This can really kill any online game. It's a chicken-and-egg problem, although even if that problem gets solved, it can really kill a game if subscriber count dips for any reason.
For example, this is a basic VERY concise history of Dark Age of Camelot:
Game launches successfully (I've heard that it is still regarded as the least buggy MMOG launch ever. This is sad since DAoC still had lots of annoying bugs.
First game expansion is well received
Not realizing that the reasons most of the DAoC subscriber base were playing DAoC instead of Everquest was because they hated certain aspects of EQ such as sitting around camping a rare mob spawn for hours on end, Mythic decided to try and capitalize on EQ's popularity by releasing a new expansion (Trials of Atlantis) which had very EQ-like mechanics. (Super-rare mob spawns as opposed to the previous DAoC model of super-rare drops off of mobs or drops off of super-hard mobs requiring lots of teamwork to beat.)
Playerbase almost universally hates ToA and constantly bitches about it to Mythic. Mythic ignores the bitching because people aren't quitting. Mythic does not realize that most of the complainers are just waiting for another place to go - While they like DAoC far less than they used to, there still aren't better options.
Eventually, Blizzard Entertainment provides just the option that over half of DAoC's playerbase is waiting for. DAoC's subscriber count drops rapidly over the period of only a few months
Mythic finally realizes just how much ToA was hurting them, and starts fixing it
While the game is vastly improved (and in my opinion, is far better than WoW in terms of game mechanics), the fact that the playerbase is totally skewed towards hardcore players shifts RvR (Realm vs. Realm) mechanics in such a way that casual players can't compete. As a result, despite the reason for people originally leaving for WoW being gone, the reduced playerbase of DAoC makes people stay with WoW (or other games - EVE in my case).
DAoC is stuck in a chicken-and-egg situation in which they can't gain new/casual players until they gain more casual players.
Game mechanics-wise, I would rather be playing DAoC than EVE. But the decimated playerbase means DAoC is no longer fun, despite good game mechanics.
In my case, Windows Update (or whatever it is now called) would consistently hang on my machine, consuming 100% CPU for 30-40 minutes or more without doing anything.
It's apparently been a common problem since MS moved from Windows Update to ??? Update. (They changed the name, I forget what they changed it to, and in the process overhauled everything, which of course BROKE everything.) Autopatcher was the only way I could update that machine.
More likely, her heart was temporarily (and rapidly) damaged by some sort of illness that attacked her heart. (Weird virus, bacteria, maybe a toxin.) As long as THAT doesn't happen again she'll be fine.
Admittedly, SLAs (Service Level Agreements) and TOS (Terms of Service) are closely related, but that $400 T1 line does give you:
1) A certain guarantee of performance from that 1.544 Mbps line. Your 10M cable modem, on the other hand, is shared with your neighborhood. (Sort of. DOCSIS is around 30, your cap is 10, still that means you're still fundamentally shared if there are more than 3 users in your neighborhood.) 2) Probably a block of static IPs instead of DHCP 3) No "no servers" ban in your TOS 4) Higher reliability 5) Upgraded support guarantees
Really, there isn't enough detail whether he had a recalled battery or not. A lot of people probably were not aware of the Sony battery recall (The batteries Dell recalled were all made by Sony.)
The article claims it was a 9200. That model is now three generations old. The 9000 series went in numeric order as time went by - 9200, 9300, 9400, ????. 9400 (aka E1705) was the previous generation.
"I honestly have no idea why the company I work for has us install them" They are legally required to support CableCard. Well, sort of... They keep finding loopholes (which is what this article is about.)
"most of the time the picture doesn't come in on the TiVo" This is your employer's fault. Maybe they should have done a better job when designing CableCard...
Have you seen the breakdown of who gets what from albums these days?
Despite the high prices for the consumer, the supplier (artist) gets almost nothing.
Current track prices are way too high ($1.30 for usable content with an incredibly limited selection), and while allofmp3's were too low (10-25 cents/track depending on length and compression), a compromise somewhere between the two (maybe 50 cents for no-DRM) would likely be quite successful.
