The fellow asks about workers being forced to train their UNQUALIFIED replacements and the fool responds that the workers shouldn't expect to get jobs they aren't qualified for...
Is this guy a robot? Because his response sounds like what a PR robot would say if I jammed my arm up his muppet ass and twittled my fingers.
Obviously the laid off workers were qualified for the work because they were doing it and they trained their replacements.
So... Would kermit the PR guy like to respond? Anyone want to jam their arm up his ass and see if they can provoke another robotic fucking response?
What was most odd about that exchange was that the fellows were presuming to joke as if their commentary were witty or contextually relevant.
The whole train was conceived as an infrastructure boondoggle to get federal money into the state coffers.
That is the only reason california even did it. Had the feds not offered them money they wouldn't have touched it. And then you have the usual backscratching where contracts are thrown at campaign donors etc.
Look, we had two means of getting from LA to SF and both was largely superior to the train concept.
1. Airplane. It is a lot faster and for anyone doing a regular commute at that sort of distance... time is money. People that aren't getting their transport paid for by their company or aren't making more than enough to pay for the plane flights out of petty cash are not commuting between LA and SF on any regular basis. If you are just visiting for the weekend or something then the travel cost is not that bad considering that it is not a frequent expense.
2. A god damn fucking car. Let me give people that don't know shit about california a bit of insight here, the drive from LA to SF can be absolutely beautiful if you take the scenic route. Really a great trip and I recommend it for anyone that wants a good time. Beautiful country. Great food. Very nice accommodations. If you want to get from point A to point B faster... then take the highway that goes through the imperial valley. The land is flat and boring... and mostly full of farm fields... but it is a straight uninterrupted highway connecting point A with point B.
Either option is superior to the train.
Airplanes are faster and cheaper than the bullet train. Remember, the train doesn't actually cost 83 dollars a ticket. That is the subsidized rate. The government is DISCOUNTING the ticket to attract your business with YOUR tax dollars. If you actually look at what the train ACTUALLY costs you'll find that it is costing MORE per passenger than an airplane. This is while being slower. Which makes it a stupid form of travel.
Cars are the most economical and most interesting way to go because you can make detours and travel the most scenic way. And even then you're just paying for gas. I can jam six people or so in my car and travel between the cities on 30 dollars of gas. The bullet train can't even begin to compete with that economy.
So what the train offers is speed... and its slower than the plane while being a lot more expensive.
The bullet train is stupid. It was a scam pushed by corrupt politicians and the various people in my state that supported it are mostly unimaginative twats that thought a technology developed in the 70s and only found to be marginally economical under the most extreme of conditions made any sense connecting SF with LA.
Dumb.
A better idea if you want something new and wiz bang is Musk's HyperLoop. That at the VERY least is new and interesting. It might even be cheap and fast. But the "bullet train"... it might make sense in Japan but in Cali? No.
What was further ignored is that in Cali the most successful rail route is not between SF and LA but between LA and San Diego. It is one of the few Amtrak lines in the US that actually make a profit.
The premise of my post was that Intel would shift to a different technology. Not silicon wafers. One that I've seen them talk about is optical computing. That is you fire a laser into a 3d brick with all the inputs and outputs being supplied by lasers instead of electrons.
You avoid several things with this: 1. It won't heat up... either at all or much less readily. 2. At the microscopic scale you don't have to worry about magnetic fields generated by one circuit screwing up what another one is doing. 3. You might be able to sustain several different frequencies of light operating concurrently in the same circuits.
As to not having to overhaul factories, they'll have competitors with equivalent manufacturing capability then which will mean losing market share. Furthermore, their patients last for 14 years... after that what do they have?
As to DRM from windows, pirated versions of the OS bypass that. DRM is generally pretty fucking ineffective. Listen. First law of computer security is physical security. If I physically have the program and the code in my hot little hand... then I have control. The only thing stopping me is whether or not I'm smart enough to exploit my advantage.
The only effective DRM is where the user doesn't actually obtain physical possession of the code. Some games for example do this where the server code is maintained by the publisher or developer but not by the user. Thus the user has a PORTION of the total code but not all of it. These games generally only work if they can connect to the server and the server will do some necessary function that the client application can't do alone.
MS has actually tried to do this to some extent with their "cloud" office apps which suggest that their systems requiring access to the MS servers is a "feature" and not just fucking DRM.
In any case, those that want to bow to that DRM will do it and those that don't won't. We're already seeing a very robust Linux community and software environment. So if MS or Apple become hostile environments then people will just migrate to linux. It isn't a big deal.
Minor issues are not substantive. If I point at a red bike and say "this is a bike" and then you point at a blue bike and then say "well you are wrong because then what is that"... you are being obtuse.
And if you are intentionally being obtuse then you are arguing in bad faith. I have a very low tolerance for sophistry and very little patience for it. Speak plainly and honestly. If you are pedantic or obtuse that will be taken as evidence of personal stupidity or bad faith. No offense. There are no other conclusions.
As to wolves in sheep's clothing, I offered you an open and honest offer just between us. All things being equal if what I am offering is honored, will you accept it?
If not, then help me understand why? Because what I'm reading from you is that any attempt to find common ground, cooperate, or be reasonable will be exploited and taken as a sign of weakness BY YOU. Effectively that punishes me for trying to be reasonable with you. And that kind of hostility means there can be no society between us. No civilization. No law. We just need to put on war paint and see which of us is a better killer.
I don't want that. I'd like to think we can be better than that. But for that to be possible you have to be reasonable. In situations where party A refuses to be reasonable with party B... one or both of those parties must be overridden and dominated. Possibly party C will dominate us both. Possibly I will dominate you. Possibly you will dominate me.
But if you refuse to reason then one of us is getting dominated and it is in each of our interests to see that it does not fall upon ourselves.
... all modern TVs plug into computers... either natively through VGA, DVI, or DisplayPort, or via HDMI... possibly with a cheap 5 dollar DVI to HDMI converter.
My gaming PC is a laptop. It was 1200 dollars at date of purchase and were I to have bought just a laptop that might have been about 800 dollar. Definitely not less because I like a fast machine regardless.
With Desktops you can run into some problems here because it isn't convenient to move them around. But that isn't a huge problem really. How many PC gamers go to lan parties on occasion and you're not just moving your computer from one room to the other but taking it to a friend's house.
I don't think many console gamers really appreciate how meaningless most of the features of the console are if they made any effort what so ever to replicate them in the PC.
But that is a cultural difference between those respective communities. Console gamers generally speaking don't make an effort. That isn't the point. They don't want to. They want to play their game with no effort or nonsense and anything that requires them to fiddle with something creates stress and is justification for some emotional episode.
I understand that and I'm not arrogant enough to say they should just man up and stop being such little pansies. They like it their way and that's fine.
What I am saying is that they can get the ease of use and simplicity of a console without losing the ability to change their mind later and say "you know what, maybe I would like to make any effort and actually improve this experience." And via my win win option they would have that option with no downside.
If you want to fuck over console users and make it harder for developers to reach as many players as possible... then keep it how it is... It serves no justifiable purpose in the existing market with the existing technology.
No one is saying that all change is for change sake. However you would and must agree that some change is for change sake.
