What a load of crap. Taking advantage of increased irrational demand isn't a problem. It's following market trends, and that's good business. The smart people that are interested in her music will simply wait a while before buying, allowing prices to go back to normal. Nothing wrong with capitalizing on people who are 1) willing to pay more or 2) have so little self-control that they can't wait.
Lots of other "big" titles that launched recently have since gone free-to-play. Star Wars Online and DC Universe Online are recent examples. I give SWTOR a year (more than the average due to the Star Wars name) before they start letting people in free. They might not call it "F2P" but at the very least they'll have playable trial accounts that expose 75% of the game.
I don't have cable any more. The main reason is that I was paying $60/month for a package that had only three channels that I used. (MLB Network, ESPN, Versus in HD - I watch live sports but not much else.) If I could pay $15/month just for those channels, I'd be doing it. But since I can't, I just ditched the whole thing. I realize I'm not the typical customer, but it would be awfully nice if there was a company that could cater to those of us that really only want a few channels, and aren't willing to pay ridiculous amounts for them.
I know I'm way behind on this, just now discovered IFTTT, but I have to say it's an awesome idea. I love the ability to automatically link up some of these web apps without requiring code. Could I code those linkages? Sure, but that makes me spend time, and host that code, and maintain it...with IFTTT all that work is abstracted away. This is just like the adapter integration model...build one adapter for each of your end applications, then hook up the adapters. Swap out an end application, and as long as you keep the adapter the same, your integrations still work. Same principle applies here and it's a great idea!
Before this whole price thing blew up, I gave up on Netflix. Why?
1. If I want anime (my favorite genre), I'm better off with http://www.rentanime.com./ It costs $20/month, but the selection is significantly better. I'd already seen pretty much all the good anime that was on Netflix anyway. 2. If I want TV shows, go damn near anywhere on the Internet these days and you'll hit a way to get TV shows. From Hulu+ to iTunes, to Amazon, they're everywhere. Pretty cheap, too. 3. For new movie DVD releases, there's http://www.redbox.com./ Sure, it's not quite as convenient as Netflix was, but I only watch 1-2 movies a month, so it's a *lot* cheaper. Plus it has the spur-of-the-moment factor...as long as I'm willing to put some pants on and drive 5 minutes, I can get the DVD right away.
About the only thing left is older movie DVD releases. You can get most of those on Amazon too.
At the end of the article: "But the main thing is to be truthful and not exaggerate because we actually have to deliver." When there are some real-world examples, then graphene will be worth reading about.
I don't want my wireless access point open because my bandwidth is crappy enough as it is. I don't need to be giving random other people access to fill up that bandwidth.
If I were running DropBox, I wouldn't go after the guys who exploited a weakness in the way my filesharing worked...I'd fix it. Seems very odd that DropBox would worry about DropShip at all. Now I don't know anything about how this stuff works and so it may not be a simple change, but if you're going to be a company that wants to provide secure filesharing, then you've got to make the change anyway, DropShip or no DropShip. So, update your code to close the loophole so it doesn't work any more. Problem solved, not only for DropShip but also for any other person looking at the same thing.
http://scratch.mit.edu/ is a good place to start, I would think. Let him do some of that and then when you start to hear, "I wish I could do X", point him toward something more complex. I've seen Python and Ruby both suggested as that next step, and I'd add Perl to the list.
... being a manager and staying late with your developers, your first priority shouldn't be riding them but play a support role.
Absolutely. There's the very basic support, like ordering the food and making sure the cleaning people don't turn off all the lights, which is very useful. But more importantly, being available when something comes up that the developer needs help with. Question about requirements comes up? The manager can call the functional guy and ask. Problem with access? The manager can call up the sysadmins and get the ball moving. It's pretty rare that something is so completely cut-and-dried that the developer can work late hours with no outside support to get it done. When that outside support is needed, having the manager right there to get the help that is needed can be a great help.
And I'd be pretty pissed too if someone copied things from me and published them as their own work.
I would side more with Rowling if the lexicon weren't so clearly a work of love from the author, a work that could arguably be fair use (as mentioned in groklaw, there's a good possibility that if he'd just stuck to the main books, he would have won), and if she hadn't come out and said that she'd used the website as a reference guide.
I haven't read the lexicon so I don't know how much of it really is copying, but she's been a bitch about the situation while he's been nice and tried to do the right thing. He tried to work with her, she seemed hopeful for a while and then pulled all support. That was a pretty dick move on her part. I hope that he can edit the lexicon some more and try to publish it again, this time without including the reference works that Rowling's put out and with more of his own words than hers.
