I have been thinking about a Math MMORPG that is based on educational learning. For instance:

Mage: Level of Mage is based on Mathematic ability of the player. If you can answer a high level Algebra problem then you can cast that 7th level spell. Effectiveness could also be determined by how close the player was to the answer.

Fighter: Thac0 is based on the historical knowledge of the user. "What year was the Battle of Hastings?"

Thief: ThaC0 could be based on something like Art History and thieving abilities based on something like Philosophy.

etc.

I think it would be great if this could be done and hosted by a nonprofit organization to promote learning. The concept would take away the MMORPG process of grinding away at useless button clicks and would encourage learning something other than stupid game mechanics. And finally once someone understood the system, playing would be better for casual gamers.

Bard's Tale: Yes it was rebooted on the XBox a few years ago (sort of), but they killed that game. The game that was in development by a fan group looked like it was going to kick so much butt (Devil's Whiskey), but then EA started sending cease and desist letters so they had to change it. I remember that it was going to be called"The Bard's Legacy."

I have to grab a copy of Devil's Whiskey.

Yeah, I worked at shitty little web hosting company and they had their own repository server for updates to all of the managed servers. The admin team has at least three security guys who's job it was to QA the repository on pretty much a daily basis. They monitored for security patches and posted them to the repository as soon as possible. And we supported about 4 different OS's at the time.
I can't see why you won't have your own repository with a few people who knew deb/rpm package building for your specific repositories. And then it's just a matter of standardization. "Here are the OS we support."

Make magazine had this covered back a while ago:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2005/10/diy_gps_tracking.html
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2005/10/diy_gps_tracking_with_mologogo.html

Mologogo with a cheap $60 cell phone.

Before your kid leaves for the day, check her bag and make sure it's on and working properly.
When she gets home, put the cell phone on the charger.

In the event that you loose your kid, you check the website and Mologogo will tell you where the kid is at.
My phone can tell me where any of my friends are, yours should to.

Easy peasy.

Hmmm, interesting. A little earing that makes a very light tone when you are facing North.

Yeah, I know what you mean, sorta. I have to retake Calc I sometime in the future, but what I got out of the class made me feel like I knew things few other people really understood in the world. I wanted to apply Calculus to other areas of my life.
But, I mean; there should be games and fun things that are just as addictive/fun as WoWCrack that actually teaches you something. Image WoWCrack games where you learned Calculus or even Algrebra. Your level was based on the equations you could solve. And rather than grinding on killing trolls or orcs you were grinding on equations.....
I wish I was a developer......

What the hell is wrong with this society? We have people holed up in their rooms playing these MMORPG's and they're not learning anything except how to raid and grind. They could be doing learning through grinding just as easily. If only we had people developing these kid of games. Could you imagine a kid/teenager/basement dweller saying, "I'm addicted to Calculus!!!!" Or, "I hate the grind between Partical Physics PHD 1.1 and Partical Physics 1.2."
We/they play these games with stupid rewards for something that is completely intangible. At the very best you could say that these games are teaching people who to function in a team environment and how to organize projects. That's really about it.
Oh MMORPG why can you be more educational.

I agree with you about the kobayashi maru test, but in a sense I disagree with you.
The way that the test was exploited seems almost like a modern exploit. Look at exploits to run code on modern gaming platforms:
- The PSP: Uses a tiff exploit. You get it to show a bad picture, it reboots and runs a custom firmware (if I understand that right)
- The Wii: Exploits a save game. You save an exploited save game, you play the game, you walk up to a character and the system reboots loading a custom firmware.
And Kirk isn't very subtle. At least not in the Star Trek I have watched. He's a tactician, he takes risks, and at times he is very brazen. But subtle? No. Not Kirk.

I agree with the idea of smaller. What about a necklace or a choker.

I think that really do have some marketing geniuses there. If I remember correctly they were the first nonprofit to develop a Firefox addon that took your Amazon purchases and fed them through there nonprofit sponsor links so that you could done money without even thinking about it.

This is another really great marketing venture. It's too bad that Miro kinda sucks and is not geared towards my age demographic.

Capitalism failed because the Capitalists broke it. It's a false dichotomy. Pure capitalism doesn't work because inherently the only motivation is to make money. When you're willing to do anything to make a profit, including buying politicians who make the laws so that you can have monopoly on the business in that area, then you have effectively broken capitalism.
I really want to start my own municipal cable/internet/telephone service much like the town of Wilson, North Carolina. But I know that would never happen without a really compelling reason. My local town is owned by TW.

Last I read, Moonlight support for those specific features aren't available until Q3 this year.
That said, you might try the Moonlight that let everybody stream the presidents inauguration address. I doubt it will work, but it's worth a try.
http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

Download VirtualBox

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Install a version of Windows XP. If you don't have one find a torrent... cough cough blackxp cough.

Watch March Madness on Windows on Linux.

For the record, I don't watch sports, so I don't know that it work. That said, I have watched Netflix (uses Silverlight) on a licensed Windows in Virtualbox on Ubuntu.

First off. Windows 2000? That you keep up to date? I haven't seen Windows 2000 updates since.... 2005. Security? WTF?
For the love of dog, use something like VirtualBox or VMWare. Now!

Second, as a techie who has returned to college I deal with this a lot. Firefox has been hit or miss. Sometimes, I have HAD TO use IE. It's a bitch, cause I use Ubuntu. Nothing sucks more then having to keep a dual boot system (I used previously) or a VM around just for that one class that requires that you submit files via IE.
That said, I have had professors are usually very understanding of using browsers other than IE. For instance my Macroeconomics professor posted my short go by for playing his videos which seemed to only play in IE. I don't know why but they only played in IE, and I forced them to play with Firefox, Greasemonkey and FlashFix.
Other than that, I have seen problems with Blackboard and Etudes. It's usually hit or miss. Depends on the professor. My best luck has been with Moodle. I haven't had one class that has been problematic on Moodle.

I would guess and say that it plays a video as you start the game. The intro screen shows something that looks like the name "Aspyr" in a flame and it says, "Aspyr." Then the intro plays that shows the Sims doing different actions (related to expansion packs.)
My guess is that they are all part of a Quicktime video.