The white first gen macbooks certainly had issues. I believe they were the first to attempt a matte finish white plastic case for a laptop computer, which was bound to cause issues with discoloration. There was one bad run of white topcase plastic that stained from skin oil and makeup, though the rest were ok. As to the cracking, there were actually not one, but two separate cracking issues. One was IMHO a design flaw, placing the top lid rests to land at a weak spot where the top case was thin and bridged a gap over the optical drive. The other less-known issue was hairline cracking near the ports. I have no idea why it was doing that, I can only assume it was again a plastics issue of stress cracking. (I'm not a plastics engineer) In all three of these cases though, Apple has been replacing these parts for free, as far as one year out of warranty. Although you can still count those as quality issues, I'd say repairing a year out of warranty is a pretty good reaction by Apple. That's the price you have to pay for cutting edge technology.
"razor sharp edges" is a bit melodramatic don't you think? They've got an edge like a butter knife.
The whole heat sink compound issue is entertaining at best. There are only two ways to overuse hsc: put on so much that you can't press the heat spreader down flush on the die, or put on so much that it oozes out and blocks ventilation, neither of which has happened with macs. You'll notice none of the people discussing this "issue" are citing anyone with a clue. (like an electrical engineer) Having worked with electronics for over 30 years, all I can do is laugh at these people that think because they see some hsc oozed out from the spreader that it's somehow defective. The only two common ways to screw this up is use cheap/contaminated hcs, or not get your heat spreader down firm and flush, and that's never been an issue with Apple.
Heat is turning out to be a tradeoff though. You want it to run as fast as possible, you want it to be small, and you want it to always run cool. Pick two, you can't have all three. Don't set it on your lap while you're doing video rendering. Apple does some of the best cooling of any computer, desktop or laptop, using multiple fans and temperature sensors with zones, and intelligent fan speed control with acoustic consideration. They run cooler (and quieter) than any laptop or desktop of their size and speed. Compare with your dell's size, acoustic level, and processor speed. Apple also figured out early it's a stupid idea to put vents or intakes on the underside of a laptop.
Jury's still out on the backlight issue. I haven't seen enough examples of this problem yet to figure out what's going on with them. CCT lighting issues are extremely rare and are actually almost alway defective inverters. There seem to have been an early run of LED backlights with the "stage lights" effect but I haven't seen a single one of those show up, I'm assuming those are also very rare or occurred only very early in the initial run.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the hard drives in the macbooks. OMG seagate needs to be publicly beaten. I've lost count of how many seagate hds have failed in macbooks. Bad choice by Apple to OEM them. Thankfully they're going WD now. Speculating there hasn't been a major outcry because people can more easily recognize an OEM isn't directly responsible for such a clearly outsourced part.
I haven't heard anyone say a word about issues with the desktops lately. Considering how Apple likes to keep near the bleeding edge, it's surprising to see two entire generations of new systems with no common early issues. (talking about the silver cased imacs or mac pros) Has anyone heard anything at all bad about them? I've ran into a few 24" imacs with bad power supplies, but haven't heard anyone discussing that publicly.
past actions and mistakes should not automatically cause your loss of rights. "Innocent until proven guilty" does not have a "unless you've been a bad boy" clause.
had you gotten a recording of that, you may have found yourself with a full scholorship and straight A's. Assuming you kept copies of the tape in several safe locations.
a lot of people went to youtube to find eps of TV shows. Combine the takedowns with hulu, and that's got to be responsible for a lot of their lost revenue.
Tweenbot: ask nice robot lady to upgrade module so i can write capital letters
I was just thinking how hilarious and interesting it would be to find out where they were planning to release one of these, and mug it during the test, and do a 30 second Indy pitstop to upgrade it with say, voice or something else before they could react, and scatter, and see what the coordinators thought of that...
A little turmabout, let THEM become the social experiment...:)
I bet they are as basic as it gets, they probably bought one of those $19 radio shack remote control cars, you know the ones with a single button remote that makes it back up while turning the wheel, removed the shell, (or maybe not!) and put the cardboard top on it. Probably the biggest challenge was making sure the batteries would last the duration of the test. That one was what, 40-some minutes, that's a long time for a pair of C batteries.
I suppose they could have extended battery life by simply removing the receiver altogether since it was unnecessary.
I bet they would have gotten even better results by adding a push sensor bumper on the front, that when it hit something it would make a little pathetic squeak or something. That would add a whole new angle to the analysis and anthropomorphize it one step more by appealing more to the public's sense of pity. (or annoyance I suppose) Might do the same with a tilt sensor so it would also sound pathetic if it tipped over.
Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the âoerightâ direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation.
I'd have lost that bet. Maybe I'm too cynical.
But the one example they showed was entirely within a city park. I can't imagine this working in the city, the odds of it getting ran over would have to approach 1:1 most other places.
I wonder if the sidewalk it was traveling down (to the south) had a physical barrier blocking it from going further south? (toward traffic) In that respect I would expect the locations were carefully chosen to minimize risk.
Although mutual attraction would account for multiple objects in the L point staying near each other, there's no specific force attracting things TO the center of the L point. (beyond the gravity of objects already there, which unless they're massive, is pretty small) Beyond that, the areas anywhere except exactly in the L point only work to take you AWAY from the L point. This would seem to suggest that only one thing can maintain its position at any given L point, since only one thing can be precisely at the center of the L point. (tho maybe several things can collect together there in a lump?)
The traditional drawings I've seen of them show several satelites collecting in a cloud of sorts at a given L point. That doesn't seem to make much sense, the only way they could stay there is if they were touching? wouldn't work too well for satellites. Also having debris collect all around your surface would not be good either.
If one body managed to get to the L point, it could help attract other objects to the L point where they could lump together, but that still does not explain what keeps the mass IN the L point. Even a very weak influence from the outside would pull it ever so slightly away from the center (matter of millimeters even) and then it would not be experiencing even attraction anymore and would be pulled away from the L point?
afaik, all the L points are NOT static. The points exist where equilibrium of gravity from all nearby major sources is, and since all these sources are in motion relative to each other, the L points must also move.
For example, the location of the lagrange point between earth and moon is affected by the sun's gravity. It's not enough necessarily to pull anything out of it, but since it's moving, relative to what's IN it, (asteroids, satellites, whatever).
What I don't understand is why things tend to collect there. I can understand that once something arrives there, it would be easy for it to stay there, but the L point is just that, a point, not a region. A single asteroid that found itself exactly centered at L5 (ignoring tidal effects of the asteroid) and with zero relative momentum to L5's movement through space, could stay there. But L5 moves as the planets and satellites orbit. Not a lot, but some. And I don't see any factor that would cause an object that had left L5 (or more correctly, L5 had moved) to become attracted to moving back to L5. It's like a steel ball in between two magnets. If you put the ball in precisely the L point of where their fields meet, it can stay there. But one tiny nudge in the wrong direction (any point NOT on the perpendicular bisector of its location) would cause one magnet to attract it more than the other could counter, and the ball would slowly start to creep, and would soon accelerate and fly to the magnet. Why is this not an issue with the lagrange points? Only objects on the perp bisector of that L point would tend to move to the L point.
The bacteria would 'think' they were alone when they are actually in a group
That only covers the quorum inhibitors. The presenter made almost zero distinction between the use of boosters and inhibitors. That particular quote discusses the inhibitors. I'm sure the boosters don't work that way. (which is the scenario I was exploring)
I found it interesting that she didn't expand on what the actual effects of the quorum drugs were. She just said that we have these quorum suppressors and quorum enhancers and we're going to use them to fix our problems. Why? Why would an enhancer be useful and a suppressor be useful? when? Felt more like "we found a way to meddle with the system and are going to flail our hands wildly and hope something good happens!"
The mouse example was a good illustration of this. After all the setup describing what they did, the conclusion: "the mouse lived" or "the mouse died". Well, THAT demonstrates a good understanding and thorough conclusion now doesn't it? I'd feel a lot better if they acted like they had any idea WHY the mouse lived or died, other than based on what drugs they treated it with. Why did the drugs help? What specific bacterial behaviors were altered?
My wild speculation here is that if you pump a bunch of those quorum signals into a body, you fool the bacteria into believing they are a lot more numerous, and trigger their pathogenic (dangerous/attack) behavior (and thus an accelerated immune system response) before there's enough bacteria present to overcome the immune system. Instead, the immune system has the time to get ramped up and move to action while there's still a low bacterial count, and the bacteria are wiped out. THAT'S the kind of conclusion I was expecting from this presentation. But instead I was sadly disappointed by the almost complete lack of followthrough at the end of what started as a very interesting presentation.
stopping the killer T cells from seeking out and attacking foreign objects."
So is this basically just shutting the immune system off? Wouldn't that cause serious problems, unless you're a "boy in a bubble"?
I'll admit that not having a liver is a more immediate problem than not having an immune system, but both should be terminal conditions shouldn't they?
Does that mean they will fix all the bugs that have been found in the past? No. Can someone else fix them? No.
