The reason that thrashing never happens with Outlook [Express] is thanks to a special Microsoft-only feature. You see, instead of wearing your system out by swapping data from memory to disk to memory to disk all the time, it runs entirely from virtual memory. This also improves performance, because the computer isn't spending all that time moving the data back and forth. It even makes your system marginally more electrically efficient, since it doesn't waste bits, and we all know bits are electricity./end completely ridiculous satire
Maybe Thunderbird is trying to do some shuffling around with its data files after it's been idle for a while. Another thing... Have you defragged lately?
Yes, we prefer to call it gaffers' tape. Some simply call it gaff tape. People in theater and live concert production use it too, so you can go to their stores to find it also. Or just bum a piece off someone, because it is really expensive.
I heard "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" last summer about four times in a row before I hung up. Nice. It was summer where the company was located, also.
I gave up on the Christian movie industry LONG ago after probably the third "Absolutely Must See" film I saw. One of the Left Behind series, I think. Bleargh! The secular movie industry made a better movie with The Passion than anything I saw at any function. Well, duh.
I've been irritated by the Christian music industry plenty of times in the past. Being a DJ for youth groups, college group functions, and such, I always look for fresh music that can compare with secular stuff. I find that the industry squashes and belittles a lot of really good music exactly the way you described.
I have to listen to secular radio several hours a day just to keep a handle on what "good" music sounds like, so I have a measuring stick. I can honestly say there are only a handful of bands producing music that really sounds comparable, and they are not the ones everyone listens to. No, they are largely unheard of, and have never been on a WOW compilation. Probably because of the lack of money and fame, and because the name "Jesus" isn't mentioned every three words. I think the best source if you're looking for some possibly good new stuff is web radio like Radio U. Other decent web radio shows: Planetlightforce and ZJAM. Forget K-Love and Air One unless you like muzak.
You just have to keep looking, because there IS a small amount of good stuff out there. You just gotta wade through a lot of "Oh, it's good enough, because Jesus loves you whether you are a good musician or not" crap. It's like the old needle in the haystack cliche.
Yeah. It works great for $10, no kidding. Key word is works. You get what you pay for, and not a bit more or less. I made the housing for the lens with about $5 of black foam board and some black duct tape I already had.
I looked up the cost of a comparable Fresnel lens and it was the same price either way. The two ways being thus... Buying the plans and lens from Ebay, or buying the lens without a plan from an online lens shop. Go with the plans. You'll get a cheapo lens that you may or may not be happy with but you're getting it for about the right price.
You can get a high quality rigid lens for about thirty bucks and make a better projector or upgrade the one you already built, but you really need a good SOURCE before you upgrade the lens. A bubble-shaped fourteen inch monitor from ten years ago is not a good source. You need a truly flat screen or you'll only be able to get one part of the screen in focus at a time. It'll make you crazy. That's just simple optical physics, though. My Diamondtron works just fine as a source, and LCD monitors are great.
Also, a bright video source is pretty much required because the light projected onto a point decreases exponentially with increasing distance. More simple physics there. So you're going to need a bright screen, bright target screen for projection, and a dark room. Let's face it. Your CRT just can't compete with a projector bulb in terms of brightness. You can't make a fresnel based projector that works well in a well lit room.
In case you were wondering: The lens you get is a flimsy letter paper sized plastic sheet, but it's most definitely a lense. You can use it for a large rectangular magnifying glass. In fact I think Staples has a lighted reading magnifier that uses one of these.
I don't sell stuff on Ebay or otherwise, nor am I promoting these kits. I just want to provide some info for anyone who's considering purchasing one of these, so you can make an educated choice about whether it is the right thing for you to do.
The moral of this post is to make sure what you've already got will be adequate before you buy a DIY kit.
Send them a document in an open format they cannot possibly open on their machine, like GIMP, *Tex, or some XML-based OOO-specific format. If they complain about not being able to open it, say: "Hey, how about that. I couldn't open your file either!!" Then you can either work out a compromise, or get beat up for being a geek. (Discretion is advised to avoid the second scenario.)
