It is true that AMD does not yet have a proper response to the 1070 and 1080. It is equally true that NVidia does not yet have a proper response to the 480, though the 1060 is expected to launch soon. AMD made the unusual choice of launching its new generation of technology with a mid-range card rather than a flagship. But they are known to have higher end cards in the works.
Yes, same price class. But that's only because of the recent price reduction of the 970 to clear them out before the 1060 (which will probably offer comparable performance) is released. And that $259 card doesn't have 8GB of RAM; it's more directly comparable to the $199 version of AMD's card.
So, I agree with the posters who say that it is great news, and it is certainly relevant to the Slashdot audience. Is it the right card for you, or would you do better to buy a 1070 (if you can get one), wait for the 1060, or buy one of the previous generation NVidia cards at a discount? I can't answer that, but perhaps the data in the reviews can help people choose. What is clear is that this new card has pretty much obsoleted any previous AMD video card that sells for $200 or more; there is no longer any reason to buy any of those. High-end AMD fans will have to decide whether to buy a Crossfire pair of 480s or wait for the higher end models.
The stapled green cards will increase the supply of STEM employees and lower wages. But those employees will have a full right to stay in the US that is not contingent on employment and therefore be able to negotiate wages and benefits from a normal position. In contrast, H1B holders are at the mercy of their employers and have no leverage; they can't leave their job or take a new one because they will lose their right to stay in the US. So it's a net improvement.
Because we already made that decision years ago. Modern cars are designed to crumple on impact, which means more damage to the car but less damage to the occupants.
I regularly use my Fire tablet to read e-books. I find my phone screen too small for the purpose; the 7" tablet is just right for reading on the go. I only occasionally use it for other apps because it's slow, mostly because of having only 1GB RAM. I expect I will buy another or its current equivalent if it dies - that one use is important enough to me to justify the $50, or less if you catch it on sale as I did.
I think Captain Splendid was thinking of the REAL Wendy - Melinda Lou "Wendy" Morse née Thomas, fourth child of Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's and the person the company was named for. She has been a spokesperson for Wendy's in ads since 2010. She also owns multiple Wendy's restaurants.
Lots of people use Chromebooks as writing tools. They work well for that, even offline. (Google Docs won't do everything that a good standalone word processor will, but it does everything you need if you are a writer as opposed to a publisher.) They're OK as spreadsheet tools, though a bit lacking for the serious spreadsheet guru because the spreadsheet in Google Docs isn't as powerful as Microsoft Excel or even LibreOffice Calc. And they're fine for most of the cloud development platforms that are increasingly important. And of course they're perfect for anything you can do in a web browser.
You can also run a standard Linux distro on a Chromebook, either via Crouton or as a dual-boot option, and do the full range of things that you can do with any Linux laptop. There are some drawbacks that others have already mentioned, but mostly it works well.
A number of Chromebooks already come with 4GB. On a Pro model I'd want 8GB. Also 100GB or more flash, and an SD card socket where the card goes all the way in so it can be left in semi-permanently. The card slots where the card only inserts halfway are fine for data exchange, but not for expanding the normal storage capacity of the system because you have to take them out every time you bag the system for carrying.
Other things I'd want: multiple USB ports (including legacy USB 3.0 as well as USB-C; two of each is probably enough) and a full size HDMI output. Pros will want to do presentations, and life is easier if you don't have to deal with dongles. It should have 802.11AC wireless and Bluetooth 4.0. An LTE version should be available. Wired Ethernet would be nice to have but the size and weight target might make it impossible. The display should be 1080p or better. The battery life for routine use must be 10 hours minimum.
Wired Ethernet, alas, isn't ever going to be a thing on ultrathin laptops. The connector is too thick. I suppose it could be done with one of those pop-out connectors like some computers used to have for modems, but they were rather fragile.
I think that business laptops that aren't designed to be ultraportable will continue to come with wired Ethernet. It still works better than wireless in an office full of people and probably always will. Whether Lenovo will continue to offer the Trackpoint in those systems remains to be seen.
I'm typing this on an old Lenovo ThinkPad X200, which has a wired Ethernet connector, a Trackpoint, and an excellent keyboard. No touchpad - most of their systems of this vintage had both a touchpad and a Trackpoint, but this is a smaller system that didn't have room for both so they dispensed with the touchpad. I don't miss it.)
