You aren't representing this very fairly. You're representing it like a snide interlocutor with a vested interest in nuclear power. Interest is high in nuclear power because coal and petroleum prices are high. Not because Luddites demand alternative energy but then say it will harm the environment. You make it read as if nuclear power is comparable to wind or solar - it isn't.

The world of the future also has to deal with future risks we leave them. It's true that hydro-electric power affects salmon populations, as you point out, but the reason it's a concern is because fishing is a huge business that makes a lot of money. So it raises the price of hydro power to compensate in the market, it doesn't invalidate the power source.

Two additional, greater risks that nuclear and hydro power present to the environment is the risk of terrorism. One can theorize that wind and solar power could have harmful effects on their local environments, but it would be on the order of roads or power lines. It would not be on the order of Three Mile Island or Chernobyl. Or that scene we see of the Hoover Dam crumbling in every freakin' movie that comes close to the Hoover Dam, ever.

In the grand scheme, coal and petroleum processing are still preferable to nuclear power from a social planning perspective, especially when it comes to decommissioning. Sinking the money for nuclear infrastructure plans into alternative research, including tide pools and geothermal to introduce even more competitive players will reduce the cost of power and solve the so-called 'Energy Crisis'.

Consumption and waste is not a crisis that can be solved by scientists. As long as we're producing it on Earth and there are practical limits, there is no free energy, so we would do well to think of it that way instead of pretending nuclear power will solve problems. Putting more power in the hands of nuclear providers simply tilts the scales of global power towards instability. Especially if nations that don't have nuclear power are prevented from having it in the future.

So what about parodies? I'm not sure I understand what a design patent on a web page is protecting, other than the trademarked content of the page. It seems a little redundant and otherwise burdensome on the patent system, to me.

Causation does not necessitate that management will perceive the correlation.

I've been boycotting EA Games for a good five years now because they are a pox on the industry of game publishing. When their quarterly results aren't in line with estimates, they blame piracy or the economy and completely ignore their abysmal customer service record.

I think it really depends on what the application is. Most people have idle cores the majority of the time. I tend to aim for lower clockspeeds and wattage, myself. You're right that it's an advantage to Intel over the long term, excepting that there will be 32nm socket AM3 processors in 24 months or less.

Of course, schedules do slip and blunders do occur as well. Hopefully AMD manages to handle all its debts to continue operations, because the market really does suffer without competition.

This is an interesting theory. Given that the number of desktops running Linux is something around 2% (according to the marketing I've read) of all PCs in the wild, what if, after recouping production costs for the Windows/Mac/proprietary version, an LGPL client was released into the wild *and* the ability to purchase a valid, legal, interoperable license to run the software on Linux by:

• buying the boxed/published Windows/Mac/proprietary client and run the free LGPL client
• buying an official 'support license' using digital download of the LGPL client through the production/publisher's official website

There simply are not enough Linux clients to honestly regard piracy of an LGPL client as a threat to sales and yet this would be exactly the reason used to justify not releasing a Linux client or even a legal license of interoperability. Not the dollars/cents of goodwill and possible community interest and publicity it would generate, but the possibility of piracy and, if necessary, also discussing the doomed endgame of LGPL wrangling among the original publishers and forked projects. Isn't it okay that forked projects exist if the game already made money in the process? I mean, if we make the LGPL release contingent on the sales/profitability of other clients, there can be no loss, really. It's acknowledging a small enthusiast market and nurturing it as a wellspring of ideas instead of a threat to revenue streams.

What's the alternative? I use AdBlock Plus judiciously and if I perceive a site to be 'peddling trash' I exercise my right to ignore their advertisements. Games don't go away, even when the companies and ad-agencies go bankrupt. What's the point? One bad game can ruin a company's reputation forever with a customer. There are too many options to expect a second chance using these methods and foisting (unprofitable, non-opt-in, non-opt-outtable, invasive) advertisements on the game reduces your market to the lowest common denominator of those who will accept them. The people who will not accept them know how to circumvent, avoid or boycott them, if necessary. Why do you care if people opt-out of the ad program they have no intention of validating anyway? They are just trying to enjoy the game and you're removing the acceptable terms of a sale, essentially counting the beans you collect from advertisers instead of placing a cent of value on your customers. Is it a financing problem? Do true fans need to tithe for something they've already purchased? I would still prefer to pay for the choice. How does removing choice benefit the relationship between publisher and customer when there is a precedent of something better?

