Agreed. The OP was so far off I couldn't even think of a way to respond to it. Blizzard has been hosting WOW pvp tournaments for years. They've been doing battle net ladder tournaments for SC and WOW for years as well.
The LAN thing is a little annoying, but the OP took it wayyyyyy out in left field.
I've never gotten any closer to SC pro gaming than watching some random videos forwarded by friends, yet I bought SC and SC2, and primarily played single player in both. If I play multiplayer with friends, it's usually comp stomp. I don't think the OP understands how incredibly niche competitive SC multiplayer is, especially in the US.
Are you talking about the WOW forums? People there disagree with them all the time. It's nearly the only reason anyone ever posts at all. You only get banned (or "shamed") if you're trolling, cursing, screaming, and generally being an obnoxious jerk.
They also give people many many chances before banning, usually locking threads and asking nicely to calm down and correct your tone/language. I've been disagreeing with Blizzard on their forums for years now and never had a problem.
I'm pretty sure the Real Name Required / Made Public aspect was what people were up in arms about. Having the option to keep 1 friends list across all your alts is pretty universally desired.
Apple didn't 'pay $1 billion to developers' cause they're such nice guys. They did so because that's what the developers had coming to them. To put it in the context that they did it for any other reason is faulty and/or misleading logic.
As a sarcastic comment above pointed out in regards to retail stores, of course Apple needs to make profit off their store. The fact that they make a profit doesn't mean they're not nice guys. It also doesn't mean they're not mean guys.
Regardless, it means they're doing smart business by running a successful store and giving an (arguably) large amount of profit to developers. They aren't taking advantage of their dominant position to jack up their own profits, afaik. That's what most companies would do in their situation.
This is what the OP was pointing out, not that Apple is some philanthropic martyr, creating an app market at their own expense out of the kindness of their heart.
A video player that can output to a TV and a video projector are similar enough for trademark infringement.
Consider that Apple used product differentiation to get out of infringing on Apple Music's trademark to continue as Apple Computers. But when they started making iTunes and selling MP3s, they went to settle with Apple Music first, despite being a music seller not a music label.
Which only occurred after you didn't return it for a week! Did you think they were just going to let you keep the movie forever?
Yes, when they had huge commercials about "no more late fees!!!!!", with no mention of "lol we're just gonna charge you full price for a used movie". Considering how few people return a movie late want to buy the movie, this was a nasty nasty trick.
A week also isn't very long considering Blockbuster continually increased their rental periods (and prices). The last time I went in one (several years ago) I'm not sure you even *could* rent a movie for less than 5 days. 2 more days and I'll get charged $15? As a customer, I'm supposed to be happy and excited about that?
Unless this changed since I worked there, this is out and out wrong. The rain check was for a FREE copy of that title on your next visit.
Overall, we don't have to worry about nature too much. At least not in the "doom and gloom" way, perhaps in the "we just lost some valuable species way".
The bigger concern for global warming is how it will impact humans. Not that we'll die off, just that it will cost a lot of money and resources to deal with the changes.
Didn't mean what? To demonstrate what HTML5 can be capable of? I really don't understand what you think they did wrong here.
Do you understand that HTML5 isn't a standard yet?
Do you understand that this is how standards are created? Companies develop technologies, demonstrate them, and request they become part of the open standard.
An Apple only playground? A cliff? It's a tech demo for heaven's sake. They could not get away with pushing HTML5 proprietary Apple-only with their pitiful marketshare. To suggest otherwise is frankly ludicrous.
There's nothing remotely strange about a company pushing for certain features to be included in a standard to restrict their tech demo to browsers that (shock!) implement that functionality.
It doesn't take a fanboy to know IOS and Flash aren't competing technologies, nor that "Steve Jobs held the web hostage" is so much flamebaiting hot air (seriously, wtf?).
Oh please - always trying to play the victim while on the attack at the same time. Just like the group of Digg gamers claimed a vast conspiracy against them and their beliefs, while they themselves were perpetrating by far the largest and worst conspiracy.
Totally agreed on the animosity being on both sides though. We're in the "Bush is a nazi, anti-war protest, green party liberals" phase of the Obama administration. Where dems lost votes due to the green party extremists, republicans are going to lose votes due to the tea party extremists. They are both splitting the conservative vote, and alienating moderates with extremist rhetoric.
Unfortunately they're also making a huge spectacle in the process, which is why the (zomg ultra-liberal!) media, who is actually just after eyeballs, keeps printing story after story about a small minority of extremists.
Half the jokes amount to little more than posting clips of extremist nutjobs and then pausing. When posting politicians' actual comments is "heavy handed force-fed satire", you know something is wrong with the politics. Or at least the news media enabling that kind of extremist nonsense.
