I got about halfway through before I basically got bored with it. Maybe there's some awesome ending where you get to make friends with Che Guevera that I missed. But basically it's Zelda, set in a cartoony world, and you have a mildly sexy lead character. But having a woman as the lead character is so out of place with the rest of the game that it makes no inroads for women in gaming, other than to demonstate that you can put a woman as the lead character and still not sell a game.
Is it good? I guess. But it's no Zelda or Ico. You can also kinda tell it was made for all 3 platforms, because the models look awful compared to other Cube or XBox games. If you find it on discount, you might as well pick it up if you don't already have a lot of games on your plate.
I think it's got less to do with who uses Debian for console only applications like servers, and more to do with the fact that one needs only install Debian once. The Debian Developers, the people in the best position to introduce such a software haven't done so in the past because it isn't their itch. Even if you look at the beta screenshots, it's the same procedure and installer done up in GTK. Compared to Fedora's installer, this is pointless.
And it's not like Debian doesn't have a great chance to improve and beat Fedora: the Fedora graphical installer really blows at net installs. I got a couple of errors when installing it; they leave common errors hanging on a dialog asking if I want to retry. On retry it came through fine. But they should at least pick up some of the fine points the FC gui installer has. Explanitory information is very useful for someone who only has the installer CD. Hopefully, this is only a very rough beta to prove that they can at least accomplish the same things a txt installer does with a graphical installer.
From what I can tell this is just some retail company that decided to throw in one of those free Ubuntu discs with a microdrive, rather than anything officially supported by Ubuntu / Cannoical. Still interesting, but a little bit less newsworthy when you discover that a) the "pre-installed" OS is not pre-installed, and b) it takes 4 minutes to boot.
When you look at the graph, you see that you're getting less than 10MB/sec. Two questions: what are the numbers on the bottom referring to, and why does the graph look like it does? Is there some caching mechanism going on?
I'm simply talking about having an mp3 or video on your desktop that you downloaded and looked at, and a folder on the Desktop called "Documents" that I created. Dragging the media file onto the unopened folder causes Nautilus to copy the file rather than move it. Not even a Dialog indicating it's copying things. =(
Keep in mind that Dapper is unstable / likely to be broken often. 5.10 / Breezy is still fine and will be updated periodically while they work on making Dapper "releasable." Just because Dapper is publicly available doesn't mean the public nessecarily wants it.
Not to rain on your parade or anything, but I can confirm that the screenshot in question looks very much like my Ubuntu Breezy Firefox 1.0.7 save dialog. Dia.94, which I just installed to check it out, uses the older dialog. Judging from the page that screenshot came from, it seems GNOME wants to migrate away from that.
Presumably, the screenshot in question is GIMP Save As'ing a picture / diagram. I don't much care for the new dialog, although if it would perhaps infer places I frequently save things to that might improve it some.
Since I've got the ear of a fellow GNOME user, when did GNOME decide that drag and drop meant drag and copy? And of course, I'm still waiting for them to let me drag and drop into folders on my Desktop. I did hear however that they finally got a patch in to stop removable media icons from popping up over icons that already exist. So hurray on that front.
> You know, Apple doesn't tie up large sections of the industry in backwards, proprietary technology. They're cutting edge.
So cutting edge are they, that large sections of the market love and use firewire! Perhaps the reason Apple doesn't tie up large sections of the market isn't because they have proprietary technology, but because they charge too much for that tech. I suppose we should be thankful Apple hasn't had the balls to lower prices.
I'll bite. Firstly, we have no evidence that the laws that appear to govern the universe around us today apply universally, let alone universally across time. That is, perhaps the rules have changed, we just don't know. So your argument by contradiction treads on the thin ice of assumptions. Why the big bang happened is very much open to discussion and investigation. On to the specifics.
Firstly, the second law of thermo is more of a guideline than a law. It's not an absolute, that every second in time, we're progressing towards some state of unpredictability; hence the word "tends". Furthermore, the law describes entropy, a concept we made up to encompass some concept of randomness at a microscopic level. Entropy is basically directly related to the number of possible states. Most importantly, the concepts of order and disorder rely on the possible configurations within the system. The most typical model of a system is a container of free floating gaseous molecules, although its possible to make up more complex examples. That said, it's also one of the most unassailable theories we have. "Not even Maxwell's laws of electricity or Newton's law of gravitation are so sacrosanct, for each has measurable corrections coming from quantum effects or general relativity." (Thermodynamics, Ivan P. Bazarov).
