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Valuations are often EXTREMELY sensitive to the measure of expected growth. As such, if Facebook had an high estimated growth, where as Groupon (which I've never heard of) had a low estimated growth, then this would dramatically change their valuations, given they're similar companies with similar costs of equity/capital.

At the moment Google has a market capitalization of 198.58b, and while Google has an easier monetizing job (I think) than Facebook, and a longer history, we should notice that Facebook has similar traffic to Google, possibly even more. Not sure if this is throughput or hits though.

So without more research, while $50b is high, it can be rationalized, and may not be insane. Not to say that it isn't insane, but it might not be. Especially if it occupies only a small portion of your portfolio, and the investment is syndicated amongst many investors.

A: Because the breaking of flow is not what's irritating; it's the fact that you're posting it out of order.

Oh, and PS, we get it already!

OK. so the mass of the moon is, oh about 7.346 x 10^22kg that's approximately 73459000000000000000 tonnes. If we extract, say, 1 million tonnes of stuff from the moon, that's about 1.3 x 10^-17 %, also known as a poofteenth of a percent.
According to my calculations, this will be enough to move the moon further away from us by about 4.76 x 10^-11 metres or approximately the diameter of a hydrogen atom.

> Switch to Hybrid trucks

Here in Australia, deliveries in the suburbs are done on small, fuel effient motorcycles:
postie bikes

They also have the advantage that they can be ridden right up to the mailbox, then across the driveways/footpath to the next letterbox.

Sure, they would love to make big dollars on ads (Bing),

Can you explain me why the avalanche of "In the cloud" ad campaign I'm seeing recently? Join the WindowsLive and they won't need cookies or fancy HTML5 thingies to track you anymore.
Does Facebook need cookies to sell your data or expose you to ads?

GM developed the platform in Australia which most of their cars run on around the world. This is why they all have similar configurations, and feel/look the same. Despite the fact that they source parts from the same/similar suppliers, and keep branding consistent. At the time it was a huge undertaking and Holden (GM's Australian Subsidiary), released a movie called 6 Billion Dollar Baby, which was about the development of the platform and how it had cost Holden (not sure about GM, overall), an estimated 6 Billion Dollars to the release date.

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Holden+6+billion+dollar+baby

This was likely capitalized and will be depreciated over a very long time.

Forget $10K, you can build your own CNC for only a few hundred dollars of parts. Admittedly, this requires a much higher skill level, but realistically geeks are going to be the early adopters for this sort of technology anyway.

I agree - take a look at this article... this article

Mmmm... witchetty grubs. =b..
Info

In a sense, yes. There may not be a single gene that makes you good at rocket surgery (or any other thing), and I'm not denying that environment also has a strong influence, but there's certainly a significant genetic component in aptitude. To perform any task exceptionally, and to perform some tasks at all, you must have both in some degree. Read up on twin studies if you're interested in learning more.

You could redefine "works" to be only inclusive of this one activity. But as I said, even by that measure, you could lose since you'd be increasing the activity you were trying to stop.

I don't think you know the definition of "crime", it's anything where you break the law and can be punished for. Doesn't matter about whether you agree with it or not. Most laws are not about the extreme circumstances, they're about these in between circumstances and so various groups can generally rationalize it. Drugs being a perfect example.

I don't think you know how GDP is calculated. It is extremely rare to have black market transactions included, especially since they can't be measured well. Any values would be guess work.

"To stay in power" is a perfect example of something which can not be easily defined, nor have I talked about that. A politician staying in power is the product of a whole fuck load of forces, and not necessarily due to appeasing the people on a base level. While I have never gotten into political theory much, from the topics I have studied, and the papers I have read, there was no particularly good theory as to what/why people get elected to government and manage to stay in government.

Gaaah.

