Even if the VPS provider collects only $5 per month from you, your cellular or satellite ISP collects $5 for every gigabyte of data that you upload from your device to the VPS or download from the VPS to your device. Such data tolls for remote desktop sessions can add up.
They'really asking "Y?" because newcomers often fail victim to the XY problem, in which someone asks how to perform a particular step in a process when that might not even be the best step for that process.
Most bloat in the modern web is related to scripts that track the user from one website to another. Turn on Firefox Tracking Protection, and HTML documents will load comfortably in the Raspberry Pi 3's 1 GB of RAM.
you know even "a 14 year old Pentium 3" has enough CPU power for numerous tasks that are artificially restricted by the operating systems of smartphones, tablets, and game consoles, right? This includes, for example, compiling and running high school computer science homework.
Atari almost died in 1982 because they tried to control everything.
Atari died in 1983-1984 because it couldn't control everything. A flood of bad third-party 2600 titles was giving video gaming itself a bad reputation, and retailers stopped being so willing to stock new releases. This left the market open for Nintendo to come in and use the lockout chip in the NES to ensure at least a minimum level of quality.
Would people put a server in their house? Carry a pocket size battery powered server with them in order to do work while riding the bus? Or pay $5 per GB to an ISP to get data on or off?
Just because someone has to create works doesn't mean everyone needs to have this capability "without an investment of capital," as the article puts it. There will still be PCs for a price, and established businesses will still be able to afford this price just as established video game studios can afford console devkits.
Just because a market exists doesn't mean enthusiast individuals will remain able to afford it. Prices for some computers and components can and have been seen to rise.
Fully update Windows 10 before the start of the simulation and then disconnect it from the Internet during execution, or build in checkpointing to disk. Both should avoid data loss due to forced restarts after kernel security updates.
Steam has a pretty fantastic return policy. If a game looks good try it. If you pass the 2 hours, you probably like it enough to keep it anyway.
Provided:
The game isn't the gaming equivalent of a short film, which can be completed in less than two hours. (Source: "14 Steam games that prove Valve's refund policy is broken" by Ric Cowley) Eventually developers of such games will wise up to this and offer them only through channels other than Steam to avoid the risk of players completing it and then seeking a refund.
The game doesn't open with two hours of something completely different from representative gameplay. In "Could Steam's refund policy have a weird effect on game design?", Tyler Wilde relays the concern of independent game developer Andrew Pellerano of that game design will change to encourage a 2-hour binge before the game becomes no longer refundable. It's suggested that games might even adopt player-hostile patterns currently prevalent in free-to-play mobile gaming, with games giving rapid progress in the first two hours but making the rest of the game an unreasonable grind-fest that can be skipped by buying in-game energy with real money. Or it could open with two hours of cut scenes, for instance, and its publisher may have put that fact under review embargo.
The game doesn't open with 2 hours of trying and failing to get the game to work on your PC, particularly if it needs a driver update or if a necessary activation or matchmaking server is overloaded. If you want, I can dig up anecdotal reports of this causing problems for other users of the Steam service.
How much of a problem do these cases pose in practice?
And youtube gameplay videos come out very fast
I've read that some video game publishers take these videos down on copyright grounds just as fast, claiming that a playthrough violates the publisher's exclusive right to perform its audiovisual work publicly, particularly for rhythm games and for retail games sold by a retailer that broke street date. (Or is this practice limited to console-centric developers?) And I'm aware of some gaming platforms that include only an HDMI output with HDCP always on, which deters those who aren't willing to point a camera at a monitor from making gameplay videos. The technology to do this exists in Windows, under the name Protected Media Path, but I'll grant that I haven't see it in wide use because of legacy VGA and non-HDCP DVI monitors.
At this point, I'm complaining that 10 inch GNU/Linux laptops like those made in 2010 or thereabouts are discontinued and that there is no similarly sized, similarly priced proper tool for the job. I'd prefer one that doesn't beg whoever turns it on to wipe the drive if an operating system capable of running something other than a web browser is installed.
Also, you can most certainly use your phone to create or edit without an internet connection. I just put my phone into airplane mode (no wifi or cell data connection) and was able to create a new.doc file and save it locally.
That works fine because your phone's OS publisher has approved your app. But could you, for example, create a.c file, save it locally, compile it locally, and test it locally? That'd be similar to what I do with my laptop on the bus, but I don't think it's something Apple would so readily approve for the iPhone or iPad. Perhaps if it were Python I could use Pythonista, but that's about it.
