I'm sure the seller would be much happier waiting a few tiny fractions of a second longer for a trade rather than effectively being forced to pay an unwanted middleman.
That's not how it works. The seller always gets paid exactly their Limit price. The only question is when. If the market is going up, it happens very quickly. If the market is down, it may never happen unless they reprice lower - in which case they DO get less money - and they would have been better off getting their original price earlier, if only there was a buyer on their market. Well, the HFT is the buyer on their market.
Good points, all of them. Hopefully these two sides of it will help encourage some productive discussion instead of the misconceptions that most people argue in circles about whenever HFT comes up.
That would result in different markets diverging by 0.2% before the arbitrageurs can step in and start trading between them to even things out. That's friction, antithetical to liquidity. The end result of such a tax is the arbitrageurs make less money and the buyers and sellers on the divergent markets don't make trades at prices that they would have otherwise have made trades - IE, less actual, real, legitimate commerce takes place.
That's a huge cost to pay, and we shouldn't do it out of spite because we think the HFT guys are scummy middlemen. They're middlemen that are promoting commerce - and it's not clear at all that what they do is net negative. Indeed, in economics circles the general belief is that they're a net benefit.
Arbitrage benefits everyone. Given a seller with a limit order and a buyer buying at market price:
* The seller's order gets executed at their asking price sooner, which is good for them.
* The buyer's order gets executed at a lower price than would otherwise be available on their local market.
* The HFT skims a small amount in exchange for making a match which made the market more efficient.
This ISP is not trying to protect anybodies privacy, and they admit that fact
Actually, no. Exactly the opposite. From TFA:
AG: If your ISP is able to operate with only two weeks of logging, why can’t others like Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner?
DJ: They should. I think ISPs need to minimize their logging to a degree that it works within their business, notify customers about subpoenas and, where subpoenas warrant resistance after review, they should resist them.
AG: Why don’t they?
DJ: I could only speculate. Costs. The cost is legal friction and lawyers.
Sonic is an unusually good ISP. They are consistently awesome, even when it's not the most profitable thing, and have a long track record of standing up for their users in the face of litigation and censorship problems. Perhaps that's profitable in the long run by making fanatically loyal customers (and they are), but that's 180 degrees from the corner cutting you're suggesting.
It's actually not that it's perceived as better. Louder simply gets noticed more. If you have the radio playing at a low level as unobtrusive background music but then a song comes on that's a little louder, you're more likely to pay attention to it, remember the hooks, and then go buy a copy. You didn't necessarily like it any more than if it was played with more dynamic range; they just got you to pay attention at the right moment.
Plain old RCA cables like you use for composite video, except you use three of them. Most HDTVs have a set of component inputs for this. It was the analog standard used before DRM, and thus HDMI, was mandated by the content assholes.
the problem is their choice of client and their inability to use it propertly. Solid email clients combined with best practices facilitate both these tasks
No argument there! I use a solid email client and I know how to use it well, but the fact is that a large number of people don't. In my case enough of my users are technically proficient, and I've just made it clear that the rest can either learn or simply have to cope; fortunately I can in my case, but for what the OP is looking for, well, let's just say he's going to have a lot of Yahoo users. He can say "deal with it", but he's going to lose a significant number of users.
For example: how shall I CC myself a copy of my own comments here today so that I can reference it in the future
That's just one of many ways that web forums suck for email users. My pet peeve is vBulletin: "There may also be other replies, but you will not receive any more notifications until you visit the forum again." Way to completely get the feature WRONG.
The bottom line is that mailing lists work great for people with full-strength email clients, but suck for web users; web forums are good for web users, but suck for those of us who prefer email. Yahoo Groups is really one of very few systems that do OK at both.
Car chargers are usually just boost converters. With the higher rating it'll push more current when connected to a battery, but it will probably perform about the same given a 10W source.
+1 Mailman, but with reservations. I run a large Mailman list and everything you said is true: it can handle large lists gracefully. That doesn't just mean performance. That means handling bounces properly, regex filters to catch things that need to go to the moderation queue, and all the other advanced stuff required for a large list.
