NBC hosts flash versions of all of its TV series on its site. The interface is generally good but there are some quirks about when ads must be viewed. The ads are forcibly inserted between chapters of an episode. Whenever the chapter boundary is crossed in the forward direction, the overlay ad is played and the underlying video is paused. (As an aside, this kludgy architecture actually makes me believe it is possible to disable the ads…) So for example, if you’ve already watched to certain chapter, then backtrack, then return to it, the boundary is crossed again in the forward direction and the ad must play again. This shouldn’t happen. Also, suppose you want to start playing a late chapter. The ad immediately before that chapter plays, but if the video was freshly loaded, the ad at the beginning of the video is also forcibly played before a chapter can even be selected. This also seems like incorrect behavior.

But I understand… playing ads too many times in error is of no concern to NBC, of course.

So what’s on NBC’s site? Most shows have only the latest episodes on a time delay (to not preempt live broadcast and DVD sales, I suppose), but a few have all past episodes available. One of these I’ve been watching is Friday Night Lights. Actually never saw any ads for this, but all of Season 1 was surprisingly good. Unfortunately, Season 2 was crap and total BS. Sadly, there is only so much good material for writers to crank out.

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Now that I have gotten seriously addicted to Tablet PC (the faux paper templates in Windows Journal alone were enough to get me hooked), I’ve been pondering about some limitations of the platform. One is authentication. One of things you are not happy to do with a mouse — which the pen is, sort of — is inputting random strings that have become of modern-day passwords.

So I understood the point of the fingerprint reader option on this build. Swipe and you can bypass having to type passwords in tablet mode when the keyboard is hidden. But I didn’t get the option, and I believe there are other alternatives.

There are many modes of biometric authentication, fingerprint, face recognition, handwriting, voice, etc., and getting nearly perfect reliability in each case is a difficult problem when used alone. State of the art is just not good enough. But combined into a multifactored authentication protocol, it may just work. Here is something that should work today with existing hardware:

That should do the trick for a quick keyboard-less authentication. Why hasn’t anybody written software to do this?

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I was playing with a laptop from HP the last couple of days and noticed that when off AC power (on battery), the maximum CPU frequency is only half of the specification. The machine runs Windows Vista. The CPU is an AMD ZM-80, duo core 2.1GHz. On AC power, the processor can reach 2.1GHz on heavy load, but on battery power, the maximum it will go to is 1.05GHz on each core. This is really a problem because performance (especially for single-threaded applications) is pitiful at those levels. In fact, 1080p HD WMV demo videos could not play smoothly just like on a four-year-old Pentium M 1.6GHz.
(Read the article)

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Here is a problem recently described to me. Apparently there is a more elegant solution (which may give more insight), but I don’t see it yet.

The problem: \(X, Y, Z\) are independent random variables uniformly distributed over [0,1]. What is the distribution of \((XY)^Z\)?
(Read the article)

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GS chief gives up bonus for now… Some more discussion here and here.

Here is a money quote (pun intended):

There are instances where bonuses are justified, deserved, and in the best interests of the investment bank involved. Your very best people are people you want to hold, and your very best people will have opportunities even in this environment to transfer allegiance.

So the rationale behind the pay structure, allegedly, is to use the bonus as a kind of bribe money, to keep proprietary information (some term it “talent”, laugh) locked up within one firm. So in a way, bonuses have gotten far away from being a performance incentive.
(Read the article)

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… and squint.

This is part of the laptop backlight repair documentation.

So I gave up on fixing the laptop screen. The screen shall forever stay apart from the laptop. I even removed the laptop cover from its hinges so I just get a nice flat machine, and lighter, too. On second thought, this isn’t that bad. It’s no worse than a desktop machine. It’s still portable, and I just need to find a VGA monitor to connect to. Or just use Remote Desktop to connect in. Fine with me. But before I can get an external monitor, I still have a transition period where I need output from the machine right on the desk.
(Read the article)

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… another thing breaks.

This is part of the laptop backlight repair documentation.

The main difficulty in replacing the CCFL is taking apart the laptop screen. I followed some of these references:

• This from here on how to open the lid portion that holds the screen.
• This from here on how to go the rest of the way to take apart the screen.

I didn’t take great pictures of the process but I took some.
(Read the article)

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… then pitch black.

This is part of the laptop backlight repair documentation.

So a few months ago, my 4-year-old Dell laptop screen started getting a red hue when the screen first got turned on. It happens to be the first sign of CCFL failure — failure of the fluorescent backlight that is the light source for the screen. The second symptom soon after was the backlight going off by itself, especially when light level was set high. You can stall this process somewhat by lowering the light level but eventually the backlight will go off so frequently that the only choice is replacement.
(Read the article)

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Stories like this about the sudden unwinding of the yen carry trade had me thinking.

Financial markets are some kind of dynamical system. This system has stable and unstable modes. Clearly, the unstable modes are best not to be touched, yet there are few (or not enough) regulations or systematic constraints to keep a path from falling into those.

Common experience from systems design seems to say that you have to be willing to give up some efficiency in exchange for stability. That’s why there are currency pegs (or trading bands), reserves ratios, and interest rate targets. But these are too crude. There needs to be systematic tools in all markets to damp system dynamics to a time constant on the same order as that of economic reality. You cannot have capital flooding in and out of markets and currency flooding in and out of countries at rates that cannot be absorbed or sustained by the national economies. Sure, that is “efficient”, but it also makes no sense. This is the point at which free market and market efficiency fundamentalists need to take a step back and look at the big picture and see where they are so obviously wrong.

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Don’t mean to pick on Iceland, but this admittedly hungover photo of a poster for recruitment is just… untimely.

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