The Commonwealth wasn't exactly that democratic. I would place the Provisions of Oxford higher on that list.
Also a monarch that had lost the support of his people was also in a very weak spot. Richard II knew exactly that when he personally met with Wat Tyler. The English monarchy had always been very unique in Europe. They constantly had to deal with taxpayer's strikes, revolts and insubordination when they took a wrong step.
I wouldn't say that the motivation for that comic and a candidate being smeared for playing WoW are the same. The D&D isue profited nobody and was nothing but a witch hunt. Trying to paint somebody in a bad light for playing an MMO was just a smear campaign that backfired. I guess a lot of people on the GOP campaign team also had WoW accounts. The real issue here propably is that they expected the voters to swallow it. Which in design is an insult to their intelligence.
Here is how you could shock the real Christian Taliban. First create a human male character. Then place him behind a cow. Then chant the ancient evil mantra "/dance". Fraps that. Submit it to whoever wants to listen as "Cow Sodomy Simulator corrupts our youth by the millions!". Next step: set up a booth selling torches and pitchforks next to their church. Profit.
In short: 1) Steal underwear. 2) Sodomize a cow. 3) Profit.
The principle of being born on GOP land. And to a GOP family. It is not a matter of choice because that has already been made for you.
Which is a rather feudal principle. Not a democratic one.
So the whole Rep/Dem thing is basically the same kerfuffle as the old York/Lancaster bit? Only with less codpieces? I can roll with that. Please do continue.
I had said it before: Lackland's son was briefly ousted by a guy who had the audacity to call in an elected parliament. And his grandson and everybody else afterwards had to deal with them. Apart from the Norman Bastards all English monarchs were nothing without their subjects' consent. Henry the 8th was the closest to an absolute monarch as that blighted island ever got. The Stuarts tried to mimic him but they didn't get very far.
...which still doesn't explain how Gingrich even remotely managed to be a contender. That man is personally odious.
I truly believe you are right. And this will be the conclusion the Republican party will have to come to or it will be unelectable on a federal level for the next decade.
It truly is hilarious. The GOP moved so far to the right that they made Obama look like a leftie. I grew up in the 70ies and 80ies and for the past 10-15 years I have been wondering what on earth is going on with them? A year ago they would have taken the whole country by a landslide. Then they started campaigning.
The GOP currently is in a bad shape and unelectable. In 4 years the Tea Party is either a ghost from the past or there will be a Democrat dominance for at least a decade.
I predict differently. If the Republicans continue to embrace the Tea Party loonies then they will be making way for Democrat dominance.
That strategy has lost them the election. And they will come to the same conclusion. The shift to the right will stop or the GOP is done for a long time. I don't really understand what they did in the primaries. The ultra-right will vote GOP anyway and you need to capture the moderates who can either vote Dem or GOP based on current policies they most identify with. If the party had shut the fuck up after the primaries then it would have been Romney by a landslide. GOP was unelectable for the majority of voters and that's why the Dems won.
Just look at what happened. Two states somewhat legalized weed, an openly gay has been elected and to everybodies dismay having a WoW account doesn't disqualify you from office. And now look me straight in the eyes and tell me that Jeebus-based WASPy male-dominated politics have a chance in the US on a federal level. You do not win votes by how loud you shout.
The GOP knows that and already has started acting on it. They will cooperate since they don't need to obstruct Obama for another 4 years. The guy will be gone no matter what they do. But now they CAN shed the Tea Baggers because they can now say that they lost them the election. They couldn't do that 2 years ago since they won the house which turned out to be a fluke.
Well, you'll have to be fair. With the installation of Obamacare they have entered the 19th century. The pink leftie Otto von Bismarck introduced Mandatory Health Insurance for low incomes and the arch-communist Kaiser Wilhelm the First smiled on it.
The Royal Family is always under scrutiny if it does try to influence policies. At the moment the Prince of Wales is being put under a mganifying glass because of his lobbying for his numerous social causes. The Queen only comes into play when things have gone terribly wrong. What a King/Queen can and can't do has been determined under the Stuarts(one got his head lobbed off, the other had to flee from an orange).
And that was quite some time ago. Just to boggle the mind for a bit Edward Longshanks had to call in a parliament to raise taxes for his wars. That's the guy you might know from that Braveheart movie that was so popular a couple of years ago. I repeat: Edward the First of England, one of the most autocratic monarchs the country ever saw, had to form a parliament to get things done. And he wasn't the first who had to do just that. "No taxation without representation" is a very old, very English principle.
