Distinction is whether you are being sold distinctive "entertainment unit" or continous stream as well as in array of avaiable manipulation techniques.

TV (good job catching who "customers" and what "product" is) has much weaker tools to keep you hooked to stream. Games offer proper, personalised, feedback loop that no other entertainment can. Developers are aware of this, explotiting it. That makes it amoral because it is not exactly victimless.

Point is that you start paying for being entertained, but end up paying to get another hit. People will rarely tell you this - no-one likes to admit that he wasted hundreds of hours, no it was glorious and epic! Not wasted time, nosiree! I had fun, of course!

And counting funhours ... well, that is kinda sad.

Skinner boxes are designed so that you do not want to quit then (and they are not "hobby", just like taking tobaco breaks is not "hobby"), so while appreciated, "grow up" is not solution, no more than saying "just stop drinking". Not helpfull.

But hey, if you want to continue feeling good about your hobby, feel free to ignore all of this.

People are getting disgusted with MMOs, it is inherently amoral business.

Eventually, player realizes what excatly is being done to him:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2487-The-Skinner-Box
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

Once you realize that, everything about MMO stops being fun, every reward is spolied because you know it is conditioning to keep you playing to get further rewards. Then you get slightly pissed at authors for abusing skinery-boxy mechanics of human psychology. And you quit for good.

Changing MMO does not help: it is just differently colored lever you have to press to get pelets. Nothing devs can do can help past this point except abandoning notion of chaining player to game.

Cosndering we do not know job he is doing it could also be corporatese for "kid, we are not going to order you some kind of gaming rig to fill forms."

There are (many, many) cases where you simply do not need newest hardware and it would be literally throwing away money to order some. I see little odd about IT not being in hurry to throw away working PCs for not reason.

And yes, it saves corporate some money. You know how not to become almost broke? By acting like you already are.

Yes they are. Same gameplay mechanics, same addiction rates. They are just to user friendly and too fun for ordinary person to be considered one by fans of genre.

Fun fact: Diablo 1 was actually turn based in early stages of development.

On the other hand Dwarf Fortress ( http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html , http://df.zweistein.cz/ ) is also sometimes labeled roguelike. It seems like anything in text mode and arcane controls can get this label - even sims crossed with simcity.

In general, "pirated software" is rarely available because someone has kind heart and thinks world is better off with everyone having copy of photoshop ... site ops make living out of advertizing (and from confusing people - TPB is cute example as it tries to confuse people to downloading toolbar ...), and it gets darker than ads...

Just think of reason why someone will want to do it ... bored geek, ego boost for being "the man", or money?

When i see 20 000 leech torrents, do i see 20 000 possily gratefull people or 20 000 possible nodes in botnet i can sell to highest bidder?

> the catholic church really needs to shut up about any and all issues having to deal with human sexuality. it can't seem to do anything on that subject matter except cause evil in the world

No, they need to get laid.

Allow priests to date women and to marry. Allow women to priesthood (and to date men and marry and have children).

For fuck sake, allow them to experience one of most basic things about being human. Sex, having family and children, actual love "love".

Make priesthood desirable occupation for normal, well adjusted men rather than escape for someone who does not wish to have sex with woman and wants socially acceptable excuse.

Sure, but...

One of them will be malware infestation stuff that responds to every search querry with "[fullhd] whateversearchtemryouused.torrent" link to paysite. Unlikely to appear at kill list, ever and forever polluting search results.

Other one will be unknown to general population and by time word spreads, it can easily be added to kill list.

Adding address of known site to blacklist is easy. Much easier than setting up decent site, maintaining it and attracting critical mass. Five seconds of work versus days/weeks.

People can force it if they care about having one extra day of life per week: Make goverment pass apropriate work-week laws and watch companies complying. 5/8 week standart is result of *Workers* taking action, not goverment and companies being nice.

It could be ugly, it is nearly two months a year of life. And for politician, it is chance of lifetime to get to top.

Society needs fixed amount of X (food, clothing, cars, entertainment, whatever).

Say you produce X with 4 people in 5 days. If you have only 4 days, you need 5 people. You can figure out the rest i hope.

Just reducing 5 work day week to 4 days could increase employment by 25% (and possibly more because you will have more going on in backoffice departments in every industry).

That is huge. That means workforce *shortage* even because very few countries have 20% rate on unemployment. No more busy-work even.

IIRC, Society actually went throught similar changes - saturday used to be work day too and 40 hour work week is considerably shorter than what was usual for factory workers 150 years ago.

This is first time I ever heard about it.

Have you ever heard of writer Jiri Kulhanek?

Thought so...

* Leaders could receive donated phones from their supporters and remain anonymous.

Leader that is important enough for this to happen is already target of BB.

        * A person could easily steal a phone from someone else and use it until it's deactivated, then steal another. If this person had a following, part of that group of followers could be tasked with maintaining a constant influx of stolen phones.

Participating in crime is nice way to alienate general population. Especially when you take away someones means of communication as news will spread around: "hi this is john, my phone was stone by those protesters, my new number is ..." ...sympathy will not be with phone thief.

        * People could steal the phones of high-ranking officials or their families, or just random people, and bring them to protests to increase their own plausible deniability.

Plausible deniability? Joke, right? If goal is to hit protesters hard, no-one will care about legalese. Officials and related people will be simply filtered out, everyone else (including those random people) hammered.

        * People could also steal or forge IDs when buying a phone, so that it's incorrectly registered.

Stolen ID ... yeah, that is heart winner. I am quite sure person that is target of it will be overjoyed. As will anyone close him when he gets taken into custody/beaten bloody.

---

Lets see, you want to steal phones and ids to cover your protesters, making general population mistrust you and be afraid of you. You also just gave propaganda fuel away and pissed off some official.

Smooth move.

Best "use case" for voice commands is not constant talking to computer and replacement for keyboard/mouse.

Instead, think of possiblities where it makes actual sense, where people want to interact with computer, but walking to it and pressing buttons is not really good way, examples:

"Next Slide", "Previous Slide" (yay for powerpoint meetings).

"Next Song", "Next Radio Station" (I am at kitchen, cooking, dont want to listen to particular song, dont want to dirty the mouse).

"Check Connection" (I am fiddling with cables below table/wifi antena direction and want computer to give me feedback).

Smart move. Especially when you are going to be looking for new job soon. Kinda hard to explain to new employer that you will not do it in his company too...

Well, stuff that is hard to find again is so for reason: it is not that good. or popular. those are not synonyms, but it works out like good indicator or worthiness.

Collections grow because or your mindset - if it is "expensive" to download file, you are unlikely to part with it easily. You just put your own pricetag on file (or link with file emotionally as downloading it again is going to be painfull). Such files just gather dust, seen once and then just considered too precious to delete without taking actual quality of content into account.

It is hard thing to do. I know, It is quite hard ot make yourself delete that mp3 for which you waited for week back in dialup years.