Comment Is it really inexpensive? (Score 5, Funny) 98
Sure it seems cheap, but have you seen the prices on the refill cartridges? Outrageous!
Sure it seems cheap, but have you seen the prices on the refill cartridges? Outrageous!
because people pay apple more money, so they can afford better designers and can get better components. [longer post explains more, see http://slashdot.org/~lkcl%5D
lenovo *used* to do this when they were IBM. IBM *used* to buy the more expensive components then run them at lower clockrates, which *used* to result in much more reliable products. the thermal stresses (even during normal operation) placed on ceramic packaging causes them to develop micro hairline cracks; high temperatures also cause migration of solder as well as the heavy metals within the silicon ICs themselves.
whilst i find the practices of apple absolutely deplorable - forcing people to sign up for an ID in order to use hardware products that they have paid for, taking so much information that even *banks* won't work with them - bizarrely the amount of money that people pay them is sufficient for apple to spend considerable resources on high-quality components and design.
i have bought a stack of laptops in the past (and always installed Debian on them - see http://lkcl.net/reports/) and have found them to be okay, but always within 2 to 3 years they are showing their age or in some cases completely falling apart. the 2nd Acer TravelMate C112 i bought i actually wore a hole through the left shift key with my fingernail after 2 years of use. hard drives died, screen backlights failed, an HP laptop had such bad design on the power socket that it shorted out one day and almost caught fire. i had to scramble for a good few seconds to pull the battery out, smoke pouring out of the machine as the PMICs glowed.
about 6 years ago my partner had the opportunity to buy both an 18in and a 24in iMac at discounted prices. i immediately installed Debian on it: it took 4 days because grub2-efi was highly undocumented and experimental at the time. so i had a huge 1920x1200 24in screen (which over the next few years actually damaged my eyes because i was too close: my eyesight is now "prism" - i've documented this here on slashdot in the past), a lovely dual-core XEON, 2gb of RAM and it was *quiet*. there is a huge heatsink in the back, and the design uses passive cooling (vertical air convection).
awesome... except not very portable. and no spying or registration of confidential data with some arbitrary company that you *KNOW* is providing your details to the NSA, otherwise there's this conversation which begins "y'know it's *real* hard to get that export license for your products, if you know what i mean, mr CEO".
so, when i moved to holland i had to leave the 24in iMac behind - apart from anything, 2gb of RAM was just not enough. i leave firefox open for 4-7 days (basically until it crashes), opening over 150 sometimes even as many as 250 tabs in a single window. it gets to about 4gb of RAM and starts to become a problem: that's when i kill it. on the iMac, it was consuming most of the resident RAM. i compile programs: 2gb of RAM is barely enough for the linker phase of applications like webkit (which requires 1.6gb of RESIDENT memory in order to complete within a reasonable amount of time). i run VMs with OSes for study.
so i was used to the 1900x1200 screen now, where i could get *five* xterms across a single window. i run fvwm2 with a 6x4 virtual screen, and run over 30 xterms in different places, 3 different web browsers; as i am now developing hardware i run CAD programs in one fvwm2 virtual screen, PDFs in the ones next to it, i run Blender in one virtual screen, OpenSCAD in another, firefox in another, chromium in yet another, then i have to view and manage client machines so i use rdesktop to connect to those (move over to a free virtual window area to do it) - the list goes on and on.
so i figured, "hmmm laptop... but with good screen. must have lots of RAM too, minimum 8gb, must have decent processor". i then began investigating, and found the Lenovo Ideapad. great! let's buy it!
so now i am extremely happy with this machine - not with apple themselves - but with the hardware that i have. it's light, it's fast, it's a sturdy aluminum case, the fan only comes on if i swish large OpenSCAD models around in 3D (or if firefox gets overbloated as usual).
the only downsides i've had are as follows:
* despite having an intel graphics chipset, it's so new that video playback is not supported. i had to set VLC to use "OpenGL" as the playback option, installing the accelerated opengl drivers (which worked)
* there is a problem with power in the EU - it's not properly earthed. this results in *massive* EM interference that spikes the SSD controller, causing hard resets once a second. those cause an entry to be written to
* the powerbutton by default causes a power-off, i often press it accidentally and haven't worked out how to disable it.
* the camera is a proprietary PCIe device from broadcom that has not yet been reverse-engineered
* EMI power spikes often cause the wireless to be a bit flakey as well (understandably). solved by putting in a high-power linksys router and backing it down to 802.11b.
the 2560x1600 screen however is absolutely fantastic. i can now get *TEN* 80x50 xterms on a single screen. i am currently running firefox at 1600x1300 in one window and have room for *FOUR* xterms to the left of it. i have all the multimedia-related applications (alsamixer, qjackctl, VoIP) on their own dedicated virtual screen, whereas before they had to be spread out across at least two.
and the funny thing is that even with the tiny font size, i am not straining to look at it. i got used to it within about 4 hours.
so, this is the machine i will stick with for at least the next 5 years. i simply won't need to buy another unless i start doing something radically different.
