E-Dribble

Regardless of whether it’s driven by loyalty, devotion, ignorance or stupidity, Microsoft has surpassed being synonymous with the desktop and has become the only desktop, much like Kleenex became the only tissue and coke took soda’s place.  Although we never get to choose our most vocal supporters and defenders, sometimes the worst possible choice floats to the surface and gets more exposure than you might like.

A member of one of the forums I frequent posted this article by Ken Starks of Helios.  He received an email from a middle school teacher.  It seems one of her children had brought a laptop into her classroom and was showing the other kids how linux worked and handing out disks.

Did she write Ken to find out what linux was?

No.

Did she write him to ask him if he could supply materials for her student?

Nope.

Did she ask him to talk to the child about running linux in the classroom as it was a disruption?

In the immortal words of Men at Work: Na, Na, Na.

She wrote him to tell him that what he was doing was wrong, making kids think you could get something for free when you couldn’t and that she wasn’t sure, but she thought he was doing something illegal.  If so, she was going to try to have him prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.  Finally, she suggested that Mr. Stark contact Microsoft to see if he could get some obsolete OS disks on the cheap for the computers he hands out to disadvantaged kids.

Well, Mr. Stark had some fun with it, it got picked up by Slashdot and she ended up looking like the tard that she is in front of the whole world.  Yay, public education.  The most disappointing aspect of the whole fiasco was the warm-fuzzy group hug that Mr. Stark perpetuated, to diffuse all of the linux zealot’s anger and resentment.

As I stated in the forum post concerning the letter, she shouldn’t be berated for not understanding linux.  It’s still an OS aimed at geeks(dispute this, and you’re a geek.).  What she should be ridiculed for is going so far as to accuse someone of illegal actions without doing an iota of research on the matter, aside, of course, from using linux once in college.

If you wonder how our kids turn out to have the thought capacity of turnips, you have to look no further than Karen, our children’s guardian through the learning process.

• Microsoft is everywhere
• you’re giving children false hope
• I saw a linux install 10 years ago
• I think you may be doing something illegal

All of these sentiments sent to an OS developer without taking the time to figure out what the hell he was developing.  I don’t know about you, but as a general rule, I require some form of information before I will accuse someone of anything.

I bet if I did the research, I would find that her students truly do have the thought capacity of turnips.  Since I haven’t though, I guess I shouldn’t say so.

Group hug, everybody.