"A total of 16,777,216 IP address numbers were just allocated to the Asian Pacific Network Information Centre IP address registry for assignment to users"
Oh, that's good to know. Now I don't have to bother looking up the registrar for all of those hacking attempt logs on my Linux server.
I just made up those prices, I wouldn't get too literal there... But anyway, yeah, I think I have made similar points on/. before when people bring this up, but I usually just get modded down;)
Which is a bit ironic, since my primary router/gateway is a Linux box (though also a NAS, DLNA/DAAP server, backup server, an external HTTP/FTP/SSH/mail server, etc). I just don't pretend the hours of tinkering with it has saved me any money as a router...
Yeah, I do get that, and the OP may have exaggerated a bit (though not necessarily by much - a good consultant can easily make well over $200k in 18 months if desired). But it still doesn't mean he can just claim as a blanket statement "anyone can make a game for free!" (which he basically states)
If it hadn't been for the revenue he made after it was released, I doubt he'd be making more games of that level of effort without any upfront source of income, unless he's lucky enough to be independently wealthy - in which case the opportunity cost of his time is zero (or negative for many people who would otherwise just spend money with all that free time;)
It reminds me of all the people who say things like "why buy a $10 DVD when you can rip or torrent it, burn to a DVD-R, and print a nice label?" Or "why buy a wireless router for $100 when you get go get a cheap used PC for $25, download and install a simple Linux distro on it, configure DNS, DHCP, routing, firewall, VPN, etc yourself?" Yes, you can spend a few bucks less out of your wallet those ways, but don't kid yourself that you are really "saving money" if you get paid $75/hour to do the same things in your day job! If it's a hobby, that's great, but not everyone finds it as fun...
"I worked an average of three or four hours a day on development, with a few self-imposed crunch periods. The development cycle was around three years. It was hard at times, but that's just because it's a lot of work for one person to do."
For some reason he seems to consider his time free. I'm continually amazed at how people fail to account for the opportunity cost of their time in the software industry. 4 hours a day for 3 years is 1 1/2 years of his time. Just because he doesn't take a salary from himself, doesn't mean that should not be included in the development cost - he just received his equivalent compensation plus much more once the game sold so well.
if they were to charge those outside of the UK then they would have to ensure that their GeoIP code works flawlessly
Not really... they just have to make sure it's reasonable. Maybe a few people will go to the effort to use some proxy server, but honestly it's really not worth that effort just to save such a small fee for such a commodity service...
Rumor is that Apple is going to announce it anyway in about 10 days, so it's not like anyone (besides Apple and Gawker, possibly) will give a shit about all this after that, anyway.
One reason: any GOOD engineer also understands the value of time vs money, and doesn't need to waste that valuable time making a simple cable by hand when a perfectly good mass produced cable can be purchased for a few dollars.
Lexicon, along with many of the other high end brands, sells the majority of their products through the CEDIA market. I can guarantee you through experience that anything sold through that market has a huge markup compared to the mainstream consumer gear. You can argue all you want, but it's simply a matter of manufacturing costs, wholesale, and retail markup, and those numbers don't lie.
given a choice of 2 interconnects where one is to exact-length and the other is varying length, which would you choose, all else being equal? and ignoring the insane markup (yes, its uncalled for!).
What are you talking about? The insane markup is the whole point! You are saying that there is probably no measurable difference - in that case, any good engineer would choose the less expensive solution. End of story.
Seriously? Yeah, Lexicon's ridiculously overpriced equipment used to be worth the ridiculous prices, but *now* they are ruining the company and overcharging.
Or maybe they have ALWAYS been charging a 500%+ markup on their products just because they could. I'm not saying Lexicon doesn't have some of the best products in the business - just that the best products in the business do NOT need to cost 5-10x the average products in the business...
Really? I thought all slashdot comments WERE just a variant on agreement or disagreement.
Interesting: Agree, and you have stated your opinion as "fact" Overrated: Disagree, and you have stated your opinion as "fact"
Informative: Agree, and I didn't know that fact! Insightful: Agree, and I DID know that fact!
Troll: Disagree, but it's the first time I have seen that argument Redundant: Disagree, and I have already seen that argument
Offtopic: Disagree, and your point didn't really make much sense Underrated: Agree, but your point didn't really make much sense
Flamebait: Disagree, and you stated your comment in a particularly offensive way Funny: Agree, and you stated your comment in a particularly offensive way
That's more or less exactly what happened when the USA got caught using the Echelon system for the exact same purposes as the Chinese are now mounting these attacks.
So the US was hacking into human rights workers' information in order to find and imprison its own citizens that were speaking up against them? Right.