Simon de Montfort, who had ousted Edward's daddy for a year or so, even went so far to have non-nobles and fat cats sit in his parliament. Not entirely democratic but at least somewhat elected. And that was mid-13th century. There's a reason why he has a spot on a wall in the US House of Representatives dedicated to him. Stuff like that tends to linger. And once you went there you can't go back.
I remember my first HD. It had the handy form factor of a shoe box. It needed an external power supply. It made a most frightful racket. It weighed a ton. And it did hold a whopping 10MB.
Not many of us can claim their first computer was a 640k, 16 color, 2 floppy, 10MB HD Decision Mate V. That's NCR. In the early 80ies a computer deal with Iran fell through(for some reason or another...it's got something to do with changing the name of the country from Persia to Iran and them snubbing Jimmy Carter) leaving NCR stranded with storehouses full of those amazing machines. My dad having worked for 15 years for those bozos nabbed one of them. Well, he payed 600 deutschmarks for it and got one for his son. My fate was sealed ever since.
Thanks, dad. I could have been a literature scholar if it hadn't been for you. Hrumph.
The current console generation is a joke for gaming and has always been. They lack the versatility of input devices that are traditional for PCs. Joysticks, HOTAS, racing wheels and gamepads have been always available for PCs but they weren't strictly necessary due to the sheer flexibility of keyboard and mouse. And there hasn't ever been such a huge mandatory bureaucratic overhead when trying to publish for PC. Spend thousands of dollars for a dev kit, an unlocked console AND so called QA from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo? There has already been a case where an indie developer simply didn't publish a patch for an XBox Live Arcade game due to the bill MS would send them and the WEEKS they spend on "QA". Compare that to BBS, FTP, Web, Steam, Humble Bundle and GOG. The Ouya has potential because it does away with that crap.
Take a look at what consoles did to the FPS genre. Aim assist due to THE F*CKING WRONG INPUT DEVICE, handholding/non-explorable terrain due to memory limitations and technology that's basically stuck in the stone ages. I can't blame the jingoistic content of the Mediocre Warfare Battle Furry series on the technology but I will do so nonetheless. Regenerating health because we can't hide a healt pack behind a pillar because RETURN TO COMBAT ZONE! It is a sad day indeed when my Android tablet that wasn't built for it is capable of producing visuals that are on par with a PS2 AND send a 3D signal over HDMI to my 3D monitor. Within a year they will be on par with a PS3. And don't get me started on half-assed PC ports that still get sold at 60$ a pop. Skyrim sticks out like a sore thumb in that respect and that doesn't even run on PS3.
That being said, I do enjoy playing XCOM with a gamepad. It can be a bit fiddly at times but those controls are very well done.
I hereby declare Nov 1st national Burn Your Console Day. Stop buying that crap.
Nope. You put the executive summary at the end so they have to scroll over a lot of stuff that looks terribly insightful and very valuable by sheer volume.
If I had put it at the top that would imply I knew beforehand what I would ramble on about when in reality I am as surprised by the result as you are.
tl;dr:
Bullshit is power. Especially if you don't have a clue. :P
I'm in the fortuitous position that I don't have to care about price that much. But I do care about lock-in. That's one reason why I waill wait before I get a Windows 8 tablet. Not Windows RT. This imho is a solution looking for a problem.
To me the sweet thing about those full Windows 8 tablets is that there is absolutely no reason to bring a laptop because they basically have the same specs plus the touch screen and the form factor.
I agree.
the major driver for PC sales in the past has been obsolescence. Something new popped up that you absolutely wanted but your machine couldn't handle it. Most of the time this involved replacing CPU, Graphics card, Mainboard and possibly RAM. Basically a totally new machine.
Last year I bought an i7 based system with 16gb RAM, SSD and a Geforce 580. I also use this machine for development and have to run an awful lot on it. It is BORED stiff most of the time. CPUs have been fast enough for some time. Graphic cards don't need replacing as often since PC gaming is still held back by the current console generation. Unless of course you want to drive multiple screens at monster resolutions...
A NORMAL user who does some text processing, web browsing, Youtube and stuff can easily live with a 5 year old machine. Windows 8 might be a reason to upgrade.
