People don't buy Macs for the specs they buy it for the glowing Apple symbol when they flip it open. Then everyone can see they have a Mac. Hipster status symbol. I worked previously at Asus and liked the Zenbooks. I actually have a Republic of Gamers laptop.
I think you're painting a lot of people with a very wide brush there.
Some people might own Apple hardware strictly as a status symbol. But most people I personally know buy Apple hardware for one (or both) of two reasons:
1. OS X
2. Hardware quality
By the way, I'm typing this on an ASUS ROG laptop. But my wife has an iMac, and everyone in my family has an iPhone and iPad. The Apple gear keeps on working, and working, and working... Huge bonus: Apple keeps supporting the hardware with OS updates!
It's actually pretty awesome. I'd be on a Mac myself, but I gotta have my games...
I think you're more right than you may realize about this. Electric motors will last far, far, far longer than complex, finicky, issue prone internal combustion engines.
People will be able to drive electric vehicles until they're literally falling apart, and the electric motors inside will still be in good enough shape to salvage.
What about vehicles that regularly need to travel more than 300 miles?
Small internal combustion engine that runs at a fixed, efficient RPM, and gas tank that keeps the batteries topped off.
Or just rent a car for those occasional long distance needs.
Most miles are commute miles of a fixed (and relatively short) distance. Electric vehicles are ideal for that. Better get used to them becoming more and more popular. Especially as people start discovering how cheap they are to operate (way less money spent on "fuel" and way less money spent on maintenance).
Not to mention the luxury and performance market. For example, Tesla's spank the crap out of Formula 1 cars. (Check YouTube for all sorts of fun videos where Tesla's spank the crap out of every single internal combustion engine car they race against.)
Internal combustion engines simply can't compete in the performance market. As more car enthusiasts move to truly high performance vehicles like Tesla, we'll see prices continue to drop on all electric vehicles in general.
It's clearly going to take a generation or two to transition to electric vehicles, and even then, anyone who needs a long-hauler or high-endurance vehicle isn't going to switch to EVs, as they're not very practical for that.
What do you mean by "high endurance"? Because internal combustion engines are way more complex, finicky, and unreliable than electric motors. ICE's also have a far shorter useful lifespan than electric motors.
If anything, what we're likely to see is electric vehicles literally falling apart while the electric motors within will still be in fine working condition.
You are acting like quibbling over whether the number was 90% of the exposed population, or 30% of the total population, is important and you're ignoring my point. Let's take another example. Smallpox wiped out the great majority of Native Americans when they were exposed. How many? Nobody knows for sure. It was lots.
Humanity is inflicting itself with another situation in which we will be quibbling over what percentage of the total population was killed or harmed by it, and the percentages could be similar. This is the point that I'm trying to make and if you're too cowardly to acknowledge it, there's not much point in continuing the conversation.
I'm not quibbling or addressing your point at all. I'm just correcting a single factual error in your post. I'm not saying the correction strengthens or weakens your argument at all. I thin you're mistaking me for someone who is arguing with you.
The black plague, in medieval europe, for example had about a 90% kill rate, comparable with what modern militaries would like to see in an engineered bio weapon.
Spreading throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, the Black Death is estimated to have killed 30–60% of Europe's total population. In total, the plague reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million in the 14th century.
The black plague, in medieval europe, for example had about a 90% kill rate, comparable with what modern militaries would like to see in an engineered bio weapon.
For what it's worth, I typed this into Google: what percentage of the population did the black plague kill
And got this:
Spreading throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, the Black Death is estimated to have killed 30–60% of Europe's total population. In total, the plague reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million in the 14th century.
The tech is here, just not on Android and iOS that have the smartphone business sown-up.
Perhaps what scares me the most is if Apple and Google fail in this area, Microsoft might win by default. Then Microsoft might end up with yet another monopoly...
That doesn't mean ARM is about to invade the desktop/workstation/server market.
Regarding the desktop market, what I really want, and what I think a lot of other people really want (but don't realize it yet), is the ability to attach their smartphone to an external (full size) display, keyboard, and mouse [1], and run "full screen" applications.
I think smartphones are already fast enough for this to work (if they aren't yet, they soon will be). Smartphones are already pushing tons of pixels (often far more pixels than your typical "full size" 1920x1080 display). A smartphone driving a full screen display shouldn't be a problem at all.
Bonus points if: (1) your phone is being charged while attached, (2) there's only one cable from your phone to this set up, and (3) you can continue to use your phone while also using "full screen" applications (this may require smartphones with more RAM).
