links for 2009-10-23

"So when it comes to education, I start rolling my eyes when people suggest education is the magic bullet. Let’s get real, please. As heretical as it is to say in our society, “education” is not the panacea for personal finance. That’s a simplistic throw-away answer that does nothing to address real solutions."

"What you’ll experience are ridiculously good designs. Millions of iterations are folded into what you see. Everything is the product of a million successful tries. The colors and shapes and structures and textures are manifestations of survival. If it’s alive it’s good design."

"The first one above shows the growth of data traffic on AT&T’s mobile network. It is 50 times higher than it was just three years ago. I added two arrows to show when the first iPhone launched in June, 2007 and the iPhone 3G in July 2008. The chart overlays the first 20 quarters of user growth for each product. Only eight quarters after launch, the iPhone and iPod Touch has more than twice as many users (57 million) as imode (25 million), five times as many as Netscape (11 million), and eight times as many as AOL (7 million) at a comparable points in their histories."

Is all that we need to explain the supernatural human laziness?

"A UN rights expert says the food situation in North Korea is desperate, with aid from the World Food Programme reaching only one-third of the hungry."

"Having two adjacent screens will create navigational confusion. A lot of people will try to touch the e-ink display out of confusion, a bad guess, or ingrained habit and be slightly frustrated every time. Displaying some interactive elements on the e-ink screen, including dialogs and input boxes, adds to the confusion. It’s a touch-screen device, but only in one area. You touch the things that you interact with, except those." The worst complaint brought up, which does make sense.

"Today we’re introducing Raindrop, an exploration in messaging innovation being led by the team responsible for Thunderbird, to explore new ways to use Open Web technologies to create useful, compelling messaging experiences."

"On Fox News' Hannity, Karl Rove suggested that a Washington Post/ABC News poll that showed broad support for a public option was skewed because "the wording of the question" didn't make clear that the public option would include government involvement. In fact, the Washington Post/ABC News poll question asked about support for "having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans," and its results mirrored those of other recent public opinion polls that asked about support for a government-administrated public option." Whenever Rove gets out his whiteboard I have to question it.

"A woman in the US who said she was kidnapped, raped and tortured in a racially-motivated attack in 2007, has now said she fabricated her story. Seven people pleaded guilty to the attack on Megan Williams, now aged 22. Six are serving prison sentences. But Ms Williams' lawyer now says she invented the story to get revenge on her boyfriend for hitting her. Prosecutors have questioned the move, saying the alleged culprits were found guilty on the basis of evidence." Um okay?

"These arguments run from the literally incoherent (#1) to the sublimely unpersuasive (#3), with #2 somewhere in between. Yet, they are, apparently, the best arguments that the Yes on 1 folks can muster — the ones they're using to close out their campaign. The fact is that the overwhelming majority of people who dislike gay marriage do so for one of two reasons: either their religion has a taboo against homosexuality, or they find the practice gross."

"It showed that, even in a market like this one with very few players, collusion is difficult to maintain. There are tremendous incentives for one or more parties to cheat and move the market toward a competitive outcome. Unfortunately nobody has ever gone as high as the predicted equilibrium bid of $17.50."

"But the hip replacement scam is even worse than Steve realizes. Because who, you might ask, pays for hip replacements in America? The answer: Medicare pays 63.8% of the cost, Medicaid 6.8%. That’s right, the U.S. government pays for 70% of hip replacements in this country."

"The American Booksellers Association, which represents independently owned bookstores, has sent a letter to the Justice Department asking it to investigate what it describes as “predatory pricing” by Amazon, Wal-Mart and Target. The price war began last week when Wal-Mart announced that it would offer Walmart.com customers who preordered any of 10 of the coming holiday season’s biggest potential best sellers the chance to buy the books in hardcover editions for just $10. Typically new hardcovers sell for $25 to $35, although some discounting is common." Unfortunately for them it's most likely not illegal, as long as the large companies didn't collude together.

"I wonder how much of this comes down to semantics. The vast majority of people I know have no problems storing their email in the cloud. And that's probably the biggest cache of personal data most average users have."

"Only have a 10 minute coffee break and want to see the best items first? All feeds now have a new sort option called "magic" that re-orders items in the feed based on your personal usage, and overall activity in Reader, instead of default chronological order. Click "Sort by magic" under the "Feed settings" menu of your feed (or folder) to switch to personalized ranking. Unlike the old "auto" ranking, this new ranking is personalized for you, and gets better with time as we learn what you like best — the more you "like" and "share" stuff, the better your magic sort will be. Give it a try on a high-volume feed folder or All items and see for yourself! " Can you say so cool.

Read Kindle books on your Windows PC.