E.g. you might have 8GB RAM, but an older dual core CPU from 2009
I admit that if you're starting with an eight-year-old Core 2 Duo, it might be expensive to get up to speed. But then that's like skipping the Wii U and going straight from Wii, which was Nintendo's console in 2009, to Nintendo Switch. Build a new PC and it's like buying two consoles: you can play both Wii U-era PC games at maxed-out settings and Nintendo Switch-era PC games at medium settings.
order a HDMI to VGA adapter from China if going with the latest graphics cards
Wouldn't you need HDMI to hook up the Switch Dock anyway?
Like, it's the fastest PC I've ever had, and I don't want to send the parts to the landfill. [...] You really need to run Windows to freely run any game [...] So, you either can't run linux, or have to use it in a VM
If you have 8 GB of RAM, you can comfortably allocate 2 GB* to your Xubuntu VM and still leave plenty of room for whatever Windows wants to do once you've closed the game. Or you can save the parts from the landfill by putting Xubuntu on your old PC and putting the two on a KVM switch.
* Source: experience. My laptop has 2 GB of RAM and runs Xubuntu on bare metal, and I don't notice any thrashing. But then I've enabled Firefox Tracking Protection, which causes some of the more RAM-hogging elements of HTML documents not to load.
Look at the scenery? Read an eBook? Play a non-internet game? Make a phone call? Read a real book? Listen to the radio?
Or more concisely: "View others' works instead of creating."
If you think you need to be connected to the internet all the time, you are sick
I don't need to be connected to the Internet all the time if I have a laptop running a proper GNU/Linux or Windows operating system. Instead, I check out work before I leave home, do work on the bus, and commit it once I arrive at my destination. However, if I were to try using an iPad and a Bluetooth keyboard as a substitute for a laptop, I would need to SSH to the machine where my application runs. That means either cellular Internet access or carrying a (hypothetical) battery-powered compute module that runs my applications and a Wi-Fi access point to let me view the application from an SSH, VNC, or X11 display app on the iPad.
Last I looked, backpacks can hold a 17" laptop.
For the sake of brevity, I omitted my other reason for preferring a 10" laptop over a backpack-carried 17" laptop. If I am using a laptop in a bus seat, a 10" laptop fits better between my body and the seat back in front of me than a 17" laptop would.
I guess the theory is that an application exclusive to macOS is likely to follow the platform's Human Interface Guidelines more closely than one whose user interface is generalized to cover more platforms.
The point is that *Apple users* can't buy software from anywhere else.
One has a choice to be an Apple user or not.
If you bought a house in a certain neighborhood you wouldn't accept being limited to only purchasing physical goods from one specific store as a condition of living in that neighborhood.
One has a choice to live in a particular neighborhood or not.
I'm really confused if you are asking me a rhetorical question. Yes? Most people do use a laptop.
I'm trying to gauge how seriously I should be taking certain arguments of PC Master Race fanboys. If laptops without an MXM slot really are the majority of PCs, then consoles win for people willing to settle for playing one console's vanilla library offline.
It fizzled because no one wants to play IAP Android crap on a TV
I could have mentioned Apple TV instead. It's also a set-top gaming device built on an SoC "marketed as a mobile chip". Is IAP iOS/tvOS crap any better?
policies are hostile to garage developers
That's been solved for months: Itch to Steam to consoles.
How much does your plan with unlimited text to U.S. and Canada cost you per month?
I could switch providers and have unlimited across the whole country
Assuming you mean "unlimited voice calls and voice mail".
so the people I know in the US, we just text.
As AmiMoJo wrote above: "Text messages have the same flaw as all plain text communicating formats - it can be hard to infer tone. We invented smilies to help, and now for some reason everyone hates emoji. Make it easier to use and suddenly it sucks." You recommended voice calls and voice mail to work around that problem, and those aren't unlimited on your present plan. This means communicating tone "properly" costs more than not doing so.
Then what should one do between stepping on and stepping off?
And yes, kids will carry around a 3DS and a smartphone.
Will they carry two smartphones, one to run Android-exclusive applications and one to run iPhone-exclusive applications?
If you have a need that requires, for example, a laptop, you'll bring it along with your smartphone. I do. That's why they still sell laptops and laptop-specific carry bags.
I do just that. But I fear what'll happen once my current laptop bites the dust, as it's hard to find a 10" anymore, and bigger laptops (particularly 13" and larger) require "laptop-specific carry bags", which in my experience are mugger magnets.
