It'll be interesting to see how the sales for it fare; will the Apple faithful buy it anyway and delude themselves into thinking it's wonderful even though it's a big step down?
If it were just this then I'd say no but as an Apple user for the past decade this was the last straw. I've been waiting over a year now for a new Mac Pro with nothing and when I was thinking of switching to the Mac Mini to get by they took out two of the cores so it is now a desktop with less power than even their low end laptops. With this latest change they are killing off the laptops as well: no ports, crap GPU, old CPU and insane pricing. I'm now going to move back to PCs with Linux+Windows. Windows has a new Linux subsystem which will hopefully make it bearable and the new hardware from Microsoft, Surface book and Surface studio, looks far more like it came from Apple while the new Macbooks with their fondle bar are far more reminiscent of the old-style MS 'innovations': a stupid gimmick with no real use.
A simple google would show you there are plenty of them.
Possibly but the primary use of USB sticks is for sharing files between machines so until the vast majority of laptops in use have USB-C and the vast majority of memory stick use it too it is really important to have at least one USB-A port. A single USB-A port would have been vastly more useful than a fourth USB-C.
Just arrange a discussion group. Get a bunch of slashdot readers onboard and from a suitably safe distance just ask them whether vi or emacs is best. Then just sit back and watch the launch.
Frankly, the reason TV is being taken over by Netflix et al. has everything to do with getting rid of ads.
True but they have to make it attractive to get people to take the plunge and switch. Wait another few years until Netflix starts to reach subscriber saturation and their revenues are no longer increasing due to growth. Then they will then try to start adding in the ads to increase their revenue and/or have over the rate of inflation price increases until the next technology comes along to make them obsolete and the cycle can begin again.
Apple will price their products to reflect the development costs and engineering expense they invest to design and deliver new parts, services, and experience.
Agreed. The problem is that in the past those costs went into developing useful features like a rugged aluminium body, a fantastic glass trackpad with gesture support, longer battery life etc. With this model that cost has gone into removing multiple important ports (one USB-A and a SD card slot would have been really nice), removing previous innovations (no mag-safe) and removing function keys to replace them with a silly gimick that would require me to divide attention between the keyboard and screen.
On top of this they release it with a CPU that is one year old and a GPU that is one generation old. This is not the Apple of a few years ago that negotiated to get early access to Intel CPUs and used cutting end GPUs in the machines. On top of that they did not refresh their desktop line and are STILL trying to sell a $4k+ Mac Pro machine which is now 3 years old. Apple have not only dropped the ball with the mac they did so so long ago that the competition has run with it and scored and they still don't even seem to realize it. Just compare the new MS Surface Studio to what Apple came up with. I've used macs for over a decade now but this even really was the last straw and reluctantly I'm heading back to Linux and Windows now.
It's not a lie - show me where to plug in lightning earphones into the new mac WITHOUT using a dongle and I'll retract. I've been a loyal mac user for the past decade with a desktop and a laptop both of which are in desperate need of an update and I really just want a new mac. However I am not going to pay full price for a 3 year old Mac Pro machine nor am I going to pay over $4k (Canadian) for a high end laptop with an already out of date CPU and GPU. Apple have dropped the ball so much that I'm doing what would have been unthinkable a year ago: I'm looking at switching to windows and I'm not happy.
They are currently busy removing that archaic interface known as the keyboard one row at a time. Given them a chance to finish that before they start removing all the remaining ports.
...if you think about the ear phone situation. The new macs still have a 3.5mm jack for ear phones and no special wireless chip. Hence there are no ear phones which will work with both your mac an your iPhone.
People used to claim that Apple was a hardware company but given the current state of their hardware this is hard to believe. I think they are turning into a dongle company where they plan to make their money selling dongles to let you connect all their hardware together.
Funny, I was going to say the same thing about Trump, but even moreso. Take a look at politifact. 80% of the what comes out of his mouth is a lie.
Exactly so he is clearly a very poor example because he did not start by telling little lies he started by telling huge whoppers and just never stopped.
Any remedy that involves me getting into a lawsuit with a megacorp isn't going to work.
...and hence we are back to my original point that we need to level the playing field in the legal system between huge corporations and individuals because in order for any penalty to be applied there has to be a court involved to determine whether the corporation did perjure themselves.
There is good reason to believe that this is the best algorithm to use.
