I've only visited Sydney a few times, but I live in NYC, and I really wouldn't consider them very similar at all. Maybe some of the suburbs (which you relate to Queens) are more closely related, but for the areas of Sydney I know best (around the bridge/harbour/opera house/kings cross) I'd say it's more like SF. Or maybe it's changed a lot since I was last there - that would be a shame.
I do completely agree that Aus tends towards the US and NZ Europe though. I was hitch hiking through that part of the world years ago and given some sage advice: If you want to get a lift in NZ put a British flag on your pack, if you want to get a lift in Aus put any _other_ flag on it:) I found Canadian worked well!
If those people do not like it, take a job that does not require you to be on call. I should not suffer from your career choice. I keep my phone on, on vibrate. If it rings (which it rarely does) I go outside. How exactly does that make you "suffer from my career choice"? Get over yourself. Provided I'm not disturbing anyone I have just as much right to watch a movie as you do. The problem here is people who aren't considerate, not the phones. You can install all the blockers you like but some people will still slurp drinks, crunch popcorn, shout at each other and generally be anti-social. If you want the perfect, isolated, quiet controlled movie experience hire the entire theater or just stay at home. Otherwise, you're opting to be part of society and that includes putting up with people who do things you don't like.
Why? The screen on most DSLRs is way better than that on the DS (and, by extension, I assume the DSi). I guess there's a little utility to having the second screen for a thumbnail view, but when I'm looking at pics on site I'm usually interested in checking exposure, focus, etc and so a good screen is essential.
I'll stop setting my test when supposed "experts" stop failing it spectacularly. I typically assign a short written test asking pretty basic, fundamental stuff as well as some more interesting esoteric questions. I expect everyone to get the easy stuff - the rocket scientists will have a good go and the tricky stuff. There have been a number of times when candidates have come in with impressive resumes, have been well liked by HR and management interviews, but have scored lower than a college student on the test. Obviously I back it up with a technical interview too...but the conclusion is usually the same.
Fact is, people lie through their teeth on resumes, and the interview is the only chance we get to figure out the truth. If you're good, I'll hire you, but I'm not going to take your word for it.
Well, actually, yes it is. Please point me to somewhere where you can get a USB connected standalone 20x4 backlit display, with control buttons, for anywhere near that price.
For example, crystalfontz are one of the better/cheaper suppliers of this kind of thing typically and their closest equivalent is this which is $133!. Just the display, without any controls or a case is $70. MatrixOrbital, the other big supplier, cost even more.
So please stop comparing this to a monitor or a keyboard, it's not one of those, and if you want a standalone display with buttons which hooks up to USB and is LCDproc compatible, this is a steal.
I used to get similar speeds & prices (actually was bumped up to 30mbps at one point) from Cablevision in NJ. Then I moved and am now in a Comcast area - same price, half the speed.
As if the rightness or wrongness of something depends upon how many people accept it Rubbish. With something like a language, which exists soley for the purpose of communication, has evolved over time (and will continue to do so) with no central authority the only meaningful definition of "rightness" is commonality of acceptance. Unlike Perl or algebra there is no standard, no test, no unarguable definition of what's right or wrong. The dictionary does not define the language it describes it. The definition is done by it's speakers.
As for your Orwell quote, my interpretation of his actual text is that he's against a decline in the quality of writing, and of expression, not the process of change within the language itself. He mentions bad metaphors, pretentious phrases, "uninspiring" writing. That, to me, is an entirely different issue to that of the evolution of meaning.
There's evolution and there's corruption. By allowing the corruption of the word hacker, people who are hackers in the correct sense are lumped in with those in the incorrect sense. Now we have to come up with another word for those who are hackers in the original sense... when we already had words for both!
Agreed, it's confusing. But it's also commonplace, English is rife with words with multiple meanings. For example: "Park", "Bank", "Letter", "Well", or "Grass". In some cases the correct meaning can be inferred from context ("I took my money to the bank" vs "We sat on the left bank of the river"), in some cases it cannot ("He burnt the grass"). Call it corruption or call it evolution, it's been happening for as long as the language has existed, will continue to happen for as long as people still speak it, and is generally accepted and understood. I hope you're not arguing that, for example, "Bank" should only have one meaning? If so, which one?
