While most consumers will be perfectly happy with the functionality of the tablet computer - there is still a very large minority of people who will pay for the flexibility of a general purpose desktop computer:
With future Android and Windows versions we are probably going to see the traditional PC/Laptop merge with the tablet. Essentially, many modern Android tablets can already connect to a KB and external monitor (my 1 yr old Acer Iconia tablet has a full sized USB 2.0 port and mini HDMI) which makes the biggest difference between my Tablet and Laptop the OS (Android 4.0 on the tablet, Windows 7/Linux on the lappy). As tablet hardware improves, this will be addressed. In 2-3 years we'll be buying tablets that can dual boot Windows, Linux and Android (and even hacked version of IOS. even with Apple suing everyone and sundry over it) that can be used as an independent tablet or docked to a monitor and KB/Mouse set up to be used as a traditional PC.
But in regards to the Desktop specific market, it's not going to disappear. As you pointed out people need desktops for specific tasks, gamers, devs, scientists and others who require a metric crapload of processing power. With great processing power come great cooling requirements and laptops/tablets just cant cut it there. In 3 years I doubt there will be a tablet equivalent to my current gaming boxen (Phenom 2 944/16GB RAM/Geforce 570/512 GB SSD) ignoring my 3 TB of spinning disk let alone the dual Xeon systems I get for the GIS analysts (servers in a whitebox basically).
One option you didn't consider were many businesses that want a non-portable computer. They buy 5000 SFF low power desktops because they are slightly cheaper and don't ever need to be removed from the building in their life times.
Just one minor nitpick
Console game systems come nowhere near the capabilities of a tricked out game system
Game consoles come nowhere near stock, off the shelf PC gaming systems. When the PS3 was released, it's graphic processing was 2 generations behind my gaming PC (PS3=Geforce 6 series, PC = Geforece 8 series). We're now 7 generations beyond that. The GF 640m in my lappy would be at least twice as powerful as the PS3.
We're going to see tablets that connect to monitors and keyboards.
At which point it's no longer a tablet, it's a PC.
Exactly.
Whats the difference between a tablet and a cheap PC with an LCD screen.
But I have a slightly different prediction, rather than becoming a PC, tablets will become a peripheral to the PC. Basically Windows 9 will have a "move to tablet" feature where you can move whatever your doing into a connected Android tablet (possibly even a WP8 tablet for the 3 or 4 people who bought them).
Also we'll probably see cheap LCD panels integrated into desktop cases or even keyboards in the near future.
The same one that suffers from lots of malware.
People who care about creating their own programs: 0.01%. (and that's being generous.)
People who care about not getting malware: 99.99%.
That's why so few people are using Windows?
You're wrong again.
People will use the platform that allows them to do what they need to do. Platforms that lock them in, put up barriers to doing things and when a user does something their own way they tell them "they're holding it wrong" will not be the successful platform.
Malware on Windows doesn't matter and Malware on Android is not a big issue (sorry, I know you like to make out that it's endemic, but it really affects less than 0.001% of users) so it goes doubly so for Android.
However more people are jumping off IOS due to Apple's restrictive nature. I mean if I want to transfer a text file from my phone to my work PC I have to jump through half a dozen hoops on IOS (one of which probably requires hacking my phone) but on Android I just plug my phone in and copy/paste. I cant email these files to myself either, they're over 7 MB so the email filter at work will drop it out of hand.
People still use Windows because it allows them to do what they need to with a minimum of fuss, and so it will be with mobile devices.
I had a friend who could routinely make $100 an hour playing on the street. Not massive cash, but for a kid of 18, better than flipping burgers.
You are seriously uninformed about the going salaries for flipping burgers. I believe $100 an hour is a rough equivalent of $200,000 a year salary
What strata of society do you live in, where such money is not massive cash?
Even if you meant "a day", that's still much more than you could ever make flipping burgers ($12.50/hour after taxes).
The fact he said "better than flipping burgers" tends to indicate that he has some idea of what wage that kind of work attracts.
BTW, $100 p/h is not a regular wage for a busker, this would be at peak foot traffic times in nightlife areas, so maybe 2 hours on 2 nights a week (8-10 PM friday and saturday nights in my city) outside of that takings would be very slow even for a good busker. So it's good for a short stint to get some extra cash but it's not a full time job.
BTW, have you ever played an instrument. 2 hours solid on a guitar would leave your fingers shredded, 4 hours you wont feel them for a week (by solid I mean practically no breaks, playing hard for 55 minutes an hour). I have a lot of respect for people who can do this.
A$400 p/w is less than minimum wage in Oz, musicians earn their money in 2 main ways. First by performing, this is a guaranteed income rather than relying on the generosity of passers by. Secondly by teaching, most guitar teachers are also performers and have been performing for years (A$60 p/h for a decent guitar teacher in my city).
I've been suspicious ever since I saw my sister "Like" Unibet and TomWaterhouse (betting sites) and I know for a fact my sister doesn't gamble (motgage and kid, she doesn't have the cash) and when my tea totalling mate liked Johny Walker (hes also a bit of a hipster so if he did drink he'd drink some obscure brand of whiskey made by Scottish virgins that you've never heard of).
So I think that Facebook is inserting these "likes" on the behest of advertisers.
My Facebook Friend list is the same as my real friend list (I dont add any Tom, Dick or Harry that I've met somewhere, at some point in my life) so I notice when things are out of character for them.
