I guess it's still the 1950's in Mexico, since they're still washing out and reusing glass bottles.
Must be 1950's in Scotland too. In Scotland most people drink Irn Bru instead of Coke which typically comes in glass bottles and you are refunded about a quarter of the price of the bottle if you return it to a shop. They pick them up each day wash them and re-use them. The glass bottles are also larger and cheaper than the plastic ones (before you even consider the shop refund).
... Apple is offering a technical solution to the problem.
Or another way of putting it is that Apple are deliberating over months the 'problem' of kids having full access to their parents credit cards for any itunes purchases for 15 minutes after their parents giving them a gift. I know all the fanboys are lining up to blame the parents for being stupid enough to pay for something for their children without reading slashdot first, personally their response makes me feel they are far more stupid only for trusting Apple with their credit cards in the first place.
The real problem with games is that it's hard to appreciate old games. They were written for old machines that nobody has anymore (which is why emulators are so culturally important!), and their old blocky graphics and 8-bit color makes them unattractive to look at.
Though arguably many in the games industry are now saying games have reached a graphical plateu where they look good enough to be generally acceptable and small graphical improvements come with a big increase in computer horsepower. It's potentially a very exciting time for new games as suddenly developers have good enough graphics that they can start devoting more than the barest of minimum (traditionally no more than 5%) of cpu power to cool stuff like AI, improvisational pathfinding algorithms, real time audio effect processing/filtering organically flowing dynamic music and maybe even intelligently evolving plotlines in real time.
In a sense it's no surprise that no games can as yet be popularly agreed upon as a timeless creation comparable with some of histories greatest artists; but perhaps this will very soon change....
The real debate is perhaps about the actual definition of art. Something people have been unable to agree on for centuries, I don't see that changing because of a blog or forum post. no matter how inspiring it may be.
Let's be realistic. They have $290k sales in 10.5 months? That sounds like a lot until you realise that's how much it would cost to cover the salaries of three good software engineers, assuming those guys agreed to work from home. If that's split four ways, then there's a decent chance those four people are making a loss.
Let's be realistic. They have $290k sales in 10.5 months?
290k in revenues from selling in-game currency is breathtaking alright, its breathtakingly small amounts.
While working in anti-cheating side of player support for an online MMORP game developer that does not have a legal way to buy currency, I could quite easily ban gold farming accounts worth that amount in two days (assuming value of both the accounts and the gear/currency on those accounts sold at the cheapest available rates). Is TFA referring to a largely unsuccessful 'goldfarming' venture or is there not a lot to be made from 'botting' in Eve where players can buy money legitimately?
Even in PC gaming recently there haven't been many games pushing the latest hardware to the limits.
Thats usually because most PC games are being held back by developers pandering to console version limitations from the very start of the development cycle.
I am with Virgin currently and experiencing a dial up level of pings in online games during peak times despite paying for the 'Large' sized internet package. I have phoned up and complained a few times now and they have admitted they have heavily oversubscribed the area; but the biggest slap in the face came yesterday morning, spam letters to everyone in the building (probably street) 'dear occupier' ( I even got one addressed like this despite being a customer), and offering a large internet deal at about a third of the yearly price I am currently paying in this. I wouldn't be surprised if they charge me international call rates to India every time I try to phone up tech support.
Can anyone recommend an alternative ISP with good pings?
WhatsApp for iPhone and Android allows you to send sms and picture messages for free via your web connection to anyone of your friends who also has the app. I believe there are others out there (does Google voice also do this?).
Well considering that Google fixed something a 3rd party created and that Microsoft is the creator of the problem in it's systems I fail to see the correlation.
To be fair if Microsoft started remotely removing software from your computer that they deemed a threat there would be a considerable backlash.
Maybe in North Korea or China. In America something like this is at most a civil tort of libel.
Though I know nothing about US law, I do know that in the UK if it is a minor or non-damaging infraction it would be seen as 'Malicious Communication' and the perpetrator likely given a first-time-harassment warning but if continued becomes a 'Pursued a Course of Conduct' offense which amounts to harassment which can give jail time. However if the initial communication is genuinely damaging or career threating then it can be immediately considered harassment and therefore jail worthy.
This was not an accusation. This was not public. This was a private conversation between friends outside of school. The teacher had to force a student to log on to his facebook to even see them.
It was most definitely not a private conversation. 15 Kids involved and the average facebook user has 130 friends. A quick calculation shows this conversation was potentially in front of almost 2000 people not to mention the default Facebook settings leave profiles public.
Against making executive decisions based on Facebook posts. It's getting ridiculous.
What these students did was a jailable offense if only they were old enough. Doing things that would land an adult in jail is a fairly good reason to expel someone.
