The web is quick 'n' dirty information, like indeed on/. It's where you see it first - or well at least well before the information arrives in book form. Traditional newspapers are in between. Way faster than books though lagging well behind web sites.
Books are great for reference of slowly-changing information, though web sites and e-books have their merit in that realm too. Books are certainly unbeaten when it comes to historical reference.
Nevertheless I believe books are here to stay for a long time to come. Libraries have their function for sure. If only to archive materials, and in that aspect I think it's only logical that they would expand to computer software, including games. It is a great way to sample material, and to broaden one's horizon.
Many countries have one library that has the task of obtaining and archiving at least one copy of anything that is published in print. It is a quite logical expansion to included other kinds of publications, such as music and software.
So basically the total energy is less but the energy of each of them is still enough to do damage, thus a shower means more particles that can actually do damage. Then also the original impact must have had quite some energy involved. All on a quantum scale of course.
As long as those showers are big enough, the energy of the individual particles will be less than the original particle.
Cosmic radiation may be ionising, even on the earth's surface, but I can imagine it is strong enough to actually cause nuclear fission or so to occur in the shielding. Thus no way to gain energy for this shower of particles, and while you may hav a few more ionising particles the energies of those are far less and they are spread out over a relative large surface, so I think even in such a case the chance of actual damage (i.e. disturbing the electronics) is still lessened by shielding.
Well, imagining being one of those consultants, I would make sure this project would never finish! Obviously the longer it takes the more you make off of it. This is a recipe for disaster - and internal sabotage.
Maybe you should look up the meaning of "copyright". Then maybe you even realise that this whole story has nothing to do with copyrights. And also that copyright doesn't end with giving you a copy of that data.
Yes now I see it. I didn't recognise that as a tab, I'm used to FF that puts tabs under the address bar. Which makes more sense to me but that I think is mostly a matter of taste/style.
Looks nice except for that huge grey bar on top: that's a waste of screen space. I'm now using Easy Peasy (Ubuntu Netbook Remix based) and that is doing something similar except putting the title bar of the window also in the top menu bar, saving those pixes for something useful. Very important on a small screen like the EEE701 has. I'm using it much more now than when I had the stock Linux on it.
The maximising is great on those small screens but on my normal desktop monitor I don't do this: I miss the easy drag-and-drop between windows...
Sounds like they filter all the crap out for you already, leaving only music by real musicians. You should be happy for that, less risk of making a mistake when buying music.
Interesting and funny at the same time. And after all the funny replies let me give you a serious one.
Botnets as we know them will never become anything like a neural network (let alone self-aware) simply because the nodes do not communicate with each other, but only receive commands from a central server. And all that inter-node communication is necessary for a neural network.
You're making the exact mistake TFA argues is holding back tablets in their current form.
The hardware doesn't really matter.
The software, specifically the user interface matters. A slate doesn't have a mouse: no more mouse-overs. A slate doesn't have a keyboard: a virtual will have to appear when necessary. It can be held in two ways (well maybe four, counting upside-down). The UI will have to follow, and can also make use of that.
Doesn't work. I'm married to one and that hasn't helped my Chinese much. We stick to talking English to each other (our common language, a foreign language for both of us). Living in Hong Kong however that helps. And I have taken classes, that also helped me a lot. So by now I can have a simple conversation in Chinese. Well that is as long as I don't venture out too far, Cantonese is spoken mostly in Guangdong province ("only" about 300 mln people), and I don't speak Mandarin. Mostly useless to me.
Oh and for those who are wondering why I learned Cantonese (it's said to be harder than Mandarin): no-one around me speaks Mandarin, it's a foreign language here. And 80% of my Chinese business associates speak Cantonese. It's interestingly also widely spoken in Singapore (where the Mandarin dialect is the official Chinese - Cantonese is spoken more) and basically all Chinese communities worldwide outside of China/Taiwan speak Cantonese.
For an outsider however who hopes to learn some Chinese for doing business in China in general, learning Mandarin is probably the more practical choice. It's the official dialect, and widely spoken. But if you come to Hong Kong better try your luck with English. It's spoken much better than Mandarin here.
