Well, so long America. Asking Australian telcos advice on how to run the internet is like asking pedophiles advice on running a kindergarten. We have one of the slowest and most expensive internets in the world. You'd be better off looking at Asian countries (like Japan and south Korea). I nearly fell off my chair and spat my breakfast at my screen when I read this headline.
Personally, every mp3 I have has been id3 edited properly using all the data I can find on the net. I then store it on my server in the following structure:
Well, according to Rufus' law. Computers and other IT equipment age 20 years for every human year. So, that would make the internet 800 years old. Now, Methuselah lived for 969 years, so if the internet was a human, it could set records in the near future.
You need to look at the grand scheme of things. Sure, you may get 5-10% of customers using massive amounts of data (over 500Gb) but when 90-95% of your customers are home users and small businesses who don't have their own data centers, and they may only have a 50Mb backup, their lack of use offsets the heavy users.
Imagine if in a 1Pb server, 750Tb of data was used by 10,000 individuals paying $5/mth and the other 250Tb was used by 50 individuals paying $5/mth. I failed at mathematics at school, but I'm sure the 10k will pay the data center costs that would be incurred by the 50.
Before you mod me down as a troll, read what I have to say.
I am completely sick and tired of manufacturers putting MS Office and Norton Antivirus on computers from factory. These programs come pre-loaded with Asus/HP/Compaq/etc computers but only as 30-60 day trials. And since 90% of people that buy brand name computers are idiots (and 11 years in computer retail tells me this), they think they have the whole program. So the antivirus runs in 60 days but they still think they're protected (not that Norton is very effective in any case) or they create documents in Word/Excel only to be unable to open them without paying more money. What makes it worse is that some people actually start using MS Outlook, then get locked out of their emails.
Deceiving customers with trial software should come to an end. And if this is the straw that breaks the camels back, then so be it.
All record company politics aside, we need an open source album format. MP3's to date have been individual song formats. They can have limited graphics embedded into them, but they are limited to a single individual file package. What would be good is:
- An open source audio compression which is completely scalable (maybe ogg for one download option, flac for those who really enjoy their music). - Different price points for different quality (an ogg album for example would be $10, flac could be $20, flac with all media extras including video could be at $30). Nine Inch Nails did this with Ghosts. There were, IIRC, about 6 different options to acquire the album that ranged from free, to $300. AND IT SOLD WELL!!!! (looking at this RIAA???) - Embedded album art and liner notes. Maybe even music videos. With the speed and availability of the internet these days, downloading a 200mb album with video's should be an option. - Easily extractable package. It would be good to add an album to your iTunes/xmms/winamp/wmp playlist and be able to pick out songs for shuffling purposes and such. - NO DRM!
Someone mentioned.tar files. Something similar would be good, but you have to have native support in media players (iTunes, winamp, wmp, etc).
I own a copy of BetaField 2 and have tried to run it on 3 completely different, but entirely compatible PC's with XP and Vista. I have found it's a good game to play if you can fluke getting it running. I had it working for about 10 minutes total. The biggest disappointment is when it didn't work on my gaming PC (AMD Athlon X2 6000, 2Gb Corsair Dominator 1066MHz, 2x 8800GT 512Mb in SLI) using XP or Vista. Maybe MS will release an OS that works with games really well. Then maybe EA will release a game that works well with Windows.
I have been using Win7 in a VM on my Vista laptop and it does run faster than the host OS. That I'm impressed with. I might try and install some games and see what happens. After the debacle that was Vista, MS may well just be on a winner with 7. My fingers are crossed.
This is not a smart move on the part of those companies which want to stick with Windows XP. Here's my take on the situation. Many will disagree, but there are some valid points.
1. Support: Sure, Microsoft has extended support but what about third parties? What about buying new hardware which will have Vista/Windows 7 drivers, but no XP support. It will come soon enough. And you could even stretch it to the point where hardware upgrades will become a nightmare. With 8Gb of RAM becoming common in high end computers NOW, think about where we'll be in 12 months time. Even low end bargain PC's will have 4Gb, which XP won't support properly right now. And don't bother talking about XP-64bit, there is even less support for that then there is 32bit.
2. Training: Windows has evolved over the past decade. The user interface and structure of how things are done has changed too. Consider this. Say you have an employee starting who's job requires some basic skills with MS Windows. If that employee has a relatively new computer and hasn't had experience with XP, you would have to take the time/spend the money on training them to use an old operating system. That's just stupid.
3. Why not?: From all the reports I've read, Windows 7 is going to be the LEAST crappy version of Windows yet. Even hardened anti-microsoft people (me included) are impressed with 7. Vista was a mistake, granted. And there would be no sane business on the planet that would have upgraded to Vista unless they had to. But c'mon people. XP was good, but it's also 8 years old.
