What I can never figure out is why no one uses a.us domain. Aren't they free? Maybe no one knows where to register them!
You're not supposed to register "yourname.us", but only "yourname.city.state.us". And "cybertron.podunk-city.co.us" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
As several people mentioned in the previous story, fill the envelopes with glitter. Glue
or duct tape the envelope shut so that it is harder to open. Once it is opened, the
glitter goes everywhere (try to find the powery glitter, it floats in the air) and is almost impossible to clean up.
That's a great idea. I'll bet powdered copier toner would work even better. There's almost nothing harder to get out than copier toner.
While I think the DC ethernet adapter is a step in the nice direction, I'm still not in a rush to go out and order one. For one thing, it only works with a small, select group of games. And while some people are going to be excited at the prospect of being able to play low-ping 4-player games of Quake III Arena (that's all the DC version supports) at 640x480 resolution, that's going to strike a lot of people as old news. Of course, one can expect there to be more broadband-enabled games in the future.
Up until recently, I would have been more excited about the ethernet adapter, what with the fact that progress has been made porting Linux to the DC, as well as lots of emulators and other projects (VCD and MP3 players and like). But alas, the rumors I'm hearing more and more frequently are that Sega is going to start shipping new Dreamcasts that won't boot CD-ROMS (only the proprietary GD-ROM), in an effort to keep people from copying games. That'll work real well for all two weeks until a mod chip comes out, but could really cramp the efforts of people doing independent development on the system, if their project won't work on new Dreamcasts without a hardware modification.
I guess the main reason I won't be investing in new DC gadgetry, though, is that it becomes more and more apparent over time that game companies are by and large not neat, creative cottage industries interested in hacking, exploration, or or neat development products. They are evil consumer electronics corporations who want my money are who are all too eager to restrict, dumb down, and hobble their products if it is in the interest of their bottom line.
My bottom line is that I think I'll use that $90 to buy some art supplies and used CDs, and do something with my spare time other than point and drool for a change.
3) -- A side scrolling RPG/action game where you had to go through forty levels to
get to the top of a mountain. The main thing I remember about it is that you could get
an NPC to follow you around, who would attack when you would attack -- there
were like 6 different ones, from a ninja that tossed stars to an archer, to a wizard.
Anyone know the name of this? About 1990-1991 when it came out.
I believe the game you are looking for is Capcom's Magic Sword, which runs beautifully with MAME.
Now consider a 3d gui - "Shit, I know the
report I need is in here somewhere. Let's see, I go north for 20 paces and turn left at
my resume. Then I go west until I reach my porn collection, up until I reach my
unfinished novel and... There is is!"
Um, nobody says that a 3D GUI would obviate the same tools that already exist to locate information on a large system. I use 'find' and 'locate' on pretty much a daily basis to track down files buried deep in the directory structure.
My current 2D GUI has a 3x3 screen "Virtual Desktop" up in the corner, and it's not at all uncommon for me to have a dozen or so xterms open all at once. If I lose track of what I put where, I can instantly jump to any open application via the right click menu. For that matter, isn't the whole virtual/paging desktop metaphor an added dimension to the GUI? (think "dimension" in the sense of an array)
Honestly, I don't know whether a fully 3D (Quake style) GUI would be useful or not. I think that when we all have head-mounted displays that are as light as sunglasses, have built in motion sensors, and are easy on the eyes for long periods of use, that 3D GUIs will be perfectly useable and intuitive.
In the mean time, I can't say. I honestly don't know whether it makes any sense to model a VR-style 3D GUI that you can only interface with through a 2D monitor -- I've never really seen it tried -- but I don't think it makes sense to discount its usefulness just because the concept hasn't already been proven.
My question: what does a comic book collector/art dealer need with three G4s? Was it just because he was rich?
Nah, my instincts were that the computers were there as product placement, plain and simple. I also noticed the Macs were also running screensavers depicting characters owned by [popular comics publisher], giving double the product placement dollars.
