Don't you love the impartial scientific tone here?
TFA is wrong in so many ways. It says solar cells are made from one of the most common materials on earth, but because you can make even more efficient solar cells from extremely rare materials, it's not sustainable?
Cover the rooftops of the world with 25% efficient solar cells and we'll have more energy than we know how to spend (although I'm sure we can find something). 50% efficient solar cells are only worth it if they're less than twice as expensive.
But even beyond that, Indium solar cells are only unsustainable if they actually use up the Indium and stop functioning after that. If they don't use up the Indium, they are perfectly sustainable. It's just that the capacity is limited by the amount of Indium we can find.
You're the new guy they just hired to replace him. Who cares about CNAMEs when you're on the server looking at the hostname? Someone tells you 'daffy' and 'kirk' are down. What are they? What do they do?
On the other hand, if I told you 'mx2' and 'nas1' are down, you have a better idea of what you're dealing with... Forget that there's a CNAME from mail to daffy and a CNAME from p0rnserver to nas1.
I don't see how mx2 and nas1 are more informative than daffy or kirk.
Ofcourse if you've got lots of servers that are essentially the same, then it makes sense to call them daffy00 - daffy99.
Well I think the reason for having a bunch of "Cute" names for the server is just really prevent confusion.
But also occasionally just for fun or to show off.
I still remember coming across my-hostname-is-longer-than-yours.mit.edu.
At my university, machines were named after boats. Usually sailing boats, but when students got a new machine to experiment with, it was called titanic.
It puts the achievement into the right perspective. Outperforming a country with less than 4% surface (and similarly smaller number of citizens)
Number of citizens isn't quite that much smaller. I think Germany has about 30% the population size of the US.
But Germany is quite clearly a front runner in clean energy. It's inevitable that larger countries will eventually overtake it in absolute numbers. And I'm glad the US is already doing that. Good job!
Exactly. For the moment, the political and societal will to do something is a much bigger factor than land area or climate. Germany is the front runner, but as soon as everybody else finally catches up, it'll be overtaken in solar by sunnier countries, and in wind power by windier countries.
You'd think Netherland (my country) would be quite good at wind power, but apparently we suck.
Well, locations where these 'wind farms' are both out of eye sight and ear shot (as they can be quite loud) are rather rare.
Much more so in a relatively densely populated country like Germany, though.
But they don't need to be out of sight or ear shot, you just put them in a place that's noisier and uglier than windmills. Along motorways, for example. And that's something that Germany has a lot of.
No idea if they actually put them there, though. Much of Germany is probably too hilly. Along the coast is more efficient, but Germany is rather short on coastline.
I think there was a story last year, where some rich community in Florida managed to get a off-shore wind farm denied because the towers would just be visible on the horizon...
So they don't have power lines, highways or railroads in Florida? Or, I don't know, ugly apartment blocks? Wind farms are benign in comparison. But hey, put them wherever the oil platforms are.
Many years ago I read a story about an artist who had some hits in the '60s or '70s. Decades later she started a website where some of her songs were available for free, and suddenly her sales go up again.
Exposure means sales. Downloads means exposure. It's a very simple equation.
The only artists who don't benefit from downloads are the ones suffering from overexposure already.
Suppose McDonalds launches a new burger and sales and profitability both go up, but employees are stealing them at a higher than usual rate too. Yeah the burger was a success and worth doing even if the theft has gone up because profitability is up, but that doesn't mean you simply ignore the employee theft problem.
Not the same thing.
Ditto for theft.
Not the same thing. You're comparing apples and oranges.
By stealing hamburgers or other physical products, you deny someone else the use of that product, it costs resources, etc. That's not the case with illegal downloads. Furthermore, how many thieves leave money for the stuff they stole? Some downloaders do that. They download the crack because the legally purchased software is no good. How many physical products exist where a stolen version is superior to a legally purchased version?
You're comparing apples and oranges, and those are not the same thing in a variety of ways.
I'm not supporting DRM, but isn't the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials is the cause of DRM at first place?
The fear that illegal sharing is hurting sales, certainly. Let's face it, copying software is as old as software itself, and trying to prevent that is almost as old. The problem is, it doesn't work. By its very nature, you can't prevent software from being copied, and invasive DRM is certainly the wrong answer.
If downloaders don't like DRM, then they should instead find legal ways to get over with DRM (ie. boycott, complain, sue) instead of giving a good claim to those using DRM on their products.
