Uhhh...because many of us, in fact I would argue soon ALL of us, have data caps? I'm all for buying online but the fabled "download anytime model" is gonna die hard. Kinda hard to "shop from your lounge chair" and download it if it is gonna cost you $1.50 per Gb if you go over. And if anything thanks to Amazon my family buys more dead tree databases than ever before. With Amazon I can just slap some money in my account and let mom go to town. I do the same for my boys for games, and myself for games and musical equipment.
So I'd say buying dead tree and plastic is alive and well, it is GameSlop douchebaggery that is dying out. You treat your customers right you'll have plenty of business. but TFA shows GameSlop simply doesn't understand that concept.
That is why again the reputable mom&pop shop is the way to go. my oldest took his S10 in to 3 different "big name" shops and they told him to get the AC fixed they were gonna have to rip out the dash, replace this part, it was gonna be crazy expensive. I asked around and found a nice old guy with a shop literally out in the woods. When I asked him why he was out in the woods he said "I'm swamped so why would I care where the shop is at? This lets me work in peace" so sure enough I knew I had a good one.
He takes one look under the hood and breaks out this big shop fan and aims it at the engine. When I asked WTF? he said 'Most of these shops don't seem to realize that with these little S10s you just can't put Freon in them while they are hot, the pressure builds up and it only gets about half what it should". he put in the Freon (held about half a can) and told the oldest "If that switch sticks at any time if you'll just switch from hot to cold a couple of times it will unstick it. Common on this model". what the others said was gonna cost several hundred cost me $80.
So I really can't say enough about the little mom&pops, you find a good one and they take pride in their work and aren't trying to screw you. my oldest has icy cold air now and it is just purring like a kitten.
There is one teeny tiny flaw in your comparison. you see, smart phones other than the iPhone? Were just kinda...well shit. Their UI sucked the big wet titty, the battery life was a joke, slower than watching paint dry, they were just really really bad.
Now compare that to PC gaming, where they are all running Win 7 X64, no difference there, i can build a damned nice AMD quad core gaming PC for a customer for around $600 loaded to the brim, or get a gaming laptop for less than $1500, again loaded to the brim. The reason Apple still sells laptops is the network effect, people get hooked on the iShiny and want iEverything. i've seen it happen, they start with the pod, then get the phone, then the pad, then finally the Macbook. While i think the price is too high for the iShiny folks like how it all integrates so if it makes them happy? Good for them.
So thinking you can get iShiny money for a gamer PC is kinda nuts. There really isn't anything to separate this from a top of the line Envy or even a nice DIY gamer PC from someone like me. Well except the price, like I said fully loaded quad for $600 and no nut cooking? But then again frankly I haven't figured out the whole laptop thing. I know customers that have spent crazy money on a laptop and then never go anywhere with the thing! WTF? Why waste money on a laptop that is never gonna be away from an outlet?
Nooo, it is proof of their pure MBA driven greed. Are you saying HP doesn't know how to make deals? Because they are getting rid of a consistent money earner because it ONLY gets 6% profit. That ain't iMoney! Dealing with them I could tell EXACTLY what was going on. They would tell me to get back to them in a day or two, they would go to WSJ or some other site and find how much the biggest sellers on the app store were making and then ask for 30% above THAT. After all if anyone at all asked for our IP it must be uber valuable, right?
That is why I'm seriously thinking about seeing how much it'd cost just to do the whole thing in China. I could get the code written and have a prototype made here and then have it cranked out in China and sell it on Chinamart and places like that. Because dealing with IP holders I've found the sheer unstoppable greed of the MBA dipshits simply makes dealing with the minefield not worth it. Then I can tell them to play hide and go fuck themselves like the Chinese do. It simply isn't worth doing anything in America if it involves IP anymore.
Because they have to upload the CP video FIRST before they are given the address. According to my friend it is maddening because trying to catch these guys is like trying to catch ghosts. they use fake IDs for mail dumps, some even pay a flunky to simply pick up the DVD and stick it in another envelope and mail it somewhere completely different, it is really maddening.
As for why they would want more CP if they have a kid to molest? Because the sick fucks collect CP the way some collect baseball cards, and it lets them show off their latest fucktoys? Remember we aren't talking the social retards here, the one they caught that let them learn of this in the first place is accused of over 27 molestations over a 16 year period.
As for seeing their faces on the videos? not gonna happen because after the "Mr Swirly" case they all invested (or pirated) video editing software and screw the hell out of their voices and faces. That is why the cops often pass around pics of an abused kid and not the abuser, because while they obscure the fuck out of their faces seeing the face of the child is a turn on for those sick fucks so they never obscure that.
Anyway I get to hear all about it since we "talk shop" around 3 times a year when I'm in the state capital, I let him know I'm gonna be in town and we set up lunch somewhere.
the bitch is he is trying like hell to recruit me because they are seriously short handed and he knows I've always been damned good at data recovery, but honestly? I don't think I could take it.
I mean i'm glad there are guys like him trying to bust the sick fuckers but I think having to look at raped kids all day would fuck my head seriously up. I know he sees a shrink 3 times a week paid for by the state to help him "data dump" as he calls it but I don't think that would help. I have always been very visually oriented and seeing kids getting raped day after day AFTER DAY? And how he stays so cool on the stand is beyond me. I have watched the man work and he is like ice, all facts, never rattled. Sitting there while some smarmy lawyer tries to cover for a guy I KNOW has fucked his 9 year old, because I saw the video? I couldn't be that cool. I'd end up saying something like "Well maybe if your client would quit raping his 9 year old we wouldn't be here huh?"
So while I give the man credit I don't think I could do his job. I have only seen that crap one time, when a computer I was working on was infected with a link slammer bug that would fill the screen with pop ups including to CP sites. Man that shit was sick. I did write down the addresses and send them to that place John Walsh always recommended on AMW, but even looking at the crap long enough to get an address made me want to hurl. How he can do that 5 days a week? I don't care how much money he makes, it ain't enough.
DXVA. Klite has excellent DXVA support and last I checked VLC? Not so much. DXVA makes a HUGE difference when it comes to CPU load. With DXVA my customers can be watching one video while converting another and NO skipping simply because while the CPU does the transcoding all the grunt work for decoding is dropped to their GPU. Any PC made in the last 4 years will have most formats supported through DXVA even if they only have onboard, which since I put my money where my mouth is and became an all AMD shop means they have plenty of GPU thanks to the Radeon 4xxx chips.
Don't get me wrong,VLC is nice and I include it as well for those funky formats they may run across. Usually if VLC can't open it the file is damaged, because VLC opens more funky formats than any player. it just seems behind the curve when it comes to DirectX support, probably because it is cross platform. I guess one more point to having a program native over cross platform huh?
That is why I said ask around. it really ain't hard to spot the honest ones as we are usually swamped. as for a stuck CD being a motherboard? never heard that one although I had had boards have a bad IDE channel. If they wanted to keep the machine I would offer to install a PCI IDE adapter but usually when you get to the point a channel is blown that board ain't gonna last much longer.
But it really ain't hard to spot the honest ones. just make like you are teh stupid and see if they start trying to throw technobabble at you. like car mechanics I've found if they start trying to throw technobabble at you right off the bat to intimidate? yeah they're a scam. Like I said the good ones will be busy and just give you a rough idea. Machine is running slow but haven't been having any hard lockups? They probably are full of toolbars and crap. Machine gets to desktop and promptly restarts with NO way to load even in safe mode? hotbar. If the guy has any exp he has seen the same shit a million times. I tell folks I won't know until I get in there but a good 90% of the time its PEBKAC thanks to them installing crap.I have 3 I'm working on now that are Security tool and toolbar loaded.
As a PC builder and repairman I'd know if anyone was actually using it as I have to clean the crap out and I'd be getting "How do I open (name of file extension) and frankly i haven't had a single case of RealPlayer or anyone asking about it in over 5 years, hence why I dropped Real Alternative from my standard install image.
