Isn't this service intended for 'Joe the console player', and not for competitive PC gamers? In other words, it's an entirely reasonable trade-off.

I think the issue here is all the 'hardcore' gamers who worry about this kind of stuff were never the target market, because they're 'hardcore' enough to put tons of money into their own rig. The recreational player just wants the cheapest method that's acceptable, and that's what the service is aimed for. Of course, it's mostly the hardcore gamer who posts on forums, not the recreational ones, so it's nothing but hate in the internet echo chamber.

In my day, we used FAQs to fix problems. And 'my day' wasn't all that long ago.

I would say that the best use for a support forum is assistance from other players, before the support team can help you. Of course, you don't need the official forums for this.

And companies will never take risks like this, because their executives can be held responsible for any harm their company causes..... oh wait, that's not right.

If the executives can get rich while risking their company go bankrupt, they will do it and keep the boatload of cash they made while doing it.

Yup.

I'm not saying it needs to be announced everywhere, or for no reason. However, when we're talking about social interaction, I think real name can be a reasonable expectation. Think of real-world equivalents: your car has a unique - but anonymized - identifier, while you give first and/or last for most social interactions.

I think 200 messages is a reasonable return rate, if only one universal query is required, instead of multiple. That's still an average of one API call per 20 seconds (say, query all every minute, that still allows two other calls per minute for messages out or overflow updates) which should be enough for most reasonable uses.

If you're getting more than 200 messages per minute, there might need to be a reevaluation of your Twitter usage. That's a lot for an individual to read. Anyone who wants to do something aggregating Tweets would of course be blocked, but I can't blame Twitter for wanting to stop 3rd party aggregators.

So why does it take multiple API queries? Shouldn't it grab everything all at once, perhaps with the option to prioritize the current window worth of results? I can understand requiring a separate call to view profiles, or perform a search, but whether I'm following 1 person or 100 people, I expect it should take just 1 call to receive all the tweets.

Actually, there is research that suggests that under anonymous circumstances, otherwise normal people begin to behave in anti-social ways.
Article
Research paper
Another paper
One more

The better question to ask is if people drive with less regard because they feel they are unidentifiable. Would you shout at a driver who cut you off if you knew they could hear you and find you? Would you drive around a line of backed up cars and force your way into line if you believed your reputation could be affected?

As for retaliation, privacy is already a myth. Anyone who wants to retaliate already can with a little bit of investigation. Physical retaliation is still rare, though. Using real names just removes this facade of privacy, making it obvious to those who speak that they can be held responsible and accountable for their actions (as they already can), and thus reinstating the disincentive to behave badly.

Wouldn't cheaper crops with higher yields reduce the need for farm subsidies?

You're right that it's the politics that causes the big problems, but that doesn't preclude GM crops from being used in conjunction with fixing the politics to solve our food issues.

If we removed patent protections on GM seeds, Monsanto would probably just reneg on their promise not to use 'terminator'-gene seeds, which produce sterile seeds. Thus, we trade the problem of patent lawsuits for the fear of cross-contaminating our world food supply into sterility.

Monsanto 'piggy-backs' the genes, though. Their first gene that provided resistance to Roundup herbicide (which makes farming so economically superior it's almost mandatory) has a patent expiring in 2014 (for soybeans). However, Monsanto has two methods for preventing use of this gene by farmers.
1) They are marketing their 2nd generation of Roundup-safe soybeans, which have higher yields. They still have the market on the best plants (arguably, this is innovation and good).
2) They ensure that buying a seed with the Roundup Ready gene also has other, patented genes. Thus the seed is still covered under a Monsanto patent, and can't be replanted by the farmer.

Fortunately, since the patent is up, other companies can create seeds with this gene. It's possible they might not even place other patented genes in, which would allow the farmers to reseed.

You mean hellaLame. Combined, they are 2 hellaLame.

Stupid yes, but nothing unacceptably so. If saying something obnoxious when I was a teenager is reason to disqualify me from a job, I don't want that job anyway.

I use Bakkster because it practically is my name. My friends use it frequently in IRL conversations.

If you can't search and find my real name, your Google-fu is very weak indeed.

Not necessarily. I've seen many trolls silenced purely through removing that veil of anonymity. Generally, a troll wants to feed their ego, which is hard to do when people are laughing at your MySpace photos.

That said, I think Blizzard's handling of minor's real names is unfortunate, here. It seems this will be rolled out before there are protections in place, which I think is a big no-no. Either the parental controls should be there first, or all minors should be blocked until that time.

It was required, though the job was worth it.

That said, I'm pretty certain that they (or any other investigator) could find any and all screen names I ever used, so it doesn't really matter if I volunteer them or not.