It's not $100; it's $100 per platform per year. If you buy a Java certificate, it won't work on any platform that isn't Java, and it'll self-destruct after 365 days.

Good luck with that if the feature you relies on shows up as (void)0 (that is, unimplemented) in the end user's browser. It's apparently easier to get end users to upgrade a Java plug-in than to switch to a different web browser.

From this page, Atom N450, Xubuntu 12.04, Xorg 1.11.3, Firefox 24: "Hmm. While your browser seems to support WebGL, it is disabled or unavailable. If possible, please ensure that you are running the latest drivers for your video card." This Mozilla page recommended looking in the "Additional Drivers" utility that came with the operating system, but all it showed me was the driver for a Broadcom NIC that I'm already using. The Mozilla page also referred me to Intel's driver update utility, but that's Windows-only.

Web developers can't count on users having Chrome available. When a web application detects that a required JavaScript object is unavailable, it displays an error message to the user. In such a case, whom does the user blame?

Did you try explaining this conflict of interest to the media in a letter to the editor? Did you try donating money to the campaign of the majority leader's opponent?

If the Tesla Motors saga is to be believed, this failure of local dealers to serve their respective markets is something that you should mention to your state legislators.

If you'd believe an Anonymous Coward's side of this story, then shipping with a gamepad and being marketed for use with a TV are remarkable because they are beyond the lowest common denominator for PC gaming. Is this AC right or just full of crap?

Then what is the proper term for Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, and other desktop Linux distributions that resemble Debian, Fedora, and Gentoo more than Android?

Listing all Linux distributions in an application's "system requirements" would require excessive space. This means there's a need for a precise name for the set of Linux distributions that support Gtk+ and/or Qt userland as opposed to only the Android userland. Would Qt/Linux or Gtk+/Linux be more accurate?

It's still far less clunky than "Linux-with-a-GNU-userland" or "Linux-that-isn't-Android-or-embedded".

I need brevity because there are plenty of Slashdot users who repeatedly point to Google Play Store as evidence that there are plenty of games and other commercial apps "on Linux". So is there a shorter term for Linux-based systems that aren't Android or embedded?

It does when "free Linux-based OS with a multiwindow GUI" takes up the majority of a 50-character "Comment Subject" box. You need the "multiwindow GUI" part to distinguish the multitude of Linux distributions for desktop and laptop PCs from Android and from Linux distributions designed for servers.

I agree with you that it's not likely to be a big practical issue. Back when those games came out, the MHz race was still on; it's a cores race now, and cores require more rearchitecting of the engine. And once hardware comes out, there'll be a lot more pressure on Valve not to issue breaking patches for existing games sold when that hardware was still on shelves.

It's three of five now. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are fans of lockdown. OUYA and now Valve, less so.

I can think of three things that "free software friendly games" might mean: games that are themselves free software and free cultural works, games that are free software but require the purchase of mission packs (e.g. Doom, Quake III), or just games whose graphical complexity is low enough to run on a pre-Haswell Intel IGP (the desktop GPU with the most complete free driver). Which did you mean?