I hate it when Jimmy Carter and I agree with you on anything.

But seriously, the Carter hate is not entirely fair. Some bad things happened while he was in office, but he had some notable accomplishments too.

I think that it's fair to say that he was a much better human being than he was a politician. However, I think we would be better off with a few more Carters around.

Or kids using their parents credit cards...

There are many stories of kids racking up thousands of dollars on in-game purchases in games that seem to specifically be targeting kids.

The government can petition to be allowed for it to preserve the preserved metadata, in order to use as evidence in civil suits that result from when it's discovered that the preserved metadata wasn't safe from the NSA after all...

Maybe, but I don't see it happening. As it is, the police are allowed a lot of dirty tactics in order to circumvent your rights. Police often see rights as an obstacle for them, rather than something that should be protected.

They already lie and try to intimidate people in order to get them to consent to a search. "If you don't let me in, then I can take you into the station for questioning while we get a warrant... Don't you want to make this easier?" "If you cooperate, then this will go easier on you." "If you didn't do anything wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of."

There are "good" cops and there are bad cops, but even "good" cops protect bad cops, and aren't always looking out for your rights.

You are confusing a "Mentor" and "Sidekick" system. A Mentor system will take a higher level player and temporarily reduce their power (level) in order to allow them to play with lower leveled people in lower level content.

A "Sidekick" type system is more like what you are describing, which allows a lower level player to become more powerful in order to play with a higher level character.

Both can be of benefit, but I'd lean towards a Mentor system for WoW.

Also, A "Sidekick" doesn't necessarily have to be viable for high end raid content. In fact, I'd say it shouldn't be! That content is designed to be something that higher level players have to build up to already. But that doesn't negate the value of allowing sidekicks to perform in "Normal" level dungeons with higher level players.

Though a sidekick system probably works best in a game that doesn't require party role optimization to work well, which would not be WoW.

I know you are joking with the dog, but it did make me wonder if a child/teen (who probably wouldn't know their rights) could be tricked into giving consent to a search, against their parents wishes.

That might be the one place where the law decides a minor can give consent...

This seems to lower the bar to whatever member of a household can be bullied or tricked into consenting to a warrant-less search.

Absolutely true! Mentoring and Sidekicks aren't the only option. Some games have also created "mercenaries" that allow you to play dungeon content with NPCs that act as your party. Though, the problem with that is that you are still playing a massively multi-player game solo, which kind of seems pointless (given there are better single player games).

I'm still a fan of mentoring though. They could have created a "Legacy Dungeon" mode (with some incentive) for higher level characters that would mix them (artificially de-leveled temporarily) with lower level players (friends or random) that are still leveling up. Give both something to do.

Well there are many possible ways to deal with it, but they seemed to have taken the monetize it solution.

"We have blocked this content because we think that it might contain material that is not licensed by GEMA. We definitely aren't saying that it is being blocked due to GEMA being made up of douchebags. Thank you."

It does devalue the market for max level characters, but that was a black market anyway. In theory, bought characters (if discovered) could get the account banned.

However, I think it's been a long time since you had people power-leveling characters to max to flip them for cash was common. My understanding was that in more recent years, it's been far more common for people to try to steal ("hack") the accounts, and then try to sell those compromised accounts.

When accounts were (or are) not compromised, using cheats and exploits was also common, which again could put you at risk of the "banhammer" if your account comes on the radar of Blizzard.

It was still a short-cut (with risks) for exchanging money for time investment, unofficially.

But again, the lack of a good solution to the original problem that new players are effectively cut off from the content of veteran players is what created an incentive for this type of criminal behavior.

That's one of the big problems with MMRPGs. They eventually become so old that only those heavily invested in it can find it fun and compelling to continue playing. The gap between newbie players and veteran players will continually expand.

However, I still maintain that there are better ways of bridging the gap between old and new players, rather than requiring huge time investments or more money.

Or... maybe MMRPGs are just a flawed idea in general.

"Mentoring" and "sidekicks" have been implemented in many games. It's been requested countless times for WoW. It's a good idea that they seem resistant too.

The nature and design of these games naturally creates limits on who can play with who. Instead of coming up with an interesting and potentially fun solution to the problem (as the other 2 systems create), Blizzard has only implemented the Recruit-A-Friend system that helps reduce the time a little for the new player, but forces one friend to invest a lot of time leveling a new character with that recruited friend. Without that, it's just more grinding through 90 levels, or pay money in the future.

This seems like the greediest way to handle the problem, not the most fun.

I've seen mobile versions of sites that still do a great job, and rival some of the "site apps". I realize they can have extra bells and whistles, but it's still an unwanted complexity. I resent when so many sites want to push their apps on me.

If there is an app for one of your favorite sites that you use all the time, then I can see it having value. However, I don't want prompts to install an app every time I happen across some random site that I find in a Google search. Do you want to put an ad for your app on your site? Fine, but don't want to be nagged just because I happen to visit your site one time. That is a good way for me not to bother visiting your site again.

As a user, why do I want to buy an app to mostly work like a browser bookmark?

When I see someone with a personalized domain name for their e-mail address, I tend to think they are either a narcissist, or they are over-compensating.

There's nothing special about registering a domain, and the idea that this conveys that the person is technically competent is utter nonsense.

I've known many idiots with their own domains, and brilliant folks with GMail accounts. In fact, I've only ever personally known one brilliant and competent guy who had his own domain (and has had it for about 20 years).

Obviously, this AI should be given tenure!

The most obvious reasons are to determine how accurate, legitimate, honest, biased, trustworthy, or safe a site is.

I find it far more surprising that you don't see the value of googling an URL.