It doesn't matter if you love the stuff or not. You still have to follow the rules. If he was serious about this for the "love of the game", he'd have gone to Rowling to get her to work with him.
I own a Sony eReader PRS-505. I got it to use mainly when I travel internationally, it's wonderful to carry 10+ hours of reading material in one slim package. I've found that it's also fine for everyday use. I use the USB cable (comes with the reader) to hook up to my WinXP laptop for charging and updating content.
You can get books either through Sony's eBook site or by uploading RTFs and PDFs. (And a few other formats, that I don't use.) I have yet to buy a book from Sony, but I'm a big sci-fi reader so I've downloaded a bunch of stuff from the Baen free library (http://www.baen.com/library/) and other sources.
Technically, I really like the features. The battery life is great, I've used it pretty much non-stop on international flights for 12+ hours and never even saw the battery indicator go down. The viewing area is plenty big, as long as you use the zoom feature properly to expand pages of PDFs. It's easy to switch from one book to another, and to maintain bookmarks.
My only real complaint isn't specifically about the Sony, it's more an industry thing - I wish there was a standard book format. Rocket eBook, Windows CE books, Microsoft reader, Palm format, etc. It gets old seeing all those different formats all the time.
I did see mention above about some other features missing, like a text search. Personally I don't really care about that so it's not an issue for me. Also I've seen folks complain about having to use a computer to get content (rather than wireless like a Kindle), but again it's not an issue for me. I work on my computer all the time, no hardship for me to use it for my reader content.
I've been with City of Heroes since open beta 3.5 years ago (just missed the closed beta). I've seen several posts here on/. saying basically "Been to CoH, didn't like it, left the game" and I'd like to say a little about how the game has matured since then.
Today's CoX (so abbreviated since both City of Heroes and City of Villains is really the same game) has changed massively during those 3.5 years. There's City of Villains, 2 years old as of last week, which nearly doubled the number of playable archetypes (think classes). There's tons of new zones (over 30 now) to play in. There's different mission types - rescuing hostages, destroying or defending the urban landscape - than the original "beat up all the bad guys". And there's Inventions, which is the CoX crafting system, a fairly new system that's still growing.
Bad things have happened too. Enhancement Diversification, unfortunately abbreviated ED, upset a lot of people by basically capping the amount by which you could improve your powers. Just over 2 years ago, there was a massive nerf to defense that made melee archetypes much squishier. And plenty of the little nerfs that every MMORPG gets along the way.
One thing that has not changed in the entire 3.5 years is the dedication of the CoX team to the community. The faces have changed - we've had several community representatives, the original lead designers for both CoH and CoV are gone - but the team has continued and has been very open with us about how the game is doing and their plans. Sure, they don't tell us everything, just as I wouldn't tell my clients everything about how I run my consulting business - but they're very open with everything they're allowed to share. And we get new updates (called issues) typically once every 3 months or so, which is great for keeping the game fresh even for us old-timers.
This NCSoft acquisition is a good thing for the game, in my opinion. The developers will no longer have to worry about two masters (Cryptic and NCSoft) - even when both your bosses are in agreement, red tape can cause problems, much less when they don't agree. That issue is gone. NCSoft has shown their commitment to maintaining the game through their offers of employment to practically the entire development and support team, as well as the creation of the NorCal studio. Personally I won't get much out of the in-game gifts, but it says a lot about NCSoft that they're reaching out to the community in this way.
It's interesting how a "database" means something much different than it did just a few years ago. Oracle has been selling their DB for years now not based on the relational data storage ability of the product, but on the other things you can do: monitoring, high availability, business intelligence queries, etc. For instance, one of the big selling points of Oracle 11g is the ability to build OLAP cubes within the database engine. That's a big leap from what I've traditionally thought of as "database functionality".
These additions to MySQL by Google shows that it's going the same way. Makes you wonder what "database" is going to mean 5 years from now.
Hadn't seen that link before. Gave it a quick glance, and it looks like Ou is debating the details (i.e. exactly how much CPU is used) and ignoring the real issue of users being locked out of their content. If the assertion about Guttman not doing enough research is correct, then shame on him - but it seems that the basic assertions in the original paper are still true.
