Am I the only one not busting a nut at the chance of paying $0.99 to download one song? Or $9.99 to download an album? To me this is hardly an improvement over current pricing. Maybe it's just that the stuff I listen to isn't typically available (live trance sets) but I really can't see paying much more than $0.25 for a single downloadble track. Maybe $0.50 if I really enjoyed the artist.
But if people will pay $5-15 to eat out when they can have subsistence at home, then what's up here?
TiVo won't die
on
TiVo Will Die
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Look. TiVo won't die. So the reviewer says he likes ReplayTV better and that TiVo won't dominate the market in years to come.
But that's ok.
Consider the home PVR market. By all accounts, it's a growing market. In years to come, let's say that it's a $10B market. Even with just 10% market share, that's $1B. Not chump change.
Honestly it's like saying AOL will die. Fading into obscurity, being obsolete, etc are not equivalent to dying. Last time I checked, AOL still had 24.3 million subscribers. All joking aside, let's assume 20m actually pay. That is still $400m/MONTH which is a CASH stream that I dare not to cough at.
Unfortunately, this makes excellent sense for Microsoft. When they put together MSN around 1994, it was obvious that they were trying to get in on this action. MSN never succeeded in terms of its weak user base.
You're right in that it makes perfect sense in 1994. But in the 90's, AOL was a hot ISP despite its dismal service (been there).
But today, in 2004, AOL is a failing ISP as mentioned earlier. And they seem to be losing subscribers and honestly the prospects for growth look dim. So the only thing that can really justify acquisition is iff MS-AOL > MS + AOL.
I'm not really sure what MS-AOL would really do well. You cite a large subscriber base and an outlet for content, but MS's primary business is software, not content. If you suggest that AOL users are MS's target audience for software (computer-impaired folks), then I agree. But this task can easily be accomplished by advertising or "strategic partnerships": AOL could use the cash.
Show me that MS-AOL would be greater than the sum of its parts and you'll win over a convert.
Compare this to my roommate, now that I'm here in college. Games are a buffer, a drug, for him. They are, like reading forums, watching movies, and TV, a way to pass time. One of the most telling particular cases of this was when one of the guys down the hall knocked and asked if we wanted to go to dinner with the floor(as we often do). He said no, he just came back from class and had to "unwind." He did come back, but he "unwound" by playing about three hours' worth of Halo multiplayer, followed by dinner and then approximately another three hours. If he finds Halo unappealing at the moment he fidgets a bit and then turns to another of the aformented activities. It's as though he were waiting for something, but I'm not quite sure what. It makes me uneasy to see him do it though, since I know he's not playing with my goals, nor is he really doing any role-playing or vicarious living through simulation. It's just something he *does*, using all of his free time to do it.
I appreciate your comment, I can see myself in that situation. Thanks.
People who criticize video games are hypocrites -- every single one of them. They would never DARE to level a complaint against any of the other trite, meaningless forms of entertainment.
Au contraire. I wouldn't have fared much better watching Cartoon Network 24/7.
Additionally, I think entertainment is good because I learn better when I am having fun learning. I know that by listening to the "uneducational fiction" work To Kill a Mockingbird on audio book that superficially, I don't learn much. But there is depth there; in a subtle way I take an adventure outside myself to learn more about myself. I think outside the box so that perhaps I will come to the conclusion that my "normal" life is interesting and strange and perhaps rather quaint.
The point is that I don't see this kind of depth in the games that I have played, nor the games that my friends play. The only exception I can think of is the web game "Alter Ego". And even when I can argue that there is some value in the game (i.e. Simcity 4) I think that I really could have done better getting off of my ass and heading across the street to Borders to read a book or two.
I have been playing games since elementary school but became quite hardcore by high school. And honestly I do think that through playing games, I lost many chances to become better and grow personally. In a sense, I'd say that I became dumber by playing games.
I don't know about you, but for me playing games is a relatively brainless activity in the sense that the same decisions are made over and over again; and I've excelled, from Counter-strike to poker to Civilization to Simcity to Star Wars Galaxies (made over 25 million creds as a merchant). Yet since my interest is business I should be spending my time developing my curiosity and to think about what is possible than the critical thinking that serves me so well in games.
I wish I wouldn't have started on games, especially when I see my 12-year old brother becoming addicted. Yes, I'm dumber because of games, but I had my fun.
