In Order To Change A Shareholder: Fill & Download for Free

The cheapest way is to do it yourself. Probably not the easiest, but the cheapest.You take this form provided by the state of Delaware and create a version where the article amended is Article 1 that states your name.http://corp.delaware.gov/amend09.pdfThen you submit it following the directions here:Submitting A RequestHere's the version where Oracle did it (see page 2) - you can see the format is the same.http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/investor-relations/amended-restated-cert-inc-176729.pdfThose are the only things you have to file, but in order to comply with Section 242 of the Code, you also need to have a board meeting or a unanimous written consent approving the amendment, as well as a shareholder approval approving the amendment. For the exact requirements see Section 242.Title 8Or, you can use a service, who will prepare and file the certificate for you (though I'm not sure whether they actually do the board/shareholder consents since I tend to do those myself and haven't asked)

This is a very complex question, in order to understand the reasons behind Qatar’s isolation we need to understand how geopolitics works:Geopolitical actors function according to their constraints;Geopolitical power is not only based on military force or economics, in fact, it is very relative based on technological, diplomatic, and social capabilities;Qatar constraintsBeing a very small nation, Qatar does not have either military or geographical advantage that can make it a superpower or even a regionally dominant power. So, it is very common for such a nation to be dominated by a powerful neighbor. The traditional behavior of such a state is to align itself to the dominant power in order to achieve security.Gulf Geopolitical landscapeQatar is a part of GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), an organization formed in 1981 by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE and Oman as a reaction of Iranian revolutionary Shia influence in the region.The Gulf geopolitics are dominated by the cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Both of them are trying to use religion to dominate the Muslim world and the region. In the Middle East, the religion is a form of geopolitical power, Saudi Arabia who has the two most important cultural heritage for the Muslims (Mecca & Medina) is a key factor in the Islamic world. They are promoting their own religious, political and social vision called Wahhabism, which is a part of Sunnism. In contrast, Iran branded itself as a revolutionary republic, promoting its own vision, a Shia revolutionary ideology. A lot of military factions such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Al Nursa and others are religiously built and legitimated. In this way, religious influence is transforming into military and political power.Qatari Flag on Empire State BuildingHow is Qatar building its power?Qatar understands very well the 21st century. Doha's solution to its constraints is to use its financial power, its geographical location plus its cultural/diplomatic influence in order to avoid to be dominated by the Saudi Kingdom.Financial powerIn the 21st century, a national economy is based on private businesses which tend to have an international construct. In this regard Qatar position itself as a powerful investor in big international players such as the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore or the US. Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the sovereign wealth fund of the nation is said to be one of the most acquisitive funds in the world possessing about $ 338 billion of assets around the globe. Let’s look at some of its assets:a. It is the fourth largest shareholder in the Swiss Bank;b. It is the third largest shareholder in Germany’s Volkswagen;c. During the financial crisis, Qatar becomes one of the largest investors in the UK’s Barclays Bank also Doha bought London’s Shard which is the tallest skyscraper in Europe. plus Canary Wharf, HSBC Tower skyscrapers.d. Qatar bought U.K. department store, Harrods back in 2010;e. Qatar raised its stake in British Airways owner IAG to 20 percent and purchased a 20 percent stake in London Heathrow in 2016;f. In New York, Qatar's investment arm bought nearly a 10 percent stake in, Empire State Realty Trust. This company is the owner of Empire State Building.g. Doha has also invested in Uber and recently announced plans to open an office in Silicon Valley to invest more into U.S.-based tech firms.h. In Singapore, QIA purchased one of the well-known Asia Square towers from BlackRock for $2.5 billion. It was the largest office transaction in Singapore's history.But how financial power can buy geopolitical power?These businesses that are listed in Qatari investment portfolio are one of the most influential in their origin countries. In the US its called simply lobby, Europeans are not very familiar with this term but they are using the same practices. Basically, the governments understand that the country political and economic stability is related to these big companies. That’s why these companies are able to influence the government domestically and internationally policies. Being one of the shareholders, Qatar has its own influence in that company and therefore in the mentioned states.Winning hearts and mindsIn the 21st-century information and media are consumed at a global stage. Qatar’s Al Jazeera media channel broadcast in both English and Arabic. It is the most influential media television in the Arab world and one of the most respected information source worldwide gaining more audience worldwide.Al Jazeera remarked itself being one of the most vocal critics of the authoritarian regimes