But those people are both uncommon, and generally don't indicate what the rest of the market will do. In fact, they're often quite wrong. Sure, laser disc was supposed to be awesome, but I only know about 2 people who ever owned one before they became obsolete.
I think we are in agreement, but stating things differently. I'm not saying the high-end people will predict what the market at large will accept, which is clearly not the case. But these companies pitching this stuff do target the high-end folks first. I don't think anyone expects the Walmart crew to buy $4000 TVs. Maybe if the high end folks buy enough of them the prices will fall, and then it will be more accessible.
The bleeding edge seemed to like 3d TV. Then it went to the wider market and has died off.
I don't think it has died off. Check out the graph in this article - consistent growth. I think you just don't hear as much about it anymore since it was so over-hyped. Movies continue to be made in and converted to 3D, and 3D-capable TVs continue to gain market share.
What consumers want is a stable technology, not be be on a constant upgrade treadmill
There are different kinds of consumers. What you say is probably true of the consumers buying their sets at Walmart and Target, and it's probably true of me as well (at least to a degree). But I know plenty of people who are always on the bleeding edge. This 4k stuff is blatantly targeted at those consumers, and it may or may not trickle down to the rest of us... sometimes these high end things succeed (hi-fi VHS, HDTV) and sometimes they fail (videodisk, DVD audio), but the high-end, bleeding edge folks get to decide that, not the conservative consumers.
I came here to post this. I'm in the minority, but to my eye it is more pleasant to watch the old grainy picture than it is to watch compressed high resolution video. In particular, my eye gets drawn to grass. Every time I watch a game played on grass (baseball, football, the other football, etc), the digital compression just hijacks my eyes. I can learn to ignore it over time, like watching a movie with subtitles, but it still is not my preference.
I'm not the one telling other people that they are cowardly. I'm not the one on the attack. I'm not telling anyone how to act - I'm just pointing out how low his horse is.
If losing up to a week's worth of work is acceptable, than that is a perfectly reasonable option. Most people are not as disciplined as you - I am certainly not. I used to use an external drive that I kept in the trunk of my car (originally intended to bring it in to work... kept forgetting) - figured losing both my home usb drive and my car usb drive would be a rotten coincidence. Of course, the car drive never came inside and so was always out of date. The home drive got zotched by lightning as it was still hooked up to the PC that was also struck by lightning... that was fun.
I think you are under the impression that I'm recommending cloud backup as the only backup. That is not the case. The cloud backup is only for when your local backup is destroyed or unusable. If you and your friend want to swap drive space on your home machines, that would work just as well. Of course, then you have to worry about your friend's data habits...
Yes, I played with it, but unfortunately I'm very cross-platform... iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac (and FreeBSD, but don't need Dropbox there...). Dropbox and Google Drive are hard to beat for my mixed needs.
But, for the most part, those are small projects which are unlikely to have won the submitter's approval in the first place. His other examples were giant projects like Qt and Flex. You can bet that if Adobe open sourced Flash, someone would maintain it for Linux.
I have no idea how many people are trying to break into your home, but I would be willing to bet that the number that are trying to hack any of the large cloud services is much higher.
I bet you are wrong. Home burglary is downright common. Hacking of major websites still makes the news. In my 'hood, burglaries run in the 400 per 100,000 people range, and nationwide it is in the 800 per 100,000 people range. Meanwhile, "identity theft" (which includes even simply stealing a credit card number) runs in the 100 per 100,000 people range - though it can be as high as 150 per 100,000 people in some states. I definitely do not tuck all my computers away in a hidden closet whenever I leave the house, so me personally? I'm a lot more likely to be burgled than to have my identity stolen - which is kind of scary since someone just tried to use my credit card and so I had to cancel it... does that mean "I'm due"?:)
No matter what the odds of various thefts, they are far lower than the chance of catastrophic data loss, which is probably 100%. There are just as many house fires as there are identity thefts every year, and hard drives all fail eventually. Backups are critical if you have data you don't want to lose. Offsite storage is essential, even for an individual. Prior to affordable cloud backup, I would distribute DVDs with home videos and pictures on them to as many family members as would take them. I figured it would be a pain, but I'd be certain to have a usable copy of almost everything out there somewhere.
