I didn't even pirate the Ubi games this go-around. I simply deprived myself of the glorious Assassin's Creed and Driver sequels. I was also looking forward to From Dust.

It's just cheap entertainment, and there are SO many awesome things $60 can go to. It's not sex; you *can* abstain from Ubisoft.

Certainly. Guy alone in room weeping softly at computer desk. Girl comes in...
Girl: What's wrong Mr. Awesome?
Guy: My porn cloud got deleted by the Feds!
Girl: That sucks! Damn feds, we better make our own faster than they can delete it!!

And I'm spent.

It seems that the game industry wants their product to be like the OS industry - or many other BIG software people. Think Cisco (the guys I deal with). You can buy a switch or router and resell the hardware, but the software it runs is licensed and non-transferable.
I bet the software that runs all kinds of important hardware is on a non-transferable license.
Does the same not apply (From what I hear, not a MS user - hope I'm TROLL levels of wrong) to Microsoft licensing? Agreed, that is the messiest licensing in the world... But I don't think you can transfer your licenses, for at least some flavors of Windows (enterprise or volume licensing, server vs user, chocolate ultimate vs basic with sprinkles?).

Sometimes data just falls into your hands too. Are you trespassing when a back-end process causes a database to barf itself all over some user's browser? It is not hard for a small/inexperienced team to create an interface that does not handle all the legitimate crap the world will throw at it.

I'm a WebSense admin. Classification of content seems to be random at best. I'm constantly unblocking and reclassifying content. You have no idea how often sites like Google get classed as porn, malicious, social networking, tasteless and so on. WS just rolls a D100 every time it crawls a site. Frustrating as hell. I have so many stories :(

I blogged this post. Brilliant! I wish we could pay the pirates for enhancing the original product.

It's nice that we don't face the same persecution the Yanks face from the MAFIAA, I like my shared music... And healthcare ;) But this system will alienate the one or two people who do still pay for music and cause them to re-evaluate their position on piracy. If it's justified through yet another tax, then why pay for music at all? And... what's the difference between music, movies and games? A bitstream by any other name is still just a bitstream.

Working in retail I learned that cables are almost 100% profit. Why the huge markup? It has to do with people spending $4K-$5K on entertainment equipment; 1% of total budget on cabling? Bargain!

Since you say client, I'm guessing you are the vendor and they get to dictate what your address will be. NAT to the rescue. One day when we all have flying cars we'll also have IPv6 and nobody will get to pick their addresses :)

In our organization, we NAT an address block to another block and effectively call your network by some other name. Of course, if you're using Active Directory NAT apparently won't work (that's what our server nerds bitch about, in which case we tell them to use a product that isn't broken or re-address).

So our router calls Client1 10.1.1.0/24 and Client2 10.1.2.0/24 even though they both call themselves 192.168.1.0/24

Absolutely it is a license to do whatever you want, simply because they don't offer refunds.

My particular gripe: Fallout 3 for Playstation 3. I purchased the game, had great fun. Purchased all the expansion packs and 1 of them just doesn't work (system locks up within 20 minutes max) and the other I can't get into at all (system locks up trying to enter it).

Search the forums for these issues and they are well known bugs. That is unacceptable. I bought two products and can't use them at all. It's almost as if nobody even play-tested the DLC for PS3.

Can I return the defective product? Absolutely not. So I pirated the game for PC because it works better. Will I purchase DLC again? Probably not until I've play-tested it.

There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me..... You can't get fooled again.

And north-north-America! The land of Ice and Snow©
Canada, where yesterday's geezers use Fahrensomething and tomorrow's geezers use Celcius.

If it's anything like where I work then these statements are true:
1. The IT department didn't have a say
2. [Vendor] felated [purchaser|executives] (either with marketing, golfing, widgets, etc)
3. It won't work as intended and users will complain and IT will have to do something about it
3a. Without any budget because it's been blown on the crappy tech already.

The linux suggestion was probably made by many competent IT staff but since it didn't cost enough it wasn't considered. Also, the microsoft techs would have screamed bloody murder that Linux wouldn't work and other FUD.

After working in this industry for a few years I've come to realize that the best decision is always suggested but quickly flamed upon in favor of the worst decision.