Precisely. I think a great deal of confusion could be avoided if more people understood the difference between digital media and physical media. Infinite objects v. scarce objects is a good way to put it.

Thanks, Tim. CONTAINER sounds fascinating. Please keep me posted.

Thanks, Sam. You're right, this viral thing is getting out of hand . . .

Thanks, John, and my apologies for the slow reply—I've been traveling for the past two-and-a-half weeks and things have gotten pretty backed up. But yes, DayZ is incredible—a free mod to ARMA 2, the military sim from Prague's Bohemia Interactive, that's racked up nearly 1.4 million players and all kinds of raves since it was released at the beginning of the summer. It was created by Dean Hall, a 31-year-old ex-New Zealand army officer who went through a pretty harrowing training experience in Brunei and apparently did some real thinking about it. (Check out this interview with him in Eurogamer.) Perhaps what's most brilliant about it is the realism: This is an open-world survival game that actually focuses on survival as it happens (or doesn't happen) in the real world. You need food, you need water, you need shelter, and if you're wounded and don't get help you'll bleed out and die. (As it says on the Web site, the current average life expectancy in-game is 1 hour 9 minutes.) Hall started out developing it as a training simulation, but when he failed to get a response he built it on his own while working in Prague on ARMA 3. He's now working with Bohemia Interactive to develop it as a stand-alone game. Are you playing it yourself? If so, please let me know what you think.

Thank you, Jeni. Very nice to hear.