Under normal driving conditions, a human is not really better than a robot. It's the extreme conditions, where the driver is not paying attention to the road, or a sudden even, or ice and snow or a mechanical problem that gets you.
It's normal conditions, such as rain, boring roadworks and heavy traffic that a robot will be infinitely better than a distracted, incompetent or stupid driver.
It's extreme conditions where the human has infinitely better capacity to understand what's happening and choose the least bad outcome where the robot would be fucked.
I know I can put my car onto snow at speed, go into a semi-controlled slide and come out the other side in full control pointing the right way. A robot can't (yet) plan ahead like that, doesn't have the understanding or experience of how the car will react, and can't predict the utter stupidity of the guy coming the other way that's going to lose his back-end taking half my lane.
While many accidents are caused by people's mistakes, some are caused, or at least helped along by mechanical failure, such as tire blow out or brake problems. These automated cars may be better at reacting to the problems, but I don't want to be in a road train inches in front of a semi when its tire calls it quits.
I agree with you, reasonable distance would still be sensible to cope with the unknown - and also to allow for far more gentle changes in speed. Good motorway (erm, highway?) drivers rarely hit their brakes in normal traffic because they plan ahead and see speed changes happening. No matter how good your automated system there are likely to be spots of congestion that cause changes in speed, there will be issues with debris, children or broken vehicles on the roads, etc, so making it viable to deal with those without emergency braking is only sensible.
However, when a tire does blow out, vehicles doing something remarkable. They keep going. I find myself pretty relaxed about that possibility.
Note that I'm picking up specific points you've made; I actually agree with your main points and thought you put them well:)
I think that the tagline "Pull a Jordan" is insulting and offensive
I think it's apt and funny. I also hope Martin has the decency to finish his series before dies, but accept he may not be in complete control over that.
I'd suggest the Malazan Book of the Fallen too then, by Stephen Erikson.
Get through Gardens of the Moon (the first book) and give the second one a go too, even if you don't like the first. It starts in (innovative) generic fantasy mode but swiftly turns up the ratchet, goes heavily multi-threaded, ties together story threads across millenia and has some of the harshest treatment for 'main' characters I've seen in mainstream books.
I mostly love it for the constant ratcheting up of the bar for "don't fuck with..", where someone you don't fuck with in the first book or two is destroyed in a middle book just to demonstrate how much nastier someone else is - who is then ripped apart to prove that an earlier character whose abilities were doubted really is that nasty.
He gets shit done, and he's also a far better writer than Martin.
I'm not knocking Martin, he's a world ahead of Jordan (frankly the world of literature is a better place without him spewing out more shit books) and I'll happily buy that one when it's released.
But the Malazan Book of the Fallen is just by far the best 'fantasy' series I've ever read, by quite a margin.
I think 10 minutes server downtime once a couple of months (or even less frequently) due to compiling updates, is not much of an issue. Other packages can compile while the server is up and running, it reduces performance, but not for too long as to call it important. At least this has been my experience.
I'll happily go with "Desktop replacement" but to me that's a modifier of "laptop".
I have a desktop replacement laptop. It's not as good as a desktop (certainly not including price), but it is a laptop.
It's not as portable as many laptops, its battery life isn't great, but it is portable, it can run off battery and it does suit my needs better than that Apple reviewed.
It's lovely that the market supports so many different requirements and usages. I just hate people lying to make a certain product sound better, by (for instance) claiming it's the first laptop to ever use a core i7 CPU.
Apple are marketing to a sizeable market segment (maybe too big to be a 'niche' these days) and will be successful. No need for PC Mag to lie about it.
Only because they're not thinking (or can't afford it. Or, can afford it).
SSD for boot, traditional hard drive for bulk storage. It's the cost effective compromise for vastly improved performance. It also costs more than dropping a 5400rpm drive into an alleged performance laptop, which utterly discredits the review.
