It's an interesting part of human psychology I never studied, and I don't know how much research has been done on it. However you see it with relative frequency. Someone will decide something is offensive to a given group without themselves being part of that group.
The two issues people seem to be being offended on behalf of women for are the fact that Uhura wasn't a very "strong woman" character, in particular with her somewhat self centered reaction to Spock's attitude toward death, and to the fact that Kirk leers at Alice Eve's character and we see her in her undergarments.
I don't really get it myself. Ya the Uhura thing was maybe a little silly and "girly" but it was done first to set up Spock's reaction with regards to emotions and second because they wanted a lover's quarrel for comic relief (which the audience I saw it with found quite funny at least).
It is just something you'll encounter from time to time: Someone will find something offensive for you on your behalf, even when they are not in that group. I think perhaps some of the male reviews are worrying too much about if the portrayal of women was "correct" for whatever definition of "correct" they have whereas the women watching the movie are just concerned about if they are enjoying the time they spend watching it.
The problem isn't people not liking the movie, it is people hating on it, often without even seeing it, because they feel like they SHOULDN'T like it. It is similar to the hipster attitude: Star Trek can't be good because it's popular and popular can't be good. The Onion had a hilariously spot on piece on the first one called "Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'." There was plenty of that happening. Trekkies hating on it as being "not Star Trek" or getting mad because it was "mainstream" without any real criticism of the movie, just that it wasn't ok to like because of what it was.
I can respect anyone who says "I don't care for this," but doesn't hate on it, they just don't care for it because it doesn't match their taste.
I can also respect someone who dumps on something, but has a well reasoned argument as to what they see is wrong with it. A great example are the Plinkett reviews on the Star Wars prequel. Mike Strokua presents plenty of reasons as to why they really aren't good movies, not just ones he doesn't care for.
I cannot respect people who hate on things for silly reasons, and who act like you are one of the unwashed masses if you happen to like it. That somehow liking that which is mainstream is bad and means you can't have any taste.
I encounter it with music all the time. I have a more refined taste than many and a lot more knowledge. I was a classical and jazz player for many years (about 10) and, well, if you play them for that long you either grow to enjoy them or you stop. My MP3 library is filled with Orff, Ravel, Bach, Motzart, Ellington, Bassie, Coltraine, Ferguson, and so on. I've also a good bit of theoretical music training, understanding of what actually makes music what it is, and a good bit of acoustics knowledge to boot. I can, should I wish, analyze a song on a fairly technical level.
However I also find I have a lot of enjoyment of new music, including some popular music. One such piece is Party Rock Anthem. It is no great masterpiece but I enjoy it. It is catchy and fun. I like to listen to it. It is also, of course, extremely popular. Something like 500m views on Youtube, where many haven't even heard of the composers I mentioned previously.
For that, I garner a sneer from some other "music lovers," as though you cannot possibly like the "trash" of the masses and still enjoy great works of the past. I say bullshit, you can like what you like, and you can appreciate things in different ways.
So the GP was very accurate, and there's been a lot of that shit in this thread. People whining it isn't "real" sci-fi. That it is dumb because of the actions, that it isn't good Star Trek, etc, etc. I say screw you, it was a fun movie. Not the best I've ever seen, but I enjoyed it....Though on the topic of sound the fucking theatres need to stop abusing the volume dial! I am seriously bringing my SPL meter next time and if it is exceeding maximum levels, I am going to try and get them in trouble. Movies are supposed to be loud for big hits, not all the damn time. 105dB for big brad band hits, 115dB for LFE explosions, 75dB, or less, for dialogue and standard effects. Not loud, louder and loudest!
Star Trek has a rating of 95% (94% with top critics) on Rotten Tomatoes. That puts it waaay up there. So if critic reviews are the "objective" measure, then it was very good. Or maybe we say "power to the people" and look at sales numbers. In that case it grossed $385 million, costing able $150 to make thus making it a success commercially. This is theatre numbers, not including rentals and DVD sales.
This also puts it over the gross for any other Star Trek movie, including the original motion picture, when adjusted for inflation. So by that "objective" measure it is also the best, since people spent the most on it in real dollars (meaning inflation adjusted).
As the parent says, it is fine not to like a movie. Your tastes are your tastes but stop trying to pretend like they are in any way, shape, or form "objective". They are subjective, that is what likes and dislikes are by definition. Particularly since if you put any numbers to it. Star Trek did really well. Film critics liked it, audiences liked it, that makes it good if you want to use metrics to define that.
Gravity is not the best example. The reason is that we really DON'T understand gravity very well. We know that there is a force that we call gravity that causes objects to attract. However we don't have a solid idea how it actually works. We can't get it to unify with the other forces, there are indications that our best theory on it (general relativity) is incomplete and so on.
The FACT of gravity, that objects attract or on a more human scale that shit falls down. We observe this all the time, there's not really a question that there is this force. However the THEORY of gravity, meaning the explanation for what it is and how it works, is something that is not solid.
