Seriously? Here's a definition of hearsay that even an idiot can most likely understand (hoping you don't prove me wrong on that): 1. unverified, unofficial information gained or acquired from another and not part of one's direct knowledge Oh, and in case you missed it, yes, I called you an idiot.
First, I objected to it being called "third-hand hearsay", not merely "hearsay". You failed to demonstrate that it's third-hand, which isn't surprising because it very obviously isn't.
Second, read your own definiton of "hearsay". In particular, these words: "gained or acquired from another". Then say "hearsay" to yourself slowly. Hearsay. Hear-say. Hear. Say. Now, try to remember all that while you think about what the word might mean for a little while. I can tell you're not too bright, so take your time and come back when you're done.
Back? Good. Hope that didn't hurt too much. Now, do you think that just possibly it means to hear something, then say it? That one of the defining characteristics of hearsay is that the information is at least second-hand? In your own words, that it is "gained or acquired from another"? Now, the report in TFA is first-hand information. It is indeed unverified and unofficial; if you told someone else it would, by the definition you gave, be hearsay. But we're not talking about you telling someone else, we're talking about a report from a person who claims to have discovered and verified the fault themselves. It is part of their, as the definition you provided puts it, "direct knowledge".
So, I'm very sorry to have to dash your hopes that even an idiot could understand your definition, but it seems you couldn't understand it.
Let the market work out what's excessive, by making the cost of fuel reflect the true cost - including the environmental impact and the cost of wars to protect the supply. At present, fuel is effectivley subsidised in most countries as these costs are not borne in proportion to consumption.
Awww, you've gone and spoiled my rant. I was wrong to assume you're the worst-of-the-worst when it comes to emission of greenhouse gasses, and for that I apologise. Anyway, my assumptions about your activities aside, my point is that one should consider the argument, not the source. It doesn't matter whether someone is perfect, it matters whether they are right. Claiming that someone anyone who has ever used fossil fuels has no right to criticise excessive consumption of them by others (whether or not the incident in TFA is excessive or not is irrelevant to this point) is evasionary bullshit. It's is a very handy way to convince yourself whatever you do is not a problem though.
How is "I now have 3 of these 9400's in my shop, My new replacement and 2 brand new fresh out of the box systems for clients. All 3 of them have the exact same problem." (a quote from TFA) third-hand hearsay?
Owned by someone with morals, or owned by the employees. The John Lewis Partnership in the UK provides excellent service, excellent prices and treats its staff (partners, actually) exceptionally well.
Everyone who NEVER uses any kind of fossil-fuel provided energy to do ANYTHING not absolutely life-or-death, please go track down the Gulfstream owner and do your CO2 rant. The rest of you shut the fuck up.
"Black and white thinking" - seeing the world only in terms of extremes - is a sign of mental illness. If you are honestly incapable of seeing that producing, say, ten tons of CO2 from fossil fuels is worse then producing one ton of CO2 from fossil fuels I suggest you go and see a psychiastrist.
However, I suspect you aren't mentally ill but are simply using the fact that nobody is perfect to justify your being as destructive as you like, because you like your SUV and long-haul holidays and the convenience of lights which achieve full brightness in 0.05s instead of 0.5s. If someone drops a sweet wrapper, they can't criticise you for dumping a truckload of toxic waste, right? If someone bumps into you in the street, they can't criticise you for taking a baseball bat to someone's head, right? Wrong. Stop dodging and whining and take some fucking responsibility for your actions.
Heck, breathing produces CO2, even dying produces CO2. The point is to minimize unnecessary production.
No, the problem is not CO2 production. Breathing and dying only release CO2 which was extracted from the atmosphere very recently. That kind of CO2 production is cyclic and averages out to nothing in a short (in planetary terms) period. It's CO2 production from sources which have been locked up in the Earth's crust for hundreds of millions of years and the resultant net increase in CO2 which is the problem. The only way to reverse it is to remove CO2 from the system again. That's why I think we should grow trees and bury them in clay to permanently remove carbon from the cycle.
