Artagra

Not all of these would classify as "new challenges", but overall they will expand your perspective and expose you to interesting new ideas.

- Taking long walks (5km +) in your neighbourhood can give you a new perspective on your surroundings

- Snow Skiing or Diving - expensive, but both worth it if you haven't tried them

- Volunteering at a local organisation

- A part-time job that's way out of your normal focus. I've worked part time as a real-estate agent, photographer, IT technician, and learnt a lot about life doing so.

- Do some online / self study in a literature, psychology, philosophy or politics.

Assuming you have the Early 2011 Macbook Pro, the change will be as follows:

CPU - Quad Core 45w to Dual Core low voltage (big change for CPU intense work, but for 90% of what people do you won't notice the difference)

GPU - The Dell only has integrated Graphics - so any gaming will be worse than on the Macbook.

Screen - Increase in resolution from either 1440x900 or 1680x1050 to 1920x1080, and gaining the IPS panel. Going from 16x10 to 16x9 (this really annoys some people)

HDD - change from traditional drive to SSD (assuming you didn't put an SSD into your Macbook). If you already had an original Apple SSD in the Macbook, then it will just be faster.

Memory - lose the potential for 16gb, limited to 8gb.

Optical bay - lose the optical drive, lose the potential for dual drives.

Battery life - can't give you a good answer on this, without a review in Linux. In Windows, the Dell can loop video for 325 minutes, which is similar to the Macbook Pro. Under heavier load, the Dell would last longer but do less processing work during that time. Once you add Linux to the mix, I'd guess a 30% decrease in battery life.

Build quality - the Dell is good, but not great. I would give a slight advantage to the Macbook.

From the site:

"While touchscreens provide a versatile user experience, they provide no tactile experience for consumers. Vibration haptics and similar solutions try to simulate a sensation of touch, but all are "feedback" technologies, vibrating only after touching the screen (even if they are touched in the wrong place or by mistake). In contrast, Tactus' technology creates real, physical buttons, where users can rest their fingers on the buttons, as on a mechanical keyboard, and input data by pressing down on the keys. Tactus is the only solution to both "orientation" and "confirmation" problems that are inherent in touch screens."

11" Macbook Air = 1.08kg HyperJuice 60Wh external Battery = 0.36kg

Comes in under your weight limit, will give you 10+ hours. Only disadvantage is it's a cumbersome / weird form factor, macbook plus external batt.

However, if you find a decent small bag, it won't really be that much of an issue.

http://www.hypershop.com/HyperJuice-External-Battery-for-Mac...

Very good point! My argument is that feeling taken advantage of does not necessarily mean that you are being taken advantage of, at least in an economic sense.

"Dediu refers to the giant gap between the cash Apple hauls in and what it pays its retail staff as Apple Store workers' "productivity." We'd guess there's probably another word for it, somewhere outside of the economist's lexicon."

Does the author of this article realise that different products have different markups? That Apple actually has to make these computers also? That a fair way to compare employee renumeration is directly, rather than through some random metric?

As an employee, I would rather earn $9 at store A selling $1000 worth of products than $5 at store B selling $6 dollars worth of products!

Do professional sports people feel taken advantage of? Cause you know, they get quite a small percentage of the total take of TV advertising that leverages off of their work.

/Rant Over. Wow, I wish more people studied Econ 101

Very interesting. I agree with a lot of what the author says, and I think that aspects of Apple's case against Samsung are spurious, to say the least. However, I also see one major flaw in his argument.

If this design is obvious, why then do all tablets made trior to the iPad look nothing like the iPad? (Windows Tablets, Apple Newton, Specialist Medical Tablets, Grid Tablet, etc etc)

http://www.cultofmac.com/109373/what-tablets-looked-like-bef...

Microsoft did some terrible things, and abused their market power. But overall, I would say the world is a significantly better place than it would have been without MS. Looking at it from an economics point of view, every person who bought MS software made a logical transaction where the benefits outweighed the costs, therefore making their life better in some way.

Clickable Link - http://www.mediminder.co

Thanks DJO :) I take it from your history and submissions you are in SA? Email me on paul@prophecy.co.za , keen to get connected.

Hi Guys - I'm Paul from MediMinder

Shout if you have any questions. Our site is still very rough, so be gentle.

Twitter: @MediminderZA Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/MediMinder/212125382196510 MediMinder.co

Short answer? Go see a Psychologist. I know a lot of people are naturally averse to this (I was, at one point) but I've realised that a good psychologist is really just a good hacker - someone who's read a lot on the subject at hand (personality and the psyche), is motivated to help you, enjoys it, and has found a way to make money doing so.