I'm guessing they're referring to the fact that hackers can add back that other 90 GB of storage with an added/upgraded hard drive. And I suppose the other stuff too, although I'm not sure why you'd bother.
Many companies have a policy of not allowing 'lame-duck' workers to have system-level access. Usually they'll let you access your own email and non-critical applications, but in your case, since you were a system admin, it sounds like they shut down everything. I don't think this necessarily would be affected by anything you say in your resignation letter. It's a policy put into place to protect the company's assets, and in order for that policy to be effective, it needs to apply to all workers that are leaving.
Yeah, I have IE favorites. I have an IE favorite link that points to my Mozilla bookmarks.html, and I used to have the ability to access the IE favorites from Mozilla. Not exactly the ideal situation, but at least it automatically updated. Without the Mozilla ability to read the IE favorites, I've lost half the connection.
The export function in IE that others have mentioned isn't nearly as good, but at least it's a workaround. I'll have to give it a try.
It's important to those of us that have to use multiple browsers for one reason or another. There are lots of cases where a site is only viewable in IE (or vice versa, although that's much less common). This is especially bad if your company develops Int(er|ra)net applications, as mine does.
The "who cares" mentality seems to exist at the Mozilla developer level as well, since this bug keeps popping up again and again. I'm almost positive that.URL file formats haven't changed recently - certainly they're simple enough. But somehow this feature keeps breaking. It's a reason for me not to use Mozilla, and if Mozilla is ever going to become a general user phenomenon, it needs to be working flawlessly. Joe user won't switch unless we make it extremely easy for him to do so.
The obvious next comment is "get the source, fix it yourself, submit a patch". If I get the time, maybe I will, despite my less-than-stellar C++ skills.
I guess it's personal taste. I like the OS to manage my browser so that I use the same switching shortcuts as I do to change applications. Normally that's keyboard for me, not mouse, so location of the clicks aren't important to me.
Slashdot Mirror
What a load of crap. Taking advantage of increased irrational demand isn't a problem. It's following market trends, and that's good business. The smart people that are interested in her music will simply wait a while before buying, allowing prices to go back to normal. Nothing wrong with capitalizing on people who are 1) willing to pay more or 2) have so little self-control that they can't wait.
Lots of other "big" titles that launched recently have since gone free-to-play. Star Wars Online and DC Universe Online are recent examples. I give SWTOR a year (more than the average due to the Star Wars name) before they start letting people in free. They might not call it "F2P" but at the very least they'll have playable trial accounts that expose 75% of the game.
I don't have cable any more. The main reason is that I was paying $60/month for a package that had only three channels that I used. (MLB Network, ESPN, Versus in HD - I watch live sports but not much else.) If I could pay $15/month just for those channels, I'd be doing it. But since I can't, I just ditched the whole thing. I realize I'm not the typical customer, but it would be awfully nice if there was a company that could cater to those of us that really only want a few channels, and aren't willing to pay ridiculous amounts for them.
I know I'm way behind on this, just now discovered IFTTT, but I have to say it's an awesome idea. I love the ability to automatically link up some of these web apps without requiring code. Could I code those linkages? Sure, but that makes me spend time, and host that code, and maintain it...with IFTTT all that work is abstracted away. This is just like the adapter integration model...build one adapter for each of your end applications, then hook up the adapters. Swap out an end application, and as long as you keep the adapter the same, your integrations still work. Same principle applies here and it's a great idea!
Before this whole price thing blew up, I gave up on Netflix. Why?
1. If I want anime (my favorite genre), I'm better off with http://www.rentanime.com./ It costs $20/month, but the selection is significantly better. I'd already seen pretty much all the good anime that was on Netflix anyway.
2. If I want TV shows, go damn near anywhere on the Internet these days and you'll hit a way to get TV shows. From Hulu+ to iTunes, to Amazon, they're everywhere. Pretty cheap, too.
3. For new movie DVD releases, there's http://www.redbox.com./ Sure, it's not quite as convenient as Netflix was, but I only watch 1-2 movies a month, so it's a *lot* cheaper. Plus it has the spur-of-the-moment factor...as long as I'm willing to put some pants on and drive 5 minutes, I can get the DVD right away.
About the only thing left is older movie DVD releases. You can get most of those on Amazon too.
At the end of the article: "But the main thing is to be truthful and not exaggerate because we actually have to deliver." When there are some real-world examples, then graphene will be worth reading about.
