This, this, and exactly this. Mod anony-man up. What an incredibly negative and unrealistic view your friends and family have of human nature. People will pay for something they enjoy because they want you to keep making it. If your 'source of income' is so tenuous that it can be undermined by some kid setting up a torrent, then your audience wouldn't buy it in the first place because they don't care enough to keep you going. Yes, there will always be a selfish percentage who will do nothing but take. Before the Internet we called them shoplifters. But most people are better than that. If you do something that makes them feel, they will want to help you continue doing it.

In the days when an artist could die in poverty, most people didn't have money to pay them, and the means to reach those that could were nearly non-existent. People have disposable income now and have had for quite some time. An artist that dies in poverty today means there was no market for what he was creating, or he or she wasn't clever enough to discover them.

Yeah, you're right about that. That was probably about the dumbest thing anyone has ever said in the history of words. Evidently writing isn't art. Music, movies, photography, or design aren't worthwhile art forms either. Reproducibility is a factor of technology, not the value of the object being reproduced. I'm pretty sure that given time, indistinguishable reproductions of the greatest artworks ever created will be available via 3D printers in the poster's mom's basement. I'm seriously having a hard time trying to figure out what the hell he thinks he was talking about.

In his book, The Righteous Mind, Jon Haidt covers this phenomenon quite thoroughly. It comes down to this: in spite of what we might like to think, most of our beliefs are built on uncontrollable, gut reactions. Our thinking and explanations of those reactions are post-hoc justifications to convince others that we are correct and that they should be on our side. In this case, the gut reaction has simply been replaced by a vote. If the participants believed that to be their response to the situation, it's not surprising that they would construct post-hoc rationalizations to justify their behavior.

I can't imagine how anyone with a name like that would have a personal bias in interpreting these results. No sirree.

Your understanding of "survival of the fittest" is flawed. "Fittest" does not mean "fitness" to do battle with the environment, it means fit to reproduce. A male peacock who is highly mobile yet fails to attract a mate will not pass on its genes. A male peacock who can't move but attracts females who bring him food, protect him, and reproduce with him is considerably more "fit" to survive. In fact, he'd just be a level 90 Paladin away from living a lot of people's dream life.

No, it means clearly you need to get out of your mother's basement and find something engaging to do with your life.

Yes, probably off-topic, but I've found myself saying exactly that in pretty much every conversation I've had regarding religion, politics, and economic policy for the last five years. It's sad to see it's now infected technology.

+1. I LOL'd. Would LOL again.

I just bought my first ever Apple product, a MacBook Air with Lion. I have been woefully unimpressed with the illogic of many of its features, the inconsistencies in use and design, and some of the downright irritating PITA aspects. Talking with my friends who are long time Apple users, it seems a good 90% of my complaints were all introduced with Lion. Many of of those power-users are of the same opinion as you. It's got some nice features but this will be the only Apple computer I'll be buying for a good long time.

Would you feel better if I said you "earned" being victimized? You smoke two cartons of Camels a week in this day and age, and you don't just deserve cancer, you earned it. You evidently put a lot of effort into pretending that the fact that your cancer was all but inevitable somehow didn't apply to you. Enjoy your winnings!

Any opinion referencing "refresh rate" when talking about film can be safely ignored.

No, but it does take someone who understands addiction to understand how addiction works. And it's pretty clear to anyone who who has ever regularly used caffeinated substances the parent poster isn't one of them.

And once again, I'm tethered to a screen. PC wins this one.

Unless you're using the above mentioned HDMI on a bigger screen. Now you want higher resolution. PC wins again.

Computer gamers - which I believe is what started this thread - use them extensively. PC again.

True, however the concept of being stuck without a keyboard when you do need one hasn't gone away. This is a tie. Size and portability are a huge plus for small platforms but even something simple as typing an essay is frustrating to the point of distraction on a table.

Very, very slowly - and it's not like they've stopped developing desktop and laptop CPUs. Point PC - for now.

And a tie. I'll reiterate the AC's point because it's true: there are many areas that a tablet or phone simply cannot match a PC for even something as seemingly trivial as web browsing.

I recently switched to Chrome from Firefox because Firefox just plain broke. I'm a tab-whore and it would literally take 10 minutes before Firefox became usable. It was not unusual to see a 1.4G Firefox footprint. I switched to Chrome and I was so happy to see 30M and 50M threads here and there. But then as I started completing my migration I noticed that tabs started loading slower and slower. Now, with the exact same session loaded, Chrome is using about 20% more memory than Firefox ever did. It's an absolute pig. I'm either going to have to change my browsing habits or find another new browser.

I'd say that an MBA is considerably less useful than an English degree. At least with an English degree, an employer can be fairly certain the candidate can put together a coherent sentence, think critically and analytically, and understands perspective. With an MBA about the only thing they're assured of is your ability to draw a nice seating chart.