By allowing copyright infringement to be called piracy, they are associating it with something far more sinister than kids swapping files. According to this page, that particular double meaning of "Pirate" has been in use since at least 1701. Isn't 300 years enough to consider something part of the language? I put it to you that your rejection of this usage of "pirate" is more to do with your personal beliefs on copyright than any consideration for the purity of the language. As for hacker, I think there's still time to correct the errant usage, but it's a battle we'll probably lose.
Propagandists use this against us all the time. "It's not murder... it's execution." And they would be right. Murder has a very specific meaning - it doesn't just mean "kill" (after all, we already have a word for that!). I strongly disagree with the death penalty, and I think capital punishment is just "as bad" as murder, but that does not make them the same thing. To equate them is to confuse the matter.
Oh and "Murder" is also a group of Crows. See how fun English is?
I would posit that if the regexp parser built into your language is able to execute an algorithm significantly faster than than code written in your language itself, your language is broken.
Regexps are great for saving you having to write big complex parsers full of ugly boilerplate code, but if you take the time to write that code it should be at least as fast as the regexp (and in fact should be faster in the general case as they can be more specialized).
The thing that some people seem to not have noticed is that recently EA have actually become one of the better labels when it comes to innovation and quality gameplay. Examples - Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, Mass Effect, Portal, TF2, Skate, Spore - I could go on. Sure there's a lot of sports games as always, but EA also has a lot of the more interesting games out there.
If your locale is under the coverage of the FCC you should report them. They do not have the option to "not supply" cable cards - it's not something they do to be nice it's something they do because they legally have to.
With rare exceptions, all cable companies in the United States are required to provide CableCARDs conforming to this specification, and must correct incompatibilities between their networks and certified CableCARD devices.
The "rare exceptions" I believe come into effect when you have a very small local cable co. for whom it's considered "too expensive" to provide them. TWC does not fit that category! Almost all areas of the US only have one cable company, that doesn't affect whether CableCards should be available.
OK. I don't normally swear on/., but this is bullshit.
And I don't normally reply to posts replying to mine, but hey - yours is special:)
First, the $2500 MacBook Pro you price has a 512MB video card, an option that is not available on any of the Dell Studio series. You should be comparing to the $2000 Macbook Pro, which has the 256MB video card
OK, fine, the graphics cards are different - my mistake. $1200 different? If you say so! But whatever, if you want to use the $2000 Macbook Pro that's fine, just add the $50 for the HDD upgrade. But then we only have a 2.4GHz cpu, so the Dell is now faster and still something like $800 less.
And once you include things like Wireless-N to match the Mac
Did you even read my post? It was a pretty easy to comprehend list. Wireless N was already included in my price.
and the Ultimate version of Vista to match OS X,
OK if you insist, add $150 for Vista Ultimate (wouldn't we be installing Ubuntu anyway??). Now we're down to $650 difference.
And most Mac users don't buy RAM from Apple
So Apple overcharge? Say it isn't so!! I thought that was the whole point of this discussion:) Regardless - 2GB is the least you can spec on these machines so your argument is redundant.
And then you end up paying more to Dell for a backlit keyboard, camera etc
$50 for the keyboard (didn't see that), camera is included. Now we're at $600. Keeping count at home?
OK, so the final tally by your specs (some of which I don't agree with - such as Vista Ultimate) still has the difference at $600 for a $2050 Macbook Pro. That's what, 30%? Quite a markup (particularly as with your spec I have to have the case in white, Dell let me choose!). I personally don't think magsafe is worth that much but YMMV.
But dishonest exaggerations like yours are just stupid.
Don't forget to add the cost of the OS (is Windows included in $1269?). Yes it is.