Just because the current best algorithm we have cannot explain why it made a certain decision it does not follow that all future best algorithms will be unable to explain. Indeed for some applications, such as scientific data analysis, one of the reasons we use algorithms like Boosted Decision Trees a lot is because we can see exactly why an event was classified as signal vs. background.
Fingerprints are an inherently insecure way to 'secure' a device of any kind because there are techniques to obtain latent fingerprints, which we all leave everywhere anyway,
If someone wants to get into my device so much that they are willing to find, scan and make replica fingerprints then at this point passwords are even less secure.
How do you differentiate between a "good AI" with bad decisions and a "bad AI" making good decisions?
The same way you would do this with humans: you would need to read their mind to understand the motivation behind the decision. This is probably a lot easier for an AI (so long as it is Open Source!) than for a human.
Overwhelming medical evidence huh? Show me the double blind placebo safety test performed on a vaccine. I bet you can't show me one.
I don't need to show you a double blind placebo safety test. Just look at the death rates from measles, mumps, whooping cough, the rate of birth defects caused by german measles or the rate of TB cases in Europe (where they vaccinate for it). There is literally no other plausible explanation for the dramatic declines in death rates for these diseases which occur immediately after vaccination programs started. Note also the absence of a similar increase in deaths or serious complications for the vaccine. The tests you mention are conducted before mass deployment. Now these vaccines are deployed you just need to look at the data: they really are overwhelming.
Are you or have you ever been an anti-vaxxer? If yes, you are blacklisted.
McCarthism was persecuting people for political beliefs which had nothing to do with their job performance. Being an anti-vaxxer in the face of the overwhelming medical evidence that supports vaccines calls into question the ability of the person to be a medical professional.
Everybody has the right to his own opinion and has the freedom to express the same. Including nurses.
Indeed they do but they do not have a fundamental human right to be a nurse. To be a medical professional you have to meet certain criteria because people need to be able to trust the advice that you give and this advice can very severely impact their lives if it is wrong. While they are entitled to their own opinion if they want to share it with others they need to do so without the authority of a medical professional because the medical profession is rather unequivocal that the benefits of vaccines massively outweigh the tiny risks.
If not jail time, what punishment would you suggest for people who file fraudulent DMCA claims then?
How about statutory damages to the person the complaint is against to compensate them for their time fighting it and any potential damage caused? If you wanted a bit of poetic justice you could set the damages using the same formula for the ones the typical complainants use when claiming damages against something that actually is infringing. It would be very hard for them to argue against that without saying that their own claims are massively inflated.
When all armies are made of robots, it will be senseless for them to fight each other. They will then be used to attack civilians.
More civilians will suffer but probably only indirectly either as collateral damage (in much the same way as drone strikes today kill innocent civilians while targeting terrorists) or because the US will get involved in far more situations than it does today. Unlike humans where every casualty has a negative impact on votes, every destroyed robot means more money for the companies making them which means more money for politicians which means more votes.
What, you think that just because the US military currently has over 1 million human troops but zero robot ones...
Last I checked they had a few drones, either that or they have some really tiny pilots. I expect the first land-based robots will work in the same way: some autonomy to handle simple tasks but anything complicated will be done by a human "pilot".
It's putting the onus on the defense to prove that they're _not_ infringing. Assume guilt much?
I agree it is a problem but not for the reason you give. Samsung will still have to prove that the defendant infringed their copyright. The problem is one of risk. The cost of the court case is the problem here. Samsung is, for the moment ay least, a multi-billion dollar company with huge pockets. Win or lose the cost of this type of court case is a blip in their budget. However for the defendant the financial risk is huge: he could lose his life savings on a case like this.
This is the serious problem with the law today. Corporations can afford to bring frivolous cases knowing that the defendant cannot afford the time and money risk. What we ned to have is a system where the financial risk is comparable. For example perhaps if a corporation loses a case like this they should be required to compensate the defendant with one years salary of their highest paid employee. Who knows perhaps this might also help limit currently insanely high executive pay.
Slashdot Mirror
It'll be interesting to see how the sales for it fare; will the Apple faithful buy it anyway and delude themselves into thinking it's wonderful even though it's a big step down?