Sparkleshare just (ab)uses a git repository to store things in the same way as DropBox. For me, this git repository sits on a server in my basement, but you could use an online git provider as well. Git is not ideal for binary files, but you do get file history for free and it does work.
Sure, if you were collaborating with me. I'm a geek and would frankly prefer that so that I don't have to delete a bunch of crappy formatting. I'll search and replace for things like double spaces after periods and tabs and then paste into the word processor.
But if I sent you a PPT to collaborate on because some stupid professional organization that we were submitting something to wanted a PPT for some reason, then what? You are stuck in that application. The same thing would happen if they asked for an Adobe Illustrator file or even an ODF. Everyone involved in a project needs to be using the same version of the same software if you want things to go as trouble free as possible.
By the way, even ASCII text has variants - what carriage return character shall we settle upon?:)
Well, sort of - it sounds like he was using it in place of email or ftp for file transfers to other people. He didn't keep copies of some of the data because he didn't care about it once the job was over. I agree that the lesson here is "backup"!
All of my data is backed up via Crashplan and stored on their servers. Presumably (I'm just blindly trusting them at their word) it is encrypted by a key that they hold but which only my client has the password to. If I were the paranoid sort or had juicier data, I have the option of holding the key myself but that limits the convenience somewhat.
I'd like you to tell me why I should be worried. Remember that the IRS (with over 100,000 employees) has my tax records and my banks and brokerages have all of my other financial records. I submit that the chances of my Crashplan account getting hacked and my identity stolen or my finances stolen are far lower than one of those organizations having a massive data breech which includes my data. I also submit that my home is more likely to be burglarized and the same data carried away in a nice laptop-shaped package. I might be wrong, but I've never seen anything to suggest that there is a scourge of identity theft due to cloud storage. Educate me:)
Once you start doing that it shows you how little control you have over such services and how dependent you are on other parties, especially if you consider them as a panacea to not having to keep your own backups (as the OP seems to have done)
While I agree that you need to keep your own backups (even of your Google Docs and Gmail, people!), the only people who have an issue with the "someone else's computer" bit are either edge case users with highly sensitive data or control freaks. There isn't exactly a crises of identity theft via cloud services - I have to conclude that the big names with good reputations are probably doing better at keeping data secure than I would be. Hell, my house has glass on the doors! An alarm system, sure... but that gives someone a solid 10 minutes to grab stuff and flee.
In my neighborhood, we have these house fire things that would totally ruin your day. I pay $1600/year in home owners insurance - an extra $10/month to have all my data at some far-flung location keeps me feeling warm and fuzzy. My house could burn down and I'd have all my data back as fast as they can overnight a hard drive (or I could be cheap and download for a few weeks...).
TFA is written by an individual who does work on contract - they are going to be outsourcing their IT no matter what. The cloud is perfect for that. Just have some redundancy - for instance, Dropbox plus another versioned backup, either remote or local. On my Windows machine I have Dropbox* running, but then Windows 7 backup also runs every night to a second hard drive and Crashplan keeps versioned files in the "cloud" and on my basement NAS. This is severe overkill, but what the hell, storage is cheap and I setup my backup system without Dropbox in mind. The Macs are similar - Crashplan to the "cloud" and time machine to NAS. At work I only use Windows 7 to the network and Dropbox. No idea why IT doesn't have a real backup policy for desktops, but there you go.
* I keep saying "Dropbox" for brevity. The truth is that I use Google Drive, Dropbox, and even Sparkleshare. It all depends on what I'm doing.
Most PCs have a power supply which supplies most of its power at 12V. This would also make car chargers convenient, since cars mostly still have (horribly regulated) 12-14 V power at 2 amps from their cigarette lighter. That should give up to 24 watts from a car. The micro-USB spec has been exceeded, but they cannot go any higher with that connector at that voltage.
I'm glad you brought up the damper that invalidating Apple's patent would have, because my contention is that the result is exactly the same when you mandate USB. Where is the incentive to innovate on connector types when you can't use the result?
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But those people are both uncommon, and generally don't indicate what the rest of the market will do. In fact, they're often quite wrong. Sure, laser disc was supposed to be awesome, but I only know about 2 people who ever owned one before they became obsolete.
