Borderlands did that, with drop-in multiplayer co-op.

In one fell swoop, that game was killed for me; I was really enjoying playing, I ended up in a maximum-size group with all decent people, completely by accident. We played the last half of the game in one loooong sitting.

Just as we were getting to the last boss, some exploiting douchebag came in and killed the end boss via some exploit.

Thus I don't play multiplayer games. As if I didn't hate them before, I sure as hell hate them now. The sad thing is that I *really* enjoyed Borderlands, but that put me off even buying the expansions.

Gary (-;

"the current regulatory framework would lead to constant legal challenges to the FCC's authority every time it attempted to pursue a broadband policy."

And... so?

"Something's good for consumers but unpopular with service providers; because the service providers might be bitchy let's not do it."

What? The *point* of the FCC is *exactly* to suffer being that middle man.

Gary (-;

Oh, and I should add that a relatively piddling amount of money in the face of "no, seriously, this *will* kill your customers" is hardly making me think more highly of them.

Gary (-;

First... It seems obvious at this point that volcanic ash does, in fact, destroy engines. The fact that "how much ash for how much destruction" is unknown, well, I can almost sympathise with the airlines, and perhaps the governments really were erring a bit vigorously on the side of caution.

Then I think... Man, there was a time when airlines garnered occasional goodwill. I'd feel I'd been treated well by them, where there wasn't nickel-and-diming at every turn, where flying didn't make me feel like a criminal [sure, not entirely the airlines fault, but I don't remember any of them ever stepping up on behalf of their customers].

That time has passed. Nowadays it brings nothing but joy to me to see their airlines suffering. In some parts of the world stuff like this is known as karma. Treat your customers like shit, eventually mother nature dumps thousands of tons of rock on your ass.

Gary (-;

When you're shopping for a new thing, what you do is: You weigh up the pros and cons of each thing available, compare those against the list of your needs, then pick the most appropriate one.

If affordable early termination is one of your specific needs, then don't buy the phone you're looking at from the provider you're looking at where early termination is a big scam. You have to weigh up the pros and cons and pick what's best for you. There are lots of phone providers, and sure - they all suck. But you pick what best meets your needs.

- And this is why I still don't have a smartphone. Because the cons [such as monthly cost c.f. my current plan] don't add up to be sufficient to meet my needs [such as affordable]. The cons of Apple's iPhone douchebaggery far outweigh the pros of having a phone I could kinda-sorta develop for.

Another simple way to avoid the problem of accidentally hitting the web browser is to remap the web browser button to something else. Even my cheap phone can do that.

Gary (-;

Sure, and some people like their web browser to have a built in mail client.

The original purpose of phoenix was to stop putting in exactly this kind of cruft.

Perhaps if the "awesome bar" was so awesome, then someone could implement it as a plugin. That way, everyone's happy. You get a browser *with* that feature, and I get a browser *without* that feature.

The [not] "awesome bar".

Somehow it always makes it harder to find what I want, not easier [eg, for some reason, it appears to have decided that penny-arcade.com is the correct url when I type in "facebook"]

And no; "just turn it off" studiously avoids the OP's complaint - which was that things like this shouldn't have needed to be added in the first place. How soon we forget - the name "phoenix" didn't even appeared in the news post [although it is in TFA].

When I last went shopping for a phone, I didn't get Verizon because of exactly this. I bought a motorola razr cheap from t-mobile.

Let me sync with my mac out of the box. Phone cost: 20 dollars. Service cost: don't remember exactly but it's something like thirty bucks a month.

You make it sound like AT&T-iPhone vs Verizon are the only two games in town. In fact, they're just two of the worst. Perhaps you're into self-hate - is that why the only two options you describe both proscribe crippled hardware?

Gary (-;