The issue is, really, what programming really creates. Are we designing new things and coming up with new ideas, or are we constructing something which costs next to nothing to move around?
If a bright team in India is given a spec, follows it properly, and delivers a rock-solid product, it can be shipped on a CD-R, a DVD, or even just an external hard disk to another location. Source code can be SCP'ed to a server in the US. It's not like shipping cars from Japan to the US, it's even easier.
The thing that we can't outsource as readily is innovation. We basically need to change into a nation of inventors, since that's really the only position left. We need to constantly pump out new ideas, and take the credit for them while someone else implements said idea for cheap.
That's not to say that there aren't innovative programmers out there. I work with innovative programmers, that's why they have jobs in the US. When you're designing something that's never been done before, you don't *want* to deal with a 12 hour lag time, or trying to communicate new ideas and the like to someone who's asleep when you're busy coding.
In the long run, what will happen is that people in every nation will come up with good ideas, and they'll implement them on their own. After that, maintenance will go to the lowest bidder. I wouldn't say that everyone wins in this situation, but fewer people lose, at any rate.
I don't like outsourcing. I think it's a crock, and that's partially because I lost a job to it once, and was asked repeatedly to come back for consulting work after I was let go. If the new guy halfway across the world can't do my job, then maybe I shouldn't have been fired in the first place. It's a system that doesn't work as well as managers initially suspect, but it probably does have its place, when done properly.
I had a rough idea what the reasons were behind it, but the point remains. For a Thunderbird-based Athlon to keep up with this, you'd need to cool it, overclock it to hell, and hope to god you don't melt anything.
Perhaps I really just feel an urge to hug my system. The cache, the HyperTransport, the massively improved IPC count over even the older Athlons, and the insanely low price of all the parts I needed just make me happy, as I don't need some massive behemoth of a system to do just about anything I'd need.
Lack of 64-bit is an irritant, but this is a gaming box. Show me a PC game that needs 64-bit support in the next two years, and I'll consider yanking my Sempron and slapping in an Athlon64. Gotta love the compatibility.
You'll need a new mobo for any modern CPU. To put it plainly... deal with it. I sucked up the loss, and called it a day.
If you have DDR RAM, you're set, though. My PC2700 (DDR 266) RAM works just fine with my Socket 754 Sempron 3100+, but I'm sacrificing a small amount of speed. On the upside, it's dual channeled now, or so memtest86 wants me to believe.
I also replaced my beast of a mid-tower case with an Antec Aria, bringing the cost of my upgrade to $300 plus shipping.
For ~$120 for the chip, and ~$80 for a motherboard, you can keep all of your other components. I just looked up what modern motherboards can support, and three years hasn't been enough time to render my components obsolete. Yay.
Then again, it's not like I'm moving from SDR to DDR, switching to SATA, and expecting a PCI-X video card. Top of the line gear just doesn't seem worth it anymore.
If we ignore how momentum and force work, then you're right.
Unfortunately for those worried about Segway collisions, the whole thing weighs a lot less than a car, or even most motorcycles.
i wouldn't want Grannie in a car at all if she can ride in a Segway, since the Segway's less likely to cripple me when it hits. Just pass a few laws stating that the Segway belongs on the sidewalks, and that's that. It's not like anyone's going to spend $5000 on a non-approved mobility device which requires you to stay on your feet full-time, and the few who do will probably have enough money to do other things than run people over with their new toy.
Considering the fact that my 3 year old PC died, I replaced the 1.4GHz Athlon (T-bird) with the Socket 754 Sempron 3100+.
Same RAM, same disk, same video, but a new motherboard.
I *feel* like I'm getting more than a 28% speed boost from it, so it's clearly not just the clock speed that's doing it. Making a chip run faster never was the right idea, and I'm glad to see that they're walking away from that.
Now, if we can just get a core like the Pentium M, but for desktops, then maybe we'll see some real competition.
GPRS doesn't get me where I need to be, though, which is on a tightly firewalled WLAN which lacks a VPN uplink.