The downloaders aren't harmed by the DRM, the paying customers are (many of whom resort to downloading the crack despite having a legal copy). That's the entire reason why DRM is the wrong solution. It encourages piracy.
And suing your customers isn't a good solution either. The only good solution I'm aware of is providing better quality and better service to paying customers. That's what Stardock, Valve and (to a lesser extend, perhaps) iTunes are focusing on, and that seems to work.
Heck, the complete medieval, rome and shogun was on sale for 24 some months ago!
When Medieval 2 Total War came out, my PC wasn't even powerful enough to play it. Now I have a PC that can play it, and what do you know? I find the game for $10. Cool stuff. I just hope it doesn't have crippling DRM, but $10 is low enough to take that risk blindly.
I've paid over $50 (sometimes a lot more) for other games, but only when I knew in advance they'd be good and they'd work.
Yes, its common knowledge that there is a correlation, but are they in anyway meaningfully linked. I mean, the pro-infringement camp like to point to this and say, look infringement is actually increasing sales... the more people download the more they buy.
Pro-infringement camp? Your choice of words exposes your biased world view. Few people are pro-infringement. Sure, they exist, but most people are simply pro-being able to use stuff. How much they insist on paying money for that varies, but it's all about the content, not the infringement. That's just a by-product of getting at the content.
Does downloading music actually increase the amount you buy, or is it simply the case that the people who are most interested in music download and buy the most.
...
The only question is what percentage of those that chose to infringe it would have bought it if that was the only way to get it. Obviously, a huge swathe of them would simply have done without.
You seem to live in a fairy tale land where there's a magical dial to regulate the number of downloads. Illegal downloads don't cause stuff, they are caused by stuff. If you don't like illegal downloads, you need to look at the real causes.
Even more so, illegal downloads aren't even an interesting statistic to producers. They should only care about the number of sales. If sales and downloads both go up, they're still doing something right. If sales and downloads both go down, they're still doing something wrong. The downloads don't matter, the sales do.
A situation where downloads are impossible is simply not going to happen outside magical fairyland. All that matters is: how do you get people to buy your stuff. Stop seeing downloads as missed sales. Many of them are sales, many others would never have been sales.
Are they correlated or one causes the other? I don't think its clear.
They are quite clearly correlated. The causation isn't so obvious, but my guess is they're both caused by a desire for games, music and movies, and possibly a desire to get the best experience from them.
I have noticed this too. The people who consume the most, well... consume the most. They are just content whores:) Some they will pirate, things they can easily get and like they will buy as much of as they can. They just want the content, whatever is the easiest way for them to get it most of the time. At least this is what I have seen.
So smart producers will make sure that paying for it is the easiest way to get the content. That means paid downloads without crippling DRM. That means your HD DVD or BluRay should simply work at full resolution no matter what. That means CD you buy should be rippable so you can put them on your mp3-player.
I don't think 50+% of the people are actually opposed to copyright. They're just opposed to it being used as an excuse for harmful DRM and other complications. They want to see their movies and play their games, and don't mind paying for them if they're any good, but paying lots of money for crap that doesn't work gets tired really fast.
What is this article trying to say? That copyright infringement is good because the people doing it are actually also buying a lot of games?
No, it's saying that the industry is fighting the wrong fight. They're attacking their own customers.
That's bullshit. There is no correlation here, unless you studied the purchasing habits of a set group of people who couldn't pirate stuff for a year and they could the next year.
What the hell does that mean? If the study shows that people who buy more also download more, and people who download less also purchase less, than that's correlation. It doesn't necessarily say anything about causation, but the correlation is quite obvious.
Hardcore gamers buy a lot of games. If hardcore gamers also pirate a lot, then this is a disaster for people making hardcore games.
No. People buying lots of games are not a disaster for people who make those games. Those people finding a different hobby would be a disaster, though.
Put yourself in the position of someone making a game. If the guy who doesn't pay for your game buys a lot of CD's, that doesn't help pay your mortgage or buy your groceries.
People who don't buy your stuff don't pay your mortgage no matter what other stuff they do buy and whether or not they download your stuff illegally. Pirates don't matter. Customers do.
Everyone I know making games is moving to flash games that are ad-supported, console gaming, or doing MMO games.
Then you need to get acquainted with Brad Wardell from Stardock. He's the one who said "pirates don't matter", he's applied this to his single player PC games which don't have any copy protection, and sell very well. His strategy works because he focuses on pleasing his customers instead of chasing them away.
