Guys, I think the market has already shown it's willingness to put up with this model through the rise of digital distribution. You already can't sell used games bought on the PSN, XBox Live, Steam, or any other digital distributor of games. And these services are super popular.

Anyone crying about having to re-buy your games when you get a new console is inventing a bug in a system doesn't exist yet, and that's clearly just dumb. They already let you associate a new PS3 with your PSN account be ready do download all your PSN titles again in a snap, no re-buying necessary. Pretty sure that would extend to this possibly non-existent future disc non-product that they're not selling or even manufacturing yet too.

And actually if it worked, it would likely cut down on having to re-buy games because this way they can allow people to download games they bought on disc so they don't have to buy it again if they ever lost it.

Also if it worked, it would also make stealing someone's games pointless, because they wouldn't be able to play it. That's a plus.

Really though, its pretty obvious they're not trying to dick their customers, they're trying to prevent piracy. They're trying to prevent what happened to the Nintendo DS with their products.

I'm not sure they'd actually release discs like this, but I would miss being able to swap games with other people, and I suppose being able to buy/sell on Craigslist or something, but I rarely do either of those anyway.

And GameStop can rot in hell, so... Meh. Poor GameFly I guess, but other than that I don't see any real news here.

This is *your* fault for making Steam, PSN,and XBL so popular. Can't have your cake and eat it too.

Free, as in beer. Literally in this case, a piece of beer can.

In other words, some people think that if something is free, then there must be something wrong with it because if it really was as good or better, someone would be making money on it. So they won't give it a chance, and go with the popular and expensive one because that's "what they know".

One of the parts of the otherwise totally asinine "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" that actually did stick with me was the story about some little part of a motorcycle that can be replaced with just a little piece of tin can if it breaks, and in some ways it even works better if you do. But, in the auto parts store it costs $15. The point is this guy's friend would never consider using a piece of tin can on his bike, and would always buy the expensive part every time because he's the kind of guy that associates paying for something with quality. You could never convince him that a free alternative to anything could be better, because then why would anyone ever pay for it? And since there's these successful and widely popular companies selling the widget for lots of money and making a killing, they must be doing something right that can't be offered anywhere else. Having dealt with enough executive types that make decisions like these for large companies, they are almost universally this type of person. It's not that free can't be better, it's just out of their comfort zones. Really, I think it stems from faith in capitalism. Windows is it because its the big one that everyone uses, and that means everything to some people (unfortunately).

Also based on the homicide rate chart from Wikipedia that you hold in such high regard:

Czech Republic: very liberal gun laws, 1/3 the homicide rate of the US

Germany: only requires you be 18 and fill out an application. 1/5 the homicide rate of the US.

Italy: fairly painless to obtain a pistol, and one can apply for a concealed permit. 1/5 the homicide rate of the US.

Japan: Licensing is little more than a formality, strict gun laws are not enforced. It's very easy to get guns. Also, one of the lowest homicide rates in the world.

Mexico: has extremely strict gun laws that are heavily enforced, yet the murder rate is almost 4x that of the US! Hmm... Interesting, eh?

Honduras: tops off your coveted list with the highest homicide rate in the world being 18X higher than here in the US, and the laws are substantially more restrictive (can own at most 5, assault weapons banned, etc)...

We could go on and on, but the evidence to support your claims is not there. Period. There is no causality between firearm availability and homicide rates.

The murder rate has very little to do with the people's ability to get guns in their hands. Right now, we are close to the all time low national murder rate in the US ( http://thepublicintellectual.org/2011/05/02/a-crime-puzzle/ ), while legal firearm ownership, or at least attempted firearm ownership, has increased ( http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports/2010-operations-report/2010-operations-report-pdf ).

Also missing from your analysis is that by far most homicides involving firearms are done so with *illegally* obtained firearms, which would still exist even if they were banned. Additionally, while 67% of homicides are committed using firearms ( http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_09.html ), what isn't measurable is how many of them would have occurred with or without a gun.

And also, the national rate is influenced largely by a few larger cities. Homicide by firearm in California is very high compared to most states, and they have some of the strictest gun laws in the country. While in Washington or Idaho, it's closer to the opposite. Homicide rates are influenced more by things like prohibition, wars, etc.

"...there were a handful of victims in 90 other countries..."


A handful of victims in 90 countries? What were they victims of, dismemberment?

That is not at all true. A record company can't sue anyone for sharing music they don't own the rights to, and those that are trying to crack down on file sharing don't own the rights to independent music. Even if the independent labels wanted to get in on suing the fans, they likely couldn't afford to pay the lawyers, but most of them don't want to anyway. You'll always be able to share the media of artists/companies that don't oppose the sharing of their works. Nobody is going to be making any file transfer protocols illegal any time soon.

I bet you can't name me one crime that is realistically made easier by viewing a year-old street-level picture of an area. Even if the image included a non-blurred license plate, or something.

It's all well and good when a company wants to make money on something that people simply want, or that makes daily tasks a little easier, etc.

But cancer is the second biggest cause of *death* in the United States. Should we really wait while this one company makes "enough" money on it while people are dying?

Without the patent, other researchers would be more free to use the methods for their own research, which further advances the cause of curing cancer, as having more eyes on it certainly doesn't stifle progress. More information can be obtained from 3rd parties that not only benefit themselves, but the original company that discovered the gene.

One company owning a patent for a method that identifies a cancer gene so that they can 'be given some time to try and profit from that discovery' only seeks to make the discovery of a cure take longer, in favor of making the company who hired the original researchers more money, and makes it more expensive for anyone else to do further research (even the same researchers that have moved onto different companies).