I'm not condoning it, but I don't really subscribe to Steam for the "ethics" of it -- I just want cheap games easily accessible.
If Microsoft can do that and provide some nice social tools to boot, then I will give them my money. Or GOG, or Humble, or anybody else. (thought the irony is with GOG/Humble is that they are usually Steam activated).
But this is a single instance where you don't. I don't either, for that matter. But the fact that when you do, or you might, that their customer service sucks beyond EA's... that's never good.
Valve is generally only interested in money. So I think HL3 is going to come, but it will come whenever it comes. The problem is that at Valve, Steam is the real moneymaker (even if they released HL3 tomorrow) and their focus is on the cash cow.
I never said Valve wasn't interested in making the game, I just said I'm not interested in talking about things that aren't here yet.
There are a hundred links to the article with a simple search, but just use "Valve customer service score" and search for dates in the last week or so, you should have a plethora. I just chose one at random.
Let's be honest... we love Valve because of Half Life, and GabeN's voice through the years.
That's been gone for a long time. They are a money machine now, and their Steam platform is basically a printing press for said money. Where are the improvements to the Steam platform? When you rank behind EA in customer service, you have to think that there's something amiss.
Don't get me wrong, I love Valve games, I love Steam not because it's a great platform (it's actually pretty shit), but because I have a whole bunch of games at a cheap price. The communication tools ingame are pretty terrible, the game updates themselves are pretty terrible (coming from a CSGO player), and they make exceptions to their marketplace to allow bots to trade, so they can keep a very shady betting scene from the likes of CSGOLounge/DotaLounge going strong. After all, they get a cut of every marketplace transaction. It's also the reason for the big push behind Steam Machines, which are positioned so that the likes of Microsoft and the Xbox/Windows integration to an app store (and games!) never competes. In short, Valve isn't that "indy" group of lovable "gamers who make games" any more -- they are a pretty ruthless business.
Long story short... I don't care about Half Life 3. That's about something that isn't even here yet. I care more about their attention to the games they have out now, engagement with the community (which is how they got this big to start), and a start to a conversation with the gamers. Half Life 3 will come when it comes; I am sure Valve wants to get it out too so they can cash in another big check.
For me, no. I do macro work in Excel that can't be replicated in LibreOffice. I assume many other people as well. I know it CAN be done, but when you need a specific tool there is no denying that Office is simply the best productivity suite.
Until then, people will always want Windows (yes, I know you CAN get away without Office but for practicality people actually do like it). And even then... Windows isn't as bad as it was when Linux was so advocated for. It is stable, boots fast, and is relatively easy to use. Yeah, Windows 8 is a trainwreck but Windows 10 looks very good, and DirectX is a very good API.
But their enterprise focus is extremely helpful. I manage our cloud relationships and dealing with MS as a business entity, and especially when it's concerning legal and regulatory matters, Microsoft is a *pleasure* to work with. Amazon on the other hand, is totally unavailable and seems to want to cater only to companies that start out in basements. That's fine, but given MS' focus on 'cloud' as a whole I don't see it being too long until MS catches up to AWS and even surpasses them.
On the licensing front they are miles ahead; they offer Oracle, SAP, and other things that AWS does not in prebuilt VMs. And to be frank... I have no issues with the service as I can compare and contrast them with AWS which we also use heavily. Only downside is that RedHat isn't offered at Azure, but given the per hour/minute licensing costs we've opted to look more heavily into CentOS.
I think Sinofsky envisioned himself AS a "Steve Jobs" type, and that's what he wanted as his legacy. He was stubborn in his principles because he did the same thing that Jobs did -- I am right, and customers are stupid.
In Jobs view it works out well, because his philosophy was one that won over customers. Sinofsky had no prior wins in the consumer or enterprise space, he was a cog in the machine helping push big products along. When he had the spotlight, he felt it was his duty to deliver his vision, rather than what Microsoft was known for -- focus grouping and telemetry reading the environment, which to their benefit, works very well in the enterprise space.
