Of course there are other benefits to Apple. Some are very, very hard to compare objectively. That doesn't necessarily justify the extra expense.
Let's try another comparison, this time with full specs. I beefed up the specs on the Dell laptop to meet your concerns. To wit:
Apple: 2.53 GHz Core i5 4 GB RAM 500 GB HDD 15" 1440x900 display 8x DVD Writer NVIDIA GT 330M OS X Backlit Keyboard $2049
Dell: 1.73 GHz Core i7 8 GB RAM 640 GB HDD 15.6" 1080p display Blu-ray reader + DVD Writer NVIDIA GT 420M Windows Ultimate Backlit Keyboard 92 Wh battery 2 MP Webcam 1 year in-home service $1825
Now, I believe that should satisfy most everything you mentioned. This is by no means a low-end system, and exceeds the Macbook Pro in almost every possible way (at least, on paper). And STILL saves you over $200.
Does the Apple still have a few advantages? Of course. The dual video thing, the power adapter, and it's probably lighter (but that's hard to judge on customized systems).
Maybe a better measure of the "Apple Tax" is how much they charge for upgraded components:
Extra 4 GB RAM? Apple charges an extra $220 vs. Dell. 256 GB SSD? Apple charges an extra $100 vs. Dell. 3 year protection? Apple charges an extra $139 vs. Dell.
I did exactly what you said. I picked an Apple system and configured it and a Dell system to match as best I could.
Macbook Pro ($2049) vs Dell XPS 15 ($845) 21.5" iMac ($1899) vs Dell XPS 9100 ($1429) (This was hard to match quickly: the Dell boasts a Core i7 vs the iMac's i5 and 2x RAM on the video card)
I'm sure you could go through different Dell systems and find better deals, too.
Your mistake was to pick systems where the "apple tax" gets drowned out by the base component costs. Anybody willing to spend $5k on a system has to expect a high markup, regardless of where he buys from.
Now, one might argue about quality, service, etc... but the end result is that the average consumer should expect to pay significantly more for an Apple with the same hardware specs.
Feel free to make a GUI for the administrative interface, but not at the expense of an underlying CLI.
There are two ways to do this: have your GUI call the CLI when necessary, or use a common API behind both. Other methods will lead to bitrot in one of the interfaces, most likely the CLI.
GUIs are fine and even enjoyable to a certain extent, but the author is right that the CLI takes priority.
Re:Okay, here's a question ...
on
New IE Zero Day
·
· Score: 2
Or have a relative who is guaranteed to get all the latest malware, and will have to remove it while home for the holidays.
For now. Also, genealogy documents more than just biological relationships. It's more about how families are put together and interact. After all, good genealogical software should allow for adoptions, no?
I've always been bothered by the fact that no standard deviation is ever given. Of course, there's not much room on there for that info on a periodic table, but I don't even see it when the full properties are listed.
TFA presents the value as a range ([1.007 84; 1.008 11] for Hydrogen). Why not say 1.00798 +/- 0.014%. IANAC (chemist), but that seems to give the same information, but in a way that's more natural to the way people will use the value. Unless I know what the correct average weight is where the sample was taken, I should probably be using the worldwide average anyway (but then include the error bars).
After reading the presentation, I see that you're pretty much right. Each camera model has a different key, which is stored on the camera itself. This is then used to create a HMAC.
It doesn't even look like this was all that hard, since the key was so easily extracted. I agree with the conclusion in that presentation: Cannon needs to hire people who understand security, if they want this feature to mean anything.
But the usage patterns don't jive with their pricing.
I should preface this by saying that this is only a guess -- any rebuttals are welcome.
Let's start with web browsing. I'd say the usage pattern for each device is about the same, with the big difference being volume. The biggest difference would be for smartphones, which will have fewer large image files by visiting web sites optimized for a mobile device.
Next: email. I don't see a big difference here. Maybe fewer large files for smartphones and tablets by not downloading attachments.
How about streaming media? Movies and music will both come over in large packets, so the overhead should be minimal. I don't seen any significant difference between devices. But you're more likely to watch a movie on a tablet than the other devices.
What about apps? This is much harder to guess, but I would suppose that most mobile apps generally send lots of small packets, with an occasional large packet or two. That's what I'd expect from a game or weather app, at least.
So, I think it's clear that smartphones will tend to have smaller packets, on average, than the other devices. Doesn't this mean that smartphones stress the network more than the other devices? Shouldn't the price be higher for smartphones?
No, packet size is not the main factor here, even if I'm backwards in my thinking above. They charge different amounts because different devices are different markets. Even though the supply remains constant regardless of the device, the demand curves are very different. Why should we even expect the prices to be the same, then?
Tethering changes that. Allowing cell phone MBs to be used instead of USB modem MBs connects the two markets together and gives them the same demand curve. Everyone knows that the reason some carriers prevent tethering is because it prevents them from charging the premium for USB modem MBs.
