One mistake I think a lot of people make is translating a degree into a career path. True, you can match degrees to jobs but often most employers are looking to see that you have education when they look for a degree. At least in my rather limited perspective.

So she should try to find something she likes, not necessarily directly related to a degree in math.

Difficult to recompile software? This is why I prefer Gentoo over Linux From Scratch. See Gentoo has a package manager so you don't have to bother with funky make errors. Let me show you what a typical compile looks like, type this at a shell prompt:

sudo emerge firefox

And off it goes compiling happily. Now lets pirate Windows, open your web browser, go to your favorite download site, type this in their search bar:

Windows 7 Ultimate x64 cracked

You just have to wait for the download to finish, but then I have to wait for my compile to finish too, seems fair enough.

As for me needing to be "pissed off", I prefer Gentoo Linux over say Debian Linux or RedHat Linux or Windows or OS X because it is a system which you compile all the software you want. I happen to enjoy tweaking my system and having the bare minimum required to run. But that is just me. There are plenty of distributions that offer binary archives, some of the more popular ones even have big fancy GUI based package managers, something that Windows lacks. Lets face it, the install wizards aren't up to snuff, talk about "Micky Mouse bullshit".

If anything, I'm pissed off at binary based operating systems that limit what I can do. I realize not everyone wants to do the same things I do, and then you have people that really just don't care, naturally different people have different goals, therefore different system exist.
Notice I didn't say "everyone should compile every last piece of software they will ever use" and instead said "this is why I use Gentoo Linux"

Maybe you shouldn't make such glaring assumptions.

Now as for "the general public" not tolerating compiling software, no shit.
People pay me handsomely to do the digital equivalent of wiping their ass because you know what, they can't figure out how to; set up their email account in Microsoft Outlook, they can't figure out how to update Adobe Flashplayer, they have a hard time grasping that their is a difference between the username and password they use to log into the network at work and the username and password they use to log into their personal email at home. They can't even install Microsoft Office by themselves either, it isn't that they don't have the account privileges, they are local administrators, they literally don't know how to click "next" a few times. Even after I show them step by step. I even had a lady who entered financial information into a "security warning".

So I have every right to be pissed off at shitty designs that cater to the computer illiterate; but because they are shitty, the computer illiterate end up not figuring it out anyways. Instead of little Suzy checkout girl being able to fend for herself, she calls me up and says "set this up I don't know how" and now I'm stuck with something designed for people who don't know what they are doing.
If I have to do everything anyways, I don't see a problem with systems that compile software, it isn't like Suzy was going to install it herself anyways, she is just going to pay me to do it instead.

That is why I use Gentoo Linux, whenever there is a link issue because I upgraded a library, I just recompile against that library.

You have to stop thinking that all open source projects are out there to "emulate" a proprietary product. In some cases this is exactly what they do, for example ReactOS aims to be binary compatible with Windows NT. But most of the time they are there to offer a different point of view, a different way to accomplish a task, and they are aimed at a different type of person. For example Adobe Photoshop is aimed at people who just want to pull a product of the shelf, click buttons, wave their mouse about and have an edited/digitally painted image. GIMP is all about the plugins, it lets people build their own tools literally, Photoshop only lets you create batch jobs out of existing tools, there is some room for end user plugins but not every much.

So what more people go out of their way to pirate Windows? I think that has to do with the fact that it is very easy to figure out how to work a torrent client or some other downloading client and Google for "free Windows download" coupled with all the dirty/borderline illegal if not flat out illegal business tactics carried out by the Wintel trust back in the day that made sure only Wintels where stocked at your local computer shop.
Most people only ever know about Windows because when you walk into Radio Shack or Best Buy or where ever, they only have Wintels if you are lucky maybe a few AMD boxes, but they still run Windows. And every time retailers or manufacturers try to do something a little different Microsoft does its best to threaten the company back into submission.
From my point of view, it seems like more people choose to pirate Windows then download a Libre operating system because they only know about Windows.

Though I do like your argument on why companies like a bit of piracy, I think there was a story while back highlighting Microsoft allowing large quantities of Windows XP piracy over in China because it got their name out.

That is because up until recently Broadcom was not an open source player. With there latest chipset they are actually developing a set of open source drivers (brcmfmac and brcmsmac)
So with the proprietary drivers you end up with only a handful of people actually looking at the code and fixing the issues, versus the new chipset, I can say "Hey, look I fixed this, want my patch?"

I use it to grab adblock+ but that is about it.

If you can't pin down every data stream spewing from a "pure" install of your operating system, can you be sure it doesn't have private information? A system that obfuscates it's operation is a system that doesn't protect end user privacy, just the privacy of anyone with a backdoor installed on it.

Heck, I can search the registry to see what websites you've visited, remotely if I wanted too, even after you clear your browser history and temporary data. Maybe Microsoft itself isn't violating your privacy but they sure make it an easy job for others.

But I feel this can still come back to poor public education.
I was only required to take one "Civics" class really didn't have anything coherent to say.
It stead of forcing us to memorize the Bill of Rights they should have actually explained what they did for citizens. We didn't even break down the Constitution and discuss what powers are given to the Federal government and are reserved for State governments. ect. ect.

I want you to go home, turn off any thing on your network that might be sending broadcast traffic, fire up a computer running a freshly installed copy of a Windows that was legally obtained and theoretically shouldn't contain any rootkits or backdoors.

Then fire up a frame capture and watch all the odd traffic flowing from the box, even after you turned off things like automatic updates and netBIOS to ensure you aren't picking up legitimate services.

A democracy only works when the public isn't mainly comprised of morons. I blame shitty public education.

This is a first for Microsoft, protecting users' privacy.

I have great anti-virus software, it is called, "don't mount my /home or /tmp directories with the executable bit set."

It still is for n00bs.

Really? I was always under the "assumption" that the success of Unix had to do with the fact that it was written mainly in C so you could port it to any platform with a C compiler, that it supported a rich programming API even very early on, that it was not bloated allowing it to not waste what was at the time extremely expensive computing resources, and that it actually supported multiple users.
Last time I checked it was Unix that dominated pretty much all markets, except for the desktop market.

But everyone knows OS X isn't a real Unix. Lets face it, they do just enough to pay for their certification.

You do realize that you can configure Apache to defend against DoS attacks, for example making the timeout threshold a shorter period of time.

If you are worried about bloat, why not go the whole nine yards and build your server from the ground up using Gentoo Linux or FreeBSD, compile everything from source and optimize binaries for the server's micro-architecture.

Take a look at debian-installer and preseed, rather simular to kickstart for anaconda based installers, or sysprep for Windows. You can probably push the images out over the network via FTP or NFS.

Then you will want to look at making a local apt mirror or cache depending on your needs, to manage updates and such.

This is at a minimum. NIS or LDAP might also be required if you intend to grow the network.http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/02/26/1730239/ask-slashdot-how-do-you-install-ubuntu-on-30-laptops-and-keep-them-in-sync#