I was thinking of building my own laptop/tablet that uses a happy hacker kbrd. Finding affordable touchscreen lcd's has proven a pain though.
I guess I'm not purely a 2 fingered typist. It depends what I'm typing, sometimes I use 3 or 4 fingers too but it's still sort of a pecking method of typing. My hands don't touch the keyboard in any way except when I punch the keys. I type mainly from the shoulder making something like a wiggling punching motion. I can type really fast regardless of key layout but I do wear keyboards out quickly. I probably get more exercise by typing than most people though. I have taken typing tests (for many years) so I know how fast I can type. As I don't touch the keyboard the rate of typing depends mostly on my hands knowing the way the word is layed out on the keyboard. Familiar words I can type with a single motion while unfamiliar words I have to hunt and peck because I don't know how they are layed out. I'm certainly not the only person who tends to type like this though. Lots of geeks I've noticed do it with their passwords and stuff. I for one don't even know what some of my passwords are but my fingers know the right positions so I can type them anyway. To find out my passwords I generally have to pull up a terminal and just type my password and then read what I typed.
I guess because of how I type I think a hand gesture interface could be pretty effecient. It might have a higher learning curve than a keyboard but you could interact with it very quickly..
Like the Twiddler though there is no way I'm paying more for my input device than I would for a large new hdd.:)
The hardware looks big and ugly. My media center Linux box is smaller and nicer looking than the one they are using. I mean really what does a media center need a floppy drive for?
The software looks nice though. I'll have to see if I can try it. Their software looks nicer than mine. Will have to see how it stacks up as far as functionality.
Naw, you're computer interface would act as something of an artificial organ. You'd be able to control it just as well, or as poorly, as any other part of your body.
It'd be interesting to see how society would change if we all thought humanity was about to end and there was absolutely nothing we could do about it. Would we still pay bills and go to work? Would we try to get better education? Would we have a war?
Just to take a guess I'd say that major evils like government and corporate oppression would quickly fade while you'd get more street-level violence. Part of the street-level violence would be the result of panic and religious clashes and some would be over basics like food (As with the social order breaking down there'd be less food, medicine, etc being shipped).
I'm pretty happy with my Happy Hacker keyboard. I think the only thing I'd change about keyboards in general is to put the letters in alphabetical order.
Key order doesn't do shit for typing one way or another. I can type 100wpm with two fingers and I don't move my wrists so I won't have to worry about repetitive stress. Putting the keys in alphabetical order would just lower the learning curve and let schmucks use my keyboards that have the symbols worn off.
I do like one handed keyboard/mice like the Twiddler. When they release a reasonably priced wireless version I'll buy a few.
Naw. Future computers will operate by direct brain link. You'll swollow a pill and a lil computer and wireless connection will be intergrated with your wetware and allow you to mentally commuicate with any electronic devices around you just by thinking. Sounds farfetched but I'd be willing to bet the little money I have that we'll start seeing direct brain computing before voice recognition reaches a human to human level or nears anything close to the speed of typing. We are the Borg. You will be assimilated.
No kidding. Just because NASA has no ideas what to do doesn't mean that nobody could. Some middle school kid might pop up with some brilliantly obvious way to save our asses that the hotshots all overlooked. If you're fucked anyway you might as well let everyone else have a chance to think of something.
This is also a reason why I think we should be busy colonizing space. If we had self-sustaining colonies on the Moon, Venus, and Mars at least the human race would survive our home worlds destruction. In the story abour Mars ice yesterday were some links of people who just can't understand why we should explore space rather than sitting on our asses here. IMO global killers are one very good reason. Shit happens, it's best not to have all your eggs in one basket.
I'd be interested in what kind of hardware they are using. I built a Linux-based cell phone a while back (uses VoIP w/ WiFi) and the best hardware I could find was still somewhat clunky (PDA sized) and cost about $400. I'm looking into rebuilding the software into tablet and wearable form factors but I'd sure love to find a cellphone sized device that ran Linux that I could hack on.
Isn't this the same argument thrown against Mozilla a year or two ago? "It's taking to long so it isn't worth the effort." or "We have Internet Explorer anyway - why do we need another browser?"
Software, especially good software, takes a lot of time to produce. Anyone can throw off crappy code quickly but to make something you'll be able to keep secure and stable over it's lifetime takes time and effort. Unless you're the developer what do you care how the effort is being spent? it's not your time or effort so feel free to go about your business doing something you feel your efforts are more useful in.
