Simply saying it removes 3 line items is not seeing the larger issue.  Those 3 line items took the bulk of the time

- starts up Steam, - updates Steam, - restarts Steam

The cost to unlearn talents will now decay over time. This cost will be reduced by a rate of 5 gold per month to a minimum of 10 gold.

After a disconnect from the server, it is now possible to log back in immediately, instead of receiving the message, "A character with that name already exists."

Fear: The calculations to determine if Fear effects should break due to receiving damage have been changed. The old calculation used the base damage of the ability. The new calculation uses the final amount of damage dealt, after all modifiers. In addition, the chance for a damage over time spell to break Fear is now significantly lower. Note that Fear continues to be roughly three times as likely to break on player targets as on non-player targets.

We have re-evaluated the mechanics of consumable items in the game and concluded that these should work in a more intuitive manner. As such, most items that can not be equipped with right click abilities have been streamlined into one of three categories. Using an item of a particular category will trigger a shared cooldown among all other items in the same category. The categories break down as follows with category cooldowns as listed.
Potions 2 minutes: This includes items such as Health Potion, Mana Potion, Invisibility Potion and Mighty Rage Potion.
Aggressive 1 minute: This includes items such as explosives, Really Sticky Glue and Discombobulator Ray.
Non-Aggresive 2 minutes: This includes items such as Healthstone, Night Dragon's Breath, Whipper Root Tuber and Target Dummy.
Many items that can be equipped have had their cooldown category removed and will be controlled exclusively by the item's self cooldown. For example, the Gnomish Mind Control Cap should no longer trigger the cooldown of the Talisman of Arathor.
We have re-evauluated the class specific quest rewards for both Zul'Gurub and Ahn'Qiraj Ruins. To bring them more in line with the effort required to attain them we have upgraded the superior items to epic quality.
All food/drink can be eaten while silenced. Previously some food/drink could not be consumed when under the effect of a silence.
The Gnomish Mind Control Cap may now only be used on targets that are not in combat.

A new LEGENDARY item quest has been added! Casters rejoice (and druids too)!

With all-digital distribution, would playtesting suffer?

Yes.  With patches on tap there's less incentive to get it perfect first time because you can always patch it tomorrow.  And if tomorrow's patch introduces bugs then there's always the day after.

I see Warren's point too, but given the choice between fucking with Steam for 20 minutes before getting into a game and installing a store-bought AAA game that is going to install Starforce or some other driver based copy protection that is likely to fuck up my system in some way that is impossible to undo without reinstalling Windows, I'll take Steam every time.

In my experience, both as a developer and user, this isn't true.  Developers would rather get things right the first time and not deal with constant patching, and when patching isn't easily available that doesn't mean the first rev will be any better, it just means you'll be waiting longer with a buggy game until a big patch release comes out months later.

So stop whining you little bitch.

Sounds like the media-based installation can be substantially shortened by simply packaging all the updating into one big ball of fun.

SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- The former college student known as the "Naked Guy," who gained notoriety in the early 1990s for attending class in the buff, has died in jail, authorities said.

Andrew Martinez, 33, whose stripped-down strolls at the University of California, Berkeley, got him expelled and prompted the city to adopt a strict anti-nudity ordinance, was found unconscious Thursday in a Santa Clara County jail, said jail spokesman Mark Cursi.

Officials are investigating the death as an apparent suicide.

He had been in custody since January 10 on charges of battery and assault with a deadly weapon, authorities said.

In 1992, Martinez organized a "Nude-In" protest at the university. He said he was trying to make a point about free expression.

The message caught on, and nude spottings spiked on campus. Martinez, who landed on national talk shows, was expelled the next year after the university banned nudity.

I know not many were planning on it anyway, but don't bother going to see The Da Vinci Code. It's...well, not good.

Developers don't test. QA people test.

This is not true, at least not for us. While we do have a QA team at Activision, we have two in-house testers that test builds we make every day just for them, builds in between the builds that go to Activision for testing. And for every major milestone on Quake 4 we were all required (well, strongly asked) to playtest the build each night up until the milestone. Since our artists/modelers often finished with their work and didn't technically have crunch, we turned them into a first-line-of-defense QA team and asked them to do testing on the builds every night, and for multiplayer we generally had the whole team test every night.

This is not true, at least not for us.

Damn, I was hoping Ron Howard would be able to syphon off the shitty writing, leaving only the story behind.  Ah well, it's not like I go to movies anyway.

Don't forget to add that developers should be unit testing their shit as much as possible before dropping it in a build anyway. But that's the common sense.

Plus, the scene where Langdon and Teabing are arguing about grail lore is such blatant pandering to the Christian base that it's insulting to everyone. Every time Teabing says something controversial, Langdon pipes in with "THAT'S NEVER BEEN PROVEN!" or "ACCORDING TO SOME SOURCES!"

I know it's Ron Howard, but grow some balls, man.

that better be cool, woman!