Slashdot Mirror
2004 Interactive Fiction Results
silent_knight writes "Early in October, the 2004 Interactive Fiction competition began. The results are now in! Be sure to check out some of this year's best entries: Luminous Horizon, Blue Chairs, All Things Devours, Magocracy, and Murder at the Aero Club. All entries (and interpreters) can be downloaded together for Windows and the Mac from the download page." As mentioned in the previous story, Linux support for these games is also easily available.
(tilts head 180 degrees)
If you think
Other Infocom Interpreters for interactive fiction, including PalmOS, WinCE, Franklin Bookman, and Nintendo Game Boy Advanced.
Half Life 2, damnit. Graphics are just a layer of extra interface between the user and text.
tonight
Reaper Nor do the Racist? How Is A previously
Let me tell you a tale.....
One upon a time, there was an experienced Programmer with over 15 years of hands-on experience in coding C, C++ and Java. Despite working extremely hard in a software company, non-stop, nine hours a day, 5 days a week and many a time on weekends for many years, one fine morning he and many others were fired by Human Resources and the Manager as a "cost cutting" exercise (actually profit increasing) for the company!
There he was, out on the street without a job, what to do? He applied again to many different companies, but there were no vacancies. No one wanted Programmers, it seems they are available at a dime a dozen! "Well," he thought "thats that! Henceforth, I will use my experience and knowledge to write my own Software and sell it to earn a living. So that I may be free from working under verminous Managers and parasitic Human Resources personnel who don't care a hoot for their workers."
After 1 year of development he did some pretty good, small application software programs and put them for sale on some download sites. Immediately they were pirated and distributed, and far worse, many other such similar software suddenly appeared - being given away as "Freeware" by some misguided programmers who resort to begging the public for donations or sponsorship from large companies.
Thus, due to Freeware he was unable to sell almost any copies of the software he had made and then decided there was no moving forward in the Software Industry, he had to do the only job available, that of a waiter in a neighborhood restaurant. He was a programmer, working as a waiter. A waste fo talent, a waste of energy.
Yes..... ...its a sad story and it is true. It happened to me and it is happening to you.
Here is a brief comparsion of two popular software Models:
In the above standard software business model (known hereon as "the Business Model") which was being followed until recently, Programmers develop software which they sell to the Public. Due to the large volume of sales and the fact that licenses are usually sold per unique copy, there are fair returns which enable many hundreds of thousands or millions of programmers to be employed productively. Note: This is same standard business model for almost any profession such as Lawyers, Engineers, Doctors, Accountants, Hairdressers, Photographers. It is based on fair trade, where you do some work for the Public who pays you a reasonable amount in return for your services.
In the Freeware or Opensource model (known hereon as "the Free Model") now in vogue and being touted as the future, the software is given way free to the General Public. Thus there is no return payment for service to the Public. Because of the fact that software can be easily replicated at virtually no cost, and there are no legal restrictions in this model, the Freeware effect can multiply itself and its software exponentially. The Programmers cannot sustain themselves and have to beg for donations or be sponsored by large companies. Since software is NOT sold, unlike the standard business model, the returns are ZERO and thus instead of the hundreds of thousands or millions of programmers that can be sustained by the revenues of the standard business model, the average programmer would be lucky to afford so much as a single meal. Many who contribute to Freeware in their spare time work a full-time day job in commercial software companies, they too put their jobs at risk from an imminent collapse when there are no revenues for their companies, sister companies or 3rd party providers (or consumers) thanks to the glut of Freeware being dumped.
But...
...some of the Free Model programmers commonly say "We do this to contribute something to the Communty..."
Yes, thats a fine notion when repeated, but the Community since Ancient Times is built on the concept of trade between the members of the Community. Trade. Where the value of a man is used to trade for the value of an