One Intrade commenter from London claimed he was set up to earn about $20,000 in arbitrage against Betfair. If you expect the manipulation to continue over a period of time (which I certainly did, and wished I could register on other betting sites), it's worth it to deposit larger sums of money with bank transfers despite the wait.
At one point I wondered whether the manipulators were making large purchases once per day and whether this could explain why the different betting sites never came back in line with each other. In that case, a savvy arbitrageur might take advantage of prices while they're at their widest differential, and then wait to buy more the next day. I thought I saw a pattern like this going for a few days in a row but it was gone by the time I felt confident enough to trade around it.
There are people, a LOT of people, who literally think Google IS the internet. If they can't get to Google in a web browser, they think the internet is broken; "I can't get to my internet!" And they know of no other portal thereto.
Just ask some folks over age 55 or so. You'll find this user mindset is very common.
You? Me? Yes we could find things. However it would have a massive influence on how the internet works.
It's like Bear Grylls or some other "survivalist" who knows how to pick berries in the woods and make a shelter laughing at the idea that a breakdown in modern argiculture would have an effect on the world.
"People" as in "some number of people somewhere"? Sure.
But people in general? I strongly doubt it. Hang out with some "non-technical people" (they will often helpfully describe themselves this way for you) while they use the computer sometime. If they didn't have Google, they might be able to get to Facebook, but that would be pretty much the boundary of the Internet for them.
Every browser has a built in search feature, which offers a variety of providers. IE doesn't default to Google.
I'm not sure why people here are acting as if Bing, Yahoo etc. don't exist and don't offer a decent service that would be adequate for the internet to continue functioning without Google.
We're not acting like that. We're saying it may as well be that way for most people. You and I would be fine if Google disappeared. We'd just switch our auto search to Bing/Duck Duck Go/Blekko and never look back. But most "non-technical" people are dependent on Google, and if they wanted to use Bing, they would have to either search "Bing" on Google and click the link in the results or find a nerd to set it up for them.
Real World Example: Some relative of my girlfriend set up her mom's computer to use Yahoo. But she has since been convinced that Google is better and she should use that. So what does she do? Every time she starts up her web browser, she types "google" into the Yahoo search box, clicks the link to go to the Google homepage, then does her search there.
People can learn. It's not like they would never be able to use their computers again. They'd call their daughter and she'd be like "oh, click on that little arrow and click on 'yahoo'".
Yeah, if any major service that millions of people used every day disappeared, there would be a period of adjustment. But that's all... a period of adjustment.
So the obsession many young girls have with Disney princesses, sometimes carrying it into adulthood (that makes for some very interesting conversations), has no influence on the narrative structure those girls are using to evaluate their lives?
No. The Disney Princess "narrative" simply fits into preexisting gender norms. There was no "Disney Princess" culture in the 1950s. If you created a chart showing the trendlines of female mobilization into the workforce (and particularly the "professions") and the revenue extracted from Disney Princess offerings, you'd have a concrete reason to question the assumption you're making here.
the narrative structure that people respond to is objective and possibly derived from ancient myths. disney follows this structure rather than invent it.
But what happens once people get used to the new duration of the yellow light? Do they approach it based on what they're used to from all the other yellow lights they've ever seen? Then the longest yellow light in the country is the safest one, until all the other lights are lengthened to match it.
This is actually a problem in the area this article is from. In maryland the yellow light is much shorter then in virginia, therefore maryland drivers tend to stop at yellow lights in virginia which causes lots of close stopping of drivers behind . If safety was really a concern then there would be a more narrower range of allowed yellow light duration between counties and states. As far as the speed cameras are concerned they only reduce speed for a very short distance once everyone knows where they are, its a pure profit motive.
Seems like VA drivers should stop racing yellow lights, and should maintain safe following distance. Even if the driver ahead chooses to roll into a stop at a green light, drivers behind should be able to stop safely.
I always thought that the safety came from a longer period of warning until the cross-traffic started, not from a longer period to dart through the intersection on yellow.
Often it's not so much that people get used to it, as that the yellow lights are often set too short to react to in time (and safely) to avoid running the light. If people have to stand on their brakes to avoid running a yellow-turning-red, it's too short.
By law, yellow means "stop if possible to stop safely". Drivers should expect the yellow light to be at least 4 seconds (legal minimum in most states). Stopping at a yellow is not a problem.
Given that three people posted a link to the same parody video within three minutes of each other, I'm forced to assume that Adam Curtis is a brilliant filmmaker.
I had no idea you could get faculty from another institution to be on your thesis committee. More importantly, I had no idea PhD students could do summer internships to supplement their measly stipends. If I knew that I might have applied to grad school already. It seemed like the only people in my undergrad program who had a good idea of how to plan out their academic careers were the ones whose parents were university professors. I felt alienated and left to fend for myself and I still don't know how to break back into that world.
What separates Rothko and Pollock from the artists in the link is that other people have tried to capture what they captured, and failed. I never got it until I finally saw other rectangle blobs and other paint drippings. There is at least something there to be felt.
Tell me when they can grow me a new inner ear and cure tinnitus. I want to experience the tranquility of true silence, and I want it from something other than the cold embrace of the grave.
