What would I store as a developer? 1) program ID, not associated with IP address or any other registration database. Hash it if need be before I collect it if my company insists on some form of registration database so I don't get involved with Legal's problems. 2) other usage stuff involving ONLY the game. 3) *maybe* some hardware and OS info. (OS version & patch level, ActiveX version & patch level, what settings user is playing on). 4) relevant game info - maps preferred, settings, etc., that can't be duplicated by my play testers or development testing. 5) any instances of the game barfing, with the option to send significant debugging info, or just the incident and basic info surrounding it (like where in the game, level, position, etc.), or even nothing.
The need to show "how good you are" with VIM is extremely lame!
Well, you're thinking that the VIM guy really gives a tit what everyone else thinks. If he still codes 2x-20x what all the IDE people use, and he's happy, and his code works, he's not going anywhere soon.
I've worked with more than a few crack developers who can hunt-and-peck faster than I can touch type, which isn't slow... Oh, they happened to know as much of the internals of the business as the business people did...
Your company probably has all those RDBMS because somewhere along the line they bought an accounting package, say, that runs on Sybase. No, let's get real, Oracle Financials. HR somewhere got onto a package like Lawson or JD Edwards, because Oracle HR was too bloody expensive and the moneybags did not want to pay any more for Oracle DBAs than they have to. So it's Lawson or JDE on Sybase or SQL Server. And then maybe there was some budgeting, forecasting or other Enterprise-y application (say, data warehousing/datamart, business "intelligence", etc.), and because of the extortion being paid to keep various beta-level versions of Oracle Financials, along with all the in-house customization done on top of those, even though your company might have an enterprise-ish license, no one will give any authorization to do development against Oracle, and to a lesser extent, Sybase/SQL Server.
MySQL would indicate that there is a fondness for this Fine System for web application internet/intranet development, too. Plus, the licensing is nice, and the hardware costs are...well...they're commoditized, so it's easier for someone to say, "Hey, I need a database for this spec", and someone says, "OK, I'll build you a server on this fine '486 box to run it", rather than figuring out whether the SunFire box with the Oracle database on it can handle some more ad hoc querying for reporting and relatively light I/O.
Hey, I wonder if you have an AS/400 box or two running DB/2-based apps somewhere?
Don't worry about it. Most companies are a mish-mash of one Really Important Database system (usually whatever runs accounting and AP/AR), and a bunch of lesser tiers of RDBMS and servers, down to and including MS Access-based key applications...
Well, all of the GE'd organisms that the Pharma industry currently uses in bioreactors to make certain drugs or drug precursors haven't wrecked the world...yet.
I've often wondered what causes the oily sheen sometimes I see on standing water around the Pac Northwest. These pools seem to be populated by an orange algae...
Well, if I buy a book, do I need a license to read it? No. It's copyrighted. If I buy a song, do I need a license to listen to it? Well, no, not technically, although I'm sure I paid some sort of license fee for the device needed to listen to the product due to terms imposed on the manufacturer (if I bought the device new), whether it's for LP vinyl, CD, cassette tape, 8-track, etc.
But if I had my own laboratory, equipment and inclination, there's nothing stopping me from using a small diode laser or two and doing the necessary miniature optics devices to use instead of running a little chip of diamond through the groove, and figuring out how to get some firm in Taiwan to make a couple of hundred a year (I'd want to sell them to audiophiles first, you know, the ones that can "hear" the difference between Monster Cables and everything else...). Granted, patents on LP technology have expired. But what if I used similar techniques to read the magnetic particles off of tape? Hmm... true audiophile market there, right?
Anyhow.
The point I was getting at, if it's copyrighted, it shouldn't be licensable (its distribution might be) in the sense that the copyrightee has downstream rights for how I use the product other than what has been already defined for copyrighted works, unlike how it is for computer software.
Software has cherry-picked the best from both licensing (escaping liability and warranty of fitness while maintaining "ownership" of the product) as well as copyright (keep others from copying it).
Most/all of the proprietary works I've seen that the owner wishes to maintain control over are NOT copyrighted, they are treated as proprietary works - you check them out, you check them in, you don't get a copy for yourself, and, no, they won't give you one to look at outside of their control.