To be fair to Apple, you can go purely SSD. But because they don't offer the second drive, you're basically forced into paying a lot more to receive far less capacity.
I'd rather pay extra for the speed but retain the capacity. Give me that second drive.
(Posted on a laptop with four drive bays. Plus an optical. 17" form factor gives you plenty of space..)
If you want comparable screen/CPU/graphics/etc then no, you wont get that for half the price.
You will get it for less - e.g. a 15.4" laptop with 1920x1080 resolution, mobile i7 CPU, nvidia graphics and a 7200rpm hard disk (which is your primary limiting factor in most uses, something Apple keep failing to realise) for under $1800 from Falcon Northwest, and I don't live in the US and it took me all of three minutes to find that.
But if you just want a well built laptop capable of handling most types of work or home use, you can get a very well made machine for half the price of an Apple. HP and Lenovo are used across the business world for very good reasons.
you have to go to the 15.6" Lenovo to get 1920x1080 (stupid resolution for a laptop)
I was about to go into an unhinged rant at you over that, fearing you were one of these people that think 1280x1024 makes the writing look a bit small and holding back the rest of us. Then..
would much rather have a 1920x1200
Thank you!
HD TV has a lot to answer for, but making 1920x1200 screens cost prohibitive to use in a laptop is probably the worse of the lot. I'm going to lose 10% of my screen space when I next upgrade my laptop because I just can't find anything with a good resolution and all the other things I want inside.
I am however lusting over the 13.1" Sony Vaio Z series with its 1920x1080 screen. I'll cope with losing the bottom 10% to get that resolution in that form factor.
1) Your laptop isn't a laptop if it's got a 95W desktop CPU in it.
Oooh, I'm sorry - hadn't realised there were strict definitions to which people had to adhere when describing computers.
What _is_ the name for a laptop, that looks like a laptop, can be carried around like a laptop, that runs off its own battery like a laptop, has a screen, keyboard, speakers, touchpad, volume buttons and webcam like a laptop, and is in every possible way a laptop except for its CPU which runs.. in a laptop?
Me, I'd call it a laptop.
Ironically I wouldn't use it on my lap, but I do own such a device and I do carry it in a laptop bag between homes where I use it while lying in bed, instead of my other laptop.
It's great that low power CPUs are finally up to the capabilities of two year old desktop CPUs, and understandable that chipset improvements make the system as a whole superior. Me, that makes me wonder what using the current desktop chipset/CPUs in a laptop would perform like, because the one thing I don't need from my laptop is the ability to run without an external power source. At that point sacrificing performance to improve battery life ceases to be attractive.
I'd hope so, but it's still a hopelessly naive review. The summary states
Quad-core Core i7 processor is a first.
I'm typing this on a 20 month old laptop with a quad core i7 processor.
Too right a laptop designed two years later with two years of chipset improvements should be better. Although frankly I'd skip the apple and go for a 13.1" Vaio - better screen resolution, lighter, and also ships with an i7 CPU.
Hmm, which is more evil? Sony suing anybody that uses any of their hardware, or Apple just plain stopping you?
Have you ever seen a child support payment that really was equal to half the cost of feeding, clothing, housing, and medical care for the child? It doesn't happen.
Which fantasy world are you living in? How about a man that was jailed because he's refusing to pay significantly more than half of the cost of feeding, clothing, housing and caring for his children:
Any man that whines about child support isn't a man.
Any woman that wants me to pay for her children lets them grow up in my house. I don't raise them, I don't pay for them. I'm not dealing with the stress and hassle of working for a living if I have to give my income away to someone. I'd rather quit my job and raise my children myself.
If you don't like that, don't fuck me or plan for an abortion.
For fucks sake your entire justice apparatus is politically elected. They're political beasts that will do whatever is expedient to achieve re-election.
That's not justice, and that does mean these people are very easily influenced.
Sarah Palin, Huckabee, some bloggers, and even some two-bit Congresscritters aren't going to get anyone executed for anything.
