Shadow Hearts Series The Nippon Ichi Games (Disgaea, Eternal Mana, Phantom Brave, etc etc) Dragon Quest Series Grandia Series Wild Arms Series Tales of Games Shining Tears/Force Neo Sukisomething or another The Shin Megumi Tensen games Elder Scrolls, Baldur's Gate Games... Final Fantasy 12 is coming out pretty soon...
There are hundreds hundreds of hours of single, mind numbing, no girlfriend having gameplay out there to be had. Costs about 150 bucks + games to get started. To say there is a darth of single player gaming is to ignore the easiest way to play said games.
"Unacceptable server down time, maxed network storage, and no backups systems have hit the bottom line, and those on top are starting to notice."
I don't know your situation... but maybe more money is needed for people, equipment, etc etc. You can demand all you want, but if you don't pony up the resources... *shrugs* You get what you pay for.
"In my understadnding, once you buy a CD, you have a license to play it's songs in any format"
This is actually a big problem in understanding. You don't have a license to play songs anywhere. YOU OWN IT. You can do anything you want with it. It is -not- licensed to you. It's like saying the apple you buy at the store is licensed to you. No. You just bought an apple. Same goes for CDs. The RIAA is trying, and seems to be winning, the idea that you are buying and owning something. That's the battle they are fighting, and winning I think.
Many aren't fan of Ayn Rand, but she talks a lot about this in Atlas Shrugged. Of the idea that the "looters" buy up the government and basically make it so everyone is a criminal. That it's practically impossible to not break the law. Then they, the looters, can go and control you. If you disagree with them or their policies, oh look! You're a criminal. Time to prosecute.
Unless Taiwan comes out and decalres its sovereignty, no one really needs to consider it as anything else. I mean, it'll mean war, but at least they get themselves on Google Earth right. But honestly, sack up or shut up.
I did some investigating on expandable mail systems and the only one I found was cyrus' murder project, http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/ , and so far it's worked quite well for me. The campus supports 10's of thousands of users. I don't know of any reason why it could not be expanded to hundreds of thousands and beyond. It supports high availability and is quite fast. Also, unlike other servers it allows a single namespace, so no imap1.domain.com, imap2.domain.com, everyone is just imap.domain.com. Check it out.
So, if Video Games is a two billion dollar market, why is it so hard to make a profit? Companies are continually going under, being bought or selling below cost. Now they are finding new and exciting ways to tax people who make products for their products. Is this market really so silly as to make production more expensive than the product? In what school is this good business?
It's been said that Microsoft and Sony aren't shooting for control of the video game market, but of a larger market. But I can't help but be reminded of all the web sites that gave out so many promotions and blew through so much money building a name before they got on solid financial ground.
If anything is on Nintendo's side these days its sound financial policy. But will a crash come for the rest? Who will starve and jump ship first? Or will this segment of the market become a cost of doing business? The dream has to end sometime...doesn't it?
Saw him in concert in LA, so great to see the mix of geeks and underground club goers in the same room. But nothing quite like watching the room jump as they sing, "I'm boba, the fett." I'm not quite sure if its art, but I like it.
I think online backups won't be the future for anyone. If you have a 400GB raid, and you want to back that up, we're talking a lot of time and a lot of bandwidth to transfer that to the online storage. Tape afaik is still the best way to archive data.
Do hackers and geeks just not care about communicating effectively?
That I think is a main point that people often get wrong. IM Speak if you will is just as effective in communicating for most people and is more efficient.
'definately' and 'should of' may be wrong but that doesn't mean using them makes you less effective at communicating, since you still understand it. Language always changes. And I think with the rate of technology change being what it is, we are just witnessing a rate of language change to match. Faster, Cheaper, Better. "I have to leave now." versus "g2g". Both are effective, but one is far more effeciant. Spelling and Grammar, apart from being taught less and less in school, will continue to matter less and less as people find new and more effective ways to communicate. It's not a particularly happy thought as I enjoy a nice intelligent discourse without using "lol", but I suspect the next generation of computer users won't mind so much.
So, at my company users like to send company email from home. If they use Cox, for instance, they use their SMTP servers, as everything else is blocked. They send out an email from my domain from Cox. Someone with SPF checks the registry and finds that Cox is not me, bounces the email. Is this the standard result of SPF? Is the solution to run SMTP servers on random unblocked ports for your users and teach them how to send email through them? Does anyone else find this to be a pain? Am I missing some piece?
So, I have to agree that the reason Microsoft is a monopoly has nothing to do with Media Player or IE. As a reminder as to the real reason, which I haven't really seen addressed yet... Here's a repost of an article from 2002. Sorry, it's long, but important to remember. Here's the sad story of BeOS.