Sync everything to the cloud, and Bob's your uncle. I think people would love this. Instead of having to constantly maintain a needy desktop OS like Windows or OS X (sorry, but for non-geeks, "traditional" desktop OS's are still way too "needy"), you'd have one computing device that's far easier to maintain.
Now, I know/. is home to chest-thumping uber-geeks that are about to tell me how terrible and under-powered this would be. I'm not necessarily talking about making you happy. I'm talking about making the other 98% of the market happy.
Besides, as a long-time software developer myself, I think it's almost shameful and ridiculous how much computing power is utterly wasted on really lazy and inefficient implementations of software. Even most chest-thumping uber-geeks could be perfectly happy with smartphone level computing power, it just requires a little more thought and careful software development.
And I think this can and will happen, because what I'm describing above is what 98% of the market wants (imo), and I really think it'll happen in the next 10 years. Even Microsoft has time to win this huge war, if they're the first to market with a good implementation of what I've described above. I think Google and Apple are the others big players that have a chance, but we'll see which company is forward-thinking enough to be the first to do it right.
That doesn't mean ARM is about to invade the desktop/workstation/server market.
Regarding the desktop market, what I really want, and what I think a lot of other people really want (but don't realize it yet), is the ability to attach their smartphone to an external (full size) display, keyboard, and mouse [1], and run "full screen" applications.
I think smartphones are already fast enough for this to work (if they aren't yet, they soon will be). Smartphones are already pushing tons of pixels (often far more pixels than your typical "full size" 1920x1080 display). A smartphone driving a full screen display shouldn't be a problem at all.
Bonus points if: (1) your phone is being charged while attached, (2) there's only one cable from your phone to this set up, and (3) you can continue to use your phone while also using "full screen" applications (this may require smartphones with more RAM).
Sync everything to the cloud, and Bob's your uncle. I think people would love this. Instead of having to constantly maintain a needy desktop OS like Windows or OS X (sorry, but for non-geeks, "traditional" desktop OS's are still way too "needy"), you'd have one computing device that's far easier to maintain.
Now, I know/. is home to chest-thumping uber-geeks that are about to tell me how terrible and under-powered this would be. I'm not necessarily talking about making you happy. I'm talking about making the other 98% of the market happy.
Besides, as a long-time software developer myself, I think it's almost shameful and ridiculous how much computing power is utterly wasted on really lazy and inefficient implementations of software. Even most chest-thumping uber-geeks could be perfectly happy with smartphone level computing power, it just requires a little more thought and careful software development.
And I think this can and will happen, because what I'm describing above is what 98% of the market wants (imo), and I really think it'll happen in the next 10 years. Even Microsoft has time to win this huge war, if they're the first to market with a good implementation of what I've described above. I think Google and Apple are the others big players that have a chance, but we'll see which company is forward-thinking enough to be the first to do it right.
Every dollar taken out of the productive Real Economy and put into unproductive and wasteful Government Economy means there is less dollar for investment and growing the economy.
You managed to beg the question twice in a single sentence. Impressive!
I was looking at a continuum device in the local MS Store the other day. It appeared to be a dongle attached to a Windows 10 phone (I forgot the model, but probably one of the new flagship series) which allowed for keyboard, mouse and video input/output. The UI on the 24" screen was standard Windows 10 and it was pretty snappy... I think they are close.
I'm so conflicted. I think Microsoft is abusive and I don't want to use their products, but Continuum is so compelling to me...
I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't just killed it off already. This is their third reboot, with nothing to indicate that this time will be any better than the last ones.
I am...not a fan of Microsoft. In fact, Windows 10 (with built in self serving advertisements) is something I consider really abusive to Windows users. But...
I'm looking at Continuum with a lot of interest. In my younger days, I loved to build computers, and tweak things, and try alternative operating systems, and upgrade my systems part by part, etc.
But these days, I mostly want things to Just Work with as little hassle as possible. Continuum has me interested because I'd love to have just one computing device -- a smartphone -- that can also be easily attached to an external display/keyboard/mouse, and offer me desktop style applications as well.
Store most of my data in the cloud, and I've got a nice, problem free, easy computing experience. That sounds very attractive to me.
I'm not sure if Apple or Google are looking into something similar. Microsoft may be the leader in this area, and if they get first mover advantage, Windows Phone may yet be a competitor, depending on how many other people are interested in Continuum. I think a lot of people might be interested. A lot of people, like me, are sick of babysitting and updating and maintaining and tweaking multiple computing devices.
