Make a GPL 3d modelling program that is as easy to use as Second Life's modelling tools.
Do the (absolutely necessary) community development and get the tool into the hands of creative people.
Integrate a media library so users can share textures and models with ease.
Add a web interface to this library so people not using the program can also browse and contribute.
Then, and only then, develop a distributed virtual world that can use this content.
???
Profit
I'll probably do step 1 sometime in the next month or two (or three). If someone else wants to do it, I'd recommend the excellent Ogre3d graphics engine.. but use whatever you like, it's the community you build that matters.
He's obviously ill-informed. All he has to do is log into Second Life for 15 minutes and he'll quickly discover that almost everyone is 25+. It's a game for people who don't want a game.. i.e., adults.
People having fun without an imposed gameplay. Shock! Send in the journalists! Exactly how many times can you report "look Ma, no rules" story before people start labelling you as a formularic hack?
Have you considered the possibility that you've been hacked and you just don't know about it? If you have a Windows or Linux box connected to the Internet this is almost certainly the case. Macs, less so.
DRM is a philosophy. It's not one particular technology. Digital Rights Management is the proposition that the creator of a work has absolute and complete control over users of that work. DRM is the logical endpoint of idea ownership.
DRM is a lot worse than that. One day people will distribute physical objects made from programmable matter. When that happens you will find that a few rare objects are free for you to copy if you have some programmable matter of your own. You could even recycle some objects into programmable matter that you can use for whatever purpose you like. Except that is, the objects that have DRM. They won't let you copy them. They will have biometrics technology built into them and, if the creator has so chosen, no-one else will be able to use the object except you. Or the object will only be good for a set period of time and you'll have to return it (or if you're lucky recycle it) after its use-by date.
This has to happen. Otherwise the scarcity that our society is based on will be threatened. If you wanna know what it feels like to live in a world of artificial scarcity, go play Second Life. Where every object has DRM.
Jogging? With your iPod? You know there's a harddrive in that iPod right? And you know that harddrives work by having heads resting just above a fast spinning platter? Jogging will drive those heads into the platter and destroy the harddrive. That's why Apple released the iPod Shuffle (and now the Nano) because stupid people were buying a device with a harddrive in it and going jogging.
BTW - you also shouldn't take it in the shower with you.
The mere fact that you can sell your copyright to another party is questionable isn't it? The power of copyright in the US comes from the constitution:
Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Not to their agents. Not to their wives or children. Not to their publisher. To the Authors. Of course we've had too many years of copyright law abuse and reinterpretation to contest it now.
You're just being picky. You simply can't get by without a shell being installed by default. We're not there yet. That was my original point and I stand by it.
Ya know what I think would be cool, if someone would set up a site that syndicates blogs and actually does some sorting. So when you go to Planet GNOME (for example) you actually get blog entries that are about GNOME, not just the random musing about some GNOME developer's sick cat. Same with this liftport blog site. Yeah, it's got a tiny bit of relevancy to LiftPort, it's written by their staff members, but it's 99% not about space elevators. Maybe Google Blog Search will change all that.
If your sound card doesn't "just work" then what? You're expected to lookup your card, find the right module and then do modprobe from the command line until it works. I've done this before and gotten it to work, but there's no way your average user will be able to do it.
As for changing the screen resolution (my absolute personal pet peeve) what if you go to the GNOME applet and see that there is only one resolution listed because the autodetection for X decided you only needed one? Yep, edit/etc/X11/xorg.conf
I think it's a "one day" thing. They're trying to make Star Office better than Microsoft Office so they can compete in the market, and they're trying to drag open source along with the ride (which is the Sun way).
This is the stupidest argument I've ever heard. Allow me to summarise: Linux isn't broken because Windows is broken. How freakin' braindead is that? Face reality, people use Windows. If you want people to use Linux you have to be better than Windows. You can't say "Windows is broken too" like a child, you have to fix the god damn problem.
Yes I do. 99% of the people I talk to who try switching to Linux don't give up because of the apps.. they give up because they can't use their printer/camera/sound card/second monitor. They give up because they can't find where to change the screen resolution. They don't even get to the apps because they can't access their windows partition or their file server or their email to get at their documents.
You sound mighty sure of yourself for someone who writes XP software.;)
Sigh. I also write a lot of Free Software.
Let's take these FUD-esque statements one at a time.
That's offensive. Just because I'm pointing out some obvious deficiencies does not mean I have some evil agenda.
Configuring the display drivers we may have just covered. If you're thinking about editing your xconfig files, I've never had to Kubuntu. It's not like The Old Days anymore.
