Yes, there is more to it than shiny graphics (look at the continued success of CS). However, UT2007 looks to be very promising, especially with the other games that will be powered by the Unreal 3 engine, and I do love the gameplay of COD2. HL2 is also top of my list, and yes I was looking forward to being able to play it in HD. However, I hate playing a FPS with a standard console controller. The Revolution's controller held out promise, but if the system is going to be hobbled by low(er) horsepower, I'll reconsider buying it for the games that CAN and DO provide innovative and fun game play mixed some nice eye candy that will look great in HD. I am looking forward to console gaming giving me the best of both worlds, and saving me money from having to upgrade my PC for games like Battlefield 2.
I was looking forward to the Revolution's controller to be able to play FPS games such as COD2 and the upcoming UT2007. Since MS is not allowing a keyboard and mouse (I don't know Sony's plans), I was hoping the Revolution's freestyle controller would be what I was looking for. But with lower end specs like this, I'm not so sure. Perhaps I will be upgrading my PC after all.
Good comments. You bring up some valid points regarding a consistent installation/upgrade mechanism for Linux apps. DPKG for Debian is probably the most reliable, and versatile of the bunch. As a user that's concerned with this, I'd like to know what your thoughts are on something like PBI that the folks over at PCBSD are developing. I think what they are on to is potentially better than what Linux/Unix/Windows are doing. Their installer actually releases the user from dependency (or in Windows' case, dll) hell by providing all the files that the user needs to run the application in it's own "container". Apps no longer have to share files with other apps (or the operating system), so you may upgrade the OS, and never have your apps break. It's an interesting concept that I think Linux could do well from.
Early on in Ubuntu's beginings, I ran it as my primary desktop mainly because it was described as a better Debian than Debian. So I ran it, and was genuinely impressed, but not overly thrilled. Yes, it has many of the pluses that Debian has namely in APT, and embraces Debian social contract, and then some. But I still don't get why people are losing their minds over this.
After about seven or eight months, I tried it again. Better, but still not amazing. In the meantime, I had used Xandros, and eventually moved (and settled on) PCLinuxOS. Wireless worked, the browser had every plug-in I needed, Java was pre-installed, etc. In my opinion, it's clearly a better Ubuntu than Ubuntu.
What permanently turned me off, is when Ubuntu refused to include KDE based apps with their distro (this is prior to Kubuntu and Breezy Badger), and when problems started cropping up regarding Ubuntu seemingly splitting off with Debian. Regardless of what Mark Shuttleworth has to say, I agree with Ian's comments that they are not respecting the fact they are riding on the backs of Debian's work.
Just my.02.
I'm getting just the information I was looking for here. Thanks for that. So a number of causes have been identified. Among those, niche markets, high publishing costs, short shelf lives, and last but not least, an unattractive market for writers due to length of time and effort vs. low rate of return.
So, what are some suggestions for fixing this? Publishing online to eliminate paper costs? Perhaps advertisements in the books to help offset some of these costs, or to supplement writer income?
What do you think should be done?
Isn't anyone else creeped out by the "Welcome to your computer Dave" message? What's next, "I'm sorry Dave. That DVD is copyright protected, Dave. Regardless if you are the owner, you may not circumvent the copy protection mechanism, Dave. I'm sorry Dave, I must now suck you of the airlock Dave." *shudder*
Am I the only one who thinks that Google's true innovation has slipped? Most of the new stuff Google is rolling out is already being done by someone else (you can argue until you're blue in the face as to whether or not they are doing it better than everyone else). Their search engine was revolutionary, but this seems too evolutionary for the kind of talent they have. Come on Google, blow us away like you used to.
This is not really a tool per se, but the faster you can convert your users to thin clients on a terminal server platform, the better off you'll be. If you get 70 or 80 of your users to use TS, it means less hardware to manage, less time patching systems, high availabilty by backing up and/or RAIDing the data, faster response times for user's problems, less power and HVAC usage, etc. It's not an answer for everyone, but it can make your job a lot easier if it's done right.
