If you raised wages, EA would have to use less programmers to get a given job done, produce inferior work or have to charge higher prices
Bullshit on a stick, newbie. EA had an operating profit of over $500M USD last year, and spent several hundred million dollars on marketing alone. You want to argue that globalization should fuck workers here? I think it should make life better for workers everywhere.
$1.45M in cash this year, $145M in stock options granted over his career. Stock options may look free, but they damn well aren't-- the difference comes out of the company's profits same as any other compensation.
So, EA games has 3,300 programmers. Hire another 1,650 at $60,000 a pop, and the wages cost you $100M a year. Adjust to ~$150M a year for benefits, and you're still taking up less than one third of EA's operating profits from last year.
Productivity goes up, and it costs you less than the money spent compensating the CEO in the last 10 years.
We can also compare it to EA Games' marketing budget, estimated at >$100M in the last quarter. Cut your marketing budget by 30%, and you can hire enough programmers for them to have normal lives and increase production.
I uninstalled SP2 on my folks' computer. Software compatibility problems, general annoyance, and as the final straw SP2 was not compatible with the installer program for Microsoft's own Office 2000.
I'm reasonably happy with XP+SP1, but SP2 was a giant step backward.
Did you, or did you not, purchase Half-Life the first day it was on sale? Mmkay, then. If you want less of an effort *wait a week*.
For the record, three (3) separate installs took place on opening day among various computers in the possession of myself an my roommates. No hitches, nothing took more than 40 minutes... reasonable, for a game that comes on five (5) CDs.
Bottom line? Valve's products just earned >$150 from people in my house, and we 're all very happy with our purchases.
"Yes, but I know sound doesn't not not travel through a vaccum!"
Modified Homerisms for every situation.
...and other nifty sneaky tricks
on
Halo 2 Released
·
· Score: 1
Flash Halo2 Update: Apparently Halo 2 may play around with lots of files on the hard disks of modded xboxes too.
Reporting User Update: People's text while recounting this issue to me would no longer pass the lameness filter, based on content, typos, and caps. This is the most hilarious thing to happen yet today...
Ahh, but the sequel seems to have BIOS-flashing...
on
Halo 2 Released
·
· Score: 1
Some of my contacts say that Halo 2 re-flashes the BIOS on modded xboxes. Any other reports of this?
Heh, if there's one xbox game to put sneaky re-flashing capability on, this is it. Very cunning move, Microsoft.
Most CD/DVDs are FAR more vulnerable to damage by being scratched through the top side. The bottom side has most of thickness of the disc (clear, resilient plastic) between the surface and the data medium. The actual information is stored on the backside of the substrate at the TOP of the disk, and even a shallow scratch through that will destroy data.
You can have a pretty massive scratch on the plastic side, and judicious application of nose grease and a high-quality reader will do just fine. Scratch the data layer, and you're screwed.
They can still texture the top side, but *that* is the side that requires the best protection you can get on it, either way.
What open market? You still need a beta invite to sign up for an account. Moron...
Media self-censorship a function of consolidation.
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I think that the biggest threat to the free press in the United States today comes from the owners of media conglomerates, not the government. The continuing centralization of media ownership and the ongoing lobbying campaign in support of media consolidation leave us with an oligarchy of giant media groups. Often, the major media outlets of a city are owned by one or two large corporations, with interlocking ownership.
Under those conditions, the views of the owners are propagated without check, because there simply is no real independent mass media in most parts of the US today. They censor themselves, so the government doesn't have to.
FUD! That's a general trouble-shooting page, dealing with copy-protection issues.
Attempting to load the program when logged in as administrator is the 10th item on the troubleshooting list, and is entirely reasonable given that administrators can configure each user's access as they see fit. You can't expect Microsoft to make their programs run when the user doesn't have access to the physical drive that the copy-protection media is in.
Under default settings, at least some of these programs will run just fine as a non-admin user, I've tried it myself.
Or you can go on Dell's website and pick up a fully-assembled and personally-configured machine matching those specs, with pre-installed legit software for ~$1200. For a bare-bones system running Linux (which they do offer) take a couple hundred off that price. It takes 15 minutes to customize your system and plug in your credit card number, a couple days later it gets shipped to you, and in roughly a week you've got your machine with no further annoyance other than plugging the various cables in.
If you don't want the looming 'threat' of having purchased cheapware, go to a local independent retailer. For a reasonable price premium, you can purchase a system with quality and attributes of your choosing, assembled by someone else, and working 'out of the box'. Want a super-quiet case? Pick up one of those high-end Antec cases that are cheap now 'cause they didn't sell well. Video card? Ain't no mac can live in the world of a 6800 Ultra. Dual Opterons? Well, that'll cost you, but it'll own the socks off a Mac where it counts.
