But at the federal level I pay my taxes so the money can be used to bail out whatever group has their hand out this week?
Bullshit. The '08 "bailouts" weren't bailouts AT ALL. They just STABILIZED the financial system so that the gears of capitalism could keep working. If they hadn't, then businesses wouldn't be able to get short term credit, financing, even be able to make PAYROLL.
Yeah -- you heard me right: no bailout, no paychecks. Not even credit cards. Suddenly everyone would be unable to buy anything except maybe by barter. (Do you REALLY want people trading HARD ASSETS for what they need?)
Not a single person was bailed out. Zip. Zero. Nada. It's just that a ton of high-grade securities weren't trading at their TRUE value, so the government came in and bought them at a REASONABLE price. The rest of the bailout only consisted of LOANS that had to be FULLY REPAID, like what ol' General Motors (grr! unions bad!) did AHEAD OF TIME. Yeah, real "waste" there, right? Moron.
It's people like you promoting this moronic Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh ignorance that got this country in the mess it's in. And people like you who oppose EVERY possible method that will get the economy back on its feed again, like STIMULUS projects.
George Will wrote some hack piece for the Washington Post on global warming that had exactly four data points in it, and each one of those facts was wrong. Do you think the "ombudsman" of the Washington Post is going to print a correction? No, because it's supposed to be an "opinion piece". Well, as the man said, you have the right to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
Link please??? Show me this alleged op-ed. I've read George Orwill for a long time, he usually gets his stuff right on the issues, and he's *especially* careful on scientific issues like global warming and vaccination.
By the way, isn't global warming still basically just a theory at this point anyway? Sorry, needs to be a little stronger than that before you take away the keys to my (luxury) SUV.
Wow. Just wow. You quite clearly have no clue what the fuck you're talking about, do you?
People who bash religion (like you're doing) have, without exception, never studied any serious theology or scrutinized the arguments of top theologians.
If you had, you would actually understand the "burden of proof" argument. You would understand why theology deserves a place in respectable secular universities right alongside physics. You would understand the real tests you can do to see if God is real. You would understand why, for example, Scientology is not a serious religion. Nor, of course, your hypothetical Reptile religion.
Tell me, how much of this are you actually familiar with? Do you know the difference between ecclesiology, soteriology, and hamartiology? Are you familiar with the doctrinal dispute in the Reformation? The English Reformation? Anabaptism?
(I know, I know, "you shouldn't have to get a doctor of divinity degree to debate god". Well, apparently, you need a degree in physics -- i.e. approval of people who disagree with you -- in order to debate fundamental theories of physics. Why is theology held to a higher standard?)
Ah, nothing like the predictive power of evolution for ya! Despite the fact that it's basically just a theory at this point, it can be used to "prove" pretty much anything you want! The birds are the same? Evolution! They're not the same? Uh, convergent evolution. That's it!
A while ago there were two papers I remember, where one of them observed that women dress sexier when fertile, while another observed women walk sexier when *not* fertile. Ah, inconsistent results that need more study, right? Nope! Evolution explains BOTH of them! Everything's consistent with evolution!
It really is just a theory folks. How about some warnings for the textbooks?
Shut up. Just shut the hell up. You have literally NO CLUE what the hell you are talking about. And yet you spout off anyway. Your envy of people who have actually achieved *success* in their lives, has blinded you to the NEED for the financial rescue package that our ELECTED representatives (we are a democracy, remember?) worked overtime to pass.
It was NOT about bailout of rich bankers, who -- if you're interested in the truth -- have NOT come out of this unscathed. They have gotten fired, seen their firms go down in flames, or seen their pay reduced SIGNFIGANTLY. It's not a case of someone having to "move into a smaller mansion" as you put it. And I totally resent your framing of it as a "bailout". It was a financial rescue and liquidity provision package, NOT a bailout. And it bailed YOU out, as I will explain in terms simple enough for you to understand.
