I think: 'Laptops are not performance machines. They will never replace desktops...Does your laptop have a fast 2 TB Raid?' will probably stand forever as the Top Ten Foolish Things Said on Slashdot.
No it doesn't...and neither does anyone's desktop, statistically speaking.
The joke is, I'm actually a (softcore) PC gamer, I have a moderate game rig, about 2 years old at this point, and it doubles as a playback-only HTPC, with wires and a remote sensor run into another room.
I have it on a KVM with, duh, my work laptop. Which I have because I have to take it places.
Unlike you, I don't care much about portability. Movability, to take it to work, yeah, but I don't need computers all over my house...I have an iphone for that. Before that, I was considering a netbook.
But, regardless, I am aware enough to know normal people do not use computers like I do. Sheesh. it's like this site has turned into some giant nerd parody, like we're nerds who aren't aware that not everyone is a Farscape fan and you can't just walk up to them and talk about it. Hey, goobers, we are not normal WRT computers. Normal people have computers to do surfing, email (Webmail, at that!), Word, some photos, some porn. Some of them even managed to find torrents! They aren't doing 'character animation and special fx professionally'.
Hell, even the PC game market isn't as big as some people here seem to be assuming, nor do most games require the newest and best machines. There are about four million people buying games that need a desktop each year, and they're upgrading about every four years, so a million PC aimed at them each year. Maybe double that, might even get tripled that with very generous assumptions.
Um, yes, every time I wanted to go out, I could pull out my work laptop, boot it up, sync it to my work desktop, pack it back up, and leave. And then when I got back home I could the same thing in reverse.
Or, I guess I could just leave it hooked up after the 'got back' sync. Bring it in, hook it up, boot, sync, leave it hooked up, and then before I leave sync, unhook, and leave.
Or, and here's a clever idea, why don't I just work on the damn laptop to start with, which seems to, I dunno, save several stupid steps there, and saves me an entire computer.
It doesn't matter how 'easy' it is. It requires the laptop to be booted, both when I get back and before I leave, and hence is not even slightly easier than just using the laptop the entire time.
I guess if I could just boot it up without plugging keyboard and mice and monitor in and it would magically sync, in the universe where half this site seems to operate, where plugging it in is a time consuming procedure, it might save time. In reality, I have the thing entirely plugged in during the four or five seconds it takes to boot up to the TrueCrypt boot password screen, much less before it finishes unhibernating. (I have no idea how everyone else is so incompetence and slow and plugging three or four cables in.)
And, yet, again, we get the weird idea that a laptop can't have a monitor or two, keyboard, wrist rest, mouse, etc.
I'm just baffled as to how people keep saying something that's not even close to a reasonable thing to say. It's like saying 'Sure, I could rent an apartment, but I like having tables and chairs, so I bought a house instead'. I'm just standing here saying 'WTF are you talking about?'.
If you have a workable system, fine. No one's saying you should change.
But there are plenty of us with laptops that have exactly the setup you describe. Everything you talk about.
Except we can spend about 30 seconds unplugging stuff and pick it up and take it elsewhere and use it there also.
Either way you slice it, it's just really hard to peg the Republicans as a party of racists.
I was taking issue with someone who claimed the Democrats were the party of racists. With a link to a totally idiotic article 'proving' this, because a slightly higher percentage of Democrats voted against Civil Rights Acts.
Ignoring the fact it was, of course, a Democratic party initiative to start with, that both parties voted for it, and the Democrats who didn't support them were either forced out, usually to the Republican side, or forced to change their position.
Whereas Republicans didn't have to modify their positions until later, in the mid-80s, when it became unaccepted to be openly racist at all. And then, the Republicans decided on the Southern Strategy to be 'non-openly' racist, to speak in code to the racists and hopefully get their vote without actually having to be racist and lose the vote of everyone else.
They've mostly abandoned this, and I didn't peg them as the party of racists at this point. I have no evidence there are currently racists among the Republican party politicians. (Except apparently a few of them have show up in Arizona, but the rest of the Republican party is rather, um, worried about that, and certainly don't support it.)
This article was, of course, in support of the concept that the Democratic party is the most racist one now, because it still has inequality between race as an issue as a party plank. Whereas the Republicans insist that the fact that over twice the percentages of blacks live in poverty as whites is a coincidence, and to talk about attempting to do something about that is, ipso facto, racist.
'PC gaming market' does not mean 'people who run the fastest machine'. Plenty of laptops are entirely capable of running most games.
And the non-casual market has never been as large as people think. I mean, Half-Life, one of the best selling computer games of all time, has sold less than 10 million copies, and probably averaged 3 million a year for a bit...but 130 million personal computers are sold a year. That's 2% of the people who buy a new computer buying Half-Life.
Now, it's hard to figure out how many actual 'gamers' there are, and if a laptop would fit their needs or not, but the market isn't as big as people assume.
2. Growth of 3D media, I certainly see a need for higher performance computing here
I don't know what you mean by '3D media'.
3. Media creation/editing (3D modeling, video editing, etc.)
That's an even smaller market than hardcore gamers.
Given that people will have remotely-accessible storage residing in the home for their portable devices, I could also imagine people running a more powerful personal server machine in their homes.
Yeah, but it's equally likely that's going to be some off-the-shelve NAS. Or an account 'in the cloud', no matter how stupid it is to pay monthly fees for storage.
