I was born in Soviet Union and live in Russia now. After the USSR broke, people really appreciated the freedom. It helped that our first president (with all his demerits) was bent on freedom of press, even when journalists called him a feeble-minded alcoholic or something like that.
It is slowly changing (according to Hunter's Corollary to Murphy's Law, things go from bad to worse) now that we have reelected our KGB president to the second term. But still, the strictness of our laws (though in general they aren't particularly strict) is more than compensated by the laxity of their enforcement.
Still, the progress in regards to personal freedoms over the past 20 years is staggering. Ironically, in the United States things went the other way, as the government continued to accumulate more and more powers and is not afraid to use them.
I am not happy here in Russia (because science is not funded and the country is not safe - murder rate thrice of the US one), so I plan on moving somewhere when I finish my PhD, but I will not even consider moving to US.
Wrong is to violate the privacy and other rights of many innocent people in the process. Of course, people should be able to report crime when they encounter it and the sysadmin featured in the story did everything right. What I find dangerous is his suggestion that looking for criminals and catching them is fun. The police is trained to operate within the narrow confines of the law. They have to protect the society not just from "evil", but also from themselves. Witness the cops from the story - they spent 10 minutes restraining the guy, because they didn't want to harm him. Can you be sure that every overzealous sysadmin will be as considerate? I can't. So, let's leave fighting crime to professionals.
Precisely. BTW, you misspelled "more" and forgot a "then". Since then they have built a Union covering most of Europe and ensuring the free people of Europe will cooperate and coexist peacefully. And all world countries have built the UNO ensuring that there is a mechanism to resolve most international conflicts in a just and lawful manner.
I believe that if instead of wasting resources on attacking independent countries over false premises the USA tried to accelerate processes of integration and cooperation, we would have a much better world. Building orbital weapon platforms is doing precisely opposite. Bush (and his cabal) deserves to be brutally assassinated. If there are any professional terrorists/hitmen reading Slashdot, please, take the hint!
Your figures indicate a cost of 50 cents per account, much less if you oversell (which is harmless, since capacity can be easily added). How much extra ad impressions (and thus ad-clicks) will they have? A lot, and that would quickly pay back the investment. Of course, we ignore the costs of bandwidth and labor, but my point is they are relatively small, even if you give 1Gb of storage.
The real question is - how widely this invention is used today, 4 years after the award was given. It doesn't look like there are some huge barriers to entry in the business of pot-in-pot manufacture, it doesn't look like the technology is complicated, so what is the result?
Are Africans using this in droves to improve their living conditions? And if not, what does that mean? That they are stupid people who are not well suited to live in the modern world and thus do not deserve to survive? Or that we should send more humanitarian (development) aid to them? Not trolling, just honestly curious.
Bullshit. Rational and intelligent humans can use cooperative strategies. When was the last time you heard about France and Germany fighting each other? Finland and Sweden?
The simple truth is that the USA simply wastes trillions of dollars. That's all it does. It has the largest science spendings (since it is the largest economic power), but it still deems it necessary to dedicate more than 50% of its huge research budget to military research. Only 4 other countries spend more than 10% and only about 7-8 more countries spend more than 1% on military research. All other countries are completely happy spending >99% on civilian stuff.
And if you believe that there will be other benefits, you are deluding yourself. It's the same as buying a supercomputing cluster so that you can play games and send e-mail - totally wasteful. If you care about advances in technology and science, spend the money on [civilian] technology and [fundamental] science, not on military research.
Re:Talking about insanely short-sighted...
on
Weapons in Space
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· Score: 1
The concept was out there, we had to develop it and have it ready before anyone else. Who would you have preferred to develop the first nuke? Russia? Germany? China? I would prefer if that would be someone not too eager to drop it on civilians.
That is a very dangerous sentiment. Yes, it's a bit of slipperysloppish, but it isn't far from handing in your parents for crimethink, 1984-style. Digging up evidence on criminals (vigilantism) is not something everybody should be engaged in.
Other illegal activities including using P2P, discussing Islam, contributing to Open Source, criticizing President Bush or Chinese Communist Party, etc.?
I don't want my activities monitored in the Internet cafe. Well, perhaps monitoring for network-related reasons is ok (traffic, spamming, port scanning, troyan sending, etc.), but not recording (that's what transparent proxying means).
