No, the bigger question is "What happens when the company stops renewing license keys?"
This actually happened to me once. I was working for a small transportation company and we were renting an application that allowed us to track shipments, autmate billing, AR, AP, etc. The company from whom we were renting the application ended up being acquired by another company that specialized in the same field. A few months later we received notice that they would no longer be supporting our application but that we would be able to upgrade to the other company's application (which had a significantly higher cost). Of course we didn't want or need the other companies application, nor did we want to pay the additional monthly expense.
I ended up leavintg the company before it was resolved and my former employer went out of business within a year, so I have no idea what they eventually settled on. But things that like do happen sometimes.
Back in those days it probably would have been relatively easy to break database on our systems and convert it to another system. Of course, nowdays it's probably illegal to do that, even if it is your data.
The trick that almost everyone learns at some point is that the data can be recovered from these drives occasionally (actually quite often) by getting another hard drive ready and then somehow getting the drive spinning. My favorite approach is to freeze the hard drive. Yep. The freezer overnight. If you don't believe me see http://www.internetvalue.com/onsite/200ways.htm
Yep, I've done that a few times myself. The other odd-sounding trick that nobody believes me about is how to fix a sticky, dirty, or otherwise gummed up keyboard. Say someone spills a coke on a keyboard and it no longer works. Take it home, stick it in the dishwasher with no soap and don't use the heat drying cycle. Let it air dry. That usually does the trick.
I'm not there yet, but I think that I'm definitely headed for a record. I've got a Proliant 1600 running NT4 and Oracle8 for a lab database that's been up 232 days, 2 hours, 22 minutes and 27 seconds. My company recently instituted a regular reboot schedule for all of our servers where they get rebooted at least once a month, and I intentionally left that server out of the loop. I'm gonna see how far it goes before it finally falls over. The thought of setting a record is actually almost enough to make me not want to leave this company...
Once open war is declared, our economy will boom. It'll be the answer to our recent economic downturn. Look at how WW2 pulled us out of the Depression.
Yeah, war is great for your economy. Just ask Japan, Germany, Vietnam, Korea, etc...
A war will boost your economy as long as you're winning it. If you lose, you screwed. But even if you do win the war, such a ridiculously reactionary action as declaring war on China would almost certainly cause the US to be hit with international economic sanctions. And those certainly won't help the US economy any. If you think that the recent economic downturn is ugly, wait until you feel the sting of being able to only have international trade with Taiwan and Israel.
I am constantly amazed at what kind of tripe gets modded up here.
2)The internal politics of China in this are very important. There has been speculation in the fringe press that this incident was set up by the Chinese Military for their own goals. While this is speculation, if true, this leaves them (the Chines Military) with a win/win situation. If the USA backs down, then they win in the international arena. If the USA does not back down then The Military gets to strengthen their position inside China.
While I won't speculate on motives or who caused the accident, I do think that you're on the right track here. It's my understanding that the Chinese Millitary and the Chinese Government don't always see eye-to-eye on these kinds of issues.
I seem to recall press reports claiming that the government was trying to work out a solution but was having problems getting the millitary to agree. That wouldn't surprise me one bit.
Why was the US plane there? It was spying on China, presumably to further its own military and economic goals. This act, performed within a country, is treason, punishable by death.
That's not true at all. Spying "performed within a country" is spying, not treason. When a nation's citizen betrays the government of his nation to another nation, that is treason. There's a very big difference.
While it is true that in many countries treason is punishable by death, in the "western" countries that is generally not the case. I don't recall Aldridge Ames or the recently captured FBI spy facing the death penalty anywhere, even though they were American citizens.
In the matter of spying on another country, I seem to recall the United States expelling a group of Russian spies less than a month ago. Shortly afterwards the Russian government expelled a group of American spies. No harm no foul.
I think that you'll find that most modern cases will end up like the US/Russian incident. Nobody wants to create an international incident by executing someone else's citizen, even if they were spying. The only exception that I can think of might be during a time of war between two countries or some other state of increased hostility.
I have heard no mention of the acceptability of the spying mission.
What's there to say about it? It was spying. We do it, they do it, even the birds and the trees...wait a minnit.
Every major nation's government has spies. They all spy on each other. They even spy on their allies. It's no biggie. The trick is to try to limit the amount of spying that someone can do on you without actually hurting anyone.
