The USA still has serious problems due to the undue influence of Christianity in the field of Science. Basically, an educated woman is a threat to the Christian Male power structure. So culturally, the US is threatened by educated women.
People don't run OSes, they run the applications the OS runs on. It will probably be the case this guy doesn't WANT to change from Photoshop to Gimp, from IE to FireFox, from AIM to Pidgin, to run Wine for WoW. The list goes on.
Linux has survived, but not really prevailed. The general public still doesn't want Linux, despite the years of improvements. Keep in mind that I took a pessimistic view of Linux survival. That is, I didn't think Linux would survive. I thought that Linux and its users would be slaughtered. It has, and it has grown and improved. I am honestly astounded at the level of advancement that Linux has made
But that being said we are still losing to OSX and Windows. A Couple reasons exist. One is Games. A few more do exist. Things generally aren't happening fast enough, and I really am having a hard time understanding why. Its as if there are not as many coders working on Linux application software while there are more coders working the Kernel. The Former is bad, the latter is good. One thing I think needs to be done is an improvement to Linux's development suite. Something to challenge Visual Studio.
Every year Linux survives is a year of Linux. Lets hope the last year of Linux never comes.
Windows, not the internet created the legions of Spammers, botnets and virii. In the Unix world, we closed the SMTP relays. Yet the Windows bots still swarm. Now. I am not saying that in the Unix world, we would be completely free of security vulnerabilities. There would still be hackers and spammers. But they would no6t be as widespread a problem. The proliferation of Spam has been directly attributed to the rise off Windows bots. Get rid of Windows, you get rid of the problem.
The other problem is the DMCA and DMCA like legislation. We need to be rid of the DMCA by any means necessary
DTV could have been made alot more robust if they had gone with ESVB or OFDM (Which Wifi uses) as a modulation. It seems that with 8SVB they picked the very worst modulation possible.
I'm a little concerned. Is it possible that a specific batch of vaccines got contaminated due to poor quality assurance practises (sorta like how sometimes food gets contaminated with pathogens) and the contaminated vaccines started something like this? I once saw a hearing on C-SPAN by a congressman who basically accused a company of tainting the vaccines with a chemical that broke down into mercury in the blood resulting in mercury poisoning. But in that instance his complaint was not that the vaccine was the culprit, but that the company had not adhered to the regulations put fourth by the FDA and allowed tainted Vaccines in the wild anyway.
Does anyone else know anything about this?
Disclaimer: And by the way, I do trash the Christian Fundamentalists in the anti-Vaccine community. Seriously. They piss me off. But then again, Christians piss me off in general. And if they had their way we'd all be back in the dark ages and disease would run rampant.
If this works... I wonder if it will be possible for other hardware makers to be sued for making Windows only products. One of the big barriers to Linux adoption is chipsets that have no Linux driver and it seems that some companies go out of their way to make hardware that won't work with Linux intentionally.
Its no secret that the majority of/. users Are WINDOWS users. Linux users happen just to be "The Largest Minority". People here attack F/OSS Software almost constant. It never stops. Trolls, astrotufers, you name it, they troll it.
Windows users and OSX users are going to attack Linux users on every front in every way endlessly and relentlessly.
Linux has a Sane Desktop environment: Its called KDE. It conforms to FreeDesktop.org standards.
Linux has actually TWO Sane mans of Installation. RPM, DEB. (Sorry Gentoo Users, Portage doesn't cut it.)
Under absolutely no circumstances should ANY Linux application be "installed" by typing./configure; make; make install. Those steps are for DEVELOPERS and MAINTAINERS only to MAKE packages (RPM, DEB.)
Couple things. RPM and DEB need a standard and understood hierarchy. DEB wins out here. There is less variability in the configuration of DEB, and a great deal of variability in RPM (SUSE, Mandriva, Fedora.) This creates problems that could be solved if someone created a "Unified RPM standard". As far as the RPM and DEB differences are concerned, its my opinion that dpkg and RPM should be interchangable on both systems without having to "convert" from Alien. For example, if I am a Mandriva user, and Ubuntu has something I want, I should be able to set up dpkg and rpm to understand each other and retrieve the DEB Packages from Ubuntu.
