I've viewed this "controversy" with curiosity and it somewhat mimics progress vs tradition arguments. I'm not trolling but honestly looking for insight:

- Day after day we have people happy to play single player games in online systems without complaint from consoles to phones to even Facebook. Why is this game different? The explanations so far lacking because the most compelling one is that "Diablo 2" used to do it. That doesn't mean I don't think an offline mode would have been impossible but that it isn't required.
- Do we operate under the illusion that all PC games are portable? I remember trying to play "Diablo 2" which has an offline mode, on vacation and on airplanes and other places and it was a miserable experience. "Diablo 3" is not meant to be portable or played in an environment with spotty power or spotty connectivity. Why do people insist on this mode when it seems more like an environment and usability issue instead of a missing feature? I suspect people believe that if "Diablo 3" had an offline mode they could play it anywhere but experience has showed me with "Diablo 2" that never happens nor is worth it.
- Are we denying the advantages this tech brings just to enhance the argument of what it takes away? I like the idea of storing characters "on their systems" instead of my computer since I've lost "Diablo 2" saves when machines and hard drives die. I like validation of characters, items, hosted environments because I've also lost a ton of characters to just joining the wrong games. It is not impossible to support both a completely validated system and offline but I would always lean in supporting the validated system when it comes to active support.

Basically I'm unconvinced that an offline mode is valuable let alone an effective workaround. Even if "Diablo 3" had an offline mode, we'd still have an article on /. complaining about how Blizzard/Activision/Blizzard-Activition/Satan is evil and can't handle it. Blizzard needs to address connectivity issues and delivery on the features they said they were supporting.

In college, as part of the engineering degree program there has to be some credits in art/history/etc. I picked up a philosophy track which required an introduction to logic and rehtoric. I don't want to imply these classes ruined anything but it definitely opened my mind to multiple ideas. When you are asking fundemental questions of reality (Why aesthetics important? What defines good? Why is humanity valuable? etc) and find that although religion does have some answers but not all and are encouraged to keep looking and discussing it instead of being quiet and accept "the truth" then that erroded their fundementals.

People forget that you don't need a science to be encouraged about critical thinking.

Although not strictly the Apple II, the IIe was the first real computer brought into my house growing up. Now that I'm a professional working adult, looking back on that box with the green monitor, the one floppy drive, and other details I wondered how in the world my parents were able to justify and afford the thing! As the article correctly points out, at $1200~ 1980 dollars that is around $5000 today! That was probably the most expensive piece of technology in the house at the time and I never realized it at the time where instead I was simply happy to mess around with Applesoft Basic and various games.

This seems true for the ones that built up the fortune but when they pass it on to their children it seems likely so. What lesson in consequence did they learn by having their parents provide for them? It isn't that passing on property is good or bad but there is no lesson teach or learn either.

For the record I don't believe wealth or poverty automatically gives a bias in mortality but that is due to the fact "getting rich" is a complex and variable. Some people lucky into wealth and others work very hard and achieve poverty where its hard to see the moral base in either activity.

Really the price structure of having a subscription was either ahead of its time or too exotic and especially made no sense with Last.FM or Pandora. In some ways it was ahead of its time and others it was just exotic for being exotic.

I personally never liked the interface. My dad got one and I could never figure it out at a glance where instead I had to "study" it to figure out what I wanted it to do. For instance: While playing it will artistically scroll multiple pieces of text the screen but if I wasn't familiar with the song or artist I had no idea what it meant. Is "Nightfall" the name of the track, the play list or album, the composer, singer, or what??? It could have been the theme or mode for all I knew!

I heard this story on NPR on the way into work and it makes sense. You would need to license and register robotic cars differently so why not start now independant of whether or not Google's car works?

Quality control is fine but then why take weeks and cost so much to get a rejection due to bugs or low quality? When a game crashes I don't believe many blame Microsoft but instead point fingers at the ISV (example: Bethesda). Why do this? To strictly control and squeeze all the money they can from the supply chain where quality seems to not be secondary.