Here's why we did the rescue: A bunch of banks packaged mortgage products together under a very elegant (and beautiful imho) design that nicely divvied up the risk and reward based on the unique, individual needs of various parties. At the same time, they have their own debts to pay off. At any given moment, however, their money isn't in cash: it's in complicated financial instruments.
But no problem, right? They just sell the instruments for the quick spending money to pay off the debts. Oops -- now, because of BASELESS fears, no one wants to buy the instruments at their FAIR market price, so now they're insolvent.
Does that make any sense to you? Going into bankruptcy just because you have to unload assets at fire sale prices, WELL below what they are TRULY worth? No one should have to deal with that. That's why the Treasury's plan was to simply step in, pay the FAIR market price, that no one else is willing to, so they can keep the credit system from freezing up.
And as Paulson explained, it worked. We averted a major crisis, in which people wouldn't have been able to take out loans for mortgages, cars, consumer credit products, and even PAYROLL.
Yes, it was that bad.
So please, shut your damn mouth and stick to a topic you actually understand -- like computers. And please leave the finance system to the professionals.
Uhhhhh huh. Yeah dude. Whatever. So, you're basically saying that whatever we find, uh, evolution, like, TOTALLY predicted it. If we find cases of evolution working like Darwin originally predicted, hey, that's proof. If we find the opposite, like the scientists just did, that's proof too! Everything's proof!
All that shows is that "evolution" is like "phlogiston" and "elan vital" and "emergence". They can explain everything, so they explain nothing.
Lessons to take away:
1) Explaining events is easy. The hard part is to not explain non-events. 2) The whole pretense of "separation of church and school" is a lie. We have the church in our schools *right this second*. All we did was replace the Pope's prayerbook with Charles Darwin's.
I could do better scientific work that the mainstream evolution fanatics by reading a Bible. And have.
Wow, what a sacrilegious crock! There wasn't any "FSM" (whatever that means) that "coded" God (unless you mean maybe the Bible Code, but that's under investigation). God is eternal; He always has been, always will be. This is pretty clearly delineated in the Holy Bible (I can send you one if you like).
Have you ever even actually REAd the Bible?
But hey, don't let the tenets of MY PERSONAL FAITH get in the way of your petty jokes....
Wow, you really have no clue what you're talking about, do you? You think you're so clever for nitpicking Goedel's ontological argument.
Let me ask you this: is there any role in your life for spirituality, whatsoever? I'm not talking about any one conception of God, just your spirituality. If you don't, I really feel sorry for you.
If people took spirituality more seriously, we wouldn't have all these problems. People would be more moral and generally pleasant to one another. And maybe you wouldn't talk about sex so much.
Then, you will hear only those things that no one is trying to suppress by intimidation or retaliation.... However, anonymous speech too often conveys vital information for it to be prohibited for those who want to hear it.
That argument applies just the same to all kinds of unsolicited email. As much as I may get annoyed at some kinds of spam, I have to fundamentally agree with the Virginia courts here. The fact is, spam is a perfectly valid form of free speech. When you tell people they can't spam, you're telling them that they don't have the right to speak their mind to the world.
Is spam annoying? Of course! (Well, on occassion.) But "annoyingness" has NEVER been a basis for restricting someone's rights. You know what I find annoying? When people voice opinions against the proposed financial rescue bills in the House and Senate. (Not to mention the anti-rescue banner ad on this very story!) They are universally speaking out of ignorance (specifically, regarding the problems illiquidity of perfectly valid mortgage-backed securities) and it pisses me off to no end.
But that anger it arouses in me does not equate to a right to ban that kind of speech (except maybe under economic terrorism laws, which I think they need to pursue, as I said recently). Imagine if the British Crown decided that speaking against the Stamp Act was "spam". Or, more appropriately, what if they had the attitude of "Oh, you can have ALLLLL the free speech you want... but only on paper that's had its Stamp Act duties paid." That's the 18th-century equivalent of what I see a lot of people these days saying: "Oh, you have the right to free speech... but not on my email server."
Yes, I *do* have free speech. EVERYWHERE. Not just in "free speech zones". But on government-taxed paper too. Using the air you might have breathed. And yes, using your server, which CHOSE to accept my messages.
