Precisely. Your name that's on your Battle.net account is used for billing purposes, used to positively identify you in case of account compromise severe enough that you cannot regain access, and a host of other reasons.
And now they want to use that as the positive identifier for you on the forums - forums which might as well be mandatory for getting technical support or customer service, as their email system takes weeks to reply and their phone lines are more often than not unable to take more callers into queue due to so many irresponsible people allowing their accounts to become compromised.
This is possibly the most insane thing Blizzard has ever attempted.
Bingo. I've bought games that I was severely on the fence about during the current sale because they were less than five dollars.
That's less than the cost of lunch at the university I work at. It's not something I'm going to lose sleep over if the game turns out bad, or as related to the story and argument at hand, if Steam suddenly winks out of existence and I can not authenticate them.
Cancel the contract and go with who, precisely? Many areas in the US are under, at best, a duopoly when it comes to high-speed options. If both of your options have clauses in their contracts that you don't agree with (i.e. bandwidth limitations in spite of "unlimited" claims), what's your recourse?
The problem is that they do not perceive it as an issue. Even their internal paperwork to employees at their retail stores emphasizes the whole "this is not a problem, do not admit that it is a problem, do not offer warranty repairs for this, do not offer anything free" mindset that they're pushing.
For a company as seemingly devoted to the "user experience" as Apple is, this is a laughably embarrassing position to take.
I had a waitress who complained that she could not split a $53 check 5 ways because "53 can't be divided by 5". I'd rather have everyone be able to do basic math than have 12 yr old math geniuses. The geniuses can wait to blossom in college or in the industry. The two are not mutually exclusive. The problem is that people are unwilling to invest in the infrastructure (both physical and human) necessary to make both possible at once.
Dual enrollment. My highschool allowed us to take classes at the local community college that would count for highschool while simultaneously they would count as college classes. Unfortunately, there's a few issues with programs like that - students without the money to afford the tuition for said coursework at the community college or the lack of self-transportation between high school and college were barred from the opportunity simply because of their socioeconomic standing.
Trust me, I was one of them. That's why I graduated high school in the second quartile of my graduating class - every opportunity for me to really test myself was barred due to the fact that my parents were dirt poor, so I saw no reason why I should try at all.
Blizzard tries to accommodate both kinds of players I really wish that were the case. However, having played from Closed Beta to about 1.12, quitting due to college, and coming back in 2.3, PVE is nowhere near the same level of focus and consideration that it used to be pre-TBC and pre-Arena. Abilities are frequently hammered due to being conceived as "overpowered", and classes that once had two or three ways to talent themselves out to perform their role (i.e. Hunters being able to go deep MM or 0/21/30 SV) are being shoehorned into one very specific and very boring talent lineup to be remotely competitive (i.e. Hunters being forced to go 41/20/0 and spam a very boring macro to be competitive DPSers) in a raiding environment.
Plus, the whole "arena tournament" nonsense is laughable at best, given the horrific balance in Arena.
And who's to say the memories of what you've done don't stay with you? I played WoW for about two years starting on release day, and I still have all the videos that I shot (I was my guild's lead videographer) of my guild's first kills of every boss in the game up to the Four Horsemen in Naxxrammus. Sure, we never scored any world firsts and only had one server first, but I enjoyed the camaraderie that my guildmates and I had, and I enjoyed the experience of being given a puzzle and working with 39 other people to solve it.
I don't have model airplanes or whatnot to show people, but I do still have some pretty nice videos to show them.:)
So a person's leisure and enjoyment should be impeded because someone doesn't like them and is willing to harass them and create false slander to tarnish their reputation?
Except for the fact that it's a lot more meaningful to actually see and hear your family through, say, a video taken from your computer's webcam than some text on a screen.
Now yes, if it's not being used properly, sure, but the article has a damn good point about that.
Except for the fact that The Planet DOES have a redundant power supply that WAS ready to be switched over to - did you RTFA and see the part where the Houston fire department informed them that they were not allowed to switch over?
Colocation requires having another set of hardware that you own (instead of renting from a server provider like The Planet), paying for colocation space, power, bandwidth, etc.
Most people aren't big enough or don't consider their web presence important enough to have a colocated solution.
I like right across the street from one of The Planet's Dallas data centers, so when I saw this article, I was like "So why wasn't I woken by an exploding generator?" Makes sense now.
Of course, I still have to go to work on Wednesday now, too. Bah.
Slashdot Mirror
Incorrect.
Real ID is "required" to use cross-realm, cross-faction communication, and was designed to be used with people you already know and trust.