Alan Moore's various deconstructions of the Superhero genre (Watchmen, Miracleman, Swamp Thing) would be better written and more of an homage to the genre. Anyone care to guess when (if ever) Moore will get his chance to do movies?
Alan Moore's graphic novel From Hell is currently in the late stages of production of a film version. It's not a superhero book -- it's a graphic novel adaptation of Jack the Ripper -- but it should be interesting seeing Moore's work adapted to the silver screen (though I have my doubts how well it can capture the dark mood and earnest, detailed depiction of Victorian life that made the graphic novel so absorbing).
I've heard that Terry Gilliam has been approached about doing a Watchmen movie on several occassions, but has half-jokingly said he would only take the project if it could be twelve hours long.
In terms of comics/movies adaptations, I'm also very much looking forward to the film adaptation of Daniel Clowes' "Ghost World", starring Thora Birch in the lead role, which is supposed to come out in January.
I have no idea what Zuccarini's complaint was with Guinness but it is more than
apparent that he registered these domains with the intent to harrass them.
Why would I want to support this kind of childish behavior?
Because free speech (espescially critical speech) is an important principle, and is one of the few effective tactics individual people have in counterbalancing the vast amounts of money and lawyers that corporations use to gain more and more power.
What's next? Will "Consumer Reports" magazine get shut down for publishing critical reviews of (trademarked) products? Plenty of software licenses already stipulate that one can't publish benchmarks without explicit permission -- it's not hard to imagine this trend extending to other products.
"Gasbag" is a pervert who
gains sexual gratification from having a thin straw inserted into his urethra (or to use the common parlance, 'piss-pipe'), then his
homosexual lover blows firmly down the straw to inflate his scrotum
Actually, that's not at all how scrotal inflation works. I understand it involves injecting sterile saline solution into the scrotum. I've never tried this, but you can read how to do it safely in case you're interested.
(Before you moderate this down, ask yourself honestly -- who are the real crazies -- people who do scrotal inflation, or people who pay $1000+ for a game console?)
I read a review of a book about 5 or so years ago, it was about a book by some guy
who may have been a scientist, it was sci-fi, and about people living inside a sun or
something... i asked someone recently about this and he lent me Snowcrash, which
was ok i guess but i dont think it was that.
Could it be David Brin's Sundiver? A good read, and the first book of Brin's excellent "Uplift" series (though I've only read the first of the two trilogies).
I'm really surprised over how many people don't like the UI of the GIMP -- I definitely find it easier and more comfortable to use than that of Photoshop. I realize this is somewhat subjective, but having right-click menus rather than a menu bar is a big plus to me. I also like having lots of independent windows for different tools, rather than everything in one big parent window (though last I checked, Mac Photoshop worked like this also). Yeah, there's a bit of a context switch if you're used to Photoshop, but GIMP just feels easier to use for me.
And another thing: I'm really surprised that nobody has taken Photoshop to task for what it really is -- an amusing toy, but absolutely useless for any kind of real-world editing of streaming video. Anybody who would recommend such a half-finished product as a serious tool for manipulating visual media is obviously a either rank novice or a sheltered geek.
Re:(half OT)Removing the white wall from a picture
on
Grokking The Gimp
·
· Score: 2
What about a more Photoshop-esque "select all pixels of color x (with tolerance y) from the current layer" w/ preview?
It's there. Select->By Color from the right click menu. The only thing it doesn't do is change the preview in realtime as you move the tolerance slider -- you have to do an extra mouse click to regenerate the preview.
Am I the only one who saw the title of this article and instantly thought of the substance imipolex, from Rudy Rucker's books "Software"/"Wetware"/"Freeware"? (all excellent reads by the way). How long will it be until I can have a Happy Cloak?
Or will we at least see kids talking about trading the latest Tupperwarez?
