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Comment Thanks for everything Rob! (Score 1) 1521

by nebby (#37207514) Attached to: Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot

Many years ago, I ran a site called Half-Empty. It was an exciting time, I was in college, and had hacked together this site (letting my grades suffer in the process) as a way for people to share stories and vote on them. It was kind of like a ghetto version of Digg, where the users posted content not links.

One of the biggest thrills for me ever was when I sent an e-mail to /. about its initial launch and made it onto the front page. My dorm room was Slashdotted, I pulled RAM out of my roommates computers and threw it into my little server, which somehow survived. I knew it was inevitable my cable connection would be cut off so I sent an SOS out for anyone who would be willing to host the site for free, I was a poor college student, and Krellis from DynDNS stepped in. Half-Empty grew for a few years and became a large part of my life and many others. I owe the experience entirely to that initial Slashdotting, which gave the site the momentum it needed to stay alive. I regret not keeping the site up; it was a victim of a hard drive crash and I was enough of an amateur at the time to not have been making regular backups.

So, thanks again Rob. Good luck, and be proud of all you've accomplished with Slashdot. Cheers!

Comment Re:Good luck with IP if working with the Chinese (Score 5, Informative) 262

by nebby (#27357069) Attached to: Circuit Board Design For a Small Startup?

This generally isn't true. A VC will get preferred stock and as such in a liquidation event they will be able to recover their money before anyone else can. (So if you take on 1M in funding, sell the company for 500K, you're right, you get nothing and they lose 500K). I'm guessing this is what you're thinking of.

If you sell the company for 2M and they put in 1M, they get their 1M back and the rest of the pie can be sliced up in different ways depending on the term sheet. (Google participating preferred stock cap)

Comment Re:Sony Giving Microsoft A Lesson In Online Gaming (Score 1) 66

by thatguywhoiam (#20218737) Attached to: Warhawk PS3 Server Clusters

Well, it could be legit. I mean, as the other AC said, those are all valid points for Sony's and against Microsoft's online plan. I actually didn't know some of that, if true (does Microsoft really have no dedicated servers? That seems like quite the cheesy deal to me, when you're paying for the online service), so it's interesting to read.

Actually - that is true. All Live connections are peer-to-peer. Which is cheesy in a for-pay service, I agree. Supposedly Halo 3 will be the first to have dedicated servers but that's just a rumour at this point.

On the other hand, you could be right, too. I imagine that the low player counts of GoW and Halo 2/3 are deliberate, and not a technical limitation, and I certainly think that invoking Home makes you a raving fanboy, at least. Home doesn't really have anything to do with gaming, imo.
Well yes and no. You can ostensibly use Home as a lobby system - the people in your "room" can all connect seamlessly to the same multiplayer game, assuming they all have copies. They did demo that at E3. No comment on the fanboy, though. :)
Windows

UK Schools At Risk of Microsoft Lock-In 162

Posted by kdawson from the apple-for-the-teacher dept.
Robert writes "UK schools and colleges that have signed up to Microsoft Corp's academic licensing programs face the significant potential of being locked in to the company's software, according to an interim review by Becta, the UK government agency responsible for technology in education. The report also states that most establishments surveyed do not believe that Microsoft's licensing agreements provide value for money." In a separate report, Becta offered the opinion that schools should avoid Vista for at least another year, since neither Vista nor Office 2007 offers any compelling reasons for schools to upgrade.
Networking

Submission + - Networking in Extreme Conditions?

Submitted by
222
222 writes: "Mission: Create an intermediate distribution frame. Difficulty: A few feet away, industrial equipment will be generating roughly 2000 degree heat. Bonus: Keep the network switches inside the IDF from melting.
Does anyone have experience in making IT work in such extreme conditions? Is there an enclosure in existence that can handle this type of abuse? This is essentially what I've been asked to accomplish, and now I'm asking my Slashdot brethren the questions; "Can it be done? Do we have the technology?""

PS3 Scales 1080i To 480p On HDTVs 125

Posted by Zonk from the when-it-rains-it-pours dept.
Dr. Eggman writes "According to an article from IGN, PS3 owners are finding that 1080i-only HDTV sets are scaling down launch games to 480p. The scale-down occurs because the launch games do not support 1080i, however they should be scaling down to an HD resolution of 720 instead of 480p. It is unknown if this is a technical or software issue and if it can be patched soon." ABC news is reporting that a patch which should be available to PS3 owners soon will correct the backward compatibility issues we discussed the other day.