Now I just use Ninite to install Klite and that takes care of your.avi DiVx/Xvid, wmv, H.26x, all the basics with DXVA hardware acceleration and call it a day. Once in a while I'll run into someone who asks about QT, simply from movie trailers, but those are starting to go H.264 now so all that is really left for QT is iTunes. I just wish Apple would let QT fucking die already, it royally sucks on Windows and is nearly as big a pile of suck as real was back in the day.
But unless like Jerry Lewis rmb and rma files are big in France I just don't see what is the fucking point. If Real wants to keep their precious IP let them have it and fucking die already. it would be like Intel suddenly giving a shit about Indeo video. Who the fuck uses that crap anymore? anybody? As you pointed out P2P has switched to mkv and avi so what is left? anyone? anywhere?
I frankly haven't seen rmb files in the wild since geocities. A few years after it quit being hip I had folks asking how to convert some rmb file but I don't even get that anymore, it is all flash now. So WTF? How are they even still around? Are they really making enough trolling to keep the doors open?
I'd say the truly sad part is all this Gestapo crap is a complete waste of time because the cops know that isn't where the target is. I have a friend that works state crime lab and according to him after those big busts around 5 years ago actual predators simply stopped using the Internet for CP. he said the only ones you catch that way now are social retards that touch nobody but themselves and are whacking off to the same shit that has been floating around since the 80s.
So what do the real child molesters use? USPS of all things. They only use the net long enough to set up a trade on a back alley board which according to my friend there is ZERO chance of a cop infiltrating because the entrance fee is video of you molesting a kid with an object of their choosing and they don't give enough time to fake the video.
After that it is all encrypted DVDs and mail dumps. So many DVDs go through media mail nobody is ever gonna notice and if they don't get a response within x amount of time they consider that link dead and move on. According to my friend they are quite worried that terrorist types are taking notes from the CP scum as their system is damned near foolproof. the only reason they even know of it is every once in a while a kid that one of them was abusing will tell and they'll find the discs, not that they can read them of course. And with guys looking at 500+ years for all the abuse and no prosecutor EVER gonna make a deal with a serial child rapist good luck on getting one to flip.
So in the end all you get is what my friend calls the "Social retards" that are completely harmless. One they busted had been so isolated from humans, even going so far as to have all his food delivered, that they had to tranc him like an animal to get him out of the building. According to him the ones they get now are a complete waste of money as you are throwing guys that if you threw them in a room with a kid would go hide in a corner into a cell for 60 years at taxpayer expense while the ones who actually rape children are nowhere near there. but the politicos want the "catch a predator" style headlines so they waste the cash.
So just as in TFA we piss money down a rathole all in the cause of "doing something" even if that something is completely fucking pointless and doesn't actually solve anything. Welcome to Amerika, where your rights can be shot to shit as long as its "for teh childrenz!"
But if we are gonna go by American laws shouldn't they be busted for spyware? Because realnetworks has a history of dodgy practices when it comes to their player.
That said I have to ask a question...is it popular over there or something? Seriously who the fuck uses Real anything anymore? I used to install Real Alternative along with QT alternative but frankly i dropped RA something like 4 years ago and nobody even noticed because Real files are like 8 tracks. Sure you might find some somewhere in the backwoods, but nobody uses the crap anymore. The only thing I see QT used for that is non Apple is movie trailers or I'd drop it as well.
The world belongs to flash now. Flash, avi, mkv, and wmv for the porn sites. Hell I don't even hardly see any mpg files anymore, and for music its all mp3 or aac. Who the fuck uses rmb or rma anymore?
THANK YOU it is good to see someone understand. Some of these games? BAD, we are talking MST3K bad. That was part of my desire, because in the days of shareware you got the good, the bad, and the cheesy, all on one disk. the only real difference between what we had and the shareware of old is instead of "300 games for $5!" like in the old days we were gonna try to do it by genre, puzzle, horror, shooters, etc. Hell I even offered to do like Shareware and link to their site so they could try to upselll them or sell other properties!
But sadly trying to "deal" with these MBA shitbrains I saw why China WILL win, it is because for them it is either "insane iMoney" or nothing, so they get nothing. look at HP getting rid of their PC line which makes damned good money, but because it is ONLY 6% or 7% profit that simply isn't good enough. Its not iMoney! They must make "More monies growing per quarter nom nom nom" or to them its completely shit. Lenovo and the other Chinese companies will be more than happy to take that 6% profits and if their IP reindeer games get in the way? China will tell them to play a nice game of hide and go fuck yourselves. like I said if I'd have outsourced I could have it on Chinamart right next to those Nintendo emulators with 300+ games.
But instead its just one more American idea and business that simply won't get made thanks to the copyrights and patents minefield. That is taxes that won't get paid, jobs that won't be filled, and for those greedy pigs ZERO PROFITS because they sure as fuck aren't gonna sink a dime of THEIR money and at the prices they want a single shit game would cost more than your average AAA game. Meanwhile if I was willing to just deal with China? I could have kept the money and told them to take a flying fuck. if this isn't proof copyrights are broken I don't know what is. Copyrights destroy markets and innovation, simple as that.
Exactly! Folks here seem to forget how bad a shape that company was in when Jobs got there. it was NOTHING like the Apple he had left. it had been horribly mismanaged for years, they had a HUGE line of the most confusing crap. I should know as we were looking at a Mac for my dad about a year before Jobs came back and honestly even the salespeople didn't know whether this model or that was the "fastest" or better or anything, there were simply too many models, most of which had serious overlaps.
And lets not forget the OS either. by that time Windows was up to Win95 and Apple was using the same tired OS they had in the late 80s. No multitasking NO memory protection, a friend had one of the Performas and I swear you could look at the thing funny and get a panic or freeze up. The Pepsi guy bet the farm on the lawsuit against MSFT and let the company go to hell so when he lost that was it, he was fucked.
So as another poster pointed out while the dollar amount may not have been enough to save Apple it was a big enough token to get Wall Street to take notice, because they knew Bill Gates didn't throw money at losing deals and combined with the long term agreement to support the Mac showed developers the Mac was worth developing for.
While I'm happy to give Steve all the credit in the world for turning Apple around the man needed to have time to clean up the mess, straight the ship, and get NeXTStep converted into OSX. Thanks to MSFT Jobs didn't have all the "Jobs returns to company in death spiral" stories every day and instead was getting upbeat press which got the investors off his back and let the man work. So give credit where credit is due, whether you like the company or not. When Steve needed the help Bill came through, for selfish reasons or not.
But saying one is gonna "kill" the other as the press have been doing is a stupid as saying, to use the time honored/. car analogy, that "this new moped is gonna kill truck sales!" while ignoring the fact that they are designed for completely different jobs. As one reviewer said "I don't see many people writing their reports from an iPhone" and the same goes for an iPad. It is for consuming. Sure there are a few jobs where it can fit, medical and warehousing where one checks off radio buttons? Not a problem.
And as someone who builds and sells PCs allow me to explain this incredible revelation that nobody in the tech world seems to grasp, I guess Captain Obvious must be on vacation or something, but I'll be happy to fill in. Here goes: The reason PC sales are slowing down? Because once we hit dual cores, in fact I would argue once they hit around 2.5Ghz for most folks, the PC became good enough for the vast majority. Hell my two boys love playing their MMOs and shooters and frankly the Pentium Ds with Radeon HD4850s plays them all just fine at 1440x900. Those are what? 5 year old+ chips?
There simply isn't a "killer app" that uses enough raw horses for most people to need to jump back on the upgrade treadmill. these OEMs got spoiled during the MHz race and expected everyone to toss and replace every 3 years but once we hit 2.5Ghz that took care of the casual surfers and once we hit dual cores that took care of a good chunk of the rest.
Even I who was addicted to the treadmill has a PC about to hit 3 years. During the MHz race I'd be shopping for parts but now? I have a Phenom II quad and 8Gb of RAM and more Tb of HDD space than I know what to do with, so what's the point? My HD4850 plays all my games at 1600x900 with all the bling, my quad transcodes fast, what do I need another for?
So we really don't need Kojack to crack this case. Tablets are oversized cell phones which is a NEW thing. it basically lets you do most of what you use a cell for without having teeny weeny eyestrain o-vision. It also gets better battery life than a laptop thanks to specialized chips for decode so its a great consuming content device. on the flip side everyone and their dog and their dog's squeaky toy has a PC that is "good enough" for the majority of their tasks. Hell in my family we have 6 desktop and four laptops for four people, what do we need more for?
