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Rather than one phone per household, it is one phone per person.

And rather than one phone bill per household, it is one per person.

Instead of one computer per household, it is one computer or tablet per person.

On the other hand, instead of one paid copy of each program per household, it's one per person due to lack of spawn installation within a household.

An individual may have a tablet for web browsing, but there will still be a computer for the kids to type up their school papers.

Not necessarily. If one owns a tablet, a Bluetooth keyboard like the ZAGGkeys Flex that I'm typing this comment on is cheaper than a whole new computer and monitor. Some households could end up with no computers at all and no way for a child who wants to learn to program to have access to hardware on which to learn to program.

Here we use fake doctors...

1 hour for making dinner, and eating it with the family

Make a large batch at once and microwave portions as needed. It's fast, easy, healthy, and some foods (particularly soups) actually get better the more times they get re-warmed.

1 hour for shopping + errands (groceries, kid's clothes, basic stuff)

Every single day?

So I'd have enough time for 30-60 minutes of gym. I just choose not to take it, save for some weekend exercises.

Well, in that case your options are to be born a mutant or wait for scientists to turn those genes into fitness injections.

then why is one of the donation rewards "three digital copies" -- if there's no DRM, why would three copies be any different than one?

Because too many PC game developers have eliminated spawn installation from their products and instead require a household with three players to buy three copies.

"Even an unpopular person with an unpopular theory can (possibly) demonstrate that his theory give correct predictions."

Name three.

"Five Famous Scientists Dismissed as Morons in Their Time"

"Six Uneducated Amateurs Whose Genius Changed the World"

Should you consider Cracked's own reputability lacking, sources are cited as links throughout their articles.

"Even an unpopular person with an unpopular theory can (possibly) demonstrate that his theory give correct predictions."

Name three.

"Five Famous Scientists Dismissed as Morons in Their Time"

"Six Uneducated Amateurs Whose Genius Changed the World"

Should you consider Cracked's own reputability lacking, sources are cited as links throughout their articles.

It goes the other way too. If you need someone to look like an idiot on a show or commercial, in recent history it's far more likely that the man will look stupid then the woman, to the point the only 'dumb' actor was the man.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1290144/Why-DOES-TV-love-portray-men-idle-feckless-idiots.html
http://www.modernman.com/why-do-commercials-think-men-are-idiots/
http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-reasons-commercials-are-sexist-against-men/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_scarcity

Or:
http://www.disinfo.com/2013/01/is-sowing-artificial-scarcity-the-future-of-business/
http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html

Or:
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1990s/1998/no-1124-april-1998/artificial-scarcity
"Technological capacity to produce enough to satisfy everyone's needs already exists globally and has done so for many decades. Yet needs continue to remain unmet on a massive scale. Why? Quite simply because scarcity is a functional requirement of capitalism itself."

This web page includes suggestion by me on ways to transcend artificial scarcity as the basis of our modern economy:
http://www.artificialscarcity.com/

Anyway, it was a great video as piece of performance art related to the idea, which also connects to "planned obsolescence" or even, to a lesser extent, "fashion".

Cracked.com ran a photoplasty competition a week ago on 21 web browser features we desperately need, this was number 21 on the list.

This feature was listed as #21 in http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_529_21-web-browser-features-we-desperately-need_p21/#21 - and, from all of them, the one is actually easy to implement. Hell, users have been wishing this kind of feature since before tabs even existed! I can only wonder what took so long for any dev team.

I hope Chrome gets this on the stable release ASAP, and Firefox and Opera follow suit, Explorer can go frack itself for all I care.

21 Web Browser Features We Desperately Need

How long has this been in development again?

I enjoyed the last Batman too, but I do have a number of complaints about it. Some of them were so blatantly obvious that hard to tell if being rushed was the worst offender. I believe cracked.com covers my feelings best. Just have a spare change of underwear handy because this article is really funny.

Don't forget why this has come about - developers believe they will sell more copies of a game if they abandon local multiplayer and force everyone online.

It could be because of greed; if so, David Wong of Cracked agrees with you. But it could also be because of deadlines. There might not be enough time before release to optimize the renderer for two to four split-screen views when the engine is having trouble handling one. But good luck getting a fighting game like Street Fighter series or Mortal Kombat series or Smash Bros. series or whatever they're playing nowadays to require a separate copy of the game per player. In general, games that put both players in a single view instead of splitting the screen are more likely to keep local multiplayer.

