Please backup your claim that what they're doing is "wholesale against the rules". Please also backup the claim that they "continually get banned".
I'd be willing to bet that (unfortunately) I've played this game more hours than you, and across my multiple characters on several servers, I've only been contact in-game less than 5 times with direct offers from gold sellers. Meanwhile I've been begged for gold by English-speaking players dozens of times.
Most of the farmers quietly kill the same creatures in a given area over and over and over. They play a numbers game - kill more mobs and get more money, with more chances to get a rare item. Only a rare few of them actually use exploits or bots, or spam people to sell.
While I do think we'd all be better off without them, I'd definitely argue that their behavior is much less disruptive than the typical bad-attitude (kid?) English player.
Just like with "normal" players, there's a great variety in the behaviors. Some gold farms are friendly, even fun (and some are quite skilled in PvP), but some seem ignorant robots that do the same things non stop and repeat the same phrases in horribly broken English.
I've grouped with a few farmers before - even communicated to some degree with them (google for english to pinyin dictionary), but there are some universal behaviors they have. First and foremost, they will roll NEED on any item that drops, regardless of whether they can or would use it. As far as I can tell, they don't understand the difference between NEED and Greed.
In some respects they've done less damage than some of the other entrepreneurs - the ones who troll the auction house all day buying up every single item and repricing them higher. There's some guy on Eredar alliance side named Plate (and Platejr) who literally buys every single item within a range of levels and then reprices it roughly 4x higher than what it would normally sell at. That guy is far more despicable than people who churn away at Tyr's Hand all day.
What I've really wanted, but not yet found, is some way to programmatically (or from command line) take a series of JPGs (1,000 to 50,000) and create a movie out of them. I've got Quicktime Pro, but it doesn't have command line ways of doing this (and it bogs down horribly when manually loading an image series and saving out a movie).
I do use ImageMagick (actually GraphicsMagick I think) to watermark/timestamp each of the JPGs before I make the movie, but surely there's a way to fully automate what I'm doing...
Firstly, the author states that WoW is the most successful MMORPG on Earth. My understanding from the MMORPG tracking groups is that Ragnarok Online has about 17 million subscribers worldwide. But that's beside the point.
But about the time > skill, that's an accurate statement. But the root of the problem lies in WoW's (and EQ's and other games') focus on gear. There are essentially two driving forces in WoW: experience gain and gear acquisition.
People play and quest in order to get more experience so their characters level. Ultimately the characters become level 60 (max) and cease to need any experience. Meanwhile, during the leveling, there is a fairly strong focus on acquiring newer, better (more level-appropriate) gear because that makes your character perform better, which of course helps you level faster.
The problem is that gear can have a very significant affect on the character's performance. That makes sense to a degree, but it becomes way out of proportion at level 60. Throughout the lower levels, the typical best gear at any given point can be acquired by making a few runs thru the appropriate instance. That doesn't require too much of a timesink, at least since the instances don't usually take more than two hours each to run. Some can be done very quickly.
But at 60, the time-haves get separated from the time-have-nots because the people with great amounts of time can raid N times in the same place just to get one or two pieces of gear. And unlike at lower levels, the disparity between the high end raid gear and the typical ("typical magic gear" - a cheapening of the idea of special items in the first place) gear is huge.
A caster 60 who makes no effort to raid will likely have around 3500 hitpoints and 4500 mana. A same class caster who wears the best raid gear will have 5000 hitpoints and 8000 mana. These are example numbers, but the % increase is roughly accurate. In some cases the better geared player will have things that increase their spell damage, so they may be consistently doing 25% more damage than the poor guy. In addition to just the armor (which gives all the stat and damage bonuses), there are a variety of trinkets and toys, some of which can give a big benefit.
When it's all said and done, a poorly geared player with good skill will be hard pressed to beat a well geared player with mediocre skill. This means that gear > skill. And since it took vast amounts of time to get the gear, time > skill.
There was a game, long ago... oh wait, it's still humming along, albiet with small playerbase, called Ultima Online. It's been going for 8 years, and I've not seen it since beyond the first 18 months (when I quit), but at that time there were very few magical items. Players actually ran around wearing plain old gear. In WoW you've got stuff like the Archer's Leggings of the Wolf/Bear/Eagle/..., and there are so many types and variations that I'd guess the item database for WoW is orders of magnitude larger than many other MMORPGs. In UO you had (IIRC) cloth, leather, chainmail, or plate boots. In UO if you needed a new sword, you paid a player (Grandmaster Blacksmith typically) to make you a shiny new katana, or halberd, or whatever. In UO, skill > gear, because everyone had basically the same gear.
