What are the chances that IBM will try a hostile takeover instead?
Are rher more things to consider to that than the likelihood that they could get 51% of Sun shareholders to be willing to accept a near 100% mark up from pre-purchase rumor price?
Cause if that's all that it takes, in this market I think it would be easy to find that many people willing to take the money and run. And not even that many, since in my understanding IBM could already have secured 5%.
Well, my memory goes back to this: SJ Games vs. the Secret Service, which happened in 1990. So your memory must be longer than mine to recall a time when such things didn't happen.
Btw, what was the outcome of that? Oh yeah:
The judge gave the Secret Service a tongue-lashing and ruled for SJ Games on two out of the three counts, and awarded over $50,000 in damages, plus over $250,000 in attorney's fees.
and the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
And that all occurred after a raid on a pretty small company. Imagine what will happen this time. Provided that the colo provider can survive the loss of it's tenants.
I also hold the very unpopular viewpoint that it's basically a slap in the face to an artist to view their work before they're done with it.
I agree. Fortunately, there were no artists involved in the making of this movie.
Srsly, I'd give more of a shit about the degradation of an artistic attempt to represent life in an unusual and insightful way. Movies of this type, however, bear as much resemblance to art as McDonald's does to a 5 course French meal. It's nothing but a crass attempt to pull money from my wallet. Since they've made that their one and only objective, I'm really not embarrassed when I defeat them at it.
Especially when I can do so by using the foibles of their own methodology that they intended to use to draw more money from me, in this case digital distribution.
Seriously, there's more use for a "stack" of Xserves and Xserve RAIDs than to "leave them to rot in a corner", even if you are pissed off at the service you received. Over a $450 RAID controller card, you're going to "rot" several thousands of dollars worth of Apple gear?
I can't argue that Apple's Enterprise Support can sometimes suck, but you have a wanton disregard for server resources purchased by your employer.
You're either a moron or a troll. btw: Apple hasn't made the Xserve RAID for several years. So your troll information is a few years out of date too.
What is it with the crappy selection? 10K titles doesn't cut it, esp when 1/2 of those are b movies never even released in theaters.
Call me when they have the majority of the mainstream movies from the last 30 years available-or basically any title that I can get on dvd now. I suspect that the only reason I can't is because the studios are morons, but hopefully they'll soon realize that I will rent more (and make them a whole lot more money) when the selection is better. Where I am, traditional dvds aren't a great option either.
Furthemore, I wish amazon was easier to browse. Cause right now it kinda sucks, is kinda slow, and is not as in informative as even the dvd jackets at a BnM.
Honestly, good riddance, the world is better off without companies like that.
EG Blockbuster, who thought it was a good revenue stream to make more off of late penalties than off of rentals. Now they're 0wn3d by NetFlix, and is anyone surprised? Good riddance.
A downturn can be good for clearing out the parasitic deadwood like this. If it doesn't go deeper than that, it can be quite a good thing for our economy.
To think that "SyFy" is how you'd text "SciFi" is clearly ridiculous. Either the exec is making it up, which is not unlikely, or the whole focus group conspired to pull some lolz on the suit.
I can see them all sitting in a room, using their iphones etc, to text each other about what's the most ridiculous thing they can get the suit to believe. That they'd actually use SyFy to mean the SciFi channel would be right up at the top of the list.
For one thing, it wouldn't be capitalized. For another, it would be "sf", as everyone else has pointed out. Finally, no one gives a good goddam about the channel "branding" or "identity". I watch the shows that I like, and change the channel when I'm done. With a TiVo, not only do I not know what time a show is really on, I have very little idea what channel it comes from too. And I'm not about to continue to watch a channel simply because I just watched a show on it--I'm going to watch something else that I recorded from wherever else it was.
Really, the only way to improve declining ratings is to STOP MAKING CRAP. Channel suits need to stop worrying about their channel image, and should think more about making TV that's watchable.
Or when they failed to pick up FireFly. Fox canceling it maybe I can see. But the SciFi channel was born to show TV like FireFly. When they didn't pick it up from Fox they showed their true colors.
BattleBots too, for that matter. What was it doing on Comedy Central?
Whatever works for you; nowhere is YMMV is as true as it is in game design.
However, I have followed the development of GURPS for years and years. While I love the system for individual character design, everytime I have tried to develop a party around it, the characters are too individual. The party often just won't have a single cohesive focus because none of the players work together. Most GURPS campaigns that I have been in have fallen apart after a few sessions as a result--everyone is off doing their own thing.