Then there's the cost of the Development suite, if you're into that sort of thing. I'm sure a Windows developer already has a VS license. If not, you could use that or slum it with a free one (I heard gcc works just fine on Windows!). Really, you're grasping at straws - the challenge was to find a cheaper laptop based on specs.
I agree with you that Apple stuff is well designed and generally well put together (although I'd take a ThinkPad over anything when it comes to quality, personally). But that wasn't the GP's assertion - he asserted that Apple cost the same for the same spec. Whilst that is true in some cases, it certainly isn't in others.
This is not like someone in his garage working away, this is like somebody building a PC that can play every PS3, Wii, and 360 game near-flawlessly and is selling it less than those consoles.
Which would be both awesome and legal, provided they didn't break any copyrights, patents, etc in the process. The question here is whether Psystar are doing so or not, and that's for the courts to decide, not us.
My understanding is that the restore disk doesn't have any Apple software on it, but it enables you to load OSX from the original OSX disk which they also supply. I'm pretty sure Psystar aren't stupid enough to do anything which is blatently breaking copyright, they're looking at testing a much more grey area.
Of course, then there's my music library. I don't feel any remorse about screwing the RIAA. I'll support the artists by paying for concerts & such.
If you're a DJ you're probably playing decent music. How much of that really comes from RIAA labels? I know basically none of mine does...it comes from small indy labels run by artists, producers and other DJs. So really you're ripping off people just like yourself.
Some odd FORCE really drives the market. I have a collection with items dating as recent as 1981, valued between $5000 and $7500. The original prices for the items summed to no more than $670!
Should have bought stock. Had you put that same $670 in a DJIA tracker back in '81 you'd have $8262 right now. Had you had amazing foresight and put it in Apple stock, you'd have almost $41,000!
examples please. I realise this CAN be built in WM, but show me a phone being sold to consumers that will let the manufacturer brick or remote apps at will? Any Blackberry device (e.g. Pearl). A quick google will show you how to remote wipe one from an admin console. Typically this is reserved for IT admins of corporations (just like the remote wipe facility in the iPhone) but if you think RIM don't have the same ability if they really wanted to...
Itunes DRM does not affect me, as i don't use the store. Well then App blacklisting won't affect you either, if you don't use the AppStore.
This is not the case with the iphone, which, if you had read up about it, Duke Jobs has, himeself, acknowledged contains such a "kill switch" for random applications or the entire phone itself.
You do realise that remote bricking/wiping is pretty much a standard feature on any smartphone being sold for use by businesses? Windows Mobile does it, Blackberry does it, etc. Likewise, AFAIK any cell network can block a phone from their network for whatever reason they see fit (typically to prevent theft/fraud).
If and when Apple start abusing this feature, then we can talk, but I simply don't see what they'd have to gain given the negative publicity which would surely come with it. And from the opposite POV, imagine the negative publicity if some popular app went nuts and started trashing people's phones. That's what they're trying to prevent here.
Apple has truly innovated here: in taking away control from users Why act surprised? That's always been Apple's way. Restricting choice in hardware, restricting choice in software, restricting choice in terms of UI. The tradeoff is supposed to be that you (as a regular user) get a better, more consistent, more reliable experience. For me, that's not acceptable for a computer - which is why I don't use a Mac (and am in general not an Apple fan at all). But for a cellphone? Hells yeah. I've owned all the systems you mention (plus blackberry which you don't) and compared to the iPhone they all suck. They're clunky, ugly, unreliable and user-unfriendly. Once one of them come up with a device & UI which is anywhere near as good as Apple's, then we can talk about the details which 99% of users (myself included) don't really care about.
Slashdot Mirror
I've only visited Sydney a few times, but I live in NYC, and I really wouldn't consider them very similar at all. Maybe some of the suburbs (which you relate to Queens) are more closely related, but for the areas of Sydney I know best (around the bridge/harbour/opera house/kings cross) I'd say it's more like SF. Or maybe it's changed a lot since I was last there - that would be a shame.
