Of course rather then be strong armed, the companies could choose to just threaten to go all AMD.
Do you think intel would risk losing say Dell over pricing? And do you think big PC makers are in any sort of risk for poor profit margins?
Recently we put the screws to dell and got 40% discounts on some large orders (dozens of notebooks and monitors). Obviously they have high profit margins if they are OK with taking those cuts.
I see it on the cops tv show every single day. Cop pulls over some young male (either a minority or a redneck) and after talking to him for one second says "Sir I'm going to need you to step out of the car." then after a quick search says "Sir, you are not under arrest, but I am placing you in these handcuffs for your protection.".
Then he searches their car, finds they have warrants and a half a ton of some illegal substance they blame it on their friend who let them use the car and go to jail.
Or they find a willing party in a country that does not care about these laws and give them the files. Then they post on their blog or page that they have deleted all the work, from their computers in accordance to Squares request.
Fast forward about 6 months, the new party announces that because of project X closing they have started project Y to recreate it by themselves. Fast forward another 6 months they release the same finished IP.
The upgrade mill on consoles is a lot easier to take then the pc. I have to upgrade my pc yearly if I want to play the top of the line games and top of the line looks.
Consoles on the other hand have 5+ year lifespans. I also did not buy all those consoles at once. I bought the wii on launch date because it looked like a neat idea and I simply have no choice but to play zelda. I bought the 360 a few months later so I could play online games with my friends who have 360's. GTA4, Soul caliber, fable, etc have made it worth it. Especially when I can rent a 360 game for 5 bucks and play it till I'm bored (vs 60.00 for a pc game that if it sucks has no chance of a return.) So I can play every game that is released,and only buy the ones with real replay value.
The ps3 I bought as month ago. I bought it because my wife wanted a blue ray player, and I figured "Hey I might as well get a ps3 and metal gear." Win win situation. I fully expect to be using these systems to play new video games for years.
The computer side would require the same basic cost upfront, plus as you pointed out a $200+ upgrade cost if I want to keep up with the high end. I found even that when I didn't want the highest end graphics, my ram needed to grow, my cpu was always too slow, the hard disk requirements always grow, and the video cards are always getting bigger.
More importantly then that, I don't have to deal with windows, viruses, spyware, starforce, securerom, etc. Although this trend is starting to waver, I also can typically expect a console game to work out of the box. Many pc games are released when they should still be a beta. But even more so, I can rent the game, see if it is any good, then buy it.
Do I miss PC gaming? A little. There are a few games I would love to play. I want to play dragon age when it comes out. But no mac port and no console ports will mean I'll have to pass. Which is fine with me. I will be buying two pc games for sure (only because they will run on mac) and those are diablo 3 and starcraft 2 (and I can't wait!)
I have bought a lot of mac games as well to help push the mac platform. I bought spore, c&c 3, age of empires III, city of heros mac edition, World of warcraft, C&C generals, C&c tiberium wars, quake 4, Doom 3, and neverwinter nights 2.
But I have found I spend more time downstairs on my 50 inch tv playing with my wii or 360 (especially download content such as old nintendo games or 360 exclusives) then I do on my mac playing the games above.
I guess I'd rather have them ship a nice wine bottle pre-configured and installed rather then let me do all that work.
That's the advantage of cider. It makes it feel like a mac application.
The problem with picasa was that it didn't feel like a linux app. It felt like a windows app running in wine. This is where games have the advantage. They typically don't have you selecting file paths or other things that make it feel like it's not linux native.
EA has solved this problem acceptably on macs. They use cider. It lets them develop for windows and then run acceptable on mac.
The games I have bought that use this run fine on my macbook pro. They have some annoyances (don't play nice with dual screens, etc). But they work and apparently only require they develop their game with this library in mind.
I'd think this same tech could allow you do do the same thing in linux. A small change in the development process lets you use linux, mac, and windows. No specialized versions (In fact people have used cider to make other windows games run on mac), just some testing and sticking to the features cider supports.
I used the money to interact more with the outside world. Took up hobbies that improved my health and introduced me to new things and culture.
Then I broke down and got a 360, wii, and ps3. My gaming itch is not scratched on a 50 inch screen from my lazy boy.
I'll still buy mac games when the mood strikes. But quitting pc gaming allowed me to get rid of windows in an instant.
A much more tangible side effect? I'm off the upgrade mill. I don't have to spend money on new video cards every year, more ram, bigger processors, etc. I recently upgraded my notebook (my wife needed a new computer). I doubled the ram, gained a ton of cpu power and a much larger video card. The net effect is that I can't tell a god damn difference. This is very exciting to me. It means I might not need to spend hundreds of dollars a year on my computer.
I'm so glad I read this article. Typically I don't read gaming articles because they are windows only. But now I found 2 new mac games to try: Geneforge and Caster.