Because defense lawyers would be too adept at arguing that "there isn't a 'specific' law against the alleged actions of their clients, and that the prosecutors are reaching far outside the scope and intent of the drafters of the law(s) in question". And some of the judges would probably agree with those arguments enough times to create precedences.
Look at all the grief the Supreme Court throws at obscenity laws when cases involving them get appealed to their level... people should just give up on passing those laws and find other ways, but they won't. Either the law is too specific or overly broad, and there really appears to be no middle ground for the Supremes.
These kinds of "cyber-bullying" laws won't help much, either, but it makes everyone feel good because "something was done". And they will tend to be unevenly applied, as well. Children of Mayor Dailey in Chicago getting "cyberbullied" while playing WoW? Better watch out... Children of someone who is not too fond of The Mayor? Good luck, oh, and, well, sorry for taking so long to plow your street or pick up your garbage... With the fluidity of establishing new on-line identities, it would take some pretty far-reaching steps to enforce on someone w/o throwing them in jail, and somehow I could see a judge having something to say about the overreaching of the authorities and the punitive nature of any judgments against the scale of the (alleged) criminal behavior...
These kinds of laws are kind of like magnetic yellow ribbons on cars & such.
Does the dragging death of the guy in Texas really need "hate crime" laws? Well, no, but yes, they were passed in Texas. However, legislatures giving the judges the ability to weigh in on the punishment phase taking the nature of the crimes (including criteria that are involved with hate crimes) to increase penalties would make more sense, as would allowing the prosecution to seek special status on the charges, like in many jurisdictions involving a potential death penalty prosecution.
...except GE is now making (and selling) a "true" hybrid locomotive. Yes, it has a big battery pack. It's intended to run on batteries for starting out in urban areas and storing some of the energy currently radiated away from regenerative braking.
I think GE and EMD are working on hybrid switchers, too, but along the line of the Chevy Volt: engine runs generator, which keeps battery pack charged, or can provide additional on-demand electrical boost, but running on battery is main source of power, which is opposite of current car hybrid systems, where the battery pack provides the boost.
...don't forget all the ancillary companies that the auto industry lobby is dependent on - highway construction, real estate, retail development, etc., and that have effective "ins" to US legislative bodies.
Obviously, most people haven't played "Railroad Tycoon". Freight might be boring, slow and ugly, but it is ultimately more profitable over the long term than passenger service.
In reality, UP and BNSF are at or very near capacity running coal trains from Utah & Wyoming back east to coal-powered power plants, and their trans-continental lines transhipping cargo containers are near capacity, too. Drive along I-80 (UP freight line) or US 20/26 (BNSF coal lines) in Wyoming if you don't believe this...
Most of the people going to LV from LA (and San Diego) are going there for the casinos on the Strip. One either walks between casinos or takes taxis/limos (or braves the bus). No different than downtown Chicago, NYC or WDC. Actually driving along the Strip sucks, unless it's like 1am.
Even when it's blistering hot, it's not *that* bad to walk from the Stratosphere to MGM Grand/Bellagio/Monte Carlo/Luxor, but it is a significant walk that you don't do if you're in any kind of a hurry. It's a dry heat, after all. It would be deadly if it was also Chicago-humid in the summer. Plus, some of the casinos have chipped in for a monorail line that parallels the Strip. Not sure how that's going. It's been a few years since I've been to LV.
...which is why they'd have to do what the TGV does. No grade crossings. At least Las Vegas to outskirts of LA Metroplex shouldn't be too bad along the bulk of the corridor.
The liability environment of the US would probably make it hard to use TGV, though, since it uses "in cab" signaling, which isn't going to be used in the US any time soon because of the liability.
Initially, maybe. But now? Nope. Most of the shares are not direct value in Yahoo. Get real.
The REAL owners of Yahoo are its lenders and other first-tier debt holders. Shareholders fall far down on the list if Yahoo were to suddenly declare bankruptcy and sell off all their assets to the highest bidder.
It's like me saying I own a part of the US presidential elections because I bought options on the various on-line options traders...
Security fixes? BFD. It's all the bugs, inconsistant operations, etc. that never get worked out that suck every day, even when they release a new "version" of something.