The fuckers will carry on doing everything in their power to kill local multiplayer.

How can the big game studios "kill" local multiplayer? They can abandon it in their own titles, but that would just leave the genres associated with local multiplayer to indie developers, and connecting a gaming PC, Steam box, or Ouya console to a TV would become a more attractive option.

Online multiplayer is NOT a superior replacement for local multiplayer. They both have their strengths and weaknesses.

For people who live alone or with a non-gamer and can never find the time to schedule play dates, weaknesses outnumber strengths. Online multiplayer is the only way to play multiplayer with pickup groups of strangers. For genres where each player really needs his own view and pointing device, such as RTS, weaknesses outnumber strengths. And for game types that depend on hiding information from your opponents, such as FPS where both players aren't on the same team, weaknesses outnumber strengths.

These days, TVs have VGA inputs and video cards have HDMI outputs.

I am aware that a PC's VGA, DVI, or HDMI output can be used with a TV's VGA or HDMI input.

Somewhere in that mix is your answer.

How so? The fact that a PC can output to a TV is no help if the head of household is unwilling to build or buy an additional PC just for the living room. Nor is it helpful if there aren't enough professionally made games designed to take advantage of the tendency of PCs that have been connected to a TV's VGA or HDMI input to have more controllers connected to them.

Meanwhile, replacing dedicated 'media centers' with a PC is becoming more common.

I'd like to see evidence that you're right and FunkSoulBrother's estimation is outdated, because several Slashdot regulars have repeatedly explained that this is not the case. "Most non-geek people simply have no desire to hook up their computer to their TV" and "Nobody wants to attach their PC to their TV".

http://www.cracked.com/article_17019_5-real-life-soldiers-who-make-rambo-look-like-pussy.html

I guess you missed the part that PC gaming will be outselling the entire console industry by the first quarter of next year.

How much of that is revenue from sales of multiple copies to one household? Major-label PC games are more likely to require a separate copy for each player, as opposed to a copy per household like Smash Bros. (4 players non-split), Mario Kart (4 players split), and Xbox 360 versions of Call of Duty series (2 players split) support.

The corporations have the same legal rights as a person (huge mistake IMO) and then do EVERYTHING possible to obfuscate their actions. Meanwhile people fighting back against their tyranny form groups with a public face (like ANONYMOUS) to shield their identities and are branded criminals for it. Makes you wonder who the real bad guys are.....

"[A]ll of the random ass-headed cruelty of the world will suddenly make perfect sense once we go inside" The Monkeysphere.

*Sigh*. That's the joke.

See also Point 3.

http://www.cracked.com/article_17165_6-reasons-north-korea-funniest-evil-dictatorship-ever.html

Probably one of my favorite Cracked articles ever.

Unless the world is willing to all convert to anime porn

You'd be surprised. Some people have converted to anime porn so thoroughly that they've even converted to anime dating. See #4. Anigao Girls.

A majority of games being made for PC these days already have native support for game controllers

Since when? I was under the impression that PC games had support for a game controller, singular, not game controllers, plural, in part due to publisher greed.

Almost all of them require internet multiplayer

True, online multiplayer is more convenient for people who prefer to game in pick-up groups with strangers, and some publishers have been known to move multiplayer online to sell more copies to each household. But Call of Duty series still allows two players per Xbox 360 console.

except for some pretty specific party games.

I think the point is to encourage PC ports of these party games. Right now, for example, fighting games that aren't Street Fighter 4 tend not to get ported to the PC. Where's the PC counterpart to platform fighters like Power Stone, Super Smash Bros., or PlayStation All-Stars?

It's fine if you don't want to have online multiplayer.

The problem is that more and more, no online multiplayer means no multiplayer at all because publishers think they can make more money by selling multiple copies to a household.

But then you have to buy the same stuff four or five times so everyone in the family can have it.

You have to do that anyway with video games because very few PC games support same-screen multiplayer or even spawn installation.

Reminds me of another article:

"Each contingency is an arrangement of time, activity, and reward, and there are an infinite number of ways these elements can be combined to produce the pattern of activity you want from your players."

Notice his article does not contain the words "fun" or "enjoyment." That's not his field. Instead it's "the pattern of activity you want."