Regular people aren't going to buy servers for their house that are regular computers. The only servers they're buying are things they just plop on their network.
Finally, other people who've been saying what I've been saying.
Normal users run IE, Word, Excel, Windows Media Player, a bunch of crap in their tray, and that's it. Power users use Firefox and Skype and an actual email client and WinAmp and maybe even an RSS reader. (Please note these are just examples.)
Those two together are 90% of computer users. 90% of computer users do not 'upgrade', except the power users sometimes stick in another hard drive (And, nowadays it's a USB hard drive.) or more memory, they do not 'compile', and they do not notice, or at least don't care, that their copy of Portal autodetected their setup and is only running at 2x and not 8x anti-aliasing.
It's really weird watching slashdot, who are self-proclaimed computer experts, appear to not know this at all. As I said above, it's like watching a bunch of auto mechanics assert that passenger vehicles won't catch on, because no one will be able to move their piano.
It's also quite weird to watch everyone seem to assume that laptops must be operated by having them sit on your lap. Like no one's ever plugged in a monitor to them, and there aren't wireless mice and keyboard being sold all over the place.
and anyone interested in anything more than browsing and IM'ing people pictures of their dicks
That's right, this article is crazy, laptops will never get more that 90%-95% of the marketshare! Only the vast vast vast majority of people who just want to use the internet and run Word and store pictures will buy them! The tiny minority that actually upgrades their own computer won't buy them!
Also, passengers cars will never catch on...how will people move around their pianos?
Seriously, half the people here seem to be in a weird sort of denial. Probably because they either think their computer speed is directly related to penis size, or they consider the intelligence to upgrade their computer related to it.
Sane people have realized desktop computers were going away for quite some time, as are the CPU-speed wars. Computers have, and will continue to, get lighter and quieter and more energy efficient, not faster. And, thus, laptops will continue plummeting in price.
Most laptops don't have a docking solution like the Thinkpad X series where you can plonk it down and all your peripherals are connected, you have to plug everything in and unplug it when you leave, no a major hassle but do it every day and it's a pain.
Really? Plugging stuff into and out oa laptop every day is a major hassle? Compared to plugging them into an out of a desktop each day?
Oh, wait, you were comparing how difficult is it is to do something with a laptop to something that a desktop functionally can't do. Seriously?
'Man, driving a car to get somewhere sure is a hassle. I have to pay attention and everything. That's why I like sitting on my sofa. For a price of a car, you can buy dozens of sofas!'
On top of all this, laptops simply don't have the right form factor to support good posture while working so if I'm going to be at a computer for hours a day, I'll take a desktop thank you.
Really? Because I've always found the form factor of a desktop to be much worse. I mean, you essentially have to lay on the floor, there's no interface device, and there's not even a screen! Using a desktop is a nightmare.
No, I much prefer using a computer monitor and keyboard and mouse, all plugged into whatever I'm using, laptop or desktop. That really is the best way to use computer. And, then, in a pinch, you can use a laptop by itself. I've never even seriously confused using a desktop by itself, that's just crazy, man.
My work computer is a laptop. 80% of the time it's hooked to a KVM at my house. I plug in a secondary monitor via USB. Another 10% of the time it's hooked into one at the office. (I work from home usually.)
That other 10% of the time it's hauled into a meeting, or taken to a client site. And because it's my actual work computer, all my shit is there when I need it, instead of hoping and praying I remembered to grab everything relevant and hoping I don't forget some password I changed on my real work computer or how to get into some obscure site. (And, yes, the hard drive is encrypted.)
The real joke is, at this point, the battery has entirely stopped working. It's a UPS, it functions for maybe five minutes. When I use it, I have to plug it in. And it's still much more useful than a desktop, because I can move it around, and it has a keyboard, mouse, display, speakers, and wifi all built in.
Now, of course, on the other side of the KVM I have my desktop, which is a medium quality gaming computer/HTPC. My laptop isn't really powerful enough to play games on...although a newer one probably would be. I think work's getting me a new one this year.
I find all the laptop hate here to be very strange. The article is really correct...90% of people who want a computer really should buy, and are buying, a laptop. And most of them don't even know they could set up a little 'docking area' with a keyboard and mouse and big monitor if they needed to do a long stretch of work on them, but they are buying them anyway.
The world really is shifting.
Sure, there's maybe 10% of the population that needs or wants someone else, and that number is probably disproportionally represented in on/., but for most normal people, a laptop is the better choice hands down.
Re:Does it have a monitor and full-size keyboard?
on
Flight of the Desktops
·
· Score: 1
No shit, that drives me crazy when I have to type on my laptop's keyboard, especially as I still copy and paste using Shift+Insert and Ctrl+Insert. Which is also screwed up by the lack of a Ctrl on the right side of my laptop's keyboard.
Hell, I once had to use a desktop where some moron designer had decided that the top row of that block should be power keys, like power-off and suspend, and the block should be right below that, touching the arrow keys. Um, no. And for a while, I actually had a keyboard that was that, flipped around...power keys between the navigation block and arrow keys. I pulled them off and worked normal.
I agree about the numeric keypad. If you do a lot of work on that, you can buy one of those pretty cheap, and that keypad is far enough away that you have to look and line up your hand on it when you start typing, so it doesn't need to be exactly right anyway. You can even get a bluetooth one that doesn't have to be plugged in.
