Define mentally stable? George Bush apparently fits that bill as does Jerry Falwell.
If by "stable" you mean with no change in mental state... ever... then you may be right.
As for GWB, mental stability does not automatically confer competence -- though a lack of mental stability may mean an increased chance of incompetence.
I mean, does it even occur to you that if you could, somehow, recreate the *exact* same state of affairs twice to see what would happen, then it might still be possible for two different outcomes to occur? Not because of anything measurable or predictable, but because that's just how things are?
Even from a physicist's point of view, we can look to Schrodinger to suggest that this is possible. Look at the cat example... a radioactive atom in a box with a cat. The cat dies if the atom splits. At t = t(half-life of atom), the cat is both dead and alive, until we open the box to observe it. Say we open the box, and the cat is dead.
If we were able to recreate the universe (identically) at t = 0, then guess what? It's still a 50/50 shot of the cat being dead at t = t(half-life), and when we open the box, it would not be a surprise if the cat were alive.
But, it doesn't matter anyway, since if we were to recreate the universe exactly at t = 0, we'd have no idea that we'd run the first trial of the experiment; so we'd keep running the experiment and resetting the universe ad infinitum.
and thus they can take some portion of that sale and defer the income till now, which is what they have already said they did for the first round of numbers, which this second round includes.
Only the discount coupons that they were actually paid for in addition to the cost of XP. MS gave away a lot of upgrade coupons, which they cannot state revenue for.
You could, depending on the situation and the bundle, but MS didn't. You'd have a hard time justifying it if the cost of XP + coupon = the cost of XP sans coupon, which was the situation last year. Also, they've stated that only the discount coupons actually paid for were deferred.
Otherwise, you're accounting for the "free upgrade" coupon as if it has no value, which makes no sense.
Actually, you're accounting for it as if it produced no revenue, which is different. Companies give away freebies; that doesn't mean the freebies have no value.
"Free" sales can't be deferred as revenue. The discount coupons they sold, yes. And they did defer revenues on the sold upgrade coupons, 1.64 Bn for Vista + Office 2007.
So a large portion of the 40 million is from Vista licenses that Microsoft has been selling for the last year.
Funny, since the upgrade coupon program wasn't even announced until October of last year, and only 1.64 Bn of revenues (from Vista and Office 2007) was deferred.
It's also important to note that there are no figures on how many of those upgrade certificates have been cashed in for an actual copy of Vista. Which means that the number of installed Vista Desktops could be a mere fraction of the 40 million unit number that Microsoft is providing.
That goes without saying.... never mind the fact that 80% of MS's license sales are to OEMs, leaving a ton of licenses sitting on the shelves in warehouses and stores (or on yet-to-be-manufactured PCs).
Note that the deferred revenues for the discount upgrade coupon program were only realized when (1) the Vista license was actually paid for and the license key acquired or (2) the user paid for it, but declined to upgrade as of 3/31/07 (the expiry date of the coupons).
Hey, The "free" upgrades cannot be stated as sales. The discount coupons sold can be stated as sales this year -- and they were. Total deferred licensing (Vista + Office 2007) was around 1.64 Bn for Qtr 1 2007.
I'm betting they included "free upgrade to vista" offers for copies of XP sold for the year prior to vista.
Nope. They cannot state those as current-period sales, and for Gates to publically announce that they were would be grounds for FTC action. I'm sure he cleared the statement through Legal, so I'd be willing to bet those aren't included.
If he had said that 40 million licenses were issued, that would be a different story... but he said sold.
With around 400,000 licenses a day new Vista users will take 8 weeks to beat Mac users, 4 days to exceed Mac sales and 3 days to exceed Linux desktop users."
Sorry, sales/day is not a constant. MS sold 20 million Vista licenses in the first 30 days (according to MS). 70 days to sell another 20 million...
Two data points are not enough to extrapolate a curve, but I'd guess that sales as a function of time is a logarithmic curve (based on early adopters) plus a near-constant (based on replacement cycles).
Re:Weight loss thru exercise alone is a fallacy
on
Treadmill Workstation
·
· Score: 1
Exercise has important health benefits and you should be doing it. But to lose weight, you need
to control your food intake.
You do not necessarily need to reduce your food intake to lose weight, though it's useful for the obese. If someone has a consistent caloric and nutritional intake, their weight will reach equilibrium. Adding exercise to the equation will cause them to lose weight -- not only does it bun calories directly, but it stimulates the metabolism and causes the body to burn additional calories at rest.
That said, most people who need to lose weight need to reduce intake while adding exercise. The marginally overweight are a pretty small subset of those who need to lose weight in the US.
