From someone else's damn miserable life. I love that you're an AC who's replying, that's rare.

I can't find the comment I pulled that example from. If you really want to discredit my entire post because you're fixated on it being my boo-hoo miserable life, then I guess I can go find it for you. If you just want to step back, breathe, and just relax, we can do that too. All depends on how petty you are.

No, it does not. I never once implied that joining Facebook magically improves your security. However, if you never register, you never know if you're tagged in a picture. I wore a Halloween costume and someone took a picture of me. Someone told me I was on a Facebook picture. Could I find it? No. Is my name on it? Who knows? I don't know the person who has the picture; but they obviously have access to my friends, so maybe they know my name.

And I'm not sure what this strange fascination is with ACs and believing I was personally attributing that friends/colleagues comment to my personal life. I keep better friends, but you are damn delusional if you don't think the average drooling moron is exactly like that.

There is no guarantee of privacy with Facebook. Even if you kept your information hidden to everyone but your friends, your friends can slip up. If they use an application to fill out a survey about you, for example, that application instantly gets free access to your information. If they take a picture and tag you in it, any of their friends can see it.

Plus, as Zuck made it obvious on the 13th, he's got all of your info and doesn't give a damn who gets it.

Facebook changed the nature of friendship. It gave people who don't care about privacy the ability to share private information about their friends with complete strangers, without ever getting consent from the friend.

Oh please, don't get pedantic. You obviously understood the point of what I was saying, but chose to ignore it.

Boo-hoo. Your life has great meaning, if you're posting AC to tell people to get a life. And maybe you should stop assuming that I used my own life as an example.

I hate to say it, but you are unusual. Go to a college. Any college. Every dorm at my college followed the same path: Facebook friend your room mates and everyone on your floor, so you can chat with them. Then shout responses to their Facebook messages so you can both laugh out loud. I wish I were joking.

The snarky, yet 'insightful', AC comment claiming that I need new friends (as if I was using my own circle of friends as an example, ha) is a beautiful dream. In the end, the average human being is stupid, and on Facebook. You can either dissociate yourself with the millions of people who use Facebook, or you can swallow your egotistical pride. The choice is yours, although you won't always like the results.

I'm sick of this extreme form of pointing and laughing.

No, no one is literally forcing you to use Facebook. You can gladly stay off of it.

Problem.

If any of your friends use Facebook, they can easily tag you in a photo without your ass ever knowing it. If any relatives use Facebook, they can easily mark your birthday as an event. If a boyfriend/girlfriend uses Facebook, they can boast about where you ate dinner.

If you ever joined Facebook, even if you joined back when they had the promise of privacy for those who sought it, you are permanently in their system, even if you try to delete your account.

If you stay off of Facebook, your friends and colleagues assume it's because of some anti-social horrible problem with you and treat you very differently.

But, you're right. No one is literally trying to kill you, so Facebook should be allowed to rape and pillage privacy rights.

If my friends can't be arsed to grab my name off the contact list on their cellphone or their e-mail, then they ain't much worth having. I actually hang out with my friends, too; so if they feel that I'm not a friend just because I don't have a Facebook, then they can go eat a shoe. It's only been around for a few years, and I'm not about to have my friendships marginalized away just because I hopped off that bandwagon.

Indeed. Unless, of course, you joined before they stripped away many privacy rights. Trying to quit now is a laughable joke; once you're in, they tell you that you can't permanently delete your account-unless you tear apart their TOS to find the obscured link that actually does delete your account. That takes two weeks, and according to my friends, I still show up on their friends lists.

Yeah, you don't have to use Facebook. But if you ever join, you never get to leave.

Except the Wii, which despite all complaints about how it "sucks" makes a profit on each system sold, makes more money than the other systems (I'm not too sure post-MW2, but it was that way pre-MW2), and has yet to have any features randomly stripped away. With my 360, I've had a few surprises ("Oh, you though you could play an AVI on here? Well, you need to get internet access to your 360 to get the update. Oh, you bought it used and don't have the wifi adapter, and your router is in the basement so running a wire down is a pain in the ass? Too bad!"), with my Wii, it still works the exact same as the day I bought it, without anything crippling it.

I didn't even bother with the PS3. It may have prettier graphics and a sleeker system, but I've already sworn myself off Sony for their consistent "shit on the customer base" attitude.

Nah, Google will release their own social network called Friendoogle, which we'll all already be members on because of all of the data mining they do. Social networks are data mining tools; Google hardly needs that. They'd rather do it after the fact, as an after thought really, out of the goodness of their non-evil hearts.

