As pointed out on a news website (which I can't remember where for the moment), the whole thing appears staged, and they 'police' are probably acting (or actors).
It is not illegal in Russia to sell the western goods, it's just illegal to import them, under the current self-imposed Russian sanctions. There is no reason why the shop can't advertise the food, and there is no law that the police can use to stop the food from being sold.
Everything is fair and just. If you show you are a valuable resource that can't be replaced, then you have nothing to fear.
Wonderful!
Of course, the people running the company will never make poor, short term, misguided decisions.
Let me tell you a story.....
I was working as an external consultant for a very large company. They have amazingly complicated business processes - in fact too complicated. I encountered a large issue caused by poor business processes , that was affecting multiple business units. For each individual business unit, there was an elevated cost, but taken over the all of the units, the cost was huge.
Now, I didn't have enough knowledge to be able to resolve this, but there was a developer who had work there for 10 years, had contacts with all of the business units affected. With his help, I was able to arrange a meeting with multiple department head - which for this organization was a big achievement. I explained the issue, and the huge costs that could be saved. The developer was able to provide a solution, but it would also mean the way that 3 units worked would have to be slightly changed. The amount of work involved wasn't large, but the logistics were extremely difficult.
So, what happened? This developer who have 10 years of business knowledge and could help save hundreds of thousands each year was let go. He was replaced by Infosys, and a team of people in India (yes, a team replaced one person - but, hey, it was still cheaper). Management didn't know and didn't care that the business knowledge was leaving. The developer was kicked out, then I left for another project in another company. The business practices were never changed, and the cost savings never occurred.
It's been two years since, and I've heard that the outsourcing isn't going so well, and they have approached my consulting company group if they could put in a bid to take it over and bring it back on shore.
but you can't outsource Dave Johnson, because there's only one of him.
And there was only one of this developer with the business knowledge. It didn't save his ass from being outsourced to India.
(By the way, the company got rid of their entire development group, not just this one guy. They lost other people who had more experience - these people knew what was happening a couple of years in advance, and so left, which ironically made the outsourcing decision easier, since the development group was at half strength anyway.)
Or perhaps they could open an office in Flyover Land.
Good point. I've wondered why these companies are determined to keep everything in the most expensive areas where it's hard to find people cheaply.
I remember a number of years ago, Oracle opened up a new support centre in Colarado Springs. Not that there's a lot there now, but back then, there was a local military base, and not much else. Oracle then offered a relocation package to the support staff working in Redwood Shores - on the same salary as I recall. A lot of people moved, as their cost of living suddenly halved.
Surely Facebook et al could set up a new centre in the middle of knowehere, offer the same salary, and find lots of people.
Actually, to be very pedantic, it was originally the American high end brand for Toyota.
Toyota wanted to create an up market brand that didn't have the cheap Japanese car legacy that Toyota and other Japanese manufactures suffered from. Toyota launched Lexus, in think initially in the US, and they brought it to other markets.
In Japan, the high-end Lexus cars were sold as Toyotas. Lexus didn't appear in Japan until quite a while after it was going well globally. In the late 90's or early 2000's, I think.
I have a dive watch, and I dive with it every week. My dive instructors also wear dive watches....... of course, this is in a swimming pool, where we need to time things when training for our certifications (i.e. 50 seconds under water without air).
When we go open water diving, it's always with a computer, although the chief dive instructor always has a watch for a backup.
Most US teachers have the equivalent of an undergraduate degree in mathematics.
I'll believe you, since I don't have any knowledge of US teacher training or US degrees. I do have a question that I hope you can answer.
How can that be possible? How can you have a degree in something else, and still have the same level of maths as someone with a maths degree?
For my maths degree, I had free choice for the equivalent of 1/2 of a year. Every other class was a maths class, although some over lap with the people studying physics and computer science (and the into stats class was general for a lot of degrees). There is no general education requirement for degrees in the UK, as that is assumed that you received it in high school.