As for me I find Plex86 interesting because I don't want to spend a fortune on hardware but sometimes I do like to have a sandbox enviroment to run development stuff, test apps, or just open questionable email attachments. Bochs is to slow to run many apps properly and if I was going to spend the money for faster hardware I might as well just buy new computers. It makes more sense to use a virtualized enviroment and save some money (and hassle).
Virtualization may not have as many users as web browsers but it's technology which for the most part will continue to be useful for a long time. The x86 processor has a long history of compatible code so there is no reason to think Plex86/Bochs won't still be useful a decade from now.:)
Re:The Real Problem - Computers Are Too Slow
on
Forget Moore's Law?
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· Score: 1
I think AI and ultra-realistic VR are things that no matter what speed you throw at it aren't going to crack easily. These are parallel processes and they need massive grids of processing to work well. For real improvements I think you'll have to wait until nanotech computing is a reality. Trillions of tiny computers working together can do what one big fast computer can't.
Also there is a long way to go in software design in these kinds of fields. More horsepower helps (a lot) but it certainly won't make smarter computers without better software.
Seriously at this point most people don't need 1Thz CPU's. What most people need is cheaper, smaller, more energy effecient, cooler CPU's. You can buy 1Ghz CPU's now for the cost of going to dinner. If you could get THOSE down to $1 each so they could be used in embedded apps from clothing to toasters you would be giving engineers, designers, and inventors a lot to work with. You'd see a lot more innovation in the business at that price point. Once powerful computing had spread into every device we use THEN new demand for high end processors would grow. The desktop has penetrated modern life - so it's dead - time to adjust to the embedded world.
Does anyone have stats on how this effects bandwidth usage? Am I right in understanding this is some sort of protocol that allows each network device to broadcast what ports it has open to everyone else on the network all the time? How does this differ from how Windows machines auto-find each other in their Network Neighborhood?
The first time I tried it I connected it both to MySQL and M$ Access inside of 15 minutes having never used either OpenOffice or ODBC before. It wasn't difficult at all. I didn't like it and went back to my own way of doing things but it wasn't difficult to setup. I'd say if you have trouble with the setup you really don't want to be messing with databases without a more experienced user to guide you. Try IRC or a mailing list - lots of help is available.
Really? In what way? I've tried running my programs on Solaris and they ran exactly the same as on Linux. Support between Linux and Windows is overall a no brainer. Windows sometimes takes a couple more modules that are missing from Windows Python but the distutils packages it all up into a nice exe for me. What pitfalls are you speaking of?
I use PayPay via my web-enabled cell phone to buy/sell with individuals and check my balance. I use my PayPal debit card with the crusty retail giants as they have trouble understanding the idea of a customer punching a few buttons on your phone to transfer funds to them.
I'd like to see digital money and I am a big supporter of open source and protocols but I think digital money is one of those areas where you need some centralized control. You could open your source and your protocols but you'd have to force each device to register itself with a central server to authenticate transactions. Also without a central organization to put something to back the cash people will be reluctant to invest a lot in that cash.
That's very possible. I especially notice the amount of time Java apps take to load and the fact that even on reasonably powerful home machines they use up resources quickly if you're like me and use 5+ apps at once. I can play a dvd and browse the web at the same time without issue but run a Java program or two while browsing the web and the machines bog down. Python might not be quite as fast at number crunching in some ways but it feels speedier especially when running lots of programs.
That looks like a really old quote. I believe Python is quite a bit faster than it was when that quote was made. If you look at the changelogs you'll see notes to this effect. I haven't done any speed tests to test Java against Python on my own but Python feels a lot faster for me under both Windows and Linux.
Re:InternalMemos is notorious for hoaxes
on
Even Sun Can't Use Java
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Julian.Taylor@central.sun.com is the address Google came up with for me. Not sure if it's the right one. Seems close enough though.
Since when are memos technically correct? You must work at a lot geekier place than I have. Not that I think InternalMemos isn't notorious for hoaxes.
I wouldn't hold out for Sun to switch from Java to Python either but I really wish they would. Java blows. Python is easier to develop (fewer required tools etc) and runs a lot better under both Linux and Windows. Python (with wxPython) produces nicer looking more functional gui programs to.
If it's in a central db anyway I'm sure they already have some sort of unique identifier for each card. If you can't tie a card to an individual it doesn't matter anyway. Of course anyone experienced in computers knows you could still tie the card to the individul but it'd be more work than with say a credit card at least.
