I don't think you have that number. Rather, most of the consumers aren't aware that their individual actions could turn the industry for the better. It's the same for everything. People don't believe that there could be life outside of the two-party system, so they continue to vote to the 2 major parties. Many of them aware of the problem, but with their vote, they create a massive sense of dead-end, hence it becomes dead-end.

However, if things go rather bad after while, such as, legit gamers are struggling to be able to play, because of all the DRM, copy-protection, server-down issues in single-player games, then there's more than just ideological argument, and more people start acting against these practices. When business practices strangle the enjoyment, the functioning of the industry, as they do seem to do that, perhaps you'll see more people complaining about how it goes. It has happened before.

I don't think we would ever get there. There always be developers who make their work freely available, without the need of resorting to these practices, "piracy" (how I hate this term really).

Oh dear. "excuses for piracy". Where do you get your dictionary from? Wired?

Look, this whole idea, that copying software, or get access to the use of a software is "piracy", that is, criminal activity, is pure media selling BS. Software is a bunch of bits, and bits ought to be copied, and are copied over all the time when you're using a computer. If you release something to the public that means that practically you have no control over what the public does with their copy of the bits you originally arranged to be a computer game. If you give access to someone, and that someone shares his account with others, that's their business, that's their right. Labelling it as piracy shows that you took those anti-piracy propaganda before the films in cinemas too seriously. Publishers don't like that people share their accounts with others? Who the flying fuck cares really?

The software business gets it backwards completely. The costs of development per copy is in inverse relationship to the number of copies. That goes for most of the buy-a-license software. The software-as-service model in the case of Blizzard's Starcraft 2 is bit more honest in this department, and I laud them for this, however, forcing people to this service for multi-player is to remove the ability of players to maintain the game for their own, even after Blizzard won't care any more. If they say, that OK guys, the development costs of the game was this and this, and for any future development we need to secure a budget of $X, I'm telling you, they could get the money in no time from donations alone, as they have a great product, and people appreciate their constant attention since the SC/BW. They could secure a direct revenue stream from the gamers if they want to, without resorting to this shady practices.

I own a legal account the WoL, and I'll update my account to HoTS as well, and I also complained about this practice directly to them (that is, the lack of LAN and the enforcement of online game. I also expressed to them why I don't buy an account to D3). And you know what was their answer? Politely saying, they don't care.

Also I have to add, I used to work as a video game developer, and I think that studios, and game developers often live in a bubble. The whole business is rotten from the core, it is rotten since its conception. At some point, gamers and game developers must take proper action, take out publishers, as unnecessary middle man, start to use free (as in freedom) game engines, put consumer pressure on the major CPU/GPU manufacturers to provide complete documentation of their products, so all software platform could benefit from them. Games must leave their engine code behind that is sold over and over in different iteration, while nothing has changed. Games are mostly glorified FSMs, with large pile of artwork, and we must go for the art work, provide revenue for the artists: the game designers, the concept artists, the modellers, the musicians, the fx artists, all those who actually create our precious games, not for imaginary entities.

Nvidia cards aren't open hardware hence the open source drivers are born without proper documentation. No wonder that they aren't as good as the product of people who have access to that magic documentation. Just saying... The AMD hardware drivers should be improved, but hey, I actually remember problems with propriety software as well, even the the developer of the drivers happen to be the producer of the hardware.

If you read the EULA of majority of commercial software, including games, it is specifically forbidden to reverse engineer and modify the Product. While you're right that without distributing the modifications, it is unlikely that he gets sued, but he still did something that is against the contract of the purchase of the software license.

But also these doctors must be well aware that with the right hygiene those numbers weren't the same. So rather than endorsing this practice, that some parents choose on the grounds of the idea that masturbation should be prevented, they should rather go out and endorse hygiene education.

Yeah, pretty much this. But perhaps here lies the problem. The perception of reality is heavily influenced by the media we consume every day. For example, if all the newspapers giving frequent headlines to violent crime, people will perceive violent crime on the rise, whatever the actual facts are. Similarly, porn could give false sense of reality when it comes to sex, when it is mass produced and consumed, thus it could well be that the portrayal of women as a sex-toy would influence the attitude of porn consumer men towards women.

I do not praise however any kind of ban, and as I suggest that the problem actually lies somewhere else. You say you can make a distinction between reality and fantasy, which is great, but I get the feeling sometimes, the most of the population actually can't. It is rather the part of the human condition, if you like, because we see the majority of the human population is in to some kind of distortion of reality, such as superstition, or religion, or delusions about races, minorities, women. I would go so far, that certain genres in the film industry became popular because they are perceived as reality and thus influencing the reality. The "gangsta" life is an example of this: everything is about money, "respect" (never understood the concept of respect on these terms), rampant sexism, so on. This is a self-reinforcing pattern in a way, as films, music, music videos, celebs are produced because it draws large crowd, and is "cool", on the other hand, the a part of the crowd copy the behaviour that they see in the telly, and try to be more gangsta in their everyday life, including all the sexism, money-worshipping, violent. Similarly to the issue with religious education, this is the spreading of memes that are obviously self-reinforcing, and definitely not positive in the course of human development.

