It's an advantage yes, but hardly an unfair one.. Everyone else is free to use a keyboard and mouse if they so desire. You can buy joypads with rapid fire and macro support too, are these devices also unfair?
You don't force people to use them, you just provide the option for those who want it. Other people can simply ignore the option and use the existing pads.
They do make desktops... A quick google for "sony vaio desktop" reveals a large number... They seem to mostly make imac-style all in one units these days.
Or they would just import more foreign cars... Cars from all these countries are already for sale in the US, most manufacturers offer diesel variants in europe but only offer petrol versions of the same cars in the US, and would likely continue to do so but in greater numbers if american car companies folded.
All of this bio waste is used tho... Some of it is used as animal feed, the rest is typically allowed to rot down and is used to fertilize land for use to grow the next crop.
Extra controller - only if you want 2 people to play on one console at the same time, is this even commonly done on a PC? I've never seen that so it's an unfair comparison. Wireless - assuming you want to use the networking capabilities wirelessly, many people are perfectly happy with cables, my xbox is under the tv and the phoneline terminates next to the antenna socket for the tv, so the dsl router was already there. Bigger drive - or you could save money by buying the machine with the bigger drive already. Headphones - you would need headphones on a PC too. HDTV - wouldn't you want to buy a good TV anyway, for you know watching tv programs?
It's not the "security" aspect of consoles which makes them attractive... Piracy occurs on consoles anyway, just look at the mod scene or go visit thepiratebay and see how many consoles games are available to download. The advantage of a console is that the hardware is static... Games developers are not saddled with compatibility middleware, they can bypass it and take full advantage of the hardware, and end users have the convenience of knowing that any game they buy for their console will work out of the box with zero hassle, and they don't have to read and understand the system requirements list, deal with buggy drm schemes or worry about background tasks including malware from interfering with the game.
Nintendo also have the least reason not to merge them... Sony manufacture PCs, making the PS3 a fully functional computer would harm sales... MS make software for PCs, so a fully blown xbox computer would also harm their sales.
A fully functional browser, email client and simple writing/drawing apps on a console would result in a lot of people not needing a separate computer.
Sony could do this tomorrow, they already offer linux compatibility on the PS3, all they need is to provide a simplified distro such as the ones provided with netbooks, ship it on dvd and make it trivial to install (to the point of just booting the dvd and waiting a few mins) or even supply it pre-installed. But see above for why they don't.
People used to play on Amigas and C64s connected to their TV all the time... PC gaming is an unnecessary hassle, too many variables to contend with, poor longevity of the hardware (before it becomes obsolete for running new games, not before it fails), hassle configuring and maintaining the os and associated software including fighting against drm schemes, too many different incompatible types of hardware and their drivers, background processes hampering game performance etc.
If you have a machine solely for gaming, then it may as well be a machine thats guaranteed to play all games released for it, plays the games simply by inserting the media, and only plays the games and doesn't hassle you with anything else. If you use a PC for other things, then the presence of games and their drm schemes are probably having a negative impact on your other activities anyway.
If instead of buying a gaming PC, spec up a cheaper machine that will handle everything other than games that you do on it, see how much money you saved and see if that money will buy a PS3...
As someone else pointed out, all we really need on consoles are support for keyboards and mice, which shouldn't be terribly difficult now that all modern consoles support USB. Where you position the console is up to you, as is what type of games you play on it.
Incidentally, i always use a keyboard on my lap, i don't even have a desk... I'd not use a mouse on my lap simply because it has nowhere to rest... There might be a market for gaming chairs which have places to put the keyboard and mouse.
Keyboard and mouse support on consoles would be great, especially if a large number of games supported them... Unlike various addon controllers like the steering wheels you can get, which only work with a small handful of games. Having a console-like device that connects to the TV, has a keyboard and boots games directly by inserting the media is far from a new idea... The Amiga did that, and damn well too. Console companies are missing a trick here, my parents bought me an Amiga because it could play games and therefore i would be satisfied with it, and it could also be used for doing homework etc... As the article mentioned, many games need a keyboard and mouse to play properly, and if a console could perform the basic computing tasks most people do they could save themselves the hassle and cost of having to maintain multiple systems. On the Amiga, there were some annoying games that made you type characters using the joypad, but most games used each IO device where it was most appropriate.
