EVE is a subscription model. You buy time in chunks of 30, 60, 90.. days. You can also buy a game-time card (known as "GTC card", an excellent example of RAS syndrome) which is worth 60/90 days. However, you are allowed to sell that card to another player for ISK (in-game currency) via CCP and in doing so officially "buy" ISK. The other player, of course, gets the card (== game time). Make sense? I don't understand why this is here now, though, as they've been running the exact same model for years now.

Yes, but that's a full microtransactions model, while EVE just allows you to buy in-game money with out-of-game money in an officially sanctioned way. The important distinction is that in Y!PP you spend doubloons in game for buying stuff, while in EVE you can only trade them for in-game money.

Of course, you could go the other way and make location actually matter - like, for example, EVE Online.

If you're looking for something with a bit of innovation, I'd suggest Warsow. First of all, it has cel-shaded graphics, so it'll never look "old" - just different (in a positive way). Second, while the same ol' formula is there, the game is focused on movement, and that's the edge it needs to be different enough to be considered innovative. My favorite showcase video of the game is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O776iJ_mdSM (though, of course, something like that is very difficult to pull off).

On the other hand, it's 4 months for the whole of Google. And Google is huge. So it's a fair assumption that it'd be much less than 12 months for something a fraction of Google's size.

You should try Arch (http://www.archlinux.org/), it has all the advantages of Gentoo and less hassle if you don't feel like compiling every single package.

This is not a new article, I saw it way back in October on LWN: http://lwn.net/Articles/302576/ Still interesting though. The real question is: what are the alternatives? KOffice, other than currently being in Beta, is missing lots of critical features, making it suitable for only basic office stuff (which is still enough for most people, though). What other office suites are there? And if a developer wanted to help, where would he do the most good? OOo (yet it has always been criticized as a puppet of it's corporate overloards)? Or KOffice? Or one of the even-less-known suites out there?

That encounted is heavily scripted, and the script tends to... well, fail. I assume you've read somewhere what you're supposed to do (if not, SPOILERS: go to the tunnel, Aard the support beam behind you, pick up the rune from the body, run as fast as you can, killing as few kikimores as possible (stick to the right) and then at the right time turn around and Aard the beams twice or thrice). So, just keep going - the important bit is not to get bogged down fighting all the kikimores, as the queen will catch you.