There do need to be improvements in SDL, SDL is getting stale.
Another issue is Upstream maintainers. Upstream coders are coding some of these applications with bizzare and stupid configurations that don't work well with EITHER Package manager and all they provide is a tar ball. And then you look at their Windows build, and in some cases its easier to install the Windows Build in Wine. Thats unforgivable.
However, I think that what we are seeing right now is not the outright resistance to Linux. Its not that Linux sucks, its just that Adobe, and Quicken, and several of these ISVs have strictly Anti-Linux policies. Its kinda the same thing as when you see these heavily DRMed web sites that Are Windows+IE only because they rely on IE DRM, and have a written policy against Linux OR Mac.
The fact is, they hate Linux, not because it sucks, not because its hard to write applications for, its that THEY HATE LINUX. Its not rational, its not anything there is a reasonable excuse for. They just hate Linux and they want to see Linux die.
If you remember a while back I said something like: There will never be a year of Linux, but it doesn't matter, what matters is that there is never a 'the last year of Linux or 'the Final year of Linux'. The fear never leaves the back of my mind that there will be a day coming when either Jobs or Ballmer or some US politician like Orin Hatch says 'If you are a Linux user, we will come find you, man, woman, child or company. You will use Windows pr you will pay fines, you will go to jail.'
This whole 30 Million, if its true, could mean Linux is here to stay, at least for a while. It could mean that we will continue to see at least a steady development of Linux games and applications. So Linux may hold on if we can for one thing, find a way to keep from losing any more important programmers, while at the same time attracting new talent. An example of this that hits close to home for me is the announcement Pixel would be leaving. I'm a Mandriva contributor. I'm worried about what will happen to Mandriva without Pixel.
I really wish that the RPM vs. DEB debate. I wish it would be settled. I have Mandriva machines and I have Ubuntu machines. I really wish that I could install RPMs or DEBs on both distributions transparently. It doesn't necessarily mean that there has to be the exclusion of RPMs or DEBs, I just wish that I didn't need to use utilities like Alien to convert one package type to another. I wish I could use both package formats, at least for non-critical systems interchangably, and if Ubuntu has a DEB for something Mandriva has no RPM for, then let the Mandriva box install Ubuntu's DEB.
The US has never really been the freedom loving nation it aspires. when it started, it had slavery, when that ended there was an apartheid of Blacks, after that there were constant conflicts over religion internally. (In fact, religion has caused the US Public school system to be torn apart.) The list goes on. The USian public doesn't really believe in freedom. It believes in White, Christian, Male, wealthy domination. The whole secularism and tolerance thing has been around only since the early 70s.
You can't really have a true open and transparent democracy when such a huge percentage believe in a Monarchical Autocratic universe. The last 8 years, the US presidency has boiled down to "Jesus wants me to be president." My significant other has been told "Jesus wants Christians to run Windows", and "Linux is a Demonic Operating system". So telling the public "Jesus says making copies of music is wrong." and they will believe it. Because thats just the way the USA is.
Short of a revolution in the US or a major civil Rights movement on the part of consumers where millions of people march in protest of IP laws on the corporate headquarters of these IP giants and the capitol, I don't see any changes coming from this. The current generation of USians lacks the motivation for any sort of anti-monopoly revolution. If real change were to occur, it would take at least a vietnam level uprising against US IP policy.
The problem is that IP Policy is very nebulous and difficult to understand compared to things like protesting compulsory military service or religious or racial discrimination.
Right now, we have a serious problem with Telephone companies and cable companies attempting to squander and rip apart the Internet. The Internet would only continue to expand and new innovations would take root. But the problem is that local monopolies are standing in the way of that. There are entrenched intrests on many sides that want to fragment and censor the Internet, and people are too lazy and stupid to stand up and protest these actions. Its not government regulation thats the problem, and its not the "free market libertarians" that are the solutions. Its a couple of very corrupt, very ARROGANT shareholders that need to go to PRISON for what they are doing.