However, it's very much a traditional mailing list setup, and that's not what the OP was asking for. It has web-based archives, but they're read-only - you can't do things like click "reply to this" on the web and follow up like you do in a web forum. My userbase is technical, but even still I have a minority that hates having to use an email client, and they do have some good points: in a mail client, you can only see what's in your inbox, not the whole thread. This results in excessive quoting, which just makes things ugly. So you either have to switch back and forth to the archives, or leave stuff in your inbox that you don't intend to reply to, or sort it into folders (automated filtering is really beyond most people). That's extra load for them, and they just want to go to the thread on their web browser. That's where Google and Yahoo excel. Unfortunately they come with all the downsides you mention.
Yes, I just charge a small 12v gel cell and then use DC-DC converters to get whatever voltage I need.
I'm not sure if the Thinkpads will charge from a 10W panel. The power port doesn't connect directly to the battery. There's a charging circuit which regulates current to the lesser of what the battery or power supply can handle. So if you connect a 65W power supply, the charging circuit pulls until it sees the voltage start dropping (which happens sooner than a 90W power supply), then just holds that charge rate. The trouble is the charging circuit may decide something is wrong when the voltage starts dropping when it's only pulling 10W.
Fortunately, it's easy to try out! What you need is a "dc-dc boost converter", aka a "step up converter". Like this: boost converter. Warning, Chinese seller; it'll take a couple weeks to arrive, but I've bought buck converters (convert DC down instead of up) from them a couple times and never had a problem. Take one of those and try converting up from a 12V wall wart and see if it works before you get the panels.
One potential problem: the voltage out of the solar panels will vary with load. Mine goes up to about 20V with no load. The boost converter will not convert down. There are two ways to address it: either add a small gel cell battery to hold the voltage near 12V, or use a buck-boost converter. That's just what it sounds like: boost the voltage up to say 35V, then convert back down to 19V. Of course you take a double hit on conversion efficiency doing this. It's likely not a real problem though; the laptop probably won't care, and as soon as it starts pulling power it'll go right back into the range the boost converter can handle.
I have a 5W panel so I can run the radios at home, but I'd never bother carrying it. It's a lot bigger and heavier than the batteries, and spare batteries are relatively trouble free.:)
At 2 mW, you'd have to walk for over 1000 hours to generate the energy held in 1 AA battery. Rather than strapping a wonky device to my knee, I'd rather just carry a spare battery.
Related, my bug out bag doesn't contain a hand-crank radio or flashlight. It has a couple packs of AAs, which are much lighter than the food to replace the energy I'd expend cranking. They'll last me at least a few weeks. If civilization can't reestablish itself in that time, I'm probably fucked, regardless of electricity.
Don't expect to come out much smaller than a netbook, ultrabook, or Air. It's hard to shrink a keyboard down much smaller than that and still have it be pleasant to use. You can trim it SOME, but not much.
The biggest problem you're creating is wires. If you go down this road you will absolutely have to use a wireless keyboard and mouse. I suggest a Logitech Unifying pair - it will allow both together on a single tiny dongle.
Then try to combine the projector and the computer somehow. I doubt any of the tiny projectors will have enough room to stuff the computer inside, but definitely attach them to each other somehow. If you want to go classy, make a custom wooden box for the computer that can mount to the projector. Midrange, get a premade case for the computer and use some double sided tape to join them. Low end, duct tape can do anything.
Having attached them together, you can now use a very short cable to connect the two of them. Also, see if you can get a projector with a power supply beefy enough and at the proper voltage to run the computer as well. Tap the computer's power into the projector somewhere (drill a hole and solder in). Then you only have to carry one power supply, and you don't have to keep hooking things up.
While not exactly practical, it would give you a fun and unusual computer if you're up for the tinkering.
"Interesting. Compare my data 4 high-energy nucleons w V1's That increase is attracting attention!"
