OSNews

I finally understand why you post the things that you do, not just in this thread but in general.

The world has gradations, kaiwai. The evildoers are human as are the angels. There is a little bit of Voltaire present in NASCAR, a little bit of Christopher Hitchens in the Bible, a bit of kiwi in George W. Bush and a little bit of Dennis Ritchie in every iPad user. Try to understand this and see that this blog is trying to change some of the patterns you detest--and it may even have the power to. No need to be so cynical all the time, it grates on peoples' nerves here.

Thom's point is as clear as day. Talking about the future is not a "conspiracy theory". It's called "talking about the future". I don't think that you honestly believe that this doesn't an incremental step in the major consumer OS vendors' increasing control of desktop PC's.

That said, I personally don't think Thom and commenters here give enough credit to the "average user". As the Arab spring has reminded us most recently, totalitarianism is both real and a myth: real in its brutal effects, myth in its claim to totality. People will keep resisting, and they'll even become aware of their resistance and that there is something that should be resisted. *Ahem* The eventual American intervention in Nazi Europe is not the only kind of salvation that exists; people will always rise up.

For the record: I have always said that if FOSS got some spine and earnestly tried to sell the public on the importance of libertas in software they would do phenomenally well. Programmers love love love to hate themselves and act condescendingly toward the rest of the world, saying that the "average user" will never understand. This has never been anything more than about job security (in a broad sense): as long as you say people won't get it, then there's no chance that they will, and so your mastery and puffed up sense of self-worth will continue unharmed.