=== Net Neutrality ===

     I don't have a clever title to start off this talk about net neutrality. Rather here we are jumping right into the thick of things. For those of us who don't know anything about net neutrality, it was a set of rules which were put into place in 2015 which stopped internet providers from promoting their own things over others by offering faster speeds to their own services and slower speeds or even entirely blocking other services they don't want their consumers to see. This can even go as far as promoting one brand over another in a way which would mean anything new to the market could fail completely because it's not promoted by any of the service providers.

     Basically these rules were put into place to make the internet a more even playing field for everybody, thus making it more fair no matter the size of your company or your popularity. Essentially what this means is that something small like myself and this blog COULD fade into existence because it's not promoted by anybody but myself. That means when searching for something similar to this here, instead of finding a fair assortment of search results which may hold this blog in a reasonable place, there may be so many unfairly promoted results in front that you never get down far enough to find me.

     I don't really enjoy or understand a lot of politics; most things I just don't really care for all that much. But this is actually quite crazy to me to learn about this. From all the news that I've read, apparently the people in charge of making this decision only cared about legal arguments and largely disregarded the record 22 million feedback comments.

     It's difficult to say what exactly is going to happen due to this ruling; whether they go back on their decision or put something new in place... or if everything stays like this. I guess at this point we can only wait to see what comes about in the future. We likely won't see many huge changes right away as there would be much ruling and other things the various companies would have to put into place. I'm all for equality, so I can only hope things still work out well in the end.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

Blizzard is dropping the Battle Net brand.

     After years and years of playing some of my favourite games on the good old Battle.net, Blizzard will be dropping the brand and changing it to be Blizzard Tech. To me, this doesn't really change much except to put some nostalgic thoughts of playing games like Diablo II online with friends and other random strangers across the internet.

     I'm always intrigued when it comes to changing up branding and seeing where things go from there. It always seems to be a bit of a gamble to me. That, and I see some brands like Coke changing it up quite often. I can't imagine having an entire brand rely on me coming up with some sales-pitch with the hopes that it captivates the target audience. There's the very real chance that it fails miserably and you actually lose customers in the process.

     In this case (for long-time customers like myself), I imagine it'll be a little bit weird for a bit. Ultimately though, I think it makes a ton of sense; and I think a little bit of weirdness is a minor concern considering new customers will have an easier time adjusting to and finding the new system.

     Really, this is simply a thought-provoking announcement to me. Something which makes me remember the past with games like StarCraft and WarCraft, and look forward to the future. Oh how I love watching the beautiful progression of technology since my birth in 1992. It's amazing to me how I've grown up with it and through it and I cannot imagine how older generations must think about it when they remember their past.

     That's all for now. Have a great day everybody! ^_^

~ Kyle