Intel Atom: pros/cons/hazzards?

This onlyprovides a sampling of homes -- those who decide a thermostat is worth ~$300.

I would think ToU and load shedding tariffs would be far more effective from the power company's perspective (I know places where each are in use).

OTOH, a thermostat could be *commanded* (overridden) to temporarily alter it's POTENTIAL setpoint and, thereby, provide the load shedding function (if you have electric heat -- but, there's also a special tariff for

*that*)

We heat with natural gas. New England heats with oil. Not much energy to be saved by the electric company in those markets.

(heating) Oil companies don't really see "peak demand" -- you schedule a delivery to suit your consumption (granted an unusually cold winter would cause more deliveries... but not because folks are using more heat at 12:43PM).

I've only *once* encountered a natural gas shortage in my lifetime (though it is an unusual psychological issue -- akin to losing your copper land line!). Sure, *somewhere* they've got to "open a valve wider"...

Exactly. Especially if the thermostat can locally communicate with a motion sensor in the living room ("so we know when it's not occupied"), bedroom ("so we know to turn down the heat when you are asleep"), etc.

LCD panels are becoming common on refrigerators. I've seen microwaves with "LCD doors". Sure would be worthwhile to know when your eyes are pointed in their direction!

Er, no. See, as a starting point,

And /new/ coffee makers over here claim to be able to get 10/15 cups out of 1.3 litre container! Yeah, right :(

Teaspoon and tablespoon are surprisingly standardised.

Except in their vernacular usage as flatware!

American cup is 1/2 pint, English is 5% smaller at 2/5 pint, metric is 10% larger at 1/4 litre.

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I think the uncertainty comes from more colloquial usage. E.g., Tom's comment that "10/15 cups (coffee) in 1.3L"

Here, we would say "cups of coffee" (nominally ~6 oz) or "cups of tea" (probably *4* oz?) and NEVER "6C coffee" (C == "measured cup").

E.g., when I describe my tea consumption, I am careful to say "8 pints daily" or "about a gallon a day" and not "8 cups daily" because the "cup I use for tea" is 16 oz and not 8 (as in C) or

4 as in "(nominal) tea cup/bowl" (when drinking caffeinated tea, the difference is significant!)

I love the second sentence of that page - "It is principally used in the United States and Liberia". There is no denying the technical achievements the US has made, but think how much more they could do if their dropped the medieval units of measurement!

I recommend "Nanny Ogg's Cookbook" - it has a discussion about how the units used in the "original" recipes were translated into metric from the standard unit of "some" (i.e., put in some flour, some water, and some salt..).

Back to the recipe in question - of course it's fine with approximate measurements. You don't want precision here - you need to get a bit of variation, or you'll never be able to make it better than average.

Not according to

which, incidentally, has /two/ US definitions for cup, both smaller than an Imperial cup.

By comparison, rods, poles, perches, chains and furlongs are very well defined.

One of my favourite cookbooks (which has never been out of print since 1954) is "Food In England" by Dorothy Hartley. It tends to avoid mentioning quantities, which is the way it should be for everything except breads and cakes.

Oh yes, forgot to mention. The US pint is 80% of the Imperial pint, 16floz vs 20floz.

When did merkins pick up the habit of short-changing us? :)

If you asked any American who has *used* a "measuring cup", there is no uncertainty. We'd not say a cup is half a pint but, rather, a pint is two Cups. A quart, 2 pints. 8 oz to a Cup, Etc.

At smaller quantities, most folks are uncertain: e.g., 3t = 1T;

2T = 1oz; 2 oz = 1 shot.

Even less formally: 2 smidgen = 1 pinch; 2 pinch = 1 dash; 8 dashes = 1t. (Most folks tend to think of these as just informal quantities: "a little bit")

Of course, NO ONE bakes anymore so this is quickly leaving the common conscience: "Pour contents of box into bowl; add water; mix well"

For baking the accuracies required are far tighter than in other types of cooking. An extra 5% water will significantly affect bread but not a stew!

Don't Brits still use pints? Miles? Feet?

Units of measure see very different uses, here.

Scientists, engineers, etc. *may* (opt) to work in metric units -- or not. When I create a CAD drawing, I have to pick which units of measure to adopt throughout.

Government endorsed/standardized units are what they are (argue with the politicians). They really only apply to legal comparisons -- The Market (largely) allows items to be sold in whatever units the two parties agree upon.

Joe Public has no incentive to abandon what his parents/grandparents have used. What's the benefit? Start buying fuel in liters instead of gallons? The price per unit energy doesn't change (though it *will* for some reason). Start buying milk in 4 liter bottles (why 4 and not 1 -- or 10)? Should hotdogs be sold in packages of *10*? Ditto buns? A bottle of beer always a liter? And, 10 bottles in a "6 pack"? Should there be some decimal number of slices of bread in a "loaf"? (think of how hard it would be to compare loaves, otherwise! :> ) Sell eggs in quantities of 10? How large should a container of fresh strawberries be? Should the next larger container be a 10-fold increase? If you want something between the two, buy some number of the smaller size? Should canned corn be sold in the same size (weight) cans as canned peas? What about asparagus?

How do you deal with bulk produce -- X grams of celery @ $0.0025/g? Does it even make sense to compare celery prices (per g) to that of potatoes? (potatoes are sold by the pound, here; celery by the "bunch") How does a "bunch" of cilantro compare to a bunch of celery? Do we even care? Do we standardize on the leaf size of the cilantro (as it directly affects the usable portion of the weight that you are paying for!)

