Roman Grazhdan - Slashdot User

Submission + - Can 'Big Data' Make IT Relevant Again? (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @02:08PM

itwbennett writes: "Just last week, Microsoft and IDC released a study predicting that cloud computing would create 14 million jobs. Great news, right? Well, yes. But those jobs won't be in IT or even mostly in the U.S. The message is clear: IT has become less relevant to the business. And so is it any wonder that IT is wary of that other hot trend, Big Data? But there's a good chance that Big Data could actually make IT more important to the business. Brian Proffitt argues that the tasks associated with Big Data, 'unlike system operation and automation, can't really be scaled, because at the end of the day there's going to need to be a data scientist (or a team of data experts) looking at the data and making decisions.' And who better to do that than 'business savvy' techies?"

Submission + - Sequel to Wasteland, the Legendary RPG, to be Fan Funded via Kickstarter (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by Roman Grazhdan on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @01:38PM

Roman Grazhdan writes: Inspired by recent success of Double Fine Adventure, inXile, a game studio founded by Brian Fargo who you might know as a founder of Interplay, decided to take the same route and make a sequel to the legendary RPG Wasteland fan-funded.

This way the team won't depend on major publishers and will implement the features the end user want. The poll on Wasteland forums showed that gamers want it to be DRM-free, so DRM-free it is. All the other aspects of the game are being discussed likewise.

The minimal goal is $900.000, if $1.250.000 would be pledged, the money would be spent on creating a larger world with more locations and quests, $1.500.000 would mean MacOS X version, and with a larger sum 'the sky is the limit', Brian says.

In several hours, more than $150.000 had been pledged.

Submission + - Is Russia Really going to Sell Advanced Fighters to China? (the-diplomat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @12:33PM

An anonymous reader writes: Russia appears close to selling $ 4 billion dollars worth of advanced fighter equipment to China. If the deal is completed, Russia would sell 48 SU-35 fighters to China at about $85 million dollars a piece.

Why would either nation do this considering their past deals? China has been widely accused of buying a Russian jet, the SU-27 and stealing much of the technology to create its own jet, the J-11B.

Russia however just lost the Indian MMRCA competition for new fighter jets to France. China maybe having a hard time with its copycat fighter's and its much displayed J-20 stealth fighter is speculated to use a Russian engine as the Chinese are having issues developing their own.

A marriage of convience? For now, perhaps.

Submission + - Microsoft Evangelist Promises Windows Phones For t (wmpoweruser.com)

Submitted by Roman Grazhdan on Wednesday December 14, 2011 @07:36AM

Roman Grazhdan writes: Ben Rudolph, a Microsoft evangelist, tries to launch 'Get The Facts 2.0', viral and involving social networks, and this time Android is the target. Five Windows phones are to be raffled off among the authors of anti-Android tweets. It's quite a smart move, #droidrage storm is rising on Twitter, and Android fans will not even be able to strike back: much less people have seen Windows Phone, not to mention being outraged by it.

Submission + - Anti-Piracy Ad Caught Using Pirated Music (summify.com)

Submitted by

addam666

on Wednesday December 14, 2011 @05:12AM

addam666 writes: "You wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal a handbag...

We all know how the rest goes, because thanks to the Motion Picture Association Of America and their foreign associates, every time you hire a DVD, you have to sit through this ad before you get to the main menu. But in what must be the most delicious slice of irony served this year, it has just been discovered that that the music used to soundtrack this 50-second pain in the ass is actually stolen."

Comment I'm sorry about the mess... (Score 1) 247

by Roman Grazhdan on Wednesday December 14, 2011 @02:44AM (#38366832) Attached to: Adblock Plus Developers To Allow 'Acceptable' Ads

I tried to retract the post somehow, but failed to find it yesterday (the 'newest' was full of proposals to buy real estate in India)

Submission + - Adblock Plus developers to allow 'acceptable' ads (adblockplus.org)

Submitted by Roman Grazhdan on Tuesday December 13, 2011 @04:25AM

Roman Grazhdan writes: Developers of Adblock Plus, an award-winning add-on for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome boasting over 12,000,000 users, announced that starting from version 2.0 the extension would come with a white list of unobtrusive, privacy-respected ads. These will be allowed by default, users will still be able to block them by unchecking "Allow non-intrusive advertising". The developers say: "Only 25% of the Adblock Plus users seem to be strictly against any advertising".

What is this — betrayal of ideals of annoyance-free web or birth of independent authority for standards for advertisement?

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