Besides that every single town/village in China has their own dialect, often not mutually intelligible. Even in a small place like Hong Kong there are villages that speak Hakka. Unmistakably Chinese but totally unintelligible for Cantonese or Mandarin speakers.
And for learning to write, there is only one way: like the children here. Learn the characters one by one, memorise them by writing them down dozens of times, and repeating them. Reading follows automatically that way.
I have met plenty of artists that recorded their own 4-6 track album and sold it for something like EUR 5 at their concerts. That was their cost - and they had produced only maybe a couple thousand disks.
Recording a CD by some big label may cost 10 times as much, but when moving hundreds of times the number of disks that is still cheaper on a per-CD basis, and manufacturing cost is down due to bigger volumes.
In the volumes those big record companies are doing I don't believe they need double the price of an indie CD just for marketing and recording.
Or you could of course, you know, try to give some supporting figures for your reply. Something to make it believable that those huge margins are needed, and reasonable even.
When CDs and LPs were sold in parallel, the CD (with it's cheaper manufacturing) tended to cost more than the LP. I don't believe that marketing a CD costs more than marketing the LP that is sold at the same time.
20% for the shop: USD 2, shop pays distributor $8 each.
$0.50 each for distribution (let's be generous), USD 7.50 to the CD manufacturer.
$1.50 for manufacturing of the disk, case, booklet (I'm in a generous mood tonight), $6.00 left.
$0.09 for royalties: $5.91 gross profit for label? For recording costs? Marketing costs? Even liberally applying other costs on the CD process there is stil a lot of money unaccounted for.
Besides I wonder wtf some "copyright royalty board" has to do with setting rates. Isn't such a rate decided as a matter of negotiation between artist and publisher?
In Hong Kong a typical release CD of some local artist costs around USD 10 already. That's been since I moved here 7, 8 years ago. Older releases cost less. Import from US is typically USD 8-12 for a CD.
Now there are a few differences: the entertainment world lives on a smaller budget and the top artists are at a level that wouldn't even make it into American Idol. That says more about the cantopop than about American Idol.
Movies on DVD cost about USD 20 (new releases), older movies are sold at far cheaper prices. On VCD one can buy a movie for a few dollars.
The above prices are for the official media, not for the pirated ones. Those are far cheaper.
Still I think US$10 for a CD is overpriced. Pirated CD's are selling for well under USD 1 each. So that is a $9.something mark-up for what? Recording and artist's share?
Both pirated CD's and official CD's have to be manufactured and distributed. That incurs costs that are independent of the content. The only difference is the actual recording and the marketing. Even the shops selling pirated disks are in the same expensive locations as the official outlets, so even there is no difference: they both have to make the same profit to survive. Both shop's suppliers have to run their trucks and pay their drivers and workers and run their CD/DVD machines.
Official releases have better quality CD (technical: play guaranteed, last longer than a few years) and come in jewel case instead of paper sleeve. That may add $0.20-0.30 to manufacturing.
Even when selling at USD 2.50 each the label should be able to make a USD 1.00 gross profit on each. And at that price level it becomes vending machine material, and volume may skyrocket due to all those impulse buys. Sell a million disks, make a million in gross profit. If a million dollars is not enough to cover recording, marketing, and a fat profit, then you're doing something terribly wrong.
Publisher goes with other DRM scheme? SOrry works on 5% of the players in the marekt. The only way to sell significant volume of music you have to go through Apple or DRM-free. That gave Apple monopolistic power, and the labels had no choice but to go DRM-free to break that power. The R from Restrictions in DRM is not just for the end user but also for the publisher in this case, it restricts choice of retailers to one. And that's what killed DRM: it was the Restrictions from DRM itself.
Wrong. Totally wrong. We (as consumers) did not kill DRM in music. DRM did. The market leader in on-line music is iTunes, with their iTunes DRM and their iPods. To sell music with DRM the publishers had to go through Apple. And that gave Apple monopoly power over on-line music sales.
Publisher goes with other DRM scheme? Sorry works on In the games world I don't see this happening as the market is nicely split in three, and there are no third-party consoles to speak of like in the mp3-player market with one absolute market leader and thousands of other players fighting over the rest.
