...business laptop. But its not like the Thinkpads of old that were thick.
The thin mag on the HP and Sony models will not hold up the same, and it shows in their extended warranty prices which are more than twice that on a comparable Thinkpad.
I am now in the market for a new Thinkpad, and in Lenovo's defense just about every other clone maker still pales in comparison. For the same price as what a T430s goes for, the offerings from Dell, Sony and HP don't measure up. The only real weakness of the current Thinkpad line are the screens in a few of the models (like the 14in. T430/s). Lenovo are trying to push relatively lo-res/low clarity kit and I don't know if its due to sheer cost cutting or because of other considerations like durability. OTOH, I noticed the screens on the Sony business laptops were similarly disappointing (I did not see Dell or HP business laptops that hit the mark for weight, durability, speed and security features).
The new Thinkpad T530 comes with a crummy keyboard...
Then you haven't used it. The new keyboards are the same underneath, with only a slight layout adjustment and new keycaps on top which IMO have a better feel. They are not flat, it is easier to hit a key properly, and they reject dirt better. I have scoured both professional reviews and user testimonials on places like Youtube, forums and blogs and have yet to come across a negative review of the new keycaps. Mostly, they are reported to be even better than the old ones.
Thinkpads are *still* Milspec tested (presumably they pass) and I dare you to compare the price of a 3yr warranty from Apple or Sony with one for a Thinkpad. BIG difference that reflects the durability of the products that are covered. And please don't compare features/price with non-business models that are comparable to other lines like the consumer Ideapad. A Sony S Series 13 Premium compares in features/specs with a Thinkpad T430s (including security features, which are important, IMO)... but costs much more.
A few people don't like the overall feel of the newer Thinkpad models with the carbon fiber-reinforced plastic. I'm not one of the haters though. They still feel very nice, but its a 'new wave' niceness... new materials that, thank goodness, are much lighter. Magnesium outer bodies are so 1990s, too bulky at this level of toughness and I'm glad they're gone.
Thinkpads are still fully modular designs letting you easily swap drives and batteries and yet the current crop of them can compete with the weights of monolithic designs like Macbook Pros. That also reflects greatly on Lenovo's choice of materials.
Macbooks aren't even laptops/notebooks anymore. They are ultrabooks that straddle the line between a personal computer and a manufacturer-managed appliance or thick client. That is too restrictive for me and many others. And BTW you should never trust a 'personal' device on which you cannot simply and quickly yank the power, nor should you trust a manufacturer that attempts to shut out small and medium sized businesses from aftermarket repair and recycling.
Actually, when Linux supports the kind of network transparency that allows efficient desktop sharing with multiple parties instead of resorting to a crude bitmap-tosser like VNC, then we will have caught up to the Windows and OS X of long ago.
But I don't think that's even necessary. Just because AGW activists like you are not convinced of the competitiveness of low-GHG energy and are speaking out of both sides of their mouth...
Whoa! YOU'RE the one who insinuated in your 2nd paragraph that substitutes for fossil fuels aren't "good".
But labeling me an activist gets you a pass, with your own conscience anyways. No need to even try for consistency.
If it came down to it, many of us would much rather live in a world of 4C higher temperatures than in a world in which any organization is able to bring that kind of pressure on any country.
Then "many of us" would rather be ignorant and probably die in misery because that is what such a stance entails. +4C is past the projected threshold for a runaway warming effect.
Some think they can "live" with +4C: Only people who argue from a position of privilege would say something like that...as if the dying will mainly be left to others.
There is no real way to deal with GHG pollution other than to regulate it globally. Otherwise, there will always be some countries with players who see deregulating fossil fuels as an opportunity to become filthy rich (and to heck with future generations). Continuing to hand the fulcrum of power over to multinational corporations (moving production to wherever regulation is lowest and energy is dirtiest) on this issue simply will not work and it is why piecemeal national removal of subsidies is naive; Every country should know that their neighbors face the scrutiny and pressure, too, so they do not see ending pro-fossil fuel policies as placing themselves at an economic disadvantage.
The two changes together have made it much, much easier for me to type. And at very fast typing speeds, the 13% reduction in effort over Dvorak is nothing to sneeze at.
Keep in mind that for a layout like Colemak to be a real benefit you have to be a good touch typist. OTOH if you are using some kind of personally-adapted hunt and peck method like Sean Wrona then it won't make as big of a difference. There is some good discussion of typing speed and comfort at the colemak.com forum.