My next computer I'm building in the next month or so will have a dual boot Sabayon Linux/Windows 7 setup. I run XP/Vista/Ubuntu on my current PC and at the moment, only XP works;). That being said, Microsoft seems to have finally done something right on the OS front with 7. What's next? "We're not upgrading to Windows 8, We're sticking with XP"? FFS. Let's just all go back to MSDOS and be done with it.
Just today, we read on/. that Zango sued Kaspersky and lost, setting a precedent that will no doubt have an effect on malware vendors. I posted a reply which fits perfectly with THIS story in THAT thread!
For those who don't want to click, the gist of it was that Zango gained money via deceit (changing software to gain profits) and was classed as malware. MS are doing the same as Zango!!!!!! Any business obtaining money by deceit is trading ILLEGALLY. Tsk tsk Microsoft. In this climate of spyware/malware becoming a larger target in the public eye, I can't believe this could turn out rosy for Redmond.
Zango sues Kaspersky for interfering with their business model. This is a legitimate move on Zango's part (and yes, I know they're scum but go with me here).
Kaspersky blocked Zango in the first place for being malware. What is malware? There is software out there that installs on a computer for the purpose of using customer data to make money for the software company or some related company. However to be classed as malware it has to be either installed via deceit or be non compliant when a user is performing an uninstall.
If Zango's business practices are intended to obtain money by deceit, and the courts have just agreed to that fact via the verdict in the Zango vs Kaspersky case, then it seems that not only is Zango scum, but also practicing in ILLEGAL BUSINESS PRACTICES.
Let me just reiterate that. It is entirely plausible to think that Zango is running an illegal business and can be sued/shut down. Therefore, any company that is involved in malware activities could be operating illegally too. This win for Kaspersky could open the floodgates and rid the internet (partially) of spyware.
Am I going crazy here, or did what I just type make complete sense?
It wouldn't have mattered. Most commercial anti-virus packages didn't remove Hotbar and its ilk. That is the entire point of the article. Someone (Kaspersky) had the balls to block this scumware and got sued for the trouble. They won, which is great for the anti-viruses of the world, but it's only at this point the malware is being exposed for what it is.
By simply having anti-virus software before, it wouldn't stop this crap from happening. I truly believe that having an antivirus package is only going to give you 50% security on a Windows based system. You'll get 30% more protection with a full internet security package incorporating an antivirus/antispyware/firewall. You'll get 10% more security by not using Internet Exploiter. That leaves 10% that you just can't protect yourself from. I think it's a fair assessment, though many would disagree.
It seems like the Quake engines are mostly optimized for indoors rendering, and anything in a Bethesda-style RPG would need to be optimized for large outdoor spaces, with trees, times of day/night, weather, etc.
The first Bethesda game I ever played was The Elder Scrolls - Chapter 1: The Arena. "Arena" was built on the iD Wolfenstein 3D game engine, however they did adapt that engine to include all kinds of really cool, ahead-of-its-time features. Reflective puddles, fog and rain effects, outdoors that synced night/dawn/day/dusk skymaps with lighting conditions, perspective rolling when being damaged, a 400+ city world. All this on the Wolf3D engine!!!!
I find it ironic that Bethesda's biggest cumulative game (The Elder Scrolls, pick your chapter) started off with an iD software engine, and now they bought iD.
Fair enough. You're entitled to your opinion. I don't agree though. We build about 15 AMD based PC's to every intel. I am slightly biased to AMD, as I don't believe in propping up marketing companies that make processors as a side project.
That being said, I cannot blame any issues with PC's that we have had on any platform EXCEPT for one intel system. I ordered in a high end Gigabyte mainboard for an E8500 system I was building and was matching it with 8Gb of DDR2. Thing is, the particular chipset (which escapes me now) couldn't boot with 8Gb of RAM, even though the mainboard manufacturer claimed the board would. After much research, I discovered that the chipset was simply not up to current standards. This was only 2 months ago.
I switched the customer over to a Phenom X4 810 system and it works fine with all 8Gb.
Slashdot Mirror
Please somebody mod parent as funny. I don't want anyone reading it to think that that spyware is ACTUALLY a virus remover.... :(
Well, so long America. Asking Australian telcos advice on how to run the internet is like asking pedophiles advice on running a kindergarten. We have one of the slowest and most expensive internets in the world. You'd be better off looking at Asian countries (like Japan and south Korea). I nearly fell off my chair and spat my breakfast at my screen when I read this headline.
Personally, every mp3 I have has been id3 edited properly using all the data I can find on the net. I then store it on my server in the following structure:
(Letter)\(Artist)\(Year) (Album Title)\(Artist) - (Album Title) - (Track Number) (Name of song).mp3
Example:
A\ACDC\1976 Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap\ACDC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap - 05 Problem Child.mp3
For songs that don't appear on an album I usually have an "album" folder named "Other".
