I am personally not deeply troubled by this behavior. I like having the latest version of Chrome running on my machine. That being said, they really should let users opt out (or, better yet, make it an opt-in on first launch) of automatic updates. And, to my knowledge the keystone auto updating is the behavior on Mac and Windows. In Linux, it just uses apt. I don't have any issue with the Linux behavior, except that they might add a dialog informing the user that they're modifying /etc/apt/sources.list during the install. You have to remember that there are two sides to this coin: with auto updates turned on, you are vulnerable to any bugs that may be introduced by an update and to any nefarious / evil conduct from Google as darkly insinuated by the above poster. Conversely, without auto updates, you are vulnerable to any security issues that the updates fix. Frankly, the later concerns me a lot more than the former, and I suspect most of the non-tin-foil-hat-wearing community would concur.

yeah, they need to get together with some music majors. Have the CS majors design the instruments and have the music majors figure out how to use them and perform.

Adobe needs to realize that when you regularly release new versions of a hugely expensive software suite, there are going to be lots of people who won't / can't upgrade. It's a slap in the face to their customers that a $2,000 piece of software that was still top-of-the-line less than a year ago won't be supported on the latest operating systems. Heck, I'm still using CS2 with no plans to upgrade any time soon. I'm not made of money and I still haven't seen any feature in CS3 or 4 that even remotely justifies paying Adobe's ridiculous prices to upgrade.

Adobe's only strategy to maximize their profits seems to be ultra-high pricing and increasingly obnoxious DRM. If anyone in Adobe management has taken micro-economics, it might be a good time to remember that a lower price will greatly increase the quantity demanded. If Adobe products didn't cost your first-born child and a kidney, people might actually buy their upgrades.

I think Blizzard is getting overconfident with the success of WoW and forgetting that good customer relations can really make or break a product launch. For a recent example, Google "Spore". Several of my favorite StarCraft matches that I've played over the years occurred in a venue without an internet connection. My friend and I played a very memorable game while on vacation in a cabin in a remote part of Colorado. WoW by its nature requires an internet connection. StarCraft is an RTS and there is *no reason* other than DRM to require one. MooseMuffin is right -- It's raining money at Blizzard right now and it looks like they really don't care about their customers' concerns much any more. However, I think they may find that the people playing WoW aren't necessarily the same people who like playing StarCraft. I know a lot of people who love StarCraft, but won't touch an MMORPG and vice versa. I'm in the former category and I will not buy SC2 if it requires an Internet connection. I'm not going to let them shove their DRM down my throat. And it really pisses me off because SC1 is probably my favorite game of all time.

When you can get a 100mbit connection in Japan for the equivalent of $14 / month, I feel like, if anything, Time Warner should give me this 8mbit crap for $2 / month -- and even that wouldn't be as good a deal as the Japanese are getting.

Our ISPs really dropped the ball here. I had 6mbit internet in 1999 (had a really cool uncapped DSL package through Sprint :) ). Here we are 9 years later, and speeds have hardly improved. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has leapfrogged us.

Don't tell me that we're putting too much strain on the Time Warner network. I'm paying those bastards $45 / month. I should be able to use my full 8mbits 24/7 if I want to. Internet in Japan is 40 times better (in terms of megabits per dollar) than it is here. Give me a break!