It's a balance in my experience. I've had places where they would get upset if they saw you talking to someone rather than nose to the grind stone and others that got upset if you didn't stop what you were doing and say hi to someone that came into your workspace to talk to someone else (who was there, not that they came asking for them and you ignored them).
Sadly, it is the lowest common denominator (well maybe highest common denominator): those that do need a lot of social interaction will get very frustrated by not having it. The assumption is usually that those that are quite or less social are not harmed by being forced to say hi and deal with small talk (even though that isn't the case when you need hours of consecutive time to figure out things sometimes, or just like the socialites might feel with no social interaction that like your life is being wasted with "how's the weather" talk). Regardless, the socially adapt are by definition the squeaky wheel and so are the ones that will get their way. Also, they tend to be the ones seen as being leaders/liked by people so are more likely to be your manager now or in the future so always a good idea to keep them happy.
Suggestion: have lunch with people. You have to eat anyways, so if they have to feel like they know you let them have their meaningless conversations with you while you are stuffing your frozen dinner in your mouth.
Which I'd guess have much higher failure rates then comparable aged cheaper cars: a couple reasons: they tend to push the engineering envelope more than the latest Civic or equivalent, and probably more importantly: people that own them are probably more likely to drive (even if only occasionally) like douches (as my father used to say about his old boat of a Bel Air, you got to run the engine out every once in a while for "maintenance" reasons).
True the risk is still relatively low per mile driven. Might be more than typical for gas powered cars though of similar price/age. Just a guess why: a lot of car fires are caused by electrical problems given bigger electrical currents an electric car would be more likely to arc and have sufficient current in an arc to start a fire. That said there probably were more accidents getting into and out of gas stations for the equivalent road miles driven than either electric or gas cars have fires.
It's not destroying evidence unless they can prove a crime has been committed. They can't prove a crime as been committed without evidence. So they should be fine. You can't sue someone for not having something. The whole deal with the government being able to get records from companies hinges on the argument that the companies own the records not the customers. If the company owns them they have the right to do with them as they wish. That is until they make some sort of data retention laws for everyone not just people in sensitive industries (banking, healthcare etc).
Amazon et al generally are places I hit when I shop. Apple has devices that I use. Do I really want Apple to know exactly who it is and when and how often a particular app gets used? Do they really need my cc number and address so I can download my latest free apps? Amazon and friends collect the info when you make a purchase, Apple insists on getting the info before you make a purchase or even worse even when you are explicitly not making a purchase.
Talking to a coward I realize but the thing is Apple by virtue of the Apple id has much more specific user info than probably anyone but Facebook. They make you login to get free apps and such so it isn't just your purchases it is every interaction in their store, what you chose to download onto your device etc. all tied to a real person. Facebook is potentially worse because they know more about you than what flavor of condoms you prefer (your friends, your conversations, friends of friends etc).
I agree. Whenever I hear the next great company say "I don' know" like a blonde bimbo 5 years after being founded when asked how they are going to monetize I think: "I'm not going to like the answer when it comes".
There is a very easy way for companies to protect you from NSA if they so chose: don't collect info. User name and password so you know it is me when I log in. My IP, duration, what I did none of it needs to be tied to my account. Sure iTunes or Amazon might be able to make that upsale if they know everything I've ever done for 10hrs a year I spend shopping on their site but at what cost? I'd pay that extra $2 in lost profits to have them leave me the hell alone. Especially since I'm not a citizen of said big brother state.
Our business is software our vendors are no one (well we cut a check once a year for MSDN and one a month to AWS but otherwise... Our customers: dealt with through resellers in their particular country so generally no we don't need to interact outside the office much. We have ~100 devs and 10 office people. The 100 devs don't even have phones. There is very few times that a supplier/customer will absolutely must get a hold of you in the first hour of the day or last hour. Dealing with your intracompany stuff from 11-3 is pretty easy to do for 99% of things. For the remaining 1% you hire people specifically for being available at that time or a call relay service to ring the person that happens to be on call.
