haven't had goosebumps like that during any trailer since the Fellowship one. Just wow.

May be they should have started with the Hobbit, do the learning steps there, and make an even better LOTR?

The perfection of the Trilogy (and yes there is only one Triology and its about a ring, not light sabers) ruined cinema for me anyway. There will be nothing like that nine hour special, ever. Ever.

BTW, I had goosebumps when Vader got his helmet. It's just not a trilogy anymore. And there are situations where it's just OK to go ass to mouth.

(there are a few movie references in here, blimey, Harry...)

... for roughly 18 months now, and quite successful at least in the aspect that people working for me kept telling that they are quite happy with how I do things compared to what was before I took over. So far, so good. I'm still not dead. ;)

Main lessons I learned:

* Learn to delegate. Fast. Don't ever ever do things yourself (speaking about solving tech issues). If you have worked with the same people before, they will frown at you for not "working" anymore for roughly 3-6 months. Ignore it. Justify it. If you are good at keeping their backs free, they will see why you do it. Reason: if you do things yourself (meaning: tech solutions), you will have to fix them. Everybody will play the "he did that" game, and you will drown. Even if you want to support the guys, help out... don't. As much as possible.

* Be rightful, honest, truthful. Never hide your own mistakes or gains from anybody. People will see, and learn to be truthful to you - because of respect, as opposed to be afraid. You need to know what's going on in your team, so this is a key part!

In other words: be the *good* guy. In every respect. Taking blame, and hand down compliments as well as negative stuff.

That will lead to people standing behind you when things get ugly, and they WILL get ugly at some point, because you are responsible for whatever goes wrong. Things have a tendency to go wrong.

* Trust is earned, not given away. You need to earn the trust of your guys as well as the big hats!

* And while taking about it, possibly the worse part, which is dealing with bosses: basically, the same rules apply. Be rightful, truthful, and try to justify things on reasoning, not emotions. Try to think FOR your people, not against them. Never blame something on a person. It's your fault for not forseeing this could happen. Keep in mind that you will suffer when your people loose faith, because you can't deliver without them. Watch out for structural issues in the company that will keep you from delivering; say, you don't have a QA department at hand or miss critical infrastructure. There goes your capability to deliver. It's about keeping those things in mind.

* Development methods don't matter. Structure does. Wrap your team around your issues, not vise versa.

* Oh, and I always wear heavy motorcycle boots, just in case somebody needs some kicking.

Well, the first camera I have hold in my hands was an SLR. That was around 1982. Did not hurt, even if I could not grasp the full concept until maybe ten years later.

Of course, the camera does not matter that much, and there are so many brilliant cams out there now, including the iPhone 4/4S - they can all do "the trick". I've seen people taking pictures with their iPhone 4 that I still can't produce with my ~4000$ DSLR equipment (well call it "drug" ;))

If you want to get into Photography as opposed to "taking pictures", I strongly vote for a DSLR, though - you still get the most flexibility, you can easily scale your system to whatever you want to, and the current DSLRs are absolutely simple to use, too - just like a P&S. And they are not expensive anymore.

Just my 2 cents :)

All DSLRs manufactured during the last five years are decent enough for beginner to ambitionist level.

Hint: spend your money on lenses, not the camera body. Though: a standard zoom lens set will do the trick, like 18-55/55-200 or the like. Depends on what camera you get, but the idea is always the same. You'll start buying more anyway ;)

Workshops bring you in contact with others, and you can learn from them. There are very good workshops, some even backed by podcasts which are free; Leo Laporte would be one, then www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com another; there are numerous other ones.

Most important: enjoy and have fun! That's what it's all about.

I've been stuck in the same dilemmy in Germany now for more than ten years, and how crazy this whole legislation is and has always been never occurred to anybody in public.

This goes so far that the rates are actually too low to really complain about, but high enough to be a big headache for small concerts and stuff.

If an artist is signed with GEMA (so, get's money from them), he even has to pay GEMA fees in case he organizes a concert himself, for himself, only playing his own songs.

He will get the money back later, of course - but subtract bureaucracy fees. Same goes on for CDs!

It's just completely crazy. So as an artist, you are either "in" - and pay to eventually get paid - or "out" - and you never get paid at all.

The winners? Big acts, as usual.

First thing, Heise will not sell this information, they are basically the good guys, protected by several laws and priviledges they would loose by such action, plus widely financed - they dont need to do so.

Their main interest is to expose something bad going on, which is just living up to their journalist role. Good stuff.

Facebook is already retreating, they know they can only loose, and Heise is - in Germany - very, very big (I think every techy guy/girl in Germany at least pays minimum attention to their news feed, plus one of the multiple print magazines they publish). They also have a history of going to court, and going there sucessfuly, fighting for publicists rights regarding modern technology issues (patent/copyright gags and stuff) and net freedom.

People have been asking for how they do the Facebook "masking" (reportedly, already over 500 official requests), and Heise said they are already working on creating a documentation on how to do it.

Facebook should not even try to stop this, war is already lost, at least throughout Europe. The whole "like" system outweighs "hidden tracking" by far in value, and with criticism rising constantly in public media (!) plus privacy jurisdiction evolving badly for them in Europe, they will have to be very careful to not loose everything.

As you said: to big to fail. Not.

... called "Anonymous". A group is defined as not only people sharing the same motives and taking concurrent actions, but also some "working together" routine, organization, and structure.

All of this is missing in Anonymous; it's more like a swarm, then a group.

This critic is similar to that one could state against the idea of having a "Anonymous Leader" arrested in Spain.

There is no defined leader in a swarm of birds, as they are not really a group; they just coincidently fly together into the same direction. If you are interested in such logical rule-based swarm "auto"-coordination, check out the Sanderling, which is a little bird occupying many seasides. You will see hunt through flat waters in something that looks like "groups" of birds, but in reality, those are not at all tied together, and just coincidently appear in the same place at the same time doing the same thing.

I'm reading /. on my well-known brand ?phone, at 7:40 am naturally... in bed.

Either I'm doing something very right, or very wrong.

I let you decide ;)

While the project is based upon a gaming engine, and is "set up" as a classical game, the whole intention of the project differs totally from what is widely found as the "definition of gaming". (which is: having fun by pushing buttons to move dumb objects on a screen)

The basic concept here is to use a computer game as a media or communication platform, to use it educationally - and to use it to make people remember the BAD things that happened in history.

And you know, it works. People here in germany did not discuss the Mauer shootings for several years on such a broad base for years, and now it's all over public media again - which is basically even MORE than the author of the work could have hoped to gain with it, but it was exactly what was on his mind - maybe on a smaller scale.

In general, it's time that public opinion recognizes games as more than "a funnny thing to relax". It's an art form, it's about communication, socializing, and live in general. The understanding of a "game concept" finally has to change, but I think this will come with the next generations, who understand a "computer game" not only as an evolved version of "Pong".