I started seeing excitement about this late 2011, as Guild Wars 2 started to do its road show, demoing it at various conferences. There was a lot of hype behind GW2, but when they did their first Beta Weekend Event, it really blew me away.
ArenaNet was smart and didn't show the game off to people (in beta form) until they felt it was really ready to show to the public. Their beta wasn't a place to test it while it was still alpha quality. Their beta events were there for people to experience the game, stress the servers, and test some of the more detailed mechanics that needed work.
Even in the beta events, it's a well polished game with very few rough edges. All the classes feel unique, and have a lot of different play styles available to them (depending on how you equip/spec your character). It's really hard to describe a large MMO in just a few words (as there is so much content), but it is really worth giving it a try if you like MMOs.
The biggest selling point that I've been using with friends is how they split up PvP. In the PvE (player vs environment/enemies), there is no fighting other players (pvp, player vs player). When I run around the PvE world, it is really one of the first games where I will help out random people. They did a great job to guide you into helping others. It really helps build a feeling of community within the PvE adventure.
For PvP, it's all in an instanced area. So you never fight against people in the PvE world. They have 2 PvP modes. One is a battleground style PvP (much like they have in World of Warcraft with battlegrounds). These are quite fun. But then they have a persistant PvP zone (a massive zone at that), where 3 servers fight against each other for control of the areas. For people that played DAoC (dark age of Camelot), it feels much like the RvR in that.
The story and lore of the universe is quite fun (I started reading up on GW1 lore, it's a pretty decent fantasy story). But it doesn't get too much in the way for people that don't want to take part in it.
Dan Schindler Co-Founder and Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing
From their about us page:
Donuts is a domain name registry bringing variety and choice to Internet naming.
The company was founded by long-standing industry executives with experience in registry and registrar operations and industry regulation, and who have successfully launched top-level domains (TLDs), built industry-leading companies, and brought value and choice to the domain name marketplace.
Donuts has applied for more than 300 TLDs and intends to secure and operate each. The company is well-resourced by substantial funding from multi-billion dollar private equity and venture capital funds.
Looking at their investors, they have a lot of VC money. Looks like a startup trying to cash in on this. Though, it could be looked at in another light, that they are trying to provide a multitude of TLDs for people to use.
The 2 companies I've worked at were both very security focused. Though, one was big expensive SAN systems (they had been encrypting network traffic since at least 1998 for the device management), and the other company does network security (IPS/IDS) and they are extremely paranoid with how data is stored and transmitted around.
I guess it's a matter of the type of company you work at and the background/enthusiasm of the people you work with.
Flame may not be using the same tech, but it is highly advanced and uses a lot of the same attack vectors that Stuxnet and Duqu used. It definitely wasn't developed by the team behind those 2 malware packages, but more of a parallel project that used some of the same tricks.
It still feels very much like an NSA lead attack on the middle east.
Non-sequitur in regards with the interest of consumers - the consumers interest is still "get me my consumption at the lowest price possible".
For the individual consumer that actually pays for content, it is in their best interest to get other consumers to pay for content. The more people that pay, the more money that goes to the creators, so they can hit their break even point and then make a profit. If producers can guess they will have more people purchasing their product, the initial price may be lower.
Even on Lua's site (which Fox links to), they have a section explaining how to spell and pronounce the name.
Please do not write it as "LUA", which is both ugly and confusing, because then it becomes an acronym with different meanings for different people. So, please, write "Lua" right!
You think they'd at least get that part right (when they link to the website).
This was the same thought that came into my head as I was reading this as it was plastered all over the internet. Sure, it makes some huge claims (that many of us already suspected), but there isn't any direct proof. This tells a good story that seems to fit with the facts we know, but doesn't seem to go any further in offering proof that certain governments were involved.
I didn't see you mention Google Apps. My company (500'ish people) are all on Google Apps and I really like it. Plus its free for up to 10 users, so you could at least give it a test drive. It integrates email, calendar, docs, and contacts all into one package (with names shared between each).
