There is a number of requests that they could have to process that would make continued business in Europe unprofitable. If the costs of business go above the income generated by the business, they'll pull out (or significantly change operations to make it profitable to stay in that market, again). Will Google/other search engines receive that number of requests? That remains to be seen.

I assume that there'd be some kind of location-specific display of information. When accessed from a U.S.-based IP, Google would display the unfiltered results. From a European IP, Google would remove "forgotten" results. I guess that the issue with that would be the edge cases, where the origination point of a request can't be determined accurately.

Exactly. A search engine should display what's available and where, without regard to the content. Fred and Sandra are misdirecting their attacks, if they're going after the search engine. They ought to go after you and your website (since you are, after all, the one posting the information that they don't like).

It sounds like an implementation of a multiple-protocol IM client, but without a heartbeat ping between client and server for either of the supported protocols (and also with user identifiers that don't distinguish between which protocol the user wants to send the message on).

On an Android phone, using Hangouts, when I choose a contact that has a gchat name and a mobile phone number attached, I can switch between "SMS" and "Hangouts". Everyone with iMessage will have an Apple ID anyhow, right? Apple could use that for an iMessage username, or have a little combo-box to the side of the message being sent to choose the protocol to use. In addition, if someone unregisters a phone number from their Apple ID (which I'd imagine could be done online?), it would make sense if the system would fall back to standard SMS (or send via SMS to the phone and simultaneously to whichever devices are currently logged into iMessage).

Better than what I've got. 25 down, 5 up, $62 per month (with 100 down, 20 up available for $100/month from the same ISP). Other parts of my area have DSL at up to 6 down 1 up for about $35/month, but I'm not in range for that. Mobile has tiny bandwidth limits (and the unlimited ones can't match even the DSL connection's speed). Satellite has about the same drawbacks as mobile, except that it also costs more. Even what I have has a 250GB soft-cap (they'll send you letters when you go over, but I haven't heard of anyone actually being cut off).

Internet in the US is a terrible mess, but it seems like you've got it better than most.

DRM doesn't "allow" anything; it restricts what a user can do with the protected media by its nature. It's IP-holder-friendly, but user-hostile. I'd call some DRM implementations "unobtrusive" or "better than not having the product at all", but not "friendly", and certainly not friendlier than DRM-free media.

In general, I agree with your viewpoint, just not your terminology.

That's a contradiction in terms, right there. DRM is friendly if it does something *for* me. I'll agree that there's more and less cumbersome DRM implementations, but the argument that less-cumbersome DRM is in *any* way friendlier than no DRM at all obviously falls flat on its face.

I've also never met anyone that would admit to paying for in-game purchases. Everyone I know either plays the free stuff without paying, or buys *real* games that don't fall into the gameplay rut favored by igp. Whales are the only customers that developers of igp-containing games pay about, and I'd wager that by raw population count, those people are even smaller than the group that follows my behavior.

As you say, "So fucking wrong." That's the quickest way to get an app deleted from my device. I've got a few f2p/IAP games, but they're blocked by the firewall. If they aren't playable (and enjoyable) in that state, they get tossed. I've got more games that I've legitimately paid for than f2p games (and their devs have seen more money from me than f2p devs ever will).

I can't get to Polygon from here, so I read the entry on the Unreal Engine blog/wiki prior to my previous post. The game code doesn't look like it'll be under some kind of copyleft, but it *does* look like access to the data will be cheap ($19/seat/month and 5% of income from games based on the engine). In the EULA (which appears to govern licensee actions with the engine and UT Project game assets), I don't see anything stopping a developer from making a modified version of the main game executable and distributing it for free (presumably, the developer would be on the hook for hosting charges, since 5% of gross income from the game would go to Epic).

You can't distribute licensed source, licensed tools, or enough to allow users to create a "standalone product". You might be able to give them enough leeway to freely create content that relies on the product that you built (and are giving away for free). I'd imagine that someone will take at least that twisted of a view of their developer license, at some point.

"All code" doesn't mean a subset of the code. It means "all code". Anyhow, if one has the game code and the art assets, then there's nothing to stop you from replacing the assets in the game. If there's some DRM-encumbered binary blob for talking to the store, there'd be nothing stopping someone from coding their own replacement that points to another store.

Personally, from the tone of the announcement, I'd expect something like Google's app market. The official market would be the default, but there's nothing stopping you from connecting to an alternate market, or from installing modpacks you grab off some modder's website. Of course, if Epic doesn't make any money on the game, it'd be counted as a failed experiment, and we wouldn't see something similar from them anytime soon.

It seems like you have cause and effect backwards, here. Having privacy, even within a married couple, is healthy. There needs to be trust that your spouse isn't going to purposefully do something to harm the relationship. For instance, my wife texts and calls friends, and I generally don't know the content of those conversations. My wife telling me if I ask is trust, and it's healthy. If I demanded access to her E-mail, phone history, etc, that's not healthy, and it wouldn't be her fault if she wanted to maintain a corner of privacy in her life. You can't blame my jealousy and irrationality on her actions.

If I'm being abusive, then I'm not going to want her to find outside help, and I'm not going to want her to talk to her friends about her problems. I'll want to control every aspect of her life. That's the situation we're looking at, not an otherwise-stable relationship with communications issues.

In the U.S., that isn't strictly true (although it's often the case). By the Fair Labor Standards Act, if an employee doesn't make the federal minimum wage by a combination of the $2.13/hour direct wage and their tips, the employer is required to make up the difference.

....I'd rather not. If a coworker is competent, then I don't really care why they're working with me, as long as they're doing good work.

Got a citation for that? A quick search shows Nexus 5 in-ear SAR to be 0.96W/kg (below the FCC's 1.6W/kg limit), and surface SAR for an operating microwave at roughly 8x that level.