MS has a product they want to sell. Assuming they made a perfect operating system at TIME X at X+1 they'd release a variation on it simply because they need to sell a new version with their existing business model. Because in this example the initial OS was literally perfect, the replacement would likely be imperfect in some respect.
What I think has to be addressed here is that dominant operating systems are not just products and corporations like MS can't treat them that way. They're standards. Its like a fuel standard. You can change the chemistry of the fuel so long as doing so doesn't fuck up the engines. And if you do want to change the fuel so that it an incompatibility is introduced, it is important that that fuel be optional and that the consumer be made aware of what is happening.
It is irresponsible for MS to presume that they can change the look and nature of the OS to any great extent without preserving backward compatibility and persevering the GUI nature of the previous edition as an option.
If you as a corporation have various imperatives that require you to introduce new features that impact these requirements then you need to present those in parallel with each other. If you lack the resources to do that then questions of competence become increasingly relevant.
As to losing political and social control or creating micro cultures, you can't stop that from happening. Currently the areas are controlled by the gangs and they're psychopathic as anything.
I want to stress that a very important issue here is consent. So people can leave the commune if it isn't working out for them at any time. And of course if we get any reports of violence, intimidation, or coercion in the communes then that should be investigated and dealt with.
Are you going to be able to deal with current gangs that live and breath violence, intimidation, and coercion? Of course not because we haven't had any luck up to this point and we have been trying. It is going no where.
The communes will have issues because anything will. But all things being equal it can't be worse than the status quo.
As to Russia, the workers never owned anything. It was always a "political elite" which was just their window dressing on the fact that they replaced one ruling class with another.
I think communism can work... I say this as someone that has no interest in actually living in a communist society. But I think it can work but it has to be structured differently than is typically imagined.
See, things fail. It happens all the time in ANY system. Shit just breaks. And the big flaw I see in communism... aside from moral and ethical issues... just logistically is that it is a massive too big to fail system. I think what you need to do is break it up into lots of semi autonomous entities that can and will fail all the time without endangering the larger society or even especially disrupting it.
Think of little companies in capitalism that die all the time. No one cares. It is totally normal. It only becomes a problem when the company is fucking huge and then that creates problems. And I think that is the first issue that any aspiring communist should look at fixing. My suggestion for that is to have lots of little communist communities that interact with each other according to traditional market forces... aka some kind of consensual exchange of goods and services. So you have communist communities that ultimately still exist in an over arching system that recognizes the inevitability of markets and should any given community be badly mismanaged it can fail without bringing down the whole house.
As to some mill dying because of chinese competition... Again, I'd need to go through that sort of thing on a case by case basis to figure out if there were not some way to save the operation.
In my experience, unions are often not able to deal with sacrifice. This is because they personally have to eat that sacrifice while a more traditional management structure can divorce itself from the consequences. But that doesn't change the fact that sometimes hard choices need to be made.
One thing that I do believe US manufacturing must embrace systematically is automation. As intensively as we can possibly do it. This scares unions because they think we'll replace all of them with machines. The problem with fighting this is that not only do they not save ANY of their jobs but they tend to destroy the business and remove the factory from the community entirely in the process. Let us just go with a worst case scenario and say the automation would cost 80 percent of the jobs at a given factory. That sounds bad. But not implementing the factory at all means you lose 100 percent of the jobs AND the factory leaves which has so many other negative consequences I don't even want to get into them all.
The US has lots of flour mills in it. We are net exporters of flour... big ones. In fact, if anything China is more likely to import flour from us than the other way around. So if some flour mill died... that's on the workers.
If we're talking about a steel mill, Chinese competition there is very stiff. From what I am led to believe one of the bigger problems is energy costs. Melting large amounts of steel and then keeping that steel at very high temperatures while it is mixed with som
On the issue of lightstep, it is quite good for setting up kiosks and even pretty good at restricting what employees can do on company machines. I have set up a lot of workstations and I am actually a huge fan of custom user interfaces for people that do repetitive things with machines they don't own.
Think of the interface on most bank ATM machines... I think windows XP is actually at the heart of a lot of those systems which horrifies some people. But technically it shouldn't be a problem so long as you manage the security properly. You just run a nice GUI application that outputs to the interface ATM monitor and don't worry about what the OS GUI normally wants to look like. It doesn't matter.
I think people get too caught up with the notion of what a GUI is or they think it actually is in anyway representative of what the computer is actually doing. I am very much in favor of MS improving the GUTS of the OS to make them as stable, flexible, scalable, modular, etc as possible. But the GUI is just a fucking program that sits on top of the OS allowing you to interact with given elements of the OS in a controlled and predictable fashion.
We can make it look like whatever you want. You seem to like metro. I wouldn't take anything away from someone that they liked. I am a huge believer in the "win-win" scenario. I believe that if you examine most situations you can find an optimal compromise between all interests and serve them all to the extent that is reasonable.
When it comes to GUIs, I think one thing MS could do is make the GUI much more moddable. Something like lightstep's system would be something they could steal from and I'd also look at how Firefox is really pushing GUI customization. Just let people do whatever makes them happy.
And then make the config files independent of everything else so that people can share those interface defaults with each other.
What you would very quickly have is a half dozen interface mods that were very popular and not MS defaults. The average user isn't going to know enough to even know these things exist.
But those average users ask people like you and me for help. They say "why is shit not where I expect it to be!?" and that puts me at least in the regrettable position of saying MS is sometimes a shortsighted beast. I am currently installing patches and modifications on systems where this is an issue. I have a big folder full of registry hacks and third party GUI mods that change things to be more understandable to legacy users.
But that's only one issue. I think MS should make GUI mods a core aspect of future operating systems.
I think there is also something to be said for creating a standard GUI modification framework that extends to applications such that if I want to modify the GUI of any compatible and compliant application, I can do it quickly and consistently.
GUIs are just a mask over the nightmare of code that actually squirms under the surface of most programs. If the mask can make the nightmare look comprehensible then it can do whatever we want.
As to your notion that some corruption undermines my position, that is absurd. Requiring absolute purity is unreasonable
As to your rejection of compromise, cooperation, or neighborly peace... So be it.
You're just telling me I have to play power politics, subtle shadow games, and show no mercy, hesitation, or remorse.
You apparently want to deal with someone that feels the greatest thing in life is to drive his enemies before him and hear the lamentations of his women.
First 32 MB of ram is very low actually. My video card has more than a gigabyte and that is just my video ram. I have another 8 gigabytes of conventional ram.
Second, what you're saying is that there might be performance issues in the emulation and while I think that might be so initially due to poor optimization or currently insuffiecent hardware... I think you'll find that machines 4 years after initial console release are so much faster that there really isn't much of an excuse.
I'm wondering what stats you think a modern gaming PC can't crush effortlessly. You do realize that modern gaming PCs ALWAYS look better than consoles and that includes when the consoles are released. Give the console a few years to age while the PCs always remain current... and the consoles start feeling dated.
The hardware in consoles is often not actually that impressive. They're perhaps impressive for the price. 400 dollars for all that is pretty good. But you have to keep in mind that some gaming PCs push 3000 dollars or more. So you really can't compete with that if you want to get into a dick measuring contest with the PC.
