what would you do with a zillion dollars? (Score 1)

if you're looking to money as your prime motivating factor, eventually you have to ask yourself what you'd do if you had all the money you could want. if you say, "end world hunger," then OK, imagine that's done: now what do you do?

if what you really want to do is to play with computers, or build systems, or figure out how information works... you might consider writing free software with all the spare time you get from having a zillion dollars.

how come nobody ever asks why people watch tv for five hours a day when nobody's paying them too? probably because most people have a very rigidly binary idea about activities: things you get paid for doing, and things you pay to do. of course, the lines are never that clear.

nobody ever asks me why i spend time and money fixing up my house; that's a lot of work, and it's something people get paid to do. strangely, people don't even find it surprising that i'll go over and help a friend fix their house or their car. after all, a saturday afternoon spent in a friend's garage with a cooler of cold ones is a totally all-american way to spend your time.

i don't see writing free software, or building free systems, as being much different from a bunch of people tinkering around with an old car; it only seems wierd because 10,000 people can't fit in a garage ;)