I don't think many really like Broadcast TV but they just like the shows. Cable was popular because back in the days because you paid for the service you got commercial free content, then reduced commercial, as well more stations to choose from. Now they have often more commercials then broadcast TV, there are more channels however most of them are duplicates to each other. Standard, HD, Digital Standard, Digital HD. Or things Discovery 1 2 3 4 which the higher number has the same show that number seasons back. It has became a complete mess.
Exactly.
I was thrilled when we first got cable. It was great. All the same programming, none of the commercials.
Then they started adding commercials... But they were also adding channels... So it was OK. But not great.
Now... Meh. Tons of re-runs. Tons of duplicate programming. Channels that used to be interesting are now just more of the same (like SyFy).
There's a reason why services like Netflix and Hulu are popular. There's a reason why everyone loves their DVR.
If you're homeless and have a serious ailment, it might be a sensible thing to do.
If you're homeless, you probably qualify for Medicaid.
It's the folks who actually earn an income that're screwed-over here in the US. Earn too much money, you don't qualify for Medicaid. But that cutoff is low enough that it includes all sorts of jobs that don't come with medical benefits, and don't pay enough for you to purchase your own health insurance. Which means you're screwed if you get hurt/sick.
Effective range is for what users MAY do, not what they DO do. Just because I only drive 40 miles a day 99 out 100 days doesn't mean I dont want to drive 400 miles on that 100th day.
Fair enough.
But are you willing to pay an extra several thousand dollars for a battery that'll get you the extra miles for that one day out of 100? Or would you be just as happy simply re-charging a few times along the way?
Does GM really need to outfit all its cars with batteries that can go 400 miles? Or can it maybe offer a model with a 200 mile battery instead?
Does GM need to focus on developing bigger batteries, because everybody winds up wanting to drive 400 miles? Or would that money be better spent on developing a quick-charge system that'll top off a battery in a few minutes, basically enabling the same kind of virtually-unlimited range that you get with a gasoline engine?
sure ps3's and xboxes sound silly for congress or the DOJ but it could be going to our troops, like that ps3 supercomputer... but TFA is obviously out to state an agenda, so nothing to see here unless you want some rant by what seems like a child
Even if they aren't going into a cluster/supercomputer, I'm not sure that I have a problem with it. Sure, maybe our congresscritters can just go home and play on their own console system... But folks who've been deployed don't really have that option. And I'm certainly not going to begrudge the soldiers who are keeping me safe the cost of a few game systems.
If you're giving a web page low-level access to your hardware
Then your operating system is broken. A browser implementing WebGL makes calls to the operating system's implementation of OpenGL or Direct3D, which is supposed to protect each application using OpenGL or Direct3D from others. A broken 3D video driver is no different from a broken 2D video driver: both are security holes.
I guess that's true these days. I've had various games crash my 3D drivers and I just get a pop-up message stating that the driver had to be re-started.
I'm still thinking of the good ol' days where a video driver crash meant a BSOD.
If it were WebDirectX they'd be all over it. Since it's WebGL, however, there are security concerns.
Which isn't to say that the security concerns aren't valid... If you're giving a web page low-level access to your hardware there's certainly a possibility for abuse. But I suspect that Microsoft's concern here is more about market share than security.
Mainly because it's simply not free, yes you can enjoy the games to a certain extent without paying a penny, but they are designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible and in the long term are far more expensive than purchasing a retail product upfront.
Well, that's why it's called "free to play".
Nobody forces you to pay for it. Unlike WoW or EVE, I can create a LotR:O account for free. And play all I want, day after day after day. Nobody is going to force me to pay for anything.
But there are some nice things you get if you pay money. And, of course, the things are nice enough to make you want to pay for them. That's the whole idea.
The states certainly do pass laws regarding who you can and can't marry. That much is true.
However, your original post implied that if assisted suicide was legalized, it would then be mandated in some cases.
