Very well said.

The best gift I ever received was a portrait of my great-grandfather on the eve of World War I in his Russian army uniform. He had died when I was a kid, and it felt like he had just been given back to me.

I'm hoping to do the same for my father this year for his birthday. My plan is to give him a copy of his father's World War II record (my grandfather passed away earlier this year). Neither of these are expensive gifts, but they're the sort of gifts that will always be remembered.

Okay, I know some other people have mentioned this - and been voted down for it - but this has to be said: both free software and flash drives are terrible ideas for stocking stuffers on general principles.

Look, there are two reasons for this. The first is that any worthwhile gift has to be about the person you're giving it to. It has to be something THEY will appreciate. And, ideally, it should be something they wouldn't have gotten otherwise. When it comes to holiday shopping, even the friends of mine who are techies I wouldn't give free software or a data stick to. The ones who are into free software likely already have what I'd give them, and the ones who aren't would probably prefer something more non-technical, or more difficult to come by. It doesn't matter if you think it's cool - it's what THEY think.

The second is that, well, the gift should be something out of the ordinary. A flash drive is a basic computer accessory, and free software is, well, FREE. If it was software you created, then it would be worthwhile, as it was something you made. But otherwise, it would be like giving somebody a box of tissues.

If you're looking for gift ideas, be creative and stay away from the free software. If you've got a wine lover, give them a bottle of ice wine; if you've got somebody who loves the cute stuff, an interesting plush toy or the like. And if you absolutely have to give somebody software, make it something you created yourself or something that they would have to go shopping and pay for to get otherwise.

But if you go with flash drives and free software, the only thing you'll end up coming across as is some boring, thoughtless, self-obsessed cheapskate. Believe me, you don't want that.

Ah...just my luck to come across a bona fide Greenlander... :-)

And that's not a complaint by any means - frankly, it's fascinating to hear what's been going on over there. I think you may be wrong about the settlements. As far as I understand it, there were two Viking settlements, with the earliest founded around 980. There is a growing settlement, but it starts to decline in the 13th century, around the time of the end of the Medieval Warm Period. The Western Settlement is reported abandoned around 1350-60, and the last written record of the Vikings in Greenland is from 1408 (a wedding). By 1480-1500, ships going to Greenland are reporting that the Norse settlements have completely disappeared.

Jared Diamond has a good section on why the Greenland Norse probably disappeared in his book "Collapse." As I recall, he theorized that part of it was the cooling climate, a large part of it was the fact that the Norse thought that because the soil looked like Scandinavia, it was just like Scandinavia (it wasn't), and as a result destroyed the topsoil, and a large part of it was conflict with the Greenland Inuit combined with an unwillingness to adjust their lifestyle and diet to the changing conditions as farming became untenable.

Actually, I just checked that, and you're correct - there is nascent farming again around the vicinity of what was once both Viking settlements. Nice catch, and I stand corrected.

That said, you are wrong about the permafrost being long gone - this appears to be a development in the last five years or so (compared to the centuries of permafrost). Considering the Vikings were farming there for about 500 years before the settlements were confirmed abandoned, what we have here remains evidence of the commencement of a warm period - which, as I mentioned, is right on schedule.

Perhaps most scientists agree, but the historians disagree. The historical evidence for a warmer MWP is overwhelming.

Where shall we start? The fact that there was increased agriculture? The fact that Greenland had arable farming settlements on what is permafrost today? The fact that vineyards in Eastern Europe were found at higher altitudes and latitudes than is possible today?

Or how about the hundreds of peer-reviewed proxy studies from the time that show a temperature ranging from .5 to 2 degrees higher than today? A database of those can be found at the Medieval Warm Period Project at http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php

The truth of the matter is that we are right on schedule for a warm period - they happen about once every thousand years. The last one, the MWP, was about .5-2 degrees warmer than today. The one before that, the Roman Warm Period, was about 2-4 degrees higher than today (and during that time, there were passes through the Alps that haven't been usable in close to two millennia). The idea that we're about to enter a climate apocalypse is fear-mongering.

Well, you had my sympathy right up to: "Now without those Disney movies, well, I will honestly probably go right back to piracy since I can't afford to buy every Disney movie that comes out. (I know not every movie was on Netflix)."

Now you just come across as spoiled and self-entitled. By your own admission, you have at least two other easy and legitimate sources for this content - so use them.

Last I checked, stealing was taking something that was not yours to take. The definition depends on the thing being taken not being yours.

So, yes, software piracy counts.

Tweakguides did that: http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_4.html

Also, the entire article is worth noting: http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

Basically, when they crunched the numbers, they found that the determining factor for whether a game sees large-scale piracy was popularity. For the popular games, the piracy rate came out at around 1 pirate copy for every six copies sold for the consoles, and 10-12 pirate copies for every legitimate copy sold for the PC.

Well, the difference can be a source of uncertainty, but there are trends based on general similarities that can be calculated. For example (pulling numbers out of my hindquarters), if the average sales for an RTS by company X is 400,000, and they've not only produced several RTS games, but they've got a consistent ability to hold off piracy for two weeks, then they do have a reasonable expectation that if they release an RTS with the same level of quality and they can hold off piracy for two weeks, they will sell around 400,000 copies. If this new game has zero-day piracy and only sells 50,000 copies, then they can draw some legitimate conclusions about the impact the piracy had.

As I mentioned in another reply, Tweakguides did some research on this, and crunched the numbers. The article (which is long, but worth reading), is here: http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

To answer your question, they found that the DRM only had a negative impact on piracy, and that was when it was successful. Lack of DRM (or light DRM) showed absolutely no impact on piracy rates whatsoever. So, either the people who are pirating to get away from DRM are an insignificant minority, or it's just an excuse.

Now, with PC game piracy at a rate of around 10 to 12 pirate downloads per copy sold (both download and disc), the highest percentage of illegal downloads that can be accounted for by people downloading pirate copies to circumvent the DRM on copies they bought is 10% (1/10), and that's assuming that no copies sold match up with a pirate copy downloaded first (eg. somebody downloads the game, tries it, and decides to buy it). So that's a basic rough estimate based on the numbers I've got.