Outsourcing IT isn't the problem. A failure to oversee the IT services provided was the problem;
Which is difficult to impossible to do unless you're directly managing the technicians. In which case, why are you paying another company A$200 an hour when the same techs would jump at being directly offered A$35-60 an hour (consulting rates in Oz).
So we're back to outsourcing being the problem. There may be more to it than that, but if you need 100% control, you cant get that by going through third party.
You're paying for taxes, for your government, you're not paying that much for the gas itself.
Wrong.
The taxes go to fixing and building roads. In the US, this money comes from state budgets (so income taxes basically). In Australia I'm paying A$0.375 p/L taxes on fuel and this goes to maintaining roads. It's a more equitable system based on actual petrol usage. The guy who drives a V8 pays less than the guy who drives an Inline 4.
In Australia, we get our fuel from Singapore (Tapis) which is consistently US$0.20 p/L more expensive than WTI or Brent Crude.
Also driving in Europe and Australia, you can really tell the money is spent on roads.
Other countries tend to have higher gas prices than the USA because of taxes levied to support various social programs.
This is bollocks, please stop repeating it.
Actually, taxes on fuels are levied to pay for the roads the cars drive on.
In Australia 37.5 Australian cents are levied out of every litre to pay for road maintenance and it still isn't enough. In my state 100% of speed camera revenue goes to road construction and maintenance yet still there is money taken from income and corporate taxes to make up the shortfall.
In the US, they just take 100% of the money to pay for roads from taxes (or debt, which will eventually be take from taxes).
I prefer fuel taxes to income taxes as they work on consumption. In effect they punish the heaviest and most inefficient users, people who use their car less pay less... and saying this, I own a sports car (not cheap on fuel).
A market controlled by cartels or monopolies is not free, and is every bit as bad as a market controlled by a government.
In fact it's worse. Governments only have to recoup cap ex and op ex, private cartels have to make a profit and they have to keep making more profit than they did last year.
The Philippines is one of the last countries in the world where the Catholic Church has a dominant voice in politics, so laws attempting to enforce morality are a fairly common thing. For example, it's one of the only countries in the world where divorce is illegal. As a result, many couples today either don't get married in the first place, or else are in a long term live-in relationship with someone while still being married to someone else.
This is true for the government, but not for the people.
Filipinos are like most other SE Asians (including Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims) where they are quite devoutly religious but not fanatical like in the ME or bible belts of the west. So Filipinos believe quite deeply in god, but are not insecure in their religion at all. They wont try to force it on you at all. The same is true for other people in SE Asia like Indonesian Muslims or Khmer Buddhists (well, minus the god part for Buddhists). However, I wont talk about religion with a Filipino, whilst not insecure, they are quite adamant in their beliefs.
The Philippines is one of the last countries in the world where the Catholic Church has a dominant voice in politics, so laws attempting to enforce morality are a fairly common thing. For example, it's one of the only countries in the world where divorce is illegal. As a result, many couples today either don't get married in the first place, or else are in a long term live-in relationship with someone while still being married to someone else.
Cybersex in the Philippines was already legally considered to be a form of prostitution before this law was passed. Now it would appear that the punishment for getting naked on a webcam will be harsher than that for having actual sex for pay, which will only serve to drive women away from the relatively safe jobs involving cybersex and into the more dangerous work of actual prostitution.
Just how much more severe is the punishment for cybersex? The fine for prostitution is 200 to 2,000 pesos. The fine for cybersex is 200,000 to 1,000,000 pesos. Average annual family income in the Philippines is 206,000 pesos as of 2009.
Well to show how powerful the Filipino government is, there is quite a bit of prostitution going on in the Phils, even in Manila. The cops are all paid to look the other way. That's the real reason this thread is really making a mountain out of a molehill. The cops are for sale, the mayor is for sale, hell even the president is for sale. It's just a question of how many Peso. Laws like this make it look like Manila is "Doing Something(TM)" but drive for 1 hour down the Norther Luzon Expressway out of Manila, the law is ignored by the local govt and plod... Just like the laws on prostitution.
It's the usual sensationalism. The BBC published an article with a similar headline the other day, except more than anything the cybersex the BBC was referring to was not really cybersex as people classically know it - in other words, this story seems to stem from the fact the BBC reporter got a little confused about everything.
For those familiar with the Philippines this is pretty standard... it aslo wont make one jot of difference.
The Philippine government has a secret love/open hate with the sex "industry" in the Phils. They, as good Christians are reviled and repulsed by the idea of consensual paid sex between adults, however they love the money it brings into the country.
But the kicker about the Phils government is that it's corrupt as all buggery so what's "illegal" by the letter of the law goes on in open view thanks to the letters P, E, S and O. Put simply, you can pay to get out of almost any kind of trouble as long as you haven't pissed off anyone important (pissing off Filipino's in the Philippines is a bad idea in general, there are shitloads of guns in that country and life is cheap).
The law is there to target "cam girl" operators. Basically people set up a bunch of girls with webcams and charge customers to *ahem* talk to the girls. I'm assuming you're familiar with the concept even though most wont engage in it (including myself, why pay a cam girl when you can, well, hire a real one).
NOTE: anyone planning travel to the Phils, dont let me put you off. The sex trade is not that open and is pretty restricted to red light districts, it's a lot more subdued than Thailand or Amsterdam. There are lots of nice places to visit where there isn't a red light district like Puerto Princesa or Davao. Even Cebu City is fine and Filipinos are generally very friendly, accepting and helpful (I.E. you have to be a really special kind of arsehole to get shot as a tourist).
