...we're assholes.

And by that, I mean we're the types to run a process in the background which randomly "clicks" on ads and otherwise generates browser "noise" during our downtime.

Sign me up for the 70 a month, suckers!

Every color ( except white )! Every gender ( except male )!

At least, that's the message I get from various media and state organizations.

Bingo.

Listen up MPAA, here's the key: Make it easy for customers to give you money and receive the product they want in the time frame they want it.

Seriously, Modesto could use both a bart station AND fiber.

Might be bearable at that point.

Customers may not be able to site specific fears, but you don't have to; a company that's behaved as badly as ubisoft ( or ea for that matter ) should be throwing off all sorts of red flags.

No, frankly. At this point, they AREN'T doing anything wrong by ripping off their customers.

Customers are entering into the agreement knowing full well what kind of treatment they can expect from Ubisoft, and Ubisoft is providing it.

STOP FUCKING GIVING UBISOFT MONEY.

By this point, anyone who gets bitten by this or any future shady behavior from a software house with such a sterling DRM reputation deserves whatever they get.

What they don't deserve is our pity. Ridicule maybe. I could even be convinced that "Mocking them" is the appropriate response.

I can't believe I'm saying this. I can't believe I have to say this.

This has been my life for the past couple decades. I am often the "voice of reason", and I don't have the heart to tell folks "No, I'm the voice of common sense", although I suspect they wouldn't get it.

So bad executive behavior, which has been immortalized in dilbert for *decades*, is now worthy of an essay?

There's a certain sense of irony here.

Dear Google,

Hi. My name is grasshoppa. You may know me from such famous threads as "Windows 8 Sucks" and "Windows 8 User Interface, wtf?". You may remember that I, along with a multitude of others, warned MS about making such a radical change to the desktop. No, wait, that's not quite right; we warned against FORCING such a radical change to the desktop. But we were assured by various astroturfers that windows 8 was the bees knees, the mutts nuts and various other wonderous bits of animals ( thank you, Sir Terry Pratchett, for that phrase ). We were called all sorts of various names for our opinions. Yet many of us stuck to our guns; we knew that a mobile interface force fed to desktop users was a recipe for failure.

Please. Listen to us now. This is a remarkable bad idea. This is the kind of idea your competitors DREAM of you implementing. It's really the only way they can get a foot hold into your market. And make no mistake; a foot hold will be all they need, because once you start down this road ( and, inevitably back track a week later due to overwhelming user criticism ), you have lost your momentum. You have lost the confidence necessary to stay that one step ahead of them. And they will then proceed to eat your lunch.

Who am I? No one really. Just some poor schmuck that will have to work with YOUR end users when you force feed them a UI change. And I'm already resentful for it.

So please. For the love of all you hold dear, PLEASE DO NOT FORCE A NEW INTERFACE on people.

Yet the very same folks that got burned here will line up, again, for the next release.

Folks, until these publishers are punished ( by depriving them of your cash ), they won't change. It's up to each of you to STOP GIVING THEM MONEY.

Of course that will never happen. If gamers actually *learned* EA would have been out of business years ago.

The work shows how easy it is to track the movement of large numbers of people with current technology--assuming they are willing to allow their data to be used in this way.

Right..."willing"...let's go with that.

Seriously, unless there is a very real business need ( and no, the CIO jumping up and down about TEH CLOUDS is not a legitimate business need ), keep your data under your control. Not only does this alleviate the problem of bailout should your provider die on short notice, but it also solves the security of cloud data rather nicely.

Granted, that someone even has to point this out shows just how deep the marketing bullshit is on this.

Well, the practice will be illegal anyway. But it always has been, and we see that no one really pays attention to that pesky "legality" question, so what'll probably happen is that it will get a new window dressing, be secret, and no one will be the wiser.

Oh, it'll still be illegal, but that's what gag orders are for.

I have a radical idea. If we accept that game developers are going to have the moral equivalency of a used car salesman with a crack addict to support, how about we ( the customers ) stop giving said addicts OUR GOD DAMNED MONEY FOR SHIT.

Anyone who gives these greedy SOBs a single cent are part of the problem.