salm - Slashdot User

Comment Starbucks charges for WiFi in the Philippines (Score 1) 375

by salm on Sunday February 13, 2011 @10:09AM (#35191970) Attached to: Tech-Unfriendly Cafes Say No Kindles Allowed

Here in the Philippines, Starbucks either doesn't have WiFi or charges significantly for WiFi on top of the cost of the coffee. Mind you, the Starbucks here are run under a monopolistic license held by Rustan's. Personally, I go over the road to Seattle's Best Coffee, also owned by Starbucks that does offer free WiFi, or at least one hour's WiFi included in the cost of your coffee.
In summary, the comment in the article regarding Starbucks only necessarily refers to the US, though it may be true in other regions.
Despite emailing Starbucks Philippines, they have not deigned to explain why they choose to lose my coffee purchases rather than offer me WiFi, though the Starbucks here seem always busy regardless, so maybe they have no need to offer the incentive of free WiFi.
I can believe the Philippines demands a different business model than the States.

Comment Re:Advice, Dawg (Score 1) 842

by salm on Sunday May 09, 2010 @04:49AM (#32145440) Attached to: How To Behave At a Software Company?

I'd agree with the above.

I'm a software manager at a BioTech company.
I hire 70% on fit and 30% on technical ablility.
Don't get me wrong. You must have the technical ability, or have shown evidence that you're smart and can pick things up quickly.
That's a given, and the subject of another post.
But the rest is whether you'll fit with the team.
Get your work done. Have a laugh and a joke. Try and gossip positively rather than negatively. Help us many people as you can, but don't let your core tasks slide.
Be proactive about the next piece of work.
Don't be too late in through the door in the morning, don't head out on the dot at 5pm most evenings.
Your clothes should be clean, and you shouldn't smell bad.
Going to work should be enjoyable, you're going to be there a lot of your waking time. Enjoy the company of the people you're with, and try and help them out.

Enjoy

More Evidence For Steam Games On Linux 256

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday April 22, 2010 @06:17AM from the come-on-valve-spill-the-beans dept.

SheeEttin writes "Back in November 2008, Phoronix reported that Linux libraries appeared in the Left 4 Dead demo, and then in March, Valve announced that Steam and the Source engine were coming to Mac OS X. Now, Phoronix reports that launcher scripts included with the (closed beta) Mac version of Steam include explicit support for launching a Linux version."

DarkPlaces Dev Forest Hale Corrects Nexuiz GPL Stance 131

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @06:44AM from the two-sides-to-every-story dept.

Time Doctor writes "There has been a lot of information going around about Nexuiz, the GPL, and what the Nexuiz leadership has done. A new interview has gone up with DarkPlaces developer Forest Hale to set things straight. Quoting: 'The original plan was to contact every developer and relicense the Nexuiz 2.5.2 GPL gamecode sources for this title, to ensure authentic gameplay and return some important features to the community for the benefit of everyone. However this gamecode re-licensing attempt did not go well; with the former developers making claims of violations there was no choice but to re-implement the gamecode from scratch on non-GPL sources. As a result there will be no ongoing code contributions back to the community, and the gameplay may differ more than originally planned. This is a very unfortunate outcome but has no significant impact on development. To make this perfectly clear – the game is being reimplemented from scratch; all they share is a name.'"

Augmented Reality To Help Mechanics Fix Vehicles 81

Posted by timothy on Thursday January 14, 2010 @04:19PM from the insert-overlaid-part-a-into-slot-b dept.

kkleiner writes "ARMAR, or Augmented Reality for Maintenance and Repair, is a head mounted display unit that provides graphic overlays to assist you in making repairs. An Android phone provides an interface to control the graphics you view during the process. Published in IEEE, and recently tested with the United States Marine Corps on an armored turret, ARMAR can cut maintenance times in half by guiding users to the damaged area and displaying 3D animations to demonstrate the appropriate tools and techniques."

Are Complex Games Doomed To Have Buggy Releases? 362

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday December 16, 2009 @05:40AM from the where-did-my-face-go dept.

An anonymous reader points out a recent article at Gamesradar discussing the frequency of major bugs and technical issues in freshly-released video games. While such issues are often fixed with updates, questions remain about the legality and ethics of rushing a game to launch. Quoting: "As angry as you may be about getting a buggy title, would you want the law to get involved? Meglena Kuneva, EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner, is putting forward legislation that would legally oblige digital game distributors to give refunds for games, putting games in the same category in consumer law as household appliances. ... This call to arms has been praised by tech expert Andy Tanenbaum, author of books like Operating Systems: Design and Implementation. 'I think the idea that commercial software be judged by the same standards as other commercial products is not so crazy,' he says. 'Cars, TVs, and telephones are all expected to work, and they are full of software. Why not standalone software? I think such legislation would put software makers under pressure to first make sure their software works, then worry about more bells and whistles.'"

Treading the Fuzzy Line Between Game Cloning and Theft 235

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday December 10, 2009 @07:24AM from the welcome-to-the-world-of-policeactioncraft dept.

eldavojohn writes "Ars analyzes some knockoffs and near-knockoffs in the gaming world that led to problems with the original developers. Jenova Chen, creator of Flower and flOw, discusses how he feels about the clones made of his games. Chen reveals his true feelings about the takedown of Aquatica (a flOw knockoff): 'What bothers me the most is that because of my own overreaction, I might have created a lot of inconvenience to the creator of Aquatica and interrupted his game-making. He is clearly talented, and certainly a fan of flOw. I hope he can continue creating video games, but with his own design.' The article also notes the apparent similarities between Zynga's Cafe World and Playfish's Restaurant City (the two most popular Facebook games). Is that cloning or theft? Should clones be welcomed or abhorred?"