He Who Controls the Bootloader End of an Era
Scot Hacker, August 2001
The day before I submitted this column, news hit the net that the other shoe had finally dropped. After months of waiting and wondering what was to become of Be, we learned that Palm, Inc. will be purchasing Be's technology, intellectual property, and assets. While we don't yet know exactly what Palm plans to do with Be, my guess is that the company intends to beef up and extend its product line -- make palm-sized devices more media-friendly, and possibly build appliance-like units for the home. As analyst William Crawford recently said, "Where they have to go, Be already is." Be's lightweight footprint and excellent media handing capabilities make the technology a good fit. Be will receive $11 million in Palm stock, which they intend to liquidate to pay off debts. Considering that Apple allegedly once considered paying $125 million for Be, Palm got Be for a song -- a fire-sale blowout.
Palm initially stated that they don't intend to develop a desktop version of BeOS, which means the version of BeOS you're using now may be the last one you'll ever see. However, users who have corresponded with Palm's top ranks have been met with an open ear, and BeFAQs is currently preparing a full report on the state and potential of the BeOS user base for the big cheeses at Palm. Whether the report will have any effect is anybody's guess, but barring a miracle, it seems that BeOS is now officially dead in terms of its prospects for further evolution. That, however, doesn't necessarily mean it's dead to the users who already have it installed. The BeOS userbase will likely become similar to the Amiga userbase - hanging on to those souped-up boxes out of sheer love for years, maybe decades.
Some in the community met the news with relief. Others simply seem exhausted by the endless process of battling ridiculous odds, and are ready to move on to something else. But many still believe deeply in what Be is and what they've created. Believe that there is a way to best Microsoft at its own game (without having to tread the open source quaqmire). Believe that there is no better desktop user experience, period.
But the reality is that Be's failure has made a point to the world, to whit: "Don't bother trying to create a better commercial desktop OS -- it doesn't matter how hard you try, how many engineers you throw at the problem, how much money you spend, or how many years you put into it. Microsoft owns that space and, worse, the public is totally complicit with that fact. People will not stop using Windows. It is a losing battle."
It is unlikely now that anyone will ever again attempt what Be, Amiga, and IBM attempted. And that's the saddest thing of all -- the insidious ways in which the monopoly has wormed itself into the fabric of our economy and culture. The message that "resistance is futile" has been hammered home. The only OS projects that stand a chance are open source, because they don't play by the rules of the economy. But open source projects seem either unable or unwilling to create a system that approaches the elegance, speed, and ease-of-use of BeOS. If you want an x86 system with a future, you're now bound either to the mess of GNU/Linux or to the Windows donkey cart, with all of the political and technological baggage that entails.
Speaking of the insidious tendrils of The Monopoly and its effect on small companies like Be who dare to set foot in the ogre's front yard, on with this month's intended column. Peaceful Co-Existence? Right. It is statistically unlikely that a person purchasing a new computer is ever going to change its operating system -- the OS that comes with the computer you
"Also, what is the best way to rate productivity in an OS?"
Wouldn't the answer to that simply be, "Whichever gets you the most work done?"
I don't like windows, but I can do my job the best with it because of the tools provided for windows. I rather use Linux or OSX for what I do, but I can't do my job as well with those even though I could probably do OS level things better. *shrugs*
What I have found is that if done correctly, spending more on IT is an investment. What you should do is look at how other departments works, how they spend their money. You will probably find they are quite wasteful, i.e. printing every report rather than emailing a PDF or automating some process for a small example. Find solutions that will lower overall expenditures while increasing money into IT. It'll make the company happy, the departments that work better will be happy and your departments increased budget will make you happy. IT should not longer be seen as a reactive department. It is a capital investment in the structure and foundation of your business. It should be treated as such.
It's probably too basic for what you want and it's not out of box, but Edna (http://edna.sourceforge.net/) is a pretty amazingly simple and good streaming server. The only downside is it has issues with unicode file names, ie chinese filenames and all.
I was really excited by this at first. The idea of putting together IM and a non-outlook groupware solution seemed like a cool idea. Mix ical and IM with p2p without the ICQ bloat? Could be cool. Sadly... grouper is not this. It's waste with a pretty interface with a hint of the possibility of big brother watching me.:( Oh well.
But the erector set has a history of not only being fun, but sparking all sorts of engineering action in the brain for them youngsters out. I have no idea if you can find a place that sells them though.
Slashdot Mirror
Buy a PS2?
Shadow Hearts Series
The Nippon Ichi Games (Disgaea, Eternal Mana, Phantom Brave, etc etc)
Dragon Quest Series
Grandia Series
Wild Arms Series
Tales of Games
Shining Tears/Force Neo
Sukisomething or another
The Shin Megumi Tensen games
Elder Scrolls, Baldur's Gate Games...
