Because he obviously has never thought about this issue before now, right? It didn't affect or influence him in any way prior to this story being posted.

When you have a mental condition and people tell you they just don't believe that you have it, it makes you question your own sanity. Your post makes a rather large assumption about someone you have never met and could be detrimental to the person it's aimed at. Apparently he's not the only one that has problems with emathy and filtering his output...

You say he should just be careful what he discloses... You are failing to see the problem. Until he's had a lot of experience with a new social situation, he doesn't know what is acceptable and what isn't. And even then, that doesn't mean he understands WHY. Combined with the fact that he can't fully erase any actions or statements he makes online after making them, that leaves avoiding that media altogether or remaining anonymous. You are telling him to do the thing he has problems doing to begin with.

Also, hindsight is 20/20, etc.

Yeah, can't be having noteworthy information presented to us for *free*. That would be ludicrous.

That reminds me, time to pay my /. subscription fees.

If this is true, I highly doubt that MS will work with stores like Gamestop for this. They simply have no reason to. Even if they do, the small local game stores have MUCH better prices on nearly any game, and they are going to be SOL in this matter either way simply because they aren't big companies.

I have a locked XBox Live account with +half a year or so paid on it. Being a yearly subscription, I forgot to update it when I canceled my bank account (due to another bank that I dislike buying out my bank). Instead of cancelling my account, MS left it running for another 4 or 5 months, THEN closed and locked the account for nonpayment. I went out and bought a year prepaid card, entered it in my account. The next day I was locked out again. The response I got from MS? "We don't take time cards as payment for debt owed." I also couldn't get any prepaid credit cards to work with their system.

Their system was more than happy to eat the $50 subscription card and bring my account back into the positive, but still keep me from accessing my account. Customer service told me I was out of luck. My Live account has hundreds of dollars of DLC and games on it. I sold my XBox within a week and haven't looked back. I'm done with consoles.

And it wouldn't be possible to introduce that "safe harbor" under a new law because....?

Per person? They'll just cycle through people. Per company? Oh, look... we went out of business last night and...wouldn't you know it...reopened for business today under a new name.

There is no easy fix that does not involve pouring tons of man hours (money) into oversight, and no one is going to pony up the dough to do so. The real problem now is that starting from scratch with the law really is the best alternative available, but so many political people have so much invested up to this point that they'd never back down.

All anyone can do at this point is make sure stories like this get out in the open so that people are aware of just how twisted and unequal our laws are applied when money gets involved.

Several years ago if you tried running a server on one of the major ISPs in the US using a residential connect and your usage was spiking they'd contact you and point out that your 'agreement' with them prohibits hosting servers. I don't know if they still do that.

Us little guys are supposed to consume, not produce.

This just in - Steam offers 100 year video game rentals in Germany...

(Something tells me it isn't that simple)

I made the mistake of buying Diablo 3 without doing my homework. I didn't know about the always online requirement. Never again will I participate in a game that forces you to connect to a server to play by yourself. There is no benefit to the consumer, only headache and inconvenience. I'm sorry that they are having problems with piracy, but there are limits to how much I will inconvenience myself over someone else's problem. When a game causes more stress than it relieves it is no longer worth playing.

That's without even taking into account the fact that I will not buy an EA game any time soon, no matter what the title or how much I loved the franchise in years past. I have had nothing but had experiences with them for years now. I really don't want to boycott ANY game company. Even SOE has redeeming moments. EA though, has consistently screwed me over each and every time I've given them a chance.

Yes, how tasteless... Now if you don't mind, I have a game to play. http://www.koboldsatemybaby.com/

Yes, it feels like soon they'll devolve to blaming the consumers for daring to not consume their products. "This would have been a success if only more consumers jumped on board!" No shit, Sherlock. They took a chance in going in a new direction, and the lost the bet. Now they're just trying to use their size to muscle the change in anyway instead of backtracking, because that would be admitting failure.

The memory is always the first thing to go...

"Once Invisible Tracck comes within 20 miles (32 kilometers) of a cellular network it will 'wake up' and alert authorities." There is no reason for fancy EMPs or trying to trace the devices themselves... This doesn't do ANYTHING while out in the forest. It activates when it comes within range of a network. You could knock down every tree in the forest and this would do nothing until you actually move the lumber. The simplest solution would be to run a metal detector over each tree as it's loaded for moving. From there you either leave the offending tree there or search for and remove the device.

While I don't believe this is in any way viable to enforce, I think it would be hilarious to sit back and watch the aftermath.