I'll admit that it's very close to what I want, but it's just far enough to really get in the way when I have real work to do. On top of that, I'm not thrilled with the lack of support for it through T-Mobile. Too much of a geek toy, not enough of a techie's toolkit.
I'm not surprised, really. There aren't enough of us to make a difference.
Even so, here's what I want out of a PDA, and the Axim comes close, but not close enough.
1) Wifi support, including WPA, and ideally, some VPN software. I move between multiple wireless networks, some more secure than others. WEP and WPA support are a must. 2) Multitasking. I'm a Palm user, but I'd love to leave programs running in the background properly. (IM programs can do this, IRC and SSH programs cannot. There's a good reason for that, however.) 3) 80x24 terminal emulation. I don't really care about the resolution, as long as I can read a full terminal's worth of information. 4) An input system that allows, minimally, Control and Escape in addition to keyboard input. 5) Enough battery power to get me through the day, and possibly halfway into the next day. I'm okay with charging my battery daily, as long as I can get to the end of the day in the first place. 6) Applications! SSH is key here. An X server wouldn't be bad either, as I sometimes need to manage some LDAP directories, and I'm a little faster flipping through a handful of nodes in a GUI. Toss in a *good* pressure-sensitive touchscreen, a simple painting app, a good diagramming tool, and a decent notepad, and some kind of handwriting recognition. Hell, make the system fast enough, and I won't even *care* about handwriting, so long as I can read what I write.
Ideally, what I want needs to function similarly to a paper memo pad, as well as a wireless SSH device, and a built in video camera would be nice. I can't imagine how I got by without a camera on hand at all times. It's great for grabbing data when I have no time to write it down. Voice memos are similarly important. Syncing via bluetooth would be nice, but not crucial. Persistent data access is a must, so add a flash backup system if needed.
Give me about 256 MB of space to work in, and I'll generally be fine. It's not for watching DVDs, it's not my MP3 jukebox, it's a tool. I use it to gain access to data, much of which won't be stored locally anyway. Just leave me space for my notes and thoughts, and everything else can get pulled from the WLAN as needed.
I use them for my skates (removable trucks, so I just pop them off, strap them down, and walk into a store,) or for an umbrella. I rarely get caught in the rain these days, and it's never soaking the inside of my bag.
As for the belts, you haven't really overloaded the bag yet. Once the weight gets excessive, the chest and waist belts will make a huge difference. Especially if you're on skates or a bike.
The checked pattern isn't the most attractive, but I think it's reflective, which is a good thing.
The bag's not really designed for geeks carrying a complete load of network gear, laptop, and so on. It's made for the cyclist with a laptop. You can carry all your crap in one bag, possibly include some water, and you won't get too tired. I moved onto the Sport Deluxe backpack from a sling pack, and I've never been happier.
1) Power management via catnip. Use just a little of the stuff, and you will bring your kitten into a low power suspend mode. Heat dissipation won't change much, though.
2) Compatibility. Kittens are initially incompatible with additional kittens, resulting in cowering, hissing, and the occasional scratch. This will normally go away, and lead to mutual cooperation, with two kittens working together being far more destructive than two kittens working individually.
I'd lock it down too, if I were Google. They've done all the work of getting these news clippings together, but they're not allowed to make any money off of it. While I doubt Mr. Bond (heh,) was looking to make any money from his work, Google's probably got some copyright issues to worry about, most of which can be quelled by keeping Google News restricted for now.
Don't be evil. That's good. Not getting sued by the news organizations is also good. A C&D doesn't involve getting money from anyone, aside from the lawyers charging for whatever billable time was involved.
In the end, Google's got to take a better safe than sorry approach to this system, or else we may all lose it.
I'm glad the FTC isn't sure that this is a good idea, because it isn't.
Once my taxpayer dollars start going towards regulating spam, then it's not a far stretch to move onto regulating the rest of the Internet.