Mark my words in 3 years or less we'll be saying the same thing about the tablet unless Apple or someone else figures out a way to make them die hard after the warranty dies out. By then everyone that wants one will have one and they'll say the same thing they are saying now about PCs, why do I need another one? The one i have now works fine for what I do!
Oh Dear Lord no! Say it ain't so! Geek Squad running corporate IT? WTF? Hell they couldn't install a fucking floppy correctly! I got done with one of their "fixes" just last week, the poor lady was like "Why did I take it in to get fixed and it is SLOWER than it was to begin with?
I ended up having to show her where the label on the front of her PC listed it as having 1Gb of RAM and now suddenly? 512Mb. Somebody got himself a free RAM upgrade at her expense. Sadly as I posted that is par for the course, I see quite a few "five finger discounts" coming from machines that have been in the clutches of WB. She called and had a fit and got basically told by management unless she had pictures of before and after she was SOL. I told her she was just lucky they didn't rip the retainers out as they have been known to do.
I have seen parts stolen, parts put in backwards, hell I even saw a HDD that was obviously hammered in since they didn't know how to release the drive cage! That don't count the hot software I've seen put on (rampant) and of course them helping themselves to all pics, tunes, and videos. Frankly I wouldn't trust those clowns to shine my shoes, much less actually fix anything!
I know this will sound like a plug for myself but it really isn't, just some sound advice. you need work done or a family member needs work done, a new desktop, etc and you don't have the time to DIY? take it to a mom&pop shop. it won't take long at all to ask around and most of us actually take PRIDE in our work. We charge reasonable rates and will be happy to tell you if a machine is worth sinking money into or not, hell I've saved three folks this month the cost of new builds by pointing out I could upgrade their CPU+RAM for a hell of a lot cheaper.
Those Worst buy guys give EVERYONE in computers a bad name.That is why they have to advertise so much, to lure in new suckers. Me? i haven't even had business cards in nearly 2 years because I'm completely booked up just from word of mouth. If you do a good job you don't NEED to advertise, word gets around quickly enough.
Actually, and I'm sure I'll get hate for saying this, it was Gates who saved his ass. Of course we know Gates didn't do it out of the goodness of his heart, he did it to keep from being the only OS company and thus a big ass target to regulators but he did save his ass.
Not only did Gates cut a big fat check for Apple stock which at the time really wasn't doing squat, but also there was serious fears that nobody was gonna waste money developing for a "dying" platform. Having the head of one of the largest software companies on the planet come out and say 'I think the Mac has a great future and we at Microsoft are committed to supporting the Mac with our software" and then announcing a long term deal to supply MS Office really killed a lot of the skittishness. After that at the next MacWorld you saw tons of companies jump on board because if MSFT thought there was money to be made? Maybe there was.
Don't get me wrong, once Jobs had the money he was fricking brilliant, killing all the huge lines of confusing plastic crap and making a small line of sleek and sexy products, one hit after another. But when Jobs first came back there was serious talk that Apple was a "dead" system (I know, funny now right?) and that Jobs didn't have a prayer of stopping the death spiral. Gates may be a ruthless bastard but if he hadn't helped out Apple at the right time and gave Jobs the funds and breathing room he needed to rebuild the line things could have turned out VERY differently.
I just wonder how well Cook is gonna be able to break balls and steer the ship, because from everything I've read he has been more of a supply chain guy. Apple under Jobs has always been Steve's vision of perfection, like it or not, so we'll just have to see if after the products that were already in the pipeline have come and gone if Cook can come up with new markets to slaughter like Jobs did.
Either way Via Con Dios Steve, you truly deserve to be in that tiny room of visionaries that can say "I changed the way things are done".
Bimbo Newton Crosby, nice to see that SOMEONE gets it. The IPs we were looking at weren't the Wolf3Ds or anything that could currently be bought or even played on a modern system without DOSBox, we're talking the weird and cheesy stuff that sold on Shareware discs back in the day. in fact that was what gave me the idea, to create a modern shareware style device so that those that don't remember what that was like could get a taste.
But when we actually tried to sit down and talk to these people, people that were making ZERO PROFIT on the IP, and had NO interest from anybody? Most wanted $75k+ upfront and 30% of the gross AND many wanted rights to anything We did. yeah go fuck yourselves.
The bitch is i could have outsourced it to China and probably have them selling on Chinamart RIGHT THIS MINUTE and not have to give a shit. It is THIS which is why China will win, because it is EASY to simply ignore the copyright bullshit and IMPOSSIBLE to play by the rules.
Sadly as you said like the movies that are disappearing now (you know about that right? tons of movies from the 30s and 40s are rotting in the vaults because the studios can't figure out how to "monetize the IP" and won't give up the rights either) the vast majority of these games will go right into the black hole, never to be played or enjoyed. simply because copyrights are so rigged that every corp thinks their shit don't stink and they can get AAA prices for nothing.
And thus brilliance was spoken. Hell one could close the thread right there. You can't even try units at Worst buy before buying online since they are 90% of the time "house brand" crapola made specifically for WB with the cheapest shit China has to offer.
And Lord help you if you have someone stupid enough to take it to Geek Squad. I used to work at a shop down the street from a Worst Buy where OUR ENTIRE BUSINESS was nothing but fixing the fuckups by Geek Squad "agents". We used to call them the Greek Squad because one way or another they were gonna fuck you. i've seen RAM stick literally ripped off by ripping them out of the slot, I've seen a $300 GPU magically turned into a $45 GPU, a 400gb HDD turn into a 40Gb, and I hope you didn't have any nekkid pics of your GF because they helped themselves to anything and everything. One of the guys I knew that worked there had a 300gb USB drive with a batch file that looked for.jpg,.mp3,.avi, etc. That is why you always heard about CP busts with worst buy, because he before they started working on the thing they were looking for porn to snatch!
Frankly I wouldn't buy a power cord from worst buy, out of the 20 or so WBs I've had to deal with there was exactly ONE I found that was decent, with knowledgeable guys that tried to give you a fair deal. When my nephew had to have a laptop for school ASAP they sat down and worked with him and gave him a good deal. Went back there 3 months later and they had fired the staff (my guess to save a buck) and replaced them with MickeyDs quality help. I wouldn't take WB junk on a bet.
How about some more links? How about the fact that the ones who thought up credit default swaps, aka economy killers, are now in charge of the carbon credit scam?
Or how about how Rev Al Gore, Mr "inconvenient truth himself" has set himself up to be the world's first carbon billionaire? BTW did you know he has the ecologically friendly brass balls to say having a house with an indoor basketball court that blows more AC than TWENTY family of four homes, and who farts around on a private LEAR JET is complete CARBON NEUTRAL? How is that miracle able to occur? By paying himself credits from his own company that's how! it would be like you moving money from your left to right pocket, calling it "wealth redistribution" and demanding AND GETTING a tax break for doing it!
One final note: You notice that NEVER, not even once, have you seen Rev Al and the AGWers call for tariffs on china and India, even though both have said they won't play his little carbon games? you know why that is? because they make money on offshoring duh! More MONIES nom nom nom!
WAKE UP! Both sides are COMPLETELY FULL OF SHIT and have been corrupted by money so damned badly that if one of the "scientists" on EITHER side tells you its raining your ass better stick your arm out the window! The winner will take BILLIONS OF DOLLARS from the people who can least afford it, the working poor. BOTH SIDES want to fuck you HARD.
A sensible plan would be to stay as we are now, to keep raising standards while investing in technology TO BE BUILT HERE that would give us the energy we need. but that will never happen if either side wins, why? because they can't make massive profits THAT way stupid! More MONIES nom nom nom!
Dude buy the digital spray games, especially "you are empty". It'll run on any old P4 with a 6200 or better so no problems there and it is so fucking weird it is worth every cent!
