I think something that has been missed by posters so far on the DRM issue is the fact that, if/when my internet connection fails, often the first thing I do is go looking for single player games I have installed on the computer.

If you can't do that, it rather defeats the point of single player mode, at least to me. If the Internet connection is up I'm generally doing more productive things than playing games nowadays.

The comments on this story really do illustrate how the readership of Slashdot really has changed over the past few years.
This is a real "News for Nerds" story, a story about open source development and how we're still not really past the bad old days of winmodems when it comes to (real, not binary blob) hardware support by manufacturers.

A full half of the comments I can see above seem to be troll posts along the lines of "LOL M8 DOESNT RUN UNREAL TOURNAMENT 27".

Oh dear.

Oh, and something else I forgot to mention:

Completely ignoring the field of economics is rather silly, don't you think?
If you offer someone a product for £1000, or another product for £5000, do you think that taking away the £1000 product would result in complete conversion to sales of the £5000 product?

In typical Slashdot style, here's a car analogy (I'm in the UK, public transport is viable here):
I don't own a car because for young drivers, insurance runs at £2000+ per year.
If it were available for free, or for say, £300pa, I would buy a car.
In this case, the 'free or cheap' option (i.e piracy) does not exist. I still "want" to drive. But I don't, because I feel it's a waste of money.

And it's not for lack of means: I could afford the insurance, but it becomes comparable to other activities.
I will never buy a movie again. Ever. You could take away my means with which to pirate movies - I still wouldn't buy movies.
Paying £15 for a DVD is not worth it compared to the alternatives for me. £15 buys me ten books from a charity store. £15 buys me a return train ticket to a city I've never visited before. £15 buys me four meals at McDonalds, or a week's worth of food if I live frugally. Stick on another £5 or so and I can get a night out clubbing.

Paying £15 to sit down and watch moving images for 90 minutes is not worth it. It's one of the most expensive activities, per hour, I can think of outside of motorsports/aviation.

The statement you have just made is factually false.
Amazon: register, create account, input address, input credit card details, etc etc
Let's pretend we've already done all of that, as the article writer assumes uTorrent is already installed.

Can Amazon deliver a DVD in less than ten minutes, to my computer screen, in the correct format?
Even if the DVD theoretically appeared at my doorstep instantly, I'd have to get up, take the DVD, rip open the packaging, take it out of the box, put it into the computer, wait through a few minutes of piracy warnings...

Or I could pirate it, and make a cup of tea while waiting. Jolly good.

Whether or not it is then fair to pirate movies is a completely seperate issue.
Pirating movies _IS_ easier and faster than actually buying them. Factually. Even ignoring DRM concerns.

These games often take part using real rifles to aid in the training process as it's cheaper and easier than having guys out on a range.

Small difference between that and CoD using a controller.

I am a student and we have 30p coffee in our vending machine.
I still bite my tongue when I compare it to the amount of cups I could get from buying instant coffee. :D

Interesting reading. Thank you for the link.
I cannot say I agree with everything in there, but I do agree with the general premise that one has a duty to oneself first and foremost.

Indeed.

I am slowly winning the war on gifts. This year, I bought low value items that I thought were well suited to the people that received them.
I feel that the object of such holidays is to show your love and appreciation for the people in your life that brought you to where you are today. No man is an island, to be sure.

I appreciate the £5 pack of underwear I receive far more than trinkets which will soon be thrown into the back of a cupboard. (That is, until enough time has passed that I can safely chuck the thing on eBay). :P

I do not currently own a car because the benefits do not outweigh the costs for me. I take the train or pay friends fuel + hourly rate to transport me around when required. As a relatively young male in the UK, insurance costs run at £3000 per year. That pays for a very large amount of taxi journeys.

I would very much enjoy driving a car, and technically I could make the payments and not have to loan money. But then, that takes me further away from financial freedom. It reduces the interest I accrue in my savings account. It reduces the amount of time I could survive comfortably if my income dried up tomorrow.

For the first two questions.. underwear runs at probably sub £20 per year. It's also not obtainable for free, as coffee isn't. Shavers are even cheaper - disposable razors run at probably £2 for a year.

Living in the wilderness has an opportunity cost of not taking part in society. To be sure, if I discovered food + rent + other essential bills actually cost me more than any job I could find was providing, I would certainly give it a shot.

I do not budget to avoid "going into the hole", if by that you mean into debt. I am debt free, at least in the sense that my assets are greater than my liabilities (I do have student loan debt, but it is hedged.)

But what about future obligations? If I fell out of university now, I'd be able to keep myself going for about a few months until I had to borrow additional money.
Every £10 I spend now is another night of accommodation.

At the end of the day, all expenditures warrant a cost-benefit analysis, if we speak rationally. Internet access provides more to me in terms of future earnings potential than does playing Skyrim. In addition, if I wish to play Skyrim, I can very easily and without threat of punishment obtain the game for free. It would be difficult to do the same for Internet access.