There are only so many hours in a day, and there are only so many movies and television shows that people can consume. If the costs of reproduction and distribution fall precipitously, people aren't going to see ten movies a week or watch TV for an additional four hours a day. They'll just spend less money to consume about the same amount of content. That would be true even in a world with no piracy. And with more bandwidth to fill, that smaller pool of money needs to fund the creation of even more content. Risky, expensive productions were going to wither away even if BitTorrent had never been created. Or put another way, don't blame piracy for The Jay Leno Show or Saw VI. In fact (although the huge biases make it hard to trust any study of the topic), I wouldn't be surprised if most pirates haven't greatly reduced their spending on media as distribution costs fell; but rather started accumulating more bits for the same amount of money.

Once content producers figure out how to make money in a world without physical media (which requires them to figure out how to offer their customers what they want at a prices they'll pay -- you'd think it wouldn't be so hard), the content will flow again. There may be less money available to create it, and they may need to change the ways they fund it, but people with a story to tell will find a way to tell their story. The radio and the phonograph didn't kill live music, movies didn't kill live theater, television didn't kill movies, and the VCR didn't kill anything. In all of these cases there were big winners and big losers, and the scope and/or quality of the content may have morphed over the decades, but there is more stuff (both good and bad) than ever before.

It would be an interesting experiment (for very small values of interesting) to see how long it takes for every website to get Firsted. I wouldn't be surprised if it identified new sites faster than Google's own spiders.

Maybe that's part of the plan?

Don't forget "This is a [ Socialist | Fascist } lie!", "I also found this site (nigerian.spambot.com) to be helpful", "XXX !! SEE YOUNG GIRLZ DO IT WITH FARM ANIMALZ!!! XXX", "This [ music | team | artist | writer | company ] sucks and everyone who disagrees is [a hipster douchebag | trailer trash ]", and "...b-b-b-but [ Obama | Bush | Clinton ] did it and the MSM [didn't have | had ] a problem with it /then/."

I think I'll pass...

I'm normally the first in line to defend executives who work for their shareholders, because if they don't they'll just be replaced with someone who does. But in this case "wasting" means paying too much money to people in category #2.

It's reasonable to assume that if insurance company X saved $1,000,000 by buying cheap solutions instead of gold-plated ones, the $1,000,000 wouldn't be used to buy more medical care for their policyholders; it would be (properly) spent on executive bonuses and dividends. So from the standpoint of the only people who matter (the shareholders), the money was wasted.

Now in real life the insurers will simply raise their policy rates and/or reduce other payments to people in category #2 to maintain their margins. But in the first case they'll end up with fewer customers and presumably lower profits or increased risk. And in the second case they risk alienating customers or doctors or -- even worse -- attracting the attention of regulators.

Putting aside the legitimate concern that if they covered iPhones they would suffer from more fraud, this isn't all that different than if the insurance company CEO set that rule because his brother-in-law is the CEO of Myers-Briggs. It's a transfer of money from the people who've earned it (the shareholders) to those who haven't (assistive device manufacturers). Unless the extra $7,500 per device is cheaper than the additional (hidden) costs of paying for iPhones (or iPhone software), then it's waste.

Hell, maybe Myers-Briggs would become more efficient if all of their products weren't paid for by insurance and taxes. I've used their software, and it's not much better than pretty good in-house software. They could use the competition.

It would depend on the contract you signed when you bought the policy. You can pay however much you want for whatever coverage you like; it's no one else's business.

Wow. You have anger issues, my friend. But regardless, perhaps it would be wise if you took a Valium and then went back and read the article in question. Nowhere is it suggested that insurers pick up the tab for things that their customers currently pay for. The issue is that they are currently paying $8,000 for equipment that could be replaced with $500 worth of off-the-shelf kit, and that kit would be more effective and useful, to boot.

Your argument seems to be that insurance companies shouldn't actually pay out on claims, because that would make their customers "irresponsible" and "helpless twits", and you're absolutely correct that if all insurance companies refused to pay claims, then the price of insurance would surely plummet. But there's some sort of logical flaw in your argument that I can't quite put my finger on...