The Internet like Water, like Electricity, is becoming a public utility, it should be transparent in an transparent manner like one. And to the Cable Cos and the Telcos, no its not your network anymore.
Uh, no, three years is 2012. I have actually researched this. Heavily. The regulation just says that, only the primary channel must be carried, and it must be carried without conditional access.
What I am saying is, the Cable companies should be forced by the FCC to decrypt the Non-premium stations to clear QAM. And that there should be an act passed stating tht the Cable monopolies CAN NOT encrypt what would not be encrypted on an Analogue teir. (like C-SPAN 1, 2 and 3)
This will be a little hard to explain, so I'll try and be as sensible as possible. There are "must carry" regulations that control what Cables can and can't scramble. They have to Carry local channels and they have to carry stations like TBS in an unscrambled/unencrypted format. (my significant other and I have had many arguements about this.) "Scrambling" is an Analogue concept that applied to Analog NTSC Cable. Cable companies don't do this any more, they simply stick it on the "Digital Teir" and encrypt the shit out of it. Digital Cable" uses QAM. (Quadurature Amplitude Modulation.) QAM gets encrypted heavily by cable companies.
Now, most Digital Televisions, and Digital VCRs (but not those cheap DTV Converters) have QAM tuners (call this "Digital Cable Ready") in addition to ATSC Tuners (Digital Terrestrial Tuners.)
Now must of these "Digital Cable Boxes" that the cable company provides, output ONLY Analogue RF NTSC out, (at 480p) or Composite out. (also 480p.) if you want 720p or 1080i, you have to get one of their "HD" packages to get a "box" with Component or HDMI output. (so its the digital cable boxes that prevent just everyone subscribing to get "HD".
Here is the problem. The Cable companies consider their QAM tier to be entirely Premium channels all 100+ of them. So they feel entitled to encrypt the whole thing. Not only that, they are moving regular NTSC Channels to the Digital Teir and encrypting them. Save the ones that under the US's must carry Rule. (I think Canada is as variation of the way.)
Now here is the killer, while there is no hard and fast date for this like the Febuary 17th 2009 switch, its expected the Analogue Cable teirs will go dark some time in 2012 or 2013. So what we are likely to see sometime in that year, is a situation where maybe 20 local channels and must carry nationals are in Clear QAM, and virtually everything else is Encrypted. And there is no Analogue Teir at all. Without a set top Box rental, you will be better off watching OTA ATSC, and not subscribing to cable at all.
Religious people tend to always find a religious meaning, let me be the first to give a secular reason to be thankful for this season. However slight and insignificant, Linux has gained ground this year. More hardware and applications work this year than last year, and once again, I am preparing my yearly X-mas LAN war like so many other years before. (Hey, I don't believe in religion/God, but I do find this time of year wonderful for partying. And thats exactly what I will do.)
I'm starting to re-evaluate my dire forecasts for Linux's future. In 2005, and 2006, I was fairly certain Linux users were in the edge of the Abyss. Linux may never become a huge player in the desktop market, but maybe just this once, the hundreds of thousands of rabid Windows and and to a lesser extent OSX users that are all hounding for the death and mutilation of the Linux OS and the charter it represents are held back for the time being.
Now, Linux user must not grow complacent or overconfident. But for this season, for this year and this next few days, we can all be a little less afraid than we are normally.
I have a feeling that is what the case will be. The teachers who have Windows desktops in their classrooms took one look at Linux and went "No. You give us Windows or the boxes will wind up collecting dust in the back of the classroom." And that was probably was what alot of the Independent Education software vendors said too. "We have thousands of man hours and workers tied up in this Windows only education software. We will not port our software to Linux. Put Windows on your boxes or we will take our business elsewhere."
