Certainly not. VB and Carlton Draught or Tooheys on tap at most pubs in Melbourne. I've worked at Fosters in South Melbourne and can't recall with 100% certainty that they even had Fosters on tap at the staff bar there. Most of the other varieties they certainly did.
All you needed was a reference to germs in that last sentence and you would have the name of an excellent book on the topic. I suspect it might not be a coincidence though.
"Sony will have done market research to find the best price (for them) to sell the PS3."
If that is the case, just why exactly do we have this variation in the price now? If by "market research" you mean "consumer/press backlash", then maybe you are right.
It seems more and more often Sony have shown that their strategy is poorly thought out. I couldn't care less about them as a company, I'd like it for PS3 to be at least moderately successful though even if it is just to keep the others honest and keep looking for new areas of innovation.
I'm curious to know a bit more, purely because we are trying to re-invent the wheel where I currently work with a similar system that will across our different development environments (.Net, PHP, Java) in a unified way. Upon first usage, Rails appeared to have it nailed for me so much of our emulation has been holding that as a benchmark... but if there are better options I'd love to be looking closer at them. The most simple introduction to JDO I found was here:
So with the person class I define in the class all of available attributes, a getter and setter for each, and a constructor.
On rails in a production environment it would be:
class Person end
and the first time the model is called its structure is defined by ruby/rails and cached. Now if you wish to define (or redefine) aspects of the model, you are free to do so. I can replace the automagically generated accessors with whatever I feel like. I can also redefine field mappings and all manner of other things. So from the example given by O'Reilly I can't immediately see the benefit JDO provides in terms of development, I can come to the exact same point with a comparable amount of code in Ruby or I can short cut it and accept the default behaviour with substantially less. All with no SQL at all.
Where the difference may well exist is in the SQL generated in the back end, and I suspect this is where the original developers/engineers of each solution had a difference in opinion. I'm more accustomed to seperating the SQL logic into views and stored procedures from the outset to improve performance and provide means of controlling how everyone accesses the data. It means much playing around with SQL pre-deployment to improve queries and indexes on tables. Rails has taken the view that theoretical performance issues may never occur and time spent addressing them could well be time wasted, or even worse that your theoretical issues are wrong and bottlenecks occur in other parts of the system. It's this view which means that "high-performance SQL" can not be "automatically generated". The system can't intuitively know the best way to index a table or order data until real world usage occurs, and so that is left as an exercise to the reader. If/when it becomes an issue then it's time to incrementally start over-writing the default options in the areas that need to be addressed. I'd take this approach as under engineering at the outset and then engineering where required later. While I haven't had to deploy a site under serious load yet, I have to say that that it has definitely had it's benefits. And I'd back myself to write more appropriate and beter performing SQL (and indexes) for a given situation than a tool that attempts to do it automatically... so it's an approach that seems more sensible to me.
So I accept that the O'Reilly example was fairly basic, but if the only difference is in the performance of the SQL generated by the two frameworks then personally I think the rails approach makes more sense as good performing queries aren't solely dependent on the way you write a select statement.
Without knowing much about the other systems you mention and how they work, isn't the whole basis of "convention over configuration" taken to mean "if you only want the defaults, do nothing... if you need something more complex/controlled/etc then you can configure it accordingly". And to that, you can customise the SQL used to return a model, define relationships, or pretty much anything you want in rails as well.
The idea being get the system up and running and work out what needs to be addressed from a performance perspective based on real world usage instead of over-engineering based on a preconceived notion on where the problems will be.
I'm not sure about over in the states, but here in Australia it can be entirely dependent on the ownership structure. If they were owned personally, then they will pass based on the terms of his will. If however they were owned via a company or trust then it will not be considered part of his estate and he'd need to have other arrangements planned for the scenario.
Combine the fact that some of the biggest advantages of conquering forces (especially the Spanish over the Mesoamericans) in history has been in no small part due to their ability to accurately document events for subsequent parties or to pass information quickly and accurately to third parties over vast distances and people may realise how important writing has been and why it will continue to do so.
Allowing literacy to slip significantly will have dire consequences.