Recording someone's activity should be reserved for those cases when the system administrator already has reason to suspect someone, not as a prevention or a way to entertain himself.
Thanks for the response. I just read the whole thread and I still can't see how your concerns can be genuine. If we are talking about government you still haven't explained how exactly would this tech be useful for monitoring people. "They" already have thousands of cameras installed everywhere so densly that in a major American or British city you can't walk from your home to your job without being recorded 90% of the time. Government isn't concerned with small always on cameras precisely because they've been using big always on cameras for years. If this technology can be used for anything, it's for giving power back to the people. Now "we" will be able to monitor "them" as well.
As for the right to photograph in public, it's not just my personal take it's everyone's legal right. And my pleasure is none of anyone's business. Just like sex in the bedroom ought not to be regulated, so taking voyeuristic photos should not be a subject of any regulation (unless one posts them and thus causes some [potential] harm, then the question is open).
I mean, I can certainly understand the knee-jerk reaction of "Shit, I don't want a photo of me sneezing, or tripping, or bending over something and showing my panties taken by anyone". But that reaction does not deserve more than a quick rejection. The truth is, we've recognised the rights of paparazzis to photograph pretty much anyone very long ago. You may argue that this only applies to celebrities, but that's not really true, and if your naughty video gets posted to Internet, you can bet you are already a celebrity anyway (like Libby Hoeler or Cay Lynn).
I meant to add this earlier, but I realize I was pretty snippy to you in my initial response so I do apologize. Your comment just really rubbed me the wrong way. Apology accepted.
I would definitely donate to them when I can afford that, but I was thinking about something different - something with an Al Quaeda twist. What is going on in regards to our freedoms is abuse of the system, plain and simple. We (and EFF), on the other hand, are forced to play by the rules, making our struggle ineffective. As much as I am white and fluffy, I would love if some organisation would brutally murder Canadian Minister of Heritage, Macrovision CEO, RIAA executive team and every other evil and corrupt businessman and politician. For that I would open my wallet right now.
In other countries, however, including western countries like Germany and France, freedom of expression is non-existant -- you may only say what the government allows you to say.
You may not say what the government explicitly disallows you to say (and then again, it usually only applies to public speech). There is a big difference.
I was just reading about the DVD player included with the ATI Radeon All In Wonder series. It says that screen captures and other things I might want to do will not function if the DVD is copy protected. Here is the quote from the ATI document -
Recording from a Source Encoded with Analog Copy Protection
The ATI ALL-IN-WONDER? products detect analog copy protection on the input source and will refuse to capture video from such sources. The record button automatically becomes disabled. Further, TV-ON-DEMAND is not possible with an analog copy protected source.
Since for all practical purposes there are only two video-card manufacturers and both of them enforce Macrovision DRM, I have no other choice than avoid buying DVDs, at least the legit ones. So it's DivX or DVD-R from P2P or a pirated DVD.
P.S. I wish there was a digital freedom fighters group with a PayPal account.
There has been an interview with a lobbist some time ago at Slashdot. May be you can ask him for some advice on how to do all that? There are 60+ million people in the USA (and a huge amount in Canada, Europe or elsewhere in the world). If 1% of American ones give 10 bucks each, you will have 6 million dollars, enough to buy half of the Congress (at least in regards to digital freedom issues). Wouldn't that be marvellous?
What do you call "the fucking thread"? One post you are replying to? I've read it. AtOMiCNebula asked a question - what are the privacy implications everyone is talking about. You gave an answer - and then you described at length why you think these implications are of real concern. That's what I disagree with.
You say: - My privacy concerns are with the photo being uploaded to a public site Camera is irrelevant here, because it does not automatically upload the photos - My biggest privacy concern however is with abuses of the technology by law enforcement agencies and the government You failed to give any examples being too occupied with your disdain for voyeurs. Did you mean the government will force me to provide the records I don't want to? Did you mean the policemen will carry these and record everything they do? What? Honestly, I just tried to think of any real possibilities for govt to abuse this tech and I can't see any... - or just nosy neighbors who enjoy spying on others The neighbors can use any camera anyway or just use binoculars
To conclude, you answered AtOMiCNebula with your rant about why you don't want to be filmed. This is completely irrelevant to the article, technology and the question asked, since when you are in public, everyone has the right to film you with any technology whatsoever.