OTOH, while I do use the numeric keypad enough to touch type on it, I don't use it that much, usually just to enter long strings of numbers...it's possible some accountant out there disagrees with me, and can hit a numeric-pad eight in the middle of typing a sentence.
Re:Does it have a monitor and full-size keyboard?
on
Flight of the Desktops
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Let's see.. I'm sitting in front of a desktop with 8GB of memory, a dual processor, two 22" monitors, a full sized ergonomic keyboard, and a Wacom pad.
You do realize laptops can have all of those things, right? That you can, in fact, plug input and output devices into them? And add memory?
In fact, the laptop I'm typing on right now actually has all those things except 8GB of memory (Because it's old and 32 bit, and I'm still running XP on it.), and the full-sized keyboard is not ergonomic because I hate those.
It's also got 4TB of disk space, 6 powered USB ports (4 in back of which 3 are in use, 2 in front of which I use one), memory card reader, DVD burner, and a cable-TV video card so I can also use it as a DVR. I copy all of my CDs/DVDs to it, and when I get a blu-ray player for my home theater, I think I'll go add a 1.5TB hard drive to the last slot.
You do realize that laptops can have all those things, right? (Although it's a lot easier to plug all your USB stuff into a hub and plug that into your laptop instead.)
In fact, most laptops come with 6 USB ports (And I have to point out that all USB ports on a computer are, by definition, powered.), and a DVD burner, and about half of them come with memory card readers built in, at least for one type, usually SD.
And, of course, USB memory card readers and USB cable-TV tuners are easy enough to get.
To get enough disk space I'd have to add some type of wired/wireless file server slowing. Until they make them with easily swapable components and they come with docking stations, I think the added cost of the needed components just isn't worth it.
And they'd need to come with a 'docking station' why, exactly? Most people just buy a NAS and plug USB drives into them if they want more space.
The case is an off-the-shelf case with room for 8 internal drives. I can swap out the entire motherboard, CPU, video card, network card, and any other component.
That is the only reason to have a desktop that you managed to list.
And as for your wife using her desktop...yeah, only a fool would sit there and unplug stuff from a desktop to hook it to a laptop to use it. OTOH, only a fool wouldn't have bought a KVM in the first place, which is what normal people who have both a laptop and a desktop do.
Ah, okay. So the data transfer is the iPhone essentially sending un-itemization data to the phone company.
Well, it's flatly absurd to charge people for that, for one thing.
Secondly, if the phones are, as the article claims, transferring up to sixty megs of data, it's idiotic to only use the 3G instead of offloading that to wifi if possible.
Perhaps it's some sort of security thing, or perhaps the data isn't even going to an IP address at all, but straight into the underlying data network that IP happens over, but still. There should be a logical way to simply hold the data until on a wifi network or a certain amount of time passes.
I don't understand this story at all. Part of it seems to be implying this is just an accounting thing...your phone isn't actually sending data then, the bill is just reporting the tiny amount of push transfers it did during the day as a single instance at night. (Otherwise, you'd have hundreds of '20 byte' listings during the day as the phone asks 'New data?' and the other end says 'Nope'.)
That seems reasonable, but then another part of the article seems to imply this is real, because it's using 3g 'during' it.
Yet another part seems to imply it's imaginary, as people have been refunded money from it.
Which is it? Those are three different things!
If there really is some big transfer thing, the phone could certainly be collecting all that and sending it as soon as it's on wifi, and only using 3g if it's been 24 hours or whatever.
If you are extremely worried about this, just put your device into "airplane mode" before putting it to sleep. It won't try to talk to anything at all.
Translation: If you are worried about your cell phone deciding to cost you money, you can always stop using it.
Um, no thanks. Most of us who leave our cell phone on at night do so that it, um, functions as a cell phone. You know, the whole 'receive telephone calls' thing.
Only in the Republican universe did 'Republicans' oppose segregation and 'Democrats' support it.
Actually, that's exactly how it was. Your disconnect with reality is fascinating, though.
In the House: 153 Democrats voted for the civil rights act, and 91 against, or 63% in favor. 136 Republicans for, and 35 against, or 80% in favor.
Yeah, that's a real split along party lines, you moron. (The Senate was even more equal, 69% Democrats and 82% Republicans.) The Republicans supported desegregation slightly more, and that's about all you can say. And hey, look at that, right there, 153 Democrats supporting desegregation and 35 Republicans opposing it.
Meanwhile, here's the House's split of the people from states involved in the Civil war:
South: 7 for, 97 against. Everyone else: 283 for, 33 against.
Here's just the Democrats: South: 7 for, 87 against. Everyone else: 145 for, 9 against. (And while we're at it, all 10 Southern Republicans voted against it.)
Why, that certain looks like a geographic split, and not a political party split, doesn't it?
1) Are you one of the lunatics that thinks that Clinton was responsible for Welfare reform, too?
In your universe welfare and welfare reform has something to do with race. Interesting. Very interesting.
Clinton campaigned on welfare reform and signed a bill into law when it was presented to him. That is about as much as presidents can be 'responsible' for legislation.
2) Is Senator Byrd (former Grand Moff of the KKK) a Democrat or Republican?
The title Grand Moff is, you moron, from Star Wars. Christ, you're an idiot. Byrd was a town leader, whatever that title is.