I believe the high cost of insurance is largely due to insurers wasting money, rather than insurers not telling their customers that they should just buy it themselves. But that's just me.

But in all seriousness, if you're ever in the market for insurance look me up. You would be a dream customer.

Far from the truth, but I LOL'ed.

I know. And that's one of the tests I use to determine if something is a bad idea. "Always show all menu items" in Office XP/2003. "Never show Clippy" (also in Office). Etc.

Am I the only person who thinks transparency sucks? If it's too transparent, the content can be hard to pick out from the background. And if it's only a little transparent (OS X), the menu can look like it got smudged with dirt. Are we expected to use only low-contrast, muted backgrounds?

If I wanted to see a partially obscured, blurry version of what's behind my browser, I can just smear my glasses with Vaseline and minimize Firefox.

Find a local bar that has the DirectTV package. Hell, that's the best way to watch sports, anyway. Beer, wings, and no clean-up.

I'll agree with you that the post was too broad. I was using "Christians" as shorthand for "Hypocritical Christians". I know there are many, many Christians who are very actively helping the poor and sick.

But while it may have been unfair of me to suggest that "most Christians are anti-science" (which is not at all true), I believe that it's completely fair to claim that many (most?) Christians are not overly picky about actually applying the teachings of Christ. The majority of self-described Christians I've met happily engage in premarital sex, get divorced, use birth control (Catholics only, natch), cuss, accumulate excess wealth, don't go to church (much less tithe), check their horoscopes, play the slots, and would punch you in the nose before they would turn the other cheek. The complete lack of concern that most Christians have for usury is just one more sign of hypocrisy and/or ignorance.

Mind you I don't find any of these activities to be morally wrong, and therefore I'm not claiming that people who engage in them are bad people. I'm just pointing out that if you THINK you're a Christian you should at least learn what the rules are and make some attempt to follow them.

And then the other thing is that painting with broad strokes attracts mod points like flowers attract bees. I'm addicted to the +5 cookie. ;-)

Don't you hate reading /. with no mod points?

For the record, a post about how Christians should follow Christ's lead and focus more of their energy on defending the poor, in response to a post expressing surprise that Christians don't already do that, is actually ON-topic in a thread about how our government allows companies to deny jobs to the poor because they're poor. Not that I feel the need to defend myself, but you seem to have overlooked that. And you called a complete stranger a troll. :-(

May God grant you a long, joyous life full of every blessing and happiness.

You shouldn't be surprised. The Christians are too busy fighting to keep evolution out of schools and gays out of wedding chapels to actually focus on the poor, the sick, or any of the other people who Jesus spent his life helping.

That's not an argument. That's just contradiction.

You originally wrote:

A boycott generally starts "I'm not buying your product anymore; instead, I'm buying product X from vendor Y." But what PC game in the same genre as Mario Party series or Super Smash Bros. series do you recommend?

I keyed in on the word "but", as that would normally imply you would boycott the console makers, but you need to find a replacement item first. Which of course implies that if you can't find a replacement item, the boycott would be unrealistic.

It's entirely possible I read too much into your choice of conjunction, in which case there's no real disagreement.

On the other hand, if it was meant as written I will continue to argue that an economic boycott shouldn't be based on the availability of substitute goods. It's a war of attrition in which the two sides suffer until one of them caves. If you (generically, not YOU specifically) want to make a statement, then a boycott should happen even if there were no games available for the PC at all.

If people had refused to buy DVDs or videotapes unless the DVDs were non-region coded and unencrypted (despite having no ability to watch any new movies at home), then the studios would have been forced to give in. The fact that 95% of the population neither understands nor cares about the issue is why the remaining 5% of us have to put up with this shit.

And finally "another employer is giving me a better offer" is not a reasonable analogy. A boycott means "I won't do business with you even if you give me the best offer." Striking workers (a labor boycott) suffer in the expectation that their employer will suffer even more. It's a short-term sacrifice for (hopefully) a long-term gain. If going to work someplace better is an option, then you wouldn't need to strike; you would just need to resign.