you shouldn't get that argument, it has no real basis. It is usually easier to upgrade from the old, especially when you can use certain things that are still in place. It is also easier because you usually have a workforce with experience in doing this sort of stuff and therefore are better prepared for the problems they will face.
More realistically, not enough Americans demand that bandwidth. It's like tv on cell phones. We hardly have it and it's common in Japan. Is this bad thing? of course not. Unless there is some horrible form of market failure, it would get produced at about how every much people want.
yeah, but the great part of OOo is that there isn't much of a difference with MS office. Anyone who uses MS office for anything basic can definitely sit down and do the same stuff with OOo in exactly the same way. That is the beauty of pretty much cloning the basic parts of the layout. It means for what teachers uses this stuff for, there is very little retraining needed. Those teachers that are more apt and therefore use the computer for more things are probably going to be less affected by the switch because they usually do well in learning new things quickly. At least that is my experience with teachers that really use all the options on MS office.
unfortunately, your examples don't really apply. If the bill is written to do what they plan for it to do, the coast guard in the US will still provide free weather data to sailors and the FAA will still provide free weather data to pilots. I know because I do both and espeically for pilots, these things just can't change because so much of whether or not it is legal for a plane to take off is based on very accurate weather.
I"m not saying this stuff might not be happening in Australia, but if I ever saw a pilot using something like weather.com or weather.gov to plan his flights, I would try to do everything in my power to get his lisence revoked, those sources don't give you nearly all the information you need to fly(remember, weather on the ground isn't the same as weather 10,000 ft. in the air).
I don't agree with this because I pay for this work to be done through taxes and therefore expect to be able to access the data. I don't want the US government wasting resources packaging it with little ribbons but simple data and predictions they are making should be available.
as to the ass clown who thinks everyone in these races are billionaires and that for some reason billionaires don't deserve the same services everyone else recieves(even though they usually foot a larger bill for them), you need to learn who eneters these races. A lot of the people out there aren't billionaires but professional sailors and captains. They may be working for/with some really rich person, but that doesn't make their life somehow forfeit(death by association, I guess?).
Or if you want something that will make you think in iteresting ways, why not the proof of why the real numbers are a larger infinite set than the natural/integer/Q numbers and then ask them to find a set that stands inbetween the two in size(of course, this is what Godel's theorem is talking about).
It actually leads back to what the parent post is talking about, but gives you a more tangible case of the incompleteness theorem in action.
Re:The power of MSN and Mensa
on
MSN Sponsors Mensa
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
just RTFA, he originally sued for millions of dollars. I quote the suit:
(c)Damages against the Washington Post defendants in the amount of $500,000.00 for intentional interference with prospective economic advantage and inducing a breach of employment contract.
(d Damages against the Washington Post defendants in the amount of $1,000,000.00 for intentional infliction of mental anguish.
(e Damages against the Washington Post defendants in the amount of $1,000,000.00 for negligence.
(f) Damages against the Post in the amount of $1,000,000.00 for refusing to post retractions, and for unreasonable delay in removing defamatory messages posted on its web page.
(g) Punitive and exemplary damages in the amount of $2,000,000.00.
thats quite a bit of money and the last one is for punitive damamges. just get off your high horse. he wanted satisfaction in the millions originally.
you should read some of the other comments below, but I dont mean to imply simply lying is ok. What i am saying is they simply reported on the facts available at the time. This is equivalent to me suing a newpaper because they reported that I am an accused murderer. As I said below, it is equivalent to OJ suing every new organization that reported about him in even a slightly negative sense calling him an accused murderer before the verdict of his trial.
This case has three very important points being made. One is that you can no longer say people have had bad histories or are being accused of something bad. This is because if it turns out they are not guilty, you can now sue for libel.