But all that demonstrates is that Byrd, a Southern Democrat, was no longer behaving in a racist manner when the racist Southern Democrats got pushed out of the party. Which he had. He filibustered civil rights legislation 1964, but by 1968 was voting for it. (We can debate how much of this was honest change and how much of it was simply seeing how the wind was blowing the Democratic party, but that's not really important here.)
3) Is affirmative action color blind or not?
The parts having to with national origin, gender, and religion are. The parts having to do with race aren't.
But now you're trying to demonstrate that the left has 'gone too far', or that the left is racist in the opposite direction, which isn't even slightly relevant to the original point, which claimed the left was racist for fighting desegregation
Which, as I pointed out, was nonsense. The left's elected legislators were slightly less on the bandwagon. OTOH, the presidents, two Democrats, also pushed it. the parties appear about equal objectively.
4) Are there hordes of racists still running around in the Republican party?
No, but again that's totally irrelevant to my original point, in that the Republicans ended up with the racists in the mid-60.
Unless I can see the actual ballots put somewhere, and counted,and even look at them to make sure they are being counted right...it's not voting, period.
It's just some little game.
No, a 'receipt' doesn't help. Even putting aside the fact that that lets people threaten others over their vote, I have no way of determining that my vote is actually included in the total count, even if the machine knows how I voted. Machines can lie. I cannot see the inside of the machine.
And, no, saving pieces of paper for 'needed' recounts doesn't help...all that means is that criminals have to make the difference large enough to not trigger a recount.
If you want to have a device that prints the ballot for you, and have it be smart enough to keep a running total...well, as long as it's not keeping record that allow voters to be identified, fine, whatever, you can count as it happens. It's a 100% correct exit poll. But the actual voting is with little pieces of paper that get put in a box I can inspect and get counted in public.
Indeed. Trying to align racial history along party lines in this country is idiotic.
It's always been aligned along geographic lines.
Now, I want to emphasize, that the North doesn't have entirely clean hands here. A lot of horrific stuff went down outside the South, and, in general, the North's only been about two to four decades ahead of the South.
The North is more 'early', than 'good'. And, as other have pointed out, the South lagging behind is almost entirely due to economic issues in not wanting to give their workforce rights. There's an entirely valid position to take that the reason civil rights movements happen in the north is that 'The Leaders' there don't stop them, whereas they get stomped out in the South because 'The Leaders' there want the labor, and that it doesn't have a lot to do with the actual residences of either.(1)
But that said, almost every giant civil rights that ended up passing or doing anything at all, issue has cleanly split the country in half. The North votes for it, the South doesn't.
Political parties realign around that fact, they have nothing to do with it. Nor does it have much to do with 'conservative' or 'liberal'. It is simply, entirely, geography, period.
1) It's the same sort of crap the country is starting to see in AZ. The anti-Hispanic sentiment exists because the big business of the GOP has been pushing anti-illegal-immigrant stuff for so long because their don't want their workers to have rights. (Better to abuse them.) At the top, it's based on economics, with the leaders making sure to inform everyone about 'those people'. It's racism generated to pursue profits.
However, at this point, their supporters just somewhat gotten away from them into crazy land. To the point that the people passed a law so harsh the workforce is going to dry up, and it even punishes people who hire those dirty Hispanics. (In fact, 'Our supporters have somewhat gotten away from us into crazy land' is now the official GOP slogan.)
Well, yes, but you assume people have the minimum amount of competence to know that going to a primary doesn't blindly help 'your team'.
Hell, if I was in that district, and cared about that race, I'd probably vote in the Republican primary instead, to try to screw it up. (I don't think political leaders should be people encouraging that without others calling them on it, but I certainly think it's fair game to do on your own.)
Republicans have a theory that black people vote for black Democrats over white Democrats, no matter how incompetent they are, or how much they are 'real' Democrats. Ergo, they think if they run incompetent black people as Democrats, they will split the vote. Or at the very least, have some black people, disgusted at the primary outcome, not vote in the general election.
They also think the same thing about women. (Re: Sarah Palin and the whole PUMA thing they invented and pushed in the media)
This doesn't really work that well. It does work a little, though, and it just costs a filing fee.
And it lets the Republicans have better stats. Sure, they don't elect black guys in their primaries much, but, statistically, neither do the Democrats. (Because half of them are Republican plants.)
If their voter base doesn't care about the primary, why the fuck would they go vote in it? Seems like a lot of work for something you don't care about.
Now, you can make the theory that, as a Republican always wins that seat anyway, they didn't care about that race. But they have to care about something or they wouldn't have shown up.
Sounds like a design flaw. I crossfoot my spreadsheets regularly to detect errors, and this sort of error would drive me insane, but would certainly prevent me from going further or offering the sheet as useful until I corrected it.
Thank goodness this 'design flaw' exists. You know, if they were vaguely competent, they'd have simply made it where the voter totals equal 'max number of total votes for any office', and then we'd never know that it registered a lot more votes than it should have.
Luckily, there's also someone crossing the names off a piece of paper, and they add that up, too. I'm sure one of these days it will be totally computerized and so the computer can 'fix' it.
Slashdot Mirror
I think: 'Laptops are not performance machines. They will never replace desktops...Does your laptop have a fast 2 TB Raid?' will probably stand forever as the Top Ten Foolish Things Said on Slashdot.
