Gold, as in the Golden rule - he who has the gold, rules.
Which, interestingly enough, is pretty much the opposite of what is happening. Here you have this guy with an irreplaceable, limited resource. If he was in the US, he would have been man handled into a lawyers office and encouraged to be part of some corporation that could financially benefit from his genetic makeup. As it is (according TFA) he has to pay for taxi fair to the blood donation centers.
Seems like a nice guy, stuck in a weird situation. I'm actually wondering why he doesn't get 'employed' by one of the blood banks. At least they could reimburse him for his taxi fare.
But, Mr. Monster does have a point. It's not just processor speed or graphics capability anymore. Apple, especially, loves changing core technologies and then leans on developers to upgrade their apps to take advantage of them. And of course, most developers are going to add functionality to the current version and not back port them. So, not only are you stuck with an old OS, but you're stuck with old apps.
At least Apple is smart enough to leave the old apps in place, so it's not like you're left with a non functional gizmo - but you are stuck in a time warp.
A car costs tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars when new. The iPhone - not so much. An automobile has the real possibility of killing you or dozens of people around you - again, the iPhone not so much*.
They are not even remotely analogous.
* and for all of you serious aspergers cases out there, don't go trying to make up some bizarre scenario where an iPhone connected to a cheap charger burns down a elementary school, OK?
Works find on the original mini pad, so I assume the iPad 2 will be fine as well. Haven't upgraded my 4S since 7 is slower than 6 - enough to bug me - and I don't want to be bugged by my phone. But it's an early 4S and physically at death's door so I'll probably get a new version.
PLEASE APPLE. It won't hurt you much. Keep the 4S size. And while you're at it, bring back the 17 inch MBP and the cheese grater. Pretty please.
Face it, as far as these companies are concerned, you guys are even less relevant than transexual credit card wielding jihadists. They don't care about you. You're a rumor, recognizable only as deja vu and dismissed just as quickly. You don't exist; you were never even born. Anonymity is your name. Silence your native tongue. You're no longer part of the System...
Normally, the term "evolution" implicitly refers to super-long time frames.
Ummm, no it doesn't. Fruit flies, bateria, viruses and a host of other living things evlove on timescales that are observable by humans in near real-time. Taco Cowboy better stick to something other than commenting on biological processes that he knows little about.
It's not a well crafted sentence but yes, most discussion of evolution concern themselves of long spans of time. It actually has only relatively recently when we were able to clearly see evolutionary changes in macroscopic organisms that occurred over a period of just a couple of years. Of course, rapidly dividing little things have been the forefront of molecular basis of evolution for some time but some people have found it difficult to grasp that growing longer toes and creating antibiotic resistance are really the same thing.
You got part of it - genetic (or epigentic, it really doesn't make a difference to the theory) variation.
And.
Selection. You need that part. Otherwise you just have a whole bunch of very slightly different critters wandering around the petri dish. Don't forget selection.
I want my my police force - the one I fscking pay for - to have restraint, respect, and integrity for the citizen-bosses they've been privileged and entrusted to protect.
Then use some better metrics in selecting, training and above all, paying for them. When you pay a police officer just a bit more than a fast food flipper, you're not exactly going to attract the best of the best of the best.
... but will be using a randomly-generated password for every website that asks me for a password.
I'm not in the position to argue the merits of the rest of your post, but this last part seems obvious.
Once you have more than a half dozen passwords, your ability to remember them drastically decreased unless you are some sort of savant. You need a password manager. Once you are using a password manager, there is no reason NOT to use a different, random, difficult to hack password on every site. I have no idea what the vast majority of my passwords are - the only ones I remember are the three I use multiple times a day at work. The rest get created and filled out by 1Password.
And, yes, of course, now I'm at the mercy of my 1Password password and the company's ability to manage their program. Can't be perfect and the current system really does suck but this way seems to be the best of the worst.
One feature I wish Agile Bits would set up is the ability to automatically change passwords on a regular basis. As it is, I manually change some high value passwords every so often (not Slashdot's of course). PITA.
Easy solution: Hire clones of Bennett Hasselton. He spends 10s of hours a week solving the hard issues facing the world such as distributed social networks and the optimal queuing for ice lines at Burning Man.
