Help text is not the place to put logic puzzles.

In Windows Vista, when you go to the System control panel, you are shown a number that describes your computer's rating. But are higher numbers better or worse? If I had a choice, would it be better to have a 1 rating or a 5 rating?

In earlier betas of Windows Vista, you had to have a degree in philosophy to figure this out. If you clicked the "Help" button on the System control panel page, you were sent to a page of help text that tried to explain the performance rating. When it got around to explaining what the number means, the text said, paraphrased, "When looking for software to run on this computer, you should choose programs whose rating is less than or equal to the rating of this computer."

So does this mean that bigger ratings are better?

"Well, if a program's rating is small, then the computer's rating needs to be bigger than that, so a program wants its rating to be as small as possible so more computers can run it. If my computer's rating is small, programs will be fighting to get a rating low enough that I can run it. That's a good thing for me, right? No wait, but what if the program I want has a high rating? Then my computer will need a higher rating. If my computer had a low rating, then that wouldn't be less than or equal to the program's rating. No wait, I got it backwards, it's the program that needs to be less than or equal to the computer, not the other way around. If the program's rating needs to be less than or equal to the computer's rating, then that means that the computer's rating needs to be greater than or equal to the program's rating. If my computer rating were higher, than it could run more programs."

"I think."

"Why can't they just say, 'Bigger numbers are better'?"

Although we'd all like Moore's Law to continue forever, quantum mechanics imposes some fundamental limits on the computation rate and information capacity of any physical device. In particular, it has been shown that 1 kilogram of matter confined to 1 liter of space can perform at most 1051 operations per second on at most 1031 bits of information [see Seth Lloyd, "Ultimate physical limits to computation." Nature 406, 1047-1054 (2000)]. A fully-populated 128-bit storage pool would contain 2128 blocks = 2137 bytes = 2140 bits; therefore the minimum mass required to hold the bits would be (2140 bits) / (1031 bits/kg) = 136 billion kg.

That's a lot of gear.

To operate at the 1031 bits/kg limit, however, the entire mass of the computer must be in the form of pure energy. By E=mc2, the rest energy of 136 billion kg is 1.2x1028 J. The mass of the oceans is about 1.4x1021 kg. It takes about 4,000 J to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 degree Celcius, and thus about 400,000 J to heat 1 kg of water from freezing to boiling. The latent heat of vaporization adds another 2 million J/kg. Thus the energy required to boil the oceans is about 2.4x106 J/kg * 1.4x1021 kg = 3.4x1027 J. Thus, fully populating a 128-bit storage pool would, literally, require more energy than boiling the oceans.

An ellipsis is sometimes used to indicate a pause in speech, an unfinished thought or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence. While not a correct usage, ellipses are often used in this manner for internet chat, email, and forum posts.

The real problem with the PTC complaints is that the organization uses "indecency criteria" so simplistic that they makes Blue's Clues look like a college philosophy course. They rate shows based on "sex," "language," "violence," and "overall." Curse words—bad for children! Shows stuffed with nothing but consumerism, tawdry celebrity, and mockery of those who can't hold a tune—good for children!

Consider Everybody Loves Raymond, which received "green lights" in all four PTC categories. In promoting the show as a family-friendly offering, the PTC notes that "Raymond promotes the idea of long-lasting marriage, and Debra feels fulfilled in her role as a stay-at-home mom. Language on this series used to be harsh, but since the first of 2004 [sic], has dropped to a record low number of just 8 uses of mild 'hell,' 'crap,' and 'damn' in 6 episodes. Sexual references have been non-existent since January 2004."

The focus is on specifics: exact words, number of uses, etc. While the PTC does point to the fact that the couple remain married and that Debra "feels fulfilled," it's arguable whether the show portrays family in such a way that anyone would want to have one. The main characters show little affection for one another, the jokes routinely come at the expense of spouses, and the whole milieu feels joyless and barren. Regardless of how "mild" the show's use of "hell," "crap," and "damn" may be, it's a show that makes me viscerally uncomfortable to watch, and it's not the kind of thing I want my kids to see.