The health risks of trans fats do not prove that "processed" food is bad, unless you narrowly define "processed" to mean "partially hydrogenated".
Actually a huge percentage of processed foods contain transfats (or at least they did), so there was a tremendous correlation. However that was just a sample of a wider trend, which is that when people screw with food, it usually has negative consequences.
They have also said a 32-bit version of the Longhorn server would be available.
Microsoft has a long and storied history of making these sorts of absolute proclamations, but then adapting as the marketplace changes. For instance I remember, way back when, Microsoft announcing that the next version of DirectX would only be available on Windows 2000 (which at the time was "in the future", and they were hoping that it would be the convergence OS that would eliminate the consumer/business split). Woops, not only was that product late, but it completely eliminated any excitement about the new DirectX among developers. Windows 2000 would only run certified applications, and DRM and "trusted" hardware was proclaimed as required years ago.
Likewise Internet Explorer 7 would only be on Vista. Avalon would only be on Vista. Indigo would only be on Vista. Woops, now they're going to backport all of those because no developer would bother with it otherwise.
Surely decaffeination is a potential cause of cancer?
Indeed. Which is why when I drink decaf coffee I drink "swiss water" decaf. I'm still unsure what exactly this study was measuring - where they comparing chemically decaf coffee, or swiss water decaf coffee? If the former obviously you have to suspect the chemicals might have played a part.
More like keywords + PageRank (e.g. votes for keywords) = tags. Actually contextual PageRank that Google uses (where they analyze the text around every link into a site) is akin the "tags".
Of course the folksonomy aspect of it isn't mandatory. Flickr is held up as one of the primary examples of tags, yet the vast majority of photo tags are added by the photo "owners" themselves, just like the days of old with webpages and meta keywords. So you end up with nonsense like this.
Its nice that the author assumes we know what tags are. It creates an article that only people who know whats going on already understand. Otherwise you go tag? What kind of tag?
Parent Post Tags: clueless "karma whore" "obvious question":-)
Seriously though, tags are user-provided categorization (including multiple "categorizations" given that you can apply multiple tags) of content. e.g. Search on Flickr for all photos that are in the union of the tags Toronto and Girl and you'll get photos that have those two tags. The same concept applies to delicious. This is the so-called folksonomy in action, where us lowly serfs categorization content, rather than "the man" in a taxonomy like Yahoo.
However the tag thing is going way too far (as are most "Web 2.0" things) - tags are useful in the absence of a superior classification system. For instance we tag photos in Flickr only because the system can't, thus far, determine what the photo is about mechanically. If it could automatically classify photos, then this folksonomy would prove terribly dated, unreliable, and inaccurate. Look at Google - what is better: The META keywords technique of before, or actually contextually placing each page based upon its actual content?
What was high end when the XBOX came out? Geforce 4 Ti? Can a Geforce 4 Ti run games the same quality as Halo 2 or Conker Reloaded? How does Burnout revenge run? Or the new Need for Speed?
Wow, someone is a little defensive of their xbox.
The remarkable thing is that games on the xbox look like sheeeit. I constantly marvel at the low resolution, and terrible framerate that it pushes out (try pushing an HDTV screen with it and it starts blowing chunks...at least chunky-style framerates). It blows me away that there are people who would defend it.
I dont know what kind of PC parts you were buying, but I paid more for my GeForce3 than I did for my Xbox. Xbox was purchased at launch, and the GF3 around the same timeframe.
I wasn't price comparing a PC with an xbox - the original message indicated that the xbox was better than high-end PCs at release. It wasn't. Of course it kicked the ass of comparable PCs (the very few that were that cheap), but I wasn't comparing dollar for dollar.
Re:PS3? No thanks, Sony; you screwed the pooch
on
Bad Day To Be Sony
·
· Score: 1
Um, it is exploiting flaws in *Microsoft's* products. Yes, sony was evil to do this, but Microsoft is clearly implicated in this whole mess. This is not a Sony rootkit running on Nintendo or on Linux; this is a sony rootkit exploiting holes in Microsoft Windows.
How is it exploiting a "hole"? If you're running as an admin, it installs itself at a system level - just like lots of other system utilities do. There is no hole here, apart from the fact that most users still run as admin (though don't go blaming Microsoft entirely for that. Even loved software like Winamp falls apart if you don't run as admin or do some manual ACL changes, because they didn't conform to even the basic rudiments of user-level security).