Or 'war', if that's what Jobs wanted, Apple's got one now for real. Let's have this discussion again a year from now, and the above numbers may be a lot closer. In a war, you lose some battles like Samsung has recently. They just won one. Its going to be interesting, and Apple is ceded more ground recently. As my Dad used to say, "We shall see what we shall see."
Apple's "victory" may be nothing but a Pyrrhic victory. They haven't done any real damage to Samsung and the actual punishment has been postponed until after an appeal, Samsung have also put in a motion for a mistrial, with Velvin Hogan shooting his mouth off at every opportunity a mistrial may be incredibly easy to get (the basics of it: he instructed the other jurors to ignore the concept of prior art). I bet Apple is quietly wishing Hogan had of kept his mouth shut.
any CPU in the late 90's was called a Pentium regardless of whether it was Intel or AMD.
Not on any of the mailing lists or web pages that I ever visited. Maybe it was an Australian thing?
Nope,
Normal people just called them Pentiums. You're problem is that you were using a mailing list (which meant people probably knew the difference)
AMD K6's were advertised as Pentium II's in print (it was the 90's, print was still a big thing) up until they got caught, then they just called it "Pentium 2 equivalent" (Even AMD marketed it as such)
The Smart Four Two is safer in a crash than any SUV ever made, but a lot of people dont have the IQ to realize that.
I suggest you go to youtube and watch some of the Smart crash test videos. Against larger cars, the Smart usually gets punted quite far.
If everyone drove something that size, sure. But mass does matter.
In a collision would you like to:
A: come to a very sudden stop.
B: bleed off speed slowly.
You're right that mass matters, but more mass != safer. In fact more mass == more kinetic energy that needs to go somewhere.
But size and shape matters as much as mass. SUV's are slightly more deadly in a collision because of their tendency to roll due to their higher centre of gravity. This wonderful fact gets left out of many safety tests (ANCAP and Euro NCAP don't even test rear end collisions). Safety really comes down to structure and features. The occupants larger SUV will suffer worse injuries/fatalities then those in a smaller hatchback that has better crumple zones, better structural integrity (I.E. roll bars) and a better SRS (Supplementary Restraint System). The biggest risk to both vehicles is head injury, which is increased significantly if the vehicle rolls.
Point in short, between an SUV and a compact, the car with the better head restraints wins.
Android Fanboy: You paid how much for that phone that does half of what mine does?
iPhone user: Actually I jailbroke it, so I have a far higher quality of real apps and I can do anything you can in terms of configuration or customization.
Sorry Captain Obvious, you met your match when Captain Reality showed up.
So... how many custom IOS ROMS are there.
Captain Reality has been out ranked by General Reality.
Also, they were both reminded that an Android users doesn't have to break anything to get something like AirDroid working.
Signed
Common F. Sense.
Considering my EK Civic (97) has a fuel economy of 6.5 L/100 KM (combined) and I actually achieved this doing 80 KM p/d (1/2 highway driving and 1/2 city driving) $14,000 would by approx 10,000 L @ $1.40 a litre (average price here in Oz). The tank capacity of an EK is 45L so that's 222 odd refills. I used approx 34 litres in the Civic of Fury each week doing around 500 K's a week, thats 294 refils so that's just shy of 5 years and seven months.
Then again, my EK was a VTI model which had better fuel economy than the previous GLI models which the articles author had due to the fact it had VTEC (Honda introduced the VTI in 1997, the first Civic with VTEC). So his figures will be a little different (at a guess, 7.0 L/100 KM combined).
Still, he deserves full hacker credit. I have to wonder if he's added any extra weight. The Civic's 1.6L engine would be best described as "gutless" if the body was not fantastically light. The car weighed a little under 1000 KG which isn't bad for a 5 seater sedan.
sure its not as slim or as light, it doesnt have as much battery life, but shit, its cost 40 bucks on ebay, why would I want to spend a pile of money on a obsolete computer no matter how sexy it was?
Seriously? 900 bucks for a 13 inch dell ultrabook? I got a 15.6 inch 2.5ghz i5 with twice the ram and a TB hard drive for 499$ at the dell refurb outlet for my mediocre work computer, and it has one scratch across the windows sticker on the bottom.
This.
Ultrabooks are not for everyone. Most people will buy a NEW i5 with a 500 GB spinning HDD for US$500 ish from their local box retailer.
Only people looking for something specific will look outside this range. To elaborate I bought an laptop for traveling last year, because I'd be doing some gaming on it what I needed was a laptop that was light, had a powerful GFX, good battery life, DVD drive and a 14" screen. I ended up with a 14" Asus, 8GB RAM, Hybrid Nvidia 640M/Intel GMA. Using the intel GFX It'd get 9-10 hours on battery, using the Nvidia GFX it would play most games on med to high settings (battery life was about 5-6 hours though). This was only US$850, I spent the rest of my budget on a 256 GB SSD.
People who do a lot of traveling will buy ultrabooks, but not people who just want a machine to pot around home with.
They both have the same processor, same amount of RAM, same GFX capability, same battery life (7h according to the manufacturer) et al.
The difference is the "so called" Retina display is 1440x900 and the Zenbook has a 1920x1080, the Zenbook also has better speakers, and SD card port and standardised Micro HDMI ports.
Now I'll get to why the Ultrabook (and Air) is not going gangbusters
Look at the power of web/email machines under US$500. This is all that most users need. Ultrabooks really aren't for the common users. Businesses don't buy Apple or even Asus, they buy from the likes of HP, Lenovo or Dell because when your ring up Apple and say, "I want 300 computers delivered per week for the next 5 weeks" they'll laugh at you, but when you ring Dell and ask the same question they ask which day you want them delivered. Ultrabooks are twice the price of decent laptops and seeing as they meet the needs of most users, most users will pick the cheaper option.
