Using lines laid with public dollars, and protected with limited monopolies. Also, often building off research done at public universities, with government grant money.

Don't take this as an attack; I'm curious why you actually need an 8000 series card, and why you need water cooling on your present card?

I have a single, stock cooled, non-OC 5770, and can run pretty much every game on maximum settings (or rather, any game that doesn't choke on AMD GPUs). Why would you need much more, unless you're using your GPU for calculation, or mining bitcoins or something? I used to be a big graphics bleeding-edger, but thanks to everything being tied to ancient console hardware, I pretty much stopped caring. Early in the next console generation I'm sure I'll grab a decent 6000 or 7000, or maybe hop to Nvidia,, I'm getting a bit sick of bad support and game bugs, though it would pain me, I've been using ATI and AMD exclusively for over a decade (Actually since 3DFX crapped out, something about underdogs, and not being Intel).

After "hardcore" PC games died off, it was about not having to upgrade for years, but even then, now my aging 5000 series is perfectly fine. The only motivation I can think of is just pure masochistic (I mean it in a nice way) geekery. Because I can.

This is what I meant by an edge definition. There isn't a purely capitalistic country on Earth, and probably never has been one for any significant period of time. On the other hand, pretty much every country on Earth has some flavor of socialistic policy, stretching back a very long time. Capitalism by this definition is a myth, and as much a utopian ideal as Communism.

Probably because when societies don't ban dangerous products, misleading or harmful and exploitative practices, things go bad pretty quickly, and people force their governments to protect them (as is their right, and as is the function of government). Personally, and I really don't want to get into it, I think that any economic theory is perfectly fine, until the second it hurts the only thing that matters, people. People are more important than commerce and capital. People need commerce, obviously, but it can go bad. Government exists to keep it within bounds, providing maximal benefit and minimal harm. Where these bounds exist are debatable, and these definitions vary from culture to culture, and time to time. There isn't one true definition, rule, or set of standards.

But actually we're just having a semantics fight now... Your thinking of economic philosophies (laissez faire, in particular, it seems), which generally are political philosophies as well. You'll find there are several competing economic philosophies. All them them have about as much force as the various competing political philosophies, meaning not much. They are all utopian, and sound very nice as a philosophy, but don't take into account that the world is a messy, chaotic thing with more factors than anyone can ever truly foresee.

You can be a capitalist while being a socialist, they aren't mutually exclusive domains. Many of the socialist countries in the world also have capitalist economies... Hell, the biggest communist country on earth is becoming a bigger capitalist country than the U.S. Hell, capitalism existed in the U.S.S.R.

As you point out, capitalism is how money works. Where there is currency or trade, there is capitalism, no matter what the government is.

Socialism is a political philosophy, and capitalism is an economic theory. Unless we take capitalism as what the edge cases define it as, of course, meaning no taxes, no laws, and no regulations, then they are not in opposition.

Personally, the market should be as free as possible, until it negatively effects individuals or society. Society is the sum of all the people within it, not just certain classes, or those who have more money/power, and government exists for the benefit of society, by the permission of society, and not for certain individuals or classes of people.

Eh, it is a problem, but I think your taking it a bit far. My old Motorola Droid was stuck on Froyo for over two years, but was usable the whole time. I didn't have to "hack" it, it made calls, it did "smart" stuff like browsed the web and GPS, I could still install around 90% of apps... It worked fine. The only thing I missed is shiny new stuff. It really is no different than Apple not supporting older iPhones with new OS updates (even if they could handle 90% of the features), except here the blaim lies on my carrier, and there the blame lays on Apple.

The only real message here is that Verizon sucks. Other carriers DO update phones, even if they are over six months old. If it wasn't for me getting a damn good deal by sharing an account with the whole of my family, I'd jump ship overnight. With Android everything is a manufacturer problem (Asus sucks.) or a carrier problem (Verizon sucks.), not an Android problem. With iOS everything is an Apple problem. The commonality is that the mobile market is really really bad. I really dislike the fact that is the market of planned obsolescence and sneaky ways of forcing people to upgrade or upgrade in mid contract. You need a new phone every six months, really... We'll work on making your old one crap, so you can stick it in a landfill and cough up another $200 for us, plus fees.

Huh? When do you ever have to reboot a smartphone? I think I had to reboot my last two phones twice, total not each. Which, to me is a problem, since the only time you need to reboot is when your carrier decides to update, and carriers hate updates.

And I've noticed the opposite. 3 years ago all my friends had iPhones, now they all have something made by Samsung. Rival anecdotal experience: game, set, match.

Even though it runs on the exact same hardware, and has the exact same functionality?

If I hack OS X to run on my current computer, is my current computer no longer a PC? Or is Not-PC only bestowed with magical Apple pixie dust?

