A lot of conservative fuckwits love him. Not because he's any good, but that he wrote in fiction the most quoted for fact fiction line I see on Slashdot, "An armed society is a polite society." America proves him wrong.
You're doubly wrong. TANSTAAFL is, by far, more quoted than that.
TANSTAAFL is from the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, not Starship Troopers. Starship Troopers is about a militaristic society where people are expected to serve to get rights... so in that respect Verhooven got it right.
Most people have an issue with Heinlein's depicted societies because they fail basic common sense. They require people to believe in exactly the same thing and never act irrationally, this is why Verhooven depicted the society in Starship Troopers as a fascist dictatorship using brutal means to control the population, because this is more believable than a society that voluntarily submits to military rule. Other messages aside, I've always viewed the society in Starship Troopers (the book) as being akin to that in Nineteen-Eighty Four.
And Americans are exceedingly polite. When you meet Americans, they will smile at you, eyeball you, and ask how you are. And expect you to be polite enough to not respond with truth. It's a society built on polite fiction. That doesn't stop them from stepping on your body to make a buck. But they'll smile at you while doing so.
As an Australian who lives in Europe and has extensively travelled including the US, the friendliest and most polite Americans I've met have been in places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, NY city. The rudest and most arrogant have been from Texas (in my experience, 3 out of every 4 Texans is complete arsehole, the 4th is a top bloke, I'll say that whatever the case a Texan doesn't do it by halves).
The most polite people I've ever met are the Dutch. I think this comes from the fact Dutch people are quite honest whilst also being erudite. Of course I'm sure there are Dutch arseholes too, but they seem to be doing a good job of hiding them.
It was a great book. Now I know why the movies stank.
I'm not sure I'd call it a "great" book. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a great book. Starship Troopers is more good than great. I say that because it's far and away the most polemical of Heinlein's juvenile books, and polemics and juveniles make for an awkward mix.
The problem with Heinlein's books are that he couldn't leave his politics out of it and his politics were unworkable in the real world. His books were actually quite well written, good prose and characters (the language was a bit too American for us English speakers though) but the idea that an anarchistic capitalism or voluntary military government would work completely broke the suspension of disbelief.
John Scalzi's Old Mans War series was a better depiction of a benign military dictatorship. Such a society could only be maintained if kept secret from the population that was expected to support it. When it was revealed, the support structure broke down.
By most nations, I assume you mean most developed nations because universal or single payer health care isn't common in developing nations.
However Uber isn't advocating this, Uber simply wants this to be someone elses problem.
Placing government in control of a 5G network everyone uses grants government means of directly tracking high resolution movements of everyone everywhere in real time. Hard to come up with a worse more dangerous idea than this one
That horse left the barn in the Bush administration. Carriers are required to provide that information to the federal government. It's one of the things in the FISA bills that keep quietly passing Congress.
This.
Not sure why people think the private sector cares about their privacy and security at all... let alone more than the government. Private corporations have been selling your data to anyone and everyone who'll pay for years, the government at least has rules preventing that.
I have no illusions about Tory competence, but they're never going to be that desperate for excuses.
if anything, Don should borrow a few of hers, he might sound a bit more intelligent (it would at least be hilarious to hear hem refer to himself as one).
You do know that age is already a factor in calculating insurance prices, right?
Yes, but completely unrelated to any risk from established crash statistics otherwise a 65 yr old will be charged more than a 25 yr old as over 65's are as highly represented in crash and fatality statistics as teenagers... Yet they charge them less than 35 yr olds (one of the lowest risk groups).
Stop buying the line that it's all about risk, it's not. It's about what they can get away with charging you.
If I'm making a credit card purchase I enter my name and address in all uppercase since that's exactly how it appears on my bill (and card, in case of my name).
I've dealt with payment systems on the back end. It's not necessary as the system is case insensitive, it'll be sent as all lowercase anyway. As long as the characters match in your first and last name you're fine.
WTF changed 3 or 4 years ago in Britain? Major insurer closed? Change in liability laws? Lucas electric reopened?
25% in 3 years? Was it being artificially held down?
Two things.
1. The Tory government has increased the Insurance Premium Tax, it's now at 20% when it was previously 9%.
2. Because they can. The Tory govt are letting them get away with whatever they want. The tax rises have let them get away with increasing premiums wherever they can and blame the government.
What is needed is an inquiry into the insurance industry in the UK. That will unsettle a lot of skeletons in the Conservative's closet though, so it wont happen whilst the Tories are in power.