Now, you then go on to apply this microscopic concept to a MUCH MUCH higher level than it was intended to represent. Following your proof model, I can show that it's impossible for us to design a better computer under the laws of thermodynamics, for example. It's more organized, more complex, after all. And yet it would be difficult to do so without understanding the second law. Even more so for air conditioners;) Thermo is intended to represent molecular randomness related to heat and energy, not model the complex interactions of organic molecules that propegate through various useful chemical properties. Furthermore, even if it was appropriate to generalize thermodynamics to things far outside its scale like evolution and astrodynamics and gravity, the observed "species explosion" suggests that the universe is growing new species (perhaps less so in within our life times, but still), which means the matter of the universe is finding more and more ways to organize itself. This is an increase in the possible states of the universe, which is by definition an increase in entropy. I still think it's hooey to describe lifeforms in the same fashion one describes the mechanics of an air conditioner or hot air baloon, however.
Intelligent Design is a theory, just like Lamarckian evolution is. Even a vigorous disproof doesn't render the idea not a theroy. And as far as I can tell, Lamarkian evolution is a far more appropriate "alternative theory" than ID, with more predictive value than ID. Perhaps we need a stronger statement than "science teaches us theories about observed natural occurrances."
With ID, you can't even suggest that the world, universe and all our memories are older than five seconds. Sure, decay of naturally occuring isotopes might suggest that some previously living things are older than other previously living things, but an All Powerful being is just as capable of creating a consistant backstory as it is creating the universe as we know it.
Google's business model is dead simple: purchase lots of computing facilities, and set a ton of intelligent people on the task of using them to make business decisions. This typically means computer experts, economists and finance experts all working together on wierd things like hidden markov models, or whatever else powers AdSense. This is the same strategy that's also placed Wal-mart as one of the largest companies in the world. Walmart brings in several finance experts and datamining experts to sift through their transactions for trends (such as pop tart sales during hurricanes, or an above average correlation of having beer and diapers in the same shopping cart). So this business technique is not lost on the giants of the world.
The difference is that aside from the computing facilities at Google, the only thing of physical value Google has is 7 billion dollars in the bank. That's enough money to find almost any high margin market and show up en force within six months. The only two I can think of off the top of my head that Google can't change the landscape of in six months is Pharmeceuticals and Defense Contracting. I'm reasonably certain neither one is something Google wants to be in, though. The only thing outside of more Internet related activity Google might pursue is Banking. Although if they did set up a bank, I suspect it would also be heavily internet related. However, there's a lot of software to be built for a banking institution, and it would be in Google's best interests to built it itself-- you've got loans (possibly) to deal with, and fraud detection / prevention... the list goes on. It's been speculated that they're coming out with something to allow money transactions across the internet, similar to Paypal I suppose.
Amazon also tries the same thing, although they're focused on retailing and other markets. Wal-mart should really be much more worried about Amazon, and they probably are. Amazon sells a lot of the same stuff Walmart does, without the expenses of however many thousands of stores Walmart operates. I think you over simplify the problem. I don't think many businesses believe that they're giving people what they don't want or need.
There already is a market for software; it's just not very efficient, so only the biggest of players can participate. Microsoft has been successful mostly as a software market maker / trader. Novell appears to be the same. Oracle is in a similar scenario, as is Apple. Sure, Apple also sells computer hardware at a sizeable margin, but look at how well
But be careful what you wish for; you want a stock market for software. That would mean that anyone with the most money can come through and buy out a given piece of software, and they will, if there's more money to be made in it -- stock means control. You might consider it an investment for a wealthy.com'er to take his millions and buy a company and release the code, but there's measurable return on investment. Sure, now many more people are free to look at, modify and use the software, and I suppose the software has been more Liberated, but it's a one time game. What we really need to see is some way of coming out with more money than you started, so the process can happen again with more software.
You might imagine MSFT as 300 billion votes that it's not possible to open source something and earn your money back.
