I think they're noting it simply because the accusation is that Google lifts from Apple, and now it's looking more and more like the pendulum is swinging the other way.

Hmm... filming cops is just fine, it's legally fine because nobody has the expectation of privacy being out in public and the police are not above that!

Google Glass, however, is intrusive--people have the expectation of privacy being out in public!

If you're hosting your own private game of counterstrike on your own computer, you are running a server.

I'm going to back up your "So What?" with another point of view.

There is a perception that traditional "big business" has long understood, but that the big Internet corps like Yahoo and Google have yet to "get", and it holds that the less you focus the worse a job you will do.

Corporations like Procter & Gamble have solved the problem with heavy branding: Tide, Bounty, Charmin, Crest, Oral-B, etc., etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Procter_%26_Gamble_brands

Each brand exists as if it's a complete and separate company. While I doubt there's many people who haven't heard the name "Procter & Gamble", most people use their products without realizing that they're using a P&G product. Some P&G brands might even compete against each other.

There is no reason that Yahoo needs to "glue" it's products into some sort of "Yahoo identity." In fact, if the Yahoo! "brand" is dying, they could opt to kill it off entirely and go the branding route. Keep Flickr as "Flickr" and Tumblr as "Tumblr." They're solid brands unto themselves. I think that even gives Yahoo an edge because people, psychologically, become more likely to use something that stands on it's own rather than gets package-dealt with something else. For example, psychologically people tend to think "If Yahoo Search sucks then Yahoo sucks and so 'Yahoo Flickr' must suck too." Keep the branding separate. Flickr = Flickr, Tumblr = Tumblr and then only people who are really passionate about their reasons for liking or disliking specific corporations will care that Flickr and Tumblr just happen to be owned by Yahoo.

Google has a really good thing going with Youtube, as a brand, and should *not* try and integrate it with the Google name in any way. Notice how many steps in that direction have resulted in negative blow-back. Like trying to force people to use their real names for comments, and link their Youtube accounts with a Google account. I used to have a registered Youtube account, I don't anymore because of that. Gmail was a success story, and in some ways it might qualify as a brand unique from "Google", but people think of "Google" as a search engine. They'd be better off keeping it that way. Blogspot should stay Blogspot, Chrome should stay Chrome. There's no reason not to drop the "Google" name from each of those brands entirely and let them stand on their own. While this is pure conjecture, I kind of suspect that Google Plus may have had a slightly better chance of succeeding as a Facebook killer if they had done a better job with branding, and not associated it with Google. It should have focused entirely on what separates it from Facebook and makes it *unique and compelling* instead of "Hey Google has one too!" ... the appropriate response to that was "so what?"

Apple is a total anomaly in the world of branding. They've created an "Apple Identity" and their indivdual brands have been able to benefit from that. But it also puts their individual brands in potential jeopardy becuase if the Apple brand takes a hit it's more likely to trickle down to their individual products.

Yahoo could be very successful as a holding company with many unique brands that each focus on their own individual "identity." They don't need to integrate a thing or attach the Yahoo name to any of them. Just let each product shine on it's own.

And medications are rarely, or at least are supposed to only be rarely, the only prescribed treatment, usually initially medication and behavioral therapy, medication being largely used to aid behavioral treatment at the start, unless I am mistaken.

Jesus, and how long ago were predominately PSYCHOLOGICAL models being attacked?

They don't believe in either.

Yes, a lot of people do, I thought it was a very good game during my youth, and since most of the people that played the game back then didn't exactly have internet access or not at all like we do now, it appears that this consensus was arrived at entirely by the young gamers of that era. It's regarded as one of the best platformers of the console.

You didn't play this game back during the NES days, did you? This game was so good it's one of the few NES games I remember at all from my very early youth. A remake of a very old but very good game? This isn't nostalgia because of DuckTales per se, it's because this game was a shining gem of the console.

The reason they are remaking old games is because there's a niche in the market for people that want to play games that played like older games, because game design has shifted since then, not necessarily for better or worse but because of the general trend over time. Point-and-click adventure games are also making a slight comeback (see TellTales's success on that front along with various indie groups). Look at how many Halo-esque or military FPSes are released these days and tell me that this isn't something of a breath of fresh air.

It is exactly, every one bit, a "straw man" argument because not one single person is making any of the claims that you are saying they make. You are building up an argument for the sake of tearing it down. That is a "straw man" by very definition.

