Attempts to Count Linux Users Remain Pointless

An anonymous reader writes "A great deal of attention is paid to numbers, but rarely does one actually ask what these numbers mean. One problem that many people have been trying to tackle is gauging the extent of use of Free software, including Linux. Questionnaires are not a solution here and neither are statistics, which are usually derived from the wrong data. The following article looks at the various challenges at hand and concludes that the growth rate of Linux is likely to remain an enigma."

Re:Ah, an Onion-esk headline

[Anonymous Coward]

The dutch tax administration is actually counting these figures. In The Netherlands, the tax office releases each year an application which helps filling in your tax deductions. Most households in the netherlands who own a computer use it. Now, for the last few years they've released it their tax-app for Windows, Mac and Linux, and each year they publish how many times the tax-app is downloaded per platform; here's the link for last year's figures:

In dutch:
http://automatiseringgids.sdu.nl/ag/nieuws/nieuws/ toon_nieuwsbericht.jsp?di=335745 [automatise...ids.sdu.nl]

English translation (Yahoo babelfish):
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done &tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-home&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fautom atiseringgids.sdu.nl%2Fag%2Fnieuws%2Fnieuws%2Ftoon _nieuwsbericht.jsp%3Fdi%3D335745&lp=nl_en&btnTrUrl =Translate [yahoo.com]

Re:Full Liberation is Not Pointless.

[dedazo]

Let me help you understand why it was modded as troll. This is what the post should have looked like:

Desktop liberation is important because it prevents sabotage in other seemingly unrelated areas like, power management and portable music players. As long as [Microsoft] has the lion's share of desktops, they can put pressure on vendors, equipment makers and even on line service providers like Google.

This is the point where you quit while you're ahead, and it's the difference between +5, Insighftul and -1, Troll.

The rest of the post is nothing more than a disjointed, infantile nickel hyperbole rant, complete with grade school creative spelling, the implication that free software is absolutely perfect and everything else is absolutely useless, the ever so odious "GNU/Linux" Stallmanite koolaid push and empty promises of nirvana if only everyone would just be reasonable and see the world in the same "join us or die" black and white shades as him. The whole thing is "cleverly" designed to make sure that you end up looking like you're attacking free software or defending Microsoft when you try to question his bullshit.

Now you might very well agree with the latter part of the post, in which case more power to you and all that. Most people don't, however, and that's probably why twit has been getting troll mods on all his "let me tell you why M$ sux" rants lately.

You pays your money and you takes your chances. Or if you're twitter, you just blame your negative moderation on a vast Microsoft conspiracy to undermine you personally, operated out of India with funds provided by Bill Gates' checkbook. Either way, since you're incapable of realizing that you inflict more damage than good to the very cause you are supposedly trying to advance, you lose.