Do you ever talk on your cell phone? You wouldn't be upset if your cell provider released all your phone calls publicly online, would you? How about if Gmail made all your e-mails public? You willingly gave them all that information, why would you expect them to keep it private?
Bad customer service makes their userbase ripe for the taking by any other social network. They don't have a proprietary wall like a custom format to lock us into their particular service. The critical mass of users is the closest they have, but that isn't so difficult for users to re-create elsewhere in the same way Facebook got it.
The fact that no other serivce has started taking over Facebook's marketshare could mean its hard to do right. Or it could mean that serious competition is right around the corner.
"Uses it" isn't as binary as you make it sound. I'm sure everyone has a few friends that spend all day on it, but the majority of users seem to avoid actually going there unless forced to by an e-mail notification of something specifically pertaining to them (eg. a private message or photo tagged of them). Having lots of signups doesn't mean as much as having the users actively visiting your site.
I think it's pretty safe to assume from the OP's description that his dad only does this when there is little or no traffic around, and certainly not when there's a lineup of people trying to turn left behind him. Notice the OP said "his own private advance left", not "an advanced left for him and the huge line of cars backed up behind him".
What makes you think Blizzard is "catering" to foul mouthed children? Have you looked elsewhere on the internet? This is hardly something unique to Blizzard or even to video games.
Ugh, when did they change this? They're going to maintain 3 different tournament ladders and 3 different versions of the multiplayer game, one for each expansion?
NOT maintaining 3 multiplayer editions of the game was the bulk of their pitch for making it into 3 games. The single player content was supposed to be what you were paying for. Did someone high up decide no one was going to buy the 2nd two games and decide to risk forcing all 3 on everyone?
Will they at least be priced as expansions ($20? ok ok....$40?) instead of as full priced games?
Do you really find MMO players any more insufferable than eg. FPS games? MMOs seems a lot better to me, because it ties people up with the same longevity and social structure that makes people (generally) behave in real life. The FPS games I've played all had transient naming, so you could say and do anything and it would never follow you to the next server you played on. The only exception was once they started banning CD-keys for cheating.
MMO guilds and FPS clans are both ways to play these games socially without ever bumping into people you don't care for. It totally changes the game, usually for the better. But not always.
Sorry I missed that - quite strange that they would tie up software restrictions with carrier restrictions, as these are entirely different issues.
But in all cases that means more control of the device for consumers. It's not an absurd lawsuit, it's about information control.
Personally I would love to have all phones available across all carriers, and would also love to have full software access (or at LEAST reverse-engineering rights despite the DMCA).
But I still think the lawsuit is absurd. Countless other companies that have been doing the same things for years or even decades. Does Nintendo have a "monopoly" on their WiiWare marketplace? Does Amazon have a monopoly on the Kindle marketplace? Sony on what OS can be installed on the PS3?
The way this should get "fixed" is by the courts overturning the DMCA provisions that prevent reverse engineering. After that, you could go to Best Buy and "buy" a jailbreak kit for your iPhone that lets you run apps that do support 3rd party marketplaces, or the cards that let you run your own software on the DS.
Contrary to that hope, Sony and Nintendo have both been locking things down further and winning lawsuits against sellers of jailbreak kits. Why would the courts spontaneously reverse all this case law when it comes to Apple and the iPhone? That's why the lawsuit is absurd.
Unfortunately, even if they "win" it's going to be a settlement that gives the lawyers a pile of cash and gets the customers a $5 coupon. Apple and kin will get to keep being as restrictive as they want. Nothing good will come of this.:\
But that's just the latest on the iPhone4: the long running carrier exclusivity lawsuit rumors have been upgraded to Class Action status.
The class action lawsuit is about carrier exclusivity, not the app store or other software restrictions. This should be obvious considering the Kindle and every game console have the exact same software restrictions, with the Kindle even having 1984 remotely removed from users' devices, without (afaik) a lawsuit being filed against Amazon.
The carrier exclusivity lawsuit for Apple being tied to AT&T seems absurd. Is there any way whatsoever this lawsuit will succeed?
What would blocking carrier exclusivity mean for every other phone manufacturer? The (dumb) Nokia phone that I have now is Verizon-only. MOST phones have been carrier-exclusive, especially considering we only have 2 primary carriers per technology (GSM and TMDA) in the US anyway.
