Because there's demand for it from paying customers (although I wouldn't be surprised if the vast, vast majority of MATLAB users for example were Windows users, but I digress).

Adobe has presumably made some calculations, used various source of information, and made a determination that porting Photoshop and the rest of their core applications to Linux will not be profitable. FFS they've already stopped porting Adobe Reader years ago and don't patch the main Flash plugin on Linux unless a big security vulnerability is exposed.

They just don't see Linux as being that important a market. Do you really think they'd deny themselves profit? Are you so arrogant you think YOU know better than Adobe at the market they make millions in?

Do not think for a minute that the big companies that don't support Linux haven't made a calculated decision not to bother with porting software to it. No-one knocks back an increased income, but if it costs more to support it than they'd see as profit, it's a net loss and bad for business.

If you identify yourself with one of the characters on the show, it's quite possible you won't be laughing at yourself. Instead you may just feel worse that you're the brunt of jokes for "normal" people's amusement. If regular folks find the antics of these geeks funny (in a pity way), you'll start wondering if you're also laughed at (behind your back perhaps) the same way?

I don't really identify with any of the characters on the show anymore. I was perhaps close to Leonard but managed to become more "normal" and smooth the edges of my social capabilities because fuck it, being a stereotypical geek sucks. You're smart but no-one cares because you talk funny and dress inappropriately. You might be able to make good money and work on stuff you enjoy, but at the end of the day and away from work you stick out like a sore thumb because you spent your years fiddling with computers and electronics rather than socializing and fucking teenagers.

I'm sure you were totally just ready to start spending money for video entertainment.

It is true that the longer you spend time on illegal downloads, the harder it is to go legit. However, I'd argue that it's not just because of price (or the lack of it), but rather because the illegal downloads will almost always provide a SUPERIOR product compared to the legit version (of media anyway). I can get a high quality, 1080p Blu-ray rip of The Avengers in MKV format which can be played on almost any player these days, and certainly across all platforms, DRM-free and offline since it's an actual file and not a stream. You simply cannot get such an equivalent product from legit sources.

No-one legally provides Hollywood movies as a DRM-free download in an open format of a very high quality. It's all streaming these days, often with inconsistent buffering of moderate quality, requiring Windows-only players with limited functionality compared to standalone player applications. The Pirate Bay simply provides a better product, nevermind it being free. I'd pay for an equivalent quality product, but no-one is willing to sell it. THAT's why stops be from being completely legit - I don't like paying money for substandard stuff. Too many people don't know any better however.

If I was Hollywood, I wouldn't care if foreigners were accessing Hulu using VPNs. If they're technically capable of using VPNs in the first place then they're probably also capable of obtaining torrents, and I'd prefer them using Hulu and seeing ads and the like and keeping things reasonably legal then cutting them off and giving them yet another reason to say "fuck it" and move straight to torrents.

Fucking idiots these Hollywood guys are. They want all the power at all costs.

I was about to make a more civil post in reply but honestly, yours makes it for me in a similar fashion.

Although the phrase "you need my money to exist, I don't need your product to exist" sounds insightful and powerful, it's ultimately worthless because as you say, ignorant or week-minded/willed consumers will ensure that companies continue to act like dicks because there isn't enough motivation for them not to do so.

The idea that companies will get punished for being assholes has been shown time and time again to be completely bullshit because of the power of being huge and controlling the system. You can of course elect not to contribute to the system by not spending money on said assholes if you can, but they won't notice unless a significant number of people make the same decision (and publicly). And of course, this only works for luxury items that you can do without...

Sometimes I wish there were some normal musicians using Linux and that was publicised instead of these hacks. The fact that these guys get attention and regular musicians don't tells me more about the lack of Linux use in music than anything else, and that's fucking sad. Linux sucks, stop promoting it until it gets more use by pro users.

We don't deserve it. We're just too *dumb* as a species.

Fuck you. If you have or intend to have any children you'll change your tune very quickly. You MUST remain positive about the future of humanity or end up like one of those morons who thinks he knows better than everyone else but appears on the outside as a miserable cunt, someone no-one wants to spend any time with because they see the future as hopeless. Don't be one of those miserable cunts, please.

The bandwidth savvy consumer would like to download more content and play it back at any time, but do those consumers even exist as the majority anymore?

I'm one of the those aforementioned types of consumer, and I'm quite willing to admit I'm in the minority in wanting DRM-free, offline files under my control. Most people want streaming, and that's fine.

The problem is that it's one thing to be in the minority but still being service. It's another thing to not having a fucking option at ALL! No-one is willing to sell me a DRM-free, offline format of The Avengers for example... short of me buying a Blu-ray disc (and a suitable reader since I have none) and ripping it myself (which might be an illegal form of media shifting, I'd have to check what my country's position on this is). It's all about the streaming these days. Google Play has a "buy" option for certain titles but said purchases are always at the cost of the physical media versions anyway and come with restrictive DRM, so there's no advantage.

I'd be OK with being in the minority if I could still get what I wanted. But I can't. It's unfortunate that torrent sites seem to offer me exactly what I want though...