in the Arab world. Its critics have a considerable influence in the Arab Spring events.Qatar LNG and IranQatar is the world’s biggest seller of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) aggregating to 30% of global supply. Iran and Qatar are sharing the world’s largest natural gas field, South Pars. Since 1979, Iran was under international sanctions, in this way Iran wasn’t able to modernize its LNG industry neither make deals around the globe. In contrast, Qatar invested and modernized its capabilities in extracting and selling LNG around the world.After the Iran Deal, Tehran started to invest in its energy sector in order to be able to make good deals, Qatar policy toward Iran changed because Doha realized that they have no chance to stop Iran’s new investments in the sector so they choose to become a part of the Iranian LNG industrial development. This is the smartest thing you can do in this situation.Qatar-Turkey Pipeline proposalQatar envisioned a pipeline from South Pars via Saudi Arabia, Jordan Syria, and Turkey that can supply customers from Europe and Turkey. In this scenario, Russia would lose its monopoly in the European gas market. This project is backed by the US. In contrast, Russia backed another project, a pipeline from South Pars via Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon to Europe.Because of the Syrian civil war evolution, Qatari project became unrealistic. It is unlikely that Syrian president Assad would support such a project. In fact, the Russian proposal seems to be a more realistic idea. So, Qatar changed its approach toward Russia and Iran. Being unable to confront them, Qatar is trying to make concessions in order to be a part of the future developments.In practice, Doha becomes more friendly with Iran, a policy which raises concerns in both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Saudi-Iranian tensions are higher than ever before. In case of the UAE, they have a territorial dispute with Iran over three islands in the Hormuz Strait, Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb.Is Qatar supporting terrorism?The short answer is yes, they support different terrorist organizations. The complete answer is that all states from the region are somehow supporting terrorists. The real issue is who is supporting who and why.In contrast to Saudi Arabia or UAE, Qatar has no considerable Shia minority or any religious minority. The Qatar Royal House is ruling based on the Sunni branch of Islam and their legitimacy is not under threat of external influence. In Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and UAE, Iran can actually have religious influence among their populations because of their Shia minorities. In the aftermath of the March 2011 protests in Bahrain, Iran expressed strong support for the demonstrators, the majority of whom follow Shia Islam. GCC intervened military in Bahrain to stop the uprising.The same scenario can be replicated in Saudi Arabia. The Shia minority is located in the richest oil region, an uprising there is a serious threat to the Saudi Monarchy. Ryadh expressed its concern many times of the Iranian interventions in its domestic issues.Another ideological threat to the Saudi regime is Muslim Brotherhood organization. This is an international Sunni Islamic transantional movement with political activities in all countries around the Middle East. In 1954 MB brought teachers in Saudi Arabia from Egypt which was ruled by Nasser at that time. Saudi newly educational system needed teachers with experience and obedience. Despite the fact MB expressed its support of the ruling family, they influenced intellectual life in Saudi Arabia undermining official Wahhabi ideology.During the Arab Spring, MB played an important role especially in Egypt where they were supported by Qatar in order to gain influence in Cairo. Mohamed Morsi a member of MB, won the election after Mubarak’s fall in 2011.Currently, MB is recognized as a terrorist organization by Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Without a direct influence in Doha, MB is a useful pawn in the Qatari regional interests. Think at this in business terms, MB is a niche of the religious market that Qatar is dominating.Qatari-Turkish friendshipTurkey is one of the most powerful actors in the region. Ankara avoided becoming a part of the Saudi-Iranian conflict. Erdogan is spreading his own political influence over the region challenging Turkish traditional zero-problem foreign policy. Regarding Syria, Turkey's main interest is to keep institutions intact in order to avoid a failed state at its borders. In contrast with Saudi Arabia, the removal of Assad is not a vital point. In contrast to Iran, keeping Assad in power is not a goal of Ankara. Erdogan’s ideal scenario would be a pro-Turkish new Syrian regime, that’s why Turkey is another supporter of the MB.Both of them, Turkey and Qatar are trying to pursue their own foreign policy. Both of them are supported by the US but at the same time, both of them are willing to make deals with Iran and Russia. Dona-Ankara axis is a natural geopolitical approach for both of them having similar interests.Final thoughtsDespite the fact it is a small nation, Qatar is unwilling to remain under external influence. It is pursuing its own foreign policy using its geopolitical advantages: financial power, media, and religious niche influence.We can think of Qatar as a smart power who is not relying on its hard power but on a soft one. Having a huge portfolio of international assets in one of the most powerful countries in the world Qatar is positioning itself as an influential business partner. Being able to reopen negotiation with Iran, Russia and perhaps Syria, Qatar is becoming an independent geopolitical actor.