Clones of Hasselton? I thought gain of function experiments were on a moratorium these days.
If you are just trying to develop the next Unix clone of telenet or ftp, this argument might make some sense. If you are working in any sort of commercial environment, the cost of the PC is just a rounding error.
This entire subthread about the putative costs of a generic x86 box vs. something from Apple is absurd - nobody cares about these sorts of costs except poor hobbyist programmers -- and none of the companies, Apple included, gives a tinker's damn about this demographic.
For mid to upper range laptops*, Apple is very competitive with everybody else. If you like the tight hardware / software integration that MacBooks offer, then great. If you don't care or really want to run Windows, go get something else. I do wish that Apple had a few more choices - I'd love for them to resurrect the 17" MBP, but I'd also like Dell to have English speaking customer facing employees, for HP to make keyboards worth a damn and for Toshiba to simply go away.
But life is hard....
* The Mac Pro, especially the Darth Vader's ashtray version, is really a niche product
Hell, the magsafe connector is worth that. One Labrador Retriever puppy and one Dell XPS power connector = one damaged motherboard - even though the Dell connector is pretty robust as these things go.
Nothing intangible about that. Sometimes you get what you pay for.
While the premise of TFA is incorrect, Apple certainly has created a quality product - at least as good as upper end offerings from most mainstream manufacturers. Yes, it has a marketing cachet that, to most of us, is kind of annoying, but that is the real world.
You don't need 'a great deal of money' to get into OS X either as user or developer (remember, the development system is free). No, you cannot scrape the components for a Wintel supercomputer out of a dumpster but there apparently is a large enough population with enough money to actually pay for things they use.
Slashdot Mirror
How do you know? Eh?
They could be....
Gold, as in the Golden rule - he who has the gold, rules.
Which, interestingly enough, is pretty much the opposite of what is happening. Here you have this guy with an irreplaceable, limited resource. If he was in the US, he would have been man handled into a lawyers office and encouraged to be part of some corporation that could financially benefit from his genetic makeup. As it is (according TFA) he has to pay for taxi fair to the blood donation centers.
Seems like a nice guy, stuck in a weird situation. I'm actually wondering why he doesn't get 'employed' by one of the blood banks. At least they could reimburse him for his taxi fare.
But, Mr. Monster does have a point. It's not just processor speed or graphics capability anymore. Apple, especially, loves changing core technologies and then leans on developers to upgrade their apps to take advantage of them. And of course, most developers are going to add functionality to the current version and not back port them. So, not only are you stuck with an old OS, but you're stuck with old apps.
At least Apple is smart enough to leave the old apps in place, so it's not like you're left with a non functional gizmo - but you are stuck in a time warp.
No good deed goes unpunished.
A car costs tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars when new. The iPhone - not so much. An automobile has the real possibility of killing you or dozens of people around you - again, the iPhone not so much*.
They are not even remotely analogous.
* and for all of you serious aspergers cases out there, don't go trying to make up some bizarre scenario where an iPhone connected to a cheap charger burns down a elementary school, OK?
Works find on the original mini pad, so I assume the iPad 2 will be fine as well. Haven't upgraded my 4S since 7 is slower than 6 - enough to bug me - and I don't want to be bugged by my phone. But it's an early 4S and physically at death's door so I'll probably get a new version.
PLEASE APPLE. It won't hurt you much. Keep the 4S size. And while you're at it, bring back the 17 inch MBP and the cheese grater. Pretty please.
(Stomps off to the basement to sniffle.)
You MUST be new here.
A CVS fanboi?
If this isn't a poster child for the 'long tail of the Internet' I don't know what is.
Face it, as far as these companies are concerned, you guys are even less relevant than transexual credit card wielding jihadists. They don't care about you. You're a rumor, recognizable only as deja vu and dismissed just as quickly. You don't exist; you were never even born. Anonymity is your name. Silence your native tongue. You're no longer part of the System ...
Hell, if it's only $35 dollars, I'm in.
Do you take Bitcoins?
Zaphod Beeblebrox: There's a whole new life stretching out in front of you.
Marvin: Oh, not another one.
I expect more than 1.5GHz in 2014 for a desktop Mac.
Then you obviously are in the market for a new Mac Pro.
You know you are. Feel the force.
Arms race .... heh heh.
