ZioPino - Slashdot User

EA Shuts Down Pandemic Studios, Cuts 200 Jobs 161

Posted by Soulskill on Friday November 20, 2009 @01:01AM from the say-goodnight-folks dept.

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 This is not Borland (Score 5, Informative) 351

by ZioPino on Wednesday May 06, 2009 @02:13PM (#27848975) Attached to: Borland Being Purchased By Micro Focus

I worked in Borland, when it was indeed Borland. Great company, you could not find another place with so many fine minds.
What is called Borland today is not the company that people knew. The management stole the name, connected it with mindless, buzzword-rich nonsense and moved the headquesters from Scotts Valley to Texas. They were selling nothing and that's what MicroFocus is buying: nothing.

The core of Borland's business, compilers and IDEs was spun off as CodeGear, recently purchased by Embarcadero Software. CodeGear is still located in Scotts Valley with many of the original developers in the group. Great people with a passion for tool development.
It's not a coincidence that Borland, the travesty, has been losing money at incredible speed after CodeGear was gone. The only part of the business that made sense, that generated revenues, was let go by a management simply unable to understand what a compiler is.
That the name Borland, which was synonym of innovation and "barbarian" spirit, is now associated with the leading name in a technology that was an embarrassment in the 80s, COBOL, is a shame that makes me cringe to no end.
Remember, this is not Borland, the real Borland, the one that brought us such gems as Turbo Pascal, C++ builder, Paradox, JBuilder etc, and that in general taught Microsoft how to write IDEs, is called CodeGear.
The company mentioned in this article, is a travesty and a sham.

The Net — Democratic Panacea Or Autocratic Tool? 204

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday April 11, 2009 @05:15AM from the or-tubular-googocracy dept.

Alex writes "On April 6, 10,000 protesters organized in Moldova against the nation's Communist leadership by utilizing new media like Twitter and Facebook, demonstrating the ever-increasing potential of the Internet as a democratic and liberating tool. But in the current Boston Review, Evgeny Morozov critiques the view that the internet will inevitably democratize autocratic regimes like China, Russia and Iran. He argues that the Net's democratic effects are not inherent, and that autocratic regimes have been successful in controlling electronic media to disseminate their ideology. Will the net ultimately spread American democracy, or just American entertainment?"

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