And there you reveal the fundamental weakness of modern education. I mean, think about it. We're demanding that students be taught evolution in science classes, even though evolution is still basically just a theory at this point... er, just like intelligent design.
Science should be about teaching students SOLID, known facts, not "theories". They should learn about gravity and atomic interaction and optics and the kinds of rocks and plate techtonics. They should not be taught some bizarre dream that some guy hobbled together based on a few coincidental pieces of evidence. That's just not what science is.
Evolution is a theory. That's all it ever has been and all it ever will be. We'll never be able to actually go out and test evolution. All we really have is faith, and that's exactly why it's important to teach students about alternate belief systems. I still think evolution should be taught in science class because obviously you have to be on the up and up about what's going on. But the same reasoning applies to intelligent design, which has made great advances in understanding life at the biochemical level.
So really, let's keep science reality-based, and teach students ALL sides, not just the ones that are most politically popular. Don't be so insecure in your beliefs that you have to ban everything else.
Oh, absolutely, man, cause there are like those dildos now with LEDs on them, and I really need to know that when I ram one of them up my keister, that might give me cancer... in addition to making me look like a faggot and everything...
Shut up. SHUT UP YOU FUCKING TERRORIST! That is one hundred fucking percent STRAWFUCKINGMAN. "Global climate change" (and, misleadingly, "global warming") refers to a VERY SPECIFIC set of changes in the earth's climate as a result of HUMAN EMISSION of greenhouse gases. We HAVE TO cut these in order to prevent these VERY SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE changes from happening. But all you fuckholes want to do is stick your heads in the sand and say, "I don't like what all the top universities in the word have unanimously agreed on" (which is, of course, that we need to have STRINGENT product efficiency regulations and move toward an all-out ban on fossil fuels as a general goal) "so I'm just gonna PRAY REAL HARD TO JAYSUS" that it's not true.
Well, guess what, Bible-thumper, it IS true. And if you're going to deny it, you might as well deny the moon landings, because the 100% accurate climate models use the EXACT SAME UNCONTROVERSIAL SCIENTIFIC LAWS that are used to design space shuttles and satellites and airplanes and the SUV you're driving UNNECESSARILY (which is seriously fucking up the earth -- ever think of the suv HYBRIDS they have now? Guess not). So the ONLY POSSIBLE reason you can deny ANY of this is by, quite frankly, turning off your brain like that ape George W Bush.
I hope you burn in hell. You know, what earth will be like in five years if assholes like you keep voting.
Sorry for the delay in response. No one's probably following, but I hope you are because I really want to answer your (good!) inquiries.
First of all, let's get one thing straight, I did NOT in any way assume there is a "big contest, a struggle for domination". That is wholly an invention you added to my post. All I talked about was the very real fact that if large absolute (not relative!) numbers of folks aren't using Linux, there's no reason for the major-league players to write the major-league applications for it: photoshop, games, CAD, etc.
Reading back at my post, the only thing I can see that might have given you the impression I was framing this as a contest, was my remark about how Linux could have "taken over" the desktop market. But if you look at the context, I was simply saying, "Hey, if you idiots handled this with actual care, then most people would decide that Linux was best for their own needs, and the difference was great enough to justify the effort in switching." No abduction from Microsoft's seraglio, just folks helping each other out.
Second, I want to examine your general atomistic mindset. "Everyone knows now exactly what they need to do everything they want to do and they already know the best options they should be persuing and exactly who to ask and WHAT to ask, to overcome any shortcomings." That's your philosophy, and both the wrongness of it, and its attitude, scare the hell out of me. That is not how the world works, and for you to think that way gives the strong evidence that you are the stereotypical pale-skinny-dateless nerd in basement.
In the real world, people help each other out. They DON'T know everything, and they need friends and family to make suggestions. "Hey, you're doing X, why not do Y instead?" "Hey, if you're doing B, you can do it a lot easier with C, let me show you how."
