Well, to be totally honest I've had to repair/replace my last THREE laptops (Dell, Asus, and HP) due to failure of the AC jack and thus failure to charge. I can't pinpoint exactly what I do to beat them up so much, but it happens to be every time (a little Googling suggests this is a common failure point).
I'm thinking at least in my use case the MagSafe would be a big boon. Replacing the cable, even at Apple prices, has to be cheaper than internal repair on the laptop (which I've been quoted for the above failed models, over $150 every time, for a repair on a laptop that is usually worth 300-400 by the time it breaks).
So while I agree Apple could have done it better (my iPhone cable is frayed as hell and barely hanging on), the magnetic connector seems like a big plus in their column, to me.
I'm in the market for a new high performance laptop, and I've been looking a lot at the 2011 Macbook Pros. I've never owned an Apple laptop before so I'm far from a fanboy. I actually tried to tried to price out an HP Envy thanks to your post. It wasn't so much that it wasn't cheaper, its that I couldn't actually get most of the features that Apple is offering -- they just weren't options.
The HP site didn't offer the following things: -Magnetic power connector -- My current HP Pavillion is dying due to AC jack solder issues. Never again. -16:10 screen (I need vertical resolution) -Matte Screen (so I can sit in my backyard and work) -SSD only option. (they had some sort of hybrid drive as the only addition option for +$580.00!!)
To their credit, HP offered the following better than Apple, in my opinion: -6 different CPU options so I could fine grain that decision -Upgrade from 4GB to 8GB of RAM was a reasonable +$60.00, not the rapacious Apple +$200 -User replaceable batteries. (I'm very wary of the certain $100+ charge when the Macbook Pro battery inevitably dies.)
The pricing for these not very comparable machines came to ~$2200 for the HP vs ~$2700 for the Apple, so the HP was definitely cheaper. I just have to decide if a 16:10 matte screen and a non-stupidly designed power jack are worth $500 to me.
I ran it, I didn't own it. So no, I didn't feel very guilty about making $10 an hour busting my ass all day.
That was pretty much the highest margin item we had. The coffee was actually really expensive, and had to be tossed constantly for freshness. I'd wager we lost money on it. The frilly latte type espresso drinks were only sold at double or triple their true cost.
None of this overcame the cost of rent, electricity, plumbers, repairmen, and near minimum wage staff.
I've never understood why everyone gets so offended at SMS rates. Why don't you complain about the markup on bottled water, too. What something is worth is whatever people will pay. You cannot begrudge a company a profit. It's why they exist.
When I ran a cafe, we purchased bottled water for $0.28 and sold it for $1.50. So roughly a markup of 5x-6x more than we paid for it.
Let me know when the carriers start charging 5x-6x what an SMS costs them, and I'll happily stop posting about SMS rates.
Well space is only as large as it has expanded. But as it keeps expanding, it keeps growing, meaning we'll never be able to travel to its ends. (Unless its rate of expansion slows or halts at some point) There are nothing where there are nothing. Then again, there are no walls, for if you could travel beyond space, you'd just expand space by travelling "out" of space.
It's plenty secure if you're not worried about your wife or the occasional handyman stealing your passwords. Russian hackers are not going to break into my house and look under the keyboard.
I'm going to postulate that in a world where age reversal science is well implemented, male birth control probably won't be that tough a scientific hurdle to overcome.
There are keyboard and mouse that can be plugged into a Xbox 360? Please tell me this is true -- I don't care about graphics, but I need my K+M controls for shooter games.
At first this really angered me, then I thought about it, and I've never upgraded the hard disk on any of the 3 (all PC) laptops I've owned (going back to 1999). I've purchased replacement batteries for each of them, and also been limited by battery life on all of them. I can't say Apple is making a bad decision here, at least for my use case.
Gee, I wonder what they've set the odds on someone betting they'd get an F and then going and getting an F.
If it were me I'd make it 1:1.
On second thought... if you really thought this was clever I'll set the payout odds at 1:10. (That's right 1:10 not 10:1 -- so if you are dumb enough to place that bet I'll keep 90% of your cash if you win, and all of it if you manage to lose.)
With 1:10 odds, a bet of $100 would yield a $110 payout.