I have heard rumors from folks that work at MS that he was basically blinded by his vision, and didn't want to listen to anybody. The result as we all know, is Windows 8.
Windows 10 looks to be shaping up quite well, and that they are dumping RT isn't a big surprise; it's kind of relevant given that Intel/MS have huge synergies as well as the fact that Intel is making a great dent in the mobile space versus the ARM designs.
I have an x86 Atom Tablet that gets me plenty of battery life and works exceptionally well with Windows 8. I'll be glad to upgrade to Windows 10.
Gone are the days of instable, crashing Windows. Linux was a great idea for an alternative desktop for its stability, but nowadays there's really no issue with keeping a Windows system stable and running without any issue. Games run exceptionally well, and all the supporting software to go along with it (ie, TwitchTV streaming tools, chat, music, etc) are generally Windows only. Can you get things that run on Linux as well? Sure... but you're basically running Linux because you want to advocate for that as a platform; not because Windows is worse.
The only folks who seem to really be advocating for Linux are Valve; and they have a vested business interest in doing so since Microsoft has a competing "Store" to their own, that ultimately could even provide some gaming software among other things. With the tie-ins to Xbox Live with upcoming Windows 10 and shared achievements, etc, this is even a bigger threat. So there's easy understanding why THEY are doing it. But everybody else? I honestly don't know.
I am perfectly content with a Windows box for gaming and *nix for some dev/database/virtualization work. These are tools. I fail to see why people keep trying to put a square peg into a round hole and shoehorn Linux into things that it doesn't perform best at.
Simple fact is that now, it costs less for an OEM to use Windows than it does Android.
The big allure of Android was how cheap it was compared to Windows, and it's why it took off so well. I don't know that it will last if Microsoft can give the entire thing away for free. But this is how they won the console wars during the era of the 360, by undercutting the cost and also developing the software at a greatly increased rate.
If Windows 10 is any indication, I think Microsoft is actually doing a good job for once in a long while.
If you have the Google Play services including the Store and Music, then you are charged to use those.
In comparison and somewhat ironically, Windows is completely free for devices under 8", including all the services and store. And with new OEMs now pushing that as well (since they made it so Windows can run on exact same Android hardware), perhaps we will see some competition to Android on the OEM side. Or not. Either way, the point is that Android is not really free.
Once upon a time they were a great game developer who made exceptional games with a great story, and tied in well with the community to really expand that.
With Steam being the 800lb gorilla in terms of online distribution, now getting a lot of competition from others ala Origin, UPlay, GMG, etc, they have doubled down and basically made Steam the most important piece of software in their portfolio. Sorry folks, don't think we will see Half Life 3 any time soon.
Their business model has changed as well. They went from selling copies of games to becoming a distribution network and "item shop" with the skins they sell in games like CSGO/DOTA. CSGO has not received any real changes despite the game being in dire need of them (browse HLTV or Reddit for any evidence), at the development level. Valve employees are allowed to choose which products to work on, and since DOTA is a cash cow the most effort is spent on that, and on Steam itself.
Don't get me wrong -- I really love Steam. I'm the proud owner of 300+ games which I mostly don't play:) However the idea that Steam is an amazing platform is just ridiculous. It has poor support for most everything, it's poorly designed, the social features are atrocious, etc etc. But it provides a stable base for a delivery platform, and that has been its strength, and also the reason Valve has succeeded. I am glad that Steam look at Twitch as a competitor, but making it so that their streaming is only accessible through the Steam client is well -- a terrible decision. The social features that exist within Steam are subpar at best, so the benefit of the integration is lost on me. Twitch offers a lot more, and with the API they have there are a lot of neat tools that people have already made to take advantage of it in a larger way.
