Microsoft has enough resources to cater for every market segment it wants to be involved in.
There's absolutely no doubt in saying that Linux has always needed an answer to Windows gaming. Windows gaming is, as I see it, the biggest obstacle to mass market adoption of Linux. Linux does everything I could ever ask for... except game as well as Windows.
OS X... The Mac is now directly targetting the Linux niche market - everyone who has a PC but doesn't want to run Windows, the answer is no longer Linux, it's OS X. Steve Jobs has never been seen as an advocate of gaming, otherwise there would have been a bigger push on making the Mac a dedicated gaming machine. This could be a bit of a shortcoming given the huge surge in gaming in the general populace that has taken hold over the last decade.
So I'm not sure what Mr AC is trying to say between the lines, but yes. MS is more gaming oriented than Linux or Mac. This seems like a very intelligent strategy given the proportion of gamers out there, allowing MS to outcompete Linux and Mac in that market.
I've been with PC gaming since, well, Sim City sat on a 3 1/4" floppy disk in my old 286.
And the gameplay today is no better than it was all the way back then. Heck, DooM III in it's entirety had fewer monsters than some levels of DooM2! What about games like Elite? The dramatic storyline of Wing Commander? Freelancer just didn't compare.
I will say that improved graphics are important! Not as important as decent gameplay, that's what keeps you playing the game and it's what makes you buy the sequel. The instant gratification age of the consoles is upon us all, however, and eye candy is being substituted for playability.
However, eternal optimist that I am, I feel that decent graphics and gameplay can co-exist. For example, whether you like them or not, games like Morrowind and World of Warcraft are very good examples of how to make a game and have compelling gameplay as well as decent graphics that significantly enhance the experience. Quite often in Morrowind I would turn off the map and just look at the scenery, the roads, mountain ranges and rivers and decide to explore by following the geography just to see what was on the other side. GTA is another good example of really immersive gameplay and okay graphics (Well, the graphics are quite dated now).
This should never have happened, it should not be possible. All servers should be protected by firewall from the internet, thus preventing nasty external attacks. At the very least, in case it's a web server/email server/ftp server as well as a file server, you should only allow those ports through the firewall.
Or, alternatively, place those functions onto a different server. Internet functions like WWW, FTP and so on are generally better served from a linux server, and those servers tend to have lower hardware requirements, so cost should not be an issue.
There is no excuse for shoddy security when it is such a basic thing to correctly install a firewall to protect your environment.
It makes sense that computer games, like any other form of media, should have a market representation similiar to other media. Just look at childrens books, childrens movies, childrens TV shows... all quite a niche market.
It hasn't been in the past, but this is only evidence that the market is still growing and maturing.
The same follows for women in gaming. Women don't necessarily like watching action movies, so why should the same women be expected to like playing action games? As more women become involved in the industry they will be able to shape it towards the kinds of games they enjoy playing.
That's great advice but it takes a lot of maturity to understand that you are responsible for your own life (and the outcomes of the decisions you make!)
Children (won't someone please think about them?) (and immature adults for that matter) are quite impressionable, and they tend to like the steaming material that the mass media shovels at them.
So the real question, I think, is "How much responsibility does each of us have to ensure that the whole of society does not continue to perpetrate these values?". And of course, developing, playing and advocating computer games with barbie-doll figured girls and action-hero styled guys is an example of perpetrating the aforementioned values.
I believe they're classifying an event where a fee is charged to play the game as non-private, which means they consider it to be a public performance.
You can't do a public performance using trademarks and copyright from another organisation without permission. Goes back to my George Lucas analogy.
You can't do a play about midichlorians and jedi for profit without paying a licensing fee to Lucas, the copyright holder.
Now, buying WW rulebooks is no more or less of a license than buying a Star Wars DVD grants you the right to make profit using the terms "Jar Jar Binks" and "Watto".
The only part where it's even in the slightest hazy is where you classify a game held at a public venue like a convention and charge money for it as a "performance" rather than anything else. But, in the same way you can't broadcast privately owned DVD's in a public forum, they seem to be legally entitled to do what they are.
WW is not retroactively raising the price of the books. I know this is slashdot and people don't read the articles or anything... but anyway.
If it helps you to understand, it's like a franchise, say, Subway.