Which is why I made my sarcastic comments that the current legality of marriage allows the state to dictate my specific partner, and the idea that legalizing gay marriage would therefor cause the state to force me into a gay marriage.
We have all sorts of rules and regulations regarding what kind of motor vehicles are allowed on the road, too. But I'm not actually required to drive one.
Similarly - if assisted suicide were legalized it would, presumably, be regulated in some way. But that does not necessarily mean that it would be mandated.
re: marriage - The government certainly structures taxes in a manner which encourages certain kinds of family structures and discourages others. Even if nothing is done intentionally, there might be some unintended consequences with regard to tax treatment of dependents, etc. even before you get into whether legal guardians would have the authority to make such decisions on behalf of their wards.
Marriage laws are most certainly written to encourage certain types of marriage. But the OP was suggesting that just because assisted suicide was legalized, it would be mandated in some cases. Which falls outside the scope of current marriage laws.
Suicide is mans attempt to keep control of what he never had any control of. Himself.
I guess I'll assume you're speaking for yourself... Because I have pretty much full control of myself.
Legal suicide is an invitation for the 'state' to decide who is worthy to live and die because it immediately puts law makers in the position of deciding who's life is worthy of being required to live.
Right... Because legalizing marriage put law makers in the position of deciding who I have to marry, right?
Which explains why there's so much opposition to legalizing gay marriage - if that happens we'll all be required to marry same-sex partners.
it will be used as an excuse to not take care of those people who choose not to use the 'option' when they are no longer 'worthy' of support.
We already do that here in the US.
If the insurance company decides your treatment costs too much, you're on your own. And if you aren't wealthy enough to pay for it out-of-pocket, you're as good as dead.
I'm somewhat inclined to wonder if this is just part of some terrifyingly value-rational spreadsheet junkie's byzantine plan to manipulate the market in refined-fictionalonium futures or something of the sort...
Honestly, that was my first thought as well.
There's so much metagaming going on in EVE... I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out this was all some plot to gain in-game advantage.
The effort, which affects dozens of core systems, is taxing IT operational budgets at a time when shops are already under the gun to implement electronic health records.
For the most part, this isn't my problem.
ICD-10 has been on the radar for a while now. At least a couple years. And it's Federally mandated. So we didn't have any problem adding the necessary funds to our budget this year.
Each of our HIS vendors has already got ICD-10 stuff ready to go. We'll have to pay them for their time, or a software release, or whatever... But, as far as my own labor is concerned, it'll basically involve giving them remote access or throwing a disc in the drive.
Most of the labor involved is in our coding department. They're going to have to send folks out to get (re)trained in the ICD-10 stuff. They are, understandably, a little stressed. But they've been working on this for a while, too.
Linux was an integral part of my Computer Science education.
The first few CSC courses were all run from a lab with tons of Alpha terminals. Later courses were conducted in labs where all the machines dual-booted Windows and Linux. Almost all of our programming assignments were done in a Linux environment.
Plus, half the university's servers were running on some sort of Unix-like OS.
And you're getting ridiculed for asking about Linux?
Seems a little weird to me... Is Linux really such a marginal part of a modern university environment?
Who cares if it looks awesome if latency sucks. I'd rather have SuperNES StarFox quality graphics with no lag than ray-traced graphics with horrible latency. It can be reduced, but I don't yet believe it's possible to make it unnoticeable. I guess I'll believe it when I see it.
Latency is an absolutely huge problem. It's a bigger problem, for me, than poor image quality.
I'll happily turn down the visuals if it makes my game more responsive. And nothing will make me throw up my hands in frustration faster than input lag.
I'm amused that a company would announce the release of a game almost 10 months out. I would say that there's about the same chance of the world ending in a fiery conflagration or massive economic meltdown as there is of Mass Effect 3 being released on that date.
But I guess it's good to have something to pretend to look forward to, even if it's only as a distraction from the Great Depression II.
I'm willing to bet that this announcement will see additional sales of Mass Effect 1 and 2.
Why are we willing to pay for these things, out of our taxes, for criminals in jail - but not for schoolchildren?