There's something to be said for an officially sanctioned server as far as revenue models, but I don't think there's a silver bullet here. I don't play any big-name MMOs because I've had too many bad experiences in the past with the companies that run them...from EQ to SWG. If clients can take an active part in testing/tweaking and balancing a time-tested and weathered game experience, publishers would benefit from the ideas and mutual interests of their audience. The way you reference the use of the LGPL it is constraining development and blurring vision when its proper use empowers diversity and strengthens the underlying foundation. I think aside from the One-MMO-To-Rule-Them-All revenue model, MMOs don't work too well because they require a larger investment than the average game and a less guaranteed payoff for the player that they will truly enjoy the experience after grinding through whatever it is they will need to grind through.

I don't pretend to believe using the LGPL is the best way to publish games, but I think at its root the LGPL has a place in the software lifecycle. If you interpret video games as art, when they are treated as nothing more than a thing to be constantly recycled and re-released for profit with expansions of new content that ignore already existing bugs, it really cheapens the experience of the audience. A game which achieves an LGPL-level of appreciation can serve as a monument and a constant check on the quality, honor and respect that exist between developers and clients in a healthy gaming community. It's not something you can point to on the bottom line, but for some odd reason the companies that embrace the philosophy of the LGPL in the right places have been very successful in building additional revenue streams.

That philosophy is pretty clearly missing from the vast majority of games released in the past decade - most publishers treat their customers like filthy criminals and most of the customers prefer to be locked up in a console because it's easier. Bugs are there so you don't get too much of an attachment to the game because the sequel will be even more juiced-up (eye candy only) and possibly more boring, even if it does, in fact, fix the friggin' bugs! Ultimately, developers have been validating investor/management assumptions that the sales cycle which fuels developer salaries is more important than the product which is ultimately developed. It's easy to be an ideologue when you're not trying to earn a paycheck, but where do developers draw the line? It doesn't pay to be dogmatic, but the lack of LGPL releases for some of the 'Best Of' category classic games has reduced the overall quality of what's considered 'releasable' and what 'goes gold' and what gets patched these days. The larger trend is that virtual publishing monopolies have removed healthy competition while enabling anti-consumer corporate polices in a lot of the PC gaming market (as predicted by RMS, incidentally).

Except that *they* don't actually own all the music anymore. Small and independent labels have a larger share of the pie. You can still see live performances, listen to the radio and experience the music while following a set of personal restrictions specifically designed to deny revenue and profit to the segments of the industry you don't like. You know, "Walk the walk," like you say.

The problem with the record industry, from my perspective, is that even after I've walked the walk for over a decade, they're still not bankrupt and they still haven't corrected or repudiated their methods. They still believe their best customers are criminals, they still believe locking the schlock they shill up in a hermetically-sealed DRM container will protect the profit-value of their investment. Sure they miss the dollars I spend on other things now, but they are so incompetent that they've invented metrics to rationalize my (and other music lover's) absence from their marketplace. It's a sad state of affairs.

Most artists recognize that myspace and twitter can do for free what used to require a record contract and thousands of dollars in contract debt to produce. Frankly, I think most music fans are ready to embrace building the *new* industry after the current hegemony has been Rasputin'd. Right now, the large labels are just holding back the smaller labels that aren't completely out-of-touch with their audience. That's JMHO, though.

Absolutely. Or rather, I implemented client-side DRM on my music purchases - I manage my own rights over music media I purchase, or I simply do not purchase it.

I listen to Pandora a fair bit and have found a lot of new music there. If Pandora can grasp, through technology, what customers want to hear and then generate sales, why can't radio? The simple answer is that media ownership chooses not to because they believe it costs less. Promoting goodwill between customers and product is a waste of resources and we have at least ten years of evidence backing up that statement.

Oh but they have. It's a self-effecting prophecy, actually, because the largest acts are no longer pursuing contracts actively and are focusing on self-promotion (myspace/twitter/blog/tour/etc).

Say, if you own a restaurant and your star chef leaves to start a new restaurant or simply because they are frustrated with your management, do you hire another star chef? Maybe if you know one, but in all likelihood, some culinary production is about to take place in your kitchen that is merely 'good' or 'above average'. Your customers will notice the difference, too.