You are absolutely right that this can get out of hand: a) by FORCING people who have evaluated the merit of the suggestion and found it lacking, to use it anyway; and b) through invasive, well-funded, irritating corporate marketing. But you're going well beyond criticism of that, to saying, hey, I'm not going to help hook people up, and if that means worse software to me, I just don't care.
The point is, having a good product just ain't enough, because you have to be able to *articulate* its merit. It is this area in which Windows makes up its deficiency -- it actually (gasp!) persuades folks to use it, and until you can do the same, you do not have a basis on which to say Windows is worse.
A diamond mine that no one knows the existence of, has no value.
Yeah, sure bro, let's all smugly pat ourselves on the back for dodging the bullet by not using Windows.
Hey, wanna know the SECRET as to why your non-Windows OS is so SUPER secure? You ready for it?
Because no one uses it!
*When* people start using Linux en masse (which will NEVER happen because the Linux commuity doesn't know the first thing about marketing itself or user interface design or making the transition easy), THEN there will be an incentive to actually write viri for Linux.
And then, do you know what'll happen? They WILL find a jagged shard of glass in the Linux kernel, and they WILL fuck you with it.
As someone who's spent a lot of time denying the holocaust, I have to say that this rings true. So I'll probably switch to saying things like, "Jews were kept safe in Germany during the second world war."
Slashdot Mirror
But at the federal level I pay my taxes so the money can be used to bail out whatever group has their hand out this week?
Bullshit. The '08 "bailouts" weren't bailouts AT ALL. They just STABILIZED the financial system so that the gears of capitalism could keep working. If they hadn't, then businesses wouldn't be able to get short term credit, financing, even be able to make PAYROLL.
Yeah -- you heard me right: no bailout, no paychecks. Not even credit cards. Suddenly everyone would be unable to buy anything except maybe by barter. (Do you REALLY want people trading HARD ASSETS for what they need?)
Not a single person was bailed out. Zip. Zero. Nada. It's just that a ton of high-grade securities weren't trading at their TRUE value, so the government came in and bought them at a REASONABLE price. The rest of the bailout only consisted of LOANS that had to be FULLY REPAID, like what ol' General Motors (grr! unions bad!) did AHEAD OF TIME. Yeah, real "waste" there, right? Moron.
It's people like you promoting this moronic Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh ignorance that got this country in the mess it's in. And people like you who oppose EVERY possible method that will get the economy back on its feed again, like STIMULUS projects.
I hate to be the one to break it you all, but it's a cold, hard fact that evolution is basically just a theory at this point.
Or, to use the language of science, a conjecture.
It hasn't been proven and probably can't be proven, so students are right to learn about this weakness.
It's quite unscientific to quash dissenting views.
George Will wrote some hack piece for the Washington Post on global warming that had exactly four data points in it, and each one of those facts was wrong. Do you think the "ombudsman" of the Washington Post is going to print a correction? No, because it's supposed to be an "opinion piece". Well, as the man said, you have the right to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
Link please??? Show me this alleged op-ed. I've read George Orwill for a long time, he usually gets his stuff right on the issues, and he's *especially* careful on scientific issues like global warming and vaccination.
By the way, isn't global warming still basically just a theory at this point anyway? Sorry, needs to be a little stronger than that before you take away the keys to my (luxury) SUV.
Wow. Just wow. You quite clearly have no clue what the fuck you're talking about, do you?
People who bash religion (like you're doing) have, without exception, never studied any serious theology or scrutinized the arguments of top theologians.
If you had, you would actually understand the "burden of proof" argument. You would understand why theology deserves a place in respectable secular universities right alongside physics. You would understand the real tests you can do to see if God is real. You would understand why, for example, Scientology is not a serious religion. Nor, of course, your hypothetical Reptile religion.
Tell me, how much of this are you actually familiar with? Do you know the difference between ecclesiology, soteriology, and hamartiology? Are you familiar with the doctrinal dispute in the Reformation? The English Reformation? Anabaptism?