This is not the worst thing Admiral have done, they've recently been caught charging anyone with the name "Mohammad" or variants there of £100 more that someone with an Anglo name like Steve. They sent me an Email on Wednesday (I'm an Admiral customer) saying they weren't racist but were charging people more based on a racially stereotyped name, but no, we're not racist (to be fair, they're more greedy than malicious and thought they could get away with it).
BTW, Lucas are now just making components in China so quality has actually improved (my previous BMW Z4 had a Lucas starter motor after the Bosch one packed it in).
and that proves that most people didn't even understand the ads in the first place.
They were not "Mac guy" and "PC guy", they were Mac and PC in human form.
No, people got that.
It backfired because people thought the "PC" was relatable and the "Mac" was an insufferable cunt bucket.
The PC was like your dad or uncle who was a bit old fashioned. You could easily take him to dinner with the family and he'd be completely inoffensive. The Mac was like an early 00's hipster, you'd pray he didn't have any questions about the menu otherwise the remaining guests will start to die of starvation before he'd finished verifying the organic and charitable status of the asparagus on a side dish before lecturing you on the evils of slave farmed carrots.
Or maybe a different food analogy. The PC was like mashed potato, not going to set the world on fire but most people like it because it's simple and tasty. The Mac guy was like an sloth intestine wellington, wants to pretend it's cool, unique and original but in reality is utterly repulsive.
I'm assuming I've made my point, the meaning of what the GP wrote does not change if you remove the word "guy" after PC or Mac.
"It has a processor, memory, operating system, drive... sound like a computer?"
It sounds like a microwave oven.
What Microwave has a disk drive in it? What OS, can I run Slackware on it?
The term "processor", "memory" and "operating system" are pretty specific terms and clearly connotate to a computer even when not used in context. To pretend they are anything else is completely disingenuous and only make you sound like you have no idea what you're on about.
Someone who doesn't know what a "processor" is will have no idea if a Microwave has one.
English language puritans are incredibly stupid because they don't get that the language has evolved for fault tolerance, not grammatical accuracy.
Maybe, but I see it as an ignorant kid who doesn't know how things work, where they came from, and what things are used for. They're the kind who, when they grow up, won't know how to do simple things like change a light bulb or repair a toilet..
This, a lot of kids think that milk comes from the supermarket in the US... Given that they're more intelligent than the average Apple user, its not a bad assumption.
Considering they believe we are closer to doomday now that we were during the Cuban missile crisis I'd say your spot on.
During the Cuban missile crisis, we had two leaders who were actively trying to avoid conflict, this culminated in a deal that saw the Soviet remove the missiles in Cuba and the US remove it's missiles in turkey. Both sides went to the table and backed down sensibly. The idea that the US was seconds away from nuclear war in the Cuban missile crisis was laughable.
Right now, we don't just have the two US parties fighting each other, the republican party is fighting its own leader. We are at the risk of two of the most powerful economic powers in the world, if not the two most powerful individual nations collapsing economically due to their own stupidity.
Look at this thread. Many Americans are too interested in trying to find a way to blame this on a "left" that doesn't exist in the US than admitting they're in serious economic strife. Same with the Brexiteers in Britain, too interested in trying to prove things aren't as bad as they could have been, but ignoring the fact things are much worse than they would have been without Brexit.
I'm not a fan of Jack White. I've heard the name, but I have no idea what kind of music he even plays, but I do know that I can type "Jack White" into Google and find out in as long as it would take me to listen to some of his music.....which I will do now....after I get another beer.
....a few songs and a beer later....
I get and agree with your point... but
For the uninitiated, Jack White is of the White Stripes, a rock/grunge band from the 1990's. He plays an instrument and survives without auto tune. I went to a White Stripes concert in the 00's. Just about everyone would recognise the distinct sound of Seven Nation Army even if they've got no clue about Jack White or the White stripes.
Jack White has been in the industry long enough not to depend on labels to create fans, so he gets to do things like this with no problems. Most of his fans will be going there to see and hear him anyway.
I would be shocked if it wasn't Jack White making the decision. The record labels don't give a shit since from their perspective touring is just marketing for album sales / streaming.
Jack White (of the White Stripes fame) is powerful enough of an artist and has enough fans that he's not dependent on a label to get sales any more, in fact he can pretty much pick and choose his label now. He's an old school musician, so I'd also be shocked if it didn't come from him.
