Nearly thirty years it has been and our desktops are still not free. For thirty years, our lives are still sadly crippled by the manacles of frequent crashes and by numerous security problems. Thirty years we have lived on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. We are still languishing in the corners of American society and find ourselves exiles in our own technological land.

So I have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. Windows has to go from our desktops. It is time for Linux and Apple’s OS X to play a more major role, and for Microsoft to get with the program and fix this broken buggy whip.

I say to you today, my readers, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of productivity. I have a dream, that all PCs will live up to their original marketing potential, and free their owners from the devils of DOS and frequent application crashes. I have a dream that one day our desktop PCs, sweltering in the heat of their overclocked CPUs, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and reliable operations.

I have a dream that one day all of my applications will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood and play nicely on my PC, no matter what version of drivers, browser add-ons and video adapter is inside my computer.

I have a dream that your and my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the version of operating system running on their desktop computer, or by which browser they use to access the Internet, but by the content of their Web sites and emails.

I have a dream today.

This is my hope. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day from frequent reboots, free from infected bot nets, free from crashed applications and inexplicable blue screens and error messages.

How I wish most of us could free ourselves from the tyranny of Windows and have a desktop operating system that didn’t crash frequently, could support our legacy browsers, were easy to install and wasn’t a security sinkhole. Dream on.

Maybe some day we will be able to say “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free of Windows at last!”

I first penned this column eight years ago, in honor of Dr. King’s famous speech at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial back in August 1963. I thought you might enjoy the column, as my way of showing my respect for his memory and fantastic oratory. Sadly, I had to change very little of the text between then and now.