WoW is hopelessly broken because it follows in the footsteps of EQ (and Diablo) by making magical named items the norm. It's like trying to imagine getting rid of all foods except dessert, and then going so far as to make all desserts just different arrangements of icing. What was once special is now utterly commonplace.
The PvP "honor" system is similarly broken. It rewards time spent doing Quake-style deathmatch zerging with honor kills, and the more honor kills you get, the higher rank you get. There is much greater reward for mindless repetition than there is for skill and teamwork. It's worse now even as people have figured out how to manipulate the Battlegrounds system to ensure easy victory for their team. Consequently, many level 60 Battlegrounds games are utterly one-sided honor point farming sessions that last 6 minutes each.
And there are 5+ million rats pressing that cheese button every night.
You're not allowed to say "that's so gay" and so on. It is against the terms. However, Blizz doesn't monitor every communication, but rather they leave it up to players to self-police.
You can report people who are saying offensive things and Blizzard will look into it. In many cases they'll give a warning, and in some cases they'll ban someone.
I've had very positive results from reporting people who had offensive names or who said things highly offensive (in my view). So if gays get offended by hearing the word "gay" used as a negative term, then they should report the offenders.
Dublin Dr. Pepper (in Texas) still uses pure cane sugar. And the stuff is the nectar of gods!
High fructose corn syrup tastes like shit, and it's in nearly everything we (Americans) eat... but it doesn't have to be. The Dr. Pepper bottling company that makes Dublin Dr. Pepper can't make enough to meet demand, and still the price of them is reasonable.
Before posting a question like this, how about researching RoR just a little.
RoR generates complete, readable code for you when you ask it to (the scaffold), but once you've done that, you're typically going to go modify that yourself. It's relatively simple, logical code. And it's a one time deal. You will typically intentionally go modify that scaffold code, unless you're doing something really simple.
Besides, if you wanted to know how maintainable RoR code was, you could have followed any of the many tutorials to see how they make changes after having "generated" code.
I still cannot fathom how games can come under such scrutiny while television and movies show things far, far more brutal, sadistic, and sexually depraved.
I suppose it's because the game industry doesn't (yet) have a total lockdown on the government the way the movie industry does. No sense railing against values in movies since the government won't pass any laws that they're specifically paid off NOT to pass by the movie industry.
At least one good thing to look forward to is that the dinosaurs that make up the movie industry will die off, while each year the number of gamers increases. Imagine the day when all the old people were gamers in their youth, or even in their old age too...
The decline of the gaming industry is because "big media" has gotten involved. They choose the concept (or sequel, or license), then run it through accounting to see if it fits their return on investment requirements. During development, if they suddenly have a concern over quarterly earnings per share, it may be more attractive for them to cut the game off, toss out the staff, and report minutely better earnings.
It's simply quantity (or eye-candy) over quality, just like television. How many reality shows are there, and how long have most halfway thinking adults been entirely through with that theme?
Good shows are really rare, and as we know, some great shows get cut after one episode if the numbers don't show immediately.
Even pimps run better business than big media.
Two games a few years ago that really stood out (and had huge sales, and even huger income/cost ratios) were Re-volt and Roller Coaster Tycoon. Both games were innovative, fun, and even pretty. But they didn't have million dollar rendered movie cut scenes, any advertizing, or big public rollouts.
The one upside to the downside in the game industry is that it forces some of us to re-enter the real world. There are plenty of fun things to do there.
Sorry, I had 256 on the brain from a discussion on video cards from elsewhere. This iMac has 512. I don't think you can even buy one with less than 512. I'd have bought 1GB, but I didn't pay for it.
At 512MB it only swaps if I load up WorldOfWarcraft. Funny thing is, WoW loads and zones faster on this Mac (compared to the much faster playing PC). Everything else is just slower.
Even just in general use, the Mac feel slow. Dragging windows, resizing windows, scrolling iTunes. It's all slow like the early days of Linux window managers where they tried to do too much eye candy for the power of the machine.
But most importantly, this Mac has some network (DNS) issues, even with BIND setup and running. And what I had to do to configure BIND, while not difficult, is certainly not something you'd expect a Windows user to ever do.
