Oracle, and Sun before them, have been including that toolbar nag thing for several years. And it's not just Ask, it also will offer Bing and Google toolbars. It's an idiotic and annoying problem, but it's hardly a new issue or "the main contributions from Oracle to Java during the last year" as you put it.

I've been telling people to get off of Windows XP since 2001!

Slashdot has suffered such a serious decline in the past 4 years that it's remarkable someone actually bought it. The constant off-topic posts by professionals: Hugh Pickens (mostly not tech related), judgecorp (Techweek), mikejuk (i-programmer.info), the laughably bad slashvertisements, the terrible video missteps, and the apparent lack of any actual editing by the "editors" have reduced the once mighty Slashdot to a mere footnote.

Why not just use Wine to run the apps directly on Linux?

Part of the problem is I never played SC2 (I never buy games for more than $20) so I didn't know they'd already adopted that model until after I'd paid for my WoW subscription. A part of why I paid the WoW subscription was that with the included Diablo III, it sounded like a pretty good deal.

But I'll never use the multiplayer or auction house features...if I do play Diablo III, it'll be purely single player. So I really object to Blizzard requiring a Battle.net account and an internet connection to play a single player game, just like I don't want to play Ubi games that act the same way.

Well, best of luck with that for them. I know I'll never buy another Blizzard game that is built that way. I got Diablo III as part of my 1 year WoW subscription, so I didn't even bother looking into the DRM aspects, otherwise I'd have never purchased it (in spite of being a huge fan of the other Diablo titles). I haven't bothered playing it since I discovered it was online only.

I never, ever buy new games at full price. I've commented on this many times in the past, but I just don't feel that modern games give appropriate gaming value for their high $60 price tags. So I always wait until the game is discounted, either in the stores, on PSN, or on Steam, before I buy. That means that all DLC will have been out for a long time, and will also be cheaper. I only recently (as in, the last month) started playing Fallout 3, because it was on sale with all the DLC on Steam. Same with Oblivion, New Vegas, etc.

Not only that, but if you wait, you can sometimes get extra items that were originally pre-order bonuses, or dealer exclusives, bundled in a "game of the year" edition. No DLC or special item is worth actually buying something from Gamestop or Best Buy, but it always irks me to see game comapnies screw over their customer base with that sort of divisive BS.

So they can put DLC out on day 1, on day 1000, and it doesn't matter to me. I'd much rather wait for it to be cheap, bug-fixed, and thoroughly reviewed before I put down some money.

The only exceptions are my favorite franchises, Half-Life and Portal. But I'm OK with paying full price for those, because they're great, and it only happens once every 3 to 5 years...

Here we go again...a completely off-topic post, with video, cluttering up the front page because it's a pet project of the editors. Hasen't the Slashdot readership made it clear about this? If you must waste your time making bad videos, at least have the decency to keep them in the "Video" ghetto where they belong, and where the readers (and it's "readers", not "watchers") can safely ignore them. How long will your little vanity project keep going on, distracting you from doing your real job, and dragging Slashdot into the sewer?