I certainly understand peak and average.

It has a low-wattage speaker mismatched with a high-wattage driver circuit. The driver circuit overpowers and damages the speaker when you play a high-average-amplitude sound file at full volume.

It's like a flashlight with low and high settings, where the high setting sends 6 volts to a 3 volt lightbulb. It will be extra bright for maybe two seconds while it destroys the lightbulb. Obviously if your max power output is 6 volts then you need to pair it with a 6 volt bulb.

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If your doing the sort of "compromise engineering" that results in the product self-destructing, then part of your "compromise" is the legal obligation to pay the warranty cost of repairing/replacing/refunding that product when it does self-destruct.

If I set the volume to full and I'm not satisfied with the sound level I get, sure, I'll go get external speakers. But using the laptop at full volume should never result in permanent damage. It should never self destruct just because I play a music file that happens to contain clipping.

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Simple solution, stop browsing at -1 and you won't have to see the "Fuck Beta" comments.
And then we won't have to see your "fuck 'fuck beta'" comments.

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Dell paired a high wattage amplifier with a low wattage speaker, which any engineer knows will result in speaker damage.

Dell had several choices. They could have spent a few cents more on a bigger speaker and sold a same-volume-laptop for $200.50, or they could have saved a few cents on a smaller amplifier circuit and sold a slightly-less-loud-laptop for $199.50.

What they can't do is sell a defective product that self-destructs and refuse to honor the repair warranty.

Baloney. They paid for a product that was advertized as having certain capabilities, in specific including a working sound system. Further more they purchased a product that came with both a legal implied warranty of fitness-for-purpose, as well as an express warranty.

What they were given was a product that unexpectedly self-destructs when you play some sound files.
(The only way the software is relevant here is that the software causes common sound files to resemble those uncommon sound files which trigger the self-destruct effect, making the hardware defect more commonly visible.)

The only way "Dell purchasers are getting what they paid for" is in some loony radical libertarian ideology where you call it "getting what you paid for" when someone sells a hair drier with low-and-high settings which unexpectedly melts whenever you use the high setting.

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You're missing something important here.

Lets say a recording has volume numbers 01210.
Amplifying (doubling) that would give you 02420.
If the maximum hardware volume is 2 then the software clips it to 02220. (The 4 gets reduced to 2.)
The important point here is that a music file could have had 02220 in the first place!

Most music files won't have 02220 because it sounds like crap. But a music file can have 02220, and there do exist music files that have 02220.

So this has absolutely nothing to do with the software - the issue is that the Dell speakers get damaged if you play certain sound files! A sound system that damages itself when you play certain music files is clearly defective hardware. The only way that the software is involved is that it makes "common" music files look like those "rare" types of music files which trigger the hardware problem.

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I believe their market research team identified an opportunity to expand the (currently underrepresented) Creationist demographic.

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I am not a number! I am a free man!

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Ahhh. Are you trying to evolve a larger Creationist userbase?

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integer underflow.
65535

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Do you mean that literally?
And by "literally", I literally mean figuratively :)

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I don't where you heard that story, but it's loaded with factual errors. It's an utter apologetics whitewash of a number of extremely embarrassing facts.

February 19, 1616 An Inquisition commissioned theologians to prepare a formal report on the heliocentric view of the universe.

February 24 1616 the unanimous report concluded that a stationary Sun and moving earth is "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture ".

February 25 1616 The Pope declares an an order for Galileo to "abandon this doctrine, not to teach it to others, not to defend it, and not to treat of it", and threatens stronger action if Galileo did not comply.

February 26 1616 Galileo receives the order: "to abstain completely from teaching or defending this doctrine and opinion or from discussing it... to abandon completely... the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing".

March 5 1616 The Pope ordered a complete ban on any book advocating the moving Earth model on the basis that it was "altogether contrary to Holy Scripture". This ban was not limited to Galileo's work, but also included Kepler's work, Copernicus's work, and any such work in general.

Next we jump ahead to 1632, two Popes later. Galileo has a good relationship with the new Pope. Galileo wants to write a new book, and the Pope demands that his geocentric arguments be included. So apparently the Pope knew of and consented to a new book. The Pope's garbage geocentric arguments naturally get demolished in the book, and the character who presented them came off looking foolish. The new Pope takes it personally, and orders the new book banned.

Galileo is then brought to trial "for holding as true the false doctrine taught by some that the sun is the center of the world", in violation of the 1616 order.

Galileo is threatened with torture and interrogated.

June 22 1633 The Inquisition finds Galileo guilty of Heresy for teaching that the Earth moves after a moving Earth had been explicitly declared contrary to Holy Scripture. Galileo was sentenced to prison, which was reduced to house arrest. Furthermore the Inquisition bans the publication of anything ever published by Galileo, whether it deals with the solar system or not.

January 8 1642 Galileo dies, after a 9 year life-sentence arrest.

1835 Galileo's work is finally removed from the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, after more than 200 years of being on the Church's prohibited list.

1992 Pope John Paul II finally issues a public vindication of Galileo and acknowledgement of the Church's fuckup:
"Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture. "

Note that "theologians of the time" refers to the official position of the Church and at least two Popes who attacked Galileo. And "they maintained the centrality of the Earth" refers to their insistence that the Earth is the center of the universe and does not move because Bible says the Earth does not move, and the Bible is the infallible word of God.