Honestly, I hope Steam's streaming platform falls flat on its face; perhaps it will enlighten them that competition is going to be there, and they should get back to the things that make them great -- making great games, staying engaged with the community (which has fallen off considerably in the last few years), and developing Steam to be a much more premiere community rather than a game library.
I've been on Slashdot for a long time and always heard that this is the year of Linux on the desktop. It's not this year, or next, and it never will be.
Frankly, I am happy to run Linux to power servers or even for development work. It excels in those areas. However, the sad reality for our resident Windows haters is that well... Windows isn't that bad any more. It doesn't crash. Yeah, Windows 8 is a mess on the UI side but on the performance side, it's exceptional. It can run as a server quite well. IIS is a pretty good web server. SQL Server is also pretty good. And Visual Studio is still arguably the best IDE (though I can't speak from personal experience on this).
So what is the benefit of Linux gaming? Well, none, really. The real benefit is to instigate a bunch of Linux lovers to bring love to SteamOS and as a result, Valve, so that Microsoft never gets off the ground their 'app store'. Because that's the true reason of the discontent by Valve, isn't it? It's not that Windows is "so bad" any more, it's that Valve, which is basically a monopoly, is in threat of having that monopoly broken by Microsoft (kind of ironic if you think about it).
And that's the reality. If you like Linux, that's great. But you can't use the argument of Windows being that bad any more, which is WHY you like Linux. It's simply not true. I'm more of the opinion that the requirement you have should dictate the use of the right tool. And this is a case of forcing the wrong tool (Linux) to match requirements of playing games that seems backwards. But not being a Windows lover or hater, or Linux lover or hater, I suppose I'm in a unique camp that way.
Standard journalism often has to reflect on the articles they have written in the past in order to look at their viewpoints and editorial on subjects in the past, explain how those might have changed, and then reflect that in the new editorial they are writing.
Perhaps it's not just tech journalism. It's probably just ALL journalistic standards that have basically gone down in the era of FOX news and infotainment, that we don't pretend to want that intellectual honesty that perhaps once was there. The press is complicit in most things for access -- it's true of Apple's press events (and how Walt Mossberg fawns over anything Apple does), as much as it is true of traditional press fawning over the sitting President in the hopes of better access.
The Verge isn't at fault because they are Apple fanboys; we are at fault for not looking at them with a harsher eye. As Bill Clinton said, people are now more accepting than ever, unless they have a viewpoint they disagree with. And everybody LOVES Apple. It's just not cool not to (apparently).
Of course I'm a weird guy with a Windows phone because I wanted a better camera (at the time), so what the hell do I know...
So in my basement I have a 36U HP server rack that I got off of Craigslist for around $200. It is 350 lbs and getting it home was a huge challenge; the person who buys my home will inherit this rack; I think next time I do this I'll get a freestanding rack that's a lot cheaper and easier to set up.
Anyway that aside... I have a TP-LINK VPN router that intakes my cable modem connection (100/50 -- Optimum is great!). That plugs into a Dell 48 Port switch on a single VLAN (no need for multiples). I have an i5 server with SSD and 2x2TB drives in mirror that acts as my HTPC and Media Center (the Microsoft one). Attached to that is a Ceton card that records all my TV, and distributes that to two XBoxes in my family room and bedroom (so I can watch live TV and DVR). That setup is amazing. Additionally I have Media Browser (http://www.mediabrowser.tv) running to 3 Roku boxes in the family room, bedroom, and living room.
Every bedroom in my house gets two ethernet jacks. The kitchen and family room also have two. I also run Unifi POE Access Points on each floor of my house (they are great) to do my wireless; I don't have a wireless router.
That's about it... it's a great setup that saves me a lot of money on my cable bill (no boxes), provides a lot of flexibility for content I watch and stream, and it's all backed up to a cloud backup, Crashplan.
Just as it pertains to cloud, really. Their offerings are pretty terrible and far behind others in the space. If you're still in a datacenter with physical equipment, it's still a great player.