The lawsuit makes about as much sense as a CPU-Exclusivity class action lawsuit against Microsoft for not making Windows on PowerPC. It's lawyers making an absurd lawsuit against a target with big pockets, hoping to get swatted away with a settlement.
I went to Japan shortly after the first iPhone was launched, and they had as many (or more) of them on the subways than I saw in America. I went to stores looking for their flying cars and hoverboards and and teleporters, hoping I could bring back something amazing to America. I was pretty sorely disappointed.
All I saw from their phones was as much texting as a teenage girl, and people reading websites and news on their cramped little screens.
This is the same stuff phones in America have been able to do for the past decade, but that no one has wanted to do because of American carriers' horrendous pricing on texting and data plans.
It's sad that I had to come this far down to find an upmodded post talking about the actual issue at hand, and pointing out there's very little merit to it.
Every other upmodded post is blindly lashing out at Apple as being de facto wrong and evil.
I must be new here, why would I expect objectivity regarding Apple from Slashdot users...
I'd say a review from a well-respected magazine like Consumer Reports that discusses their confirmation of technical problems in the iPhone belong in the tech support board. Professional and objective confirmation of a major product flaw is pretty serious and relevant.
On the other hand, I would fully expect them to limit the number of threads discussing the same topic, and to pick one that isn't a complete troll about it. I haven't seen any indication that this is the approach Apple's forum moderators are taking.
RIght, the listed calories on the label is low or zero. Yet I've never heard of a study showing diet sodas result in weight loss. Diet soda is a scam that's making fat people even fatter.
Fiber makes you feel full too, and it's a very easy measure of whether a given carbohydrate-heavy food is healthy or not. If it's got less than 2g of fiber, it's almost guaranteed to be junk food.
Saying sugar is a carbohydrate is like saying trans-fat is a fat, therefore we shouldn't eat any fat. Sugar is a simple carbohydrate. That doesn't mean the high fiber complex carbohydrates humans have been eating as long as they've been around are suddenly bad for us.
How do you measure calories in diet soda such that it's in 100% agreement with how the human body processes it? I have no clue, but honestly, it's irrelevant. No study has ever shown diet soda to cause a decrease in weight. Whether we understand why or not, diet soda is every bit as bad as regular soda. If anything it's worse. People think they can drink it while trying to lose weight, or drink it in excess.
Anyway, carbohydrates aren't bad for you. But too many carbohydrates are.
Totally agreed - that's what most "X food is bad for you" statements come down to: excess.
Ignoring any subconscious subterfuge by advertising agencies (or Devo), the most basic use of advertising is getting you to know a product or company even exists.
Now that I watch TV almost solely through Netflix, I never see advertisements. While I like this in theory, there are movies that come and go without my ever hearing about them. Sometimes ones I wish I had seen in the theater.
Or even if you know it exists, advertisements keep brands fresh in your mind. A Budweiser ad probably isn't alerting you that Budweiser beer exists, but it's still influencing you.
None of those advertising effects require clicking on the ads, and are probably the bulk of the value that makes advertising something companies consider worth paying for.
Personally I use Flashblock to avoid ever seeing obnoxious Flash advertisements, and block images from individual servers if I find an ad egregiously obnoxious. This works pretty well and makes me feel a little like I'm still contributing to the financial solvency of my favorite sites. I've never bothered to tick "don't show ads" on Slashdot for instance - their ads are generally relevant and not too obnoxious.
Individuals make mistakes. For groups to make mistakes, especially a group as big as Blizzard, requires monumental stupidity. Either Activision put their foot down and said "you're going to do this", or the higher-ups at Blizzard completely ignored the majority of the company who said this was a terrible idea.
Corporations making mistakes is nothing at all like individuals making mistakes.
The Facebook brainwashing worked on Activision apparently, but it still hasn't worked on users.
Facebook is popular because it's PRIVATE, FRIENDS-ONLY. Most people refuse to share their private, personal information on the public internet. Facebook is only popular because of the privacy that marking everything friends-only affords.
Every time Facebook tries to (inexplicably) force users' private information to be public, there is a huge backlash and Facebook has to retreat.