Picture a Soviet town where everyone is supposedly gone insane where you suddenly have rednecks in coonskin caps running around with double barrels going "Bogga booga" I swear, the sound they make sounds like booga booga. And the cut scenes! Oh man the cut scenes are like if "the ring" was done by REALLY stoned Russians. "A kid walks down the street, a puppy bashes its head against a window until it bleeds, a guy gets hit by a car" WTF? What does that have to do with Soviet mind control?
Dude get it, if you like to laugh at MST3K style WTF situations you'll love this. The entire game is completely batshit.
Wow, talk about not getting it. Would you happen to be an MBA? The WHOLE POINT was these were games that hadn't been sold in over 20 years which means they were earning ZERO PROFIT understand? None, zip, zero, nada.
Now someone comes along and tell you something you are making ZERO MONEY from could actually earn you some money? Do you say "sit down and lets talk turkey" or do you say "I want 35% more than it cost new, just cause I'm special" as in Special Olympics?
As I said we were planning to make MAYBE 3% for ourselves after licensing and throwing some back to the DOSBox guys, but the sheer douchebaggery of those with games earning ZERO PROFIT would have caused the price to be around $200 A STICK. I'm serious, games that sold for less than $5 at the bargain bin they wanted more than a AAA game for. That isn't profit that is sheer dipshit stupidity. And now they are making ZERO PROFIT again. Wow, that was smart, I wonder why China and other countries that don't deal with this bullshit are kicking our asses, it sure is a mystery.
The problem with the Kin was it was targeted at the wrong group. they tried for the hipsters, which already were quite happy with the iShiny. you DO NOT target a product at a group that has one of the highest satisfaction ratings of all time that is seriously fucking dumb. What they SHOULD have done is targeted it to the tweeners and teens, the groups that can't afford an iShiny but would like to stay connected.
If you were to give me the kin today i could make it a hit. would it be an iShiny hit? Fuck no, there is only one WoW. And THAT is the problem. Just as too many MMOs all want to be WoW too many OEMs want to be the iShiny and anything less they consider massive fail. so they target the iShiny crowd, get their asses handed to them on a plate, and then give up.
Like I said give it to me or anyone else who knows you can't be WoW and you'd have had a profit making product. I predict the same uber fail for WinPhone, simply because yet again they'll go for the hipsters and yet again they will get slaughtered when compared to the iShiny. It is like trying to sell the Mustang to Ferrari owners, it is just fucking DUMB.
Want to win against iPad? Do a Dell. 1.4Ghz single core ARM, 512Mb of RAM, 4Gb of flash (with MicroSD support) and sell the thing for $8 over cost, which would put it at about $159. Use the profits to buy up a sweetheart contract for dual core ARMs and make the second generation duallies for $199. Massive hit, pads everywhere.
Would you make iPad profit per unit? FUCK NO because a lot of what sells Apple is the name and history, same is if you sold a Ferrari knockoff you ain't getting shit compared to a Ferrari, even if you made one so damned identical someone on the assembly line couldn't tell the difference. Again everyone wants to be WoW, when they can't make WoW profits they roll over and die.
Just goes to show why China will win in the end, companies like Lenovo are quite happy to take those 6-8% profits, whereas if it isn't making double digits and climbing per quarter the "damn everything but the quarterly reports!" MBA fuckheads here in the states will call it a complete loss. HP had a BOM of $318 which is too damned high, but if they would have sold it for $350 they could have had a solid seller if not iShiny money, but that simply isn't good enough here anymore, it is iShiny or bust. That is why they will fail.
Sadly I can answer that first one, greed, greed to the point of stupidity greed.
I should know because a friend and I had an idea for what I thought would be a neat little product...DOSBox...In a box. It would have been a flash stick with a preset and configured DOSBox loaded up with games, you'd have a shooter stick, a puzzler stick, platformer, variety pack, you get the idea. We were also gonna avoid the games everyone already has ways of running easily, your Wolf3Ds and Dooms and the like and concentrate on the offbeat and the quirky.
So what happened? Simple half the games when we started researching are forever lost in a no man's copyright land where the company has changed hands so many times nobody has clear rights to squat, but the worst was the second category, where we would find games with a clear title and the owners would want more than when it was new because "We might want to do something somewhere sometime with it". We are talking games that could be bought on eBay by the crateload for $5 and the assholes are wanting 30% of the gross!
So if you want to know why the bastard Valenti made sure copyrights were "forever minus a single day" it was so greedy pricks could lock huge chunks of our history up, either behind paywalls or just to let it rot until they could find a way to "maximize the profit potential of the IP" which is of course never.
Our little idea wasn't designed to make iMoney, hell we would have made maybe 3% profit after BOM and throwing some back to the DOSBox guys, we were doing it because we loved classic gaming and wanted to make it easy for the younger generations to try the games. Instead most likely the games will never get re-released on squat, simply because of the greed and endless copyrights. if I there is a hell I wish Valenti a nice spot in it, the sorry piggish fuck.
Nice troll, complete horseshit, but nice none the less. Unless you are running Win9X (which if you are, WTF is wrong with you? are you insane?) you just plug it in, Windows loads the HID driver (which it already has) and voila! Its a flash drive, duh!
Working retail I've had to deal with more funky players than you've had hot meals friend, from the CCC Walgreen's $20 specials to the Cowons to the Creative, you name it I'd had to load tunes into it and show someone how to use it and NEVER have I seen what you are describing on any win NT based Windows, never.
Oh I take that back, there was once a $15 POS Chinese player where I actually had to go into the device and tell it to run as a flash drive, otherwise you had to use WMP. Woop de fricking do, took all of 10 seconds.
As for TFA I may have never been a MacHead but I respected the man's vision. Via Con Dios Steve, I wish you nothing but the best..
I'd say the bigger question is this: can they keep the vision? Lets be honest folks iPhone 5 and iPad 4 and probably one or two more iPods were already in the pipe under Job's watch, but what after?
Like it or not it is the vision of Jobs that made Apple. look at how they sucked without him before, it ended up an MBA clusterfuck, hell look at what happened to MSFT when they lost Gates, another MBA clusterfuck.
To me the difference between Jobs and the MBAs can be summed up by a story I read by one of the guys that was designing iDVD..."So we hear Steve is gonna be in the next day to look at what we had done, so we have all these mock ups, with tabs and buttons for all the features, when in walks Steve. he completely ignores our mockups walks to the whiteboard and draws a box. he says 'This is it, this is the product. you drop a video in here and a single button that says burn appears" and he walked out. We just stood there shocked"
And THAT is what is gonna be damned hard for Apple to replace. It is damned hard to get people who can see the forest past the trees and cut through the bullshit and Jobs was damned good at that. remember it ran alright for a little while after he left the first time, it took about three years for the MBA clusterfuck to really take hold. I'd wish him well but sadly he has lived longer than most with that type of cancer and this move is probably him putting his affairs in order.
So while I'm sure the company will be fine now, the bigger question is will it still be innovating in 3 years, or like before will they end up coasting on past successes while all the PHBs jockey for position.
That is why I just tell everyone to just go to Amazon. Within days of a game coming out there are already used copies at BETTER prices that gameslop and it is the only place i know of where one can buy new and used PC games uber-cheap as well.
Most of the guys here would think I'm nuts but I enjoy BAD games, i'm not talking bad to the bone, i'm talking MST3K making fun of it bad and Amazon is wonderful for getting truly awful games for dirt cheap. if anyone hasn't tried them the digital spray games like "You are empty" fits this category, it is like "The Ring" if written by a seriously stoned Russian. And who can bitch when you get games for $3 or $4 shipped? hell at those prices i bought Kane & Lynch II just to laugh at it. BTW do NOT buy K&L II, it is so bad it ain't even funny bad, just painful bad. Duke Nukem Forever is actually better, it is THAT bad. you can be 4 foot away from someone and NEVER hit them!
So if Gameslop is acting like douches I'm frankly not surprised. The only reason I'm glad they exist is the game companies want to yank first sale away from us and make us pay them for the right to sell our used games, so it is like "battle of the network douchebags" when it comes to the publishers and gameslop. Just stick to Amazon and all will be gravy. The only thing GS is good for is dumping unwanted games and even then I tell folks they'd be better off at a pawnshop for the ripoff prices GS gives for used games.
