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Try selling that one on eBay. Whoops! I guess you can't.
Oh...you mean like a fruit apple...

The fact that game production costs are now approaching Hollywood proportions isn't really news to anyone who follows the industry. What is news and what is different here is how Shane Kim approaches game investment and development, and how that directly affects quality and innovation in games.

Laying off 200 (presumably) talented game developers and alienating some of those that remain seems counterintuitive to producing high-quality games, but on paper I'm sure it looks like a good financial move for a Microsoft division that is hemorrhaging cash like there is no tomorrow.

Here's the original post, highlighting comments from Blue Fang's president that expresses some concerns.

Microsoft Game Studios' New GM Shane Kim Speaks

Mercury News' Dean Takahashi profiles and interviews Shane Kim, Microsoft Game Studios' new General Manager. Among his first acts as GM, Kim killed Microsoft's entire XSN sports line and cut the number of developers from 1200 to 1000, leaving some developers 'privately grumbling that Microsoft has lost its way.' Kim has taken a more conservative, business-oriented approach than predecessor Ed Fries, funding sequels to games like Project Gotham Racing and Halo (Xbox) saying, 'This is about us growing up ... At the end of the day we'll have more quality.' But others like Blue Fang's Hank Howie have reservations: 'I wonder how innovative new ideas are going to get funded if everyone is being cautious and funding sequels.' Mirror at Mercury News.

Nice... I believe the parent AC would have been deserving of your sarcasm and condescension had the line you cited actually been from the linked to article in this story.

I take it you've graduated from the "RTFA before you post" tools to the "REFA (Read Every Fucking Article) before you post" tools...

``Wash.-based software giant to reach trial. Microsoft has reached settlements in nine states and Washington, D.C., totaling $1.5 billion, including $1.1 billion in California. Cases were dismissed in 16 other states.'' Minnesota plaintiffs near court date with Microsoft on overcharge claims

``Wash.-based software giant to reach trial. Microsoft has reached settlements in nine states and Washington, D.C., totaling $1.5 billion, including $1.1 billion in California. Cases were dismissed in 16 other states.'' Minnesota plaintiffs near court date with Microsoft on overcharge claims

Well, Honda and other car companies moving production overseas makes more sense. After all, if a manufacturing plant can cough up 1000 cars a day in the wrong country, then you'll also have to pay for shipping, handling, import/export tariffs, added paperwork & bureaucracy, licensing, more paperwork, both foreign AND local QA organizations who get involved with you product and more. Basically, it just makes sense to have two plants instead: One serving the local market and one serving the foreign market. The savings in time, costs and paperwork is apparently worth it.

Software, though, is a vastly different thing, considering software outsourcing is quite recent and Japanese car manufacturers have been in the US ( and here in Europe, too... Do they even have Volvo, Peugot, Volkswagen and the like in the US? ) for ages. Besides, it costs practically nothing to ship software overseas, especially if you you decide to press and package the CDs in the destination country. But if companies so badly want to save some money, why don't the fire all CEOs and the entire "Board of Directors" and outsource THAT to India? I mean, the average tech-CEO salary comes down to about 21 million a year, which we will round down to 10 million a year because of smaller companies and all that. Now, what would be better for the company? Mr. D. P. Drizzle at $ 21.000.000 a year or A. Ghadami at $ 21.000 a year? Outsource the CEOs!

Seems something like this happened not so long ago in California and somebody got upset.

Yes of course there is easily found verification of this claim.

They're also competing for local search.

Try Google lab's for pizza in your (American) city or zipcode.

Guerilla marketing and stickers?

It's better with the butterfly.

