Comment Re:Stop using DRM as an excuse to not pay (Score 1) 299
Why would one need an excuse to download anything?
Comment Re:"increased goodwill from users"? (Score 2) 299
I know very well where to download them (and some of them, like 'Practical Postgres' are available for free anyway), but I still buy them, because I love O'Reilly Media. I also keep telling everyone how awesome they are and that one shouldn't be afraid of the prices: they are twice lower than they show.
It takes one person to upload, but everyone decides if he should buy a book himself.
It takes one person to upload, but everyone decides if he should buy a book himself.
Comment Re:"increased goodwill from users"? (Score 5, Informative) 299
I've bought a dozen of ebooks from O'Reilly and didn't upload any of them anywhere. They don't treat me as a potential thief and don't fuck up my reading experience and the prices are reasonable (especially when you compare them to apress or pragmatic). They are my friends. I want them to prosper and publish more DRM free books.
Comment Re:What? (Score 2) 247
For the record, Pandora didn't fail completely. At the moment they are manufacturing the boards in Germany and assemble the devices in Germany and Great Britain and finally started shipping them.
Yes, they did piss off plenty of people along the way with poor communications, but they still managed to start building and shipping them, and new ones are of quite a good quality. Besides they finally have newer kernel, 2.4.27 made tinkering with the OS quite painful.
I've got myself one on ebay, and even though I had to fix a couple of things myself (first batch, meh) I really am happy with the device and I'm thinking of buying a new one, with more ROM. I mostly use it for surfing, email, minor admin tasks over ssh, reading books and of course playing games, at the moment my fav is Shadowrun for Sega Genesis.
The good thing about this whole thing is that they learned to deal with hardware makers and now know a couple of things about the process, so their next project should run smoother.
Maybe it's not particularly smart of me, but I'm very enthusiastic about crowdfunding, I'm backing several project on KS and that Debian Administrator Handbook liberation and several games at Desura. But I think I'll be able to tell if it does worth it only in a year.
Submission + - Can 'Big Data' Make IT Relevant Again? (itworld.com)
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)
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.
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)
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.
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)
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)
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."
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
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)
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?
What is this — betrayal of ideals of annoyance-free web or birth of independent authority for standards for advertisement?