All they did was access a publicly available service on the user's machines.
They did not hack the users, they did not install software on the users machines. All they did was user a service that was provided to the public. Fi the user did not want to provide that service to the public, they should of taken action to block or remove it.
How are they to know that the user is not aware the software is running?
I run a webserver on a computer at my house. Normally it's firewalled, but lets just say for some reason apache adds upnp support and opens up my router so you can get to my webserver.
If you send a HTTP request to my IP address and I respond with a webpage, you just required information from me that I don't want you to have.
Can I use you for this? You just accssed my system in an unauthorized manner. Or is it my fault for not setting my system up properly?
I see the value of a seat belt.I know how it can save lives. I simply fail to see why laws need to be in place to force me to do something that may save my life and will most certainly not harm another human being.
Just like I can see making jumping of a building illegal. You can land on someone and hurt them. I can't see how going to a doctor and asking him to put you down or slitting your wrists in a bathtub could should be illegal.
My insurance says they will not cover me without a seatbelt. So, they won't have to pay a dime if I get hurt. Yet I'll get a ticket for not wearing it because someone has to look out for my safety.
I'm just sick of people telling me what I can do to myself.
I"m not saying seatbelts don't save lives. I'm saying it should be my choice on IF I want to protect myself. It's not your choice. The fact that everything thinks that it is, AND then legislates it is simply wrong.
Also, when it comes to things that can't fail. We don't screw around maintaining it ourselves and need open source. When we use open source for business, we pay companies to support it.
I have a 10 man IT department, we are not going to be responsible for when our mission critical applications fail. We want a 24/7 support contract much much more then we want source code.
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Of course rather then be strong armed, the companies could choose to just threaten to go all AMD.
Do you think intel would risk losing say Dell over pricing? And do you think big PC makers are in any sort of risk for poor profit margins?
Recently we put the screws to dell and got 40% discounts on some large orders (dozens of notebooks and monitors). Obviously they have high profit margins if they are OK with taking those cuts.
Doing business with the EU is just too risky. If I was intel I'd pay my fine and get out.
I like how this is flamebait, but my comment below saying kubuntu sucks is insightful.
I see it on the cops tv show every single day. Cop pulls over some young male (either a minority or a redneck) and after talking to him for one second says "Sir I'm going to need you to step out of the car." then after a quick search says "Sir, you are not under arrest, but I am placing you in these handcuffs for your protection.".
Then he searches their car, finds they have warrants and a half a ton of some illegal substance they blame it on their friend who let them use the car and go to jail.
Kubuntu is not a decent version of KDE. Or KDE really sucks.
If they put half the time into kubuntu that they put into ubuntu it could become a great operating system.
Now all that is needed is a decent version of KDE for ubuntu.
Or they find a willing party in a country that does not care about these laws and give them the files. Then they post on their blog or page that they have deleted all the work, from their computers in accordance to Squares request.
Fast forward about 6 months, the new party announces that because of project X closing they have started project Y to recreate it by themselves. Fast forward another 6 months they release the same finished IP.
This is why I never write legacy code, only progressive forward thinking code!
People who write legacy code are just not thinking of the future.
The upgrade mill on consoles is a lot easier to take then the pc. I have to upgrade my pc yearly if I want to play the top of the line games and top of the line looks.
Consoles on the other hand have 5+ year lifespans. I also did not buy all those consoles at once. I bought the wii on launch date because it looked like a neat idea and I simply have no choice but to play zelda. I bought the 360 a few months later so I could play online games with my friends who have 360's. GTA4, Soul caliber, fable, etc have made it worth it. Especially when I can rent a 360 game for 5 bucks and play it till I'm bored (vs 60.00 for a pc game that if it sucks has no chance of a return.) So I can play every game that is released,and only buy the ones with real replay value.
The ps3 I bought as month ago. I bought it because my wife wanted a blue ray player, and I figured "Hey I might as well get a ps3 and metal gear." Win win situation. I fully expect to be using these systems to play new video games for years.
The computer side would require the same basic cost upfront, plus as you pointed out a $200+ upgrade cost if I want to keep up with the high end. I found even that when I didn't want the highest end graphics, my ram needed to grow, my cpu was always too slow, the hard disk requirements always grow, and the video cards are always getting bigger.
More importantly then that, I don't have to deal with windows, viruses, spyware, starforce, securerom, etc. Although this trend is starting to waver, I also can typically expect a console game to work out of the box. Many pc games are released when they should still be a beta. But even more so, I can rent the game, see if it is any good, then buy it.
Do I miss PC gaming? A little. There are a few games I would love to play. I want to play dragon age when it comes out. But no mac port and no console ports will mean I'll have to pass. Which is fine with me. I will be buying two pc games for sure (only because they will run on mac) and those are diablo 3 and starcraft 2 (and I can't wait!)