So what now? Utility? Form factor? I am SERIOUSLY considering to get one of those Windows 8(not RT) Transformers once all the inevitable kinks got ironed out. And I WILL ditch my laptop for it. Because a tablet/laptop hybrid is exactly what I'm interested in. I've got a Transformer Prime which is a brilliant little machine. But now, after living with Android for the last 3 years I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that it simply sucks. Especially web browsing is atrocious. Also for some things I'd need a little bit more available performance. I don't know if the Prime is underpowered(I'm under the impression it is one of the fastes Android things out there) or if Android is the limiting factor. And I suspect it is the latter.
tl;dr:
Nobody replaces PCs at the rate they used to. And if they get replaced then it is rather for form factor than more power.
I've got nil years of bue collar and 15 years of greyish-collar(I need more shirts or a more efficient laundry schedule) job experience and currently hold down an executive position in a 50 person company. And I also will call a spade a spade and not participate in bs. If somebody asked me to harden a system to absolute security, I'd remove direct access by encasing it in concrete, unplug it from the mains and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. Not in that order.
People forgot how to deal with risk. And how to assess risk. It takes just philosophy 101 or common sense.
At the moment I am currently in a situation where I have to inform a client that the results of a 3rd party security audit mans they either have to take a known risk or live without the conveniences I advised against years ago. Thee will be no easy answers.
That Napolitano woman(her name sounds familiar but I won't google her for lack of interest) propably is a politician/lawyer with years of CYA experience seeking for easy answers, non-accountability wrapped in a tie and a suit. She ain't paying enough for me to pick up the buck for her.
Well, they look for somebody who follows blindly and yet is bright enough to deduce things based on his own observations.
They are forever condemned to hammer square blocks into round holes unless they find somebody who thinks the Nuremberg defense is absolutely absolving you.
In my whole professional career(some of it actually required NATO clearance...for blueprints that propably had already been known been known to Teh Enemi for 30 years) I was more than once severely tempted to leak stuff to the national press. Never did, tho. I fully understand what thought process Manning followed when he leaked stuff. We let the fools run stuff and let them cover up their shortcomings with secrecy.
...and the ineffectual process is devised by lawyers who have contracted the horrible affliction of becoming a politician. They try to hire some guy who looks well in a suit, has the right non-related diploma who will do anything to further his career.
I wonder when basic - and by that I mean really basic - philosophy has dropped out of our curriculum. It's not as if common sense were an arcane art lost to the ages and bank portfolios. We seem to have replaced it with non-controversy and lazy thinking.
Go to Youtube and search for Asus Transformer Book. Those things have an i7 chugging along. Those 10 years you predicted are IMHO already over. But I'll wait to see if they are any good before I get one myself. i7 sounds like awful battery life. But apart from rendering or encoding I can't think of anything that'd challenge that thing. IO performance usually kills you before that thing breaks the 50% barrier. Also Win8 SOUNDS like one of the best ideas MS has had since...ummm...ditching the Windows95 line? But I don't know if I am ready to trust them.
If they want me to buy my stuff from some Windows store they've got another thing coming. Shouldn't be a problem in Windows 8 and I'm not interested in RT anyway. A locked down machine is not something I want.
Ugh. EA. The graveyard of 90ies superb studios...
I would never even dream of using it to develop on since I've been previously traumatized by undergeared dev machines. My people all have at least 8gigs of ram, SSD drives, 2 27" screens(3 for the creative types), mouse and keyboard of their choice and very good chairs. I haven't had the opportunity to write serious code for a couple of months. Only some refactoring.
Coding on a Prime. Huh. The keyboard is nice but not THAT nice.
...and while Samsung and Apple duke it out in court, Asus has quietly perfected its Transformer line to a point where I say that tablets will in the near future replace desktop PCs.
The sole reason for a beefy PC for me is intensive gaming or intensive software development. I find myself more often not taking my laptop with me on business trips and only bring my Prime. Now they threaten to sell a similar machine with an i7, Win 8(which may or may not suck) and 3 slightly bigger screens. And even if I refuse to go down the Win8 route: the form factor of the Transformers is so perfect that neither Apple or Samsung have anything in store that even remotely interests me.
