To save having to read the linked articles it's here http://www.d2.vu/

Na, never did know how to spell it, I'm an ex-programer and dyslexic - all the best programers are dyslexic :)

(and I had to look up to see if dysleic was spelt with a i or a y !)

I use very much the same system in my room. Worked fine when I was young, had a brilliant memory and knew where everything was. Now I'm at the "get off my lawn" age, I forget where I put things within two minites of putting them down, Spend half my life looking for things.

Would get myself organised, but at my age the payback time is probably not worth the time spent doing it.

Don't we have something called the world wide web that's a bit like that now?

Excuse the blatant advertising, but I for one am actually making a living from making and selling 3-d printed things.

What you may ask? Would you belive model train parts?

  http://www.shapeways.com/shops/tebee?sort=newest

and selling them on the dreaded Ebay too http://stores.ebay.com/tbmod

I think it's a sad reflection on our political system that we need to do this.

The next question is will it be it be dishonest enough to grease the right palms and have some real influence?

But it's good that such a large industry now has a voice there.
     

I would caution against trying in-home support unless you live in a well off neighbourhood or can afford to live on a low wage. Problem is there is some young buck, usually the son of a friend of a friend, who gets off on messing with computers and will do it for pocket money. It's hard to make a living wage against competition like that.

If this sounds bitter, yes I've tried it. I'm a bit similar to you started my IT career doing assembler programing on IBM 360's , became a systems programer, then started doing network support, then pc support, then ended up doing PHP programing. I hate managing and at an early stage became a freelance contractor to get decent money but avoid all the management politics.

I had to give all up when I had to take 3 years out to look after my terminally ill mother. Tried to get back in after but I was too far behind and frankly not in all that good a state myself by then.

Tried the home PC support but it's very hard to find a price level that you can afford to live on and people can afford you, though I very much enjoyed the work and meet real live people again after 2 many years in 2nd line support. Did a few other non-computer ventures for a while ( Ran a bar, worked as a photographer) but was never really as happy as when I was messing with bits . Neither did I make as much money , and that with the loss of most of my capital through two divorces forced a rethink.

In the end I stumbled in into a job I really enjoy. I'm a model railroader by hobby and started using 3-d cad to make models by 3-d printing. A year and a bit later I have a business that almost supports me and my family.

If you have been in the biz for 39 years, like me you're not getting any younger - go find something you enjoy and do it.

Much as I feel sympathy for your cute girls, if they are not making money from this it's probably because they are/were paying too much for the licence fee. They made a bad business decision somewhere down the line and flunked out. I have no personal knowledge of the market for Loony Tunes car floormats but would suspect it's not huge anyway.

If their themed mats are markedly more expensive than an ordinary mats then people just will not buy them. To blame pirated mats for this is just trying to find reasons to avoid taking the blame themselves.

To a large extent this is how the capitalist system works though, we need survival of the fittest businesses to ensure the market works. The companies that sell the licences will always try to get higher fees for them, it's only the fact that a number of the licensees fail that stops these fees going up any more and us the public having to pay even more for our goods.

I can't help feeling this whole thing has be a gigantic waste of time and money

OK it does look like they cloned the game but you can't copyright the ideas behind a game only the artwork and the like. Though there are people who would like to extend copyright in this way and are to a certain extant succeeding.

See the thread a few hours ago on Similar, but not copied, image found to breach copyright.

So who's bribed who to get this pushed through ?

I'd add my vote to that too - I've been a programer since the days of Assembler on IBM 360 days and have drifted through many jobs over the years, from support to networking to consultancy but always keep my hand in doing a little coding.

About 7 years ago had several major crises in my life that made me review my life priorities and realized that though I was still a good(but dyslexic) programer, there were young bucks who could do it faster than me and people in the third world who could do it for 50th of what I wanted to charge.

Re-invented myself as a 3-d designer making things for my hobby - making a fraction of my consultant's fees, but it's steadily growing and I get to do things I enjoy all day.

I've also downsized my life , bought a house in a cheaper country for cash and don't run flash cars any more, got a new wife and am as happy as Larry. Now these choices may not be right for you, but they worked for me, you need to decide what is right for you.

Yes but the deaths are nicely spread out so no one notices them. It's like car accidents vs train or plain crashes. By most statistics more people get killed in the former but what sticks in our minds is the big ones of the latter we see on the news.

It's just a human failing, if one that our addiction to a constant stimulus of easily digestible news nuggets only re-enforces.

It's also one many unscrupulous people exploit for their advantage, drumming up public support for something based on some newsworthy incident that everybody knows about, to push through laws or policies to further their own advantage , but thats a failing of our current democratic system.

I'm another person for whom Photoshop is one of the major sticking points - apart from anything else I even have a paid for licence for it, though admittedly not the version I'm currently running .

Other thing I use on it is Autodesk Inventor - Linux CAD packages are sadly few and far between, certainly for what I need. You would think that Linux was the prefect rock-solid platform to build such a demanding package on but it doesn't seem to have happened yet.

Yes having little variation in the range results in economies for the manufacturer, but the "one size fits all" approach combined with Apple's resistance to letting the people who buy their stuff do any changes to it means that very few people are perfectly served by the model range . The more choices you have in choosing a device and what you run on it the more like is the result you end up with something that severs your needs, rather that the needs the manufacturer feels you should have.