In one hour with a good psychologist, they will generally be able to give you very good guidance on what you are feeling. It's not magic, it's just the power of having an informed, objective observer in a situation that encourages you to be open.

Otherwise, ask the people closest to you - your spouse, GF/BF, etc.

I had the opportunity to see Richard Stallman speak, to participate in a Q&A session afterwards, and to ask him a few specific questions. I think he's a great man, whose acting with a huge amount of conviction and commitment to what he believes in - I have huge respect for this.

I also think he's a bit crazy, but then so am I! I feel he could make a bigger impact for his cause if he was more moderated and accessible in his views, but I respect his views none the less.

I think a detailed rider like this is generally a good thing, as it allows people to prepare more effectively. And from talking to the people who organised the event I attended, I think he's actually much more chilled out and reasonable than some of the things in the rider make him seem.

Yes. Thunderbolt bandwidth falls between a PCI-E 2.0 1x slot and 4x slot.

Tests that have been done comparing the performance of relatively high end desktop cards on 1x, 4x, 8x and 16x slots have established that while there is a performance penalty, such a solution would still out perform most mobile GPUs.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_S...

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_480_PCI-Expres...

It's a tough one. There are many people who fall into the group you describe, but there are also people for whom chemotherapy and radiation therapy has been very successful and allowed them to continue living a healthy, happy life.

Because even if you have rock solid RAID and backup solutions (and unfortunately, many, many companies don't), there is a cost involved in replacing drives. Especially when you are talking about an end user. Yes, most servers have RAID and you can do a swap out with no down time, and at minimal cost. But if you have an SSD failing in a users laptop / desktop, the down time and frustration involved can be major.

I agree - you can't just look at brand, as there are often a lot of issues that are specific to individual models. Having said that, my experience selling OCZ drives (100s of drives) is that they all have a high failure rate :( The only drives I haven't had experience with are the Enterprise level drives, so I can't comment on them.

I think the reason for this is that OCZ largely uses Indilinx and Sandforce controllers, and while very quick, they have had more than their fair share of issues.

I agree completely that, even with TRIM, the benchmarked performance of an SSD decreases over time. However, one thing to remember is that the real-world performance remains very similar, and that the average person won't be able to tell the difference. I recently had two identical Macbook Pro's next to each other, one with a Intel X25-M G1 drive in it that had been used for nearly 18 months, and the second with a fresh out the box X25-M G2. Even taking into account the fact that the G2 was factory fresh, and the G1 (a drive that does not support TRIM) was significantly slower benchmark wise, the experience of using the two machines was almost identical. There were differences, but they were very slight. I doubt I could have reliably picked which was which in a double blind test.

So for desktop use, I wouldn't worry about the performance over time of a good SSD.

You need to remember that Apple decides to avoid certain markets (want a laptop less than $1000? Apple won't sell it to you). Also, sales do not equal profit.

I think Apple is hugely successful, both in terms of selling computers to individuals (Vast majority of Apple sales are above $1000, Apple has a 90% market share of retail PCs sold that are above 90% [1]) And they are hugely profitable [2].

1: http://macdailynews.com/2010/02/01/apple_mac_owns_90_market_... ) 2: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-revenue-vs-o...

I think another important factor to remember, is that Apple simply able to spend more on development for each computer they sell. No-one else makes as much profit per machine as Apple does, and no one else sells as many of each SKU as Apple does.

I'm not quite sure the every year upgrade makes sense, for all the reasons others mention. But I have seen that if you upgrade on a 2 year, 3 year or 4 year cycle, in South Africa at least, it costs you about the same in the long term.

My experience on SSDs, having used multiple drives myself and sold 100s of drives to tech savvy customers:

- Brand does matter - the failure rate on Intel drives is a lot lower than other brands.

- The system you put it in also makes a difference. For example, certain generations of Macbook Pros are just not happy with certain SSDs. We've had customer that had two or three failures with a certain brand / model / chipset, and then changing to a different SSD they haven't had problems.

- The failure rate for SSDs overall is higher than that for HDDs, but lower than the failure rate for some other products (such as Graphics cards).

- Every SSD we have sold went into a custom built system or was installed afterwards into a laptop, so I don't buy the argument that problems are caused because it's installed by an end user and not at the factory.

- They are blindingly fast. In my opinion, it's better for 90% of users to put a new Intel SSD into their existing system, than it is to buy a new system.

Well, I'm pretty sure this won't be a popular response, but anyway.

Firstly, I'm not really referring to this specific case. I think the video is tasteless and in many ways vile. However, I want to comment specifically on trophy hunting.

