What is wrong with that? Then I can expect at least 40 minutes of battery life and anything more than that is nice.
What's wrong with that? What's wrong is that you're telling the customer a number that by and large they aren't interested in. What they want to know is if they can watch a full DVD without recharging. If they can work on their Excel spreadsheet for the entire 6-hour cross-country flight if the plane doesn't have plugs. You tell them "minimum 40 minutes" and they say "Whoa! That's not long enough to do anything!" and you say "Well it's just the minimum, under typical usage conditions it will last much longer," and then they ask "And how long is typical? Long enough to watch Casino Royale on BluRay?"
What's your answer? Hypothetically you should be able to actually say whether it'll last long enough to watch the movie, but how do you answer that question in general? What is "typical"? That's what people really want to know, the minimum number doesn't really do them much good except to say that if they really load down the laptop, it won't last long. Which makes the product look bad, and is still by and large not that helpful.
It's not an easy question, more difficult in many ways than talking about performance. Considering that power has only become a major concern for commodity chip makers in recent times, I'm not surprised that their battery life estimates aren't very accurate. Of course, whatever estimate they do use, no matter how accurate, will be measured in a way that makes their parts look good. That won't change, ever. I'm sure that's part of your motivation for the minimum time metric -- there are far fewer ways to screw with it. Which is nice, but not sufficient by itself.
Uh, well, yeah, except the universe as we know it is already pretty complex (there are a great many particles already known to exist), and not finding the Higgs would up-end one of the nicest and simplest parts of our current understanding, which is to say symmetry (and lots of other aspects of the Standard Model). The new theory would probably end up being much more complicated to explain why symmetry exists in some cases but not others.
Kinda like how when we figured out Newton's Theory was inaccurate, what replaced it was much more complicated and frankly much weirder. Light travels at a constant velocity relative to all inertial observers? Traveling near the speed of light or a large gravity well alters mass, length, and the relative passage of time? And since we've experimentally verified most of these effects, whatever theory replaces Relativity will probably be even more complicated and more strange to explain both the known effects and whatever anomalies arise to show Relativity to be wrong.
It's possible that at the core there's a Theory of Everything where one simple equation explains all the emergent behaviors that every other theory tries to explain. But it isn't a given, we're a long way from that, and not finding the Higgs will open a doorway to many new possibilities, lots of em plenty damn complex. Hell one of the things that attracts physicists to String Theory is that it is, relatively speaking, mathematically simple and elegant.
I'm going to sue God because I came up with the concept of 4-dimensional space-time.
Yeah! And when he defends himself, he'll have to say how many dimensions their really are to show the patent doesn't apply. Trick God into verifying string theory!
Perhaps the message that was intended was that overall the change did not affect users very much outside of relatively trivial things, not that those two things were literally the biggest changes in the system period.
I know this is heresy around here, but sometimes literalism is not the best route to understanding.
What the summary doesn't mention, but is worth noting, is that they were already using open source programs where possible---Firefox, Thunderbird, OOo. Now I think their migration is wonderful, but I suspect it might have been somewhat more difficult if users were asked to adjust to new programs, as well.
Of course it would have been more difficult. That just means they did it right, switching to Free applications first then to the Free OS. They probably saved money in the first step as well as the second, and lowered the burden by doing it phased rather than dumping it all on the users at once.
You forgot to mention that the Ether Bunny isn't real, and it's really the kids' parents who sneak into their rooms and anesthetize them at night, Mr. Spoil Sport.
This doesn't affect the energy capacity of the battery at all, only the rate it can charge or discharge. It's a new electrode, not a new electrolyte.
So obviously the battery wouldn't be able to power the vacuum cleaners for terribly long. I don't know how much energy is in a 1L LiIon battery, and am too lazy to look it up. But it would drain your laptop battery in a couple seconds or less.
then there is the lame teeny-soap-opera guy who keeps falling back on silly cliches like "90-lb anorexic girl who KICKS SOME ASS!"
I wouldn't have even minded if she hadn't kicked ass with kung-fu. It would have made sense if she had kicked ass with guns like she did in the War Stories episode. The calculated-shots-without-looking type of bad-assery at least fits in with her being a super-genius. But I don't care what they did to her brain, unless there were a lot of off-screen calisthenics she just wouldn't have had the strength to do any of that stuff without hurting herself more than her enemies.
I liked her character in the series, I was disappointed they took her in the direction they did in the movie. The 'reader' angle seemed to have so much more potential, but all we got was kung-fu and a knowledge of where reavers came from. Which was cool in and of itself, but to have that be the only reason the alliance wanted her? Yeah let down.
