okay.. how about apple's way:

version 3.x

there. much better.

the difference is, the apps use apple's storefront, apple's payment gateway, apple's software and update distribution, apple's ad network, etc, etc, etc. apple is earning their cut.

netflix is ONLY using internet bandwidth that has ALREADY been bought and paid for by them and by their customers. isp's have already made their money on providing the pipes, they don't deserve a penny of netflix revenues, or any 'tax' or 'surcharges' from their customers.

perhaps, but i would absolutely LOVE a laptop i could rip the screen off of and use as a touch-enabled tablet... and it could even run windows 8, i wouldn't fucking care, just to get my hands on the hardware.

paint shop pro has worked for me for years... still use version 9 (have newer, but 9 is the sweet spot for me).. corel's kinda fucked it up, but it's still more than usable, and still beats paying adobe's prices.

the 100 million figure also probably includes a pile of volume licenses.. but those seats mostly remain on XP or 7.

since that was a limited-time offer... does that key still work? or is it now gone forever since his 'windows 8 with media center' took a dump?

i miss those super large fries and coke!

(although the mcd here has recently added the option back on the menu but doesn't call it 'super sized' - probably due to the unwarranted previous negative publicity -- and ya that documentary too).

until all tracking is banned.

like we can trust the web sites, ad networks, and (most) search engines to NOT track, even if it was 'banned'.

browser functionality to block such behaviour, at least client-side, will pretty much always be necessary.

EA has a large enough business in *console* games that a little hissyfit over DRM in PC titles won't be noticed... especially given that there are new console hardware launches upcoming for which they'll sell a shitload of games for, and which will save their chief executive asshole's job.

how they're going to wriggle their way out of that one

oh, that's easy..... all the bugs in the AIs are because of a client-server interaction bug preventing the proper calculations from being run on the "servers".

the only cap system that is fair and prevents outrageous overage charges is throttled-but-free usage over the cap. e.g. pay $30 for 100 gigs at 15 mbit, over 100 gigs in a month then speed falls to 1/10th that... want more full-speed gigs this month? call or login and order extra gigs for $7.50 per 25 gigs. extra gigs rollover, monthly quota does not. simple and fair.. provided it is marketed in plain english and limits are as obvious in marketing materials as the price or 'full' speed.

and it will be called..

wait for it...

WINDOWS RETRO

there is absolutely NO NEED for simcity 5 to have been purposefully designed to require publisher operated servers to run other than to implement a harsh DRM scheme.

we played sc2000 on a 33mhz cyrix slc (essentially a 386sx that spoke i486).. sc3000 on a 133mhz pentium (non mmx version and original win95 no fat32).. and sc4 on a 550mhz k6-2 (2000, later xp).. the slowest bit of any of those games on any of those systems? the fucking cd-check drm for sc3000 and sc4.

things have sped up just a tad since then... not just raw cpu power but also the pc's subsystems (ram, hdd, graphics, etc).

even with neighboring city (region) math thrown in, i think a simple 2005-07 dual core desktop (e.g. comparable to pentium e5200 or first-gen dual core athlon, which is on the box as the 'minimum') with just 1 gig of ram available to the game (i.e. as little as 2 gig total, also on the box as the 'minimum') would be more than enough to handle all of the math for sc5, AND host multiplayer besides.

if the cpu requirements are so great that EA thinks server-based calculations are the only way to go... what kind of horsepower do they have on those servers if they do what even an old pentium e5200 can't do on their own? holy shit. they didn't charge nearly enough for the game if they're dedicating entire xeon server cores and gigs of ram to each player.. OM-FUCKING-G.

i guess the server actually plays the game and the the dual to quad core processor required or recommended by EA on the box is solely to run the fucking DRM

TFA refers to a pilot project by fairfax county schools. their project would not have failed miserably if they implemented it properly: with offline-capable ereaders preloaded with the proper texts and materials.. but instead, they opted for content and a system that required internet access (presumably due to drm at the publisher's insistance) to use, which limited access to those with sufficient internet access at home AND limited _where_ students could read and study their texts. a preloaded offline ereader would have eliminated those major issues with a conversion to digital texts. if fairfax county school board had listened to complaints and concerns expressed prior to them choosing this defective system, and not gotten memorized by slick salesmen, their system _could have been_ a model for public schools nationwide - instead they just fucked up big time.

they couldn't at least hit 1280x720 for 720p video? what the hell........