Valve and Zenimax should have given at least the big-name modders some heads-up, so they could think and have time to rationally decide whether to start selling, and for how much, and to work out any licensing issues in multi-person teams.

I guess you missed it but they did exactly that.

Creator of removed paid Skyrim mod gives his side of the story

Basically Valve contacted him and several other high profile mod authors over a month and a half ago to participate in the rollout. In this particular case, the Art of the Catch mod (adds fishing to Skyrim, I think, I haven't tried it) needed some files from another mod to run, or it had a dependency, or both. Valve told him their legal team thought it would be OK but that the author should consult a lawyer on his own. He didn't, and many butts got hurt over the result.

But your assertion, that they did this with no notice to anyone, least of all the high profile modders, is wrong. They did exactly that.

Time Warner, a copyright focused company would have brought to the relationship.

It's worth pointing out that Time Warner Cable is, confusingly, not owned by Time Warner Inc. It used to be, of course, and for some reason it still has the name (likely some sort of obligation with an expiration date) but since 2009 it's been an independent company.

It's resulted in some asinine incidents, like how TWC for a while could not use HBO Go even though Time Warner proper owns HBO.

You make some good points but there's one thing I think is going on and is worth pointing out.

Apple is in an interesting spot at the moment in that, due to the sheer popularity of just about everything they make, they're selling more Macs now than ever before. People are switching to Macs more now than ever did during that "I'm a Mac" campaign. It's anecdotal evidence, sure, but my wife switched to OS X from Windows and didn't lose any momentum.

The issue Apple faces is that they've always had this small but devoted group of people to sell to. They could get away with software being done the way it was and at the quality level it was because they knew their core contingent would lap it up. And they did. But it likely left them with software that was difficult to maintain and lacking in features which would be difficult to add to the existing code.

Take Microsoft, for instance. By all accounts, the source code for the Office products is a fucking nightmare for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the need to maintain compatibility with all of the documents already out there (and we know they don't always get that right either). The story goes that a several years ago they tried to rewrite everything from scratch while maintaining compatibility with existing documents. It was called Project Pyramid or Triangle or something. It was a disaster and after years of work and millions of dollars it was canceled. Fortunately they had continued to work on the regular Office suite so they still had something to ship (no Netscape level mistake made) but they simply had too much code in use by too many people to merit changing it. Look what happened when they tried to redo large portions of Windows - Vista was the result and it was a disaster that's kept a lot of the world on XP to this day.

Apple has their iWork suite and they realized with as many people getting Macs these days, and with Microsoft for a long time refusing to upgrade Office for Mac, if they were ever going to redo the code base now would be the time. Now, before millions more people use it and maybe make it part of their workflow. Same as Final Cut Pro. Thing is they don't know which features are really being used and which ones aren't so they come out with basic versions missing those features and when people complain that Thing X is missing, they put it back in.

It's true that the killing of Apeture is becaue they're not interested in the pseudo-pro photogtapher scene but I think that their other recent maneuvers with software are because if they want code that is long term maintainable, now would be the time to do it, before tons of other people use it and then they're stuck.

As for the DJ's and the cables, I would think anyone who wants to use a Mac professionally would know to get something other than the new MB. Its likely neither the most durable or portable Mac (11" MBA probably has it beat on portability) but its worth noting that if you have AppleCare (yes, an added expense) they'll replace broken cables for free just by bringing them to the store. Not an option if there's not an Apple store in the area but as a counter point to the "they make the cables crap so you have to buy new ones" argument, they'll replace your worn out cables for free under AppleCare.

Or just don't buy them. I stopped eating a lot of crap like chips, etc. just by not buying them in the first place. If I want something crunch, nuts, carrots, or celery will do just fine.

Wasn't the digital revolution supposed to free small artists from the tyranny of the labels and allow them to keep their own profits?

Where in the hell did you get that idea?

decent price? 16 bucks for a re-re-release on a system where you can emulate the original or probably the re-release too.

Just because it's old doesn't mean it's worthless. They spent a lot of time and money making a 3D version of the game for the DS, which they released for $30 and sold a ton of. The iOS version has better graphics and a higher resolution and they charged $16, just over half of what the DS version cost. And you're still complaining.

baldurs gate enhanced edition ios is 9.99$.

Baldur's Gate is $9.99 on iOS because it's on sale. Its normal price is $19.99. Baldur's Gate II is normally $24.99. I know because I bought both at those prices. Also, they sort of suck on touch devices. And even if I'm wrong and they're both $9.99 because the price has permanently dropped it just proves my point that cheap people like yourself drove the price down to such a level that the only reason the games are profitable is because they're 17 years old and only the porting costs need to be covered. But you can fucking forget about new games of that depth coming out.

But thanks for proving my point about how mobile gaming drives prices down to the point where the only good RPG's are going to be ports of ancient games. Enjoy your F2P hell you've created.

The days of selling "kiddie" handhelds with QVGA screens and $40 games are numbered.

God I hope not. Mobile gaming is nice and all but it's a race to the bottom. Every game has to be $0.99 or free, and IAP tied to gameplay (just 5 more moves for $0.99!). This is why there's nothing of any depth in mobile gaming. No one is going to sink millions into an RPG on an iPhone. Square has tried to charge decent prices for their games (like $15.99 for FF3) and no one buys them.

A lot of 3DS games are really good and it's because you can charge $40/pop for them and make a profit. Heck, the stupid AR games that come built into the 3DS are better games than 90% of the stuff on the iPhone.

I agree with your premise that dippy little games on Mobile with Mario will get the kids interested in Nintendo and hopefully pick up a Nintendo system but man I really hope that portable consoles and $40/game pricetags don't go away because otherwise everything is going to be a F2P mess.

People who think portable gaming on the 3DS is in any way analogous to modern Mobile games has no idea what they're talking about. Hopefully the market is large enough to carry both.

He then got forty cavities.

How many large power plants built since the 60's have been on-budget? 1st world only need apply, please.

Yeah, everybody should go get a Masters degree and go be a programmer, surely these kinds of jobs will NEVER see wage depression as the market is filled with workers of the same skill set!

Google's war on blogs continues, this time on their own properties. What they want is clear: move adult content onto some other host, and pay them to drive traffic to it since it won't show up in organic search anymore.

Then it's not a web server, is it?

Nope.

Regular old new lines work just fine.

Dunno what happened to your post.

Bitcoin: backed by math, er, I mean scammers!