Are they productive compared to an 8 hour work day? Maybe. Maybe they are 4-8 hour workdays plus socialization time. At Google, for instance, the fairly experienced employees I know work in departments where the norm is a ~12 hour day at work, but 1/3-1/2 of that is spent chatting, taking exercise classes on the Google campus, or drinking Google's in-office company-supplied hard liquor.
Comparing as close as possible specs, the 1.8GHz i5 with 128GB SSD and 4GB of RAM costs $1,199 for the MacBook Air and $1,499 for the ThinkPad. For the 2GHz i7, the MBA is $1,499, the ThinkPad is $1,849. However, the ThinkPad has a 14" screen instead of 13" (not sure if this is a pro or con in a portability-at-all-costs Ultrabook), integrated 3G (need a USB dongle for the MBA). The ThinkPad lacks Thunderbolt, so USB is the fastest peripheral interface. The ThinkPad is marginally larger in one dimension, marginally smaller in two more, so about the same volume and the weight difference between the two is under 0.1%. The ThinkPad comes with a 3-year warranty, but this costs extra for the MBA (unless you buy from the education store), which brings the cost quite a bit closer. The cost of upgrading to 8GB of RAM for the ThinkPad is not listed - it's not even clear that it's an option, which is a shame because that's something I'd be pretty sure to want.
You can look at the Lenovo site for upgrade pricing. Anyway, the real price for a ThinkPad is much lower than the list price - Lenovo usually has enormous coupons stackable with sales that are always running. I think the need for coupons is annoying, but if you're willing to jump through the hoops, the price for an X1C today is about $1100-1200. Also, the cost of an 8 GB RAM upgrade on the X1C is the cost of buying that RAM on Amazon (about $40) - the machine is meant to be user upgradeable. The same is true of the hard drive.
I am a Catholic guy, but I wasn't raised in the U.S. view's of creationism vs evolution. I am Mexican, and here, they teach us evolution *with* creationism. At church.
At school? They leave the God theories to the church. God has no business in the government schools, and teachers aren't nuns to be teaching kids about God anyway.
The way the Saturday Church classes taught me was that God didn't just create Adam and Eve, but evolved species into Adam and Eve. A simple way to explain it is that God plays Spore on a very big supercomputer with high definition graphics.
I don't get why Christians / Catholics get so pissy about Darwin being a theory and that a maker must've just spawned everything out of thin air. Both theories aren't mutually exclusive. The initial spores could've spawned out of thin air, then evolved into men and women.
And don't get me started with the Big Bang / Genesis thing, as the idea of creating the universe in 7 days is just wrong, but if some dude was shown a fast-forwarded video of the big bang and saw (and wrote) about creation taking place in 7 days, well that'd be a misunderstanding, I think.
I went to a Catholic school where evolution was taught (by priests) as fact and creationism as metaphor. It wasn't until college that I realized this was a peculiarity caused by my school being run by Jesuits in western America.
Its really just bad that they insist on not moving to micro USB like basically all other phones manufacturers have. Requiring people to buy new sets of chargers, cables, accessories, docks for a new product just shouldn't be necessary with what is already available.
Agreed in principle, but I'd prefer mini USB - I was visiting my extended family recently and we got to talking about broken cables and we've seen about 15 out of the 30 micro USB connectors we've collectively owned, usually supplied along with Kindles or phones, fail within the first year of normal use. None of us had ever seen a mini USB connecter fail in a larger sample size. Micro was supposedly designed for more plug/unplug cycles, but it seems like it's solidly failed to hit its goals.
Someone needs to take a long, hard look at the moderation of climate threads on/. Quoting from the moderation guidelines:
Try to be impartial about this. Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down.
I'm not taking sides either way in the climate debate; I'm saying that sceptics are moderated down because the moderators disagree with their point of view. At least one comment here already has the score '0 Flamebait' when I'm pretty sure the author of that comment posted what he posted because he honestly believes it, not because he's trying to stir up a flame war. Another comment is titled, 'Before the trolls start...', immediately branding anyone who disagrees with the author as a troll. They're not, they just disagree with you. Build a bridge and get over it.
The currently comment distribution with a score over 2 are weighted heavily toward comments that deny climate change. I agree with your statement, but I think that the majority of bias here is in the other direction.
The tablet market is about to explode with the Nexus 7 and Surface.