It doesn't matter how fast or slow it is. Whatever Windows 7 is, like Vista, people will have to accept it, because MS will make sure no one has any choice.
I appreciate your point, and I even support your position. But you have to realize that what this buys us is time. Running a Binary Blob for Nvidia's cards, and running a firmware blob for Broadcom support is no where NEAR the same thing s running Vista. Right now what Linux needs is to survive in the face of Billions of Windows users who want to see us disappear. If we can accept the time being and stay alive, wait until Linux gets a share of the OS Market large enough to really threaten the hardware makers then we can start pushing the hardware makers to do something about the binary blobs. Not before.
Intelligent design is a crock. Its just re-badged Christian Creationist crap. The whole ID Movement is a political movement started by Christians to use psuedo-scientific methods to try and make Creationism sound intelligent (Youtube a guy named Thunderf00t)
There is nothing intelligently designed about our universe. Shit works because, well, if it didn't work, we wouldn't be standing her talking about it. It works because of the sheer necessity that if it didn't work, the universe would fail.
I have a few questions I wanted to "fact check" about AIDS.
1. Most people who have AIDS are actually Heterosexual. 2. AIDS is incurable, there is no vaccine, and treatment is generally painful and only delays the inevitable. 3. No one who gets AIDS ever survives it. It has a 100% kill rate. 4. While there are homosexual people who have AIDS, Homosexuality and AIDS are unrelated. However, religious groups attempt to connect AIDS to Homosexuality, when there is none. 5. If AIDS were transferable through some other common method, such as water, or mosquitoes, and a large majority of the population, if not the entire population of the Human species, we would be extinct within a matter of a few decades.
The best thing you can do is don't. US Public schools are fear based, and heavily pro-Microsoft. If you are a Linux user, you don't have a prayer.
I grew up in US Public schools, and computers in US Schools have been a disastrous waste. Students really haven't benefited from them, in fact the reverse has occurred. You are just casting pearls before swine.
Slashdot Mirror
The USA still has serious problems due to the undue influence of Christianity in the field of Science. Basically, an educated woman is a threat to the Christian Male power structure. So culturally, the US is threatened by educated women.
People don't run OSes, they run the applications the OS runs on. It will probably be the case this guy doesn't WANT to change from Photoshop to Gimp, from IE to FireFox, from AIM to Pidgin, to run Wine for WoW. The list goes on.
Linux has survived, but not really prevailed. The general public still doesn't want Linux, despite the years of improvements. Keep in mind that I took a pessimistic view of Linux survival. That is, I didn't think Linux would survive. I thought that Linux and its users would be slaughtered. It has, and it has grown and improved. I am honestly astounded at the level of advancement that Linux has made
But that being said we are still losing to OSX and Windows. A Couple reasons exist. One is Games. A few more do exist. Things generally aren't happening fast enough, and I really am having a hard time understanding why. Its as if there are not as many coders working on Linux application software while there are more coders working the Kernel. The Former is bad, the latter is good. One thing I think needs to be done is an improvement to Linux's development suite. Something to challenge Visual Studio.
Every year Linux survives is a year of Linux. Lets hope the last year of Linux never comes.
Windows, not the internet created the legions of Spammers, botnets and virii. In the Unix world, we closed the SMTP relays. Yet the Windows bots still swarm. Now. I am not saying that in the Unix world, we would be completely free of security vulnerabilities. There would still be hackers and spammers. But they would no6t be as widespread a problem. The proliferation of Spam has been directly attributed to the rise off Windows bots. Get rid of Windows, you get rid of the problem.
The other problem is the DMCA and DMCA like legislation. We need to be rid of the DMCA by any means necessary
DTV could have been made alot more robust if they had gone with ESVB or OFDM (Which Wifi uses) as a modulation. It seems that with 8SVB they picked the very worst modulation possible.