Why is it that when somebody is in prison we're willing to all chip in to make sure they've got access to food/clothing/shelter/healtchare/education/etc... But when they're free like the rest of us, it's their problem, and it's just too bad if they can't afford food/clothing/shelter/healtchare/education/etc.
This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!
Depending on the child's family, and the location of the school, many of these things are not available.
There is no assurance that anybody is going to have a roof over their head. Sure, there are public housing programs, but they aren't a sure thing. They're chronically underfunded. I guess there are homeless shelters, too, but they aren't any better funded.
There is no assurance that anybody is going to get three meals a day. Yup, the food stamps program exists - again, chronically underfunded. And with lots of hoops to jump through. And there aren't soup kitchens everywhere.
Fitness center - you want them to go to the Y? You realize the Y isn't free, right? YMCA membership around here is ridiculously expensive. It's cheaper just to sign up at some other health club.
Earn a degree - scholarships, grants, loans, night school... None of those are guaranteed. Lots of competition for limited scholarships and grants. And several of the banks in my area have stopped offering student loans.
Books and computer - public library. Well, that's nice if you have a public library. And if that library actually has computers and a decent selection of books. Again though, they're chronically underfunded.
It sounds like he does actually want to make a prison, because prison is likely the only place you'll find all that together. That doesn't mean they're not provided to the non-incarcerated. This type of thinking sends the school systems down the path of being replacement parents. That should not be our end goal.
These things are apparently important enough that they're provided for prisoners. Nobody says "I'm sorry you can't earn enough money to pay for your own health care, it's your problem" when you're a prisoner. And yet, if you aren't a prisoner, that's basically the response. Same thing goes for pretty much everything else you mention.
So, culturally, we think healthcare is essential enough to provide it to the people we've locked away from the rest of us... But we don't think it's essential enough to make sure that our schoolchildren have it no matter what...
No company worth their salt will put all the company data "on the cloud" No way in HELL is my customer DB and accounting DB going on the cloud.
A cloud is a logical construct, not a physical one. It's a collection of physical hardware that's been abstracted away to provide a clean and consistent interface independent of the actual hardware it lives on. Sound familiar?
Do you run a Citrix farm? That's a cloud.
Do you run a VMWare cluster? That's a cloud.
Nobody said the cloud had to belong to somebody else, or had to be public. Plenty of companies are running their own internal clouds.
This is an Android-based device for $139. It has an e-Ink display and a touch screen. I'm buying one the day after it's rooted.
Does anyone know enough about the touch-screen method this uses to tell me whether it can present two datapoints at a time? (Can the hardware be used to do multi-touch?)
It is my understanding that the nook has already been rooted.
Leaving the device idle draws power, too. So I could do 10,000 pageturns, and leave my device idle for a couple days, and then only have enough power for 5,000 more pageturns.
And if I'm using the wi-fi to download books, that number will go lower still. Or if I'm using 3G on the edge of network coverage, it'll be even lower.
One of the selling points at the time was not so much battery life, but user replaceable batteries. With the Nook, you could walk into a B&N and buy a new battery and replace it yourself... with the Kindle you had to send it in, at your expense, to have the battery replaced.
That's one of the main reasons my wife and I bought nooks, instead of kindles.
She's got an old iPod... 1st or 2nd generation, I'm not sure which. It still functions just fine, but the battery is completely shot. Has been for ages. I don't think it actually lasted longer than a year. We still use the thing in a docking station, but it is no longer portable. It has to be plugged in to power to work.
I didn't want a repeat of that with my nook.
You can buy replacement batteries at B&N, as well as Best Buy. I'm sure they can be ordered on-line, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's some off-brand version as well. When my battery eventually dies I can replace it myself with no trouble at all. If I was really worried about battery life I could even purchase a couple extra batteries, charge them up, and swap them out when they get low.
I own the original Nook, and get in at least an hour, usually two or more, spread throughout the day. Do people buying dedicated e-readers (as opposed to color tablets) really only get in a half hour every day? I'd thought the market was mostly for readers like me.