Now one can of course argue this to global warming as well. There is the fact that average global temperature has been rising, outside of known cycles. There is then the theory as to why, in particular that the primary or exclusive cause is increased atmospheric CO2 levels due to human emissions. One can accept the fact but argue the theory.
The question isn't people running the reds, it is traffic collisions. Cutting down on people running reds isn't useful when it leads to more collisions due to hard braking, which it does. The point of traffic laws is, or at least is supposed to be, safety.
That is probably one of the silliest arguments I've seen in awhile. First off, I normally AM on a desktop, one with a nice nVidia GTX 680 in it which is part of how I have a good comparison of AMD and nVidia drivers. However when I go mobile, I want all the power I can get my hands on. It isn't an either/or situation it is an "all of the above." The 7970M should have tipped you off, it being one of the highest end, most expensive, GPUs out there. My laptop has an Ivy Bridge quad core, and a 7970M, and a Samsung SSD and a Seagate SSHD (it has two drive bays), and 32GB of RAM and so on. I didn't trade off on anything to get an Intel CPU, it's a high end laptop. It doesn't stack up to my desktop, but it is the best I can do and still have it reasonably portable.
There's also the small matter of AMD not really having many good laptop offerings. Sager, the company I elected to use, has none, Dell has none that I know of, ASUS has a grand total of two, both low end (15" 1366x768 screens, for example). I cannot find an AMD CPU laptop that uses AMD's 7970M GPU. That right there might tell you a little something about their CPU offerings.
In terms of CPUs not being an issue, I take it you've never profiled any games have you? You find games are highly vaired in that regard. Some, it matters very little. Others under-utilize the CPU overall because they are not very multi-threaded, but need a lot of speed on a single core, something AMD is not good at delivering. Still others hit it hard all over. Take a look at Battlefield 3 some time. It'll hit a quad quite hard. It also turns out games are not the only thing that like a heavy hitting CPU.
Also, as someone else noted, this -is- and AMD issue. nVidia doesn't have issues with dGPU passthrough.
Finally there's the little problem of things like jittery framerates being 100% on the GPU and its drivers. This is a long standing AMD problem that they are finally, maybe, fixing with newer drivers that affects their desktop parts too.
Have you fixed your drivers yet? I have a laptop with their previous 7970M and man, it has been a trial. To being with performance was hamstrung really badly by under-utilization. It is set up in an Enduro config, meaning it passes its video through the integrated Intel GPU, just as nVidia does with Optimus. However they had continual problems with underuse. That is now mostly fixed, though it took over 6 months for a driver, but there's still big issues of stuttering and such. There's a driver coming "real soon now" that has been that way for a few months. Also they make getting it rather hard. If you go and download the driver from their site, you get the "notebook verification tool" which says that it isn't compatible with my laptop. You have to go find the actual driver file elsewhere and install it.
So really, I am a little unimpressed about their bragging compared to the 680M. The speed of the 680M was more impressive since it actually worked when it was launched. The best hardware is not that impressive if it isn't backed with properly working software, and AMD really seems to like to drop the ball on that. I've been rather annoyed at the problems I've had with my laptop and the length of time it has taken to fix them.
Are you also willing to require that people only drive when they are well rested? Turns out being sleepy is a major impairment to driving. So are we going to restrict that as well? After there is "no excuse".
Because it would seem the economic crisis has been a world wide thing, not a US thing, and it would seem that many countries including many EU countries, are having problems. So, pray tell, what country do you live in that has been unaffected? Prior to answering, you might want to do a bit of research to see if you are talking nonsense or not.
The standard set for 4G was way too high. It isn't like you can just say "We want something to work at this speed!" It is complex, and it is getting harder with wireless because you are working in an environment where you only have so much frequency and shitty SNR. You can't just throw more spectrum at the problem generally.
The thing is 4G, as it is marketed today, or 3GPP LTE as the ITU would like it is a big step up. If you've played with it on a network that implements it well, it is major. I was amazed at how much faster things were when Verizon turned it on in my area (I already had a phone that was ready for it). It is a generational kind of upgrade, not an incremental one, to consumers. So it makes sense to call it something they understand.
Remember labeling isn't all just "marketing" it is also about having shit people can understand. The concept of a wireless "generation" got introduced with 3G phones and people understood it pretty well: 3G phones were a lot faster than their old phones that they now knew were 2G. Makes sense. So it also follows that 4G phones will be faster still.
I really don't like it when new standards get set arbitrarily high and then there's a hissing match over naming and so on. Part of naming should be something to keep it clear to consumers. Don't ask them to go do a ton of research and understand arcane acronyms and so on.
I think it is reasonable to say "Every time we have a big increase in speed due to a change in technology for mobile phones, we'll call it a 'G' increase." LTE really is a new generation of phones. It is much faster, requires new consumer equipment, requires new tower equipment, etc. That it wasn't as fast as the ITU hoped is kinda silly.
