Full of ROFL.

I know someone who got some binary tattoos.

His kids names, for example, in ASCII binary around his upper arm.

could do creative things with ASCII binary, making shapes and words and it would be your little secret that nobody else knows. :-)

As our business is deeply centered around writing skills and communication, as well as business integration, etc, our engineers (except one) are all native english speakers.

As for imports, I think we have two aussies and a kiwi, as well as a few Canadians and at least one Brit, as well as a guy from Eastern europe who studied at an American university and has been a citizen since then.

I imagine we could find Russians or Chinese equally skilled, but the reputation of our company in having engineers who are highly skilled COMMUNICATORS as well as engineers.

That's a big part of the sales pitch.

And in this case, consulting is a service. :-)

It's not specifically structured finance, but the whole system of money-making.

In my company, there are a number of world class engineers who do consulting work.

There are also sales drones... err people... who sell said work.

We bill about $300/hr for consulting and our better engineers make $200k. Not bad. Even the average guy makes $125k or so.

But our top sales guy made almost $1m last year and there are a dozen of them making over $500k. That's more than the CEO.

The sales guys can sell so much because we have world class engineers and a world class management team.

Why did he make 8x what some of these world class engineers make? Is it because sales is more important?

I don't think he's a world class person in any regard. He's a lush. He gets kicked out of strip clubs on friday nights for getting sloshed and being a dick.

At the same time, his engineer is at home working to finish up the project he was working on to pay for that strip club outing.

Ahh the justice.

I would contend that the use of the adjective "niggardly" would fall in a very different scope than the noun "black hole".

LOL

When they refer to "storage" generally a few weeks or months is implied.

I don't think there's a serious detrimental effect to overnight storage of batteries at 100% charge.

Heating them up while at 100% charge is probably bad, so in the context of a laptop, that's a concern, but it's not something you can easily fix, other than by leaving the battery out of the system when running on AC and only plugging it in to "charge up" for a mobile excursion.

I don't know too many people who care enough about their battery chemistry to do that, however,

There is circuitry in laptop batteries that works like a "fuel gauge" and needs to be calibrated. Doing it three times seems excessive. It should work after just one full cycle.

Other than when you need the power, this is the only reason to deep-cycle the battery. Do it once every 30-50 cycles to reset this circuitry.

That's accurate.

On a new battery (and once every 30-50 cycles on a used one) it is beneficial to "reset" the internal circuitry that monitors battery state.

Even if the cells are strong, this circuit can tell the computer to shut down due to a dead battery condition.

For pure cell chemistry, running it down from 100% to 80% is better.

Of course, there's always heat issues. When you heat up a lithium cell, you (in effect) increase its capacity. When it's already at 100% charge, that can be bad.

So... I guess if you want to "maximize" the life, in a very anal way in a laptop, disconnect the battery when not using it or when running off AC Power. Try to store it at around 40% charge. Charge it to 100% immediately before use and discharge the battery only as much as you require. Store the battery between 30% and 70% charge, but not connected to the computer. Repeat.

That's probably a pain.

Keep it cool and don't run it all the way down very often. That's the best you can do in "real world" use.

I don't think this is true either. Lithium battery's life is probably better stated as the "number of amp-hours used" or "number of hours spent under heavy charging". The "number of cycles" is just a convenient comparison number, but means nothing to the battery chemistry (and in fact, might mean the opposite, when discussing charge rates, etc).

The degradation of performance is caused by oxidation of the anode material. Lithium batteries have a VERY linear discharge rate between 95% and 20% of capacity. Frankly, the anode has no idea whether or not the battery is at 90% or 40%. Simply, the amount of time spent under voltage-regulated charging (that's the space in between 20% and 80% capacity when rapid-charging a Lithium battery is possible) is more indicative of longevity of the cell. Avoiding rapid charging is how to prolong the life, since it is during charging, not discharging (under normal rates) that the oxidation occurs in Lithium cell batteries.

When the cell capacity is above 75% or 80%, the charge rate is current-limited with a fixed voltage and therefore, the last 20-25% of battery charge is done much slower than the other 75%. In light of this, it's very good for the life of your battery to keep it above 75% charge most of the time and then charge it back to 100% from there.

Dropping the battery past it's linear discharge voltage (below about 20%) has a more significant impact on battery life than anything else. Don't do it often. Especially, don't store it when it's at 0%. That is hell on the batteries. "Dead battery" is a cell voltage of about 3.2V. The cell will naturally discharge further if stored in that state and if it gets below 3.0-2.7v, the battery is likely completely useless.

HOWEVER, laptop batteries are a bit unique because they maintain an internal "fuel gauge" that tries to calibrate itself based on the voltage. This is pretty challenging, since the voltage is very near linear during discharge. As a result, this gauge (whuch does affect battery life) will probably function better by fully discharging the battery at least once every 30-50 cycles.

So... Every few months, you should drain your laptop battery all the way. Other than that, keep it charged to 100%

This is wrong. The chemistry of a Lithium Ion and/or Lithium Polymer battery is seriously damaged by "complete discharge".

When the voltage drops below 3v per cell (about 9v for the 3-cell packs they use in the laptops), the dielectric polymer can delaminate and actually start to dissolve.

The best treatment of a Lithium-chemistry battery is to keep it "topped up" as often and as regularly as possible.

And the GP is correct that heat seriously degrades this battery type as its internal structure is a heat-sensitive polymer plastic, rather than metal plates as in previous generations.

cuz, that's where the all childrenz is loitering

duhhh

There IS a problem with addressing a specific theory as if it is truth, or controversy. One may teach Greek creation stories of Atlas holding the world on his shoulders in the "people once believed that.." category.

The category of "perhaps this is an alternative to scientific evolution theories" is entirely different and almost completely unjustifiable, in my opinion.

Almost thirty percent of the world are Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and other traditional Asian religions. Almost 10% fit in a smattering of others (traditional tribal, Sikhism, Jainism, etc).

I'm not sure, but perhaps that dictates the teaching (in the same light) of the Vishnu, Brahma creation story. It might be worth referencing the Buddhist doctrine that pondering the creation of Universe is a bit contrary to Buddhist ideals. Or perhaps the giant Tortoise creation myth that is very common in geographically diverse tribal religions.

To be fair, 20 years ago, I learned about many of these in Social Studies class. I don't think there's any controversy teaching that.

It's the migration of these theories into science class, when there is relatively no scientific merit to them, that is vexing.

We have just as much scientific evidence of Noah's flood or Adam and Eve's garden as we do of Vishnu growing a giant flower from his navel, from which a many-headed deity was hatched.

*shrug*

Glen Beck approves of your Hitler reference. :-)

Well, actually, while the number of seafood restaurants will decline, the remaining ones will be able to charge a MUCH higher price.

After all, there are sustainable farming operations for ALMOST all types of fish, but the quantities are limited. The few that can't be farmed may never be widely available again (whale, crab, and a few others come to mind).