Bull-shit...no one DESERVES the right to get paid. That's a moral/ethical argument that has nothing to do with reality. It may be true (I hold to it personally...probably in a lesser way than you), but that doesn't matter when reality comes into the picture. Truth is, economically speaking, the MARKET determines who DESERVES to get paid or not...not you or I. The frustrations that many have is the artificial legislation of who deserves pay. It disrupts the entire market and takes the decision-making out of the hands of those who are paying, leaving consumers bitter and angry at the fact that they can't even choose who or what to pay for (hence why people hate taxation time).

At least quit arguing from an emotional standpoint...take the time to make informed and reasonable arguments rather than dragging your moral/ethical standpoints in. I hate some of this crap too, but it doesn't have to be a part of the argument. It sounds like you may have a personal stake in this. If so, think about it from this way...Would it bother you if I demanded that your right to choose be taken away from you because I think that I deserve something? Ya, it might be a little extreme in some cases, but, the arguments that you make really do boil down to such a plea.

Sadly, however, people only see "OMFG!!! My computer is smoking from having to make all these pretty colours!!" - the interface must be Mac! They completely miss the fact that each interface works with a different basic behavioral model (that, and about 90% of the people that actually take the time to say something are only repeating what someone else has said - they've never seen it themselves).

In the state where I grew up (Texas), the general philosophy is that, if you are going the speed of the general traffic, you are being a safe driver, and are, therefore, keeping the spirit of the law. I still remember my dad getting pulled over for going the speed limit because he was 15 mph UNDER the general traffic flow. Such a speed difference is hazardous to the rest of traffic. Period.

The only issue with your thinking is that some people STILL have problems with such services and/or have a bad taste in their mouths from previous experiences with these and other services or DRM in general. These people are going to be extremely difficult to appease. Also, your conclusions are actually unreasonable from the sense that, for one, people are creatures of habit. Just because iTunes and Amazon have made music downloading easier, doesn't mean that it is an easier process for those that are already pirating, nor does it mean that it will be enough to immediately pull all of them to a new method of downloading. For that matter, I think that many Americans (and expecially non-Americans) are extremely fed up (I know I personally am) with the media and content companies' antics and are waiting for a kind of concession of sorts or an ACTUAL boon to bring them back in the fold. Even those people that I know that abhor downloading and/or even burning backup copies of your own CDs or DVDs are bothered by media and content companies' money grabbing attempts. Many of them don't know what to do, some want to fight back, and some just try to be legal for now, but the point is that the number of disillusioned customers is growing rapidly. This is also a possible contributor to piracy numbers.

Most importantly, it is important to consider the sources of your data. Most data that I have seen quoted in regards to rampant increases in piracy has been funded and compiled by sources with either funding or links to groups who have much to gain from such numbers. While not entirely disregardable (pretty sure that was a coined word there), I still am loathe to automatically take such data for granted, especially considering some of the creative methodology that has been used for the past years to evaluate sales lost through pirating. On the other hand, I really haven't even seen (so far) any studies pointing to significant increases in piracy from independent companies. Basically, I still feel that we (the general populace) are still rather uninformed between the conflicting reports and the biased information we receive, unable to RELIABLY make any determination whether or not piracy is increasing or whether the losses are even legitimate, especially in a booming industry (the music industry is actually growing quite well right now...only middle-man industries are suffering a downsize - hence the outcry of the recording industries).

Honestly, when it comes down to it, I really don't know whether your conclusions are CORRECT or not, but I don't think that you can reasonably or reliably conclude such things...yet.

However, I do believe that individual freedoms are being constantly revoked for the sake of these conglomerate companies and THAT irks me quite a bit. Perhaps the important questions aren't even about piracy at all, but about the loss of freedoms that is taking place in the efforts to fight terrorism and piracy.

One problem...did you ever read 1984? Have you ever considered China? Have you considered the US or the UK the past 60 years or so? Control the information and you can control the population. It's a very basic premise that doesn't even have to be completely fulfilled for the result to happen...even just controlling part of the information may be enough to control a part of the population or part of what the whole population does.

I think I found the reason why you keep getting those airplane system parts back (right -> write)

Seriously though, I think you just forgot your /sarcasm tag...

My dad repairs airplane systems as well...he works with diagnosing/repairing/redesigning those circuit boards on the fly...they come in, like you said, late in the week, with that Friday deadline...then again...my boss likes to call up 5 minutes before go time, and ask me, "Can you just change this for me right quick?" That wouldn't bother me so much if people realized that something like that just ASKS for errors and bugs, especially the more complicated something is...No matter how careful the programmer and no matter how many unit tests you have, trying to code something in five minutes just is a bad habit to be in...it doesn't give you the time to think about various extreme cases and scenarios that could crop up.

