There are those who argue that financial speculators, for their own good, closely track underlying supply and demand, and therefore stabilize — not destabilize — markets. But this is not the case. Experiments have shown that, even for an instrument with a perfectly known valuation, the existence of human players itself creates speculative intent which can at least temporarily unanchor market prices. Speculation itself certainly doesn’t stabilize markets, in fact it has to be disequilibriating — required for price discovery. What keeps prices stable are well structured instruments that anchor to real economic variables by some other mechanism, things like periodic reconciliation of contracts, payment of agreed-upon dividends, or taking delivery of commodities. Anything that needs no reconciliation for an indefinite period of time is asking for trouble.

And this is the case with automatically rolled commodities futures embedded in commodities funds. Besides the fact that these funds are only really useful during price shocks (and not during predictably rising and falling prices, which would be priced into the futures contracts already), this effective lengthening of contract duration must by itself unanchor market prices. It must. This is beyond the fact of the so-called “long-only” issue from the initial demand creation, which indeed causes a demand shock. But even after the new demand stabilizes, commodities prices can be expected to be still more volatile than before these funds were created.

It isn’t all for nothing though. The commodities market now sees “farther” into the future in terms of supply and demand. As a commenter said, people are buying commodities funds with the view that there will be future supply shortages, so they are sending price signals for producers to ramp up now. So the benefit is ostensibly that we starve less in the future, at the cost of starving more people today. Perhaps we can argue whether the former part is worth more volatility, but still the latter part isn’t strictly necessary. As with many such things, the speed at which capital is allocated is the issue. It is only a demand shock when funds flow faster than farmers can respond and plant more crops. More volatility is arguably good for speculation, as it implies larger price amplitudes, shorter time-scales for profit, and more arbitrage opportunities; it just isn’t necessarily beneficial to the real economy.

• http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic75189.html
  http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=600188
• http://forums.amd.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=34&threadid=91772&enterthread=y
• http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=722088
• http://thevistaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=34479

• http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=20263

• http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=236341

As usual, there is a bunch of crap on the internet about Vista or AMD being the culprit. No, this has nothing to do with Vista Power profiles, which are all set to 100% maximum processor state. After reading the above threads and thinking about this, I’m convinced that it is a system-level issue. When on battery power, something set in the BIOS must be throttling the CPU to half-speed, so any software controls will have no effect beyond that.

One of the threads did mention that turning off or altering a Power Management setting in the BIOS allowed the battery mode maximum CPU frequency to go higher. Unfortunately, I got a stupid InsydeH2O BIOS with nothing to set. The next step is perhaps to hack the BIOS.

Now for some entertainment:

Customer : CPU cannot go above 50% frequency when on battery power, no matter which Vista Power Plan is chosen.
[An agent will be with you shortly.][You are now chatting with Jarred .]
Jarred : Hello Customer
Jarred : Welcome to HP Total Care for HP notebooks. My name is Jarred. Please give me a few moments while I review your issue description details.
Customer : hello
Jarred : I understand that, your Notebook CPU does not go above 50% frequency on battery power. Am I right?
Customer : that is right
Jarred : I will certainly do my best to help you out with this information.
Customer : you can try it yourself
Jarred : Well Customer, let me inform you that this is normal for any Notebook that runs on battery power.
Customer : That is not normal, because I have another notebook (different manufacturer) that does not exhibit this behavior
Jarred : In these Notebook the settings are different, the Notebook does not run as it runs with AC power. Let me also inform you that if it Execeeds beyond 50% to 70% the Notebook will get freezed.
Customer : Frankly, that does not make any sense. Is this limitation documented anywhere?
Customer :And is there any way to get around it…
Jarred : May I know the processor if it is AMD or Intel?
Customer : It is an AMD ZM-80 processor
Customer : Turion X2 Ultra, for a TX2500Z build
Jarred : Well Customer in AMD process, there is a option set as ‘power no’, which will limit when running on battery.
Jarred : However you can try to check in BIOS if there is any option to change.
Customer : Do you mean PowerNow? I think that is certainly something that should be in the BIOS.
Customer : However, I checked the BIOS settings on this notebook, and there are very few options to change.
Customer : Do you offer a more sophisticated BIOS or an update that specifically lets me make this change?
Jarred : I am sorry it is powernow.
Jarred : Customer, i do understand your concern, I would have provided you right away, if there was any solution for this issue.
Customer : There are no power management options in the BIOS, unfortunately.
Customer : I believe this should be reported as a bug, because a 50% limit on the CPU on this notebook makes many online videos unplayable.
Customer : That makes this "Entertainment Notebook" very crippled on battery.
Customer : Can you open a support ticket with HP engineers to resolve this issue?
Jarred : Sure Customer, I will excalate a technical-exclation on this issue.
Jarred : If there is any advancement options provided you will be informed.
Customer : Will I get an email on the progress of this ticket?
Jarred : I need few details to do this.
Customer : Sure.
Jarred : Once if I create the case you will be intimated by email contacted by Phone once after this excalation is sent to the case managers.
Jarred : Untill then, you can have this chat session ID – XXXXX
Customer : Ok, I appreciate that.
Jarred : Please provide me Product Number p/n (eg:DS542U): Serial Number s/n (eg: CNS34915MC):
Customer : p/n: XXXXX
Customer : s/n: XXXXX
Jarred : Please provide me your shipping address and
phone number.
Customer : XXXXX
Customer : phone: XXXXX
Jarred : Thank you for the information you have
provided.
Customer : Sure.
Jarred : Okay Customer, I will create the case and you will be intimated by Email or by phone, by our case managers as soon as possible.
Customer : Thank you for your help. I appreciate it.
Jarred : Please let me know if there’s anything else I can assist you with, today?
Customer : That will be all.
Jarred : Thank you for contacting HP Total Care Support, please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or clarifications. We assure you of our dedicated support, 24 hours, 365 days a year.
Bye Customer. Good Night.

Here’s the quote in question at 0:37:

One of the things which I think has increased the cost of living has been this administration’s reliance on a high interest rate policy.

In fact, the issue of the day was over fiscal policy being too tight and being overly concerned about the threat of inflation.

In Chinese, there is this elementary passage which plays on the homophone issue of spoken Mandarin Chinese. Every character in the entire passage is pronounced “shi” (with varying tones), but nevertheless at this level the passage would make no sense if recited. But, written in the Classical Chinese idiom, the passage makes perfect sense when read visually (and isn’t particularly difficult to comprehend even for a modern reader).

《施氏食狮史》
石室诗士施氏，嗜狮，誓食十狮。施氏时时适市视狮。十时，适十狮适市。是时，适施氏适市。氏视是十狮，恃矢势，使是十狮逝世。氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。石室拭，氏始试食是十狮。食时，始识是十狮，实十石狮尸。试释是事。

This is one demonstration that written Chinese can hold significant semantic content beyond phonetic value, a mechanism that has been key for tying together diverging spoken dialects over a thousand years.