Microsoft wants to maximize profitiability (they are a business, what do you expect?)
To do so they ship a variety of updates for games, some of which are free and some of which are not. Bug fixes are free (you see xbox games update for bug fixes and game balance improvements all the time), some features are free or provided via promotion (effectively ad supported but the only ad is that the description says who sponsored it.) The first new gears maps were provided this way (free, sponsored by some other company, I don't remember who.)
The approach for the latest round of new maps for gears was to charge for them for a few months, then make them free. Charging makes money directly. Making them free makes money because it adds buzz which results in more sales of the original game. Bungie and Microsoft disagreed over which approach would make the most money, but they both had the same goal (to make the most money.)
Crackdown has a similar situation. A bug fix update (free, and mandatory for continued online play like they all are), a free feature update which adds some new features, and a pay feature update which offers even more content for a price.
It's hard to see what's "wrong" with any of this. The market is definitely changing as content updates are now provided online. When you had to ship a box to a store for an expansion pack it had to be big and you had to charge for it. Now that you can update software far more often and with less expense we are seeing more updates, smaller updates, some free, some not.
Although I am not the most 31337 person in the world, I am pretty much surrounded by the world of computers, but I have never, in my life, put down money for a computer magazine. And no one I know, including many programmers, hardware people, or network administrators, seems to be a follower either.
Not trying to insunuate that you're a n00b or anything, but back before the internet computer mags were a valuable source of information. Computer Shopper (which used to be several times larger than it is now) was often the best way to find good prices on hardware. Earlier than that I remember eyeing the various clones in the XT/AT era advertized in paper mags. Now that's all pointless, there is nothing in the world of PCs that I'm going to find in a magazine that I can't find several times faster on the 'net and with more options to compare between.
The same holds true for many, but not all, non-computer topics these days.
No, and that's completely besides the point anyway. From the campaign's perspective, why should they pay something when it's available for free? Why should they reward hugely this one volunteer when there are literally thousands of others who don't see a penny?
Very simply, because they want what he has. If they don't want it that badly then they don't have to buy it. I doubt they'll be able to build up a presence of that magnitude for a mere $49,000 if they do it themselves...
The majority of Vista users have UAC turned off, and the majority of those who dont will turn it off as soon as they figure out how.
That isn't true - mainly because there is no easy way to turn it off. Maybe the majority of slashdot users have UAC turned off (I don't know, I left it on), but most users don't even know what it is - they just click Allow when asked any question since they know that Cancel means "it's not going to do what I wanted it to do".
But kidding aside, I can't see why a child could be liable for laws they have no say in. I'm sure there's a legally great reason, but not a morally good one.
Are you suggesting that children can kill people at will because they don't get to vote? How about convicted felons who can't vote either, do they get a free pass? Legal and illegal aliens?
As to the monetary issue, parents are responsible for the financial debts of their minor children with few exceptions.
True, but Adobe does not exactly have a perfect record either. Flash 8 and 9 where not available for Linux, and even Flash 9 Update has no plugin for a pure64 system. Way to go, Adobe.
There isn't even a 64-bit version of Flash for Windows...
For those who don't know, the quick launch bar was introduced as part of IE 4.0 in 1997, it is by no means a win2k/xp/vista feature. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was disabled by default in XP (but enabled by default in win2k and vista). I believe that in XP microsoft thought the 'recent apps' addition to the start menu replaced the need for quick launch, but by Vista the realized that it did not...
Except that when you make money the motivating factor for why you do things, the things that SHOULD motivate you as a human being in a human culture - cease to function. The RIAA's recent behavior (suing a 10 year old girl.. come on) eloquently demonstrates this assertion.
Who are you to define what "should" motivate people as human beings? Money IS the defined system of value - and there is no other measurable or accurate system of value. Everything else is prone to PR games - including TFA.
Who knows if the highest paid employees were actually the best employees? If they were, this is probably a dumb move, but I'll give Circuit City the benefit of the doubt that they probably thought about this before making their decision. You don't fire your best employees, you might fire your most expensive ones if they are merely the most expensive because they have been there the longest. Anyone who remains a sales clerk at Circuit City for a long time is likely not going to be one of the best employees anyway - the best Circuit City employees will find themselves making several times as much somewhere else within a few years.
The Canon i860 [canon.com] is not related to the S820. Note that the web page says, "... it provides true 4 color photo printing...". One day a few months ago, the InkJet printer companies switched from "true 6 color photo printing" to the present "true 4 color photo printing". I don't know their motivation, but the 6 color printers print MUCH nicer photos, in our experience, with much better shadow detail. Tech company marketing departments take extreme advantage of any ignorance they find in customers.