Somehow, whatever motivation (greed?) leads Facebook to try to destroy their users' privacy leaked into Activision/Blizzard and made them attempt to do the same.
No surprise, there was the exact same backlash from users that Facebook gets every time they try this bullshit.
You're afforded quite a bit of anonymity when driving and at the grocery store. You're not in the work place, but that's why (the majority of) people are more cautious at work than on the road.
Note that cautious can mean a lot of things. It can mean not being a jerk to your co-workers. But it can also mean being quiet because you're afraid to speak honestly. It can mean pretending to be someone you're not. It can mean not participating in something you want to.
The internet lets people be less cautious. That means more trolls, but it also means more honesty, and more freedom. That's one of the prime reasons the internet is so popular. Same with MMOs and other multiplayer videogames.
Taking away freedom that is currently there leads to protests. People don't want to lose their freedom. People have never had freedom at work, so thats just how things are, and the reason they go home and hop on an anonymous video game in their free time at home.
That's a great ideal, and it's awesome that your boss is laid back. Consider yourself lucky.
I've heard from recruiting companies that they won't hire anyone who plays WOW. All because of one or two bad experiences with WOW players.
There are also child murderers who played DOOM. But what teenage boy of that generation didn't play DOOM? Yet there is still a generation of adults who assign a stigma to games because of anecdotal evidence.
WOW is that incredibly-popular game of the current generation. Where DOOM was causing kids to kill each other, WOW is turning them into drooling XP-farming slackers.
The same employers turning down job applicants because of a google search are clueless that their star employee also plays WOW. The only difference is the star employee was smart enough to keep his video game hobby private.
Thanks to Blizzard, having a professional career may now mean avoiding Blizzard and Activision PC games. That's the choice they're moving toward - either play our games under your real name, with every piece of loot and boss kill published the internet, or don't play our games at all.
To many of us with a job and a family, the answer is easy: there are plenty of games out there that I can still play without giving up my privacy.
The reason people are so free-wheeling with Facebook is because it is PRIVATE, FRIENDS-ONLY. You're not sharing your great bowel movement status update with the whole world, future employers, co-workers, potential girlfriends, and total strangers. You're sharing it only with your family and friends who you've explicitly friended on facebook.
Every time Facebook has taken (already-entered) personal information and made it public there has been a huge backlash. When "likes" were forced public many people, myself included, removed all of that content from their facebook. The ONLY reason we have that information on facebook is because it is PRIVATE.
Blizzard is skipping right over the "private, friends-only" concept that made social networking popular on facebook. They're going straight to "no privacy whatsoever" and acting surprised that no one wants it.
The complete destruction of privacy is something that only corporations with a monetary stake are interested in.
"we’ll blast seeds with radiation and chemicals to get lots of mutations,"
Is that really done? I was under the impression that mutations almost universally result in death of organisms. (meiosis and sexual procreation being the primary cause of variety for evolution)
Yeah, the RealID thing was strange, and it's only getting stranger. You now have to share your login name with all of your friends. In a game that was already rife with phishing and hacking to obtain logins BEFORE your login was used anywhere aside from logging in.
Now your username and real name are going to be inseparable from the game, effectively. Who wants that? Anyone?
Having blue posters "go public" doesn't sell me on the idea. They were *already* public, most of them. And unlike us, they have moderation power to lock or remove threads they don't like, where they're being abused, or where information is being posted that is private.
When someone posts an unflattering picture of me in my realm forum will they be as quick to lock it as they were when a picture of all the Community Managers was posted and half the responses were asking about "the cute chick in the back"? I doubt it.
In starcraft 2 (beta) you create an account "identifier" that is different than your login name or real name. Why can't WOW use the same thing, for the same purpose? Your reputation would follow you between forums, between toons, between guilds. There is no need to bring your login or real name into it to achieve that.
Slashdot Mirror
It certainly makes sense as a company to do this.
It's only funny because unlike Google and Apple's devices, no one wants a W7 phone. Not even for free.
Do you ever talk on your cell phone? You wouldn't be upset if your cell provider released all your phone calls publicly online, would you? How about if Gmail made all your e-mails public? You willingly gave them all that information, why would you expect them to keep it private?
