I don't think saying "cut yourself off from all power, then" is a valid response to people who say "we should be producing other forms of power than nuclear"
Then what non-fossil, non-nuclear source of electric power would meet demand on a calm night? Or would calm nights require rolling blackouts?
As to people getting by without a PC but having a console... I've never seen that and I frankly suspect you're talking about unicorns.
If people who don't own a PC and do most of their "computing" on a phone are unicorns, then my cousin is a unicorn, as is a former co-worker.
As to your comment about malware... I don't know what you're talking about. Clarify your position.
Get on a PC and try to watch a video that you found through a search engine, and if it happens to be on a sufficiently shady site, the site will require you to install what it calls a "codec update" or "Flash update". Except this purported update is actually a malware dropper.
As to cockfighting RPGs... there are literally pokemon games... same IP on the PC:
I can't publicly recommend use of blatant infringements lest I be accused of "inducing copyright infringement" per MGM v. Grokster.
there are zillions of the fucking things
Therein lies the problem: finding which of the "zillions of the fucking things" is any good and/or has any community around it. Unlike with consoles, I'm not aware of any review sites that aim to cover 100% of Steam releases. It's called the paradox of choice: with too many choices, the brain gives up and chooses "none of the above".
As to whether I want to dump a game cube for an emulator if I bought a game cube... yes. For the same reason I'd rather listen to an MP3 or a FLAC file than I would a CD or an LP.
By "dump" I mean take a disc and make an image of the data on the disc for use with an emulator, like ripping a CD to FLAC. How do you do that with Neo Geo AES cartridges or with GameCube discs?
Ever played NeoGeo on the android? Its great.
I tried playing NES on an Android tablet. I kept "whiffing", my term for accidentally pressing outside the range of the on-screen buttons. The same thing happened when I tried the free subset of Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure, a Mario clone on Google Play Store. I didn't get very far until I paired my Bluetooth keyboard. Because a flat sheet of glass has no tactile position cues, it's worse than playing on a Turbo Touch 360, and that's saying something. At least a Turbo Touch has physical trigger buttons, edges on the D-pad, and ridges inside the D-pad. True, emulators tend to support external gamepads, but a PlayStation Vita or Nintendo 3DS is far easier to carry than an Android tablet and a Dual Shock 3. If things like the Xperia Play (phone with slide-out gamepad) were still manufactured, or if JXD gaming tablets were sold in brick-and-mortar stores, it'd be different.
Seriously play around on the steam store for a minute and realize that the PC game market has about 10 times as many titles. Are all of them great? Obviously not. Lots of them are shit. But then lots of games on the console are shit as well.
I think the peasants' argument is that for any generation after the second, a random sample of 10 PC games will have noticeably more shit than a random sample of console games.
Yet "Activision Blizzard" is before Alphabet, and Activision was named to be before Atari. The race to the front of the phone book continued with three other companies started by Activision alumni: Accolade (Populous; HardBall), Acclaim (home versions of Smash TV, Mortal Kombat, and NBA Jam, as well as numerous movie and TV licenses), and Absolute (A Boy and His Blob; Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors).
Alphabet would first have to get past The Walt Disney Company, whose ABC television network is commonly known in the business as the "Alphabet Network".
Uber service resembles taxi service more than it does fixed-route bus service. So even under a mindset that mass transit is GOOD, I imagine Uber isn't quite as GOOD as mass transit. Right now, it's just filling a gap.
I'm posting on slashdot, do I seem like the kind of person who cares about sportsball?
Even if you don't, a Slashdot user might live with someone who does care about sportsball or something else that isn't on Netflix.
Though sarcasm aside, can't you pick those games up with an antenna if you really want to watch them?
You're probably thinking of the Super Bowl (NFL championship game) or the NBA Finals, which are shown OTA. The College Football Playoff is not; it's on ESPN. Nor are some games of the NHL Stanley Cup Finals; they're on NBCSN (formerly Versus).
Thanks for the pointer to the/r/PCMasterRace wiki. But in the interest of completeness, let me go through other arguments that peasants repeat:
You mean consoles on the other hand only allow you do certain things. You may also not be allowed to upgrade, mod, change the hardware, software, use unauthorized peripherals as well.
Nor are your opponents, which is the advantage that peasants claim.
And moving from one generation to the next on consoles, the chances of your guaranteed compatibility goes right out the window.
The Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Wii, Nintendo DS, and Wii U run the vast majority of the previous generation's games perfectly. The PS2 and PS3 both run PS1 games, and early PS3 consoles (the ones marked SACD) can also run PS2 games. And consoles have classic games from previous consoles in Nintendo eShop and PlayStation Store. Good luck running Windows 9x games on your Windows 10 PC, when 10 is just one more than 9.*
Nothing stops you from using a PC in the living room
Then what stops these people? Or what changed since then?
