I was, perhaps, a little hard on them. Cross over between disciplines should be encouraged. But the point is, it's the price, not whether you win that really matters. And the physicists' paper didn't seem to investigate that point.
But what I find most telling is that the majority of the article linked to is discussions with economists who have done much more substantial work in the area.
The main point I take away from this article is that its written by physicists. The point is not how many bids you put in to win - but at what price. I seriously doubt that the article would make it into any economics journal. You know, the journals where they actually know something about how auctions work.
Who cares if I make 100 bids in increments of $1 or one bid of $100. The price will be the same. What matters is if the price is lower with single winning bids or with 'bidding wars'.
the OS parks the heads when it reads near-zero (rather than very high) acceleration on all axes, i.e. freefall
That can't be right.
A laptop is not going to reach teminal velocity (i.e. zero acceleration) falling off a table. I'm not sure what the terminal velocity of a laptop is, but I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that you don't reach it within 2 metres.
Once again, except for Rosetta applications that need to be translated on the fly, it takes about 2-3 seconds to open most applications for me. It is fast. Really fast. Further more, it is pretty standard practice just to leave applications open and in the background. Even if you don't, OS X seems to run a RAM disk/caching system such that subsequent openings of applications are even quicker because they are unlikely to need to go to disk (you can never have too much RAM).
But, to cut to the chase, it does matter if you are manipulating large files or, for example, DVD disk images during finalisation. So, dealing with digital video or large photoshop files can be affected by disk speed. I have an external 7200rpm firewire drive that I use for this sort of stuff, but suppose I should go for a SATA connection if it really mattered that much to me - it doesn't.
Don't know about you but I so rarely boot my MacBook Pro. Just like my Powerbook it spends much of its time in sleep mode. And let me tell you - having it awake and ready to go before you have the screen fully up makes it such an enjoyable experience.
But, even assuming I was rebooting a lot, the time it takes to start up is around 20 seconds with my 5400rpm drive - it is really subjectively fast - faster than some PC laptops wake from sleep. Maybe its an Open Firmware/EFI thing...
I'm seriously considering jumping into this head first, being on the bleeding edge, and going with an implant.
Rev.13:16:
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads.
Oh boy, where do I start?
"Head first" - implant in the forehead?! "Bleeding edge" - more like bleeding forehead. I wonder if I could get the sentence to convert to 666 using enough numerological gymnastics...
Perhaps you might want to look up 'monopoly' in the dictionary.
Ummmm, perhaps you might want to read the first paragraph of section 3 of the findings of fact. Helpfully excerpted here for your benefit because you have better things to do:
Microsoft enjoys so much power in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems that if it wished to exercise this power solely in terms of price, it could charge a price for Windows substantially above that which could be charged in a competitive market. Moreover, it could do so for a significant period of time without losing an unacceptable amount of business to competitors. In other words, Microsoft enjoys monopoly power in the relevant market.
You obviously don't understand what the word monopoly means in this situation.
Microsoft is only your deemed 'monopoly' because the general public have taken to them so well and a few people cant deal with it.
Wrong. Microsoft may have achieved its monopoly on the operating system because of the general public making a free choice (even that is doubtful) - but it achieved its monopoly of most of the closely related areas, browsers in particular, by abuse of that operating system monopoly. Have a read of the antitrust case findings of fact about Microsoft. (Particularly sections IV and V.)
The general public have not taken to them out of their own free will. They have 'taken' to them through shady, duplicitous, illegal and morally bankrupt actions. Wake up and smell the coffee!
You will then find the packages at/Library/Receipts and can copy them to other Macs.
...actually at/Library/Packages
And to answer the objections below (above?) it works so simply with multiple updates - you select them all and then choose 'Install and Keep Package' or 'Download Only'. I suppose they could have put a checkbox in the main window rather than burying this option at the top level of a menu, but it it so much better than the Microsoft(TM) way (click in the 'Edit' menu, choose 'Copy...', select 'Other Options...', click on the 'Settings' tab, scroll down the list until you see 'Enable Tranche Survival' and select that option.)
I think you post raises the important distinction between what is legal or illegal and what is right or wrong.
Laws are an imperfect instrument for getting people to do what is right - but they are the best we have. The problems occur when people equate what is legal with what is right rather than starting with what is right. You get classic examples in stock markets where companies cook the books in an entirely legal manner that is fundamentally misleading. It is only when someone decides that what they are doing is so fundamentally wrong that they try to convict them - but usually using novel interpretations of existing laws. Spam fits right into this scenario. It is wrong but because of the inadequacy of our laws it is commonly not illegal. Instead, people have to develop novel interpretations of existing laws (e.g. stealing computer bandwidth, tresspass on computers or whatever). It is helpful that the people dealing in spam are generally gutter-trash who can be relied on to be into other shady activities.