I recently saw a documentary showing the application of the technology in a German supermarket much like we'd been promised a few years back. You could email your shopping list through ahead of time (or select the products from the website as required) and they were added to your account. On arrival at the supermarket you swipe your customer card to dispatch a trolley with attached LCD screen, and the trolley provides a list of the items to purchase and their location within the store as required. You scan items on entry into the trolley and the total is automatically calculated and the product checked off your list. Weighted items (vegetables) you bagged yourself and printed out a barcode from one of the weighstations in the produce section as you bagged. Scan that on the trolley and those items are checked off and added to the total. All in all, it looked like a very cool system. You simply presented your screen at the checkout, paid and left (returning the trolley when you're finished loading your car obviously).
And there was plenty of value add there too. If you wanted to be quick, the trolley can show you the shortest route around the store. If you were stuck for ideas on a wine to accompany your dish your could prompt for suggestion and be directed to a complementing Merlot in aisle 3.
Back to the source of the oil. Iran is the second largest OPEC nation, an organisation which controls almost 40% of global oil production. Even by your own figures, I think a sudden loss of one fifth of your oil supply would have a drastic affect on the price of oil. Don't forget the US is not the only country burning oil at a terrible rate, many other countries are going to be bidding for that Venezualan oil if/when the middle east decide they don't want to deliver to anyone in the "coalition of the willing".
The slightest hiccup in oil production over the past 12 months (hurricanes, strikes, fires, threats of civil unrest, military coups, etc.) have regularly resulted in +10% movements in price. I can only imagine what would happen to prices if 20% of production just suddenly turned off, and really turned off not just speculation on what might occur.
Ultimately to be successful in the market, you just need to have smart risk/money management (the "more rational" part of your argument). If you assume that your guess is no better than a 50/50 chance of being right, cut your loses early and let your profits run. Set a stop loss as quickly as you can once you move into profit and then enjoy the ride.
As for P/E ratios, Googles at 89 is ridiculous. Even Microsoft, who I would hardly consider a growth stock these days seems unusually large in the 20s. But the US market has always had a strange way of valuing companies in that sense.
Re:People are Obese regarless of Income or Geograp
on
Obesity Contagious?
·
· Score: 1
An equally nice hypothesis, but if you actually didn't compare apples and oranges or to wit apples and burgers it might be a little more realistic.
Try purchasing bread which isn't laden with salt and/or sugar, fresh lettuce which isn't covered in pesticides and chlorine, fresh tomato, lean ground mince which isn't adulterated with water or other supplements, etc. and you'll quickly find that the couple of $ it costs for a burger is quickly outweighed by the cost of lean healthy meat alone.
But you are right, feeding a cow/fish/prawn/basically any animal for it's lifetime is down right expensive. It usually takes several times the final weight of the animal in feed to get it there, so to make it cost effective the lifespan (from birth to table) required is reduced by various means or the product is mixed with other fillers and preservatives before appearing on shelves or in delis. At which point, how healthy much of it is is drawn into question.
It's the nature of the business that the healthy option will be more expensive than the unhealthy alternative unless legislation or tariffs are put in place to balance it for the good of the people. The reason why it is usually unhealthy in the first place is because it is cheaper to substitute the real healthy product with preservatives, salt, sugar, etc. for flavour. If it wasn't so commercially appealing to continue with such widespread substitution you wouldn't need foods loaded with fat, start substitutes, salt and sugar just to give it flavour.
Re:Rubbish food is expensive
on
Obesity Contagious?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Take a look at the cost of tinned fruit and vegetables or to a lesser extent frozen ones vs the fresh alternatives. Bean, tomatoes, pears are all regularly on sale for less than 70cents a can (Australian dollars, that equates to just over US$0.50 on todays rate). Now consider how many of the fresh alternative you'd have to buy for a similar quantity. It's hard to imagine they can tin or pack these things and still make a profit. Looking at the ingredients on many will show higher levels of salt and other additives.
And sourcing "good" lettuce these days is becoming increasingly difficult. Between the regular covering in pesticides and endocrine disruptors during growing, to the cleaning/bleaching in chlorine when it is harvested, to being sold in those "ready picked" plastic salad bags which mean it is devoid of almost all nutritional content by the time it hits your plate.... it's a fun game a the supermarket when you actually feel like taking the time to try and keep the diet as health as possible (especially so if you AREN'T a vegetarian as meat products are some of the most bastardised).
