Over umpteen versions and so many years, and they still haven't added settings to disable audio (banners and embedded video commercials with audio enabled have become worse over time) and it has only grown increasingly bloated over hogging processing and memory. Thankfully Opera makes it simple and accessible to disable the plugin for the majority of browsing, or even on a per-site basis for the worst offenders. But these are things that Adobe should be implementing so users can take control of what plays on their PC.

One of the things I had to consider when I bought my iPhone recently was that it couldn't play Flash--and the more I debated this the more I realized that 99% of Flash on the web is now junk. Despite the occasional Flash game or intentionally viewing an embedded video, I suspect we would all be better off without it on most sites.

They've been sitting on remaking FF7 for years. $150 million would probably be covered by just the initial release if they were to produce an updated version with modern tech.

Not that I care either way--I hated that game and pay less attention to Square with each year. But they _could_ do it any time if they only wanted to.

Sure, if that makes you feel better. The toilets also breathe fire up into your arse and the lightbulbs all contain microchips so the government can spy on you.

We actually have people protesting because they would have to change some bloody lightbulbs or use a more efficient toilet.

On the plus side, just the suggestion that we might adopt a similar plan could trigger multiple simultaneous aneurysms in even the lowliest peon at Fox News. We could cut emissions and BS at the same time.

I was browsing my Facebook settings just last night. I believed that I had already handled this chore, but this time I paid more attention to the section with application settings obscurely nestled four clicks into the mess they call privacy settings. For some reason you can't actually tell what's going on at a single glance as I previously thought, and need to switch among views like 'authorized' and 'allowed to post' (whatever the difference is, I do not know) to actually see what's going on. That's where I discovered that a couple like Farmville and some quiz app had been "authorized" despite the fact that I have never used them nor ever opted into them.

I suppose I should feel grateful that they even allow us to delete them.

So now I wonder how long my information has been shared with these parties that I don't even use. And that doesn't even explain all the other apps, because I'm sincerely unsure if they're all enabled by default and I have to block them manually. For example, I was on a site called Livestream the other day to find it had accessed my Facebook cookie with my user information splayed about their page. I can't find any recourse to this--my privacy settings claim to have 'select partners instantly personalizing their features with my public information...' disabled. Evidently, some select partners are more privy than others. Meanwhile, clicking the privacy button on Livestream simply routes one to the Facebook privacy policy where they kindly explain that you are fucked.

Unfortunately, Opera has no pertinent settings about ensuring that cookies are only retrieved by the original domain so if Facebook won't take measures against this then perhaps the browser devs will and I am going to post the feature request later. Clearly we are going to have to take these measures ourselves because this story proves that Facebook staff aren't even listening.

Most people here may just be better at reading comprehension than you. It says "last _bought_", afterall.

But just a few of the most common gripes:

Lionhead did a commendable job porting Fable, but in translating the controls to keyboard+mouse, they completely neglected joypads or any alternative input devices. The first thing we saw were customers downloading Joy2key just to adapt, which produces twitchy results and demonstrates that the devs clearly failed to test it against a real group of gamers because anybody could have pointed out that people would want to plug in a controller. (It's either this or the far scarier scenario where Lionhead apparently didn't realize you can even use peripherals on a PC.)

Sadly that's not the only game, while others have it the other way and fail to adapt decent keyboard+mouse controls. Still others like one of the Spiderman games wouldn't even accept my non Xbox controller as an input device, even though Windows and everything else registers it fine.

I see a lot of ports that fail to take advantage of the basic hardware superiority of a PC, right down to increased screen resolution, or even wide screen displays. Sadly some native PC games are even guilty of this (I think Doom 3 and/or Quake 4 were in this group)

Many more fail to appreciate the fact that while one-size-fits-all may be the creed of the console companies and their audience, PC gamers are accustomed to settings and expect the freedom to tweak for performance. We're not simpletons that need tech support to plug A/V cables into a TV, and would-be port developers need to recognize this by adding the full list of options for shadow detail, texture resolution, etc. if for no other reason than because that's what the other PC games offer and your product will look half-assed and inferior by comparison. And may your gods help you if you don't fully support keyboard configuration, and I get stuck using some WASD, RDFG, or whatever scheme with no recourse to change it.