Most phones aren't encrypted and usually the company can bypass it. For example with Android phones tied to a Gmail account, Google can bypass the lock screen. So if you forget your password, that is a recovery mechanism. Also data can be accessed if you physically removed the flash chip from the phone and put it in another reader. Lock screens are protection against most kinds of attacks, not high level security. Most people don't need high level security though, so it works well.
You can also encrypt your phone. Well I presume you can encrypt iPhones, having not owned one I don't know. You can encrypt Blackberries and Androids. There you set a key and it does basically a full-disk encryption type of thing. You have to enter the key to access the device at all (whereas lock screen lockouts will allow some stuff to happen) and there is no recovery. If you forget the password, you're boned, flash the device and start over. Few people do that because it is not pushed and is inconvenient.
It is also more security that is generally useful. Most people are worried about someone running up a phone bill, or getting at your account information or something if they steal a phone. A lock screen stops that. Device encryption is needed only against more serious threats, hence most don't use it.
You find a lot of tribalism in political life, particularly these days. People tend to view their group as the good guys, the other group as the bad guys. So because the "good guys" are doing it to the "bad guys" that makes it good. It is ok, it needed to be done because those bad guys are so bad!
Of course if the situation were reversed they'd howl and scream.
The nice thing about Seagate HHDDs or SSHDs or whatever the companies what to call them now is that they just work. You drop it in a system, it works like a normal drive but faster. The flash works like cache on a RAID controller or the like. It just speeds things up.
With this, there's mucking about. Even if you could use it as separate drives, why would you want to? If I want to to just some small SSD storage and larger magnetic, I can. In fact I do. In my laptop I have a SSD for OS and apps and an HDD (actually one of Seagate's hybrids) for media and samples. My desktop is the same but more and larger drives.
It just seems silly to me. An all hardware approach seems much better and clearly doesn't cost that much as Seagate's drives are not expensive.
Have you ever found something, particularly something released years ago, and said "How the hell did I never hear of this?" Well that right there is a failure of marketing. There was something you would have been interested in, but you didn't know that it was out there for you to buy. Things don't just magically spread word-of-mouth. Sometimes it happens, you get lucky and your item is real popular to talk about and everyone spreads it around. However more often, you have to go and make it known.
Also this Ask Slashdot is particularly stupid because he says "non-labour" when talking about expenses. So he means excluding all salaries. You know, the really big expenses. That is the really telling part of how much you spend on something. Salaries will almost always be by far the largest item.
For example I work for a university IT group for an engineering college. We have an annual capital budget, meaning money for computers, switches, that kind of thing of around $100,000. We have an annual salary budget of about $1,000,000. We spend literally around 10x on people as we do on things. It is also fairly expensive when it comes to things since computers need relatively frequent replacement, you usually only get 5-7 years out of them.
That also doesn't pay for a ton of people. That is maybe 9 staff and 10-15 of students.
People are expensive, at least if you want good people and you want to pay them a fair wage. $10,000 gets you a pretty nice Dell server that you can stack a ton of VMs on and it'll last you for a number of years. $10,000 also pays a fraction of one person's salary for a single year. Easy to see why things get stacked in the people direction.
Also more people, more labour, is usually what you need to make something better, to have better service. I mean thinks if you are writing a program, what helps more: An additional server, or an additional coder? I'm not saying the capital equipment is unnecessary, but the expense will be way less.
Since many of the big name anti-virus companies aren't from the US. ESET is in the Slovak Republic. Kaspersky is in Russia. Bitdefender is in Romania. So they don't really take orders from the FBI. Now, they do have US offices, so they aren't 100% out of reach, however they could always decide to shut down their US office. You don't need a presence in the US to sell in the US, and indeed most of them sold their AV scanner prior to having a US office. At that point the US government could go and declare it is illegal to buy their product in the US but man would that send up all kinds of red flags and would really screw over the goal of sneakily getting their stuff on to systems since now everyone would know.
The AV market is pretty global, with many of the vendors not only not being US companies, but not headquartered in US allies. The US government would have very little influence on them over all, and it would more than likely backfire. After all, it could be big press and big sales to be the AV vendor that told the FBI to fuck off and is able to find government security programs.
It is a transfer of risk: You pay a company to assume the risk of a device failing during normal operation. As with any insurance, it is limited in what it covers, and it is more limited than an accidental damage plan.
As to if they are worth it, well it all depends on your situation. Largely it is if you can afford to replace the device in the event it fails. Insurance is rarely "worth it" in the overall sense. I mean obviously insurance companies have to take in more money, on average, they they pay out or they won't exist. So it comes down to the individual loss: You insure things you can't afford to pay for.
So in terms of an extended warranty, well if accidental damage is you concern then you'll need something additional. It would be for a case where you have an expensive device that you really can't afford to replace, and do not wish to do without.
In other words, precisely what I said. Yes, you have to back off on rez and settings. Guess what? That's fine, and expected for something as low power profile as an integrated GPU. Fact remains you can game on it just fine, even new games. Not everyone needs everything cranked, not everyone wants to spend that kind of money. Intel GPUs are extremely competent these days. They are low end and will always be because they get a fraction of the 30-40ish watts of power a laptop CPU/GPU combo can have rather than the 100+ watts a dedicated laptop or desktop GPU can have. However for all that, they do well.
