I don't think you know who Jeff Gerstmann is. Other than that though, I agree with you.

I think maybe "money spent" would be a better metric. If you buy AAA titles, consoles, surround sound systems, projectors, liquid-cooled rigs with dual video cards, gaming headsets, specialized controllers, keyboards, and mice...in short, if some non-trivial percentage of your household's disposable income goes towards gaming, then you are a gamer. Does it not make economic sense to target the demographic that is spending outrageous amounts of money on this stuff. Otherwise you're chasing a very thin, long tail. Good luck keeping your game dev company afloat with that plan.

Too bad you posted AC, otherwise I could make sure I never hire you. Sorry man, but the last 10 companies I worked for got pretty big things done with Oracle DBs, and were able to host several-terabyte databases doing things that even DB2 would choke on, never mind MySQL or SQL Server, or any other DB I've worked with. I've worked with more companies that have migrated *to* Oracle because they outgrew what they were using, than the other way around. There's always much gnashing of teeth, and angst over going with such a reprehensible company's product...but that's been my experience at least.

I'm not a PhD level database guru, but my career has been almost entirely working with databases over the last 20 years. I can say that the underlying technology of the Oracle RDBMS itself is light years beyond other systems. I'm not an advocate of anything Oracle has done in other arenas over the last 10-15 years, but I experience an existential crisis every day in my job where I love working within an Oracle database, but hate pretty much everything about the company that owns it.

Have you seen SAP?

Well, you could always try making a battery with a lithium anode instead, that's coated with carbon nanospheres to stop it from reacting to stuff, and forming dendrites over time with charging and recharging. Funny thing is, Stanford's doing just that, and I believe I may have even gotten this link from slashdot a couple weeks ago: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...

The not-so-secret to Sony's continued success: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

It's the damned processes. Yesterday, I got a new Jira ticket to fix a query and provide the updated results in a file to the ticket submitter. I looked at the query, realized that I knew exactly what was wrong with it, and fixed it, dumped the results, and sent them to this guy. I then resolved and closed the ticket in about 5 minutes. I took a bit of heat for it, because I didn't follow the due process of prioritizing this task, determining whether or not it would go into the next sprint, assigning story points to it, creating subtasks, and providing time estimates for them. All told, probably about half an hour's worth of meeting time and overhead to do a 5 minute task. But how dare I bypass the process to get something simple done??!!

Sorry, I just double checked, and it's actually 100/5. Worse even than I remembered. I checked all available plans from Telus, Rogers, Shaw...and there's nothing better that's available anywhere near me. Remember this when the MP/RIAA makes a stink about those damned dirty Canadian pirates. Sure, if I pirate a movie, maybe I can seed it on a torrent site, and you'll get it in about 3 weeks. :P

Where I live, in a suburb of Vancouver, BC. I have no options even remotely like this. I have 100/10 cable internet right now, and that's the best I can get. Uploading anything is almost an exercise in futility.

Too funny. After all these years, I somehow never knew that CTRL-ESC = Windows Key. I'm on an "ancient IBM" keyboard right now (a Model M from 1984), and I just tried it. Massive forehead smack ensued when I discovered it worked. So, honestly, no sarcasm intended, thanks for that tip!

What I miss the most is the classic start menu where you can completely create your own sub-groups in a hierarchy. When I'm trying to remember which utility I wanted to use, but the name was something goofy that I haven't used in a year, it's nice to be able to go Start->Audio Tools->Transcoders-> {browse list, and "oh yeah, it was this..."}->BeHappy

Hanlon's Razor is a useful tool...but it cuts both ways. I use it sometimes myself. "Whoops, I didn't realize I was logged into production when I deployed that critical bug fix that isn't scheduled to go until next week! Oh well, at least we won't get called on the weekend about the error that was prematurely fixed..."

I'm surprised you're being modded flamebait. My first listen to the $299 version of Beats, I was certain they were actually broken. But no, I tried them at 3 different stores, and I can't for the life of my understand how they just don't sound downright bad to other people. They sound broken to me. The bass is cranked, but only in a very narrow range that makes certain notes in a bassline sound louder than others, and there's some weird kind of thing going on in the midrange that almost sounds like phase cancellation. I dunno man...

Well, my headphones were around $350, but they have significant amounts of titanium and kevlar in their construction. I think they're worth it...

I suspect it might be because her mom might end up becoming a presidential candidate soon...or am I wrong about that. I confess to being a non-American only somewhat up-to-date on the current state of US politics.