True, you are going to have to have the usual terms and conditions
Google must be the only checkout system on yuor site your site must be orientated around an instant payment system etc
The usual clauses, nothings perfect and I wouldn't suggest this replace whats already out there, just add another option and let people choose.
Given the choice I personally would use something like this over the choice of google adwords (right now I use paypal but am considering switching to google checkout)
I can see the ideal solution to this type of advertising fraud.
If I am running a site selling certain goods, then I don't really care how many hits I get, I'm bothered about how many sales I get.
Now if google can set up an adwords system for me that does not charge per click, but instead I use their payment system as a check out and grant them a commission on refered sales (as long as they can prove that the refereal was sent via a targetted ad in the current browser session would be my condition) then they can take say 5% of the sale (on top of their normal processing comission.
Then the problem comes down to trusting google to correctly report which sales on your site are actually directly from one of their adverts and not from their main search.... however its only one company, its a large and well known company so auditing it would be a lot easier than many of the smaller more dubious companies.
Yes but you do not build mission critical hardware out of off the shelf components.
You buy high availability systems, usually with redundancy and a rated uptime in the region of 4, 5 or even 6 9's
Take a fairly low end box in this space, a Clariion CX300 - got a small one for testing a couple of years ago for 25k (GBP) with 300Gb of storage (scsi 15k rpm) and thats before putting raid onto them.
Oh and if you want the remote copy software license not only do you need another box at the same price but you'll probably pay more than the hardware price for the software (then add SAN, fibre link to offsite office etc etc)
When the cost of not having a backup restored for 1 hour can be in 7 figures, never mind if its down for a day, then 18k for a drive is pocket change.
Close to true, but it only came to that during a class action lawsuit against OEMs that were labeling hard disks as 6.4Gb when they were slight less than 6 gigabytes (by the definition of gigabytes that was accepted at the time)
Only when that happened did standards bodies put through the mebi, gibi nonsense - probably at the urging of these OEMs so they could win the court case.
Only advertisers and merketers use decimal based capacities - hell evn itunes uses the binary style for its Gb, despite labelling its ipods in decimal.
It comes down to money - its more expensive to make an 1Gb capacity thats in 2^30 than 10^9 - so thats what happens. Its nothing to do with standardisation - or atleast it wasn't until companies that would have had to otherwise foot a legal bill got involved. Because of addressing, block size, inodes, and node clsutering the binary style makes sense, the decimal still is just to inflate marketing junk.
How many of these were bulk licensing deals with companies that basically let them run whatever OS was the latest? How many of these businesses actually have moved their production systems onto vista?
How many of these were OEMs? How many of those which were OEM have been reinstalled with XP (pirate or otherwise)
How many were free upgrade with XP systems? How many of those used the upgrade and are still running vista now?
Yes I know thats fairly obvious - as is the fact that computers will continue getting better.
My first point was that we should not be competing in such games against computers at all - in the same way we would not bother trying to arm wrestle a machine or run a stabnding 1/4 mile faster than a motorbike.
My second point is that perfect knowlege deterministic games lack the scope for feints, bluff, artifacts of chance and player personality. I'm not saying they can't be there, but they are limited.
I like the idea of a game where the strategy would be on the order of go or chess, but the hidden information and chance would add elements with the like of a skilled poker game.
Some how the element of chance and imperfect knowlege just seems to fit in the the real world more closely
Or alternative I could be talking bollocks - always a possbility:)
I suspect its more the case they had 100,000Km of fibre - in fact multiples of - since I distinctly remember them talking about gigs of capacity with latency in 1/10s of a second
And given 15Km of test fiber sits in a box 1m * 50cm* 50cm (I know as we used to have a few where I used to work) I can see if being feasable to have the 100,000km - if it were a big lab with lots contacts in the fiber optics industry
I remember reading some research a couple of years ago that somethign similar was done using 100km of optical fibre and a router programmed to keep sending the same stuff around the loop, or it could read it/write it as it came around.
In some ways being slower is definitely an advantage, even with 100km at 10Gb/s you don't have much storage when the bits are moving at the speed of light.
There are lots of reasons they might have kept the email.
They could have been logging anything that comes in for security reasons.