Now, you can (presumably) buy the instructions from Subway from the head office, on how to make subs and cookies and all the other stuff they sell.
This means you can go out and start making subs and selling them under the subway brand with subway prices and everything, right? And they won't expect anything more from you, right?
Wrong. As a franchisee, you can own the book and read it, and probably even make subs at home for yourself (and maybe a few friends) to eat - but if you want to put up the subway store and sell to the public for profit, you'll need to pay subway a fee - for using their intellectual property to make a profit for yourself.
Furthermore, they can decide to raise or alter the ongoing fees for the use of their trademarks and IP. Even after you bought that first instruction book from them.
The restrictions WW asked for were far beyond the scope of copyright law. The only way they could legally force obedience is to get signed contracts before every sale- and with the number of rulebooks out already, it's too late for that.
Actually, go look at a WW rulebook before you say that. You'll see a familiar line in the copyright blurb. It'll say "All Rights Reserved". Guess what that means?
Is that unfair? You decide. But one thing is for sure, White Wolf is entitled to do it.
Here's the really interesting part. It is "infringing" copyright to run the game at home (insofar that you are using WW copyrighted and trademarked terms).
The difference however, is that WW encourages you to do it, and doesn't actively chase down people in their homes.
You can make a tool and you can sell it on the proviso that people pay you a fee to use it. You can charge however you like, you can pay a intial purchase cost and an ongoing rent, rent only, or whatever you like.
Now, what prevents this kind of thing from becoming rampant is our good friend the free market economy. You make a $5/month screwdriver, and the guy next door is just going to make a $5 own it for life screwdriver. Who's going to win that price battle, do you think?
The hard part for people to accept about this is that White Wolf own the IP that you're borrowing, and they want to change their marketing model slightly. World of Warcraft is a good example of this. Once upon a time you used to buy a computer game and play it all you wanted. Now, with MMOG's, you pay rent too. White Wolf wants this kind of revenue stream, and they're entitled to charge you for it.
As a free consumer, you get to vote with your wallet. Don't buy their stuff if you don't like the price. I sure won't be.
That's not a very good analogy. White Wolf own the copyright on things like "Camarilla" and "Brujah" and "Malkavian". Like any copyright owner they have a right to tell you when you can and can't use those terms and concepts and storylines in a public forum to make profit.
It's kind of like making a play about Jedi and Gunguns and Midichlorians and then charging the public to go see it without permission from George Lucas. If I did that I'd also be expecting a letter from his lawyers pretty soon.
Likewise, Anne McAffrey has been pretty hard about closing down online RPG's based around Pern. You simply can't run one without her approval or she sends out the lawyers. Those aren't even for profit!
But going back to your lovely analogy, the "how to make a movie" book very likely doesn't contain any copyrighted material that you would then introduce into your own movie. Generic terms like cameras, lighting, sound stages and so on clearly aren't copyright, so the authors would have no right to try and tell you that they were the copyright owners. However, and here's the fun part we all hate - if there was a technique listed in the book, a particular process that was quite specific and met all the other requirements that it was under a Patent - then yes, if you made a movie using a patented process without permission you could well be off to court.
That, more or less, is how IP works. Disagree however much you will, the owners of Patents and Copyrights can do whatever the heck they want with their own stuff!
Now, having said all that, there is nothing stopping you from just making up your own rules on how to pretend to be a vampire.
What White Wolf are saying is that if people run and use White Wolf games at conventions and charge people money to play for a *profit*, then they need to obtain a license to make said profit using White Wolf's material as the key engine for doing so. You can still play not-for-profit for the once off cost of buying the source material.
I actually think that is fair, if people are using White Wolf IP to make a profit, White Wolf deserves the right to ask for a cut. Whether they will make some cash or not is a different question.
The problem? RPG's are wholly creative works so all anyone needs to do is just make up their own free system and use that instead. Kinda like open source software coding but much easier to do.
Heck, D20 system is "open" in that WoTC encourages people to make and publish (for money!) rules and content based on the core system, and they don't ask for anything in return other than the basic acknowledgement.
I RTFA and it made some good points, and most importantly, they were constructive!
The author implies that one of the major reason Firefox was successful is the ease of migration. And it's true! Firefox will seamlessly "borrow" MSIE settings while leaving IE there in case you want to go back. This makes it a very comfortable transition.