Sure, spam is bad. It's background noise, undesired traffic, and so on. Throwing government funding at the problem isn't going to make it go away, though. Few things will, in fact, short of a series of concentrated DoS attacks on the spammers themselves, by doing everything just short of providing any real personal information. Clutter their databases with garbage. Sign up as Seymour Asses, 123 Fake St, New New York, NY. Ask for more information, and target it all at a spamcatching address.
Make them WORK to get any kind of useful data from their own systems, like we all have to work to find the good email in our inboxes.
Just don't try to regulate the Internet. There's too many loopholes, and you'd end up eliminating both the bad and the good.
I've always considered the biggest problem with PC hardware to be the utter *lack* of flexibility.
Sure, the GPU cannot replace the CPU, but it can assist a lot more than it currently does.
Why not just have a CPU that's dedicated to integer math, simple logic, and routing?
Pass off any tougher math to a dedicated FPU, including 3d work. Audio mixing? Hit the FPU, or perhaps another DSP.
Segment the RAM into General Purpose and high-bandwidth, much like we're doing with video cards as it is.
GPUs can't work for all computing problems, but they can probably work for a lot more than they're currently doing. Of course, that would require a massive redesign of PC architecture, as well as the software to support it.
I think it has to do with lower atmospheric pressure, and low speeds due to gravity.
Opening a parachute from too high up will result in it failing to open properly, as I recall, since there's no air to "fill" it. However, add an inflatable framework, and the parachute will properly open, even in a vacuum.
I'd imagine it's less like a parachute, and more like a giant umbrella, so that you come down Mary Poppins-style.
Every time I've flown, we're allowed to use our cell phones as soon as the plane has landed.
From landing to actually exiting the plane is another 10-20 minutes. Add another 10-20 on top of that for collecting a bag if you've checked in.
That is, of course, for any major airport. If you're just hopping off the plane from the tarmac, it's a little bit faster, but still not by much.
A forty minute wait in the few cases where you can't plan ahead is minor compared to the babbling idiocy of some jackass who feels a need to holler into his headset. You're probably not that kind of person, I'll grant, but that kind of person is everywhere. It's bad enough on a bus ride. I'd rather not have to deal with it when I'm flying from coast to coast, or outside of the US.
Seriously, you don't know stupidity until you see some self-absorbed prick crammed into a seat bitching loudly into his cell phone. Moments like that make me glad to have noise-reducing headphones.
- A removable battery. - An internal 2.4 GHz antenna - Bluetooth module - 802.11b/g module (unlikely to ever happen) - WPA support - a 480x640 screen, with a Zaurus-like stretch feaure for the keyboard - Long range IR - A better camera. Increase the resolution if you want, but please, boost the light sensitivity. It sucks for indoors shots. - More memory. Much more memory. Like... 128MB total? - A jog dial - Voice/video capture built in - Keep the SD slot. I like it. - The fastest ARM chip they can cram into a Palm OS5/6 device - Hotsync/charge via Mini-USB port.
And it should collapse to be no larger than my Treo 600. While I can't use the keyboard in this theoretical mode, at least I'm not carrying a surfboard in my pocket. Usable enough, but with enough versatility to work as a real personal computing device no matter where I am.
I know *why* it's not there, but back in the old days, you'd have ports on the back of a system, so it didn't matter which hand you used for a pointing device.
This was all especially funny when the newer iBooks came out. We bought one, and it came with the Apple Optical mouse, complete with 12-inch cable. And the USB port on the left.
Then they screw up and put the USB ports on the left side of the Powerbook, while I'm right-handed, and like having an external mouse.
Not one to want an extra cord snaked all the way around the back ot my laptop, I took advantage of the built-in Bluetooth module and got a Bluetooth mouse.
If pointing and clicking comfortably without dealing with an external wireless transceiver is useful, then I've got your argument.
A good nail file can file down more than just nails. You can file off a burr from just about anything, smooth down a jagged edge, and so on.
It's more useful when dealing with a system thrown together by some jackass who used bargain basement parts and didn't pay attention to things like accessibility and future repair needs.
