Scaffolding, applying 6+ inches of insulation boards (glued and secured with "nails") on all outer walls, weather protection, paint job, remove scaffold.
It's not exactly witchcraft. And I have seen it done a few dozens of time. The roof is somewhat harder (depending on shape), but still nothing a skilled contractor shouldn't be able to pull off rather quickly. Take a look at countries where there are financial incentives (like cheap credits) for insulating houses. 6 months is twice the time the Chinese estimated for building the worlds largest tower.
How does the patent office (and the judge) have the audacity to grant and uphold something like that? Last time I checked, patents were for "inventions" and not for "discoveries".
So in case it would have been bigger and we noticed it let's say a few weeks/a month/a year ahead of impact. Could we have done anything? Do we have any plans for such events?
Training is time consuming, expensive and needs to be taught to every single cow. A automated process could provide a cost saving mechanism - a training program probably not. It might be interesting for your pet cow Betsy though.
I claim prior art. There is a report of a guy in the middle east who used this substance as an alternative to blood consumption two thousand years ago. The process is still performed regularly.
6 months on a two story building? Last time I saw a facade refitted, it took less than two weeks. Upgrading windows the windows too might take a little longer but still a LOT less than six months. Even six weeks is a reason to look for different contractors.
you seem to have forgotten:
3) Conserving energy. By insulating houses and replacing ineffective systems it is relatively easy to save a lot of energy (and thereby CO2) without a negative impact on the standard of living. Actually good insulation improves living standards more often than not.
The problem here is that stuff like this needs investments (which pay off after a few years though). Rental houses will need some encouragement to do this, because the owner (the one paying for insulation) does not (directly) reap the benefits (lower electricity bills for people living there). On the long term people will prefer housing with higher energy standards (lower extra costs) if a choice exists and thereby provide a reason for the owner to upgrade.
I'm not saying Brazil isn't an interesting market, but it probably isn't in the top 5. It is really not that simple/cheap to check the entire world for trademarks. Also I guess the naming scheme started before the music player could place phone calls. I guess they checked iPod more thoroughly.
On the other hand this is not the first time this company gets in trouble for using other peoples trademarks. A certain British music label comes to mind...
There is an "allow unobtrusive adds" feature in ABP which might provide a solution to this dilemma. It provides reasons and rewards for playing nice. Should this idea take hold in a big way (yeah, the day pigs learn to fly) companies might actually choose the static, boring but seen by everyone ad over the fancy, super tracking, animated attention whore add seen only by the few slobs who don't have blocking yet.
Of course the whole thing will be gamed and I have no idea, if it will ever take off.
I think the "allow unobtrusive adds" feature in Adblock plus is a valid way to go. I don't mind the adds next to my search results and I don't mind un-animated picture adds on a site. Hell once in a while I actually clicked one, because it sounded interesting. These days though with fullscreen click through layers, flash tracking and malware serving ad servers it's simply a bad idea not to use a blocker.
Sites require funding and advertisement provides funding. But advertisements does not "require" animation, sound, popups, tracking feature or malware attack vectors. Play nice again and so will I.
Well I'm still partially living in this dream world where politicians are not reelected if they fuck up too much. On the other hand, I heard that Berlusconi is starting a comeback. That this guy has realistic chances, just baffles me out of my mind. Corruption charges, sex parties, an affair with an under aged prostitute, obstruction of justice, a messy divorce, crafting laws to prevent his own prosecution and a lot more. The man does have chutzpah though.
It's already available: http://zerocurrency.org/unitedstates.html
For Euros use the drop down box on the left and select a country from the Euro zone eg. France, Germany, Italy, Greece *cough*
As to the original question, why is it so hard to make accurate progress bars, the answer is simple; the problem is exactly as hard as creating a time machine. The exact length of any non-trivial operation is unknown until after the operation is complete. When predicting the future becomes easy progress bars will become accurate.
While it's impossibly hard to do completely right, it gets a lot easier once you lower your expected precision. If someone would really try hard enough, I guess the could come up with a fairly realistic prediction scheme for a given task. You could collect statistics for a lot of machines, evaluate your tasks (cpu usage, io operations, network usage), get details on system load and capability and so on and end up with a realistic and highly probable expectation on how long it will take.
No one will ever do that, because it's complicated, time consuming and basically not worth it, but at least you won't have to adjust the laws of physics to do it.
That reminds me of my all time favorite progress bar: The windows 95(?) defragmentation tool. 1% to 99% took less than one hour, 99% to completion took three.
If you want to calculate anything there is either (sometimes outrageously) simplified and off, or exact and messy as hell. The closer you approach the real world, the more weird factors appear to crash your party.
Slashdot Mirror
Scaffolding, applying 6+ inches of insulation boards (glued and secured with "nails") on all outer walls, weather protection, paint job, remove scaffold. It's not exactly witchcraft. And I have seen it done a few dozens of time. The roof is somewhat harder (depending on shape), but still nothing a skilled contractor shouldn't be able to pull off rather quickly. Take a look at countries where there are financial incentives (like cheap credits) for insulating houses. 6 months is twice the time the Chinese estimated for building the worlds largest tower.
