I really didn't have time for the usual format, I hope this will do. Please read the fact checks as they add important points and correct some details.
"We are a group of professionals. We treat each other with respect and we have a great working relationship. Personal relationships are not ... an issue," said a serious-faced NASA Commander Alan Poindexter. "We don't have them and we won't."
The Mac Pro (not to be confused with the similarly-named "Macbook Pro") is probably the one Apple product that you haven't heard of, as they haven't released a commercial overhyping it in about four years.
Like the Macbook Pro is supposedly just a Macbook with better specs, the Mac Pro is supposed to be an Apple desktop with better upgradability and specs than the Mac Mini or iMac. In those respects, the Mac Pro is still better. However, Apple has been steadily reducing the frequency at which it updates the Mac Pro, which has lead the products current irrelevance.
Unfortunately, even as the Mac Pros on the shelves age, their price tag does not. The current configuration is over 450 days old and has the same price tag as the day it was released onto the market (which was still hefty even then).
It's my contention that the reason Apple is having a hard time keeping the Mac Pro a decent product is because they've made it something that it shouldn't be: A custom form-factor albatross that nobody buys. This is not a Mac Mini, or an iMac. Nor is it a f**king cube. It's a bulky PC workstation that's supposed to have excellent price/performance in exchange for desk real estate. Instead, Apple's insistance of form over function has resulted in neglect of the line and has made it into a sleek-looking overpriced dinosaur.
The Mac Pro started out as a computer that was CHEAPER than a homebuilt alternative with the same specs. That's why I bought one. Todays Mac Pro is an overpriced over-customized rip-off that even Dell and HP can trounce on price/performance.
The following is something I trolled on a mac fanboy forum... for some reason they agreed:
Once you realize--I mean really realize--that a computer is just a bunch of parts, most of which are not special in any way (and are usually similar in quality), you really get annoyed with brand loyalty.
The difference between the Mac Pro and all other Macs is JUST that it's the only Mac that ignores (or should ignore) form factor.
You pay extra for the portability of the Laptops and the desk-space economization of the Mac Mini or the iMac. However, for the Mac Pro, the only distinguishing characteristic should be PRICE.
Mac Pros use (or should use) STANDARD FORM FACTOR parts, and therefore should be the LOWEST PRICE/PERFORMANCE ratio of the macs, not the highest. They are easy to assemble and use STANDARD parts.
The iMac/Mac Mini have an excuse for being expensive (even though they're not): they use extremely customized parts to fit into their small form factor. The Mac Pro does not. Economics of scale dictate the Mac Pro should be updated more frequently and should be of a higher value (ignoring aesthetics).
IMO, the fact that the Mac Pro isn't being updated and is still using old parts (and thus a worse value) is due to Apples over-customization of the motherboard and case components.
The "New" Mac Pro should have as few custom parts as possible. They should use inexpensive, mass-produced yet high quality components that are already on the market (or at least as much of them as possible). No more gigantic grey case fans, just use a standard 120MM. No more stupid aluminum cages that make it a bitch to swap out the CPU, just an empty box with the mobo screwed to the side-wall and case fans in the back. No more ridiculous [UNRELIABLE] PSU with no label on it, just cut a deal with Thermaltake for an all black 1.5KWatt monster.
Take a standard high-end Intel motherboard, tack on some EFI and design the case around it. Duct tape the thing together and sell it at a reasonable price. You could even stuff it inside a brushed aluminum case with an apple sticker on the side and call it good.
The hilarious part that fanboys don't get is: Apple's parts are lower quality than the consumer computer component market (like stuff out of newegg) that sells for a fraction of the cost. Apple uses SH*T hard drives (Maxtor/hitachi) and SH*T RAM. They use THE WORST DVD burners (Sony). Their video cards are buggy/crappy (Radeon 2600) and outdated. Even their "custom" looking components have mass failure like their PSUs. And by the way, they charge more for it.
It's not entirely their fault. Apple's painted themselves into a corner by making these "sleek" formfactors that require custom parts. The more customized the parts, the smaller the scale of fabrication, and therefore the higher the price to produce and to develop (per unit). It also costs more to engineer (or re-engineer, as they often do), on top of re-certifying everything at every step through the FCC. Their custom cases and PSUs have to be run through the regulators with practically each new revision. I'm suggesting they abandon that model for the Mac Pro and just make an "unsexy" 'PC-style' high-quality, high-value box. It's what pro-sumers really want (high-power/quality, low price), abandons the "Sleekness" that is really extraneous to professionals, and has very little cost to create new revisions. (14,412)
Now that Greenspan is no longer working for the government, he's once again turned into a capitalist.