Now, I don't think I'm the only windows user who thinks it would be excellent if I could install Linux and have it inherit at least some of the information from Windows. Now, I've seen enough Linux password changers for Windows to know Linux can crack open and interrogate the Windows registry.
Some really valid ideas in the article. Will people take notice? I hope so.
Ahh... yes... you don't see the big deal because you disabled it.
The ooooh-ahhhh factor is when you're running 1600x1200 8xFSAA 8 tap aniso or better. (Difficult on a laptop, but laptops are not meant for gaming). And yes they put 3D accelerators in laptops, but those are regarded in some circles as a bit of a joke.
So yes, especially high detail is the whole point, otherwise the money you spent on that laptop would be better spent on a PS/2 or XBox or Gamecube, depending on your preferences.
If you look at the benchmarks, the performance of HL2 on the ATI hardware at the time is significantly better than the nVidia hardware at the time.
I can think of no other game that shares this disparity, generally nVidia's offerings are on par or better than the ATI ones across the board.
There's only one reason for such a marked difference in the performance of HL2 on ATI gear compared to other software running on ATI - performance optimisation. That's the nicest way to put it. Sabotaging nVidia is another, more tinfoil hat way to look at it.
So basically what the Inq. is suggesting (and providing evidence for) is that ATI paid Valve to ensure that Half Life 2 made ATI cards look much better than they actually are (compared to how they run with other games).
To ward off ATI fanboy flames: I own an ATI 9600XT. It wasn't the best card available at the time but it did offer the best price-performance when I bought it. I bought it without a Half Life 2 voucher.
This is pretty stupid. Windows boxes are firewalled by default (all new Windows XP/2K3 installs are firewall on by default. All Windows XP boxes connected by default - again, all of them - to Windows Update have SP2 installed and the firewall enabled). Sure there are some legacy PC's out there running Windows without protection - but we've already established that this is lunacy, just like not firewalling your Linux box is also lunacy.
What is the author trying to prove exactly? All people who go deep sea diving without basic scuba equipment drown within 12 minutes? Shock horror omg wtf?
This isn't news, it's anti-MS FUD. Why didn't the author mention that a properly protected (firewalled, AV'd) windows box will stay unviolated on the internet for as long as a properly protected (firewalled, AV'd) linux box wil? Because that isn't Slashdot's traditional anti-MS FUD, that's why.
Slashdot used to be a respectable news source. Dead horse flogging propaganda like this only removes journalistic credibility from slashdot.
Doing your research is vital, as they say, a fool and his money...
There are two major reasons for this pricing, as you suggest they are economical and technological reasons.
Technically, it takes a while to get a new chip production line singing. I'm no lithographer, but the process is extremely complex. Initially, on any wafer, many CPU's will be faulty or fail testing. So the yield from any batch of processors can be quite low at the start. This means they spend a lot of money making very few CPU's (or GPU's or any other kind of device).
Taking that into account, let's look at the economy of it all. We have a high initial cost per unit of production, you feel that right away. Until the process is kinked out, the new parts will cost more to produce so you will pay more to own them. Secondly, there aren't many of them out there, and people like yourself with low budget constraints and high demand will happily pay a premium for these parts. Demand and supply, at the seller-happy end of the equation.
Now, for the rest of us without $1350 to blow every time a new GPU shows up, the trick is to state your budget, research all the components you can afford to buy at that budget, and most importantly, read the benchmarks! Understand the technology you are investing in. It will help you to understand how the components plug together, what you'll need to buy, how quickly the next part will arrive to make your new gear obselete and so on.
Also (sigh) if the parent had done his research instead of buy first and ask questions later, AMD's socket 940 is the *first* Opteron socket available. The extra pin is used for handling registered RAM (from my understanding), hence the early Opterons and Athlon FX's on socket 940 required more expensive memory. AMD have always aimed at the server space first (they want that market!) but their yields are great so they've been able to push CPU's at the desktop market as well. There's no move to socket 940 in future, it's a move away from that.
The gaming industry deliberately invokes this kind of "negative" publicity to move product. The same kind of thing happened when Take Two made Manhunt.
I had a look at Manhunt and yeah, the murder in the game is pretty gruesome (stabbing people rather vividly, suffocations with plastic bags, etc). The game itself was pretty godawful though. Gameplay was repetitive, nothing outstanding in the game to set it apart except for the violence.
