Speak for yourself Ken

Story: Why Desktop Computing FailedTotal Replies: 26
Author Content
tracyanne

Sep 14, 2011
8:37 PM EDT
nt
TxtEdMacs

Sep 14, 2011
9:00 PM EDT
ta,

I am always perplexed when I see nt, since I know nt != NT in more than just case sense.

While I used to presume it meant nt == nothing there, I think that too was not a match.

However, whether not universally accepted, in this case this comes perilously close:

      nt == null thought

is so apropos, it just must be the correct interpretation.

YBT
techiem2

Sep 14, 2011
9:57 PM EDT
nt = no text (i.e. the topic says it all but the forum won't let you post a blank message)

Although I do like Null Thought....
lcafiero

Sep 14, 2011
10:46 PM EDT
I'm not going to say it, but I know someone during the course of this thread is going to blurt out something like, "Why do the words 'Null Thought' and 'Ken Hess article' seem to go so naturally together?"

But I'm not going to be the one to say it. Uh uh. Not me. No way.
tmx

Sep 15, 2011
3:09 AM EDT
I thought nt means 'nice try' projected to the article writer.
tracyanne

Sep 15, 2011
3:32 AM EDT
All of the above perhaps, it's just another of his cloud computing BS articles. Ho Hum.
ComputerBob

Sep 15, 2011
7:49 AM EDT
"nt" has always meant "no text" to me, as in "the title speaks for itself."

Interestingly, "nt" is also a self-contradicting statement.
khess

Sep 15, 2011
8:51 AM EDT
It's not about cloud. It's about, if you'd actually read you'd know, the failure of fat desktop OSs. Has nothing to do with cloud but everything to do with bloated OSs that people break because they're so breakable and exploitable. And, to you, Cafiero, you are not one to talk when it comes to null thought. Every time I see one of your posts, I think vacuous, hot air, waste of space, poor trapped electrons, etc.. You guys are a bunch of clowns who need something more to do with your time. Use your powers for good, children. Do you have such low self-esteem that you think that spewing your bile boosts your worth? It doesn't.
dinotrac

Sep 15, 2011
9:05 AM EDT
@khess -

Gosh. We think you write something stupid and we have low self-esteem? Guess I must be deep in the pits of depression given what I just posted.
khess

Sep 15, 2011
9:52 AM EDT
It's your rancid commentary that defines you, not what I write.
dinotrac

Sep 15, 2011
10:48 AM EDT
@khess -

Darned right it's not what you write that defines me. Sadly, it does seem to define you.
lcafiero

Sep 15, 2011
11:26 AM EDT
Rats, dinotrac, you beat me to it.
flufferbeer

Sep 15, 2011
11:52 AM EDT
Seems to me that the Hubristic Hessian is Having a Hissy-fit by Harassing those He Heartily disagrees with Here //Har dee Har-Har//

-fb
djohnston

Sep 15, 2011
12:19 PM EDT
Quoting:Every time I see one of your posts, I think vacuous, hot air, waste of space, poor trapped electrons, etc.. You guys are a bunch of clowns who need something more to do with your time. Use your powers for good, children. Do you have such low self-esteem that you think that spewing your bile boosts your worth?


Nice. Engage in ad hominem attacks. Very professional.



TxtEdMacs

Sep 15, 2011
12:45 PM EDT
Correction John's Son "d",

When I read the quote, I thought it was an apt assessment of K.H.'s output. Just because he wrote it, does not implicitly reduce its validity describing his activities. Thus, I say for once Ken Hess gets it right.

Be beneficent, please.

YBT*

* a.k.a. Your Buddy Txt.
khess

Sep 15, 2011
1:03 PM EDT
LOL. At least you guys are getting a break from D&D or WoW.

How I do love to stir the Trolls.
lcafiero

Sep 15, 2011
1:08 PM EDT
Take you long to come with that one, Ken?
khess

Sep 15, 2011
1:10 PM EDT
Nope. And, Larry, try to use full sentences lest someone criticize your writing. ;-)
lcafiero

Sep 15, 2011
1:20 PM EDT
Heh. Right.
skelband

Sep 15, 2011
1:24 PM EDT
@khess: Actually we just disagree with you Ken.