Gamers get bent out of shape by the various monetisation strategies of publishers because they will invariably use those monetisation strategies to make their video games worse.The model of video games used to be simple: developers made good video games and you paid them $60 for that game. Developers were encouraged to make the best game possible because that is how they made money. However the addition of monetisation strategies has changed that system.Let’s start with DLC (downloadable content, generally sold separately from the game, for those who aren't familiar with the initialism), the first real additional monetisation strategy pursued by publishers.The idea was simple: publishers could extend the life of games that people love without having to make a sequel and asking gamers to buy an entirely new game. DLC could also theoretically be used to explore and expand upon things that gamers really enjoyed in the game such as the origins of a side character or boss. There is nothing wrong with using DLC in this way.Instead what happened was that publishers found it easier to carve content out of their games and sell it back to us than to make additional content on top of all the original content. Rather than release a full game and see what people wanted more of, they made a full game then cut out the parts that they thought gamers would enjoy to be sold separately.(Basically this)One of the most egregious examples of this was Mass Effect 3 which cut out a character to be Day One DLC (another shit show) who happens to be really important to the story of the game and trilogy and who was obviously designed to be in the game from the start.This is Javik. He is the last surviving member of an alien race that was destroyed by the game’s main antagonists and he is vital to understanding the nature of the threat that the player is facing. He was sold separately for $10. EA made the conscious decision to make the game worse by selling an important character that was clearly designed to be part of the game separately. Imagine going to see Lord of The Rings and being told that if you wanted to see the version of the movie with Gandalf in it you had to pay an extra $10. Not a different version without Gandalf as a character, the same movie but with all the scenes with Gandalf in removed even if the movie now no longer makes sense. Nobody would tolerate that and yet gamers are expected to be excited that their favorite games are being chopped up and sold to us separately.Perhaps story doesn’t matter to you? Perhaps you are one of those people who thinks story is for nerds. You like gameplay like a real gamer. Well DLC ruined that too. Multi-player FPS games like Call of Duty were also not safe from having their content chopped out and sold back to the players. The first game in a series would come with 20 maps. The sequels would start removing those maps and selling them back to the players as DLC; game number 2 would have 15 maps and sell an additional 10 for $15, game 3 would have 12 maps and sell you 3 map packs of 4 maps each for $15 a pop and finally game 4 would have 4 maps included with 4 map packs of 3 maps each for $20 each. Gamers would get progressively less stuff for more and more money. The worst part was that the community would always migrate to the new maps so if you didn’t have them then you functionally couldn’t play the game you bought. This also happened to racing games where the one game would have 100 cars and 50 tracks then the next game would have 80 cars and 30 tracks with the rest of the content hidden in DLC. Fighting games also suffered because their rosters would shrink just to sell your favorites back to you. Call me old fashioned but I believe that sequels should contain more things than the previous games.Then as if hacking their games to pieces to sell to us separately wasn’t enough they decided to make us pay for the pleasure up front. Many publishers started giving their games Season Passes which are a way to make gamers pre-order DLC that the developers haven’t even planned out yet. Many of these Season Passes go on sale without any consideration for what the DLC will be about usually just dates for their launch. The result is often that season passes consist of: one challenge arena which is always the first one, since it is the easiest to make, one DLC that should have been part of the game, since they were already doing that to begin with and maybe one actual DLC if you were lucky. Then because Season Passes were not enough some games got multiple Season Passes or simply released more content that was not included in the original Season Pass. Not only were gamers asked to pre-order content that had been carved out of their games but they might not even still get all of that content anyway.To accommodate all of this fuckery publishers also moved to a new system of releasing a game. In the past if you wanted a game then you could go to the shops and buy a game and that had everything that you needed. Now gamers need a fucking spreadsheet to navigate what version of the game you want.Now that $60 that a game used to cost only gets you the shell of a game meant to be filled with DLC. Words also end up becoming meaningless because the Ultimate edition ends up not even including all the stuff despite being called the Ultimate edition. Publishers don’t even know what the word Ultimate means anymore. Publishers do this in the hopes of confusing the customer into spending more. Rather than offering their customers value they try and trick them into spending more money.Publishers are also releasing Collector’s Editions of games that nobody even knows are good. The garbage fire that is “Alien: Colonial Marines” has a collectors edition when that game should be buried in a landfill. Collector’s editions used to be for games that had already come and were successful. They were a re-release of a game that people have demonstrated that they want and a way to reward fans.