The sheer brilliance of having a second battery in the detachable keyboard alone is worth the price. Not needing a protective cover for the screen since the keyboard protects it is clever. Using the keyboard to offer a second data storage is commendable. Having fully featured USB/HDMI ports on the keyboard is useful. It's like carrying your docking station around with you.
Pity about the GPS, tho. And Android web browsers still suck. Responsiveness is at times sluggish. And it can become awfully warm(not hot). And it has the worst case of Bluetooth lag I have ever encountered. Try watching a movie with Bluetooth headphones and sound and movie will never be in synch. It also is mono. And it is not beefy enough to run the first Dungeon Keeper in Dosbox at a playable frame rate(I could possibly tweak it a bit, tho).
M4 needs a firmware update. It's got a bug which makes it not return from SMART calls after 5000 hours of total real time up time. Flash that thing and you have a good SSD hd again.
Funny how iDevice leave me completely cold whil that Microsoft thing makes me nursing a semi.
Quick! Start tablet. Fire up file browser. Ah! There ain't no place like/sdcard/dos/mom.
Any platform that gets dosbox/ScummVM ported to shall henceforth be considered a success. Mame and UAE are also important. Does it run Xenon2 on an Amiga emulation? Does it support a run of the mill bluetoothed game controller? Android does that. iThings don't. Therefore iThings stink. Does RT stink?
That RT tablet looks awfully slick and polished. It looks like they threw top talent at the problem. Also they realized how much a detachable keyboard adds to a tablet.
I got myself a Transformer Prime(warts and all; I knew most of the problems beforehand and bought it nevertheless) and I find I use my laptop less and less. sometimes I don't even bring it with me on business trips.
The tablet come ultrabook strategy is a sound one. Pity RT/8 are not binary compatible.
.NET is quite nice for implementing Windows clients. But it's not my weapon of choice for application server side stuff. Here Java wins by sheer third party support.
The existence of the.NET platform arguably drove innovation for Java. It got dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
That being said, APIs are have and forever will be Microsoft's Achilles heel. Also it took too much time to get WPF right. Development infrastructure is also on the costly side when compared to Java. Java offers so many tools for Free and free that I prefer to use it when in doubt.
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The Commonwealth wasn't exactly that democratic. I would place the Provisions of Oxford higher on that list.
Also a monarch that had lost the support of his people was also in a very weak spot. Richard II knew exactly that when he personally met with Wat Tyler. The English monarchy had always been very unique in Europe. They constantly had to deal with taxpayer's strikes, revolts and insubordination when they took a wrong step.
Oh wow! I didn't know that comic. Is it real?
I wouldn't say that the motivation for that comic and a candidate being smeared for playing WoW are the same. The D&D isue profited nobody and was nothing but a witch hunt. Trying to paint somebody in a bad light for playing an MMO was just a smear campaign that backfired. I guess a lot of people on the GOP campaign team also had WoW accounts. The real issue here propably is that they expected the voters to swallow it. Which in design is an insult to their intelligence.
Here is how you could shock the real Christian Taliban.
First create a human male character.
Then place him behind a cow.
Then chant the ancient evil mantra "/dance".
Fraps that. Submit it to whoever wants to listen as "Cow Sodomy Simulator corrupts our youth by the millions!".
Next step: set up a booth selling torches and pitchforks next to their church.
Profit.
In short:
1) Steal underwear.
2) Sodomize a cow.
3) Profit.
The principle of being born on GOP land. And to a GOP family. It is not a matter of choice because that has already been made for you.
Which is a rather feudal principle. Not a democratic one.
So the whole Rep/Dem thing is basically the same kerfuffle as the old York/Lancaster bit? Only with less codpieces? I can roll with that. Please do continue.
I had said it before: Lackland's son was briefly ousted by a guy who had the audacity to call in an elected parliament. And his grandson and everybody else afterwards had to deal with them. Apart from the Norman Bastards all English monarchs were nothing without their subjects' consent. Henry the 8th was the closest to an absolute monarch as that blighted island ever got. The Stuarts tried to mimic him but they didn't get very far.
...which still doesn't explain how Gingrich even remotely managed to be a contender. That man is personally odious.
I truly believe you are right. And this will be the conclusion the Republican party will have to come to or it will be unelectable on a federal level for the next decade.
It truly is hilarious. The GOP moved so far to the right that they made Obama look like a leftie. I grew up in the 70ies and 80ies and for the past 10-15 years I have been wondering what on earth is going on with them? A year ago they would have taken the whole country by a landslide. Then they started campaigning.
Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.
They demonstrably do.
The GOP currently is in a bad shape and unelectable. In 4 years the Tea Party is either a ghost from the past or there will be a Democrat dominance for at least a decade.
I predict differently. If the Republicans continue to embrace the Tea Party loonies then they will be making way for Democrat dominance.
That strategy has lost them the election. And they will come to the same conclusion. The shift to the right will stop or the GOP is done for a long time. I don't really understand what they did in the primaries. The ultra-right will vote GOP anyway and you need to capture the moderates who can either vote Dem or GOP based on current policies they most identify with. If the party had shut the fuck up after the primaries then it would have been Romney by a landslide. GOP was unelectable for the majority of voters and that's why the Dems won.
Just look at what happened. Two states somewhat legalized weed, an openly gay has been elected and to everybodies dismay having a WoW account doesn't disqualify you from office. And now look me straight in the eyes and tell me that Jeebus-based WASPy male-dominated politics have a chance in the US on a federal level. You do not win votes by how loud you shout.
The GOP knows that and already has started acting on it. They will cooperate since they don't need to obstruct Obama for another 4 years. The guy will be gone no matter what they do. But now they CAN shed the Tea Baggers because they can now say that they lost them the election. They couldn't do that 2 years ago since they won the house which turned out to be a fluke.
Well, you'll have to be fair. With the installation of Obamacare they have entered the 19th century. The pink leftie Otto von Bismarck introduced Mandatory Health Insurance for low incomes and the arch-communist Kaiser Wilhelm the First smiled on it.
The Royal Family is always under scrutiny if it does try to influence policies. At the moment the Prince of Wales is being put under a mganifying glass because of his lobbying for his numerous social causes. The Queen only comes into play when things have gone terribly wrong. What a King/Queen can and can't do has been determined under the Stuarts(one got his head lobbed off, the other had to flee from an orange).
And that was quite some time ago. Just to boggle the mind for a bit Edward Longshanks had to call in a parliament to raise taxes for his wars. That's the guy you might know from that Braveheart movie that was so popular a couple of years ago. I repeat: Edward the First of England, one of the most autocratic monarchs the country ever saw, had to form a parliament to get things done. And he wasn't the first who had to do just that. "No taxation without representation" is a very old, very English principle.
Simon de Montfort, who had ousted Edward's daddy for a year or so, even went so far to have non-nobles and fat cats sit in his parliament. Not entirely democratic but at least somewhat elected. And that was mid-13th century. There's a reason why he has a spot on a wall in the US House of Representatives dedicated to him. Stuff like that tends to linger. And once you went there you can't go back.
I remember my first HD. It had the handy form factor of a shoe box. It needed an external power supply. It made a most frightful racket. It weighed a ton. And it did hold a whopping 10MB.
Not many of us can claim their first computer was a 640k, 16 color, 2 floppy, 10MB HD Decision Mate V. That's NCR. In the early 80ies a computer deal with Iran fell through(for some reason or another...it's got something to do with changing the name of the country from Persia to Iran and them snubbing Jimmy Carter) leaving NCR stranded with storehouses full of those amazing machines. My dad having worked for 15 years for those bozos nabbed one of them. Well, he payed 600 deutschmarks for it and got one for his son. My fate was sealed ever since.
Thanks, dad. I could have been a literature scholar if it hadn't been for you. Hrumph.
The current console generation is a joke for gaming and has always been. They lack the versatility of input devices that are traditional for PCs. Joysticks, HOTAS, racing wheels and gamepads have been always available for PCs but they weren't strictly necessary due to the sheer flexibility of keyboard and mouse. And there hasn't ever been such a huge mandatory bureaucratic overhead when trying to publish for PC. Spend thousands of dollars for a dev kit, an unlocked console AND so called QA from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo? There has already been a case where an indie developer simply didn't publish a patch for an XBox Live Arcade game due to the bill MS would send them and the WEEKS they spend on "QA". Compare that to BBS, FTP, Web, Steam, Humble Bundle and GOG. The Ouya has potential because it does away with that crap.