There was a reason to buy the first xbox since it was somewhat more advanced than highend pcs. I can't see any reason why someone would waste 400 dollars on a 360.
The first Xbox was sub-par compared to top-end PCs at the time. I always buy in the midrange, yet my PC could stomp the original xbox when it was released. Of course the xbox advocates would say that the xbox is tuned, and doesn't have all the inefficient generalized software that a PC needs, and so on, and perhaps they are right.
However a triple-core, "hyperthreaded" (e.g. 6 virtual processors) 3.2GhzX3 PowerPC with an incredible memory bus is decidedly superior to most PCs. Add that with a top-end video processor, and you have an incredibly capable system. I'm not a console gamer, but I am drawn to the technical capabilities of that machine, and I have no doubt that there'll be hacks to stick it into cluster configurations very quickly.
The xbox360 is a killer, killer, killer machine. The only reason there isn't a lot of hype is because Microsoft has suppressed virtually all info about it, and has done close to nothing to promote it (at least up until now). Perhaps they're planning on a shock and awe campaign to sell it, but the lack of enthusiasm is entirely in their court.
Oh really, and MS support via the 360 for HD-DVD won't have a cancelling effect on this?
This keeps getting stated on here, and it is entirely untrue. People are confused because Microsoft tepidly put their backing behind HD-DVD, yet the Xbox360 actually uses neither - it is standard old school 9GB DVD.
If you think pair programming is a ridiculous concept you are just on craftmans level in computer science/art/programming.
Bwahahaha. I see you drank the kool-aid and swallowed the yellow pill. Great stuff.
Ever saw a surgery in a movie? And? Does the chief everythign alone? Ever saw a airplane crew? And? 2 ppl in cockpit, right? Ever saw the stearman of a big ship? He is completely alone in his cabin house, right?
These analogies are so terribly ridiculous that I'm not even going to bother with them. Strangely it's the standard sales pitch though - yes, developing an internal time tracking app is just like surgery. Geez. BTW: They have two-pilots in a plane primarily because human beings die. If said pilot dies, second in command takes over (you know - because otherwise people die. Unlike that time tracking app). The second in command otherwise keeps their mouth shut and basically abides by the dictatorship first office - Completely unlike pair programming.
I think if you have not tried it, you should shut up. And if you have tried it but failed in being successfull, then you should start analying WHY you where not successfull. Or you should accept that you are still an amateur and not a pro in doing software projects.
Wow, you've got all the bases covered - either I haven't tried it, or I did but I suck so I should just shut up anyways. Give me a break. You guys are unbelievable.
Sometimes I really do not understand the modding. If you had read about 5 minutes into Scrum material you would have noticed that Ken Schwaber and every other coach _always_ explicitly mention that scrum is no silver bullet and will never be.
Right - everyone always thinks the modding should be different when they disagree with it. Tough nuts though.
Anyways, way to miss the point. Have you read the Mythical Man Month? What is accepted and evangelized as a silver bullet doesn't necessarily have to be held up as a silver bullet by the creators and external advocates - It has to be proposed as a silver bullet on the waylaid team. You know - way over budget, cohesion is falling apart...desperate manager suddenly proposes the silver bullet that everyone should move to a scrum methodology (or they should switch over to J2EE, or RoR, or whatever is enough of a change that it could be temporarily perceived as a silver bullet) and everything will be fixed.
Yes, you're the only one. No, wait - It's actually a cliched response that appears in the hundreds every single time a story mentioning the word "blog" appears here. Keep on thinking that you're individual though.
all i ever see in google is search results from some moron posting his opinion on whatever it is im searching for.
And that's a blog problem how? Bitch to Google about that if you have a problem with it, or try other search engines. Stomping out legitimate long-tail content because you don't like it is extraordinarily egotistical and selfish.
I was taught by an instructor for a fighting sport that "only perfect practice makes perfect". I think this applies to almost any process.
Is this contrary to my statement somehow? Applying your comment to my statement, it appears that you mean that if someone never versed in fighting sports went in their backyard and started kicking a tree, practice will make perfect. Then, of course, they'll go up against someone who spent the year learning from a master (who himself learned from many masters), and practicing, and they'll get their asses royally kicked. Obviously doing matters, but doing to the exclusion of learning is wasted effort.
