When you "steal" a movie online, the studio only loses "potential" sales. Likewise, when you do (or do not) watch a movie, the resources used to produce the movie remain constant. When 100,000,000 people watch the same movie, the production costs of the movie to the studios are the same as if 10 people watch it. In otherwords, supply and demand does not apply when we have infinitely reproducible units of trade. You do not "steal" a movie, rather you "unfairly take advantage" of someone else's hard work. It's similar to the stolen valor act. You can't actually "steal" valor, but you can take credit for something you don't deserve credit for. Movies expected to "make more money" are given bigger budgets -- they have more "viewers" which distributes the production costs. Movies expected to make less money are given smaller budgets, and the distributed viewership shares the lower production cost of the movie. Finally, "gambles" are factored into other movies, so a movie that loses money is compensated for elsewhere.

It's not really "greed," if you're demanding to see the biggest explosions. If you want cheap movies go order a low budget foreign film online -- and you'll pay for the corresponding lower budget. Or, you know, stop watching movies. No one is twisting your arm to shell out $$$ on overpriced movies. If Hollywood loses enough viewers, they'll scale back production costs, until the average viewer feels the cost is worth it. As long as people shell out premium $$$, movies will have premium production costs. Big fat corporate greed problems don't apply to ridiculous luxuries like big budget movies. The MPAA is not "forcing" you to consume their products, and it won't hurt you one bit if you don't buy their stuff. If you expect them to lower their costs, as if you're entitled to that, then you're the one being greedy.

I swore to never buy an Apple product, lo and behold I ended up with an iPad 2. Ultimately, the aspect ratio of the Android horde was the deal breaker, the only one to successfully tempt me has been the Tab 10. The iPad 2 is smooth, sleek, works great, and most importantly works in portrait and landscape mode (I find myself using it in portrait more than landscape, since most web pages are vertical.) But the iPad 2 is not "magically better" than the other tablets. Having fiddled around with the Tab 10, I can say it's just as solid of an experience as an iPad 2. The problem is mentality. People have this strange idea in their head that Apple products are "the best" simply because of a logo. And honestly, the iPad 2 is top notch, and will stay top notch, until other designers are willing to go balls-to-the-wall and compete on equal grounds. That means getting over the "Apple is better by default" mentality. And this CEO literally just said "The iPad 2 is better than our product!" Which is even stupider than Motorola overpricing the Xoom.

My brother met his wife on World of Warcraft, and since they lived states apart at the time they had "web dates." They used to have a date night where they'd get on the cells and watch the same movie. They did all sorts of creative things to keep the relationship going, before she finally moved to live with him and they got married. So sorry Gates, couple's who met online have been doing this stuff for ages.

I live about 30 miles from the East Texas court most of these tech patent disputes take place at. The only (see: ONLY) high-speed service in my area is Suddenlink. The alternative sold out a few years ago. Well, lo-and-behold, everytime I mistype a URL I don't get a 404 -- I get a search result (all clad in ads) with "Suddenlink" across the top of the page. This is why so many people are worried about ISP's screwing up the Internet. First, even if Suddenlink argues they're doing me a favor, why do they get to decide which search engine my 404 is sent to? Second, that makes it awfully tempting for Suddenlink to monitor my Internet activity for targeted advertising in their 404 redirect page. And third, what the buggar are the data retention policies for the site they redirect to?

"We've found possible traces of water maybe sorta kinda that could maybe imply there was water on Mars. So, you guys aren't gonna cut our funding, right Obama?"

Are you sure? Because there are plenty of feminist twits who say that sort of thing all the time and mean it whole heartily.

Oh for bullocks sake. "Requires both courage and vision" ? Oh yeth, soooo courageous and progressive! DARING! A tour de force of epic proportions! Cry me a bleeding serious-as-a-heart-attack river. Right, because educated men just want to make tons and tons of children, but if you make the women smart the population problem goes away because they refuse to be baby factories. Bullocks. The reason it improves society is because well treated girls make for healthier, happier, and more caring mothers, which means the next generation has better parental care. Women being bold and progressive with more rights has little to do with it -- it's just a means to an ends (better upbringing.) And there's absolutely nothing "Daring" or "Courageous" about treating girls well. It's not because the third world "lacks vision" that they aren't sending their girls to school, it's because they're too busy fighting mass starvation and disease. Give them stability, and the rest will follow.

This tech really works!

Everyone who thinks this is absurd has implicitly argued that profiling -- racial, gender, and otherwise -- works.

My parents have run a business for the past twenty years. We have lots of big wavers and warnings to our customers: "X company that made your Y might try to weasel out of paying, if they do, please don't expect us to pay for your repairs.", "Special orders usually come in within two weeks, but we've seen them get delayed up to two months on many occasions." Etc etc etc. I can't count how many times I've seen my dad hand over a waver -- usually it shuts people up and they apologize. Of course, my dad's very tactful, he knows how to make people pipe down (say, by not challenging their egos.)

On that note, I've met plenty of uppity pool folk, I know EXACTLY how you feel... and they are indeed the worst!