I've got a good bunch of friends who I have know for something like 25 years now and we actually met through a role-playing club that I started in my local town during the mid 1980s - these days we also meet socially and our various girlfriends and wives (yes, we DO have them!) have become a good circle of friends also.
After about 10 years we started to move away from tabletop RPGs and board games to LAN gaming, then on to World Of Warcraft for several years (though not me, WoW did nothing for me when I tried a month's membership).
However, they've now got bored with WoW and in the past couple of years we've now gone back to tabletop board games to the point where we now meet once a week to play games like Zombies!!!, Ravenloft, Star Fleet Captains and Thunderstone. We all still PC game but now it tends to be the occasional Left 4 Dead session or single player games like Skyrim, Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas.
There does seem to be something of a revival in board games, especially those that provide a semi-RPG element where everyone these days is too busy to write "pen and paper" RPG campaigns. And rather than all sitting in our various homes in front of networked PCs on a server some where, it's now face-to-face board game sessions, the social aspect of which cannot be beaten in my view.
I think major games publishers are now flogging a dead horse anyway.
Microsoft, deliberately or not, initiated the slow death of commercial PC gaming by fragmenting DirectX versions over Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 and there's no denying that the number of new PC game releases has dropped over the past few years as a result. With fewer new bleeding-edge games coming out, the need for PC upgrades has also dropped which has meant that hardware manufacturers have gone over to newer products like netbooks and tablets.
I personally believe we are approaching a renaissance in computer gaming, whether or not the PC ultimately survives as a hardware platform. One of the best things to happen to gaming is the rise of lower-powered platforms and more simplistic and independent games, meaning that huge game production budgets are becoming less important and smaller teams of programmers, or even individual programmers, can now get back in the game and produce good games. This goes back to the Golden Age of Computing in the days of home computers like the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga, as well as many others.
The best thing that can happen is that big publishers continue with their greed - they will ultimately kill themselves off, or at least move away from developing on the PC completely - paving the way for the "little guys" to come in and get a "piece of the action" in programming games on what is essentially an open platform anyway.
Personally, I've no problem with him being jailed.
I'm all for free speech but I also all for facing the consequences of using that right to free speech - if someone takes offence at what you say, or even jails you for it, then maybe next time you'll engage your brain first before you say anything...
There's a big difference to living in a police state (which I truly do not want to see) and living in a society where every individual demonstrates a little compassion and decency for everyone else in that society - and, in all honesty, if people demonstrated they could do that themselves with a little self-determination and personal responsibility rather than having politicians make laws and police enforce them, we would actually move AWAY from being the Orwellian state currently.
Every day of my life I could happily stand up and voice an opinion to everyone else and sometimes those opinions would definitely piss someone else off - but before I open my big fat mouth I do a quick balancing sum in my head and decide whether voicing my opinion or not ruining someone else's day is more important. Usually the latter wins.
And if occasionally a judge throws some guy in jail for a few months for opening his big fat mouth a bit too much, then so be it.
Just one thing I'd like to point out here that you seem to be missing - not everyone who uses a tablet or a portable computer of some kind is necessarily a great TV or movie buff.
I do watch a little TV and movies but personally I spend far more time listening to music and audio/radio comedy in my spare time. At home I have a perfectly adequate 33" flat screen TV on which I watch either DVD movies or movies streamed from my media server, I've never bothered with HD or Bluray and if I'm using a computer at all then I'm generally either playing a game, reading a book or manual, doing a little programming or maybe messing about with a retro game emulator of some sort.
Yes, there are people out there that love movies as much as I love music and who want the biggest screens, surround sound audio and all that stuff, and good luck to them. But I also think that far too many people get dragged far too quickly into the "bigger is best faction" without understanding why they actually need what they're buying.
There are more mobile phones being sold today than laptops and PCs combined.
The statistic is entirely meaningless.
I do know of some older people who have never got into using PCs because of the learning difficulties and have found iPads or tablets to be the answer to getting them online and connected - I would not argue that for a minute.
But I know of absolutely nobody who has completely stopped using PCs because of mobile phones and tablets. Yes, my missus, for example, bought herself a HP Touchpad and now carries that about a lot more than her Asus Netbook she used to use while on the move, but at home she's sat at her desktop PC any time she needs to do any work on a computer.