An investment that Netflix is already making. It provides an OpenConnect Appliance without charge to any qualifying ISP willing to give it colo space. Comcast didn't want to take the offer.
If movies/TV shows are sent through the internet and played on some sort of computer, there is a greater chance of piracy
Even in modern Windows operating systems that have "Protected Video Path" DRM? I'm told Netflix downgrades your stream to SD if it can't successfully establish a Protected Video Path.
It is $18/mo for the same service that is already free, only slightly more reliable.
If you were to cancel that $18 per month service, the cable company would likely hike your Internet rate by $20 per month because you no longer qualify for the bundle discount.
Now what happens when the networks you mentioned in 7-10 start saying "Please log in with the username and password issued to you by your participating cable or satellite television provider"?
Saved $145 per month by lowering my Time Warner Bill from $210 to $66
How much of that was absorbed by the upgrade from a flip phone to an Android phone? Major cellular carriers tend to charge more for service on smartphones than on dumbphones.
I will just go to a bar if their is a sports event I want to watch.
People under 21 are forbidden to enter bars. So what should people do if they want to watch the game with their kids, such as the parent of a high school student whose older brother's school is in the ESPN-exclusive College Football Playoff?
"but I like to play on the couch"... then get a gaming laptop and plug it into your tv when you want to do that. You can plug game pads into a PC as easily as anything.
But will the average PC-native co-op game necessarily support gamepads, plural? A lot of PC games require a separate PC per player so that they can sell two to four copies of a game to a single household instead of one copy that works in shared-screen mode.
What is more, the cost of a gaming PC is not the cost of the entire machine. Because you're going to have a PC regardless. Who has a console but doesn't have a PC at all?
People who get by with a console and phone, or people who live in a household where another member routinely hogs the only PC.
So the cost of the gaming PC is not the cost of the machine but rather the cost of turning the PC you're going to buy anyway into a gaming PC.
In other words, wait three to five years until you would have already replaced your existing compact or office-spec laptop with a gaming laptop.
Then you'll hear someone say "but PCs are hard"... well... ten year olds can figure it out.
I've had ten-year-olds get a PC infected with fake antivirus. The only good thing about that is at least it isn't encrypting ransomware.
And then you'll hear "but none of the exclusive games I want are on the PC"... well, you're a victim of advertising because name the genre and there is probably lots of PC games that are every bit as good if not better.
What are better PC counterparts to these games?
Amplitude (abstract rhythm game)
Katamari Damacy (3D platformer with the eat smaller objects mechanic from Bubbles)
New Super Mario Bros. Wii and U (cooperative 2D platformer)
Super Mario 3D World (cooperative 3D platformer)
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword (third-person fantasy action adventure)
Pokemon (cockfighting RPG)
Animal Crossing (social simulator in a somewhat Winnie the Pooh-reminiscent style)
Super Smash Bros. For (platform fighter for up to 4 players)
Splatoon (third-person paint shooter)
emulators
Once you've bought game cartridges or GameCube or Wii discs, how do you dump them so you can run them in an emulator?
[DVRs] feel like 15 year old tech, and they constantly break. They're big and bulky, and make a lot of heat and noise for something that seems slower and less powerful than my mobile phone.
I wonder how much of this is caused by two things: skimping on hardware in order to pay incumbent DVR patent holders such as TiVo, and continuing to use obsolete hardware because it happens to have been certified by the DRM division of CableLabs.
Research introductory price from local competing ISPs with same speed (cable vs. DSL, etc...)
When such competing ISPs do not exist, such as 25 Mbps cable when the competition is 3 Mbps DSL or 10 GB/mo satellite, does this price include the cost of moving your family and finding a new job?
Which of the following is more efficient? A. Requiring all users to purchase a DVR to store scripted shows between time of broadcast and time of viewing. B. Serving them on demand from a CDN box colocated in the ISP's datacenter.
When I can get Netflix for $8, Hulu for $8, and HBO for $15, why do I want to spend $100 for 1000 channels I don't watch.
Two reasons. One is that they're bundled with live sports or politics channels that you do want. Sport leagues' online streaming services tend to black out games shown on national or regional pay TV. The other is that the discount on Internet service for also having TV through the same company is sometimes larger than the price of TV.
And before you say "switch to water", consider that some people use caffeine with a psychiatrist's approval because it's cheaper than prescription psychiatric stimulants.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think saying "cut yourself off from all power, then" is a valid response to people who say "we should be producing other forms of power than nuclear"
Then what non-fossil, non-nuclear source of electric power would meet demand on a calm night? Or would calm nights require rolling blackouts?
As to people getting by without a PC but having a console... I've never seen that and I frankly suspect you're talking about unicorns.