Yeah, sure. I'd like to see that gold thread thing working. Could it have been just yellowish kelp? Because I've seen plenty of that. It doesn't resemble gold, though.
Whether it's true or not, I'd like to know how it could possibly have worked.
And of course, the obligatory moneymaking scheme: 1) Invent electrical device that attracts trace amounts of gold from the ocean, although gold suspended in the water is hard to believe. 2) ??? 3) Profit!
Well, you could go down to some used computer shop and pick up a $50 Pentium or 486 PC with Windows 95 on it, and a cheap 14" sub-$50 SVGA monitor, and put one of these combos on there. As long as you've got those minimum specs, you should be able to do any of these. Except for #3, which requires much beefier hardware.
1) Powerpoint ($$) 2) OpenOffice (Free) with either its Impress component, or Impress plus its built-in Flash movie (SWF) exporter (for which you will need the plugin, which is free) plus Mozilla (Free) 3) Flash development software ($$$) + Flash Plugin (Free) + Mozilla (Free) - note that this would require a much beefier system probably costing $300 or more.
So, you can do this for less than $100. That's about as cheap as you're going to get unless you do the VCR+TV idea someone else had.
Sorry about mentioning Powerpoint, but it's cheaper than Flash Studio for your purpose. Although, why would you use either of those when you can use OpenOffice for free?
The choice is up to you - hopefully my info will be useful in making that decision.
I assume you have never played this game, and have no idea what it is. If that's false, then you are a disgrace to online gaming.
These are not my "rules." They are the unwritten code of conduct that virtually everyone agrees with online, and countless others have posted just about everywhere else. There's a little bit of wise advice mixed in there in between the guidelines. Very little of this was a black-and-white Thou Shalt Do This And Not This rules document, and if you think about what I said, you can see why I would say it.
I don't know why I wasted my time writing this reply to an Anonymous Coward...
At off-peak times early in the morning here on the U.S. east coast, there are always at least 3,000 players on my server. Since the U.S. is pretty much 99% asleep then, most of those can only speak Japanese. So your best bet if you want community is to arrange your schedule so you can play well after the U.S. is awake and online - I've heard that evenings are best, but I have not been able to observe this due to my current work schedule.
Hey, I'd like to welcome all of you PS2 people to our world a little in advance.
We have worked hard to promote friendship, fairness, and community in our world. Please observe some basic guidelines of etiquette while you enjoy this beautiful world. It's not all "don't"s, so please read and consider carefully.
1) Don't cheeze. Seriously. That means: Powerleveling, botting (including fishbotting), using cheat utilities, purchasing and selling gil/characters/use of characters/powerlevels from anyone, and the extremely low and dirty tactic of setting Follow and going AFK while you're in an EXP party. This just hurts you because you won't learn to play properly, and might just anger a lot of people. Your reputation will be ruined if you try this - be careful what you do to save time. Oh, remember, purchasing anything in-game, using cheat programs, and botting are violations of the EULA. You don't want to get your future 75th level Beastmaster deleted, now do you?
2) Don't beg for money!!! There are countless people who know how to make gil (the FFXI currency) legitimately - ask around in front of your local auction house and someone will gladly tell you their favorite ways to make some fast cash. There is no real reason you need to get that extra 5k RIGHT NOW other than laziness. And expect us to laugh at you if you ask for money for a kit (complete set of equipment) when you start over with a level 1 job. Your old job can go stomp some newbie mobs (monsters) for money real fast.
3) You have all the time you want. The game doesn't end at any specific date. Don't complain about how you don't have enough time to make that last trip to get items, or level properly, or do quests for small change. Do learn to enjoy each session and be patient. You will be partying with the PC players before you know it, so hang in there!
4) Choose the name wisely when creating your character. You don't want to run around with some name you'll hate later - after all, who wants to have a name like "PhatL33TBuddha", "Sl1m3M0ld", "Somebody" or "TehSUX0RZ" after the novelty humor wears off? No, I haven't seen those names in-game or looked to see if they existed. I suggest EBON, the Everlasting Book of Names (sorry, no link), or perhaps some random name generating website. Oh, please don't pick the names of previous FF characters - they are almost all taken anyways. This is your avatar. Let it represent you.
