Lately with the massive increase in, well - just plain ignorant investors - you have a point. In theory, though, market cap represents the market's evaluation of the future value of a company - ie if there was "perfect knowledge" about how a company will perform, stock prices would settle and never change. That fits with your comment, too - the job of PR is to pretend that they are providing you knowledge/information when in reality they are "trying to make the company look as good as possible no matter what".
Still, it is a reasonable explanation as to why IBM and Google have similar market caps, even though IBM's profits are 3x Google's... which company do you think is more likely to grow in the next few years? Investors have put their money on Google in that bet...
Reminds me of a great parody of Trespasser that involved a futile (live action) attempt to stack coke cans... wish I could find the video, Google is failing me... anyone?
You are trying to say that those countries are effectively censoring the Internet? Ridiculous. They try, but it's so easy for anyone with technical knowledge to bypass their filters, the Internet is the primary way that uncensored news and communication gets through.
That's assuming you take a piece of digital media and toss it in a closet. Sure, in that case a book may last longer. But we are talking about the INTERNET, a massive distributed global network of digital information where redundancy of data is practically an organic process, and electronic storage is actively maintained by keeping the constituent hardware working.
Mr. Bradbury may not be senile, but he sure has lost the amazing perception and imagination he once had that allowed him to write so many great works of science fiction...
Exactly. I don't understand why a publisher is babbling (incorrectly) about attach rates. Make a really good game for a console - the console owners will buy it. If there just aren't very many of those customers, sure, that's a valid complaint and a reason not to support the console. But the only one who should be worried about the sales PER CONSOLE is Sony (who makes a licensing fee from every game sold...)
Yeah, I agree in theory the Internet is much more random in usage than a utility like electricity... but I think part of the problem is that people are REALLY exaggerating the usage required to make a difference for this imaginary "utility".
In practice you can go to as many bloated web pages as you want and they will amount to a few fluorescent night lights compared to the 50,000 BTU air conditioner of a dozen HD movie downloads that makes Comcast sit up and take notice.
Hey - in fact I'm as cynical about this as anyone - I would not put it past the ISPs to take advantage of any legislation to raise overall prices for the average customer. But I am also not one of those people who thinks that I am somehow entitled to download 500GB of pirated HD movies just because Comcast was unclear on their advertising.
You choose to go to a web site with a bloated web page, just as you can choose to leave all the lights in your house on 24/7 if you want.
DoS is an illegal mechanism to use up your bandwidth/resources, as would be your neighbor secretly running an extension cord from your house to theirsand using your electricity for their air conditioning. Of course in practice when you call the police/FBI/your ISP about the DoS, they are likely to respond anywhere from laughter to confused mumbling...
Good developers paired with over-the-shoulder code reviews produce code that is just as good (or better), and is far more productive.
This I agree with wholeheartedly - a relatively quick over-the-shoulder review before a checkin provides the advantage of the extra eyeballs in pair programming/code reviews without the ridiculous disadvantages of redundancy and annoying meetings. Though as you said, it does assume good developers...
Not as long as the half life of this story, apparently! (I tossed my Nalgene bottle a year ago, and my coworkers were stunned I hadn't already heard of the hazard...)
Well, I agree at the level of "we barely know anything" about what the function is but it's *clearly* more than "energy conservation". Sleep constitutes almost 1/3 of every human life, there are bound to be endless crackpot (or interesting) theories...
Multiple studies have shown recuperative processes ranging from cell growth/recovery, immune system function, working memory, etc. I doubt any neurobiologist these days would claim it's just "energy conservation".
No, I am not being unfair, and no he didn't answer the question (unless you think making up an answer qualifies).
First, he said "I think" - what kind of scientific qualification is that?
Second, he claimed "lack of REM sleep can result in actual brain damage" - which has not been proven anyway.
Third, you have even stated he didn't say anthing about the original question that specifically used the word, well... "specifically"! What about any of it was specific, even if it wasn't vague pop science and making wrong conclusions?
In fact, I wasn't meaning to be THAT harsh - a log of this statements as regards to REM sleep have been borne out by research - but mostly statements that can be quoted from a wikipedia article, inexplicably mixed in with a few things that are totally unproven. But I guess that's the/. way...