I'm probably buying my mum a laptop soon, She just wants to use it for email, internet shopping and farmville so I sure as hell wont be buying a A$2000 Macbook for that. Her eyes aren't so good so "Retina(R)" displays are useless. I'll look for the lightest 15" 1366x768 screen available under A$600.
But now, with SSD technology rapidly improving, I'd say within 18 months you will see "convertible" touchscreen Ultrabooks running Windows 8 Professional with 512 to 1024 GB SSD storage standard with the latest super-efficient Intel "Core" CPU's, and those will definitely be vastly better-selling.
Dont give up the day job mate, comedy is not your forte.
Windows 8 is DOA, everyone hates it. Gamers wont use it, Businesses wont use it. The average user will hate it.
Now if you had of said.
But now, with SSD technology rapidly improving, I'd say within 18 months you will see Ultrabooks running Windows 7 Professional with 256 to 512 GB SSD storage standard with the latest super-efficient Intel "Core" CPU's, and those will definitely be vastly better-selling.
It might be more believable.
First off, touchscreens are gimmicky when you've got a KB and mouse. It's not a question of interface its a question of ergonomics and Gorilla Arm is still a problem if you're using the device for any length of time.
Users don't typically use more than 200 GB of storage with Windows + Office. We aren't talking about your gamer or person who torrents everything, I've got a 256 GB SSD in my laptop and I struggle to fill that. I've also got a 512 GB SSD in my gaming box and even with a lot of games I struggle to fill that (although my older, less IO intensive games (think pre 2003) go onto a 300 GB VelociHeater).
You're right in thinking that 128 GB on an SSD is pushing it, but 256 GB is fine for a lot of people. 1 TB SSD's are overkill.
Apparently, it's a trademarked Intel name, because the article referenced in the summary said:
Devices such as HP's $579 Sleekbook - which runs AMD's chips, so can't be called an Ultrabook
I always thought Ultrabook was a generic term for a more powerful netbook (or a notebook in a smaller formfactor), but apparently it's Intel specific.
Its trademarked but used in the same way as generic cola is called Coke, generic paracetamol is called Panadol/Tylenol (depending on which country you live in) and any CPU in the late 90's was called a Pentium regardless of whether it was Intel or AMD. Basically it's just made it's way into popular usage and Intel would be stupid to try to fight it.
So someone who stays back on weekends, helps train and educate the junior members of the team and has earned the respect of their coworkers is an arrogant egotistical twat because... they're good at what they do.
Fuck, you need a big hit with the cluebat too.
The person described in the article is not egotistical, in fact if you are intimidated by the fact a coworker or subordinate is smarter than you, you're the twat.
I've worked with Brilliant Jerks. They're good at what they do, and they know it. They get shit done. But they also belittle their coworkers, disrupt the work of others, have to have their finger in every pie, are unwilling to delegate things that they don't need to do any more, etc. They like to be the pilot and at the controls at all times. But as a business grows, they cannot be central to every single last project any more. When they are asked to delegate, or find themselves excluded from even a minor project, they throw a hissy fit. You don't "appreciate" them. You "need" them to be involved. You're an ungrateful git because "they" do all the work around here while you slackasses stand around the water cooler and waste time.
Read the article, this is the opposite of the person they described.
The article described him as someone who had the respect of his coworkers, someone who passed on knowledge and training and the first to be willing to work OT/holidays.
The person you described is a Jerk, but not the person in the article... and you get rid of jerks as soon as possible, even if they do the work of 3 juniors, you'll probably get 3 juniors to work better with the team.
That means he was either 1. seeing twice as many patients as the others in the same amount of time, meaning he was not having as many meaningful patient interactions or more likely 2. ordering unnecessary and expensive tests
We actually have doctors that are brilliant and fit none of these descriptions. Having universal health care in Oz, number 2 is a non starter as ordering more tests than needed for diagnosis would just expose incompetence or at least inexperience. Number 1 is not necessarily true and tested by the number of successful treatments.
I had an optical surgeon when I was younger, she was the best in 3 states (about half the country in Australia). There was a waiting list from other optical surgeons to get patients under her knife. When she finally retired, it took 3 surgeons to handle the same number of patients (peadiatric surgeons often did everything from diagnosis to complex surgery). This is by far not the norm, but true brilliance is not the norm.
The first thing you do is stop refeing to them as jerks.
From the article,
When he spoke, everyone became quiet and listened â" not out of excitement for what he was going to say but out of respect.
He was always the first to cover for doctors who were on call. He was always the first to volunteer to work on holidays
This is a jerk?
I think the "boss" blogger needs to get up and have a big cup of reality.
This is the complete opposite of a jerk, the kind of person who keeps the business ticking along as usual no matter what is thrown in his way. The kind of person you dont want to piss off into leaving by calling them a jerk behind their back.
So he hasn't got much business acumen, that's not his job, that's yours (the boss). Chances are you know fsck all about his job and would have a very hard time replacing him.
You dont find something to "do" with a person like this, you give them something to do. Finding the work is not his problem, making sure the P&L statements look good is not his problem. His problem is doing the work that your clients pay for.