Since there's no authority on Earth, and could never possibly exist that could ban all these behaviours to be propagated, one must make a larger effort on the consumer base and also, produce, and promote high quality alternatives. No easy solutions, and not necessary successful either. The work on the consumer base would be organising our education system around critical thinking, and reducing, gradually removing the hero ethos from our public discourse, and way of educating children. The positive hero just as much harmful in this way than the negative. Also, specifically about sexuality, I think feminists, like me should rather focus on reinvent this whole thing: we live in an age where pile of old stereotypes are crumbling, the social structure based on gender aren't necessary for the success of our biological need, but stereotypes die hard, and we're just half way between finding sex as a communal, physical joy, and the firm necessity of reproduction. Instead of shying away from sexuality as an entertainment, we must should just make it normal to children to grow up in an environment where sexuality, as long as it is promoting fantasies as such, but also the natural play of bodies of lovers, there would rather to gain from it. I mean, the entertainment genres are clearly making a very unhealthy distinction here: especially, films of Hollywood promoting "clean teenagers" who only have their first sex at the graduation, and mostly coupled with the monogamistic notion of LOVE, and show nothing of the reality, either the play of bodies, neither the real events that usually leads to people to have healthy sexual life as they are. No, we want to give moral lessons of a sort that ends up being out of touch of ourselves. On the other hand, the porn industry is awashed by poor quality, again unrealistic doll-worshiper, unrealistic, promoting inconsequential behaviour. Now, while I think both extreme should be allowed, we are clearly out of proportion on both sides.

People here, who bash the feminism of the 60's should learn more about this age. I genuinely think that this is an unfinished business and there are plenty of thoughts of the 60's/70's feminism that we should learn from. We're in the limbo now but it is time to move toward freedom and equality, which can only be achieved by widespread critical thinking. That's a lot of work, and "free market" would not help in it.

As a matter of fact, many do. Ya know, there are plenty of different strands under that label, including for example, anarcha-feminists, or rather, social and individual anarchists in general. Oh, and if we go by the definition of libertarians, there's no conflict being a libertarian and a feminist at the same time.

Data mining?

OK, but these are different player attitudes completely. I don't think you argue that online RTS matches should be cleared from cheating, while single player stuff, is just single player stuff. Skipping over boring thing in a single player campaign, or non-competitive multi player campaign should be always available, as saving as well. Add to this, that even in SC2, with the most recent patch, you can take control of any game at any point when watching it in a replay. You download a game played by the "pros" and play out the second half.

"Of course, you could always buy a gamepad for $20-50 to your PC... "

That's the real power of PC really...

Also, that way there would be a chance that we would have a larger part of the population that is capable to contribute to space exploration.

No, not at all. But crewed space flight is very resource heavy investment, so we must make sure that if humans leave this planet for a space mission, they go for something more specific, than just being locked in a can with a few days of looking out the window to Mars. That's at the heart of the criticism of the ISS mission, but at least there there's space for experiments, and that is the first frontier to test our technology for space missions. Never the less, just to send people to see how their piss acts in space isn't really good investment IMHO.

I don't think it is wise by any standard to make half-hearted missions, while we could just "save up" for a fully committed mission, and let those people land, or stay in orbit and make valuable research.

As long as you don't put all future hope in this single mission, and we start educate the public that in the real world, even the most rigorously planned, simulated and component tested mission is subject of trial and error, than it shouldn't be a problem. It is the politics of space that is fucked up in this regard, as it was conceived in an era of national dick waving and cold war.

But, if private space industry can send humans for a flyby, perhaps for the same cost, they could just send hardware that allows for humans to land, perhaps to land a load of rocket fuel. Would make more sense, and perhaps would cost the same money. Few tons at a time... Or perhaps partner up with NASA/ESA/Whathaveyou, and send an extra month to control some probes down there, with better response time, and use this window for more detailed surface exploration just by being there. Flyby, and see the planet from the window strikes me as complete waste of resources, which aren't that abundant.

Btw, bit of a tangent, but what if in similar vein to the landing with Opportunity, would not be viable to send rocket fuel to Mars, in smaller packages, thus reducing the complication with landing a single large load, and than collect them?
As I understand, it is a more resource effective to launch smaller loads many times, than launch a big load in a single launch. Perhaps a crewed Mars mission, should compromise from:

1) A space ship assembled in orbit, made of these blow-up Bigelow modules. The volume matters a lot for keeping humans sane over the mission. They need as much space as they can get.
2). the fuel and the engine. If we don't want to do things at a single launch, perhaps it is possible to shorten the length of the journey by spending more launches from Earth to orbit.
3) Launch for the rocket fuel for the return, and scatter them in to smaller packages for landing.
4) Launch the life support and scientific equipment as a separate load that goes lands before humans.
5) Send a crew and food, which could be spoiled by radiation.

I think that the idea of sending everything at once is the problem. The list above could span over decades as the biggest concern, the organic parts, humans and their food is the only one that must go in the same launch and have limits how much they can spend in space. The degradation isn't really a big problem, only for microcircuits.