Posts by Dave 126 10672 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010
>I don't know why but I always have a suspicion that I am being taken for a ride but am not bright enough to know what ride that is.
I'm sure you're bright enough, but perhaps you haven't spent too much time thinking about these things? If Mr Worstall inspires you to learn and think more about these topics more then he'll have done you a service, regardless of whether your eventual conclusion is different to his or in agreement.
Even if you think he is selling snake oil, then at least his articles will inoculate you against similar arguments from others.
>better methods of communication always have grown the economy as getting information passed around is pretty much a definition of how to increase economic efficiency.
Terry Pratchett wrote about the impact of Clacks Towers on the economy of the Discworld, in Going Postal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_of_the_Discworld#The_clacks
>8 cores will not help the watch tell the time any more than a single core.
My portable Citizen/Tandy word-processor is just fine as it is. It doesn't need anything faster than its Zilog Z80 CPU or its 14 x 80-character monochrome display in order for me to write documents.
Your phone isn't a phone any more than a Thinkpad or Macbook is a portable word processor; your 'phone' is a connected pocket computer. Similarly, the device Samsung is making is not a watch, it's a wrist-mounted terminal.
From Iain M. Banks, Look To Windard:
"Sorry to disturb you, Ambassador. Hub here. You're closest; would you let Mr. Olsule know he is speaking to an ordinary brooch, not his terminal?"
>please Samsung try and get it right, its all about design, just alerts and great battery life. our phones will do the rest.
Casio (Edifice or G-Shock Bluetooth) and Citizen (Proximity) already make such watches. Conventional sports watch design, indefinite battery life, simple phone notifications.
>competitors... ...do not look like they should be used in public.
The Sony ones look like sports or workshop protective goggles. A workshop isn't a social place like a bar, and a street - where a cyclist might use them for navigation or recording a careless driver - isn't considered a private place.
It was the case that Japanese camera phones had a 'shutter' noise that couldn't be disabled - a response to fears that they would be used for taking photos without the subject's knowledge. This is the country where school girls can rent space on their thighs for advertising messages.
Sony recalled some camcorders quite a few years ago - the issue was a 'low light' mode that used infra-red, making clothes appear see-through. Sony fixed the 'issue', but people being people managed to undo the 'fix' to restore the functionality on subsequent models, and resold them over the internet.
http://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2012/07/in-1998-sony-accidently-sold-700000.html
Whoah, I remember playing the original. A sandbox car game in which you run over pedestrians, four years before GTA became 3D.
Of course just mowing down pedestrians was easy - big points come from smashing a lamppost down the street to splatter the civilians. Seem to recall that censors insisted on making all the blood green - so that the player was killing zombies (acceptable) instead of humans (moral panic) - though a Hex editor could be used to restore the proper content.
I don't think I ever won a race by beating the competing cars to the finish line... I just beat them into scrap.
Made me remember playing Quarantine (1994) - think 'Doom' in a taxi. It wasn't that good, though.
>>" living in smaller houses than their parents (and renting them) etc., etc."
>One would expect young adults to live in smaller houses than their parents (and renting them).
I think he meant " living in smaller houses than their parents did when they were of an equivalent age.
>they really should be saying "hey Apple, you pay so much less now, where the fucks our discount"...
In terms of economics, what it costs Apple to actually make the iPhone 6 is irrelevant, except with relation to how much it costs Apple's rivals to make competing products. The manufacturer will sell their products at a price that suits them (usually to improve margins, but one might discount products to gain market share. Apple have done their sums and determined that enough people will pay the asking price - and APPL's bottom line suggests that they have pitched it well.
Of course, it suits Apple to try and make sure there are no competing products; someone might instead buy a Samsung and it will still make phone calls and play YouTube videos, but it won't be a FaceTime terminal or iWatch companion. The user might have already invested (money and learning) in propriety iDevice-compatible kit, so a HTC handset won't be a swap-out alternative (, i.e level competition) for an iPhone.
This isn't the area of economics that is being discussed in the article. The argument being made is that a computer sold in the eighties for £1000 was a word processor and spreadsheet. It then, slowly, acquired the ability to be a photograph archive, drafting board and music player. Today, it is also a video editor, physical model simulator, and video-phone. (And my ageing Core2 Duo laptop also functions as a fan-heater)
>"Some of the curbs at the soccer club are quite high".