Final Fantasy 12 is coming out pretty soon...
There are hundreds hundreds of hours of single, mind numbing, no girlfriend having gameplay out there to be had. Costs about 150 bucks + games to get started. To say there is a darth of single player gaming is to ignore the easiest way to play said games.
"Unacceptable server down time, maxed network storage, and no backups systems have hit the bottom line, and those on top are starting to notice."
I don't know your situation... but maybe more money is needed for people, equipment, etc etc. You can demand all you want, but if you don't pony up the resources... *shrugs* You get what you pay for.
"In my understadnding, once you buy a CD, you have a license to play it's songs in any format"
This is actually a big problem in understanding. You don't have a license to play songs anywhere. YOU OWN IT. You can do anything you want with it. It is -not- licensed to you. It's like saying the apple you buy at the store is licensed to you. No. You just bought an apple. Same goes for CDs. The RIAA is trying, and seems to be winning, the idea that you are buying and owning something. That's the battle they are fighting, and winning I think.
You also can find those Laserdisc versions on torrents as DVD ISOs at certain popular sites. They are pretty great.
Many aren't fan of Ayn Rand, but she talks a lot about this in Atlas Shrugged. Of the idea that the "looters" buy up the government and basically make it so everyone is a criminal. That it's practically impossible to not break the law. Then they, the looters, can go and control you. If you disagree with them or their policies, oh look! You're a criminal. Time to prosecute.
Unless Taiwan comes out and decalres its sovereignty, no one really needs to consider it as anything else. I mean, it'll mean war, but at least they get themselves on Google Earth right. But honestly, sack up or shut up.
I did some investigating on expandable mail systems and the only one I found was cyrus' murder project, http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/ , and so far it's worked quite well for me. The campus supports 10's of thousands of users. I don't know of any reason why it could not be expanded to hundreds of thousands and beyond. It supports high availability and is quite fast. Also, unlike other servers it allows a single namespace, so no imap1.domain.com, imap2.domain.com, everyone is just imap.domain.com. Check it out.
So, if Video Games is a two billion dollar market, why is it so hard to make a profit? Companies are continually going under, being bought or selling below cost. Now they are finding new and exciting ways to tax people who make products for their products. Is this market really so silly as to make production more expensive than the product? In what school is this good business?
It's been said that Microsoft and Sony aren't shooting for control of the video game market, but of a larger market. But I can't help but be reminded of all the web sites that gave out so many promotions and blew through so much money building a name before they got on solid financial ground.
If anything is on Nintendo's side these days its sound financial policy. But will a crash come for the rest? Who will starve and jump ship first? Or will this segment of the market become a cost of doing business? The dream has to end sometime...doesn't it?
www.mcchris.com
Saw him in concert in LA, so great to see the mix of geeks and underground club goers in the same room. But nothing quite like watching the room jump as they sing, "I'm boba, the fett." I'm not quite sure if its art, but I like it.
I think online backups won't be the future for anyone. If you have a 400GB raid, and you want to back that up, we're talking a lot of time and a lot of bandwidth to transfer that to the online storage. Tape afaik is still the best way to archive data.
That I think is a main point that people often get wrong. IM Speak if you will is just as effective in communicating for most people and is more efficient.
'definately' and 'should of' may be wrong but that doesn't mean using them makes you less effective at communicating, since you still understand it. Language always changes. And I think with the rate of technology change being what it is, we are just witnessing a rate of language change to match. Faster, Cheaper, Better. "I have to leave now." versus "g2g". Both are effective, but one is far more effeciant. Spelling and Grammar, apart from being taught less and less in school, will continue to matter less and less as people find new and more effective ways to communicate. It's not a particularly happy thought as I enjoy a nice intelligent discourse without using "lol", but I suspect the next generation of computer users won't mind so much.
I wonder how difficult it would be to fight such a sentence with the ideal of "Cruel and Unusual"?
So, at my company users like to send company email from home. If they use Cox, for instance, they use their SMTP servers, as everything else is blocked. They send out an email from my domain from Cox. Someone with SPF checks the registry and finds that Cox is not me, bounces the email. Is this the standard result of SPF? Is the solution to run SMTP servers on random unblocked ports for your users and teach them how to send email through them? Does anyone else find this to be a pain? Am I missing some piece?
By Macromedia, you mean Adobe right? Super F/OSS friendly Adobe.
Just remember, when you WinMX, WinMX safely... or at least, somewhat more safely.
http://www.bluetack.co.uk/index.php
So, I have to agree that the reason Microsoft is a monopoly has nothing to do with Media Player or IE. As a reminder as to the real reason, which I haven't really seen addressed yet... Here's a repost of an article from 2002. Sorry, it's long, but important to remember. Here's the sad story of BeOS.