The big 4 say iTunes has to to DRM everything, or they can't sell their music. Same goes for pricing. The big 4 won't let iTunes sell other people's music for less.
I had a neighbour a few years ago who was overweight, probably in the 300+ range given his height and girth. He started walking about 2 1/2 hours a day, everyday of the week. It was about a year and a half before he started to lose weight, but then it started to pour off.
While he may not have started losing weight for a while, I bet he was a damn sight healthier much sooner than that. It's not uncommon for overweight people to actually gain a little weight as they start excercising, as their muscle mass increases.
I agree there are gaps in the Apple range and it bugs me too. What they do offer is very nice and the price, for what you get, isn't extortionate IMO. The mid-range laptop is one, but the one that bugs me is the lack of a ~$1000 desktop machine without a built-in monitor. I'd love a Mac desktop which I could dual-boot into Windows to play games, but the only things with decent GFX cards or the potential for upgrades are Mac Pros, which cost megabucks and are huge overkill for most people. I can't exactly stick a 20" iMac in a cupboard and use it as a Linux server in a few years either. I do wonder if Apple deliberately don't make directly comparable products to the mid-range latop and tower PC - it's got to be much harder to differentiate your stuff and sell premium products in those highly competetive segments, especially now the architecture is directly comparable.
I think it was a dv6000t I specced out last time and got pretty much that price - so kudos for honestly trying to match the specs, which is more than the guy was doing which promted me to check this out last time (who was claiming an $800-1000 differential). Even so, the HP is still noticably inferior in a few different ways - ways which aren't cheap to fix. That extra 160MHz may not seem much, but the price difference is $125 at NewEgg or $200 if you get it as an option on a Sony laptop. As for "dimensions within 1/2 inch" well, that certainly sounds better than saying it's 69% thicker, which it is at its thickest - the HP is 1.69" at its thickest compared to 1" for the MBP - and that's with the 6-cell pack, not the 12-cell you need to match the MBP's battery life (I did find some battery life specs for the HP last time, but I can't find them again, IIRC about 2.5h with the 6-cell and a similar configuration was quoted). The 12-cell weighs more too. Judging by the pics, it's around 2.5" thick at the back with the 12-cell pack. $375 extra ($500 - processor differential) for a laptop 60% or 40% of the maximum thickness aint too bad, especially when you also get Firewire, gigabit ethernet, the higher resolution screen and for an extra $2 802.11n WiFi. I can't be bothered to go and find the Sony which really was similar in dimensions and had the same processor as the MBP (but the same lower res screen as the HP, and no gig ethernet) and cost $1850, but I'm sure you can find it if you want.
I would never claim Apple computers are cheaper than PCs. They generally aren't. But the premium isn't $500 or 25%, it's more like 5-10% and for that you get niceties like the mag-safe power adapter, an illuminated keyboard and a DVI-VGA converter cable. Macs are premium products - expensive, but not hugley overpriced in the way people like to make them out to be. They cost a lot, but you do get a lot for your money. That HP is just no comparison. You drive your Hyundai, I'll drive my Benz and I'm sure we'll both be happy with what we've got.
I think Carly illustrates the problem is perhaps not hubris, but the complete lack of disincentives for failure. Screw a couple of formerly great companies into the ground and what do you get? Tens of millions of dollars and lucrative consultuing and speaking engagements. WTF? Anybody not a board level who scews up like that ends up flipping burgers.
Or, like HP, they kinda forgot about developing and manufacturing products and decide to concentrate just on selling stuff. After all, it's selling stuff that makes you money, right? Everything else is just a cost so you're best getting rid of that pointless, expensive R&D.