They could even reduce advertising budgets significantly and simply use the "similar artists" and "people also bought x" features that most good online stores have nowadays.
On the other hand, shutting down the box ASAP makes it much harder to find the guy.
For example, one of Vodafone Greece's first reactions to finding that some of their switching systems had been rootkitted was to remove the offending software. This removal was one of the main contributing factors to the authorities having no chance to ever find the group that had compromised the system, that along with a couple of other screwups led to Vodafone getting fined a pretty hefty sum.
The bugs have been successfully designing themselves that way thanks to our good friend evolution.
If someone wants to create an antibiotic-resistant superbug, it would be much easier for them to start with existing antibiotic-resistant bugs and tweak them with existing well-established techniques.
The big news of this article is not that genetic material was transplanted, but that the *full and complete* genome was transplanted. To be honest, while it's an impressive feat, for 99% of the applications mentioned in the article summary, existing "partial genome" transplantation techniques are more than sufficient. People have been doing partial genome transplants with success for nearly three decades now - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin#Timeline_of_i nsulin_research .
That was the point - Diebold does, and their ATM machines (unlike their voting solutions) are extremely secure. The poster was wondering why the people who are involved with their ATM design don't seem to be involved with their voting system design.
Other replies did a good job of explaining why this is...
I can't provide details, but yes. I know of companies that have had a VERY anti-Linux (in terms of allowing its use) stance over the past few years and the SCO case was a big contributing factor.
Whether or not the "thou shalt not use Linux" contingent in those companies will change their tune with this news, I do not know. My guess is they'll find another excuse.
Rather than trying to sue them out of existence, the RIAA would have been better off simply destroying them the capitalist way - Drive them out of the market with (possibly unfair) competition.
They could easily have charged twice what allofmp3.com charged and still done well for the following reasons: 1) Better selection if they did it right. (This would be hard - allofmp3 had a better selection than many of the "I only carry music from one of the major 5 labels" official online stores.) 2) Easier payment. EASY as hell compared to the nightmare that was getting credits on allofmp3 before they were totally shut down. 3) Still far less expensive than current prices. $1.30/track is a little to expensive for "impulse buy", and means that people are only going to buy tracks they've heard. With allofmp3, I would routinely buy entire albums if I liked one track because it was so inexpensive to do so. (Oddly, people buying entire albums is one of the things the RIAA wants people to do and why they resisted any form of online sales for so long...) Likewise, with allofmp3, I would routinely buy additional albums if I liked the first one as a total impulse buy.
The RIAA was stupid with how they handled allofmp3. They looked at it and simply saw, "we're not getting paid". They were too blinded by that greed to look at allofmp3's business model and the fact that allofmp3 was proof that if you gave people content at the right price and convenience, they were perfectly willing to pay for music rather than download it for free.
Yup. Just because the SFLC has determined that Atheros will have trouble suing the developers (it's no guarantee that they can't - see previous comments regarding Kodak and legal opinions) doesn't mean that the FCC won't decide to start smacking someone around over this issue.
After all, the reason consistently stated by Atheros for the closed HAL is that the FCC would nail them if they opened it up. I don't blame them - the FCC could easily put them out of business.
In most cases, they bought supercomputers before IBM started making "cheap mass market" units. i.e. they don't have BlueGenes because they have custom one-offs.
I know Cornell Theory Center has a few supercomputers that were top of the line when installed, but I think they're getting a bit old nowadays.
Yup, Cornell has dropped off of the top500 for now. They held the #6 rank in 1995, were last on the top500 list with a ranking of 496 in 2006, and last held a top 100 ranking of 49 back in mid-2003. Just like these new BlueGene systems will drop off of the top500 list after 4-5 years.
Even without using an exotic powerplant like a rotary, it's still possible to get a LOT more power out of an engine similar in size to the existing ones.
