That really depends on where you live. In low crime areas, a burglar alarm costs much more than the discount you get for having it. In some areas it's even statistically likely you'd pay more for the system and monitoring than to replace your likely losses. A remotely monitored fire alarm is a better investment in many areas than remotely monitored home invasion systems, but thankfully once you have one they usually do both.
If I'm home and they are armed (a crowbar used to break a window or a door frame is also a deadly weapon) then I'm protecting myself by use of force up until they leave the premises or surrender their weapon. Your situation where you live may be different by law, but not in reality. work on getting your laws to match reality.
That's bullshit. A guy broke into my friend's place one night hopped up on meth. My friend is a combat vet, certified marksman, and general gun nut. He grabbed the.45 ACP next to his bed, chambered a round, and... beat the shit out of the guy by pistol whipping him, as once he saw the guy he never felt his life was in danger. The thief went to jail on multiple counts and my friend was commended by the officers on duty for his restraint. His attorney said it'd be no problem at all if the guy tried to sue, and she'd probably be able to handle it pro bono (she is his regular lawyer for his business, though, so it's not like she's offering free services to some new client off the street after an initial consultation).
Minor wounds like from rock salt under the skin are not going to lead to lifelong disabilities and huge settlements. It's true that when you actually shoot deadly rounds you should shoot to kill and not to wound. That's not just for the lawsuits, but also because when you shoot to kill you're more likely to hit (center mass being easier to hit than a limb), you're more likely to disable the attack coming at you, and you can fire faster and with less hesitation between shots if you're trying to fill the fucker with metal than if you're trying to think about where to hit and with how many rounds.
Yes, if you start firing actual metal rounds into an attacker, empty the weapon into center mass. Even if they manage to survive and sue, you're safer during the attack to disable your attacker completely than to send them into an injured rage by grazing their thigh or something. Make sure whether they are still breathing or not to call 911 to report the incident as soon as you can safely do so without allowing them to renew the attack on you. Otherwise, you could be in trouble for not reporting it soon enough, including if he could have been saved from your gunshot injuries and you let him bleed out.
The fear of an effective prosecution is the most effective deterrent to many thieves. A hacksaw can get through those bars, but it'll take enough time they're likely to be caught. That's why the bars work. If you have off-site recording of sufficiently clear video, it would work just as well so long as you can convince the thief of that fact beforehand. The "beforehand" part becomes the problem.
The New York Times is a yellow journal and has a history of printing sensational stories whether or not they have any basis for them. Get used to that.
Here in the US where the story is taking place (and where Verizon is actually a carrier as opposed to the EU where AFAIK they are not), porting a number is possible but is a pain in the ass. I know some of the snobs in the UE find this hard to believe, but the US is its own sovereign nation and has governing bodies and regulatory agencies both distinct from and operated differently from the EU. Technology is very little of the issue.
Take for example the issue my wife and I have with trying to get onto a family plan. I can port my number to her cell company, but I'd still need a separate plan. They can't combine a number with my area code on a plan with a number in her area code. Their people just haven't put the time into making it possible, even though the two area codes border one another. We could port her number to my cell provider, but then she'd lose the free calling to her large family and most of her hundreds of other contacts that she made when her provider dominated her area where she grew up.
Our solution so far has been to keep my cell phone number with my existing provider, which gives 3G coverage here but 2G where my wife is from and free calling to most of my family and friends and to keep her phone number with her existing provider which offers 3G where she's from but 2G here and free calling to most of her family and friends.
I distrust both major parties, most of the minor parties, and anyone who wants to totally undo either of the major parties only to set themselves up in the same place. I don't trust political parties because they're full of politicians. The only thing you can trust a politician to do is to play politics. Now, there are a few real leaders who want what's best for the people within both major parties, but most of the people who really want what's best are out in the field working for it with some nonprofit, as a donor to nonprofits, as people who write letters to politicians or to news editors, or who just try to get through their day without imposing their will on others more than necessary.
TBH, I can never remember what Dell machines followed what motherboard standard to what extent, if at all. Their systems seem reliable enough for the money, but being able to order stock replacement components has never been their strongest point.