For artists where I don't have full albums, the structure is similar:
B\B-52's\B-52's - Love Shack.mp3
I do the same for my TV shows:
House M.D.\Season 06\House M.D. - Season 06 - Episode 04 - Instant Karma.avi
I do this so that any filename I see on any occasion, I know exactly where it belongs and where it's come from.
Large Hadron Collider. Now THAT'S a weapon of mass destruction.
What is this "attractive woman" device you speak of?
Well, according to Rufus' law. Computers and other IT equipment age 20 years for every human year. So, that would make the internet 800 years old. Now, Methuselah lived for 969 years, so if the internet was a human, it could set records in the near future.
You need to look at the grand scheme of things. Sure, you may get 5-10% of customers using massive amounts of data (over 500Gb) but when 90-95% of your customers are home users and small businesses who don't have their own data centers, and they may only have a 50Mb backup, their lack of use offsets the heavy users.
Imagine if in a 1Pb server, 750Tb of data was used by 10,000 individuals paying $5/mth and the other 250Tb was used by 50 individuals paying $5/mth. I failed at mathematics at school, but I'm sure the 10k will pay the data center costs that would be incurred by the 50.
Before you mod me down as a troll, read what I have to say.
I am completely sick and tired of manufacturers putting MS Office and Norton Antivirus on computers from factory. These programs come pre-loaded with Asus/HP/Compaq/etc computers but only as 30-60 day trials. And since 90% of people that buy brand name computers are idiots (and 11 years in computer retail tells me this), they think they have the whole program. So the antivirus runs in 60 days but they still think they're protected (not that Norton is very effective in any case) or they create documents in Word/Excel only to be unable to open them without paying more money. What makes it worse is that some people actually start using MS Outlook, then get locked out of their emails.
Deceiving customers with trial software should come to an end. And if this is the straw that breaks the camels back, then so be it.
All record company politics aside, we need an open source album format. MP3's to date have been individual song formats. They can have limited graphics embedded into them, but they are limited to a single individual file package. What would be good is:
- An open source audio compression which is completely scalable (maybe ogg for one download option, flac for those who really enjoy their music).
- Different price points for different quality (an ogg album for example would be $10, flac could be $20, flac with all media extras including video could be at $30). Nine Inch Nails did this with Ghosts. There were, IIRC, about 6 different options to acquire the album that ranged from free, to $300. AND IT SOLD WELL!!!! (looking at this RIAA???)
- Embedded album art and liner notes. Maybe even music videos. With the speed and availability of the internet these days, downloading a 200mb album with video's should be an option.
- Easily extractable package. It would be good to add an album to your iTunes/xmms/winamp/wmp playlist and be able to pick out songs for shuffling purposes and such.
- NO DRM!
Someone mentioned .tar files. Something similar would be good, but you have to have native support in media players (iTunes, winamp, wmp, etc).
"Games fail to portray gender and ethnic diversity"? Really?
Alyx Vance - African American/Asian female
Eli Vance - African American male with a physical disability
Father Grigori - A Russian priest
Judith Mossman - A Caucasian female
For those of you not familiar with K's Choice and didn't get the parent comment...
"'solution' to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles."
You forgot ironic. The big brother connotations on this scandal makes the whole story somewhat funny even.
I own a copy of BetaField 2 and have tried to run it on 3 completely different, but entirely compatible PC's with XP and Vista. I have found it's a good game to play if you can fluke getting it running. I had it working for about 10 minutes total. The biggest disappointment is when it didn't work on my gaming PC (AMD Athlon X2 6000, 2Gb Corsair Dominator 1066MHz, 2x 8800GT 512Mb in SLI) using XP or Vista. Maybe MS will release an OS that works with games really well. Then maybe EA will release a game that works well with Windows.
I have been using Win7 in a VM on my Vista laptop and it does run faster than the host OS. That I'm impressed with. I might try and install some games and see what happens. After the debacle that was Vista, MS may well just be on a winner with 7. My fingers are crossed.
I see what you were trying to start there....
This is not a smart move on the part of those companies which want to stick with Windows XP. Here's my take on the situation. Many will disagree, but there are some valid points.
1. Support: Sure, Microsoft has extended support but what about third parties? What about buying new hardware which will have Vista/Windows 7 drivers, but no XP support. It will come soon enough. And you could even stretch it to the point where hardware upgrades will become a nightmare. With 8Gb of RAM becoming common in high end computers NOW, think about where we'll be in 12 months time. Even low end bargain PC's will have 4Gb, which XP won't support properly right now. And don't bother talking about XP-64bit, there is even less support for that then there is 32bit.