I just fail to see even the remotest connection between your rant and the article. Yes, some things should be private and not be posted to Usenet. So sue the bastards. Every judge will be on your side if your upskirt photos are posted to the web or usenet. Sue the bastard if he films some confidential documents containing trade secrets of your company. But please, don't think even for a second (because you would be deluding yourself) that this has any significance for the case at hand.
These cameras are tools, which can be used for both good and evil, just like cars, guns and P2P. If you outlaw these cameras, only outlaws and perverted voyeurs would have them. It is not your concern what I am filming, just like it is not your concern what I am thinking about when I oogle your breasts. Unless I directly harm you (or it clearly looks like I am going to), you have no right to stop me.
Consider that there is a nice Disneyland in Tokyo, Japan. And if you saw Kill Bill, you know that you don't have to check swiss knifes and nail files in with your luggage.:)
Plus, I would expect Japan to have much more things new and interesting to an Australian than the US.
Like Personalized Menus in Windows/Office we all love to hate?
I don't think so. And I don't understand what is so cool about the newsmap. May be I am missing some important Flash functionality, but to me that looks just like a bunch of stupid rectangles with smallish newslines. In its current state it is no better than opening bbcnews.com or something like that. I mean, waiting ages for the Flash to load only to find out that some news are considered important and others are compressed so much as to make the actual title invisible? Does not fit my definition of useful.
That's the same as saying using Concorde for both your daily commute and flying to Hawaii represents the best of both worlds. It doesn't, because the mileage sucks.
You don't need a personal car for most of the time and it can be cheaper, more environmentally friendly, more convinient and more comfortable to replace it with either Segway (short distance trips), ULTra (intracity travel), maglev train (intercity travel) or supersonic jet (international travel). Common sense dictates that using car for all of that is bound to be inefficient.
And for those cases when you want to go offroad or travel to a village which is not connected by railway, you should be able to either get a taxi (may be computer-controlled if you only need to travel on highway) or rent a car (or a Skycar).
I think everyone here misses the point of "visual" in visual programming. It's not like it must necessarily involve moving around some icons with arrows, like in that pathetically worthless Mac browser we read about a few days ago. What it will consist of, however, is very high-level programming language with a strong support for visualisation of things that should be visualised.
When you have an array of records and want them sorted, ideally you should just click the "Sort" button, say "Sort!" or make a sorting jesture. Everything else should be an option, a parameter, a tweak. The computers are powerful enough and can be made smart enough to understand how to sort the records or to ask you about details if they don't. Same applies to pretty much everything else.
Come on, people, we've seen so many production revolutions that to resist yet another one borders on luddism. If we can make a completely automated factory that builds cars, if we can make a plane that flies from US to Australia without any human intervention, a robotic shark that swims with real ones, what makes you think we can't make a developing environent that can understand how to sort an array in a context-sensitive manner?
So the software is complex and expensive to create, but somehow hardware is simple and can be made for free? What about investment in a new chip-fabrication plant growing exponentially in a reverse Moore Law for the past 4 decades? What about increased consolidation in the video-card/CPU industry? Why do you think there are only two 3d-chip makers? Perhaps, because it is really difficult to do and expensive, don't you think so?
As for your extrapolation, it is complete nonsense. You simply can't do that. Some 10THz computers might end up costing 125$ in 2018, but it doesn't mean all (average) will. The usage patters will change significantly, the role of the computer will change significantly, the digital economy is only beginning to shape now, so we can't make that prediction.
You fell into the trap of oversimplification. The world just doesn't work that way.
Nobody spends the effort necessary to make lower-end stuff. You can't just take a 1998 model and sell it today. Not because it is slow, but because it looks bad or misses some essential features that would be cheap to add today, but were simply not available 6 years ago.
I would love to get a 1.4 kg laptop with 6+ hours of battery life (preferably 16+ hours). I don't care about the specs, as long as it would be Windows-compatible, Internet-capable and would be powerful enough to play a DivX movie fullscreen (600 MHz+).
I mean, the batteries must have been getting better over time. All parts were becoming more efficient (although increasing capability was killing the efficiency). Why didn't battery life improve much (much == x10)?
Slashdot Mirror
I was born in Soviet Union and live in Russia now. After the USSR broke, people really appreciated the freedom. It helped that our first president (with all his demerits) was bent on freedom of press, even when journalists called him a feeble-minded alcoholic or something like that.