Macs can't compete with commodity hardware on price, at low end or high end, and they can't compete with Windows for widespread software availability.
Plus, the mere fact that you're using a mac annoys the hell out of 80% of the first-line tech support people you're likely to encounter, and if you're planning on using your system to access outside computer resources you're going to have to talk to them sometime...
130 watts of continuous usage runs to almost 100kW/Hr per month, which works out to an additional $8-12 on my power bill. I live in a relatively cheap electricity market, too.
Given that there are five high-end computers currently living in my basement, I'd say it adds up.
My problem? Cable modem.
on
AMD 90nm Evaluated
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
As the proud owner of an old-school Duron, my computer isn't a problem. However, living in a bachelor pad which happens to be filled with geeks, we have a cable modem.
This makes our house faster than our friends' houses. So their computers migrate there also. And the bastards never remember to turn them off...
Having five or six power-hungry gaming systems around explains much about our recent power bills.
I guess the Greens don't believe in personal responsibility.
I'd like to note that criminalizing individual drug possession and usage in the absence of harm to others is an excellent way to ferret out and imprison those naughty people who don't have any personal responsibility, and are clearly an immediate threat to our society!
We need to continue to create more victimless crimes to keep our society safe from evildoers.
...but what does 'hx4705' translate to non-l33t?
on
HP iPAQ hx4705 Reviewed
·
· Score: 3, Funny
HP iPAQ hx4705 Reviewed
When I saw that phrase, I spent a good 20 seconds trying to figure out what the non-l33t translation for 'hx4705' was.
"HP iPAQ hacks... No... Um, hat attacks? No. What the hell does that say?!?"
Sure, you can say that I spend too much time on IRC, but I blame the editors for posting an article title that wouldn't pass the lameness filter if I tried to add it as a comment. What am I supposed to think, other than 'wow, that's some seriously obfuscated l33t'?
We are still cleaning up and testing to ensure that the infection does not return. We did discover that we had several machines throughout the organization that had various spyware and other downloaded games and programs. One that stands out and may well have been the entry point for the worm is the ARES P2P program.
Sounds like p2p is only one of many potential culprits in this case. From prior experience, I'd be more inclined to blame spyware programs which are deliberately designed to socially-engineer users into compromising their own systems.
Once you've got spyware running, the security of your system becomes dependent on the integrity of spyware creators who have already passed the ethical brightline of coercing users to install their product through either dishonesty or direct exploits.
The content that can be reached via P2P software poses some degree of security risk in untrained hands, but that risk is miniscule compared to the mind-boggling insanity of discounting the danger of spyware which has gained access to your network without necessarily even being intentionally placed there by a user. If spyware is running, the system is compromised. End of story.
...and that's why I run PeerGuardian Lite with the malware/evil only blocklist and Spybot S&D in active-protect mode on my system and anywhere else I have access to. You should too.
Yeah, the bastards killed Multiplayer Battletech.
on
MMORPG Circle of Life
·
· Score: 1
Just like when the bastards at EA killed Multiplayer Battletech.
Hell, they could have started charging for what they already had in the beta with *no additional development* and I'd have bought it.
I still say the beta of MPBT:3025 was one of the most entertaining games ever made.
Moving up out of the broadband stone age, I got bored at work a month ago and decided to play some Counter-Strike.
It took about as long to load the game and set all of my controls the way I like them than it did to download/install on Steam.
Since Steam came around, the number of exploits has risen instead of decrease. Great work.
Uh-huh. Not that I've noticed-- haven't seen any cheaters around in a while. Multiple weekly security/microcode updates tend to be hard on the kind of mass-distribution cheats that are a problem online.
I think you just don't know what yoiu're talking about.
They want the perception that the internet is becoming more threatening, ideally in conjunction with their product being portrayed as a solution.
That leads to increased sales for their overpriced consumer-level products. It's like how the Bush Administration spews agitprop about terrorism despite the total absence of domestic terrorism problems since 9/11-- both as a preventive measure and as an underhanded plan to create public demand for anti-terrorism policies which increase government involvement in areas where it will end up costing us heavily.
Slashdot Mirror
If you raised wages, EA would have to use less programmers to get a given job done, produce inferior work or have to charge higher prices
Bullshit on a stick, newbie. EA had an operating profit of over $500M USD last year, and spent several hundred million dollars on marketing alone. You want to argue that globalization should fuck workers here? I think it should make life better for workers everywhere.
