Was I surprised to see that nowhere in the United States made the list? More like I expected no place in the United States to make the list. Granted, I will say places like Seattle, Cleveland, and San Francisco are likely the cutting edge of tech-savvy cities in the US, but nothing like the cities mentioned on the list. Here under the good old red, white, and screwed we must constantly hear bickering people who don't want to technically evolve with the rest of the world, and it shows. I live in a community about 40 miles west of St. Louis, and due to the way the certain agreements and infrastructure is laid out, people on the north side of Interstate 70 can have digital cable, broadband cable/DSL up to 10Mbps, IP telephone service...basically all the top-end services. If you live on the south side of Interstate 70, you'd be lucky if you could even get DSL service.
Issues like this are one of many as to why the United States doesn't evolve with the rest of the world. Our cars don't have emission/economy standards like the rest of the world, we will be one of the last developed countries to officially adopt digital televisions (Bush delayed until 2009 I believe), and for many people, broadband internet access is a thing of dreams. Our super-billion dollar cellular providers still can't even promise they'll have service where you live or work (advertising that you have the fewest dropped calls is still a negative point).
The real trouble is, we're almost headed right back to the stone age again - AT&T has almost risen again to become Ma Bell, and this time she'll even be more of a pain because she now controls a large portion of the cellular market. I know for the next 25 years it will be a lot of beating my head into a brick wall. But it's what I've come to expect from the only remaining superpower.
There are a ton of replies to this matter, so I apologize if I'm retreading tires here:
After reading several comments, which I must say many of them make extremely good points backed up by facts (collective intelligence is really quite amazing) I did come up with a few ideas that I wanted to talk about...First off, I had to think about why Gonzalez would say something like that? I know many of you feel it's just another awful augmentation (sorry Condi, had to use your word) of this current administration, and that's probably true, but something had to give him cause to even come up with this. I don't just throw down some heavy bs unless I've got motivation to do so, so here's why I think we have to joy of getting to debate over this: You might remember some time ago last year that there was quite a bit of squabbling over whether or not suspected terrorists would be able to view/hear the evidence laid against them by the United States because it might contain "sensitive data pertinent to national security" which at the time some people did share with me that it really meant "we don't really have anything on you, but are suspect enough to be guilty". And maybe now that theory was right and that's what Gonzalez is trying to do. We have all these people locked up or detained or being monitored because there is suspicion that they are linked to terrorism, and it feels like a policy that wants to assign guilt by association. There's no quantifiable proof, or at least nothing that a half-decent lawyer couldn't dispute, so of course Gonzalez would say that not everyone is promised proper proceedings.
The second part of this issue, where I feel Gonzalez has totally gone wrong, and even where the "conservative-leaning" (as some say) Supreme Court has even documented, as this does not apply to US Citizens. Not now, not ever. The Supreme Court ruled on this in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004) in which any accused US citizen will not be denied the writ of habeas corpus even if declared an "enemy combatant" as defined by the November 13, 2001 Presidential Military Order. I do feel that our nation does need to be protected from threats domestic and abroad, and I would even support the use of some tactics that some might feel would compromise our freedoms, but as with anything like that, you can always execute within reason. One thing I love about Washington, they love to talk in black and white and then they whine in the gray area. It is truly the crux of modern democracy.
I believe in competition being good, but I'm not sure it's all about just competition. This likely could be the move to save PC Gaming as a whole. Technology-wise PC's will always have superiority over consoles, but there are rare arguments to the economics of top-end gaming PC's against consoles. Microsoft and Sony take huge losses to push their hardware, and slowly but surely it does pay off - Gears of War on the Xbox 360 has sold 3 million copies in just a hair over 60 days. Name one PC title that is using every bleeding-edge technology and has sold that many copies that fast. You won't find it, because the segment of people who will pay between $2500 and $5000 for a PC to play those kinds of games (Crysis, Oblivion) is so small you can't hope to sell that many copies.
Intel knows how to make computer chips quickly, and on the cheap. That is what I feel they are bringing to this contest. I think Intel believes they can make a graphics platform just as powerful or more powerful than Nvidia/ATI and can do it for less cost. That is how you generate competition not just in the graphics sector, but you make PC's more competitive against the consoles. The PC has endless amounts of good games to sell, the problem is there aren't cheap PCs that will play them with the slickness that consoles provide. Ultimately this move should make the top-end PC cheaper, which is good for everyone because the inherent competition will force Nvidia/ATI to lower prices.
I like this move. Go Intel!