They must be using some sort of version control, right? So it should be trivial to find out who inserted the code and find out what exactly is going on (and prosecute those responsible). I mean, they'd like to "clear their name", wouldn't they?
Where I work, our source code repository has logins but no passwords (unless you set one, and most developers don't, for whatever reason). My old boss used to check in things under my name.
After I set a password, he used to throw code "over the fence" and have me check it in verbatim.
Having your name/login on checked in code is not a terribly reliable way to identify the guilty party.
(btw, I'm not saying my old boss ever did anything nefarious -- I'm quite sure he didn't -- I'm just demonstrating that your approach is not terribly reliable.)
I expect similar things are present in a lot of other security products, just that there they are still undiscovered. Criticizing Juniper for this is entirely the wrong reaction.
I don't understand your logic at all here. It's like saying, "Lots of people murder other people. Criticizing one murderer is entirely the wrong reaction."
You can -- and should -- criticize the murderer and look to solve the greater problem at the same time.
... as in "this is not your grandpa's MS anymore".
I'd like to think that, but then Windows 10 popped up a notification telling me to upgrade to Office 365. Seems like the same old abuse-of-monopoly Microsoft to me.
C'mon Slashdot. I don't want to disable the auto-load feature, as it's useful.
God damn I so badly want to disable the auto-load / auto-refresh feature... I hacked it with a blacklist at one point but somehow they worked around that...
Once again, Microsoft is abusing their monopoly status for their own gain.
I'm so glad I'm not the only person that realizes this. People have forgotten that Microsoft still has a desktop operating system monopoly. I think it's monopoly abuse all over again.
Personalization, start, "Occasionally show suggestions...". Off by default for me. But I can turn ON. And it appears. How dare MS let me turn on an option for ads!!!
It was ON by default for me, though I don't recall having seen any suggestions (yet?).
Slashdot Mirror
People don't buy Macs for the specs they buy it for the glowing Apple symbol when they flip it open. Then everyone can see they have a Mac. Hipster status symbol. I worked previously at Asus and liked the Zenbooks. I actually have a Republic of Gamers laptop.
I think you're painting a lot of people with a very wide brush there.
Some people might own Apple hardware strictly as a status symbol. But most people I personally know buy Apple hardware for one (or both) of two reasons:
1. OS X
2. Hardware quality
By the way, I'm typing this on an ASUS ROG laptop. But my wife has an iMac, and everyone in my family has an iPhone and iPad. The Apple gear keeps on working, and working, and working... Huge bonus: Apple keeps supporting the hardware with OS updates!
It's actually pretty awesome. I'd be on a Mac myself, but I gotta have my games...
The second hand market will also have taken off.
I think you're more right than you may realize about this. Electric motors will last far, far, far longer than complex, finicky, issue prone internal combustion engines.
People will be able to drive electric vehicles until they're literally falling apart, and the electric motors inside will still be in good enough shape to salvage.
What about vehicles that regularly need to travel more than 300 miles?
Small internal combustion engine that runs at a fixed, efficient RPM, and gas tank that keeps the batteries topped off.
Or just rent a car for those occasional long distance needs.
Most miles are commute miles of a fixed (and relatively short) distance. Electric vehicles are ideal for that. Better get used to them becoming more and more popular. Especially as people start discovering how cheap they are to operate (way less money spent on "fuel" and way less money spent on maintenance).
Not to mention the luxury and performance market. For example, Tesla's spank the crap out of Formula 1 cars. (Check YouTube for all sorts of fun videos where Tesla's spank the crap out of every single internal combustion engine car they race against.)
Internal combustion engines simply can't compete in the performance market. As more car enthusiasts move to truly high performance vehicles like Tesla, we'll see prices continue to drop on all electric vehicles in general.
It's clearly going to take a generation or two to transition to electric vehicles, and even then, anyone who needs a long-hauler or high-endurance vehicle isn't going to switch to EVs, as they're not very practical for that.
What do you mean by "high endurance"? Because internal combustion engines are way more complex, finicky, and unreliable than electric motors. ICE's also have a far shorter useful lifespan than electric motors.
If anything, what we're likely to see is electric vehicles literally falling apart while the electric motors within will still be in fine working condition.
Or more accurately, they'll continue to build phones with built-in obsolescence
You're talking about iPhones having built-in obsolescence?!
My iPhone 5s (and iPad 2!) are still getting OS updates. My friend's Android phones? Not so much...
