ou're right. They should have stopped at the previous version
Never said that. I merely said 'whoop-dee-doo'.
Damn progression! Who cares if most consumers are drawn to a minimalist interface. We want it to look the same. Forever.
So provide it as yet another skin. Make it the new default for new installs even.
Its not really any better or worse than the old one... but it does make it look more like chrome if that's the itch you wanted to scratch.
I'm not mocking them because I prefer the old one, I'm mocking them because they said idiotic fluff like "Rounded tabs that make navigating the web faster"
I don't really care one way or the other about the new look. But the features they made a big to-do about should have just been another skin.
There's a huge difference between voiding the warranty and not being allowed to do what you want to your car.
And Apple lets you do neither.
How do you know?
Because your transaction goes through with the payment options you have on file with Sony, not with Steam, through Sony's infrastruture. I've seen games that do in-app through valves system and its COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.
Hell, you can even just buy the game currency at walmart, enter a code. EQ2 is very very loosely coupled with steam and while I'm sure steam gets a cut of any transactions that do go through steams infrastructure; most transactions don't.
I'm pretty sure Valve takes a cut of in-app purchases on free-to-play games.
Any that use steams infrastructure, for sure. The others? I'm not so sure. Free2Play is a special category though... unless there was kickback to steam thered be no incentive for them to even carry the title. But EQ2 isn't really F2P... the base game is but the current expansions are paid, and pretty much everyone that plays plays the current expansions. So Steam can make its money off the annual xpac.
First, I'm not a victim of Apple because I don't buy their products.
So it doesn't affect you. This is a bigger issue than you.
Second, Valve chooses not to pay the gatekeeper, just like many game companies don't want to pay Valve, though many do because of Valve's market dominance on the PC. Third, there are alternatives to Apple, just like there are alternatives to Valve.
With the PC you can choose to use steam or not. As the developer you can reach the customers without it. As the customer you can reach developers with out it. Some customers choose to use steam, and some developers choose to use steam. With a Mac same thing. With Linux same thing.
With IOS you can't. If you OWN an iphone you are not allowed to shop for apps outside the app store. If you are a developer you cannot sell apps to users without using the apple app store. That is the difference. And it should be illegal.
All the things that make steam similiar to apples app store are accurate. But the lock in is different. And the fact that one can buy an android to avoid it is entirely beside the point.
If I am a developer and you are a customer that owns a device, I should NOT have to use the manufacturers "store" to sell you something.
*shrug* So there's an alternative, even on the iDevice.
The point is the customers experience is artificially degraded.
The tabs are sleek and smooth to help you navigate the Web faster.
Well that's a fucking relief. I've been slogging awa with these slightly squarer tabs for months and my productivity has been in the toilet as a result.
Seriously, do they have any actual metrics that the new tabs actually help anyone "navigate the web faster" ?
Itâ(TM)s easy to see what tab youâ(TM)re currently visiting
It was already easy.
and the other tabs fade into the background to be less of a distraction when youâ(TM)re not using them.
Tweaking the relative brightness between current and other tabs hardly counts as revolutionary. I'm indifferent at best.
The Firefox menu has moved to the right corner of the toolbar and puts all your browser controls in one place.
I get how this different, but how is this, in any way 'better'?
I can't wait for this to get into cars. Who doesn't want a perfectly empty dashboard with all the controls crammed into the right corner.
In all seriousness, whoop-dee-doo so they moved the top left menu to the top right, but now its got that newish 3 bar icon which has come to mean "we stuck the menu here".
I guess people who heretofore have only ever used a twitter app will will finally be able to find the firefox menu that had been eluding them, hidden away in the top left.
The menu includes a âoeCustomizeâ tool that transforms Firefox into a powerful customization mode where you can add or move any feature, service or add-on.'
All it needs is to say "Don't Panic!" in large friendly letters.
I know why they don't. That doesn't mean it's the right answer.
Because you sincerely think consumers shouldn't have the right to do what they want with the cars they bought?
Then why don't you apply the same logic to Valve?
I did.
Don't you think they also take a percentage of in-app purchases?
Everquest 2, for example, is available on steam. In-app purchases don't appear to go through valve's transaction processing at all, and you can even link and unlink the game to steam at will since Sony provides its own download, hosting, patching, and payment infrastructure. You can even buy the game from another store entirely, or direct from Sony.
Sure, other smaller games from smaller publishers are wholly dependent on valves infrastructure, but its their choice.
You really made a poor choice by bringing in Steam as a victim of Apple.
Steam's not really the victim of apple. We the consumer are. We can't shop from steam's app because of apple. We can however login to the steam website and shop from that though even on an apple device. That's how pointless and fucked up it is.
Its not because they haven't thought of it. Its because they tried and society gave them a giant smack down.
Or you can just buy an Android that allows sideloading.
Just because Chevy lets you tinker with the engine and get oil changes where you like doesn't mean its ok for Ford to bolt your hood shut and only give dealers the keys.