Remember PATCO? No? Well, not too many people do. They were the striking air traffic controller guys back in the 80's. Fired. Boom. Done.
Why? In the interest of public safety. If this situation isn't in the interest of public safety I don't know what is.
I don't think that the Bush administration is even that hesitant to take action against labor unions. I remember reading here on/. that they used the Taft act on the Oakland seaport dock workers, with no ostenible threat to public safety that I can see.
On the other hand, I feel a bit disapointed in the Bush administration and would not expect them to take control or even bring attention to this situation for it is an election year..
Who knows? The only people who can actually witness the people who both complain about the game and play the game are the people who play the game as well; the forums are subscriber only, so no outsider can really see what the issues are. Instead we have to take the words of the reporters and the developers, which this article clearly shows as being questionable.
I am a subscriber to SWG and I hate it. Rant to follow.
I still have a subscription, and trust me, there is not much intelligent life to be found in the forums. The game really has quite a bit of promise and I would look hopefully to a SWG2. Having said that, the current game is so full of letdowns and frustrating game design.
Yet quitting is tough because despite what you learned in Economics, sunk costs feel like they count. My ex-gf estimates that I spent 100days (i.e. 100 x 24hr) playing the game and having success in SWG is something that brings me back from time to time. Also, if you get really sucked into the SWG world, you may reach a point where you feel like you can relate more with SWG players than persons on your real life. Yes, it can be that addicting.
Do I think that SWG is a big steaming load of crap? In a way, yes. But I also do think that SWG does many things right, which is what makes its shortcomings so painful. I really wish that SWG was a good game.
The problem is a lack of critical thinking, I suggest, and not some arbitary level of intelligence (which is impossible to measure and compare, anyway).
Actually, Americans are quite good at critical thinking. But that is the ONLY type of thinking we are taught in schools. Have you considered that there are other types of thinking? Suppose we were taught the way of thinking that makes things possible instead of slapping things down or merely making evaluations of the subject.
It's like being criticized and having people say "you suck" without any clue as to how to improve the situation.
If interested, there is a guy named Edward De Bono who has written on the subject...
* Children are to be respected as different from adults and as individuals who differ from each other.
* The child possesses an unusual sensitivity and intellectual ability to absorb and learn from his environment that are unlike those of the adult both in quality and capacity.
* The most important years of a child's growth are the first six years of life when unconscious learning is gradually brought to the conscious level.
wow, that ridiculous tuition seems reasonable now. because what value you can you put on your conscious intelligence. or alternatively, what amount would you pay to prevent your kid from being stupid?
We live in a society of lowest common denomenators.
Well it seems that mass media and mass advertising (including spam) is by definition dumb. Like you say, mass-x must appeal to the most amount of people in order to be considered *mass*. And since people have such diverse interests, dislikes, etc (recall trying to find a suitable mate), those who are trying to engineer mass-phenomena are really just looking to capture the most amount of people, and one way to do so is to capture a common or widespread desire in the whole sum of people.
As long as the economics of spam mean that there's nearly nothing stopping more people from sending it, virtually guaranteeing that the signal/noise ratio of my mailbox will go down for the rest of time, I'm against it.
Then I gather you are for the "electronic postage" movement, i.e. making people pay to send e-mail?
Because even if spam were illegal, look at speeding. That's illegal, right?
Things that I have noticed personally are elements of resource management from RTS's applying to efficient living in the real world. Critical thinking and decision making can be taken away from nearly any game, from snap-decisions in FPS games to strategic ones in Strategy.
I completely agree that RTS's can develop your critical thinking and decision making skills in allocating scarce resources.
However RPS fanatics miss a key point of real-life managerial decisions--coming up with creative, nonstandard solutions that often would NOT be possible within the framework of a Warcraft game. For example, if you have no more peons, surely the warriors could carry the gold at 1% of the speed. Or many of the uncertainties: people flake out in real life.
At the end of the day, a master RPG player is just a master of making many complex decisions but only in a highly stylized (simplified) system.
Ray Ozzie founded Groove Networks in October 1997. Ray is best known as the creator of Lotus Notes, the world's leading groupware product with more than 100 million users worldwide.
Lotus Notes? oh no. I remember having to use that pos in a previous internship.
Since its founding, the company has obtained more than $155 million in financing from Accel Partners, Microsoft(R) Corporation, Intel Capital, and private investors.
