Wasn't that thing supposed to be out last x-mas? i haven't kept up at all (too busy with WoW on PC and KOTOR II on xbox:), is the platform got a schedule released date or just pushed back infinitly (har har)?
I think many of the European countries wouldn't allow RIAA/MPAA/etc to go after individual downloaders, but would after the centralized tracker servers.
However, what about re-locating to places like Russia, Eastern Europe, south america, etc? Not physically of course but the servers.
Alternatively is anyone working on a more transparent P2P system? The advantages of BT (fast speeds, built in incentives to share upload speed) with higher levels of anonymity and a more distributed tracker?
Its ironic that the movie, TV, and recording industry have this vast opportunity here (lots and lots of people worldwide want to see your stuff!) but cannot capitalize on it. I'd pay a few bucks a month if I could download whatever I wanted and see it whenever I wanted without going to crappy movie theaters or sitting in front of the couch when the TV execs want me to, but I guess thats heresy.
(yes, I have a mythTV box)
I keep reading about this $40 million dollar figure being bandied out. How on earth did this game cost so much?
At six years thats over $6 million per year! How do you spend so much? I don't think Blizzard has spent so much on World of Warcraft, and that game is 100x more complex (albeit not as pretty).
So is the number just made up or is there really any truth behind it? Just curious.
Of course, I don't understand either how the new Tom Hanks animated movie (Polar Express) cost $170 million either. What the heck is going on that costs so much to make these computer driven movies/games?
I have a mythTV with 500GB of attached storage and it just rocks... I originally owned a tivo (added 80GB to it), loved it, but didn't want yet-another-monthly-bill after that tivo died and wanted something where I can dump my DVD collection with either a DVD jukebox or massive storage.
its absolutely brilliant, no monthly fees, I get CVS builds once every few weeks, I have a nice quiet Antec Sonata case hidden away, and I have over 200 DVDs I ripped using mythTV so I can watch them whenever I want, however I want. LOL i use mythTV more for the ripped DVDs than TV, I probably only watch 3-4 hours of recorded TV per week (daily show, 24, amazing race, will & grace).
The only improvement to mythTV I hope to see is picture quality... imo the PVR-250/350s that most people use for recording isn't the highest quality, I think my Tivo had slightly better TV quality and much, much faster channel changing while watching live. Hopefully a next generation of HDTV PC cards will come out without silly cap'ing problems and we will all be happy:)
wanna bet the next few episodes of star trek enterprise are gonna talk about how "the frame dragging around us is warping the space time continuum!"
it'll probably be the nazis fault too...
the good online poker sites (partypoker, etc) automatically monitor players and tables, and if they notice collision will autoban users. with 1000s of players online simultaneousely, its very rare for 2 people to randomly be in the same poker table more than once a day or whatever.
the article mentioned specifically the problem is that wsz skins are able to escape IE's security policies and run as local computers when sent as XML files, so a malicious website (or HTML email, message board posting, etc) could automatically run the exploit without even your knowledge...
time to uninstall winamp...
one might argue the reverse might be true - people may want/need/buy smaller hard drives for their personal computers because they have such large online, virtual drives.
So maybe western digital sells 100,000 more drives to google but 10,000,000 less profitable/smaller drives to Dell/etc.
great for users - upload (encrypted) important stuff regularly to gmail, no worries about backup/remote access/version control/etc.
If I do have the cash to hang out in Vancouver or Calgary for a while, how do I go about immigrating? From reading the canadian immigration website, it takes 6-16 months (!) to get a PR card, assuming you pass the tests and all that. If you are a US citizen, is there a faster route?
Obviously I can just go up and chill, but eventually would need/want to work and buy a place and all that good stuff...
End of the day, I'd rather they release the theater version first and release the extended version when they are able.
I'll rent the normal version, watch it a few times, and then buy the extended (or super version) when it comes out.
I do hope tho they announce info on the super trilogy version before they release the EE ROTK. If they release the EE of ROTK and then 5 months later announce a super trilogy version I'll be pissed.
I just bought Two Towers extended a few days ago, pretty happy with it!
absolutely. i work in a f500 corporation and as the dev manager i spend half my time convincing the program manager to convince the IT guys to let our stuff trickle out.
i can totally see the IT managers point, that his job is to keep everything up all the time and if everything is changing underneath him, he can't do that!
i am at least happy we have our own sandbox (which we manage, the IT folks will only swap out hardware, apply security patches, or format, nothing else), and we hand over new software releases on a quarterly basis. I don't think there really is any other way to do it, can't have random groups deploying software to production servers, i don't think the CEO or CIO would want to hear the finger pointing blame game when something goes wrong.
gotta be a better way tho...
