Better than half the computers sold no longer even include a discrete GPU

Has it ever been the case in the past decade that more than half of the computers sold included a discrete GPU?

Once integrated graphics became a useable thing, the vast majority of systems that I see* do not have a dedicated graphics card: Integrated graphics of the day have always been adequate for any non-gaming usage of that same day, and people are (as a rule) cheap.

*: This is an anecdote based on a couple of decades of fixing computers. I welcome actual data.

I don't own a Rift, and I likely won't.

But:

What I remember from the Quake 1 days was this: The rendering was fisheyed. If I looked at a pillar, and then turned a few degrees to the right, the pillar got -bigger-: It consumed more pixels at the side of the screen, than it did in the middle of the screen.

This really bothered me at the time. I complained about it, and folks said "Well how ELSE would it be shown?"

And I'm all like "I don't care. That's not how I see things. And I hate it."

And then they're all "Whatever, fag."

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here, looking at a pillar in real life, and I turn my head (or my gaze) to the side, and it doesn't get bigger. It just moves over a bit in my field of vision, and doesn't look at at like looking through a magnified peephole in a door.

In retrospect, it is clear that this rendering method was done so that CPUs of the day could keep up at a reasonable framerate, as the periphery would require fewer polygons and thus render faster.

It also seems clear to me that something like Rift, which is intended to encompass the entire field of view, the system would need to be particularly careful about how it handled such things.

But then, output devices don't control fisheye. Game programmers do. Perhaps it can improve simply through better software design.

IBM isn't known for dumb moves

Your memory of IBM differs from my own.

Really?

About 20 years ago, people still sometimes had to use dialing codes to make a phone call to a cellphone. We had a list in the kitchen next to the telephone of some common ones. "I think Mom said she'd be in Cleveland today...let's try that one first."

This was AMPS, of course. Things have improved a bit since then.

Oh, and then D-AMPS happened. And CDMA2000 1xRTT. And EVDO. And 3G. And LTE. Coverage has gone from "it usually works if you're near a highway" to pretty much just being expected to work just about everywhere.

Overall, it has been a steady stream of improvements. This year really is no different. So LTE's being rolled out. Cool! But that's not so different than a few years ago, when 3G was being rolled out.

*shrug*

The two accounts are different.

You mentioned a bunch of generalized places where you say you've lived, and stated that the sidewalks were paid for by the government in those places.

I mentioned a specific instance of a thing characteristic of its kind (not a general rule as you seem to think).

One of these claims can be independently verified. The other cannot be.

Guess which one is more reliable?

It's not a question of bias. It is an example (there's that word again) of the notion that not all statements are created equally.

s/menutes/minutes/

etc

Dear Hairyfeet,

Curse you and your long-winded Youtube link. After the "accidental" shootings and tazings, I've been watching "complaint form" failure porn for about twenty menutes.

Thanks, I guess. Now I don't even know if I like being in a CCW state, or not.

What then, would you propose to do with the class of problems that are rely on extremely low latency transmission of data between nodes?

Instead of just using distcc by itself, also run at least one instance of ccache?

*ducks* *runs*

As a retort to your first paragraph:

Yes, desert ecosystems are worth something.

So are all of the ecosystems that thrive on developed arable land, and forests, and swamps and marshes, and coastlines, and shorelines, and shallow water, and deep water, and brackish water, and...

Every sperm is sacred.

So what? Either we're more important than an existing ecosystem, or we're not, or we continue to burn fossil fuels and poison all of the ecosystems at the same time.

As a retort to your second paragraph:

There are lots other things that can be done with power other than immediately transmit it somewhere else, and there are plenty of deserts that are within shouting distance of populated cities.

As a retort to your third paragraph:

You just discredited everything you said by virtue of being deliberately insulting instead of helpful. Thanks, I guess, for letting us know that you're an asshole straight-away instead of saving it for later.

It was an illustration of the fact that neither of us are perfect.

Now, really: Who gives a shit? We've both corrected ourselves.

If you've some manner of useful point to make, I'm all ears.

Example: A thing characteristic of its kind or illustrating a general rule.

Anecdote: An account regarded as unreliable or hearsay.

*shrug*

Indeed. These words have different meanings. Perhaps that is why they are spelled, pronounced, and defined differently.

I see that I made a typo there: s/PS3/PS4/

I trust you'll forgive me as your prose is not exactly the crown jewel of grammatical perfection, either:

That's not a problem, it just shows your and denial.

That's not a problem, it just shows that you write phonetically with little regard for what the written words actually mean.

That wasn't an anecdote. It was a specific example.

For $247.90, it looks you get a case, a power supply, a motherboard, CPU, heatsink, and some slow RAM. It has built-in graphics that, while useful, is probably nothing compared to what will be included with the PS3.

WTF am I supposed to do with that? That's not a gaming rig; that's a pile of parts.

Oh, I see. And I'm supposed to spend another $150 on a GPU. So now it's a $400 box with no storage, and no optical drive.

BD-ROM drives are, what, $70-ish?

Now it's $470.

Add storage, input devices, an operating system, and a game (launch bundles always seem to include a game), and...gosh, it doesn't seem like such a good deal after all, and it integrates poorly into my living room: PC gaming on a couch sucks. Double-suck if you want to play with a friend.

And when it's all said and done, I still have to administer the thing? My time isn't worth much, but I've got better things to do when I want to play a game than fuck around with drivers and tweak settings, like actually playing a game.