Everywhere but the US, Microsoft exists in the market because of piracy
If this is true, why is it that free-as-in-beer Linux can't compete on the street with free-as-in-beer Windows? Why is it that Linux needs the top-down government stamp of approval to make headway anywhere in the third world?
Compare to XP sales figures, both current and a year after initial release, and cross-reference with wide-spread customer insistence on XP.
How about an Apples-to-Apples comparison between Vista Premium and Windows MCE in their first year?
Vista Ultimate and XP Pro in their first year? Consumer Vista hasn't even been on the market for a year. It missed the Back-to-School and Christmas sales seasons last Fall.
I guess Microsoft has begun to face reality, pushing XP over Vista.
Reality comes in different flavors.
You might want to take a look at Microsoft's Q1 returns:
Microsoft's client unit, which includes the Vista operating system released to consumers in January, posted $4.1 billion (Euro 2.8 billion) in revenue for the quarter. That's a 24 percent increase from the same period a year earlier.
Demand for Vista was especially encouraging in "emerging markets" such as Russia and China, Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell said during a conference call with analysts. In addition, demand for premium, and more expensive versions of Vista was better than expected.Microsoft shares hit six-year high on earnings report
Each of the company's five business divisions showed double-digit revenue growth. That was particularly important in the Client Div., the group where Microsoft counts Windows sales. There, revenue jumped 25%, to $4.1 billion, an astonishing gain for a mature market. Microsoft estimates that PC sales grew 14% to 16% in the quarter. The larger revenue gains came as consumers went for the pricier, premium version of Windows Vista.Microsoft Results Turn Heads
Someone out there - or 88 million someones - bought a copy of Vista, 28 million of them in the last two months. This brought $4.14 billion in revenue in the quarter, making the Vista doom mongers look a tad silly. Sales of high-end Vista SKUs were the most popular.
Office 2K7 sales were up 20 percent to $4.11 billion, while Halo 3 and the Xbox 360 generated a profit of $165 million in the quarter with 1.8 million Xbox 360 consoles sold. Vista helps Microsoft's quarterly profits rise 23 per cent
Hot Coffee did not translate into buckets of money for Take-Two.
Bioshock is by any reasonable standard an adult game.
It has the potential to evolve into a very successful franchise. But with none of the liabilities that come with Manhunt 2.
Rockstar's PR went into overdrive to emphasize the player's emotional and physical engagement with his role as the psycho killer. The gross-out sadism of the Wii controller kills. This did not help its cause.
Manhunt 2 began as a placeholder for GTA.
It began as a late attempt to cash in on the success of exploitation flicks like Saw and Hostel.
Wait, so is the earth billions of years old, or 6000 years old, as told in the bible?
This idea is usually associated with James Ussher (1581-1656). Bishop Ussher was trying to construct a unified chronology - a world time-line of events - based in part on Biblical sources.
This is one of the things you have to do if you ever going to separate history from myth and legend.
4004 BCE isn't a half bad place to begin if you think of the world as beginning with our collective stories of the past or what survives in writing.
Ussher's account of historical events for which he had multiple sources other than the Bible is usually in close agreement with modern accounts; for example, he placed the death of Alexander in 323 BC and that of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. On the other hand, the period of time between the Creation and the Flood depended on the version of the Old Testament that was used: Hebrew (1656 years); Samaritan Pentateuch (1307 years); or the Ethiopic text (2262 years). Ussher favoured the Hebrew version.James Ussher
I don't really see how a physical product would be more profitable
Broadband penetration in the states is only around 45%.
I would not be surprised to hear that the percentage is even lower among those who are console gamers only. Wii gamers only.
How much does it cost to ship the Orange Box on palletes to Walmart?
Outsource the packaging. Include an action figure, a strategy guide in paperback. Be damn sure the "Game of the Year Edition" is in the stores in time for Christmas. Price it at $60 list.
the Register has a theory as to how Rockstar can get around Britain's Manhunt 2 ban
How long will it be before Parliament closes this particular window of opportunity?
Manhunt 2 brings the torture porn genre to the video game console. The player taking the role of the psycho killer. The game play graphic disembowelment mimed with the Wii controller.
Manhunt 2 invites the kind of ferocious backlash that has Take-Two's financial backers reaching for their Zantac whenever they see Rockstar in the news.