Yeah... That figure seems a bit odd to me, as well.
I bought a nook because I read a good amount. Reading is one of my primary timesinks. I'll easily put in half an hour over a lunch break... Another 15-30 minutes here and there throughout the day as I'm waiting for appointments or meetings or whatever to start... And then a good hour or two in the evening... And that's all during the week. On the weekend, or a holiday, I can spend 6-8 hours reading a good book.
I mean, if I only read 30 minutes a day, I don't think I would have cared enough about my books to buy a nook.
How about stating the battery life in actual hours of continuous use instead of estimated days based on estimated usage? Is that really so hard?
With an e-ink display, it isn't so much the number of hours in use... It's more about how many times the screen refreshes.
Of course the device will use some power just sitting there idle... But e-ink doesn't really draw power except when it refreshes the screen. So, if you're actively reading and flipping lots of pages, you'll burn through the battery. If you're somewhat distracted, or a slow reader, or if you're looking at a single page for some reason (a diagram, or something) it'll last longer.
And then you'll use more power if you're using the wi-fi... Like when you're shopping their ebook store, or downloading your purchases...
So they have to come up with a profile of how often they think folks use the wi-fi, and how often they turn the page, and how long the device sits there unused... And that profile can easily be tweaked to look better than the competition.
I'm sitting here, after reading your response, pondering to myself... Poe? Not Poe? It reminds me of when I was a kid and we'd get a daisy and pluck the petals off while debating over whether someone loved you or not. I can't imagine that a discussion about a possible pantyshot of a video game character would generate a response like this in earnest... But... It is the Internet, and I'm sure stranger things have happened.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think many really like Broadcast TV but they just like the shows. Cable was popular because back in the days because you paid for the service you got commercial free content, then reduced commercial, as well more stations to choose from.
Now they have often more commercials then broadcast TV, there are more channels however most of them are duplicates to each other. Standard, HD, Digital Standard, Digital HD. Or things Discovery 1 2 3 4 which the higher number has the same show that number seasons back. It has became a complete mess.
Exactly.
I was thrilled when we first got cable. It was great. All the same programming, none of the commercials.
Then they started adding commercials... But they were also adding channels... So it was OK. But not great.
Now... Meh. Tons of re-runs. Tons of duplicate programming. Channels that used to be interesting are now just more of the same (like SyFy).
There's a reason why services like Netflix and Hulu are popular. There's a reason why everyone loves their DVR.
If you're homeless and have a serious ailment, it might be a sensible thing to do.
If you're homeless, you probably qualify for Medicaid.
It's the folks who actually earn an income that're screwed-over here in the US. Earn too much money, you don't qualify for Medicaid. But that cutoff is low enough that it includes all sorts of jobs that don't come with medical benefits, and don't pay enough for you to purchase your own health insurance. Which means you're screwed if you get hurt/sick.
Effective range is for what users MAY do, not what they DO do. Just because I only drive 40 miles a day 99 out 100 days doesn't mean I dont want to drive 400 miles on that 100th day.
Fair enough.
But are you willing to pay an extra several thousand dollars for a battery that'll get you the extra miles for that one day out of 100? Or would you be just as happy simply re-charging a few times along the way?
Does GM really need to outfit all its cars with batteries that can go 400 miles? Or can it maybe offer a model with a 200 mile battery instead?
Does GM need to focus on developing bigger batteries, because everybody winds up wanting to drive 400 miles? Or would that money be better spent on developing a quick-charge system that'll top off a battery in a few minutes, basically enabling the same kind of virtually-unlimited range that you get with a gasoline engine?
sure ps3's and xboxes sound silly for congress or the DOJ but it could be going to our troops, like that ps3 supercomputer ... but TFA is obviously out to state an agenda, so nothing to see here unless you want some rant by what seems like a child
Even if they aren't going into a cluster/supercomputer, I'm not sure that I have a problem with it. Sure, maybe our congresscritters can just go home and play on their own console system... But folks who've been deployed don't really have that option. And I'm certainly not going to begrudge the soldiers who are keeping me safe the cost of a few game systems.