Posting on the internet that someone is a paedophile can have some very serious repercussions even at the wild accusation level. Why is there shock horror at the decision to refuse to allow a pupil that falsely the staff paedophiles to attend?
Well considering the current UK terror alert was recently raised to severe and they have already recently foiled terrorist plots such as (http://www.comparecarrentals.co.uk/news/261127639.html). I understand the balance between privacy and not being murdered by superstitious maniacs is unfair on everyone.
I agree that the UK government mollycoddles its population too much and people are right to treat any moves especially against privacy dubiously but equally would you like to be the one to explain to grieving families that they should be grateful for more personal privacy?
The real villains are those incorporating foreign policy and creating these terror threat situations by lining their own pockets with energy funds. Look at Libya for example, are we really supposed to believe that suspiciously well equipped Libyan rebels who have managed to fight off their own countries armed forces should be primarily interested in securing oil wells? When other countries governments are being overthrown its democratic revolution but if we need to get involved to aid 'ahem secure oil wells' it needs to be reported as an international crisis.
The problem with government is that they rarely want to engage in a project that has a longer return on investment than the next election date. They don't want to be the government that lost 20% productivity during a financially difficult time for the net benefit of saving the next government a bunch of cash. Sad, but true.
Not sure I fully agree, while as an office worker for a temping agency I saw a lot of different office environments and came to realise that the vast majority of Office users know only a few basic functions and a well written excel document could easily replace a few unnecessary staff (usually my own role) if only someone there knew how to use it. It really wouldn't take long to transfer those staggeringly limited skills to another very similar platform.
I mostly read the headline as "Beer Company Alliance speaks out against free beer and warns of health hazards".
>Microsoft then take a further 30% of this, $21, because I work for them... Leaving me with just $49
BASTARDS
When you work for a software company, the norm is to take complete ownership of any related software you create in your spare time, the idea is that so you cant just steal company secrets and sell them in the form of your own products. In practice its a way of completely owning their staff as though they were property (assets is the word they like to use), I have even seen contracts that stipulate ownership of the content of your dreams; however enforcing such dubious practices is another matter....
For me it's the ribbon interface that hides everything.
At least with a menu I could just browse and read from the text what the option is. Now I often have to guess what that icon does and I'm not going to remember all those from the large amount of applications I have to support.
Sorry I feel no sympathy for people who complain about the MS Office UI when theres a perfectly good menu-driven one available completely for free:-
I understand PayPal blocks accounts for all kinds of questionable reasons which aren't political. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
It didn't stop them from blocking the KKK. Actually I went to double check on the official KKK site and they still have support from Visa and Mastercard but no longer Paypal. I guess the bad press gave them a change of heart.
In order to find out their payment details I added a thousand dollar donation to my card and went to payment options and the cheeky bastards saw fit to add a further 250 dollars to the total on my fake donation for 'shipping'!
It's a scary site though, a real eye opener. They sell hate filled rascist t-shirts varying from XXX large down to shirts for 2 year olds. (Sorry getting a little off topic but my point was that Paypal were still supporting these guys when they cut off Wikileaks).
So it only makes sense that they change their programming to cast a bigger net into the demographic pool.
Perhaps they should consider changing their distribution methods to net a bigger audience. For example, pirated versions of TV shows are currently far superior to the aired versions because they typically do not contain advertisements. Personally if the option to pay a small fee to stream these shows ad free and with the full back catalogue available they might actually be able to compete, assuming it they can make it less effort than bit torrents.
As to why SciFi as a genre is dying these days, it's a genre that caters almost exclusively to the geek crowd, a crowd that increasingly does not watch broadcast television. Whether it's torrents or DVRs, a huge percentage of fans don't watch the shows when they're broadcast, driving advertising rates for those programs into the ground.
Perhaps if they tried marketting their material appropriately to their target audiences. For example creating regional torrents of their shows with clickable ads built in with an option of streaming shows without ads for a small fee.
You do know that the US has a similar extradition treaty with the UK? If the US really wanted him they could just go after him in Britain.
After the fiasco of the Enron three being extradited to Texas and charged for crimes done in the UK against a UK bank then sentenced to jail over something that isn't even a crime in the UK, it is not likely to happen again. It is also worth noting that it is a staggeringly unfair, one-way extradition policy set up by a previous government and is likely to be repealed if challenged, especially in another political farce, double-dipped with political corruption like this whole Assange business is.
Not to mention that steam will automatically update your graphics drivers should you so choose as well as automatically keeping your games up to date, even old dos games can be installed and loaded with a single click. Steam fixes a lot of what drove people to consoles, ie fiddly installs that require computer know how.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess it's still the 1950's in Mexico, since they're still washing out and reusing glass bottles.
