As comparison, alcohol causes 2.5 million deaths every year, according to World Health Organization.

I'll show you this, like it was an assignment in logic: Prove that gun control decrease school shootings!

Axioms:
There are people who, sometimes, want to injure or kill others.
People are more likely to succeed in injuring or killing others the more lethal weapons they can get hold of.

Proof:
With stricter gun laws, it becomes more difficult to get hold of guns.
If guns are more difficult to get hold of, fewer people will have guns.
If fewer people have guns, fewer people with murderous intentions will have guns.
Therefore, with stricter gun laws, there will be fewer school shootings.

Alcohol kills and injures outrageous numbers of people every year. Tobacco too. Weapons add to the suffering, as well as mental problems and sheer stupidity, not to mention poverty and desperation. We don't have one single problem to solve, but many, and none of them are easy to do away with. Yet we should try to work in the right direction on all of these issues. If you abstain from alcohol and tobacco, refuse to own guns, help people in need of medical attention or money, and try to convince other people to do the same, the society of tomorrow will be a slightly better place than if you ignore these issues. Putting pressure on politicians isn't a bad thing either. Every little bit helps.

Humans should definitely be brought back!

Get rid of ageing and other diseases and let people decide when and if they want to die! Personally I might stick around just to see how the show ends.

You can't expect much subtlety in catch phrases and propaganda. But I can assure you that the thought process doesn't end there when pro-pirates are concerned, and I assume the same is true for the anti-pirates.

Copying information has been easy and nearly costless for quite some time. What the internets have provided us with is a very easy and nearly costless way to connect people and publish and distribute information. All organizations (in its most inclusive meaning) that have benefited from the earlier situation where high costs were associated with connecting people as well as publishing and distributing information, are in one way or another threated by this development. This includes e.g. the copyright industry as well as the catholic church and even the national state itself, even though it may not be immediately obvious. All these organizations will try to defend themselves, and we will have a major struggle for quite some time, but I really don't think opposing communication among people will work out very well in the long run.

Here comes everybody, by Clay Shirky, explains some of these things in more detail. It's a great book.

So far GW seems to have been getting away with their bullying, but it's got to catch up with them eventually. Other companies are getting into plastic miniatures these days, after all. Mantic Games looks especially interesting.

Hardcore gamers are a small minority of course, but they tend to be a lot more computer-savvy than the average user, which increases their importance. Friends turn to them when it comes to computers, etc. But games are a concern for more casual gamers as well. When you enter a game store, you generally find no games for Linux (unless things look really different over there in the U.S.), and that's where the casual user will go. Anyway, people are lazy, and there's got to be some incentive to change OS for them to do it. So why would people change to Linux? Most people don't care about open source and other possible ideological reasons, and price is a small issue, since you can always get Windows without paying for it anyway. The average user don't have any incentive for change at all. But if you could tell the hardcore gamer that you can get the latest games and possibly better performance (if that is the case) on Linux, you might have the embryo of your tipping point right there.

I included myself in the "youths" bracket, as opposed to the middle aged, and I'm not younger than you are. Call me sloppy, but I didn't expect the Spanish inquisition.

It's nearly 2.30 a.m. over here, and I have to sleep, so I can't explain myself in more detail right now.

You underestimate the importance of games. Unfortunately, Linux still can't compete with Windows when it comes to games. Gamers are forced to keep Windows installed, and it's a pain to dual-boot. Sure, there are lots of games that work on Linux, and if you've got the patience for it, you can get even more to work through Wine, but that's not good enough. Gamers generally want the latest games, and they want them now, without any wait or bothersome hassle.

There are of course lots of middle aged people who don't play games or who are satisfied with simple ones, but they won't start any great migration. Youths are the key, and the gamers especially. Without them, Linux can't win.

Free Will is a difficult subject to discuss since different people put different meanings into the concept itself (and since tricky metaphysical issues often arise).

Basically there are two basic kinds of definitions of the concept, one that implies incompatibilism (that is, that Free Will and determinism are incompatible) and one that implies compatibilism.

The first one is concerned with the person's relation to the world around him and somehow demands that the person in all his actions introduce a new "cause" into the world, something that simply isn't a result of all the little forces working on him or her. Given this definition, if determinism is true there can be no Free Will. Some argue that quantum mechanics may give room for this kind of Free Will, while others (myself included) don't think that that will work either.

The second is concerned with the person's experience of the world and his own actions, and demands that the person's actions are in accordance with his decisions. Given this definition, it doesn't matter at all if the world is deterministic or not. Unless you, as percieved by yourself, perform actions that doesn't conform to your decisions, you have Free Will.

(Personally I've never understood why so many people think that the first kind of Free Will is important. How can it be, if I can't even tell if I have it or not? Clearly I have the second kind, and that's what important to me as a sentient being.)