I don't think irrelevant in either case. When someone asks for the MPG, they're asking for the fuel efficiency. In the hybrid case, where gasoline is its only external fuel, that should be simple to calculate. When it's "all electric", you take the fuel that powers that electricity -- using a representative number for the electricity generation -- and compare that to how much distance it gets you.
Though for the optimal apples-to-apples comparison, you might as well just take a given gasoline price and compute how much it costs to power one mile of travel for that price, vs. some existing car being used today.
Now I'm going to explain to you how it works in the real world. In the real world, I have no hope of modifying police department policy, even if I did all that. Furthermore, even if I did get official policy changed, pilots have significant discretion to deviate from altitude requirements, and then how do I meausre that he acted in contravention of them? And even if I did file a complaint, using equipment capable of measuring noise, how long until it's acted upon?
ALL because a cop didn't give a damn about the people he's flying over, cause gosh, it's just much more convenient to hover low.
Anyway, I accept that they're going to be conflicting interests between law enforcement that needs to catch people, and the the people who want to avoid cop-related nuisances. That's understandable, and I don't mean to paint the laser-pointer people as 100% justified, sorry if I gave that impression.
It's just that I'm appalled that the cop has to nerve to gripe about those gosh-darn laser-pointing nuisances making it SO hard to fly over them, apparently not even realizing how big a nuisance HE is to them.
Put one of these powerful helicopters in the hands of a power-hungery cop and see that the first thing they'll do is noisily hover over my house, disrupting whatever I was doing.
Seriously, do they not realize that they're *also* a nuisance to people on the ground?
Regarding the officer: He didn't demand a local number, he said it couldn't be a cell phone. (i.e. the problem wasn't the area code) Don't worry, it's normal for me to be given restrictions that others don't have to follow. The officer was, in all other ways, being a prick, so that's a good theory, and if it matters, that was late '03.
And the phone number wasn't demanded with the license. Only after he issued the ticket, when I needed to give contact information, did he ask for a phone number and said it couldn't be a cell.
And about apartments/doctors: do people normally give out-of-area code #s when registering their primary contact info? Also, when they set up the voice permission system for the front gate (so I can let people in) they said it had to be a local number. But, like everything else, I'm sure they dont' hold anyone else to that standard.
You don't assign any blame to the fact that consumers wouldn't buy from someone with an honest business model? That is, if printer makers sold you the printer at cost + markup, and ink at cost + markup, the initial cost would be high for the printer, and people wouldn't think about the savings in ink. They'd continue to buy the printers that are sold as loss leaders.
I'm not saying you're entirely wrong -- but you do have think about the position these businesses are in.
Why don't they make a guitar hero with a real guitar.. and you actually have to match the pitch..
Because you don't have to match pitch on a real guitar either (except when checking that the strings are in tune). Like in GH, on a real guitar, you just have to press between two frets, and it's designed so that the string is shortened to the right length for that pitch.
You must be thinking of a violin/viola/cello/bass.
That's not to say they couldn't make it *more* like a guitar. E.g. have six rows of buttons, each going the length of the fingerboard, and getting smaller as you approach the big end...
I'm trying to do something analagous in DDR: make it so you can have dances requiring a 2x2 array of pads, for a 6x6 grid of buttons.
Exactly. As a DDR fanatic, when I first played GH, I was like, "Hey, this is just like when I want to be lame and play DDR with a hand-held controller". Unfortunately, since my fingers get sore and lock up quickly from doing things like GH, I can't go around and "pwn" everybody. But I did surprise the people who were watching me play for the first time.
Plus, DDR has doubles mode where you have to dance across two pads. (Crowds will often form when I do that.) Some rare arcades have quad mode where you dance across four pads lined up. I wish there were a version where the four pads were arranged 2x2 and will try to write a program to handle that if no one else comes up with it.
As for the person who made the comment about "four fingers to five buttons", DDR has two feet to four buttons, or two feet to eight buttons if you do doubles.
Exactly what I was thinking. Search engines, especially Google, are great at picking out the important search terms, even if you do type it as a standard question. So being able to specifically parse natural-language questions seems to have a low reward-to-effort ratio. If you're going to natural language processing, the goal should be to simplify a difficult problem. For example, translating between languages automatically, which takes YEARS of training for an individual to be able to do consistently.
Saving someone from the HORROR of having to click "did you mean?" or spend five minutes learning how to use a search engine? Don't bother.
