Neowin.net

Following the auto-update early this week, there are now manual patches for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, bringing the English and European editions of Blizzard's 3D real-time strategy game to version 1.04b. This patch was uploaded to Blizzard's FTP server less than an hour after 1.04a. I'll let you decide which patch you want to install, there are no noted changes on the official site.

View: Blizzard FTP - Warcraft III Patch Directory
Download: Warcraft III 1.04a Patch (English - 6.2mb)
Download: Warcraft III 1.04b Patch (English - 6.67mb)

The "control or influence" mantra Chambers has been using for some time. In fact, the business summary quoted above is an almost verbatim repetition of what Chambers said in August when commenting on how he expected the first fiscal quarter to pan out.

Chambers said that by controlling things such as product pricing, and by consolidating suppliers in order to gain volume discounts, Cisco managed to increase key metrics such as gross margin and cash flow to approaching 1999 peaks.

But Chambers cautioned that the company still cannot tell how much of its good performance reflects the market, and how much reflects business won from competitors, many of which, he said, are still losing money.

He said in the last six quarters since Cisco's outlined its current strategic vision, Cisco's revenue has increased 9% from $4.3bn to $4.8bn, while the combined revenue of an index of its top ten North American rivals has declined 48% from $11.2bn to $5.2bn.

Chambers said the four-pronged strategy the firm has been working on is bearing fruit, and that much of the strategy the company is putting in place now is more likely to have a big impact two to four years from now, rather than providing immediate returns.

After talking to customers, Chambers said he identified several areas enterprises are interested in: security, IP telephony, storage, wireless LANs, and data/voice/video convergence. In the service provider market, Chambers said he expects things to get worse before they get better for several quarters.