This is because the i860 produces better pictures than most of the previous generation's 6-color printers. The technology has changed quickly - I have an i960 (same era as the i860 - circa 2003) - the pictures are so perfect that I have little reason to consider buying a newer one... unless, say, I could get a four color printer that made prints as good or better than the i860... less stuff to keep track of and refill (though I've got no interest in going the HP way with merged cartridges and all the wasted ink they result in.)
As a sidenote, all this complaining about inkjet clogs... my i960 goes between not printing anything for a month or more and once or twice a year printing massive quantities (making photo calendars for family is one of those times.) I only had it clog once - and that was with a very cheap 3rd party ink - putting back a canon ink cartridge made the clog go away within a few pages. (while no amount of rising the head in hot water etc had any effect.) Oddly enough, only the yellow ink clogged - and I saw the same behavior on two printers... so, I use canon yellow ink and cheap ink for the rest.
That said, the boxes are cheap ($50), far less expensive than the new cell phone often needed to switch wireless providers. It's not much of a barrier.
Probably because Tivo has a patent on DVR technology. See Tivo v. Echostar.
Truely you jest.
Windows Media Center ReplayTV MythTV MediaPortal (open-source backport of XBMC with added TV functionality) DirectTV PVR (in house, current generation) MS TV (closed box PVR for cable in use by major cable companies) MS IPTV (NYR but shown at CES - closed box PVR for IPTV - xbox 360 and standalone) UltimateTV (defunct)
I'm sure the list goes on. They all support recording, trick play, guide etc. and none of them infringe on any patent Tivo has. I'm sure Tivo's got a patent on a lot of aspects of their implementation, but nothing so all-encompasing that it would prevent Apple from including this functionality.
The reality is that it is HARD to provide a global (or even across the US) solution for TV which includes guide listings for everywhere, works with cable, satellite, etc. and is as reliable as a cable box. Apple is not interested in this (yet at least) and this is never what AppleTV was purported to be. It's more like a media center extender, except that it doesn't require a media center PC, or a windows media connect device with a better UI and no windows requirement.
That's a gross simplification of course, and I know they've made choices around local caching and PC-independent operation that differ from MCX and WMC - and choices around PC/Mac interop that differ from Tivo and all the closed box PVRs.
Considering that a max-sized MIME chunk was/is(?) usually 30K lines or so, and that a typical 1MB file would break out into a couple hundred chunks by itself... how well d'ya think a 600MB warezed DivX would distribute?
Apparently you haven't been on usenet in a while. The "complicated process" you describe is completely automated and there are plenty of newsreaders (i.e. news file grabbers) which convert the thousands and thousands of posts out there in a group into the 25 movies that are actually posted.
As some GP post said though, this slips below the radar - not enough people even know about usenet to make a dent.
I'll assume for a second you meant "console vs. windows" or "pc vs. console" - and yes, in fact, that feature was specifically demonstrated for ShadowRun at CES in January.
Obviously, Exchange can do that as well - it takes about 30 seconds to create a rule to do that in Outlook (which will be processed by the server and doesn't require Outlook to remain connected to function). Maybe windows live mail can't (I've never used it) but I'm sure there are plenty of free web mail systems that can't do that either. It places the webmail provider in a situation where they are performing work on account of someone who isn't necessarially ever going to their site, which is a pretty lousy situation for a company to be in.
The whole idea of a University outsourcing their email to a free webmail provider sounds rediculous to begin with. GP was trying to twist this into somehow an evil action on Microsoft's part - which I objected to because this has nothing to do with Microsoft.
This is also known as, why the fuck did the United States not complete its prosecution of Microsoft and prevent these illegal business practices. Notice the last: you cannot forward your email. You cannot forward your email. Microsoft does the exact same thing on their Exchange email server -- no email forwarding allowed.
Hello Troll. The university is telling them not to forward their mail, windows mail certainly does not prevent this (how would mom and pop forward their stupid jokes??). Microsoft is providing webmail without POP and IMAP because their webmail is ad-supported and that's how they've chosen to implement it - like MANY MANY other webmail providers have done as well. Yes, there are some free webmail apps that do allow POP and/or IMAP - so what? This is how they chose to run their free webmail. The university is the one you should be bitching at, there's nothing evil about microsoft providing a free ad-supported webmail system.
As to the comment about Exchange, what are you talking about? Are you taking about the fact that Exchange/Outlook allows people to send mail with "rights management" specifying that forwarding is blocked? Like, oh, 10 mails I have recieved in the last year out of tens of thousands that were marked that way because my employer did not want confidential information forwarded? Way to twist a feature customers asked for into "exchange does not allow mail to be forwarded".