Again, this can be corrected with good DMing--it's really their job to find the motivator that unites the party. And, they can help during character creation by giving each character a "god" part that will serve as a unifier later. But that put a lot more work on the DM.
The best system I have developed a character in, personally, is WoD. I think the new version is even better--instead of 7 classes, there are now 5. Each major class has a multitude of minor classes, including rules for creating your own variation. So every character is broadly slotted into a major class, with a lot of opportunity for the refinement and differentiation of that concept with a minor class. Also what helps WoD, imo, is that many of the powers have pretty subjective interpretation--so if you haven't designed the character, and played the character, to back up your application of that power in combat (or otherwise) it's not going to work. Therefore, good RP lends itself to what you are able to accomplish in combat, not vice versa.
btw, GURPs "borrowed" the concept of disadvantages from the original Hero Superpower games. But I think you're right, it's a key element to creating different characters.
Another thing that I really like about GURPs is the ability to RP during combat. By this I mean the mechanic that lets you choose between actively defending, aggressively attacking, or blending them. While it serves a strategic purpose, it also allows some RP--a fearless barbarian would also aggressively attack without consideration of defense, while a spineless wizard might always maximize their defense until just the right moment for an attack.
Finally, I'm having a debate about game mechanics on slashdot. Thank Gygax I'm already married with kids--I think I just lost my "check vs. social skills" saving throw.;)
I read TFA, and I saw no discussion of how this book (or any of 4e, really) fosters the RP of the G. Pretty much the whole review was about how these different characters will function differently in combat. It reads like we're back to miniature gaming with some background character information for color--and much less focus on the fostering of interesting characters with subtle motivations, backgrounds, and non-strategic interactions with the party or NPCs.
One could argue, I think, that any class-based system constrains the ability of even experienced players to come up with unique character ideas. You might play a character with an interesting motivation and background, but at the end of the day you're the "striker, divine" (or whatever).
Maybe DnD isn't the place for that, and if you want to play characters one should play Amber (or arguably WoD). And I'm sure that I'll hear from folks that say any good gamer can wedge a character into whatever they're given to play, and that's true to an extent.
But certainly the system can foster the sense of character and RP, mostly by how much emphasis they put on combat rules and differentiation between characters. A class-based system limits that differentiation, by design, so you more or less have a pre-determined function in a squad of people that you need to fill or you're leaving a gap during melee.
It seems like 4e has borrowed from WoW to the extent that playing characters is mostly an afterthought, just as it is in WoW. (Yeah, I tried to play on some "RP" WoW servers too, and barely ever ran into others that would also RP. Most of the other folks didn't even know it was an RP server, and frankly, again, the system was all about combat effects, and had very very few character driven effects or story, so it's extremely hard to differentiate yourself outside of combat.) I don't fault WotC for that--it's hard to not want to replicate the success of WoW.
But really, if I want to play combat miniatures, I'll do something else (like Warhammer). If I want to RP, it doesn't sound like 4e is the system to do it.
While there are natural processes that can produce it, it decays quickly and so it is more likely that an organism is providing consistent replenishment.
However, I don't think anyone expects that Pluto would be able to support life--too too cold. Is there some explanation for natural forming, and natural persisting, on Pluto that makes sense that does not imply the presence of life?
I would think that a planet could be defined as having a regular orbit, with only slight variance. "Slight" of course being subjective, but by no definition would Pluto's eccentricity be considered slight.
Also, it might be required to be in the orbital plane, but that would require at least two other planetary bodies.
Which all begs the real question, I think: Why doesn't Amazon give these things away? Increasing their use is really all to their advantage. It prevents people from sharing their books with their friends. Right now, if I buy a dead tree book it goes to my library or friends when I am done. Every time Amazon sells a kindle book, they lock out those other users and increase their potential revenue stream.
There is no way in hell that I will buy one of these kindles until it supports PDF and plaintext. Word docs would be a bonus too. I really don't understand why the media is so excited for the opportunity to give Amazon $350 to be locked into the Amazon format for books. DRM issues aside, not being able to read the material that I already have in formats I like make this a total non-starter.
But if they were giving them away I would be a lot more likely to try it, even with their own format. And if they can do that enough, the PDF will go away.
But if you need a molecular biologist who has experience building clustered supercomputers, simple word of mouth is unlikely to put you in touch with anyone remotely qualified.
On the contrary, specialist positions usually work better at networking than others. Are you such a person as that described, or is that just a hypothetical? 'Cause I've worked with people exactly like that at the NHGRI, and they pretty much all knew each other--they read each other's papers and went to the same conferences.