If you can stomach the profanity, check out this site . There are no ifs, ands, or buts on where these people stand on a game. I don't think the industry uses these guys for marketing, but honest reviews abound. Check out this tasty review of HL2 for a sample. ***WARNING*** NOT FOR THE EASILY OFFENDED!!
It would be interesting to see if there are any similarities between sleep and deep meditation in relation to problem solving.
Of course that would mean that science would have to concede an actual benefit to alternative medicine. Can't have that now, can we?
There are some serious discussions going on right now over at fireflyfans.net of raising money for a straight to DVD series. This is not like the SaveEnterprise campaign, sine the fans are not very keen on getting the series back on to network TV.
The idea was born out of a (I believe) New York Magazine article, where Firefly was singled out as a series that had the ability to make this happen. The method is similar to to how some OSS programs operate. Once the creator of the program gets X amount of money, they release the program. Same would apply here. Sixteen episodes budgeted at 2 million USD a piece, plus creation costs for the DVDs, shipping etc. Ballparking it at $40 million USD to produce, and charge another $29.95 USD to sell it.
It's unclear whether or not Fox has the rights to a straight to DVD release, since they hold the broadcast rights to new episodes. But, since these are not being broadcast, this may be able to be sidestepped, or possibly royalties or some such would need to be paid to them. It's all in the wording of the contract. There has also been talk about rasing the money to purchase the rights from FOX, if they are willing to sell.
Mal: "What happens when the money's good enough?" Jayne: "Well, that will be an interesting day."
Does Micorsoft make any licensing or royalty money on after market accessories? Seems they could since they have locked drivers down/out of the X360. It's also confusing why they would not add a keyboard and mouse to that line up.
I read a saying once that sums this up best. It goes, "Suing IBM is like kicking a Pit Bull. No matter how it ends up, you're gonna be a mess.".
I can't remeber who said it, but truer words have never been spoken.
I'd start by looking at Communigate Pro from Stalker Software. They have a Dynamic Cluster solution which taps out at 5 million accounts, and includes everything you are asking for. They have a Super Cluster that will handle 5 million+ if need be. Their prices are very reasonable, and they have won numerous awards. Their Network Computing stress test did something like 160,000 e-mails per hour with zero errors. They have a free unlimited trial to download, and runs on 21 platforms from Windows and Linux to QNX and BeOS!!
http://www.stalker.com/content/solutions.htm
Did he check above the visor? Man, the keys could still be there! If they are, then fly that fucker out of there. FREE!! FREE!! FREE!! There's no way Reno 911 could ever catch you!
What's that? Questionable tactics used by the British media?? Say it isn't so! C'mon folks, didn't anybody see Notting Hill? OMG, I can't believe I just admitted to seeing Notting Hill!!!
You don't even need to go that far. Just encourage game developers (Id, Epic, Blizzard, etc.) that choose to program in OpenGL, or utilize other open standards, and the games port nearly flawlessly to Linux. Just have a look at UT2004, America's Army, and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Get these engines into the hands of talented people like Ryan Gordon at http://icculus.org/http://www.bluesnews.com/plans/477/, and you can see that it looks very promising.
BTW, WoW works amazingly well using Wine alone.
Using a commodity PC, and the software provided free by ZoneCD http://www.publicip.net/, I was able to setup a public Wifi Hotspot in about 30 minutes. Super easy, and gives you granular access levels to grant people different types of access (i.e. Super User, Average Joe, etc.). You can track user logins, and other usage stats via a webpage as well. It sure pissed off my wife to have to log in everytime though!
$4.1B can actually buy you one thing that Sun needs the most right now, and that's time. Dell successfully implemented a strategy to lean back on it's cash reserves for no other reason than to lower it's prices, and stick it to it's competition. Sun could implement the same strategy for it's hardware. Switch to Linux and provide high quality software (Linux), bundled with high end hardware to create price points up and down it's line that could put the HP's and IBM's of the world in a bind. All the while maintain some of it's cash reserves, and play up it's services buisness much the same as IBM has.