Fair arbitration might be good for both parties. But these contracts that require arbitration always give the power to select the arbiter to the big company, not the individual who is seeking redress. That's a recipe for injustice, and the record shows it; nearly all the cases that go to arbitration are ruled in favor of the corporation that is paying the bills for it.
The problem with this theory is that most cancer cases happen after reproductive age. They may have some negative effect on the survival of offspring by denying them the support of parents and grandparents, but the offspring have already been born. It would explain leukemia (which is not uncommon in childhood), but does less to explain breast cancer (which mostly strikes at age 40 and above, past the prime reproductive years) or prostate cancer (mostly an old age disease).
You can use it in crowded and noisy places. Try that with video.
Text is accessible. It can be translated to Braille or speech for the blind. It can be made larger for the vision impaired. It reaches the deaf, who find audio and video content challenging to use at best.
Text is flexible. It requires very few device capabilities. It can travel over low bandwidth links.
Text is fast. It can be skimmed as needed.
Text is unambiguous. Things are spelled out. Things like addresses, where precision matters, are conveyed efficiently.
With the notable exceptions of the Surface Pro (which is better viewed as a hybrid device; they're mostly bought to use with a keyboard, not as a pure tablet) and the iPad line, tablets sell for less than high end phones do. Most of them don't have cellular radios as a cost factor (except for the models with LTE connectivity), but they have big screens and big batteries that cost more than the smaller ones in phones do. Tablets with the specs of a high end phone are scarce because few people want to pay $800 for them.
But yeah, at least offer us 2GB or more RAM on Android tablets. 1GB is painful given the size of present day apps. Installing Facebook and Messenger on a 1GB Android device will bring the poor thing to its figurative knees. Tablets without LTE tend to have fewer apps installed than phones do, so they don't need as much internal memory IF they also have a memory card slot. (Apps mostly have to be in internal memory, but media can happily live on a card.) Tablets are not only more likely to have a slot than phones are, it's also likely to be much easier to get to; some phones require removal of the battery to get to the memory card.
Some recent Apple devices are much more difficult to repair than your 2013 Air. The current Retina MacBook (the ultralight one) is the most egregious example; iFixit gives it a repairability score of 1 (most difficult). For comparison, the 2013 MacBook Air gets a 4. The 12.9" iPad Pro gets a 3, iPhones are easier; the iPhone 5 line got a 6 and the iPhone 6 line gets 7.
A large percentage of new TV sales are 4K (in the 50" and up sizes) because the cost penalty is small so you might as well get it. The percentage of the installed base is still small. And remember that Sony also sells 4K TVs; they may be hoping that the updated console also drives some TV upgrades.
True, Netflix 4K costs more. But it's only $2/month more after the recent price increase for the HD subscription. It also gets you four simultaneous streams instead of two, so some families may already have the 4K subscription just for that. 4K on Amazon Prime doesn't cost anything extra. There isn't a huge amount to watch in 4K yet, but Netflix is now making all their shows in 4K and Amazon is doing the same for non-children's shows. Current theatrical films are mostly shot and rendered in 4K, so 4K streaming of those will probably be available when they start showing up on streaming services.
I have seen people complain about apps that are actually asking for appropriate permissions, such as a web browser that asks for camera, microphone, and location access.
You ask, why does your web browser need those things? Its core functionality does not use them, and a browser will not (or at least should not, and the major browsers don't) turn on your camera or microphone without asking. But... browsers allow web sites to ask for permission to use them, and many users want the ability to grant those permissions to some web sites. The security model of mobile OSes is such that for a browser to be able to offer those capabilities to a web page, it must itself have the permissions; there is no mechanism for asking the OS for permissions on the spot.
There is a problem with this model. Most of are willing to trust that Chrome, Firefox, and Safari will use permissions appropriately. But can we say the same of some other web browser that might interest us?
Android Marshmallow's new ability to selectively deny permissions to an app is a step forward. (iOS has had similar capabilities for a while.) If you want to try out some new browser without fearing that it will use your camera and microphone to spy on you, you can deny those permissions to it. You won't be able to do video chat from that browser but you can still use it for other purposes. In previous Android versions you would not have been able to install that browser, because it would refuse to install unless you granted all the permissions it asked for. But it's still imperfect, because the app may not fail gracefully when it attempts to use something that it doesn't have permission to use.
