And why exactly do we need to send someone to a "remote area" to report on conditions when there are already people in those remote locations who are quite capable of telling the story?

So true. And why would we need Woodward and Bernstein, when we could simply look at Nixon's or Deep Throat's blog?

The problem in our society is the magical age of 16, 18 and 21.

How would you prefer it done? With a law that can be flexibly applied however way a politically crusading DA wants it to be applied? Would you prefer to be forced to, instead of verifying age, verify "mental capacity", or some other inexact metric?

We have the solid limits for good reasons. It's a defence against tyranny handed down from the legal authorities. The ideal is that everyone knows exactly whether or not their behaviour is legal, so armed with a little information, they have nothing to fear from said authorities. Anything that detracts from this is, IMHO, stupid.

I'd also like to point out that having a (reasonably) developed brain, like an advanced 13 year old, does not imply the knowledge or wisdom to make certain long-term, potentially life-changing decisions. We hope that people have experienced enough of the world at 16, 18, or 21 (in conjunction with the development of mental maturity) to make these decisions. It's not perfect, but it's more perfect than the alternative.

Right, because when a company really pleads, it's representatives say "please" five times per sentence.

It's about as pleading as a company can get. They're never going to sound desperate; there might be stockholders watching. So, instead, they'll cover it up with some spin. Suddenly, it's not a plead for customers to buy from them, it's a plead for customers to make the Right Decision(tm). It is a plead nonetheless.

Personally, I think both companies are pathetic. They both engage in this kind of behaviour, and this finger-pointing simply highlights this fact. Hopefully, when next you consider buying a product from either one of them, since, as the a *ahem* great man once said:

"Openness is central because it's the foundation of choice." - Ballmer

Wait, wait, wait, so you're saying that this store combines DRM and ads? Wow!

And their range is a fraction of iTunes', which is a fraction of the pirate bay's, you say? Cool!

What's that? The store client is buggy, and there's only one type of uncommonly used proprietary format? No shit!

Oh and you say it closed down? I wonder why something like that would happen...

The fact that we are being asked to swallow this is disgusting.

The fact that we're being asked to swallow electronic voting is disgusting. Some things electronics simply don't do well, and one such thing is accountability. We should be demanding accountability. Not just in angry letters to congress-critters, but outside voting booths, to the people who mindlessly register their vote, without any real clue if their vote will count or not.

All the more reason not to trust even a full blown QA team with our votes.

Astroturfing is fraud. Fake grassroots campaignsm like all advertising campaigns, are deliberately designed to be misleading, to implicitly give false impressions. Unlike most advertising campaigns, they rely on lies to get behind our defences. They poison our well of information with their lies. How can we be sure of who we're talking to? Must we always be forced to automatically mistrust any voice on the internet? Astroturfing is damaging our communications, perhaps permanently.

Compare this with regular, legally acknowledged fraud. Why is it illegal? It's illegal because it a) misleads people, and b) removes an element of trustworthiness for public information. Exactly the same thing is happening on the internet, but it isn't happening to multi-billion dollar corporations, so the government doesn't care.

They target us because we are the most likely to make best use of the disks. Why sell it to us once, when they can suppress backups, and sell it to us multiple times?

You know what's really getting old? DRM, and it's not getting old gracefully. DRM doesn't work. It never did work, it probably never will work. Maybe it's about time that big movie execs started thinking along the lines of satisfying customers, rather than forcing them to bend over with every purchase. Fuck Bluray. They obviously don't want our money.