If my math is right, at 4.5M copies sold as of 12/2011, 0.06% of people in the world play at least Starcraft 2 (and that's assuming all 7B people in the world have a computer). So no, "99.99% of people who don't play any of those games" isn't true.

As far as the advertising is concerned, I was just trying to come up with an example of how it might be used. The point wasn't to give a perfect way to advertise, but merely to show that some of that data might be useful. That point still stands, regardless of whether or not my example really works. I do believe that there are people far smarter than myself who would use that information to increase their company's sales, which was the real point.

I hear what you're saying, agree with many of your points, and respect your position. However, there are parts I don't agree with. I don't agree with about who you think has a right to data. Yes, it looks like a lot of people in the EU are taking the same side as you, but I don't think it's the right stance (and by the way, it has nothing to do with my job or developers, that's just honestly how I feel as an internet user). I think that if you're trying to prove that what you want is possible, you've succeeded. I don't disagree that it's possible, but I don't think it's simple. Not because implementing it is difficult, but because deciding on what to implement and then agreeing on it is.

First off, I said "not feasible" and not "impossible". Those are not synonyms. But your comment is a very shallow view of the problem. I understand your concern with the tracking bugs, and I agree with you there (although it's a difficult problem to police what kind of tracking would be allowed and what wouldn't since some is beneficial, but that's a whole other story).

So let's focus on just one small part of this issue to illustrate why it is difficult. Take your example where you provide credit card information and address for purchase and delivery of a product. Sure, it's not unreasonable to expect that to be deleted after a certain amount of time, and that isn't too hard to accomplish either. However, that's not the only thing that going into the database...

The time of day, the page you clicked on to get to the page, the other items you looked at before this one, where the item was on the page, etc are all collected, but they aren't necessarily associated with you and your credit card information. These analytics are used to redesign pages, decide which items should be put on sale, etc. Is that reasonable information for a company to hold on to? Furthermore, what about your location? Isn't it reasonable for a company to know that Product X sold really well in one area but not in another, so maybe they market it more heavily in one area? They shipped an item somewhere, and they want to know where that item went. I don't think any of that is unreasonable, but that's information about you in some ways. So a non-rhetorical question: should that be included in user data that needs to be removed?

And then you get to places like facebook. The simple question is, if I post on someone's wall, and then I want to delete my account, should my post be deleted from that person's wall? Does that person have any rights to preserve the comment's on their wall?

It's not so much that it's that difficult to erase the data, but the problem is in deciding what to erase. How do you decide which data you have a right to, and which data I have a right to, and which data the company has a right to, when they all overlap? I think that's a really tough question.

All that is fine and true (except I'd say the closer analogy is if you set up a camera in your bathroom and then I showered in it, in which case it would still be illegal to sell the pictures I think), and I like the idea of knowing that my online presence could be erased, but from a developer's standpoint, it really isn't feasible. Sure, people want to have privacy, and corporations want to hold onto every bit of information they can, but the developers in the middle realize that both are a little absurd.

You have no idea who you're dealing with... http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rwsTYQ26QDQ#t=100s

Yeah, and since the summary is actually longer than the teaser from the paywalled article, there isn't a lot of info to talk about here. Are the "foes" in question even angry with Amazon or are they really fighting back against ICANN? I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with Amazon TRYING to get the domain names; the problem would be if ICANN actually gave them to Amazon.

The Thing

I love consoles. I like the fact that when I buy a game, I know that I'm going to be able to put it in that little box and play it without having to worry about if my box meets the system requirements of the game or if I have a strong enough cell signal to log onto the games servers or if my software version isn't compatible.

I love PCs. I like the fact that it makes it easier to download lots of games and has more function than just a console. I like 25" 1080p widescreens, but I really like hooking my PC up to my 1080p 52" TV in my living room.

I don't want either model to die, and I don't understand why so many people think that there can be only successful model. I think there are a lot of people who, like me, love consoles and don't want to see the box-with-controllers-and-some-way-to-insert-a-game-and-a-TV-out model die. There's a demand for this model, even if you don't fit into it.

Those are cyberspaces (no idea if that's a real term, but I think you'll get my meaning), in which cases people live in a virtual universe (i.e. WoW, etc). They're a bit different from the idea of an all-encompassing cyber world, or the definition of cyberspace presented in the article: “a graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system ” So no, "cyberspace" doesn't exist, but cyberspaces do.

You get thousands of dollars a year in rewards? If you have a card with 2% cash back and no limits (which isn't the norm), you'd need to put $100,000 on your credit card to get to the "thousands" mark. Are you saying you're putting more than $100,000 on your credit card every year, or do you have some card that gives better rewards than what the common man has access to? Either way, I don't think you're the average consumer here.

And from my personel experience, I used to be on the road 80% of the year for work, and even with hotels, airfare, food, etc etc, I rarely managed to break $100,000 with combined personal and business expenses. That's not easy to do unless you're living pretty extravagantly.

That idea seems so simple and so great that there's no way someone else hasn't thought of it so it has to be wrong. Or you should be patenting it or something.

But my guess is that there isn't enough of an elevation change for traditional hydroelectric power generation. Still, that's a lot of potential energy that you'd be capturing, so maybe there are ways to harness it.

That's a really good point: you have to find what works for you. Your body is likely different from mine and the next person's, so switching mice might change your life.

In my case, I broke my forearm pretty severely as a kid, and it didn't set correctly, so my left arm is actually rotated outwards a few degrees (I don't know the technical term, but it's like one hand can rotate from 0-180 degrees while the other is from 5-185). Anyway, typing on a regular keyboard causes pain almost immediately, so I switched to the raised, split keyboards and all my problems went away as my wrist didn't need to rotate past the point that it's able.

Saipan isn't a foreign country, it's a US territory in the same category as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

I'm not trying to argue what facebook should or shouldn't do, but it's usually pretty hard to "be dead", at least in my experience. Over a year after my dad died, my mom wanted to cancel some of the extra channels we got with our cable subscription, but since my dad's name was on the bill, she couldn't do anything until she could prove to them that he was dead. It wasn't exactly what we expected to have to go through with a cable company.

Yeah, private firms have worked great for securing our Nuclear Facilities: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9451100/G4S-under-fire-after-nun-breaks-into-US-nuclear-facility.html