From what I see, this Zenbook is missing USB-C, but the Macbooks are being built with this feature. This may or may not matter to most people. At least to me, a lack of USB-C makes a laptop un-buyable in 2016.
There is some truth to that, but that's not the whole story.
There are many good people out there, but you will see people from CS or Computer Eng backgrounds that understand surprisingly little about any part of a computer or software (even from good schools... sometimes I can't fathom how they passed). And at least 80% of the time someone writes that they know SQL or Unix on their resume, they can't name even a few basic commands.
I've you've ever hired for a stem job, you will know: there are plenty of people with the right degree out there. Finding one with a degree who understands even half of what they learned is another.
Ok, so this is what I got from reading that short: well, this doesn't really address any of the concerns people have mentioned, but it's super duper powerful. Wheee!
I still don't quite get it myself and wouldn't buy one, but I guess its hard to speculate how the market will react.
the debates about whether schooling dulls the brain or whether newspapers damage the fabric of society seem peculiar
What? It doesn't to me, actually. Modern schooling and news media give us many of nifty tools, but also do damage to our education and ability to think independently, and so in turn to society. So, I'm not sure I agree we can dismiss debate like this. I pick this quote because it's an example of why this is a poor argument.
The whole argument the author uses assumes we have consistently progressed using media and surpassed the problems media critics pointed out, therefore critics in the past are wrong. Maybe it's true that they are always rather negative and forget the positive aspects of change, but there have been a huge range of critics with lots of criticisms that seem to have manifested true.
Sorry, but you can't throw out an argument like this author did in a 1-page article, he just has too many presumptions for too complex an issue.
I disagree. I'm paying you for the option to buy electricity when I need it. It costs money to provide that option, and so I should (rightfully) pay for it. The fee for this option may have been implicity built into the rates in the past, but I think they are just changing their model to more closely reflect costs because the market is changing.
I am not sure we can/should speculate on this without more details. Of course the energy company wants to ensure its revenues, but this may not be unreasonable. Even if you have solar, you're (probably) still connected to the grid. It's a huge convenience to you to use just a bit of energy when you really need it - but what if you only use $5 worth of electricity at a low cost? The billing probably process probably costs a nice percentage of your total bill! Is it really unreasonable to pay for a connectivity fee? I don't think it is necessarily...
Maybe I have no ICT skills, but I've looked at the stuff on their website, and I call BS on their assessment. How ironic that I find that their study that says people like me have no information skills calls the information the give total crap.
Take a look at their flash demo. I think they pull this out of their asses pretty much. Not to say that any college students (myself included) do have critical thinking skills, but let's not get our knickers in a knot.
Dr. Quack is an assistant professor at Harvard med school, so I don't think that's really a fair comment. Psycological addiction can still be a problem, it is not fair to say it is not. Nor is it fair to say that it is not their fault. But that doesn't mean it is not worth helping people.
Also, I don't think it trivializes people with drug dependencies. First, I don't think alcohol is really much of a physical dependence at all (but I'm no expert, just my opinion). Second, if you decide to put drugs into your body without being fully informed of both positives and negatives before you do it, you deserve what you get - and blaming it on physical dependence is not ok.
Why can't they make raids scale to the number of people in them? So if 20 people show up, the difficulty is 20. If 40 people show up, the difficulty is 40. That way, there is no requirement for people to stay in the raid, and no requirement that people HAVE to show up. Whoever has free time can join in, and whoever doesn't have free time doesn't have to join in. There is no way that that is too difficult to impliment.
Question 1: What happened to the PowerPC's supposed performance advantage over Intel?
Gap is breaking, and there are many other advantages of Intel/x86.
Question 2: What happened to Apple's 64-bit operating system?
Just because Intel's 64 bit is expensive now, doesn't mean it will be in a year.
Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?
Who knows if it will be supported, but AMD doesn't have the supply of chips to deal with Apple. Plus, Intel has better brand recognition and probably more muscle in negotiating a contract.
Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
For developers... ?
Question 5: Is this all really about Digital Rights Management?
Probably not.
Where have we seen crap like this before... ? I know! In drug education. Kids today either get bad information from friends (try these drugs, they're cool, there's no risk) or from the school (don't do drugs, they're all bad and will ruin your life). I personally have seen that kids have so much mis-information about things like this (sex, drugs, where are parents these days, anyways?). And we wonder why kids do so many drugs? Well, maybe the school should teach them the truth instead of lies and propaganda, then kids will learn to make responsible choices. Maybe it's just me, but nothing makes me more annoyed than being mis-educated. By the way, if you do want to do drugs, read erowid.org first =)
The truth is that there is nothing wrong with educating kids about something like copyright law, even if it is supported by the music industry. Except the problem, as everyone already knows and pointed out, is that it will end up as an extremely biased education.
