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What Disney's Acquisition of Fox Means For the Future of Film and TV (qz.com) 139

Posted by BeauHD from the rich-get-richer-and-the-poor-get-poorer dept.
Disney announced on Thursday it had reached a $52 billion deal to buy most of the assets of 21st Century Fox. It is "the biggest and most consequential media merger in an era of big and consequential media consolidation deals," reports Quartz. "The deal will have a lasting effect on film, television, and the internet." From the report: If the merger is approved, Disney will own: All of Fox's film studios (20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight, and Fox 2000); Fox's television studio; FX Networks; National Geographic; Fox's stake in European broadcaster Sky; Fox's stake in North American streamer Hulu. Staying with the hollowed out 21st Century Fox is the Fox broadcast network, Fox News, Fox Sports, and Fox Business. With Fox's film and TV studios and its cable networks, Disney will acquire the rights to literally hundreds of popular television series and movies. (Some of which include Avatar, X-Men, Deadpool, Modern Family and The Simpsons.)

Imagine all of the properties mentioned above, plus all of Disney's existing franchises (Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, etc.) combined into one internet streaming service. You won't have to imagine for long, because that's pretty much exactly why Disney CEO Bob Iger was so keen on buying all of Fox's biggest assets. Disney plans to release a streaming entertainment service in 2019. It would have been quite formidable on its own, even without Fox's help, but now it will likely be the first true rival to Netflix in the streaming space. Before today, Disney, Fox, and Comcast (NBCUniversal) all shared equal 30% stakes in Hulu (Time Warner owns 10%). But when Disney takes over Fox's share of the streaming service, it will own 60%, becoming a controlling majority owner, relegating Comcast to minority owner in the process.

20th Century Fox, we hardly knew ye. Okay, that may be a bit premature, but it's clear that Fox's film business won't be the same if the merger is approved. The deal marks the first time in modern history that one major film studio has purchased another, eliminating one of the "big six," and essentially giving Disney control of two-thirds of Hollywood. (The other four major movie studios are Universal, Warner Bros., Paramount, and Sony.)

Comment Re:WAT? Windows? Easy to maintain? (Score 1) 336

by deragon (#55620281) Attached to: Linux Pioneer Munich Confirms Switch To Windows 10
Why would the have hardware problems? They purchased hardware meant for Windows machines? Couldn't they purchase hardware from Dell or System76? Do they try to install Mac OS X on Asus laptops? Why then they try to install Linux on Windows hardware? Stick to vendors that provide support for your OS, and you will have less problems. That is why Macs are considered good; nobody really tries to set Mac OS X on a Windows machine.

Comment Re:Obviously... (Score 4, Insightful) 255

by deragon (#53178285) Attached to: How Linux Saved A School's Failing Windows Laptop Program
Troll... But I'll bite and answer. You can say the same thing about schools going for tablets (Android & iPad) and Chromebooks. Also, there are some institutions, mainly gouvernemental institutions in Europe switching massively to LibreOffice and Linux... Ok, the story is about the USA, but it does show that the market could change. Beside, I expect someone to be able to adapt to a new OS and tool suite quiet easily. Even with a FOSS background, these kids will easily be able to adapt to any job requiring Windows and MS Office.

Comment Re: Hello Wine (Score 2) 585

by Short Circuit (#52812463) Attached to: New Intel and AMD Chips Will Only Support Windows 10

I've done native code on Windows in industrial safety and automation. You'd think that's an oxymoron, but it can be made sufficiently robust.

I've dealt with bugs in Microsoft's SDKs, and dealt with multiple generations of drawing APIs. Played WoW and other games on WINE on Gentoo. Watched the incessant scrolling of FIXMEs on the console.

I'd love it if I could get paid to hack on WINE...

Comment Re:Why would anyone want Linux on the desktop? (Score 1) 383

by deragon (#52026599) Attached to: Windows Desktop Market Share Drops Below 90%

Linux is hard to configure, well sometime yes, other no. Sharing a drive is a click away. LibreOffice has become good enough; seriously, you should try it on Windows. NVidia proprietary video driver is pretty much on par with Windows. Games, well it depends if you play them or not. Many do not care; thus the reason why they departed from Windows to tablets.

If you want solid reason for disliking Linux, read my take on it at My disastrous experience with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Trusty Thar.

Despite, I still love Linux and am a hard core fan. The reasons can be found here.

Comment Re:Isn't that your failure... (Score 1) 383

by deragon (#52026559) Attached to: Windows Desktop Market Share Drops Below 90%
Sorry, but with Linux, you must be very careful of the DESKTOP device you buy. Many do not have the proper driver. Windows may not work out of the box with the device, but the device drivers are readily available. For one, as far as I know, there exist no game wheel which force feedback works completely on Linux. Many specialized game mouse do not work well. Even the Steam Controller has some issue and require a proprietary driver (which I read; not lived). Some Wacom tablets do work, some don't.
Businesses

Software Audits: How High-Tech Software Vendors Play Hardball (infoworld.com) 162

Posted by BeauHD from the code-of-omerta dept.
snydeq writes: InfoWorld's Dan Tynan offers an inside look at how high-tech software vendors such as Adobe, Oracle, and IBM play hardball over software licensing, pushing customers to "true up" to the tune of billions of dollars per year -- and using the threat of audits as a sales tool to close lucrative deals. "When it comes to software audits, the code of omerta prevails," Tynan writes. "It's not a question of whether your organizations' software licenses will get audited. It's only a question of when, how often, and how painful the audits will be. The shakedown is such a sure thing that nearly every customer we contacted asked us to keep their names out of this story, lest it make their employers a target for future audits."

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