If you're so inclined and feel like an interesting read about why diet, health, and the economy have been so drastically affected by food over the past 50 years "Not on the label" by Felicity Lawrence is an excellent read.
Re:People are Obese regarless of Income or Geograp
on
Obesity Contagious?
·
· Score: 1
And that to eat truly healthy food, it usually costs more. Spending more seems to go against our overwhelming capitalist nature. There have been numerous studies done (all the ones I've read have been from the UK though, but I'm sure there are similar ones in the US) which show that those on poorer incomes have significantly reduced access to "healthy" food, and as such eat rubbish. Which becomes a vicious cycle as increased health problems and obesity lead to their own additional problems and expenses.
If I had my mod points available (I don't because I posted on this topic unfortunately) I'd mod you up. Having re-read the article, I think this better articulates what has actually happened than a simple loss of IQ.
No, the average IQ should of a country always be 100... given it is meant to be representative of the average of the sample set. IQ tests within the US should and would be different to those in Australia vs those in the UK to attempt to remove cultural bias between the countries.
I'd suggest anyone concerned or curious about the effect our food and our food choices are having on our lives read Not on the label by Felicty Lawrence.
We briefly touched on IQ (and its calculation) in my psychology studies. From what we were told, your Intelligence Quotient was basically a representation of where you sat on the bell distribution curve for your: - age - gender - cultural background - etc
Basically, the closer they could come to matching your specific circumstances to those similar to you, the more accurate your IQ measurement was. There was much discussion about how both questions and distribution had to be changed to remove cultural bias inherent in the testing. So if you were straight down the line as being average, you'd have a score (IQ) of 100. If you were below average, you might be 70. If you are above average you might be 130.
So can someone explain to me how the IQ can be dropping when it is meant to be the measure of the average? The percentage of people in the demographic obtaining a score of 100 should remain constant. I understand that the number of correct answers might diminish or increase over time, but the percentile of people scoring 100 and the distribution of the rest should remain the same otherwise the scoring is flawed.
Insurance already discriminates. Those under age 25 are in a higher risk group on the road, they pay a premium. Males are even higher risk, they pay a premium. Too many years working in IT with a bad posture has taken it's toll on my back requiring regular chiro to make life enjoyable, so I have to have a spinal exclusion on my income protection policy. Thankfully I'm relatively young and qualified, with a white collar job so that helps reduce my premiums.
The whole industry works by pooling the funds of many in the hope that you never actually have to use it, but when you do it is subsidised by others. It's essentially a lottery, if you never need your insurance you are ultimately out of pocket and handed over your money for nothing. If you do need it though, you "win" by reducing how much it costs you.
Those who are more likely to take benefit from the fund have always been expected to pay more.
Unfortunately we already have a silver deficit each year, and the metal is more scarce than gold. Expect silver prices to rise considerably over the coming years as stores continue to be depleted at a rate far exceeding that which it is being mined.
It will likely continue be cheaper than gold though so your point stands.
There is a very good reason why people print out hard copies "in order to study it properly". The eye is able to perceive, and thus it is easier for the brain to understand, reflected light as opposed to transmitted light. CRTs and LCDs emit light into your eye, paper will reflect it. That's why people print out hard copies, because it is actually easier to study it properly.
Likewise, there is much more to be learnt about and observed by someone in the flesh as opposed to via a webcast. So I'd say no, there won't come a time in our lives at least.
I've theorised my belief on where Google will take this some time ago when there was talk of them becoming an ISP.
Just think of hundreds if not thousands of "Google Accelerators" all around the place acting as transparent proxies for an untold number of internet connections. Not only can they now tell what sites are popular based on search results (which may not be the same, that's more a mark of what people are looking for), but they can tell what areas/locations look at what content, how many people at site A also view site B, roughly how long users stay on a specific site, etc. etc.
But I think the most immediate benefit to them in the short-term is that they can reduce the amount of spidering they need to do. With millions of people going out and fetching the pages people want to look at for them, they only need to really go out and spider the "darker" parts of the net.
Slashdot Mirror
Certainly not. VB and Carlton Draught or Tooheys on tap at most pubs in Melbourne. I've worked at Fosters in South Melbourne and can't recall with 100% certainty that they even had Fosters on tap at the staff bar there. Most of the other varieties they certainly did.