Does anyone remember the name of the game where you were this warrior, 2-d
scroller, walked down the hallway with this shield, which you could turn into the
SUPER MEGA SHIELD by slamming the joystick up and down repeatedly, and you
fought other warriors at the end, knocking parts of their armor off until you hit a vital
point?
Sounds like Taito's "Gladiator". You can download the ROMS for use with MAME and see for yourself (it plays great in emulation).
Anyone have *any* idea how to get a volume knob to tweak software?
You might have some luck hacking the guts of an old mouse (or better still, a game controller with some sort of potentiometer) to get something that you could bolt onto the backside of a knob. Eschewing a volume knob in favor of some buttons would be even easier.
You might find some other ideas at the build your own arcade controls FAQ which, like your proposed project, deals with the question of attaching non-standard input hardware to a PC.
This looked great right up until I got to the part where you can only load your account using an existing credit card.
Somebody else in this thread mentioned that one thing that holds back anonymous payment methods is that they could be used for money laundering, and I have to begrudgingly admit that that's a valid point. Even with limits such as those established by privatebuy ($500 worth of transactions per day, no more than $1000 in your account at one time), somebody could still hack a system where money was chanelled through a large number of accounts under different names. After all, the crime syndicates of the U.S. Government and credit card companies do need to protect their interests against the machinations of lesser crime syndicates.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, Neal Stephenson's short story The Great Simoleon Caper is an entertaining, thought-provoking look at the topic of anonymous e-cash.
Why would anybody create such a system in the first place? You aren't giving them any way to make a profit, so why go through the effort....
Sure I am. If the system caught on, just think of all the money they could make collecting interest from or re-investing people's still-unspent digital cash. The more money you have access to, the more money you can make with it. Providing a service in exchange for access to people's money is a big part of how most banks, investment companies, etc. stay in business.
So far, all of the online payment systems I've seen, including Paypal and Yahoo's payment service, are lacking in at least two areas:
Need for a credit card. I really dislike the business practices of cc companies on too many levels to mention. I don't use them, and while I would like to be able to do more shopping/commerce online, but have no plans on getting a credit card to do so. Yahoo's payment system at least allows payment directly from a bank account, but that still doesn't provide for...
Privacy. I like to pay for things with cash whenever possible. I pay my rent and utilities by check, buy a money order for mail order purchases, nearly everything else is the green stuff. Let the people who track buying habits make their living off of somebody else.
What I would really like to see is a payment system where, as a user, I could set up an anonymous account and send the company a money order along with a note to "please deposit in account XYZ123". I would then have that much money to spend online. The payment company would collect a 1% service charge on everything I purchased, and all transactions are guaranteed to be as anonymous as practically possible (i.e. they would only collect enough data to prevent fraud and abuses, and never to share the data or use it commercially). People who wanted to receive payments through the service would have to identify themselves, of course.
Does anyone know if there is anything like this already in existance? Would you use it if it were available?
Most notably, the War Games catagory. Hello? http://civilization.gamestats.com! Firaxis and Activision are duking it out to create the next generation of Civilization games.
I don't think most people would consider Civilization (the board game or computer games) to be proper wargames -- they are turn based strategy games with a military/conquest element, but that's about it. "Real" wargames (tactical/strategic simulations) don't have roman phalanxes that can destroy an offshore battleship, or planes where a single bombing run takes two years of game time.
I've been marginally interested in wargaming for about two decades, and in all of that time it's been a niche market with a very specialized audience. You really have to have an interest in military history to enjoy grognard-style wargaming. Most people I've encountered who are serious wargamers are extremely specialized in the types of games they like to play: the Boer wars, or the WWII North African Campaign, the Roman Conquest of the British isles, etc. These people want to know the armament and insignia of every division, the personality of the commanders, etc. It's really not for everybody (for my part, I'd be happiest playing maybe one or two nights a year of serious wargaming, using a game system where I can learn all of the rules in half an hour or less -- I'm not a serious grognard).