Its still illegal for Ford, and it should be illegal for Apple.
I disagree. They invested all the money building and selling their device and platform. They should be able to sell software on it as they see fit.
Just like car manufacturers should be allowed to dictate that you must get all your service at the dealer, and buy gas from their gas stations right, and only install oem parts?
I mean, they spent all that money on the designing and building cars, building dealer networks, and now some 'minute-lube' is trying to make a buck doing an oil change -- and they can't even void the owners warranty nor install a lock preventing the customer from opening the hood to service the engine themselves!
Apple has done all of these things with its platform. They locked it down so the customer can't install their own software, can't shop at a different store. But its all artificial and could be swept away with a software patch.
Perhaps the force of law should force that door open, just like it did with the car dealers.
They could try and demand it as a condition for selling items in their store, but manufacturers would balk.
Which is exactly what amazon is now doing: "balking" And a lot more manufacturers should "balk". And customers should balk. All in all a lot more balking should be taking place.
The difference is that an app like Comixology can be given away for free while making money on all the in-app purchases. It's just another revenue model.
Right. I agree with that. Why would Bestbuy carry the ipad if they were free and apple made all their money from the app store and best buy made nothing. I get that.
On the other hand, the solution there is simple, best buy just won't carry the ipad unless they can sell it for something. Problem solved.
The Best Buy analogy is broken, because they are a store, not a platform.
That's really no difference at all.
You buy a console and leave the store.
And once you've bought comixology you never have to visit the apple app store again. The dependency on the store is artificial and arbitrary.
You can "leave" the iDevice too to another platform, but when you're on it Apple wants their cut, just like Microsoft does with the Xbox.
The only reason Apple (or Microsoft) get 30% of all purchases for iPads or Xboxes is they are effectively able to force you to. This should be illegal.
Do you really think if Best Buy could get 30% of all your after purchase sales they wouldn't? There is no techical reason they couldn't. (And in fact, for example, historically, when you bought a cell phone from a cell phone dealer a percentage percentage of your monthly bills went back to the dealer as a "residual" payment for signing and servicing the customer.)
We absolutely have meatspace examples of the same sort of systems.
Of course, it's not just about the payment transaction, it's very much the exposure to the userbase.
You completely missed the point.
This isn't about initial purchases, its about in-app purchases. 30% for the initial app purchase is quite fair.
30% for in-app purchases is, in many (but not all) cases, ludicrous. Because at that point its just transaction processing. You aren't paying for a userbase with in app purchases -- these are already your customers, and you app is the "store".
Paying apple 30% for in app purchases is exactly as reasonable as apple paying bestbuy 30% for apple app store purchases since the customer bought the ipad from bestbuy.
Says the guy with no retail experience what so ever.
Quite the contrary.
The apple app store is pretty reasonable for selling apps. It provides exposure, hosting, reviews, etc. But in-app purchases? The app itself is the store. The ONLY thing Apple does for them is provide the transaction processing.
bestbuy takes ATLEAST 30%
Off the initial purchase yes. But afterwards?
Lets take it one step backwards from in-app purchase revenue going to the app store. Why not have the app purchases go to the physical store. Its the same damned thing.
Suppose you buy your ipad from bestbuy, should best buy get to require that they get 30% of all the apps you buy on that ipad for the lifetime of the device?
Because that's what apple's app store is doing. You buy the app, and pay 30% to the store you bought it from and that's perfectly fine. But the app itself contains a store for its own in-app stuff... and Apple gets 30% that why?
Because they gave you access to the 'market' that bought the app? So then bestbuy can make the same argument... i minght not have my ipad if i didn't buy it at bestbuy, so best buy gave apple access to me, and therefore best buy should get 30% of everything i buy in the ipad right?
Microsoft allows the subscription to be purchased both through their site (where they keep it all) and in-app where they give Apple their 30%.
Yes, I knew that.
What was your point about Office again?
Supporting the (small minority of?) users that subscribe "in-app" is a nod to ease-of-use and helps expand the market. They can drop the feature in the future once the market is established, just as amazon did.
Plus Microsoft knows the vast majority of people will get their office 365 subscription elsewhere anyway. (Primarily through work - ie enterprise volume licensing)
Look up what percentage Valve charges other game companies to publish on Steam. Valve tries to hide this number, but it's been reported at 30%.
Developers wishing to reach the PC, Mac, or Linux game markets do not have to go through Valve. Observe multiple competing app stores, direct sales, physical retail sales, and so forth. If your business model isn't compatible with steam you can reach those customers any number of other ways. There is lots of software not on steam after all.
Magic the Gathering: Online as an example. Evidently Wizards (Hasbro iirc) are happy to run their own patch manager and store. They release some simpler fixed deck titles to steam effectively as tutorials and advertising for the "real thing", but the big cash cow they run entirely themselves. And I can't imagine what advantage they would get by giving up 30% of their revenue to valve and selling the boosters etc there.
