I suspect the issue is that it's a large company. There are bound to be areas that are exciting and interesting and filled with motivated people, and there are going to be areas of the company that ... aren't. That feel like people just show up to get the paycheck and go home.

There seem to be two points in the article and summary. The one that makes sense is that the slowness of the merger is murdering Sun's business. The other is that the slowness is causing people to leave. I doubt the latter is true. People do not want to work for Oracle, fast merge or slow merge.

Huh, did you join the goons or their subsidiaries or something? (somethingawful regulars). I've been in a number of corps and no one expects me to help them build their ship, or steals stuff. Most money-making enterprises are beneficial for everyone involved, and there are plenty of basic things you can do to secure guild assets.

"... you suspect that your opponents cheat ... "

In other words, they won.

Go on, try to find an online game where when you win, you aren't accused of cheating.

This site will never work without owning nearly everything about the game experience. And even then it's tricky.

It is, they're saying they should use the $300 million data center that already exists instead of buying a new one.

Why is a basic reading comprehension failure modded insightful?

This metallic ape speaks the truth. It looks beautiful, and does so even on non-top-end machines. (So no AoC ridiculousness.) It has a few neat gimmicks (wings, somewhat less stupid pvp, amazing customization.)

But it is, at root, the same game as WoW, EQ2, LOTRO, etc. It's a very polished, fun version, but don't expect it to change the game, shake up the boxes, or think outside any paradigmotrons.

Actually Aion looks pretty impressive even on modest gpus, and that's with dozens and dozens of people running around. So I hear. :-"

Unsustainable? You've watched too much Dr Strangelove. B-52s don't breed.

Or maybe it's the dozens of people I knew in college addicted to various versions of the game and unwilling to pay money for most anything. So no, I don't think this is just some victimless leetness contest.

Problem is, and all jokes about single engineers aside, that means the spouse has to find something viable in that location as well. Some professions are pretty portable, others aren't. But it's not just about where you can lure a single person.

Plus, if you lose your job, suddenly you're in Toledo where there's not that many other companies. At least in the Bay Area, you know you have multiple options to switch to should you want to. Without having to sell your house which no one wants or needs to buy. (Admittedly this is a chicken-and-egg problem; if enough companies move to Toledo or wherever, this goes away.)

Yeah, why do people complain that you're deriving enjoyment from their labor, their primary way of life, and not compensating them in any way. What selfish jackasses, eh?

So what you're describing is essentially a world where instead of going to work and having The Mainframe that you work on, there's actually a plethora of Mainframes out there, some specialized to different tasks, some competing with others in doing a task better. You can pick and choose the ones that work best for you. With, of course, the option of running it on your reasonably powerful personal computer if that's the easiest way.

Seems like we're actually approaching a reasonable balance in the server vs client swing, rather than swinging back to another extreme.

(In case it isn't clear, I basically agree with you and think it's pretty cool.)

I always thought it would've made a great single-player game. The car-in-wasteland gameplay and engine was pretty cool and fun. But as a mmo it just sort of became same-y real fast.