Yeah. Let me know when their use is simple enough for 95% of the populace to handle, and when Webmail access that is independent of the browser/computer they are using and isn't implemented at the ISP level is possible.

It's not so simple and clean-cut as you make it sound. If it's an extreme hassle to remain secure and/or private then most people won't bother until it becomes easier. And even then you have to get them to care without sounding paranoid.

I would tend to disagree. Hacking a multiplayer game only crosses the line when it is done without the consent of everyone who would be affected by it. Certainly those who use hacks to give themselves a personal advantage at the disadvantage of everyone else are scumbags who take the game way too seriously, but starting a game where the explicit purpose (and this is stated up front to the other players) is to play around with the game and see what it is capable of is, in my opinion, perfectly fine.

Except when you try to exercise your right of first sale.

If I recall correctly, Valve's games are tied to the Steam platform even if they come on a physical disc, and there is no way to "unregister" a game. I could be wrong, or they may have changed that, but given that only two of the seventeen eBay results for the Windows version of the Orange Box are used, I'm guessing they haven't.

Right, like how Microsoft patched the Xbox 360 so that Xbox games could now work over Xlink Kai as compensation for axing the original Live service. Oh wait...

Yeah, I know. Valve is not Microsoft. But I wouldn't put so much faith in what ultimately seems to be nothing more than an unenforceable promise. And besides, if Steam's ownership changes hands, there's no guarantee that this promise will remain.

I think both approaches are the wrong way to go. Civil disobedience only works if you can get an immense, passionate group of people to partake in it, and do it in such a way as to attract others to the cause. As it stands, most people don't care enough about this for it to actually be a viable form of protest, and those who do are small enough that the public will turn a blind eye to them. More importantly, it is worth noting that this can easily backfire and cause lobbyists to simply push for even harsher laws to combat it, now that they can play the victim even better by pointing to these people as the justification for more regulation.

The hard-lined opposite approach won't work either. Again, because the majority of people aren't passionate about this, they will simply shrug it off and get used to it, whether that is in the form of accepting the new laws or just moving to more covert methods. Furthermore, we already know that Edgar Bronfman isn't (publicly at least) going to give his kids any slack if they are found to be infringing, so what makes you think that any other executives or politicians you mention are going to act differently?

Really? I've been using Firefox for years as my primary browser, most of which wasn't on Windows, and I can't even remember the last time I visited a site that didn't work properly in it.

Maybe I just don't go to these sites in question, and because of this I remain ignorant of their inability to work correctly. Then again maybe I'm not alone: I doubt that Firefox would have gotten its 20-ish% usage share if key Web sites still didn't work right in it. Likewise I doubt that other browsers and even non-Windows operating systems would see a slow but growing rise in usage if people couldn't get their favorite sites to work outside of Windows and IE.

Really? libavcodec is installed by default now?

And how do you know that the businesses being advertised actually condoned the spamming, much less encouraged it?

Never thought I'd see modern malware that ran on Windows 95, 98, or ME.

Not everyone has your priorities. Some people care very much about placing and receiving calls. Just because you don't care as much as they might does not make them inferior.

The EeePC 700 series has a maximum resolution of 800x480, so yes the Display Properties window is a legitimate problem even in today's world (in this case, enabling and changing the resolution of the external monitor).

What Blu-ray player?

Nope.

No PSP.

Try again.

Sure. In software.

I have one mobile phone, and it barely takes pictures.

It is possible to argue that AAC is displacing MP3, albeit silently.

For example, how many people who rip their CDs with iTunes actually go into the preferences and change the format from AAC to MP3?

"MP3" is synonymous with "audio" for most people. Chances are that, especially with Windows' default hiding of extensions, they have no idea what the file is really encoded in. And as long as they can play it, they have no reason to care.

Yes, because what the mobile business desperately needs is another standards war now that 3GPP2/CDMA has bit the dust.

Wikipedia. Print version of Wikipedia's source.