Samsung's competitor has excellent pen input, so the Surface Pro should be just as good. The drivers were a bit problematic at first on the Surface Pro, but I think they fixed that.
Little third-party developer support? You must live in some fantasy world where Windows 95-Windows 8 never existed. A tablet that runs every 32-bit (and 64-bit) application ever written for the world's most popular OS since the mid-90's does not have "little third party developer support".
The price cut lets it undercut every direct competitor by 100 bucks. This thing doesn't compete against a puny ARM tablet or even a puny $450 laptop. It competes against ultrabooks and especially ultrabook-tablet hybrids (Samsung Ativ Smart PC Pro, Sony Vaio Duo...).
It has its niche - less money for the same product is always better, but it's by no means overpriced.
Again, just because we're not capable of testing them due to our limitations (limited lives, precise and/or massive measurements, etc.) at the moment, does not mean it is impossible to test them (working through several generations, advances in measuring equipment, etc.).
On the other hand, something like "God created the universe." cannot be tested. That belief is necessarily grounded in faith alone.
No, science is not religion, in the way you're implying it is. Science works by creating theories (either from educated guesses or observations, often both) and testing them.
If it can't be tested, it's not science*.
*Of course, one thing is not being capable of measuring something - the fact that light is affected by gravity took a while to test, for instance. That doesn't make it impossible to test.
While I do not have experience with university student politics (thank God!), I do have such experience from High School. The sentence "At best, they organise drunken festivals and serve as a training ground for the corrupt and incompetent cadre currently in charge of the western world." is not far from the truth there.
I have the feeling it's a very deep cultural problem.
Even worse. A company with which you have never, ever dealt now has a right to your entire browsing history and "public metadata", courtesy of your friendly ISP.
All non-technical issues aside (the existence of some sort of filter is a matter for another discussion), the fact that all data gets sent through "Huawei's databse" should set off a few alarms, even ignoring the fact that it's Huawei (which is too close to the chinese government/chinese armed forces for comfort).
I distinctly remember reading in Java's license terms that it may not be used in critical systems like nuclear plants, missile control systems, and, I suppose, medical aplications.
You say you don't want a nuclear plant next to you... Do you prefer a coal-fired plant? Oil-buning plant? Natural Gas? Wind Turbines (those things seem to be noisy like hell)? Want your backyard full of solar panels and still need a secondary power source? Want to live in a valley that will soon become a lake, courtesy of the new dam?
I'd love a miniature nuclear reactor for my neighborhood: free electricity and hot water, in essence.
Indeed, those are stupid issues. Partially because of them, I will not be buying Apple in the near future if I can avoid it. However, those problems are pretty much known beforehand (you could argue that the purple flare is a Samsung-ish problem).
As much as I dislike Apple's products and philosophy, I absolutely hate Samsung's philosophy. In my experience, it's either copying (much more than would be reasonable) successful products or throwing tons of crap at the wall to see what sticks (the galaxy cameras come to mind). Either way, their products are designed to what seem to be very poor standards with atrocious quality control.
Out of 11 Samsung products:
Two were dead on arrival (Ativ Smart PC Pro, a camcorder whose model I don't recall) - they did turn on, but were not in a condition anyone would call useful (dead touchscreen and autofocus, random stability issues, not to mention the fact that the tablet's replacement, like all other units I've seen, had plastic covering one of the keyboard dock's pins and a misaligned speaker grille).
One (40" LCD) developed some unusual dark areas on the screen.
One (Refrigerator) suffers from an ice dispenser button that gets stuck if operated with a single finger, its shelves' plastic is cracking and there's rust developing on some parts of the outside finish.
One (Monitor, Syncmaster 940BW) has a driver issue (seriously. Google it and wonder how it's possible...) under Windows 7 where a driver is automatically installed that includes a bad color profile that causes White to be displayed as Yellow in color-corrected applications, unless a different profile is manually chosen.
One (Dual-SIM phone with crappy resistive touchscreen) was never a decent phone, but its touchscreen decided to crap out one day, for no apparent reason, making it impossible to use.
Another phone (Wave I think it was called... ) was a phone whose hardware showed potential but was running Bada or whatever that OS was called. Not pleasant to use.
Only 4 / 11 Samsung products never gave any reason for complaint (besides limitations that were obvious when buying it - like a screen that is at a fixed height - those were knwon and expected, so there's no reason to blame Samsung): Two 830 SSDs (one 128GB and one 256GB), another monitor (Syncmaster BX2450) and a Blu-Ray drive.
I'm sure someone can give me a comparable amount of Apple horror stories, but I'd bet that most of them are actually limitations that one knows they're buying - like support for newer versions of OS X / iOS being a gamble. The products themselves don't tend to start failing in unpredictable ways, most failures are predictable, in my experience.
tl;dr I won't be buying Samsung again anytime soon (and I wouldn't buy Apple anyway, so don't bother with that angle)
"I know this will get modded down into oblivion, but this absurd focus on social media crap (Thank you Facebook and to a lesser extent Google), along with the support from mobile/pseudo-mobile OS makers (It always comes down to Google, Apple and Microsoft screwing up, doesn't it?) is the perfect analogy for crap traditional media - masses digesting previously regurgitaded content that seems to never have been original and spreading it around so that more memebers of the idiotic masses can rinse and repeat.
