Curious as to why the fuel economy readouts on a modern car would be inaccurate. The computer has fuel flow readings down to about .001 ml and precise wheel rotation readings 6/sec from the ABS system. Unless the owner puts tires of a non-standard diameter on the car what would cause the inaccuracy?

sPh

There's also the European preference for small high-revvers combined with the disdain for automatic transmissions. Yes, up through about 1990 a well-driven manual could provide better fuel economy. Today's computer-controlled automatics are more efficient than human shifters, and that's before any fancy radar-driven predictive shifting is brought into play.

sPh

Note that I am saying nothing about personal driving enjoyment preferences or ability to play boy racer, just fuel economy

Up until just a few years ago, the ultimate measure of fuel economy in the UK was:

miles/liter/stone/cubic meter

So I wouldn't gripe about US ANSI units too much ;-)

sPh

Haven't been to the UK since road signs were officially changed to km, but I understand most UKians still think of distances in miles.

The graphs (note now split into two: one for exchange-based signups and one for Medicaid-based.

http://acasignups.net/graphs

But how many have paaaaaaaid?!?

http://acasignups.net/14/03/21...

sPh

I don't think the so-called slashdot effect is in effect these days except for casual and amateur sites. Pretty much any serious site can handle a hard slashdot hit any more.

I guess you only buy bug-free software, then.

I think what sphealey was saying is that, if a vendor say "you don't want to see our 'dirty laundry'" or something like that, then that vendor is an immediate no-go.

It isn't about bug-free software, it is about making sure you avoid vendors that may try to deliberately hide/ignore bugs.

Spot-on AC.

I had a software vendor once that had an odd bug in its telephone system: when a support person would put you on hold it would occasionally transfer you into conference with the technician's queue. You know what really, really angers a customer? Being told for the third time by second-level support that he is closing your case as "can't reproduce/no other customers reported/not a bug" and then being put into an impromptu conference call with two other customers waiting to speak to the 2nd level developer about the very same bug - each for more than the 1st time. Makes the user conference a bit uncomfortable for the support group as well.

ASK (of MANMAN fame - predecessor of 80% of the ERP products on the market today), Novell, and several of the large networking vendors of the 1990-2005 period were all organizations that openly published their bug lists to the world during their growth phases. It was the restriction of those lists that signaled to their customers and the market that it was time to be careful, not their original existence.

sPh

Yes, I know: I'm sure none of the above published 100% of their non-security bugs. But it was clear to any experienced manager of those technologies that a very large percentage were publicly acknowledged.

- - - - - What about the trolls who will say "hey this has been filed for X years and still nobody fucking fixes it!?? FAIL!!" Who needs that kind of drama in a bug db. - - - - -

Not to sound all cluetrainy, but this isn't 1995 any more. There are plenty of open uncensored forums and mailing lists where your customers are discussing your product, especially its bugs, and which prospective customers are researching prior to making a decision. Is it better to have the bug acknowledged, perhaps with a brief explanation of why it won't be scheduled for a few more years and a workaround, or your better customers knifing you in the back on mailing lists?

sPh

Whereas I have eliminated several ERP vendors from medium-dollar searches when they dropped the "dirty laundry" phrase. Clue: the software vendor's "dirty laundry" is my bug and has the potential to destroy my business.

So eating a lot of protein cures HIV? Who knew. I guess those idiot physicians and biochemists and infectious disease specialists and epidemiologists just don't understand anything a pharmaceutical rep doesn't tell them.

Um.... the same editorial team also runs the Cult of Android site. Bit of self-depreciating humor there I think.

sPh

Good summary by Ezra Klein, who has been tracking health care reform since at least 2008:

In conservative media, Obamacare is a disaster. In the real world, it’s working.

"On the whole, though, costs are lower than expected, enrollment is higher than expected, the number of insurers participating in the exchanges is increasing, and more states are joining the Medicaid expansion. Millions of people have insurance who didn't have it before. The law is working. But a lot of the people who are convinced Obamacare is a disaster will never know that, because the voices they trust will never tell them"

But how many paiiiiiiid???

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

7.2 million, a higher conversion percentage than private industry expects. Call the whambulence for the hard radical right.

sPh

OK, perhaps I should qualify that with "assuming the camera has a decent quality sensor". Although since Apple and Samsung do, that seems a bit redundant for a discussion about spec warriors. If someone is going to claim that their Nogood Phone Ltd QLX8732 with the 897MP sensor that produces images worse than 110 film is competing with the 5S and the S5 then I can't help them.

The fundamental point being that 98% of photos taken today are only ever seen on Facebook or similar, and those services downsample images to 0.25 - 1.2 MP at most. Start with a good quality 8MP image, crop it to 6MP, submit it to Facebook as a "high quality image" and you're down to 1.2MP. But even if you want to make prints 6MP generates an excellent quality 5x7 and a good quality 8x10 for all ordinary people.

sPh