I don't consider myself a "PC Gamer", I generally prefer console games, though I do have a few PC games that I play occasionally (Neverwinter Nights, UT2k4), I ran Linux exclusively for quite a while (I have a mac now as well, though I've never used it for games). I have to say that, in my experience with a few different distro's (pre-fedora versions of redhat, Mandrake, Debian, and Suse), I've found that Suse is really a nice distribution for 3D support- if you use an nVidia card. You can choose at install time if you want open source 3D drivers, or the official nVidia drivers, and if you update your system, getting the drivers working again is as easy as refreshing the install from YaST.
As for a window manager, Window Maker seems to be pretty light weight, or if you really want to get fancy, you can write a script to drop you out of a window manager completely and just run the game on top of plain ol' X. To be completely honest though, I run KDE most of the time, and have never found it's memory footprint to be a problem even when I'm running rather resource intensive games or applications. I have a buttload of ram though, so YYMV.
Others have mentioned Cedega, which is not free, though you can get the source free from CVS if you feel like messing about with configuring it and compiling it yourself. AFAIK their licensing doesn't prohibit this, it only prohibits you distributing it to anyone else.
Actually, I'd second this. I spent a lot of time resisting the pressure to read the Harry Potter books, but I finally broke down and borrowed the first book from a friend of mine, and I have to say that now I have the entire series of books, and found them all to be quite enjoyable.
While the reading level of the books is certainly going to be low, and not present much of a challenge to adult readers, JK Rowling manages to do an amazing job of creating a great story and an immersive world with the limited complexity of the language that she uses. In fact, this is one of the nice things about this series, it's a very easy and at the same time engrossing read, so I can get through a book relatively fast. There is also a lot of very subtle humor in the books, especially the laters ones once the series was proving popular to adults as well as kids, that is clearly targeted at an older audience.
These books are especially good for people with kids, because it is one of the few book series that the parents and the kids can equally enjoy.
It's nice to see SVG wallpaper support to compliment the icon support, I hope that they get some really good submissions, I'll probably submit an entry myself.
One problem with KDE has always been, IMHO, it's choice of default themes. There are a lot of really awesome themes out there, but the KDE team always seems to use a rather "bleh" default theme.
I always liked the quote: "If every cigarette you smoke takes 7 minutes off your life, then every game of Dungeons and Dragons you play delays the loss of your virginity by 7 hours."Marilyn Manson, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell.
If you happen to care that people start using some browser other than IE, there is a simple thing that you can do that will help convince people to switch, stop supporting IE.
All of my friends who want free tech support from me know that if they use IE, they get no sympathy from me.
None of the websites that I develop personally are tested with IE, they get a small message saying "this site has not been tested with Internet Explorer, and may not work as expected. If you want to be sure you are getting the full experience from this site, please download an alternate web browser: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/".
I guess it depends a lot on the kid, there is no one size fits all style of parenting. I have to admit I have no experience with having kids, having quite recently been one myself, however I have the following experience to share:
My parents divorced when I was very young, and shareed equal custody. They both had very different parenting styles. My father was very strict, trying to micro-manage every aspect of my and my step-siblings lives. We were allowed 20 minutes a day on the computer, not one second left. We were allowed exactly 3 phone calls a night, each one up to 10 minutes in length, not one second over. We were not allowed to talk to anyone on the phone, visit and internet sites, or read any books without his review and approval. The list goes on.
My mother, on the other hand, took a much more "live and let live" style of parenting. If I wanted to do something, then I did it, and if I made a bad decision then I had to deal with the consequences, she was there to help guide me and to grow up and find my own sence of what was right and wrong, and to learn the difference between good and bad decisions, but she left it up to me in the end. If I wanted to watch some violent or sex filled movie, or play some violent video game, or read some edgy book, then I could- of course she was also there to talk to me about it and provide a context for what I was seeing.
