He's not right, at least as far as consumer OS choice goes and not just a semantical thing like a console running Linux. An exclusive Linux game will likely only cause downloads of Live CDs like Knoppix (especially those with pirated versions of the game included) to it to explode. You'll see more people using computers like a console, but you won't likely see more people using Linux on a daily basis.

The only realistic way Linux will explode is if Microsoft continues down the Windows 8 road and makes their OS completely unsuitable for use on Desktops, forcing OEMs to abandon it to avoid constant complaints and returns. With Linux being the only real desktop OS alternative on 3rd party hardware it would likely win out by default. But it's more likely the OEMs would instead adapt to the new version of Windows by adding touch screens or whatever else was needed so even that's unlikely.

Linux needs a lot of little things to happen to become a common desktop OS. Games support is a major one, but it's not something that could cause it all by itself even with an big time exclusive title.

2000 years ago, when a few parasites in the water supply could wipe out a good chunk of the known population of the world, pulling out and blasting your wife in the face or a dude eschewing women to gargle dong would be a sin as every rugrat a woman could pop out was needed for the species to have the best chance of survival.

If you look at the bible as a 2000 year old social studies and science textbook much of it makes quite a bit of sense. It's only when one tries to rigidly apply it as having any value as a modern day science and social studies textbook that it becomes utterly ridiculous and a great reason to stay away from Texas.

My belief is that most people kept it around because it's what they get with their OEM computers and/or it's what they know (I'm firmly in the latter group). And Windows has always been intuitive enough that none of those people had issues big enough to consider alternatives.

But that all changed with Windows 8. Windows is no longer intuitive. My grandparents bought a new laptop that had it preinstalled and couldn't do a damned thing with it. They'd open something and have no clue how to get it to go away so they could do something else. So of course, they called me for help. I tried to teach them how to use it, even though I'd not used it before, but found myself constantly Googling to find out how to do things. If I had to struggle to learn to use for basic things, I knew they'd never be able to (we'd already been down that road when I bought them a Mac a few years ago).
So I installed Ubuntu. I'm only barely familiar with it thanks to it being the base of the XBMC machines I use around the house, but I knew it was very Windows-like so I gave it a shot. They took to it immediately. And thus, Linux has supplanted Windows in the all important "grandma can use it" metric.

And with it becoming obvious by how they've tried to "fix" Windows 8's problems with Blue, that Microsoft has become touched in the head and really believes the Windows 8 type of interface is viable for a traditional desktop computer. So with no competition in the "intuitive to use" being likely in the near future, it wouldn't take much to push Linux onto the desktops of all the OS indifferent people out there who care only that an OS is easy to use.

Valve isn't likely to be the force that gets Linux on desktops. It's those OS indifferent people who really matter. If they all switched to Linux, the app writers and game developers would go with them en masse. A little bit of marketing to that demographic would likely do it. If some Distro started throwing up ads during Law and Order and Murder She Wrote marathons, Linux use would likely explode.

A. To most people who have never smoked, tobacco quite frankly tastes like shit. With the availability of numerous other flavors ranging from fruit flavors to desert flavos and even fish, few people who don't smoke are going to find tobacco flavors more appealing. And almost none of them are ever going to decide they'd prefer to smoke or chew actual tobacco over tailored flavors. B. Smoking cessation and nicotine delivery isn't the only use for ecigs. I know several diabetics and dieters who use ecigs with nicotine free eliquids to curb cravings for sweets and other junk food with great success.

It can cost a lot if you make it a hobby. But it doesn't have to cost a lot. A $80 Vamo kit (with 2 batteries and a charger), a $20 Protank and maybe $10 in replacement heads a month will cover the hardware costs for a fairly high performance. And a 30ml bottle of eliquid costs about $20 on the high end and will last most people about 2 weeks. As for it being harmful, It's almost certainly more harmful than not vaping but there's no concrete data showing it's any more harmful than breathing the air in any major city and a great deal of data showing it's far less harmful than smoking. There's a fine line to draw in order to help existing smokers transition to them (since they're evidently better than actual cigarettes) and discouraging non-smokers (especially teenagers) from trying them out. By painting the opposition as nutjobs, all you're doing is looking like a nutter yourself.

The main ingredient in Smoke/Fog fluid is Triethylene glycol, not ethylene glycol.

The point is to get off the highly carcinogenic substances produced by the combustion involved in smoking tobacco.

Not me. It's still great music and I have no problem listening to it (well, not St. Anger and anything since, that's all been shit).
Buying it on the other hand, is something I haven't and won't ever do again. And I'd bought a lot. And it all got ripped and shared out (on Direct Connect, I hated Napster) within days of Lars showing up on C-Span whining to Congress that some broke ass kid deserves to go to jail for listening to a song without paying.
That fucker used to brag incessantly about how they'd fucked people over to get by in their early days. Turned out, they just liked fucking people over and getting by was just an excuse for being shit human beings. But I don't blame the music just because the artists who made it are douchebags.

The first problem is you assume publishers don't already use similar methods. They do. But instead of limiting themselves to users of a single website they cast a much wider net by sending copies of their books to public libraries, book store owners, book clubs and critics as well as using social/sales driven websites that already do similar things to what you propose like Goodreads, Amazon, LibraryThing, etc....