I'm doing International Baccalaureate Computer scicence, and it does that. You write your exam code in a pseudocode that an examiner can understand. The course also requires you to to write a program (of reasonably significant size for a HS student) and have that marked, but you can use any language you want since, ultimately, the code isn't what counts - it's the documentation and the algorithms. Implementation is just picky details.
It is interesting that Stanford, a top school in the world, trusts the studens to uphold the honor code. I remember reading about the problems of cheating, and McGill's exceptionally strict examination policies - and then they compared this to Stanford. I personally would never cheat, and having to submit my papers to a cheat detector would really ruin the learning environment for me.
Here is a little blurb on stanford's and U of V's policies policies (Taken from here, speaking of plagiarizing:P )
[Stanford] gives students and the community full responsibility of themselves and of upholding the honor law. The university puts all the pressure of academic integrity on its students and it trusts them enough not to cheat so that the faculty is not constantly reminding them of the Code, "The faculty on its part manifests its confidence in the honor of its students by refraining from proctoring examinations and from taking unusual and unreasonable precautions to prevent [...] dishonesty [...]. The faculty will also avoid, as far as practicable, academic procedures that create temptations to violate the Honor Code." (S. U.) Another school where this idea of ienforcementi is put into effect is the University of Richmond in Virginia. This school lets students "leave the classroom during an exam or [...] may even take the exam home" (U. of V.). The professors trust the students because of the enforcement factor. Instead of faculty breathing down the student's neck about cheating, the student knows it is his/her responsibility not to cheat. Millersville University would benefit by adopting this honor code. The students here are trustworthy and would also benefit from the fact that they are trusted by their instructors.
Powerbooks may not be as tough as ToughBooks, but you might be really surprised by how durable they are. Read the story of this poor powerbook... it survived getting run over by a truck. Hehe =D
Really, it shouldn't be a huge deal. We're launching ourselves into space and we expect it go problem free? Ok, no matter how great you are you'll make mistakes, people will die & money is lost. It happens, but it's not a good reason to stop doing it (although there may bemany other good reasons.) There are probably more people who die of starvation each minute than have ever died related to accidents in spacecraft (and the people in the spacecraft knowingly take a risk.) We probably spend as much on porn as we do in space research. So what's the big deal?
I often search for information on the internet about topics I didn't fully understand from my textbook/teacher. There isn't really a one site that has it all in any subject. I just google for a topic, and often there is a university course site that comes up with some reading/practice problems. I've found great resources on calculus that way... Anyways, obvious advice i suppose... but it works.
Slashdot Mirror
From what I see, this Zenbook is missing USB-C, but the Macbooks are being built with this feature. This may or may not matter to most people. At least to me, a lack of USB-C makes a laptop un-buyable in 2016.
...does it run in Linux?
Yes, but they request that you install Wine first.
There is some truth to that, but that's not the whole story. There are many good people out there, but you will see people from CS or Computer Eng backgrounds that understand surprisingly little about any part of a computer or software (even from good schools ... sometimes I can't fathom how they passed). And at least 80% of the time someone writes that they know SQL or Unix on their resume, they can't name even a few basic commands.
I've you've ever hired for a stem job, you will know: there are plenty of people with the right degree out there. Finding one with a degree who understands even half of what they learned is another.
I still don't quite get it myself and wouldn't buy one, but I guess its hard to speculate how the market will react.
What? It doesn't to me, actually. Modern schooling and news media give us many of nifty tools, but also do damage to our education and ability to think independently, and so in turn to society. So, I'm not sure I agree we can dismiss debate like this. I pick this quote because it's an example of why this is a poor argument.
The whole argument the author uses assumes we have consistently progressed using media and surpassed the problems media critics pointed out, therefore critics in the past are wrong. Maybe it's true that they are always rather negative and forget the positive aspects of change, but there have been a huge range of critics with lots of criticisms that seem to have manifested true. Sorry, but you can't throw out an argument like this author did in a 1-page article, he just has too many presumptions for too complex an issue.
Real time flu tracking, eh? Let's all sneeze at once and see if we can crash it.
I disagree. I'm paying you for the option to buy electricity when I need it. It costs money to provide that option, and so I should (rightfully) pay for it. The fee for this option may have been implicity built into the rates in the past, but I think they are just changing their model to more closely reflect costs because the market is changing.