Just a few weeks ago the US expelled a dozen or so Russian spies. The Russians kicked out an equal number of US spies. Nobody gets hurt. Nobody gets held hostage. Everyone says, "Yep, nice caatch." And the next week another dozen Russian spies took the place of the deported ones here in the US (and vice versa). It's just part of the game.
The Drudge Report is reporting that the South China Morning Post is reporting the following
My father's uncle's cousin's daughters ex-boyfriend says that's not true.
Seriously though, I just browsed past the SCMP website and didn't see anything about the plane being forced down. One wonders if Drudge knows that SCMP is an english-language newspaper?
The Soviet Union used to do that frequently. Their aircraft would be met by US fighters, which would get close enough to take pictures, and would "escort" them all the way down the coast.
I had a friend who used to be in a sub-hunter group in the US Navy. He told me once that they actually found a Soviet sub off the coast of California steaming it's way into the San Franciso Bay area. I don't know if he was bullshitting me, but...
It's my understanding that these things happen all the time. As long as nobody is breaking any laws and everyone stays out of everyone else's air/seaspace, they just stare each other down for a minute and then go on their merry way.
I wonder how much of this is payback for the whole Wen Ho Lee thing at Los Alamos?
As long as the police aren't mounting cameras hidden behind trees in the trouble centers (centralized on the University Hill), I don't think there's much in the way of protection against this.
Why should that matter? As long as the cameras are focused on a public place, you have no legal expecatation of privacy.
I don't know how it is in Boulder (is it a smaller town?), but here in Columbus (Ohio) there are cameras everywhere. They certainly aren't all owned by the police of the city, but they are there. I once made a game of counting how many cameras took my picture in the course of a trip from my house in the suburbs to a downtown destination. I counted 17 (most of which were downtown). These are traffic cameras, security cameras on office buildings, parking lots, etc. Not to mention cameras mounted on the dash of police cars (I didn't count them because I had no way to tell if a particular car had a camera or not).
So I guess my point is that you're on camera pretty much anywhere you go in public (in most fair-sized cities). Get used to it.
It happens at least once a year here in Cow-lumbus, OH, at the Ohio State Football University. Afterwards, the news programs always have a bunch of whining students on it complaing about the way police behaved. It's disgusting.
I'm glad that I'm not the only Columbus resident who feels that way. Also, don't forget OU in Athens. They have regularly scheduled riots too (usually around Halloween).
Interesting how in the US these things tend to occur around universities...
Someone said that it differs between US states as well. Isn't there a federal limit at 18 though? Or is that only for porn?
It does vary from state to state in the US. To my knowledge there is no Federal limit on the Age of Consent. That's an issue that wasn't specified or ammended into the US constitution, so it's left to the states.
There are two different concepts at work here. One is the Age of Consent. The other is the Age of Majority.
Age of Consent is how old you have to be in order to be able to consensually have sex (and thereby avoid your partner getting charged with statutory rape).
Age of Majority is the age at which you are generally considered to be an adult (i.e., no longer a minor) and as such get all the rights and responsibilities that adults get. These include voting and serving in the millitary, as well as being legally and financially independent of your parents (they can no longer be held responsible for you actions or finances unless they choose to via co-signing a loan or what-not).
Because of the "morally" sensitive nature of pornography, it is generally restricted to those who have reached the Age of Majority. The implication is that as a minor your parents are responsible for you and the government needs to cooperate with the families to ensure that you do not have the legal rights to go against your parents wishes until they are no longer responsible for you.
Hence there is also a crime (in most states) known as Contributing to the Delinquincy of a Minor. Actions that could result in this charge vary with local laws, but generally include providing sexually explicit material to a minor, providing them with alcohol, committing a crime with them (i.e., an adult and a minor rob a gas station), etc. Although it's OK for parents to serve wine to their kids at dinner or to provide them sexual education materials (usually). It's basically a catch-all category for people who help minors do things that the parents disapprove of. Interestingly enough, in a state where the age of consent is 16 and the age of majority is 18, a 19 year-old who has sex with his 17 year-old girlfriend could conceivably be charged with Contributing to the Delinquincy of a Minor (whereas he could be off the hook if he were only 17 himself).
There's also a whole other mess known as Emancipated Minor status whereby a minor can sue for legal and financial separation from their parents. This basically breaks the tie of responsibility to the parents, but the right to vote and so-on is still witheld until the Age of Majority. However, it is relatively rare. Also, this tie could be broken in the event that the minor gets married (with the parent's permission, of course).
