Speaking as someone with a phobia of flying, your reaction could not be more different from mine... First April Fools' prank that has actually made me sigh with relief upon looking at the calendar :-P

You must have attended a school with far fewer nerds than mine. Or perhaps just a much less expensive one.

Very much depends on the content in question. For example: I just got an Apple TV. Cost 100 bucks. It directly links up with my computer, my iTunes account, my Netflix account, and my Hulu Plus account. The last of those (Hulu Plus) is the most obnoxious to use, and for that reason, it's the last one I go to. I like to think that as content delivery continues to evolves, HP will either improve its delivery mechanism or be crowded out by other providers. As for iTunes and Netflix, my experience is pretty much uniformly fantastic, convenient, and fast. I do a one-time setup for my accounts and have instant, easy streaming access. I have access to vast libraries of content, whether things I've purchased on iTunes or things available on Netflix. It's incredible. I just turn on the TV, fire up my remote (which, by the way, is my PHONE thanks to Apple's incredible platform integration), and tell my Apple TV what I want to watch today. Boom, easy, that simple.

For the small subset of things not available through iTunes or Netflix, though (or HP, which is, again, my last resort), if I go to the effort of trying to find it online or downloading a -ahem- less-than-legitimate copy, my experience is considerably lesser. First I have to fire up a program to search for the file. Then I download what I hope will actually be the file I'm looking for. Then I have to make sure it's a good copy and that it's actually what it claims to be. If it's not, there's twenty minutes wasted and I start over again looking for another download. Repeat until I find a good one. Then I hook up my computer to the TV, turn off any programs that might interrupt the show, fire up the viewing program (which requires using my laptop trackpad and keyboard rather than a few quick thumb movements on my phone), make sure the screen is properly maximized and my mouse cursor isn't sitting somewhere that will interfere with the viewing, and then I *finally* watch the show, which, absolute best-case scenario, will be of a quality equal to that from the primary content delivery mechanism. Takes much longer, requires an investment of more time and bother on my part, is less reliable, AND now I'm also using up space on my hard drive instead of being able to stream (and download to my computer or a mobile device, on demand, if and when I ever want to). Apple's relaxed DRM policy is perfectly fine with me, and low-level DRM is something I'm perfectly willing to put up with for a superior experience (up to five computers can be authorized on my account, with unlimited numbers of mobile devices that can sync with any of those computers -- not at all unreasonable for legitimate personal use, frankly). Seems to me Apple has found a pretty solid delivery scheme that's both above-board from a legal perspective and provides an overall better experience for me, the user. I just wish everyone would get on board with either offering timely on-demand content through a direct-subscription service like Netflix (or even HP, which, even coming in as the worst of the "legit" non-cable, non-satellite content-delivery services, is STILL more convenient than pirating -- even though the commercials are annoying, it requires less effort from me to ignore HP's commercials than it does to futz around for half an hour to snag free unauthorized content) or next-day availability on iTunes. HBO's "wait a year and then you can buy it" option for non-cable subscribers makes me a sad Panda.

Everyone "else"? Other than whom? Copyright law has excesses and abuses, of course, but copyright in the abstract is intended to encourage creation and innovation by granting certain rights to creators and innovators (thereby ensuring some form of compensation for their creation and innovation such that, in the better cases, the time they spend creating and innovating won't have to by necessity be spent earning a living through some other means less suited to their unique talents). So, at its best, copyright should, far from harming everyone, help everyone -- it helps creators and innovators through the aforementioned grant of rights and creation of incentives, and it helps everyone else by incentivizing the creation and innovation that we all enjoy/consume/experience betterment from/etc.

If your comments are strictly limited to "copyright" as in, copyright law in the United States as of 2013, then I'll grant that there is an argument to be made that it does more harm than good. But even then, it's unreasonable to say that it only harms everyone but, presumably, a select subset of content owners. Even though copyright law is quite broken, it still arguably incentivizes some creation, and some subset of things created are of sufficient use that their existence justifies their protection. Again, I'm not making an empirical (or, really, hypothetical, since we don't know what the alternative universe looks like) argument about whether on balance the current copyright regime does more harm than good, but at a minimum, your comment is vastly overinclusive to the extent it purports to deny any good whatsoever. At least, that's a more detailed and thoughtful argument that you haven't made here with your brief comment.

Erm, no. Copyright isn't responsible for the attempts to cripple the internet. You have good old-fashioned monopolistic practices like corporate acquisition and industry integration, with a heaping does of regulatory capture and anti-competitive lobbying at the government level, to thank for that. You don't even need a copyright when you have a sufficient concentration of wealth and power in a few hands. The reason most of us don't have FiOS, for instance, has absolutely zero to do with copyright. Copyright is an excuse many companies use for draconian power plays, but if they couldn't point to piracy, rest assured they'd point to something else. The major telecomms have had a lot of luck slowly crippling our regulatory infrastructure (and, otherwise, structuring regulations in a way that keeps out competitors) in such a way that they can control our ability to use the internet. But if you think copyright is anything more than a pawn in this overarching scheme, I respectfully suggest you stop wondering what type of bark that is on the tree over there and instead start thinking about what kind of forest the tree is growing in.