I bet once they fix the site you could easily double your speed and start earning more like 6.50 an hour. That's starting to get into the kinds of wages teenagers earn, and is probably better for students. Still no overtime pay or benefits, but there's also no boss, no stupid uniforms or punishment if you come in late.
On the other hand, so far the only people using mturk is amazon for some fairly trivial stuff. I would hope that Amazon figures out how to attract other people to their marketplace. There seems to be all kinds of things that one might do with it, but the method is so extraordinary that they'll definately need a serious market boosting mechanism. Perhaps we'll see some "grade my paper" type scholarships, where amazon hands out 10 dollars of money to students to spend on this, and via mturk they get back 20 reviews. Something to get people to try it without risking much, ya see? And of course, by hitting up students like that, they'll also bring in more people on the work side. Certainly interesting stuff here, hopefully they can pull it together into something new and amazing.
DS and PSP both have plenty of hackers, even with official opposition to the very notion. It would appear that device hackers feel no qualms about working with "closed source" hardware. It seems that most hackers pick a technology for the transformational value. Taking a wifi router that's already quite cheap and vastly improving its features, that sort of thing. And I suspect the wide distribution of the product to be hacked plays into it as well, not just in how many potential hackers have the product, but how many hackers decide it's worth it to hack it and share.
Then the 442 is in a troubling spot. Partly because they already have a core set of developers who know the product and helped create the specs, there appears to be little documentation of the hardware used to run it. This is also partly because music players rarely get the kind of inspective treatment the various game machines do. The other big problem is that this thing costs about twice as much as their competitors. Price is a big determinate of sales, and if you want your "hacks" to see widespread use, you should be interested in seeing the price fall.
How come I can't install and run Windows, OSX, Solaris and Linux binaries from ONE file downloaded over the internet? There's no legitimate technical reason for this, it's just nerds in their IVORY TOWER who refuse to make their systems more usable for us, the common man. They resort to fabricating stories of "DLL Hell" and library versioning, binary incompatible C library compiles, differing base installs, conflicting file overwrites, and the costs of distributing static compiled binaries, but refuse to recognize the immense value I place on this. Why is it that Microsoft, Sun, Apple, Novell, Redhat, Debian, Gentoo, Mandriva, and IBM can't cooperate to determine exactly what it is that my system should be providing as a bare minimum of computing system facilities?
I'd like to conclude by thanking the superlative Stephen Colbert for giving me the inspiration for this post. May the Lord protect us, the keepers of the light of Truth.
Showing the movie ratings as an example of successful self regulation probably isn't the best argument to give a guy who blamed an R rated film (Basketball Diaries) for the murderous behavior of a 14 year old murderer.
Well, they do own several other direct revenue methods, like Google Earth Plus. And I suppose you could also claim that when they issue new stock, that's a direct sale. But by and large the majority of Google's income is advertising.
But they're certainly evaluating several different methods of making money. Google Video appears to be laying in wait for pay to view content. There's been rumors of Google replicating craigslist style content, although that appears to be more advertising. There was a suggestion that Google was intending to create something akin to paypal. That could bring in some money as well. I think that much of Google's market valuation comes from investors feeling confident that Google has what it takes to adapt and improve for a long time to come, more than any one specific revenue source.
Holy smokes batman! Excel is pretty nifty, and my roommate's demonstrated some rather interesting techniques for modelling heat transfer over a copper plate using iterative techniques. But lets be honest, Excel is about a good of a scientific calculator as it is a database.
Like your paper mentions, order of evaluation is critical for correct results. What isn't laid out in the paper is the natural consequence of floating point representations: error. Errors might seem small for any given calculation, but when you're iteratively calculating a solution a thousand or more times, I suppose it's not impossible to wind up with signficant error. The important question I can think of that doesn't appear to be addressed in your paper is: how to determine when error though this method becomes signficiant? Relatedly, can/should a PE use these calculations in certifying anything?
Partly it sounds like you wish matlab was better at visualization;)
When you have kids, you'll probably consider moving to the suburbs (I think infants have a brain controlling parasite or something) for their 'quality public schools'. Big cities all have their unique charms, but suburbs all look and feel the same. Truly metropolitan, in the Kantian sense. People bitch and moan about the quality of inner city schools, and the quality of schools in the middle of Retirement Farmville Kansas, but most suburban public school districts are okay.
