I suspect

amanfromars of cheating as I too think he has gotten

much better or someone is impersonating him not fair

otherwise it actually makes some kind of sense no

meds required at least none that I am aware of.

Copy Protection and PC games

While this doesn't relate to music/movies as such, it does relate to the DRM crap. I love PC games, as I'm sure many of you do, and I have no issues dropping $50-$70 on a good game (I figure 20-30 hours of gameplay, which means $2/hr or so.. cheaper then pool or drinking). The issue I have is when I pay this large amount of money, bring my shiny disk home and pop it in the drive.. only to find out that it refuses to run because of the copy protection. Maybe it detected a virtual drive, maybe securom just sucks so hard core it THOUGHT it MAYBE detected something strange and refuses to run. So I have to go download a crack from what may be a suspect site in order to run my legally purchased game.. which naturally throws out of whack my ambitions to play online. When it is easier for me to download a game online (and maybe faster), then going to the store and buying it and installing it, there is a problem.

DRM only works in the US?

Let's see some of the previous attempts by big companies to limit what I can watch...

1) Audio cassettes... well, it didn't take long for someone to introduce the "record button", and even less time to a dual-deck to arrive to make copying even easier.

2) Video casettes... took longer, but once again that little "record" button arrived, and if you could afford two VCRs, you were in business.

3) DVDs... My favourite was the Zoning on the disks. Didn't take long for people to realise that most of these zones were a pain in the ass programmed into the players at the last moment. Result? In Australia at least, you'd have a hard time BUYING a zoned player, even from the big brands.

4) PS/PS2/games... another "zoned" product. Result? Again in Australia, the courts ruled that it was legal to mod-chip your PS/PS2 for the express purpose of playing oversea games. The fact that you could ALSO play copied games was a different kettle of fish and you'd have to catch someone in the act - the chipping itself was legal.

I won't even mention the various ripping options...

I have a very large collection of DVDs and CDs (although I haven't bought a CD in a while... nothing interesting out there lately). I buy DVDs on a weekly basis. Why? Cause it's still easier - I might have to buy them overseas (because some idiots sitting in a boardroom in Melbourne has decided the Aussie public does not want that particualr title), but in the long run the storage of the data is easier that way.

So I refuse to upgrade to Vista, I refuse to buy a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD piece of kit. Eventually, the companies will realise the stupidity of their actions... some of them may even do so before filling for bankruptcy.