So, don't make the mistake of confusing what is right with what is legal.
There are many respected scientists who are not 'sceptics' (as that term is so often used - pejoratively) who doubt the link between hurricanes and global warming. Repeat after me, correlation does not prove causation.
Yeah. They don't appreciate the beauty of cup-holders in Europe. I mean, I don't care if it has the best fuel economy, fastest acceleration, best road-holding ability: If it doesn't have twice as many cup-holders as passenger seats it's not worthy of being called a car.
Oh, and tyres - don't get me started in tyres. You actually have to change them and rotate them in Europe. Look, if I have to change my tyres before the engine gives out I consider myself ripped off. Cornering ability - bah, the only roads worth driving on are ones that are straight enough to land aeroplanes on.
You better believe that they have issues on Europe.
If we accept both assumptions, then you can hardly come to any other conclusion than that mankind is utterly insignificant in Creation.
Maybe you can, but the whole point about Jesus (you know, that whole Son of God, died on the cross for your sins thing) is that mankind and individuals are significant. Ergo, your logic is faulty. You seem to be making an awful lot of assumptions about God and what he would or wouldn't do. Perhaps you should restate your post to include the 10 or so actual predicates to your argument rather than the two spurious ones you list. Hundreds of millions of Christians need only add one more:
#3 Jesus died for my sins
and they can recognise their significant to God. You, however, require:
#3 The volume of the universe is large and humans are small in volume #4 God cares about the volume of things when measuring significance #5 There are many other inhabited planets in the universe #6 God only has a finite amount of care so can't care much about any individual planet #7 God cares about things in proportion to their period of existence #8 It took a lot of time for God to create the universe and he overachieved if all he wanted was a bunch of humans
The ultimate goal of google is to show you whatever it is you want to see. When searching for simply the word "failure", that page is what people are expecting to see now and searching for. Why should google artificially alter that?
Because with googlebombing what Google is showing you is what a small number of motivated people want you to see, not what you want to see. The fact that people involved in a googlebomb want to see something does not make it what the majority of people want to see. And making it circular by saying that people now expect to see the results of a succesful googlebomb when they search for failure is just sophistry.
That's not the point. The point is whether anthropogenic global warming is a reality.
There is a big difference.
While not actually disagreeing with the point about agribusiness in your post I will point out that, even if anthropogenic global warming is a reality, the appropriate policy response is not clear (e.g. adaptation or abatement). The US may have reached the right conclusion for the wrong reasons. Even the most ardent supporters of Kyoto concede that is was more about tokenism and being seen to do something as a first step to maybe doing something meaningful 20 years down the track than actually having an effect on anthropogenic global warming.
Sadly this is not the way it has worked in practice.
Executives are granted options that are already in the money on issue. Thus, they get substantial income even if the stock does nothing. If the stock goes down these options are regularly repriced with lower exercise prices which effectively removes all the downside risk.
Furthermore, options are a poor tool. The link should be between the executives performance and outcomes, not the stock price. The stock price will move for many reasons unrelated to the executive's performance - for example, stocks go up in booms and yet you would be hard pressed to argue that any executive was responsible for the economic boom. Thus, at a minimum, they should only be paid when their stock outperforms other similar stocks (or even just the whole market index). Instead, you see executives being rewarded heavily for good luck. If the market is going up, only the most grossly incompetent executive could make a stock go down. A mere seat-warmer is still likely to get significant returns.
The basic economics is that poorly designed incentive schemes, of which option grants are an example, encourage gaming of the system and not proper results or rewards.
Then why are they still mostly using corks, which have no advantages whatsoever and cause a percentage of the wine to spoil?
Depends which wine industry you are talking about. But my pick of the answers would be: (a) Because consumers are irrational snobs when it comes to wine. (b) They're not. (c) Both of the above. (d) Because I'm French.
The Australian wine industry has been pretty innovative. The Stelvin seal hasn't made it onto top quality reds yet (that is, those designed to be cellared and aged before consumption) because it doesn't breathe in the same way as cork (cork does actually have some advantages here). But given that 90% of wine is consumed within 24 hours of purchase, a lot of producers are making the switch. Practically all of the quality white wines I have brought in my local bottlo recently have screw-caps.
