Virtually all SD card readers are attached to a USB port, so An SD card cannot be a faster solution than USB. I don't think I have ever seen even one SD card reader on a PC that was not attached via USB. The "built in" SD card readers are just attached to the USB header pins directly on the mother board.
No, leasing out bandwidth is pretty much all we want ISPs to do now. Having a monopoly on that would leave the situation as it is now, but basically mandate that the monopoly ISP not offer any of the commodity free services that it currently does, while it throttles whatever costs it money.
The solution is to have municipalities do what they already do well. That is the municipalities should run another set of pipes like the sewer lines to each house. A tube system the size of the sewer system would allow for dozens if not hundreds of companies to compete without all of the fake right of way issues that only exist because municipalities have joined in the telecom monopoly business.
A bicycle is a non-starter. It IS luggage on the train as opposed to carrying luggage. It is totally impractical for use in any kind of adverse weather, either hot or cold. It's range is limited. It also doesn't come anywhere near solving the problem of having to sit next to someone who just pissed themselves on the train. Your comments specifically point out many reasons why mass transit doesn't work, and why people will keep using cars.
Trains are actually a very good solution once you overcome the fact that they only run on the rails. Of course, that is simple to solve. Make the trains flatbeds with stations that have ramps on both sides so that the commuters can drive their flexible cars up one side and park on the train. Then the commuter can sit and enjoy the personal space, cleanliness, and storage capabilities of their car, as well as the ability to sleep, read, work, or chat with the other passenger offered by mass transit, while the train takes them relatively close to their destination in a much safer and more fuel efficient manner. They can then drive down the ramp at the other end and have all the benefited of a car at their destination.
Trains are great, but like most mass transit, it has a serious last mile and edge case problem. The problem is easily solve with only a small amount of imagination though. Unfortunately, there are too many people involved in mass transit planning that either do it for show, or think that any use of cars is evil.
At every moment we are doing dozens if not hundreds of multiple tasks at the same time. Cooking alone is not a single task, but a bunch of different tasks.
Bingo. Check/Debit cards are fraud magnets by design. Heck, when they were first introduced, Visa actually ran ads showing how easy it was to commit fraud with them. They would show how hard it was to use a check because you had to prove who you were, but with a Visa check card, you can buy whatever you want without any evidence of who you are. Check cards have all of the lack of security of a credit card, and all of the risk of an ATM card. It is simply an ATM card without a pin. Who in their right mind would think that issuing ATM cards where using the pin is optional is a good idea?
iPhone fans generally take the stance that if the iPhone is missing a feature, then the feature is unnecessary and if the iPhone has a bug, then the bug is a feature.
Your whole post is an exercise in what you were arguing against.
So, you confirm that the poster complaining about Flash crashing 40% of the time is either lying, or has some kind of unusual setup that is the real culprit. It is now an hour later, and the Flash running on my Mac in 6 windows is still running fine.
Conclusion: The user's computer is broken, and since he considers it impossible that a product from Apple could be the cause of crashes, Flash must be at fault.
That is a good catch. Of course, it still shows his poor reasoning/troubleshooting skills. What is the first thing different about his system than from the majority of peoples systems who have no problem running Flash? That's right. It is a Mac. As you said, it might be due to Apples restrictions on their software, or maybe his Mac isn't the premium hardware that he would like to believe, but in true Mac user fashion, he dismisses that the Mac itself could be the reason that things DONT "Just Work" on his Mac.
Just out of curiosity though, I just loaded up 6 windows, each running a flash game, on the Mac I have here to see if any of them crash. So far, they all loaded up fine, with no crashes. I'll let them run for a little while and see what happens.
Honestly, I think the poster is just lying, but I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he has crappy hardware, and doesn't understand computers well enough to understand why that matters.
Having known several burglars in the past, I can tell you that they won't bother with finding a night that you are away. Most of them will just walk up to your front door at 11am and ring the doorbell. If you answer, they will give an excuse for being there, whether that is selling candy, asking for signatures on a petition, or what have you. If you do not answer, they know they are clear to go. As poor of a career choice as they may have made, it isn't brain surgery to figure out that most people are gone to work during the day, and you want people gone when you commit a burglary.