Maybe it's just me but I learnt my lesson regarding DRM (remember that R, it means Restrictions, because that's what it does) with the simplest of them all.
The humble DVD.
Remember some 10, 12 years ago, before DeCSS? Some DVD would play find under Linux, others not. Then DeCSS came, and suddenly those other DVDs would play fine.
Those stupid region codes sweetened it all up nicely.
Now that was my first experience with DRM. I suddenly found my self restricted in playing DVDs on my computer (running Linux, I didn't own a stand-alone DVD player at the time, no Windows) that I borrowed legally. Since then I avoid DRM unless I know it's so utterly and entirely cracked that it completely loses its function. The DVD is an example of that: region codes don't work, CSS is solved, there is no restriction left.
Unfortunately on my iBook I still sometimes run into it. I have PDF files that don't allow me to copy/paste some text out of it. Luckily my Linux box doesn't have that issue.
With all respect for content producers, who I believe deserve to be paid for their content, but not for anything involving DRM. Oh and I do prefer to download my anime... no need for an actual physical disk or so (too hard to find, have to go out to a shop, hoping they happen to have that one, etc)... but no way to make a small donation for a job well done. I mean is it that hard? I happily give double the $0.04 or so they make from every retail sale. Directly to the artist/studio.
Oh well I'm not a gamer, but DRM has my interest. I really feel sorry for you that you have been fucked by the content providers so badly. And I hope you will also now do your best to get your content as restriction-free as possible.
Currently I am doing most of my stuff on a five-year-old iBook. The lowest end at the time. Will last for another couple years.
Lucky you, my 700mhz G3 ibook died about 4 times before I decided to not spend any more money fixing it.
My iBook's keyboard broke a year ago when I was trying to clean it (most keys don't work any more, strange), using it long time already with external monitor, keyboard and mouse. I have an EEE 701 as portable now.
My home desktop on the other hand is a fully maxed out 4ghz quad core computer with 6gb of ram, 2TB of HD space, top end graphics card, 1000W PSU, etc. But that's because I do CAD/CAM/CAE work on my desktop and prefer as fast of a cpu as possible.
For that kind of applications I can imagine you need something like that! It's just not something that 99% of the population would ever do. I've studied chemical engineering and CAD/CAM is something I know exists, but not something I have ever done.
This also may explain why there are no truly cheap digital cameras.
The cheapest that I can find nowadays costs still at least about USD 100. They all do zoom, fancy tricks, lots and lots of megapixels, whatever.
Maybe I have only looked in the wrong shops but I can't seem to find cheap, simple point-and-shoot style digicams. For my business I often have to shoot photos, and would like to have a cheap cam that I can keep in my bag, that has decent quality, no need to zoom, cheap enough to not hurt my wallet when it breaks. 2-4 MP is enough. No zoom. I like an LCD but not necessary. Should take SD cards for easy transfer of images. That's all. Oh and a price tag of under say USD 50 would be nice.
On the other hand maybe I should get a new phone, modern phone cams can do this. It's just that such a phone is quite expensive still.
Currently I am doing most of my stuff on a five-year-old iBook. The lowest end at the time. Will last for another couple years.
Next to me a PC, Intel, some three years old, also pretty much lowest end at the time. I don't even know the specs much less truly care. It works, plays my videos, allows me to surf the net. Its hardware doesn't slow me down, it's fast enough.
Under my desk a 8-10 year old box, 650 MHz iirc, some 128 MB I guess, that was until a year ago the server in my office (mail, files, my web site, everything). Unfortunately it broke down, and I had to replace it.
I'm not a gamer, and I don't have HD video. My desk is too small for a monitor over 17". I am considering upgrading my 15" monitor but on the other hand it does the job.
700W for power supply that is more than my electric heater in this room. And in summer it's hot enough as it is already. How come we can't compute with less than 50W any more (not counting the monitor)? 2TB disk? well I'm not collecting movies or so. Integrated video does the job just fine, maybe not all the eye-candy and so, but to spend a lot just for more fancy window movements no thanks.
You maybe should re-read the list of what I'm actually doing with a computer. There is nothing you can not do easily on a computer from 8 years ago. OK firefox starts up a few seconds faster maybe, but that's not worth a month's income.
