Does Blizzard not have another tech support pathway? E-mail or private support requests? I don't play any Blizzard games, so I don't know.

If that's the case, then it's an issue with Blizzard's implementation. In general, I don't think there's any problem with linking an official forum account to a real name.

That is a predicament, but more because they are trying to phase it in. This wouldn't be an issue if it were the way the game was when released, and those with an objection could simply not sign up to begin with.

I agree, anyone who is concerned should just use an alternative forum. Problem solved.

Real Internet Detectives can usually find an actual name from just the screen name already, so you're already 'in danger' of this happening RIGHT NOW! How often does it happen, though?

I've usually seen this in response to trolls who attempt to hide behind their anonymity. They tend to disappear when their MySpace pictures get posted in response to their troll posts.

At the risk of making the stale old 'they aren't holding a gun to your head' argument, I find the word "force" to be pure rhetoric. It's not even the game itself, just the official forums for the game, which is both optional and has alternatives. It's rather trivial to avoid giving your name if you don't want to.

The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. People are less likely to act like an asshole if they don't have anonymity to hide behind. The only people who will be idiots any more are those who are idiots already.

Another example of a game using real names is iRacing, though real names are used throughout the game, instead of just on the forums. Again, the idea is to discourage anti-social behavior (intentional wrecking, profanity, etc), and this is part of their aggressive policing against griefers. In this case, such a prevention is especially necessary for a racing game of this type. I don't frequent the Blizzard forums, so I'm not sure if there are enough douchebags there to justify such measures.

In that case, either:
1) Don't be a jack-ass on the Blizzard forums.
2) Don't use the Blizzard forums.

That said, I've given my screen name which I've used for the last decade as part of a background check for an interview, so I'm well aware of the issue. However, nothing I said in the past (I've said a lot of stupid stuff) was an issue. If it is a concern to you, don't use the forums (it's an optional part of an optional game you play, you can deal with it), or simply police your behavior before it is recorded for all posterity on the Intertubes.

You're right, and this argument ignores three very important points:
1) Playing music well is expensive. Equipment to perform at one of these large venues with an acceptable sound (to both the audience and the musician), plus spares in case things break, adds up to a lot (particularly for drummers). In short: the costs are more than that of the tour bus and food.
2) Continuing this line, as a professional musician, there probably isn't a secondary source of income. With the amount of practice required, and that except for teaching music lessons or being a contract-hire studio musician (aka, 'selling out' to some), the skills don't really translate well, a day job may be out of the question. If you want to see a musician, you have to be willing to accept that if you expect them to entertain you for a living, they need to make enough money to make a living themselves (including their dependents and eventual retirement).
3) There are a lot of other people dipping into that pot of money. The venue, promoter, manager, techs, and everyone else involved get some of that money too. There's just no way that each member of a 5-piece band selling $5 tickets will walk away with $1 for each attendee.

That's not to say some musicians aren't gluttons for cash, but the general expectation seems to be that of a vow of poverty.

I was never concerned with the 'audiophile' types. I'm concerned by the average Joe who gets tricked by the guy at Best Buy into thinking his picture will suffer if he uses $3 HDMI cables, and instead should buy a $75 3' HDMI cables. You know, because more expensive means better.

Right, I absolutely understand that. However, it's an unnecessary complexity for someone to understand when it comes to short digital cables. Having a higher integrity analog waveform for a digital signal, compared to one that already has 0% data loss, is of no benefit to the quality of the received digital signal.

The point is that they're tricking people who might understand enough about analog to know that the waveform will be 'better', even though the digital signal received will be of no higher quality. That's why they need to understand the fundamentals of digital signals, in addition to physics.

Once again, I understand signal integrity issues, they just simply don't apply here. If your protocol specifies cable jitter of less than 50ns (for example), it doesn't matter if your cable has a jitter of 40ns or 1ns, both will be reproduced identically. Same with rise/fall time, over/undershoot, duty cycle, etc. If both meet the specifications, the received signals will be identical.

I'm sure it had nothing to do with trying to keep portraying games as lacking artistic merit. ;)

I know the XBox 360 DRM licenses itself to the console you download it on (and can be relicensed once a year, if you get a new one), so as long as your original hardware works it should work even if MS burns the servers. So you're trading the inability to lose individual games for the unfortunate fact that if the console goes, so do all the games.

Agreed, I've found the risk analysis for my habits to come down in favor of Steam for the most part, too. The risk of Steam disappearing forever or having a temporary outage is less than my risk of harming my disk or temporarily misplacing it. The fact that my most-played Steam games are also multiplayer (and thus require an internet connection anyway) helps, too.

I still prefer physical media for consoles, though. I chalk it up to a combination of the planned obsolescence of the platform, smaller HDD, vendor lock-in, and familiarity with a stack of console games next to the TV.

The best part is, I think the software 'bug' might have been there intentionally to make the iPhone look like it had better reception than it actually had (iPhones had complaints of more dropped calls than other phones, right?). So now, instead of admitting their hardware issue on iPhone 4, they will just make it obvious how bad the reception has always been, now that people have already bought their phones.

I don't think it will work, but I guess when you're as big as Apple, you've gotta try everything.

You're either being pedantic or wrong. What about FSK, FM, AM, QPSK, and so on?

I passed my classes with flying colors, thank you very much. I also do hardware design for a living. Don't forget, you insulted my knowledge first.

The point still stands: no matter how much physics you know, understanding the fundamentals of digital signal transmission is necessary for skepticism of the claims made by Monster, Denon, and others on hihg-integrity digital cables.