Of course, many of the ideas on computer security are as rooted in reality as peoples ideas on home security. Complex passwords that expire every 30 days is like the person that puts $200 dollar locks on their front door, and doesn't realize that a rock wrapped in a sock is a universal key for sliding glass doors. and doesn't realize that a $2 security sticker on the window is 10 times more effective.
I have an Android and an iPhone sitting right here. The reason you are confused is because the iPhone is an OK phone. It just isn't a great phone. It has, and has had major problems. You get mocked because you rave about a product that is only adequate. iPhone fans generally take the stance that if the iPhone is missing a feature, then the feature is unnecessary and if the iPhone has a bug, then the bug is a feature. The iPhone was massively crash prone for a long time, it is extremely noisy to other device, the battery is not user replaceable, it has no expandable storage, it doesn't multitask, you cannot get a model with a physical keyboard, and it needs special software to put your own music on it.
These are all major failings. The iPhone doesn't suck, but it has real problems. If you say things to your friends like "experienced what it's like to have a "personal digital assistant" that works for you, rather than a personal digital taskmaster that makes you work for it, in pale hopes of some return in efficiency that never materializes.", it is no wonder that they mock you and believe you have been conned.
Comments like "But watch him fiddle with it, hunt and hunt for apps, tweak and manage, and watch me just use." when your talking about a device that requires special software be installed on a computer just to copy an mp3 over is at best being in denial.
If your browser is crashing 40% of time that Flash is on the screen, you need to replace your hardware, or clean the viruses off your machine. I have never had Flash crash a single machine. I have never seen flash crash a single machine. My son plays flash games all the time, and at times has 20 windows open with different flash games running, leaves them running for days at a time, and has never had a crash from Flash. I don't doubt that your machine crashes all the time, but I call shenanigans on the claim that flash is crashing it.
You seem to be in the wrong discussion. The rest of us are talking about HTPCs, not general purpose computers. The only HTPC task I wouldn't throw at the Revo is Recording. Although, there may be external video capture cards that make it better for that than your systems too.
You are simply rationalizing your over powered CPU choice, and over priced customization for a product that has reached commodity status. For the living room, your solution loses on every criteria except possibly recording live TV, which is becoming less and less of a concern. Of course, your attempt at measuring power consumption by processor speed in MHz, pretty well sums up where your at with computers.
Every version of Linux, however, including Ubuntu, requires some expertise in configuration and management of the OS. It's not nearly as hands-off a system.
That is simply a lie. A couple of weeks after his second birthday I formatted my son's hard drive and handed him a copy of Ubuntu 5.10. He installed it, and was up on the internet running his software in less than an hour and a half with no intervention on my part. This was a good 10 months before he could even read. I can guarantee that he did not have "some expertise in configuration and management of the OS".
Conversely, I followed that up with formatting his hard drive and handing him a Windows install disk. He was unsuccessful at installing it. No doubt this was due to the Windows install requiring reading to get through, but the fact remains that a 2 year old can install Linux. Any adult that claims they cannot is claiming to be mentally incapable to the point that they should be institutionalized.
It's nice to have the source code to mess with, or to enhance. But if I have to compile a new piece of software just to install it properly the first time, that's when *nixen completely fail the end user.
Given that Ubuntu supports more hardware out of the box than Windows, the only benefit that your statement gives is that with Windows, you can just throw the hardware away when windows doesn't support it, whereas with Ubuntu, you might be tempted to try and get it to work.
I spent less than half of what you charge for my Revo ($180). Because the video decoding is done on the video card, it easily handles every video file I throw at it, and it runs at 12 watts when not under load, and 20 watts when under full load. The electricity savings alone pay for the entire cost of replacing it every year and a half. Your solution is drastically more expensive in both the short and long run.
HTPC is a different beast than standard general us PCs. It is generally the case that an HTPC has a fixed purpose. It's hard drive only needs to be fast enough to stream a movie, and it's CPU/GPU only need to be fast enough to run menus and decode video. The Revo meets those requirements, and those requirements are extremely unlikely to change anytime soon.