I bet you the parent of the thread is pissed after reading the comments......he was smacked off his soap box.
Yes, I am very angry. Very, very angry. Grrrrrr! Smacked off my soap box!
Oh, no, wait - No I'm not angry. Nor was I "smacked off" my soap box. In fact, you might note that I didn't exclude myself from this particular vice (indeed - I've had quite a few times in my career where I've learned something that I'd always ignored to think "Egads! All those ridiculous looking implementation!"). We're in a field where knowing just isn't that important, because chances are good that most other people don't know either, and that's really sad. Most of the professionals in this career allocate close to zero time to actually learning, instead "doing to learn", which is a recipe for more shit being unleashed on the world...yet it continues.
In your example, you bid $50 max, and can get bumped up pretty quickly. If you defer this to the end, there's a better chance you can get the item for, say, $40 after others try to snipe it for $35, $36, $37, etc.
Honestly I think the sniping community is working on entirely unscientific guesses. To add my own unscientific guess, based upon auctions I've been involved with - the exact opposite is actually true. If two people hit a digital camera early, and one is willing to spend $250, and the other is willing to spend $275, then the bid will shoot up to $250. All of the sniping "super good deal" followers likely won't even notice this auction, and the ending will be a fairly quiet affair (I look for these sorts of auctions). Compare this to the auction where the camera sits at the minimum bid until 5 minutes before the close - It has 30 watchers, all of whom want a piece of this super rich deal. The probability that one of them is willing to spend more, given the high amount of attention, is vastly increased.
Seriously, if someone did a real statistical analysis on it, I would wager - with a great deal of confidence - that "snipers" are fooling themselves, and that as a technique it is a disadvantage.
Sounds like a good start, but know that it'll only be a base to build on. As someone that has used Linux/*BSD/Unix for over 10 years, it's something that will provide a lifetime of learning.
Using and learning are very different things. There are people out there, right now - probably millions of them - doing software development the wrong way. They're implementing their small set of knowledge over and over again, for years at a time, not realizing how redundantly and incorrectly they're doing things (a great example would be the millions of developers squeezing out terrible database designs year after year - a particular vice of mine. Perhaps they'll imagine that they're expert database designers after a few years, but that couldn't be further from the truth). If they took a moment and actually learned for a few hours, it would make the implementation part much more effective, but people shun learning when they can just use what they already know as their hammer.
People like buying things for less than they're willing to pay. That one fact alone is why sniping works. "I'm -willing- to pay $50 for this item, but damn I'd be excited as git out to pay $35." - if that $35 bid holds, I'll be a lot more interested in getting the item than I would be if it were $50. That's why sniping works. The difference between 'willing' and 'excited about'.
This makes no sense. If two people are competing for an item, and they both rely on sniping, and one is willing to pay $45 and the other is willing to pay $50, then the sniping $50 person will win. If, on the other hand, you bid a max of $50, but the current bid is $35, and no one else bids, then it will sell for $35.
In fact the snipers are often shooting themselves in the foot with their technique (I've watched this quite a few times) - an item unnaturally low up until the end, such as what happens with several snipers, invariably gets a LOT of attention: Everyone notices that super video card "going for" $20. Suddenly you have 10 super-snipers all trying for their max, and in the competitive spirit usually more, in the last seconds. Compare that to simply bidding the item up to a reasonable level earlier - far less attention, and it's far more likely that you'll actually get it for less.
Without having a fee associated with access to their very own information, eBay is really opening up for third party developers to generate decent applications, rather than hav eto depend on scraping the HTML to get functionality.
Shouldn't these "decent applications" have enough of a revenue model to pay for the access fees? I don't know what sort of coin Ebay was charging, but such a "barrier to entry" often keeps the standards high - every dimwit that knows how to call a webservice can toss together some piece of junk to waste everyone's time. Instead it's usually built around even a marginal business, and it's just a cost of doing business in that market.
If Ebay is doing this, it's likely because they're worried about auction competitors, so they want to lock as much of the development community in.
and before folks start going on about sniping, eBays very own policies make sniping the -only- way to do business on ebay with any effectiveness. Becaused they won't implement the simple policy of extending an auction based on most recent bid (a very simple solution to the problem of sniping, and one that would be an elegant, simple, and beneficial solution to eveyrone), sniping is now 'de rigeur' for any auction.