We're not living in the early 90s any more where there was a big difference. It matters if you have a 386DX33 or a 486DX2-66 from a few years later. It doesn't really matter if you have a 1 GHz single core or 3 GHz quad core. You're not typing any faster on it. Your movies don't play faster on it, both will happily play full HD. Web sites won't load faster (javascript may make a difference but that's mainly a software issue), your net connection is the bottleneck.
When buying a computer these days I go for the cheapest/slowest specced hardware which is way more than what I need (watch videos, troll/., e-mail, general browsing, some web/general programming, standard office work).
And actually what I'm waiting for to buy a new box is for the old one to die. 5 year old hardware is still fast enough for pretty much everything that I do.
The CPU speed problem is solved and done with for all but the most demanding applications (since well 8-10 years now).
GPU as well. A little later, when did we get integrated graphics again?
Memory problem is also solved. So cheap now.
The iPhone is already as powerful as a 10-year-old desktop. And it's not that I'm doing anything now that I couldn't do on my computer 10 years ago - at least not hardware wise.
OK so now the GPU is on the CPU die. The memory controller is there already, right? It should be a no-brainer to integrate small stuff like ethernet. Bluetooth/wifi may be a bit harder due to the necessary aerial. Now all that's left is to integrate the RAM on the die and we're there. A one-chip computer. No need for complex motherboards any more. At that moment the whole hardware issue is solved.
They tend to be specialised processors, designed specifically for graphics related tasks. Those tasks happen to be computationally very similar to other tasks such as protein folding. Though they will be poor performers or possibly totally incapable of certain tasks your CPU has to do.
That said I'm waiting for the first CPU to build in a GPU so we don't even need a separate graphics chip on our motherboards any more to for the already integrated graphics output.
It all depends on your point of view. One man's "password recovery" is another man's "password cracking". Just like the same person being a "freedom fighter" and "terrorist/insurgent" at the same time. It all depends on your point of view.
Slashdot Mirror
The web is quick 'n' dirty information, like indeed on /. It's where you see it first - or well at least well before the information arrives in book form. Traditional newspapers are in between. Way faster than books though lagging well behind web sites.
Books are great for reference of slowly-changing information, though web sites and e-books have their merit in that realm too. Books are certainly unbeaten when it comes to historical reference.
Nevertheless I believe books are here to stay for a long time to come. Libraries have their function for sure. If only to archive materials, and in that aspect I think it's only logical that they would expand to computer software, including games. It is a great way to sample material, and to broaden one's horizon.
Many countries have one library that has the task of obtaining and archiving at least one copy of anything that is published in print. It is a quite logical expansion to included other kinds of publications, such as music and software.
So basically the total energy is less but the energy of each of them is still enough to do damage, thus a shower means more particles that can actually do damage. Then also the original impact must have had quite some energy involved. All on a quantum scale of course.
As long as those showers are big enough, the energy of the individual particles will be less than the original particle.
Cosmic radiation may be ionising, even on the earth's surface, but I can imagine it is strong enough to actually cause nuclear fission or so to occur in the shielding. Thus no way to gain energy for this shower of particles, and while you may hav a few more ionising particles the energies of those are far less and they are spread out over a relative large surface, so I think even in such a case the chance of actual damage (i.e. disturbing the electronics) is still lessened by shielding.
Well, imagining being one of those consultants, I would make sure this project would never finish! Obviously the longer it takes the more you make off of it. This is a recipe for disaster - and internal sabotage.
Maybe you should look up the meaning of "copyright". Then maybe you even realise that this whole story has nothing to do with copyrights. And also that copyright doesn't end with giving you a copy of that data.
Yes now I see it. I didn't recognise that as a tab, I'm used to FF that puts tabs under the address bar. Which makes more sense to me but that I think is mostly a matter of taste/style.
Looks nice except for that huge grey bar on top: that's a waste of screen space. I'm now using Easy Peasy (Ubuntu Netbook Remix based) and that is doing something similar except putting the title bar of the window also in the top menu bar, saving those pixes for something useful. Very important on a small screen like the EEE701 has. I'm using it much more now than when I had the stock Linux on it.
The maximising is great on those small screens but on my normal desktop monitor I don't do this: I miss the easy drag-and-drop between windows...