There is a place for a full power PC in HTPC. If I ever get around to trying MythTV again for recording live television, a full PC in the closet as the recorder/server would make sense. For just displaying on a TV though, a full PC just adds huge up front costs, huge back end costs, lots of noise, lots of space and doesn't improve the user experience at all.
More accureatly, look at Windows vs. the Mac. That is the most accurate comparison between an iPhone and Android. Why does Grandma buy a Windows machine instead of a Mac?
The value is not in 3D. Yes, 3D is a gimmick. BUT, with it comes TVs that can interpolate two different video streams, and sync glasses to block the image you don't want to see. That is how they show you 3D on the TVs. Show one video stream to your right eye, and a different video stream to your left eye. No doubt, we will very shortly see boxes that will interpolate ANY two video sources, inject one of the stream's audio into the SAP channel, and blank out both eyes in the glasses instead of only one at a time. What this will do is give us the ability to have two different people watching two different TV shows at the same time on the same TV.
So, sure, 3D is a gimmick, but having the "3D TVs" will soon mean that I can watch The Office on the same TV and at the same time that my wife watches Tori and Dean.
You left out the option that cities could lay pipe the same way they do with sewer lines, and then they could let any cable company run lines any time they want without ever having to dig up the streets again.
OK, that line is used profusely by pro public breast feeding folks. It is a very poor argument. What could be more natural? How about taking a crap. Does that make it ok to do in a restaurant? Natural != Good.
Then there is the fact that a woman showing her bare boobs in public is illegal in most of the US. Doing so to feed a baby should not change the legality of public nudity.
Those things being said, it seems ridiculous that it is legal for a B cup man to walk around without his shirt, but it is a crime for an A cup woman. So, from a legal standpoint, our laws are bizarrely discriminatory, but if being topless in public is illegal, it should be illegal. If it is not, then it should not be for anyone.
From a moral stand point, I don't mind you showing them if you don't mind me looking.
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You jest, but I have had many people tell me that in all seriousness. Ok, the left out the teabagger part.
Virtually all SD card readers are attached to a USB port, so An SD card cannot be a faster solution than USB. I don't think I have ever seen even one SD card reader on a PC that was not attached via USB. The "built in" SD card readers are just attached to the USB header pins directly on the mother board.
No, leasing out bandwidth is pretty much all we want ISPs to do now. Having a monopoly on that would leave the situation as it is now, but basically mandate that the monopoly ISP not offer any of the commodity free services that it currently does, while it throttles whatever costs it money. The solution is to have municipalities do what they already do well. That is the municipalities should run another set of pipes like the sewer lines to each house. A tube system the size of the sewer system would allow for dozens if not hundreds of companies to compete without all of the fake right of way issues that only exist because municipalities have joined in the telecom monopoly business.
A bicycle is a non-starter. It IS luggage on the train as opposed to carrying luggage. It is totally impractical for use in any kind of adverse weather, either hot or cold. It's range is limited. It also doesn't come anywhere near solving the problem of having to sit next to someone who just pissed themselves on the train. Your comments specifically point out many reasons why mass transit doesn't work, and why people will keep using cars.
Trains are actually a very good solution once you overcome the fact that they only run on the rails. Of course, that is simple to solve. Make the trains flatbeds with stations that have ramps on both sides so that the commuters can drive their flexible cars up one side and park on the train. Then the commuter can sit and enjoy the personal space, cleanliness, and storage capabilities of their car, as well as the ability to sleep, read, work, or chat with the other passenger offered by mass transit, while the train takes them relatively close to their destination in a much safer and more fuel efficient manner. They can then drive down the ramp at the other end and have all the benefited of a car at their destination.
Trains are great, but like most mass transit, it has a serious last mile and edge case problem. The problem is easily solve with only a small amount of imagination though. Unfortunately, there are too many people involved in mass transit planning that either do it for show, or think that any use of cars is evil.
At every moment we are doing dozens if not hundreds of multiple tasks at the same time. Cooking alone is not a single task, but a bunch of different tasks.
I assume you feel the same way about car exhaust. Or are you only offended by other people putting crap in the air?
