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But the intricacies of governing a real-currency microeconomy are so maddeningly complex it's impossible to give people anything but superficial customer service.

Linden encourages people to create virtual goods-based businesses with real money, then makes decisions on land, currency, advertising, outlawed content, or a million other things that directly impact people's livelihoods.

And as the BBB notes, Linden tends to ignore complaints

Schmidt called netbooks the "next generation" of the low-cost machines produced by Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. "Products today are not completely done. Things are missing.

Such devices could rule the world, Schmidt said, because cloud online apps are the future. "Cloud computing is one of those changes that are going to happen - regardless of whether or not companies in the ecosystem want it to," he said. "IT systems today are so slow in the way that they evolve...We now have an opportunity to build a whole new generation of applications that cycle much faster."

Just as predictably, Schmidt began his Morgan Stanley Q&A by insisting that Google's search monopoly could vanish at any moment. He pointed to a recent snafu where Google's search engine blocked access to the entire internet.