Do you think you can get that kind of person by advertising in the paper? Maybe. But more than likely someone knows a student or colleague that would be good for the job, and they recommend them. Or, even more likely, the folks with the position recruit someone away from their current position instead of trying to fill it with an unknown quantity.
Anyway, I think if you're looking for work there's little sense in reducing your profile. I think LinkedIn profiles can be managed appropriately, and therefore the reward potential is larger than the risk. All you risk that is some time, and it doesn't take a lot.
Most jobs are found through networking and friends. Only the worst, lowes-end jobs are in the paper. That's plain fact. I've started over a few times, and I'm not interested in having to do it again.
I dunno if LinkedIn is the best place to grow your networking, but it's an avenue. If you're careful with it, I think it could be a valuable tool. I haven't yet had to put it to the test, and I hope I don't have to any time soon. But it's something that you need to build while you have a job, and not wait until you're already out of work.
I agree with another poster--of the networking social sites out there, Linked In appears to be the only one that has career value.
I'd expect that wear-leveling algorithms look for that kind of discrepancy and moves static files to sectors that are getting heavier use, and starts putting heavily written files onto the sectors that previously contained static info. That would be pretty easy to do. At least OS X moves files around according to how often they're being used (but the OS X technology was designed for optimizing platters).
If I were an officer on the other end of the phone, given this case, what reason would I have to ever tell the truth about the status of a warrant again?
In fact, any officer could then conduct any search of anyone they wanted, simply by finding someone eg their partner who would not tell them the accurate contents of a warrant.
Slashdot Mirror
Should IBM wind up buying SUN after all, I think the name of the company should be Blue Sun.
What are the chances that IBM will try a hostile takeover instead?
Are rher more things to consider to that than the likelihood that they could get 51% of Sun shareholders to be willing to accept a near 100% mark up from pre-purchase rumor price?
Cause if that's all that it takes, in this market I think it would be easy to find that many people willing to take the money and run. And not even that many, since in my understanding IBM could already have secured 5%.
Well, my memory goes back to this: SJ Games vs. the Secret Service, which happened in 1990. So your memory must be longer than mine to recall a time when such things didn't happen.
Btw, what was the outcome of that? Oh yeah:
The judge gave the Secret Service a tongue-lashing and ruled for SJ Games on two out of the three counts, and awarded over $50,000 in damages, plus over $250,000 in attorney's fees.
and
the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
And that all occurred after a raid on a pretty small company. Imagine what will happen this time. Provided that the colo provider can survive the loss of it's tenants.
I also hold the very unpopular viewpoint that it's basically a slap in the face to an artist to view their work before they're done with it.
I agree. Fortunately, there were no artists involved in the making of this movie.
Srsly, I'd give more of a shit about the degradation of an artistic attempt to represent life in an unusual and insightful way. Movies of this type, however, bear as much resemblance to art as McDonald's does to a 5 course French meal. It's nothing but a crass attempt to pull money from my wallet. Since they've made that their one and only objective, I'm really not embarrassed when I defeat them at it.
Especially when I can do so by using the foibles of their own methodology that they intended to use to draw more money from me, in this case digital distribution.
Y, no kidding. I'll even pay for shipping.
Seriously, there's more use for a "stack" of Xserves and Xserve RAIDs than to "leave them to rot in a corner", even if you are pissed off at the service you received. Over a $450 RAID controller card, you're going to "rot" several thousands of dollars worth of Apple gear?
I can't argue that Apple's Enterprise Support can sometimes suck, but you have a wanton disregard for server resources purchased by your employer.
You're either a moron or a troll. btw: Apple hasn't made the Xserve RAID for several years. So your troll information is a few years out of date too.
What is it with the crappy selection? 10K titles doesn't cut it, esp when 1/2 of those are b movies never even released in theaters.
Call me when they have the majority of the mainstream movies from the last 30 years available-or basically any title that I can get on dvd now. I suspect that the only reason I can't is because the studios are morons, but hopefully they'll soon realize that I will rent more (and make them a whole lot more money) when the selection is better. Where I am, traditional dvds aren't a great option either.
Furthemore, I wish amazon was easier to browse. Cause right now it kinda sucks, is kinda slow, and is not as in informative as even the dvd jackets at a BnM.
...any one else worry that this implied Chimp controlled, orbiting satellites?
Damn you, bloody apes!
Honestly, good riddance, the world is better off without companies like that.
EG Blockbuster, who thought it was a good revenue stream to make more off of late penalties than off of rentals. Now they're 0wn3d by NetFlix, and is anyone surprised? Good riddance.