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Uhhh...because many of us, in fact I would argue soon ALL of us, have data caps? I'm all for buying online but the fabled "download anytime model" is gonna die hard. Kinda hard to "shop from your lounge chair" and download it if it is gonna cost you $1.50 per Gb if you go over. And if anything thanks to Amazon my family buys more dead tree databases than ever before. With Amazon I can just slap some money in my account and let mom go to town. I do the same for my boys for games, and myself for games and musical equipment.
So I'd say buying dead tree and plastic is alive and well, it is GameSlop douchebaggery that is dying out. You treat your customers right you'll have plenty of business. but TFA shows GameSlop simply doesn't understand that concept.
That is why again the reputable mom&pop shop is the way to go. my oldest took his S10 in to 3 different "big name" shops and they told him to get the AC fixed they were gonna have to rip out the dash, replace this part, it was gonna be crazy expensive. I asked around and found a nice old guy with a shop literally out in the woods. When I asked him why he was out in the woods he said "I'm swamped so why would I care where the shop is at? This lets me work in peace" so sure enough I knew I had a good one.
He takes one look under the hood and breaks out this big shop fan and aims it at the engine. When I asked WTF? he said 'Most of these shops don't seem to realize that with these little S10s you just can't put Freon in them while they are hot, the pressure builds up and it only gets about half what it should". he put in the Freon (held about half a can) and told the oldest "If that switch sticks at any time if you'll just switch from hot to cold a couple of times it will unstick it. Common on this model". what the others said was gonna cost several hundred cost me $80.
So I really can't say enough about the little mom&pops, you find a good one and they take pride in their work and aren't trying to screw you. my oldest has icy cold air now and it is just purring like a kitten.
There is one teeny tiny flaw in your comparison. you see, smart phones other than the iPhone? Were just kinda...well shit. Their UI sucked the big wet titty, the battery life was a joke, slower than watching paint dry, they were just really really bad.
Now compare that to PC gaming, where they are all running Win 7 X64, no difference there, i can build a damned nice AMD quad core gaming PC for a customer for around $600 loaded to the brim, or get a gaming laptop for less than $1500, again loaded to the brim. The reason Apple still sells laptops is the network effect, people get hooked on the iShiny and want iEverything. i've seen it happen, they start with the pod, then get the phone, then the pad, then finally the Macbook. While i think the price is too high for the iShiny folks like how it all integrates so if it makes them happy? Good for them.
So thinking you can get iShiny money for a gamer PC is kinda nuts. There really isn't anything to separate this from a top of the line Envy or even a nice DIY gamer PC from someone like me. Well except the price, like I said fully loaded quad for $600 and no nut cooking? But then again frankly I haven't figured out the whole laptop thing. I know customers that have spent crazy money on a laptop and then never go anywhere with the thing! WTF? Why waste money on a laptop that is never gonna be away from an outlet?
Nooo, it is proof of their pure MBA driven greed. Are you saying HP doesn't know how to make deals? Because they are getting rid of a consistent money earner because it ONLY gets 6% profit. That ain't iMoney! Dealing with them I could tell EXACTLY what was going on. They would tell me to get back to them in a day or two, they would go to WSJ or some other site and find how much the biggest sellers on the app store were making and then ask for 30% above THAT. After all if anyone at all asked for our IP it must be uber valuable, right?
That is why I'm seriously thinking about seeing how much it'd cost just to do the whole thing in China. I could get the code written and have a prototype made here and then have it cranked out in China and sell it on Chinamart and places like that. Because dealing with IP holders I've found the sheer unstoppable greed of the MBA dipshits simply makes dealing with the minefield not worth it. Then I can tell them to play hide and go fuck themselves like the Chinese do. It simply isn't worth doing anything in America if it involves IP anymore.
Because they have to upload the CP video FIRST before they are given the address. According to my friend it is maddening because trying to catch these guys is like trying to catch ghosts. they use fake IDs for mail dumps, some even pay a flunky to simply pick up the DVD and stick it in another envelope and mail it somewhere completely different, it is really maddening.
As for why they would want more CP if they have a kid to molest? Because the sick fucks collect CP the way some collect baseball cards, and it lets them show off their latest fucktoys? Remember we aren't talking the social retards here, the one they caught that let them learn of this in the first place is accused of over 27 molestations over a 16 year period.
As for seeing their faces on the videos? not gonna happen because after the "Mr Swirly" case they all invested (or pirated) video editing software and screw the hell out of their voices and faces. That is why the cops often pass around pics of an abused kid and not the abuser, because while they obscure the fuck out of their faces seeing the face of the child is a turn on for those sick fucks so they never obscure that.
Anyway I get to hear all about it since we "talk shop" around 3 times a year when I'm in the state capital, I let him know I'm gonna be in town and we set up lunch somewhere. the bitch is he is trying like hell to recruit me because they are seriously short handed and he knows I've always been damned good at data recovery, but honestly? I don't think I could take it.
I mean i'm glad there are guys like him trying to bust the sick fuckers but I think having to look at raped kids all day would fuck my head seriously up. I know he sees a shrink 3 times a week paid for by the state to help him "data dump" as he calls it but I don't think that would help. I have always been very visually oriented and seeing kids getting raped day after day AFTER DAY? And how he stays so cool on the stand is beyond me. I have watched the man work and he is like ice, all facts, never rattled. Sitting there while some smarmy lawyer tries to cover for a guy I KNOW has fucked his 9 year old, because I saw the video? I couldn't be that cool. I'd end up saying something like "Well maybe if your client would quit raping his 9 year old we wouldn't be here huh?"
So while I give the man credit I don't think I could do his job. I have only seen that crap one time, when a computer I was working on was infected with a link slammer bug that would fill the screen with pop ups including to CP sites. Man that shit was sick. I did write down the addresses and send them to that place John Walsh always recommended on AMW, but even looking at the crap long enough to get an address made me want to hurl. How he can do that 5 days a week? I don't care how much money he makes, it ain't enough.
DXVA. Klite has excellent DXVA support and last I checked VLC? Not so much. DXVA makes a HUGE difference when it comes to CPU load. With DXVA my customers can be watching one video while converting another and NO skipping simply because while the CPU does the transcoding all the grunt work for decoding is dropped to their GPU. Any PC made in the last 4 years will have most formats supported through DXVA even if they only have onboard, which since I put my money where my mouth is and became an all AMD shop means they have plenty of GPU thanks to the Radeon 4xxx chips.
Don't get me wrong,VLC is nice and I include it as well for those funky formats they may run across. Usually if VLC can't open it the file is damaged, because VLC opens more funky formats than any player. it just seems behind the curve when it comes to DirectX support, probably because it is cross platform. I guess one more point to having a program native over cross platform huh?
That is why I said ask around. it really ain't hard to spot the honest ones as we are usually swamped. as for a stuck CD being a motherboard? never heard that one although I had had boards have a bad IDE channel. If they wanted to keep the machine I would offer to install a PCI IDE adapter but usually when you get to the point a channel is blown that board ain't gonna last much longer.
But it really ain't hard to spot the honest ones. just make like you are teh stupid and see if they start trying to throw technobabble at you. like car mechanics I've found if they start trying to throw technobabble at you right off the bat to intimidate? yeah they're a scam. Like I said the good ones will be busy and just give you a rough idea. Machine is running slow but haven't been having any hard lockups? They probably are full of toolbars and crap. Machine gets to desktop and promptly restarts with NO way to load even in safe mode? hotbar. If the guy has any exp he has seen the same shit a million times. I tell folks I won't know until I get in there but a good 90% of the time its PEBKAC thanks to them installing crap.I have 3 I'm working on now that are Security tool and toolbar loaded.
As a PC builder and repairman I'd know if anyone was actually using it as I have to clean the crap out and I'd be getting "How do I open (name of file extension) and frankly i haven't had a single case of RealPlayer or anyone asking about it in over 5 years, hence why I dropped Real Alternative from my standard install image.