Hmm. this should set off the tinfoil hatters here of MS.
wow, highly interesting. text here in case the Valve mods don't want you to know:
*********
Here's what happened to the silent majority of people that found themselves with steam having downloaded CZ to their machines without any real notification. Story below is in chronological order. The reason I'm making this into the separate thread is because I don't believe something like this belongs in the CZ forum (this is steam issue and has nothing to do with CZ mod) and because I have two questions I'd like to hear the answer to (those are at the bottom of the post).
Here's what happened: Steam started, and suddenly popped up an ad (something I don't recall it doing before). Seeing "CZ" label, I closed the window as soon as it opened. I switch to another window for a few minutes (note: I'm on 10mbps). In about 10 minutes I notice steam icon has changed to "working". I switch to netlimiter bandwith monitoring software to see the bloodsucker having already downloaded 50 megs of "something", yet my game of NS plays just fine. Odd. Also I notice the new "CZ" icon in the games menu, but right click on it only shows "start pre-loading" option. Well I could care less about pre-loading it since I have no intention whatsoever of bying that game, so I just let it be (note to unbelieving teenagers: there was no "preferences" or any option like that. Only standard info options and "start pre-loading". Nothing else.) Okay, open steam preferences in netlimiter, find the address of the update server and choke download to 1KB/sec. No more weird download traffic for a while, as that choke kills the connection. Yay for good anti-bandwith-leech software. About 2 hours later I come back and restarted steam to find that I now have ~40% of counter strike mod installed (that mod was set to "never update" in the preferences and never installed on the machine). Rather pissed at it (I'm on daily traffic quota) I choose to delete the whole thing and set the preferences to "never update" again thinking that would fix it. Next day, evening, start up steam for daily couple hours of NS, and play normally. After I'm done, I notice that steam icon indicates "working" again. Okay, since the update server is still choked to hell externally, no way it could have downloaded downloaded anything weird. Additionally I notice that I now have CS and CZ icons active. WTF? Okay, again, CS preferences, delete local content (almost none of it this time, thanks to the external choke). Nope, error message pop up indicates that "CS cannot be deleted as CZ requires some CS content". As you can figure, at this moment I'm getting beyond pissed, and right click on CZ icon, and finally see that "preferences" option where "start pre-loading used to be"! Allright, click on that, and notice that I have a pretty decent persentage of the game pre-loaded. Delete that content, never update both CZ and CS, and since then it didn't seem to start again. Then again, I don't know what it will try to pre-allocate tomorrow, so steam is now on permanent external 4KB up/down choke just in case.
Now a few questions to people that are actually in contact with valve steam team (not the random forum users please, I ask for input form people that know what they are talking about, as I can make educated guesses just as well as anyone here)
1. Is this sort of thing going to happen in the future? Unlike many teenaged amercan boys seem to think, everyone in this world pays for their bandwith. ISPs pay per download and upload gigabytes, and these costs are covered by customers who pay for their connections. If this sort of useless downloads begin to be used, ISPs will experience greater amount of traffic. Think all those gamers that never really use their computers for any massive downloads suddenly pre-load something like half-life 2, gigabytes worth of data likely, I'm ready to bet any ISP, american, european or australian is going to notice the spike, and someone will have to pay for it. And as always, it will us the customers. 2. With valve hiri
However every time I load up HL I connect to the Steam server. I wonder if these costs add up to negate the initial boost in cash? Keep in mind I have been playing HL since 1999 or so.
How much does this system cost in USD? After reading the Sharp link, I am seriously considering buying this laptop. I would really like an ultraportable laptop and I missed out on that IBM Thinkpad for $1k a while back.
One has to wonder why Valve seems to be spending so much time on Steam. I've seen previous comments speculating that the reason Valve is delaying HL2 is to work on getting Steam 100% correct.
Yet even if that were true, it's hard to see how Steam would really increase the amount of people buying Valve games. Even though I was a hardcore HL1 player, I would not buy any game because of the Steam association. If anything it just seems like a cool market research tool and possibly some DRM in the future. But to spend a few years programming a cool market research/DRM tool?
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only one not busting a nut at the chance of paying $0.99 to download one song? Or $9.99 to download an album? To me this is hardly an improvement over current pricing. Maybe it's just that the stuff I listen to isn't typically available (live trance sets) but I really can't see paying much more than $0.25 for a single downloadble track. Maybe $0.50 if I really enjoyed the artist.