If you're giving a web page low-level access to your hardware
Then your operating system is broken. A browser implementing WebGL makes calls to the operating system's implementation of OpenGL or Direct3D, which is supposed to protect each application using OpenGL or Direct3D from others. A broken 3D video driver is no different from a broken 2D video driver: both are security holes.
I guess that's true these days. I've had various games crash my 3D drivers and I just get a pop-up message stating that the driver had to be re-started.
I'm still thinking of the good ol' days where a video driver crash meant a BSOD.
Yup.
If it were WebDirectX they'd be all over it. Since it's WebGL, however, there are security concerns.
Which isn't to say that the security concerns aren't valid... If you're giving a web page low-level access to your hardware there's certainly a possibility for abuse. But I suspect that Microsoft's concern here is more about market share than security.
This Penny Arcade strip pretty much sums it up for me.
Mainly because it's simply not free, yes you can enjoy the games to a certain extent without paying a penny, but they are designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible and in the long term are far more expensive than purchasing a retail product upfront.
Well, that's why it's called "free to play".
Nobody forces you to pay for it. Unlike WoW or EVE, I can create a LotR:O account for free. And play all I want, day after day after day. Nobody is going to force me to pay for anything.
But there are some nice things you get if you pay money. And, of course, the things are nice enough to make you want to pay for them. That's the whole idea.
The states certainly do pass laws regarding who you can and can't marry. That much is true.
However, your original post implied that if assisted suicide was legalized, it would then be mandated in some cases.
Which is why I made my sarcastic comments that the current legality of marriage allows the state to dictate my specific partner, and the idea that legalizing gay marriage would therefor cause the state to force me into a gay marriage.
We have all sorts of rules and regulations regarding what kind of motor vehicles are allowed on the road, too. But I'm not actually required to drive one.
Similarly - if assisted suicide were legalized it would, presumably, be regulated in some way. But that does not necessarily mean that it would be mandated.
Legalized != Mandated.
re: marriage - The government certainly structures taxes in a manner which encourages certain kinds of family structures and discourages others. Even if nothing is done intentionally, there might be some unintended consequences with regard to tax treatment of dependents, etc. even before you get into whether legal guardians would have the authority to make such decisions on behalf of their wards.
Marriage laws are most certainly written to encourage certain types of marriage. But the OP was suggesting that just because assisted suicide was legalized, it would be mandated in some cases. Which falls outside the scope of current marriage laws.
Suicide is mans attempt to keep control of what he never had any control of. Himself.
I guess I'll assume you're speaking for yourself... Because I have pretty much full control of myself.
Legal suicide is an invitation for the 'state' to decide who is worthy to live and die because it immediately puts law makers in the position of deciding who's life is worthy of being required to live.
Right... Because legalizing marriage put law makers in the position of deciding who I have to marry, right?
Which explains why there's so much opposition to legalizing gay marriage - if that happens we'll all be required to marry same-sex partners.
it will be used as an excuse to not take care of those people who choose not to use the 'option' when they are no longer 'worthy' of support.
We already do that here in the US.
If the insurance company decides your treatment costs too much, you're on your own. And if you aren't wealthy enough to pay for it out-of-pocket, you're as good as dead.
I'm somewhat inclined to wonder if this is just part of some terrifyingly value-rational spreadsheet junkie's byzantine plan to manipulate the market in refined-fictionalonium futures or something of the sort...
Honestly, that was my first thought as well.
There's so much metagaming going on in EVE... I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out this was all some plot to gain in-game advantage.
The effort, which affects dozens of core systems, is taxing IT operational budgets at a time when shops are already under the gun to implement electronic health records.
For the most part, this isn't my problem.
ICD-10 has been on the radar for a while now. At least a couple years. And it's Federally mandated. So we didn't have any problem adding the necessary funds to our budget this year.