There has been some research that people who record things with their phone have a poorer memory of the event because they're not actually paying attention to it, they're paying attention to the phone they're recording it with. The flipside of this is that if you zoom in you tend to have a clearer memory of it as you're focusing instead of just framing (not that people who record things with phones even bother framing, but I digress).
I largely agree with this stance, the last concert I went to I kept my phone in my pocket from the moment the band started to the moment I left. Given White's audience, I doubt they'res going to be much resistance to it, most will remember a time before we all had mobile phones, let alone smartphones.
This is why they created Alphabet; to be the holding company of their cash cow (Google) and all of their other innovating companies. If you think that Google is not innovative, then transfer to one of the other bets that are more innovative.
The search engine market is mature, as are most of the other technologies developed under Google. There's not much we can do about that.
But this isn't news, someone quitting because they've realised that the company they work for is just a company isn't newsworthy.
For a small "income pass-through" business, incorporation will probably cost more in administrative overhead than saved in taxes. I investigated this with my tax person considering the new tax law as we just came into possession of a small farm with a cash flow of ~$50 - $75k. She indicated the overhead costs would be too much unless cash flow was much larger. I think she was talking hundreds of thousands or at least $1 million.
It absolutely is not.
I have an S-Corp, and work through it as sole employee and owner.
What overhead costs?? Yes, I pay a CPA at end of year to do my taxes, but during the year, its just me and it isn't *that* much extra work, and it isn't rocket surgery.
The thing is, you're a CPA... that means you already know all the rules and loopholes (and are part of the problem). How long would it take for you to learn the tax rules of the United Kingdom? Forget tax rules, how long would it take you to learn something outside of your career, like the French Industrial Relations legal system?
Most people don't have the time to put in to that.
What we want is a simple tax system. Taxes would be lower if everyone paid their share, right now we've got the big end of town paying a fraction and the average person paying a significant percent. of course this would put a lot of accountants out business but AI will do that shortly enough (long before it puts taxi drivers out of business).
People are not educatable in this regard. Look at all the people who say that Trump hates women, minorities, muslims, etc. No amount of education can convince people not to believe the worst about someone they have been convinced is evil.
Ahh, you have this backwards... To achieve your deification of Trump, you need more ignorance, not more education. Education tends to lead people to making logical conclusions based on evidence and actions, its ignorance that makes them believe things that aren't true. Fortunately for you, its easier to make people more ignorant than educated, the tool you need is Propaganda.
Do they not have title records for cars in the UK? It seems like it'd be a trivial exercise to look up the license plate or the VIN to determine the owner of those cars.
Yes and no.
It depends how old they are. The car park went into receivership in 2003 so the cars may be years older than that, maybe even predating the computerisation of the DVLA.
That's besides the point. The registration record is just the last person who paid tax on the car. The simple and effective defence to that is to say "I sold the car" and with no evidence to the contrary the Judge will be forced to accept that at face value, the DVLA know this so they wouldn't even bother, doubly so if the last record is a SORN (Statutory Off Road Notification).
However it doesn't matter as the cars are considered abandoned and destined for a scrapyard.
Name one other laptop that can do something no one cares about by carrying around a bunch of shite that no one wants to carry around?
Meanwhile, the Carbon X1 has 2 TB ports, 2 USB3, full size HDMI, micro SD and micro SIM, so you can do all you want without a bag of annoying dongles to sort through.
It's also faster, lighter has a MUCH nicer keyboard and comes with up to 1TB flash, more than the 13 inch MBP.
Last year I bought a new laptop. The specifications were, i7 processor, 12 GB of RAM, Geforce 950, GPU, 512 GB SSD... It was well worth it, the Macbook Pro costs £2,600. I didn't get a Macbook Pro, I got a laptop with the same specifications as that for £750. Its an Asus, so it's likely to last longer than a Macbook Pro (my lasts Asus was bought in 2011 and still going, I only replaced it so it could play recent games). Once you get past the badge, you realise there are Macbooks out there for 1/3 the price.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of conservative fuckwits love him. Not because he's any good, but that he wrote in fiction the most quoted for fact fiction line I see on Slashdot, "An armed society is a polite society." America proves him wrong.
You're doubly wrong. TANSTAAFL is, by far, more quoted than that.
TANSTAAFL is from the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, not Starship Troopers. Starship Troopers is about a militaristic society where people are expected to serve to get rights... so in that respect Verhooven got it right.