Yeah, right, that's why IBM sold its disk drive research labs to Japanese giant Hitachi, because, um, research leads to long term success. US trade policy currently demands the sale of nearly half a trillion dollars of corporate property to foreign owners this year alone, not to mention the trillions of dollars of past ownership transfers.
That's why US corporations can't afford to fund long term research; They barely have access enough to US markets to survive, let alone protectionist foreign markets. Look at economic history, rather than bogus economic theory, and you'll see that EVERY TIME a nation is a rising industrial power rather than a declining one, that nation has aggressive industrial trade policies and strong protection for internal industries. The US rose that way in the 1800's, and is in downsizing and outsourcing decline now, having abandoned any care for its ability to produce products.
When economists say "it's ok, the US is the country that INNOVATES" they're only backed up by the fact that in the PAST US corporations funded basic research because they had protected internal markets that gave them the long term profitability to afford long term investments. But now, under "free trade" US corporations can't afford to invest in research. The innovation will follow the production to countries whose governments care about production and national profit rather than only caring about current consumption.

I'm one of the contributors to the Esperanto Wikipedia. One thing that I have seen is that there are a number of people who scan the list of latest changes. I know I do it. Most of the time, we make minor corrections to typos, but I've certainly been taken to task for more serious mistakes.

This article discussed some of the questions concerning articles on the Wikipedia. It pointed out exactly the behavior I have described, along with other factors. Aside from the stated requirement of a neutral tone, it turns out that a neutral tone is self-enforcing. The only way you can get an article to stand up to repeated editing is to make you points in a way that your fellow contributors can accept.

This can certainly result in criticisms and praise getting watered down a bit. But it actually has some side-effects that are obvious after you consider them. For example, because the Esperanto Wikipedia is not tied strongly to any particular country, there is a concerted effort to make geographical references neutral. References to Southeast Asia are neutral. References to the Far East aren't.

[the RIAA]summarily dismissed the EFF's proposal as too "drastic"

Article here

Searching news.google.com on "collective licensing" turned up this bit of news from yesterday:

Senators Ron Wyden and John Ensign ... called a meeting in Washington today encouraging the music industry and a new trade group for file-swapping companies to find a resolution.

The article is here

Also found was this where the RIAA has responded to the EFF proposal, saying [the RIAA]summarily dismissed the EFF's proposal as too "drastic"

Not accordinging to the SiliconValley.com article which stated Napster derives no income from the sale of a branded music player.

It also said HP returned Napster's $250,000 check. Napster probably paid HP (and is paying Samsung) a certain amount to get the Napster logo on HP's and Samsung's players in an effort to gain mindshare. Napster needs Samsung more than Samsung needs Napster.

HP realized the money they were getting from Napster was nothing compared to what they could get from a portion of HP iPod sales...

Okay, first off, I have no idea how the comment text on that got duplicated.

Second, is it really Troll to honestly state the obvious? Any fool can see that Apple's marketshare is gone and is never coming back. Once a school chooses Windows as its standard OS and bans Apple purchases (as my district did in 2002), there will be no "switching" back.

``Dell is thrashing Apple in terms of new education sales by some 35% to 21% of purchases." (Nov. 2002, source)

Education Market Share
Apple: 15%
Dell: 35%
(Sep. 2002, source)

``The trend toward standardization is hurting Apple where it has traditionally been stronger -- in schools, where information-technology workers are increasingly deciding what computers to buy, despite the protest of Mac-loyal teachers. When Quality Education Data surveyed school districts last fall, 54 percent said their schools used some Macs, while 91 percent said their schools used some Windows PCs. The number of Macs was lower than the year before.
`Apple's market share is declining steadily,' said Jeanne Hayes, president of QED. `Dell is definitely the leader now both in installed base and in share, because they've moved into the server business as well.' "
(Jul. 2003, source; this article also discusses Apple's market share in general and indicates the failure of the "Switch" campaign)

Advanced Botanicals Inc's contact page can be found here. They're listed on this page as having different products refused entry to the US for false labelling.

SCO files for temporary restraining order against reality

SCO files for temporary restraining order against reality

According to MIPI, there are around three million users simultaneously online and connected to the Kazaa network at any one time sharing around 573 million files. Over 850,000 tracks are made available by over 2,500 Australian users. If each downloaded track was purchased for US$0.99 the total would be over US$2 billion per month globally.

