Wait, so how does an ATM that only synchronizes once a day know that I just put in the right pin number? Does every ATM on the planet download a list of every ATM card and PIN in existence?

I'm not trying to be sarcastic or glib, I'm just trying to understand how the system you describe could function.

Which, in turn, will continue to teach companies that they're fools not to sue everyone immediately for every little possible violation.

The law of unintended consequences is indeed a bitch.

Congratulations, you are the textbook definition of "part of the problem." You are why this is happening. Ubisoft is a company trying to make money; that's what companies DO. You, however, are an amoral asshole, and the cause of all of this DRM bullshit.

"For the lulz."

I.e. they do things specifically because it amuses them, regardless of the damage it causes. That's pretty clearly not good, and I'd say it goes well past neutral and down into chaotic evil territory.

I'm curious, do people who cover up outlets disgusts you? How about those who make sure there's a childproof fence around the pool? Or the ones who put a lock on the liquor cabinet?

Watching your child every second of every day is an equally dangerous proposition, in terms of their intellectual and emotional growth, as not watching them at all. They NEED to learn to think and operate independently, and being able to designate a subset of the Internet not filled with bomb instructions and donkey porn would be an excellent service to help them do that in relative safety.

And why, pray tell, should they mark up a quote from some movie over actual discussion? And not even a particularly interesting or well phrased one, at that.

But Max Payne wasn't film noir so much as a parody of film noir. At least, I assumed it was a parody. Oh god, they weren't serious, were they?

Bullshit. Libel and slander are illegal information in every free society on Earth.

Well, see, the game's not out yet. There ya go.

I was wondering when they'd start doing this one. Many of the attacks were done using a program called "low orbit ion cannon," essentially an opt-in botnet: run the program and it waits for a signal from a master node, then starts spamming requests at the specified target. Meaning that the participants in the attacks, far from the usual unknowing and unwilling infected, were in fact choosing specifically to join in the action. What's more, the nature of a DDoS makes proxy use counter-productive and ineffective (all attacks come from a small number of proxy IPs, being easily blockable, and you DDoS the proxy long before the target).

The end result? A list of unprotected ip addresses for a bunch of idiot thugs and 13-year old kids, not at all anonymous. Well done, geniuses.

Or, people could stop pirating games. That's both equally effective and equally likely.

List of Infant Mortality Rates

United States: 6.3 deaths per 100,000 live births

United Kingdom: 4.8 deaths per 100,000 live births

Oh I'm sorry, do the facts get in the way of your opinion? How rude of me.

Did you read your own link? That article lists clones, yes, but it hardly proves that the industry was "based off of clones." The only seminal game mentioned that was itself an absolute, blatant copy of another is Pong, and they paid out a $700k settlement to Magnavox for their duplication. The rest are either off-brand copyright theft or examples that clearly fall under "inspiration." No major work comes close to Zynga's bald-faced appropriations.

"Installing AMD dual core optimizer" (from the game installation)

Uh, game, I know you can't see that "Intel Inside" sticker, but still, I can save you some time...

I generally like Steam, but I really miss the option of a custom install from pre-Steam games. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to sit and watch DirectX and the Microsoft redistributable unpack their entire installation, run, and of course immediately quit, discovering their target already up to date. And doesn't automatically downloading a brand new copy of these with every game installation really defeat - or at least marginalize - their purpose?

Waaaait a minute. A six foot tall liquid-fueled rocket? On the ground at your farm, sure, that's safe. But it's a ROCKET. You obviously don't intend for it to STAY on the ground. And you don't own the airspace above a certain level.

My sympathy for your desire to experiment or engage in your hobby ends when you begin threatening to fire explosive devices into commercial airspace.