I have a feeling that the world would be a nicer place if only those who could stay awake for 24 hours a day, seven days a week would have children.

Maybe it's just me being a misanthrope again...

And that is sort of ok. You should always assume that your ISP can and will listen in on the traffic, and take measures to make sure this is not a problem. If not your ISP directly, someone can easily make them or on of their employees do it.

Browse on sites with HTTPS, make sure your other protocols are using SSL or some other published, open and scrutinized encryption. If you really need to hide your destination, use Tor.

I don't think Google is any worse than the other ISPs in this respect, and I think Google has other reasons to become an ISP.

• 1) The other ISPs in the US seem to fucking suck with regards to bandwidth and arbitrary data caps, hurting Google's drive to make everything happen online on their own servers. More players are needed, players who like the internet, not players who actually hates it because it cuts in to their own profits.
• 2) They are afraid that in a not-so-distant future, the ISP who for example is also a telco will start demanding that Google pays for all google voice chats over the telco's data lines. The ISP who's also a cable company will demand that Google pays for all youtube streaming, etc. This won't be a problem if Google is their own ISP.

I think this is much more a PR move than it is a financial move.

They want to show that they have "solved" the problem and that it will not happen again, by letting a manager walk. I'm pretty sure the full board of directors knew perfectly well what was going on with Sim City, and it is not likely that the CEO was the only one driving this through.

Why massage and hack a program like blender when you can use the venerable POV-Ray, open source raytracer since 25 years back, first raytracer in space, etc.

You can already do all of this directly in its scene description language, and you will get exact results instead of interpolated meshes.

Ahhh... the piracy argument. Which has hit the game industry hard since the early 80ies. I have magazines here from 1981 where the publishers whine about piracy and how it will make sure that there will be no computer games in the future.

And it's the same, every year. The business just grows and grows, people spend more and more money on computer games. But no, the piracy will kill the industry, look at the evil pirates, forcing us to make half-finished games with mandatory DLC.

The Free Software Foundation campaign about this all the time, and have for some time now. They do have the organisational structure to do this.

But nobody listens, because they also care about linux and free software in general, and that's eww hairy nerds, don't take my capitalism! Maybe if angry gamers would join up, they would get the manpower to actually get heard.

Harsch but true. I guess there are a few questions to be answered:

• 1. Is the actions of EA hurting enlightened gamers, who chose to give their money to better companies?
• 2. Is it likely that EA will release a game that "pro gamers" want to play? A game that is not a glorified FarmVille.
• 3. Is the industry in large damaged by the actions of EA?

If the answer to these questions are all "no", then it does not matter much what EA does, except the usual moral issues about parting a fool from his money.

Actually it doesn't have a problem, since it's already solved.

Now, please tell me how some users switching to a completely different cryptocurrency would solve your perceived problem with forked bitcoins?