I have bought a lot of mac games as well to help push the mac platform. I bought spore, c&c 3, age of empires III, city of heros mac edition, World of warcraft, C&C generals, C&c tiberium wars, quake 4, Doom 3, and neverwinter nights 2.
But I have found I spend more time downstairs on my 50 inch tv playing with my wii or 360 (especially download content such as old nintendo games or 360 exclusives) then I do on my mac playing the games above.
I guess I'd rather have them ship a nice wine bottle pre-configured and installed rather then let me do all that work.
That's the advantage of cider. It makes it feel like a mac application.
The problem with picasa was that it didn't feel like a linux app. It felt like a windows app running in wine. This is where games have the advantage. They typically don't have you selecting file paths or other things that make it feel like it's not linux native.
EA has solved this problem acceptably on macs. They use cider. It lets them develop for windows and then run acceptable on mac.
The games I have bought that use this run fine on my macbook pro. They have some annoyances (don't play nice with dual screens, etc). But they work and apparently only require they develop their game with this library in mind.
I'd think this same tech could allow you do do the same thing in linux. A small change in the development process lets you use linux, mac, and windows. No specialized versions (In fact people have used cider to make other windows games run on mac), just some testing and sticking to the features cider supports.
Yes government intervention is ALWAYS a good thing. That's how we solve problems, just litigate them.
I opted to stop playing computer games.
I used the money to interact more with the outside world. Took up hobbies that improved my health and introduced me to new things and culture.
Then I broke down and got a 360, wii, and ps3. My gaming itch is not scratched on a 50 inch screen from my lazy boy.
I'll still buy mac games when the mood strikes. But quitting pc gaming allowed me to get rid of windows in an instant.
A much more tangible side effect? I'm off the upgrade mill. I don't have to spend money on new video cards every year, more ram, bigger processors, etc. I recently upgraded my notebook (my wife needed a new computer). I doubled the ram, gained a ton of cpu power and a much larger video card. The net effect is that I can't tell a god damn difference. This is very exciting to me. It means I might not need to spend hundreds of dollars a year on my computer.
I'm so glad I read this article. Typically I don't read gaming articles because they are windows only. But now I found 2 new mac games to try: Geneforge and Caster.
Oh and btw, I'm not even a windows user. For the last year I've been using osx. My house no longer has a single machine running windows on it.
We have 2 macbook pro's and a ubuntu desktop that's sole purpose is a backup target.
It was seriously that hard? I typed in one google and found it.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322389
First link.
I can't see how it could possibly be illegal.
All they did was access a publicly available service on the user's machines.
They did not hack the users, they did not install software on the users machines. All they did was user a service that was provided to the public. Fi the user did not want to provide that service to the public, they should of taken action to block or remove it.
How are they to know that the user is not aware the software is running?
I run a webserver on a computer at my house. Normally it's firewalled, but lets just say for some reason apache adds upnp support and opens up my router so you can get to my webserver.
If you send a HTTP request to my IP address and I respond with a webpage, you just required information from me that I don't want you to have.
Can I use you for this? You just accssed my system in an unauthorized manner. Or is it my fault for not setting my system up properly?
Clearly he did not economic damage and should be celebrated instead of punished.
I had this problem. At the time microsoft was offering to mail out FREE cd's with sp2 on them AND some vendors antivirus and firewall.
In fact a quick google shows that microsoft will still mail you a sp3 disk for a small fee ($3.99)
https://om2.one.microsoft.com/opa/start.om?StoreID=CE6E3AFC-6B25-4F99-8913-3E3453AD966D&LocaleCode=en-us&NewTrans=1
So you can install whatever windows your computer came with, not hook it up to the internet, use that cd to install sp3. Then plug in your internet.
Easy as pie.
I see the value of a seat belt.I know how it can save lives. I simply fail to see why laws need to be in place to force me to do something that may save my life and will most certainly not harm another human being.
Just like I can see making jumping of a building illegal. You can land on someone and hurt them. I can't see how going to a doctor and asking him to put you down or slitting your wrists in a bathtub could should be illegal.
When it effects me I give a shit. I don't care how small.
My insurance says they will not cover me without a seatbelt. So, they won't have to pay a dime if I get hurt. Yet I'll get a ticket for not wearing it because someone has to look out for my safety.
I'm just sick of people telling me what I can do to myself.
I"m not saying seatbelts don't save lives. I'm saying it should be my choice on IF I want to protect myself. It's not your choice. The fact that everything thinks that it is, AND then legislates it is simply wrong.
Also, when it comes to things that can't fail. We don't screw around maintaining it ourselves and need open source. When we use open source for business, we pay companies to support it.
I have a 10 man IT department, we are not going to be responsible for when our mission critical applications fail. We want a 24/7 support contract much much more then we want source code.