Not only that it assumes that everyone is equally effective getting up at the same time. It is actually counter productive for both the employee and the employer. It does my boss no good for me to come in at 8am if I can't focus well till 11am. Better I do my household choirs or someother mindless activity when I'm half awake then my coding.
There are exceptions of course and large number of people will be stuck on a schedule: store hours, shipper receivers etc. But since most people are office workers now (and of manual laborers only some work in an environment that truly needs a schedule mandated from on high (not all factory workers just the ones working in a factory with multiple shifts for example)) the ability for flexibility is much greater. A few people needed to operate a machine can agree when to start we shouldn't be treated like babies anymore needing a pointy haired boss to say "be here at 8... or else".
Why do they do it now twice a year? You don't need to be exactly coordinated +- 30min should be fine. Easily can spend the first part of the day catching up with email, getting equipment turned on etc.
I realize you didn't post directly to me but I do do as I suggest. I work flex time and generally come into work later during the winter than during the summer. Since the majority of people now do office work not making stuff it can work for the majority of people. A minority of people have jobs that require them to have people around the entire time they work. If someone isn't in already you can usually find something else to do in the mean time. Syncronizing people's schedule for the sole purpose of "we might want a meeting first thing in the morning once in a while so it would be convenient if everyone is in at 8am just in case" is just silly. Just like programming synchronize when you have absolutely no way around it, otherwise avoid it like the plague.
Oh and I might add that almost everything doesn't have to happen right now so running on an interrupt based scheduling model is just silly. Example from my work: Really you need this bug in the dev branch fixed RIGHT NOW? Really? When is the next integration build going to run? When is the next release? I'm pretty sure almost always things can wait a few hours and this is with CI since our test runs take 10hrs to run you are on average 5hrs away from anything that will affect others. Shipping at most companies happens roughly twice a day morning shipments and afternoon shipments. So again things are inherently batchy and as long as it happens within the batch that it comes in/is required happening right now doesn't matter we still aren't sending an empty truck out the LA with your one part on it, fed ex is still probably only going to send their guy around once a day etc.
What does it matter if we happen to live somewhere where the clocks say 7pm when the sun rises? I say one global time and you just use common sense when calling people far away... like you got to do now when calling overseas anyways. I don't remember when daylight savings kicks in in Germany but I know they are ~4-6 hours away so sometime before noon seems okay.
Heck we could even schedule things with the sun like people that work for themselves (farmers, construction etc) already can. You go to work sunrise + 1hr and work whatever number of hours that are expected. Everyone gets some daylight hours to themselves sure more in summer than winter but you aren't trying to dance the time around so that you can try to get some daylight only to epically fail in the northern latitudes: I live near Toronto sunrise in the winter is ~8am and sunset around 5 so you can literally commute to work in the dark and it is dark by the time you live the office seeing the sun for 0 hrs a day isn't a good thing if for no other reason than sometimes you need to do something outside where you can see what you are doing.
I fight this in the office all the time and I don't see why cross office/company interaction needs to be any different: we need to remove the dependency on concurrent interaction. People send email and then knock on the door 10 min later and ask if you've seen it. We need to get in the habit of planning work enough that we can wait a couple days for a reply almost always and then learn to wait patiently not block waiting to make progress because we insist on dealing with things one at a time regardless of if the necessary person has time at the moment.
Growing a crop that some teapot dictator comes and feeds to his cousins isn't a pretty effective way of getting ahead either. People have to have stability to have a reasonable expectation of profit to invest in the future. Otherwise they'll sit on the ground and wait for a meal to be delivered to them or eat the grain rather than feed it to the chickens or save it to plant for next year. This is a vast generalization though. A bunch of countries in Africa are making significant gains. Opportunies give you a reason to invest, investing in fixed assets gives you a reason to fight for protections, leading you to value yourself and others more, leading to opportunities as who can work and get an education expands through the social hierarchy etc.
A big part of it is the inflation rate. Ex. I looked at one in offering loans in Mongolia at ~19% interest. The thing is inflation has been around 15% there so the effective interest rate is only about 4%. With defaults the return on investment was quoted at 1.8% which is probably about right.