Totally offtopic, but all of this sniping nonsense just proves how ridiculous people treat an auction like ebay (which usually leads them to grossly overpay). I've bid, and won, a couple of Ebay items through the magical technique of deciding how much it's worth to me, and putting that amount in their little autobidding system. If someone exceeds my amount - well that's more than I would have paid anyways, so it's no skin off my back. I'm certainly not going to get into any competitive BS and overpay just to win an auction. There is no logical explanation for last-second bidding except for irrational competitiveness undermining rational valuation.
It's just so nice to see a media corporation recognize that legit uses of peer-to-peer exist. The fact that they're actually using it is even better.
I'm amazed that everyone is seeing this so positively - instead of actually ponying up to get a first class infrastructure (e.g. I can download from Microsoft at 600KB/second all day long, even during the rush for the VS2005/SQL Server RTM. Google has been pushing more and more monster services on their pipes), they're basically using the resources of home users to distribution their content under their conditions. Gee, what a win win. Consumers will especially like it when their overloaded, overburdened high speed provider starts jacking up the prices to support the extended bandwidth they need to support all of the P2P traffic.
Sorry, but this is like a pizza delivery company dropping off some pizzas at your house and getting you to deliver the rest.
This makes perfect sense to me. Why base the "value" of a page off something you hope is right rather than off the actualy browsing trends of people.
Because you're not tracking the browsing trends of people - you're tracking the browsing trends of a very small number of self-selected people who install the toolbar. In the case of Alexa, the installed base is absolutely _miniscule_, and it tends to be a very specific cross-section (these people weren't a randomly selected cross-section).
For those reasons Alexa rankings are hugely gameable, and ridiculously useless, outside of the top 1000 or so.
Slashdot Mirror
What incentive would Microsoft have to make their product better without the competition there?
Um...money? New versions spur sales, and of course no one wants to buy a software assurance plan if there's no upgrades in it for them.
The health risks of trans fats do not prove that "processed" food is bad, unless you narrowly define "processed" to mean "partially hydrogenated".
Actually a huge percentage of processed foods contain transfats (or at least they did), so there was a tremendous correlation. However that was just a sample of a wider trend, which is that when people screw with food, it usually has negative consequences.
They have also said a 32-bit version of the Longhorn server would be available.
Microsoft has a long and storied history of making these sorts of absolute proclamations, but then adapting as the marketplace changes. For instance I remember, way back when, Microsoft announcing that the next version of DirectX would only be available on Windows 2000 (which at the time was "in the future", and they were hoping that it would be the convergence OS that would eliminate the consumer/business split). Woops, not only was that product late, but it completely eliminated any excitement about the new DirectX among developers. Windows 2000 would only run certified applications, and DRM and "trusted" hardware was proclaimed as required years ago.
Likewise Internet Explorer 7 would only be on Vista. Avalon would only be on Vista. Indigo would only be on Vista. Woops, now they're going to backport all of those because no developer would bother with it otherwise.
Surely decaffeination is a potential cause of cancer?
Indeed. Which is why when I drink decaf coffee I drink "swiss water" decaf. I'm still unsure what exactly this study was measuring - where they comparing chemically decaf coffee, or swiss water decaf coffee? If the former obviously you have to suspect the chemicals might have played a part.
http://www.yafla.com/dforbes/2005/09/17.html#a59
(transfats)
Of course that covers just one thing, but the evidence is obvious that the more processed food is, the less healthy it usually is.
Basically, keywords + wiki = tags?
More like keywords + PageRank (e.g. votes for keywords) = tags. Actually contextual PageRank that Google uses (where they analyze the text around every link into a site) is akin the "tags".
Of course the folksonomy aspect of it isn't mandatory. Flickr is held up as one of the primary examples of tags, yet the vast majority of photo tags are added by the photo "owners" themselves, just like the days of old with webpages and meta keywords. So you end up with nonsense like this.
Its nice that the author assumes we know what tags are. It creates an article that only people who know whats going on already understand. Otherwise you go tag? What kind of tag?
