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Apple loses iPhone trademark in Brazil
The BBC is saying that Apple has lost the trademark for "iPhone" in Brazil, to a company that makes an Android-powered phone, of all things. Gradiente Eletronica registered the name "iPhone" in that country back in 2000, years before Apple tried to do the same thing, and so the ruling Institute of Industrial Property there has decided that Gradiente Eletronica owns the trademark, not Apple. However, things aren't as plain and simple as that. Gradiente Eletronica hadn't released a product using the iPhone name until December of 2012. And Apple still has the rights to use the name iPhone on anything outside of the smartphone realm, including on clothing, in software and almost anywhere else. Apple is reportedly appealing the decision, so we should hear more about this one in the future. What usually happens in this case is that the company from Cupertino ends up paying for the name in a settlement, and indeed, the chairman of Gradiente Eletronica has said that the company is "open to a dialogue for anything, anytime." But Apple likely wants to get out of this without paying up, especially if it has a legitimate right to the name itself. [via Engadget]
TERA subscription error affects thousands [Updated]
According to several tipsters and many, many pages on TERA's forums, something's gone badly wrong with En Masse's account system. The studio admits that some players have been billed immediately upon selecting a subscription plan instead of being billed after the 30 days. Other players have reported not being able to log in at all, as the game cannot find their subscriptions or free time and delivers an "expired account" error. En Masse posted that it is aware of the situation and is working to resolve it. The studio says that players who purchased a physical copy of the game and signed up for a subscription before entering their game code triggered this problem. However, we've also had reports of players who have encountered this error when dealing with digital copies. Affected players should now be able to log in to TERA while En Masse works on fixing the error. [Thanks to Andrew, Schippie, and Alex for the tip!] [Update: En Masse has contacted us to note that the 2000 players have been affected by the "insufficient remaining subscription time" issue, not the "immediate billing" error. En Masse says that these are two separate issues that the studio is actively working to resolve as fast as possible. We've updated this article accordingly.]
Breakfast Topic: To re-customize or not
Paid customization has come to the game, and with it, some big decisions for a lot of players. We've asked for a long time to be able to change our gender or look in the game, and now that we can, we have to decide if we will or not.Personally, I'm torn -- way back when I first started the game, I created a female Night Elf Hunter, thinking along the old classic lines of "if I'm going to stare at someone's backside for hours and hours, it might as well be a woman." But since then, I've gotten a lot of flak for being a dude playing a female character, and since I've played all male characters since then, I think I better identify with male characters anyway, even if the view isn't as good.But on the other hand, I'm used to my Hunter now -- she's looked the same for almost 80 levels, and it would be weird to suddenly see a Night Elf guy on the screen in her place. So I'm torn -- change my character to a male and make being social in game much easier, or stay the same and keep my character familiar to me?What do you all think? Are you facing the same situation or is the choice easier (or even harder) for you?
An open letter against a dysphemism
Elizabeth's post about getting the word "gay" out of the game got tons of feedback from you all (some comments more intelligent than others), and now a poster on WoW Ladies has another language sensitivity that I agree with. The word "rape" is used by some players in game for all kinds of things, and most of the time it's used without thought to what the word really means.Personally I don't use it (not because I have a specific abhorrence of the word, although the act itself is pretty abhorrent), but every once in a while you'll hear things like "boy, our guild raped Hakkar last night," or "stupid elite Son of Arugal just came out of nowhere and raped me." The word for this kind of usage is actually "dysphemism," the opposite of euphemism, in which you specifically use a harsh word in the place of a more polite one.And that's the problem-- just like "gay," it's not polite to use, not least of all because you may hardly know the person that reads it or their situation. In some cases, the word can be downright offensive. Fortunately, I don't know anyone (that I know of) who's experienced real-life rape or abuse, but especially in an MMO situation, there's no reason to use the harsher word, especially if, as Elizabeth said about "gay," it costs you respect (and possibly your account).As the WoW Ladies contributor says, "realize there are a lot of women in guild, as well as a lot of married members and members with children. Realize that 1 in 6 women are raped in the US. Realize that each person in the guild is either female themselves, and/or has multiple loved ones and friends that are female. Realize that rape is a deeply traumatic experience, for the victim and their loved ones." Even if you're joking, or even if you didn't mean it that way, it's just not worth saying.
Mage Spell Calculator shows numbers behind the casting
From a forum post by Jonaleth, we find this nifty little tool that will tell you everything you ever needed to know (ever) and even some things you didn't about how your mage spells push out damage.It takes a while to load, and the site seems pretty rickety (I really hope posting it here doesn't bring it down), but once it loads up, you can realize just how powerful a tool it is. Put your mage talents in, use the checkboxes at the top to fill out info about your gear and situation, and then the tool will show you average hit calculations,damage per mana spent total, and even all of the damage coefficients (up to 2.0.1, so Arctic Winds hasn't changed here yet) on each one of your spells.Pretty incredible tool for mages, especially for those who want to squeeze every possible bit out of their class and spec. Jonaleth uses the guide as proof that frost mages don't get to churn out nearly as much damage as fire mages do. Well, umm, yeah. What else is new?But Jonaleth is right-- this kind of tool does provide a really clear look at what we already know to be true. Now you can see in raw numbers just how crazy powerful Pyroblast is.
