Day 70: I'm Sorry, Dave. I'm Afraid I Can't Do That

[anarchist_nomad]

Contrary to popular belief, I am not a computer guy. Sure, I consider myself to have a basic competence with the things. On the hardware side, I have semi-built my own desktops; on the software side, I can program passably in Fortran 77, C++, Perl, and an assortment of other minor languages. Really, though, I just learn what I need to do whatever task is required of me in any given moment. I have known some true computer people -- they spend their weekends writing device drivers, just for fun!

What experience I have has been mainly within a Linux environment. I have been using Linux since about 1994 and administering Linux systems for over a decade. Although I avoid Windows whenever possible, I have certainly had my fair share of experience there, too. With Macs, not so much.

Anyway, I have two computer related questions to throw out to the collected wisdom of my gentle readership. One involves Mac hardware; the other, Windows software. One hundred points are at stake for each question -- the person with the best answer in each category walks away with them!

So, without further ado, here goes:

Question the First: What is the difference between a MacBook and a MacBook Pro. Online searches have mainly turned up two answers, neither of which is helpful. The first is simply a common statement that: "A MacBook Pro is essentially the same as a MacBook, but more powerful." Thank you, Igor. Not terribly useful; this answer screams ignorance. The other unhelpful answer is that a MacBook has a thirteen inch screen, where MacBook Pro screens start at fifteen inches. Whilst once true, this information is now obsolete. I am curious because I recently priced a MacBook and a similarly equipped MacBook Pro. With the former, I took the base system from Apple's website and simply upgraded to a 320 GB hard drive and added a three year warranty. With the latter, I configured it to the same specifications as the MacBook -- same RAM, same hard drive, same processor speed. The MacBook Pro still cost $245 more. What I want to know is this: What does one actually get for those $245? The best I can tell, you get:

• A backlit keyboard
  
• A firewire port
  
• An SD card reader
  
• A spiffy looking metal exterior

Am I missing anything? I'm fine with Apple charging $245 for these things; it makes the decision between a MacBook and a thirteen inch MacBook Pro quite straightforward -- one simply asks if one wants to pay $245 for those four items. However, I can't shake the feeling that I'm missing something. Help me out, dear friends -- am I??

Question the Second: I run a dual-boot system with Linux and Windows. Annoyingly enough, my Windows partition seems to have recently been infected with some minor, yet annoying, viruses. Adware, Google redirects -- you get the idea. I have been running various free anti-virus programs: Spybot Search & Destroy, Ad-Aware, AVG Free, and Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. This has had varying degrees of success, purging the worst of the lot from my system. Not all of it, though. So, gentle readers, do you have a favourite free program to recommend? Or perhaps it is time to byte the bullet and purchase some digital protection? If so, what would you suggest that has been useful to you?

Remember! There are two hundred points at stake here! Think carefully and answer well!

Comments

[anarchist-nomad.livejournal.com]

Heh, you wrote this whilst in a meeting! Indeed, I probably watched you writing it on the video conference screen! :-)

Thanks for the advice. I'm beginning to think that the list of features I mentioned above -- plus the "spiffiness factor" that you cite -- are pretty much all that the extra money buys. That and the maximum RAM expandability. I checked blaisepascal's comment about video card... and they are the same. Ditto for predicted battery lifetime. I cannot speak to screen quality yet, though. May need to hit an Apple Store to check on that.

Hmmmm... I suppose that I had better go back to paying attention to the meeting. The next talk -- on OD analysis -- is about to begin.

[chefmayhem.livejournal.com]

T would be honored to know you were paying attention to his talk! He didn't think people would care so much :)

[anarchist-nomad.livejournal.com]

*grin* Actually, I think it somewhat interesting! I like when people have unusual ideas of what to do with the data. I like AH's CC1pi analysis for the same reason... even if I am skeptical of whether it will ultimately be useful.[*,**]

I can't see you on the video anymore, so I don't get to watch you commenting. :-(

P.S. If you manage to post a comment here during your presentation, I will be enormously impressed!

---

[*] Mainly because of very low statistics.

[**] Though it will likely become his thesis either way, which makes it useful to him.

[chefmayhem.livejournal.com]

Oh, come now, you think I could resist a challenge like that? You may singlehandedly take down my talk. But, if I do it right, the talk goes smoothly and we post right in the middle. Just...like...this :-) [*]

[*] It's magic!

[chefmayhem.livejournal.com]

Actually, that got posted right after my talk ended. I admit, I got too focused on my talk to post it in time. I'm too dedicated a grad student!!

[anarchist-nomad.livejournal.com]

Nice try, though! You get an "A" for effort, my friend!

As for your talk? I'll admit that I didn't pay as much attention as I would have liked. I'm actually quite interested in what you are doing... but it is well past midnight here and my ability to focus has dropped considerably.

At some point, I wouldn't mind chatting with you about your work with POLfit at a time that is not ridiculously late. Tis interesting stuff!

[chefmayhem.livejournal.com]

Oh. Also, regardless of which you get, you're still with a University, get the educational discount, it's excellent :-)

[x-mass.livejournal.com]

can i take a wild guess and assume your stateside?

In the US Apple gives big discounts to academia. In the UK Apple gives small discounts of the UK price. For the UK price take the US price plus sales Tax. Remove dollar sign, add sterling sign, then add 17.5% sales tax.

Typically for UK residents its much cheaper to buy retail in the states, then remove all packaging, bags etc, change keyboard to UK standard and void the warranty. When the pound was at over 2 dollars the cost of the flight made little difference to the saving,

[blaisepascal]

Though it will likely become his thesis either way, which makes it useful to him.

That brings up an interesting question about academics... My understanding is that the traditional standard for a PhD is significantly increasing the breadth of human knowledge (or similar). Can one get a PhD based on a dissertation for an experiment which didn't turn out the way you'd hoped? E.g., could your dissertation's abstract be something like "Theoretical work by Bromstead suggested that under conditions X the standard model predicts result Y, while many other competing theories predict result not-Y. After 3 years of experimental design, building, and data collection and analysis, detailed herein, we conclude that under conditions X, Y happens to within 5sd. Therefore, the standard model is vindicated once again, and new physics is avoided for another day."

[anarchist-nomad.livejournal.com]

Pretty much, yes. The idea is that if you fail to find new physics, you set a limit -- probably the new world's best -- on whatever you were looking for... and get your PhD for that.

On DZero, which gyades has worked on since the dawn of time mid-1990s, the joke is that you don't get your PhD until you have made sure that there is no new physics in your analysis... or: "Congratulations, you have confirmed the standard model! Now you can have a PhD!"