I don't think it's a computer's or a phone's job to keep a driver's hands on the wheel any more than a coffee cup's or a burrito's. Enabling someone to use the device without removing hands from the wheel is one thing, but you can't make them keep their hands on the wheel.
I think for back-of-envelope type things without the envelope, this is a great idea. Sign language translation is a big boon, of course, if they can get that done.
I don't actually see this replacing a notepad or a PDA, but I do think it has promise as a quick interface for when you don't want to get those things out of your pocket. I wonder how they handle rain...
Imagine these gesture interfaces with augmented reality overlay glasses so you do have private visual somewhat persistent feedback without taking your perception out of your surroundings. I think that's a good combination, and better than using data gloves to get it.
This isn't to use for a mobile phone while driving. This is an interface for a wearable computer (which may also be a phone) when you need to give it visual input. Apparently you'd also still have a Bluetooth headset and voice dialing if it's a phone. With this you wouldn't have to dig out the phone and the stylus* and be limited to such a small input area.
* If you say a finger is better than a stylus, then you're clearly not considering visual input. Multi-touch is great and all, but draw a coherent picture on your 4-inch phone screen with your finger?
I think the chair and the whiteboard are worth sourcing from there, and the USB pen drive the intern is using to store all the pr0n he got from your company's high-speed WAN.
There are also BTX, which was an Intel attempt at a smaller format but which has been superseded by micro-ATX and flex-ATX since they, unlike BTX, are compatible with ATX cases.
I think I mentioned DTX, which AMD introduced specifically for HTPC and such.
Intel also had WTX specifically for servers and high-end workstations. It was even larger than EATX, but the extra size is really unnecessary these days since you can get dual-socket boards in EATX. Most quad-socket boards are in a form factor called SSI MEB, which is about the same size WTX was. There are also SSI CEB and SSI MEB in that SSI family. Notice Wikipedia knows little about SSI.
Then there's the ETX and XTX family which are actually COM systems rather than true motherboards.
Then there's all the non-?TX stuff like NLX, LPX, EBX, EPIC, and a few more besides. Then there are all the proprietary boards out there.
Then there's formfactors.org which, as the name suggests, is a whole site dedicated to documenting and reporting news updates on motherboard form factors. They have comparisons, specs, guides, info on testing equipment for system designers and builders, and list news on updates to specs and such on their main page.
Just make sure you're not using one of those crappy laptops that power through the battery and only use AC to charge the battery.;-) Many of these small box systems can be specified and configured with processors, chipsets, and drive systems that make their power draw comparable to laptops.
They can also be configured to draw quite a bit of power, too, though. You can get anything from a Via C3 through an Athlon II X4 (including a Core 2 Duo E7500 and lots of Atoms for Intel fans) in small form factors. And that's just if you're buying rather than building.
My main laptop's fan runs much more than most of my desktops given the same sort of use. I can imagine it's going to be a pain to replace when it goes. At least fans are cheap.
I can, at least, use the built-in 10/100, the built-in 802.11b, some USB networking (up to 4 with no hub if I give up my external mouse), and a PC Card adapter. I can actually upgrade my wifi because it's on a MiniPCI. Heck, this thing even has a built-in modem.
There is a case for a laptop, but I think there's a case for a small standalone PC, too.
Several, in fact. You can uninstall all the non-driver printer crap from the control panel on every one I've ever used. If not, it'd get wiped and reinstalled. Right now, I don't have any laptops running Windows at all, though, so I usually do that already.
Okay, I'll take my tongue out of my cheek for the reply.
Chances are they wouldn't be stupid enough to actually block those links outright. They're not as big and as entrenched as Apple, after all.
What they could easily do, though, is monitor exactly which features of the competition are mentioned, when, how, by whom, and how often. They could then react with market-based intelligence they'd have to spend millions for if they didn't control the communications channel. I'd say that's anticompetitive from the start.
The same tactic could be used to develop in-house versions of any Twitter-based applications, and even to analyze the data flow to make writing the "official" version easier. There's a real tension between developing a platform for other developers and developing new features in your platform based on the ideas of developers who used your platform. There is also an issue with dicking around with the platform without sufficient notice to ISVs.