I've tried four times and can't parse that string, let alone make sense of it. Can someone from the appropriate generation translate it for me, please?
The X1nn (and Thinkpad Edge, etc) doesn't have: magnesium roll cages, the very good Thinkpad keyboard, docking stations, the bend lid edge which interlocks with the body to keep junk from getting in when it's closed, lid latches, drains (see the numerous youtube videos of what happens when you pour a cup of water on the keyboard: it has built in channels to the drains and it doesn't get the motherboard wet), plus lots of little touches like thinklights and the rugged feet.
I'm not saying they're BAD, they're just not built like Thinkpads. Cutting these things let them get the price down considerably, and they're very well equipped for their price point... But they screwed with the formula. Thinkpad used to be synonymous with "Premium rugged business laptop" instead of "a well-equipped business laptop with good value for the money".
They're not netbooks either - despite being that size they're crammed full of much higher spec guts, and generally made to a higher standard. It's just it's own class of thing, and probably exactly what the OP is looking for.
You don't want an Air. That's basically taking the parts from a full power, full featured laptop and using heavy integration to cram it into an extra thin case.
Doing that for cheaper is basically the definition of "Ultrabook".
But you're looking for less powerful and less expensive. That's square on what Netbooks were created for. Pick your favorite 12" model.
If you want something with more midrange performance, look at the Thinkpad X130 series. It's not a real Thinkpad, but more of a premium-grade netbook.
A person riding past on a tall unicycle results in one person seeing over the fence. Google taking pictures is explicitly for the purpose of posting them to a popular web site with strong indexing so anyone in the world can look over your fence remotely.
I wouldn't mind if some guy on a unicycle looked over my fence and saw me exposing myself to the sky. He can deal with his own mental scars. But I wouldn't be happy about it at all if Google took pictures for the whole world to see.
I don't have a degree. School bored me to death so I dropped out and took the GED. That's all the paper I have.
I got some things on my resume by working on my own hobby projects that demonstrated that I could work on moderate-scale systems. I also got a bit of white-collar job experience working as a drafting monkey. Those two things demonstrated the two primary things that employers want to see: a) I'm capable of doing technical things; b) I'm capable of showing up for a job sober enough to not get fired for a few months at a time.
With that on my resume, my formal education has never been an issue. It was enough to get an entry-level sysadmin job. It was relatively low pay and under my skill level, but I didn't care - I stuck it out for a year at which point I had solid relevant experience on my resume. From there I was able to jump into jobs that challenged me and made me learn rather than the ones that paid the best - those are solid resume gold, and result in the next job paying much better than this job would have if I'd simply gone for max pay. (I also simply prefer harder jobs - it also keeps me from getting bored.)
The other thing I do is keep learning. I hated school, but I love learning at my own pace and on my own time. It's its own reward, so I don't have any problem with motivation for it, but if you're not like that, do at least try to completely immerse yourself into learning something relevant to your career. Again, hobby projects are great. Then when you're in an interview you get to show off all the things you know.
Perhaps I'm biased, but when I'm hiring people the highest weighted thing when I'm scanning resumes is to look at their most recent job and see not what they were responsible for, but what they accomplished. That matters much more than job titles or formal education.
It works the same in NASA as it does in software dev: you get what you pay for. If you want results, pay for results. If you pay for development, all you get is lots of development.
a globally accessible persistent user-constructable 3D world, but it hasn't happened yet
SecondLife. The limiting factor is that after you've created a dildo gun and traded it for strap on wings, it comes down to either socializing (which IM accomplishes with lower hardware requirements), or endlessly creating for creativity's sake, which only a small percentage of people care to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. BP had a spill on an established field. They get to pretend like nothing's wrong and continue on as before.
Shell wants to start up a new field. They need permission, and they won't get it if they create a PR clusterfuck.
Right? Wrong? Few care. It's politics.
I'm sure the seller would be much happier waiting a few tiny fractions of a second longer for a trade rather than effectively being forced to pay an unwanted middleman.
