Did you stop to consider that perhaps they only contributed one driver because that's all that was needed? Or perhaps that noone is demanding that the iPhone's OS be shared because noone has a phone with comparable hardware and a nice touchscreen?
What people find irking about Apple refusing to let OSX be used on other machines is that there is no real difference between Apple's hardware and other commodity PC hardware. It is an artificial limit imposed by Apple to try to keep more of the profits for themselves - remember, they make their money largely through hardware markups, not by selling their OS.
If Apple lets clone makers sell OSX for commodity PC hardware, then Apple will quickly become an operating system company rather than an integrated-all-in-one-computer-experience company. That would be VERY bad for business.
There's a difference between "spending wads of cash on R&D" and "spending far more than you're earning on R&D". Amazon does the former, not the latter. Amazon is definitely not spending more than it's earning.
As far as I know, only Provo City was involved in the sale of the physical fiber network to Broadweave. Provo was supposed to auction off the network (and I'm sure one of the two existing ISPs on the network would have bought it, or maybe Xmission), but instead they just announced that Broadweave had purchased it for less than the city had invested in the network. I don't understand why. It is indeed dodgy in the extreme, and none of us are happy about it.
I didn't say *I* use Photoshop;) I have The GIMP installed for the tiny tasks I run in to, but I'm a programmer, not a graphic artist... I've simply talked to quite a few video editors who do image editing as well, and that's their opinion... Final Cut Pro for video (now that it's up to par with Premeire) and Photoshop for images. Take it with a grain of salt, it's opinion:D
Uplink's demo was fantastic in this regard. They let you play all the way up until you get asked by one of two groups to do work - anywhere from two to twenty hours of gameplay, depending on your style - and then the game ends where the full version would continue. Worked well for me:)
Precisely. What *real* alternatives are there to Adobe products to cause competition to keep prices down? Only recently has Apple begun to compete with Premeire (with Final Cut Pro). The open source world's attempts at work-alikes don't count as competition - sure, The GIMP works for little things, but how many professionals use it over Photoshop? Cinellera (spelling?) is an open source video editor, but it's not even *close* to being complete enough to compete with Adobe's or Apple's offerings.
I've actually been quite impressed with Steam keeping the DRM behind-the-scenes. I never have to deal with it, I never have to enter keys or passwords, and while I've only downloaded/installed Bioshock once I didn't have any issues with it.
I don't see a problem with Steam letting me only play games I've paid for - it seems fair - but I can see that there is a line that should not be crossed (limited number of activations? I can't play on my laptop *and* on my desktop? BAD PUBLISHER! BAD!). It doesn't seem that Steam is anywhere near the line, so I'm happy for now.
The only thing that concerns me with Steam is that I'm not really sure what their policy is on being logged in on the same account from more than one machine simultaneously. Once in a while my wife plays Peggle on my account while I play CS:S or something, and I'm always nervous the Steam police will lock out my account; but that's just because I don't know what their policy is. I would definitely complain about that kind of thing. I should be able to play each game I own, independent of whether or not I'm playing some other game I own at the same time.
I'm sure various trustworthy organizations will volunteer to continue running the Steam authentication servers. At the very least, if Valve/Steam does go belly-up, and my company is in the position to do so, it will be volunteering.
Honestly I don't know why the city couldn't advertise its fiber network. Virtually all advertisement happened by word-of-mouth (which is how I found out about it).
Of course, the two companies who leased the fiber network weren't prohibited from advertising - but for some reason they didn't do it either. At least, *I* never saw an ad from either of them.
The problem was that the city couldn't legally advertise the service, so they were hemorrhaging money because the ISPs didn't have enough subscribers - even selling it in a shady deal they lost a lot of money on the project.
Note that the fiber network was owned by the city, but the city leased the network to two ISPs who actually provided service. They didn't advertise it either.
Provo, Utah. The fiber network was owned by the city until recently, when they sold the iProvo network to Broadweave Networks in a shady deal that's currently in dispute.
I run a subversion server at home for various uses, including international projects. As soon as I can be bothered, I'll also set it up to stream my music to me wherever I am. It's currently hosting my pictures for sharing with people. Are you saying I don't need good bandwidth at home for that?
And, for the record, I'm also in IT, though not for decades, and let me tell you, if you've ever gone to a partner company's office to download the VPN client to their computers only to find that they're on some 512Kbps DSL line shared with eight people, you'll understand the need for faster connections. (I do realize you conceded that businesses might need faster connections.)
Imagine a hypothetical home with five children and two computers in the home office. Three kids have their own computers. There's a Wii in the basement and a PS2 and/or PS3 upstairs (the kids like Final Fantasy XI online).
So you've got three kids upstairs watching youtube and/or pirating stuff (they think Dad doesn't know, I'm sure), or downloading music on iTunes, or watching TV on Netflix, or playing games, two kids on the two consoles, Dad is in the office playing Counter-Strike: Source, and Mom is watching re-broadcasts of Oprah online.
