That's debatable I suppose. I'd suggest that we wouldn't have the mess of DRM, ACTA and whatnot that we have now if there was no piracy.

Whether it's realistic to have no piracy at all is another topic of course...

Exactly, if you don't like it, DON'T BUY IT!

You are not entitled by nature to receive all the stuff you want under the conditions you want. If you don't like the conditions, then DON'T BUY THE PRODUCT. You are not making the problem of DRM any better with illegal downloading. Yes, life's not fair enough to let you have your cake and eat it too.

Not giving money is fine, in fact it's what I'm advocating as well!

What's wrong is to expect to still get all the stuff you want anyway:

i download everything i want ... i will never, ever, buy another book, game, dvd, whatever.

If you did not buy or use any of the products you listed, then it did very well have an effect. Of course that's pretty worthless in the big picture if a hundred bazillion other people were still using or buying those products. OTOH, did "pirating" Starcraft, Diablo or Visa help in any way? Did that change anything beyond more DRM or more severe punishment?

If a boycott at least generates media attention, it sends a signal. The only way the big companies can respond to that signal is by offering a better product (or at least do nothing). Pirating sends a signal as well, but the way the big companies are going to respond to that signal is by adding more DRM or more legislation, because it is something they can fight (or at least they think so). A simple boycott cannot be fought with DRM or legislation.

In other words: you're the effing source of the problem! There'd be no countries blocking piracy websites or trying to enact ACTA or any similar such actions on a governmental level if there was no piracy to begin with, yet you could still influence the market by simply not buying what you don't like.

And while you're "killing" the distribution companies, the artists die with them because they depend on the same money you're not paying them.

Give money to the artists who deserve it and be picky about it. That is empowering the ones who deserve it, while starving the ones who don't.
Grabbing the content from the establishment without paying for it is actually empowering the establishment, because the law is on their side; whether that is right or wrong in your opinion. Because you are "stealing" from the big ones they are able to move whole governments and push new legislation through, because they can point at actual wrongdoing going on from the POV of the law. If simply nobody was interested in their products, they'd have no club to swing.

Only on Slashdot can such a comment be modded Insightful.

We get that the current system is not perfect. But publicly declaring that you're not going to pay for anything anymore while obviously still expecting to get all the latest new stuff... how is that fair to anyone, especially the creators of the stuff you're consuming?

I for my part am simply more selective about who I'm giving my money. And if I decide I do not want to fork over money for something, I may simply not consume it. If you want something to change, vote with your attention. Otherwise it's no wonder this is turning into a war.

It must just be me, but the Apple users around me are routinely more knowledgable about computers than the average Windows users around me.
In fact, most Apple users around me are developers or otherwise professionals whose main tool is a computer, while most Windows users around me have had their XP box for the last decade and use it to occasionally browse the web and download a virus or two.

I know that I'm probably biased due to my work and people I meet through it, but man, do I hate the generalization that Windows users are somehow the better computer users.

There you go, even better. :)

Oh darn, I'll feed the troll...

OK, please elaborate how installing an application by simply copying the executable into a location where all executables are stored is insecure. Is there an exploit that has been facilitated by this that would have been impossible otherwise? /Applications is not a system folder BTW. The system is in /System, and /Library. /Applications is a location to install applications, nothing more, nothing less.

True. Anybody with half a brain knew this of course. It was merely time for the practical proof.
From here on Apple will have to proof itself in how well it does or doesn't respond to such incidents.
For its first trial by fire, it didn't receive very high marks so far.

This! I wish I had mod points. Apparently long rants are more popular than actually trotting out the real details. Apple's In-App Purchase is really rather carefully designed. There are limited ways in which developers can charge users. These have to be explicitly, individually registered with and approved by Apple. They are displayed in the App Store before you even download the app. The item you are about to buy and its price are clearly displayed before you purchase.

Apple could hardly make it any more explicit you're about to pay money for something short of you needing to fax in an order sheet.

Hint: North Korea and South Korea do not have the same kind of relationship as North Dakota and South Dakota.

If you mean to say that the sun and the earth didn't exist back then and that hence the "year" didn't exist, then that's nonsense. A "year" is a somewhat well defined length of time, which applies just as much now as it did then, regardless of when that length of time was first defined or when the ingredients for defining it came into existence.

Now, if you'd be talking about whether the length of time we define as a "year" nowadays is the same now as it was back then, and whether time is a universal constant at all throughout the universe... you may be onto something.

Who said it's undesirable?

Oh right, this is KeepYourRemoteFingersAwayDot, sorry.

Say what now? Precaution against what?
And browsers cache assets transferred over HTTPS just fine.