Because the system that regulates it is corrupt! At the federal level it is pretty much a given at this point. Go lower to the state level and it is not as bad but it is still not good, ALEC and such, and down to city/county level you likely have less volume/size but you also have less oversight.

Until, starting at the top, we remove the money = speech corruption that started in the 70's we will see "solutions" continue to be be how can we word our new form of corruption in a way that sounds legit.

This game smacked to me of Titanfall marketing. And appears to have delivered the same level game. Nothing bad but not anything near the level of hype that the marketing inspired.

But the marketing DID deliver the hype level sales and that is all that matters to the publishers. So while the culture of pre-orders based on marketing hype that is backed up by paid for "reviews" exist this cycle will repeat.

Yeah the idea that they are going away from streaming is crazy. I used Netflix during their early days, DVDs via mail only, and it was fine for the time. But today I only use disc media when I'm forced to. Everything else is either streamed or moved around via some form of flash tech.

That is for day to day usage. Discs still have their use IMO as backup but the idea of using them for my day to day media consumption is something I don't even consider.

All that being said I still see them in use for people who don't have the same technical skills that I do and or specific needs. So it is not like that functionality needs to go totally away but the idea that Netflix is going to go away from their online streaming is again just crazy talk.

> Customers made them believe they wanted a seamless device to device experience...

Where/who/what exactly makes this true? I am not saying I don't believe that some study like that existed but I'd like to see it before I believe in its validity.

Because what I've been saying all along is that having multiple UI's is not a huge deal. We as humans can deal with that fact all day long. We don't need our toaster to have the same UI as our oven even if they form similar tasks. And that same idea extends freaking everywhere.

I honestly think that idea was never any sort of customer driven event, rather a marketing idea that was driven by shills in the tech press. That then took root into MS's internal culture.

I have used TONS of UI's over the years and have 0 problems with having a UI for my phone/tablet/whatever that has no real reason to expect a keyboard/mouse to ever be present being different than a UI for a system that will. In fact I downright expect better design from those who design UIs. And going the other way, forcing a UI that ignores the fact that my primary input is going to be a keyboard/mouse, smacks of bad design.

But we all know it was not some sort of bad design. It was/is a tactic by MS.

You ignored my other points but whatever. Lets address what you have said now.

The issue is that your finger is not a mouse pointer. It won't be unless you want to stick it in a pencil sharpener and get the tip of the bone down to a nice point. So failing that the UI will have to change to accommodate that. What was something that would be more than acceptable in size and shape to accommodate a WIMP interface has to now accommodate a finger.

Further your finger does not have buttons. To solve that mobile UI's use taps to simulate clicks and holds mostly to simulate right clicks. But it is still not as functional as buttons. Further unlike mobile UI platforms where you are directly holding the device, you would be tapping on a monitor.

Now the old CRT's back in the day could have put up with something like that without movement but modern screens are gonna be moving all over the place in response to tapping/holding.

Finally if you meant to imply that I can't see the value in other interface platforms you are very wrong. The issue is using the right interface for the right platform. And not trying to kludge together UI's for the sake of a single companies bottom line.

Aside from getting gorilla arm and moving your hands away from your primary input device? Smudging up your screen? And having to worry about your UI being altered from being efficent with the standard WIMP interface vs some kludge of one that tries to accommodate WIMP and a UI that is designed for when you don't have access to a keyboard/mouse.

Trying to merge the UI because you want to be able to sell more stuff rather than it actually being a UI upgrade is not a good thing. I don't want a yolk for my car any more than I'd want a steering wheel for a plane. Nor do I want to have to lug around a keyboard and mouse to use my phone. Hopefully you can see where I'm going with this when I sit down at a desktop computer.

Shrug, I still am not sure you have done any real research on this issue because my Logitech remote has ~30 buttons (not counting the number pad) and the remote that came with my TV has ~25. So yeah 5 extra buttons, most of which have direct functions that are not/would not be included on my TV remote like things for a cable box, is not that many.

Further that one remote can and does replicate all the functionality of 3 remotes in one package. (And it could do more.) It has its own programmable screen where you can put functions and or let the software put them there for you.

It is not perfect but damn few things ever are. But as far as programmable remotes go, of which I've been using since I 1st had a programmable remote in the 90's, it is damn good.

Honestly unless your TV has a remote that already ties into an audio system it is worthless. That is unless you think that the sound that comes out of TV speakers is acceptable.

If you think that all "universal remotes" are created equal you have not done much research. Get a good programmable remote, like the Logitech line, and don't look back.