However, there is nothing preventing you from using the pre-Real ID system of "/friends $CHARACTER_NAME".
Precisely. Your name that's on your Battle.net account is used for billing purposes, used to positively identify you in case of account compromise severe enough that you cannot regain access, and a host of other reasons.
And now they want to use that as the positive identifier for you on the forums - forums which might as well be mandatory for getting technical support or customer service, as their email system takes weeks to reply and their phone lines are more often than not unable to take more callers into queue due to so many irresponsible people allowing their accounts to become compromised.
This is possibly the most insane thing Blizzard has ever attempted.
Bingo. I've bought games that I was severely on the fence about during the current sale because they were less than five dollars. That's less than the cost of lunch at the university I work at. It's not something I'm going to lose sleep over if the game turns out bad, or as related to the story and argument at hand, if Steam suddenly winks out of existence and I can not authenticate them.
Cancel the contract and go with who, precisely? Many areas in the US are under, at best, a duopoly when it comes to high-speed options. If both of your options have clauses in their contracts that you don't agree with (i.e. bandwidth limitations in spite of "unlimited" claims), what's your recourse?
I dunno, doesn't most of that free porn require Flash to view? In that case, the point still stands.
The problem is that they do not perceive it as an issue. Even their internal paperwork to employees at their retail stores emphasizes the whole "this is not a problem, do not admit that it is a problem, do not offer warranty repairs for this, do not offer anything free" mindset that they're pushing. For a company as seemingly devoted to the "user experience" as Apple is, this is a laughably embarrassing position to take.
Ah ah, that one was in a case, remember?
Probably. Everyone I know who grew up in the mid-late 80s is excited as hell.
Trust me, I was one of them. That's why I graduated high school in the second quartile of my graduating class - every opportunity for me to really test myself was barred due to the fact that my parents were dirt poor, so I saw no reason why I should try at all.
Some of us prefer extensible and open, though.
:)
And I haven't had FF3 hit over 200MB of RAM yet in any beta or RC build, and I constantly have 10+ tabs open with a myriad of extensions.
Every time I have let myself be guilted into trying Opera, I crawl back to Firefox because Opera does not fill my needs.
Plus, the whole "arena tournament" nonsense is laughable at best, given the horrific balance in Arena.
And who's to say the memories of what you've done don't stay with you? I played WoW for about two years starting on release day, and I still have all the videos that I shot (I was my guild's lead videographer) of my guild's first kills of every boss in the game up to the Four Horsemen in Naxxrammus. Sure, we never scored any world firsts and only had one server first, but I enjoyed the camaraderie that my guildmates and I had, and I enjoyed the experience of being given a puzzle and working with 39 other people to solve it.
:)
I don't have model airplanes or whatnot to show people, but I do still have some pretty nice videos to show them.
God help us all if it gets Fiery.
I'm pretty sure it's okay if it gets Earthy, though.
So a person's leisure and enjoyment should be impeded because someone doesn't like them and is willing to harass them and create false slander to tarnish their reputation?
Ebeneezer seems to have several /. accounts today, actually.
Referring more specifically to what the article mentions the soldiers using YT for, not the actual analogy. Apologies if that wasn't clear.
Except for the fact that it's a lot more meaningful to actually see and hear your family through, say, a video taken from your computer's webcam than some text on a screen.
Now yes, if it's not being used properly, sure, but the article has a damn good point about that.
Clearly. Why, after all, should people in bad situations be given a chance to get out of them?
And people like you don't suck? "Oh, your circumstances suck, so you get stuck with the short end of the stick; not like I care, though."
It's sickening to see the audacity of some people to be genuinely apathetic about others.
Lemme guess, voting Republican in November?
Except for the fact that The Planet DOES have a redundant power supply that WAS ready to be switched over to - did you RTFA and see the part where the Houston fire department informed them that they were not allowed to switch over?
This is in no way an intentional deceit.
The server room itself is fine since it's pretty far away from the power room.
The power room is the one you'd wanna see, what with the three missing walls.
That's not from Urvish, that's from the guys having to maintain the servers we run our forums off of.
Colocation requires having another set of hardware that you own (instead of renting from a server provider like The Planet), paying for colocation space, power, bandwidth, etc.
Most people aren't big enough or don't consider their web presence important enough to have a colocated solution.
I like right across the street from one of The Planet's Dallas data centers, so when I saw this article, I was like "So why wasn't I woken by an exploding generator?" Makes sense now.
Of course, I still have to go to work on Wednesday now, too. Bah.