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Lifetime of an individual could be argued. Beyond the lifetime, the "plus", though, is absurd.

I always imagined that PMA copyright terms, such as those of the Berne Convention, were intended to reduce the perverse incentive to murder authors in order to force their works into the public domain.

As far as "lifetime+" for not-individuals goes, that should be a non-issue: if the copyright is owned by a corporation, it's assigned for a fixed period, full stop.

This is how current U.S. law operates: copyright in a work made for hire expires 95 years after the end of the Gregorian calendar year in which the work was first published.

Creative works should be relinquished to the public domain after a not-overlong, reasonable period within which the creator reaps a reward for the creation.

Agreed. But when the major movie studios own the major news media that help legislators get elected, how will legislators entertain any idea of a "not-overlong, reasonable period" other than the movie studios'?

Agreed, so long as nobody tries to introduce a mainstream "desktop Linux" or "server Linux" distribution that uses a C library other than the GNU one.

an ever present PC MasterRace?

There's one thing the PC Master Race hasn't mastered: how to market living-room PCs to customers who aren't hardcore geeks. Really what consoles are good for is ease of use and single-screen multiplayer. If PCs catch up in those respects, we won't need consoles anymore.

an ever present PC MasterRace?

There's one thing the PC Master Race hasn't mastered: how to market living-room PCs to customers who aren't hardcore geeks. Really what consoles are good for is ease of use and single-screen multiplayer. If PCs catch up in those respects, we won't need consoles anymore.

an ever present PC MasterRace?

There's one thing the PC Master Race hasn't mastered: how to market living-room PCs to customers who aren't hardcore geeks. Really what consoles are good for is ease of use and single-screen multiplayer. If PCs catch up in those respects, we won't need consoles anymore.

If you're referring to the use of "GNU/Linux" rather than just "Linux", I would guess the use of "GNU/Linux" was intended to contrast desktop Linux, for which this fix was released, with Android, for which support had been terminated even earlier.

you can't install it yourself on the vast majority of shared hosts - many also don't have SNI enabled and will also require that you use a dedicated IP for the cert which is extra cost there.

SNI support is part of why I switched pineight.com from Go Daddy shared hosting to WebFaction shared hosting. But I think shared hosts don't offer SNI hosting because of the perceived support cost of complaints from users of Internet Explorer for Windows XP. It and Android Browser for Android 2.x are the last two remaining major browsers that don't support SNI. But in two months, Microsoft will stop releasing security updates for Windows XP. At that point, migrating to SNI will make sense because server operators can presume that IE/XP is insecure, especially once computer vandals start deploying client-side MITM through a forever-day exploit in Windows XP. The login form summarizes the Firesheep, SNI, and IE/XP issues and links to a TLS version of the form for users with compatible browsers.

you can't install it yourself on the vast majority of shared hosts - many also don't have SNI enabled and will also require that you use a dedicated IP for the cert which is extra cost there.

SNI support is part of why I switched pineight.com from Go Daddy shared hosting to WebFaction shared hosting. But I think shared hosts don't offer SNI hosting because of the perceived support cost of complaints from users of Internet Explorer for Windows XP. It and Android Browser for Android 2.x are the last two remaining major browsers that don't support SNI. But in two months, Microsoft will stop releasing security updates for Windows XP. At that point, migrating to SNI will make sense because server operators can presume that IE/XP is insecure, especially once computer vandals start deploying client-side MITM through a forever-day exploit in Windows XP. The login form summarizes the Firesheep, SNI, and IE/XP issues and links to a TLS version of the form for users with compatible browsers.

C is ubiquitous.

Except on platforms that ban third-party native applications. For example, third-party applications for Chrome OS and Firefox OS are written in JavaScript, as are iOS applications that contain prohibited behaviors. Applications for Windows Phone 7 and the Xbox Live Indie Games are written in .NET Compact Framework bytecode, which in practice means C#.

One copy of a $60 game costs less than three or four copies of a $30 game

My game preorders are usually only $35 for AAA titles

$140 if you have four gamers in the household. Conventional wisdom is that not enough PC games offer single-screen multiplayer or spawn installation; each player needs his own gaming PC and copy of the game.