Next is that you cannot keep online archives of things you reported on in the past if they could qualify for the above. Namely, a person couldn't bring suit if they never kept an online archive becasue the paper could argue the comments were no longer easily available from them after he was given a not guilty verdict.
third is that it is possible to now require that papers follow up on all stories to give the end result. THIS IS THE ONE THING I LIKE ABOUT THIS RULING. as I said above, I think papers should always post retractions or follow ups if new information becomes available.
I have a comment below where I post what he is suing the Post over. He is suing for the fact that these things were written before his trial and that they were still available online to anyone who wanted to look through an archive of the Post.
keep in mind one part of the suit is that they didn't post a retraction and kept the same story up on their website with no mention of the outcome of the case(which is what I mean by a retraction).
This might or might not be a reason to sue for libel because it was an archived story. Part of the value of the internet is being able to keep records of everything that has happened(in sum total, in specific instances everyone can keep as much of a record as they please).
The reason I don't like this suit is it could very well mean that archiving stories could become illegal simply becasue they discussed any instance that has been ruled on. Think about the implications of any person who ever had this type of story written about them and then being cleared in a court of law. Every person ever accused of murder who had statements like this put out against them(namely, saying they were accused of murder and maybe have a bad record of being accused constantly) can go back and sue newpapers for having an archive of the original story.
It's almost like trying to change history to suit your needs now.
great idea, so from now on the media shouldn't report that anyone is accused of anything until after the trial right?
sure sounds like you have no idea how things are done in the US. You can only sue for things that are said that are known to be blatantly false. This isn't the case(at least part of it).
I just hope you understand how ridiculous it is to require that everything posted to the newspaper is forever held up as true in a court of law. Better yet, read the comments that he is suing over. The post didn't say "this sexual harasser and thief is finally being brought to justice". I actually quoted the article in a different reply.
I responded to this type of comment a moment ago, read some of the quotes from the article. The washington post only said why he was dismissed and quoted a UN official who said that it was for misconduct. Nor did they say he did any of this, but rather highlighted that he had been constantly accused of misconduct.
you are missing the point of the case. he is suing, not because they reported him as a liar and thief after he was exonerated, but because they reported about it before he was taken to trial.
that is what the post did, report on the facts available at that time.
what you are saying is that if anything is proven even remotely false in the future I should be held against it now. I guess you want our reporters to see into the future? To know the exact outcome of everything they are reporting on as it is happening?
OJ simpson cannot sue people because his reputation was harmed over the murder trial. He was referred to as a murderer by many people. One cannot call him a murderer now, but before the trial people were making claims left and right(both guilty and not guilty).
just so you can read some of the injurous comments:
Section: A SECTION
Word Count: 680
The United Nations has removed a controversial African official from his post at the U.N. Drug Control Program and will not renew his contract because of "misconduct and mismanagement," a U.N. spokesman said yesterday.
The move came after a story in The Washington Post on Sunday detailed a series of allegations against the official, Cheickh Mohamed Tidyane Bangoura, who was the subject of several U.N. investigations. Government officials in Africa, creditors and U.N. sources
CLOUD OF SCANDAL FOLLOWS U.N. DRUG CONTROL OFFICIAL
BOUTROS-GHALI TIES ALLEGEDLY GAVE PROTECTION
Article 2 of 2 found
William Branigin
James Rupert Washington Post Staff Writers
Janaury 5, 1997; Page A1
Section: A SECTION
Word Count: 2342
For much of his four-year career with the U.N. Drug Control Program, Cheickh Mohamed Tidyane Bangoura has been dogged by scandal.
Colleagues have accused him of sexual harassment, financial improprieties and nepotism. The government of Ivory Coast, where he formerly was stationed, said it received so many complaints about his alleged misdeeds that it demanded his removal.
in my view, none of this is calling him a thief, only pointing out that he has been constantly accused of these things. Now of that is untrue, I do not know. The ex ante truth of these statements isn't what was being claimed but rather, the ex post truth value.
except Intel is almost completely dominant in Japan and this doesn't go against the number 2 maker in the US, AMD. Even if the weak dollar could be blamed, it wouldn't make much sense to 'protect' Japanese businesses in an area which those businesses don't exist.
market theory doesn't predict anything like that. Well, unless you are assuming perfect information(everyone knows this is going on) and that all products are homogenous and that no company has market power because we are in a perfectly competitive environment.
