No, wanting it to some extent means you buy it or don't. This is a binary question. There are plenty of things in this world that I either can't afford or justify spending money on, and guess what, I don't have them. You don't get something for nothing just because you don't have or don't want to spend the money.

1) Then they don't get to have their cake and eat it too. If they don't want to spend money on it, they don't get to have it.
2) Then they don't get to have it.
3) Gray area at best
4) Most pirates fall into this category, I would be willing to put money on it.

Loss of potential sale is theft, plain and simple. If you pirate something, you no longer have to spend money to get said thing. If everyone does that, then people lose all chance of recouping the cost of creating what was pirated. If you can't recoup the cost, you can't create more.
The cost of creating is owned money, you spend the money with the hopes of making it back, as well as enough to continue creating. Every loss of sale cuts into that. Copies reduce the value of the original as well, making it even harder to recoup the cost, if possible at all.

Yes, I will arrogantly say that I am correct. And you have yet to make a valid point in your argument to make me question otherwise. All you have is what you "think" and what your "opinion" is. Just because you don't agree with the law doesn't make it OK, and hell, even if the laws didn't exist, it would still be wrong and detrimental to the economy. There is no such thing as something for nothing.

What the pirates believe and what is reality are two very different things. They are criminals, they are breaking the law. It really is a black and white matter despite what those who want something for nothing think. They can bitch and moan about the MPAA/RIAA coming after them, but it is really simple how to avoid it in the first place and them saying that they think they should be able to download whatever they want is not going to hold up in court and they will lose.

I welcome you to counter my argument, your previous attempt did nothing sway my convictions.

Like to watch without buying is like saying there are cars I would like to drive but I wont buy them. You don't go break into one, take it for a joy ride, and give it back. This is a binary thing, either you want it or you don't. If you want it, you buy it. And just because the car is physical while movies are not does not mean they don't cost anything to produce. A lot of money went into producing that movie. The sale of the movie is what lets them recoup that.

Opinion doesn't mean anything where law (civil or criminal) is concerned. You don't get to change how the system works just by saying that you don't think that that is how it should work.

That makes no sense, copyright laws were created to help with non physical items. There were plenty of loopholes for people to weasel out of theft charges. There are a number of laws that were created after thousands of years of them not existing, but by your logic, they aren't needed because all contingencies were thought of thousands of years ago.

A work of art, be it music, video, or text, still takes time and effort to create and people have the right to demand compensation for their work from people wishing to benefit from it.

Although this thread has gone way off topic, I will throw in my two cents.

I once had a friend say it wasn't stealing because he wouldn't have bought it otherwise. This argument fails on so many levels. For you to have downloaded/copied it, you had to want it on some extent. If you didn't want it, you wouldn't download it. If you did, you would buy it. Since you did download it, you did want it, and therefore denied the owner the sale and revenue. Plus, if you can download what you marginally want and wouldn't buy otherwise, you are going to definitely download what you do want.

I have yet to meet someone who buys what they like and downloads what they don't, it is always an all or nothing.

Piracy is theft, plain and simple.

Any other argument is just lying to yourself to justify that you are not a criminal.

And I will admit that I used to pirate music, I stopped a long time ago and buy everything I want on CD or off of Amazon. The Amazon part is nice too because it kills the argument of not wanting to spend $20 on a CD since most CDs on Amazon/iTunes are $10 or less, and songs are usually $1, sometimes a little higher. Even videos are getting cheap when you can get episodes of TV shows at an average cost of $2.

We all used to complain that the MAFIAA wasn't changing to match technology, well they finally have and, really, all arguments pro piracy have dried up. The only thing I think they are failing with now are the stupid PSAs and commercials on every DVD I buy, but digital downloads are slowly taking care of that as well.

I am sure this will get modded down, but there you have it.

Yes, mainstream games and Linux don't mix at the moment, and probably never will sadly. As far video streaming and tax prep, Video streaming is working it's way there due to tablets, if any major distro (namely Ubuntu) releases a solid tablet that is more desktop than smartphone then I could see closed source plugins being developed for streaming. Tax prep is easier, they are already going full on web app, I say it give it 3-5 years and they won't be selling software anymore, so you can run it on anything. I think we are going to see a massive shift as far as the media industry is handling video in the next decade. It is a new (to them) tech that has been exploited by pirates and scared the crap out of them, the same as MP3. When companies like Netflix who could care less about DRM and just wants their software everywhere gets enough clout (like Amazon or Apple), we will see the removal of DRM from video like we did audio.

