Posting as Anonymous for obvious reasons.
Yeah, sometimes I forget my password too.
...then there was a time when BYOD was better...
The utopian future, where users won't be crying "fix my random device you have never seen one of before, I need it to work" to IT?
Let's address those point-by-point.
So out of your list, the only valid point is "free". And perhaps applications, depending on if you need to use an app which is Linux-specific. But otherwise it's not a compelling argument you just made. And hey, if you have no need of applications which run on Windows and want to take advantage of the Linux price point (or just prefer the OS), God bless you. But Linux advocates also need to cut it out with this superiority complex nonsense. Linux and Windows are both perfectly serviceable operating systems which may or may not be superior depending on your needs. Saying one is inherently better than the other is asinine.
There is no chance of this working. The Whitehouse petitions are a theater to let the Whitehouse look caring and connected to the people. It's not in place to get anything done.
There is no realistic chance of this working. That is not the same as no chance whatsoever. It may be about the same as the odds of winning the lottery, but it's still non-zero.
This is basically never true. This action makes people feel like they have done something without actually doing anything at all. Because they felt like they have acted, they don't feel the need to act any further. Donating just $5 once to the EFF or the ACLU would be actually doing something, funding groups that actually do things. A whitehouse petition is the same as doing nothing at all, but damn if you don't fell like you did something.
In the cases you mentioned, the alternatives are not "do something that probably won't help" and "do nothing at all", they are "do something that probably won't help" and "do something which helps in a small way". Not the same thing at all. If someone was going to donate $5 to an advocacy group, then I can respect saying that this hurts the cause for the case of that person. But if someone was going to do nothing at all, this is still an improvement, however small.
That is only true if you define "stealing" to include depriving the original owner of the use of their property. Which almost nobody does. The usual meaning of the word is nothing more or less than to take without permission.
Not to mention that in moral terms, it is the same damn thing as conventional theft. But hey, let's focus on technicalities of language. Nobody (except the industry people themselves, or those taking their paychecks such as legislators), is going to say that the tactics proposed by the media industry are reasonable or morally acceptable. But the fact that they are dicks about making their point does not diminish the validity of their point that piracy is not ok.
Yeah, I don't check either. I have some email alerts set up, and my phone only plays a notification if one of those comes in (or if someone calls, obviously).
And like I said, I'm sympathetic to people who get forced into that stuff by management. But there are so many people that voluntarily give up their work life balance, and then complain about how much time they spend working. Well, you're the one who chose to work 7 days a week...
The Tao is like a glob pattern: used but never used up. It is like the extern void: filled with infinite possibilities.