The Age of Consent is actually lower than the Age of Majority in many states because those states recognize that even minors of a certain age have a certain right to determine what they can do with their bodies.
And now you know far more than you'd ever want to about the laws in our strange little world known as the U.S.
I can't see anything fundamentally wrong with a 19-year-old male looking at naked pictures of (or having sex with) a 17-year-old female. That's only a two year difference, for christ's sake! But it is a felony in many places.
You're not 19 years old by any chance are you? I know that used to bother me a lot when I was that age, especially when there was an attractive, intelligent 17-year-old that wanted go out with me.
I would guess that M-F sex is allowed regardless of age. However, being a (primarily) Islamic country, I imagine that there are also laws (with serious punishments, maybe even death) for sex outside of marriage. Just guessing.
But that would seem to allow a husband to always have relations with his wife, and a woman wouldn't be able to marry without the permission of her father or some such...
Whaddya mean? Ship via FedEx and your package will miss the plane thanks to a bunch of lazy Russians, but if it does happen to make the plane don't worry because the plane will crash in the south Pacific and your package will be lost at sea. Unless of course one of the survivors finds it, in which case it will be ransacked and vandalized for any useful parts or left to rot on a desert island for 3 or 4 years. Then if you're really, really lucky and the survivor has a boatload of integrity, he might hand-deliver it unopened 4 years late, by which time whatever it was is now completely worthless and has probably been replaced.
Yep, I'm gonna ship with them for sure now!
OK...it was kinda FedEx heavy, but realistically so. I mean, the alternative was to have Tom Hanks working for International Express Shipping Co., Ltd. It added to the realism by having it being a real company. I just think that people were so surprised to see a real company name that they concentrated too much on it and not on the movie.
I just don't wanna hear anything about blatant FedEx or Nextel advertising in Driven when it comes out...
I'd think if anything it'd create a more stressful development schedule.
I think that it won't change a thing about the devleopment cycle. Point 1: There is a little more money available, so the development cycle could be stretched. Point 2: Advertisers will be in a hurry to get the games out to coincide with their product marketing campaigns, so product managers will be less inclined to let the development cycle go long. Because of this, we end up with Point 3: The suits at the game company put the cash towards the game's overall profitability (or buy some stupid "we shipped it on time" awards with it) and the deadline doesn't move at all.
Adding advertisments to game worlds such as everquest? Ok ok, so Everquest isn't much of a fantasy world...in fact it's just a glorified monster whack, but non-the-less, I couldn't stand to be in a perpetual online FANTASY world with Coca-Cola banners. How idiotic are these people, and wouldn't it be that much more idiotic if the videogame publishers/developers actually put these in?
OK, so EQ is a game that is not suited well to advertising (especially since you pay a subscription rate for it). So maybe instead of in-game advertising they flash a banner at the bottom of hte logon screen.
Really though, the prime market for this kind of advertising is Electronic Arts and their EA Sports line of games. Just about every one has tons of prime advertising real estate reading for the taking. And IMHO, if they put up billboards and banners at ballparks and race tracks in-game, that just adds to the realism.
One of my favorite games a few years ago was a Formula 1 racing sim (can't remember who made it). But not only did they get the looks of the cars and GPS info for the tracks just right, they also made sure to get the same advertising in the same places on the track. It not only added a level of realism, it actually made the game a little easier for me because I was already fmailiar with the tracks from television. So I already knew to begin braking and turn left at the Foster's banner because of the hairpin coming up (or whatever).
We are getting service from CommuniTech, who rent us a Cobalt Raq3 server. Part of the reason to go with a dedicate server from an ISP is to outsource system administration.
In my experience, if you pay for a dedicated server from a hosting company they usually expect for you to be responsible for the administration and so-on. Typically if you use one of their shared systems then they will handle all the administration and what-not on their end. But I gather that varies from company to company.
But the bottom line for anyone who is considering outsourcing anything (even just web hosting) is to make sure that in the contract EVERYTHING is specified. Everything from who maintains the system, who is responsible for security and any breahes of said security, what kind of backup system will be in place, what sort of service-levels are required to be maintained, penalties for violating SLA's, and even what happens if the hosting company goes under. And what the additional charges will be for services outside the realm of what is included in the contract.
