I love the Brits. (But I love everyone.)

As executives, Brits have developed this wonderful, pugnacious, straight-talking chip-on-the-shoulder attitude in our time. It's a kind of "oh yeah, sez you" that owes more to soccer yobs than fox hunting.

And for a journalist it's great fun.

Open a UK office and you can guarantee something really loud and brash is going to come out of it. Microsoft has been finding this out a lot lately.

This time it's Nick McGrath, head of platform strategy for Microsoft in the UK, who says Linux isn't ready for "mission critical computing."

This is funny. No version of Windows can yet handle high-end mainframe demands. The thing just has too much overhead. Microsoft doesn't even target the very top end.

Yet Linux, which is a form of Unix, which has been around about 20 years longer than Windows, is somehow not ready for "mission-critical computing."

I hope McGrath did a silly walk out of the room after he made that statement. (You should know that John Cleese, who created the Ministry of Silly Walks for Monty Python, did an excellent stint in the 1980s as a corporate consultant. Buy his videos here.)