Most people have an issue with Heinlein's depicted societies because they fail basic common sense. They require people to believe in exactly the same thing and never act irrationally, this is why Verhooven depicted the society in Starship Troopers as a fascist dictatorship using brutal means to control the population, because this is more believable than a society that voluntarily submits to military rule. Other messages aside, I've always viewed the society in Starship Troopers (the book) as being akin to that in Nineteen-Eighty Four.
And Americans are exceedingly polite. When you meet Americans, they will smile at you, eyeball you, and ask how you are. And expect you to be polite enough to not respond with truth. It's a society built on polite fiction. That doesn't stop them from stepping on your body to make a buck. But they'll smile at you while doing so.
As an Australian who lives in Europe and has extensively travelled including the US, the friendliest and most polite Americans I've met have been in places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, NY city. The rudest and most arrogant have been from Texas (in my experience, 3 out of every 4 Texans is complete arsehole, the 4th is a top bloke, I'll say that whatever the case a Texan doesn't do it by halves).
The most polite people I've ever met are the Dutch. I think this comes from the fact Dutch people are quite honest whilst also being erudite. Of course I'm sure there are Dutch arseholes too, but they seem to be doing a good job of hiding them.
aixylinux opined:
It was a great book. Now I know why the movies stank.
I'm not sure I'd call it a "great" book. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a great book. Starship Troopers is more good than great. I say that because it's far and away the most polemical of Heinlein's juvenile books, and polemics and juveniles make for an awkward mix.
The problem with Heinlein's books are that he couldn't leave his politics out of it and his politics were unworkable in the real world. His books were actually quite well written, good prose and characters (the language was a bit too American for us English speakers though) but the idea that an anarchistic capitalism or voluntary military government would work completely broke the suspension of disbelief.
John Scalzi's Old Mans War series was a better depiction of a benign military dictatorship. Such a society could only be maintained if kept secret from the population that was expected to support it. When it was revealed, the support structure broke down.
Most nations have it except for the USA.
By most nations, I assume you mean most developed nations because universal or single payer health care isn't common in developing nations. However Uber isn't advocating this, Uber simply wants this to be someone elses problem.
Placing government in control of a 5G network everyone uses grants government means of directly tracking high resolution movements of everyone everywhere in real time. Hard to come up with a worse more dangerous idea than this one
That horse left the barn in the Bush administration. Carriers are required to provide that information to the federal government. It's one of the things in the FISA bills that keep quietly passing Congress.
This.
Not sure why people think the private sector cares about their privacy and security at all... let alone more than the government. Private corporations have been selling your data to anyone and everyone who'll pay for years, the government at least has rules preventing that.
Leader of country makes speech to position it at the forefront of technology growth industry.
This is hardly news.
She's also sticking with the 'A and B' branding. Strong and Stable didn't work out, lets see how Safe and Ethical pans out.
This is why I wanted Lord Buckethead, he was standing on the "strong, not entirely stable" platform.
> If she runs out of nonsense to spout . . .
. . . she can turn to Trump for inspiration.
I have no illusions about Tory competence, but they're never going to be that desperate for excuses.
if anything, Don should borrow a few of hers, he might sound a bit more intelligent (it would at least be hilarious to hear hem refer to himself as one).
Thiny veiled age discrimmination
You do know that age is already a factor in calculating insurance prices, right?
Yes, but completely unrelated to any risk from established crash statistics otherwise a 65 yr old will be charged more than a 25 yr old as over 65's are as highly represented in crash and fatality statistics as teenagers... Yet they charge them less than 35 yr olds (one of the lowest risk groups).
Stop buying the line that it's all about risk, it's not. It's about what they can get away with charging you.
If I'm making a credit card purchase I enter my name and address in all uppercase since that's exactly how it appears on my bill (and card, in case of my name).
I've dealt with payment systems on the back end. It's not necessary as the system is case insensitive, it'll be sent as all lowercase anyway. As long as the characters match in your first and last name you're fine.
WTF changed 3 or 4 years ago in Britain? Major insurer closed? Change in liability laws? Lucas electric reopened?
25% in 3 years? Was it being artificially held down?
Two things.
1. The Tory government has increased the Insurance Premium Tax, it's now at 20% when it was previously 9%.
2. Because they can. The Tory govt are letting them get away with whatever they want. The tax rises have let them get away with increasing premiums wherever they can and blame the government.
What is needed is an inquiry into the insurance industry in the UK. That will unsettle a lot of skeletons in the Conservative's closet though, so it wont happen whilst the Tories are in power.