Are you serious? It's politics. It's an official statement by the US Secretary of State claiming the US govt has received evidence from Google and demands an explanation. The Chinese government is VERY conscious about world perception, and their own embarrassment or humiliation, etc. Calling them out like this will force them to respond, and they have learned from several previous International fiascos (SARS, lead, tainted milk, etc) that lying and denying everything when the proof is already out usually just causes lot more harm than good. You are right that they probably will have to deny it (lead paint is one thing, govt sponsored international industrial espionage is another) - but they are going to lose a lot of international credibility in the process.
This kind of potential leverage in international politics and diplomacy doesn't come along very often, so I hope the US govt keeps up the statements like this to keep the Chinese govt on the defensive!
I have had a great experience as a dyndns user. I paid $30 for each of 2 customdns domains when they were still flat rate, and now I am grandfathered into them forever... can't beat that:)
You didn't even READ the article you posted. It's about people illegally using their condos and apartments as cheap hotel rooms. It has nothing to do with having a business meeting in a real hotel room.
None of this should make any difference to an unrelated contract between a hotel and a vendor.
In the end, you know what this is? Capitalism. If the CEA wants to keep vendors from fleeing to cheaper venues, do you know what they need to do? LOWER THEIR PRICES.
Last I heard it was at least $40 per sq ft to rent floor space - that's $20,000 for just 500sq ft for 4 days. And that doesn't include the thousands more for any furniture, thousands for often crappy Internet access, overpaid labor to do any setup, or even the $3 per bottle of water (and woe to anyone who tries to bring their own!)
And have you ever been in their "meeting rooms"? A confusing sea of temporary walls that look like they are about to fall down, with minimal amenities. Why should a company be forced to have private meetings there (and pay even more, of course), whether they are renting booth space or not?
Again, I think people are unclear on the whole "reboot" concept.
Farscape, like Firefly, was a great show, but I'm pretty sure right now all of their fans would prefer that they just continue with new stories featuring the same cast, production studio, etc rather than "reboot", ie recast and tell the same story over in a different way...
Slashdot Mirror
Umm... how about... SQL? Which as you obviously don't know, is the dominant language for databases, and is the primary domain for a company like SAS.
Oh, and also mathematics in general. Yeah, that little detail which has been around a bit longer than programming languages...
Redundant? I hadn't seen a similar post, please point it out if I'm wrong.
I guess the horde of Chinese government-sponsored hackers also has a "slashdot mod division"...
"A total of 16,777,216 IP address numbers were just allocated to the Asian Pacific Network Information Centre IP address registry for assignment to users"
Oh, that's good to know. Now I don't have to bother looking up the registrar for all of those hacking attempt logs on my Linux server.
I just made up those prices, I wouldn't get too literal there... But anyway, yeah, I think I have made similar points on /. before when people bring this up, but I usually just get modded down ;)
Which is a bit ironic, since my primary router/gateway is a Linux box (though also a NAS, DLNA/DAAP server, backup server, an external HTTP/FTP/SSH/mail server, etc). I just don't pretend the hours of tinkering with it has saved me any money as a router...
Yeah, I do get that, and the OP may have exaggerated a bit (though not necessarily by much - a good consultant can easily make well over $200k in 18 months if desired). But it still doesn't mean he can just claim as a blanket statement "anyone can make a game for free!" (which he basically states)
If it hadn't been for the revenue he made after it was released, I doubt he'd be making more games of that level of effort without any upfront source of income, unless he's lucky enough to be independently wealthy - in which case the opportunity cost of his time is zero (or negative for many people who would otherwise just spend money with all that free time ;)
It reminds me of all the people who say things like "why buy a $10 DVD when you can rip or torrent it, burn to a DVD-R, and print a nice label?" Or "why buy a wireless router for $100 when you get go get a cheap used PC for $25, download and install a simple Linux distro on it, configure DNS, DHCP, routing, firewall, VPN, etc yourself?" Yes, you can spend a few bucks less out of your wallet those ways, but don't kid yourself that you are really "saving money" if you get paid $75/hour to do the same things in your day job! If it's a hobby, that's great, but not everyone finds it as fun...
Well... From Jonathan:
"I worked an average of three or four hours a day on development, with a few self-imposed crunch periods. The development cycle was around three years. It was hard at times, but that's just because it's a lot of work for one person to do."
For some reason he seems to consider his time free. I'm continually amazed at how people fail to account for the opportunity cost of their time in the software industry. 4 hours a day for 3 years is 1 1/2 years of his time. Just because he doesn't take a salary from himself, doesn't mean that should not be included in the development cost - he just received his equivalent compensation plus much more once the game sold so well.
Chuck Norris doesn't need a password, because when it's the real Chuck Norris - you just know.
if they were to charge those outside of the UK then they would have to ensure that their GeoIP code works flawlessly
Not really... they just have to make sure it's reasonable. Maybe a few people will go to the effort to use some proxy server, but honestly it's really not worth that effort just to save such a small fee for such a commodity service...
