Steam starts running ads promoting AMD.

Here is the critical flaw with your plan.

Steam doesn't have ads. Its a major reason people like steam so much.

Steam doesn't actually own the PC market, it's not like a console where Microsoft or Sony can say "dont like it, stiff because we own your dicks". Steam got to its position by being better than its competitors, more useful, less annoying and far friendlier to gamers. If Valve changes that they will start to lose customers.

Sorry, but it's awfully hard to take it seriously as a religion ... it has about as much credibility as being a Jedi or a Pastafarian.

Why do you lump Jedis and Pastafarians in with Scientologists?

Its much easier to take a religions that was deliberately designed to be a piss-take more seriously than Scientology.

Which is a perfect example of why he was wrong and the GP that corrected him was correct.

Niemöller's poem was about the Nazi's pre-emptively isolating and in many cases killing their enemies.

Not sure about where you live, but non-profits in Australia have to have a purpose which useful and beneficial to society (I.E. provide old age care, help for the less fortunate, provide tutoring or educational services, sporting clubs and so on) and cant be allowed to distribute the money it makes to its members or owners.

Churches, by and large are either exempt or can completely ignore these rules.

So they should be taxed the same as an ordinary business, money used in clearly charitable programs can be deducted from their taxable income, same as a mining company can do for the money it spends maintaining the ecology around it's sites. This change will only harm those religions using most of it's profit for self aggrandisement.

ORLY.

What alternatives to Itunes exist? Are any big enough to challenge it?

Apple have been able to use their market position to push around media companies. Media companies for fuck sake, the most pig headed, obnoxious and obstinate arseholes in the game.

Apple have also been suing it's competitors left, right and centre just for being competitors.

Sadly, no.

Cognitive dissonance is very powerful and this sounds like a textbook case of "no true scotsman".

He wasn't a TSA agent, the brave defenders of 'Murica because no true TSA agent would do such a thing.

Eunuchs admins?

You dont need a VPN. Netflix recently opened in Oz, so I got an Oz account and just use a simple Firefox extension to watch Netflix in the US as the US has many times more shows than Australia (Oz has around 1500 titles, the US has 7500 titles).

However even with a VPN (which is what, $5 a month) it's still much cheaper than trying to get the content locally... IF you can get the content locally.

This is all set up so they can rake over the richer countries without entirely locking themselves out of the less wealthy countries.

And basically this is admitting that they're deliberately ripping off more wealthy countries...

But that's not true. A movie in Thailand costs as much as a movie in the United States... but both are cheaper than Europe who are miles cheaper than New Zealand and Australia. That explanation makes no sense when you consider reality, Thailand is much poorer than the US but Europe isn't significantly wealthier.

In a digital world with no borders, this not only makes no sense, but it's completely unenforceable.

The Libertardians will argue that they're charging what the market will bear. But what they forget is that the free market doesn't exist in the entertainment industry because they have a government granted (and occasionally enforced) monopoly. The fact is, the entertainment industry is charging beyond what the market will bear, however in decades past there was little we could do about it. Then we could get a suitcase of bootleg DVD's from Thailand and Bali... Then there was piracy, now doing end runs around geoblocking. All of this _is_ the market asserting itself against what it feels are unfair conditions (and by market I mean people, because that's what a market is comprised of).

Steam sales have repeatedly proven that low prices do more to affect piracy than anything else.

In Australia ISP's have always been considered utilities.

As such, it is not the responsibility of the ISP to police what you do, nor interfere with what you do with its service.

Grey import in Australia is legal, the same applies to services that use geoblocking and other methods for price discrimination. However because the Australian courts cant stop it they turn a blind eye to people circumventing it.

The same drug can have radically different effects on different people. Sounds like you dont react well to morphine. Others will react differently.

My brother in law gets knocked out by small doses of doxylamine (over the counter sedative used in some pain killers) but I'm almost completely unaffected by a slightly higher dose.

Before dispensing pharmaceutical or medical advice please be aware of the limitations of what you say.

You really need to start taking your own advice.

Your sources come from brand name manufacturers. Of course they're going to claim generics dont work as well.

The FDA and it's counterparts in every other western country has a requirement that all generic pharmaceuticals are as safe and effective as the brand name pharmaceuticals they're competing against.

Studies have shown that generics are not only bioequivalent, but the lower cost leads to better adherence (I.E. patients "forget" to take the brand name medication more often).

Paracetamol == drug name.

Panadol == brand name.

I never ask for a pain reliever by it's brand name as brand name pain killers are more expensive than generics and the generics are just as effective.

The article reported a "reduction" in responses to "pleasant and disturbing photos". So I wouldn't start claiming that it's having a very negative effect, or much of an effect at all. When I'm in enough pain to necessitate a pain killer I'm not usually worried about being as happy as I could be (9 times out of 10, it's so I can get to sleep). I typically use Ibuprofen (with a bit of codeine) as most of my pain is a result of inflammation and paracetamol isn't a good anti-inflamatory.

Your talking about racism, this article is about internet trolls They are not the same.

Technically yes, you can be a troll without being racist. However you cant really a racist without being a troll. So there is a lot of overlap between the two concepts.

Ive been tagged a troll because of my views a few times.

As has happened to me a few times. But it's not common and amazingly I still have excellent karma. Normally I get modded "overrated" as that mod has a much lower chance of being corrected by another user with mod points than the troll mod does.

If you're consistently being modded as a troll, you have to accept that either you are a troll or your comments are completely unsuitable for this forum.