It only ever happens to me on mobile, so no no-script there. What happens is you can see the link to use classic, and then it disappears behind some other div. To top it off, the stupid fucking website is "responsive," so it squishes itself down into a useless wad of mobile-site and fuck you if you'd rather it stayed a normal full page. So far as I know there's no way to disable CSS Media Queries without browser plugins so the design weenies have finally managed to get us good and stuck in their sweaty ass-crack of "modern web design."

I get the feeling that EA forced Will Wright to make all sorts of stupid changes to make it something "anyone can play." There are videos (link) from early versions that show a much more "realistic" look and feel. No cartoonish dancing, googly eyes, or happy singing penis creatures in evidence.

At some point during development some upper management types meddled the game into the pitiful thing that was released. If you look at the information about the development of the game, there are all kinds of cool prototypes that went on to become the game, you can really tell they were trying to do something revolutionary.

EA does NOT do revolutionary.

Except you'll have to "very carefully position it" to actually, you know, click on one of those menu items once you've flailed the cursor up to the top of the screen. So I'd say it's a non-issue, and thus the single menu bar is, as ever, crap.

Worse than Android apps, it only runs Chrome apps. Possibly NaCl is supported, I've no idea, but the bulk of the apps are HTML/CSS/JS zipped up with some metadata. I've been tossing around the idea of getting a Chromebook, but only if Linux could be installed on it easily, which it seems like some Chromebooks cannot do. Mostly they seem to support a weird dual-install that boggles my mind and seems really sub-optimal. Perhaps someone with more experience can elaborate.

Personally, I doubt I could do very much work in ChromeOS itself, and what I could do would be limited to whatever the "SSH client" in the Chrome store can support. SSH is nice and all, but I'd rather not be stuck doing absolutely everything in it especially if network conditions aren't so good. Nothing like your ssh client lagging while you're trying to edit text. Where or where will the cursor be when it catches up, and what got fucked up in the process?

The Internet is the very definition of decentralized. Sure, Google might provide an easy way to search for what you want, but then you're directed to some half-assed eCommerce site which may, or may not, be trustworthy. Assuming they're legit, or you just don't care, you've got to navigate whatever checkout process they've got, fill out a bunch of forms with personal info, and if you're lucky they don't steal your identity.

Don't get me wrong, what Amazon is doing here is despicable. But let's not kid ourselves, Amazon got to be the size it is because people like being able to just find what they're looking for and buy it with minimal fuss and without navigating the god-awful clusterfuck that is eCommerce. The comparison to Wal-Mart is particularly apt. Not only because of the two companies desire to take over the world, but because Wal-Mart, like Amazon, has excelled in giving people what they want, when they want it, and at a lower price than any competitor. The fact that these kind of retailers are destroying local economies is the last thing on most peoples minds.

Yet.

Slashdot needs IP shadow banning, so fucktards like APK can spin their wheels with their insane posts and the rest of us can get on with it. I don't know what's gotten into him lately, but practically every single story has a flood of stupid APK's stalker "LOL EAT UR WRODS FEEB" posts. It's starting to get out of hand. Hopefully he gets back on his meds and settles down soon.

APK, before you go on your usual "LOL @UR NOT A >> LICENSED MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL SO U -> KANT KALL ME @KRAZY@" rant, I've got proof that I am and I can. Bitch.

Nonsense. They didn't take it away from you, they didn't flip a switch and remove the possibility of using XP. I can't believe I'm defending Microsoft here, but they've really got nor responsibility to subsidize your, or anyone else's, decision to continue using the software. Where does the line end? Are they to keep updating your precious XP for another ten years? Twenty? Dealing with the aftermath of XP being EOL'd seems to me to fall squarely in the "consequence of your own personal decisions" camp, rather than "they owe me updates forever because I paid them once for something."

Windows 7 is fine, once you get past your heebie-jeebies about the updated interface. The 32-bit version should be able to run nearly everything, save for such software that is so breathtakingly awful, or tied to a specific version of Windows in some kind of unholy union, that it simply can't handle anything else. You can even still run the old 16-bit shit you've got laying around, probably even without significant issues. If you went and got yourself stuck using software that is incapable of running on a newer, and largely compatible, OS, well frankly it's your own god damned fault, and Microsoft shouldn't be expected to ensure your particular requirements are taken care of for free, forever.

They should just do what the comic book guys do. Set the new ones in an alternate dimension, which is almost but not quite entirely unlike Star Wars. Then, they could do whatever they want to, the fans can keep their cherished memories and believe they came from the TRUE universe. To top it all off, they can have a movie where the two realities join forces to battle some inter-dimensional-something-or-other. At least if they mentioned such a thing it might get the whiny fanboys to simmer down a bit.

No, no, no, you're doing it wrong! Only an idiot would use HOSTS files, they're outdated, a pain to administer, and generally a complete waste of time. Only a psychotic internet troll could advocate the use of such a thing.

I'm sure they've thought about charging for 911 service, but for some reason are unable to. The laws and regulations around this stuff are ... complicated.

I do believe there are many, many ways to solve this problem. They just won't.

Because they're evil.

Because they're apparently too god damned stupid to just disallow the text direction character(s). The oft cited excuse for lack of unicode support is essentially, "Cuz the trolls would do nasty things," which is, as excuses go, pretty weak.

The real question would be what kind of transparency is there about this data? What are they collecting, exactly, and what do they do with it? I can't think of anything Madison Avenue, or wherever the marketing firms lurk around in, would love more than a huge trove of child behavioral data, especially if there's even a hint of it being personally identifiable.

Much data is likely already gathered by the government run schools, but the constant push to completely privatize schools raises the same issues as other large corporate databases, specifically the ability of those private schools to monetize that data to pad the bottom line.