Making a 4k display isn't as simple as manufacturers just wanting it bad enough. I know people like to look at little phone screens and say "If these can be high rez, why can't big displays be higher rez!" but all that shows is a lack of understanding of the situation.
Transistors cost money and pixels require them. How many pixels a display has is not a small part of its cost. So you can't just say "Let's have 4k or 8k desktop displays, should be hard!" because it in fact is.
That isn't to say we won't, it is coming, but it will be some time.
Also there are plenty of other technologies that you need for higher rez like interconnect speed (as you note with DP 1.2), video memory, video processing power and so on. Display makers haven't been "stalling" it is something that hasn't been very doable. If you looked around, you could find that there were (and are) a few examples of higher rez displays but they were expensive and plagued with issues like low refresh rate and requiring multiple dual link DVI connections to run.
Seriously, people need to stop pretending like companies could just give us some awesome new technology if they wanted to bad enough. No, not really. There's a lot that goes in to something like a higher rez display. You don't just wish it into existence.
So chill. Higher DPI displays will happen at some point, probably sooner rather than later. However it isn't a situation of "stalling". It is a situation of R&D, production costs, and all the technology needing to exist.
If you want a 4k display right now, go get a Sony PVM-X300. It's a no-shit 4096 x 2160 30" display. Just don't bitch about the cost.
New Intel GPUs are surprisingly competent. No, they don't stand up to higher end discrete solutions but you can game on them no problem. You have to turn down the details and rez a bit in some of the more intense ones, but you can play pretty much any game on it. (http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-4000-Benchmarked.73567.0.html). For desktops I always recommend dropping $100ish to get a reasonable dedicated card but for laptops, gaming on an integrated chip is realistic if your expectations are likewise realistic.
Gone are the days of the GMA 950 that sucked at even simple GDI+ rendering. The integrated GPUs now are competent, though lower end (in keeping with their power profile).
More about shirking responsibility. If the company provides the device and wants employees to have work data on it, they are responsible. They need to secure it and make sure that data is dealt with properly. If a breach happens, it is on them. Well that's complex and expensive. So, instead just have employees bring in their own devices. Then you aren't responsible. If something happens you say "Oh well that was an employee owned device and they weren't following our security policies (which are so impossibly complex and draconian nobody can follow them) we aren't to blame!"
You can't sue for damages if there aren't any. I don't care if you think it shouldn't be that way, that is how it actually is. Civil court is largely for remedying economic damages. Like if you hire me to do work on your house, I cause damage, and then refuse to pay for it, that is what civil court would be for.
So if I do something to you that is not illegal and causes you no economic harm, well you'll have trouble suing me (successfully) for it. There are cases and trademark infringement is one of them that there is no need to show harm, but not all that many.
So maybe less bitching about capitalism form you, more learning about the court system. Asking if something has done enough harm to warrant damages is a real issue for civil cases. That is how it works, regardless of if you like it or not.
They have to do with backlight and filters. You can already get monitors with much wider gamuts than normal (normal meaning sRGB). This can lead to much more realistic colours since it can cover more of what the eye is capable of seeing, and more importantly can cover all of the colours you are likely to encounter in the world, excluding some special cases like lasers.
The issue currently is that most software isn't colour space aware, so it won't render things right, you'll get oversaturation when you use a wider gamut.
Seriously, whining about a few extra pixels more or less is silly. The "double HDTV" version of 4k is fine, and works well for things given that it makes scaling a 1920x1080 signal easy. There is nothing special about 2^12 when it comes to monitors. We also wouldn't want a computer monitor with such a wide ratio. When you are doing computer work, vertical real estate matters. 2:39:1 CinemaScope is fine for a movie. It isn't what you want when programming or writing documents.
If you need one for pro digital cinema work, well then go get one. The Sony PVM-X300 is 4096x2160 and thus can do DCI 4k native, ACI 4k CinemaScope cropped, DCI 4k flat cropped, and 4k UHD without losing any image or any resizing. Also has 3G HDSDI inputs, 10-bit colour and all kinds of other pro features.
If you really are interested in doing DCI 4k editing, then it is something to get. If you are just whining then stop.
Also if you need something cheap (though given the cost of 4k cameras that is kinda silly) you know you can get computer monitors over 1920 horizontal, right? You can get 2560x1400 and 2560x1600 displays for under $2000. That'll let you do 2048x1280 with no resampling ans space to spare around it for controls. The NEC PA301W is what I'd recommend. 10-bit, full hardware calibration, excellent build quality, $1800 shipped from B&H. It is what I use for general computer use and gaming.
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It's an interesting part of human psychology I never studied, and I don't know how much research has been done on it. However you see it with relative frequency. Someone will decide something is offensive to a given group without themselves being part of that group.