Also, humble bundle and steam sales giving us games for next to nothing.

If everyone were to wait for sales, then how would AAA games' production budgets get covered?

As for the online thing - Steam gives you 30+ days between check ins if you save your password locally.

Other Slashdot users have told me that 30 days is still not good enough for deployed members of the armed forces.

The whole "Paradox of Choice" is not a real study

Yet people stopped buying Atari 2600 games in 1983 when there were too many bad choices on the shelves. What keeps another 1983 gaming recession from happening again?

The point of the PC Master Race is FREEDOM. We can use what we want, when we want.

Does this include freedom to use a game with whom you want, including to play with someone else in the same room and to let someone else play after you're done with a game? Does it include freedom from cheaters?

From how you post, I seriously doubt that you are a PC gamer.

I started posting this way after I met a certain PlayStation fan on Slashdot who claimed that nobody wanted to play PC games together in the same room. I really want to prove each point in that article invalid; you're invited to post in more detail on its talk page.

I believe that ultimately the PC master race should dominate, but I also believe that PC gaming first needs to solve the problems listed in that article as well as this one. Steam Machines have the potential to help with ease of use and pricing compared to a standard Windows PC. The curation of Steam Greenlight helps gamers who might not know what games are worthwhile while softening the transition for gamers who end up becoming more adventurous. With console gaming, one can stick to approved games, but trying not-yet-approved games requires buying a gaming PC. With the Steam Machine, as I understand it, one can try something new by just closing the Steam client. Still, gamers are still saddled with the choice of Steam Machine to buy, and developers that of which to target.

I believe that ultimately the PC master race should dominate, but I also believe that PC gaming first needs to solve the problems listed in that article as well as this one. Steam Machines have the potential to help with ease of use and pricing compared to a standard Windows PC. The curation of Steam Greenlight helps gamers who might not know what games are worthwhile while softening the transition for gamers who end up becoming more adventurous. With console gaming, one can stick to approved games, but trying not-yet-approved games requires buying a gaming PC. With the Steam Machine, as I understand it, one can try something new by just closing the Steam client. Still, gamers are still saddled with the choice of Steam Machine to buy, and developers that of which to target.

Then let me try to rephrase the other Anonymous Coward's comment the way I understood it: "Linux is still incredibly unusable on the desktop due to many of these little stupid bugs that regular people shouldn't have to bother with. It's too developer-centric and not enough inexperienced-user-centric." Steam Machines are supposed to compete with the major video game consoles, which are designed from the ground up for inexperienced users.

If your gaming PC does not connect to the internet, I'm guessing you don't do much multiplayer...

I don't see how not.
Step 1: Connect PC's HDMI, DVI, or VGA output to the HDMI or VGA input of a television.
Step 2: If DVI or VGA was used, connect PC's output to the audio input of a television or stereo system.
Step 3: Connect two to four wired Xbox 360 controllers, an Xbox 360 PC wireless receiver, or other USB game controllers to the PC.
Step 4: Start game and choose single-screen multiplayer mode.

If you don't agree with a game's licensing, etc, you will never be forced to use it.

I was forced to use specific computer games in school, many of them published by MECC.

why the hell should the open source community praise Valve for bringing proprietrary software to its most famous platform?

For one thing, video games help ease the transition to a free platform. For another, video games by their nature are going to be proprietary because there isn't currently as much of a reciprocal sharing mentality around the components of a video game other than code (meshes, textures, maps, audio, and the like) as there is around code.

What I did in my deduplicator written in Python was group the files by their and reject any file with a unique size. Then I'd hash the first few kilobytes of each file with MD5 (it's just a spot check so speed is more valuable than security against intentional collisions) and reject any file with a unique first few kilobytes. Finally I'd hash the whole file with a more secure hash.

Build an app that doesn't have massive amounts of similar apps in the App Store.

That requires first thinking of a kind of app that neither has "massive amounts of similar apps in the App Store" nor violates the leaked copy of the guidelines. I imagine that a lot of beginning developers will draw a blank.

Whatever you build runs the risk of being rejected by Apple for any number of reasons, but as long as you stick to the guidelines, the risk is minimal.