That is, essentially, how Facebook began. The only thing that is different is greed. As college students, they might want to protect privacy. As fresh out of college students, they might look at their massive college debt and start weighing their options. Before you know it, they're paying lip service to advertisers at the expense of their user base. But hey, at least they'll have Ruralville!

They're not competitors. Wanna know why? It's literally impossible to compete with free. People will wait for 87 days for their torrent downloading at 1 kb/s to complete long before they'll take a ten minute drive to the game shop to pay $50. Forcing media companies to 'just accept' that at least 1/4 of their customer base will never pay so much as a penny for years of development work is entitlement, and is disgusting.

This isn't like what you stated at all. It's more like "Oh, automobiles aren't competing with the automobile black market. Why is that? Because they never pay us, but opened up a shop giving away our automobiles." This isn't two different products. It's the same damn product, just with one person taking it without permission and then redistributing it as they see fit.

True, they can gain more money if they move to the global market. But it is their right and their choice to do so. If they don't, it is not your right to take what they have for free. This is entitlement that really needs to be stamped out. You don't deserve the moon just because you can see it for Christ's sakes!

But your use of my analogy is wrong! You're not going to a competitor; you're staying right where you are while paying no one. So the competitor never gets a dime from you, and the company you're shafting beefs up security to try and stop you from shafting them.

I don't agree with everything the media outlets do. Forcing delays for no reason whatsoever in a connected world like the one we have is unacceptable. It still doesn't justify taking it for free, because you know what? It detracts from their profits when they do release it in your country, meaning that they see less profits there than normal. Ergo, no incentive to release earlier without first seeing if it's successful in the US.

Yeah, but regardless of what you believe...there isn't some set amount of money to be made that excuses people not paying for their copy.

As an anecdote, I once lost my Wii Fit disk; but since I registered my game with them they verified it was mine and sent me another copy, free of charge. My hard drive failed before I could de-authorize my CS2, but Adobe took all of five minutes to give me another authorization when I asked.

The point that I'm trying to make is that it is highly unlikely that every pirate tried to contact said company and was rejected. No; there's a better chance that they lost it and then decided to pirate it instead of talking to the company. What information does that give the company? If a large portion of users were losing their copy instead of just being pirates, the companies would add in extra measures to ensure they didn't lose money on incidents like that. Lack of communication with the company just means that buyers look like pirates.

Now, here's the problem with using the Humble Bundle to try and somehow justify piracy:

1. They put 0 DRM on it.
2. They made it absurdly easy to download: fill out the form, pay, done.
3. You could pay them .01. To put it in perspective, most people don't even pick up pennies they find on the ground.
4. They actually paid for some people's copies when they couldn't figure out how to use the form.

Now, let's look at your reasons for why piracy happened.

1. Someone made a direct link to the download in a forum somewhere and people are too lazy to go back and fill in the form.

That sounds about right.

2. No means of paying in your country and/or no access to a credit card.

That sounds about right, too. However, that is no justification for piracy. If you can't pay, you can't have it. It's sad that their country doesn't have paypal, but the 'no access to a credit card' bit is absurd. No parent or friend could really afford a .01 transaction? Really?

3. You already paid for it once and wants to download it again on your spare computer or monitor.

Cute. Except that they offered you infinite downloads after paying!

4. You're a thievin' moneygrubbing pirate.

Yes, yes you are.

Most people don't pirate because the price is too high. They pirate because there's too many game they want, and they can't afford them all. So, they pay for some, then pirate the rest. Or, in the case of the Humble Bundle, they pirate because they are flaming hypocrites. Humble Bundle listened to pirate complaints: DRM, difficulty of download, cost. What did they get? Piracy.

Point B is, again, not true when pointed to the Humble Bundle. Furthermore, most pirate products are inferior. Only a very small handful of games have crippling DRM, and by very small, I mean maybe ten. I tried pirating Silent Hill 4 once, and the end result was a whole slew of minor issues that weren't present in the official version. I also required ISO mount software; unless I also chose to pirate it once the demon was finished, I'd be out money on that, and there is no justification for the piracy of it!

This is, again, tough shit. There's a very fine type of pork only made in Spain that costs $100 an ounce; I'll never be able to taste that because of the country I live in, unless I go over there, and I damn well won't be able to take it back with me. That does not mean that I should get someone to grab me a full ounce and bring it to me so I can enjoy it. It's not some absurd God given right that we have, to be able to use everything in the world. We need to stop acting like it's our right.

And finally, tough shit. What do you ask them to do? Mail their pennies to the company selling the Humble Bundle? People would pirate it because they were too lazy to send it! Blaming a company for offering every means possible for online transaction is just plain pathetic. Suck it up and stop being so damn entitled!