No it doesn't...and neither does anyone's desktop, statistically speaking.
The joke is, I'm actually a (softcore) PC gamer, I have a moderate game rig, about 2 years old at this point, and it doubles as a playback-only HTPC, with wires and a remote sensor run into another room.
I have it on a KVM with, duh, my work laptop. Which I have because I have to take it places.
Unlike you, I don't care much about portability. Movability, to take it to work, yeah, but I don't need computers all over my house...I have an iphone for that. Before that, I was considering a netbook.
But, regardless, I am aware enough to know normal people do not use computers like I do. Sheesh. it's like this site has turned into some giant nerd parody, like we're nerds who aren't aware that not everyone is a Farscape fan and you can't just walk up to them and talk about it. Hey, goobers, we are not normal WRT computers. Normal people have computers to do surfing, email (Webmail, at that!), Word, some photos, some porn. Some of them even managed to find torrents! They aren't doing 'character animation and special fx professionally'.
Hell, even the PC game market isn't as big as some people here seem to be assuming, nor do most games require the newest and best machines. There are about four million people buying games that need a desktop each year, and they're upgrading about every four years, so a million PC aimed at them each year. Maybe double that, might even get tripled that with very generous assumptions.
There are 120 million PC sold a year.
It's not computer speed, you fool. It's truck size.
Go out and buy a Ford F-250 today!
Um, yes, every time I wanted to go out, I could pull out my work laptop, boot it up, sync it to my work desktop, pack it back up, and leave. And then when I got back home I could the same thing in reverse.
Or, I guess I could just leave it hooked up after the 'got back' sync. Bring it in, hook it up, boot, sync, leave it hooked up, and then before I leave sync, unhook, and leave.
Or, and here's a clever idea, why don't I just work on the damn laptop to start with, which seems to, I dunno, save several stupid steps there, and saves me an entire computer.
It doesn't matter how 'easy' it is. It requires the laptop to be booted, both when I get back and before I leave, and hence is not even slightly easier than just using the laptop the entire time.
I guess if I could just boot it up without plugging keyboard and mice and monitor in and it would magically sync, in the universe where half this site seems to operate, where plugging it in is a time consuming procedure, it might save time. In reality, I have the thing entirely plugged in during the four or five seconds it takes to boot up to the TrueCrypt boot password screen, much less before it finishes unhibernating. (I have no idea how everyone else is so incompetence and slow and plugging three or four cables in.)
And, yet, again, we get the weird idea that a laptop can't have a monitor or two, keyboard, wrist rest, mouse, etc.
I'm just baffled as to how people keep saying something that's not even close to a reasonable thing to say. It's like saying 'Sure, I could rent an apartment, but I like having tables and chairs, so I bought a house instead'. I'm just standing here saying 'WTF are you talking about?'.
If you have a workable system, fine. No one's saying you should change.
But there are plenty of us with laptops that have exactly the setup you describe. Everything you talk about.
Except we can spend about 30 seconds unplugging stuff and pick it up and take it elsewhere and use it there also.
Either way you slice it, it's just really hard to peg the Republicans as a party of racists.
I was taking issue with someone who claimed the Democrats were the party of racists. With a link to a totally idiotic article 'proving' this, because a slightly higher percentage of Democrats voted against Civil Rights Acts.
Ignoring the fact it was, of course, a Democratic party initiative to start with, that both parties voted for it, and the Democrats who didn't support them were either forced out, usually to the Republican side, or forced to change their position.
Whereas Republicans didn't have to modify their positions until later, in the mid-80s, when it became unaccepted to be openly racist at all. And then, the Republicans decided on the Southern Strategy to be 'non-openly' racist, to speak in code to the racists and hopefully get their vote without actually having to be racist and lose the vote of everyone else.
They've mostly abandoned this, and I didn't peg them as the party of racists at this point. I have no evidence there are currently racists among the Republican party politicians. (Except apparently a few of them have show up in Arizona, but the rest of the Republican party is rather, um, worried about that, and certainly don't support it.)
This article was, of course, in support of the concept that the Democratic party is the most racist one now, because it still has inequality between race as an issue as a party plank. Whereas the Republicans insist that the fact that over twice the percentages of blacks live in poverty as whites is a coincidence, and to talk about attempting to do something about that is, ipso facto, racist.
1. PC gaming market is still going to be around
'PC gaming market' does not mean 'people who run the fastest machine'. Plenty of laptops are entirely capable of running most games.
And the non-casual market has never been as large as people think. I mean, Half-Life, one of the best selling computer games of all time, has sold less than 10 million copies, and probably averaged 3 million a year for a bit...but 130 million personal computers are sold a year. That's 2% of the people who buy a new computer buying Half-Life.
Now, it's hard to figure out how many actual 'gamers' there are, and if a laptop would fit their needs or not, but the market isn't as big as people assume.
2. Growth of 3D media, I certainly see a need for higher performance computing here
I don't know what you mean by '3D media'.
3. Media creation/editing (3D modeling, video editing, etc.)
That's an even smaller market than hardcore gamers.
Given that people will have remotely-accessible storage residing in the home for their portable devices, I could also imagine people running a more powerful personal server machine in their homes.
Yeah, but it's equally likely that's going to be some off-the-shelve NAS. Or an account 'in the cloud', no matter how stupid it is to pay monthly fees for storage.
