Chewing gum is *the* single thing I truly despise in our free societies. It is ridiculously cheap, ubiquitous, popular - and more stable in the environment than granite. People chew that stuff all the time and spit it everywhere - all floors, streets, corners, sidewalks of all cities are riddled with that decades-old, positively eternal chewed chewing gum.

Just look at the streets on a busy intersection: thousands of flattened chewing gum remains, outlasting the tarmac they are embedded in by decades.

Sometimes when I look down on the city floor for some reason and notice the gum, I have a hard time regaining the faith in personal freedom, pushing back the urge to cry for Singaporean laws against that filth.

Honestly: what part of individual freedom demands that people can spit this stuff everywhere?

The Eee and its ilk have shown that people are willing to buy Windowsless boxes, which is an affront to Microsoft's business model. You have to wonder if Midori is a "plan B" to allow them to continue to get revenue from Linux users. Alan, Bob and Clarence may well be willing to pay $10 a month for "Windows access" on their Eees if it lets them use Office, and this way Microsoft have a guaranteed revenue stream whatever OS people actually buy with their machine. Especially if it's agressively marketed and bundled.