Seriously, this is the way it goes:

• Kid - pocket money + xmas presents, little knowledge - consoles
• Student - loans + part time job, knows enough to throw a rig together, happy to pirate all software - PC
• Working Adult - disposable income, what little time available for hobbies precious, DOES NOT WANT THE HASSLE: back to consoles

That's the path that I and most of my peer group at work (for major IT name) have followed, and I'd give 50:50 odds you're in the middle segment at the moment. When you realise that you just cannot be bothered fighting whatever copy protection is stopping you playing that legally purchased disc in your hand, and you've got too much to lose to torrent the new release of Windows, maybe things will look different.
Maybe I'm wrong, and the upgrade cycle is really your hobby, with gaming an occasional bonus - that's the other way to go.

It absolutely isn't in the UK. If the product does not work as expected, the vendor (not the manufacturer) has a liability to provide a full refund if demanded. Course, IANAL.

I'm afraid you missed my point entirely. I'm not trying to debate the source of morality. I'm just pointing out that the English word 'right' has more than one meaning and in this context means 'something which the state has determined all its citizens should have'. Some other people think the sole meaning is 'something which it was preordained all human beings should have'. This is causing tedious flame wars throughout this thread.

All of this is nit picking over the definition of the word 'right'. It has more than one meaning! Generally, the precise meaning is determined by who we are saying is 'giving' the right - and in the case of 'basic human rights' we usually imply that either 'the natural order of things' or $DEITY 'gave' the rights. All rights do not have to be innate though - I can contractually give you a right of access across my land. In the case of TFA we are talking about a government / constitutionally granted right. Ok? Can we all stop arguing semantics now? Kthx.

Hey from the UK. I agree with the vast bulk of your statement, but I think in most cases the GBP 15 a month would be mega misleading. Maybe that's true in your ex-pat case, but for most employed people I think NI contributions are significantly higher than that, I'm certain mine are. Still of course worth it to not have to consider paying for an ambulance call out - always wondered how that worked under private system, sounds like it doesn't.

Because people have memories and can spot trends in a corporations behaviour?

It is of course perfectly possible that they have no intention of abusing this in any way, and merely wanted to make sure they didn't end up fighting any stupid law suits from some bright spark who had the idea of filing something similar and going after them with it.
Time will tell how 'evil' this is.

Yep - I've stopped bothering. What's the point of correcting mistakes you see or adding updates when you know they'll just be bounced. And notability being tested by 'has this member of the cabal heard of X' isn't entirely sensible I feel. Shame, the quality and range of info on there is bound to suffer as a result of this.

Really? The only one here who's pleased his 360 (or pick your toy of choice) comes with something that doesn't give you instant carpal tunnel these days?

Built up, as in you've not been taking any leave, to uh, get more leave?

You mean like http://www.y-windows.org/ ?

As far as I could tell, that HP related link was just some blurb saying "HP would like people to buy their stuff, not IBM's" - what was the relevance of that exactly? It seemed like almost exactly the opposite of the implication in context.

No. But afterwards, if you didn't give the engine any gas during the process, it would be moving slower. As lots of people have tried to point out, this might be desirable (see speed bumps). If the driver is just going to accelerate back to speed however, you have gained nothing.

Oh for god's sake. Perhaps some console gamers just happen to hold down real jobs and have lives away from the crosshair, so we don't want to spend all out time reinstalling Direct X, working out how to bypass SecureRom yet again, and upgrading our graphics card just to relax for an hour in the evening now and then.

Childish antagonism aside, C&C 3 was the last game I will ever buy for PC I suspect. The pain of getting it to work in the first place was just too much, followed by discovering EA had successfully raped the franchise into a shell of its former self anyway. A £150 box under the TV is just so much less hassle, for me. And I will miss really playable RTSs.

(Consider troll fed)

Erm, is anyone saying it is or isn't? This isn't a debate about the ethics of software copyright, this is a question about making a sensible decision to safeguard career / legal compliance. So, yeah, I'd say troll/flamebait was fair enough.

If it makes you feel better, as someone who makes a living writing code my personal view is that in both cases there is probably some justification for copyright as an entity, but that most legislation currently comes down too heavily in favour of the 'rights' holder. That applies equally to software and music. I think that's pretty much the prevailing view around here, give or take.