5) Please set fair prices when you sell items. This includes all current players - don't abuse the new[bie] players' wallets. It's very tempting and simple to cause market inflation, but we trust you to have good judgment in this regard. And on the other side of the same issue, don't purchase things that are overpriced. It just encourages the greedy. Charge a reasonable amount for a teleport - and expect to pay for a teleport. Do not charge for a raise, heals or buffs!
6) When seeking a party, use the Comment field. You can tell who's looking for what kind of party by looking at the little colored dot next to their name in the search function, if any - and see what they have to say about themselves. The "Edit Comment" function is poorly documented but please use it and read others' comments. Japanese players who don't want to talk to English players, and vice versa, will usually say so in their comments.
7) Learn your role in your parties. This is very important! One puller, one tank, and one healer: these are the base ingredients for a successful party. Macros are the key to skillchains and magic bursts - discussing these are not a waste of time, contrary to what some impatient players will tell you. Listen to your teammates and stick together as a party when travelling.
8) Select subjobs wisely. Watch the interaction of the stat bonuses to see which combinations mutually weaken each other, and avoid those. No warrior should have a mage job subbed. At the very least, if you must sub a mag
I'll confirm this. That's exactly how it worked for me -- I started playing at the end of November and I paid some small change at the end of December.
Just my $0.02 for those of you who need a second opinion!
# begin rant # Seems to me like this guy likes to take the sensationalist approach more than the straight facts approach, and shock us out of our right minds. But that's to be expected from a human author. # end rant #
Did anyone else read this and get the impression that he wanted us to think that these horrible, awful scourge-of-mankind diseases ORIGINATED from this facility? I'll post about the origins of two big names he drops here.
Lyme Disease is actually named after a town in Connecticut where it was first documented in the 1970s. That town's name? Old Lyme. I go there every year for a vacation, so I know about it very well. It spreads to humans by ticks - exactly the kind of thing you'd expect Plum to have inside. However, it is easily treated, has a decent grace period before complications occur, and is not debilitating until it gets really bad. You can read more about it here. If this easily curable disease was indeed the result of an experiment at Plum Island, then it was probably the crappiest and least effective bioweapon ever invented.
Now, about West Nile Virus. According to this document: Unless new information comes to light, the first case of West Nile virus to be subjected to scientific study was brought to medical attention in December 1937 at Omogo, West Nile district, Northern Province of Uganda. That case (and the subsequent viral characterization process) was documented by members of the Yellow Fever Research Institute, Entebbe, Uganda in 1940. I seriously doubt they created West Nile in a laboratory that long ago.
The Plum Island laboratory (Link 1Link 2 got any more links?) has been around plenty longer than Lyme Disease has been known according to this document, but it is newer than West Nile. Directly copied from that site: In 1946, a disease laboratory was built at Fort Terry by the government. Fort Terry was closed in 1948 because we were no longer at war, and it was no longer needed. Fort Terry was reopened to research new ways to go to war, and for the development of chemicals to kill animals.
Draw your own conclusion, here's your sketch pencil.
How about Allegro? It's a free cross-platform C/C++ API for game coding. I used to love writing DOS games with that and DJGPP back in the days of Win95-98, and it's available with the same amount of functionality on DOS, Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, Irix, Solaris, Darwin), Windows, QNX, BeOS and MacOS X. It's not for 3D graphics really, but it does everything else (besides networking) darn well. For instance: multichannel sound, game controllers, mouse and keyboard, timers, simple 2D graphics, graphics import/export, packed datafiles (useful for tile graphics libraries and sound banks), and even a free MIDI software synthesizer that uses your sound out. So all you need is a networking API if you're writing a multiplayer game, and a 3D API if you're going 3D, and you're all set.
