The issue wasn't that Microsoft bundled IE, it's that they prevented OEMs from bundling Netscape.

Who is Comodo and why should I trust them?

Brink didn't use Megatextures, there was no need for it to do so.

The only two games to use Megatextures so far are RAGE and Quake Wars. In the latter, they work quite well.

The difference is in implementation. Link prefetching was already supported in Chrome (and Firefox), which fetches the page in the background and stores the results in cache. Chrome 13 goes a step farther, actually prerendering the page in the background if requested (including running Javascript).

Implementation details are here: http://code.google.com/chrome/whitepapers/prerender.html

Then am I allowed to install a keylogger? By your logic, it's the same thing.

Not the same thing - you have groups of friends at each individual school, and you have friends in other colleges who had likely already been invited to Facebook, and everyone could network together. Who couldn't you network with? People not in college, high school students, people who had graduated. It was a very concentrated experience.

The problem with Google+ is that it's just so scattershot. I invited people I know, then they blocked invites. What's the common thing they all have together? They know me, and nothing else. There's no reason for them to come back to the site.

I never understood the "tablet influence". Gnome 3 seems to be very focused on using hot corners and maximizing the use of screen real estate. It's very keyboard/mouse oriented, and not touch friendly at all.

Personally, I've loved it. Gnome 3 gave me something different and interesting, and it made me actually come back to Linux after being a Windows 7 user for years.

I have a CR-48, and the really fast boot (8 seconds), instant sleep/resume, 6-8 hour battery and 3 second shutdown go a long way in making it incredibly useful. The machine has wifi and pay-as-you-go 3G access, and you get 100 MB free 3G a month should you need to check your email when there's no hotspot or something.

Google will have trouble marketing these with all the hype around tablets, but to be honest, it's been a lot more useful than my iPad since I can actually use it as a computer without carrying around my mammoth Thinkpad W500. It's not perfect for me (though it does have SSH!), but for my Mom's next laptop, I'm going to strongly recommend a Chromebook. It's all she needs, the price is right, and there's no spinning platters, security problems, or bloat to worry about.

A key feature of iOS 4.3 was significantly improved JavaScript performance by porting Nitro to iOS, Nitro is a part of Webkit. So yes, this specific iOS update did include a rather significant Webkit update, perhaps one of the most significant ones in recent memory, which makes it suspect.

So they're holding it back on purpose. Maliciously? Who knows.

The only tracking features Chrome makes use of is a ping to Google upon successful install (RLZ identifier, by way of Google Update, which is not installed with Chromium and a separate open source project) and the suggested results in the address bar, which can be disabled.

I'm all for people using whatever browser they want because it suits their needs, but I don't get the FUD against Chrome. It's utter bullshit and anti-Google paranoia when there are plenty of legitimate criticisms to be made.