That thing is one of the biggest pains to remove from someone's machine once they've got it too. Had to help my roommate get rid of the 2008 version on his laptop.
If enough customers defect to other carriers rather than renew their contract to AT&T and Verizon's new tiered data garbage they will have to drop the idea. I don't have much hope in this happening but when my renewal comes up I will do my part.
If you're on iPhone and you're jailbroken get 3g Unrestrictor (I think that's what they're calling it now) off of Cydia. Once you've used it to fool Skype into thinking it's on WiFi you can make all the voip calls you want. It's the one thing I miss after making the switch to Android, I haven't found something comparable to it yet.
Maybe some serious infrastructure pounding from things like video calling will inspire customers to get the infrastructure they've been lagging behind on in place faster.
Apple isn't even supporting PPC with their latest releases (Snow Leopard cannot be installed on a PPC Mac). I don't think it's fair to expect Blizzard to continue support after even the manufacturer has dropped it.
Actually the forum idea was something they thought of to reduce the flaming and idiocy that runs rampant on the WoW forums. If you've spent any amount of time there as I once did you would know why anything to reduce this would seem very attractive to them.
The lack of a convenient way to opt out of Real ID was bad enough
I don't understand why people keep making this point. RealID was and still is an opt-in system. By default if you did nothing you were not using RealID, only by sending someone a RealID friend request or accepting one would you be opting in to RealID. The forum issue I can see more justification in, though for me that's not enough to write off Blizzard, they never implemented it and I don't use their forums anyway. It just means I'll be keeping an eye on what they do a little more closely.
As Blizzard said they designed the system mainly for people to use with their real life friends. I don't know about you but my real life friends already know where I live. Now I definitely agree that letting you hide your real name could spread the usefulness of the features in RealID to some in-game friends but seeing as that was not their stated design I'll consider that to be a suggestion for new features rather than a failure to implement what they said they would implement.
The real name required for posting on the forums was a stupid idea but it was also never implemented and posting on the official forums is not required to play the game (in fact I personally find other forums far more useful for WoW related discussion and info). Their actual implementation of it has been quite decent, it was opt-in by default and they were upfront about how it worked. A few people got burned with the friends-of-friends deal but again, this was known beforehand and it was a user's choice whether or not to opt in by using the feature.
While certainly an interesting application of law (and a nice illustration of why laws that society no longer wishes to have enforced should be removed and not simply ignored) that sets a horrible public example for that church. While some may argue otherwise I feel that it is hypocritical for a church (which generally teach people to uphold moral behavior) to, upon discovering this law, make the arguably unethical decision to sue the homeowner for repair costs they were unwilling to cover themselves.
Bad counterexample. Speed limits don't *cause* people to drive faster or more dangerously.
Used improperly they certainly can. The town next to mine growing up set a speed limit of 25 along a fairly well traveled state route which normally has a speed limit of 50 in that area. They placed the sign indicating the drop to 25 just over a hill around a blind corner in an obvious attempt to raise revenue from speeding tickets (the cops loved hiding there). People would come around the corner going 50-55, see immediately in front of them a speed limit sign saying 25 and a cop 100ft down the road and predictably slam on their brakes. Occasionally someone behind them would come around the corner and see the brake lights but not have enough time to slow down before rear-ending them.
In this case the unintended consequences aren't from local idiocy on a town's part but from people's insistence on performing the task anyway. I doubt this will be a popular opinion but I think the ban on talking on the phone should be relaxed while texting is enforced strictly. It is less dangerous to have people holding a phone to their head talking than staring into their lap trying to type. Regardless of the danger shown we know that the public is insistent on communicating using their phones while driving. More and stricter laws will simply result in more effort expended hiding the activity, it's an arms race. If people know there are large penalties for being caught texting but that they can talk on a phone call many will simply switch to calling instead of texting.
Perhaps if we actually had driver training worth a damn we would know who. Those who can't handle a vehicle well simply wouldn't have a license. Given the current difficulty and "training" required we may as well just have an automated booth that takes your picture and prints out a license at every Wal-Mart, Rite Aid, etc...
In states without "no fault" laws you will end up paying if you cause the accident. The insurance will pay now, you will pay over time in the form of increased insurance premiums. You can quite easily end up paying more over time than the whole ordeal would have cost you if you just paid for the accident up front, of course this is not always feasible or legal (Many states require accidents over a certain amount of damage be reported to the police which means the insurance will get involved).
Having moved from a fault state to a no-fault state in the past two years I think the "no-fault" laws are one of the problems that need solving honestly.
Were these more recent models? I'm wondering if their quality has gone downhill or if I just managed to get the one exceptionally sturdy model by accident.
Actually when I first saw this with 0 comments the site loaded instantly, by the time I tried to load one of the Javascript apps Slashdot had hammered it into oblivion.
Slashdot Mirror
That thing is one of the biggest pains to remove from someone's machine once they've got it too. Had to help my roommate get rid of the 2008 version on his laptop.
If enough customers defect to other carriers rather than renew their contract to AT&T and Verizon's new tiered data garbage they will have to drop the idea. I don't have much hope in this happening but when my renewal comes up I will do my part.