(I know, I know, "you shouldn't have to get a doctor of divinity degree to debate god". Well, apparently, you need a degree in physics -- i.e. approval of people who disagree with you -- in order to debate fundamental theories of physics. Why is theology held to a higher standard?)
Ah, nothing like the predictive power of evolution for ya! Despite the fact that it's basically just a theory at this point, it can be used to "prove" pretty much anything you want! The birds are the same? Evolution! They're not the same? Uh, convergent evolution. That's it!
A while ago there were two papers I remember, where one of them observed that women dress sexier when fertile, while another observed women walk sexier when *not* fertile. Ah, inconsistent results that need more study, right? Nope! Evolution explains BOTH of them! Everything's consistent with evolution!
It really is just a theory folks. How about some warnings for the textbooks?
Shut up. Just shut the hell up. You have literally NO CLUE what the hell you are talking about. And yet you spout off anyway. Your envy of people who have actually achieved *success* in their lives, has blinded you to the NEED for the financial rescue package that our ELECTED representatives (we are a democracy, remember?) worked overtime to pass.
It was NOT about bailout of rich bankers, who -- if you're interested in the truth -- have NOT come out of this unscathed. They have gotten fired, seen their firms go down in flames, or seen their pay reduced SIGNFIGANTLY. It's not a case of someone having to "move into a smaller mansion" as you put it. And I totally resent your framing of it as a "bailout". It was a financial rescue and liquidity provision package, NOT a bailout. And it bailed YOU out, as I will explain in terms simple enough for you to understand.
Here's why we did the rescue: A bunch of banks packaged mortgage products together under a very elegant (and beautiful imho) design that nicely divvied up the risk and reward based on the unique, individual needs of various parties. At the same time, they have their own debts to pay off. At any given moment, however, their money isn't in cash: it's in complicated financial instruments.
But no problem, right? They just sell the instruments for the quick spending money to pay off the debts. Oops -- now, because of BASELESS fears, no one wants to buy the instruments at their FAIR market price, so now they're insolvent.
Does that make any sense to you? Going into bankruptcy just because you have to unload assets at fire sale prices, WELL below what they are TRULY worth? No one should have to deal with that. That's why the Treasury's plan was to simply step in, pay the FAIR market price, that no one else is willing to, so they can keep the credit system from freezing up.
And as Paulson explained, it worked. We averted a major crisis, in which people wouldn't have been able to take out loans for mortgages, cars, consumer credit products, and even PAYROLL.
Yes, it was that bad.
So please, shut your damn mouth and stick to a topic you actually understand -- like computers. And please leave the finance system to the professionals.
Now, calm down, Skeeter. He ain't hurtin' nobody.
STFU and take your phail with you. Show me one single example of when i've trolled. Just one. ONE. That's all I'm asking.
You can't do it. You can't do it BECAUSE I'M NOT A FUCKING TROLL YOU MORON.
Why are some people such dicks?
Uhhhhh huh. Yeah dude. Whatever. So, you're basically saying that whatever we find, uh, evolution, like, TOTALLY predicted it. If we find cases of evolution working like Darwin originally predicted, hey, that's proof. If we find the opposite, like the scientists just did, that's proof too! Everything's proof!
All that shows is that "evolution" is like "phlogiston" and "elan vital" and "emergence". They can explain everything, so they explain nothing.
Lessons to take away:
1) Explaining events is easy. The hard part is to not explain non-events.
2) The whole pretense of "separation of church and school" is a lie. We have the church in our schools *right this second*. All we did was replace the Pope's prayerbook with Charles Darwin's.
I could do better scientific work that the mainstream evolution fanatics by reading a Bible. And have.
Wow, what a sacrilegious crock! There wasn't any "FSM" (whatever that means) that "coded" God (unless you mean maybe the Bible Code, but that's under investigation). God is eternal; He always has been, always will be. This is pretty clearly delineated in the Holy Bible (I can send you one if you like).
Have you ever even actually REAd the Bible?
But hey, don't let the tenets of MY PERSONAL FAITH get in the way of your petty jokes....