sorry, but I lived in the US for 15 years, now live in Europe (Amsterdam) and I think, with the exception of perhaps Germany, Europe is wayyyy behind in the US technologically. Examples:
-- home appliances in the US are vastly superior. Larger kitchens, better ranges, robot-vacuum thingies, sprinkler systems, the list goes on: domestic life in the US is much nicer than Europe
-- cars are better equipped in the US (more comfy, bigger, cheaper gas helps of course)
-- mobile SMSing is not popular, but it is available. since phone plans are cheaper in the US (my US phone is free for all mobile calls for $80/month) its easier just calling then typing. The best thing about Europe tho is that all incoming calls are free, and you can roam without too many worries (although with prepaid, roaming basically is incoming-only -- sucks!)
i could go on and on, but its a wayyy offbase statement to say US is behind vis-a-vis technology.
Having said that, i think quality of LIFE is vastly superior in europe -- less emphasis on work, more active social life, deeper relationships (with friends and family), a better sense of community, no patriot-act type crap, more freedoms, etc.
i definitely prefer to live in europe than america, but I do miss my old awesome kitchen and pool!
I agree, this was pretty damn dumb of Oracle. Microsoft is just gearing up their Microsoft Great Plains Business division (or whatever the heck the new name is), and adding a few hundred tho customers for a few billion is a damn good deal. They have a better chance of getting it ok'd by the government since they have a small position in the ERP market compared to Oracle/SAP. They could pick up both JD Edwards and Peoplesoft, let the current software keep going for 4-6 years while slowly migrating everyone over to their own stuff (and enhancing it with new code).
wait till you see Oracle Enterprise, I had the curse of working with it for 2 years and wanted to die every single day. It was designed by blind squirrels most likely. i thank allah every day that I am free of the curse of Oracle now and dev'ing simple webforms off mySql.
Oracle database is good though, hella complicated to admin but very robust. I will be a infidel and admit that I do like Microsoft SQL as well, great gui and 10 times easier to admin than Oracle.
That's an interesting statement; what it brings to mind is Angola, with right-wing South Africans (U.S. proxy) fighting left-wing Cubans (Soviet proxy)... The Cold War doesn't seem like it helped Angola very much, but I'm sure that's not the model you had in mind.
What sort of opportunity did the Cold War offer Africa, and how did they squanderit?
As you point out, many 3d world countries were involved as proxies between USA and Russia during the cold war. Countries such as Philipines, Turkey, Malaysia, Iran, Peru got both military assistance and economic assistance while the money spout was on. African countries, in general, spent most of the money on military purposes and then squandered any other funds on various grandiose projects (worlds largest church, palaces, etc). I grant you most of the recipients did not end up really that much better (afghanistan is a cruel example, chile and most of south america another), but arguably better than Africa has.
I mean, think about it, if you were the ruler of a country and you had two superpowers currying favor from you, isn't there ANY way they could have used it to materially improve their peoples lives, instead of simply blowing it all on the latest machine gun model? Billions were spent between the 50s and 80s.
Its also interesting to view statistics such as noting that most of africa, most of south america, china, and india were at roughly the same levels of agricultural assistance in the 60s (all were net importers, needed massive aid, etc). A few African countries have progressed and made it on their own, but most are actually BELOW 1960s levels in self-sufficiency.:(
I spent 18 months in Kenya and Rwanda as a ngo worker in the past 3 years, they are definitely making more progress now than a decade ago, but I always find it amazing how easy people are able to shoot themselves in their own feet (metaphorically speaking). It really is two steps forward, three steps back most of the time...
Poor sanitation, disease, and civil war. United States, late 19th century. What did we do to overcome these problems? Did an international outreach of concerned Europeans build sewers and hospitals for us? Did English peacekeepers prevent the savagery of our civil war?
Umm, we brought over millions of slaves from Africa to do all the dangerous, hard work for no wages?
Oh, so you are suggesting Africans should go invade europe?
kidding aside, i mostly agree with you, but it is much, much, much more difficult for countries nowadays to "hoist themselves by their petards" than it was 100 years ago. China and India have managed to putter along pretty well, many people believe because they have accepted little to no IMF funds and are able to set their own economic policies. Don't also forget that 1st world countries currently subsidize their farmers heavily, which means 3d world farmers have a very tough time profiting from farming (long story, Europe is most guilty of this).
I do feel Africa squandered their biggest opportunity, the cold war. Now that its over, only the countries with valuable resources (oil, gold, diamonds) are getting vague interest.
Slashdot Mirror
IANAL (which for years I thought means "I am ANAL", but that's neither here nor there)
For all the IANAL lovers, you can download lots of it on the new search engine. Even DP! (which I always thought was Divorce Proceedings)
Wasn't that thing supposed to be out last x-mas? i haven't kept up at all (too busy with WoW on PC and KOTOR II on xbox :), is the platform got a schedule released date or just pushed back infinitly (har har)?