There may be an interesting parallel between wargames and flight sims here: in both cases, the target audience is much more interested in detail and realism than in mass-market playability. The difference being that as computers get better and better, building better flight sims requires more money and effort to design something that makes use of all of those resources (and it will be a LONG time - if ever - before they make a flight sim that is realistic enough for the truly hardcore). Flight sims will always be around, but they may start costing a lot more, and be harder to find through mass-market retail. The future may be better for wargaming, since you don't need millions of dollars and a whole development studio to design a wargame - the target audience mostly only cares about historical accuracy and a good AI. The latter can be tricky, but there are still lots of good wargames being put out by small, independent software companies (I've heard good things about Tac-Ops, for instance).
I guess my discomfort with the whole thing is not so much about any inherent properties of the distribution method, but rather the presentation. Part of the reason a lot of people are pushing development of Gnome is to make Linux/Unix a more viable desktop OS for people without a strong computing background. People who don't know about 'tar -tz' and are mostly just trustingly following directions. I can't help but think of all the old BOFH jokes about naive users being told 'okay, to rename a file, type 'rm -rf/.*'
Your complaint is ridiculous because in a sense tarballs are the method that gives you the MOST security and control, and that's what we're distributing
I don't agree with you that tarballs give you more security and control than rpms or.debs... In all three cases, you can manually examine and extract the contents of the archives to a particular directory. rpms and.debs are also a lot easier to clean up if you decide to remove the package, and.debs (not sure about rpms) offer md5 package signing so you have some reassurance the package hasn't been tampered with). In all cases, performing any of these tasks involves understanding the tools involved. Giving step-by-step directions to be typed as root, without explanation, may in the long run be teaching people to shoot themselves in the foot.
Additionally our tarballs install into their own path (/nautilus-preview or something) so they'd be easily removable when you're done playing with it. So its neither sloppy nor insecure unless *YOU* are sloppy and insecure in how you deal with them.
And that's exactly my point. I have enough experience with tar to know it's not a smart idea to su to root, cd to '/', and untar a file containing a piece of beta software from someone I've never heard of before. But that's precisely what the install instructions on the Nautilus page recommends.
If you'd like to suggest a way to make the process not require root, but still be able to
install to places like/usr/bin, we're open to suggestions.
If the preview installs into it's own path, why does it have to write to/usr/bin? Why not $HOME/bin? (I will refrain from opining on the virtues of/usr/local, and how dumping any old beta software into the system directories tends to lead to instability and cruft).
How about an installer script that gives an option between a 'safe' install in $HOME or/tmp, or a system install, which must be run as root? (and includes a brief message explaining exactly what this entails).
I haven't had a chance to install and look at Nautilus yet, but looking at the Nautilus web page struck me as an example of trend I really don't like. The installation instructions at http://download.eazel.com/download.html tell you to download the tarball, su to root, cd to/, and type 'tar -zxf (tarball). Not only is this a sloppy way to install software, it's also *dangerous*. One of the first things I learned as a Unix admin is "never do anything as root that you don't fully understand", and while nobody is ever 100% scrupulous about this (we've all typed 'make install' without reading the sources), there should still be an effort made for 'safe computing' - an option to run a new program safely from the user's home directory, for instance.
I spotted an even more unsettling example of this phenomenon on the Helix Gnome website the other day. The recommended install process consists of su-ing to root, then typing 'lynx -source http://url.com/ | sh'. Umm, sure, what better way to make the install process user friendly than by having you download a shell script from the net and run it as root, sight unseen.
What the hell is wrong with these people?
I agree that if Linux is going to gain popularity as a desktop platform, it needs to be made easier to use for non-technical people. But real thought needs to be given to those things that make Unix a better desktop than Windows -- mainly security and stability. Unix/Linux has held out remarkably well against the plagues of viruses, trojans, and so forth which cause problems in the Windows world. Encouraging practices like installers that unnecessarily require root access are a huge step backwards.
Slashdot Mirror
What I can never figure out is why no one uses a .us domain. Aren't they free? Maybe no one knows where to register them!
