No, the character was dirt poor but he had access to some 'central property' that I suppose he might have sold off for series cash. The central aspect is important because the Metaverse was very strict in imposing its metaphor. For example, in Second Life you can teleport to pretty much any area specifically not closed off. On the other hand, you have to literally take a high speed train or program some other type of vehicle and physically move yourself in the Metaverse.

Hiro owned a small apartment in the Hacker quarter which was right in the middle of the area that all other building spread out from. He also made the unfortunate error of selling his stock in the Metaverse operating company. Whoops.

As for bitcoin, just as a quick and rough aside, the problem is that its particular proof-of-work is useless. When you mine bitcoins, you aren't doing any useful labor. A bitcoin operated peer-to-peer economy would be the ultimate bubble. Maybe if you tied its production to computation that actually does something useful.

The real fact is those associated with the movement choose to take the identity of the whole movement. A movement that says, "We are Anonymous and we are gathered together to allow us to do whatever we want. And to prevent you from stopping us." If a Anonymous member rapes somebody and identifies it as an act for Anonymous, well, that sucks but you gave yourself an identity that centered around empowering people to do whatever you want without repercussion.

The correct response at that point is to discard your Anonymous identity, come out, and say 'I am not that nor do I support those who identify themselves with that, Anonymous. I am and I would not rape for the lulz.'

Now, the Christians. You do find people who are not Christian identifying the Religion as a whole with its freak outliers. The media in America is generally Christian-centric so it avoids doing this. The thing is, the Christian faith is not "We do things for the lulz and we band together in anonymity to make it difficult for you to catch and prosecute us." It has a relatively well defined set of morals and principles that you can point to and say, "No, Westboro, no, that is not what Jesus would want." You can generally separate a good Christian from a bad Christian. How do you separate a good Anonymous thug from a bad Anonymous thug?

I am not familiar with the policy behind this. I know you have to pay to get the developers license to put your apps in the app store. So Apple still makes cash from free apps. Does it cost money to deploy these Web Apps?

You lack humor credibility. Way to go. I would tell you to go to DeVry but they don't do CE (Comedic Engineering) degrees, either. Looks like your just shit outta luck.

Man, I should have learned Canadian.
This might be witty in his native tongue.

They aren't a civil disobedience group. Anonymous is a political action group at best. A pretty poor one, too. Civil disobedience hinges on refusing to obey poor laws. This is more like breaking into the house of someone you don't like.

Civil disobedience also is about accepting the consequences of your actions. Like for example, when the followers of MLK did sit-ins at segregated businesses they would be arrested. They would plead guilty, and when bailed out return to the business and continue the sit-in. Anonymous does not do this. In my personal opinion, that makes them simple criminals, not activists of any sort. This is why I stated earlier that they are a political action group only at best.

But by definition they are not a civil disobedience group and it does a great injustice to the memories of Thoreau, Ghandi, Dr. King, and all their followers who have actually dared and risked something to change the world.

This is all a very cute discussion, what with the suggestions of flame throwers and Browning machine guns to deter pirates. The discussion of the morality of deterring pirates is good, too, though a little underwhelming. Obviously, we should try to deter them as it means we don't have to kill them or answer their demands.

But the actual issue is far more practical. http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/part2.htm is quiet clear. Any practice or exercise with weapons violates innocent passage. Now, some might say that having a shotgun or some such on a boat is no big deal. Well, everything is a big deal when you're interacting with nations. It's like saying sending one military man into another country to arrest a known criminal is not a big deal. I mean, if a country is frightened of one military man how great of a country can it be? That isn't the point. If Canada or China drops even one military man to hassle even one person under U.S. authority I'm sure you can imagine the controversy and diplomatic firestorms that would cause.

Even a small militarized asset in a given nation's territorial waters is too much for any nation serious about its sovereignty. That is all of them, by the way. The right of innocent passage is main way that we can have a workable system of sea trade. The discussion shouldn't be focused on what can be put on a ship to seriously mess pirates up. Instead, consider whether this qualifies as a weapon that could cause diplomatic issues.