Well it certainly would've been better to make this a proper news post on the front page...

no i dont mind, i try to explain best as possible .

I assume you know that most countries tracked every online move of the people, which sites they visited , social media, etc etc etc ... already from the beginning.

Some countries dont allow internet, and some do but block certain sites to prevent people reading things they don't want to read.

The thing is now with all the 'attacks' and whats been going on lately, the Dutch Govt decided that by dragging the net
sleepwet in Dutch they will be able to anticipate what might come regarding some 'things', they believe that 'naughty' people that might do very bad things will use internet communciations , ofcourse the bad guys can read anything the govt says in the news aswell so they probably wont be using that and maybe start sending mail by airmail via pigeons like in the medieval ages, and have personal meetings face to face like many critics already mentioned when talking about this bad idea of the law to drag data (sleepwet).

Basically its probably like this: in a democracy people have lots of freedom, they vote anonimous, people do have to id themselves when they vote but voting in general is anonimous, no one knows who voted on which party, imagine what they would find out when 'dragging' all data.

Govts will never admit that but somehow they would love to know everything, they have referenda but they dont like people to say no when they want yes and vice versa, so this law will allow them to know everything, which might not be that bad but doing so they do violate some rules, seems there is a 'rule' or 'law':
European fundamental rights.

Its quite complicated and the AIV insures and claims they wont be looking for people doing naughty things like snooping around if people download certain things but in the meantime they know everything and who guarantees they wont abuse it ? lots of people dont really trust Govts they always lie in a way and yes = no and no = yes so its the govts own fault that there is little trust.

Anyway the petition is done so basically a referendum might be held , somewhere in march 2018, thing is the law will be active starting jan 1 st 2018.... so some govt people like mr. Buma (not the BUMA/STEMRA) said he will ignore it, and he also said the other parties vvd and cu agree with him, so its a mess at the moment and they will mess it up even more.

This proves that the good old 70s and 80s were indeed the better decades compared to the millenium (2000 and up )

Thats why i said that the little info game companies collect like account info email info and some IP, is nothing compared to all the data our own Govt going to collect which they would never see. so they can have it :D
the govts are the ones harvesting data and ofcourse they will look in it..... :D
take yahoo, they already collected lots of data before and now verizon took over they announced to harvest even more :D i need the mail for my games like gog and online browsergames so let them harvest all they know is ip, location and maybe a mobile nr thats all.

Sad!

So what was the deal with Flight of the Amazon Queen's removal (and the lack of its prior announcement)?

Kind of sad to see so many games gone, but what's done is done.

That is actually quite a loss. Not only was it a great game but also since it was free. When I started out here on GOG I thought it was nice of them to offer some games for free, so new users can get accustomed to the systems and maybe broaden their horizon in terms of genres.
At least Beneath a Steel Sky is still here.

Chronology on the other hand was a Newgrounds game that looked nice but came with a 5 dollar price tag. It was on my wishlist forever, waiting for a 90% sale that never came...

For what it's worth I also contacted the dev of FRACT OS (in addition I also contacted another dev I "knew" who was following his Twitter but they replied to me that unfortunately they did not know the dev well enough). So far I also got no reply. Really sad to see this gone. I spent so much on this Halloween sale that I just couldn't get myself to buy this one too. But hope dies last and I can still try top reach the dev...

But the fact that those games are gone for now does not have to mean that they are gone forever. Maybe we will find a way to get in contact with some of those devs after all.

Always amazed me about forums and sticky posts. Quite often they go unnoticed by readers.

That's a serious statement, not trying to make light of it. One support forum I used to help out on, we had 72 point text with link going across the front page, the front page of the subforums and any in bound traffic from search engines about a current bug. People still missed it and started new threads asking why the problem hadn't been noticed (It had) and why it hadn't been fixed yet. (It had which was covered in the linked to article.)

Maybe people have got used to stickies being used for etiquette and rules posts and just ignore all of them.

I always at the very least look at the titles of the stickies. We mention it to our soccer moms as a good idea when they visit a new web forum as well.

But you may be right. I've been to some forums, and they have over a dozen stickies on every page.

The real problem is that most people will ignore mere "sticky" posts expecting anything really important to appear in a "blue" news post. Most of the sticky posts are topics that have run their course and may be interesting to a newcomer but not a regular.

Just in case anybody missed "Flight of the Amazon Queen" onm GOG I was informed by EnforcerSunWoo that it's still available and labeled as freeware on scummvm here.

Now that's just sad... a free and, according to others, great game removed without a heads-up – thanks for telling us eiii.

Personally, I expect it to appear as the subject matter of an official GOG.com thread (but they too ought to be coloured blue to make them stand out better).

Ah DAMMIT, I didn't see this.