As soon as some corporate battery behemoth hears this, they'll buy up the patent and lock it away so it can't be manufactured until the current battery designs stop making so much money.

And our average weightiness.

I think the 'balance of usability' would be perfectly easily defined by the end-user more than the programmer.

How about making the OS scalably responsive based on how it's used? "Gee, this guy only seems to use notepad and Firefox, and he has a hard time reading the text because he keeps enlarging it. Let's do that for him, and keep Notepad at the ready. Maybe even in a few weeks archive some of his least-used programs and data files to save system space. But make sure he knows we'd like to do it, and give him the option to decide not to."

"It looks like this guy really likes to play DX games and surf the web, and tweak his configurations. Let's give him the option of enabling administrative mode more easily and seeing hidden files, but allow him to disable it if he ever wants. And while we're at it, let's prioritize DirectX applications when they're running fullscreen so he gets the best experience out of it. In fact, he's so good at using this thing, let's let him have the option to modify his resolution, UI features, button sizes, text and color formatting, refresh rate, even tinker with his registry. He obviously knows how to handle it."

"This person thinks they know what they're doing, but they changed something that we had to adjust to make the system functional again. If he tries it again, we can just give him a polite reminder of what happened last time and offer that he seek support on the subject on our forums before he continue enforcing the same changes as before."

And most importantly...

"This person really doesn't seem to like it when we augment the OS's actions based on what they do, so let's just disable it and let him change his ability to access things manually."

All you have to do is make sure that the OS lets the end-user know 'Yes, we did this, and no, it wasn't a virus. Do you want us to put it back the way it was?' Give the end-user all the options but also the protections for the people who think they know what they're doing or the ones who DO want to minimize it for their use to a handful of actions.

I'd even be happy with after two months it goes 'You have a bunch of programs you never ever use. They're components of the OS, but if you never expect to use them we could remove them for you. Would you like to see a list and take out things you don't want to improve disk space and possibly even system performance?'

And last but not least, have all these annoying questions and thoughts in a convenient little place that doesn't get in the way. Popups on the taskbar? Maybe. But better yet, how about a scrolling ticker on the desktop? It floats behind other objects/windows, asks questions about your system use, and can also be configured to constantly inform you of important things. From RSS feeds to the weather, if you have new email, or occasionally mention your system performance.

Emphasis on those last four words, there.

New form of cyber terrorism and domestic internet havoc in 3...2...1...

I suppose that's what I get for not RTFA'ng TFA's FA. I'm surprised no one else called the guy on the article I referenced that Microsoft's involvement was insinuated and not factual. It comes across as the buyout being a direct cause of the retraction.

Anyone arguing that MS might make Skype better or at least not screw it up? They just announced removal from one system and it's been less than a week. They're going to confine Skype in an attempt to Microsoft-only products to keep their products on top of Mac and Linux. Bet you good they're going to integrate it right into Windows 8 with a nifty API for third-parties and maybe even make it so you get special phoning discounts if you use it from a Windows OS.

Instead Facebook won't sell the data, they'll just sell a piece of software to corporations that already does the loophole jumping for them, and claim that it's for educational or security evaluation purposes for their 3rd party apps.

And AT&T will buy this technology and lock it away for the next 40 years then complain that they have to raise internet user rates to cover their yearly costs, a la the oil industry to alternative fuel sources.

Not in all cases, but in some 'you get what you pay for' is a realistic term. It does apply in this situation. If you can (and do) pay for a subscription or a legitimate copy, you get support from the people who can actually improve the game you're playing. You also get the ability to interact with more people, be involved in competitions and group activities, and make friends that way. The problem is there's a point where the joy of playing online becomes a necessity more than a feature. For some games it makes sense. WoW is an MMO, and so it's an expectation slated by part of the genre before you even purchase it. You have to have internet to play, simple as that. For games like Counter-Strike and Starcraft II, it shouldn't be. You still have single-player mode and should be absolutely entitled to play without internet access. As far as I know, Starcraft II has that option. But DRM's on consoles are becoming ridiculously restrictive of content access. If I paid for a game, I expect to play it. Not see a 'Sorry, but we couldn't validate your ownership due to a connectivity issue'. This is going to become more and more of an issue the more companies manage to skate over class-action suits without compensating any of their customers whenever they can't provide access to the DRM they sell. It's bad enough that companies still package crap with quality products (compilation CD's, two-movie DVD's, Battle Chests, etc) just to raise the price when no one was buying the crappy products in the first place. I can already see a future where Capcom has their own DRM system on the internet over IPv6, and the million or so dedicated Capcom fans are all ticked off when Capcom uses AT&T's recent 'arbitration loophole' to avoid ever having to make the DRM content playable.

I remember the good ol' days when having internet access made a game more fun, rather than it being a necessity just to play at all. Maybe this kind of thing will 'encourage' a return to that way of planning, if only a little.

Don't worry so much over this. As soon as this is refined to pose a legitimate threat to petroleum fuel engines General Motors will purchase the patent for ungodly amounts of money and lock it away with the vegetable oil engine patent and the dawn dish washing liquid engine patent to make sure they keep their stock holders' investments in petroleum nice and inflated.