whereas Microsoft happily licenses their DRM scheme to whoever asks for it in order to encourage interoperability.
MS claim to "license anywhere", but what they won't do is qualify any PC platforms other than Windows to authenticate protected content. So even if a software developer wanted to license WMA DRM, they still can't build an application for Mac OS X or Linux. All they are "encouraging" is more sales of Windows.
Technically, you have $625 worth of cards for a pretty awesome TCG and a free Ogre trinket that you can use or sell on eBay. You really can't argue with eBay - search completed auctions for 'murloc pet' and you'll see they sell for $500-700 like this one.
Personally, I'd get divorced if I spent that much money on a pet. I don't understand antiquing myself - why spend thousands of dollars on old furniture that's uncomfortable and too fragile to use? But I don't get worked up about what people choose to spend their own money on.:)
The UDE reward points in the World of Warcraft TCG were intended to be a reward for players - not a reason to drive sales. They're simply a "bonus" that can be redeemed for not only items in the WoW online game, but also for physical items like deck boxes, playmats, token cards, etc. However, we understand that we didn't do the best job communicating our intent, so as of Monday morning we've announced that we're cutting the points required to obtain the trinkets in half, and eliminating the threshold for the tabard.
A pack of cards, containing 100 points, sells for $5.00, while an entire box, containing 24 packs or 2400 points, costs around $100.00. UDE lists the in-game fireworks trinket at 20,000 points and the ogre trinket at a whopping 50,000 points. The talbard, which sells for a "reasonable" 2,500 points, actually requires an account of points worth 25,000, placing it in the same price bracket as the other trinkets.
The article's math is a little off. The MSRP for a booster pack is $3.89, so a box of 24 packs retails for $93.36. Most game stores sell boxes at a discount, and if you poke around online or on eBay you can find them as low as $60. With the new costs announced today, you can accumulate enough points for the fireworks trinket by spending $389 at retail, or about $250 if you order online. The Ogre trinket will cost about $625 if you bought boxes just for the reward points.
The article glosses over the fact that alongside the UDE points, you're also getting cards to, you know, actually play the game. You end up with at least 250 Rare/Epic and 750 Uncommon cards which all have a value on the secondary market, and looking at prices one week out from release things are looking pretty good. If you just want the UDE points, then take your cards to a game store or put them on eBay, and you can recoup a large amount of the money you spent on cards originally.
Honestly though, you should just give the game a chance. It's the best TCG to be released in the last 10 years, and does a good job being honest to the online game. If anyone at a recognized website or print publication wants some product to review the actual gameplay, please send me a message and I'll get some out to you this week.
Cheers,
Ben
--
Ben Drago
Organized Play
Upper Deck Entertainment
And why isn't Slashdot linking directly to SCO's homepage? Let's cost them a few bucks in bandwidth, maybe knock them offline for a bit. You know Slashdot is just another "evil Linux company" anyway.
Go check out the picture of McBride on SCO's main page. How can you take a CEO seriously when he wears a suit jacket over a t-shirt?
I mocked BtVS (and the fans) for years - partially because of the show, plus some misplaced derision of the pseudo-Goths I knew from high school and college.
Then FX started showing all the episodes in order - two a day. Let's just say "thank God for Tivo."
About three months later I'd seen almost every episode from the first five seasons. And I loved it. The writing was often excellent, and the casting was perfect. The first three seasons did a great job capturing the real essence of high school, instead of the Utopia often portrayed in network shows about those awkward years.
It's certainly not perfect, but even the worst episodes were often way above average, which is more than we can expect from the boob tube these days. And when BtVS was at its best, it held it's own with anything on TV - Buffy was nominated for an Emmy for Best Writing in a Drama, and the other nominees were two episodes each of "West Wing" and "The Sopranos". Not too shabby.
Anyway - before you make fun of it too much, it's worth checking. I'm pretty sure FX is still rerunning the series in order. It's definately worth waiting to start with the first season, as the show has a great mythos that later episodes rely on.
Interesting. If the CDs will still play in regular CD players, then the actual music is still on the CDs in an unencrypted format. Shouldn't CD-ROM manufacturers just be able to update the device drivers so that their drives don't choke on whatever copy protection is at the beginning of the CD?
... and get nailed by the DMCA by working around copy-protection? Hell - CD-ROM manufacturers may have to make sure that their drives don't work with this hybrid un-CDs, or they could get nailed by the DMCA even if the fact it now works was simply a byproduct of other new features or bug fixes.