Bad customer service makes their userbase ripe for the taking by any other social network. They don't have a proprietary wall like a custom format to lock us into their particular service. The critical mass of users is the closest they have, but that isn't so difficult for users to re-create elsewhere in the same way Facebook got it.
The fact that no other serivce has started taking over Facebook's marketshare could mean its hard to do right. Or it could mean that serious competition is right around the corner.
"Uses it" isn't as binary as you make it sound. I'm sure everyone has a few friends that spend all day on it, but the majority of users seem to avoid actually going there unless forced to by an e-mail notification of something specifically pertaining to them (eg. a private message or photo tagged of them). Having lots of signups doesn't mean as much as having the users actively visiting your site.
I think it's pretty safe to assume from the OP's description that his dad only does this when there is little or no traffic around, and certainly not when there's a lineup of people trying to turn left behind him. Notice the OP said "his own private advance left", not "an advanced left for him and the huge line of cars backed up behind him".
What makes you think Blizzard is "catering" to foul mouthed children? Have you looked elsewhere on the internet? This is hardly something unique to Blizzard or even to video games.
WOW is hugely popular in the military. I'm pretty sure it doesn't support LAN play.
Ugh, when did they change this? They're going to maintain 3 different tournament ladders and 3 different versions of the multiplayer game, one for each expansion?
NOT maintaining 3 multiplayer editions of the game was the bulk of their pitch for making it into 3 games. The single player content was supposed to be what you were paying for. Did someone high up decide no one was going to buy the 2nd two games and decide to risk forcing all 3 on everyone?
Will they at least be priced as expansions ($20? ok ok....$40?) instead of as full priced games?
Do you really find MMO players any more insufferable than eg. FPS games? MMOs seems a lot better to me, because it ties people up with the same longevity and social structure that makes people (generally) behave in real life. The FPS games I've played all had transient naming, so you could say and do anything and it would never follow you to the next server you played on. The only exception was once they started banning CD-keys for cheating.
MMO guilds and FPS clans are both ways to play these games socially without ever bumping into people you don't care for. It totally changes the game, usually for the better. But not always.
Sorry I missed that - quite strange that they would tie up software restrictions with carrier restrictions, as these are entirely different issues.
But in all cases that means more control of the device for consumers. It's not an absurd lawsuit, it's about information control.
Personally I would love to have all phones available across all carriers, and would also love to have full software access (or at LEAST reverse-engineering rights despite the DMCA).
But I still think the lawsuit is absurd. Countless other companies that have been doing the same things for years or even decades. Does Nintendo have a "monopoly" on their WiiWare marketplace? Does Amazon have a monopoly on the Kindle marketplace? Sony on what OS can be installed on the PS3?
The way this should get "fixed" is by the courts overturning the DMCA provisions that prevent reverse engineering. After that, you could go to Best Buy and "buy" a jailbreak kit for your iPhone that lets you run apps that do support 3rd party marketplaces, or the cards that let you run your own software on the DS.
Contrary to that hope, Sony and Nintendo have both been locking things down further and winning lawsuits against sellers of jailbreak kits. Why would the courts spontaneously reverse all this case law when it comes to Apple and the iPhone? That's why the lawsuit is absurd.
Unfortunately, even if they "win" it's going to be a settlement that gives the lawyers a pile of cash and gets the customers a $5 coupon. Apple and kin will get to keep being as restrictive as they want. Nothing good will come of this. :\
From TFS:
But that's just the latest on the iPhone4: the long running carrier exclusivity lawsuit rumors have been upgraded to Class Action status.
The class action lawsuit is about carrier exclusivity, not the app store or other software restrictions. This should be obvious considering the Kindle and every game console have the exact same software restrictions, with the Kindle even having 1984 remotely removed from users' devices, without (afaik) a lawsuit being filed against Amazon.
The carrier exclusivity lawsuit for Apple being tied to AT&T seems absurd. Is there any way whatsoever this lawsuit will succeed?
What would blocking carrier exclusivity mean for every other phone manufacturer? The (dumb) Nokia phone that I have now is Verizon-only. MOST phones have been carrier-exclusive, especially considering we only have 2 primary carriers per technology (GSM and TMDA) in the US anyway.
