...this is the sort of response that makes me wish that moderation was not merely limited to discussions you haven't commented in.
+++
Re:Why does every story about US politics....
on
Debt Deal Reached
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· Score: 2
> Because the overwhelming majority of news reporters are Democrats,
Past a certain point, only the facts can speak to the heart of the matter. You can only do so much to skew the presentation of those facts if you do your job as a journalist.
Besides, it's not as if there are no dissenting opinions anyways.
Call "the biased liberal media" another element of the crackpot teabager mentality.
The vast majority of US views favor spending more. There's only real question is what to spend it on.
This sort of nonsense is why bleeding hearts and moral crusaders should not merely fixate on some junkie prostitute when they want to elevate a victim to special status.
...kind of depends on what you want to do with a tablet/phone and whether or not this will run afoul of Steve's vision and what the devout fanboys think you should be doing with a tablet.
More and more it becomes easier and easier to want things that the devout fanboys will call "geeky".
PCs are starting to become overkill for media devices. If your co-processors are good enough, you can get away with a lot less. You can have smaller devices and lower power consumption and less heat issues and remove parts that aren't really needed.
A GoogleTV box that is not closed would be a potentially very cool thing, like an AppleTV but with enough GPU muscle to handle the things that a PC can but an AppleTV or Roku can't. Just leave it in as an accessable "expert" option so that it's available but not scaring the appliance crowd.
> The problem with a low-profile PC is that their manufacturers haven't been promoting them to the public.
Nonsense.
You can find smaller machines at Best Buy and have been able to do so for a long while now.
You could even find Revos in Best Buy for awhile. Of course Best Buy doesn't want to sell you a $200 PC. They tried their best to hide it when they carried it. However, there are still plenty of machines out there besides "the monster tower from the 80s". Less lame stores will give you even better options.
If all you see are monster towers, you are simply not looking.
Just about every form of "non-streamed" video is not some obscure corner case. It's most of what's actually out there. It's the vast majority of what actual real people and non-geeks are using.
Any device that can't play content encoded in real industry standards is just making it harder on n00bs that will likely have problems with Handbrake or AirVideo regardless of how well you do at putting lipstick on that pig.
This is probably why real PCs still outpace "appliances" by a wide margin in this area.
A 1994 PC can handle this "retina display" nonsense. That doesn't mean that you actually would want to use it for anything. Being able to output at a certain resolution and being able to actually do anything with it are entirely orthogonal to each other.
I'd much rather have the "underlying horsepower" so content has to be "adapted" less or not at all.
There's one in particular who's name unfortunately escapes me at the moment that likes to throw around absurd (more like slanderous) accusations. Even inspired himself some similarly crafted domain names giving him a taste of his own medicine.
Not even all Fox troll baiters are as bad as him, nevermind the industry at large.
The "absurd cost" is pretty easy to explain if you don't have blinders on.
Devices that aren't terribly limited cost more. It's as simple as that.
Far too many people are willing to declare that cheap crap is a suitable alternative when it really isn't. It's certainly not a complete replacement. You are left with considerable compromises that any discriminating consumer should be able to recognize and acknowledge.
Your entire screed is Fanboy nonsense. You're like an ostrich with it's head stuck in a hole.
If your views reflect Apple management, they are trebly doomed.
Anyone in this space is going to be by definition "at war" with Apple since Apple is a single vendor integrated monopoly. There is just no "peaceful coexistence" with something like that. It's like trying to "just get along" with Microsoft.
The Revue may have bombed but the rest of the onslaught continues.
Many of us are happy for this being the sorts marginalized by Apple and it's devout followers.
> But "a basic function PC" comes in a much bigger case and lacks any sort of SDTV-compatible output
SDTV? This is 2011. What rock have you been hiding under?
TVs use different inputs and most PCs these days come with such inputs. Also even generic non-HTPCs come in smaller and quieter cases even without considering the use case of putting it next to your TV.
The problem with the Logitech Revue is that you could buy a low profile PC for about the same price.
> People who don't want a big, ugly, noisy tower in the living room.
Sounds like a classic Apple fanboy arguing against a 10 year old view of the competition.
> statistically nobody sets up an HTPC.
