As I said, its forgiven for the macbook air. Its a ridiculous direction with the macbook pro.
But this isn't a MacBook Pro. It's a MacBook. The MacBook Pro and MacBook Air are separate lines of laptops. If you want all the other ports all the time, get a MacBook Pro.
I'd love this to be true, but it seems unlikely from the point of view of the Gaia hypothesis. Life tends to transform its surroundings, hence the Earth's oxygen atmosphere that we depend on. This is why James Lovelock predicted, back in the '70s, that the Mars probes would not find life there: if Mars had life, we'd be able to see unambiguous evidence of it from here. The fluctuating methane levels on Mars are intriguing, but given the billions of years that Mars (and Titan) have been around, it seems like any life would have had plenty of time to evolve and make an unmistakable impact.
I predict that all of you net neutrality supporters are in for a nasty surprise. Your hatred of Comcast and fear of what it might do has lead to the biggest restrictions on freedom since the Patriot Act, which at least had the excuse of 3,000 dead people.
But what’s the excuse here? Ooh, Comcast might charge Netflix more money? There might be “fast lanes” that cost more? Do you think George Soros spent $196 million on NN because he’s worried about Netflix? Of course not. You don’t need 300+ pages of regulations for just that. This whole thing is a Trojan Horse so that the government can get it’s fingers deeper into the internet. As soon as the regulations are available, search them for terms like “hate speech” and "disparate impact." This will be a mass of restrictions, requirements, taxes, subsidies, and pay-offs to favored groups. I'm sure trial lawyers will be happy, because there will no doubt be lots of new things they can sue about. I’m sure the FCC will administer this with all the fairness that the IRS has brought to regulating political advocacy non-profits.
And now that the regulations have changed, the NSA will have a freer hand with wiretaps.
Get ready for a shitstorm once Silicon Valley finds out what’s really in this.
Fantasy, unless it's well and thoroughly regulated. Capitalism when free incentivizes monopolization and centralization of power and eliminates competition.
Nonsense. Look at the history of most monopolies: they got that way due to deals with government bodies that prevented competition. See the Bell System, railroads in the 19th century, municipal cable franchises, etc. There are cases of monopolies achieved through purely technological means: for years Alcoa had a monopoly on the only cost-effective means of producing aluminum, but even then they were kept in check because manufacturers could often substitute other materials.
The creative destruction of capitalism makes it hard for even giant players to stay on top. Remember 15 years ago, when Microsoft was king? For years now, Apple has made more from iPhones alone than Microsoft makes from everything. 50 years ago people worried that GM and US Steel would grow too big.
Finally, regulation has downsides, and is often used by big players to squelch small ones. See regulatory capture.
Care to explain why Cuba is a failure when health care and education are on a much higher level (and much cheaper) than in the USA albeit being under a boycott and other sanctions from the USA the last 70 years?
I always love it when defenders of Cuba portray the US boycott as a negative for Cuba. Have you forgotten that you are the one claiming that capitalism exploits people, and that communism is more efficient and fair? So what if we're not exploiting Cuba with our evil capitalist free trade? That should be a good thing for them, according to leftist economic theory, and allow them to become richer, right? But the fact is, in the 1950s, Cuba had the highest per capita income in Latin America. Now it has the lowest. If you want to blame that on the fact that we aren't practicing capitalism with Cuba, go right ahead!
As for their supposedly wonderful health care and education systems, according to what? Cuban government statistics? LOL.
I sort-of lust after a Mac Book, but my ThinkPad is substantial enough that I don't worry about breaking it just by looking at it
Don't worry about that. The "unibodies" of MacBooks (both Pro and Air) are CNC machined out of solid billets of aluminum. They are quite robust, despite their thickness.
Where I complain about excessive thinness is in cellphones. I wish Apple would stop making iPhones thinner, and just use any extra space for the battery.
That should be "Avoided Tax." There's a crucial legal difference between evading taxes (which means breaking the law to avoid paying) and avoiding taxes (which means any legal means to avoid paying).
you are morally bankrupt . nothing else need be said.
