Guests included an earnest IT wonk who works with Microsoft systems and a plucky pundit from New York City who digs the open source movement. Here's a little bit of unsolicited advice to open source enthusiasts speaking in public : SHUT THE FUCK UP! Atleast, until you can learn to leave the BOFH metality at home and complete a sentence without saying uuuuuuuuhhhh four times or chucking derisively at the decisions, involving closed source software, others have taken for reasons y, x and z. You know you're right, and I know you're right, but berating someone with the fact that they are wrong has rarely proven to be an effective means of persuasion. I will let you in on the dirty little secret of most computer users : they just don't care about the details. They really don't. Not even a whit. Nope, they don't care. Say it with me. And, as much as you would like to belive it, they are *not* worse people for it. They have other considerations in their life and in a world of the-customer-is-always-right durable goods, can you really fault someone for expecting something that "just works" ? In a world of never-ending daily compromises, most people are willing to live with the fact that Microsoft may suck, for a bunch of reasons that make their eyes glaze over, but atleast they don't have to edit a .xinitrc file. Or even an AUTOEXEC.BAT file, most of the time. Yes, they made their own bed but now is the time to point out the alternative not force them to sleep in it. That's just petty and mean-spirited.