We are clearly going to get a big bunch of amateur economists commenting on this one.

I see you are getting this trend started. I would add that there still would be secure government debt to purchase for a long time - though not as much of it. States, municipalities, school boards, etc. are always participating in the bond market for special projects. There are also foreign government's that run deficits but whose debt is more secure than the US's (Thailand, etc.)

This is why many places that accept credit cards require minimum transaction amounts to use them.

Which is a violation of their merchant agreement and, if you notify the credit card company, will result in them being told to either drop the minimum or stop taking cards.

IThey are not allowed to have minimum transactions for cards and they are not allowed to charge a premium for card-using customers. They are, however, allowed to give cash discounts.

/merchant account reseller for the last 5 years.

No.

You buy that equipment with an understanding that there are restrictions on how you use it.

Do you buy a lunch buffet carrying a set of Tupperware?

I have an Asus G73JH-A1 with one of the HD's upgraded to a SSD from http://www.xoticpc.com/.
It has a better processor and cost $1000 or so less.

Let me show you something.

Mr. Fake Lawyer: Why are you defending a squatter?

It's not as if the site is currently a home-brew fan site where people share pictures of their atari's.

It's a squater trying to sell it for money. And it's pretty standard procedure that when you take a protected name as a URL and try to SELL it, the owner of the name gets to take it away from you.

In the long term, it is not Ray Casting or Ray tracing that will win out, but Ray Charles because you got the right one baby!

Easy solution.

Look up the best games from two years ago. Buy them for $10-20 on Steam or Origin or whatever.

I have been playing Bad Company 2 for a total time of maybe a few weeks. I bought it really cheap. Ditto with Portal.

Props to you on reminding me of Rise of The Triad.

I never played Castle Wolfenstein but remember that we got Rise of the Triad somehow on a CD. My dad said it was too violent for us but I snuck to the computer in the middle of the night to play it.

Ah, the memories.

- Doesn't "believe in vaccinations"
- Or God
- Gives kids names from a random license plate, apparently not recognizing that it has a real meaning in Spanish
- Doesn't own a car.
- Got taken advantage of by someone with a profit motive (like many game programmers are by a studio)

In the end, all this added up to a guy who came up with a pretty unique game-concept, even though he essentially ripped off Minecraft.

Steam isn't anything special and Origin is similarly nothing special. Just another way to buy games (or apps) digitally. I have both and have bought games from both. Nothing special.

It makes sense for each publisher to have their own digital storefront and cut out the middleman.

Be a fan boy about games, not about, uhm, digital commerce distribution platforms.

"making projects that are geek-centric, geek-powered, and just plain A-Z geek."

I'm as geek as the next guy but this seems as boring and outdated as hell. It's needlessly retro.

Because they don't understand finance. They probably can't even pronounce it correctly (it's 'fih', not 'fEYE', and the accent is on the second syllable.)

Your math would only be correct if it was issuing 100% of it's equity. It's probably issuing a tiny fraction.