Where do you get the idea that the desktop has died or at least in the throes of it?

Do you really think office farms comprising literally millions of PCs are going to disappear to be replaced by some kind of pad?

Call centre staff are going to hold the phone in one hand, their iPad in the other?

Can you really imagine programmers/developers/web professionals trying to do serious work on a tablet?

Just where do you get these insane ideas from?

A point that I have made elsewhere is that a lot of home users who bought desktops purely for media consumption and email etc will find that they can do it more easily and more "mobiley" on a tablet or smartphone and for many of them they will decide that they just don't need a desktop anymore. Let me tell you though that they are *MUCH* in the minority of computer users now and for the foreseeable future.

The big mistake that many people are making when they look at the sheer explosion of handheld computing in the modern world is that it is somehow to the detriment of the humble desktop. It just aint so. There are just massively more computing devices out there now.

khess

Sep 15, 2011
1:46 PM EDT
@skelband

If you'd actually read, you'd see that I didn't say anything about the hardware. It's the OS. I've actually also written that a piece on this is not the post-pc era, but that one must have slipped by.
skelband

Sep 15, 2011
2:19 PM EDT
@khess:

Granted but it actually changes nothing however.

The nature of the OS (and I presume that you really mean desktop environment) for desktops is defined by the activities that people do on them.

If you read around these pages, you will realise that many of the desktop environments being developed, Unity, the Gnome Shell are targeted precisely at users that are not likely to be using the desktop paradigm, which is why they will ultimately fail.

I see the industry in an in-between situation at the moment. Everyone sees tablets and smartphones being the future of computing and that is certainly true for a swathe of computing activities involved in communications and media consumption. But the desktop and its accompanying OS is primarily ideally suited to an entirely different use case and I don't see that changing at all in the near future.

What has happened is that a lot of people that were using the desktop and its OS for a use case for which it was not ideal are jumping ship. There is a reason why TVs and DVD players and PVRs don't look and feel like PCs. It is now why tablets and smartphones don't look and feel like desktop PCs.

It is also why Gnome and Ubuntu are making the BIG mistake of targeting their DEs at those types of consumption users. Those users are not going to be using desktop machines for their activities. That leaves us the "traditional" computer users saddled with DEs that just don't suit our workflow and the almighty mess that we are getting ourselves into.
dinotrac

Sep 15, 2011
2:20 PM EDT
@khess -

Without regard to anything that may have slipped by, I think we're just amazed that you seem unable to understand the basic nature of technology. New stuff comes along and crowds old stuff out. That doesn't mean the old stuff has failed, which was the supposed point of your piece.

If you were to be honest -- or to actually think about the issue -- all that desktop computing gave birth to the technologies that are superseding it. Would android phones and iPads really have sprung up out of the vacuum? I doubt it.
tracyanne

Sep 15, 2011
4:32 PM EDT
khess wrote:It's not about cloud. It's about, if you'd actually read you'd know, the failure of fat desktop OSs. Has nothing to do with cloud but everything to do with bloated OSs


I did read it, it didn't seem much different from all your other poorly reasoned diatribes on cloud, where the desktop is irrelevent etc etc, blah blah woof woof, so pardon me, my bad.

BTW with 450 million plus Windows 7 licenses sold the bloated OS looks more like a success than a failure. I'd like it to be a failure, but I don't have the same ability to ignore reality that you do ken.
khess

Sep 15, 2011
5:07 PM EDT
450 million plus, LOL. you believe some of the fiction that you read.
tracyanne

Sep 15, 2011
5:23 PM EDT
ken, only some, yours I can't quite suspend my sese of disbelief.
hkwint

Sep 16, 2011
9:12 AM EDT
Agree with TA, there's practically no products out there on which there's such a high profit margin then on Windows or Adobe / Apple software. So it still is one of the most succesfull things ever sold.

Try selling rice, cars, TV's or a hotelbed for 3x costrpize and you'll fail. If desktop-OS'es were really bad, tons of people would complain at the big OEM's not to install them anymore.

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