I think your biggest problem is that most /. readers are either old farts or desperately wish they were (naturally, I include myself in that). Most people here seem to adhere to fairly conservative (whatever that means) technical views, i.e. Microsoft is evil, JavaScript programmers are script kiddies, the 'real world' should just go away and leave the Internet alone etc.

Unfortunately for you, that means you have a readership that has no interest in video or other 'modern' formats (just look at the arguments over ASCII art) and prides itself on holding somewhat contrarian views. On top of that, /. culture was born when everything on the internet was free; now it isn't any more, but you're scrambling to monetize a website based on the idea that a bunch of curmudgeons are entitled to bitch about whatever they like for nothing. Hence the endless debates over advertising, in its various forms. Good luck with that.

I'm not saying I have a solution (it's not clear if there's even a problem) but I think you have to accept that /. is now Fox News for Nerds. Like most news sources, it's used primarily by those who conform to its culture, and by those who want to be part of it. This is not a dynamic, cool site any more (if it ever was); it's for people who are tech conservatives and want to stay that way and regrettably for you, that position includes a rejection of 'commercial' culture.

Atheism certainly is a religion, in the (very broad) sense that it's a belief system based on scientifically unproven or unprovable claims. Atheism is unprovable because atheists believe that there are no supernatural deities; you can't prove a negative therefore it's purely a question of belief, not of logic or science. Religion on the other hand is provable, but in thousands of years of human history, not one person has succeeded in proving the existence of any deity. Or in hundreds of years of the scientific method, if you prefer, since apparently proving the existence of God/gods to other people was a lot easier until the scientific method came along: no major world religion has been founded in the scientific age.

There is nothing rational about being an atheist, so if you want to talk about a sceptical view of religion (and atheism) you would be better off describing yourself or others as agnostics.

So apparently you want to be taken more seriously, but you decide to drop "windoze" into your question? Do you really think that the people who hand out jobs - and titles - care about your personal prejudices? As a professional, if the best solution for your company is "Microsoft`s platform" then you deliver it, you don't spend time complaining about how no one respects you because your proposal to migrate Visual Studio to vi isn't taken seriously. If it makes sense, make a business case for it and argue for it, but if the guys upstairs decide against it then either shut up or get out. This is what happens every day in Sales, Marketing, Production, Finance etc., but you seem to believe that IT is different.

If you're so obsessed about a job title then insist on it your contract. As some people say, that may make sense if you're concerned about your next job, but how bad is this job if you're already thinking about the next one?

What about Rule 0:

Rule 0: the following rules apply only to techies, who are the only people capable of understanding even the basic issues involved

Seriously, if you provide a consumer service of any kind, and you expect the consumers to do anything more than just use the service, you are seriously deluded. People - including, I suspect, many techies - will never do anything more than chat/download/email/surf/whatever.

My bank doesn't tell me to back up my account details in case their internet service goes down, why should anything else be different? Yes, that's a rhetorical question, and of course you and I understand the difference, but why should anyone else?

Anyway, the point is that this is not even a technical issue: it's a business one. How do you persuade people to start paying not only for "free" services (Facebook) but "worthless" invisible ones (a backup of your Facebook data)?

If you can solve that, let us know. Until then, going on about backups is only preaching to the choir. Most of whom have probably had a nasty experience with things going wrong already... :-)