Yeah, not having LAN sucks. The game is still fun.

Which is the same thing as Civ 4. And Civ 3. And Civ 2. And Civ 1.

As I said up the stream a bit there, he was using the trainer program ONLINE while playing with his friends. His own fault.

What's your point? Blizzard's a large-ish company, with their own corporate structure. Just because your company does something a particular way doesn't mean Blizzard does.

Also, the header for the story says "Alan Dabiri, Lead Software Engineer for StarCraft 2". In the sentence you quote, the author of the story (you'd have to ask to be sure) may have meant "a Lead Software Engineer for Blizzard Entertainment, who worked on Wings of Liberty..". Or perhaps the "a" is an error.

And software engineering is but one aspect of game developing. So yeah, there's multiple leads because there are multiple disciplines involved.

The biggest and best arguments for LAN is lower latency, less risk of random disconnection and not having to deal with internet jerks.

Frankly, once you know that a company bans entire accounts for cheating, you should maybe consider not cheating, even if the only person you bother is yourself. And Blizzard is well known for wide, sweeping bans. And since all their games are tied to one account, well...

You can play the campaign offline, albeit without achievements. Multiplayer? No dice.

No, it does not take place locally. If you lose internet connection at any point during the game for more than a second, you're dropped out of the game.

You can play offline in the campaign only, and even then without the achievements.

The guy admitted that he had the trainer program running while he was playing online with friends. Can't really tell the difference between someone cheating and someone goofing around with friends when it's just automated software. And at any one time there are tens of thousands of games going on at the same time, so it's a bit hard to check out possible cheaters on a case by base basis.

Traditionally? You mean, way back in old school game developing? It's not like things change right? They just stay the same forever...

This. I never got to see a launch in person, but I have always felt awe every single time I watched one of the Shuttles launch. I hope that the US will continue to explore space, and continue to put people up there under their own program.

You are tracked by your bank and CC company every time you use your card anyways.

Being spammed by advertising, that's a more legitimate concern in my eyes.

I think it is objectiveness. It is easier to read, if not "more correct". The more computer power the advertisers and magazine editors have, the more they can "do" with their adverts and articles. But just because they can do more, doesn't mean it is better.
Another example is roleplaying books. White Wolf has some fantastic (and not so fantastic) artwork in their books, but sometimes their layout burns the eyes with harsh contrast between images and text, or not enough contrast so that it all seems to blend together.

If I am sending an email or a typewritten letter, I always hit spacebar twice after a period. In SMS and Twitter, I only hit it once due to the character limitations per message.