I first attempted to find a free program I could download to run this on my own web server. That doesn’t seem to exist in any good and usable form. So I tried to write my own. This proved to be more difficult than I first realized. Since nobody seemed to format their feeds in a standard way, it was turning out to be a daunting adventure in XML parsing.

So in the end I combined two different services to perform the task. The first service is FeedJumbler which does a serviceable job of combining feeds. My only complaint is that it destroys a great deal of the extra data in the feed items. The other service is, of course, FeedBurner. It does a good job of taking the jumbled feed and making it a feed that is useable. It also adds in my del.icio.us feed and my flickr feed without killing the extra data.

I hope one day soon I will be able to use FeedBurner for this entire operation. So many people want to combine many RSS feeds into one, but most services that perform this function are meant for people who read rss rather than those who publish it. Not only that, but so few of them actually parse all of the XML properly causing the inevitable loss of useful tags.

I know from coding a solution why this is. RSS sucks. From the user perspective it’s great because programs that automatically create RSS, like WordPress, and programs that read RSS, like Firefox, already exist and work great. From a developer’s perspective it is a nightmare. I was not able to find a single RSS library in existence that actually handles anything that might be in a feed. No matter what tags from whatever XML namespaces appear in a feed, it should not be ignored or removed. People obviously are pretty good at coding software that writes RSS which is chock-full of semantic web happiness, but nobody has written anything that can make use of all of it let alone just hold onto it. Every library took the RSS data and destroyed at least some of it to make it easier for developers to handle it programatically. Then they made it incredibly difficult to re-write a new RSS feed.

I’m obviously a big fan of the uses of RSS, but not until we have intelligent RSS handling libraries which can actually make use of the full potential of RSS will we see more new and exciting things like podcasting.

When I saw this fps implemented using the canvas element last week I knew gold had been struck. With the canvas you have the ability to create a real-time drawing surface with JavaScript. With the XMLHttpRequest you have the ability to get and send data to a web application which can read and write to a database. If you add these two things together you can make a massive multiplayer online game in a web browser that requires very little loading time, no installation and no plugins. This is the hotness. If games like Kingdom of Loathing pick up on this technology they can do some really revolutionary stuff.

As a proof of concept for this idea I have created a terrible terrible demo. It’s really simple and almost embarassing, but that’s what you get with less than an hour of work. I only tested it in Firefox 1.5, but it should theoretically work in any browser that supports XMLHttpRequest and canvas. There are two links and a canvas. If you click a link, the square with the coordinates it represents will turn black. This isn’t anything new, except that behind the scenes those coordinates are being read from XML data. If you replace that static XML data with a web application and a relational database then you’re playing with power.

Maybe the demo will be better by the time you read this. I’m going to keep working on it as a platform for creating games that utilize grids. Tile-laying games like Tigris and Euphrates and strategy games like Dungeons and Dragons combat are top contenders. All that we have to do now is expand the canvas to have real 3d drawing power with the help of the GPU.

What are the long term implications of this technology? The most obvious thing I see is another nail in the coffin of Microsoft. Looking for the reason? PC Gaming is one of the main reasons pepople still run Windows. If all the software is web-based then Firefox becomes the OS and Linux/OSX/Windows doesn’t matter. If we can make a 3d, or even a 2d MMO that works in Firefox regardless of platform we can make a killing. Even people running old versions of BSD would be able to play the game just fine. There are more PCs than consoles out there. Firefox’s popularity is growing daily. A quality game built on this platform could easily overtake the great World of Warcraft because the barrier to entry is so small. To get into most MMOs you have to install software and have sufficient 3d hardware. Signing up for this MMO would be no harder than registering for a forum on the web.

I’m going to talk about this tonight on GeekNights.