Yep. Just the other day, a "media producer" came to my home and ate all my food. Sarcastic? Yes, a little. But providing me with something that I want in exchange for an agreed price is not "living off me".
Funny you should mention eating. Do you pay a copyright fee every time you copy the inventor of the Sandwich? Or how about every time you have Ranch dressing? You're being provided with something you want, so why aren't you compensating the original creator?
I don't think anyone disagrees that original works deserve compensation. But there's got to be a limit on how long they get to hold that culture hostage, and it needs to be a lot shorter than it is now. Most of us spend all day creating original works for our employer, but we don't expect to keep being compensated for them 80 years later.
You're wrong. And you probably, like my dad, have a 20-DVD DVD-changer in your family room.
I, on the other hand, like many people these days, have a networked HTPC with ripped copies of my (many) DVDs I have legally purchased. I also use it to watch Netflix these days. Mostly online because the physical DVDs they ship are - you guessed it - almost always too scratched to play.
I don't think Apples other products are relevant to the OP's question and argument.
Apple's methodology is to have a small lineup of products, and release new ones with updates features on a regular basis. Each product has a clear niche, even with how many iPod products they have out. This lets them put the time and quality into their individual products instead of losing focus and confusing customers ike, say, Dell, who has 27 lineups of the same basic desktop computer.
HTC doesn't have that many phones sharing the market yet, but this phone is so close to the Incredible that it's a bit insulting to their customer base. There are always upgrades, but a new phone and no support for their old one, this fast, is going to scare customers.
This release smacks of "oh crap, we think we're losing sales to Droid X and Evo because our screen isn't big enough!"
Then again, maybe their release cycle is just super-fast. I think my friend replaced his Eris with an Incredible before the Eris even got updated to the latest Android release. Not much reason to support your products if you think people will pay to upgrade instead.
I dunno, there's a clear correlation between the decline of pirates and the increase in autism and obesity. We need to stop bickering over this crap and start working to bring back pirates. I've got a box of eye patches and I know where we can get some parrots. Anybody interested?
I believe every state allows for home schooling. And of course you can leave the state (or the States) if you're not OK with vaccines. That seems like plenty of options apart from "forced to play".
And that's ignoring the fact that children aren't being harmed by vaccines. But if they hypothetically were, you'd still have a choice in the matter if you were really bad at math and wanted your child to die from an easily-prevented disease instead of taking a very small (even in the most insane of estimates) chance of vaccination harm.
It's quite reasonable for the state to prevent unvaccinated children from bringing communicable diseases to public schools.
I took a movie class that focused on Film Noir. The Spring semester of the class was going to be about Horror movies. Some friends took a literature class about science fiction. Focusing on a genre is a great way to dissect creative works and analyze the common themes as well as distinctions between works in the same genre.
Using modern works is a great way to teach kids while keeping them interested enough to learn. The latter part is whats missing from many schools.
Yep. And IE doesn't have Google in its default browser list until you jump through several additional hoops. Yet there are browsers in there I've never even heard of. It couldn't be more obvious who is being Evil here.
Um, you do recall that browser anti-trust was from Netscape, right? Google didn't open their wallet to Firefox until long after the government chose to let Microsoft continue exploiting their desktop monopoly to take over the browser market (among other markets) with their inferior web browser.
The court will consider each claim independently on its own merits. But the rest of us know that Microsoft has sour grapes and is up to its usual tricks. IE: throwing around funds from its OS monopoly to take over markets by any means possible.
When you got AOL back in the day, you were paying for an AOL walled garden. Even when they started including a Real Web Browser(tm) it took a long time to be advertised or thought of as "internet access".
With Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc. these days, you are paying for INTERNET. Blocking or slowing portions of that is at best misleading advertising.
Even beyond that, I'm not sure a Comcast extra-fast walled garden would violate net neutrality. Comcast's own services are already going to be fastest for Comcast users simply by existing on their internal network. If they offer Comcast walled garden at Super Fast Speeds(tm) and slow down the greater internet, that's still OK. That's just Super Slow Internet Service (tm) and they would be unable to advertise as a broadband internet provider.
The issue is when they advertise as a broadband internet provider, and then provide restricted access to some parts of the internet. Throttling Youtube but not Hulu, because Google refused to pay them a "please let your users access the internet For Real" fee.
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Agreed. The OP was so far off I couldn't even think of a way to respond to it. Blizzard has been hosting WOW pvp tournaments for years. They've been doing battle net ladder tournaments for SC and WOW for years as well.
The LAN thing is a little annoying, but the OP took it wayyyyyy out in left field.