You don't see cars running on the waste created by other cars, do you? It's a similar concept to this - something of no value gets reused to create supposed value. Just like it doesn't work for cars, it doesn't work for media. Yet idiots still fall for it and act like it's the best thing in the world! Maybe I should scam some people with a car that runs on CO2... I dunno, maybe I'll say it's as revolutionary as Warp drive in Star Trek. Or turning a bunch of furry stuffed animals into raging mass murderers capable of defeating a trained, well-equipped army. How more revolutionary can something be? If they fall for this, I might even convince a couple of cities to splurge on a monorail line that serves no useful purpose.
Obligatory xkcd perfectly illustrates the current media situation: Some random guy with no knowledge of anything about the subject can succesfully pretend to be a big shot - the situation is that crappy, yes.
And for the parent: It's fucking "Grammar". Not "grmmer" or even "grammer", it's "grammar"! And we're supposed to believe you? How about a link to Wikipedia at the very least, to support your opinion, huh? Oh, must not let facts get in the way of your biased arguments, right? Idiot."
WinRT is a wrapper for Win32, so someone could develop a Wine-like compatibility layer to provide WinRT support on Win32 systems, which could then be run on Wine.
What are you talking about? If you're talking about lead-acid batteries, they're plastic, lead + lead oxide and sulfuric acid. If you're talking about lithium-ion, there's plastic, lithium + whatever the particular chemistry uses and perhaps some electrolyte.
All of those components are recyclable or reusable in some way.
Quality sure as hell suffered. My Vaio SE got its screen scratched by the palm rest just by being carried around in a laptop case. Its keyboard supports snapped on one side after applying a bit more pressure than usual. They did fix the latter, but wanted 300+€ for a new screen (The screen was scratched, had developed bright spots and a dead pixel and always had backlight bleed). Considering they essentially wanted 1/3 of the original price to replace the screen, I refused.
So much for Sony having better quality than most. They certainly won't be getting my money again, regardless of product.
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Samsung's competitor has excellent pen input, so the Surface Pro should be just as good. The drivers were a bit problematic at first on the Surface Pro, but I think they fixed that.
Easily expandable storage via USB, works like any tablet, not too heavy, sure - 3G would be great, it doesn't have to be, what is these days?
Little third-party developer support? You must live in some fantasy world where Windows 95-Windows 8 never existed. A tablet that runs every 32-bit (and 64-bit) application ever written for the world's most popular OS since the mid-90's does not have "little third party developer support".
The price cut lets it undercut every direct competitor by 100 bucks. This thing doesn't compete against a puny ARM tablet or even a puny $450 laptop. It competes against ultrabooks and especially ultrabook-tablet hybrids (Samsung Ativ Smart PC Pro, Sony Vaio Duo...).
It has its niche - less money for the same product is always better, but it's by no means overpriced.
Indeed, you're absolutely right.
Again, just because we're not capable of testing them due to our limitations (limited lives, precise and/or massive measurements, etc.) at the moment, does not mean it is impossible to test them (working through several generations, advances in measuring equipment, etc.).
On the other hand, something like "God created the universe." cannot be tested. That belief is necessarily grounded in faith alone.
Electric drive with optional two-cilinder gasoline engine for extra range.
No, science is not religion, in the way you're implying it is. Science works by creating theories (either from educated guesses or observations, often both) and testing them.
If it can't be tested, it's not science*.
*Of course, one thing is not being capable of measuring something - the fact that light is affected by gravity took a while to test, for instance. That doesn't make it impossible to test.
While I do not have experience with university student politics (thank God!), I do have such experience from High School. The sentence "At best, they organise drunken festivals and serve as a training ground for the corrupt and incompetent cadre currently in charge of the western world." is not far from the truth there.
I have the feeling it's a very deep cultural problem.
VirtualBox supports a lot of monitors with Linux guests, too. Can't vouch for how well it works, though, I only needed one monitor at once...
The new round Mac Pro is an absurd product, as has been amply discussed.
Even worse. A company with which you have never, ever dealt now has a right to your entire browsing history and "public metadata", courtesy of your friendly ISP.
All non-technical issues aside (the existence of some sort of filter is a matter for another discussion), the fact that all data gets sent through "Huawei's databse" should set off a few alarms, even ignoring the fact that it's Huawei (which is too close to the chinese government/chinese armed forces for comfort).
I distinctly remember reading in Java's license terms that it may not be used in critical systems like nuclear plants, missile control systems, and, I suppose, medical aplications.
You say you don't want a nuclear plant next to you... Do you prefer a coal-fired plant? Oil-buning plant? Natural Gas? Wind Turbines (those things seem to be noisy like hell)? Want your backyard full of solar panels and still need a secondary power source? Want to live in a valley that will soon become a lake, courtesy of the new dam?
I'd love a miniature nuclear reactor for my neighborhood: free electricity and hot water, in essence.