Haha!
Actually, you only have to watch someone strap a toddler into a baby seat to see why some people prefer higher vehicles. Simply, the parent has to bend less when holding a heavy object (the toddler), and they stoop less when engaging the straps.
Well, that's showing some concern for your fellow citizens who aren't as strong as you are - our population is aging, y'know. Maybe the user has arthritis, and any weight saving saves them discomfort when they move their laptop around their house. Maybe the user has a load of other stuff - paper files, cameras, product samples, whatever - that they need to lug around as a part of their job. Maybe the user travels by air a lot, and the space saved in their carry-on luggage allows them to pack an extra shirt.
Who knows.
iFxit tend to be the go-to site for 'repairability' scores.
The Surface Pro used more glue and 52 screws, according to iFixit. I can't find any guides or teardowns of the Lenovo Yoga 2 or 3 on the iFixit site.
Instead of just researching how easy these things are to repair, you might also research how reliable different brands are, and what their extended warranties and service compare.
>Licking the hand that feeds IT ... Doesn't sound like a site I'd bother reading.
And yet the headline could have read "New Macbook Pro - a bugger to dismantle" and been both critical *and* accurate.
Criticising poor products and lauding good ones is in the interest of the consumer and user. Beyond that, not distorting what is said by a source is important.
iFixt merely expressed mild surprise that the Macbook Pro has a different design of trackpad to that in the new Macbook - that is all.
>As an example, combination of sliding parts, latches and rubber 'stoppers' wouldn't add weight nor thickness to these gadgets,
Yes it would... and it would add complexity, too - making the device both more expensive to manufacture and assemble, and more expensive to recycle. Using glue makes products easier to dismantle when they come to the end of their lives, since they can just be passed through an oven and then pulled apart. This much less labour intensive than unscrewing a dozen or so fasteners.
The manufacturer is responsible for the end-of-life disposal of products now in many territories - so ease of recycling is in their interests.
http://www.ebay.com/gds/How-Much-Gold-Is-Really-In-A-Rolex-Watch-/10000000001632748/g.html
The total value of the pure 24kt. gold in this Rolex President is $963.27.
Case ring weights 18.5 grams. Contains 13.875 grams of pure gold. It has a value of $178.43.
Case back weighs 7.21 grams. Contains 5.41 grams of pure gold. It has a value of $69.57.
Bezel weighs 5.30 grams. Contains 3.98 grams of pure gold. It has a value of $51.18.
The bracelet weighs 68.85 grams. Contains 51.64 grams of pure gold. It has the most value at $664.09.
Fair enough, I didn't choose my examples well, except that they weren't 'functional' objects. Still, there are many examples of luxury goods in history that didn't last long - Cleopatra's baths of asses milk, rare foods and spices, gladiators and otherwise useful slaves killed for entertainment. The bottom line is that they were usually displays of wealth power over lesser mortals.
>Once upon a time the point of "luxury" goods was that they lasted
What d'ya mean? History is chockablock with examples of extravagent luxury goods. The eggs made by Faberge, the rare cloth dyes and gold thread for your clothing, gold statues of yourself.
In that context, the gold iWatch is not a sign of society's breaking point, it is just yet another drop in the rain storm of history.
Yeah, once upon a time it was expensive to make durable goods... but modern manufacturing techniques allow inexpensive objects to be functional and durable. The manufacturing tolerances on any cola can, for example, are just incredible. We all can now afford sharper knives, better shoes and more intricate toys than any king of old.
>Do you think Apple will provide that [TAG's] kind of service?
Apple hired TAG's VP of Sales last summer, and poached a couple of fashion and luxury CEOs in 2013.* At the least, Apple knew what they didn't know and set about learning.
As for service you describe, I would imagine it depends on the sales channel Apple uses for the gold version... an Apple concession within an existing luxury retailer doesn't seem implausible. The service level depends upon the dealer and their margin, and TAG do sell watches at many time the price of Apple's top offerings.... I dunno.