What I'm meaning is that in a constantly repeated series of non-rigged probability-based games being played, on what grounds could you say 'this is being cheated' given that the payout ratio must by definition vary all over the place?
I'm not sure. Hopefully the casino would take a few straight weeks of 110% and then put some additional security on the game, to start observing whether the general public is on a heater, or if its the same 10 guys who seem to win consistently. Then try and reverse engineer their scheme. If you can't, or maybe they are just freakishly lucky and don't even have a scheme, then you just ban them for being "too good", under threat of trespass.
Well then that's directly at odds with the GP's post - that 'rogue' wins can be detected because they fall outside the target payout ratio limits
Yeah, I don't work in the industry so I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the GP was just getting at that rogue wins could be "detected" in so much as they would be highly improbable due to math, but not impossible.
"The Powerball drawing on March 30, 2005 game produced an unprecedented 110 second-prize winners, all of whom picked the five white balls correctly but missed the red Powerball. The total payout to 5+0 winners was $19.4 million; 89 plays won $100,000 each, with the other 21 plays winning $500,000 each due to the PowerPlay option.
Powerball officials initially suspected a reporting error or fraud. However, it turned out that all 110 winners had received their numbers from fortune cookies made by Wonton Food Inc., a fortune cookie factory in Long Island City, Queens, New York. The factory had printed the five regular numbers (22, 28, 32, 33, and 39) on thousands of fortunes. The sixth number in the fortune, 40, did not match the Powerball number, 42. None of the employees of Wonton Food played those numbers (at the time, the closest jurisdiction with Powerball was Connecticut.) Since the matches had been the result of a coincidence rather than foul play, the payouts were made "
Surely, it was smart of the lottery to investigate this... 110 winners for that prize is way outside of what the math dictates 'should' happen. In this case they weren't fraudulent, but this is a reasonable threshold to suspect it.
The same would be the case if you beat trillion-to-one (worse?) odds and jackpotted a slot machine 10 times in a row. Completely possible on any legal slot machine in the USA, but I'd be worried about the casino calling BS on it, just due to the miniscule odds that it could happen.
A machine that guarantees a certain percentage of return within a certain time window (probably measured in games played) is not random. If it's not random there's a pattern to how it dispenses winnings. If there's a pattern to it, it should be possible to notice which machines are about to increase their payoff to even the ratio, so it just might be possible to increase your rate of return.
You're misunderstanding how a "percent of return" works. There is no time window -- the machine has no memory of what the last spin was, each spin is an independent event. It can be determined mathematically via pay tables to make sure its pay approaches its setting, say, 90%, over time. There is no reason programatically why you couldn't hit 10 jackpots back to back, it's just that the odds would be astronomical.
Imagine a simplified machine that internally rolls a ten sided die. Everything is a loss except if the die rolls "9". Machine costs $1 to play. If you get a "9", you get $5. Surely you can see where this machine, over thousands of spins, would make money, and a very predictable amount, too. But no matter what the previous roll was, you'd still always have a 1 in 10 shot of winning $5.
That is how slot machines work, with a lot more numbers and a lot more bells and whistles.
You've never worked at my company, then. We have an (American) programmer who swears up and down that he has never heard of Richard Pryor. Not that he doesn't like his humor -- he literally hadn't heard of the man.
Consider the fuss if Comcast said tommorow that they would no longer serve data via HTTP to their userbase. Now consider the minor, tech site, nerdy fuss that would occur if they said the exact same about NNTP. That is the difference.
Of course you can't shut down a protocol, but while I don't want it, it baffles me as well that any major ISP is running a news server in 2010. It would be like an airline still offering smoking in the cabin.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, to be totally honest I've had to repair/replace my last THREE laptops (Dell, Asus, and HP) due to failure of the AC jack and thus failure to charge. I can't pinpoint exactly what I do to beat them up so much, but it happens to be every time (a little Googling suggests this is a common failure point).
I'm thinking at least in my use case the MagSafe would be a big boon. Replacing the cable, even at Apple prices, has to be cheaper than internal repair on the laptop (which I've been quoted for the above failed models, over $150 every time, for a repair on a laptop that is usually worth 300-400 by the time it breaks).