That, I think, is where scientists and believers differ. Scientists would like to know why, exactly, this particular Christian (or Islamic, or Jewish, or Hindu, etc.) God exists, and not one or more of any number of other possible gods (Zeus, Baal, Ra). Does causality have meaning for gods? Do gods always know they are gods, or do some think they are merely an evolved being in a random universe?
I'm clipping your post, but understand that I am including the entire thing when I say that these are all things believers wonder about. Millennia of religious philosophers have pondered the question of free will, the nature of omnipotence, and all these other things. The question "can God create an object so heavy that He cannot lift it?" predates the modern scientific method by centuries. Wondering about the nature of God is a fundamental part of an active faith.
As a scientist, I get to the very first question -- does God exist? -- and realize I can never craft a falsifiable experiment that tests for the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent creator being, much less to test for the properties of omniscience or omnipotence. We can't test for the existence of 'free will', even assuming we could define it. Thus the scientist correctly decides that these questions belong in the realm of religion and philosophy, not science.
It's perfectly possible to do both -- ponder questions empirical and falsifiable, and questions philosophical and unanswerable -- as long as you know that they are distinct.
Which is kinda the point of what I was saying -- Intelligent Design logically precludes the idea of a naturally-arisen Designer, it only allows for the super-natural. Thus the only answer that satisfies ID is a religious one that must be taken on faith, and this is not science. ID is not science. People who say that it is science, and justify this by saying the Designer could be an alien race, are lying to cover up ID's religious foundation.
Okay, fine then, just consider my post a reinforcement of the claim in the post you replied to that the "It's not necessarily God, maybe it was aliens" dodge of the IDers is really nothing more than a dodge because aliens doing it is logically inconsistent with ID, and not a rebuttal of whatever your point was.
You talked about philosophical differences, but that doesn't mean you can tell the difference.
How would you, as an observer with an iron age level of technology, be able to distinguish a miraculous burning bush from one that had been zapped with a heat ray?
Yes of course, because the part of the quote on technology you modified that everyone forgets to include is "... if you don't know how it works". If you don't understand how the technology works, then it's magic, and the people who control it are gods.
That's irrelevant to the question of whether the D in ID could be aliens. At the end of the day, whether we can detect the difference or not, it's either magic or technology, they're either supernatural gods or advanced aliens subject to the same natural laws as everyone else. If it's the latter case, then no matter how advanced the technology of an alien race is, that technology is based on natural laws, the aliens themselves are based on natural laws, and the alien species themselves arose naturally (or the aliens who designed them arose naturally, etc). However, the entire premise of ID that leads to the ID-supporter claiming the IDer could be an alien and not a god is that something as complex as intelligence cannot arise naturally. Ergo, we have a contradiction, and the ultimate IDer in ID cannot be a naturally-occurring race of aliens. It must be supernatural.
ID implies a supernatural entity, a supreme being, a God. And in particular for the vast, vast, majority of ID proponents, it's the Christian God, and they know it, but pretend like it's not the case. Because ID is nothing but pseudo-science spread thinly over Creationism to get past the Separation clause.
This has nothing to do with the question of if some being landed on our planet and claimed to be a God would we be able to prove that they are really divine or not. It's an interesting hypothetical, but really not related to ID at all.
There's this FBI guy running around who can't find the "company" to save his life, but when a ditzy pop stars handler wants an unobtrusive bodyguard he just stumbles in off the street wad of cash in hand?
Yes, this really makes no sense.
If I didn't have a PVR, I probably wouldn't be watching at all, it took me until last night to get around to watching Friday's episode...
If I did have a PVR, I would never have watched it. The only reason I've watched it at all is because I really like Sarah Conner Chronicles despite the Lost-like pacing, and Dollhouse comes on after it on the same channel when I'm already on the couch, beer in hand.
Ugly Betty also has this habit - direct lifting from like Serendipity (the Prado vs Prada handbag) and the Devil Wears Prada (the whole show is based on that book/movie)
Uh well technically the whole show is based off of the Mexican serial La Fea Mas Bella. Which WP now tells me is based on the Columbian soap Betty La Fea, and predates the book by several years. But I'm sure they rip off The Devil Wears Prada among other sources.
And yeah, despite being mildly entertaining the Dollhouse bow hunter episode has been done many times. I personally think of Ice-T vs Gary Busey in Surviving the Game. I guess the twist in this version is that the hunter bumps uglies with the prey first?