But if people will pay $5-15 to eat out when they can have subsistence at home, then what's up here?
Look. TiVo won't die. So the reviewer says he likes ReplayTV better and that TiVo won't dominate the market in years to come.
But that's ok.
Consider the home PVR market. By all accounts, it's a growing market. In years to come, let's say that it's a $10B market. Even with just 10% market share, that's $1B. Not chump change.
Honestly it's like saying AOL will die. Fading into obscurity, being obsolete, etc are not equivalent to dying. Last time I checked, AOL still had 24.3 million subscribers. All joking aside, let's assume 20m actually pay. That is still $400m/MONTH which is a CASH stream that I dare not to cough at.
Unfortunately, this makes excellent sense for Microsoft. When they put together MSN around 1994, it was obvious that they were trying to get in on this action. MSN never succeeded in terms of its weak user base.
You're right in that it makes perfect sense in 1994. But in the 90's, AOL was a hot ISP despite its dismal service (been there).
But today, in 2004, AOL is a failing ISP as mentioned earlier. And they seem to be losing subscribers and honestly the prospects for growth look dim. So the only thing that can really justify acquisition is iff MS-AOL > MS + AOL.
I'm not really sure what MS-AOL would really do well. You cite a large subscriber base and an outlet for content, but MS's primary business is software, not content. If you suggest that AOL users are MS's target audience for software (computer-impaired folks), then I agree. But this task can easily be accomplished by advertising or "strategic partnerships": AOL could use the cash.
Show me that MS-AOL would be greater than the sum of its parts and you'll win over a convert.
link in parent shows "file not found"
try this link
link in parent shows "file not found"
try this link
Compare this to my roommate, now that I'm here in college. Games are a buffer, a drug, for him. They are, like reading forums, watching movies, and TV, a way to pass time. One of the most telling particular cases of this was when one of the guys down the hall knocked and asked if we wanted to go to dinner with the floor(as we often do). He said no, he just came back from class and had to "unwind." He did come back, but he "unwound" by playing about three hours' worth of Halo multiplayer, followed by dinner and then approximately another three hours. If he finds Halo unappealing at the moment he fidgets a bit and then turns to another of the aformented activities. It's as though he were waiting for something, but I'm not quite sure what. It makes me uneasy to see him do it though, since I know he's not playing with my goals, nor is he really doing any role-playing or vicarious living through simulation. It's just something he *does*, using all of his free time to do it.
I appreciate your comment, I can see myself in that situation. Thanks.
People who criticize video games are hypocrites -- every single one of them. They would never DARE to level a complaint against any of the other trite, meaningless forms of entertainment.
Au contraire. I wouldn't have fared much better watching Cartoon Network 24/7.
Additionally, I think entertainment is good because I learn better when I am having fun learning. I know that by listening to the "uneducational fiction" work To Kill a Mockingbird on audio book that superficially, I don't learn much. But there is depth there; in a subtle way I take an adventure outside myself to learn more about myself. I think outside the box so that perhaps I will come to the conclusion that my "normal" life is interesting and strange and perhaps rather quaint.
The point is that I don't see this kind of depth in the games that I have played, nor the games that my friends play. The only exception I can think of is the web game "Alter Ego". And even when I can argue that there is some value in the game (i.e. Simcity 4) I think that I really could have done better getting off of my ass and heading across the street to Borders to read a book or two.
I have been playing games since elementary school but became quite hardcore by high school. And honestly I do think that through playing games, I lost many chances to become better and grow personally. In a sense, I'd say that I became dumber by playing games.
I don't know about you, but for me playing games is a relatively brainless activity in the sense that the same decisions are made over and over again; and I've excelled, from Counter-strike to poker to Civilization to Simcity to Star Wars Galaxies (made over 25 million creds as a merchant). Yet since my interest is business I should be spending my time developing my curiosity and to think about what is possible than the critical thinking that serves me so well in games.
I wish I wouldn't have started on games, especially when I see my 12-year old brother becoming addicted. Yes, I'm dumber because of games, but I had my fun.
Remember PATCO? No? Well, not too many people do. They were the striking air traffic controller guys back in the 80's. Fired. Boom. Done.
/. that they used the Taft act on the Oakland seaport dock workers, with no ostenible threat to public safety that I can see.
Why? In the interest of public safety. If this situation isn't in the interest of public safety I don't know what is.