Someone that's already run in a presidential campaign and shows every likelihood of trying for a nomination to be President of the US of A inherently has significant levels of influence.
Given the well publicised levels of corruption in the US, the gun-happy culture, the belief in killing people as a form of justice and the low level of intelligence exhibited by significant numbers of Americans I don't think it's unreasonable for Assange to be concerned for his life if illegally transferred to the US.
I can tell the difference, but was ignoring that to make a plea on your daughter's behalf. You're clearly a cruel bully incapable of showing empathy with two year old girls.:)
Slashdot Mirror
It might frighten you to discover a similar anti-defamation policy buried deep on page 174 of your employee manual
No, it's on page 3 of my employment contract. Not a surprise, and something I do take seriously.
Of course, my employer has to be careful what it says about me too, which feels fair.
Under normal driving conditions, a human is not really better than a robot. It's the extreme conditions, where the driver is not paying attention to the road, or a sudden even, or ice and snow or a mechanical problem that gets you.
It's normal conditions, such as rain, boring roadworks and heavy traffic that a robot will be infinitely better than a distracted, incompetent or stupid driver.
It's extreme conditions where the human has infinitely better capacity to understand what's happening and choose the least bad outcome where the robot would be fucked.
I know I can put my car onto snow at speed, go into a semi-controlled slide and come out the other side in full control pointing the right way. A robot can't (yet) plan ahead like that, doesn't have the understanding or experience of how the car will react, and can't predict the utter stupidity of the guy coming the other way that's going to lose his back-end taking half my lane.
While many accidents are caused by people's mistakes, some are caused, or at least helped along by mechanical failure, such as tire blow out or brake problems. These automated cars may be better at reacting to the problems, but I don't want to be in a road train inches in front of a semi when its tire calls it quits.
I agree with you, reasonable distance would still be sensible to cope with the unknown - and also to allow for far more gentle changes in speed. Good motorway (erm, highway?) drivers rarely hit their brakes in normal traffic because they plan ahead and see speed changes happening. No matter how good your automated system there are likely to be spots of congestion that cause changes in speed, there will be issues with debris, children or broken vehicles on the roads, etc, so making it viable to deal with those without emergency braking is only sensible.
However, when a tire does blow out, vehicles doing something remarkable. They keep going. I find myself pretty relaxed about that possibility.
Note that I'm picking up specific points you've made; I actually agree with your main points and thought you put them well :)
I think that the tagline "Pull a Jordan" is insulting and offensive
I think it's apt and funny. I also hope Martin has the decency to finish his series before dies, but accept he may not be in complete control over that.
I'd suggest the Malazan Book of the Fallen too then, by Stephen Erikson.
Get through Gardens of the Moon (the first book) and give the second one a go too, even if you don't like the first. It starts in (innovative) generic fantasy mode but swiftly turns up the ratchet, goes heavily multi-threaded, ties together story threads across millenia and has some of the harshest treatment for 'main' characters I've seen in mainstream books.
I mostly love it for the constant ratcheting up of the bar for "don't fuck with..", where someone you don't fuck with in the first book or two is destroyed in a middle book just to demonstrate how much nastier someone else is - who is then ripped apart to prove that an earlier character whose abilities were doubted really is that nasty.
Great writing, great story, excellent series.
He gets shit done, and he's also a far better writer than Martin.
I'm not knocking Martin, he's a world ahead of Jordan (frankly the world of literature is a better place without him spewing out more shit books) and I'll happily buy that one when it's released.
But the Malazan Book of the Fallen is just by far the best 'fantasy' series I've ever read, by quite a margin.
Hmm, lets ponder that for a moment. £20m will buy you one, maybe two Tornado aircraft.
Two aircraft, no pilots, no training, no ground crew, no parts, no maintained runway, or 300 drones that are more useful in asymmetrical warfare?
The pilots can retrain as drone pilots if they want, or they can take their RAF training and go work for EasyJet. Their choice.
