How are they one step above rent-a-cops? Your statement seems to be implying that by the very virtue of not being from private industry they are better than private industry, which is a pretty weak argument. Especially when all the evidence doesn't really put them one step above anything. Further even if we assume you're right, that they're one step above rent-a-cops, how on Earth does that make you feel even remotely better? I can't even come up with an adequate analogy to express how stupid I think that sentiment is. Also note that I'm not even saying private industry would be better, I just think your post is wrong.

Oh no, they love games because they can make a lot of money off of them. Just look at the relatively recent DLC trend which is massively overpriced. Oh perhaps dedicated server binaries for PC games which as far as I've read (feel free to correct me) must be licensed by game server providers. The binaries aren't released publicly (CoD, BFBC2). Or even things you only get if you buy the game first hand but if you buy it second hand you have to pay extra to get those things (if you want them).

Let's see what they come up with next.

Well, I suppose we can wait and see what they do with Wikileaks...

If photons did have mass then they wouldn't be traveling the speed of light. The speed of light would still be a constant, but light wouldn't actually travel at that speed. As far as an alternative to dark matter, I'm not really qualified to answer that. According to wikipedia the upper bound for the mass of a photon is 1 x 10^(-18) eV/c^2 which is miniscule. For reference an electron has a mass of about .5 MeV/c^2. Considering dark matter is supposed to take up 80% of all matter in the viewable universe, I'd have to guess no. Like I said though, I'm not a physicist so take this with a grain of salt.

A photon (most likely) does not have mass. Although, interestingly enough, it does have momentum. It is affected by gravity, such as passing by a star, because spacetime is curved and the photon is merely following a geodesic (generalized notion of a straight line through curved space)..

As someone who has studied algebraic geometry quite a bit I find the jump from classical mechanics to relativity to be very beautiful mathematically. The former is still useful as the approximation is close enough for the majority of situations, but it did unwittingly make some assumptions which turned out to be wrong. To me dark matter and dark energy seem like a kludge and I do hope we just unwittingly made some assumptions about the system that turn out to be false. Of course that's just the mathematician in me, always searching for perfection. Dark matter and dark energy may very well be real, I'm not a physicist.

Well first let me say that I believe your option C is equitable and pretty much everyone finds it equitable. I'm also not talking about piracy or breaking DRM, I'm mostly talking about the philosophical implications.

So you're right that with a hard copy of a book you can only lend, sell, or give it out once (unless it is returned to you). The reason is there is only one physical copy. This has made sense with books and other media because the barrier to copy has traditionally been so high. Let's just delve into the example of a book and how it's copied and why lending makes sense.

So as an individual just a few hundred years ago you almost certainly did not have a printing press, though even if you did it would take you a lot of time to actually be able to copy a book. If you wanted to give someone a copy of a book (not lend them your copy) you would most likely copy it by hand with pen and paper. So lending makes sense and is far easier.

Now I believe in the 1800s the typewriter was invented. So about 100 years ago you still probably wouldn't have access to a printing press, but you might have access to a typewriter. Again, it would be a lot of work to retype the entire book to give it to a friend. It's easier and makes more sense just to lend your copy that you bought.

Now go to around the 1950s when the photocopier was invented. I realize there were rudimentary implementations of this far earlier, but as far as something usable by the general populace this was the turning point. At this point it's starting to become easier to copy information. It would still be tedious and time consuming, but the amount of effort has decreased thanks to technology. It would still make more sense to not waste your time and just lend the book though.

Now fast forward to around the time personal computers really started to take off, say around 1980 (was a bit before but I'm being approximate). Now an average person on the street might have access to a computer and a printer. You would still have to retype the whole book and print it off, and the typography wouldn't be great, but once again the ease of copying has been increased. Information is slowly ending it's coexistence with the physical world. By that I mean the actual data, the information, no longer needs to be on a piece of paper to read. However, at this stage you're probably not going to transfer digital copies and it would be easier to print them. Although, it's probably easier still just to lend a friend your copy of the physical book.

Now let's skip to today as you get the idea. Books are created on computers, and computers are nearly ubiquitous. Not only that but many computers are connected via the internet. The typography is easy to get down and you can easily write and distribute a digital copy of a book via a PDF file (perhaps form a LaTeX source file) and with a little more work you can send it to the printing press to get a physical book. Suddenly all of the work of copying the information has been reduced drastically. You don't have to copy the physical object anymore. You have the information without it being put into a physical form. Couple this with the falling technology prices and the ease of copying and it is suddenly too easy to resist sending a copy rather than lending your copy. Now that you have a digital copy and no hard copy, suddenly the idea of lending doesn't quite make sense. Making a copy is essentially free. The publishers have to actively combat this to make it work more like it used to.