Of course, when I was with my father I never cared about his rules, other than as something to get around. When I was with my mom on the other hand, I genuinely tried to make decisions that would not dissapoint her. Sure if I were talking on the phone for a minute longer than I was supposed to at my fathers I would be grounded for a month, and I think I could have gotten arrested and my mother wouldn't have done anything other than have a talk with me, but I cared that my mother was dissapointed in me, and that's what made the difference.
Sure I might have developed a few bad habbits because my mom would let me do what I wanted, but in the end I think that I am much better off for her style of parenting.
I realize that parents don't want their kid on the internet all the time, and like to encourage other acitivities, but why resort to something like this? It seems to me that the better idea would be to actually talk to the kids when it seems like they've been spending too much time online. Arbitrary rules like this only make kids see parents as a rival, and rules like this as something to try to get around, intstead of a reasonable guideline from people with more life experience.
Any ideas how well an "'edible skeletal muscle derived from a domesticated bird' nugget" would sell?
well, personally I think they would sell quite well if you put them in a combo with a Krusty Partially
Gelatinated Non Dairy Gum Based Beverages.
Hmm, maybe we should start a campaign to inform this group of our feelings on the matter. (Gee, I hope it doesn't overload their email servers *wink* *wink*). Here is the email that I will be sending, feel free to use it and/or use any variation of it.
to: Editor@parentstv.org
subject: Anti-American Messages on TV
I am writing to you out of a deep sense of concern for the current state of affairs of television in the US. As you are no doubt aware, TV is one of the most influential mediums in the modern world, exerting it's influence on all people, young and old, and shaping the future of this great nation. No doubt it is because you recognize this influence of TV on our natioon that your group has been active in the past in alterting the FCC to material which is broadcast which you find is inappropriate for public airwaves. We are faced now with a more immediate and terrible threat however than mere dirty language or violence, we are faced with a threat to the very core of american freedom. A number of groups which are highly influential in television has recently been using it's influence to stelthily subdjugate the great freedom of american, and place a most un-patriotic influence on the youth of america. By seeking to eliminate the freedom of press and of speech, the freedom of expression and the freedom of the the public to use the public airways for entertainment that they deem appropriate for themselves. This group, by attempting to censor the expression of americans is sending the message to american viewers that we are a country that is not focused on freedom, but rather is focused on the control of the majority by a small minority which is dictating morality to the country at large. You needn't look far to find this group, in fact just look at the office around you, and consider the message you are sending next time you deem that some bit of television is so awful that you need it to be removed from the public airwaves, rather than you simply chosing to turn the television off.
maybe if this gets out of hand the difficulty of foreigners getting these ID's will accidentally reverse the trend of IT jobs getting outsourced to India?
Nah, what am I thinking, the government always covers their collective asses to make sure there are no unintended positive side effects to anything they do, couldn't have that.
It seems to me that there is a pretty big difference between this case and SCO's case against IBM. It looks like in this case, it was admitted that BSD contained some code that both parties admitted to, but the debate was over whether or not that code was ok to have in there. SCO on the other hand seems to be claiming ownership of code that may not even be there in the first place, or maybe I just missed something.
I see your point, that's why I said that I didn't think it was really a DDOS, but I think the spirit is to be a pain in the ass. Most of the time, if a DDOS is launched against someone, it comes down to the goal being to be a pain in their ass, same situation here, the screen saver is trying to be a pain in the spammers ass.
I'm not saying that it's not moral or justifiable, but the fact is that I'd rather not be the person who gets made an example of (unlikely, as they would probably go after lycos or a large business who allowed teh screen saver to run).
they can call it "NOT a DDOS" all they want, but it doesn't really change the facts. Technically speaking, they are right, because they are not trying to cause a Denial of Service, but I think that really in spirit it's not much different enough. While I certainly have no sympathy for spammers, I know that this is certainly not something that I'm going to be installing, as someone living in the US, because it seems to me that it's certainly possible for someone to win a lawsuit against the company or the people running this software.