Joe Public is accustomed to buying things in "conventional sizes" -- even if those sizes are not standardized (except "by convention"). Rx's call for "the zest of a large lemon" or "a small onion". They are typically just starting points -- add more or less to taste. (each time I make an Rx, I make small changes to evaluate their impact on the resulting taste, cooking time, etc. Then, markup the recipe with my ideas for what to try *next* -- "the result was too tart when the lemon was increased; try XXX next time!")

Vendors have seized upon this informal size convention to silently increase prices without changing the MARKED price on an item.

E.g., OJ is purchased in 56 oz containers (1 qt, 1 pt, 1 cup) -- despite the fact that it *looks* like a "half gallon" (of *milk*!) Come out with a new package, bundle TWO of them together (to make it appear to be *more* than the old package -- but not exactly TWICE!) and convince folks that it is a better "deal" than the old package (which you no longer offer for sale!). Then, eventually sell them singly for a net increase in price.

How large is a bottle of laundry detergent? A bottle of soda? A *can* of soda? (e.g., Coke's used to come in 7 oz bottles). Coors (beer) once tried introducing (silently) an 11 oz can of beer. Change the shape a little bit and it's *roughly* the same "heft" (when full)... "Who's gonna know? ~8% invisible price increase -- marketing coup!!" How many sheets in a roll of paper towels? Toilet paper?

[We have a term for this: it is called The Free Market! The theory is that consumers -- unaided by gummit -- are smart enough to drive the market in the "right direction" (whatever that means). Any sort of regulation/standardization would *interfere* with their rights to dynamically engage in this interactive "struggle"]

And why anything other than cents, dimes (10c), dollars (100c), ten dollar, hundred dollar and thousand dollar bills? Why these oddball units (25c,

50c, $2, $5, $20, $50)?

And what about this silly clock and calendar??! 60 minutes, 60 seconds, 24 hours, ... Think about all the effort wasted as people try to compute differences in times-of-day! And, keeping track of which months have 31 days vs. 30 -- and that pesky February! What is the *date* 30 days hence? Time zones? Why do we all have to agree that "Sun ROUGHLY directly overhead" is "noon"? Why can't it be 1500 in someplaces and 0200 in some others? You *still* have to know what the local "activity schedule" is in some remote location ("It's 7PM, there -- businesses will be closed") and be able to determine the time skew (zone). Wouldn't it be nicer to just be able to say, "I will call you at 2315?" -- having already compensated (in your mind) for the fact that 2315 is midday, there?

Yet, despite all these "inefficiencies", life (business) still seems to go on! And, commercially, apparently pretty well!

Sure! A *packed* cup of brown sugar is significantly different than a *loose* cup of granulated sugar -- or, confectioner's sugar!

Stew (ditto soup) is (historically) a collection of "leftovers". The number of potatoes you put in depends on how many are ABOUT TO GO BAD. Add a lot, and you'll probably want to increase the seasonings accordingly -- as well as toss in more carrots, etc.

Baking is far more of a ratiometric process as you're dealing with chemistries in addition to taste. E.g., the ratio of vanilla to sugar to baking powder to ... tends to be relatively constant. And, nice integer multiples:

1t vanilla, 0.5t salt, 1t powder... That;s where volumetric measure is such a convenience: have containers that are already created AT these sizes and multiples thereof (which mimics our measurement units) and just ensure you "measure level"!

I've lived in Norway for the last 20 years, so I'm a bit out of touch...

Yes, people still use pints, miles, feet and inches, and sometimes pounds weight and gallons (especially for petrol) - but they are very rarely used for anything accurate. Older generations use Fahrenheit for weather (as long as it is above freezing - below freezing, everyone uses Celsius). Recipes are, of course, always approximate, and it's not uncommon to use imperial units there.

Milk can be in litres or pints. Beer is always in pints - even if it is actually half a litre...

Apart from occasional exceptions, such as PCB track widths in mils, you will not find many non-metric units in modern science, engineering, or technical fields outside the USA.

And you wonder why people say your posts wander...

I made a light-hearted jibe at American measurements - I didn't plan a discussion on every measurement system since the dawn of mankind!

A pint is 20fl.oz. vs 16fl.oz. in the US.

Two different miles, nautical miles being the "other".

A foot is reputedly 36 barleycorns wide.

My point was that we all use an odd collection of units -- even "metrified" countries -- every day. And, life still goes on. If there was reason to decimalize these other things, why then, not EVERYTHING? Those souls still have to deal with "odd quantities" (how many stone do you weigh?)

On Mon, 22 Sep 2014 17:03:38 +0100, Tom Gardner Gave us:

Must be why that John fellow had to die.

On Mon, 22 Sep 2014 10:06:27 -0700, Don Y Gave us:

Personally, I like how we are able to discriminate a GPS signal when the received strength is right down next to the baseline noise floor.

But on the lighter side...

Yeah, and where do you gauge at on that silly Scientology meter thingy?

Good thing the astrology circles didn't come up with too many weird quantifications, or device with which to measure them!

Bwuahahahahahaha! BRL!

Am 22.09.2014 um 19:06 schrieb Don Y:

You may never have been to a truly "metrified" country, then.

E.g. here in Germany there's basically no non-metric unit left in practical, much less every-day use. And it's been like that since about the 1950s, at the least.

Part of the reason is that it's been made effectively illegal to offer anything to the general public if it's quantified in non-metric units, by way of "fair conduct of commerce" laws.

About the last hold-out are display screen diagonals given in inches, but even those are only tolerated, as an extra bit of information. The official product specification has to be metric, though, or you open yourself to competitors' cease-and-desist, and eventual lawsuits.