See: Stac Electronics vs. Microsoft, Symantec vs. Microsoft, Quarterdeck code being bought for us in MS-DOS 5, early Windows versions approaching multitasking much as Desqview had done for DOS already, Microsoft shipping a Windows office application suite after telling all their ISVs they were going to market with OS/2, Windows including remote desktop, Windows including a browser, Windows including a media player, Apple putting out Garage Band, Apple putting out Final Cut, Apple putting out iWork and iLife and making them next to nothing to promote the platform, Mandriva putting out their own directory server, AMD and Intel doing graphics, Apple changing their iPhone and iPad SDK rules specifically to screw Adobe, Apple allowing people to think both major sets of APIs for OSX were going to be 64-bit some day right up until they decided Adobe'd need to rewrite everything to get 64-bit code on the platform, Apple dropping PPC like a hot potato when they went to Intel, Apple dropping m68k like a hot potato when they went to PPC, Apple granting clone licenses then killing the clone companies, Compaq killing Alpha over some cross-licensing issues with Intel, the many different incompatible and partially functional ways to script Windows and Microsoft applications over time (and sometimes incompatible ways at the same time across products)...
Have you ever wondered why the US has never gone completely metric? It's called leveraging an investment in a platform. That's something you can't do if the platform vendor changes things out from under you or starts making you product to bundle with its platform. Let's be glad Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, and the like aren't in the tool and hardware (both in their non-IT meanings) business like Stanley, Milwaukee, DeWalt, Kawasaki, Michigan, or Bosch.
A cheap APC UPS is more capable and easier to replace than a laptop battery for use as a UPS. The runtime of a full-powered PC on an entry-level UPS is terrible compared to a laptop, but you're talking UPS here and not primary power source. Most laptop batteries are terribly expensive to replace after the laptop is only a couple of years old. They are often literally more expensive than replacing the laptop with a like model from eBay. I've had good luck with some batteries, but others like to fail as soon as the warranty is over. APC's UPS batteries to to last for years longer than the warranty, and usually until they have been abused in some way.
A built-in keyboard and screen is much harder to upgrade. Laptop keyboards are also much more expensive to replace. Laptop keyboards mostly suck. A laptop keyboard adds to the footprint of the screen, unless you pay for a back-folding tablet/conventional.
Laptop touch pads and pointing sticks are a pain to replace and sometimes a pain (literally and figuratively) to use. A nice external touch pad or trackball works nicely in a cramped environment, especially if it's cordless.
There's no hinges to bust on a small box. If the stand for your external LCD monitor wears out, you don't have to ship the computer off to get it fixed.
While expansion of these things is limited, it's still often better than a laptop.
Yeah, you could get a netbook for the price of a cheap monitor, keyboard, mouse, and mini-ITX or flex-ATX system. If you're not going to carry it around though, why give up other features for portability?
That's all not to mention running a full PC compatible headless in the size of a consumer electronics component. For $200 you can use netfilter as your firewall, make it an access point, use it as a NAS, run dedicated game server software for the likes of the Battlefield series or the Valve games, make it a print server, serve boot images to other systems on your network, use fetchmail to grab your mail off your accounts and use IMAP locally to store as much as you want (just make sure to back it up), set up a backup server (no, a NAS is not a backup server although a backup server can write to a NAS or back one up), use it as a node in a file/application level/MPI/single image cluster, have it run security scans on your other systems, use it as a music player, make it stream video to systems that do have monitors, use it as a dedicated development box for non-graphical server software, use it as your own intranet web server, or more.
Then, of course, there are KVM switches out there, too. You could get a four-port KVM or KVMA and hook up three of these little boxes right next to your main desktop without shelling out for a monitor apiece. It's much handier than putting four full desktops at one desk or putting a telecom rack in your home office next to your desk.
Think "restaurant" or "retail shop". A POS system generally doesn't move around much. Buying an all-in-one is expensive. Messing with long cables and big boxes hidden under the counter eating dust isn't a very good use of tech time (usually billable per hour since these businesses rarely have any IT staff, or traveling staff if it's a chain) or of space at the checkout station. Screwing a VESA-mount PC onto the back of an LCD monitor and running really short cables makes loads of sense. If you think POS isn't a big enough market to make it, remember that IBM and NCR both got big that way.
Also, HTPCs really don't need their own monitors, and small is good there too.