Actually according to Nielson, the lion's share of people that do "Internet streaming" of content do it from a PC. If you are talking about a device like a Revue or AppleTV or Roku, a PC is still the dominant option by far. Perhaps the whole idea in general is "too geeky".
The Apple TV wins based on price and that's about it. That's what this is really about.
This is why Netflix is doing so well. It is considered the cheap option and is often "bundled for free". That is why pretty much any new streamer device includes it.
"being cheap" is what really wins the market. Droning from Lemmings or Fanboys is really quite irrelevant.
AppleTV is simply full of fail when it comes to this sort of thing. It's the device that you have to adapt to rather than the other way around as it should be.
"support" is a highly artificial issue that depends on the product being broken to begin with before you really benefit from it. This includes faulty hardware, bugs, and missing features. An appliance should not ever need any "support". If you are ever engaging "support" then then vendor did something terribly wrong.
Also, being able to "root" the device isn't a terribly compelling argument. It's like "support". Its far better if you don't have to hack it to begin with. Either it's built with better features to begin with or more open to those features being added afterwards.
Ultimately all of these factors make neither option terribly compelling really.
Although the Android based product might have an edge with "things you already have".
It's a backup device. If you need "service" then it's already a failure. The fact that it can linger at the Genius Bar for 2 weeks for free is really not terribly useful.
If you are fixating on "warranty support" then you've already lost the argument when it comes to product quality.
Slashdot Mirror
A Mac-only company of 50K employees.
Must be an interesting world on the other side of that Einstein-Rosen bridge you managed to find there.
Send it to the local PC recycler.
We have one of those in rural Texas. Surely there are some in the same neck of the woods where Google operates.
...this is the sort of response that makes me wish that moderation was not merely limited to discussions you haven't commented in.
+++
> Because the overwhelming majority of news reporters are Democrats,
Past a certain point, only the facts can speak to the heart of the matter. You can only do so much to skew the presentation of those facts if you do your job as a journalist.
Besides, it's not as if there are no dissenting opinions anyways.
Call "the biased liberal media" another element of the crackpot teabager mentality.
The vast majority of US views favor spending more. There's only real question is what to spend it on.
This sort of nonsense is why bleeding hearts and moral crusaders should not merely fixate on some junkie prostitute when they want to elevate a victim to special status.
How is this any different than most exchanges that occur in a "free market"?
The rich and powerful always exploit the rest of us and take advantage of the fact that it's a buyer's market in labor.
...except in the real world it's the Yugo that doesn't fly apart into pieces.
Again with the clueless "BMW" remarks from the devout fanboys. I doubt if any of these jokers have ever been inside a BMW.
Some people are just brand fixated and will pay a lot of money for the right logo.
...kind of depends on what you want to do with a tablet/phone and whether or not this will run afoul of Steve's vision and what the devout fanboys think you should be doing with a tablet.
More and more it becomes easier and easier to want things that the devout fanboys will call "geeky".
PCs are starting to become overkill for media devices. If your co-processors are good enough, you can get away with a lot less. You can have smaller devices and lower power consumption and less heat issues and remove parts that aren't really needed.
A GoogleTV box that is not closed would be a potentially very cool thing, like an AppleTV but with enough GPU muscle to handle the things that a PC can but an AppleTV or Roku can't. Just leave it in as an accessable "expert" option so that it's available but not scaring the appliance crowd.
Ideally, there is NOTHING tying me to a single hardware vendor or platform.
When the next thing comes along, I can take advantage of it rather than being trapped by someone else's limited vision.
Open standards and free markets are handy that way.
You must be an Apple fanboy. You missed the point and misunderstood the key technical issue entirely.
Your attempt to make somehow turn this into a case of "being cheap" and the Apple product being some sort of luxury good is also misplaced.
> The problem with a low-profile PC is that their manufacturers haven't been promoting them to the public.
Nonsense.
You can find smaller machines at Best Buy and have been able to do so for a long while now.
You could even find Revos in Best Buy for awhile. Of course Best Buy doesn't want to sell you a $200 PC. They tried their best to hide it when they carried it. However, there are still plenty of machines out there besides "the monster tower from the 80s". Less lame stores will give you even better options.
If all you see are monster towers, you are simply not looking.
Except it doesn't "get the job done".