The point is Steam is great for most developers in the same way that the apple app store is great for most developers. The store provides a lot of the infrastructure, patch management, community management, and transaction tools along with an opportunity to get exposure to a lot of gamers. This is a pretty good deal overall. I think Arcen games once said around 90% of its revenue is through steam vs 3% from direct sales. Clearly, for them, the 30% paid to steam appears to be money very well spent. And the same goes for Apple's app store.
But in apple's case for example, take Microsoft Office. Microsoft doesn't need the app store to generate demand for its product. If they released office for the ipad they could sell it directly without any trouble at all. They certainly don't need apple to provide them infrastructure, exposure, or process Visa cards. But they couldn't. So for the longest time there was no office for ipad.
Now there finally is Office for iOS... but most of the key functionality is tied to a subscription to office 365. That's the "loophole" with Apple (if your business model can be contorted to work with a subscription service that your customers obtain [primarily] externally to apple).
30% to gan access to many millions of people who already have payment details entered and ready to go at the press of a button.
30% of your gross revenue? For transaction management? Whether you need it or not? Are you high?
Visa charges what? Around 3% to gain access to many millions of people who are carrying around a piece of plastic with the Visa emblem painted on it; for transactions under $50 they don't even have to push a button they can just tap the card on your payment terminal. 3% to access millions of customers, so they don't have to carry cash or write you cheques. But you think 30% its a good deal?
30% is a good deal if you sell a few thousand copies of a 1$ app. Its ludicrous money for other business models.
Want to know why, for example, the Steam Mobile app doesn't allow you to buy Windows games for your PC and add them to your steam library right from the mobile app?
30% gross to Apple is why
Its also why you can use MS Office if you have an office 360 subscription, but you cannot actually subscribe via the app. No way microsoft is handing apple 30% gross revenue to run a Visa. It would be ludicrous.
80% fixed income, 20% equity is conservative. As such, even a 20% decline in the stock market only equates to a 4% drop in your retirement fund.
Not disagreeing there. I'm just arguing that basing your retirement on a reliable 5% yield on a conservative portfolio is not sane.
You are free, however, to put your money in a money market earning 0.7% if you like
Of course I'm not advocating that.:) I'm advocating a mix similar to what you suggested -- but I'm saying you should plan to be able to live off a 3% yield, not 5%, so you should aim to have enough in the bank at retirement that at 3% your minimum lifestyle goals are still met.
earning 0.7% if you like, but then at the 3% inflation you are worried about, you will be loosing 2% of your value each year which will severely limit how much you can withdrawal and for how long.
Sadly even at 5% yield with 3% inflation you are being gradually screwed. With say 1$M in the bank, taking 50k per year out your capital will be preserved, but the buying power of that 50k will steadily decline. Literally... year 1 you have 50k in buying power; year 2 the same 50k withdrawl is only 48.5k in buying power... 10 years down the road that 50k is going to be miles below what you need; so in order to retain your buying pwoer you are doing to be drawing down ever more capital each year, even at 5% yield. You basically need 8% yield to retain 50k "buying power" against 3% inflation without eating into your equity. And that's absurd... so you need a LOT more than a million dollars if you want to have a hope of living a 20 year retirement and leaving anything approaching a million bucks to the kids (Before taxes.)
Steamworks looks like DRM and quacks like DRM. In what way is it not DRM?
It has a cloud save game component - that's not DRM. It has a match making service - that's not DRM It has its whole 'achievements' tracking, and leaderboards and stuff, that's not DRM. Steam is download manager, and automatic patching system, and that's not DRM either. But yeah, Steam ALSO has a DRM component, no question about that.
Steam is DRM.
Saying "Steam is DRM" is like saying the Wizard of Oz is a story about a scarecrow. Its not really a complete or accurate picture.
Moreover there absolutely ARE games on Steam that are not dependent on Steam, and will gracefully turn off steamworks features if steam isn't available/running or online, making them every bit as "DRM free" as GoG.com titles.
Anybody pretending otherwise is lying to themselves.
I really don't know what your axe to grind here is.
I notice you also don't even touch things like resale and so on.
Even GoG doesn't allow 'resale' in any meaningful sense of the word. The game is on your gog account, you can't transfer it. Sure you can take the copy you downloaded and sell it to someone else and never download it again I suppose... but you can do the same with any steam title that's not reliant on steam too. And in any case that's not a meaningful "support for resale".
Re:I don't think, they worry about non-US users
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If 3 out 4 Hulu subscribers were foreign, you'd think Hulu would have opened up in foreign markets by now.:)
On the other hand if it's in the 30-70% range then I'd say they're absolutely justified in cracking down on it.
I'd be VERY surprised if its much more than the 0.3% to 0.7% range.
Re:I don't think, they worry about non-US users
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Also, Hulu is ad-supported. If I was one of their 'sponsors', I might be a bit annoyed that Hulu was billing me for ads delivered to countries where I don't even do business.
You should factor that into your advertising budget.