You may recall the heat Gore got for conducting Dem party business over White House phone lines
Nothing like going through the channel of "You're fired for not using your office to help Republicans win elections"?
To me, that's the real improper use of resources (in this case, human resources) for campaigning, compared to which using the wrong email account or phone is trivial.
Well, first off, I'm not a libertarian, I lean towards socialism. But I believe that actors in a free market will seek to maximize their gain, and wishing it weren't so is a waste of time. This is why we have redistribution of resources via taxation.
As to a proof of that assertion, how much economics background do you have? Almost every economist agrees that an efficient (and therefore more beneficial due to better economic utility) economy depends on accurate pricing -- and accurate pricing is determined by what buyers are willing to pay in the marketplace. This is independent of libertarianism, though it supports their case when interpreted in conjunction with other libertarian tenets.
If the attorneys were fired because they didn't help Republicans win elections, that's a problem, and a story, whether legal or not. Plenty of people get fired for doing things that are legal but incompetent or wrong. Plenty of people are held accountable even if they aren't fired. This goes near to the top of the Executive Department, and you say it's a non-story simply because it's not strictly illegal on the bare face of it?
Also, there is a good chance that there was illegal activity involved. If they were fired in order to obstruct prosecutions, intimidate prosecutors, or to cover up corruption, then guess what? They were likely illegal. Don't always believe what the mouthpieces of the administration are telling you.
If you think it was inappropriate, don't vote for G.W. Bush when he runs for re-election. OH, that's right, he can't run for re-election. That means that this is a non-story. To summarize, the firings weren't illegal, the President can't run for re-election.
So administrations in their second term are not to be held accountable for anything they do? That's what you're saying, and it's a crock. First, all the information about it needs to be brought to light. Did you forget that others besides the president are involved, and some of them plan to stay in politics? If anything untoward happened, it's our right to know, and it's our duty to use that information as we see fit.
In summary, you're repeating the propaganda of the administration mouthpieces who want us to believe it's a non-story. At its heart, the attorney firing issue is not about firing a few attorneys -- it is about corruption and twisting the purpose of the attorney general's office to electoral politics.
Sorry, I'm approaching it from an economic realist standpoint. What happens in your nice little world of people charging just enough to get by is that, in the long run, benefits are reduced for everyone. Since we all feel good about doing business, it seems like a good system... but it does little more than maintain total quality of life, instead of increasing it across the board.
Also, it is a discussion of the merits of capitalism. If actors are free to act as they will within the capitalist system, and you're not happy with the results, then your problem is with the system, no? Or are you just making wishes that run contrary to the individual optimal actions within the system?
Trying to maximize profits at the detriment of your own customers is common practice, and that's largely why so many things are completely screwed up. The world would be better if people were willing to settle for an honest buck, a modest profit, instead of screwing over everyone as far as they're allowed with no consideration for the ramifications.
Well, that's a debate about capitalism. Some would argue that your system is inefficient, and would therefore not make best use of resources, and would therefore result in less for everyone.
From a personal standpoint, I'd agree with you -- to the extent that customer goodwill has value that I'd equate to whatever profit I'm not getting by charging more.
As for not considering the ramifications, I don't think that's the problem. I think the problem is that it's impossible to quantify certain ramifications, like customer goodwill, so they are undervalued when large companies do pricing studies.
To get back to the best use of resources and companies maximising profits -- absent huge barriers to entry and unfair business practices, new companies will step in if there is a profit to be made. That's the incentive to enter an industry; so if eBay is making a killing, then a competitor who charges less should be able to enter the field and compete for our business. That leaves us with two competitors (and therefore likely enhanced service as they comepte on levels other than just price) along with better pricing. If eBay just makes a middling profit, then there is no incetive for a competitor to come in.
Sorry, had a senior moment about Logo Basic; I learned Logo and BASIC concurrently in a class called Logo/Basic in grade school... the two were taught concurrently in a NJ-approved curriculum by the same name. For some reason I conflated the two into one system.
I recalled using BASIC syntax with a Logo interpretor, but that's gotta be all in my head.
If the thinking is that you're programming the turtle, then the student will always think of the language as only useful for programming the turtle.
Students do not need to think that they are programming the turtle; if they do think so, then they are not being taught properly.
I understand your argument, but I'd point to my OP, in which I state that Logo should be used in conjuction with, and as a precursor to, a language like Pascal. Logo is used to teach kids how to break down complex projects into machine-understandable simple commands, while giving them nice results to reward their work.
Blockquote>It is not (in their minds) teaching them how to program the computer itself.That's a failure of the teacher, not of the language. Maybe my experience is different, since it was taught concurrently with a more abstract language. Would it be easier for students to understand that they are programming the computer if there were no graphical representation? Possibly, but I believe that is offset by the other gains of Logo.