I did particularly love this one:
I think 10 minutes server downtime once a couple of months (or even less frequently) due to compiling updates, is not much of an issue. Other packages can compile while the server is up and running, it reduces performance, but not for too long as to call it important. At least this has been my experience.
I still have my November '94 CD with "Plug & Play Linux" on it - Yggdrasil, although I'd have to stick it into a drive to check the version.
Not the first version I ever installed though. That was earlier in '94, from floppy disks downloaded over the 'net.
The first thing the review says, right at the top of the page:
Pros
Quad-core Core i7 processor is a first.
Well, it's not.
I'm not challenging whether it's a fast laptop, but there's a degree of misinformation going on that makes me mistrust them anyway.
I'll happily go with "Desktop replacement" but to me that's a modifier of "laptop".
I have a desktop replacement laptop. It's not as good as a desktop (certainly not including price), but it is a laptop.
It's not as portable as many laptops, its battery life isn't great, but it is portable, it can run off battery and it does suit my needs better than that Apple reviewed.
It's lovely that the market supports so many different requirements and usages. I just hate people lying to make a certain product sound better, by (for instance) claiming it's the first laptop to ever use a core i7 CPU.
Apple are marketing to a sizeable market segment (maybe too big to be a 'niche' these days) and will be successful. No need for PC Mag to lie about it.
Only because they're not thinking (or can't afford it. Or, can afford it).
SSD for boot, traditional hard drive for bulk storage. It's the cost effective compromise for vastly improved performance. It also costs more than dropping a 5400rpm drive into an alleged performance laptop, which utterly discredits the review.
To be fair to Apple, you can go purely SSD. But because they don't offer the second drive, you're basically forced into paying a lot more to receive far less capacity.
I'd rather pay extra for the speed but retain the capacity. Give me that second drive.
(Posted on a laptop with four drive bays. Plus an optical. 17" form factor gives you plenty of space..)
If you want comparable screen/CPU/graphics/etc then no, you wont get that for half the price.
You will get it for less - e.g. a 15.4" laptop with 1920x1080 resolution, mobile i7 CPU, nvidia graphics and a 7200rpm hard disk (which is your primary limiting factor in most uses, something Apple keep failing to realise) for under $1800 from Falcon Northwest, and I don't live in the US and it took me all of three minutes to find that.
But if you just want a well built laptop capable of handling most types of work or home use, you can get a very well made machine for half the price of an Apple. HP and Lenovo are used across the business world for very good reasons.
you have to go to the 15.6" Lenovo to get 1920x1080 (stupid resolution for a laptop)
I was about to go into an unhinged rant at you over that, fearing you were one of these people that think 1280x1024 makes the writing look a bit small and holding back the rest of us. Then..
would much rather have a 1920x1200
Thank you!
HD TV has a lot to answer for, but making 1920x1200 screens cost prohibitive to use in a laptop is probably the worse of the lot. I'm going to lose 10% of my screen space when I next upgrade my laptop because I just can't find anything with a good resolution and all the other things I want inside.
I am however lusting over the 13.1" Sony Vaio Z series with its 1920x1080 screen. I'll cope with losing the bottom 10% to get that resolution in that form factor.
1) Your laptop isn't a laptop if it's got a 95W desktop CPU in it.
Oooh, I'm sorry - hadn't realised there were strict definitions to which people had to adhere when describing computers.
What _is_ the name for a laptop, that looks like a laptop, can be carried around like a laptop, that runs off its own battery like a laptop, has a screen, keyboard, speakers, touchpad, volume buttons and webcam like a laptop, and is in every possible way a laptop except for its CPU which runs.. in a laptop?
Me, I'd call it a laptop.
Ironically I wouldn't use it on my lap, but I do own such a device and I do carry it in a laptop bag between homes where I use it while lying in bed, instead of my other laptop.
