This is actually the reason I pirate all of my kindle books. That, and at the rate me and my girlfriend read books, it would be completely not viable economically.. we're talking 3-4 books a day being read, That's much, much more money than any other general hobby (think, WoW is $15/mo.. a new GOOD book ebook/hardcopy is 3-13$)

My system is as follows; If the book is good enough that I'll want to read it again down the line, I'll pick up the paper or hardback copy for my bookshelf.. not only does this provide great asthetics but allows portability, and allows me to loan it to friends.
The kindle has more than paid for itself in a month (We have exhausted the library's supply a good while ago)... I'm sure there's plenty of people who consider what I'm doing 'wrong' and that's fine with me... I just like to read, and I can't afford to spend 100$+ a week on books.

It's weird but I've experienced the opposite...

People who are very illiterate with computers ask me about 'hacking' their device constantly, for free stuff.

Being an audiophile specializing in digital music for over 10 years, I am glad that finally someone from an academic background can verify this "digital dust" phenomenon. However, what the author failed to realize is that, similar to the essence of this "digital dust" issue as opposed to its analogue real world problem (that is, real dust on your desk, CDs, etc), there is a digital way to tackle it, which has been known as "digital vacuuming". It's pretty much like how you clean real dust from your floor. You need to record the sound of a vacuum machine into your computer and save it as audio clips in bitrate matching the audio files you want to clean, and put them in the folders of your audio files. To clean, just play the vacuum sound for a while (1-5min depending on file sizes) and it will clean the audio files in that folder. The key is matching the bitrate of vacuum sound to your audio files. It works like a charm! And I would suggest implementing this procedure on a regular basis to preserve your audio files in perfect status.

I vaguely remember playing a SWAT game for PC that pretty much did this.. kind of..

Well, actually, it used real-life video in place of rendered graphics, the video changing based on which direction you went.

This has totally happened to me.

Totally boned the cisco firewall, email was totally BROKEN, and I was winging it..

I was so green that i didn't even realize we paid for cisco support contracts.... spent hours searching through google and manuals

what you said is exactly right, people don't bitch on forums about problems with enterprise cisco equipment, they call support

True this ;)

I've worked many-a-jobs where the first day was "Okay oh shit.... I don't have a clue what i'm doing... let's fire up google"

Hell, one time I was hired to admin / datamine some small-time company's SQL database..

had no clue what SQL even was when I was hired, but sure as hell did after 6 months of being knee-deep inside the database

This is actually a well known tactic in carding circles.

After you've used and abused the 'virgin' cards, it's standard fare to spam them in IRC so they are used so much so quickly by so many that you are a needle in the haystack.

Why is it news that they are honoring these pre-orders? To pre-order, don't you have to actually, uh, pay for the game? Whenever I've pre-ordered something at my local gamestop I usually pay full price and just pick up on release.

Now, maybe they have some sort of 'down payment' thing, and then on release date you pay the remainder... but still.. why wouldn't they honor them? I can't see any reason why they wouldn't.

Case in point, I ordered Team Fortress 2 a long, LONG time ago. I'm talking about when they were releasing the videos of the army guys and the turrets, looked 'realistic' (for tech back then) etc etc.. the game that never came out.

I pre-ordered this game because it was on Game Stop's 'RELEASES' board. I was an avid player of Quakeworld TF and MegaTF.

Know what? I only got one call, asking if I wanted to change my order to The Oranage Box because it was learned tf2 was being shipped with it. Of course, I did.. and TF2 was a totally different game at this point.. but at no time did I lose my pre-order.

Thank you. Finally someone else who sees bitcoin for what it really is.

It's an elaborate ponzi scheme designed to generate insane interest at the very beginning (due to people starting getting crazy amounts of BTC).. in turn these people become huge vested in increasing bitcoin's value.. so much so that they becomes fanatics and thus you see stories like this EVERYWHERE these days... more interest is generated by seeing people with 1000s of coins and a $7 exchange rate, leading to a huge influx of more people looking to generate coins, so on and so forth
i've said it before and i'll say it again

In the beginning of BTC mining, the FEW people who programmed/used their own personal GPU miners on huge farms (while everyone else was still using CPU) are the only ones who are going to benefit (See more that a couple thousand dollars) from this crap... everything else is just increasing value for these guys.

This is just from the ridiculous inflated exchange rate.

The article even said he was going to buy 10,000 BTC .. if he would have done that instead (with the current exchange rate) he'd be sitting at $70k

As you can see, mining is a fool's errand. Now.. buying a thousand or so BTC might have seemed like a smart move on my part right about now, wish I did. Bitcoin seems akin to a pyramid scheme. The early adopters get insane amounts, this leads to a huge increase of people 'using' and 'valuing' the currency because of interest in generating money, in turn exponentially increasing the value of said currency.

The real people benefiting are the super-early adopters who have 10,000+ BTC who have been using custom build GPU mining software from the start. Everyone else just pretty much helps add value to their insane amounts

This is something that people do all the time; everywhere.

As a matter of fact, living in CA, it has its' own lingo associated with it

called 'blowing a house up'.. it's when you rent a property for the sole purpose of growing pot in every square inch possible

As a matter of fact, I see a good handful of property owners who advertise properties on craigslist/budtrader for the sole purpose of doing this.

Then again, this is California where it is BIG BUSINESS. People make millions upon millions from legal pot here, so of course a market will spring up around places to grow it, it's only natural when so much $ is involved

This is so true.. although i'm still a 'slave' to the monster out of need.. valve has royally screwed me just like that one time.

I lost my entire account (The entire thing, banned) with well over $300 worth of games. Almost everyone valve-made game. CoD: MW, BF:BC2

How does this happen, you say? You receive a gift from a random friend who you never talked to (The gift was Left4Dead 2, because he wanted someone to play with) and it turns out whoever's credit card he used, issues a chargeback... your account is locked/banned permanently!

No matter what I did or said, I could not get my account back. They wouldn't just remove the offending game. They wouldn't let me pay the ***MEASLY FIVE DOLLARS (on sale) THE GAME COST WHEN THIS HAPPENED*** to get my account back.

They pretty much thought I was part of some kind of credit card fraud ring and banned me outright, when I offered to fax them multiple forms of identification AND the credit card used to purchase *Every single game* on my account...

But no, in the end, it came down to one single $5 gift given to me randomly from some douchebag to take away all my games.

Fuck you Valve.

(I still love you, though.. Portal 2 was awesome.. but this just isn't fair)

hahhaha /.'s troll-sense must be off lately

I was obviously a troll, I know this lodsys stuff has everyone up in a frenzy, I was just bored and fishing for replies.. you should see my other thread, so many ragers.

Lol, I definitely win troll of the thread.

Yeah, lodesys is a bunch of punks akin to a mafia protection racket..

But I was in a shitty mood and wanted to troll

got a killer rage response from /. though, score +1

Uhm, don't you think it would be cheaper to BUY A FUCKING LICENSE TO THE PATENT?

They are ONLY ASKING FOR a very VERY small amount. An amount so small you'd be pressed to notice considering you're using their technology to sell your application with a crippled free-ware version that you can upgrade.

They should be allowed to PROFIT from TECHNOLOGY THEY PATENTED (or bought the patent to)
That's the ENTIRE POINT OF THE PATENT SYSTEM.

Sure, it would be hugely expensive to fight a lawsuit... They aren't asking for THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS, they are asking for an absolute tiny amount of revenue that you gain, by using their technology.

Not at all unreasonable.