Sounds like they filter all the crap out for you already, leaving only music by real musicians. You should be happy for that, less risk of making a mistake when buying music.
Interesting and funny at the same time. And after all the funny replies let me give you a serious one.
Botnets as we know them will never become anything like a neural network (let alone self-aware) simply because the nodes do not communicate with each other, but only receive commands from a central server. And all that inter-node communication is necessary for a neural network.
You're making the exact mistake TFA argues is holding back tablets in their current form.
The hardware doesn't really matter.
The software, specifically the user interface matters. A slate doesn't have a mouse: no more mouse-overs. A slate doesn't have a keyboard: a virtual will have to appear when necessary. It can be held in two ways (well maybe four, counting upside-down). The UI will have to follow, and can also make use of that.
Doesn't work. I'm married to one and that hasn't helped my Chinese much. We stick to talking English to each other (our common language, a foreign language for both of us). Living in Hong Kong however that helps. And I have taken classes, that also helped me a lot. So by now I can have a simple conversation in Chinese. Well that is as long as I don't venture out too far, Cantonese is spoken mostly in Guangdong province ("only" about 300 mln people), and I don't speak Mandarin. Mostly useless to me.
Oh and for those who are wondering why I learned Cantonese (it's said to be harder than Mandarin): no-one around me speaks Mandarin, it's a foreign language here. And 80% of my Chinese business associates speak Cantonese. It's interestingly also widely spoken in Singapore (where the Mandarin dialect is the official Chinese - Cantonese is spoken more) and basically all Chinese communities worldwide outside of China/Taiwan speak Cantonese.
For an outsider however who hopes to learn some Chinese for doing business in China in general, learning Mandarin is probably the more practical choice. It's the official dialect, and widely spoken. But if you come to Hong Kong better try your luck with English. It's spoken much better than Mandarin here.
Besides that every single town/village in China has their own dialect, often not mutually intelligible. Even in a small place like Hong Kong there are villages that speak Hakka. Unmistakably Chinese but totally unintelligible for Cantonese or Mandarin speakers.
And for learning to write, there is only one way: like the children here. Learn the characters one by one, memorise them by writing them down dozens of times, and repeating them. Reading follows automatically that way.
I have met plenty of artists that recorded their own 4-6 track album and sold it for something like EUR 5 at their concerts. That was their cost - and they had produced only maybe a couple thousand disks.
Recording a CD by some big label may cost 10 times as much, but when moving hundreds of times the number of disks that is still cheaper on a per-CD basis, and manufacturing cost is down due to bigger volumes.
In the volumes those big record companies are doing I don't believe they need double the price of an indie CD just for marketing and recording.
Or you could of course, you know, try to give some supporting figures for your reply. Something to make it believable that those huge margins are needed, and reasonable even.
When CDs and LPs were sold in parallel, the CD (with it's cheaper manufacturing) tended to cost more than the LP. I don't believe that marketing a CD costs more than marketing the LP that is sold at the same time.
Then where does the rest of the money go?
USD 10 retail price
20% for the shop: USD 2, shop pays distributor $8 each.
$0.50 each for distribution (let's be generous), USD 7.50 to the CD manufacturer.
$1.50 for manufacturing of the disk, case, booklet (I'm in a generous mood tonight), $6.00 left.
$0.09 for royalties: $5.91 gross profit for label? For recording costs? Marketing costs? Even liberally applying other costs on the CD process there is stil a lot of money unaccounted for.
Besides I wonder wtf some "copyright royalty board" has to do with setting rates. Isn't such a rate decided as a matter of negotiation between artist and publisher?
In Hong Kong a typical release CD of some local artist costs around USD 10 already. That's been since I moved here 7, 8 years ago. Older releases cost less. Import from US is typically USD 8-12 for a CD.
Now there are a few differences: the entertainment world lives on a smaller budget and the top artists are at a level that wouldn't even make it into American Idol. That says more about the cantopop than about American Idol.
Movies on DVD cost about USD 20 (new releases), older movies are sold at far cheaper prices. On VCD one can buy a movie for a few dollars.
The above prices are for the official media, not for the pirated ones. Those are far cheaper.