Is heavily marketed and works like absolute dog shit.
Yes, they have a great hypervisor. The rest of their products? Total, and utter shit. They can't compete on so many fronts they are running to provide anything with "Cloud" in it so people buy it. vCloud Automation Center. AirWatch. CloudVolumes. Horizon.
It's going to be interesting to watch a company who sat on its laurels while the cloud rush started and now is running to try to catch up.
If you are tracking a company's performance by its stock price it's kind of laughable; share holders are a mentally unstable bunch, and unless you sacrifice your company for short term profits they really don't get excited. There is no long term outlook for companies any more, and MS' long term strategy I think, is getting stronger. The cutting of the 18k employees is just showing they are narrowing their focus and really concentrating on the areas they think will be big; cloud, and mobile.
And as somebody in the cloud space myself (for work), I look at Azure with great interest because of their investment into it. We are a huge Microsoft customer already, and we can leverage that size and contract for our benefit with Azure and licensing; Amazon can't beat them on that, and if I get the enterprise tools I want... it's a no brainer. AWS has a lot of features, but the vast majority of them aren't useful at this point for our needs... we need pure infrastructure, autoscaling, and database services -- all of which are available through Azure, and all of which are available for a lower cost.
Scholarship money is heavily designed to give the student the idea of a "price break" when making a choice in school. Now this school is adding a bullshit scholarship to play video games to lure a lot of students there with the idea that "Oh, I can play video games and get paid!"
No, you're not getting paid for it. You are getting a coupon for the university so they get your business, rather than you choosing another university that might be a better fit, or cheaper for you.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not condoning it, but I don't really subscribe to Steam for the "ethics" of it -- I just want cheap games easily accessible.
If Microsoft can do that and provide some nice social tools to boot, then I will give them my money. Or GOG, or Humble, or anybody else. (thought the irony is with GOG/Humble is that they are usually Steam activated).
Or Microsoft's app store -- which is poised to compete with them in the combination of Xbox into their marketplace.
Will be interesting times, regardless.
Conversely, I really haven't had any issues with Origin's service either. And I play a bit of BF4 not to mention Mass Effect and some other games.
Granted my usage of Steam is far higher.
But this is a single instance where you don't. I don't either, for that matter. But the fact that when you do, or you might, that their customer service sucks beyond EA's... that's never good.
I think you misread it, then.
Valve is generally only interested in money. So I think HL3 is going to come, but it will come whenever it comes. The problem is that at Valve, Steam is the real moneymaker (even if they released HL3 tomorrow) and their focus is on the cash cow.
I never said Valve wasn't interested in making the game, I just said I'm not interested in talking about things that aren't here yet.
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/...
There are a hundred links to the article with a simple search, but just use "Valve customer service score" and search for dates in the last week or so, you should have a plethora. I just chose one at random.
Let's be honest... we love Valve because of Half Life, and GabeN's voice through the years.
That's been gone for a long time. They are a money machine now, and their Steam platform is basically a printing press for said money. Where are the improvements to the Steam platform? When you rank behind EA in customer service, you have to think that there's something amiss.
Don't get me wrong, I love Valve games, I love Steam not because it's a great platform (it's actually pretty shit), but because I have a whole bunch of games at a cheap price. The communication tools ingame are pretty terrible, the game updates themselves are pretty terrible (coming from a CSGO player), and they make exceptions to their marketplace to allow bots to trade, so they can keep a very shady betting scene from the likes of CSGOLounge/DotaLounge going strong. After all, they get a cut of every marketplace transaction. It's also the reason for the big push behind Steam Machines, which are positioned so that the likes of Microsoft and the Xbox/Windows integration to an app store (and games!) never competes. In short, Valve isn't that "indy" group of lovable "gamers who make games" any more -- they are a pretty ruthless business.