Regular people aren't going to buy servers for their house that are regular computers. The only servers they're buying are things they just plop on their network.
I did buy a cell phone that had all that.
It's called an iPhone.
Finally, other people who've been saying what I've been saying.
Normal users run IE, Word, Excel, Windows Media Player, a bunch of crap in their tray, and that's it. Power users use Firefox and Skype and an actual email client and WinAmp and maybe even an RSS reader. (Please note these are just examples.)
Those two together are 90% of computer users. 90% of computer users do not 'upgrade', except the power users sometimes stick in another hard drive (And, nowadays it's a USB hard drive.) or more memory, they do not 'compile', and they do not notice, or at least don't care, that their copy of Portal autodetected their setup and is only running at 2x and not 8x anti-aliasing.
It's really weird watching slashdot, who are self-proclaimed computer experts, appear to not know this at all. As I said above, it's like watching a bunch of auto mechanics assert that passenger vehicles won't catch on, because no one will be able to move their piano.
It's also quite weird to watch everyone seem to assume that laptops must be operated by having them sit on your lap. Like no one's ever plugged in a monitor to them, and there aren't wireless mice and keyboard being sold all over the place.
and anyone interested in anything more than browsing and IM'ing people pictures of their dicks
That's right, this article is crazy, laptops will never get more that 90%-95% of the marketshare! Only the vast vast vast majority of people who just want to use the internet and run Word and store pictures will buy them! The tiny minority that actually upgrades their own computer won't buy them!
Also, passengers cars will never catch on...how will people move around their pianos?
Seriously, half the people here seem to be in a weird sort of denial. Probably because they either think their computer speed is directly related to penis size, or they consider the intelligence to upgrade their computer related to it.
Sane people have realized desktop computers were going away for quite some time, as are the CPU-speed wars. Computers have, and will continue to, get lighter and quieter and more energy efficient, not faster. And, thus, laptops will continue plummeting in price.
Most laptops don't have a docking solution like the Thinkpad X series where you can plonk it down and all your peripherals are connected, you have to plug everything in and unplug it when you leave, no a major hassle but do it every day and it's a pain.
Really? Plugging stuff into and out oa laptop every day is a major hassle? Compared to plugging them into an out of a desktop each day?
Oh, wait, you were comparing how difficult is it is to do something with a laptop to something that a desktop functionally can't do. Seriously?
'Man, driving a car to get somewhere sure is a hassle. I have to pay attention and everything. That's why I like sitting on my sofa. For a price of a car, you can buy dozens of sofas!'
On top of all this, laptops simply don't have the right form factor to support good posture while working so if I'm going to be at a computer for hours a day, I'll take a desktop thank you.
Really? Because I've always found the form factor of a desktop to be much worse. I mean, you essentially have to lay on the floor, there's no interface device, and there's not even a screen! Using a desktop is a nightmare.
No, I much prefer using a computer monitor and keyboard and mouse, all plugged into whatever I'm using, laptop or desktop. That really is the best way to use computer. And, then, in a pinch, you can use a laptop by itself. I've never even seriously confused using a desktop by itself, that's just crazy, man.
Because it can move?
My work computer is a laptop. 80% of the time it's hooked to a KVM at my house. I plug in a secondary monitor via USB. Another 10% of the time it's hooked into one at the office. (I work from home usually.)
That other 10% of the time it's hauled into a meeting, or taken to a client site. And because it's my actual work computer, all my shit is there when I need it, instead of hoping and praying I remembered to grab everything relevant and hoping I don't forget some password I changed on my real work computer or how to get into some obscure site. (And, yes, the hard drive is encrypted.)
The real joke is, at this point, the battery has entirely stopped working. It's a UPS, it functions for maybe five minutes. When I use it, I have to plug it in. And it's still much more useful than a desktop, because I can move it around, and it has a keyboard, mouse, display, speakers, and wifi all built in.
Now, of course, on the other side of the KVM I have my desktop, which is a medium quality gaming computer/HTPC. My laptop isn't really powerful enough to play games on...although a newer one probably would be. I think work's getting me a new one this year.
I find all the laptop hate here to be very strange. The article is really correct...90% of people who want a computer really should buy, and are buying, a laptop. And most of them don't even know they could set up a little 'docking area' with a keyboard and mouse and big monitor if they needed to do a long stretch of work on them, but they are buying them anyway.
The world really is shifting.
Sure, there's maybe 10% of the population that needs or wants someone else, and that number is probably disproportionally represented in on /., but for most normal people, a laptop is the better choice hands down.
No shit, that drives me crazy when I have to type on my laptop's keyboard, especially as I still copy and paste using Shift+Insert and Ctrl+Insert. Which is also screwed up by the lack of a Ctrl on the right side of my laptop's keyboard.
Hell, I once had to use a desktop where some moron designer had decided that the top row of that block should be power keys, like power-off and suspend, and the block should be right below that, touching the arrow keys. Um, no. And for a while, I actually had a keyboard that was that, flipped around...power keys between the navigation block and arrow keys. I pulled them off and worked normal.
I agree about the numeric keypad. If you do a lot of work on that, you can buy one of those pretty cheap, and that keypad is far enough away that you have to look and line up your hand on it when you start typing, so it doesn't need to be exactly right anyway. You can even get a bluetooth one that doesn't have to be plugged in.
