The Apple store works because Apple's customers are the kind of people that buy their computers from stores. Microsoft has those customers too, and they shop at Best Buy. If they can capture some of those customers, that's profit directly into their pockets.
You're right about that video; while it's cheesy and sophomoric, it does (accidentally) capture the distinction very well. Nobody walking down an aisle sees an iPod and wonders "what is that? let me take a look at the features." Everyone knows what an iPod is and, unless they're rich or Christmas shopping, they already know they're going to get one when they walk in the store and don't need any more convincing than the $100-budget artwork on the plain box. Apple doesn't need anything on their box except the size of the storage. Every music player is called the same name, and customers don't have to know the generation number or anything because they don't have a choice. Microsoft's offerings are more conventional: diverse and complicated.
Microsoft is clearly trying to recreate their consumer image to push ahead on this ridiculous trend of hip tech. They're going for sleek and simplified, which is obvious in Windows 7. Their packaging is getting simpler and more artistic. Some of their commercials play the quiet-and-confident keep-it-in-the-public-mind honestly-do-we-even-need-to-tell-you-what-our-product-is-because-everyone-already-knows-about-it game. Check out the amazon product description.. it goes on and on about the simplified interface and clean, innovative ways of interacting faster. I think the Microsoft store is just one arm of that movement. They've got a very modern, artwork-and-buzzword-oriented look with expensive displays and bold, clean colors. It's logical, I guess. But that game is just a huge popularity contest, and counting on fickle teens turning their attention your way is hardly a wise investment on Microsoft's part. Both companies are evil, but Apple is good at keeping its mouth shut and letting the public associate "Apple" with Apple products and not Apple the company. Microsoft's complex agreements with OEMs, retail, and enterprise customers, as well as their more diverse and wordy offerings and their arms in multiple fields (PC games, xbox subscriptions, office apps, software development, operating systems, etc, etc) make that impossible.
Their business side is still mostly consumer-garbage-free. Server is clean anyway.
Thank you ChinggisK for restoring my faith in humanity after all of these idiots.
There is no need to retain any other information.
Oh god, this is slashdot isn't it? Where's the healthy paranoia? Of course they don't need to keep logs but they could. You're handing them your identity, committing a crime, and hoping that they don't keep laws. I guess you trust the name The Pirate Bay (from these other posts I gather you all are stupid enough for this in the first place) but keep in mind they were just bought by a mystery for-profit third party. When the media companies come knocking with a $15 million check asking to buy their company and then we can start keeping logs until people start realizing what's going on wink wink wink, do you think the new owners will go down with their sinking pirate ship or take the cash and retire to tropical islands?
Even without all the media paranoia.. you now torrent from behind an IP address and if someone gets a court order to release your identity, your ISP will notify you immediately. So do you want to torrent from behind all the impenetrable anonymous security and peace of mind of a bulletproof name/card#/exp/dob record?
Doesn't running a proxy for hundreds of thousands of users downloading large files over bittorrent cost a lot of money? It'll have to be a paid service. A fully anonymous paid service that doesn't keep any records. Hm.
So just because it has a low amount of sugar, it can't be bad for you? In that case, I'll use the whole stick of butter tomorrow at breakfast. All natural!
Oh come on, how many times do we need to do this study? No matter how much you test it, eating candy will never be good for you. Isn't there an old joke about research funding and the positive health effects of chocolate?
How does that extreme improbability inject sufficient magic to allow us to reject determinism? Does falling in love only happen when god rolls the dice and sends a cosmic ray your way? Is god excused from the problem of evil because that once-in-a-million-years proton decayed in Eve's brain and randomly condemned Man to suffering? Face it, we're so vanishingly close to deterministic that it's not even worth talking about.
Don't get caught up in the scifi fantasy of going back in time and 1 tiny little change affects the whole course of history. The reality is nobody will notice and nobody's life will be any different.
Don't be dense. A BASIC program is deterministic, regardless of quantum effects and radioactive decay. No matter how many times you run it you're going to get the same results.
A brain is deterministic too. Your mind is no more affected by random phenomena than you can feel someone stepping on a twig thirty miles away. It's just not a part of your virtual "mind-system's" experience.
Sure, maybe at some point a cosmic ray emitted by random effects may flip a bit and you'll get a different result. But that's one interaction in 10^44 planck times per second!
His fan club is just a bunch of deterministic automatons whose brains and environment are simply ticking through the laws of physics. How can you hate them?
God's supposedly the one who can make a difference, and doesn't.
Do a 2-second search yourself. It's when you're actually navigating from start to destination instead of just sort of flying around in circles and landing where you started.
How is being able to tell your interviewer "I quit in the middle of projects I don't think will succeed, because it's good for my career" good for your career?
Microsoft just started their own competing service (Games for Windows Live). They hope to draw users by offering Microsoft-controlled games only on GW Live. So no I don't think that'll happen.
And EA is retarded. They would profit millions of dollars if they would sell the Battlefield series on Steam. Nobody can figure out why they won't do it other than stubborn corporate inflexibility.
They probably have agreements with Microsoft that are a barrier to selling through a competitor. It was an xbox title first.
Also, the pack you're talking about is like $35. One of the greatest RPGs ever made is worth that much.
Slashdot Mirror
The Apple store works because Apple's customers are the kind of people that buy their computers from stores. Microsoft has those customers too, and they shop at Best Buy. If they can capture some of those customers, that's profit directly into their pockets.
