* Posts by hlang

4 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Mar 2013

World of Warcraft then and now: From Orcs and Humans to Warlords of Draenor

hlang

I honestly hate warlords. There's nothing new or interesting here.

Ouland again, Orcs again, Timetravel?!? Yawn. Jump the shark yawn.

Most classes have been pruned down to mind numbing 3 button rotations. Skills that existed for 10 years have been removed. Reforging is gone. Professions are meaningless. Garrisons and followers are an ipad like minigame glued into Wow. All they needed to do is sell garrison resources for cash to make a standalone freemium game. Don't like battle pets? Well, too bad... now you have followers that are just as bad, and mandatory. And don't get me started on how little sense it makes to have everyone sitting in their instanced garrison and obsessing over it in an MMO.

This expansion is 100% nostalgia. Which is why it's boring. Now if it had been "Warcraft: Return of the Titans", that I'd have been excited about.

That said, I expect this expansion to be hugely successful. Wow players have proven they don't like anything different. It's always been about Orcs and Humans to them. And there's nothing really wrong with that. Meanwhile, I'll be working on my Steam backlog.

Cracking copyright law: How a simian selfie stunt could make a monkey out of Wikipedia

hlang

This is the truth. The fame of this photo was the story that went with it. It is an amusing photo, but it simply would not have gained the popularity it did without the accompanying tale.

But that tale means the United States copyright office won't consider registering it.

That's the catch 22

hlang

Re: I'm puzzled by this article

Actually, you are quite wrong. The US Copyright Office hasn't refused any application. All they've done is make their position known and clear. If this ends up in court, the court could disagree with the Copyright Office and mandate a change. If people disagree on how Copyrights are being handled in the United States, lawmakers can update, clarify, and modify the law... which is how the system is supposed to function. But as it stands now, this photograph cannot be copyrighted.

"The U.S. Copyright Office will register an original work of authorship, provided that the work was created by a human being.

The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants.

Examples:

A photograph taken by a monkey."

Oracle revs Database Appliance to X3-2 – and nearly to Exadata

hlang

There are many reasons to buy this.

1) You have idiots for your storage admin and system admin. That no matter how many times a dba tells them exactly how to configure something, they screw it up. This box eliminates the morons. It gives the dba everything under his control.

2) Licensing consolidation. I've seen too many cases of database sprawl at SMB's. For a manager, he knows if it's on this appliance, it's licensed. And if he really needs to he can expand the cores and licensing without have to do another costly (in dba time) hardware migration.

3) Ease of deployment. Having demoed one, it literally only takes a few hours after unboxing to having a database running. There is no way you could setup a two node oracle cluster this fast on a system you build, unless you build 100 of them and get it down to a science.

4) Patching. Firmware and oracle patches are bundled together, supposedly tested and certified to work. Patching is very simplified as well.

5) Disaster recovery. Say you want to setup a D.R. site but don't cannot afford, or convince management, to duplicate your oracle licenses. You can log ship to your mission critical databases on an offsite Database Appliance with limited cores enabled. If you ever DO actually need it in a disaster scenario, you can up your cores and licenses rather fast and you're back in business.

6) Bundled third party software with the database appliance. Vendors have the ability to take a database appliance, put their application on it, and bundle it with the oracle database. Then they can sell an all in one solution with built in high availability and growth potential.

I could go on and on. The only people that fail to see the potential with this device are, frankly, snobs. This device is definitely one of their better offerings. It has the most flexibility and utility of any Oracle product I've seen in a long time.