I do completely agree that Aus tends towards the US and NZ Europe though. I was hitch hiking through that part of the world years ago and given some sage advice: If you want to get a lift in NZ put a British flag on your pack, if you want to get a lift in Aus put any _other_ flag on it :) I found Canadian worked well!
If those people do not like it, take a job that does not require you to be on call. I should not suffer from your career choice.
I keep my phone on, on vibrate. If it rings (which it rarely does) I go outside. How exactly does that make you "suffer from my career choice"? Get over yourself. Provided I'm not disturbing anyone I have just as much right to watch a movie as you do. The problem here is people who aren't considerate, not the phones. You can install all the blockers you like but some people will still slurp drinks, crunch popcorn, shout at each other and generally be anti-social. If you want the perfect, isolated, quiet controlled movie experience hire the entire theater or just stay at home. Otherwise, you're opting to be part of society and that includes putting up with people who do things you don't like.
You'll also get the update from game discs if your console isn't online.
RTFA. The ISP in question hosted the control points for the botnets which generated the spam. They didn't need crazy bandwidth, just solid hosting.
Why? The screen on most DSLRs is way better than that on the DS (and, by extension, I assume the DSi). I guess there's a little utility to having the second screen for a thumbnail view, but when I'm looking at pics on site I'm usually interested in checking exposure, focus, etc and so a good screen is essential.
I'll stop setting my test when supposed "experts" stop failing it spectacularly. I typically assign a short written test asking pretty basic, fundamental stuff as well as some more interesting esoteric questions. I expect everyone to get the easy stuff - the rocket scientists will have a good go and the tricky stuff. There have been a number of times when candidates have come in with impressive resumes, have been well liked by HR and management interviews, but have scored lower than a college student on the test. Obviously I back it up with a technical interview too...but the conclusion is usually the same.
Fact is, people lie through their teeth on resumes, and the interview is the only chance we get to figure out the truth. If you're good, I'll hire you, but I'm not going to take your word for it.
Well, actually, yes it is. Please point me to somewhere where you can get a USB connected standalone 20x4 backlit display, with control buttons, for anywhere near that price.
For example, crystalfontz are one of the better/cheaper suppliers of this kind of thing typically and their closest equivalent is this which is $133!. Just the display, without any controls or a case is $70. MatrixOrbital, the other big supplier, cost even more.
So please stop comparing this to a monitor or a keyboard, it's not one of those, and if you want a standalone display with buttons which hooks up to USB and is LCDproc compatible, this is a steal.
I used to get similar speeds & prices (actually was bumped up to 30mbps at one point) from Cablevision in NJ. Then I moved and am now in a Comcast area - same price, half the speed.
As if the rightness or wrongness of something depends upon how many people accept it
Rubbish. With something like a language, which exists soley for the purpose of communication, has evolved over time (and will continue to do so) with no central authority the only meaningful definition of "rightness" is commonality of acceptance. Unlike Perl or algebra there is no standard, no test, no unarguable definition of what's right or wrong. The dictionary does not define the language it describes it. The definition is done by it's speakers.
As for your Orwell quote, my interpretation of his actual text is that he's against a decline in the quality of writing, and of expression, not the process of change within the language itself. He mentions bad metaphors, pretentious phrases, "uninspiring" writing. That, to me, is an entirely different issue to that of the evolution of meaning.
There's evolution and there's corruption. By allowing the corruption of the word hacker, people who are hackers in the correct sense are lumped in with those in the incorrect sense. Now we have to come up with another word for those who are hackers in the original sense... when we already had words for both!
Agreed, it's confusing. But it's also commonplace, English is rife with words with multiple meanings. For example: "Park", "Bank", "Letter", "Well", or "Grass". In some cases the correct meaning can be inferred from context ("I took my money to the bank" vs "We sat on the left bank of the river"), in some cases it cannot ("He burnt the grass"). Call it corruption or call it evolution, it's been happening for as long as the language has existed, will continue to happen for as long as people still speak it, and is generally accepted and understood. I hope you're not arguing that, for example, "Bank" should only have one meaning? If so, which one?