The other thing to also consider is that for a long time, the main factor driving PC purchases was gaming, and the need to upgrade to more and more powerful PCs in order to play the latest games - however, compare the number of big commercial PC games being released now to 5 years ago and there has been a considerable drop in number, due to games consoles and Microsoft muddying the PC game development waters by stopping DirectX development on Windows XP in order to push Windows 7 upgrades.
Take away the PC gaming element and really any PC released in the past 5 years in perfectly capable of running Windows 7 and letting people get on perfectly happily with doing all the stuff they need to on a PC (apart from playing the most modern games).
I myself am mainly a Linux guy but I do use (and like) Windows XP.
I can't argue that Windows 7 is technically a better OS than XP but I've totally shied away from upgrading to it from XP because I think the default Aero UI is cluttered and confusing, and all the important stuff in Control Panel seems to have been renamed purely for change's sake. I've set up a number of desktop PCs for the missus, relatives and friends, even now I have not got my head around the way the networking stuff has been changed around and how you change things like workgroups and computer names - bear in mind also that I can configure all that stuff in XP or in Linux text files for DNS, networking and SAMBA with my eyes closed.
I don't see myself not needing Windows any time soon, I actually believe in using the right tools for the jobs I need to do and if that means I sometimes use Linux and other times use Windows then so be it - maybe one day I will be able to do all I want to in one or the other solely.
But at this moment in time, Windows XP does everything I need to on Windows, Windows 7 offers nothing I desparately need at this moment in time to justify the learning curve I would need to go through in order to become as competent with it as I with XP.
And you need to also bear in mind that only within the past few months has the number of Windows 7 installations exceeded the number of Windows XP ones. Whilst, again, I don't doubt it's a better OS, it's adoption has been much slower than Microsoft would have liked, and they have had to deliberately cripple XP by stopping DirectX and IE development on it in order to push Windows 7 more.
It's nice to finally see a list of RPGs that are standard "swords and sorcery" or science-fiction fare and stuff that I have actually played.
Personally, I came to computer gaming from the ZX Spectrum, through the Commodore Amiga and then to the PC - consequently I completely missed Japanes game consoles and don't consider that my gaming fun has suffered much as a result of that.
Therefore I have no experience or even interest in Japanese computer RPGs - if anything I am not comfortable with the concept of Anime and child heads on adult bodies, it's all a bit too "weird" for my tastes, though I accept part of it may be a cultural thing.
Besides which, the Japanese computer RPGs I have quickly tried, like Legend Of Zelda, are well made but far too "cutesy cutesy" for my tastes - I'd much rather be down a standard dungeon killing skeletons and surviving on worm rounds - long live Dungeon Master!
There's a particularly poignant point about half way down the article where it's said that Ebenezer Jobs shut down Apple's philanthropic programs when he returned to the company in 1997.
The last time this topic was raised on/., a fanboy said that Apple had $1 billion in assets at the time - that contradicts your figure so one of you is wrong.
Not to mention the fact that your figure smacks of "Make Shit Up" accounting anyway. A US "billion" is actually 100 million, not 1000 million, and your suggestion, therefore, that Apple had $40 billion in assets at a time when pretty much nobody outside the US had even heard of them is clearly ridiculous.
"Overpriced" is relative - with my financial wealth I consider a Porsche car overpriced yet some with greater wealth will change their Porsche for a new one every year because they presumably do not consider one overpriced.
Nobody forces me to buy music or media, I choose to buy the stuff that appeals to me on the basis that, say, a music CD I pay around £10 for is worth the money when I enjoy it over and over again over the course of my lifetime. Same goes for movies, games, etc.
If nobody paid for media then none of it would be produced, full stop. The fact that some people get their stuff for free is because legitimate purchasers have provided enough income to justify the release in the first place, thus allowing free copies to be made available to those who want it for free, In other words, legitimate purchasers subsidise the collections of those who don't pay.
The key is NOT to make a convenient package because that has been done already and still people copy stuff. If everybody was a little more appreciative of money and appreciative of artists who have the right to make money from what they do, then consumer demand would drive good quality releases.
...says you at 32 years of age quickly typing your response on the PC in your bedroom at your parents house before changing into your McDonald's uniform for the late shift.
Surely if someone is looking at a display from 3 inches away then that in itself suggests a problem with that display?