Your costs were exponentially lower when you were born, making more money doesn't entitle you to start charging more money for no real reason.
You're absolutely right, eBay having higher profits doesn't entitle them to charge more for no reason.
Being a business allows them to charge more for no reason. Don't like it? Don't use them.
I don't know why people feel that companies have to justify price increases with some rationale of higher costs for them. Companies do that to make purchasers feel better, but the truth of the matter is that companies (regulated industries aside) can charge whatever the hell they feel like for what they provide. EBay is not in business to make $x profit per transaction; they are in business to maximize $x.
Untrue. If they don't know what they are learning, then how can they ever apply it?
I see. So when you teach your 2-year-old to think about cause and effect, they need to know that what they are learning is to think about cause and effect? All they need to know is that if they do x, y will happen. They'll figure out how to apply that elsewhere. I'm exaggerating here a bit, but teaching young students the ability to think logically and from a whole-project perspective is universal, and doesn't need to be shoehorned into programming.
That still doesn't change the fact that students will see these features as merely in support of pushing the turtle around. Because the end goal of every Logo program is to make the turtle do something interesting.
That's a poor logical deduction. The end goal of most Logo programs is to make a finished product (a picture of something); the turtle is a tool to help visualize the process (and to engage those who are very young). If you approach it as pushing the turtle around, then you are missing the entire point of Logo. When I took a Logo class as a 7-year-old, and later on when I taught Logo to 9 & 10 year-olds, the kids seeing Logo as a way of 'pushing the turtle around' never came up. But maybe it's the way it was taught -- I'm sorry that you had such a useless experience with it.
Again, I'm referring to Logo BASIC, so maybe we're agreeing here.
No, Logo teaches them to push a turtle around the screen. It doesn't really convey a sense to young children that they're "programming" a computer.
Well, first, their cognizance of whether they are "programming" isn't as important as the concepts they are learning. Second, if that's all they are learning, then there's a problem with how they are being taught.
If the kids only learn the "enter command, watch turtle move, rinse, repeat" part of Logo, then they are not learning to use Logo at all. Proper instruction in Logo will teach kids about subroutines, about loops, about the importance of syntax, about planning out a somewhat complex program. Note that I should have mentioned that Logo BASIC is what I'm referring to, not just Logo -- I should have made the distinction.
As to why Basic still gets slammed, I think you're incorrect, it has little to do with Dijkstra's 1986 article. We've moved past that, and it's the VB scripters who now get slammed on Slashdot. Just my opinion, from what I've observed over the last several years.
Random user goes to jail for attempted piracy and *aa also files a civil suit.
PROFIT!
Profit for the *AA. Not for the public, who pay IIRC ~$40,000 per year to keep someone incarcerated. And that's operating costs, never mind the capital costs of building prisons, or the costs of maintaining the legal system to put them into prison.
People need to think about that -- if someone attempts to pirate, is convicted, and serves a prison term of one year, that just cost us taxpayers well over $50,000.
For what? $3000 worth of pirated media?
As a country, we'd be better off just paying the *AA companies directly from the general treasury and allowing people to copy media freely -- of course, that would decrease the expansion of the prison industry, but I have no qualms about that.
I've not seen this MIT project, but Logo then Pascal is a good introduction to programming for kids. Logo teaches them to think in terms of processes, as well as teaching the importance of syntax. It also gives them a visible product that they can take pride in and appreciate... "Hello world" just isn't as inspiring to kids as seeing a colored square on screen that they made.
Pascal is more like modern programming languages, and while it has its problems, it's simple enough for a preteen to use.
As for your comment that BASIC gets slagged on slashdot -- I think typically it's VisualBasic that gets slammed, for giving people the tools to get a bit of programming done without making sure they have programming concepts down. People who learn to program in VBA learn a lot of bad habits, and if they start doing real development instead of basic scripts, they don't have the background necessary. It's not so much VBA that sucks IMO, it's the fact that so many VBA users learned how to write code without learning how to program.
They're using this as a scare tactic, and if they give *actual* details, that means that FOSS companies can develop strategies for dealing with it instead of paying fees to Microsoft.
If the patent is so easily worked around, then it's a trivial patent anyway, and thus worthless IMO. In the long run, MS will not benefit at all from attempted extortion/enforcement, since there are workarounds. They should instead just open up the patents for anyone to use, and make what they can of the resultant goodwill.
Oh, and while they are at it, maybe MS can bring about world peace, it's just about as likely to happen.