I am a PC gamer of many years, I am almost never inconvenienced by such errors. The only consistent problem I have is dealing with really old games as the backward compatibility sometimes is not fantastic.
As to saying that Vista didn't change much, I remember that UI changes were the biggest issue.
As to Windows 7 and 8... I use programs like Classic Shell to put things back so I sometimes forget what MS is doing.
As to tablet interfaces being required in the brave new world. They matter for people using touch interfaces and I think for THEM they should have that inferface. However, the interface is poor for keyboard/mouse users. MS is being foolish if they can have one GUI in all contexts.
Have a tablet GUI, a desktop GUI, a TV GUI, and a phone GUI. The OS can be the same. Just put different skins on the OS.
Ever use a program called LightStep for windows? It let you customize the GUI pretty heavily. It wasn't a total conversion of the GUI but you could create a lot of things.
My personal favorite with it was the way it handled the start menu. You could set it up so that rather than being a folder it was instead a list of shortcuts stored in a file. The advantage was INSTANT population of the list. Those little half second to two second wait periods when you do some things can be annoying if they happen frequently.
It is all a question of per year depreciation in dollars.
Say I have something that costs 10,000 dollars and depreciations at a rate of.01 percent a year and then I have something that costs 10 dollars and depreciates at a rate of 1 percent a year. Which is better if they provide the same amount of power at manufacture? Obviously the 1 dollar system because its initial cost is so low that the depreciation in dollars doesn't matter.
What we need to do is get that number as low as possible by dollar and ideally it would be nice if the panels could be maintained right where they are such that they last basically forever.
For example, is it the coating on the cells that is wearing out? If so, could I suggest a flaking or shedding skin that breaks down as the sun effects it and then sell more of the sealing compound in a spray can or something. Then lets say every six months to a year you go on your roof... wipe off the panels and then give every panel a couple new coats of new sealant.:)
I have a friend in Romania that I talk to and he'd not agree with you. I find no basis to support your position what so ever. I can point to statistics that show improved quality of life... I can point to vastly inproved human rights... I am now suspecting that you're just letting your communist salt flow over the evil empire getting struck down in the Cold War and your apparent ideology with it.
Look, I don't want to piss all over your beliefs or your aspirations. To the contrary, I want to give you the resources to realize your dreams and not in some way you'll regret either. I'd like you to be happy with the out come because it would make you less inclined to peddle this bitter sophistry at people like me that are just honestly trying to be reasonable. You people are so manically repressed, passive aggressive, and bitter that it is very hard to communicate with you rationally.
This isn't an insult. It really isn't. I don't want to be your enemy or for there to be bad feelings. I want you to get your communist dream. Just let other people have their own dreams while you're about it. Tolerance is not a lot to ask for I think.
Your belief that others are making choices for themselves that you don't agree with... well, that's fine in so far as you have an opinion and it is fine to oppose it if they effectively put the same "chains" on you. However, if you're being offered the ability to set up your own system and live how you like... you can either accept that offer or I fail to see how you'll have any intellectual integrity left.
This "give me everything or there's war" attitude from some people is counter productive. You're setting up a system where I have to fuck you over on purpose just to keep you from fucking me over.
Is this how you want to live? Because if that's how you want it... fine. You make me sad but I've got the war paint and I'm happy to cut throats in the darkness of the new moon. Your nonsense doesn't fool as many people as you think it does and it certainly doesn't intimidate me. Its just a fucking nuisance. It is annoying. And I'd like to not have to worry about you creeping up behind me and stabbing me in the back if I don't keep an eye on you.
As to people not buying consoles if it isn't console exclusive, that contradicts what console users keep telling me.. that they like the console experience.
if the console enjoys no advantage over the PC but exclusive content then those users are either deluded or lying. I suspect they're neither.
what is more, the console platform would remain a simplier streamlined gaming machine. It would have desktop OS under its GUI but the nature of it would be largely unchanged from what it is now. Many users like not having to worry about drivers, updates, compatibility, will this game work with my hardware, etc. And all of that could be retained even while unifying the operating systems.
As to people buying the PC version which is cheaper... they will be the SAME version. And what you could do is require the game maker to sign a profit sharing agreement in return for letting it work on the console version of windows. This would give MS the money to subsidize the cost of the console hardware offering it at a discount. You see consoles sell for 400-500 dollars which is well below the cost of a full gaming PC even though the hardware in those machines could drive a perfectly modern desktop operating system on top of the console games.
It is the inkjet printer system. With consoles you pay less for the machine but then more for the games. Depending on how many games you buy and how you work out the pricing... you can save money one way or the other.
I personally feel gaming PCs work better for me because I only include the price difference between a gaming PC and regular PC. I'm going to buy a regular PC regardless. So what does it cost buy a better machine that can play modern games? I find it costs about what a console costs. About 300-500 dollars over the cost of a normal PC. Say the PC a laptop I'd be happy with minus gaming would be about 800 USD. Now what would a gaming machine cost? I found one that was quite good for 1200 USD. Price difference of 400 dollars which is the cost of a console.
And I then avoid the console game mark up, retain backward compatibility with legacy games, can apply user made mods to games to my heart's content, and I do enjoy cheating in single player games sometimes. I'll run cheat engine and just tell the game "no, I have a billion gold coins... I swear." And that is just something you can't do on consoles and it makes me too sad to touch them.
Console players however are not like me. They don't like to fuck with the source files of a game to change enemy units so they have different stats.
One game, Evil Genius, had this one SOB that was extremely annoying. So I went into the game files and kneecapped his stats so he was a fucking joke. Basically all but removed him from the game. It is a single player game. I make the rules. And the game was a lot more fun for me after I did that.
But console players like things simple, predictable, easy. That isn't an insult. They're sitting there to chill out and dealing with that crap is stressful for some people. It isn't fun. For me, it is fun. I like it. I have as much fun fucking with a game as I do playing it.
As to new phone OS's etc. I've already addressed your point and I don't feel further discussion on that tangent is productive since you're ignoring my points.
as to corporate and consumer being different... yes and no. One of the big strengths of MS is that they largely blend the two which profits business in that their labor force is less useless and profits consumers in that they fuck around with a similar machine at work.
I grant that some business major twits think it makes sense to get monopolies and exclusive contracts but that is short sighted. MS didn't build its empire on that and its not growing with it and it won't hold on to market share with it.
We are seeing a huge explosion in open source, open hardware... stuff. And while the apple people might be happy in the walled garden with barbed wire on top it is important to remember that there are far more people outside that walled garden than inside it. And while Apple did enjoy incredible growth that rate of increasing market share has largely leveled out.
MS has to remember the 80/20 rule which is basically a business school way of saying "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". The customer you have NOW is worth more than the one you MIGHT get tomorrow.
Which is why I'm saying NOT to fuck over any existing customers. Neither the PC nor console users. You can make them both happy while unifying the platform.
As to updating a console in this paradigm, there is nothing that would stop MS from updating such a system the same way they do now. If the user specifically did something to stop that, then that is on them. But if they don't kneecap the updating process then it should go off without a hitch.
