Granted, TF2 will likely go on sale soon... it's name in the Steam store is now "Team Fortress 2 (Mac coming soon)" and the remaining Orange Box games all went on sale the day their Mac versions went on sale... Portal was on sale for 100% off for a week and a half, while HL2/HL2Ep1/HL2Ep2 are 30% off right now.
Speaking of which, The Orange Box is $20.99 on Steam right now.
A) A history of letting you not need the disc in the drive anymore after a patch is NOT really a friendly way of stripping away DRM once the "hype" dies down. Besides, people are getting the dates wrong here, Starcraft removed needing the disc with patch 1.15, which was released almost ten years after the game debuted. Requiring online activation of a unique code is apples-to-oranges with keeping a disc in the drive.
I said this elsewhere, but I'll repeat it here: Blizzard only removed the CD-check on the games they now sell digitally through their online store. That is: StarCraft, Warcraft 3, and Diablo 2. And their respective expansions.
It clearly doesn't apply to all their games, since WarCraft 2: Battle.NET Edition was released after StarCraft, using the same game engine, but has no no-CD patch... and not sold digitally through said store.
I also saw piracy in college and it had nothing to do with ability to pay. People could find the money for beer and pot but not games or music.
These people fall into groups 1 or 4.
1) People who are cheap asses and don't buy games because they can pirate for free. If piracy wasn't an option, they still probably would still buy some games, but they wouldn't buy nearly as many as they'd be willing to pirate....
4) People who only pirate a game because they could get it for free, and wouldn't bother with the game if they actually had to pay for it.
And from the looks of it they are just trying to put on a "happy face" to the same Ubisoft horseshit. And I quote "If we've done our job right and implemented Battle.net in a great way people will want to be connected while they're playing the single player campaign so they can stay connected to their friends on Battle.net and earn the achievements on Battle.net"
So how exactly is this different than the Ubisoft bullshit?
Because Ubisoft forces you to be online as long as the game is running. Worse yet, you can't even play the game if their servers mess up.
It's not Ubisoft that Blizzard is imitating, it's Valve. The major difference between Steam and the new Battle.NET (as far as I can tell) is that Steam occasionally requires games to be re-authenticated, even if you have Steam set to Offline mode. It'll be interesting to see if Battle.NET gains that feature prior to StarCraft 2's launch, or worse yet, some time after it has been released.
For me, even installing the multiplayer beta took days and countless attempts. Why? It seemed as though the auto-patch utility was broken, or the recent patch itself was. Frankly, that alone wouldn't give me too much hope for the system, beta or not.
Steam is usually pretty good about installing updates... but on one occasion, I've had it completely screw up an install, forcing me to completely reinstall the game in question (Team Fortress 2).
Speaking of Half-Life 2, with the latest update, it now uses the Steam Cloud to store saved games. Does this mean Offline mode is completely useless? I want to know, because I've had it for a while but never bothered to play it. I have it installed on my laptop for the express purpose of being able to play it some-time I don't have Internet access.
They released no-CD patches for Warcraft 3, Diablo 2, and Starcraft 1, you know. They have a good track record here.
None of those require activation over the Internet.
It took them approximately 10 years to do so (for Starcraft anyway).
It's a moot point, since I still have the CD and can use it if I wish. If they take their Internet service down, I have no choice but to resort to some illegal measure.
The real reason they did it is because they started selling digital copies of these games through their online store, not to convenience their existing customers.
My understanding is that Google has to remove it if they want to remain under the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions in the stretch that this did come to trial and it was found to be infringing. The same goes for Youtube videos.
The culture seems so stuck on how to keep the grains of sand from falling through their fingers. with new and better lock ins. that people can see right through.
Non-tech people are notoriously bad at seeing these.
Besides which, this article is about how they're going to partner with another company that follows the same principle.
Quite simply, the decision Apple made to base OSX off of BSD was probably the smartest one they've made. Why reinvent the wheel when the solution you're looking for is already there, stable, and field tested for a good 30 or so years?
And yet they took the Mach kernel and FreeBSD userland, rather than the FreeBSD kernel and FreeBSD userland which had been built from the ground up to work together..
Have you also noticed that buildings don't have a 13th floor? The building I work in specifically adopted the British floor numbering system, where Ground and 1 are separate floors, to avoid having a 13th floor.
As you can see, every single company is making less money than Apple, except for HP. And I'll bet you that when you look up HP's annual financial reports, it will show they're not making that money in the PC-market.
Forgot the topic of conversation, did we? Here, let me remind you:
Jobs is going to loose the smart phone wars just like he lost the PC wars.
Last time I checked, Apple has both larger revenues and larger profits than any other manufacterer of consumer desktop and laptop computers on the market. I'd be happy to "lose" like that too.