Each of our HIS vendors has already got ICD-10 stuff ready to go. We'll have to pay them for their time, or a software release, or whatever... But, as far as my own labor is concerned, it'll basically involve giving them remote access or throwing a disc in the drive.
Most of the labor involved is in our coding department. They're going to have to send folks out to get (re)trained in the ICD-10 stuff. They are, understandably, a little stressed. But they've been working on this for a while, too.
Weird.
Linux was an integral part of my Computer Science education.
The first few CSC courses were all run from a lab with tons of Alpha terminals. Later courses were conducted in labs where all the machines dual-booted Windows and Linux. Almost all of our programming assignments were done in a Linux environment.
Plus, half the university's servers were running on some sort of Unix-like OS.
And you're getting ridiculed for asking about Linux?
Seems a little weird to me... Is Linux really such a marginal part of a modern university environment?
Who cares if it looks awesome if latency sucks. I'd rather have SuperNES StarFox quality graphics with no lag than ray-traced graphics with horrible latency.
It can be reduced, but I don't yet believe it's possible to make it unnoticeable. I guess I'll believe it when I see it.
Latency is an absolutely huge problem. It's a bigger problem, for me, than poor image quality.
I'll happily turn down the visuals if it makes my game more responsive. And nothing will make me throw up my hands in frustration faster than input lag.
I'm amused that a company would announce the release of a game almost 10 months out. I would say that there's about the same chance of the world ending in a fiery conflagration or massive economic meltdown as there is of Mass Effect 3 being released on that date.
But I guess it's good to have something to pretend to look forward to, even if it's only as a distraction from the Great Depression II.
I'm willing to bet that this announcement will see additional sales of Mass Effect 1 and 2.
I think you're missing the point.
Why are we willing to pay for these things, out of our taxes, for criminals in jail - but not for schoolchildren?
Why is it that when somebody is in prison we're willing to all chip in to make sure they've got access to food/clothing/shelter/healtchare/education/etc... But when they're free like the rest of us, it's their problem, and it's just too bad if they can't afford food/clothing/shelter/healtchare/education/etc.
From the fine article:
This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!
Depending on the child's family, and the location of the school, many of these things are not available.
There is no assurance that anybody is going to have a roof over their head. Sure, there are public housing programs, but they aren't a sure thing. They're chronically underfunded. I guess there are homeless shelters, too, but they aren't any better funded.
There is no assurance that anybody is going to get three meals a day. Yup, the food stamps program exists - again, chronically underfunded. And with lots of hoops to jump through. And there aren't soup kitchens everywhere.
Fitness center - you want them to go to the Y? You realize the Y isn't free, right? YMCA membership around here is ridiculously expensive. It's cheaper just to sign up at some other health club.
Earn a degree - scholarships, grants, loans, night school... None of those are guaranteed. Lots of competition for limited scholarships and grants. And several of the banks in my area have stopped offering student loans.
Books and computer - public library. Well, that's nice if you have a public library. And if that library actually has computers and a decent selection of books. Again though, they're chronically underfunded.
It sounds like he does actually want to make a prison, because prison is likely the only place you'll find all that together. That doesn't mean they're not provided to the non-incarcerated. This type of thinking sends the school systems down the path of being replacement parents. That should not be our end goal.
These things are apparently important enough that they're provided for prisoners. Nobody says "I'm sorry you can't earn enough money to pay for your own health care, it's your problem" when you're a prisoner. And yet, if you aren't a prisoner, that's basically the response. Same thing goes for pretty much everything else you mention.
So, culturally, we think healthcare is essential enough to provide it to the people we've locked away from the rest of us... But we don't think it's essential enough to make sure that our schoolchildren have it no matter what...
Seems a little messed up to me.
No company worth their salt will put all the company data "on the cloud" No way in HELL is my customer DB and accounting DB going on the cloud.