Take a look at what consoles did to the FPS genre. Aim assist due to THE F*CKING WRONG INPUT DEVICE, handholding/non-explorable terrain due to memory limitations and technology that's basically stuck in the stone ages. I can't blame the jingoistic content of the Mediocre Warfare Battle Furry series on the technology but I will do so nonetheless. Regenerating health because we can't hide a healt pack behind a pillar because RETURN TO COMBAT ZONE! It is a sad day indeed when my Android tablet that wasn't built for it is capable of producing visuals that are on par with a PS2 AND send a 3D signal over HDMI to my 3D monitor. Within a year they will be on par with a PS3. And don't get me started on half-assed PC ports that still get sold at 60$ a pop. Skyrim sticks out like a sore thumb in that respect and that doesn't even run on PS3.
That being said, I do enjoy playing XCOM with a gamepad. It can be a bit fiddly at times but those controls are very well done.
I hereby declare Nov 1st national Burn Your Console Day. Stop buying that crap.
Nope. You put the executive summary at the end so they have to scroll over a lot of stuff that looks terribly insightful and very valuable by sheer volume.
:P
If I had put it at the top that would imply I knew beforehand what I would ramble on about when in reality I am as surprised by the result as you are.
tl;dr:
Bullshit is power. Especially if you don't have a clue.
I'm in the fortuitous position that I don't have to care about price that much. But I do care about lock-in. That's one reason why I waill wait before I get a Windows 8 tablet. Not Windows RT. This imho is a solution looking for a problem.
To me the sweet thing about those full Windows 8 tablets is that there is absolutely no reason to bring a laptop because they basically have the same specs plus the touch screen and the form factor.
I agree.
the major driver for PC sales in the past has been obsolescence. Something new popped up that you absolutely wanted but your machine couldn't handle it. Most of the time this involved replacing CPU, Graphics card, Mainboard and possibly RAM. Basically a totally new machine.
Last year I bought an i7 based system with 16gb RAM, SSD and a Geforce 580. I also use this machine for development and have to run an awful lot on it. It is BORED stiff most of the time. CPUs have been fast enough for some time. Graphic cards don't need replacing as often since PC gaming is still held back by the current console generation. Unless of course you want to drive multiple screens at monster resolutions...
A NORMAL user who does some text processing, web browsing, Youtube and stuff can easily live with a 5 year old machine. Windows 8 might be a reason to upgrade.
So what now? Utility? Form factor? I am SERIOUSLY considering to get one of those Windows 8(not RT) Transformers once all the inevitable kinks got ironed out. And I WILL ditch my laptop for it. Because a tablet/laptop hybrid is exactly what I'm interested in. I've got a Transformer Prime which is a brilliant little machine. But now, after living with Android for the last 3 years I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that it simply sucks. Especially web browsing is atrocious. Also for some things I'd need a little bit more available performance. I don't know if the Prime is underpowered(I'm under the impression it is one of the fastes Android things out there) or if Android is the limiting factor. And I suspect it is the latter.
tl;dr:
Nobody replaces PCs at the rate they used to. And if they get replaced then it is rather for form factor than more power.
I've got nil years of bue collar and 15 years of greyish-collar(I need more shirts or a more efficient laundry schedule) job experience and currently hold down an executive position in a 50 person company. And I also will call a spade a spade and not participate in bs. If somebody asked me to harden a system to absolute security, I'd remove direct access by encasing it in concrete, unplug it from the mains and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. Not in that order.
People forgot how to deal with risk. And how to assess risk. It takes just philosophy 101 or common sense.
At the moment I am currently in a situation where I have to inform a client that the results of a 3rd party security audit mans they either have to take a known risk or live without the conveniences I advised against years ago. Thee will be no easy answers.
That Napolitano woman(her name sounds familiar but I won't google her for lack of interest) propably is a politician/lawyer with years of CYA experience seeking for easy answers, non-accountability wrapped in a tie and a suit. She ain't paying enough for me to pick up the buck for her.
Well, they look for somebody who follows blindly and yet is bright enough to deduce things based on his own observations.
They are forever condemned to hammer square blocks into round holes unless they find somebody who thinks the Nuremberg defense is absolutely absolving you.
In my whole professional career(some of it actually required NATO clearance...for blueprints that propably had already been known been known to Teh Enemi for 30 years) I was more than once severely tempted to leak stuff to the national press. Never did, tho. I fully understand what thought process Manning followed when he leaked stuff. We let the fools run stuff and let them cover up their shortcomings with secrecy.