"User dialogue (e.g., from role playing games, simulation games, etc) may be used to characterize the user (e.g., literate, profane, blunt or polite, quiet etc).
So now all the balding, overweight middle-aged men playing hot female characters in rpgs will be targeted with ads for cosmetics and tampons?
Awesome.
Seriously, though, this makes me wonder if people who truly roleplay are going to be served ads based on their in-character dialogue -- could lead to some interesting (and profitless for the company being advertised) ads being served.
Not that there's much roleplaying in most popular games anymore, other than the above-mentioned example.
Slashdot Mirror
As for GWB, mental stability does not automatically confer competence -- though a lack of mental stability may mean an increased chance of incompetence.
If we were able to recreate the universe (identically) at t = 0, then guess what? It's still a 50/50 shot of the cat being dead at t = t(half-life), and when we open the box, it would not be a surprise if the cat were alive.
But, it doesn't matter anyway, since if we were to recreate the universe exactly at t = 0, we'd have no idea that we'd run the first trial of the experiment; so we'd keep running the experiment and resetting the universe ad infinitum.
Actually, you're accounting for it as if it produced no revenue, which is different. Companies give away freebies; that doesn't mean the freebies have no value.
Seems like it would be noisy, smelly, and a real pain to get into your home office.
And please see my clarifications, licenses for which there are no revenue cannot be deferred as sales.
"Free" sales can't be deferred as revenue. The discount coupons they sold, yes. And they did defer revenues on the sold upgrade coupons, 1.64 Bn for Vista + Office 2007.
That goes without saying.... never mind the fact that 80% of MS's license sales are to OEMs, leaving a ton of licenses sitting on the shelves in warehouses and stores (or on yet-to-be-manufactured PCs).
Note that the deferred revenues for the discount upgrade coupon program were only realized when (1) the Vista license was actually paid for and the license key acquired or (2) the user paid for it, but declined to upgrade as of 3/31/07 (the expiry date of the coupons).
Hey,
The "free" upgrades cannot be stated as sales. The discount coupons sold can be stated as sales this year -- and they were. Total deferred licensing (Vista + Office 2007) was around 1.64 Bn for Qtr 1 2007.
If he had said that 40 million licenses were issued, that would be a different story... but he said sold.
Two data points are not enough to extrapolate a curve, but I'd guess that sales as a function of time is a logarithmic curve (based on early adopters) plus a near-constant (based on replacement cycles).
That said, most people who need to lose weight need to reduce intake while adding exercise. The marginally overweight are a pretty small subset of those who need to lose weight in the US.
To me, that's the real improper use of resources (in this case, human resources) for campaigning, compared to which using the wrong email account or phone is trivial.
Well, first off, I'm not a libertarian, I lean towards socialism. But I believe that actors in a free market will seek to maximize their gain, and wishing it weren't so is a waste of time. This is why we have redistribution of resources via taxation.
As to a proof of that assertion, how much economics background do you have? Almost every economist agrees that an efficient (and therefore more beneficial due to better economic utility) economy depends on accurate pricing -- and accurate pricing is determined by what buyers are willing to pay in the marketplace. This is independent of libertarianism, though it supports their case when interpreted in conjunction with other libertarian tenets.
If the attorneys were fired because they didn't help Republicans win elections, that's a problem, and a story, whether legal or not. Plenty of people get fired for doing things that are legal but incompetent or wrong. Plenty of people are held accountable even if they aren't fired. This goes near to the top of the Executive Department, and you say it's a non-story simply because it's not strictly illegal on the bare face of it?
Also, there is a good chance that there was illegal activity involved. If they were fired in order to obstruct prosecutions, intimidate prosecutors, or to cover up corruption, then guess what? They were likely illegal. Don't always believe what the mouthpieces of the administration are telling you.
So administrations in their second term are not to be held accountable for anything they do? That's what you're saying, and it's a crock. First, all the information about it needs to be brought to light. Did you forget that others besides the president are involved, and some of them plan to stay in politics? If anything untoward happened, it's our right to know, and it's our duty to use that information as we see fit.
In summary, you're repeating the propaganda of the administration mouthpieces who want us to believe it's a non-story. At its heart, the attorney firing issue is not about firing a few attorneys -- it is about corruption and twisting the purpose of the attorney general's office to electoral politics.
Sorry, I'm approaching it from an economic realist standpoint. What happens in your nice little world of people charging just enough to get by is that, in the long run, benefits are reduced for everyone. Since we all feel good about doing business, it seems like a good system... but it does little more than maintain total quality of life, instead of increasing it across the board.
