Hm. Very valid points.

I'm sure you're not the only person with those issues. Has Valve tried to address them at all?

I have one additional concern, it's the "slowhacking" thing. Not a steam-specific concern, more a valve-network-code concern...

For those who haven't heard about it, "slowhacking" is when a server administrator is running a special adminstration kit from Valve. It allows them to alter a connected client's game configuration file from the server console. Originally, it was for helping newbies change their "rate" or "maxdecals" commands, or to edit the screen name of someone who puts something offensive in there. But some server admins can abuse it, such as remapping the user's keyboard layout, or to alter the network connection settings so that the client can never connect to another one of those game servers without deleting or fixing his config file.

Valve's response to that is "set your config.cfg to read-only". Which is fine, but what if the person is a newbie and doesn't know how. Or what if I don't like having to go out to Windows every time I want to alter my own configuration.