Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Brilliance, Delay, Simputer
It's all fun and games until you end up in Bankruptcy. Born Game writes: "Loki was supposed to be declared dead today by the bankruptcy trustee. Dennis Powell has followed their story closely, and he has written a wrapup that will break your heart and make you mad."
I hope he's making it longer than Cryptonomicon. We reported that Neal Stephenson's new book Quicksilver was due last month. An anonymous reader pointed to this page at Amazon UK, writing "the book is due out March 6th next year, not this year. Meh."
Maybe calling it Brilliant wasn't such a bright idea. asv108 writes: "According to this article from MP3 Newswire, Cnet's Download.com has removed KaZaA media desktop due to concerns over Brilliant Digital Entertainment's hidden software."
It's still available elsewhere though; if you or someone you love wants to use such software regardless, TDScott writes: "In case anyone is having trouble convincing their friends that there's a problem with the b3d spyware installed with KaZaA, I've put together a quick summary page on what the problem is and how to remove it (use AdAware with caution) - pointing people to it might save you hours of explanation."
I hope these are available stateside, too. Pankaj writes "Simputer is All set to hit the market in India. The Open Source Computer (Both Hardware/Software) Has found its first makers in Encore Solutions who will start selling it within the next one month. {sources internal}. This will give the iPaq and Palms a run for their money, as the simputer is loaded with features like internal modem, smartcard reader and usb port. There are plans to add a gsm phone into it too -- watch out, Nokia! And one third the price; it's supposed to be 10,000 Indian Rupees. Thats around $210 try comparing it to the ipaq.
Did you ask what it is based on? It's Linux 2.4, man, with gtk and its developer kit it's as free as the hardware itself. This looks like hot stuff to go for.
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
Does anyone know who (if anyone) is going to maintain OpenAL? This is a promising spatial audio api, and I would hate to see it go by the wayside. Already I see dead links on their site (e.g. CVS server), and have to find backup FTP servers to get access.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Loki was not killed by a market not willing to buy their goods, though that did have some small contribution. It was killed by the absolute criminal incompitence of it's president.
I feel sorry for the people who Loki owes money to. I feel no pity at all for Loki.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
If you go to the member companies page on the openal site: Here
It lists Creative Labs and Loki Entertainment Software.
My guess is that Creative Labs will maintain this.
They have been good with opensource in the past
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
"""The deposition took on a surreal air at times, with Draeker refusing to say whether or not he is a lawyer and in one spectacular moment testifying that as president of Loki he could say how much had been paid to Scott Draeker and when, but as Scott Draeker he could not say whether he actually received the money."""
Nobody is going to wait for a company to port games over to Linux if they can boot up Windows on the same box. If Loki perhaps pursued licencing good games exclusively for Linux... then they would probably have had a better chance.
Said one, "All we lost was money. Scott lost his friends."
... Scott should lose his right to be with us anymore. He should be in prison, based on that story.
My only concern with giFT is with the age of the current build, which, if the Download page is to be believed, was completed on January 1, 1900. Nostalgic computing is great and all, but...
That sounds like how I write. I am miserable in a word processor. It's too easy to get sidetracked. When I write longhand, I have to organize my ideas. Also, I really like the aesthetic of pages and pages of my handwriting spread out in front of me. To each his own, eh?
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
And thanks for the code. SDL, OpenAL, and the Loki installer/uninstaller/updater are still with us. As is my stack of 8 Loki games (2 copies of tribes).
-Paul Komarek
Let's say they were charging $50/copy and they sold 5000 copies (which seemed to be a reasonable expectation given what the report said). At that price and volume, that's $250,000 per title.
Now, figure that each title is going to take 3 or 4 developers. Let's say that each is paid $96K/year (for math simplicity) in salary and benefits, that would come down to approximately $8000/month per employee or roughly $32,000/month for each team. My numbers are totally coming out of thin air, but not unreasonable. At that burn rate you can afford to spend 7 months in development of each game with some room for some sort of profit.