Shareholders give companies money to expand, grow, and operate.
Only when shares are initially offered to the market, such as in an IPO. The company that issued the shares does not benefit from the ongoing trading of those shares.
Mr. Yang benefits at some point due the value of the shares he owns, but until he sells his shares (like anyone else), it's all on paper.
Try to get a loan? Hmm... I'm going to guess that most businesses start out small, funded by some sort of personal cash or credit. Once they have some money flow, and seem to be making some profit, they reach for more money...
I suppose I'm in an odd situation. I live on a farm, where the farmer runs it as a cash operation, no operating loans, no supplier loans, property is paid off, etc. Kind of rare these days. Sure, he doesn't have fancy new John Deere tractors like most of the other neighboring farmers do. But he's not beholden to the bank...
Now, could I just up and do one day what he's been doing the last 20-30 years? No. Would take about $2-5 million to get established on a 300-500 acre grass seed farm. That would give me about 2-4 years probably to eke a profit out of it.
And, like you said, chances are, no bank will give me the coin to do that. US FDA loans won't help, either. Unless I've got some sort of experience doing it already, that duck won't fly.
And that would probably require doing something extra off the farm as well. I know someone else who is making as much from running 1-3 semi trucks hauling various ag products (mill fines, brewery leftovers, etc) around the pacific NW, as he does from farming, but it keeps the whole enterprise profitable.
I agree with you, but I think the value-add for Carl Icahn is to shut down some of the non-revenue-generating stuff (like, all the cool stuff such as Pipes), and simply find someone to sell the online ad business to (like Microsoft), leaving a husk of "yahoo" as some lame-ass search portal that just uses MicroHoo underneath, but can be run by a skeleton crew. How many Microsoft shares does Tracinda and Carl Icahn own? Hmm...
The viral part about it is that the strategic thinking is that through Rails (on IronRuby and IIS), they can get people to embed Windows-based dependencies not only on the server side, but through the client-side as well. The Moonlight implementation will suck just enough that in the fantasy world that Microsoft lives in the rest of the world will just clamor (er, keep their Windows-based client computers around running IE) to upgrade to Vista, IE8, and whatever other shinola comes from Redmond, as will whatever plugin for Firefox that gets released upon the world, except this time it won't be because Adobe just didn't want to dedicate resources to the various non-Windows/non-IE versions.
I don't mind admitting that I'll keep XP running on my main computer (definitely no plans to downgrade to Vista or Windows 7), but run IE on it intentionally for web browsing? Yeah, riiiight...
I do think flash gives adobe too much control of the web.
Why? Until the day comes when the only way to implement websites is through Flash, then yes. But since most of the web doesn't use it at all or as a secondary feature, well...
Right, so figure out how to use this against them. No, don't risk servers where actual damages could occur (banks, hospitals, electrical power SCADA systems, etc). Figure out how to set up servers sending bogus Bt traffic that MediaDefender latches onto, and figure out how to get them to constantly be chasing these kinds of sites.
Ironic if it would be some of these botnets could somehow do it... (two wrongs perhaps resulting if not in a right, at least a left turn?)
So, has anybody figured out how to do a DDoS on MediaDefender by somehow enticing them to try and DoS a bittorrent provider, but then somehow get them to try and automagically shutdown several at the same time, and keep MediaDefender doing this on a more or less constant basis by rotating honeypot servers for MediaDefender to "attack"?
At the very least, if MediaDefender was having to pay for a saturated 9Gbps data feed 24/7...
Use their weight, momentum, bad breath and body odor against them.
I forget the company, but at the OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science & Industry), they had a table top electron microscope there 3 or 4 months ago. It's a Netherlands company that makes it. I wish I remembered more about it, but the pricing on it was probably in the $10-50K region for the one they had there.
Kind of "google earth" in reverse was its software interface for looking at stuff. Slicker than snot.
Slashdot Mirror
Have the SanFran IT system admins gotten into a running conversation with this team yet?
What would I store as a developer?
1) program ID, not associated with IP address or any other registration database. Hash it if need be before I collect it if my company insists on some form of registration database so I don't get involved with Legal's problems.
2) other usage stuff involving ONLY the game.