The lawsuit makes about as much sense as a CPU-Exclusivity class action lawsuit against Microsoft for not making Windows on PowerPC. It's lawyers making an absurd lawsuit against a target with big pockets, hoping to get swatted away with a settlement.
No. Nice myth though.
I went to Japan shortly after the first iPhone was launched, and they had as many (or more) of them on the subways than I saw in America. I went to stores looking for their flying cars and hoverboards and and teleporters, hoping I could bring back something amazing to America. I was pretty sorely disappointed.
All I saw from their phones was as much texting as a teenage girl, and people reading websites and news on their cramped little screens.
This is the same stuff phones in America have been able to do for the past decade, but that no one has wanted to do because of American carriers' horrendous pricing on texting and data plans.
It's sad that I had to come this far down to find an upmodded post talking about the actual issue at hand, and pointing out there's very little merit to it.
Every other upmodded post is blindly lashing out at Apple as being de facto wrong and evil.
I must be new here, why would I expect objectivity regarding Apple from Slashdot users...
I'd say a review from a well-respected magazine like Consumer Reports that discusses their confirmation of technical problems in the iPhone belong in the tech support board. Professional and objective confirmation of a major product flaw is pretty serious and relevant.
On the other hand, I would fully expect them to limit the number of threads discussing the same topic, and to pick one that isn't a complete troll about it. I haven't seen any indication that this is the approach Apple's forum moderators are taking.
RIght, the listed calories on the label is low or zero. Yet I've never heard of a study showing diet sodas result in weight loss. Diet soda is a scam that's making fat people even fatter.
Fiber makes you feel full too, and it's a very easy measure of whether a given carbohydrate-heavy food is healthy or not. If it's got less than 2g of fiber, it's almost guaranteed to be junk food.
Saying sugar is a carbohydrate is like saying trans-fat is a fat, therefore we shouldn't eat any fat. Sugar is a simple carbohydrate. That doesn't mean the high fiber complex carbohydrates humans have been eating as long as they've been around are suddenly bad for us.
How do you measure calories in diet soda such that it's in 100% agreement with how the human body processes it? I have no clue, but honestly, it's irrelevant. No study has ever shown diet soda to cause a decrease in weight. Whether we understand why or not, diet soda is every bit as bad as regular soda. If anything it's worse. People think they can drink it while trying to lose weight, or drink it in excess.
Anyway, carbohydrates aren't bad for you. But too many carbohydrates are.
Totally agreed - that's what most "X food is bad for you" statements come down to: excess.
This. Carbohydrates are not bad. The obesity epidemic of the past decade or two clearly has nothing to do with carbohydrates (alone).
Low-fiber foods that don't make you feel full? Sure.
Overly-refined foods packed with excessive sugar? Sure.
Beverages (including milk, but namely soda and "diet" soda) with as many calories as a meal? Sure.
Every time I see someone claim carboyhydrates are bad for you I put my face in my palm and shake my head slowly.
Ignoring any subconscious subterfuge by advertising agencies (or Devo), the most basic use of advertising is getting you to know a product or company even exists.
Now that I watch TV almost solely through Netflix, I never see advertisements. While I like this in theory, there are movies that come and go without my ever hearing about them. Sometimes ones I wish I had seen in the theater.
Or even if you know it exists, advertisements keep brands fresh in your mind. A Budweiser ad probably isn't alerting you that Budweiser beer exists, but it's still influencing you.
None of those advertising effects require clicking on the ads, and are probably the bulk of the value that makes advertising something companies consider worth paying for.
Personally I use Flashblock to avoid ever seeing obnoxious Flash advertisements, and block images from individual servers if I find an ad egregiously obnoxious. This works pretty well and makes me feel a little like I'm still contributing to the financial solvency of my favorite sites. I've never bothered to tick "don't show ads" on Slashdot for instance - their ads are generally relevant and not too obnoxious.
Individuals make mistakes. For groups to make mistakes, especially a group as big as Blizzard, requires monumental stupidity. Either Activision put their foot down and said "you're going to do this", or the higher-ups at Blizzard completely ignored the majority of the company who said this was a terrible idea.
Corporations making mistakes is nothing at all like individuals making mistakes.