If it were just this then I'd say no but as an Apple user for the past decade this was the last straw. I've been waiting over a year now for a new Mac Pro with nothing and when I was thinking of switching to the Mac Mini to get by they took out two of the cores so it is now a desktop with less power than even their low end laptops. With this latest change they are killing off the laptops as well: no ports, crap GPU, old CPU and insane pricing. I'm now going to move back to PCs with Linux+Windows. Windows has a new Linux subsystem which will hopefully make it bearable and the new hardware from Microsoft, Surface book and Surface studio, looks far more like it came from Apple while the new Macbooks with their fondle bar are far more reminiscent of the old-style MS 'innovations': a stupid gimmick with no real use.
A simple google would show you there are plenty of them.
Possibly but the primary use of USB sticks is for sharing files between machines so until the vast majority of laptops in use have USB-C and the vast majority of memory stick use it too it is really important to have at least one USB-A port. A single USB-A port would have been vastly more useful than a fourth USB-C.
Just arrange a discussion group. Get a bunch of slashdot readers onboard and from a suitably safe distance just ask them whether vi or emacs is best. Then just sit back and watch the launch.
Frankly, the reason TV is being taken over by Netflix et al. has everything to do with getting rid of ads.
True but they have to make it attractive to get people to take the plunge and switch. Wait another few years until Netflix starts to reach subscriber saturation and their revenues are no longer increasing due to growth. Then they will then try to start adding in the ads to increase their revenue and/or have over the rate of inflation price increases until the next technology comes along to make them obsolete and the cycle can begin again.
Show me an i7 Kaby Lake CPU for a laptop that I can buy right now?
Ok how about the Dell XPS 13? Scroll to the last few models and they have 7th Gen i7 Kaby Lake CPUs. If Dell can do it Apple has no excuse.
Apple will price their products to reflect the development costs and engineering expense they invest to design and deliver new parts, services, and experience.
Agreed. The problem is that in the past those costs went into developing useful features like a rugged aluminium body, a fantastic glass trackpad with gesture support, longer battery life etc. With this model that cost has gone into removing multiple important ports (one USB-A and a SD card slot would have been really nice), removing previous innovations (no mag-safe) and removing function keys to replace them with a silly gimick that would require me to divide attention between the keyboard and screen.
On top of this they release it with a CPU that is one year old and a GPU that is one generation old. This is not the Apple of a few years ago that negotiated to get early access to Intel CPUs and used cutting end GPUs in the machines. On top of that they did not refresh their desktop line and are STILL trying to sell a $4k+ Mac Pro machine which is now 3 years old. Apple have not only dropped the ball with the mac they did so so long ago that the competition has run with it and scored and they still don't even seem to realize it. Just compare the new MS Surface Studio to what Apple came up with. I've used macs for over a decade now but this even really was the last straw and reluctantly I'm heading back to Linux and Windows now.
Huh?! Since when were you forced to buy Apple products?
Well if you buy one of the new MacBooks you'll find that now there is literally no escape so it's best to get out now while you still can.
what a weird thing to lie about.
It's not a lie - show me where to plug in lightning earphones into the new mac WITHOUT using a dongle and I'll retract. I've been a loyal mac user for the past decade with a desktop and a laptop both of which are in desperate need of an update and I really just want a new mac. However I am not going to pay full price for a 3 year old Mac Pro machine nor am I going to pay over $4k (Canadian) for a high end laptop with an already out of date CPU and GPU. Apple have dropped the ball so much that I'm doing what would have been unthinkable a year ago: I'm looking at switching to windows and I'm not happy.
They are currently busy removing that archaic interface known as the keyboard one row at a time. Given them a chance to finish that before they start removing all the remaining ports.
...if you think about the ear phone situation. The new macs still have a 3.5mm jack for ear phones and no special wireless chip. Hence there are no ear phones which will work with both your mac an your iPhone.
People used to claim that Apple was a hardware company but given the current state of their hardware this is hard to believe. I think they are turning into a dongle company where they plan to make their money selling dongles to let you connect all their hardware together.
Funny, I was going to say the same thing about Trump, but even moreso. Take a look at politifact. 80% of the what comes out of his mouth is a lie.
Exactly so he is clearly a very poor example because he did not start by telling little lies he started by telling huge whoppers and just never stopped.
Any remedy that involves me getting into a lawsuit with a megacorp isn't going to work.
There is good reason to believe that this is the best algorithm to use.