Speaking of Wrona, he sometimes participates in tournaments both online and in person. I've heard that typing is taken pretty seriously as a sport in some other non-US countries.
Some of the better keyboards available now are the Matias QuietPro (tactile but quiet), the Topre Realforce (uses capacitive springs), the TrulyErgonomic and Kinesis Advantage (both have split and unstaggered key layout) and the relatively inexpensive CM Storm QuickFire Rapid.
People in Country A don't get an increased risk for lung cancer because Country B has a lot of smokers.
Personally, I'd like to see government investment in research in renewable energies, increased taxation of oil and coal, and investment in nuclear power plants. But I strongly object to multi-national carbon trading schemes or global emission limits, because I think they would be ineffective and subject to massive abuse.
You mean like the Montreal Protocol? That 'ineffective' and abusive regime?
Cooperation on AGW has to be international for multiple reasons. Two of them are 1) Atmospheric conditions at this scale affect everyone, and 2) Cooperation has to bring competitiveness to heel on this issue, so that anyone taking an 'If they don't do it, we will' attitude to high-GHG modes of production will be made to feel the pressure.
Mertrometro made an insightful comment along those lines:
The position paper was vetted internally and approved along the orgs normal channels. Unless by "higher up leadership" you mean the lobbyists -- they were surprised, that's true.
...would be pretty interesting after enacting a policy like that. I have a sinking feeling its yet another example of white culture/identity jumping the shark.
Mechanical keyboards are going through a revival after dying out over the course of 20 years. Lots of new options popping up and targeting different niches: Razer and CoolerMaster for gaming, Matias (who just designed their own premium Alps switches) and Das Keyboard for typists, and for typists who want ergonomics there is TrulyErgonomic (with a split, unstaggered mechanical board) and good ol' Kinesis (with their iconic split fingerbowl design, also with unstaggered key layout).
It's still "not there yet", however. These brands are still developing a picture of what people want and there is still too much emphasis on old form factors. Logitech recently unveiled a new mechanical model that is highly conventional which seems intended for gamers.
The compact/tenkey-less form factor is another, separate trend in keyboards that I wish more mechanical vendors would notice. IMO, number pads should be detached/optional and not interfere with a person's reach to a pointing device (nor reduce one's options for positioning on a keyboard tray or desktop); Most keyboards are too wide.
Off the shelf components are VLSI, have been for decades.
Its amazing what tech fanbois will do to prevent people from entering or viewing information without microprocessors. Feeding a hand-marked ballot into a machine gives us a digital representation while creating the best kind of paper trail. OTOH using a computer to record a vote then make a printout is doing it backwards because the latter invites all sorts of additional fraudulent activity that require a minimum of people and physical effort to execute.
Everyone who objects to an inappropriate use of Technology (a holy word that can be used to candy-coat or lionize virtually any profit scheme or power grab) by bigwigs gets marked as a Luddite these days.
Luddite is often used in the same contexts as conspiracy theorist to deride people who express suspicion about the dealings of the inner circles or finance and power, particularly when the military-industrial complex is involved (by contrast, people who accuse most climate scientists of coordinating a massive fraud are usually referred to as "skeptics").
This at the same time that government and the private sector team up for a massive project that expands incarceration to encompass 1% of the adult population, involving seemingly endless counts of "conspiracy". And there are ever more ways to generate suspicion against little people thanks to Technology, operated by Those-Who-Insist-The-Cameras-Point-Away-From-Them-Or-Else-Get-Confiscated. These people and their toadies are never called Luddites or conspiracy theorists -- it just wouldn't be proper.
No, the mechanics of voting in a democracy cannot be re-made as a service provided by for-profit corporations.
Elections aren't about making money...
Talk about naive. What do you think corporate PACs and lobbyists are for? They have come to treat politicians as investments that offer a very high ROI.
ATM manufacturers created the computerized voting market. Check out blackboxvoting.org from their early days (Bush-II era) or read their book.
Secret voting is not even remotely like banking or paying taxes because the recipient of the information isn't allowed to know who generated which piece of data.
Paper or similar analog medium is the only correct way to do secret ballot voting. The result is subject to far more robust forensic analysis (should a crime be committed), recounts are straightforward and no one needs a PhD to fully audit the logic behind the process.
Malware and backdoors are the equivalent of "bias, misrepresentation, or threats" to computers.