Of course that base price isn't accounting for a lot of the company infrastructure. You have to afford a place to work, computers, a network connection, marketing, packaging, etc. You'll need an office manager, somebody to run the website, and a couple other odds and ends. So probably, in the grand scheme of things, you're talking at least $50K/month burn rate. As you develop more games, the overhead is probably reduced somewhat but this is a reasonable baseline.
So now, suddenly you are down to 5 months of development time. Ohhhh wait, you forgot to license that game, didn't you? Well that's going to shave a few bucks off each copy of the game, and now suddenly you are in the red assuming that you can get the game ported from start to finish in 5 months.
My numbers aren't necessarily realistic, but I think they are close enough to reality to illustrate that this is, at best, a razor thin business to be in.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I recently bought a second copy of Tribes II from Tux Games (which seems to load somewhat slowly right now). I think there are a few other places, too, but I'm not able to find them right now.
There are several good linux gaming sites, such as linuxgames and icculus.org. icclus.org has a nice faq and lots of projects, and linuxgames is a cornucopia of helpful info for gaming on linux.
-Paul Komarek
Ok, a failed lawyer, starting a Linux game company. Sounds suspiciously like an opportunist with no relevant experience and dollar signs in his eyes. Did he at least have some technical background? Experience in the (brutal) gaming industry? Familiarity with Linux? You'd think the article would have mentioned it (working at Apple does not imply a technical background).
If anyone ever gives you this vibe, get out, quick. The best of plans, in the best of circumstances, executed by the best of people is a long way from a sure thing in the free market. Optimism and confidence are good, but counting on success--even just in your heart--before it's in the bank is always a mistake. This lesson, it seems, will be learned over and over until the end of time.
You're only supposed to get unemployment benefits if you're looking for work. So Draker was dishonest from the start.
My company was financed in 1999, so I recall distinctly that the boom was in full swing the whole year. (Hint: when did VA Linux IPO?) If they couldn't find funding in 1999, something was very wrong.
I'm going to stop, because the later signs are too obvious, and because if the signs were all there at the height of the bubble--well that's just pathetic.
Reading this, I couldn't help being reminded of the movie startup.com. Somehow, you were supposed to feel sorry for these losers, even though they aspired to nothing more noble than easy riches, and pursued them with laughably poor judgement. I can't fairly blame them for dipping into the overflowing VC pool, but I certainly didn't cry for their failure.
Maybe my standards for entrepreneurs are too high. Maybe it's because I've been with a tech start-up that I was and am proud of (founded in 1998, and still going, thank you).
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
When I had orignally read that article about the Brilliant Digital (BDE) Trojan being silently distributed in Kazaa, I laughed and became glad that I had never installed Kazaa.
e xe , 4d ata 2.dll,44m 32\bdedown loader.dll,44s ystem32\bdefdi. dll,442 \bdeinst a2.dll,44b 3d,,i ,,
D eleting:Other,1,HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT,2,b3dini_auto_f ile,,a yer.bde playerctrl,,2 ,bdeplayer.bde playerctrl.1,,T ,2,bdesmartinsta ller.bdesmartinstaller,,L ASSES_ROOT,2,bdesmartinsta ller.bdesmartinstaller.1,,_ CLASSES_ROOT,2,clsid\{519581 69-d5e3-11d1-aa42-0000e842e40a},,, 1,HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT,2,clsid\{679251 65-c4b6-11d2-b9c6-0000e84f59a6},,, 1,HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT,2,interface\{67 925164-c4b6-11d2-b9c6-0000e84f59a6},,t her,1,HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT,2,s3d_auto_file , b ri lliant digital entertainment,,O T,2,typelib\{82fc 7881-aacc-11d2-b9c6-0000e842e40a},,
But what's this? There's a new Ad-Aware? I download it and run it. It finds 19 new components. Guess what, the BDE Trojan is installed on my machine. How? I have no idea. I never downloaded installed Kazaa and nobody else uses this machine. And I almost never browse with IE so ActiveX couldn't have let it in.
The only conclusion I can come to is that BDE software is being distributed with applications besides Kazaa. The only newly downloaded (Windows) software I have installed recently are Ad-aware and WinAMP and honestly I think they are unlikely suspects. The date on the BDE files was JAN 12 2002!!! That was 3 months before the original slashdot article!