EA's financial status as of last year.
Sales $2.82 bil
Profits $.50 bil
Assets $3.34 bil
Market Value $13.28 bil
Employees 4,000
CEO Probst's compensation package
$1.45M in cash this year, $145M in stock options granted over his career. Stock options may look free, but they damn well aren't-- the difference comes out of the company's profits same as any other compensation.
So, EA games has 3,300 programmers. Hire another 1,650 at $60,000 a pop, and the wages cost you $100M a year. Adjust to ~$150M a year for benefits, and you're still taking up less than one third of EA's operating profits from last year.
Productivity goes up, and it costs you less than the money spent compensating the CEO in the last 10 years.
We can also compare it to EA Games' marketing budget, estimated at >$100M in the last quarter. Cut your marketing budget by 30%, and you can hire enough programmers for them to have normal lives and increase production.
I uninstalled SP2 on my folks' computer. Software compatibility problems, general annoyance, and as the final straw SP2 was not compatible with the installer program for Microsoft's own Office 2000.
I'm reasonably happy with XP+SP1, but SP2 was a giant step backward.
I'm not a hardcore gamer
Did you, or did you not, purchase Half-Life the first day it was on sale? Mmkay, then. If you want less of an effort *wait a week*.
For the record, three (3) separate installs took place on opening day among various computers in the possession of myself an my roommates. No hitches, nothing took more than 40 minutes... reasonable, for a game that comes on five (5) CDs.
Bottom line? Valve's products just earned >$150 from people in my house, and we 're all very happy with our purchases.
"Yes, but I know sound doesn't not not travel through a vaccum!"
Modified Homerisms for every situation.
Flash Halo2 Update: Apparently Halo 2 may play around with lots of files on the hard disks of modded xboxes too.
Reporting User Update: People's text while recounting this issue to me would no longer pass the lameness filter, based on content, typos, and caps. This is the most hilarious thing to happen yet today...
Some of my contacts say that Halo 2 re-flashes the BIOS on modded xboxes. Any other reports of this?
Heh, if there's one xbox game to put sneaky re-flashing capability on, this is it. Very cunning move, Microsoft.
Most CD/DVDs are FAR more vulnerable to damage by being scratched through the top side. The bottom side has most of thickness of the disc (clear, resilient plastic) between the surface and the data medium. The actual information is stored on the backside of the substrate at the TOP of the disk, and even a shallow scratch through that will destroy data.
You can have a pretty massive scratch on the plastic side, and judicious application of nose grease and a high-quality reader will do just fine. Scratch the data layer, and you're screwed.
They can still texture the top side, but *that* is the side that requires the best protection you can get on it, either way.
on the open market
What open market? You still need a beta invite to sign up for an account. Moron...
I think that the biggest threat to the free press in the United States today comes from the owners of media conglomerates, not the government. The continuing centralization of media ownership and the ongoing lobbying campaign in support of media consolidation leave us with an oligarchy of giant media groups. Often, the major media outlets of a city are owned by one or two large corporations, with interlocking ownership.
Under those conditions, the views of the owners are propagated without check, because there simply is no real independent mass media in most parts of the US today. They censor themselves, so the government doesn't have to.
I'll save them some time: My innermost desire is a fat-free pudding that doesn't let you down in the flavor department like so many others.
Oh. That's just like my innermost desire... except I'd prefer that my fat-free flavorful pudding also be redheaded and named "Aurora".
s/written/vomited by lemurs
FUD! That's a general trouble-shooting page, dealing with copy-protection issues.
Attempting to load the program when logged in as administrator is the 10th item on the troubleshooting list, and is entirely reasonable given that administrators can configure each user's access as they see fit. You can't expect Microsoft to make their programs run when the user doesn't have access to the physical drive that the copy-protection media is in.
Under default settings, at least some of these programs will run just fine as a non-admin user, I've tried it myself.
Or you can go on Dell's website and pick up a fully-assembled and personally-configured machine matching those specs, with pre-installed legit software for ~$1200. For a bare-bones system running Linux (which they do offer) take a couple hundred off that price. It takes 15 minutes to customize your system and plug in your credit card number, a couple days later it gets shipped to you, and in roughly a week you've got your machine with no further annoyance other than plugging the various cables in.
If you don't want the looming 'threat' of having purchased cheapware, go to a local independent retailer. For a reasonable price premium, you can purchase a system with quality and attributes of your choosing, assembled by someone else, and working 'out of the box'. Want a super-quiet case? Pick up one of those high-end Antec cases that are cheap now 'cause they didn't sell well. Video card? Ain't no mac can live in the world of a 6800 Ultra. Dual Opterons? Well, that'll cost you, but it'll own the socks off a Mac where it counts.