As to making gamers pay twice... statistically gamers don't do that. While the occasional person might buy a game for multiple platforms, sales for that are quite poor and you see that with the whole DVD versus blue ray thing as well. A lot of studios keep thinking that people will re buy the same fucking movies over and over again at 25 dollars a pop just because they're given slightly better picture quality or something.
The only thing I'd be interested in at this point would be a lossless reproduction of the original celluloid at full big screen fidelity. Short of that, I see no reason to buy something that I already bought. I mean, I bought Jurassic park when it first came out. I was a kid and that movie was ridiculously exciting at the time. So I bought a VHS of it. IF and when I want a higher fidelity copy, I pull it off the web... because yeah I'm a bad bad man. But I bought the fucking thing. I'm not paying twice. I refuse.
And if I had a choice between not having it or buying it twice... I'd literally choose to not have it. I am NOT buying it twice.
As to Moore's law, oh ye of little faith. The end of Moore's law is like Peak oil. It isn't going to happen any time soon.
Here is the thing, Intel etc NEED to push boundaries to maintain market share. If they can't push the bounds then any joeblow CPU maker can turn out something just as good. And when that happens, Intel is done.
So the fist thing we can expect is that they'll shift to different technologies. I think I saw something about optical processers using optical fiber optic inputs and outputs. An issue with the silicon is that it heats up from the electrical resistance and the magnetic fields cause issues and if seperations become thin enough they leak current. From what I understand, optical processors will have none of those problems.
Which means 3d processors. Not a flat waffer but a big old brick.
I just don't see it slowing down. I see if anything Intel faking people out by saying it will so they don't try so hard to catch up because they assume Intel is going to hit a wall.
That is what Intel wants them to think. Maybe Intel will hit a wall but if they do they're fucked. Their survival as a market leader depends on them blowing right through any arbitrary limit people assume will stop them just keep on going.
You are suggesting that we can already do it? Good... I don't know why you're being a fucking asshole about it but I'm going to just take the information and move forward with it.
Assuming we already have the tech to do it, it makes even less sense that we wouldn't.
Sure, but I'd like to see the concept applied generally to all MS computing products. I'd like the only thing stopping me from playing a next gen game on my phone to be that my phone just isn't powerful enough to do it with acceptable performance. I want MS to unify their entire product portfolio.
The Asus Transformer is cool... I think that's a step in the right direction. That's tablets handled apparently. Next deal with the console and the phone.:)
I'd love to a project Aria module that has a mobile x86 processor in it can run a proper desktop OS if I so desire.
We've seen some android products that let you dock your phone into a cradle that gives the phone a big desktop screen, as well as a USB port that you can pop peripherals into such as keyboards, mice, etc which basically makes the phone a real portable computer. I like the concept but the phone is still running android which is not really a prime time desktop OS.
As to apple users, I think some people have a really hard time with apps and I think MS would do well to have an Appstore or something for MS windows. I think they've played with that idea on and off but never really pushed the concept.
Some people that are totally clueless really prefer and likely profit from a walled garden. The poor bastards get viruses constantly otherwise. It is really quite sad. So I think walled gardens are fine. I just don't think they should be locked or have barbed wire on the top of the hedges. If I want to leave. I should have the option to walk right out the fucking door. So long as I have that option, I don't mind the walled garden. I think Android's take on it is pretty reasonable. Most phones aren't rooted which can make installing somethings a pain in the ass but assuming the phone is rooted you can do pretty much whatever you want including just running stock android files and only downloading things from the app store.
Can you cite the speed of the edram? I'm unconvinced that modern gaming PCs are slower than last generation consoles.
as to bandwidth:
""PCI Express 4.0
On November 29, 2011, PCI-SIG announced PCI Express 4.0,[36] providing a 16 GT/s bit rate that doubles the bandwidth provided by PCI Express 3.0, while maintaining backward and forward compatibility in both software support and used mechanical interface. Additionally, active and idle power optimizations are to be investigated. Final specifications are expected to be released in late 2016.[37] Extensions and fut""
As to the power and features of the GPU not matching... I'm sure there are differences but the modern PC hardware is always faster than the console stuff at launch and it continues to outpace the performance of the consoles going forward.
I should think a modern gaming PC should be able to emulate a first generation xbox without working too hard. Even a second generation xbox shouldn't be hard with some optimization. The latest xbox likely would require microsoft to assist in optimization at this stage. But in a few years the modern PCs should again be more than up to the job of flat out crushing a then old console.
As to costs, as you pointed out AMD was willing to sell their chips at a price console makers currently find acceptable.
So while that might have been relevant at one point it isn't anymore.
Your game comment didn't address that the console itself doesn't make money but rather the licensing agreements that game makers have with console makers. Console users pay more for games. Typically around 60 dollars per game while PC players tend to pay substantially less. The majority of that price difference goes to the console makers and constitutes their actual profits.
Many people seem to like the simplicity and living room friendliness of a console. And I think on inertia alone the appliance is going to be relevant for long time regardless of exclusive game licenses.
And keep in mind that many games are ported to the PC already and it doesn't hurt the consoles when that happens. After all, PC players like myself are not going to buy a console just to get access to that one game we wanted to play. Take Halo 3, I played Halo 1 and 2 on the PC but can't continue the story because MS refuses to release Halo 3 on the PC. That's sad. But it is ultimately a lost opportunity for the game dev and microsoft.
As to the legality of unlocked firmware on cellphones... boot loader unlocked phones are quite common actually. I was taking it a step farther to have the firmware chip itself be a microSD card to address the inevidible drive corruption and to permit people to upgrade the internal memory.
Further consider that there are projects like Project Aria which will not only permit this but will make practically every element of the phone modular including the screen, the CPU, the speakers, the camera, etc. Look it up:
And if that is possible then I should think a fucking removable firmware chip is nothing.
As to most non-technical users, they are going to appreciate being able to use the same program across all platforms especially if the developers adapt the UI so it dynamically defaults to given UI elements in different contexts.
As to people having invested in iOS apps, people have invested so fucking much more in desktop applications that suggesting that they can't ever drop iOS even if they get the desktop apps in their hand is asinine. For one thing, all the popular mobile apps will be ported to whatever phone OS becomes dominant. But really, you're going to get so much more by gaining access to the desktop apps that complaining about losing the mobile apps is mind boggling. What exactly would you lose that wouldn't be trumped by something you'd gain? The only advantage of the mobile apps in this context is that they have a mobile GUI. However, we must assume that many desktop apps will have an optional mobile GUI simply because their users will ask for it.
Once you have a viable application, tweaking the GUI is especially in just a single program is fucking nothing. You could do it in no time. We're talking about a couple hours of work for the small programs are a relatively small number of man hours for the larger programs when compared to the man hours put into making the program in the first place. It is a very affordable feature that would just be added - because.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey bingo...
The fellow asks about workers being forced to train their UNQUALIFIED replacements and the fool responds that the workers shouldn't expect to get jobs they aren't qualified for...
Is this guy a robot? Because his response sounds like what a PR robot would say if I jammed my arm up his muppet ass and twittled my fingers.
Obviously the laid off workers were qualified for the work because they were doing it and they trained their replacements.