Indeed, those are stupid issues. Partially because of them, I will not be buying Apple in the near future if I can avoid it. However, those problems are pretty much known beforehand (you could argue that the purple flare is a Samsung-ish problem).
As much as I dislike Apple's products and philosophy, I absolutely hate Samsung's philosophy. In my experience, it's either copying (much more than would be reasonable) successful products or throwing tons of crap at the wall to see what sticks (the galaxy cameras come to mind). Either way, their products are designed to what seem to be very poor standards with atrocious quality control.
Out of 11 Samsung products:
Two were dead on arrival (Ativ Smart PC Pro, a camcorder whose model I don't recall) - they did turn on, but were not in a condition anyone would call useful (dead touchscreen and autofocus, random stability issues, not to mention the fact that the tablet's replacement, like all other units I've seen, had plastic covering one of the keyboard dock's pins and a misaligned speaker grille).
One (40" LCD) developed some unusual dark areas on the screen.
One (Refrigerator) suffers from an ice dispenser button that gets stuck if operated with a single finger, its shelves' plastic is cracking and there's rust developing on some parts of the outside finish.
One (Monitor, Syncmaster 940BW) has a driver issue (seriously. Google it and wonder how it's possible...) under Windows 7 where a driver is automatically installed that includes a bad color profile that causes White to be displayed as Yellow in color-corrected applications, unless a different profile is manually chosen.
One (Dual-SIM phone with crappy resistive touchscreen) was never a decent phone, but its touchscreen decided to crap out one day, for no apparent reason, making it impossible to use.
Another phone (Wave I think it was called... ) was a phone whose hardware showed potential but was running Bada or whatever that OS was called. Not pleasant to use.
Only 4 / 11 Samsung products never gave any reason for complaint (besides limitations that were obvious when buying it - like a screen that is at a fixed height - those were knwon and expected, so there's no reason to blame Samsung): Two 830 SSDs (one 128GB and one 256GB), another monitor (Syncmaster BX2450) and a Blu-Ray drive.
I'm sure someone can give me a comparable amount of Apple horror stories, but I'd bet that most of them are actually limitations that one knows they're buying - like support for newer versions of OS X / iOS being a gamble. The products themselves don't tend to start failing in unpredictable ways, most failures are predictable, in my experience.
tl;dr I won't be buying Samsung again anytime soon (and I wouldn't buy Apple anyway, so don't bother with that angle)
I thought tinfoil-hatters made their own to avoid being trapped in a government conspiracy to sabotage tinfoil hats? How's the business?
Lemme try:
"I know this will get modded down into oblivion, but this absurd focus on social media crap (Thank you Facebook and to a lesser extent Google), along with the support from mobile/pseudo-mobile OS makers (It always comes down to Google, Apple and Microsoft screwing up, doesn't it?) is the perfect analogy for crap traditional media - masses digesting previously regurgitaded content that seems to never have been original and spreading it around so that more memebers of the idiotic masses can rinse and repeat.
You don't see cars running on the waste created by other cars, do you? It's a similar concept to this - something of no value gets reused to create supposed value. Just like it doesn't work for cars, it doesn't work for media. Yet idiots still fall for it and act like it's the best thing in the world! Maybe I should scam some people with a car that runs on CO2... I dunno, maybe I'll say it's as revolutionary as Warp drive in Star Trek. Or turning a bunch of furry stuffed animals into raging mass murderers capable of defeating a trained, well-equipped army. How more revolutionary can something be? If they fall for this, I might even convince a couple of cities to splurge on a monorail line that serves no useful purpose.
Obligatory xkcd perfectly illustrates the current media situation: Some random guy with no knowledge of anything about the subject can succesfully pretend to be a big shot - the situation is that crappy, yes.
And for the parent: It's fucking "Grammar". Not "grmmer" or even "grammer", it's "grammar"! And we're supposed to believe you? How about a link to Wikipedia at the very least, to support your opinion, huh? Oh, must not let facts get in the way of your biased arguments, right? Idiot."
How did I do?
Whoosh...
WinRT is a wrapper for Win32, so someone could develop a Wine-like compatibility layer to provide WinRT support on Win32 systems, which could then be run on Wine.
What are you talking about? If you're talking about lead-acid batteries, they're plastic, lead + lead oxide and sulfuric acid. If you're talking about lithium-ion, there's plastic, lithium + whatever the particular chemistry uses and perhaps some electrolyte.
All of those components are recyclable or reusable in some way.
Recycled, like the vast majority of batteries currently used in cars, hybrid or not.
Not much, but those are the minority of games (how many games have you recently played with no mouse?).
Quality sure as hell suffered. My Vaio SE got its screen scratched by the palm rest just by being carried around in a laptop case. Its keyboard supports snapped on one side after applying a bit more pressure than usual. They did fix the latter, but wanted 300+€ for a new screen (The screen was scratched, had developed bright spots and a dead pixel and always had backlight bleed). Considering they essentially wanted 1/3 of the original price to replace the screen, I refused.
So much for Sony having better quality than most. They certainly won't be getting my money again, regardless of product.
That's a more internal issue. Besides, how many people outside of France use french services?