How big are these pills, anyway?





  • gee the actual size is shown in a image on a monitor.
    Look mom, i can make the pill grow larger/smaller by changing to a diffrent resolution. 

     Instead of that stupid line about the actual size being shown, they should have just put down the dimensions.



  • they should have made it a Java applet that detects the screen resolution and then creates the image based on that!



  • @tster said:

    they should have made it a Java applet that detects the screen resolution and then creates the image based on that!

     

    But then you gotta worry about the size of the monitor.     



  • @bonzombiekitty said:

    @tster said:

    they should have made it a Java applet that detects the screen resolution and then creates the image based on that!

     

    But then you gotta worry about the size of the monitor.     

     

    oops.  good point 



  • @bonzombiekitty said:

    @tster said:

    they should have made it a Java applet that detects the screen resolution and then creates the image based on that!

     

    But then you gotta worry about the size of the monitor.     

     

    Why does something involving a printer, wooden table and a camera (possibly a scanner) come to mind here? 



  • @SpComb said:

    @bonzombiekitty said:

    @tster said:

    they should have made it a Java applet that detects the screen resolution and then creates the image based on that!

     

    But then you gotta worry about the size of the monitor.     

     

    Why does something involving a printer, wooden table and a camera (possibly a scanner) come to mind here? 

    Okay, take a picture of a person's hand holding the pill above a wooden table. But how do you know that person doesn't just have really big hands? 



  • who would care about the precise size of the pills? as if there was a chance that they would be 5cm long? do they come in different sizes, like clothes, so that you could choose your perfect fit?



  • if the pills are actually the size they show up as on my monitor I would be very concerned about the size!



  • @lanzz said:

    who would care about the precise size of the pills? as if there was a chance that they would be 5cm long? do they come in different sizes, like clothes, so that you could choose your perfect fit?

    Two potential reasons.

     1.  Some people have difficulty swallowing and would rather have a smaller pill over a big one.

     2.  Marketing.   Showing the "actual" size of a pill in relation to a cometeing product can make a stronger association that the pill is actually more powerful.  If you have pill A and pill B, and three of A lasts 12 hours, but one of B lasts 12 hours, the marketing is better if you can show that B is the same size as one of A.  If B was significantly larger than A then it sends the message that all they did was cram three A's together.  W
     



  • @lanzz said:

    who would care about the precise size of the pills? as if there was a chance that they would be 5cm long? do they come in different sizes, like clothes, so that you could choose your perfect fit?

    Only for suppositories.

    Professor Farnsworth: Just take this pill.

    Fry: I can't swallow something that big!  

    Professor Farnsworth: Good news! It's a suppository!  



  • A very easy way to fix this is to ditch the "Actual size" text, and place a dime next to the pills for comparative sizing. 



  • @tster said:

    if the pills are actually the size they show up as on my monitor I would be very concerned about the size!


    Good News! It's a suppository.


    <edit>
    Well fine, then. I see someone already did that joke.
    I'll go hide now.



  • @Critter said:

    A very easy way to fix this is to ditch the "Actual size" text, and place a dime next to the pills for comparative sizing. 

    Which doesn't help those who have never seen a dime and don't know what size one is (like me). Pardon me for not being up to speed on the relative sizes of small coins of a foreign currency. 



  • and how big is a dime?



  • @stratos said:

    gee the actual size is shown in a image on a monitor.
    Look mom, i can make the pill grow larger/smaller by changing to a diffrent resolution. 

     Instead of that stupid line about the actual size being shown, they should have just put down the dimensions.

     

    how about an 800x600 image showing monitor sizes from 15" to somewhere in the low twenties, in both standard and widescreen varieties.

     

    interestingly, it fit completely on my 15" 1024x768 laptop screen... 



  • @Hitsuji said:

    and how big is a dime?

    It's one tenth of a dollar, but that's not important right now!  :-)

    One of those weird things people forget are actual "units" themselves.  A nickel is five cents, but a dime is one dime.  Something over a centimeter, less than two.  Having neither a dime nor a ruler handy is something of a handicap at answering that question.



  • Wikipedia says 17.91 mm.



  • How many football fields is it? Libraries of Congress? Please, use units I know!



  • @bonzombiekitty said:

    @tster said:

    they should have made it a Java applet that detects the screen resolution and then creates the image based on that!