So... Would kermit the PR guy like to respond? Anyone want to jam their arm up his ass and see if they can provoke another robotic fucking response?
What was most odd about that exchange was that the fellows were presuming to joke as if their commentary were witty or contextually relevant.
The entire thing is baffling.
The whole train was conceived as an infrastructure boondoggle to get federal money into the state coffers.
That is the only reason california even did it. Had the feds not offered them money they wouldn't have touched it. And then you have the usual backscratching where contracts are thrown at campaign donors etc.
Look, we had two means of getting from LA to SF and both was largely superior to the train concept.
1. Airplane. It is a lot faster and for anyone doing a regular commute at that sort of distance... time is money. People that aren't getting their transport paid for by their company or aren't making more than enough to pay for the plane flights out of petty cash are not commuting between LA and SF on any regular basis. If you are just visiting for the weekend or something then the travel cost is not that bad considering that it is not a frequent expense.
2. A god damn fucking car. Let me give people that don't know shit about california a bit of insight here, the drive from LA to SF can be absolutely beautiful if you take the scenic route. Really a great trip and I recommend it for anyone that wants a good time. Beautiful country. Great food. Very nice accommodations. If you want to get from point A to point B faster... then take the highway that goes through the imperial valley. The land is flat and boring... and mostly full of farm fields... but it is a straight uninterrupted highway connecting point A with point B.
Either option is superior to the train.
Airplanes are faster and cheaper than the bullet train. Remember, the train doesn't actually cost 83 dollars a ticket. That is the subsidized rate. The government is DISCOUNTING the ticket to attract your business with YOUR tax dollars. If you actually look at what the train ACTUALLY costs you'll find that it is costing MORE per passenger than an airplane. This is while being slower. Which makes it a stupid form of travel.
Cars are the most economical and most interesting way to go because you can make detours and travel the most scenic way. And even then you're just paying for gas. I can jam six people or so in my car and travel between the cities on 30 dollars of gas. The bullet train can't even begin to compete with that economy.
So what the train offers is speed... and its slower than the plane while being a lot more expensive.
The bullet train is stupid. It was a scam pushed by corrupt politicians and the various people in my state that supported it are mostly unimaginative twats that thought a technology developed in the 70s and only found to be marginally economical under the most extreme of conditions made any sense connecting SF with LA.
Dumb.
A better idea if you want something new and wiz bang is Musk's HyperLoop. That at the VERY least is new and interesting. It might even be cheap and fast. But the "bullet train"... it might make sense in Japan but in Cali? No.
What was further ignored is that in Cali the most successful rail route is not between SF and LA but between LA and San Diego. It is one of the few Amtrak lines in the US that actually make a profit.
The premise of my post was that Intel would shift to a different technology. Not silicon wafers. One that I've seen them talk about is optical computing. That is you fire a laser into a 3d brick with all the inputs and outputs being supplied by lasers instead of electrons.
You avoid several things with this:
1. It won't heat up... either at all or much less readily.
2. At the microscopic scale you don't have to worry about magnetic fields generated by one circuit screwing up what another one is doing.
3. You might be able to sustain several different frequencies of light operating concurrently in the same circuits.
As to not having to overhaul factories, they'll have competitors with equivalent manufacturing capability then which will mean losing market share. Furthermore, their patients last for 14 years... after that what do they have?
As to DRM from windows, pirated versions of the OS bypass that. DRM is generally pretty fucking ineffective. Listen. First law of computer security is physical security. If I physically have the program and the code in my hot little hand... then I have control. The only thing stopping me is whether or not I'm smart enough to exploit my advantage.
The only effective DRM is where the user doesn't actually obtain physical possession of the code. Some games for example do this where the server code is maintained by the publisher or developer but not by the user. Thus the user has a PORTION of the total code but not all of it. These games generally only work if they can connect to the server and the server will do some necessary function that the client application can't do alone.
MS has actually tried to do this to some extent with their "cloud" office apps which suggest that their systems requiring access to the MS servers is a "feature" and not just fucking DRM.
In any case, those that want to bow to that DRM will do it and those that don't won't. We're already seeing a very robust Linux community and software environment. So if MS or Apple become hostile environments then people will just migrate to linux. It isn't a big deal.
Minor issues are not substantive. If I point at a red bike and say "this is a bike" and then you point at a blue bike and then say "well you are wrong because then what is that"... you are being obtuse.
And if you are intentionally being obtuse then you are arguing in bad faith. I have a very low tolerance for sophistry and very little patience for it. Speak plainly and honestly. If you are pedantic or obtuse that will be taken as evidence of personal stupidity or bad faith. No offense. There are no other conclusions.
As to wolves in sheep's clothing, I offered you an open and honest offer just between us. All things being equal if what I am offering is honored, will you accept it?
If not, then help me understand why? Because what I'm reading from you is that any attempt to find common ground, cooperate, or be reasonable will be exploited and taken as a sign of weakness BY YOU. Effectively that punishes me for trying to be reasonable with you. And that kind of hostility means there can be no society between us. No civilization. No law. We just need to put on war paint and see which of us is a better killer.
I don't want that. I'd like to think we can be better than that. But for that to be possible you have to be reasonable. In situations where party A refuses to be reasonable with party B... one or both of those parties must be overridden and dominated. Possibly party C will dominate us both. Possibly I will dominate you. Possibly you will dominate me.
But if you refuse to reason then one of us is getting dominated and it is in each of our interests to see that it does not fall upon ourselves.
... all modern TVs plug into computers... either natively through VGA, DVI, or DisplayPort, or via HDMI... possibly with a cheap 5 dollar DVI to HDMI converter.
My gaming PC is a laptop. It was 1200 dollars at date of purchase and were I to have bought just a laptop that might have been about 800 dollar. Definitely not less because I like a fast machine regardless.
With Desktops you can run into some problems here because it isn't convenient to move them around. But that isn't a huge problem really. How many PC gamers go to lan parties on occasion and you're not just moving your computer from one room to the other but taking it to a friend's house.
I don't think many console gamers really appreciate how meaningless most of the features of the console are if they made any effort what so ever to replicate them in the PC.
But that is a cultural difference between those respective communities. Console gamers generally speaking don't make an effort. That isn't the point. They don't want to. They want to play their game with no effort or nonsense and anything that requires them to fiddle with something creates stress and is justification for some emotional episode.
I understand that and I'm not arrogant enough to say they should just man up and stop being such little pansies. They like it their way and that's fine.
What I am saying is that they can get the ease of use and simplicity of a console without losing the ability to change their mind later and say "you know what, maybe I would like to make any effort and actually improve this experience." And via my win win option they would have that option with no downside.
If you want to fuck over console users and make it harder for developers to reach as many players as possible... then keep it how it is... It serves no justifiable purpose in the existing market with the existing technology.
No one is saying that all change is for change sake. However you would and must agree that some change is for change sake.
MS has a product they want to sell. Assuming they made a perfect operating system at TIME X at X+1 they'd release a variation on it simply because they need to sell a new version with their existing business model. Because in this example the initial OS was literally perfect, the replacement would likely be imperfect in some respect.