Long story short... I don't care about Half Life 3. That's about something that isn't even here yet. I care more about their attention to the games they have out now, engagement with the community (which is how they got this big to start), and a start to a conversation with the gamers. Half Life 3 will come when it comes; I am sure Valve wants to get it out too so they can cash in another big check.
For me, no. I do macro work in Excel that can't be replicated in LibreOffice. I assume many other people as well. I know it CAN be done, but when you need a specific tool there is no denying that Office is simply the best productivity suite.
When Linux has a worthy Office competitor.
Until then, people will always want Windows (yes, I know you CAN get away without Office but for practicality people actually do like it). And even then... Windows isn't as bad as it was when Linux was so advocated for. It is stable, boots fast, and is relatively easy to use. Yeah, Windows 8 is a trainwreck but Windows 10 looks very good, and DirectX is a very good API.
But their enterprise focus is extremely helpful. I manage our cloud relationships and dealing with MS as a business entity, and especially when it's concerning legal and regulatory matters, Microsoft is a *pleasure* to work with. Amazon on the other hand, is totally unavailable and seems to want to cater only to companies that start out in basements. That's fine, but given MS' focus on 'cloud' as a whole I don't see it being too long until MS catches up to AWS and even surpasses them.
On the licensing front they are miles ahead; they offer Oracle, SAP, and other things that AWS does not in prebuilt VMs. And to be frank... I have no issues with the service as I can compare and contrast them with AWS which we also use heavily. Only downside is that RedHat isn't offered at Azure, but given the per hour/minute licensing costs we've opted to look more heavily into CentOS.
I think Sinofsky envisioned himself AS a "Steve Jobs" type, and that's what he wanted as his legacy. He was stubborn in his principles because he did the same thing that Jobs did -- I am right, and customers are stupid.
In Jobs view it works out well, because his philosophy was one that won over customers. Sinofsky had no prior wins in the consumer or enterprise space, he was a cog in the machine helping push big products along. When he had the spotlight, he felt it was his duty to deliver his vision, rather than what Microsoft was known for -- focus grouping and telemetry reading the environment, which to their benefit, works very well in the enterprise space.
They axed Steve Sinofsky.
I have heard rumors from folks that work at MS that he was basically blinded by his vision, and didn't want to listen to anybody. The result as we all know, is Windows 8.
Windows 10 looks to be shaping up quite well, and that they are dumping RT isn't a big surprise; it's kind of relevant given that Intel/MS have huge synergies as well as the fact that Intel is making a great dent in the mobile space versus the ARM designs.
I have an x86 Atom Tablet that gets me plenty of battery life and works exceptionally well with Windows 8. I'll be glad to upgrade to Windows 10.
Gone are the days of instable, crashing Windows. Linux was a great idea for an alternative desktop for its stability, but nowadays there's really no issue with keeping a Windows system stable and running without any issue. Games run exceptionally well, and all the supporting software to go along with it (ie, TwitchTV streaming tools, chat, music, etc) are generally Windows only. Can you get things that run on Linux as well? Sure... but you're basically running Linux because you want to advocate for that as a platform; not because Windows is worse.
The only folks who seem to really be advocating for Linux are Valve; and they have a vested business interest in doing so since Microsoft has a competing "Store" to their own, that ultimately could even provide some gaming software among other things. With the tie-ins to Xbox Live with upcoming Windows 10 and shared achievements, etc, this is even a bigger threat. So there's easy understanding why THEY are doing it. But everybody else? I honestly don't know.
I am perfectly content with a Windows box for gaming and *nix for some dev/database/virtualization work. These are tools. I fail to see why people keep trying to put a square peg into a round hole and shoehorn Linux into things that it doesn't perform best at.
Simple fact is that now, it costs less for an OEM to use Windows than it does Android.
The big allure of Android was how cheap it was compared to Windows, and it's why it took off so well. I don't know that it will last if Microsoft can give the entire thing away for free. But this is how they won the console wars during the era of the 360, by undercutting the cost and also developing the software at a greatly increased rate.