I think a step in the right direction would be a bootable CDROM that contains KDE and GNOME, and ALL of those wonderful short games - like KBlackBox, Same Gnome, etc. without any attempt to leave space for office apps. A browser with a Flash plugin would be ideal, so you can download and play MORE games. Ahh, those remind me of something. Does anyone remember MS Entertainment Pack? It wasn't graphically intense. It was just a bunch of cool games. And people paid a decent amount of money for those crappy games, when you could buy a single SNES game for the same price. Also, think of PopCap and those terrible Flash games my mom got hooked on at iwon. So why don't we focus on just making a bunch more cool games, and making them well?
Maybe someone can collaborate with a large (50+) group of coders, artists, and musicians and they can all put at least half-time effort into a real game. The unwashed masses of coders need a leader... someone has to step up and say "Join me! I will lead us to glory!" If I weren't so darn busy with two jobs I might be doing this right now. We don't need any 3D full-freedom MMORPG style games. Those are getting tired. Focus on single and small multiplayer LAN games. And if you can come up with a LAN/lobby server gaming API like DirectPlay, more power to you. Allegro doesn't do networking.
Coders: If you're thinking about making a game, please please please don't write another variant of some game we already have ten of. We really don't need Super Ultra Mega 3D Tetris/Mahjongg with Cute Girly Pictures or yet another card game. Honestly, we need classic arcade games, and twitch games you can play for five minutes. Using Allegro (see the link above) you can easily make them - and they will be cross-platform.
Just try to do a good job making your game fun and don't over-polish the graphics. Too many features will make the game take longer to develop. Remember the KISS principle.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason that thrashing never happens with Outlook [Express] is thanks to a special Microsoft-only feature. You see, instead of wearing your system out by swapping data from memory to disk to memory to disk all the time, it runs entirely from virtual memory. This also improves performance, because the computer isn't spending all that time moving the data back and forth. It even makes your system marginally more electrically efficient, since it doesn't waste bits, and we all know bits are electricity. /end completely ridiculous satire
Maybe Thunderbird is trying to do some shuffling around with its data files after it's been idle for a while. Another thing... Have you defragged lately?
Yes, we prefer to call it gaffers' tape. Some simply call it gaff tape. People in theater and live concert production use it too, so you can go to their stores to find it also. Or just bum a piece off someone, because it is really expensive.
I heard "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" last summer about four times in a row before I hung up. Nice. It was summer where the company was located, also.
Significant kernels of news! Ha ha! Get it?
Hands-on preview of Donkey Konga!
Hands-on! Hahahaha! Get it?
Agreed.
I gave up on the Christian movie industry LONG ago after probably the third "Absolutely Must See" film I saw. One of the Left Behind series, I think. Bleargh! The secular movie industry made a better movie with The Passion than anything I saw at any function. Well, duh.
I've been irritated by the Christian music industry plenty of times in the past. Being a DJ for youth groups, college group functions, and such, I always look for fresh music that can compare with secular stuff. I find that the industry squashes and belittles a lot of really good music exactly the way you described.
I have to listen to secular radio several hours a day just to keep a handle on what "good" music sounds like, so I have a measuring stick. I can honestly say there are only a handful of bands producing music that really sounds comparable, and they are not the ones everyone listens to. No, they are largely unheard of, and have never been on a WOW compilation. Probably because of the lack of money and fame, and because the name "Jesus" isn't mentioned every three words. I think the best source if you're looking for some possibly good new stuff is web radio like Radio U. Other decent web radio shows: Planetlightforce and ZJAM. Forget K-Love and Air One unless you like muzak.
You just have to keep looking, because there IS a small amount of good stuff out there. You just gotta wade through a lot of "Oh, it's good enough, because Jesus loves you whether you are a good musician or not" crap. It's like the old needle in the haystack cliche.
Yeah. It works great for $10, no kidding. Key word is works. You get what you pay for, and not a bit more or less. I made the housing for the lens with about $5 of black foam board and some black duct tape I already had.
I looked up the cost of a comparable Fresnel lens and it was the same price either way. The two ways being thus... Buying the plans and lens from Ebay, or buying the lens without a plan from an online lens shop. Go with the plans. You'll get a cheapo lens that you may or may not be happy with but you're getting it for about the right price.
