You're saying they lose $50 per PC they sell and earn it back with software? ..and XBox has to sell 9 games per console to be able to compete with Microsoft?
Correct on the first. If Dell had to sell PCs without any pre-installed software, they would have to rasie prices just to break even. (They have tried this actually - their current "small business" offerrings make a big deal out of coming without any "trialware". Of course, those units cost more for the same hardware with the trial stuff.) The kick they get not just from shipping units with the software but when someone actually clikcs through and converts that 60-day trial anti-virus stuff to the real deal is very significant. Dell isn't really a PC business at least at the low end. They sell sockets for subscription software conduit and ink cartridges.
As Peter says, Microsft makes the Xbox and yes, they have to sell a large number of games (not just any games, but games made by Microsoft's game studios, which includes Bungee - it was like 8.6 games per console 3 years ago prior to the 360) just to break even. The larger xbox/games studio business unit has yet to break even. It's a multi-billion dollar company taken alone, but it's not profitable, not yet. You may have heard Bungee is spinning off after the success of Halo 3. This is because the folks there don't want their success to be shackled to the losing business of selling consoles. They want their compensation and stock options to reflect them as a stand alone business. Can you blame them? Local optomization.
Instead of inventing more sophisticated lies about their products that is supposed to improve your life and make you happy they should start making good quality products instead so they can JUST TELL THE TRUTH about them! Good products sell themselves!
This is true in some cases and of course not at all true in other cases. It takes an educated consumer with the resorces to pay more in the short run for longevity and quality for this to be true. So, this is works for high-end products targeted at high end consumers - Porsches and Mercedes and perhaps IPhones and such. But the rise of cheap crap from China is testimony to the fact that the Wal-mart shopper generally prefers to save $5 in the near term even if they have to buy it twice in the longer term. Local optomization.
I expect that most scientists and people interested about biology and evolution don't agree with the popular opinion that humans are the ultimate end goal for evolution.
I certainly am not implying that. I was mearly pointing out a therory to support my point about evolution necessitating local optomization. THe point is that once a species gains power to change their own environment through climate change, making other species extict, nuclear bombs or whatever, local optomization make lead to it's destruction. Its a theory without evidence. I netiher agree nor dispute it.
In fact most species that just shows up tend to get extinct rather quickly through some catastrophy or missadopting and evolution starts over with some key species,
There are many examples of species which last a very long time with little change. Evolution favors change where change is favorred and favors stasis where stasis is favorred. It may be that environmental flexability and tool-using intelligence represents incredibly usefull and novel adaptations which change the game. Certainly extensive tool-using is a relativly recent adaptation in evolutionary terms.
and I think self awareness and intelligence is bad for a species. ,
I disagree with the first. I challenge you to show that my dog is not self aware. I challenge you to show that a single celled bacteria is not self aware. Forst you must define self aware, which is hard to do. Certainly anything with even a primitve nervous system is self aware in some respect in that it is "aware" of where it ends and everything else begins.
The jury is still out on the second point. Certainly one can make a case either way but you first have to define "good" and "bad". If "good" means population numbers, surely intelligence has done well for humans to date....
The only way for a species to survive is if everyone think alike and do alike and live in perfect balance with nature.,
Now your just spouting human-centric tree-hugging mystical nonsense. No species delibertly tries to live "in balance with nature". Every organism - every gene - makes localy optimal choices which serve to maximize their own fitness. Period. If the sum of these choices appear to result in some sort of balance when viewed from an external frame of reference - our frame of reference - that may be a necessary side effect of all that locally optimal behaviour, but it certainly is not intentional on the part of speceis or organisms or genes.
I would go so far as to say that Homo Sapiens is just a temporary catastrophy that has shown up, like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. The key species for mammals after the dinosaurs was a small rat. I guess the Rattus Norvegicus will be the next one.
You may be right. The jury is still out. Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times....