If people want the option to ever be playing single-player games, they need to stop assuming they can get them for free, and free-ride off the honest people who still open their wallet for decent entertainment.
And if companies want people to pay for their games, they need to stop assuming that they can hurt the play experience of honest, paying customers without chasing them towards cracked versions of the game that offer a superior experience.
It's a two-way street. Companies are trying to control their customers, but a free market simply doesn't work like that.
An unscientific look at my friends seems to suggest that the people who buy the most also pirate the most. There actually seems to be a fairly consistent ration between amount downloaded and amount purchased.
It's been common knowledge for quite some time now. Only the industry insists on ignoring it.
On the face of it, it's illogical for them to buy anything but clearly there's some good reason for them to do so.
A lot of downloaders have surprisingly high ethical standards. Some purchase a legal copy, don't install it (because of DRM) and download the cracked version instead.
After all, what's a dutchman (or woman) to do when they have the economy blues but hoist the Jolly Roger and go out for a good old pillage on the high seas.
The pride of our national history, the VOC made much of its early profits through piracy. It brought us our Golden Age. It makes sens to go back to those pragmatic mercantile principles, right?
Even our prime minister lauded the VOC mentality a few month ago. (And got criticised for it because that includes slave trade and colonialism, but nobody mentioned piracy at the time.)
This hdd seems to be competing with the spinpoint f1 and the latest of seagate's 7200 RPM hdds. The kicker is this is a "green" series drive. It uses variable RPM technology. It actually spins at 5400 RPM quite often.
"Quite often"? Do you mean it's really variable, intead of merely unspecified, as with WD's other Green Power drives? There they suggested variable speeds when it wasn't. The original WD GP drives rotated at 5400 rpm all the time. (And personally I don't think it's possible to vary the spindle speed of a drive during operation.)
They didn't dare to mention that because they were afraid people might see 5400 rpm as slow and old fashioned, when in this case it's actually modern, efficient, and almost just as fast as other manufacturers' 7200 rpm drives. An impressive feat that they should be proud of, instead of trying to disguise it with misleading specs.
Gamers, remember, your power supply/CPU/video card are the biggest culprits.
True, although modern CPUs (like Intel's E8x00 series) also don't consume all that much power anymore (3W idle, 30W during load, I read once), power supplies are getting more efficient, and even some modern video cards try not to use 100 W to draw the desktop.
Lower power will generally equate to lower hear and thus less breakdowns though.
Nice try Captain Revisionist, but the October, February and succeeding Soviet Revolutions were very much communist and all of the hard working 'capitalists' that lost their family owned businesses through appropriation would probably argue otherwise, if they could. While the end result might have been complete corruption of communist 'ideals' (arguably the end result of communism), the beginnings were very much communist.
Actually, the beginnings were poverty. The people who really did the hard work (which wasn't the capitalists) demanded bread and went on strike. The autocratic Czar eventually abdicated in March, after which a provisional government was formed that was supposed to form a new democratic government. So the February revolution was a social democratic revolution, and not a Leninist one. Originally even the Bolsheviks (including Stalin, ironically) intended to go along with this democratic government. It was only when Lenin returned from exile that the Bolsheviks went hardline and demanded all power, and that led to the October revolution where Lenin instated his dictatorship of the elite.
So only the October was a communist revolution in the Leninist sense of the word. Had Lenin not returned from his exile, Russia might have become a decent democracy. Unfortunately it went from one autocracy to another, just with a different aristocracy at the top.
Personally I tend to buy legit games because I trust them more, I expect them to not contain code that will fuck up my machine. Every event like the sony rootkit fiasco hurts that trust though.
Exactly. That's why nowadays I check if a game has any DRM before I buy it, and what that DRM can do to my machine. I simply don't do first week or even first month purchases anymore, exactly because malicious DRM is too common.
Added benefit is that by the time I buy a game, there's a patch that fixes the most serious bugs.
Slashdot Mirror
Vieleicht solltest Du auch erst einmal deutsch lernen ...
Are we going to get faulty spelling flames in German now?
Nuclear is clean, safe and practically inexhaustible.
It has a bad track record on those, though.
And nuclear and conventional power don't need generators?
Ofcourse not. You pour the fuel in, and it's magically turned into electricity. Downsides only count for technologies that don't use fossil fuels.
Don't you love the impartial scientific tone here?
