jcs2305

danox said:

bob-tahoma said:

danox said:

Microsoft, please complete the deal, please….

What a waste Microsoft just pissed $69 billion dollars down the drain, exceeding, Google, and HP in one shot, this waste of money means don’t expect any significant hardware development for Microsoft in the future.

The Microsoft boneyard gets bigger

* The big Acquisition losers of Microsoft Over the years…..

Web TV $425 million dollars.
Hotmail. $500 million dollars.
Vizio $1.4 billion dollars.
Titus communication $1 billion dollars.
Navison $1.4 billion dollars.
*aQuantive $6.4 billion dollars wrote off in 2012 i.e. (a completewrite off shortly after acquiring)
*Skype Technologies $8.5 billion dollars.
*Yammer $1.2 billion dollars.
*Nokia $7.2 billion dollars.
*LinkedIn $26.5 billion dollars
*Git hub $7.2 billion dollars.
*ZeniMax Media 8.1 billion dollars.
*Nuance Communications to $20 billion dollars.
****Activision $69 billion dollars (Biggest in Microsoft history)****

Note, most were software acquisitions, which upon completion, most of the value of the software company dissipates rapidly, similar to Twitter, as an example.

Most of Microsoft acquisitions were complete right offs in the end. You certainly did not see most of the so-call tech implemented into their finished software i.e., their desktop OS or their web services division software in any meaningful way that justified the inflated prices that they paid for these boondoggles.

In contrast, Apples largest merger in the last 25 years was only $3 billion dollars, Apples best acquisition cost $400 million but it came with the best CEO in the last 25 years, and three other acquisitions, PA Semi, Intrinsity, and Anobit critical to Apple’s, Arm SOC’s development, cost Apple a total of 1.1 billion dollars.

I guess with your business acumen you are running the world’s third largest company. On no wait, what’s the third largest company again… something seems to be working for them. 

Whoops, hit a nerve Mr. one post.

A gaming company, software company, or a TV/Movie content company, are the worst, because the value in most cases (people) dissipates immediately upon the acquisition. 

Most of the critical talent can go elsewhere, almost immediately. Within a year most of the people at Activision/Blizzard will be let go, most of the game companies that Activision uses/employs are used on a per game basis, which means once they finish programming the game they are gone in most cases.

If Microsoft was acquiring Unreal Engine (a game OS maybe the best?) that would be a different story.

dewme said:

AppleZulu said:

lkrupp said:

"Netflix does expect that it will lose subscribers when the new policy comes into effect in the States, but believes that overall it's worth it. “

Losing those subscribers will be a plus for Netflix. Those subscribers who shared their password with all family members are hurting revenue anyway. Just like Napster and the music industry people will always be able to rationalize thievery, claiming Netflix is overpriced and deserved to be taken down. Human nature at its finest.

First, Netflix famously used to encourage account sharing. Changing the rules later doesn't suddenly make customers who took them up on that practice into thieves. It makes Netflix disingenuous as it implements price increases, much like breakfast cereal companies that shrink your "Lucky Charms" box while leaving the sticker price the same. 

Netflix could solve their problem by selling subscriptions on a per-stream basis, with, if they insist, different pricing for picture and audio resolution. Why do they need to spend resources spying on you by policing which IP addresses are accessing which streams? Currently the only way they're "losing" revenue through account sharing is via their $16 and $20 plans, mostly the $20 plan, which is the only one that allows four simultaneous streams. The "standard" $7 and $10 plans only allow a single stream to occur on the account at a given time. If anyone is sharing on those accounts, it's already inconvenient for the customer, and harmless to Netflix, because the required bandwidth doesn't change. The $16 plan allows 2.

If you have a single big-screen TV home theater setup in the den, Netflix does not have a single-stream option for you with a 4K UHD picture. They don't even have a single-stream option for a 1080p picture. For context, Best Buy currently has zero 40" or larger 720p TVs available. Zero. 720p is the black-and-white set of the 21st century. At this point, 1080p is the low-budget standard, yet Netflix even charges extra for that, and double the price of their single-stream ad-free subscription if you want 4K, the standard resolution of most TV's being sold today.

