I thought "pirates" were those who made the files available. Not those who download them.Anyway,it's still trivial to download any MS software. The hassle is you have to look out for malware and then find a WGA crack. Rather than go through all that crap, when I was given a used corporate laptop with a heavily passworded Vista setup and faced wiping and reinstall to get a useful system, I just said "fuck all that" and got Ubuntu. My daughter complained, but she got used to it.

Too many sites try to force you to use your Facebook ID to log in now. This would make it almost compulsory.

Wrong. Very wrong.

The Federalist Papers
The Federalist Papers are a series of 85 articles or essays promoting the ratification of the United States Constitution written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Seventy-seven of the essays were published serially in The Independent Journal and The New York Packet between October 1787 and August 1788. ...At the time of publication, the authorship of the articles was a closely guarded secret

I wait till 5 episodes are broadcast, download them and burn to a DVD. So I get my own DVD one or two days after the finale.

Swimming? That's when I really appreciate my watch. A cheap 100 m waterproof stainless steel analog with a bezel to time my laps. What else would I do? Keep a phone in a plastic bag in my briefs? Leave it on the beach to be stolen? Other times, like riding my bike, I need to make a connection, and keep track of time.

I really hate the idea of having to have a phone in one hand at all times. Too easy to lose, get damaged or distract me.

I suspect the "difficulty" is more legal than technical. The Estonians don't care if they brick an occasional device, and they don't try to get the users' legal consent. And people and governments in other countries might not be happy to trust the FBI to reprogram their router/modem.

Hong Kong was never an independent country. For 150 years it was a British colony, now its China's again. But it has independent taxes, judiciary, customs, immigration, its own TLD (.hk).

Most Iranians are ethnically "Persian" and speak Farsi . They aren't Arabs. While most Iraqis are Arab, which is one reason they hate each other, and have for thousands of years.

Yes. "Greedy lying assholes", "willfully ignorant", ""loonie conspiracy theorist" would be more descriptive of the different types..

That would be a stupid assumption.

There are a lot of people who might be sympathetic to a "terrorist" cause, but never instigate any such acts. But if someone purporting to be a fighter for their cause turns up, befriends a lonely disaffected person, asks for their help, talks them into helping over a year, the result is the creation of the one grooming them. They aren't "truly" terrorists. They're roleplaying in a game created by the FBI.

Terrorists don't perceive themselves as "criminals". They're freedom fighters, martyrs, heroes, etc. They are, to someone sympathetic to their cause "respected authority figures".

People are going to copy inflatable Daleks and Cyberman action figures?

The BBC isn't going away. They are funded by a licence fee. They also make a load from selling stuff and distributing overseas. Doctor Who might get its budget cut, but it wouldn't go off the air.

Anyway, I don't care about Hulu, except that I keep seeing websites that have embedded Hulu links for trailers or video clips that I can't access, being outside the US. If they require subscriptions too, then that would block a lot of Americans, so hopefully we'd go back to free sites like Youtube.

I guess that's where the "WEB-DL" downloads come from. Perfect quality, no station logos or pop-over promos for other shows. Worth waiting a few hours for.

Yeah, maybe if you had bothered to read the complete first sentence you might have a clue.