I get the donate part and I don't expect to see my money again but I'd like to see it sustain itself. Otherwise you are dumping money into something that has no chance of helping: buying a car for a guy to be taxi driver were all the males in town are already taxi drivers and no one visits for example. If they know they got to pay you back what the money is worth after inflation they are forced a bit to look for good ideas not just another goat because goats are what they are used to.
Building the infrastructure in a lot of these countries doesn't matter. If you don't value human life it is only a matter of time before some idiot decides that only his tribe should have access to water and breaks the wells. Or there is a war and the knowledgeable people all go home. Help can't equal do it for them because just like in star trek interfering with a culture before they are ready to use technology responsibly isn't a good idea. Save everyone from malaria so the shitheads can rape and kill them when they are 14 doesn't solve the problem. First get rid/neutralize the shithead element AND get the society to the point where they realize being a shithead isn't the divine of one sex/tribe/chieftain/class.
I get what you are saying but I think it is that users haven't been bitching enough. We get nice mass market "power user" rigs and our flat panels have gone from 19" -> 24" over the last 5 years or so but we've stuck with 1920X1080 even though we have ~2X the screen space. Maybe it was wishful thinking but I was hoping that the latest iMacs would have gotten a refresh from the 2560X1440 maybe retina screen is too much to ask (would probably be in the 8k ish range with a 27" screen size) but 4k would have been nice for say a $2-300 price bump.
At 1920X1080 I increase my text size when coding not because I have a hard time reading text that is small but because I find the pixellation such crap on larger screens that I make it bigger so the lines are thicker and the edge blur isn't such crap. The iMac screen I have at home is probably the only large screen I've found acceptable at 10pt and even that is borderline. 1920X1080 is just craptacular on my 24" at work.
I think mine is the one right before that was allowed: early 2009 27":( On a happier note: time for an upgrade in a year or so and this time I'll probably go for a 2-3 24" setup of some generic PC:)
When I was looking for a computer ~Feb 2009 the iMac 27" was a good value for me at the time. I knew I'd likely be moving across the continent soon so wanted something I could throw in a "suitcase" and count as one bag. I checked out Dells and HPs all in ones at the time and they were crap. I think the largest was 19" with a 1920X1080 screen. Slower graphics, slower ram. ~$1800. I paid 2500 got 8" more screen, a quad i7 (versus an i5 I think it was in the HP) 2560X1400 res, 2X the graphics performance and a bigger harddrive. I paid $700 more but got a hell of a lot more of a computer. For the same price as the HP one I could have gotten a 21.5" mac with about similar (and crappy to me) specs.
The Mac Pro and the Mac Book Pro are where they really rob you but for the Mac Book they still have the best or at least an extremely rare resolution for a laptop, Mac Pro no excuses, $4k for a pretty empty box then you are supposed to pay oddles to fill it up, um no.
I agree. They should have a mode where you can slave the iMac screen to use it as a second monitor. Might get people to upgrade a bit more frequently if they didn't have to thing oh crap about $600 of that price tag is the screen I already own. Also would be good to plug iPad and the like into the mac and go full screen (yeah I know they have an app store for the mac) so you could use it for little meetings and such. We used a 27" iMac for standups at my last job and it was plenty big enough for 5-6 people to huddle around.
Except dell will charge you about $200 to go from 8->32GB of ram versus 600 or so for a mac etc.They rape you a lot more when you don't buy the stock system. They also make it next to impossible for the normal person to upgrade anything other than ram on the iMac so you are stuck.
I agree whole hardly with the screen though. It is about time for a 4k screen I guess they are still too pricey but my 3 year old iMac was kicking a 2560X1440 screen when you'd have to drop 7-800 or so then for an equivalent resolution screen... and it would still look like crap next to the mac monitor. That said I can't really tell the difference between the iMac screen and a cinema one and my worked paid 1k euros for a 30" back in the day. So I think there is still maybe a bit of an Apple tax if you buy the monitor separately but I felt pretty good getting a quad i7 with one of the best 27" screens at the time for ~2500 or so (also had the upgraded graphics and disk on mine).
