ESchmidtSeesYou

I just wonder why they put out that joke of a controller for Google TV, when they could have made a PS Move-like controller with a slide-out keyboard or similar.

Exactly.

automatic trading based on Black-Scholes acerbated the crash != the Black Scholes model contributed to the crash

Unrelatedly, is there anything wrong with, say, a mortgage-backed security accurately priced according to a particular model, so long as the limitations of the particular model's assumptions are properly understood? This applies to any model in economics or finance. All are obviously just simplifications of reality.

The technical assumptions of a mathematical model should not be blamed for the actions of ignorant or reckless investors.

I really wouldn't take an article seriously if it partially blames the '87 stock market crash on Black-Scholes (basic model for pricing European options). That makes literally zero sense.

Also, rumors that Gingerbread will launch by December, and 4.0 towards the end of next year:

http://phandroid.com/2010/10/19/android-3-0-should-be-ready-...

What leads you to believe that Verizon or any other carrier wants to become a dumb pipe?? A decade of contrary statements to the press suggests otherwise.

Original source: http://phandroid.com/2010/10/18/exclusive-first-android-ging...

Remember that Google recently hired Matias Duarte from Palm, who headed the UI design of webOS. These subtle revisions aiming towards design consistency and taking the ugly out of Android, if true, are very promising.

Yes, but they're pushing this as an open browser standard for all web app stores. It'll be interesting to see Google's response to this, as well as how DRM potentially works in both implementations.

I generally find anything like this to be very cheesy, but that genuinely moved me. Thanks for sharing.

If you want to sell a Windows Phone 7 handset, you have to pay Microsoft.

If you want to sell an Android handset... you have to pay Microsoft.

They're pretty direct about their legal strategy.

Oh, really? You're actually making the opposite argument: divided technical leadership is what drove most progress in personal computing. Unless you yearn for the days of the IBM mainframe...

The Economics of the Microsoft Case, by perhaps the best technology economist there is, Timothy Bresnahan of Stanford:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.24.7...

You can blame people like Larry Summers, who advocated shock therapy when he was Chief Economist of the World Bank, devastating the economic potential of the former Soviet bloc.

This is basically correct, but it still depends on one's values.

Who do you value more, the current generation or future generations? Essentially the perpetual argument over the standard discounting problem.

And convicted monopolist. Not all good, not all bad.

I used to be big on microcredit, until I realized it isn't actually profitable (as is claimed).

The vast majority of funding for microcredit organizations comes from government. It's still charity, even if it can often be fairly efficient charity.

Microsoft brazenly, fiercely ignored antitrust law. There's endless evidence in court on their attempts to illegally block the adoption of Java and Netscape Navigator. They were found guilty in U.S. v. Microsoft. And every web developer knows how much damage IE6 did to the progress of the internet. Gates' fortune is unquestionably tainted.

That said, the majority of economists would probably more or less agree with Slim. Buffett, Gates, and Slim could amass wealth faster than pretty much anyone else on earth. Just leaving the money invested in the global economy is not a priori worse than giving it all to charity. Compound growth is obviously self-sustaining growth. The HOPE is that charity can do the same.

Giving away tens of billions of dollars is an ENORMOUS informational problem. Good luck allocating it all even the least bit efficiently. The real answer is that no one can possibly know what the best use of all that money is.

What would I do with the money? Probably put it all in a Vanguard Total Market fund, or the closest fund imitating the true world economy.

The best comment is definitely:

"What about the Newton?? I actually bought one. I still can’t believe that I did."

Well they do praise it, albeit it in an odd way.

I know several developers who frequently complain about Android fragmentation, but then again they might just be spoiled by iOS.

WP7 doesn't really allow for any oem/carrier skinning though...

Will Windows Phone 7 be anywhere near as hacker friendly? Keep in mind xda-developers originally formed as a Windows Mobile community.

Yes, thank you kindly.

Wonderfully straightforward resource for the basics.

Fits.me is one company that's been working on the problem of buying clothes online that fit well, using a robot mannequin: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20018094-1.html

You already can publish changes by including them in the app description or in the update-install approval dialog box.

They showed their cloud syncing online store at Google IO. Watch, starting around 31:10 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY3U2GXhz44

The whole video is very much worth watching for any developers.

IO = Google's annual developer conference.

Gingerbread = Android 3.0, coming by the end of the year.

Honeycomb = Android 3.5, coming next year, with further optimizations for tablets.

Also, consider how Google just added Market support for buying and selling paid apps in ~20 countries: http://www.androidcentral.com/google-expands-paid-app-suppor...

The improvements really are constantly coming.

To anyone who thinks: that a very small team creating an entire, enormously complex operating system, with unending goals for platforms improvements, that has already been successfully iterating at an extreme pace, is up against enormous competition from Apple and Microsoft, and is playing the long game for the future of mobile and computing as a whole... is really ignoring these extremely common complaints and resting on its laurels...

...uh, really? There are many very concrete reasons to believe they know about the vast majority of these issues and have respective solutions addressing them somewhere in their product roadmap. (ie, major UI revision in Gingerbread, along with optimization for tablets.) That, and they've been overwhelmingly successful so far, as Android phones now consistently outsell the iPhone each quarter.

And if anyone genuinely IS interested in attempts by the dismal science to suck the soul out of romance, check out Gary Becker's 'A Theory of Marriage' papers.

Not serious statistics, but very cool visual nonetheless.

Now, so long as everyone realizes the 'woman at the bar' scene in A Beautiful Mind isn't actual game theory, feel free to go nuts.