I think we are in agreement, but stating things differently. I'm not saying the high-end people will predict what the market at large will accept, which is clearly not the case. But these companies pitching this stuff do target the high-end folks first. I don't think anyone expects the Walmart crew to buy $4000 TVs. Maybe if the high end folks buy enough of them the prices will fall, and then it will be more accessible.
The bleeding edge seemed to like 3d TV. Then it went to the wider market and has died off.
I don't think it has died off. Check out the graph in this article - consistent growth. I think you just don't hear as much about it anymore since it was so over-hyped. Movies continue to be made in and converted to 3D, and 3D-capable TVs continue to gain market share.
may be things have improved recently?
Yes, there are more channels that show old stuff :)
What consumers want is a stable technology, not be be on a constant upgrade treadmill
There are different kinds of consumers. What you say is probably true of the consumers buying their sets at Walmart and Target, and it's probably true of me as well (at least to a degree). But I know plenty of people who are always on the bleeding edge. This 4k stuff is blatantly targeted at those consumers, and it may or may not trickle down to the rest of us... sometimes these high end things succeed (hi-fi VHS, HDTV) and sometimes they fail (videodisk, DVD audio), but the high-end, bleeding edge folks get to decide that, not the conservative consumers.
I came here to post this. I'm in the minority, but to my eye it is more pleasant to watch the old grainy picture than it is to watch compressed high resolution video. In particular, my eye gets drawn to grass. Every time I watch a game played on grass (baseball, football, the other football, etc), the digital compression just hijacks my eyes. I can learn to ignore it over time, like watching a movie with subtitles, but it still is not my preference.
On Facebook? Wow...
I'm not the one telling other people that they are cowardly. I'm not the one on the attack. I'm not telling anyone how to act - I'm just pointing out how low his horse is.
If losing up to a week's worth of work is acceptable, than that is a perfectly reasonable option. Most people are not as disciplined as you - I am certainly not. I used to use an external drive that I kept in the trunk of my car (originally intended to bring it in to work... kept forgetting) - figured losing both my home usb drive and my car usb drive would be a rotten coincidence. Of course, the car drive never came inside and so was always out of date. The home drive got zotched by lightning as it was still hooked up to the PC that was also struck by lightning... that was fun.
I think you are under the impression that I'm recommending cloud backup as the only backup. That is not the case. The cloud backup is only for when your local backup is destroyed or unusable. If you and your friend want to swap drive space on your home machines, that would work just as well. Of course, then you have to worry about your friend's data habits...
You don't need to transliterate it, it is written on the side.
Yes, I played with it, but unfortunately I'm very cross-platform... iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac (and FreeBSD, but don't need Dropbox there...). Dropbox and Google Drive are hard to beat for my mixed needs.
But, for the most part, those are small projects which are unlikely to have won the submitter's approval in the first place. His other examples were giant projects like Qt and Flex. You can bet that if Adobe open sourced Flash, someone would maintain it for Linux.
I have no idea how many people are trying to break into your home, but I would be willing to bet that the number that are trying to hack any of the large cloud services is much higher.
I bet you are wrong. Home burglary is downright common. Hacking of major websites still makes the news. In my 'hood, burglaries run in the 400 per 100,000 people range, and nationwide it is in the 800 per 100,000 people range. Meanwhile, "identity theft" (which includes even simply stealing a credit card number) runs in the 100 per 100,000 people range - though it can be as high as 150 per 100,000 people in some states. I definitely do not tuck all my computers away in a hidden closet whenever I leave the house, so me personally? I'm a lot more likely to be burgled than to have my identity stolen - which is kind of scary since someone just tried to use my credit card and so I had to cancel it... does that mean "I'm due"? :)
No matter what the odds of various thefts, they are far lower than the chance of catastrophic data loss, which is probably 100%. There are just as many house fires as there are identity thefts every year, and hard drives all fail eventually. Backups are critical if you have data you don't want to lose. Offsite storage is essential, even for an individual. Prior to affordable cloud backup, I would distribute DVDs with home videos and pictures on them to as many family members as would take them. I figured it would be a pain, but I'd be certain to have a usable copy of almost everything out there somewhere.
Sparkleshare just (ab)uses a git repository to store things in the same way as DropBox. For me, this git repository sits on a server in my basement, but you could use an online git provider as well. Git is not ideal for binary files, but you do get file history for free and it does work.