The top complaint should be the steep system requirements, which often make the clearest indication that studios and their developers aren't even _trying_ to produce a decent port. We understand that you can't directly convert the specs of an Xbox 360 to PC as if they were sporting the same architecture and there is no overhead from the OS and other running tasks. But when a game runs fine on the limited hardware of a console, yet states ten times the system memory, GPU memory, etc as the minimal PC requirements and you still get framerate issues it makes one wonder if they bothered to optimize any of it.

Another issue is support, because I see too many games released, followed by the predictable fan response on official forums about bugs and errors, and months later no patch has ever surfaced. Some games are known for having to rely on third party unofficial patches, or even developers personally releasing their own fixes independent of the company. If you want the respect (and positive reviews and money) of the PC community, then you need to expect to stand behind your product. Which isn't to say every kid who can't understand how to update his video drivers needs to be placated, but you can expect to alienate your own fan base by outright ignoring+abandoning them once you have their money.

The last complaint I'll add involves DRM. I think it's lovely that you--whether you're a developer or publisher--believe that the Nintendo Wii or whatever is 100% secure and are fully committed to the myth that piracy only affects the PC.

The problem is when you try to introduce the same false sense of security into your spiffy PC product in the form of DRM, because too often that has arrived in the form of rootkits/Starforce/et al. PC Gamers are often fanatical about things like system maintenance, and we've learned to notice the details like inconspicuously placed services and entries to the Run keys in our registries. Frankly, it's a violation because the lone act of _us_ paying _you_ money by buying your product does not give you the right to take over our system and do what you will. And until you can come up with a better justification for these draconian measures than your bottom line, we're going to continue resenting you for it. I see legitimate customers driven to downloading the game illegitimately every day over these things. It would behoove you to pull your heads out of the sand and pay attention to this.

Even the basic requirement of a disc to launch the executable is patently offensive to our intelligence. There is no technical reason why any game today would require me to fish out a DVD every time I want to play it on my PC. We all know it, and more importantly you know it too, because all game data is installed and doing otherwise would present the type of severe bottleneck seen in--well, console game loading times. Yet instead of taking advantage of this benefit on our behalf, you've clung to the tradition of 'please insert disc 1...even though you've already committed six gigabytes of hard drive space to storing all the movies and data'

I'm done. In closing, please tell Square to start making Final Fantasy ports on the PC again because I bought Seven and Eight but not a single one since because they haven't made any others and I can't be arsed to go buy some Playstation just for that.

The first thing that struck me about this article is that I seem to recall an inferred right in Constitutional law for a citizen to travel freely within the country. I managed to find something summarizing+confirming the fact, aptly named 'right to travel': http://supreme.justia.com/constitution/amendment-14/96-right-to-travel.html

It would seem to me that a toll in order to make use of public roads would be tantamount to the poll tax explicitly barred in the twenty fourth amendment. This is apart from the obvious point that charging tolls on tax payer funded roads seems redundant.

This is a good idea. Just ask any proponent of creati...err...intelligent design.

The only argument of which I'm currently aware is that they state the excessive damages are necessary to deter others.

It may be fortunate that this is the kind of rhetoric that sells to politicians moreso than courts. The extortionate damages that IP holders currently seek is clearly intended not to simply deter people from violating copyright, but from even putting up a fight in the first place--as demonstrated by the way the RIAA handles these cases by offering to settle for a few grand or face the threat of an exponential lawsuit.

Otherwise you're just stating the obvious: yes, the RIAA will find a way to fight this. And the sky is blue and birds chirp.