No way Quake is more addictive than Pong. Pong FTW!

Of course this speaks nothing about the use of licences required to use an ever increasing part of the games, be it various forms of DLC, or even the ability to go online at all. If the new game comes with some such licence tied to PSN, which requires $10 or more to buy separately, that second hand copy might not seem as atractive anymore.

Thermite makes it possible!

I see you like getting up early - good for you. However, I belong to the majority who prefer staying in bed until we have to get up to get to work. It blows my mind, that you would think it's reasonable to FORCE the majority to adjust to your biological clock, when you are perfectly free to get up 2 hours before the rest of us every day of the year. I'm sure you have things you might as well do before going to work, instead of afterwards - so it's really all the same to you.

Your other idea, that it's somehow easier to force your rhythm on everyone be means of DST than "changing peoples lives" I find completely pointless. I don't wan't to get up before the sun - and I'm not fooled by what my alarm clock tells me about that. Insisting that the clocks are "wrong" all year round is just an extra pointless layer of silliness.

The fact that you don't understand why people swear about DST - yet you wan't to FORCE them to have more of what they don't wan't, really blows my mind. It has been scientifically proven, that suicide, heart attack and countless other ailments spike after the change to DST http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/12/is-daylight-saving-time-bad-for-your-health/. People obviously have very good reasons to NOT wan't any of the DST nonsense. The reasons given by the DST proponents somehow always fail to make any sense for anyone but themselves. Yours being a prime example.

I have no less than 4 M's with keys shorted, all because my wife spilled tea (with cream and sugar) in them (*curses). When it happens to one of my 3 remaining operational ones - I'll have to "bolt mod" one of the 4. You can't get to the shorted membranes nondestructively, and the dishwasher doesn't seem to get the job done. On the upside, It'll be an opportunity to frankenstein one with electronics from a Logitech Wii wireless keyboard, that I acquired for the purpose. She'll have to let me use the time, when it's she who wrecked it in the first place.

The answer to your rethorical question, would surprisingly to you be mostly yes. In patent law, "lack of working over an extended period in the territory of the patent" is grounds for applying for a "compulsory license" - which is the legal equivalent of use it or loose it regarding patent protection.

The other comparison also completely misses the point. The GPL'd software can clearly be licensed on fair and equal terms by everyone willing to abide by it's terms. The fact that the pricing on the software is 0 does not make it any less fair. Also, you must understand that the GPL is merely a license to distribute the software, which is still otherwise covered by copyright. So anyone willing to make contact with the rights holder(s) on that particular piece of software, is free to negotiate a different license with different terms and pricing than those offered by the GPL. The only legal similarity, is that both would have a hard time claiming any damages in a court case, as neither have any direct income from selling their product.

When I saw this conclusion, I looked up the background of the authors:
  Mary Jander: BA, English and Business
  Kim Davis: PhD, Philosophy
  Nicole Ferraro: B.A. / M.A., Media Studies and Creative Writing

Clearly this bunch is qualified to tell the founders of the worlds fastest ever growing company which technology is not going to pan out 30 years from now. To their credit I was expecting to find the resumees of 3 MBA's. At least these guys are not soulless, merely clueless (about tech anyway)

It's actually called amd64 or ie32e depending on which companies implementation it is. The term x86 implies it's running on a 386, or at the very least on the last chip referred to as 686, which would be the Pentium3 I guess. The term x86 makes no sense, without referring to those museum pieces.

As a matter of fact, the police, judge and jury are all going to factor in a long wrap sheet of petty crime - even in a murder case.

Fortran isn't that bad, considering it's from 1957. Anyone who can do Fortran, could learn C++ very quickly, [begin rant] Cobol on the other hand was a step backwards the day it appeared in 1959, and it's creators should be bludgeoned with a frozen fish for even writing the design document. And yes - I've written tons of Cobol - it doesn't grow on you. It's probably the first example of the fundamental misconception, that it's desirable (if even possible) to make formal descriptions using informal language. The MBA's still think you can describe a piece of software in Word, and then it's a trivial process to make the software that customers want. Informal language is desirable to humans because it supports leaving out details - which is exactly what makes it useless for programming a computer. Using the word "plus" in stead of the symbol "+" is completely missing that fundamental point.[end rant]

Judging from the praise given to walled garden environments, like Apples app-store, I not so sure we can depend on technology to automatically free us from monitoring and control, by either government or big corp. However, such a fringe openion will never stand a chance in the 2 party systems of the US and UK. Even in the multiparty systems of continental Europe, the PP will struggle at elections, if it does not adopt some policy on mainstream subjects like employment and healthcare. Of course those passionate about the civic liberty agenda, will struggle to find agreement on the mainstream topics. (pardon my typos, I'm writing on an iPad. Can't wait to get back to my model M)

You obviously have no kids.

What are you waiting for? - that data will b worth a fortune if sold for advertising purposes.

It's just to cheap for coorporate america to hedge it's bets when they only have to bribe.... errh I mean make campaign contributions, to 2 parties. Try to elect some representatives from the pirate party, like sweden has.

1GB - you must be kidding. Back in 1991 was when I supplemented a floppy drive, with my very first 42MB seagate 157A. Back then, the top drives were about 200MB. 1GB is probably more like 1995.