Even for my free choices, I chose maths subjects, since there were more areas of maths to study that could fit into one degree. There were some areas, such as the calculus of variations, that I wanted to study, but I couldn't fit in.
So, if I, only studying maths for every subject in my degree couldn't cover everything, how can someone studying something else have the same level of maths coverage as me?
When your nowhere to be found, your wife will think you're with your mistress, your mistress will think you're with your family, and you can have the time to submit bug reports!
Because he has supporters like myself who hate the convoluted Unix philosophy
In turn, you should accept that there is a difference between people who are using Linux as a desktop and need things like sound, and people who are using it in the server room.
I currently professionally support Linux systems. I like that it's similar to other Unix systems.
Let me see if I can even remember all of the Unix and Unix like operating systems I've had to support professionally... - Pyramid OSx - DG/UX - DEC Digital Unix (OSF/1) - HP MPE ix (MPE with a posix shell) - HP/UX - Xenix - SCO Unix - Solaris (Sparc, x86) - AIX
Now, you can't say I'm resistant to change, as there is a large difference in how all of those systems are administered. I liked the fact that Linux was familiar and I could switch over to it.
What I don't like is that desktop related changes are encroaching on the server room. Fine, you like playing games or listening to music. Don't force me to go down the same path.
You have to take into account that there are no absolutes in politics, except at the extreme ends.
Slashdot is a US website, and most of the people here have a US perspective. From the average person's perspective in the US, Sweden, and most of Europe is socialist.
A lot of people in the US truly believe that Obama is socialist (esp. w.r.t. Obamacare), where as in Europe, Obama is more to the centre-right.
I have a Synology DS512+ with 5x 3T disks. For storage size, capability and low noise, you just can't beat it. And it runs Linux.
It goes well with my
- Mac Pro (the old big silver box version),
- i7 with 24G ram (home built)
- i7 with 64G ram (home built)
- 2 x Xeon E5-2620 (6 core each) 192G ram
- Mac Mini
I have ethernet wired through the house, plus a wifi router on each floor.
Ah, the old day were good. I have 2 MicroVaxes, a Vaxsation 5000, a DEC Alpha. A half-height 20 megabyte drive that was as big as a washing machine, and a tape drive, just a bit bigger. A 6-CPU RS/6000, just a bit bigger than a microvax. I also had huge collection of every Sun Sparc you could imagine.
Pity, all of that had to go when I got married.:-(. I've had to build up my current collection by stealth, one piece at a time.
Mothers with small children, dropping them off to pre-school.
Evil. Pure Evil.
There is no greater enemy for a bike than a Mother driving along, turning backwards to stop the kids fighting while at the same time, looking for a place to park.
And you're forgetting the wonderful wall of manuals.
Those VMS manuals were the greatest set of system documentation I've ever had the pleasure to work with. Combined with the on-line help system, you could be come an expert just by reading and trying things out.
One of the greatest disappointments I had was when I had to use MS Windows for the first time, there was no manual that details all of the commands possible. How can you know what a system can do, if you don't detail all of the features?
I agree. Hiring devs and interfacing is the better solution.
Now, the dev team doesn't have to be in house, it could also be an external team. As long as they develop against and API, then that's all that matters. If it's easier to hire an external team to develop than making the longer term commitment for new employees, then do that.
What I haven't seen anyone mention is the cost of upgrading. This is the biggest factor by far. It can cost you more in upgrading what you've customised than the original cost to create it.
I've seen many companies get their first Oracle ERP system, and go bananas customising everything. We it comes to upgrading, they get the estimate for the cost to upgrade their custom code, and they get a shock. I know of places that have cancelled their upgrade projects since the cost to upgrade with customisations was too much.
What happens in these cases is that for the upgrade, instead of bringing everything along, they reimplement the system, and ditch most of the customisations, only including the ones are are absolutely needed.