As German games go, M.U.L.E. is fairly flawed. But the flaws really can’t be blamed on any people. Half of the problems in the game are simply due to technical limitations. Because it is a video game with very minimal controls there had to be some losses. For example, the mine outfitters are on the left side of town. So if you have plots of land on the left of the map you can mine them without spending too much time. Also, having a poor a.i. which can be taken advantage of in any game with less than four players really hurts the game quite a bit. Lastly, the method of selecting plots of land is fickle, and you really need lots of skill to get the land you want.

The other ways in which the game is flawed weren’t viewed as flaws because this is a video game. But when you design a strategy game the current thinking is that you want to remove as many random and arbitrary factors as possible. M.U.L.E. has way too many random factors. Pretty much every turn somebody gets a random bonus or detriment. There is an element of gampeplay where you hunt the wampus which appears randomly. And the selection of how many plots of land are auctioned off and when can be pretty random.

One last thing about the game that is not so good is the lack of knowledge. In game theory there are ways of describing games as being games of total information, partial information or no information. A game of no information is like 3 card monte. The dealer used sleight of hand to move the card so you don’t know which card to pick, and your chances of winning are one out of three, or worse. A game of partial information is like Texas Hold ‘em, you know some of the cards out there, but you don’t know what your opponent is hiding. A game of total information is like checkers, chess or go where everything is in plain sight.

The problem with M.U.L.E. is that it is a game of total information, everything every player has is wide open. However, the rules of the game are closed. You receive points based on money, land and goods. Money points are obviously one point per dollar. Land points seem to simply be a number multiplied by how many plots of land you own. And goods points seem to be a multiplier of how many, and which, units of goods you possess. However, the multiplier for goods is unknown! How am I supposed to decide whether or not to sell a good? Let’s say I have an opportunity to sell one crystite for $50. Would it be worth more than 50 goods points if I held onto it? There’s no way to know because I can’t find this information anywhere on the Internet.

Despite multiple paragraphs about the flaws of M.U.L.E. it is still a great game. With a little bit of modification it would make an excellent board game that could be played time and time again. If I find the time I am going to work on making a new game very much like M.U.L.E without as much randomness. I know that I’ve said stuff like this before and never come through on it. But remember what I said about shit-talking? At the minimum I will design a new game like M.U.L.E. that is much more like a german strategy board game with less random crap. At the most, I will implement this game in software for online play.

My issue is that I’ve pretty much locked my blog into an essay blog. I make big infrequent posts. A lot of times I write posts and never put them up because they are large and hard to edit. Mostly that’s my fault for being heavily redundant. I keep saying the same thing in many different ways to be sure I get my point across. Like right now. And while this format allows me to express myself in a way I like, it is really something I need to limit.

I had a SlashJournal and it had limits. I worked within those limits for a time. But eventually I found them too constricting, so I switched to this format which has no limits. Now that I’ve experimented with no limits for a time I find that I still can’t do everything I want. So I’m going to write myself a new blog software. One that imposes heavy limits to allow me to do more. Not making sense? Let me explain.

Presently all I can do to post on my blog is make a bunch of HTML and stick it in a box. But with so much freedom to move around I really lack direction. So I always end up blabbing away about something crazy. I never post a cool link I’ve found. I never post a short little blurb about a book or a game. I always wait for something really good and then write a huge thing about it.

So here’s my idea for a new blog software that encompasses all types of blogging. The multi-blog if you will. Instead of just one type of post there will be many. There will be simple “link” posts where I just put up a URL. That will most likely mirror to my del.icio.us. There will be blurb posts where I limit myself to 50 words or such. These will be used for anything which doesn’t require much explanation. Things like “I went to the beach today, yay!” or “I got this thing, you totally should buy it.” I’ll still keep the essay posts, but from then on I will be sure to limit myself to 1000 words or so. Maybe even less. That will force me to edit more heavily and only post an essay when I really write it well. I’ll probably make additional types of posts for photos (Flickr mirror), video and audio.

