Okay, let's just speculate about all the ways this could be misused:

*-- Vending machines that make you reach into your pocket and pull out money whenever you pass by them.

*-- Rich handicapped people buying time on poor people's bodies.

*-- Rich people buying time on poor people's bodies, in order to do criminal things.

*-- Police officers with a 'lay down with your hands behind your back' raygun.

I'm sure I missed a few, any suggestions?

This is why I didn't go into computer engineering as a young lad. I recognized that computers were tools, and the people trained to maintain and program them were going to end up as essentially service personnel. The high-level managers consider sysadmins to be one notch above a janitor. Shameful, but true. I realized this quite young.

Instead, I went into physics. I'm not appreciably higher in the corporate architecture, but what I do is so arcane nobody believes that I'm easily replaced. If sysadmins are treated like janitors, a scientist is treated like a skilled seamstress -- I'm still 'labor', but it costs so much to find someone who can do my job they're willing to cut me a little slack.

I agree with everything you wrote except 'great game'. I thought I was buying a sequel to D2, where hardcore item grinding was possible but not obligatory. D3 was not designed to be similar to D2. It is a hardcore game -- the kind of game I do not want to play.

The point of avoiding a bad game producer is not just to hit their bottom line. If they're playing mind games with their players, I don't want to be involved with them at all. I also don't want to inflate their player numbers, even if I'm not a paying customer.

That said, I might give EQ Next a try. It sounds like they may have learned their lesson about how to treat their players.

I won't be buying this expansion because D3 was such a huge disappointment, I don't see any expansion ever making it fun. I think my highest level character was 37 -- I stopped when I got to Hell difficulty, because there seemed no point in playing the exact same content over a third time. Meanwhile it didn't seem possible to progress without spending real-world money. Blizzard lost me with this game.

But on a related note, I have a question. Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) is bringing out the new Everquest Next which looks amazing. But I swore off of Sony in 2000 after being a guide in the original Everquest. The guide program was so corrupt, and the John Smedley administration was so disrespectful of the players, that I swore never to buy another Sony game. Has Sony improved? After more than ten years I'd be willing to give them another chance if I hear that they're not the pure evil they used to be. (I know EA is still pure evil, but I haven't heard anything lately about SOE.)

Blizzard has probably lost me for ten years. We'll see if they still try to trick players into spending money, and whether they re-discover what makes game fun.

Bullets are relatively expensive for the damage they do. One bullet might cost $1 and kill one person. Bombs aren't cost effective at all unless you're counting the damage to structures as a plus, but often it is not.

Chemical weapons, on the other hand, are relatively cheap for their killing capability, and do not harm important infrastructure. $1 worth of Sarin gas will kill thousands. Chemical weapons make war too easy. That's why we're outraged when governments use them.

(Could be worse; they could be using bioweapons. $1 of weaponized smallpox could eradicate a small country all by itself. Can't wait until that's the red line someone crosses...)

It sounds as if game developers are learning what sci-fi/fantasy writers already knew; fans can be rabid and irrational. For most authors this isn't a problem because they sell in the 5 or 6 digits and there may be just one crazy fan. But every AAA video game has millions of players, so the number of crazies can be much larger.

This is why Neil Gaiman was forced to tell people that 'George R. R. Martin is not your bitch.' Because rabid fans wanted GRR to be their bitch, and because he now has such a large audience their harassment was getting out of hand.

The solution to this is to grow a thick skin and/or to get a secretary that will read and filter your mail for you. Or you could make games that only sell 10k-100k units, so the fanbase doesn't reach a critical mass of craziness...but if your company is addicted to money then being a smaller part of the market isn't an option.

There's nothing wrong with 'the human spirit'.

The fact is that capitalism is an aberration. The first industrial revolution in the 1700s brought rail lines and new textiles, then it petered out. The second industrial revolution around 1900 brought automobiles, nuclear power, and computers; it is petering out right now. It may be that the last 200 years were a historical aberration.

Macroeconomists are coming around to the view that capitalism cannot survive without an industrial frontier -- an innovative environment full of new technologies. Without that, we go back to the stagnant economies of the middle ages. There was nothing wrong with the human spirit back then, there just weren't any opportunities. The rich controlled everything and people stayed within their social castes. It could be that we're now headed back to that state. It may be the default mode for human society.

The original part of Wall-E was the non-human, almost entirely non-speaking POV. That's pretty rare in both Hollywood and literary sci-fi.

I like this idea, because we can then begin developing products like Rad-X and Radaway.

I have an open network on my wireless hub. But...I live on a 3 acre plot, on one side of a 200 acre cornfield. My nearest neighbor is a quarter mile away. You can't get a wireless signal unless you park yourself on my front lawn (and I'm doubtful about that, as the walls of my house are 8-inch thick concrete.)

You could say that I believe wireless internet should be free for all those who are inside my house. You could also say that I'm lazy and lucky enough to not have to worry about it. If someday I move back to the city, I'm going to have to research how to lock things down properly.

I know this is meant to be humorous, but the flush toilet was invented in the 1800s. It's recent technology -- about as old as the motorcar. It was inevitable that it would get the benefits of electronics...although I can't see what benefit is gained by wiring up a toilet.

I think we've gotten to the point where we put electronics into things just for the hell of it.

Oh, god. Now I really want to Google 'stewpit', but I'm worried it's some keyword for a terrorist cannibal org.

I wouldn't say it's great for consumers, because all the services differ. If they were all exactly the same then yeah, it would be great. But as they are there's a pain for the consumer every time we have to switch. I don't *want* to switch. I exist in this disloyal state only because they've forced me into it.

When Google Reader announced it was closing, I started a new RSS account on every service I could find. Feedly, Netvibes, Newsblur, The Old Reader, etc. I'm using Netvibes because it suits my needs best. But my accounts still exist on all those other services, and they're just one button -- 'Mark all as Read' -- from being up-to-date.

The future of the net, apparently, is complete lack of brand loyalty. I don't care who gives me the service I desire, and I don't care what they've done in the past. I'll use whatever site is most convenient and I'm ready to switch to another site at a moment's notice. I am the type of consumer that companies like Google have created. Hope they choke on us.