There's a huge difference between cramming a G5 system into a 2 inch 25-pound box, and doing the same in less than an inch of space, with a 4-8 pound maximum weight.
With the Powerbook, we'll need to cram all of that in, leaving room for a large Li-Ion/Li-Polymer battery, cooling hardware, and there will be similar performance tradeoffs (3x vs 2x clock multipliers, etc.)
That said, I'm going to have to start saving up for a 2nd gen G5 Powerbook now, since this is at least a good first step in that direction.
A 120gig HDD and USB 2.0 enclosure will generally need an external power supply. That's more bulk than an iPod.
I have a Mac. Lots of people do. Many Macs have slot-loading drives which will *die* when you try to use a business card CD.
I'll grant you that the iPod is not the best portable storage device, but it's a damned good music player that happens to pull double duty. Why bother carrying more crap than you need?
When you rent a car, you can't let a friend drive it. If you wreck the car, they don't give you a new one, you pay some amount, insurance covers the rest, and it's recorded that you're less safe than other drivers.
That's the RIAA model right there. When you pay for a CD, you're merely renting the media so that you can access the content. It's still their property, so you can't do whatever you want with it. You can't transfer ownership, since you don't own it.
I'd be fine with this in some aspect, if I were to rent the media, and get more than 2 songs worth of decent content. As it is, it's like renting a car that comes with 3 annoying passengers who crank up the A/C, tear up the seats, leave fast food containers all over the place, and then stiff me with the bill.
Slashdot Mirror
I had my pride. And by the time they called me, I had a better job, too.
Needless to say, if I *did* have the time, $200 an hour would be the easiest part of my terms.
The issue is, really, what programming really creates. Are we designing new things and coming up with new ideas, or are we constructing something which costs next to nothing to move around?
If a bright team in India is given a spec, follows it properly, and delivers a rock-solid product, it can be shipped on a CD-R, a DVD, or even just an external hard disk to another location. Source code can be SCP'ed to a server in the US. It's not like shipping cars from Japan to the US, it's even easier.
The thing that we can't outsource as readily is innovation. We basically need to change into a nation of inventors, since that's really the only position left. We need to constantly pump out new ideas, and take the credit for them while someone else implements said idea for cheap.
That's not to say that there aren't innovative programmers out there. I work with innovative programmers, that's why they have jobs in the US. When you're designing something that's never been done before, you don't *want* to deal with a 12 hour lag time, or trying to communicate new ideas and the like to someone who's asleep when you're busy coding.
In the long run, what will happen is that people in every nation will come up with good ideas, and they'll implement them on their own. After that, maintenance will go to the lowest bidder. I wouldn't say that everyone wins in this situation, but fewer people lose, at any rate.
I don't like outsourcing. I think it's a crock, and that's partially because I lost a job to it once, and was asked repeatedly to come back for consulting work after I was let go. If the new guy halfway across the world can't do my job, then maybe I shouldn't have been fired in the first place. It's a system that doesn't work as well as managers initially suspect, but it probably does have its place, when done properly.
I had a rough idea what the reasons were behind it, but the point remains. For a Thunderbird-based Athlon to keep up with this, you'd need to cool it, overclock it to hell, and hope to god you don't melt anything.
Perhaps I really just feel an urge to hug my system. The cache, the HyperTransport, the massively improved IPC count over even the older Athlons, and the insanely low price of all the parts I needed just make me happy, as I don't need some massive behemoth of a system to do just about anything I'd need.
Lack of 64-bit is an irritant, but this is a gaming box. Show me a PC game that needs 64-bit support in the next two years, and I'll consider yanking my Sempron and slapping in an Athlon64. Gotta love the compatibility.
You'll need a new mobo for any modern CPU. To put it plainly... deal with it. I sucked up the loss, and called it a day.
If you have DDR RAM, you're set, though. My PC2700 (DDR 266) RAM works just fine with my Socket 754 Sempron 3100+, but I'm sacrificing a small amount of speed. On the upside, it's dual channeled now, or so memtest86 wants me to believe.
