While it may well flop, this seems like a very credible challenge to Microsoft's dominance in gaming. Given a very specific subset of hardware like a steam box will represent, linux can run flawlessly and offer great performance. Valve can throw together tremendous functionality very cheaply by bundling existing applications like XBMC or VLC, not to mention WINE. As with linux in general, many of WINE's configuration problems and glitches go away when you start thinking about a very specific subset of hardware.

The question is, how does Microsoft respond to it? Do they start looking to pursue intellectual property claims against WINE, or against Valve for using it? (or is this the very reason that Valve is pushing for native ports of games?) What else can Microsoft to to put the brakes on Valve?

But Microsoft is unlikely to license any of its OS software to Valve for use on an XBOX competitor. So where does that leave Valve?

i.e. -- mom's basement.

REALITY CHECK: There is absolutely NO WAY it's coming to me. Cars compete with other models at certain price points. I believe this is a case where either Tesla makes an extra few percent profit or has to share that bit with a dealership -- which I may or may not be able to haggle with.

So far, nobody's mentioned in the discussion the following angle on the story:

OK. So dealerships don't like being cut out. And they don't like it. Of course not. They're small businesses. They're owned by families, not giant corporations, and those families are terrified that all the rest of the giant corporations will cut them out the way that Tesla does. Is it really so much better when Tesla Corp (or Elon Musk, for that matter) keeps all the profit instead of sharing a small percent with a local family?

I'm not a car dealer. Just thought maybe this was a point worth considering.

PGP comes to mind. Cant an application developer just create a 1024-bit public key encrypted chat program?

It's a very fine line, but I think you (and the judge) are probably on to something there.That having been said, they knew what they were doing.

I don't particularly want to see apple fined at all.They obviously make very good products that people like. Because of this, they don't need to screw consumers, but they did it anyway. I think they should be prevented from doing so again. Personally, I'd rather see them forced to allow people to be able to buy ebooks through the kindle or nook app than forcing them to pay a big fine.

Seems like Apple is getting let off very easy after carefully organizing the screwing-over of consumers.

So they get to try this again in 5 years?

And shouldn't the solution be forward looking? Is Apple actually doing the same thing with movies or other content besides books now and getting away with it?

FBReader is ok. I like the nook one better-- on an actual nook it can be used to read both free and paid content, but the app from google play doesn't seem to be able to do this. Never tried the kindle app, because I assumed it would work the same as the nook one. I'll probably give it a look. OTOH, all of my books are in epub, which makes for a lot of converting.

dartmud is a decent one. Characters there run a broad range between serious rollplayers and people more or less just looking to hang out, which makes it fairly approachable. If that doesn't float your boat check out topmudsites.com or the mud connector where you can search for one that you like.

There are several muds that fit that bill nicely. Text based. No explosions. Solve puzzles. Act out a character. Contribute to a story.

I have almost exactly the same experience. I own a nook color

My oldest son has a nook tablet, and he complains that there aren't any free-to-play games on it.

My younger son has a nexus 7. The reader apps all fall short of the nook. But the nook app (as far as I can tell) for generic android devices only works for books bought from B&N.

In general our consensus is that the nook is the better reader, but the nexus is more versatile.

There are three nooks in my house, and I find very little to agree with you.

Ebooks take up so little space, that I've found that isn't a problem. It might be different if I wanted to store movies on our various nooks (a simple touch, a nook color, and a nook tablet) but having books hasn't been a problem yet.

HUH?!? I don't have any windows machines in my house, and I have no problems with any of our nooks. This doesn't match up with my experience at all. I connect the nook to my linux computer with the cable provided, and load whichever epub files I want. It may be different for me because I run opensuse, which isn't the most popular linux distro, but I seriously doubt that. Really this seems to come out of left field. I have absolutely no problem at all using my nooks with a linux computer and I don't have any (pirated or genuine) copies of windows.

The credit card complaint is legitimate. But other tablets are the same. I created a single-use charge number using my credit card's "online shopping" features, and never worried about it again.

are they perfect? No. They make great e-readers, but unless you root them, they make poor tablets. That having been said, in my experience they are not nearly as poor as the OP's experience.

Lots of Balmer-bashing here. (not surprising)

I forget exactly where Microsoft was when Balmer took over. Did they even have windows phone out? Was it still in the XP days or had Vista come out? Given the state of things, what should he have done differently?

A better question: where should Microsoft go now? They have a shrinking desktop market. Nobody seems to be buying either their phones or their tablets. They bought Skype, making them more or less the dominant player in VOIP services. The Xbox One pre-launch has been a mess. But Xbox is hugely popular, and people happily fork over $50 a year to subscribe to Xbox Live Gold. Where would you take Microsoft from here?

Stay in business AND get the word out. This seems like a really dumb move by comcast.