A bit of a stretch, don't you think?
The post didn't malliciously lie about this guy. They didn't decide to go after this man by destroyin his reputation(like the McCarthy trials). There was, at the time, some proof that he was involved in illegal activities and the post reported on it. By your exact logic, President Bush could sue almost every media outlet in the world(especially those that post online) because of those false documents about his military record or OJ simpson suing every news outlet that called him a murderer.
People shouldn't have their hands tied from reporting based on the facts available. Its why we call them reporters and not detectives. I hope this gets struck down simply because if we want to have a society where we are kept up to date we have to allow for these people to report based on bad information once in a while. As long as it wasn't meant to crush the man's reputation out of spite, its fair game(ie. they had a good reason to believe at the time of reporting that this is true).
Now I will say it would be the responsibility of the Post to probably directly link to that article another article about how he was found not guilty of the crime. But I won't say they need to actually be 100% certain every time they report something that every fact is accurate.
first note, that when I said belief, I was referring to something I am pretty sure I was told by the police but I cannot remember as it no longer(well in 2 months) applied in me.
secondly, be sure you are looking up a pertinent law. this law regulates the sale of alcohol and is applied to things such as bars and restaurants, not what someone does in the privacy of their own home(unless I now need a lisense to have a 12 pack in my fridge) . no time now, I will post later either an email or actual law that deals with this.
you win for extremely weak argument. by your exact definition, the FAA could mandate saying the lord's prayer before boarding at airplane. As this isn't a law(in your stricter definition of the word) then it would all be ok by the federal government. better yet, it wouldn't even be congress making that law.
we interpret what was meant by extending it to other parts of government, this includes government spending that is construed as establishing religion of some faith. It can also be argued that when the government lets any faith be immortalized on some form of public property, this is using government resources to establish some religion. It doesn't matter if you care wether or not every religion is represented in the courthouse, any citizen can excercise their right to not have it there(if it is within their rights) and it wins. Thats the nice thing about rights; without changing the constitution, in theory the majority can never outweigh the minority.
actually, depending on your stance, there is a reason for it. Look at the under age drinking and driving deaths for before and after the law, there was a huge drop in occurance, even though hte number of people who could illegally drink and drive suddenly jumped(all those people who were 18, 19 , and 20 and could do it legally couldn't after the law).
It has proven itself as a good deterrent for drinking and driving, probalby because of a judgement issue. While you might be smart ehough to choose the president at 18, statistics doesn't show you are smart enough to be allowed to legally drink. Of course, again, this rests on wether or not you believe government should regulate towards stupid people in some cases.
I'm not sure where you live, but at least here in florida as of 4 years ago, it was legal for a parent to give their child alcohol. It was something I cleared with the police in my town out of curiosity. A random adult cannot give a minor alcohol but a parent has the right to. I can't remember, but I believe there is also a mandate that it is the privacy of the home or similar abode(like personal house boat).
no, I just found the thought of you saying it and not knowing where it came from funny. I'm actually hindu, which is where that idea originated(as world religions of Eur-asia go).
I also found it humorous that a Buddhist tennant was used as part of an argument by someone defending christianity because most people in general don't know much about other religions, much less use them in their arguments.
but just to tell you, the tennant in buudhism is about being able to be exposed to anything(even those nekkid women) and still remain in complete control and not have those thoughts form. That is the self control they shoot for.
personally, my favorite part of the post was about how right thought was part of the 8 fold path. You do know that is a Buddhist tennant? forgive my horrid spelling, I bit out of my right mind:-P
just to give you an example, I'm manipulating a data set with about 7 thousand observations and 75 variables. This I find to be damn near impossible in excel but very easy to do in SAS or Stata. But I still import it from excel because I find naming my variables easier in Excel and it makes SAS work a lot more manageable.