Wow, you really have no clue what you're talking about, do you? You think you're so clever for nitpicking Goedel's ontological argument.
Let me ask you this: is there any role in your life for spirituality, whatsoever? I'm not talking about any one conception of God, just your spirituality. If you don't, I really feel sorry for you.
If people took spirituality more seriously, we wouldn't have all these problems. People would be more moral and generally pleasant to one another. And maybe you wouldn't talk about sex so much.
Just something to think about.
Then, you will hear only those things that no one is trying to suppress by intimidation or retaliation. ... However, anonymous speech too often conveys vital information for it to be prohibited for those who want to hear it.
That argument applies just the same to all kinds of unsolicited email. As much as I may get annoyed at some kinds of spam, I have to fundamentally agree with the Virginia courts here. The fact is, spam is a perfectly valid form of free speech. When you tell people they can't spam, you're telling them that they don't have the right to speak their mind to the world.
Is spam annoying? Of course! (Well, on occassion.) But "annoyingness" has NEVER been a basis for restricting someone's rights. You know what I find annoying? When people voice opinions against the proposed financial rescue bills in the House and Senate. (Not to mention the anti-rescue banner ad on this very story!) They are universally speaking out of ignorance (specifically, regarding the problems illiquidity of perfectly valid mortgage-backed securities) and it pisses me off to no end.
But that anger it arouses in me does not equate to a right to ban that kind of speech (except maybe under economic terrorism laws, which I think they need to pursue, as I said recently). Imagine if the British Crown decided that speaking against the Stamp Act was "spam". Or, more appropriately, what if they had the attitude of "Oh, you can have ALLLLL the free speech you want ... but only on paper that's had its Stamp Act duties paid." That's the 18th-century equivalent of what I see a lot of people these days saying: "Oh, you have the right to free speech ... but not on my email server."
Yes, I *do* have free speech. EVERYWHERE. Not just in "free speech zones". But on government-taxed paper too. Using the air you might have breathed. And yes, using your server, which CHOSE to accept my messages.
And there you reveal the fundamental weakness of modern education. I mean, think about it. We're demanding that students be taught evolution in science classes, even though evolution is still basically just a theory at this point ... er, just like intelligent design.
Science should be about teaching students SOLID, known facts, not "theories". They should learn about gravity and atomic interaction and optics and the kinds of rocks and plate techtonics. They should not be taught some bizarre dream that some guy hobbled together based on a few coincidental pieces of evidence. That's just not what science is.
Evolution is a theory. That's all it ever has been and all it ever will be. We'll never be able to actually go out and test evolution. All we really have is faith, and that's exactly why it's important to teach students about alternate belief systems. I still think evolution should be taught in science class because obviously you have to be on the up and up about what's going on. But the same reasoning applies to intelligent design, which has made great advances in understanding life at the biochemical level.
So really, let's keep science reality-based, and teach students ALL sides, not just the ones that are most politically popular. Don't be so insecure in your beliefs that you have to ban everything else.
UM, I think you neglected to mention that Evolution is also just a theory at this point.
Yeah, you might want to mention that part when you advocate suppressing alternative beliefs in the classroom...
It sure is fun to huh-huh-guffaw about ID ... until you realize, after some reflection, that evolution is, at root, just a theory.
You know, as in ... not fact and all.
Denier on aisle five, wet-mop cleanup requested.
Oh, absolutely, man, cause there are like those dildos now with LEDs on them, and I really need to know that when I ram one of them up my keister, that might give me cancer ... in addition to making me look like a faggot and everything...
So, in other words, blacks are criminals and shouldn't be allowed to buy stuff online.
Next time, have the balls to say it yourself instead of burying it in meth.
What about the internet?
Um, you ... do realize, don't you, that evolution is just a theory, right? THEORY. As in ... it hasn't actually been proven yet?
Yeah ... *that* kind of theory.
