If you take security seriously, you're not going to use DRM-infested proprietary software at all, fool. In fact, you'd stay far away from *Sony* products, as you should be aware.

Do you know what DRM is? It inherently restricts you.

And obviously proprietary software does not respect the four freedoms.

Free software is often more secure, so no.

It's called voting with your wallet and not supporting evil activities. Sony's products aren't "good" 99% of the time anyway because they're filled with DRM and proprietary software.

That makes no sense. You don't buy from them because they're doing Evil Thing X. If lots of people do this and make it known why they are not buying, they will hopefully stop.

Avoiding Sony's products is easy. In general, you should avoid giving money to evil companies if you can.

That's because it does. I stay away from companies that do evil things, as I don't want to fund their evil activities. Sony still makes proprietary software and DRM, so I don't want to give them funding. This is very easy to understand.

Yes, and also to protect yourself from the company's malicious 'features.'

The ends don't justify the means. Maybe they should have real security rather than relying on locked-down, DRM-infested consoles and obscurity. This would never happen with free software. Good security doesn't rely on obscurity like this.

If you're willing to sacrifice your rights so you can avoid the bogeymen known as cheaters, you lack principles.

You and your ilk are the real bullies for attacking everyone's fundamental liberties.

Good thing he wasn't comparing them then. You never explained why the logic doesn't apply in the other situation. The logic of, "Criminals have it, so police should too." is ridiculous.

Your view of privacy isn't sustainable in any free country.

No, it couldn't, because you're the one who wants to give the government near-unlimited surveillance powers. You'll be crying when you find them in your precious house, because there's nothing else for them to do.

When people vote in candidates supporting mass surveillance and the continued erosion of our fundamental liberties, constantly vote for 'the lesser of two evils' using shaky reasoning, and actively defend their choices, I can reach no other conclusions. You might think that's completely irrelevant, but I disagree.

There is no straw man here; that's an accurate description of what many believe in. There is no evidence that it exists, so I don't believe. Personal subjective experience isn't reliable given what we know of the human mind.

But that is a straw man. I simply don't see the evidence that most people are all that intelligent, so I don't see a reason to believe it. I see lots of things that convince me otherwise, as I've explained. You're certainly not providing anything convincing.

Show me an education system that enables a significant majority of people to truly understand complex mathematics (rather than just be mere users of it) and I'll be impressed. I can't prove that such a thing doesn't exist, and I do think many current education systems are flawed beyond belief, but most people can't even seem to do this in the best of environments.

Not so obvious to me. No need to play Internet psychologists.

I suggest that you learn to stop being an authoritarian moron, and then I'd feel no need to call you such things. As it is, though, the personal attacks you're getting are well-deserved, because people with attitudes such as yours are literally destroying our freedoms.

Information is power. Enough information combined with things like parallel construction means they can silence nearly anyone, and therefore crush democracy.

Furthermore, what you want violates the laws in many countries. A government allowed to violate the law is unlimited government.

Where are these anarchist organizations? Not here. Neither the ACLU or the EFF fit that description. They're merely trying to protect our fundamental liberties from freedom-hating scumbags such as you who wants everyone to be spied on merely because there's a non-zero possibility they could be terrorists, an idea which is in complete opposition with the principles that free, democratic countries are supposed to aspire to.

If you're fine with sacrificing everyone's fundamental liberties so you can feel safe, then I suggest moving to North Korea, which is one possible result out of many authoritarian results of your desired form of government.

Work on your logic. He did not say that the situations were exactly the same. He was testing your own idiotic logic in a different situation, which was "If criminals can use X, police should be able to use X." It never ceases to amaze me how many people don't understand the difference between saying two things are exactly alike and using analogies.

So you've arbitrarily decided that everything in your house is magically private while everything outside of your house isn't, and that because you don't care about privacy outside of your house, no one else should have any privacy. Amazing. Remind me why I should care about the privacy you want to have in your house? If the government doesn't respect any other form of privacy and you have to become a hermit if you don't want your privacy violated, why the hell would they respect your precious, precious form of privacy?

But I realize we live in the real world where there are more forms of privacy than just what you do in your house.

Non sequitur. The validity of my arguments remains the same regardless of whether or not I attack you. I could have said "1 + 1 = 2" and then called you an idiot, but that would not make what I said wrong.

That fortunately sounds technically impractical since it requires server administrators to all cooperate and somehow know you're telling the truth, but more importantly, unconstitutional in the US if you want the government to force that to happen. The US constitution doesn't grant the government the power to do such a thing, and furthermore, since the government would be forcing people to identify themselves if they want to speak, it would be a form of censorship. If you don't send your data the way we want you to (by identifying yourself), you don't get to speak at all.

Yeah, that's called a chilling effect. You've basically just silenced any speech that the majority vehemently disagrees with in the name of safety, which is the telltale sign of an authoritarian. I would rather bump into things I disagree with than get rid of anonymity.

Anyone who physically assaults others over speech is a barbarian and should be punished appropriately.

Freedom is dead. Finished. Over. Nothing is going to change that.

Nice self-fulfilling prophecy. While you whine and cry about how we're done for, there are people actually doing something. I'm sure many people felt the same as you during the civil rights movement, but thanks to people not giving up, it had many successes.

I'm not going to tell you to grow up, because your age/height has nothing to do with the conversation, but I will tell you to grow a brain.

I won't give my money to companies that continually do evil things; it's pretty simple. I don't want to support Sony's behavior; they support DRM, proprietary software, make use of rootkits, and their software has actual malicious features so they can screw over users (like they did with OtherOS).

Because there are other companies that don't do such evil things. Not Microsoft or Nintendo, but they exist. I don't really see the need to buy Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo garbage in the first place; it's so easy to avoid it.

Just like YOU want to feel safe at the expense of everyone else's fundamental liberties and the US constitution. Screw off. If you feel otherwise, you don't really belong in "the land of the free and the home of the brave," or any free country. You would rather the government unlimited power so you can have your perfect safety, all the while you pretend the people in the government are perfect beings. Move to North Korea and you'll have you ideal government.

It's funny how you hardcore authoritarians are always on the opposite side of organizations dedicated to protecting our liberties and privacy. That should make you feel bad, but you don't care about freedom one bit.

It's *one* problem, but mass surveillance would still be wrong either way.