The weighted companion cube is the best cube, because the weighted companion cube will never threaten to stab you, and in fact, cannot speak. In the event the weighted companion cube does speak, the enrichment center urges you to disregard its advice.
I'm not saying Linus doesn't have talent, or that he's not "nearly always correct", but I am saying that he goes beyond stripping away sugar-coating, and resorts to name calling (I believe the phrase I once read was "unevolved chimpanzee"), and public (not private) belittling of people who makes mistakes. That's not simply "correcting you", that's not straddling the line in any way. That's fully crossing the line to being an asshole, and it's completely unnecessary. And here he is, talking about it again. Being an asshole has embroiled him in side debates about the correctness of it, and all of this effort and stupid side chatter is now nothing but a waste of his time.
There's a very-not-gray area of being blunt: "This code is too abstract and isn't efficient, it wastes cycles with all this dereferencing, and is not acceptable in the kernel." It's not nice, but it's not mean. It's actually easy to stay in that area. It takes no more or less effort than calling someone an insulting name, and it provides a not-hostile work environment that might bring extra talent to the table.
Sorry to poke at the god-like bubble people try to wrap Linus in, but I never see talent as an excuse for a prima donna getting away with unwarranted hostility.
dear karmashock,
thank you - genuinely - for making your feelings known so clearly. it is not often that these kinds of words get through on slashdot: so often they are treated as "troll" or "flaimbait", but your words are genuine and from the heart, and everyone can see that plainly.
i've said this often enough, but it is worth repeating: i am not a U.S. citizen but i know that where the U.S. leads, everyone else follows. so it matters *a lot* that the U.S. remain a stable country and a shining example for the rest of the world. the USA uses something like 25% of the world's resources and is only 1/8th the world's population: obviously not everyone can follow *that* example or we would need more Earths to live on!
the only thing i can suggest is that if you are truly a patriot, read the U.S. Constitution again. it was in the film "National Treasure" that that incredibly critical section first came to my attention - the one about "every citizen having the absolute duty to uphold it" and even to *overthrow* the government if it becomes tyrannical.
so i'm absolutely serious: think hard about that. i don't think it's quite come to it yet: they're being quite subtle about it as well as, in some ways, being really quite self-delusional in the genuine belief that they are doing the right thing, and that in itself is part of the problem. these are *rational people* in power, but they are justifying some pretty borderline decisions.
i guess what i'm really saying is: talk to other people about this. get a consensus. find out if other people believe that your government has gone too far, to the point of being tyrannical. if other people don't believe that's the case, then that's fine too. but if they do, then, collectively, you know what to do.
There is not a reason that talent and asshole must always be coupled in the same person. And very few people who aren't assholes like to work in an abusive environment. Therefore, this kind of environment excludes people who have talent but who are not assholes. Of course, a "nice" environment excludes assholes for very similar reasons.
So what we need is what we've got: two distinct environments. One is where assholes with talent build one set of components, and nice people build other components. Occasionally they spit at each other from across the divide, but overall, it works. Yes, people will complain if they find they ended up working for the wrong team, and they may be appalled at the working environment of the other side, but those seem to be individual preferences.
Is one side better or more talented than the other? Probably, but they would unquestionably be better than they are today if they could draw from the full talent pool, instead of restricting themselves to just like-minded assholes or nice guys.
didn't we just see a report from the NSA that the people who bombed the World Trade Centre didn't use encryption but instead used obfuscation - sending their messages to each other with subjects that would *deliberately* trigger SPAM filters, such as "Buy Viagra Online"?
Yeah, I wasn't worried about her safety, only that all the hospital's systems are vulnerable because they have these malware infection hosting devices rolling around on carts.
My wife recently went in for an ultrasound, and the machine clearly booted up Windows XP. I'm sure they can't install updates it without it being a certified upgrade, so they do nothing.
Meanwhile, whatever hackers are finding their ways into the hospital's network probably aren't quite so fussy about the certification of their malware.
I hadn't heard of minnows, and didn't know what it was until I looked it up now
We also all have an uvula, those trees can often have galls and many buildings have dormers. Doesn't necessarily mean they belong in a short childrens dictionary, though. After all, there are "real" dictionaries as well as the internet for anything not covered in the shortened one.
Only in America, greatest and most compassionate nation on the earth, can you find people greedy enough to take online Reddit posts discussing how to "eradicate homeless game characters, compile it into not one but two books, and sell the whole thing for 200+ dollars.
I think he may be trying to eradicate his own homelessness with those prices. Although with the prices for printing vanity books, he might not be making enough to pay the rent for two months.
It was for a Windows user. He's not a likely convert for Linux. My experience in installing is on the Linux/BSD side, so it didn't really occur to me that someone would bundle a bunch of crap with the Windows version of Libreoffice. I'll watch for that in the future.
Variables don't; constants aren't.