(This is not a thing that should exist)But all of this nonsense pales in comparison to the scourge of microtransactions.Now let me first say that I don’t have a problem with microtransactions in theory.They can be used well to support games that are free-to-play. I understand that game development costs money and developers can’t give their work away for nothing so as long as a game is free, the microtransactions don’t affect gameplay and are open and honest then nobody will have a problem with them. If a developer makes a fun, free game and includes an honest and fair way for you to support them for their effort then that is a perfectly valid and reasonable business.The gamers start getting upset when microtransactions start creeping into full priced premium games and when they start being coercive and deceitful.Firstly there should not be microtransactions in full priced games. These games are paid for upfront so the developer is already making money. They then still sell DLC and make even more money to pay. Adding in microtransactions feels like triple dipping. Publishers are trying to squeeze even more money out of their customers even though they have already paid. Just like DLC adding microtransactions to full priced games makes the games worse. Let’s look at some examples.Diablo 3 at launch had two problems because of additional monetisation. It contained a real money premium action house and as a result had to be always online so that players could use it but the developers purposefully made the loot tables in the game terrible in order to “encourage” players to spend real money on items. When the games came to console they didn’t have the real money auction house and had reworked loot tables to fix the balancing. The result was that the console versions of Diablo 3 were much much more fun that the PC version until that removed the auction house and got the reworked loot tables. Even the developers admitted that the auction house ruined Diablo’s gameplay[1]Dead Space 3 completely broke the game in order to shove microtransactions into the game. The excellent and high skill combat was simplified down so that crafting mechanics could be forced in and the game could sell you crafting materials and blueprints. A franchise that had built its reputation on atmosphere and immersion threw all of that out the window so that every time you opened the crafting menu a store could pop up and offer to sell you stuff shattering your immersion like a brick through a window.[2]“Middle Earth: Shadow of War” took the previous game’s best unique selling point, the Nemesis System, and broke it in order to sell microtransactions. The Nemesis system was a complex mechanic based around the player’s interactions with the Orc hierarchy in the game with rivalries, betrayals and promotions within that power structure creating unique emergent gameplay for players to all have unique stories and experiences in the game. In Shadow of War the developers decided instead to commoditise the Orcs in premium loot boxes and in order to “encourage” the player to spend more money they made Orcs have the lifespan of mayflies. Thus the mechanic was ruined because it meant that the players barely got to know any of their Orcs before they were killed, resulting in very few interesting organic stories emerging. The ridiculous turnover rate of orcs also meant that players ended up seeing 20 orcs of the same name throughout their play through. Once again the developers admitted that the microtranscation ruined their game and removed them.[3]Ubisoft’s entire gameplay design philosophy has shifted in order to accommodate microtransactions. Most of their games now contain RPG elements and crafting but the games also reward the player with much less experience and crafting materials so that they can sell them back to the players in the form of “time savers”. When Assassin’s Creed Odyssey players were using the custom mission tool to create ways to earn experience faster and more easily Ubisoft removed those missions because they didn’t want competition for their online store[4]. Ubisoft are making their games more grindy to sell players ways to skip that grind. They are making their games worse so that they can monetise ways to make them better.The big one however is EA’s Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2017). Battlefront 2’s multiplayer allowed players to advance the ranks in their preferred classes and heroes and unlock various stat bonuses in the form of Star Cards. However in Battlefront 2 these upgrades were locked behind a steep progression system that took forever to advance in and behind randomised loot crates that could be bought for real money. [5] This means that a player could spend money to gain a material advantage over other players. EA created what they hoped would