I don't want my wireless access point open because my bandwidth is crappy enough as it is. I don't need to be giving random other people access to fill up that bandwidth.
If I were running DropBox, I wouldn't go after the guys who exploited a weakness in the way my filesharing worked...I'd fix it. Seems very odd that DropBox would worry about DropShip at all. Now I don't know anything about how this stuff works and so it may not be a simple change, but if you're going to be a company that wants to provide secure filesharing, then you've got to make the change anyway, DropShip or no DropShip. So, update your code to close the loophole so it doesn't work any more. Problem solved, not only for DropShip but also for any other person looking at the same thing.
http://scratch.mit.edu/ is a good place to start, I would think. Let him do some of that and then when you start to hear, "I wish I could do X", point him toward something more complex. I've seen Python and Ruby both suggested as that next step, and I'd add Perl to the list.
... being a manager and staying late with your developers, your first priority shouldn't be riding them but play a support role.
Absolutely. There's the very basic support, like ordering the food and making sure the cleaning people don't turn off all the lights, which is very useful. But more importantly, being available when something comes up that the developer needs help with. Question about requirements comes up? The manager can call the functional guy and ask. Problem with access? The manager can call up the sysadmins and get the ball moving. It's pretty rare that something is so completely cut-and-dried that the developer can work late hours with no outside support to get it done. When that outside support is needed, having the manager right there to get the help that is needed can be a great help.
And I'd be pretty pissed too if someone copied things from me and published them as their own work.
I would side more with Rowling if the lexicon weren't so clearly a work of love from the author, a work that could arguably be fair use (as mentioned in groklaw, there's a good possibility that if he'd just stuck to the main books, he would have won), and if she hadn't come out and said that she'd used the website as a reference guide.
I haven't read the lexicon so I don't know how much of it really is copying, but she's been a bitch about the situation while he's been nice and tried to do the right thing. He tried to work with her, she seemed hopeful for a while and then pulled all support. That was a pretty dick move on her part. I hope that he can edit the lexicon some more and try to publish it again, this time without including the reference works that Rowling's put out and with more of his own words than hers.
It doesn't matter if you love the stuff or not. You still have to follow the rules. If he was serious about this for the "love of the game", he'd have gone to Rowling to get her to work with him.
I own a Sony eReader PRS-505. I got it to use mainly when I travel internationally, it's wonderful to carry 10+ hours of reading material in one slim package. I've found that it's also fine for everyday use. I use the USB cable (comes with the reader) to hook up to my WinXP laptop for charging and updating content.
You can get books either through Sony's eBook site or by uploading RTFs and PDFs. (And a few other formats, that I don't use.) I have yet to buy a book from Sony, but I'm a big sci-fi reader so I've downloaded a bunch of stuff from the Baen free library (http://www.baen.com/library/) and other sources.
Technically, I really like the features. The battery life is great, I've used it pretty much non-stop on international flights for 12+ hours and never even saw the battery indicator go down. The viewing area is plenty big, as long as you use the zoom feature properly to expand pages of PDFs. It's easy to switch from one book to another, and to maintain bookmarks.
My only real complaint isn't specifically about the Sony, it's more an industry thing - I wish there was a standard book format. Rocket eBook, Windows CE books, Microsoft reader, Palm format, etc. It gets old seeing all those different formats all the time.
I did see mention above about some other features missing, like a text search. Personally I don't really care about that so it's not an issue for me. Also I've seen folks complain about having to use a computer to get content (rather than wireless like a Kindle), but again it's not an issue for me. I work on my computer all the time, no hardship for me to use it for my reader content.
I've been with City of Heroes since open beta 3.5 years ago (just missed the closed beta). I've seen several posts here on /. saying basically "Been to CoH, didn't like it, left the game" and I'd like to say a little about how the game has matured since then.
Today's CoX (so abbreviated since both City of Heroes and City of Villains is really the same game) has changed massively during those 3.5 years. There's City of Villains, 2 years old as of last week, which nearly doubled the number of playable archetypes (think classes). There's tons of new zones (over 30 now) to play in. There's different mission types - rescuing hostages, destroying or defending the urban landscape - than the original "beat up all the bad guys". And there's Inventions, which is the CoX crafting system, a fairly new system that's still growing.
Bad things have happened too. Enhancement Diversification, unfortunately abbreviated ED, upset a lot of people by basically capping the amount by which you could improve your powers. Just over 2 years ago, there was a massive nerf to defense that made melee archetypes much squishier. And plenty of the little nerfs that every MMORPG gets along the way.