If Windows 10 is any indication, I think Microsoft is actually doing a good job for once in a long while.
Of course not -- but access to the MS services (like their "store") is included. It is not with Android.
Android is really NOT free.
Plain vanilla (and useless) Android is free.
If you have the Google Play services including the Store and Music, then you are charged to use those.
In comparison and somewhat ironically, Windows is completely free for devices under 8", including all the services and store. And with new OEMs now pushing that as well (since they made it so Windows can run on exact same Android hardware), perhaps we will see some competition to Android on the OEM side. Or not. Either way, the point is that Android is not really free.
The way I read it is that you need Steam to watch any matches.
Has fundamentally changed.
Once upon a time they were a great game developer who made exceptional games with a great story, and tied in well with the community to really expand that.
With Steam being the 800lb gorilla in terms of online distribution, now getting a lot of competition from others ala Origin, UPlay, GMG, etc, they have doubled down and basically made Steam the most important piece of software in their portfolio. Sorry folks, don't think we will see Half Life 3 any time soon.
Their business model has changed as well. They went from selling copies of games to becoming a distribution network and "item shop" with the skins they sell in games like CSGO/DOTA. CSGO has not received any real changes despite the game being in dire need of them (browse HLTV or Reddit for any evidence), at the development level. Valve employees are allowed to choose which products to work on, and since DOTA is a cash cow the most effort is spent on that, and on Steam itself.
Don't get me wrong -- I really love Steam. I'm the proud owner of 300+ games which I mostly don't play :) However the idea that Steam is an amazing platform is just ridiculous. It has poor support for most everything, it's poorly designed, the social features are atrocious, etc etc. But it provides a stable base for a delivery platform, and that has been its strength, and also the reason Valve has succeeded. I am glad that Steam look at Twitch as a competitor, but making it so that their streaming is only accessible through the Steam client is well -- a terrible decision. The social features that exist within Steam are subpar at best, so the benefit of the integration is lost on me. Twitch offers a lot more, and with the API they have there are a lot of neat tools that people have already made to take advantage of it in a larger way.
Honestly, I hope Steam's streaming platform falls flat on its face; perhaps it will enlighten them that competition is going to be there, and they should get back to the things that make them great -- making great games, staying engaged with the community (which has fallen off considerably in the last few years), and developing Steam to be a much more premiere community rather than a game library.
I've been on Slashdot for a long time and always heard that this is the year of Linux on the desktop. It's not this year, or next, and it never will be.
Frankly, I am happy to run Linux to power servers or even for development work. It excels in those areas. However, the sad reality for our resident Windows haters is that well... Windows isn't that bad any more. It doesn't crash. Yeah, Windows 8 is a mess on the UI side but on the performance side, it's exceptional. It can run as a server quite well. IIS is a pretty good web server. SQL Server is also pretty good. And Visual Studio is still arguably the best IDE (though I can't speak from personal experience on this).
So what is the benefit of Linux gaming? Well, none, really. The real benefit is to instigate a bunch of Linux lovers to bring love to SteamOS and as a result, Valve, so that Microsoft never gets off the ground their 'app store'. Because that's the true reason of the discontent by Valve, isn't it? It's not that Windows is "so bad" any more, it's that Valve, which is basically a monopoly, is in threat of having that monopoly broken by Microsoft (kind of ironic if you think about it).
And that's the reality. If you like Linux, that's great. But you can't use the argument of Windows being that bad any more, which is WHY you like Linux. It's simply not true. I'm more of the opinion that the requirement you have should dictate the use of the right tool. And this is a case of forcing the wrong tool (Linux) to match requirements of playing games that seems backwards. But not being a Windows lover or hater, or Linux lover or hater, I suppose I'm in a unique camp that way.
Is that it's well... rudimentary and crude.