Now I just use Ninite to install Klite and that takes care of your .avi DiVx/Xvid, wmv, H.26x, all the basics with DXVA hardware acceleration and call it a day. Once in a while I'll run into someone who asks about QT, simply from movie trailers, but those are starting to go H.264 now so all that is really left for QT is iTunes. I just wish Apple would let QT fucking die already, it royally sucks on Windows and is nearly as big a pile of suck as real was back in the day.
But unless like Jerry Lewis rmb and rma files are big in France I just don't see what is the fucking point. If Real wants to keep their precious IP let them have it and fucking die already. it would be like Intel suddenly giving a shit about Indeo video. Who the fuck uses that crap anymore? anybody? As you pointed out P2P has switched to mkv and avi so what is left? anyone? anywhere?
I frankly haven't seen rmb files in the wild since geocities. A few years after it quit being hip I had folks asking how to convert some rmb file but I don't even get that anymore, it is all flash now. So WTF? How are they even still around? Are they really making enough trolling to keep the doors open?
I'd say the truly sad part is all this Gestapo crap is a complete waste of time because the cops know that isn't where the target is. I have a friend that works state crime lab and according to him after those big busts around 5 years ago actual predators simply stopped using the Internet for CP. he said the only ones you catch that way now are social retards that touch nobody but themselves and are whacking off to the same shit that has been floating around since the 80s.
So what do the real child molesters use? USPS of all things. They only use the net long enough to set up a trade on a back alley board which according to my friend there is ZERO chance of a cop infiltrating because the entrance fee is video of you molesting a kid with an object of their choosing and they don't give enough time to fake the video.
After that it is all encrypted DVDs and mail dumps. So many DVDs go through media mail nobody is ever gonna notice and if they don't get a response within x amount of time they consider that link dead and move on. According to my friend they are quite worried that terrorist types are taking notes from the CP scum as their system is damned near foolproof. the only reason they even know of it is every once in a while a kid that one of them was abusing will tell and they'll find the discs, not that they can read them of course. And with guys looking at 500+ years for all the abuse and no prosecutor EVER gonna make a deal with a serial child rapist good luck on getting one to flip.
So in the end all you get is what my friend calls the "Social retards" that are completely harmless. One they busted had been so isolated from humans, even going so far as to have all his food delivered, that they had to tranc him like an animal to get him out of the building. According to him the ones they get now are a complete waste of money as you are throwing guys that if you threw them in a room with a kid would go hide in a corner into a cell for 60 years at taxpayer expense while the ones who actually rape children are nowhere near there. but the politicos want the "catch a predator" style headlines so they waste the cash.
So just as in TFA we piss money down a rathole all in the cause of "doing something" even if that something is completely fucking pointless and doesn't actually solve anything. Welcome to Amerika, where your rights can be shot to shit as long as its "for teh childrenz!"
But if we are gonna go by American laws shouldn't they be busted for spyware? Because realnetworks has a history of dodgy practices when it comes to their player.
That said I have to ask a question...is it popular over there or something? Seriously who the fuck uses Real anything anymore? I used to install Real Alternative along with QT alternative but frankly i dropped RA something like 4 years ago and nobody even noticed because Real files are like 8 tracks. Sure you might find some somewhere in the backwoods, but nobody uses the crap anymore. The only thing I see QT used for that is non Apple is movie trailers or I'd drop it as well.
The world belongs to flash now. Flash, avi, mkv, and wmv for the porn sites. Hell I don't even hardly see any mpg files anymore, and for music its all mp3 or aac. Who the fuck uses rmb or rma anymore?
THANK YOU it is good to see someone understand. Some of these games? BAD, we are talking MST3K bad. That was part of my desire, because in the days of shareware you got the good, the bad, and the cheesy, all on one disk. the only real difference between what we had and the shareware of old is instead of "300 games for $5!" like in the old days we were gonna try to do it by genre, puzzle, horror, shooters, etc. Hell I even offered to do like Shareware and link to their site so they could try to upselll them or sell other properties!
But sadly trying to "deal" with these MBA shitbrains I saw why China WILL win, it is because for them it is either "insane iMoney" or nothing, so they get nothing. look at HP getting rid of their PC line which makes damned good money, but because it is ONLY 6% or 7% profit that simply isn't good enough. Its not iMoney! They must make "More monies growing per quarter nom nom nom" or to them its completely shit. Lenovo and the other Chinese companies will be more than happy to take that 6% profits and if their IP reindeer games get in the way? China will tell them to play a nice game of hide and go fuck yourselves. like I said if I'd have outsourced I could have it on Chinamart right next to those Nintendo emulators with 300+ games.
But instead its just one more American idea and business that simply won't get made thanks to the copyrights and patents minefield. That is taxes that won't get paid, jobs that won't be filled, and for those greedy pigs ZERO PROFITS because they sure as fuck aren't gonna sink a dime of THEIR money and at the prices they want a single shit game would cost more than your average AAA game. Meanwhile if I was willing to just deal with China? I could have kept the money and told them to take a flying fuck. if this isn't proof copyrights are broken I don't know what is. Copyrights destroy markets and innovation, simple as that.
Exactly! Folks here seem to forget how bad a shape that company was in when Jobs got there. it was NOTHING like the Apple he had left. it had been horribly mismanaged for years, they had a HUGE line of the most confusing crap. I should know as we were looking at a Mac for my dad about a year before Jobs came back and honestly even the salespeople didn't know whether this model or that was the "fastest" or better or anything, there were simply too many models, most of which had serious overlaps.
And lets not forget the OS either. by that time Windows was up to Win95 and Apple was using the same tired OS they had in the late 80s. No multitasking NO memory protection, a friend had one of the Performas and I swear you could look at the thing funny and get a panic or freeze up. The Pepsi guy bet the farm on the lawsuit against MSFT and let the company go to hell so when he lost that was it, he was fucked.
So as another poster pointed out while the dollar amount may not have been enough to save Apple it was a big enough token to get Wall Street to take notice, because they knew Bill Gates didn't throw money at losing deals and combined with the long term agreement to support the Mac showed developers the Mac was worth developing for.
While I'm happy to give Steve all the credit in the world for turning Apple around the man needed to have time to clean up the mess, straight the ship, and get NeXTStep converted into OSX. Thanks to MSFT Jobs didn't have all the "Jobs returns to company in death spiral" stories every day and instead was getting upbeat press which got the investors off his back and let the man work. So give credit where credit is due, whether you like the company or not. When Steve needed the help Bill came through, for selfish reasons or not.
But saying one is gonna "kill" the other as the press have been doing is a stupid as saying, to use the time honored /. car analogy, that "this new moped is gonna kill truck sales!" while ignoring the fact that they are designed for completely different jobs. As one reviewer said "I don't see many people writing their reports from an iPhone" and the same goes for an iPad. It is for consuming. Sure there are a few jobs where it can fit, medical and warehousing where one checks off radio buttons? Not a problem.
And as someone who builds and sells PCs allow me to explain this incredible revelation that nobody in the tech world seems to grasp, I guess Captain Obvious must be on vacation or something, but I'll be happy to fill in. Here goes: The reason PC sales are slowing down? Because once we hit dual cores, in fact I would argue once they hit around 2.5Ghz for most folks, the PC became good enough for the vast majority. Hell my two boys love playing their MMOs and shooters and frankly the Pentium Ds with Radeon HD4850s plays them all just fine at 1440x900. Those are what? 5 year old+ chips?
There simply isn't a "killer app" that uses enough raw horses for most people to need to jump back on the upgrade treadmill. these OEMs got spoiled during the MHz race and expected everyone to toss and replace every 3 years but once we hit 2.5Ghz that took care of the casual surfers and once we hit dual cores that took care of a good chunk of the rest.
Even I who was addicted to the treadmill has a PC about to hit 3 years. During the MHz race I'd be shopping for parts but now? I have a Phenom II quad and 8Gb of RAM and more Tb of HDD space than I know what to do with, so what's the point? My HD4850 plays all my games at 1600x900 with all the bling, my quad transcodes fast, what do I need another for?
So we really don't need Kojack to crack this case. Tablets are oversized cell phones which is a NEW thing. it basically lets you do most of what you use a cell for without having teeny weeny eyestrain o-vision. It also gets better battery life than a laptop thanks to specialized chips for decode so its a great consuming content device. on the flip side everyone and their dog and their dog's squeaky toy has a PC that is "good enough" for the majority of their tasks. Hell in my family we have 6 desktop and four laptops for four people, what do we need more for?