In a rant he recently wrote for the WSJ, he said “The United States, and most of the rest of the developed world, is in need of a tectonic shift in fiscal policy ... Incremental change will not be adequate.”
He went on to say that “Perceptions of a large U.S. borrowing capacity are misleading,” and current long-term bond yields are masking America’s debt problem. “Long-term rate increases can emerge with unexpected suddenness,” such as the 4 percentage point surge over four months in 1979-80.
“The federal government is currently saddled with commitments for the next three decades that it will be unable to meet in real terms,” Greenspan said. “[The] very severity of the pending crisis and growing analogies to Greece set the stage for a serious response.”
He also says that yields on U.S. Treasuries have decreased in recent months (demand has increased) because of the European debt crisis--a situation that is likely only temporary. This is of course directly contradicting Bernanke's latest tirade against the Gold Rally in which he suggested that the low yields on US Treasuries in recent months were a sign of long-term stability (a pack of lies Latewire immediately called out).
10-year Treasury notes yielded 3.20 percent as of 12:11 p.m. in Tokyo on June 17th, down from the year’s high of 4.01 percent in April and compared with as high as 5.32 percent in June 2007, before the recession began. Yields continue to be low “despite the surge in federal debt to the public during the past 18 months to $8.6 trillion from $5.5 trillion". Greenspan says this shift in demand from European into American Bonds is “temporary.”
“Our economy cannot afford a major mistake in underestimating the corrosive momentum of this fiscal crisis,” Greenspan said. “Our policy focus must therefore err significantly on the side of restraint.”
I couldn't have said it better myself. Can you please tell your former underlings that?
UPDATE: Peter Schiff just released a VLOG where he said almost exactly the same thing. (32,974)
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says he’s a bit puzzled by surging gold prices. The 30% rally from a year ago, on top of gains in previous years, ... Gold is seen by many investors as a hedge against inflation risk.
Mr. Bernanke notes that the inflation signal isn’t confirmed by movements in other asset classes.
That's because the CPI is complete BS, and everyone knows it (with the possible exception of Bernanke). Of course he's also leaving out such asset classes as "Food" and "Energy" (apart from Oil). Plus his whole "reflation" strategy is keeping prices high as household income declines (fewer hours, worse wages, unemployment), plunging everyone but the super-rich into horrible poverty (worse than we would've had even with just the recession).
Yields on Treasury bonds tend to rise when investors worry about inflation, but those yields have been falling recently.
1) People are fleeing the Euro 2) The fed is BUYING THE FREAKIN BONDS IN RECORD NUMBERS ON THE SECONDARY MARKET
Inflation expectations as measured in Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) markets remain low.
Again...
And other commodity prices are falling. Gold is breaking records, but copper prices are down 17% so far this year.
Demand for copper, now that the housing market is on its last legs, is going to be reduced from the highs the federal reserve and other government agencies artificially raised them. The copper bubble popped with the housing bubble, and as of yet Bernanke hasn't been able to inflate your way out of it. Not to mention the fact that China is no longer stockpiling all the copper on the planet. (28,577)
In this episode, we examine the "Juggalo" culture. We demonstrate that this is not a hoax or a joke--these individuals do exist and they're likely operating heavy equipment, possibly in your area.
This documentary footage was of a "gathering" of ICP fans (who label themselves "Juggalos").
Best quote: "I just hope I don't get the HIV again."
I hate films that suck but have a complicated plot where you don't know what's going on because you probably weren't paying attention, but you definitely don't care enough to google and find out.... so then someone asks you "what was this movie about" and you sound like an ass saying "I donno but DON'T SEE IT" (7,283)
So I installed VirtualBox a few days ago and loved it so much I wanted to put it on my Macbook (and since it's FREE, you can do it without licensing issues unlike some other pieces of software..... f$#@ you Macworld). However, I have no desire to reinstall/reconfigure Windows. Therefore I decided to just transfer VirtualBox' configuration from one Mac to another as closely as possible. This method takes about 1 minute (plus however long it takes to transfer your hard drive image).
I tried transferring the "~/Library/VirtualBox" folder over directly, and that didn't work (seems to be hardware-specific), so I tried creating a new machine and importing the hard drive image, that works fine. By the way, if you have Windows installed on this image, the following is probably illegal (unless you're licensed properly):
1) Go into ~/Library/VirtualBox/ on the computer with the existing installation 2) Transfer the "HardDisks" folder to the new mac in the same relative location (~/Library/VirtualBox), leaving out everything else in the VirtualBox folder 3) [this step could have been done already, doesn't matter] Install VirtualBox on the destination machine 4) Create a new virtual machine 5) Go through the dialogs selecting RAM allocation, et al, (it doesn't matter what you select as far as RAM or even machine name) and when it comes to "Virtual Hard Disk," Select "Use existing hard disk" 5) Select the .vdi file you transfered from your previous mac (~/Library/VirtualBox/HardDisks/*****.vdi) by hitting the little FOLDER BUTTON (it will NOT show up under that drop-down menu automatically).