I'm right now required to use SAS, or I might use Stata. I suggest you try them both becuase they each are amazing at different things. I find the greatest part about Stata is how easy it is to find programs that are written by others that give you very useful functions in the command line.
personal thing as an economist, but I find Stata to be the easiest to start on and has some of the nicest community based features and the most powerful is by far SAS. Though I have never used SPSS, I personally haven't been given a reason to learn it.
if you have experience across all three any particular reason you choose SPSS?
I am somewhat appauled that the GP considers excel a scientists best friend. When I was in high school and didn't have access to either high level data or high level stat programs I used excel but I now avoid it like the plague. The only thing I like excel for is handing out my data set in a manner that makes sure everyone can import it in a usable format(because I like to name my data columns with fun names that make sense).
I find excel way too slow and difficult to use when manipulating large data sets. It can be done through lots of keyboard shortcuts but I like the flexibility of a real statistical program.
I've sat down and played with linux but I will tell you this, it isn't a reading comprehension test that gets you ready for a debian install. I compare it to chinese water torture or needles in my eyes after hours of staring at a computer screen getting it all to work.
Installing Debian is easy... well, let me take that back, I think its the stage 3 install that only takes a few days to muck through if you are an experienced Linux user. It might take me a week to get the system working. Now this is where I step back and look and say, "the functionality of Debian isn't worth a week of my time learning to get it up and running". Maybe you should look at it from that angle. Redhat I can get up and running in about 3 hours(most of which I don't have to be infront of the computer).
seems like a pretty terrible trade off to me, and this isn't even when I'm comparing it to the mecca of debian installs(isn't a stage one install where you get all the benefits??)
I just did a quick check of the article and I didn't see a compile time of 30, second, only of 160 seconds, which is still good but not nearly 30 seconds.
other than that, doesn't seem to be revolutionary at all, just another 4 way server. I've seen these advertised for quite a while, even with the 4 way opteron.
Slashdot Mirror
you shouldn't get that argument, it has no real basis. It is usually easier to upgrade from the old, especially when you can use certain things that are still in place. It is also easier because you usually have a workforce with experience in doing this sort of stuff and therefore are better prepared for the problems they will face.
More realistically, not enough Americans demand that bandwidth. It's like tv on cell phones. We hardly have it and it's common in Japan. Is this bad thing? of course not. Unless there is some horrible form of market failure, it would get produced at about how every much people want.
yeah, but the great part of OOo is that there isn't much of a difference with MS office. Anyone who uses MS office for anything basic can definitely sit down and do the same stuff with OOo in exactly the same way. That is the beauty of pretty much cloning the basic parts of the layout. It means for what teachers uses this stuff for, there is very little retraining needed. Those teachers that are more apt and therefore use the computer for more things are probably going to be less affected by the switch because they usually do well in learning new things quickly. At least that is my experience with teachers that really use all the options on MS office.
unfortunately, your examples don't really apply. If the bill is written to do what they plan for it to do, the coast guard in the US will still provide free weather data to sailors and the FAA will still provide free weather data to pilots. I know because I do both and espeically for pilots, these things just can't change because so much of whether or not it is legal for a plane to take off is based on very accurate weather.
I"m not saying this stuff might not be happening in Australia, but if I ever saw a pilot using something like weather.com or weather.gov to plan his flights, I would try to do everything in my power to get his lisence revoked, those sources don't give you nearly all the information you need to fly(remember, weather on the ground isn't the same as weather 10,000 ft. in the air).
I don't agree with this because I pay for this work to be done through taxes and therefore expect to be able to access the data. I don't want the US government wasting resources packaging it with little ribbons but simple data and predictions they are making should be available.
as to the ass clown who thinks everyone in these races are billionaires and that for some reason billionaires don't deserve the same services everyone else recieves(even though they usually foot a larger bill for them), you need to learn who eneters these races. A lot of the people out there aren't billionaires but professional sailors and captains. They may be working for/with some really rich person, but that doesn't make their life somehow forfeit(death by association, I guess?).