If instead of making changes to the Oracle ERP, you just feed it the data from interfaces, you have now de-coupled the need to change your custom code from the ERP upgrade - at most you will need to make minor changes to the interface data if Oracle change their API.
This is really the best way to go. I've been consulting/supporting oracle ERP systems for over 20 years. If you want to contact me privately, I'd happy help you further. Now, even though I do ERP consulting for a living, unless you're in Europe, my company won't be getting any business from you, so you can trust that my advice will be independent.
From my perspective, it appears that both China and the US are willing to bend to their control any IT organization that they can.
I'm happy that a verified source have been made, but sad to think that it has now come to this - the US, China, Russia,..... so many countries that it is no longer safe to host security projects.
If only I could get a CISCO router build in China, packages in the US and sold through a reseller in Russia.... it could be marketed are the ultimate freedom router*.
I've seen this happen with some of the Oracle support forums, and I really hate it.
What Oracle are doing now is that when you log a support request for some products, they first direct you to the customer forums to find an answer before you can complete entering the support request - and you have to acknowledge in the support request that you are aware of the customer forums.
The problem is that unless your problem is really simple, the forums are a waste of time, and when I have to log a support request, it's never for a simple issue, and normally for something that needs a brand new patch, or a patch that has only been out for a short period of time and only a few people have encountered the issue before.
The customer forums don't make the cost of the support contract any cheaper, so if it's saving money, then all it means that Larrty gets to spend more on another boat.
I have to say that it's expensive for a Fiesta (it's only around $20k where I am), but in general the US has the cheapest car prices for a western country. I think that's because the market is competitive, and consumers are price sensitive. Everyone in Europe, Australia and New Zealand get ripped off. The prices in Japan aren't so bad.
My last new car cost about 20% more in Euros, than in USD, and that was with a â1/$1.30 exchange rate - almost half price in the US. It would have been cheaper for me to purchase the car from the US, have it shipped over to Europe and then pay 20% in import duties.
My wife's Nissan has a backup camera. I wasn't use to it, as my main car has ultra-sonic parking sensors. Originally I didn't like the camera, until I was in a car park and it was pitch black. The camera has night vision capability, and I was able to see everything just like it was daylight (but only in black and white).
In this case, looking out of the windows didn't help much, but with the camera, I was able to see far further than the reversing light.
WB was using the backers' money and let them assume the risk if the project fails.
So?
To quote super chicken, "you knew the job was dangerous when you took it".
That was a risk I was willing to take. If I lost out and didn't get anything for my money, then oh well, maybe I'll not eat out one night instead and I'll be even.
Worst part is, you guys aren't even getting the promised rewards, i.e. the digital download.
No, that's a lie. They provided a digital download. No where was it ever promised that it was going to be a DRM free download.
I'm a backer. I was never told it would be DRM free.
No, we didn't pay a studio. We paid Rob to create a movie. Rob then worked with the studio to get extra funding and promotion.
If Rob didn't get agreement with the studio, then he still was going to make the movie with the money that he raised. It might not have had a wide cinema release, but he had enough money to made a reasonable quality movie.
But where were we ever told that it would be a DRM free digitial download?
I'm a backer. I never saw any mention of it being a DRM free digital download. I have access to be backers website, I read all of the comments on kickstarted by Rob and his team. No-one ever said that it would be DRM free.
As far as I'm concerned, they delivered the promised download, they met the conditions.
I was hoping that a movie would be made, of at leave direct-to-video quality. If it didn't get make, then, oh well, it was worth the shot.
It's not like I committed as much as the founder of XE.com, who paid $10,000 for a speaking part in the movie. (Although he could probably afford his $10k as much as I could my $40.)
Geek rage is right. People here are getting all worked up over something that probably doesn't affect them. I suppose some people just like getting upset at big media companies.