The initial, confused silence, is followed by "...I don't understand...", to which I explain that I don't want to buy one either and that they are intruding on my privacy by sending this crap. They insist on me providing my SSN in order to stop, which I flatly refuse -- they say it's for "security" so other people can't make annoying changes to my account, ironically. I still refuse. They should gain my permission in order to send it, not to stop it.
They already have your SSN, it's on the screen in front of them, they are only asking as a means to validate that it is you on the phone and not someone who stole your phone (they also know it's your phone calling, even more reliably than 911 knows since it's their network.) You're only making your own life more difficult our of "principle" - if only I had enough time to waste on such useless ventures.
FWIW - I never opted in or out of anything and I get about one message per year from Cingular. Given that they don't charge for these messages and they are my cell provider I really don't consider this spam.
Me, well, It was an experiment gone bad for a lot of people that basicly made them decide to pull 98 into NT/2000 instead of keeping 98 and incorperating the good parts of NT/2000 to create XP.
This was *always* the plan. No one at microsoft ever seriously intended to "pull the good parts of NT/2000 back into 98 to create XP". If Microsoft could have pulled it off then Win2K would have meant the end of the 9x line, but it wasn't quite there yet.
9x was built for speed.
NT was built for stability.
(both were built before Microsoft realized how big of a can of security-related worms the internet was going to be)
The fundamentally different attitudes of the two teams when the two were being built in the first place (at around the same time) was enormous. NT people were disgusted with 9x design and implementation. 9x people knew that the NT approach would not provide what they needed to provide to "wow" people on the then-current hardware.
And they haven't been convicted of a single one of those things; there are just some accusations here. It's not flamebait to question the difference between civil and criminal activity; calling Microsoft a criminal organization, a term generally reserved for organizations like the mob, is flamebait.
Even the MPAA and RIAA, though I may hate them to death, are not truely 'criminal organizations'. If you want to call unacceptable behavior and abuse of the law (without being convicted of breaking a criminal law) just cause for a "criminal organization" you may as well start labeling the US government a criminal organization.
It's a criminal organization that is completely above the law. Passing more laws isn't going to curb it.
Microsoft is a 'criminal organization'? There's a difference between civial and criminal offenses, take a basic law class if you need to understand it better.
They do? And assuming they do, is that a get out of jail free card?
If so, why?
Because, if that's true, then making Microsoft dissapear off the face of the earth would have a significant effect on the economy of the United States. That is, like it or not, more important to the US government than applying absolute justice to Microsoft is.
That doesn't mean the government can't levy huge fines, etc. They love taking money from people and entities that they have full control over, but if they kill the company, they don't get to take the money anymore...
VF5's developers have said the game will not feature online play because the it would mess with precise timing of the game's movements. However, it will still have Achievements and Live! awareness that all 360 games are required to have.
Honestly I can't see how this is going to work for them. A 360 game without live (play) pretty much misses the point. I bought my 360 so I could play games with friends (and not just when they're visiting). It's all about playing with friends, together or against one another. I think this is (if it's not blasphemy to say it here) the real innovative thing MS has down with the 360 (and to a lesser extent the xbox) - they've made console gameplay a social experience.
If I could control the universe every game would learn from the gears of war approach to co-op play (that is, you can play the whole game, story intact, together.) I was so dissapointed that rainbow six:vegas dropped the story for co-op and just had you play through the levels. It's still a good game but without online co-op (with the full story) I may never actually bother to finish it. Now I feel obliged to finish the single player story before I play through it with friends... and I haven't gotten around to it.
Crackdown at least seems to have decided to take a similar approach, and despite the fact that they appear to be pimping crackdown by connecting it to the halo 3 beta, I'm way more interested in getting crackdown than getting halo 3.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft wants to maximize profitiability (they are a business, what do you expect?)
To do so they ship a variety of updates for games, some of which are free and some of which are not. Bug fixes are free (you see xbox games update for bug fixes and game balance improvements all the time), some features are free or provided via promotion (effectively ad supported but the only ad is that the description says who sponsored it.) The first new gears maps were provided this way (free, sponsored by some other company, I don't remember who.)
The approach for the latest round of new maps for gears was to charge for them for a few months, then make them free. Charging makes money directly. Making them free makes money because it adds buzz which results in more sales of the original game. Bungie and Microsoft disagreed over which approach would make the most money, but they both had the same goal (to make the most money.)