Re:Card to card transfers?
on
Cashless Society
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I think that is the main problem with smartcard based digital cash. If you can't transfer between average Joe's without special equipment it's just a fancy debit card. Add a small screen and keyboard (think credit card sized calculator) and make it so they can transfer data by touching and you'd have a decent form of digital cash. If you are retaining the information in a central db somewhere you'd have to have the sending card digitally sign and timestamp the transaction and the recievers card check that data for correctness.. then next time the cards were used somewhere with a connection to the central db it'd send a copy of that transaction in to update the db. The unique signed tranasaction data would make it hard to fake the transactions.
I'm actually surprised to hear they were still around at all. What are some recent titles they've produced? I don't play arcade games a lot so I really had no idea they were still producing for so long.
I've been pushing a similar model for movies for a while and hearing of it for concerts makes a lot of sense too. It shouldn't be hard to encode the concert in near real time and burn off copies as fast as fans can buy them. A home cd-burner takes at most a minute or two to burn a disc so it shouldn't be a problem to burn them as fast as you can sell them just by giving each clerk their own burner. A teenager in our linux group built a vending-machine style burner a couple years ago and it'd be even better for this job. Punch the button, drop in your money, and get your cd.
I'd suggest $15 each is very high though. If they really want to make this popular they'll sell the cd's for something closer to $5 each.
I've never had a credit card or taken out any kind of a loan (even for a car or house) and my credit is still shit. Why? Because of utility companies mostly. The bill you in advance and then claim you are behind in your payments. I've almost never recieved my deposits back from these companies despite the fact I was caught up when I closed my account - then they like to send a final bill that is off the wall.
One electric company made me pay a past tenants bill to get my utils on ($150+) plus my deposit ($100) and then played the game when I tried to move.. no deposit returned and they kept billing me. This has happened to me countless times with electric, sewer, water, phone, internet, and cable companies. One cable company refussed to turn my roommates cable off when he died unless he called to verify he was dead and then tried to force the rest of us living there to pay the cable bill despite the fact that none of us had a tv.
Landlords are also pretty bad. Does anyone ever get their deposit back? We had one place THROW AWAY our stuff before we were due to be moved out, then they damaged the place themselves (cig butts all over.. and neither of us smoked) and then they refused to give back our deposit and actually sent us a bill.
Banks suck. Especially large nation wide banks that go through a lot of mergers. I've had so many off the wall fees and just outright loss of my money that I don't even put my money in banks anymore. Everything is in cash or PayPal. Some people say PayPal sucks but in my experience they are far better than most banks.
Magazine companies. These shit heads buy your name and sign you up without permission. Then if you cancel or just don't pay they put nasty marks on your credit record. Some retarded company signed me up for some twenty or so magazines I didn't even read ranging from porn to shitty computer mags to home furnishings. I only read three magazines (LJ, Dr Dobbs, and Home Power) and of course none of those were in the list.
School loans. I've been paying on these things for years but the amount I owe never goes down. Also they keep selling the loans so it takes me a while to figure out I have to send the payments somewhere new.. during which time they charge late fees. If I had the option again I wouldn't go to college unless I could pay cash. It is nice that the dot crash left me making so little money that I'll never be able to pay these loans off.
So behave as much as you want but you'll still have bad credit. The only way to not have bad credit I think is to get credit cards and spend a lot of money but keep making payments. If you aren't a good patriotic American that spend spend spends then you will be made an example for others.
Re:Would have to agree.. -More-
on
Sim-Dud?
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· Score: 1
What they really need to do is make playing the game free but charge to get your Sims exclusive merchandise or go into exclusive areas. People are what make this kind of game fun so you have to reach critical mass if you want the game to be popular. Being free will help do this. As you said a lot of people just don't want to subscribe to a game.
Just some observations on how to get people to pay.. If they let you take you Sims to the happening club but charge a $2/monthly cover charge people will understand that. Follow a reality model and have ladies night where women get in free and things like that. If somebody wants a Britney Smears poster for their Sims then charge $1. Again it's a model that customers will understand and be comfortable with. Have fun with it a little. Instead of a subscription fee have Sim taxes. You can have you Sim avoid paying taxes as long as you want but they get weird IRS guys showing up and things like that.