Or if you want something that will make you think in iteresting ways, why not the proof of why the real numbers are a larger infinite set than the natural/integer/Q numbers and then ask them to find a set that stands inbetween the two in size(of course, this is what Godel's theorem is talking about). It actually leads back to what the parent post is talking about, but gives you a more tangible case of the incompleteness theorem in action.
Slashdot;-)?
just RTFA, he originally sued for millions of dollars. I quote the suit:
(c)Damages against the Washington Post defendants in the amount of $500,000.00 for intentional interference with prospective economic advantage and inducing a breach of employment contract.
(d Damages against the Washington Post defendants in the amount of $1,000,000.00 for intentional infliction of mental anguish.
(e Damages against the Washington Post defendants in the amount of $1,000,000.00 for negligence.
(f) Damages against the Post in the amount of $1,000,000.00 for refusing to post retractions, and for unreasonable delay in removing defamatory messages posted on its web page.
(g) Punitive and exemplary damages in the amount of $2,000,000.00.
thats quite a bit of money and the last one is for punitive damamges. just get off your high horse. he wanted satisfaction in the millions originally.
you should read some of the other comments below,
but I dont mean to imply simply lying is ok. What i am saying is they simply reported on the facts available at the time. This is equivalent to me suing a newpaper because they reported that I am an accused murderer. As I said below, it is equivalent to OJ suing every new organization that reported about him in even a slightly negative sense calling him an accused murderer before the verdict of his trial.
This case has three very important points being made. One is that you can no longer say people have had bad histories or are being accused of something bad. This is because if it turns out they are not guilty, you can now sue for libel.
Next is that you cannot keep online archives of things you reported on in the past if they could qualify for the above. Namely, a person couldn't bring suit if they never kept an online archive becasue the paper could argue the comments were no longer easily available from them after he was given a not guilty verdict.
third is that it is possible to now require that papers follow up on all stories to give the end result. THIS IS THE ONE THING I LIKE ABOUT THIS RULING. as I said above, I think papers should always post retractions or follow ups if new information becomes available.
I have a comment below where I post what he is suing the Post over. He is suing for the fact that these things were written before his trial and that they were still available online to anyone who wanted to look through an archive of the Post.
keep in mind one part of the suit is that they didn't post a retraction and kept the same story up on their website with no mention of the outcome of the case(which is what I mean by a retraction).
This might or might not be a reason to sue for libel because it was an archived story. Part of the value of the internet is being able to keep records of everything that has happened(in sum total, in specific instances everyone can keep as much of a record as they please).
The reason I don't like this suit is it could very well mean that archiving stories could become illegal simply becasue they discussed any instance that has been ruled on. Think about the implications of any person who ever had this type of story written about them and then being cleared in a court of law. Every person ever accused of murder who had statements like this put out against them(namely, saying they were accused of murder and maybe have a bad record of being accused constantly) can go back and sue newpapers for having an archive of the original story.
It's almost like trying to change history to suit your needs now.
great idea, so from now on the media shouldn't report that anyone is accused of anything until after the trial right?
sure sounds like you have no idea how things are done in the US. You can only sue for things that are said that are known to be blatantly false. This isn't the case(at least part of it).
I just hope you understand how ridiculous it is to require that everything posted to the newspaper is forever held up as true in a court of law. Better yet, read the comments that he is suing over. The post didn't say "this sexual harasser and thief is finally being brought to justice". I actually quoted the article in a different reply.
I responded to this type of comment a moment ago, read some of the quotes from the article. The washington post only said why he was dismissed and quoted a UN official who said that it was for misconduct. Nor did they say he did any of this, but rather highlighted that he had been constantly accused of misconduct.
you are missing the point of the case. he is suing, not because they reported him as a liar and thief after he was exonerated, but because they reported about it before he was taken to trial.
that is what the post did, report on the facts available at that time.
what you are saying is that if anything is proven even remotely false in the future I should be held against it now. I guess you want our reporters to see into the future? To know the exact outcome of everything they are reporting on as it is happening?