Still I think US$10 for a CD is overpriced. Pirated CD's are selling for well under USD 1 each. So that is a $9.something mark-up for what? Recording and artist's share?
Both pirated CD's and official CD's have to be manufactured and distributed. That incurs costs that are independent of the content. The only difference is the actual recording and the marketing. Even the shops selling pirated disks are in the same expensive locations as the official outlets, so even there is no difference: they both have to make the same profit to survive. Both shop's suppliers have to run their trucks and pay their drivers and workers and run their CD/DVD machines.
Official releases have better quality CD (technical: play guaranteed, last longer than a few years) and come in jewel case instead of paper sleeve. That may add $0.20-0.30 to manufacturing. Even when selling at USD 2.50 each the label should be able to make a USD 1.00 gross profit on each. And at that price level it becomes vending machine material, and volume may skyrocket due to all those impulse buys. Sell a million disks, make a million in gross profit. If a million dollars is not enough to cover recording, marketing, and a fat profit, then you're doing something terribly wrong.
Something got lost.
I was trying to say as second paragraph:
Publisher goes with other DRM scheme? SOrry works on 5% of the players in the marekt. The only way to sell significant volume of music you have to go through Apple or DRM-free. That gave Apple monopolistic power, and the labels had no choice but to go DRM-free to break that power. The R from Restrictions in DRM is not just for the end user but also for the publisher in this case, it restricts choice of retailers to one. And that's what killed DRM: it was the Restrictions from DRM itself.
Remember, we killed DRM in music.
Wrong. Totally wrong. We (as consumers) did not kill DRM in music. DRM did. The market leader in on-line music is iTunes, with their iTunes DRM and their iPods. To sell music with DRM the publishers had to go through Apple. And that gave Apple monopoly power over on-line music sales.
Publisher goes with other DRM scheme? Sorry works on In the games world I don't see this happening as the market is nicely split in three, and there are no third-party consoles to speak of like in the mp3-player market with one absolute market leader and thousands of other players fighting over the rest.
A business will only add DRM to their release if they believe it increases their profit.
As soon as "the market" can prove that adding DRM reduces their profit, it will go away.
Maybe it's just me but I learnt my lesson regarding DRM (remember that R, it means Restrictions, because that's what it does) with the simplest of them all.
The humble DVD.
Remember some 10, 12 years ago, before DeCSS? Some DVD would play find under Linux, others not. Then DeCSS came, and suddenly those other DVDs would play fine.
Those stupid region codes sweetened it all up nicely.
Now that was my first experience with DRM. I suddenly found my self restricted in playing DVDs on my computer (running Linux, I didn't own a stand-alone DVD player at the time, no Windows) that I borrowed legally. Since then I avoid DRM unless I know it's so utterly and entirely cracked that it completely loses its function. The DVD is an example of that: region codes don't work, CSS is solved, there is no restriction left.
Unfortunately on my iBook I still sometimes run into it. I have PDF files that don't allow me to copy/paste some text out of it. Luckily my Linux box doesn't have that issue.
With all respect for content producers, who I believe deserve to be paid for their content, but not for anything involving DRM. Oh and I do prefer to download my anime... no need for an actual physical disk or so (too hard to find, have to go out to a shop, hoping they happen to have that one, etc)... but no way to make a small donation for a job well done. I mean is it that hard? I happily give double the $0.04 or so they make from every retail sale. Directly to the artist/studio.
Oh well I'm not a gamer, but DRM has my interest. I really feel sorry for you that you have been fucked by the content providers so badly. And I hope you will also now do your best to get your content as restriction-free as possible.
Lucky you, my 700mhz G3 ibook died about 4 times before I decided to not spend any more money fixing it.
My iBook's keyboard broke a year ago when I was trying to clean it (most keys don't work any more, strange), using it long time already with external monitor, keyboard and mouse. I have an EEE 701 as portable now.
My home desktop on the other hand is a fully maxed out 4ghz quad core computer with 6gb of ram, 2TB of HD space, top end graphics card, 1000W PSU, etc. But that's because I do CAD/CAM/CAE work on my desktop and prefer as fast of a cpu as possible.
