I am the 5%.

Not to Ubisoft, though. I don't know the last time I bought an Ubisoft title. Quite frankly, none of their games are all that interesting, and I'm not taking my chances with their DRM, either. I've got all of this generation's consoles, but really, if you're going to fuck with one platform, you kind of fucked with me regardless. Real smooth, Ubisoft.

Anyway, I kind of knew that Ubisoft's DRM scheme was all for the purpose of pushing to console-only development. I guess they'll save money by removing a platform from their development cycles (the way consoles are now, optimizing for them to get what we have now graphically isn't an easy task) and they won't have to worry about piracy anymore - Except they probably aren't actually losing an appreciable number of sales to piracy to begin with anyway.

So basically, someone out there thought that a site like this was actually a legitimate way to shield from any kind of tracking?

And the fact that that someone was wrong is surprising?

They make their points very clear in the linked statement: The service is not intended to provide anonymity or shelter from legal repurcussions; They are there to provide a workaround for those who are being censored, to provide a way of bypassing "Great Firewalls", or simply to prevent your ISP or wireless network from seeing your HTTP requests. There is no expectation of privacy, and nor should there be. The same expectations are true of Tor and other "anonymity" initiatives (though Tor is inherently less open to tracking due to the way packets flow through the Tor network (that is to say, it's very decentralized)).

Sure, services like HMA partially obfuscate the trail, but they aren't bound by any agreement to guarantee your privacy, don't claim to, and ultimately will not.

Perhaps, but they've been here for over a decade now I think, and the level of service has been similar all throughout. I don't quite understand what they're even doing here if they aren't going to expand their network.

Forget Rogers in Newfoundland. Their coverage is in exactly two places - Most parts of St. John's, and I believe some of Clarenville or Gander. Bell's network, on the other hand, is comprehensive here, and the other mobile providers here use Bell's towers (Fido excepted, because Rogers owns Fido).

In that case, say hello to TrueCrypt hidden volumes.

Pfft. Just working harder doesn't suddenly make things any easier. Take a look at the war on terrorism: It'll never truly 'end', no matter how hard anyone tries. Terrorism is an idea, and ideas exist as long as people are around to have them. Frankly, I think Lulzsec/Anon's antisec movement is similar in scope, particularly since there are participants from everywhere in the world, not just in the UK and US.

Over a decade ago, when our cell phones were still rocking monochrome displays and just then getting into WAP browsing? Yeah. That's a great comparison, actually, and points out where the concept would have begun in the 'modern' era. Remember, that was about the extent of what our technology of the era could bring to bear without HUGE cost, which incidentally I imagine will be a very present issue with the Wii u's main controller.

Operating costs are irrelevant; They exist for any other transaction in the business. As for buying the used game back, they don't do that with real currency, just store credit.

I should note that with the Halo 3 example, I was offered a used copy of the game on launch day when I was going to pick it up.

True, but EB/Gamestop have huge incentives to bring new games back for trade value. When The Godfather was released, there actually was a promotion that if you could beat the game within a certain period of time (I think it was either a few days or a week), you'd trade it back in and it was 'free'. Nowadays, they have their "Most Wanted" lists, with new releases fetching the biggest bounties, and new releases tend to have a "trade 3 and it's free" promotion as well. In other words, EB/Gamestop have put HUGE amounts of effort into making people part with new releases in order to get other games, in a rather turnstile fashion. If you've ever been into an EB or Gamestop, you'll probably notice that there actually are a surprising number of new releases with used stickers on.

It's true that on day 0, there shouldn't be many used copies, but I have witnessed it, in particular with Halo 3. Within less than a week's time, used copies lined the shelves for $5 less than new.

I don't believe that it's fair for a product to have to compete with itself on the same shelves that it's on. Recently used copies are very likely to not have any damage or defects, and EB/Gamestop warrant them as working for a certain period of time, anyway, so there isn't any incentive to pay the extra to buy a full retail copy. This is part of the reason why multiplayer is becoming such a huge cornerstone of game development - Multiplayer communities generally mean that people who play online will continue to do so, rather than trading the game in. It's also why EA and others have been bundling one-use DLC with their games, and why it could very well be possible that in order to combat both piracy and used game sales, one-use (or limited-use) serial keys for console games might be in our future. With that in mind, it would be a LOT better to come to an agreement with publishers over street dates rather than having the bottom taken out from under the entire used game industry in the name of anti-piracy (which is exactly how it would be spun).