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User: EvanED

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  1. Re:The speed difference between them is huge... on NY Times' Broder Responds To Tesla's Elon Musk · · Score: 1

    It's about trying to say "the car died right in the parking lot" in his review.

    Oh for crying out loud. If he wanted to say that the car died right in the parking lot that badly, wouldn't he have devoted more than 5 minutes to it? I mean, he spent more than 18 hours from the time he left Washington until the time he got back to NYC. Even without the problems, that's a ton of time and a ton driving. And you think he couldn't make more than 4 or 5 trips around the parking lot?

  2. Re:Tesla kept logs. on NY Times' Broder Responds To Tesla's Elon Musk · · Score: 1

    And where does Musk say that?

    (Not that in some sense it matters -- if the GPS is more accurate and is reporting a higher speed than the speedometer, it means the speedometer is underreporting. This would be a huge problem.)

  3. Re:You clearly didn't review the charts given. on NY Times' Broder Responds To Tesla's Elon Musk · · Score: 1

    Musk's logs show precisely what the heater was doing. At 68 miles since recharging the NYT reporter DID NOT begin "range-maximization".

    I don't disagree with those statements. What I do disagree with is that the article necessarily says he did. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that +68 miles is where he really started paying attention to whether there was a problem. What my quote of the article didn't include was the paragraph break before "I began following Teslaâ(TM)s range-maximization guidelines", and I think that can make a world of difference. I think that dramatically lessens the degree of implication of "I did mental math around 68 miles" and "I started range maximization". It doesn't say "I immediately started range maximization".

    Like I said before, I'm not really trying to excuse the NYT here. It's just I think that Musk may have found some things that aren't actually particularly well-supported by the data.

  4. Re:The speed difference between them is huge... on NY Times' Broder Responds To Tesla's Elon Musk · · Score: 1

    When Broder claims he was driving around [nearby streets, presumably] looking for the [in his words] poorly marked charging station...

    Um, I'm not sure why you'd think he'd be driving around nearby streets, or what streets are nearby (in a driving sense) to the service plaza with the charging station that he could have been driving on.

    (And the original article states that's where the charge was made.)

    --

    A more interesting question is what Musk's speed data is based on. Is it based on the GPS which is no doubt present in the car (as you say and I agree), or is it based on a more traditional speedometer reading based on wheel revolutions?

  5. Re:The speed difference between them is huge... on NY Times' Broder Responds To Tesla's Elon Musk · · Score: 1

    My estimate of the perimeter around the main parking lot area is about 500 feet.

    Oops, sorry; that was supposed to link to the Google Maps satellite view of the service plaza.

  6. Re:The speed difference between them is huge... on NY Times' Broder Responds To Tesla's Elon Musk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you didn't find it on your first time circling the small 100 car lot, why wouldn't you just slow down to look for it rather than going in circles around the lot 30-40 times at a speed too fast to carefully look?

    30-40 times? Hah.

    My estimate of the perimeter around the main parking lot area is about 500 feet. That would put it at 6-7 times max to get 0.6 miles.

    But look: the Tesla charger isn't in that group of parking spaces, it's lower down to the left. Directly in front of the building. (Google helpfully has it marked.) Going around the whole building would take the distance up quite a bit more, depending on what path you follow. (It's not totally clear from there what paths are legal, and there doesn't seem to be street view.) If you got there, drove around the main parking lot a couple times looking for something that wasn't there, went up and down an aisle or two, then found yourself going around the north side of that building, that'd probably be sufficient to hit 0.6 miles.

    And furthermore, 0.6 is even an overestimate. Based on Musk's own graphic, that 0.6 includes much of the exit into the service plaza. Just that exit could easily account for 20% of that 0.6 miles.

    I'm not saying that Broder is in the right when it comes to the whole story. I think there are a number of unanswered questions, and some parts of his review + Musk's data that are suspicious. But, I also think that a couple part in particular of Musk's post are grasping at straws, and I think "Broder was driving around trying to run the car out of power" is one of them -- I find Broder's explanation way more credible than Musk's pseudo-accusation of sabotage.

  7. Re:A couple of points on NY Times' Broder Responds To Tesla's Elon Musk · · Score: 5, Informative

    A charging station he had previously been to...which makes his claim seem pretty suspect to me.

    When? On the way up?