I have a friend that's been part of Google's product review team for a few years. From my understanding, they do not do content scraping for reviews when associating them to products. Websites must actually subscribe and push the data to google to have it included (or present an XML feed for google to fetch or something similar). Google has live humans going through and making sure that the people who sign up to populate product reviews are legitimate (spammers try to push crap comments to the system).
What you are describing basically sounds like what NGFW (Next Generation Firewalls) solve. These are standard firewalls, but add more "smarts" to them, like detecting certain applications, telling you which users access them and when. So you'll want something inline to do it properly.
A lot of traffic to the web may also be going over an SSL connection, so you would probably need an SSL module in-line to basically man-in-the-middle all the computers on the network and snoop the traffic.
Check out the NSS report (costs money to buy the report) on NGFW appliances.
It was money made in the US, and people in the US that make money legally need to pay income tax on that money.
If Saverin want's to go make billions in another country and pay taxes there, let me. But I don't think he should be able to enter the US, be part of a team that builds a business in the US, then when he makes a lot of money on it, leaves without paying his share of taxes. I'd say he's exploiting the opportunity he was given in the US without paying his share of income tax.
Agreed, it probably should have been included. I sorta rushed to post with the information I knew off-hand. Though, the links to the DOTA wiki entry and ATRS entry both include HoN.
The basics of the game are that you control a single unit (a hero), and you work with a team of people (normally 5 other players). So it becomes a 6 vs 6 battle where you are trying to destroy the other teams base. This game style has been dubbed ARTS (action real time strategy).
It originally started as a Warcraft 3 mod. Since then, numerous companies have copied the style.
1) You have Blizzard creating a DOTA mod for Starcraft 2. 2) You have Valve creating DOTA 2. (note that Valve and Blizzard are having a trademark war right now over DOTA). Dota 2 is a stand-alone game. 3) LoL (League of Legends) is a DOTA style came released back in 2009. It's a stand-alone game with persistant characters.
For the lazy, the wikipedia entry on the virus. While it can spread easily, it sounds like the virus has a short life span and there is a vacine already developed for it.
Though, it can have some nasty effects on pregnant farm animals, it seems unclear (at least to me), if animals that were effected in the past then get pregnant afterwards still have birthing issues.
Nope, not in Eastern District of Texas. According to this article:
Worlds Inc. filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, Inc., Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. and Activision Publishing, Inc. in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts on March 30, 2012.
Java's server-side is still very strong and won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
Java as a language for UIs, not so much. The built in UI widgets and windowing (Swing) is weak at best. While it has many of the basic widget types, it hasn't really evolved much as time has moved forward. Plus it always felt just enough different from native applications to stop developers from using it.
Java applets, I feel, have been dead for a long time. Applet initialization time was just too long or would break during loading to discourage people from using it. Though, I've seen Java Web Start work pretty well for deploying Java applications.
I completely believe the data that these scientists have collected. I also believe that they have done their work right. I believe in their findings and their predictions about how the climate will be changing in the coming years.
What I don't believe is why they thing this change his happening. The climate of our planet is pretty complicated, and I know I don't understand or all the variables involved. I'm sure the guys that worked on this study have a good understanding of it, but we only have data for maybe a few hundred years if we're lucky? The earth has been around a long time and I'd expected it would go through changes as it goes through its very long life.
My other issue with climate study is that it's used as a political weapon. Politicians wield the results to push their own agendas. With this, it seems like results from studies could be skewed.
point taken.:-D But last year at a minimum, everyone got a Galaxy Tab 10.1 and a Chromebook. If I would have ebay both of them, I would have made around $1200 (and tickets were $500 last year for full-price).
But I guess I could argue the $300 is covering food and drinks. They feed you breakfast and lunch for the 3 days of the conference. As well there is 1 night of partying (with free alcohol, and live music (last year it was Jane's Addiction)).