I think with all these different types of posts I will be more inclined to put up more content. And that content will be more useful to myself and others. Especially since I will also do the following. First, implement track-backs which I have never had working. Next mirror on sites like del.icio.us and Flickr for awesome and for bandwidth relief. RSS everything. Feeds of different types of posts, feeds of different combinations of types of posts, feeds of date. And of course, absolutely everything will be categorized by tag, not hierarchy. Oh yeah, feeds for flags too. Feeds for combinations of flags. The whole shebang.

What I’m going to basically do is create a single information collation point which will allow me to store, get and share all the digital information in my life. I’ve wanted such a thing for quite awhile, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized the web was the place for it to be. But don’t expect it anytime soon. I’m going to be working on using the Puzzle Pirates engine to make some multiplayer games first.

The first thing on my list is to turn Puerto Rico or Tigris and Euphrates into network playable computer games. I’ll probably write in C and use GTK. I’m just worried about how legal this will be considering IP and what not. It’s a possibility.

Another possibility is to make a useful GUI for Megamek. Megamek is a great open source project that lets you play pen and paper Battletech online with friends. The problem is that like most open source projects, the user interface is terrible. I’m considering forking megamek and making a better interface. It would get a lot of use at least between me and my friends.

Another thing on my list, that I’ve wanted to do for some time is to make an original pc game. It would be somewhere in between X-COM and Advance Wars. I could use SDL to make it cross platform and awesome. It would also be playable over the internet, maybe even with a central server to match up players and such. I think this kind of game really needs to exist in the world, and the fact that it doesn’t is a travesty.

A smaller project I’m thinking of is maybe an XMMS Visualization that runs as a screensaver. So when you lock your computer random music plays and the visualization looks cool. This has lowered in priority since I discovered electric sheep.

Oh yeah, Grandma Linux. This would probably be a really big project. I want to make a linux “distribution” that is so unbelievably easy while simultaneously absolutely flawless. I would have to make a new window manager or modify an existing one. I would have to make a system by which even the dumbest person could format and partition their drives without screwing up. And I would need to use knoppix hardware detection of perfect. I imagine someone putting in a CD and 30 minutes later having a perfect linux system that consists only of a few very large icons on the desktop. Word Processor, Web Browser, E-mail, AIM, etc. The last button would be Install Software, which would work perfectly every time. You get the drift.

So, I need some software to make this summer, apart from the software I’m getting paid to make. Maybe I’ll just end up helping out some other OSS projects. Anyone got any good ideas?

So MMOs suck. Everquest, World of Warcraft, Asheron’s call, Ultima Online, Final Fantasy 7, Planetside and more all suck ass. The first reason, as been explored in detail by other people. Basically, most MMO games, at least those with monthly fees, are designed to addict you and keep you paying. They are not designed to be the best games they can be. Something like Zelda is designed to be the best game it can be. And that’s why the series has only faltered once. Yet something like Everquest is not designed for maximum fun and entertainment. It is designed to take a long time to achieve goals regardless of skill. It is designed to be neverending so that players will keep playing just to reach the next point, one more level, but there’s always one more. They have a goal which can never be achieved. And this is because it makes you keep playing.

The second thing about MMOs that suck is that skill in the game doesn’t really come into play that much. Sure, there’s some skill in the combat system. And it shows more in games like Planetside. But overall its usually the people who have been playing for longer amounts of time are more powerful. Especially in treadmill RPG types. Some amount of skill might allow you to get levels faster, but that’s usually because this is a new character and you’ve been here before. It’s not a game of skill like chess or checkers, or even Super Mario. Where how good you are at playing the game determines if you will achieve the goal. Its simply a matter of once you know how to play, you have to sit there until the goal is achieved. Usuallyb e repeating monotonous uninteresting tasks.

MMOs are basically glorified chat rooms in which you have a 3d avatar and a 3d world to explore. That in itself is not so bad if all you’re looking for is IRC with graphics slapped on some VRML. There’s a reason they don’t use VRML much anymore. But if you are looking for a game. A diversion of the nature of a contest, played according to rules, and displaying in the result the superiority either in skill, strength, or good fortune of the winner or winners. Then most MMOs that is not.