One problem is that a developer can't even see the latest guidelines without already having paid $1,100 for the devkit (Mac mini + iPad mini + certificate). I signed up for an Apple ID and registered as a developer, but when I tried to view the guidelines, I got an authorization failure because I'm not yet a paid member.

I like to see if they just copy/paste the same paragraph over and over or use the cliche lorem ipsum .... text.

Or if they include H. Rackham's translation of the "Lorem ipsum" passage of Cicero's De finibus as an in-joke. (Latin dolorem ipsum means "pain itself".) I've done that myself when making a demo of a font renderer for an 8-bit computer platform. From lipsum.com:

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.

Well, it may not have an EXE extension, but in Linux and OSX, you can surely download a file, set the executable bit, and execute the program.

By "EXE" I did not intend to refer to a particular filename suffix. I intended to refer to an executable program in COFF/PE format that uses Windows APIs. An EXE won't run in Linux or OS X. Instead, the application would have to be ported to Linux and ported to OS X.

IOS, Android, and WinRT all allow programs to be download and run from the appropriate app store

Apple has a laundry list of application behaviors that it refuses to approve for distribution through its App Store. So does Microsoft. And besides, even if the application does not include one of the forbidden features, the Windows application has to be ported to iOS, ported to Android, ported to Windows RT, and ported to Windows Phone.

I can't see why you wouldn't want to just put an app on the apps store but would rather try to coerce a browser to do something it wasn't really meant to do in the first place.

The fact that the app does one of the things on the blacklist, perhaps?

Consoles and games systems are much less easy to get your foot in the door in terms of development, but that's hardly a reason to develop a paint program in a browser.

If not in a browser, then in what else?

At 240p NTSC, a dot clock rate of 135/22 = 6.14 MHz produces square pixels. But actual consoles that ran at 240p tended to have non-square pixel aspect ratios, such as 12:7 (Atari 2600), 6:7 (Apple II, Atari 7800, IBM CGA), 3:4 (Commodore 64), 8:7 (ColecoVision, NES, SMS, most TG16 games, Super NES, and some Genesis games), 32:35 (other Genesis games, PlayStation), etc. See articles about NES overscan and PAR and other classic consoles' PAR. If I record one of these consoles with a DVD recorder or a capture card and then point-resize the recording, it won't look very good because each point-resize cell won't correspond to one pixel output by the console. Nor will conversions of live-action home movies taped with an SD camcorder look very good point-resized.

Besides, if the higher bitrate and point resize really help, YouTube should be doing them automatically. Or must people on an Internet plan whose uploads are capped per month rent a VPS, upload the video to the VPS, resize the video on the VPS, and then upload from the VPS to YouTube?

The Bible alludes to copyright (1 Timothy 5:17-18) but also to fair use (Leviticus 23:22) Any Bible translation publisher who doesn't consider a quotation like DoofusOfDeath's to be a fair use isn't putting the ministry first.

The Bible alludes to copyright (1 Timothy 5:17-18) but also to fair use (Leviticus 23:22) Any Bible translation publisher who doesn't consider a quotation like DoofusOfDeath's to be a fair use isn't putting the ministry first.

What makes Android better than any other distro?

Google Play Store has a large selection of Android applications, especially in categories that free software tends not to touch, such as games and video-on-demand players. Other distros might catch up should more games and clients for VOD services get ported to SteamOS (and thus to GNU/Linux), but that isn't guaranteed to happen.

how does "mandatory SSE2" play into open source where the compiler can detect SSE2 and compile for it?

Apart from Gentoo and FreeBSD users that use a "ports" style system, I guess it's more common to install binary packages from the distribution's repository than to compile source packages. Besides, not all applications can even be open source, especially games and video-on-demand players.

A leaked copy of the App Store Review Guidelines listed several things that no iOS app is allowed to do. For example, there's no public API for seeing which wireless access points are available, making network troubleshooting apps impossible. Nor can a developer create an app launcher that's more accessible to individuals with disabilities. Nor is there any web browser that implements HTML5 features that Apple deliberately left out of Mobile Safari.

