Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 include a Protected Video Path that encrypts video even over the PCI Express bus. I'd imagine that Microsoft anticipated programs like CamStudio and FRAPS and blocked API calls like PrintWindow() and GetWindowDC() and glReadPixels() for a window displaying DRM restricted video.

Audio is already routinely watermarked using Cinavia technology.

Because not everybody is willing to pay hundreds of dollars per year for 3/4G, and some people are too shy to ask random individuals to let them tether to their device.

Because you can use a laptop without having to pay for tethering on top of what you already pay for mobile data.

If you make a distinction, you need to explain the difference. Where does a website end and an application begin? Slashdot and other web boards are essentially web-based workalikes of an NNTP user agent, and that's certainly an application. I had assumed that the line was that one reads a "website" but posts using an "application". If elsewhere, where do you draw the line?

Not if the process containing the meat of the CDM is signed by the operating system publisher with elevated permissions to block attaching a debugger, and it uses the Trusted Platform Module to make sure it's running on an approved kernel and not in a VM. Microsoft thought through a lot of these issues when designing PlayReady DRM to meet the requests of the six largest U.S. motion picture distributors.

I think the idea is that people living where the only affordable home Internet access is dial-up would carry the Chromebook to a branch of the county library to do large data transfers.

Other Slashdot users have repeatedly told me that people with niche needs need to suck it up and accept that products and services that lack economies of scale will have inflated prices. The cliche they use is "You are an edge case."

This is true of individual federal income tax returns in the United States. But I seem to remember other countries requiring that individuals or businesses e-file certain forms using software compatible only with Windows. I'll let residents of those countries provide the details.

But freemium games, especially single-player games designed to run on Wi-Fi-only tablets, still need some sort of obfuscation to keep users from hacking in fake receipts.

So what do you do if one of the websites that doesn't work is the website that a government requires you by law to use, such as the site for filling in your tax return?

The problem, as staunch DRM opponents see it, is that the universe of "non-EME content" would dwindle to an edge case once all legitimate providers of popular media adopt EME.

How is a user who just reads considered "abusive" to Slashdot? Treat Tor like any other open proxy, giving it read-only access.

Would you prefer to be able to read Slashdot through the web but have to buy an app (and a different brand of computer to run the app) in order to post? That's what it'd be like.

Street Fighter series, for example, doesn't need to split the screen to have more than one player per box. Nor does Rampart, an early arcade RTS, or the Dead Ops Arcade mode of Call of Duty: Black Ops.

And it's useless to communicate with people who use an Android device or an iPhone or iPad as a primary communications device.

You talk about OpenPGP. How much does it cost to travel to get your key signed by people who are well connected in the web of trust? And how can you trust that the people who signed the key of the person with whom you want to communicate are reliable at signing keys?

That depends on whether a client supporting Off The Record is available for a particular operating system (such as Windows Phone) and how easy it is to start using. Mobile operating systems prefer monolithic apps over protocol plug-ins that can be installed into an existing app, and people might not be willing to learn a different IM client's user interface just to communicate with you.