Some of these attacks have gotten quite good. I recently got an email from "paypal" that seemed quite convincing...except that I don't have a pay pal account. The fact is that some of these attacks are getting quite sophisticated, to the point that someone who is even on the lookout for phising scams can be tricked in a moment of slight distraction, or even be impressed by the amount of work that went into this.
This looks like another step in the right direction, having workstation PCs available from a known and large company can only help linux on the desktop at the business grow. It's still a baby step, I think when we see a big company release a consumer level PC running Linux that it will really be something to get excited about. As it stands right now, I don't think this is going to be happening. The reason for this is that the people interested in Linux are not going to be interested in buying a "consumer level" PC, they are going to either build a machine, or buy a high level prefab.
While it may seem like a nice thing to give out live cd's for linux, you might go fruther giving out a copy of the The OpenCD instead. It's a compliation of open source software for windows. You can also compile your own, I like to give out CDs with Firefox, Open Office, GIMP, Gaim, and a few free games. A bootable linux distro is just likely to confuse people, but software that they can use on their computers all the time without having to boot into a new OS is useful. As a side bonus, most people don't know about OSS or realize that the software is free, so it seems even more valueable;)
What I don't understand is, with all of the negative publicity that spam gets, why do people still buy stuff from spammers? Although everyone claims to hate spam, I recall reading an article on/. a while ago that said as many as 10% of people buy stuff from spam, this just seems ridiculous to me. If I were walking down the street and I saw what looked like a delapedated, possible condemned building, and as I walked by 50 guys with crudely made signs ran outside surrounded me screaming "buy our product" I sure as hell would do whatever I could to get out of the situation, spam is the digital equivilent of this, yet people still buy into it. I guess it's that too many people think GIGO means Garbage In Gosple Out. As long as there are people buying the products though, there will never be a technological solution to the problem of spam.
I guess stories like this could help by showing what creeps spammers are, but the only people who are going to read articles like this already know the evils of spam. Perhaps we need to get a bunch of donations and run a commerical during prime time reality tv equating spam to terrorism?
Anyway, sorry for the somewhat offtopic rant, just been rather upset with spam more than usual lately, an email address that i've had for almost 4 years that never got a single spam has finally been getting inundated with it because some fucktard had to go and put my address in a CC with 100 other people for some stupid chain letter, and then one of those machines got pwnd and now the address is out there (BCC PEOPLE, IF YOU HAVE TO SEND THOSE DAMNABLE CHAIN LETTERS TO SO MANY PEOPLE LEARN TO USE BCC FOR $diety SAKE).
I see a lot of comments on every story about MMORPGS about the problem with level grind. The solution mentioned in the interview is to offer players more "carrots" but I think thats like sticking your finger in a dam, it's just not a viable solution to keeping players playing. The biggest problem with level grind is that combat in MMORPGS (and most CRPGs in general I think) is that combat is boring. Especially for a fighter, where you just click on the enemy and watch your character fight it out, and it's not much better for other classes. CoH did alleviate this a tiny bit, but I think the core problem still remains, combat is not nearly interactive enough.
What I would like to see in a MMO game is something closer to an action adventure (think Square-Enix's Secret of Mana series) where the combat requires player skills. This isn't to say that levels should be eliminated, but more that it gives the player a bit more to do during a fight, and keeps the pace up a bit. A system like this also rewards player skills. An exceptionally skilled player might be able to make it through an area at level 12, while an average player might need to be as high as level 15 or 16 to make it though the same area. This also has the advantage of not making the EXP penelty feel so harsh, because even if your character loses some fighting experience, you as the player are still better than you were before.
I think the biggest problem with this would be to implement it on the PC in such a way as to allow it to be playable with a keyboard and mouse, though a console only game (or one that hands down required a game controller) could do quite well with a system like this, IMHO.