So now, to call back that earlier metaphor, not only are they charging extra for the green clovers and blue diamond marshmallows in your lucky charms, but they're also shrinking the box and employing an angry leprechaun to smack the bowl out of your hands if you dare to try sharing any of those lucky charms you paid for with anyone else. 

So no, this isn't about thievery. This is about Netflix changing the terms of the deal and then calling their own customers thieves. This is on the level of AT&T selling unlimited data plans and then several years later changing the deal by throttling bandwidth to dial-up modem speeds after a customer used a certain amount of data, and then saying with a straight face that those customers still had unlimited data plans.

The disingenuous part about Netflix is spot on. As business owners they obviously came to the realization that promoting sharing was ultimately a bad thing for them and backtracked on that strategy, which they are allowed to do. As far as the nickel & dime up-charges on resolutions, it does suck but they obviously think they can get away with it just like ISPs and cellular services can get away with selling "unlimited" data plans that have throttling. Totally disingenuous and deceptive marketing, but too few subscribers are holding them accountable. 

The shrinkflation argument is pretty much business as usual across the board for many producers lately. The choices of-late are jack up the price, reduce the quantity, or do a bit of both. At least Apple has been doing better in this regard, especially with the new M2 Mac mini. 

Your final metaphor is interesting, but not exactly applicable in my opinion:

"So now, to call back that earlier metaphor, not only are they charging extra for the green clovers and blue diamond marshmallows in your lucky charms, but they're also shrinking the box and employing an angry leprechaun to smack the bowl out of your hands if you dare to try sharing any of those lucky charms you paid for with anyone else."

The non-applicable part is that if you buy a box of magically delicious Lucky Charms and decide to share them with family, friends, or whomever, you are giving up your Lucky Charms and can no longer consume them yourself. When Netflix was not actively enforcing the number of concurrently active streams, i.e., no bowl smacking, you weren't giving up anything when you shared your Lucky Charms. Everyone you shared with was getting their own free box of Lucky Charms because you paid for one box.

Now if Netflix actively enforced the number of concurrently active streams and if the subscription cost was purely based on the number of number of concurrently active streams you paid for the sharing thing would be moot. If you wanted to pay for 10 streams and give 9 of them away, or if 20 people wanted to time-share those 9 extra streams you gave away, that would be your choice and Netflix should not care one bit because they'd enforce the hard limit on the number of active streams. You'd simply be giving away a portion of what you bought, which is a loss to you. This seems like a totally fair approach for everyone involved, regardless of what Netflix did in the past.

How to Know if Too Many People Are Using Your Netflix Account

While you can be signed into Netflix on multiple devices, you can only actively watch a stream on the number of screens included in your plan. This means that if you have the two-screen plan, you can still have three people signed into your account on various devices, as long as they aren't all watching at the same time.

However, if you see a message like Too many people are using your account right now, the maximum number of people watching on your account is already reached.

lkrupp said:

"Netflix does expect that it will lose subscribers when the new policy comes into effect in the States, but believes that overall it's worth it. “

Losing those subscribers will be a plus for Netflix. Those subscribers who shared their password with all family members are hurting revenue anyway. Just like Napster and the music industry people will always be able to rationalize thievery, claiming Netflix is overpriced and deserved to be taken down. Human nature at its finest.

Appleish said:

Twenty bucks for 4K while other streaming services include it in their basic plan. What a ripoff.

prof_intel said:

When I got my iPhone 14 Pro, I visited my nearest o2 store to get an e-sim only to be told that they have “run out” of e-sims. 

How do you run out of a digital service?

If they had supported transferring e-sims from my old phone to my new phone I wouldn’t have been in this situation…

This is going to happen to me every time I get a new iPhone.