And only *YOU* mentioned resolutions as low as 320x480 or 640x960. I was talking minimum of around 1024x768 which, having used computer screens for as long as I have, seems to be about the lower end limit of what I can peer at for hour after hour. (Okay 800x600 on a text-only display like a Kindle.)
Like I said, fanbois shouldn't try to get technical with techies - in the words of Douglas Adams "Relax and enjoy your shoes".
If NOBODY traded money for ideas, how much media do you think would be out there for others to download freely?
And, assuming you have a job, isn't that precisely what YOU are being paid for? And are you prepared to give you labour away free based on the same principles?
You need to be of the older generation (like me) to get the full appreciation of the impact of free access to commercial media.
There's a psychological issue here also, in that getting something for free actually causes you to value and appreciate it much less, so you just end up collecting more and more of it.
I and a bunch of friends used to be the same with PC games. Go back around ten years, we would download all the cracked games from Usenet and hand them out to each other, we literally had hundreds of CDRs with cracked games on them. But nobody ever fully appreciated the games, it didn't matter because there were plenty more to download and try.
I actually ended up spending more time burning the downloads to CDs and acting as a "help desk" to friends who didn't have the skills to get the cracked games to run. I actually got so bored with it all that one day I just slung the whole lot in the bin and stopped PC gaming completely.
A couple of years later, I started PC gaming again, but just playing the stuff I knew would be good and buying legal copies. Yes, games are frequently expensive, but I've just learnt patience and can wait a few months for the price of a game to go down if I don't want to pay full price for it. But as a result I do enjoy my PC gaming a lot more now.
I'm the same with music. I'm a huge rock music fan, I used to download stacks and stacks of albums from Usenet but, again, I hoarded it and hardly listened to any of it - and got bored with it. Nowadays, if I find an interesting looking album then I download it, listen to it and either buy it on CD if it's good or just delete the downloads. As a result, I only pay for music that I know is worth the money, I therefore think music is good value for money and listen to more of it (both at home and live) than I've ever done.
I'm not trying to preach about the wrongs of piracy, the quality of most media and games out there is crap and not worth the money being asked of it. But having free access to it does lessen the enjoyment overall and these days part of the fun is hunting out the good stuff at the best prices.
My nephew is in halls of residence at one UK university and whilst he does have Internet access on the university network from his room, he cannot even connect to the PlayStation network from it - plus every file-sharing site that he has tried is blocked.
I can only speak from practical experience and talk about a device like the Amazon Kindle 3 which is about the only portable device I peer at for hour after hour.
Admittedly I'm an old git and it took me a while to "adjust" from reading paper books but I don't have a problem with headaches or eyestrain with long reading sessions on that - and it's 800x600 only, albeit an e-ink display.
So I don't get what the big deal is with displays above a certain resolution when the screen itself is tiny - I don't own Apple stuff either but even on Android devices (that I do own), I'd hardly see this as a reason to rush out an buy one.
You mean it looks bad on that display that's already smeary to hell with all your fingerprints on it?
I don't get you youngsters at times - if you are in a place where you are having to use a portable device to watch a movie, then it's because you're alleviating the boredom of being sat in a plane, train, automobile and grateful for anything that works to alleviate that boredom. As long as it's reasonably watchable on a tiny screen, who the fuck CARES whether it's 1080P or whatever?
It's a bit different sat at home in the comfort of an armchair enjoying a movie in full surround sound on a 92" mega-screen...
I hate to say it but someone who deliberately keeps their source code under 80 characters wide usually has some common sense when it comes to formatting and readability of that source code when anyone else scans their eye over it - unlike many of today's keyboard monkeys.
I challenge even someone with perfect vision to look at two small 10" displays side-by-side from a normal viewing distance and work out which one has the better resolution on the basis that both of them have at least 1024x768.
Maybe if you put your face 3" from the screen and try to focus really hard, you will see a difference for the nanosecond your vision still remains perfect before it's ruined forever.
Fanbois - think you can talk technical with the rest of us but.., oh dear.
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I've got a good bunch of friends who I have know for something like 25 years now and we actually met through a role-playing club that I started in my local town during the mid 1980s - these days we also meet socially and our various girlfriends and wives (yes, we DO have them!) have become a good circle of friends also.
After about 10 years we started to move away from tabletop RPGs and board games to LAN gaming, then on to World Of Warcraft for several years (though not me, WoW did nothing for me when I tried a month's membership).