...and the ineffectual process is devised by lawyers who have contracted the horrible affliction of becoming a politician. They try to hire some guy who looks well in a suit, has the right non-related diploma who will do anything to further his career.
I wonder when basic - and by that I mean really basic - philosophy has dropped out of our curriculum. It's not as if common sense were an arcane art lost to the ages and bank portfolios. We seem to have replaced it with non-controversy and lazy thinking.
Go to Youtube and search for Asus Transformer Book. Those things have an i7 chugging along. Those 10 years you predicted are IMHO already over. But I'll wait to see if they are any good before I get one myself. i7 sounds like awful battery life. But apart from rendering or encoding I can't think of anything that'd challenge that thing. IO performance usually kills you before that thing breaks the 50% barrier. Also Win8 SOUNDS like one of the best ideas MS has had since...ummm...ditching the Windows95 line? But I don't know if I am ready to trust them.
If they want me to buy my stuff from some Windows store they've got another thing coming. Shouldn't be a problem in Windows 8 and I'm not interested in RT anyway. A locked down machine is not something I want.
Ugh. EA. The graveyard of 90ies superb studios... I would never even dream of using it to develop on since I've been previously traumatized by undergeared dev machines. My people all have at least 8gigs of ram, SSD drives, 2 27" screens(3 for the creative types), mouse and keyboard of their choice and very good chairs. I haven't had the opportunity to write serious code for a couple of months. Only some refactoring.
Coding on a Prime. Huh. The keyboard is nice but not THAT nice.
...and while Samsung and Apple duke it out in court, Asus has quietly perfected its Transformer line to a point where I say that tablets will in the near future replace desktop PCs.
The sole reason for a beefy PC for me is intensive gaming or intensive software development. I find myself more often not taking my laptop with me on business trips and only bring my Prime. Now they threaten to sell a similar machine with an i7, Win 8(which may or may not suck) and 3 slightly bigger screens. And even if I refuse to go down the Win8 route: the form factor of the Transformers is so perfect that neither Apple or Samsung have anything in store that even remotely interests me.
The sheer brilliance of having a second battery in the detachable keyboard alone is worth the price. Not needing a protective cover for the screen since the keyboard protects it is clever. Using the keyboard to offer a second data storage is commendable. Having fully featured USB/HDMI ports on the keyboard is useful. It's like carrying your docking station around with you.
Pity about the GPS, tho. And Android web browsers still suck. Responsiveness is at times sluggish. And it can become awfully warm(not hot). And it has the worst case of Bluetooth lag I have ever encountered. Try watching a movie with Bluetooth headphones and sound and movie will never be in synch. It also is mono. And it is not beefy enough to run the first Dungeon Keeper in Dosbox at a playable frame rate(I could possibly tweak it a bit, tho).
I forsee that Asus will be heavily copied.
M4 needs a firmware update. It's got a bug which makes it not return from SMART calls after 5000 hours of total real time up time. Flash that thing and you have a good SSD hd again.
Funny how iDevice leave me completely cold whil that Microsoft thing makes me nursing a semi.
/sdcard/dos/mom.
Quick! Start tablet. Fire up file browser. Ah! There ain't no place like
Any platform that gets dosbox/ScummVM ported to shall henceforth be considered a success. Mame and UAE are also important. Does it run Xenon2 on an Amiga emulation? Does it support a run of the mill bluetoothed game controller? Android does that. iThings don't. Therefore iThings stink. Does RT stink?
That RT tablet looks awfully slick and polished. It looks like they threw top talent at the problem. Also they realized how much a detachable keyboard adds to a tablet.
I got myself a Transformer Prime(warts and all; I knew most of the problems beforehand and bought it nevertheless) and I find I use my laptop less and less. sometimes I don't even bring it with me on business trips.
The tablet come ultrabook strategy is a sound one. Pity RT/8 are not binary compatible.
.NET is quite nice for implementing Windows clients. But it's not my weapon of choice for application server side stuff. Here Java wins by sheer third party support.
.NET platform arguably drove innovation for Java. It got dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
The existence of the
That being said, APIs are have and forever will be Microsoft's Achilles heel. Also it took too much time to get WPF right. Development infrastructure is also on the costly side when compared to Java. Java offers so many tools for Free and free that I prefer to use it when in doubt.