To be fair, this is the Berkeley PD we're talking about, here. It's not like there's a tax-paying public there. It's mostly students and professors, and everyone who actually makes money is (primarily) paid by the University. It's more like a corporate state of Greek times.

And how is that a problem?

You can get a $100 SSD which is more than sufficient as the primary drive in a medium-high end desktop or laptop. A $500 SSD is a different ball park entirely at this point - it's a 'high end' item. I've been not only quite happy, but overly satisfied with the 64GB Kingston SSD I've been using as a system disk on my home workstation for the past year and a half.

Yes, I've got multiple RAID arrays and 500GB-3TB disks sitting around and in systems, as well. But the SSD is by all means preferable as a primary system disk, even if I've got to manage my space more carefully. With 128GB, I'd not worry about a rotating disk in the same system. At 256GB, you're talking twice the storage the average person needs (or even wants) for all of their data.

OK, so you came up with the 1% scenario where Cloud is the best option. Yes, there are other similar (IPO, product launch, etc.) corner cases. Arguably, this falls under "c", maybe as "d" as "short term mass distribution".

I'm going to make several bets here which will also hold true:

* sequential performance will improve at a rate congruent with storage capacity
* random performance will remain roughly the same as it has for the past 10 years (ie, poor, though it will likely improve slightly unless we go back to double-thick drives like we had 10-15 years ago)
* resiliency will not improve for single disks and will likely be worse for in terms of longevity.
* none of this will matter for the consumer market, because by that time, everyone will be using SSDs almost exclusively. You can still fit a lot of data on a 500GB drive, and those are commonly available for laptops and desktops already.

And, correct me if I'm wrong, but "no more than 10cm, with an uncertainty of 10cm" means to me that the answer he came to is statistically insignificant, or something like that. He's trying to lie with science.

Look, either you can measure it, or you can't. You can't say "it's risen 10cm" when you could be off by as much as 10cm. Science doesn't work that way. "There may, or may not be a room with a door down the hall to your left". Sorry. Try again.

This whole thing reads like "we can stop global tide levels from rising any further by not using the toilet". It's retarded. Do people even realize where ground water comes from?

That is just one of many of the hurdles.

Really, these problems are problems because most 'cloud' shit is done wrong.

It's a bit of a worn out record here on Slashdot, but anyone or any company which is fully dependent upon The Cloud for business continuity is a fool.

* First off, there is no such thing as 'utility computing', and probably never will be due to the volatile nature of storage and its ongoing cost of maintenance.
* Second, if you do not maintain primary physical control of something, to the best of your ability, you do not control it.
* For primary IT infrastructure, it will cost more to do "Cloud" than local. If you can afford 2-3 servers a year, but not much more, and a nominal IT operations budget, chances are you should have an in-house "cloud" with off-site replication.
* Bandwidth costs both ways will kill you, as will latency in many cases, will kill Cloud functionality.

At this point, I still strongly recommend against public Clouding your systems unless they are:

a) (very!) low volume with use-based billing. This only makes sense for a low-volume public-facing site where you don't already have IT infrastructure (on a cost basis)
b) off-site 'hot' replication. You've got your inside 'private Cloud' which replicates to off-site systems. (Cloud is basically just colocated virtualization, after all.)
c) Other geographic/distribution requirements (eg. multisite organization with none serving as a good central hub). In this case, colocation of your own equipment makes more sense in many regards.

I have to do your research for you now instead of just leading the blind? :)

Google for 'gaming performance windows vs. mac' for starters. OSX has only about 2/3 the gaming performance as Windows at the graphics display level, nevermind the desktop display engine.

As for Aero/Aqua, that's largely an anecdotal thing based on experience and knowledge of how things typically work. I'm guessing, based no what I've seen.

And yes, Apple does tend to put the "A" team on visual presentation with everything else being of significantly lower importance. I would hope the B team would get to work on important things like system performance and drivers, at least, though I'm guessing they're working on things like bug reporting and update management... judging how messed up DHCP and wifi drivers are, I'm going to guess they've got the C or D team on those things...

And yet, when people had the latest, greatest Core 2 from Intel, with integrated graphics - and it sucked horribly for pretty much everything - there was nothing ARM had which could do what a desktop could do, even a low-end one.

Today, however, there are quite a few ARM processors which do a lot more than such a setup - arguably just as much as a 'cheap' i5 or i3 system with Intel graphics. And they're in phones, not on desktops.

Keep in mind, the 'desktop' is a dying breed. An ARM VESA mounted computer would more than meet business needs (assuming there's software to run on it, and for the most part, there either is or will be). For the most part, the technology exists today (software + hardware) to completely erode Intel's standing on both the home and corporate desktop without leaving the Microsoft monoculture outright. Good or not, W8 will make that more possible.

Intel has the 'general purpose computing'/IT infrastructure market locked up for many years to come, but the consumer market is another story. If ARM can design and implement a requirement for their licensees which is similar to a BIOS, so chip designers can simply ship drivers and custom ROMs for each device are not required, I think this would be more true, allowing for easier home enthusiast access.