Doesn't exist at the consumer level? Up until last month I could get 50Mbps symmetric fiber at home for $59.99/month. Now I can still get it, but it costs three times as much. (broadweave.net bought out iProvo...)
Yes, the telcos are satisfied to sit on their thumbs collecting money. The problem is that we can't really vote with our wallets like we could with some other industries - if we want to be able to check our e-mail, run our home-based internet business, or anything of the sort, we need internet, and if the only thing available is too expensive, we have no choice but to pay it or lose our business. Not very attractive, and it's the source of the problem.
The problem lies in the way "competition" and "local monopoly" is defined. Legally they define it by zip code; so Qwest can take half of a zip code and Comcast can take the other half, and they'll both have exclusive control of their areas - but they'll look to the government like they both offer service in the same zip code, so they must be competing. If you look at availability by street rather than zip code you end up with local monopolies instead.
Granted this isn't always the case but it's an example of why the government doesn't get involved.
Sure they're *offering* premium services, but the prices skyrocket for slight increases in speed. For example, the company that just bought out my ISP will be changing to this pricing model:
(I'll use their names; speeds (download/upload) are in Mbit/sec)
Yes, they offer it, but I don't know anyone who would pay those prices. I don't even want to pay $43.99 - the previous owners of the fiber network were charging me $39.99/month for 15/15 service. And $19.99 for 3/0.5 fiber is more expensive than Qwest DSL, if memory serves.
What's sad is that the the previous owners of the fiber network offered 15/15 for $39.99 and 50/50 for $59.99. I'd pay that, if I needed 50/50... but I $101.39 for 30/30 is ridiculous.
So you can't say "there must not be demand because ISPs offer premium packages"... price plays a huge role as well.
I know several people who own Diablo II and want to play online with me, but can't because they don't know where their serial keys are. Yet another reason I like Steam.
One further reason: the less use a CD gets, the less it gets scratched. How often have you opened your CD drive to put in a new CD, only to find an old CD you forgot was there, so you put the old one on the desk out of the way?
If the only use for the CD is to install the game, then your CDs last orders of magnitude longer. This is one huge reason I like Steam.
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Did you stop to consider that perhaps they only contributed one driver because that's all that was needed? Or perhaps that noone is demanding that the iPhone's OS be shared because noone has a phone with comparable hardware and a nice touchscreen?
What people find irking about Apple refusing to let OSX be used on other machines is that there is no real difference between Apple's hardware and other commodity PC hardware. It is an artificial limit imposed by Apple to try to keep more of the profits for themselves - remember, they make their money largely through hardware markups, not by selling their OS.
If Apple lets clone makers sell OSX for commodity PC hardware, then Apple will quickly become an operating system company rather than an integrated-all-in-one-computer-experience company. That would be VERY bad for business.
There's a difference between "spending wads of cash on R&D" and "spending far more than you're earning on R&D". Amazon does the former, not the latter. Amazon is definitely not spending more than it's earning.
Ah, our good old friend, security by obscurity. Bruce Schneier would not be amused.
As far as I know, only Provo City was involved in the sale of the physical fiber network to Broadweave. Provo was supposed to auction off the network (and I'm sure one of the two existing ISPs on the network would have bought it, or maybe Xmission), but instead they just announced that Broadweave had purchased it for less than the city had invested in the network. I don't understand why. It is indeed dodgy in the extreme, and none of us are happy about it.
I didn't say *I* use Photoshop ;) I have The GIMP installed for the tiny tasks I run in to, but I'm a programmer, not a graphic artist... I've simply talked to quite a few video editors who do image editing as well, and that's their opinion... Final Cut Pro for video (now that it's up to par with Premeire) and Photoshop for images. Take it with a grain of salt, it's opinion :D
I guess we'll have to hope that if Steam goes down, it's because Valve simply closes up shop without selling off its assets ;)
Uplink's demo was fantastic in this regard. They let you play all the way up until you get asked by one of two groups to do work - anywhere from two to twenty hours of gameplay, depending on your style - and then the game ends where the full version would continue. Worked well for me :)
Precisely. What *real* alternatives are there to Adobe products to cause competition to keep prices down? Only recently has Apple begun to compete with Premeire (with Final Cut Pro). The open source world's attempts at work-alikes don't count as competition - sure, The GIMP works for little things, but how many professionals use it over Photoshop? Cinellera (spelling?) is an open source video editor, but it's not even *close* to being complete enough to compete with Adobe's or Apple's offerings.
I've actually been quite impressed with Steam keeping the DRM behind-the-scenes. I never have to deal with it, I never have to enter keys or passwords, and while I've only downloaded/installed Bioshock once I didn't have any issues with it.
I don't see a problem with Steam letting me only play games I've paid for - it seems fair - but I can see that there is a line that should not be crossed (limited number of activations? I can't play on my laptop *and* on my desktop? BAD PUBLISHER! BAD!). It doesn't seem that Steam is anywhere near the line, so I'm happy for now.