I could go on and on all day, but let me finish by saying why Puzzle Pirates is so far the only game that means anything as far as MMOs go. First, Puzzle Pirates is not perfect. It has many of the problems the other games have. For example, not only does it have no achivable goal, it has no goal to begin with! Once you learn how to do everything in the game, you’re only real goal can be to get more money to get more stuff to get more money. And all you can realy get with money is shops ( which require a lot of real work on your behalf, and only serve to accumulate money for you ), boats, clothing and swords. Once you have the best sword, the nicest clothes and all the boats you can ask for there’s not much more to it.

But puzzle pirates overcomes most other MMOs because of two things. The first thing is skill required. In fact, skill is most of what matters in puzzle pirates. Every person in the game does work to move the economy via playing Tetris-like puzzle games. Different tasks all have different puzzles. Sailing puzzle, carpentry puzzle, my new favorite apothecary puzzle and more. How well you do at these puzzles determines how much you contribute to what the puzzle does. A better job of sailing makes the boat move better. There is a direct correlation between your skill at a puzzle game and the effect of it on the game world. And usually, skill is all that matters. So theoretically a complete newbie (a greenie) can walk into the game and defeat the wealthiest pirate in the ocean in a sword duel. It can happen. The other thing that puzzle pirates does right is politics. There is no political system coded into puzzle pirates. The vast majority of the actual game is all economics. A highly dynamic and managed capitalist pirate society where players strive to get themselves a nice treasure. The politics occur entirely via players. Just about the only thing you can do is form a crew and combine crews to form a flag. That’s it. Everything else happens in the official game forums and chat in game. And through these freeform communications mediums players ally, quabble, make underhanded deals, make friends, make enemies, trade goods and more. This is where the game is at. Freeform social interaction is what drives the game forward. And not only is it existing, but involvement in this interaction and skillfully engaging in the politics is the only way to really get ahead. Not a line of code is written for dealing with it, but due to the excellent form of the game itself it happens and works.

People always tell me that in their MMO people role-play and that’s what its about. Sure, people role-play. But in Everquest, role-playing isn’t necessary to get ahead. It’s a MUD with grpahics. I used to play MUDS and the way to get ahead was kill monsters and find treasure. It’s the same thing in most MMORPGs. Nothing new to see here. All that role playing can get you is some friends to group with. That’s as far as it goes. In puzzle pirates if you don’t role play you have no friends. You have no friends you have no crew. You have no flag. You don’t rise up in the ranks, you have no reputation, nobody knows you. Without a large number of other physical real players working with you, you can achieve little more than amassing wealth and boats. You can’t get an island. You can’t get a fleet of ships. You can’t manage many shops without significant real world time investment. You cant move the amount of commodities you need to move to maintain your holdings. You need friends to survive in Puzzle Pirates, unless you want to have very little.

So most MMOs suck. And these are just the basic reasons. Next time I will talk about how MMO games are actually a magnification of western society. And then in part 3 I will reveal my plan for the ultimate RPG. But that will wait until me and my friends flesh the idea out as far as our minds go.

However, we all know that communistic style communities do work on a small scale. Ten farmers all working together and sharing profits equally is a very communist scenario. And it works. It works as long as the sale of the crops from that farm is sold competitively in a capitalist marketplace. If the sale of those crops was always guaranteed to bring in the same amount the farmers wouldn’t mind growing crummy crops, or fewer crops. They would make one rusty ear of corn, or no corn, and that would be that. But because the better they work the more they all get, they work harder. It is a prisoners dilemma for each and every farmer. One of them can try to go the other way and leech off the others, and that will work. The problem is that the other farmers will notice and kick your ass out. Since the group of people is so small, and they all agree to help each other “escape from prison” beforehand, they all benefit double through their help of each other.