I have a VoIP number, just to have a "local, home" number with unlimited calling. Yet it's often done more harm than good. Everyone I know gets confused beyond belief if I ever call them with more than one number, and yes, even once I explain that one is a cell and one is home.
Has anyone had problems with giving a cell number to hospitals, law enforcement, etc? I was given a speeding ticket and the officer said cell numbers are not acceptable.
Also, are apartments, employers, etc. okay with out-of-area-code contact numbers?
That's not as silly as it might sound, funny-modder. A dominant evolutionary theory is exactly what the parent said, except with "genes" instead of "tractors".
Serious question: would fire count as life under that defintion? I'm not sure if it has any local entropy reduction. Unless maybe you take "reduction" to mean "adding electrons":-P
Sounds like if they make the android female and pretty enough, they could seat "her" on a bench in a mall and see how long it takes for a guy to start hitting on her, and then how long until he realizes she's a robot.
On second thought, I think the 10% cuckoldry thing was a valid example of science -- they didn't know the true number before making a guess based on other species' testes/cuckoldry correlations. However, I don't think there was much precision in the guess, beyong that it would be between two values, and I don't know enough to evalute whether you need the unique contributions of evolutionary psychology, as opposed to ordinary evolutionary theory, to make that prediction.
I'm kind of in the same spot. I got a Wii at launch and as far as I can tell, people aren't having trouble getting it. I suggested to my health care professional that she buy one for her family, and at the next week's visit, she told me she got it, no problem.
Since, like you, I'm getting kind of bored with it despite having gotten a lot of games, I'd gladly sell it if I could get $500 for it, but i just don't think could pull it off.
Scientific theories, as structures of logically coherent hypotheses, must agree with observed reality. That is all. [...]
To borrow from Eliezer Yudkowsky, the strength of a theory is not in what it can explain, but in what it cannot explain. In other words, it has to be able to say: "This potential observation is just not possible."
Anyone can explain observed reality. Heck, astrologers could use astrology to "explain" everything. Science is supposed to be something more.
That's why I assumed it was a non-issue until recently, since police can bypass any physical barrier. (They don't care about leaving evidence of forced entry if they have a warrant.)
I can't wait to see the legal cases after scientists find out how to derive memories from neuron patterns! Or bionic brain add-ons for that matter...
I assume you're not American? I drive a '98 Ford Escort[1] and it gets more like 26 city/29 hwy mpg. Yes, I get regular oil changes and tuneups, and most of my city driving is along a 10-mile strip of freeway.
[1] To my stalkers: yes, one time I claimed to drive a Kia. That was a joke to make a point. I do, though, drive a small car.
I'm going to have to agree with you that this is a "feel-good", but abysmally poor policy WAIT BEFORE YOU HIT THE REPLY KEY PLEASE READ TO THE END OF THIS PARAGRAPH. And this is from the perspective of "carbon emissions are negative externalities".
Trying to silently make everything more energy-efficient (and crappier) simply has the effect of giving people more disposable income while leaving their incentives for using energy unchanged. What energy-free thing do you think they're going to spend the extra free cash on? If you want manufacturers to account for the carbon externality, here's a crazy idea: 1) tax carbon-emitting fuels so that the externality is reflected in the price, and 2) apply the funds toward solving the problem (sinks and abatement). Then, ALL processes (not just those legislators can demonize) will apply part of their economic gain towards canceling the environmental side-effects, and will only be performed when they're still desirable, even given this cost.
But then, that doesn't given environmentalists veto power over everything they don't like, now, does it?
It's almost like this:
Environmentalist: You shouldn't do that because, um, it's inefficient for the environmental damage it causes. Logical Person: Okay, how much does it do? I'll pay to undo it. E: Um, $100 for every gallon of fuel. LP: And where does that number come from? E: Um, look, just don't do inefficient stuff, okay? You'll know it's inefficient because we'll tell you not to do it.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think irrelevant in either case. When someone asks for the MPG, they're asking for the fuel efficiency. In the hybrid case, where gasoline is its only external fuel, that should be simple to calculate. When it's "all electric", you take the fuel that powers that electricity -- using a representative number for the electricity generation -- and compare that to how much distance it gets you.
Though for the optimal apples-to-apples comparison, you might as well just take a given gasoline price and compute how much it costs to power one mile of travel for that price, vs. some existing car being used today.