I think the answer to this depends a lot on if your a small development group creating some small or niche application, or a big developer. It's probably shouldn't, but I think it does. If you are working for a large developer, or creating expensive software, then I second the comments stating that your best bet is probably to deliver the program to the publisher on a drive or flash memory, and let them burn it. For small development houses producing low cost software, then you have some ohter options. I was working with a few other people about a year ago on an application that we intended to sell (it never got to release unfortunately, due to some legal problems involving one of the other developers and a non-compete agreement that he'd signed with a company he'd worked for several years ago, that we didn't have to money to fight in court) but the plan we worked out was basically this:
We would burn out copies of the program on standard CD-R or DVD-R media, and send the program out with the disks, manuals, and a few extra CD cover stickers. When a user would register the software online, then they were able to go into a section of the website and download an ISO of the software if they needed to burn another copy of the software. Since the disks to the application would be copy protected, this allowed users to create a backup copy if they needed it. Each iso would be given a unique MD5 sum, so that if someone tried to put the ISO on a p2p service, we would be able to track it down to the user who first distributed it. Unfortunately, we never got close enough to distribution to get this system implemented, but it was the idea we were going with.
If you've played Metroid Prime, then you've pretty much played Metroid Prime 2
I know this isn't the opinion that a good little slashbot is supposed to have, but I have to say that I HATED Metroid Prime. Super Metroid is I think one of the best examples of what happens when a game just comes together to make something absolutely perfect. Metroid Prime I think is the perfect example of what happens when a game is forced into a genre it should have never gone into.
Although I've never personally been a fan of first person games, I purchased Metroid Prime, because I'd heard so much good about it, and I thought that it would be extremely hard to screw up a metroid game. I was wrong.
The control scheme I found was severely lacking, platforming is nearly impossible because of the view, and it sucks having to scan everything.
Although it is possible that a third factor caused both the hurricane and the increase in sales of strawberry pop tarts, it really seems reasonable that what is actually going on is that people stock up on food that they can eat without having to cook or add water too. Pop Tarts are a really common brand of a fairly popular type of food, and Strawberry is kind of the default flavor.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't consider myself a "PC Gamer", I generally prefer console games, though I do have a few PC games that I play occasionally (Neverwinter Nights, UT2k4), I ran Linux exclusively for quite a while (I have a mac now as well, though I've never used it for games). I have to say that, in my experience with a few different distro's (pre-fedora versions of redhat, Mandrake, Debian, and Suse), I've found that Suse is really a nice distribution for 3D support- if you use an nVidia card. You can choose at install time if you want open source 3D drivers, or the official nVidia drivers, and if you update your system, getting the drivers working again is as easy as refreshing the install from YaST.
As for a window manager, Window Maker seems to be pretty light weight, or if you really want to get fancy, you can write a script to drop you out of a window manager completely and just run the game on top of plain ol' X. To be completely honest though, I run KDE most of the time, and have never found it's memory footprint to be a problem even when I'm running rather resource intensive games or applications. I have a buttload of ram though, so YYMV.
Others have mentioned Cedega, which is not free, though you can get the source free from CVS if you feel like messing about with configuring it and compiling it yourself. AFAIK their licensing doesn't prohibit this, it only prohibits you distributing it to anyone else.
Actually, I'd second this. I spent a lot of time resisting the pressure to read the Harry Potter books, but I finally broke down and borrowed the first book from a friend of mine, and I have to say that now I have the entire series of books, and found them all to be quite enjoyable.
While the reading level of the books is certainly going to be low, and not present much of a challenge to adult readers, JK Rowling manages to do an amazing job of creating a great story and an immersive world with the limited complexity of the language that she uses. In fact, this is one of the nice things about this series, it's a very easy and at the same time engrossing read, so I can get through a book relatively fast. There is also a lot of very subtle humor in the books, especially the laters ones once the series was proving popular to adults as well as kids, that is clearly targeted at an older audience.
These books are especially good for people with kids, because it is one of the few book series that the parents and the kids can equally enjoy.
So...Netcraft confirms it, blogging is dead?
It's nice to see SVG wallpaper support to compliment the icon support, I hope that they get some really good submissions, I'll probably submit an entry myself.