I'm a little concerned. Is it possible that a specific batch of vaccines got contaminated due to poor quality assurance practises (sorta like how sometimes food gets contaminated with pathogens) and the contaminated vaccines started something like this? I once saw a hearing on C-SPAN by a congressman who basically accused a company of tainting the vaccines with a chemical that broke down into mercury in the blood resulting in mercury poisoning. But in that instance his complaint was not that the vaccine was the culprit, but that the company had not adhered to the regulations put fourth by the FDA and allowed tainted Vaccines in the wild anyway.
Does anyone else know anything about this?
Disclaimer:
And by the way, I do trash the Christian Fundamentalists in the anti-Vaccine community. Seriously. They piss me off. But then again, Christians piss me off in general. And if they had their way we'd all be back in the dark ages and disease would run rampant.
If this works... I wonder if it will be possible for other hardware makers to be sued for making Windows only products. One of the big barriers to Linux adoption is chipsets that have no Linux driver and it seems that some companies go out of their way to make hardware that won't work with Linux intentionally.
I am rather tough on Linux myself, but constructively tough.
Its no secret that the majority of /. users Are WINDOWS users. Linux users happen just to be "The Largest Minority". People here attack F/OSS Software almost constant. It never stops. Trolls, astrotufers, you name it, they troll it.
Windows users and OSX users are going to attack Linux users on every front in every way endlessly and relentlessly.
Linux has a Sane Desktop environment: Its called KDE. It conforms to FreeDesktop.org standards.
Linux has actually TWO Sane mans of Installation. RPM, DEB. (Sorry Gentoo Users, Portage doesn't cut it.)
Under absolutely no circumstances should ANY Linux application be "installed" by typing ./configure; make; make install. Those steps are for DEVELOPERS and MAINTAINERS only to MAKE packages (RPM, DEB.)
Couple things. RPM and DEB need a standard and understood hierarchy. DEB wins out here. There is less variability in the configuration of DEB, and a great deal of variability in RPM (SUSE, Mandriva, Fedora.) This creates problems that could be solved if someone created a "Unified RPM standard". As far as the RPM and DEB differences are concerned, its my opinion that dpkg and RPM should be interchangable on both systems without having to "convert" from Alien. For example, if I am a Mandriva user, and Ubuntu has something I want, I should be able to set up dpkg and rpm to understand each other and retrieve the DEB Packages from Ubuntu.
There do need to be improvements in SDL, SDL is getting stale.
Another issue is Upstream maintainers. Upstream coders are coding some of these applications with bizzare and stupid configurations that don't work well with EITHER Package manager and all they provide is a tar ball. And then you look at their Windows build, and in some cases its easier to install the Windows Build in Wine. Thats unforgivable.
However, I think that what we are seeing right now is not the outright resistance to Linux. Its not that Linux sucks, its just that Adobe, and Quicken, and several of these ISVs have strictly Anti-Linux policies. Its kinda the same thing as when you see these heavily DRMed web sites that Are Windows+IE only because they rely on IE DRM, and have a written policy against Linux OR Mac.
The fact is, they hate Linux, not because it sucks, not because its hard to write applications for, its that THEY HATE LINUX. Its not rational, its not anything there is a reasonable excuse for. They just hate Linux and they want to see Linux die.
If you remember a while back I said something like: There will never be a year of Linux, but it doesn't matter, what matters is that there is never a 'the last year of Linux or 'the Final year of Linux'. The fear never leaves the back of my mind that there will be a day coming when either Jobs or Ballmer or some US politician like Orin Hatch says 'If you are a Linux user, we will come find you, man, woman, child or company. You will use Windows pr you will pay fines, you will go to jail.'
This whole 30 Million, if its true, could mean Linux is here to stay, at least for a while. It could mean that we will continue to see at least a steady development of Linux games and applications. So Linux may hold on if we can for one thing, find a way to keep from losing any more important programmers, while at the same time attracting new talent. An example of this that hits close to home for me is the announcement Pixel would be leaving. I'm a Mandriva contributor. I'm worried about what will happen to Mandriva without Pixel.
So, again, don't celebrate just yet.