Many people ask why IT seems to always be in the cross hairs for budget cuts. This is fairly simple: IT departments spend money, they don't make it. They are however, the people who provide the tools to make a business a success. However "soft" costs such as support are often overlooked.
Part of the buisness problem in America is that the short term is very often as far as planners and executives can think. Cutting people is not often the best way to go about saving money, but it's fast and provides a quick return. Part of your job, believe it or not, is to sell management on the cost saving AND productivity effectiveness of your IT infrastructure, and certainly standardization of your policies and practices.
For instance, small buisnesses can benefit by going to a terminal services environment vs. standard PCs (especialy an LTSP or NX environ). Why? Fewer machines to patch and/or upgrade can result in less downtime, and save money on either a) hiring additional IT staff, or b) save on any contractors or maintenance vendors having to fix multiple machines. If a nasty virus gets released, you patch one machine vs. 5 or 10.
As stated before, take a look at what policies and procedures you have implemented, and look for any unnecessary actions or redunandcies. For instance, do you have multiple data sources that contain the same data? These are most often being maintained by two people, when one person, and some automation, can possibly handle it. The other person can be re-assigned to another dept. that needs the help. We do employee sharing where I work, and inmost cases, it's effective. Our IT staff sometimes performs duties normally carried out by our building maintenance. Simple wiring, or maybe installing a power outlet is easy, safe, and frees up remedial busy work for building maintenance when an IT person is available. The same is true in reverse. When computers need to be moved and re-setup, and we're short handed, a quick call to the maintenance dept, and one or two guys may be availble to do installs for us.
Hope it helps, and good luck!
Re:It sure worked. Scox up 20% at the open.
on
SCO Targets UK Firms
·
· Score: 1
20% of nothing is, well, let me do the math..... Nothing, then carry the zero..........
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Yes, there is more to it than shiny graphics (look at the continued success of CS). However, UT2007 looks to be very promising, especially with the other games that will be powered by the Unreal 3 engine, and I do love the gameplay of COD2. HL2 is also top of my list, and yes I was looking forward to being able to play it in HD. However, I hate playing a FPS with a standard console controller. The Revolution's controller held out promise, but if the system is going to be hobbled by low(er) horsepower, I'll reconsider buying it for the games that CAN and DO provide innovative and fun game play mixed some nice eye candy that will look great in HD. I am looking forward to console gaming giving me the best of both worlds, and saving me money from having to upgrade my PC for games like Battlefield 2.
I was looking forward to the Revolution's controller to be able to play FPS games such as COD2 and the upcoming UT2007. Since MS is not allowing a keyboard and mouse (I don't know Sony's plans), I was hoping the Revolution's freestyle controller would be what I was looking for. But with lower end specs like this, I'm not so sure. Perhaps I will be upgrading my PC after all.
Good comments. You bring up some valid points regarding a consistent installation/upgrade mechanism for Linux apps. DPKG for Debian is probably the most reliable, and versatile of the bunch. As a user that's concerned with this, I'd like to know what your thoughts are on something like PBI that the folks over at PCBSD are developing. I think what they are on to is potentially better than what Linux/Unix/Windows are doing. Their installer actually releases the user from dependency (or in Windows' case, dll) hell by providing all the files that the user needs to run the application in it's own "container". Apps no longer have to share files with other apps (or the operating system), so you may upgrade the OS, and never have your apps break. It's an interesting concept that I think Linux could do well from.