    Not true: there are separate service plazas on each side of the highway. Furthermore, if you look at Google's "satellite" photo, they are not symmetric -- the parking lot is a completely different layout on the two sides, and the Tesla charging station (marked on the Google image) is in a different location.

  8. Re:You clearly didn't review the charts given. on NY Times' Broder Responds To Tesla's Elon Musk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So to start, I am totally down with the idea of electric cars; I think that the utility of them around town would outweigh for many people the range problems for longer trips*. I personally try to drive relatively little; I've put an average of well under 5,000 mi/year on my car. I probably shouldn't say this, but Tesla is the answer to "what's your dream car?" security question on some website. Believe me when I say I don't have a bias against electric cars.

    (* There was some discussion about this in the previous thread which I almost participated in, but didn't. Ballpark figures for the Tesla seem to be an hour of charge for about every three hours of driving. Personally, this is enough of an increase in stopping time compared to what I currently do on long trips that I really wouldn't want to do a long trip in one.)

    But... I've read Musk's comments and both responses on the NY Times blog (ironically I haven't actually read the original article), and to be honest I didn't really find Musk's blog post all that convincing. And this is after a bit of me wanting to see the NY Times review get nailed to the wall.

    For instance, Musk claims that the logs show that the heat was turned up when the reporter said he turned it down. But within 20 minutes of the point at which Musk says proves his point, the temperature was turned down -- dramatically. The NY Times article doesn't really give a precise "I turned down the heat at milepost 182"; that's a mileage that Musk seems to have derived from the following quote from the original article:

    As I crossed into New Jersey some 15 miles later, I noticed that the estimated range was falling faster than miles were accumulating. At 68 miles since recharging, the range had dropped by 85 miles, and a little mental math told me that reaching Milford would be a stretch. I began following Teslaâ(TM)s range-maximization guidelines, which meant dispensing with such battery-draining amenities as warming the cabin.

    But Musk doesn't say how he arrived at that number in his blog post; he just asserts that's the point at which the reviewer says. IMO it's not too much of a stretch to think that the above review is imprecise enough that skirting that arrow over just 20 miles to where the temperature was lowered could be what actually happened.

    This point in particular sits very poorly with me on Musk's side; I really feel like he was looking for faults with the data hard enough that he was probably prone to find ones that weren't actually there.

    Note that I'm not by any means absolving Broder. I think that this story still has a bit more to play out until it reaches its resolution (if it ever does, without phone calls). But I really do feel like the "oh the NY Times got served!" people are really jumping to conclusions, even given Musk's data. I've been burned too many times my assuming things when they looked so clear before.

  9. Re:fantastic idea, working with files could be eas on Collaborative LaTeX Editor With Preview In Your Web Browser · · Score: 1

    plus they don't take .eps files??

    My total speculative guess is that they're using pdflatex to render rather than traditional latex, and haven't bothered to implement conversions between image formats.

  10. Re:Troll... on OpenOffice: Worth $21 Million Per Day, If It Were Microsoft Office · · Score: 1

    Wow, apparently my "I hate to be that guy" was subconsciously swiped from my GP, including quotes. I promise we're different people though... you probably won't have to search far to find out that "name one thing that MS Office does that OpenOffice doesn't" is not something I'd be very likely to say. :-)

  11. Re:Troll... on OpenOffice: Worth $21 Million Per Day, If It Were Microsoft Office · · Score: 1

    I hate to be "that guy", but why not Latex? You obviously know about it.

  12. Re:If anything the numbers are UNDER stated on OpenOffice: Worth $21 Million Per Day, If It Were Microsoft Office · · Score: 1

    My software came from and is updated via my Linux distro. Add in all the Linux downloads and the install number used in his analysis is very under stated.

    I suspect that you'd see something similar to Firefox, though to a less extent: even though Firefox is pretty universally used among Linux users (maybe less so since Chrom(e|ium)), Linux Firefox users are still a very small part of overall Firefox users. Similarly, I expect there are far more Windows OpenOffice users than there are Linux OpenOffice users.

    And I suspect that the number of Windows OpenOffice "users" like me -- I download Open/LibreOffice every couple years to see if Impress is still shitty -- rather outweighs the number of Linux users getting it from their repo instead of the OO/LO site.

  13. Re:potentially worth... on OpenOffice: Worth $21 Million Per Day, If It Were Microsoft Office · · Score: 1

    Not really. OpenOffice is something you can try on a whim. Maybe you hear from a friend that it exists, and decide to give it a try. Maybe you like it, but maybe you don't. (There are plenty of people who feel strongly for one side or the other, as shown by the comments on this story.) But if you don't, the cost of trying it out is very low to zero depending on how you count.