So while I agree Apple could have done it better (my iPhone cable is frayed as hell and barely hanging on), the magnetic connector seems like a big plus in their column, to me.
I'm in the market for a new high performance laptop, and I've been looking a lot at the 2011 Macbook Pros. I've never owned an Apple laptop before so I'm far from a fanboy. I actually tried to tried to price out an HP Envy thanks to your post. It wasn't so much that it wasn't cheaper, its that I couldn't actually get most of the features that Apple is offering -- they just weren't options.
The HP site didn't offer the following things:
-Magnetic power connector -- My current HP Pavillion is dying due to AC jack solder issues. Never again.
-16:10 screen (I need vertical resolution)
-Matte Screen (so I can sit in my backyard and work)
-SSD only option. (they had some sort of hybrid drive as the only addition option for +$580.00!!)
To their credit, HP offered the following better than Apple, in my opinion:
-6 different CPU options so I could fine grain that decision
-Upgrade from 4GB to 8GB of RAM was a reasonable +$60.00, not the rapacious Apple +$200
-User replaceable batteries. (I'm very wary of the certain $100+ charge when the Macbook Pro battery inevitably dies.)
The pricing for these not very comparable machines came to ~$2200 for the HP vs ~$2700 for the Apple, so the HP was definitely cheaper. I just have to decide if a 16:10 matte screen and a non-stupidly designed power jack are worth $500 to me.
I ran it, I didn't own it. So no, I didn't feel very guilty about making $10 an hour busting my ass all day.
That was pretty much the highest margin item we had. The coffee was actually really expensive, and had to be tossed constantly for freshness. I'd wager we lost money on it. The frilly latte type espresso drinks were only sold at double or triple their true cost.
None of this overcame the cost of rent, electricity, plumbers, repairmen, and near minimum wage staff.
I've never understood why everyone gets so offended at SMS rates. Why don't you complain about the markup on bottled water, too. What something is worth is whatever people will pay. You cannot begrudge a company a profit. It's why they exist.
When I ran a cafe, we purchased bottled water for $0.28 and sold it for $1.50. So roughly a markup of 5x-6x more than we paid for it.
Let me know when the carriers start charging 5x-6x what an SMS costs them, and I'll happily stop posting about SMS rates.
Well space is only as large as it has expanded. But as it keeps expanding, it keeps growing, meaning we'll never be able to travel to its ends. (Unless its rate of expansion slows or halts at some point) There are nothing where there are nothing. Then again, there are no walls, for if you could travel beyond space, you'd just expand space by travelling "out" of space.
So the Universe is like Minecraft, then?
That's why you store it on your PHYSICAL desktop.
It's plenty secure if you're not worried about your wife or the occasional handyman stealing your passwords. Russian hackers are not going to break into my house and look under the keyboard.
I ran the cafe inside a Borders. We had a decent markup, but nowhere near $3 a cup. If you really want to do them a favor, buy a bottle of water.
[Soviet Russia joke goes here.]
I sedate myself with Xanax to go on the plane, I would love if I didn't have to refill my Rx every time I fly.
I'm going to postulate that in a world where age reversal science is well implemented, male birth control probably won't be that tough a scientific hurdle to overcome.
There are keyboard and mouse that can be plugged into a Xbox 360? Please tell me this is true -- I don't care about graphics, but I need my K+M controls for shooter games.
How does Keepass work if I'm on my phone browser or a public terminal?
At first this really angered me, then I thought about it, and I've never upgraded the hard disk on any of the 3 (all PC) laptops I've owned (going back to 1999). I've purchased replacement batteries for each of them, and also been limited by battery life on all of them. I can't say Apple is making a bad decision here, at least for my use case.
Well, you get your space beer at the space bar, so...
Gee, I wonder what they've set the odds on someone betting they'd get an F and then going and getting an F.
If it were me I'd make it 1:1.
On second thought... if you really thought this was clever I'll set the payout odds at 1:10. (That's right 1:10 not 10:1 -- so if you are dumb enough to place that bet I'll keep 90% of your cash if you win, and all of it if you manage to lose.)
