It's a trade off. "Free services" typically require more leg work and can come with legal or security risks. I used to have a great XBMC & torrenting setup years ago. I spent significant time customizing it and various plugins, extending scripts etc. I had fun, and took necessary precautions. Millions wouldn't. Some are happy to pay €9/month to another evil corp for convenience (where it works for them).

If that involves stifling other's creativity and harming society, then I'd argue no.

Realistically, it is a balancing act.

Copyright, patent and even trademark laws should promote sustainable creativity and societal progress. They try to achieve this by granting some extra (non-intrinsic) rights to creators.

That these are regularly abused to stifle competition and creativity in the name of profit is a cancer deserving treatment.

And faced with an imperfect world: If any law or its implementation feels unjust, then most people will feel morally OK with breaking it.

labwc is working pretty well these days. Screen tearing for games and all.

There are a bunch of environment variables that I set this time though, which may have contributed to a better experience this time.

One of these years my children will discover the PS3 hidden unused in the entertainment center since they were born, and there'll be 2mil+1. Muhaha.

PvE seems like a DLC feature to me (and hence should be included with EoD), but could have been marketed as a subscription instead, with the new edition including it for life. ie. Make it feel like renting a server. Even their backdown seems like a bad business move on their part.

The real problematic part, which they don't seem to be addressing (or are they?): the scavs-don't-target-you-at-distance thing is clearly over the top and pay to win, as is the invite-your-friends-to-a-live-match feature, unless it's PvE mode only and I misunderstood. edit: it looks like it will be PvE only now.

Who cares?

My company's 9,000 CentOS machines and over 100,000 containers now mostly run Amazon Linux or Alpine. Rocky Linux was preferred by some, but we led the way and the rest followed. Our final licensed RH systems will also disappear this quarter (legacies of a DC-centric era), and we will be free of them.

It was inertia that kept us with RH, but their bad faith moves kicked us into action. We now have better security tooling and processes all around, too.

Good riddance, Red Hat (and IBM, until your next acquisition and corporate strangling)!

My expectation is that russia, like the soviets and frankly every major player, try and succeed often in this regard. Affairs, underage girls/boys, murder, tax evasion, photos of meetings with spies. If there's nothing to find and they want it, they can sometimes manufacture it.

I'm sure active blackmail is not sooo common, but it happens.

Heh. I guess an alternative is that they are a useful idiot of a paid actor, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Given the account age, it's probably an existing user's dedicated meme bot account.

I'm also looking forward to a viable/stable alternative. I have serious doubts that I'll see one in my lifetime, unfortunately.

Tea would be healthier but alas, I want something cold in hot weather!

Absolutely right that it has to be legislated by Government and enforced. Pricing in externalities is important, but at the very least they should be accounted for/reported on honestly (and also not over-inflated).

Consumerism is complicated, of course. It is often manufactured, one way or another. From lack of viable or convenient alternatives (eg. public transport / safe walking and bicycle paths), to straight up advertising and social pressures, to incentives or requirements from above (eg. job, laws, etc.).

"Thanks, Smokey!"