Some percentage of people your ads get shown to aren't interested in your product and never will be, that some percentage don't have enough money to buy it, that some percentage are foreign tourists staying at a friends house who don't speak English and can't even under stand your ad, that some percentage looked away and muted the volume when your ad came on, some percentage...
really if the idea that some fraction are foreigners jumping through hoops to watch your ads offends you I don't know how you cope.
If you are retired with a million dollars in your retirement account, one would hope it isn't sitting in a money market. Even AAA+ corporate, munis and treasuries will get you around 4% today and are considered safe. In addition, you would keep some of your funds in the stock market, maybe 20%. 5% would probably be low.
And if the stock market takes even a temporary crash, what then? You are suddenly drawing down your capital, and now next year you've got that much less capital earning interest so even if the market recovers you're still short. If it takes 3 or 4 years to recover your down a couple hundred thousand from where you started.
Meanwhile you are fighting inflation at say 3%.
Because you are LIVING off the interest, you cannot weather temporary market setbacks like you can during the saving stages of your life. Even a short term drop a genuine concern.
Retirement planning scenarios have to be CONSERVATIVE. If you do better in retirement great -- enjoy your blackjack, hookers, and blow, but you have to plan for things not going particular well with the economy.
It certainly isn't going to object if another game that I happened to buy from the same *store* is being played on another PC!
The game doesn't object. Steam itself does. There *is* a big difference, even if the end result is indistinguishable in practice.
It can *probably* even be played just by turning off sound...
Depends where "if (!sound_device_available)" is.
If you honestly thought that just because they *told* you it was purely for technical reasons it therefore isn't DRM, you are a colossal idiot
If they told me that, I'd tell them to fix it because its lazy programming. If they are a decent developer who *honestly* didn't do it for the DRM then they would and could fix it.
Since this sort of stuff has happened, and exactly those sorts of updates to games have been released to make titles work better with acheivements and cloud saves etc when run offline or without steam loaded at all your "utter moron, brainless fanboy, sucker, and collossal idiot" charges fall flat on their face.
Theres even been games that were released DRM free, added acheivements etc which "broke" their ability to be run without steam, and then patched again to restore steam-free running. Just because a developer does a half-assed or flawed implementation of using the steamworks client stuff doesn't mean they are trying to stick you with DRM.
Because its retarded to have to carry all that shit about just because a phone doesn't support SD.
Wow, ok... "carry all that shit about" is PRECISELY what I think of a bag of SD cards, with all your media scattered around on them, accessible one at a time.
I guess you missed the part where you can access those terabytes by leaving them at home in most circumstances. Its not like they need to be hanging from your belt next to your onion.
Plus its multiple TERAbytes of available space not GIGAbytes portioned out a 100 a time; so 10s to 100s of times the space for a fraction of the price. So... there's that.
Do you really need to bring StarCraft II into this,
Yeah... I haven't bought SC II yet and doubt I will. blizzard doesn't exactly stand for anything good anymore in my books. SC1, D1, D2, WC III... but modern WoW and SCII? Not impressed with the direction they've gone.
There use to be this ideal of "innocent until proven guilty". What makes you trust this woman so much?
The woman's word didn't convict them. It amounted to reasonable suspicion to pull a vehicle over, that's it. Your ignoring a big chain of events.
It could have been a female Federal agent wanting to create a parallel construction of evidence.
Its conceivable. Do you have any evidence for this beyond a mere statement of the possibility that it might be the case?
An anonymous call, by itself, warrants just the smallest of investigations -- in this case, the law enforcement official followed the vehicle and did not see any evidence of wrong doing. That should have been the end of it.
Because pulling the driver over and asking if he was drunk is an "exceptionally deep investigation"?
The woman apparently did not want to press charges
Press charges for WHAT?
or even testify since it is assumed she refused to give her name.
Not wanting to get involved is pretty normal. If I saw a drunk I wouldn't want to get dragged into court, have my character, recollections, and life torn apart by cross examination, my time wasted etc. And if the police catch up to him because of my tip, and notice he's drunk then they can take care of him without my help.
I suspect in this case, however, you'd need to have the caller identified since if the run-off-the-road case was taken to trial, the defendant has a right to cross-examine witnesses.
Only if he was charged with running the other driver off the road. If he's to be charged with drunk driving, the fact that he's impaired when pulled over is more than sufficient.
I do think they overstepped what was appropriate for the situation.
Pulling him over to see if he's drunk is inappropriate after a report he was driving badly. FWIW Drunk drivers rarely drive erratically. Their reactions and awareness is impaired; so unless something unexpected happens they'll probably appear to be driving just fine.
Slashdot Mirror
ou're right. They should have stopped at the previous version
Never said that. I merely said 'whoop-dee-doo'.
Damn progression! Who cares if most consumers are drawn to a minimalist interface. We want it to look the same. Forever.
So provide it as yet another skin. Make it the new default for new installs even.
Its not really any better or worse than the old one... but it does make it look more like chrome if that's the itch you wanted to scratch.
