When the battery dies the power chip gets confused.
My iPhone 6 needed a battery replacement just short of two years and had the same symptoms - the battery indicator would show plenty, but at some random point it just turned off. I was trying to limp along like that until the 7 came out but it continued to deteriorate. $65 and an hour at the Apple Store and all was great again, and now I'll wait for the iPhone 8. I use the phone heavily and often charge during the day, it was up over 700 load cycles when it failed, so I'm not too upset. I've had iPhones since day 1 and never had any trouble before.
I doubt they were really so deluged with orders they had to bring new servers online after the MBP launch, but they certainly need them now that they got such a lovely fluff piece on Slashdot! I've been an Apple user for 27 years, and I'm less happy with them now than ever because they are going too far in the consumer market with the computers. But their market and System76 has a tiny overlap. But kudos to System76 for getting this marketing published on Slashdot!
As others have pointed out the sample size is too small to be scientifically valid, but even if you want to draw conclusions from it, how about the astronauts that went into deep space lived 11.9 years LONGER than those that did not fly, and 9.2 years longer than those that made LEO? Plus many of them are still alive in the 70s and 80s.
I laugh when people call this a thin laptop. No one seems to have imagined how that kickstand and floppy keyboard would work on a lap! Maybe it is a new category, since you need to place a board on your lap before you can use it, they've created the first "board-top".
Exactly. Design by committee, more is better. That is the same way they design everything. Compare Excel to Numbers on the Mac. Microsoft throws in a thousand features almost no one needs, making it much less usable for the 99%.
The Intel version has a great novelty to it. I can see it becoming an executive fashion accessory for a while. People that really need mobile computing will stay away. It looks great sitting on a desk, but imagine how it would work on your lap. You would need to put a briefcase or a board on your lap to provide a stable surface. And, since they said nothing about battery life and there is no battery door, you can count on it running for an hour or two of serious work. So the two unique features (integrated keyboard and kickstand) are of no use unless it is sitting on a table. However, sitting on an executive's desk it screams "I'm too important to have a computer that does real work". They will sell a few.
As for the ARM version, they need to get developers onboard. No tablet developer will abandon the iPad or Android based on Microsoft's promise to execute better this time than they did with Zune and Xbox. Developers won't pick it up until Microsoft has sold a lot of them, and people won't buy a lot of them until there are a lot of apps.
The rushed, shoddy presentation of a future product proves they still haven't figured out what makes Apple successful. It is not surprise announcements, casual clothes, or trendy staging. It is highly usable devices that ship today. When Microsoft gets that their deep pockets may make them a competitor. Not today!
A lower price for an ebook is not proof, or even an indication, of price fixing. If an ebook costs more than the physical book it need mean only that people who read ebooks are willing to pay more. People with ebook readers are probably more affluent and more appreciative of convenience and/or technology, and therefore willing to pay more. Publishers and retailers have every right to charge what the market will bear for a product. If the ebook version of Dune is worth the $3 difference to you, buy it. If not, buy the physical book. Or just check out either the ebook or physical book from your local library for free! But either way you are not getting screwed, you are making a value decision. And if no one wants to pay $3 extra for the ebook, then the publisher can decide to drop the price.
The margin numbers I give are on the whole company. Amazon does not break out the ebooks separately, but the vast majority of its businesses are not on the agency model, so 2012 is applicable. And I'd also point out these articles point out the problem with following percentage numbers which headline all the articles you quote. So Amazon profits climbed 71% in a 2010 quarter: they went from 225 to 384 million. On the other hand Apple's last profit was only up 51%, from 6 billion to 11.6 billion. Amazon was better by 20%. Yea, except Apple made an additional $5.6 billion vs. Amazon's increase of $157 million. When a company operates close to break-even, small actual gains result in large percentage gains. My point is you need to read carefully, even between the lines, and think about what the numbers they choose to give actually say. Read an Apple earning statement- they push the profit. Amazon pushes the revenue. That's why I own Apple stock and not Amazon stock.