One problem with KDE has always been, IMHO, it's choice of default themes. There are a lot of really awesome themes out there, but the KDE team always seems to use a rather "bleh" default theme.
I always liked the quote:
"If every cigarette you smoke takes 7 minutes off your life, then every game of Dungeons and Dragons you play delays the loss of your virginity by 7 hours."Marilyn Manson, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell.
If you happen to care that people start using some browser other than IE, there is a simple thing that you can do that will help convince people to switch, stop supporting IE.
All of my friends who want free tech support from me know that if they use IE, they get no sympathy from me.
None of the websites that I develop personally are tested with IE, they get a small message saying "this site has not been tested with Internet Explorer, and may not work as expected. If you want to be sure you are getting the full experience from this site, please download an alternate web browser: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/".
I guess it depends a lot on the kid, there is no one size fits all style of parenting. I have to admit I have no experience with having kids, having quite recently been one myself, however I have the following experience to share:
My parents divorced when I was very young, and shareed equal custody. They both had very different parenting styles. My father was very strict, trying to micro-manage every aspect of my and my step-siblings lives. We were allowed 20 minutes a day on the computer, not one second left. We were allowed exactly 3 phone calls a night, each one up to 10 minutes in length, not one second over. We were not allowed to talk to anyone on the phone, visit and internet sites, or read any books without his review and approval. The list goes on.
My mother, on the other hand, took a much more "live and let live" style of parenting. If I wanted to do something, then I did it, and if I made a bad decision then I had to deal with the consequences, she was there to help guide me and to grow up and find my own sence of what was right and wrong, and to learn the difference between good and bad decisions, but she left it up to me in the end. If I wanted to watch some violent or sex filled movie, or play some violent video game, or read some edgy book, then I could- of course she was also there to talk to me about it and provide a context for what I was seeing.
Of course, when I was with my father I never cared about his rules, other than as something to get around. When I was with my mom on the other hand, I genuinely tried to make decisions that would not dissapoint her. Sure if I were talking on the phone for a minute longer than I was supposed to at my fathers I would be grounded for a month, and I think I could have gotten arrested and my mother wouldn't have done anything other than have a talk with me, but I cared that my mother was dissapointed in me, and that's what made the difference.
Sure I might have developed a few bad habbits because my mom would let me do what I wanted, but in the end I think that I am much better off for her style of parenting.
I realize that parents don't want their kid on the internet all the time, and like to encourage other acitivities, but why resort to something like this? It seems to me that the better idea would be to actually talk to the kids when it seems like they've been spending too much time online. Arbitrary rules like this only make kids see parents as a rival, and rules like this as something to try to get around, intstead of a reasonable guideline from people with more life experience.
Any ideas how well an "'edible skeletal muscle derived from a domesticated bird' nugget" would sell?
well, personally I think they would sell quite well if you put them in a combo with a Krusty Partially Gelatinated Non Dairy Gum Based Beverages.
Hmm, maybe we should start a campaign to inform this group of our feelings on the matter. (Gee, I hope it doesn't overload their email servers *wink* *wink*). Here is the email that I will be sending, feel free to use it and/or use any variation of it.
to: Editor@parentstv.org subject: Anti-American Messages on TV I am writing to you out of a deep sense of concern for the current state of affairs of television in the US. As you are no doubt aware, TV is one of the most influential mediums in the modern world, exerting it's influence on all people, young and old, and shaping the future of this great nation. No doubt it is because you recognize this influence of TV on our natioon that your group has been active in the past in alterting the FCC to material which is broadcast which you find is inappropriate for public airwaves. We are faced now with a more immediate and terrible threat however than mere dirty language or violence, we are faced with a threat to the very core of american freedom. A number of groups which are highly influential in television has recently been using it's influence to stelthily subdjugate the great freedom of american, and place a most un-patriotic influence on the youth of america. By seeking to eliminate the freedom of press and of speech, the freedom of expression and the freedom of the the public to use the public airways for entertainment that they deem appropriate for themselves. This group, by attempting to censor the expression of americans is sending the message to american viewers that we are a country that is not focused on freedom, but rather is focused on the control of the majority by a small minority which is dictating morality to the country at large. You needn't look far to find this group, in fact just look at the office around you, and consider the message you are sending next time you deem that some bit of television is so awful that you need it to be removed from the public airwaves, rather than you simply chosing to turn the television off.
maybe if this gets out of hand the difficulty of foreigners getting these ID's will accidentally reverse the trend of IT jobs getting outsourced to India?