By allowing copyright infringement to be called piracy, they are associating it with something far more sinister than kids swapping files.
According to this page, that particular double meaning of "Pirate" has been in use since at least 1701. Isn't 300 years enough to consider something part of the language? I put it to you that your rejection of this usage of "pirate" is more to do with your personal beliefs on copyright than any consideration for the purity of the language. As for hacker, I think there's still time to correct the errant usage, but it's a battle we'll probably lose.
Propagandists use this against us all the time. "It's not murder... it's execution."
And they would be right. Murder has a very specific meaning - it doesn't just mean "kill" (after all, we already have a word for that!). I strongly disagree with the death penalty, and I think capital punishment is just "as bad" as murder, but that does not make them the same thing. To equate them is to confuse the matter.
Oh and "Murder" is also a group of Crows. See how fun English is?
I would posit that if the regexp parser built into your language is able to execute an algorithm significantly faster than than code written in your language itself, your language is broken.
Regexps are great for saving you having to write big complex parsers full of ugly boilerplate code, but if you take the time to write that code it should be at least as fast as the regexp (and in fact should be faster in the general case as they can be more specialized).
The thing that some people seem to not have noticed is that recently EA have actually become one of the better labels when it comes to innovation and quality gameplay. Examples - Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, Mass Effect, Portal, TF2, Skate, Spore - I could go on. Sure there's a lot of sports games as always, but EA also has a lot of the more interesting games out there.
If you want someone to hate on, Activition is the new EA.
That greyhat would be Kapersky Labs and the Dutch police :)
If your locale is under the coverage of the FCC you should report them. They do not have the option to "not supply" cable cards - it's not something they do to be nice it's something they do because they legally have to.
From wikipedia:
The "rare exceptions" I believe come into effect when you have a very small local cable co. for whom it's considered "too expensive" to provide them. TWC does not fit that category! Almost all areas of the US only have one cable company, that doesn't affect whether CableCards should be available.
OK. I don't normally swear on /., but this is bullshit.
And I don't normally reply to posts replying to mine, but hey - yours is special :)
First, the $2500 MacBook Pro you price has a 512MB video card, an option that is not available on any of the Dell Studio series. You should be comparing to the $2000 Macbook Pro, which has the 256MB video card
OK, fine, the graphics cards are different - my mistake. $1200 different? If you say so! But whatever, if you want to use the $2000 Macbook Pro that's fine, just add the $50 for the HDD upgrade. But then we only have a 2.4GHz cpu, so the Dell is now faster and still something like $800 less.
And once you include things like Wireless-N to match the Mac
Did you even read my post? It was a pretty easy to comprehend list. Wireless N was already included in my price.
and the Ultimate version of Vista to match OS X,
OK if you insist, add $150 for Vista Ultimate (wouldn't we be installing Ubuntu anyway??). Now we're down to $650 difference.
And most Mac users don't buy RAM from Apple
So Apple overcharge? Say it isn't so!! I thought that was the whole point of this discussion :) Regardless - 2GB is the least you can spec on these machines so your argument is redundant.
And then you end up paying more to Dell for a backlit keyboard, camera etc
$50 for the keyboard (didn't see that), camera is included. Now we're at $600. Keeping count at home?
OK, so the final tally by your specs (some of which I don't agree with - such as Vista Ultimate) still has the difference at $600 for a $2050 Macbook Pro. That's what, 30%? Quite a markup (particularly as with your spec I have to have the case in white, Dell let me choose!). I personally don't think magsafe is worth that much but YMMV.
But dishonest exaggerations like yours are just stupid.
Pot, meet kettle.
Don't forget to add the cost of the OS (is Windows included in $1269?).
Yes it is.
Then there's the cost of the Development suite, if you're into that sort of thing.
I'm sure a Windows developer already has a VS license. If not, you could use that or slum it with a free one (I heard gcc works just fine on Windows!). Really, you're grasping at straws - the challenge was to find a cheaper laptop based on specs.