I guarantee that sales will be higher for the game as a result of CNN's free publicity. Won't make the game any better though.
A lot of "geeks" I know are all members of the SCA. SCA arts and sciences encompass a wide range of reasonably geeky activities, including but not limited to brewing beer, smithing armour and weapons, leatherworking, costuming, fighting in armour, archery and so on.
A large amount of effort and detail is put into the crafting of authentic armour and weaponry, and the enthusiasm and energy dedicated to these tasks often exclude the demands of a more normal, healthy lifestyle, thus making these a small part of larger geekdom.
The same goes for Microsoft. What if MS gets one or two killer games, and Sony's games don't deliver on the hype? You can expect moderate success from the game sequels for Halo etc, but you can't say a game will be a killer until it's out and accepted by the general public. The only reliable measure you have for guaging the probability of a hit game is the number of titles and developers being put forward. And this time, Microsoft is rivalling Sony instead of being significantly far behind.
Surely you aren't suggesting that if Sony gets one killer game, no matter how many hits the 360 has, Sony will achieve superior market dominance?
Except Microsoft has (presumably) learned all their lessons from the original X-Box and from what I've seen they've managed to stable a large number of publishers for the 360, far more than they had last time. In fact they will most likely be neck-a-neck with Sony for this next round. Except by the time Sony launches, MS will probably be around to the next shopping season's worth of game titles, making Sony enter the market with possibly *fewer* titles than the 360.
And I wouldn't imagine for a minute MS isn't going to be throwing a lot of weight at keeping those publishers in line - this battle is worth more to MS than the browser wars were!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if you put it that way... yes.
Microsoft has enough resources to cater for every market segment it wants to be involved in.
There's absolutely no doubt in saying that Linux has always needed an answer to Windows gaming. Windows gaming is, as I see it, the biggest obstacle to mass market adoption of Linux. Linux does everything I could ever ask for... except game as well as Windows.
OS X... The Mac is now directly targetting the Linux niche market - everyone who has a PC but doesn't want to run Windows, the answer is no longer Linux, it's OS X. Steve Jobs has never been seen as an advocate of gaming, otherwise there would have been a bigger push on making the Mac a dedicated gaming machine. This could be a bit of a shortcoming given the huge surge in gaming in the general populace that has taken hold over the last decade.
So I'm not sure what Mr AC is trying to say between the lines, but yes. MS is more gaming oriented than Linux or Mac. This seems like a very intelligent strategy given the proportion of gamers out there, allowing MS to outcompete Linux and Mac in that market.
I've been with PC gaming since, well, Sim City sat on a 3 1/4" floppy disk in my old 286.
And the gameplay today is no better than it was all the way back then. Heck, DooM III in it's entirety had fewer monsters than some levels of DooM2! What about games like Elite? The dramatic storyline of Wing Commander? Freelancer just didn't compare.
I will say that improved graphics are important! Not as important as decent gameplay, that's what keeps you playing the game and it's what makes you buy the sequel. The instant gratification age of the consoles is upon us all, however, and eye candy is being substituted for playability.
However, eternal optimist that I am, I feel that decent graphics and gameplay can co-exist. For example, whether you like them or not, games like Morrowind and World of Warcraft are very good examples of how to make a game and have compelling gameplay as well as decent graphics that significantly enhance the experience. Quite often in Morrowind I would turn off the map and just look at the scenery, the roads, mountain ranges and rivers and decide to explore by following the geography just to see what was on the other side. GTA is another good example of really immersive gameplay and okay graphics (Well, the graphics are quite dated now).
This should never have happened, it should not be possible. All servers should be protected by firewall from the internet, thus preventing nasty external attacks. At the very least, in case it's a web server/email server/ftp server as well as a file server, you should only allow those ports through the firewall.
Or, alternatively, place those functions onto a different server. Internet functions like WWW, FTP and so on are generally better served from a linux server, and those servers tend to have lower hardware requirements, so cost should not be an issue.
There is no excuse for shoddy security when it is such a basic thing to correctly install a firewall to protect your environment.
It makes sense that computer games, like any other form of media, should have a market representation similiar to other media. Just look at childrens books, childrens movies, childrens TV shows... all quite a niche market.