How does the patent office (and the judge) have the audacity to grant and uphold something like that? Last time I checked, patents were for "inventions" and not for "discoveries".
So in case it would have been bigger and we noticed it let's say a few weeks/a month/a year ahead of impact. Could we have done anything? Do we have any plans for such events?
... hows your space program going.
Well as the Romans already stated: "non olet", [Money] doesn't smell.
I know I should probably not ask, but birthday candle? (No, I will not Google for this)
Training is time consuming, expensive and needs to be taught to every single cow. A automated process could provide a cost saving mechanism - a training program probably not. It might be interesting for your pet cow Betsy though.
And Goodwin!
And the girls asks "So what do you do for a living?" ...
I claim prior art. There is a report of a guy in the middle east who used this substance as an alternative to blood consumption two thousand years ago. The process is still performed regularly.
A nice novel approach, but they'll probably reply that you are holding it wrong. That and "where's your license?"
What about a few thousands of years of prior art?
6 months on a two story building? Last time I saw a facade refitted, it took less than two weeks. Upgrading windows the windows too might take a little longer but still a LOT less than six months. Even six weeks is a reason to look for different contractors.
you seem to have forgotten:
3) Conserving energy. By insulating houses and replacing ineffective systems it is relatively easy to save a lot of energy (and thereby CO2) without a negative impact on the standard of living. Actually good insulation improves living standards more often than not.
The problem here is that stuff like this needs investments (which pay off after a few years though). Rental houses will need some encouragement to do this, because the owner (the one paying for insulation) does not (directly) reap the benefits (lower electricity bills for people living there). On the long term people will prefer housing with higher energy standards (lower extra costs) if a choice exists and thereby provide a reason for the owner to upgrade.
Another energy saver is bicycle lanes. But that may be tougher to introduce in a city like New York.
In New York it's more like a designated suicide zone.
I'm not saying Brazil isn't an interesting market, but it probably isn't in the top 5. It is really not that simple/cheap to check the entire world for trademarks. Also I guess the naming scheme started before the music player could place phone calls. I guess they checked iPod more thoroughly.
On the other hand this is not the first time this company gets in trouble for using other peoples trademarks. A certain British music label comes to mind...
Time to include Brazil in the "War on Drugs" (R)
There is an "allow unobtrusive adds" feature in ABP which might provide a solution to this dilemma. It provides reasons and rewards for playing nice. Should this idea take hold in a big way (yeah, the day pigs learn to fly) companies might actually choose the static, boring but seen by everyone ad over the fancy, super tracking, animated attention whore add seen only by the few slobs who don't have blocking yet.
Of course the whole thing will be gamed and I have no idea, if it will ever take off.
I think the "allow unobtrusive adds" feature in Adblock plus is a valid way to go. I don't mind the adds next to my search results and I don't mind un-animated picture adds on a site. Hell once in a while I actually clicked one, because it sounded interesting. These days though with fullscreen click through layers, flash tracking and malware serving ad servers it's simply a bad idea not to use a blocker.
Sites require funding and advertisement provides funding. But advertisements does not "require" animation, sound, popups, tracking feature or malware attack vectors. Play nice again and so will I.
Hot coffee on lap, cafeteria food poisoning and back pain from sitting to much
Well I'm still partially living in this dream world where politicians are not reelected if they fuck up too much. On the other hand, I heard that Berlusconi is starting a comeback. That this guy has realistic chances, just baffles me out of my mind. Corruption charges, sex parties, an affair with an under aged prostitute, obstruction of justice, a messy divorce, crafting laws to prevent his own prosecution and a lot more. The man does have chutzpah though.
It's already available: http://zerocurrency.org/unitedstates.html
For Euros use the drop down box on the left and select a country from the Euro zone eg. France, Germany, Italy, Greece *cough*
As to the original question, why is it so hard to make accurate progress bars, the answer is simple; the problem is exactly as hard as creating a time machine. The exact length of any non-trivial operation is unknown until after the operation is complete. When predicting the future becomes easy progress bars will become accurate.
While it's impossibly hard to do completely right, it gets a lot easier once you lower your expected precision. If someone would really try hard enough, I guess the could come up with a fairly realistic prediction scheme for a given task. You could collect statistics for a lot of machines, evaluate your tasks (cpu usage, io operations, network usage), get details on system load and capability and so on and end up with a realistic and highly probable expectation on how long it will take.
No one will ever do that, because it's complicated, time consuming and basically not worth it, but at least you won't have to adjust the laws of physics to do it.
That reminds me of my all time favorite progress bar: The windows 95(?) defragmentation tool. 1% to 99% took less than one hour, 99% to completion took three.
If you want to calculate anything there is either (sometimes outrageously) simplified and off, or exact and messy as hell. The closer you approach the real world, the more weird factors appear to crash your party.