Office complexes could be much nicer if when moving people around you picked up their tiny little PC and carried it to their new desk, not to mention the same problems with dust, heat, and rats' nests of cables as in POS but across many more machines. Getting a PC up off the (carpeted!) floor in the corner of the office or under the desk where it'll be kicked repeatedly is a good thing.
I don't really want a full tower or a laptop on my kitchen counter or on my nightstand. I'd rather have something small, quiet, and cheap. Hook it up to a cheap LCD, a cheap keyboard and a trackball or touch pad. I can use cordless I/O if I want, and slide the pointer and keyboard into a drawer when I'm not using one or the other. I don't really need to pay for a laptop or have the bulk of the keyboard on my table or counter when I'm not using them this way. A laptop may be portable, but even the smallest netbook has more footprint than an LCD monitor.
Oh, you were just talking about a person's main all-purpose consumer PC? That's all well and good, but the market is so much bigger than that.
Micro-ATX is the little brother of ATX, and Flex-ATX is the little brother to Micro-ATX. ITX is a different nuclear family (call them cousins). Mini-ITX, micro-ITX, nano-ITX, and even pico-ITX boards exist.
ATX was initially designed by Intel and the official updates to it have been specified by them as well. The original design was as a replacement for the dated AT boards as a general-purpose desktop and server role. Smaller versions have become popular as more circuitry has been built onto the motherboard, requiring fewer expansion slots. ATX, EATX, Micro-ATX and Flex-ATX use the same mounting hole layout (except that EATX uses a few extra holes).
AMD designed DTX to be hole-compatible with ATX cases, BTW.
ITX was initially designed by Via, as are the updates. ITX was initially designed as an embedded or industrial form factor where size, cooling, and energy efficiency were key factors. The smaller sizes (mini, nano, and pico) have been around for some time, but have been slow to become popular for general desktop use as they have been primarily built for Via's own low-power processors.
The industrial and embedded form factor PC/104 is actually smaller than all of these form factors, with mobile-ITX (which requires an additional I/O board) being the only open standard board smaller. PC/104 was developed by AmPro and has been around since 1987.
The Beagle Board is smaller still, but is not x86/x86_64 compatible. The only current ways to get smaller that I'm aware of is to ditch the motherboard altogether and go with a computer-on-module or system-on-chip design or to pony up and design your own motherboard standard.
The HP thing is actually optional. You can install just the driver or the driver and all the add-ons. The HP web site and every HP driver CD I've used allow installing just the drivers.
The add-ons offer things like ink level updates, scanning across the network (if you have a multi-function), mapping the card reader on your HP printer as a drive on your desktop system (even across the network), and some fax/image fixup/color matching/misc. other document-related software.
HP does charge a metric shit-ton of cash for their inks, with the Vivera six-color system being somewhat more reasonable than some shitty tri-color single cartridge. They don't force you to install things you don't want, though.
Contact the EU. Seriously, this is just after (in bureaucrat time) they were forced to offer browser choices. Now they're trying to lure people to their search engine to generate ad revenue by abusing the same near-monopoly on desktop OSes.
Not to mention this is a horrible security practice -- force-installing software someone didn't request. This should be prosecuted as unauthorized access to millions of computers.
They'll just block links to Facebook, Yahoo, MySpace, any torrents, news sites critical of Twitter, and coverage of things like the recently outed auto-follow bug...
Patents are already public information. Even if you put up a firewall, it's still public within the US. If you think the PRC isn't smart enough to hire someone to look up patents and send them a file, you're very racist or very shortsighted.
They're getting a public more empowered to see the ludicrous situation the PTO is in lately and to challenge silly patents which never should have been granted. As Google writes much software and software patents tend to be easily gained and broadly protected (think MPEG-LA and H.264) that can only be a good thing for them as well as everyone else who isn't a patent troll.
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That really depends on where you live. In low crime areas, a burglar alarm costs much more than the discount you get for having it. In some areas it's even statistically likely you'd pay more for the system and monitoring than to replace your likely losses. A remotely monitored fire alarm is a better investment in many areas than remotely monitored home invasion systems, but thankfully once you have one they usually do both.
If I'm home and they are armed (a crowbar used to break a window or a door frame is also a deadly weapon) then I'm protecting myself by use of force up until they leave the premises or surrender their weapon. Your situation where you live may be different by law, but not in reality. work on getting your laws to match reality.
