My wife pre-ordered Diablo III. SC2 was annoying with the log-in requirements, but given everything I had read about the Zero Day issues, I asked her to send it back, unopened.

I'm not really a fan of game piracy. I keep all my PC games; dating from the mid-90s, I've got 500-700 PC titles tucked away into binders upon binders upon binders. Once upon a time I had the brilliant idea of putting all the activation codes into an excel file so that I could get rid of the boxes and manuals, but I lost that a decade ago - from time to time I've had to visit Megagames or other sites for a crack over the years, but I never felt bad about it because I always owned the game.

I think this is where I finally draw the line on piracy. When a game is unplayable in single player mode because of DRM, regardless of reason, temporary nature....I think that crosses a line. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow...but one day soon there will be a pirated, DRM free version of Diablo III. If people will build Everquest or WoW servers....if random would-be customers will donate money to an indie developer to recreate Asheron's Call 2 from the ground up years after the game shut down with no hope of Turbine releasing the code for it...then I imagine someone or a team of someones will muster up the energy to give us a version of Diablo III that we can play offline in single player mode.

Blizzard lost a $60 sale from me. The game is being returned, un-opened today. In the not too distant future, Usenet is going to get $20 from me.

That's a horrible idea.

And what happens when all the frivolous lawsuits that people love tossing around get used like a DoS attack against unpopular people, or people that someone has a vendetta against?

What happens when 10,000 anti-war activists all file individual suits against the president? He's supposed to put out of pocket to defend himself?

And if I'm the CEO of Apple, and someone doesn't like their iPhone and can't get a refund because they're past the purchase date allowance, if they sue me because they feel wronged, do I pay for it myself?

Unreasonable plan.

The tagline is inverted.

In Soviet Russia, cybercrime shames YOU!

I can't help but sit here shaking my head in some disbelief at the comments I've read on this thread. Slashdotters are a technologically savvy community for the most part, and I lost track of the number of times that I saw something to the effect of "The government probably has means/software/tools/hacks to get your info."

Now, I've done extensive work *for* the government in the realm of computer forensics, which is as far as I'll elaborate, and the tools we use are commercially available. Were anyone so inclined, you could even attend or get notes on FBI or DoD taught digital forensics classes.

There's nothing wrong with some good old fashioned suspicion or conspiracy theory, but the *one* area that slashdotters should be mostly competent and knowledgeable on has more of those wild ideas than anywhere else.

My wife and I both want(ed) to play Little Big Planet. With that said, there's no way in the ninth circle of hell that we're going to invest in a PS3 to do so. Proprietary consoles can suck a fattie. Now, I wonder how many other potential non-consumers there are out there in my shoes? At least Square Enix is shaping up; Sony doesn't get a stranglehold on Final Fantasy anymore. I hope that turns into other a *lot* of other developers abandoning one-console contracts. Metal Gear, Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy as multi-console releases? =)

I'd like to see a warning label affixed to every ballot that says: "WARNING: Electing politicians has been linked to recession, higher taxes, and war."

These kind of stories swing both ways, and we've had literally dozens of "Finally the pendulum swings the other way moments" that have amounted to nothing more than blips across the radar... But I can't help but optimistically wonder if this is the start of a trend fighting back against corporate abuse of us, the customer? For several years now, I (and probably you) have been inured to new stories about corporation X doing new thing Y to screw customer z, and the news story hasn't even batted an eyelash because we're not surprised. Now the RIAA is backpedaling, and DRM is getting an appropriate scrutinizing. =) Its a good start to 2009!

Everyone knows that if you overphish a stream, there's no phish left for everyone else. Its a classic case of resource depletion!