This is how the kibbutz works. In Israel there are small communities just like this. They start a business, build homes, build schools and work together to help the community become bigger and better. Slackers are noticed and weeded out. Some of them grow oranges, but others run resort hotels or manufacture shoes. Its quite a happy existence of people working together to survive in a close knit community working together for the greater good of each other. And as long as the work they cooperate on is beneficial and profitable in the outside world, everything is great.

So I thought to myself, hey. I would love to live like that. Not have to worry about the boss or deadlines or any of that type of stuff. Just every day wake up and get to work doing something I love to do that is directly related to my continued survival and happiness. And I would be with a bunch of friends all working together making life very enjoyable. If you get right down to it, the only things missing in my life are two material goods. Those are a laptop computer and a nice car. I consider the Treo 650 to already be in my possession because I have set aside money for it. Other than that, all I really want is to live near and around other intelligent and like minded people. People I can play video games, D+D and German board games with. People who I can discuss Slashdot with on a daily basis. I want to sit at the dinner table, talk about what I did during the day, and for the other people to be interested and understanding instead of just “that’s nice”. Despite all the flaws, those are the things that make college the greatest place, and I see no reason to give up those things in order to continue with life.

So obviously I propose a geek commune. Like minded geeky people like myself should pick up and move to somewhere where land is cheap. We can spend half of our time developing high quality non-free software for any customer who needs it. We can use this money to feed ourselves, purchse technology, pay the bills and acquire luxuries and other fun things. In our spare time we can all work together on free/open source software that interests us and makes the world a better place. And because we will have a geographically central location we will be much more efficient and higher quality at developing said FOSS software than those who communicate solely through the internet. We can apply techniques like extreme programming and other in order to make some really awesome stuff. Also, because the people there are indirectly “paid” for their work we can maybe get some artists and musicians into the fold to make some FOSS games. It would be geek Mecca and college graduates would embark on pilgrimages to visit and join us if they are deemed (trust)worthy and useful/valuable.

We could also do awesome stuff like lock up all the buildings and caravan to conventions like Otakon and Comic-con with wireless mesh networks between our vehicles. There would be websites documenting our activities and antics for the world to share in. It would be truly a beautiful thing. There are only two obstacles in getting this thing to work. First we need stuff to start with. Difficult to come by a large block of land, a good internet connection, living space and an officy type building without starting funds. Second we have to start a profitable software business that can at least feed all of the founding members.

Barring those two difficulties I think this is the most realistic dream come true I can hope for. Anyone interested can just drop me a line and we’ll talk about it. I especially want to hear from you if you can help out with either of the two problems. I can tell you right now that if I had enough initial investment and a customer/customer base, and my college degree was complete I would be out buying land in the desert as we speak.

You might be thinking what this has to do with the ultimate desktop project. Well, up until now I’ve been using Xfce4.05. It’s pretty good. It has a nice graphical control panel and simple seperate components. I don’t use the panel, but I do use xfdesktop and the taskbar and such. However, it isn’t perfect. The weak xinerama support annoys me among many other small things. The yet to be released Xfce4.2 supposedly fixes many of these things. Yes, it is much improved, but it still isn’t exactly what I want. Thinking along the Gentoo philosophy I decided that with enough time and effort spent I could get the exact desktop environment that I wanted. I could do it even if it meant making themes by hand, writing a window manager from scratch, or modifying the code of Xfree86/Xorg.

So the first step was to have a window manager rodeo. I couldn’t think of a word to use instead of rodeo that sounded good, deal with it. In the process I discovered many things. First off, very few window managers are unique. Enlightenment, ion, xfce, gnome, kde and ratpoison seemed to be the only ones that stood out among the crowd. Open/Black/Fluxbox, pekwm, fvwm, windowmaker, they all seemed the same to me. They give you a blank screen maybe with one or two small widgets. They also provide a menu when you right click the desktop. The rest is up to you to customize. I couldn’t understand why someone felt the urge to make a new wm when so many exactly like it already existed.

