I think that’s how sports should be digested. It’s impossible to keep track of every single game, much less, even attend those games. I think that’s a luxury for those who obviously can afford to do so.

The only time I’m involved with sports is when the playoffs happen, so I’m there for the World Series. But I’m not there for the full 162-game season. I’ll root for my team when they’re doing good in the standings, whether they’ve done some right moves and criticize them when they do something stupid or fail the season.

Not too far off from what actually happened to some people. Christ. The levels the authorities went to protect the pockets of all of those rich executives.

We’re not in the 2000s where the RIAA/MPAA spent hour after hour, individually going after individuals whom they suspect is pirating.

They’ve changed up tactics all throughout the 2010s and into today. Where, they’re holding ISPs accountable and are targeting owners of services and pirating sites instead. They’ve actually got some victories under their belt through this, which is a damn shame, so it’s telling them that it is working. Not to mention we’ve had the misfortune of dealing with ACE, their little treehouse club and lots of copyright trolls that act as copycats who take it upon themselves to operate similarly as to how they did in the 2000s.

You have far greater risk being an owner, being the uploader and being the source of pirating than you are these days, just downloading it. Your ISP decides when they want to take action against whatever files you’ve downloaded.

As people have said, your best tools are with VPNs and figuring out which VPN has your back, most importantly. That’s what pirating has come down to and that is trust.

But blah blah, we get it, the feds will say copyright is a crime and blah blah. We got that decades ago, we just don’t care because consumer rights have been thoroughly fucked over which in turn, causes us to pirate. A lesson these idiots refuse to learn.

I do shit on people who continue to buy this because it’s telling the companies that it is an acceptable practice for them to do.

…That you can do through emulation also.

What I’m not understanding, are the boot-lickers who’re praising the publishers for making these ROMs available on the market. Like, pirates are the ones who have been doing the archiving and preserving while video game companies kicked the can down the street for the longest time. And only recently are these compilations released, are some people going like “WOW! THEY ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT PRESERVING! IT MAKES MY DICK HARD NOW!”

Like dude? These ROMs have been available for a long ass time and they weren’t because of these video game companies you’re happily throwing money down to.

It can’t be helped. There are websites out there that function best on both platforms. I’ve tried Floorp and Librewolf when trying to use whatever the therapist tossed at me. Things just ended up not working out, because the sites simply can’t care about those browsers. Only Chrome works best. Firefox, they throw a fit about versions and stuff.

That’s out of my hands.

Windows 8 being released as it was, was the death knoll period for how things are treated based on what platform. It was obvious where the focus shifted. Since then, websites started being designed with mobile in mind, that barely worked. We’re having all of these dumb virtual services that work optimally - on phone. We have apps that would’ve been great to also have desktop only work on - you guessed it - phones.

Programs are now called Apps. I think troubleshooting on mobile is perhaps one of the most frustrating and hopeless experiences one can have. When something just breaks, it could very well be anything and your phone is faster to being obsolete than your desktop would.

Where the hell did we go wrong?

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I want you to try and create something. Just something. Be an artist.

The moment you try selling your work and that’s all that you’re trying to sell on the side to make money and make ends meet.

Then you’ll understand.

Okay, thanks for an unneeded warning because nothing wrong has happened to me all this time. You keep sitting in that corner and being afraid with your little tinfoil hat on.

I have yet to ever have this happen to me. I’ve been pirating Windows OSes since Win2000 days.

This is only a risk if you don’t know what you’re getting into and do not take precautions. The best security for your PC and OS is common sense. Anti-virus and that junk just want your money to make you feel secure.

I pirate because my money is more important to be spent on necessities. A video game isn’t going to pay my bills. A music track isn’t going to pay my car payment. A book isn’t going to pay my groceries.

Entertainment to me is just a luxury. Not everything I’ve gotten was pirated, if but spent sparingly when sales and deals come around. But if me wanting something such as a game is going to come between that and me needing food for another week or two. The food is going to win out and that game is going to be pirated.

I don’t have all of the time in the world either to keep waiting, waiting, and waiting for deals to be low enough for me to afford whatever it is.

Man, it felt like maybe an entire generation ago since I felt I last needed discs for any level of pirating.

The last time I used one was just to get some linux distros to install when the USB flash method wasn’t working.

The American Government and those who lobby all the time for things to get their way. The only kind of history they like, is one they approve of. Any historical facts or things they disagree with, is white-washed and buried. The only things they bother to archive are what they think is dear to them and things that are mostly commonly known, nothing of interest.

Profit is the bottom line.

It’s quite sad, how many museums and archival efforts are allowed to die here. The video game industry, was happily allowing over 87% of games released in the past, to just rot and die off without a care. Pirates had to step in a preserve. The music industry, would only care so much about keeping things if they were successful artists. Just so much selective and arbitrary reasons to keep things.

There were so many EA games I wanted to buy.

Problem was, was this. No, I don’t want to subscribe to a service just to play something I bought off from another service on!