On the #kde IRC channel tonight there was some discussion about how bad english spelling rules were. I found out via google that there is a 'Simplified Spelling Society'. From the site, here is a description of how English spelling was invented:
From 1476 printers took charge of things.
The early printers were nearly all foreign. Caxton, who set up the first printing press in London, was English but had lived mainly in Belgium and had written mostly in Latin. His assistants all came from the Continent. English spelling rules were therefore devised almost entirely by non-native speakers of English. Printers often also added letters to the last word of a line to make the whole text look neater. They were paid by line and habitually inserted letters into words to earn more money. Many of their whims and tricks eventually became rules of English spelling.
http://www.spellingsociety.org/aboutsss/leaflets/whyeng.php
That made me 'laugh' (pronounced 'larf'), or as we say in the 21st century LOL..
Syndicate Blogs
Accuracy
The site you refer to is rather interesting, but even with my casual acquaintance with the subject matter (a few books including a very thick one I've yet to finish), I'd have to contend some of their points. For example:
"English was one of the first non-Latin / non-Greek languages to develop a writing system of its own. Early English spelling was very consistent and predictable."
Maybe, but that was Anglo-Saxon or Old English, not English as we know it. It's a bit like saying that everything would be alright if only hadn't stopped speaking German, more or less. English is the product of extensive borrowing from other languages, and quite possibly the formula to its acceptance. (I'd also question the assertion about the "Latin grammar rules which English had before the Conquest". The very thick book talks a lot of the influence of various languages on English, and I'm fairly sure Latin doesn't score highly in the grammar department.)
I certainly don't think the state of English spelling is excusable, especially if one has had experience of "reformed" languages, but one can't ignore the very nature of the language - one of promiscuous ad-hoc borrowing. Perhaps English can be reformed one day, but it's unfair to judge those who contributed to its lexicon too harshly: back then English was very much a language in continuous development.
A trap in every word
I'm a native English speaker who learnt Dutch at a late age, I have to say that learning to spell in a language with reformed spelling is like a breath of fresh air after a bean feast, in comparison to English. Lots of languages have their spelling fixed. Why can't we have a go at English? Etymological links be damned!
I did some digging around a while ago about the state of English spelling. The best proposal for reform that I found was Cut Spelng. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut_Spelling ) It is a quite elegant transform and maintains a high degree of backwards compatibility.
There is an old program around called BTRSPL ("Better Spelling") which is written in Quick Basic (?) and contains some dictionaries for converting between the different spelling systems. I've played with the idea of doing something with the dictionaries, like put up a babelfish style web page for doing translations. Unfortunately I haven't followed through on this idea...
Mark Twain
Here are Mark Twain's classic suggestions for a spelling reform.
I can feel an irony...
... in Mark Twain's suggestions. But I'd still prefer the english language with reformed spelling
Of course I'm biased, I'm Ukrainian 
I agree (partially)
My mother's tongue (Romanian) is an almost 100% phonetic one. Its _extremely_ simple to use. It's phonetic spelling is intentional and is modeled after the Latin (which is also almost 100% phonetic). So, I can definitely understand the pain of the non-phonetic language speakers. And English is not the worst. Just look at French.
On the other hand, trying to simply (I'd say stupidly) turning a language to phonetic, after 400 years of evolution, is shortsighted. Doing this would loose: a) etimology and b) word-groups relationships.
Ex for a: If "station" becomes spelled "steishn" (or whatever), it looses the immediate etimological link with the latin root, "statia"
Ex for b: How would a school kid learn easier that "ciaild" and "cildrn" are the singular and plural of the current "child"?
Romans were ancient, primitive (to modern standards -- given they were polyteist and slave-owners), gruesome killers, but they had an awesome culture of language and litterature. Just two examples: "filius", "filia" and "filii" all mean the same thing (child) in masculine, feminine and plural form. What can be simpler? (and it would be fascinating to unravel the etymology of the root "fil"). And second, the "homo" meaning "man", which has clear etymological roots in the sanskrit "om".
Ah, language. Just don't play with it easily.
Re: I agree (partially)
Some spelling corrections to your post:
modeled => modelled
etimology => etymology
looses => loses
I would say about 90% of slashdot contributors, who are probably native speakers, don't know when to use 'lose' or 'loose', let alone non-native speakers. Should spelling be on a par with the spoken language? Can we ignore the roots of the english language by throwing away the spelling of words from other languages it has adopted? I don't know.
Jucata responded to my blog with 'rofl', and I attempted to correct him by saying it should be 'rotlf', and then I corrected myself by saying it should actually be 'rotfl' - Hmm.. So I think there is a danger that we can invent difficult to spell and difficult to pronounce words/acronyms in the 21st century as a result of our keyboard based text entry being hard to use. And maybe we will be no better off than Caxton's crap helpers were at understanding spelling usability.
typing errors
Not knowledge errors (and yes, it enforces our common point in favor of phonetic the fact that we _need_ this kind of knowledge). Mostly related to my 39 years of training in a phonetic language, in which we write "etimologic" and "modelat" (double letters are the worst affront of non-phonetic languages). And I believe "modeled" is correct in british English (or was it american English? http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=modeled). I wrote "etymologic" many times in the comment afterwards. And "loose" was consequence of lack of touchtyping skills (another reason agains non-phonetic).
As of acronyms, altough I use them lightly online, I am definitely against using them outside IRC and e-mail, even collocvially.
I repeat that I agree with you smiling ironically at non-phonetic languages. And I must acknowledge that writing in English, even after 15 years, requires from me at least twice as much effort as writing in other languages.
But, as I said, language being central to being human, we need to consider the topic profoundly. Easy dissing and tossing will only further us from a better solution (case in point: Esperanto --and I'm advancing myself dangerously here, as I'm far from knowledgeable).
Re: typing errors
Apologies for pointing out spelling differences, it's normally a bit rude within the KDE project to do that, and I hope you didn't mind.
You might be right about modeled, it's possible that it would be spelled that way in British english, but not when talking about computer topics. The dictionary link doesn't say which version is which. So 'modelled' looks more 'right' to me. But if I'm supposed to be a native speaker and aren't sure, it just reinforces how difficult it is. In fact that is a further problem with English spelling that there are two slightly different variants, British and American. I would happily abandon British spelling as a start towards improving things.