Yep, this is standard practice if your scm support knows what they're doing.
And I have yet to see it done right in practice. Especially with ClearCase. Every config spec I've seen includes/main/LATEST or similar, instead of working off of labels.
The closest I've seen was with Subversion, where the policy was to only branch off of the tags directory. But even then most people just worked off of trunk. It was a mess.
If you're using Subversion, the right way for a project of any decently large size is to only work off of a branch and only branch off a tag.
And don't branch off the integration branch for exactly the same reasons stated in the article.
The problem comes when stable releases are too infrequent. Changes start requiring features and fixes from other changes waiting to go to the trunk, and a programmer is tempted to branch from the integration branch to pull those in.
A better solution is to branch from a stable point on the trunk and merge the needed changes into that branch. This makes it clear exactly what dependencies exist and the required changes follow along automatically. If a new stable release comes along in the meantime, just merge the trunk back up to your branch (as you'd probably do anyway, right?).
Since when does the ambassador report to you? Since when is it his job to give reports on other countries to the general public?
No, his job is to represent your government officials in another country. He reports to them, not you.
You might argue that the Prime Minister is duty-bound to give reports like this to the general public, and you might have a point... but that still wouldn't necessarily include the ambassador's opinions. I think it's very reasonable for such things to remain private or even classified.
All this is fine as far as it goes, but it'll only work until our malicious plugin installer patches the browser binary and makes it skip the key check
The real problem is that we can't even trust the OS to behave. Once that trust is broken, there's really not that much you can do. DRM hits the same wall.
Those that would install "evil plugins" fall into two categories: normal companies and malware writers. If the problem you're trying to solve comes from malware writers (and leaving the Windows == malware discussion aside), then I wish you good luck on some sort of digital signature system.
On the other hand, if you're worried about Microsoft, Apple, and Google then the solution could be much simpler: the court system. (But simpler is a relative term...) At what point would a third-party patch (not just a plug-in) be considered a derivative work subject to copyright laws?
The AC doesn't know what he's talking about, but digital circuit design has gradually incorporated more and more CS concepts and methodology. HDLs are becoming more high-level, for example, so that an engineer can describe what needs to happen and when, leaving the details on how up to the synthesizer.
There's a reason that universities are offering Computer Engineering degrees, bringing together Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. The AC is right: Ohm's Law doesn't really apply (that's not to say a digital circuit designer shouldn't know it inside and out) when working with FPGAs, but nor do most sorting algorithms taught in CS classes.
The benefit comes by forcing everybody else to go through the machines. Then I know that my flight won't blow up.
I guess it's not surprising that 80% (or whatever) of Americans are OK with the machines, since they rarely fly and are OK with forcing those that are more frequent travelers to go through the extra security. That's the democratic way of doing things.
Yet Judge Morley wouldn't allow Aitken to claim the exemption for transporting guns between residences. He wouldn't even let the jury know about it. During deliberations, the jurors asked three times about exceptions to the law, which suggests they weren't comfortable convicting Aitken. Morley refused to answer them all three times. Gilbert and Nappen, Aitken's lawyers, say he also should have been protected by a federal law that forbids states from prosecuting gun owners who are transporting guns between residences. Morley would not let Aitken cite that provision either.
Kind of hard to be a juror when you don't have all the facts, isn't it?
I get a growth rate of about 115.5% per year. Which means the size will multiply by 2.155x each year.
Think "rule of 70" to make this easy. Given that growth rate, the size will double every.6 years. In 3 years, the value will double nearly five times, for a total of 30x over 3 years.
We seriously need to be more precise with our terms, or we get confusion like this!
For most branching, the command would be a simple 'svn merge http://svn.example.com/repos/calc/trunk' from within the branch. The most complicated part is specifying the location of the branch to merge from (trunk in this case).
So, how do you find the phone number of your child's 3rd grade teacher? In 1960 you used the phone book. In 2010 you don't, period. People are now unreachable unless you have a prior relationship and they expect you to call them.
That's the way people seem to want it these days. Caller ID has made screening much easier -- I know a lot of people that don't answer any number they haven't put in their contact list. The most you can do is leave a message or text them and hope they call you back.
Listing these numbers in a directory would be worthless.
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ARE YOU DAFT?
Of course there are other benefits to Apple. Some are very, very hard to compare objectively. That doesn't necessarily justify the extra expense.