The question is, why do they need the grief? Bioshock is doing just fine, thank you.
You would have to agree that they would have a lot of graphic artists in that these are predominantly capitalistic based economies where advertising is important.
It isn't just advertising and it isn't just print.
You are irrelevant to the commercial artist and designer anywhere in the world if you can't match Photoshop point-for-point.
In January 2003, the Scottish Parliament debated a petition...to refer to the blue in the Scottish flag (saltire) as 'Pantone 300'. Countries such as Canada and South Korea and organizations such as the FIA have also chosen to refer to specific Pantone colors to use when producing flags. U.S. States including Texas have set legislated the PMS colors of their flags.Pantone
Indeed. Schools used to be filled with logic and reasoning.
Like hell they were.
"How do we once again become a nation of learners, in which attitudes towards intellectual pursuit and quality of work have excellence as their core?"
[These words echo] two qualities common to educational reformers since World War II: nostalgia and amnesia. They look back through a haze to some imagined golden era of American education when we were "a nation of learners," forgetting that a century ago the high school graduation rate was about 3 percent, and it didn't exceed 50 percent until mid-century...
The educator Ralph Tyler, one of the most prolific writers and innovators the field has known--he directed the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University for a number of years--looked back in 1974, when he was seventy-two, at what schools had been like in his youth: "What I remember . . . are the strictness of discipline, the catechismic type of recitation, the dullness of the textbooks, and the complete absence of any obvious connection between our classwork and the activities we carried on outside of school. . . . The view held by most teachers and parents was that . . . [the school's] tasks should be sufficiently distasteful to the pupils to require strong discipline to undertake them and carry them through."
thanks to our wonderful common-law system, there's an ungodly number of statutes.
Historically speaking, common law is rooted in traditional practices and procedures - and statutory law scarcely exists.
The Revolutionary generation believed that judge-made law was easily manipulated and dangerously whimsical.
That is why in the American system there is this extraordinary insistence on written constitutions, legislation, administrative rules, and so on. Laws may have common law roots, but that is not how they are presented to a court.
An American judge does not think in terms of natural law, he is not a judge in the common law tradition as a Brit would understand it.
He does not think like a European academic who builds abstract theories of what the law is or should be, rather, he tries to give a contemporary meaning to the law as it is written.
I'd rather have less functional or powerful free software than a more powerful or reliable proprietary program because I can hire people to improve the free program or I can ask the community to help me improve the free program.
You are not thinking like a professional who has deadlines to meet and whose livelihood and reputation are based on the quality of his work.
$650 buys Photoshop retail boxed.
$650 buys something much less from the freelance programmer who charges by the hour.
And they can't release a non-US version that people in the US will "accidentally" download?
in our metro newspaper there is not one job opening in photography that does not include expertise in Photoshop as a requirement.
these shops have no interest in a program that increases their legal exposure. no interest in a program that can't deliver basic functionality and live within the law.
They will never end until the Geek lets go the idea that what works for him works for others --- like his neighbor, Joe. who will, in a year or so, have become as comfortable with his new dual or quad core Vista system as he became with his Pentium 4 running XP.
1) Lawyers file class action lawsuit that says P2P traffic is being blocked.Lawyers file class action lawsuit that says P2P traffic is being blocked.
2) Comcast rebuttal says that all the traffic is illegal.
Try this one on for size:
1 Residential customer files a class action that says P2P traffic is being blocked.
2 Comcast replies that P2P is being throttled to maintain the quality of services available to other users.
3 Comcast reminds the plaintiff that his contract as a residential customer does not include any rights to act as a server or any guaranteed QOS.
4 Comcast argues - successfully - that if there is an injured class entitled to a bring the action, the plaintiff is not a part of it.
4 Comcast suggests to the plaintiff that one very simple solution to his problem would be to try scheduling his 2 GB ISO download for 3 AM ET and not 7 PM ET.
5 Comcast wins. The plaintiff is billed at $200/hour. Life goes on.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect that a draft horse - a work horse - has become rather too valuable an animal to be put to such mundane use.
Because when Walmart sells a widescreen HP Media laptop with ATSC digital tuner and HD-DVD drive it comes pre-loaded with Vista Premium.