Gotta say that was a very long post that repeated a lot of conventional wisdom but said almost nothing to answer OP's question...
"What is it specifically that requires us to lose consciousness to get what we need from sleep?"
From a neurobiological perspective that will not be answered satisfactorily until we know at a basic biochemical level what happens during sleep to "recharge" the brain to its normal function.
Ok, I hate to hate, but why is it whenever there is a totally ridiculous sensationalistic story like this (the original source is "TidBITS, Mac news for the rest of us"!?) it's Timothy doing the posting?
TFA non-story even ends with a "personal" opinion that oh, just maybe the technology used by much of the latest US armed forces, its arsenal, and their $500B+ budget may not be left to rot... you THINK?
Absolutely true. Also the fact their straws were (don't know if it's still true) a little wider than average so that customers would finish their drinks faster.
Why the heck they would want people to stay in their stores longer now I have no idea. Then again, why the heck anyone who can afford a laptop would want to hang out in their nasty ass stores, let alone EAT there, I have no idea either.
Don't sell yourself short;) At a really generic level, the only reason any company would take out a loan is if they could get it for free/profit or they thought they would need it in the future and predicted it would be more expensive to get when they needed it... (in fact, what other reasons would ANYONE have to take out a loan? To build credit??:)
So for Microsoft (with $25B in the bank) it means they are probably making more on investments with the cash they have than what they will pay on the bonds - which is "CFO tricks" by any definition...
Slashdot Mirror
I had no idea that the people who run wikipedia actively changed stories for political ends.
Then you haven't been paying much attention...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales#Controversies
Lately with the massive increase in, well - just plain ignorant investors - you have a point. In theory, though, market cap represents the market's evaluation of the future value of a company - ie if there was "perfect knowledge" about how a company will perform, stock prices would settle and never change. That fits with your comment, too - the job of PR is to pretend that they are providing you knowledge/information when in reality they are "trying to make the company look as good as possible no matter what".
Still, it is a reasonable explanation as to why IBM and Google have similar market caps, even though IBM's profits are 3x Google's... which company do you think is more likely to grow in the next few years? Investors have put their money on Google in that bet...
Reminds me of a great parody of Trespasser that involved a futile (live action) attempt to stack coke cans... wish I could find the video, Google is failing me... anyone?
You are trying to say that those countries are effectively censoring the Internet? Ridiculous. They try, but it's so easy for anyone with technical knowledge to bypass their filters, the Internet is the primary way that uncensored news and communication gets through.
That's assuming you take a piece of digital media and toss it in a closet. Sure, in that case a book may last longer. But we are talking about the INTERNET, a massive distributed global network of digital information where redundancy of data is practically an organic process, and electronic storage is actively maintained by keeping the constituent hardware working.
Mr. Bradbury may not be senile, but he sure has lost the amazing perception and imagination he once had that allowed him to write so many great works of science fiction...
Exactly. I don't understand why a publisher is babbling (incorrectly) about attach rates. Make a really good game for a console - the console owners will buy it. If there just aren't very many of those customers, sure, that's a valid complaint and a reason not to support the console. But the only one who should be worried about the sales PER CONSOLE is Sony (who makes a licensing fee from every game sold...)
Yeah, I agree in theory the Internet is much more random in usage than a utility like electricity... but I think part of the problem is that people are REALLY exaggerating the usage required to make a difference for this imaginary "utility".
In practice you can go to as many bloated web pages as you want and they will amount to a few fluorescent night lights compared to the 50,000 BTU air conditioner of a dozen HD movie downloads that makes Comcast sit up and take notice.
Hey - in fact I'm as cynical about this as anyone - I would not put it past the ISPs to take advantage of any legislation to raise overall prices for the average customer. But I am also not one of those people who thinks that I am somehow entitled to download 500GB of pirated HD movies just because Comcast was unclear on their advertising.
I think the analogy holds just fine.
You choose to go to a web site with a bloated web page, just as you can choose to leave all the lights in your house on 24/7 if you want.
DoS is an illegal mechanism to use up your bandwidth/resources, as would be your neighbor secretly running an extension cord from your house to theirsand using your electricity for their air conditioning. Of course in practice when you call the police/FBI/your ISP about the DoS, they are likely to respond anywhere from laughter to confused mumbling...
