But it's a university with two class Bs... Don't you get it? They're fucking PRO there in Israel. (pardon my french). Don't bother with that BGP stuff, he obviously doesn't know what it is, nor why Facebook isn't going to bend over backwards to accomodate him.

The speakerphone would've picked up the "Whaa Whaa Whaa" from the whaaaaambulance on his blog.

Don't get me wrong, but the following passage was telling:

Why didn't he prepare in advance? If he knew it was coming any time soon, why not brush up on it in advance? Why wait until the company says "Well, next week" and bitch about having to cancel his plans, which he eventually doesn't do.

So allow me to simply summarize the entire blog in an all too familiar onomatope: Waaaaaaah

Sounds like every day project management, including the budgetted manhours. So... When the project goes over budget, and is only 1/10th finished, do you:

• Report to management you goofed?
• Break out the whip and start flogging developers while reading the Adobe EULA out loud?

Quick, claim it doesn't have a loop and write a book. :)

If you look at it from a EU point of view, you might see that the general attitude of our population towards the conflicts you mention is "Why the hell are we even there?". We don't have the billions to pour into our armies that the US does, and as far as my country is concerned we'd rather trim it down further so we can use that money on more useful things which actually benefit our population.

Yet somehow we find ourselves dragged into conflicts with ample political pressure, sending our troops to places where the US has made a nasty mess of things with their politics in the past few decades. The media doesn't shy away from stressing at each and every incident how our country doesn't even have any business there, so that doesn't help public opinion either. To top it off this whole mess of course pressures our local politics, as most people don't consider these nations such a threat that it requires military intervention.

You speak of a dwindling appetite and patience in the US Congress, but the same applies on the other side of the fence. I'd like to believe that it was the foreign policy conducted by the Bush administration which changed the attitude in the average Joe in the EU, but I think that most likely the change in attitude has many more causes. On top of that the stress caused to our financial system by what is by most perceived as a US problem in 2008, of which the consequences can still be felt today in the banking industry here, naturally accompanied by the necessary budget problems for the local governments.

While I don't share those opinions for the most part, I do understand where the sentiment comes from, and I think the US often overestimates the capabilities and willingness of other countries to mobilize its troops against problems at which its own politics often lie at the cause. To say that your congress is losing its patience with us is more than indicative of a lack of understanding of our politics and budgetary issues, subjects which are very much influenced by the US and its policies, mind you.

A less cynical person might even call such words arrogant, but I prefer to think of them as "inconsiderate" from a nation which can pour billions into its military industrial complex without so much as an afterthought.

It's not the destination that matters, it's how you get there. Nothing stresses this as much as blowing up your destination when you get there.

Here's a handy link for you : http://4chan.org/ . Don't bother with the back button, you'll fit in there better than here.

Have you tried Common Sense 2012? I hear it works well in most sensible cases. Other than that on the cheap : Microsoft Security Essentials. It seems a bit contradictory to let MS handle anti-virus software, but at least it doesn't hog your system as badly as most other products.

Yes, I know how you feel. I like to think of myself a I/O aficionado. I have a friend who's a memory expert. We know a guy who was pretty much a BIOS guru, but he's not feeling too well lately after hearing about the UEFI thing.

I hardly know anyone who downloads their music from SoundCloud. Most tracks are either demos (with a link to itunes, amazon, juno or whatever). And the few amateurs that are serious about their music have already joined one of the many netlabels where you can usually download entire albums from their own site or bandcamp.

Are you by any chance doing market research, trying to infiltrate into the tech crowd while looking young, hip, dynamic and social 2.0 web networking? You're doing a splendid job, I might add. However, please forgive my sarcasm if you're not, your post seems to read like a 55 year old police officer going under cover "buyin' da ganja mon, totally down with da 'erb an' ting".

You cycle through sockpuppet accounts faster than a d&d party through cheetos. Have you tried being less obvious about it, or does your employer not offer you that kind of training?

