Submission + - Hawking, Lording it up..
Quietly_Confident writes: "A petition on the official
UK government 'Number 10 Downing Street'
web site is inviting
British citizens or residents to impetrate the conference of a
life peerage on Prof.
Stephen Hawking. The petition suggests that; "Professor Stephen Hawking, one of
the greatest minds this country has and has had, who should have been Knighted a
decade ago should actually be conferred a peerage [Lord Hawking]".
A life peerage would entitle Prof. Hawking to sit in the House of Lords should he wish to. With recent honours for cash scandals, it would be a breath of fresh air if a truly Great and deserving Britton was honoured appropriately, possibly in the Prime Minster's Resignation Honours List."
A life peerage would entitle Prof. Hawking to sit in the House of Lords should he wish to. With recent honours for cash scandals, it would be a breath of fresh air if a truly Great and deserving Britton was honoured appropriately, possibly in the Prime Minster's Resignation Honours List."
Feed $500 million underwater fiber network to link Asia, America (engadget.com)
Filed under: Networking
Unfortunately for most, traversing back and forth to Asia from America on a regular basis isn't exactly in the cards, but thanks to a $500 million project agreed upon by a 17-member telecommunications consortium, visiting via fiber will soon be a whole lot snappier. Telekom Malaysia, along with 16 other firms, have awarded a half billion dollar contract to Alcatel-Lucent and NEC to construct a 12,428-mile link between the west coast of America and Southeast Asia. The aptly-dubbed Asia-America Gateway will connect the western US with Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii, while also offering "seamless interconnection" with Europe, Africa, and Australia. Moreover, the project is being designed to provide a "more secure link for traffic" across the seas, as it avoids the hazardous Pacific Ring in hopes of dodging massive internet outages due to unexpected earthquakes. Best of all, the wait time for the undersea cabling to make an impact is fairly reasonable, as users should see "faster and more reliable service" when it becomes operational in December of next year.[Via Physorg]
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
MIT Dean of Admissions Resigns in Lying Scandal 351
Billosaur writes "CNN has a report that the Dean of Admissions at MIT has resigned her post after admitting to lying about her academic record. 'Marilee Jones, who joined the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1979 to lead the recruitment of women at the university, stepped down from her post after admitting that she had misrepresented her academic degrees to the institute, according to a statement posted on MIT's Web site.' The school had recently received information about her credentials and the subsequent investigation uncovered the misrepresentations. Question is, why did it take 28 years?"
Journal Journal: [cgi] Need for Speed 3
Created for a 3d contest on deviant art (theme: speed)
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/54184759/
Submission + - Open-source Renewable Energy Project
Iddo Genuth writes: "An open-source engineering project named SHPEGS is currently under development in Canada. The project aims to create a new power plant design that will use a combination of solar and geothermal energy for use in more distant locations without polluting the environment."
Submission + - Do you still think Wii is a bad name?
PineGreen writes: "Just over a year ago, Nintendo announced that Revolution will be renamed to Wii. The slashdot community was gobsmacked and seemingly hated the new name. One year after, with all the success that Wii has, do you still think that this name change was such a "stupid idea"?"
Feed Bush 15.4-inch HD-ready TV aims low, fails (engadget.com)
Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
The quixotic race to make the world's smallest HDTV got a little tighter today with this 15.4-inch TV / DVD combo from Bush. Featuring 720p resolution and an HDMI port, it's not the smallest HD-ready panel we've ever seen, but it's certainly the smallest you can actually go out and buy. While you probably won't be using this little guy to settle that 1080i-vs-1080p debate, we're not going to complain about hi-res panels filtering down to even the cheap-o TV / DVD player combo level. We are going to complain about the ridiculous £250 ($500) this thing will set you back, though, as well as the lack of a Freeview tuner, which means you'll need some kind of external box to view any HD content. No deets on availability, but with a plethora of solid 19- to 22-inch HD-ready displays at that price point, it's not like anyone's really chomping at the bit here.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Submission + - My software doesn't get enough pirate's attention
Benoit Joossen writes: "My software doesnt get enough pirates attention.
April 28th, 2007
Today I stumbled on an article by Daniel Jalkut about piracy. Daniel is also a Mac software developer.
He claims that piracy is not such a bad thing, because pirates will become our customers tomorrow.
A short summary of his article could be:
Granted, Pirates are not paying our bills today, but they contribute to word-of-mouth marketing, they provide some peer-to-peer support, and by choosing your product they help fighting your competitors. Eventually, theyll grow a moral backbone and legitimately pay for your products.
He concludes that piracy should be ostracized as a bad social behavior, rather than fought like crime.
At first, I found his reasoning very interesting and mostly agreed with him. But when I tried to apply it to SimpleMovieX, my main product, I discovered a more complex reality.
Like every software worth two pennies, SimpleMovieX has been cracked for a long time. My protection scheme is extremely simple, and I guess that any cracker with the right tools can break it in five minutes. Making it more difficult would be a loss of time, it would be cracked anyway. So this protection scheme is just aimed at reminding users of demo version that its a 30$ product, that they can buy it, receive my eternal gratitude, and enjoy a world-class technical support.
So as Im not fighting piracy seriously, does it make me a supporter of Daniels reasoning? Not so fast!
SimpleMovieX is not pirated enough to see the benefits that Daniel mentions. Word-of-mouth marketing, peer-to-peer support, fighting competitors, and finally getting future customers, all this depends on the pirates massively adopting your software.
You will say: Pirates dont choose it because its a bad quality product with too few features. Wrong! They dont choose it because its competing in a completly distorted market.