You can get a high quality rigid lens for about thirty bucks and make a better projector or upgrade the one you already built, but you really need a good SOURCE before you upgrade the lens. A bubble-shaped fourteen inch monitor from ten years ago is not a good source. You need a truly flat screen or you'll only be able to get one part of the screen in focus at a time. It'll make you crazy. That's just simple optical physics, though. My Diamondtron works just fine as a source, and LCD monitors are great.
Also, a bright video source is pretty much required because the light projected onto a point decreases exponentially with increasing distance. More simple physics there. So you're going to need a bright screen, bright target screen for projection, and a dark room. Let's face it. Your CRT just can't compete with a projector bulb in terms of brightness. You can't make a fresnel based projector that works well in a well lit room.
In case you were wondering: The lens you get is a flimsy letter paper sized plastic sheet, but it's most definitely a lense. You can use it for a large rectangular magnifying glass. In fact I think Staples has a lighted reading magnifier that uses one of these.
I don't sell stuff on Ebay or otherwise, nor am I promoting these kits. I just want to provide some info for anyone who's considering purchasing one of these, so you can make an educated choice about whether it is the right thing for you to do.
The moral of this post is to make sure what you've already got will be adequate before you buy a DIY kit.
All hotornot users prepare for a temporary inflation of their ratings...
WAAH!! WAAH!!!! MY POOR, POOR EYES!
At least make some Tron UNDERSHORTS or something..
Time to invent mental floss.
Send them a document in an open format they cannot possibly open on their machine, like GIMP, *Tex, or some XML-based OOO-specific format. If they complain about not being able to open it, say: "Hey, how about that. I couldn't open your file either!!" Then you can either work out a compromise, or get beat up for being a geek. (Discretion is advised to avoid the second scenario.)
It's such a carefree, social department.
Of course, everyone in there is and forever will be dirt poor.
Re: the Gold Thread device
Yeah, sure. I'd like to see that gold thread thing working. Could it have been just yellowish kelp? Because I've seen plenty of that. It doesn't resemble gold, though.
Whether it's true or not, I'd like to know how it could possibly have worked.
And of course, the obligatory moneymaking scheme:
1) Invent electrical device that attracts trace amounts of gold from the ocean, although gold suspended in the water is hard to believe.
2) ???
3) Profit!
Well, you could go down to some used computer shop and pick up a $50 Pentium or 486 PC with Windows 95 on it, and a cheap 14" sub-$50 SVGA monitor, and put one of these combos on there. As long as you've got those minimum specs, you should be able to do any of these. Except for #3, which requires much beefier hardware.
1) Powerpoint ($$)
2) OpenOffice (Free) with either its Impress component, or Impress plus its built-in Flash movie (SWF) exporter (for which you will need the plugin, which is free) plus Mozilla (Free)
3) Flash development software ($$$) + Flash Plugin (Free) + Mozilla (Free) - note that this would require a much beefier system probably costing $300 or more.
So, you can do this for less than $100. That's about as cheap as you're going to get unless you do the VCR+TV idea someone else had.
Sorry about mentioning Powerpoint, but it's cheaper than Flash Studio for your purpose. Although, why would you use either of those when you can use OpenOffice for free?
The choice is up to you - hopefully my info will be useful in making that decision.
I'm all for spending 1 trillion dollars if I have a shot at being that lucky guy on Mars. Well, if it comes from the right place...
I assume you have never played this game, and have no idea what it is. If that's false, then you are a disgrace to online gaming.
These are not my "rules." They are the unwritten code of conduct that virtually everyone agrees with online, and countless others have posted just about everywhere else. There's a little bit of wise advice mixed in there in between the guidelines. Very little of this was a black-and-white Thou Shalt Do This And Not This rules document, and if you think about what I said, you can see why I would say it.
I don't know why I wasted my time writing this reply to an Anonymous Coward...