Incidentally, the PS3 uses standard SATA drives, so there is nothing stopping you connecting a bigger one... It's designed to take 2.5" laptop drives internally, but you can actually connect a 3.5" desktop drive if you don't mind having cables hanging out and have an external source of power for it.
It's a little different on the pentium pro, which was especially poor at running 16bit code and ran 9x quite slowly... Also if you had more than 1 cpu 9x simply would just ignore the extra ones.
A lot of business apps don't support 64bit either... The Cisco VPN client for instance, is not available for 64bit windows or 64bit linux, if you want 64bit you have to use an old sparc running solaris... I'm sure other proprietary vpn clients are just as bad too.
Not exactly... They started with the original NT kernel which was actually quite good, and then they bolted on all kinds of cruft to make it compatible with their dos based windows, resulting in quite a mess.
But a BSD project can move towards a closed source fork, with the original BSD licensed code dying out... If the closed source version ends up more widely used and incompatible, then having the original version isn't terribly useful.
Information can be kept secret and protected, it doesn't need to be thought of as a physical good... Everyone has lots of personal information (passwords, ssn etc) that they keep secret.. And then there is other info they freely share with others, wether it be a casual chat about the weather or what was on tv last night etc.
Anyone who possesses the information can decide what they want to do with it, and it's perfectly legal so long as the original source of the info agrees with you doing so. You wouldn't give away someone else's personal information, but there is plenty of other information people will have no issue with you spreading.
The trouble is, teachers are paid extremely poorly (that's why we have so many bad ones) and teaching in high schools can often be dangerous with kids carrying knives and/or guns around... Anyone with a good level of linux knowledge will be earning far more than a teacher ever will.
We need a total rework of the education system... Trying to continue the totalitarian school systems from 150 years ago where kids sat in silence bored rigid while a teacher droned on just doesn't work... The more you try to force a kid, the more they will rebel. The more you bore them, the more they will try to seek alternatives (ie playing truant).
If school lessons were fun and interesting, kids would actually want to attend them. If you just try to force them into attending something they hate, then they will do everything they can to avoid going.
If both will do the job, then it makes no sense whatsoever to use windows... Linux costs less, and will save cash strapped schools a lot of money, not only in what they save by using free software but also what they save by being able to reuse old hardware, and buy cheaper lower specced hardware. Teachers should be all for it, because less money spent on computers and associated tools means more money to spend on other things, like teachers salaries.
PDFCreator? Doesn't staroffice export to PDF natively?
Your colleague is clearly rather ignorant. It makes perfect sense in virtually any situation, especially business, to evaluate multiple options thoroughly and decide based on relative merits of each.
I deal with similar people at work too... They are very jealous that I always have newer hardware to play with than they do, and they refuse to believe i'm not getting favoritism from the bosses... Infact, I save so much by not buying any software and making more efficient use of servers etc, that I'm able to spend the surplus budget on new hardware like fancy new laptops and such. My budget is actually considerably lower than theirs, too.
It's important to point out that software is at it's core information, not a physical product...
It is akin to scientific research... Scientists publish research papers all the time, often for the reputation it earns them, other times so that the wider scientific community can take his research and add to it, hopefully sharing the results back.
I've had no problem explaining free software to my grandfather, because he is a scientist and understands the concept perfectly.
The problem is thinking of software as a physical good rather than as information...
Information can be passed around freely and often is, it can also be bought, sold and hoarded. Giving someone a free piece of software is no different from giving them a free piece of advise or just having a general conversation with them.
CPU cycles, power, memory, all adds up... And once the load exceeds a single box, you have to get into clustering and load balancing.
How many times is your code going to run? Slower code wastes time each and every time it is executed, so the time you saved writing it could end up being lost a thousand times over as you wait for the code to finish it's task.
In this case, acceptably fast is "as fast or faster, using the same or less memory" than other competing options.
My biggest gripe is when people take a perfectly working app tho, and rewrite it in whatever language is fashionable at the time, which seems to be ruby right now... You end up with new code that hasnt been fully debugged yet, which runs at a fraction of the speed of the original, and consumes far more resources.
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It's an advantage yes, but hardly an unfair one.. Everyone else is free to use a keyboard and mouse if they so desire. You can buy joypads with rapid fire and macro support too, are these devices also unfair?
You don't force people to use them, you just provide the option for those who want it. Other people can simply ignore the option and use the existing pads.