There are a half dozen different 'glossy' UIs which predate OS X - most noteably, Enlightenment and whatever that shell modification is for Windows which has been around since forever which is based on (iirc) Afterstep. OS X has, actually, never really done 'glossy', though they did do AA'd fonts long before Windows did and have played around with various incarnations of 'soda fountain metal counter' and do a lot of drop shadows, which were done well the first time by Apple (though not the first implementation, just the first one to do hardware acceleration).

Aero performs better than OS X does the same hardware, actually, though that might be the OS and/or graphics drivers more so than the display widget software. OSX will take forever to do something, pre-rendering visual elements, so that when they are displayed they display crisply. Windows doesn't do that, so comparable shittiness looks better on a Mac, but may also take longer to perform... Overall I'd say Mac visuals are markedly slower than either Linux or Windows at this point, regardless of hardware.

What I've observed is this:

* people are lazy, even if they work hard. They want to get more done for less.
* people are either stupid or smart.
* smart people prefer using the keyboard (less doing and repetition, which is mentally painful)
* stupid people prefer using the mouse (less thinking, which hurts their walnuts)

Probably, "ok, that'll be $150. Sign here, and be sure to read the clause about no liability for damages, yadda yadda".

Yeah, and you better hope you have the fine print clearly stated and made obvious to the customers before you do your boot & nuke, or you're going to have a lot of angry customers when they lose all their important data.

When I did this, it was a flat $150 which included a 'standard' backup, wipe and reinstall assuming they had the OEM disks. For a new system, the OEM disks will usually include crapware in the image, so you'd have to then run something like pcdecrapifier. It really is a mess, I can't understand why people put up with it and fully appreciate why someone might prefer a Mac over the gobs of bullshit on the average consumer PC.

I like the Acer laptops for the very reason you state.

I suppose that it largely depends on how exactly you're shipping things, what you're shipping, and where you're sending it.

In certain parts of the country, FedEx is the only way to go. In rural NE and SD, for example, I know FedEx will stop/drive by 2, 3 times a day. By 'rural' I mean anything from a couple dozen people per square mile (or less) to small towns to cities of 150-200k people.

In these places, UPS is the one that's more likely to do things like leave the packages at the local gas station (also the post office), and not bother even trying to deliver it (no wonder it's cheaper). I have had FedEx drop off several packages and then pick up at the end of the day, with the same driver. You won't get anything like that with UPS. If you want to ship something big and/or heavy, FedEx is the only way to do it with any expectation that it'll be handled well (with normal bulk rate or freight rates).

In my experience, they each excel at different things.

* UPS is good at small parcel post (letters and the like). If timeliness isn't an issue and cost is the perogative, and it's not easily broken, go for it. Most likely to read "Fragile" to mean "Step On and/or Break".
* FedEx is best at big things (eg. larger than a breadbox). They handle things the best, in my experience. If you need it timely, it'll be there, but it might also cost you. I've gotten things which couldn't have been delivered faster if someone had left for the airport to travel to me with them on a commercial flight - just ridiculously fast. It's the only way I'll ship sensitive equipment.
* USPS is the cheapest and most secure way to get something from overseas, ironically. Don't do it with anything fragile. Sometimes, you wonder if they're still using the Pony Express for some legs of the delivery.

You realize that if they were to stop giving such a massive discount on flats/off-loading the cost of flats to the paying customer (the ones who buy stamps and ship packages, never mind fund them through taxes), several things would/could happen:

* The USPS would not be bankrupt and would be a net profit center for the Federal Government. Yeah, they'd make money at it, even if they try to fail through other means.
* Most nonsense magazines which are shipped to the house (and infrequently paid for by the recipient, it seems) would cost twice as much to be shipped. Corner distribution would be preferred.
* Many of these junk rags, bulk fliers, and other junk mail would simply stop coming to your door. (Awesome!)
* There would be no need for daily mail delivery, and we could reduce USPS delivery to 2 or 3 times a week (or simply reduce the number of federal employees and lengthen the routes, with cyclical delivery routes).

Really, flat rate bulk mail is a travesty. It should not happen. It is corporate welfare at its finest (and worst) and absolutely enrages me. It has bankrupt one of the simplest and most essential government services here in the US. The irony is that private enterprise - FedEx, DHL, UPS - have managed to do a better job than the USPS by far, for less - all while paying fuel and income taxes.

Yeah, except email IS a waste of time.

That doesn't mean I don't use it when it's appropriate to use it to share something with someone. Things like rambling thoughts, technical details, and the like.

I still call my family and friends and will even occasionally write a letter. I also send videos to friends and family.

Facebook? I'm sorry, what the hell does that have to do with anything? It's an echo chamber of Stupid Fat Vegan Farmer updates and invitations, for the most part. Had facebook never allowed 3rd party applications, it would still be regarded as a social network (with the emphasis on 'social'). Now it's just an ad and web based software delivery system (not unlike, say, Steam).