Because Vista Ultimate supports business tools like trusted computing and full disk encryption.
If this is true, why is it that free-as-in-beer Linux can't compete on the street with free-as-in-beer Windows? Why is it that Linux needs the top-down government stamp of approval to make headway anywhere in the third world?
How about an Apples-to-Apples comparison between Vista Premium and Windows MCE in their first year?
Vista Ultimate and XP Pro in their first year? Consumer Vista hasn't even been on the market for a year. It missed the Back-to-School and Christmas sales seasons last Fall.
Reality comes in different flavors.
You might want to take a look at Microsoft's Q1 returns:
Microsoft's client unit, which includes the Vista operating system released to consumers in January, posted $4.1 billion (Euro 2.8 billion) in revenue for the quarter. That's a 24 percent increase from the same period a year earlier.
Demand for Vista was especially encouraging in "emerging markets" such as Russia and China, Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell said during a conference call with analysts. In addition, demand for premium, and more expensive versions of Vista was better than expected. Microsoft shares hit six-year high on earnings report
Each of the company's five business divisions showed double-digit revenue growth. That was particularly important in the Client Div., the group where Microsoft counts Windows sales. There, revenue jumped 25%, to $4.1 billion, an astonishing gain for a mature market. Microsoft estimates that PC sales grew 14% to 16% in the quarter. The larger revenue gains came as consumers went for the pricier, premium version of Windows Vista. Microsoft Results Turn Heads
Someone out there - or 88 million someones - bought a copy of Vista, 28 million of them in the last two months. This brought $4.14 billion in revenue in the quarter, making the Vista doom mongers look a tad silly. Sales of high-end Vista SKUs were the most popular.
Office 2K7 sales were up 20 percent to $4.11 billion, while Halo 3 and the Xbox 360 generated a profit of $165 million in the quarter with 1.8 million Xbox 360 consoles sold. Vista helps Microsoft's quarterly profits rise 23 per cent
Hot Coffee did not translate into buckets of money for Take-Two.
Bioshock is by any reasonable standard an adult game.
It has the potential to evolve into a very successful franchise. But with none of the liabilities that come with Manhunt 2.
Rockstar's PR went into overdrive to emphasize the player's emotional and physical engagement with his role as the psycho killer. The gross-out sadism of the Wii controller kills. This did not help its cause.
Manhunt 2 began as a placeholder for GTA.
It began as a late attempt to cash in on the success of exploitation flicks like Saw and Hostel.
This idea is usually associated with James Ussher (1581-1656). Bishop Ussher was trying to construct a unified chronology - a world time-line of events - based in part on Biblical sources.
This is one of the things you have to do if you ever going to separate history from myth and legend.
4004 BCE isn't a half bad place to begin if you think of the world as beginning with our collective stories of the past or what survives in writing.
Ussher's account of historical events for which he had multiple sources other than the Bible is usually in close agreement with modern accounts; for example, he placed the death of Alexander in 323 BC and that of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. On the other hand, the period of time between the Creation and the Flood depended on the version of the Old Testament that was used: Hebrew (1656 years); Samaritan Pentateuch (1307 years); or the Ethiopic text (2262 years). Ussher favoured the Hebrew version. James Ussher
Broadband penetration in the states is only around 45%.
I would not be surprised to hear that the percentage is even lower among those who are console gamers only. Wii gamers only.
How much does it cost to ship the Orange Box on palletes to Walmart?
Outsource the packaging. Include an action figure, a strategy guide in paperback. Be damn sure the "Game of the Year Edition" is in the stores in time for Christmas. Price it at $60 list.
How long will it be before Parliament closes this particular window of opportunity?
Manhunt 2 brings the torture porn genre to the video game console. The player taking the role of the psycho killer. The game play graphic disembowelment mimed with the Wii controller.
Manhunt 2 invites the kind of ferocious backlash that has Take-Two's financial backers reaching for their Zantac whenever they see Rockstar in the news.
The question is, why do they need the grief? Bioshock is doing just fine, thank you.
Ouch!
and how much of that functionality is in Photoshop Elements or on older versions of Photoshop?
It isn't just advertising and it isn't just print.
You are irrelevant to the commercial artist and designer anywhere in the world if you can't match Photoshop point-for-point.