Early on in Ubuntu's beginings, I ran it as my primary desktop mainly because it was described as a better Debian than Debian. So I ran it, and was genuinely impressed, but not overly thrilled. Yes, it has many of the pluses that Debian has namely in APT, and embraces Debian social contract, and then some. But I still don't get why people are losing their minds over this. After about seven or eight months, I tried it again. Better, but still not amazing. In the meantime, I had used Xandros, and eventually moved (and settled on) PCLinuxOS. Wireless worked, the browser had every plug-in I needed, Java was pre-installed, etc. In my opinion, it's clearly a better Ubuntu than Ubuntu. What permanently turned me off, is when Ubuntu refused to include KDE based apps with their distro (this is prior to Kubuntu and Breezy Badger), and when problems started cropping up regarding Ubuntu seemingly splitting off with Debian. Regardless of what Mark Shuttleworth has to say, I agree with Ian's comments that they are not respecting the fact they are riding on the backs of Debian's work. Just my .02.
I'm getting just the information I was looking for here. Thanks for that. So a number of causes have been identified. Among those, niche markets, high publishing costs, short shelf lives, and last but not least, an unattractive market for writers due to length of time and effort vs. low rate of return. So, what are some suggestions for fixing this? Publishing online to eliminate paper costs? Perhaps advertisements in the books to help offset some of these costs, or to supplement writer income? What do you think should be done?
Isn't anyone else creeped out by the "Welcome to your computer Dave" message? What's next, "I'm sorry Dave. That DVD is copyright protected, Dave. Regardless if you are the owner, you may not circumvent the copy protection mechanism, Dave. I'm sorry Dave, I must now suck you of the airlock Dave." *shudder*
Am I the only one who thinks that Google's true innovation has slipped? Most of the new stuff Google is rolling out is already being done by someone else (you can argue until you're blue in the face as to whether or not they are doing it better than everyone else). Their search engine was revolutionary, but this seems too evolutionary for the kind of talent they have. Come on Google, blow us away like you used to.
Can we add Extinguish to that as well?
This is not really a tool per se, but the faster you can convert your users to thin clients on a terminal server platform, the better off you'll be. If you get 70 or 80 of your users to use TS, it means less hardware to manage, less time patching systems, high availabilty by backing up and/or RAIDing the data, faster response times for user's problems, less power and HVAC usage, etc. It's not an answer for everyone, but it can make your job a lot easier if it's done right.
If you can stomach the profanity, check out this site . There are no ifs, ands, or buts on where these people stand on a game. I don't think the industry uses these guys for marketing, but honest reviews abound. Check out this tasty review of HL2 for a sample. ***WARNING*** NOT FOR THE EASILY OFFENDED!!
It would be interesting to see if there are any similarities between sleep and deep meditation in relation to problem solving. Of course that would mean that science would have to concede an actual benefit to alternative medicine. Can't have that now, can we?
There are some serious discussions going on right now over at fireflyfans.net of raising money for a straight to DVD series. This is not like the SaveEnterprise campaign, sine the fans are not very keen on getting the series back on to network TV.
The idea was born out of a (I believe) New York Magazine article, where Firefly was singled out as a series that had the ability to make this happen. The method is similar to to how some OSS programs operate. Once the creator of the program gets X amount of money, they release the program. Same would apply here. Sixteen episodes budgeted at 2 million USD a piece, plus creation costs for the DVDs, shipping etc. Ballparking it at $40 million USD to produce, and charge another $29.95 USD to sell it.
It's unclear whether or not Fox has the rights to a straight to DVD release, since they hold the broadcast rights to new episodes. But, since these are not being broadcast, this may be able to be sidestepped, or possibly royalties or some such would need to be paid to them. It's all in the wording of the contract. There has also been talk about rasing the money to purchase the rights from FOX, if they are willing to sell.
Mal: "What happens when the money's good enough?"
Jayne: "Well, that will be an interesting day."
Yes it would.
I'm still running WinXP Beta. Oh, no wait a second.....
Does Micorsoft make any licensing or royalty money on after market accessories? Seems they could since they have locked drivers down/out of the X360. It's also confusing why they would not add a keyboard and mouse to that line up.
I read a saying once that sums this up best. It goes, "Suing IBM is like kicking a Pit Bull. No matter how it ends up, you're gonna be a mess.". I can't remeber who said it, but truer words have never been spoken.