2. Training: Windows has evolved over the past decade. The user interface and structure of how things are done has changed too. Consider this. Say you have an employee starting who's job requires some basic skills with MS Windows. If that employee has a relatively new computer and hasn't had experience with XP, you would have to take the time/spend the money on training them to use an old operating system. That's just stupid.
3. Why not?: From all the reports I've read, Windows 7 is going to be the LEAST crappy version of Windows yet. Even hardened anti-microsoft people (me included) are impressed with 7. Vista was a mistake, granted. And there would be no sane business on the planet that would have upgraded to Vista unless they had to. But c'mon people. XP was good, but it's also 8 years old.
My next computer I'm building in the next month or so will have a dual boot Sabayon Linux/Windows 7 setup. I run XP/Vista/Ubuntu on my current PC and at the moment, only XP works ;). That being said, Microsoft seems to have finally done something right on the OS front with 7. What's next? "We're not upgrading to Windows 8, We're sticking with XP"? FFS. Let's just all go back to MSDOS and be done with it.
Goonix anyone?
More importantly, at 2.1 million dollars, will it blend?
Just today, we read on /. that Zango sued Kaspersky and lost, setting a precedent that will no doubt have an effect on malware vendors. I posted a reply which fits perfectly with THIS story in THAT thread!
For those who don't want to click, the gist of it was that Zango gained money via deceit (changing software to gain profits) and was classed as malware. MS are doing the same as Zango!!!!!! Any business obtaining money by deceit is trading ILLEGALLY. Tsk tsk Microsoft. In this climate of spyware/malware becoming a larger target in the public eye, I can't believe this could turn out rosy for Redmond.
Zango sues Kaspersky for interfering with their business model. This is a legitimate move on Zango's part (and yes, I know they're scum but go with me here).
Kaspersky blocked Zango in the first place for being malware. What is malware? There is software out there that installs on a computer for the purpose of using customer data to make money for the software company or some related company. However to be classed as malware it has to be either installed via deceit or be non compliant when a user is performing an uninstall.
If Zango's business practices are intended to obtain money by deceit, and the courts have just agreed to that fact via the verdict in the Zango vs Kaspersky case, then it seems that not only is Zango scum, but also practicing in ILLEGAL BUSINESS PRACTICES.
Let me just reiterate that. It is entirely plausible to think that Zango is running an illegal business and can be sued/shut down. Therefore, any company that is involved in malware activities could be operating illegally too. This win for Kaspersky could open the floodgates and rid the internet (partially) of spyware.
Am I going crazy here, or did what I just type make complete sense?
It wouldn't have mattered. Most commercial anti-virus packages didn't remove Hotbar and its ilk. That is the entire point of the article. Someone (Kaspersky) had the balls to block this scumware and got sued for the trouble. They won, which is great for the anti-viruses of the world, but it's only at this point the malware is being exposed for what it is.
By simply having anti-virus software before, it wouldn't stop this crap from happening. I truly believe that having an antivirus package is only going to give you 50% security on a Windows based system. You'll get 30% more protection with a full internet security package incorporating an antivirus/antispyware/firewall. You'll get 10% more security by not using Internet Exploiter. That leaves 10% that you just can't protect yourself from. I think it's a fair assessment, though many would disagree.
Hey, that was a cheap trick...
The first grant offer was 20,000 pounds. The artist wasn't happy.
They had to UUH, double up, UUH UUH!
It seems like the Quake engines are mostly optimized for indoors rendering, and anything in a Bethesda-style RPG would need to be optimized for large outdoor spaces, with trees, times of day/night, weather, etc.
The first Bethesda game I ever played was The Elder Scrolls - Chapter 1: The Arena. "Arena" was built on the iD Wolfenstein 3D game engine, however they did adapt that engine to include all kinds of really cool, ahead-of-its-time features. Reflective puddles, fog and rain effects, outdoors that synced night/dawn/day/dusk skymaps with lighting conditions, perspective rolling when being damaged, a 400+ city world. All this on the Wolf3D engine!!!!
I find it ironic that Bethesda's biggest cumulative game (The Elder Scrolls, pick your chapter) started off with an iD software engine, and now they bought iD.
And next time I might even login before posting.
Duh!
Fair enough. You're entitled to your opinion. I don't agree though. We build about 15 AMD based PC's to every intel. I am slightly biased to AMD, as I don't believe in propping up marketing companies that make processors as a side project.
That being said, I cannot blame any issues with PC's that we have had on any platform EXCEPT for one intel system. I ordered in a high end Gigabyte mainboard for an E8500 system I was building and was matching it with 8Gb of DDR2. Thing is, the particular chipset (which escapes me now) couldn't boot with 8Gb of RAM, even though the mainboard manufacturer claimed the board would. After much research, I discovered that the chipset was simply not up to current standards. This was only 2 months ago.
I switched the customer over to a Phenom X4 810 system and it works fine with all 8Gb.