That's bullshit. A guy broke into my friend's place one night hopped up on meth. My friend is a combat vet, certified marksman, and general gun nut. He grabbed the .45 ACP next to his bed, chambered a round, and... beat the shit out of the guy by pistol whipping him, as once he saw the guy he never felt his life was in danger. The thief went to jail on multiple counts and my friend was commended by the officers on duty for his restraint. His attorney said it'd be no problem at all if the guy tried to sue, and she'd probably be able to handle it pro bono (she is his regular lawyer for his business, though, so it's not like she's offering free services to some new client off the street after an initial consultation).
Minor wounds like from rock salt under the skin are not going to lead to lifelong disabilities and huge settlements. It's true that when you actually shoot deadly rounds you should shoot to kill and not to wound. That's not just for the lawsuits, but also because when you shoot to kill you're more likely to hit (center mass being easier to hit than a limb), you're more likely to disable the attack coming at you, and you can fire faster and with less hesitation between shots if you're trying to fill the fucker with metal than if you're trying to think about where to hit and with how many rounds.
Yes, if you start firing actual metal rounds into an attacker, empty the weapon into center mass. Even if they manage to survive and sue, you're safer during the attack to disable your attacker completely than to send them into an injured rage by grazing their thigh or something. Make sure whether they are still breathing or not to call 911 to report the incident as soon as you can safely do so without allowing them to renew the attack on you. Otherwise, you could be in trouble for not reporting it soon enough, including if he could have been saved from your gunshot injuries and you let him bleed out.
The fear of an effective prosecution is the most effective deterrent to many thieves. A hacksaw can get through those bars, but it'll take enough time they're likely to be caught. That's why the bars work. If you have off-site recording of sufficiently clear video, it would work just as well so long as you can convince the thief of that fact beforehand. The "beforehand" part becomes the problem.
The New York Times is a yellow journal and has a history of printing sensational stories whether or not they have any basis for them. Get used to that.
Here in the US where the story is taking place (and where Verizon is actually a carrier as opposed to the EU where AFAIK they are not), porting a number is possible but is a pain in the ass. I know some of the snobs in the UE find this hard to believe, but the US is its own sovereign nation and has governing bodies and regulatory agencies both distinct from and operated differently from the EU. Technology is very little of the issue.
Take for example the issue my wife and I have with trying to get onto a family plan. I can port my number to her cell company, but I'd still need a separate plan. They can't combine a number with my area code on a plan with a number in her area code. Their people just haven't put the time into making it possible, even though the two area codes border one another. We could port her number to my cell provider, but then she'd lose the free calling to her large family and most of her hundreds of other contacts that she made when her provider dominated her area where she grew up.
Our solution so far has been to keep my cell phone number with my existing provider, which gives 3G coverage here but 2G where my wife is from and free calling to most of my family and friends and to keep her phone number with her existing provider which offers 3G where she's from but 2G here and free calling to most of her family and friends.
I distrust both major parties, most of the minor parties, and anyone who wants to totally undo either of the major parties only to set themselves up in the same place. I don't trust political parties because they're full of politicians. The only thing you can trust a politician to do is to play politics. Now, there are a few real leaders who want what's best for the people within both major parties, but most of the people who really want what's best are out in the field working for it with some nonprofit, as a donor to nonprofits, as people who write letters to politicians or to news editors, or who just try to get through their day without imposing their will on others more than necessary.
At least they can leave the country legally, and without threat of death. It's Ukraine. They didn't always have that option.
For that matter, they didn't always have the right to own a business or to work for whichever business they liked.
In Soviet Ukraine, the politicians told you where to go.
Sorry, but Soviet jokes actually make sense in response to this summary.
TBH, I can never remember what Dell machines followed what motherboard standard to what extent, if at all. Their systems seem reliable enough for the money, but being able to order stock replacement components has never been their strongest point.
I don't think it's a computer's or a phone's job to keep a driver's hands on the wheel any more than a coffee cup's or a burrito's. Enabling someone to use the device without removing hands from the wheel is one thing, but you can't make them keep their hands on the wheel.
I think for back-of-envelope type things without the envelope, this is a great idea. Sign language translation is a big boon, of course, if they can get that done.