I'm talking about changing your X display driver from "nv" to "nvidia" so you can play some games. I believe the current procedure is: edit/etc/X11/xorg.conf and pray.
Back to the "Peripherals" screen. Click the "Printers" button.
Note that lack of support for your printer. Note that complete lack of any information that tells you how to install a third party driver. Ask on the forums and get a long procedure that involves the command line and running vim/emacs a lot.
I think you're comment about the menu items is related to the people who wrote the package you've installed, not the people who wrote the operating system.
Uhhhh, no. It's about the Ubuntu team not adding a menu item to the diff they apply to the Debian package to create the Ubuntu package. It's entirely about the people who made the distro. Not that I'm complaining. If they don't want to add a menu item, fine, but don't be surprised when your average user wonders how the hell they can run the program they just installed.
btw, they just released a new preview of their next version. They claim to have improved the Control Panel (kcontrol). I'm downloading it now to see what they've done.
Yeah, sounds like Kubuntu is pulling ahead of Ubuntu!
Yeah, people like his brother. Unlike my brother. Can we make any more pointless sweeping statements? Open Office is also available for Windows. So why would you wanna switch to Linux? Because Linux is better for some reason right? What's gunna stop you switching? Because Linux is different/difficult in some regards. Therefore, which is more important for Linux? Developing Open Office or developing "meta-tools", as you put it, to make the platform dead easy to switch to?
I guarentee it does. Last time I checked these were lacking:
Changing the screen resolution.
Configuring display/mouse/keyboard drivers.
Setting up a sound card.
Configuring a network.
Installing a printer.
I use Ubuntu, and put up with the various annoying things. Like installing a new app via synaptic and then having no way to launch it except by running it from the command line. That's a new kind of insanity.. the first time it happened to me I actually went and grabbed the source package, extracted it and looked at the diff created by the Ubuntu team to see if I hadn't missed where they put the menu item. Nope, nothing there. So we have this dead simple package installation program but no way for an ordinary user to actually run the programs they've installed. Genius!
and? Are we supposed to see your brother as the most important person in the world or something? My brother won't switch to Linux because he doesn't know how to work a command line and we still don't have a decent control panel applet on any Linux distribution worth mentioning. So why isn't that the most important application? When you don't need to operate a shell to configure your computer, then we'll see more defections, not before.
Slashdot Mirror
O..k. I'll, err, do that then.
I'll probably do step 1 sometime in the next month or two (or three). If someone else wants to do it, I'd recommend the excellent Ogre3d graphics engine.. but use whatever you like, it's the community you build that matters.
He's obviously ill-informed. All he has to do is log into Second Life for 15 minutes and he'll quickly discover that almost everyone is 25+. It's a game for people who don't want a game.. i.e., adults.
People having fun without an imposed gameplay. Shock! Send in the journalists! Exactly how many times can you report "look Ma, no rules" story before people start labelling you as a formularic hack?
Have you considered the possibility that you've been hacked and you just don't know about it? If you have a Windows or Linux box connected to the Internet this is almost certainly the case. Macs, less so.
Just find an early adopter and sell the god damn thing. Why do inventors have so much trouble making a business these days?
DRM is a philosophy. It's not one particular technology. Digital Rights Management is the proposition that the creator of a work has absolute and complete control over users of that work. DRM is the logical endpoint of idea ownership.
DRM is a lot worse than that. One day people will distribute physical objects made from programmable matter. When that happens you will find that a few rare objects are free for you to copy if you have some programmable matter of your own. You could even recycle some objects into programmable matter that you can use for whatever purpose you like. Except that is, the objects that have DRM. They won't let you copy them. They will have biometrics technology built into them and, if the creator has so chosen, no-one else will be able to use the object except you. Or the object will only be good for a set period of time and you'll have to return it (or if you're lucky recycle it) after its use-by date.
This has to happen. Otherwise the scarcity that our society is based on will be threatened. If you wanna know what it feels like to live in a world of artificial scarcity, go play Second Life. Where every object has DRM.
Jogging? With your iPod? You know there's a harddrive in that iPod right? And you know that harddrives work by having heads resting just above a fast spinning platter? Jogging will drive those heads into the platter and destroy the harddrive. That's why Apple released the iPod Shuffle (and now the Nano) because stupid people were buying a device with a harddrive in it and going jogging.
BTW - you also shouldn't take it in the shower with you.
Cool, so if they get struck by lightning we know God is pro-DRM.
The mere fact that you can sell your copyright to another party is questionable isn't it? The power of copyright in the US comes from the constitution:
Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Not to their agents. Not to their wives or children. Not to their publisher. To the Authors. Of course we've had too many years of copyright law abuse and reinterpretation to contest it now.
