Last night, Stephen Colbert gave a speech mocking President Bush at the White House Correspondents Dinner, which Bush attended. The video (a 3 parter on YouTube on Google Video) is pretty long, but quite funny. It's getting some "blogosphere" buzz... will it go viral like Jon Stewart's "Crossfire" appearance?
NBC has a game show called Deal Or No Deal in which the contestant picks one of 26 suitcases containing amounts of money ranging from $.01 to $1,000,000. After picking the suitcase, the contestant slowly eliminates the other suitcases, revealing their amounts. The contestant is periodically offered a "deal" to trade in their suitcase for some amount of money.
If you've eliminated a lot of the high paying suitcases, you get offered a low deal. If you've eliminated all but the most valuable suitcases, you get offered a pretty sweet deal. If you decline all the deals to the very end, you get the amount of money in the mystery suitcase.
It seems like a clear case of probabilistic expectation, so I was curious if the "deal" offers were just the expected value of the contestant's suitcase; I don't watch the show often and I don't normally carry a calculator with me, but I was watching last night and had my laptop with me, so I decided to quickly calculate some odds.
When we tuned in, the current contestant was down to 3 suitcases: $.01; $400k; and $750k. Ignoring the one cent suitcase, that's 1/3 * 400k + 1/3 * 750k or an expected value of $383k. Her deal? $375k. Pretty close. (She took the deal; her suitcase was worth $400k, so she only lost out on $25k. Chump change =).
One contestant later, they were down to 8 suitcases with one worth $750k. The offer given to the contestant was $21k. Now $750k / 8 is almost $100k, so the deal value was clearly below expectation. The contestant eliminated two more (low value) suitcases, and her deal got bumped up to $63k. One more low value suitcase down and her deal went up to $96k (her suitcase now had expected value $150k). She took that deal.
They then walked through what would have happened had she had continued the game. She kept eliminating suitcases until there were 2 suitcases (the one she'd picked and one last mystery case) and they said her offer would have been $400k. $25k above expectation.
So it looks like the game has an increasing expectation multiplier that actually hits >1. I guess if I'm ever on the show, I'll work my way down to 2 suitcases and then take the deal -- proving once and for all that mathematicians make piss poor gameshow contestants. Now if only they'd bring back Let's Make a Deal...
I'm a fan of current_'s Google Current segments, so I tried to set up an RSS feed with enclosures so that I could use a video podcast program (like iTunes or Democracy) to download them, but Google video requires a "secure url" parameter for downloads, seeming to imply Google doesn't want people doing stuff like that. The best I can do is use the video feed API to create a feed of links to new videos.
Import this RSS feed into your favorite aggregator (like Bloglines or Google reader) and it'll update with links to new Google Current segments in Google video.
Before I begin, let me say a few things
(a) I don't like DRM. I realize that for now we often have few choices, but I really do hope the public comes to at some point and demands that media distributors stop treating us (the customers) like we're a bunch of crooks
(b) I think music CDs should cost $12 or less. Maybe it's because that's how much the cost back when I first started buying CDs, but I find it hard to believe that inflation is the reason why the average CD is something like $15.
(c) I worked for Amazon.com as an intern in the summer of 2003 and have a number of friends who work there. Amazon feels very strongly about "passing the savings on to the customer," but recently I've become rather disenchanted about their average customer experience.
Alright, on to the actual whining.
Earlier today I decided I was going to buy Supernature by Goldfrapp and Back to Bedlam by James Blunt. Now, I'm excited about these two albums, but it's not like I'm buying my favoritest albums ever, so I'm looking for the best deal possible and while I'd prefer to have a physical do-as-I-please copy, I'm not above saving some money and putting up with some lower quality DRM nonsense (how bout them principles, eh?).
So I go fire up the ol' web browser and head on over to Amazon. Sure it's not instant karma, but they'll have a low price, right? Well, Back to Bedlam is $14 (a dollar off if you buy the "clean" version, but that's a tirade best left for later). Supernature is $14, with a special edition DVD version for $15 ($1 for a random extra junk seems more than reasonable).
My original thinking had been that I would pay $12-13 for a physical CD, but any more than that, and I'll just buy the damn things for the flat $10 on iTunes. $14 > $13, so looks like iTunes will be lining their pockets with a few more of my dollars.
Haha. Did you see that? Silly Akshay thinks that just because iTunes says full albums are $9.99, that they'll actually be $9.99. How naive. No, it actually turns out that the James Blunt and Goldfrapp albums cost $11.99 and $12.99 , respectively.
In particular, the James Blunt album includes a "Bonus" video that I don't want but can't buy the album without; oh boy! I can buy and album that's supposed to cost $10 plus a video that costs $2 for the low low low price of $12! Thank god for iTunes and how it lets me buy my media a la carte! Bleh.