That's not how it works. The seller always gets paid exactly their Limit price. The only question is when. If the market is going up, it happens very quickly. If the market is down, it may never happen unless they reprice lower - in which case they DO get less money - and they would have been better off getting their original price earlier, if only there was a buyer on their market. Well, the HFT is the buyer on their market.
Good points, all of them. Hopefully these two sides of it will help encourage some productive discussion instead of the misconceptions that most people argue in circles about whenever HFT comes up.
undodgable tax of 0.2%?
That would result in different markets diverging by 0.2% before the arbitrageurs can step in and start trading between them to even things out. That's friction, antithetical to liquidity. The end result of such a tax is the arbitrageurs make less money and the buyers and sellers on the divergent markets don't make trades at prices that they would have otherwise have made trades - IE, less actual, real, legitimate commerce takes place.
That's a huge cost to pay, and we shouldn't do it out of spite because we think the HFT guys are scummy middlemen. They're middlemen that are promoting commerce - and it's not clear at all that what they do is net negative. Indeed, in economics circles the general belief is that they're a net benefit.
Lowers transaction costs? Which ones!?
Arbitrage benefits everyone. Given a seller with a limit order and a buyer buying at market price:
* The seller's order gets executed at their asking price sooner, which is good for them.
* The buyer's order gets executed at a lower price than would otherwise be available on their local market.
* The HFT skims a small amount in exchange for making a match which made the market more efficient.
This ISP is not trying to protect anybodies privacy, and they admit that fact
Actually, no. Exactly the opposite. From TFA:
AG: If your ISP is able to operate with only two weeks of logging, why can’t others like Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner?
DJ: They should. I think ISPs need to minimize their logging to a degree that it works within their business, notify customers about subpoenas and, where subpoenas warrant resistance after review, they should resist them.
AG: Why don’t they?
DJ: I could only speculate. Costs. The cost is legal friction and lawyers.
Sonic is an unusually good ISP. They are consistently awesome, even when it's not the most profitable thing, and have a long track record of standing up for their users in the face of litigation and censorship problems. Perhaps that's profitable in the long run by making fanatically loyal customers (and they are), but that's 180 degrees from the corner cutting you're suggesting.
It's actually not that it's perceived as better. Louder simply gets noticed more. If you have the radio playing at a low level as unobtrusive background music but then a song comes on that's a little louder, you're more likely to pay attention to it, remember the hooks, and then go buy a copy. You didn't necessarily like it any more than if it was played with more dynamic range; they just got you to pay attention at the right moment.
Plain old RCA cables like you use for composite video, except you use three of them. Most HDTVs have a set of component inputs for this. It was the analog standard used before DRM, and thus HDMI, was mandated by the content assholes.
More info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_cable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YCbCr
the problem is their choice of client and their inability to use it propertly. Solid email clients combined with best practices facilitate both these tasks
No argument there! I use a solid email client and I know how to use it well, but the fact is that a large number of people don't. In my case enough of my users are technically proficient, and I've just made it clear that the rest can either learn or simply have to cope; fortunately I can in my case, but for what the OP is looking for, well, let's just say he's going to have a lot of Yahoo users. He can say "deal with it", but he's going to lose a significant number of users.
For example: how shall I CC myself a copy of my own comments here today so that I can reference it in the future
That's just one of many ways that web forums suck for email users. My pet peeve is vBulletin: "There may also be other replies, but you will not receive any more notifications until you visit the forum again." Way to completely get the feature WRONG.
The bottom line is that mailing lists work great for people with full-strength email clients, but suck for web users; web forums are good for web users, but suck for those of us who prefer email. Yahoo Groups is really one of very few systems that do OK at both.
Car chargers are usually just boost converters. With the higher rating it'll push more current when connected to a battery, but it will probably perform about the same given a 10W source.