They do make desktops...
A quick google for "sony vaio desktop" reveals a large number... They seem to mostly make imac-style all in one units these days.
Or they would just import more foreign cars...
Cars from all these countries are already for sale in the US, most manufacturers offer diesel variants in europe but only offer petrol versions of the same cars in the US, and would likely continue to do so but in greater numbers if american car companies folded.
All of this bio waste is used tho...
Some of it is used as animal feed, the rest is typically allowed to rot down and is used to fertilize land for use to grow the next crop.
But consider...
Extra controller - only if you want 2 people to play on one console at the same time, is this even commonly done on a PC? I've never seen that so it's an unfair comparison.
Wireless - assuming you want to use the networking capabilities wirelessly, many people are perfectly happy with cables, my xbox is under the tv and the phoneline terminates next to the antenna socket for the tv, so the dsl router was already there.
Bigger drive - or you could save money by buying the machine with the bigger drive already.
Headphones - you would need headphones on a PC too.
HDTV - wouldn't you want to buy a good TV anyway, for you know watching tv programs?
It's not the "security" aspect of consoles which makes them attractive...
Piracy occurs on consoles anyway, just look at the mod scene or go visit thepiratebay and see how many consoles games are available to download.
The advantage of a console is that the hardware is static... Games developers are not saddled with compatibility middleware, they can bypass it and take full advantage of the hardware, and end users have the convenience of knowing that any game they buy for their console will work out of the box with zero hassle, and they don't have to read and understand the system requirements list, deal with buggy drm schemes or worry about background tasks including malware from interfering with the game.
Nintendo also have the least reason not to merge them...
Sony manufacture PCs, making the PS3 a fully functional computer would harm sales...
MS make software for PCs, so a fully blown xbox computer would also harm their sales.
A fully functional browser, email client and simple writing/drawing apps on a console would result in a lot of people not needing a separate computer.
Sony could do this tomorrow, they already offer linux compatibility on the PS3, all they need is to provide a simplified distro such as the ones provided with netbooks, ship it on dvd and make it trivial to install (to the point of just booting the dvd and waiting a few mins) or even supply it pre-installed. But see above for why they don't.
People used to play on Amigas and C64s connected to their TV all the time...
PC gaming is an unnecessary hassle, too many variables to contend with, poor longevity of the hardware (before it becomes obsolete for running new games, not before it fails), hassle configuring and maintaining the os and associated software including fighting against drm schemes, too many different incompatible types of hardware and their drivers, background processes hampering game performance etc.
If you have a machine solely for gaming, then it may as well be a machine thats guaranteed to play all games released for it, plays the games simply by inserting the media, and only plays the games and doesn't hassle you with anything else.
If you use a PC for other things, then the presence of games and their drm schemes are probably having a negative impact on your other activities anyway.
If instead of buying a gaming PC, spec up a cheaper machine that will handle everything other than games that you do on it, see how much money you saved and see if that money will buy a PS3...
As someone else pointed out, all we really need on consoles are support for keyboards and mice, which shouldn't be terribly difficult now that all modern consoles support USB. Where you position the console is up to you, as is what type of games you play on it.
Incidentally, i always use a keyboard on my lap, i don't even have a desk... I'd not use a mouse on my lap simply because it has nowhere to rest... There might be a market for gaming chairs which have places to put the keyboard and mouse.
Keyboard and mouse support on consoles would be great, especially if a large number of games supported them... Unlike various addon controllers like the steering wheels you can get, which only work with a small handful of games.
Having a console-like device that connects to the TV, has a keyboard and boots games directly by inserting the media is far from a new idea... The Amiga did that, and damn well too.
Console companies are missing a trick here, my parents bought me an Amiga because it could play games and therefore i would be satisfied with it, and it could also be used for doing homework etc...
As the article mentioned, many games need a keyboard and mouse to play properly, and if a console could perform the basic computing tasks most people do they could save themselves the hassle and cost of having to maintain multiple systems.
On the Amiga, there were some annoying games that made you type characters using the joypad, but most games used each IO device where it was most appropriate.
Incidentally, the PS3 uses standard SATA drives, so there is nothing stopping you connecting a bigger one... It's designed to take 2.5" laptop drives internally, but you can actually connect a 3.5" desktop drive if you don't mind having cables hanging out and have an external source of power for it.