The numbers you quoted are for all sales across all departments. And you apparently realize that with your comment on HP.
Sorry, but you still haven't shown Apple's numbers for their "computer desktop and laptop computers" business. You'd be hard pressed to, seeing as how Apple doesn't release those numbers, only how many units they sold and their total revenue / profits.
I'll still go through some of the numbers you listed, though.
According to HP, during fiscal Q2 2010, it made $10 billion (of their company-wide $30.8 billion) in revenues in its Personal Systems Group (i.e. Desktop/Laptop PCs) with a $465 million operating profit.
According to Apple, during fiscal Q2 2010, they made $13.5 billion in revenues (across the entire company) with a $3.07 billion profit. Did I mention this is across the entire company yet?
Having said that, Apple does have more details in their (PDF) 2009 10-K (Amended) form. According to it, across all of 2009, their total revenue on Macs was $13.9 billion. Which would be an average of $3.5 billion per quarter. However, I don't see where in this document they say how much the Mac division made in profit. Instead, they have the average price of Macs sold (which incidentally is $1,333; down 10% from 2008's $1,478). Side Note: These numbers includes their XServe server line.
According to Dell, during fiscal Q1 2010, their Consumer and Small Business groups made a combined total of $6.7 billion in revenues, with an "operating income" of 330 million (Dell doesn't list profit per department). This is not counting their Large Enterprise or Public (health care?) divisions.
So these guys are shipping more computers and making less money doing so, which makes Apple the loser? That's an interesting view on business.
Now see, I gave data to support my point (that others have higher sales). Do you have any data supporting that Apple has higher profits/revenues?
Given that Gartner only lists the top 6 PC companies by units shipped (and yes, Apple is included, as they are number 6 on the US chart), it's not an educated guess that since HP sold at least 3 times as many units as Apple, HP also has higher profits/revenues than Apple.
Last time I checked, Apple has both larger revenues and larger profits than any other manufacterer of consumer desktop and laptop computers on the market. I'd be happy to "lose" like that too.
I don't know about revenues and profits, but in terms of units sold, the top 6 worldwide are HP, Acer, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS, and Toshiba according to Gartner's 1Q 2010 report released on April 15th.
Interesting how you don't expect Google/HTC to have had a "_working_ finger-based touch screen phone for 2 years?"
For the record, that date I quoted above is the date that the first Android phone, the G1 (aka HTC Dream), was announced. That was 1 year, 8 months, and 1 day ago. The phone itself wasn't released for another month, on October 22, 2008 in the US... 1 year, 7 months, and 2 days ago. It hit Europe 8 days later.
Guess you'll have to sell your Nexus One, as Google hasn't has a "_working_ finger-based touch screen phone for 2 years."
Apple has also done an incredible amount of work with Webkit and it is completely absurd to use it to imply they are simply mooching off the community.
He didn't. He pointed out that Apple didn't have a choice of license in that case, because Webkit is based on someone else's work.
er... hasn't WGN been a cable network for the last 15-20 years? I don't even live in the same state (or even time zone) as Chicago, but all the local cable operators carry WGN, and have carried it even back when it was "Chicago's Very Own Channel 9."
Slashdot Mirror
RPG Maker VX might not be a bad choice either... as I recall, it uses Ruby to do its coding.
Or better yet, Garry's Mod + Team Fortress 2.
Granted, TF2 will likely go on sale soon... it's name in the Steam store is now "Team Fortress 2 (Mac coming soon)" and the remaining Orange Box games all went on sale the day their Mac versions went on sale... Portal was on sale for 100% off for a week and a half, while HL2/HL2Ep1/HL2Ep2 are 30% off right now.
Speaking of which, The Orange Box is $20.99 on Steam right now.
I said this elsewhere, but I'll repeat it here: Blizzard only removed the CD-check on the games they now sell digitally through their online store. That is: StarCraft, Warcraft 3, and Diablo 2. And their respective expansions.
It clearly doesn't apply to all their games, since WarCraft 2: Battle.NET Edition was released after StarCraft, using the same game engine, but has no no-CD patch... and not sold digitally through said store.
These people fall into groups 1 or 4.
Because Ubisoft forces you to be online as long as the game is running. Worse yet, you can't even play the game if their servers mess up.
It's not Ubisoft that Blizzard is imitating, it's Valve. The major difference between Steam and the new Battle.NET (as far as I can tell) is that Steam occasionally requires games to be re-authenticated, even if you have Steam set to Offline mode. It'll be interesting to see if Battle.NET gains that feature prior to StarCraft 2's launch, or worse yet, some time after it has been released.