Going from $230M Net Income 4 quarters ago to $10M last quarter is a good indication they will be cutting back on spending, laying off good people, etc.
Umm. SGI went from a loss of $230 million, to a positive net income of $10 million.
The SGI F220 is the next generation of the 22" Apple Cinema Display. I'll leave the details as an excercise for the reader.
One of the cool things about the F220 is that is has VGA, DVI, S-Video, and composite video inputs. You can switch between them from the front panel, or with the handy remote control. It even has picture-in-picture.
So it's not the cheapest, but it does have some extra features some users would be interested in.
For everything I've read about Tivo, there's nothing yet that has convinced me I want one. Can it get to the 100+ digital channels I have now? (not that my VCR can, but if the Tivo can't, then it's no better.) Just curious.
Yes. My old 14-hour Tivo controls my brand new digital cable box flawlessly. I've even set it up to record the digital channels instead of analog if both are available (like HBO).
For DirectTV users, there's DirectTivo which combines a Tivo and your DirectTV unit, so that you only have to have one box. Or you can just connect your Tivo to your current satellite box with a serial cable, and it will control it from there.
This may be really interesting if it actually allows you to burn TV shows recorded with their "Giga Pocket Personal Video Recorder" to DVD. The collateral on the web page is pretty vague. It states that you "can record TV shows to your hard drive" and that you "can save your home movies to DVD"
If they don't have some kind of software lock to prevent saving the PRV files to DVD, I can see the TV networks getting upset. It would be trivial to save a whole season of the Sopranos on a couple of DVDs.
How about "The only SGI systems that SGI sells and supports with Linux are the low-end Intel workstations and Intel servers." Is that clear enough for you, or should I use smaller words?
I wonder if folks over at SGI plan on dropping Irix in the near future for Linux entirely. As it stands right now the majority of their hardware run Linux, and the last version of Irix released was to mainly fix bugs.
The only SGI systems that run Linux right now are the low-end Intel workstations (230, 330, and 550) and the Intel rack-mount servers (1100, 1200, 1400, 1450) - certainly not a "majority of [our] hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
whereas Microsoft happily licenses their DRM scheme to whoever asks for it in order to encourage interoperability.
MS claim to "license anywhere", but what they won't do is qualify any PC platforms other than Windows to authenticate protected content. So even if a software developer wanted to license WMA DRM, they still can't build an application for Mac OS X or Linux. All they are "encouraging" is more sales of Windows.Technically, you have $625 worth of cards for a pretty awesome TCG and a free Ogre trinket that you can use or sell on eBay. You really can't argue with eBay - search completed auctions for 'murloc pet' and you'll see they sell for $500-700 like this one.
Personally, I'd get divorced if I spent that much money on a pet. I don't understand antiquing myself - why spend thousands of dollars on old furniture that's uncomfortable and too fragile to use? But I don't get worked up about what people choose to spend their own money on. :)
The UDE reward points in the World of Warcraft TCG were intended to be a reward for players - not a reason to drive sales. They're simply a "bonus" that can be redeemed for not only items in the WoW online game, but also for physical items like deck boxes, playmats, token cards, etc. However, we understand that we didn't do the best job communicating our intent, so as of Monday morning we've announced that we're cutting the points required to obtain the trinkets in half, and eliminating the threshold for the tabard.
A pack of cards, containing 100 points, sells for $5.00, while an entire box, containing 24 packs or 2400 points, costs around $100.00. UDE lists the in-game fireworks trinket at 20,000 points and the ogre trinket at a whopping 50,000 points. The talbard, which sells for a "reasonable" 2,500 points, actually requires an account of points worth 25,000, placing it in the same price bracket as the other trinkets.
The article's math is a little off. The MSRP for a booster pack is $3.89, so a box of 24 packs retails for $93.36. Most game stores sell boxes at a discount, and if you poke around online or on eBay you can find them as low as $60. With the new costs announced today, you can accumulate enough points for the fireworks trinket by spending $389 at retail, or about $250 if you order online. The Ogre trinket will cost about $625 if you bought boxes just for the reward points.
The article glosses over the fact that alongside the UDE points, you're also getting cards to, you know, actually play the game. You end up with at least 250 Rare/Epic and 750 Uncommon cards which all have a value on the secondary market, and looking at prices one week out from release things are looking pretty good. If you just want the UDE points, then take your cards to a game store or put them on eBay, and you can recoup a large amount of the money you spent on cards originally.