Surface? Really? OK, you were sounding reasonable for a bit there, but now you just sound like an anti-apple-fanboy, not using logic, but certain any competitor will take Apple out. There's no reason to believe the Surface will be any more successful than WP7.
From the perspective of someone with an iPad, a Kindle Fire, and both Android and iPhones in my house, the Surface is pretty damn compelling. The Nexus 7 looks like 75% of an iPad's usefulness (for my usage patterns) for a fantastic price. The Surface looks like maybe 400% of an iPad's usefulness for a decent price. Both are extremely intriguing.
Please explain the value then. People from seperate countries do things together all the time.
What is different about the Olympics is that people do peaceful things. Unlike some of the other scenarios where people from some of these countries come together.
The Olympics are separated from other international athletic competitions in two primary ways: 1) they're the most commercialized, corrupt, money-driven competition with the greatest focus on advertising and 2) they have a propaganda tradition mostly based on Hitler's contributions to the games. Both of those points are despicable.
This guys is throwing up one of those "hybrid-laptops". He's found his corner case and he's going to troll it for everything it's worth.
If hybrid graphics on a laptop counts as a corner case and so do similarly common corners with other components (hybrid SSD/HD, fingerprint reader, uh...3g transceiver, etc.) then I think the vast majority of computers will have some sort of corner case that is central to their normal operation.
Just look at the sales numbers for things like Galaxy Note, Galaxy S3, and HTC One X.
Huge screens = huge sales.
Personally, I'm salivating over the Gaaxy Note 2, which should have an even bigger screen than the original.
And is that proof that people want big screens? No. The iPhone is much smaller than those but outsells them all put together. Is that proof people want smaller screens? No.
First, I think there's a case to be made around sales numbers not reflecting customer interest in individual features. Consumer electronics sales seem to be mostly driven by advertising, not utility.
If the cops can tail you without a license, then why shouldn't they be able to track you with GPS. And if they can track you with GPS, why shouldn't they be able to track everyone? Sometimes the scale of something matters. Being able to recognize me when you see me on the street or on a facebook post is a little different from being able to find every single publicly available picture that I've ever been in.
A large contingent of Slashdot posters has always struggled to think of a concept in between the extremes. I think that's why Ayn Rand is so popular around here.
This is another case if outlawing technology. Someone can look at a person, compare them to a lineup of photos, and then look them up in a phonebook and call them. But because a computer can do it so much better and so much quicker, we are scared and feel the need to censor progress. What about the freedom to take photos? The freedom to process photos?
I can only imagine that when someone invents teleportation, it will be outlawed and the designs burned and the inventor executed, because of the fear that 75% of the population will lose their jobs.
When are we going to accept change and take steps to live within that world? If you are so afraid of it, then stop putting your photo online? If you are a celebrity, then too bad.
I do agree that the government shouldn't be monitoring without a warrant though. Just like they aren't supposed to before technology.
Yes, just look at the chilling effects Luddites have had on cars through traffic laws! Someone can walk down a street and run into people and bludgeon them to death with their bodies, but because a car can do it so much better and so much quicker, we are scared and feel the need to censor progress. What about freedom to travel?
I have to think that while something like Plex would be better for a lot of people, XBMC still gets used on name recognition alone. If you have more than one device that you watch media on (TVs, Roku, tablets, phones, whatever) why wouldn't you want a central server managing the library, downloading metadata, saving watched flags, holding resume times, and serving up video to the devices? I turned a friend on to Plex from XBMC and he's amazed at how often he stops watching in one room and resumes in another. I love it too. I can't count the times that I've started watching something on the iPad in the kitchen while cleaning up and then going into the bedroom to finish on the TV. That's a way bigger feature to me than getting "the real deal" running everywhere I need it.
The people above wanting this for Google TV...check out Plex, it may be exactly what you're looking for.
Sorry to not gush for XBMC, I know it's the best solution for many people and I truly appreciate the heritage and the fact that it's the foundation for Plex, but until they have a centralized server (if ever), I can't even consider it for myself. And no I'm not going to jump through hoops to get it.
Plex transcodes and the resulting video looks pretty terrible. XBMC plays video natively.
The Q is something that does not look embarrassing to have in your living room.
I'd say the Q is the most embarrassing-looking electronic device that doesn't vibrate. Actually, it might easily be mistaken for a device that does vibrate.
he has 50 years of education, anything he writes is fact
20 years from now people will be saying the same thing about this supposed global warming. in the northeast it has actually been cooler than 30 years ago when i was a kid. almost every ridiculous theory about super hurricanes destroying NYC by 2010 have not happened.