That does raise an interesting discussion... if a company is officially going to stop supporting a product that is still heavily in use, should they have an obligation to open up the source? I think so.
Of course with xp goes an obvious problem... imagine just how much worse the malware scene would be if they had access to windows source code? (tho from the levels of sophistication seen in modern malware, it's painfully obvious they've already grown very skilled with a decompiler)
Guessing the main reason MS would say NO is that many security problems in XP also exist in Vista/7 also due to inheritance, most of which MS is relying purely on protection from security-through-obscurity, and we all know how good a model that is. "Hmm this is vulnerable in XP, wonder if it still works in 7? well isn't that useful!"
Stunned as always, things you'd swear "could never happen again", DO. (for those that missed the connection, one of Hitler Youth's main tennants was snitching on your parents)
I say he should have waited for them to level all the charges they could against him, before turning the arrow the other way. Or maybe he did. Either way, it'll be really hard for them to back down on the bill after they themselves calculated it. (realizing the biller and the infringer are not the same entity, but they're acting together it appears)
Depends on what criteria you want to use. Doom was probably the first contender but lacked almost all notion of the 3rd dimension. IMHO bungie hit it first with Marathon, with improvements over Doom too numerous to list. Some of the key additions were vertical aim, lifts, reloading, reasonable ammunition limits, bundled map AND physics editors, improved mob AI, and of course the big winner, networked multiplayer deathmatch. I personally think that last one is a requirement, though there have been some very good FPS that lack multiplayer. (Deus Ex my fav) The only thing Marathon lacked at the time was "jump" and "climb".
What I wonder is, are companies like Cox pulling maneuvers similar to "Hollywood Accounting" to make their end costs really high, which would appear to justify jacking everyone's rates up, but under the table they're paying themselves off (via their affiliate or otherwise owned companies) and turning an insane profit in the big picture?
Slashdot Mirror
The white first gen macbooks certainly had issues. I believe they were the first to attempt a matte finish white plastic case for a laptop computer, which was bound to cause issues with discoloration. There was one bad run of white topcase plastic that stained from skin oil and makeup, though the rest were ok. As to the cracking, there were actually not one, but two separate cracking issues. One was IMHO a design flaw, placing the top lid rests to land at a weak spot where the top case was thin and bridged a gap over the optical drive. The other less-known issue was hairline cracking near the ports. I have no idea why it was doing that, I can only assume it was again a plastics issue of stress cracking. (I'm not a plastics engineer) In all three of these cases though, Apple has been replacing these parts for free, as far as one year out of warranty. Although you can still count those as quality issues, I'd say repairing a year out of warranty is a pretty good reaction by Apple. That's the price you have to pay for cutting edge technology.
"razor sharp edges" is a bit melodramatic don't you think? They've got an edge like a butter knife.
The whole heat sink compound issue is entertaining at best. There are only two ways to overuse hsc: put on so much that you can't press the heat spreader down flush on the die, or put on so much that it oozes out and blocks ventilation, neither of which has happened with macs. You'll notice none of the people discussing this "issue" are citing anyone with a clue. (like an electrical engineer) Having worked with electronics for over 30 years, all I can do is laugh at these people that think because they see some hsc oozed out from the spreader that it's somehow defective. The only two common ways to screw this up is use cheap/contaminated hcs, or not get your heat spreader down firm and flush, and that's never been an issue with Apple.
Heat is turning out to be a tradeoff though. You want it to run as fast as possible, you want it to be small, and you want it to always run cool. Pick two, you can't have all three. Don't set it on your lap while you're doing video rendering. Apple does some of the best cooling of any computer, desktop or laptop, using multiple fans and temperature sensors with zones, and intelligent fan speed control with acoustic consideration. They run cooler (and quieter) than any laptop or desktop of their size and speed. Compare with your dell's size, acoustic level, and processor speed. Apple also figured out early it's a stupid idea to put vents or intakes on the underside of a laptop.
Jury's still out on the backlight issue. I haven't seen enough examples of this problem yet to figure out what's going on with them. CCT lighting issues are extremely rare and are actually almost alway defective inverters. There seem to have been an early run of LED backlights with the "stage lights" effect but I haven't seen a single one of those show up, I'm assuming those are also very rare or occurred only very early in the initial run.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the hard drives in the macbooks. OMG seagate needs to be publicly beaten. I've lost count of how many seagate hds have failed in macbooks. Bad choice by Apple to OEM them. Thankfully they're going WD now. Speculating there hasn't been a major outcry because people can more easily recognize an OEM isn't directly responsible for such a clearly outsourced part.
