But now, the latest consoles are up to 2013 tech (AMD Jaguar, do the math)
They may be 2013 chips, but they're not fast 2013 chips. The new consoles will certainly drive upgrades at the low end of the gaming market (e.g. people still using PCs from a few years ago), but they're no faster than a low to mid-range gaming PC today.
Nobody has the $1000 it takes to get bleeding edge graphics, and that's what the PC is all about.
Uh, what?
I think my GPU cost $250 in January, and it plays almost every game I've tried maxed out at 1920x1080 at 60fps. Most games are designed for consoles, which currently have the GPU equivalent of a gaming PC from the mid-2000s.
Only because most games are written for consoles with CPUs for which the word 'crap' would be praise.
Games written for the new consoles are probably going to make some people regret saying 'I'll just buy a dual-core, you don't need anything faster than that for gaming'.
People go into stores, look at new PCs, see Windows 8 and say 'WTF? I thought this was a PC? Don't PCs run Windows, not this tablet shit?'
I built a new games PC at the beginning of the year because I could see what a clusterfsck Windows 8 was going to be and wanted to get something that could play games for the years until Microsoft smarten up and release a new desktop version of Windows. Can't see any reason why I'd want to buy a Windows PC until then.
Stability control aka anti-lock brakes is not a "bull shit electronic nanny".
Having rolled about a hundred yards on a snowy road last year with the brake pedal hard down, waiting for something to happen, I'm not convinced that's true. I'm pretty sure my old steam-age cars would have stopped well before the one I was driving with ABS.
If I understand it correctly (which I may not) stability control stops you from doing stupid things like skidding. And while skidding is fun there are better and faster ways of handing a turn.
I drove mid-engined cars for about ten years, and I'd be continually thinking 'OK, if I press the gas a bit more, the back wheels will slide out and I'll get round the corner faster'. I don't know how much they were really slipping sideways on the asphalt, but I would go through a set of tires in about 10,000 miles.
Can anybody give me a reason not to have stability control where that reasons does not contain “fun” or “because”? (which might be sufficient – just looking for any other reasons.)
'Cause, uh, it's a sports car designed for racing?
Mid-engined cars are designed solely to get around corners fast, and they're extremely unstable compared to your average Ford or Honda. The problem is that many are bought by people who have no clue, and end up in a ditch the first time they take their foot off the gas in a corner.
Not true. I buy plenty of stuff from small retailers, and not because they're cheaper than Amazon.
There's a place for a 'sells anything to anyone' store like Amazon, but there's also a place for niche stores that specialize in one kind of product and serve it well.
If we could hit say 80-90% of use case it would turn our world upside down.
Uh, no.
It has to be 100% usable, or we'll be back to the AF447 case where the autopilot hands control back to the 'pilot', because it doesn't know what to do, and they crash because they haven't been watching what's happening. And, in the case of a car, you won't have two minutes to figure out what to do before you crash, you'll probably have two seconds.
That doesn't mean it has to be usable in all road conditions, though; I'm guessing a viable 'cruise control' for the open highway would be much easier than town driving, and could eliminate many truck drivers.
But, for the average driver, if you can't sit in the car drinking beer and sending text messages, what's the point?
This is fascinating, but what I find even more interesting is why they couldn't use a similar technique to make the need for the attitude control wheels obsolete?
Wouldn't work very well near Earth, because you're in darkness much of the time and there's enough atmosphere left that drag might be larger than any force you could create from light pressure.
But I seem to remember that Mariner Mercury used light pressure on its solar sails for attitude control when it could, to miminize fuel use by the thrusters.
Mount a camera on the drone and let me watch my package flying over the landscape via the "Track my package" option.
Around this time last year, we were waiting for an important and urgent transatlantic courier delivery, managed to figure out which flight it was on, and were following the plane online as it crossed the atlantic so we could ensure the customs clearance guy was ready to deal with it as soon as it landed. So we're not too far from being able to do that today.
The people that think technology is the problem with our schools aren't addressing the real problem: The fact that our culture is anti-learning, anti-education, pro-sky-fairies and anti-critical thinking.
Well, yes. But that's compulsory schooling for you. Kids are forced to sit in boring classrooms for the best part of twenty years being indoctrinated by left-wing, unionised government employees so they'll vote for left-wing governments who'll demand higher taxes to pay teachers more.
You need to get kids to enjoy learning, get them reading and writing, then get them to learn to think rationally and analyze things critically.
Kids naturally enjoy learning and want to learn as much as possible. Takes years of teaching to beat that out of them.
What these people really don't want to hear is that 'high tech' is making schools themselves irrelevant when a kid who can read can find just about any information they want either online or in a good library.
Same here. And there's been very little of that in Windows since XP.
BTW, I was amused by your mention of SxS, SxS Hell is one reason I'm glad I only ever have to boot Windows for games these days. There are better operating systems for everything else.