OTOH, while I do use the numeric keypad enough to touch type on it, I don't use it that much, usually just to enter long strings of numbers...it's possible some accountant out there disagrees with me, and can hit a numeric-pad eight in the middle of typing a sentence.
Let's see .. I'm sitting in front of a desktop with 8GB of memory, a dual processor, two 22" monitors, a full sized ergonomic keyboard, and a Wacom pad.
You do realize laptops can have all of those things, right? That you can, in fact, plug input and output devices into them? And add memory?
In fact, the laptop I'm typing on right now actually has all those things except 8GB of memory (Because it's old and 32 bit, and I'm still running XP on it.), and the full-sized keyboard is not ergonomic because I hate those.
It's also got 4TB of disk space, 6 powered USB ports (4 in back of which 3 are in use, 2 in front of which I use one), memory card reader, DVD burner, and a cable-TV video card so I can also use it as a DVR. I copy all of my CDs/DVDs to it, and when I get a blu-ray player for my home theater, I think I'll go add a 1.5TB hard drive to the last slot.
You do realize that laptops can have all those things, right? (Although it's a lot easier to plug all your USB stuff into a hub and plug that into your laptop instead.)
In fact, most laptops come with 6 USB ports (And I have to point out that all USB ports on a computer are, by definition, powered.), and a DVD burner, and about half of them come with memory card readers built in, at least for one type, usually SD.
And, of course, USB memory card readers and USB cable-TV tuners are easy enough to get.
To get enough disk space I'd have to add some type of wired/wireless file server slowing. Until they make them with easily swapable components and they come with docking stations, I think the added cost of the needed components just isn't worth it.
And they'd need to come with a 'docking station' why, exactly? Most people just buy a NAS and plug USB drives into them if they want more space.
The case is an off-the-shelf case with room for 8 internal drives. I can swap out the entire motherboard, CPU, video card, network card, and any other component.
That is the only reason to have a desktop that you managed to list.
And as for your wife using her desktop...yeah, only a fool would sit there and unplug stuff from a desktop to hook it to a laptop to use it. OTOH, only a fool wouldn't have bought a KVM in the first place, which is what normal people who have both a laptop and a desktop do.
Ah, okay. So the data transfer is the iPhone essentially sending un-itemization data to the phone company.
Well, it's flatly absurd to charge people for that, for one thing.
Secondly, if the phones are, as the article claims, transferring up to sixty megs of data, it's idiotic to only use the 3G instead of offloading that to wifi if possible.
Perhaps it's some sort of security thing, or perhaps the data isn't even going to an IP address at all, but straight into the underlying data network that IP happens over, but still. There should be a logical way to simply hold the data until on a wifi network or a certain amount of time passes.
I don't understand this story at all. Part of it seems to be implying this is just an accounting thing...your phone isn't actually sending data then, the bill is just reporting the tiny amount of push transfers it did during the day as a single instance at night. (Otherwise, you'd have hundreds of '20 byte' listings during the day as the phone asks 'New data?' and the other end says 'Nope'.)
That seems reasonable, but then another part of the article seems to imply this is real, because it's using 3g 'during' it.
Yet another part seems to imply it's imaginary, as people have been refunded money from it.
Which is it? Those are three different things!
If there really is some big transfer thing, the phone could certainly be collecting all that and sending it as soon as it's on wifi, and only using 3g if it's been 24 hours or whatever.
If you are extremely worried about this, just put your device into "airplane mode" before putting it to sleep. It won't try to talk to anything at all.
Translation: If you are worried about your cell phone deciding to cost you money, you can always stop using it.
Um, no thanks. Most of us who leave our cell phone on at night do so that it, um, functions as a cell phone. You know, the whole 'receive telephone calls' thing.
Only in the Republican universe did 'Republicans' oppose segregation and 'Democrats' support it.
Actually, that's exactly how it was. Your disconnect with reality is fascinating, though.
In the House: 153 Democrats voted for the civil rights act, and 91 against, or 63% in favor. 136 Republicans for, and 35 against, or 80% in favor.
Yeah, that's a real split along party lines, you moron. (The Senate was even more equal, 69% Democrats and 82% Republicans.) The Republicans supported desegregation slightly more, and that's about all you can say. And hey, look at that, right there, 153 Democrats supporting desegregation and 35 Republicans opposing it.
Meanwhile, here's the House's split of the people from states involved in the Civil war:
South: 7 for, 97 against. Everyone else: 283 for, 33 against.
Here's just the Democrats: South: 7 for, 87 against. Everyone else: 145 for, 9 against. (And while we're at it, all 10 Southern Republicans voted against it.)
Why, that certain looks like a geographic split, and not a political party split, doesn't it?
1) Are you one of the lunatics that thinks that Clinton was responsible for Welfare reform, too?
In your universe welfare and welfare reform has something to do with race. Interesting. Very interesting.
Clinton campaigned on welfare reform and signed a bill into law when it was presented to him. That is about as much as presidents can be 'responsible' for legislation.
2) Is Senator Byrd (former Grand Moff of the KKK) a Democrat or Republican?
The title Grand Moff is, you moron, from Star Wars. Christ, you're an idiot. Byrd was a town leader, whatever that title is.
But all that demonstrates is that Byrd, a Southern Democrat, was no longer behaving in a racist manner when the racist Southern Democrats got pushed out of the party. Which he had. He filibustered civil rights legislation 1964, but by 1968 was voting for it. (We can debate how much of this was honest change and how much of it was simply seeing how the wind was blowing the Democratic party, but that's not really important here.)