It is slowly changing (according to Hunter's Corollary to Murphy's Law, things go from bad to worse) now that we have reelected our KGB president to the second term. But still, the strictness of our laws (though in general they aren't particularly strict) is more than compensated by the laxity of their enforcement.
Still, the progress in regards to personal freedoms over the past 20 years is staggering. Ironically, in the United States things went the other way, as the government continued to accumulate more and more powers and is not afraid to use them.
I am not happy here in Russia (because science is not funded and the country is not safe - murder rate thrice of the US one), so I plan on moving somewhere when I finish my PhD, but I will not even consider moving to US.
Wrong is to violate the privacy and other rights of many innocent people in the process. Of course, people should be able to report crime when they encounter it and the sysadmin featured in the story did everything right. What I find dangerous is his suggestion that looking for criminals and catching them is fun. The police is trained to operate within the narrow confines of the law. They have to protect the society not just from "evil", but also from themselves. Witness the cops from the story - they spent 10 minutes restraining the guy, because they didn't want to harm him. Can you be sure that every overzealous sysadmin will be as considerate? I can't. So, let's leave fighting crime to professionals.
Precisely. BTW, you misspelled "more" and forgot a "then". Since then they have built a Union covering most of Europe and ensuring the free people of Europe will cooperate and coexist peacefully. And all world countries have built the UNO ensuring that there is a mechanism to resolve most international conflicts in a just and lawful manner.
I believe that if instead of wasting resources on attacking independent countries over false premises the USA tried to accelerate processes of integration and cooperation, we would have a much better world. Building orbital weapon platforms is doing precisely opposite. Bush (and his cabal) deserves to be brutally assassinated. If there are any professional terrorists/hitmen reading Slashdot, please, take the hint!
Your figures indicate a cost of 50 cents per account, much less if you oversell (which is harmless, since capacity can be easily added). How much extra ad impressions (and thus ad-clicks) will they have? A lot, and that would quickly pay back the investment. Of course, we ignore the costs of bandwidth and labor, but my point is they are relatively small, even if you give 1Gb of storage.
The real question is - how widely this invention is used today, 4 years after the award was given. It doesn't look like there are some huge barriers to entry in the business of pot-in-pot manufacture, it doesn't look like the technology is complicated, so what is the result?
Are Africans using this in droves to improve their living conditions? And if not, what does that mean? That they are stupid people who are not well suited to live in the modern world and thus do not deserve to survive? Or that we should send more humanitarian (development) aid to them? Not trolling, just honestly curious.
Bullshit. Rational and intelligent humans can use cooperative strategies. When was the last time you heard about France and Germany fighting each other? Finland and Sweden?
The simple truth is that the USA simply wastes trillions of dollars. That's all it does. It has the largest science spendings (since it is the largest economic power), but it still deems it necessary to dedicate more than 50% of its huge research budget to military research. Only 4 other countries spend more than 10% and only about 7-8 more countries spend more than 1% on military research. All other countries are completely happy spending >99% on civilian stuff.
And if you believe that there will be other benefits, you are deluding yourself. It's the same as buying a supercomputing cluster so that you can play games and send e-mail - totally wasteful. If you care about advances in technology and science, spend the money on [civilian] technology and [fundamental] science, not on military research.
The concept was out there, we had to develop it and have it ready before anyone else. Who would you have preferred to develop the first nuke? Russia? Germany? China?
I would prefer if that would be someone not too eager to drop it on civilians.
That is a very dangerous sentiment. Yes, it's a bit of slipperysloppish, but it isn't far from handing in your parents for crimethink, 1984-style. Digging up evidence on criminals (vigilantism) is not something everybody should be engaged in.
Other illegal activities including using P2P, discussing Islam, contributing to Open Source, criticizing President Bush or Chinese Communist Party, etc.?
I don't want my activities monitored in the Internet cafe. Well, perhaps monitoring for network-related reasons is ok (traffic, spamming, port scanning, troyan sending, etc.), but not recording (that's what transparent proxying means).
Recording someone's activity should be reserved for those cases when the system administrator already has reason to suspect someone, not as a prevention or a way to entertain himself.
