Only if there is a number in the exact middle. If you are rounding to the nearest 5 though there is no middle number. 1,2 go down. 3,4 go up. There is no 2.5 and hence no problem with bias.
Please see the 1991 guideline by the Prices Surveillance Authority, The Withdrawal of Copper Coins, which said codified the "round to nearest 5" approach.
If you think the PSA (now ACCC) don't treat their guidelines as law, try not following them (to the detriment of consumers) and see how fast they manage to frame it as a breach of the Trade Practices Act. If a supermarket tried rounding up from 2c to 5c they'd be in court quicker than you could say "the Trade Practices Act 1974". Of course they could choose to always round down, since you're allowed to charge less than the marked price - but since there was a well known and advertised guideline as to what to do at the time, why would you do any different?
The big supermarkets are all part the Australian Retailers Association whose much more recent Code of Practices for Computerised Checkout Systems includes the language from the PSA guideline:
""" With the withdrawal of copper coins it was necessary to develop Rounding Guidelines to ensure that prices are still fair and accurate, as prices still contain denominations that are no longer in use. Under the Rounding Guidelines the following rounding principles apply to cash transactions:
1 & 2 cents - rounded DOWN to the nearest 10
3 & 4 cents - rounded UP to the nearest 5
6 & 7 cents - rounded DOWN to the nearest 5
8 & 9 cents - rounded UP to the nearest 10 Where a consumer elects to pay by way of cheque, credit card or EFTPOS it is unnecessary for businesses to round the total value of the transaction, as the consumer is able to pay the exact amount. Rounding on these types of transactions may constitute a breach of the Trade Practices Act """
So again, why would any such store not follow their own guidelines - that all their competitors will since they all signed the thing?
I've never heard of such a policy - it'd be stupid to do since the law says how to round so that is isn't detrimental to the store or the customer. None of the large retail stores I shop at do that anyway.
What you can do is combine items so that it always rounds down. You'll save 50c and spend 2 hours at the checkout. You'd be better off spending 15 minutes begging for change outside the store...
About the only time it makes sense is to put $X.02 of petrol in your car instead of $X - but know one I know bothers.
Say you're buying a $5.23 lunch, five days a week. You're actually paying $5.25 a day.
You conveniantly ignore all the occassions you buy a $5.27 lunch and save 2c. Or you're too stupid to read a simple post. Or maybe to stupid to understand what rounding means.
It averages out - sometimes you pay a cent or two above the total price. Sometimes you pay a cent or two below the total price. If you really care about 2c you can always arrange to be paying less, you just have to add/remove items with non-multiples of 5c prices until your total ends in 1c, 2c, 6c, or 7c.
Of course no one does because, they know it evens out in the long term (heck even in the short term).
I would bet the store you're giving those two or three or four cents to does not see it as insignificant, considering that they may be getting that extra one to four cents on hundreds of transactions in a day. Free extra revenue, from people who think that pennies don't matter!
You can't seriously be that dumb, there are only 5 possible results for an individual transaction.
1. the price paid is exactly the total price 2. the store gets an extra 1c 3. the store gets an extra 2c 4. the customer gets an extra 1c 5. the customer gets an extra 2c
There is no 3 and 4 cent option, as is pretty obvious if you think for about a quarter of second instead of just making shit up.
And if you are retarded enough to care, then just always arrange to but things which total $X.02. Congratulations, you save 2c on every transaction you make. Of course the time required to make sure the transaction ends in 2, and the extra items you have to buy to do so will probably make it not worth while - but feel free to stick it to the man!
You just round to the nearest 5 cents. If something costs $13.23 then you end up paying $13.25 if you pay cash, if it costs $13.27 then you also pay $13.25 if you pay cash. When paying by EFTPOS (think swiping your debit card in the US) or credit card or cheque (think check it the US:) you pay to the exact cent. Actual prices are still specified to individual cents, the rounding is done on the total purchase not on each individual item.
It works perfectly well, sure you can get 2c worth of free petrol (gas...) by putting $40.02 in the tank, but no one does because it's 2c... Sure you could try buying 2c (or 7c) worth of petrol over and over again, but no one does that either because it's retarded.