Finally, maybe we can end every half assed project having it's own sound server. Honestly to keep sound working between KDE, Gnome, and other apps I've constantly flicking on and off various sound servers. Sure apps can autodetect them and deal with them but some apps don't bother and there is always one app you use that won't work with the sound server all the other apps work with. I'll be a happy camper when we have a good standard that works with everything. Maybe MAS is that standard.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I was thinking of building my own laptop/tablet that uses a happy hacker kbrd. Finding affordable touchscreen lcd's has proven a pain though.
:)
I guess I'm not purely a 2 fingered typist. It depends what I'm typing, sometimes I use 3 or 4 fingers too but it's still sort of a pecking method of typing. My hands don't touch the keyboard in any way except when I punch the keys. I type mainly from the shoulder making something like a wiggling punching motion. I can type really fast regardless of key layout but I do wear keyboards out quickly. I probably get more exercise by typing than most people though. I have taken typing tests (for many years) so I know how fast I can type. As I don't touch the keyboard the rate of typing depends mostly on my hands knowing the way the word is layed out on the keyboard. Familiar words I can type with a single motion while unfamiliar words I have to hunt and peck because I don't know how they are layed out. I'm certainly not the only person who tends to type like this though. Lots of geeks I've noticed do it with their passwords and stuff. I for one don't even know what some of my passwords are but my fingers know the right positions so I can type them anyway. To find out my passwords I generally have to pull up a terminal and just type my password and then read what I typed.
I guess because of how I type I think a hand gesture interface could be pretty effecient. It might have a higher learning curve than a keyboard but you could interact with it very quickly..
Like the Twiddler though there is no way I'm paying more for my input device than I would for a large new hdd.
The hardware looks big and ugly. My media center Linux box is smaller and nicer looking than the one they are using. I mean really what does a media center need a floppy drive for?
The software looks nice though. I'll have to see if I can try it. Their software looks nicer than mine. Will have to see how it stacks up as far as functionality.
Naw, you're computer interface would act as something of an artificial organ. You'd be able to control it just as well, or as poorly, as any other part of your body.
:)
Dare I ask who Virginia Abbondanza is?
It'd be interesting to see how society would change if we all thought humanity was about to end and there was absolutely nothing we could do about it. Would we still pay bills and go to work? Would we try to get better education? Would we have a war?
Just to take a guess I'd say that major evils like government and corporate oppression would quickly fade while you'd get more street-level violence. Part of the street-level violence would be the result of panic and religious clashes and some would be over basics like food (As with the social order breaking down there'd be less food, medicine, etc being shipped).
I'm pretty happy with my Happy Hacker keyboard. I think the only thing I'd change about keyboards in general is to put the letters in alphabetical order.
Key order doesn't do shit for typing one way or another. I can type 100wpm with two fingers and I don't move my wrists so I won't have to worry about repetitive stress. Putting the keys in alphabetical order would just lower the learning curve and let schmucks use my keyboards that have the symbols worn off.
I do like one handed keyboard/mice like the Twiddler. When they release a reasonably priced wireless version I'll buy a few.
Naw. Future computers will operate by direct brain link. You'll swollow a pill and a lil computer and wireless connection will be intergrated with your wetware and allow you to mentally commuicate with any electronic devices around you just by thinking. Sounds farfetched but I'd be willing to bet the little money I have that we'll start seeing direct brain computing before voice recognition reaches a human to human level or nears anything close to the speed of typing. We are the Borg. You will be assimilated.
No kidding. Just because NASA has no ideas what to do doesn't mean that nobody could. Some middle school kid might pop up with some brilliantly obvious way to save our asses that the hotshots all overlooked. If you're fucked anyway you might as well let everyone else have a chance to think of something.
This is also a reason why I think we should be busy colonizing space. If we had self-sustaining colonies on the Moon, Venus, and Mars at least the human race would survive our home worlds destruction. In the story abour Mars ice yesterday were some links of people who just can't understand why we should explore space rather than sitting on our asses here. IMO global killers are one very good reason. Shit happens, it's best not to have all your eggs in one basket.
I'd be interested in what kind of hardware they are using. I built a Linux-based cell phone a while back (uses VoIP w/ WiFi) and the best hardware I could find was still somewhat clunky (PDA sized) and cost about $400. I'm looking into rebuilding the software into tablet and wearable form factors but I'd sure love to find a cellphone sized device that ran Linux that I could hack on.
Isn't this the same argument thrown against Mozilla a year or two ago? "It's taking to long so it isn't worth the effort." or "We have Internet Explorer anyway - why do we need another browser?"