I don't actually see this replacing a notepad or a PDA, but I do think it has promise as a quick interface for when you don't want to get those things out of your pocket. I wonder how they handle rain...
Imagine these gesture interfaces with augmented reality overlay glasses so you do have private visual somewhat persistent feedback without taking your perception out of your surroundings. I think that's a good combination, and better than using data gloves to get it.
This isn't to use for a mobile phone while driving. This is an interface for a wearable computer (which may also be a phone) when you need to give it visual input. Apparently you'd also still have a Bluetooth headset and voice dialing if it's a phone. With this you wouldn't have to dig out the phone and the stylus* and be limited to such a small input area.
* If you say a finger is better than a stylus, then you're clearly not considering visual input. Multi-touch is great and all, but draw a coherent picture on your 4-inch phone screen with your finger?
ITYM System/36. Now get off my lawn! ;-)
I think the chair and the whiteboard are worth sourcing from there, and the USB pen drive the intern is using to store all the pr0n he got from your company's high-speed WAN.
There are also BTX, which was an Intel attempt at a smaller format but which has been superseded by micro-ATX and flex-ATX since they, unlike BTX, are compatible with ATX cases.
I think I mentioned DTX, which AMD introduced specifically for HTPC and such.
Intel also had WTX specifically for servers and high-end workstations. It was even larger than EATX, but the extra size is really unnecessary these days since you can get dual-socket boards in EATX. Most quad-socket boards are in a form factor called SSI MEB, which is about the same size WTX was. There are also SSI CEB and SSI MEB in that SSI family. Notice Wikipedia knows little about SSI.
Then there's the ETX and XTX family which are actually COM systems rather than true motherboards.
Then there's all the non-?TX stuff like NLX, LPX, EBX, EPIC, and a few more besides. Then there are all the proprietary boards out there.
For a pretty good comparison of the more common formats, Wikipedia has a computer motherboard form factor article and several individual articles for ATX, NLX, LPX, etc.
Then there's formfactors.org which, as the name suggests, is a whole site dedicated to documenting and reporting news updates on motherboard form factors. They have comparisons, specs, guides, info on testing equipment for system designers and builders, and list news on updates to specs and such on their main page.
Then there are embedded systems company sites and small-board enthusiast sites like smallformfactor.com (industry journal), mini-itx.com (small system enthusiasts_), pc104.com (list of PC/104 part suppliers), PC/104 Consortium, and places like Embedded Planet which sells embedded computer stuff including even more specialized small form factors, like AMC, PCI, microPCI, PrPMC, and other "industrial" form factors that typically require a chassis and backplane system designed for rack mounting in the industrial control or telecommunications applications.
Just make sure you're not using one of those crappy laptops that power through the battery and only use AC to charge the battery. ;-) Many of these small box systems can be specified and configured with processors, chipsets, and drive systems that make their power draw comparable to laptops.
They can also be configured to draw quite a bit of power, too, though. You can get anything from a Via C3 through an Athlon II X4 (including a Core 2 Duo E7500 and lots of Atoms for Intel fans) in small form factors. And that's just if you're buying rather than building.
My main laptop's fan runs much more than most of my desktops given the same sort of use. I can imagine it's going to be a pain to replace when it goes. At least fans are cheap.
I can, at least, use the built-in 10/100, the built-in 802.11b, some USB networking (up to 4 with no hub if I give up my external mouse), and a PC Card adapter. I can actually upgrade my wifi because it's on a MiniPCI. Heck, this thing even has a built-in modem.
There is a case for a laptop, but I think there's a case for a small standalone PC, too.
Several, in fact. You can uninstall all the non-driver printer crap from the control panel on every one I've ever used. If not, it'd get wiped and reinstalled. Right now, I don't have any laptops running Windows at all, though, so I usually do that already.
Okay, I'll take my tongue out of my cheek for the reply.
Chances are they wouldn't be stupid enough to actually block those links outright. They're not as big and as entrenched as Apple, after all.
What they could easily do, though, is monitor exactly which features of the competition are mentioned, when, how, by whom, and how often. They could then react with market-based intelligence they'd have to spend millions for if they didn't control the communications channel. I'd say that's anticompetitive from the start.