Anyone who isn't getting all of this in writing is settings themself up for a fall.
If the sites you browse have unique content, then more power to ya'. The sites I wander past (usually the one-liner url in spam) have varying degrees of duplication -- even within their own damned collection. Very rarely do I see pictures of people I've never seen before.
What the hell's wrong with you?!?!? You don't actually click on those links that come in spam. Otherwise the site gets hits and the site owners continue to believe that spam is an effective marketing tool!!!! Break the cycle man, break the cycle!!!
Seriously though, if all you ever do is click the one-line URL found in spam, I'm not surprised that you see duplication. A single porn site may have 20-30 different URL's and sometimes even an equal number of front-pages that just serve the same content. It's simple...if you can sucker someone into joining the same site under three different names, that's three times the profit without needing more content. That's the easiest way to do it (just like spam is the laziest way to advertise it). Ever stop to think that the same person or company may be sending you multiple spam messages to different URLs?
I'm constantly amazed at how easily people are taken in by the simplest ruses on the Internet...maybe I should go into busines...
And the performance is awful. For a LAN party, you want a box with power, and it needs a 3d accelerator. You won't get that in a Compaq box (especially not in the SFF).
I dunno about that. I find the performance on the DPENSFF systems pretty reasonable. You can get them with a Pentium III 1 GHz, they'll take up to 512 MB of PC133 SDRAM, and they can be ordered with TNT2 Pro video cards. While that's not the fastest video card around, it's still a pretty strong performer. Granted, the cost is a little higher than buying off-the-shelf components and trying to build something yourself, but the frustration level is considerably lower.
You can't get something for nothing. No matter what you do, you will have to sacrifice some performance for portability.
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No, the bigger question is "What happens when the company stops renewing license keys?"
This actually happened to me once. I was working for a small transportation company and we were renting an application that allowed us to track shipments, autmate billing, AR, AP, etc. The company from whom we were renting the application ended up being acquired by another company that specialized in the same field. A few months later we received notice that they would no longer be supporting our application but that we would be able to upgrade to the other company's application (which had a significantly higher cost). Of course we didn't want or need the other companies application, nor did we want to pay the additional monthly expense.
I ended up leavintg the company before it was resolved and my former employer went out of business within a year, so I have no idea what they eventually settled on. But things that like do happen sometimes.
Back in those days it probably would have been relatively easy to break database on our systems and convert it to another system. Of course, nowdays it's probably illegal to do that, even if it is your data.
The trick that almost everyone learns at some point is that the data can be recovered from these drives occasionally (actually quite often) by getting another hard drive ready and then somehow getting the drive spinning. My favorite approach is to freeze the hard drive. Yep. The freezer overnight. If you don't believe me see http://www.internetvalue.com/onsite/200ways.htm
Yep, I've done that a few times myself. The other odd-sounding trick that nobody believes me about is how to fix a sticky, dirty, or otherwise gummed up keyboard. Say someone spills a coke on a keyboard and it no longer works. Take it home, stick it in the dishwasher with no soap and don't use the heat drying cycle. Let it air dry. That usually does the trick.
I'm not there yet, but I think that I'm definitely headed for a record. I've got a Proliant 1600 running NT4 and Oracle8 for a lab database that's been up 232 days, 2 hours, 22 minutes and 27 seconds. My company recently instituted a regular reboot schedule for all of our servers where they get rebooted at least once a month, and I intentionally left that server out of the loop. I'm gonna see how far it goes before it finally falls over. The thought of setting a record is actually almost enough to make me not want to leave this company...
Once open war is declared, our economy will boom. It'll be the answer to our recent economic downturn. Look at how WW2 pulled us out of the Depression.
Yeah, war is great for your economy. Just ask Japan, Germany, Vietnam, Korea, etc...
A war will boost your economy as long as you're winning it. If you lose, you screwed. But even if you do win the war, such a ridiculously reactionary action as declaring war on China would almost certainly cause the US to be hit with international economic sanctions. And those certainly won't help the US economy any. If you think that the recent economic downturn is ugly, wait until you feel the sting of being able to only have international trade with Taiwan and Israel.
I am constantly amazed at what kind of tripe gets modded up here.
The crew is trained to destroy any sensitive equipment if it is about to fall into enemy hands
Yes, with axes no less. Seems to me that there should be a self destruct button and 24 parachutes on-board.