3) *maybe* some hardware and OS info. (OS version & patch level, ActiveX version & patch level, what settings user is playing on).
4) relevant game info - maps preferred, settings, etc., that can't be duplicated by my play testers or development testing.
5) any instances of the game barfing, with the option to send significant debugging info, or just the incident and basic info surrounding it (like where in the game, level, position, etc.), or even nothing.
The need to show "how good you are" with VIM is extremely lame!
Well, you're thinking that the VIM guy really gives a tit what everyone else thinks. If he still codes 2x-20x what all the IDE people use, and he's happy, and his code works, he's not going anywhere soon.
I've worked with more than a few crack developers who can hunt-and-peck faster than I can touch type, which isn't slow... Oh, they happened to know as much of the internals of the business as the business people did...
Your company probably has all those RDBMS because somewhere along the line they bought an accounting package, say, that runs on Sybase. No, let's get real, Oracle Financials. HR somewhere got onto a package like Lawson or JD Edwards, because Oracle HR was too bloody expensive and the moneybags did not want to pay any more for Oracle DBAs than they have to. So it's Lawson or JDE on Sybase or SQL Server. And then maybe there was some budgeting, forecasting or other Enterprise-y application (say, data warehousing/datamart, business "intelligence", etc.), and because of the extortion being paid to keep various beta-level versions of Oracle Financials, along with all the in-house customization done on top of those, even though your company might have an enterprise-ish license, no one will give any authorization to do development against Oracle, and to a lesser extent, Sybase/SQL Server.
MySQL would indicate that there is a fondness for this Fine System for web application internet/intranet development, too. Plus, the licensing is nice, and the hardware costs are...well...they're commoditized, so it's easier for someone to say, "Hey, I need a database for this spec", and someone says, "OK, I'll build you a server on this fine '486 box to run it", rather than figuring out whether the SunFire box with the Oracle database on it can handle some more ad hoc querying for reporting and relatively light I/O.
Hey, I wonder if you have an AS/400 box or two running DB/2-based apps somewhere?
Don't worry about it. Most companies are a mish-mash of one Really Important Database system (usually whatever runs accounting and AP/AR), and a bunch of lesser tiers of RDBMS and servers, down to and including MS Access-based key applications...
Well, all of the GE'd organisms that the Pharma industry currently uses in bioreactors to make certain drugs or drug precursors haven't wrecked the world...yet.
I've often wondered what causes the oily sheen sometimes I see on standing water around the Pac Northwest. These pools seem to be populated by an orange algae...
"What about chainsaws?" -- Leatherface
Well, if I buy a book, do I need a license to read it? No. It's copyrighted. If I buy a song, do I need a license to listen to it? Well, no, not technically, although I'm sure I paid some sort of license fee for the device needed to listen to the product due to terms imposed on the manufacturer (if I bought the device new), whether it's for LP vinyl, CD, cassette tape, 8-track, etc.
But if I had my own laboratory, equipment and inclination, there's nothing stopping me from using a small diode laser or two and doing the necessary miniature optics devices to use instead of running a little chip of diamond through the groove, and figuring out how to get some firm in Taiwan to make a couple of hundred a year (I'd want to sell them to audiophiles first, you know, the ones that can "hear" the difference between Monster Cables and everything else...). Granted, patents on LP technology have expired. But what if I used similar techniques to read the magnetic particles off of tape? Hmm... true audiophile market there, right?
Anyhow.
The point I was getting at, if it's copyrighted, it shouldn't be licensable (its distribution might be) in the sense that the copyrightee has downstream rights for how I use the product other than what has been already defined for copyrighted works, unlike how it is for computer software.
Software has cherry-picked the best from both licensing (escaping liability and warranty of fitness while maintaining "ownership" of the product) as well as copyright (keep others from copying it).
Most/all of the proprietary works I've seen that the owner wishes to maintain control over are NOT copyrighted, they are treated as proprietary works - you check them out, you check them in, you don't get a copy for yourself, and, no, they won't give you one to look at outside of their control.
Because defense lawyers would be too adept at arguing that "there isn't a 'specific' law against the alleged actions of their clients, and that the prosecutors are reaching far outside the scope and intent of the drafters of the law(s) in question". And some of the judges would probably agree with those arguments enough times to create precedences.