The same tactic could be used to develop in-house versions of any Twitter-based applications, and even to analyze the data flow to make writing the "official" version easier. There's a real tension between developing a platform for other developers and developing new features in your platform based on the ideas of developers who used your platform. There is also an issue with dicking around with the platform without sufficient notice to ISVs.
See: Stac Electronics vs. Microsoft, Symantec vs. Microsoft, Quarterdeck code being bought for us in MS-DOS 5, early Windows versions approaching multitasking much as Desqview had done for DOS already, Microsoft shipping a Windows office application suite after telling all their ISVs they were going to market with OS/2, Windows including remote desktop, Windows including a browser, Windows including a media player, Apple putting out Garage Band, Apple putting out Final Cut, Apple putting out iWork and iLife and making them next to nothing to promote the platform, Mandriva putting out their own directory server, AMD and Intel doing graphics, Apple changing their iPhone and iPad SDK rules specifically to screw Adobe, Apple allowing people to think both major sets of APIs for OSX were going to be 64-bit some day right up until they decided Adobe'd need to rewrite everything to get 64-bit code on the platform, Apple dropping PPC like a hot potato when they went to Intel, Apple dropping m68k like a hot potato when they went to PPC, Apple granting clone licenses then killing the clone companies, Compaq killing Alpha over some cross-licensing issues with Intel, the many different incompatible and partially functional ways to script Windows and Microsoft applications over time (and sometimes incompatible ways at the same time across products)...
Have you ever wondered why the US has never gone completely metric? It's called leveraging an investment in a platform. That's something you can't do if the platform vendor changes things out from under you or starts making you product to bundle with its platform. Let's be glad Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, and the like aren't in the tool and hardware (both in their non-IT meanings) business like Stanley, Milwaukee, DeWalt, Kawasaki, Michigan, or Bosch.
A cheap APC UPS is more capable and easier to replace than a laptop battery for use as a UPS. The runtime of a full-powered PC on an entry-level UPS is terrible compared to a laptop, but you're talking UPS here and not primary power source. Most laptop batteries are terribly expensive to replace after the laptop is only a couple of years old. They are often literally more expensive than replacing the laptop with a like model from eBay. I've had good luck with some batteries, but others like to fail as soon as the warranty is over. APC's UPS batteries to to last for years longer than the warranty, and usually until they have been abused in some way.
A built-in keyboard and screen is much harder to upgrade. Laptop keyboards are also much more expensive to replace. Laptop keyboards mostly suck. A laptop keyboard adds to the footprint of the screen, unless you pay for a back-folding tablet/conventional.
Laptop touch pads and pointing sticks are a pain to replace and sometimes a pain (literally and figuratively) to use. A nice external touch pad or trackball works nicely in a cramped environment, especially if it's cordless.
There's no hinges to bust on a small box. If the stand for your external LCD monitor wears out, you don't have to ship the computer off to get it fixed.
While expansion of these things is limited, it's still often better than a laptop.
Yeah, you could get a netbook for the price of a cheap monitor, keyboard, mouse, and mini-ITX or flex-ATX system. If you're not going to carry it around though, why give up other features for portability?
That's all not to mention running a full PC compatible headless in the size of a consumer electronics component. For $200 you can use netfilter as your firewall, make it an access point, use it as a NAS, run dedicated game server software for the likes of the Battlefield series or the Valve games, make it a print server, serve boot images to other systems on your network, use fetchmail to grab your mail off your accounts and use IMAP locally to store as much as you want (just make sure to back it up), set up a backup server (no, a NAS is not a backup server although a backup server can write to a NAS or back one up), use it as a node in a file/application level/MPI/single image cluster, have it run security scans on your other systems, use it as a music player, make it stream video to systems that do have monitors, use it as a dedicated development box for non-graphical server software, use it as your own intranet web server, or more.
Then, of course, there are KVM switches out there, too. You could get a four-port KVM or KVMA and hook up three of these little boxes right next to your main desktop without shelling out for a monitor apiece. It's much handier than putting four full desktops at one desk or putting a telecom rack in your home office next to your desk.
