I chose laptop, even though I do 3D rendering. Everybody here has told you they use less power, yadda yadda yadda. One of the main reasons I went laptop is in consideration of a few things.
1.) I move about once a year. I'm sick of lugging my desktop around. When it goes extinct, that's it for desktops to me.
2.) I wanted an LCD that'd do 1600 by 1200, and the cheapest I've found those is $1,000. My laptop was only $700 on top of that. (Yay for Dell.)
3.) When it's time to replace my laptop, this one will still be useful. I have 4 towers at home that'll never see the light of day again, but the laptop I bought back in 99 is still finding use as a web terminal. (plus, selling them is easy.)
4.) I'm no longer sold on the upgradability factor. By the time mid-range processors are 4x what I currently have, I've saved up enough for a new laptop. I'm not the type to drop $500 in a vid card for a few extra FPS. (Lately I've been gaming on my Game Cube anyway.)
5.) Extra desk space. Need I say more?
My current desktop has been promoted to 'server', and I send it rendering jobs to do once in a while. Eventually I'm just going to hide it in a dark corner somewhere.
"The receptors in the certer of the eye respond much more slowly than the receptors on the edges;"
It's kind of funny how the edges of your eyes work. I went to a play with a friend of mine, we had center seats. On either side of the stage was a dim EXIT sign. Whenever I looked straight at the stage, I could see the EXIT sign at the edge of my vision, but if I looked right at it, it was too dim to see it. I remember my friend next to me was having the same problem, we'd both turn our head and look at the exit sign.
More recently, I noticed something kind of interesting. My car has an alarm in it. There is a blue LED next to the steering wheel that flashes when the alarm is on. It's bright enough that the seat gets illuminated by this LED. I was out in my front yard one night, and every time I looked away from the car, I saw a flash. But if I looked right at it, I couldn't see anything. I sat there for a moment and shifted my eyes left and right. When my car was in the edge of my vision, I could plainly see the light flash. But if I looked right at it, I couldn't see the light flashing against the seat at all. The difference was startling, it was almost like somebody was only making the light flash when I wasn't looking right at it.
Part of me wonders if this 'feature' of our eyes is responsible for ghost sightings.
"If the pan is fast enough, you're going to see flicker and jerkiness."
When I was a kid, I saw an animated movie a little too close to the screen. As some of you already know, when there is panning in an animated movie, there is no motion blur. The strobing was distracting. There were places I was seeing a double image.
I think projectors have improved since then. I read somewhere that they actually show a film at 48fps, but each frame is shown twice. If that's true, I can see why I haven't noticed it in recent years.
"So let's see, we've got a 100MBps fat pipe direct from the heartland of the U.S. to the largest communist nation in the world, but I still can't get a direct flight from Miami to a communist country 90 miles off our shore???"
You can't carry refugees/drugs/weapons/money/cigars with fibre. If you considered the fact that there's no need for data to go through customs, you wouldn't find this so 'odd'.
"I used to do my homework on it and I got in trouble because my teacher thought the computer was doing it for me. To this day that still makes me laugh."
When I first got into 3D rendering, I had the same problem. My art teacher thought the computer was making the 'art'. I went round and round with her over that. She finally relented when I showed her an image that proved an artist has to drive a 3D program to get good results. Basically it was a 3-D recreation of a drawing I did.
"I don't completely get it... So a sound file was used again and again...isn't this common place?"
I heard this one a few times in RotK. As for being 'common place', perhaps, but this is a human voice creating it as opposed to your typical reused sound effect. It's sort of like identifying that guy who's like in every movie, but nobody has any idea what his name is.
Try not to oversimplify it, it'll help you in your quest for enlightenment.
" And since the Game.com didn't flop too badly....they had a few decent games, including Duke Nukem 3D, so I can't imagine this system to die off immediately."
Have you actually played Duke Nukem 3D? It wasn't 3D, it was barely 2D. They could have done virtually the same game in one of those old Tiger handhelds from back in the early 90's.
"Oh this sounds like it will be such a loss. The casting of Smith already hints at a typical "politically correct", trendy actor ladden, ball of crap hurled from Hollywood"
I look forward to the day where the casting of a black actor doesn't result in speculation that it was a 'politically correct' move.
I'm not convinced that's your real motivation for posting that comment. I think the casting of Will Smith did hit you wrong, but I don't think it's about race at all. I think you're worried that the movie will be a comedy. Frankly, I am too.
Slashdot Mirror
... PocketPC or Zaurus suit your needs? If not, could ya do some simplification for that?
I chose laptop, even though I do 3D rendering. Everybody here has told you they use less power, yadda yadda yadda. One of the main reasons I went laptop is in consideration of a few things.
1.) I move about once a year. I'm sick of lugging my desktop around. When it goes extinct, that's it for desktops to me.
2.) I wanted an LCD that'd do 1600 by 1200, and the cheapest I've found those is $1,000. My laptop was only $700 on top of that. (Yay for Dell.)
3.) When it's time to replace my laptop, this one will still be useful. I have 4 towers at home that'll never see the light of day again, but the laptop I bought back in 99 is still finding use as a web terminal. (plus, selling them is easy.)
4.) I'm no longer sold on the upgradability factor. By the time mid-range processors are 4x what I currently have, I've saved up enough for a new laptop. I'm not the type to drop $500 in a vid card for a few extra FPS. (Lately I've been gaming on my Game Cube anyway.)