You're not supposed to register "yourname.us", but only "yourname.city.state.us". And "cybertron.podunk-city.co.us" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
More info on .us domains (including how to register them) can be found straight from the horse's mouth.
As several people mentioned in the previous story, fill the envelopes with glitter. Glue or duct tape the envelope shut so that it is harder to open. Once it is opened, the glitter goes everywhere (try to find the powery glitter, it floats in the air) and is almost impossible to clean up.
That's a great idea. I'll bet powdered copier toner would work even better. There's almost nothing harder to get out than copier toner.
While I think the DC ethernet adapter is a step in the nice direction, I'm still not in a rush to go out and order one. For one thing, it only works with a small, select group of games. And while some people are going to be excited at the prospect of being able to play low-ping 4-player games of Quake III Arena (that's all the DC version supports) at 640x480 resolution, that's going to strike a lot of people as old news. Of course, one can expect there to be more broadband-enabled games in the future.
Up until recently, I would have been more excited about the ethernet adapter, what with the fact that progress has been made porting Linux to the DC, as well as lots of emulators and other projects (VCD and MP3 players and like). But alas, the rumors I'm hearing more and more frequently are that Sega is going to start shipping new Dreamcasts that won't boot CD-ROMS (only the proprietary GD-ROM), in an effort to keep people from copying games. That'll work real well for all two weeks until a mod chip comes out, but could really cramp the efforts of people doing independent development on the system, if their project won't work on new Dreamcasts without a hardware modification.
I guess the main reason I won't be investing in new DC gadgetry, though, is that it becomes more and more apparent over time that game companies are by and large not neat, creative cottage industries interested in hacking, exploration, or or neat development products. They are evil consumer electronics corporations who want my money are who are all too eager to restrict, dumb down, and hobble their products if it is in the interest of their bottom line.
My bottom line is that I think I'll use that $90 to buy some art supplies and used CDs, and do something with my spare time other than point and drool for a change.
notice how many people *are* using png? not a lot...
I am, at least for the titles on my, erm, original MP3 page. Irony abounds.
3) -- A side scrolling RPG/action game where you had to go through forty levels to get to the top of a mountain. The main thing I remember about it is that you could get an NPC to follow you around, who would attack when you would attack -- there were like 6 different ones, from a ninja that tossed stars to an archer, to a wizard. Anyone know the name of this? About 1990-1991 when it came out.
I believe the game you are looking for is Capcom's Magic Sword, which runs beautifully with MAME.
Now consider a 3d gui - "Shit, I know the report I need is in here somewhere. Let's see, I go north for 20 paces and turn left at my resume. Then I go west until I reach my porn collection, up until I reach my unfinished novel and... There is is!"
Um, nobody says that a 3D GUI would obviate the same tools that already exist to locate information on a large system. I use 'find' and 'locate' on pretty much a daily basis to track down files buried deep in the directory structure.
My current 2D GUI has a 3x3 screen "Virtual Desktop" up in the corner, and it's not at all uncommon for me to have a dozen or so xterms open all at once. If I lose track of what I put where, I can instantly jump to any open application via the right click menu. For that matter, isn't the whole virtual/paging desktop metaphor an added dimension to the GUI? (think "dimension" in the sense of an array)
Honestly, I don't know whether a fully 3D (Quake style) GUI would be useful or not. I think that when we all have head-mounted displays that are as light as sunglasses, have built in motion sensors, and are easy on the eyes for long periods of use, that 3D GUIs will be perfectly useable and intuitive.
In the mean time, I can't say. I honestly don't know whether it makes any sense to model a VR-style 3D GUI that you can only interface with through a 2D monitor -- I've never really seen it tried -- but I don't think it makes sense to discount its usefulness just because the concept hasn't already been proven.
My question: what does a comic book collector/art dealer need with three G4s? Was it just because he was rich?
