I wonder how many people play WoW offline?

That may be so, but do you really think the value of that extra click is worth anything from a /. reader with this mindset. Next thing you know you'll be suggesting they should follow some of the ad links on the site, or buy some of the site's affiliate's products. This may even be enforced by having your affiliates track when each user visits their site or fills out some survey. Nevertheless, no matter what you do, people who believe that the web should be free will continue to believe so.

There's also a greater cause being supported. Paywalls are not conducive to an enjoyable internet. It's similar to the radio where I used to be able to enjoy music throughout the day. Over time radio air-time has been increasingly filled with ads to the point that it's no longer enjoyable to listen to. If websites require more forced advertising it will get to the point that you are forced to see more advertisement content than what you actually wanted to read in a day.

not take up all the processing power of a system = fast

You just get 1 out of 2.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but EMP does not just wipe out 'digital' circuits. I believe it will just as effectively destroy any circuitry, including the kind in ham radios. From what I have read, power cables (which act as giant antennas) and directly attached antennas make devices particularly more prone to electro-magnetic pulses, which will surge through the attached circuitry destroying weak components. I think people should take more care in not stating something as fact if they do not know for sure, especially if you're going to insult someone else's intelligence.

It's not a good idea to trust a host PC. It could easily copy the data off of your flash drive at the point when it's plugged in, not to mention the potential for keyloggers logging your online passwords. One solution to using an unfamiliar host PC is to carry with you a linux live CD such as Knoppix. Running this live CD and using your USB key will keep your data safe. Your passwords will also be safe from software keyloggers, but hardware keyloggers exist (although these could be visually checked for).

By extrapolating, in two years people will be buying five copies. I guess Windows 7 will finally be the prize winning cash cow Microsoft has been dying to create!

Let's say they are successful, and they do make it such that you can't play online, or even at all without a legitimate copy. These copyright measures are obviously annoying to their legitimate customers, as evidenced by many /.ers here, and I'd venture a guess that they don't increase sales. I think that most people who pirate games wouldn't buy them anyways, they will just find something else to pirate. They may end up getting 5% of the people who would have pirated the game to buy it, but by annoying their paying customer base with limited functionality or a required connection to play I think it hurts sales more than it helps them in the long run. Pirates will always be there, freeloading your games, companies should worry about impressing their paying customer base.

Sorry, my copy paste failed me, the second one for manageability should read: "Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools."

Did anyone notice that their facts just changed? I thought facts were supposed to be universal truths. Here's the two examples I noticed, but I can tell the wording of some of the others changed too.

Manageability:
< Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools. That's just not nice.
> Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools. That's just not nice.

Developer Tools:
< Of course Internet Explorer 8 wins this one. There's no need to install tools separately, and it offers better features like JavaScript profiling.
> Internet Explorer 8 has the most comprehensive developer tools built in, including HTML, CSS and JavaScript editing, but also JavaScript profiling; other browsers have developer tools available, but either require you to download them separately, or aren't as complete.

In the future, programming will all be in XML, as this is will prove more adaptable to change. Open source software will of course embrace this open extensible language.

for (i=0;i<10;i++)
printf("%d\n", i);

Will be replaced with the following code which is not only much easier to read, and type, but is also adaptable to whatever extra options may be added to for loops over the years.

<for>
<initialization><assignmentvariable="i"><int>0</int></assignment></initialization>
<condition><expression>i<10</expression></condition>
<increment><assignmentvariable="i"><expression>i+1</expression></assignment></increment>
<body>
<output><expression>i</expression></output>
</body>
</for>

The problem is your preparation in having a BAC ready shows intent. Witnesses would work better, just have them testify that you were inebriated when they saw you that night, and the access times of the files installed after agreeing to the EULA on that same night.

Additionally, can continuing to use the program really constitute agreement if you don't even remember installing it and hence do not realize that an agreement was a prerequisite to using the program?

I think it's interesting that they chose the Prisoner's Dilemma for the game - a 2 choice discrete turn game. While not everyone knows the algorithms computers use for such games, people generally consider computers to be quite good at turn-by-turn games (like chess) and should be regarded as more formidable opponents. Not to mention playing a computer at this game should provoke our minds to attempt to decipher the pattern if we believe we are playing a computer so that we can beat it.

But the main reason I find it interesting is that it is very easy to get into an always defect loop. If you opponent has been defecting every turn, what incentive is there for you to defect? In this sense playing a human is an almost random process as to when to stop defecting, and when you do you will most likely lose the turn anyways. If I were playing a human I would think less about my opponents thoughts and fall into a tit-for-tat play style (repeating the last move), starting cooperatively.

I think it would be more interesting to see the effect of thinking you are playing a computer vs a human in a game with more information. For example, in chess you may leave a piece open when playing a human if you believe your opponent will not see it given the large number of possible moves, whereas with a computer you know at least every immediate move will be considered.