It's great that low power CPUs are finally up to the capabilities of two year old desktop CPUs, and understandable that chipset improvements make the system as a whole superior. Me, that makes me wonder what using the current desktop chipset/CPUs in a laptop would perform like, because the one thing I don't need from my laptop is the ability to run without an external power source. At that point sacrificing performance to improve battery life ceases to be attractive.
I'd hope so, but it's still a hopelessly naive review. The summary states
Quad-core Core i7 processor is a first.
I'm typing this on a 20 month old laptop with a quad core i7 processor.
Too right a laptop designed two years later with two years of chipset improvements should be better. Although frankly I'd skip the apple and go for a 13.1" Vaio - better screen resolution, lighter, and also ships with an i7 CPU.
Hmm, which is more evil? Sony suing anybody that uses any of their hardware, or Apple just plain stopping you?
Fuck me when did Slashdot readers get so naive?
Influence != Order
I used the word Influence.
Go learn some politics, it'll stand you in good stead in the workplace. Hmm, and in college. Actually, thinking about it, in Kindergarden.
Pick up some reading comprehension skills while you're there.
I'm happy to hear valid critique of my comments but at least respond to the point I'm making instead of making irrelevant statements.
These people are making sound bites to increase their popularity or provide entertainment.
Yeah, me too. Notice however how everyone else has already noted how naive, juvenile and stupid you are.
I'm very happy to take responsibility for my actions. I'm just not funding a lavish lifestyle for some bitch that wont let me raise my own children.
Is that wrong?
Hmm. I _do_ have an interesting entry in my diary for Tuesday afternoon..
hmm, the AG is a political appointment though. Aren't state AGs elected?
Maybe I've been misunderstanding it all these years. Quite likely really.
You elect local sheriffs, yeah? Does that count? ;)
Fair point, although I was thinking more of the attorney general and prosecutors that would be the people demanding state murder.
Have you ever seen a child support payment that really was equal to half the cost of feeding, clothing, housing, and medical care for the child? It doesn't happen.
Which fantasy world are you living in? How about a man that was jailed because he's refusing to pay significantly more than half of the cost of feeding, clothing, housing and caring for his children:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article1985796.ece
Or ignoring whether it's half the costs of caring for the children, is 80% of a man's income a fair amount to take? No wonder the guy killed himself:
http://www.mensrights.com.au/Men_Suicide_Statistics_Australia/Australian_Father_Suicide_Victim_Hounded_Over_Child_Support-Canberra_Times_15NOV2000.aspx
Oh, and it's not rosy in the US either. Check the stats from New Hampshire before you go on another sexist rant:
http://ulocal.wmur.com/service/displayDiscussionThreads.kickAction?as=63455&w=177326&d=570454
Any man that whines about child support isn't a man.
Any woman that wants me to pay for her children lets them grow up in my house. I don't raise them, I don't pay for them. I'm not dealing with the stress and hassle of working for a living if I have to give my income away to someone. I'd rather quit my job and raise my children myself.
If you don't like that, don't fuck me or plan for an abortion.
Sure. You keep believing that.
For fucks sake your entire justice apparatus is politically elected. They're political beasts that will do whatever is expedient to achieve re-election.
That's not justice, and that does mean these people are very easily influenced.
Sarah Palin, Huckabee, some bloggers, and even some two-bit Congresscritters aren't going to get anyone executed for anything.
Someone that's already run in a presidential campaign and shows every likelihood of trying for a nomination to be President of the US of A inherently has significant levels of influence.
Given the well publicised levels of corruption in the US, the gun-happy culture, the belief in killing people as a form of justice and the low level of intelligence exhibited by significant numbers of Americans I don't think it's unreasonable for Assange to be concerned for his life if illegally transferred to the US.
I can tell the difference, but was ignoring that to make a plea on your daughter's behalf. You're clearly a cruel bully incapable of showing empathy with two year old girls. :)
It's all fun and games until your precious darling replies with, "Cool! Tried that too, here's the video of me: ..."