nickd - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Don't follow us (Score 1) 387

by nickd on Thursday October 29, 2009 @02:17AM (#29907143) Attached to: Obama Looks Down Under For Broadband Plan

Because all internet connections need a person at the other end ?

Those data centres with redundant suppliers going into the buildings (not to mention aggregated multiple connections for throughput) through to those remote security cameras and kiosks etc - they all use internet connections and have nothing to do with our population density.

Submission + - Amazon Cloud Adds Hosted MySQL (amazon.com)

Submitted by 1sockchuck on Tuesday October 27, 2009 @07:09AM

1sockchuck writes: Amazon Web Services has added a relational database service to host MySQL databases in the cloud, and is also dropping prices on its Amazon EC2 compute service by as much as 15 percent. Amazon says the new service lets users focus on development rather than maintenance, but it will probably be bad news for startups offering database services built atop Amazon's cloud. Cloud Avenue warns that Amazon RDS should serve as "a warning bell for the companies that build their entire business on Amazon ecosystem. ... They are just one announcement away from complete destruction." Data Center Knowledge has a roundup of analysis and commentary on Amazon RDS and its impact on the cloud ecosystem.

Comment Re:Patent trolls (Score 5, Informative) 267

by nickd on Thursday October 15, 2009 @01:27AM (#29753639) Attached to: Wi-Fi Patent Victory Earns CSIRO $200 Million

Except that they aren't patent trolls - they are the Australian Government's science organisation - Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), they have been in this battle for quite a while.

Read up on the WLAN stuff here http://www.csiro.gov.au/science/wireless-LANs.html

Then get back to us when you think that inventing wireless networking technology is easy and doesn't warrant the possibility of being patented.

ESRB Eyeballing Ratings For iPhone Games 72

Posted by Soulskill on Monday June 15, 2009 @06:37AM from the why-not-go-for-flash-games-too-while-you're-at-it dept.

Kotaku reports that the ESRB is thinking about expanding their game ratings to include games sold on the App Store. They realize that evaluating every single game is not feasible, but they may still be underestimating the amount of work they'd be taking on, and it could negatively affect some developers. Quoting: "'ESRB has seen increases in rating submissions each year since its founding and has always been able to keep pace,' the ESRB's Eliot Mizrachi told us. 'We have rated more than 70 mobile games to date and will undoubtedly rate more in the future as the market grows.' Seventy? Over the past, what, four or five years? It's a piddling number when you think of the hundreds of games available through the App Store. Further, many of them are mobile adjuncts to console releases, a different sort of beast from iPhone games. Not all of those need or deserve a rating; but if Apple brings in the ESRB to rate games, with the idea that it'll help parents control what their kids buy for their iPods, then unrated games are likely to be blocked by such filters. The incentive would definitely be there to get a game rated. And what of the cost? Getting a game rated isn't a free service; the ESRB levies a fee that covers the cost of looking through the code and rating the game."

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