Mark my words in 3 years or less we'll be saying the same thing about the tablet unless Apple or someone else figures out a way to make them die hard after the warranty dies out. By then everyone that wants one will have one and they'll say the same thing they are saying now about PCs, why do I need another one? The one i have now works fine for what I do!
Oh Dear Lord no! Say it ain't so! Geek Squad running corporate IT? WTF? Hell they couldn't install a fucking floppy correctly! I got done with one of their "fixes" just last week, the poor lady was like "Why did I take it in to get fixed and it is SLOWER than it was to begin with?
I ended up having to show her where the label on the front of her PC listed it as having 1Gb of RAM and now suddenly? 512Mb. Somebody got himself a free RAM upgrade at her expense. Sadly as I posted that is par for the course, I see quite a few "five finger discounts" coming from machines that have been in the clutches of WB. She called and had a fit and got basically told by management unless she had pictures of before and after she was SOL. I told her she was just lucky they didn't rip the retainers out as they have been known to do.
I have seen parts stolen, parts put in backwards, hell I even saw a HDD that was obviously hammered in since they didn't know how to release the drive cage! That don't count the hot software I've seen put on (rampant) and of course them helping themselves to all pics, tunes, and videos. Frankly I wouldn't trust those clowns to shine my shoes, much less actually fix anything!
I know this will sound like a plug for myself but it really isn't, just some sound advice. you need work done or a family member needs work done, a new desktop, etc and you don't have the time to DIY? take it to a mom&pop shop. it won't take long at all to ask around and most of us actually take PRIDE in our work. We charge reasonable rates and will be happy to tell you if a machine is worth sinking money into or not, hell I've saved three folks this month the cost of new builds by pointing out I could upgrade their CPU+RAM for a hell of a lot cheaper.
Those Worst buy guys give EVERYONE in computers a bad name.That is why they have to advertise so much, to lure in new suckers. Me? i haven't even had business cards in nearly 2 years because I'm completely booked up just from word of mouth. If you do a good job you don't NEED to advertise, word gets around quickly enough.
Actually, and I'm sure I'll get hate for saying this, it was Gates who saved his ass. Of course we know Gates didn't do it out of the goodness of his heart, he did it to keep from being the only OS company and thus a big ass target to regulators but he did save his ass.
Not only did Gates cut a big fat check for Apple stock which at the time really wasn't doing squat, but also there was serious fears that nobody was gonna waste money developing for a "dying" platform. Having the head of one of the largest software companies on the planet come out and say 'I think the Mac has a great future and we at Microsoft are committed to supporting the Mac with our software" and then announcing a long term deal to supply MS Office really killed a lot of the skittishness. After that at the next MacWorld you saw tons of companies jump on board because if MSFT thought there was money to be made? Maybe there was.
Don't get me wrong, once Jobs had the money he was fricking brilliant, killing all the huge lines of confusing plastic crap and making a small line of sleek and sexy products, one hit after another. But when Jobs first came back there was serious talk that Apple was a "dead" system (I know, funny now right?) and that Jobs didn't have a prayer of stopping the death spiral. Gates may be a ruthless bastard but if he hadn't helped out Apple at the right time and gave Jobs the funds and breathing room he needed to rebuild the line things could have turned out VERY differently.
I just wonder how well Cook is gonna be able to break balls and steer the ship, because from everything I've read he has been more of a supply chain guy. Apple under Jobs has always been Steve's vision of perfection, like it or not, so we'll just have to see if after the products that were already in the pipeline have come and gone if Cook can come up with new markets to slaughter like Jobs did.
Either way Via Con Dios Steve, you truly deserve to be in that tiny room of visionaries that can say "I changed the way things are done".
Bimbo Newton Crosby, nice to see that SOMEONE gets it. The IPs we were looking at weren't the Wolf3Ds or anything that could currently be bought or even played on a modern system without DOSBox, we're talking the weird and cheesy stuff that sold on Shareware discs back in the day. in fact that was what gave me the idea, to create a modern shareware style device so that those that don't remember what that was like could get a taste.
But when we actually tried to sit down and talk to these people, people that were making ZERO PROFIT on the IP, and had NO interest from anybody? Most wanted $75k+ upfront and 30% of the gross AND many wanted rights to anything We did. yeah go fuck yourselves.
The bitch is i could have outsourced it to China and probably have them selling on Chinamart RIGHT THIS MINUTE and not have to give a shit. It is THIS which is why China will win, because it is EASY to simply ignore the copyright bullshit and IMPOSSIBLE to play by the rules.
Sadly as you said like the movies that are disappearing now (you know about that right? tons of movies from the 30s and 40s are rotting in the vaults because the studios can't figure out how to "monetize the IP" and won't give up the rights either) the vast majority of these games will go right into the black hole, never to be played or enjoyed. simply because copyrights are so rigged that every corp thinks their shit don't stink and they can get AAA prices for nothing.
And thus brilliance was spoken. Hell one could close the thread right there. You can't even try units at Worst buy before buying online since they are 90% of the time "house brand" crapola made specifically for WB with the cheapest shit China has to offer.
And Lord help you if you have someone stupid enough to take it to Geek Squad. I used to work at a shop down the street from a Worst Buy where OUR ENTIRE BUSINESS was nothing but fixing the fuckups by Geek Squad "agents". We used to call them the Greek Squad because one way or another they were gonna fuck you. i've seen RAM stick literally ripped off by ripping them out of the slot, I've seen a $300 GPU magically turned into a $45 GPU, a 400gb HDD turn into a 40Gb, and I hope you didn't have any nekkid pics of your GF because they helped themselves to anything and everything. One of the guys I knew that worked there had a 300gb USB drive with a batch file that looked for .jpg, .mp3, .avi, etc. That is why you always heard about CP busts with worst buy, because he before they started working on the thing they were looking for porn to snatch!
Frankly I wouldn't buy a power cord from worst buy, out of the 20 or so WBs I've had to deal with there was exactly ONE I found that was decent, with knowledgeable guys that tried to give you a fair deal. When my nephew had to have a laptop for school ASAP they sat down and worked with him and gave him a good deal. Went back there 3 months later and they had fired the staff (my guess to save a buck) and replaced them with MickeyDs quality help. I wouldn't take WB junk on a bet.
How about some more links? How about the fact that the ones who thought up credit default swaps, aka economy killers, are now in charge of the carbon credit scam?
Or how about how Rev Al Gore, Mr "inconvenient truth himself" has set himself up to be the world's first carbon billionaire? BTW did you know he has the ecologically friendly brass balls to say having a house with an indoor basketball court that blows more AC than TWENTY family of four homes, and who farts around on a private LEAR JET is complete CARBON NEUTRAL? How is that miracle able to occur? By paying himself credits from his own company that's how! it would be like you moving money from your left to right pocket, calling it "wealth redistribution" and demanding AND GETTING a tax break for doing it!
One final note: You notice that NEVER, not even once, have you seen Rev Al and the AGWers call for tariffs on china and India, even though both have said they won't play his little carbon games? you know why that is? because they make money on offshoring duh! More MONIES nom nom nom!
WAKE UP! Both sides are COMPLETELY FULL OF SHIT and have been corrupted by money so damned badly that if one of the "scientists" on EITHER side tells you its raining your ass better stick your arm out the window! The winner will take BILLIONS OF DOLLARS from the people who can least afford it, the working poor. BOTH SIDES want to fuck you HARD.
A sensible plan would be to stay as we are now, to keep raising standards while investing in technology TO BE BUILT HERE that would give us the energy we need. but that will never happen if either side wins, why? because they can't make massive profits THAT way stupid! More MONIES nom nom nom!
Dude buy the digital spray games, especially "you are empty". It'll run on any old P4 with a 6200 or better so no problems there and it is so fucking weird it is worth every cent!