To summarize: straw man, nonsense, nonsensical anecdote that doesn't matter even if true, straw man.
I hope so... I know it won't happen in the US.... Which actually says a lot. As Americans we are used to getting what we paid for. If something sucks, we're entitled to our money back.
No refunds in the US, but you can still sell it. I've made a separate Bliz account for each of their recent products and sold the account when I'm done with it. For their two most recent games, "done" came two days after purchase.
She doesn't say "merely touching an unworking product makes it hands-on review" at any point. She says that she can give a review that's "hands on" even with just a short time using the product, as long as she's clear it's just an impression and isn't an in-depth review. If you read the review, it's full of qualifiers like "At this stage Microsoft is being very cagey and no-one has had much time using Surface RT yet, but from our experience of trying it out."
Just another unfair article summary by some Slashdot basement dweller with an anti-Microsoft agenda.
As far as Anandtech, at least, which is usually the only tech site on the internet worth reading, there was no claim of a "review" and the author made it very clear exactly how much contact he had with the device.
Advertisers pay higher rates for more targeted advertising.
So rates would go down, but ads would have to go up because they'd be less effective.
Advertisers would be mad, websites would make about the same.
Ads don't increase the amount consumers spend - they influence consumers choice of where that money goes. If each ad is individually less effective, the balance is maintained and advertising's total effectiveness won't change. If each ad is individually more effective, the balance is maintained but we've taken probably the most important step to a totalitarian state, since this tracking data is a candy shop for the government. It's an arms race that provides no net benefit and your privacy is the cost.
Slashdot Mirror
Are they productive compared to an 8 hour work day? Maybe. Maybe they are 4-8 hour workdays plus socialization time. At Google, for instance, the fairly experienced employees I know work in departments where the norm is a ~12 hour day at work, but 1/3-1/2 of that is spent chatting, taking exercise classes on the Google campus, or drinking Google's in-office company-supplied hard liquor.
Comparing as close as possible specs, the 1.8GHz i5 with 128GB SSD and 4GB of RAM costs $1,199 for the MacBook Air and $1,499 for the ThinkPad. For the 2GHz i7, the MBA is $1,499, the ThinkPad is $1,849. However, the ThinkPad has a 14" screen instead of 13" (not sure if this is a pro or con in a portability-at-all-costs Ultrabook), integrated 3G (need a USB dongle for the MBA). The ThinkPad lacks Thunderbolt, so USB is the fastest peripheral interface. The ThinkPad is marginally larger in one dimension, marginally smaller in two more, so about the same volume and the weight difference between the two is under 0.1%. The ThinkPad comes with a 3-year warranty, but this costs extra for the MBA (unless you buy from the education store), which brings the cost quite a bit closer. The cost of upgrading to 8GB of RAM for the ThinkPad is not listed - it's not even clear that it's an option, which is a shame because that's something I'd be pretty sure to want.
You can look at the Lenovo site for upgrade pricing. Anyway, the real price for a ThinkPad is much lower than the list price - Lenovo usually has enormous coupons stackable with sales that are always running. I think the need for coupons is annoying, but if you're willing to jump through the hoops, the price for an X1C today is about $1100-1200. Also, the cost of an 8 GB RAM upgrade on the X1C is the cost of buying that RAM on Amazon (about $40) - the machine is meant to be user upgradeable. The same is true of the hard drive.
NO.. Gravity is a law, not a theory. It will perform exactly the same every time.
Except when it doesn't. Then we consider alternative theories of gravity or slight changes to our understanding of it. Just like evolution.
I am a Catholic guy, but I wasn't raised in the U.S. view's of creationism vs evolution. I am Mexican, and here, they teach us evolution *with* creationism. At church.
At school? They leave the God theories to the church. God has no business in the government schools, and teachers aren't nuns to be teaching kids about God anyway.
The way the Saturday Church classes taught me was that God didn't just create Adam and Eve, but evolved species into Adam and Eve. A simple way to explain it is that God plays Spore on a very big supercomputer with high definition graphics.
I don't get why Christians / Catholics get so pissy about Darwin being a theory and that a maker must've just spawned everything out of thin air. Both theories aren't mutually exclusive. The initial spores could've spawned out of thin air, then evolved into men and women.