Ill take an example: If you like cars, and youre a thief, youll probably pick the most exclusive cars. A Porsche is not more difficult to steal as a Ford, but its much more rewarding, and the cost is the same: Nothing.
With software piracy, the same happens: If you can get cracked versions of Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, and SimpleMovieX, which one would you use? High-end video editing or entry-level video editing? The fact that SimpleMovieX costs 30$ versus over 500$ for the other ones, doesnt matter for the pirate crowd. Not to mention freeware products, iMovie, and QuickTime Pro with hundreds of registration keys in the wild.
But its not an excuse. Im willing to fight for SimpleMovieX anyway. Ill continue improving it, differentiating it, and Ill try to turn this distorted market to my advantage.
Its clear that a certain type of entry-level software, often high-quality products, developed by small developers, is getting hurt harder. If the positioning is: offer less features but be affordable, then you get little pirates attention.
Like it or not, freeware and piracy are two forces that are shaping the software market. They decide to what extent a product can be successful, or said in other words, they decide what products get developed.
Ill learn the lesson for my next product, and one of design goals (not the first one!) will be to get maximum pirates attention.
A market shaped by free products and future customers cannot but be a passionate one!"
Today I stumbled on an article by Daniel Jalkut about piracy. Daniel is also a Mac software developer.
He claims that piracy is not such a bad thing, because pirates will become our customers tomorrow.
A short summary of his article could be:
Granted, Pirates are not paying our bills today, but they contribute to word-of-mouth marketing, they provide some peer-to-peer support, and by choosing your product they help fighting your competitors. Eventually, theyll grow a moral backbone and legitimately pay for your products.
He concludes that piracy should be ostracized as a bad social behavior, rather than fought like crime.
At first, I found his reasoning very interesting and mostly agreed with him. But when I tried to apply it to SimpleMovieX, my main product, I discovered a more complex reality.
Like every software worth two pennies, SimpleMovieX has been cracked for a long time. My protection scheme is extremely simple, and I guess that any cracker with the right tools can break it in five minutes. Making it more difficult would be a loss of time, it would be cracked anyway. So this protection scheme is just aimed at reminding users of demo version that its a 30$ product, that they can buy it, receive my eternal gratitude, and enjoy a world-class technical support.
So as Im not fighting piracy seriously, does it make me a supporter of Daniels reasoning? Not so fast!
SimpleMovieX is not pirated enough to see the benefits that Daniel mentions. Word-of-mouth marketing, peer-to-peer support, fighting competitors, and finally getting future customers, all this depends on the pirates massively adopting your software.
You will say: Pirates dont choose it because its a bad quality product with too few features. Wrong! They dont choose it because its competing in a completly distorted market.
Ill take an example: If you like cars, and youre a thief, youll probably pick the most exclusive cars. A Porsche is not more difficult to steal as a Ford, but its much more rewarding, and the cost is the same: Nothing.
With software piracy, the same happens: If you can get cracked versions of Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, and SimpleMovieX, which one would you use? High-end video editing or entry-level video editing? The fact that SimpleMovieX costs 30$ versus over 500$ for the other ones, doesnt matter for the pirate crowd. Not to mention freeware products, iMovie, and QuickTime Pro with hundreds of registration keys in the wild.
But its not an excuse. Im willing to fight for SimpleMovieX anyway. Ill continue improving it, differentiating it, and Ill try to turn this distorted market to my advantage.
Its clear that a certain type of entry-level software, often high-quality products, developed by small developers, is getting hurt harder. If the positioning is: offer less features but be affordable, then you get little pirates attention.
Like it or not, freeware and piracy are two forces that are shaping the software market. They decide to what extent a product can be successful, or said in other words, they decide what products get developed.
Ill learn the lesson for my next product, and one of design goals (not the first one!) will be to get maximum pirates attention.
A market shaped by free products and future customers cannot but be a passionate one!
Journal Journal: Wellington Grey 's Slashdot Flowchart 1
Wellington Grey brings us this peek at the inner workings of the typical Slashdot user. When you analyze it, it's not a bad representation of how things work. Mind you, I think too much emphasis is put on the effect of work... but that's just me.
Submission + - WebDevelop
Anonymous Coward writes: "WebDevelopement"
Bookmark Wellington Grey 's Slashdot Flowchart (wellingtongrey.net)
Journal SPAM: Jehovah's Witnesses
They believe in 'earthly resurrection', their belief is we can resurrect after we died and are discompsed fully on the earth. There are many descriptions of resurrection immediately after their death in Bible. But I don't believe we resurrect after we are cremated or discomposed.
Submission + - Tackling The Astroturfing Problem
Dalton Georgia writes: After a reporter at Forbes.com wrote a negative review of Iolo System Mechanic 7, someone pretending to be a random user posted numerous comments on the blog post. They said they had just tried the software, loved it, and accused the reporter of being paid off by Iolo's competitors. But a little digging revealed that the comments actually came from an IP address at Iolo headquarters. This practice of faking grassroots support has its own term, astroturfing, and is increasingly common in the tech business. Can we ever trust user reviews again?
Submission + - WoW Gold paid for real sex
Shohat writes: "A woman posted an ad on Craigslist, offering a certain something for some quick cash in her game of choice, WoW.The offer was very specific, and And she got what she wanted — enough money an epic flying mount - Screenshots of the postings prior to removal .
First of all, is this prostitution? Sure seems like it, although MMO money isn't entirely established as legally worth real money yet, even if people buy and sell it all the time on multiple online and offline markets."
First of all, is this prostitution? Sure seems like it, although MMO money isn't entirely established as legally worth real money yet, even if people buy and sell it all the time on multiple online and offline markets."