On a related note, there's plenty of economists with evidence to cite that suggest that raising the minimium wage based on a inflationary / cost of living standard yearly will escalate property values and rent. This is basically because in the short term, the housing supply is fixed. Imagine that there's somebody out there tired of living in the ghetto, but doesn't have the money to live elsewhere. Suddenly their wage is increased by some marginal percentage and some landlord now thinks they're creditworthy or whatever that didn't before. Obviously the people living there find the situation acceptable at the moment, and assuming some across the board raise for inflation / cost of living, I don't think their demand for their current quarters will subside. Add in the new demand, and prices go up. The landlord puts the asking price a bit higher, to maximize revenues (inventory management's essentially the same for housing, only its slower to build new inventory). Full housing units remain full, and the price has gone up. Sounds plausible, at least.
I'm not well versed enough to understand how this plays out in the long term. Probably the supply goes up (constructing new apartments / homes takes time), and the price drops back toward "equalibrium." I suspect this new equalibrium is above the old one.
As for expected inflation, according to my professor of economics, as long as everybody's expecting inflation, nobody's hurt by it. You expect x% inflation, and when you ask for a raise you get x%. When you go to get a loan, the loan officer certainly considers the x% inflation in the price of the loan among other factors. What hurts is when inflation is actually some amount y greater than x. Your raise is smaller than expected, so you'll have to spend less Real Dollars. Creditors get below expected returns (and debtors get a boon).
I find that the situation is compounded by an extrememly judicious choice of words by RMS. The above statement, "To be precise, violating the GPL makes the information more free but less Free, while violating most copyrights makes the infomation more free but equally Free," is understandably confusing. However, "To be precise, violating the GPL makes the information more free but less Liberated, while violating most copyrights makes the infomation more free but equally Liberated" is clearer, but also makes RMS sound more like the crazy and cunning coot he is.
Slashdot Mirror
Even worse, we may owe the Swiss a debt of graditude; it was the Swiss patent office for whom Einstein worked, not the US one.
is non-parental control. I wonder how much less greif there'd be in online games if the Mature audiences only recommendation was followed.
I got about halfway through before I basically got bored with it. Maybe there's some awesome ending where you get to make friends with Che Guevera that I missed. But basically it's Zelda, set in a cartoony world, and you have a mildly sexy lead character. But having a woman as the lead character is so out of place with the rest of the game that it makes no inroads for women in gaming, other than to demonstate that you can put a woman as the lead character and still not sell a game.
Is it good? I guess. But it's no Zelda or Ico. You can also kinda tell it was made for all 3 platforms, because the models look awful compared to other Cube or XBox games. If you find it on discount, you might as well pick it up if you don't already have a lot of games on your plate.
I think it's got less to do with who uses Debian for console only applications like servers, and more to do with the fact that one needs only install Debian once. The Debian Developers, the people in the best position to introduce such a software haven't done so in the past because it isn't their itch. Even if you look at the beta screenshots, it's the same procedure and installer done up in GTK. Compared to Fedora's installer, this is pointless.
And it's not like Debian doesn't have a great chance to improve and beat Fedora: the Fedora graphical installer really blows at net installs. I got a couple of errors when installing it; they leave common errors hanging on a dialog asking if I want to retry. On retry it came through fine. But they should at least pick up some of the fine points the FC gui installer has. Explanitory information is very useful for someone who only has the installer CD. Hopefully, this is only a very rough beta to prove that they can at least accomplish the same things a txt installer does with a graphical installer.
From what I can tell this is just some retail company that decided to throw in one of those free Ubuntu discs with a microdrive, rather than anything officially supported by Ubuntu / Cannoical. Still interesting, but a little bit less newsworthy when you discover that a) the "pre-installed" OS is not pre-installed, and b) it takes 4 minutes to boot.
When you look at the graph, you see that you're getting less than 10MB/sec. Two questions: what are the numbers on the bottom referring to, and why does the graph look like it does? Is there some caching mechanism going on?
I'm simply talking about having an mp3 or video on your desktop that you downloaded and looked at, and a folder on the Desktop called "Documents" that I created. Dragging the media file onto the unopened folder causes Nautilus to copy the file rather than move it. Not even a Dialog indicating it's copying things. =(
Keep in mind that Dapper is unstable / likely to be broken often. 5.10 / Breezy is still fine and will be updated periodically while they work on making Dapper "releasable." Just because Dapper is publicly available doesn't mean the public nessecarily wants it.