I also replaced my beast of a mid-tower case with an Antec Aria, bringing the cost of my upgrade to $300 plus shipping.
For ~$120 for the chip, and ~$80 for a motherboard, you can keep all of your other components. I just looked up what modern motherboards can support, and three years hasn't been enough time to render my components obsolete. Yay.
Then again, it's not like I'm moving from SDR to DDR, switching to SATA, and expecting a PCI-X video card. Top of the line gear just doesn't seem worth it anymore.
If we ignore how momentum and force work, then you're right.
Unfortunately for those worried about Segway collisions, the whole thing weighs a lot less than a car, or even most motorcycles.
i wouldn't want Grannie in a car at all if she can ride in a Segway, since the Segway's less likely to cripple me when it hits. Just pass a few laws stating that the Segway belongs on the sidewalks, and that's that. It's not like anyone's going to spend $5000 on a non-approved mobility device which requires you to stay on your feet full-time, and the few who do will probably have enough money to do other things than run people over with their new toy.
Considering the fact that my 3 year old PC died, I replaced the 1.4GHz Athlon (T-bird) with the Socket 754 Sempron 3100+.
Same RAM, same disk, same video, but a new motherboard.
I *feel* like I'm getting more than a 28% speed boost from it, so it's clearly not just the clock speed that's doing it. Making a chip run faster never was the right idea, and I'm glad to see that they're walking away from that.
Now, if we can just get a core like the Pentium M, but for desktops, then maybe we'll see some real competition.
GPRS doesn't get me where I need to be, though, which is on a tightly firewalled WLAN which lacks a VPN uplink.
I'll admit that it's very close to what I want, but it's just far enough to really get in the way when I have real work to do. On top of that, I'm not thrilled with the lack of support for it through T-Mobile. Too much of a geek toy, not enough of a techie's toolkit.
So, I ditch the eyepatch, get a slightly more modern pistol, and move the bandana from covering my head to just covering the lower half of my face.
Got it.
I'm not surprised, really. There aren't enough of us to make a difference.
Even so, here's what I want out of a PDA, and the Axim comes close, but not close enough.
1) Wifi support, including WPA, and ideally, some VPN software. I move between multiple wireless networks, some more secure than others. WEP and WPA support are a must.
2) Multitasking. I'm a Palm user, but I'd love to leave programs running in the background properly. (IM programs can do this, IRC and SSH programs cannot. There's a good reason for that, however.)
3) 80x24 terminal emulation. I don't really care about the resolution, as long as I can read a full terminal's worth of information.
4) An input system that allows, minimally, Control and Escape in addition to keyboard input.
5) Enough battery power to get me through the day, and possibly halfway into the next day. I'm okay with charging my battery daily, as long as I can get to the end of the day in the first place.
6) Applications! SSH is key here. An X server wouldn't be bad either, as I sometimes need to manage some LDAP directories, and I'm a little faster flipping through a handful of nodes in a GUI. Toss in a *good* pressure-sensitive touchscreen, a simple painting app, a good diagramming tool, and a decent notepad, and some kind of handwriting recognition. Hell, make the system fast enough, and I won't even *care* about handwriting, so long as I can read what I write.
Ideally, what I want needs to function similarly to a paper memo pad, as well as a wireless SSH device, and a built in video camera would be nice. I can't imagine how I got by without a camera on hand at all times. It's great for grabbing data when I have no time to write it down. Voice memos are similarly important. Syncing via bluetooth would be nice, but not crucial. Persistent data access is a must, so add a flash backup system if needed.
Give me about 256 MB of space to work in, and I'll generally be fine. It's not for watching DVDs, it's not my MP3 jukebox, it's a tool. I use it to gain access to data, much of which won't be stored locally anyway. Just leave me space for my notes and thoughts, and everything else can get pulled from the WLAN as needed.
They're for water bottles??
I use them for my skates (removable trucks, so I just pop them off, strap them down, and walk into a store,) or for an umbrella. I rarely get caught in the rain these days, and it's never soaking the inside of my bag.
