I don't understand why they don't just go ahead and drop the SGML parts of HTML 5, if they are going to break backwards compatibility why not move to a completely XML based syntax.

Statistical sampling, they give the vaccine to a large number of people and see if the rate of infection among the vaccinated is lower than amongst those in a control group. If the vaccine is 100% effective then no one in the vaccinated group will become infected, and inevitably some in the control group will be.

You are forgetting the fact that IE is still the dominant browser (65%) and not even their newest version supports any of these features. 17% of internet users are still using IE6, 41% IE7, and only 7% for IE8. Just think how long it will take before 90% of users are using a browser that supports HTML5 and until then very few people will support it, unless they can specifically target Firefox 3.5+. I suspect Windows 9 will be out by the time that happens.

If they do this I will stop buying games and simply start pirating them. They will have lost me as a customer forever.

His idea to bar linking to copyrighted materials is absurd and could break the web, almost everything on the web is copyrighted by someone. How exactly would implement this for pages where there are multiple copyright owners for different parts of the page, who have only given permission to the original site to use them? Would I need every commenter's permission to link to a Slashdot comment page? You only give permission to Slashdot to use your content not me.

There are already ways to restrict people from linking to your site, you could block all requests that don't have a referer from a list of approved sites. I realize that it is easy to turn off or fake referers but most users either won't know how or won't bother. Also as for restricting copyrighted material to only preapproved individuals, that technology already exists and is used very widely on the internet and copyright law can already deal with sites that will take copyrighted material and simply redisplay it. While I share his desire to see newspapers continue and not die out, this is not the right approach (or at least we don't need new laws for them).