Just about every form of "non-streamed" video is not some obscure corner case. It's most of what's actually out there. It's the vast majority of what actual real people and non-geeks are using.
Any device that can't play content encoded in real industry standards is just making it harder on n00bs that will likely have problems with Handbrake or AirVideo regardless of how well you do at putting lipstick on that pig.
This is probably why real PCs still outpace "appliances" by a wide margin in this area.
A 1994 PC can handle this "retina display" nonsense. That doesn't mean that you actually would want to use it for anything. Being able to output at a certain resolution and being able to actually do anything with it are entirely orthogonal to each other.
I'd much rather have the "underlying horsepower" so content has to be "adapted" less or not at all.
There's one in particular who's name unfortunately escapes me at the moment that likes to throw around absurd (more like slanderous) accusations. Even inspired himself some similarly crafted domain names giving him a taste of his own medicine.
Not even all Fox troll baiters are as bad as him, nevermind the industry at large.
The "absurd cost" is pretty easy to explain if you don't have blinders on.
Devices that aren't terribly limited cost more. It's as simple as that.
Far too many people are willing to declare that cheap crap is a suitable alternative when it really isn't. It's certainly not a complete replacement. You are left with considerable compromises that any discriminating consumer should be able to recognize and acknowledge.
Your entire screed is Fanboy nonsense. You're like an ostrich with it's head stuck in a hole.
If your views reflect Apple management, they are trebly doomed.
Anyone in this space is going to be by definition "at war" with Apple since Apple is a single vendor integrated monopoly. There is just no "peaceful coexistence" with something like that. It's like trying to "just get along" with Microsoft.
The Revue may have bombed but the rest of the onslaught continues.
Many of us are happy for this being the sorts marginalized by Apple and it's devout followers.
> But "a basic function PC" comes in a much bigger case and lacks any sort of SDTV-compatible output
SDTV? This is 2011. What rock have you been hiding under?
TVs use different inputs and most PCs these days come with such inputs. Also even generic non-HTPCs come in smaller and quieter cases even without considering the use case of putting it next to your TV.
The problem with the Logitech Revue is that you could buy a low profile PC for about the same price.
> People who don't want a big, ugly, noisy tower in the living room.
Sounds like a classic Apple fanboy arguing against a 10 year old view of the competition.
> statistically nobody sets up an HTPC.
Actually according to Nielson, the lion's share of people that do "Internet streaming" of content do it from a PC. If you are talking about a device like a Revue or AppleTV or Roku, a PC is still the dominant option by far. Perhaps the whole idea in general is "too geeky".
The ATV2 has a limited ability to play back content. So do most other "appliances".
It doesn't matter how much you "hack" it. It's cheap crappy hardware.
The Apple TV wins based on price and that's about it. That's what this is really about.
This is why Netflix is doing so well. It is considered the cheap option and is often "bundled for free". That is why pretty much any new streamer device includes it.
"being cheap" is what really wins the market. Droning from Lemmings or Fanboys is really quite irrelevant.
"Stuff you have at home"? Are you kidding.
AppleTV is simply full of fail when it comes to this sort of thing. It's the device that you have to adapt to rather than the other way around as it should be.
"support" is a highly artificial issue that depends on the product being broken to begin with before you really benefit from it. This includes faulty hardware, bugs, and missing features. An appliance should not ever need any "support". If you are ever engaging "support" then then vendor did something terribly wrong.
Also, being able to "root" the device isn't a terribly compelling argument. It's like "support". Its far better if you don't have to hack it to begin with. Either it's built with better features to begin with or more open to those features being added afterwards.
Ultimately all of these factors make neither option terribly compelling really.
Although the Android based product might have an edge with "things you already have".
??? IOW, you are talking completely out your ass and engaging in lopsided assumptions like some Fox News "commentator".
It's a backup device. If you need "service" then it's already a failure. The fact that it can linger at the Genius Bar for 2 weeks for free is really not terribly useful.
If you are fixating on "warranty support" then you've already lost the argument when it comes to product quality.
That's the great thing about PCs: you aren't stuck with the one and only one option that Steve is willing to sell you.
You can throw out all of the extraneous nonsense that you don't want and will never use.
"Confidence" should be about more than just getting "warm fuzzy" from seeing the Apple logo.
Unless you've got a magic money making machine, time really is not money.