Heh - wow.

We live in an age where pretty much none of what we use we've written ourselves. It's literally impossible for an individual  to check every line of code running on a system, as most software is written in teams, some small, some large. The OS itself has more code than physically possible to review by a single person.

So let us not fool ourselves: Whether downloaded or not, there is always a level of trust that they are all doing the "right thing" and not sticking anything bad on your system.

Most virus scanners have real time memory scanners, and actually, you may be more protected than you think:

-Most systems come with DEP enabled, which helps protect against patching important system files in memory.

-Most systems come with NTFS, which has a permission system to prevent patching important system files on the drive.

So your most important system files are probably safe. If you're taking security seriously and not being admin all the time.

What? Again.....What?

My oh my......i knew there was a reason i prefer to ignore your posts.

We'll, whadayaknow -- a Kangooroo just jumped in this mess, too.

   People here in Jakarta City of 16 million, choose to live under bridges because houses are too expensive and they can't be priated. If you are a pirate and live in a house, then we could call it a pirate house.

Biggest.  Understatement.  Ever.

Though, I was surprised to see this on the news.  Usually, it's how games are responsible for a whole manner of social ills or somesuch bull.

As for the pirates.  Well dammit, do any of them have any idea the harm they are doing to gamers who don't pirate?  I suspect they do and just don't give a hoot as long is they get it for free.  Bastards.

ROFLMAO

Any game with an exe file and internet access can potentially do it. However, noone sends an executable code in real-time, it's inefficient. Executable code is not generated real-time so client already has all the required code beforehand and server sends and recieves data only.

Do you even understand what are you talking about? Say, every MMORPG processes data server-side yet noone of the millions of users says about "security issues" because of it. I don't care about you, you may live in your delusions as much as you want, but please don't spread your bullshit ideas on public forums. Someone may actually believe you, and that will be bad.

And that reasoning would work fine for essentials like food and medicine etc. Computer games, however, are a luxury item. You don't need computer games. So if you can't afford them, you don't get them, simple as that.

Sure if your family is starving and you steal a loaf of bread that you can't afford to feed them, you get my sympathy. If, however, you want to play a game but you can't afford it and pirate it, you get my contempt.

Darn, here we go again.

Here's the equation; Education, Work, Food, Shelter, Relationship, Transportation (be it individual or collective), Leasures (TeeVee, portable Phones, Computers, gimmicks, addictions...), Luxury (Games or not), Investment (Retire from the chaos of personal ambitions & adulthood responsabilities or keep the standard of living you've worked VERY hard to obtain), looping back to first item in the list.

Cope with it. Anywhere on Earth.

(PS; Interesting link to PPP, though... comparing goods & services in the ENTIRE scope of industrialized conditions might give you a better grasp over the true "situations" since salary & revenues are matching expenses in more ways than GNP figures or productivity in specific regions.)

PC's aren't copyrighted information, they have actual physical property to aquire.  It's simple necessity.  You can take the software without paying for it, you can't take the hardware.  So they spend what money they have to spend on the hardware and take everything else that makes it worth having to begin with.  It's great for the hardware companies, neutral for the software companies.

Some of you need to learn the difference between passing a moral judgement on someone and placing blame on them for an actual effect.  There is no benefit to the programmer if someone doesn't buy a computer to begin with.

You don't have a point to miss.  What would be odd is if people with little to spend weren't blowing it on hardware to run the pirated goods.

A single guy making 20k a year has a couple thousand dollars of discretionary money in this country depending on where he lives.  That has to be split up amongst whatever discretionary activities he wants to do.  That's enough to justify a computer every few years.  You can spend around a third of it on the hardware and software and stay relatively up to date with plenty of things to do.  A guy with 500 bucks is in an entirely different situation, the hardware alone will take up half of his discretionary spending  If he passes on paying for the software, it's a purchase with excellent utility.  If he pays for the software, he doesn't get to eat out, see movies, buy music, all the wonderful things that people spend their discretionary spending on.

It's mind numbingly obvious.  Take how much money you spend on hardware and software, and then get rid of all the software expenses and add on all the stuff you wish you got but didn't have the money for.  The hardware is worth far more to the guy with 500 bucks to spend than it is for the guy with 2k, as long as he doesn't mind a little copyright infringement.  Which explains why hardware costs more in pirate countries than it does in rich yuppie countries.

I just can't wrap my mind around any links you try to shove into this argumentative, b0rsuk.

Sure, there are some business alternatives.

Sure, Gates has enough bazillions to not worry about Piracy -- heck he even wouldn't bend down to pick a juicy $100 bill since by the time he walks back again, that 10 seconds worth of wasting time costed him 10+ times as much.

Want theory? I'll give you one.

Piracy would control 100% of anything distributed worldwide (software or not, btw). Who's getting paid for **manufacturing** products?

You're asking for global economic chaos and work oblivion. Don't come complaining here when you run out of cash & FOOD though.

You steal anything, you're a thief.

Well, Zyx in particular is just in conflict with his own philosophical leanings, but generally speaking you break life down into two parts.  What you need, and what you want.

What you need is the bare essentials for survival, food and shelter.  What you want is everything else, video games ain't food.  Those of us who aren't socialists don't give a flying rats ass whether you can afford your video games or not, the ones that are would rather no one can afford them than only some people.

How he's ended up against third world piracy is a mystery to me.  It's an illogical argument to begin with, but a hardcore socialist should be hating on the rich guy instead of calling out some poor putz making 12k a year in Romania.  I write it off as a market solution to a pricing problem at the global scale.  Western civlization has a pricing problem, the pirates provide the solution.  The intelligent businesses seem to agree with me, but our entertainment industry is run by creative idiots that can't think analytically, so I doubt they'll ever catch on.

Regardless, poor people do not need entertainment.  It's a want.

Zyx, this is remarkably without any nuance. If the problem is (as in Russia) that people simply cannot afford access to products, the problem does not lie with pirates (and pirates aren't costing actual sales because the people pirating wouldn't by the product). The problem exists on a deeper, more fundamental level - economically speaking, people aren't making enough money and the economy itself is already a failure (except for those few who are affluent enough to be able to meet their needs and wants).

Locating the problem with people who can't afford movies and video games pirating them ignores much larger, more endemic problems that are only becoming worse. It can't be broken down into something so simple as "Right or wrong, black and white." There has to be a better way to deal with this stuff than by criminalizing people who already don't have much. The question shouldn't be "Are these people criminals?" but rather "Why is society in such a state that people cannot afford such items?"

And I don't really buy the idea that luxury items means that working class or unemployed people shouldn't have access to them. "Luxury" doesn't have to mean expensive, nor should it necessarily mean "unattainable." And I'm not saying that this means that piracy should be okay. Instead, I'm saying that the market itself is flawed, and creates the environment in which piracy becomes the appealing choice.