The average user also has about one tit, one ball and half a penis. Just wanted to mention that.

The vast majority of piracy is a necessity for the majority of the world's population. In most parts of the world a student cannot even afford half of the textbooks he needs and certainly cannot afford to buy video games for 60 USD each. Modern economy spends billions on advertising to create artificial demands, so it is not suprising that people who cannot afford all these shiny things copy them if they have the opportunity.

When I was a poor student many years ago (in the 90s), I pirated everything, every productivity software and every game I wanted to play for the simple reason that I could not possibly have afforded them. I had difficulties to make ends meet at the end of each month, often couldn't pay my phone bill and often had to 're-shuffle' credits to keep heating and warm water. It would have been outright crazy to buy, say, a copy of Adobe photoshop or protools for my hobbies or even for professional education, I would have literally had to starve in order to afford any such software.

Now that I have a reasonable income I almost never pirate and buy the stuff, if that's possible. (There are surprisingly many things you cannot buy in smaller countries, affordable streaming of TV series being on top of the list.) Sure there are also some people who copy content even though they could buy it, but I'm pretty sure these are a minority. Many companies deliberately do not make the correct calculations, though, they don't ask "How much does all the software this guy puts on his computer cost in total, including all upgrades?", they instead whine that "this guy could have bought our product X but instead pirated it" ignoring the fact that if you'd add up all the stuff people want because of their ads or really need, you'd end up with an astronomical bill in comparison to which hardware costs would be neglectable. Thank good we have gratis open source software now, so it is indeed possible to go without pirating nowadays unless you're in a specific field like graphics or audio engineering where it still hard to do everything with gratis software in a competitive way that you can also put on your CV.

You seem to be contradicting yourself, so may I ask what's your point? That you personally want something from Google that (in your opinion) is bad for society?

1. That's already illegal in every European country.

2. Threatening to kill someone is not trolling, and any politician who conflates trolling with death threats should be kicked out of his or her office ASAP.

Not as poisonous as coke, though ...

So switching from Lucida to Helvetica counts as innovation now?

What's next, windows with round corners again?

I have a theory why people buy tablets ... or better to say, why men buy tablets: Porn. I believe they buy them so they can watch porn while sitting on the toilet. That's why tablet sales are so high. The remaining alleged 'purposes' are just excuses. It's just a theory, of course.

Now regarding women who buy tablets, I have no idea why they would do that. Do they buy tablets? If so, that's perhaps because they are sleek and handy and you can watch Sushi advertisements on them. Or whatever.

The difference is that you can live with an HIV infection nowadays provided you are treated early and continuously, whereas there is a 50-90% chance of dying from Ebola.

Even if everything on it is properly implemented, which is doubtful, the device will be completely insecure for ordinary, non-expert users. To use Tor securely, the endpoint communication software must be properly anonymized, Java and Javascript disabled, etc. Use Tails or Tor browser bundle on an encrypted home partition of a well-patched system instead.

Are you sure that your bad experiences do not just come from the fact that you're a racist sexist nazi? I'm not saying you are, just want to point out that I know from personal experience that there are a lot of racist sexist nazis out there who have no idea that they are one.

Also, what about this constant rightist/leftist bullshit, is this alleged dichotomy really still relevant where you live? Because where I live it sure isn't, except perhaps for the extreme left and right totalitarians who tend to agree on almost everything anyway and sometimes switch their allegiances several times during their lifetime.

I always thought this rule was invented to make it easier for typesetters to distinguish the end of a sentence from abbreviations. Were the two spaces ever actually typeset?

It's very reasonable to use Firefox, because it allows you to install the most essential privacy extensions.

Honestly, you can only browse the net nowadays with strong ad blockers, cache cleaners, automated cookie deletion and a whole bunch of web-tracker killer add-ons. Or, pay for a good VPN service.

It would be easily spread by coins and monetary notes, though, wouldn't it?

What I don't understand: Wouldn't it be possible to put the wearer through a disinfectant decontamination shower before he or she takes off the suit?

Precaution. They can carry the virus but no dog -> human transmission is known.