5.) Extra desk space. Need I say more?
My current desktop has been promoted to 'server', and I send it rendering jobs to do once in a while. Eventually I'm just going to hide it in a dark corner somewhere.
Everybody's focused on my apparent 'attack' on Linux, nobody's looking at what I said.
"The basis for a TV reality show... Steve B and Bill G install a new Windows PC, without any help, or special privileges, or special help lines."
On UPN, they'll have Linus try to get an NVidia card running in Linux.
"Or you can just do what I did & get your Mom an iMac...."
Think of the productivity boost they'll have with no games to play!
"If your 'Joy' stick fits in a USB port, you have bigger problems then the blaster worm."
The nice thing about flaming somebody over the internet is that you don't have to have a big dick to tell somebody they have a small one.
"The receptors in the certer of the eye respond much more slowly than the receptors on the edges;"
It's kind of funny how the edges of your eyes work. I went to a play with a friend of mine, we had center seats. On either side of the stage was a dim EXIT sign. Whenever I looked straight at the stage, I could see the EXIT sign at the edge of my vision, but if I looked right at it, it was too dim to see it. I remember my friend next to me was having the same problem, we'd both turn our head and look at the exit sign.
More recently, I noticed something kind of interesting. My car has an alarm in it. There is a blue LED next to the steering wheel that flashes when the alarm is on. It's bright enough that the seat gets illuminated by this LED. I was out in my front yard one night, and every time I looked away from the car, I saw a flash. But if I looked right at it, I couldn't see anything. I sat there for a moment and shifted my eyes left and right. When my car was in the edge of my vision, I could plainly see the light flash. But if I looked right at it, I couldn't see the light flashing against the seat at all. The difference was startling, it was almost like somebody was only making the light flash when I wasn't looking right at it.
Part of me wonders if this 'feature' of our eyes is responsible for ghost sightings.
"If the pan is fast enough, you're going to see flicker and jerkiness."
When I was a kid, I saw an animated movie a little too close to the screen. As some of you already know, when there is panning in an animated movie, there is no motion blur. The strobing was distracting. There were places I was seeing a double image.
I think projectors have improved since then. I read somewhere that they actually show a film at 48fps, but each frame is shown twice. If that's true, I can see why I haven't noticed it in recent years.
"News for Nerds... How is this news? The book was published in 1977."
RTFA. It also says 'Stuff that Matters'.
...UniRacers popped into mind when reading the headline.
"So let's see, we've got a 100MBps fat pipe direct from the heartland of the U.S. to the largest communist nation in the world, but I still can't get a direct flight from Miami to a communist country 90 miles off our shore???"
You can't carry refugees/drugs/weapons/money/cigars with fibre. If you considered the fact that there's no need for data to go through customs, you wouldn't find this so 'odd'.
"UT2K3 perhaps? ;)"
Screw that, I wanna play Red Alert!
"I was being sarcastic, you idiot."
On this ship, you're to call me idiot, not you captain.
" thats way more useful than a camera-in-a-cellphone"
No, it's not.
Besides, my cell phone records both sound and pictures.
"And Bill Gates couldn't possibly have lied in that interview."
It really isn't that likely he would have said that. Virtually nobody in the computer industry would ever say something like that.
"I used to do my homework on it and I got in trouble because my teacher thought the computer was doing it for me. To this day that still makes me laugh."
When I first got into 3D rendering, I had the same problem. My art teacher thought the computer was making the 'art'. I went round and round with her over that. She finally relented when I showed her an image that proved an artist has to drive a 3D program to get good results. Basically it was a 3-D recreation of a drawing I did.
" I wrote a 10k line Tangrams program! And I was 8 years old. Beat that!"
I was on girlfriend no. 2 at the age of 8.
"I don't completely get it... So a sound file was used again and again...isn't this common place?"
I heard this one a few times in RotK. As for being 'common place', perhaps, but this is a human voice creating it as opposed to your typical reused sound effect. It's sort of like identifying that guy who's like in every movie, but nobody has any idea what his name is.
Try not to oversimplify it, it'll help you in your quest for enlightenment.
Wally got a story posted on Slashdot! Bet he gets a visit from Alice soon.
Flamebait? Do you really think people are going to fling mud at me because I disagree with the modding up of an overdone joke here?
" And since the Game.com didn't flop too badly....they had a few decent games, including Duke Nukem 3D, so I can't imagine this system to die off immediately."
Have you actually played Duke Nukem 3D? It wasn't 3D, it was barely 2D. They could have done virtually the same game in one of those old Tiger handhelds from back in the early 90's.
"Macs will run at 3 ghz? WOOHOO! That means AMD and Intel will have 6gig chips!"
Flamebait? Nobody saw the humor in that?
"AC so I'm not a karma-whore."
Pity. You should be rewarded for making my life a little easier.
"Oh this sounds like it will be such a loss. The casting of Smith already hints at a typical "politically correct", trendy actor ladden, ball of crap hurled from Hollywood"
I look forward to the day where the casting of a black actor doesn't result in speculation that it was a 'politically correct' move.
I'm not convinced that's your real motivation for posting that comment. I think the casting of Will Smith did hit you wrong, but I don't think it's about race at all. I think you're worried that the movie will be a comedy. Frankly, I am too.
"I, for one, welcome my new fully automated domestic assistants."
I'm so fucking tired of this joke getting modded up. Go spend your mod points on something original.