1- you can swap PCs, you can't swap the cloud. I always keep an old PC in a closet for such emergencies. 2- You can do backups - and should. We've learned you can't trust the cloud to do backups. 3- I'll concede 3, for the general public, adn because OS maker do such an horrible job of making their OSes secure for the general public. I personally never got hacked, maybe because I'm behind a firewall, don't have admin rights as a matter of course, and don't download and run just anything. The only virus I ever got was when trying to ressuscitate a friend's HD. Actually, got caught twice with that one.
I think the reasoning is the same as with the iPhone... and definitely does NOT apply to the slashdot crowd: think of your parents, siblings, non-geed friends...
The General Public is willing to sacrifice a lot of flexibility and confidentiality for - ease of use - ease of maintenance - money - coolness
This may seem anathema to us geeks... but when I get the monthly "my PC's not working" from my dad (ie: a video driver update messed the screen resolution and the icons are no longer in their usual place ^^), I understand how the concept can work in the marketplace. Confidentiality is a very vague concept, as long as no one gets their credit card number; Flexibility is of no import if they can do even only 50% of what they want to do... right now they can do only 30% because computers are so hard... and they're not even aware of the 10% they're missing. My dad has an nice digital camera, but still hasn't ventured into posting pics online...
So I think Chrome OS will be a success. Mainly through MS and Linux fault: even with Apple hammering the point home again and again and again, they never focused on catering to our moms and dads and nieces and nephews.
1- we can't trust the cloud for availability: gmail outages.... 2- we can't trust the cloud to not lose our data (sidekick fiasco) 3- we can't trust the cloud with our confidentiality (all those SSID heists and others)
Mmmm, I meant their dealer of debt, China, is so dependent on the US debt they hold, that they have no choice but to keep supplying the US with credit. A case of the user being dependent on the dealer, but the dealer dependent on the user, too. Mutually assured ruin, a re-run of the 60's mutually-assured destruction.
IMHO, anything benefits from 2 screens. One for the "focus" stuff (internet, word...), one for the "always there" stuff (IM, media, social net...). I'm not a coder and I can barely live with only one screen:-p
1- the Atom really is much, much MUCH less powerful than any other CPU currently on the market, bar VIA's. 2- you're not paying for CPU power, you're paying for screens and design. Not only in money, but in battery life too.
That. Plus "intellectual property" is a very vague concept:
- aren't we here at slashdot opposed to some/most copyrights/patents... - the US congressmen keep expanding IP scope + duration to please their paymasters Disney and co. Should the rest of the world automatically accept that and follow suit ? - didn't the US gladly turn a blind eye to infringers when it was to their benefit ?
The iPhone is the quintessential example of a product in which marketing, design and form are chosen over function. (not that it's a bad product, but it's by far not the most feature-rich nor the best hardware)... so of course in that specific case most of the value-added is American.
Most products do not work this way. And the ones that do are not that big, either. It would have been interesting to see a study of all phones, not just the relatively marginal iPhone, or things other than phones, ie toys, electronics, white goods...
While he's at it, why didn't the author do that study on Windows or MacOS, which I'm sure are manufactured for $2 in China, and sell for $80-$250 ?
Design, advertising, and goodwill are much more fungible than manufacturing capacity and know-how. A handful of counter-examples when those 3 items are maximized cannot be generalized, nor extrapolated over time. Who took over IBM's PCs again ? Are you that sure that, in the long run, the companies that actually manufacture all those things will not be best placed to design - market - sell them ? Give it time. A few years ago, it was electronics, then computers... phones and media-players will follow, and given the sad state of western OSes, software, and services, there's a huge market waiting to be taken over.
As I understand it, though the x86 instruction set is the standard, there are
1- optional elements to it: MMX, SSE1/2/3/4... I assume one-size-fits-all code either shuns these subsets, or branches. Both cases diminish performance.
2- Various underlying micro-architectures. So code compiled specifically for one will perform better than a generic compile: cache sizes/alignment, register count/swap...
There ARE rewards without risks (trying hugging your mom/kid), and risks without rewards (try playing russian roulette). So the whole "there a no rewards without risks" is just a bland, stupid statement.
Nuclear power did a lot of damage in Tchnernobyl because greens did not instill enough fear in it, there.
It's a balance thingy. I wouldn't trust my balance to you.
The French PC games magazine Joystick, apart from fairly objectives reviews, has a kinda effective and clear system. Apart from the regular notations (0-5 stars "a blank CD is marginally more fun"... to "for genre fans only"... "Good Game !"), and they do use the whole gamut of grades, they add - a Megastar status which means that the game pretty much is a must-have. They give out a handful of those annually - side warnings if the translation sucks, or if the game requires a very powerful config to run, or if there are too many bugs - a recurring global editor's choice list, plus individual favs of reviewers.