Actually, Palm didn't INVENT Graffiti, they simply brought it to market. Xerox successfully sued Palm for patent infringement. Palm has since stopped shipping Graffiti in favor of the JOT system originally featured on PocketPC.

BTW, Microsoft licensed both JOT and Calligrapher. Calligrapher, known as Transcriber in native PocketPC, is based upon Newton handwriting recognition.

The problem with ALL handwriting recognition is that english letters and numbers look too much alike.

Examples
1 I l |
5 s S $ 6 G @
Z 2 z
0 O o 6 8
. , ' "
( [
* + t T

A rational handwriting recognition forces the user to change their style of writing. Especially print writing. The methods of keystrokes are just too similar. I believe that US style of print writing will eventually change because of this.

Cursive writers actually have an advantage in natural systems. Cursive letters have enough difference that it's EASIER for the software to distinguish between two characters based upon pen strokes.

OK, back to the point. No Apple doesn't sell PDAs. But palm no longer sells PDAs with Graffiti. Ironically, a graffiti compatible system is now included with every PocketPC. Apple sold the FIRST PDAs, there is NO dispute about this. Apple COINED the term PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). Kudos to Palm for making the concept cheap, simple and practical.

Unfortunately, it seems like it's the spam fighters who are doing the dying.

Cell phones now debit cards in S. Korea
Infrared lifestyle: South Koreans pay using cellphones

According to this, 2 megapixels.

True. I remember an article on SiliconValley.Com talking about tech pro's who were employed at $40K - 60K / Year and HOMELESS, due to the astronomical cost of housing in the Bay area. They could not even afford rent!

What may need to be done by governments, industry, etc. is to encourage back office IT to locate to lower cost areas in the USA. Utah's UTOPIA project might be an example of something local / state government can do. It certainly beats paying for a factory or chicken processing plant to locate in a rural area!

Column...

eJournal

The article in question claims that 540,000 jobs were lost in 2002. Hmm... let's say the average high-tech worker makes US$75,000 (it's probably closer to US$40,000). What's 540,000 jobs times US$75,000? My my, it's US$40.5 billion.

By not spending its cash hoard, presumably on purchases, acquisitions, etc. in the high-tech industry, Microsoft has cost the equivalent, or perhaps literally, all the lost techs job suffered in 2002.

The scenario is a little more disturbing when more realistic numbers are plugged in. 540,000 jobs times US$40,000 (a more realistic avg. salary) is US$21.6 billion. In other words, Microsoft has twice again enough cash to more than make up for all lots tech jobs of 2002. Sobering, especially as their profits increase.

While the numbers above may be somewhat dubious, what is unavailably clear is this: Microsoft sitting on its huge pile of cash can do nothing good for the industry.

According to a Mercury News story , the camera is nearly unhackable through its proprietary interface (aha! those wily hackers will never figure this one out!).

"Hackers will have a hard time making Dakota Digital cameras reusable at home. The cameras have a special plug, so you can't use any standard computer cable for connecting to a personal computer. Also, you can't erase more than one picture and the images are stored in a raw format that won't be recognized by photo-editing software."

Really... how many times does it take for stupid marketers to learn security by obscurity doesn't work?

*scoove*

Quill essentially affirms Bellas Hess.

There's a four-prong "Complete Auto" test which has been used as a criterion for the validity of state taxes on interstate commerce:

1. The tax must be applied to an activity with a "substantial nexus" with the taxing state
2. The tax must provide fair apportionment between the states
3. The tax must not discriminate against interstate commerce
4. The tax must be fairly related to services provided by the taxing state

Relevant quotes from the cases:

State taxation falling on interstate commerce ... can only be justified as designed to make such commerce bear a fair share of the cost of the local government whose protection it enjoys.

... The Court has never held that a State may impose the duty of use tax collection and payment upon a seller whose only connection with customers in the State is by common carrier or the United States mail.

... If Illinois can impose such burdens, so can every other State, and so, indeed, can every municipality, every school district, and every other political subdivision throughout the Nation with power to impose sales and use taxes.