You're correct in that Steam doesn't mandate DRM for games sold on it. But it has two distinct problems:

1. Steam doesn't indicate on a game's store page if said game is DRM-free. You have to search for this information elsewhere and hope someone has the correct info. Sometime Steam will indicate if a game uses extra DRM apart from regular Steam-DRM, but I've never seen it advertise a game as DRM-free unless the developer/publisher has specifically put that info somewhere in the game's description. However, everything from GOG is DRM-free so they don't have to say anything because it's already a given.

2. Steam mandates use of a client. Even if you want to run the game outside of the client, you need the Steam client for downloading as well as updates. GOG has a client but you can easily download everything from a game's landing page once purchased. You then have an installer you can backup and the game runs via your regular desktop/Start menu shortcut. Much cleaner I think as I can then download and organize files in the way I want without dealing with the problems that can arise by using an unnecessary client.

What pisses me off the most about Steam is that its DRM is NOT EVEN NECESSARY. It doesn't stop pirating - I downloaded BioShock Infinite and Episode 2 (which contained the previous episode, all other DLC and the latest patch), installed them, copied over the modified steam_api files and ran it perfectly fine (even quicker than steam, since no client needs to be launched first and there's no "preparing" dialog window beforehand). It doesn't stop jack shit in terms of pirating, yet it's there because archaic publishers still believe that some protection is better than nothing even if that DRM has the potential to hider paying customers.

I wasted endless hours in my own brief flirtation with P2P trying to find an uncorrupted file of reasonable quality. Never again.

In other words, you weren't prepared to put in a (relatively miniscule) amount of effort and time into learning how to use P2P effectively to obtain high-quality files. It's really not that hard once you gain a bit of experience, but you were lazy.

That's fine. Not everyone has the attitude of owning control over your media. You're free to stream as much as you want... until your streaming access is blocked because the media was taken offline for whatever reason or your net connection becomes conjested/offline/throttled due to the abandonment of net-neutrality. You could have of course had personal copies of the media for offline use if you had bothered to learn a bit about how to use P2P effectively... but hey, some people only learn once things go bad.

Teach the player early on what the difference is between a openable door and a purely aesthetic door. Some games (particularly ones with a sci-fi aesthetic) often use doors with green accents to represent openable doors and red accents for permanently closed doors. Some games like Deus Ex often have the door slightly depressed into the wall to signify a usable door, whereas purely aesthetic (closed) doors are generally flush with the wall.

Provide a different set of door types very early on in the game and the player will learn very quickly which doors to try and use. After a while it becomes automatic. To be honest I'm surprised this is seen as a problem anymore - I've never really thought about it for years. Maybe the next generation of game developers don't know much from history.

Syria is an interesting case though, the world doesn't seem to really care what's happening there.

I don't think that's a fair statement to make.

First off, who are the good and bad guys in Syria? You can stage an intervention unless this is established, and it's way too blurred at this point to determine the best side to back. Too many factions mingling with each side, all wanting their own things with a lot of the counter to what's best for Syria and virtually all of them guilty of war crimes. There are no good guys except the civilians caught up in this shit, and they aren't the ones fighting.

What can the world realistically do with Syria? If the US directly intervenes, people will say they're trying to act as the "world police" again and it'll be seen as an Arab world vs USA proxy war, which the US doesn't really need at this point. The UN is useless because countries like Russia will veto any attempt at a UN-backed military intervention due to their interest in selling arms to the Syrian government.

Ultimately the world is tired with wars and conflict all the time and are tired with the Arab world's complete inability to keep their shit in check and in peace. Apparently no-one really wants peace over there so they keep finding ways to push for conflict. The world can't do shit at this point - all that can be done is to wait for the war to finish on its own. It will eventually, even if Syria itself is completely destroyed in the process. Such is the nature of man.

Shithole? You mean the United States? The rest of the world has bullying issues in schools of course, but no-where near as horrific as in the US with their zero-tolerance approach making bulling virtually impossible to deal with. I promise you it's nowhere near as bad elsewhere.

Plus, it's your world as much as it is anyone elses. Keep in mind that the news always reports bad news in dominance, so perhaps you should stay away from most news sites/TV/radio for a while so that you can realign your views of the world in a more balanced way. The world has plenty of great, positive things about it. Being addicted to the news would definitely ruin you without balance though.

Violence is supposed to be the *last* resort when other methods of dealing with a problem have failed. You have to tread carefully with how to explain this to a child, otherwise they'll see violence as an effective solution to dealing with troubling people and will use it at the first opportunity rather than the last. Imagine what kind of asshole he'll grow up to be with this mindset.

Honestly it depends on what you want to accomplish as well as other factors which might not just be about the software.

For example - I don't like to pirate software and will use a "lesser" tool if it still does what I want. Also a lot of the alternative software, being free/open-source, supports Linux when the commercial tools won't even acknowledged its existence. I don't use Linux on the desktop as much anymore, but I do prefer to use cross-platform tools as much as possible so that I have the freedom to use any system I like and still have the same software available. Keeps the same skills available.