I haven't heard anyone say a word about issues with the desktops lately. Considering how Apple likes to keep near the bleeding edge, it's surprising to see two entire generations of new systems with no common early issues. (talking about the silver cased imacs or mac pros) Has anyone heard anything at all bad about them? I've ran into a few 24" imacs with bad power supplies, but haven't heard anyone discussing that publicly.
given that Apple's quality has dropped as of late,
Can you link some of those for us to look at? ("pictures, or it didn't happen")
Isn't cheaper to just build a building than to refurbish some of these locations?
because hydrogen-bomb proof locations are so much cheaper to build yourself! Menards has a kits for sale I hear.
past actions and mistakes should not automatically cause your loss of rights. "Innocent until proven guilty" does not have a "unless you've been a bad boy" clause.
had you gotten a recording of that, you may have found yourself with a full scholorship and straight A's. Assuming you kept copies of the tape in several safe locations.
a lot of people went to youtube to find eps of TV shows. Combine the takedowns with hulu, and that's got to be responsible for a lot of their lost revenue.
Tweenbot: ask nice robot lady to upgrade module so i can write capital letters
I was just thinking how hilarious and interesting it would be to find out where they were planning to release one of these, and mug it during the test, and do a 30 second Indy pitstop to upgrade it with say, voice or something else before they could react, and scatter, and see what the coordinators thought of that...
A little turmabout, let THEM become the social experiment... :)
I bet they are as basic as it gets, they probably bought one of those $19 radio shack remote control cars, you know the ones with a single button remote that makes it back up while turning the wheel, removed the shell, (or maybe not!) and put the cardboard top on it. Probably the biggest challenge was making sure the batteries would last the duration of the test. That one was what, 40-some minutes, that's a long time for a pair of C batteries.
I suppose they could have extended battery life by simply removing the receiver altogether since it was unnecessary.
I bet they would have gotten even better results by adding a push sensor bumper on the front, that when it hit something it would make a little pathetic squeak or something. That would add a whole new angle to the analysis and anthropomorphize it one step more by appealing more to the public's sense of pity. (or annoyance I suppose) Might do the same with a tilt sensor so it would also sound pathetic if it tipped over.
Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the âoerightâ direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation.
I'd have lost that bet. Maybe I'm too cynical.
But the one example they showed was entirely within a city park. I can't imagine this working in the city, the odds of it getting ran over would have to approach 1:1 most other places.
I wonder if the sidewalk it was traveling down (to the south) had a physical barrier blocking it from going further south? (toward traffic) In that respect I would expect the locations were carefully chosen to minimize risk.
So, have we found it more common for the calibration to drift to the right, or to the left ?
Although mutual attraction would account for multiple objects in the L point staying near each other, there's no specific force attracting things TO the center of the L point. (beyond the gravity of objects already there, which unless they're massive, is pretty small) Beyond that, the areas anywhere except exactly in the L point only work to take you AWAY from the L point. This would seem to suggest that only one thing can maintain its position at any given L point, since only one thing can be precisely at the center of the L point. (tho maybe several things can collect together there in a lump?)
The traditional drawings I've seen of them show several satelites collecting in a cloud of sorts at a given L point. That doesn't seem to make much sense, the only way they could stay there is if they were touching? wouldn't work too well for satellites. Also having debris collect all around your surface would not be good either.
If one body managed to get to the L point, it could help attract other objects to the L point where they could lump together, but that still does not explain what keeps the mass IN the L point. Even a very weak influence from the outside would pull it ever so slightly away from the center (matter of millimeters even) and then it would not be experiencing even attraction anymore and would be pulled away from the L point?
afaik, all the L points are NOT static. The points exist where equilibrium of gravity from all nearby major sources is, and since all these sources are in motion relative to each other, the L points must also move.
For example, the location of the lagrange point between earth and moon is affected by the sun's gravity. It's not enough necessarily to pull anything out of it, but since it's moving, relative to what's IN it, (asteroids, satellites, whatever).
What I don't understand is why things tend to collect there. I can understand that once something arrives there, it would be easy for it to stay there, but the L point is just that, a point, not a region. A single asteroid that found itself exactly centered at L5 (ignoring tidal effects of the asteroid) and with zero relative momentum to L5's movement through space, could stay there. But L5 moves as the planets and satellites orbit. Not a lot, but some. And I don't see any factor that would cause an object that had left L5 (or more correctly, L5 had moved) to become attracted to moving back to L5. It's like a steel ball in between two magnets. If you put the ball in precisely the L point of where their fields meet, it can stay there. But one tiny nudge in the wrong direction (any point NOT on the perpendicular bisector of its location) would cause one magnet to attract it more than the other could counter, and the ball would slowly start to creep, and would soon accelerate and fly to the magnet. Why is this not an issue with the lagrange points? Only objects on the perp bisector of that L point would tend to move to the L point.