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Was I surprised to see that nowhere in the United States made the list? More like I expected no place in the United States to make the list. Granted, I will say places like Seattle, Cleveland, and San Francisco are likely the cutting edge of tech-savvy cities in the US, but nothing like the cities mentioned on the list. Here under the good old red, white, and screwed we must constantly hear bickering people who don't want to technically evolve with the rest of the world, and it shows. I live in a community about 40 miles west of St. Louis, and due to the way the certain agreements and infrastructure is laid out, people on the north side of Interstate 70 can have digital cable, broadband cable/DSL up to 10Mbps, IP telephone service...basically all the top-end services. If you live on the south side of Interstate 70, you'd be lucky if you could even get DSL service. Issues like this are one of many as to why the United States doesn't evolve with the rest of the world. Our cars don't have emission/economy standards like the rest of the world, we will be one of the last developed countries to officially adopt digital televisions (Bush delayed until 2009 I believe), and for many people, broadband internet access is a thing of dreams. Our super-billion dollar cellular providers still can't even promise they'll have service where you live or work (advertising that you have the fewest dropped calls is still a negative point). The real trouble is, we're almost headed right back to the stone age again - AT&T has almost risen again to become Ma Bell, and this time she'll even be more of a pain because she now controls a large portion of the cellular market. I know for the next 25 years it will be a lot of beating my head into a brick wall. But it's what I've come to expect from the only remaining superpower.
There are a ton of replies to this matter, so I apologize if I'm retreading tires here: After reading several comments, which I must say many of them make extremely good points backed up by facts (collective intelligence is really quite amazing) I did come up with a few ideas that I wanted to talk about...First off, I had to think about why Gonzalez would say something like that? I know many of you feel it's just another awful augmentation (sorry Condi, had to use your word) of this current administration, and that's probably true, but something had to give him cause to even come up with this. I don't just throw down some heavy bs unless I've got motivation to do so, so here's why I think we have to joy of getting to debate over this: You might remember some time ago last year that there was quite a bit of squabbling over whether or not suspected terrorists would be able to view/hear the evidence laid against them by the United States because it might contain "sensitive data pertinent to national security" which at the time some people did share with me that it really meant "we don't really have anything on you, but are suspect enough to be guilty". And maybe now that theory was right and that's what Gonzalez is trying to do. We have all these people locked up or detained or being monitored because there is suspicion that they are linked to terrorism, and it feels like a policy that wants to assign guilt by association. There's no quantifiable proof, or at least nothing that a half-decent lawyer couldn't dispute, so of course Gonzalez would say that not everyone is promised proper proceedings. The second part of this issue, where I feel Gonzalez has totally gone wrong, and even where the "conservative-leaning" (as some say) Supreme Court has even documented, as this does not apply to US Citizens. Not now, not ever. The Supreme Court ruled on this in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004) in which any accused US citizen will not be denied the writ of habeas corpus even if declared an "enemy combatant" as defined by the November 13, 2001 Presidential Military Order. I do feel that our nation does need to be protected from threats domestic and abroad, and I would even support the use of some tactics that some might feel would compromise our freedoms, but as with anything like that, you can always execute within reason. One thing I love about Washington, they love to talk in black and white and then they whine in the gray area. It is truly the crux of modern democracy.
I believe in competition being good, but I'm not sure it's all about just competition. This likely could be the move to save PC Gaming as a whole. Technology-wise PC's will always have superiority over consoles, but there are rare arguments to the economics of top-end gaming PC's against consoles. Microsoft and Sony take huge losses to push their hardware, and slowly but surely it does pay off - Gears of War on the Xbox 360 has sold 3 million copies in just a hair over 60 days. Name one PC title that is using every bleeding-edge technology and has sold that many copies that fast. You won't find it, because the segment of people who will pay between $2500 and $5000 for a PC to play those kinds of games (Crysis, Oblivion) is so small you can't hope to sell that many copies. Intel knows how to make computer chips quickly, and on the cheap. That is what I feel they are bringing to this contest. I think Intel believes they can make a graphics platform just as powerful or more powerful than Nvidia/ATI and can do it for less cost. That is how you generate competition not just in the graphics sector, but you make PC's more competitive against the consoles. The PC has endless amounts of good games to sell, the problem is there aren't cheap PCs that will play them with the slickness that consoles provide. Ultimately this move should make the top-end PC cheaper, which is good for everyone because the inherent competition will force Nvidia/ATI to lower prices. I like this move. Go Intel!