Games with more graphical complexity than (say) Go or Chess are one thing that tends to be missing from purist free operating systems for reasons I've described elsewhere. So is connecting to the Internet if there's no free driver for your NIC.

Then the app developer can just hide the malicious functionality in a game. Users of free software repositories are already used to going to the non-free repositories for games for several reasons.

• Missile Command (Google Play or Amazon)
• Missile Defense (Google Play)
• Thwaite (NES ROM with source code, runs in NES emulators for Android)

A hosts file is a method of blacklisting hostnames of servers with which you desire not to communicate, such as malware-infested servers and the servers that host social recommendation ("like") widgets that track you and slow down page loads.

It's like cars - for the most part, most drivers don't care what goes on under the hood

Unless it's something that keeps the driver from driving on a particular road. Locked-down devices are limited in what applications they can run on; I've made a fairly lengthy list of what'll never run on an iDevice.

Ditto consoles - pop the disc in, play game.

Unless a game isn't available for a particular console because of console maker politics. That's why Bob's Game never shipped for DS and The Binding of Isaac won't be getting a 3DS port.

Are there examples of software that are available for Android but not for iOS.

I can think of a few things Apple forbids under its guidelines:

• Apps to develop apps, such as AIDE.
• Wireless network analysis tools.
• Video game console emulators that run ROMs that you dumped using a Kazzo (NES) or Retrode (Super NES and Genesis) or CD drive (PlayStation) or homebrew ROMs that hobbyists are still creating for these platforms.
• Web browsers that aren't Safari wrappers with all the intentional limits of Safari, such as no uploads of media types other than pictures and videos and no WebGL and no getUserMedia. And yes, I mean "intentional limits": Apple has implemented WebGL on iOS but allows it only for iAds, not for web sites.

You can adjust font DPI and sizes in the OS.

I'm aware of the procedure for setting font size based on monitor size and seating distance. But a 10-foot UI is more than big enough text; it's also making sure that 1. windows don't have more information than will fit on the screen at a larger font size, and 2. the user can efficiently navigate the interface with a few keys on a gamepad rather than a mouse and keyboard.

gamepad

Lack of standardization may be an issue there, true. But games of significant complexity in general are going to be platform-specific.

Yet somehow, SDL manages to abstract gamepad access across multiple PC platforms. True, the button order for non-Xbox 360 controllers varies considerably, but there are ways around that. I seem to remember XBMC maintaining a device description repository for game controllers.

Ah, well, then it can be done. Cool!

gamepad

Lack of standardization may be an issue there, true. But games of significant complexity in general are going to be platform-specific.

Yet somehow, SDL manages to abstract gamepad access across multiple PC platforms. True, the button order for non-Xbox 360 controllers varies considerably, but there are ways around that. I seem to remember XBMC maintaining a device description repository for game controllers.

Drivers [for printers] in the cloud.

That would just let Google see everything you print and mine it for keywords.

Nor have I met a set of Libertarian candidates who got elected to the House or Senate in large enough numbers to counter the MPAA's sway on the big two parties. I don't see how Libertarians in local and state office count when software patent reform, the topic of the featured article, is exclusively federal.

So they can put ads for Google Play Music alongside it, obviously. It'd complement Google Song Search, which is Google's Shazam-alike (presumably powered by the same tech that powers YouTube's Copyrobeast) that directs users to Google Play Music instead of Shazamazon. One angle Google might use, should it acquire this service, is to the effect "if you like this artist, listen whenever, wherever* with Google Play Music."

* Offers vary by country

Then change the default.

Microsoft won't change everyone's default, and the majority of home PC users are unaware that the default can be changed at all. Most people I've met in person don't seem to know what XBMC is.

My HTPC has a quad core i5 3350 (Ivy Bridge, 3.1GHz), 8GB of RAM, a GeForce GTX 660 and a 2TB 7200RPM drive in a mini ITX case.

Who manufactured it, so that I can buy one like it for myself? And was it as affordable as a $399 PS4?

Sorry, calling BS on your made-up "tradition".

Sony and Microsoft are doing the hard work to make the public aware of their products. When was the last time you saw a television commercial for "someone more knowledgeable" to build, specifically, a gaming HTPC?