Let's try another comparison, this time with full specs. I beefed up the specs on the Dell laptop to meet your concerns. To wit:
Apple:
2.53 GHz Core i5
4 GB RAM
500 GB HDD
15" 1440x900 display
8x DVD Writer
NVIDIA GT 330M
OS X
Backlit Keyboard
$2049
Dell:
1.73 GHz Core i7
8 GB RAM
640 GB HDD
15.6" 1080p display
Blu-ray reader + DVD Writer
NVIDIA GT 420M
Windows Ultimate
Backlit Keyboard
92 Wh battery
2 MP Webcam
1 year in-home service
$1825
Now, I believe that should satisfy most everything you mentioned. This is by no means a low-end system, and exceeds the Macbook Pro in almost every possible way (at least, on paper). And STILL saves you over $200.
Does the Apple still have a few advantages? Of course. The dual video thing, the power adapter, and it's probably lighter (but that's hard to judge on customized systems).
Maybe a better measure of the "Apple Tax" is how much they charge for upgraded components:
Extra 4 GB RAM? Apple charges an extra $220 vs. Dell.
256 GB SSD? Apple charges an extra $100 vs. Dell.
3 year protection? Apple charges an extra $139 vs. Dell.
That is the Apple tax in action.
I did exactly what you said. I picked an Apple system and configured it and a Dell system to match as best I could.
Macbook Pro ($2049) vs Dell XPS 15 ($845)
21.5" iMac ($1899) vs Dell XPS 9100 ($1429) (This was hard to match quickly: the Dell boasts a Core i7 vs the iMac's i5 and 2x RAM on the video card)
I'm sure you could go through different Dell systems and find better deals, too.
Your mistake was to pick systems where the "apple tax" gets drowned out by the base component costs. Anybody willing to spend $5k on a system has to expect a high markup, regardless of where he buys from.
Now, one might argue about quality, service, etc ... but the end result is that the average consumer should expect to pay significantly more for an Apple with the same hardware specs.
Wait ... why are the alligators trying to get things working?
Feel free to make a GUI for the administrative interface, but not at the expense of an underlying CLI.
There are two ways to do this: have your GUI call the CLI when necessary, or use a common API behind both. Other methods will lead to bitrot in one of the interfaces, most likely the CLI.
GUIs are fine and even enjoyable to a certain extent, but the author is right that the CLI takes priority.
Or have a relative who is guaranteed to get all the latest malware, and will have to remove it while home for the holidays.
Any ideas on how I can get out of it this year?
Just like most white people can't tell Chinese people apart, those with prosopanosia can't tell anybody apart.
At least, that's what I was told once. It makes sense to me that the underlying brain mechanisms could be related.
For now. Also, genealogy documents more than just biological relationships. It's more about how families are put together and interact. After all, good genealogical software should allow for adoptions, no?
I've always been bothered by the fact that no standard deviation is ever given. Of course, there's not much room on there for that info on a periodic table, but I don't even see it when the full properties are listed.
TFA presents the value as a range ([1.007 84; 1.008 11] for Hydrogen). Why not say 1.00798 +/- 0.014%. IANAC (chemist), but that seems to give the same information, but in a way that's more natural to the way people will use the value. Unless I know what the correct average weight is where the sample was taken, I should probably be using the worldwide average anyway (but then include the error bars).
After reading the presentation, I see that you're pretty much right. Each camera model has a different key, which is stored on the camera itself. This is then used to create a HMAC.
It doesn't even look like this was all that hard, since the key was so easily extracted. I agree with the conclusion in that presentation: Cannon needs to hire people who understand security, if they want this feature to mean anything.
But the usage patterns don't jive with their pricing.
I should preface this by saying that this is only a guess -- any rebuttals are welcome.
Let's start with web browsing. I'd say the usage pattern for each device is about the same, with the big difference being volume. The biggest difference would be for smartphones, which will have fewer large image files by visiting web sites optimized for a mobile device.
Next: email. I don't see a big difference here. Maybe fewer large files for smartphones and tablets by not downloading attachments.
How about streaming media? Movies and music will both come over in large packets, so the overhead should be minimal. I don't seen any significant difference between devices. But you're more likely to watch a movie on a tablet than the other devices.
What about apps? This is much harder to guess, but I would suppose that most mobile apps generally send lots of small packets, with an occasional large packet or two. That's what I'd expect from a game or weather app, at least.
So, I think it's clear that smartphones will tend to have smaller packets, on average, than the other devices. Doesn't this mean that smartphones stress the network more than the other devices? Shouldn't the price be higher for smartphones?
No, packet size is not the main factor here, even if I'm backwards in my thinking above. They charge different amounts because different devices are different markets. Even though the supply remains constant regardless of the device, the demand curves are very different. Why should we even expect the prices to be the same, then?
Tethering changes that. Allowing cell phone MBs to be used instead of USB modem MBs connects the two markets together and gives them the same demand curve. Everyone knows that the reason some carriers prevent tethering is because it prevents them from charging the premium for USB modem MBs.
Yep, this is standard practice if your scm support knows what they're doing.