There's a much simpler way to cut all the bullshit. Just make the game that you want to play. If you think, "Ooh! Wouldn't it be cool if ____?", then do it. There's not a single successful game that didn't start out with that exact phrase (in your language of choice).

There's tons of great games for the PC but they're 99% one player/machine with mouse and keyboard.

I've been collecting a list of multiplayer-capable games, along with links to other people's lists.

At best you'll get a few console ports who kept the console controller scheme as an option

That or indie games whose developers heed Microsoft's advice that "Applications should support multiple controllers" better than the majors do. So does the whole one-machine-per-player mentality on the PC come from a belief that not enough potential customers own multiple USB game controllers and a 20" or bigger monitor? Or is it more a matter of publisher greed?

No worries about drivers, Windows breakdowns, etc.

Instead, you have to worry about system updates that disable all your homebrew.

If you get a nice new controller, just plug it in, and it will work.

Nice new controllers just work on Windows and Linux as well. Since Windows XP Service Pack 1, Windows has come with class drivers for both standard USB HID gamepads and Xbox 360 controllers. And a few weeks ago, I tried all my USB gamepads on an Xubuntu machine; they worked.

More likely that you can do multi-player.

I've been told World of Warcraft is massively multiplayer. CronoCloud keeps telling me that single-screen multiplayer is overrated, that the advantage of multiplayer games with a separate machine per player is that you can play online at any time with a pick-up group of strangers instead of having to arrange schedules for all your real-life friends to come visit you. That and publisher greed are why PS3 and Xbox 360 games have become more likely to require a separate console per player. But there are still several PC games that support single-screen multiplayer.

Play in the living room and connect to the TV

PCs output VGA and/or HDMI video. TVs made since about 2007 can display both, and even older TVs can display PC video through a $30 VGA-to-composite scan converter. I don't see anything stopping people from putting a media PC next to an HDTV.

If you were a gamer, and you found an indie PC game that had a mode for multiple Xbox 360 controllers connected to a home theater PC, would you try it?

Wee different. Going concern should not be the only criterion. It's an ethical issue, frankly.

For example, KFC was hacked, that would mean it should only be revealed if, say, KFC's secret recipe was stolen, and it threatened their going concern (unlikely but whatever...), but not if, say entire databases of consumer address and numbers were copied, which while hurting consumer privacy, would *not* hurt their going concern (since KFC could hush it up and go on selling chicken like normal).

I believe both cases should be revealed.

Do that many people give a shit or have feelings for strangers they happen across / first meetings?

Yes they do, it's instinctive behavior for most primates, and the more the stranger looks and acts like a member of your "tribe" the more empathy they get. But who's talking about strangers? - This finding goes a long way to explaining why I tolerated my ex-wife for 20yrs. ;)

Empathy travels in both directions, although I suspect your question was rhetorical, the fact that you asked it reduces the initial empathy I had for you. This is probably because at 53 I'm the "silverback" of my own little tribe and subconsciously judge you as a prospective associate from a similar tribe. Competition for resources (particularly territorial resources) dictates nobody can have the same level of empathy towards everyone but the tribe is always looking for social/political alliances to boost their standing in the neighborhood. You can see the same thing at work in the royal families of Europe both past and present, they were so busy using their children to seal territorial alliances that many of their descendants now suffer complications from inbreeding. In many ways our brains simply were not built to handle the civilizations we create, for example most of my tribe live more than an hour's drive away. Excluding my parents my own tribal elders live on the other side of the planet and are more or less strangers to me. I can't even name all my Uncles and Aunt's, I just know I had ~20 of them somewhere in the UK, I've met a few and a few are already dead. As a child these people were replaced by adult neighbors and family friends, in fact back then children were expected to address adult family friends as "Uncle" or "Aunt" as a sign of respect, similar as to how US kids today address adults as "Sir", etc.

Citation: The Monkeysphere

Soon, personal computers will take over as the primary game systems -- Their graphics have reached and surpassed that of the dedicated game console

Yet the console remains ahead of the PC in the number of players that a single machine can service. The PC hardware has supported multiple USB controllers since 1999, and TVs have had PC compatible video inputs (VGA and HDMI) since about 2007, yet major labels remain stuck in the mind set of one player, one PC, one copy of the game.

and are smaller (mobile) and more approachable by the masses

Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita are almost as small as a phone.

It's not so much the death of a "game console" it's the death of dedicated hardware.