With 1:10 odds, a bet of $100 would yield a $110 payout.
Can I ask where you got it? My 2001 Prius battery just shit the bed at 135,000 miles, and I was told it would be $3,000 for replacement.
He *clearly* meant that it was a beauty to Apple and Apple shareholders, not some objective universal beauty.
What I'm meaning is that in a constantly repeated series of non-rigged probability-based games being played, on what grounds could you say 'this is being cheated' given that the payout ratio must by definition vary all over the place?
I'm not sure. Hopefully the casino would take a few straight weeks of 110% and then put some additional security on the game, to start observing whether the general public is on a heater, or if its the same 10 guys who seem to win consistently. Then try and reverse engineer their scheme. If you can't, or maybe they are just freakishly lucky and don't even have a scheme, then you just ban them for being "too good", under threat of trespass.
Well then that's directly at odds with the GP's post - that 'rogue' wins can be detected because they fall outside the target payout ratio limits
Yeah, I don't work in the industry so I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the GP was just getting at that rogue wins could be "detected" in so much as they would be highly improbable due to math, but not impossible.
Consider this situation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerball#Fortune_cookie_payout
"The Powerball drawing on March 30, 2005 game produced an unprecedented 110 second-prize winners, all of whom picked the five white balls correctly but missed the red Powerball. The total payout to 5+0 winners was $19.4 million; 89 plays won $100,000 each, with the other 21 plays winning $500,000 each due to the PowerPlay option.
Powerball officials initially suspected a reporting error or fraud. However, it turned out that all 110 winners had received their numbers from fortune cookies made by Wonton Food Inc., a fortune cookie factory in Long Island City, Queens, New York. The factory had printed the five regular numbers (22, 28, 32, 33, and 39) on thousands of fortunes. The sixth number in the fortune, 40, did not match the Powerball number, 42. None of the employees of Wonton Food played those numbers (at the time, the closest jurisdiction with Powerball was Connecticut.) Since the matches had been the result of a coincidence rather than foul play, the payouts were made
"
Surely, it was smart of the lottery to investigate this... 110 winners for that prize is way outside of what the math dictates 'should' happen. In this case they weren't fraudulent, but this is a reasonable threshold to suspect it.
The same would be the case if you beat trillion-to-one (worse?) odds and jackpotted a slot machine 10 times in a row. Completely possible on any legal slot machine in the USA, but I'd be worried about the casino calling BS on it, just due to the miniscule odds that it could happen.
A machine that guarantees a certain percentage of return within a certain time window (probably measured in games played) is not random. If it's not random there's a pattern to how it dispenses winnings. If there's a pattern to it, it should be possible to notice which machines are about to increase their payoff to even the ratio, so it just might be possible to increase your rate of return.
You're misunderstanding how a "percent of return" works. There is no time window -- the machine has no memory of what the last spin was, each spin is an independent event. It can be determined mathematically via pay tables to make sure its pay approaches its setting, say, 90%, over time. There is no reason programatically why you couldn't hit 10 jackpots back to back, it's just that the odds would be astronomical.
Imagine a simplified machine that internally rolls a ten sided die. Everything is a loss except if the die rolls "9". Machine costs $1 to play. If you get a "9", you get $5. Surely you can see where this machine, over thousands of spins, would make money, and a very predictable amount, too. But no matter what the previous roll was, you'd still always have a 1 in 10 shot of winning $5.
That is how slot machines work, with a lot more numbers and a lot more bells and whistles.
You've never worked at my company, then. We have an (American) programmer who swears up and down that he has never heard of Richard Pryor. Not that he doesn't like his humor -- he literally hadn't heard of the man.
Seinfeld is funny if you understand social convention. Not surprisingly I find that it wasn't a big hit in the software community.
Consider the fuss if Comcast said tommorow that they would no longer serve data via HTTP to their userbase. Now consider the minor, tech site, nerdy fuss that would occur if they said the exact same about NNTP. That is the difference.
Of course you can't shut down a protocol, but while I don't want it, it baffles me as well that any major ISP is running a news server in 2010. It would be like an airline still offering smoking in the cabin.
How does this cover the mountain casinos in Colorado? They are not Indian controlled or on riverboats.