Amniotic fluid is already sampled in those that are high risk of havign a child born with down's syndrome, so this is a non-issue.
All you needed was a reference to germs in that last sentence and you would have the name of an excellent book on the topic. I suspect it might not be a coincidence though.
Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
"Sony will have done market research to find the best price (for them) to sell the PS3."
If that is the case, just why exactly do we have this variation in the price now? If by "market research" you mean "consumer/press backlash", then maybe you are right.
It seems more and more often Sony have shown that their strategy is poorly thought out. I couldn't care less about them as a company, I'd like it for PS3 to be at least moderately successful though even if it is just to keep the others honest and keep looking for new areas of innovation.
I'm curious to know a bit more, purely because we are trying to re-invent the wheel where I currently work with a similar system that will across our different development environments (.Net, PHP, Java) in a unified way. Upon first usage, Rails appeared to have it nailed for me so much of our emulation has been holding that as a benchmark... but if there are better options I'd love to be looking closer at them. The most simple introduction to JDO I found was here:
1 .html
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2002/02/06/jdo
So with the person class I define in the class all of available attributes, a getter and setter for each, and a constructor.
On rails in a production environment it would be:
class Person
end
and the first time the model is called its structure is defined by ruby/rails and cached. Now if you wish to define (or redefine) aspects of the model, you are free to do so. I can replace the automagically generated accessors with whatever I feel like. I can also redefine field mappings and all manner of other things. So from the example given by O'Reilly I can't immediately see the benefit JDO provides in terms of development, I can come to the exact same point with a comparable amount of code in Ruby or I can short cut it and accept the default behaviour with substantially less. All with no SQL at all.
Where the difference may well exist is in the SQL generated in the back end, and I suspect this is where the original developers/engineers of each solution had a difference in opinion. I'm more accustomed to seperating the SQL logic into views and stored procedures from the outset to improve performance and provide means of controlling how everyone accesses the data. It means much playing around with SQL pre-deployment to improve queries and indexes on tables. Rails has taken the view that theoretical performance issues may never occur and time spent addressing them could well be time wasted, or even worse that your theoretical issues are wrong and bottlenecks occur in other parts of the system. It's this view which means that "high-performance SQL" can not be "automatically generated". The system can't intuitively know the best way to index a table or order data until real world usage occurs, and so that is left as an exercise to the reader. If/when it becomes an issue then it's time to incrementally start over-writing the default options in the areas that need to be addressed. I'd take this approach as under engineering at the outset and then engineering where required later. While I haven't had to deploy a site under serious load yet, I have to say that that it has definitely had it's benefits. And I'd back myself to write more appropriate and beter performing SQL (and indexes) for a given situation than a tool that attempts to do it automatically... so it's an approach that seems more sensible to me.
So I accept that the O'Reilly example was fairly basic, but if the only difference is in the performance of the SQL generated by the two frameworks then personally I think the rails approach makes more sense as good performing queries aren't solely dependent on the way you write a select statement.
Without knowing much about the other systems you mention and how they work, isn't the whole basis of "convention over configuration" taken to mean "if you only want the defaults, do nothing... if you need something more complex/controlled/etc then you can configure it accordingly". And to that, you can customise the SQL used to return a model, define relationships, or pretty much anything you want in rails as well.
The idea being get the system up and running and work out what needs to be addressed from a performance perspective based on real world usage instead of over-engineering based on a preconceived notion on where the problems will be.
I'm not sure about over in the states, but here in Australia it can be entirely dependent on the ownership structure. If they were owned personally, then they will pass based on the terms of his will. If however they were owned via a company or trust then it will not be considered part of his estate and he'd need to have other arrangements planned for the scenario.
Combine the fact that some of the biggest advantages of conquering forces (especially the Spanish over the Mesoamericans) in history has been in no small part due to their ability to accurately document events for subsequent parties or to pass information quickly and accurately to third parties over vast distances and people may realise how important writing has been and why it will continue to do so.
Allowing literacy to slip significantly will have dire consequences.