I am not making it up. Look closely at the statement amounts for the last quarter. Amazon only states they are making a ton of _revenue_ off the Kindle, not a ton of profit; they do not break out the numbers to pinpoint where their meager profit comes from. Search the web for sites that give estimates of what the Kindle costs to make vs. what they sell it for and make your own decision. The actual numbers are not reported, so the estimates are the best you can do. But something that cannot be hidden is the actual margin for the company. See the NYT discussion of Amazons last quarter:
The article brags about the GROSS margin (profit minus cost of goods which is 24%) but the net margin is their take-home pay. (You can tell if a site is pro or con Amazon by which they report.) To explain the difference, imagine that for $20 including shipping I sell you a book I bought for $10, and it costs me $10 to ship it. My gross margin is 100%, but my net margin is 0%. Amazon's net margin is the total cost of their doing business, including web infrastructure, salaries, real estate taxes, shipping, and everything else that actually costs them money. Amazon's net margin is 130 million profit/13.18 billion revenue or 1.01%! By comparison, Apple's last quarter numbers were 47.4% gross margin and 28.3% net margin.
The books were cheap because Amazon was selling them at a loss to prevent the entry of competition. Amazon has a long-term strategy to work on razor-thin margins driving out all competition. In the last quarter they made about 1% of gross- they made a penny out of every dollar people spent. No small or medium business in their right mind would enter a market like that. So overall Amazon does not turn a lot of profit, but their stock is valuable (much more than their profit would justify) because investors expect that once they have completed driving all their competitors out of business they will raise their margin (meaning the prices you pay go up). So you are going to pay more, a little bit now because of the agency model and most favored nation status thanks to Apple, or a lot more later when no one but Amazon has physical or electronic books to sell you.
Apple has yet to release a serious reading device. I know people who enjoy reading on their iPads, but I've never met a single person who preferred it to e-ink, having tried both.
You have met one now. I have a second gen Kindle, the Kindle fire, and iPads 1 and 3. Forget the Fire - all I read on there is my monthly free book from Amazon Prime. Before the iPad 3 came out, I used the old Kindle regularly, essentially any time there was enough ambient light. I refuse to have a little Kindle light or headlamp to read! I used the first gen iPad to read when it was dark. The new iPad changes that. Its retina display is tough to live without once you have used it. And its backlight produces more than enough light for reading during the day. Only in direct sunlight is there now a problem. So if I'm going to the beach I take the old Kindle, otherwise it is the iPad 3 by a mile.
I wonder how Apple's and Amazon's ebook sales compare?
we'll never know because neither Apple or Amazon break them out of earnings. But there is an essential difference. Apple sells music, movies, and books to get you to buy their hardware which makes them huge money. Amazon is selling their hardware at or below cost, and their books at or below cost. They do this in the hope of gaining market share, and between the lower prices because they lose money and because they were there first, they certainly have an edge. But my point is this has to come to and end soon. If the anti-trust case does not get Apple out of the ebook business (and it won't) Amazon will raise prices.
Worst case they pay a small (for them) fine without admitting wrongdoing, and promise never to do it again. What happens then?
Well, Apple can sell their books at cost or below because their profit comes from hardware. The iTunes store is a tiny blip in Apple's revenue, and ebooks a small part of that tiny bit. The publishers can raise the price Apple, Amazon, and others pay for ebooks, and will to preserve their income. Amazon gives away their hardware at cost, so somewhere they need to start making profit on media. It is widely believed that Amazon is selling many books below publisher's cost in order to drive others out of the business. Once it is clear that Apple can (and will because they have lost the agency model) match Amazon's prices and is in the ebook business to stay, Amazon won't be so anxious to lose money. Then prices will come back to where they have been, maybe even higher.
Apple still breaks records every quarter, Amazon chugs along on its slow growth curve, the publishers keep making some money, and 99% of authors still starve. Nothing's going to change.