Honestly most Star Trek movies were bad. There were a few exceptions but by in large they were not "Star Trek". The TNG movies were especially guilty of that.

So the question is what will the new Star Wars movies be? Will they be a "reboot"? Will they just use the Star Wars universe as a backdrop and be whatever? Or will they honestly try to be "Star Wars".

Now with the way Lucas had his way with EP 1-3 at this point calling anything true "Star Wars" is a pretty low bar. But it will be what it will be. I am sure as hell not expecting much.

While I've played a fair amount of Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft my main interaction with Blizzard was with WoW and so I'm not really here to talk about D3. I only played D2 a bit and have not even watched a LetsPlay of D3 just to give an idea of my interest in the series at this point.

What I would like to say is that it is less than a year since Activision/Blizzard has detached themselves from Vivendi Universal. And as such there may be hope for them going back to some of the older better ways.

IIRC Vivendi Universal was losing money pretty badly during the years that introduced a lot of the really blatant cash grab moves that happened. And while getting any sort of proof from corporations is laughable in this day and age it sure as hell looked like Vivendi was pressuring Blizzard to make those moves.

Yeah, those pre-existing conditions, caps on how much health care you get, and HUGE profits for medical care that the law is attempting to fix are just side effects of how it is hurtin 'Murica!

I have been on /. for years now. And I've watched it change from Taco's personal site to a corperate entity and that is fine. Things change and we all move on.

But that beta website...no. Not gonna be viewing that. Slashdot will become one of the many sites that I used to know and love to something I don't visit anymore.

So good luck Dice and all you who are getting those paychecks. Once you make the change I will remove /. from my bookmarks and not look back.

Big props for you speaking truth here. I honestly have run into so many MS shills/fanboys that I am rather shocked and amazed that you are not one of them.

The only issue I have is that in your OP you list the few "under the hood" upgrades that Win8 has as nice but when pushed have to honestly list them as marginal. Again given your overall honesty I'm not faulting you I'm just saying that there really is nothing "under the hood" of Win8 that outweighs the bullshit that is its UI.

(BTW, Process Explorer FTW if you want anything better than Task Manager information.)

> Win 8 OS under the hood (which does have some nice improvements)

List them. Seriously. List them all.

I've seen this claim many times but nobody has yet to make a compelling valid list. So please, try.

So I actually have been actively using Opera for a while now. As well as it having a place in my history as my primary browser back in the day. And by now you might have then inferred that while I use Opera it is not my primary browser. Let me explain.

Since, at least as far as I'm aware, you still can't give a command line options to any Windows browser to tell it where/what size to open it has been convenient for me to use Firefox on my main monitor for my primary browser and then a 2nd browser that opens up on my 2nd monitor. Further it is nice having my 2nd monitor browser be different since then I can keep 2 effective sets of bookmarks. Since my 2nd monitor browser is in effect more a media device than my primary browser.

And for that Opera has worked great. In fact it still is working right now on my 2nd monitor where a YouTube video is playing right now. The UI was decent, it did not eat up a ton of resources, and overall did exactly what I wanted it to do and did it pretty well.

Well just a week ago I wanted to do a reinstall and so I packed up all my programs config/data files and did the deed. Opera's data files sit in:

C:\Users\$UserName\AppData\Roaming\Opera\Opera x64

Notice that last bit...my archive said just Opera not Opera x64 which I thought was a little odd since Opera kept auto updating for me so I thought I was running exactly the same thing that I had been not 45m prior. But whatever, I could see why that could happen between version installs but not updates. I was wrong.

I had been running Opera 12.x. I did not really keep track of it since all the dev's lost their heads and went for version number bloat and all that. So when I hit Opera's download site I just grabbed the latest version, installed, turned it on once, killed it, replaced the default config files with mine, and turned it back on and...

It was like installing Win8. Total UI change for the worse. (This was now Opera 19 btw.) No way to even put up a button for bookmarks. Everything had to go though a "quickdial" type page. Options were dumbed down. Just bad bad bad. It took me to realize that I was running what amounted to a whole new Opera and not the old one that had served me well.

Here: http://www.opera.com/download/...

You can see where the change was. The old Opera, which they appear to still be doing some updates to, stops at 12.x and then the reboot starts at 15 and is up to 19, lol, now. That version is something that again I liken to a Win8 version of Opera. I did not use it long enough, the new version of Opera, to give it any sort of proper review. All I know is that it was bad for me, reeked of some sort of desire to force tablet UI on desktop computers, and dumbed down everything as if I was using some Apple OS/app.

I am not opposed to change but where Opera is going now will not have me as a follower.