The review has it right though usb on the back is a pain in the ass. Especially since the screen tilts easily so you are always bumping it. I have keyboard and mouse + and external drive always attached. I can't get enough juice out of the remaining port (might be better now with USB3) with a USB port expander so I'm stuck constantly swaping out my iPod, tablet, Kindle, etc to get them charged and since they all use a different connector (damn you both Apple and Amazon) I have to remove the cord from the back each time I switch.
I'm sure there are lots of exceptions but when I worked in academia I had no problem getting access to journals and this was the earliesh days of the internet (98-2000). Universities generally have access for all the main journals. My field (physics) generally has a habit of publishing pre-published papers to "the archives" which are free (also have engineering and comp sci papers there). Technically you aren't supposed to since most/all journals stipulate that the articles you are submitting are original unpublished research but they let it slide.
Next up conferences/incestual relationships: in a narrow field (which lets be honest is where most academics end up working) your PhD supervisor is either THE expert in the field or did their grad work/post doc with one of the few people that are. You go to conferences with a 100 plus people all with their own networks of experts from different continents. Finding who is doing something interesting isn't hard. The people/politics is what is hard: convincing them to collaborate, share unpublished results etc. Once it is published they'll happily send you a pdf, talk your ear off at a bar etc.
The people that complain about lack of access (and I've become one of them to a small extent) is people that no longer work directly in academia, no longer work full time on R & D, and/or are working on their own on side projects and would really like access. For most of us if we really cared we could drop ~$200 a year and get electronic access via our local university's community library access programs. We just don't care enough to spend $200 of our own money or take a 30min drive somewhere which to be honest acts as a filter to those that are unlikely to be current enough and willing to put in enough effort to make a meaningful contribution.
Companies with good cash flow putting money in investors pocket while having a protected product (either brand, patents, process leadership) beats technology that will someday somehow make you lots of money. As much as I like Amazon at some point you owe your investors a return on their investment, real dollars not wall street hopes and dreams that might get whipped out the next time we have another housing bubble or war.
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It's a balance in my experience. I've had places where they would get upset if they saw you talking to someone rather than nose to the grind stone and others that got upset if you didn't stop what you were doing and say hi to someone that came into your workspace to talk to someone else (who was there, not that they came asking for them and you ignored them).
Sadly, it is the lowest common denominator (well maybe highest common denominator): those that do need a lot of social interaction will get very frustrated by not having it. The assumption is usually that those that are quite or less social are not harmed by being forced to say hi and deal with small talk (even though that isn't the case when you need hours of consecutive time to figure out things sometimes, or just like the socialites might feel with no social interaction that like your life is being wasted with "how's the weather" talk). Regardless, the socially adapt are by definition the squeaky wheel and so are the ones that will get their way. Also, they tend to be the ones seen as being leaders/liked by people so are more likely to be your manager now or in the future so always a good idea to keep them happy.
Suggestion: have lunch with people. You have to eat anyways, so if they have to feel like they know you let them have their meaningless conversations with you while you are stuffing your frozen dinner in your mouth.
Which I'd guess have much higher failure rates then comparable aged cheaper cars: a couple reasons: they tend to push the engineering envelope more than the latest Civic or equivalent, and probably more importantly: people that own them are probably more likely to drive (even if only occasionally) like douches (as my father used to say about his old boat of a Bel Air, you got to run the engine out every once in a while for "maintenance" reasons).
True the risk is still relatively low per mile driven. Might be more than typical for gas powered cars though of similar price/age. Just a guess why: a lot of car fires are caused by electrical problems given bigger electrical currents an electric car would be more likely to arc and have sufficient current in an arc to start a fire. That said there probably were more accidents getting into and out of gas stations for the equivalent road miles driven than either electric or gas cars have fires.
It's not destroying evidence unless they can prove a crime has been committed. They can't prove a crime as been committed without evidence. So they should be fine. You can't sue someone for not having something. The whole deal with the government being able to get records from companies hinges on the argument that the companies own the records not the customers. If the company owns them they have the right to do with them as they wish. That is until they make some sort of data retention laws for everyone not just people in sensitive industries (banking, healthcare etc).