You can't buy an HP or anything else I've found with the same spec for under $1500 either - I did find a slower, much heavier HP with a lower resolution screen and poorer battery life for $1560 or so. You can buy a Sony which is close, but has a lower resolution screen and weighs a pound more, for $1850 though. Gah, I ran the number here a couple of weeks back, but it's fallen off the bottom of my message list, it would be handy if subscriber could retreive it. You can certainly buy a laptop for much less, but I've not found one at all with all the same features and the closest models available (like the Sony, which is still inferior in significant ways) cost similar money. If you do go and look make sure you match everything: processor, RAM, screen, HD, optical drive, weight, battery life, included restore disks, all OS features (cf XP Pro, Vista Ultimate)... it's easy to find something cheaper with the same CPU and RAM which is noticeably inferior in other ways, but try and find something which is actually equivalent and see what it costs in Windows-land.
Why teach them about code pages, completely screwey function call mechanics, 256 byte jumps, limited capability C libraries, etc., when they could be learning about putting their name on the display, spinning a motor, playing a tune, and shipping data up to a PC over USB?
You don't have to deal with most of that crap with AVR, which is a big part of its appeal - it feels a lot like big iron to develop for, you rarely even have to care that it's Harvard (till you realise your strings are eating RAM, but the hoops to jump through to store them only in program space are minimal). And I'd call ARM big iron in the context of MCUs!
I don't think either ARM or AVR is right for teaching high-school kids though, perhaps not even C unless they know basic (!== BASIC) programming already. There's too much overhead in the development process - compilers, makefiles, configuration registers.... I'd go for PicAxe, Basic Stamp or similar. But I wouldn't reject Lego either - if you want to do much more than flash some LEDs or write your name on a screen, you're going to need some sensors and/or mechanicals and Lego does that exceptionally well in this context. NQC for the "old" Mindstorms is reasonably close to "proper" embedded development but without the hassles.
The aim should be improving security and software quality, not trying to make it look like you are improving security and software quality.
OK, I'll bite. How is Vista's UAC not the former? How do you conclude that it's only for show?
I was merely pointing out the difference between the drive to make it look like you're doing something and the drive to actually do something, though of course the two are not mutually exclusive. And I didn't conclude UAC is only for show. In the opinion of TFA, in practice UAC is over-used to the extent that it became so intrusive that the author turned it off - thus negating any potential benefit. A security system which is so clumsy it doesn't get used is not a secure system in the real world. The suggestion is that this over-use is indicative of the desire to appear to be secure as overriding the desire to actually be secure. You could claim that that's down to the author, but he didn't feel the same need with the similar system used on Mac OS X. Is TFA right about Microsoft's intentions? I doubt any of us know - in fact I doubt it was explicit even at Microsoft, likely more of a general feeling permeating the company which resulted in a general trend.
In your example, the idea of tariffs etc. being in the best interests of the public is just plain wrong and you appear to know that - so how you can claim the opposite I don't know. If you meant "what the majority think is best right now" vs "what's really best in the long term" you should have said that, but you didn't. I accept that it's the position of the government (which is distinct from the country) to take a more long-term view. You seemed to be claiming that you could harm everybody in a country while still benefiting that country, which of course you can't, because a country is little more than a group of people living together under a common government.
With Vista, youll need MAJOR upgrades, with a new MacOS, youll HAVE to buy a new computer!
FUD. A creaky old iMac will run the latest Mac OS (which you can buy in a box at my local computer store, just like Windows, but cheaper) perfectly well.
The stark reality about Vista is that driver support is minimal at best. Rather shocking considering XP had drivers for much more hardware. I'm really curious if anyone knows why driver support is so minimal at this time.
DRM-laden drivers? XP drivers would give you full quality even if you couldn't verify, to Microsoft's satisfaction, that you had paid for your content. Only communist homosexual evolution-believing terrorists would have any need to play content without Microsoft's explicit authorisation.