In the end, I find them very useful. Too bad I don't have much time to play anymore, and they pulled their website because they couldn't find a way to make it at least break even.
Also, Europe is a lot more about walking around than the US are. I live in Paris, which is kinda similar to London generally speaking. I always get puzzled looks when I try to tell tourists to WALK somewhere and show them a nice route to do it.
Subway-hoping from tourist spot to tourist spot is less fun.
Computer-wise, do whatever you would do if going to any city, even within the US. If you will you'll use your PC a lot (what a pity, you're on holiday !) take it. If not, don't.
Beware of roaming fees for voice and data on your mobile phone. A calling card, Skype, IM, are much cheaper.
Yep, we do agree. 2% of the population want to build their own, 98% want ready-made, so the appearance of a ready-made solution that does not compromise your rights, your control, your data, is very good news.
But disagree with your new = untrustworthy assertion. Anything is untrustworthy, even very old stuff like Windows... I think a priori trustworthiness for a new product is more a matter of company track record, and Opera's isn't too shabby. Do you consider all cars unsafe until they've been on the roads for years ?
This is probably the worst analogy ever, and the worst way to make the point that Opera gives you back ownership, control, and security, that "the cloud" took away.
Welcome back, backups, freely defined access rights, copyright @myself, not some photosharing site, on my own stuff !
If you lose all your data everytime you reinstall Windows... I've got one trick to teach you.. it's a brand new concept, called partitions... And another one, called backups... bleeding edge stuff !
Slashdot Mirror
1- you can swap PCs, you can't swap the cloud. I always keep an old PC in a closet for such emergencies.
2- You can do backups - and should. We've learned you can't trust the cloud to do backups.
3- I'll concede 3, for the general public, adn because OS maker do such an horrible job of making their OSes secure for the general public. I personally never got hacked, maybe because I'm behind a firewall, don't have admin rights as a matter of course, and don't download and run just anything. The only virus I ever got was when trying to ressuscitate a friend's HD. Actually, got caught twice with that one.
I think the reasoning is the same as with the iPhone... and definitely does NOT apply to the slashdot crowd: think of your parents, siblings, non-geed friends...
The General Public is willing to sacrifice a lot of flexibility and confidentiality for
- ease of use
- ease of maintenance
- money
- coolness
This may seem anathema to us geeks... but when I get the monthly "my PC's not working" from my dad (ie: a video driver update messed the screen resolution and the icons are no longer in their usual place ^^), I understand how the concept can work in the marketplace. Confidentiality is a very vague concept, as long as no one gets their credit card number; Flexibility is of no import if they can do even only 50% of what they want to do... right now they can do only 30% because computers are so hard... and they're not even aware of the 10% they're missing. My dad has an nice digital camera, but still hasn't ventured into posting pics online...
So I think Chrome OS will be a success. Mainly through MS and Linux fault: even with Apple hammering the point home again and again and again, they never focused on catering to our moms and dads and nieces and nephews.
Mmmm, so far, we've learned that
1- we can't trust the cloud for availability: gmail outages....
2- we can't trust the cloud to not lose our data (sidekick fiasco)
3- we can't trust the cloud with our confidentiality (all those SSID heists and others)
What more is there to learn ?
It's frightening to see how many people dare to express opinions or formulate answers without really looking at what the question is.
Mmmm, I meant their dealer of debt, China, is so dependent on the US debt they hold, that they have no choice but to keep supplying the US with credit. A case of the user being dependent on the dealer, but the dealer dependent on the user, too. Mutually assured ruin, a re-run of the 60's mutually-assured destruction.
sorry if that was unclear.
Where did you read any mentions about jobs in my post about debt ?
I agree with your point, and probably there is some link going from jobs to trade flows to debt, but to me, those are 2 very distinct subjects.
to follow up on your exquisite image:
on the one hand, a building crew without an architect.
on the other hand, an architect without a building crew.
who do you think will build the better house ?
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-atom-cpu,1947-8.html
http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-4801-view-Intel-atom-1.6-Ghz-benchmark.html
IMHO, anything benefits from 2 screens. One for the "focus" stuff (internet, word...), one for the "always there" stuff (IM, media, social net...). I'm not a coder and I can barely live with only one screen :-p
Agreed. For my new PC I went with a large (26") screen instead of 2x22" for the same price, and I regret my choice.
1- the Atom really is much, much MUCH less powerful than any other CPU currently on the market, bar VIA's.