Amazon et al generally are places I hit when I shop. Apple has devices that I use. Do I really want Apple to know exactly who it is and when and how often a particular app gets used? Do they really need my cc number and address so I can download my latest free apps? Amazon and friends collect the info when you make a purchase, Apple insists on getting the info before you make a purchase or even worse even when you are explicitly not making a purchase.
Talking to a coward I realize but the thing is Apple by virtue of the Apple id has much more specific user info than probably anyone but Facebook. They make you login to get free apps and such so it isn't just your purchases it is every interaction in their store, what you chose to download onto your device etc. all tied to a real person. Facebook is potentially worse because they know more about you than what flavor of condoms you prefer (your friends, your conversations, friends of friends etc).
I hear you get that from unprotected interactions with strange connectors.
I agree. Whenever I hear the next great company say "I don' know" like a blonde bimbo 5 years after being founded when asked how they are going to monetize I think: "I'm not going to like the answer when it comes".
There is a very easy way for companies to protect you from NSA if they so chose: don't collect info. User name and password so you know it is me when I log in. My IP, duration, what I did none of it needs to be tied to my account. Sure iTunes or Amazon might be able to make that upsale if they know everything I've ever done for 10hrs a year I spend shopping on their site but at what cost? I'd pay that extra $2 in lost profits to have them leave me the hell alone. Especially since I'm not a citizen of said big brother state.
Our business is software our vendors are no one (well we cut a check once a year for MSDN and one a month to AWS but otherwise ... Our customers: dealt with through resellers in their particular country so generally no we don't need to interact outside the office much. We have ~100 devs and 10 office people. The 100 devs don't even have phones. There is very few times that a supplier/customer will absolutely must get a hold of you in the first hour of the day or last hour. Dealing with your intracompany stuff from 11-3 is pretty easy to do for 99% of things. For the remaining 1% you hire people specifically for being available at that time or a call relay service to ring the person that happens to be on call.
Not only that it assumes that everyone is equally effective getting up at the same time. It is actually counter productive for both the employee and the employer. It does my boss no good for me to come in at 8am if I can't focus well till 11am. Better I do my household choirs or someother mindless activity when I'm half awake then my coding.
There are exceptions of course and large number of people will be stuck on a schedule: store hours, shipper receivers etc. But since most people are office workers now (and of manual laborers only some work in an environment that truly needs a schedule mandated from on high (not all factory workers just the ones working in a factory with multiple shifts for example)) the ability for flexibility is much greater. A few people needed to operate a machine can agree when to start we shouldn't be treated like babies anymore needing a pointy haired boss to say "be here at 8 ... or else".
Why do they do it now twice a year? You don't need to be exactly coordinated +- 30min should be fine. Easily can spend the first part of the day catching up with email, getting equipment turned on etc.
I realize you didn't post directly to me but I do do as I suggest. I work flex time and generally come into work later during the winter than during the summer. Since the majority of people now do office work not making stuff it can work for the majority of people. A minority of people have jobs that require them to have people around the entire time they work. If someone isn't in already you can usually find something else to do in the mean time. Syncronizing people's schedule for the sole purpose of "we might want a meeting first thing in the morning once in a while so it would be convenient if everyone is in at 8am just in case" is just silly. Just like programming synchronize when you have absolutely no way around it, otherwise avoid it like the plague.
Oh and I might add that almost everything doesn't have to happen right now so running on an interrupt based scheduling model is just silly. Example from my work: Really you need this bug in the dev branch fixed RIGHT NOW? Really? When is the next integration build going to run? When is the next release? I'm pretty sure almost always things can wait a few hours and this is with CI since our test runs take 10hrs to run you are on average 5hrs away from anything that will affect others. Shipping at most companies happens roughly twice a day morning shipments and afternoon shipments. So again things are inherently batchy and as long as it happens within the batch that it comes in/is required happening right now doesn't matter we still aren't sending an empty truck out the LA with your one part on it, fed ex is still probably only going to send their guy around once a day etc.
