Where did I approve of stealing someone's software (or music, or whatthefuckever in digital format?). What I said was that the companies are coming off as money grubbing douchebags and getting shitty laws passed that will not be effective. The SOPA law (and similar laws, such as the DMCA) will be primarily used in an offensive manner with little to no accountability What this has to do with me getting paid for the hours I work I don't understand. I am not a content producer, which I presumed was obvious when I said "Not that I condone or give a shit either way as far as piracy is concerned." If I were, I would probably give more of a shit, but getting BS laws passed such as this, bankrupting individuals with enormous legal fees, and screwing society over is not how I would proceed. And another note, that's the difference between the "general outrage" on Slashdot when a GPL project is being taken advantage of, compared to the overall approval when it's the RIAA/MPAA who is the target. The RIAA and MPAA are not even remotely altruistic organizations. Most open source projects can be seen as contributing something towards the betterment of humans, and not just screwing over the consumers. Bah.

So EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc... Never made any money off of PC games so far? Not that I condone or give a shit either way as far as piracy is concerned, I do give a shit when half-cocked laws created by corporations and their pet politicians are enacted that are to the detriment of the nation. Sure online piracy is bad and could possibly hurt the profit margins of these companies, but this law is so far on the other side of sanity that it's obscene. The middle ground is where it needs to be, but that point was crossed long ago, back before Mickey Mouse (and the associated copyrights,trademarks, yada-yada) became effectively permanent.

Try visiting http://www.martinlutherking.org/ It's a good example of what happens when you don't control your brand online. It gave a good opportunity to show how you shouldn't just blindly agree with everything you find on the internet.

Some accountability for their software, but this isn't the time or place for it. How many of these were cases of the user of the OS doing something stupid? At some point the user of the device needs to be held accountable for not properly patching/updating the device. If the software is something truly important, Space Shuttle O2 system, nuclear power plant, etc... Yes, they should be accountable for defects, but not because Facebook User #2,290,231 clicks on a malicious advertisement and gets malware installed because he didn't patch.

Suddenlink is my provider. They are my *only* choice for reasonably fast internet service. The DSL service here is capped at 1 Mbps and spotty at that. Satellite service is out of my price range, and there is no wireless provider. I'm not happy with them over this, and will send them a message, but cancel my subscription and not have Internet isn't an option. It's an effective monopoly, and they know it.

Wasn't that one of the original "words of curse" from the South Park shit episode? Aside from that, I'd go with gorram.