In January 2003, the Scottish Parliament debated a petition...to refer to the blue in the Scottish flag (saltire) as 'Pantone 300'. Countries such as Canada and South Korea and organizations such as the FIA have also chosen to refer to specific Pantone colors to use when producing flags. U.S. States including Texas have set legislated the PMS colors of their flags. Pantone
Like hell they were.
"How do we once again become a nation of learners, in which attitudes towards intellectual pursuit and quality of work have excellence as their core?"
[These words echo] two qualities common to educational reformers since World War II: nostalgia and amnesia. They look back through a haze to some imagined golden era of American education when we were "a nation of learners," forgetting that a century ago the high school graduation rate was about 3 percent, and it didn't exceed 50 percent until mid-century...
The educator Ralph Tyler, one of the most prolific writers and innovators the field has known--he directed the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University for a number of years--looked back in 1974, when he was seventy-two, at what schools had been like in his youth: "What I remember . . . are the strictness of discipline, the catechismic type of recitation, the dullness of the textbooks, and the complete absence of any obvious connection between our classwork and the activities we carried on outside of school. . . . The view held by most teachers and parents was that . . . [the school's] tasks should be sufficiently distasteful to the pupils to require strong discipline to undertake them and carry them through."
What Happened to America's Public Schools? [November 1997]
Historically speaking, common law is rooted in traditional practices and procedures - and statutory law scarcely exists.
The Revolutionary generation believed that judge-made law was easily manipulated and dangerously whimsical.
That is why in the American system there is this extraordinary insistence on written constitutions, legislation, administrative rules, and so on. Laws may have common law roots, but that is not how they are presented to a court.
An American judge does not think in terms of natural law, he is not a judge in the common law tradition as a Brit would understand it.
He does not think like a European academic who builds abstract theories of what the law is or should be, rather, he tries to give a contemporary meaning to the law as it is written.
You are not thinking like a professional who has deadlines to meet and whose livelihood and reputation are based on the quality of his work.
$650 buys Photoshop retail boxed.
$650 buys something much less from the freelance programmer who charges by the hour.
in our metro newspaper there is not one job opening in photography that does not include expertise in Photoshop as a requirement.
these shops have no interest in a program that increases their legal exposure. no interest in a program that can't deliver basic functionality and live within the law.
burn everything to a disk or a card or a USB drive and mail it.
with the 500 GB SATA HDD on sale for $150 tell me why I should care.
They will never end until the Geek lets go the idea that what works for him works for others --- like his neighbor, Joe. who will, in a year or so, have become as comfortable with his new dual or quad core Vista system as he became with his Pentium 4 running XP.
which would matter if the OEM system install of Windows or OSX didn't define the PC for all but a tiny minority of users who get to make a choice.
Try this one on for size:
1 Residential customer files a class action that says P2P traffic is being blocked.
2 Comcast replies that P2P is being throttled to maintain the quality of services available to other users.
3 Comcast reminds the plaintiff that his contract as a residential customer does not include any rights to act as a server or any guaranteed QOS.
4 Comcast argues - successfully - that if there is an injured class entitled to a bring the action, the plaintiff is not a part of it.
4 Comcast suggests to the plaintiff that one very simple solution to his problem would be to try scheduling his 2 GB ISO download for 3 AM ET and not 7 PM ET.
5 Comcast wins. The plaintiff is billed at $200/hour. Life goes on.
and torrents will still be stuck on the back burner. throttled by one means or another.
No.
Little question: Does the packet shaping and interdiction violate the agreement that comcast made with users?
"Terms of service subject to change without notice." If it isn't nailed down in your contract, you have nothing to take into court.
Western Union used to print disclaimers on every telegraph form, which is plain English translated to:
It will get there when it gets there.
The deferred service - the night letter rates - are cheaper.
I never thought that I'd see the day when, "We won't interfere with your Internet connection!" would actually become a selling point, yet here we are.
It has been a selling point from day one.
But your T1 service is $400/month. Shared residential cable $40/month.
Prices from Creative Computing October 1982:
Missile Command - $28 - Atari 400/800
Zork I or II - $40 - IBM PC
Castle Wolfenstein - $24 - Apple II [character graphics]
Wizardry - $45 - Apple II