He Who Controls the Bootloader
End of an Era
Scot Hacker, August 2001
The day before I submitted this column, news hit the net that the other shoe had finally dropped. After months of waiting and wondering what was to become of Be, we learned that Palm, Inc. will be purchasing Be's technology, intellectual property, and assets. While we don't yet know exactly what Palm plans to do with Be, my guess is that the company intends to beef up and extend its product line -- make palm-sized devices more media-friendly, and possibly build appliance-like units for the home. As analyst William Crawford recently said, "Where they have to go, Be already is." Be's lightweight footprint and excellent media handing capabilities make the technology a good fit. Be will receive $11 million in Palm stock, which they intend to liquidate to pay off debts. Considering that Apple allegedly once considered paying $125 million for Be, Palm got Be for a song -- a fire-sale blowout.
Palm initially stated that they don't intend to develop a desktop version of BeOS, which means the version of BeOS you're using now may be the last one you'll ever see. However, users who have corresponded with Palm's top ranks have been met with an open ear, and BeFAQs is currently preparing a full report on the state and potential of the BeOS user base for the big cheeses at Palm. Whether the report will have any effect is anybody's guess, but barring a miracle, it seems that BeOS is now officially dead in terms of its prospects for further evolution. That, however, doesn't necessarily mean it's dead to the users who already have it installed. The BeOS userbase will likely become similar to the Amiga userbase - hanging on to those souped-up boxes out of sheer love for years, maybe decades.
Some in the community met the news with relief. Others simply seem exhausted by the endless process of battling ridiculous odds, and are ready to move on to something else. But many still believe deeply in what Be is and what they've created. Believe that there is a way to best Microsoft at its own game (without having to tread the open source quaqmire). Believe that there is no better desktop user experience, period.
But the reality is that Be's failure has made a point to the world, to whit: "Don't bother trying to create a better commercial desktop OS -- it doesn't matter how hard you try, how many engineers you throw at the problem, how much money you spend, or how many years you put into it. Microsoft owns that space and, worse, the public is totally complicit with that fact. People will not stop using Windows. It is a losing battle."
It is unlikely now that anyone will ever again attempt what Be, Amiga, and IBM attempted. And that's the saddest thing of all -- the insidious ways in which the monopoly has wormed itself into the fabric of our economy and culture. The message that "resistance is futile" has been hammered home. The only OS projects that stand a chance are open source, because they don't play by the rules of the economy. But open source projects seem either unable or unwilling to create a system that approaches the elegance, speed, and ease-of-use of BeOS. If you want an x86 system with a future, you're now bound either to the mess of GNU/Linux or to the Windows donkey cart, with all of the political and technological baggage that entails.
Speaking of the insidious tendrils of The Monopoly and its effect on small companies like Be who dare to set foot in the ogre's front yard, on with this month's intended column.
Peaceful Co-Existence? Right.
It is statistically unlikely that a person purchasing a new computer is ever going to change its operating system -- the OS that comes with the computer you
Can be found at gametrailers.com.
Grand Turismo... damn.
You should at least rent the remasters. The picture quality is absurdly nice. They did a real good job cleaning it up.
"Also, what is the best way to rate productivity in an OS?"
Wouldn't the answer to that simply be, "Whichever gets you the most work done?"
I don't like windows, but I can do my job the best with it because of the tools provided for windows. I rather use Linux or OSX for what I do, but I can't do my job as well with those even though I could probably do OS level things better. *shrugs*
What I have found is that if done correctly, spending more on IT is an investment. What you should do is look at how other departments works, how they spend their money. You will probably find they are quite wasteful, i.e. printing every report rather than emailing a PDF or automating some process for a small example. Find solutions that will lower overall expenditures while increasing money into IT. It'll make the company happy, the departments that work better will be happy and your departments increased budget will make you happy. IT should not longer be seen as a reactive department. It is a capital investment in the structure and foundation of your business. It should be treated as such.
It's probably too basic for what you want and it's not out of box, but Edna (http://edna.sourceforge.net/) is a pretty amazingly simple and good streaming server. The only downside is it has issues with unicode file names, ie chinese filenames and all.
I was really excited by this at first. The idea of putting together IM and a non-outlook groupware solution seemed like a cool idea. Mix ical and IM with p2p without the ICQ bloat? Could be cool. Sadly... grouper is not this. It's waste with a pretty interface with a hint of the possibility of big brother watching me. :( Oh well.
But the erector set has a history of not only being fun, but sparking all sorts of engineering action in the brain for them youngsters out. I have no idea if you can find a place that sells them though.
Yeah, it looked like the trailer -was- the movie.