They could be running a honey pot for spam statistics/analysis (if you have the bandwidth/processing to spare it can be a good way to spot spam, see what comes in on the invalid addresses, look for same sender, same content in the other mails)
They could just have set a default account to catch all other mail.
They could have had their mail system badly configured.
Or as you hinted at, they could have been hoping that they would get misaddressed email that they themselves should not have received.
I suspect its more that chess comuters are trying to play this variation without being coded for it.
Since there are only 960 valid starting combinations it wouldn't take much for it to precompute the opening moves for each possible variable - what chess computers already have for the normal game.
Even go won't stand against comptuers for long, its still a total knowlege deterministic game. Admittedly the search space is large and we still haven't figured out good metrics for it, but thats just a matter of time.
Real skill for gaming requires games that have a random element, but one that over the course of a match will average out so that it becomes player skill that controls. Preferably the game should not be total knowlege (eg each player should know some things that the other player does not, such as hidden cards)
There are not many games that follow these yet still have a high level of complexity but those I have played I do enjoy.
For those that have read player of games I find the ideas in that very much resonate with what I have said above, though its a topic that have been discussed in game theory for quite some time.
It really depends on the company. Different places regard testers very differently. I've never worked in the gaming industry but I have a lot of experiance in the software developement industry.
I started at IBM as a graduate (Hursley dev labs for those that know IBM). Every grad starting there goes into test. Its a good place to learn the product (frequently better on a general level than any of the devs) and from there they will look for those that have developement aptitude.
I was on that track until I got head hunted to a senior test position elsewhere - the money lured me away.
Later on I was head hunted to a city financial in a developement position in a language that I had a lot of experience with. They specifically wanted someone with test experiance though. They were of the opinion that someone with a background in test had a better understanding of the need for thorough unit testing and maintainability of the code as well as overall code quality.
For companies that are concerned about code quality and reliability then a grounding in QA will probably stand you in good stead - though making the jump to dev without having to drop back down to a junior level will be difficult...
From what I've seen as a player, I'm not sure that many games companies are particularly bothered about those qualities...
Ok I RTFA and I do not see any more detail than was in the previously posted fortune artical.
Ok this is/. so dupes are not uncommon, nor is blatantly misleading summaries, but it would have been nice if it could have got it right this once... its a fairly obvious scenario!
Wouldn't it be easier to go for slander or libel then?
If microsoft is accusing you of breaking the law then they either have to prove it or retract the statement and settle. Sounds like it would be safer than that act since as microsoft has named a number, it would have to prove that number, even if a couple did stick then their original statement is still false.
More important during discovery you could get the court to force them list these patents and where the infringements are...
Since anyone supplying a linux appliance, system or server would fall foul of microsoft's claims then I suspect anyone with deep enough pockets could take up this cause.. or set up a company front to do so for them and let it take the fall if necessary
They saw linux running on a 486 with X (yes it still does) but since it was going so slow they thought someone must have copied the doBullShit and doMoreBullShit API calls.
I'm sure you are all familiar with them...
doBullShit is the one that makes the system go slow and not respond to your mouse for a second or two, doMoreBullShit is the same, but first it turns on the rotating hour glass, in the middle allows you to actually click (still with the hour glass though) then goes non responsive before finally turning off the hour glass and returning the system to you.
Its an understandable mistake I'm sure... given what you need to run windows vista I'm sure the concept of X running on a 486 is one most people don't even contemplate;)
Or you could take the more cynical view that they did the IPO so spread the blame for no longer following that motto.
"Sorry its not us, its our shareholders"
Retaining control themselves leaves them an easy target for the media if they go against their stated aims, spread out and run by votes its out of their hands.
Slashdot Mirror
True, you are going to have to have the usual terms and conditions
Google must be the only checkout system on yuor site
your site must be orientated around an instant payment system
etc
The usual clauses, nothings perfect and I wouldn't suggest this replace whats already out there, just add another option and let people choose.
Given the choice I personally would use something like this over the choice of google adwords (right now I use paypal but am considering switching to google checkout)
I can see the ideal solution to this type of advertising fraud.
If I am running a site selling certain goods, then I don't really care how many hits I get, I'm bothered about how many sales I get.