I've never gotten any closer to SC pro gaming than watching some random videos forwarded by friends, yet I bought SC and SC2, and primarily played single player in both. If I play multiplayer with friends, it's usually comp stomp. I don't think the OP understands how incredibly niche competitive SC multiplayer is, especially in the US.
Are you talking about the WOW forums? People there disagree with them all the time. It's nearly the only reason anyone ever posts at all. You only get banned (or "shamed") if you're trolling, cursing, screaming, and generally being an obnoxious jerk.
They also give people many many chances before banning, usually locking threads and asking nicely to calm down and correct your tone/language. I've been disagreeing with Blizzard on their forums for years now and never had a problem.
I'm pretty sure the Real Name Required / Made Public aspect was what people were up in arms about. Having the option to keep 1 friends list across all your alts is pretty universally desired.
Apple didn't 'pay $1 billion to developers' cause they're such nice guys. They did so because that's what the developers had coming to them. To put it in the context that they did it for any other reason is faulty and/or misleading logic.
As a sarcastic comment above pointed out in regards to retail stores, of course Apple needs to make profit off their store. The fact that they make a profit doesn't mean they're not nice guys. It also doesn't mean they're not mean guys.
Regardless, it means they're doing smart business by running a successful store and giving an (arguably) large amount of profit to developers. They aren't taking advantage of their dominant position to jack up their own profits, afaik. That's what most companies would do in their situation.
This is what the OP was pointing out, not that Apple is some philanthropic martyr, creating an app market at their own expense out of the kindness of their heart.
That would be Google. ;)
A video player that can output to a TV and a video projector are similar enough for trademark infringement.
Consider that Apple used product differentiation to get out of infringing on Apple Music's trademark to continue as Apple Computers. But when they started making iTunes and selling MP3s, they went to settle with Apple Music first, despite being a music seller not a music label.
Which only occurred after you didn't return it for a week! Did you think they were just going to let you keep the movie forever?
Yes, when they had huge commercials about "no more late fees!!!!!", with no mention of "lol we're just gonna charge you full price for a used movie". Considering how few people return a movie late want to buy the movie, this was a nasty nasty trick.
A week also isn't very long considering Blockbuster continually increased their rental periods (and prices). The last time I went in one (several years ago) I'm not sure you even *could* rent a movie for less than 5 days. 2 more days and I'll get charged $15? As a customer, I'm supposed to be happy and excited about that?
Unless this changed since I worked there, this is out and out wrong. The rain check was for a FREE copy of that title on your next visit.
Thats what I remember as well.
Overall, we don't have to worry about nature too much. At least not in the "doom and gloom" way, perhaps in the "we just lost some valuable species way".
The bigger concern for global warming is how it will impact humans. Not that we'll die off, just that it will cost a lot of money and resources to deal with the changes.
Didn't mean what? To demonstrate what HTML5 can be capable of? I really don't understand what you think they did wrong here.
Do you understand that HTML5 isn't a standard yet?
Do you understand that this is how standards are created? Companies develop technologies, demonstrate them, and request they become part of the open standard.
An Apple only playground? A cliff? It's a tech demo for heaven's sake. They could not get away with pushing HTML5 proprietary Apple-only with their pitiful marketshare. To suggest otherwise is frankly ludicrous.
There's nothing remotely strange about a company pushing for certain features to be included in a standard to restrict their tech demo to browsers that (shock!) implement that functionality.
As long as it ends up a standard though, who cares? There's nothing nefarious about that.
/facepalm
Are you serious?
They made a tech demo of pre-release HTML5 and you consider that "trying to take over the interwebs with proprietary Apple-only tech"?
That is seriously reaching.
It doesn't take a fanboy to know IOS and Flash aren't competing technologies, nor that "Steve Jobs held the web hostage" is so much flamebaiting hot air (seriously, wtf?).
Oh please - always trying to play the victim while on the attack at the same time. Just like the group of Digg gamers claimed a vast conspiracy against them and their beliefs, while they themselves were perpetrating by far the largest and worst conspiracy.
Totally agreed on the animosity being on both sides though. We're in the "Bush is a nazi, anti-war protest, green party liberals" phase of the Obama administration. Where dems lost votes due to the green party extremists, republicans are going to lose votes due to the tea party extremists. They are both splitting the conservative vote, and alienating moderates with extremist rhetoric.
Unfortunately they're also making a huge spectacle in the process, which is why the (zomg ultra-liberal!) media, who is actually just after eyeballs, keeps printing story after story about a small minority of extremists.