Crackdown has a similar situation. A bug fix update (free, and mandatory for continued online play like they all are), a free feature update which adds some new features, and a pay feature update which offers even more content for a price.
It's hard to see what's "wrong" with any of this. The market is definitely changing as content updates are now provided online. When you had to ship a box to a store for an expansion pack it had to be big and you had to charge for it. Now that you can update software far more often and with less expense we are seeing more updates, smaller updates, some free, some not.
Unfortunately you spend most of your time talking to yourself.
Oh, yes, no PC game has ever charged for an add on pack with additional maps and other content.
Not trying to insunuate that you're a n00b or anything, but back before the internet computer mags were a valuable source of information. Computer Shopper (which used to be several times larger than it is now) was often the best way to find good prices on hardware. Earlier than that I remember eyeing the various clones in the XT/AT era advertized in paper mags. Now that's all pointless, there is nothing in the world of PCs that I'm going to find in a magazine that I can't find several times faster on the 'net and with more options to compare between.
The same holds true for many, but not all, non-computer topics these days.
Very simply, because they want what he has. If they don't want it that badly then they don't have to buy it. I doubt they'll be able to build up a presence of that magnitude for a mere $49,000 if they do it themselves
That isn't true - mainly because there is no easy way to turn it off. Maybe the majority of slashdot users have UAC turned off (I don't know, I left it on), but most users don't even know what it is - they just click Allow when asked any question since they know that Cancel means "it's not going to do what I wanted it to do".
Are you suggesting that children can kill people at will because they don't get to vote? How about convicted felons who can't vote either, do they get a free pass? Legal and illegal aliens?
As to the monetary issue, parents are responsible for the financial debts of their minor children with few exceptions.
There isn't even a 64-bit version of Flash for Windows
For those who don't know, the quick launch bar was introduced as part of IE 4.0 in 1997, it is by no means a win2k/xp/vista feature. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was disabled by default in XP (but enabled by default in win2k and vista). I believe that in XP microsoft thought the 'recent apps' addition to the start menu replaced the need for quick launch, but by Vista the realized that it did not
Who are you to define what "should" motivate people as human beings? Money IS the defined system of value - and there is no other measurable or accurate system of value. Everything else is prone to PR games - including TFA.
Who knows if the highest paid employees were actually the best employees? If they were, this is probably a dumb move, but I'll give Circuit City the benefit of the doubt that they probably thought about this before making their decision. You don't fire your best employees, you might fire your most expensive ones if they are merely the most expensive because they have been there the longest. Anyone who remains a sales clerk at Circuit City for a long time is likely not going to be one of the best employees anyway - the best Circuit City employees will find themselves making several times as much somewhere else within a few years.
This is because the i860 produces better pictures than most of the previous generation's 6-color printers. The technology has changed quickly - I have an i960 (same era as the i860 - circa 2003) - the pictures are so perfect that I have little reason to consider buying a newer one
As a sidenote, all this complaining about inkjet clogs
I pay Vonage $15/mo for phone service. There's no way that Comcast competes with this on price.
That said, the boxes are cheap ($50), far less expensive than the new cell phone often needed to switch wireless providers. It's not much of a barrier.
Truely you jest.
Windows Media Center
ReplayTV
MythTV
MediaPortal (open-source backport of XBMC with added TV functionality)
DirectTV PVR (in house, current generation)
MS TV (closed box PVR for cable in use by major cable companies)
MS IPTV (NYR but shown at CES - closed box PVR for IPTV - xbox 360 and standalone)
UltimateTV (defunct)
I'm sure the list goes on. They all support recording, trick play, guide etc. and none of them infringe on any patent Tivo has. I'm sure Tivo's got a patent on a lot of aspects of their implementation, but nothing so all-encompasing that it would prevent Apple from including this functionality.
The reality is that it is HARD to provide a global (or even across the US) solution for TV which includes guide listings for everywhere, works with cable, satellite, etc. and is as reliable as a cable box. Apple is not interested in this (yet at least) and this is never what AppleTV was purported to be. It's more like a media center extender, except that it doesn't require a media center PC, or a windows media connect device with a better UI and no windows requirement.
That's a gross simplification of course, and I know they've made choices around local caching and PC-independent operation that differ from MCX and WMC - and choices around PC/Mac interop that differ from Tivo and all the closed box PVRs.
Apparently you haven't been on usenet in a while. The "complicated process" you describe is completely automated and there are plenty of newsreaders (i.e. news file grabbers) which convert the thousands and thousands of posts out there in a group into the 25 movies that are actually posted.
As some GP post said though, this slips below the radar - not enough people even know about usenet to make a dent.