Standard journalism often has to reflect on the articles they have written in the past in order to look at their viewpoints and editorial on subjects in the past, explain how those might have changed, and then reflect that in the new editorial they are writing.
Perhaps it's not just tech journalism. It's probably just ALL journalistic standards that have basically gone down in the era of FOX news and infotainment, that we don't pretend to want that intellectual honesty that perhaps once was there. The press is complicit in most things for access -- it's true of Apple's press events (and how Walt Mossberg fawns over anything Apple does), as much as it is true of traditional press fawning over the sitting President in the hopes of better access.
The Verge isn't at fault because they are Apple fanboys; we are at fault for not looking at them with a harsher eye. As Bill Clinton said, people are now more accepting than ever, unless they have a viewpoint they disagree with. And everybody LOVES Apple. It's just not cool not to (apparently).
Of course I'm a weird guy with a Windows phone because I wanted a better camera (at the time), so what the hell do I know...
So in my basement I have a 36U HP server rack that I got off of Craigslist for around $200. It is 350 lbs and getting it home was a huge challenge; the person who buys my home will inherit this rack; I think next time I do this I'll get a freestanding rack that's a lot cheaper and easier to set up.
Anyway that aside... I have a TP-LINK VPN router that intakes my cable modem connection (100/50 -- Optimum is great!). That plugs into a Dell 48 Port switch on a single VLAN (no need for multiples). I have an i5 server with SSD and 2x2TB drives in mirror that acts as my HTPC and Media Center (the Microsoft one). Attached to that is a Ceton card that records all my TV, and distributes that to two XBoxes in my family room and bedroom (so I can watch live TV and DVR). That setup is amazing. Additionally I have Media Browser (http://www.mediabrowser.tv) running to 3 Roku boxes in the family room, bedroom, and living room.
Every bedroom in my house gets two ethernet jacks. The kitchen and family room also have two. I also run Unifi POE Access Points on each floor of my house (they are great) to do my wireless; I don't have a wireless router.
That's about it... it's a great setup that saves me a lot of money on my cable bill (no boxes), provides a lot of flexibility for content I watch and stream, and it's all backed up to a cloud backup, Crashplan.
Just as it pertains to cloud, really. Their offerings are pretty terrible and far behind others in the space. If you're still in a datacenter with physical equipment, it's still a great player.
Is heavily marketed and works like absolute dog shit.
Yes, they have a great hypervisor. The rest of their products? Total, and utter shit. They can't compete on so many fronts they are running to provide anything with "Cloud" in it so people buy it. vCloud Automation Center. AirWatch. CloudVolumes. Horizon.
It's going to be interesting to watch a company who sat on its laurels while the cloud rush started and now is running to try to catch up.
If you are tracking a company's performance by its stock price it's kind of laughable; share holders are a mentally unstable bunch, and unless you sacrifice your company for short term profits they really don't get excited. There is no long term outlook for companies any more, and MS' long term strategy I think, is getting stronger. The cutting of the 18k employees is just showing they are narrowing their focus and really concentrating on the areas they think will be big; cloud, and mobile.
And as somebody in the cloud space myself (for work), I look at Azure with great interest because of their investment into it. We are a huge Microsoft customer already, and we can leverage that size and contract for our benefit with Azure and licensing; Amazon can't beat them on that, and if I get the enterprise tools I want... it's a no brainer. AWS has a lot of features, but the vast majority of them aren't useful at this point for our needs... we need pure infrastructure, autoscaling, and database services -- all of which are available through Azure, and all of which are available for a lower cost.
This is a marketing gimmick.
Scholarship money is heavily designed to give the student the idea of a "price break" when making a choice in school. Now this school is adding a bullshit scholarship to play video games to lure a lot of students there with the idea that "Oh, I can play video games and get paid!"
No, you're not getting paid for it. You are getting a coupon for the university so they get your business, rather than you choosing another university that might be a better fit, or cheaper for you.