Thanks for the response. I just read the whole thread and I still can't see how your concerns can be genuine. If we are talking about government you still haven't explained how exactly would this tech be useful for monitoring people. "They" already have thousands of cameras installed everywhere so densly that in a major American or British city you can't walk from your home to your job without being recorded 90% of the time. Government isn't concerned with small always on cameras precisely because they've been using big always on cameras for years. If this technology can be used for anything, it's for giving power back to the people. Now "we" will be able to monitor "them" as well.
As for the right to photograph in public, it's not just my personal take it's everyone's legal right. And my pleasure is none of anyone's business. Just like sex in the bedroom ought not to be regulated, so taking voyeuristic photos should not be a subject of any regulation (unless one posts them and thus causes some [potential] harm, then the question is open).
I mean, I can certainly understand the knee-jerk reaction of "Shit, I don't want a photo of me sneezing, or tripping, or bending over something and showing my panties taken by anyone". But that reaction does not deserve more than a quick rejection. The truth is, we've recognised the rights of paparazzis to photograph pretty much anyone very long ago. You may argue that this only applies to celebrities, but that's not really true, and if your naughty video gets posted to Internet, you can bet you are already a celebrity anyway (like Libby Hoeler or Cay Lynn).
I meant to add this earlier, but I realize I was pretty snippy to you in my initial response so I do apologize. Your comment just really rubbed me the wrong way.
Apology accepted.
Apparently, even the wisest kfg may make a mistake. You are obviously thinking about icy Europa, not vulcanic Io, aren't you? :)
I would definitely donate to them when I can afford that, but I was thinking about something different - something with an Al Quaeda twist. What is going on in regards to our freedoms is abuse of the system, plain and simple. We (and EFF), on the other hand, are forced to play by the rules, making our struggle ineffective. As much as I am white and fluffy, I would love if some organisation would brutally murder Canadian Minister of Heritage, Macrovision CEO, RIAA executive team and every other evil and corrupt businessman and politician. For that I would open my wallet right now.
The Constitution explicitly states that the rights are not limited to those already listed.
In other countries, however, including western countries like Germany and France, freedom of expression is non-existant -- you may only say what the government allows you to say.
You may not say what the government explicitly disallows you to say (and then again, it usually only applies to public speech). There is a big difference.
Copied from here:
I was just reading about the DVD player included with the ATI Radeon All In Wonder series. It says that screen captures and other things I might want to do will not function if the DVD is copy protected. Here is the quote from the ATI document -
Recording from a Source Encoded with Analog Copy Protection
The ATI ALL-IN-WONDER? products detect analog copy protection on the input source and will refuse to capture video from such sources. The record button automatically becomes disabled. Further, TV-ON-DEMAND is not possible with an analog copy protected source.
Since for all practical purposes there are only two video-card manufacturers and both of them enforce Macrovision DRM, I have no other choice than avoid buying DVDs, at least the legit ones. So it's DivX or DVD-R from P2P or a pirated DVD.
P.S. I wish there was a digital freedom fighters group with a PayPal account.
There has been an interview with a lobbist some time ago at Slashdot. May be you can ask him for some advice on how to do all that? There are 60+ million people in the USA (and a huge amount in Canada, Europe or elsewhere in the world). If 1% of American ones give 10 bucks each, you will have 6 million dollars, enough to buy half of the Congress (at least in regards to digital freedom issues). Wouldn't that be marvellous?
What do you call "the fucking thread"? One post you are replying to? I've read it. AtOMiCNebula asked a question - what are the privacy implications everyone is talking about. You gave an answer - and then you described at length why you think these implications are of real concern. That's what I disagree with.
You say:
- My privacy concerns are with the photo being uploaded to a public site
Camera is irrelevant here, because it does not automatically upload the photos
- My biggest privacy concern however is with abuses of the technology by law enforcement agencies and the government
You failed to give any examples being too occupied with your disdain for voyeurs. Did you mean the government will force me to provide the records I don't want to? Did you mean the policemen will carry these and record everything they do? What? Honestly, I just tried to think of any real possibilities for govt to abuse this tech and I can't see any...
- or just nosy neighbors who enjoy spying on others
The neighbors can use any camera anyway or just use binoculars
To conclude, you answered AtOMiCNebula with your rant about why you don't want to be filmed. This is completely irrelevant to the article, technology and the question asked, since when you are in public, everyone has the right to film you with any technology whatsoever.