I ended up getting a ticket, though I'm giving it to a co-worker (who work is paying to send).
From what I saw, it wasn't actually a first-come first-serve setup. One of my co-workers who got in "queue" before me didn't get a ticket. I started about 5 minutes after they were posted and I got a ticket. So it seems that once you were in their queue, it may have been random who they gave the tickets to.
I can't speak for others, but I attended Google I/O for their GWT (Google Web Toolkit) and related talks. The GWT sessions were actually rather popular, even though Android is the hip tech that everyone is interested in. I'm guessing people also wanted to attend the Android talks in hopes of getting free phones (some of the talks last year gave phones to people who went to that specific session).
If I was a student in the Bay area, I would definitely fork over the money (only $300 for students) to get the free swag. But for a regular priced ticket ($900), plus hotel and travel, I figured it would have cost me around $2600. I couldn't justify that cost, especially since all the talks are posted to Youtube within a few days of the conference.
App developers for iPhones and Android devices want to be paid for the work they do. Some of those developers release 2 versions of their apps: ones with ads for free, and another that costs money with no ads. Most people tend to vote for the "ads" version because it seems free to them.
If this article is right, it may be work paying for those $0.99 apps as it will save you money in electricity and time/announces.
If you look at their website, you'll see they use likenesses of the characters from the movies in their advertising. If the pub was just using fan artwork or coming up with their own graphical material (while using the names), they may have been left alone. But they are using the faces from the movie in their own advertising and promotional material (posters, loyalty card). That's just asking for trouble.
Slashdot Mirror
I started seeing excitement about this late 2011, as Guild Wars 2 started to do its road show, demoing it at various conferences. There was a lot of hype behind GW2, but when they did their first Beta Weekend Event, it really blew me away.
ArenaNet was smart and didn't show the game off to people (in beta form) until they felt it was really ready to show to the public. Their beta wasn't a place to test it while it was still alpha quality. Their beta events were there for people to experience the game, stress the servers, and test some of the more detailed mechanics that needed work.
Even in the beta events, it's a well polished game with very few rough edges. All the classes feel unique, and have a lot of different play styles available to them (depending on how you equip/spec your character). It's really hard to describe a large MMO in just a few words (as there is so much content), but it is really worth giving it a try if you like MMOs.
The biggest selling point that I've been using with friends is how they split up PvP. In the PvE (player vs environment/enemies), there is no fighting other players (pvp, player vs player). When I run around the PvE world, it is really one of the first games where I will help out random people. They did a great job to guide you into helping others. It really helps build a feeling of community within the PvE adventure.
For PvP, it's all in an instanced area. So you never fight against people in the PvE world. They have 2 PvP modes. One is a battleground style PvP (much like they have in World of Warcraft with battlegrounds). These are quite fun. But then they have a persistant PvP zone (a massive zone at that), where 3 servers fight against each other for control of the areas. For people that played DAoC (dark age of Camelot), it feels much like the RvR in that.
The story and lore of the universe is quite fun (I started reading up on GW1 lore, it's a pretty decent fantasy story). But it doesn't get too much in the way for people that don't want to take part in it.
they were just announced, it'll take a bit for review sites to dig into those sorts of details.
Apple mentioned they worked on making the fans quieter, but I'd be interested to know the heat and noise level of the machines.
Or you go to the website of the email address: http://donuts.co/
From their Team page:
Dan Schindler
Co-Founder and Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing
From their about us page:
Donuts is a domain name registry bringing variety and choice to Internet naming.
The company was founded by long-standing industry executives with experience in registry and registrar operations and industry regulation, and who have successfully launched top-level domains (TLDs), built industry-leading companies, and brought value and choice to the domain name marketplace.
Donuts has applied for more than 300 TLDs and intends to secure and operate each. The company is well-resourced by substantial funding from multi-billion dollar private equity and venture capital funds.
Looking at their investors, they have a lot of VC money. Looks like a startup trying to cash in on this. Though, it could be looked at in another light, that they are trying to provide a multitude of TLDs for people to use.