If you had $400 or $40,000 it doesn't matter, my advice is the same. Get an 8" Dobsonian (roughly $350 new, but lots available used, just get someone that knows 'sopes to check it out before you buy used). It is amazing what you can see with one of these simple telescopes, and it will teach you the sky because they lack motorized mounts. Next addition is some good eyepieces, they make a huge difference and stay with you as you upgrade the scope, good eyepieces last forever.
Fancy computerized mounts are great, but they are too much of a crutch for the beginning astronomer. I've met people that have been viewing the sky for years but still don't know anything more than the obvious constellations. It is like trying to learn to sail in an America's cup boat, you learn far easier in a simpler boat.
Two things I'd strongly recommend. First, never buy department store telescopes, or any others that advertise their magnifying power, you will not enjoy these and leave the hobby in a few weeks. Second, forget photography until you are much more accomplished, and can afford to spend a lot more than $1000. We have all been spoiled by Hubble photos, and you will be incredibly frustrated trying to come up with a photograph that looks anything like what you can find for free on the web, especially if you aren't spending $5,000 or more for the equipment.
That is telemetry, which gives the status of the satellite. PCSat2 is a material-science experiment, which monitors 70-odd different solar cells and how they respond to the environment of space. The solar cell performance data is sent via a separate amateur radio system.
When the checkout is complete and the satellite is opened for general amateur use, it will also relay position between two points on the earth (which is the main function of the first PCSat).
You can see his current location with this link. This is trasmitted via amateur radio, picked up by a local radio networks, and then forwarded to a server. You can also see the track he took on his current trip with this link.
I think he said what he meant, with full awareness of what all the different definitions of free are, as they are applied to software.
What is more, I think he is right, it IS what MOST people find compelling. Most people do not care about any of the other rights available as pertain to free and open software. What most people care about is that the price is zero. That is all he said, it is just his opinion (and mine FWIIW). This is not a news story...
This would easily be overturned. The amateur radio tracking protocol APRS has had a means to encode Lat/Lon as base 91 for at least 7 years. 91 was chosen to use all printing characters that can be sent over amateur packet radio without special encoding. Base 91 wasn't designed to be used in URLs, but they do claim uses outside URL, and all base numbering systems. Hopefully the patent office will Google before they grant this one...
Let's see...doing something that any sane person would call "making a fool of oneself", desparately calling attention to it, and then trying to make an obscene amount of money from it...
No violation of doctor/patient relationship, because all that is being "disclosed" is that a lawsuit was filed, which is a matter of public record anyway.
On the other hand, if you accuse someone of being a quack, expect a lawsuit yourself, which you will certainly lose!
The average general internist or pediatrician grosses under $150k/year, has to pay their own benefits, and pay $50-80k/year in malpractice insurance. S(he) works between 60-70 hours a week, 50 or more weeks a year. On an hourly basis, they make less than a lot of nurses.
Doctors aren't getting rich any more, only about 5% of the health care dollar goes to doctors. Ancillary personel (nurses, techs, etc.) get 20%, lawyers get 12%, businesspeople get most of the rest! God bless America!
I had to be fingerprinted to renew my medical license a couple years ago.
Every detail of my professional life, including my home address, any criminal arrests or convictions, lawsuits or disciplinary actions, is required by Florida law to be online.
If I get arrested for DUI (not convicted, just arrested) I would have to undergo a years-long period of intensive intervention and probabtion, or I would lose my license.
If I have to undego all this, why shouldn't everyone be forced to undergo this sort of scrutiny???
I work in a big city emergency room. I'm exposed to patients with AIDS, influenza, gastroenteritis viruses (like the ones that plague cruise ships), tuberculosis, and endless cold viruses on a daily basis. When SARS makes it to the US, I'll almost certainly catch it.