+1 Mailman, but with reservations. I run a large Mailman list and everything you said is true: it can handle large lists gracefully. That doesn't just mean performance. That means handling bounces properly, regex filters to catch things that need to go to the moderation queue, and all the other advanced stuff required for a large list.
However, it's very much a traditional mailing list setup, and that's not what the OP was asking for. It has web-based archives, but they're read-only - you can't do things like click "reply to this" on the web and follow up like you do in a web forum. My userbase is technical, but even still I have a minority that hates having to use an email client, and they do have some good points: in a mail client, you can only see what's in your inbox, not the whole thread. This results in excessive quoting, which just makes things ugly. So you either have to switch back and forth to the archives, or leave stuff in your inbox that you don't intend to reply to, or sort it into folders (automated filtering is really beyond most people). That's extra load for them, and they just want to go to the thread on their web browser. That's where Google and Yahoo excel. Unfortunately they come with all the downsides you mention.
Yes, I just charge a small 12v gel cell and then use DC-DC converters to get whatever voltage I need.
I'm not sure if the Thinkpads will charge from a 10W panel. The power port doesn't connect directly to the battery. There's a charging circuit which regulates current to the lesser of what the battery or power supply can handle. So if you connect a 65W power supply, the charging circuit pulls until it sees the voltage start dropping (which happens sooner than a 90W power supply), then just holds that charge rate. The trouble is the charging circuit may decide something is wrong when the voltage starts dropping when it's only pulling 10W.
Fortunately, it's easy to try out! What you need is a "dc-dc boost converter", aka a "step up converter". Like this: boost converter. Warning, Chinese seller; it'll take a couple weeks to arrive, but I've bought buck converters (convert DC down instead of up) from them a couple times and never had a problem. Take one of those and try converting up from a 12V wall wart and see if it works before you get the panels.
One potential problem: the voltage out of the solar panels will vary with load. Mine goes up to about 20V with no load. The boost converter will not convert down. There are two ways to address it: either add a small gel cell battery to hold the voltage near 12V, or use a buck-boost converter. That's just what it sounds like: boost the voltage up to say 35V, then convert back down to 19V. Of course you take a double hit on conversion efficiency doing this. It's likely not a real problem though; the laptop probably won't care, and as soon as it starts pulling power it'll go right back into the range the boost converter can handle.
Perhaps a pound. It's a 1 square foot glass panel, not a roll-up. http://amzn.com/B0006JO0TC Not that heavy, but neither are batteries.
I have a 5W panel so I can run the radios at home, but I'd never bother carrying it. It's a lot bigger and heavier than the batteries, and spare batteries are relatively trouble free. :)
At 2 mW, you'd have to walk for over 1000 hours to generate the energy held in 1 AA battery. Rather than strapping a wonky device to my knee, I'd rather just carry a spare battery.
Related, my bug out bag doesn't contain a hand-crank radio or flashlight. It has a couple packs of AAs, which are much lighter than the food to replace the energy I'd expend cranking. They'll last me at least a few weeks. If civilization can't reestablish itself in that time, I'm probably fucked, regardless of electricity.
Don't expect to come out much smaller than a netbook, ultrabook, or Air. It's hard to shrink a keyboard down much smaller than that and still have it be pleasant to use. You can trim it SOME, but not much.
The biggest problem you're creating is wires. If you go down this road you will absolutely have to use a wireless keyboard and mouse. I suggest a Logitech Unifying pair - it will allow both together on a single tiny dongle.
Then try to combine the projector and the computer somehow. I doubt any of the tiny projectors will have enough room to stuff the computer inside, but definitely attach them to each other somehow. If you want to go classy, make a custom wooden box for the computer that can mount to the projector. Midrange, get a premade case for the computer and use some double sided tape to join them. Low end, duct tape can do anything.
Having attached them together, you can now use a very short cable to connect the two of them. Also, see if you can get a projector with a power supply beefy enough and at the proper voltage to run the computer as well. Tap the computer's power into the projector somewhere (drill a hole and solder in). Then you only have to carry one power supply, and you don't have to keep hooking things up.