I recently saw a documentary showing the application of the technology in a German supermarket much like we'd been promised a few years back. You could email your shopping list through ahead of time (or select the products from the website as required) and they were added to your account. On arrival at the supermarket you swipe your customer card to dispatch a trolley with attached LCD screen, and the trolley provides a list of the items to purchase and their location within the store as required. You scan items on entry into the trolley and the total is automatically calculated and the product checked off your list. Weighted items (vegetables) you bagged yourself and printed out a barcode from one of the weighstations in the produce section as you bagged. Scan that on the trolley and those items are checked off and added to the total. All in all, it looked like a very cool system. You simply presented your screen at the checkout, paid and left (returning the trolley when you're finished loading your car obviously).
And there was plenty of value add there too. If you wanted to be quick, the trolley can show you the shortest route around the store. If you were stuck for ideas on a wine to accompany your dish your could prompt for suggestion and be directed to a complementing Merlot in aisle 3.
Back to the source of the oil. Iran is the second largest OPEC nation, an organisation which controls almost 40% of global oil production. Even by your own figures, I think a sudden loss of one fifth of your oil supply would have a drastic affect on the price of oil. Don't forget the US is not the only country burning oil at a terrible rate, many other countries are going to be bidding for that Venezualan oil if/when the middle east decide they don't want to deliver to anyone in the "coalition of the willing".
The slightest hiccup in oil production over the past 12 months (hurricanes, strikes, fires, threats of civil unrest, military coups, etc.) have regularly resulted in +10% movements in price. I can only imagine what would happen to prices if 20% of production just suddenly turned off, and really turned off not just speculation on what might occur.
Ultimately to be successful in the market, you just need to have smart risk/money management (the "more rational" part of your argument). If you assume that your guess is no better than a 50/50 chance of being right, cut your loses early and let your profits run. Set a stop loss as quickly as you can once you move into profit and then enjoy the ride.
As for P/E ratios, Googles at 89 is ridiculous. Even Microsoft, who I would hardly consider a growth stock these days seems unusually large in the 20s. But the US market has always had a strange way of valuing companies in that sense.
An equally nice hypothesis, but if you actually didn't compare apples and oranges or to wit apples and burgers it might be a little more realistic.
Try purchasing bread which isn't laden with salt and/or sugar, fresh lettuce which isn't covered in pesticides and chlorine, fresh tomato, lean ground mince which isn't adulterated with water or other supplements, etc. and you'll quickly find that the couple of $ it costs for a burger is quickly outweighed by the cost of lean healthy meat alone.
But you are right, feeding a cow/fish/prawn/basically any animal for it's lifetime is down right expensive. It usually takes several times the final weight of the animal in feed to get it there, so to make it cost effective the lifespan (from birth to table) required is reduced by various means or the product is mixed with other fillers and preservatives before appearing on shelves or in delis. At which point, how healthy much of it is is drawn into question.
It's the nature of the business that the healthy option will be more expensive than the unhealthy alternative unless legislation or tariffs are put in place to balance it for the good of the people. The reason why it is usually unhealthy in the first place is because it is cheaper to substitute the real healthy product with preservatives, salt, sugar, etc. for flavour. If it wasn't so commercially appealing to continue with such widespread substitution you wouldn't need foods loaded with fat, start substitutes, salt and sugar just to give it flavour.
Take a look at the cost of tinned fruit and vegetables or to a lesser extent frozen ones vs the fresh alternatives. Bean, tomatoes, pears are all regularly on sale for less than 70cents a can (Australian dollars, that equates to just over US$0.50 on todays rate). Now consider how many of the fresh alternative you'd have to buy for a similar quantity. It's hard to imagine they can tin or pack these things and still make a profit. Looking at the ingredients on many will show higher levels of salt and other additives.
And sourcing "good" lettuce these days is becoming increasingly difficult. Between the regular covering in pesticides and endocrine disruptors during growing, to the cleaning/bleaching in chlorine when it is harvested, to being sold in those "ready picked" plastic salad bags which mean it is devoid of almost all nutritional content by the time it hits your plate.... it's a fun game a the supermarket when you actually feel like taking the time to try and keep the diet as health as possible (especially so if you AREN'T a vegetarian as meat products are some of the most bastardised).
If you're so inclined and feel like an interesting read about why diet, health, and the economy have been so drastically affected by food over the past 50 years "Not on the label" by Felicity Lawrence is an excellent read.