I've been bled on, coughed on, crapped on, pissed on, and vomitted on, but the worst is butt pus...
Of course, it pays better than piloting a cubicle...
Slashdot Mirror
When the battery dies the power chip gets confused.
My iPhone 6 needed a battery replacement just short of two years and had the same symptoms - the battery indicator would show plenty, but at some random point it just turned off. I was trying to limp along like that until the 7 came out but it continued to deteriorate. $65 and an hour at the Apple Store and all was great again, and now I'll wait for the iPhone 8. I use the phone heavily and often charge during the day, it was up over 700 load cycles when it failed, so I'm not too upset. I've had iPhones since day 1 and never had any trouble before.
I doubt they were really so deluged with orders they had to bring new servers online after the MBP launch, but they certainly need them now that they got such a lovely fluff piece on Slashdot! I've been an Apple user for 27 years, and I'm less happy with them now than ever because they are going too far in the consumer market with the computers. But their market and System76 has a tiny overlap. But kudos to System76 for getting this marketing published on Slashdot!
As others have pointed out the sample size is too small to be scientifically valid, but even if you want to draw conclusions from it, how about the astronauts that went into deep space lived 11.9 years LONGER than those that did not fly, and 9.2 years longer than those that made LEO? Plus many of them are still alive in the 70s and 80s.
I laugh when people call this a thin laptop. No one seems to have imagined how that kickstand and floppy keyboard would work on a lap! Maybe it is a new category, since you need to place a board on your lap before you can use it, they've created the first "board-top".
Exactly. Design by committee, more is better. That is the same way they design everything. Compare Excel to Numbers on the Mac. Microsoft throws in a thousand features almost no one needs, making it much less usable for the 99%.
The Intel version has a great novelty to it. I can see it becoming an executive fashion accessory for a while. People that really need mobile computing will stay away. It looks great sitting on a desk, but imagine how it would work on your lap. You would need to put a briefcase or a board on your lap to provide a stable surface. And, since they said nothing about battery life and there is no battery door, you can count on it running for an hour or two of serious work. So the two unique features (integrated keyboard and kickstand) are of no use unless it is sitting on a table. However, sitting on an executive's desk it screams "I'm too important to have a computer that does real work". They will sell a few.
As for the ARM version, they need to get developers onboard. No tablet developer will abandon the iPad or Android based on Microsoft's promise to execute better this time than they did with Zune and Xbox. Developers won't pick it up until Microsoft has sold a lot of them, and people won't buy a lot of them until there are a lot of apps.
The rushed, shoddy presentation of a future product proves they still haven't figured out what makes Apple successful. It is not surprise announcements, casual clothes, or trendy staging. It is highly usable devices that ship today. When Microsoft gets that their deep pockets may make them a competitor. Not today!
A lower price for an ebook is not proof, or even an indication, of price fixing. If an ebook costs more than the physical book it need mean only that people who read ebooks are willing to pay more. People with ebook readers are probably more affluent and more appreciative of convenience and/or technology, and therefore willing to pay more. Publishers and retailers have every right to charge what the market will bear for a product. If the ebook version of Dune is worth the $3 difference to you, buy it. If not, buy the physical book. Or just check out either the ebook or physical book from your local library for free! But either way you are not getting screwed, you are making a value decision. And if no one wants to pay $3 extra for the ebook, then the publisher can decide to drop the price.
The margin numbers I give are on the whole company. Amazon does not break out the ebooks separately, but the vast majority of its businesses are not on the agency model, so 2012 is applicable. And I'd also point out these articles point out the problem with following percentage numbers which headline all the articles you quote. So Amazon profits climbed 71% in a 2010 quarter: they went from 225 to 384 million. On the other hand Apple's last profit was only up 51%, from 6 billion to 11.6 billion. Amazon was better by 20%. Yea, except Apple made an additional $5.6 billion vs. Amazon's increase of $157 million. When a company operates close to break-even, small actual gains result in large percentage gains. My point is you need to read carefully, even between the lines, and think about what the numbers they choose to give actually say. Read an Apple earning statement- they push the profit. Amazon pushes the revenue. That's why I own Apple stock and not Amazon stock.
