Problem isn't the sexual activity. Problem is the mindset that people have about it, teached by religions for hundreds of years. When people can finally put that past them and accept that, just like for them, sexual activity is a normal human function there is no need to worry about stuff like this. Then it would be the same as posting on your Facebook wall how good your breakfast was. People would just be bored about it.

Google Analytics is the largest offender in this. There are others, but they have their fingers everywhere. Here on slashdot too.

Seriously, this "omg he's a shill" shit on /. needs to stop.

I'm not anti-open source, in fact I use CentOS and Fedora on my servers every day and I love its scripting abilities. That's where open source software really shines. At the same time I also understand (and acknowledge) that open source software has serious problems on desktop and especially with usability, because that is the truth. Of course we could all just lalalala, but doesn't that do more harm than bringing the fact out?

Pro Facebook? I've just pointed out that normal people like to use it and the fear mongering and "I just don't get it" attitude on slashdot is getting tiresome. For an intelligent community this large the sheer amount of ignorance is sometimes astonishing. I've also noted about the Google+ love and Facebook hate here on slashdot, objectively, as again many people here on slashdot don't seem to be able to see past the google-love mindset and that they both violate privacy and common good. The difference is that Google takes a soft, psychological way to do this and it seems to work for geeks as well extremely well. Like the previously noted "Do you want to improve your browsing and install Chrome" marketing with no "Yes" answer but a soft "Oh I guess that's ok" button.

It's not some shady slashdot marketing, it's opinions that sometimes differ from your own. Learn the difference.

That would be true if we all had just one game and we never lost interest in it. But the fact is, you don't usually continue playing that long and at least not so often. If you do, good! But if you now sell the game to new player, he has all the interest in it like a new customer, except that he didn't pay a cent to the game company. Your theory is nice, but it fails in practice. These costs have been calculated statistically when defining the price of game and how much they can spend on online services. Resold game is basically allowing freeloaders. Now, as Sony is a business it's not off from them. They just shift that cost to other customers. But is that fair to the others?

If the original buyer sells the game, he is obviously bored with it. It's not a situation of original buyer playing two years or original buyer playing one year and other player playing one year.

The comment about single player/lan/multiplayer games in the old times is slightly wrong. The recent generation multiplayer games have a lot more content and gameplay than they previously had. Unlocks, classes, customization. Even FPS games are getting close to roleplaying/mmo games. I personally love it. The best aspect for example in CoD multiplayer for me has been the customization allowed. I also love that TF2 is adding more and more of it. It's a lot different than from the quake times.

I know such always get critized by customers and it's Sony here... But lets try to look at it objectively. Running online services costs money. Running online services that are constantly improved, have new items or classes or whatever rolled out and the game being balanced all the time cost a lot more money. These games don't have monthly subscriptions because that only works with mmo games. This means the game company is fully dependant on the income from game sales. When people resell their game the game developers get nothing, so they also have less incentive to support online games.

Now this leaves a few options for the game company. Valve is currently experiencing with the another one - make the game free to play and have a store where gamers can buy items or decoration (hats, different colors). This is also how Facebook games and the like work, and this has been the standard in Asian markets for a long time. This also gets criticized here on slashdot, but I think it works pretty well with TF2. Players get a truly awesome game for free and theres incentive for the players to buy from store (I want this item now), but they can also unlock them via achievements and playing the game. I bought TF2 (Orange Box) when it came out, but I've also bought a few items from the store after I started playing it again now. Items I felt would make my gaming nicer as I could customize my classes as I wanted to. Items I just got a little bit earlier.

The other one sadly is either monthly fees or things like this PSN Pass. As I've personally never resold a game (and I don't think it's so huge market with PC games, consoles yes) I really don't feel like paying a monthly fee to play some shooter game. Microsoft handles this by collectively collecting a monthly feel for the whole 360 service. But the truth is, somehow the company needs to get money to run the online services. I spend a lot for the game, so I don't like to subsidize freeloaders. It's only fair that they also pay a little to get online access, which is a recurring cost for the game company.

What's funny is that Apple zealots always try to say that Apple "barely breaks even" with app store and that they make money by selling hardware. I'm not sure why it's so hard for someone to understand that they can do both.

There is no thing called "prior art" with trademarks. This isn't patents.

Google+ is even worse than Facebook on this regard. When you join Google+, your profile is already public to the whole internet and search engines. And because it's Google, they have already indexed it by then. There is no way to set it private before it's already public. Now they also want that people really make everything public in their search engine. Of course it makes business sense for Google, but is not good for users that want privacy. Google even uses good marketing language to soften the user. Such stuff never says "Yes", but it reads "oh that's okay". Dirty tricks.

I use OpenOffice almost daily, but for very simple stuff. The truth is, it still lacks many features that Office offers. It also still doesn't seem to open or save Office files correctly, which is really needed if you want to exchange files with other people. The GUI also feels kind of sluggish and outdated, but that probably comes from Java.

I did exactly this after some relatives added me and they just didn't understand the online/idle color in Facebook and would always flood me with "hello??" and get mad when I didn't answer. Works like a charm, they don't see me online anymore, but everyone else do. And it's still not completely blocking. You can also easily ignore status updates from people that flood them. Most problems that people here on slashdot complain about are easily fixed with one click.

Unnecessary? Yeah, maybe us slashdotters wont use the video chat feature much, but normal people love it. To be honest I rather use MSN Messenger with my girlfriend, but such feature really is essential to Facebook too.

You, Microsoft has a huge R&D division in the following subjects

- Algorithms and theory
- Hardware development
- Human–computer interaction
- Machine learning, adaptation, and intelligence
- Multimedia and graphics
- Search, retrieval, and knowledge management
- Security and cryptography
- Social computing
- Software development
- Systems, architectures, mobility, and networking
- Computational and Systems Biology

It's the largest one in the industry. They really do lots of research, and should enjoy the results aswell.

It might be retro, but what does it say about open sources ability to compete against closed source? It seems it's currently over 20 years behind.

So, what exactly have you done to not support Chinese? Do you buy products that have been only made and manufactured in the US, even if its higher price? Do you own iPhone or any other known mobile phone? Does any of your product read Made in China? Instead of blaming Microsoft for doing business with Chinese, what about you taking the first step?