* Lives

* Power Pills

* Health Points

* Stealth Suits

* Respawn Points

* Save Games

* Freeze / Rewind Time

All of these give an edge to the poor slob on the couch who only has reflexes in tens of milliseconds. I cannot see how making an actual explicit mode is dissimilar to any of these.

A few of my relatives were almost taken in by Multi Level Marketers. These companies too are trying to grow via social internet means

These are barely legal organisations who sit _just_ on the legal side of the Pyramid definition.

Basically they try to sell overpriced financial restructuring products to people. Then if the customer does not want to become a purchaser, they try to convert the customer into selling the same products.

MLM people at the top earn more than people at the bottom.

so I don't think your judgement about what add-ons are appropriate should be considered.

22:33 UTC - Flamed on Slashdot for having TwitterBar. Why does kno1 nderstnd me?

The Tribune group collapsed because of a load of toxic debt they could not refinance.

It is quite fashionable for failing businesses to ignore their own poor performance. Instead they blame it on unforseen circumstances and present themselves as innocent victims of a global cataclysm.

A side effect of this fashion is that some commenators, like this article, are writing off whole industries and business models. They augur from the business collapses. Unfortunately these auguries ignore the more mundane reasons, too much debt, bad profit projections, in favour of some system wide collapse.

IMO the last few years, say 2005 have been mainly credit driven. So although there is undeniable shrinking of advertising revenues, this shrinking is dwarfed by the awful reality of spending shrinking back to sensible levels.