Screwed up the link.
It's here: http://maps.google.com.au/maps?q=-31.955949,141.462311&num=1&t=h&sll=-35.310258,149.125156&sspn=0.015987,0.033023&ie=UTF8&ll=-31.955931,141.462573&spn=0.003973,0.006727&z=18

Here's a circular feature in southern central interior Australia, and all the street names around it come from minerals:
http://maps.google.com.au/maps?sll=-28.87835,141.047974&sspn=4.39095,8.453979&ll=-35.310258,149.125156&spn=0.015987,0.033023&t=h&z=16

You're looking for a roughly circular feature? I think this is a more likely spot personally:

http://maps.google.com.au/maps?sll=-28.87835,141.047974&sspn=4.39095,8.453979&ll=-35.310258,149.125156&spn=0.015987,0.033023&t=h&z=16

TFA doesn't mention a location. There is a roughly circular sort of feature in about the right place and about the right size centred here:

http://maps.google.com.au/?ie=UTF8&ll=-28.614665,141.139984&spn=0.806518,1.234589&t=h&z=10

You can see it better if you zoom out a couple of steps. It's not very well defined, and may just be wishful thinking on my part!

Ummm.... if it's "non-satellite imagery," where else could it be from?
I'd think a guy taking pictures out of a Cessna wouldn't be very economical long-term compared to a drone.

Yeah, and I'd think a guy taking pictures out of a car to make a map as he drives up and down every single street in the world wouldn't be very economical... oh wait. (Then again, drones you say? Oh snap.)

Like this? Click me I'm an innocent google link

I think they should receive some congrats.

It's not entirely true that there are no inhabited areas with high natural background levels. In fact much higher than the global average. These include Ramsar in Iran, Guarapari in Brazil, Kerala in India and others. The interesting thing is that epidemiological studies do not find adverse health effects on humans. Which certainly raises questions about the linear no threshold model which holds that there is no safe lower limit.

High Levels of Natural Radiation in Ramsar, Iran

The Liberals and Greens and of course the independents are able to step outside the party line if they really need to, when they do this it is called crossing the floor.

Quite recently Liberals have been crossing the floor to vote for climate change laws.

http://www.google.com.au/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=liberal+cross+the+floor

No matter matter what the issue a Labor MP is not allowed to cross the floor unless he has been given a conscience vote. He must vote as caucus directs or lose membership.

I just googled "harold scruby wiki" http://www.google.com.au/search?num=100&hl=en&q=harold+scruby+wiki&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

first result I got was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanker !!!

3: Maybe they just really liked their beer which is why so many of them drank it.

Yeap, and they used to feed their kids heaps of beer on regular basis (??!).Or maybe they weren't their kids after all? (hint: search for "nubians" on the page and read around a bit).

My point is: generating hypotheses (and verifying them) is quite risky when the cultural/ethical/time distances are huge.

BTW: does anyone know how stable the tetracyclines are in hydrofluoric acid?

The third voice message has what may be a gps location in the Caspian Sea
Nuclear sub?

Who's going to rescue you from Everest? There's a reason why there are over 100 dead bodies littering the summit, it's too high to be rescued by chopper and it's too risky to carry a dead body down. Insurance or no insurance, nobody is coming to get you if you get into trouble on Everest.

You don't need special insurance, punish the handfull of irresponsible idiots not the millions of responsible hikers and climbers. They could start by drowning the "salty water" idiots in the Colorado river.

Middle of nowhere

Just out of curiosity, what do people who live out in the middle of nowhere do to defend themselves against thieves? It's one thing when the police are minutes away in the city, but in the outback, I'm sure that's not always the case.

I lived in the middle of nowhere, I never saw a cop, the closest police station was a 1.5 hour drive away. Some people had shotguns or rifles for hunting or protecting livestock from ferral dogs. However as another poster has pointed out there was no need to lock the doors let alone own a gun to defend themselves against thieves.