I'm a backer. Is anyone else here an actual backer? I pledged enough to get a digital download. I never expected it to be a DRM free version. The fact that I can download it to my Nexus 7 is a bonus further than I was expecting. When I signed up, I was thinking they were probably only going to deliver a MS Windows only version - after all the project is being run by a director/producer, and not a tech head.
And am I upset with the digital download? No. Totally DRM free would have been great, but it's not something that I expected.
Right, so, as a backer, what did I actually expect for my money? I donated money to have the chance to see a Veronica Mars movie that would have been on a cheap budget and a direct-to-video quality production.
What did I get? I got a move that is really like a cinema quality release movie. That's more than I hoped for. I also got a t-shirt, stickers, the script, a DVD, and a digital download. All of that for half the cost of a AAA game title.
Heck, I'm over the moon.
And what else did I get for being a backer? I got sense of ownership of the movie and the whole creation process. It was a fun journey.
Also, for any of you non-backers that have decided to download the movie, well, I'm a bit disappointed that you're interested enough to have a look, but it would have been nice if you could have contributed someway. Maybe if you like the movie, try to make it one of the most pirated movie around at the moment. With more interest, maybe there can be a second Veronica Mars movie.
What non-backers don't appear to know is that Rob was restricted by the studios and the agreements with the cinemas on how he could allow the digital downloads. To get a movie in the cinemas, at the same time as being available for download is the first time this has happened (as far as I know). The studios and cinema owners normally never allow this.
One final thing. Even though the kickstart paid for the production of the movie, the studio covered the cost of the kickstarter rewards and also the (little) promotion that went on. So I can understand why the studio wants to keep control as much as they want over the distribution.
Slashdot Mirror
As pointed out on a news website (which I can't remember where for the moment), the whole thing appears staged, and they 'police' are probably acting (or actors).
It is not illegal in Russia to sell the western goods, it's just illegal to import them, under the current self-imposed Russian sanctions. There is no reason why the shop can't advertise the food, and there is no law that the police can use to stop the food from being sold.
I love your optimism.
Everything is fair and just. If you show you are a valuable resource that can't be replaced, then you have nothing to fear.
Wonderful!
Of course, the people running the company will never make poor, short term, misguided decisions.
Let me tell you a story.....
I was working as an external consultant for a very large company. They have amazingly complicated business processes - in fact too complicated. I encountered a large issue caused by poor business processes , that was affecting multiple business units. For each individual business unit, there was an elevated cost, but taken over the all of the units, the cost was huge.
Now, I didn't have enough knowledge to be able to resolve this, but there was a developer who had work there for 10 years, had contacts with all of the business units affected. With his help, I was able to arrange a meeting with multiple department head - which for this organization was a big achievement. I explained the issue, and the huge costs that could be saved. The developer was able to provide a solution, but it would also mean the way that 3 units worked would have to be slightly changed. The amount of work involved wasn't large, but the logistics were extremely difficult.
So, what happened? This developer who have 10 years of business knowledge and could help save hundreds of thousands each year was let go. He was replaced by Infosys, and a team of people in India (yes, a team replaced one person - but, hey, it was still cheaper). Management didn't know and didn't care that the business knowledge was leaving. The developer was kicked out, then I left for another project in another company. The business practices were never changed, and the cost savings never occurred.
It's been two years since, and I've heard that the outsourcing isn't going so well, and they have approached my consulting company group if they could put in a bid to take it over and bring it back on shore.
but you can't outsource Dave Johnson, because there's only one of him.
And there was only one of this developer with the business knowledge. It didn't save his ass from being outsourced to India.
(By the way, the company got rid of their entire development group, not just this one guy. They lost other people who had more experience - these people knew what was happening a couple of years in advance, and so left, which ironically made the outsourcing decision easier, since the development group was at half strength anyway.)
Or perhaps they could open an office in Flyover Land.
Good point. I've wondered why these companies are determined to keep everything in the most expensive areas where it's hard to find people cheaply.