Dedicated hardware allows the best input device for the job. Imagine playing Mega Man on the flat sheet of glass that is current smartphones. I haven't seen any indication that a lot of people are willing to buy a $62 Bluetooth gamepad to play a 99 cent game.

A Calculator?

The input devices on calculators such as the TI-8x series are intentionally limited to make them eligible for use on standardized college entrance examinations.

A Watch?

If your device is small enough to fit into a wristband, such as the sixth generation iPod nano, good luck getting any sort of good gaming input on it.

I can hook my wireless controller to my Nexus7

You can; how many people who aren't the sort of geek who reads Slashdot actually do?

and my Nexus 7 to my TV

How does this work? The Nexus 7 has no TV output, unlike several other 7" Android tablets.

I do the same with my PC.

You do; how many non-geeks do the same? CronoCloud and others have told me that very few people actually do this.

For FPS' - let's face it, the vast majority of console games

For this to be true, more than 50 percent of console titles this generation would have to be first-person shooters. I haven't seen evidence that this is anything but an exaggeration.

Consoles are a bad deal all around

Even when there are plenty of multiplayer console games that work with one copy per household, as opposed to the tendency of one copy per player on a PC?

Arguing that PC games give players too many configuration options (even if they choose to use them) is ridiculous.

The problem is that players have to use them. In general, PC game controllers present their face buttons in an unpredictable order. So unless your controller happens to bean Xbox 360 game controller and the game you are playing happens to use "XInput" (specific support for Xbox 360 controllers under Windows), you have to go through at least some sort of configuration form before the computer knows which button to use for jump, attack, switch weapon, and pause.

Press the following buttons
in order:
[Up], Down, Left, Right,
Jump, Attack, Change Tool,
Pause

Since when it choice a bad thing?

Since researchers discovered that people freeze up when they see too many choices. From this page:

Preferences can confuse many users. Take the famous too many clocks example. A significant number of test subjects were so surprised to have 5 choices of clock they couldn't figure out how to add a clock to their panel. This cost of preferences is invariably underestimated by us technical types.

i never understand how people who rant about software freedom [...] will then run out and buy an microsoft xbox and a sony playstation.

It's because not enough PC games support USB gamepads well or support more than one player on one HDTV monitor. Some people prefer the multiplayer model traditionally associated with consoles, especially for games that aren't FPS or RTS. PCs can do it; it's just that major PC game publishers choose not to in order to sell a copy per player instead of a copy per household.

"A vote for anyone but the tooth fairy and you're just throwing it away"

"I will donate $5 million to charity if Ms. Fairy can prove she's a dentist"

"This election is not about teeth, but the people whose mouths use them!"

I like where this could go. Cracked had great coverage on Brazil's elections that probably have someone running as the tooth fairy :)

-Matt

So many explanations of human behavior on a global scale (or any scale outside your Monkey Sphere) can be found right here. http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html

I made the comment "extremists in every direction" because I see every group - Christians, atheists, Muslims, pro- or anti-climate change groups, left- or right-wing politics, pro-life or pro-choice, others - all taking extreme viewpoints, rather than the more moderate "You know what, I think this, but I am actually going to listen to you and not be nasty about it, and respect the fact you think differently, as really, we don't have all the answers." Everyone seems to know it all, even on things that really aren't certain either way.

I value hearing from people with different viewpoints - it's enriching. I have realised that I don't know anyone with whom I agree on everything, and I certainly don't know everything - I know that some things I think are true won't be, just like everyone else (I'm just not certain what), so better not to be too arrogant about what I do know. Guys like the subject of the original article though don't seem open to listening to others, and it saddens me.

Also, if you can't see how some very vocal atheists are holding extremist viewpoints (as an aside, I was talking about views and ideas more than actions), I'm a little surprised. After all, atheism in it's strong form ("there is no god at all") is to assert something you actually cannot know. Also, this (and the article it came from). :-)

I made the comment "extremists in every direction" because I see every group - Christians, atheists, Muslims, pro- or anti-climate change groups, left- or right-wing politics, pro-life or pro-choice, others - all taking extreme viewpoints, rather than the more moderate "You know what, I think this, but I am actually going to listen to you and not be nasty about it, and respect the fact you think differently, as really, we don't have all the answers." Everyone seems to know it all, even on things that really aren't certain either way.