Honestly though, you should just give the game a chance. It's the best TCG to be released in the last 10 years, and does a good job being honest to the online game. If anyone at a recognized website or print publication wants some product to review the actual gameplay, please send me a message and I'll get some out to you this week.
Cheers,
Ben
--
Ben Drago
Organized Play
Upper Deck Entertainment
Cray vector business was sold to Tera in March 2000. SGI kept the NUMA properties.
23 minutes? That's not a song - that's a circle jerk. :)
Yes, forms!
On a clean 10.2 install pages like DEBKAfile display just fine with Safari and Mozilla. I get the "gibberish" in Internet Explorer though.
Go check out the picture of McBride on SCO's main page. How can you take a CEO seriously when he wears a suit jacket over a t-shirt?
... when every search result for sco.com gets redirected to goatse.cx or tubgirl.com.
The Altix at NASA is a true 512 processor single system image - it is not a cluster of smaller nodes.
Disclaimer: I work for SGI.
My parent needs +1, Funny.
And if you do keep it in your shirt pocket, the first time you lean forward to lift the toilet seat ...
*ker-SPOOLSH*
Then FX started showing all the episodes in order - two a day. Let's just say "thank God for Tivo."
About three months later I'd seen almost every episode from the first five seasons. And I loved it. The writing was often excellent, and the casting was perfect. The first three seasons did a great job capturing the real essence of high school, instead of the Utopia often portrayed in network shows about those awkward years.
It's certainly not perfect, but even the worst episodes were often way above average, which is more than we can expect from the boob tube these days. And when BtVS was at its best, it held it's own with anything on TV - Buffy was nominated for an Emmy for Best Writing in a Drama, and the other nominees were two episodes each of "West Wing" and "The Sopranos". Not too shabby.
Anyway - before you make fun of it too much, it's worth checking. I'm pretty sure FX is still rerunning the series in order. It's definately worth waiting to start with the first season, as the show has a great mythos that later episodes rely on.
C'mon man. Get with the program. It's "Lost them during the switch."
Umm. SGI went from a loss of $230 million, to a positive net income of $10 million.
The SGI F220 is the next generation of the 22" Apple Cinema Display. I'll leave the details as an excercise for the reader.
One of the cool things about the F220 is that is has VGA, DVI, S-Video, and composite video inputs. You can switch between them from the front panel, or with the handy remote control. It even has picture-in-picture.
So it's not the cheapest, but it does have some extra features some users would be interested in.
I've interviewed far too many Unix sysadmins that have amazing technicals abilities, but poor communication skills and/or huge egos.
I don't care how good you are - if you act like a dick, I'm not going to hire you.
Thankfully, we get to pick and choose now.
Yes. My old 14-hour Tivo controls my brand new digital cable box flawlessly. I've even set it up to record the digital channels instead of analog if both are available (like HBO).
For DirectTV users, there's DirectTivo which combines a Tivo and your DirectTV unit, so that you only have to have one box. Or you can just connect your Tivo to your current satellite box with a serial cable, and it will control it from there.
This may be really interesting if it actually allows you to burn TV shows recorded with their "Giga Pocket Personal Video Recorder" to DVD. The collateral on the web page is pretty vague. It states that you "can record TV shows to your hard drive" and that you "can save your home movies to DVD"
If they don't have some kind of software lock to prevent saving the PRV files to DVD, I can see the TV networks getting upset. It would be trivial to save a whole season of the Sopranos on a couple of DVDs.
I just watched the "Making of Shrek" program on HBO, and in every shot that had a computer that system was an SGI running IRIX.
How about "The only SGI systems that SGI sells and supports with Linux are the low-end Intel workstations and Intel servers." Is that clear enough for you, or should I use smaller words?
I wonder if folks over at SGI plan on dropping Irix in the near future for Linux entirely. As it stands right now the majority of their hardware run Linux, and the last version of Irix released was to mainly fix bugs.
The only SGI systems that run Linux right now are the low-end Intel workstations (230, 330, and 550) and the Intel rack-mount servers (1100, 1200, 1400, 1450) - certainly not a "majority of [our] hardware.
IRIX on MIPS is not going anywhere. Take a look at SGI's IRIX/MIPS roadmap.
InterVideo's WinDVD on my Dell laptop for work running Win2K takes screenshots from DVDs just fine.
> (i.e. you couldn't plug that nice LCD screen
> on anything else, so you were stucked with a
> cheezy card)
Or you can use a MultiLink adapter and connect to something like the Hercules Prophet DDR/DVI or Prophet2 Ultra running Linux or Windows.
MultiLink adapter