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With future Android and Windows versions we are probably going to see the traditional PC/Laptop merge with the tablet. Essentially, many modern Android tablets can already connect to a KB and external monitor (my 1 yr old Acer Iconia tablet has a full sized USB 2.0 port and mini HDMI) which makes the biggest difference between my Tablet and Laptop the OS (Android 4.0 on the tablet, Windows 7/Linux on the lappy). As tablet hardware improves, this will be addressed. In 2-3 years we'll be buying tablets that can dual boot Windows, Linux and Android (and even hacked version of IOS. even with Apple suing everyone and sundry over it) that can be used as an independent tablet or docked to a monitor and KB/Mouse set up to be used as a traditional PC.
But in regards to the Desktop specific market, it's not going to disappear. As you pointed out people need desktops for specific tasks, gamers, devs, scientists and others who require a metric crapload of processing power. With great processing power come great cooling requirements and laptops/tablets just cant cut it there. In 3 years I doubt there will be a tablet equivalent to my current gaming boxen (Phenom 2 944/16GB RAM/Geforce 570/512 GB SSD) ignoring my 3 TB of spinning disk let alone the dual Xeon systems I get for the GIS analysts (servers in a whitebox basically).
One option you didn't consider were many businesses that want a non-portable computer. They buy 5000 SFF low power desktops because they are slightly cheaper and don't ever need to be removed from the building in their life times.
Just one minor nitpick
Game consoles come nowhere near stock, off the shelf PC gaming systems. When the PS3 was released, it's graphic processing was 2 generations behind my gaming PC (PS3=Geforce 6 series, PC = Geforece 8 series). We're now 7 generations beyond that. The GF 640m in my lappy would be at least twice as powerful as the PS3.
We're going to see tablets that connect to monitors and keyboards.
At which point it's no longer a tablet, it's a PC.
Exactly.
Whats the difference between a tablet and a cheap PC with an LCD screen.
But I have a slightly different prediction, rather than becoming a PC, tablets will become a peripheral to the PC. Basically Windows 9 will have a "move to tablet" feature where you can move whatever your doing into a connected Android tablet (possibly even a WP8 tablet for the 3 or 4 people who bought them).
Also we'll probably see cheap LCD panels integrated into desktop cases or even keyboards in the near future.
The same one that suffers from lots of malware.
People who care about creating their own programs: 0.01%. (and that's being generous.)
People who care about not getting malware: 99.99%.
That's why so few people are using Windows?
You're wrong again.
People will use the platform that allows them to do what they need to do. Platforms that lock them in, put up barriers to doing things and when a user does something their own way they tell them "they're holding it wrong" will not be the successful platform.
Malware on Windows doesn't matter and Malware on Android is not a big issue (sorry, I know you like to make out that it's endemic, but it really affects less than 0.001% of users) so it goes doubly so for Android.
However more people are jumping off IOS due to Apple's restrictive nature. I mean if I want to transfer a text file from my phone to my work PC I have to jump through half a dozen hoops on IOS (one of which probably requires hacking my phone) but on Android I just plug my phone in and copy/paste. I cant email these files to myself either, they're over 7 MB so the email filter at work will drop it out of hand.
People still use Windows because it allows them to do what they need to with a minimum of fuss, and so it will be with mobile devices.
I had a friend who could routinely make $100 an hour playing on the street. Not massive cash, but for a kid of 18, better than flipping burgers.
You are seriously uninformed about the going salaries for flipping burgers. I believe $100 an hour is a rough equivalent of $200,000 a year salary
What strata of society do you live in, where such money is not massive cash?
Even if you meant "a day", that's still much more than you could ever make flipping burgers ($12.50/hour after taxes).
The fact he said "better than flipping burgers" tends to indicate that he has some idea of what wage that kind of work attracts.
BTW, $100 p/h is not a regular wage for a busker, this would be at peak foot traffic times in nightlife areas, so maybe 2 hours on 2 nights a week (8-10 PM friday and saturday nights in my city) outside of that takings would be very slow even for a good busker. So it's good for a short stint to get some extra cash but it's not a full time job.
BTW, have you ever played an instrument. 2 hours solid on a guitar would leave your fingers shredded, 4 hours you wont feel them for a week (by solid I mean practically no breaks, playing hard for 55 minutes an hour). I have a lot of respect for people who can do this.
A$400 p/w is less than minimum wage in Oz, musicians earn their money in 2 main ways. First by performing, this is a guaranteed income rather than relying on the generosity of passers by. Secondly by teaching, most guitar teachers are also performers and have been performing for years (A$60 p/h for a decent guitar teacher in my city).
Well then what in the world am I doing wasting time writing software?!? Time to pull the old Casio out of the closet and lay down some tunes!
OK, I understand the appeal of becoming a musician but seriously, how is you calculator going to help you?
I've been suspicious ever since I saw my sister "Like" Unibet and TomWaterhouse (betting sites) and I know for a fact my sister doesn't gamble (motgage and kid, she doesn't have the cash) and when my tea totalling mate liked Johny Walker (hes also a bit of a hipster so if he did drink he'd drink some obscure brand of whiskey made by Scottish virgins that you've never heard of).
So I think that Facebook is inserting these "likes" on the behest of advertisers.
My Facebook Friend list is the same as my real friend list (I dont add any Tom, Dick or Harry that I've met somewhere, at some point in my life) so I notice when things are out of character for them.
Which is difficult to impossible to do unless you're directly managing the technicians. In which case, why are you paying another company A$200 an hour when the same techs would jump at being directly offered A$35-60 an hour (consulting rates in Oz).
So we're back to outsourcing being the problem. There may be more to it than that, but if you need 100% control, you cant get that by going through third party.