Oh right, I'm "morally bankrupt " because I don't take people seriously when they froth at the mouth and throw terms like "fascist" and "racist" and "sexist" at anyone they disagree with. On the other hand, I'm not an Anonymous Coward making absurd and unsubstantiated charges. Anyone who reads just the linked interviews should be able to see that you don't know what you're talking about. I doubt if anyone who knows R.U. thinks he's any of those things. I don't know what your problem is, but in this discussion you're just a troll. If you don't like transhumanism, fine, lots of people don't. There's even a section of the book called "Criticisms of Transhumanism," which is online here. I doubt you can cite anything in the book that any sane person would call "fascist" or "racist" or "sexist."
in fact, Goffman is an ardent supporter of several self defined "neo reactionary fascist" transhumanists... he makes constant support and mention of these people, and they are "race realists" and HBD creeps.
AFAIK this is completely untrue. R.U. is an acquaintance of mine, I've read some of his work, and this is simply false. He actually leans to the left. Of course, any editor who covers wide-ranging topics is going to mention and even publish people they don't entirely agree with. That's how magazine publishing and "encyclopedias" work. But you are spewing bullshit when you say he's an "ardent supporter" of any of that. [Citation needed], dude.
In particular he more than makes the case that the bones of "transhumanism" are in fact : fascist, plutocratic elitist, sexist, racist and overwhelmingly adolescent
Maybe it's just me, but whenever I hear anyone or anything called "fascist," sexist," and "racist" all at once, I think it tells me more about the person using those words than it does about whatever they are talking about.
his boosterism for the truly evil transhumanist technocrats who oppose democracy and who cheer-lead for general mechanization and dehumanization
OK, I just read the two linked interviews, and I'm just not seeing this. At all. Neither of the authors seem to be cheerleading for evil and dehumanization. They both seem to be fairly positive about transhumanism, but mention flaws and potential downsides. I am acquainted with R.U., and he's not at all a "technocrat," and that comes through in those two interviews.
The Heritage Foundation proposal did include an individual mandate, but that's like saying your bedroom ceiling is based on the Sistine Chapel because they both are covered in paint. The Heritage proposal was for minimal, catastrophic insurance, what used to be called "major medical." That's the sort of insurance people used to be able to buy for maybe $50/month. But the ACA larded everything up with countless mandates (birth control, etc.), so that even minimal insurance is now expensive. And then, in one of many ironies, deductibles are now so high that many people avoid going to the doctor. Remember when the ACA was needed to ban "junk insurance policies," which were defined as policies with high deductibles? Down the memory hole!
I said years ago, before this monstrosity came online, that it would not work as claimed, and in fact might never work. I believe that prediction still holds. They've stopped talking about the problems with the backend, but AFAIK they have not yet fixed them, and are still doing things manually or with estimates. It will also be interesting this tax season, when millions of people find that their tax bill is higher than they thought it would be, thanks to the ACA.
The rural areas say they hate government and redistribution of wealth - fine - then let them do without the wealth redistributed to them and maybe cities, unshackled by them, can begin to turn their own finances around.
Oh, how I hate this simplistic meme about how "blue" cities support the "red" suburbs and rural areas. One thing that it ignores is that a great deal of the wealth generated in cities is created by people who live (and vote) in suburbs and rural areas. it's called "commuting."
Or try this thought experiment: cities stop "distributing their wealth" to the suburbs and rural areas, and the suburbs and rural areas stop distributing their wealth to the cities... as well as "their" food, water, oil, gas, and electricity. Now who needs who more?
Thank you for having dealt with all the other more pressing problems, domestic and foreign, so that now you have extra time for these folks! I'm sure they'll have lots of informed, trenchant, challenging questions for you, the answers to which will be informative and enlightening. It'll be the adversarial press speaking truth to power!
I agree that "too thin" is an issue. I'd be happy if Apple stopped making iPhones thinner and instead used the space for more battery.
I'm not sure you're right about technological advances, though. While I'm not obsessed with the latest and greatest, I think it's impressive and meaningful that phones are getting to have near desktop-level processors, excellent cameras, etc. But I find it hard to image that Google will be able to create modules 1) with more impressive specs than an iPhone 6, and 2) be able to sell them at a competitive price.
This has all the earmarks of another sounds-cool-at-first Google project that won't amount to much in the end.