2- you're not paying for CPU power, you're paying for screens and design. Not only in money, but in battery life too.
The US are a debt addict. Their luck is that their debt dealer, China, only has one customer.
That. Plus "intellectual property" is a very vague concept:
- aren't we here at slashdot opposed to some/most copyrights/patents...
- the US congressmen keep expanding IP scope + duration to please their paymasters Disney and co. Should the rest of the world automatically accept that and follow suit ?
- didn't the US gladly turn a blind eye to infringers when it was to their benefit ?
The iPhone is the quintessential example of a product in which marketing, design and form are chosen over function. (not that it's a bad product, but it's by far not the most feature-rich nor the best hardware)... so of course in that specific case most of the value-added is American.
Most products do not work this way. And the ones that do are not that big, either. It would have been interesting to see a study of all phones, not just the relatively marginal iPhone, or things other than phones, ie toys, electronics, white goods...
While he's at it, why didn't the author do that study on Windows or MacOS, which I'm sure are manufactured for $2 in China, and sell for $80-$250 ?
Design, advertising, and goodwill are much more fungible than manufacturing capacity and know-how. A handful of counter-examples when those 3 items are maximized cannot be generalized, nor extrapolated over time. Who took over IBM's PCs again ? Are you that sure that, in the long run, the companies that actually manufacture all those things will not be best placed to design - market - sell them ? Give it time. A few years ago, it was electronics, then computers... phones and media-players will follow, and given the sad state of western OSes, software, and services, there's a huge market waiting to be taken over.
As I understand it, though the x86 instruction set is the standard, there are
1- optional elements to it: MMX, SSE1/2/3/4... I assume one-size-fits-all code either shuns these subsets, or branches. Both cases diminish performance.
2- Various underlying micro-architectures. So code compiled specifically for one will perform better than a generic compile: cache sizes/alignment, register count/swap...
I'd like both, so that I can read in bright sunlight AND in bed with the room light off.
Additional, I take it OLED can do video and full color, e-ink can't.
If on top of that the reader is foldable (but still sturdy), count me in.
There ARE rewards without risks (trying hugging your mom/kid), and risks without rewards (try playing russian roulette). So the whole "there a no rewards without risks" is just a bland, stupid statement.
Nuclear power did a lot of damage in Tchnernobyl because greens did not instill enough fear in it, there.
It's a balance thingy. I wouldn't trust my balance to you.
Iran trying to get the bomb was pretty much unavoidable after they let Israel have it.
The French PC games magazine Joystick, apart from fairly objectives reviews, has a kinda effective and clear system. Apart from the regular notations (0-5 stars "a blank CD is marginally more fun"... to "for genre fans only" ... "Good Game !"), and they do use the whole gamut of grades, they add
- a Megastar status which means that the game pretty much is a must-have. They give out a handful of those annually
- side warnings if the translation sucks, or if the game requires a very powerful config to run, or if there are too many bugs
- a recurring global editor's choice list, plus individual favs of reviewers.
In the end, I find them very useful. Too bad I don't have much time to play anymore, and they pulled their website because they couldn't find a way to make it at least break even.
Also, Europe is a lot more about walking around than the US are. I live in Paris, which is kinda similar to London generally speaking. I always get puzzled looks when I try to tell tourists to WALK somewhere and show them a nice route to do it.
Subway-hoping from tourist spot to tourist spot is less fun.
Computer-wise, do whatever you would do if going to any city, even within the US. If you will you'll use your PC a lot (what a pity, you're on holiday !) take it. If not, don't.
Beware of roaming fees for voice and data on your mobile phone. A calling card, Skype, IM, are much cheaper.
Have a nice trip !
http://yourname.unite.opera.com/ and your local copy of opera regularly pings their server.
Yep, we do agree. 2% of the population want to build their own, 98% want ready-made, so the appearance of a ready-made solution that does not compromise your rights, your control, your data, is very good news.
But disagree with your new = untrustworthy assertion. Anything is untrustworthy, even very old stuff like Windows... I think a priori trustworthiness for a new product is more a matter of company track record, and Opera's isn't too shabby. Do you consider all cars unsafe until they've been on the roads for years ?
This is probably the worst analogy ever, and the worst way to make the point that Opera gives you back ownership, control, and security, that "the cloud" took away.
Welcome back, backups, freely defined access rights, copyright @myself, not some photosharing site, on my own stuff !
My PC is powered and running 24x7.
If you lose all your data everytime you reinstall Windows... I've got one trick to teach you.. it's a brand new concept, called partitions... And another one, called backups... bleeding edge stuff !