Now again I'm not advocating piracy or taking a firm stance that information should be free. I'm merely looking at the trend and offering my opinion. I think the ease of disseminating information is tending towards zero, i.e. no effort. Gone are the days that in order to get a copy of a book easily you need a very expensive printing press and a good typesetter. Now, assuming this happened unhindered what will this look like in ten years? twenty?

As I said, I think your option C is completely fair. But let's consider the fact that option C works so well with physical books because the book itself has a finite number of copies printed and has traditionally been time consuming and difficult to copy. With the digital copy you just need to make one and thanks to technology copying is essentially free. So does option C actually make sense for a digital copy when it's the antithesis to what technology allows us to do?

I'd like to also point out that the transfer from a physical to a digital copy removes restrictions. Back before this sort of thing was possible you certainly could lend your book out. Maybe you never get it back, or maybe whoever you lent the book to lends it to someone else. Or perhaps you do get it back. However, there is only one copy being passed around. It was a physical limitation. With a digital copy of a book no such limitation exists.

Basically the content used to be married with the physical world[1], now they are fairly separate. Everyone is still used to the idea of a physical object containing in some way some data, be it a book, a DVD, a CD, or whatever. We can lend it or sell it or give it away once, but only once (unless you get it back). This is no longer the case. However, all business models in the industry are based on this. Over the past few decades this has changed. So what do they do? They try to force the same set of restrictions (and more in some cases) which used to exist so that their business model still makes sense.

Now, I'm not saying I know how to approach this in any way, but you can't deny that there has been a very large change in the way information is exchanged. In the same way that the industrial revolution made manufacturing on a large scale easy, the digital revolution is making distribution (allowed or not) on a large scale easy. I do dread the thought of information becoming even more controlled and restricted when the current trend and technology should mean there is even less control and restriction.

[1]Yes, a digital copy takes up disk space and bandwidth to receive. Just as you could copy the book by hand a hundred years ago, or by photocopier a few decades ago. This is more of a continuum than a discrete change I suppose.

The same reason someone would write an interpreter or compiler for an esoteric programming language such as Brainfuck or Piet. Or make a homebrew computer. It may not be the most practical thing to do with your time, but it's fun and interesting. The only reason a geek needs to do something is, "I want to."

Is it sad that I don't know which company you're talking about?

I don't know. My all time favorite multiplayer FPS is Starsiege: Tribes. It was only multiplayer and it was hard as hell to play. I was never one of the greats, or even really good but I always found it fun. Thing is the game is absolutely full of content. The multiplayer was amazingly complex for its day. Even though it had no multiplayer it was still seeped in Starsiege lore. You don't need to know any of it to play the game, but they did put a lot of time into it. So it's not like content and multiplayer are mutually exclusive.

Well the focus has shifted from single player to multiplayer quite a lot in the last decade or so. Single play has been getting easier and shorter for mainstream blockbuster titles, but they tend to focus on multiplayer. I did enjoyed the new Medal of Honor single player even with it being very short, they did screw up majorly on multiplayer though. Even games which are heavily focused on single player have been getting shorter, like the episodic releases of Half-Life 2. I'd give them a break but the reason they did episodic releases was shorter games, at quicker intervals. They got the first part down I suppose...

If you want something that's hard as nails then try I Wanna Be The Guy. It's not an FPS with amazing graphics or anything, but you'll be playing that for a long time. You can also try going back to some of the classic FPS single player games like System Shock 2. It's not like they have somehow gotten worse.

Then why do we pay for both incoming and outgoing texts while in Europe they only pay for outgoing texts? Same with calling.

I always wanted a very nice package management system for OSX. Kind of like Synaptic on top of apt. I agree that Fink and DarwinPorts are woefully lacking and I'd like to see an all-encompasing package management system for OSX. I'm just afraid if Apple has anything to do with it then it will turn out like their iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch app store.

Honestly spell checkers help me. I enjoy the system wide spell checker in OSX and it's pretty rare that I don't know how to spell a word. Thing is the spell checker system doesn't tell me what the correct spelling is (or what it thinks the correct spelling is), it just tells me what I've typed is wrong. So I generally pop open a google tab which is pretty good at suggesting the right spelling so I know how to spell it, which is great given the story I'm replying to.

I mean I know what you're saying. Having all of this technology enables people to be lazy, but some people are willing to put in the effort to better themselves. Perhaps it's because society itself allows people to be lazy with little recourse.