     

    But then you gotta worry about the size of the monitor.     

    Don't worry - all modern monitors report their exact size to the computer (in theory, anyway). Of course, getting at that information is somewhat harder...



  • @bonzombiekitty said:

    @tster said:

    they should have made it a Java applet that detects the screen resolution and then creates the image based on that!

     

    But then you gotta worry about the size of the monitor.     

    Not if the applet prompts the user to input the size of the monitor in a textfield!
     



  • @rbowes said:

    How many football fields is it? Libraries of Congress? Please, use units I know!

    It is three times the size of Rhode Island, or put another way, one thousand of them laid end to end would reach from the Earth to the Moon.

    If you started counting them on the day Julius Caesar was born and you counted one every second, you would be halfway through the count by now.  Each one is the size of a plover's egg.

     



  • @tster said:

    @bonzombiekitty said:

    @tster said:

    they should have made it a Java applet that detects the screen resolution and then creates the image based on that!

     

    But then you gotta worry about the size of the monitor.     

     

    oops.  good point 

     Not really.  People forget that CSS supports units other than pixels, and 1cm == 1cm == 1cm no matter what size monitor you have--the browser will adjust to fit based on the perceived DPI (or DPCm, if you like) of the display device.  (It doesn't matter whether you have a 17", 15" or 3" monitor--the DPI is what counts.)



  • @mrprogguy said:

    Not really.  People forget that CSS supports units other than pixels, and 1cm == 1cm == 1cm no matter what size monitor you have--the browser will adjust to fit based on the perceived DPI (or DPCm, if you like) of the display device.  (It doesn't matter whether you have a 17", 15" or 3" monitor--the DPI is what counts.)
    That might be true in X and on Mac OS, but in Windows it's common that display DPI is set to 96 or 120 - no matter what the monitor's actual DPI is. And if the windowing system doesn't have the correct value, how will a browser get it (not to mention the problems way too many programs have if DPI is set to anything but 96).



  • @ender said:

    @mrprogguy said:
    Not really. People forget that CSS supports units other than pixels, and 1cm == 1cm == 1cm no matter what size monitor you have--the browser will adjust to fit based on the perceived DPI (or DPCm, if you like) of the display device. (It doesn't matter whether you have a 17", 15" or 3" monitor--the DPI is what counts.)
    That might be true in X and on Mac OS, but in Windows it's common that display DPI is set to 96 or 120 - no matter what the monitor's actual DPI is. And if the windowing system doesn't have the correct value, how will a browser get it (not to mention the problems way too many programs have if DPI is set to anything but 96).

    This is in fact a bug in Windows - the code is there to set things based on the EDID block from the monitor, but it's been broken since (at least) Win2k and we can only presume that it's not likely to be fixed. The other systems differ only in that their implementations of this actually work.

    This is also the reason why the Windows fonts change size when you change the resolution. That is not supposed to happen; fonts are measured in "points", which are 1/72th of an inch (or 1/12th of a pica).



  • @bonzombiekitty said:

    @lanzz said:

    who would care about the precise size of the pills? as if there was a chance that they would be 5cm long? do they come in different sizes, like clothes, so that you could choose your perfect fit?

    Two potential reasons.

     1.  Some people have difficulty swallowing and would rather have a smaller pill over a big one.

     2.  Marketing.   Showing the "actual" size of a pill in relation to a cometeing product can make a stronger association that the pill is actually more powerful.  If you have pill A and pill B, and three of A lasts 12 hours, but one of B lasts 12 hours, the marketing is better if you can show that B is the same size as one of A.  If B was significantly larger than A then it sends the message that all they did was cram three A's together.  W
     

    Extra disingenuous when you realize that between 50 and 99% of the pill is just inert buffer anyway, often cellulose and/or chalk, so the size can be radically altered without changing the potency in the slightest.



  • @foxyshadis said:

    Extra disingenuous when you realize that between 50 and 99% of the pill is just inert buffer anyway, often cellulose and/or chalk, so the size can be radically altered without changing the potency in the slightest.

    Many pills seem to use lactose - a sugar that a surprising number of people have difficulty digesting!
     



  • I think you forgot something here, projectors. I don't think many projectors are equipped with distance measuring laser beams (but, that would be cool to have) so that they can use trigonometry to calculate the dpi of the projection.


Log in to reply