Half the jokes amount to little more than posting clips of extremist nutjobs and then pausing. When posting politicians' actual comments is "heavy handed force-fed satire", you know something is wrong with the politics. Or at least the news media enabling that kind of extremist nonsense.
Yep. Just the other day, a "media producer" came to my home and ate all my food. Sarcastic? Yes, a little. But providing me with something that I want in exchange for an agreed price is not "living off me".
Funny you should mention eating. Do you pay a copyright fee every time you copy the inventor of the Sandwich? Or how about every time you have Ranch dressing? You're being provided with something you want, so why aren't you compensating the original creator?
I don't think anyone disagrees that original works deserve compensation. But there's got to be a limit on how long they get to hold that culture hostage, and it needs to be a lot shorter than it is now. Most of us spend all day creating original works for our employer, but we don't expect to keep being compensated for them 80 years later.
You're wrong. And you probably, like my dad, have a 20-DVD DVD-changer in your family room.
I, on the other hand, like many people these days, have a networked HTPC with ripped copies of my (many) DVDs I have legally purchased. I also use it to watch Netflix these days. Mostly online because the physical DVDs they ship are - you guessed it - almost always too scratched to play.
I don't think Apples other products are relevant to the OP's question and argument.
Apple's methodology is to have a small lineup of products, and release new ones with updates features on a regular basis. Each product has a clear niche, even with how many iPod products they have out. This lets them put the time and quality into their individual products instead of losing focus and confusing customers ike, say, Dell, who has 27 lineups of the same basic desktop computer.
HTC doesn't have that many phones sharing the market yet, but this phone is so close to the Incredible that it's a bit insulting to their customer base. There are always upgrades, but a new phone and no support for their old one, this fast, is going to scare customers.
This release smacks of "oh crap, we think we're losing sales to Droid X and Evo because our screen isn't big enough!"
Then again, maybe their release cycle is just super-fast. I think my friend replaced his Eris with an Incredible before the Eris even got updated to the latest Android release. Not much reason to support your products if you think people will pay to upgrade instead.
I dunno, there's a clear correlation between the decline of pirates and the increase in autism and obesity. We need to stop bickering over this crap and start working to bring back pirates. I've got a box of eye patches and I know where we can get some parrots. Anybody interested?
I believe every state allows for home schooling. And of course you can leave the state (or the States) if you're not OK with vaccines. That seems like plenty of options apart from "forced to play".
And that's ignoring the fact that children aren't being harmed by vaccines. But if they hypothetically were, you'd still have a choice in the matter if you were really bad at math and wanted your child to die from an easily-prevented disease instead of taking a very small (even in the most insane of estimates) chance of vaccination harm.
It's quite reasonable for the state to prevent unvaccinated children from bringing communicable diseases to public schools.
I took a movie class that focused on Film Noir. The Spring semester of the class was going to be about Horror movies. Some friends took a literature class about science fiction. Focusing on a genre is a great way to dissect creative works and analyze the common themes as well as distinctions between works in the same genre.
Using modern works is a great way to teach kids while keeping them interested enough to learn. The latter part is whats missing from many schools.
Yep. And IE doesn't have Google in its default browser list until you jump through several additional hoops. Yet there are browsers in there I've never even heard of. It couldn't be more obvious who is being Evil here.
Um, you do recall that browser anti-trust was from Netscape, right? Google didn't open their wallet to Firefox until long after the government chose to let Microsoft continue exploiting their desktop monopoly to take over the browser market (among other markets) with their inferior web browser.
The court will consider each claim independently on its own merits. But the rest of us know that Microsoft has sour grapes and is up to its usual tricks. IE: throwing around funds from its OS monopoly to take over markets by any means possible.
Agreed, I don't have nearly as much time to play WOW anymore!
The pre-internet corollary to this would be blabbing to everyone at a bar down the street from the courtroom.
Facebook has its issues, but they're mainly with respecting privacy settings.
When you got AOL back in the day, you were paying for an AOL walled garden. Even when they started including a Real Web Browser(tm) it took a long time to be advertised or thought of as "internet access".
With Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc. these days, you are paying for INTERNET. Blocking or slowing portions of that is at best misleading advertising.
Even beyond that, I'm not sure a Comcast extra-fast walled garden would violate net neutrality. Comcast's own services are already going to be fastest for Comcast users simply by existing on their internal network. If they offer Comcast walled garden at Super Fast Speeds(tm) and slow down the greater internet, that's still OK. That's just Super Slow Internet Service (tm) and they would be unable to advertise as a broadband internet provider.
The issue is when they advertise as a broadband internet provider, and then provide restricted access to some parts of the internet. Throttling Youtube but not Hulu, because Google refused to pay them a "please let your users access the internet For Real" fee.