So what did I do? I put on my shoes and walked my butt over to Best Buy where I bought the two albums on sale for $$10 and $$12 (+ $1.84 tax). No waiting for Super Saver Shipping, no DRM crap. The normal Best Buy prices are $13 and $14, so even if they hadn't been on sale, buying them on Amazon would have saved me about a buck (after taxes).
So for all our wonderful internet and technology, the best deal for this customer was to walk a few blocks over to his local record store to buy what he wanted. What does it mean? It means we still have a ways to go before the future of online music shopping is here... or maybe it'll just never come. While the world waits, I guess I'll stick to buying physical CDs and what limited stuff I can get off of emusic.
I saw this comic in emilie's aim profile a few months ago and today I had the strong urge to dig it back up. I probably won't win many coolness points by admitting that this is absolutely hilarious... but it so is.
Well, I guess I graduated almost 2 years ago, but it's amazing to see people I knew in school having a noticible impact on the world around me.
At a party two weeks ago, I met a girl who mentioned that she was going to a concert this week. The performing artist? Vudoo Soul. Or, if you knew him in school, Chris Vu ('04). It was great to see and hear him again; especially with friends who only knew him as that voice they loved.My iPod died a week ago, so I've been heavily leaning on my favorite online radio station, KCRW, to keep me musical company at work (Morning Becomes Eclectic in particular). In addition to playing great, new stuff, they also keep their entire playlist online so you're never left wondering what that song you just heard was.
Below is some of the stuff (not all of it is new) that I'm now addicted to thanks to KCRW:
There's a strange feeling you get when you discover that a joke you love has a second meaning that's always been there, unbeknownst to you.
Case in point, I've always thought Family Guy's cover of Elton John's "Rocketman" is absolutely hilarious, but I just discovered yesterday that it's actually a parody of an eerie, 1978 William Shatner cover. Now I feel all weird inside.
not dead... yet.
Anyways, I ran across this article about blogging in New York Magazine and thought it was quite the interesting read. So here I am... blogging about it. yeah.
you like that? how everything came full circle? I thought you might.
Google recently made available a way to see what your most popular searches of the year were. My results offer quite a bit of insight into my personality... mainly that I'm a vain, self-absorbed, mash-up/podcast listening, photo sharer who lives in zip code 10128.
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So as some of you know, I've recently been working on a little side project outside of work which I've taken to calling "party chat." It's this group-chat like bot for Google Talk which (for the most part) acts the way I always sorta thought low-traffic group-chats should act.
Anyways, thanks to lots and lots of help from Michael Bolin, I've finally "launched" PartyChat as the inaugural post to my new geek-oriented blog Techwalla. Please take a look, make a poke, and let me know what you think (as well as any bugs you find). It currently isn't that solidly implemented, but it should be able to handle a few hundred users. If you want to know what chats I'm in, just send me an IM, and I'll let you know =).
I went to the filming of today's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart with some other Googlers. On a whim, I suggested we all wear Google gear to the studio in hopes of getting some attention and maybe a mention on the show.
We didn't get an on-air mention, but our four black, Google t-shirts immediately grabbed Jon's attention when he came out chat with the crowd before the show. After asking us if we really did work for Google, he started quizzing me about how Google works.
Jon: So tell me this, you know that "I'm Feeling Lucky" button Google has on the front page? How does that work?
Me: It reads your mind.
Jon: No really, how does it do it?
Me: You want the real answer? It's just the first search result.
Jon: But how does it know what I want? You push the button and it just magically takes you to porn.
Me: But you were looking for porn, right?
Jon: Well, yeah [crowd laughs] What? Isn't that what the Internet is for? Porn and Shopping.
Unsatisfied with my answer, he announced that it's probably a bunch of gerbils inside his computer creating the search results. He must already be well versed in our patented PigeonRank technology.
Well, as you might guess, after a day (or week) of working on Blogger, I lack the energy to come home and do blogging of my own. So as low traffic as this blog has been in the past, it'll probably get even slower for the next few months. Life is interesting and I do my best to take advantage of the city. Work is good and stuff. Yeah.
Alright, back to watching the Sox in HD on my 50" TV. Ah the good life.
Many of you have probably heard or read about Jon Stewart's August 25th interview of Christopher Hitchens on Comedy Central's The Daily Show. Video clips of the interview can be found on the CommonBits website (courtesy of Crooks and Liars) and on The Daily Show's official website.
In the interview, Stewart does a wonderful job articulating many Americans' frustration with how the current administration has dealt with the war in Iraq. A transcript of the most important part of the interview was done by Wonkette and has been widely circulated around the internet. Being a former college newspaper editor who once evoked campus outrage when being too precise in the transcription of an interview, I decided to fix up Wonkette's text using the recording of the show I have on my DVR. What follows is my best transcription of Jon Stewart and Christopher Hitchen's exchange:
Jon Stewart: The people who say we shouldn't fight in Iraq aren't saying it's our fault. That is the conflation that is the most disturbing to me --
Christopher Hitchens: Don't you hear people saying we've made them nastier?
