Well first let me say that I believe your option C is equitable and pretty much everyone finds it equitable. I'm also not talking about piracy or breaking DRM, I'm mostly talking about the philosophical implications.

So you're right that with a hard copy of a book you can only lend, sell, or give it out once (unless it is returned to you). The reason is there is only one physical copy. This has made sense with books and other media because the barrier to copy has traditionally been so high. Let's just delve into the example of a book and how it's copied and why lending makes sense.

So as an individual just a few hundred years ago you almost certainly did not have a printing press, though even if you did it would take you a lot of time to actually be able to copy a book. If you wanted to give someone a copy of a book (not lend them your copy) you would most likely copy it by hand with pen and paper. So lending makes sense and is far easier.

Now I believe in the 1800s the typewriter was invented. So about 100 years ago you still probably wouldn't have access to a printing press, but you might have access to a typewriter. Again, it would be a lot of work to retype the entire book to give it to a friend. It's easier and makes more sense just to lend your copy that you bought.

Now go to around the 1950s when the photocopier was invented. I realize there were rudimentary implementations of this far earlier, but as far as something usable by the general populace this was the turning point. At this point it's starting to become easier to copy information. It would still be tedious and time consuming, but the amount of effort has decreased thanks to technology. It would still make more sense to not waste your time and just lend the book though.

Now fast forward to around the time personal computers really started to take off, say around 1980 (was a bit before but I'm being approximate). Now an average person on the street might have access to a computer and a printer. You would still have to retype the whole book and print it off, and the typography wouldn't be great, but once again the ease of copying has been increased. Information is slowly ending it's coexistence with the physical world. By that I mean the actual data, the information, no longer needs to be on a piece of paper to read. However, at this stage you're probably not going to transfer digital copies and it would be easier to print them. Although, it's probably easier still just to lend a friend your copy of the physical book.

Now let's skip to today as you get the idea. Books are created on computers, and computers are nearly ubiquitous. Not only that but many computers are connected via the internet. The typography is easy to get down and you can easily write and distribute a digital copy of a book via a PDF file (perhaps form a LaTeX source file) and with a little more work you can send it to the printing press to get a physical book. Suddenly all of the work of copying the information has been reduced drastically. You don't have to copy the physical object anymore. You have the information without it being put into a physical form. Couple this with the falling technology prices and the ease of copying and it is suddenly too easy to resist sending a copy rather than lending your copy. Now that you have a digital copy and no hard copy, suddenly the idea of lending doesn't quite make sense. Making a copy is essentially free. The publishers have to actively combat this to make it work more like it used to.

Now again I'm not advocating piracy or taking a firm stance that information should be free. I'm merely looking at the trend and offering my opinion. I think the ease of disseminating information is tending towards zero, i.e. no effort. Gone are the days that in order to get a copy of a book easily you need a very expensive printing press and a good typesetter. Now, assuming this happened unhindered what will this look like in ten years? twenty?

As I said, I think your option C is completely fair. But let's consider the fact that option C works so well with physical books because the book itself has a finite number of copies printed and has traditionally been time consuming and difficult to copy. With the digital copy you just need to make one and thanks to technology copying is essentially free. So does option C actually make sense for a digital copy when it's the antithesis to what technology allows us to do?

I'd like to also point out that the transfer from a physical to a digital copy removes restrictions. Back before this sort of thing was possible you certainly could lend your book out. Maybe you never get it back, or maybe whoever you lent the book to lends it to someone else. Or perhaps you do get it back. However, there is only one copy being passed around. It was a physical limitation. With a digital copy of a book no such limitation exists.

Basically the content used to be married with the physical world[1], now they are fairly separate. Everyone is still used to the idea of a physical object containing in some way some data, be it a book, a DVD, a CD, or whatever. We can lend it or sell it or give it away once, but only once (unless you get it back). This is no longer the case. However, all business models in the industry are based on this. Over the past few decades this has changed. So what do they do? They try to force the same set of restrictions (and more in some cases) which used to exist so that their business model still makes sense.

Now, I'm not saying I know how to approach this in any way, but you can't deny that there has been a very large change in the way information is exchanged. In the same way that the industrial revolution made manufacturing on a large scale easy, the digital revolution is making distribution (allowed or not) on a large scale easy. I do dread the thought of information becoming even more controlled and restricted when the current trend and technology should mean there is even less control and restriction.

[1]Yes, a digital copy takes up disk space and bandwidth to receive. Just as you could copy the book by hand a hundred years ago, or by photocopier a few decades ago. This is more of a continuum than a discrete change I suppose.

The same reason someone would write an interpreter or compiler for an esoteric programming language such as Brainfuck or Piet. Or make a homebrew computer. It may not be the most practical thing to do with your time, but it's fun and interesting. The only reason a geek needs to do something is, "I want to."