And don't get me started with the Big Bang / Genesis thing, as the idea of creating the universe in 7 days is just wrong, but if some dude was shown a fast-forwarded video of the big bang and saw (and wrote) about creation taking place in 7 days, well that'd be a misunderstanding, I think.
I went to a Catholic school where evolution was taught (by priests) as fact and creationism as metaphor. It wasn't until college that I realized this was a peculiarity caused by my school being run by Jesuits in western America.
Its really just bad that they insist on not moving to micro USB like basically all other phones manufacturers have. Requiring people to buy new sets of chargers, cables, accessories, docks for a new product just shouldn't be necessary with what is already available.
Agreed in principle, but I'd prefer mini USB - I was visiting my extended family recently and we got to talking about broken cables and we've seen about 15 out of the 30 micro USB connectors we've collectively owned, usually supplied along with Kindles or phones, fail within the first year of normal use. None of us had ever seen a mini USB connecter fail in a larger sample size. Micro was supposedly designed for more plug/unplug cycles, but it seems like it's solidly failed to hit its goals.
"the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes"
No, that's the mission statement of the TSA.
Dune is a masterpiece. The masses don't know it exists. The award-givers looked him over. And only the first book got any real acclaim from critics.
I think Dune is wildly popular with the masses (of people who would ever consider reading sci fi) and that it doesn't live up to the widespread hype.
Someone needs to take a long, hard look at the moderation of climate threads on /. Quoting from the moderation guidelines:
I'm not taking sides either way in the climate debate; I'm saying that sceptics are moderated down because the moderators disagree with their point of view. At least one comment here already has the score '0 Flamebait' when I'm pretty sure the author of that comment posted what he posted because he honestly believes it, not because he's trying to stir up a flame war. Another comment is titled, 'Before the trolls start...', immediately branding anyone who disagrees with the author as a troll. They're not, they just disagree with you. Build a bridge and get over it.
The currently comment distribution with a score over 2 are weighted heavily toward comments that deny climate change. I agree with your statement, but I think that the majority of bias here is in the other direction.
Using his company's CodeSuite forensic software,
Alternate summary: CodeSuite found not to work as forensic software!
Or in other words, "If evidence disagrees with my irrational prejudice, evidence must be wrong!"
The tablet market is about to explode with the Nexus 7 and Surface.
Surface? Really? OK, you were sounding reasonable for a bit there, but now you just sound like an anti-apple-fanboy, not using logic, but certain any competitor will take Apple out. There's no reason to believe the Surface will be any more successful than WP7.
From the perspective of someone with an iPad, a Kindle Fire, and both Android and iPhones in my house, the Surface is pretty damn compelling. The Nexus 7 looks like 75% of an iPad's usefulness (for my usage patterns) for a fantastic price. The Surface looks like maybe 400% of an iPad's usefulness for a decent price. Both are extremely intriguing.
"If that supermodel gives me a handjob, I'd gladly pay $100."
This is what you sound like.
The x86 version of the ms surface should do everything he lists in the form factor of an ipad.
Anyone who suggest otherwise is trying to sell you something or wants to spend your tax money.
Going to mars is an absolute waste of resources.
What resources were lost in this trip to Mars? What would they have gone toward if we hadn't used them for this mission?
Please explain the value then. People from seperate countries do things together all the time.
What is different about the Olympics is that people do peaceful things. Unlike some of the other scenarios where people from some of these countries come together.
The Olympics are separated from other international athletic competitions in two primary ways: 1) they're the most commercialized, corrupt, money-driven competition with the greatest focus on advertising and 2) they have a propaganda tradition mostly based on Hitler's contributions to the games. Both of those points are despicable.
This guys is throwing up one of those "hybrid-laptops". He's found his corner case and he's going to troll it for everything it's worth.
If hybrid graphics on a laptop counts as a corner case and so do similarly common corners with other components (hybrid SSD/HD, fingerprint reader, uh...3g transceiver, etc.) then I think the vast majority of computers will have some sort of corner case that is central to their normal operation.
Just look at the sales numbers for things like Galaxy Note, Galaxy S3, and HTC One X.
Huge screens = huge sales.
Personally, I'm salivating over the Gaaxy Note 2, which should have an even bigger screen than the original.
And is that proof that people want big screens? No. The iPhone is much smaller than those but outsells them all put together. Is that proof people want smaller screens? No.
First, I think there's a case to be made around sales numbers not reflecting customer interest in individual features. Consumer electronics sales seem to be mostly driven by advertising, not utility.