I remember a number of years ago, Oracle opened up a new support centre in Colarado Springs. Not that there's a lot there now, but back then, there was a local military base, and not much else. Oracle then offered a relocation package to the support staff working in Redwood Shores - on the same salary as I recall. A lot of people moved, as their cost of living suddenly halved.
Surely Facebook et al could set up a new centre in the middle of knowehere, offer the same salary, and find lots of people.
Actually, to be very pedantic, it was originally the American high end brand for Toyota.
Toyota wanted to create an up market brand that didn't have the cheap Japanese car legacy that Toyota and other Japanese manufactures suffered from. Toyota launched Lexus, in think initially in the US, and they brought it to other markets.
In Japan, the high-end Lexus cars were sold as Toyotas. Lexus didn't appear in Japan until quite a while after it was going well globally. In the late 90's or early 2000's, I think.
I have a dive watch, and I dive with it every week. My dive instructors also wear dive watches.... ... of course, this is in a swimming pool, where we need to time things when training for our certifications (i.e. 50 seconds under water without air).
When we go open water diving, it's always with a computer, although the chief dive instructor always has a watch for a backup.
Most US teachers have the equivalent of an undergraduate degree in mathematics.
I'll believe you, since I don't have any knowledge of US teacher training or US degrees. I do have a question that I hope you can answer.
How can that be possible? How can you have a degree in something else, and still have the same level of maths as someone with a maths degree?
For my maths degree, I had free choice for the equivalent of 1/2 of a year. Every other class was a maths class, although some over lap with the people studying physics and computer science (and the into stats class was general for a lot of degrees). There is no general education requirement for degrees in the UK, as that is assumed that you received it in high school.
Even for my free choices, I chose maths subjects, since there were more areas of maths to study that could fit into one degree. There were some areas, such as the calculus of variations, that I wanted to study, but I couldn't fit in.
So, if I, only studying maths for every subject in my degree couldn't cover everything, how can someone studying something else have the same level of maths coverage as me?
Hey, in case it makes you feel any better, Oracle has also incorporated R inside it's database.
So, Oracle is involved with both Java and R.
Maybe both companies can start fighting and introduce incompatible versions! Just like the old days.
Well, then, you need a mistress.
When your nowhere to be found, your wife will think you're with your mistress, your mistress will think you're with your family, and you can have the time to submit bug reports!
Because he has supporters like myself who hate the convoluted Unix philosophy
In turn, you should accept that there is a difference between people who are using Linux as a desktop and need things like sound, and people who are using it in the server room.
I currently professionally support Linux systems. I like that it's similar to other Unix systems.
Let me see if I can even remember all of the Unix and Unix like operating systems I've had to support professionally...
- Pyramid OSx
- DG/UX
- DEC Digital Unix (OSF/1)
- HP MPE ix (MPE with a posix shell)
- HP/UX
- Xenix
- SCO Unix
- Solaris (Sparc, x86)
- AIX
Now, you can't say I'm resistant to change, as there is a large difference in how all of those systems are administered. I liked the fact that Linux was familiar and I could switch over to it.
What I don't like is that desktop related changes are encroaching on the server room. Fine, you like playing games or listening to music. Don't force me to go down the same path.
Northern France.... that's a very Ch'ti place. Very different from the south.
(Pronounce 'ch' as 'sh'.)
(Sorry, I suppose most people won't understand that...)
You have to take into account that there are no absolutes in politics, except at the extreme ends.
Slashdot is a US website, and most of the people here have a US perspective. From the average person's perspective in the US, Sweden, and most of Europe is socialist.
A lot of people in the US truly believe that Obama is socialist (esp. w.r.t. Obamacare), where as in Europe, Obama is more to the centre-right.
cheers,
(aol) Me Too!!! (/aol)
I have a Synology DS512+ with 5x 3T disks. For storage size, capability and low noise, you just can't beat it. And it runs Linux.