It hasn't been in the past, but this is only evidence that the market is still growing and maturing.
The same follows for women in gaming. Women don't necessarily like watching action movies, so why should the same women be expected to like playing action games? As more women become involved in the industry they will be able to shape it towards the kinds of games they enjoy playing.
That's great advice but it takes a lot of maturity to understand that you are responsible for your own life (and the outcomes of the decisions you make!)
Children (won't someone please think about them?) (and immature adults for that matter) are quite impressionable, and they tend to like the steaming material that the mass media shovels at them.
So the real question, I think, is "How much responsibility does each of us have to ensure that the whole of society does not continue to perpetrate these values?". And of course, developing, playing and advocating computer games with barbie-doll figured girls and action-hero styled guys is an example of perpetrating the aforementioned values.
The film apparently ends with the storming of the parilament buildings however. So presumably the ending has been mangled substantially, however.
They obviously plagiarised that from Equilibrium... which was plagiarised from Fareinheit 451... etc etc etc.
I believe they're classifying an event where a fee is charged to play the game as non-private, which means they consider it to be a public performance.
You can't do a public performance using trademarks and copyright from another organisation without permission. Goes back to my George Lucas analogy.
You can't do a play about midichlorians and jedi for profit without paying a licensing fee to Lucas, the copyright holder.
Now, buying WW rulebooks is no more or less of a license than buying a Star Wars DVD grants you the right to make profit using the terms "Jar Jar Binks" and "Watto".
The only part where it's even in the slightest hazy is where you classify a game held at a public venue like a convention and charge money for it as a "performance" rather than anything else. But, in the same way you can't broadcast privately owned DVD's in a public forum, they seem to be legally entitled to do what they are.
WW is not retroactively raising the price of the books. I know this is slashdot and people don't read the articles or anything... but anyway.
If it helps you to understand, it's like a franchise, say, Subway.
Now, you can (presumably) buy the instructions from Subway from the head office, on how to make subs and cookies and all the other stuff they sell.
This means you can go out and start making subs and selling them under the subway brand with subway prices and everything, right? And they won't expect anything more from you, right?
Wrong. As a franchisee, you can own the book and read it, and probably even make subs at home for yourself (and maybe a few friends) to eat - but if you want to put up the subway store and sell to the public for profit, you'll need to pay subway a fee - for using their intellectual property to make a profit for yourself.
Furthermore, they can decide to raise or alter the ongoing fees for the use of their trademarks and IP. Even after you bought that first instruction book from them.
The restrictions WW asked for were far beyond the scope of copyright law. The only way they could legally force obedience is to get signed contracts before every sale- and with the number of rulebooks out already, it's too late for that.
Actually, go look at a WW rulebook before you say that. You'll see a familiar line in the copyright blurb. It'll say "All Rights Reserved". Guess what that means?
Is that unfair? You decide. But one thing is for sure, White Wolf is entitled to do it.
Here's the really interesting part. It is "infringing" copyright to run the game at home (insofar that you are using WW copyrighted and trademarked terms).
The difference however, is that WW encourages you to do it, and doesn't actively chase down people in their homes.
Let's not confuse morality with IP law here!
You can make a tool and you can sell it on the proviso that people pay you a fee to use it. You can charge however you like, you can pay a intial purchase cost and an ongoing rent, rent only, or whatever you like.
Now, what prevents this kind of thing from becoming rampant is our good friend the free market economy. You make a $5/month screwdriver, and the guy next door is just going to make a $5 own it for life screwdriver. Who's going to win that price battle, do you think?
The hard part for people to accept about this is that White Wolf own the IP that you're borrowing, and they want to change their marketing model slightly. World of Warcraft is a good example of this. Once upon a time you used to buy a computer game and play it all you wanted. Now, with MMOG's, you pay rent too. White Wolf wants this kind of revenue stream, and they're entitled to charge you for it.
As a free consumer, you get to vote with your wallet. Don't buy their stuff if you don't like the price. I sure won't be.
That's not a very good analogy. White Wolf own the copyright on things like "Camarilla" and "Brujah" and "Malkavian". Like any copyright owner they have a right to tell you when you can and can't use those terms and concepts and storylines in a public forum to make profit.
It's kind of like making a play about Jedi and Gunguns and Midichlorians and then charging the public to go see it without permission from George Lucas. If I did that I'd also be expecting a letter from his lawyers pretty soon.