Not to rain on your parade or anything, but I can confirm that the screenshot in question looks very much like my Ubuntu Breezy Firefox 1.0.7 save dialog. Dia .94, which I just installed to check it out, uses the older dialog. Judging from the page that screenshot came from, it seems GNOME wants to migrate away from that.
Presumably, the screenshot in question is GIMP Save As'ing a picture / diagram. I don't much care for the new dialog, although if it would perhaps infer places I frequently save things to that might improve it some.
Since I've got the ear of a fellow GNOME user, when did GNOME decide that drag and drop meant drag and copy? And of course, I'm still waiting for them to let me drag and drop into folders on my Desktop. I did hear however that they finally got a patch in to stop removable media icons from popping up over icons that already exist. So hurray on that front.
> You know, Apple doesn't tie up large sections of the industry in backwards, proprietary technology. They're cutting edge.
So cutting edge are they, that large sections of the market love and use firewire! Perhaps the reason Apple doesn't tie up large sections of the market isn't because they have proprietary technology, but because they charge too much for that tech. I suppose we should be thankful Apple hasn't had the balls to lower prices.
I'll bite. Firstly, we have no evidence that the laws that appear to govern the universe around us today apply universally, let alone universally across time. That is, perhaps the rules have changed, we just don't know. So your argument by contradiction treads on the thin ice of assumptions. Why the big bang happened is very much open to discussion and investigation. On to the specifics.
;) Thermo is intended to represent molecular randomness related to heat and energy, not model the complex interactions of organic molecules that propegate through various useful chemical properties. Furthermore, even if it was appropriate to generalize thermodynamics to things far outside its scale like evolution and astrodynamics and gravity, the observed "species explosion" suggests that the universe is growing new species (perhaps less so in within our life times, but still), which means the matter of the universe is finding more and more ways to organize itself. This is an increase in the possible states of the universe, which is by definition an increase in entropy. I still think it's hooey to describe lifeforms in the same fashion one describes the mechanics of an air conditioner or hot air baloon, however.
Firstly, the second law of thermo is more of a guideline than a law. It's not an absolute, that every second in time, we're progressing towards some state of unpredictability; hence the word "tends". Furthermore, the law describes entropy, a concept we made up to encompass some concept of randomness at a microscopic level. Entropy is basically directly related to the number of possible states. Most importantly, the concepts of order and disorder rely on the possible configurations within the system. The most typical model of a system is a container of free floating gaseous molecules, although its possible to make up more complex examples. That said, it's also one of the most unassailable theories we have. "Not even Maxwell's laws of electricity or Newton's law of gravitation are so sacrosanct, for each has measurable corrections coming from quantum effects or general relativity." (Thermodynamics, Ivan P. Bazarov).
Now, you then go on to apply this microscopic concept to a MUCH MUCH higher level than it was intended to represent. Following your proof model, I can show that it's impossible for us to design a better computer under the laws of thermodynamics, for example. It's more organized, more complex, after all. And yet it would be difficult to do so without understanding the second law. Even more so for air conditioners
Intelligent Design is a theory, just like Lamarckian evolution is. Even a vigorous disproof doesn't render the idea not a theroy. And as far as I can tell, Lamarkian evolution is a far more appropriate "alternative theory" than ID, with more predictive value than ID. Perhaps we need a stronger statement than "science teaches us theories about observed natural occurrances."
With ID, you can't even suggest that the world, universe and all our memories are older than five seconds. Sure, decay of naturally occuring isotopes might suggest that some previously living things are older than other previously living things, but an All Powerful being is just as capable of creating a consistant backstory as it is creating the universe as we know it.
Ah, but what if it's e = m c ^e ? I wasn't aware that dimensional analysis could determine exact exponents.
And if it turns out that E only equals MC, will the Japanese feel betrayed?