I'm not mocking them because I prefer the old one, I'm mocking them because they said idiotic fluff like "Rounded tabs that make navigating the web faster"
I don't really care one way or the other about the new look. But the features they made a big to-do about should have just been another skin.
I actually love the lack of status bar
And until recently people like you could simply turn it off, while people like me could turn it on.
This seemed to be working fine for both of us. What was improved by changing this status quo?
There's a huge difference between voiding the warranty and not being allowed to do what you want to your car.
And Apple lets you do neither.
How do you know?
Because your transaction goes through with the payment options you have on file with Sony, not with Steam, through Sony's infrastruture. I've seen games that do in-app through valves system and its COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.
Hell, you can even just buy the game currency at walmart, enter a code. EQ2 is very very loosely coupled with steam and while I'm sure steam gets a cut of any transactions that do go through steams infrastructure; most transactions don't.
I'm pretty sure Valve takes a cut of in-app purchases on free-to-play games.
Any that use steams infrastructure, for sure. The others? I'm not so sure. Free2Play is a special category though... unless there was kickback to steam thered be no incentive for them to even carry the title. But EQ2 isn't really F2P... the base game is but the current expansions are paid, and pretty much everyone that plays plays the current expansions. So Steam can make its money off the annual xpac.
First, I'm not a victim of Apple because I don't buy their products.
So it doesn't affect you. This is a bigger issue than you.
Second, Valve chooses not to pay the gatekeeper, just like many game companies don't want to pay Valve, though many do because of Valve's market dominance on the PC. Third, there are alternatives to Apple, just like there are alternatives to Valve.
With the PC you can choose to use steam or not. As the developer you can reach the customers without it. As the customer you can reach developers with out it. Some customers choose to use steam, and some developers choose to use steam. With a Mac same thing. With Linux same thing.
With IOS you can't. If you OWN an iphone you are not allowed to shop for apps outside the app store. If you are a developer you cannot sell apps to users without using the apple app store. That is the difference. And it should be illegal.
All the things that make steam similiar to apples app store are accurate. But the lock in is different. And the fact that one can buy an android to avoid it is entirely beside the point.
If I am a developer and you are a customer that owns a device, I should NOT have to use the manufacturers "store" to sell you something.
*shrug* So there's an alternative, even on the iDevice.
The point is the customers experience is artificially degraded.
Then I'm not interested. Seriously, chrome has gotten me way to lazy in this regard.
Maybe not all of us want every single thing we type into the address bar sent to google or bing?
The tabs are sleek and smooth to help you navigate the Web faster.
Well that's a fucking relief. I've been slogging awa with these slightly squarer tabs for months and my productivity has been in the toilet as a result.
Seriously, do they have any actual metrics that the new tabs actually help anyone "navigate the web faster" ?
Itâ(TM)s easy to see what tab youâ(TM)re currently visiting
It was already easy.
and the other tabs fade into the background to be less of a distraction when youâ(TM)re not using them.
Tweaking the relative brightness between current and other tabs hardly counts as revolutionary. I'm indifferent at best.
The Firefox menu has moved to the right corner of the toolbar and puts all your browser controls in one place.
I get how this different, but how is this, in any way 'better'?
I can't wait for this to get into cars. Who doesn't want a perfectly empty dashboard with all the controls crammed into the right corner.
In all seriousness, whoop-dee-doo so they moved the top left menu to the top right, but now its got that newish 3 bar icon which has come to mean "we stuck the menu here".
I guess people who heretofore have only ever used a twitter app will will finally be able to find the firefox menu that had been eluding them, hidden away in the top left.
The menu includes a âoeCustomizeâ tool that transforms Firefox into a powerful customization mode where you can add or move any feature, service or add-on.'
All it needs is to say "Don't Panic!" in large friendly letters.
I know why they don't. That doesn't mean it's the right answer.
Because you sincerely think consumers shouldn't have the right to do what they want with the cars they bought?
Then why don't you apply the same logic to Valve?
I did.
Don't you think they also take a percentage of in-app purchases?
Everquest 2, for example, is available on steam. In-app purchases don't appear to go through valve's transaction processing at all, and you can even link and unlink the game to steam at will since Sony provides its own download, hosting, patching, and payment infrastructure. You can even buy the game from another store entirely, or direct from Sony.
Sure, other smaller games from smaller publishers are wholly dependent on valves infrastructure, but its their choice.
You really made a poor choice by bringing in Steam as a victim of Apple.
Steam's not really the victim of apple. We the consumer are. We can't shop from steam's app because of apple. We can however login to the steam website and shop from that though even on an apple device. That's how pointless and fucked up it is.
Arguably, yes.
You ever wonder why they don't?
Its not because they haven't thought of it. Its because they tried and society gave them a giant smack down.
Or you can just buy an Android that allows sideloading.
Just because Chevy lets you tinker with the engine and get oil changes where you like doesn't mean its ok for Ford to bolt your hood shut and only give dealers the keys.