You're just being picky. You simply can't get by without a shell being installed by default. We're not there yet. That was my original point and I stand by it.
Ya know what I think would be cool, if someone would set up a site that syndicates blogs and actually does some sorting. So when you go to Planet GNOME (for example) you actually get blog entries that are about GNOME, not just the random musing about some GNOME developer's sick cat. Same with this liftport blog site. Yeah, it's got a tiny bit of relevancy to LiftPort, it's written by their staff members, but it's 99% not about space elevators. Maybe Google Blog Search will change all that.
If your sound card doesn't "just work" then what? You're expected to lookup your card, find the right module and then do modprobe from the command line until it works. I've done this before and gotten it to work, but there's no way your average user will be able to do it.
/etc/X11/xorg.conf
As for changing the screen resolution (my absolute personal pet peeve) what if you go to the GNOME applet and see that there is only one resolution listed because the autodetection for X decided you only needed one? Yep, edit
I think it's a "one day" thing. They're trying to make Star Office better than Microsoft Office so they can compete in the market, and they're trying to drag open source along with the ride (which is the Sun way).
Optimally from a technical point of view. Definitely not from a political point of view.
Yep, and people are lining up to buy StarOffice right? Enough to justify 80 fulltime programmers? That's a LOT of customers.
This is the stupidest argument I've ever heard. Allow me to summarise: Linux isn't broken because Windows is broken. How freakin' braindead is that? Face reality, people use Windows. If you want people to use Linux you have to be better than Windows. You can't say "Windows is broken too" like a child, you have to fix the god damn problem.
Only 100 developers? Are you crazy? That's more developers than most software houses. How the hell can Sun justify that expense?
Yes I do. 99% of the people I talk to who try switching to Linux don't give up because of the apps.. they give up because they can't use their printer/camera/sound card/second monitor. They give up because they can't find where to change the screen resolution. They don't even get to the apps because they can't access their windows partition or their file server or their email to get at their documents.
You sound mighty sure of yourself for someone who writes XP software. ;)
/etc/X11/xorg.conf and pray.
Sigh. I also write a lot of Free Software.
Let's take these FUD-esque statements one at a time.
That's offensive. Just because I'm pointing out some obvious deficiencies does not mean I have some evil agenda.
Configuring the display drivers we may have just covered. If you're thinking about editing your xconfig files, I've never had to Kubuntu. It's not like The Old Days anymore.
I'm talking about changing your X display driver from "nv" to "nvidia" so you can play some games. I believe the current procedure is: edit
Back to the "Peripherals" screen. Click the "Printers" button.
Note that lack of support for your printer. Note that complete lack of any information that tells you how to install a third party driver. Ask on the forums and get a long procedure that involves the command line and running vim/emacs a lot.
I think you're comment about the menu items is related to the people who wrote the package you've installed, not the people who wrote the operating system.
Uhhhh, no. It's about the Ubuntu team not adding a menu item to the diff they apply to the Debian package to create the Ubuntu package. It's entirely about the people who made the distro. Not that I'm complaining. If they don't want to add a menu item, fine, but don't be surprised when your average user wonders how the hell they can run the program they just installed.
btw, they just released a new preview of their next version. They claim to have improved the Control Panel (kcontrol). I'm downloading it now to see what they've done.
Yeah, sounds like Kubuntu is pulling ahead of Ubuntu!
People use computers so that they can use office.
Yeah, people like his brother. Unlike my brother. Can we make any more pointless sweeping statements? Open Office is also available for Windows. So why would you wanna switch to Linux? Because Linux is better for some reason right? What's gunna stop you switching? Because Linux is different/difficult in some regards. Therefore, which is more important for Linux? Developing Open Office or developing "meta-tools", as you put it, to make the platform dead easy to switch to?
I use Ubuntu, and put up with the various annoying things. Like installing a new app via synaptic and then having no way to launch it except by running it from the command line. That's a new kind of insanity.. the first time it happened to me I actually went and grabbed the source package, extracted it and looked at the diff created by the Ubuntu team to see if I hadn't missed where they put the menu item. Nope, nothing there. So we have this dead simple package installation program but no way for an ordinary user to actually run the programs they've installed. Genius!
and? Are we supposed to see your brother as the most important person in the world or something? My brother won't switch to Linux because he doesn't know how to work a command line and we still don't have a decent control panel applet on any Linux distribution worth mentioning. So why isn't that the most important application? When you don't need to operate a shell to configure your computer, then we'll see more defections, not before.
Fine -> Declare bankruptcy -> Go piss on the courthouse lawn.