OJ simpson cannot sue people because his reputation was harmed over the murder trial. He was referred to as a murderer by many people. One cannot call him a murderer now, but before the trial people were making claims left and right(both guilty and not guilty).
just so you can read some of the injurous comments:
Section: A SECTION
Word Count: 680
The United Nations has removed a controversial African official from his post at the U.N. Drug Control Program and will not renew his contract because of "misconduct and mismanagement," a U.N. spokesman said yesterday.
The move came after a story in The Washington Post on Sunday detailed a series of allegations against the official, Cheickh Mohamed Tidyane Bangoura, who was the subject of several U.N. investigations. Government officials in Africa, creditors and U.N. sources
CLOUD OF SCANDAL FOLLOWS U.N. DRUG CONTROL OFFICIAL
BOUTROS-GHALI TIES ALLEGEDLY GAVE PROTECTION
Article 2 of 2 found
William Branigin
James Rupert Washington Post Staff Writers
Janaury 5, 1997; Page A1
Section: A SECTION
Word Count: 2342
For much of his four-year career with the U.N. Drug Control Program, Cheickh Mohamed Tidyane Bangoura has been dogged by scandal.
Colleagues have accused him of sexual harassment, financial improprieties and nepotism. The government of Ivory Coast, where he formerly was stationed, said it received so many complaints about his alleged misdeeds that it demanded his removal.
in my view, none of this is calling him a thief, only pointing out that he has been constantly accused of these things. Now of that is untrue, I do not know. The ex ante truth of these statements isn't what was being claimed but rather, the ex post truth value.
except Intel is almost completely dominant in Japan and this doesn't go against the number 2 maker in the US, AMD. Even if the weak dollar could be blamed, it wouldn't make much sense to 'protect' Japanese businesses in an area which those businesses don't exist.
market theory doesn't predict anything like that. Well, unless you are assuming perfect information(everyone knows this is going on) and that all products are homogenous and that no company has market power because we are in a perfectly competitive environment. A bit of a stretch, don't you think?
The post didn't malliciously lie about this guy. They didn't decide to go after this man by destroyin his reputation(like the McCarthy trials). There was, at the time, some proof that he was involved in illegal activities and the post reported on it. By your exact logic, President Bush could sue almost every media outlet in the world(especially those that post online) because of those false documents about his military record or OJ simpson suing every news outlet that called him a murderer.
People shouldn't have their hands tied from reporting based on the facts available. Its why we call them reporters and not detectives. I hope this gets struck down simply because if we want to have a society where we are kept up to date we have to allow for these people to report based on bad information once in a while. As long as it wasn't meant to crush the man's reputation out of spite, its fair game(ie. they had a good reason to believe at the time of reporting that this is true).
Now I will say it would be the responsibility of the Post to probably directly link to that article another article about how he was found not guilty of the crime. But I won't say they need to actually be 100% certain every time they report something that every fact is accurate.
first note, that when I said belief, I was referring to something I am pretty sure I was told by the police but I cannot remember as it no longer(well in 2 months) applied in me.
secondly, be sure you are looking up a pertinent law. this law regulates the sale of alcohol and is applied to things such as bars and restaurants, not what someone does in the privacy of their own home(unless I now need a lisense to have a 12 pack in my fridge) . no time now, I will post later either an email or actual law that deals with this.
you win for extremely weak argument. by your exact definition, the FAA could mandate saying the lord's prayer before boarding at airplane. As this isn't a law(in your stricter definition of the word) then it would all be ok by the federal government. better yet, it wouldn't even be congress making that law. we interpret what was meant by extending it to other parts of government, this includes government spending that is construed as establishing religion of some faith. It can also be argued that when the government lets any faith be immortalized on some form of public property, this is using government resources to establish some religion. It doesn't matter if you care wether or not every religion is represented in the courthouse, any citizen can excercise their right to not have it there(if it is within their rights) and it wins. Thats the nice thing about rights; without changing the constitution, in theory the majority can never outweigh the minority.