However, they've now got bored with WoW and in the past couple of years we've now gone back to tabletop board games to the point where we now meet once a week to play games like Zombies!!!, Ravenloft, Star Fleet Captains and Thunderstone. We all still PC game but now it tends to be the occasional Left 4 Dead session or single player games like Skyrim, Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas.
There does seem to be something of a revival in board games, especially those that provide a semi-RPG element where everyone these days is too busy to write "pen and paper" RPG campaigns. And rather than all sitting in our various homes in front of networked PCs on a server some where, it's now face-to-face board game sessions, the social aspect of which cannot be beaten in my view.
I think major games publishers are now flogging a dead horse anyway.
Microsoft, deliberately or not, initiated the slow death of commercial PC gaming by fragmenting DirectX versions over Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 and there's no denying that the number of new PC game releases has dropped over the past few years as a result. With fewer new bleeding-edge games coming out, the need for PC upgrades has also dropped which has meant that hardware manufacturers have gone over to newer products like netbooks and tablets.
I personally believe we are approaching a renaissance in computer gaming, whether or not the PC ultimately survives as a hardware platform. One of the best things to happen to gaming is the rise of lower-powered platforms and more simplistic and independent games, meaning that huge game production budgets are becoming less important and smaller teams of programmers, or even individual programmers, can now get back in the game and produce good games. This goes back to the Golden Age of Computing in the days of home computers like the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga, as well as many others.
The best thing that can happen is that big publishers continue with their greed - they will ultimately kill themselves off, or at least move away from developing on the PC completely - paving the way for the "little guys" to come in and get a "piece of the action" in programming games on what is essentially an open platform anyway.
Personally, I've no problem with him being jailed.
I'm all for free speech but I also all for facing the consequences of using that right to free speech - if someone takes offence at what you say, or even jails you for it, then maybe next time you'll engage your brain first before you say anything...
There's a big difference to living in a police state (which I truly do not want to see) and living in a society where every individual demonstrates a little compassion and decency for everyone else in that society - and, in all honesty, if people demonstrated they could do that themselves with a little self-determination and personal responsibility rather than having politicians make laws and police enforce them, we would actually move AWAY from being the Orwellian state currently.
Every day of my life I could happily stand up and voice an opinion to everyone else and sometimes those opinions would definitely piss someone else off - but before I open my big fat mouth I do a quick balancing sum in my head and decide whether voicing my opinion or not ruining someone else's day is more important. Usually the latter wins.
And if occasionally a judge throws some guy in jail for a few months for opening his big fat mouth a bit too much, then so be it.
Just one thing I'd like to point out here that you seem to be missing - not everyone who uses a tablet or a portable computer of some kind is necessarily a great TV or movie buff.
I do watch a little TV and movies but personally I spend far more time listening to music and audio/radio comedy in my spare time. At home I have a perfectly adequate 33" flat screen TV on which I watch either DVD movies or movies streamed from my media server, I've never bothered with HD or Bluray and if I'm using a computer at all then I'm generally either playing a game, reading a book or manual, doing a little programming or maybe messing about with a retro game emulator of some sort.
Yes, there are people out there that love movies as much as I love music and who want the biggest screens, surround sound audio and all that stuff, and good luck to them. But I also think that far too many people get dragged far too quickly into the "bigger is best faction" without understanding why they actually need what they're buying.
There are more mobile phones being sold today than laptops and PCs combined.
The statistic is entirely meaningless.
I do know of some older people who have never got into using PCs because of the learning difficulties and have found iPads or tablets to be the answer to getting them online and connected - I would not argue that for a minute.
But I know of absolutely nobody who has completely stopped using PCs because of mobile phones and tablets. Yes, my missus, for example, bought herself a HP Touchpad and now carries that about a lot more than her Asus Netbook she used to use while on the move, but at home she's sat at her desktop PC any time she needs to do any work on a computer.
The other thing to also consider is that for a long time, the main factor driving PC purchases was gaming, and the need to upgrade to more and more powerful PCs in order to play the latest games - however, compare the number of big commercial PC games being released now to 5 years ago and there has been a considerable drop in number, due to games consoles and Microsoft muddying the PC game development waters by stopping DirectX development on Windows XP in order to push Windows 7 upgrades.
Take away the PC gaming element and really any PC released in the past 5 years in perfectly capable of running Windows 7 and letting people get on perfectly happily with doing all the stuff they need to on a PC (apart from playing the most modern games).