So what you're saying is, the analyst didn't actually pull it out of his butt, but rather he collected from the butts of Apple salesmen.
I _also_ have an iMac G5 17" 256MB machine, and it has quickly developed some kind of problem that makes it VERY slow for browsing, connecting to iTunes, etc. I found and followed instructions on setting up BIND, but that didn't help. Apple's OS updater didn't magically fix it, so basically I have a gimped Mac that I use only for basic browsing while I'm playing games fullscreen on my fast PC. But hey, it sure looks good on the outside!
This isn't advice that's useful to you - it's too late for you.
Never be an early adopter of new technology in a mission critical environment. I thought everyone learned their lessons on that from MS Service Pack experiences years ago...
Firstly, it's your decision whether you sign the agreement with the photog that states that they hold the copyright. If you disagree with their terms, find a different photog.
Typically you should see the price per photo vary depending on several factors, including whether or not the photog retains the rights. If the photog doesn't retain rights, you'll probably pay a big sitting fee (or you'll be required to buy X$ of photos).
If there's no minimum purchase and the sitting fee is small, then chances are good the photog will retain the rights.
Some photogs will sell you a CD of the images for a price (sometimes small $, sometimes large$ ).
As for dealing with WalMart and Sams, just go present reasonable proof to them that you're a professional photographer and they'll put you in a file so you don't have to fight them next time.
Saying "I've never run Linux" does not mean "I've never read Linux code".
Theo and the OpenBSD folks are well known for being very serious code reviewers, and there's a strong possibility that they've read many critical parts of Linux code.
In fact I'd be surprised if they didn't review a lot of the leaked Windows code too, just to size up the competition.
Small business, the type of business that supposedly makes the US operate, does not willingly accept freaks. They tolerate IT types (people with poor social skills, and perhaps less than ideal grooming habits), but they aren't going to willingly choose to employ people who look like freaks (to them).
It's JobHunting101: All else being equal, the applicant who makes the best impression gets the job. Now if the place you're applying to is full of people with "tats" and noserings, then you're set. But since that hasn't exactly caught on with normal people, your chances of appearing as though you would "fit in" are slim.
If you're a freak, hide it until you get the job (and ideally until you prove that you're invaluable).
What ever would we do without "professional" voice actors. I'm certain that the only good voice actors are from Hollywood. It could be that there's plenty of talent all around the world, perhaps right in your town's theater.
Unions are outdated. People who join unions are spineless whiners who cannot take a stand for themselves (at least in the US).
Programmers who work for EA are spineless slaves.
I'll be trolled down, but I don't care.
If you don't like your freaking pay or your work conditions, STOP WORKING THERE!
At least until the lawyers completely fuck up the game industry with game concept patents, there's a ton of room for small, independent game companies to create the next sleeper. Lord knows none of the big companies are creating anything worth buying. Every one of them has 80% eye candy that plays like shit.
1. Apple has been losing the MHz war for years, and looking worse each year for it (even though Intel has even begun to back away from MHz claims).
Two years ago Steve Jobs said, "We'll be at 3GHz next year!". Next year came, and they were 2.5GHz with excuses. Now a year later they're at a whopping 2.7GHz. It's embarassing, even if it isn't a real issue.
2. Apple doesn't need more difficulting in getting products built and delivered on time.
IBM has thus far not been as reliable as Intel in getting processors out the door quickly.
3. We already knew that OSX worked on Intel, as it had been reported many times that Apple had a working port in-house.
4. Adding "Intel" to the Apple ads will help legitimize Apple computers to some of the people who assumed Macs were just second-rate computers.
Average consumers don't know PPC. They do know Blue Man Group and "Intel Inside". Incidentally, that's why I believe Apple didn't go to AMD, even though AMD has a better product (in the Opteron).
5. Lastly, it's a stock-boosting move.
Every few years tech companies must reinvent themselves, replace their CEO, or otherwise make a radical change. Just look at AAPL closing price, and then compare it to tomorrow's (which is actually today's now!) price.
Slashdot Mirror
Please backup your claim that what they're doing is "wholesale against the rules". Please also backup the claim that they "continually get banned".
I'd be willing to bet that (unfortunately) I've played this game more hours than you, and across my multiple characters on several servers, I've only been contact in-game less than 5 times with direct offers from gold sellers. Meanwhile I've been begged for gold by English-speaking players dozens of times.