    That's not true of MS Office. Who is going to go spend $150 on a lark just to try it out? Very few.

    Now, MS Office does have another thing going "unfairly" for it: bundling. In the above analysis, I'm counting people who go out and actually buy it explicitly, including upgrades and checking the "give me Office" box when buying a computer, not people who just go out to Best Buy and walk out the door with a computer with Office preloaded.

    (You could say that counting one but not the other is a bit unfair; to some extent you're right. However, I maintain that the two characteristics are very different, and that the original comment was on just the one.)

  14. Re:potentially worth... on OpenOffice: Worth $21 Million Per Day, If It Were Microsoft Office · · Score: 1

    FWIW, I don't know what you did to get that then.

    I tried it in LibreOffice 4.0 on Windows and on 3.5 on Ubuntu 12.04. The correction suggestions on the Windows one has 11 words, none of which are "quick". The Linux one did, but it was #13 of 13.

    As another point of comparison, Opera on Windows suggests it as #2 out of a pretty-obnoxiously-long list of options.

    Now, that being said, that's one word. I'm certainly prepared to believe that Word gives better suggestions, but "qick" is far from proof. For instance, "qyick" and "qjick" will give "quick" as the first suggestion.

  15. Re:potentially worth... on OpenOffice: Worth $21 Million Per Day, If It Were Microsoft Office · · Score: 1

    Yes and no.

    Let's take your examples:

    If a group of doctors volunteer their time and work in a clinic and treat the poor, pro bono, are they not entitled to claim the value that they provide is based on their normal rate? Same question for lawyers who provide pro bono counsel to those who cannot afford it. Can't they claim the value they produce per their normal hourly rates?

    What about the doctor who stepped into the clinic to ask a few questions and ask how things are done, applied a couple bandages, then walked out? Can he say that he provided the same amount of value as one of the long-term doctors?

    What about the lawyer who decided to download the latest version of LibreOffice to see if Impress was less donkey ass, then decided to go back to MS Office?

    A lot of those downloads are going to be for things like that -- where there was a download, but it really didn't provide value. Or what's the incremental increase in value for someone who went from LO 3.5 to 4.0 vs. someone who stuck with Office 2007?

  16. Re:What? on OpenOffice: Worth $21 Million Per Day, If It Were Microsoft Office · · Score: 2

    I understand that the word processing of LO and MS Office are about par, but is the same thing at all true about the Excel & PowerPoint programs?

    I can't speak to Writer or Calc... but when it comes to Impress, IMO the answer is a big fat "NO!"

    I've done a fair bit of evaluation of the two back when I was trying to decide whether to buy MS Office or stick with OO (spoiler: I did), and about the only thing that Impress manged to impress me with was how impressively bad it was. I haven't used Office XP for a while but I don't think it was even as good as that version of PowerPoint. And while I'm generally pretty indifferent on the ribbon, I think 2007 improved on 2003 a ton, and somehow 2010 actually managed to improve on 2007, though not enough for me to upgrade. (My use of 2010 was a "use at work" thing.)

    Just a couple days ago I wanted to make a diagram, and decided to give LibreOffice Draw a try. The block corner arrow doesn't even have a handle to adjust the width of the arrow, which means that unless I'm missing something that shape is essentially useless. This problem is in both Draw and Impress.

    (I'd love to try Keynote... but my usual line there is that I don't want to spend $1000 on presentation software, even if it does come with a free computer. :-))

  17. Re:Banking passwords are overrated on Everything You Know About Password-Stealing Is Wrong · · Score: 1

    I have some kind of account with three different banks (a local credit union for checking & savings, an online "high yield" (not so much any more) savings, and a credit card); to my knowledge, none of the three offer those dongles.

    I get the impression they're common in Europe, but I think they're pretty unheard of in the US.

  18. Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here! on LibreOffice 4 Released · · Score: 1

    Also, I needed to make a diagram just this morning, and decided to give LibreOffice Draw a try. Even in the new LO release, the corner block arrow has no handle for changing the width of the line, which means that AFAICT the thickness scales to the overall size of the diagram portion.

    This one thing basically left Draw dead in the water for what I wanted to do.

    (Actually Impress seems to have the same problem. I wonder if lack of control like that was part of why I disliked Impress.)