If the cops can tail you without a license, then why shouldn't they be able to track you with GPS. And if they can track you with GPS, why shouldn't they be able to track everyone? Sometimes the scale of something matters. Being able to recognize me when you see me on the street or on a facebook post is a little different from being able to find every single publicly available picture that I've ever been in.
A large contingent of Slashdot posters has always struggled to think of a concept in between the extremes. I think that's why Ayn Rand is so popular around here.
Technology is too good! We need to outlaw it!
This is another case if outlawing technology. Someone can look at a person, compare them to a lineup of photos, and then look them up in a phonebook and call them. But because a computer can do it so much better and so much quicker, we are scared and feel the need to censor progress. What about the freedom to take photos? The freedom to process photos?
I can only imagine that when someone invents teleportation, it will be outlawed and the designs burned and the inventor executed, because of the fear that 75% of the population will lose their jobs.
When are we going to accept change and take steps to live within that world? If you are so afraid of it, then stop putting your photo online? If you are a celebrity, then too bad.
I do agree that the government shouldn't be monitoring without a warrant though. Just like they aren't supposed to before technology.
Yes, just look at the chilling effects Luddites have had on cars through traffic laws! Someone can walk down a street and run into people and bludgeon them to death with their bodies, but because a car can do it so much better and so much quicker, we are scared and feel the need to censor progress. What about freedom to travel?
I have to think that while something like Plex would be better for a lot of people, XBMC still gets used on name recognition alone. If you have more than one device that you watch media on (TVs, Roku, tablets, phones, whatever) why wouldn't you want a central server managing the library, downloading metadata, saving watched flags, holding resume times, and serving up video to the devices? I turned a friend on to Plex from XBMC and he's amazed at how often he stops watching in one room and resumes in another. I love it too. I can't count the times that I've started watching something on the iPad in the kitchen while cleaning up and then going into the bedroom to finish on the TV. That's a way bigger feature to me than getting "the real deal" running everywhere I need it.
The people above wanting this for Google TV...check out Plex, it may be exactly what you're looking for.
Sorry to not gush for XBMC, I know it's the best solution for many people and I truly appreciate the heritage and the fact that it's the foundation for Plex, but until they have a centralized server (if ever), I can't even consider it for myself. And no I'm not going to jump through hoops to get it.
Plex transcodes and the resulting video looks pretty terrible. XBMC plays video natively.
The Q is something that does not look embarrassing to have in your living room.
I'd say the Q is the most embarrassing-looking electronic device that doesn't vibrate. Actually, it might easily be mistaken for a device that does vibrate.
he has 50 years of education, anything he writes is fact
20 years from now people will be saying the same thing about this supposed global warming. in the northeast it has actually been cooler than 30 years ago when i was a kid. almost every ridiculous theory about super hurricanes destroying NYC by 2010 have not happened.
To summarize: straw man, nonsense, nonsensical anecdote that doesn't matter even if true, straw man.
I hope so... I know it won't happen in the US.... Which actually says a lot. As Americans we are used to getting what we paid for. If something sucks, we're entitled to our money back.
No refunds in the US, but you can still sell it. I've made a separate Bliz account for each of their recent products and sold the account when I'm done with it. For their two most recent games, "done" came two days after purchase.
She doesn't say "merely touching an unworking product makes it hands-on review" at any point. She says that she can give a review that's "hands on" even with just a short time using the product, as long as she's clear it's just an impression and isn't an in-depth review. If you read the review, it's full of qualifiers like "At this stage Microsoft is being very cagey and no-one has had much time using Surface RT yet, but from our experience of trying it out."
Just another unfair article summary by some Slashdot basement dweller with an anti-Microsoft agenda.
As far as Anandtech, at least, which is usually the only tech site on the internet worth reading, there was no claim of a "review" and the author made it very clear exactly how much contact he had with the device.
nt
Advertisers pay higher rates for more targeted advertising.
So rates would go down, but ads would have to go up because they'd be less effective.
Advertisers would be mad, websites would make about the same.
Ads don't increase the amount consumers spend - they influence consumers choice of where that money goes. If each ad is individually less effective, the balance is maintained and advertising's total effectiveness won't change. If each ad is individually more effective, the balance is maintained but we've taken probably the most important step to a totalitarian state, since this tracking data is a candy shop for the government. It's an arms race that provides no net benefit and your privacy is the cost.
You're extremely biased. A teacher, perhaps?
I think your sarcasm detector is broken.