What I think has to be addressed here is that dominant operating systems are not just products and corporations like MS can't treat them that way. They're standards. Its like a fuel standard. You can change the chemistry of the fuel so long as doing so doesn't fuck up the engines. And if you do want to change the fuel so that it an incompatibility is introduced, it is important that that fuel be optional and that the consumer be made aware of what is happening.
It is irresponsible for MS to presume that they can change the look and nature of the OS to any great extent without preserving backward compatibility and persevering the GUI nature of the previous edition as an option.
If you as a corporation have various imperatives that require you to introduce new features that impact these requirements then you need to present those in parallel with each other. If you lack the resources to do that then questions of competence become increasingly relevant.
As to losing political and social control or creating micro cultures, you can't stop that from happening. Currently the areas are controlled by the gangs and they're psychopathic as anything.
I want to stress that a very important issue here is consent. So people can leave the commune if it isn't working out for them at any time. And of course if we get any reports of violence, intimidation, or coercion in the communes then that should be investigated and dealt with.
Are you going to be able to deal with current gangs that live and breath violence, intimidation, and coercion? Of course not because we haven't had any luck up to this point and we have been trying. It is going no where.
The communes will have issues because anything will. But all things being equal it can't be worse than the status quo.
As to Russia, the workers never owned anything. It was always a "political elite" which was just their window dressing on the fact that they replaced one ruling class with another.
I think communism can work... I say this as someone that has no interest in actually living in a communist society. But I think it can work but it has to be structured differently than is typically imagined.
See, things fail. It happens all the time in ANY system. Shit just breaks. And the big flaw I see in communism... aside from moral and ethical issues... just logistically is that it is a massive too big to fail system. I think what you need to do is break it up into lots of semi autonomous entities that can and will fail all the time without endangering the larger society or even especially disrupting it.
Think of little companies in capitalism that die all the time. No one cares. It is totally normal. It only becomes a problem when the company is fucking huge and then that creates problems. And I think that is the first issue that any aspiring communist should look at fixing. My suggestion for that is to have lots of little communist communities that interact with each other according to traditional market forces... aka some kind of consensual exchange of goods and services. So you have communist communities that ultimately still exist in an over arching system that recognizes the inevitability of markets and should any given community be badly mismanaged it can fail without bringing down the whole house.
As to some mill dying because of chinese competition... Again, I'd need to go through that sort of thing on a case by case basis to figure out if there were not some way to save the operation.
In my experience, unions are often not able to deal with sacrifice. This is because they personally have to eat that sacrifice while a more traditional management structure can divorce itself from the consequences. But that doesn't change the fact that sometimes hard choices need to be made.
One thing that I do believe US manufacturing must embrace systematically is automation. As intensively as we can possibly do it. This scares unions because they think we'll replace all of them with machines. The problem with fighting this is that not only do they not save ANY of their jobs but they tend to destroy the business and remove the factory from the community entirely in the process. Let us just go with a worst case scenario and say the automation would cost 80 percent of the jobs at a given factory. That sounds bad. But not implementing the factory at all means you lose 100 percent of the jobs AND the factory leaves which has so many other negative consequences I don't even want to get into them all.
The US has lots of flour mills in it. We are net exporters of flour... big ones. In fact, if anything China is more likely to import flour from us than the other way around. So if some flour mill died... that's on the workers.
If we're talking about a steel mill, Chinese competition there is very stiff. From what I am led to believe one of the bigger problems is energy costs. Melting large amounts of steel and then keeping that steel at very high temperatures while it is mixed with som
On the issue of lightstep, it is quite good for setting up kiosks and even pretty good at restricting what employees can do on company machines. I have set up a lot of workstations and I am actually a huge fan of custom user interfaces for people that do repetitive things with machines they don't own.
Think of the interface on most bank ATM machines... I think windows XP is actually at the heart of a lot of those systems which horrifies some people. But technically it shouldn't be a problem so long as you manage the security properly. You just run a nice GUI application that outputs to the interface ATM monitor and don't worry about what the OS GUI normally wants to look like. It doesn't matter.
I think people get too caught up with the notion of what a GUI is or they think it actually is in anyway representative of what the computer is actually doing. I am very much in favor of MS improving the GUTS of the OS to make them as stable, flexible, scalable, modular, etc as possible. But the GUI is just a fucking program that sits on top of the OS allowing you to interact with given elements of the OS in a controlled and predictable fashion.
We can make it look like whatever you want. You seem to like metro. I wouldn't take anything away from someone that they liked. I am a huge believer in the "win-win" scenario. I believe that if you examine most situations you can find an optimal compromise between all interests and serve them all to the extent that is reasonable.
When it comes to GUIs, I think one thing MS could do is make the GUI much more moddable. Something like lightstep's system would be something they could steal from and I'd also look at how Firefox is really pushing GUI customization. Just let people do whatever makes them happy.
And then make the config files independent of everything else so that people can share those interface defaults with each other.
What you would very quickly have is a half dozen interface mods that were very popular and not MS defaults. The average user isn't going to know enough to even know these things exist.
But those average users ask people like you and me for help. They say "why is shit not where I expect it to be!?" and that puts me at least in the regrettable position of saying MS is sometimes a shortsighted beast. I am currently installing patches and modifications on systems where this is an issue. I have a big folder full of registry hacks and third party GUI mods that change things to be more understandable to legacy users.
But that's only one issue. I think MS should make GUI mods a core aspect of future operating systems.
I think there is also something to be said for creating a standard GUI modification framework that extends to applications such that if I want to modify the GUI of any compatible and compliant application, I can do it quickly and consistently.
GUIs are just a mask over the nightmare of code that actually squirms under the surface of most programs. If the mask can make the nightmare look comprehensible then it can do whatever we want.
Hey bingo
Hey bingo
As to your notion that some corruption undermines my position, that is absurd. Requiring absolute purity is unreasonable
As to your rejection of compromise, cooperation, or neighborly peace... So be it.
You're just telling me I have to play power politics, subtle shadow games, and show no mercy, hesitation, or remorse.
You apparently want to deal with someone that feels the greatest thing in life is to drive his enemies before him and hear the lamentations of his women.
*saddles up* :)
First 32 MB of ram is very low actually. My video card has more than a gigabyte and that is just my video ram. I have another 8 gigabytes of conventional ram.
Second, what you're saying is that there might be performance issues in the emulation and while I think that might be so initially due to poor optimization or currently insuffiecent hardware... I think you'll find that machines 4 years after initial console release are so much faster that there really isn't much of an excuse.
I'm wondering what stats you think a modern gaming PC can't crush effortlessly. You do realize that modern gaming PCs ALWAYS look better than consoles and that includes when the consoles are released. Give the console a few years to age while the PCs always remain current... and the consoles start feeling dated.
The hardware in consoles is often not actually that impressive. They're perhaps impressive for the price. 400 dollars for all that is pretty good. But you have to keep in mind that some gaming PCs push 3000 dollars or more. So you really can't compete with that if you want to get into a dick measuring contest with the PC.
I am a PC gamer of many years, I am almost never inconvenienced by such errors. The only consistent problem I have is dealing with really old games as the backward compatibility sometimes is not fantastic.
As to saying that Vista didn't change much, I remember that UI changes were the biggest issue.
