Here are a couple reasons why teen me (I'm almost 30 now) may not have preferred eBooks over actual books:
1) I had only moved once in my life, and did not appreciate how much physical space books take up during a move. After moving ~4-5 times since going to college and graduate school, I have vowed to buy only eBooks now. Conveniently, I am also finally basically done buying academic textbooks (for which eBook versions can be scarce), having bought most of the ones I plan to use (often enough to not borrow a library copy) during my PhD and beyond.
2) In my experience, eBooks don't make it easy to annotate. Copies of my books from A Great Gatsby to Introduction to Biology are rife with pencilled in thoughts, arrows, underlines, etc. I've even enjoyed reading notes left by previous students in copies of books I've borrowed from the library (I am thinking of some comments I vehemently disagreed with in the Harvard library copy of Sartre's Search for Method, and to which I responded in turn). In that sense, library books might be more social than today's eBooks, as they can be both shared and annotated.
In regards to 2), something that I really enjoy when reading books on my Kindle is seeing the "popular highlighted passages". It basically shows you in your text where the most popular highlights are (so usually thousands of people have highlighted that passage for it to show up to you). I would love if they would expand that out further and allow popular comments/annotations as well (opt-in, of course)...although I'm sure there are a whole breadth of filtering and spam issues to deal with.
My ereader of choice is the Asus EeeNote. Very hard to find, and I'm not sure it's even made anymore. I ordered one from Taiwan (thanks, Chrome's built-in translation!). It has a Wacom digitizer, so it needs a pen, but that also means it doesn't register finger presses (so you can rest your hand on the screen while you write). There are a couple buttons at the bottom so you can flip through pages or through the menu without needing the pen in your hand. It's not the best ereader out there, but it's the only one I know of built for handwriting and reading at the same time. Black and white screen with no backlight, which is reportedly the reason Asus never sold it in the US. They didn't think the market would be there.
It can also be used just for note-taking (wifi sync with Evernote), it has Firefox built-in for web browsing, has a camera and can take audio notes as well. Plays MP3s. I use it a lot for writing notes in class while recording the audio of the professor. When I get home, my notes are already on my PC. Sitting at home, I can plug it into my PC and use it like a 8" Wacom digitizer in Photoshop. Totally worth the $250 shipped from Taiwan.
If those are the top 2 reasons, I suggest these as 3 and 4:
3) You lose the 'cover' of the book to signal to people what you're reading. Hanging out at Starbucks all day reading whatever it is you're reading is a good way to encourage conversations with other people who like the book/genre/author/style. This might not sound like too big a deal until you realize that teens use this to find sexual partners. (No, I'm not guessing here.)
4) They haven't yet had to lug their $365, hard cover, 800 page, 20 pound edition of "Calculus" from the dorm side of the campus to the science quad a mile and a half away.
A paper cover? (Or are you talking about something I'm not aware of?) Sure, but if I buy the "To Kill a Mockingird" cover and start reading another book, it doesn't change the cover.
The point I was trying to imply without saying it outright is that guys will take different books to places they'll be best received. There's an entirely different vibe in DC's "Adams Morgan" district than there is in the Shaw neighborhood, and the savvy pickup artist isn't likely to be reading the same book in both places.
Actually, I think this is an interesting lie for a different reason. Look at their no. 1 competitor, Google. They had a PhD in computer science as CEO and now a guy who well on his way to a PhD came up with an algorithm that, as far as I can tell, revolutionized search. Why did this Yahoo guy lie? Maybe he felt pressure to keep up with the Google guys, and thought a modest lie about a B.S. in Comp Sci would do the trick while going undetected. It might be sign of the times--that PhDs and PhD-equivalents are heading large companies. And a funny misread too--their 2nd foremost competitor in search was founded by a dude without a B.S. at all.
Addressing your other points: I feel like a CEO should be aware of how he/she is being perceived and correct any mistakes about his/her record.
No need for (b) typos and (c) trolls, but (a) opinions are output that computers currently fail to effectively provide, but things that much of human society currently depends on. I was going to cite medicine and marketing as examples, and act like science doesn't depend on opinion, but that is actually very false. The scientific process is basically 1) experiment/observe (i.e. take pictures), 2) form opinions (calling them "hypotheses") about what we observe and 3) decide what to do next to convert that opinion into a truth value.
I don't know what "music theory" is, and I agree that I wouldn't listen to Radiohead if I didn't like the melodies (there are other mathy/geeky bands out there I don't listen to, an extreme case being Information Society giving you instructions on how to configure a modem to translate their "song" into ASCII, no. 1 listed here: http://www.cracked.com/article_18896_10-mind-blowing-easter-...).
But some theories about music are very mathematical. We probably are just beginning to understand how to think about music in terms of math, because music is complex and (at least much of Western music) discrete. An article in Science in 2008 defines equivalence relations and uses n-dimensional symmetries to describe sequences of pitches in time. See here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/320/5874/346 and here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/320/5874/328.full)
I think there is some truth in a Leibniz quote: "The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic." (http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Quotations/Leibniz.html)
It's hard to say why I like Radiohead. At first I really didn't like them; I found Kid A (album) especially discomforting. I had to let go of a lot of pre- (mis?) conceptions about what makes music good before I could come to like it. I probably had to let go of a lot of pre- (mis?) conceptions about myself and my worldview at the same time to appreciate the lyrics. But now it's one of my favorite works of art.
Thanks but I am really interested in reading more about NP hardness in real world situations. Operations research may be a place to start but then my question becomes "Where does NP hardness arise in operations research?"
