I like the bit about the exorbitant price of floppies nearly killing Origin. I remember blowing my allowance (and later a good chunk of my paycheck) regularly on floppies just to be able to back all those Origin and EA games. Nothing like spending $1.00+/floppy to prevent diskrot from claiming disk 7 (of 8) nine months after spending $50.00+ on the game:(
I can get 2 DVD-Rs or a DVD-RW (with change left over) now for less that a single 720K DSDD floppy back in the good ol' days.
It's likely his competitors are selling/renting appliances that happen to have Nessus installed. Customers are paying for the appliance, not the software, same way that a PC maker can "sell" a Linux box with distro 'X' pre-installed.
As long as his competitors aren't making changes the Nessus code, they don't have to release anything - just include the appropriate license documentation and maybe a ref back to the Nessus website.
TFA is light on details - $15.6M for ~200 people is less than $8K apiece and that doesn't consider legal fees, etc that come off the top. It's also not clear if this is in cash or in 'restricted' EA stock or some combination thereof.
I used to work a salaried position that didn't pay overtime but demanded 50 - 60 hours/week. I asked about changing to hourly and was told, flat out, that it would be a pay cut. My salary, apparently, included an "allowance" of about 15% for "overtime compensation". If I converted to hourly, not only would I take a 15% pay cut, but I would absolutely never, ever, be allowed to put in overtime.
Sucks to be these guys. You just know that EA is going to do everything it can to make them unhappy so they quit. There are too many naive people out there who want jobs in the games industry.
Corporate IT/software development needs to clean up its act, but they have too much leverage over employees - "cheap" contractors and off-shoring. When your company is measured by the bottom line and double-digit increased "value" to share-holders year-after-year, there just isn't any business case to treat people fairly. It's despicable, but that's the attitude that business schools are churning out.
The latest Nine Inch Nails dualdisc wouldn't come up on any of my Windows PCs, but both sides work fine (and rip normally;) on a Mac.
Sad thing is, there really isn't enough content on the DVD side to make it worth buying - a small resolution version of the "Hand That Feeds" video and 5.1 versions of the tracks. I guess if I actually listened to music through the 5.1 setup at my desk it would be okay, but I listen to 99% of my music in the car or through headphones. The only saving grace is that it was on sale for the same price as the CD version. *shrug*
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I like the bit about the exorbitant price of floppies nearly killing Origin. I remember blowing my allowance (and later a good chunk of my paycheck) regularly on floppies just to be able to back all those Origin and EA games. Nothing like spending $1.00+/floppy to prevent diskrot from claiming disk 7 (of 8) nine months after spending $50.00+ on the game :(
I can get 2 DVD-Rs or a DVD-RW (with change left over) now for less that a single 720K DSDD floppy back in the good ol' days.
Key word here: "Appliances"
It's likely his competitors are selling/renting appliances that happen to have Nessus installed. Customers are paying for the appliance, not the software, same way that a PC maker can "sell" a Linux box with distro 'X' pre-installed.
As long as his competitors aren't making changes the Nessus code, they don't have to release anything - just include the appropriate license documentation and maybe a ref back to the Nessus website.
Oops. Must remember not to do math before 8AM.
The question still stands whether it's cash or "restricted" stock.
TFA is light on details - $15.6M for ~200 people is less than $8K apiece and that doesn't consider legal fees, etc that come off the top. It's also not clear if this is in cash or in 'restricted' EA stock or some combination thereof.
I used to work a salaried position that didn't pay overtime but demanded 50 - 60 hours/week. I asked about changing to hourly and was told, flat out, that it would be a pay cut. My salary, apparently, included an "allowance" of about 15% for "overtime compensation". If I converted to hourly, not only would I take a 15% pay cut, but I would absolutely never, ever, be allowed to put in overtime.
Sucks to be these guys. You just know that EA is going to do everything it can to make them unhappy so they quit. There are too many naive people out there who want jobs in the games industry.
Corporate IT/software development needs to clean up its act, but they have too much leverage over employees - "cheap" contractors and off-shoring. When your company is measured by the bottom line and double-digit increased "value" to share-holders year-after-year, there just isn't any business case to treat people fairly. It's despicable, but that's the attitude that business schools are churning out.
The latest Nine Inch Nails dualdisc wouldn't come up on any of my Windows PCs, but both sides work fine (and rip normally ;) on a Mac.
Sad thing is, there really isn't enough content on the DVD side to make it worth buying - a small resolution version of the "Hand That Feeds" video and 5.1 versions of the tracks. I guess if I actually listened to music through the 5.1 setup at my desk it would be okay, but I listen to 99% of my music in the car or through headphones. The only saving grace is that it was on sale for the same price as the CD version. *shrug*