It's a little different on the pentium pro, which was especially poor at running 16bit code and ran 9x quite slowly...
Also if you had more than 1 cpu 9x simply would just ignore the extra ones.
Perhaps he doesnt want to waste the money to buy window and all the required third party junk?
A lot of business apps don't support 64bit either...
The Cisco VPN client for instance, is not available for 64bit windows or 64bit linux, if you want 64bit you have to use an old sparc running solaris... I'm sure other proprietary vpn clients are just as bad too.
Or they turn off the activation servers...
Not exactly...
They started with the original NT kernel which was actually quite good, and then they bolted on all kinds of cruft to make it compatible with their dos based windows, resulting in quite a mess.
It's not hard to make it faster than vista...
Where are the benchmarks comparing it to XP, Ubuntu and OSX?
But a BSD project can move towards a closed source fork, with the original BSD licensed code dying out... If the closed source version ends up more widely used and incompatible, then having the original version isn't terribly useful.
Information can be kept secret and protected, it doesn't need to be thought of as a physical good...
Everyone has lots of personal information (passwords, ssn etc) that they keep secret.. And then there is other info they freely share with others, wether it be a casual chat about the weather or what was on tv last night etc.
Anyone who possesses the information can decide what they want to do with it, and it's perfectly legal so long as the original source of the info agrees with you doing so. You wouldn't give away someone else's personal information, but there is plenty of other information people will have no issue with you spreading.
The trouble is, teachers are paid extremely poorly (that's why we have so many bad ones) and teaching in high schools can often be dangerous with kids carrying knives and/or guns around...
Anyone with a good level of linux knowledge will be earning far more than a teacher ever will.
We need a total rework of the education system... Trying to continue the totalitarian school systems from 150 years ago where kids sat in silence bored rigid while a teacher droned on just doesn't work...
The more you try to force a kid, the more they will rebel.
The more you bore them, the more they will try to seek alternatives (ie playing truant).
If school lessons were fun and interesting, kids would actually want to attend them. If you just try to force them into attending something they hate, then they will do everything they can to avoid going.
Also point out that when it comes to tech jobs, linux skills almost always command more money than someone who has only ever used windows.
Not just PHP...
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.austin.isd.tenet.edu
PHP on Linux, perhaps this teacher should quit her job working for a school that hosts their website on illegal software.
If both will do the job, then it makes no sense whatsoever to use windows...
Linux costs less, and will save cash strapped schools a lot of money, not only in what they save by using free software but also what they save by being able to reuse old hardware, and buy cheaper lower specced hardware.
Teachers should be all for it, because less money spent on computers and associated tools means more money to spend on other things, like teachers salaries.
PDFCreator? Doesn't staroffice export to PDF natively?
Your colleague is clearly rather ignorant. It makes perfect sense in virtually any situation, especially business, to evaluate multiple options thoroughly and decide based on relative merits of each.
I deal with similar people at work too... They are very jealous that I always have newer hardware to play with than they do, and they refuse to believe i'm not getting favoritism from the bosses... Infact, I save so much by not buying any software and making more efficient use of servers etc, that I'm able to spend the surplus budget on new hardware like fancy new laptops and such. My budget is actually considerably lower than theirs, too.
It's important to point out that software is at it's core information, not a physical product...
It is akin to scientific research... Scientists publish research papers all the time, often for the reputation it earns them, other times so that the wider scientific community can take his research and add to it, hopefully sharing the results back.
I've had no problem explaining free software to my grandfather, because he is a scientist and understands the concept perfectly.
The problem is thinking of software as a physical good rather than as information...
Information can be passed around freely and often is, it can also be bought, sold and hoarded. Giving someone a free piece of software is no different from giving them a free piece of advise or just having a general conversation with them.
CPU cycles, power, memory, all adds up... And once the load exceeds a single box, you have to get into clustering and load balancing.
How many times is your code going to run? Slower code wastes time each and every time it is executed, so the time you saved writing it could end up being lost a thousand times over as you wait for the code to finish it's task.
In this case, acceptably fast is "as fast or faster, using the same or less memory" than other competing options.
My biggest gripe is when people take a perfectly working app tho, and rewrite it in whatever language is fashionable at the time, which seems to be ruby right now... You end up with new code that hasnt been fully debugged yet, which runs at a fraction of the speed of the original, and consumes far more resources.