seems like epoxying the USB ports (or disabling them in bios, if its welded shut!) would have been easier than removing them, but whatever floats their boat.
the attitude that you have to be working every second from clocking in to clocking out is not only extremely selfish, but also completely stupid since it's bad for the company too.
If someone these days said something like that to their grandfather, it is likely they would get smacked upside the head and laughed at. Do you suppose when your ancestors up through the last 20 years earned a living, they were worried about down-time, checking in, fulfillment, or any of that other stuff? Or do you suppose maybe they were more concerned about earning a living to support their family?
What you think makes you more productive isnt really relevant. Unless your company has specific policies allowing employee downtime during work hours, Im guessing your boss would be less than pleased about your sense of entitlement to using facebook for 1/6th of the work day.
At least where Im from, employment is an at-will contract.
That means that if at any time, either party finds the contract (your employment) to be unbearable, onerous, or undesirable, they can terminate it. That is, your boss can terminate you if he decides that he can get better value out of someone who WILL work longer hours, and you are free to tell him to take the job and shove it if you think you can get better treatment elsewhere.
Id agree with the respect thing, but again: start looking for another job if its a problem.
Wouldn't want to anger our corporate overlords, now would we?
Youre getting paid to do a job. Your "corporate overlord" has agreed to provide you with a substantial sum of money for doing a job that presumably does not involve attending to personal affairs during certain hours. They apparently have also taken steps to secure their network, including by enforcing what appears to be their version of an Acceptable Use Policy.
You really dont have a leg to stand on here. I do personal stuff at work at times too and my boss generally doesnt mind, but he would be fully within reasonable bounds to ask me to stop (nicely or otherwise) until the end of work hours.
You really do have a sense of entitlement, and you really need to get over it. If these "corporate overlords" are so onerous, you can always quit and earn your living elsewhere.
Doesn't matter how many times you tell someone don't go to those sites, they still do. Why?
Im going to save you a lot of pain and hassle and explain to you why your acquaintances keep getting viruses, because you dont really understand it.
Theyre getting viruses because they have out of date {plugin | browser} and are visiting {any website with ads}. People get viruses from facebook, because facebook has ads, and every ad is untrusted content from who knows where that can launch and exploit any vulnerable plugin.
Want to keep them from getting viruses? Stop yelling at them to be clairvoyant about which sites have bad content, and update their plugins. Your approach is not fixing the issue, its just instructing them to hide from exploits that they shouldnt be vulnerable to. If you want to REALLY make this easy, install Chrome and tell them to use that on pain of death; it autoupdates itself and its plugins, and blocks old/vulnerable plugins, so its about as foolproof a way as possible to stop exploits from rooting their machines.
Which would you rather have: skype for linux which has received precisely no updates in something like 6 years because it gives no benefit to the vendor, or an update with ads which at least ensures that it will receive future attention?
You know, if you dont like the ads you can use your own VoIP service. Ekiga is right there waiting, if you want your small userbase and your poor bandwidth usage.
You do realize that ads are responsible for the wide variety of free services we receive on the internet, right? That includes slashdot, in fact, in case you werent aware.
Youre lumping vastly different situations into one bucket, throwing up your hands, and despairing.
US, UK, etc have their own censorship and "entering the 21st century" issues, but lumping them together with Ethopia and China is a pretty big stretch.
The fact that we have outlets like the Onion, Jon Stewart, and all the talking heads (Beck, OReilley, whoever else) which build their reputation on skewering powerful political figures shows you just how different we are.
If youre asking if there are any countries where the internet is completely unrestrained and there is no enforcement of any laws whatsoever, no, there arent, and thats not a bad thing (ask any of the GPL folks). Likewise, if youre asking if there are any countries whose laws are perfect and are never abused, sorry, we dont have a utopia yet.
It seems to me that the least helpful thing that can be done (other than pretending everything is peachy) is to act like everything is as bad as it could be and that things are hopeless. More helpful perhaps would be to discuss WHERE the US, UK, etc fail, but comparing them to Ethopia is ridiculous.
No, I simply dont like when supposedly technical folk on slashdot try to justify a massive markup and then claim its not a massive markup.
If youve been following my post youve already seen the laptops ive linked that have the same or better specs-- with the sole exception of the resolution-- for $1400, and yet somehow that extra $1400 doesnt count as gouging. And of course the soldered on RAM is for the customer's own good.
If you like Macs, fine, buy one. Just dont try to convince the rest of us that its anything other than either A) a very niche need, or B) an overpriced status purchase.
Except that that 149 is for a package of 16GB, not an upgrade from 8 to 16. 8GB price is typically $80; the fact that you can get the full 16 for cheaper than Apple's upgrade is just icing on the cake.
Consider that they charge $900 for an UPGRADE from a HDD to SSD, whereas if you just bought the laptop and did it yourself you would not only save $500 (assuming a 512GB crucial M4), but you would also get a 500GB HDD to boot. Then consider why you would ever pay for upgrades through the apple store if they didnt force you to.
My apologies; peak curent appears to be 350mA, which ups the reduction to ~30mW, and the percent to 0.75%, at absolute peak (burst write). Now we're cooking with gas.