Bingo. Check/Debit cards are fraud magnets by design. Heck, when they were first introduced, Visa actually ran ads showing how easy it was to commit fraud with them. They would show how hard it was to use a check because you had to prove who you were, but with a Visa check card, you can buy whatever you want without any evidence of who you are. Check cards have all of the lack of security of a credit card, and all of the risk of an ATM card. It is simply an ATM card without a pin. Who in their right mind would think that issuing ATM cards where using the pin is optional is a good idea?
iPhone fans generally take the stance that if the iPhone is missing a feature, then the feature is unnecessary and if the iPhone has a bug, then the bug is a feature.
Your whole post is an exercise in what you were arguing against.
So, you confirm that the poster complaining about Flash crashing 40% of the time is either lying, or has some kind of unusual setup that is the real culprit. It is now an hour later, and the Flash running on my Mac in 6 windows is still running fine.
Conclusion: The user's computer is broken, and since he considers it impossible that a product from Apple could be the cause of crashes, Flash must be at fault.
That is a good catch. Of course, it still shows his poor reasoning/troubleshooting skills. What is the first thing different about his system than from the majority of peoples systems who have no problem running Flash? That's right. It is a Mac. As you said, it might be due to Apples restrictions on their software, or maybe his Mac isn't the premium hardware that he would like to believe, but in true Mac user fashion, he dismisses that the Mac itself could be the reason that things DONT "Just Work" on his Mac.
Just out of curiosity though, I just loaded up 6 windows, each running a flash game, on the Mac I have here to see if any of them crash. So far, they all loaded up fine, with no crashes. I'll let them run for a little while and see what happens.
Honestly, I think the poster is just lying, but I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he has crappy hardware, and doesn't understand computers well enough to understand why that matters.
Having known several burglars in the past, I can tell you that they won't bother with finding a night that you are away. Most of them will just walk up to your front door at 11am and ring the doorbell. If you answer, they will give an excuse for being there, whether that is selling candy, asking for signatures on a petition, or what have you. If you do not answer, they know they are clear to go. As poor of a career choice as they may have made, it isn't brain surgery to figure out that most people are gone to work during the day, and you want people gone when you commit a burglary.
Of course, many of the ideas on computer security are as rooted in reality as peoples ideas on home security. Complex passwords that expire every 30 days is like the person that puts $200 dollar locks on their front door, and doesn't realize that a rock wrapped in a sock is a universal key for sliding glass doors. and doesn't realize that a $2 security sticker on the window is 10 times more effective.
I have an Android and an iPhone sitting right here. The reason you are confused is because the iPhone is an OK phone. It just isn't a great phone. It has, and has had major problems. You get mocked because you rave about a product that is only adequate. iPhone fans generally take the stance that if the iPhone is missing a feature, then the feature is unnecessary and if the iPhone has a bug, then the bug is a feature. The iPhone was massively crash prone for a long time, it is extremely noisy to other device, the battery is not user replaceable, it has no expandable storage, it doesn't multitask, you cannot get a model with a physical keyboard, and it needs special software to put your own music on it.
These are all major failings. The iPhone doesn't suck, but it has real problems. If you say things to your friends like "experienced what it's like to have a "personal digital assistant" that works for you, rather than a personal digital taskmaster that makes you work for it, in pale hopes of some return in efficiency that never materializes.", it is no wonder that they mock you and believe you have been conned.
Comments like "But watch him fiddle with it, hunt and hunt for apps, tweak and manage, and watch me just use." when your talking about a device that requires special software be installed on a computer just to copy an mp3 over is at best being in denial.
Now that you mention it, I better pull my TV off the wall, since it must not be functioning either.
If your browser is crashing 40% of time that Flash is on the screen, you need to replace your hardware, or clean the viruses off your machine. I have never had Flash crash a single machine. I have never seen flash crash a single machine. My son plays flash games all the time, and at times has 20 windows open with different flash games running, leaves them running for days at a time, and has never had a crash from Flash. I don't doubt that your machine crashes all the time, but I call shenanigans on the claim that flash is crashing it.
And now we are seeing even worse statistical lies about cell phones.
Are you really accusing someone of being a fanboy for a particular model of PC? Really?
You seem to be in the wrong discussion. The rest of us are talking about HTPCs, not general purpose computers. The only HTPC task I wouldn't throw at the Revo is Recording. Although, there may be external video capture cards that make it better for that than your systems too.