Its still illegal for Ford, and it should be illegal for Apple.
Governments gave those cable companies the monopolies in the first place. Now those governments work with the cable companies to the benefit of both.
It's called fascism.
In what universe is that "fascism"?
It's just plain old corruption and greed.
I disagree. They invested all the money building and selling their device and platform. They should be able to sell software on it as they see fit.
Just like car manufacturers should be allowed to dictate that you must get all your service at the dealer, and buy gas from their gas stations right, and only install oem parts?
I mean, they spent all that money on the designing and building cars, building dealer networks, and now some 'minute-lube' is trying to make a buck doing an oil change -- and they can't even void the owners warranty nor install a lock preventing the customer from opening the hood to service the engine themselves!
Apple has done all of these things with its platform. They locked it down so the customer can't install their own software, can't shop at a different store. But its all artificial and could be swept away with a software patch.
Perhaps the force of law should force that door open, just like it did with the car dealers.
They could try and demand it as a condition for selling items in their store, but manufacturers would balk.
Which is exactly what amazon is now doing: "balking"
And a lot more manufacturers should "balk". And customers should balk. All in all a lot more balking should be taking place.
The difference is that an app like Comixology can be given away for free while making money on all the in-app purchases. It's just another revenue model.
Right. I agree with that. Why would Bestbuy carry the ipad if they were free and apple made all their money from the app store and best buy made nothing. I get that.
On the other hand, the solution there is simple, best buy just won't carry the ipad unless they can sell it for something. Problem solved.
The Best Buy analogy is broken, because they are a store, not a platform.
That's really no difference at all.
You buy a console and leave the store.
And once you've bought comixology you never have to visit the apple app store again. The dependency on the store is artificial and arbitrary.
You can "leave" the iDevice too to another platform, but when you're on it Apple wants their cut, just like Microsoft does with the Xbox.
The only reason Apple (or Microsoft) get 30% of all purchases for iPads or Xboxes is they are effectively able to force you to. This should be illegal.
Do you really think if Best Buy could get 30% of all your after purchase sales they wouldn't? There is no techical reason they couldn't. (And in fact, for example, historically, when you bought a cell phone from a cell phone dealer a percentage percentage of your monthly bills went back to the dealer as a "residual" payment for signing and servicing the customer.)
We absolutely have meatspace examples of the same sort of systems.
Of course, it's not just about the payment transaction, it's very much the exposure to the userbase.
You completely missed the point.
This isn't about initial purchases, its about in-app purchases. 30% for the initial app purchase is quite fair.
30% for in-app purchases is, in many (but not all) cases, ludicrous. Because at that point its just transaction processing. You aren't paying for a userbase with in app purchases -- these are already your customers, and you app is the "store".
Paying apple 30% for in app purchases is exactly as reasonable as apple paying bestbuy 30% for apple app store purchases since the customer bought the ipad from bestbuy.
Says the guy with no retail experience what so ever.
Quite the contrary.
The apple app store is pretty reasonable for selling apps. It provides exposure, hosting, reviews, etc. But in-app purchases? The app itself is the store. The ONLY thing Apple does for them is provide the transaction processing.
bestbuy takes ATLEAST 30%
Off the initial purchase yes. But afterwards?
Lets take it one step backwards from in-app purchase revenue going to the app store. Why not have the app purchases go to the physical store. Its the same damned thing.
Suppose you buy your ipad from bestbuy, should best buy get to require that they get 30% of all the apps you buy on that ipad for the lifetime of the device?
Because that's what apple's app store is doing. You buy the app, and pay 30% to the store you bought it from and that's perfectly fine. But the app itself contains a store for its own in-app stuff... and Apple gets 30% that why?
Because they gave you access to the 'market' that bought the app? So then bestbuy can make the same argument... i minght not have my ipad if i didn't buy it at bestbuy, so best buy gave apple access to me, and therefore best buy should get 30% of everything i buy in the ipad right?
That's just standard retail practice? LMAO :p
Microsoft allows the subscription to be purchased both through their site (where they keep it all) and in-app where they give Apple their 30%.
Yes, I knew that.
What was your point about Office again?
Supporting the (small minority of?) users that subscribe "in-app" is a nod to ease-of-use and helps expand the market. They can drop the feature in the future once the market is established, just as amazon did.
Plus Microsoft knows the vast majority of people will get their office 365 subscription elsewhere anyway. (Primarily through work - ie enterprise volume licensing)
Look up what percentage Valve charges other game companies to publish on Steam. Valve tries to hide this number, but it's been reported at 30%.
Developers wishing to reach the PC, Mac, or Linux game markets do not have to go through Valve. Observe multiple competing app stores, direct sales, physical retail sales, and so forth. If your business model isn't compatible with steam you can reach those customers any number of other ways. There is lots of software not on steam after all.