According to Wikipedia, these are the specs: 2.8L V6, 170 HP (Europe), 130 HP (US). The engine was severely derated to meet emissions specs in the U.S. Back in that time period it was probably carbed - EFI didn't become common until later in the 80s, and once that was introduced it became easier and easier to meet emissions specs without compromising horsepower.
Nowadays it should be easy for a 24V variant with the same displacement to crack 200 HP normally aspirated (even more with variable valve timing). There are also plenty of turbocharged and supercharged engines in that displacement class, or turbo/super kits for NA engines in that displacement class. For example, there are a lot of turbo kits for the Mitsubishi 6G7x V6 variants, including the 3.0L 6G72 which makes around 220HP with modern 24V heads I believe. (My 12v variant only cranks out 150 though.:( )
There were even turbo/super/24v variants of the PRV engine used in the DeLorean, but those have been out of production for over a decade.
"Either the person did want to use the product, in which case they should pay for it, or they didn't want to use it. You can't have it both ways."
Not quite. Let's use Adobe Photoshop as an example They can: 1) Want to use the product but not afford retail price. 1a) They pirate it 1b) They choose an alternative (Paint Shop Pro or GIMP) that isn't quite what they wanted but does an acceptable job and is cheaper ($100-150 and free, respectively). 2) Want to use the product and can afford/justify its exorbitant cost 3) They don't want to use the product
True, in all cases but 2), it represents a lost sale for Adobe. But in the case of 1a), it is false to claim that piracy was the cause of that lost sale. The sale was lost no matter what for case 1), whether or not piracy or competition was the cause.
Rather than having a small, super-expensive, super-efficient panel, I'd rather have a panel with much less efficiency than current cells but much higher watts-per-dollar rating.
The constant increases in silicon cell efficiency are great for space stations, but for those of us on the surface of the planet, we need a breakthrough in watts-per-dollar that isn't vaporware. There's no shortage of space to put solar cells (building roofs, car roofs, etc.), but there's a shortage of money for it and also current cells require more energy to manufacture than they can produce in their lifetime.
I got through a good portion of my senior year of college (2002) using an ancient 233 MHz Pentium-MMX laptop. with an UPGRADE to 128M of RAM (from 64).
This included: Word processing Web browsing IM Matlab simulations Circuit design with Eagle
I did have a 1 GHz Athlon Thunderbird available, but with the exception of the Matlab stuff, I took no productivity hit. In fact, if anything my productivity was higher because I could work while laying on my apartment's nice comfy couch instead of sitting at my desk. (This is why I used the laptop when I had another machine available.) In some ways the slowness of the Matlab stuff actuall increased productivity because it forced me/allowed me to multitask while my simulations ran.
Admittedly, the laptop ran Linux. Running Vista on this machine is likely crippling it so that 1GB RAM might indeed be insufficient.
Look at some of UNH's studies on algae-derived biodiesel.
Because algae grows well in waste water from human sources (in fact LOVES sewage) and because it needs no soil, it can be grown in areas where it is utterly impractical to grow crops. UNH typically uses the Sonoran Desert in the U.S. Southwest as an example - Something like 1/4 of that area (which is mostly unpopulated) could supply the transportation fuel needs of the entire country (if all vehicles were converted from gasoline to biodiesel, of course.) They did assume special "high oil content" algae breeds that are difficult to grow/maintain without less "efficient" strains taking over though, it looks like this company is focusing on less efficient (but easier to grow/keep alive) algae strains with lower oil content.
The article makes a comment about "wild algae". It looks like the company is focusing on less efficient algae (in terms of oil content) in order to simplify the process and make the system easier to maintain.
Slashdot Mirror
This can really kill any online game. It's a chicken-and-egg problem, although even if that problem gets solved, it can really kill a game if subscriber count dips for any reason.
For example, this is a basic VERY concise history of Dark Age of Camelot:
Game launches successfully (I've heard that it is still regarded as the least buggy MMOG launch ever. This is sad since DAoC still had lots of annoying bugs.