I myself am mainly a Linux guy but I do use (and like) Windows XP.
I can't argue that Windows 7 is technically a better OS than XP but I've totally shied away from upgrading to it from XP because I think the default Aero UI is cluttered and confusing, and all the important stuff in Control Panel seems to have been renamed purely for change's sake. I've set up a number of desktop PCs for the missus, relatives and friends, even now I have not got my head around the way the networking stuff has been changed around and how you change things like workgroups and computer names - bear in mind also that I can configure all that stuff in XP or in Linux text files for DNS, networking and SAMBA with my eyes closed.
I don't see myself not needing Windows any time soon, I actually believe in using the right tools for the jobs I need to do and if that means I sometimes use Linux and other times use Windows then so be it - maybe one day I will be able to do all I want to in one or the other solely.
But at this moment in time, Windows XP does everything I need to on Windows, Windows 7 offers nothing I desparately need at this moment in time to justify the learning curve I would need to go through in order to become as competent with it as I with XP.
And you need to also bear in mind that only within the past few months has the number of Windows 7 installations exceeded the number of Windows XP ones. Whilst, again, I don't doubt it's a better OS, it's adoption has been much slower than Microsoft would have liked, and they have had to deliberately cripple XP by stopping DirectX and IE development on it in order to push Windows 7 more.
It's nice to finally see a list of RPGs that are standard "swords and sorcery" or science-fiction fare and stuff that I have actually played.
Personally, I came to computer gaming from the ZX Spectrum, through the Commodore Amiga and then to the PC - consequently I completely missed Japanes game consoles and don't consider that my gaming fun has suffered much as a result of that.
Therefore I have no experience or even interest in Japanese computer RPGs - if anything I am not comfortable with the concept of Anime and child heads on adult bodies, it's all a bit too "weird" for my tastes, though I accept part of it may be a cultural thing.
Besides which, the Japanese computer RPGs I have quickly tried, like Legend Of Zelda, are well made but far too "cutesy cutesy" for my tastes - I'd much rather be down a standard dungeon killing skeletons and surviving on worm rounds - long live Dungeon Master!
Maybe you write apps that appeal to Apple users only?
Or maybe you write apps that already have free near-equivalents already built into Android? Or written better by other developers?
Or maybe you are a good iOS coder and shit Android coder?
There are many reasons why Android people might not have bought your specific apps.
Just saying...
Ahem!
According to the above, the foundation was founded in 1994, long before he stepped down as CEO.
Please don't get me wrong, I'm actually a FOSS/Linux guy and not a Microsoft one, but I prefer facts rather than speculation or FUD.
Ahem!
There's a particularly poignant point about half way down the article where it's said that Ebenezer Jobs shut down Apple's philanthropic programs when he returned to the company in 1997.
The last time this topic was raised on /., a fanboy said that Apple had $1 billion in assets at the time - that contradicts your figure so one of you is wrong.
Not to mention the fact that your figure smacks of "Make Shit Up" accounting anyway. A US "billion" is actually 100 million, not 1000 million, and your suggestion, therefore, that Apple had $40 billion in assets at a time when pretty much nobody outside the US had even heard of them is clearly ridiculous.
...Jobs went to Microsoft on his knees and begging for money to stop the final death of his company.
Good to see that at least one point in his career, Jobs understood the word "humility".
"Overpriced" is relative - with my financial wealth I consider a Porsche car overpriced yet some with greater wealth will change their Porsche for a new one every year because they presumably do not consider one overpriced.
That's a crap argument.
Nobody forces me to buy music or media, I choose to buy the stuff that appeals to me on the basis that, say, a music CD I pay around £10 for is worth the money when I enjoy it over and over again over the course of my lifetime. Same goes for movies, games, etc.
If nobody paid for media then none of it would be produced, full stop. The fact that some people get their stuff for free is because legitimate purchasers have provided enough income to justify the release in the first place, thus allowing free copies to be made available to those who want it for free, In other words, legitimate purchasers subsidise the collections of those who don't pay.
The key is NOT to make a convenient package because that has been done already and still people copy stuff. If everybody was a little more appreciative of money and appreciative of artists who have the right to make money from what they do, then consumer demand would drive good quality releases.
Evian? Perrier? They sell water.
