domwood

I torrent stuff, like a substantial portion of humanity. Except music (Spotify) and games less than five years old. Movies I torrent without a care, unless they're indie or similar. Anyway, I digress, I'm just saying I'm not going to hypocritically pontificate, just comment on the product.

On the actual site: I like the straightforward process you've gone for. A search for 'Dracula' returns multiple, relevant results with the year of release where it's available. It's very easy to find what movie I want. A downside is the download options, all I'm presented with is some links with the filesizes, that's not enough information in my opinion, but I suppose there's not actually much you can do about that. It's a downside because it's not immediately clear if it has subtitles, what language it might be dubbed in and if it is HD or not.

It's a pretty well executed idea that's naturally going to be a bit rough 'round the edges, but it's a great start.

I'm not particularly impressed. The Pi isn't a budget computer, it's not for watching Nyan Cat or listening to podcasts, it's a computer sandboxing tool. Yes, it has teething problems but it's been designed on a minuscule budget, had little time in the wild to actually gain any traction and most definitely has not had the time required to mature the supported software. This review is targeting all the wrong things and glossing over what the Pi is actually meant for.

As a media centre or recreational tool, it's useless, but as an educational tool it's not to be rubbished. For $35 a go, I'm willing to put up with a lack of Youtube.

Did it for you.

Oh indeed. I think we tend to default to defence of the "little guy", even without enough information to make informed judgements. I certainly made the mistake of jumping to conclusions here. Personally, I have little-to-no time for either party's argument, as it's a rather banal fight anyway.

The fact that one of the most powerful nations in the world not only created one of the most notorious viruses in the world but lost control of it is madness. Its original purpose was to cause hardware to physically destroy itself. Imagine if, by sheer coincidence, the commands for that were the same as the commands for something like a nuclear reactor's cooling turbines? It's incredibly improbable but not impossible. That makes this a hugely dangerous and downright stupid occurrence. America shouts at Pakistan for losing control of its nukes and then develops, with a country that has some reputation for overkill (Israeli invasion of Gaza being a prime example), a dangerous weapon in software form, then doesn't pay attention to what the thing actually does? Where's the review process? How does something like the software being modified so it can infect and spread on common consumer systems so rapidly (I'm assuming that the modifications were to the way it spread, not sure) get missed? It's crass carelessness.

International espionage is half offence and half tact. It's not espionage if everyone finds out about it.

Quite frankly, from what I've read (the blog posts only), this seems like a pissing contest that's got out of hand. Each side should back down, stop trying to use the internet to throw poo at each other and work it out. Merge, settle or ignore each other and deal with it when there's a good reason to. Neither of you will lose money if you just compete.

I agree with jrockway's points, especially on the sub par branding, they're both very standard names and that is literally your only problem. If you're all capable of starting up these companies, I'm sure you're capable of rebranding. Both companies should rebrand in my opinion, it's a matter of originality, which neither brand has and neither party has the moral ground to get litigious over.

Very good points there, I can't help but agree. I'm also rather glad I'm one of those anti-Facebook nuts. Where's my foil hat?

This is kinda sad, I sorta hope they pull through. Companies like Kodak have really struggled to remain relevant, and it's not really their fault.. yeah, they made a decision 20 years ago, but for it to bite them on the arse 20 years later is just not nice. It's like fooling around with someone on a Saturday night, forgetting about it and then finding out you've got a kid 20 years later.

Exciting.. Like really. I'm not even a proper dev and I wet my pants a teeny bit.

It's a grenade launcher, not a rifle. (you can have rifled barrels in a grenade launcher, doesn't make it a rifle) and a TOT detonation's hardly the most amazing thing ever. It's just another example of mobile infantry artillery, it's expensive and it's just another horrible way to die.

I've been living on my own since I was 16, I've struggled to find full time work as a designer, with no formal qualifications and barely enough experience to call myself a professional. I recently lost the first, well paying and only full time office based design job I've ever had. You know what? Fuck it, I don't care. And you shouldn't either! You're 20, you made a "life decision". Well done, seriously. You had the hangers to go for it and it doesn't matter if things didn't go to plan. Your parents are reacting the predictable way, they still care but it's their job to bitch and complain. Tell them that it's your prerogative to fuck up, and it's not theirs to make it worse.

You quit your job for perfectly good reasons, it was a crappy job and if I was in your situation I'd have done the same. Be proud you walked away.

You're going to be fine if you keep your shit together, use your friends taking the piss as your justification to succeed. Go find a crappy job that'll earn you a piss poor amount of money and then go focus on being awesome in your spare time. Make something random, see what happens. Repeat. Find other devs/designers to work with, see what you can do. Repeat. Work in the day and do crazy shit at night. Get your confidence back, build your portfolio. Get to a point where you've got your cahones back and then do something with yourself. Move to somewhere where there's cool companies looking to hire, impress them all. Repeat.

You'll get somewhere if you push for it. And if you fuck up? Who cares! You're young, just enjoy the ride.