A downturn can be good for clearing out the parasitic deadwood like this. If it doesn't go deeper than that, it can be quite a good thing for our economy.
Or, move to a more friendly country. Think about Intel having a monopoly, and then moving to Japan, for instance.
To think that "SyFy" is how you'd text "SciFi" is clearly ridiculous. Either the exec is making it up, which is not unlikely, or the whole focus group conspired to pull some lolz on the suit.
I can see them all sitting in a room, using their iphones etc, to text each other about what's the most ridiculous thing they can get the suit to believe. That they'd actually use SyFy to mean the SciFi channel would be right up at the top of the list.
For one thing, it wouldn't be capitalized. For another, it would be "sf", as everyone else has pointed out. Finally, no one gives a good goddam about the channel "branding" or "identity". I watch the shows that I like, and change the channel when I'm done. With a TiVo, not only do I not know what time a show is really on, I have very little idea what channel it comes from too. And I'm not about to continue to watch a channel simply because I just watched a show on it--I'm going to watch something else that I recorded from wherever else it was.
Really, the only way to improve declining ratings is to STOP MAKING CRAP. Channel suits need to stop worrying about their channel image, and should think more about making TV that's watchable.
Or when they failed to pick up FireFly. Fox canceling it maybe I can see. But the SciFi channel was born to show TV like FireFly. When they didn't pick it up from Fox they showed their true colors.
BattleBots too, for that matter. What was it doing on Comedy Central?
Does anyone know any that are rising to the top?
Hulu. BitTorrent.
I'm not even kidding. What Google is doing to the newspaper industry, Hulu will do to TV in a decade.
However, IMHO, the best system for RP is GURPS.
Whatever works for you; nowhere is YMMV is as true as it is in game design.
However, I have followed the development of GURPS for years and years. While I love the system for individual character design, everytime I have tried to develop a party around it, the characters are too individual. The party often just won't have a single cohesive focus because none of the players work together. Most GURPS campaigns that I have been in have fallen apart after a few sessions as a result--everyone is off doing their own thing.
Again, this can be corrected with good DMing--it's really their job to find the motivator that unites the party. And, they can help during character creation by giving each character a "god" part that will serve as a unifier later. But that put a lot more work on the DM.
The best system I have developed a character in, personally, is WoD. I think the new version is even better--instead of 7 classes, there are now 5. Each major class has a multitude of minor classes, including rules for creating your own variation. So every character is broadly slotted into a major class, with a lot of opportunity for the refinement and differentiation of that concept with a minor class. Also what helps WoD, imo, is that many of the powers have pretty subjective interpretation--so if you haven't designed the character, and played the character, to back up your application of that power in combat (or otherwise) it's not going to work. Therefore, good RP lends itself to what you are able to accomplish in combat, not vice versa.
btw, GURPs "borrowed" the concept of disadvantages from the original Hero Superpower games. But I think you're right, it's a key element to creating different characters.
Another thing that I really like about GURPs is the ability to RP during combat. By this I mean the mechanic that lets you choose between actively defending, aggressively attacking, or blending them. While it serves a strategic purpose, it also allows some RP--a fearless barbarian would also aggressively attack without consideration of defense, while a spineless wizard might always maximize their defense until just the right moment for an attack.
Finally, I'm having a debate about game mechanics on slashdot. Thank Gygax I'm already married with kids--I think I just lost my "check vs. social skills" saving throw. ;)
I read TFA, and I saw no discussion of how this book (or any of 4e, really) fosters the RP of the G. Pretty much the whole review was about how these different characters will function differently in combat. It reads like we're back to miniature gaming with some background character information for color--and much less focus on the fostering of interesting characters with subtle motivations, backgrounds, and non-strategic interactions with the party or NPCs.
One could argue, I think, that any class-based system constrains the ability of even experienced players to come up with unique character ideas. You might play a character with an interesting motivation and background, but at the end of the day you're the "striker, divine" (or whatever).
Maybe DnD isn't the place for that, and if you want to play characters one should play Amber (or arguably WoD). And I'm sure that I'll hear from folks that say any good gamer can wedge a character into whatever they're given to play, and that's true to an extent.
But certainly the system can foster the sense of character and RP, mostly by how much emphasis they put on combat rules and differentiation between characters. A class-based system limits that differentiation, by design, so you more or less have a pre-determined function in a squad of people that you need to fill or you're leaving a gap during melee.