Nah, my instincts were that the computers were there as product placement, plain and simple. I also noticed the Macs were also running screensavers depicting characters owned by [popular comics publisher], giving double the product placement dollars.
Alan Moore's various deconstructions of the Superhero genre (Watchmen, Miracleman, Swamp Thing) would be better written and more of an homage to the genre. Anyone care to guess when (if ever) Moore will get his chance to do movies?
Alan Moore's graphic novel From Hell is currently in the late stages of production of a film version. It's not a superhero book -- it's a graphic novel adaptation of Jack the Ripper -- but it should be interesting seeing Moore's work adapted to the silver screen (though I have my doubts how well it can capture the dark mood and earnest, detailed depiction of Victorian life that made the graphic novel so absorbing).
I've heard that Terry Gilliam has been approached about doing a Watchmen movie on several occassions, but has half-jokingly said he would only take the project if it could be twelve hours long.
In terms of comics/movies adaptations, I'm also very much looking forward to the film adaptation of Daniel Clowes' "Ghost World", starring Thora Birch in the lead role, which is supposed to come out in January.
I have no idea what Zuccarini's complaint was with Guinness but it is more than apparent that he registered these domains with the intent to harrass them. Why would I want to support this kind of childish behavior?
Because free speech (espescially critical speech) is an important principle, and is one of the few effective tactics individual people have in counterbalancing the vast amounts of money and lawyers that corporations use to gain more and more power.
What's next? Will "Consumer Reports" magazine get shut down for publishing critical reviews of (trademarked) products? Plenty of software licenses already stipulate that one can't publish benchmarks without explicit permission -- it's not hard to imagine this trend extending to other products.
"Gasbag" is a pervert who gains sexual gratification from having a thin straw inserted into his urethra (or to use the common parlance, 'piss-pipe'), then his homosexual lover blows firmly down the straw to inflate his scrotum
Actually, that's not at all how scrotal inflation works. I understand it involves injecting sterile saline solution into the scrotum. I've never tried this, but you can read how to do it safely in case you're interested.
(Before you moderate this down, ask yourself honestly -- who are the real crazies -- people who do scrotal inflation, or people who pay $1000+ for a game console?)
I read a review of a book about 5 or so years ago, it was about a book by some guy who may have been a scientist, it was sci-fi, and about people living inside a sun or something... i asked someone recently about this and he lent me Snowcrash, which was ok i guess but i dont think it was that.
Could it be David Brin's Sundiver? A good read, and the first book of Brin's excellent "Uplift" series (though I've only read the first of the two trilogies).
Um, are you a troll, or just stupid? Photoshop is designed to edit images. Still images. To manipulate video, you'd use Premiere or After Effects.
It's called irony, son. (See also the six million posts in this thread of people writing off GIMP completely because it doesn't do printed media).
I'm really surprised over how many people don't like the UI of the GIMP -- I definitely find it easier and more comfortable to use than that of Photoshop. I realize this is somewhat subjective, but having right-click menus rather than a menu bar is a big plus to me. I also like having lots of independent windows for different tools, rather than everything in one big parent window (though last I checked, Mac Photoshop worked like this also). Yeah, there's a bit of a context switch if you're used to Photoshop, but GIMP just feels easier to use for me.
And another thing: I'm really surprised that nobody has taken Photoshop to task for what it really is -- an amusing toy, but absolutely useless for any kind of real-world editing of streaming video. Anybody who would recommend such a half-finished product as a serious tool for manipulating visual media is obviously a either rank novice or a sheltered geek.
What about a more Photoshop-esque "select all pixels of color x (with tolerance y) from the current layer" w/ preview?
It's there. Select->By Color from the right click menu. The only thing it doesn't do is change the preview in realtime as you move the tolerance slider -- you have to do an extra mouse click to regenerate the preview.
Am I the only one who saw the title of this article and instantly thought of the substance imipolex, from Rudy Rucker's books "Software"/"Wetware"/"Freeware"? (all excellent reads by the way). How long will it be until I can have a Happy Cloak?