Must be 1950's in Scotland too. In Scotland most people drink Irn Bru instead of Coke which typically comes in glass bottles and you are refunded about a quarter of the price of the bottle if you return it to a shop. They pick them up each day wash them and re-use them. The glass bottles are also larger and cheaper than the plastic ones (before you even consider the shop refund).
... Apple is offering a technical solution to the problem.
Or another way of putting it is that Apple are deliberating over months the 'problem' of kids having full access to their parents credit cards for any itunes purchases for 15 minutes after their parents giving them a gift. I know all the fanboys are lining up to blame the parents for being stupid enough to pay for something for their children without reading slashdot first, personally their response makes me feel they are far more stupid only for trusting Apple with their credit cards in the first place.
The real problem with games is that it's hard to appreciate old games. They were written for old machines that nobody has anymore (which is why emulators are so culturally important!), and their old blocky graphics and 8-bit color makes them unattractive to look at.
Though arguably many in the games industry are now saying games have reached a graphical plateu where they look good enough to be generally acceptable and small graphical improvements come with a big increase in computer horsepower. It's potentially a very exciting time for new games as suddenly developers have good enough graphics that they can start devoting more than the barest of minimum (traditionally no more than 5%) of cpu power to cool stuff like AI, improvisational pathfinding algorithms, real time audio effect processing/filtering organically flowing dynamic music and maybe even intelligently evolving plotlines in real time.
In a sense it's no surprise that no games can as yet be popularly agreed upon as a timeless creation comparable with some of histories greatest artists; but perhaps this will very soon change....
The real debate is perhaps about the actual definition of art. Something people have been unable to agree on for centuries, I don't see that changing because of a blog or forum post. no matter how inspiring it may be.
Let's be realistic. They have $290k sales in 10.5 months? That sounds like a lot until you realise that's how much it would cost to cover the salaries of three good software engineers, assuming those guys agreed to work from home. If that's split four ways, then there's a decent chance those four people are making a loss.
Let's be realistic. They have $290k sales in 10.5 months?
290k in revenues from selling in-game currency is breathtaking alright, its breathtakingly small amounts.
While working in anti-cheating side of player support for an online MMORP game developer that does not have a legal way to buy currency, I could quite easily ban gold farming accounts worth that amount in two days (assuming value of both the accounts and the gear/currency on those accounts sold at the cheapest available rates). Is TFA referring to a largely unsuccessful 'goldfarming' venture or is there not a lot to be made from 'botting' in Eve where players can buy money legitimately?
Even in PC gaming recently there haven't been many games pushing the latest hardware to the limits.
Thats usually because most PC games are being held back by developers pandering to console version limitations from the very start of the development cycle.
Can anyone recommend an alternative ISP with good pings?
WhatsApp for iPhone and Android allows you to send sms and picture messages for free via your web connection to anyone of your friends who also has the app. I believe there are others out there (does Google voice also do this?).
Well considering that Google fixed something a 3rd party created and that Microsoft is the creator of the problem in it's systems I fail to see the correlation.
To be fair if Microsoft started remotely removing software from your computer that they deemed a threat there would be a considerable backlash.
We're talking about 12-13 year old kids... I think that's a bit extreme...
These kids are above the age of criminal responsibility for their actions. (UK its 10 and USA it varies per state between 6 and 12)
What these students did was a jailable offense
Maybe in North Korea or China. In America something like this is at most a civil tort of libel.
Though I know nothing about US law, I do know that in the UK if it is a minor or non-damaging infraction it would be seen as 'Malicious Communication' and the perpetrator likely given a first-time-harassment warning but if continued becomes a 'Pursued a Course of Conduct' offense which amounts to harassment which can give jail time. However if the initial communication is genuinely damaging or career threating then it can be immediately considered harassment and therefore jail worthy.
This was not an accusation. This was not public. This was a private conversation between friends outside of school. The teacher had to force a student to log on to his facebook to even see them.
It was most definitely not a private conversation. 15 Kids involved and the average facebook user has 130 friends. A quick calculation shows this conversation was potentially in front of almost 2000 people not to mention the default Facebook settings leave profiles public.
Against making executive decisions based on Facebook posts. It's getting ridiculous.
What these students did was a jailable offense if only they were old enough. Doing things that would land an adult in jail is a fairly good reason to expel someone.
Posting on the internet that someone is a paedophile can have some very serious repercussions even at the wild accusation level. Why is there shock horror at the decision to refuse to allow a pupil that falsely the staff paedophiles to attend?