I really wish that the RPM vs. DEB debate. I wish it would be settled. I have Mandriva machines and I have Ubuntu machines. I really wish that I could install RPMs or DEBs on both distributions transparently. It doesn't necessarily mean that there has to be the exclusion of RPMs or DEBs, I just wish that I didn't need to use utilities like Alien to convert one package type to another. I wish I could use both package formats, at least for non-critical systems interchangably, and if Ubuntu has a DEB for something Mandriva has no RPM for, then let the Mandriva box install Ubuntu's DEB.
The US has never really been the freedom loving nation it aspires. when it started, it had slavery, when that ended there was an apartheid of Blacks, after that there were constant conflicts over religion internally. (In fact, religion has caused the US Public school system to be torn apart.) The list goes on. The USian public doesn't really believe in freedom. It believes in White, Christian, Male, wealthy domination. The whole secularism and tolerance thing has been around only since the early 70s.
You can't really have a true open and transparent democracy when such a huge percentage believe in a Monarchical Autocratic universe. The last 8 years, the US presidency has boiled down to "Jesus wants me to be president." My significant other has been told "Jesus wants Christians to run Windows", and "Linux is a Demonic Operating system". So telling the public "Jesus says making copies of music is wrong." and they will believe it. Because thats just the way the USA is.
Short of a revolution in the US or a major civil Rights movement on the part of consumers where millions of people march in protest of IP laws on the corporate headquarters of these IP giants and the capitol, I don't see any changes coming from this. The current generation of USians lacks the motivation for any sort of anti-monopoly revolution. If real change were to occur, it would take at least a vietnam level uprising against US IP policy.
The problem is that IP Policy is very nebulous and difficult to understand compared to things like protesting compulsory military service or religious or racial discrimination.
Right now, we have a serious problem with Telephone companies and cable companies attempting to squander and rip apart the Internet. The Internet would only continue to expand and new innovations would take root. But the problem is that local monopolies are standing in the way of that. There are entrenched intrests on many sides that want to fragment and censor the Internet, and people are too lazy and stupid to stand up and protest these actions. Its not government regulation thats the problem, and its not the "free market libertarians" that are the solutions. Its a couple of very corrupt, very ARROGANT shareholders that need to go to PRISON for what they are doing.
The Internet like Water, like Electricity, is becoming a public utility, it should be transparent in an transparent manner like one. And to the Cable Cos and the Telcos, no its not your network anymore.
Uh, no, three years is 2012. I have actually researched this. Heavily. The regulation just says that, only the primary channel must be carried, and it must be carried without conditional access.
What I am saying is, the Cable companies should be forced by the FCC to decrypt the Non-premium stations to clear QAM. And that there should be an act passed stating tht the Cable monopolies CAN NOT encrypt what would not be encrypted on an Analogue teir. (like C-SPAN 1, 2 and 3)
This will be a little hard to explain, so I'll try and be as sensible as possible. There are "must carry" regulations that control what Cables can and can't scramble. They have to Carry local channels and they have to carry stations like TBS in an unscrambled/unencrypted format. (my significant other and I have had many arguements about this.) "Scrambling" is an Analogue concept that applied to Analog NTSC Cable. Cable companies don't do this any more, they simply stick it on the "Digital Teir" and encrypt the shit out of it. Digital Cable" uses QAM. (Quadurature Amplitude Modulation.) QAM gets encrypted heavily by cable companies.
Now, most Digital Televisions, and Digital VCRs (but not those cheap DTV Converters) have QAM tuners (call this "Digital Cable Ready") in addition to ATSC Tuners (Digital Terrestrial Tuners.)
Now must of these "Digital Cable Boxes" that the cable company provides, output ONLY Analogue RF NTSC out, (at 480p) or Composite out. (also 480p.) if you want 720p or 1080i, you have to get one of their "HD" packages to get a "box" with Component or HDMI output. (so its the digital cable boxes that prevent just everyone subscribing to get "HD".