The less goodwill between industry and fans, the less artists will want to be associated with those industry players, despite all the perks. Small labels will get a larger piece of the pie, but the pie will get a lot smaller (at least temporarily) because those small labels don't have access to the same media promotion levers as the entrenched industry players and those industry players are still pulling the levers for the schlock that they need to turn out for the next quarterly statement. It really isn't fair to the artists who are trying to make a living, but it is completely and totally the industry's fault for treating their customers this way for over a decade. Running a crusade to chase after the last 10% of profits while sacrificing the experience of the other 90%? Not a good business model...

'Keep it Real' and suffer like the rest of the grinders or abuse your personal resources to obtain authority like the rest of the world?

I suggest joining the Horde.

Also, barley is barely worth the price of the beer it goes into.

What do you get when there's a shortage of barley farmers and a surplus of beer drinkers? PBR

Somehow, the rules that govern beer-making are related to the rules that govern music production. I know, that's as clear as mud.

Actually, there is a dichotomy between OpenBSD and all other operating systems. Theo's political stances have brought a lot of problems for the development of OpenBSD as compared to other BSD dstributions, but at their core, the OpenBSD devs are concerned with server security, open code and open protocols and not necessarily the latest features. This process is called security auditing.

They still have only a generally limited window manager, but without the plodding devotion of the OpenBSD team, many binary WiFi blobs (that have been reverse engineered by the OpenBSD team) would still be enabling security breaches while legitimate users were none the wiser. SSH, and the use of remote terminals for all operating systems, have been vastly improved because of the OpenBSD project and it's (simple) minimum requirements which are generally unmet by the commercial software industry.

Whether or not the OpenBSD platform ever grows into a popular client for web-browsing and document editing, it seems as if the community of developers using OpenBSD for their work have definitely succeeded as administrators over the years. And because of the license BSD provides to developers, all of the code in OpenBSD can be used in other projects, whether or not those other projects meet the political standards of Theo de Raadt.

My memory going back to the original MW game is hazy because I played it so much without actually following the story when I was younger. I remember when I finally beat it, though, I had tracked down a Gray Death _____ with a bunch of immense mechs. In a 4v5 battle where one of my 3 ace pilots inevitably would do something bone-headed and we'd all die and I'd play it over again. Is it the same Gray Death Legion? And where in the timeline did the original MW computer game fall? Honestly, I am amazed that Microsoft would buy the license just to do so little with it for so long and I'm just really happy there is going to be a new one.

I think as a younger and more idealistic gamer I thought that boycotting game manufacturers with retarded DRM schemes (If you played MW2, you should agree that MW3's DRM scheme was retarded) would result in the elimination of DRM from the games industry...but no, it turned out that game sales fell because of pirates and not conscious decision-making on the part of myself and other disgruntled customers.

Maybe it doesn't matter now, but back in 1999 when I purchased a game if you told me I'd have to download a crack in order to play a CD and the game at the same time I'd tell you the game was broken and that it wasn't worth buying it anyway.

It was my loss, though...just makes me more pissed at SecurROM and every manufacturer who has bought into their "business model." If DRM is to protect the first two weeks of sales from piracy and otherwise only harms legitimate customers, release a patch to eliminate it after two weeks so I can buy the game! Grrr.....

For real? MechWarrior 3 was the only one I skipped as it appeared to be an obvious step down from MechWarrior 2. I was sort of dismayed when I learned that the MechWarrior franchise was bound to go the way of Halo, but I bought MechWarrior 4 and played through it. It was fun, if not very long. I played on a few public servers but I became bored quickly with the lack of certain tactics that are in the classic game and, especially, the lack of customizable mechs available.

Okay, that sounds about right. I never got into the MechWarrior 2 expansions, though I had the Ghost Bear one. I really wanted to customize the loadout myself, like you could do in the Battletech tabletop games. But are you saying I need to buy the expansion in order to make customized mechs and that nobody without the expansion can experience those mods and additionally that once you use customized mechs it actually disables the expansion content you purchased? I admit it. The fact is, I held my prejudice against expansions for games and never even considered the possibility that I could experience something more among the community because I considered it a foregone conclusion that...

would not happen. Even more prejudiced, I know. Still...wtf MicroSoft? Why you gotta be like that? Anyway, glad I found out. Might try this out if Mercs is included.