Is it sad that I don't know which company you're talking about?

I don't know. My all time favorite multiplayer FPS is Starsiege: Tribes. It was only multiplayer and it was hard as hell to play. I was never one of the greats, or even really good but I always found it fun. Thing is the game is absolutely full of content. The multiplayer was amazingly complex for its day. Even though it had no multiplayer it was still seeped in Starsiege lore. You don't need to know any of it to play the game, but they did put a lot of time into it. So it's not like content and multiplayer are mutually exclusive.

Well the focus has shifted from single player to multiplayer quite a lot in the last decade or so. Single play has been getting easier and shorter for mainstream blockbuster titles, but they tend to focus on multiplayer. I did enjoyed the new Medal of Honor single player even with it being very short, they did screw up majorly on multiplayer though. Even games which are heavily focused on single player have been getting shorter, like the episodic releases of Half-Life 2. I'd give them a break but the reason they did episodic releases was shorter games, at quicker intervals. They got the first part down I suppose...

If you want something that's hard as nails then try I Wanna Be The Guy. It's not an FPS with amazing graphics or anything, but you'll be playing that for a long time. You can also try going back to some of the classic FPS single player games like System Shock 2. It's not like they have somehow gotten worse.

Then why do we pay for both incoming and outgoing texts while in Europe they only pay for outgoing texts? Same with calling.

I always wanted a very nice package management system for OSX. Kind of like Synaptic on top of apt. I agree that Fink and DarwinPorts are woefully lacking and I'd like to see an all-encompasing package management system for OSX. I'm just afraid if Apple has anything to do with it then it will turn out like their iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch app store.

Honestly spell checkers help me. I enjoy the system wide spell checker in OSX and it's pretty rare that I don't know how to spell a word. Thing is the spell checker system doesn't tell me what the correct spelling is (or what it thinks the correct spelling is), it just tells me what I've typed is wrong. So I generally pop open a google tab which is pretty good at suggesting the right spelling so I know how to spell it, which is great given the story I'm replying to.

I mean I know what you're saying. Having all of this technology enables people to be lazy, but some people are willing to put in the effort to better themselves. Perhaps it's because society itself allows people to be lazy with little recourse.

Dunno if anyone has posted this yet. But this was an interesting video I saw an book marked about a trip to North Korea.

Perhaps he was referring to the actual .NET framework rather than the C# language, in which case his comment really is praising it. The less you have the program the better, that's why .NET and various other libraries and frameworks exist in the first place; so you don't have to redo the menial stuff over and over again or make your own library to save time. So by saying .NET does everything for you is high praise (assuming it does it properly of course).

As an aside, I do like C# and think it's a pretty good language. I just wish they would add autoboxing already.

Well if we want to get pedantic, and we do since this is slashdot, a byte isn't always 8 bits. An octet would be 8 bits. So I suppose it should be Gibi Octets or GiO for gigabinary octet rather than GB for gigabyte.

Of course if someone hands you a computer I'd suggest you place money on a byte being 8bits. Chances are it is. Also, I'm not seriously suggesting we start using KiO, MiO, GiO, etc... Just poking a little fun at the industry.

My father would agree.

He was in the Marine Corps in Vietnam. I've heard quite a few stories, mostly humorous, from his time in Vietnam. Although he's told me a few which were truly horrific. He saw things that colored his view of the world, just as I'm sure Gabe's grandfather did. My father can't stomach watching Saving Private Ryan, other movies based on war, or video games based on war. Video games tend to glamorize it, and both movies and video games tend to put in the gore to make it sickening for someone who has lived through it. He also talks about how you'll never truly understand what it's like until you're there and you see your friends die, smell the stench of death, live with the stress, and experience the fear.

Having said all that I do play a lot of games. Games such as Red Orchestra I quite enjoy. I can handle simulated violence, I know it's fake. I know I wouldn't be able to handle it in real life though, so I respect veterans' for that and I understand why they have the views that they do. Although there are a lot of people in the current generation which can handle it. I've had a few friends go over to Iraq and Afghanistan who were gamers before and still are after. Although I've never spoken with any of them in depth about it.

I dunno, their touch pads seem to be current gen stuff. Although I suppose it depends on how you define last/current gen. If you're just talking about the physical hardware then perhaps, I wouldn't know. Their multi-gesture touch surfaces such as the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad seem to be current gen tech if you take in the programming, hardware, and what competitors are offering. Although it could be competitors are offering better things and I just don't know about it, feel free to link me.

I'm not a physicist but its effectiveness isn't entirely based on the substance it's shooting at but also the frequency of the laser. In other words just because you have a mirror which reflects visible light doesn't mean it will reflect infrared or another frequency range. Granted a laser only has one frequency.