This doesn't really apply to shooters. Unlike MMOs, which need a complex environment to be maintained server-side, shooters lend themselves well to simple LAN play. Cutting the ability to play over LAN for completely arbitrary reasons, and when it would require no resources from the company -- that's the kind of stupidity that hurts.

[...]they (as far as we can tell) are extremely fucking profitable.

I wouldn't call a few tens of millions profit "extremely fucking".

And there's a huge discrepancy between the $700-800m revenue with a low few tens of millions margin, and the unofficial "valuation" of Facebook at a high few tens of billions.

I'll be the first to admit I'm crap at economics but in my simple world I use simple math. If the yearly profit you can expect from a business is N, where does the valuation as 20xN come from? What's worth 19xN? The brand? Fixed assets? Potential for expansion? We're talking figures that (on paper) are starting to approach a trillion. Come, now.

The IPO, if and when it happens, will give us actual figures. But I can't help noticing that Facebook, Zynga et al. keep postponing them IPO's over and over.

Taken at face value, the excuses presented are silly. Simple math will show you that the cost of outfitting the entire place with Windows 7 and Office licenses alone would cover quite a bit of training and driver development. Not to mention how they seem to be focused on just desktops while leaving servers alone? What unsurmountable obstacle suddenly appeared, after they seemed to have been using OO, Firefox and Thunderbird for so long?

Not saying it's completely implausible, but I'd like to see some cold hard figures and facts for both scenarios.

I don't see what technical people working on Symbian have to do with the decisions that shape the direction that Symbian takes. They are mostly executants. If there's fault anywhere, it's at management level.

These people's reaction strikes me as the anger of someone who did all they could, even probably advised against management's poor choices, only to be ignored and finally discarded. They end up being the ones thrown out while the management keeps their jobs and gets a new toy to play with.

That is one of the weirdest aspects of the deal. Why choose an OS which has yet to prove itself? Shouldn't they have waited a little to see how Windows Phone 7 does? Is that 4% marketshare it got so far so amazing to make you say "wow, this is just what we need to take on Apple"? Not to mention their strange obstinacy when it comes to avoiding Android. Not that Meego is any more proven than Phone 7, in fact Meego is even more of an unknown factor. But it just feels that of all the possible choices the had they went with the worst possible one. Of course it begs the question what's the weight that has tipped the scales that we're not seeing yet.

The market for low end voice/text-only cell phones will get taken over by low end smart phones[..]

I wouldn't be so sure. It depends a lot on what people want. And so far only about a fifth of mobile phone owners want a smartphone.

Are you so sure that the smartphone form factor is such a universally desired one? Not everybody wants the "Jack of all trades, master of none" that is the smartphone. I for one see perfectly good cases to be made for combination of a dumb but reliable phone (you know, that makes and recieves calls and does it well) with other devices: MP3 or video players, tablets, netbooks, laptops, PC, gaming consoles, portable gaming devices etc.

And let's not forget that the so call "dumbphones" are not exactly dumb, they're really "feature phones". They have added functionality that serves their owners perfectly well. Actually, what these people are holding back from is not the whole smartphone experience, it's certain things they see as drawbacks: all-touch interface, big [fragile!] screen, low battery life, permanent connectivity, big price tag. Are these going to change? Some will, some won't.

Why is Symbian dying? Last I checked the smartphone adoption was something like 20% at global level. Much less that that in individual countries. What are the 80% dumbphones of the world running? Aren't most of them running Symbian?

If you mean "Nokia is [i]killing[/i] Symbian" then ok, but that's a whole different bunny.

Intel's relation with Microsoft has always struck me as more along the lines of "I've got a gun under the table pointing at your groin, now smile to the camera // Same for you buddy."

Wintel was a PC thing. The relation deteriorates rapidly nowadays, with Microsoft courting ARM in mobile product niches and Intel investing in Linux.

But what about certain expectations that the buyer had? Fairly reasonable ones, IMHO. Such as (a) "I can play games on my PS3" and (b) "Sony will respect my privacy".

Suddenly, (b) has been proven wrong and if you object to that, (a) will follow. [Not to mention the infamous (c) "I can run Linux on the PS3".]

I think you can see how people might get a bit pissed off about all this.

Adding to the GP and P posts: I also play online FPS games, I am an admin with reasonable experience, and, most importantly, [b]I've had the chance to see autistic kids gameplay[/b].

And here's the thing: before I found out a player was autistic, their manner of play raised all kinds of warning flags for me. There were spurts of uncanny abilities, they wouldn't talk to anybody, they were focusing obsessively on a limited sets of actions (run this exact route, attack at these exact points), they displayed anti-social behavior (attacking their own team) for no apparent reason. My first reaction? What a cheater/asshole combo!

Has anybody considered how their repetitive/compulsive nature alone may cause autists to deviate from the player norm? Not to mention that about 1 in 10 autists show outstanding abilities ("idiot savant" kind) and about 9 in 10 exhibit enhanced sensory perceptions.

So I find it strange that most highly-moderated comments so far have completely ignored the fact the kid is autistic and how it may have affected his gameplay. My own experience tells me that unless Microsoft knows for sure he used an actual bug or exploit, I'd take that "cheater" verdict with a BIG grain of salt. I'm fairly confident that an autistic person can trip both automated and human cheater detection. They were designed for regular people.

Dunno, but I'd sure like to ask the devs of Torchlight that question. Why intentionaly exclude a Linux port considering they used a cross-platform engine? It blows the mind.

Granted, it later turned out to run ok under Wine... but in the meantime I was undecided and waited until the game was up on offer for $5. If there was a native Linux port I'd have payed the full $20 from the start. That's $15 they cheated themselves out of. All this while most indy devs out there would be aghast at the thought of throwing $15 out the window like that.

The only people who will not install Windows at any cost are those with a moral objection to non-free software.

I wouldn't say I won't install Windows "at any cost"... but I'm not exactly looking forward to that ever being the case. I'd have to have a really burning reason to do so. It's just become so... alien.

No Compiz, not even workspaces; no centralized update and install; having to install firewall, antivirus, antispyware, wasting resources and still never be sure what's crawling inside your PC; apps installing pieces of themselves all over the main menu and the HDD and leaving cruft behing when you uninstall; every other app using a different look and feel; a taskbar, a "start" menu and a desktop in general that feel like a joke when it comes to customization; having the pleasure of being nagged about a perfectly legit copy as being "pirated".

Moral objection? I have a moral objection to the Apple lock-in. For Windows I have practical objections.