Also, it is a discussion of the merits of capitalism. If actors are free to act as they will within the capitalist system, and you're not happy with the results, then your problem is with the system, no? Or are you just making wishes that run contrary to the individual optimal actions within the system?
From a personal standpoint, I'd agree with you -- to the extent that customer goodwill has value that I'd equate to whatever profit I'm not getting by charging more.
As for not considering the ramifications, I don't think that's the problem. I think the problem is that it's impossible to quantify certain ramifications, like customer goodwill, so they are undervalued when large companies do pricing studies.
To get back to the best use of resources and companies maximising profits -- absent huge barriers to entry and unfair business practices, new companies will step in if there is a profit to be made. That's the incentive to enter an industry; so if eBay is making a killing, then a competitor who charges less should be able to enter the field and compete for our business. That leaves us with two competitors (and therefore likely enhanced service as they comepte on levels other than just price) along with better pricing. If eBay just makes a middling profit, then there is no incetive for a competitor to come in.
I recalled using BASIC syntax with a Logo interpretor, but that's gotta be all in my head.
Students do not need to think that they are programming the turtle; if they do think so, then they are not being taught properly.
I understand your argument, but I'd point to my OP, in which I state that Logo should be used in conjuction with, and as a precursor to, a language like Pascal. Logo is used to teach kids how to break down complex projects into machine-understandable simple commands, while giving them nice results to reward their work.
Blockquote>It is not (in their minds) teaching them how to program the computer itself.That's a failure of the teacher, not of the language. Maybe my experience is different, since it was taught concurrently with a more abstract language. Would it be easier for students to understand that they are programming the computer if there were no graphical representation? Possibly, but I believe that is offset by the other gains of Logo.
Being a business allows them to charge more for no reason. Don't like it? Don't use them.
I don't know why people feel that companies have to justify price increases with some rationale of higher costs for them. Companies do that to make purchasers feel better, but the truth of the matter is that companies (regulated industries aside) can charge whatever the hell they feel like for what they provide. EBay is not in business to make $x profit per transaction; they are in business to maximize $x.
That's a poor logical deduction. The end goal of most Logo programs is to make a finished product (a picture of something); the turtle is a tool to help visualize the process (and to engage those who are very young). If you approach it as pushing the turtle around, then you are missing the entire point of Logo. When I took a Logo class as a 7-year-old, and later on when I taught Logo to 9 & 10 year-olds, the kids seeing Logo as a way of 'pushing the turtle around' never came up. But maybe it's the way it was taught -- I'm sorry that you had such a useless experience with it.
Again, I'm referring to Logo BASIC, so maybe we're agreeing here.
If the kids only learn the "enter command, watch turtle move, rinse, repeat" part of Logo, then they are not learning to use Logo at all. Proper instruction in Logo will teach kids about subroutines, about loops, about the importance of syntax, about planning out a somewhat complex program. Note that I should have mentioned that Logo BASIC is what I'm referring to, not just Logo -- I should have made the distinction.
As to why Basic still gets slammed, I think you're incorrect, it has little to do with Dijkstra's 1986 article. We've moved past that, and it's the VB scripters who now get slammed on Slashdot. Just my opinion, from what I've observed over the last several years.
People need to think about that -- if someone attempts to pirate, is convicted, and serves a prison term of one year, that just cost us taxpayers well over $50,000.
For what? $3000 worth of pirated media?
As a country, we'd be better off just paying the *AA companies directly from the general treasury and allowing people to copy media freely -- of course, that would decrease the expansion of the prison industry, but I have no qualms about that.
I've not seen this MIT project, but Logo then Pascal is a good introduction to programming for kids. Logo teaches them to think in terms of processes, as well as teaching the importance of syntax. It also gives them a visible product that they can take pride in and appreciate... "Hello world" just isn't as inspiring to kids as seeing a colored square on screen that they made.
Pascal is more like modern programming languages, and while it has its problems, it's simple enough for a preteen to use.
As for your comment that BASIC gets slagged on slashdot -- I think typically it's VisualBasic that gets slammed, for giving people the tools to get a bit of programming done without making sure they have programming concepts down. People who learn to program in VBA learn a lot of bad habits, and if they start doing real development instead of basic scripts, they don't have the background necessary. It's not so much VBA that sucks IMO, it's the fact that so many VBA users learned how to write code without learning how to program.
Oh, and while they are at it, maybe MS can bring about world peace, it's just about as likely to happen.
Awesome.
Seriously, though, this makes me wonder if people who truly roleplay are going to be served ads based on their in-character dialogue -- could lead to some interesting (and profitless for the company being advertised) ads being served.
Not that there's much roleplaying in most popular games anymore, other than the above-mentioned example.