Stewart: I hear people say a lot of stupid [bleep]. But what I'm saying is, there is --
Hitchens: You promised me you'd never say that.
Stewart: There is reasonable dissent in this country about the way this war has been conducted, that has nothing to do with people believing we should cut and run from the terrorists, or we should show weakness in the face of terrorism, or that we believe that we have in some way brought this upon ourselves. They believe that this war is being conducted without transparency, without credibility, and without competence --
Hitchens: Well I'm sorry, sunshine, I just watched you ridicule the President for saying he wouldn't give a --
Stewart: No, you misunderstood why --
Hitchens: a timetable. You said [unintelligible] --
Stewart: That's not why I ridiculed the Pres. . . What I ridiculed the President was, He refuses to answer questions from adults as though we were adults and falls back upon platitudes and phrases and talking points that does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with the very people he needs to convince.
[Audience erupts in applause]
Hitchens: [barely audible] You want me to believe that you're dying to be his side...
[Continued applause]
Hitchens: [gestures to the audience] There you go! You did it again! . . . C'mon c'mon [gesturing to Stewart to display Hitchens' book] . . . get it done and delivered.
[Audience still applauding, eventually dies down]
Hitchens: You want me to believe that, really, you're secretly on his side -- you just wish he was more persuasive. You want me to believe that.
Stewart: I secretly need him to be on my side. He's too important and powerful a man not to be.
realized today that blogspot blogs are their own domain and can use the "site:" parameter to do an internal search. a little html source code hacking later and voila, my own personal blog search.
if that means nothing to you, look in the right hand column and check out the little "Search ( ! )" box.
In May, Google acquired/hired dodgeball.com, a SMS-based social networking tool. Since NYC is precisely the kind of place where the ability to find out what bars/clubs friends are at and how to meet up with them is important, I've been using dodgeball for a while now since moving into the city. But, as you shall now hear, dodgeball is thankfully available in a number of major cities.
I'm in the bay area for a few days and I was supposed to meet up with my sister at a bar in San Francisco last night. Unfortunately, she gave me directions on how to get there while I was in a groggy-post-nap condition and, hearing her wrong, I some how convinced myself that the bar was on third street. It wasn't. My sister, being my sister, is absolutely terrible about answering her cell phone so there I am, groggy, in San Francisco (which I am not familiar with at all) with no idea of where I'm supposed to go.
Then, in a moment of brilliance, I opened up an SMS compose message to sf(a)dodgeball.com and queried it with the name of the bar, "21st amendment?" 10 seconds later I received back dodgeball's glorious response "Sounds like you're looking for the 21st Amendment @ 563 Second Street (btw. Bryant and Brannan)..." And all was good (so was their jerk chicken).
So you super observant readers might notice this, but the ( ! )'s main page has changed subtly. Now under each post, you can not only see how many people have commented, but who has commented.
It's a neat little feature I found out about here. There are lots of other "hacks" you can add to your blog that I might try playing with in the future too.
I bought a mattress from Sleepy's Mattress whatevers on the beginning of July. I thought all was good, they were willing to deliver it soon, were giving me a good price, and so on. When the sales rep went to go ring it up, she had trouble getting the discounts to work out properly, so she was $20 above the price we had agreed on. She fuddled around with the computer for 10-15 minutes until finally convincing me to pay the total bill and have her write a note on the receipt promising me a phone call and my $20 back.
A week later. My mattress had arrived fine, but no call from the sales woman. I went back to the store, but a different sales rep was there. He called the store the woman was working on to confirm the refund. She gets on the phone and tells me that she tried to call me the day of my purchase to tell me that her manager had not approved our "deal" but that there must have been something wrong with the number I gave her because she was not able to get through, which is crap, seeing as she gave my # to the delivery guys who had no trouble getting a hold of me. After bitching at her and talking to other sales rep, I was able to get the process of refunding restarted, with a promised call in a few days.
Two weeks later, no call, no refund. I go to the store once again and talk to yet another rep. who appears to be higher up in the chain. She tells me they've had problems what my original rep in the future and apologizes. She then does mumbojumbo with my card and says that they'll be refunding me $60, again sorry for the inconvenience. That was 3 weeks ago and I still haven't seen any money put back into my account.
So, what do we learn? Never buy from Sleepy's. Never ever ever. I hope someone who was thinking of buying from them reads this post and changes their mind. At the very least, I'll never buy from them again.
So my suitemates and I live in a new apartment in a complex which only opened recently. Amoung other things, this means the apartment gadgets are still new.... which is why we only recently realized we've been refrigerating our fridge's instruction manual for the last month.
