't around they'd suddenly lose all interest in their industries? You think that computers aren't a commodity? Someone or something would _have_ to fill the space. And that something and those companies would provide jobs.

The only way that argument holds is if the size of the industry was completely dependant on Microsoft, and that if they were not here people would simply do without computers. A ridiculous idea.

Microsoft don't make any wild innovations, whether they have great products or not. They don't provide anything irreplacable to the industry at all. If they disappeared tomorrow I fail to see any huge change in the nature of the industry, apart from the practical issues of an abandoned platform. Actually I can see a lot of good, healthy change coming from it, as long as it happened slow enough.

Nothing...because it's not a country, it's a kingdom. British and Irish is the most coverage you're going to get.

Actually no, it's simple really. English is the language spoken in England, and however it evolves there. "English" is pretty accurate on its own. Nothing can change that fact...It's right there in the word!
Other dialects? great! But when it comes to nitpicking about the definition of "English", there's no argument.

I don't know where you are but in the UK there's this thing called the Data Protection Act[wikipedia.org]
So at least here it's not their perogative as to if you get to take your data out. The most they can charge you for it is £10.

Except, you know, Opera isn't 100% compliant with CSS 2 or 2.1, and Acid 3 doesn't test for 100% compliance.

Well if you kill Tomboy there'll be no Gnote. So it makes no sense to consider Gnote an alternative to Tomboy.

All that Tomboy and Gnote users will be left with are these developers which have clearly demonstrated their lack of software design skills, leadership, or vision. Which indeed hurts everyone because it means one less high quality Unix/Linux desktop app.

At work it sometimes takes me an hour to get in. Yes, it's because the network is crap even though we've got money falling out of our asses. (I guess IT doesn't get any, or they're too lazy to improve things)

Either way, there's your anecdotal evidence. Just as useful as your's. GP was talking about a work environment, which usually means a network.