Oops, forgot about powdered sugar.
*makes mental note to take baking soda bags out of front seat*
Then you ... sue the car place for hiring mentally retarded individuals that can't tell the difference between fine and coarse white powder?
Baking soda? Then I can see your point -- maybe.
Prank or civil disobedience, the way I see it is:
Guy roams elephants through people's yards, complains when someone leaves caltrops.
Oh no, don't worry, they probably just changed the name of the accused to protect his dignity.
That's a good point.
Now I'm going to explain to you how it works in the real world. In the real world, I have no hope of modifying police department policy, even if I did all that. Furthermore, even if I did get official policy changed, pilots have significant discretion to deviate from altitude requirements, and then how do I meausre that he acted in contravention of them? And even if I did file a complaint, using equipment capable of measuring noise, how long until it's acted upon?
ALL because a cop didn't give a damn about the people he's flying over, cause gosh, it's just much more convenient to hover low.
Anyway, I accept that they're going to be conflicting interests between law enforcement that needs to catch people, and the the people who want to avoid cop-related nuisances. That's understandable, and I don't mean to paint the laser-pointer people as 100% justified, sorry if I gave that impression.
It's just that I'm appalled that the cop has to nerve to gripe about those gosh-darn laser-pointing nuisances making it SO hard to fly over them, apparently not even realizing how big a nuisance HE is to them.
LOL!!!
Nah, I think credit card companies and phishers are responsible for that natural selection goal.
Put one of these powerful helicopters in the hands of a power-hungery cop and see that the first thing they'll do is noisily hover over my house, disrupting whatever I was doing.
Seriously, do they not realize that they're *also* a nuisance to people on the ground?
Regarding the officer: He didn't demand a local number, he said it couldn't be a cell phone. (i.e. the problem wasn't the area code) Don't worry, it's normal for me to be given restrictions that others don't have to follow. The officer was, in all other ways, being a prick, so that's a good theory, and if it matters, that was late '03.
And the phone number wasn't demanded with the license. Only after he issued the ticket, when I needed to give contact information, did he ask for a phone number and said it couldn't be a cell.
And about apartments/doctors: do people normally give out-of-area code #s when registering their primary contact info? Also, when they set up the voice permission system for the front gate (so I can let people in) they said it had to be a local number. But, like everything else, I'm sure they dont' hold anyone else to that standard.
Hey, if this version can upgrade without deleting my bookmarks and javascript whitelist (like it did 3 of the last 4 times I upgraded), I'm excited!
When was the last time IE did that? Sometime between "never" and "why don't you fire up that bong again?"
You don't assign any blame to the fact that consumers wouldn't buy from someone with an honest business model? That is, if printer makers sold you the printer at cost + markup, and ink at cost + markup, the initial cost would be high for the printer, and people wouldn't think about the savings in ink. They'd continue to buy the printers that are sold as loss leaders.
I'm not saying you're entirely wrong -- but you do have think about the position these businesses are in.
Why don't they make a guitar hero with a real guitar.. and you actually have to match the pitch..
Because you don't have to match pitch on a real guitar either (except when checking that the strings are in tune). Like in GH, on a real guitar, you just have to press between two frets, and it's designed so that the string is shortened to the right length for that pitch.
You must be thinking of a violin/viola/cello/bass.
That's not to say they couldn't make it *more* like a guitar. E.g. have six rows of buttons, each going the length of the fingerboard, and getting smaller as you approach the big end...
I'm trying to do something analagous in DDR: make it so you can have dances requiring a 2x2 array of pads, for a 6x6 grid of buttons.
Exactly. As a DDR fanatic, when I first played GH, I was like, "Hey, this is just like when I want to be lame and play DDR with a hand-held controller". Unfortunately, since my fingers get sore and lock up quickly from doing things like GH, I can't go around and "pwn" everybody. But I did surprise the people who were watching me play for the first time.
Plus, DDR has doubles mode where you have to dance across two pads. (Crowds will often form when I do that.) Some rare arcades have quad mode where you dance across four pads lined up. I wish there were a version where the four pads were arranged 2x2 and will try to write a program to handle that if no one else comes up with it.
As for the person who made the comment about "four fingers to five buttons", DDR has two feet to four buttons, or two feet to eight buttons if you do doubles.
