If a post on Facebook’s developer blog is accurate, you have less than a week to make your call for no change. That’s right, no change. a group of members have coalesced behind a petition, massing together “Against the ‘New Facebook’” to send Zuckerberg and the rest of them out in Palo Alto a message: “We’re not saying get rid of the new layout, just that they should keep the old one and let us choose which layout we want like skins. Color options would be good too.”

As Compete’s trendspotters made known this past week, many Facebook users have switched over to the “new” Facebook, also called “beta,” only to revert back to the old way. Yet, the company is choosing to switch the network over by default in a matter of days, not months, as I myself envisioned it would. If you’re not fond of the idea of a site-wide shift, join the gentle opposition. Their goal at present is to reach 1 million registrants. As of 7:50 PM ET Saturday, they collectively number 424k-strong. The count has been 11 42 days in the making. Thousands enter the fold by the hour. All to invoke no change, but rather, a choice. Where do you fall? (Note: We made mention of a parallel movement yesterday, less than half the size, with nearly the same title. It happens.)

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So a whole lot of people thought Microsoft’s Silverlight technology warranted an install to watch the summer games in Beijing at NBCOlympics.com. And another big crowd felt different, thinking, among other things, that the use of Adobe Flash would naturally suit them just as well.

Following the main events in China (the Paralympics opened today), the limit of Microsoft’s exclusivity deal with NBC was made clear this past week when NBC broadcast live coverage of the NFL’s opening game between the New York Giants and the Washington Redskins in celebratory preparation to do the very same for games occurring every Sunday night for duration of the next 17 weeks - and all in Flash. NFL.com, too, displayed Thursday’s game and will routinely cover Sunday matches here on in.

The no-show-Silverlight talk doesn’t end there. Suzanne Tindal of CNET’s Webware quoted Microsoft senior program manager by the name of Scott Hanselman as having said at the company’s own Tech.Ed conference that “we’re going to see a 100- to 1,000-fold speed increase in JavaScript as Google and the guys at Mozilla…kick us in the arse.” Furthermore, Jonas Follesø of Cap Gemini, an IT and business consultancy, commented that JavaScript will pose a serious challenge to Silverlight - more so than Flash has thus far.

An interesting position for Silverlight to find itself in, for sure. As it is basically known, Silverlight is a platform for developing rich Internet applications. More so with the 2.0 beta than with versions to come before, given its support for .NET and so forth. Therefore, juxtapositions with both Flash and JavaScript are rightfully made. Which means that if Silverlight is to have any chance at the kind of ubiquity shown by its more common competitors, it needs to do far more than solidify video delivery partnerships with the likes of NBC. It must inhabit a vast supply of Web applications of all types. Which, to speak reasonably here, isn’t so inevitable. Years of assimilation among Web users needs to happen to achieve an all-around permanence. Flash and JavaScript developers know this. Unfortunately for Microsoft, those forces didn’t have monsters of such dimensions to spar with.

It’s not an impossibility for Silverlight to grow, mind you. Given the right level of attention to the platform, Microsoft could mark its Olympic foray as only the first big starter in the long slog toward mass adoption. But “could” is the key word. The hill climbs (yes, climbs plural) will be trying. One, as I noted above, is to convince the public of its validity and utility in the presence of two semi-household names. There’s a toughie.

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Next week, DEMOfall 08 hits San Diego, California for 3 days, and a total of 72 companies will, according to Chris Shipley, Mary A. C. Fallon, and the rest at DEMO setting the stage, “launch disruptive innovations.” The span of companies is as wide-reaching in design as they are in global placement. Shipley & Co are promising to showcase everything from battling spam (effectively); a game development utility for the masses, sharing and selling photographs, and lots else. And they’ve gone ahead and offered up an early look at the names slated to pitch their product or service to the crowd. And a big tease this list is. Here are some Web-centric highlights that we’ll be keeping an eye on.

Alerts, Bellevue WA - Information, delivered. News, weather, notes, etc.

Telnic, London, England - Store, update, publish contact information.

Awind, Junghe, Taiwan - Your digital home, plus WiMax.

beeTV, Milano, Italy - Personalized video.

ffwd.com, San Francisco, CA - “Your personal remote control for video on the Web.”

Invision TV, Bethesda, MD - An “Internet video guide.”

RemoTV, New Haven, CT - Stream media to any Internet-connected device.

Blue Lava, Honolulu, HI - Immerse yourself in your photography.

Kadoo, Washington, DC - Share files, etc. with specific people.

MeDeploy, Hamden, CT - Distribute media in lots of places. Quickly. Easily.

MixMatchMusic, Burlingame, CA - Connect with musicians.

Photrade, Cincinnati, OH - Sort of iStockPhoto-like. Name has received mention on Mashable.

Echonest, Somerville, MA - Music recommendation through APIs.

Paragent, Muncie, IN - Remote desktop management.

Accordia Group, New Rochelle, NY - Business relationship management.

Arsenal Interactive/HeyCosmo, Mountain View, CA - Social “unification.”

Familybuilder, New York, NY - Build a family tree within a social network. (I.e., Facebook, Bebo.)

TravelMuse, Los Altos, CA - We’ve covered this startup before. We loved.

Zazengo, Santa Cruz, CA - Social activism networking. We previously highlighted one network build on Zazengo, called MalariaEngage.

GreenSherpa, Santa Barbara, CA - Personal cash flow management.

Rudder, Inc, Houston, TX - Financial analysis in your inbox.

Momindum, Paris, France - mash documents with video presentations.

Qtask, Burbank, CA - All manner of project collaboration.

iWidgets, San Francisco, CA - Social marketing.

Semanti Corp, Alberta, Canada - Semantic Web cataloguing.

SkyData, San Mateo, CA - LinkedIn, Facebook, Outook, Google, Salesforce, SugarCRM, NetSuite in one.

WebDiet, Henderson, NV - Eat healthy, be healthy, wherever you are.

CrowdSpring, Chicago, IL - Crowdsource ideas. We covered these guys back in March.

Sim Ops, San Francisco, CA - easily build your own games.

Disclosure: Mashable is a sponsor of DEMOfall 08

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