A cloud is a logical construct, not a physical one. It's a collection of physical hardware that's been abstracted away to provide a clean and consistent interface independent of the actual hardware it lives on. Sound familiar?
Do you run a Citrix farm? That's a cloud.
Do you run a VMWare cluster? That's a cloud.
Nobody said the cloud had to belong to somebody else, or had to be public. Plenty of companies are running their own internal clouds.
All the nooks are relatively similar - they're all running B&N's customized load of Android.
Both the 1st edition nook and the nook color have been rooted. There's even a relatively friendly software-only root available.
I assume that the new and improved nook will be rooted very quickly, if the current techniques don't already work on it.
This is an Android-based device for $139. It has an e-Ink display and a touch screen. I'm buying one the day after it's rooted.
Does anyone know enough about the touch-screen method this uses to tell me whether it can present two datapoints at a time? (Can the hardware be used to do multi-touch?)
It is my understanding that the nook has already been rooted.
http://nookdevs.com/
Just say "it allows for 20000 page turns"
Even that wouldn't be terribly accurate though...
Leaving the device idle draws power, too. So I could do 10,000 pageturns, and leave my device idle for a couple days, and then only have enough power for 5,000 more pageturns.
And if I'm using the wi-fi to download books, that number will go lower still. Or if I'm using 3G on the edge of network coverage, it'll be even lower.
One of the selling points at the time was not so much battery life, but user replaceable batteries. With the Nook, you could walk into a B&N and buy a new battery and replace it yourself... with the Kindle you had to send it in, at your expense, to have the battery replaced.
That's one of the main reasons my wife and I bought nooks, instead of kindles.
She's got an old iPod... 1st or 2nd generation, I'm not sure which. It still functions just fine, but the battery is completely shot. Has been for ages. I don't think it actually lasted longer than a year. We still use the thing in a docking station, but it is no longer portable. It has to be plugged in to power to work.
I didn't want a repeat of that with my nook.
You can buy replacement batteries at B&N, as well as Best Buy. I'm sure they can be ordered on-line, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's some off-brand version as well. When my battery eventually dies I can replace it myself with no trouble at all. If I was really worried about battery life I could even purchase a couple extra batteries, charge them up, and swap them out when they get low.
I own the original Nook, and get in at least an hour, usually two or more, spread throughout the day. Do people buying dedicated e-readers (as opposed to color tablets) really only get in a half hour every day? I'd thought the market was mostly for readers like me.
Yeah... That figure seems a bit odd to me, as well.
I bought a nook because I read a good amount. Reading is one of my primary timesinks. I'll easily put in half an hour over a lunch break... Another 15-30 minutes here and there throughout the day as I'm waiting for appointments or meetings or whatever to start... And then a good hour or two in the evening... And that's all during the week. On the weekend, or a holiday, I can spend 6-8 hours reading a good book.
I mean, if I only read 30 minutes a day, I don't think I would have cared enough about my books to buy a nook.
How about stating the battery life in actual hours of continuous use instead of estimated days based on estimated usage? Is that really so hard?
With an e-ink display, it isn't so much the number of hours in use... It's more about how many times the screen refreshes.
Of course the device will use some power just sitting there idle... But e-ink doesn't really draw power except when it refreshes the screen. So, if you're actively reading and flipping lots of pages, you'll burn through the battery. If you're somewhat distracted, or a slow reader, or if you're looking at a single page for some reason (a diagram, or something) it'll last longer.
And then you'll use more power if you're using the wi-fi... Like when you're shopping their ebook store, or downloading your purchases...
So they have to come up with a profile of how often they think folks use the wi-fi, and how often they turn the page, and how long the device sits there unused... And that profile can easily be tweaked to look better than the competition.
I'm sitting here, after reading your response, pondering to myself... Poe? Not Poe? It reminds me of when I was a kid and we'd get a daisy and pluck the petals off while debating over whether someone loved you or not. I can't imagine that a discussion about a possible pantyshot of a video game character would generate a response like this in earnest... But... It is the Internet, and I'm sure stranger things have happened.