Then fate came to me on the Gentoo forums. There is a monthly thread where people post pictures of their desktops. In the thread someone said “isn’t taviso great?” I said “what is taviso?” I thought it was a piece of software, but I couldn’t emerge it. esearch -Sc taviso came up with no results. I was informed quickly that taviso was the “god of fvwm” and also a Gentoo dev. Apparently he used xvidcap to make a video demonstrating his desktop instead of just screenshots. I checked out his video and was blown away. When I tried fvwm2 I could only get it to look like twm plus a pager panel and taskbar with a very ugly “raw X” theme. You wouldn’t even know he was using fvwm unless he told you. According to the mother of all fvwm threads which he started he claims that “fvwm can do anything”. Ladies and gentlemen it looks like I found my solution. With considerable time and effort I can use fvwm to create the ideal desktop for me.

So here I go. I’ve created a brand new user on my machine with an empty home folder. I am also going to create a project website for my ultimate desktop experiment. This experiment will work as follows. First I will, on real paper, design my ideal desktop environment. I will not assume that anything is impossible. The only limits I put on my desires are those imposed by my computer hardware, the Linux kernel and X. Everything else will be fair game. Items in the plan will be separated by component. I will design my ideal panel, taskbar, menus, window decorations, pager, etc. After that I will go through the list and mark off which items I think are far off. By far off I mean items which are either obviously difficult to implement and/or not absolutely necessary. I will consider the project complete even if none of these items is implemented. Note, this initial plan will only contain functional requirements. e.g: there will be a menu with these items that works like this. The final part of the project will be theme. Animations, icons, colors, backgrounds, etc. All come afterwards. However, sometimes color/theme is part of functionality. Having a different color background depending on desktop and page is functional. Which background colors I choose is a matter of theme and that comes later.

After I make the plan and make web pages out of it I will put a link to the page here. My first hope is that my ideal desktop is created and I get to experience my perfect computing experience. Second I hope that other people can use the project to learn about fvwm and make their own computer experience better. I know almost nothing about fvwm right now, so other will be able to learn along with me. Third I hope that I can prove taviso wrong. I’m sure there is something I want that fvwm can’t do. Of course, this is a contradictory hope. It would kind of suck if what I wanted wasn’t possible, but slightly satisfying that I can confirm to myself that fvwm is not the be all end all of window managers. I would definitely rather have it work though. In a perfect world I would get everything I wanted but simultaneously discover something impossible. Anyway, I’m going for it, watch this space.

So recently they have added new functionality to the game. The much needed ability to freely transfer goods between vessels and shops you own at the same island. Previously to transfer goods from ship to ship you would have to sell it to a shop and then buy it back from that shop. It really blew if you didn’t own a shop because you couldn’t do it for free. Good thing we own shops. Anyway, that’s all fixed now.

Prior to the addition of this feature our policy was to always keep ships full of rum and shot. Rum is like gasoline for pirate ships, duh. And shot it what you put in the canons, you need it. Recently many of our pirates have not been filling boats back up. And we have way too many boats for it to be efficient for us to go around loading all of them. So I came up with an idea. At each major island we can store all the rum and shot on a single ship. All of the other commodities can be stored on a second ship. Whenever a pirate wants to go sailing they make a withdrawal from the big ship, as if it were a bank. When they eventually bring the ship back to a port where a storage ship is located they empty out all their goods and make a deposit.

This is the best thing because we can really maximize our efficiency. No longer will every pirate be ordering rum all over the place. Instead we can make fewer larger purchases of rum and shot. This will save us big money in the long run. Also when we sell good we can make fewer larger sales. Better yet, all the stray commodities ( lots of boats have like 1 or 2 units of various materials on them ) will be collected together and become large sacks of goods. This helps a lot because it can rake in more cash.

