I'm in a similar boat.. I'm trying to recreate Squad Leader by Avalon Hill in a browser. I think Hasbro might own the trademark, but I don't think copyright applies to game rules:
Another way to "short" is to buy put options. The most you can lose is the price of the option. Are there any puts for Linked In? I'd buy those... maybe.
I was reading the comments of the Techcrunch article and someone mentioned Grooveshark: tried it out today and within in seconds I was listening to all my favorite songs without signing up. Of course within minutes I signed up because I wanted to save my playlist. UI was extremely clean, fast, and intuitive and worked excellently in my outdated Firefox browser on linux.
Just now I went to mog.com... "discover music through people and people through music"... and "where music listens to you"... and "Better Than Rhapsody, Pandora and iTunes... Combined.". Lame first impression.
I click "Try it free"... but I have to enter my email, screenname, password twice, TOC checkbox, and a captcha. screw it! Then I'll have to pay later?
Of course, will Grooveshark the Audiogalaxy (but better) of 2009 survive as it is today?
And as far as long-tail catalog depth... I'll need some more man-hours to see how deep it goes, I'm assuming Mog will be deeper and have better discovery features. I mean you have to pay money for it, it has to be better in some way I guess.
First of all there are no leaders, no machine guns, no morale checks or broken units. Once those are added you can call it Squad Leader.
In the original rules, it is very rare that you get a KIA when firing. It's more likely that you'll get a "Morale Check" where you roll the die against the unit's morale number. If you have an unfortunate morale check roll, then your units are "broken" and are required to run for cover away from enemy units. Leaders stacked with units help with the morale checks, and can "rally" troops to get them unbroken.
Machine guns are used to create devastating fire lanes with their long range and penetration effects.
That's just the introductory rules. Successive modules added such things as panzerfausts, smoke, tanks, americans, minefields.... until we have "Advanced Squad Leader" which is an incredibly detailed and complex game system.
The alert messages have been removed and instructions added. It's not a full fledged game, only a demonstration of UI ideas to solicit feedback. Should have been more clear about that.
fkd