Indeed, it isn't the wine industry that is the problem (they know how much product they loose to corking) but the wine-snob consumers (which extends all the way down to consumers of Two Buck Chuck). Look at the timeline at the link I included. Screwcaps were used in Australia between 1977 and 1984 but withdrawn because of consumer resistance.
It's not only games that demand these new uber-graphics-cards. Consider what is happening with operating systems. In a couple of years I'm sure the OS will require today's uber-cards.
Core Image in OS X offloads a lot of the GUI stuff to the graphics processor. To get all the eye candy (sorry, usability improvements) you can't have a particularly old card. Vista is doing the same thing.
Science: Taiwan Breeds Transgenic, Flying Green Pigs Apple: Windows on Intel Macs - Yes or No? Science: Global Warming a product of malfunctioning heat pump in Hades
Indeed. In some circles aluminium is more commonly known as congealed electricity.
I'm going to bet that the cost of the nail is more than the value of the electricity produced - but the real question will be, "Is this the least efficient ways you can produce power?"
Actually, there was a scientific paper released recently (which I can't find in Google even after more than 90 seconds of serious searching) which suggested that the reason myopia developed was that those who couldn't hunt stayed home with the women. And while the perfectly-sighted alpha-males were out hunting, the myopic nerds were perpetuating the species.
Who knows? Maybe we will actually know the answer in a few years and such wild pop-optometry won't be necessary any more. (Not! And pigs might fly out of my hairy ass!)
Seriously, are you going to be attaching one to a $10,000 hifi system?
For those of us who haven't got AirTunes set up over a wireless network to stream from their Airport Express using an optical digital cable to their $10,000 hifi system - yes.
The convenience of having all your music easily selectable and ready to play at the press of a button covers over a lot of sins. (But running it from your computer is better, because PearLyrics and Spotlight give you full searchability of song lyrics and that is insanely great.)
But then, I don't use 128kbps MP3s to encode my music. I haven't gone for a dedicated hard-disk/music server with uncompressed CDs or Apple Lossless yet so space is an issue.
All that means that I might care about the sound quality of the analogue output from the iPod - will that be the weakest link or will it be the MP3 quality? Or what is the optimum bit rate at which the analogue output becomes the limit?
Slashdot Mirror
I was, perhaps, a little hard on them. Cross over between disciplines should be encouraged. But the point is, it's the price, not whether you win that really matters. And the physicists' paper didn't seem to investigate that point.
But what I find most telling is that the majority of the article linked to is discussions with economists who have done much more substantial work in the area.
The main point I take away from this article is that its written by physicists. The point is not how many bids you put in to win - but at what price. I seriously doubt that the article would make it into any economics journal. You know, the journals where they actually know something about how auctions work.
Who cares if I make 100 bids in increments of $1 or one bid of $100. The price will be the same. What matters is if the price is lower with single winning bids or with 'bidding wars'.
Hey, I mean, it moves packages...
I know it moved my package.
the OS parks the heads when it reads near-zero (rather than very high) acceleration on all axes, i.e. freefall
That can't be right.
A laptop is not going to reach teminal velocity (i.e. zero acceleration) falling off a table. I'm not sure what the terminal velocity of a laptop is, but I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that you don't reach it within 2 metres.
The SO's AutoCad won't run on a Mac.
You're saying it doesn't run under either OS X, Windows XP or Linux? Wow, that's some esoteric software.
Once again, except for Rosetta applications that need to be translated on the fly, it takes about 2-3 seconds to open most applications for me. It is fast. Really fast. Further more, it is pretty standard practice just to leave applications open and in the background. Even if you don't, OS X seems to run a RAM disk/caching system such that subsequent openings of applications are even quicker because they are unlikely to need to go to disk (you can never have too much RAM).
But, to cut to the chase, it does matter if you are manipulating large files or, for example, DVD disk images during finalisation. So, dealing with digital video or large photoshop files can be affected by disk speed. I have an external 7200rpm firewire drive that I use for this sort of stuff, but suppose I should go for a SATA connection if it really mattered that much to me - it doesn't.
Don't know about you but I so rarely boot my MacBook Pro. Just like my Powerbook it spends much of its time in sleep mode. And let me tell you - having it awake and ready to go before you have the screen fully up makes it such an enjoyable experience.
But, even assuming I was rebooting a lot, the time it takes to start up is around 20 seconds with my 5400rpm drive - it is really subjectively fast - faster than some PC laptops wake from sleep. Maybe its an Open Firmware/EFI thing...
Rev.13:16:
Oh boy, where do I start?