When there are 50 people in a town and one of them is a thief, it's not hard to work out who it is. Dogs take the place of a gun in the bedside table and since there are usually more dogs than people in isolated towns there is no way a stranger can even get into town without the entire population knowing about it. Wether you live in the city or the middle of nowhere a medium to large sized dog is the most effective defence against thieves. A gun is useless if your not at home to use it.

"If you have some useful information about that data then please share."

The average temp in Greenland has risen ~3degC in the last century.

You have the raw data and it's not hard to work out how to perform a least squares fit using a spreadsheet. Therefore you have everything you need to confirm/debunk my claim.

If you would rather read about science than perform it then you could start by looking here and here, or if pretty graphs are your thing then try a this random article that took me two minutes to find via a google search

Bloody lazy folks: Roundabout Studies

If you replace "most" with "all" I'm inclined to agree. Self skepticisim is the core skill required for critical thinking but it's not a miricale cure for divided opinion simply because in most cases (such as your video games/art example) there is no "correct" opinion, they are just opinions conveyed with various degrees of passion and/or arrogance that you may or may not agree to with your own degree of passion/arrogance.

It is a cure for stress and social disorders caused by alienating people for having threatening opinions. Great hostility only comes from threats; I am still hostile to people who are intentionally vicious and hurtful, for example, but that's because they are clearly attempting to harm others.

If I perceived a "threat" because somebody might say something that hurts me because it goes against what I want to accept as fact yet is inarguable in any way I'm comfortable with, then I'm simply too scared to leave my little imaginary world; and of course, being so threatened, I would become hostile to such ideas and the people that conveyed them. Being willing to grapple with uncomfortable ideas puts you in the unfortunate situation that you may discover you're actually wrong.

What I find amusing is that you come across as if you are immune to human nature because you have discovered introspection, however your uncritical acceptance of "climategate" propoganda is strong evidence that you suffer from the same utterly human foibles as the people you are critisizing.

I'm immune to the human nature of being afraid to analyze the data. Of course, I'm also unqualified to fully analyze the data, seeing as I'm not a climatologist; on the other hand, I can analyze explanations, and I've seen many discussions about "unconforming" data being dropped ... fitting the data to the model. I'm not so delusional that I'd think this only happens with "global warming" of course: I'm sure pharmacies, oil companies, car manufactures, and telecommunications service providers massage their data too. Political climate does, however, encourage all independent researchers to fit the data to the model, and encourage the majority of the scientific body to ignore "quack-job" dissenters who want to challenge an "accepted theory."

I've chosen to see this as a political issue: at best I don't trust the current propaganda; at worst, I don't believe the truth is physically possible to find at this point. Global climate is changing, but that's normal: we've had ice ages, and hell they moved around (the whole world didn't experience an ice age at one time). I think claiming that "humans are causing global weather changes and we need to reverse the damage" is stupid: for one thing, I don't believe we're causing it; for another, I think we need to analyze the new weather patterns and begin adjusting to our new home. This isn't an MEE.

If you replace "most" with "all" I'm inclined to agree. Self skepticisim is the core skill required for critical thinking but it's not a miricale cure for divided opinion simply because in most cases (such as your video games/art example) there is no "correct" opinion, they are just opinions conveyed with various degrees of passion and/or arrogance that you may or may not agree to with your own degree of passion/arrogance.

What I find amusing is that you come across as if you are immune to human nature because you have discovered introspection, however your uncritical acceptance of "climategate" propoganda is strong evidence that you suffer from the same utterly human foibles as the people you are critisizing.

PS: My drooling grandchild gleefully stuffing chocolate cake into (and onto) her face on her first birthday is the most beautifull thing I have seen in a long time. Unlike the swill they serve at Subway, we are all organic but some people are uncomfortable with that fact. ;)

"It also requires an environment where we are not penalized for admitting a mistake. E.g. discussion on Internet forums such as Slashdot is nothing like that."