Social skills are required in virtually any job - even geek jobs - because interacting with people is part of the job. There aren't many jobs where you get a spec, shut yourself in a room, then email the result off after a few weeks. Mostly, people have coworkers and they have to work with them. Social skills make those interactions more effective and efficient which makes the team as a whole more effective and efficient.
If you don't have them naturally to any great extent (I don't) you have to learn. Looking at the top of people's noses in leiu of eye contact, learning what kinds of things offend people and approaches which are less likely to cause offence, stuff like that. Social skills, or a sufficiently close approximation to them, can be learnt and do make you more productive in most environments.
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First, I objected to it being called "third-hand hearsay", not merely "hearsay". You failed to demonstrate that it's third-hand, which isn't surprising because it very obviously isn't.
Second, read your own definiton of "hearsay". In particular, these words: "gained or acquired from another". Then say "hearsay" to yourself slowly. Hearsay. Hear-say. Hear. Say. Now, try to remember all that while you think about what the word might mean for a little while. I can tell you're not too bright, so take your time and come back when you're done.
Back? Good. Hope that didn't hurt too much. Now, do you think that just possibly it means to hear something, then say it? That one of the defining characteristics of hearsay is that the information is at least second-hand? In your own words, that it is "gained or acquired from another"? Now, the report in TFA is first-hand information. It is indeed unverified and unofficial; if you told someone else it would, by the definition you gave, be hearsay. But we're not talking about you telling someone else, we're talking about a report from a person who claims to have discovered and verified the fault themselves. It is part of their, as the definition you provided puts it, "direct knowledge".
So, I'm very sorry to have to dash your hopes that even an idiot could understand your definition, but it seems you couldn't understand it.
Let the market work out what's excessive, by making the cost of fuel reflect the true cost - including the environmental impact and the cost of wars to protect the supply. At present, fuel is effectivley subsidised in most countries as these costs are not borne in proportion to consumption.
Awww, you've gone and spoiled my rant. I was wrong to assume you're the worst-of-the-worst when it comes to emission of greenhouse gasses, and for that I apologise. Anyway, my assumptions about your activities aside, my point is that one should consider the argument, not the source. It doesn't matter whether someone is perfect, it matters whether they are right. Claiming that someone anyone who has ever used fossil fuels has no right to criticise excessive consumption of them by others (whether or not the incident in TFA is excessive or not is irrelevant to this point) is evasionary bullshit. It's is a very handy way to convince yourself whatever you do is not a problem though.
How is "I now have 3 of these 9400's in my shop, My new replacement and 2 brand new fresh out of the box systems for clients. All 3 of them have the exact same problem." (a quote from TFA) third-hand hearsay?
Owned by someone with morals, or owned by the employees. The John Lewis Partnership in the UK provides excellent service, excellent prices and treats its staff (partners, actually) exceptionally well.
"Black and white thinking" - seeing the world only in terms of extremes - is a sign of mental illness. If you are honestly incapable of seeing that producing, say, ten tons of CO2 from fossil fuels is worse then producing one ton of CO2 from fossil fuels I suggest you go and see a psychiastrist.
However, I suspect you aren't mentally ill but are simply using the fact that nobody is perfect to justify your being as destructive as you like, because you like your SUV and long-haul holidays and the convenience of lights which achieve full brightness in 0.05s instead of 0.5s. If someone drops a sweet wrapper, they can't criticise you for dumping a truckload of toxic waste, right? If someone bumps into you in the street, they can't criticise you for taking a baseball bat to someone's head, right? Wrong. Stop dodging and whining and take some fucking responsibility for your actions.
No, the problem is not CO2 production. Breathing and dying only release CO2 which was extracted from the atmosphere very recently. That kind of CO2 production is cyclic and averages out to nothing in a short (in planetary terms) period. It's CO2 production from sources which have been locked up in the Earth's crust for hundreds of millions of years and the resultant net increase in CO2 which is the problem. The only way to reverse it is to remove CO2 from the system again. That's why I think we should grow trees and bury them in clay to permanently remove carbon from the cycle.