And that to eat truly healthy food, it usually costs more. Spending more seems to go against our overwhelming capitalist nature. There have been numerous studies done (all the ones I've read have been from the UK though, but I'm sure there are similar ones in the US) which show that those on poorer incomes have significantly reduced access to "healthy" food, and as such eat rubbish. Which becomes a vicious cycle as increased health problems and obesity lead to their own additional problems and expenses.
If I had my mod points available (I don't because I posted on this topic unfortunately) I'd mod you up. Having re-read the article, I think this better articulates what has actually happened than a simple loss of IQ.
Thank you.
No, the average IQ should of a country always be 100... given it is meant to be representative of the average of the sample set. IQ tests within the US should and would be different to those in Australia vs those in the UK to attempt to remove cultural bias between the countries.
I'd suggest anyone concerned or curious about the effect our food and our food choices are having on our lives read Not on the label by Felicty Lawrence.
We briefly touched on IQ (and its calculation) in my psychology studies. From what we were told, your Intelligence Quotient was basically a representation of where you sat on the bell distribution curve for your:
- age
- gender
- cultural background
- etc
Basically, the closer they could come to matching your specific circumstances to those similar to you, the more accurate your IQ measurement was. There was much discussion about how both questions and distribution had to be changed to remove cultural bias inherent in the testing. So if you were straight down the line as being average, you'd have a score (IQ) of 100. If you were below average, you might be 70. If you are above average you might be 130.
So can someone explain to me how the IQ can be dropping when it is meant to be the measure of the average? The percentage of people in the demographic obtaining a score of 100 should remain constant. I understand that the number of correct answers might diminish or increase over time, but the percentile of people scoring 100 and the distribution of the rest should remain the same otherwise the scoring is flawed.
Insurance already discriminates. Those under age 25 are in a higher risk group on the road, they pay a premium. Males are even higher risk, they pay a premium. Too many years working in IT with a bad posture has taken it's toll on my back requiring regular chiro to make life enjoyable, so I have to have a spinal exclusion on my income protection policy. Thankfully I'm relatively young and qualified, with a white collar job so that helps reduce my premiums.
The whole industry works by pooling the funds of many in the hope that you never actually have to use it, but when you do it is subsidised by others. It's essentially a lottery, if you never need your insurance you are ultimately out of pocket and handed over your money for nothing. If you do need it though, you "win" by reducing how much it costs you.
Those who are more likely to take benefit from the fund have always been expected to pay more.
Unfortunately we already have a silver deficit each year, and the metal is more scarce than gold. Expect silver prices to rise considerably over the coming years as stores continue to be depleted at a rate far exceeding that which it is being mined.
It will likely continue be cheaper than gold though so your point stands.
Well blindness might not be one you have to worry about for too much longer either ;)
check this annoucement
There is a very good reason why people print out hard copies "in order to study it properly". The eye is able to perceive, and thus it is easier for the brain to understand, reflected light as opposed to transmitted light. CRTs and LCDs emit light into your eye, paper will reflect it. That's why people print out hard copies, because it is actually easier to study it properly.
Likewise, there is much more to be learnt about and observed by someone in the flesh as opposed to via a webcast. So I'd say no, there won't come a time in our lives at least.
This "ribbon" baloney just seems to be a bigger version of what Adobe have been doing for years (at least in their DTP type products).
I quite like it, as anything I need to change for the tool/action I'm currently performing is always in the same place.
There is also the fact that IE will connect to IIS servers quicker than non-IE browsers will
MS-IE/IIS speedup hack
I've theorised my belief on where Google will take this some time ago when there was talk of them becoming an ISP.
Just think of hundreds if not thousands of "Google Accelerators" all around the place acting as transparent proxies for an untold number of internet connections. Not only can they now tell what sites are popular based on search results (which may not be the same, that's more a mark of what people are looking for), but they can tell what areas/locations look at what content, how many people at site A also view site B, roughly how long users stay on a specific site, etc. etc.
But I think the most immediate benefit to them in the short-term is that they can reduce the amount of spidering they need to do. With millions of people going out and fetching the pages people want to look at for them, they only need to really go out and spider the "darker" parts of the net.