If you don't already own a PC, with what device are you posting comments to Slashdot? Or do most people use only a laptop, smartphone, or tablet computer?
The problem then becomes one of finding the good games among all the crap, particularly if the games you're looking at don't yet have a Metascore and your co-workers are non-gamers.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if the VPS provider collects only $5 per month from you, your cellular or satellite ISP collects $5 for every gigabyte of data that you upload from your device to the VPS or download from the VPS to your device. Such data tolls for remote desktop sessions can add up.
They'really asking "Y?" because newcomers often fail victim to the XY problem, in which someone asks how to perform a particular step in a process when that might not even be the best step for that process.
Most bloat in the modern web is related to scripts that track the user from one website to another. Turn on Firefox Tracking Protection, and HTML documents will load comfortably in the Raspberry Pi 3's 1 GB of RAM.
you know even "a 14 year old Pentium 3" has enough CPU power for numerous tasks that are artificially restricted by the operating systems of smartphones, tablets, and game consoles, right? This includes, for example, compiling and running high school computer science homework.
Atari almost died in 1982 because they tried to control everything.
Atari died in 1983-1984 because it couldn't control everything. A flood of bad third-party 2600 titles was giving video gaming itself a bad reputation, and retailers stopped being so willing to stock new releases. This left the market open for Nintendo to come in and use the lockout chip in the NES to ensure at least a minimum level of quality.
Would people put a server in their house? Carry a pocket size battery powered server with them in order to do work while riding the bus? Or pay $5 per GB to an ISP to get data on or off?
Just because someone has to create works doesn't mean everyone needs to have this capability "without an investment of capital," as the article puts it. There will still be PCs for a price, and established businesses will still be able to afford this price just as established video game studios can afford console devkits.
Why do your processing on a slow machine when you can have access to a remote rendering farm.
Are $5 per GB uploaded or downloaded and 1000 ms ping to said "remote rendering farm" reasons enough? This is the reality of satellite Internet.
Just because a market exists doesn't mean enthusiast individuals will remain able to afford it. Prices for some computers and components can and have been seen to rise.
Fully update Windows 10 before the start of the simulation and then disconnect it from the Internet during execution, or build in checkpointing to disk. Both should avoid data loss due to forced restarts after kernel security updates.
Steam has a pretty fantastic return policy. If a game looks good try it. If you pass the 2 hours, you probably like it enough to keep it anyway.
Provided:
How much of a problem do these cases pose in practice?
And youtube gameplay videos come out very fast
I've read that some video game publishers take these videos down on copyright grounds just as fast, claiming that a playthrough violates the publisher's exclusive right to perform its audiovisual work publicly, particularly for rhythm games and for retail games sold by a retailer that broke street date. (Or is this practice limited to console-centric developers?) And I'm aware of some gaming platforms that include only an HDMI output with HDCP always on, which deters those who aren't willing to point a camera at a monitor from making gameplay videos. The technology to do this exists in Windows, under the name Protected Media Path, but I'll grant that I haven't see it in wide use because of legacy VGA and non-HDCP DVI monitors.
At this point, I'm complaining that 10 inch GNU/Linux laptops like those made in 2010 or thereabouts are discontinued and that there is no similarly sized, similarly priced proper tool for the job. I'd prefer one that doesn't beg whoever turns it on to wipe the drive if an operating system capable of running something other than a web browser is installed.
Also, you can most certainly use your phone to create or edit without an internet connection. I just put my phone into airplane mode (no wifi or cell data connection) and was able to create a new .doc file and save it locally.
That works fine because your phone's OS publisher has approved your app. But could you, for example, create a .c file, save it locally, compile it locally, and test it locally? That'd be similar to what I do with my laptop on the bus, but I don't think it's something Apple would so readily approve for the iPhone or iPad. Perhaps if it were Python I could use Pythonista, but that's about it.
E.g. you might have 8GB RAM, but an older dual core CPU from 2009
I admit that if you're starting with an eight-year-old Core 2 Duo, it might be expensive to get up to speed. But then that's like skipping the Wii U and going straight from Wii, which was Nintendo's console in 2009, to Nintendo Switch. Build a new PC and it's like buying two consoles: you can play both Wii U-era PC games at maxed-out settings and Nintendo Switch-era PC games at medium settings.
order a HDMI to VGA adapter from China if going with the latest graphics cards
Wouldn't you need HDMI to hook up the Switch Dock anyway?