Your post shows a complete lack of having even read my paragraph, which clearly stated that to many abortion is about preventing a murder, and has nothing to do with "wanting the woman to do anything." To them it is about preventing a wrong, not enforcing a particular behaviour or forcing a woman to do anything. And once again, that is THEIR position, not mine. I am probably more "pro choice" than most on the pro-choice side.

Any time you have a movement or an ideology that affects people who don't share that ideology you see outrage. That outrage often comes with straw-man tactics used in discourse.

I can think of many examples of so-called "right wing" or "conservative" ideologies that are on the receiving end. The "pro-life" movement is one example. To most who are "pro-life" the issue that is that life begins at conception and so an abortion is literally murder. But many on the "pro-choice" side have accused the "pro-life" crowd of hating women and wanting to enslave them. That's a very blatant straw-man argument from my point of view. And FWIW, I'm probably more "pro-choice" than most.

Fiscal conservatism receives straw-man arguments all the time. Whenever people accuse a fiscal conservative of being "on the side of the wealthy" or "greedy", whenever someone claims that libertarianism is "anarchy for rich people" those are straw-men arguments.

Actually, now that I said that only morons would believe EA's BS about the CPU not being enough for their game, and that they're actually processing your city on the server... it kinda makes me wonder if they ARE trying to get morons as a target demographic.

I was reading a paper a few months ago about Nigerian widow scams and such. The question they had basically asked themselves was: why those scams don't try to be a little less ridiculous and more plausible? Why don't they try to snag more people?

Their conclusion was that basically the scammers don't really want everyone. They actually want only the morons, who are more likely to then go through with it. If a smart person gets tipped off that it's bogus... GOOD! That's one less dead end to waste time on.

So I'm thinking, hmmmm, maybe that's EA's plan. Maybe they do want to reach the morons. More morons with money probably means more crap DLCs sold down the line :p

Well, that much is clear.

In fact, here's a thought: they said that the processing was so complex, they had to do some of it on their servers. But... if my still fairly top of the line 4 cpu / 8 thread Intel couldn't do it... what was EA going to do that actually makes a difference? Add one more CPU of their own for everyone who plays at a given time? Yeah, I'm so going to believe that they'll buy a 1 million CPU server farm just to handle everyone at launch. NOT.

So, yeah, it was clear that they're just shovelling ridiculous BS and hoping that enough morons would actually believe that.

The sad part, though, is that I've actually seen morons repeating it in excuse of the crashing servers fiasco.

Actually, considering how the game works, I'm 100% convinced that it's the result of EA considering the single-player case... except in EA management lingo that use-case sounds a bit like, "OMG, gazillions of people will pirate our game, or buy it used on EBay."

Seriously, the game IS at heart a single player game. I've managed to squeeze in between server crashes and start a game or two, and guess what? The game functions exactly the same when the server crashes while you're in your city.

The lie that the game is too complex for a single CPU and they need to do server-side processing too, was just that: a lie. The only "server-side processing" they do is saving the game and publishing your game events.

But here's the funny thing: Steam for example manages just fine to send your achievements to the server in the background, without needing the game to be tethered to a server all the time. Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas, A Game Of Dwarves, etc, take your pick, they're all single player games that Steam can both provide DRM for and save the achievements (and for some even the save games) on their server without pretending it's an online game.

So anyway, the game IS perfectly able to run single player. It's not a real client-server product like WoW or EA's own TOR. It doesn't need a server or a server emulator to play exactly the same. It's a single player game, which is perfectly able to function without a server, plus some artificial tethering to their servers that doesn't really add much.

So why IS a single player mode missing at least as an official option to start the game, when the game functions perfectly well in single player?

It seems to me like the only reasonable explanation is that they considered single-player offline mode as something to prevent.

You know, it just occurs to me... their problem with piracy and with second hand games is that someone gets to play one of EA's games, and EA doesn't get paid for it.

So let me get this straight, the result of putting the idiotic DRM in SimCity, is... that now a LOT of people get to play one of EA's (other) games, and EA doesn't get paid for it.

Sure, most of those wouldn't have bought the other EA game, but then neither would have most pirates. That is, outside of putting the BS in BSA.

But if you do the the maths BSA style, where every single copy downloaded is a lost sale -- and you just know whoever came up with that over-the-top DRM is -- yeah, great job, EA. Did you need a scope to shoot yourself in the foot so neatly, or is it a natural talent?

No, seriously, releasing SimCity without DRM would have probably resulted in less people playing an unpaid copy, AND saved them from all the negative publicity and angry customers.