... that doesn't require a mobile phone like those Casio Data Bank calculator watches.

To be fair, we've been overreacting since long before the 24-hour news cycle, and the absence of information in pre-broadcast history stirred at least as much paranoia and speculation. We're paranoid and fearful animals, and we'll use whatever we need to justify it.

you can still buy a game in Russia and play it in the US.

One can be "in Russia" (virtually) quite easily, and use a Russian payment method as well. So what does this accomplish?

Are you serious?

I've stopped playing games on disks because it's so annoying. I definitely prefer Steam over a disk check.

Though I play primarily indie games, so most of my Steam games are non-DRM anyway.

I dont remember that, I remember "well spoken and clean cut" or some such.

He represents Delaware accuratelyaccurate I'm embarrassed to say.

Atari, is that you? :P http://www.google.com/search?q..."do+the+math"

Also to rent an ip address isn't free.

Maybe the popular theaters will get hit instead?

I agree. It is hard to keep up too since I am an old fart. :/ I wonder what it would be like in 30 years.

Hackers should take down MPAA instead. :P

Or sexy. Eww!

Exactly. There's nothing frightening about this at all; it's a nuisance at best for the sites. Between using IP addresses directly, or editing a hosts file, or switching to an offshore DNS server, it's all of a 30 second delay.

For sites dedicated to piracy, it won't make the slightest difference in traffic. The demand is there, so people will seek out the product. The idea that making it marginally (or even substantially) more difficult to find will reduce demand is like saying "If Barnes and Noble doesn't carry pornography, there won't be any demand!"

Is piracy morally justifiable? Not really. In the end, someone is going around the rules of society for personal gain. Still, available evidence suggests that the actual economic damage is minimal, at worst, and possibly that it's helpful to the bottom line. People who pirate seem mostly to be people who wouldn't pay anyway, so they're not really lost as customers. Additionally, word of mouth can help the popularity of films, regardless of whether that opinion came from a free screening, a paid viewing, or a pirated download. From a practical standpoint, it doesn't make sense to focus efforts on stamping out something that's so benign. In other words, we shouldn't tolerate measures that negatively impact the rest of society to protect one group from an imaginary harm.

And the cloud / cloud services aren't going away anytime soon. I have a hard time thinking of those as "Fads" though they might be supplanted or the terminology might change in a few years.

"Big Data" for me is still a buzzword that I'm not sure I understand the value of for most IT shops.

My first boss in IT (and the guy who hired me) was black.

I'm white and I was the first guy he hired into the newly formed department.

Ditto. We need t(rans/ele)porters!