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Businesses

EA Shuts Down Pandemic Studios, Cuts 200 Jobs 161

lbalbalba writes "Electronic Arts is shutting down its Westwood-based game developer Pandemic Studios just two years after acquiring it, putting nearly 200 people out of work. 'The struggling video game publisher informed employees Tuesday morning that it was closing the studio as part of a recently announced plan to eliminate 1,500 jobs, or 16% of its global workforce. Pandemic has about 220 employees, but an EA spokesman said that a core team, estimated by two people close to the studio to be about 25, will be integrated into the publisher's other Los Angeles studio, in Playa Vista.' An ex-developer for Pandemic attributed the studio's struggles to poor decisions from the management."

Comment sloppy (Score 2, Insightful) 369

"Cenzic analyzed all reported vulnerability information from sources including NIST, MITRE, SANS, US-CERT, OSVDB, OWASP, as well as other third party databases for Web application security issues reported during the first half of 2009." Ah -- the old "count the number of bug reports" technique. I won't even bother ranting about that

Comment Re:Not News!! (Score 1) 843

I haven't run anti-virus on my main machine ever (over 15 years, mainly Mac). The only thing I've ever gotten were Word macro-viruses. I stopped using MCSFT products about 5 years ago and not a single incident since. (btw, I try out all kinds of different software all the time, surf all over, etc. It's certainly not for lack of exposure.) Before anyone gets all fanboi on me -- I use windows. For gaming. Never gotten a virus from a purchased title (yes, it could happen, it just hasn't).

Comment Re:It's a screaming deal (Score 1) 173

I wouldn't use it for a personal web site or anything, but for a small business who needs a basic DB-backed web site/service, it's quite a deal (especially if they are short on internal IT resources).

You wouldn't host your personal stuff on it, but you'd put business stuff there?

Comment Re:Adobe is a horrible company to do business with (Score 1) 181

I would add that Adobe products are turning into bloatware. From my perspective, the Adobe of today is not the same Adobe of five or ten years ago. Todays Adobe seems more interested in market share and up-selling rather then making products that work smoothly. In my tool box, Adobe's stuff is slowly getting replace by smaller, cheaper apps that only do a few things, but do them very well. Case in point, Dreamweaver. It's over 600 MB, costs $400, and installs a number of "features" that I don't want. Enter TextMate and CSS Edit. Less then a $100 for both of them and both do exactly what I want. It actually kind of bums me out. I used to really like Adobe products. I still use Photoshop

Comment How very ironic... (Score 5, Insightful) 197

That a website promoting our fiscal recovery cost so much. As an American citizen and a professional web developer, I'd like to understand how this amount can possibly be justified. Did they build a data-center to house this site? I'll bet you that the web developers who actually built this site didn't take home the majority of that cash.

This stinks.

Comment Re:Clever marketing, plain and simple (Score 3, Insightful) 228

I disagree. Staging fake protests undermines the legitimacy of people who are actually concerned about an issue. Were the people who have been interrupting the town hall meetings around healthcare legitimate, or were they just paid for by the marketing departments of big pharma? Are big pharma marketers good marketers, who just scumbags who would take a buck regardless of the effect is has on our country?

Personally, I think you're confusing "notable" with clever.

Frankly, I fed up to here with the notion that "if it gets results, it must be okay." In the same way I don't buy from companies that send out spam, I've stopped spending my dollars on companies whose marketers do this kind of shit. EA, I can say I noticed you for all this.

and I think you suck....

Comment Re:August (Score 1) 1146

bullshit. If this has been your experience, you're doing it wrong. Nahdudes post was dead on -- relationships are about putting more into it then you might get back, and if both people approach it with that attitude, more people would have happier marriages. I've been married for 15 years, and my home life is terrific.

Comment Share the love (Score 1) 367

I'm not here to slag on Zed. He has a point, especially about developers using open source software. Share the love, or more specifically, the credit and the cash. I'm the primary developer for a middle sized web site, and we use drupal. I've made a point of making sure that we share our experiences with anyone who asks, helping out the Drupal association when I can, and most importantly: supporting the developers who make all this happen. Most Drupal developers tend to work for small companies and I've hired several of these companies to help us with various projects. They share their time, expertise, and insight, and we share the cash and the love. In my experience so far, it has been a win-win.
Programming

Open Source Usability — Joomla! Vs. WordPress 240

An anonymous reader writes "PlayingWithWire profiles two open source tools for Web development, comparing Joomla! and WordPress through the lens of usability. The article has apparently upset a few people at the Joomla! forum, but it does bring up a good point. Many open source projects are developed by engineers for engineers — should they focus more on usability? PlayingWithWire makes a bold analogy: 'If Joomla! is Linux, then WordPress is Mac OS X. WordPress might offer only 90% of the features of Joomla!, but in most cases WordPress is both easier to use and faster to get up and running.'" The article repeatedly stresses that blogging platform WordPress and CMS harness Joomla! occupy different levels of the content hierarchy. How fair is it to twit Joomla! on usability?

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