First game expansion is well received
Not realizing that the reasons most of the DAoC subscriber base were playing DAoC instead of Everquest was because they hated certain aspects of EQ such as sitting around camping a rare mob spawn for hours on end, Mythic decided to try and capitalize on EQ's popularity by releasing a new expansion (Trials of Atlantis) which had very EQ-like mechanics. (Super-rare mob spawns as opposed to the previous DAoC model of super-rare drops off of mobs or drops off of super-hard mobs requiring lots of teamwork to beat.)
Playerbase almost universally hates ToA and constantly bitches about it to Mythic. Mythic ignores the bitching because people aren't quitting. Mythic does not realize that most of the complainers are just waiting for another place to go - While they like DAoC far less than they used to, there still aren't better options.
Eventually, Blizzard Entertainment provides just the option that over half of DAoC's playerbase is waiting for.
DAoC's subscriber count drops rapidly over the period of only a few months
Mythic finally realizes just how much ToA was hurting them, and starts fixing it
While the game is vastly improved (and in my opinion, is far better than WoW in terms of game mechanics), the fact that the playerbase is totally skewed towards hardcore players shifts RvR (Realm vs. Realm) mechanics in such a way that casual players can't compete. As a result, despite the reason for people originally leaving for WoW being gone, the reduced playerbase of DAoC makes people stay with WoW (or other games - EVE in my case).
DAoC is stuck in a chicken-and-egg situation in which they can't gain new/casual players until they gain more casual players.
Game mechanics-wise, I would rather be playing DAoC than EVE. But the decimated playerbase means DAoC is no longer fun, despite good game mechanics.
Actually, I read the article and then forgot half the contents. Insufficient caffeine. :)
In my case, Windows Update (or whatever it is now called) would consistently hang on my machine, consuming 100% CPU for 30-40 minutes or more without doing anything.
It's apparently been a common problem since MS moved from Windows Update to ??? Update. (They changed the name, I forget what they changed it to, and in the process overhauled everything, which of course BROKE everything.) Autopatcher was the only way I could update that machine.
More likely, her heart was temporarily (and rapidly) damaged by some sort of illness that attacked her heart. (Weird virus, bacteria, maybe a toxin.) As long as THAT doesn't happen again she'll be fine.
Admittedly, SLAs (Service Level Agreements) and TOS (Terms of Service) are closely related, but that $400 T1 line does give you:
1) A certain guarantee of performance from that 1.544 Mbps line. Your 10M cable modem, on the other hand, is shared with your neighborhood. (Sort of. DOCSIS is around 30, your cap is 10, still that means you're still fundamentally shared if there are more than 3 users in your neighborhood.)
2) Probably a block of static IPs instead of DHCP
3) No "no servers" ban in your TOS
4) Higher reliability
5) Upgraded support guarantees
Really, there isn't enough detail whether he had a recalled battery or not. A lot of people probably were not aware of the Sony battery recall (The batteries Dell recalled were all made by Sony.)
The article claims it was a 9200. That model is now three generations old. The 9000 series went in numeric order as time went by - 9200, 9300, 9400, ????. 9400 (aka E1705) was the previous generation.
Disregarding other people's comments:
"I honestly have no idea why the company I work for has us install them"
They are legally required to support CableCard. Well, sort of... They keep finding loopholes (which is what this article is about.)
"most of the time the picture doesn't come in on the TiVo"
This is your employer's fault. Maybe they should have done a better job when designing CableCard...
CD was Philips, not Sony.
As to DVD - Not sure about the original DVD format, but Sony effectively created the recordable DVD format war with the + series of formats.
And yes, Sony had a role in VHS vs. Beta - Beta was Sony's format.
Have you seen the breakdown of who gets what from albums these days?
Despite the high prices for the consumer, the supplier (artist) gets almost nothing.
Current track prices are way too high ($1.30 for usable content with an incredibly limited selection), and while allofmp3's were too low (10-25 cents/track depending on length and compression), a compromise somewhere between the two (maybe 50 cents for no-DRM) would likely be quite successful.
They could even reduce advertising budgets significantly and simply use the "similar artists" and "people also bought x" features that most good online stores have nowadays.