The only thing that concerns me with Steam is that I'm not really sure what their policy is on being logged in on the same account from more than one machine simultaneously. Once in a while my wife plays Peggle on my account while I play CS:S or something, and I'm always nervous the Steam police will lock out my account; but that's just because I don't know what their policy is. I would definitely complain about that kind of thing. I should be able to play each game I own, independent of whether or not I'm playing some other game I own at the same time.
I'm sure various trustworthy organizations will volunteer to continue running the Steam authentication servers. At the very least, if Valve/Steam does go belly-up, and my company is in the position to do so, it will be volunteering.
I've found that I can find relatively reliable reviews of games on penny-arcade.
Honestly I don't know why the city couldn't advertise its fiber network. Virtually all advertisement happened by word-of-mouth (which is how I found out about it).
Of course, the two companies who leased the fiber network weren't prohibited from advertising - but for some reason they didn't do it either. At least, *I* never saw an ad from either of them.
The problem was that the city couldn't legally advertise the service, so they were hemorrhaging money because the ISPs didn't have enough subscribers - even selling it in a shady deal they lost a lot of money on the project.
Note that the fiber network was owned by the city, but the city leased the network to two ISPs who actually provided service. They didn't advertise it either.
Provo, Utah. The fiber network was owned by the city until recently, when they sold the iProvo network to Broadweave Networks in a shady deal that's currently in dispute.
My new ISP is being modest about the "upgrades" - they're simply labelled "[Base package name] Plus".
They still charge an arm and a leg more, however.
I run a subversion server at home for various uses, including international projects. As soon as I can be bothered, I'll also set it up to stream my music to me wherever I am. It's currently hosting my pictures for sharing with people. Are you saying I don't need good bandwidth at home for that?
And, for the record, I'm also in IT, though not for decades, and let me tell you, if you've ever gone to a partner company's office to download the VPN client to their computers only to find that they're on some 512Kbps DSL line shared with eight people, you'll understand the need for faster connections. (I do realize you conceded that businesses might need faster connections.)
Imagine a hypothetical home with five children and two computers in the home office. Three kids have their own computers. There's a Wii in the basement and a PS2 and/or PS3 upstairs (the kids like Final Fantasy XI online).
So you've got three kids upstairs watching youtube and/or pirating stuff (they think Dad doesn't know, I'm sure), or downloading music on iTunes, or watching TV on Netflix, or playing games, two kids on the two consoles, Dad is in the office playing Counter-Strike: Source, and Mom is watching re-broadcasts of Oprah online.
18Mbps can run out pretty quick.
Doesn't exist at the consumer level? Up until last month I could get 50Mbps symmetric fiber at home for $59.99/month. Now I can still get it, but it costs three times as much. (broadweave.net bought out iProvo...)
Well played, sir :)
Yes, the telcos are satisfied to sit on their thumbs collecting money. The problem is that we can't really vote with our wallets like we could with some other industries - if we want to be able to check our e-mail, run our home-based internet business, or anything of the sort, we need internet, and if the only thing available is too expensive, we have no choice but to pay it or lose our business. Not very attractive, and it's the source of the problem.
The problem lies in the way "competition" and "local monopoly" is defined. Legally they define it by zip code; so Qwest can take half of a zip code and Comcast can take the other half, and they'll both have exclusive control of their areas - but they'll look to the government like they both offer service in the same zip code, so they must be competing. If you look at availability by street rather than zip code you end up with local monopolies instead.
Granted this isn't always the case but it's an example of why the government doesn't get involved.
Sure they're *offering* premium services, but the prices skyrocket for slight increases in speed. For example, the company that just bought out my ISP will be changing to this pricing model:
(I'll use their names; speeds (download/upload) are in Mbit/sec)
Fiber Basic: 3.0/0.5 - $19.99
Fiber Fast: 15/3 - $43.99
Fiber Fast Plus: 15/15 - $49.99
Fiber Faster: 30/5 - $77.99
Fiber Faster Plus: 30/30 - $101.39
Fiber Demon: 60/5 - $133.99
Fiber Demon Plus: 60/60 - $180.89
Yes, they offer it, but I don't know anyone who would pay those prices. I don't even want to pay $43.99 - the previous owners of the fiber network were charging me $39.99/month for 15/15 service. And $19.99 for 3/0.5 fiber is more expensive than Qwest DSL, if memory serves.
What's sad is that the the previous owners of the fiber network offered 15/15 for $39.99 and 50/50 for $59.99. I'd pay that, if I needed 50/50... but I $101.39 for 30/30 is ridiculous.
So you can't say "there must not be demand because ISPs offer premium packages"... price plays a huge role as well.
Except that the post office is hemorrhaging money, even with the raised stamp prices.
That's a situation where I wouldn't feel bad downloading the ISOs.
I know several people who own Diablo II and want to play online with me, but can't because they don't know where their serial keys are. Yet another reason I like Steam.
One further reason: the less use a CD gets, the less it gets scratched. How often have you opened your CD drive to put in a new CD, only to find an old CD you forgot was there, so you put the old one on the desk out of the way?
If the only use for the CD is to install the game, then your CDs last orders of magnitude longer. This is one huge reason I like Steam.