For that kind of applications I can imagine you need something like that! It's just not something that 99% of the population would ever do. I've studied chemical engineering and CAD/CAM is something I know exists, but not something I have ever done.
I have seen exactly that demo'ed in an ad on TV not so long ago. I forgot which brand has it, but it exists.
This also may explain why there are no truly cheap digital cameras.
The cheapest that I can find nowadays costs still at least about USD 100. They all do zoom, fancy tricks, lots and lots of megapixels, whatever.
Maybe I have only looked in the wrong shops but I can't seem to find cheap, simple point-and-shoot style digicams. For my business I often have to shoot photos, and would like to have a cheap cam that I can keep in my bag, that has decent quality, no need to zoom, cheap enough to not hurt my wallet when it breaks. 2-4 MP is enough. No zoom. I like an LCD but not necessary. Should take SD cards for easy transfer of images. That's all. Oh and a price tag of under say USD 50 would be nice.
On the other hand maybe I should get a new phone, modern phone cams can do this. It's just that such a phone is quite expensive still.
I think you're mixing up wants and needs.
Currently I am doing most of my stuff on a five-year-old iBook. The lowest end at the time. Will last for another couple years.
Next to me a PC, Intel, some three years old, also pretty much lowest end at the time. I don't even know the specs much less truly care. It works, plays my videos, allows me to surf the net. Its hardware doesn't slow me down, it's fast enough.
Under my desk a 8-10 year old box, 650 MHz iirc, some 128 MB I guess, that was until a year ago the server in my office (mail, files, my web site, everything). Unfortunately it broke down, and I had to replace it.
I'm not a gamer, and I don't have HD video. My desk is too small for a monitor over 17". I am considering upgrading my 15" monitor but on the other hand it does the job.
700W for power supply that is more than my electric heater in this room. And in summer it's hot enough as it is already. How come we can't compute with less than 50W any more (not counting the monitor)? 2TB disk? well I'm not collecting movies or so. Integrated video does the job just fine, maybe not all the eye-candy and so, but to spend a lot just for more fancy window movements no thanks.
You maybe should re-read the list of what I'm actually doing with a computer. There is nothing you can not do easily on a computer from 8 years ago. OK firefox starts up a few seconds faster maybe, but that's not worth a month's income.
We're not living in the early 90s any more where there was a big difference. It matters if you have a 386DX33 or a 486DX2-66 from a few years later. It doesn't really matter if you have a 1 GHz single core or 3 GHz quad core. You're not typing any faster on it. Your movies don't play faster on it, both will happily play full HD. Web sites won't load faster (javascript may make a difference but that's mainly a software issue), your net connection is the bottleneck.
You see how well I follow current hardware :)
When buying a computer these days I go for the cheapest/slowest specced hardware which is way more than what I need (watch videos, troll /., e-mail, general browsing, some web/general programming, standard office work).
And actually what I'm waiting for to buy a new box is for the old one to die. 5 year old hardware is still fast enough for pretty much everything that I do.
The CPU speed problem is solved and done with for all but the most demanding applications (since well 8-10 years now).
GPU as well. A little later, when did we get integrated graphics again?
Memory problem is also solved. So cheap now.
The iPhone is already as powerful as a 10-year-old desktop. And it's not that I'm doing anything now that I couldn't do on my computer 10 years ago - at least not hardware wise.
OK so now the GPU is on the CPU die. The memory controller is there already, right? It should be a no-brainer to integrate small stuff like ethernet. Bluetooth/wifi may be a bit harder due to the necessary aerial. Now all that's left is to integrate the RAM on the die and we're there. A one-chip computer. No need for complex motherboards any more. At that moment the whole hardware issue is solved.
They tend to be specialised processors, designed specifically for graphics related tasks. Those tasks happen to be computationally very similar to other tasks such as protein folding. Though they will be poor performers or possibly totally incapable of certain tasks your CPU has to do.
That said I'm waiting for the first CPU to build in a GPU so we don't even need a separate graphics chip on our motherboards any more to for the already integrated graphics output.
It all depends on your point of view.
One man's "password recovery" is another man's "password cracking".
Just like the same person being a "freedom fighter" and "terrorist/insurgent" at the same time.
It all depends on your point of view.