What does it matter if we happen to live somewhere where the clocks say 7pm when the sun rises? I say one global time and you just use common sense when calling people far away ... like you got to do now when calling overseas anyways. I don't remember when daylight savings kicks in in Germany but I know they are ~4-6 hours away so sometime before noon seems okay.
Heck we could even schedule things with the sun like people that work for themselves (farmers, construction etc) already can. You go to work sunrise + 1hr and work whatever number of hours that are expected. Everyone gets some daylight hours to themselves sure more in summer than winter but you aren't trying to dance the time around so that you can try to get some daylight only to epically fail in the northern latitudes: I live near Toronto sunrise in the winter is ~8am and sunset around 5 so you can literally commute to work in the dark and it is dark by the time you live the office seeing the sun for 0 hrs a day isn't a good thing if for no other reason than sometimes you need to do something outside where you can see what you are doing.
I fight this in the office all the time and I don't see why cross office/company interaction needs to be any different: we need to remove the dependency on concurrent interaction. People send email and then knock on the door 10 min later and ask if you've seen it. We need to get in the habit of planning work enough that we can wait a couple days for a reply almost always and then learn to wait patiently not block waiting to make progress because we insist on dealing with things one at a time regardless of if the necessary person has time at the moment.
Or when the fathers have to support all their bastards.
worth every penny.
Growing a crop that some teapot dictator comes and feeds to his cousins isn't a pretty effective way of getting ahead either. People have to have stability to have a reasonable expectation of profit to invest in the future. Otherwise they'll sit on the ground and wait for a meal to be delivered to them or eat the grain rather than feed it to the chickens or save it to plant for next year. This is a vast generalization though. A bunch of countries in Africa are making significant gains. Opportunies give you a reason to invest, investing in fixed assets gives you a reason to fight for protections, leading you to value yourself and others more, leading to opportunities as who can work and get an education expands through the social hierarchy etc.
A big part of it is the inflation rate. Ex. I looked at one in offering loans in Mongolia at ~19% interest. The thing is inflation has been around 15% there so the effective interest rate is only about 4%. With defaults the return on investment was quoted at 1.8% which is probably about right.
I get the donate part and I don't expect to see my money again but I'd like to see it sustain itself. Otherwise you are dumping money into something that has no chance of helping: buying a car for a guy to be taxi driver were all the males in town are already taxi drivers and no one visits for example. If they know they got to pay you back what the money is worth after inflation they are forced a bit to look for good ideas not just another goat because goats are what they are used to.
Building the infrastructure in a lot of these countries doesn't matter. If you don't value human life it is only a matter of time before some idiot decides that only his tribe should have access to water and breaks the wells. Or there is a war and the knowledgeable people all go home. Help can't equal do it for them because just like in star trek interfering with a culture before they are ready to use technology responsibly isn't a good idea. Save everyone from malaria so the shitheads can rape and kill them when they are 14 doesn't solve the problem. First get rid/neutralize the shithead element AND get the society to the point where they realize being a shithead isn't the divine of one sex/tribe/chieftain/class.
I get what you are saying but I think it is that users haven't been bitching enough. We get nice mass market "power user" rigs and our flat panels have gone from 19" -> 24" over the last 5 years or so but we've stuck with 1920X1080 even though we have ~2X the screen space. Maybe it was wishful thinking but I was hoping that the latest iMacs would have gotten a refresh from the 2560X1440 maybe retina screen is too much to ask (would probably be in the 8k ish range with a 27" screen size) but 4k would have been nice for say a $2-300 price bump.
At 1920X1080 I increase my text size when coding not because I have a hard time reading text that is small but because I find the pixellation such crap on larger screens that I make it bigger so the lines are thicker and the edge blur isn't such crap. The iMac screen I have at home is probably the only large screen I've found acceptable at 10pt and even that is borderline. 1920X1080 is just craptacular on my 24" at work.