3) Is affirmative action color blind or not?
The parts having to with national origin, gender, and religion are. The parts having to do with race aren't.
But now you're trying to demonstrate that the left has 'gone too far', or that the left is racist in the opposite direction, which isn't even slightly relevant to the original point, which claimed the left was racist for fighting desegregation
Which, as I pointed out, was nonsense. The left's elected legislators were slightly less on the bandwagon. OTOH, the presidents, two Democrats, also pushed it. the parties appear about equal objectively.
4) Are there hordes of racists still running around in the Republican party?
No, but again that's totally irrelevant to my original point, in that the Republicans ended up with the racists in the mid-60.
Unless I can see the actual ballots put somewhere, and counted,and even look at them to make sure they are being counted right...it's not voting, period.
It's just some little game.
No, a 'receipt' doesn't help. Even putting aside the fact that that lets people threaten others over their vote, I have no way of determining that my vote is actually included in the total count, even if the machine knows how I voted. Machines can lie. I cannot see the inside of the machine.
And, no, saving pieces of paper for 'needed' recounts doesn't help...all that means is that criminals have to make the difference large enough to not trigger a recount.
If you want to have a device that prints the ballot for you, and have it be smart enough to keep a running total...well, as long as it's not keeping record that allow voters to be identified, fine, whatever, you can count as it happens. It's a 100% correct exit poll. But the actual voting is with little pieces of paper that get put in a box I can inspect and get counted in public.
Indeed. Trying to align racial history along party lines in this country is idiotic.
It's always been aligned along geographic lines.
Now, I want to emphasize, that the North doesn't have entirely clean hands here. A lot of horrific stuff went down outside the South, and, in general, the North's only been about two to four decades ahead of the South.
The North is more 'early', than 'good'. And, as other have pointed out, the South lagging behind is almost entirely due to economic issues in not wanting to give their workforce rights. There's an entirely valid position to take that the reason civil rights movements happen in the north is that 'The Leaders' there don't stop them, whereas they get stomped out in the South because 'The Leaders' there want the labor, and that it doesn't have a lot to do with the actual residences of either.(1)
But that said, almost every giant civil rights that ended up passing or doing anything at all, issue has cleanly split the country in half. The North votes for it, the South doesn't.
Political parties realign around that fact, they have nothing to do with it. Nor does it have much to do with 'conservative' or 'liberal'. It is simply, entirely, geography, period.
1) It's the same sort of crap the country is starting to see in AZ. The anti-Hispanic sentiment exists because the big business of the GOP has been pushing anti-illegal-immigrant stuff for so long because their don't want their workers to have rights. (Better to abuse them.) At the top, it's based on economics, with the leaders making sure to inform everyone about 'those people'. It's racism generated to pursue profits.
However, at this point, their supporters just somewhat gotten away from them into crazy land. To the point that the people passed a law so harsh the workforce is going to dry up, and it even punishes people who hire those dirty Hispanics. (In fact, 'Our supporters have somewhat gotten away from us into crazy land' is now the official GOP slogan.)
I didn't say anything about the civil war at all, did I?
And I actually mostly agree with you. The civil war was fought, as all wars are, over money.
I was talking about what happened 100 years later.
Well, yes, but you assume people have the minimum amount of competence to know that going to a primary doesn't blindly help 'your team'.
Hell, if I was in that district, and cared about that race, I'd probably vote in the Republican primary instead, to try to screw it up. (I don't think political leaders should be people encouraging that without others calling them on it, but I certainly think it's fair game to do on your own.)
Well, no, it didn't work. Read the post.
Republicans have a theory that black people vote for black Democrats over white Democrats, no matter how incompetent they are, or how much they are 'real' Democrats. Ergo, they think if they run incompetent black people as Democrats, they will split the vote. Or at the very least, have some black people, disgusted at the primary outcome, not vote in the general election.
They also think the same thing about women. (Re: Sarah Palin and the whole PUMA thing they invented and pushed in the media)
This doesn't really work that well. It does work a little, though, and it just costs a filing fee.
And it lets the Republicans have better stats. Sure, they don't elect black guys in their primaries much, but, statistically, neither do the Democrats. (Because half of them are Republican plants.)
If their voter base doesn't care about the primary, why the fuck would they go vote in it? Seems like a lot of work for something you don't care about.
Now, you can make the theory that, as a Republican always wins that seat anyway, they didn't care about that race. But they have to care about something or they wouldn't have shown up.
Sounds like a design flaw. I crossfoot my spreadsheets regularly to detect errors, and this sort of error would drive me insane, but would certainly prevent me from going further or offering the sheet as useful until I corrected it.
Thank goodness this 'design flaw' exists. You know, if they were vaguely competent, they'd have simply made it where the voter totals equal 'max number of total votes for any office', and then we'd never know that it registered a lot more votes than it should have.
Luckily, there's also someone crossing the names off a piece of paper, and they add that up, too. I'm sure one of these days it will be totally computerized and so the computer can 'fix' it.
Hey, you moron, everyone got six votes. The title is even 'Residents get 6 votes each in suburban NY election'
It's a very strange setup, and I doubt it will make any difference, but, no, Hispanics didn't get more votes than other people.