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Postal Wins Court Case Brought by USPS
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing out a press release announcing Postal developer Running With Scissors has been ruled victorious in a court case brought by the United States Postal Service. This seems to be the culmination of a trademark suit which began in 1997 after the release of the original Postal, as the USPS commented "All of us at the Postal Service have a sense of humor, but there is nothing funny about your game 'Postal'", and then tried to prove the Postal Service has a proprietary use of the word 'Postal'. Running With Scissors have fun with this legal resolution: "With unlimited financial resources comes unlimited ego. POSTAL and POSTAL 2 represent everything the USPS isn't: a successful private enterprise that will never have to rely on an irrevocable government contract to keep its pockets perpetually lined with cash."
successful private enterprise ... crap
Now I don't think anyone that has looked into Postal 2 at all would call it successful, (Read this review
But I suppose it is successful at being a simulation of the USPS, that is
redune.com: The World 3.2 Megapixels at a time
I don't know which is lamer, the game Postal or the US Postal Service for trying to bring a lawsuit...
Although I would like to point out that the US postal service has much more utility. You can use any mailbox, and they'll get it there for you.
It's kind of like a game in itself, like you know, you try not to use the same mailbox for any letter. Like you could just put your bills in the mailbox in front of your house, but that's boring! For fun, how about mailing your gas bill in the one in the mailbox in front of the supermarket, your electric bill in the mailbox in front of the bank, etc etc. The fun never stops! And the mail still gets there, incredibly, no matter which box you choose!
Once you've done that around your town for a few weeks, you're ready for the big fun. It's time to take a road trip...where? It doesn't matter! North, South, East, West....drive 900 miles and mail a different bill in every town you come across! Why, last Christmas, I mailed my utility bills (due in Texas) from Washington State! And they got there! Amazing, and just a testament to the hardworking men and women who work hard to bring you the absolute uniformity of those true-blue boxes, all marked with "US Mail" and just a sprinkle of magic.
Thanks, US postal service, for making us laugh about love.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
It's like the 2 Live Crew of video games. While greatly appreciative of the fact that they've fought on behalf of free speech, I have to say that neither is all that great once you actually get a chance to purchase it. GTA3 is probably the 'edgiest' game that has managed to provide a good gaming experience (although I'm open to hearing about others).
as anybody who works for the post office can tell you there's not a lot of arrogant pride around there. Our current president wantts to take the USPS and turrn it into a private business, effectively killing the perpetuation of consistent and federally mandated service at regulated prices.
As for a shitty company that makes even shittier games....well......
The game Postal was named such so as to be like the phrase "going postal", which generically refers to getting angry to the point of snapping, sometimes resulting in violence.
The term stemmed from a rash of violent incidents in which postal workers came into their office (their post office) and would shoot up the place - sometimes due to inane stress levels and buracracy, other times because of being fired.
Why this happened mostly in post offices is anyone's guess, but the aforementioned buracracy, the pre-email volumes of mail causing stress, and the fact that since it was a government institution, striking was illegal.
Ergo, the game Postal took its name from a slang term, which took its name from the office where workplace violence was more or less common, and the reasons stemmed from the USPS themselves.
In short, it's the USPS' fault that the game got named that way. This is no different than Google trying to sue for the use of the slang term "google", except that Google's repsonse time is quicker. Oh, and no one gets killed when you go google.
Schnapple
does anyone remember the fact that only months after this suit was filed, more(CNN December 1997) than (CNN September 1997) one postal worker opened fire on his co-workers?
Every time some (half) wit chimes in with that comparison, it pisses me off.
& oe =UTF-8&q=coffee+spill+lawsuit+mcdonalds&spell= 1
See, McDonnolds used to keep their coffee just below boiling. REALLY FUCKING HOT. No where near a temperature where you could actually drink it. This was policy. Their thinking was that people at the drive through were less likely to drink the coffee right away, so the hotter it was, the better.
Okay, but see, people tend to hold their drinks in their croches. I've done it. And when nearly boiling coffee is spilled on your pink parts it can do you serious, long term damage. Mr Happy doesn't like second and third degree burns.
So McDonnalds had already lost Many of these cases (no, I don't know how many). There was a legal precedent that had been set. Burn yourself, McDonnalds gives you some money.
The point of the price tag on that particlar lawsuit is that the only way to get McDonnalds to actually change their policy was to make it too expensive to keep things as they were.
So you jack the suit into the roof just to get the attention of this corporate monolith.
From what I heard (and it's just a rumor) the lady took most of the money and handed to some burn victim charity.
A little poking around revealed that some of what I read was right, some was not:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8
None of the linked pages say what happened to the money that was awarded, though the two I looked at agreed that the final sum was far less than the 2.7 million dollars of the original decision.
Potential 3rd degree burns on your crotch, as company policy. To hell with that.
Fooz Meister