As for the belts, you haven't really overloaded the bag yet. Once the weight gets excessive, the chest and waist belts will make a huge difference. Especially if you're on skates or a bike.
The checked pattern isn't the most attractive, but I think it's reflective, which is a good thing.
The bag's not really designed for geeks carrying a complete load of network gear, laptop, and so on. It's made for the cyclist with a laptop. You can carry all your crap in one bag, possibly include some water, and you won't get too tired. I moved onto the Sport Deluxe backpack from a sling pack, and I've never been happier.
1) Power management via catnip. Use just a little of the stuff, and you will bring your kitten into a low power suspend mode. Heat dissipation won't change much, though.
2) Compatibility. Kittens are initially incompatible with additional kittens, resulting in cowering, hissing, and the occasional scratch. This will normally go away, and lead to mutual cooperation, with two kittens working together being far more destructive than two kittens working individually.
I'd lock it down too, if I were Google. They've done all the work of getting these news clippings together, but they're not allowed to make any money off of it. While I doubt Mr. Bond (heh,) was looking to make any money from his work, Google's probably got some copyright issues to worry about, most of which can be quelled by keeping Google News restricted for now.
Don't be evil. That's good. Not getting sued by the news organizations is also good. A C&D doesn't involve getting money from anyone, aside from the lawyers charging for whatever billable time was involved.
In the end, Google's got to take a better safe than sorry approach to this system, or else we may all lose it.
I'm glad the FTC isn't sure that this is a good idea, because it isn't.
Once my taxpayer dollars start going towards regulating spam, then it's not a far stretch to move onto regulating the rest of the Internet.
Sure, spam is bad. It's background noise, undesired traffic, and so on. Throwing government funding at the problem isn't going to make it go away, though. Few things will, in fact, short of a series of concentrated DoS attacks on the spammers themselves, by doing everything just short of providing any real personal information. Clutter their databases with garbage. Sign up as Seymour Asses, 123 Fake St, New New York, NY. Ask for more information, and target it all at a spamcatching address.
Make them WORK to get any kind of useful data from their own systems, like we all have to work to find the good email in our inboxes.
Just don't try to regulate the Internet. There's too many loopholes, and you'd end up eliminating both the bad and the good.
The Alphas were workstations, not desktops.
(Then again, so is the Power Macintosh, but that doesn't stop a lot of people from buying them for home use anyway.)
I've always considered the biggest problem with PC hardware to be the utter *lack* of flexibility.
Sure, the GPU cannot replace the CPU, but it can assist a lot more than it currently does.
Why not just have a CPU that's dedicated to integer math, simple logic, and routing?
Pass off any tougher math to a dedicated FPU, including 3d work. Audio mixing? Hit the FPU, or perhaps another DSP.
Segment the RAM into General Purpose and high-bandwidth, much like we're doing with video cards as it is.
GPUs can't work for all computing problems, but they can probably work for a lot more than they're currently doing. Of course, that would require a massive redesign of PC architecture, as well as the software to support it.
A man can dream, though.
I think it has to do with lower atmospheric pressure, and low speeds due to gravity.
Opening a parachute from too high up will result in it failing to open properly, as I recall, since there's no air to "fill" it. However, add an inflatable framework, and the parachute will properly open, even in a vacuum.
I'd imagine it's less like a parachute, and more like a giant umbrella, so that you come down Mary Poppins-style.
Every time I've flown, we're allowed to use our cell phones as soon as the plane has landed.
From landing to actually exiting the plane is another 10-20 minutes. Add another 10-20 on top of that for collecting a bag if you've checked in.
That is, of course, for any major airport. If you're just hopping off the plane from the tarmac, it's a little bit faster, but still not by much.
A forty minute wait in the few cases where you can't plan ahead is minor compared to the babbling idiocy of some jackass who feels a need to holler into his headset. You're probably not that kind of person, I'll grant, but that kind of person is everywhere. It's bad enough on a bus ride. I'd rather not have to deal with it when I'm flying from coast to coast, or outside of the US.