Youre not going to tell me a voltage drop from 1.5v to 1.35v on a laptop with discrete graphics is worth $1000. I doubt you would even notice the difference, TBQH.
From http://download.micron.com/pdf/technotes/ddr3/TN41_01DDR3%20Power.pdf It looks like peak current is around 120mA, which means the reduction from 1.5v to 1.35v nets you a savings, at maximum, of a whopping 18mW. Thats not even considering that that is PEAK draw, and over time its proabbly closer to 10mW.
This, in a box drawing a total of probably 40W, which means a savings of 0.25%. WOOOOOOO! THAT will extend the battery life a whole bunch!
Except that there are a plethora of techies who will tell you that the "experience" is for the most part in the mind of the purchaser. Apple has convinced a large number of people that any error or virus or anything else on a Windows box is "just windows breaking"; whereas anything that happens on OSX (and believe me, things do happen) must clearly be their own fault for not using it right.
I will get calls from people asking how to fix broken printing or safari malfunctions or whatever else on the Mac, but who would 5 minutes later explain how much they love having a Mac which never breaks.
There are cool things about OSX, and if it were cheaper / dual-bootable on non Apple hardware I would probably pick it up. But I would very likely NOT use it as my primary OS because the last time I spent a significant amount of time on it there were way too many things that drove me up a wall, and it wasnt just "not used to it stuff", it was "OSX doesnt and cant work that way and why would you want it to" stuff. That is, Im expected to conform my expectations to OSX because, of course, its better than me.
The amount of power that RAM consumes is so small that it is basically irrelevant when considering the battery life of a laptop. The solid state drive is nice, as are the other features, but lets not pretend they warrant that pricetag (unless resolution and width are truly the deciding factor for you).
What must be mystifying to you is that I dont WANT my government providing those services to me. I think there are some services that it should, but generally I believe it is far more important that individuals have the freedom to choose their own course in life.
It may be partially because of the American culture or my own upbringing, but I really fear the day when the government is so involved in my life that they provide all the features that Europeans seem to expect.
Slashdot Mirror
seems like epoxying the USB ports (or disabling them in bios, if its welded shut!) would have been easier than removing them, but whatever floats their boat.
Get another job, or accept that whatever you're being paid requires those hours.
the attitude that you have to be working every second from clocking in to clocking out is not only extremely selfish, but also completely stupid since it's bad for the company too.
If someone these days said something like that to their grandfather, it is likely they would get smacked upside the head and laughed at. Do you suppose when your ancestors up through the last 20 years earned a living, they were worried about down-time, checking in, fulfillment, or any of that other stuff? Or do you suppose maybe they were more concerned about earning a living to support their family?
What you think makes you more productive isnt really relevant. Unless your company has specific policies allowing employee downtime during work hours, Im guessing your boss would be less than pleased about your sense of entitlement to using facebook for 1/6th of the work day.
Mutual respect is where its at.
At least where Im from, employment is an at-will contract.
That means that if at any time, either party finds the contract (your employment) to be unbearable, onerous, or undesirable, they can terminate it. That is, your boss can terminate you if he decides that he can get better value out of someone who WILL work longer hours, and you are free to tell him to take the job and shove it if you think you can get better treatment elsewhere.
Id agree with the respect thing, but again: start looking for another job if its a problem.
Wouldn't want to anger our corporate overlords, now would we?
Youre getting paid to do a job. Your "corporate overlord" has agreed to provide you with a substantial sum of money for doing a job that presumably does not involve attending to personal affairs during certain hours. They apparently have also taken steps to secure their network, including by enforcing what appears to be their version of an Acceptable Use Policy.
You really dont have a leg to stand on here. I do personal stuff at work at times too and my boss generally doesnt mind, but he would be fully within reasonable bounds to ask me to stop (nicely or otherwise) until the end of work hours.
You really do have a sense of entitlement, and you really need to get over it. If these "corporate overlords" are so onerous, you can always quit and earn your living elsewhere.
Doesn't matter how many times you tell someone don't go to those sites, they still do. Why?
Im going to save you a lot of pain and hassle and explain to you why your acquaintances keep getting viruses, because you dont really understand it.
Theyre getting viruses because they have out of date {plugin | browser} and are visiting {any website with ads}. People get viruses from facebook, because facebook has ads, and every ad is untrusted content from who knows where that can launch and exploit any vulnerable plugin.
Want to keep them from getting viruses? Stop yelling at them to be clairvoyant about which sites have bad content, and update their plugins. Your approach is not fixing the issue, its just instructing them to hide from exploits that they shouldnt be vulnerable to. If you want to REALLY make this easy, install Chrome and tell them to use that on pain of death; it autoupdates itself and its plugins, and blocks old/vulnerable plugins, so its about as foolproof a way as possible to stop exploits from rooting their machines.
Try it in China and see how far you get before you end up mining rocks 16 hours a day.
What youre saying is, youre one of those countries that doesnt enforce laws that might put the Russian Business Network out of business?
Wow, what a utopia.
Because skype is far more reliable and better quality, as well as being free and 0-hassle setup.