If people who don't own a PC and do most of their "computing" on a phone are unicorns, then my cousin is a unicorn, as is a former co-worker.
As to your comment about malware... I don't know what you're talking about. Clarify your position.
Get on a PC and try to watch a video that you found through a search engine, and if it happens to be on a sufficiently shady site, the site will require you to install what it calls a "codec update" or "Flash update". Except this purported update is actually a malware dropper.
As to cockfighting RPGs... there are literally pokemon games... same IP on the PC:
I can't publicly recommend use of blatant infringements lest I be accused of "inducing copyright infringement" per MGM v. Grokster.
there are zillions of the fucking things
Therein lies the problem: finding which of the "zillions of the fucking things" is any good and/or has any community around it. Unlike with consoles, I'm not aware of any review sites that aim to cover 100% of Steam releases. It's called the paradox of choice: with too many choices, the brain gives up and chooses "none of the above".
As to whether I want to dump a game cube for an emulator if I bought a game cube... yes. For the same reason I'd rather listen to an MP3 or a FLAC file than I would a CD or an LP.
By "dump" I mean take a disc and make an image of the data on the disc for use with an emulator, like ripping a CD to FLAC. How do you do that with Neo Geo AES cartridges or with GameCube discs?
Ever played NeoGeo on the android? Its great.
I tried playing NES on an Android tablet. I kept "whiffing", my term for accidentally pressing outside the range of the on-screen buttons. The same thing happened when I tried the free subset of Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure, a Mario clone on Google Play Store. I didn't get very far until I paired my Bluetooth keyboard. Because a flat sheet of glass has no tactile position cues, it's worse than playing on a Turbo Touch 360, and that's saying something. At least a Turbo Touch has physical trigger buttons, edges on the D-pad, and ridges inside the D-pad. True, emulators tend to support external gamepads, but a PlayStation Vita or Nintendo 3DS is far easier to carry than an Android tablet and a Dual Shock 3. If things like the Xperia Play (phone with slide-out gamepad) were still manufactured, or if JXD gaming tablets were sold in brick-and-mortar stores, it'd be different.
Seriously play around on the steam store for a minute and realize that the PC game market has about 10 times as many titles. Are all of them great? Obviously not. Lots of them are shit. But then lots of games on the console are shit as well.
I think the peasants' argument is that for any generation after the second, a random sample of 10 PC games will have noticeably more shit than a random sample of console games.
Making this all legal is why the asker is trying to limit Windows and Photoshop to a small number of seats.
Speaking of Disney, isn't copyright the one thing that can outlast the heat death of the universe?
Yet "Activision Blizzard" is before Alphabet, and Activision was named to be before Atari. The race to the front of the phone book continued with three other companies started by Activision alumni: Accolade (Populous; HardBall), Acclaim (home versions of Smash TV, Mortal Kombat, and NBA Jam, as well as numerous movie and TV licenses), and Absolute (A Boy and His Blob; Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors).
Alphabet would first have to get past The Walt Disney Company, whose ABC television network is commonly known in the business as the "Alphabet Network".
Not like I expect any email from google either
One needs to be pretty isolated not to have any contacts that are @gmail.com.
why does YouTube still require a fucking Google- account to post?
By "Google- account" are you sarcastically referring to Google+? I thought YouTube dropped the Google+ requirement.
Or by "Google- account" do you mean a Google account that is "minus" the Google+ profile?
Mass Transit is GOOD, personal autos are EVIL.
Uber service resembles taxi service more than it does fixed-route bus service. So even under a mindset that mass transit is GOOD, I imagine Uber isn't quite as GOOD as mass transit. Right now, it's just filling a gap.
I'm posting on slashdot, do I seem like the kind of person who cares about sportsball?
Even if you don't, a Slashdot user might live with someone who does care about sportsball or something else that isn't on Netflix.
Though sarcasm aside, can't you pick those games up with an antenna if you really want to watch them?
You're probably thinking of the Super Bowl (NFL championship game) or the NBA Finals, which are shown OTA. The College Football Playoff is not; it's on ESPN. Nor are some games of the NHL Stanley Cup Finals; they're on NBCSN (formerly Versus).
Thanks for the pointer to the /r/PCMasterRace wiki. But in the interest of completeness, let me go through other arguments that peasants repeat:
You mean consoles on the other hand only allow you do certain things. You may also not be allowed to upgrade, mod, change the hardware, software, use unauthorized peripherals as well.
Nor are your opponents, which is the advantage that peasants claim.
And moving from one generation to the next on consoles, the chances of your guaranteed compatibility goes right out the window.
The Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Wii, Nintendo DS, and Wii U run the vast majority of the previous generation's games perfectly. The PS2 and PS3 both run PS1 games, and early PS3 consoles (the ones marked SACD) can also run PS2 games. And consoles have classic games from previous consoles in Nintendo eShop and PlayStation Store. Good luck running Windows 9x games on your Windows 10 PC, when 10 is just one more than 9.*
Nothing stops you from using a PC in the living room
Then what stops these people? Or what changed since then?
* That was a joke.
Having local CDNs would also be a huge investment
An investment that Netflix is already making. It provides an OpenConnect Appliance without charge to any qualifying ISP willing to give it colo space. Comcast didn't want to take the offer.
If movies/TV shows are sent through the internet and played on some sort of computer, there is a greater chance of piracy
Even in modern Windows operating systems that have "Protected Video Path" DRM? I'm told Netflix downgrades your stream to SD if it can't successfully establish a Protected Video Path.
It is $18/mo for the same service that is already free, only slightly more reliable.
If you were to cancel that $18 per month service, the cable company would likely hike your Internet rate by $20 per month because you no longer qualify for the bundle discount.
7) Downloaded Fox Sports app for cell phone
Now what happens when the networks you mentioned in 7-10 start saying "Please log in with the username and password issued to you by your participating cable or satellite television provider"?
Saved $145 per month by lowering my Time Warner Bill from $210 to $66
How much of that was absorbed by the upgrade from a flip phone to an Android phone? Major cellular carriers tend to charge more for service on smartphones than on dumbphones.
I will just go to a bar if their is a sports event I want to watch.
People under 21 are forbidden to enter bars. So what should people do if they want to watch the game with their kids, such as the parent of a high school student whose older brother's school is in the ESPN-exclusive College Football Playoff?
"but I like to play on the couch"... then get a gaming laptop and plug it into your tv when you want to do that. You can plug game pads into a PC as easily as anything.
But will the average PC-native co-op game necessarily support gamepads, plural? A lot of PC games require a separate PC per player so that they can sell two to four copies of a game to a single household instead of one copy that works in shared-screen mode.
What is more, the cost of a gaming PC is not the cost of the entire machine. Because you're going to have a PC regardless. Who has a console but doesn't have a PC at all?
People who get by with a console and phone, or people who live in a household where another member routinely hogs the only PC.
So the cost of the gaming PC is not the cost of the machine but rather the cost of turning the PC you're going to buy anyway into a gaming PC.
In other words, wait three to five years until you would have already replaced your existing compact or office-spec laptop with a gaming laptop.
Then you'll hear someone say "but PCs are hard"... well... ten year olds can figure it out.
I've had ten-year-olds get a PC infected with fake antivirus. The only good thing about that is at least it isn't encrypting ransomware.
And then you'll hear "but none of the exclusive games I want are on the PC"... well, you're a victim of advertising because name the genre and there is probably lots of PC games that are every bit as good if not better.
What are better PC counterparts to these games?
emulators
Once you've bought game cartridges or GameCube or Wii discs, how do you dump them so you can run them in an emulator?
Last time I checked, cows said EAT MOR CHIKIN.
I'd much rather wait for it to come out on DVD or arrive on netflix than suffer through all the advertising.
Does the College Football Playoff ever get to DVD or Netflix?
[DVRs] feel like 15 year old tech, and they constantly break. They're big and bulky, and make a lot of heat and noise for something that seems slower and less powerful than my mobile phone.
I wonder how much of this is caused by two things: skimping on hardware in order to pay incumbent DVR patent holders such as TiVo, and continuing to use obsolete hardware because it happens to have been certified by the DRM division of CableLabs.
What are their customers going to do? Go to one of their competitors when they want to watch Game Of Downton Abbey?
Worse comes to worst, they'll watch a show that isn't Game of Thrones or a show that isn't Downton Abbey. Sometimes substitutes are not exact.
Research introductory price from local competing ISPs with same speed (cable vs. DSL, etc...)
When such competing ISPs do not exist, such as 25 Mbps cable when the competition is 3 Mbps DSL or 10 GB/mo satellite, does this price include the cost of moving your family and finding a new job?
Which of the following is more efficient?
A. Requiring all users to purchase a DVR to store scripted shows between time of broadcast and time of viewing.
B. Serving them on demand from a CDN box colocated in the ISP's datacenter.
When I can get Netflix for $8, Hulu for $8, and HBO for $15, why do I want to spend $100 for 1000 channels I don't watch.
Two reasons. One is that they're bundled with live sports or politics channels that you do want. Sport leagues' online streaming services tend to black out games shown on national or regional pay TV. The other is that the discount on Internet service for also having TV through the same company is sometimes larger than the price of TV.
In my state, we've been forced to buy auto liability insurance since, well...forever.
I don't buy car liability insurance. Here's why not.
And before you say "switch to water", consider that some people use caffeine with a psychiatrist's approval because it's cheaper than prescription psychiatric stimulants.