No, you really haven't, since you didn't learn THE FIRST TIME to tell them that "your hard drive failed." (Once, twice, thrice...)
Having said that, I find it quite incredible that all these "corporate faces" are so concerned with losing money because Microsoft says they have to pay for a hundred more copies of Windows eXPatriate Super Disgruntled Cubicle Cow Edition or face licence revocation. I can understand a few clients being concerned that they might not be able to play Far-Cry on their billion-dollar Cray systems (what a waste of such superior boxen), but do America's college students REALLY need cross-compatibility for the latest version of Duke Nukem Donkeypunches Osama Bin Laden? What happened to schoolwork with an occassional round of Solitaire? Last I checked, Linux supported Patience, Mahjongg, KSolitaire (to name a few that come to mind immediately) on that front. It even supports Unreal Tournament (let's lead with our best foot), StepMania (albeit with some doing on ATi systems), SNES9X, ZSNES, BoycottAdvance, FakeNES, Mupen64, MAME, and - since a veritable slew of fighters use an engine virtually identical to Mugen - with some amount of doing: Street Fighter, Capcom v. SNK, and even Eternal Fighter Zero. Who says you can't game on Linux? :cool:
But I stray from my point. What does it say about our state of affairs when our sales executives would rather be playing Half-Life 2 than preparing their lecture on WHY their products aren't selling, which - incidentally - is due to excessive office usage of Half-Life 2? What does it say about our educational systems when our sysadmins wholly endorse systems that can't be fully clamped down in such a manner as to bypass floppies on boot (unless the district is willing to shell out $2,000 per motherboard) in order to "preserve the ability of our charges to administer applications to their liking" and then wonder why no real work is getting done? I'm not suggesting that Linux is going to instantly re-order our nation, everyone knows that a complete reversal of entropy is a scientific improbability (Lesson: NEVER say science makes ANYTHING impossible. Bad logic.
). However, it can't hurt to make some effort to fight the effects of entropy, rather than embracing it wholeheartedly. Remember that it was THAT kind of thinking that got the Nazis into power (invoking Godwin's Law here, I know), and THAT kind of thinking that led to the Holocaust - don't ever let anybody tell you otherwise. Embracing the norm is a danger, nay a CANCER, that eats at the very fabric of our society every day. Shall we stand idly by and let another empire collapse from a mass unwilling to fight the future?
EDIT: Reflection: Perhaps if we're THAT apathetic, we deserve the coming insurrection. :rolleyes:
