Gotta be extreme to get any attention. At least give Brendan a way out other than stepping down. Maybe he will apologize and try to make amends in light of his new responsibility.
Thanks for answering so many questions. And thank you bodhi and rcxdude as well! I had an idea that best practices might still be an emerging topic. My unclear question about merging was indeed about conflicts, so I'm glad to hear that the merge philosophy is to be "stupid" as rcxdude said. I'll do some more research and check those links.
New to git as well as programming in general. This site has helped me somewhat, but I'm still confused about some basic concepts. Aren't the arrows all facing the wrong way? What happens to a commit after 'git reset' abandons it; can the commit be accessed ever again? What's the difference between reset and revert? How can merge and rebase be trusted? What are the best practices for how many branches a project should have and how & when should they be merged? And what are remote tracking branches? Since I only program alone so far, my friends tell me not to concern myself with these questions until I am forced to do so in a practical situation... but that doesn't satisfy me.
On the spectrum of college students, the lower economic end is where the viability of such expensive higher education comes into question. Statistics describing the entire population do not support an argument relating to this subset. Not only that, but the closing strawman of "all you care about" is unrealistic. If only it were as simple as deciding to "Go to college" then I don't think this discussion would be taking place. Eric Schmidt's words are great for those who do have a choice, but to everyone else, he's out of touch.
man, the hacker scene is so petty. ripping each other off just to show they can (or worse, to profit). sure imitation is flattering, but where's the dignity?
The reason you don't see it is that "cheat" is the wrong word. Cheating means breaking the rules. The shortsighted view you've presented disregards the entire premise of the Gamasutra article, which is that these are money games, not skill games. If you buy an advantage in a skill game, you are cheating, but if you buy an advantage in a money game, you are just playing by the rules.