Well considering the current UK terror alert was recently raised to severe and they have already recently foiled terrorist plots such as (http://www.comparecarrentals.co.uk/news/261127639.html). I understand the balance between privacy and not being murdered by superstitious maniacs is unfair on everyone.
I agree that the UK government mollycoddles its population too much and people are right to treat any moves especially against privacy dubiously but equally would you like to be the one to explain to grieving families that they should be grateful for more personal privacy?
The real villains are those incorporating foreign policy and creating these terror threat situations by lining their own pockets with energy funds. Look at Libya for example, are we really supposed to believe that suspiciously well equipped Libyan rebels who have managed to fight off their own countries armed forces should be primarily interested in securing oil wells? When other countries governments are being overthrown its democratic revolution but if we need to get involved to aid 'ahem secure oil wells' it needs to be reported as an international crisis.
The problem with government is that they rarely want to engage in a project that has a longer return on investment than the next election date. They don't want to be the government that lost 20% productivity during a financially difficult time for the net benefit of saving the next government a bunch of cash. Sad, but true.
Not sure I fully agree, while as an office worker for a temping agency I saw a lot of different office environments and came to realise that the vast majority of Office users know only a few basic functions and a well written excel document could easily replace a few unnecessary staff (usually my own role) if only someone there knew how to use it. It really wouldn't take long to transfer those staggeringly limited skills to another very similar platform.
I mostly read the headline as "Beer Company Alliance speaks out against free beer and warns of health hazards".
Sure, it's a stretch, but can you out-lawyer Microsoft if and when they argue otherwise ?
And is a mobile app worth the court costs?
>Microsoft then take a further 30% of this, $21, because I work for them... Leaving me with just $49
BASTARDS
When you work for a software company, the norm is to take complete ownership of any related software you create in your spare time, the idea is that so you cant just steal company secrets and sell them in the form of your own products. In practice its a way of completely owning their staff as though they were property (assets is the word they like to use), I have even seen contracts that stipulate ownership of the content of your dreams; however enforcing such dubious practices is another matter....
For me it's the ribbon interface that hides everything. At least with a menu I could just browse and read from the text what the option is. Now I often have to guess what that icon does and I'm not going to remember all those from the large amount of applications I have to support.
Sorry I feel no sympathy for people who complain about the MS Office UI when theres a perfectly good menu-driven one available completely for free:-
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/
I understand PayPal blocks accounts for all kinds of questionable reasons which aren't political. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
It didn't stop them from blocking the KKK. Actually I went to double check on the official KKK site and they still have support from Visa and Mastercard but no longer Paypal. I guess the bad press gave them a change of heart.
In order to find out their payment details I added a thousand dollar donation to my card and went to payment options and the cheeky bastards saw fit to add a further 250 dollars to the total on my fake donation for 'shipping'!
It's a scary site though, a real eye opener. They sell hate filled rascist t-shirts varying from XXX large down to shirts for 2 year olds. (Sorry getting a little off topic but my point was that Paypal were still supporting these guys when they cut off Wikileaks).
So it only makes sense that they change their programming to cast a bigger net into the demographic pool.
Perhaps they should consider changing their distribution methods to net a bigger audience. For example, pirated versions of TV shows are currently far superior to the aired versions because they typically do not contain advertisements. Personally if the option to pay a small fee to stream these shows ad free and with the full back catalogue available they might actually be able to compete, assuming it they can make it less effort than bit torrents.
As to why SciFi as a genre is dying these days, it's a genre that caters almost exclusively to the geek crowd, a crowd that increasingly does not watch broadcast television. Whether it's torrents or DVRs, a huge percentage of fans don't watch the shows when they're broadcast, driving advertising rates for those programs into the ground.
Perhaps if they tried marketting their material appropriately to their target audiences. For example creating regional torrents of their shows with clickable ads built in with an option of streaming shows without ads for a small fee.
You do know that the US has a similar extradition treaty with the UK? If the US really wanted him they could just go after him in Britain.
After the fiasco of the Enron three being extradited to Texas and charged for crimes done in the UK against a UK bank then sentenced to jail over something that isn't even a crime in the UK, it is not likely to happen again. It is also worth noting that it is a staggeringly unfair, one-way extradition policy set up by a previous government and is likely to be repealed if challenged, especially in another political farce, double-dipped with political corruption like this whole Assange business is.
It seems everything Apple is working on is leaked and it really is becomming a tiresome marketting ploy, perhaps moreso because it seems to work.
Not to mention that steam will automatically update your graphics drivers should you so choose as well as automatically keeping your games up to date, even old dos games can be installed and loaded with a single click. Steam fixes a lot of what drove people to consoles, ie fiddly installs that require computer know how.