Like, it's the fastest PC I've ever had, and I don't want to send the parts to the landfill.
[...]
You really need to run Windows to freely run any game [...]
So, you either can't run linux, or have to use it in a VM
If you have 8 GB of RAM, you can comfortably allocate 2 GB* to your Xubuntu VM and still leave plenty of room for whatever Windows wants to do once you've closed the game. Or you can save the parts from the landfill by putting Xubuntu on your old PC and putting the two on a KVM switch.
* Source: experience. My laptop has 2 GB of RAM and runs Xubuntu on bare metal, and I don't notice any thrashing. But then I've enabled Firefox Tracking Protection, which causes some of the more RAM-hogging elements of HTML documents not to load.
Look at the scenery? Read an eBook? Play a non-internet game? Make a phone call? Read a real book? Listen to the radio?
Or more concisely: "View others' works instead of creating."
If you think you need to be connected to the internet all the time, you are sick
I don't need to be connected to the Internet all the time if I have a laptop running a proper GNU/Linux or Windows operating system. Instead, I check out work before I leave home, do work on the bus, and commit it once I arrive at my destination. However, if I were to try using an iPad and a Bluetooth keyboard as a substitute for a laptop, I would need to SSH to the machine where my application runs. That means either cellular Internet access or carrying a (hypothetical) battery-powered compute module that runs my applications and a Wi-Fi access point to let me view the application from an SSH, VNC, or X11 display app on the iPad.
Last I looked, backpacks can hold a 17" laptop.
For the sake of brevity, I omitted my other reason for preferring a 10" laptop over a backpack-carried 17" laptop. If I am using a laptop in a bus seat, a 10" laptop fits better between my body and the seat back in front of me than a 17" laptop would.
I guess the theory is that an application exclusive to macOS is likely to follow the platform's Human Interface Guidelines more closely than one whose user interface is generalized to cover more platforms.
The point is that *Apple users* can't buy software from anywhere else.
One has a choice to be an Apple user or not.
If you bought a house in a certain neighborhood you wouldn't accept being limited to only purchasing physical goods from one specific store as a condition of living in that neighborhood.
One has a choice to live in a particular neighborhood or not.
How are the aforementioned choices impractical?
I installed Sox and set it to "play" all audio file types [...] no gui needed.
Without a GUI, how do you pause or seek in an audio file?
I'm really confused if you are asking me a rhetorical question. Yes? Most people do use a laptop.
I'm trying to gauge how seriously I should be taking certain arguments of PC Master Race fanboys. If laptops without an MXM slot really are the majority of PCs, then consoles win for people willing to settle for playing one console's vanilla library offline.
It fizzled because no one wants to play IAP Android crap on a TV
I could have mentioned Apple TV instead. It's also a set-top gaming device built on an SoC "marketed as a mobile chip". Is IAP iOS/tvOS crap any better?
policies are hostile to garage developers
That's been solved for months: Itch to Steam to consoles.
How much does your plan with unlimited text to U.S. and Canada cost you per month?
I could switch providers and have unlimited across the whole country
Assuming you mean "unlimited voice calls and voice mail".
so the people I know in the US, we just text.
As AmiMoJo wrote above: "Text messages have the same flaw as all plain text communicating formats - it can be hard to infer tone. We invented smilies to help, and now for some reason everyone hates emoji. Make it easier to use and suddenly it sucks." You recommended voice calls and voice mail to work around that problem, and those aren't unlimited on your present plan. This means communicating tone "properly" costs more than not doing so.
"Hard to infer tone?" That's a solved problem - it's called the telephone.
How do you search the full text of voice mail?
Just step off the bus or subway.
Then what should one do between stepping on and stepping off?
And yes, kids will carry around a 3DS and a smartphone.
Will they carry two smartphones, one to run Android-exclusive applications and one to run iPhone-exclusive applications?
If you have a need that requires, for example, a laptop, you'll bring it along with your smartphone. I do. That's why they still sell laptops and laptop-specific carry bags.
I do just that. But I fear what'll happen once my current laptop bites the dust, as it's hard to find a 10" anymore, and bigger laptops (particularly 13" and larger) require "laptop-specific carry bags", which in my experience are mugger magnets.
If you don't already own a PC, with what device are you posting comments to Slashdot? Or do most people use only a laptop, smartphone, or tablet computer?
The problem then becomes one of finding the good games among all the crap, particularly if the games you're looking at don't yet have a Metascore and your co-workers are non-gamers.