America's Army Games Cost $33 Million Over 10 Years 192

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday December 10, 2009 @04:25AM from the your-tax-dollars-at-play dept.

Responding to a Freedom Of Information Act request, the US government has revealed the operating costs of the America's Army game series over the past decade. The total bill comes to $32.8 million, with yearly costs varying from $1.3 million to $5.6 million. "While operating America's Army 3 does involve ongoing expenses, paying the game's original development team isn't one of them. Days after the game launched in June, representatives with the Army confirmed that ties were severed with the Emeryville, California-based team behind the project, and future development efforts were being consolidated at the America's Army program office at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. A decade after its initial foray into the world of gaming, the Army doesn't appear to be withdrawing from the industry anytime soon. In denying other aspects of the FOIA request, the Army stated 'disclosure of this information is likely to cause substantial harm to the Department of the Army's competitive position in the gaming industry.'"

Dead Space 2 Announced 56

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday December 08, 2009 @02:22AM from the now-with-extra-dead dept.

Electronic Arts announced on Monday that their popular survival-horror game Dead Space is officially getting a sequel. According to the press release, it's being developed for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. There's speculation that Dead Space 2 may include some form of multiplayer, after an EA job opening was spotted on LinkedIn that mentioned multiplayer level design for the franchise.

New Aliens Vs. Predator Game Doesn't Make It Past AU Ratings Board 277

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday December 05, 2009 @04:36AM from the gauntlet-thrown dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Australia refused to give Rebellion's new Aliens Vs. Predator game a rating, effectively banning it in the country. Rebellion says it won't be submitting an edited version for another round of classifications, however. (As Valve did with Left 4 Dead 2.) They said, 'We will not be releasing a sanitized or cut down version for territories where adults are not considered by their governments to be able to make their own entertainment choices.'"

Over 160 Tutorial Videos Created For Unreal Dev Kit 48

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 04, 2009 @07:14AM from the how-it's-done dept.

As a follow-up to Epic Games' release of a free version of the Unreal Engine last month, the company has now posted over 160 video tutorials which demonstrate the various uses of the Unreal Development Kit. Roughly 20 hours of footage were created by technical education company 3D Buzz, with topics ranging from user interface to game physics to cinematics.

Microsoft's Top Devs Don't Seem To Like Own Tools 496

Posted by kdawson on Saturday November 28, 2009 @09:55PM from the frankly-speaking dept.

ericatcw writes "Through tools such as Visual Basic and Visual Studio, Microsoft may have done more than any other vendor to make drag and drop-style programming mainstream. But its superstar developers seem to prefer old-school modes of crafting code. During the panel at the Professional Developers Conference earlier this month, the devs also revealed why they think writing tight, bare-metal code will come back into fashion, and why parallel programming hasn't caught up with the processors yet." These guys are senior enough that they don't seem to need to watch what they say and how it aligns with Microsoft's product roadmap. They are also dead funny. Here's Jeffrey Snover on managed code (being pushed by Microsoft through its Common Language Runtime tech): "Managed code is like antilock brakes. You used to have to be a good driver on ice or you would die. Now you don't have to pump your brakes anymore." Snover also joked that programming is getting so abstract, developers will soon have to use Natal to "write programs through interpretative dance."

California Continues To Push For Violent Game Legislation 167

Posted by Soulskill on Friday July 24, 2009 @08:27AM from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed,-you're-probably-california dept.

Back in February, the US Court of Appeals shot down a California law that banned the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. Shortly thereafter, State Senator Leland Yee petitioned the US Supreme Court to review the case. Now, along with California's Psychiatric and Psychological Associations, Yee has filed an amicus curiae brief with Court that elaborates on the reasoning behind the law. Within the brief (PDF) are some interesting quotes: "Parents can read a book, watch a movie or listen to a CD to discern if it is appropriate for their child. These violent video games, on the other hand, can contain up to 800 hours of footage with the most atrocious content often reserved for the highest levels and can be accessed only by advanced players after hours upon hours of progressive mastery. ... Notably, extended play has been observed to depress activity in the frontal cortex of the brain which controls executive thought and function, produces intentionality and the ability to plan sequences of action, and is the seat of self-reflection, discipline and self-control." The video game industry has filed its own amicus brief to dispute Yee's claims.

Gaming On Windows 7 554

Posted by Soulskill on Friday July 24, 2009 @04:52AM from the extreme-minesweeper dept.

Jason Wilson writes "Windows 7 comes out Oct. 22, and many gamers are wondering whether it will be a boon for gaming, as Microsoft promised Vista would, or a disappointment (like Vista was at its launch). Former ExtremeTech editor Jason Cross, who's covered games and tech for 13 years, discusses the pluses and minuses of Windows 7 for gamers — how it differs from Vista, if it'll run older games, and the benefits of 64-bit computing. 'Windows 7 basically takes the Vista codebase and rewrites, refines, optimizes, and overhauls most of the internal stuff without making dramatic changes to the driver stacks that Vista did over WinXP. The changes to the fundamental driver models are small and mostly serve to improve performance. Plus, the hardware makers — especially the graphics guys — are on top of the changes this time around. Nvidia and ATI have been shipping quite good Win7 graphics drivers for months now.'"

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