One thing that's interesting about the economy is you can actually get nearly everything in game as a free player through dilithium mining. It takes a little more work, but for those of us with tight wallets it's a nice system. I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to switch to the free model or not.

I'm sure my feelings will be completely synonymous with yours. I pre-ordered the game knowing that, after such a long time in development, it was NOT going to be a stroke of brilliance. In the tech and game world, something going that long under development would have to practically be re-written to be worthwhile in the major players scene.

I played the demo, and you know what? I enjoyed it. Sure, I'm frustrated by the level design and 2 weapon limit, but such is life. Either they target the nostalgic, older crowd, or the try and bring in the younger generation of gamers who grew up with Halo and CoD as their first gaming experiences. Honestly, most of us who knew the Duke when he came to life have (mostly) grown up and have little gamers of our own to raise.

Whatever works for them. I'm anxiously awaiting my order to arrive, and I'm sure I'll relish every little duke quip.

I myself am one of said artists, to an extent, but I am a firm believer in Kickstarter being a great tool for artists. I myself have been funding the production of my new album (blues) for a couple years now out of pocket. I've been trying to figure out how to handle preorders, and after seeing the Asylum Street Spanker's campaign, I realized a great way to do it - a Kickstarter campaign. The money goes towards equipment for live shows/touring, and also gives fans of my music a chance to snag copies of the new album (a month early, in fact), get commissioned tunes, or even get one of my old beater guitars should they feel generous enough (or think I'm famous enough to warrant it's purchase). Essentially, I'm turning the fans into the record label. They front the project, and get what they want in return. I love the idea of being able to directly support my favorite bands without dealing with a record label taking an obnoxious cut, and Kickstarter is the perfect way to do it.

Also, once the album is out and I've got my gear, I'll be using Kickstarter to not only sell my album (outside of Amazon/iTunes/physical locations), but to help with another project I've been dreaming of.. A way to get guitars to kids in low-income families. I'm guessing that's probably more in-line with what you'd like to see Kickstarter being used for. There are a lot of kids who love music, and want to get into it, but don't have the financial means to do so. Guitars are relatively cheap, and are quite prolific in the music industry.

Not all of us self-absorbed starving artists are complete bastards :)

I've actually found Amazon's cloud service incredibly useful. I listen to music on a myriad of devices; my Android phone, my laptop, my desktop, my work computer.. While I typically don't rely on the cloud service to stream music (unless I'm at a machine with limited storage), it's nice to be able to download my music to all my devices when I want rather than having to manually copy them or utilize my Dropbox account (which I tend to keep full of other stuff). Any time I purchase an album on Amazonmp3 (at least once or twice a month, if I can keep myself restrained), I have it loaded onto the cloud service. Then, when I'm ready to listen to it on a certain device, I just log into my account and download the album. I'm not going to bother uploading all my previously purchased tunes (seeing as how I've got them all loaded and backed up at appropriate locations), of course, but it is nice for situations when you think you've copied an album over to another machine and delete it off of another device (such as my phone), but then discover that you didn't.

Same. We just can't allow it. If we don't have control of the equipment, we can't take responsibility for the damage that happens to it or our network if something goes bad. Hell, our corporate HQ doesn't even support non-Blackberry devices on the Exchange server (fine by me, seeing as how we've got a pretty decent webmail client).

The largest following that I perceived with the device was the connection to TechCrunch and the price point. Once the drama with Arrington ensued it certainly brought some amusing attention to the device, but the price jump killed something that really didn't seem to have a whole lot of "killer instinct" in the innovation/competition department.

Did said Tennis player spend most of his life playing tennis with his right, though?

I myself am a south-paw, but I learned to do many things right handed from the start, such as guitar, or shooting a gun. Re-training yourself to utilizing something akin to a writing/drawing utensil, after having done it for 10 or more years, can be a little difficult, I'm sure.

Exactly. Just running Nessus does not a proper security audit make.

Seriously? Ok, lets break this down.

Said person is addicted to game. Why is he addicted? Presumably, because the game is fun (well, to him; I personally found it just "ok"). So, because the game possesses such a great deal of entertainment, he spends most of his waking hours with it.

Sounds like there's a bit of a disconnect. The idiot isn't addicted to the game, he's addicted to the departure from reality and responsibility... AKA, he's a child.

Ok, that's a bit harsh. There is such a thing as internet addiction, supposedly, and I'm sure it can extend to video game addiction, however, I would say that the problem is less so the game and more so the reason behind pursuing it: not finding regular life enjoyable enough to actually go through the motions.

My next question is this.. How in the hell could he AFFORD to play it that much? I mean, you've also got to be able to afford Cheetos and Code Red to fuel those... 11 ####ING HOUR GAMING SESSIONS? Jesus.

This guy has more problems than your average /.er.

(I'm the Systems Manager for a local newspaper, and also had to deal with administration of local forums) Even in my smallish town, the trolls are quite able to get around IP bans and more (many are still on dialup, but we have had some utilize proxy services, or SOCKS proxies - I knew I shouldn't have written that guide a few years back :P). Beyond that, we also get trolls who aren't even living in the area anymore.

As far as the rubber room, while it's a good idea, many papers don't have staff capable of developing systems like that, and are using CMSes not developed in-house. Hell, many small papers don't even HAVE a "web guy/gal" to manage the site. Still, it is feasible that it would function well once implemented.

We use OO.o when someone sends us OO.o files, but otherwise, we use the MS Suite for so much as is that we can't justify switching without some rethinking of our process for certain dept's work. Not to mention the fact that re-training staff would be a mindblowing headache that we're just not equipped for. We're a daily paper, so every day is full, and we use that time to the best of our abilities (and then some - I'm actually doing some coding for work on my day off :)).

MS Word (not my choice) and Textpad (we're a Mac shop, and once again, not my choice :)).

I work in the newspaper industry - first as a graphic designer/web dev, and now as systems manager. I grew up on OSS, and learned the Adobe suite later on.

I try to regularly check up on how OSS is doing regarding my industry, but sadly, it IS lacking. We require so much in the industry, even beyond the obvious stuff (excellent type support, CMYK support, etc). For instance, our RIPs (raster image processors, taking the digital art and burning it to film) require specifically prepared PDFs. We print to postscript files and run them using a specialized preset in Adobe's Distiller to make our PDFs.

As well, we also frequently have to work with artwork provided by clients using a variety of software; not just Adobe, but Publisher generated, and more. Also, we use a software/database combo that allows us to integrate storage of photos, articles, and page layouts, with a slew of features that streamline our work to an extreme (which uses MySQL, though).

There ARE some great open-source programs out there; I love RAW Studio for processing raw photo files. Gimp works fine for web graphics, but I hesitate to use it for print processing just because Photoshop gives us such a great level of quality control and color processing in the CMYK environment.

The problem with this is the fact that it would greatly affect businesses who rely on mail services. No mail on Thursday means no bills going out, no checks coming in, etc. Also, that means people who get newspapers delivered via mail route (yes, they do that - I'm systems manager at a small locally focused paper that is doing quite well) will have to skip a day. Of course, if we lose Saturday, we lose a day, too. As far as receiving packages go, I always have mine shipped to work, anyway, so I don't have to worry about being there to sign for it.

For general design, GoMedia's 'zine is great. http://www.gomediazine.com/
I don't read many web design blogs anymore, but Web Designer Depot isn't bad. http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/
Even better, Script & Style: http://scriptandstyle.com/
Also, Usability Post: http://www.usabilitypost.com/
For typography, I Love Typography is an incredible blog. http://ilovetypography.com/