Ooops- as soon as I hit submit I realized that in my bookselling example the initial gross margin is 50%, not 100%.
I am not making it up. Look closely at the statement amounts for the last quarter. Amazon only states they are making a ton of _revenue_ off the Kindle, not a ton of profit; they do not break out the numbers to pinpoint where their meager profit comes from. Search the web for sites that give estimates of what the Kindle costs to make vs. what they sell it for and make your own decision. The actual numbers are not reported, so the estimates are the best you can do. But something that cannot be hidden is the actual margin for the company. See the NYT discussion of Amazons last quarter:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/technology/amazon-profit-dropped-35-percent.html
The article brags about the GROSS margin (profit minus cost of goods which is 24%) but the net margin is their take-home pay. (You can tell if a site is pro or con Amazon by which they report.) To explain the difference, imagine that for $20 including shipping I sell you a book I bought for $10, and it costs me $10 to ship it. My gross margin is 100%, but my net margin is 0%. Amazon's net margin is the total cost of their doing business, including web infrastructure, salaries, real estate taxes, shipping, and everything else that actually costs them money. Amazon's net margin is 130 million profit/13.18 billion revenue or 1.01%! By comparison, Apple's last quarter numbers were 47.4% gross margin and 28.3% net margin.
The books were cheap because Amazon was selling them at a loss to prevent the entry of competition. Amazon has a long-term strategy to work on razor-thin margins driving out all competition. In the last quarter they made about 1% of gross- they made a penny out of every dollar people spent. No small or medium business in their right mind would enter a market like that. So overall Amazon does not turn a lot of profit, but their stock is valuable (much more than their profit would justify) because investors expect that once they have completed driving all their competitors out of business they will raise their margin (meaning the prices you pay go up). So you are going to pay more, a little bit now because of the agency model and most favored nation status thanks to Apple, or a lot more later when no one but Amazon has physical or electronic books to sell you.
Apple has yet to release a serious reading device. I know people who enjoy reading on their iPads, but I've never met a single person who preferred it to e-ink, having tried both.
You have met one now. I have a second gen Kindle, the Kindle fire, and iPads 1 and 3. Forget the Fire - all I read on there is my monthly free book from Amazon Prime. Before the iPad 3 came out, I used the old Kindle regularly, essentially any time there was enough ambient light. I refuse to have a little Kindle light or headlamp to read! I used the first gen iPad to read when it was dark. The new iPad changes that. Its retina display is tough to live without once you have used it. And its backlight produces more than enough light for reading during the day. Only in direct sunlight is there now a problem. So if I'm going to the beach I take the old Kindle, otherwise it is the iPad 3 by a mile.
I wonder how Apple's and Amazon's ebook sales compare?
we'll never know because neither Apple or Amazon break them out of earnings. But there is an essential difference. Apple sells music, movies, and books to get you to buy their hardware which makes them huge money. Amazon is selling their hardware at or below cost, and their books at or below cost. They do this in the hope of gaining market share, and between the lower prices because they lose money and because they were there first, they certainly have an edge. But my point is this has to come to and end soon. If the anti-trust case does not get Apple out of the ebook business (and it won't) Amazon will raise prices.
Apple will not be toast.
Worst case they pay a small (for them) fine without admitting wrongdoing, and promise never to do it again. What happens then?
Well, Apple can sell their books at cost or below because their profit comes from hardware. The iTunes store is a tiny blip in Apple's revenue, and ebooks a small part of that tiny bit. The publishers can raise the price Apple, Amazon, and others pay for ebooks, and will to preserve their income. Amazon gives away their hardware at cost, so somewhere they need to start making profit on media. It is widely believed that Amazon is selling many books below publisher's cost in order to drive others out of the business. Once it is clear that Apple can (and will because they have lost the agency model) match Amazon's prices and is in the ebook business to stay, Amazon won't be so anxious to lose money. Then prices will come back to where they have been, maybe even higher.
