You have to laugh... I once actually had to argue about how a microwave was not a necessity with some slashdotter once. So let's "grant" the Bushmen of the Kalihari free broadband so they can rent videos and stick it in some wildebeest's butthole for entertainment.
It's truly amazing we lived for a million or two years without microwaves OR video rentals. I honestly can't imagine how people survived!
If smoking is so great and such a valuable right that others shouldn't be able to stop you doing it whenever and wherever you please, why do cigarette companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year just to keep convincing people they need to keep doing it?
And if exercise and eating right is so good for you, why does the gov't spend millions trying to get people to start and/or continue such practices?
Come on - you can't deduce anything one way or the other from the existence of advertising. Don't get me wrong, I think smoking is a nasty habit and I wish people would stop doing it, for everyone's sake. Similarly, I think using bad logic is a nasty habit, and I wish people would stop doing that, too.
I totally agree with you to an extent.
However, your smoking does has an effect on me - if nothing but for financial reasons if you truly do smoke in a vacuum.
It's not physically possible to smoke in a vacuum, is it? There's nothing to support combustion, unless maybe your cigarettes contain a built-in oxidizer of some sort.
Oh wait, I get it - you mean like in a vacuum cleaner! Of course. But be careful in there - those dust bunnies are surprisingly flammable!
Simple enough, actually. Take, for instance, abortion. If you don't believe in abortion, don't have one. DON'T try to get legislation banning abortion passed to keep everybody from having an abortion just because you don't like it for reasons I'm sure you have every right to have.
I agree completely, and I think this simple logical principle should be extended to other areas. For example, if you don't like armed robbery, don't rob anyone. But don't go passing legislation to keep other people from engaging in armed robbery - that's a private decision between a man and his gun dealer, and it's really no one else's business.
>The problem with that is... they don't get the binaries, they can't try out the software and learn how good it is.
Sure they can.
They can compile it their own damn selves.
...and this attitude is precisely why it will NEVER be "the year of Linux on the desktop".
I know it's hard to imagine, but there are actually people out there (a majority, in fact) who use computers to get a job done, and have no interest in picking up the skills to "compile it there own damn selves" - just as there are people who drive a car but have no interest in the details of an internal combustion engine. You can diss them all you want (and I'm sure you will), but unless there's a realistic way for these people to use the software, they're just going to keep buying windows. And companies are going to keep writing software for windows. And hardware manufacturers are going to keep writing drivers for windows. And linux is never going to replace windows.
MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED -- The Pershing II missiles have been launched.