The very purpose of the Commerce Clause was to ensure a national economy free from such unjustifiable local entanglements. Under the Constitution, this is a domain where Congress alone has the power of regulation and control.

Other references:

Annette Nellen's Home Page, especially Timeline Review of Activities Related to Discussions on Internet Taxation

Sales and Use Taxation of Internet Transactions

In other news, Barnes & Noble Inc. has offered to buy back the shares of BN.com -- could this eventually mean BN.com will have to collect sales taxes on internet sales to all states which have Barnes & Noble retail stores?

Microsoft don't write software, they assimilate :)

Microsoft made their name through DOS - but did they write DOS? No, they bought Seattle Computer Products' 86-DOS operating system. Microsoft wrote Internet Explorer, right? Well, no, it was born out of code licensed from the Spyglass browser. Did they write SQL server? Nope - that was again developed with code licensed from Timeline.

Infact, whatever the latest bandwagon is, Microsoft buys out the competition? Instant messaging becomes in vogue? Microsoft buys an instant messaging developer. Holes in file security? Microsoft buys a XDegrees, a security specialist. Worried that Mac's can emulate Windows? Microsoft buys Connetix, the makers of Virtual PC. Microsoft worried about viruses negative effects on OS sales? Don't worry, Microsoft have just bought GeCAD, an AV vendor...

I pitty the poor IT director who said that open source is a no brainer.
Actually the correct quote is 'Open Source a No-Brainer for Developing World', and it was written by Dan Gillmor, as you can see on the first link.

No wonder about this.. SCO Group was label as a "buy" by Deutsche Bank analyst on October 15th.

Actually, I believe that Macrovision costs only around US$.05 per DVD, or thereabouts, hardly a signficant contribution to the purchase price, and not a vast amount of the production price. Source: San Jose Mercury News.

The lawyer profession is still alive and well, isn't it? ;)
Well... sort of. Once the lawyers that work for RIAA have stopped working for them, they'll probably find it harder to get work. Would you want to employ a lawyer that sued a 12 year-old for downloading music?

I think this is a great idea, if u wanna play, u gotta pay to clean up your mess when you're done with it.

Maybe 1 more reason to vote "NO" on recall ;-)

DeanSpace development comunity - Website : http://DeanSpace.org
Articles: http://drupal.org/node/view/2267
Wired News http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59497,00 .html
Dan Gillmore http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/650 1101.htm
Reason Online http://www.reason.com/links/links081303.shtml
Hesie Online (german) http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-26.08.03-00 1/

the CE Linux Forum and all of it's members: Sony, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes the Panasonic brand, Hitachi, NEC Corp., Sharp Corp., Toshiba Corp. -- as well as Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands and Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea. At that point, SCO stock will hit 50. After Canopy leverages that to sell a lot of paper on other Canopy sub-companies and cash out a lot of positions, Darl and the other insiders will sell, sell, sell and cry boo-hoo all the way to the bank. That's what this has been about all along anyway: pump and dump.

Leave it to the Mercury News to report with more sordid details.

What caught my eye...

The CCIA trade group also ran into trouble Thursday when it sought to send a paid announcement about its critical Microsoft report to 140,000 subscribers of popular trade magazines for chief security officers and chief information officers.

The publisher for CIO and CSO magazines, CXO Media Inc., offers such announcements ``to target a specific market segment of our audience by designing a list of prospects for direct mail and e-mail purposes.''

But in this case, the subject was too touchy.

``We find it is too sensitive of material to send out. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I have to deny your request,'' according to an e-mail from the publisher obtained by The Associated Press.

``We need to try to provide some balance on these issues, and this seemed a little one-sided,'' CXO spokeswoman Karen Fogerty said.

Sheesh! The mags won't even report this story if you pay them!

---

Fight the Power!

Considering Dell has $35 Billion in annual sales compared to Apples $1.5 billion, I think you may want to reconsider who is having more success right now.