Macs can't compete with commodity hardware on price, at low end or high end, and they can't compete with Windows for widespread software availability.
Plus, the mere fact that you're using a mac annoys the hell out of 80% of the first-line tech support people you're likely to encounter, and if you're planning on using your system to access outside computer resources you're going to have to talk to them sometime...
Technically, Duke Nukem just stole a lot of the 'tude and lines from AOD.
AOD: 1993.
DN3D: 1996.
Does that give Duke Nukem 3-D a "-1, Redundant"?
Replace 'eye' with 'brain', and you could have the scientific accident which results in the creation of a new superhero... "THE BRAIN"
130 watts of continuous usage runs to almost 100kW/Hr per month, which works out to an additional $8-12 on my power bill. I live in a relatively cheap electricity market, too.
Given that there are five high-end computers currently living in my basement, I'd say it adds up.
As the proud owner of an old-school Duron, my computer isn't a problem. However, living in a bachelor pad which happens to be filled with geeks, we have a cable modem.
This makes our house faster than our friends' houses. So their computers migrate there also. And the bastards never remember to turn them off...
Having five or six power-hungry gaming systems around explains much about our recent power bills.
I guess the Greens don't believe in personal responsibility.
I'd like to note that criminalizing individual drug possession and usage in the absence of harm to others is an excellent way to ferret out and imprison those naughty people who don't have any personal responsibility, and are clearly an immediate threat to our society!
We need to continue to create more victimless crimes to keep our society safe from evildoers.
HP iPAQ hx4705 Reviewed
When I saw that phrase, I spent a good 20 seconds trying to figure out what the non-l33t translation for 'hx4705' was.
"HP iPAQ hacks... No... Um, hat attacks? No. What the hell does that say?!?"
Sure, you can say that I spend too much time on IRC, but I blame the editors for posting an article title that wouldn't pass the lameness filter if I tried to add it as a comment. What am I supposed to think, other than 'wow, that's some seriously obfuscated l33t'?
We are still cleaning up and testing to ensure that the infection does not return. We did discover that we had several machines throughout the organization that had various spyware and other downloaded games and programs. One that stands out and may well have been the entry point for the worm is the ARES P2P program.
Sounds like p2p is only one of many potential culprits in this case. From prior experience, I'd be more inclined to blame spyware programs which are deliberately designed to socially-engineer users into compromising their own systems.
Once you've got spyware running, the security of your system becomes dependent on the integrity of spyware creators who have already passed the ethical brightline of coercing users to install their product through either dishonesty or direct exploits.
The content that can be reached via P2P software poses some degree of security risk in untrained hands, but that risk is miniscule compared to the mind-boggling insanity of discounting the danger of spyware which has gained access to your network without necessarily even being intentionally placed there by a user. If spyware is running, the system is compromised. End of story.
...and that's why I run PeerGuardian Lite with the malware/evil only blocklist and Spybot S&D in active-protect mode on my system and anywhere else I have access to. You should too.
Just like when the bastards at EA killed Multiplayer Battletech.
Hell, they could have started charging for what they already had in the beta with *no additional development* and I'd have bought it.
I still say the beta of MPBT:3025 was one of the most entertaining games ever made.
over two years ago.
Over two years ago being the operative clause.
Moving up out of the broadband stone age, I got bored at work a month ago and decided to play some Counter-Strike.
It took about as long to load the game and set all of my controls the way I like them than it did to download/install on Steam.
Since Steam came around, the number of exploits has risen instead of decrease. Great work.
Uh-huh. Not that I've noticed-- haven't seen any cheaters around in a while. Multiple weekly security/microcode updates tend to be hard on the kind of mass-distribution cheats that are a problem online.
I think you just don't know what yoiu're talking about.
They don't want to actually see more trouble.
They want the perception that the internet is becoming more threatening, ideally in conjunction with their product being portrayed as a solution.
That leads to increased sales for their overpriced consumer-level products. It's like how the Bush Administration spews agitprop about terrorism despite the total absence of domestic terrorism problems since 9/11-- both as a preventive measure and as an underhanded plan to create public demand for anti-terrorism policies which increase government involvement in areas where it will end up costing us heavily.
Game, set, match Symantec/Rove.
Eh, I can beat that. I want a C grade warranty. :)
HP's computer line is a joke everywhere. Well, everywhere outside Elbonia.