In the old days people would laugh at you for running a 5 year old OS and many here wont even move to that yet?!
That's because in the old days, a 5 year old OS would suck ass. XP is no worse for most users than Windows 7, and a step up for most users from Windows 8.
Microsoft should just have called XP the final version of Windows and kept updating it, but then they couldn't charge upgrade fees.
1. It seems to be about twice the price of my old EeePC. 2. It's a tablet with attached keyboard, so, with an Atom stuffed inside, is likely to be even more poorly balanced than my ARM Transformer.
Chromebooks seem to be the real successor to netbooks, but the OS is a pain to replace.
So they magically installed their operating systems themselves?
Uh, no. Installing the operating system is an essential part of building a PC. Find it doesn't boot and then having to figure out why and then having to download some firmware and then having to upgrade it is not.
Intel uses Sandforce controllers in most of their current consumer SSDs.
As I understand it, Intel have special firmware for their Sandforce SSDs.
Intel SSDs have also been known to fail horribly at times, like the bug a couple of years ago where they'd boot up with a capacity of 8MB and require a secure wipe to recover, but such horrors have been relatively rare compared to many other manufacturers.
The world needs to stop looking for heroes. The belief that an almighty hero will ride into town and save us all is the root cause of much human suffering, from Hitler to Stalin to Mao to David Cameron.
When humans finally accept that someone with the power to save them is also someone with the power to enslave them, we might actually be able to build a sensible society.
What about the economists who are employed by universities?
How long will they be employed if they start claiming that government and business economists are spouting nonsense? How many will get tenture if they don't go along with the status quo?
Churchill is most likely a bit miffed how the UK government pissed away all the hard work he accomplished.
You mean, accomplishments like bankrupting the nation, losing the Empire and giving half of Europe (including Poland, which Britain supposedly entered the war to save) to Stalin?
Slashdot Mirror
But now, the latest consoles are up to 2013 tech (AMD Jaguar, do the math)
They may be 2013 chips, but they're not fast 2013 chips. The new consoles will certainly drive upgrades at the low end of the gaming market (e.g. people still using PCs from a few years ago), but they're no faster than a low to mid-range gaming PC today.
Yeah, I totally want to write code through a VPN on a 7" touch-screen.
Totally.
That would make me so much more productive than spending $1500 for an i7 with an SSD and a ton of RAM.
Nobody has the $1000 it takes to get bleeding edge graphics, and that's what the PC is all about.
Uh, what?
I think my GPU cost $250 in January, and it plays almost every game I've tried maxed out at 1920x1080 at 60fps. Most games are designed for consoles, which currently have the GPU equivalent of a gaming PC from the mid-2000s.
CPUs are good enough.
Only because most games are written for consoles with CPUs for which the word 'crap' would be praise.
Games written for the new consoles are probably going to make some people regret saying 'I'll just buy a dual-core, you don't need anything faster than that for gaming'.
People go into stores, look at new PCs, see Windows 8 and say 'WTF? I thought this was a PC? Don't PCs run Windows, not this tablet shit?'
I built a new games PC at the beginning of the year because I could see what a clusterfsck Windows 8 was going to be and wanted to get something that could play games for the years until Microsoft smarten up and release a new desktop version of Windows. Can't see any reason why I'd want to buy a Windows PC until then.
Stability control aka anti-lock brakes is not a "bull shit electronic nanny".
Having rolled about a hundred yards on a snowy road last year with the brake pedal hard down, waiting for something to happen, I'm not convinced that's true. I'm pretty sure my old steam-age cars would have stopped well before the one I was driving with ABS.
If I understand it correctly (which I may not) stability control stops you from doing stupid things like skidding. And while skidding is fun there are better and faster ways of handing a turn.
I drove mid-engined cars for about ten years, and I'd be continually thinking 'OK, if I press the gas a bit more, the back wheels will slide out and I'll get round the corner faster'. I don't know how much they were really slipping sideways on the asphalt, but I would go through a set of tires in about 10,000 miles.
Can anybody give me a reason not to have stability control where that reasons does not contain “fun” or “because”? (which might be sufficient – just looking for any other reasons.)
'Cause, uh, it's a sports car designed for racing?
Mid-engined cars are designed solely to get around corners fast, and they're extremely unstable compared to your average Ford or Honda. The problem is that many are bought by people who have no clue, and end up in a ditch the first time they take their foot off the gas in a corner.
Not true. I buy plenty of stuff from small retailers, and not because they're cheaper than Amazon.
There's a place for a 'sells anything to anyone' store like Amazon, but there's also a place for niche stores that specialize in one kind of product and serve it well.
If we could hit say 80-90% of use case it would turn our world upside down.
Uh, no.
It has to be 100% usable, or we'll be back to the AF447 case where the autopilot hands control back to the 'pilot', because it doesn't know what to do, and they crash because they haven't been watching what's happening. And, in the case of a car, you won't have two minutes to figure out what to do before you crash, you'll probably have two seconds.