This is not the worst thing Admiral have done, they've recently been caught charging anyone with the name "Mohammad" or variants there of £100 more that someone with an Anglo name like Steve. They sent me an Email on Wednesday (I'm an Admiral customer) saying they weren't racist but were charging people more based on a racially stereotyped name, but no, we're not racist (to be fair, they're more greedy than malicious and thought they could get away with it).
BTW, Lucas are now just making components in China so quality has actually improved (my previous BMW Z4 had a Lucas starter motor after the Bosch one packed it in).
and that proves that most people didn't even understand the ads in the first place.
They were not "Mac guy" and "PC guy", they were Mac and PC in human form.
No, people got that.
It backfired because people thought the "PC" was relatable and the "Mac" was an insufferable cunt bucket.
The PC was like your dad or uncle who was a bit old fashioned. You could easily take him to dinner with the family and he'd be completely inoffensive. The Mac was like an early 00's hipster, you'd pray he didn't have any questions about the menu otherwise the remaining guests will start to die of starvation before he'd finished verifying the organic and charitable status of the asparagus on a side dish before lecturing you on the evils of slave farmed carrots.
Or maybe a different food analogy. The PC was like mashed potato, not going to set the world on fire but most people like it because it's simple and tasty. The Mac guy was like an sloth intestine wellington, wants to pretend it's cool, unique and original but in reality is utterly repulsive.
I'm assuming I've made my point, the meaning of what the GP wrote does not change if you remove the word "guy" after PC or Mac.
"It has a processor, memory, operating system, drive... sound like a computer?"
It sounds like a microwave oven.
What Microwave has a disk drive in it? What OS, can I run Slackware on it?
The term "processor", "memory" and "operating system" are pretty specific terms and clearly connotate to a computer even when not used in context. To pretend they are anything else is completely disingenuous and only make you sound like you have no idea what you're on about.
Someone who doesn't know what a "processor" is will have no idea if a Microwave has one.
English language puritans are incredibly stupid because they don't get that the language has evolved for fault tolerance, not grammatical accuracy.
Maybe, but I see it as an ignorant kid who doesn't know how things work, where they came from, and what things are used for. They're the kind who, when they grow up, won't know how to do simple things like change a light bulb or repair a toilet..
This, a lot of kids think that milk comes from the supermarket in the US... Given that they're more intelligent than the average Apple user, its not a bad assumption.
_ALL_ads are annoying!
Yes but some are more annoying than others.
I don't really like ads, but the Andrex or Morrison's ads don't make me want to throw my TV at the first smarmy, stick thin, bespectacled kid I see.
Considering they believe we are closer to doomday now that we were during the Cuban missile crisis I'd say your spot on.
During the Cuban missile crisis, we had two leaders who were actively trying to avoid conflict, this culminated in a deal that saw the Soviet remove the missiles in Cuba and the US remove it's missiles in turkey. Both sides went to the table and backed down sensibly. The idea that the US was seconds away from nuclear war in the Cuban missile crisis was laughable.
Right now, we don't just have the two US parties fighting each other, the republican party is fighting its own leader. We are at the risk of two of the most powerful economic powers in the world, if not the two most powerful individual nations collapsing economically due to their own stupidity.
Look at this thread. Many Americans are too interested in trying to find a way to blame this on a "left" that doesn't exist in the US than admitting they're in serious economic strife. Same with the Brexiteers in Britain, too interested in trying to prove things aren't as bad as they could have been, but ignoring the fact things are much worse than they would have been without Brexit.
I'm not a fan of Jack White. I've heard the name, but I have no idea what kind of music he even plays, but I do know that I can type "Jack White" into Google and find out in as long as it would take me to listen to some of his music.....which I will do now....after I get another beer.
I get and agree with your point... but
For the uninitiated, Jack White is of the White Stripes, a rock/grunge band from the 1990's. He plays an instrument and survives without auto tune. I went to a White Stripes concert in the 00's. Just about everyone would recognise the distinct sound of Seven Nation Army even if they've got no clue about Jack White or the White stripes.
Jack White has been in the industry long enough not to depend on labels to create fans, so he gets to do things like this with no problems. Most of his fans will be going there to see and hear him anyway.
He's not black like Barry White is, he's white like Frank Black is.
We dont need no water let the mother fucker burn... burn mother fucker, burn.
The 90's fucking rocked.
