Leasing a base in the Ukraine would have another effect besides tweaking Putin's nose: American servicemen and -women would see a part of the world that few Americans ever see. They would come home with an understanding few armchair theorists could match. It is a fundamental truth: travel damages bigotry and misunderstandings. Maybe one of you would step up...oh wait, this is Slashdot.

Tandy Color Basic. Because you could put scotch tape over the last pin on your cartridge of Dungeons of Daggorath, copy the source to a cassette tape, and share with your friends. Without a disk. Who needed drives?

Some random thoughts on this: WoW isn't a problem for the industry: it's a benchmark! World of Warcraft is simply a good standard to go by. It doesn't restrict other good MMOs, but it will snuff out the bad ones. I will say this: there are small gaming companies doing just fine, like CCP (EVE Online: go ahead, duplicate THAT on the damn consoles) or Introversion (Darwinia: runs on Windows/Mac/Linux - NOT on a console) or Nexon (think Combat Arms, a free online shooter). All these companies do well in PCs, and not one of them designs for consoles. DRM? Not at all. The difference is that these guys found new ways to make their games interesting. EVE Online is an MMO that attracts both thinking gamers and WoW burnouts. Some people would assume that as an MMO, it wouldn't work on a console because of the typing requirement but that would be incorrect. It wouldn't work on a console because it's not intended for the kids. WoWkids don't survive more than 2 weeks (the free trial period) in EVE because it's too complex and too deep for them. So yes, it's vastly more intellectually stimulating than any console game I've seen yet. CCP is making money with no fear that their userbase will be attracted away to WoW or gravitate to some new console game. Darwinia is the coolest little (less than 100MB) game made in a decade, and Introversion did it on a shoestring budget and no big publisher. If it's pirated, they don't notice it much, since they've made a huge profit on it already. Nexon has their free shooter, Combat Arms, and it makes money not from upfront fees or box sales, but from in-game item sales. Want that newer, cooler uniform? Or a SCAR-L in RealTree camo? Break out the credit card! The point I'm trying to make is that PC game business is healthy, despite the calls for DRM.

Your link to that gold-seller site is now an error page, thanks to their EVE accounts being banned. I left EVE months ago because I was tired of playing on an uneven field out in nullsec space. Now there's a reason to go back to the game.

Here's the problem....ANYONE who checks this out will get the same results. You see, Google cached the pages, even after O2 cut the server. As a result, I have a series of phone numbers attached to pictures of various kids, one couple who apparently is biking all the way around Great Britain, and some nice lady who sent someone else a picture of herself. I stopped at that point. Before you call someone a liar, check their evidence.