2)The internal politics of China in this are very important. There has been speculation in the fringe press that this incident was set up by the Chinese Military for their own goals. While this is speculation, if true, this leaves them (the Chines Military) with a win/win situation. If the USA backs down, then they win in the international arena. If the USA does not back down then The Military gets to strengthen their position inside China.
While I won't speculate on motives or who caused the accident, I do think that you're on the right track here. It's my understanding that the Chinese Millitary and the Chinese Government don't always see eye-to-eye on these kinds of issues.
I seem to recall press reports claiming that the government was trying to work out a solution but was having problems getting the millitary to agree. That wouldn't surprise me one bit.
Why was the US plane there? It was spying on China, presumably to further its own military and economic goals. This act, performed within a country, is treason, punishable by death.
That's not true at all. Spying "performed within a country" is spying, not treason. When a nation's citizen betrays the government of his nation to another nation, that is treason. There's a very big difference.
While it is true that in many countries treason is punishable by death, in the "western" countries that is generally not the case. I don't recall Aldridge Ames or the recently captured FBI spy facing the death penalty anywhere, even though they were American citizens.
In the matter of spying on another country, I seem to recall the United States expelling a group of Russian spies less than a month ago. Shortly afterwards the Russian government expelled a group of American spies. No harm no foul.
I think that you'll find that most modern cases will end up like the US/Russian incident. Nobody wants to create an international incident by executing someone else's citizen, even if they were spying. The only exception that I can think of might be during a time of war between two countries or some other state of increased hostility.
I have heard no mention of the acceptability of the spying mission.
What's there to say about it? It was spying. We do it, they do it, even the birds and the trees...wait a minnit.
Every major nation's government has spies. They all spy on each other. They even spy on their allies. It's no biggie. The trick is to try to limit the amount of spying that someone can do on you without actually hurting anyone.
Just a few weeks ago the US expelled a dozen or so Russian spies. The Russians kicked out an equal number of US spies. Nobody gets hurt. Nobody gets held hostage. Everyone says, "Yep, nice caatch." And the next week another dozen Russian spies took the place of the deported ones here in the US (and vice versa). It's just part of the game.
The Drudge Report is reporting that the South China Morning Post is reporting the following
My father's uncle's cousin's daughters ex-boyfriend says that's not true.
Seriously though, I just browsed past the SCMP website and didn't see anything about the plane being forced down. One wonders if Drudge knows that SCMP is an english-language newspaper?
BTW, US fighters also pretty often flew dangerously close to Russian bombers or spy planes in international waters very close to *SOVIET SHORES*.
Good for them. I'm glad to know that when our guys are acting like jackasses they at least are careful enough not to hit someone else.
Aren't pissing matches fun?
The Soviet Union used to do that frequently. Their aircraft would be met by US fighters, which would get close enough to take pictures, and would "escort" them all the way down the coast.
I had a friend who used to be in a sub-hunter group in the US Navy. He told me once that they actually found a Soviet sub off the coast of California steaming it's way into the San Franciso Bay area. I don't know if he was bullshitting me, but...
It's my understanding that these things happen all the time. As long as nobody is breaking any laws and everyone stays out of everyone else's air/seaspace, they just stare each other down for a minute and then go on their merry way.
I wonder how much of this is payback for the whole Wen Ho Lee thing at Los Alamos?
As long as the police aren't mounting cameras hidden behind trees in the trouble centers (centralized on the University Hill), I don't think there's much in the way of protection against this.
Why should that matter? As long as the cameras are focused on a public place, you have no legal expecatation of privacy.
I don't know how it is in Boulder (is it a smaller town?), but here in Columbus (Ohio) there are cameras everywhere. They certainly aren't all owned by the police of the city, but they are there. I once made a game of counting how many cameras took my picture in the course of a trip from my house in the suburbs to a downtown destination. I counted 17 (most of which were downtown). These are traffic cameras, security cameras on office buildings, parking lots, etc. Not to mention cameras mounted on the dash of police cars (I didn't count them because I had no way to tell if a particular car had a camera or not).
So I guess my point is that you're on camera pretty much anywhere you go in public (in most fair-sized cities). Get used to it.
It happens at least once a year here in Cow-lumbus, OH, at the Ohio State Football University. Afterwards, the news programs always have a bunch of whining students on it complaing about the way police behaved. It's disgusting.