:-)
Parent Post Tags: clueless "karma whore" "obvious question"
Seriously though, tags are user-provided categorization (including multiple "categorizations" given that you can apply multiple tags) of content. e.g. Search on Flickr for all photos that are in the union of the tags Toronto and Girl and you'll get photos that have those two tags. The same concept applies to delicious. This is the so-called folksonomy in action, where us lowly serfs categorization content, rather than "the man" in a taxonomy like Yahoo.
However the tag thing is going way too far (as are most "Web 2.0" things) - tags are useful in the absence of a superior classification system. For instance we tag photos in Flickr only because the system can't, thus far, determine what the photo is about mechanically. If it could automatically classify photos, then this folksonomy would prove terribly dated, unreliable, and inaccurate. Look at Google - what is better: The META keywords technique of before, or actually contextually placing each page based upon its actual content?
What was high end when the XBOX came out? Geforce 4 Ti? Can a Geforce 4 Ti run games the same quality as Halo 2 or Conker Reloaded? How does Burnout revenge run? Or the new Need for Speed?
Wow, someone is a little defensive of their xbox.
The remarkable thing is that games on the xbox look like sheeeit. I constantly marvel at the low resolution, and terrible framerate that it pushes out (try pushing an HDTV screen with it and it starts blowing chunks...at least chunky-style framerates). It blows me away that there are people who would defend it.
I dont know what kind of PC parts you were buying, but I paid more for my GeForce3 than I did for my Xbox. Xbox was purchased at launch, and the GF3 around the same timeframe.
I wasn't price comparing a PC with an xbox - the original message indicated that the xbox was better than high-end PCs at release. It wasn't. Of course it kicked the ass of comparable PCs (the very few that were that cheap), but I wasn't comparing dollar for dollar.
Um, it is exploiting flaws in *Microsoft's* products. Yes, sony was evil to do this, but Microsoft is clearly implicated in this whole mess. This is not a Sony rootkit running on Nintendo or on Linux; this is a sony rootkit exploiting holes in Microsoft Windows.
How is it exploiting a "hole"? If you're running as an admin, it installs itself at a system level - just like lots of other system utilities do. There is no hole here, apart from the fact that most users still run as admin (though don't go blaming Microsoft entirely for that. Even loved software like Winamp falls apart if you don't run as admin or do some manual ACL changes, because they didn't conform to even the basic rudiments of user-level security).
There was a reason to buy the first xbox since it was somewhat more advanced than highend pcs. I can't see any reason why someone would waste 400 dollars on a 360.
The first Xbox was sub-par compared to top-end PCs at the time. I always buy in the midrange, yet my PC could stomp the original xbox when it was released. Of course the xbox advocates would say that the xbox is tuned, and doesn't have all the inefficient generalized software that a PC needs, and so on, and perhaps they are right.
However a triple-core, "hyperthreaded" (e.g. 6 virtual processors) 3.2GhzX3 PowerPC with an incredible memory bus is decidedly superior to most PCs. Add that with a top-end video processor, and you have an incredibly capable system. I'm not a console gamer, but I am drawn to the technical capabilities of that machine, and I have no doubt that there'll be hacks to stick it into cluster configurations very quickly.
The xbox360 is a killer, killer, killer machine. The only reason there isn't a lot of hype is because Microsoft has suppressed virtually all info about it, and has done close to nothing to promote it (at least up until now). Perhaps they're planning on a shock and awe campaign to sell it, but the lack of enthusiasm is entirely in their court.
Oh really, and MS support via the 360 for HD-DVD won't have a cancelling effect on this?
This keeps getting stated on here, and it is entirely untrue. People are confused because Microsoft tepidly put their backing behind HD-DVD, yet the Xbox360 actually uses neither - it is standard old school 9GB DVD.
If you think pair programming is a ridiculous concept you are just on craftmans level in computer science/art/programming.
Bwahahaha. I see you drank the kool-aid and swallowed the yellow pill. Great stuff.
Ever saw a surgery in a movie? And? Does the chief everythign alone? Ever saw a airplane crew? And? 2 ppl in cockpit, right? Ever saw the stearman of a big ship? He is completely alone in his cabin house, right?
These analogies are so terribly ridiculous that I'm not even going to bother with them. Strangely it's the standard sales pitch though - yes, developing an internal time tracking app is just like surgery. Geez. BTW: They have two-pilots in a plane primarily because human beings die. If said pilot dies, second in command takes over (you know - because otherwise people die. Unlike that time tracking app). The second in command otherwise keeps their mouth shut and basically abides by the dictatorship first office - Completely unlike pair programming.