I don't think that the Bush administration is even that hesitant to take action against labor unions. I remember reading here on
On the other hand, I feel a bit disapointed in the Bush administration and would not expect them to take control or even bring attention to this situation for it is an election year..
First of all, when in Rome...
I didn't know what the parent poster was talking about but I googled...
When in Rome, do as the Romans do
you can find this feature buying books or finding a mate..
In the Berkeley reshalls, they do warnings/action if you are above two standard deviations of the mean.
Usually that came to about 5GB.
Who knows? The only people who can actually witness the people who both complain about the game and play the game are the people who play the game as well; the forums are subscriber only, so no outsider can really see what the issues are. Instead we have to take the words of the reporters and the developers, which this article clearly shows as being questionable.
I am a subscriber to SWG and I hate it. Rant to follow.
I still have a subscription, and trust me, there is not much intelligent life to be found in the forums. The game really has quite a bit of promise and I would look hopefully to a SWG2. Having said that, the current game is so full of letdowns and frustrating game design.
Yet quitting is tough because despite what you learned in Economics, sunk costs feel like they count. My ex-gf estimates that I spent 100days (i.e. 100 x 24hr) playing the game and having success in SWG is something that brings me back from time to time. Also, if you get really sucked into the SWG world, you may reach a point where you feel like you can relate more with SWG players than persons on your real life. Yes, it can be that addicting.
Do I think that SWG is a big steaming load of crap? In a way, yes. But I also do think that SWG does many things right, which is what makes its shortcomings so painful. I really wish that SWG was a good game.
The problem is a lack of critical thinking, I suggest, and not some arbitary level of intelligence (which is impossible to measure and compare, anyway).
Actually, Americans are quite good at critical thinking. But that is the ONLY type of thinking we are taught in schools. Have you considered that there are other types of thinking? Suppose we were taught the way of thinking that makes things possible instead of slapping things down or merely making evaluations of the subject.
It's like being criticized and having people say "you suck" without any clue as to how to improve the situation.
If interested, there is a guy named Edward De Bono who has written on the subject...
What is the Montessori Method.
The main premises of Montessori education are:
* Children are to be respected as different from adults and as individuals who differ from each other.
* The child possesses an unusual sensitivity and intellectual ability to absorb and learn from his environment that are unlike those of the adult both in quality and capacity.
* The most important years of a child's growth are the first six years of life when unconscious learning is gradually brought to the conscious level.
wow, that ridiculous tuition seems reasonable now. because what value you can you put on your conscious intelligence. or alternatively, what amount would you pay to prevent your kid from being stupid?
Remember when iTunes Music Store became invention of the year?
I think it goes to show that we live in a society where an idea pales in importance to the execution of the idea.
We live in a society of lowest common denomenators.
Well it seems that mass media and mass advertising (including spam) is by definition dumb. Like you say, mass-x must appeal to the most amount of people in order to be considered *mass*. And since people have such diverse interests, dislikes, etc (recall trying to find a suitable mate), those who are trying to engineer mass-phenomena are really just looking to capture the most amount of people, and one way to do so is to capture a common or widespread desire in the whole sum of people.
Think sex, think killing, think violence, think drama, think celebrities, think scandal, think beer, think stupidity.
Or just think.
As long as the economics of spam mean that there's nearly nothing stopping more people from sending it, virtually guaranteeing that the signal/noise ratio of my mailbox will go down for the rest of time, I'm against it.
Then I gather you are for the "electronic postage" movement, i.e. making people pay to send e-mail?
Because even if spam were illegal, look at speeding. That's illegal, right?
Things that I have noticed personally are elements of resource management from RTS's applying to efficient living in the real world. Critical thinking and decision making can be taken away from nearly any game, from snap-decisions in FPS games to strategic ones in Strategy.
I completely agree that RTS's can develop your critical thinking and decision making skills in allocating scarce resources.
However RPS fanatics miss a key point of real-life managerial decisions--coming up with creative, nonstandard solutions that often would NOT be possible within the framework of a Warcraft game. For example, if you have no more peons, surely the warriors could carry the gold at 1% of the speed. Or many of the uncertainties: people flake out in real life.
At the end of the day, a master RPG player is just a master of making many complex decisions but only in a highly stylized (simplified) system.
Hey, PartyPoker has sharpened my poker skills too :)
Ray Ozzie founded Groove Networks in October 1997. Ray is best known as the creator of Lotus Notes, the world's leading groupware product with more than 100 million users worldwide.