I am not sure we can/should speculate on this without more details. Of course the energy company wants to ensure its revenues, but this may not be unreasonable. Even if you have solar, you're (probably) still connected to the grid. It's a huge convenience to you to use just a bit of energy when you really need it - but what if you only use $5 worth of electricity at a low cost? The billing probably process probably costs a nice percentage of your total bill! Is it really unreasonable to pay for a connectivity fee? I don't think it is necessarily...
Not legal advice, not a lawyer, but an audit.
Take a look at their flash demo. I think they pull this out of their asses pretty much. Not to say that any college students (myself included) do have critical thinking skills, but let's not get our knickers in a knot.
Richard Feynman (A definite must-have!!!!)
Paul Erdos
Alan Turing
Dmitri Mendeleev
Claude Shannon
John von Neumann
The Bernoulli family...
Also, I don't think it trivializes people with drug dependencies. First, I don't think alcohol is really much of a physical dependence at all (but I'm no expert, just my opinion). Second, if you decide to put drugs into your body without being fully informed of both positives and negatives before you do it, you deserve what you get - and blaming it on physical dependence is not ok.
Why can't they make raids scale to the number of people in them? So if 20 people show up, the difficulty is 20. If 40 people show up, the difficulty is 40. That way, there is no requirement for people to stay in the raid, and no requirement that people HAVE to show up. Whoever has free time can join in, and whoever doesn't have free time doesn't have to join in. There is no way that that is too difficult to impliment.
Question 1: What happened to the PowerPC's supposed performance advantage over Intel?
Gap is breaking, and there are many other advantages of Intel/x86.
Question 2: What happened to Apple's 64-bit operating system?
Just because Intel's 64 bit is expensive now, doesn't mean it will be in a year.
Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?
Who knows if it will be supported, but AMD doesn't have the supply of chips to deal with Apple. Plus, Intel has better brand recognition and probably more muscle in negotiating a contract.
Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
For developers... ?
Question 5: Is this all really about Digital Rights Management?
Probably not.
The truth is that there is nothing wrong with educating kids about something like copyright law, even if it is supported by the music industry. Except the problem, as everyone already knows and pointed out, is that it will end up as an extremely biased education.
I'm doing International Baccalaureate Computer scicence, and it does that. You write your exam code in a pseudocode that an examiner can understand. The course also requires you to to write a program (of reasonably significant size for a HS student) and have that marked, but you can use any language you want since, ultimately, the code isn't what counts - it's the documentation and the algorithms. Implementation is just picky details.
Sounds suspiciously like they stole the technology from Michael's computers...
Here is a little blurb on stanford's and U of V's policies policies (Taken from here, speaking of plagiarizing :P )
[Stanford] gives students and the community full responsibility of themselves and of upholding the honor law. The university puts all the pressure of academic integrity on its students and it trusts them enough not to cheat so that the faculty is not constantly reminding them of the Code, "The faculty on its part manifests its confidence in the honor of its students by refraining from proctoring examinations and from taking unusual and unreasonable precautions to prevent [...] dishonesty [...]. The faculty will also avoid, as far as practicable, academic procedures that create temptations to violate the Honor Code." (S. U.) Another school where this idea of ienforcementi is put into effect is the University of Richmond in Virginia. This school lets students "leave the classroom during an exam or [...] may even take the exam home" (U. of V.). The professors trust the students because of the enforcement factor. Instead of faculty breathing down the student's neck about cheating, the student knows it is his/her responsibility not to cheat. Millersville University would benefit by adopting this honor code. The students here are trustworthy and would also benefit from the fact that they are trusted by their instructors.
The battery on the iPod is the one and only reason I won't but one.
Here is a CNet article on other reasons not to buy one...
Powerbooks may not be as tough as ToughBooks, but you might be really surprised by how durable they are. Read the story of this poor powerbook ... it survived getting run over by a truck. Hehe =D
Really, it shouldn't be a huge deal. We're launching ourselves into space and we expect it go problem free? Ok, no matter how great you are you'll make mistakes, people will die & money is lost. It happens, but it's not a good reason to stop doing it (although there may bemany other good reasons.) There are probably more people who die of starvation each minute than have ever died related to accidents in spacecraft (and the people in the spacecraft knowingly take a risk.) We probably spend as much on porn as we do in space research. So what's the big deal?
This is also done when .org, .net, .com, .ca, etc. are confused. For example, Gnome and Gnome
I often search for information on the internet about topics I didn't fully understand from my textbook/teacher. There isn't really a one site that has it all in any subject. I just google for a topic, and often there is a university course site that comes up with some reading/practice problems. I've found great resources on calculus that way... ... but it works.
Anyways, obvious advice i suppose
slashdot was really unrelated to my learning, but i thought i'd throw in how i came to read slashdot daily. No need to make fun of me for it :p