Look at all the grief the Supreme Court throws at obscenity laws when cases involving them get appealed to their level... people should just give up on passing those laws and find other ways, but they won't. Either the law is too specific or overly broad, and there really appears to be no middle ground for the Supremes.
These kinds of "cyber-bullying" laws won't help much, either, but it makes everyone feel good because "something was done". And they will tend to be unevenly applied, as well. Children of Mayor Dailey in Chicago getting "cyberbullied" while playing WoW? Better watch out... Children of someone who is not too fond of The Mayor? Good luck, oh, and, well, sorry for taking so long to plow your street or pick up your garbage... With the fluidity of establishing new on-line identities, it would take some pretty far-reaching steps to enforce on someone w/o throwing them in jail, and somehow I could see a judge having something to say about the overreaching of the authorities and the punitive nature of any judgments against the scale of the (alleged) criminal behavior...
These kinds of laws are kind of like magnetic yellow ribbons on cars & such.
Does the dragging death of the guy in Texas really need "hate crime" laws? Well, no, but yes, they were passed in Texas. However, legislatures giving the judges the ability to weigh in on the punishment phase taking the nature of the crimes (including criteria that are involved with hate crimes) to increase penalties would make more sense, as would allowing the prosecution to seek special status on the charges, like in many jurisdictions involving a potential death penalty prosecution.
...except GE is now making (and selling) a "true" hybrid locomotive. Yes, it has a big battery pack. It's intended to run on batteries for starting out in urban areas and storing some of the energy currently radiated away from regenerative braking.
I think GE and EMD are working on hybrid switchers, too, but along the line of the Chevy Volt: engine runs generator, which keeps battery pack charged, or can provide additional on-demand electrical boost, but running on battery is main source of power, which is opposite of current car hybrid systems, where the battery pack provides the boost.
...don't forget all the ancillary companies that the auto industry lobby is dependent on - highway construction, real estate, retail development, etc., and that have effective "ins" to US legislative bodies.
Obviously, most people haven't played "Railroad Tycoon". Freight might be boring, slow and ugly, but it is ultimately more profitable over the long term than passenger service.
In reality, UP and BNSF are at or very near capacity running coal trains from Utah & Wyoming back east to coal-powered power plants, and their trans-continental lines transhipping cargo containers are near capacity, too. Drive along I-80 (UP freight line) or US 20/26 (BNSF coal lines) in Wyoming if you don't believe this...
Most of the people going to LV from LA (and San Diego) are going there for the casinos on the Strip. One either walks between casinos or takes taxis/limos (or braves the bus). No different than downtown Chicago, NYC or WDC. Actually driving along the Strip sucks, unless it's like 1am.
Even when it's blistering hot, it's not *that* bad to walk from the Stratosphere to MGM Grand/Bellagio/Monte Carlo/Luxor, but it is a significant walk that you don't do if you're in any kind of a hurry. It's a dry heat, after all. It would be deadly if it was also Chicago-humid in the summer. Plus, some of the casinos have chipped in for a monorail line that parallels the Strip. Not sure how that's going. It's been a few years since I've been to LV.
LA to LV is about 220 miles (350 km) with much of the distance through mountains. And maglev is incredibly expensive over long distances!
Hmm...no, the path of I-15 between LA and LV is relatively flat except for the Cajon Pass.
...which is why they'd have to do what the TGV does. No grade crossings. At least Las Vegas to outskirts of LA Metroplex shouldn't be too bad along the bulk of the corridor.
The liability environment of the US would probably make it hard to use TGV, though, since it uses "in cab" signaling, which isn't going to be used in the US any time soon because of the liability.
But enough of the sabotage boogeyman already, OK?
I would even argue that it takes the ISP out of the "common carrier" business, also.
Initially, maybe. But now? Nope. Most of the shares are not direct value in Yahoo. Get real.
The REAL owners of Yahoo are its lenders and other first-tier debt holders. Shareholders fall far down on the list if Yahoo were to suddenly declare bankruptcy and sell off all their assets to the highest bidder.
It's like me saying I own a part of the US presidential elections because I bought options on the various on-line options traders...