Or watch the version that you paid for fail to work because it's incompatible with the OS update that you got since you bought it.
From a developer's point of view, one of the appealing things about the app store model is that you only have to support ONE version. If anybody reports a bug in an older version, you can just tell them to upgrade since it's free. Though that's a bit of a mess over in Android land, because your new version may not be compatible with the older and non-upgradeable OS on their phone. On the other hand, over there you CAN back up your phone, or the old version can be made available for sideloading (unless you happen to be one of the unfortunates who bought one of the Android phones from AT&T that disables sideloading).
Most of the dedicated bicycle facilities in the US are poorly designed and poorly maintained. That is why the cycling advocates reject them. Among the common problems:
Lack of seasonal maintenance. Want to ride in the winter? Sorry, the snow and ice don't get cleared. Want to ride in the fall? Sorry, the leaves don't get removed. Want to ride in the spring? Sorry, it will be months before the frost heaves get repaired.
Poor or non-existent lighting. Want to ride at night? Sorry, not possible unless you're happy with the idea of riding in the dark.
Car-centric traffic controls. Typically a rider in the dedicated lane in a city has to stop at EVERY intersection. The bike path may have stop signs at each one, and even if it doesn't the cars can't see you approach the intersection and so you can't proceed safely without stopping. That makes cycling MUCH slower and much more of an effort than it should be - you waste lots of kinetic energy on all those stops. I will believe that some city or town takes cycling seriously the first time I see such an intersection... and the CARS get the stop signs.
Build a bike path that actually provides a quality experience for everyday cyclists year round and they will use it. Build a bike path that is substandard in one of the ways I cited (or possibly others) and cyclists will complain that you spent money on something that is useless to them rather than on something that would help. Most of the bike paths in the US are things that might be fun for recreational riders, but are useless or worse to people who actually use a bicycle as a form of transportation. A narrow bike path that has a mix of low speed recreational riders (and especially children because they tend not to stay in a predictable path) and faster transportation cyclists is far more dangerous for the transportation cyclist than a street is.
I'm in partial agreement about the high speed highway. But if you want to build a separate path there, be prepared to give it equal treatment. It must be plowed and cleaned, and the surface has to be maintained at the same level of quality as the car road. The ones that get built in the US, with rare exceptions, just don't meet that standard.
Car drivers are angry, insufferable assholes who think they are better than everyone else and own the road. Doesn't matter if they are in a Mercedes, a Chevy, or a Smart.
Only one maker of high end Android smartphones is making a substantial profit: Samsung. The rest are scraping by or losing money. Low cost smartphones are increasingly turning it into a commodity business where the profit margins will be thin and nobody outside a low-cost production environment like China will be able to make any money. Companies like Xiaomi and Huawei may be able to show a profit, but HTC and LG are in trouble.
Some years earlier Nokia was in the same bind with dumbphones. Any hope of continuing to make them in Finland was dead. If they had stayed in the business they would have had to move production elsewhere, as Microsoft did with the business before selling it to Foxconn. Dumbphones had the additional problem that the market for them is shrinking.
Nokia did well to sell the phone business while it was still worth something. It's possible that they could have done better by making better decisions a few years earlier, but it's unclear. Making Android smartphones would probably have been more successful at the moment, but the long term forecast would still be dim because of the competition from China.
I've got an HP Compaq 6510b from 2008 (Core 2 Duo T7100, 1.8 GHz) that originally came with Windows XP. (Vista was the current version by then but presumably the original buyer wanted XP. The model stayed in production long enough for systems with Windows 7 to be available.) I installed the Windows 10 Insider Preview on it - clean install, not an upgrade. HP says nothing about Windows 10 compatibility, but everything works perfectly except the fingerprint reader. That doesn't work in any version of Windows after XP - Apple bought the maker so drivers for later versions of Windows were never developed.
Insane isn't even the fastest setting. That would be ludicrous. But your car may not have the ludicrous option, which includes all wheel drive and a larger battery.