And I have yet to see it done right in practice. Especially with ClearCase. Every config spec I've seen includes /main/LATEST or similar, instead of working off of labels.
The closest I've seen was with Subversion, where the policy was to only branch off of the tags directory. But even then most people just worked off of trunk. It was a mess.
If you're using Subversion, the right way for a project of any decently large size is to only work off of a branch and only branch off a tag.
And don't branch off the integration branch for exactly the same reasons stated in the article.
The problem comes when stable releases are too infrequent. Changes start requiring features and fixes from other changes waiting to go to the trunk, and a programmer is tempted to branch from the integration branch to pull those in.
A better solution is to branch from a stable point on the trunk and merge the needed changes into that branch. This makes it clear exactly what dependencies exist and the required changes follow along automatically. If a new stable release comes along in the meantime, just merge the trunk back up to your branch (as you'd probably do anyway, right?).
Since when does the ambassador report to you? Since when is it his job to give reports on other countries to the general public?
No, his job is to represent your government officials in another country. He reports to them, not you.
You might argue that the Prime Minister is duty-bound to give reports like this to the general public, and you might have a point ... but that still wouldn't necessarily include the ambassador's opinions. I think it's very reasonable for such things to remain private or even classified.
All this is fine as far as it goes, but it'll only work until our malicious plugin installer patches the browser binary and makes it skip the key check
The real problem is that we can't even trust the OS to behave. Once that trust is broken, there's really not that much you can do. DRM hits the same wall.
Those that would install "evil plugins" fall into two categories: normal companies and malware writers. If the problem you're trying to solve comes from malware writers (and leaving the Windows == malware discussion aside), then I wish you good luck on some sort of digital signature system.
On the other hand, if you're worried about Microsoft, Apple, and Google then the solution could be much simpler: the court system. (But simpler is a relative term...) At what point would a third-party patch (not just a plug-in) be considered a derivative work subject to copyright laws?
The AC doesn't know what he's talking about, but digital circuit design has gradually incorporated more and more CS concepts and methodology. HDLs are becoming more high-level, for example, so that an engineer can describe what needs to happen and when, leaving the details on how up to the synthesizer.
There's a reason that universities are offering Computer Engineering degrees, bringing together Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. The AC is right: Ohm's Law doesn't really apply (that's not to say a digital circuit designer shouldn't know it inside and out) when working with FPGAs, but nor do most sorting algorithms taught in CS classes.
The benefit comes by forcing everybody else to go through the machines. Then I know that my flight won't blow up.
I guess it's not surprising that 80% (or whatever) of Americans are OK with the machines, since they rarely fly and are OK with forcing those that are more frequent travelers to go through the extra security. That's the democratic way of doing things.
This part is interesting:
Yet Judge Morley wouldn't allow Aitken to claim the exemption for transporting guns between residences. He wouldn't even let the jury know about it. During deliberations, the jurors asked three times about exceptions to the law, which suggests they weren't comfortable convicting Aitken. Morley refused to answer them all three times. Gilbert and Nappen, Aitken's lawyers, say he also should have been protected by a federal law that forbids states from prosecuting gun owners who are transporting guns between residences. Morley would not let Aitken cite that provision either.
Kind of hard to be a juror when you don't have all the facts, isn't it?
List of good lawyers I know of: ...
My divorce attorney
I have a feeling your ex would disagree.
That's easy. Do or do not, there is no try.
I get a growth rate of about 115.5% per year. Which means the size will multiply by 2.155x each year.
Think "rule of 70" to make this easy. Given that growth rate, the size will double every .6 years. In 3 years, the value will double nearly five times, for a total of 30x over 3 years.
We seriously need to be more precise with our terms, or we get confusion like this!
Read the post you're replying to! That's all changed since 1.5. Now SVN knows when you branched and what you've already merged together.
Read about it here.
For most branching, the command would be a simple 'svn merge http://svn.example.com/repos/calc/trunk' from within the branch. The most complicated part is specifying the location of the branch to merge from (trunk in this case).
1.5 did wonders for SVN.
So, how do you find the phone number of your child's 3rd grade teacher? In 1960 you used the phone book. In 2010 you don't, period. People are now unreachable unless you have a prior relationship and they expect you to call them.
That's the way people seem to want it these days. Caller ID has made screening much easier -- I know a lot of people that don't answer any number they haven't put in their contact list. The most you can do is leave a message or text them and hope they call you back.
Listing these numbers in a directory would be worthless.
34th Rule of Acquisition: "War is good for business."
Pretty much hits the nail on the head, doesn't it?
Congress is the #1 danger to freedom.
Fixed that for you.
Your edit is generally correct. Fortunately, we have two other branches of government to keep them in check.
That's the theory, anyway. Political parties have blurred the lines between branches a bit.
Ahh! But this is done by a computer. That changes everything!