Now if google can set up an adwords system for me that does not charge per click, but instead I use their payment system as a check out and grant them a commission on refered sales (as long as they can prove that the refereal was sent via a targetted ad in the current browser session would be my condition) then they can take say 5% of the sale (on top of their normal processing comission.
Then the problem comes down to trusting google to correctly report which sales on your site are actually directly from one of their adverts and not from their main search.... however its only one company, its a large and well known company so auditing it would be a lot easier than many of the smaller more dubious companies.
no!! you need to compile the new tyres from source then relink them to the car!!
Yes but you do not build mission critical hardware out of off the shelf components.
You buy high availability systems, usually with redundancy and a rated uptime in the region of 4, 5 or even 6 9's
Take a fairly low end box in this space, a Clariion CX300 - got a small one for testing a couple of years ago for 25k (GBP) with 300Gb of storage (scsi 15k rpm) and thats before putting raid onto them.
Oh and if you want the remote copy software license not only do you need another box at the same price but you'll probably pay more than the hardware price for the software (then add SAN, fibre link to offsite office etc etc)
When the cost of not having a backup restored for 1 hour can be in 7 figures, never mind if its down for a day, then 18k for a drive is pocket change.
Close to true, but it only came to that during a class action lawsuit against OEMs that were labeling hard disks as 6.4Gb when they were slight less than 6 gigabytes (by the definition of gigabytes that was accepted at the time)
Only when that happened did standards bodies put through the mebi, gibi nonsense - probably at the urging of these OEMs so they could win the court case.
Only advertisers and merketers use decimal based capacities - hell evn itunes uses the binary style for its Gb, despite labelling its ipods in decimal.
It comes down to money - its more expensive to make an 1Gb capacity thats in 2^30 than 10^9 - so thats what happens. Its nothing to do with standardisation - or atleast it wasn't until companies that would have had to otherwise foot a legal bill got involved. Because of addressing, block size, inodes, and node clsutering the binary style makes sense, the decimal still is just to inflate marketing junk.
How many of these were bulk licensing deals with companies that basically let them run whatever OS was the latest?
How many of these businesses actually have moved their production systems onto vista?
How many of these were OEMs?
How many of those which were OEM have been reinstalled with XP (pirate or otherwise)
How many were free upgrade with XP systems?
How many of those used the upgrade and are still running vista now?
I know I was thinking the same thing myself when I saw the moderation - see my reply to my own post :)
Yes I know thats fairly obvious - as is the fact that computers will continue getting better.
My first point was that we should not be competing in such games against computers at all - in the same way we would not bother trying to arm wrestle a machine or run a stabnding 1/4 mile faster than a motorbike.
My second point is that perfect knowlege deterministic games lack the scope for feints, bluff, artifacts of chance and player personality. I'm not saying they can't be there, but they are limited.
I like the idea of a game where the strategy would be on the order of go or chess, but the hidden information and chance would add elements with the like of a skilled poker game.
Some how the element of chance and imperfect knowlege just seems to fit in the the real world more closely
Or alternative I could be talking bollocks - always a possbility :)
I suspect its more the case they had 100,000Km of fibre - in fact multiples of - since I distinctly remember them talking about gigs of capacity with latency in 1/10s of a second
And given 15Km of test fiber sits in a box 1m * 50cm* 50cm (I know as we used to have a few where I used to work) I can see if being feasable to have the 100,000km - if it were a big lab with lots contacts in the fiber optics industry
Not really...
:)
10Gbps = 1.25GB/s
c = 300,000Km/s (2sf)
Does 100km in 1/3s
1.25GB/s * 1/3 s = 0.416GB
I think your answer is off by a factor of 1000 (or maybe 1024)
Sounds like an idea for a slashdot poll:
:)
Which is your favorite vapourware "hard disk replacement"?
Cool :) thanks for that.
:)
Mod parent up interesting/informative
I remember reading some research a couple of years ago that somethign similar was done using 100km of optical fibre and a router programmed to keep sending the same stuff around the loop, or it could read it/write it as it came around.
In some ways being slower is definitely an advantage, even with 100km at 10Gb/s you don't have much storage when the bits are moving at the speed of light.
People in politics lying??
;)
That would never happen!!
There are lots of reasons they might have kept the email.
They could have been logging anything that comes in for security reasons.