I just fail to see even the remotest connection between your rant and the article. Yes, some things should be private and not be posted to Usenet. So sue the bastards. Every judge will be on your side if your upskirt photos are posted to the web or usenet. Sue the bastard if he films some confidential documents containing trade secrets of your company. But please, don't think even for a second (because you would be deluding yourself) that this has any significance for the case at hand.
These cameras are tools, which can be used for both good and evil, just like cars, guns and P2P. If you outlaw these cameras, only outlaws and perverted voyeurs would have them. It is not your concern what I am filming, just like it is not your concern what I am thinking about when I oogle your breasts. Unless I directly harm you (or it clearly looks like I am going to), you have no right to stop me.
Consider that there is a nice Disneyland in Tokyo, Japan. And if you saw Kill Bill, you know that you don't have to check swiss knifes and nail files in with your luggage. :)
Plus, I would expect Japan to have much more things new and interesting to an Australian than the US.
Brilliant! :) Tourists from all other the Terra are conspiring to visit the USA. We must stop them!
Like Personalized Menus in Windows/Office we all love to hate?
I don't think so. And I don't understand what is so cool about the newsmap. May be I am missing some important Flash functionality, but to me that looks just like a bunch of stupid rectangles with smallish newslines. In its current state it is no better than opening bbcnews.com or something like that. I mean, waiting ages for the Flash to load only to find out that some news are considered important and others are compressed so much as to make the actual title invisible? Does not fit my definition of useful.
That's the same as saying using Concorde for both your daily commute and flying to Hawaii represents the best of both worlds. It doesn't, because the mileage sucks.
You don't need a personal car for most of the time and it can be cheaper, more environmentally friendly, more convinient and more comfortable to replace it with either Segway (short distance trips), ULTra (intracity travel), maglev train (intercity travel) or supersonic jet (international travel). Common sense dictates that using car for all of that is bound to be inefficient.
And for those cases when you want to go offroad or travel to a village which is not connected by railway, you should be able to either get a taxi (may be computer-controlled if you only need to travel on highway) or rent a car (or a Skycar).
Use the best tool for the job.
I think everyone here misses the point of "visual" in visual programming. It's not like it must necessarily involve moving around some icons with arrows, like in that pathetically worthless Mac browser we read about a few days ago. What it will consist of, however, is very high-level programming language with a strong support for visualisation of things that should be visualised.
When you have an array of records and want them sorted, ideally you should just click the "Sort" button, say "Sort!" or make a sorting jesture. Everything else should be an option, a parameter, a tweak. The computers are powerful enough and can be made smart enough to understand how to sort the records or to ask you about details if they don't. Same applies to pretty much everything else.
Come on, people, we've seen so many production revolutions that to resist yet another one borders on luddism. If we can make a completely automated factory that builds cars, if we can make a plane that flies from US to Australia without any human intervention, a robotic shark that swims with real ones, what makes you think we can't make a developing environent that can understand how to sort an array in a context-sensitive manner?
So stupid, it makes my head spin. :)
So the software is complex and expensive to create, but somehow hardware is simple and can be made for free? What about investment in a new chip-fabrication plant growing exponentially in a reverse Moore Law for the past 4 decades? What about increased consolidation in the video-card/CPU industry? Why do you think there are only two 3d-chip makers? Perhaps, because it is really difficult to do and expensive, don't you think so?
As for your extrapolation, it is complete nonsense. You simply can't do that. Some 10THz computers might end up costing 125$ in 2018, but it doesn't mean all (average) will. The usage patters will change significantly, the role of the computer will change significantly, the digital economy is only beginning to shape now, so we can't make that prediction.
You fell into the trap of oversimplification. The world just doesn't work that way.
Nobody spends the effort necessary to make lower-end stuff. You can't just take a 1998 model and sell it today. Not because it is slow, but because it looks bad or misses some essential features that would be cheap to add today, but were simply not available 6 years ago.
I would love to get a 1.4 kg laptop with 6+ hours of battery life (preferably 16+ hours). I don't care about the specs, as long as it would be Windows-compatible, Internet-capable and would be powerful enough to play a DivX movie fullscreen (600 MHz+).
I mean, the batteries must have been getting better over time. All parts were becoming more efficient (although increasing capability was killing the efficiency). Why didn't battery life improve much (much == x10)?