Shut up. SHUT UP YOU FUCKING TERRORIST! That is one hundred fucking percent STRAWFUCKINGMAN. "Global climate change" (and, misleadingly, "global warming") refers to a VERY SPECIFIC set of changes in the earth's climate as a result of HUMAN EMISSION of greenhouse gases. We HAVE TO cut these in order to prevent these VERY SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE changes from happening. But all you fuckholes want to do is stick your heads in the sand and say, "I don't like what all the top universities in the word have unanimously agreed on" (which is, of course, that we need to have STRINGENT product efficiency regulations and move toward an all-out ban on fossil fuels as a general goal) "so I'm just gonna PRAY REAL HARD TO JAYSUS" that it's not true.
Well, guess what, Bible-thumper, it IS true. And if you're going to deny it, you might as well deny the moon landings, because the 100% accurate climate models use the EXACT SAME UNCONTROVERSIAL SCIENTIFIC LAWS that are used to design space shuttles and satellites and airplanes and the SUV you're driving UNNECESSARILY (which is seriously fucking up the earth -- ever think of the suv HYBRIDS they have now? Guess not). So the ONLY POSSIBLE reason you can deny ANY of this is by, quite frankly, turning off your brain like that ape George W Bush.
I hope you burn in hell. You know, what earth will be like in five years if assholes like you keep voting.
Sorry for the delay in response. No one's probably following, but I hope you are because I really want to answer your (good!) inquiries.
First of all, let's get one thing straight, I did NOT in any way assume there is a "big contest, a struggle for domination". That is wholly an invention you added to my post. All I talked about was the very real fact that if large absolute (not relative!) numbers of folks aren't using Linux, there's no reason for the major-league players to write the major-league applications for it: photoshop, games, CAD, etc.
Reading back at my post, the only thing I can see that might have given you the impression I was framing this as a contest, was my remark about how Linux could have "taken over" the desktop market. But if you look at the context, I was simply saying, "Hey, if you idiots handled this with actual care, then most people would decide that Linux was best for their own needs, and the difference was great enough to justify the effort in switching." No abduction from Microsoft's seraglio, just folks helping each other out.
Second, I want to examine your general atomistic mindset. "Everyone knows now exactly what they need to do everything they want to do and they already know the best options they should be persuing and exactly who to ask and WHAT to ask, to overcome any shortcomings." That's your philosophy, and both the wrongness of it, and its attitude, scare the hell out of me. That is not how the world works, and for you to think that way gives the strong evidence that you are the stereotypical pale-skinny-dateless nerd in basement.
In the real world, people help each other out. They DON'T know everything, and they need friends and family to make suggestions. "Hey, you're doing X, why not do Y instead?" "Hey, if you're doing B, you can do it a lot easier with C, let me show you how."
You are absolutely right that this can get out of hand: a) by FORCING people who have evaluated the merit of the suggestion and found it lacking, to use it anyway; and b) through invasive, well-funded, irritating corporate marketing. But you're going well beyond criticism of that, to saying, hey, I'm not going to help hook people up, and if that means worse software to me, I just don't care.
The point is, having a good product just ain't enough, because you have to be able to *articulate* its merit. It is this area in which Windows makes up its deficiency -- it actually (gasp!) persuades folks to use it, and until you can do the same, you do not have a basis on which to say Windows is worse.
A diamond mine that no one knows the existence of, has no value.
Hope that clarifies my position for you.
And here's a detailed explanation as to why that is.
Yeah, sure bro, let's all smugly pat ourselves on the back for dodging the bullet by not using Windows.
Hey, wanna know the SECRET as to why your non-Windows OS is so SUPER secure? You ready for it?
Because no one uses it!
*When* people start using Linux en masse (which will NEVER happen because the Linux commuity doesn't know the first thing about marketing itself or user interface design or making the transition easy), THEN there will be an incentive to actually write viri for Linux.
And then, do you know what'll happen? They WILL find a jagged shard of glass in the Linux kernel, and they WILL fuck you with it.
I guarantee it. (Like that Men's Warehouse guy.)
As someone who's spent a lot of time denying the holocaust, I have to say that this rings true. So I'll probably switch to saying things like, "Jews were kept safe in Germany during the second world war."