Except that a number of games and apps run on Mac as well as Windows, and there is no lack of FOSS out there to provide the same functionality in Linux as many Windows apps. Device support is getting to be pretty solid as well, I can't remember the last time I had trouble getting a device to work in Linux (granted I use Ubuntu).

There are no direct substitutes for OS, granted, but in the grand scheme of things, OS's are pretty new. Back to the car analogy, there were a small number of successful auto manufacturers back in the beginning. Some survived, many didn't, nowadays there is a (relatively) large number of brand options in the auto world.

We are already seeing a splintering of the traditional computer environment between desktops, smartphones, tablets, TVs, etc. I think with this we are going to see more of a splintering of OS's and apps as well, as well as more cross platform dev. Take the original story, MS is dropping plugins in the metro interface to use HTML5. While it sucks that H264 is licensed, it also works on practically every platform out there, and most media devices (TV's, Blurays, Game Consoles, Phones, etc.). I think this is a great thing, and kind of blow to MS in the OS environment. They have relinquished the reigns to there largest stranglehold on the market. With the PC moving to cloud storage and web based applications and a start towards a move to a media intense dev standard (I use the term standard loosely for the moment), the OS will become more disposable and really more preference of UI than anything else.

I grant this is all speculation, but it really seems to be where the industry is heading, and I for one hope that it continues. Certain things will never move, hardcore gaming will not be replaced by web apps, but then again, game consoles suffer the same problem that OS's do, there is no guarantee a game will be released on all platforms. Certain specialized apps will not make the transition either, but those will always be OS specific because of the cost of development and the fact that the cost of OS itself is not really an issue in most cases (think CAD software for instance).

Ok, think smaller then, the warranty on my TV ends and they stop supporting the model. They have no responsibility to replace my TV with one they support.

When the warranty on my car ran out, Toyota didn't offer me a new car that they would support.

I figured as much, my point was that his argument was very flawed. I use Ubuntu and Windows, so I am not biased against one or the other. Just the idea that Linux is better because it is "older" than Windows XP was invalid.

And I am sure you are only using the apps and kernel that came out those 18 years ago, because there is no need to upgrade right. Linux is 18 years old and Windows is 26 years old. The XP version of Windows is 10 years old. Most Linux distros release new versions once a year or once every other year, some even more often, some less. I am sure you are going to argue that those new versions are not needed because version 1 is plenty useful and all you need.

Yep, your right on that one. A hammer made of bone is just as useful as one made steel, why bother advancing. I guess an operating system will always be an operating system based on that logic. Just ignore the fact there are many different types of hammers out there for many different purposes, just like operating systems and applications.

Unless you are a die hard using the original version of linux with only apps released when it came out, I ask you to please make a relevant point.

We need to raise taxes period, and cut government spending. You can't keep cutting taxes and maintain our infrastructure, it just doesn't work. Police, Fire, Roads, Military, Public schools, etc are all funded by tax dollars, and a lot of them are seriously hurting financially these days (schools especially), but we also need to cut welfare programs (or at the very least regulate them better) and pet projects. I don't want to use a broad statement to say welfare or lobbying is bad, it most definitely has its positives for people and this country, but it is being abused and we have no real way to show this due to lack of regulation.

How businesses are handled needs to be changed as well. I'll admit I have more of a Randian approach to how I feel government should treat business. I feel meddling in company affairs should be limited, not eliminated per se. I support antitrust laws as long as they used correctly, but I feel that a large amount of business regulation is unnecessary. Keep any law that protects the worker, because are those are definitely needed. Eliminate most laws that prevent companies from being successful. A monopoly is prevention of choice (cable companies/internet/telcos that are locked into an area) but hurting a company because they are doing things right while their competitors aren't just to help their competitors needs to stop. Prime example of this would be the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit regarding Internet Explorer and Netscape. IE was good, Netscape sucked, plain and simple. I used both browsers and knew many people who did as well, and almost all of them preferred IE and it reflected in the market. But, since Netscape was failing, they attacked their competitor and tried to say it was because they offered it free, or that it was bundled with the OS.

