"The alternative was arguably even worse -- stories that were more interactive and interesting, yet full of people who wanted to RP every breath they took, with no actual game involved. You want to actually kill a monster? You want to gain a level?! Powergamer! Ban him!"

Sounds suspiciously like the roleplaying servers that people set up for NWN. The ones that think that in order to have proper rp and immersion, you need glacially slow levelling and miniscual amounts of magic.

PTerry already does a huge amount for Alzheimers projects. He doesn't expect the fix to come in before it's too late for him, and so he's making his plans and raising a stink about the issues while he still can.

As for "he should look at these examples," he's already keeping abreast of everything that's going on in this field. In fact, right at the beginning of all this, he asked all the n-thousand people who would write to him going "have you tried X, Y or Z" option to please not do so, unless they were a neurosurgeon or brain expert, to keep the clutter down and the signal-to-noise ratio up.

Amusingly, a disproportionate number of top-flight experts in these areas are fans. He effectively has a whole bunch of experts who keep him aware of the state of play.

Put simply, he's doing everything he can in his position, including laying the ground work in the event it's not quick enough.

The real question is, when will it have video conferencing/voip (no more will you have to get up and answer the phone when you're on the throne) and be able to run Tmost current multiplayer games (for people who are just too hardcore for loo breaks)

So obviously, when the next company asks for a reference from your previous employer, you're going to have to say "No, sorry, can't give you that as they'll know where I'm working."

Most companies over here won't even let you through to an interview without having at least the name to talk to for a reference from your previous employer (assuming you have one.)

To be fair, one of the things the Libreoffice peeps have done is started going to town on the "this is awful/redundant code, can you help us rewrite it" thing, complete with one of the nicest ideas I've seen, http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Easy_Hacks

Basically, a list of stuff that needs doing, but they don't necessarily have time for, but is easy enough that a beginner/lower level coder can do the grunt work. Eases people into working with a big project.

What will be interesting to see is if Sony (who have already tried to fast-talk the court into allowing discovery on paypal donors/blog commenters and youtube video watchers) decide that they want to find out the names and addresses of everyone who pays to support geohot, and then try and bring them into the whole show to try and show that he's soliciting pay for his alleged activities.

They already tried to got a court order to wipe this info from the entire internet (until hotz's counsel told the judge how impossible that was) so at this stage, I wouldn't bet against a "asking for donations for your defense is the same as asking for pay for your infringement" argument. Unless there's a strong precedent that this doesn't apply (something some of our american friends would know better than me.)

Underaged at 16? Depends where you are matey (heck, even japan varies by prefecture, let alone the rest of the world.)

I got one at work, to my desk phone, trying to sell me a mobile phone. He seemed rather confused when I tried to sell him broadband right back. (I work in the sales department for a major telecoms company. I found the irony amusing.)

Or the classic "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun"

If they do this, are they also going to place legal limits on the volume with which Ethel, sitting on the tram across from me, is going to talk about whichever soap or celebirty show has her attention this week? If I can't drown out their pathetic and often obnoxious ramblings, what the heck is a sane, rational person supposed to do?