Put your own together or have someone more knowledgeable do it for you.

The majority of home PC users are unaware that it's even possible to "have someone more knowledgeable [put together a slim gaming PC] for you." They think a "PC" is a huge tower that sits on a desk.

If you can put a cartridge into a Nintendo, you can build a PC.

When someone bought an NES new in box, it came with the Control Deck, video cable, controllers, a Super Mario's Duck Hunt cartridge, and a manual explaining how to assemble everything. Do mini-ITX PC kits come with all the necessary parts, or are people expected to spend hours deciding which parts one needs to buy? And do they come with an assembly manual that even nontechnical end users can understand?

Honestly, you are missing out on one of the best features of game consoles... playing with friends, on the couch, pizza on the way, beer in the fridge.

Step 1: Plug a PC's HDMI out into an HDTV's HDMI in or a PC's VGA+audio out into an HDTV's VGA+audio in.
Step 2: Plug in up to four USB gamepads. Many games are already set up for Xbox 360 controllers; wired ones work out of the box, and wireless ones work with a transceiver that plugs into a USB port.
Step 3: Install a PC game that supports couch multiplayer. I have been compiling a list of games recommended by other Slashdot users.

There are whole genres that play to that on consoles that don't exist on PCs.
*cough*Mortal Kombat?*cough*

Mortal Kombat 2011 is on PC, and classic Mortal Kombat II and Mortal Kombat 3 are emulated in Midway Arcade Treasures 2.

I wrote an article about the exact conflations implied by "intellectual property", if that clarifies anything.

I know there are still ASM programmers, but seriously

And I'm one of them. Seriously. I learned 6502 assembly on the Apple II, and most of the skills transferred to programming the Nintendo Entertainment System. In addition to my hobby coding for NES, I now have my name in a commercially published NES cartridge, where I wrote the menu and three of the games.

Not entirely novel. I had been considering such a system; check the revision history to see when.

players have to know that when the press "x" they will get the same result.

That's sort of hard to do when every console puts "x" in a different place.

• When no controller is plugged in, autoconfigure the keyboard the same way that emulators of classic game consoles come configured: arrow keys to move and Z and X for actions.
• Autoconfigure XInput for Xbox 360 controllers and DirectInput for the most popular HID joysticks. This will require a database.
• Make manual configuration of other makes and models of controller as painless as possible.
• Make essential user interface text big enough to read even in a screenshot scaled down to 432x240. For example, at 720p, fonts should be at least 24px tall. This ensures that people using a scan converter and SDTV or people sitting far from an HDTV can still play.
• Make the PC version available for paid download. In the product description, link to one or more guides on how to setup a gaming PC in the living room, such as the one Valve made for Steam's Big Picture mode.
• In the product description, show a notice like this: "Other Platforms: We are seeking a publisher to bring $TITLE to game consoles. If your company is interested in publishing a port of this game, contact us."

• When no controller is plugged in, autoconfigure the keyboard the same way that emulators of classic game consoles come configured: arrow keys to move and Z and X for actions.
• Autoconfigure XInput for Xbox 360 controllers and DirectInput for the most popular HID joysticks. This will require a database.
• Make manual configuration of other makes and models of controller as painless as possible.
• Make essential user interface text big enough to read even in a screenshot scaled down to 432x240. For example, at 720p, fonts should be at least 24px tall. This ensures that people using a scan converter and SDTV or people sitting far from an HDTV can still play.
• Make the PC version available for paid download. In the product description, link to one or more guides on how to setup a gaming PC in the living room, such as the one Valve made for Steam's Big Picture mode.
• In the product description, show a notice like this: "Other Platforms: We are seeking a publisher to bring $TITLE to game consoles. If your company is interested in publishing a port of this game, contact us."

If God uses evolution as a tool ... Then this alleged Being is not Good and Omnipotent.

God is all-powerful, but that doesn't mean he likes to waste power. God is good, even if giving humankind what we need doesn't necessarily include giving us everything we might want.

A universe was created with 10^80 atoms, to allow 10^30 atoms to form a planet that could house a target species that could only live on part of it. 13.75 billion years of cooking time was required to get us to about 95,000 years of that species' existence.