We don't call it that. We call it toilet paper like normal people. Makers of toilet paper call it bathroom tissue, I guess because they want a name that's a little more distant from "ass wipe" or less evocative of a porcelain bowl filled with crap or something, though they'll talk about their "bathroom tissue" in advertisements while showing cartoon bears (chosen because as everyone knows, bears shit in the woods) with little scraps of toilet paper all over their fat bear asses, which I can't help but wonder who the fuck has this problem and why, but I'm afraid of the answer, and apparently the right brand of ass wipe will solve it so lets just try to forget about that okay?
What were we talking about? Oh right. It's called "pop". "Soda" is okay too I guess.
Because of CG issues, the battlestation (about as big as a US space shuttle) was mounted upside down on the booster.
Okay I know CG was pretty primitive in the 80s, but I can't for the life of figure out how a 180 degree rotate on the station model would help. Or was it just a bug in their transform matrix? I could buy that. Now what really has me baffled is how a CG battle station would have affected the outcome of the cold war. Upstaging Pixar in the early days? I don't get it.
If nothing else, the current recession/depression is a great thing because it has forced people to realize how much money they were throwing away on essentially worthless junk and how little one really needs to live a comfortable life. I mean really, do you need a flat screen tv in every room of the house?
Hmm... Well, now that you mention it, I guess I really don't need a flat screen TV in the study. I mean, I already have a computer monitor there having a TV too would be kinda silly... Okay I'll go see if I can cancel that amazon order. Which just leaves the TVs in the living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, guest room, and the two bathrooms. Thanks, you saved me a lot of money!
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3) Advertise "minimum" battery life
What is wrong with that? Then I can expect at least 40 minutes of battery life and anything more than that is nice.
What's wrong with that? What's wrong is that you're telling the customer a number that by and large they aren't interested in. What they want to know is if they can watch a full DVD without recharging. If they can work on their Excel spreadsheet for the entire 6-hour cross-country flight if the plane doesn't have plugs. You tell them "minimum 40 minutes" and they say "Whoa! That's not long enough to do anything!" and you say "Well it's just the minimum, under typical usage conditions it will last much longer," and then they ask "And how long is typical? Long enough to watch Casino Royale on BluRay?"
What's your answer? Hypothetically you should be able to actually say whether it'll last long enough to watch the movie, but how do you answer that question in general? What is "typical"? That's what people really want to know, the minimum number doesn't really do them much good except to say that if they really load down the laptop, it won't last long. Which makes the product look bad, and is still by and large not that helpful.
It's not an easy question, more difficult in many ways than talking about performance. Considering that power has only become a major concern for commodity chip makers in recent times, I'm not surprised that their battery life estimates aren't very accurate. Of course, whatever estimate they do use, no matter how accurate, will be measured in a way that makes their parts look good. That won't change, ever. I'm sure that's part of your motivation for the minimum time metric -- there are far fewer ways to screw with it. Which is nice, but not sufficient by itself.
Uh, well, yeah, except the universe as we know it is already pretty complex (there are a great many particles already known to exist), and not finding the Higgs would up-end one of the nicest and simplest parts of our current understanding, which is to say symmetry (and lots of other aspects of the Standard Model). The new theory would probably end up being much more complicated to explain why symmetry exists in some cases but not others.
Kinda like how when we figured out Newton's Theory was inaccurate, what replaced it was much more complicated and frankly much weirder. Light travels at a constant velocity relative to all inertial observers? Traveling near the speed of light or a large gravity well alters mass, length, and the relative passage of time? And since we've experimentally verified most of these effects, whatever theory replaces Relativity will probably be even more complicated and more strange to explain both the known effects and whatever anomalies arise to show Relativity to be wrong.
It's possible that at the core there's a Theory of Everything where one simple equation explains all the emergent behaviors that every other theory tries to explain. But it isn't a given, we're a long way from that, and not finding the Higgs will open a doorway to many new possibilities, lots of em plenty damn complex. Hell one of the things that attracts physicists to String Theory is that it is, relatively speaking, mathematically simple and elegant.
Be careful what you wish for, is what I'm saying.
You seem to think that 1 and 2 are always connected.
Sure, um, ha ha?
I'm going to sue God because I came up with the concept of 4-dimensional space-time.
Yeah! And when he defends himself, he'll have to say how many dimensions their really are to show the patent doesn't apply. Trick God into verifying string theory!
Perhaps the message that was intended was that overall the change did not affect users very much outside of relatively trivial things, not that those two things were literally the biggest changes in the system period.