"Head first" - implant in the forehead?! "Bleeding edge" - more like bleeding forehead. I wonder if I could get the sentence to convert to 666 using enough numerological gymnastics...
Ummmm, perhaps you might want to read the first paragraph of section 3 of the findings of fact. Helpfully excerpted here for your benefit because you have better things to do:
You obviously don't understand what the word monopoly means in this situation.
Microsoft is only your deemed 'monopoly' because the general public have taken to them so well and a few people cant deal with it.
Wrong. Microsoft may have achieved its monopoly on the operating system because of the general public making a free choice (even that is doubtful) - but it achieved its monopoly of most of the closely related areas, browsers in particular, by abuse of that operating system monopoly. Have a read of the antitrust case findings of fact about Microsoft. (Particularly sections IV and V.)
The general public have not taken to them out of their own free will. They have 'taken' to them through shady, duplicitous, illegal and morally bankrupt actions. Wake up and smell the coffee!
...actually at /Library/Packages
And to answer the objections below (above?) it works so simply with multiple updates - you select them all and then choose 'Install and Keep Package' or 'Download Only'. I suppose they could have put a checkbox in the main window rather than burying this option at the top level of a menu, but it it so much better than the Microsoft(TM) way (click in the 'Edit' menu, choose 'Copy...', select 'Other Options...', click on the 'Settings' tab, scroll down the list until you see 'Enable Tranche Survival' and select that option.)
I think you post raises the important distinction between what is legal or illegal and what is right or wrong.
Laws are an imperfect instrument for getting people to do what is right - but they are the best we have. The problems occur when people equate what is legal with what is right rather than starting with what is right. You get classic examples in stock markets where companies cook the books in an entirely legal manner that is fundamentally misleading. It is only when someone decides that what they are doing is so fundamentally wrong that they try to convict them - but usually using novel interpretations of existing laws. Spam fits right into this scenario. It is wrong but because of the inadequacy of our laws it is commonly not illegal. Instead, people have to develop novel interpretations of existing laws (e.g. stealing computer bandwidth, tresspass on computers or whatever). It is helpful that the people dealing in spam are generally gutter-trash who can be relied on to be into other shady activities.
So, don't make the mistake of confusing what is right with what is legal.
A Macbook Pro?
Weighs in at 5.6lbs. Seems that some people consider the X1600 in the same class as a GeForce Go 6600.
You should all go and read Prometheus and in particular, this post.
There are many respected scientists who are not 'sceptics' (as that term is so often used - pejoratively) who doubt the link between hurricanes and global warming. Repeat after me, correlation does not prove causation.
Yeah. They don't appreciate the beauty of cup-holders in Europe. I mean, I don't care if it has the best fuel economy, fastest acceleration, best road-holding ability: If it doesn't have twice as many cup-holders as passenger seats it's not worthy of being called a car.
Oh, and tyres - don't get me started in tyres. You actually have to change them and rotate them in Europe. Look, if I have to change my tyres before the engine gives out I consider myself ripped off. Cornering ability - bah, the only roads worth driving on are ones that are straight enough to land aeroplanes on.
You better believe that they have issues on Europe.
If we accept both assumptions, then you can hardly come to any other conclusion than that mankind is utterly insignificant in Creation.
Maybe you can, but the whole point about Jesus (you know, that whole Son of God, died on the cross for your sins thing) is that mankind and individuals are significant. Ergo, your logic is faulty. You seem to be making an awful lot of assumptions about God and what he would or wouldn't do. Perhaps you should restate your post to include the 10 or so actual predicates to your argument rather than the two spurious ones you list. Hundreds of millions of Christians need only add one more:
#3 Jesus died for my sins
and they can recognise their significant to God. You, however, require:
#3 The volume of the universe is large and humans are small in volume
#4 God cares about the volume of things when measuring significance
#5 There are many other inhabited planets in the universe
#6 God only has a finite amount of care so can't care much about any individual planet
#7 God cares about things in proportion to their period of existence
#8 It took a lot of time for God to create the universe and he overachieved if all he wanted was a bunch of humans
to come to your conclusion.
The ultimate goal of google is to show you whatever it is you want to see. When searching for simply the word "failure", that page is what people are expecting to see now and searching for. Why should google artificially alter that?
Because with googlebombing what Google is showing you is what a small number of motivated people want you to see, not what you want to see. The fact that people involved in a googlebomb want to see something does not make it what the majority of people want to see. And making it circular by saying that people now expect to see the results of a succesful googlebomb when they search for failure is just sophistry.