If you're on iPhone and you're jailbroken get 3g Unrestrictor (I think that's what they're calling it now) off of Cydia. Once you've used it to fool Skype into thinking it's on WiFi you can make all the voip calls you want. It's the one thing I miss after making the switch to Android, I haven't found something comparable to it yet.
Maybe some serious infrastructure pounding from things like video calling will inspire customers to get the infrastructure they've been lagging behind on in place faster.
Since I was talking about the forums and Trade chat/Barrens chat are in game, no.
Apple isn't even supporting PPC with their latest releases (Snow Leopard cannot be installed on a PPC Mac). I don't think it's fair to expect Blizzard to continue support after even the manufacturer has dropped it.
Regardless of waiting for cataclysm you will still need to buy WOTLK to level from 70-80.
Actually the forum idea was something they thought of to reduce the flaming and idiocy that runs rampant on the WoW forums. If you've spent any amount of time there as I once did you would know why anything to reduce this would seem very attractive to them.
The lack of a convenient way to opt out of Real ID was bad enough
I don't understand why people keep making this point. RealID was and still is an opt-in system. By default if you did nothing you were not using RealID, only by sending someone a RealID friend request or accepting one would you be opting in to RealID. The forum issue I can see more justification in, though for me that's not enough to write off Blizzard, they never implemented it and I don't use their forums anyway. It just means I'll be keeping an eye on what they do a little more closely.
As Blizzard said they designed the system mainly for people to use with their real life friends. I don't know about you but my real life friends already know where I live. Now I definitely agree that letting you hide your real name could spread the usefulness of the features in RealID to some in-game friends but seeing as that was not their stated design I'll consider that to be a suggestion for new features rather than a failure to implement what they said they would implement.
The real name required for posting on the forums was a stupid idea but it was also never implemented and posting on the official forums is not required to play the game (in fact I personally find other forums far more useful for WoW related discussion and info). Their actual implementation of it has been quite decent, it was opt-in by default and they were upfront about how it worked. A few people got burned with the friends-of-friends deal but again, this was known beforehand and it was a user's choice whether or not to opt in by using the feature.
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck... it will do less damage than many of our current politicians, vote it in.
But then the work week would start on Tuesday which means Tuesday would become the new Monday. It's a vicious cycle!
Even better ban the sky! After all you can't shoot a plane out of the sky if there is no sky to shoot it out of!
Was that "back in the day" when you had to walk uphill both ways to school with no shoes and the car analogies all used horses?
While certainly an interesting application of law (and a nice illustration of why laws that society no longer wishes to have enforced should be removed and not simply ignored) that sets a horrible public example for that church. While some may argue otherwise I feel that it is hypocritical for a church (which generally teach people to uphold moral behavior) to, upon discovering this law, make the arguably unethical decision to sue the homeowner for repair costs they were unwilling to cover themselves.
Out of pure curiosity what is your motivation for not doing business with Amazon?
Bad counterexample. Speed limits don't *cause* people to drive faster or more dangerously.
Used improperly they certainly can. The town next to mine growing up set a speed limit of 25 along a fairly well traveled state route which normally has a speed limit of 50 in that area. They placed the sign indicating the drop to 25 just over a hill around a blind corner in an obvious attempt to raise revenue from speeding tickets (the cops loved hiding there). People would come around the corner going 50-55, see immediately in front of them a speed limit sign saying 25 and a cop 100ft down the road and predictably slam on their brakes. Occasionally someone behind them would come around the corner and see the brake lights but not have enough time to slow down before rear-ending them.
In this case the unintended consequences aren't from local idiocy on a town's part but from people's insistence on performing the task anyway. I doubt this will be a popular opinion but I think the ban on talking on the phone should be relaxed while texting is enforced strictly. It is less dangerous to have people holding a phone to their head talking than staring into their lap trying to type. Regardless of the danger shown we know that the public is insistent on communicating using their phones while driving. More and stricter laws will simply result in more effort expended hiding the activity, it's an arms race. If people know there are large penalties for being caught texting but that they can talk on a phone call many will simply switch to calling instead of texting.
Perhaps if we actually had driver training worth a damn we would know who. Those who can't handle a vehicle well simply wouldn't have a license. Given the current difficulty and "training" required we may as well just have an automated booth that takes your picture and prints out a license at every Wal-Mart, Rite Aid, etc...
Those 90% of idiots will just ask one of their friends who does know how to hack the phone for them.
In states without "no fault" laws you will end up paying if you cause the accident. The insurance will pay now, you will pay over time in the form of increased insurance premiums. You can quite easily end up paying more over time than the whole ordeal would have cost you if you just paid for the accident up front, of course this is not always feasible or legal (Many states require accidents over a certain amount of damage be reported to the police which means the insurance will get involved).
Having moved from a fault state to a no-fault state in the past two years I think the "no-fault" laws are one of the problems that need solving honestly.
Were these more recent models? I'm wondering if their quality has gone downhill or if I just managed to get the one exceptionally sturdy model by accident.
TFA is sourced from this article at Ars which should (in theory) stay up so I recommend reading it there.
Actually when I first saw this with 0 comments the site loaded instantly, by the time I tried to load one of the Javascript apps Slashdot had hammered it into oblivion.
It has been Slashdotted.