Got a friend who might take credit for something if you ghost wrote it for him/her? (or better yet, collaborate on it and let them take the credit, if you've got someone with similar enough views who is separate enough to safely take the credit) Just an idea - I'm sure there are other possibilities.

Actually, there is. What "embrace & extend" generally refers to is (usually Microsoft) pretending to follow a standard, but extending it in order to create incompatibilities with software made to work with the standard (e.g. Frontpage made web pages that only worked properly in IE).

Neither do I.

Very insightful and well articulated.

But why are you posting this as an AC in the comments to some other article? If you were to clean this rant up a bit and write it up a bit more thoroughly, you could submit it to any of a dozen techie and/or FOSS oriented websites/blogs and probably get it published. You might even get paid for it, but that's beside the point. Even if you didn't find a blog willing to print your article, you could put it on your own site. Next, submit a link to it as a story here on Slashdot, which would get your ideas a lot more attention than your AC comment is likely to (I just checked and the poll you linked is still at 15 votes). It is entirely possible to get Slashdotters to make a difference, but it takes a bit more work than just ranting in the comments of random articles.

Don't just complain about lack of mobilization, make it happen!

You've never been a role player, have you? I don't play Eve (never tried it), but taking on a different character is a major factor in any real role playing game. And not always some idealized "better person that I wish I could be", though that is occasionally an option that some may choose to play.

Much of the fun in these games comes from exploring the way this character that isn't you would behave in a given situation. It does not reflect upon the character of the player if the player is actually a roleplayer. Once, when playing GURPS many years ago I was stabbed in the back by a character that was played by someone whom I would entrust my life to. Betrayed and killed. It royally pissed me off, but didn't change the fact that the player was and is an extremely honorable person. It just happens that he's also imaginative enough to play a very tricky bastard in a game setting.

No, Netbooks sales have continued to grow. They're just growing at a slower rate than they did before. There's a large difference.

See here for a more thorough explanation.

Hi, I've worked in two restaurants that have been extorted by yelp salespeople. Also, I'm friends with managers of other restaurants and bars that have had similar experience. Your salespeople consistently claim to be able to get rid of unwanted reviews. They tend to call with a pitch that starts with something like "So I see you got a 2 star review on your page, wouldn't you rather that wasn't the first thing your potential customers saw when they research your business?"

I don't believe that DRM has ever increased the revenue of a product. Do you know of any examples where it has been shown to do this?

Well said! Why do I never find posts like this when I have mod points?

I've become mostly a lurker lately too, especially since I switched most of my /. reading to google reader. Anyways, I've always enjoyed your comments and it's good to see you back.

The greedy corporations don't sound forgotten to me. Are you somehow excluding them from the group of liars, cheats and grifters?

I think the AC was saying that the easy access would have been created one way or another, and I agree on the point.

Nice sig, BTW.

Do you his argument that his problem is obscurity rather than piracy? How exactly do his smaller sales figures counter that?