You are acting like quibbling over whether the number was 90% of the exposed population, or 30% of the total population, is important and you're ignoring my point. Let's take another example. Smallpox wiped out the great majority of Native Americans when they were exposed. How many? Nobody knows for sure. It was lots. Humanity is inflicting itself with another situation in which we will be quibbling over what percentage of the total population was killed or harmed by it, and the percentages could be similar. This is the point that I'm trying to make and if you're too cowardly to acknowledge it, there's not much point in continuing the conversation.
I'm not quibbling or addressing your point at all. I'm just correcting a single factual error in your post. I'm not saying the correction strengthens or weakens your argument at all. I thin you're mistaking me for someone who is arguing with you.
The black plague, in medieval europe, for example had about a 90% kill rate, comparable with what modern militaries would like to see in an engineered bio weapon.
Spreading throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, the Black Death is estimated to have killed 30–60% of Europe's total population. In total, the plague reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million in the 14th century.
The black plague, in medieval europe, for example had about a 90% kill rate, comparable with what modern militaries would like to see in an engineered bio weapon.
For what it's worth, I typed this into Google: what percentage of the population did the black plague kill
And got this:
Spreading throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, the Black Death is estimated to have killed 30–60% of Europe's total population. In total, the plague reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million in the 14th century.
I think storing user data in the cloud is fine, but many applications should be local. For example, Minecraft.
Ubuntu convergence, Windows Continuum.
The tech is here, just not on Android and iOS that have the smartphone business sown-up.
Perhaps what scares me the most is if Apple and Google fail in this area, Microsoft might win by default. Then Microsoft might end up with yet another monopoly...
That doesn't mean ARM is about to invade the desktop/workstation/server market.
Regarding the desktop market, what I really want, and what I think a lot of other people really want (but don't realize it yet), is the ability to attach their smartphone to an external (full size) display, keyboard, and mouse [1], and run "full screen" applications.
I think smartphones are already fast enough for this to work (if they aren't yet, they soon will be). Smartphones are already pushing tons of pixels (often far more pixels than your typical "full size" 1920x1080 display). A smartphone driving a full screen display shouldn't be a problem at all.
Bonus points if: (1) your phone is being charged while attached, (2) there's only one cable from your phone to this set up, and (3) you can continue to use your phone while also using "full screen" applications (this may require smartphones with more RAM).
Sync everything to the cloud, and Bob's your uncle. I think people would love this. Instead of having to constantly maintain a needy desktop OS like Windows or OS X (sorry, but for non-geeks, "traditional" desktop OS's are still way too "needy"), you'd have one computing device that's far easier to maintain.
Now, I know /. is home to chest-thumping uber-geeks that are about to tell me how terrible and under-powered this would be. I'm not necessarily talking about making you happy. I'm talking about making the other 98% of the market happy.
Besides, as a long-time software developer myself, I think it's almost shameful and ridiculous how much computing power is utterly wasted on really lazy and inefficient implementations of software. Even most chest-thumping uber-geeks could be perfectly happy with smartphone level computing power, it just requires a little more thought and careful software development.
And I think this can and will happen, because what I'm describing above is what 98% of the market wants (imo), and I really think it'll happen in the next 10 years. Even Microsoft has time to win this huge war, if they're the first to market with a good implementation of what I've described above. I think Google and Apple are the others big players that have a chance, but we'll see which company is forward-thinking enough to be the first to do it right.
We live in interesting times!
[1] And maybe speakers too.
That doesn't mean ARM is about to invade the desktop/workstation/server market.
Regarding the desktop market, what I really want, and what I think a lot of other people really want (but don't realize it yet), is the ability to attach their smartphone to an external (full size) display, keyboard, and mouse [1], and run "full screen" applications.
I think smartphones are already fast enough for this to work (if they aren't yet, they soon will be). Smartphones are already pushing tons of pixels (often far more pixels than your typical "full size" 1920x1080 display). A smartphone driving a full screen display shouldn't be a problem at all.
Bonus points if: (1) your phone is being charged while attached, (2) there's only one cable from your phone to this set up, and (3) you can continue to use your phone while also using "full screen" applications (this may require smartphones with more RAM).
Sync everything to the cloud, and Bob's your uncle. I think people would love this. Instead of having to constantly maintain a needy desktop OS like Windows or OS X (sorry, but for non-geeks, "traditional" desktop OS's are still way too "needy"), you'd have one computing device that's far easier to maintain.
Now, I know /. is home to chest-thumping uber-geeks that are about to tell me how terrible and under-powered this would be. I'm not necessarily talking about making you happy. I'm talking about making the other 98% of the market happy.