Likewise, Anne McAffrey has been pretty hard about closing down online RPG's based around Pern. You simply can't run one without her approval or she sends out the lawyers. Those aren't even for profit!
But going back to your lovely analogy, the "how to make a movie" book very likely doesn't contain any copyrighted material that you would then introduce into your own movie. Generic terms like cameras, lighting, sound stages and so on clearly aren't copyright, so the authors would have no right to try and tell you that they were the copyright owners. However, and here's the fun part we all hate - if there was a technique listed in the book, a particular process that was quite specific and met all the other requirements that it was under a Patent - then yes, if you made a movie using a patented process without permission you could well be off to court.
That, more or less, is how IP works. Disagree however much you will, the owners of Patents and Copyrights can do whatever the heck they want with their own stuff!
Now, having said all that, there is nothing stopping you from just making up your own rules on how to pretend to be a vampire.
Well I RTFA, and it wasn't so bad.
What White Wolf are saying is that if people run and use White Wolf games at conventions and charge people money to play for a *profit*, then they need to obtain a license to make said profit using White Wolf's material as the key engine for doing so. You can still play not-for-profit for the once off cost of buying the source material.
I actually think that is fair, if people are using White Wolf IP to make a profit, White Wolf deserves the right to ask for a cut. Whether they will make some cash or not is a different question.
The problem? RPG's are wholly creative works so all anyone needs to do is just make up their own free system and use that instead. Kinda like open source software coding but much easier to do.
Heck, D20 system is "open" in that WoTC encourages people to make and publish (for money!) rules and content based on the core system, and they don't ask for anything in return other than the basic acknowledgement.
I RTFA and it made some good points, and most importantly, they were constructive!
The author implies that one of the major reason Firefox was successful is the ease of migration. And it's true! Firefox will seamlessly "borrow" MSIE settings while leaving IE there in case you want to go back. This makes it a very comfortable transition.
Now, I don't think I'm the only windows user who thinks it would be excellent if I could install Linux and have it inherit at least some of the information from Windows. Now, I've seen enough Linux password changers for Windows to know Linux can crack open and interrogate the Windows registry.
Some really valid ideas in the article. Will people take notice? I hope so.
So Apple releases new features in the same patch they fix bugs in?
I think Apple is borrowing Microsoft's business practices... that will teach MS for stealing Apple's interface ideas!
Duh, the heatsinks would break her neck!
Ahh... yes... you don't see the big deal because you disabled it.
The ooooh-ahhhh factor is when you're running 1600x1200 8xFSAA 8 tap aniso or better. (Difficult on a laptop, but laptops are not meant for gaming). And yes they put 3D accelerators in laptops, but those are regarded in some circles as a bit of a joke.
So yes, especially high detail is the whole point, otherwise the money you spent on that laptop would be better spent on a PS/2 or XBox or Gamecube, depending on your preferences.
If you look at the benchmarks, the performance of HL2 on the ATI hardware at the time is significantly better than the nVidia hardware at the time.
I can think of no other game that shares this disparity, generally nVidia's offerings are on par or better than the ATI ones across the board.
There's only one reason for such a marked difference in the performance of HL2 on ATI gear compared to other software running on ATI - performance optimisation. That's the nicest way to put it. Sabotaging nVidia is another, more tinfoil hat way to look at it.
So basically what the Inq. is suggesting (and providing evidence for) is that ATI paid Valve to ensure that Half Life 2 made ATI cards look much better than they actually are (compared to how they run with other games).
To ward off ATI fanboy flames: I own an ATI 9600XT. It wasn't the best card available at the time but it did offer the best price-performance when I bought it. I bought it without a Half Life 2 voucher.
What is this all about?
An unprotected windows box, hey?
This is pretty stupid. Windows boxes are firewalled by default (all new Windows XP/2K3 installs are firewall on by default. All Windows XP boxes connected by default - again, all of them - to Windows Update have SP2 installed and the firewall enabled). Sure there are some legacy PC's out there running Windows without protection - but we've already established that this is lunacy, just like not firewalling your Linux box is also lunacy.
What is the author trying to prove exactly? All people who go deep sea diving without basic scuba equipment drown within 12 minutes? Shock horror omg wtf?