I value hearing from people with different viewpoints - it's enriching. I have realised that I don't know anyone with whom I agree on everything, and I certainly don't know everything - I know that some things I think are true won't be, just like everyone else (I'm just not certain what), so better not to be too arrogant about what I do know. Guys like the subject of the original article though don't seem open to listening to others, and it saddens me.

Also, if you can't see how some very vocal atheists are holding extremist viewpoints (as an aside, I was talking about views and ideas more than actions), I'm a little surprised. After all, atheism in it's strong form ("there is no god at all") is to assert something you actually cannot know. Also, this (and the article it came from). :-)

...perhaps the culture also is somewhat genetics based?

I'll bet you a dollar that it's not

Humor aside, it's pretty easy to see what would really happen in this scenario. First off, the panhandler would take a paycut. Then, the poor financial skills (more extreme than these) that made him homeless would make him terrible at his job.

It's a common misconception that the homeless are poor because of low income. Some are disabled or suffer severe mental illness, but most are not (or at least that's not why they beg). Substance abuse is the most common problem. They can't hold a job, and need vast amounts of money to fuel their drug/alcohol habit.

Ah, not sure where you get your logic from, but it is just as frightening that you got modded insightful as it is that morons like Broun get into public office. There are many who are both intellectually-strong and believe in God. By your logic, people like William Wilberforce or Newton shouldn't have had influence? So, you'd like a world with slavery and without physics?

Also, religion does not necesarily cause problems: Stalin (an atheist) was responsible for the deaths a good order of magnitude or so more of his own people than died in the Crusades and preceeding Muslim invasions combined.

Go read this: The God Fuse and learn that (a) every belief system can lead to being a dick, (b) there are a lot of sane, sensible people who believe different things to you.

I thought they ranged from extremely annoying to ridiculously pompous, as satirized in this video:

http://www.cracked.com/video_18269_the-new-iphone-ads-are-getting-out-hand.html

Warning: NSFW language

I would expect some people would be deeply offended by that clip, any display of humanity, no matter how tangential, will make a "normal" viewer feel sympathy/empathy for a character they see as pure evil. People don't want to see OBL enjoying a game of volleyball, they want to rip his mask off and expose the reptile hidden beneath the skin.

I think one of the most underrated discoveries about ourselves of all time would have to be the Stanford prison experiment. It goes a long way to explaining how it is possible for an otherwise "normal" person to treat Jewish children as a vermin problem and their own children like....well...their own children. Such extreme moral contradictions do take their toll on a person's psyche, the soldiers flying attack drones from downtown office buildings are said to suffer from an unusually high rate of mental breakdowns even though their society sees them as "normal people".

Drones or not, there is no evil in the modern world that goes quite as far as Mr H did, and despite the hyperbole plastered all over the internet there is certainly nothing like it on today's political horizon. Having said that Rwanda managed a smaller feat of evil with much more efficiency, they slaughtered one million people in one week with little more than religious AM shock jocks for inspiration and hand tools for implementation.

If for one second you (the reader) have thought to yourself "my people" wouldn't do that, then you really do need to stop thinking about other people's behavior for a while, instead, take some time to study yourself and your species in light of the discovery mentioned above. - Needless to say YMMV.

You're not exceptional, you're an egomaniac.

Ah. I see what the problem is. Above, you said this:

"When I was young, I thought myself exceptional as well. I chalk that up to youthful arrogance. I got over it. My self-worth is no longer defined by what I fancy myself as "good at"."

Ok, so apparently at one point in time you were Nick Burns. Fine. But now you've seen the light and you think that we - just like you did - need to get over ourselves, it's nothing special, and so on. What you're doing is projecting your life's experience onto an entire industry and everyone in it. I'm very glad you "got over it", but please don't apply your experiences to everyone else. Please read item #2, Fundamental Attribution Error for clarification.

And also, please pay attention to the AC below about the Gaussian distribution of intelligence.

Neither. As in political reporting, the concept of "sides" is one way that journalists turn stories into BS because they have vested interests in the public not learning what's really going on.

What if every type of game was available for the PC instead

Does this include games for which a good keyboard-and-mouse control scheme hasn't yet been devised, such as fighting games and 2.5-D platformers? And does it include arcade-style games for which part of the draw is that you're playing on one screen, such as party games and (again) fighting games? Very few games support multiple mice and multiple keyboards; the only one I can think of is Rag Doll Kung Fu.