You are simply rationalizing your over powered CPU choice, and over priced customization for a product that has reached commodity status. For the living room, your solution loses on every criteria except possibly recording live TV, which is becoming less and less of a concern. Of course, your attempt at measuring power consumption by processor speed in MHz, pretty well sums up where your at with computers.
Every version of Linux, however, including Ubuntu, requires some expertise in configuration and management of the OS. It's not nearly as hands-off a system.
That is simply a lie. A couple of weeks after his second birthday I formatted my son's hard drive and handed him a copy of Ubuntu 5.10. He installed it, and was up on the internet running his software in less than an hour and a half with no intervention on my part. This was a good 10 months before he could even read. I can guarantee that he did not have "some expertise in configuration and management of the OS".
Conversely, I followed that up with formatting his hard drive and handing him a Windows install disk. He was unsuccessful at installing it. No doubt this was due to the Windows install requiring reading to get through, but the fact remains that a 2 year old can install Linux. Any adult that claims they cannot is claiming to be mentally incapable to the point that they should be institutionalized.
It's nice to have the source code to mess with, or to enhance. But if I have to compile a new piece of software just to install it properly the first time, that's when *nixen completely fail the end user.
Given that Ubuntu supports more hardware out of the box than Windows, the only benefit that your statement gives is that with Windows, you can just throw the hardware away when windows doesn't support it, whereas with Ubuntu, you might be tempted to try and get it to work.
I spent less than half of what you charge for my Revo ($180). Because the video decoding is done on the video card, it easily handles every video file I throw at it, and it runs at 12 watts when not under load, and 20 watts when under full load. The electricity savings alone pay for the entire cost of replacing it every year and a half. Your solution is drastically more expensive in both the short and long run.
HTPC is a different beast than standard general us PCs. It is generally the case that an HTPC has a fixed purpose. It's hard drive only needs to be fast enough to stream a movie, and it's CPU/GPU only need to be fast enough to run menus and decode video. The Revo meets those requirements, and those requirements are extremely unlikely to change anytime soon.
There is a place for a full power PC in HTPC. If I ever get around to trying MythTV again for recording live television, a full PC in the closet as the recorder/server would make sense. For just displaying on a TV though, a full PC just adds huge up front costs, huge back end costs, lots of noise, lots of space and doesn't improve the user experience at all.
More accureatly, look at Windows vs. the Mac. That is the most accurate comparison between an iPhone and Android. Why does Grandma buy a Windows machine instead of a Mac?
Seriously! I thought these kinds of experiments had been outlawed. At the very least, no reputable institution would touch it with a 10 foot pole.
The value is not in 3D. Yes, 3D is a gimmick. BUT, with it comes TVs that can interpolate two different video streams, and sync glasses to block the image you don't want to see. That is how they show you 3D on the TVs. Show one video stream to your right eye, and a different video stream to your left eye. No doubt, we will very shortly see boxes that will interpolate ANY two video sources, inject one of the stream's audio into the SAP channel, and blank out both eyes in the glasses instead of only one at a time. What this will do is give us the ability to have two different people watching two different TV shows at the same time on the same TV.
So, sure, 3D is a gimmick, but having the "3D TVs" will soon mean that I can watch The Office on the same TV and at the same time that my wife watches Tori and Dean.
You left out the option that cities could lay pipe the same way they do with sewer lines, and then they could let any cable company run lines any time they want without ever having to dig up the streets again.
what could be more natural?
OK, that line is used profusely by pro public breast feeding folks. It is a very poor argument. What could be more natural? How about taking a crap. Does that make it ok to do in a restaurant? Natural != Good.
Then there is the fact that a woman showing her bare boobs in public is illegal in most of the US. Doing so to feed a baby should not change the legality of public nudity.
Those things being said, it seems ridiculous that it is legal for a B cup man to walk around without his shirt, but it is a crime for an A cup woman. So, from a legal standpoint, our laws are bizarrely discriminatory, but if being topless in public is illegal, it should be illegal. If it is not, then it should not be for anyone.
From a moral stand point, I don't mind you showing them if you don't mind me looking.