Most of the farmers quietly kill the same creatures in a given area over and over and over. They play a numbers game - kill more mobs and get more money, with more chances to get a rare item. Only a rare few of them actually use exploits or bots, or spam people to sell.
While I do think we'd all be better off without them, I'd definitely argue that their behavior is much less disruptive than the typical bad-attitude (kid?) English player.
... Hollywood continued to churn out pure trash.
My saying is, Own the Media (tv), Own the World
Looking forward to a complete documentary.
Just like with "normal" players, there's a great variety in the behaviors. Some gold farms are friendly, even fun (and some are quite skilled in PvP), but some seem ignorant robots that do the same things non stop and repeat the same phrases in horribly broken English.
I've grouped with a few farmers before - even communicated to some degree with them (google for english to pinyin dictionary), but there are some universal behaviors they have. First and foremost, they will roll NEED on any item that drops, regardless of whether they can or would use it. As far as I can tell, they don't understand the difference between NEED and Greed.
In some respects they've done less damage than some of the other entrepreneurs - the ones who troll the auction house all day buying up every single item and repricing them higher. There's some guy on Eredar alliance side named Plate (and Platejr) who literally buys every single item within a range of levels and then reprices it roughly 4x higher than what it would normally sell at. That guy is far more despicable than people who churn away at Tyr's Hand all day.
What I've really wanted, but not yet found, is some way to programmatically (or from command line) take a series of JPGs (1,000 to 50,000) and create a movie out of them. I've got Quicktime Pro, but it doesn't have command line ways of doing this (and it bogs down horribly when manually loading an image series and saving out a movie).
I do use ImageMagick (actually GraphicsMagick I think) to watermark/timestamp each of the JPGs before I make the movie, but surely there's a way to fully automate what I'm doing...
I use my whole hand...
Firstly, the author states that WoW is the most successful MMORPG on Earth. My understanding from the MMORPG tracking groups is that Ragnarok Online has about 17 million subscribers worldwide. But that's beside the point.
But about the time > skill, that's an accurate statement. But the root of the problem lies in WoW's (and EQ's and other games') focus on gear. There are essentially two driving forces in WoW: experience gain and gear acquisition.
People play and quest in order to get more experience so their characters level. Ultimately the characters become level 60 (max) and cease to need any experience. Meanwhile, during the leveling, there is a fairly strong focus on acquiring newer, better (more level-appropriate) gear because that makes your character perform better, which of course helps you level faster.
The problem is that gear can have a very significant affect on the character's performance. That makes sense to a degree, but it becomes way out of proportion at level 60. Throughout the lower levels, the typical best gear at any given point can be acquired by making a few runs thru the appropriate instance. That doesn't require too much of a timesink, at least since the instances don't usually take more than two hours each to run. Some can be done very quickly.
But at 60, the time-haves get separated from the time-have-nots because the people with great amounts of time can raid N times in the same place just to get one or two pieces of gear. And unlike at lower levels, the disparity between the high end raid gear and the typical ("typical magic gear" - a cheapening of the idea of special items in the first place) gear is huge.
A caster 60 who makes no effort to raid will likely have around 3500 hitpoints and 4500 mana. A same class caster who wears the best raid gear will have 5000 hitpoints and 8000 mana. These are example numbers, but the % increase is roughly accurate. In some cases the better geared player will have things that increase their spell damage, so they may be consistently doing 25% more damage than the poor guy. In addition to just the armor (which gives all the stat and damage bonuses), there are a variety of trinkets and toys, some of which can give a big benefit.
When it's all said and done, a poorly geared player with good skill will be hard pressed to beat a well geared player with mediocre skill. This means that gear > skill. And since it took vast amounts of time to get the gear, time > skill.
There was a game, long ago... oh wait, it's still humming along, albiet with small playerbase, called Ultima Online. It's been going for 8 years, and I've not seen it since beyond the first 18 months (when I quit), but at that time there were very few magical items. Players actually ran around wearing plain old gear. In WoW you've got stuff like the Archer's Leggings of the Wolf/Bear/Eagle/..., and there are so many types and variations that I'd guess the item database for WoW is orders of magnitude larger than many other MMORPGs. In UO you had (IIRC) cloth, leather, chainmail, or plate boots. In UO if you needed a new sword, you paid a player (Grandmaster Blacksmith typically) to make you a shiny new katana, or halberd, or whatever. In UO, skill > gear, because everyone had basically the same gear.