The problem we have is not the plan. The problem is the accounting. One idea was to use the in-game ships logs every time a deposit or withdrawal is made. The problem with that temporary working pirates can hop on those boats and check our logs. Also, the logs wont do any math for us.

What we need is essentially an online collaborative spreadsheet. It has to be freely available under some open source license. I’m probably going to have to hack away at it some to make it suit our needs I just don’t want to write an entire application. Secondly it must be either web-based or have a free cross-platform client. We’ve got pirates of all operating systems in our crew. Win, *nix and some Mac. If not everyone can use it then its a waste. It also has to have support for at least basic authentication. We don’t want pirates from other crews logging in and messing around.

I tried googling, but I didn’t find much other than commercial collaboration software. That is not what I’m looking for. If I could even get a rough framwork application that I could bend to do what I wanted then it would be great. Does anyone know anything like this?

Is their anyone out there who has tried writing a book with a wiki? It’s just an idea I’m playing with and I’m looking for input. Also, any information about how to set up a wiki to do this sort of thing would be appreciated. I’m not exactly too sure how to do it.

Now, I’m no great author, but I have decent writing skills. At least I like to think so. What do you think? You have a sample right here. But I do have a very good way of teaching people things. I’ve been a camp counselor 3 or 4 times and a geek my whole life. I’ve even been a geek camp counselor. I’ve taught many many people the ways of computers, and how to improve their computing experience. I’m apparently really good at it too, because people keep coming back to me for more help and answers. And unlike other geeks I don’t shoo them away. I actually have some strange power that somehow when I explain computer stuff to people they understand as completely as they can. The problem is that people who want me to tell them things listen and learn. Many people don’t want to listen when I tell them spyware is bad.

Anyway, for a long time I’ve hated the way computer education has worked. Dummy books are the absolute worst. The way they work is they teach a very specific application or program. And they only teach it at the highest level. Click here, then click here, next click over on that icon, now type stuff in. So people trying to learn about computers don’t actually learn anything. All they do is learn simple procedures for accomplishing basic tasks. If anything during their computer time deviates from that pre-learned sequence of tasks they completely fall apart. This is no good as no real learning is going on. This is why people always say things like “my computer hates me” or “it doesn’t work right”. The computers actually work just fine, they just don’t realize that they told it to do that.

To truly learn computers people need to learn about them from the ground up. I don’t mean that everyone needs a degree in computer engineering and computer science. That level of detail is unecessary. However, they should know the parts of a computer and what they do. The should understand how those parts of the computer relate to the software on an abstract level. They should understand what software is. Basic networking knowledge is also essential now with our internet days.

After a foundation of learning about how computers work then we can have another section. The part that talks about applications in general. Don’t teach outlook, teach e-mail. Don’t teach IE teach web browsing. Word/Word Processing, you get the idea. And when you teach about each seperate type of application you can talk about all the pitfalls of that type of application to make people into good netizens ( I like that word ). Teach them about spam and spam filtering. Teach them about xml file formats and proprietary binary ones. Show them examples of features in multiple applications good and bad. Try not to be biased towards one application or operating system over another. Just give the straight facts about how different popular programs do things, pro/con.

I don’t believe a book like this exists. Every computer book I’ve seen is either a dummy book for the average joe or a technical O’Reilly style book for guys like me. The in-between book does not exist. There is no way for people who are interested in progressing between the two to do so via a book.

In addition to attempting to get the book published and sold in stores, I would also publish it in a free and open format online. The same creative commons license as this site would be appropriate. I imagine I could get a working draft of the book done over the summer if I really tried. The problem is that I wouldn’t find time to work on it. Maybe after I get out of college? Now I know a lot of people are cynical and think that a book like this wont work. Or you think that nobody will care or will read it. Well, that may or may not be true. I would still like to hear what other people think about it. Especially if you are the type of person who isn’t technically inclined. Would you want to read a book like this?