:)
Software, especially good software, takes a lot of time to produce. Anyone can throw off crappy code quickly but to make something you'll be able to keep secure and stable over it's lifetime takes time and effort. Unless you're the developer what do you care how the effort is being spent? it's not your time or effort so feel free to go about your business doing something you feel your efforts are more useful in.
As for me I find Plex86 interesting because I don't want to spend a fortune on hardware but sometimes I do like to have a sandbox enviroment to run development stuff, test apps, or just open questionable email attachments. Bochs is to slow to run many apps properly and if I was going to spend the money for faster hardware I might as well just buy new computers. It makes more sense to use a virtualized enviroment and save some money (and hassle).
Virtualization may not have as many users as web browsers but it's technology which for the most part will continue to be useful for a long time. The x86 processor has a long history of compatible code so there is no reason to think Plex86/Bochs won't still be useful a decade from now.
I think AI and ultra-realistic VR are things that no matter what speed you throw at it aren't going to crack easily. These are parallel processes and they need massive grids of processing to work well. For real improvements I think you'll have to wait until nanotech computing is a reality. Trillions of tiny computers working together can do what one big fast computer can't.
Also there is a long way to go in software design in these kinds of fields. More horsepower helps (a lot) but it certainly won't make smarter computers without better software.
Seriously at this point most people don't need 1Thz CPU's. What most people need is cheaper, smaller, more energy effecient, cooler CPU's. You can buy 1Ghz CPU's now for the cost of going to dinner. If you could get THOSE down to $1 each so they could be used in embedded apps from clothing to toasters you would be giving engineers, designers, and inventors a lot to work with. You'd see a lot more innovation in the business at that price point. Once powerful computing had spread into every device we use THEN new demand for high end processors would grow. The desktop has penetrated modern life - so it's dead - time to adjust to the embedded world.
Does anyone have stats on how this effects bandwidth usage? Am I right in understanding this is some sort of protocol that allows each network device to broadcast what ports it has open to everyone else on the network all the time? How does this differ from how Windows machines auto-find each other in their Network Neighborhood?
The first time I tried it I connected it both to MySQL and M$ Access inside of 15 minutes having never used either OpenOffice or ODBC before. It wasn't difficult at all. I didn't like it and went back to my own way of doing things but it wasn't difficult to setup. I'd say if you have trouble with the setup you really don't want to be messing with databases without a more experienced user to guide you. Try IRC or a mailing list - lots of help is available.
Really? In what way? I've tried running my programs on Solaris and they ran exactly the same as on Linux. Support between Linux and Windows is overall a no brainer. Windows sometimes takes a couple more modules that are missing from Windows Python but the distutils packages it all up into a nice exe for me. What pitfalls are you speaking of?
I use PayPay via my web-enabled cell phone to buy/sell with individuals and check my balance. I use my PayPal debit card with the crusty retail giants as they have trouble understanding the idea of a customer punching a few buttons on your phone to transfer funds to them.
I'd like to see digital money and I am a big supporter of open source and protocols but I think digital money is one of those areas where you need some centralized control. You could open your source and your protocols but you'd have to force each device to register itself with a central server to authenticate transactions. Also without a central organization to put something to back the cash people will be reluctant to invest a lot in that cash.
That's very possible. I especially notice the amount of time Java apps take to load and the fact that even on reasonably powerful home machines they use up resources quickly if you're like me and use 5+ apps at once. I can play a dvd and browse the web at the same time without issue but run a Java program or two while browsing the web and the machines bog down. Python might not be quite as fast at number crunching in some ways but it feels speedier especially when running lots of programs.
That looks like a really old quote. I believe Python is quite a bit faster than it was when that quote was made. If you look at the changelogs you'll see notes to this effect. I haven't done any speed tests to test Java against Python on my own but Python feels a lot faster for me under both Windows and Linux.
Julian.Taylor@central.sun.com is the address Google came up with for me. Not sure if it's the right one. Seems close enough though.
Since when are memos technically correct? You must work at a lot geekier place than I have. Not that I think InternalMemos isn't notorious for hoaxes.
I wouldn't hold out for Sun to switch from Java to Python either but I really wish they would. Java blows. Python is easier to develop (fewer required tools etc) and runs a lot better under both Linux and Windows. Python (with wxPython) produces nicer looking more functional gui programs to.
If it's in a central db anyway I'm sure they already have some sort of unique identifier for each card. If you can't tie a card to an individual it doesn't matter anyway. Of course anyone experienced in computers knows you could still tie the card to the individul but it'd be more work than with say a credit card at least.