Modularity sounds like a good idea, but in practice, in cellphones, I don't think it'll work. In objects of that size every millimeter counts, and modularity takes up quite a bit of space at that scale, because each part needs to be enclosed, securely attach to the others, etc. The trade-offs will mean you'll be able to pick one or two things (e.g. speed, battery life, extra features, etc.) but not all at the same time. And the prices won't be good, because manufacturer(s) will not have economies of scale: it'll be hard to compete with Apple and Samsung making millions and tens of millions of identical units.
The rest of your comment misses my point: Perhaps in theory, OS X is "just an vulnerable," and maybe the OS X market share means malware authors don't bother. But whatever the causes, in the real world today, the results are undeniable: less malware on Macs.
Except, as the AC said, it doesn't presently work under OS X. I've been reading for 20+ years how "Macs are just as vulnerable as Windows," and yet, somehow, that malware parity never seems to happen. Sure, every now and then there's a headline about Mac malware, but when you read the article it's either a theoretical vulnerability or, at worst, something that happened to a handful of people. You can claim it's because malware authors don't want to bother with Macs or whatever, but the end result is the same: Windows users are always dealing with more malware than Mac users, and, I'll bet, always will. So the modded-down-to-oblivion poster above is not wrong: getting a Mac would have prevented this attack, and many others.
Tim Ferriss talks about this in The 4-Hour Body. It's one reason competitive swimmers are in such good shape: it's not just the exercise itself, it's being in water that's much colder than body temperature. One of Ferriss's weight-loss tips involves using ice-packs.
Slashdot Mirror
As I said, its forgiven for the macbook air. Its a ridiculous direction with the macbook pro.
But this isn't a MacBook Pro. It's a MacBook. The MacBook Pro and MacBook Air are separate lines of laptops. If you want all the other ports all the time, get a MacBook Pro.
I'd love this to be true, but it seems unlikely from the point of view of the Gaia hypothesis. Life tends to transform its surroundings, hence the Earth's oxygen atmosphere that we depend on. This is why James Lovelock predicted, back in the '70s, that the Mars probes would not find life there: if Mars had life, we'd be able to see unambiguous evidence of it from here. The fluctuating methane levels on Mars are intriguing, but given the billions of years that Mars (and Titan) have been around, it seems like any life would have had plenty of time to evolve and make an unmistakable impact.
Did Bush’s Broadband Deregulation Upend His Own NSA Wiretapping? Now that the regulations have changed, the situation is different.
I predict that all of you net neutrality supporters are in for a nasty surprise. Your hatred of Comcast and fear of what it might do has lead to the biggest restrictions on freedom since the Patriot Act, which at least had the excuse of 3,000 dead people.
But what’s the excuse here? Ooh, Comcast might charge Netflix more money? There might be “fast lanes” that cost more? Do you think George Soros spent $196 million on NN because he’s worried about Netflix? Of course not. You don’t need 300+ pages of regulations for just that. This whole thing is a Trojan Horse so that the government can get it’s fingers deeper into the internet. As soon as the regulations are available, search them for terms like “hate speech” and "disparate impact." This will be a mass of restrictions, requirements, taxes, subsidies, and pay-offs to favored groups. I'm sure trial lawyers will be happy, because there will no doubt be lots of new things they can sue about. I’m sure the FCC will administer this with all the fairness that the IRS has brought to regulating political advocacy non-profits.
And now that the regulations have changed, the NSA will have a freer hand with wiretaps.
Get ready for a shitstorm once Silicon Valley finds out what’s really in this.
Fantasy, unless it's well and thoroughly regulated. Capitalism when free incentivizes monopolization and centralization of power and eliminates competition.
Nonsense. Look at the history of most monopolies: they got that way due to deals with government bodies that prevented competition. See the Bell System, railroads in the 19th century, municipal cable franchises, etc. There are cases of monopolies achieved through purely technological means: for years Alcoa had a monopoly on the only cost-effective means of producing aluminum, but even then they were kept in check because manufacturers could often substitute other materials.
The creative destruction of capitalism makes it hard for even giant players to stay on top. Remember 15 years ago, when Microsoft was king? For years now, Apple has made more from iPhones alone than Microsoft makes from everything. 50 years ago people worried that GM and US Steel would grow too big.
Finally, regulation has downsides, and is often used by big players to squelch small ones. See regulatory capture.
Care to explain why Cuba is a failure when health care and education are on a much higher level (and much cheaper) than in the USA albeit being under a boycott and other sanctions from the USA the last 70 years?