The two issues people seem to be being offended on behalf of women for are the fact that Uhura wasn't a very "strong woman" character, in particular with her somewhat self centered reaction to Spock's attitude toward death, and to the fact that Kirk leers at Alice Eve's character and we see her in her undergarments.
I don't really get it myself. Ya the Uhura thing was maybe a little silly and "girly" but it was done first to set up Spock's reaction with regards to emotions and second because they wanted a lover's quarrel for comic relief (which the audience I saw it with found quite funny at least).
It is just something you'll encounter from time to time: Someone will find something offensive for you on your behalf, even when they are not in that group. I think perhaps some of the male reviews are worrying too much about if the portrayal of women was "correct" for whatever definition of "correct" they have whereas the women watching the movie are just concerned about if they are enjoying the time they spend watching it.
The problem isn't people not liking the movie, it is people hating on it, often without even seeing it, because they feel like they SHOULDN'T like it. It is similar to the hipster attitude: Star Trek can't be good because it's popular and popular can't be good. The Onion had a hilariously spot on piece on the first one called "Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'." There was plenty of that happening. Trekkies hating on it as being "not Star Trek" or getting mad because it was "mainstream" without any real criticism of the movie, just that it wasn't ok to like because of what it was.
I can respect anyone who says "I don't care for this," but doesn't hate on it, they just don't care for it because it doesn't match their taste.
I can also respect someone who dumps on something, but has a well reasoned argument as to what they see is wrong with it. A great example are the Plinkett reviews on the Star Wars prequel. Mike Strokua presents plenty of reasons as to why they really aren't good movies, not just ones he doesn't care for.
I cannot respect people who hate on things for silly reasons, and who act like you are one of the unwashed masses if you happen to like it. That somehow liking that which is mainstream is bad and means you can't have any taste.
I encounter it with music all the time. I have a more refined taste than many and a lot more knowledge. I was a classical and jazz player for many years (about 10) and, well, if you play them for that long you either grow to enjoy them or you stop. My MP3 library is filled with Orff, Ravel, Bach, Motzart, Ellington, Bassie, Coltraine, Ferguson, and so on. I've also a good bit of theoretical music training, understanding of what actually makes music what it is, and a good bit of acoustics knowledge to boot. I can, should I wish, analyze a song on a fairly technical level.
However I also find I have a lot of enjoyment of new music, including some popular music. One such piece is Party Rock Anthem. It is no great masterpiece but I enjoy it. It is catchy and fun. I like to listen to it. It is also, of course, extremely popular. Something like 500m views on Youtube, where many haven't even heard of the composers I mentioned previously.
For that, I garner a sneer from some other "music lovers," as though you cannot possibly like the "trash" of the masses and still enjoy great works of the past. I say bullshit, you can like what you like, and you can appreciate things in different ways.
So the GP was very accurate, and there's been a lot of that shit in this thread. People whining it isn't "real" sci-fi. That it is dumb because of the actions, that it isn't good Star Trek, etc, etc. I say screw you, it was a fun movie. Not the best I've ever seen, but I enjoyed it. ...Though on the topic of sound the fucking theatres need to stop abusing the volume dial! I am seriously bringing my SPL meter next time and if it is exceeding maximum levels, I am going to try and get them in trouble. Movies are supposed to be loud for big hits, not all the damn time. 105dB for big brad band hits, 115dB for LFE explosions, 75dB, or less, for dialogue and standard effects. Not loud, louder and loudest!
Star Trek has a rating of 95% (94% with top critics) on Rotten Tomatoes. That puts it waaay up there. So if critic reviews are the "objective" measure, then it was very good. Or maybe we say "power to the people" and look at sales numbers. In that case it grossed $385 million, costing able $150 to make thus making it a success commercially. This is theatre numbers, not including rentals and DVD sales.
This also puts it over the gross for any other Star Trek movie, including the original motion picture, when adjusted for inflation. So by that "objective" measure it is also the best, since people spent the most on it in real dollars (meaning inflation adjusted).
As the parent says, it is fine not to like a movie. Your tastes are your tastes but stop trying to pretend like they are in any way, shape, or form "objective". They are subjective, that is what likes and dislikes are by definition. Particularly since if you put any numbers to it. Star Trek did really well. Film critics liked it, audiences liked it, that makes it good if you want to use metrics to define that.
Gravity is not the best example. The reason is that we really DON'T understand gravity very well. We know that there is a force that we call gravity that causes objects to attract. However we don't have a solid idea how it actually works. We can't get it to unify with the other forces, there are indications that our best theory on it (general relativity) is incomplete and so on.
The FACT of gravity, that objects attract or on a more human scale that shit falls down. We observe this all the time, there's not really a question that there is this force. However the THEORY of gravity, meaning the explanation for what it is and how it works, is something that is not solid.
Now one can of course argue this to global warming as well. There is the fact that average global temperature has been rising, outside of known cycles. There is then the theory as to why, in particular that the primary or exclusive cause is increased atmospheric CO2 levels due to human emissions. One can accept the fact but argue the theory.
Just saying, maybe pick a better example.