In my opinion, allowing big game hunters to pay for trophy animals is an important and integral part of animal conservation. In many impoverished African countries, their is little to no government funding to conserve animals.

Yes, there are risk factors. But personally, I believe the additional amount of animals that are killed due to the argument of excess demand is a lot less than the number of animals saved by the increased funding for poaching prevention.

Furthermore, I believe the economic benefits of this to the local community hugely improve the lives of the local people (who I believe are a lot more important than the elephants, as important as I think the elephants are), and that this improvement will decrease poaching.

To summarize: - I agree that Trophy hunting can have negative effects. - However, I believe the positives for animal conservation of Trophy Hunting offset the negatives in two major ways. - Trophy Hunting decreases the ease with which poaching takes place by funding anti-poaching measures. - Trophy Hunting decreases the extent to which poaching takes place by improving the situation of the local communities.

So if you are pro animal conservation, and pro human rights, you should be pro Trophy Hunting. IMHO.

Well, I'm pretty sure this won't be a popular response, but anyway.

Firstly, I'm not really referring to this specific case. I think the video is tasteless and in many ways vile. However, I want to comment specifically on trophy hunting.

In my opinion, allowing big game hunters to pay for trophy animals is an important and integral part of animal conservation. In many impoverished African countries, their is little to no government funding to conserve animals.

Yes, there are risk factors. But personally, I believe the additional amount of animals that are killed due to the argument of excess demand is a lot less than the number of animals saved by the increased funding for poaching prevention.

Furthermore, I believe the economic benefits of this to the local community hugely improve the lives of the local people (who I believe are a lot more important than the elephants, as important as I think the elephants are), and that this improvement will decrease poaching.

To summarize: - I agree that Trophy hunting can have negative effects. - However, I believe the positives of Trophy Hunting offset the negatives in two major ways:

We used it on our site Prophecy.co.za for a few months. It's very interesting to watch, and can provide some interesting insight, but for us at the end of the day we decided it's not worth it. However, when we have a fancy office one day I'll put it up on a big LCD in the reception area :)

I'm sure Blizzard will Nerf this. Early reapers, well executed, had about a 70% success rate. This has a 80% success rate at least, and is much harder to counter.

Well, I'm 2v2 Bronze in a specific team with a friend (we ranked a few months back and haven't played much together.) On 2v2 Random, I'm also Gold.

But I do agree that ranking for larger teams is poor - for example, I'm 3v3 Platinum, and I'm definitely out of my league - I think I ranked their as a result of being lucky in terms of getting good team mates.

Usually when the first three arrive, they don't have a sentry yet (The first three are about 15 to 20 seconds ahead of the next 4). If they do have a sentry, and they block, then you fall back and then attack with all 7. If they don't use it, you can usually use those three to start killing their units, and the next 4 come in and finish the job. If they are rushing an immortal (high level players often do this vs Zerg) then you can usually snipe the pylon. If there is more than one pylon powering the building, then it's tougher.

In 1v1, a variation on this strat is to go all-in - send your queen after you spawn larvae, and then when the second 4 come out send most of your drones. With 7 roaches + drones + queen, it doesn't matter if he gets out the Immortal, or infact what he goes for. Only thing I've seen is a hard cannon wall, which then commits him to a single base Void rush - which is easily countered.

So yes, this strategy is very unbalanced. Played 22 games tonight, 7 losses. 2 of those losses where on 2v2. Last 10 games I played? 9 wins, 1 loss.

I hope Blizzard fixes this soon :( it's going to make Terran and Toss very susceptable early game.

I just played 17 games using this strat, in the Gold League 1v1 and Bronze league 2v2. And some of the 1v1's where against Diamond league players. 12 wins, 5 losses. Trust me, it works.

1. Against Toss it's almost always a win, especially if you go all in (attack using queen and half your drones). Unless he's got a closed wall with cannons, he can't stop you. In my experience, no-one does this in just about any league.

2. Against Terran, it's very succesful, if not quite as succesful as against Protoss. If they put up a bunker with marauders, or they micro 2 or 3 marauders behind a wall, you need to fall back. But in general, it works amazingly.

3. Against Zerg it works very well, as long as they don't six pool - if they do six pool and you haven't scouted it then you are in trouble. But in general, it worked well.

Bottom line? Although it seems like it's similar to the traditional zerg rushes, it's actually a very impressive rush. I would say that well executed it's got a 90% success rate on maps with short to medium rush distances. So definitely give it a try :)

One thing he neglects to consider is the difference between a desktop and a laptop - the effective DPI of a screen is dependent on how far away it is from your eyes.

This is why 1920x1200 is a great resolution for a 17" laptop, but only comfortable on a larger desktop screen.