TFA is wrong in so many ways. It says solar cells are made from one of the most common materials on earth, but because you can make even more efficient solar cells from extremely rare materials, it's not sustainable?
Cover the rooftops of the world with 25% efficient solar cells and we'll have more energy than we know how to spend (although I'm sure we can find something). 50% efficient solar cells are only worth it if they're less than twice as expensive.
But even beyond that, Indium solar cells are only unsustainable if they actually use up the Indium and stop functioning after that. If they don't use up the Indium, they are perfectly sustainable. It's just that the capacity is limited by the amount of Indium we can find.
You're the new guy they just hired to replace him. Who cares about CNAMEs when you're on the server looking at the hostname? Someone tells you 'daffy' and 'kirk' are down. What are they? What do they do?
On the other hand, if I told you 'mx2' and 'nas1' are down, you have a better idea of what you're dealing with... Forget that there's a CNAME from mail to daffy and a CNAME from p0rnserver to nas1.
I don't see how mx2 and nas1 are more informative than daffy or kirk.
Ofcourse if you've got lots of servers that are essentially the same, then it makes sense to call them daffy00 - daffy99.
Well I think the reason for having a bunch of "Cute" names for the server is just really prevent confusion.
But also occasionally just for fun or to show off.
I still remember coming across my-hostname-is-longer-than-yours.mit.edu.
At my university, machines were named after boats. Usually sailing boats, but when students got a new machine to experiment with, it was called titanic.
It puts the achievement into the right perspective. Outperforming a country with less than 4% surface (and similarly smaller number of citizens)
Number of citizens isn't quite that much smaller. I think Germany has about 30% the population size of the US.
But Germany is quite clearly a front runner in clean energy. It's inevitable that larger countries will eventually overtake it in absolute numbers. And I'm glad the US is already doing that. Good job!
Exactly. For the moment, the political and societal will to do something is a much bigger factor than land area or climate. Germany is the front runner, but as soon as everybody else finally catches up, it'll be overtaken in solar by sunnier countries, and in wind power by windier countries.
You'd think Netherland (my country) would be quite good at wind power, but apparently we suck.
Well, locations where these 'wind farms' are both out of eye sight and ear shot (as they can be quite loud) are rather rare.
Much more so in a relatively densely populated country like Germany, though.
But they don't need to be out of sight or ear shot, you just put them in a place that's noisier and uglier than windmills. Along motorways, for example. And that's something that Germany has a lot of.
No idea if they actually put them there, though. Much of Germany is probably too hilly. Along the coast is more efficient, but Germany is rather short on coastline.
I think there was a story last year, where some rich community in Florida managed to get a off-shore wind farm denied because the towers would just be visible on the horizon...
So they don't have power lines, highways or railroads in Florida? Or, I don't know, ugly apartment blocks? Wind farms are benign in comparison. But hey, put them wherever the oil platforms are.
I'd still be wary of working for a company that subjects people to that kind of release form. Or lie detector tests, for that matter.
Actually, my first reaction on reading the article was "holy *&#$&*#*$, this is amazingly good for an automated translation."
I thought exactly the same thing. I had to check the url bar a few times.
Ofcourse there were a few places where sentences weren't grammatical, bit still, I'm very impressed.
Many years ago I read a story about an artist who had some hits in the '60s or '70s. Decades later she started a website where some of her songs were available for free, and suddenly her sales go up again.
Exposure means sales. Downloads means exposure. It's a very simple equation.
The only artists who don't benefit from downloads are the ones suffering from overexposure already.
You could make the same argument about thieves.
Not the same thing.
Again. Same applies for theft.
Not the same thing.
Suppose McDonalds launches a new burger and sales and profitability both go up, but employees are stealing them at a higher than usual rate too. Yeah the burger was a success and worth doing even if the theft has gone up because profitability is up, but that doesn't mean you simply ignore the employee theft problem.
Not the same thing.
Ditto for theft.
Not the same thing. You're comparing apples and oranges.
By stealing hamburgers or other physical products, you deny someone else the use of that product, it costs resources, etc. That's not the case with illegal downloads. Furthermore, how many thieves leave money for the stuff they stole? Some downloaders do that. They download the crack because the legally purchased software is no good. How many physical products exist where a stolen version is superior to a legally purchased version?
You're comparing apples and oranges, and those are not the same thing in a variety of ways.
I'm not supporting DRM, but isn't the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials is the cause of DRM at first place?
