hyperjon

This is more the truth than anything. I had a friend work at EA 15 years ago as a tester. Had nothing good to say about it—just stress and more stress. One day his car broke down. And like that, he was fired. No ifs, ands, or buts—just fired. Zero fucks. (Not in any way the worst story ever, but close to home, y'know?) While it doesn't make sense for the end users (as it shouldn't), the decision to add DRM was made by the people with a vested monetary interest in the company—i.e. major stockholders. Their goal? To stop losing money on their cash cow(s). Obviously it's not made for the consumer in mind (which is why bad business decisions go forward *coughmicrosoftcough*). Out of touch? Yeah. While they can reach out to their user base, they'll first and foremost be thinking about retaining profits in mind. That'll never go away. So cutting down competition is viable, DRM is viable, and microtransactions are viable (i'm looking at you, pay-$5-to-reload-your-clip shooting game). Hence, not contributing to their business model is a good response to that. Regardless of what defense-force thugs come out to pressure you otherwise, you're ultimately in control. Support or don't.

ArsTechnica? The source is tainted. Much like kotaku, polygon, etc., it acts as a speakerpiece for the anti side. Anyway... Regarding bionic augmentations, it's generally a bad idea. The Ghost in the Shell series (most notably Arise) presents a strong argument against such augmentations. Simply put, the possibility of having memories erased/rewritten (among other things) is a nightmare in itself. Not to mention the expenses in maintaining such high-tech equipment. And if that's not bad enough, there's the dilemma of upgrading a system that can't be upgraded further (which the GITS Arise movie portrays very well).

Regarding Magic Eye pictures, there's one technique to see the hidden image, and it's through crossing eyes. Basically you can use your keyboard as a reference point: stare at the keys and begin to cross your eyes until the keys kind of merge with each other, then look up at the image.