Its like the word 'waste' doesn't mean anything.

What sort of God would use evolution, lubricated with the blood, guts and unrelenting cruelty, as a means to bring about his favored species or race?

One who intends to hand stewardship of all non-Homo species over to Homo, as in Genesis 9:2-3. What John Godfrey Saxe wrote about laws and sausages applies equally well to sapient apex species.

That makes God amoral. He becomes a kid with an ant farm.

Nevertheless Genesis is a earth centered creation story... told from a species centric position.

I agree, and I have a hypothesis about that. God reveals what we need to know to serve him, and as of right now, we don't need to worry ourselves with the other class-M planets that he's running.

Personally, I'd sooner reveal what we can know about the M class planets, and not worry ourselves after God.

If God uses evolution as a tool ... Then this alleged Being is not Good and Omnipotent.

God is all-powerful, but that doesn't mean he likes to waste power. God is good, even if giving humankind what we need doesn't necessarily include giving us everything we might want.

What sort of God would use evolution, lubricated with the blood, guts and unrelenting cruelty, as a means to bring about his favored species or race?

One who intends to hand stewardship of all non-Homo species over to Homo, as in Genesis 9:2-3. What John Godfrey Saxe wrote about laws and sausages applies equally well to sapient apex species.

Nevertheless Genesis is a earth centered creation story... told from a species centric position.

I agree, and I have a hypothesis about that. God reveals what we need to know to serve him, and as of right now, we don't need to worry ourselves with the other class-M planets that he's running.

Yeah, I'm with you. I believe in day-age creationism, that the "days" of Genesis 1 correspond to periods up to billions of years. The Bible makes it clear in 2 Peter 3:8 that time periods from God's point of view aren't necessarily literal, and before the emergence of Homo on the sixth creative day, God's was the only point of view. Even English has idioms like "the good old days" and "back in the day". This and God's use of evolution as a tool show no big conflict between Genesis and the fossil record.

Genesis conflicts explicitly with science in the order of creation. Oceans, grass and plants, and day/night, by the third day, but stars not until the fourth.

Yeah, I'm with you. I believe in day-age creationism, that the "days" of Genesis 1 correspond to periods up to billions of years. The Bible makes it clear in 2 Peter 3:8 that time periods from God's point of view aren't necessarily literal, and before the emergence of Homo on the sixth creative day, God's was the only point of view. Even English has idioms like "the good old days" and "back in the day". This and God's use of evolution as a tool show no big conflict between Genesis and the fossil record.

Just to inform, it's only a google search and driver install away from getting a PS3 controller to work on your PC.

So where should people learn in the first place that it's even possible to connect a PS3 controller to a PC so that they can Google how?

Even if the hardware can talk to each other, the users can't.

Tell me about it. All four buttons are X. The easiest way I've seen to fix the tower of Babel that is PC gaming input is to autoconfigure XInput and the most popular DirectInput gamepads and for the rest, ask users something like "Player 2: Press up, down, left, right, jump, fire, and special, in that order."

ou guys are all wrong! The buttons should be O, U, Y, and A!

I wonder how much of that comes from working around other console makers' trademarks.

Now prepare for a mind screw:

1. What letter looks like the CROSS? X.
2. What's made of cardboard and SQUARE? Box.
3. How many degrees in a CIRCLE? 360.

What does that spell?

Just to inform, it's only a google search and driver install away from getting a PS3 controller to work on your PC.

So where should people learn in the first place that it's even possible to connect a PS3 controller to a PC so that they can Google how?

Even if the hardware can talk to each other, the users can't.

Tell me about it. All four buttons are X. The easiest way I've seen to fix the tower of Babel that is PC gaming input is to autoconfigure XInput and the most popular DirectInput gamepads and for the rest, ask users something like "Player 2: Press up, down, left, right, jump, fire, and special, in that order."

ou guys are all wrong! The buttons should be O, U, Y, and A!

I wonder how much of that comes from working around other console makers' trademarks.

Now prepare for a mind screw:

1. What letter looks like the CROSS? X.
2. What's made of cardboard and SQUARE? Box.
3. How many degrees in a CIRCLE? 360.

What does that spell?