A bit of technology

Here in Latvia we have an organization which "fight" for artists' rights called AKKA/LAA. They are analogous to american RIAA/MPAA. And now they are dismissed by their own wish. And this is GREAT! Because people working in this agency were not correct (let me be polite) to artists and end-users. Basically they were taking all the money to themselfes simply because no one signed contracts with them. Just imagine - you have a caffee and a band. You want to play your own music in your own caffee. And guess what? You needed to pay to AKKA/LAA! For fucking what?

At last! They do not exist anymore!

I think that everyone heard about fantastic robbery in Stockholm! And I think that guys behind it are geniuses and should not be hunted down by government/G4S. But what about lost money? There is an estimation that guys took about 100M EUR - quite a big bank! But that money can be easily "returned" if government and G4S will act smartly and quickly.

First of all do not touch the building! It may serve as a very great sights place for tourists and that means money.

Next phase - hire a great writer to write a great book "based on real events". More money!

And last but not least - act quickly and make a great robbery movie "based on real events"! That will be a big hit and will generate big revenue!

If these steps are done properly, then revenue will overshadow the losses, it will improve overall economy by additional tourists and will make a good PR campaign for G4S like "only movie heroes can rob us!" I think this is a real deal. Oh, and by the way, I'm not asking any reward for this absolutely great idea (: Just put me somewhere in movie titles in "thanks to" section - that will be enough for me.

Wow, had too much work lately, sorry for no updates. So let's continue!

The very first bit today is about upcoming MMO game called APB: All Points Bulletin. It is sand-boxed MMO set in modern time with look'n'feel of GTA. Player chooses which side he wants to join - Enforcement (police) or Criminals - and then dives into big city, steals cars, kills innocent and so on. I've been dreaming for such game for quite a long time!

So the news is that APB team, a company named Realtime Worlds, recently opened beta applications section, so everyone may fill application and hope to become a beta-tester. Basically that means that game will be released as expected in early 2010. Great!

I also recommend you to visit APB site and check-out media stuff like trailer and video-podcasts with gameplay videos and much more. IMHO this will be the best MMO in the world!

P.S. All Points Bulletin will be released for both PC and XBox 360.

By the way, a week ago ruby devs released Ruby 1.9.2 preview 1. It is not a final build, just a snapshot of current development to make ruby users happy (: Here are the changes highlighted by developers:

* Socket API was more objectified.
* Time was reimplemented and enhanced. Now Time has no max/min value, no year 2038 problem.
* New Random class for random number sequence.
* Good news for merb users: Method#parameters.

There are also quite a lot of changes for built-in classes like Array. Full changelog is available. This is not a production-ready release!

Google will launch its own operating system for netbook market. A tiny OS will be used only as a Chrome launcher/container, so cloud/web-applications is a way to go on netbooks powered by Google. We were waiting for Google OS for quite a time...