From my experience, on the handfull of occasions I have used the phrase "I was wrong" on slashdot I have been modded up, I also have a habit of modding up others who do the same. Having said that, it is a rare occurance - a quick google for I was worng on slashdot gets only ~12K hits out of ~33 million comments.

Increasing the price of WIFI instruments may add a bill to 30 million Australians

Agreed for the most part, but I thought our population was a third less then that?

http://developer.windowsphone.com/Default.aspx

Orly, It seems incredibly easy to install undsigned applications on a WinMo phone. Not to mention that Microsoft literally gives out the dev tools for free (Visual Studio Express) if you dont want to pay for the full version (technet is A$400 a year and you get more then just VS professional) so nice try fanboy but you fail horribly.

But to access certain services it needs to be signed, though any nerdy enough user can sign it on their own.

So, local security is enforced and you call this a bad thing. You defeated your own point there by admitting all you have to do is self sign.

If you are a nerd and root it and install your own build,

Clearly you know nothing about Android. When I want to install an application from the web, I simply click on the link to the .apk file and Android asks me for permission to install it. This is on an un-rooted standard Motorola Milestone ROM and a un-rooted HTC Dream ROM. Other models from manufacturers are similar.

if the operator has installed a version that restricts you to signed apps (AT&T's latest shenanigans

In this case, AT&T is the problem, not Android so once again you defeat your own very weak point. You can get around AT&T by buying your phone outright. Unfortunately you cant circumvent the Iphone's restrictions by paying for the device up front. Blame lies with your corrupt and anti-competitive telco's, not Android.

So we are back where we started, no other mobile OS on the market has the same restrictions.

Or does 6000 Kg annoy other people? Shouldn't that be 6 Mg?

The Megagram, otherwise known as the metric ton.

So it really should be written as 6 tons.

Here is the raw data, now will you please stop linking tabloid hit pieces and repeating their propoganda?

Note the raw data in the link has a few minor holes, this is due to the fact some national weather services (eg: France) will only release their data on condition you keep it private. If you intend to perform a reconstruction be aware the raw data is chock full of anaomolies such as undocumented station movements and typos. OTHOH Jones and his unit have spent the last couple of decades ferreting out and documenting these anomolies so you may want to consider using the more complete and more accurate HadCRUT data set or NASA's similarly painstakingly cleaned GISTemp data set.

As you may or may not be aware historical temprature reconstructions are fairly insensitive to the holes and anomolies mentioned above, meaning that the raw data in the link is more than sufficient to reproduce any of the historical temprature reconstructions in the literature. If this is still insuffitient to shake your faith in tabloid journalisim, you could try some of the other raw data and master repositiries.

As much as I enjoy the usual /. digressions, I'd love to get an analysis from anyone who designs logos for a living. I'm not a designer, but I do notice few things that the logos have in common: Most of them have either text or design elements that rise to the upper-right of the logo. Most have some sort of pointer, either arrows (Subway), a slashing underline (Pizza Hut), meteor (Burger King), italics(KFC, Pizza Hut, Subway). Most use primary colours exclusively. Are these elements standard idioms in logo design? Are they universal, or are they specific to North American branding?

Yellow and Red are meant to make people feel hungry, hence why signs tend to favour these colours. Over here Burger King is called Hungry Jacks.

I'm not a designer mind you, I believe in being productive.

It's a cold day in hell for free speech. Perhaps it is brain freeze from Canadian winters.

I wish people would stop using that phrase, by Australian standards it's always a cold day in hell, 9 C.

For comparison it's 21 C and raining here in Perth, this is considered cold.

Damn ./ for not displaying ALT+167.

If it's anything like search on apple.com, then forget it.

Just the other day, I went to www.apple.com/downloads and tried to search for a software update that I knew existed. I couldn't find it even when I searched for it's exact name. Their search is absolutely useless. I eventually found the download by doing a google search.

Here's an example. I want to find the recently released (as in the past week) download for the combo installer for the Mac OS X 10.6.3 update.
Here are the search results from Apple for a search for "10.6.3 combo". Fail.
and here are the results from Google - the first result returned is the one I want. Done.