Just because you remove something from cash transactions doesn't mean you change the "base" of your currency - to claim that is just being moronic. Amazingly Australia didn't collapse, the banks didn't have a field day with "false" interest rates, in fact the only thing that changed is you don't end up carrying 10kg of coins at the end of the day...
Inflation means that a penny now is a *much* *much* finer resolution on prices. People managed perfectly well 50 years ago with a much coarser price scheme... Seriously who gives a stuff if something costs $12.32 or $12.33 - can you even tell the difference at the end of week?
Ya think it might the only one of the options you listed which actually mentions SIP. You know the one that is is mentioned about 17 million times in the SIP RFC.
To be fair (and without bothering to watch the video) if there's an explosion then the sky is probably darker afterwards because the light from the explosion will cause the camera to reduce the brightness of the image.
Carbon is what plants are made of. They get carbon from CO2. global warming (in this context) implies greater levels of CO2 (that's the theory for the cause after all, and wht some people would like to see reduced). Hence global warming would naively lead to better plant growth and hence better crop yields.
It's essentially the default theory - it has been studied for decades and everytime someone increases the CO2 levels in a greenhouse the plants grow better than the control greenhouse. It's been done thousands of times. Do you require people to provide references when they claim the Earth orbits the sun due to gravity as well? When people say a larger force will result in a higher acceleration on a given body? When people claim better nutrition results in healthier people?
This "study" tells us nothing. 21 years? How many people even had a cell phone 21 years ago? Of those people, how many of them talked on said phone for two hours a day, every day, for 21 years?
Way to pick the exceptional case mentioned in passing because it's interesting but not important at all to complain about. If the article is vaguely accurate then it looks like what they did was pull data from the cancer registry, pull data from the phone company, mush it together and shock horror people who use mobile phones more don't have levels of cancer. Of course the article may be simplifying things.
Putting a device that emits radiation next to your head is harmful. How much? Who knows. Maybe in 30 years we'll find out.
God damn it! The light in this room is right above my head - why don't they put them in the floor if they're so dangerous near my head?
Then again you're a random slashdot poster and the article quotes the scientific director of the International Epidemiology Institute saying there's no biological basis for it being harmful. Who to trust, who to trust? I wonder which has done more research and has more experience in the field in question?
We don't seem to have the same rendering of http://www.gmail.com/ cause there ain't no link titled "Sign up for Gmail" on mine. And the link you provided requires you to have a mobile phone. Why the hell do you need me to have a mobile phone for webmail?
And the link you provided does have a Signup link, which goes to the mobile phone required page. Do you have a google cookie indicating you already have an account, perhaps?
We all know the 80/20 rule. The first 80% of a software project takes 20% of the time, and it's the extra 20% of the project that requires 80% of the time and effort, but it's also that last 20% that makes it a complete and useful software. Just look at how many software projects (at sourceforge or anywhere else) that have been abandoned halfway because the developer only wanted to have fun coding the first 80% and not serious enough to do the last 20%. Nobody at Google seems to want to do that last 20% either, and that is pretty scary for a billion dollars company that we are supposed to take seriously.
I'm sure the owners care, they're losing money hand over fist after all right? What, they told the SEC they made $730 million in profit last quarter I guess they're all going to jail then.
Smart students go to college expecting to get trained to do jobs.
You have a strange definition of "smart". Smart students don't expect to get job training at university, they expect to get a university education - something essentially unrelated to job training.
Smart people who want training to get a job don't go to university they go and get that training and start working a year, maybe two or three earlier than those who go to university. The university students never catch up with that head start on the pay scale.
Of course the occasional university student makes it big in the "real world" via a university spun off startup or whatever.
Shock horror, Universities aren't job training centers. Who would have thought, places of higher learning actually caring about theories and learning and not about job skills.
Yes because the work done in the fight against, say smallpox, is of no use to you at all since there are other diseases. I guess we should just introduce the virus back into the wild since all those other diseases mean there's no benefit to the current generation from the work to eradicate it.