I think if you have not tried it, you should shut up. And if you have tried it but failed in being successfull, then you should start analying WHY you where not successfull. Or you should accept that you are still an amateur and not a pro in doing software projects.
Wow, you've got all the bases covered - either I haven't tried it, or I did but I suck so I should just shut up anyways. Give me a break. You guys are unbelievable.
Sometimes I really do not understand the modding. If you had read about 5 minutes into Scrum material you would have noticed that Ken Schwaber and every other coach _always_ explicitly mention that scrum is no silver bullet and will never be.
Right - everyone always thinks the modding should be different when they disagree with it. Tough nuts though.
Anyways, way to miss the point. Have you read the Mythical Man Month? What is accepted and evangelized as a silver bullet doesn't necessarily have to be held up as a silver bullet by the creators and external advocates - It has to be proposed as a silver bullet on the waylaid team. You know - way over budget, cohesion is falling apart...desperate manager suddenly proposes the silver bullet that everyone should move to a scrum methodology (or they should switch over to J2EE, or RoR, or whatever is enough of a change that it could be temporarily perceived as a silver bullet) and everything will be fixed.
am i the only one that hates blogs?
Yes, you're the only one. No, wait - It's actually a cliched response that appears in the hundreds every single time a story mentioning the word "blog" appears here. Keep on thinking that you're individual though.
all i ever see in google is search results from some moron posting his opinion on whatever it is im searching for.
And that's a blog problem how? Bitch to Google about that if you have a problem with it, or try other search engines. Stomping out legitimate long-tail content because you don't like it is extraordinarily egotistical and selfish.
I was taught by an instructor for a fighting sport that "only perfect practice makes perfect". I think this applies to almost any process.
Is this contrary to my statement somehow? Applying your comment to my statement, it appears that you mean that if someone never versed in fighting sports went in their backyard and started kicking a tree, practice will make perfect. Then, of course, they'll go up against someone who spent the year learning from a master (who himself learned from many masters), and practicing, and they'll get their asses royally kicked. Obviously doing matters, but doing to the exclusion of learning is wasted effort.
I bet you the parent of the thread is pissed after reading the comments......he was smacked off his soap box.
Yes, I am very angry. Very, very angry. Grrrrrr! Smacked off my soap box!
Oh, no, wait - No I'm not angry. Nor was I "smacked off" my soap box. In fact, you might note that I didn't exclude myself from this particular vice (indeed - I've had quite a few times in my career where I've learned something that I'd always ignored to think "Egads! All those ridiculous looking implementation!"). We're in a field where knowing just isn't that important, because chances are good that most other people don't know either, and that's really sad. Most of the professionals in this career allocate close to zero time to actually learning, instead "doing to learn", which is a recipe for more shit being unleashed on the world...yet it continues.
In your example, you bid $50 max, and can get bumped up pretty quickly. If you defer this to the end, there's a better chance you can get the item for, say, $40 after others try to snipe it for $35, $36, $37, etc.
Honestly I think the sniping community is working on entirely unscientific guesses. To add my own unscientific guess, based upon auctions I've been involved with - the exact opposite is actually true. If two people hit a digital camera early, and one is willing to spend $250, and the other is willing to spend $275, then the bid will shoot up to $250. All of the sniping "super good deal" followers likely won't even notice this auction, and the ending will be a fairly quiet affair (I look for these sorts of auctions). Compare this to the auction where the camera sits at the minimum bid until 5 minutes before the close - It has 30 watchers, all of whom want a piece of this super rich deal. The probability that one of them is willing to spend more, given the high amount of attention, is vastly increased.
Seriously, if someone did a real statistical analysis on it, I would wager - with a great deal of confidence - that "snipers" are fooling themselves, and that as a technique it is a disadvantage.
I hope you mean it's a pet peeve of yours, otherwise you're part of the problem.
Doh!
Good catch - I re-read that multiple times, but the syntax checker just didn't trigger on that. Indeed, I did mean to say that it was a peeve.
Sounds like a good start, but know that it'll only be a base to build on. As someone that has used Linux/*BSD/Unix for over 10 years, it's something that will provide a lifetime of learning.