I'll assume for a second you meant "console vs. windows" or "pc vs. console" - and yes, in fact, that feature was specifically demonstrated for ShadowRun at CES in January.
Obviously, Exchange can do that as well - it takes about 30 seconds to create a rule to do that in Outlook (which will be processed by the server and doesn't require Outlook to remain connected to function). Maybe windows live mail can't (I've never used it) but I'm sure there are plenty of free web mail systems that can't do that either. It places the webmail provider in a situation where they are performing work on account of someone who isn't necessarially ever going to their site, which is a pretty lousy situation for a company to be in.
The whole idea of a University outsourcing their email to a free webmail provider sounds rediculous to begin with. GP was trying to twist this into somehow an evil action on Microsoft's part - which I objected to because this has nothing to do with Microsoft.
Hello Troll. The university is telling them not to forward their mail, windows mail certainly does not prevent this (how would mom and pop forward their stupid jokes??). Microsoft is providing webmail without POP and IMAP because their webmail is ad-supported and that's how they've chosen to implement it - like MANY MANY other webmail providers have done as well. Yes, there are some free webmail apps that do allow POP and/or IMAP - so what? This is how they chose to run their free webmail. The university is the one you should be bitching at, there's nothing evil about microsoft providing a free ad-supported webmail system.
As to the comment about Exchange, what are you talking about? Are you taking about the fact that Exchange/Outlook allows people to send mail with "rights management" specifying that forwarding is blocked? Like, oh, 10 mails I have recieved in the last year out of tens of thousands that were marked that way because my employer did not want confidential information forwarded? Way to twist a feature customers asked for into "exchange does not allow mail to be forwarded".
They already have your SSN, it's on the screen in front of them, they are only asking as a means to validate that it is you on the phone and not someone who stole your phone (they also know it's your phone calling, even more reliably than 911 knows since it's their network.) You're only making your own life more difficult our of "principle" - if only I had enough time to waste on such useless ventures.
FWIW - I never opted in or out of anything and I get about one message per year from Cingular. Given that they don't charge for these messages and they are my cell provider I really don't consider this spam.
This was *always* the plan. No one at microsoft ever seriously intended to "pull the good parts of NT/2000 back into 98 to create XP". If Microsoft could have pulled it off then Win2K would have meant the end of the 9x line, but it wasn't quite there yet.
9x was built for speed.
NT was built for stability.
(both were built before Microsoft realized how big of a can of security-related worms the internet was going to be)
The fundamentally different attitudes of the two teams when the two were being built in the first place (at around the same time) was enormous. NT people were disgusted with 9x design and implementation. 9x people knew that the NT approach would not provide what they needed to provide to "wow" people on the then-current hardware.
And they haven't been convicted of a single one of those things; there are just some accusations here. It's not flamebait to question the difference between civil and criminal activity; calling Microsoft a criminal organization, a term generally reserved for organizations like the mob, is flamebait.
Even the MPAA and RIAA, though I may hate them to death, are not truely 'criminal organizations'. If you want to call unacceptable behavior and abuse of the law (without being convicted of breaking a criminal law) just cause for a "criminal organization" you may as well start labeling the US government a criminal organization.
Then add another layer to your tin foil hat.
Microsoft is a 'criminal organization'? There's a difference between civial and criminal offenses, take a basic law class if you need to understand it better.
Because, if that's true, then making Microsoft dissapear off the face of the earth would have a significant effect on the economy of the United States. That is, like it or not, more important to the US government than applying absolute justice to Microsoft is.
That doesn't mean the government can't levy huge fines, etc. They love taking money from people and entities that they have full control over, but if they kill the company, they don't get to take the money anymore
Honestly I can't see how this is going to work for them. A 360 game without live (play) pretty much misses the point. I bought my 360 so I could play games with friends (and not just when they're visiting). It's all about playing with friends, together or against one another. I think this is (if it's not blasphemy to say it here) the real innovative thing MS has down with the 360 (and to a lesser extent the xbox) - they've made console gameplay a social experience.
If I could control the universe every game would learn from the gears of war approach to co-op play (that is, you can play the whole game, story intact, together.) I was so dissapointed that rainbow six:vegas dropped the story for co-op and just had you play through the levels. It's still a good game but without online co-op (with the full story) I may never actually bother to finish it. Now I feel obliged to finish the single player story before I play through it with friends
Crackdown at least seems to have decided to take a similar approach, and despite the fact that they appear to be pimping crackdown by connecting it to the halo 3 beta, I'm way more interested in getting crackdown than getting halo 3.