Seriously, you don't know stupidity until you see some self-absorbed prick crammed into a seat bitching loudly into his cell phone. Moments like that make me glad to have noise-reducing headphones.
I've been kayaking. I leave the PDA behind.
If I did want to bring it, I'd probably have it sealed in two zip-lock bags, in a waterproof compartment in my pack.
Really, the only time the PDA has any use is when I'm no longer paddling, and that doesn't happen until I'm on dry land.
Just modify the Treo 600 with the following:
- A removable battery.
- An internal 2.4 GHz antenna
- Bluetooth module
- 802.11b/g module (unlikely to ever happen)
- WPA support
- a 480x640 screen, with a Zaurus-like stretch feaure for the keyboard
- Long range IR
- A better camera. Increase the resolution if you want, but please, boost the light sensitivity. It sucks for indoors shots.
- More memory. Much more memory. Like... 128MB total?
- A jog dial
- Voice/video capture built in
- Keep the SD slot. I like it.
- The fastest ARM chip they can cram into a Palm OS5/6 device
- Hotsync/charge via Mini-USB port.
And it should collapse to be no larger than my Treo 600. While I can't use the keyboard in this theoretical mode, at least I'm not carrying a surfboard in my pocket. Usable enough, but with enough versatility to work as a real personal computing device no matter where I am.
867 Aluminum 12".
:)
I know *why* it's not there, but back in the old days, you'd have ports on the back of a system, so it didn't matter which hand you used for a pointing device.
This was all especially funny when the newer iBooks came out. We bought one, and it came with the Apple Optical mouse, complete with 12-inch cable. And the USB port on the left.
Now *that* sucked for righties.
Well, it's sorta useful.
See, Apple makes nice hardware.
Then they screw up and put the USB ports on the left side of the Powerbook, while I'm right-handed, and like having an external mouse.
Not one to want an extra cord snaked all the way around the back ot my laptop, I took advantage of the built-in Bluetooth module and got a Bluetooth mouse.
If pointing and clicking comfortably without dealing with an external wireless transceiver is useful, then I've got your argument.
At the very least, it's kinda cool.
A good nail file can file down more than just nails. You can file off a burr from just about anything, smooth down a jagged edge, and so on.
It's more useful when dealing with a system thrown together by some jackass who used bargain basement parts and didn't pay attention to things like accessibility and future repair needs.
Not quite, but we're close, at any rate.
There's a huge difference between cramming a G5 system into a 2 inch 25-pound box, and doing the same in less than an inch of space, with a 4-8 pound maximum weight.
With the Powerbook, we'll need to cram all of that in, leaving room for a large Li-Ion/Li-Polymer battery, cooling hardware, and there will be similar performance tradeoffs (3x vs 2x clock multipliers, etc.)
That said, I'm going to have to start saving up for a 2nd gen G5 Powerbook now, since this is at least a good first step in that direction.
I'm lazy. And I carry too much crap as it is.
A 120gig HDD and USB 2.0 enclosure will generally need an external power supply. That's more bulk than an iPod.
I have a Mac. Lots of people do. Many Macs have slot-loading drives which will *die* when you try to use a business card CD.
I'll grant you that the iPod is not the best portable storage device, but it's a damned good music player that happens to pull double duty. Why bother carrying more crap than you need?
Wait, I think you just hit the nail on the head!
We don't buy music *or* license it. We *rent* it.
When you rent a car, you can't let a friend drive it. If you wreck the car, they don't give you a new one, you pay some amount, insurance covers the rest, and it's recorded that you're less safe than other drivers.
That's the RIAA model right there. When you pay for a CD, you're merely renting the media so that you can access the content. It's still their property, so you can't do whatever you want with it. You can't transfer ownership, since you don't own it.
I'd be fine with this in some aspect, if I were to rent the media, and get more than 2 songs worth of decent content. As it is, it's like renting a car that comes with 3 annoying passengers who crank up the A/C, tear up the seats, leave fast food containers all over the place, and then stiff me with the bill.