Sure, if you were collaborating with me. I'm a geek and would frankly prefer that so that I don't have to delete a bunch of crappy formatting. I'll search and replace for things like double spaces after periods and tabs and then paste into the word processor.
But if I sent you a PPT to collaborate on because some stupid professional organization that we were submitting something to wanted a PPT for some reason, then what? You are stuck in that application. The same thing would happen if they asked for an Adobe Illustrator file or even an ODF. Everyone involved in a project needs to be using the same version of the same software if you want things to go as trouble free as possible.
By the way, even ASCII text has variants - what carriage return character shall we settle upon? :)
Well, sort of - it sounds like he was using it in place of email or ftp for file transfers to other people. He didn't keep copies of some of the data because he didn't care about it once the job was over. I agree that the lesson here is "backup"!
All of my data is backed up via Crashplan and stored on their servers. Presumably (I'm just blindly trusting them at their word) it is encrypted by a key that they hold but which only my client has the password to. If I were the paranoid sort or had juicier data, I have the option of holding the key myself but that limits the convenience somewhat.
I'd like you to tell me why I should be worried. Remember that the IRS (with over 100,000 employees) has my tax records and my banks and brokerages have all of my other financial records. I submit that the chances of my Crashplan account getting hacked and my identity stolen or my finances stolen are far lower than one of those organizations having a massive data breech which includes my data. I also submit that my home is more likely to be burglarized and the same data carried away in a nice laptop-shaped package. I might be wrong, but I've never seen anything to suggest that there is a scourge of identity theft due to cloud storage. Educate me :)
Once you start doing that it shows you how little control you have over such services and how dependent you are on other parties, especially if you consider them as a panacea to not having to keep your own backups (as the OP seems to have done)
While I agree that you need to keep your own backups (even of your Google Docs and Gmail, people!), the only people who have an issue with the "someone else's computer" bit are either edge case users with highly sensitive data or control freaks. There isn't exactly a crises of identity theft via cloud services - I have to conclude that the big names with good reputations are probably doing better at keeping data secure than I would be. Hell, my house has glass on the doors! An alarm system, sure... but that gives someone a solid 10 minutes to grab stuff and flee.
In my neighborhood, we have these house fire things that would totally ruin your day. I pay $1600/year in home owners insurance - an extra $10/month to have all my data at some far-flung location keeps me feeling warm and fuzzy. My house could burn down and I'd have all my data back as fast as they can overnight a hard drive (or I could be cheap and download for a few weeks...).
TFA is written by an individual who does work on contract - they are going to be outsourcing their IT no matter what. The cloud is perfect for that. Just have some redundancy - for instance, Dropbox plus another versioned backup, either remote or local. On my Windows machine I have Dropbox* running, but then Windows 7 backup also runs every night to a second hard drive and Crashplan keeps versioned files in the "cloud" and on my basement NAS. This is severe overkill, but what the hell, storage is cheap and I setup my backup system without Dropbox in mind. The Macs are similar - Crashplan to the "cloud" and time machine to NAS. At work I only use Windows 7 to the network and Dropbox. No idea why IT doesn't have a real backup policy for desktops, but there you go.
* I keep saying "Dropbox" for brevity. The truth is that I use Google Drive, Dropbox, and even Sparkleshare. It all depends on what I'm doing.
The space station is just a front for the NSA. Actually, NASA is involved too. Didn't you notice that they are only one letter apart?
interstellar communications will be more like newsgroups than video chat.
A flame war is more disturbing when the guy on the other end can hurl an asteroid at you...
Fair enough, but the AC was calling someone an idiot for having the audacity to insist on a cost comparison based on similar hardware.
I love how people don't price in size, weight, or battery life. Those things are free, right?
Most PCs have a power supply which supplies most of its power at 12V. This would also make car chargers convenient, since cars mostly still have (horribly regulated) 12-14 V power at 2 amps from their cigarette lighter. That should give up to 24 watts from a car. The micro-USB spec has been exceeded, but they cannot go any higher with that connector at that voltage.
I'm glad you brought up the damper that invalidating Apple's patent would have, because my contention is that the result is exactly the same when you mandate USB. Where is the incentive to innovate on connector types when you can't use the result?