Well...my bad...I kinda got the idea that you were tending towards my conclusion. Maybe I'm just tired or something, but I kinda saw your post that I replied to as just talking about demand-driven economics rather than actually explaining the problem...maybe part of it is the fact, that I didn't even see this portion of your post on the article homepage:

my apologies for the misunderstanding

However, you have to realize that in the real world right now, buyers don't really control the market. For a number of reasons, buyers in today's markets don't vote with their wallets. They just roll over and take anything that companies give them. Until a critical mass of consumers begin to vote with their wallets again (or become informed decision makers), the rest of us will have to suffer with the greed of corporations along with the uninformed masses. Thus, today's markets are not demand-driven - companies strive to make them supply-driven. On a side note, I think the prevalence of this thinking has been the driving force behind the attitude that we see in so many corporation figureheads that insist that they have a RIGHT to sell their product at a certain price, ignoring market forces.

Companies have figured out that they can lobby the government for support and use laws that are quite obviously paid for by corporate interests to bludgeon their consumers into buying products at certain price levels, artificially inflating market prices (the entertainment industry is as good of a textbook example of this as you can get) and complaining about piracy as soon as customers begin to realize what is happening and try to find other providers in the market (read: piracy).

There are a lot of economics involved that shape the markets, but the biggest difference between the idealistic stencil through which so many are looking at the market and reality is the simple fact that corporations benefit (at least short-term) from a supply-driven economy and consumers benefit from a demand-driven economy...thus, it is ALWAYS in the corporations best short-term interest to try and control the market through supply. So, I doubt corporations are gonna just walk away from their cash cows...it requires us as consumers understanding everything (as you have said) and actually doing something about it (voting with our wallets, so to speak)...

So, really, we need Press that isn't owned by the politicians that they are reporting on?

Um...are you talking about Frank? He's just paranoid. We don't pay attention to him - he doesn't really count.

Actually, I have found that I NEED to install Windows more often on my development system - something about my boss saying "drop everything, I need you to find me something to do this, RIGHT NOW". So, I drop everything, download about 20 things to my desktop to test, install them all, compare them. Then he calls back and says, "Where was that other thing that I asked you to work on? What do you mean you've been trying to find me that program? Didn't you already have something ready for me BEFORE I even asked?!?!?"

The conversation proceeds something like that...

Anyway, after a while of rushing between this and that, installing such program and whatnot, and uninstalling junk and trying to make eclipse work (God, who invented that hunk of junk?!?!?!?), I eventually have a less than ideal development environment, and, rather than spending 12 hours trying to diagnose and fix it, I just spend 2 hours and completely recreate it.

However, I agree. My personal system stays pretty clean and I've never reinstalled it (except for installing Windows 7 RC1) since building it.

Do you know of any example games that do this? I've never encountered this request for an interface (I run hamachi, so, theoretically, I should, right?). I may need to go buy some to test some of this stuff out...

I can't honestly claim that you are wrong because I don't know for certain. What I do know for certain, I already posted. I'm already trying to get ahold of another xbox to try it out (I'll be working with a few PC games later to test it also) just to see for myself, but I have honestly NEVER seen this behavior - except with one of my routers (which is flashed with OSS firmware). Packets always travel out of the WAN port to the first hop on the ISPs side before bouncing back even when both computers are on the same LAN

What time frame are these games (the 'most' PC games that you referred to) made in? Am I testing with stuff that's too old to see the correct behavior? I really haven't changed my standard set of games for the LANs that I've run - SC, Diablo II, UT2K4, CS...they are kinda aging...

Um...you do realize that your average home user is NOT going to have a router that is capable of routing all that P2P traffic inside the LAN right? When the P2P packets are sent out, they will be sent to the IP address that was registered on Battle.net when everyone logged in - a public address. So, the average home router, being pieces of junk that they are, will route that out to the first hop outside where it will promptly be sent back when your ISPs router sends it to the target address - the WAN port of your home router...then it will be sent back inside.

Most home routers dont recognize that the target address of the packet is the address of its own WAN port, and some that do have problems with firewalls blocking certain ports in said instances. P2P is not a viable solution to the issue. Most people will still end up using internet bandwidth for each person even for LAN if that is the case.

Why is this parent NOT modded higher for insight? It actually has GOOD mini-analogies, good analysis, and conclusions. Where are his points for having a brain. Get on this moderators!