...says you at 32 years of age quickly typing your response on the PC in your bedroom at your parents house before changing into your McDonald's uniform for the late shift.
Surely if someone is looking at a display from 3 inches away then that in itself suggests a problem with that display?
And only *YOU* mentioned resolutions as low as 320x480 or 640x960. I was talking minimum of around 1024x768 which, having used computer screens for as long as I have, seems to be about the lower end limit of what I can peer at for hour after hour. (Okay 800x600 on a text-only display like a Kindle.)
Like I said, fanbois shouldn't try to get technical with techies - in the words of Douglas Adams "Relax and enjoy your shoes".
If NOBODY traded money for ideas, how much media do you think would be out there for others to download freely?
And, assuming you have a job, isn't that precisely what YOU are being paid for? And are you prepared to give you labour away free based on the same principles?
You need to be of the older generation (like me) to get the full appreciation of the impact of free access to commercial media.
There's a psychological issue here also, in that getting something for free actually causes you to value and appreciate it much less, so you just end up collecting more and more of it.
I and a bunch of friends used to be the same with PC games. Go back around ten years, we would download all the cracked games from Usenet and hand them out to each other, we literally had hundreds of CDRs with cracked games on them. But nobody ever fully appreciated the games, it didn't matter because there were plenty more to download and try.
I actually ended up spending more time burning the downloads to CDs and acting as a "help desk" to friends who didn't have the skills to get the cracked games to run. I actually got so bored with it all that one day I just slung the whole lot in the bin and stopped PC gaming completely.
A couple of years later, I started PC gaming again, but just playing the stuff I knew would be good and buying legal copies. Yes, games are frequently expensive, but I've just learnt patience and can wait a few months for the price of a game to go down if I don't want to pay full price for it. But as a result I do enjoy my PC gaming a lot more now.
I'm the same with music. I'm a huge rock music fan, I used to download stacks and stacks of albums from Usenet but, again, I hoarded it and hardly listened to any of it - and got bored with it. Nowadays, if I find an interesting looking album then I download it, listen to it and either buy it on CD if it's good or just delete the downloads. As a result, I only pay for music that I know is worth the money, I therefore think music is good value for money and listen to more of it (both at home and live) than I've ever done.
I'm not trying to preach about the wrongs of piracy, the quality of most media and games out there is crap and not worth the money being asked of it. But having free access to it does lessen the enjoyment overall and these days part of the fun is hunting out the good stuff at the best prices.
That's not my experience.
My nephew is in halls of residence at one UK university and whilst he does have Internet access on the university network from his room, he cannot even connect to the PlayStation network from it - plus every file-sharing site that he has tried is blocked.
Not to mention it only being available for OS X.
I can only speak from practical experience and talk about a device like the Amazon Kindle 3 which is about the only portable device I peer at for hour after hour.
Admittedly I'm an old git and it took me a while to "adjust" from reading paper books but I don't have a problem with headaches or eyestrain with long reading sessions on that - and it's 800x600 only, albeit an e-ink display.
So I don't get what the big deal is with displays above a certain resolution when the screen itself is tiny - I don't own Apple stuff either but even on Android devices (that I do own), I'd hardly see this as a reason to rush out an buy one.
You mean it looks bad on that display that's already smeary to hell with all your fingerprints on it?
I don't get you youngsters at times - if you are in a place where you are having to use a portable device to watch a movie, then it's because you're alleviating the boredom of being sat in a plane, train, automobile and grateful for anything that works to alleviate that boredom. As long as it's reasonably watchable on a tiny screen, who the fuck CARES whether it's 1080P or whatever?
It's a bit different sat at home in the comfort of an armchair enjoying a movie in full surround sound on a 92" mega-screen...
Pah!
Stone tablet and chisel. If it's good enough for Moses, it's good enough for me.
I hate to say it but someone who deliberately keeps their source code under 80 characters wide usually has some common sense when it comes to formatting and readability of that source code when anyone else scans their eye over it - unlike many of today's keyboard monkeys.
Rubbish!
I challenge even someone with perfect vision to look at two small 10" displays side-by-side from a normal viewing distance and work out which one has the better resolution on the basis that both of them have at least 1024x768.
Maybe if you put your face 3" from the screen and try to focus really hard, you will see a difference for the nanosecond your vision still remains perfect before it's ruined forever.
Fanbois - think you can talk technical with the rest of us but.., oh dear.