It goes well with my
- Mac Pro (the old big silver box version),
- i7 with 24G ram (home built)
- i7 with 64G ram (home built)
- 2 x Xeon E5-2620 (6 core each) 192G ram
- Mac Mini
I have ethernet wired through the house, plus a wifi router on each floor.
Ah, the old day were good. I have 2 MicroVaxes, a Vaxsation 5000, a DEC Alpha. A half-height 20 megabyte drive that was as big as a washing machine, and a tape drive, just a bit bigger. A 6-CPU RS/6000, just a bit bigger than a microvax. I also had huge collection of every Sun Sparc you could imagine.
Pity, all of that had to go when I got married. :-(. I've had to build up my current collection by stealth, one piece at a time.
Mothers with small children, dropping them off to pre-school.
Evil. Pure Evil.
There is no greater enemy for a bike than a Mother driving along, turning backwards to stop the kids fighting while at the same time, looking for a place to park.
If Kickstarter worked from Veroncia Mars, then I don't see why it wouldn't work for B5.
I'd pay the cost of a DVD/Blu-ray if fund it, it I could get a disc as a reward.
And you're forgetting the wonderful wall of manuals.
Those VMS manuals were the greatest set of system documentation I've ever had the pleasure to work with. Combined with the on-line help system, you could be come an expert just by reading and trying things out.
One of the greatest disappointments I had was when I had to use MS Windows for the first time, there was no manual that details all of the commands possible. How can you know what a system can do, if you don't detail all of the features?
I agree. Hiring devs and interfacing is the better solution.
Now, the dev team doesn't have to be in house, it could also be an external team. As long as they develop against and API, then that's all that matters. If it's easier to hire an external team to develop than making the longer term commitment for new employees, then do that.
What I haven't seen anyone mention is the cost of upgrading. This is the biggest factor by far. It can cost you more in upgrading what you've customised than the original cost to create it.
I've seen many companies get their first Oracle ERP system, and go bananas customising everything. We it comes to upgrading, they get the estimate for the cost to upgrade their custom code, and they get a shock. I know of places that have cancelled their upgrade projects since the cost to upgrade with customisations was too much.
What happens in these cases is that for the upgrade, instead of bringing everything along, they reimplement the system, and ditch most of the customisations, only including the ones are are absolutely needed.
If instead of making changes to the Oracle ERP, you just feed it the data from interfaces, you have now de-coupled the need to change your custom code from the ERP upgrade - at most you will need to make minor changes to the interface data if Oracle change their API.
This is really the best way to go. I've been consulting/supporting oracle ERP systems for over 20 years. If you want to contact me privately, I'd happy help you further. Now, even though I do ERP consulting for a living, unless you're in Europe, my company won't be getting any business from you, so you can trust that my advice will be independent.
cheers.
From my perspective, it appears that both China and the US are willing to bend to their control any IT organization that they can.
I'm happy that a verified source have been made, but sad to think that it has now come to this - the US, China, Russia, ..... so many countries that it is no longer safe to host security projects.
If only I could get a CISCO router build in China, packages in the US and sold through a reseller in Russia.... it could be marketed are the ultimate freedom router*.
(* Note: freedom is not for the end user)
I've seen this happen with some of the Oracle support forums, and I really hate it.
What Oracle are doing now is that when you log a support request for some products, they first direct you to the customer forums to find an answer before you can complete entering the support request - and you have to acknowledge in the support request that you are aware of the customer forums.
The problem is that unless your problem is really simple, the forums are a waste of time, and when I have to log a support request, it's never for a simple issue, and normally for something that needs a brand new patch, or a patch that has only been out for a short period of time and only a few people have encountered the issue before.
The customer forums don't make the cost of the support contract any cheaper, so if it's saving money, then all it means that Larrty gets to spend more on another boat.
I have to say that it's expensive for a Fiesta (it's only around $20k where I am), but in general the US has the cheapest car prices for a western country. I think that's because the market is competitive, and consumers are price sensitive. Everyone in Europe, Australia and New Zealand get ripped off. The prices in Japan aren't so bad.