Here is the problem. The Cable companies consider their QAM tier to be entirely Premium channels all 100+ of them. So they feel entitled to encrypt the whole thing. Not only that, they are moving regular NTSC Channels to the Digital Teir and encrypting them. Save the ones that under the US's must carry Rule. (I think Canada is as variation of the way.)
Now here is the killer, while there is no hard and fast date for this like the Febuary 17th 2009 switch, its expected the Analogue Cable teirs will go dark some time in 2012 or 2013. So what we are likely to see sometime in that year, is a situation where maybe 20 local channels and must carry nationals are in Clear QAM, and virtually everything else is Encrypted. And there is no Analogue Teir at all. Without a set top Box rental, you will be better off watching OTA ATSC, and not subscribing to cable at all.
That is the future of Television.
Religious people tend to always find a religious meaning, let me be the first to give a secular reason to be thankful for this season. However slight and insignificant, Linux has gained ground this year. More hardware and applications work this year than last year, and once again, I am preparing my yearly X-mas LAN war like so many other years before. (Hey, I don't believe in religion/God, but I do find this time of year wonderful for partying. And thats exactly what I will do.)
I'm starting to re-evaluate my dire forecasts for Linux's future. In 2005, and 2006, I was fairly certain Linux users were in the edge of the Abyss. Linux may never become a huge player in the desktop market, but maybe just this once, the hundreds of thousands of rabid Windows and and to a lesser extent OSX users that are all hounding for the death and mutilation of the Linux OS and the charter it represents are held back for the time being.
Now, Linux user must not grow complacent or overconfident. But for this season, for this year and this next few days, we can all be a little less afraid than we are normally.
Of course.
I have a feeling that is what the case will be. The teachers who have Windows desktops in their classrooms took one look at Linux and went "No. You give us Windows or the boxes will wind up collecting dust in the back of the classroom." And that was probably was what alot of the Independent Education software vendors said too. "We have thousands of man hours and workers tied up in this Windows only education software. We will not port our software to Linux. Put Windows on your boxes or we will take our business elsewhere."
It doesn't matter how fast or slow it is. Whatever Windows 7 is, like Vista, people will have to accept it, because MS will make sure no one has any choice.
I could recount some private personal negative experiences, but believe me, there is much anger out there.
I appreciate your point, and I even support your position. But you have to realize that what this buys us is time. Running a Binary Blob for Nvidia's cards, and running a firmware blob for Broadcom support is no where NEAR the same thing s running Vista. Right now what Linux needs is to survive in the face of Billions of Windows users who want to see us disappear. If we can accept the time being and stay alive, wait until Linux gets a share of the OS Market large enough to really threaten the hardware makers then we can start pushing the hardware makers to do something about the binary blobs. Not before.
Intelligent design is a crock. Its just re-badged Christian Creationist crap. The whole ID Movement is a political movement started by Christians to use psuedo-scientific methods to try and make Creationism sound intelligent (Youtube a guy named Thunderf00t)
There is nothing intelligently designed about our universe. Shit works because, well, if it didn't work, we wouldn't be standing her talking about it. It works because of the sheer necessity that if it didn't work, the universe would fail.
I have a few questions I wanted to "fact check" about AIDS.
1. Most people who have AIDS are actually Heterosexual.
2. AIDS is incurable, there is no vaccine, and treatment is generally painful and only delays the inevitable.
3. No one who gets AIDS ever survives it. It has a 100% kill rate.
4. While there are homosexual people who have AIDS, Homosexuality and AIDS are unrelated. However, religious groups attempt to connect AIDS to Homosexuality, when there is none.
5. If AIDS were transferable through some other common method, such as water, or mosquitoes, and a large majority of the population, if not the entire population of the Human species, we would be extinct within a matter of a few decades.
The best thing you can do is don't. US Public schools are fear based, and heavily pro-Microsoft. If you are a Linux user, you don't have a prayer.
I grew up in US Public schools, and computers in US Schools have been a disastrous waste. Students really haven't benefited from them, in fact the reverse has occurred. You are just casting pearls before swine.