To save time searching for reviews (if that's what you're looking for), here you go. http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/serenity
I'd start by looking at Communigate Pro from Stalker Software. They have a Dynamic Cluster solution which taps out at 5 million accounts, and includes everything you are asking for. They have a Super Cluster that will handle 5 million+ if need be. Their prices are very reasonable, and they have won numerous awards. Their Network Computing stress test did something like 160,000 e-mails per hour with zero errors. They have a free unlimited trial to download, and runs on 21 platforms from Windows and Linux to QNX and BeOS!! http://www.stalker.com/content/solutions.htm
Yeah, didn't Google just plunk down a wad of dough in for high speed access over power lines? Perhaps this ties in with that, no?
Did he check above the visor? Man, the keys could still be there! If they are, then fly that fucker out of there. FREE!! FREE!! FREE!! There's no way Reno 911 could ever catch you!
What's that? Questionable tactics used by the British media?? Say it isn't so! C'mon folks, didn't anybody see Notting Hill? OMG, I can't believe I just admitted to seeing Notting Hill!!!
You don't even need to go that far. Just encourage game developers (Id, Epic, Blizzard, etc.) that choose to program in OpenGL, or utilize other open standards, and the games port nearly flawlessly to Linux. Just have a look at UT2004, America's Army, and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Get these engines into the hands of talented people like Ryan Gordon at http://icculus.org/ http://www.bluesnews.com/plans/477/, and you can see that it looks very promising. BTW, WoW works amazingly well using Wine alone.
Using a commodity PC, and the software provided free by ZoneCD http://www.publicip.net/, I was able to setup a public Wifi Hotspot in about 30 minutes. Super easy, and gives you granular access levels to grant people different types of access (i.e. Super User, Average Joe, etc.). You can track user logins, and other usage stats via a webpage as well. It sure pissed off my wife to have to log in everytime though!
$4.1B can actually buy you one thing that Sun needs the most right now, and that's time. Dell successfully implemented a strategy to lean back on it's cash reserves for no other reason than to lower it's prices, and stick it to it's competition. Sun could implement the same strategy for it's hardware. Switch to Linux and provide high quality software (Linux), bundled with high end hardware to create price points up and down it's line that could put the HP's and IBM's of the world in a bind. All the while maintain some of it's cash reserves, and play up it's services buisness much the same as IBM has.
Many people ask why IT seems to always be in the cross hairs for budget cuts. This is fairly simple: IT departments spend money, they don't make it.
They are however, the people who provide the tools to make a business a success. However "soft" costs such as support are often overlooked.
Part of the buisness problem in America is that the short term is very often as far as planners and executives can think. Cutting people is not often the best way to go about saving money, but it's fast and provides a quick return. Part of your job, believe it or not, is to sell management on the cost saving AND productivity effectiveness of your IT infrastructure, and certainly standardization of your policies and practices.
For instance, small buisnesses can benefit by going to a terminal services environment vs. standard PCs (especialy an LTSP or NX environ). Why? Fewer machines to patch and/or upgrade can result in less downtime, and save money on either a) hiring additional IT staff, or b) save on any contractors or maintenance vendors having to fix multiple machines. If a nasty virus gets released, you patch one machine vs. 5 or 10.
As stated before, take a look at what policies and procedures you have implemented, and look for any unnecessary actions or redunandcies. For instance, do you have multiple data sources that contain the same data? These are most often being maintained by two people, when one person, and some automation, can possibly handle it. The other person can be re-assigned to another dept. that needs the help. We do employee sharing where I work, and inmost cases, it's effective. Our IT staff sometimes performs duties normally carried out by our building maintenance. Simple wiring, or maybe installing a power outlet is easy, safe, and frees up remedial busy work for building maintenance when an IT person is available. The same is true in reverse. When computers need to be moved and re-setup, and we're short handed, a quick call to the maintenance dept, and one or two guys may be availble to do installs for us.
Hope it helps, and good luck!
20% of nothing is, well, let me do the math..... Nothing, then carry the zero..........