At off-peak times early in the morning here on the U.S. east coast, there are always at least 3,000 players on my server. Since the U.S. is pretty much 99% asleep then, most of those can only speak Japanese. So your best bet if you want community is to arrange your schedule so you can play well after the U.S. is awake and online - I've heard that evenings are best, but I have not been able to observe this due to my current work schedule.
Oh, crap, I'm sorry.. I forgot to end the B tag in point #8.
Hey, I'd like to welcome all of you PS2 people to our world a little in advance.
We have worked hard to promote friendship, fairness, and community in our world. Please observe some basic guidelines of etiquette while you enjoy this beautiful world. It's not all "don't"s, so please read and consider carefully.
1) Don't cheeze. Seriously. That means: Powerleveling, botting (including fishbotting), using cheat utilities, purchasing and selling gil/characters/use of characters/powerlevels from anyone, and the extremely low and dirty tactic of setting Follow and going AFK while you're in an EXP party. This just hurts you because you won't learn to play properly, and might just anger a lot of people. Your reputation will be ruined if you try this - be careful what you do to save time. Oh, remember, purchasing anything in-game, using cheat programs, and botting are violations of the EULA. You don't want to get your future 75th level Beastmaster deleted, now do you?
2) Don't beg for money!!! There are countless people who know how to make gil (the FFXI currency) legitimately - ask around in front of your local auction house and someone will gladly tell you their favorite ways to make some fast cash. There is no real reason you need to get that extra 5k RIGHT NOW other than laziness. And expect us to laugh at you if you ask for money for a kit (complete set of equipment) when you start over with a level 1 job. Your old job can go stomp some newbie mobs (monsters) for money real fast.
3) You have all the time you want. The game doesn't end at any specific date. Don't complain about how you don't have enough time to make that last trip to get items, or level properly, or do quests for small change. Do learn to enjoy each session and be patient. You will be partying with the PC players before you know it, so hang in there!
4) Choose the name wisely when creating your character. You don't want to run around with some name you'll hate later - after all, who wants to have a name like "PhatL33TBuddha", "Sl1m3M0ld", "Somebody" or "TehSUX0RZ" after the novelty humor wears off? No, I haven't seen those names in-game or looked to see if they existed. I suggest EBON, the Everlasting Book of Names (sorry, no link), or perhaps some random name generating website. Oh, please don't pick the names of previous FF characters - they are almost all taken anyways. This is your avatar. Let it represent you.
5) Please set fair prices when you sell items. This includes all current players - don't abuse the new[bie] players' wallets. It's very tempting and simple to cause market inflation, but we trust you to have good judgment in this regard. And on the other side of the same issue, don't purchase things that are overpriced. It just encourages the greedy. Charge a reasonable amount for a teleport - and expect to pay for a teleport. Do not charge for a raise, heals or buffs!
6) When seeking a party, use the Comment field. You can tell who's looking for what kind of party by looking at the little colored dot next to their name in the search function, if any - and see what they have to say about themselves. The "Edit Comment" function is poorly documented but please use it and read others' comments. Japanese players who don't want to talk to English players, and vice versa, will usually say so in their comments.
7) Learn your role in your parties. This is very important! One puller, one tank, and one healer: these are the base ingredients for a successful party. Macros are the key to skillchains and magic bursts - discussing these are not a waste of time, contrary to what some impatient players will tell you. Listen to your teammates and stick together as a party when travelling.
8) Select subjobs wisely. Watch the interaction of the stat bonuses to see which combinations mutually weaken each other, and avoid those. No warrior should have a mage job subbed. At the very least, if you must sub a mag
I thought it was the 25th?
Rats, two less days to level before the PS2 crowd hits the servers and starts asking for power-leveling...
I'll confirm this. That's exactly how it worked for me -- I started playing at the end of November and I paid some small change at the end of December.
Just my $0.02 for those of you who need a second opinion!
Yes, but unfortunately they don't have an audio recording program.
Read on past this rant if you can.
# begin rant # Seems to me like this guy likes to take the sensationalist approach more than the straight facts approach, and shock us out of our right minds. But that's to be expected from a human author. # end rant #
Did anyone else read this and get the impression that he wanted us to think that these horrible, awful scourge-of-mankind diseases ORIGINATED from this facility? I'll post about the origins of two big names he drops here.