Exactly what I was thinking. Search engines, especially Google, are great at picking out the important search terms, even if you do type it as a standard question. So being able to specifically parse natural-language questions seems to have a low reward-to-effort ratio. If you're going to natural language processing, the goal should be to simplify a difficult problem. For example, translating between languages automatically, which takes YEARS of training for an individual to be able to do consistently.
Saving someone from the HORROR of having to click "did you mean?" or spend five minutes learning how to use a search engine? Don't bother.
I have a VoIP number, just to have a "local, home" number with unlimited calling. Yet it's often done more harm than good. Everyone I know gets confused beyond belief if I ever call them with more than one number, and yes, even once I explain that one is a cell and one is home.
Has anyone had problems with giving a cell number to hospitals, law enforcement, etc? I was given a speeding ticket and the officer said cell numbers are not acceptable.
Also, are apartments, employers, etc. okay with out-of-area-code contact numbers?
That's not as silly as it might sound, funny-modder. A dominant evolutionary theory is exactly what the parent said, except with "genes" instead of "tractors".
Serious question: would fire count as life under that defintion? I'm not sure if it has any local entropy reduction. Unless maybe you take "reduction" to mean "adding electrons" :-P
I don't think it effected understanding of the summary.
Sounds like if they make the android female and pretty enough, they could seat "her" on a bench in a mall and see how long it takes for a guy to start hitting on her, and then how long until he realizes she's a robot.
On second thought, I think the 10% cuckoldry thing was a valid example of science -- they didn't know the true number before making a guess based on other species' testes/cuckoldry correlations. However, I don't think there was much precision in the guess, beyong that it would be between two values, and I don't know enough to evalute whether you need the unique contributions of evolutionary psychology, as opposed to ordinary evolutionary theory, to make that prediction.
I'm kind of in the same spot. I got a Wii at launch and as far as I can tell, people aren't having trouble getting it. I suggested to my health care professional that she buy one for her family, and at the next week's visit, she told me she got it, no problem.
Since, like you, I'm getting kind of bored with it despite having gotten a lot of games, I'd gladly sell it if I could get $500 for it, but i just don't think could pull it off.
Scientific theories, as structures of logically coherent hypotheses, must agree with observed reality. That is all. [...]
To borrow from Eliezer Yudkowsky, the strength of a theory is not in what it can explain, but in what it cannot explain. In other words, it has to be able to say: "This potential observation is just not possible."
Anyone can explain observed reality. Heck, astrologers could use astrology to "explain" everything. Science is supposed to be something more.
That's why I assumed it was a non-issue until recently, since police can bypass any physical barrier. (They don't care about leaving evidence of forced entry if they have a warrant.)
I can't wait to see the legal cases after scientists find out how to derive memories from neuron patterns! Or bionic brain add-ons for that matter...
I assume you're not American? I drive a '98 Ford Escort[1] and it gets more like 26 city/29 hwy mpg. Yes, I get regular oil changes and tuneups, and most of my city driving is along a 10-mile strip of freeway.
[1] To my stalkers: yes, one time I claimed to drive a Kia. That was a joke to make a point. I do, though, drive a small car.
I'm going to have to agree with you that this is a "feel-good", but abysmally poor policy WAIT BEFORE YOU HIT THE REPLY KEY PLEASE READ TO THE END OF THIS PARAGRAPH. And this is from the perspective of "carbon emissions are negative externalities".
Trying to silently make everything more energy-efficient (and crappier) simply has the effect of giving people more disposable income while leaving their incentives for using energy unchanged. What energy-free thing do you think they're going to spend the extra free cash on? If you want manufacturers to account for the carbon externality, here's a crazy idea: 1) tax carbon-emitting fuels so that the externality is reflected in the price, and 2) apply the funds toward solving the problem (sinks and abatement). Then, ALL processes (not just those legislators can demonize) will apply part of their economic gain towards canceling the environmental side-effects, and will only be performed when they're still desirable, even given this cost.
But then, that doesn't given environmentalists veto power over everything they don't like, now, does it?
It's almost like this:
Environmentalist: You shouldn't do that because, um, it's inefficient for the environmental damage it causes.
Logical Person: Okay, how much does it do? I'll pay to undo it.
E: Um, $100 for every gallon of fuel.
LP: And where does that number come from?
E: Um, look, just don't do inefficient stuff, okay? You'll know it's inefficient because we'll tell you not to do it.