Think "restaurant" or "retail shop". A POS system generally doesn't move around much. Buying an all-in-one is expensive. Messing with long cables and big boxes hidden under the counter eating dust isn't a very good use of tech time (usually billable per hour since these businesses rarely have any IT staff, or traveling staff if it's a chain) or of space at the checkout station. Screwing a VESA-mount PC onto the back of an LCD monitor and running really short cables makes loads of sense. If you think POS isn't a big enough market to make it, remember that IBM and NCR both got big that way.
Also, HTPCs really don't need their own monitors, and small is good there too.
Office complexes could be much nicer if when moving people around you picked up their tiny little PC and carried it to their new desk, not to mention the same problems with dust, heat, and rats' nests of cables as in POS but across many more machines. Getting a PC up off the (carpeted!) floor in the corner of the office or under the desk where it'll be kicked repeatedly is a good thing.
I don't really want a full tower or a laptop on my kitchen counter or on my nightstand. I'd rather have something small, quiet, and cheap. Hook it up to a cheap LCD, a cheap keyboard and a trackball or touch pad. I can use cordless I/O if I want, and slide the pointer and keyboard into a drawer when I'm not using one or the other. I don't really need to pay for a laptop or have the bulk of the keyboard on my table or counter when I'm not using them this way. A laptop may be portable, but even the smallest netbook has more footprint than an LCD monitor.
Oh, you were just talking about a person's main all-purpose consumer PC? That's all well and good, but the market is so much bigger than that.
Micro-ATX is the little brother of ATX, and Flex-ATX is the little brother to Micro-ATX. ITX is a different nuclear family (call them cousins). Mini-ITX, micro-ITX, nano-ITX, and even pico-ITX boards exist.
ATX was initially designed by Intel and the official updates to it have been specified by them as well. The original design was as a replacement for the dated AT boards as a general-purpose desktop and server role. Smaller versions have become popular as more circuitry has been built onto the motherboard, requiring fewer expansion slots. ATX, EATX, Micro-ATX and Flex-ATX use the same mounting hole layout (except that EATX uses a few extra holes).
AMD designed DTX to be hole-compatible with ATX cases, BTW.
ITX was initially designed by Via, as are the updates. ITX was initially designed as an embedded or industrial form factor where size, cooling, and energy efficiency were key factors. The smaller sizes (mini, nano, and pico) have been around for some time, but have been slow to become popular for general desktop use as they have been primarily built for Via's own low-power processors.
The industrial and embedded form factor PC/104 is actually smaller than all of these form factors, with mobile-ITX (which requires an additional I/O board) being the only open standard board smaller. PC/104 was developed by AmPro and has been around since 1987.
The Beagle Board is smaller still, but is not x86/x86_64 compatible. The only current ways to get smaller that I'm aware of is to ditch the motherboard altogether and go with a computer-on-module or system-on-chip design or to pony up and design your own motherboard standard.
The HP thing is actually optional. You can install just the driver or the driver and all the add-ons. The HP web site and every HP driver CD I've used allow installing just the drivers.
The add-ons offer things like ink level updates, scanning across the network (if you have a multi-function), mapping the card reader on your HP printer as a drive on your desktop system (even across the network), and some fax/image fixup/color matching/misc. other document-related software.
HP does charge a metric shit-ton of cash for their inks, with the Vivera six-color system being somewhat more reasonable than some shitty tri-color single cartridge. They don't force you to install things you don't want, though.
Contact the EU. Seriously, this is just after (in bureaucrat time) they were forced to offer browser choices. Now they're trying to lure people to their search engine to generate ad revenue by abusing the same near-monopoly on desktop OSes.
Not to mention this is a horrible security practice -- force-installing software someone didn't request. This should be prosecuted as unauthorized access to millions of computers.
They'll just block links to Facebook, Yahoo, MySpace, any torrents, news sites critical of Twitter, and coverage of things like the recently outed auto-follow bug...
Patents are already public information. Even if you put up a firewall, it's still public within the US. If you think the PRC isn't smart enough to hire someone to look up patents and send them a file, you're very racist or very shortsighted.
They're getting a public more empowered to see the ludicrous situation the PTO is in lately and to challenge silly patents which never should have been granted. As Google writes much software and software patents tend to be easily gained and broadly protected (think MPEG-LA and H.264) that can only be a good thing for them as well as everyone else who isn't a patent troll.