The second problem is your method limits the potential audience to fans of a particular website. If that website tends to be more popular with fans of Fantasy than it is with fans of Harlequin Romances or Thrillers those books would be hamstrung from the start.

And the biggest problem is that any attempt to objectively evaluate a wildly subjective medium is fruitless. Imagine if Rowling had named her boy wizard "Jefferson Cowler". The skill of the writer would have been the same, the story would have been the same, but there's a good chance the reception would have been quite different.

A successful artist, no matter what medium they are utilize, needs both talent and luck to become a success. You can't eliminate either one from the equation, no matter what method you use.

The subsidy needs to be shifted to rural broadband. Several cities are already struggling with pushes to rezone buffer land located close to the city for industrial use because rural areas are still very underserved with broadband and even farms and mills and the like are increasingly in need of broadband access to do business.

I'd much rather pay a few bucks more for internet and phone service to subsidize the roll out of broadband to country folk than have a pig farm 3 blocks away from my house.

Context should have made it clear that "everyone" was only meant to include those who make commercial movie theatres, and other brick and mortar businesses that are dedicated to selling access to media, a viable business. Simultaneously, context also should have made it clear "everyone" was not intended to mean "every person on Earth including people whose last recent release movie watched was Breakfast at Tiffanys, those who are both deaf and blind, the Amish, domesticated animals, visiting aliens and the newly risen Undead will want to buy a home theater".


As home theatre quality and ease of use increases, prices drop and the population becomes more technologically savvy; avoiding the annoyances and expense of movie theatres will become more and more attractive to those who currently utilize movie theatres until eventually, enough of those theater-goers will opt for the home alternative that the commercial movie theatre will no longer be a large scale viable business.

I apologize for forgetting there are some people incapable of recognizing context and need everything spelled out for them.

Few people go to the theatre because they like $8 popcorn, teenagers throwing crap all over the over the place and listening to what ridiculous ring tones people have.
Eventually everyone is going to have a quality home theatre and movies will be released on Bluray without any delay for theatrical release and theatres will quickly go the way of video arcades, video rental stores, software stores, music stores and book stores.

The days are numbered for any business that is dedicated to selling media that can be digitized.

The "get off my lawn" part of me It's a bit sad about that. But that doesn't make it any less inevitable.

These shows meet the criteria for exemption as contests on several of those points.

But you are completely correct as to the reason for why those rules exist. Many of them were drafted specifically to counter schemes enacted by the old "Publisher's Clearing House" to get people to buy magazines and the numerous scams that cloned PCH's methods.

Which don't apply to shows like this as the person calling in isn't eligible to win anything and the show doesn't charge people anything to take part.
The only laws governing shows like this (that matter to viewers) are ones originally directed at game shows that prevent them from misrepresenting the vote results. Those same laws also require they take reasonable steps to ensure the voting is fair which, as someone mentioned, is why you see the fine print at the end of such shows that actually reads something similar to: "The producers, in consultation with an independent vote management company, reserve the right to remove votes identified as having been cast in such a significant block, either by technical enhancements or otherwise, that could unfairly influence the outcome of the voting." which just discloses they have to discard voting done by bots and such.

When someone is eliminated or revealed as the winner it's a safe bet it's because it's what was in the vote tallies.
Manipulating the votes is a bad way to get what they want as if that came out, there'd be no way to defend it and it'd cost them a hell of a lot more than having to put Taylor Hicks on a few posters. Plus, Telescope handles voting for lots of things beyond reality shows, some being legitimate contests. Allowing votes they collect to be manipulated or misrepresented would likely end up with them being sued into the ground if it was ever discovered.
Why risk it when it's much easier to manipulate the viewers into voting the way they want them to? It's trivial to have the sound guys work less at making a certain contestant sound good, have the lighting or camera guys make them look bad, edit their little promo packages so they come off offensive or idiotic, tell a contestant the song they thought they were going to sing didn't clear at the last minute so they have to do something else without rehearsal, have the judges say someone who is good sucks over and over and over again or any of dozens of things that can sway viewers towards the results they want that would be very hard to prove was intentional.

Also, depending on what the issue was, it may have affected American Idol as well since Telescope handles their voting as well.

As to the merit of such shows, they aren't in the same class as The Real World or Honey Boo Boo. They're at least marginally about people with actual talents and skills beyond simply being trainwrecks of human existence. I like music so I watch them. But these days I only watch them on the DVR so I can skip all the sob stories and judges' egomaniacal ramblings so they're tolerable, which means I don't vote.

Worse, I've now started getting flooded with the "Have you or a loved one used Fixilfakeadine and suffered spontaneous anal ejaculation, moderate club foot or sudden gender change? If so, call our hotline now! You may be entitled to financial compensation." messages.
At least the politicians never had their robot call me more than once or twice a day. One of those ambulance chasers called with the same message 7 times in an hour before I got around to blocking the number.

"Indian" Court.
You must have thought it was a US Court where "Oh, you changed the marking on it from an M to a W?" is usually enough.