I think many of the European countries wouldn't allow RIAA/MPAA/etc to go after individual downloaders, but would after the centralized tracker servers. However, what about re-locating to places like Russia, Eastern Europe, south america, etc? Not physically of course but the servers. Alternatively is anyone working on a more transparent P2P system? The advantages of BT (fast speeds, built in incentives to share upload speed) with higher levels of anonymity and a more distributed tracker? Its ironic that the movie, TV, and recording industry have this vast opportunity here (lots and lots of people worldwide want to see your stuff!) but cannot capitalize on it. I'd pay a few bucks a month if I could download whatever I wanted and see it whenever I wanted without going to crappy movie theaters or sitting in front of the couch when the TV execs want me to, but I guess thats heresy. (yes, I have a mythTV box)
Man how bad does your movie have to suck if you are scared of the next Star Wars?
I keep reading about this $40 million dollar figure being bandied out. How on earth did this game cost so much?
At six years thats over $6 million per year! How do you spend so much? I don't think Blizzard has spent so much on World of Warcraft, and that game is 100x more complex (albeit not as pretty).
So is the number just made up or is there really any truth behind it? Just curious.
Of course, I don't understand either how the new Tom Hanks animated movie (Polar Express) cost $170 million either. What the heck is going on that costs so much to make these computer driven movies/games?
I have a mythTV with 500GB of attached storage and it just rocks... I originally owned a tivo (added 80GB to it), loved it, but didn't want yet-another-monthly-bill after that tivo died and wanted something where I can dump my DVD collection with either a DVD jukebox or massive storage. its absolutely brilliant, no monthly fees, I get CVS builds once every few weeks, I have a nice quiet Antec Sonata case hidden away, and I have over 200 DVDs I ripped using mythTV so I can watch them whenever I want, however I want. LOL i use mythTV more for the ripped DVDs than TV, I probably only watch 3-4 hours of recorded TV per week (daily show, 24, amazing race, will & grace). The only improvement to mythTV I hope to see is picture quality... imo the PVR-250/350s that most people use for recording isn't the highest quality, I think my Tivo had slightly better TV quality and much, much faster channel changing while watching live. Hopefully a next generation of HDTV PC cards will come out without silly cap'ing problems and we will all be happy :)
those godless communist bastards are preying on our innocent capitalism aryan heros like 50 cent, eminem, and britney... think of the children!!!
wanna bet the next few episodes of star trek enterprise are gonna talk about how "the frame dragging around us is warping the space time continuum!" it'll probably be the nazis fault too...
Mr. Bush: your campaign seems to have the momentum of a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular?
the good online poker sites (partypoker, etc) automatically monitor players and tables, and if they notice collision will autoban users. with 1000s of players online simultaneousely, its very rare for 2 people to randomly be in the same poker table more than once a day or whatever.
the article mentioned specifically the problem is that wsz skins are able to escape IE's security policies and run as local computers when sent as XML files, so a malicious website (or HTML email, message board posting, etc) could automatically run the exploit without even your knowledge... time to uninstall winamp...
This must be the pda the doom3 guy was carrying! They really need to put a flashlight on it though.
one might argue the reverse might be true - people may want/need/buy smaller hard drives for their personal computers because they have such large online, virtual drives. So maybe western digital sells 100,000 more drives to google but 10,000,000 less profitable/smaller drives to Dell/etc. great for users - upload (encrypted) important stuff regularly to gmail, no worries about backup/remote access/version control/etc.
If I do have the cash to hang out in Vancouver or Calgary for a while, how do I go about immigrating? From reading the canadian immigration website, it takes 6-16 months (!) to get a PR card, assuming you pass the tests and all that. If you are a US citizen, is there a faster route? Obviously I can just go up and chill, but eventually would need/want to work and buy a place and all that good stuff...
End of the day, I'd rather they release the theater version first and release the extended version when they are able. I'll rent the normal version, watch it a few times, and then buy the extended (or super version) when it comes out. I do hope tho they announce info on the super trilogy version before they release the EE ROTK. If they release the EE of ROTK and then 5 months later announce a super trilogy version I'll be pissed. I just bought Two Towers extended a few days ago, pretty happy with it!
absolutely. i work in a f500 corporation and as the dev manager i spend half my time convincing the program manager to convince the IT guys to let our stuff trickle out. i can totally see the IT managers point, that his job is to keep everything up all the time and if everything is changing underneath him, he can't do that! i am at least happy we have our own sandbox (which we manage, the IT folks will only swap out hardware, apply security patches, or format, nothing else), and we hand over new software releases on a quarterly basis. I don't think there really is any other way to do it, can't have random groups deploying software to production servers, i don't think the CEO or CIO would want to hear the finger pointing blame game when something goes wrong. gotta be a better way tho...