Other websites were talking about using some sort of "clone machine" command, but this seems to work fine (and yes, you can just duplicate the "vdi" to clone a virtual machine on the same computer). The other machine related files do not seem to be transferable, so transferring snapshots and other settings would seem impossible (at least via this method). (6,218)
VirtualBox is an open source x86 virtualization program. To put it simply what that is:
I've been running into more and more reasons to boot into Windows lately, so today I decided to stop rebooting all the time and get a virtual machine program. I've been burned before when I purchased Parallels, so I decided to find a cheaper and better way.
Parallels charges for every version, and each version EXPIRES when used with a newer version of OS X. The upgrade costs nearly as much as the program itself, so it's quite the motherfucker.
So I googled, found VirtualBox, started downloading the 70mb file, and decided to read a review to see if those precious few seconds of waiting were worth my time (the internet has left me with crippling A.D.D.). After reading the Macworld review, I nearly stopped downloading the file, which says a lot, because in chrome, that button is ALL THE WAYYYY DOWN TTHEEERRREEE. Fortunately, my laziness won out and since VirtualBox is FREE, I decided to give it a few minutes of my time before dropping another benjamin just to run Internet Explorer.
After starting VirtualBox up and getting it up and running with a few clicks and in under 45 minutes (44 minutes waiting for Windows to install/configure), I've decided to make a few humble corrections to the Macworld review:
An while we're at it, let's alter a another of their fuck-tarded reviews:
In possibly the biggest revelation in history: Could my favorite talking head (actually, the only one I can stand) also be a fellow fan of Dewars' White Label? For those not in the know, Dewars is the best scotch under $100/fifth (at least from what I've found). It's also my liver's arch nemesis as they have done battle on many, many occasions.
In his latest installment of his show "Stossel" (his show on gambling), John throws in clips of him and others playing Texas Hold 'Em with a fifth of Dewars' White Label sitting right in front of him. Is that his beverage or is that a prop? This question must be answered, John.
Apparently the U-2 (AKA Dragon Lady) is so hard to land, having a fellow experienced U-2 pilot follow your landing in a high-performance car while relaying info over the radio is standard practice. The landing in this video is one of the better ones.
UPDATE: everything should be working now -- Idiot Man-Child Esq.
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For some reason our HTAccess file took a dump. This will make it impossible to view posted comments or view articles by themselves. Our crack team of idiot man-children with chainsaws are looking into it and will fix the problem shortly. (8,287)
The twitter feed is now piping in FatherCoughlin as well as the regular Latewire twitter account. FatherCoughlin is a satire project by one of our users.
Also, you'll notice the ad was taken down (and there was much rejoicing). It messed with the aesthetics of the site too much and didn't raise enough to cover hosting costs.
This month marks the 2nd birthday of Latewire. It also saw the most traffic by far, with users from over 100 countries. Thank you.
Here are the top 25: - United States - 15194 - Russian Federation - 5661 - Canada - 1083 - Great Britain - 732 - China - 550 - Hong Kong - 447 - Germany - 410 - Netherlands - 402 - Australia - 316 - Japan - 271 - Ukraine - 242 - India - 212 - Brazil - 189 - European country - 166 - Philippines - 145 - South Africa - 132 - Portugal - 123 - Spain - 121 - Argentina - 117 - Switzerland - 106 - Sweden - 102 - Saudi Arabia - 101 - Thailand - 85 - Ireland - 82 - Pakistan - 78 (9,443)
Occupation: Daniel is a 4th year Medical student. Prior to medicine, he worked in IT as a consultant, programmer, web designer/developer, and technician.
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Once you realize--I mean 
He went on to say that “Perceptions of a large U.S. borrowing capacity are misleading,” and current long-term bond yields are masking America’s debt problem. “Long-term rate increases can emerge with unexpected suddenness,” such as the 4 percentage point surge over four months in 1979-80.
I tried transferring the "~/Library/VirtualBox" folder over directly, and that didn't work (seems to be hardware-specific), so I tried creating a new machine and importing the hard drive image, that works fine. By the way, if you have Windows installed on this image, the following is probably illegal (unless you're licensed properly):
(it will NOT show up under that drop-down menu automatically).
- Great Britain - 732