I always love it when defenders of Cuba portray the US boycott as a negative for Cuba. Have you forgotten that you are the one claiming that capitalism exploits people, and that communism is more efficient and fair? So what if we're not exploiting Cuba with our evil capitalist free trade? That should be a good thing for them, according to leftist economic theory, and allow them to become richer, right? But the fact is, in the 1950s, Cuba had the highest per capita income in Latin America. Now it has the lowest. If you want to blame that on the fact that we aren't practicing capitalism with Cuba, go right ahead!
As for their supposedly wonderful health care and education systems, according to what? Cuban government statistics? LOL.
I sort-of lust after a Mac Book, but my ThinkPad is substantial enough that I don't worry about breaking it just by looking at it
Don't worry about that. The "unibodies" of MacBooks (both Pro and Air) are CNC machined out of solid billets of aluminum. They are quite robust, despite their thickness.
Where I complain about excessive thinness is in cellphones. I wish Apple would stop making iPhones thinner, and just use any extra space for the battery.
Evaded Tax: $28M
That should be "Avoided Tax." There's a crucial legal difference between evading taxes (which means breaking the law to avoid paying) and avoiding taxes (which means any legal means to avoid paying).
you are morally bankrupt . nothing else need be said.
Oh right, I'm "morally bankrupt " because I don't take people seriously when they froth at the mouth and throw terms like "fascist" and "racist" and "sexist" at anyone they disagree with. On the other hand, I'm not an Anonymous Coward making absurd and unsubstantiated charges. Anyone who reads just the linked interviews should be able to see that you don't know what you're talking about. I doubt if anyone who knows R.U. thinks he's any of those things. I don't know what your problem is, but in this discussion you're just a troll. If you don't like transhumanism, fine, lots of people don't. There's even a section of the book called "Criticisms of Transhumanism," which is online here. I doubt you can cite anything in the book that any sane person would call "fascist" or "racist" or "sexist."
in fact, Goffman is an ardent supporter of several self defined "neo reactionary fascist" transhumanists... he makes constant support and mention of these people, and they are "race realists" and HBD creeps.
AFAIK this is completely untrue. R.U. is an acquaintance of mine, I've read some of his work, and this is simply false. He actually leans to the left. Of course, any editor who covers wide-ranging topics is going to mention and even publish people they don't entirely agree with. That's how magazine publishing and "encyclopedias" work. But you are spewing bullshit when you say he's an "ardent supporter" of any of that. [Citation needed], dude.
In particular he more than makes the case that the bones of "transhumanism" are in fact : fascist, plutocratic elitist, sexist, racist and overwhelmingly adolescent
Maybe it's just me, but whenever I hear anyone or anything called "fascist," sexist," and "racist" all at once, I think it tells me more about the person using those words than it does about whatever they are talking about.
Wow, that's quite a rant, dude.
his boosterism for the truly evil transhumanist technocrats who oppose democracy and who cheer-lead for general mechanization and dehumanization
OK, I just read the two linked interviews, and I'm just not seeing this. At all. Neither of the authors seem to be cheerleading for evil and dehumanization. They both seem to be fairly positive about transhumanism, but mention flaws and potential downsides. I am acquainted with R.U., and he's not at all a "technocrat," and that comes through in those two interviews.
I was looking for practical, real-world things I can do right now to enhance my life through science and technology.
That doesn't look like it was the point of the book. It looks like an overview of the field, not a how-to guide.
Instead, I got very thin treatments of many subjects
I don't think that's fair. According to Amazon, the book covers 90+ topics in 288 pages. I don't see how they could be in-depth about any of them.
important subjects left out (like the 19th Century Russian Cosmism movement (precursor to transhumanism))
The Cosmism entry is on page 52.
Note that due to patent royalties, Microsoft already makes $5-$15 from every Android device. That adds up to more than they make from Windows Phone.
I've used it as a snow shovel as well, imagine shoveling snow with a laptop or phone!
A MacBook Air would make a great snow shovel. Have you seen the front edge? You could slice cheese with it.
They're talking about the Heritage Foundation's 1989 proposal, later supported by Orrin Hatch in 1993, revised again in 1994.