Lyme Disease is actually named after a town in Connecticut where it was first documented in the 1970s. That town's name? Old Lyme. I go there every year for a vacation, so I know about it very well. It spreads to humans by ticks - exactly the kind of thing you'd expect Plum to have inside. However, it is easily treated, has a decent grace period before complications occur, and is not debilitating until it gets really bad. You can read more about it here. If this easily curable disease was indeed the result of an experiment at Plum Island, then it was probably the crappiest and least effective bioweapon ever invented.
Now, about West Nile Virus. According to this document: Unless new information comes to light, the first case of West Nile virus to be subjected to scientific study was brought to medical attention in December 1937 at Omogo, West Nile district, Northern Province of Uganda. That case (and the subsequent viral characterization process) was documented by members of the Yellow Fever Research Institute, Entebbe, Uganda in 1940. I seriously doubt they created West Nile in a laboratory that long ago.
The Plum Island laboratory (Link 1 Link 2 got any more links?) has been around plenty longer than Lyme Disease has been known according to this document, but it is newer than West Nile. Directly copied from that site: In 1946, a disease laboratory was built at Fort Terry by the government. Fort Terry was closed in 1948 because we were no longer at war, and it was no longer needed. Fort Terry was reopened to research new ways to go to war, and for the development of chemicals to kill animals.
Draw your own conclusion, here's your sketch pencil.
Still too many buttons.
I say it should just include one:
The "Call stereotypical male computer geek" button.
He-he-he! Okay, sorry.
Appendix A: A website that exists solely to be a directory of games and utilities for making games, all focused on Allegro.
http://www.allegro.cc
How about Allegro? It's a free cross-platform C/C++ API for game coding. I used to love writing DOS games with that and DJGPP back in the days of Win95-98, and it's available with the same amount of functionality on DOS, Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, Irix, Solaris, Darwin), Windows, QNX, BeOS and MacOS X. It's not for 3D graphics really, but it does everything else (besides networking) darn well. For instance: multichannel sound, game controllers, mouse and keyboard, timers, simple 2D graphics, graphics import/export, packed datafiles (useful for tile graphics libraries and sound banks), and even a free MIDI software synthesizer that uses your sound out. So all you need is a networking API if you're writing a multiplayer game, and a 3D API if you're going 3D, and you're all set.
I think a step in the right direction would be a bootable CDROM that contains KDE and GNOME, and ALL of those wonderful short games - like KBlackBox, Same Gnome, etc. without any attempt to leave space for office apps. A browser with a Flash plugin would be ideal, so you can download and play MORE games. Ahh, those remind me of something. Does anyone remember MS Entertainment Pack? It wasn't graphically intense. It was just a bunch of cool games. And people paid a decent amount of money for those crappy games, when you could buy a single SNES game for the same price. Also, think of PopCap and those terrible Flash games my mom got hooked on at iwon. So why don't we focus on just making a bunch more cool games, and making them well?
Maybe someone can collaborate with a large (50+) group of coders, artists, and musicians and they can all put at least half-time effort into a real game. The unwashed masses of coders need a leader... someone has to step up and say "Join me! I will lead us to glory!" If I weren't so darn busy with two jobs I might be doing this right now. We don't need any 3D full-freedom MMORPG style games. Those are getting tired. Focus on single and small multiplayer LAN games. And if you can come up with a LAN/lobby server gaming API like DirectPlay, more power to you. Allegro doesn't do networking.
Coders: If you're thinking about making a game, please please please don't write another variant of some game we already have ten of. We really don't need Super Ultra Mega 3D Tetris/Mahjongg with Cute Girly Pictures or yet another card game. Honestly, we need classic arcade games, and twitch games you can play for five minutes. Using Allegro (see the link above) you can easily make them - and they will be cross-platform.
Just try to do a good job making your game fun and don't over-polish the graphics. Too many features will make the game take longer to develop. Remember the KISS principle.