As to Windows 7 and 8... I use programs like Classic Shell to put things back so I sometimes forget what MS is doing.
As to tablet interfaces being required in the brave new world. They matter for people using touch interfaces and I think for THEM they should have that inferface. However, the interface is poor for keyboard/mouse users. MS is being foolish if they can have one GUI in all contexts.
Have a tablet GUI, a desktop GUI, a TV GUI, and a phone GUI. The OS can be the same. Just put different skins on the OS.
Ever use a program called LightStep for windows? It let you customize the GUI pretty heavily. It wasn't a total conversion of the GUI but you could create a lot of things.
My personal favorite with it was the way it handled the start menu. You could set it up so that rather than being a folder it was instead a list of shortcuts stored in a file. The advantage was INSTANT population of the list. Those little half second to two second wait periods when you do some things can be annoying if they happen frequently.
It is all a question of per year depreciation in dollars.
Say I have something that costs 10,000 dollars and depreciations at a rate of .01 percent a year and then I have something that costs 10 dollars and depreciates at a rate of 1 percent a year. Which is better if they provide the same amount of power at manufacture? Obviously the 1 dollar system because its initial cost is so low that the depreciation in dollars doesn't matter.
What we need to do is get that number as low as possible by dollar and ideally it would be nice if the panels could be maintained right where they are such that they last basically forever.
For example, is it the coating on the cells that is wearing out? If so, could I suggest a flaking or shedding skin that breaks down as the sun effects it and then sell more of the sealing compound in a spray can or something. Then lets say every six months to a year you go on your roof... wipe off the panels and then give every panel a couple new coats of new sealant. :)
I have a friend in Romania that I talk to and he'd not agree with you. I find no basis to support your position what so ever. I can point to statistics that show improved quality of life... I can point to vastly inproved human rights... I am now suspecting that you're just letting your communist salt flow over the evil empire getting struck down in the Cold War and your apparent ideology with it.
Look, I don't want to piss all over your beliefs or your aspirations. To the contrary, I want to give you the resources to realize your dreams and not in some way you'll regret either. I'd like you to be happy with the out come because it would make you less inclined to peddle this bitter sophistry at people like me that are just honestly trying to be reasonable. You people are so manically repressed, passive aggressive, and bitter that it is very hard to communicate with you rationally.
This isn't an insult. It really isn't. I don't want to be your enemy or for there to be bad feelings. I want you to get your communist dream. Just let other people have their own dreams while you're about it. Tolerance is not a lot to ask for I think.
Your belief that others are making choices for themselves that you don't agree with... well, that's fine in so far as you have an opinion and it is fine to oppose it if they effectively put the same "chains" on you. However, if you're being offered the ability to set up your own system and live how you like... you can either accept that offer or I fail to see how you'll have any intellectual integrity left.
This "give me everything or there's war" attitude from some people is counter productive. You're setting up a system where I have to fuck you over on purpose just to keep you from fucking me over.
Is this how you want to live? Because if that's how you want it... fine. You make me sad but I've got the war paint and I'm happy to cut throats in the darkness of the new moon. Your nonsense doesn't fool as many people as you think it does and it certainly doesn't intimidate me. Its just a fucking nuisance. It is annoying. And I'd like to not have to worry about you creeping up behind me and stabbing me in the back if I don't keep an eye on you.
Is that so much to ask?
As to people not buying consoles if it isn't console exclusive, that contradicts what console users keep telling me.. that they like the console experience.
if the console enjoys no advantage over the PC but exclusive content then those users are either deluded or lying. I suspect they're neither.
what is more, the console platform would remain a simplier streamlined gaming machine. It would have desktop OS under its GUI but the nature of it would be largely unchanged from what it is now. Many users like not having to worry about drivers, updates, compatibility, will this game work with my hardware, etc. And all of that could be retained even while unifying the operating systems.
As to people buying the PC version which is cheaper... they will be the SAME version. And what you could do is require the game maker to sign a profit sharing agreement in return for letting it work on the console version of windows. This would give MS the money to subsidize the cost of the console hardware offering it at a discount. You see consoles sell for 400-500 dollars which is well below the cost of a full gaming PC even though the hardware in those machines could drive a perfectly modern desktop operating system on top of the console games.
It is the inkjet printer system. With consoles you pay less for the machine but then more for the games. Depending on how many games you buy and how you work out the pricing... you can save money one way or the other.
I personally feel gaming PCs work better for me because I only include the price difference between a gaming PC and regular PC. I'm going to buy a regular PC regardless. So what does it cost buy a better machine that can play modern games? I find it costs about what a console costs. About 300-500 dollars over the cost of a normal PC. Say the PC a laptop I'd be happy with minus gaming would be about 800 USD. Now what would a gaming machine cost? I found one that was quite good for 1200 USD. Price difference of 400 dollars which is the cost of a console.
And I then avoid the console game mark up, retain backward compatibility with legacy games, can apply user made mods to games to my heart's content, and I do enjoy cheating in single player games sometimes. I'll run cheat engine and just tell the game "no, I have a billion gold coins... I swear." And that is just something you can't do on consoles and it makes me too sad to touch them.
Console players however are not like me. They don't like to fuck with the source files of a game to change enemy units so they have different stats.
One game, Evil Genius, had this one SOB that was extremely annoying. So I went into the game files and kneecapped his stats so he was a fucking joke. Basically all but removed him from the game. It is a single player game. I make the rules. And the game was a lot more fun for me after I did that.
But console players like things simple, predictable, easy. That isn't an insult. They're sitting there to chill out and dealing with that crap is stressful for some people. It isn't fun. For me, it is fun. I like it. I have as much fun fucking with a game as I do playing it.
As to new phone OS's etc. I've already addressed your point and I don't feel further discussion on that tangent is productive since you're ignoring my points.
as to corporate and consumer being different... yes and no. One of the big strengths of MS is that they largely blend the two which profits business in that their labor force is less useless and profits consumers in that they fuck around with a similar machine at work.
I grant that some business major twits think it makes sense to get monopolies and exclusive contracts but that is short sighted. MS didn't build its empire on that and its not growing with it and it won't hold on to market share with it.
We are seeing a huge explosion in open source, open hardware... stuff. And while the apple people might be happy in the walled garden with barbed wire on top it is important to remember that there are far more people outside that walled garden than inside it. And while Apple did enjoy incredible growth that rate of increasing market share has largely leveled out.
MS has to remember the 80/20 rule which is basically a business school way of saying "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". The customer you have NOW is worth more than the one you MIGHT get tomorrow.
Which is why I'm saying NOT to fuck over any existing customers. Neither the PC nor console users. You can make them both happy while unifying the platform.
As to updating a console in this paradigm, there is nothing that would stop MS from updating such a system the same way they do now. If the user specifically did something to stop that, then that is on them. But if they don't kneecap the updating process then it should go off without a hitch.
As to making gamers pay twice... statistically gamers don't do that. While the occasional person might buy a game for multiple platforms, sales for that are quite poor and you see that with the whole DVD versus blue ray thing as well. A lot of studios keep thinking that people will re buy the same fucking movies over and over again at 25 dollars a pop just because they're given slightly better picture quality or something.