A news story about the company: http://www.geekwire.com/2012/seattle-area-startup-raised-100m-series-financing/
They have $100 million in funding.
The 2 companies I've worked at were both very security focused. Though, one was big expensive SAN systems (they had been encrypting network traffic since at least 1998 for the device management), and the other company does network security (IPS/IDS) and they are extremely paranoid with how data is stored and transmitted around.
I guess it's a matter of the type of company you work at and the background/enthusiasm of the people you work with.
Flame may not be using the same tech, but it is highly advanced and uses a lot of the same attack vectors that Stuxnet and Duqu used. It definitely wasn't developed by the team behind those 2 malware packages, but more of a parallel project that used some of the same tricks.
It still feels very much like an NSA lead attack on the middle east.
Non-sequitur in regards with the interest of consumers - the consumers interest is still "get me my consumption at the lowest price possible".
For the individual consumer that actually pays for content, it is in their best interest to get other consumers to pay for content. The more people that pay, the more money that goes to the creators, so they can hit their break even point and then make a profit. If producers can guess they will have more people purchasing their product, the initial price may be lower.
Even on Lua's site (which Fox links to), they have a section explaining how to spell and pronounce the name.
Please do not write it as "LUA", which is both ugly and confusing, because then it becomes an acronym with different meanings for different people. So, please, write "Lua" right!
You think they'd at least get that part right (when they link to the website).
This was the same thought that came into my head as I was reading this as it was plastered all over the internet. Sure, it makes some huge claims (that many of us already suspected), but there isn't any direct proof. This tells a good story that seems to fit with the facts we know, but doesn't seem to go any further in offering proof that certain governments were involved.
I didn't see you mention Google Apps. My company (500'ish people) are all on Google Apps and I really like it. Plus its free for up to 10 users, so you could at least give it a test drive. It integrates email, calendar, docs, and contacts all into one package (with names shared between each).
I'd recommend looking around to see what other anti-virus products there are. There are a few good review sites out there for antivirus:
http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/test-reports/
http://www.av-comparatives.org/en/comparativesreviews/summary-reports
BitDefender, Kasperskey, Norton, and F-Secure all seem to be putting out good products.
I have a friend that's been part of Google's product review team for a few years. From my understanding, they do not do content scraping for reviews when associating them to products. Websites must actually subscribe and push the data to google to have it included (or present an XML feed for google to fetch or something similar). Google has live humans going through and making sure that the people who sign up to populate product reviews are legitimate (spammers try to push crap comments to the system).
What you are describing basically sounds like what NGFW (Next Generation Firewalls) solve. These are standard firewalls, but add more "smarts" to them, like detecting certain applications, telling you which users access them and when. So you'll want something inline to do it properly.
A lot of traffic to the web may also be going over an SSL connection, so you would probably need an SSL module in-line to basically man-in-the-middle all the computers on the network and snoop the traffic.
Check out the NSS report (costs money to buy the report) on NGFW appliances.
It was money made in the US, and people in the US that make money legally need to pay income tax on that money.
If Saverin want's to go make billions in another country and pay taxes there, let me. But I don't think he should be able to enter the US, be part of a team that builds a business in the US, then when he makes a lot of money on it, leaves without paying his share of taxes. I'd say he's exploiting the opportunity he was given in the US without paying his share of income tax.
Accord to their feature site, the auto-update is windows only?
Windows: Firefox is now easier to update with one less prompt (User Account Control)
So it's not really auto-update, just makes it a little nicer/easier for windows users.
Agreed, it probably should have been included. I sorta rushed to post with the information I knew off-hand. Though, the links to the DOTA wiki entry and ATRS entry both include HoN.
DOTA = "Defense of the Ancients".
The basics of the game are that you control a single unit (a hero), and you work with a team of people (normally 5 other players). So it becomes a 6 vs 6 battle where you are trying to destroy the other teams base. This game style has been dubbed ARTS (action real time strategy).
