Exactly. I have a 1366x768 laptop (16") because it was friggin' cheap, I expect any mass market laptop to break and don't want to waste my poor college student money, etc.. it works great, games/movies look great, but getting actual work done is stressful and slow. I think that screen size could handle above 1900x1200 just fine (assuming the fonts were appropriately fixed so they weren't too small).

That's just an issue with font sizes being badly designed. If you could get a larger display with better fonts you could do more at once more effectively.

You're right in a theoretical sense and/or strict logical analysis of what he's saying, but we all know what he means: current displays are way lower than what he'd like. The reason megapixel fanatics are nuts is because cameras have such ridiculous resolution capabilities: usually far too big to be shown without downscaling on 2560x1600 displays, let alone any HDTV.

Maybe you have really bad eyesight? I certainly wouldn't call mine good and I have no problems with 1900x1200 on a 24" display. HDTVs are often a bit ugly compared to my LCD when looking at a desktop or such, I don't know if it's the screen quality or relatively low resolution for their size.

He's not a "normal consumer" so he has different concerns. He's lobbying them as best he can and if you don't share them, maybe you should STFU about him being a whiner? The availability of more 4K displays would not suddenly drive up the price on your 1080p screens so that you could no longer afford to buy a monitor.

not really, because the "lazy leeches" are sometimes huge buyers who are enthralled with having huge legit collections. I know people like this. The problem here is that "huge downloader" and "huge buyer" are more correlated than you'd think.

ripping Blu-Rays is a fairly big PITA. Regular DVDs are simple but 1080p takes forever to convert to high-quality x264 (and most people don't want 30 gig direct rips)

Hey, I'm not going to give my money to any company that does this and I just bought that new breakout clone game thingy earlier today. It's great.

Here in Anchorage 3 mbit down 512 up DSL is over $100/month.

Nonono. I'm not claiming anything about "people" who distribute cracks. I'm saying that you are relying on the MOST sociopathic, immoral, uncaring bastard in the entire world who creates cracks. Somewhere out there is someone who just doesn't care. That's why lots of antipiracy (and the "just don't pirate" rhetoric) is flawed; when dealing with this many people you have to forecast behavior and your model has to account for outliers.

No. The problem is that you're not relying on the average person, or even most people, to be honest. You're relying on the most sociopathic immoral uncaring bastard of a cracker to refrain from cracking the game. That's destined to failure.

- no-one sane is advocating for removal of online authentication, which actually works - a basic check to keep people from simply copying CDs can be helpful Forget the people who torrent; they're too hard to stop.

On headphones (and replicating my headphones with speakers would cost thousands of dollars) I'm a bit afraid for my hearing unless I constantly adjust the volume with some music. Nonetheless, I do agree that overcompression modern-style is awful.

Depends on the music, personal taste, etcetera. I love Beethoven's 9, most Mozart, CPE Bach, Bach's organ stuff, Vivaldi, Grieg, and am trying others. Nonetheless, some musicians are just *bad* to me: all atmosphere and no music; it sounds like a theme for a movie in the non-musical almost sound-effects like sense (Stravinsky, Bartok, etc.). On the other hand, Philip Glass, who I sincerely expected to hate (minimalist just sounded horrible) I loved the second I heard. Delving down through what you do and don't like to find more stuff you do and expand your horizons takes effort.

you'd be *VERY* surprised at the difficulty of telling music apart. I've got decent headphones (AKG K81, they're certainly not high-end but they're better than what 98% of people use) and I had trouble telling 128 from flac last time I tried. My ears aren't bad - I can tell speaker quality in an instant and I can't stand the ipod buds / PC speakers most people use.