The Dark Side of the PlayStation 3 Launch 505

Posted by Zonk from the nothing-nice-to-say dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Kotaku is running an article prompted by an email from a foreign student in Japan. The reader unveils the sad reality of the modern gaming industry. Japanese businessmen made ample use of homeless people and Chinese nationals to obtain PS3s for re-sale. There was also a large amount of pushing and shoving, some fights, and almost no police presence at the most crowded stores." From the article: "Based on my observations of the first twenty PS3s sold at Bic Camera, they were all purchased by Chinese nationals, none of whom bought any software. After making their purchase, television crews asked for interviews but all were declined. These temporary owners of PS3s would then make their way down the street where their bosses waited. After several minutes, a dozen PS3s were rounded up, as their Japanese business manager paid out cash to those who waited in line for them. I witnessed a homeless-looking Chinese man, in his sixties or seventies get paid 20,000 yen for his services and was then sent away." Update: 11/12 05:40 GMT by Z : You're right. Sony only shares a portion of the blame here. Offsides on my part.

PS3 Performance Downgraded Again 217

Posted by Zonk from the can-we-go-back-to-sony-saying-crazy-things-that-was-fun dept.
Heartless Gamer writes "The PS3's performance has been downgraded again, according to the Inquirer." From the article: "We can't tell you why the GPU lost nearly 10% of it's clock, it could be an NVidia screwup, or it could be Sony/Cell. Either way, it just became much less of an overwhelming value, but you get a DRM infected drive for 'free' either way." Interesting, but keep in mind this is The Inquirer. 9 out of 10 doctors recommend salt with their articles. Relatedly, the choice comments from Penny Arcade this past weekend about Sony's console are wandering around the internets today. From that article: "We've already talked about it, there's no chance we're buying a PS3 at launch."

PlayStation 3 Manufacturing Not Started Yet? 210

Posted by Zonk from the that's-err-not-so-good-kaz dept.
aapold writes "Despite reports to the contrary, Sony Computer Entertainment American president Kaz Hirai states in an interview on Gamespot last week that 'We haven't started manufacturing yet. Some of our ops guys were actually just in China, and also in Japan just reviewing the [production] lines and everything else. But they are, again, preparing as we speak to get the manufacturing going. We've not announced and we haven't set really a specific date to say, 'As of this day we're going to start manufacturing.'"

Sony's Motion Sensing Still Lagging Behind? 89

Posted by Zonk from the tacked-on dept.
Chris Kohler, over at Wired's Game|Life, had the chance to see an in-production PS3 game in action. He said that, for the most part everything looked great. The one thing that concerned him was the motion-sensing controller that Sony is pushing on developers. From the article: "The developers told us that although we'd be using real PS3 controllers, they didn't yet have the motion-sensing functionality built in. And not only that, although they referred to the build as 'feature-complete,' they did admit that the one feature that was not yet included was (wait for it) motion-sensing, although they did 'have some cool ideas.' There was plenty of speculation after Sony's E3 conference that the motion-sensing functionality was jammed into the controller at the last minute as a reaction to Nintendo's strategy. This was backed up by the Warhawk developers' offhand remarks that they'd implemented motion sensing 'in just a couple weeks'."

Nintendo Confirms Free Online Play For Wii 348

Posted by Zonk from the with-your-internets-and-whatnot dept.
Via Gamasutra, an interview in USA Today with Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime confirms that the Wii's online component will be free to play. The outspoken Nintendo advocate says "We will offer online-enabled games that the consumers will not have to pay a subscription fee for. They'll be able to enjoy that right out of the box. The Wii console is going to be Wi-Fi enabled, so essentially, you'll be able to plug it in and go. It won't have hidden fees or costs."

EA Pushes Sony on PSP, Price Cuts Possible 123

Posted by Zonk from the psproblems dept.
GameDaily reports that EA has been pushing Sony to be more proactive with the PSP. The software giant feels that Sony is 'letting the DS win' by failing to adopt an aggressive strategy for the handheld console. The article mentions a piece run on CNN's Game Over column, where Chris Morris talks about the possibility of a price cut by the end of the year. From the EA article: "'There is a price cut coming in the second half of the year,' said P.J.McNealy of American Technology Research. '[The PSP] has lost momentum. Nintendo has had a great run since it launched the DS Lite and Sony needs to regain some ground.' In the meantime, though, EA has been thoroughly encouraged by the DS and DS Lite and conversely discouraged by the PSP, to the point where the publisher is apparently reconsidering its strategy in the portable market."

The 360 - Online, Japan, HD-DVD 66

Posted by Zonk from the busy-box dept.
Lots of tidbits about Microsoft's next-gen console floating around this week. On Monday, the company revealed that almost 60% of 360 owners are now using Xbox Live. GameDaily discusses what is making their setup so dang popular. Major Nelson's Sunday podcast included a lot of details on the 360's approach to HD-DVD. HD Beat has the rundown on what was said, including the inevitable Sony smack-talk. Finally, Gamasutra has a feature on the 360's position in Japan. A group of analysts debate whether or not the system even needs Japan in order to be a success. From this last article: "I don't think that American gamers are enamored [with] Japanese product because it comes from Japan; rather, I think Americans like good games, regardless of the country of origin. Microsoft doesn't need Japanese development to succeed in the U.S.; it needs good games, period."

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