These have been around for years. I put together a guide for personal use a while ago, for how to get them running under VirtualBox on OSX. Should be a similar process under Linux. I don't have a blog or anything, so I'll include them here, hoping they'll be helpful to people here, sorry about the length (I last did this a few months ago, so it should be pretty up-to-date).

- Extract the RAR files. On OSX use UnRarX: http://www.unrarx.com/ At least with UnRarX, it will still work despite the first RAR file being a self-extracting .exe file which, obviously, can only run on Windows. You may have to open the multi-part archive using the second file, it will still work.

- Install VirtualBox from https://www.virtualbox.org/ Inside of VirtualBox, create a new virtual machine using the wizard. Make sure to choose the appropriate OS (for example Windows 7) and give it enough memory (the default 512MB is definitely not enough). Also, we're using 32-bit OS only. The important part is to select the .vhd file you extracted from the .rar files as an existing hard drive.

- Do not run the virtual machine yet. It won't work, because it's designed only to work with Microsoft Virtual PC. To make it compatible, click "settings" in VirtualBox to change some things:

- On the system tab, check Enable IO APIC. This is necessary to get your mouse to work (I think).

- On the storage tab, remove your VHD from the "SATA Controller" list. Then add the same VHD file back, only under the "IDE Controller" tab. The VHD is expecting an IDE controller, and you'll get a BSOD if you don't do this step. Under the network tab, change "attached to" from "NAT" to "Bridged Adapter". This is necessary to be able to access a webserver running on your local machine, that is outside of the VM. (You don't need to do this if you just want to access websites in general). Start the Virtual Machine.

- You'll notice the mouse doesn't work. We'll get to that. For now, the Tab key and Alt+Tab are your friends. Log in with either the "IE User" or the "Admin" account. The password is "Password1".

- It will ask you to activate. Ignore for now.

- In VirtualBox, go to the "Devices" menu in your OS menu bar and click "Install Guest Additions...".

- In Windows, launch Explorer somehow. Easiest way is the "run" command (try Windows Key + R) and type "explorer". From within explorer, use Tab and Enter and arrow keys to navigate to the inserted CD. Select the "Autorun" file and hit "Enter" to run it.

- You are now installing guest additions. During the process, you'll need to Alt+Tab to the new prompt window to hit enter every time you need to confirm something.

- Once guest additions is installed, use the start menu to restart the virtual machine. Once it restarts, your mouse should now work inside the virtual machine, hooray!

- It will ask you again to activate. Try to activate online. If it works without asking you for a product number, awesome. If it asks you for a product number, hit cancel, open up a command prompt (run "cmd"), and type the following:

    slmgr -rearm

(If it says you don't have permission, then try logging in under the other account when Windows starts up, if more than one account is listed, e.g. both "Admin" and "Administrator". One of them should work.) This will activate Windows for 30 days, and you can redo this every 30 days. Note: if you don't activate or run this command instead, then Windows will shut itself down after 15 minutes.

- Open up IE. It should be able to browse the Internet. But it will not open up sites on nonstandard ports, so browsing to your own site at something like

    192.168.0.10:8080

will not work. To fix this, go to Internet options, then the Security tab. Click the Trusted Sites icon. Click the Sites button. Uncheck the "Require server verficiation (https:) for all sites in this zone" checkbox. Click Add, then type in the IP address of your machine (for example

    http://192.168.0.10

). Click Close. Then, with the Trusted Sites icon still selected, change the security level for this zone to the lowest possible setting. Now, browsing non-standard ports like 8080 should work.

- If you find yourself Cmd+Tabbing between the Virtual Machine and the rest of your programs, you may find that every time you Cmd+Tab back to the Virtual Machine, it opens up the windows menu. This can get real annoying real fast, because it removes focus from whatever you were working on. You can disable the "Windows key" inside of the VM from this Microsoft webpage:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216893 Obviously, this will disable any windows key shortcuts, but that's probably fine. Remember, normal shortcuts like Ctrl+V etc use the Ctrl key on the Mac keyboard, not the Cmd key.

It's a bit beside the point, but I'd like to note how refreshing it is to read an honest shutting-down-and-wrapping-up post from a startup that had big dreams. It's all too easy to mistake bluster for confidence, and end up writing a shutdown note that claims some kind of hollow victory.