All those players that want "the console/TV/couch experience" would be able to build or buy a multitude of small form factor and home theater gaming PC.

They can now. But most people haven't felt a need to build or buy a second PC to put next to the big monitor in the living room. To them, consoles are for the living room and PCs are for desks and never the twain shall meet. I used to believe as you do, but other Slashdot users have since told me that apart from hardcore geeks, people just don't want something perceived as "a computer" in the living room. I can cite more such comments on request.

Look at how the Xbox 360 controllers and headsets (or compatible XInput style controller) has become the "de facto" gaming controller on PC.

How many multiplayer PC games actually support multiple DirectInput or XInput game controllers, as opposed to one PC, monitor, and copy of the game per player?

I'm a little disenchanted by the fact the tablet controllers, as far as I've heard, are basically single touch resistive touch screens instead of multitouch capacitive - why toss old tech besides the new?

I assume the single-touch is 1. to keep costs down and 2. to allow for drawing games that require the precision of a stylus.

I'd much rather if I could just invest in the WiiU Tablet and Pro controller

Then have someone program a tech demo of a PC game that uses a Nexus 7 tablet as its controller.

You aren't losing any liberty. And nowhere in the discussion of them has anyone mentioned requiring you sell your old car and buy an automatic one. You are the only one here championing the loss of liberty. You don't like the safe cars, so you want them banned, right?

To seriously believe that automatic cars won't become mandatory and a method for government tracking & control once they are partially implemented is self-delusion if one has any knowledge of history.

It's a compromise like politicians asking us; "Hey, can we put just a "little* of our dicks in your mouth? Why won't you even consider a compromise? It would benefit the majority. Why are you being so unreasonable?"

Maybe you don't mind it, but the rest of us do mind, thanks but no thanks.

Do not want: http://www.cracked.com/blogimages/southpark.jpg

Strat

I agree with you that noncommercial copying of a whole work and noncommercial copying of nonliteral elements are different things, and the fact that they're banned to the same degree hurts the public. But any change that diminishes the scope of copyright owners' exclusive rights would require somehow going around the copyright industry's stranglehold on the mainstream media through which the the majority of the public get their information on candidates' positions, which ends up amounting to politainment more than anything else.

http://www.cracked.com/article_15748_a-gamers-manifesto.html

I've been posting this link since it came out. This was originally written on a website called "pointless waste of time". I guess cracked bought them. Anyway, point 1, 5 years ago called this:

Two, as developers have lamented, the guts of the new consoles are geared to make the gaming equivalent of dumb blondes. It has to do with the fact that both the XBox 360 and the PS3's Cell CPU use "in-order" processing, which, to greatly simplify, means they've intentionally crippled the ability to make clever A.I. and dynamic, unpredictable, wide-open games in favor of beautiful water reflections and explosion debris that flies through the air prettily.

And the hardware is pretty amazing today, even in the medium PC markets, with bang for buck being quite high.

True, PCs have enormous bang for buck with single player, long-form games like Skyrim . But some other genres tend to have shorter play sessions, and multiplayer among people in the same room can become expensive (if all PCs are owned by the head of one household) or impractical (if everybody has to bring his own PC).

Finally! All those hours wasted on cracked.com pay off now:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18385_7-bullshit-police-myths-everyone-believes-thanks-to-movies.html
the Insanity Defense is attempted in less than one percent of all legal cases, which essentially means that more people have tried to pin their crimes on aliens or their evil twin rather than their own basket case, shoelace-eating lunacy.
Of that tiny fraction where the lawyer was even willing to try it, the defense is successful less than 25 percent of the time. Three states in the US don't even allow insanity as a defense.
Then, in that tiny, tiny fraction of cases where the guy "got off" because he convinced the court he was insane, he doesn't get to just go home. You get sent to a mental institution where you don't have a set sentence at all--they keep you as long as they see fit, which may be forever. You're there until "deemed safe to return to society", which according to the American Psychiatric Association is usually twice as long as the jail sentence would have been.

It's fun to dream of comparable actions against "insane" corporations though. I'm sure a lot of slashdoters can draw parallels between their workplace and a lunatic asylum anyway.

I've just about got my family completely weaned off consoles for PCs

How'd you do that, seeing as PC multiplayer is more likely to need several copies of the game than console multiplayer is?