I think mine is the one right before that was allowed: early 2009 27" :( On a happier note: time for an upgrade in a year or so and this time I'll probably go for a 2-3 24" setup of some generic PC :)
When I was looking for a computer ~Feb 2009 the iMac 27" was a good value for me at the time. I knew I'd likely be moving across the continent soon so wanted something I could throw in a "suitcase" and count as one bag. I checked out Dells and HPs all in ones at the time and they were crap. I think the largest was 19" with a 1920X1080 screen. Slower graphics, slower ram. ~$1800. I paid 2500 got 8" more screen, a quad i7 (versus an i5 I think it was in the HP) 2560X1400 res, 2X the graphics performance and a bigger harddrive. I paid $700 more but got a hell of a lot more of a computer. For the same price as the HP one I could have gotten a 21.5" mac with about similar (and crappy to me) specs.
The Mac Pro and the Mac Book Pro are where they really rob you but for the Mac Book they still have the best or at least an extremely rare resolution for a laptop, Mac Pro no excuses, $4k for a pretty empty box then you are supposed to pay oddles to fill it up, um no.
I agree. They should have a mode where you can slave the iMac screen to use it as a second monitor. Might get people to upgrade a bit more frequently if they didn't have to thing oh crap about $600 of that price tag is the screen I already own. Also would be good to plug iPad and the like into the mac and go full screen (yeah I know they have an app store for the mac) so you could use it for little meetings and such. We used a 27" iMac for standups at my last job and it was plenty big enough for 5-6 people to huddle around.
Except dell will charge you about $200 to go from 8->32GB of ram versus 600 or so for a mac etc.They rape you a lot more when you don't buy the stock system. They also make it next to impossible for the normal person to upgrade anything other than ram on the iMac so you are stuck.
I agree whole hardly with the screen though. It is about time for a 4k screen I guess they are still too pricey but my 3 year old iMac was kicking a 2560X1440 screen when you'd have to drop 7-800 or so then for an equivalent resolution screen ... and it would still look like crap next to the mac monitor. That said I can't really tell the difference between the iMac screen and a cinema one and my worked paid 1k euros for a 30" back in the day. So I think there is still maybe a bit of an Apple tax if you buy the monitor separately but I felt pretty good getting a quad i7 with one of the best 27" screens at the time for ~2500 or so (also had the upgraded graphics and disk on mine).
The review has it right though usb on the back is a pain in the ass. Especially since the screen tilts easily so you are always bumping it. I have keyboard and mouse + and external drive always attached. I can't get enough juice out of the remaining port (might be better now with USB3) with a USB port expander so I'm stuck constantly swaping out my iPod, tablet, Kindle, etc to get them charged and since they all use a different connector (damn you both Apple and Amazon) I have to remove the cord from the back each time I switch.
I'm sure there are lots of exceptions but when I worked in academia I had no problem getting access to journals and this was the earliesh days of the internet (98-2000). Universities generally have access for all the main journals. My field (physics) generally has a habit of publishing pre-published papers to "the archives" which are free (also have engineering and comp sci papers there). Technically you aren't supposed to since most/all journals stipulate that the articles you are submitting are original unpublished research but they let it slide.
Next up conferences/incestual relationships: in a narrow field (which lets be honest is where most academics end up working) your PhD supervisor is either THE expert in the field or did their grad work/post doc with one of the few people that are. You go to conferences with a 100 plus people all with their own networks of experts from different continents. Finding who is doing something interesting isn't hard. The people/politics is what is hard: convincing them to collaborate, share unpublished results etc. Once it is published they'll happily send you a pdf, talk your ear off at a bar etc.
The people that complain about lack of access (and I've become one of them to a small extent) is people that no longer work directly in academia, no longer work full time on R & D, and/or are working on their own on side projects and would really like access. For most of us if we really cared we could drop ~$200 a year and get electronic access via our local university's community library access programs. We just don't care enough to spend $200 of our own money or take a 30min drive somewhere which to be honest acts as a filter to those that are unlikely to be current enough and willing to put in enough effort to make a meaningful contribution.
Companies with good cash flow putting money in investors pocket while having a protected product (either brand, patents, process leadership) beats technology that will someday somehow make you lots of money. As much as I like Amazon at some point you owe your investors a return on their investment, real dollars not wall street hopes and dreams that might get whipped out the next time we have another housing bubble or war.