You're right about that video; while it's cheesy and sophomoric, it does (accidentally) capture the distinction very well. Nobody walking down an aisle sees an iPod and wonders "what is that? let me take a look at the features." Everyone knows what an iPod is and, unless they're rich or Christmas shopping, they already know they're going to get one when they walk in the store and don't need any more convincing than the $100-budget artwork on the plain box. Apple doesn't need anything on their box except the size of the storage. Every music player is called the same name, and customers don't have to know the generation number or anything because they don't have a choice. Microsoft's offerings are more conventional: diverse and complicated.
Microsoft is clearly trying to recreate their consumer image to push ahead on this ridiculous trend of hip tech. They're going for sleek and simplified, which is obvious in Windows 7. Their packaging is getting simpler and more artistic. Some of their commercials play the quiet-and-confident keep-it-in-the-public-mind honestly-do-we-even-need-to-tell-you-what-our-product-is-because-everyone-already-knows-about-it game. Check out the amazon product description.. it goes on and on about the simplified interface and clean, innovative ways of interacting faster. I think the Microsoft store is just one arm of that movement. They've got a very modern, artwork-and-buzzword-oriented look with expensive displays and bold, clean colors. It's logical, I guess. But that game is just a huge popularity contest, and counting on fickle teens turning their attention your way is hardly a wise investment on Microsoft's part. Both companies are evil, but Apple is good at keeping its mouth shut and letting the public associate "Apple" with Apple products and not Apple the company. Microsoft's complex agreements with OEMs, retail, and enterprise customers, as well as their more diverse and wordy offerings and their arms in multiple fields (PC games, xbox subscriptions, office apps, software development, operating systems, etc, etc) make that impossible.
Their business side is still mostly consumer-garbage-free. Server is clean anyway.
Oh god, this is slashdot isn't it? Where's the healthy paranoia? Of course they don't need to keep logs but they could. You're handing them your identity, committing a crime, and hoping that they don't keep laws. I guess you trust the name The Pirate Bay (from these other posts I gather you all are stupid enough for this in the first place) but keep in mind they were just bought by a mystery for-profit third party. When the media companies come knocking with a $15 million check asking to buy their company and then we can start keeping logs until people start realizing what's going on wink wink wink, do you think the new owners will go down with their sinking pirate ship or take the cash and retire to tropical islands?
Even without all the media paranoia.. you now torrent from behind an IP address and if someone gets a court order to release your identity, your ISP will notify you immediately. So do you want to torrent from behind all the impenetrable anonymous security and peace of mind of a bulletproof name/card#/exp/dob record?
Doesn't running a proxy for hundreds of thousands of users downloading large files over bittorrent cost a lot of money? It'll have to be a paid service. A fully anonymous paid service that doesn't keep any records. Hm.
So just because it has a low amount of sugar, it can't be bad for you? In that case, I'll use the whole stick of butter tomorrow at breakfast. All natural!
Oh come on, how many times do we need to do this study? No matter how much you test it, eating candy will never be good for you. Isn't there an old joke about research funding and the positive health effects of chocolate?
How does that extreme improbability inject sufficient magic to allow us to reject determinism? Does falling in love only happen when god rolls the dice and sends a cosmic ray your way? Is god excused from the problem of evil because that once-in-a-million-years proton decayed in Eve's brain and randomly condemned Man to suffering? Face it, we're so vanishingly close to deterministic that it's not even worth talking about.
Don't get caught up in the scifi fantasy of going back in time and 1 tiny little change affects the whole course of history. The reality is nobody will notice and nobody's life will be any different.
Don't be dense. A BASIC program is deterministic, regardless of quantum effects and radioactive decay. No matter how many times you run it you're going to get the same results.
A brain is deterministic too. Your mind is no more affected by random phenomena than you can feel someone stepping on a twig thirty miles away. It's just not a part of your virtual "mind-system's" experience.
Sure, maybe at some point a cosmic ray emitted by random effects may flip a bit and you'll get a different result. But that's one interaction in 10^44 planck times per second!
His fan club is just a bunch of deterministic automatons whose brains and environment are simply ticking through the laws of physics. How can you hate them?
God's supposedly the one who can make a difference, and doesn't.
Cowboy Bebop was much better in English.
Which we apparently don't have. I could take a better picture of the moon with a telescope and a camera.
Watch some anime; you'll get used to it.
How effective would it be if thousands of fans submitted MP3 via email stating, "Leave the cast alone!" in varying degrees of passion and vernacular?
They are, at least according to the TPB wikipedia article
#0f0 monospace font on black background anyone? :}
It's known as a 5150 in most states even though it comes from California.
At work I have to use IE on Windows 2000. Don't phase me out please!
Sounds good to me.
Internet Fact.
Do a 2-second search yourself. It's when you're actually navigating from start to destination instead of just sort of flying around in circles and landing where you started.
Bad analogy. This has nothing to do with long term happiness, it's just resisting immediate pain.
But why do profanities relieve stress while normal words do not? It's a different process in the brain, and that's the point of the study.
How is being able to tell your interviewer "I quit in the middle of projects I don't think will succeed, because it's good for my career" good for your career?
Must be nice to be 5 years ago.
It's probably rainwater collected at the top/back of the billboard and run through a dyed filter.
Microsoft just started their own competing service (Games for Windows Live). They hope to draw users by offering Microsoft-controlled games only on GW Live. So no I don't think that'll happen.
And EA is retarded. They would profit millions of dollars if they would sell the Battlefield series on Steam. Nobody can figure out why they won't do it other than stubborn corporate inflexibility.
They probably have agreements with Microsoft that are a barrier to selling through a competitor. It was an xbox title first.
Also, the pack you're talking about is like $35. One of the greatest RPGs ever made is worth that much.