I know this is heresy around here, but sometimes literalism is not the best route to understanding.
Change anything?
No. Answer is the same: *yawn* Let me know when he's implicated in any way, then I'll care.
If Scooter Libby hadn't actually done the Perp Walk, I wouldn't care about him either.
What the summary doesn't mention, but is worth noting, is that they were already using open source programs where possible---Firefox, Thunderbird, OOo. Now I think their migration is wonderful, but I suspect it might have been somewhat more difficult if users were asked to adjust to new programs, as well.
Of course it would have been more difficult. That just means they did it right, switching to Free applications first then to the Free OS. They probably saved money in the first step as well as the second, and lowered the burden by doing it phased rather than dumping it all on the users at once.
Is that from that movie where Bruce Willis doesn't realize that he's a zombie?
You forgot to mention that the Ether Bunny isn't real, and it's really the kids' parents who sneak into their rooms and anesthetize them at night, Mr. Spoil Sport.
This doesn't affect the energy capacity of the battery at all, only the rate it can charge or discharge. It's a new electrode, not a new electrolyte.
So obviously the battery wouldn't be able to power the vacuum cleaners for terribly long. I don't know how much energy is in a 1L LiIon battery, and am too lazy to look it up. But it would drain your laptop battery in a couple seconds or less.
I don't appreciate you sabotaging my attempt to start an off-topic pop vs soda vs coke flamewar with your stupid 'facts'. ;)
then there is the lame teeny-soap-opera guy who keeps falling back on silly cliches like "90-lb anorexic girl who KICKS SOME ASS!"
I wouldn't have even minded if she hadn't kicked ass with kung-fu. It would have made sense if she had kicked ass with guns like she did in the War Stories episode. The calculated-shots-without-looking type of bad-assery at least fits in with her being a super-genius. But I don't care what they did to her brain, unless there were a lot of off-screen calisthenics she just wouldn't have had the strength to do any of that stuff without hurting herself more than her enemies.
I liked her character in the series, I was disappointed they took her in the direction they did in the movie. The 'reader' angle seemed to have so much more potential, but all we got was kung-fu and a knowledge of where reavers came from. Which was cool in and of itself, but to have that be the only reason the alliance wanted her? Yeah let down.
That, I think, is where scientists and believers differ. Scientists would like to know why, exactly, this particular Christian (or Islamic, or Jewish, or Hindu, etc.) God exists, and not one or more of any number of other possible gods (Zeus, Baal, Ra). Does causality have meaning for gods? Do gods always know they are gods, or do some think they are merely an evolved being in a random universe?
I'm clipping your post, but understand that I am including the entire thing when I say that these are all things believers wonder about. Millennia of religious philosophers have pondered the question of free will, the nature of omnipotence, and all these other things. The question "can God create an object so heavy that He cannot lift it?" predates the modern scientific method by centuries. Wondering about the nature of God is a fundamental part of an active faith.
As a scientist, I get to the very first question -- does God exist? -- and realize I can never craft a falsifiable experiment that tests for the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent creator being, much less to test for the properties of omniscience or omnipotence. We can't test for the existence of 'free will', even assuming we could define it. Thus the scientist correctly decides that these questions belong in the realm of religion and philosophy, not science.
It's perfectly possible to do both -- ponder questions empirical and falsifiable, and questions philosophical and unanswerable -- as long as you know that they are distinct.
Which is kinda the point of what I was saying -- Intelligent Design logically precludes the idea of a naturally-arisen Designer, it only allows for the super-natural. Thus the only answer that satisfies ID is a religious one that must be taken on faith, and this is not science. ID is not science. People who say that it is science, and justify this by saying the Designer could be an alien race, are lying to cover up ID's religious foundation.
I never said that we were designed by aliens.
Okay, fine then, just consider my post a reinforcement of the claim in the post you replied to that the "It's not necessarily God, maybe it was aliens" dodge of the IDers is really nothing more than a dodge because aliens doing it is logically inconsistent with ID, and not a rebuttal of whatever your point was.
You talked about philosophical differences, but that doesn't mean you can tell the difference.
How would you, as an observer with an iron age level of technology, be able to distinguish a miraculous burning bush from one that had been zapped with a heat ray?
Yes of course, because the part of the quote on technology you modified that everyone forgets to include is "... if you don't know how it works". If you don't understand how the technology works, then it's magic, and the people who control it are gods.