Nah, what am I thinking, the government always covers their collective asses to make sure there are no unintended positive side effects to anything they do, couldn't have that.
It seems to me that there is a pretty big difference between this case and SCO's case against IBM. It looks like in this case, it was admitted that BSD contained some code that both parties admitted to, but the debate was over whether or not that code was ok to have in there. SCO on the other hand seems to be claiming ownership of code that may not even be there in the first place, or maybe I just missed something.
I see your point, that's why I said that I didn't think it was really a DDOS, but I think the spirit is to be a pain in the ass. Most of the time, if a DDOS is launched against someone, it comes down to the goal being to be a pain in their ass, same situation here, the screen saver is trying to be a pain in the spammers ass.
I'm not saying that it's not moral or justifiable, but the fact is that I'd rather not be the person who gets made an example of (unlikely, as they would probably go after lycos or a large business who allowed teh screen saver to run).
they can call it "NOT a DDOS" all they want, but it doesn't really change the facts. Technically speaking, they are right, because they are not trying to cause a Denial of Service, but I think that really in spirit it's not much different enough. While I certainly have no sympathy for spammers, I know that this is certainly not something that I'm going to be installing, as someone living in the US, because it seems to me that it's certainly possible for someone to win a lawsuit against the company or the people running this software.
Some of these attacks have gotten quite good. I recently got an email from "paypal" that seemed quite convincing...except that I don't have a pay pal account. The fact is that some of these attacks are getting quite sophisticated, to the point that someone who is even on the lookout for phising scams can be tricked in a moment of slight distraction, or even be impressed by the amount of work that went into this.
This looks like another step in the right direction, having workstation PCs available from a known and large company can only help linux on the desktop at the business grow. It's still a baby step, I think when we see a big company release a consumer level PC running Linux that it will really be something to get excited about. As it stands right now, I don't think this is going to be happening. The reason for this is that the people interested in Linux are not going to be interested in buying a "consumer level" PC, they are going to either build a machine, or buy a high level prefab.
While it may seem like a nice thing to give out live cd's for linux, you might go fruther giving out a copy of the The OpenCD instead. It's a compliation of open source software for windows. You can also compile your own, I like to give out CDs with Firefox, Open Office, GIMP, Gaim, and a few free games. A bootable linux distro is just likely to confuse people, but software that they can use on their computers all the time without having to boot into a new OS is useful. As a side bonus, most people don't know about OSS or realize that the software is free, so it seems even more valueable ;)
Haven't you learned it's better to leave nature to it's strange, on assed ways?
What I don't understand is, with all of the negative publicity that spam gets, why do people still buy stuff from spammers? Although everyone claims to hate spam, I recall reading an article on /. a while ago that said as many as 10% of people buy stuff from spam, this just seems ridiculous to me. If I were walking down the street and I saw what looked like a delapedated, possible condemned building, and as I walked by 50 guys with crudely made signs ran outside surrounded me screaming "buy our product" I sure as hell would do whatever I could to get out of the situation, spam is the digital equivilent of this, yet people still buy into it. I guess it's that too many people think GIGO means Garbage In Gosple Out. As long as there are people buying the products though, there will never be a technological solution to the problem of spam.
I guess stories like this could help by showing what creeps spammers are, but the only people who are going to read articles like this already know the evils of spam. Perhaps we need to get a bunch of donations and run a commerical during prime time reality tv equating spam to terrorism?