Computers are trusted only insofar as we can tell who asked them to do exactly what because they operate on a multitude of layers of indirection -- Anyone who thinks that what they see on screen is proof of what is recorded inside is beyond naive. As soon a secret anonymous ballot enters the picture, you've got a fundamental incompatibility with the digital world much as maximalist copyright policies are. Casting votes is not like bank transactions, for instance, where opportunity to get receipts abound and the systems in question are in constant use.
Even with open source voting software you still can't properly audit the systems because there's no way to properly inspect the operation of VLSI chips and its ludicrous to expect election commissions to do it even at the software level. If there is even one bit or gate of logic that cannot be examined then its BBV -- black box voting.
It doesn't stop at the ability to tinker for me... If the thing has a mic, a camera, etc. and wireless networking then it has to also have a removable battery.
People are idiots for trusting something for which they can't simply 'yank the plug'. Its another indicator that a device is consumer-hostile.
Richard Stallman just keeps being right about these things. The source must be open. The hardware must be open. All governments and individuals must be able to inspect the platform because there is no way to actually "Trust" proprietary solutions.
Right now, Cisco routers run Unix at the core and distribution levels. Linux is mostly being used on the access layer (edge) of the network. It is time to add more enterprise features and hardware support to make Linux suitable at all levels. Open chip designs can be developed in each country. That is the only way to make sure that each country does not subvert the networks of the others.
...network abstraction layers to their GUIs, specifically to enable people to mirror and share their desktops efficiently.
The mundane, non-vertically integrated *nix world still doesn't have this ability after all these years. X11 can't mirror/share, its also laggy over broadband connections, VNC is primitive and slow, etc. The NoMachine people have claimed they can support screen sharing in NX, but I haven't seen a working example yet (and those features are in the proprietary version anyway); otherwise they did a good job of making X11 usably network transparent for use cases not contained within a single LAN (i.e. most situations).
Personally, I'm tired of seeing all the hand-waving about X11's network transparency. It doesn't help in the vast majority of instances where people want to share an app or screen during a teleconference. X11 is not advanced in this respect -- just sadly out of touch. It mainly addresses the rather outdated use case where you have a handful of engineer types who open a CLI and type an ssh command, possibly fiddle with the display variable, then type in the desired app as a command so they can run one expensive, customized app on a server in a specially cooled room 3 floors down.
Slashdot Mirror
...business laptop. But its not like the Thinkpads of old that were thick.
The thin mag on the HP and Sony models will not hold up the same, and it shows in their extended warranty prices which are more than twice that on a comparable Thinkpad.
I am now in the market for a new Thinkpad, and in Lenovo's defense just about every other clone maker still pales in comparison. For the same price as what a T430s goes for, the offerings from Dell, Sony and HP don't measure up. The only real weakness of the current Thinkpad line are the screens in a few of the models (like the 14in. T430/s). Lenovo are trying to push relatively lo-res/low clarity kit and I don't know if its due to sheer cost cutting or because of other considerations like durability. OTOH, I noticed the screens on the Sony business laptops were similarly disappointing (I did not see Dell or HP business laptops that hit the mark for weight, durability, speed and security features).
The new Thinkpad T530 comes with a crummy keyboard...
Then you haven't used it. The new keyboards are the same underneath, with only a slight layout adjustment and new keycaps on top which IMO have a better feel. They are not flat, it is easier to hit a key properly, and they reject dirt better. I have scoured both professional reviews and user testimonials on places like Youtube, forums and blogs and have yet to come across a negative review of the new keycaps. Mostly, they are reported to be even better than the old ones.
Thinkpads are *still* Milspec tested (presumably they pass) and I dare you to compare the price of a 3yr warranty from Apple or Sony with one for a Thinkpad. BIG difference that reflects the durability of the products that are covered. And please don't compare features/price with non-business models that are comparable to other lines like the consumer Ideapad. A Sony S Series 13 Premium compares in features/specs with a Thinkpad T430s (including security features, which are important, IMO)... but costs much more.
A few people don't like the overall feel of the newer Thinkpad models with the carbon fiber-reinforced plastic. I'm not one of the haters though. They still feel very nice, but its a 'new wave' niceness... new materials that, thank goodness, are much lighter. Magnesium outer bodies are so 1990s, too bulky at this level of toughness and I'm glad they're gone.
Thinkpads are still fully modular designs letting you easily swap drives and batteries and yet the current crop of them can compete with the weights of monolithic designs like Macbook Pros. That also reflects greatly on Lenovo's choice of materials.