  19. Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here! on LibreOffice 4 Released · · Score: 1

    Except Libre office has much better functionality, even though its less on price.

    I'd just like to issue a counter-argument. I use word processors... well, basically only ever to read stuff other people have made, and then rarely. Almost all of my writing is done in plain text, in HTML, or in Latex.

    But what I do use office suites for with some regularity is presentations. And to be honest, IMO Impress doesn't even hold a candle to PowerPoint. A few years ago I was gearing up for something which I expected would need me to make a lot of presentations. (Turns out I did something different, but whatever.) I spent a fair bit of time just trying to use both PPT and Impress, so I could figure out which I wanted to use. And for whatever reason, Impress was just really frustrating to use. At the time, it was far worse than even old versions of PPT, and 2007 was (I think) a large improvement over 2003 for reasons other than the ribbon. (Actually even 2010 made some very nice UI improvements over 2007, which surprised me.) The situation is a bit better now with Impress, but it's still not even close IMO.

    PowerPoint has some problems, and it's not really the presentation software that I actually want. But it's still worlds better than Impress. (I'd like to try Keynote, but my usual line there is I don't want to spend $1000 on presentation software, even if it does come with a free computer. :-))

    (For all the Beamer fans out there, as much as I like Latex for other things, I think it's kind of crazy for presentations. IMO, presentations are a medium where Latex's strengths are unimportant and its weaknesses are important.)

    (Also, just to be clear, I am somewhat a MS fanboy by /. standards, but my closest relation with them was failing to get an internship with them not quite a decade ago.)

  20. Re:Demand More on As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow To a Trickle · · Score: 1

    iTunes, Bandcamp, and Amazon sales (almost all iTunes and Bandcamp). $82,651 between Oct 2011 and March 2012. Make sure you flip between the different spreadsheet pages via the "tabs" at the bottom.

    Wikipedia says the median income in the US is $45K. There are a lot of wrenches thrown into this comparison. Perhaps there was something special in that time that caused it to be above average (though no close-by releases; here solo albums are from 2004, 2005, 2010). Because she's self-employed, she also has (or potentially has) a ton of expenses that most full-time employees don't; if you take the typical rule (IIRC) that the cost to an employer is double that of the salary, that means that in some sense her income is half of the above numbers (which when you add in other stuff would put her reported income right around the median income). Or maybe she has health insurance through a husband, I have no idea.

    But that IS only for 6 months, and it doesn't seem like it includes touring income either. (Though other information she's reported indicates that she gets rather less revenue from touring than the above sales, and there are also a ton of expenses to that.)

  21. Re:I actually typed it, and nothing happened on Typing These 8 Characters Will Crash Almost Any App On Your Mountain Lion Mac · · Score: 2

    From a comment above, the problem is that it's not case sensitive, except for an internal sanity check which is.

    E.g. the dispatching code said "the user typed File:/// and I have a handler for file:///, so I'll call it", but then the handler had what was basically an case-insensitive comparison assert(url.startswith("file:///")).

    So the problem isn't case sensitivity or insensitivity -- it's that it was being inconsistent about it.

  22. Re:printf on Typing These 8 Characters Will Crash Almost Any App On Your Mountain Lion Mac · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, input validation is usually a good thing and no amount of you hating Apple Inc is going to change that.

    That's true. But a crash is not the way to handle invalid input.

  23. Re:Demand More on As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow To a Trickle · · Score: 1

    (Also, "wooosh", I know.)

  24. Re:Demand More on As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow To a Trickle · · Score: 1

    I'm plenty used to /., and am fairly used to having disagreements with large portions of it. And on most issues I've got pretty think skin, so I'm okay. Heck, most of this conversation isn't even really disagreements with Keating as an outright misunderstanding (if a somewhat understandable one) of her beliefs about streaming.

  25. Re:Musicians ? on As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow To a Trickle · · Score: 1

    Composers are like the people who key in the data into a database. Musicians are like people reading from a database and then interpreting the dataset into something else. And the so-called "Musicians" want to be paid for doing that ??

    How about us, the geeky programmers, the ones who made the database engines?

    Really? Saying that "composers are like the people who key in the data into a database" is like saying that the geeky programmers who made the DB engines are "the people who typed in the code."

    I mean, in some sense it's true... but it's putting the focus in the wrong place. In both cases it's figuring out what to type in the first case that's the "problem".