Google's business model is dead simple: purchase lots of computing facilities, and set a ton of intelligent people on the task of using them to make business decisions. This typically means computer experts, economists and finance experts all working together on wierd things like hidden markov models, or whatever else powers AdSense. This is the same strategy that's also placed Wal-mart as one of the largest companies in the world. Walmart brings in several finance experts and datamining experts to sift through their transactions for trends (such as pop tart sales during hurricanes, or an above average correlation of having beer and diapers in the same shopping cart). So this business technique is not lost on the giants of the world.
The difference is that aside from the computing facilities at Google, the only thing of physical value Google has is 7 billion dollars in the bank. That's enough money to find almost any high margin market and show up en force within six months. The only two I can think of off the top of my head that Google can't change the landscape of in six months is Pharmeceuticals and Defense Contracting. I'm reasonably certain neither one is something Google wants to be in, though. The only thing outside of more Internet related activity Google might pursue is Banking. Although if they did set up a bank, I suspect it would also be heavily internet related. However, there's a lot of software to be built for a banking institution, and it would be in Google's best interests to built it itself-- you've got loans (possibly) to deal with, and fraud detection / prevention... the list goes on. It's been speculated that they're coming out with something to allow money transactions across the internet, similar to Paypal I suppose.
Amazon also tries the same thing, although they're focused on retailing and other markets. Wal-mart should really be much more worried about Amazon, and they probably are. Amazon sells a lot of the same stuff Walmart does, without the expenses of however many thousands of stores Walmart operates. I think you over simplify the problem. I don't think many businesses believe that they're giving people what they don't want or need.
There already is a market for software; it's just not very efficient, so only the biggest of players can participate. Microsoft has been successful mostly as a software market maker / trader. Novell appears to be the same. Oracle is in a similar scenario, as is Apple. Sure, Apple also sells computer hardware at a sizeable margin, but look at how well
.com'er to take his millions and buy a company and release the code, but there's measurable return on investment. Sure, now many more people are free to look at, modify and use the software, and I suppose the software has been more Liberated, but it's a one time game. What we really need to see is some way of coming out with more money than you started, so the process can happen again with more software.
But be careful what you wish for; you want a stock market for software. That would mean that anyone with the most money can come through and buy out a given piece of software, and they will, if there's more money to be made in it -- stock means control. You might consider it an investment for a wealthy
You might imagine MSFT as 300 billion votes that it's not possible to open source something and earn your money back.
I bet once they fix the site you could easily double your speed and start earning more like 6.50 an hour. That's starting to get into the kinds of wages teenagers earn, and is probably better for students. Still no overtime pay or benefits, but there's also no boss, no stupid uniforms or punishment if you come in late.
On the other hand, so far the only people using mturk is amazon for some fairly trivial stuff. I would hope that Amazon figures out how to attract other people to their marketplace. There seems to be all kinds of things that one might do with it, but the method is so extraordinary that they'll definately need a serious market boosting mechanism. Perhaps we'll see some "grade my paper" type scholarships, where amazon hands out 10 dollars of money to students to spend on this, and via mturk they get back 20 reviews. Something to get people to try it without risking much, ya see? And of course, by hitting up students like that, they'll also bring in more people on the work side. Certainly interesting stuff here, hopefully they can pull it together into something new and amazing.
Shit, man, I've heard of color-blind, but sarcasm blind?
DS and PSP both have plenty of hackers, even with official opposition to the very notion. It would appear that device hackers feel no qualms about working with "closed source" hardware. It seems that most hackers pick a technology for the transformational value. Taking a wifi router that's already quite cheap and vastly improving its features, that sort of thing. And I suspect the wide distribution of the product to be hacked plays into it as well, not just in how many potential hackers have the product, but how many hackers decide it's worth it to hack it and share.
Then the 442 is in a troubling spot. Partly because they already have a core set of developers who know the product and helped create the specs, there appears to be little documentation of the hardware used to run it. This is also partly because music players rarely get the kind of inspective treatment the various game machines do. The other big problem is that this thing costs about twice as much as their competitors. Price is a big determinate of sales, and if you want your "hacks" to see widespread use, you should be interested in seeing the price fall.