That doesn't mean it has to be usable in all road conditions, though; I'm guessing a viable 'cruise control' for the open highway would be much easier than town driving, and could eliminate many truck drivers.
But, for the average driver, if you can't sit in the car drinking beer and sending text messages, what's the point?
This is fascinating, but what I find even more interesting is why they couldn't use a similar technique to make the need for the attitude control wheels obsolete?
Wouldn't work very well near Earth, because you're in darkness much of the time and there's enough atmosphere left that drag might be larger than any force you could create from light pressure.
But I seem to remember that Mariner Mercury used light pressure on its solar sails for attitude control when it could, to miminize fuel use by the thrusters.
Mount a camera on the drone and let me watch my package flying over the landscape via the "Track my package" option.
Around this time last year, we were waiting for an important and urgent transatlantic courier delivery, managed to figure out which flight it was on, and were following the plane online as it crossed the atlantic so we could ensure the customs clearance guy was ready to deal with it as soon as it landed. So we're not too far from being able to do that today.
The people that think technology is the problem with our schools aren't addressing the real problem: The fact that our culture is anti-learning, anti-education, pro-sky-fairies and anti-critical thinking.
Well, yes. But that's compulsory schooling for you. Kids are forced to sit in boring classrooms for the best part of twenty years being indoctrinated by left-wing, unionised government employees so they'll vote for left-wing governments who'll demand higher taxes to pay teachers more.
You need to get kids to enjoy learning, get them reading and writing, then get them to learn to think rationally and analyze things critically.
Kids naturally enjoy learning and want to learn as much as possible. Takes years of teaching to beat that out of them.
What these people really don't want to hear is that 'high tech' is making schools themselves irrelevant when a kid who can read can find just about any information they want either online or in a good library.
I'm fascinated and horrified but I'm also pleased because I am not fond of Microsoft, but what the hell do they think they are doing?
Surviving. They don't believe the desktop will exist in a few years, so owning it won't matter.
Of course, if you go out of your way to destroy desktop Windows in pursuit of tablet market share, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We're also hitting diminishing returns with game graphics.
That's because most games are designed for consoles with the processing power of a five-year-old PC.
Sorry I prefer progress.
Same here. And there's been very little of that in Windows since XP.
BTW, I was amused by your mention of SxS, SxS Hell is one reason I'm glad I only ever have to boot Windows for games these days. There are better operating systems for everything else.
In the old days people would laugh at you for running a 5 year old OS and many here wont even move to that yet?!
That's because in the old days, a 5 year old OS would suck ass. XP is no worse for most users than Windows 7, and a step up for most users from Windows 8.
Microsoft should just have called XP the final version of Windows and kept updating it, but then they couldn't charge upgrade fees.
10" are not gone, just changed.
http://www.asus.com/in-search-of-incredible/us-en/asus-transformer-book-t100/
Except:
1. It seems to be about twice the price of my old EeePC.
2. It's a tablet with attached keyboard, so, with an Atom stuffed inside, is likely to be even more poorly balanced than my ARM Transformer.
Chromebooks seem to be the real successor to netbooks, but the OS is a pain to replace.
And the US intentional homicide rate, from all causes, from the equivalent Wikipedia page, is 4.7 per 100,000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
So most of your 'firearm related death rate' are suicides, justifiable homicide, or accidents.
So you're using bogus statistics to support an anti-gun agenda. Hey, what a shock. Never seen that before.
BTW, Mexico's intentional homicide rate is 23.7. Clearly they don't need guns to murder people.
So they magically installed their operating systems themselves?
Uh, no. Installing the operating system is an essential part of building a PC. Find it doesn't boot and then having to figure out why and then having to download some firmware and then having to upgrade it is not.
Intel uses Sandforce controllers in most of their current consumer SSDs.
As I understand it, Intel have special firmware for their Sandforce SSDs.
Intel SSDs have also been known to fail horribly at times, like the bug a couple of years ago where they'd boot up with a capacity of 8MB and require a secure wipe to recover, but such horrors have been relatively rare compared to many other manufacturers.
The world needs a hero.
The world needs to stop looking for heroes. The belief that an almighty hero will ride into town and save us all is the root cause of much human suffering, from Hitler to Stalin to Mao to David Cameron.
When humans finally accept that someone with the power to save them is also someone with the power to enslave them, we might actually be able to build a sensible society.
What about the economists who are employed by universities?
How long will they be employed if they start claiming that government and business economists are spouting nonsense? How many will get tenture if they don't go along with the status quo?
Churchill is most likely a bit miffed how the UK government pissed away all the hard work he accomplished.
You mean, accomplishments like bankrupting the nation, losing the Empire and giving half of Europe (including Poland, which Britain supposedly entered the war to save) to Stalin?
This is a slippery slope, and I've been assured here on many occasions that slippery slopes are a logical fallacy.