The story of Bad Browser, Botched patch, and software Conflict also DRM!!!!

I have a confession to make.......
I am a gamer. I like games, and actually spent cash to get legal copy, to "support" the industry. And for certain game, it is worth it. Like most commercial games, it runs windows, and require proprietary software like IE and Windows, to work.

Of course, what happens in the last few days is this. I bought Spore Galactic Adventure, and it requires me in apply certain patch. Which breaks the game.

Actually that is just the beginning, turns out that the updater need to run with IE, which is a bad thing, IE 8 on my desktop, can run flash, but everytime I restarted, it requires me, to reinstall flash again. And the updater from EA, need IE to run!!!
Just embrace the defacto standard already!!!!

Along the way, I try to update the driver from ATI. First it turns out that, it conflicted with visual studio express I install long time back, from microsoft. I have to remove the visual studio express, old version to install driver. The solution is not even obvious!!! I think it is really crazy, that this happens.

Then finally, my brother want to borrow Red Alert 3 from me, to borrow his friend. Then I can't give it, because it is copy protected(OK, I want to play it). So now I still trying to explain copy protection......The fact you cannot share stuff is really counter intuitive..

Maybe it just me not getting used to windows, or this guys really sucks in term of quality. I mean, it is strange enough that driver don't update itself. Old installation of visual studio affect software installation? IE that don't play nice with anything........