Lotus Notes? oh no. I remember having to use that pos in a previous internship.
Since its founding, the company has obtained more than $155 million in financing from Accel Partners, Microsoft(R) Corporation, Intel Capital, and private investors.
Hmm. this should set off the tinfoil hatters here of MS.
wow, highly interesting. text here in case the Valve mods don't want you to know:
*********
Here's what happened to the silent majority of people that found themselves with steam having downloaded CZ to their machines without any real notification. Story below is in chronological order. The reason I'm making this into the separate thread is because I don't believe something like this belongs in the CZ forum (this is steam issue and has nothing to do with CZ mod) and because I have two questions I'd like to hear the answer to (those are at the bottom of the post).
Here's what happened:
Steam started, and suddenly popped up an ad (something I don't recall it doing before). Seeing "CZ" label, I closed the window as soon as it opened. I switch to another window for a few minutes (note: I'm on 10mbps). In about 10 minutes I notice steam icon has changed to "working". I switch to netlimiter bandwith monitoring software to see the bloodsucker having already downloaded 50 megs of "something", yet my game of NS plays just fine. Odd. Also I notice the new "CZ" icon in the games menu, but right click on it only shows "start pre-loading" option. Well I could care less about pre-loading it since I have no intention whatsoever of bying that game, so I just let it be (note to unbelieving teenagers: there was no "preferences" or any option like that. Only standard info options and "start pre-loading". Nothing else.)
Okay, open steam preferences in netlimiter, find the address of the update server and choke download to 1KB/sec. No more weird download traffic for a while, as that choke kills the connection. Yay for good anti-bandwith-leech software.
About 2 hours later I come back and restarted steam to find that I now have ~40% of counter strike mod installed (that mod was set to "never update" in the preferences and never installed on the machine). Rather pissed at it (I'm on daily traffic quota) I choose to delete the whole thing and set the preferences to "never update" again thinking that would fix it.
Next day, evening, start up steam for daily couple hours of NS, and play normally. After I'm done, I notice that steam icon indicates "working" again. Okay, since the update server is still choked to hell externally, no way it could have downloaded downloaded anything weird. Additionally I notice that I now have CS and CZ icons active. WTF? Okay, again, CS preferences, delete local content (almost none of it this time, thanks to the external choke). Nope, error message pop up indicates that "CS cannot be deleted as CZ requires some CS content". As you can figure, at this moment I'm getting beyond pissed, and right click on CZ icon, and finally see that "preferences" option where "start pre-loading used to be"! Allright, click on that, and notice that I have a pretty decent persentage of the game pre-loaded. Delete that content, never update both CZ and CS, and since then it didn't seem to start again. Then again, I don't know what it will try to pre-allocate tomorrow, so steam is now on permanent external 4KB up/down choke just in case.
Now a few questions to people that are actually in contact with valve steam team (not the random forum users please, I ask for input form people that know what they are talking about, as I can make educated guesses just as well as anyone here)
1. Is this sort of thing going to happen in the future? Unlike many teenaged amercan boys seem to think, everyone in this world pays for their bandwith. ISPs pay per download and upload gigabytes, and these costs are covered by customers who pay for their connections. If this sort of useless downloads begin to be used, ISPs will experience greater amount of traffic. Think all those gamers that never really use their computers for any massive downloads suddenly pre-load something like half-life 2, gigabytes worth of data likely, I'm ready to bet any ISP, american, european or australian is going to notice the spike, and someone will have to pay for it. And as always, it will us the customers.
2. With valve hiri
Intelligent, you have won me over.
However every time I load up HL I connect to the Steam server. I wonder if these costs add up to negate the initial boost in cash? Keep in mind I have been playing HL since 1999 or so.
How much does this system cost in USD? After reading the Sharp link, I am seriously considering buying this laptop. I would really like an ultraportable laptop and I missed out on that IBM Thinkpad for $1k a while back.
One has to wonder why Valve seems to be spending so much time on Steam. I've seen previous comments speculating that the reason Valve is delaying HL2 is to work on getting Steam 100% correct.
Yet even if that were true, it's hard to see how Steam would really increase the amount of people buying Valve games. Even though I was a hardcore HL1 player, I would not buy any game because of the Steam association. If anything it just seems like a cool market research tool and possibly some DRM in the future. But to spend a few years programming a cool market research/DRM tool?