On the other hand, shutting down the box ASAP makes it much harder to find the guy.
i ng_case_2004-2005
For example, one of Vodafone Greece's first reactions to finding that some of their switching systems had been rootkitted was to remove the offending software. This removal was one of the main contributing factors to the authorities having no chance to ever find the group that had compromised the system, that along with a couple of other screwups led to Vodafone getting fined a pretty hefty sum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_telephone_tapp
IEEE Spectrum had a recent article that had MUCH better information than Wikipedia though, I don't have it with me at the moment unfortunately.
The bugs have been successfully designing themselves that way thanks to our good friend evolution.
i nsulin_research .
If someone wants to create an antibiotic-resistant superbug, it would be much easier for them to start with existing antibiotic-resistant bugs and tweak them with existing well-established techniques.
The big news of this article is not that genetic material was transplanted, but that the *full and complete* genome was transplanted. To be honest, while it's an impressive feat, for 99% of the applications mentioned in the article summary, existing "partial genome" transplantation techniques are more than sufficient. People have been doing partial genome transplants with success for nearly three decades now - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin#Timeline_of_
That was the point - Diebold does, and their ATM machines (unlike their voting solutions) are extremely secure. The poster was wondering why the people who are involved with their ATM design don't seem to be involved with their voting system design.
Other replies did a good job of explaining why this is...
Your legal department is saner than that of the companies in question then.
I can't provide details, but yes. I know of companies that have had a VERY anti-Linux (in terms of allowing its use) stance over the past few years and the SCO case was a big contributing factor.
Whether or not the "thou shalt not use Linux" contingent in those companies will change their tune with this news, I do not know. My guess is they'll find another excuse.
You basically just described allofmp3.com.
Rather than trying to sue them out of existence, the RIAA would have been better off simply destroying them the capitalist way - Drive them out of the market with (possibly unfair) competition.
They could easily have charged twice what allofmp3.com charged and still done well for the following reasons:
1) Better selection if they did it right. (This would be hard - allofmp3 had a better selection than many of the "I only carry music from one of the major 5 labels" official online stores.)
2) Easier payment. EASY as hell compared to the nightmare that was getting credits on allofmp3 before they were totally shut down.
3) Still far less expensive than current prices. $1.30/track is a little to expensive for "impulse buy", and means that people are only going to buy tracks they've heard. With allofmp3, I would routinely buy entire albums if I liked one track because it was so inexpensive to do so. (Oddly, people buying entire albums is one of the things the RIAA wants people to do and why they resisted any form of online sales for so long...) Likewise, with allofmp3, I would routinely buy additional albums if I liked the first one as a total impulse buy.
The RIAA was stupid with how they handled allofmp3. They looked at it and simply saw, "we're not getting paid". They were too blinded by that greed to look at allofmp3's business model and the fact that allofmp3 was proof that if you gave people content at the right price and convenience, they were perfectly willing to pay for music rather than download it for free.
"Yet another MySpace security hole" somehow translates to "All social networking sites are full of holes"?
Just a LITTLE bit of stereotyping in the article title I think?
Yup. Just because the SFLC has determined that Atheros will have trouble suing the developers (it's no guarantee that they can't - see previous comments regarding Kodak and legal opinions) doesn't mean that the FCC won't decide to start smacking someone around over this issue.
After all, the reason consistently stated by Atheros for the closed HAL is that the FCC would nail them if they opened it up. I don't blame them - the FCC could easily put them out of business.
In most cases, they bought supercomputers before IBM started making "cheap mass market" units. i.e. they don't have BlueGenes because they have custom one-offs.
I know Cornell Theory Center has a few supercomputers that were top of the line when installed, but I think they're getting a bit old nowadays.
Yup, Cornell has dropped off of the top500 for now. They held the #6 rank in 1995, were last on the top500 list with a ranking of 496 in 2006, and last held a top 100 ranking of 49 back in mid-2003. Just like these new BlueGene systems will drop off of the top500 list after 4-5 years.