Or will we at least see kids talking about trading the latest Tupperwarez?
Does anyone remember the name of the game where you were this warrior, 2-d scroller, walked down the hallway with this shield, which you could turn into the SUPER MEGA SHIELD by slamming the joystick up and down repeatedly, and you fought other warriors at the end, knocking parts of their armor off until you hit a vital point?
Sounds like Taito's "Gladiator". You can download the ROMS for use with MAME and see for yourself (it plays great in emulation).
(whoops, the proper url is here... dunno how that extra %3C/a snuck in there...)
Anyone have *any* idea how to get a volume knob to tweak software?
You might have some luck hacking the guts of an old mouse (or better still, a game controller with some sort of potentiometer) to get something that you could bolt onto the backside of a knob. Eschewing a volume knob in favor of some buttons would be even easier.
You might find some other ideas at the build your own arcade controls FAQ which, like your proposed project, deals with the question of attaching non-standard input hardware to a PC.
I was under the impression that Namco owned Pac-man...
Namco owns the rights to the Pac-man arcade game, which they wrote.
Atari owned the rights to home versions of the game until they were bought by Hasbro a couple of years ago.
http://www.privatebuy.com/ from ecount.
This looked great right up until I got to the part where you can only load your account using an existing credit card.
Somebody else in this thread mentioned that one thing that holds back anonymous payment methods is that they could be used for money laundering, and I have to begrudgingly admit that that's a valid point. Even with limits such as those established by privatebuy ($500 worth of transactions per day, no more than $1000 in your account at one time), somebody could still hack a system where money was chanelled through a large number of accounts under different names. After all, the crime syndicates of the U.S. Government and credit card companies do need to protect their interests against the machinations of lesser crime syndicates.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, Neal Stephenson's short story The Great Simoleon Caper is an entertaining, thought-provoking look at the topic of anonymous e-cash.
Why would anybody create such a system in the first place? You aren't giving them any way to make a profit, so why go through the effort....
Sure I am. If the system caught on, just think of all the money they could make collecting interest from or re-investing people's still-unspent digital cash. The more money you have access to, the more money you can make with it. Providing a service in exchange for access to people's money is a big part of how most banks, investment companies, etc. stay in business.
So far, all of the online payment systems I've seen, including Paypal and Yahoo's payment service, are lacking in at least two areas:
What I would really like to see is a payment system where, as a user, I could set up an anonymous account and send the company a money order along with a note to "please deposit in account XYZ123". I would then have that much money to spend online. The payment company would collect a 1% service charge on everything I purchased, and all transactions are guaranteed to be as anonymous as practically possible (i.e. they would only collect enough data to prevent fraud and abuses, and never to share the data or use it commercially). People who wanted to receive payments through the service would have to identify themselves, of course.
Does anyone know if there is anything like this already in existance? Would you use it if it were available?
Most notably, the War Games catagory. Hello? http://civilization.gamestats.com! Firaxis and Activision are duking it out to create the next generation of Civilization games.
I don't think most people would consider Civilization (the board game or computer games) to be proper wargames -- they are turn based strategy games with a military/conquest element, but that's about it. "Real" wargames (tactical/strategic simulations) don't have roman phalanxes that can destroy an offshore battleship, or planes where a single bombing run takes two years of game time.
I've been marginally interested in wargaming for about two decades, and in all of that time it's been a niche market with a very specialized audience. You really have to have an interest in military history to enjoy grognard-style wargaming. Most people I've encountered who are serious wargamers are extremely specialized in the types of games they like to play: the Boer wars, or the WWII North African Campaign, the Roman Conquest of the British isles, etc. These people want to know the armament and insignia of every division, the personality of the commanders, etc. It's really not for everybody (for my part, I'd be happiest playing maybe one or two nights a year of serious wargaming, using a game system where I can learn all of the rules in half an hour or less -- I'm not a serious grognard).