The question isn't people running the reds, it is traffic collisions. Cutting down on people running reds isn't useful when it leads to more collisions due to hard braking, which it does. The point of traffic laws is, or at least is supposed to be, safety.
The #1 thing you can do to reduce collisions in an intersection is lengthen the yellow. Go ask AAA, they've got plenty of data on it.
Shit like this, and this is not the first time it happens, proves that traffic cameras are 100% NOT about safety, they are about money.
That is probably one of the silliest arguments I've seen in awhile. First off, I normally AM on a desktop, one with a nice nVidia GTX 680 in it which is part of how I have a good comparison of AMD and nVidia drivers. However when I go mobile, I want all the power I can get my hands on. It isn't an either/or situation it is an "all of the above." The 7970M should have tipped you off, it being one of the highest end, most expensive, GPUs out there. My laptop has an Ivy Bridge quad core, and a 7970M, and a Samsung SSD and a Seagate SSHD (it has two drive bays), and 32GB of RAM and so on. I didn't trade off on anything to get an Intel CPU, it's a high end laptop. It doesn't stack up to my desktop, but it is the best I can do and still have it reasonably portable.
There's also the small matter of AMD not really having many good laptop offerings. Sager, the company I elected to use, has none, Dell has none that I know of, ASUS has a grand total of two, both low end (15" 1366x768 screens, for example). I cannot find an AMD CPU laptop that uses AMD's 7970M GPU. That right there might tell you a little something about their CPU offerings.
In terms of CPUs not being an issue, I take it you've never profiled any games have you? You find games are highly vaired in that regard. Some, it matters very little. Others under-utilize the CPU overall because they are not very multi-threaded, but need a lot of speed on a single core, something AMD is not good at delivering. Still others hit it hard all over. Take a look at Battlefield 3 some time. It'll hit a quad quite hard. It also turns out games are not the only thing that like a heavy hitting CPU.
Also, as someone else noted, this -is- and AMD issue. nVidia doesn't have issues with dGPU passthrough.
Finally there's the little problem of things like jittery framerates being 100% on the GPU and its drivers. This is a long standing AMD problem that they are finally, maybe, fixing with newer drivers that affects their desktop parts too.
Have you fixed your drivers yet? I have a laptop with their previous 7970M and man, it has been a trial. To being with performance was hamstrung really badly by under-utilization. It is set up in an Enduro config, meaning it passes its video through the integrated Intel GPU, just as nVidia does with Optimus. However they had continual problems with underuse. That is now mostly fixed, though it took over 6 months for a driver, but there's still big issues of stuttering and such. There's a driver coming "real soon now" that has been that way for a few months. Also they make getting it rather hard. If you go and download the driver from their site, you get the "notebook verification tool" which says that it isn't compatible with my laptop. You have to go find the actual driver file elsewhere and install it.
So really, I am a little unimpressed about their bragging compared to the 680M. The speed of the 680M was more impressive since it actually worked when it was launched. The best hardware is not that impressive if it isn't backed with properly working software, and AMD really seems to like to drop the ball on that. I've been rather annoyed at the problems I've had with my laptop and the length of time it has taken to fix them.
Are you also willing to require that people only drive when they are well rested? Turns out being sleepy is a major impairment to driving. So are we going to restrict that as well? After there is "no excuse".
Because it would seem the economic crisis has been a world wide thing, not a US thing, and it would seem that many countries including many EU countries, are having problems. So, pray tell, what country do you live in that has been unaffected? Prior to answering, you might want to do a bit of research to see if you are talking nonsense or not.
The standard set for 4G was way too high. It isn't like you can just say "We want something to work at this speed!" It is complex, and it is getting harder with wireless because you are working in an environment where you only have so much frequency and shitty SNR. You can't just throw more spectrum at the problem generally.
The thing is 4G, as it is marketed today, or 3GPP LTE as the ITU would like it is a big step up. If you've played with it on a network that implements it well, it is major. I was amazed at how much faster things were when Verizon turned it on in my area (I already had a phone that was ready for it). It is a generational kind of upgrade, not an incremental one, to consumers. So it makes sense to call it something they understand.
Remember labeling isn't all just "marketing" it is also about having shit people can understand. The concept of a wireless "generation" got introduced with 3G phones and people understood it pretty well: 3G phones were a lot faster than their old phones that they now knew were 2G. Makes sense. So it also follows that 4G phones will be faster still.
I really don't like it when new standards get set arbitrarily high and then there's a hissing match over naming and so on. Part of naming should be something to keep it clear to consumers. Don't ask them to go do a ton of research and understand arcane acronyms and so on.
I think it is reasonable to say "Every time we have a big increase in speed due to a change in technology for mobile phones, we'll call it a 'G' increase." LTE really is a new generation of phones. It is much faster, requires new consumer equipment, requires new tower equipment, etc. That it wasn't as fast as the ITU hoped is kinda silly.