I forgot, just mention Apple in good terms and get +5 insightful.

Such a useful service smells of another link in the chain toward a blockbuster initial public offering of stock, though the company has maintained staying private during 2003.

Here's a recent article at Mercury News.

I don't think I've seen it mentioned that the recent launch of AOL Journals significantly changed the blogging competitive landscape. This news surely affected Pyra's forecast for the paid version of Blogger.

Either way, I prefer journalspace. They use the 'try before you buy' model, have more features than Blogger, and the content has an average intelligence level that's roughly three metric notches above LiveJournal.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/477 9109.htm

Look at who is calling the Dean campaign savvy- its mostly political journalists

Look at who is calling the Dean campaign savvy- its mostly political journalists

Actually, I understand that most dams (floodgates only) in North America are powered by Windows NT based software. They are not internet connected but have remote dial-up. The FBI's InfraGuard program has fixed what used to be a gaping security problem, where once you found the number you could dial straight in to the damn's control computer. In fact, this happened once before in 1998 as this article mentions. The software is called SCADA and was, iirc, developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The primary appeal of Linux is low cost: $0.00. with Windows being free in India, the typical Indian will not be interested in using Linux. Windows has significantly more applications that run on it than Linux. Off course, those applications are also "free".

Similar comments apply to China. China (which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan) is the software-piracy capital of the world. More then 90% of the software used in China is pirated. Here are some references to solidly support the aforementioned observations.

1. "Software piracy rising again in India, Microsoft official says"
2. "Business Software Alliance"
3. "Grey area: India 16th on global software piracy watch list"

Before commenting on participatory journalism you should find out what it is. I know that's not necessarily in the Slashdot tradition, but it's a good practice. :-)

Participatory journalism is journalism in which consumers of information have an opportunity to participate in the process -- if they have anything to contribute.

In other words, producers and consumers can share -- or even switch -- roles.

One of the most important characteristics of the Internet is that it democratizes publishing by lowing the capital requirements. Message boards and blogs (which we used to call "personal Web sites") are within the reach of just about anyone.

I spoke about this several years ago at the NetMedia conference in London and called it "People's Journalism." That has a vaguely Berkeleyesque ring, and I have grown to prefer the contemporary term "Participatory Journalism."

My friend Dan Gillmor is writing a book on the subject.

According to this version, the person in question wasn't an Acxiom employee but rather a former employee of one of their clients who still had legitimate access to the server in question (so his employers had been lax in notifying Acxiom to shut off his access). OTOH, the article also mentions that data from several of their clients was compromised, albeit in encrypted form, which is still somewhat shoddy for a company of this type: if the guy had been able to access his ex-employer's data then the blame is on them (the ex-employer), but if he can get at stuff from other companies then Acxiom has some explaining to do. /t

I read three versions of the story (courtesy of the Google News link). None of them specified what the job description of the perpetrator was, although I'll infer that because he had "legitimate access" (wording per the SilconValley.com verison of the story) to the servers where the information was kept, he wasn't, say, a janitor. So why the histrionics on the submitter's part about how "such a company would have such lax security as to allow an insider to browse supposedly private data at will." Dude, the guy had access. I'm a systems administrator, I can read my co-workers' email at will. If I suddenly "went rogue" without warning, not a lot you could do about it, huh? At some level, you just have to trust your employees.

What's funnier is the universal use of the word "hacker" in the various writeups of this incident. The guy had access already. He didn't hack his way into anything. Back when I worked retail, if our credit card receipts didn't add up to what the system thought we should have at the end of the day, we'd have to do a "list print" - we'd go to our little VeriFone CC terminals and have it print a record of every transaction it could remember. It had a 255 transaction memory, if my own memory serves, complete with amount, timestamp, and - wait for it - credit card number. So, if I printed out a list of 255 credit card numbers and went on a buying spree with other people's money, would you say I was a "hacker" then?

A guy that flys a freaking MiG uses Linux! Now what is the coolest OS to have on YOUR desktop?