Slashdot Mirror
France (and a large junk of Europe) have very different ideas about what's a good and bad idea when it comes to regulating business.
The US used pounds in the 1950s? Did you slide in from a parallel universe?
Same over hear, however usually you buy more than one thing at a time... Buy three items for $1.99 and the total is $5.97 which rounds to $5.95...
If the rounding was done on individual items it would be stupid - all prices would be $X.X8, but since it's done on the total it evens out.
too lazy in reality...
But yes my spelling is pathetic, but laziness prevents that from ever being corrected.
Only if there is a number in the exact middle. If you are rounding to the nearest 5 though there is no middle number. 1,2 go down. 3,4 go up. There is no 2.5 and hence no problem with bias.
Please see the 1991 guideline by the Prices Surveillance Authority, The Withdrawal of Copper Coins, which said codified the "round to nearest 5" approach.
If you think the PSA (now ACCC) don't treat their guidelines as law, try not following them (to the detriment of consumers) and see how fast they manage to frame it as a breach of the Trade Practices Act. If a supermarket tried rounding up from 2c to 5c they'd be in court quicker than you could say "the Trade Practices Act 1974". Of course they could choose to always round down, since you're allowed to charge less than the marked price - but since there was a well known and advertised guideline as to what to do at the time, why would you do any different?
The big supermarkets are all part the Australian Retailers Association whose much more recent Code of Practices for Computerised Checkout Systems includes the language from the PSA guideline:
"""
With the withdrawal of copper coins it was necessary to develop Rounding Guidelines to ensure that prices
are still fair and accurate, as prices still contain denominations that are no longer in use. Under the
Rounding Guidelines the following rounding principles apply to cash transactions:
1 & 2 cents - rounded DOWN to the nearest 10
3 & 4 cents - rounded UP to the nearest 5
6 & 7 cents - rounded DOWN to the nearest 5
8 & 9 cents - rounded UP to the nearest 10
Where a consumer elects to pay by way of cheque, credit card or EFTPOS it is unnecessary for businesses
to round the total value of the transaction, as the consumer is able to pay the exact amount. Rounding on
these types of transactions may constitute a breach of the Trade Practices Act
"""
So again, why would any such store not follow their own guidelines - that all their competitors will since they all signed the thing?
I've never heard of such a policy - it'd be stupid to do since the law says how to round so that is isn't detrimental to the store or the customer. None of the large retail stores I shop at do that anyway.
What you can do is combine items so that it always rounds down. You'll save 50c and spend 2 hours at the checkout. You'd be better off spending 15 minutes begging for change outside the store...
About the only time it makes sense is to put $X.02 of petrol in your car instead of $X - but know one I know bothers.
You conveniantly ignore all the occassions you buy a $5.27 lunch and save 2c. Or you're too stupid to read a simple post. Or maybe to stupid to understand what rounding means.
It averages out - sometimes you pay a cent or two above the total price. Sometimes you pay a cent or two below the total price. If you really care about 2c you can always arrange to be paying less, you just have to add/remove items with non-multiples of 5c prices until your total ends in 1c, 2c, 6c, or 7c.
Of course no one does because, they know it evens out in the long term (heck even in the short term).
You can't seriously be that dumb, there are only 5 possible results for an individual transaction.
1. the price paid is exactly the total price
2. the store gets an extra 1c
3. the store gets an extra 2c
4. the customer gets an extra 1c
5. the customer gets an extra 2c
There is no 3 and 4 cent option, as is pretty obvious if you think for about a quarter of second instead of just making shit up.
And if you are retarded enough to care, then just always arrange to but things which total $X.02. Congratulations, you save 2c on every transaction you make. Of course the time required to make sure the transaction ends in 2, and the extra items you have to buy to do so will probably make it not worth while - but feel free to stick it to the man!
For everyone else it averages out.
Australia manages just fine.
:) you pay to the exact cent. Actual prices are still specified to individual cents, the rounding is done on the total purchase not on each individual item.