It seems like 4e has borrowed from WoW to the extent that playing characters is mostly an afterthought, just as it is in WoW. (Yeah, I tried to play on some "RP" WoW servers too, and barely ever ran into others that would also RP. Most of the other folks didn't even know it was an RP server, and frankly, again, the system was all about combat effects, and had very very few character driven effects or story, so it's extremely hard to differentiate yourself outside of combat.) I don't fault WotC for that--it's hard to not want to replicate the success of WoW.
But really, if I want to play combat miniatures, I'll do something else (like Warhammer). If I want to RP, it doesn't sound like 4e is the system to do it.
Am I wrong?
WRONG!
"Lost in Gas" is the best episode of Firefly. "Heart of Gold" is pretty good too.
The presence of methane on Mars is considered a strong indicator of some form of current life there.
http://www.universetoday.com/2004/03/30/whats-creating-the-methane-life-or-volcanoes/
While there are natural processes that can produce it, it decays quickly and so it is more likely that an organism is providing consistent replenishment.
However, I don't think anyone expects that Pluto would be able to support life--too too cold. Is there some explanation for natural forming, and natural persisting, on Pluto that makes sense that does not imply the presence of life?
I would think that a planet could be defined as having a regular orbit, with only slight variance. "Slight" of course being subjective, but by no definition would Pluto's eccentricity be considered slight.
Also, it might be required to be in the orbital plane, but that would require at least two other planetary bodies.
Which all begs the real question, I think: Why doesn't Amazon give these things away? Increasing their use is really all to their advantage. It prevents people from sharing their books with their friends. Right now, if I buy a dead tree book it goes to my library or friends when I am done. Every time Amazon sells a kindle book, they lock out those other users and increase their potential revenue stream.
There is no way in hell that I will buy one of these kindles until it supports PDF and plaintext. Word docs would be a bonus too. I really don't understand why the media is so excited for the opportunity to give Amazon $350 to be locked into the Amazon format for books. DRM issues aside, not being able to read the material that I already have in formats I like make this a total non-starter.
But if they were giving them away I would be a lot more likely to try it, even with their own format. And if they can do that enough, the PDF will go away.
Shit, at 10.5 percent sales tax here in Chicago, I'm thinking about moving to Bangalore, too.
You think they don't have sales tax in India? I'd suggest doing some research before packing your bags. You might realize how lucky you are.
http://www.indianembassy.org/newsite//doing_business_in_india/fiscal_taxation_system_in_india.asp#4a
If you really want to avoid sales tax, try moving to Oregon.
But if you need a molecular biologist who has experience building clustered supercomputers, simple word of mouth is unlikely to put you in touch with anyone remotely qualified.
On the contrary, specialist positions usually work better at networking than others. Are you such a person as that described, or is that just a hypothetical? 'Cause I've worked with people exactly like that at the NHGRI, and they pretty much all knew each other--they read each other's papers and went to the same conferences.
Do you think you can get that kind of person by advertising in the paper? Maybe. But more than likely someone knows a student or colleague that would be good for the job, and they recommend them. Or, even more likely, the folks with the position recruit someone away from their current position instead of trying to fill it with an unknown quantity.
Anyway, I think if you're looking for work there's little sense in reducing your profile. I think LinkedIn profiles can be managed appropriately, and therefore the reward potential is larger than the risk. All you risk that is some time, and it doesn't take a lot.
ssh -X hostaddr application
I've done that, and it works. Why wouldn't it? OS X has X11, just like other Unixes.
Most jobs are found through networking and friends. Only the worst, lowes-end jobs are in the paper. That's plain fact. I've started over a few times, and I'm not interested in having to do it again.
I dunno if LinkedIn is the best place to grow your networking, but it's an avenue. If you're careful with it, I think it could be a valuable tool. I haven't yet had to put it to the test, and I hope I don't have to any time soon. But it's something that you need to build while you have a job, and not wait until you're already out of work.
I agree with another poster--of the networking social sites out there, Linked In appears to be the only one that has career value.
I'd expect that wear-leveling algorithms look for that kind of discrepancy and moves static files to sectors that are getting heavier use, and starts putting heavily written files onto the sectors that previously contained static info. That would be pretty easy to do. At least OS X moves files around according to how often they're being used (but the OS X technology was designed for optimizing platters).
I agree. Also should be applied to police who abuse their authority, imo.
If we can't trust our judicial system, the entire belief in this being a country of laws breaks down. As that goes, nothing else can be trusted.
If I were an officer on the other end of the phone, given this case, what reason would I have to ever tell the truth about the status of a warrant again? In fact, any officer could then conduct any search of anyone they wanted, simply by finding someone eg their partner who would not tell them the accurate contents of a warrant.