That view is way oversimplified and completely ignores how our evolving society has changed the rules. If Internet and phones disappeared tomorrow, people would likely start dying in much greater numbers in the not-too-distant future. We now depend heavily on this sort of communication to know where food and water needs to be. People don't live near sources of food and water any more because they don't need to any more because other technologies have sprung up to make it possible to survive without doing so. If those go away, so do the people.

I can sure see the confusion. I can't see any difference between "hacker" and "hacker" myself. What am I missing?

That's kind of what I was going for -- the weakest analogy that was still applicable just to demonstrate how widely applicable the point is about one merchant not being representative of the whole industry.

It's not over yet. I had bought a total of about 20 bitcoins for a total of about $600. After the price went up, I sold 2 of them and got all my money back (in my own bank). Now I may have lost 13 of them on MtGox, but that still leaves me with enough in my cold storage wallet and on my mobile device to get 2 to 3 gaming desktops from bitcoinshop.us at no out-of-pocket cost to me.

And who knows, if by some miracle MtGox doesn't simply lose everything they were holding for everyone, I might even still have enough to buy about 10... at no out-of-pocket cost to me. Doesn't sound like such a bad idea either way.

I didn't say debeers group, I said the neighborhood jewelry store.

I can't quite tell if you're being ironic but I found your point confusing. I think we're both saying that bitcoins are worth more than monopoly money. But when you say that Monopoly money is worth more than diamonds I'm lost. You didn't spend Monopoly money, you spent bitcoins. I can't even tell if you're agreeing with me or not.

I could ask if you'd call dollars worthless when a US big bank fails. But we all know big US banks are too big to fail :). Seriously, though, I didn't want to use a bank analogy because it was too obvious with too many parallels to be drawn. Usually that's a mark of a good analogy, but in this case I'm trying to avoid dragging in a multitude of parallel analogies. The point was to focus on a very simple and broad aspect of the suggestion: that one merchant represents the industry without specifically talking about currency or banking or exchanges. Regardless of whether you're talking about currency or any goods, why would one *generally* suggest that the value of a merchant's goods go to nothing universally when only a single merchant is failing? Just to point out how widely applicable (or ridiculous) the notion is, I chose something as different as possible.

Good luck paying for a $6,000 - $10,000 diamond in Monopoly money, though :)

Still, they're worth more than Monopoly money.

Would you similarly suggest that diamonds are worthless if your neighborhood jeweler got robbed?

I suspect they missed a "that".

I'd venture a guess that this is not unique and that every mathematical proof to date takes less space than Wikipedia. Did they mean more space?

The reason I *started* using Steam was because I bought a game in a store only to find when I got it home that it was pretty much a dummy disk that just made me install Steam and download the game in order to play it. The game was Civilization V. I don't get outraged by much, but come to think of it, that kind of is an outrage, but one just borderline enough that I was willing to accept it rather than not play the game. I don't/didn't know what else to do.

Just because so many people didn't know what astrology was doesn't change the fact that they believed "astrology" (whatever they thought it was) to be scientific. :) Of course when reporting the results, then, you *should* put "astrology" in quotes.

I think you have to put this in context. Were you expecting to get any more money from the work you put into that product? I don't think it would be reasonable to expect that these games (or at least the vast majority of them) would ever make money again. (If you think otherwise, it sounds like you *have* legal recourse here because the games are not out of copyright.) If I were in your position, though (which I kind of have been a number of times now, except most of my games were non-commercial) I would just be glad that someone gave them new life for another generation. Otherwise it would have faded into obscurity, giving you even less than you have now.

Take a step back and see that they are not trying to insult the authors as you suggest, but benefit everyone and honor the authors by propagating the work that would otherwise have faded away. I suspect (just a guess) you might be surprised at how accommodating and respectful these folks would be toward original authors if you approach them as a friend. You see them as an enemy, but really I think they are just trying to save and re-popularize something worth saving and appreciating for a bit longer, and couldn't find a practical way to contact a zillion non-existent authors in the process.