Tried to hit aaxnet.com, to see if you'd added this gem to the other clue-sticks (a place I send wannabe up-graders, whenever I have the chance). Alas incredibly s l o w just now, to load.

I hope that last er nice notoriety/15 minutes of Fame (with the Reg. link) has kept your hits up to the requisite standards of a primo muckraker's checkin spot! (?) Saves me lots of repetition anyway: I just say, "go there and read; take notes. If I can expand on any points that aren't already crystal clear - I'll try.. or send you to a few other sources".

I may have ID'd two essential and persistent failures of the small and diffuse mass of folk who appear to have grokked the situation to fullness, all along:

1) Still.. while there are several 'local nodes' of the sort as your effort is - there is no organization of "The M$-(ab)Used" that has anything like universal recognition, support = Actual Dues / some means for covering expenses and a few? full-time hires of appropriate sanity and tenacity. Apparently.. thus far, it hasn't seemed to be Worth-it enough - for a significantly large group of the disillusioned to put money where mouth is. "Microsoft Watch and Protection-therefrom" would be the essence of a title, no doubt already used - somewhere.

No $ means that a dedicated editor, organizer would have to starve / live by day job. You can do that for love.. for a time. But who can continue to love.. indefinitely.. an amorphous mass of ovine critters safely grazing on known Anthrax-laced cotton candy? (And Loving It ??)

2) Alcohol- drug- religion- gambling- sex- addictions have all spawned Twelve-Step Rehabilitation orgs, for dissemination of 'Truth' (Ok.. OK.. - see Philosophy forum) and for a few proven methods for kicking addictions: Once! you actually *Are Resolved* to - always that comes first.

Kicking M$ - connotes a kaleidoscope of those intentional lock-in consequences - all built upon the pyramid whose base is surely ~ sloth, intellectual and even survival-laziness which adores comfort and eschews the effort to become informed. Ditto with the other named addictions.

So it is a battle against the very foundations of Murican Pop-culture: ~go to sleep, consume mindlessly, go to a Theme park when the DTs strike. Never question yours or anyone's assumptions -- seek Comfort at all cost. (Political equiv: believe the slogans and the labels; voting is optional. When uncertain - buy something on CC, for comfortable diversion. Dream the Murican Dream nonstop.)

Ergo, it seems: the culture is against 1) paying for information necessary to wanting to be weaned from an addiction; thus 2) even a 12-Step org of excellent planning and execution - might well languish largely unvisited except by - the Choir actually in little need of its services [??]

What have I missed? It appears that Billy n'Bally have been formally anointed as (the most recently noticeable) Co-Popes of Capitalist Theology and shall remain in this position indefinitely, perhaps even unto inheritance by sibling Beastlets yet to be spawned septically.

Leaving: the case of Pope John XXIII, his (very temporary) just plain Wise subtlety and thus: mysterious death, shortly after his views became noticeable to The Curia.

Assassination or concupiscence? Are those the only choices (realistically) left in a declining culture?



Ashton
Nuke from orbit. A phrase which just won't go away.
The Cassandra Crossing (plague train)