I agree with you that Apple stuff is well designed and generally well put together (although I'd take a ThinkPad over anything when it comes to quality, personally). But that wasn't the GP's assertion - he asserted that Apple cost the same for the same spec. Whilst that is true in some cases, it certainly isn't in others.
Can't resist a challenge!
Mac Book Pro 15":
Black Case
2.5 GHz C2D
2GB RAM
250GB 5400RPM SATA HDD
15.4" Screen, 1440x900, LED backlight
8x DVDR/CDR
Wireless-N
Bluetooth
Dimensions: 1"x14"x10", 5.4 lbs
Price - $2500
Dell Studio 15:
Black Case
2.5 GHz C2D
2GB RAM
250GB 5400RPM SATA HDD
15.4" Screen, 1440x900, LED backlight
8x DVDR/CDR
Wireless-N
Bluetooth
Dimensions: 1"-1.3"x14"x10", 6.1 lbs
Price - $1269
So the Dell is slightly heavier, and slightly thicker at one end, but costs basically half the price. Every other spec I could find is equivalent.
This is not like someone in his garage working away, this is like somebody building a PC that can play every PS3, Wii, and 360 game near-flawlessly and is selling it less than those consoles.
Which would be both awesome and legal, provided they didn't break any copyrights, patents, etc in the process. The question here is whether Psystar are doing so or not, and that's for the courts to decide, not us.
My understanding is that the restore disk doesn't have any Apple software on it, but it enables you to load OSX from the original OSX disk which they also supply. I'm pretty sure Psystar aren't stupid enough to do anything which is blatently breaking copyright, they're looking at testing a much more grey area.
Of course, then there's my music library. I don't feel any remorse about screwing the RIAA. I'll support the artists by paying for concerts & such.
If you're a DJ you're probably playing decent music. How much of that really comes from RIAA labels? I know basically none of mine does...it comes from small indy labels run by artists, producers and other DJs. So really you're ripping off people just like yourself.
Should have bought stock. Had you put that same $670 in a DJIA tracker back in '81 you'd have $8262 right now. Had you had amazing foresight and put it in Apple stock, you'd have almost $41,000!
examples please. I realise this CAN be built in WM, but show me a phone being sold to consumers that will let the manufacturer brick or remote apps at will?
Any Blackberry device (e.g. Pearl). A quick google will show you how to remote wipe one from an admin console. Typically this is reserved for IT admins of corporations (just like the remote wipe facility in the iPhone) but if you think RIM don't have the same ability if they really wanted to...
Itunes DRM does not affect me, as i don't use the store.
Well then App blacklisting won't affect you either, if you don't use the AppStore.
This is not the case with the iphone, which, if you had read up about it, Duke Jobs has, himeself, acknowledged contains such a "kill switch" for random applications or the entire phone itself.
You do realise that remote bricking/wiping is pretty much a standard feature on any smartphone being sold for use by businesses? Windows Mobile does it, Blackberry does it, etc. Likewise, AFAIK any cell network can block a phone from their network for whatever reason they see fit (typically to prevent theft/fraud).
If and when Apple start abusing this feature, then we can talk, but I simply don't see what they'd have to gain given the negative publicity which would surely come with it. And from the opposite POV, imagine the negative publicity if some popular app went nuts and started trashing people's phones. That's what they're trying to prevent here.
Apple has truly innovated here: in taking away control from users
Why act surprised? That's always been Apple's way. Restricting choice in hardware, restricting choice in software, restricting choice in terms of UI. The tradeoff is supposed to be that you (as a regular user) get a better, more consistent, more reliable experience. For me, that's not acceptable for a computer - which is why I don't use a Mac (and am in general not an Apple fan at all). But for a cellphone? Hells yeah. I've owned all the systems you mention (plus blackberry which you don't) and compared to the iPhone they all suck. They're clunky, ugly, unreliable and user-unfriendly. Once one of them come up with a device & UI which is anywhere near as good as Apple's, then we can talk about the details which 99% of users (myself included) don't really care about.
You want to punish people for their choice of OS? That's freaking hysterical. I think you need a little perspective realignment...