Magic the Gathering: Online as an example. Evidently Wizards (Hasbro iirc) are happy to run their own patch manager and store. They release some simpler fixed deck titles to steam effectively as tutorials and advertising for the "real thing", but the big cash cow they run entirely themselves. And I can't imagine what advantage they would get by giving up 30% of their revenue to valve and selling the boosters etc there.
The point is Steam is great for most developers in the same way that the apple app store is great for most developers. The store provides a lot of the infrastructure, patch management, community management, and transaction tools along with an opportunity to get exposure to a lot of gamers. This is a pretty good deal overall. I think Arcen games once said around 90% of its revenue is through steam vs 3% from direct sales. Clearly, for them, the 30% paid to steam appears to be money very well spent. And the same goes for Apple's app store.
But in apple's case for example, take Microsoft Office. Microsoft doesn't need the app store to generate demand for its product. If they released office for the ipad they could sell it directly without any trouble at all. They certainly don't need apple to provide them infrastructure, exposure, or process Visa cards. But they couldn't. So for the longest time there was no office for ipad.
Now there finally is Office for iOS... but most of the key functionality is tied to a subscription to office 365. That's the "loophole" with Apple (if your business model can be contorted to work with a subscription service that your customers obtain [primarily] externally to apple).
30% to gan access to many millions of people who already have payment details entered and ready to go at the press of a button.
30% of your gross revenue? For transaction management? Whether you need it or not? Are you high?
Visa charges what? Around 3% to gain access to many millions of people who are carrying around a piece of plastic with the Visa emblem painted on it; for transactions under $50 they don't even have to push a button they can just tap the card on your payment terminal. 3% to access millions of customers, so they don't have to carry cash or write you cheques. But you think 30% its a good deal?
30% is a good deal if you sell a few thousand copies of a 1$ app. Its ludicrous money for other business models.
Want to know why, for example, the Steam Mobile app doesn't allow you to buy Windows games for your PC and add them to your steam library right from the mobile app?
30% gross to Apple is why
Its also why you can use MS Office if you have an office 360 subscription, but you cannot actually subscribe via the app. No way microsoft is handing apple 30% gross revenue to run a Visa. It would be ludicrous.
80% fixed income, 20% equity is conservative. As such, even a 20% decline in the stock market only equates to a 4% drop in your retirement fund.
Not disagreeing there. I'm just arguing that basing your retirement on a reliable 5% yield on a conservative portfolio is not sane.
You are free, however, to put your money in a money market earning 0.7% if you like
Of course I'm not advocating that. :) I'm advocating a mix similar to what you suggested -- but I'm saying you should plan to be able to live off a 3% yield, not 5%, so you should aim to have enough in the bank at retirement that at 3% your minimum lifestyle goals are still met.
earning 0.7% if you like, but then at the 3% inflation you are worried about, you will be loosing 2% of your value each year which will severely limit how much you can withdrawal and for how long.
Sadly even at 5% yield with 3% inflation you are being gradually screwed. With say 1$M in the bank, taking 50k per year out your capital will be preserved, but the buying power of that 50k will steadily decline. Literally... year 1 you have 50k in buying power; year 2 the same 50k withdrawl is only 48.5k in buying power... 10 years down the road that 50k is going to be miles below what you need; so in order to retain your buying pwoer you are doing to be drawing down ever more capital each year, even at 5% yield. You basically need 8% yield to retain 50k "buying power" against 3% inflation without eating into your equity. And that's absurd... so you need a LOT more than a million dollars if you want to have a hope of living a 20 year retirement and leaving anything approaching a million bucks to the kids (Before taxes.)
Steamworks looks like DRM and quacks like DRM. In what way is it not DRM?
It has a cloud save game component - that's not DRM.
It has a match making service - that's not DRM
It has its whole 'achievements' tracking, and leaderboards and stuff, that's not DRM.
Steam is download manager, and automatic patching system, and that's not DRM either.
But yeah, Steam ALSO has a DRM component, no question about that.
Steam is DRM.
Saying "Steam is DRM" is like saying the Wizard of Oz is a story about a scarecrow. Its not really a complete or accurate picture.
Moreover there absolutely ARE games on Steam that are not dependent on Steam, and will gracefully turn off steamworks features if steam isn't available/running or online, making them every bit as "DRM free" as GoG.com titles.
Anybody pretending otherwise is lying to themselves.
I really don't know what your axe to grind here is.
I notice you also don't even touch things like resale and so on.
Even GoG doesn't allow 'resale' in any meaningful sense of the word. The game is on your gog account, you can't transfer it. Sure you can take the copy you downloaded and sell it to someone else and never download it again I suppose... but you can do the same with any steam title that's not reliant on steam too. And in any case that's not a meaningful "support for resale".
If 3 out 4 Hulu subscribers were foreign, you'd think Hulu would have opened up in foreign markets by now. :)
On the other hand if it's in the 30-70% range then I'd say they're absolutely justified in cracking down on it.
I'd be VERY surprised if its much more than the 0.3% to 0.7% range.