Here's an example of a creative way to interpret my original question: as xkcd implies, you might say eBay "solves" an NP hard problem http://xkcd.com/399/. Ebay doesn't solve the traveling salesman problem as it is normally posed in computer science, but it rephrased the problem statement in a useful way.
"Playing soccer well depends little on having good ideas."
This statement seems to me to be profoundly wrong.
Perhaps some ways of "playing soccer well" depend little on having good ideas. But soccer is a very complex game: the configuration space of the players on the field is ~2*11 dimensional per team (add the z dimension for jumping and the ball in the air and you see that the total coordinate and momentum space is even vaster than 44 dimensions). Good teams are capable of organizing into configurations on the fly which are more likely to lead to goal than other configurations, and they can do this in response to the configuration of the opposing team. The Spanish team that won the most recent World Cup is a great example of 11 players who self-organize into optimal configurations in real-time.
You might argue that some players can use pure athleticism to navigate through the 44+ dimensional space and score goals. Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona are great examples: see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYet49BToLw. They share a unique build which is suited to their style of soccer playing. They are not tall, have a low center of gravity, they can accelerate and pivot very quickly, and still they have a high top speed. That allows them to make runs like those "Goals of the Century" in the linked video in which they single-handedly beat the opposing team to a score.
However I would still hesitate to say that Messi and Maradona don't need good ideas to make those runs. Exactly where they choose to run probably depends strongly on where the defenders are relative to the ball-carrier's position. Also how fast they choose to run at any moment can depend on how fast those defenders are moving--hence the utility of pivot moves. Watch Messi beat the defender that comes at him from behind at 36-37 seconds, shown from another angle at 48-49 seconds; Messi gives the illusion that he has eyes in the back of his head. But really he has played soccer so much that he can take one glace around the field and calculate which defenders can reach his position and how fast they must be moving and in what direction in order to do so. This is not a trivial calculation to do at the rapid speed required by the game.
One of my favorite positions to play is Center Midfield. This midfielder often has more control than any other player to influence to configuration space of his team. One of my favorite players to watch do this was the brilliant Zinedine Zidane. He was a technically gifted footballer, but that's a relatively small part of why I loved watching him. The main reason is because of his perspicacity and decision-making skills. It is not just as if he has eyes in the back of his head; it is as if he can see the game as we spectators see it, with a birds-eye view. His brain is closer some kind of soccer video game AI that can calculate the optimal place to put the ball based on current configuration of the 22 players.
One of my favorite matches was Zidane vs. Brazil in 2006: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvYlvkWpPy4. Check out what Zidane does at 2:05-2:20. France is already up (on a Zidane assisted goal), so they do not need to score a goal. Still they would rather keep play near the opposing team's goal for the chance to score again and to decrease the likelihood of Brazil equalizing. So Zidane is basically playing keep away for the win. At 2:14 Zidane makes a hand gesture, directing a teammate into the space to his right. Brazil players respond, moving towards the space. Then he makes a pass in the completely opposite direction, which is probably what he planned to do all along. Possession is maintained by France and the clock ticks closer towards their victory.
I think he meant it as a quick example and wasn't really an indictment of soccer players - nevertheless your obvious passion and understanding of the game is appreciated :)
Your last paragraph about Zidane is interesting. Keeping possession is a bigger tactical advantage than many people previously thought. Imagine an entire team playing keep-away for the win, patiently building up to goals confident they will get them, and you essentially have Barcelona: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6A_K8oWqfk
Zidane was more of an attacking midfielder, which makes his contributions all the more obvious, but even Zidane himself knew that the core of a great team was as far back as the often unheralded position of defensive midfield. When his club Real Madrid sold Claude Makelele and bought David Beckham, Zidane remarked, "Why put another layer of gold paint on the Bentley when you are losing the entire engine?"
Despite the presence of more heralded players like Xavi, Iniesta, and Messi, Busquets is likewise the tactical centerpiece of Barcelona, almost purely due to his intelligence on the pitch. In defense, he drops back and positions himself to intercept passes rather than challenging for the ball, and once he has it he almost always makes the right decision where to put it next. And when Barcelona have possession, he pushes forward to form a triangle with the rest of the midfield, providing an open outlet to maintain possession and recycle it. If you chart out the passes Barcelona make in a typical match, there's usually a very heavy triangle between Xavi, Iniesta, and Busquets.
The most interesting part of Barcelona's tactic, though, is the way they seem to push even more players into the midfield. Their notional striker is Messi, but in his "false nine" role he plays closer to attacking midfield. Likewise, Barcelona's defenders push forward and hold a very high line. Defensive midfielders like Mascherano and even Busquets have been repurposed to play as central defenders, while Pique can make effective runs forward. Right-back Dani Alves usually rushes forward to play as a winger.
The interesting thing about Barcelona's style of play is that, while it's obviously a tactic well suited for a team full of good passers who have played with each other mostly since childhood, it can be surprisingly effective for other teams. Swansea have used it very effectively in the Premier League this season, while Borussia Mönchengladbach have gone from near-relegation to the Champions League places: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAx9kYx8qo4
According to the Wikipedia article on LSD, the US DEA claims that the drug among other things "produces...no lasting positive effect in treating alcoholics."
The TSA chimed in, noting that LSD also produces no safeguard against "things that go BOOM!"
> So how come that the trips lasts 5-12 hs, with negligible blood concentrations?
Some drugs are very tightly bound to the receptors they target. (A few are even permanent, so the target protein has to be recycled to turn off the drug.) The blood-brain barrier serves as a one way gate that retains some drugs despite falling blood levels.