The bacteria would 'think' they were alone when they are actually in a group
That only covers the quorum inhibitors. The presenter made almost zero distinction between the use of boosters and inhibitors. That particular quote discusses the inhibitors. I'm sure the boosters don't work that way. (which is the scenario I was exploring)
I found it interesting that she didn't expand on what the actual effects of the quorum drugs were. She just said that we have these quorum suppressors and quorum enhancers and we're going to use them to fix our problems. Why? Why would an enhancer be useful and a suppressor be useful? when? Felt more like "we found a way to meddle with the system and are going to flail our hands wildly and hope something good happens!"
The mouse example was a good illustration of this. After all the setup describing what they did, the conclusion: "the mouse lived" or "the mouse died". Well, THAT demonstrates a good understanding and thorough conclusion now doesn't it? I'd feel a lot better if they acted like they had any idea WHY the mouse lived or died, other than based on what drugs they treated it with. Why did the drugs help? What specific bacterial behaviors were altered?
My wild speculation here is that if you pump a bunch of those quorum signals into a body, you fool the bacteria into believing they are a lot more numerous, and trigger their pathogenic (dangerous/attack) behavior (and thus an accelerated immune system response) before there's enough bacteria present to overcome the immune system. Instead, the immune system has the time to get ramped up and move to action while there's still a low bacterial count, and the bacteria are wiped out. THAT'S the kind of conclusion I was expecting from this presentation. But instead I was sadly disappointed by the almost complete lack of followthrough at the end of what started as a very interesting presentation.
stopping the killer T cells from seeking out and attacking foreign objects."
So is this basically just shutting the immune system off? Wouldn't that cause serious problems, unless you're a "boy in a bubble"?
I'll admit that not having a liver is a more immediate problem than not having an immune system, but both should be terminal conditions shouldn't they?
No. No such obligation should ever exist.
You could do us the courtesy of explaining the reason for your opinion. "NO!" isn't a useful contribution to any discussion.
Does that mean they will fix all the bugs that have been found in the past? No.
Can someone else fix them? No.
That does raise an interesting discussion... if a company is officially going to stop supporting a product that is still heavily in use, should they have an obligation to open up the source? I think so.
Of course with xp goes an obvious problem... imagine just how much worse the malware scene would be if they had access to windows source code? (tho from the levels of sophistication seen in modern malware, it's painfully obvious they've already grown very skilled with a decompiler)
Guessing the main reason MS would say NO is that many security problems in XP also exist in Vista/7 also due to inheritance, most of which MS is relying purely on protection from security-through-obscurity, and we all know how good a model that is. "Hmm this is vulnerable in XP, wonder if it still works in 7? well isn't that useful!"
when will they ever get rid of that?
Hitler Youth, sound familiar to anyone?
Stunned as always, things you'd swear "could never happen again", DO. (for those that missed the connection, one of Hitler Youth's main tennants was snitching on your parents)
I say he should have waited for them to level all the charges they could against him, before turning the arrow the other way. Or maybe he did. Either way, it'll be really hard for them to back down on the bill after they themselves calculated it. (realizing the biller and the infringer are not the same entity, but they're acting together it appears)
Depends on what criteria you want to use. Doom was probably the first contender but lacked almost all notion of the 3rd dimension. IMHO bungie hit it first with Marathon, with improvements over Doom too numerous to list. Some of the key additions were vertical aim, lifts, reloading, reasonable ammunition limits, bundled map AND physics editors, improved mob AI, and of course the big winner, networked multiplayer deathmatch. I personally think that last one is a requirement, though there have been some very good FPS that lack multiplayer. (Deus Ex my fav) The only thing Marathon lacked at the time was "jump" and "climb".
What I wonder is, are companies like Cox pulling maneuvers similar to "Hollywood Accounting" to make their end costs really high, which would appear to justify jacking everyone's rates up, but under the table they're paying themselves off (via their affiliate or otherwise owned companies) and turning an insane profit in the big picture?
all that accomplished was some of the most insane, noisy, LONG (sometimes downright musical) copy protection verifications in history.
isn't that some of what makes Windows so exciting? autorun on media insert...
meant to mod that funny. mod buttons have a hair trigger...