actually, depending on your stance, there is a reason for it. Look at the under age drinking and driving deaths for before and after the law, there was a huge drop in occurance, even though hte number of people who could illegally drink and drive suddenly jumped(all those people who were 18, 19 , and 20 and could do it legally couldn't after the law). It has proven itself as a good deterrent for drinking and driving, probalby because of a judgement issue. While you might be smart ehough to choose the president at 18, statistics doesn't show you are smart enough to be allowed to legally drink. Of course, again, this rests on wether or not you believe government should regulate towards stupid people in some cases.
I'm not sure where you live, but at least here in florida as of 4 years ago, it was legal for a parent to give their child alcohol. It was something I cleared with the police in my town out of curiosity. A random adult cannot give a minor alcohol but a parent has the right to. I can't remember, but I believe there is also a mandate that it is the privacy of the home or similar abode(like personal house boat).
no, I just found the thought of you saying it and not knowing where it came from funny. I'm actually hindu, which is where that idea originated(as world religions of Eur-asia go).
I also found it humorous that a Buddhist tennant was used as part of an argument by someone defending christianity because most people in general don't know much about other religions, much less use them in their arguments.
but just to tell you, the tennant in buudhism is about being able to be exposed to anything(even those nekkid women) and still remain in complete control and not have those thoughts form. That is the self control they shoot for.
personally, my favorite part of the post was about how right thought was part of the 8 fold path. You do know that is a Buddhist tennant? forgive my horrid spelling, I bit out of my right mind:-P
just to give you an example, I'm manipulating a data set with about 7 thousand observations and 75 variables. This I find to be damn near impossible in excel but very easy to do in SAS or Stata. But I still import it from excel because I find naming my variables easier in Excel and it makes SAS work a lot more manageable.
I'm right now required to use SAS, or I might use Stata. I suggest you try them both becuase they each are amazing at different things. I find the greatest part about Stata is how easy it is to find programs that are written by others that give you very useful functions in the command line.
personal thing as an economist, but I find Stata to be the easiest to start on and has some of the nicest community based features and the most powerful is by far SAS. Though I have never used SPSS, I personally haven't been given a reason to learn it.
if you have experience across all three any particular reason you choose SPSS?
I am somewhat appauled that the GP considers excel a scientists best friend. When I was in high school and didn't have access to either high level data or high level stat programs I used excel but I now avoid it like the plague. The only thing I like excel for is handing out my data set in a manner that makes sure everyone can import it in a usable format(because I like to name my data columns with fun names that make sense).
I find excel way too slow and difficult to use when manipulating large data sets. It can be done through lots of keyboard shortcuts but I like the flexibility of a real statistical program.
I've sat down and played with linux but I will tell you this, it isn't a reading comprehension test that gets you ready for a debian install. I compare it to chinese water torture or needles in my eyes after hours of staring at a computer screen getting it all to work.
Installing Debian is easy... well, let me take that back, I think its the stage 3 install that only takes a few days to muck through if you are an experienced Linux user. It might take me a week to get the system working. Now this is where I step back and look and say, "the functionality of Debian isn't worth a week of my time learning to get it up and running". Maybe you should look at it from that angle. Redhat I can get up and running in about 3 hours(most of which I don't have to be infront of the computer).
seems like a pretty terrible trade off to me, and this isn't even when I'm comparing it to the mecca of debian installs(isn't a stage one install where you get all the benefits??)
I just did a quick check of the article and I didn't see a compile time of 30, second, only of 160 seconds, which is still good but not nearly 30 seconds.
other than that, doesn't seem to be revolutionary at all, just another 4 way server. I've seen these advertised for quite a while, even with the 4 way opteron.
so your entire blurb is basically ramblings about the fact that money moves through the economy? thanks for that brilliant insight!!