The American Constitution is dead. It's an outdated document that has been viciously exploited by the frauds who claim to represent us. What we need to do is to call a Constitutional Convention and rewrite the thing with a clearer and MUCH expanded Bill of Rights.

In fact, I think that such a convention should be mandatory about every 50 years and there should be very clear rules that each iteration must always err in favor of the rights of the people and never increase the power of government. In fact, it should be mandatory that any increases in power that have occurred in the interim be removed at each convention.

I realize that I am far from an average user, but I have been using computers for 30 years (the last 15 using Windows) and have never gotten a virus, worm, or any other form of malware on a single computer I have ever owned despite not really using AV software, always logging in as admin, and spending an inordinate amount of time acquiring software on 119th St.

I don't deny that these things exist but obviously the user is the weakest link as everything you have said is already available to any user who knows how to apply them. Education would go a long way to fixing the problem. Maybe we should require the completion of a computer safety course before a person can be issued a license to use a networked computer?

As for the article topic, I have blocked google from my network, so again this malware in its current form doesn't exist for me...

I've been gaming since the Apple II came out and you missed an age when it was just as bad. The pre Win3.1 era was loaded with even more annoying and intrusive DRM. Not only were the floppies copy protected, but you had all sorts of in-box DRM such as code-wheels, having to type words in from the manual and other game-stopping, annoying BS.

The games were also more expensive when you adjust for inflation and often had horrible game design flaws like dead-ends in them. Get stuck? Sorry, no Internet. You can call an outrageously priced hint-line though...

The CD-Rom is what made the PC platform playable again. Developers got rid of all the annoying DRM until about late 1999 and then the 00s became the new 80s, with shitty value and annoying DRM coming back into the scene.

Strangely enough, I didn't pirate in the 90s, but pirated like crazy in the 80s and 00s. Perhaps there is a correlation?

The market decides the price, not the publishers, and if people refused to pay those prices they would drop down to affordable levels.

The fact is that people are spineless consumers who never take a stand on anything. They are happy to take it in the ass no matter how loudly they proclaim otherwise. They create all their own problems and then blame the companies whose power they've created through their own pusillanimity. They're basically slaves, but have convinced themselves otherwise.

I swear Nike could come out with manacles with their iconic swoosh on them, push it with a catchy commercial and a celebrity sponsor and people would line up to buy them and brag to their friends about how awesome their $200 Air Chains are. Isn't hyperbole fun?

Slightly off-topic, but I was doing research recently on how prolific various artists were over the last 50 years and hence needed to get the lengths of their studio albums to determine it. For artists from the 60s it was often impossible to get this information from Internet discographies. As such, I simply pirated the music to get the running times.

Rather ironic that piracy does a better job of preserving information about our historical artistic culture than the legitimate Internet in my specific case.

I actually did delete every file I downloaded once I got the info I needed BTW. Not because I care in the slightest about copyright, but because I don't support patented formats, and hence won't use mp3s.

Indeed. As a musician myself, I literally cringe when someone uses the word "create" in reference to writing music. It's so utterly arrogant and delusional. No one creates music. We build by accretion upon the works of past artists and within the influence of the culture and technology we grow up in and with.

Human beings have been playing music on instruments for about 40,000 years and much longer without. Funny how all these nonsense "rights" only sprung up in the last couple centuries and the lies that music wouldn't be written without them as well...

The only reason it's a step in the right direction is because every other browser has dragged Microsoft kicking and screaming into the present. They certainly wouldn't have done it on their own...

I've always found it silly that the requirement to legally acquire works for free is to get in one's car and drive to a library.

If I simply pirate all the works to create my own library and then drive around the block in my car a few times before consuming them every now and then, I've essentially done the same thing.

Just to be clear, this was a mild attempt at humor...

The real purpose of libraries in America is an adjunct to public education; to make available and instill in individuals the knowledge to identify threats to liberty and prevent the rise of tyranny. It is meant to protect a "government by the people" from becoming one run by an elite ruling class. As such, the presence of "entertainment" in a library is secondary.

Sadly, and although it is anecdotal, over the last couple decades I have noticed in the communities I have lived in a shift away from libraries being repositories of knowledge and instead becoming little more than entertainment "rental" establishments.

The fiction sections keeping getting larger and larger and the inclusion of DVDs, CDs, and other media have all come at the expense of the non-fiction section. I would guess that at my current library, only about 20-25% of the selections are non-fiction.

Obviously, libraries are failing at their purpose to the same degree that the public education system is, with the former serving more to distract than teach, and the latter to train for wage slavery rather than to truly educate.

The American experiment was an interesting idea even if it is failing completely at this point.

I really just don't understand this whole 3D movie thing. It's about as interesting as VR gloves in the late 90s; a neat idea, but really nothing but an expensive, impractical gimmick.

I think I'll sit this out until someone invents the Holodeck, or at the very least, makes something that doesn't hurt my eyes or make me wear glasses.

This comment isn't necessarily directed at you, but I always love people who use extremist arguments so they don't have to do anything at all. The world isn't black and white and you don't have to boycott all of China overnight to make a difference.

You can start by simply using sites like this to guide your purchases: http://www.stillmadeinusa.com/

Not only will you lessen support for China, but you are increasing it for your fellow Americans (assuming you are one).

“Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains. “ ---Thomas Jefferson

Thankfully, history is full of naive people who refused to accept "how things are" and did something to change reality instead. The complacent are nothing but an anchor holding back human progress...

Just to give you some faith, I think Steam is utter crap and will never buy a game from them EVER. I do buy from gog.com though, for the very reason that I only buy things I can own.

Indeed. I'm a game collector with over 2000 games, most complete in their boxes, and I can still play games from as far back as 1979 without any problem. I don't need to "call" anyone for permission to do so either, like on Steam.

The book some of this info is drawn from, The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley, was published in 1957!!!