Slashdot Mirror
It is true that AMD does not yet have a proper response to the 1070 and 1080. It is equally true that NVidia does not yet have a proper response to the 480, though the 1060 is expected to launch soon. AMD made the unusual choice of launching its new generation of technology with a mid-range card rather than a flagship. But they are known to have higher end cards in the works.
Yes, same price class. But that's only because of the recent price reduction of the 970 to clear them out before the 1060 (which will probably offer comparable performance) is released. And that $259 card doesn't have 8GB of RAM; it's more directly comparable to the $199 version of AMD's card.
So, I agree with the posters who say that it is great news, and it is certainly relevant to the Slashdot audience. Is it the right card for you, or would you do better to buy a 1070 (if you can get one), wait for the 1060, or buy one of the previous generation NVidia cards at a discount? I can't answer that, but perhaps the data in the reviews can help people choose. What is clear is that this new card has pretty much obsoleted any previous AMD video card that sells for $200 or more; there is no longer any reason to buy any of those. High-end AMD fans will have to decide whether to buy a Crossfire pair of 480s or wait for the higher end models.
The stapled green cards will increase the supply of STEM employees and lower wages. But those employees will have a full right to stay in the US that is not contingent on employment and therefore be able to negotiate wages and benefits from a normal position. In contrast, H1B holders are at the mercy of their employers and have no leverage; they can't leave their job or take a new one because they will lose their right to stay in the US. So it's a net improvement.
Because we already made that decision years ago. Modern cars are designed to crumple on impact, which means more damage to the car but less damage to the occupants.
I regularly use my Fire tablet to read e-books. I find my phone screen too small for the purpose; the 7" tablet is just right for reading on the go. I only occasionally use it for other apps because it's slow, mostly because of having only 1GB RAM. I expect I will buy another or its current equivalent if it dies - that one use is important enough to me to justify the $50, or less if you catch it on sale as I did.
I think Captain Splendid was thinking of the REAL Wendy - Melinda Lou "Wendy" Morse née Thomas, fourth child of Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's and the person the company was named for. She has been a spokesperson for Wendy's in ads since 2010. She also owns multiple Wendy's restaurants.
Lots of people use Chromebooks as writing tools. They work well for that, even offline. (Google Docs won't do everything that a good standalone word processor will, but it does everything you need if you are a writer as opposed to a publisher.) They're OK as spreadsheet tools, though a bit lacking for the serious spreadsheet guru because the spreadsheet in Google Docs isn't as powerful as Microsoft Excel or even LibreOffice Calc. And they're fine for most of the cloud development platforms that are increasingly important. And of course they're perfect for anything you can do in a web browser.
You can also run a standard Linux distro on a Chromebook, either via Crouton or as a dual-boot option, and do the full range of things that you can do with any Linux laptop. There are some drawbacks that others have already mentioned, but mostly it works well.
A number of Chromebooks already come with 4GB. On a Pro model I'd want 8GB. Also 100GB or more flash, and an SD card socket where the card goes all the way in so it can be left in semi-permanently. The card slots where the card only inserts halfway are fine for data exchange, but not for expanding the normal storage capacity of the system because you have to take them out every time you bag the system for carrying.
Other things I'd want: multiple USB ports (including legacy USB 3.0 as well as USB-C; two of each is probably enough) and a full size HDMI output. Pros will want to do presentations, and life is easier if you don't have to deal with dongles. It should have 802.11AC wireless and Bluetooth 4.0. An LTE version should be available. Wired Ethernet would be nice to have but the size and weight target might make it impossible. The display should be 1080p or better. The battery life for routine use must be 10 hours minimum.
Wired Ethernet, alas, isn't ever going to be a thing on ultrathin laptops. The connector is too thick. I suppose it could be done with one of those pop-out connectors like some computers used to have for modems, but they were rather fragile.
I think that business laptops that aren't designed to be ultraportable will continue to come with wired Ethernet. It still works better than wireless in an office full of people and probably always will. Whether Lenovo will continue to offer the Trackpoint in those systems remains to be seen.
I'm typing this on an old Lenovo ThinkPad X200, which has a wired Ethernet connector, a Trackpoint, and an excellent keyboard. No touchpad - most of their systems of this vintage had both a touchpad and a Trackpoint, but this is a smaller system that didn't have room for both so they dispensed with the touchpad. I don't miss it.)
It's unlikely that we will ever see a smartphone that works properly while wet. Capacitive touchscreens and water are not a good mix.