The true feelings of the Glitch team aren't being hidden here, and although it's sad, I think folks appreciate it a great deal.

It is an interesting screed. I was thinking when I wrote up the comment about how VP's might feel about leaving a position that there is an interesting dividing line which doesn't get talked about a lot, Matt touches on it but didn't really call it out, its this, "What are you trying to get done?"

Early in my career Steve Bourne gave me useful advice, he said the difference between junior engineers and senior engineers was that senior engineers had an agenda. More specifically they had an execution goal (like write a new file system, or create a product that solves problem 'X') and they worked toward it.

This is a both a hugely motivating and hugely scary thing, its motivating because you don't have to ask "what do I do now?" the direction just falls out of where you are vs where you are trying to go. It is scary because you can find you're goal isn't compatible with any of the company's goals. When you discover that what you want to do can't be done at the company you are working at, you either have to change goals or leave. But its not a 'feel bad about it' leaving it is 'hmm, this isn't going to work out here so lets go somewhere that it could'.

The alternative to having an agenda is "Goofing off and waiting for someone to give you a task." There are a lot of engineers who operate in that mode, do their assigned tasks at an acceptable quality level and without too much schedule slip. They are great to have around because people with agendas and use them to move the agenda forward, but they don't make for very good 'senior' people because they really don't care what they work on, its not their main focus.

It is important to note that you can't "fail" if you're just goofing off, as one of my kids put it, "It isn't procrastination if you don't have anything you need to do." You can however rationalize your low work output by the fact that your management really hasn't given you all that much to do, so whose fault is that? Whereas if you have an agenda, a goal, a destination, you can fail to make it to that destination. "You said you were going to build a game that could crush Farmville, you failed." Reading the blog post from Speck about Glitch shutting down, "we failed to develop an audience." They had a goal, they didn't get there.

Matt's advice that if you don't know what you want, you can't choose reasonably is solid. Start by deciding what you want to do, and pick something that will take a while as early goal achievement has its own problems.

The price of gold might have remained constant, but that's hardly the binding factor here. All inflation is measured with respect to a basket of goods and if you choose "an ounce of gold" as your basket of goods then under a gold standard you'll get 0 inflation by definition.

But the relevant basket of goods here is the inputs in materials and labor that go into a bottle of Coke, and that ought to be fairly close to the CPI, which rose from 27 to 50.2[1] from 1886 to 1930. Now, of course, I presume they found ways to economize and automate but it's still rather impressive that they could hold the product price down over that timeframe.

[1] According to estimates from the Minneapolis Fed http://www.minneapolisfed.org/community_education/teacher/ca...?

The VMs are designed for Virtual PC, which is of course only available for Windows.

There's a script called ievms that will automatically downloade those VMs and convert them for use with VirtualBox on OS X or Linux:

http://xdissent.github.com/ievms/

This is a pretty good take on what being a small indie dev is like. I've been through that exact cycle, of building a portfolio of games, having some big hits fund growing the company, then taking on bigger projects before the inevitable collapse. In our case that collapse actually came from our primary platform disappearing (thank MS for buying Danger) and our failure to pivot well enough into the new hyper competitive iOS market.

So I totally hear his rationale from a game developer's point of view, I really do. But though I'm a developer, I'm also a customer, and I just can't swallow the coin model for games.

I've played Triple Town and thought it was pretty cute, and yes, I'd probably pay 99c for it, maybe even up to $2.99. But I'm not signing up to a lifetime of paying coins to continue playing it long term.

One fundamental issue is that by design, coin based games are going to be 'gamed' to encourage the use of coins, and fundamentally I don't want to participate in a game dynamic where I'm paying for game experimentation with real dollars. It is like me playing a game of chess and having the constant option to drop $20 to buy another queen. Sure it isn't absolutely necessary to win, but it sure helps. Having that dynamic in games just turns me off.

Now I understand the problem of running a sustainable business all too well, having had my own game company go under, but I don't believe this is the solution. I'm not sure what the right one is, and on that front I applaud them for experimenting, but as a customer I personally reject it.