That meddling goes both ways, our government should not be bailing out large companies. Bailing out large companies because they are "too big to fail" breaks the whole model removing the incentive to do things correctly as well as the punishment for not. It only helped out the big execs who used it as a chance to cut and run. It didn't help keep the doors open or save jobs, it just put more hurt on the people who will have to pay for it in the future. I think that was one of the biggest mistakes any administration could make.

Dishing out billions of tax dollars wasn't exactly a bad idea, though. Had that money been evenly split among taxpayers, it would have been a major jump start to the economy, because while some people would save their money, most would go out and spend it (either on bills or material items). That money would eventually trickle up to the top, through every level. This would require companies to hire more people to meet demand, in turn putting more money in people's pockets, starting the whole process over again and creating more tax dollars from more people working and spending. It gives big business a chance to right the problems they created, but requires them to do so if they want to survive. Everybody wins. Some will learn from their earlier mistakes, some won't, but that is human nature and there is nothing you can do about it.

I look at it like building a campfire. If you light the top of the pile, it will die out quickly and leave the tinder at the bottom unaffected. However, if you light it at the bottom, it will grow to engulf the whole pile. That being said, if they were to attempt this, it would have to be a very large payout per person to make it effective. The good thing is that a large portion would be recouped through sales tax and eventually income tax of the newly employed/promoted. I am not saying I support a move like this either, I am saying that it would have been more effective than bailing out big businesses.

That's my two cents anyway.

Dumbass, sales tax is a CONSUMER tax. Collected by a retail business. They are not passing it to the consumer, they are just being held responsible for their consumers, just like every other retailer out there. This is not that difficult and more states need to adopt it. Online retailers are already responsible for consumer's in their home state, this just requires the logic be added for another. So don't go saying it hurts the business, it does nothing to them but make them do what every brick and mortar store already does. It adds responsibility, not the financial burden. I am honestly surprised it is taking state governments this long to enforce it.

Oh, and btw, we do tax highly profitable industries like, um, say OIL COMPANIES, those also have a state tax applied to them. Try filling up in South Carolina then in North Carolina, there is about a $0.10 difference per gallon due to NC having a higher tax on oil.

The file in the pic is not StarLogger. According to a Google search it is a Windows system file. I think the SL folder location is coincidental. It seems to be a driver file of some sort. CNET's removal information does not list that file as part of StarLogger

It seems like it was relatively easy to find, and both laptops were purchased at the same store so it could easily be the source, some kid in the stock room could have installed it thinking they could steal someones identity or that it made them 'leet' hackers. Taking the admittance from a customer support rep is not reliable, so I don't really count that one. Also, new computers come with various pieces of crapware installed that could also be the source without Samsung being aware(if that is the case, they need to screen the software better). I seriously doubt this was intentional on Samsung's side, if they are even responsible to begin with. It is even quite possible that the keylogger was part of debugging and QA that made it into the production image. Would like to see more data on this, at least try and capture it phoning home. That would tell you a lot about who the responsible party is.

Network World should have at least done the due diligence of purchasing the same model and verifying the existence of the logger, and considering they are networking magazine, I am surprised they didn't test to see where the data is going.

Mod up, just because a person thinks that it isn't stealing because it is not a physical property, doesn't mean it didn't cost money to make that needs to be recouped, and then some if they are going to be able to do it again. And any idiot who says "well I only download things that I wouldn't buy" makes me say that if you wouldn't buy it, why download it? I am completely against all DRM because I think it only hurts honest consumers, and the RIAA/MPAA because of their mafia like tactics and the fact that they are both effectively a monopoly; and I support the public domain and a limited lifetime for a copyright but anyone who says copyright in general is a bad thing needs to grow up. Nothing is free. There needs to be an incentive to continue producing new IP, whether in print, video, music, or software.

Man I wish I had mod points, I have been comparing this (and all other anti Islam movements) to McCarthyism for the last year or so. It is amazing how fast people who will be first to invoke their 1st amendment rights have no idea what it means.