Fair arbitration might be good for both parties. But these contracts that require arbitration always give the power to select the arbiter to the big company, not the individual who is seeking redress. That's a recipe for injustice, and the record shows it; nearly all the cases that go to arbitration are ruled in favor of the corporation that is paying the bills for it.
The problem with this theory is that most cancer cases happen after reproductive age. They may have some negative effect on the survival of offspring by denying them the support of parents and grandparents, but the offspring have already been born. It would explain leukemia (which is not uncommon in childhood), but does less to explain breast cancer (which mostly strikes at age 40 and above, past the prime reproductive years) or prostate cancer (mostly an old age disease).
You can use it in crowded and noisy places. Try that with video.
Text is accessible. It can be translated to Braille or speech for the blind. It can be made larger for the vision impaired. It reaches the deaf, who find audio and video content challenging to use at best.
Text is flexible. It requires very few device capabilities. It can travel over low bandwidth links.
Text is fast. It can be skimmed as needed.
Text is unambiguous. Things are spelled out. Things like addresses, where precision matters, are conveyed efficiently.
If that happens it will be time to find another social media platform. I like to read. I don't like video for conversational purposes.
With the notable exceptions of the Surface Pro (which is better viewed as a hybrid device; they're mostly bought to use with a keyboard, not as a pure tablet) and the iPad line, tablets sell for less than high end phones do. Most of them don't have cellular radios as a cost factor (except for the models with LTE connectivity), but they have big screens and big batteries that cost more than the smaller ones in phones do. Tablets with the specs of a high end phone are scarce because few people want to pay $800 for them.
But yeah, at least offer us 2GB or more RAM on Android tablets. 1GB is painful given the size of present day apps. Installing Facebook and Messenger on a 1GB Android device will bring the poor thing to its figurative knees. Tablets without LTE tend to have fewer apps installed than phones do, so they don't need as much internal memory IF they also have a memory card slot. (Apps mostly have to be in internal memory, but media can happily live on a card.) Tablets are not only more likely to have a slot than phones are, it's also likely to be much easier to get to; some phones require removal of the battery to get to the memory card.
Some recent Apple devices are much more difficult to repair than your 2013 Air. The current Retina MacBook (the ultralight one) is the most egregious example; iFixit gives it a repairability score of 1 (most difficult). For comparison, the 2013 MacBook Air gets a 4. The 12.9" iPad Pro gets a 3, iPhones are easier; the iPhone 5 line got a 6 and the iPhone 6 line gets 7.
A large percentage of new TV sales are 4K (in the 50" and up sizes) because the cost penalty is small so you might as well get it. The percentage of the installed base is still small. And remember that Sony also sells 4K TVs; they may be hoping that the updated console also drives some TV upgrades.
True, Netflix 4K costs more. But it's only $2/month more after the recent price increase for the HD subscription. It also gets you four simultaneous streams instead of two, so some families may already have the 4K subscription just for that. 4K on Amazon Prime doesn't cost anything extra. There isn't a huge amount to watch in 4K yet, but Netflix is now making all their shows in 4K and Amazon is doing the same for non-children's shows. Current theatrical films are mostly shot and rendered in 4K, so 4K streaming of those will probably be available when they start showing up on streaming services.
Where are those mod points when I need them? This comment deserves a "funny".
I have seen people complain about apps that are actually asking for appropriate permissions, such as a web browser that asks for camera, microphone, and location access.
You ask, why does your web browser need those things? Its core functionality does not use them, and a browser will not (or at least should not, and the major browsers don't) turn on your camera or microphone without asking. But... browsers allow web sites to ask for permission to use them, and many users want the ability to grant those permissions to some web sites. The security model of mobile OSes is such that for a browser to be able to offer those capabilities to a web page, it must itself have the permissions; there is no mechanism for asking the OS for permissions on the spot.
There is a problem with this model. Most of are willing to trust that Chrome, Firefox, and Safari will use permissions appropriately. But can we say the same of some other web browser that might interest us?