You're paying for taxes, for your government, you're not paying that much for the gas itself.
Wrong.
The taxes go to fixing and building roads. In the US, this money comes from state budgets (so income taxes basically). In Australia I'm paying A$0.375 p/L taxes on fuel and this goes to maintaining roads. It's a more equitable system based on actual petrol usage. The guy who drives a V8 pays less than the guy who drives an Inline 4.
In Australia, we get our fuel from Singapore (Tapis) which is consistently US$0.20 p/L more expensive than WTI or Brent Crude.
Also driving in Europe and Australia, you can really tell the money is spent on roads.
Other countries tend to have higher gas prices than the USA because of taxes levied to support various social programs.
This is bollocks, please stop repeating it.
Actually, taxes on fuels are levied to pay for the roads the cars drive on.
In Australia 37.5 Australian cents are levied out of every litre to pay for road maintenance and it still isn't enough. In my state 100% of speed camera revenue goes to road construction and maintenance yet still there is money taken from income and corporate taxes to make up the shortfall.
In the US, they just take 100% of the money to pay for roads from taxes (or debt, which will eventually be take from taxes).
I prefer fuel taxes to income taxes as they work on consumption. In effect they punish the heaviest and most inefficient users, people who use their car less pay less... and saying this, I own a sports car (not cheap on fuel).
A market controlled by cartels or monopolies is not free, and is every bit as bad as a market controlled by a government.
In fact it's worse. Governments only have to recoup cap ex and op ex, private cartels have to make a profit and they have to keep making more profit than they did last year.
The Philippines is one of the last countries in the world where the Catholic Church has a dominant voice in politics, so laws attempting to enforce morality are a fairly common thing. For example, it's one of the only countries in the world where divorce is illegal. As a result, many couples today either don't get married in the first place, or else are in a long term live-in relationship with someone while still being married to someone else.
This is true for the government, but not for the people. Filipinos are like most other SE Asians (including Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims) where they are quite devoutly religious but not fanatical like in the ME or bible belts of the west. So Filipinos believe quite deeply in god, but are not insecure in their religion at all. They wont try to force it on you at all. The same is true for other people in SE Asia like Indonesian Muslims or Khmer Buddhists (well, minus the god part for Buddhists). However, I wont talk about religion with a Filipino, whilst not insecure, they are quite adamant in their beliefs.
The Philippines is one of the last countries in the world where the Catholic Church has a dominant voice in politics, so laws attempting to enforce morality are a fairly common thing. For example, it's one of the only countries in the world where divorce is illegal. As a result, many couples today either don't get married in the first place, or else are in a long term live-in relationship with someone while still being married to someone else.
Cybersex in the Philippines was already legally considered to be a form of prostitution before this law was passed. Now it would appear that the punishment for getting naked on a webcam will be harsher than that for having actual sex for pay, which will only serve to drive women away from the relatively safe jobs involving cybersex and into the more dangerous work of actual prostitution.
Just how much more severe is the punishment for cybersex? The fine for prostitution is 200 to 2,000 pesos. The fine for cybersex is 200,000 to 1,000,000 pesos. Average annual family income in the Philippines is 206,000 pesos as of 2009.
Well to show how powerful the Filipino government is, there is quite a bit of prostitution going on in the Phils, even in Manila. The cops are all paid to look the other way. That's the real reason this thread is really making a mountain out of a molehill. The cops are for sale, the mayor is for sale, hell even the president is for sale. It's just a question of how many Peso. Laws like this make it look like Manila is "Doing Something(TM)" but drive for 1 hour down the Norther Luzon Expressway out of Manila, the law is ignored by the local govt and plod... Just like the laws on prostitution.
It's the usual sensationalism. The BBC published an article with a similar headline the other day, except more than anything the cybersex the BBC was referring to was not really cybersex as people classically know it - in other words, this story seems to stem from the fact the BBC reporter got a little confused about everything.
For those familiar with the Philippines this is pretty standard... it aslo wont make one jot of difference.
The Philippine government has a secret love/open hate with the sex "industry" in the Phils. They, as good Christians are reviled and repulsed by the idea of consensual paid sex between adults, however they love the money it brings into the country.
But the kicker about the Phils government is that it's corrupt as all buggery so what's "illegal" by the letter of the law goes on in open view thanks to the letters P, E, S and O. Put simply, you can pay to get out of almost any kind of trouble as long as you haven't pissed off anyone important (pissing off Filipino's in the Philippines is a bad idea in general, there are shitloads of guns in that country and life is cheap).
The law is there to target "cam girl" operators. Basically people set up a bunch of girls with webcams and charge customers to *ahem* talk to the girls. I'm assuming you're familiar with the concept even though most wont engage in it (including myself, why pay a cam girl when you can, well, hire a real one).
NOTE: anyone planning travel to the Phils, dont let me put you off. The sex trade is not that open and is pretty restricted to red light districts, it's a lot more subdued than Thailand or Amsterdam. There are lots of nice places to visit where there isn't a red light district like Puerto Princesa or Davao. Even Cebu City is fine and Filipinos are generally very friendly, accepting and helpful (I.E. you have to be a really special kind of arsehole to get shot as a tourist).
This is a correlation, not necessarily a causality.
It's not even a correlation.
In Australia, New Zealand, Holland and quite a few other places, cycling is quite popular despite mandatory helmet laws.
Cycling is unpopular in the US because the cities in the US are designed for cars and there are few, if any bike routes.