This isn't news, it's anti-MS FUD. Why didn't the author mention that a properly protected (firewalled, AV'd) windows box will stay unviolated on the internet for as long as a properly protected (firewalled, AV'd) linux box wil? Because that isn't Slashdot's traditional anti-MS FUD, that's why.
Slashdot used to be a respectable news source. Dead horse flogging propaganda like this only removes journalistic credibility from slashdot.
Flame/Mod away.
Doing your research is vital, as they say, a fool and his money...
There are two major reasons for this pricing, as you suggest they are economical and technological reasons.
Technically, it takes a while to get a new chip production line singing. I'm no lithographer, but the process is extremely complex. Initially, on any wafer, many CPU's will be faulty or fail testing. So the yield from any batch of processors can be quite low at the start. This means they spend a lot of money making very few CPU's (or GPU's or any other kind of device).
Taking that into account, let's look at the economy of it all. We have a high initial cost per unit of production, you feel that right away. Until the process is kinked out, the new parts will cost more to produce so you will pay more to own them. Secondly, there aren't many of them out there, and people like yourself with low budget constraints and high demand will happily pay a premium for these parts. Demand and supply, at the seller-happy end of the equation.
Now, for the rest of us without $1350 to blow every time a new GPU shows up, the trick is to state your budget, research all the components you can afford to buy at that budget, and most importantly, read the benchmarks! Understand the technology you are investing in. It will help you to understand how the components plug together, what you'll need to buy, how quickly the next part will arrive to make your new gear obselete and so on.
Also (sigh) if the parent had done his research instead of buy first and ask questions later, AMD's socket 940 is the *first* Opteron socket available. The extra pin is used for handling registered RAM (from my understanding), hence the early Opterons and Athlon FX's on socket 940 required more expensive memory. AMD have always aimed at the server space first (they want that market!) but their yields are great so they've been able to push CPU's at the desktop market as well. There's no move to socket 940 in future, it's a move away from that.
The gaming industry deliberately invokes this kind of "negative" publicity to move product. The same kind of thing happened when Take Two made Manhunt.
I had a look at Manhunt and yeah, the murder in the game is pretty gruesome (stabbing people rather vividly, suffocations with plastic bags, etc). The game itself was pretty godawful though. Gameplay was repetitive, nothing outstanding in the game to set it apart except for the violence.
I guarantee that sales will be higher for the game as a result of CNN's free publicity. Won't make the game any better though.
A lot of "geeks" I know are all members of the SCA. SCA arts and sciences encompass a wide range of reasonably geeky activities, including but not limited to brewing beer, smithing armour and weapons, leatherworking, costuming, fighting in armour, archery and so on.
A large amount of effort and detail is put into the crafting of authentic armour and weaponry, and the enthusiasm and energy dedicated to these tasks often exclude the demands of a more normal, healthy lifestyle, thus making these a small part of larger geekdom.
The same goes for Microsoft. What if MS gets one or two killer games, and Sony's games don't deliver on the hype? You can expect moderate success from the game sequels for Halo etc, but you can't say a game will be a killer until it's out and accepted by the general public. The only reliable measure you have for guaging the probability of a hit game is the number of titles and developers being put forward. And this time, Microsoft is rivalling Sony instead of being significantly far behind.
Surely you aren't suggesting that if Sony gets one killer game, no matter how many hits the 360 has, Sony will achieve superior market dominance?
Except Microsoft has (presumably) learned all their lessons from the original X-Box and from what I've seen they've managed to stable a large number of publishers for the 360, far more than they had last time. In fact they will most likely be neck-a-neck with Sony for this next round. Except by the time Sony launches, MS will probably be around to the next shopping season's worth of game titles, making Sony enter the market with possibly *fewer* titles than the 360.
And I wouldn't imagine for a minute MS isn't going to be throwing a lot of weight at keeping those publishers in line - this battle is worth more to MS than the browser wars were!
Advertisements? We should be so lucky!
Remember kids, where there's HTML, there's goatse.
I can't wait to visit goatsehouse in Second Life.
Quite easily explained.
Rosen no longer works for the RIAA, therefore no longer gets all the free "demo" CD's.
Where then is Ms. Rosen to get her free music from?
P2P is the answer! But now she is upset that she can't play all of her "free" wma music on her iPod.