DRM would exist even if copyright law were more reasonable, and most likely even if copyright law didn't exist at all. Indeed, if there were no copyright law, DRM might well be the only thing that would enable content creators to make a profit (and thereby have any reason to create the content in question). If there were no copyright law, the only way that DRM would not exist would be if the government for some reason passed a law against it, and the only reason I could think it would do that would be if the government itself was going to assert ownership over all content. I don't think either of us thinks that would be a good thing.

Very much agreed -- and the consequences of America's selling out to moneyed interests extends far beyond intellectual property implications, of course. But, in truth, it's the latter and not the former (in the abstract) that is driving the bulk of our problems.

Oh hey, a bro on the internet trying to get a rise out of me. How original. Your mommy must be very very proud of you.

Beats being a sexist prick all times of all months.

So what? What does that even mean? By many definitions, I'm a "successful woman." What does that have to do with what I said? You don't think successful people are plagued by self-doubt for any number of legitimately human reasons? Have you never heard of things like imposter syndrome? How does the fact that you know a number of women whom you deem "successful" have anything to do with my point that cultural expectations shape self-perception?

Oh, man. You should like, become a motivational speaker or something, man. Secrets of the universe right here. Good stuff. Do you also run a suicide prevention hotline where you tell people not to kill themselves?

And as for passive aggression, there's little that's more passive-aggressive than quietly resenting (and coming to the internet to complain about) people who come out and ask for what they want (such as, for instance, affirmation).

Never claimed to. And I can do you one better, even: technically, I don't even know that you are a you at all, or that time and consciousness are anything more than illusions. So - did you have an actual point, or are we just throwing out random factoids for shits and giggles? I've never met Stephen Hawking, although I have met Shaquille O'Neal. Cherries are my favorite fruit. Cows have four stomachs. French is a Latin language. Wheee!

I get pissed off all the time. I WISH I were scary pissed off, because then I occasionally might get half of the respect I've seen my male peers get when they get pissed off, instead of people laughing at me or telling me I'm "beautiful" when I'm angry. Thank FSM I'm not short, or I'd likely have people comparing me to chihuahuas (a comparison I've heard made of several of my female attorney colleagues who committed no greater sin than being competent, brilliant, successful, and petite women). Even the way your comment is phrased makes it clear that you view women's emotions as a joke. Did it ever occur to you that your wife might be a thoughtful person whose emotions merit actual consideration, rather than someone to tease into a state of irritation, and then mock for being irritated?

Given that your comments suggest a total lack of respect for your wife (and/or women or wives in general), I can see why you'd be wary about giving her your honest opinion. However, your honest opinion is more likely to contribute to depression on her side than, um, murder (jesus christ, buddy), and depression is correlated with lower lifespan. So, to the contrary, more likely than not women's lifespan would be lengthened (or, rather, not shortened) if men like you refrain from admitting to their wives how very little they truly think of them.

You might need constant affirmation, too, if you'd spent your entire life being disregarded, written off, disrespected, ignored, insulted, controlled, and looked down on simply for being alternatively too pretty or not pretty enough, without regard for anything else you may or may not have to offer the world.

An iPhone would be a tempting replacement for any man thoughtless enough to think this was a remotely fair way to treat his wife. Joking aside, this shit is pretty fucking callous. But maybe no one cares. Maybe we as human beings really have become so self-centered and bitter that the idea of paying attention to another person and caring about their needs and insecurities is an actual joke to most. If that's the case, hopefully that asteroid WILL hit us, because that's just no fucking way to live.

I'm angry that I don't have mod points to give you and angrier that apparently no one else caught the North Korea reference.

Yes, your boss IS an idiotic sack of crap. You should definitely just walk out and quit tomorrow.
Of course I don't mind that you didn't get home in time to walk the dogs like you promised. No, I'm not mad that they destroyed the rug.
That's hilarious! I've never heard that joke before!
You're absolutely brilliant. I wish I had thought to say that.
Of course I don't mind if you don't want to listen to me talk about my day. It sounds like your day was pretty tough already.

I'd love to have your friend Jake over for dinner! He always has the most entertaining stories about the women he dates.

Of course, in order to be truly successful, the app would also have to disable the husband's sarcasm meter. Fortunately, in many models, the sarcasm detectors seem to already work at reduced capacity around women (quite possibly because there's a glitch in the programming that incorrectly flags women's intelligence too low).

OC forgot the first rule of successful trolling: you need a sufficient threshold of people falling into the targeted category before any of them will start feeding you.

And, on behalf of feminists everywhere, thank you for avoiding us. I assure you the disinterest is entirely mutual.