Good developers paired with over-the-shoulder code reviews produce code that is just as good (or better), and is far more productive.
This I agree with wholeheartedly - a relatively quick over-the-shoulder review before a checkin provides the advantage of the extra eyeballs in pair programming/code reviews without the ridiculous disadvantages of redundancy and annoying meetings. Though as you said, it does assume good developers...
Not as long as the half life of this story, apparently! (I tossed my Nalgene bottle a year ago, and my coworkers were stunned I hadn't already heard of the hazard...)
How twisted am I? When I read the title this was exactly what I thought the article would be about...
Ugh, how could you list Religion as #1? That addiction has destroyed the lives of uncountably many more people than MMORPGs.
And if you disagree? Well, it just shows people have different ideas of what to dedicate their lives to, so who are you to tell them otherwise?
Yes, they do! And I heard it goes great with Pabst Blue Ribbon...
Dennis
Well, I agree at the level of "we barely know anything" about what the function is but it's *clearly* more than "energy conservation". Sleep constitutes almost 1/3 of every human life, there are bound to be endless crackpot (or interesting) theories...
Multiple studies have shown recuperative processes ranging from cell growth/recovery, immune system function, working memory, etc. I doubt any neurobiologist these days would claim it's just "energy conservation".
No, I am not being unfair, and no he didn't answer the question (unless you think making up an answer qualifies).
First, he said "I think" - what kind of scientific qualification is that?
Second, he claimed "lack of REM sleep can result in actual brain damage" - which has not been proven anyway.
Third, you have even stated he didn't say anthing about the original question that specifically used the word, well... "specifically"! What about any of it was specific, even if it wasn't vague pop science and making wrong conclusions?
In fact, I wasn't meaning to be THAT harsh - a log of this statements as regards to REM sleep have been borne out by research - but mostly statements that can be quoted from a wikipedia article, inexplicably mixed in with a few things that are totally unproven. But I guess that's the /. way...
Gotta say that was a very long post that repeated a lot of conventional wisdom but said almost nothing to answer OP's question...
"What is it specifically that requires us to lose consciousness to get what we need from sleep?"
From a neurobiological perspective that will not be answered satisfactorily until we know at a basic biochemical level what happens during sleep to "recharge" the brain to its normal function.
Nope, still Dave.
It worked perfectly for me!
Then again, my question was "What did HAL say to Dave in 2001?"
No, it's defintiely alpha. The only question it has answered correctly for me so far is "What did HAL say in 2001?"
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Wolfram+Alpha&l=1
Wow, I read a couple of his parody lyrics, and I have to agree - they are AWFUL!
Doesn't mean he shouldn't receive the same protections as a good parodist... but again, wow. Literally painful to read.
Ok, I hate to hate, but why is it whenever there is a totally ridiculous sensationalistic story like this (the original source is "TidBITS, Mac news for the rest of us"!?) it's Timothy doing the posting?
TFA non-story even ends with a "personal" opinion that oh, just maybe the technology used by much of the latest US armed forces, its arsenal, and their $500B+ budget may not be left to rot... you THINK?
Absolutely true. Also the fact their straws were (don't know if it's still true) a little wider than average so that customers would finish their drinks faster.
Why the heck they would want people to stay in their stores longer now I have no idea. Then again, why the heck anyone who can afford a laptop would want to hang out in their nasty ass stores, let alone EAT there, I have no idea either.
Don't sell yourself short ;) At a really generic level, the only reason any company would take out a loan is if they could get it for free/profit or they thought they would need it in the future and predicted it would be more expensive to get when they needed it... (in fact, what other reasons would ANYONE have to take out a loan? To build credit?? :)
So for Microsoft (with $25B in the bank) it means they are probably making more on investments with the cash they have than what they will pay on the bonds - which is "CFO tricks" by any definition...
One possibility: they're borrowing money at a low interest rate in order to retire debts that are carrying a higher interest rate.
Except from TFA...
"The sale represented the AAA-rated software giant's first ever long-term debt offering."
Still, I think your "CFO comment" is more than likely... if someone will lend you money at 3% and you are confident you can make 5%+ off it, why not?