How did the Brilliant Digital Trojan get onto my computer?
Log:
Started file scan
Other file:D:\WINNT\bde\bdeclean.exe
FileSize : 32 kb
FileCreation time : 12/01/2002 17:08:06
Last accessed : 09/04/2002 22:32:07
Build : 3.0.7.0
OS : Win32 executable
Description:BDEClean
Version:3, 0, 7, 0
ProductName:Brilliant Digital uninstaller
Other file:D:\WINNT\system32\bdedata2.dll
FileSize : 36 kb
FileCreation time : 12/01/2002 17:03:51
Last accessed : 09/04/2002 22:32:09
Build : 1.0.1.9
OS : No executable
Description:BDEData (Release)
Version:1, 0, 1, 9
ProductName:BDEData Module
Other file:D:\WINNT\system32\bdedownloader.dll
FileSize : 88 kb
FileCreation time : 12/01/2002 17:03:51
Last accessed : 09/04/2002 22:32:09
Build : 3.0.38.0
OS : No executable
Description:BDEDownloader
Version:3, 0, 38, 0
ProductName:Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. BDEDownloader
Other file:D:\WINNT\system32\bdefdi.dll
FileSize : 40 kb
FileCreation time : 12/01/2002 17:03:51
Last accessed : 09/04/2002 22:32:09
Build : 1.0.0.7
OS : No executable
Description:BDEFdiTest
Version:1, 0, 0, 7
ProductName:Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. BDEFdiTest
Other file:D:\WINNT\system32\bdeinsta2.dll
FileSize : 97 kb
FileCreation time : 12/01/2002 17:03:51
Last accessed : 09/04/2002 22:32:09
Build : 1.2.3.9
OS : No executable
Description:BDESmartInstaller (Release)
Version:1, 2, 3, 9
ProductName:BDEInstallerComponent Module
Removing selected components:
Deleting:Other,3,file,2,,D:\WINNT\bde\bdeclean.
Deleting:Other,3,file,2,,D:\WINNT\system32\bde
Deleting:Other,3,file,2,,D:\WINNT\syste
Deleting:Other,3,file,2,,D:\WINNT\
Deleting:Other,3,file,2,,D:\WINNT\system3
Deleting:Other,1,HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT,2,.
Deleting:Other,1,HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT,2,.b3din
Deleting:Other,1,HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT,2,.s3d,,
Deleting:Other,1,HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT,2,bdepl
Deleting:Other,1,HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT,
Deleting:Other,1,HKEY_CLASSES_ROO
Deleting:Other,1,HKEY_C
Deleting:Other,1,HKEY
Deleting:Other
Deleting:Other
Deleting:O
Deleting:Other,1,HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,2,software\
Deleting:Other,1,HKEY_CLASSES_RO
Read what KaZaA has to say about your privacy:
http://www.kazaa.com/en/privacy/index.htm
and then answer my subject line. Their own website states that "spyware is any software (that) employs a user's Internet connection in the background (the so-called 'backchannel') without their knowledge or explicit permission." They also state that:
"The service downloads a collection of banner ads from a web server while you are online. As you use the KMD, the service rotates ads and intermittently polls the server for new ad collections. Statistics are sent to the webserver recording which ads were displayed and how often. This information is used to bill advertisers. It may also be used to target ads for you. For example, if you often click CD store ads, you will be shown more of these than pet store ads."
I don't remember giving them "explicit permission" to do all that. I know this is preaching to the choir, but I am stunned by the obvious contradictions on their website... Thank you to the above comment poster who pointed me to KaZaA Lite. I had not heard of it previous.
"Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
I tried it with code, but I can't read my handwritten code worth beans. With English, it isn't hard to guess, but try fudging a regex!
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
You can help the organisation either financially or by developing applications. Follow for more details including a mailing list for developers.
And do remember, it's target audience is farmers, small traders in developing countries. So, they require applications for these groups. For example, they are trying to developing financial applications that can give details about microcredit transactions of a villager in India, or one that gives details about land records, simple things else-where, but for which the bureaucracy has complicated procedures.