> 1) Unfortunately, someone took a conversation about a purchase request as a chance to speak to [me] in a personal capacity
"I was checking in on different departments, to make sure everyting was running smoothly, but got drawn into a non-work discussion I didn't really expect or have a lot of time for, but that's okay, he's a nice guy."
> 2) Now that I live with the story, I’ve been waiting for a chance to share it so I don’t have to live with it any more.
"Now that someone mentions some software that would possibly have prevented the exact problem the person related to me, I think it's relevant to share.
> 3) Someone finally mentioned crematoria! Yes! Gather around, fellow engineers, to dissect a Therac none of you will ever interact with. By the way, the guy was half burned and fat. Sucks, right?
"And the implicit moral of my story is that these weird and esoteric systems the top level comment mentioned and wished there were open source versions for because they all require windows do have consequences, and do need options."
Or, you could just assume the person was like "ha ha dead people and fire" and assume everyone that asks you why you're upset is trying to curry favor with some weird set of tech moguls or something.
Edit:
> If it’s a problem that I care about those things, then, well, we are going to disagree.
Caring is not the problem, caring is laudable. Seeing those things where they don't exist, that's not. I think you're keying off some words in the post and letting that set a state of mind that colored the rest of what you read. To me, that exchange was a moment of "aw, that sucks. I feel bad for everyone involved" on the part of both parties in the conversation. Relating that itself is not bad.
In any case, we've gotten to the point where I actually got to see your reasoning to some minimal degree, and it's about what I thought (a gross misinterpretation to my eyes). I've addressed that here and before, and I'll let you have the last word.