One thing that has not changed in the entire 3.5 years is the dedication of the CoX team to the community. The faces have changed - we've had several community representatives, the original lead designers for both CoH and CoV are gone - but the team has continued and has been very open with us about how the game is doing and their plans. Sure, they don't tell us everything, just as I wouldn't tell my clients everything about how I run my consulting business - but they're very open with everything they're allowed to share. And we get new updates (called issues) typically once every 3 months or so, which is great for keeping the game fresh even for us old-timers.
Another thing that continues to grow is the player community. Sites like http://www.paragonwiki.com/, http://www.cohtitan.com/, http://coh.redtomax.com/data/ and http://www.badge-hunter.com/ are continually adding more support for players.
This NCSoft acquisition is a good thing for the game, in my opinion. The developers will no longer have to worry about two masters (Cryptic and NCSoft) - even when both your bosses are in agreement, red tape can cause problems, much less when they don't agree. That issue is gone. NCSoft has shown their commitment to maintaining the game through their offers of employment to practically the entire development and support team, as well as the creation of the NorCal studio. Personally I won't get much out of the in-game gifts, but it says a lot about NCSoft that they're reaching out to the community in this way.
It's interesting how a "database" means something much different than it did just a few years ago. Oracle has been selling their DB for years now not based on the relational data storage ability of the product, but on the other things you can do: monitoring, high availability, business intelligence queries, etc. For instance, one of the big selling points of Oracle 11g is the ability to build OLAP cubes within the database engine. That's a big leap from what I've traditionally thought of as "database functionality".
These additions to MySQL by Google shows that it's going the same way. Makes you wonder what "database" is going to mean 5 years from now.
Sure. *points to main story* If your computer ain't working, you ain't got content.
Hadn't seen that link before. Gave it a quick glance, and it looks like Ou is debating the details (i.e. exactly how much CPU is used) and ignoring the real issue of users being locked out of their content. If the assertion about Guttman not doing enough research is correct, then shame on him - but it seems that the basic assertions in the original paper are still true.
For those that haven't yet seen the reason why changing hardware hoses your Vista and are interested in the details, I highly recommend this:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
It's all about the DRM.
I'm guessing they're referring to the fact that hackers can add back that other 90 GB of storage with an added/upgraded hard drive. And I suppose the other stuff too, although I'm not sure why you'd bother.
Many companies have a policy of not allowing 'lame-duck' workers to have system-level access. Usually they'll let you access your own email and non-critical applications, but in your case, since you were a system admin, it sounds like they shut down everything. I don't think this necessarily would be affected by anything you say in your resignation letter. It's a policy put into place to protect the company's assets, and in order for that policy to be effective, it needs to apply to all workers that are leaving.
http://www.rootkit.com/blog.php?newsid=358
This is where I originally heard about this, from Greg's blog. I don't see this link on the BBC article, so I figured I'd post it.
Already answered:
CoH Forums Linux thread
Yeah, I have IE favorites. I have an IE favorite link that points to my Mozilla bookmarks.html, and I used to have the ability to access the IE favorites from Mozilla. Not exactly the ideal situation, but at least it automatically updated. Without the Mozilla ability to read the IE favorites, I've lost half the connection.
The export function in IE that others have mentioned isn't nearly as good, but at least it's a workaround. I'll have to give it a try.
It's important to those of us that have to use multiple browsers for one reason or another. There are lots of cases where a site is only viewable in IE (or vice versa, although that's much less common). This is especially bad if your company develops Int(er|ra)net applications, as mine does.
.URL file formats haven't changed recently - certainly they're simple enough. But somehow this feature keeps breaking. It's a reason for me not to use Mozilla, and if Mozilla is ever going to become a general user phenomenon, it needs to be working flawlessly. Joe user won't switch unless we make it extremely easy for him to do so.
The "who cares" mentality seems to exist at the Mozilla developer level as well, since this bug keeps popping up again and again. I'm almost positive that
The obvious next comment is "get the source, fix it yourself, submit a patch". If I get the time, maybe I will, despite my less-than-stellar C++ skills.
No IE favorites import. :( It's broken again. Back to Bugzilla....
I guess it's personal taste. I like the OS to manage my browser so that I use the same switching shortcuts as I do to change applications. Normally that's keyboard for me, not mouse, so location of the clicks aren't important to me.