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Games

An Inside Look At Warhammer Online's Server Setup 71

An article at Gamasutra provides some details on the hardware Mythic uses to power Warhammer Online, courtesy of Chief Technical Officer Matt Shaw and Online Technical Director Andrew Mann. Quoting: "At any given time, approximately 2,000 servers are in operation, supporting the gameplay in WAR. Matt Shaw commented, 'What we call a server to the user, that main server is actually a cluster of a number of machines. Our Server Farm in Virginia, for example,' Mann said, 'has about 60 Dell Blade chassis running Warhammer Online — each hosting up to 16 servers. All in all, we have about 700 servers in operation at this location.' ... 'We use blade architecture heavily for Warhammer Online,' Mann noted. 'Almost every server that we deploy is a blade system. We don't use virtualization; our software is somewhat virtualized itself. We've always had the technology to run our game world across several pieces of hardware. It's application-layer clustering at a process level. Virtualization wouldn't gain us much because we already run very close to peak CPU usage on these systems.' ... The normalized server configuration — in use across all of the Mythic-managed facilities — features dual Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors running at 3 GHz with 8 GB of RAM."

Comment Kick the Pig to Win an iPOD * FLASH * FLASH * (Score 2, Interesting) 419

If the ads were less annoying I wouldn't mind them at all. Some of the ads are actually very informative rather than spammy if you are on a website that caters to your interest and delivers ads based on content served on the site.

I'd love to see sites implement an ad protocol such as this:

1. No flash-based or animated ads.
2. No ads bigger than 300 x 100 pixels.
3. No ads with bright contrasting colours such as orange when the entire site is white and green.
4. All ads can be turned on or off at the user's preference. This site implements an honour system.
5. Users can select what categories of ads they would or would not like to be served.

If websites and companies were just more sane about their ad policies, I think a lot less people would resort to ad-blockers.

Comment Re:Good Riddance (Score 1) 796

I have a lot of patience for elderly people. If they are in a line I just go to a different line if possible. If I see them in a car, I just take a few breaths and slow down until I can safely pass them. Now when it's a soccer mom looking for coins in her purse or holding up the line, look out.. hexed_2050 is on the rage :)

Comment Re:Good Riddance (Score 1, Troll) 796

I'd rather see the end to cash rather than cheques. I hate when people pay with cash.. sitting there holding up the line while they count their dimes and pennies, then end up dropping them. A card is so easy to use, swipe and done. One thing I don't like about cards is that they can track your purchases and locations.
Mozilla

Mozilla Thunderbird 3 Released 272

supersloshy writes Today Mozilla released Thunderbird 3. Many new features are available, including Tabs and enhanced search features, a message archive for emails you don't want to delete but still want to keep, Firefox 3's improved Add-ons Manager, Personas support, and many other improvements. Download here."
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 Keep it simple, stupid! (Score 1) 514

Google's page is simple and pure. There is one logo and a search bar.
Bing has decided to make their search page bloated with graphics that actually update.
Do you know how painful it is to remote desktop or vnc to someone's computer that has yahoo, bing, or some other search engine besides google set as their homepage? grr!
Microsoft

Bing Gains 10% Marketshare 514

samzbest writes "According to ComScore's qSearch, Microsoft's retaliation against Google search, Bing, has gained significant market share, now facilitating close to 10% of US searches. That's a gain of two large points in five months."

Comment Re:What remote access technology? (Score 1) 251

Probably GoToMyComputer.

GoToMyComputer creates an outgoing connection to the GoToMyComputer server. When you want to log in, you log on to the central GoToMyComputer server and click connect. The server contacts the laptop and logs you in.

This bypasses the need to know the IP personally since the laptop creates the outgoing connection to the central server. This also bypasses 99% of all home firewalls since an outgoing connection session is established, enabling the session and allowing for data to pass in both directions.
Media

Writers Find Blogging To Be a Stressful Method of Reporting 199

Andrew Feinberg points out a New York Times story about the stress put upon prolific bloggers to maintain a constant flow of content in order to satisfy both consumers and advertisers in the information age. When breaking a story first can generate thousands more page views and clicks, many bloggers are finding themselves chained to their computers, worrying that they'll miss something important if they step away. Quoting: " 'I haven't died yet,' said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. 'At some point, I'll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen. This is not sustainable,' he said."

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