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Comment Re:What exactly is "Steam" anyway? (Score 3, Informative) 164

The issue (as is the case in other market sectors) becomes getting people to use your service in the first place. Breaking into a market can be tough and require a lot of time and money/promotional work.

Epic managed this (to the extent they have), by:
A) capitalizing on their hit game "Fortnite" to get gamers to install their platform (analogous to Steam with HL2 in the beginning), and
B) Throwing money at the problem by way of offering a reduced platform cut (only 12% instead of 30%) and by paying developers to release exclusives on their storefront (limited-time exclusivity, not permanent).

Epic had enough capital to generally pull it off, but smaller stores basically starve to death in Steam's shadow. Because, sure, I could buy stuff from other storefronts, but I already have Steam, already own a ton of stuff on Steam, and the things other storefronts want to sell are already probably on Steam, too!

Comment Re:Link busted, statistic questionable (Score 2) 54

Good point. If they are including phones, I find that figure quite believable. My personal experience with enterprise deployments is certainly nothing from which to extrapolate worldwide trends, but I'd find it hard to believe that experience to be so completely out of step with general trends.

Comment Well... (Score 1) 143

I don't entirely hate the idea. VW gets a benefit from simplifying hardware variation, just unlocks via software.

a one-time £649 "lifetime" fee that is tied to the car, not you. If you sell it, you have to pay again.

Summary is unclear. The article also notes that Volkswagen did not clarify whether the upgrade is tied to your account or to the car.
If it's to the car, then....*shrug*. If it's to the user...I guess it depends one whether that upgrade is applicable to future cars (seems unlikely).
What I would fear would be treating it like certain console games where you could sell the game disc but certain features (included DLC, content, or w/e) would be tied to a one-time code that came with the game and the purchaser would have to buy a replacement code from the publisher. They can fuck right off with that bullshit.

Comment Bad training (Score 1) 151

When you move a file to a non-existent directory in Windows, it renames the file to the destination name instead of moving it.

This is true when the parameters are ambiguous. Assuming the command issued was something along the lines of "move foo bar", an incredibly simple trick is to append a backslash change it to "move foo bar\". The command would return an error about not finding the specified path.
Also, don't force overwrites with "/y" when you aren't planning to overwrite data. Of course, the "AI" could just as easily have been running it interactively and just bulled its way through the unexpected results.

Comment Shocking (Score 2) 51

This is a fair and proportionate response to such a ridiculous policy. The idea of a nation taxing a foreign company not operating within their borders for transactions with (or involving) their citizens is preposterous, and it's curious how they even conceived of such a hare-brained cash-grab!

That was, naturally, sarcasm. Uncle Sam *always* wants a piece of the pie. For instance, foreign streamers that monetize will (generally?) be taxed on earnings resulting from viewers in the US. I find this specific example interesting, but, more broadly, "foreign corporations" profiting off US citizens/companies will be required by the US to pay taxes on "Effectively Connected Income" (and possibly non-ECI, as well).
What's good for the goose...

Comment Interesting (Score 1) 86

I'm glad I actually skimmed the article before posting, as I drew an inference from the summary that just wasn't true.
A neat idea, if they can make it practical, but I didn't see anywhere they mentioned the size of the apparatus to generate this result. How long would it take, I wonder, for the cost of building it to pencil out?

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