Besides, as a long-time software developer myself, I think it's almost shameful and ridiculous how much computing power is utterly wasted on really lazy and inefficient implementations of software. Even most chest-thumping uber-geeks could be perfectly happy with smartphone level computing power, it just requires a little more thought and careful software development.
And I think this can and will happen, because what I'm describing above is what 98% of the market wants (imo), and I really think it'll happen in the next 10 years. Even Microsoft has time to win this huge war, if they're the first to market with a good implementation of what I've described above. I think Google and Apple are the others big players that have a chance, but we'll see which company is forward-thinking enough to be the first to do it right.
We live in interesting times!
[1] And maybe speakers too.
Every dollar taken out of the productive Real Economy and put into unproductive and wasteful Government Economy means there is less dollar for investment and growing the economy.
You managed to beg the question twice in a single sentence. Impressive!
I'm sure they're all hugely inefficient relative to batteries...
Being hugely (astonishingly) inefficient relative to batteries seems to be correct:
Why not just use the gravitational potential energy of a really heavy weight as a battery?
Good points!
I was looking at a continuum device in the local MS Store the other day. It appeared to be a dongle attached to a Windows 10 phone (I forgot the model, but probably one of the new flagship series) which allowed for keyboard, mouse and video input/output. The UI on the 24" screen was standard Windows 10 and it was pretty snappy... I think they are close.
I'm so conflicted. I think Microsoft is abusive and I don't want to use their products, but Continuum is so compelling to me...
I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't just killed it off already. This is their third reboot, with nothing to indicate that this time will be any better than the last ones.
I am...not a fan of Microsoft. In fact, Windows 10 (with built in self serving advertisements) is something I consider really abusive to Windows users. But...
I'm looking at Continuum with a lot of interest. In my younger days, I loved to build computers, and tweak things, and try alternative operating systems, and upgrade my systems part by part, etc.
But these days, I mostly want things to Just Work with as little hassle as possible. Continuum has me interested because I'd love to have just one computing device -- a smartphone -- that can also be easily attached to an external display/keyboard/mouse, and offer me desktop style applications as well.
Store most of my data in the cloud, and I've got a nice, problem free, easy computing experience. That sounds very attractive to me.
I'm not sure if Apple or Google are looking into something similar. Microsoft may be the leader in this area, and if they get first mover advantage, Windows Phone may yet be a competitor, depending on how many other people are interested in Continuum. I think a lot of people might be interested. A lot of people, like me, are sick of babysitting and updating and maintaining and tweaking multiple computing devices.
They must be using some sort of version control, right? So it should be trivial to find out who inserted the code and find out what exactly is going on (and prosecute those responsible). I mean, they'd like to "clear their name", wouldn't they?
Where I work, our source code repository has logins but no passwords (unless you set one, and most developers don't, for whatever reason). My old boss used to check in things under my name.
After I set a password, he used to throw code "over the fence" and have me check it in verbatim.
Having your name/login on checked in code is not a terribly reliable way to identify the guilty party.
(btw, I'm not saying my old boss ever did anything nefarious -- I'm quite sure he didn't -- I'm just demonstrating that your approach is not terribly reliable.)
I expect similar things are present in a lot of other security products, just that there they are still undiscovered. Criticizing Juniper for this is entirely the wrong reaction.
I don't understand your logic at all here. It's like saying, "Lots of people murder other people. Criticizing one murderer is entirely the wrong reaction."
You can -- and should -- criticize the murderer and look to solve the greater problem at the same time.
... as in "this is not your grandpa's MS anymore".
I'd like to think that, but then Windows 10 popped up a notification telling me to upgrade to Office 365. Seems like the same old abuse-of-monopoly Microsoft to me.
By the way, who is funding Mozilla these days?
Microsoft, indirectly, via Yahoo Search. (Yahoo Search uses Microsoft Bing.)
The real problem, in my opinion, is that most companies simply don't take software development seriously.
Companies want software done cheap and fast, and the result is entirely predictable: buggy, unstable, insecure software.
C'mon Slashdot. I don't want to disable the auto-load feature, as it's useful.
God damn I so badly want to disable the auto-load / auto-refresh feature... I hacked it with a blacklist at one point but somehow they worked around that...
Once again, Microsoft is abusing their monopoly status for their own gain.
I'm so glad I'm not the only person that realizes this. People have forgotten that Microsoft still has a desktop operating system monopoly. I think it's monopoly abuse all over again.
Personalization, start, "Occasionally show suggestions...". Off by default for me. But I can turn ON. And it appears. How dare MS let me turn on an option for ads!!!
It was ON by default for me, though I don't recall having seen any suggestions (yet?).