The fear that illegal sharing is hurting sales, certainly. Let's face it, copying software is as old as software itself, and trying to prevent that is almost as old. The problem is, it doesn't work. By its very nature, you can't prevent software from being copied, and invasive DRM is certainly the wrong answer.
If downloaders don't like DRM, then they should instead find legal ways to get over with DRM (ie. boycott, complain, sue) instead of giving a good claim to those using DRM on their products.
The downloaders aren't harmed by the DRM, the paying customers are (many of whom resort to downloading the crack despite having a legal copy). That's the entire reason why DRM is the wrong solution. It encourages piracy.
And suing your customers isn't a good solution either. The only good solution I'm aware of is providing better quality and better service to paying customers. That's what Stardock, Valve and (to a lesser extend, perhaps) iTunes are focusing on, and that seems to work.
Heck, the complete medieval, rome and shogun was on sale for 24 some months ago!
When Medieval 2 Total War came out, my PC wasn't even powerful enough to play it. Now I have a PC that can play it, and what do you know? I find the game for $10. Cool stuff. I just hope it doesn't have crippling DRM, but $10 is low enough to take that risk blindly.
I've paid over $50 (sometimes a lot more) for other games, but only when I knew in advance they'd be good and they'd work.
Yes, its common knowledge that there is a correlation, but are they in anyway meaningfully linked. I mean, the pro-infringement camp like to point to this and say, look infringement is actually increasing sales... the more people download the more they buy.
Pro-infringement camp? Your choice of words exposes your biased world view. Few people are pro-infringement. Sure, they exist, but most people are simply pro-being able to use stuff. How much they insist on paying money for that varies, but it's all about the content, not the infringement. That's just a by-product of getting at the content.
Does downloading music actually increase the amount you buy, or is it simply the case that the people who are most interested in music download and buy the most.
...
The only question is what percentage of those that chose to infringe it would have bought it if that was the only way to get it. Obviously, a huge swathe of them would simply have done without.
You seem to live in a fairy tale land where there's a magical dial to regulate the number of downloads. Illegal downloads don't cause stuff, they are caused by stuff. If you don't like illegal downloads, you need to look at the real causes.
Even more so, illegal downloads aren't even an interesting statistic to producers. They should only care about the number of sales. If sales and downloads both go up, they're still doing something right. If sales and downloads both go down, they're still doing something wrong. The downloads don't matter, the sales do.
A situation where downloads are impossible is simply not going to happen outside magical fairyland. All that matters is: how do you get people to buy your stuff. Stop seeing downloads as missed sales. Many of them are sales, many others would never have been sales.
Are they correlated or one causes the other? I don't think its clear.
They are quite clearly correlated. The causation isn't so obvious, but my guess is they're both caused by a desire for games, music and movies, and possibly a desire to get the best experience from them.
I have noticed this too. The people who consume the most, well... consume the most. They are just content whores :) Some they will pirate, things they can easily get and like they will buy as much of as they can. They just want the content, whatever is the easiest way for them to get it most of the time. At least this is what I have seen.
So smart producers will make sure that paying for it is the easiest way to get the content. That means paid downloads without crippling DRM. That means your HD DVD or BluRay should simply work at full resolution no matter what. That means CD you buy should be rippable so you can put them on your mp3-player.
I don't think 50+% of the people are actually opposed to copyright. They're just opposed to it being used as an excuse for harmful DRM and other complications. They want to see their movies and play their games, and don't mind paying for them if they're any good, but paying lots of money for crap that doesn't work gets tired really fast.
What is this article trying to say? That copyright infringement is good because the people doing it are actually also buying a lot of games?
No, it's saying that the industry is fighting the wrong fight. They're attacking their own customers.
That's bullshit. There is no correlation here, unless you studied the purchasing habits of a set group of people who couldn't pirate stuff for a year and they could the next year.
What the hell does that mean? If the study shows that people who buy more also download more, and people who download less also purchase less, than that's correlation. It doesn't necessarily say anything about causation, but the correlation is quite obvious.
Hardcore gamers buy a lot of games. If hardcore gamers also pirate a lot, then this is a disaster for people making hardcore games.
No. People buying lots of games are not a disaster for people who make those games. Those people finding a different hobby would be a disaster, though.
Put yourself in the position of someone making a game. If the guy who doesn't pay for your game buys a lot of CD's, that doesn't help pay your mortgage or buy your groceries.