The big 4 say iTunes has to to DRM everything, or they can't sell their music. Same goes for pricing. The big 4 won't let iTunes sell other people's music for less.
TFA says it's stiffer than diamond, that doesn't mean that it's harder than diamond.
While he may not have started losing weight for a while, I bet he was a damn sight healthier much sooner than that. It's not uncommon for overweight people to actually gain a little weight as they start excercising, as their muscle mass increases.
I agree there are gaps in the Apple range and it bugs me too. What they do offer is very nice and the price, for what you get, isn't extortionate IMO. The mid-range laptop is one, but the one that bugs me is the lack of a ~$1000 desktop machine without a built-in monitor. I'd love a Mac desktop which I could dual-boot into Windows to play games, but the only things with decent GFX cards or the potential for upgrades are Mac Pros, which cost megabucks and are huge overkill for most people. I can't exactly stick a 20" iMac in a cupboard and use it as a Linux server in a few years either. I do wonder if Apple deliberately don't make directly comparable products to the mid-range latop and tower PC - it's got to be much harder to differentiate your stuff and sell premium products in those highly competetive segments, especially now the architecture is directly comparable.
I think it was a dv6000t I specced out last time and got pretty much that price - so kudos for honestly trying to match the specs, which is more than the guy was doing which promted me to check this out last time (who was claiming an $800-1000 differential). Even so, the HP is still noticably inferior in a few different ways - ways which aren't cheap to fix. That extra 160MHz may not seem much, but the price difference is $125 at NewEgg or $200 if you get it as an option on a Sony laptop. As for "dimensions within 1/2 inch" well, that certainly sounds better than saying it's 69% thicker, which it is at its thickest - the HP is 1.69" at its thickest compared to 1" for the MBP - and that's with the 6-cell pack, not the 12-cell you need to match the MBP's battery life (I did find some battery life specs for the HP last time, but I can't find them again, IIRC about 2.5h with the 6-cell and a similar configuration was quoted). The 12-cell weighs more too. Judging by the pics, it's around 2.5" thick at the back with the 12-cell pack. $375 extra ($500 - processor differential) for a laptop 60% or 40% of the maximum thickness aint too bad, especially when you also get Firewire, gigabit ethernet, the higher resolution screen and for an extra $2 802.11n WiFi. I can't be bothered to go and find the Sony which really was similar in dimensions and had the same processor as the MBP (but the same lower res screen as the HP, and no gig ethernet) and cost $1850, but I'm sure you can find it if you want.
I would never claim Apple computers are cheaper than PCs. They generally aren't. But the premium isn't $500 or 25%, it's more like 5-10% and for that you get niceties like the mag-safe power adapter, an illuminated keyboard and a DVI-VGA converter cable. Macs are premium products - expensive, but not hugley overpriced in the way people like to make them out to be. They cost a lot, but you do get a lot for your money. That HP is just no comparison. You drive your Hyundai, I'll drive my Benz and I'm sure we'll both be happy with what we've got.
I think Carly illustrates the problem is perhaps not hubris, but the complete lack of disincentives for failure. Screw a couple of formerly great companies into the ground and what do you get? Tens of millions of dollars and lucrative consultuing and speaking engagements. WTF? Anybody not a board level who scews up like that ends up flipping burgers.
Or, like HP, they kinda forgot about developing and manufacturing products and decide to concentrate just on selling stuff. After all, it's selling stuff that makes you money, right? Everything else is just a cost so you're best getting rid of that pointless, expensive R&D.