I would be shocked if it wasn't Jack White making the decision. The record labels don't give a shit since from their perspective touring is just marketing for album sales / streaming.
Jack White (of the White Stripes fame) is powerful enough of an artist and has enough fans that he's not dependent on a label to get sales any more, in fact he can pretty much pick and choose his label now. He's an old school musician, so I'd also be shocked if it didn't come from him.
There has been some research that people who record things with their phone have a poorer memory of the event because they're not actually paying attention to it, they're paying attention to the phone they're recording it with. The flipside of this is that if you zoom in you tend to have a clearer memory of it as you're focusing instead of just framing (not that people who record things with phones even bother framing, but I digress).
I largely agree with this stance, the last concert I went to I kept my phone in my pocket from the moment the band started to the moment I left. Given White's audience, I doubt they'res going to be much resistance to it, most will remember a time before we all had mobile phones, let alone smartphones.
Let's see who we wouldn't want to be able to visualize (in any way) having sex:
- Christopher Walken
Well if you saw that, wouldn't he become Christopher Fucken?
This is why they created Alphabet; to be the holding company of their cash cow (Google) and all of their other innovating companies. If you think that Google is not innovative, then transfer to one of the other bets that are more innovative.
The search engine market is mature, as are most of the other technologies developed under Google. There's not much we can do about that.
But this isn't news, someone quitting because they've realised that the company they work for is just a company isn't newsworthy.
It absolutely is not.
I have an S-Corp, and work through it as sole employee and owner.
What overhead costs?? Yes, I pay a CPA at end of year to do my taxes, but during the year, its just me and it isn't *that* much extra work, and it isn't rocket surgery.
The thing is, you're a CPA... that means you already know all the rules and loopholes (and are part of the problem). How long would it take for you to learn the tax rules of the United Kingdom? Forget tax rules, how long would it take you to learn something outside of your career, like the French Industrial Relations legal system?
Most people don't have the time to put in to that.
What we want is a simple tax system. Taxes would be lower if everyone paid their share, right now we've got the big end of town paying a fraction and the average person paying a significant percent. of course this would put a lot of accountants out business but AI will do that shortly enough (long before it puts taxi drivers out of business).
People are not educatable in this regard. Look at all the people who say that Trump hates women, minorities, muslims, etc. No amount of education can convince people not to believe the worst about someone they have been convinced is evil.
Ahh, you have this backwards... To achieve your deification of Trump, you need more ignorance, not more education. Education tends to lead people to making logical conclusions based on evidence and actions, its ignorance that makes them believe things that aren't true. Fortunately for you, its easier to make people more ignorant than educated, the tool you need is Propaganda.
Dumping their crap on our own fair shores for billions of years... without even a thank you note.
I hope you Chooks turn into Emus and kick your dunny down.
Do they not have title records for cars in the UK? It seems like it'd be a trivial exercise to look up the license plate or the VIN to determine the owner of those cars.
Yes and no. It depends how old they are. The car park went into receivership in 2003 so the cars may be years older than that, maybe even predating the computerisation of the DVLA.
That's besides the point. The registration record is just the last person who paid tax on the car. The simple and effective defence to that is to say "I sold the car" and with no evidence to the contrary the Judge will be forced to accept that at face value, the DVLA know this so they wouldn't even bother, doubly so if the last record is a SORN (Statutory Off Road Notification).
However it doesn't matter as the cars are considered abandoned and destined for a scrapyard.
Name one other laptop that can do that.
Name one other laptop that can do something no one cares about by carrying around a bunch of shite that no one wants to carry around?
Meanwhile, the Carbon X1 has 2 TB ports, 2 USB3, full size HDMI, micro SD and micro SIM, so you can do all you want without a bag of annoying dongles to sort through.
It's also faster, lighter has a MUCH nicer keyboard and comes with up to 1TB flash, more than the 13 inch MBP.
Last year I bought a new laptop. The specifications were, i7 processor, 12 GB of RAM, Geforce 950, GPU, 512 GB SSD... It was well worth it, the Macbook Pro costs £2,600. I didn't get a Macbook Pro, I got a laptop with the same specifications as that for £750. Its an Asus, so it's likely to last longer than a Macbook Pro (my lasts Asus was bought in 2011 and still going, I only replaced it so it could play recent games). Once you get past the badge, you realise there are Macbooks out there for 1/3 the price.
An iPad can not replace a MacBook.
Actually, for the majority of users, it already has. Most Mac users only used their machines for web browsing and email.