People who don't buy your stuff don't pay your mortgage no matter what other stuff they do buy and whether or not they download your stuff illegally. Pirates don't matter. Customers do.
Everyone I know making games is moving to flash games that are ad-supported, console gaming, or doing MMO games.
Then you need to get acquainted with Brad Wardell from Stardock. He's the one who said "pirates don't matter", he's applied this to his single player PC games which don't have any copy protection, and sell very well. His strategy works because he focuses on pleasing his customers instead of chasing them away.
If people want the option to ever be playing single-player games, they need to stop assuming they can get them for free, and free-ride off the honest people who still open their wallet for decent entertainment.
And if companies want people to pay for their games, they need to stop assuming that they can hurt the play experience of honest, paying customers without chasing them towards cracked versions of the game that offer a superior experience.
It's a two-way street. Companies are trying to control their customers, but a free market simply doesn't work like that.
An unscientific look at my friends seems to suggest that the people who buy the most also pirate the most. There actually seems to be a fairly consistent ration between amount downloaded and amount purchased.
It's been common knowledge for quite some time now. Only the industry insists on ignoring it.
On the face of it, it's illogical for them to buy anything but clearly there's some good reason for them to do so.
A lot of downloaders have surprisingly high ethical standards. Some purchase a legal copy, don't install it (because of DRM) and download the cracked version instead.
After all, what's a dutchman (or woman) to do when they have the economy blues but hoist the Jolly Roger and go out for a good old pillage on the high seas.
The pride of our national history, the VOC made much of its early profits through piracy. It brought us our Golden Age. It makes sens to go back to those pragmatic mercantile principles, right?
Even our prime minister lauded the VOC mentality a few month ago. (And got criticised for it because that includes slave trade and colonialism, but nobody mentioned piracy at the time.)
This hdd seems to be competing with the spinpoint f1 and the latest of seagate's 7200 RPM hdds. The kicker is this is a "green" series drive. It uses variable RPM technology. It actually spins at 5400 RPM quite often.
"Quite often"? Do you mean it's really variable, intead of merely unspecified, as with WD's other Green Power drives? There they suggested variable speeds when it wasn't. The original WD GP drives rotated at 5400 rpm all the time. (And personally I don't think it's possible to vary the spindle speed of a drive during operation.)
They didn't dare to mention that because they were afraid people might see 5400 rpm as slow and old fashioned, when in this case it's actually modern, efficient, and almost just as fast as other manufacturers' 7200 rpm drives. An impressive feat that they should be proud of, instead of trying to disguise it with misleading specs.
Gamers, remember, your power supply/CPU/video card are the biggest culprits.
True, although modern CPUs (like Intel's E8x00 series) also don't consume all that much power anymore (3W idle, 30W during load, I read once), power supplies are getting more efficient, and even some modern video cards try not to use 100 W to draw the desktop.
Lower power will generally equate to lower hear and thus less breakdowns though.
And less noise. There's a lot of benefits here.
Nice try Captain Revisionist, but the October, February and succeeding Soviet Revolutions were very much communist and all of the hard working 'capitalists' that lost their family owned businesses through appropriation would probably argue otherwise, if they could. While the end result might have been complete corruption of communist 'ideals' (arguably the end result of communism), the beginnings were very much communist.
Actually, the beginnings were poverty. The people who really did the hard work (which wasn't the capitalists) demanded bread and went on strike. The autocratic Czar eventually abdicated in March, after which a provisional government was formed that was supposed to form a new democratic government. So the February revolution was a social democratic revolution, and not a Leninist one. Originally even the Bolsheviks (including Stalin, ironically) intended to go along with this democratic government. It was only when Lenin returned from exile that the Bolsheviks went hardline and demanded all power, and that led to the October revolution where Lenin instated his dictatorship of the elite.
So only the October was a communist revolution in the Leninist sense of the word. Had Lenin not returned from his exile, Russia might have become a decent democracy. Unfortunately it went from one autocracy to another, just with a different aristocracy at the top.
Personally I tend to buy legit games because I trust them more, I expect them to not contain code that will fuck up my machine. Every event like the sony rootkit fiasco hurts that trust though.
Exactly. That's why nowadays I check if a game has any DRM before I buy it, and what that DRM can do to my machine. I simply don't do first week or even first month purchases anymore, exactly because malicious DRM is too common.
Added benefit is that by the time I buy a game, there's a patch that fixes the most serious bugs.