And honestly, I think this is difficult. What I like about my distro of choice is that it lets me just _use_ my computer, without losing lots of time on maintenance. Updates, upgrades, software installation, hardware installation, it all Just Works.

I believe this is why many people use Windows, actually. You may be "fluent" in Linux, so that switching to any other OS would cause a big loss in productivity. But for others, myself included, it's the other way around. While I know enough Linux to find my way around in it, I keep getting annoyed by all the little things that are Just Different(TM). I spend nearly no time on maintaining Windows because I've gotten it running just like I want it already. And when it comes down to what I actually use my computer for - writing code, drawing graphics and playing games, mostly - there's really no practical advantage to switching anyway. And I don't do ideology when it comes to tech.

I'm a software developer at a smallish dev shop in Sweden. I work for 40 hrs/week, period. There is occasionally overtime, but so far it's always been voluntary, and we get paid for it (or compensated with additional time off). I've five weeks paid vacation each year.

Based on what I read on Slashdot in threads like these, these seem like great working conditions, though I've always had the impression they're pretty standard. OTOH, we don't get time to work on our own projects or anything like that, which I've always wanted to have.

Mod parent up. Actual sales of Vista aren't bad by any reasonable judgement, and that's about as good an indicator of real "popularity" as you can get.

Speaking absolute numbers, any software company in the world would be thrilled to sell ~10 million copies of their flagship product every month. So before you call Vista "unpopular" I'd like to ask: "Compared to what?"

I think DS9 leaves open the question of whether the "prophets" are really "divine beings" or just another kind of alien. They certainly have an air of divinity about them, but so do other entities of the Star Trek universe, such as Q. However, if the Bajorans worship the prophets and that gets then something in return, what's the problem exactly? Obviously it hasn't stopped them from developing advanced tech; although you think it "unlikely", in the ST universe it has in fact happened. Perhaps the Bajoran religion actually encourages its followers to learn about the world around them.

Now, we can of course moan over the fact that a supposedly enlightened human like Sisko went religious, but clearly it saved his/DS9's/humanity's ass on several occasions, so what would have been his alternative? To pretend they didn't exist? To wait for his scientists to come up with plausible scientific explanations for the prophets' appearence of "divinity" before talking to them?

You're missing a key point with regards to the Bajoran religion; their gods actually exist and on multiple occasions throughout DS9 do they interfere directly in the lives of their worshippers, Sisko included. You'd need pretty strong reasons not to become religious if god came to you and told you you were his prophet. (Assuming you couldn't blame it on mental health issues.)

As for solving problems by prayer and faith, praying to a god who not only exists for a fact but who also has a track record of helping his followers actually makes quite a lot of sense from a rational pov.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with religion in the real world. I'm an atheist, too.

Although you wrote "virtually", I should point out that quite a few people run Vista on Apple hardware. I was surprised to come across such a computer at a friend's house on new year's eve, played with it a bit and it seemed to run great. It's just a regular PC after all, albeit with an exterior design that some find attractive.

Google "vista macbook" for more info. There are step-by-step guides to making it work.

First off, your kidding yourself if you think your laptops dont have DRM on them. Go play something HD on a older digital monitor with a older connection and talk to us.

"Something HD", as in the HD rip of $movie that I downloaded from $favourite_filesharing_site? Yep, works just fine.

If you don't buy crippled media, you won't have any problems with DRM. And filesharing is just another way of voting with your wallet.