The "Mac is not a PC" stuff is marketing.

So, again, the term is pretty much meaningless then? The term is no longer useful when it covers almost everything, you might as well just count "stuff", so we can figure out that rocks outsell Apple by a large factor.

I'd say your technically correct, but not semantically correct. A computer is generally defined as something where the processor can be interacted with by the user via some form of interface. Further there is a class problem; my car isn't a computer just because it has some processors sitting in it, my car is a car with a microprocessor in it. Saying a car is a PC is not something we would pretty much ever do. It isn't a "natural" expression, so probably isn't actually a valid use of the term.

Almost everything in my house is a PC, since I own them (they aren't shared), and they have a microprocessor. Meaning the TFA is dumb, since they should have counted pretty much everything, and not just tablets plus desktops.

The problem is that the term made sense when it was coined, started making less sense in the late 80's and 90's, and now probably makes no sense whatsoever.

But running with it, since TFA decided it was a useful and meaningful term; expandability isn't just hardware, it also would be software. Most tablets might be capable of running arbitrary code, but by design they are barred from doing it. You can hack/unlock them, but their primary purpose is different than a PC, or desktop. They are less "general" than a standard PC.

Please don't take it that I'm really invested in this, I think that this debate means the term has pretty much become useless.

People who would consider the Chromebook to be more "PC" than an iPad are odd. The only thing I can see is that a Chromebook has a traditional form factor, so their definition of a PC would be "screen + keyboard = PC", which is less useful than my own definition.

But in the last couple years since the Intel switch, they both would be John Hodgman, but wearing different shirts.

This is for very limited uses of the term "general". I'd say only around 30% of my computer use can be shifted over to a tablet at this time, and my use is rather limited compared to some. For some people, and many here on /., this figure will be much smaller. For my parents, a tablet might be able to handle around 100% of their normal use. General means it can be used for almost anything, need a port, add a port, need to access the GPU, go for it, need to use it for encoding stuff, no problem. There are many things you CAN do on a tablet, but not easily (try coding on one, or processing large amounts of RAW files, or writing a novel, or playing any game more sophisticated than Angry Birds, or transcoding video, or...). This would limit its claim to being "general purpose". They are designed for media consumption, and light tasks. A PC, even a MacBook Air, and designed for a larger feature set, and by design, have ways of extending their use beyond what the designers intended.

It doesn't matter what any one individual uses it for, or what they want out of it, since that way a PC is a completely subjective term, and thus meaningless. It is the actual design of the device, and its intended uses. I can use my PC as a server right now, with very little effort, I can't do that on an iPad or Android tablet, without actually working around the inbuilt limitations of the hardware and OS.

So basically the term is meaningless? Almost everything with a processor and some sort UI is a PC.

So then my question is why doesn't TFA include most TVs and DVD players, graphing calculators, high end remote controls, a large bevy of modern cars, almost all airplanes, every ebook reader, consoles, every mobile phone made since the 90's, and some wrist watches.

Sure, the user experience is locked down on most of these these devices, but all of them could run binaries as well, with a small bit of hacking.

The difference between a 286 and an Android/iOS tablet is in the form, accessibility of hardware, and accessibly of running said binary. By default most tablets won't ever let you touch the hardware, and won't let you run an arbitrary binary without working around the design of the device or UI.

So, if I share my tablet (or desktop) with others, it no longer is a PC?

If I own a giant server/super computer, and I'm the only person who uses it, it is suddenly a PC?

Is my pocket calculator a PC, since it is mine (it is in my pocket afterall), and it can do basic computations?

So, basically the term is completely meaningless.

A Mac is a PC. Especially now that there is NO difference, whatsoever, in hardware. Back in the PPC days, you might have a case, but I doubt it, since they were personal computers just like Windows and Linux boxes. Unless what GUI something uses defines whether something is a PC or not, and then, is anything not running whatever UI existed when the term was coined actually a PC either? The only difference between a Mac and a Linux or Windows box is what OS they have.

The consumer can be wrong, and various companies have abused the term to help them along. This doesn't actually change the meaning of the word, since there really isn't a way of defining that doesn't include Macs. Unless, of course your only definition of "PC" is "not a Mac", which is kind of stupid.

That said, I don't buy tablets being PCs, because they aren't "general" or generally extendable, which I would consider being important to being classified as a personal computer. If I did accept them, then I have to include phones, consoles, most modern televisions and bluray players, most routers, or basically anything having a CPU and an operating system.

Calling tablets PCs runs into the "Pluto problem", if we let them be a PC, then pretty much everything has to be a PC, and the term loses what (very little) use it once had.

Don't forget most current Bluray players, and most televisions. By some definitions of PC, we're pretty much awash in them, making the term all-but useless.