Skype also supports video, incidentally.
Microsoft just gave Skype on linux the first update its had in about 6 years.
How exactly is this a bad thing?
Which would you rather have: skype for linux which has received precisely no updates in something like 6 years because it gives no benefit to the vendor, or an update with ads which at least ensures that it will receive future attention?
You know, if you dont like the ads you can use your own VoIP service. Ekiga is right there waiting, if you want your small userbase and your poor bandwidth usage.
You do realize that ads are responsible for the wide variety of free services we receive on the internet, right? That includes slashdot, in fact, in case you werent aware.
Speed of light in fiber is 50% - 66%, So double your figures.
Im not aware of the Tea Party being a fan of big government.
Oh wait youre just trolling, carry on.
Youre lumping vastly different situations into one bucket, throwing up your hands, and despairing.
US, UK, etc have their own censorship and "entering the 21st century" issues, but lumping them together with Ethopia and China is a pretty big stretch.
The fact that we have outlets like the Onion, Jon Stewart, and all the talking heads (Beck, OReilley, whoever else) which build their reputation on skewering powerful political figures shows you just how different we are.
If youre asking if there are any countries where the internet is completely unrestrained and there is no enforcement of any laws whatsoever, no, there arent, and thats not a bad thing (ask any of the GPL folks). Likewise, if youre asking if there are any countries whose laws are perfect and are never abused, sorry, we dont have a utopia yet.
It seems to me that the least helpful thing that can be done (other than pretending everything is peachy) is to act like everything is as bad as it could be and that things are hopeless. More helpful perhaps would be to discuss WHERE the US, UK, etc fail, but comparing them to Ethopia is ridiculous.
No, I simply dont like when supposedly technical folk on slashdot try to justify a massive markup and then claim its not a massive markup.
If youve been following my post youve already seen the laptops ive linked that have the same or better specs-- with the sole exception of the resolution-- for $1400, and yet somehow that extra $1400 doesnt count as gouging. And of course the soldered on RAM is for the customer's own good.
If you like Macs, fine, buy one. Just dont try to convince the rest of us that its anything other than either A) a very niche need, or B) an overpriced status purchase.
And for all us folks who want to get actual work done on the go, theres Blackberry.
No touchscreen-only device purporting to be for business / email use will ever get a good review from me.
That graph includes all of those taxes and averages them together. Hence why its so high in Germany after the VAT and whatnot.
Fair enough, and I agree its a gradual thing.
Except that that 149 is for a package of 16GB, not an upgrade from 8 to 16. 8GB price is typically $80; the fact that you can get the full 16 for cheaper than Apple's upgrade is just icing on the cake.
Consider that they charge $900 for an UPGRADE from a HDD to SSD, whereas if you just bought the laptop and did it yourself you would not only save $500 (assuming a 512GB crucial M4), but you would also get a 500GB HDD to boot. Then consider why you would ever pay for upgrades through the apple store if they didnt force you to.
My apologies; peak curent appears to be 350mA, which ups the reduction to ~30mW, and the percent to 0.75%, at absolute peak (burst write). Now we're cooking with gas.
Youre not going to tell me a voltage drop from 1.5v to 1.35v on a laptop with discrete graphics is worth $1000. I doubt you would even notice the difference, TBQH.
From http://download.micron.com/pdf/technotes/ddr3/TN41_01DDR3%20Power.pdf
It looks like peak current is around 120mA, which means the reduction from 1.5v to 1.35v nets you a savings, at maximum, of a whopping 18mW. Thats not even considering that that is PEAK draw, and over time its proabbly closer to 10mW.
This, in a box drawing a total of probably 40W, which means a savings of 0.25%. WOOOOOOO! THAT will extend the battery life a whole bunch!
Except that there are a plethora of techies who will tell you that the "experience" is for the most part in the mind of the purchaser. Apple has convinced a large number of people that any error or virus or anything else on a Windows box is "just windows breaking"; whereas anything that happens on OSX (and believe me, things do happen) must clearly be their own fault for not using it right.
I will get calls from people asking how to fix broken printing or safari malfunctions or whatever else on the Mac, but who would 5 minutes later explain how much they love having a Mac which never breaks.
There are cool things about OSX, and if it were cheaper / dual-bootable on non Apple hardware I would probably pick it up. But I would very likely NOT use it as my primary OS because the last time I spent a significant amount of time on it there were way too many things that drove me up a wall, and it wasnt just "not used to it stuff", it was "OSX doesnt and cant work that way and why would you want it to" stuff. That is, Im expected to conform my expectations to OSX because, of course, its better than me.
The amount of power that RAM consumes is so small that it is basically irrelevant when considering the battery life of a laptop. The solid state drive is nice, as are the other features, but lets not pretend they warrant that pricetag (unless resolution and width are truly the deciding factor for you).
What must be mystifying to you is that I dont WANT my government providing those services to me. I think there are some services that it should, but generally I believe it is far more important that individuals have the freedom to choose their own course in life.
It may be partially because of the American culture or my own upbringing, but I really fear the day when the government is so involved in my life that they provide all the features that Europeans seem to expect.