It originally started as a Warcraft 3 mod. Since then, numerous companies have copied the style.
1) You have Blizzard creating a DOTA mod for Starcraft 2.
2) You have Valve creating DOTA 2. (note that Valve and Blizzard are having a trademark war right now over DOTA). Dota 2 is a stand-alone game.
3) LoL (League of Legends) is a DOTA style came released back in 2009. It's a stand-alone game with persistant characters.
For the lazy, the wikipedia entry on the virus. While it can spread easily, it sounds like the virus has a short life span and there is a vacine already developed for it.
Though, it can have some nasty effects on pregnant farm animals, it seems unclear (at least to me), if animals that were effected in the past then get pregnant afterwards still have birthing issues.
Nope, not in Eastern District of Texas. According to this article:
Worlds Inc. filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, Inc., Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. and Activision Publishing, Inc. in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts on March 30, 2012.
Java's server-side is still very strong and won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
Java as a language for UIs, not so much. The built in UI widgets and windowing (Swing) is weak at best. While it has many of the basic widget types, it hasn't really evolved much as time has moved forward. Plus it always felt just enough different from native applications to stop developers from using it.
Java applets, I feel, have been dead for a long time. Applet initialization time was just too long or would break during loading to discourage people from using it. Though, I've seen Java Web Start work pretty well for deploying Java applications.
I completely believe the data that these scientists have collected. I also believe that they have done their work right. I believe in their findings and their predictions about how the climate will be changing in the coming years.
What I don't believe is why they thing this change his happening. The climate of our planet is pretty complicated, and I know I don't understand or all the variables involved. I'm sure the guys that worked on this study have a good understanding of it, but we only have data for maybe a few hundred years if we're lucky? The earth has been around a long time and I'd expected it would go through changes as it goes through its very long life.
My other issue with climate study is that it's used as a political weapon. Politicians wield the results to push their own agendas. With this, it seems like results from studies could be skewed.
point taken. :-D But last year at a minimum, everyone got a Galaxy Tab 10.1 and a Chromebook. If I would have ebay both of them, I would have made around $1200 (and tickets were $500 last year for full-price).
But I guess I could argue the $300 is covering food and drinks. They feed you breakfast and lunch for the 3 days of the conference. As well there is 1 night of partying (with free alcohol, and live music (last year it was Jane's Addiction)).
I ended up getting a ticket, though I'm giving it to a co-worker (who work is paying to send).
From what I saw, it wasn't actually a first-come first-serve setup. One of my co-workers who got in "queue" before me didn't get a ticket. I started about 5 minutes after they were posted and I got a ticket. So it seems that once you were in their queue, it may have been random who they gave the tickets to.
I can't speak for others, but I attended Google I/O for their GWT (Google Web Toolkit) and related talks. The GWT sessions were actually rather popular, even though Android is the hip tech that everyone is interested in. I'm guessing people also wanted to attend the Android talks in hopes of getting free phones (some of the talks last year gave phones to people who went to that specific session).
If I was a student in the Bay area, I would definitely fork over the money (only $300 for students) to get the free swag. But for a regular priced ticket ($900), plus hotel and travel, I figured it would have cost me around $2600. I couldn't justify that cost, especially since all the talks are posted to Youtube within a few days of the conference.
App developers for iPhones and Android devices want to be paid for the work they do. Some of those developers release 2 versions of their apps: ones with ads for free, and another that costs money with no ads. Most people tend to vote for the "ads" version because it seems free to them.
If this article is right, it may be work paying for those $0.99 apps as it will save you money in electricity and time/announces.
I with I had mod points for you Mr. AC.
If you look at their website, you'll see they use likenesses of the characters from the movies in their advertising. If the pub was just using fan artwork or coming up with their own graphical material (while using the names), they may have been left alone. But they are using the faces from the movie in their own advertising and promotional material (posters, loyalty card). That's just asking for trouble.