Security fixes? BFD. It's all the bugs, inconsistant operations, etc. that never get worked out that suck every day, even when they release a new "version" of something.
Shareholders give companies money to expand, grow, and operate.
Only when shares are initially offered to the market, such as in an IPO. The company that issued the shares does not benefit from the ongoing trading of those shares.
Mr. Yang benefits at some point due the value of the shares he owns, but until he sells his shares (like anyone else), it's all on paper.
Try to get a loan? Hmm... I'm going to guess that most businesses start out small, funded by some sort of personal cash or credit. Once they have some money flow, and seem to be making some profit, they reach for more money...
I suppose I'm in an odd situation. I live on a farm, where the farmer runs it as a cash operation, no operating loans, no supplier loans, property is paid off, etc. Kind of rare these days. Sure, he doesn't have fancy new John Deere tractors like most of the other neighboring farmers do. But he's not beholden to the bank...
Now, could I just up and do one day what he's been doing the last 20-30 years? No. Would take about $2-5 million to get established on a 300-500 acre grass seed farm. That would give me about 2-4 years probably to eke a profit out of it.
And, like you said, chances are, no bank will give me the coin to do that. US FDA loans won't help, either. Unless I've got some sort of experience doing it already, that duck won't fly.
And that would probably require doing something extra off the farm as well. I know someone else who is making as much from running 1-3 semi trucks hauling various ag products (mill fines, brewery leftovers, etc) around the pacific NW, as he does from farming, but it keeps the whole enterprise profitable.
I agree with you, but I think the value-add for Carl Icahn is to shut down some of the non-revenue-generating stuff (like, all the cool stuff such as Pipes), and simply find someone to sell the online ad business to (like Microsoft), leaving a husk of "yahoo" as some lame-ass search portal that just uses MicroHoo underneath, but can be run by a skeleton crew. How many Microsoft shares does Tracinda and Carl Icahn own? Hmm...
The viral part about it is that the strategic thinking is that through Rails (on IronRuby and IIS), they can get people to embed Windows-based dependencies not only on the server side, but through the client-side as well. The Moonlight implementation will suck just enough that in the fantasy world that Microsoft lives in the rest of the world will just clamor (er, keep their Windows-based client computers around running IE) to upgrade to Vista, IE8, and whatever other shinola comes from Redmond, as will whatever plugin for Firefox that gets released upon the world, except this time it won't be because Adobe just didn't want to dedicate resources to the various non-Windows/non-IE versions.
I don't mind admitting that I'll keep XP running on my main computer (definitely no plans to downgrade to Vista or Windows 7), but run IE on it intentionally for web browsing? Yeah, riiiight...
I do think flash gives adobe too much control of the web.
Why? Until the day comes when the only way to implement websites is through Flash, then yes. But since most of the web doesn't use it at all or as a secondary feature, well...
Right, so figure out how to use this against them. No, don't risk servers where actual damages could occur (banks, hospitals, electrical power SCADA systems, etc). Figure out how to set up servers sending bogus Bt traffic that MediaDefender latches onto, and figure out how to get them to constantly be chasing these kinds of sites.
Ironic if it would be some of these botnets could somehow do it... (two wrongs perhaps resulting if not in a right, at least a left turn?)
So, has anybody figured out how to do a DDoS on MediaDefender by somehow enticing them to try and DoS a bittorrent provider, but then somehow get them to try and automagically shutdown several at the same time, and keep MediaDefender doing this on a more or less constant basis by rotating honeypot servers for MediaDefender to "attack"?
At the very least, if MediaDefender was having to pay for a saturated 9Gbps data feed 24/7...
Use their weight, momentum, bad breath and body odor against them.
...but good for anyone else who has used Firefox on any other platform besides OSX.
"if you bemoan the use of process, you have no business working in software or anything even vaguely related to engineering."
Yeah, software & engineering?
Pull my finger.
I forget the company, but at the OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science & Industry), they had a table top electron microscope there 3 or 4 months ago. It's a Netherlands company that makes it. I wish I remembered more about it, but the pricing on it was probably in the $10-50K region for the one they had there.
Kind of "google earth" in reverse was its software interface for looking at stuff. Slicker than snot.