You just round to the nearest 5 cents. If something costs $13.23 then you end up paying $13.25 if you pay cash, if it costs $13.27 then you also pay $13.25 if you pay cash. When paying by EFTPOS (think swiping your debit card in the US) or credit card or cheque (think check it the US
It works perfectly well, sure you can get 2c worth of free petrol (gas...) by putting $40.02 in the tank, but no one does because it's 2c... Sure you could try buying 2c (or 7c) worth of petrol over and over again, but no one does that either because it's retarded.
Just because you remove something from cash transactions doesn't mean you change the "base" of your currency - to claim that is just being moronic. Amazingly Australia didn't collapse, the banks didn't have a field day with "false" interest rates, in fact the only thing that changed is you don't end up carrying 10kg of coins at the end of the day...
Inflation means that a penny now is a *much* *much* finer resolution on prices. People managed perfectly well 50 years ago with a much coarser price scheme... Seriously who gives a stuff if something costs $12.32 or $12.33 - can you even tell the difference at the end of week?
Ya think it might the only one of the options you listed which actually mentions SIP. You know the one that is is mentioned about 17 million times in the SIP RFC.
To be fair (and without bothering to watch the video) if there's an explosion then the sky is probably darker afterwards because the light from the explosion will cause the camera to reduce the brightness of the image.
Carbon is what plants are made of. They get carbon from CO2. global warming (in this context) implies greater levels of CO2 (that's the theory for the cause after all, and wht some people would like to see reduced). Hence global warming would naively lead to better plant growth and hence better crop yields.
0 6-06-30-voa64.cfm?CFID=31128799&CFTOKEN=70212074
It's essentially the default theory - it has been studied for decades and everytime someone increases the CO2 levels in a greenhouse the plants grow better than the control greenhouse. It's been done thousands of times. Do you require people to provide references when they claim the Earth orbits the sun due to gravity as well? When people say a larger force will result in a higher acceleration on a given body? When people claim better nutrition results in healthier people?
Of course while it's the default theory, it can crumble if further evidence is found such as: http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-06/20
Because there's no such thing as a jump instruction.
Way to pick the exceptional case mentioned in passing because it's interesting but not important at all to complain about. If the article is vaguely accurate then it looks like what they did was pull data from the cancer registry, pull data from the phone company, mush it together and shock horror people who use mobile phones more don't have levels of cancer. Of course the article may be simplifying things.
God damn it! The light in this room is right above my head - why don't they put them in the floor if they're so dangerous near my head?
Then again you're a random slashdot poster and the article quotes the scientific director of the International Epidemiology Institute saying there's no biological basis for it being harmful. Who to trust, who to trust? I wonder which has done more research and has more experience in the field in question?
And the link you provided does have a Signup link, which goes to the mobile phone required page. Do you have a google cookie indicating you already have an account, perhaps?
I'm sure the owners care, they're losing money hand over fist after all right? What, they told the SEC they made $730 million in profit last quarter I guess they're all going to jail then.
You thought wrong. Hint, the topic isn't Indian colleges.
An Athlon 64 X2 or a Core duo for $200, in 2004? Where do you shop?
You have a strange definition of "smart". Smart students don't expect to get job training at university, they expect to get a university education - something essentially unrelated to job training.
Smart people who want training to get a job don't go to university they go and get that training and start working a year, maybe two or three earlier than those who go to university. The university students never catch up with that head start on the pay scale.
Of course the occasional university student makes it big in the "real world" via a university spun off startup or whatever.
Shock horror, Universities aren't job training centers. Who would have thought, places of higher learning actually caring about theories and learning and not about job skills.
It's irrelevant anyway, the Coalition has a majority in both houses of parliament, they can pass anything they want.
Just ignore that .75 seconds is the usual reaction time for drivers. Plus the .75 seconds to actually notice that the car in front hit the brakes.
People are slow...
Yes because the work done in the fight against, say smallpox, is of no use to you at all since there are other diseases. I guess we should just introduce the virus back into the wild since all those other diseases mean there's no benefit to the current generation from the work to eradicate it.
What do those poor people do when they have to catch plane? drive through a tunnel? ride an elevator?
Well the right to censor someone else's speech and replace it with some false claims, but yeah same principle.
Because no one else has those... Let's ignore that Russia used them in the 60s.