At least NY lets you track your ballot online ("New York Ballot Tracker").

Nowhere does it say Windows Blue will include the Start button. It's purely speculation based on this:

"In a separate interview with Mary-Jo Foley, Reller said simply that Blue would “address customer feedback” Microsoft has received on Windows 8 and Windows RT."

A poor article with a sensationalist headline against MS: great for HN!

Edit: at the time of this comment, the submission title was "Microsoft: All RIGHT, you can have your Start button back"

It is a Register uk tongue in cheek article title, it isn't meant to be sensationalist.

"Many users don't like it, vendors don't like it, and developers don't like it."

I would love to know how he came to the conclusion that developers don't like it. I'm building a Metro app in JS with VS 2012 and couldn't be happier. What is there to complain about when the preview OS, the SDK and the IDE are free? The level of documentation already available (incl. the sample projects) is also impressive.

I'm a developer and I don't like it. It's like a house that makes you go through the bathroom to get to the living room, that has the light switches hidden, and one room is decorated by IKEA while another is stuck in the seventies. Sure the AC is better and the beds are comfy, but there are so many oddities that while I could live in it, I wouldn't like it.

I second that. I am developing a Metro app using JS and I really like it. Visual Studio is a really nice IDE. And, the tools and documentation are solid as well. I honestly think the author of this article just makes stuff up to try to prove his point.

I haven't published anything to the App Store or Google Play, so I can't compare, but I have nothing bad to say about publishing my app (and its updates) on the WP Marketplace.

Not impressed by this rant. The author admits some of the problems also happened on the App Store, and complains MS won't help them promote the app at this time. The reasons for which the udpated app was rejected at first seem valid to me (though specific info should have been given for the inappropriate content...).

Is it really expected that a developer should be able to move an app between accounts? Were they not aware of the limited audience of WP users? This should not come as a surprise after the second version of their app is done.

I will however agree the publishing portal is poorly implemented.