Macbooks aren't even laptops/notebooks anymore. They are ultrabooks that straddle the line between a personal computer and a manufacturer-managed appliance or thick client. That is too restrictive for me and many others. And BTW you should never trust a 'personal' device on which you cannot simply and quickly yank the power, nor should you trust a manufacturer that attempts to shut out small and medium sized businesses from aftermarket repair and recycling.
Actually, when Linux supports the kind of network transparency that allows efficient desktop sharing with multiple parties instead of resorting to a crude bitmap-tosser like VNC, then we will have caught up to the Windows and OS X of long ago.
Do you go to therapy weekly or monthly?
Monthly... He would go weekly but the analyst's office is a five mile walk uphill, both ways.
Whoa! YOU'RE the one who insinuated in your 2nd paragraph that substitutes for fossil fuels aren't "good".
But labeling me an activist gets you a pass, with your own conscience anyways. No need to even try for consistency.
Then "many of us" would rather be ignorant and probably die in misery because that is what such a stance entails. +4C is past the projected threshold for a runaway warming effect.
Some think they can "live" with +4C: Only people who argue from a position of privilege would say something like that ...as if the dying will mainly be left to others.
There is no real way to deal with GHG pollution other than to regulate it globally. Otherwise, there will always be some countries with players who see deregulating fossil fuels as an opportunity to become filthy rich (and to heck with future generations). Continuing to hand the fulcrum of power over to multinational corporations (moving production to wherever regulation is lowest and energy is dirtiest) on this issue simply will not work and it is why piecemeal national removal of subsidies is naive; Every country should know that their neighbors face the scrutiny and pressure, too, so they do not see ending pro-fossil fuel policies as placing themselves at an economic disadvantage.
The two changes together have made it much, much easier for me to type. And at very fast typing speeds, the 13% reduction in effort over Dvorak is nothing to sneeze at.
Keep in mind that for a layout like Colemak to be a real benefit you have to be a good touch typist. OTOH if you are using some kind of personally-adapted hunt and peck method like Sean Wrona then it won't make as big of a difference. There is some good discussion of typing speed and comfort at the colemak.com forum.
Speaking of Wrona, he sometimes participates in tournaments both online and in person. I've heard that typing is taken pretty seriously as a sport in some other non-US countries.
Some of the better keyboards available now are the Matias QuietPro (tactile but quiet), the Topre Realforce (uses capacitive springs), the TrulyErgonomic and Kinesis Advantage (both have split and unstaggered key layout) and the relatively inexpensive CM Storm QuickFire Rapid.
People in Country A don't get an increased risk for lung cancer because Country B has a lot of smokers.
You mean like the Montreal Protocol? That 'ineffective' and abusive regime?
Cooperation on AGW has to be international for multiple reasons. Two of them are 1) Atmospheric conditions at this scale affect everyone, and 2) Cooperation has to bring competitiveness to heel on this issue, so that anyone taking an 'If they don't do it, we will' attitude to high-GHG modes of production will be made to feel the pressure.
Apparently, Polish schools are as bad as US schools at teaching thermodynamic principles (though I would hope not).
http://media.photobucket.com/image/recent/traveler_01/PDVD_011.jpg
not necessarily pro-business in general.
Mertrometro made an insightful comment along those lines:
...in a country where coal and oil companies receive large government subsidies.
Together with the strange pension requirement set by Congress, none of it makes sense.
These AGW denial stories from elReg and their ilk are the main reason why my visits are becoming less frequent and I have ads blocked here.
Feeding the witch-hunt mentality against climate scientists and environmentalists is incredibly irresponsible.
They were not politicians or political appointees. The BBC had already made up its mind and were using them as consultants.
Why did they abandon impartiality?? Because they didn't invite deniers?
...would be pretty interesting after enacting a policy like that. I have a sinking feeling its yet another example of white culture/identity jumping the shark.
so far.
'Nuff said...
Mechanical keyboards are going through a revival after dying out over the course of 20 years. Lots of new options popping up and targeting different niches: Razer and CoolerMaster for gaming, Matias (who just designed their own premium Alps switches) and Das Keyboard for typists, and for typists who want ergonomics there is TrulyErgonomic (with a split, unstaggered mechanical board) and good ol' Kinesis (with their iconic split fingerbowl design, also with unstaggered key layout).
It's still "not there yet", however. These brands are still developing a picture of what people want and there is still too much emphasis on old form factors. Logitech recently unveiled a new mechanical model that is highly conventional which seems intended for gamers.
The compact/tenkey-less form factor is another, separate trend in keyboards that I wish more mechanical vendors would notice. IMO, number pads should be detached/optional and not interfere with a person's reach to a pointing device (nor reduce one's options for positioning on a keyboard tray or desktop); Most keyboards are too wide.