Normally, the term "evolution" implicitly refers to super-long time frames.
Ummm, no it doesn't. Fruit flies, bateria, viruses and a host of other living things evlove on timescales that are observable by humans in near real-time. Taco Cowboy better stick to something other than commenting on biological processes that he knows little about.
It's not a well crafted sentence but yes, most discussion of evolution concern themselves of long spans of time. It actually has only relatively recently when we were able to clearly see evolutionary changes in macroscopic organisms that occurred over a period of just a couple of years. Of course, rapidly dividing little things have been the forefront of molecular basis of evolution for some time but some people have found it difficult to grasp that growing longer toes and creating antibiotic resistance are really the same thing.
Back to school you go.
You got part of it - genetic (or epigentic, it really doesn't make a difference to the theory) variation.
And.
Selection. You need that part. Otherwise you just have a whole bunch of very slightly different critters wandering around the petri dish. Don't forget selection.
I want my my police force - the one I fscking pay for - to have restraint, respect, and integrity for the citizen-bosses they've been privileged and entrusted to protect.
Then use some better metrics in selecting, training and above all, paying for them. When you pay a police officer just a bit more than a fast food flipper, you're not exactly going to attract the best of the best of the best.
terror is a subjective term open to interpretation. It's just as apt a use of the term as any other.
Why you stupid bicycle! Don't you realize that Worcestershire sauce bowling ball stud muffin?
Sheesh. Potato chips these days.
... but will be using a randomly-generated password for every website that asks me for a password.
I'm not in the position to argue the merits of the rest of your post, but this last part seems obvious.
Once you have more than a half dozen passwords, your ability to remember them drastically decreased unless you are some sort of savant. You need a password manager. Once you are using a password manager, there is no reason NOT to use a different, random, difficult to hack password on every site. I have no idea what the vast majority of my passwords are - the only ones I remember are the three I use multiple times a day at work. The rest get created and filled out by 1Password.
And, yes, of course, now I'm at the mercy of my 1Password password and the company's ability to manage their program. Can't be perfect and the current system really does suck but this way seems to be the best of the worst.
One feature I wish Agile Bits would set up is the ability to automatically change passwords on a regular basis. As it is, I manually change some high value passwords every so often (not Slashdot's of course). PITA.
Card Catalog?
Easy solution: Hire clones of Bennett Hasselton. He spends 10s of hours a week solving the hard issues facing the world such as distributed social networks and the optimal queuing for ice lines at Burning Man.
Clones of Hasselton? I thought gain of function experiments were on a moratorium these days.
I can tell you're not an American.
Here, it goes:
"In Gold we trust, all others pay cash."
Boo !
If you are just trying to develop the next Unix clone of telenet or ftp, this argument might make some sense. If you are working in any sort of commercial environment, the cost of the PC is just a rounding error.
This entire subthread about the putative costs of a generic x86 box vs. something from Apple is absurd - nobody cares about these sorts of costs except poor hobbyist programmers -- and none of the companies, Apple included, gives a tinker's damn about this demographic.
For mid to upper range laptops*, Apple is very competitive with everybody else. If you like the tight hardware / software integration that MacBooks offer, then great. If you don't care or really want to run Windows, go get something else. I do wish that Apple had a few more choices - I'd love for them to resurrect the 17" MBP, but I'd also like Dell to have English speaking customer facing employees, for HP to make keyboards worth a damn and for Toshiba to simply go away.
But life is hard....
* The Mac Pro, especially the Darth Vader's ashtray version, is really a niche product
AC's seem to have the worst luck with computers. Maybe you should log in and see if things change.
Hell, the magsafe connector is worth that. One Labrador Retriever puppy and one Dell XPS power connector = one damaged motherboard - even though the Dell connector is pretty robust as these things go.
Nothing intangible about that. Sometimes you get what you pay for.
While the premise of TFA is incorrect, Apple certainly has created a quality product - at least as good as upper end offerings from most mainstream manufacturers. Yes, it has a marketing cachet that, to most of us, is kind of annoying, but that is the real world.
You don't need 'a great deal of money' to get into OS X either as user or developer (remember, the development system is free). No, you cannot scrape the components for a Wintel supercomputer out of a dumpster but there apparently is a large enough population with enough money to actually pay for things they use.