And I don't think this would really be complete without pointing out exactly why the Church declared that the Bible stated the Sun orbits a non-moving Earth. That includes, but not necessarily limited to:

Psalm 104:5 (English Standard Version)
He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved.

1 Chronicles 16:30 (English Standard Version)
tremble before him, all the earth; yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.

Psalm 93:1 (English Standard Version)
The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed; he has put on strength as his belt. Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.

Psalm 96:10 (English Standard Version)
Say among the nations, âoeThe Lord reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.â

And Joshua 10:12-13 (English Standard Version)
At that time Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel,
"Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon."
And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.
Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day.

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When people think "fossils" they generally think dinosaurs or other large animals. (Note that when I say "large animals" I am including the smallest mouse.) It is extraordinarily rare for a large animal to leave a fossil record, and the fossil record of large animals is extremely random and extremely spotty.

Large animal fossils are extremely glamorous, but often overlooked the largest proportion of fossils we have. The small animal fossils. Animals roughly the size of a grain of sand, such as Forams (phylum foraminifera). Forams are tiny animals that live in the ocean.... trillions of them. Every day vast numbers of forams die and settle down to the deep dark cold sea floor, in the slowly accumulating sediment. Forams have often elaborate mineral "skeletons" called tests. Every day vast numbers of these tests become ideal fossils in the undisturbed see floor sediment. Sediment that very slowly builds up in virtually perfect layers.

Back in the 1970's oil companies developed technology for deep sea oil exploration and started bringing up long exploratory drill cores from the deep seabed. Each drill core was filled with tens of thousands tests. An effectively limitless supply of ideal perfectly layered fossils.

We have a continuous and complete fossil record spanning tens of millions of years for a large chunk of phylum foraminifera. Not merely a continuous and complete record of each transitional species, but a continuous and complete record of all the transitional forms along each species-to-species transition. A continuous and complete record tracing diverse foram species back to a common ancestor.

(Note: The group "forams" is roughly equivalent to the group "mammals". There are herbivores and carnivores and even forams that grow internal algae farms. So when I say "diverse species of forams" traced back to a common ancestor, it's roughly comparable to tracing cows and lions back to a common ancestor.)

But animals the size of a grain of sand aren't glamorous. The fossils look like tiny specks unless you look at them through a low-power microscope. Almost no one has ever heard of "forams". Forams are a type of plankton, and while many people have heard of plankton almost no one knows or cares about it.

So the elephant in the room is that we *do* have a continuous and complete fossil record for a significant chunk of the tree of life. The best possible record a scientist would wish for documenting the fact of evolution in extraordinary detail. And virtually no one has heard of it because it's an incredibly obscure and otherwise unremarkable branch of almost microscopic animals.

Much of the rest of the piece goes on to esoteric issues of phylogenetics and cladistics. But the key point is made there about the continuous nature of this record.

Note that the text absolutely does NOT make any fuss about this being some amazing new proof of evolution. And that is because among the scientific community evolution is completely non-controversial. Among the scientific community it was roughly one hundred years ago that the evidence established that evolution was true beyond-any-reasonable-doubt.

Scientists do not consider it particularly notable when new evidence shows up confirming the earth is round. Scientists do not consider it particularly notable when new evidence shows up confirming that atoms are real. Scientists do not consider it particularly notable when new evidence shows up confirming that diverse species really did evolve from a common ancestor.

The only "big significance" the author saw in this continuous-complete record of evolution was that it was just another bit of evidence to incorporate for refining existing methods and classifications. Utterly routine work in an utterly non-controversial field of science.

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You've got your definition wrong. "Creationism" is not merely the idea that God created the universe. Creationism is specifically defied in opposition to evolution. Creationist is specifically the position that God directly crafted the variety of species in substantially the same form we see them today, and virtually always in accordance with some specific religion genesis account as in the Koran / Bible / Vedic text or whatever.

The official position of the Catholic Church is that Evolution is compatible with Catholicism, and in fact the Catholic Church hosts many scientific conferences that explicitly affirm the validity of Evolution, and which explicitly reject Creationism and Intelligent Design.

The Catholic Church's position is that God created the universe and all of the scientific mechanisms and processes within the universe, and that this equally includes the laws of physics, chemistry, and the evolution of life on earth.

The official Catholic position is Evolutionist, subcategory Theistic Evolutionist. The position that God created the universe, and that Evolution is just another one of God's chosen mechanisms for running His universe.

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I was explicit in including Veterans Benefits. It is is obviously part of the military compensation package. The figures I looked at had a listing for "Medicare&Medicaid" which explains why your figure for "Department of Health and Human Services including Medicare and Medicaid" was slightly higher.

In any case, there are are three almost exactly equal budget categories that dominate the federal budget at over 20% each, vastly larger than anything else in the budget. There's no reasonable way to call any of those three "a small fraction of the federal budget".

I can't find global figures breaking down military spending expenses as a portion of each "nations budget", but I did easily find global figures breaking down military spending as a percentage of the entire GrossDomesticProduct.

The United States spends an extraordinarily high percentage on the military.

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NASA should definite send a probe out to whatever planet you're living on.

Defense+Veterans is about tied with Medicare+Medicaid for largest budget category, followed by Social Security third. Nothing else even makes it onto the radar. Lumping together ALL other discretionary spending (education, non-defense research, transportation, CDC, NASA, etc etc etc etc) still only adds up to 4th place in the budget.

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