The Heritage Foundation proposal did include an individual mandate, but that's like saying your bedroom ceiling is based on the Sistine Chapel because they both are covered in paint. The Heritage proposal was for minimal, catastrophic insurance, what used to be called "major medical." That's the sort of insurance people used to be able to buy for maybe $50/month. But the ACA larded everything up with countless mandates (birth control, etc.), so that even minimal insurance is now expensive. And then, in one of many ironies, deductibles are now so high that many people avoid going to the doctor. Remember when the ACA was needed to ban "junk insurance policies," which were defined as policies with high deductibles? Down the memory hole!
I said years ago, before this monstrosity came online, that it would not work as claimed, and in fact might never work. I believe that prediction still holds. They've stopped talking about the problems with the backend, but AFAIK they have not yet fixed them, and are still doing things manually or with estimates. It will also be interesting this tax season, when millions of people find that their tax bill is higher than they thought it would be, thanks to the ACA.
The rural areas say they hate government and redistribution of wealth - fine - then let them do without the wealth redistributed to them and maybe cities, unshackled by them, can begin to turn their own finances around.
Oh, how I hate this simplistic meme about how "blue" cities support the "red" suburbs and rural areas. One thing that it ignores is that a great deal of the wealth generated in cities is created by people who live (and vote) in suburbs and rural areas. it's called "commuting."
Or try this thought experiment: cities stop "distributing their wealth" to the suburbs and rural areas, and the suburbs and rural areas stop distributing their wealth to the cities... as well as "their" food, water, oil, gas, and electricity. Now who needs who more?
Thank you for having dealt with all the other more pressing problems, domestic and foreign, so that now you have extra time for these folks! I'm sure they'll have lots of informed, trenchant, challenging questions for you, the answers to which will be informative and enlightening. It'll be the adversarial press speaking truth to power!
I agree that "too thin" is an issue. I'd be happy if Apple stopped making iPhones thinner and instead used the space for more battery.
I'm not sure you're right about technological advances, though. While I'm not obsessed with the latest and greatest, I think it's impressive and meaningful that phones are getting to have near desktop-level processors, excellent cameras, etc. But I find it hard to image that Google will be able to create modules 1) with more impressive specs than an iPhone 6, and 2) be able to sell them at a competitive price.
This has all the earmarks of another sounds-cool-at-first Google project that won't amount to much in the end.
Modularity sounds like a good idea, but in practice, in cellphones, I don't think it'll work. In objects of that size every millimeter counts, and modularity takes up quite a bit of space at that scale, because each part needs to be enclosed, securely attach to the others, etc. The trade-offs will mean you'll be able to pick one or two things (e.g. speed, battery life, extra features, etc.) but not all at the same time. And the prices won't be good, because manufacturer(s) will not have economies of scale: it'll be hard to compete with Apple and Samsung making millions and tens of millions of identical units.
We already know something about long-term exposure, based on observing career truck drivers: diesel fumes don't cause weight loss.
I've been reading for 20+ years about these things called Macs that are far safer than Windows, and yet, somehow, nobody actually uses them.
"Nobody"? Even in the enterprise?
The rest of your comment misses my point: Perhaps in theory, OS X is "just an vulnerable," and maybe the OS X market share means malware authors don't bother. But whatever the causes, in the real world today, the results are undeniable: less malware on Macs.
The mechanisms of Cryptowall work under any OS.
Except, as the AC said, it doesn't presently work under OS X. I've been reading for 20+ years how "Macs are just as vulnerable as Windows," and yet, somehow, that malware parity never seems to happen. Sure, every now and then there's a headline about Mac malware, but when you read the article it's either a theoretical vulnerability or, at worst, something that happened to a handful of people. You can claim it's because malware authors don't want to bother with Macs or whatever, but the end result is the same: Windows users are always dealing with more malware than Mac users, and, I'll bet, always will. So the modded-down-to-oblivion poster above is not wrong: getting a Mac would have prevented this attack, and many others.
Tim Ferriss talks about this in The 4-Hour Body. It's one reason competitive swimmers are in such good shape: it's not just the exercise itself, it's being in water that's much colder than body temperature. One of Ferriss's weight-loss tips involves using ice-packs.
I've watched way too many zombie movies to feel comfortable with the drug's name.
Heck, never mind the name, this is the beginning of the plot of more zombie movies than I can count.