WinCE has a very large subset of desktop Win32 APIs. Of course it's not binary compatible, we're mostly talking about ARM platforms on 'phones.

Linux has the whole apt-get/aptitude/whatever thing but that's not going to be the draw in the mobile space. Something based on it maybe, but it's gonna have to be a whole lot more user friendly to compete with the App Store etc. Even if it's more free(TM)... And of course few people are going to develop for it if there's no return on their investment.

Linux makes a large amount of sense on a nerd targeted netbook, in fact as a mostly Windows user I might switch to something like that, but the mass market is still not driven by the forces you would like.

Some of your points are well made.

No.

Whatever you think about Microsoft (and if it's the usual cult mentality, I really don't care) Microsoft have screwed up pretty badly (more than normal, if you will) on WM7.

It's hella late and they have pissed off a lot of people. I would personally really like to see Microsoft's continual presence in the mobile space if only for the sake of diversity... I'm unashamedly a Microsoft user and mostly supporter. Downmods be damned. But WM7 is pretty much a disaster area.

I hope they have something really good on the way... And even then, I worry that they're gonna let Android rule the world. Which is careless, because Android used to suck. But it's getting better very quickly, and there's still no sign of WM7.

No, in C such operators can take any nonzero value as true, but always produce 1 for a true result. In C++ they produce bool false/true and those convert to int as 0/1.

Weapons of Mass Instruction?