Using and learning are very different things. There are people out there, right now - probably millions of them - doing software development the wrong way. They're implementing their small set of knowledge over and over again, for years at a time, not realizing how redundantly and incorrectly they're doing things (a great example would be the millions of developers squeezing out terrible database designs year after year - a particular vice of mine. Perhaps they'll imagine that they're expert database designers after a few years, but that couldn't be further from the truth). If they took a moment and actually learned for a few hours, it would make the implementation part much more effective, but people shun learning when they can just use what they already know as their hammer.
People like buying things for less than they're willing to pay. That one fact alone is why sniping works. "I'm -willing- to pay $50 for this item, but damn I'd be excited as git out to pay $35." - if that $35 bid holds, I'll be a lot more interested in getting the item than I would be if it were $50. That's why sniping works. The difference between 'willing' and 'excited about'.
This makes no sense. If two people are competing for an item, and they both rely on sniping, and one is willing to pay $45 and the other is willing to pay $50, then the sniping $50 person will win. If, on the other hand, you bid a max of $50, but the current bid is $35, and no one else bids, then it will sell for $35.
In fact the snipers are often shooting themselves in the foot with their technique (I've watched this quite a few times) - an item unnaturally low up until the end, such as what happens with several snipers, invariably gets a LOT of attention: Everyone notices that super video card "going for" $20. Suddenly you have 10 super-snipers all trying for their max, and in the competitive spirit usually more, in the last seconds. Compare that to simply bidding the item up to a reasonable level earlier - far less attention, and it's far more likely that you'll actually get it for less.
Without having a fee associated with access to their very own information, eBay is really opening up for third party developers to generate decent applications, rather than hav eto depend on scraping the HTML to get functionality.
Shouldn't these "decent applications" have enough of a revenue model to pay for the access fees? I don't know what sort of coin Ebay was charging, but such a "barrier to entry" often keeps the standards high - every dimwit that knows how to call a webservice can toss together some piece of junk to waste everyone's time. Instead it's usually built around even a marginal business, and it's just a cost of doing business in that market.
If Ebay is doing this, it's likely because they're worried about auction competitors, so they want to lock as much of the development community in.
and before folks start going on about sniping, eBays very own policies make sniping the -only- way to do business on ebay with any effectiveness. Becaused they won't implement the simple policy of extending an auction based on most recent bid (a very simple solution to the problem of sniping, and one that would be an elegant, simple, and beneficial solution to eveyrone), sniping is now 'de rigeur' for any auction.
Totally offtopic, but all of this sniping nonsense just proves how ridiculous people treat an auction like ebay (which usually leads them to grossly overpay). I've bid, and won, a couple of Ebay items through the magical technique of deciding how much it's worth to me, and putting that amount in their little autobidding system. If someone exceeds my amount - well that's more than I would have paid anyways, so it's no skin off my back. I'm certainly not going to get into any competitive BS and overpay just to win an auction. There is no logical explanation for last-second bidding except for irrational competitiveness undermining rational valuation.
It's just so nice to see a media corporation recognize that legit uses of peer-to-peer exist. The fact that they're actually using it is even better.
I'm amazed that everyone is seeing this so positively - instead of actually ponying up to get a first class infrastructure (e.g. I can download from Microsoft at 600KB/second all day long, even during the rush for the VS2005/SQL Server RTM. Google has been pushing more and more monster services on their pipes), they're basically using the resources of home users to distribution their content under their conditions. Gee, what a win win. Consumers will especially like it when their overloaded, overburdened high speed provider starts jacking up the prices to support the extended bandwidth they need to support all of the P2P traffic.
Sorry, but this is like a pizza delivery company dropping off some pizzas at your house and getting you to deliver the rest.
This makes perfect sense to me. Why base the "value" of a page off something you hope is right rather than off the actualy browsing trends of people.
Because you're not tracking the browsing trends of people - you're tracking the browsing trends of a very small number of self-selected people who install the toolbar. In the case of Alexa, the installed base is absolutely _miniscule_, and it tends to be a very specific cross-section (these people weren't a randomly selected cross-section).
For those reasons Alexa rankings are hugely gameable, and ridiculously useless, outside of the top 1000 or so.
I guess I should have just said "FP!" given how literally everyone took it. :-)