MJR

The point was that I don't believe anyone should act to normalize a behavior, in any context, of using a medical disorder as a metaphor for anything, in this case, software usability concerns.

100% agree. I stopped reading when I saw that. What exactly is "Windows autism" exactly? My autistic son would like to know... And I would encourage you not to say it in private contexts with friends either.

Hopefully saving people some time - Equifax is "unable to process" online requests - which they tell you after your submit the form. And Transunion's website for fraud alerts is currently "temporarily unavailable".

Did you read the court document? Amazon employees signed up, sometimes with fake addresses and then immediately began running wide ranging searches across numerous categories in completely separate areas across the country from their primary residence. Jumping from searching on roofers to dentistry to day spas and everything in between. They have some cases where the Amazon employee even used Angie's List internal messaging system to send service providers messages asking them to run promotions on Amazon Local or to talk to them about business deals. It's the commercial aspect that is forbidden in the TOS.

They have all the search histories of all of these accounts, the titles of the employees at Amazon, their home addresses, etc. It's clear what they were doing, the question is will a judge see it as a pattern attempting to defraud Angie's List and were the employees directed to do this or did they do it on their own.

How are you going to compete with insurance companies who have all of the data, existing relationships will their entire networks of providers and pre-existing negotiated rates with providers? Insurers are already creating local provider specific networks to serve this type of need and they have the largest incentive to drive procedure costs down - because it allows them to drive their rates down, increasing business or accounting for the losses they're suffering due to the ACA.

How will you protect your business when they decide to cut out the middle-man(you) and begin working with their networks directly to renogotiate procedure costs and kick-back discounts to employers for using these selective Cost+Quality networks? Truth is they're already doing this.

EDIT: My points may be moot - Are you only working with self-insured companies? That's the only thing that makes sense here given that you're splitting costs with the employer.

Blogger was a static blog generator well before this. It launched in 1999 and was around for a few years in that form before it was acquired by Google in 2003 and transitioned . You logged into the Blogger site and wrote your posts and then published them, which would generate your files and then FTP them to your server.

It's just another web framework, Coca-Cola is just another sugar water drink, Calvin and Hobbes is just another comic and a Lamborghini Aventador is just another car.

"Just another" is a really easy thing to say when it's someone else's creation. And more importantly trademarks are not indicators of quality or innovation. He's the owner and he chose to put it in the footer. This doesn't seem like a big deal.

And on top of that, when you get to that point, up and down don't do anything. You should be able to combine those tiles vertically.

Am I the only one who was confused by the title and thought that the article was about someone named 'Tory Boss'?

Seriously? Go look at the games, we're talking about a single image of a character in most cases. And showing something off doesn't have to be putting it up on Microsoft.com for the world to download. The kid is 15, my point is find the friend you have that is taking art class and get them to sketch something for you. I bet money that if this kid is into games, one of his gamer friends can sketch a game character for him pro-bono. We're not talking about developers and designers - these are high school kids making one-off test-the-water apps.

First, no being an artist isn't a requirement to be a gamedev. That's why I said find a friend who is.

Second, If, as you say, the app isn't the end goal, then don't release it and this issue doesn't even come up.

Third, you said "Wasting time fitting society's arbitrary moral standard is time not spent becoming a better gamedev."

As a parent, that is exactly why I would encourage him to create his own characters. It's not at all an arbitrary moral standard. Is theft an arbitrary moral standard? Plagiarism? If you don't have permission to use the characters, don't use them. These games are available on the official MS site right next to the official ones. Why go down the path of having to potentially have your account suspended, or whatever the punishment is if MS decides your apps are infringing.

Finally, What do you tell the kid the first time they have a successful project and someone rips it off? Don't get upset, you did it when you started, so it's ok? It doesn't matter that he's just getting his start, stealing these characters is just like stealing the source code an releasing it as your own. Are we condoning that as well? In my opinion, it's just as important to learn integrity as it is to build the app.

This doesn't detract what the fact that you had the initiative and drive to complete 30 different games. But if I can offer some advice now, rather than when something real happens: Create your own characters rather than borrowing someone else's creations and building them into your games. Pac-Man, Mario, Minecraft, My Little Pony are all great characters, just unfortunately not yours to make a game with. Find a friend who can draw and have them create some unique characters for you, write a little story and you've got an indie game that's all your own.

His books were written over 24 years so they idea of writing one great book is just not a practical one. He made his living as a professor not simply self-publishing, lectures and book sales. For someone who evangelizes effective presentation of information, creating a CliffsNotes or Nutshell version just completely misses the point of his work.