Most phones aren't encrypted and usually the company can bypass it. For example with Android phones tied to a Gmail account, Google can bypass the lock screen. So if you forget your password, that is a recovery mechanism. Also data can be accessed if you physically removed the flash chip from the phone and put it in another reader. Lock screens are protection against most kinds of attacks, not high level security. Most people don't need high level security though, so it works well.
You can also encrypt your phone. Well I presume you can encrypt iPhones, having not owned one I don't know. You can encrypt Blackberries and Androids. There you set a key and it does basically a full-disk encryption type of thing. You have to enter the key to access the device at all (whereas lock screen lockouts will allow some stuff to happen) and there is no recovery. If you forget the password, you're boned, flash the device and start over. Few people do that because it is not pushed and is inconvenient.
It is also more security that is generally useful. Most people are worried about someone running up a phone bill, or getting at your account information or something if they steal a phone. A lock screen stops that. Device encryption is needed only against more serious threats, hence most don't use it.
You find a lot of tribalism in political life, particularly these days. People tend to view their group as the good guys, the other group as the bad guys. So because the "good guys" are doing it to the "bad guys" that makes it good. It is ok, it needed to be done because those bad guys are so bad!
Of course if the situation were reversed they'd howl and scream.
The nice thing about Seagate HHDDs or SSHDs or whatever the companies what to call them now is that they just work. You drop it in a system, it works like a normal drive but faster. The flash works like cache on a RAID controller or the like. It just speeds things up.
With this, there's mucking about. Even if you could use it as separate drives, why would you want to? If I want to to just some small SSD storage and larger magnetic, I can. In fact I do. In my laptop I have a SSD for OS and apps and an HDD (actually one of Seagate's hybrids) for media and samples. My desktop is the same but more and larger drives.
It just seems silly to me. An all hardware approach seems much better and clearly doesn't cost that much as Seagate's drives are not expensive.
Have you ever found something, particularly something released years ago, and said "How the hell did I never hear of this?" Well that right there is a failure of marketing. There was something you would have been interested in, but you didn't know that it was out there for you to buy. Things don't just magically spread word-of-mouth. Sometimes it happens, you get lucky and your item is real popular to talk about and everyone spreads it around. However more often, you have to go and make it known.
Also this Ask Slashdot is particularly stupid because he says "non-labour" when talking about expenses. So he means excluding all salaries. You know, the really big expenses. That is the really telling part of how much you spend on something. Salaries will almost always be by far the largest item.
For example I work for a university IT group for an engineering college. We have an annual capital budget, meaning money for computers, switches, that kind of thing of around $100,000. We have an annual salary budget of about $1,000,000. We spend literally around 10x on people as we do on things. It is also fairly expensive when it comes to things since computers need relatively frequent replacement, you usually only get 5-7 years out of them.
That also doesn't pay for a ton of people. That is maybe 9 staff and 10-15 of students.
People are expensive, at least if you want good people and you want to pay them a fair wage. $10,000 gets you a pretty nice Dell server that you can stack a ton of VMs on and it'll last you for a number of years. $10,000 also pays a fraction of one person's salary for a single year. Easy to see why things get stacked in the people direction.
Also more people, more labour, is usually what you need to make something better, to have better service. I mean thinks if you are writing a program, what helps more: An additional server, or an additional coder? I'm not saying the capital equipment is unnecessary, but the expense will be way less.
Since many of the big name anti-virus companies aren't from the US. ESET is in the Slovak Republic. Kaspersky is in Russia. Bitdefender is in Romania. So they don't really take orders from the FBI. Now, they do have US offices, so they aren't 100% out of reach, however they could always decide to shut down their US office. You don't need a presence in the US to sell in the US, and indeed most of them sold their AV scanner prior to having a US office. At that point the US government could go and declare it is illegal to buy their product in the US but man would that send up all kinds of red flags and would really screw over the goal of sneakily getting their stuff on to systems since now everyone would know.
The AV market is pretty global, with many of the vendors not only not being US companies, but not headquartered in US allies. The US government would have very little influence on them over all, and it would more than likely backfire. After all, it could be big press and big sales to be the AV vendor that told the FBI to fuck off and is able to find government security programs.
It is a transfer of risk: You pay a company to assume the risk of a device failing during normal operation. As with any insurance, it is limited in what it covers, and it is more limited than an accidental damage plan.
As to if they are worth it, well it all depends on your situation. Largely it is if you can afford to replace the device in the event it fails. Insurance is rarely "worth it" in the overall sense. I mean obviously insurance companies have to take in more money, on average, they they pay out or they won't exist. So it comes down to the individual loss: You insure things you can't afford to pay for.
So in terms of an extended warranty, well if accidental damage is you concern then you'll need something additional. It would be for a case where you have an expensive device that you really can't afford to replace, and do not wish to do without.
In other words, precisely what I said. Yes, you have to back off on rez and settings. Guess what? That's fine, and expected for something as low power profile as an integrated GPU. Fact remains you can game on it just fine, even new games. Not everyone needs everything cranked, not everyone wants to spend that kind of money. Intel GPUs are extremely competent these days. They are low end and will always be because they get a fraction of the 30-40ish watts of power a laptop CPU/GPU combo can have rather than the 100+ watts a dedicated laptop or desktop GPU can have. However for all that, they do well.