I think that is the main problem with smartcard based digital cash. If you can't transfer between average Joe's without special equipment it's just a fancy debit card. Add a small screen and keyboard (think credit card sized calculator) and make it so they can transfer data by touching and you'd have a decent form of digital cash. If you are retaining the information in a central db somewhere you'd have to have the sending card digitally sign and timestamp the transaction and the recievers card check that data for correctness.. then next time the cards were used somewhere with a connection to the central db it'd send a copy of that transaction in to update the db. The unique signed tranasaction data would make it hard to fake the transactions.
I'm actually surprised to hear they were still around at all. What are some recent titles they've produced? I don't play arcade games a lot so I really had no idea they were still producing for so long.
I've been pushing a similar model for movies for a while and hearing of it for concerts makes a lot of sense too. It shouldn't be hard to encode the concert in near real time and burn off copies as fast as fans can buy them. A home cd-burner takes at most a minute or two to burn a disc so it shouldn't be a problem to burn them as fast as you can sell them just by giving each clerk their own burner. A teenager in our linux group built a vending-machine style burner a couple years ago and it'd be even better for this job. Punch the button, drop in your money, and get your cd.
I'd suggest $15 each is very high though. If they really want to make this popular they'll sell the cd's for something closer to $5 each.
I've never had a credit card or taken out any kind of a loan (even for a car or house) and my credit is still shit. Why? Because of utility companies mostly. The bill you in advance and then claim you are behind in your payments. I've almost never recieved my deposits back from these companies despite the fact I was caught up when I closed my account - then they like to send a final bill that is off the wall.
One electric company made me pay a past tenants bill to get my utils on ($150+) plus my deposit ($100) and then played the game when I tried to move.. no deposit returned and they kept billing me. This has happened to me countless times with electric, sewer, water, phone, internet, and cable companies. One cable company refussed to turn my roommates cable off when he died unless he called to verify he was dead and then tried to force the rest of us living there to pay the cable bill despite the fact that none of us had a tv.
Landlords are also pretty bad. Does anyone ever get their deposit back? We had one place THROW AWAY our stuff before we were due to be moved out, then they damaged the place themselves (cig butts all over.. and neither of us smoked) and then they refused to give back our deposit and actually sent us a bill.
Banks suck. Especially large nation wide banks that go through a lot of mergers. I've had so many off the wall fees and just outright loss of my money that I don't even put my money in banks anymore. Everything is in cash or PayPal. Some people say PayPal sucks but in my experience they are far better than most banks.
Magazine companies. These shit heads buy your name and sign you up without permission. Then if you cancel or just don't pay they put nasty marks on your credit record. Some retarded company signed me up for some twenty or so magazines I didn't even read ranging from porn to shitty computer mags to home furnishings. I only read three magazines (LJ, Dr Dobbs, and Home Power) and of course none of those were in the list.
School loans. I've been paying on these things for years but the amount I owe never goes down. Also they keep selling the loans so it takes me a while to figure out I have to send the payments somewhere new.. during which time they charge late fees. If I had the option again I wouldn't go to college unless I could pay cash. It is nice that the dot crash left me making so little money that I'll never be able to pay these loans off.
So behave as much as you want but you'll still have bad credit. The only way to not have bad credit I think is to get credit cards and spend a lot of money but keep making payments. If you aren't a good patriotic American that spend spend spends then you will be made an example for others.
What they really need to do is make playing the game free but charge to get your Sims exclusive merchandise or go into exclusive areas. People are what make this kind of game fun so you have to reach critical mass if you want the game to be popular. Being free will help do this. As you said a lot of people just don't want to subscribe to a game.
Just some observations on how to get people to pay.. If they let you take you Sims to the happening club but charge a $2/monthly cover charge people will understand that. Follow a reality model and have ladies night where women get in free and things like that. If somebody wants a Britney Smears poster for their Sims then charge $1. Again it's a model that customers will understand and be comfortable with. Have fun with it a little. Instead of a subscription fee have Sim taxes. You can have you Sim avoid paying taxes as long as you want but they get weird IRS guys showing up and things like that.
Finally, maybe we can end every half assed project having it's own sound server. Honestly to keep sound working between KDE, Gnome, and other apps I've constantly flicking on and off various sound servers. Sure apps can autodetect them and deal with them but some apps don't bother and there is always one app you use that won't work with the sound server all the other apps work with. I'll be a happy camper when we have a good standard that works with everything. Maybe MAS is that standard. :)