WoW is hopelessly broken because it follows in the footsteps of EQ (and Diablo) by making magical named items the norm. It's like trying to imagine getting rid of all foods except dessert, and then going so far as to make all desserts just different arrangements of icing. What was once special is now utterly commonplace.
The PvP "honor" system is similarly broken. It rewards time spent doing Quake-style deathmatch zerging with honor kills, and the more honor kills you get, the higher rank you get. There is much greater reward for mindless repetition than there is for skill and teamwork. It's worse now even as people have figured out how to manipulate the Battlegrounds system to ensure easy victory for their team. Consequently, many level 60 Battlegrounds games are utterly one-sided honor point farming sessions that last 6 minutes each.
And there are 5+ million rats pressing that cheese button every night.
You're not allowed to say "that's so gay" and so on. It is against the terms. However, Blizz doesn't monitor every communication, but rather they leave it up to players to self-police.
You can report people who are saying offensive things and Blizzard will look into it. In many cases they'll give a warning, and in some cases they'll ban someone.
I've had very positive results from reporting people who had offensive names or who said things highly offensive (in my view). So if gays get offended by hearing the word "gay" used as a negative term, then they should report the offenders.
Dublin Dr. Pepper (in Texas) still uses pure cane sugar. And the stuff is the nectar of gods!
High fructose corn syrup tastes like shit, and it's in nearly everything we (Americans) eat... but it doesn't have to be. The Dr. Pepper bottling company that makes Dublin Dr. Pepper can't make enough to meet demand, and still the price of them is reasonable.
Before posting a question like this, how about researching RoR just a little.
RoR generates complete, readable code for you when you ask it to (the scaffold), but once you've done that, you're typically going to go modify that yourself. It's relatively simple, logical code. And it's a one time deal. You will typically intentionally go modify that scaffold code, unless you're doing something really simple.
Besides, if you wanted to know how maintainable RoR code was, you could have followed any of the many tutorials to see how they make changes after having "generated" code.
I still cannot fathom how games can come under such scrutiny while television and movies show things far, far more brutal, sadistic, and sexually depraved.
I suppose it's because the game industry doesn't (yet) have a total lockdown on the government the way the movie industry does. No sense railing against values in movies since the government won't pass any laws that they're specifically paid off NOT to pass by the movie industry.
At least one good thing to look forward to is that the dinosaurs that make up the movie industry will die off, while each year the number of gamers increases. Imagine the day when all the old people were gamers in their youth, or even in their old age too...
The decline of the gaming industry is because "big media" has gotten involved. They choose the concept (or sequel, or license), then run it through accounting to see if it fits their return on investment requirements. During development, if they suddenly have a concern over quarterly earnings per share, it may be more attractive for them to cut the game off, toss out the staff, and report minutely better earnings.
It's simply quantity (or eye-candy) over quality, just like television. How many reality shows are there, and how long have most halfway thinking adults been entirely through with that theme?
Good shows are really rare, and as we know, some great shows get cut after one episode if the numbers don't show immediately.
Even pimps run better business than big media.
Two games a few years ago that really stood out (and had huge sales, and even huger income/cost ratios) were Re-volt and Roller Coaster Tycoon. Both games were innovative, fun, and even pretty. But they didn't have million dollar rendered movie cut scenes, any advertizing, or big public rollouts.
The one upside to the downside in the game industry is that it forces some of us to re-enter the real world. There are plenty of fun things to do there.
Sorry, I had 256 on the brain from a discussion on video cards from elsewhere. This iMac has 512. I don't think you can even buy one with less than 512. I'd have bought 1GB, but I didn't pay for it.
At 512MB it only swaps if I load up WorldOfWarcraft. Funny thing is, WoW loads and zones faster on this Mac (compared to the much faster playing PC). Everything else is just slower.
Even just in general use, the Mac feel slow. Dragging windows, resizing windows, scrolling iTunes. It's all slow like the early days of Linux window managers where they tried to do too much eye candy for the power of the machine.
But most importantly, this Mac has some network (DNS) issues, even with BIND setup and running. And what I had to do to configure BIND, while not difficult, is certainly not something you'd expect a Windows user to ever do.
So what you're saying is, the analyst didn't actually pull it out of his butt, but rather he collected from the butts of Apple salesmen.