Apple still breaks records every quarter, Amazon chugs along on its slow growth curve, the publishers keep making some money, and 99% of authors still starve. Nothing's going to change.
Not required, but there are recommendations:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/dshelms/CWOP_Guide.pdf
There is also a database of siting photos, so an interested meteorologist can see the station in context.
Steve
If you had $400 or $40,000 it doesn't matter, my advice is the same. Get an 8" Dobsonian (roughly $350 new, but lots available used, just get someone that knows 'sopes to check it out before you buy used). It is amazing what you can see with one of these simple telescopes, and it will teach you the sky because they lack motorized mounts. Next addition is some good eyepieces, they make a huge difference and stay with you as you upgrade the scope, good eyepieces last forever.
Fancy computerized mounts are great, but they are too much of a crutch for the beginning astronomer. I've met people that have been viewing the sky for years but still don't know anything more than the obvious constellations. It is like trying to learn to sail in an America's cup boat, you learn far easier in a simpler boat.
Two things I'd strongly recommend. First, never buy department store telescopes, or any others that advertise their magnifying power, you will not enjoy these and leave the hobby in a few weeks. Second, forget photography until you are much more accomplished, and can afford to spend a lot more than $1000. We have all been spoiled by Hubble photos, and you will be incredibly frustrated trying to come up with a photograph that looks anything like what you can find for free on the web, especially if you aren't spending $5,000 or more for the equipment.
When the checkout is complete and the satellite is opened for general amateur use, it will also relay position between two points on the earth (which is the main function of the first PCSat).
You can see his current location with this link. This is trasmitted via amateur radio, picked up by a local radio networks, and then forwarded to a server. You can also see the track he took on his current trip with this link.
I think he said what he meant, with full awareness of what all the different definitions of free are, as they are applied to software.
What is more, I think he is right, it IS what MOST people find compelling. Most people do not care about any of the other rights available as pertain to free and open software. What most people care about is that the price is zero. That is all he said, it is just his opinion (and mine FWIIW). This is not a news story...
This would easily be overturned. The amateur radio tracking protocol APRS has had a means to encode Lat/Lon as base 91 for at least 7 years. 91 was chosen to use all printing characters that can be sent over amateur packet radio without special encoding. Base 91 wasn't designed to be used in URLs, but they do claim uses outside URL, and all base numbering systems. Hopefully the patent office will Google before they grant this one...
Yup, it is performance art!
On the other hand, if you accuse someone of being a quack, expect a lawsuit yourself, which you will certainly lose!
The average general internist or pediatrician grosses under $150k/year, has to pay their own benefits, and pay $50-80k/year in malpractice insurance. S(he) works between 60-70 hours a week, 50 or more weeks a year. On an hourly basis, they make less than a lot of nurses.
Doctors aren't getting rich any more, only about 5% of the health care dollar goes to doctors. Ancillary personel (nurses, techs, etc.) get 20%, lawyers get 12%, businesspeople get most of the rest! God bless America!
http://ww2.doh.state.fl.us/irm00profiling/searchfo rm.asp
Every detail of my professional life, including my home address, any criminal arrests or convictions, lawsuits or disciplinary actions, is required by Florida law to be online.
http://ww2.doh.state.fl.us/irm00profiling/searchf
If I get arrested for DUI (not convicted, just arrested) I would have to undergo a years-long period of intensive intervention and probabtion, or I would lose my license.
If I have to undego all this, why shouldn't everyone be forced to undergo this sort of scrutiny???
Suck it up, people!
Steve
I've been bled on, coughed on, crapped on, pissed on, and vomitted on, but the worst is butt pus...
Of course, it pays better than piloting a cubicle...