I'm glad that I'm not the only Columbus resident who feels that way. Also, don't forget OU in Athens. They have regularly scheduled riots too (usually around Halloween).
Interesting how in the US these things tend to occur around universities...
I don't see why the article claims they can win only 75% of the time....am I missing something here?
Yes, you are. They have to guess simultaneously.
Someone said that it differs between US states as well. Isn't there a federal limit at 18 though? Or is that only for porn?
It does vary from state to state in the US. To my knowledge there is no Federal limit on the Age of Consent. That's an issue that wasn't specified or ammended into the US constitution, so it's left to the states.
There are two different concepts at work here. One is the Age of Consent. The other is the Age of Majority.
Age of Consent is how old you have to be in order to be able to consensually have sex (and thereby avoid your partner getting charged with statutory rape).
Age of Majority is the age at which you are generally considered to be an adult (i.e., no longer a minor) and as such get all the rights and responsibilities that adults get. These include voting and serving in the millitary, as well as being legally and financially independent of your parents (they can no longer be held responsible for you actions or finances unless they choose to via co-signing a loan or what-not).
Because of the "morally" sensitive nature of pornography, it is generally restricted to those who have reached the Age of Majority. The implication is that as a minor your parents are responsible for you and the government needs to cooperate with the families to ensure that you do not have the legal rights to go against your parents wishes until they are no longer responsible for you.
Hence there is also a crime (in most states) known as Contributing to the Delinquincy of a Minor. Actions that could result in this charge vary with local laws, but generally include providing sexually explicit material to a minor, providing them with alcohol, committing a crime with them (i.e., an adult and a minor rob a gas station), etc. Although it's OK for parents to serve wine to their kids at dinner or to provide them sexual education materials (usually). It's basically a catch-all category for people who help minors do things that the parents disapprove of. Interestingly enough, in a state where the age of consent is 16 and the age of majority is 18, a 19 year-old who has sex with his 17 year-old girlfriend could conceivably be charged with Contributing to the Delinquincy of a Minor (whereas he could be off the hook if he were only 17 himself).
There's also a whole other mess known as Emancipated Minor status whereby a minor can sue for legal and financial separation from their parents. This basically breaks the tie of responsibility to the parents, but the right to vote and so-on is still witheld until the Age of Majority. However, it is relatively rare. Also, this tie could be broken in the event that the minor gets married (with the parent's permission, of course).
The Age of Consent is actually lower than the Age of Majority in many states because those states recognize that even minors of a certain age have a certain right to determine what they can do with their bodies.
And now you know far more than you'd ever want to about the laws in our strange little world known as the U.S.
I can't see anything fundamentally wrong with a 19-year-old male looking at naked pictures of (or having sex with) a 17-year-old female. That's only a two year difference, for christ's sake! But it is a felony in many places.
You're not 19 years old by any chance are you? I know that used to bother me a lot when I was that age, especially when there was an attractive, intelligent 17-year-old that wanted go out with me.
I would guess that M-F sex is allowed regardless of age. However, being a (primarily) Islamic country, I imagine that there are also laws (with serious punishments, maybe even death) for sex outside of marriage. Just guessing.
But that would seem to allow a husband to always have relations with his wife, and a woman wouldn't be able to marry without the permission of her father or some such...
If I remember right, there was actually a game put together by ford in which you drove guess what....Fords.
Hmm...that wouldn't have been Ford Racing, would it? You know what they say...race 'em on Sunday, sell 'em on Monday.
The two and a half hour long FedEx commercial.
Whaddya mean? Ship via FedEx and your package will miss the plane thanks to a bunch of lazy Russians, but if it does happen to make the plane don't worry because the plane will crash in the south Pacific and your package will be lost at sea. Unless of course one of the survivors finds it, in which case it will be ransacked and vandalized for any useful parts or left to rot on a desert island for 3 or 4 years. Then if you're really, really lucky and the survivor has a boatload of integrity, he might hand-deliver it unopened 4 years late, by which time whatever it was is now completely worthless and has probably been replaced.
Yep, I'm gonna ship with them for sure now!
OK...it was kinda FedEx heavy, but realistically so. I mean, the alternative was to have Tom Hanks working for International Express Shipping Co., Ltd. It added to the realism by having it being a real company. I just think that people were so surprised to see a real company name that they concentrated too much on it and not on the movie.