I _also_ have an iMac G5 17" 256MB machine, and it has quickly developed some kind of problem that makes it VERY slow for browsing, connecting to iTunes, etc. I found and followed instructions on setting up BIND, but that didn't help. Apple's OS updater didn't magically fix it, so basically I have a gimped Mac that I use only for basic browsing while I'm playing games fullscreen on my fast PC. But hey, it sure looks good on the outside!
Once they get web-enabled terminals in bathroom stalls (it will happen!), then there will be another big drop in newspaper subscriptions.
I read the paper regularly (no pun intended), but only because I'm something of a captive audience, and the paper is just right there...
This is great. I hope we learn something important from observing this, and frankly I'm glad we (US) aren't having to pay for it.
This isn't advice that's useful to you - it's too late for you.
Never be an early adopter of new technology in a mission critical environment. I thought everyone learned their lessons on that from MS Service Pack experiences years ago...
Firstly, it's your decision whether you sign the agreement with the photog that states that they hold the copyright. If you disagree with their terms, find a different photog.
Typically you should see the price per photo vary depending on several factors, including whether or not the photog retains the rights. If the photog doesn't retain rights, you'll probably pay a big sitting fee (or you'll be required to buy X$ of photos).
If there's no minimum purchase and the sitting fee is small, then chances are good the photog will retain the rights.
Some photogs will sell you a CD of the images for a price (sometimes small $, sometimes large$ ).
As for dealing with WalMart and Sams, just go present reasonable proof to them that you're a professional photographer and they'll put you in a file so you don't have to fight them next time.
I disagree that the Ford vs Chevy analogy is the best part of the article because both Ford and Chevy suck
Saying "I've never run Linux" does not mean "I've never read Linux code".
Theo and the OpenBSD folks are well known for being very serious code reviewers, and there's a strong possibility that they've read many critical parts of Linux code.
In fact I'd be surprised if they didn't review a lot of the leaked Windows code too, just to size up the competition.
Top Story: Normal People Don't Like Freaks
I fear not the modders.
Small business, the type of business that supposedly makes the US operate, does not willingly accept freaks. They tolerate IT types (people with poor social skills, and perhaps less than ideal grooming habits), but they aren't going to willingly choose to employ people who look like freaks (to them).
It's JobHunting101: All else being equal, the applicant who makes the best impression gets the job. Now if the place you're applying to is full of people with "tats" and noserings, then you're set. But since that hasn't exactly caught on with normal people, your chances of appearing as though you would "fit in" are slim.
If you're a freak, hide it until you get the job (and ideally until you prove that you're invaluable).
What ever would we do without "professional" voice actors. I'm certain that the only good voice actors are from Hollywood. It could be that there's plenty of talent all around the world, perhaps right in your town's theater.
Unions are outdated. People who join unions are spineless whiners who cannot take a stand for themselves (at least in the US).
Programmers who work for EA are spineless slaves.
I'll be trolled down, but I don't care.
If you don't like your freaking pay or your work conditions, STOP WORKING THERE!
At least until the lawyers completely fuck up the game industry with game concept patents, there's a ton of room for small, independent game companies to create the next sleeper. Lord knows none of the big companies are creating anything worth buying. Every one of them has 80% eye candy that plays like shit.
Go and do. Stop whining.
You're right on, I totally forgot about the laptop issue. That's a huge one.
1. Apple has been losing the MHz war for years, and looking worse each year for it (even though Intel has even begun to back away from MHz claims).
Two years ago Steve Jobs said, "We'll be at 3GHz next year!". Next year came, and they were 2.5GHz with excuses. Now a year later they're at a whopping 2.7GHz. It's embarassing, even if it isn't a real issue.
2. Apple doesn't need more difficulting in getting products built and delivered on time.
IBM has thus far not been as reliable as Intel in getting processors out the door quickly.
3. We already knew that OSX worked on Intel, as it had been reported many times that Apple had a working port in-house.
4. Adding "Intel" to the Apple ads will help legitimize Apple computers to some of the people who assumed Macs were just second-rate computers.
Average consumers don't know PPC. They do know Blue Man Group and "Intel Inside". Incidentally, that's why I believe Apple didn't go to AMD, even though AMD has a better product (in the Opteron).
5. Lastly, it's a stock-boosting move.
Every few years tech companies must reinvent themselves, replace their CEO, or otherwise make a radical change. Just look at AAPL closing price, and then compare it to tomorrow's (which is actually today's now!) price.
rdannenberg@bannerwitcoff.com
Let them know just what you think of their patent ideas.
You have target practice.