Android Marshmallow's new ability to selectively deny permissions to an app is a step forward. (iOS has had similar capabilities for a while.) If you want to try out some new browser without fearing that it will use your camera and microphone to spy on you, you can deny those permissions to it. You won't be able to do video chat from that browser but you can still use it for other purposes. In previous Android versions you would not have been able to install that browser, because it would refuse to install unless you granted all the permissions it asked for. But it's still imperfect, because the app may not fail gracefully when it attempts to use something that it doesn't have permission to use.
Or watch the version that you paid for fail to work because it's incompatible with the OS update that you got since you bought it.
From a developer's point of view, one of the appealing things about the app store model is that you only have to support ONE version. If anybody reports a bug in an older version, you can just tell them to upgrade since it's free. Though that's a bit of a mess over in Android land, because your new version may not be compatible with the older and non-upgradeable OS on their phone. On the other hand, over there you CAN back up your phone, or the old version can be made available for sideloading (unless you happen to be one of the unfortunates who bought one of the Android phones from AT&T that disables sideloading).
Most of the dedicated bicycle facilities in the US are poorly designed and poorly maintained. That is why the cycling advocates reject them. Among the common problems:
Lack of seasonal maintenance. Want to ride in the winter? Sorry, the snow and ice don't get cleared. Want to ride in the fall? Sorry, the leaves don't get removed. Want to ride in the spring? Sorry, it will be months before the frost heaves get repaired.
Poor or non-existent lighting. Want to ride at night? Sorry, not possible unless you're happy with the idea of riding in the dark.
Car-centric traffic controls. Typically a rider in the dedicated lane in a city has to stop at EVERY intersection. The bike path may have stop signs at each one, and even if it doesn't the cars can't see you approach the intersection and so you can't proceed safely without stopping. That makes cycling MUCH slower and much more of an effort than it should be - you waste lots of kinetic energy on all those stops. I will believe that some city or town takes cycling seriously the first time I see such an intersection... and the CARS get the stop signs.
Build a bike path that actually provides a quality experience for everyday cyclists year round and they will use it. Build a bike path that is substandard in one of the ways I cited (or possibly others) and cyclists will complain that you spent money on something that is useless to them rather than on something that would help. Most of the bike paths in the US are things that might be fun for recreational riders, but are useless or worse to people who actually use a bicycle as a form of transportation. A narrow bike path that has a mix of low speed recreational riders (and especially children because they tend not to stay in a predictable path) and faster transportation cyclists is far more dangerous for the transportation cyclist than a street is.
I'm in partial agreement about the high speed highway. But if you want to build a separate path there, be prepared to give it equal treatment. It must be plowed and cleaned, and the surface has to be maintained at the same level of quality as the car road. The ones that get built in the US, with rare exceptions, just don't meet that standard.
Car drivers are angry, insufferable assholes who think they are better than everyone else and own the road. Doesn't matter if they are in a Mercedes, a Chevy, or a Smart.
There, fixed that for you.
Only one maker of high end Android smartphones is making a substantial profit: Samsung. The rest are scraping by or losing money. Low cost smartphones are increasingly turning it into a commodity business where the profit margins will be thin and nobody outside a low-cost production environment like China will be able to make any money. Companies like Xiaomi and Huawei may be able to show a profit, but HTC and LG are in trouble.
Some years earlier Nokia was in the same bind with dumbphones. Any hope of continuing to make them in Finland was dead. If they had stayed in the business they would have had to move production elsewhere, as Microsoft did with the business before selling it to Foxconn. Dumbphones had the additional problem that the market for them is shrinking.
Nokia did well to sell the phone business while it was still worth something. It's possible that they could have done better by making better decisions a few years earlier, but it's unclear. Making Android smartphones would probably have been more successful at the moment, but the long term forecast would still be dim because of the competition from China.
I've got an HP Compaq 6510b from 2008 (Core 2 Duo T7100, 1.8 GHz) that originally came with Windows XP. (Vista was the current version by then but presumably the original buyer wanted XP. The model stayed in production long enough for systems with Windows 7 to be available.) I installed the Windows 10 Insider Preview on it - clean install, not an upgrade. HP says nothing about Windows 10 compatibility, but everything works perfectly except the fingerprint reader. That doesn't work in any version of Windows after XP - Apple bought the maker so drivers for later versions of Windows were never developed.
Insane isn't even the fastest setting. That would be ludicrous. But your car may not have the ludicrous option, which includes all wheel drive and a larger battery.