Been done.

Ditto to what Trepidity and Seumas said. But I have questions. The article has a quote: "If you’re not paying for it, then you’re the product being sold." So: I just installed OpenBSD on some hardware I had lying around. You see where this is going.

I didn't buy the CD set (yet). It's about an 80% chance that I will now, and 99% if I turn the box into a packet filter as planned.

Questions:
(1) In what way am I the product being sold (by OpenBSD)?
(2) If I'm not "the product", then how can I tell? I'm dissatisfied with any answer that says it's obvious on its face: "I just know in my gut that Google has the capacity for evil, yet OpenBSD is good."
(3) If I am "the product", then by what mechanism am I suddenly relieved of that status when I buy the CD sets?

I'm not trying to argue that OpenBSD is good therefore Google is good, nor that Google is bad therefore OpenBSD is bad. I genuinely can't reconcile my experience with the quote, so I think the quote is an overgeneralization. Both Google and OpenBSD may or may not be selling me as a product, the fact that they're free tells me very little, and I have to research them myself.

Then you get product placement like in I, Robot, where products are not just in the world but featured, talked about, shoved in your face in a blatant attempt to influence your purchases. Rather than being immersed in a real world, we are snapped back in to our own world full of obvious advertising.

I suppose product placement isn't bad in itself, it's how product placement is used that determines how it is perceived. Populating a world with items increases the verisimilitude of the circumstances, making it too obvious reminds us we are only the pawns of big corporations.

Lower prices on 2.0GHz chips. This will increase sales, but means giving up on the money of those people who really need (or think they need) the extra speed and are willing to pay for it.

Oh, boo-fucking-hoo. They have advanced their manufacturing process to give superior yields, and rather than offer these yields to more people they want to suck the market for as much money as possible by artificially restricting demand. Yes, they're a business and that's their job, but those are still weasel words apologising for a corporation who are stitching up the public.

this seminal event was corrupted by the presence of hardcore pornography

And yet you, oh 'member of the moral community', are fine with using the word 'seminal', which originates from 'semen'.

For shame!

Oxford English Dictionary entry for 'automagically'.

There's no content that I'm missing out on

Well, *of course* there is. You may not value that content, and that's fine.

It's a figure of speech, sir, and quite comprehensible given the context.

Can someone add a hyphen between the first two words, please? The headline is difficult to parse without it.

But what is 'anonymity' on the internet anyway? If someone is thousands of miles away in a different country and I am never likely to meet them, see them, or even bump in to them in a different on-line game, how does knowing their real name affect their idea of personal responsibility?

I fear the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory will still apply when real names are used, because most people will remain effectively anonymous.

I guess the 21/6 rationale is that some people call it "the twenty-first of June." Those people are wrong. It is "June twenty-first," or if you prefer, "June twenty-one." Do those people call the time "the thirty-seventh of three p.m."? I think not.

And do you call the full date 'two thousand and ten June twenty-one'? I think not.

Your 'one and only' correct date format makes sense for computers but not for people. I do not ASCII-sort dates in my head and I seem to prefer more specific information first before the more general.

I'll stick with 21st June 2010. You can do what you like.

Irregardless of your beliefs,

Uh-huh.

the phrase was used in a perfectly crommulent way.

Not really. 'Begging the question': we have answers on Language Log.

People say Ubisoft shouldn't treat them like criminals.

No one is saying that. Go ahead, treat the pirates like criminals, find them and prosecute the fuckers. What everyone is saying is: don't treat paying customers like criminals.

When DRM seriously and significantly inconveniences the people who have legitimately bought the game, there is a fundamental problem with the protection scheme being used. You don't need to stop a legitimate customer from using the product, nor do you need to remind him that pirating games is illegal and shouldn't be done. Customers know this already!

Target pirates. Stop them. But you're fools for doing it in a way that annoys legitimate customers.

the industrial capitalists just found new ways to put us (and now our wives too, who are no longer required for housework thanks to all these appliances) to work for their own insatiable greed

Whose greed? Speak to your parents or grandparents and find out what they had when growing up, or trying to raise a family. Having the husband work and wife stay at home meant few luxuries, and certainly not a big house with bedrooms for everyone, two cars, and plenty of disposable income for entertainment and eating out.

Part of the reason why more women are working these days is because families want and expect to have nice things and a high standard of living. The labour saving devices have indeed made life simpler and less work-intensive, and if people were happy to live simply the 'age of new enlightenment' would be here.

But technology has also offered other opportunities, including making impressive things look affordable, and wanting to take advantage of the new technology, as well as wanting to keep up with the Joneses, has pushed more of us in to wanting to earn a living.

Does she want a philosophical discussion about open v. proprietary? No. It's just got to work.

Right. I agree entirely that she doesn't want that discussion, but that is pretty much the point. Unless and until the average user is educated about the implications of open vs. proprietary software we will continue to suffer the chains of proprietary software.

I believe this is Stallman's entire argument, one that he believes has already shaped much of the past two decades by the insistence of having access to open software.