Surely you can deprecate a function after all those years. I mean they've broken code before between major versions... It's just unwillingness not to do so at this point.

A polished turd is still a turd.

Sorry if that insults your language of choice...

Then you start one, because it's foolish to keep developing games outside of a business. If you can't afford to start a business you're way over your head in dealing with EA.

If you're a business you won't have any trouble dealing with a credit card processor. They'll take a cut, but so does everyone else. It's a matter of making the right choice and spending some time with a spreadsheet.

You do realize that the guy who wrote minecraft (and he's far from a genius, bless him) actually did all this... Right? Minecraft had sold well over several tens of thousands of copies before he even started pondering about moving his stuff to "the cloud". It was all a single webserver handling it with a credit card processor. Not some sort of magic. Anyone considering making a game larger in size than minecraft has already begun considering the distribution options before slavishly beginning development.

If you make a game and you as a company find this "the hardest part", I fear for your business. You don't go to Steam or Origin because you can't handle the traffic or can't delegate payment, you go there because they have a freaking huge userbase and the companies typically have all the credit card numbers of their users neatly stored in a database for impulse purchases. Then after the impulse purchases you wait for the stragglers to buy the game when it's offered in a discount. Go on steam during the weekend, and look at the sales chart and the discounts offered. That's why you use these distribution networks: a large userbase. Despite all that though, there's still plenty of indie devs who succeed in selling their stuff and distributing it without Steam or Origin (or Impulse and its measly marketshare) for that matter.

The apple store is an entirely different beast. iPhones and iPads are pretty much walled off from using "typical" software installations. It's the Apple way or no way at all. It's not a matter of choice. And again, you don't start iOS development because there's a neat little platform to distribute stuff over, but because you think your product will have a large userbase and can benefit from the impulse purchases.

These platforms are not going to lower your cost, no matter how pretty they picture it. They have the same costs as you do: (virtual) server infrastructure, maintenance, and credit card processors. They may get a bit of a better rate, but not by much, and don't forget they're out to make a profit too (just like you are) so they are going to be in your pockets for that. So in the end the bill will probably be the same, if not higher because of overhead costs. Oh and there WILL be overhead costs. Don't forget they'll probably make you use their APIs as well, for a seamless integration (friends lists, chat, etc etc). Sure these costs aren't going to be the bulk your costs, but don't forget about that.

You've got to ask yourself when someone offers you this: where is the catch? And it's pretty obvious what the catch is, right? After 90 days those games don't stop existing. Once you're deploying patch 1.12 out on the origin servers they're going to say "Wellp, that's gonna cost you. Remember that contract? Did you read the fine print?". Plan on doing some DLC? Are you sure it's not an Origin exclusive? Bandwidth used by people reinstalling the game after those 90 days? What about your price? Do you get to decide when they offer the inevitable discounts?

I would be very cautious when approached by EA (or anyone for that matter) with such an offer, because you can be sure there's no such thing as a free lunch, and you can be damned sure that EA of all companies isn't doing this out of the kindness of their heart either. They're out to maximize THEIR profits, not yours.

While at first this may seem innocuous, the truth behind this website is that it is a vipers nest of Al Qaeda militants, making money off of selling miniatures of the British flag burning and pictures of the queen with a bullseye painted on her. The proceeds of these shelf-items then go to an Al Qaeda trainingcamp hidden deep in the wastelands of Sussex where they are trained in operating micro-UAVs (preferably capable of resting on a shelf while not in use) aimed at miniature Big Bens (also preferably shelf sized).

Yes, laugh now, but you'll rue the day when someone told you about this vile plot to collapse British society as we know it and it actually happens.

And nothing of value was lost.

You misunderstand I guess, they're just going to build an automated toilet hooked up to a money printing press and see how much money they can flush down the toilet per minute.

Seriously though, there has to be a more cost-effective method to do an experiment like this.

Nah man, this is the tech demo for the Elder Scrolls MMO. I shit you not.