*https://gigaom.com/2013/10/28/why-is-apple-hiring-luxury-fashion-execs-it-wants-to-be-a-lifestyle-brand/
Here's one:
Steve Wozniak became rich because of Apple, and he wears an expensive, impractical watch because he wants to and because he can. It's huge. Why? Because it uses Nixie tubes to display the time. You have to like a company (actually a one-man band) that puts this testimonial on its homepage:
“If I wanted to buy a watch that guaranteed I would never get laid, I certainly wouldn't have to spend that much on it.”
—random Slashdot comment
above
“I would have loved to have invented that.”
—Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple
http://www.cathodecorner.com/nixiewatch/
Granddad's retirement Rolex might have sentimental value to you. That is a different kind of value to that discussed in the article.
The 'value' discussed in the article is that of showing off wealth by 'wasting' it. Y'know, like the people who like to show off by drinking a £500 magnum of champagne (though some inexpensive Cava might taste just as good to them)- it is not going to be passed on to the next generation. Cocaine and caviar, similarly.
>eventually they will go away.
I have a large stack of National Geographic magazines dating back decades that disagree with you. They almost always carry advertisements for Rolex watches, usually associated with an explorer. Rolex even sponsor various awards for young explorers - part of the cost of maintaining the brand that Mr Worstall talks about.
'Wildlife as Canon Sees It' has been another long-running National Geographic advertising campaign, usually featuring a red-ringed zoom lens that costs thousands of dollars. Again, the aim is to associate the product with professional use in the mind of the consumer.
The longevity of a Rolex compared to an iWatch is completely irrelevant for the very reasons the article discussed. Wasting resources proves that you have resources - Hence the old Rolls Royce in a swimming pool antics.
I have some sympathy for Bill Gates idea of a progressive tax on luxury goods - tax puts up the sticker price of a £300 handbag to £500 - so the buyer still shows off their disposable wealth but society benefits.
>if the reason for the extradition is retrospectively done away with, is the extradition itself is no longer valid (or considered never valid)?
If Hollywood movies have taught me anything, it is that if you jump bail for a crime you did not commit and then succeed in proving your innocence and killing the swine who framed you, you'll be left free to go home. Also, elevators don't fail safely, and cars explode if they crash above 20 MPH.
I've done something similar -I plugged a 19v laptop power brick into a 12v external HDD. Oops.
I recovered the data by snipping off a TVS diode from the HDD's PCB, and was able to recover all the data.
The 19v adaptor got slung in the bin.
For anyone who has done the same: http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-Mobile-Drives/HDD-TVS-diode-FAQ/td-p/250274
Could be very useful in some situations, and in environments were the drawbacks (looking goofy) don't matter - i.e workshops, construction sites, studios.
I've said it before - a 'smart workshop' would be lovely, where a physical work-piece becomes a CAD sketch plane, a virtual model taking its references from real pre-existing features.
> is Apple expecting their cultists to automatically use USB hubs? What point in a laptop if so?
I suspect Apple is expecting their customers to mostly buy Macbook Airs and Pros. The average consumer will first look at the cheaper and faster Macbook Airs, and will only choose to spend the difference if the new Macbook really suits their needs.
>Yeah, bog standard users don't use printers, mice or memory sticks...
They do, but:
WiFi printers are cheap and common in the home, and have been the norm in business and academia for some time.
The laptop doesn't need a mous, it has a trackpad. Bluetooth mice are available.
Your argument is what, exactly?
It's still a helluva lot more than my laptop has. My photos are redundantly stored elsewhere, my software doesn't produce particularly huge files, I tend to stream movies rather than download indefinitely. True, if I was going travelling some place boring for a month and just wanted to watch films, I might feel the pinch at only being able to store 70 films, but hey...
The are reasons that this isn't the machine for me, but storage space isn't one of them.
It could just be a transitional fragmentation. It is confusing that the Macbook Air is now the default Macbook, and something called a Macbook is a bit niche like the original Air was, but in a year's time the product line up could look a lot tidier - eg, a MB form factor is retired, beefed up or given a new display.
> a problem looking for a solution.
Respectfully, I disagree. Whether or not this watch is the correct solution, I don't know, but a time-and-motion study could show you empirically that allowing notifications to be dismissed or ignored without pocket-fumbling is no bad thing in principle. For some people, that function alone would be of tangible benefoit. Personally, I think Citizen and Casio are on a better path. But that's just me.
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