Rumor is that Apple is going to announce it anyway in about 10 days, so it's not like anyone (besides Apple and Gawker, possibly) will give a shit about all this after that, anyway.
One reason: any GOOD engineer also understands the value of time vs money, and doesn't need to waste that valuable time making a simple cable by hand when a perfectly good mass produced cable can be purchased for a few dollars.
Lexicon, along with many of the other high end brands, sells the majority of their products through the CEDIA market. I can guarantee you through experience that anything sold through that market has a huge markup compared to the mainstream consumer gear. You can argue all you want, but it's simply a matter of manufacturing costs, wholesale, and retail markup, and those numbers don't lie.
given a choice of 2 interconnects where one is to exact-length and the other is varying length, which would you choose, all else being equal? and ignoring the insane markup (yes, its uncalled for!).
What are you talking about? The insane markup is the whole point! You are saying that there is probably no measurable difference - in that case, any good engineer would choose the less expensive solution. End of story.
Seriously? Yeah, Lexicon's ridiculously overpriced equipment used to be worth the ridiculous prices, but *now* they are ruining the company and overcharging.
Or maybe they have ALWAYS been charging a 500%+ markup on their products just because they could. I'm not saying Lexicon doesn't have some of the best products in the business - just that the best products in the business do NOT need to cost 5-10x the average products in the business...
Really? I thought all slashdot comments WERE just a variant on agreement or disagreement.
Interesting: Agree, and you have stated your opinion as "fact"
Overrated: Disagree, and you have stated your opinion as "fact"
Informative: Agree, and I didn't know that fact!
Insightful: Agree, and I DID know that fact!
Troll: Disagree, but it's the first time I have seen that argument
Redundant: Disagree, and I have already seen that argument
Offtopic: Disagree, and your point didn't really make much sense
Underrated: Agree, but your point didn't really make much sense
Flamebait: Disagree, and you stated your comment in a particularly offensive way
Funny: Agree, and you stated your comment in a particularly offensive way
Actually, foreign debt is about 25% - so that makes the Chinese total portion about 5%...
That would make it a hell of a lot easier to blacklist, at least...
The PATRIOT Act was created a year after the EU's ECHELON investigation referred to in the OP. Move along, troll.
That's more or less exactly what happened when the USA got caught using the Echelon system for the exact same purposes as the Chinese are now mounting these attacks.
So the US was hacking into human rights workers' information in order to find and imprison its own citizens that were speaking up against them? Right.
Are you serious? It's politics. It's an official statement by the US Secretary of State claiming the US govt has received evidence from Google and demands an explanation. The Chinese government is VERY conscious about world perception, and their own embarrassment or humiliation, etc. Calling them out like this will force them to respond, and they have learned from several previous International fiascos (SARS, lead, tainted milk, etc) that lying and denying everything when the proof is already out usually just causes lot more harm than good. You are right that they probably will have to deny it (lead paint is one thing, govt sponsored international industrial espionage is another) - but they are going to lose a lot of international credibility in the process.
This kind of potential leverage in international politics and diplomacy doesn't come along very often, so I hope the US govt keeps up the statements like this to keep the Chinese govt on the defensive!
I have had a great experience as a dyndns user. I paid $30 for each of 2 customdns domains when they were still flat rate, and now I am grandfathered into them forever... can't beat that :)
Meh. I'd say they rebooted from a *horrible* Hulk movie in order to make a mediocre one. Neither was really worth watching IMO...
Yup. You can't take the pee out of the pool. Doesn't matter if it was the shallow end or the deep end, it's all going to circulate eventually.
You didn't even READ the article you posted. It's about people illegally using their condos and apartments as cheap hotel rooms. It has nothing to do with having a business meeting in a real hotel room.
None of this should make any difference to an unrelated contract between a hotel and a vendor.
In the end, you know what this is? Capitalism. If the CEA wants to keep vendors from fleeing to cheaper venues, do you know what they need to do? LOWER THEIR PRICES.
Last I heard it was at least $40 per sq ft to rent floor space - that's $20,000 for just 500sq ft for 4 days. And that doesn't include the thousands more for any furniture, thousands for often crappy Internet access, overpaid labor to do any setup, or even the $3 per bottle of water (and woe to anyone who tries to bring their own!)
And have you ever been in their "meeting rooms"? A confusing sea of temporary walls that look like they are about to fall down, with minimal amenities. Why should a company be forced to have private meetings there (and pay even more, of course), whether they are renting booth space or not?
Again, I think people are unclear on the whole "reboot" concept.
Farscape, like Firefly, was a great show, but I'm pretty sure right now all of their fans would prefer that they just continue with new stories featuring the same cast, production studio, etc rather than "reboot", ie recast and tell the same story over in a different way...