For many people being told a story IS fun. I enjoy watching a heavy movie from time to time because it's thought provoking and the emotional pull is a nice experience (from time to time). I read books because of the thrilling events captured in words. Games don't have to lack a story to be fun. Uncharted 2 has won many awards for its storytelling and has been reviewed very highly, having great game play that is entertaining to the player. You brought up Final Fantasy... have you ever played any of them? They have some of the deeper stories in videogaming. Try telling a Final Fantasy VIII fan that the story isn't "grown up". Final Fantasy X had many far reaching philosophical elements regarding death, reality, companionship, love, destruction, all wrapped up in an entertaining experience that brings you closer to the characters. Just because you shoot someone, or kill some ravenous bird every 25 steps, doesn't mean it's an emotionally empty game.

I believe tampering with the GPS tracking would be insurance fraud, which is also illegal. It's illegal either way.

From what I remember, the Zune pass allows you access to anything in the Zune store library as long as you pay the subscription. Removed from the library? Can't listen to the music. Stop paying? Can't listen to the music. You are not purchasing any music, you are paying money to access a library. The Zune marketplace is a completely different service than outright purchasing music. I believe they give you 10 un-DRM'd downloads per month along with the subscription, so you can see they do see the fact that their customers want DRM-free tracks.

That would be an abuse of monopoly. A company can have a monopoly on a market by having the vast majority of business. A monopoly isn't inherently bad. If a company is simply the best in the market and everybody decides to use their product, then good for them! It's still a monopoly. When that same company starts using their monopoly to force competitors out of the market, or keep people from switching, then they are leveraging their monopoly to corner the market, which is the illegal part.

You clearly have not seen Up.

The point of this format is that it's backwards-compatible with existing MP3 players.

Well, the article states that the ripped mp3HD was 5MB bigger than the comparable FLAC rip, while the original, regular MP3 was 14.6MB. Using a little bit of maths, it looks like it's about 9.4MB less than a FLAC+MP3.

That would be a valid criticism if these movies were being purchased, but these are rentals and are designed, and rightly so, so you can't keep them indefinitely.

The trailer skipping prevention is the worst! The menu button never works (gives you that "cannot preform operation" sign). I always have to hit the skip button to go through every trailer one-by-one. It's ludicrous.

We could call it The China Syndrome!

The DRM for TF2 works on a different principal, however. The game is online-only, so you can assume your player will have an internet connection when playing in the general server pool. The general server pool almost polices its self with many servers looking for only legitimate installs in order to prevent cheating. The game is also tied to Steam for DRM, so you can assume that the player has a Steam account. When playing online it checks for a legitimate Steam account, and LAN it checks for a legitimate install of Steam. Valve is also constantly releasing updates, requiring the game to be continuously re-hacked, like you said. Also, being that the servers in question are pirate servers, there is probably going to be a high hacker:legit player ratio.

So, as you can see, there are many many legitimate reasons why people would want to get a legitimate copy, and most of it has to do with playing the game online rather than the DRM measures. It is inherently tough to play pirated. For something like Gears of War, however, should not ever lock up. If I want to play single player now, I need an internet connection (not always possible for me) to update the DRM files that can break it this easily? No sale.

Exactly. Money circulating gets around to people. Random projects mean more jobs. It's exactly how FDR took us out of the Great Depression (and built up electricity infrastructure to rural areas to boot!)

Almost all of those issues seem to be aesthetic, and that opinion will vary between person to person. For instance, I love the new control panel, the Ribbon, and the style of the windows/taskbar. Sounds like this OS is right up my alley!

Er... You brew coffee by passing water through ground coffee beans at high temperature. Coffee is mostly water.

It actually is closer to infringing on copyrighted goods, because that's exactly what it is.

Stealing means what was taken was against the owner's consent, and that the owner is now deprived of that good. Copyright infringement, on the other hand, means that you have made an unauthorized copy of a work and are selling it/giving it away/making more copys, which is the case here.