How come I can't install and run Windows, OSX, Solaris and Linux binaries from ONE file downloaded over the internet? There's no legitimate technical reason for this, it's just nerds in their IVORY TOWER who refuse to make their systems more usable for us, the common man. They resort to fabricating stories of "DLL Hell" and library versioning, binary incompatible C library compiles, differing base installs, conflicting file overwrites, and the costs of distributing static compiled binaries, but refuse to recognize the immense value I place on this. Why is it that Microsoft, Sun, Apple, Novell, Redhat, Debian, Gentoo, Mandriva, and IBM can't cooperate to determine exactly what it is that my system should be providing as a bare minimum of computing system facilities?
I'd like to conclude by thanking the superlative Stephen Colbert for giving me the inspiration for this post. May the Lord protect us, the keepers of the light of Truth.
Showing the movie ratings as an example of successful self regulation probably isn't the best argument to give a guy who blamed an R rated film (Basketball Diaries) for the murderous behavior of a 14 year old murderer.
Well, they do own several other direct revenue methods, like Google Earth Plus. And I suppose you could also claim that when they issue new stock, that's a direct sale. But by and large the majority of Google's income is advertising.
But they're certainly evaluating several different methods of making money. Google Video appears to be laying in wait for pay to view content. There's been rumors of Google replicating craigslist style content, although that appears to be more advertising. There was a suggestion that Google was intending to create something akin to paypal. That could bring in some money as well. I think that much of Google's market valuation comes from investors feeling confident that Google has what it takes to adapt and improve for a long time to come, more than any one specific revenue source.
Holy smokes batman! Excel is pretty nifty, and my roommate's demonstrated some rather interesting techniques for modelling heat transfer over a copper plate using iterative techniques. But lets be honest, Excel is about a good of a scientific calculator as it is a database.
;)
Like your paper mentions, order of evaluation is critical for correct results. What isn't laid out in the paper is the natural consequence of floating point representations: error. Errors might seem small for any given calculation, but when you're iteratively calculating a solution a thousand or more times, I suppose it's not impossible to wind up with signficant error. The important question I can think of that doesn't appear to be addressed in your paper is: how to determine when error though this method becomes signficiant? Relatedly, can/should a PE use these calculations in certifying anything?
Partly it sounds like you wish matlab was better at visualization
When you have kids, you'll probably consider moving to the suburbs (I think infants have a brain controlling parasite or something) for their 'quality public schools'. Big cities all have their unique charms, but suburbs all look and feel the same. Truly metropolitan, in the Kantian sense. People bitch and moan about the quality of inner city schools, and the quality of schools in the middle of Retirement Farmville Kansas, but most suburban public school districts are okay.
On a related note, there's plenty of economists with evidence to cite that suggest that raising the minimium wage based on a inflationary / cost of living standard yearly will escalate property values and rent. This is basically because in the short term, the housing supply is fixed. Imagine that there's somebody out there tired of living in the ghetto, but doesn't have the money to live elsewhere. Suddenly their wage is increased by some marginal percentage and some landlord now thinks they're creditworthy or whatever that didn't before. Obviously the people living there find the situation acceptable at the moment, and assuming some across the board raise for inflation / cost of living, I don't think their demand for their current quarters will subside. Add in the new demand, and prices go up. The landlord puts the asking price a bit higher, to maximize revenues (inventory management's essentially the same for housing, only its slower to build new inventory). Full housing units remain full, and the price has gone up. Sounds plausible, at least.
I'm not well versed enough to understand how this plays out in the long term. Probably the supply goes up (constructing new apartments / homes takes time), and the price drops back toward "equalibrium." I suspect this new equalibrium is above the old one.
As for expected inflation, according to my professor of economics, as long as everybody's expecting inflation, nobody's hurt by it. You expect x% inflation, and when you ask for a raise you get x%. When you go to get a loan, the loan officer certainly considers the x% inflation in the price of the loan among other factors. What hurts is when inflation is actually some amount y greater than x. Your raise is smaller than expected, so you'll have to spend less Real Dollars. Creditors get below expected returns (and debtors get a boon).
I find that the situation is compounded by an extrememly judicious choice of words by RMS. The above statement, "To be precise, violating the GPL makes the information more free but less Free, while violating most copyrights makes the infomation more free but equally Free," is understandably confusing. However, "To be precise, violating the GPL makes the information more free but less Liberated, while violating most copyrights makes the infomation more free but equally Liberated" is clearer, but also makes RMS sound more like the crazy and cunning coot he is.