Instead this seems like "The Law of Unintended Consequences". In an effort to control the system Microsoft has put in place a barrier to entry, they've excluded an entire class of high quality software. Small games and games that thrive on frequent updates don't fit well into XBox Live which has been lamented by many but seems to be just as well since others can make software work on other platforms and pocket a lot more of the profits.

Is it because its "tried-and-true" or is it familiar? There are plenty of things weird and wrong with KDE and Windows work where people just got used to it unstead of understand it. That doesn't mean either system is bad but what is bad is the automatic rejection of one or the other.

The right way to do this is to offer both styles of desktop environments. There is value in being able to layout your desktop in a Windows like manner because they have been using Windows like environments for decades but this has no value for new users or new systems. Especially for Tablets, Phones, and TVs and other emerging platforms going with what Gnome offers makes more sense for usability.

The short answer is yes we can afford it but the current climate of unnecessary and dangerous austerity just to make small numbers even smaller is not going away any day soon. Those on the other side have to pick their fights and decided that for a number of reasons "Mars Exploration" isn't one they can back.

I never understood the desire to unify desktop and other things (XBox) on a phone let alone why is it valuable. There is value in creating apps that interface with other systems but one is overstating the value of a whole phone dedicated to interfacing this way when it turns out people would rather have other features (mobile location services, e-readers, etc).

Another way to think about not: Are people chomping at the bit who support Android and iPhone to get or sharing accessing to their home machines? These platforms aren't popular because of this nor do I see that changing in two years. If you can answer "Why do you think that is valuable?" then I can begin to see your stance otherwise I suspect that such features are "gee-whiz" but not necessary or the best use of the mobile phone platform.

I don't know if it is a good thing but it shouldn't be shocking that there are "party discipline" differences between the Dems and GOP. It just happens that this time it was pointed towards something popular to hate.

But there are bugs logged against Hyper-V and they haven't gotten satisfactory resolution. Since random programmers can't fix bugs or implement missing features then that falls under "broken" and should be removed if they want to move into a "candidate for release" state.

I agree. As a matter of UI, I never understood the appeal of the Windows centric layout:

- If "Start" button doesn't behave like a button.
- If "Start" is a menu, its position docked at the bottom-left is unusual because that usually contains settings for control but "Start" doesn't control anything about the desktop.
- As a menu "Start" is clumsy where navigation of more than two levels in another system that menu would be a target for redesign.
- If "Start" is a file explorer, then the interface is inconsistent (sometimes you click to navigate...or hover...or double click?).

And so on. Doing the "Explain It To Grand Mother" test usually exposes all of the weirdness about Windows. It always seemed to me people figured out how to work with the Windows desktop in spite of itself. I'm all for Ubuntu going in another direction: Don't make it like Windows or MacOS but learn from all of them and come up with something different. Even saying that, this different thing maybe a problem or a failure so Ubuntu should also include a fall back desktop that contains the most basic UI layout.

I'm not sure what the "danger" here happens to be. If the HDTV hardware has enough hardware and capibility it can be updated multiple times instead of expecting to throw out the TV to get the latest version. Or at the very least, it is not clear why it is better to throw out multiple little boxes when the same change in technology forces it.

In my living room is a "traditional" Dumb TV with 4 boxes connected too it (ignoring the receiver). In my "office" I have a Google TV which has no other boxes connected to it. I don't think I could or would swap the two around: There isn't enough space in the office for the Dumb TV and all of the additional boxes while there are some things the Smart TV doesn't do like play DVD and Blu-ray.

I think the market can handle both Smart and Dumb TVs. But just like Smart Phones no one should believe they are saving money by choosing one.

As I in a previous comment (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2612736&cid=38652618), the reason why its in the TV is so you don't have to connect a bunch of those boxes. In their current configuration I am not sure that Google TV and the like are ready for the living room but they are definitely ready for other places. Right now there is so much duplication in features in so many of the boxes that hang off a modern HDTV...Why not put them in the TV?