But really, do you expect to get anything meaningful out of a search on single semi-random words on Google?
Clearly, global warming is a reality.
That's not the point. The point is whether anthropogenic global warming is a reality.
There is a big difference.
While not actually disagreeing with the point about agribusiness in your post I will point out that, even if anthropogenic global warming is a reality, the appropriate policy response is not clear (e.g. adaptation or abatement). The US may have reached the right conclusion for the wrong reasons. Even the most ardent supporters of Kyoto concede that is was more about tokenism and being seen to do something as a first step to maybe doing something meaningful 20 years down the track than actually having an effect on anthropogenic global warming.
Sadly this is not the way it has worked in practice.
Executives are granted options that are already in the money on issue. Thus, they get substantial income even if the stock does nothing. If the stock goes down these options are regularly repriced with lower exercise prices which effectively removes all the downside risk.
Furthermore, options are a poor tool. The link should be between the executives performance and outcomes, not the stock price. The stock price will move for many reasons unrelated to the executive's performance - for example, stocks go up in booms and yet you would be hard pressed to argue that any executive was responsible for the economic boom. Thus, at a minimum, they should only be paid when their stock outperforms other similar stocks (or even just the whole market index). Instead, you see executives being rewarded heavily for good luck. If the market is going up, only the most grossly incompetent executive could make a stock go down. A mere seat-warmer is still likely to get significant returns.
The basic economics is that poorly designed incentive schemes, of which option grants are an example, encourage gaming of the system and not proper results or rewards.
Then why are they still mostly using corks, which have no advantages whatsoever and cause a percentage of the wine to spoil?
Depends which wine industry you are talking about. But my pick of the answers would be:
(a) Because consumers are irrational snobs when it comes to wine.
(b) They're not.
(c) Both of the above.
(d) Because I'm French.
The Australian wine industry has been pretty innovative. The Stelvin seal hasn't made it onto top quality reds yet (that is, those designed to be cellared and aged before consumption) because it doesn't breathe in the same way as cork (cork does actually have some advantages here). But given that 90% of wine is consumed within 24 hours of purchase, a lot of producers are making the switch. Practically all of the quality white wines I have brought in my local bottlo recently have screw-caps.
Indeed, it isn't the wine industry that is the problem (they know how much product they loose to corking) but the wine-snob consumers (which extends all the way down to consumers of Two Buck Chuck). Look at the timeline at the link I included. Screwcaps were used in Australia between 1977 and 1984 but withdrawn because of consumer resistance.
It's not only games that demand these new uber-graphics-cards. Consider what is happening with operating systems. In a couple of years I'm sure the OS will require today's uber-cards.
Core Image in OS X offloads a lot of the GUI stuff to the graphics processor. To get all the eye candy (sorry, usability improvements) you can't have a particularly old card. Vista is doing the same thing.
Now we are really putting the G into GUI.
Science: Taiwan Breeds Transgenic, Flying Green Pigs
Apple: Windows on Intel Macs - Yes or No?
Science: Global Warming a product of malfunctioning heat pump in Hades
I think you have your answer right there.
Indeed. In some circles aluminium is more commonly known as congealed electricity.
I'm going to bet that the cost of the nail is more than the value of the electricity produced - but the real question will be, "Is this the least efficient ways you can produce power?"
Actually, there was a scientific paper released recently (which I can't find in Google even after more than 90 seconds of serious searching) which suggested that the reason myopia developed was that those who couldn't hunt stayed home with the women. And while the perfectly-sighted alpha-males were out hunting, the myopic nerds were perpetuating the species.
Who knows? Maybe we will actually know the answer in a few years and such wild pop-optometry won't be necessary any more. (Not! And pigs might fly out of my hairy ass!)
Seriously, are you going to be attaching one to a $10,000 hifi system?
For those of us who haven't got AirTunes set up over a wireless network to stream from their Airport Express using an optical digital cable to their $10,000 hifi system - yes.
The convenience of having all your music easily selectable and ready to play at the press of a button covers over a lot of sins. (But running it from your computer is better, because PearLyrics and Spotlight give you full searchability of song lyrics and that is insanely great.)
But then, I don't use 128kbps MP3s to encode my music. I haven't gone for a dedicated hard-disk/music server with uncompressed CDs or Apple Lossless yet so space is an issue.
All that means that I might care about the sound quality of the analogue output from the iPod - will that be the weakest link or will it be the MP3 quality? Or what is the optimum bit rate at which the analogue output becomes the limit?