They could be running a honey pot for spam statistics/analysis (if you have the bandwidth/processing to spare it can be a good way to spot spam, see what comes in on the invalid addresses, look for same sender, same content in the other mails)
They could just have set a default account to catch all other mail.
They could have had their mail system badly configured.
Or as you hinted at, they could have been hoping that they would get misaddressed email that they themselves should not have received.
I suspect its more that chess comuters are trying to play this variation without being coded for it.
Since there are only 960 valid starting combinations it wouldn't take much for it to precompute the opening moves for each possible variable - what chess computers already have for the normal game.
Even go won't stand against comptuers for long, its still a total knowlege deterministic game. Admittedly the search space is large and we still haven't figured out good metrics for it, but thats just a matter of time.
Real skill for gaming requires games that have a random element, but one that over the course of a match will average out so that it becomes player skill that controls. Preferably the game should not be total knowlege (eg each player should know some things that the other player does not, such as hidden cards)
There are not many games that follow these yet still have a high level of complexity but those I have played I do enjoy.
For those that have read player of games I find the ideas in that very much resonate with what I have said above, though its a topic that have been discussed in game theory for quite some time.
See the T Shirt
http://www.cashncarrion.co.uk/products/16064/682/
(No I'm not affiliated with them)
Yes but I did it from lynx, on a non priveliged account, on an AIX box - I'd like to have see the malware that would target that!!!
I'm not paranoid!! They are out to get me!!
It really depends on the company. Different places regard testers very differently. I've never worked in the gaming industry but I have a lot of experiance in the software developement industry.
I started at IBM as a graduate (Hursley dev labs for those that know IBM). Every grad starting there goes into test. Its a good place to learn the product (frequently better on a general level than any of the devs) and from there they will look for those that have developement aptitude.
I was on that track until I got head hunted to a senior test position elsewhere - the money lured me away.
Later on I was head hunted to a city financial in a developement position in a language that I had a lot of experience with. They specifically wanted someone with test experiance though. They were of the opinion that someone with a background in test had a better understanding of the need for thorough unit testing and maintainability of the code as well as overall code quality.
For companies that are concerned about code quality and reliability then a grounding in QA will probably stand you in good stead - though making the jump to dev without having to drop back down to a junior level will be difficult...
From what I've seen as a player, I'm not sure that many games companies are particularly bothered about those qualities...
Me neither- plus I'm English so we use different terms here to make things even more confusing :)
As I said deep pockets are the answer - lawyers don't come cheap
Ok I RTFA and I do not see any more detail than was in the previously posted fortune artical.
/. so dupes are not uncommon, nor is blatantly misleading summaries, but it would have been nice if it could have got it right this once... its a fairly obvious scenario!
Ok this is
Wouldn't it be easier to go for slander or libel then?
If microsoft is accusing you of breaking the law then they either have to prove it or retract the statement and settle. Sounds like it would be safer than that act since as microsoft has named a number, it would have to prove that number, even if a couple did stick then their original statement is still false.
More important during discovery you could get the court to force them list these patents and where the infringements are...
Since anyone supplying a linux appliance, system or server would fall foul of microsoft's claims then I suspect anyone with deep enough pockets could take up this cause.. or set up a company front to do so for them and let it take the fall if necessary
Microsoft are probably getting confused....
;)
They saw linux running on a 486 with X (yes it still does) but since it was going so slow they thought someone must have copied the doBullShit and doMoreBullShit API calls.
I'm sure you are all familiar with them...
doBullShit is the one that makes the system go slow and not respond to your mouse for a second or two, doMoreBullShit is the same, but first it turns on the rotating hour glass, in the middle allows you to actually click (still with the hour glass though) then goes non responsive before finally turning off the hour glass and returning the system to you.
Its an understandable mistake I'm sure... given what you need to run windows vista I'm sure the concept of X running on a 486 is one most people don't even contemplate
Or you could take the more cynical view that they did the IPO so spread the blame for no longer following that motto.
"Sorry its not us, its our shareholders"
Retaining control themselves leaves them an easy target for the media if they go against their stated aims, spread out and run by votes its out of their hands.
I'm afraid this ones going to cost you...
There's call out, plus out of hours, plus overtime...
Though right now I'm afraid we just don't have the parts, we can order them in, but it'll cost extra...