While not exactly practical, it would give you a fun and unusual computer if you're up for the tinkering.
"Interesting. Compare my data 4 high-energy nucleons w V1's That increase is attracting attention!"
I've tried four times and can't parse that string, let alone make sense of it. Can someone from the appropriate generation translate it for me, please?
The X1nn (and Thinkpad Edge, etc) doesn't have: magnesium roll cages, the very good Thinkpad keyboard, docking stations, the bend lid edge which interlocks with the body to keep junk from getting in when it's closed, lid latches, drains (see the numerous youtube videos of what happens when you pour a cup of water on the keyboard: it has built in channels to the drains and it doesn't get the motherboard wet), plus lots of little touches like thinklights and the rugged feet.
I'm not saying they're BAD, they're just not built like Thinkpads. Cutting these things let them get the price down considerably, and they're very well equipped for their price point... But they screwed with the formula. Thinkpad used to be synonymous with "Premium rugged business laptop" instead of "a well-equipped business laptop with good value for the money".
They're not netbooks either - despite being that size they're crammed full of much higher spec guts, and generally made to a higher standard. It's just it's own class of thing, and probably exactly what the OP is looking for.
You don't want an Air. That's basically taking the parts from a full power, full featured laptop and using heavy integration to cram it into an extra thin case.
Doing that for cheaper is basically the definition of "Ultrabook".
But you're looking for less powerful and less expensive. That's square on what Netbooks were created for. Pick your favorite 12" model.
If you want something with more midrange performance, look at the Thinkpad X130 series. It's not a real Thinkpad, but more of a premium-grade netbook.
A person riding past on a tall unicycle results in one person seeing over the fence. Google taking pictures is explicitly for the purpose of posting them to a popular web site with strong indexing so anyone in the world can look over your fence remotely.
I wouldn't mind if some guy on a unicycle looked over my fence and saw me exposing myself to the sky. He can deal with his own mental scars. But I wouldn't be happy about it at all if Google took pictures for the whole world to see.
I don't have a degree. School bored me to death so I dropped out and took the GED. That's all the paper I have.
I got some things on my resume by working on my own hobby projects that demonstrated that I could work on moderate-scale systems. I also got a bit of white-collar job experience working as a drafting monkey. Those two things demonstrated the two primary things that employers want to see: a) I'm capable of doing technical things; b) I'm capable of showing up for a job sober enough to not get fired for a few months at a time.
With that on my resume, my formal education has never been an issue. It was enough to get an entry-level sysadmin job. It was relatively low pay and under my skill level, but I didn't care - I stuck it out for a year at which point I had solid relevant experience on my resume. From there I was able to jump into jobs that challenged me and made me learn rather than the ones that paid the best - those are solid resume gold, and result in the next job paying much better than this job would have if I'd simply gone for max pay. (I also simply prefer harder jobs - it also keeps me from getting bored.)
The other thing I do is keep learning. I hated school, but I love learning at my own pace and on my own time. It's its own reward, so I don't have any problem with motivation for it, but if you're not like that, do at least try to completely immerse yourself into learning something relevant to your career. Again, hobby projects are great. Then when you're in an interview you get to show off all the things you know.
Perhaps I'm biased, but when I'm hiring people the highest weighted thing when I'm scanning resumes is to look at their most recent job and see not what they were responsible for, but what they accomplished. That matters much more than job titles or formal education.
pay for the development
It works the same in NASA as it does in software dev: you get what you pay for. If you want results, pay for results. If you pay for development, all you get is lots of development.
a globally accessible persistent user-constructable 3D world, but it hasn't happened yet
SecondLife. The limiting factor is that after you've created a dildo gun and traded it for strap on wings, it comes down to either socializing (which IM accomplishes with lower hardware requirements), or endlessly creating for creativity's sake, which only a small percentage of people care to do.
As for the free software trolling - this isn't the first: Android is Free (Apache licensed) software.
You're probably thinking of the Ashkenazi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_intelligence