Off the shelf components are VLSI, have been for decades.
Its amazing what tech fanbois will do to prevent people from entering or viewing information without microprocessors. Feeding a hand-marked ballot into a machine gives us a digital representation while creating the best kind of paper trail. OTOH using a computer to record a vote then make a printout is doing it backwards because the latter invites all sorts of additional fraudulent activity that require a minimum of people and physical effort to execute.
Everyone who objects to an inappropriate use of Technology (a holy word that can be used to candy-coat or lionize virtually any profit scheme or power grab) by bigwigs gets marked as a Luddite these days.
Luddite is often used in the same contexts as conspiracy theorist to deride people who express suspicion about the dealings of the inner circles or finance and power, particularly when the military-industrial complex is involved (by contrast, people who accuse most climate scientists of coordinating a massive fraud are usually referred to as "skeptics").
This at the same time that government and the private sector team up for a massive project that expands incarceration to encompass 1% of the adult population, involving seemingly endless counts of "conspiracy". And there are ever more ways to generate suspicion against little people thanks to Technology, operated by Those-Who-Insist-The-Cameras-Point-Away-From-Them-Or-Else-Get-Confiscated. These people and their toadies are never called Luddites or conspiracy theorists -- it just wouldn't be proper.
No, the mechanics of voting in a democracy cannot be re-made as a service provided by for-profit corporations.
Talk about naive. What do you think corporate PACs and lobbyists are for? They have come to treat politicians as investments that offer a very high ROI.
ATM manufacturers created the computerized voting market. Check out blackboxvoting.org from their early days (Bush-II era) or read their book.
Secret voting is not even remotely like banking or paying taxes because the recipient of the information isn't allowed to know who generated which piece of data.
Paper or similar analog medium is the only correct way to do secret ballot voting. The result is subject to far more robust forensic analysis (should a crime be committed), recounts are straightforward and no one needs a PhD to fully audit the logic behind the process.
Malware and backdoors are the equivalent of "bias, misrepresentation, or threats" to computers.
Computers are trusted only insofar as we can tell who asked them to do exactly what because they operate on a multitude of layers of indirection -- Anyone who thinks that what they see on screen is proof of what is recorded inside is beyond naive. As soon a secret anonymous ballot enters the picture, you've got a fundamental incompatibility with the digital world much as maximalist copyright policies are. Casting votes is not like bank transactions, for instance, where opportunity to get receipts abound and the systems in question are in constant use.
Even with open source voting software you still can't properly audit the systems because there's no way to properly inspect the operation of VLSI chips and its ludicrous to expect election commissions to do it even at the software level. If there is even one bit or gate of logic that cannot be examined then its BBV -- black box voting.
It doesn't stop at the ability to tinker for me... If the thing has a mic, a camera, etc. and wireless networking then it has to also have a removable battery.
People are idiots for trusting something for which they can't simply 'yank the plug'. Its another indicator that a device is consumer-hostile.
Richard Stallman just keeps being right about these things. The source must be open. The hardware must be open. All governments and individuals must be able to inspect the platform because there is no way to actually "Trust" proprietary solutions.
Right now, Cisco routers run Unix at the core and distribution levels. Linux is mostly being used on the access layer (edge) of the network. It is time to add more enterprise features and hardware support to make Linux suitable at all levels. Open chip designs can be developed in each country. That is the only way to make sure that each country does not subvert the networks of the others.
This!!!
...network abstraction layers to their GUIs, specifically to enable people to mirror and share their desktops efficiently.
The mundane, non-vertically integrated *nix world still doesn't have this ability after all these years. X11 can't mirror/share, its also laggy over broadband connections, VNC is primitive and slow, etc. The NoMachine people have claimed they can support screen sharing in NX, but I haven't seen a working example yet (and those features are in the proprietary version anyway); otherwise they did a good job of making X11 usably network transparent for use cases not contained within a single LAN (i.e. most situations).
Personally, I'm tired of seeing all the hand-waving about X11's network transparency. It doesn't help in the vast majority of instances where people want to share an app or screen during a teleconference. X11 is not advanced in this respect -- just sadly out of touch. It mainly addresses the rather outdated use case where you have a handful of engineer types who open a CLI and type an ssh command, possibly fiddle with the display variable, then type in the desired app as a command so they can run one expensive, customized app on a server in a specially cooled room 3 floors down.
Very good site!