You can't buy an HP or anything else I've found with the same spec for under $1500 either - I did find a slower, much heavier HP with a lower resolution screen and poorer battery life for $1560 or so. You can buy a Sony which is close, but has a lower resolution screen and weighs a pound more, for $1850 though. Gah, I ran the number here a couple of weeks back, but it's fallen off the bottom of my message list, it would be handy if subscriber could retreive it. You can certainly buy a laptop for much less, but I've not found one at all with all the same features and the closest models available (like the Sony, which is still inferior in significant ways) cost similar money. If you do go and look make sure you match everything: processor, RAM, screen, HD, optical drive, weight, battery life, included restore disks, all OS features (cf XP Pro, Vista Ultimate)... it's easy to find something cheaper with the same CPU and RAM which is noticeably inferior in other ways, but try and find something which is actually equivalent and see what it costs in Windows-land.
Where can I buy a $199 mini Windows PC?
You don't have to deal with most of that crap with AVR, which is a big part of its appeal - it feels a lot like big iron to develop for, you rarely even have to care that it's Harvard (till you realise your strings are eating RAM, but the hoops to jump through to store them only in program space are minimal). And I'd call ARM big iron in the context of MCUs!
I don't think either ARM or AVR is right for teaching high-school kids though, perhaps not even C unless they know basic (!== BASIC) programming already. There's too much overhead in the development process - compilers, makefiles, configuration registers.... I'd go for PicAxe, Basic Stamp or similar. But I wouldn't reject Lego either - if you want to do much more than flash some LEDs or write your name on a screen, you're going to need some sensors and/or mechanicals and Lego does that exceptionally well in this context. NQC for the "old" Mindstorms is reasonably close to "proper" embedded development but without the hassles.
I was merely pointing out the difference between the drive to make it look like you're doing something and the drive to actually do something, though of course the two are not mutually exclusive. And I didn't conclude UAC is only for show. In the opinion of TFA, in practice UAC is over-used to the extent that it became so intrusive that the author turned it off - thus negating any potential benefit. A security system which is so clumsy it doesn't get used is not a secure system in the real world. The suggestion is that this over-use is indicative of the desire to appear to be secure as overriding the desire to actually be secure. You could claim that that's down to the author, but he didn't feel the same need with the similar system used on Mac OS X. Is TFA right about Microsoft's intentions? I doubt any of us know - in fact I doubt it was explicit even at Microsoft, likely more of a general feeling permeating the company which resulted in a general trend.
In your example, the idea of tariffs etc. being in the best interests of the public is just plain wrong and you appear to know that - so how you can claim the opposite I don't know. If you meant "what the majority think is best right now" vs "what's really best in the long term" you should have said that, but you didn't. I accept that it's the position of the government (which is distinct from the country) to take a more long-term view. You seemed to be claiming that you could harm everybody in a country while still benefiting that country, which of course you can't, because a country is little more than a group of people living together under a common government.
FUD. A creaky old iMac will run the latest Mac OS (which you can buy in a box at my local computer store, just like Windows, but cheaper) perfectly well.
DRM-laden drivers? XP drivers would give you full quality even if you couldn't verify, to Microsoft's satisfaction, that you had paid for your content. Only communist homosexual evolution-believing terrorists would have any need to play content without Microsoft's explicit authorisation.
The aim should be improving security and software quality, not trying to make it look like you are improving security and software quality.
Social skills are required in virtually any job - even geek jobs - because interacting with people is part of the job. There aren't many jobs where you get a spec, shut yourself in a room, then email the result off after a few weeks. Mostly, people have coworkers and they have to work with them. Social skills make those interactions more effective and efficient which makes the team as a whole more effective and efficient.
If you don't have them naturally to any great extent (I don't) you have to learn. Looking at the top of people's noses in leiu of eye contact, learning what kinds of things offend people and approaches which are less likely to cause offence, stuff like that. Social skills, or a sufficiently close approximation to them, can be learnt and do make you more productive in most environments.
Can you explain that, perhaps with an example? I fail to see how something which is best for everyone can fail to be best for the country.
1. Turn on main screen.
2. Decide who all base are belong to.
3. ????
4. Profit!