be a competitive multiplayer game where you could buy an advantage over your opponents. Not only did the loot crates offer you a potential advantage over opponents but they were incredibly stingy when it came to giving out good items which when tied to the steep progression system meant that the only way to really advance and compete was to spend a ton of cash on loot crates. Due to backlash from the community (and possibly Disney) the loot crates were temporarily removed and when they returned they only had cosmetic items in them. Once again a game was made less fun and worse in order to add a new monetisation strategy to the game. The worst part is that it was entirely unnecessary because while EA told gamers that without microtransactions they can’t afford to make games they then told shareholders and investors that removing the microtranscations from Battlefont 2 would not “affect earnings”[6] . Basically EA lied to gamers to try and get sympathy but they legally can’t lie to shareholders and investors so we now know that microtransactions are there to make pure profit and do not affect the viability of a game in any way.Abusive and predatory microtransactions have also taken hold of Free-to-play games. Where once the market was about making a good game and then finding a way to monetise the game, modern Free-to-play games are built around creating the most coercive possible microtrasactions that they can get away with. Some people will probably have a problem with my use of the term coercive but I still think it fits given that the publishers and developers of these games try to create the most frustrating gameplay loop possible in order to grind down the player’s willpower and make them purchase a microtransaction. Games like these are barely fun and sell ways to make them more fun. These monetisation strategies make these games worse because they are about breaking down the player rather than giving them a good experience.(South Park knows what is up)Here are some of the ways that they do this:Putting constantly escalating timers on every action then selling you a way to shorten those timers also known as Free-to-wait games. This works well because the initial timers are very short in order to get you into the game then reach a point where you cannot really advance without spending money. Dungeon Keeper Mobile was notorious for this because its timers would quickly become ridiculous to the point that breaking down a single block would take over 24 hours. This can be linked to competitive games such as Clash of Clans where it is impossible to compete at the top level of the game without spending money because the players that do have an advantage over you.Then there are the games that limit the amount of actions that you can do in a specific time period. The amount of energy that you need to perform actions or the amount of actions that you need to perform constantly goes up until you reach a point that you have to pay or basically stop playing. “Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery” is infamous for this because its energy had been set up to run out during a sequence where your avatar was being strangled by Devil’s Snare thus creating the effect that you either had to pay or watch a child be strangled[7].Finally there are the games that are just straight forward pay-to-win. Games where the best items, weapons and mechanics are only available to people who spend money. This can create a game where free players are treated like second class citizens by the paying players and developers and where the top tiers of play are impossible to reach unless you spend money. I wonder why gamers would get upset about games where the people with the most money win.Basically all of these games and methods are designed to brute force their way through a player’s willpower to get them to spend money on the games. They do this by making a fun game worse so that they can sell the fun back to you. These developers and publishers know that people have a limited amount of self control and they do everything they can to reach that limit and “encourage” their players to spend money.Then there are the many deceitful ways that developers and publishers try to get gamers to spend more money on their games.The most common route is through the use of dual currencies. These games have two currencies, one that is meaningless after a short while and the “real” currency. These serve multiple purposes:They allow the game to create a suckering in period where you use the meaningless currency to progress until you feel attached to the game then the game throws up the paywall to get you to spend money on the real fake currency. However the game will still give you the meaningless currency so that you feel like you are making progress even though you are not.Having a fake currency allows the game to abstract the true costs. If the game popped up and said “Spend $15 to continue” most players would realise that it is ridiculous and stop there but when it says “Pay 800 gems to continue” then that extra layer of abstraction makes it difficult for the players to know how much they are spending. Even if $15 buys you 800 gems this little bit of maths can help short circuit some people’s logic.The game gets to mess around with its own economy in order to make the real money to fake money conversion even more difficult. The most common is to