Even without using an exotic powerplant like a rotary, it's still possible to get a LOT more power out of an engine similar in size to the existing ones.
:( )
According to Wikipedia, these are the specs:
2.8L V6, 170 HP (Europe), 130 HP (US). The engine was severely derated to meet emissions specs in the U.S. Back in that time period it was probably carbed - EFI didn't become common until later in the 80s, and once that was introduced it became easier and easier to meet emissions specs without compromising horsepower.
Nowadays it should be easy for a 24V variant with the same displacement to crack 200 HP normally aspirated (even more with variable valve timing). There are also plenty of turbocharged and supercharged engines in that displacement class, or turbo/super kits for NA engines in that displacement class. For example, there are a lot of turbo kits for the Mitsubishi 6G7x V6 variants, including the 3.0L 6G72 which makes around 220HP with modern 24V heads I believe. (My 12v variant only cranks out 150 though.
There were even turbo/super/24v variants of the PRV engine used in the DeLorean, but those have been out of production for over a decade.
"Either the person did want to use the product, in which case they should pay for it, or they didn't want to use it. You can't have it both ways."
Not quite. Let's use Adobe Photoshop as an example
They can:
1) Want to use the product but not afford retail price.
1a) They pirate it
1b) They choose an alternative (Paint Shop Pro or GIMP) that isn't quite what they wanted but does an acceptable job and is cheaper ($100-150 and free, respectively).
2) Want to use the product and can afford/justify its exorbitant cost
3) They don't want to use the product
True, in all cases but 2), it represents a lost sale for Adobe. But in the case of 1a), it is false to claim that piracy was the cause of that lost sale. The sale was lost no matter what for case 1), whether or not piracy or competition was the cause.
I'd rather have it the other way.
Rather than having a small, super-expensive, super-efficient panel, I'd rather have a panel with much less efficiency than current cells but much higher watts-per-dollar rating.
The constant increases in silicon cell efficiency are great for space stations, but for those of us on the surface of the planet, we need a breakthrough in watts-per-dollar that isn't vaporware. There's no shortage of space to put solar cells (building roofs, car roofs, etc.), but there's a shortage of money for it and also current cells require more energy to manufacture than they can produce in their lifetime.
His post implied pretty clearly his problem with Vista on such a machine was Vista's significantly increased hardware requirements compared to XP.
The fact that Vista is bloatware is no secret, not even MS tries to hide it.
I got through a good portion of my senior year of college (2002) using an ancient 233 MHz Pentium-MMX laptop. with an UPGRADE to 128M of RAM (from 64).
This included:
Word processing
Web browsing
IM
Matlab simulations
Circuit design with Eagle
I did have a 1 GHz Athlon Thunderbird available, but with the exception of the Matlab stuff, I took no productivity hit. In fact, if anything my productivity was higher because I could work while laying on my apartment's nice comfy couch instead of sitting at my desk. (This is why I used the laptop when I had another machine available.) In some ways the slowness of the Matlab stuff actuall increased productivity because it forced me/allowed me to multitask while my simulations ran.
Admittedly, the laptop ran Linux. Running Vista on this machine is likely crippling it so that 1GB RAM might indeed be insufficient.
Look at some of UNH's studies on algae-derived biodiesel.
Because algae grows well in waste water from human sources (in fact LOVES sewage) and because it needs no soil, it can be grown in areas where it is utterly impractical to grow crops. UNH typically uses the Sonoran Desert in the U.S. Southwest as an example - Something like 1/4 of that area (which is mostly unpopulated) could supply the transportation fuel needs of the entire country (if all vehicles were converted from gasoline to biodiesel, of course.) They did assume special "high oil content" algae breeds that are difficult to grow/maintain without less "efficient" strains taking over though, it looks like this company is focusing on less efficient (but easier to grow/keep alive) algae strains with lower oil content.
The article makes a comment about "wild algae". It looks like the company is focusing on less efficient algae (in terms of oil content) in order to simplify the process and make the system easier to maintain.