sorry, but I lived in the US for 15 years, now live in Europe (Amsterdam) and I think, with the exception of perhaps Germany, Europe is wayyyy behind in the US technologically. Examples: -- home appliances in the US are vastly superior. Larger kitchens, better ranges, robot-vacuum thingies, sprinkler systems, the list goes on: domestic life in the US is much nicer than Europe -- cars are better equipped in the US (more comfy, bigger, cheaper gas helps of course) -- mobile SMSing is not popular, but it is available. since phone plans are cheaper in the US (my US phone is free for all mobile calls for $80/month) its easier just calling then typing. The best thing about Europe tho is that all incoming calls are free, and you can roam without too many worries (although with prepaid, roaming basically is incoming-only -- sucks!) i could go on and on, but its a wayyy offbase statement to say US is behind vis-a-vis technology. Having said that, i think quality of LIFE is vastly superior in europe -- less emphasis on work, more active social life, deeper relationships (with friends and family), a better sense of community, no patriot-act type crap, more freedoms, etc. i definitely prefer to live in europe than america, but I do miss my old awesome kitchen and pool!
I agree, this was pretty damn dumb of Oracle. Microsoft is just gearing up their Microsoft Great Plains Business division (or whatever the heck the new name is), and adding a few hundred tho customers for a few billion is a damn good deal. They have a better chance of getting it ok'd by the government since they have a small position in the ERP market compared to Oracle/SAP. They could pick up both JD Edwards and Peoplesoft, let the current software keep going for 4-6 years while slowly migrating everyone over to their own stuff (and enhancing it with new code).
Dumb larry, real dumb.
wait till you see Oracle Enterprise, I had the curse of working with it for 2 years and wanted to die every single day. It was designed by blind squirrels most likely. i thank allah every day that I am free of the curse of Oracle now and dev'ing simple webforms off mySql.
Oracle database is good though, hella complicated to admin but very robust. I will be a infidel and admit that I do like Microsoft SQL as well, great gui and 10 times easier to admin than Oracle.
That's an interesting statement; what it brings to mind is Angola, with right-wing South Africans (U.S. proxy) fighting left-wing Cubans (Soviet proxy)... The Cold War doesn't seem like it helped Angola very much, but I'm sure that's not the model you had in mind.
:(
What sort of opportunity did the Cold War offer Africa, and how did they squanderit?
As you point out, many 3d world countries were involved as proxies between USA and Russia during the cold war. Countries such as Philipines, Turkey, Malaysia, Iran, Peru got both military assistance and economic assistance while the money spout was on. African countries, in general, spent most of the money on military purposes and then squandered any other funds on various grandiose projects (worlds largest church, palaces, etc). I grant you most of the recipients did not end up really that much better (afghanistan is a cruel example, chile and most of south america another), but arguably better than Africa has.
I mean, think about it, if you were the ruler of a country and you had two superpowers currying favor from you, isn't there ANY way they could have used it to materially improve their peoples lives, instead of simply blowing it all on the latest machine gun model? Billions were spent between the 50s and 80s.
Its also interesting to view statistics such as noting that most of africa, most of south america, china, and india were at roughly the same levels of agricultural assistance in the 60s (all were net importers, needed massive aid, etc). A few African countries have progressed and made it on their own, but most are actually BELOW 1960s levels in self-sufficiency.
I spent 18 months in Kenya and Rwanda as a ngo worker in the past 3 years, they are definitely making more progress now than a decade ago, but I always find it amazing how easy people are able to shoot themselves in their own feet (metaphorically speaking). It really is two steps forward, three steps back most of the time...
Poor sanitation, disease, and civil war. United States, late 19th century. What did we do to overcome these problems? Did an international outreach of concerned Europeans build sewers and hospitals for us? Did English peacekeepers prevent the savagery of our civil war? Umm, we brought over millions of slaves from Africa to do all the dangerous, hard work for no wages? Oh, so you are suggesting Africans should go invade europe? kidding aside, i mostly agree with you, but it is much, much, much more difficult for countries nowadays to "hoist themselves by their petards" than it was 100 years ago. China and India have managed to putter along pretty well, many people believe because they have accepted little to no IMF funds and are able to set their own economic policies. Don't also forget that 1st world countries currently subsidize their farmers heavily, which means 3d world farmers have a very tough time profiting from farming (long story, Europe is most guilty of this). I do feel Africa squandered their biggest opportunity, the cold war. Now that its over, only the countries with valuable resources (oil, gold, diamonds) are getting vague interest.