Anyway, sorry for the somewhat offtopic rant, just been rather upset with spam more than usual lately, an email address that i've had for almost 4 years that never got a single spam has finally been getting inundated with it because some fucktard had to go and put my address in a CC with 100 other people for some stupid chain letter, and then one of those machines got pwnd and now the address is out there (BCC PEOPLE, IF YOU HAVE TO SEND THOSE DAMNABLE CHAIN LETTERS TO SO MANY PEOPLE LEARN TO USE BCC FOR $diety SAKE).
I see a lot of comments on every story about MMORPGS about the problem with level grind. The solution mentioned in the interview is to offer players more "carrots" but I think thats like sticking your finger in a dam, it's just not a viable solution to keeping players playing. The biggest problem with level grind is that combat in MMORPGS (and most CRPGs in general I think) is that combat is boring. Especially for a fighter, where you just click on the enemy and watch your character fight it out, and it's not much better for other classes. CoH did alleviate this a tiny bit, but I think the core problem still remains, combat is not nearly interactive enough.
What I would like to see in a MMO game is something closer to an action adventure (think Square-Enix's Secret of Mana series) where the combat requires player skills. This isn't to say that levels should be eliminated, but more that it gives the player a bit more to do during a fight, and keeps the pace up a bit. A system like this also rewards player skills. An exceptionally skilled player might be able to make it through an area at level 12, while an average player might need to be as high as level 15 or 16 to make it though the same area. This also has the advantage of not making the EXP penelty feel so harsh, because even if your character loses some fighting experience, you as the player are still better than you were before.
I think the biggest problem with this would be to implement it on the PC in such a way as to allow it to be playable with a keyboard and mouse, though a console only game (or one that hands down required a game controller) could do quite well with a system like this, IMHO.
I think the answer to this depends a lot on if your a small development group creating some small or niche application, or a big developer. It's probably shouldn't, but I think it does. If you are working for a large developer, or creating expensive software, then I second the comments stating that your best bet is probably to deliver the program to the publisher on a drive or flash memory, and let them burn it. For small development houses producing low cost software, then you have some ohter options. I was working with a few other people about a year ago on an application that we intended to sell (it never got to release unfortunately, due to some legal problems involving one of the other developers and a non-compete agreement that he'd signed with a company he'd worked for several years ago, that we didn't have to money to fight in court) but the plan we worked out was basically this:
We would burn out copies of the program on standard CD-R or DVD-R media, and send the program out with the disks, manuals, and a few extra CD cover stickers. When a user would register the software online, then they were able to go into a section of the website and download an ISO of the software if they needed to burn another copy of the software. Since the disks to the application would be copy protected, this allowed users to create a backup copy if they needed it. Each iso would be given a unique MD5 sum, so that if someone tried to put the ISO on a p2p service, we would be able to track it down to the user who first distributed it. Unfortunately, we never got close enough to distribution to get this system implemented, but it was the idea we were going with.
...simply amazing, I tip my hat to your sir.
If you've played Metroid Prime, then you've pretty much played Metroid Prime 2
I know this isn't the opinion that a good little slashbot is supposed to have, but I have to say that I HATED Metroid Prime. Super Metroid is I think one of the best examples of what happens when a game just comes together to make something absolutely perfect. Metroid Prime I think is the perfect example of what happens when a game is forced into a genre it should have never gone into.
Although I've never personally been a fan of first person games, I purchased Metroid Prime, because I'd heard so much good about it, and I thought that it would be extremely hard to screw up a metroid game. I was wrong.
The control scheme I found was severely lacking, platforming is nearly impossible because of the view, and it sucks having to scan everything.
Although it is possible that a third factor caused both the hurricane and the increase in sales of strawberry pop tarts, it really seems reasonable that what is actually going on is that people stock up on food that they can eat without having to cook or add water too. Pop Tarts are a really common brand of a fairly popular type of food, and Strawberry is kind of the default flavor.