And how many hackers are out there, exactly? Uhm...riiight.

This sounds more like the voice-over narration to the introduction of a cyberpunk B-movie than a remotely decently written article...

Because it's easier to risk money on a venture when it's not yours to lose. If it were profitable/possible, wouldn't you assume that private investors would be working on it? Sure, the idea is great, but also very expensive and unlikely to yield anything any time soon.

Correction: they didn't treat them like children: Harrington High School did. Still, I'm surprised how they think they can get away with these kinds of things. Could you imagine the charges that would be brought upon them if, say, a 15 yo girl had the laptop on while, say, undressing? It's appalling and seriously makes me wonder what's going on in their heads.

In the mean time, i expect an "oops, my bad" apology in a futile attempt to save face and not get sued out of existence.

...from Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros, Alone in the Dark... well, ok so these are particularly atrocious examples but with the exception of Prince of Persia (which i quite liked, but mostly due to Jake Gyllenhaal) all other VG based movies have been mediocre at best. Question: have any game-based movie made any money? (really, have they?)

This has already happened. As for the 1000s displaced and slaughtered, well, it's been happening since the dawn of time.

It seems the wireless router item was removed from the site. Guess it's not such a sign, after all....

underwater?

Yes...until environmentalists protest on grounds that they will cause further man-made induced global warming.

The problem with piracy is not that they make huge profits per se (if they charged $0.50 for a movie, yet the cost to create, produce and distribute a movie were $0.01, would you still be up on arms about their massive profit margin?), but it's that people see it as costing more than they are willing to pay - especially if we're force fed ads/previews that you don't want/can't skip over. Having said that, the fundamental problem is that they are not willing to accept any form of competition from other sources, effectively forcing a monopoly to justify their higher prices. It's much easier to spend money, lobby and villify your enemies as "killing the X industry" than it is to accept it and reduce prices (and profits).

Naturally. It's much easier and cheaper to add worthless (and costless) crap to your product than it is to actually lower the price.

it was a hypothetical example :-)