Making a 4k display isn't as simple as manufacturers just wanting it bad enough. I know people like to look at little phone screens and say "If these can be high rez, why can't big displays be higher rez!" but all that shows is a lack of understanding of the situation.
Transistors cost money and pixels require them. How many pixels a display has is not a small part of its cost. So you can't just say "Let's have 4k or 8k desktop displays, should be hard!" because it in fact is.
That isn't to say we won't, it is coming, but it will be some time.
Also there are plenty of other technologies that you need for higher rez like interconnect speed (as you note with DP 1.2), video memory, video processing power and so on. Display makers haven't been "stalling" it is something that hasn't been very doable. If you looked around, you could find that there were (and are) a few examples of higher rez displays but they were expensive and plagued with issues like low refresh rate and requiring multiple dual link DVI connections to run.
Seriously, people need to stop pretending like companies could just give us some awesome new technology if they wanted to bad enough. No, not really. There's a lot that goes in to something like a higher rez display. You don't just wish it into existence.
So chill. Higher DPI displays will happen at some point, probably sooner rather than later. However it isn't a situation of "stalling". It is a situation of R&D, production costs, and all the technology needing to exist.
If you want a 4k display right now, go get a Sony PVM-X300. It's a no-shit 4096 x 2160 30" display. Just don't bitch about the cost.
New Intel GPUs are surprisingly competent. No, they don't stand up to higher end discrete solutions but you can game on them no problem. You have to turn down the details and rez a bit in some of the more intense ones, but you can play pretty much any game on it. (http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-4000-Benchmarked.73567.0.html). For desktops I always recommend dropping $100ish to get a reasonable dedicated card but for laptops, gaming on an integrated chip is realistic if your expectations are likewise realistic.
Gone are the days of the GMA 950 that sucked at even simple GDI+ rendering. The integrated GPUs now are competent, though lower end (in keeping with their power profile).
More about shirking responsibility. If the company provides the device and wants employees to have work data on it, they are responsible. They need to secure it and make sure that data is dealt with properly. If a breach happens, it is on them. Well that's complex and expensive. So, instead just have employees bring in their own devices. Then you aren't responsible. If something happens you say "Oh well that was an employee owned device and they weren't following our security policies (which are so impossibly complex and draconian nobody can follow them) we aren't to blame!"
You can't sue for damages if there aren't any. I don't care if you think it shouldn't be that way, that is how it actually is. Civil court is largely for remedying economic damages. Like if you hire me to do work on your house, I cause damage, and then refuse to pay for it, that is what civil court would be for.
So if I do something to you that is not illegal and causes you no economic harm, well you'll have trouble suing me (successfully) for it. There are cases and trademark infringement is one of them that there is no need to show harm, but not all that many.
So maybe less bitching about capitalism form you, more learning about the court system. Asking if something has done enough harm to warrant damages is a real issue for civil cases. That is how it works, regardless of if you like it or not.
They have to do with backlight and filters. You can already get monitors with much wider gamuts than normal (normal meaning sRGB). This can lead to much more realistic colours since it can cover more of what the eye is capable of seeing, and more importantly can cover all of the colours you are likely to encounter in the world, excluding some special cases like lasers.
The issue currently is that most software isn't colour space aware, so it won't render things right, you'll get oversaturation when you use a wider gamut.
Seriously, whining about a few extra pixels more or less is silly. The "double HDTV" version of 4k is fine, and works well for things given that it makes scaling a 1920x1080 signal easy. There is nothing special about 2^12 when it comes to monitors. We also wouldn't want a computer monitor with such a wide ratio. When you are doing computer work, vertical real estate matters. 2:39:1 CinemaScope is fine for a movie. It isn't what you want when programming or writing documents.
If you need one for pro digital cinema work, well then go get one. The Sony PVM-X300 is 4096x2160 and thus can do DCI 4k native, ACI 4k CinemaScope cropped, DCI 4k flat cropped, and 4k UHD without losing any image or any resizing. Also has 3G HDSDI inputs, 10-bit colour and all kinds of other pro features.
If you really are interested in doing DCI 4k editing, then it is something to get. If you are just whining then stop.
Also if you need something cheap (though given the cost of 4k cameras that is kinda silly) you know you can get computer monitors over 1920 horizontal, right? You can get 2560x1400 and 2560x1600 displays for under $2000. That'll let you do 2048x1280 with no resampling ans space to spare around it for controls. The NEC PA301W is what I'd recommend. 10-bit, full hardware calibration, excellent build quality, $1800 shipped from B&H. It is what I use for general computer use and gaming.
Probably because they are close to the golden ratio. 16/10 = 1.6, and the golden ratio is about 1.618. 16/9 = 1.78.
We tend to find it pleasing (hence the name) so it makes sense to have a monitor that is around it.