Or 'war', if that's what Jobs wanted, Apple's got one now for real. Let's have this discussion again a year from now, and the above numbers may be a lot closer. In a war, you lose some battles like Samsung has recently. They just won one. Its going to be interesting, and Apple is ceded more ground recently. As my Dad used to say, "We shall see what we shall see."
Apple's "victory" may be nothing but a Pyrrhic victory. They haven't done any real damage to Samsung and the actual punishment has been postponed until after an appeal, Samsung have also put in a motion for a mistrial, with Velvin Hogan shooting his mouth off at every opportunity a mistrial may be incredibly easy to get (the basics of it: he instructed the other jurors to ignore the concept of prior art). I bet Apple is quietly wishing Hogan had of kept his mouth shut.
any CPU in the late 90's was called a Pentium regardless of whether it was Intel or AMD.
Not on any of the mailing lists or web pages that I ever visited. Maybe it was an Australian thing?
Nope, Normal people just called them Pentiums. You're problem is that you were using a mailing list (which meant people probably knew the difference) AMD K6's were advertised as Pentium II's in print (it was the 90's, print was still a big thing) up until they got caught, then they just called it "Pentium 2 equivalent" (Even AMD marketed it as such)
The Smart Four Two is safer in a crash than any SUV ever made, but a lot of people dont have the IQ to realize that.
I suggest you go to youtube and watch some of the Smart crash test videos. Against larger cars, the Smart usually gets punted quite far.
If everyone drove something that size, sure. But mass does matter.
In a collision would you like to:
A: come to a very sudden stop.
B: bleed off speed slowly.
You're right that mass matters, but more mass != safer. In fact more mass == more kinetic energy that needs to go somewhere.
But size and shape matters as much as mass. SUV's are slightly more deadly in a collision because of their tendency to roll due to their higher centre of gravity. This wonderful fact gets left out of many safety tests (ANCAP and Euro NCAP don't even test rear end collisions). Safety really comes down to structure and features. The occupants larger SUV will suffer worse injuries/fatalities then those in a smaller hatchback that has better crumple zones, better structural integrity (I.E. roll bars) and a better SRS (Supplementary Restraint System). The biggest risk to both vehicles is head injury, which is increased significantly if the vehicle rolls.
Point in short, between an SUV and a compact, the car with the better head restraints wins.
Android Fanboy: You paid how much for that phone that does half of what mine does?
iPhone user: Actually I jailbroke it, so I have a far higher quality of real apps and I can do anything you can in terms of configuration or customization.
Sorry Captain Obvious, you met your match when Captain Reality showed up.
So... how many custom IOS ROMS are there.
Captain Reality has been out ranked by General Reality.
Also, they were both reminded that an Android users doesn't have to break anything to get something like AirDroid working.
Signed
Common F. Sense.
$14000 buys an awful lot of gas.
Considering my EK Civic (97) has a fuel economy of 6.5 L/100 KM (combined) and I actually achieved this doing 80 KM p/d (1/2 highway driving and 1/2 city driving) $14,000 would by approx 10,000 L @ $1.40 a litre (average price here in Oz). The tank capacity of an EK is 45L so that's 222 odd refills. I used approx 34 litres in the Civic of Fury each week doing around 500 K's a week, thats 294 refils so that's just shy of 5 years and seven months.
Then again, my EK was a VTI model which had better fuel economy than the previous GLI models which the articles author had due to the fact it had VTEC (Honda introduced the VTI in 1997, the first Civic with VTEC). So his figures will be a little different (at a guess, 7.0 L/100 KM combined).
Still, he deserves full hacker credit. I have to wonder if he's added any extra weight. The Civic's 1.6L engine would be best described as "gutless" if the body was not fantastically light. The car weighed a little under 1000 KG which isn't bad for a 5 seater sedan.
sure its not as slim or as light, it doesnt have as much battery life, but shit, its cost 40 bucks on ebay, why would I want to spend a pile of money on a obsolete computer no matter how sexy it was?
Seriously? 900 bucks for a 13 inch dell ultrabook? I got a 15.6 inch 2.5ghz i5 with twice the ram and a TB hard drive for 499$ at the dell refurb outlet for my mediocre work computer, and it has one scratch across the windows sticker on the bottom.
This.
Ultrabooks are not for everyone. Most people will buy a NEW i5 with a 500 GB spinning HDD for US$500 ish from their local box retailer.
Only people looking for something specific will look outside this range. To elaborate I bought an laptop for traveling last year, because I'd be doing some gaming on it what I needed was a laptop that was light, had a powerful GFX, good battery life, DVD drive and a 14" screen. I ended up with a 14" Asus, 8GB RAM, Hybrid Nvidia 640M/Intel GMA. Using the intel GFX It'd get 9-10 hours on battery, using the Nvidia GFX it would play most games on med to high settings (battery life was about 5-6 hours though). This was only US$850, I spent the rest of my budget on a 256 GB SSD.
People who do a lot of traveling will buy ultrabooks, but not people who just want a machine to pot around home with.
You'd be wrong.
Mac's are still making less than 3% global sales. I'll get back to this in a moment, I would like to correct another error you made first.
They aren't.
. for US$1049
An Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A
A "so called" Retina Macbook Air 13" for US$1139
They both have the same processor, same amount of RAM, same GFX capability, same battery life (7h according to the manufacturer) et al.
The difference is the "so called" Retina display is 1440x900 and the Zenbook has a 1920x1080, the Zenbook also has better speakers, and SD card port and standardised Micro HDMI ports.
Now I'll get to why the Ultrabook (and Air) is not going gangbusters
This is why.