My last new car cost about 20% more in Euros, than in USD, and that was with a â1/$1.30 exchange rate - almost half price in the US. It would have been cheaper for me to purchase the car from the US, have it shipped over to Europe and then pay 20% in import duties.
The worst part was, the car was built in England!
My wife's Nissan has a backup camera. I wasn't use to it, as my main car has ultra-sonic parking sensors. Originally I didn't like the camera, until I was in a car park and it was pitch black. The camera has night vision capability, and I was able to see everything just like it was daylight (but only in black and white).
In this case, looking out of the windows didn't help much, but with the camera, I was able to see far further than the reversing light.
WB was using the backers' money and let them assume the risk if the project fails.
So?
To quote super chicken, "you knew the job was dangerous when you took it".
That was a risk I was willing to take. If I lost out and didn't get anything for my money, then oh well, maybe I'll not eat out one night instead and I'll be even.
Worst part is, you guys aren't even getting the promised rewards, i.e. the digital download.
No, that's a lie. They provided a digital download. No where was it ever promised that it was going to be a DRM free download.
I'm a backer. I was never told it would be DRM free.
I'm a backer.
No, we didn't pay a studio. We paid Rob to create a movie. Rob then worked with the studio to get extra funding and promotion.
If Rob didn't get agreement with the studio, then he still was going to make the movie with the money that he raised. It might not have had a wide cinema release, but he had enough money to made a reasonable quality movie.
But where were we ever told that it would be a DRM free digitial download?
I'm a backer. I never saw any mention of it being a DRM free digital download. I have access to be backers website, I read all of the comments on kickstarted by Rob and his team. No-one ever said that it would be DRM free.
As far as I'm concerned, they delivered the promised download, they met the conditions.
I'm a backer of the Veroncia Mars movie.
I was hoping that a movie would be made, of at leave direct-to-video quality. If it didn't get make, then, oh well, it was worth the shot.
It's not like I committed as much as the founder of XE.com, who paid $10,000 for a speaking part in the movie. (Although he could probably afford his $10k as much as I could my $40.)
Geek rage is right. People here are getting all worked up over something that probably doesn't affect them. I suppose some people just like getting upset at big media companies.
I'm a backer. Is anyone else here an actual backer? I pledged enough to get a digital download. I never expected it to be a DRM free version. The fact that I can download it to my Nexus 7 is a bonus further than I was expecting. When I signed up, I was thinking they were probably only going to deliver a MS Windows only version - after all the project is being run by a director/producer, and not a tech head.
And am I upset with the digital download? No. Totally DRM free would have been great, but it's not something that I expected.
Right, so, as a backer, what did I actually expect for my money? I donated money to have the chance to see a Veronica Mars movie that would have been on a cheap budget and a direct-to-video quality production.
What did I get? I got a move that is really like a cinema quality release movie. That's more than I hoped for. I also got a t-shirt, stickers, the script, a DVD, and a digital download. All of that for half the cost of a AAA game title.
Heck, I'm over the moon.
And what else did I get for being a backer? I got sense of ownership of the movie and the whole creation process. It was a fun journey.
Also, for any of you non-backers that have decided to download the movie, well, I'm a bit disappointed that you're interested enough to have a look, but it would have been nice if you could have contributed someway. Maybe if you like the movie, try to make it one of the most pirated movie around at the moment. With more interest, maybe there can be a second Veronica Mars movie.
What non-backers don't appear to know is that Rob was restricted by the studios and the agreements with the cinemas on how he could allow the digital downloads. To get a movie in the cinemas, at the same time as being available for download is the first time this has happened (as far as I know). The studios and cinema owners normally never allow this.
One final thing. Even though the kickstart paid for the production of the movie, the studio covered the cost of the kickstarter rewards and also the (little) promotion that went on. So I can understand why the studio wants to keep control as much as they want over the distribution.