I haven't seen the movie yet, but your comment and a couple others leave out something important: 2009 was a reboot of the post-USS Kelvin era. In other words, since Khan came to power in the late 20th century, the Botany Bay should still have flown off into nowhere (1996, wasn't it?), and he and his crew should still have gone into hibernation. Why would the events of 2009 cause any significant effect on someone who is fast asleep somewhere on the other side of the quadrant? That's like saying the Borg shouldn't exist now.

What it does give the movie moguls a chance to do is rewrite all of the stories we're already familiar with, and/or take them in new, maybe weird directions - but without necessarily eliminating the characters those stories were written around. We already know that Pike doesn't end up a vegetable anymore, let alone ending up on Talos IV. By the same token, maybe the Doomsday Machine (which originated outside the Milky Way) will "decide" to take a turn somewhere that it wouldn't have, owing to the absence of Vulcan. Or maybe the Enterprise won't show up at Janus VI and the Horta will go extinct at the hands of the miners there. There are tons of ways to re-use the characters and events of TOS and beyond.

That's Alcubierre's original theory, sure. The tests that warp field researchers are preparing for now, however, are expected to be doable with convential forms of energy (high voltages, as I understand). What a time to be alive!

Ordinarily I would agree with this, but there is a caveat to consider - that one "show-stopping" bug might only be seen by 5 or 10 percent of your userbase, who would quickly learn not to use the feature that triggers that bug, but those 50 cosmetic bugs will become so visible and glaring and unavoidable that you'll have users going, "Good G*d, this thing looks like shit! How I can I trust such a crappy-written program?", especially if those users are part of the general public, rather than a closed, business-users-only crowd.

In other words, Product B really *IS* worse, even if it objectively functions better.

I'm not saying those cosmetic bugs should necessarily be given the same weight as the showstopper, but to downplay them because they're "only cosmetic" is to ignore that rather sizable portion of your userbase, who care at least as much about spit and polish as they do about functionality.

Well, consider that there are many actions in a typical game that can be as easily* done with gestures as with a joystick or gamepad. It's all a matter of changing how you think about the game's controls. Let's take your platformer example:

Walking around? Seems to me that sliding your finger slowly around the screen along a viable path should work for that.

Need to shoot? A quick tap on your target seems fair (with a certain amount of "randomness" so that not every shot is perfect).

Need to jump? Swipe diagonally upwards to jump in that direction.

Need to crouch? Swipe diagonally downwards (the player should have a short timeout during which they stay crouched).

Need to operate an object on the screen (e.g. a door or something)? Tap your finger on it.

Want to use your special power-up? Surely there's an icon somewhere showing that you have it, so tap that icon.

Need to examine something? Use the two-finger "zoom" gesture on it.

Did I miss something?

(* Assuming you can consider programming/interpreting gestures as "easy" to begin with.)

Well, it works for peanut butter and chocolate, so why not? ;-)

obligatory: http://xkcd.com/838/

You forgot the most important part:

Kevin Flynn: Great, another mouth to feed.
Bit: Yes! Yes! Yes! [...]

All of my projects on github are either GPL, LGPL or WTFPL*, depending on the license of any code I borrowed from, unless I've forgotten one, even if it isn't stated in the code or README (because the license is always stated on forum posts where I publish the existence of the projects).

[*]WTFPL is a license commonly used in the Minetest community, equivalent to CC0 or "public domain".