bundle currency so that the more you spend the more you save. This means that you can buy 800 gems or whatever for $15 dollars or you can buy 2000 gems for $30. Suddenly the maths as to what is a “good deal” and what is not a good deal becomes even more cloudy. The second tactic is to make sure that all the items in the game will almost always leave “change” so that the player is tempted to spend more money so as not to waste the extra fake currency they have for example only selling fake currencies in bundles of thousands then only selling items in multiples of 412 gems.Developers put a time limit on particular items making them available only for a short period. This increases player anxiety as the clock runs out and they want to purchase the item before they can no longer do so thus making them more likely to spend money. There is literally no reason for them to do this other than to manipulate players as the items cannot expire or run out of quantity.Another popular trick is to offer the players deals that would require them to spend money even if it is only a little bit. The game will detect that a player has 200 fake currency then put an item on “sale” (again the term sale is meaningless in terms of digital items) for 250 fake currency. However if the player has 300 fake currency they will receive a different “sale” for 325 fake currency. The idea is to get the player to spend money at least once because that makes them more likely to spend money in the future.Video game players are often drawn to collectibles and some games take advantage of this by messing with the drop rates of collectibles such as with loot boxes (which I will get to soon). Another common trick is to make most of a set of items easy to get but the last one or two incredibly difficult without spending money. This can lead to encouraging players to spend money to complete the set as its incomplete status will bother them.Some games use avoidance to lure players back and keep them invested. These games threaten your progress if you do not return regularly. Your castle might decay, your crops might spoil, your village might be destroyed. Players will try their best to avoid negative consequences in the game even if they don’t really matter because they don’t want to lose the time that they have sunk into the game already.Activision are working on a matchmaking engine that will attempt to use predictive software algorithms to encourage players to purchase microtransactions[8] by matching them with high skill players using weapons that are only available for real money. While it is currently not in use it could potentially create a situation where the game will put a player in a situation where they are out of their depth just to sell them a new weapon because it will seem so good in comparison to their own.This then brings us to the topic of loot boxes. These insidious little bastards have been ruled as gambling in several countries[9] [10] due to the fact that take advantage of several psychological tricks to exploit gamers such as :Gambling Fallacy- The belief that due to a number of negative results a positive result must occur soon i.e: “I have opened 20 boxes and got nothing so the next box must contain something.”Sunken Cost Fallacy- The continued pattern of behavior because of resources already spent i.e: “I have already spent $50 on loot boxes and don’t have what I want, if I stop now then all that money is wasted.”Finding a rare item in a loot box is accompanied by enhanced music and effects to give the player a rewarding shot of dopamine in the same way that winning a boss fight or leveling up does.Loot boxes get tied into progression and thus a player’s reward for progression can be held back encouraging them to spend money to get that reward.All of these psychological tricks once again make games worse because instead of relaxing and enjoying the game, gamers have to constantly be aware of and fight against all the bullshit and try not to get tricked into spending money that they can’t afford for digital crap.[11]So why do gamers get bent out of shape about the various monetisation tactics used by publishers? It is because every single time a publisher finds or implements a new monetisation strategy it makes the game a worse experience? There is not a single example of a game where new monetisation strategies have made a game better, even good games that happen to contain these strategies I would argue that they would be better without them.Footnotes[1] Why Diablo's Auction House Went Straight to Hell[2] Dead Space 3 includes micro-transactions for buying better weapons[3] Shadow of War Is Now Microtransaction-Free[4] Ubisoft's putting a stop to Assassin's Creed Odyssey farming quests[5] Star Wars Battlefront 2's Loot Box Controversy Explained[6] EA tells investors turning off Battlefront 2's microtransactions will not affect earnings[7] Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery forces you to pay - or wait - to save a kid from being strangled[8] http://* Some games use avoidance to lure players back and keep them invested. Some games threaten your progress if you do not return regularly and [9] Netherlands Gaming Authority cracks down on loot boxes in some games[10] Belgium's Gambling Commission rules against loot boxes in Overwatch, FIFA 18, and CS:GO[11] Someone Spent Over $150,000 In Microtransactions On A Transformers Game