I don't play any spec-hungry games, so my focus was on what I do use: media.
-27" high-end-but-not-eizo-level primary monitor, 17" auxillary display off to the side
-Pentium G620 (dual-core/2.6GHz) on Gigabyte P67A-UD3-B3 board (AMD actually lost on my low-end price/single-core performance search; and bad enough to make me switch away after 4 systems/12 years with AMD)
-8GB RAM
-Radeon 4850 (was outdated even when i bought it, but it has more than enough power even still, won't be upgrading until 4k)
-Onboard sound/LAN
-dvdrw/multi-card reader
-Storage.. this is what happens when you're too poor to expand drives in a way other than adding old ones:
--1x1TB@7200rpm SATA (OS)
--1x4TB SATA
--1x2TB SATA
--1x750GB IDE (SATA bridge)
--4x500GB individual disks in external NAS
..every one of them 95-99%+ full. can't believe it's 2015 and i'm back to 'well which do i want to delete to make room for my next download'

You forgot one gigantic loophole. While ordinary citizens cannot claim not understanding whether what they were doing was illegal or not, our wonderful courts have ruled that police face no such burden. It's perfectly ok for them to arrest you if they thought the act was illegal, even if they were wrong. It's the kind of precedent that really shows the courts for what they are, just another arm of law enforcement.

You adults won't believe this, but lots of us youngsters still don't have to sit through any commercials, have permanent offline copies with no DRM in better resolution than Netflix, that can't be taken away on the whims of corporations, and aren't subjected to a limited catalog missing extremely popular items to begin with. And, it's free! (minus the cost of maintaining 12TB of storage for a large collection of TV and movies in HD). Not that a lot of us youngsters feel that the production studios' behavior morally obligates us to provide compensation, but even if we wanted to there's no service at any price that offers this level of quality and flexibility. I know being all grown up with your job and disposable income makes you feel like subjecting yourself to the horrors of Netflix is the adult thing to do... but I choose to live in my immaturity where I don't pay for less.

Kind of like how countries like Saudi Arabia who sentence drug traffickers to death don't have a huge heroin problem, right? Oh wait...

It's that easy to disable for now. A few builds later it will be like turning off sending all sites/downloads to check for attack sites... several different options in the about:config page, at which point it's only available to the rather small percentage of users who would undertake that. I for one wasn't even aware Firefox sent every file I download to its servers first (the URL) until it automatically blocked and deleted (beyond reach of even file recovery software) a file that took 8 hours to download. And to top it all off, it was a RAR containing a video- how do you even get a false positive on non-executables like that?? Completely disabling all URL transmissions involved changing no less than 4 options only available in about:config. If Chrome wasn't so appalling in features not available, and features it had but were removed, I'd use that. AFAIC, there are no "good" browsers.

That was presumably the fee for a private attorney to negotiate a plea bargain. Had you taken it to trial, even lower tier attorneys would set you back 10x that. Either that or you live someplace with really cheap representation.

The funny thing is, actual brand name sudafed is terrible for making meth, and good cooks avoid it like the plague. And almost never are gel tabs or products with other active ingredients use. Using anything other than generic, pseudo-only tablets with no weird fillers requires purification steps beyond the average trailer trash doing it, otherwise the result would be single-digit purity and loads of byproducts that even 99% of meth heads wouldn't buy. If it were really about controlling meth production, there'd be less restrictions on preparations rarely to never used in illicit production. Even more interesting is why they wanted to turn over production and distribution to the mexican cartels to begin with. IIRC a couple years back they seized a mexican meth lab with ***$2 billion*** worth of pure meth inside (15 tons at $150/g on the street, they claim higher tho), and there was not even a shortage afterwards.. at least I didn't read about one and would expect a victory lap if they even caused a weeklong drought.

I download Netflix-exclusive content already despite having a subscription (I don't believe it's 'piracy' since I pay for that and a cable TV subscription), because it's good enough I'll want to watch it again some day when it might no longer be available, and watch it when I'm not online and on another device. Not sure how how the pirates get the stream, but it's full 1080p at 2-5GB/episode. There's always the hardcore options.. although hard to get in the US, there's certain cards from china that will strip the encryption from HDMI and deliver the stream to your computer. It takes serious hardware to work with the result, but right now anything playable over an HDMI connection can be pirated thanks to that last ditch fallback.

These guys are rightly being destroyed for extorting settles from people accused of infringing porn. I understand your porn habits are more embarrassing than your taste in movies and music (usually), but how exactly is this different than extorting payments for those?
Reasons I can think of:

1. They're getting slapped down just for insulting the judge.
2. Most other judges are wholly owned subsidiaries of the *AA
3. Most other judges don't want to anger their politician masters who indisputably are.
4. (least likely) They happened upon the only judge who actually believes extorting copyright settlements is illegal.

Florida is the worst. I was detained because some other group was causing trouble in a store, and they decided it looked suspicious that I went to leave as they pulled up. Sat there for 30min waiting for a drug dog. My lawyer told me flat out the only way it could have even been challenged (and still unlikely to help) would have been if it was 45min or more. Of course the dog alerted to the front (0.01g cocaine residue on a surface, which unbelievably is a felony charge in FL, for everyone in the car (!) ), but also alerted to the trunk where there had never been anything whatsoever, ever. Good to see some common sense. Anyone know what the effect on past cases is when it hinges on something later found to be unconstitutional?

I judge my residential connection throughput by torrents. If there's anything the ISP would slow down other than competing VOD services, that would be it. And torrents with a good seed:peer ratio always saturate my connection, even at peak hours. Advertised is 50/50, observed consistent actual cap is 56/50 with FIOS in NJ just across the river from Manhattan. Had Optimum (Cablevision) before this, and that always met the 50/something advertising too (switched because Verizon actually came out cheaper, and gave us a free $200 tablet, and I was miffed because twice, without any hardware changes or service calls, Optimum mysteriously placed me on a lower bandwidth tier and had to talk my way up the support tier to someone who wouldn't just tell me it was the other networks fault despite the limit being listed on the modem's admin console- it's a scam, not a technical error like they claimed, and who knows how many people they do this to that aren't geeky enough to figure it out).
And I collect Linux distros, that's why I torrent so much!

The classic maps I'm look at has those 2 options, then a "I'm feeling geeky" link that shows the box with sumerian nippur cubit and all the other fun ones.

So anyone know if they're going to be messing with old versions of the android maps app? Because the newer versions of that suck with just as much intensity as on the desktop.

Oh you can still negotiate here in the US. Recently the 3 subway vendors I walk by on my evening commute in one station here in NYC raised everything from $1 to $1.25. Since I stop by several times a week for one particular item no other store I've found besides the subway newsstands sells (besides wholesale-only on the internet), I was particularly enraged. Once I found that the vendor on the other side of the station, that is out of my way, would still sell them to me for a dollar, I told the price gouger he could sell them to me for a dollar too or lose my business. I now get my item for $1 without having to walk out of my way. Victory!

Actually we ban every single psychologically active substance *except* alcohol and tobacco for precisely that reason, those two being the lucky winners because historically the few irresponsible ones misusing other things were typically not the white male property owners responsible for determining whose favorite substance was allowed.

Welcome to the War on Drugs. You won't believe how many times entire narcotics units have been disbanded because of rampant corruption. Too much cash and power involved to expect anything else.