That's irrelevant to the question of whether the D in ID could be aliens. At the end of the day, whether we can detect the difference or not, it's either magic or technology, they're either supernatural gods or advanced aliens subject to the same natural laws as everyone else. If it's the latter case, then no matter how advanced the technology of an alien race is, that technology is based on natural laws, the aliens themselves are based on natural laws, and the alien species themselves arose naturally (or the aliens who designed them arose naturally, etc). However, the entire premise of ID that leads to the ID-supporter claiming the IDer could be an alien and not a god is that something as complex as intelligence cannot arise naturally. Ergo, we have a contradiction, and the ultimate IDer in ID cannot be a naturally-occurring race of aliens. It must be supernatural.
ID implies a supernatural entity, a supreme being, a God. And in particular for the vast, vast, majority of ID proponents, it's the Christian God, and they know it, but pretend like it's not the case. Because ID is nothing but pseudo-science spread thinly over Creationism to get past the Separation clause.
This has nothing to do with the question of if some being landed on our planet and claimed to be a God would we be able to prove that they are really divine or not. It's an interesting hypothetical, but really not related to ID at all.
There's this FBI guy running around who can't find the "company" to save his life, but when a ditzy pop stars handler wants an unobtrusive bodyguard he just stumbles in off the street wad of cash in hand?
Yes, this really makes no sense.
If I didn't have a PVR, I probably wouldn't be watching at all, it took me until last night to get around to watching Friday's episode...
If I did have a PVR, I would never have watched it. The only reason I've watched it at all is because I really like Sarah Conner Chronicles despite the Lost-like pacing, and Dollhouse comes on after it on the same channel when I'm already on the couch, beer in hand.
Hey don't short-change the Vulcan government!
Ugly Betty also has this habit - direct lifting from like Serendipity (the Prado vs Prada handbag) and the Devil Wears Prada (the whole show is based on that book/movie)
Uh well technically the whole show is based off of the Mexican serial La Fea Mas Bella. Which WP now tells me is based on the Columbian soap Betty La Fea, and predates the book by several years. But I'm sure they rip off The Devil Wears Prada among other sources.
And yeah, despite being mildly entertaining the Dollhouse bow hunter episode has been done many times. I personally think of Ice-T vs Gary Busey in Surviving the Game. I guess the twist in this version is that the hunter bumps uglies with the prey first?
But Dollhouse sucks on its own. It's Fantasy Island with anorexic girls.
Heh. I was thinking it was like "La Femme Anorexia" or maybe "The Bourne Prostitute".
We don't call it that. We call it toilet paper like normal people. Makers of toilet paper call it bathroom tissue, I guess because they want a name that's a little more distant from "ass wipe" or less evocative of a porcelain bowl filled with crap or something, though they'll talk about their "bathroom tissue" in advertisements while showing cartoon bears (chosen because as everyone knows, bears shit in the woods) with little scraps of toilet paper all over their fat bear asses, which I can't help but wonder who the fuck has this problem and why, but I'm afraid of the answer, and apparently the right brand of ass wipe will solve it so lets just try to forget about that okay?
What were we talking about? Oh right. It's called "pop". "Soda" is okay too I guess.
It will be a nice change to have the Chinese strong enough to rein in the Allies of Evil...
Allies of Evil?
Uh oh... I know how this goes.
England better watch it's ass.
Because of CG issues, the battlestation (about as big as a US space shuttle) was mounted upside down on the booster.
Okay I know CG was pretty primitive in the 80s, but I can't for the life of figure out how a 180 degree rotate on the station model would help. Or was it just a bug in their transform matrix? I could buy that. Now what really has me baffled is how a CG battle station would have affected the outcome of the cold war. Upstaging Pixar in the early days? I don't get it.
If nothing else, the current recession/depression is a great thing because it has forced people to realize how much money they were throwing away on essentially worthless junk and how little one really needs to live a comfortable life. I mean really, do you need a flat screen tv in every room of the house?
Hmm... Well, now that you mention it, I guess I really don't need a flat screen TV in the study. I mean, I already have a computer monitor there having a TV too would be kinda silly... Okay I'll go see if I can cancel that amazon order. Which just leaves the TVs in the living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, guest room, and the two bathrooms. Thanks, you saved me a lot of money!
Besides, it had a well-known small thermal exhaust port
It was only well-known because many Bothans died to bring us that information.
And what happens when a) you get hacked or b) someone from the manned station next door comes over for a visit and unplugs a few things.
a) Explode the space station.
b) Explode the space station.
And you didn't ask this, but the answer to what happens when c) you get bored of your stupid unmanned space station
is
c) Explode the space station.
Muchas lolas! =D