What an utterly idiotic statement: Linux "failed because of $X".

Firstly, there are many possible reasons why Linux may be better or worse than Windows in a given situation, of which API stability is just one of them. Maybe it was important for you, or for a particular project you were involved with, but that doesn't make it THE REASON. Assuming that a complex issue like OS competition can be boiled down to a single "reason for failure" is stupid, particularly when your bald assertion is not backed up with a single piece of evidence.

Secondly, Linux hasn't "failed" just because it hasn't satisfied an arbitrary requirement to displace Windows within some timeline that exists only in your own head. If Linux (not UNIX) used to run on 90% of desktops and was knocked out of the game by Windows, you would have a point. If Linus Torvalds personally committed to take over from Windows within ten years, you would have a point. Neither of these is true. Linux still exists, it is still being developed, and it is still being used by millions of people and companies all over the world. I would be quite happy to achieve this level of "failure" in any of my own projects.

But meh, why I am I wasting time arguing with this crap? Another day, another "Linux will never succeed on the desktop because $MY_PARTICULAR_ISSUE" post. At least it didn't involve complaining about manually configuring monitor sync rates or include a demand to magically eradicate all distros except for the One True Choice, so I guess that's progress.

Meaning is defined differently by different people. Film at 11.

Not really. It might be considered "a lot more" by the recipients of the soup, but the rest of the world is far more likely to care about the first people on Mars than some guy who helped out in a soup kitchen for an afternoon.

I am not a lawyer, much less an American one, but since when did casual copyright infringement via P2P become a criminal matter rather than a civil one? And if this is the case, why do the RIAA waste their own money suing file sharers when they could simply call the police and have the matter dealt with by the state?

Either there has been some legal development of which I am unaware, or this university is going to look rather foolish when they start trying to report the first batch of "offenders".

Unless the troll is in the UK, where it has recently been determined that hurting people's feelings on the Internet is a jailable offence.

That's not the issue. The complaint is not that the police investigated the tweet; this might well be argued to fall under due diligence. The complaint is that they investigated it, discovered it to be totally harmless, and still brought the full force of the law to bear on the tweeter simply for the hell of it.

Not only that, but the campaign potentially puts law enforcement in a quandary. They can either arrest, charge and convict hundreds of people (including several popular celebrities) for posting a line of trivial text that harms precisely nobody, or have Paul Chambers' lawyers demand that they explain why they are applying the law selectively and unfairly.

That's one of the biggest problems with taking speech crime this far: it becomes utterly trivial for an angry population to effectively DDOS the enforcement of it.

How many times does it have to be pointed out: Slashdot is not a single person.

But feel free to karma whore by blatantly ignoring this point which has been raised many times before in response to posts like yours. It seems that attacking the mythical "Slashdot group think" is an easy way to get a +5 Insightful on almost any story these days.