When Sony's console launches, it won't have the capability. But I can easily imagine that they will include it in some mandatory patch, cause that's how Sony rolls.

Yes, that's why Microsoft and Adobe have freely available pirated versions. They would rather you be dependent on their product, than for you to use something else.

Every time I try to use it, I am confronted with the intuitiveness and the additional time spent hunting around menus for the things I want (coming from Office 2003). The last time I checked, their replacement for excel is lacking too...

But by supporting LibreOffice, presumably one could fix those problems, and make the software greater than the competition. Supporting closed source platforms like Microsoft Windows, Office, Gmail, google calander, Exchange, etc... actually prevents decent alternatives from being popular. Microsoft would rather people pirate their software than for them to move to Mac or Linux.

It is in their best interest to take advantage of any loophole, just as normal people would go to a tax accountant to get the most money for our tax return. To do otherwise is silly. Do you really pay more taxes than you should?

If there are loopholes in tax laws, then our representatives should fix those. But our representatives don't represent us, they represent the corporations which spend money lobbying. Perhaps the Onion piece about America hiring a lobbyist is what we should do to get some representation...

Actually, it is Google's problem for not setting stricter standards for those who adopt their android OS platform. Google doesn't really care though, because it is an advertising company wanting as much data as possible.

Good for you. I imagine your support for a web-based google product, prevents a decent non-web based solution from forming. You should never depend on something you don't have control over.

That's why I think Windows OS piracy is as popular as it is, they don't terribly mind you pirating their platform, as long as you keep using their platform. If you couldn't use a pirated Windows OS, then you'd either pay for it, or switch to linux. They don't want you to switch to linux, so the pirated versions are available.

With the DRM those stores provide, they should provide the platform for us to sell our DRM'ed digital files, since it can be assured that we won't be able to sell an infinite number of them (unlike the publisher). Adding the ability to sell "used" digital DRM files would be a win for consumers, but it would hurt publishers. My guess is that it won't happen.

Sounds like you should return the game :)

Once you become a high enough executive, you no longer care about the long term, only the short term. Who cares how the company is doing in two years, if you won't be here to face the consequence. They only care about short term growth to appease their share holders.

There are many moves that boost short term profits at the expense of long term growth, this PR piece from EA is their way to tell us to either pay up or shut-up (because the negative PR is hurting them).

Sure, we can vote with our dollars, and we do. At the same time, we can freely complain about EA adding micro transactions, or any/all forms of DRM.

If you have noticed, if enough customers complain about something, sometimes, things change. So asking us to just vote with our dollars is asking us to reduce our potential power. So if you don't like EA's microtransactions, or any form of always on DRM, then boycott them, AND complain about it verbosely everywhere you want to.

Publishers should be able to price their product at whatever levels they want. They got into trouble when they got together to agree on set prices.

Ebooks are an interesting thing. The Apple and Kindle Ebooks seem to be licenses to view the content, unless you illegally break the DRM of the content and load it into callibre or a similar software. You can't buy an ebook and then sell it when you are done. You can't buy a used ebook :)

Physical textbooks are getting that way too, coming with 1 time licenses to study problems that your teacher may require, which eliminates the used text book market. Ultimately, they are adapting their profit model to extract the most they can out of the existing market, similar to how Dice hosts advertisements on slashdot and calls them news articles.

I would hope that these trends push people to abandon these platforms, but history tells me that most people will stick with it because its good enough (some people gradually edging out of the market, but they don't matter). Will the people sick of these moves make their own platform? Hopefully.

One cannot escape that in the US, there are more black inmates than white or hispanic. The reason for their incarceration may be race related (eg the popular DWB: driving while black, crime that many innocent people are charged with), but the fact remains that yes, a higher percentage of black people in the US are in US jails with respect to white people.

Maybe we can take the time to find out why this is the case, and correct it, rather than pretend that using official stats is racist.

Since the majority of the study consisted of men, they should normalize it based on the percentage of men in the study. Considering that only 72 individuals were examined, there isn't a scientific conclusion that can be drawn from this study.

Since they didn't have enough females to make a male vs female comparison, they could have done it as "a percentage of scientists are prone to misconduct".

While I do support this project's principal, one should never consider any money contributed through kickstarter as a purchase, it is only a donation. You should be happy if they deliver, but they are under no obligation to do so.

Keep in mind the Electorial College, whose vote actually matters. That is why you can end up with Presidents who do not win with the "Popular vote", but win with the Electorial vote. The people who represent us in the Electorial college can vote based on popular vote, but that is not a requirement.