Slashdot doesn't have a post edit feature. If people have corrections, it has to go in a reply. Like the very first reply to that post that says
that was posted 3.5 hours before yours.
Steam is usually pretty good about installing updates... but on one occasion, I've had it completely screw up an install, forcing me to completely reinstall the game in question (Team Fortress 2).
Speaking of Half-Life 2, with the latest update, it now uses the Steam Cloud to store saved games. Does this mean Offline mode is completely useless? I want to know, because I've had it for a while but never bothered to play it. I have it installed on my laptop for the express purpose of being able to play it some-time I don't have Internet access.
The real reason they did it is because they started selling digital copies of these games through their online store, not to convenience their existing customers.
My understanding is that Google has to remove it if they want to remain under the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions in the stretch that this did come to trial and it was found to be infringing. The same goes for Youtube videos.
All the author has to do is file a DMCA counter-notification.
It's OK, Steve. It's OK. No need to start throwing chairs here.
Fun fact: Visual Studio 2010 includes Visual C++ 10, just like Visual Studio 2008 includes Visual C++ 9.
Non-tech people are notoriously bad at seeing these.
Besides which, this article is about how they're going to partner with another company that follows the same principle.
I can't see why anyone would actually want to port the 'Awful Bar' to another device.
No, seriously, I can't.
And yet they took the Mach kernel and FreeBSD userland, rather than the FreeBSD kernel and FreeBSD userland which had been built from the ground up to work together..
There's an app for that.
Have you also noticed that buildings don't have a 13th floor? The building I work in specifically adopted the British floor numbering system, where Ground and 1 are separate floors, to avoid having a 13th floor.
You missed "iPhone" (or more specifically the App Store) in that list.
Forgot the topic of conversation, did we? Here, let me remind you:
The numbers you quoted are for all sales across all departments. And you apparently realize that with your comment on HP.
Sorry, but you still haven't shown Apple's numbers for their "computer desktop and laptop computers" business. You'd be hard pressed to, seeing as how Apple doesn't release those numbers, only how many units they sold and their total revenue / profits.
I'll still go through some of the numbers you listed, though.
According to HP, during fiscal Q2 2010, it made $10 billion (of their company-wide $30.8 billion) in revenues in its Personal Systems Group (i.e. Desktop/Laptop PCs) with a $465 million operating profit.
According to Apple, during fiscal Q2 2010, they made $13.5 billion in revenues (across the entire company) with a $3.07 billion profit. Did I mention this is across the entire company yet?
Having said that, Apple does have more details in their (PDF) 2009 10-K (Amended) form. According to it, across all of 2009, their total revenue on Macs was $13.9 billion. Which would be an average of $3.5 billion per quarter. However, I don't see where in this document they say how much the Mac division made in profit. Instead, they have the average price of Macs sold (which incidentally is $1,333; down 10% from 2008's $1,478). Side Note: These numbers includes their XServe server line.
According to Dell, during fiscal Q1 2010, their Consumer and Small Business groups made a combined total of $6.7 billion in revenues, with an "operating income" of 330 million (Dell doesn't list profit per department). This is not counting their Large Enterprise or Public (health care?) divisions.
Now see, I gave data to support my point (that others have higher sales). Do you have any data supporting that Apple has higher profits/revenues?
Given that Gartner only lists the top 6 PC companies by units shipped (and yes, Apple is included, as they are number 6 on the US chart), it's not an educated guess that since HP sold at least 3 times as many units as Apple, HP also has higher profits/revenues than Apple.
I don't know about revenues and profits, but in terms of units sold, the top 6 worldwide are HP, Acer, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS, and Toshiba according to Gartner's 1Q 2010 report released on April 15th.
2 years you say?
Interesting how you don't expect Google/HTC to have had a "_working_ finger-based touch screen phone for 2 years?"
For the record, that date I quoted above is the date that the first Android phone, the G1 (aka HTC Dream), was announced. That was 1 year, 8 months, and 1 day ago. The phone itself wasn't released for another month, on October 22, 2008 in the US... 1 year, 7 months, and 2 days ago. It hit Europe 8 days later.
Guess you'll have to sell your Nexus One, as Google hasn't has a "_working_ finger-based touch screen phone for 2 years."
He didn't. He pointed out that Apple didn't have a choice of license in that case, because Webkit is based on someone else's work.
Snape, Snape, Severus Snape.
er... hasn't WGN been a cable network for the last 15-20 years? I don't even live in the same state (or even time zone) as Chicago, but all the local cable operators carry WGN, and have carried it even back when it was "Chicago's Very Own Channel 9."
Honestly, I don't listen to MIDI files enough any more to care (and this is coming from someone who runs a MIDI website).
For ScummVM, I already have the appropriate files for the MT-32 emulator.