I agree that most of her novells are very similar. However, when it comes to short stories, she has written several outstanding pieces of work.

Gnome is probably the biggest reason that Linux on the desktop never happens. KDE is a much better alternative. People who are used to Windows learn KDE in no time.

For a few years it has almost completely stopped music piracy in scandinavia and in other european countries
No it hasn't. It might have decreased, but it certainly hasn't stopped. I would say that me and my friends still download as much music as before.

Now instead of sending each other mp3 files as file transfer people are just pasting spotify links in IM conversations here.
No one has *ever* sent me a Spotify link, but I stil get sent torrent-links to albums my friends believe I might enjoy.

I get the feeling that one cannot trust Google and their services. They keep cutting them off after a while. Granted these were not the most used services, but still there has been quite a few services that has been cancelled over the year. Some services, such as Wave, didn't really get the chance to work. I think developers will be less likely to jump on board and start using new services/API:s when there is a chance that it will be cancelled within a short while :-(

Exactly - they're completely useless unless you have a monitor to dedicate to them, since they're attached to the desktop and are therefore completely useless because the only way you can see them is if you hide all other windows.

That's why you have multiple, virtual desktops...

Gnome is supposedly simple to use for beginners, but it is too different for a Windows-user with some experience. It would probably be much better if the notebooks were loaded with KDE instead. At least it looks somewhat like Windows to start with, even though it is far better...

Something as awful as "I'm a PC" wouldn't make it here in Sweden. Well, it might have 20, 30 years ago. But as a contemporary ad, it is just ridiculous!

At least the Seinfield ads were amusing. Clearly their purpose was to be ads about nothing, just as the Seinfield show was a show about nothing. It was the only thing I ever felt the least bit excited about from MS.

Maybe the problem is component-think. We don't need components in an OSS world. We don't need blackbox objects with certain particular interfaces.

As you I eye web services with a very sceptic eye. However, I cannot agree with your statements about components. A good component framework is a Godsend for all developers. Mucking about in the source code to get access to a tiny part of a larger application is ancient technology. Sadly none of the available OSS component techs are up to snuff. Neither KParts nor Bonobo go far enough and are focused too much on GUI components. Java's beans are better, but of course not OSS.