The only thing I'd be interested in at this point would be a lossless reproduction of the original celluloid at full big screen fidelity. Short of that, I see no reason to buy something that I already bought. I mean, I bought Jurassic park when it first came out. I was a kid and that movie was ridiculously exciting at the time. So I bought a VHS of it. IF and when I want a higher fidelity copy, I pull it off the web... because yeah I'm a bad bad man. But I bought the fucking thing. I'm not paying twice. I refuse.
And if I had a choice between not having it or buying it twice... I'd literally choose to not have it. I am NOT buying it twice.
As to Moore's law, oh ye of little faith. The end of Moore's law is like Peak oil. It isn't going to happen any time soon.
Here is the thing, Intel etc NEED to push boundaries to maintain market share. If they can't push the bounds then any joeblow CPU maker can turn out something just as good. And when that happens, Intel is done.
So the fist thing we can expect is that they'll shift to different technologies. I think I saw something about optical processers using optical fiber optic inputs and outputs. An issue with the silicon is that it heats up from the electrical resistance and the magnetic fields cause issues and if seperations become thin enough they leak current. From what I understand, optical processors will have none of those problems.
Which means 3d processors. Not a flat waffer but a big old brick.
I just don't see it slowing down. I see if anything Intel faking people out by saying it will so they don't try so hard to catch up because they assume Intel is going to hit a wall.
That is what Intel wants them to think. Maybe Intel will hit a wall but if they do they're fucked. Their survival as a market leader depends on them blowing right through any arbitrary limit people assume will stop them just keep on going.
Your analogy is inscrutable. Please state your objection plainly.
You are suggesting that we can already do it? Good... I don't know why you're being a fucking asshole about it but I'm going to just take the information and move forward with it.
Assuming we already have the tech to do it, it makes even less sense that we wouldn't.
so... I'm even more right than I thought. Thanks.
First Solar appears to be making the sort of panels you're talking about. :)
They use "CdTe Thin Film" :)
Can't seem to find out who actually sells the fucking things though. They might only sell to industry or municipalities which is a shame.
Sure, but I'd like to see the concept applied generally to all MS computing products. I'd like the only thing stopping me from playing a next gen game on my phone to be that my phone just isn't powerful enough to do it with acceptable performance. I want MS to unify their entire product portfolio.
The Asus Transformer is cool... I think that's a step in the right direction. That's tablets handled apparently. Next deal with the console and the phone. :)
I'd love to a project Aria module that has a mobile x86 processor in it can run a proper desktop OS if I so desire.
We've seen some android products that let you dock your phone into a cradle that gives the phone a big desktop screen, as well as a USB port that you can pop peripherals into such as keyboards, mice, etc which basically makes the phone a real portable computer. I like the concept but the phone is still running android which is not really a prime time desktop OS.
As to apple users, I think some people have a really hard time with apps and I think MS would do well to have an Appstore or something for MS windows. I think they've played with that idea on and off but never really pushed the concept.
Some people that are totally clueless really prefer and likely profit from a walled garden. The poor bastards get viruses constantly otherwise. It is really quite sad. So I think walled gardens are fine. I just don't think they should be locked or have barbed wire on the top of the hedges. If I want to leave. I should have the option to walk right out the fucking door. So long as I have that option, I don't mind the walled garden. I think Android's take on it is pretty reasonable. Most phones aren't rooted which can make installing somethings a pain in the ass but assuming the phone is rooted you can do pretty much whatever you want including just running stock android files and only downloading things from the app store.
It is about choice and flexibility.
Can you cite the speed of the edram? I'm unconvinced that modern gaming PCs are slower than last generation consoles.
as to bandwidth:
""PCI Express 4.0
On November 29, 2011, PCI-SIG announced PCI Express 4.0,[36] providing a 16 GT/s bit rate that doubles the bandwidth provided by PCI Express 3.0, while maintaining backward and forward compatibility in both software support and used mechanical interface. Additionally, active and idle power optimizations are to be investigated. Final specifications are expected to be released in late 2016.[37]
Extensions and fut""
As to the power and features of the GPU not matching... I'm sure there are differences but the modern PC hardware is always faster than the console stuff at launch and it continues to outpace the performance of the consoles going forward.
I should think a modern gaming PC should be able to emulate a first generation xbox without working too hard. Even a second generation xbox shouldn't be hard with some optimization. The latest xbox likely would require microsoft to assist in optimization at this stage. But in a few years the modern PCs should again be more than up to the job of flat out crushing a then old console.
Slashdot is doing that stupid thing where it is randomly saying a totally legitimate post is violating their "lameness filter".
Fucking thing is broken. Anyway, I can't figure out what it is complaining about so I posted my post to pastebin and am providing the link below.
Oh well:
http://pastebin.com/dWcHmQUp
As to costs, as you pointed out AMD was willing to sell their chips at a price console makers currently find acceptable.
So while that might have been relevant at one point it isn't anymore.
Your game comment didn't address that the console itself doesn't make money but rather the licensing agreements that game makers have with console makers. Console users pay more for games. Typically around 60 dollars per game while PC players tend to pay substantially less. The majority of that price difference goes to the console makers and constitutes their actual profits.
Many people seem to like the simplicity and living room friendliness of a console. And I think on inertia alone the appliance is going to be relevant for long time regardless of exclusive game licenses.
And keep in mind that many games are ported to the PC already and it doesn't hurt the consoles when that happens. After all, PC players like myself are not going to buy a console just to get access to that one game we wanted to play. Take Halo 3, I played Halo 1 and 2 on the PC but can't continue the story because MS refuses to release Halo 3 on the PC. That's sad. But it is ultimately a lost opportunity for the game dev and microsoft.
As to the legality of unlocked firmware on cellphones... boot loader unlocked phones are quite common actually. I was taking it a step farther to have the firmware chip itself be a microSD card to address the inevidible drive corruption and to permit people to upgrade the internal memory.
Further consider that there are projects like Project Aria which will not only permit this but will make practically every element of the phone modular including the screen, the CPU, the speakers, the camera, etc. Look it up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Pretty neat, huh?
And if that is possible then I should think a fucking removable firmware chip is nothing.
As to most non-technical users, they are going to appreciate being able to use the same program across all platforms especially if the developers adapt the UI so it dynamically defaults to given UI elements in different contexts.
As to people having invested in iOS apps, people have invested so fucking much more in desktop applications that suggesting that they can't ever drop iOS even if they get the desktop apps in their hand is asinine. For one thing, all the popular mobile apps will be ported to whatever phone OS becomes dominant. But really, you're going to get so much more by gaining access to the desktop apps that complaining about losing the mobile apps is mind boggling. What exactly would you lose that wouldn't be trumped by something you'd gain? The only advantage of the mobile apps in this context is that they have a mobile GUI. However, we must assume that many desktop apps will have an optional mobile GUI simply because their users will ask for it.
Once you have a viable application, tweaking the GUI is especially in just a single program is fucking nothing. You could do it in no time. We're talking about a couple hours of work for the small programs are a relatively small number of man hours for the larger programs when compared to the man hours put into making the program in the first place. It is a very affordable feature that would just be added - because.