Look at the power of web/email machines under US$500. This is all that most users need. Ultrabooks really aren't for the common users. Businesses don't buy Apple or even Asus, they buy from the likes of HP, Lenovo or Dell because when your ring up Apple and say, "I want 300 computers delivered per week for the next 5 weeks" they'll laugh at you, but when you ring Dell and ask the same question they ask which day you want them delivered. Ultrabooks are twice the price of decent laptops and seeing as they meet the needs of most users, most users will pick the cheaper option.
I'm probably buying my mum a laptop soon, She just wants to use it for email, internet shopping and farmville so I sure as hell wont be buying a A$2000 Macbook for that. Her eyes aren't so good so "Retina(R)" displays are useless. I'll look for the lightest 15" 1366x768 screen available under A$600.
But now, with SSD technology rapidly improving, I'd say within 18 months you will see "convertible" touchscreen Ultrabooks running Windows 8 Professional with 512 to 1024 GB SSD storage standard with the latest super-efficient Intel "Core" CPU's, and those will definitely be vastly better-selling.
Dont give up the day job mate, comedy is not your forte.
Windows 8 is DOA, everyone hates it. Gamers wont use it, Businesses wont use it. The average user will hate it. Now if you had of said.
But now, with SSD technology rapidly improving, I'd say within 18 months you will see Ultrabooks running Windows 7 Professional with 256 to 512 GB SSD storage standard with the latest super-efficient Intel "Core" CPU's, and those will definitely be vastly better-selling.
It might be more believable.
First off, touchscreens are gimmicky when you've got a KB and mouse. It's not a question of interface its a question of ergonomics and Gorilla Arm is still a problem if you're using the device for any length of time. Users don't typically use more than 200 GB of storage with Windows + Office. We aren't talking about your gamer or person who torrents everything, I've got a 256 GB SSD in my laptop and I struggle to fill that. I've also got a 512 GB SSD in my gaming box and even with a lot of games I struggle to fill that (although my older, less IO intensive games (think pre 2003) go onto a 300 GB VelociHeater).
You're right in thinking that 128 GB on an SSD is pushing it, but 256 GB is fine for a lot of people. 1 TB SSD's are overkill.
Apparently, it's a trademarked Intel name, because the article referenced in the summary said:
Devices such as HP's $579 Sleekbook - which runs AMD's chips, so can't be called an Ultrabook
I always thought Ultrabook was a generic term for a more powerful netbook (or a notebook in a smaller formfactor), but apparently it's Intel specific.
Its trademarked but used in the same way as generic cola is called Coke, generic paracetamol is called Panadol/Tylenol (depending on which country you live in) and any CPU in the late 90's was called a Pentium regardless of whether it was Intel or AMD. Basically it's just made it's way into popular usage and Intel would be stupid to try to fight it.
So someone who stays back on weekends, helps train and educate the junior members of the team and has earned the respect of their coworkers is an arrogant egotistical twat because... they're good at what they do.
Fuck, you need a big hit with the cluebat too.
The person described in the article is not egotistical, in fact if you are intimidated by the fact a coworker or subordinate is smarter than you, you're the twat.
I've worked with Brilliant Jerks. They're good at what they do, and they know it. They get shit done. But they also belittle their coworkers, disrupt the work of others, have to have their finger in every pie, are unwilling to delegate things that they don't need to do any more, etc. They like to be the pilot and at the controls at all times. But as a business grows, they cannot be central to every single last project any more. When they are asked to delegate, or find themselves excluded from even a minor project, they throw a hissy fit. You don't "appreciate" them. You "need" them to be involved. You're an ungrateful git because "they" do all the work around here while you slackasses stand around the water cooler and waste time.
Read the article, this is the opposite of the person they described.
The article described him as someone who had the respect of his coworkers, someone who passed on knowledge and training and the first to be willing to work OT/holidays.
The person you described is a Jerk, but not the person in the article... and you get rid of jerks as soon as possible, even if they do the work of 3 juniors, you'll probably get 3 juniors to work better with the team.
That means he was either 1. seeing twice as many patients as the others in the same amount of time, meaning he was not having as many meaningful patient interactions or more likely 2. ordering unnecessary and expensive tests
We actually have doctors that are brilliant and fit none of these descriptions. Having universal health care in Oz, number 2 is a non starter as ordering more tests than needed for diagnosis would just expose incompetence or at least inexperience. Number 1 is not necessarily true and tested by the number of successful treatments.
I had an optical surgeon when I was younger, she was the best in 3 states (about half the country in Australia). There was a waiting list from other optical surgeons to get patients under her knife. When she finally retired, it took 3 surgeons to handle the same number of patients (peadiatric surgeons often did everything from diagnosis to complex surgery). This is by far not the norm, but true brilliance is not the norm.
From the article,
When he spoke, everyone became quiet and listened â" not out of excitement for what he was going to say but out of respect.
He was always the first to cover for doctors who were on call. He was always the first to volunteer to work on holidays
This is a jerk?
I think the "boss" blogger needs to get up and have a big cup of reality.
This is the complete opposite of a jerk, the kind of person who keeps the business ticking along as usual no matter what is thrown in his way. The kind of person you dont want to piss off into leaving by calling them a jerk behind their back.
So he hasn't got much business acumen, that's not his job, that's yours (the boss). Chances are you know fsck all about his job and would have a very hard time replacing him.
You dont find something to "do" with a person like this, you give them something to do. Finding the work is not his problem, making sure the P&L statements look good is not his problem. His problem is doing the work that your clients pay for.