Just because the current best algorithm we have cannot explain why it made a certain decision it does not follow that all future best algorithms will be unable to explain. Indeed for some applications, such as scientific data analysis, one of the reasons we use algorithms like Boosted Decision Trees a lot is because we can see exactly why an event was classified as signal vs. background.
Phones need a panic button. Say tap the power button three times quickly and it goes into a locked down mode...
Samsung have a tablet that can go one better than that: it destroys all the data and the device itself if you do that.
Fingerprints are an inherently insecure way to 'secure' a device of any kind because there are techniques to obtain latent fingerprints, which we all leave everywhere anyway,
If someone wants to get into my device so much that they are willing to find, scan and make replica fingerprints then at this point passwords are even less secure.
How do you differentiate between a "good AI" with bad decisions and a "bad AI" making good decisions?
The same way you would do this with humans: you would need to read their mind to understand the motivation behind the decision. This is probably a lot easier for an AI (so long as it is Open Source!) than for a human.
Overwhelming medical evidence huh? Show me the double blind placebo safety test performed on a vaccine. I bet you can't show me one.
I don't need to show you a double blind placebo safety test. Just look at the death rates from measles, mumps, whooping cough, the rate of birth defects caused by german measles or the rate of TB cases in Europe (where they vaccinate for it). There is literally no other plausible explanation for the dramatic declines in death rates for these diseases which occur immediately after vaccination programs started. Note also the absence of a similar increase in deaths or serious complications for the vaccine. The tests you mention are conducted before mass deployment. Now these vaccines are deployed you just need to look at the data: they really are overwhelming.
Are you or have you ever been an anti-vaxxer? If yes, you are blacklisted.
McCarthism was persecuting people for political beliefs which had nothing to do with their job performance. Being an anti-vaxxer in the face of the overwhelming medical evidence that supports vaccines calls into question the ability of the person to be a medical professional.
Actually Nurses know what is going on much more than what doctors do.
I highly doubt that is true for the ones advocating against vaccines.
Everybody has the right to his own opinion and has the freedom to express the same. Including nurses.
Indeed they do but they do not have a fundamental human right to be a nurse. To be a medical professional you have to meet certain criteria because people need to be able to trust the advice that you give and this advice can very severely impact their lives if it is wrong. While they are entitled to their own opinion if they want to share it with others they need to do so without the authority of a medical professional because the medical profession is rather unequivocal that the benefits of vaccines massively outweigh the tiny risks.
...maybe it's because people who buy $600 phones tend to have more money (and less worries) than people who buy $50 devices.
This also explains why Samsung is top because those owners will never have to worry about being able to stay warm at night.
If not jail time, what punishment would you suggest for people who file fraudulent DMCA claims then?
How about statutory damages to the person the complaint is against to compensate them for their time fighting it and any potential damage caused? If you wanted a bit of poetic justice you could set the damages using the same formula for the ones the typical complainants use when claiming damages against something that actually is infringing. It would be very hard for them to argue against that without saying that their own claims are massively inflated.
When all armies are made of robots, it will be senseless for them to fight each other. They will then be used to attack civilians.
More civilians will suffer but probably only indirectly either as collateral damage (in much the same way as drone strikes today kill innocent civilians while targeting terrorists) or because the US will get involved in far more situations than it does today. Unlike humans where every casualty has a negative impact on votes, every destroyed robot means more money for the companies making them which means more money for politicians which means more votes.
What, you think that just because the US military currently has over 1 million human troops but zero robot ones...
Last I checked they had a few drones, either that or they have some really tiny pilots. I expect the first land-based robots will work in the same way: some autonomy to handle simple tasks but anything complicated will be done by a human "pilot".
It's putting the onus on the defense to prove that they're _not_ infringing. Assume guilt much?
I agree it is a problem but not for the reason you give. Samsung will still have to prove that the defendant infringed their copyright. The problem is one of risk. The cost of the court case is the problem here. Samsung is, for the moment ay least, a multi-billion dollar company with huge pockets. Win or lose the cost of this type of court case is a blip in their budget. However for the defendant the financial risk is huge: he could lose his life savings on a case like this.
This is the serious problem with the law today. Corporations can afford to bring frivolous cases knowing that the defendant cannot afford the time and money risk. What we ned to have is a system where the financial risk is comparable. For example perhaps if a corporation loses a case like this they should be required to compensate the defendant with one years salary of their highest paid employee. Who knows perhaps this might also help limit currently insanely high executive pay.