There may be an interesting parallel between wargames and flight sims here: in both cases, the target audience is much more interested in detail and realism than in mass-market playability. The difference being that as computers get better and better, building better flight sims requires more money and effort to design something that makes use of all of those resources (and it will be a LONG time - if ever - before they make a flight sim that is realistic enough for the truly hardcore). Flight sims will always be around, but they may start costing a lot more, and be harder to find through mass-market retail. The future may be better for wargaming, since you don't need millions of dollars and a whole development studio to design a wargame - the target audience mostly only cares about historical accuracy and a good AI. The latter can be tricky, but there are still lots of good wargames being put out by small, independent software companies (I've heard good things about Tac-Ops, for instance).
I guess my discomfort with the whole thing is not so much about any inherent properties of the distribution method, but rather the presentation. Part of the reason a lot of people are pushing development of Gnome is to make Linux/Unix a more viable desktop OS for people without a strong computing background. People who don't know about 'tar -tz' and are mostly just trustingly following directions. I can't help but think of all the old BOFH jokes about naive users being told 'okay, to rename a file, type 'rm -rf /.*'
Your complaint is ridiculous because in a sense tarballs are the method that gives you the MOST security and control, and that's what we're distributing
I don't agree with you that tarballs give you more security and control than rpms or .debs... In all three cases, you can manually examine and extract the contents of the archives to a particular directory. rpms and .debs are also a lot easier to clean up if you decide to remove the package, and .debs (not sure about rpms) offer md5 package signing so you have some reassurance the package hasn't been tampered with). In all cases, performing any of these tasks involves understanding the tools involved. Giving step-by-step directions to be typed as root, without explanation, may in the long run be teaching people to shoot themselves in the foot.
Additionally our tarballs install into their own path (/nautilus-preview or something) so they'd be easily removable when you're done playing with it. So its neither sloppy nor insecure unless *YOU* are sloppy and insecure in how you deal with them.
And that's exactly my point. I have enough experience with tar to know it's not a smart idea to su to root, cd to '/', and untar a file containing a piece of beta software from someone I've never heard of before. But that's precisely what the install instructions on the Nautilus page recommends.
If you'd like to suggest a way to make the process not require root, but still be able to install to places like /usr/bin, we're open to suggestions.
If the preview installs into it's own path, why does it have to write to /usr/bin? Why not $HOME/bin? (I will refrain from opining on the virtues of /usr/local, and how dumping any old beta software into the system directories tends to lead to instability and cruft).
How about an installer script that gives an option between a 'safe' install in $HOME or /tmp, or a system install, which must be run as root? (and includes a brief message explaining exactly what this entails).
I haven't had a chance to install and look at Nautilus yet, but looking at the Nautilus web page struck me as an example of trend I really don't like. The installation instructions at http://download.eazel.com/download.html tell you to download the tarball, su to root, cd to /, and type 'tar -zxf (tarball). Not only is this a sloppy way to install software, it's also *dangerous*. One of the first things I learned as a Unix admin is "never do anything as root that you don't fully understand", and while nobody is ever 100% scrupulous about this (we've all typed 'make install' without reading the sources), there should still be an effort made for 'safe computing' - an option to run a new program safely from the user's home directory, for instance.
I spotted an even more unsettling example of this phenomenon on the Helix Gnome website the other day. The recommended install process consists of su-ing to root, then typing 'lynx -source http://url.com/ | sh'. Umm, sure, what better way to make the install process user friendly than by having you download a shell script from the net and run it as root, sight unseen.
What the hell is wrong with these people?
I agree that if Linux is going to gain popularity as a desktop platform, it needs to be made easier to use for non-technical people. But real thought needs to be given to those things that make Unix a better desktop than Windows -- mainly security and stability. Unix/Linux has held out remarkably well against the plagues of viruses, trojans, and so forth which cause problems in the Windows world. Encouraging practices like installers that unnecessarily require root access are a huge step backwards.