Also, Hulu is ad-supported. If I was one of their 'sponsors', I might be a bit annoyed that Hulu was billing me for ads delivered to countries where I don't even do business.
You should factor that into your advertising budget.
Some percentage of people your ads get shown to aren't interested in your product and never will be, that some percentage don't have enough money to buy it, that some percentage are foreign tourists staying at a friends house who don't speak English and can't even under stand your ad, that some percentage looked away and muted the volume when your ad came on, some percentage ...
really if the idea that some fraction are foreigners jumping through hoops to watch your ads offends you I don't know how you cope.
If you are retired with a million dollars in your retirement account, one would hope it isn't sitting in a money market. Even AAA+ corporate, munis and treasuries will get you around 4% today and are considered safe. In addition, you would keep some of your funds in the stock market, maybe 20%. 5% would probably be low.
And if the stock market takes even a temporary crash, what then? You are suddenly drawing down your capital, and now next year you've got that much less capital earning interest so even if the market recovers you're still short. If it takes 3 or 4 years to recover your down a couple hundred thousand from where you started.
Meanwhile you are fighting inflation at say 3%.
Because you are LIVING off the interest, you cannot weather temporary market setbacks like you can during the saving stages of your life. Even a short term drop a genuine concern.
Retirement planning scenarios have to be CONSERVATIVE. If you do better in retirement great -- enjoy your blackjack, hookers, and blow, but you have to plan for things not going particular well with the economy.
It certainly isn't going to object if another game that I happened to buy from the same *store* is being played on another PC!
The game doesn't object. Steam itself does. There *is* a big difference, even if the end result is indistinguishable in practice.
It can *probably* even be played just by turning off sound...
Depends where "if (!sound_device_available)" is.
If you honestly thought that just because they *told* you it was purely for technical reasons it therefore isn't DRM, you are a colossal idiot
If they told me that, I'd tell them to fix it because its lazy programming. If they are a decent developer who *honestly* didn't do it for the DRM then they would and could fix it.
Since this sort of stuff has happened, and exactly those sorts of updates to games have been released to make titles work better with acheivements and cloud saves etc when run offline or without steam loaded at all your "utter moron, brainless fanboy, sucker, and collossal idiot" charges fall flat on their face.
Theres even been games that were released DRM free, added acheivements etc which "broke" their ability to be run without steam, and then patched again to restore steam-free running. Just because a developer does a half-assed or flawed implementation of using the steamworks client stuff doesn't mean they are trying to stick you with DRM.
Because its retarded to have to carry all that shit about just because a phone doesn't support SD.
Wow, ok... "carry all that shit about" is PRECISELY what I think of a bag of SD cards, with all your media scattered around on them, accessible one at a time.
I guess you missed the part where you can access those terabytes by leaving them at home in most circumstances. Its not like they need to be hanging from your belt next to your onion.
Plus its multiple TERAbytes of available space not GIGAbytes portioned out a 100 a time; so 10s to 100s of times the space for a fraction of the price. So ... there's that.
Do you really need to bring StarCraft II into this,
Yeah... I haven't bought SC II yet and doubt I will. blizzard doesn't exactly stand for anything good anymore in my books. SC1, D1, D2, WC III... but modern WoW and SCII? Not impressed with the direction they've gone.
and whenever they've added any sort of setting, the default was quite restrictive.
Well good enough for me then, right? Nothing bad has happened so far, so nothing ever well.
There use to be this ideal of "innocent until proven guilty". What makes you trust this woman so much?
The woman's word didn't convict them. It amounted to reasonable suspicion to pull a vehicle over, that's it. Your ignoring a big chain of events.
It could have been a female Federal agent wanting to create a parallel construction of evidence.
Its conceivable. Do you have any evidence for this beyond a mere statement of the possibility that it might be the case?
An anonymous call, by itself, warrants just the smallest of investigations -- in this case, the law enforcement official followed the vehicle and did not see any evidence of wrong doing. That should have been the end of it.
Because pulling the driver over and asking if he was drunk is an "exceptionally deep investigation"?
The woman apparently did not want to press charges
Press charges for WHAT?
or even testify since it is assumed she refused to give her name.
Not wanting to get involved is pretty normal. If I saw a drunk I wouldn't want to get dragged into court, have my character, recollections, and life torn apart by cross examination, my time wasted etc. And if the police catch up to him because of my tip, and notice he's drunk then they can take care of him without my help.
I suspect in this case, however, you'd need to have the caller identified since if the run-off-the-road case was taken to trial, the defendant has a right to cross-examine witnesses.
Only if he was charged with running the other driver off the road. If he's to be charged with drunk driving, the fact that he's impaired when pulled over is more than sufficient.
I do think they overstepped what was appropriate for the situation.
Pulling him over to see if he's drunk is inappropriate after a report he was driving badly. FWIW Drunk drivers rarely drive erratically. Their reactions and awareness is impaired; so unless something unexpected happens they'll probably appear to be driving just fine.