The Facebook brainwashing worked on Activision apparently, but it still hasn't worked on users.
Facebook is popular because it's PRIVATE, FRIENDS-ONLY. Most people refuse to share their private, personal information on the public internet. Facebook is only popular because of the privacy that marking everything friends-only affords.
Every time Facebook tries to (inexplicably) force users' private information to be public, there is a huge backlash and Facebook has to retreat.
Somehow, whatever motivation (greed?) leads Facebook to try to destroy their users' privacy leaked into Activision/Blizzard and made them attempt to do the same.
No surprise, there was the exact same backlash from users that Facebook gets every time they try this bullshit.
You're afforded quite a bit of anonymity when driving and at the grocery store. You're not in the work place, but that's why (the majority of) people are more cautious at work than on the road.
Note that cautious can mean a lot of things. It can mean not being a jerk to your co-workers. But it can also mean being quiet because you're afraid to speak honestly. It can mean pretending to be someone you're not. It can mean not participating in something you want to.
The internet lets people be less cautious. That means more trolls, but it also means more honesty, and more freedom. That's one of the prime reasons the internet is so popular. Same with MMOs and other multiplayer videogames.
Taking away freedom that is currently there leads to protests. People don't want to lose their freedom. People have never had freedom at work, so thats just how things are, and the reason they go home and hop on an anonymous video game in their free time at home.
That's a great ideal, and it's awesome that your boss is laid back. Consider yourself lucky.
I've heard from recruiting companies that they won't hire anyone who plays WOW. All because of one or two bad experiences with WOW players.
There are also child murderers who played DOOM. But what teenage boy of that generation didn't play DOOM? Yet there is still a generation of adults who assign a stigma to games because of anecdotal evidence.
WOW is that incredibly-popular game of the current generation. Where DOOM was causing kids to kill each other, WOW is turning them into drooling XP-farming slackers.
The same employers turning down job applicants because of a google search are clueless that their star employee also plays WOW. The only difference is the star employee was smart enough to keep his video game hobby private.
Thanks to Blizzard, having a professional career may now mean avoiding Blizzard and Activision PC games. That's the choice they're moving toward - either play our games under your real name, with every piece of loot and boss kill published the internet, or don't play our games at all.
To many of us with a job and a family, the answer is easy: there are plenty of games out there that I can still play without giving up my privacy.
The reason people are so free-wheeling with Facebook is because it is PRIVATE, FRIENDS-ONLY. You're not sharing your great bowel movement status update with the whole world, future employers, co-workers, potential girlfriends, and total strangers. You're sharing it only with your family and friends who you've explicitly friended on facebook.
Every time Facebook has taken (already-entered) personal information and made it public there has been a huge backlash. When "likes" were forced public many people, myself included, removed all of that content from their facebook. The ONLY reason we have that information on facebook is because it is PRIVATE.
Blizzard is skipping right over the "private, friends-only" concept that made social networking popular on facebook. They're going straight to "no privacy whatsoever" and acting surprised that no one wants it.
The complete destruction of privacy is something that only corporations with a monetary stake are interested in.
"we’ll blast seeds with radiation and chemicals to get lots of mutations,"
Is that really done? I was under the impression that mutations almost universally result in death of organisms. (meiosis and sexual procreation being the primary cause of variety for evolution)
Yeah, the RealID thing was strange, and it's only getting stranger. You now have to share your login name with all of your friends. In a game that was already rife with phishing and hacking to obtain logins BEFORE your login was used anywhere aside from logging in.
Now your username and real name are going to be inseparable from the game, effectively. Who wants that? Anyone?
Having blue posters "go public" doesn't sell me on the idea. They were *already* public, most of them. And unlike us, they have moderation power to lock or remove threads they don't like, where they're being abused, or where information is being posted that is private.
When someone posts an unflattering picture of me in my realm forum will they be as quick to lock it as they were when a picture of all the Community Managers was posted and half the responses were asking about "the cute chick in the back"? I doubt it.
In starcraft 2 (beta) you create an account "identifier" that is different than your login name or real name. Why can't WOW use the same thing, for the same purpose? Your reputation would follow you between forums, between toons, between guilds. There is no need to bring your login or real name into it to achieve that.