I just don't wanna hear anything about blatant FedEx or Nextel advertising in Driven when it comes out...
They are claiming that two minutes of Quake will make a decent, God-fearing person into a crack-smoking, serial-killing prostitute.
Seriously? Damn...I had a point, but now I gotta go find some chicks to play Quake with instead...
I'd think if anything it'd create a more stressful development schedule.
I think that it won't change a thing about the devleopment cycle. Point 1: There is a little more money available, so the development cycle could be stretched. Point 2: Advertisers will be in a hurry to get the games out to coincide with their product marketing campaigns, so product managers will be less inclined to let the development cycle go long. Because of this, we end up with Point 3: The suits at the game company put the cash towards the game's overall profitability (or buy some stupid "we shipped it on time" awards with it) and the deadline doesn't move at all.
Adding advertisments to game worlds such as everquest? Ok ok, so Everquest isn't much of a fantasy world...in fact it's just a glorified monster whack, but non-the-less, I couldn't stand to be in a perpetual online FANTASY world with Coca-Cola banners. How idiotic are these people, and wouldn't it be that much more idiotic if the videogame publishers/developers actually put these in?
OK, so EQ is a game that is not suited well to advertising (especially since you pay a subscription rate for it). So maybe instead of in-game advertising they flash a banner at the bottom of hte logon screen.
Really though, the prime market for this kind of advertising is Electronic Arts and their EA Sports line of games. Just about every one has tons of prime advertising real estate reading for the taking. And IMHO, if they put up billboards and banners at ballparks and race tracks in-game, that just adds to the realism.
One of my favorite games a few years ago was a Formula 1 racing sim (can't remember who made it). But not only did they get the looks of the cars and GPS info for the tracks just right, they also made sure to get the same advertising in the same places on the track. It not only added a level of realism, it actually made the game a little easier for me because I was already fmailiar with the tracks from television. So I already knew to begin braking and turn left at the Foster's banner because of the hairpin coming up (or whatever).
We are getting service from CommuniTech, who rent us a Cobalt Raq3 server. Part of the reason to go with a dedicate server from an ISP is to outsource system administration.
In my experience, if you pay for a dedicated server from a hosting company they usually expect for you to be responsible for the administration and so-on. Typically if you use one of their shared systems then they will handle all the administration and what-not on their end. But I gather that varies from company to company.
But the bottom line for anyone who is considering outsourcing anything (even just web hosting) is to make sure that in the contract EVERYTHING is specified. Everything from who maintains the system, who is responsible for security and any breahes of said security, what kind of backup system will be in place, what sort of service-levels are required to be maintained, penalties for violating SLA's, and even what happens if the hosting company goes under. And what the additional charges will be for services outside the realm of what is included in the contract.
Anyone who isn't getting all of this in writing is settings themself up for a fall.
If the sites you browse have unique content, then more power to ya'. The sites I wander past (usually the one-liner url in spam) have varying degrees of duplication -- even within their own damned collection. Very rarely do I see pictures of people I've never seen before.
What the hell's wrong with you?!?!? You don't actually click on those links that come in spam. Otherwise the site gets hits and the site owners continue to believe that spam is an effective marketing tool!!!! Break the cycle man, break the cycle!!!
Seriously though, if all you ever do is click the one-line URL found in spam, I'm not surprised that you see duplication. A single porn site may have 20-30 different URL's and sometimes even an equal number of front-pages that just serve the same content. It's simple...if you can sucker someone into joining the same site under three different names, that's three times the profit without needing more content. That's the easiest way to do it (just like spam is the laziest way to advertise it). Ever stop to think that the same person or company may be sending you multiple spam messages to different URLs?
I'm constantly amazed at how easily people are taken in by the simplest ruses on the Internet...maybe I should go into busines...
And the performance is awful. For a LAN party, you want a box with power, and it needs a 3d accelerator. You won't get that in a Compaq box (especially not in the SFF).
I dunno about that. I find the performance on the DPENSFF systems pretty reasonable. You can get them with a Pentium III 1 GHz, they'll take up to 512 MB of PC133 SDRAM, and they can be ordered with TNT2 Pro video cards. While that's not the fastest video card around, it's still a pretty strong performer. Granted, the cost is a little higher than buying off-the-shelf components and trying to build something yourself, but the frustration level is considerably lower.
You can't get something for nothing. No matter what you do, you will have to sacrifice some performance for portability.