Actually, even today, there are buggy whip manufacturers. The key is to recognize that you have a shrinking market size and that only the best and unique suppliers are going to survive. So, your friend, assuming he wants to stay in this shrinking market and intensifying competition will need to think of how he can outperform downloads. Are there services that are not provided by downloads. How about teaming up with the local pizza joint and delivering a pizza and a movie. Personalize the service and know the customer.

Look at, for example, stores that still sell LP records. How are they staying in business? What do they have that the other, now dead, players didn't have?

If the company developed its network in an open and free marketplace it has a right to its property. A company is a person or group of people that risk their capital to create that network. However, most telecom networks were not developed in a truly free marketplace. Various government regulations, subsidies and monopolies allowed them to effectively dominate and/or monopolize access to the "free speech". If antitrust regulations had applied to telecom providers everyone would have more than one choice for accessing the network. Many of us have only one choice and this is NOT a free marketplace.

So, the question is: If you are granted a monopoly do you forfeit certain rights to your private property?

http://xkcd.com/378/

I am on the internet several hours a day between work and home and a voracious reader of sources from all ends of the ideological spectrum and my conservatism, if anything, is re-enforced.

Under the old model I could buy the game for $59 and sell it for $19. Net cost is $40. Also, I could share the game on all the consoles or PC's in my household (Family plan). Now the game is $59 and the family plan is over $118 or higher. Now add the inconvenience of the DRM and the effective playability (i.e. value has been decreased). Take all this together and ask: Is this game still worth buying? Some people will still buy at this "higher price" some won't. If they made the right choice they will have higher profits, if the didn't the result will be lower profits. Getting all upset because they "screwed up" the product is like getting all pissed off because the new Ford Mustang only has a 100HP engine and they are charging the same price for it. You probably won't like it, won't buy it, and Ford will have lower earnings.

The problem is that I am not being "supervised" to the level that I am being checked multiple times per hour. I am fortunate that I work for a company that evaluates me on my results and compares me to others for ranking and frankly doesn't care how I achieve those results as long as it is ethical/legal. This means, that if I want to browse Slashdot all day long and then work at night-- not a problem. This invasive supervision also creates an environment where the smart people will find a job elsewhere and all you will have left are lower performing people that need the supervision.

This is so scary, it's surreal.

I better buy some black electrical tape.

The 16C is one of my most prized tech possessions. There hasn't been a programmer's calculator that has even come close to this since. I just did a quick look on eBay and it looks like the 11C, 15C, and 16C are turning into some valuable collector's items.

My apps don't need to know where I was last year.

To get my $7 I set my MSRP at $35, Amazon, sells for $10 and everyone is happy. No one looks at MSRP when they shop Amazon, anyway. And in the best(OK, admittedly wishful) case it might even sell at a higher price than $10.

You obviously took the blue pill.

I fully agree that you need to design in quality. I go by the adage "You can't test in quality". Regardless, you WILL test. The question is whether it is more economical to test before you release the product or once its in the customer hands. Some failures can have significant financial impacts(for example, how about a defect in a car engine control module that causes the engine to shut down -- VERY expensive). In the less impactful consumer market you will have degradation in sells if the quality falls below a certain point. It comes down to a tradeoff between risk to business vs. cost to test pre-release. One lower way to mitigate the risk is to turn up/down the depth of testing depending on the change. For example, if you are making some minor UI changes, you might want to do a very light regression test but if you are doing some fundamental refactoring of a core part of the product then you might want to have a more involved set of unit/subsystem/integration tests that cover as much of the product as possible.

One method we use is to err on the conservative side and to over-test initially and if the defect density is low enough then back off on later releases as the quality level is much better known and the resulting post-release risk is lower.

Bottom line, there is no hard rule, you have to know your costs and your risks and make daily tradeoffs between the two.