Why generate a score in the first place, when you can just provide compression ratio, compression speed, or in the case of the card: fps (at settings), energy used, consistency of the fps (at settings), along with any other characteristic you know or can test that doesn't combine two other things and let the user decide which of those things are better instead of trying to boil it all down to a single number?

If you read the rest of the summary, they do make the note that while they can't say that that growth is the result of increasing the minimum wage, it doesn't negatively affect it either.

I'm inclined to agree with you. As somebody who hopes to one day write a novel (or anything worthwhile, really), I would like to be published by the traditional route as it would be a validation that my book is "good". Of course, I am not dismissing self-publishing. It is a valid strategy if you believe you are good enough. I just know that a publishing house isn't going to pick my book just because. It is going to pick it because it is has chances to sell, which means it is probably better than the average produced by humanity.

What about the remember your password function on your browser? Do you, would you use that?

Note: I consider this to be on a different category than password managers since (by my experience) anybody capable of logging-in on the machine has access to the account.

[citation needed] because I would like to keep my faith in humanity and don't want to believe this. Please.

Meta-polls. I like it. Suggest it!

At most, we'll see a US version of every company with the sole objective of ensuring that the only information available is that of US citizens. That is, assuming anybody cares to do anything at all to protect the information of non-US costumers from US government.

Back on topic, yeah, this doesn't surprise me. And nobody will have the guts to say: "You know what, fuck you. We are out of here". Hell, if I were in their position, I'm not sure I would do that either.

It's not. Perhaps I should have made it clear which attitude I was referring to. I mean that we shouldn't (and I think it's bad) hate people who make something of themselves (or, more specifically, who make a lot of money), and that that attitude is not something you want in your area, or anywhere.

Ah, yes. That. I live in Portugal and I see that attitude show every now and then in the people. You do not want that to happen in your region. It's bad.

I wonder how hard it would be to get in that "pact" if your company manages to go beyond the start-up designation.

More than be mad you didn't post links, I'm surprised that you didn't post under Anonymous Coward (even if you claim is untrue).

There is one thing. I own a computer. I can download Python. Python has tutorials and documentation that can allow me how to do stuff in python. The thing is, unless I want to do anything beyond Read File, do some regex magic, write file, I'm going to have to spend some time learning. Doing what I just described is the equivalent of composing music at an amateur level: I can put together some chords, add a "simple" melody and be done with it. I probably don't need to learn much to do it. Of course, in the case of music, you are expected to know how to use the instrument (tool). In the case of programming, I'm learning Python (the tool itself) and what I can do with it (the chord) at the same time.

I think we can all agree that knowing Python (both the tool and what I can do with it) is about as hard as knowing how to play the guitar very well, which is in both cases beyond the scope of an amateur and tends towards the professional side.

Perhaps, the biggest issue is one of perception: writing a simple piece of software that reads a file, does something, and writes the result is usually not considered programming, but that's probably one of the most basic tasks you can do. And, given instructions/documentation/tutorials, you can pick it up really fast.

Disclaimer: I say this as somebody who can't do programming beyond what's specified, nor compose anything worth listening, and whose ability with musical instruments is not worth of mention.

In the given example (steam), there is barely anything from most third world countries. At the very least, game companies tend to be based on first world countries and hire first world citizens.

Now, I do agree with you that if you reduce cost, then either you lower prices or you can't complain when someone else sells a competing product for cheaper. But before asking for X country's prices, I would beg for a close examination to actual costs of production and transport. I would also beg for a close examination of what is being sold in X country and yours. Say, imagine that a cheap smartphone is being sold in X. You see it and think damn that's cheap. Here in Y it costs more. Question: do you get the same benefits they do as a consumer? Is the quality standard the same? Things like that matter.

But how do you solve the competition problem in the video game space when what people wants is Call of Duty [latest installment] or GTAV?

It is very hard to do anything resembling competition in video game space. Battlefield and Call of Duty, two high-profile shooters, don't really compete with each other. And there is barely any other Call of Duty-esque game that is anything around the required size (in terms of reach/popularity). Furthermore, all it takes is for the games to be released with a year between them (or even less) to simply not compete in terms of sales.

My other question would be how do you ensure those rights are not abused? By enforcing a single price worldwide (along with same-date release date please)? I'm convinced whoever that the seller is simply going to select US/EU prices. I might be wrong, though. What do you think?

Oh, of course there is also the "how about we just improve the living standards in x countries so that different prices don't make sense", but that's beyond what we can effectively do.

Sadly, that last sentence defines a huge part of our social interactions.