Picture a Soviet town where everyone is supposedly gone insane where you suddenly have rednecks in coonskin caps running around with double barrels going "Bogga booga" I swear, the sound they make sounds like booga booga. And the cut scenes! Oh man the cut scenes are like if "the ring" was done by REALLY stoned Russians. "A kid walks down the street, a puppy bashes its head against a window until it bleeds, a guy gets hit by a car" WTF? What does that have to do with Soviet mind control?
Dude get it, if you like to laugh at MST3K style WTF situations you'll love this. The entire game is completely batshit.
Wow, talk about not getting it. Would you happen to be an MBA? The WHOLE POINT was these were games that hadn't been sold in over 20 years which means they were earning ZERO PROFIT understand? None, zip, zero, nada.
Now someone comes along and tell you something you are making ZERO MONEY from could actually earn you some money? Do you say "sit down and lets talk turkey" or do you say "I want 35% more than it cost new, just cause I'm special" as in Special Olympics?
As I said we were planning to make MAYBE 3% for ourselves after licensing and throwing some back to the DOSBox guys, but the sheer douchebaggery of those with games earning ZERO PROFIT would have caused the price to be around $200 A STICK. I'm serious, games that sold for less than $5 at the bargain bin they wanted more than a AAA game for. That isn't profit that is sheer dipshit stupidity. And now they are making ZERO PROFIT again. Wow, that was smart, I wonder why China and other countries that don't deal with this bullshit are kicking our asses, it sure is a mystery.
The problem with the Kin was it was targeted at the wrong group. they tried for the hipsters, which already were quite happy with the iShiny. you DO NOT target a product at a group that has one of the highest satisfaction ratings of all time that is seriously fucking dumb. What they SHOULD have done is targeted it to the tweeners and teens, the groups that can't afford an iShiny but would like to stay connected.
If you were to give me the kin today i could make it a hit. would it be an iShiny hit? Fuck no, there is only one WoW. And THAT is the problem. Just as too many MMOs all want to be WoW too many OEMs want to be the iShiny and anything less they consider massive fail. so they target the iShiny crowd, get their asses handed to them on a plate, and then give up.
Like I said give it to me or anyone else who knows you can't be WoW and you'd have had a profit making product. I predict the same uber fail for WinPhone, simply because yet again they'll go for the hipsters and yet again they will get slaughtered when compared to the iShiny. It is like trying to sell the Mustang to Ferrari owners, it is just fucking DUMB.
Want to win against iPad? Do a Dell. 1.4Ghz single core ARM, 512Mb of RAM, 4Gb of flash (with MicroSD support) and sell the thing for $8 over cost, which would put it at about $159. Use the profits to buy up a sweetheart contract for dual core ARMs and make the second generation duallies for $199. Massive hit, pads everywhere.
Would you make iPad profit per unit? FUCK NO because a lot of what sells Apple is the name and history, same is if you sold a Ferrari knockoff you ain't getting shit compared to a Ferrari, even if you made one so damned identical someone on the assembly line couldn't tell the difference. Again everyone wants to be WoW, when they can't make WoW profits they roll over and die.
Just goes to show why China will win in the end, companies like Lenovo are quite happy to take those 6-8% profits, whereas if it isn't making double digits and climbing per quarter the "damn everything but the quarterly reports!" MBA fuckheads here in the states will call it a complete loss. HP had a BOM of $318 which is too damned high, but if they would have sold it for $350 they could have had a solid seller if not iShiny money, but that simply isn't good enough here anymore, it is iShiny or bust. That is why they will fail.
Sadly I can answer that first one, greed, greed to the point of stupidity greed.
I should know because a friend and I had an idea for what I thought would be a neat little product...DOSBox...In a box. It would have been a flash stick with a preset and configured DOSBox loaded up with games, you'd have a shooter stick, a puzzler stick, platformer, variety pack, you get the idea. We were also gonna avoid the games everyone already has ways of running easily, your Wolf3Ds and Dooms and the like and concentrate on the offbeat and the quirky.
So what happened? Simple half the games when we started researching are forever lost in a no man's copyright land where the company has changed hands so many times nobody has clear rights to squat, but the worst was the second category, where we would find games with a clear title and the owners would want more than when it was new because "We might want to do something somewhere sometime with it". We are talking games that could be bought on eBay by the crateload for $5 and the assholes are wanting 30% of the gross!
So if you want to know why the bastard Valenti made sure copyrights were "forever minus a single day" it was so greedy pricks could lock huge chunks of our history up, either behind paywalls or just to let it rot until they could find a way to "maximize the profit potential of the IP" which is of course never.
Our little idea wasn't designed to make iMoney, hell we would have made maybe 3% profit after BOM and throwing some back to the DOSBox guys, we were doing it because we loved classic gaming and wanted to make it easy for the younger generations to try the games. Instead most likely the games will never get re-released on squat, simply because of the greed and endless copyrights. if I there is a hell I wish Valenti a nice spot in it, the sorry piggish fuck.
Nice troll, complete horseshit, but nice none the less. Unless you are running Win9X (which if you are, WTF is wrong with you? are you insane?) you just plug it in, Windows loads the HID driver (which it already has) and voila! Its a flash drive, duh!
Working retail I've had to deal with more funky players than you've had hot meals friend, from the CCC Walgreen's $20 specials to the Cowons to the Creative, you name it I'd had to load tunes into it and show someone how to use it and NEVER have I seen what you are describing on any win NT based Windows, never.
Oh I take that back, there was once a $15 POS Chinese player where I actually had to go into the device and tell it to run as a flash drive, otherwise you had to use WMP. Woop de fricking do, took all of 10 seconds.
As for TFA I may have never been a MacHead but I respected the man's vision. Via Con Dios Steve, I wish you nothing but the best..
I'd say the bigger question is this: can they keep the vision? Lets be honest folks iPhone 5 and iPad 4 and probably one or two more iPods were already in the pipe under Job's watch, but what after?
Like it or not it is the vision of Jobs that made Apple. look at how they sucked without him before, it ended up an MBA clusterfuck, hell look at what happened to MSFT when they lost Gates, another MBA clusterfuck.
To me the difference between Jobs and the MBAs can be summed up by a story I read by one of the guys that was designing iDVD..."So we hear Steve is gonna be in the next day to look at what we had done, so we have all these mock ups, with tabs and buttons for all the features, when in walks Steve. he completely ignores our mockups walks to the whiteboard and draws a box. he says 'This is it, this is the product. you drop a video in here and a single button that says burn appears" and he walked out. We just stood there shocked"
And THAT is what is gonna be damned hard for Apple to replace. It is damned hard to get people who can see the forest past the trees and cut through the bullshit and Jobs was damned good at that. remember it ran alright for a little while after he left the first time, it took about three years for the MBA clusterfuck to really take hold. I'd wish him well but sadly he has lived longer than most with that type of cancer and this move is probably him putting his affairs in order.
So while I'm sure the company will be fine now, the bigger question is will it still be innovating in 3 years, or like before will they end up coasting on past successes while all the PHBs jockey for position.
That is why I just tell everyone to just go to Amazon. Within days of a game coming out there are already used copies at BETTER prices that gameslop and it is the only place i know of where one can buy new and used PC games uber-cheap as well.
Most of the guys here would think I'm nuts but I enjoy BAD games, i'm not talking bad to the bone, i'm talking MST3K making fun of it bad and Amazon is wonderful for getting truly awful games for dirt cheap. if anyone hasn't tried them the digital spray games like "You are empty" fits this category, it is like "The Ring" if written by a seriously stoned Russian. And who can bitch when you get games for $3 or $4 shipped? hell at those prices i bought Kane & Lynch II just to laugh at it. BTW do NOT buy K&L II, it is so bad it ain't even funny bad, just painful bad. Duke Nukem Forever is actually better, it is THAT bad. you can be 4 foot away from someone and NEVER hit them!
So if Gameslop is acting like douches I'm frankly not surprised. The only reason I'm glad they exist is the game companies want to yank first sale away from us and make us pay them for the right to sell our used games, so it is like "battle of the network douchebags" when it comes to the publishers and gameslop. Just stick to Amazon and all will be gravy. The only thing GS is good for is dumping unwanted games and even then I tell folks they'd be better off at a pawnshop for the ripoff prices GS gives for used games.