There other other sources than The Register, including posts by Twitter devs linked from the Scala language site.

"the Great Google Memory hole will remember this guy"

Yes, and it will also remeber he was framed. I'm all for educating the court of public opinion but what's the alternative to a free press reporting news about arrests, etc? - Censor everything the state does until it has come before a judge?

"This guy is going to be stygmatized for life based on a crime he didn't commit."

Natural justice is rare since most crimes can't be undone, someone paralised by a drunk driver will never get their life back. Sure some people will only remeber this guy was arrested for kiddie porn - it sucks to be a victim of a frame and that's why the framer is behind bars.

Wait, wut? Did I get that wrong?

Major corporations don't play April's fools? Seriously? Not even a little bit?

From time to time, I try out the following query on Bing: "Why is Windows so expensive?"

The day that the first result returned is NOT a site about Macs being expensive is the day I'll start to take Bing seriously.

well you'll start taking Bing seriously far earlier then I will. You also haven't done the search in a while.

"Why is Windows so expensive?" on Bing

"Why is Windows so expensive?" on Google

With Google, the first Mac response is number 3, the first two are for the search you mentioned, on Bing it's the eighth result. Both for the same Tech Radar UK article which using Occams razor leads me to believe that Tech Radar UK is gaming the search engines to get more results.

But Microsoft will always be second place to Google, if Google gets knocked out of top spot (bound to happen eventually) they will be third to Google and the no 1 contender. Why? Because MS cannot create innovative new technologies, the can modify existing ideas but not by much, once a technology is bought by MS it pretty much stops evolving until another tech is bought and integrated into it. MS don't innovate, they buy and assimilate, it's their strength and you cant hate them for doing what they are good at.

Google will get knocked out of the top spot one day, my bet is on a new technology developed by one or two brilliant people in their garage.

The UNKNOWN software/electronic fault theory has fallen over at the "prove it" stage, the cars that suffred sudden acceleration have been examined and the electronics found to be working. OTOH Toyota has recalled 3.8 million cars to replace the floor pan so that the KNOWN problem of floor mats intefering with the pedal can be fixed.

Finally, a wayward floor mat doesn't make a good news story unless you're writing it up for the Darwin awards.

"xml sucks" produce 21,300 results

"iphone sucks" produces 30,900 results.

And considering that these numbers are close, and that the overwhelming majority of lay people have no idea whatsoever what XML is, but these same lay people would have to be living in a cave not to know what the iPhone is, we must conclude that XML triumphs over the iPhone in suckitute.

"xml sucks" produce 21,300 results

"iphone sucks" produces 30,900 results.

And considering that these numbers are close, and that the overwhelming majority of lay people have no idea whatsoever what XML is, but these same lay people would have to be living in a cave not to know what the iPhone is, we must conclude that XML triumphs over the iPhone in suckitute.

Googling iPhone sucks...

Your google-fu is weak old man.

you need to use quotations marks.

"xml sucks" produce 21,300 results

"iphone sucks" produces 30,900 results.

Googling iPhone sucks...

Your google-fu is weak old man.

you need to use quotations marks.

"xml sucks" produce 21,300 results

"iphone sucks" produces 30,900 results.

It's really well written, I wish there would be an English version. It's well worth the read

Courtesy Google's Language Tools, link to translation here.

FYI, a google maps link to the location:

http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=37.769573+-122.483123&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=16

time and date: 2010-06-26 14:28:57

I often wonder why central locking hasn't caught on for houses yet. Especially if you could set it to beep at you when you've leaving but you've left a door/window open elsewhere.

For the same reason I have a different key for my screen door and front door. To make it as hard as possible to break in. One single remote for this defeats the purpose and makes it easy to break into my house by attacking me in my front yard (compared to fumbling around with the 8 odd keys and two locks on two doors)