This makes me sad, I go to a page and see this
Apparently Click2Flash has blocked some flash-stuff, it must be really interesting and important … I better click and see what it is
What can I say?? It seem that the only reason they use Flash is to create a title!!
bad, Bad, BAD
The auction site BidRivals is pure genius … if you’re the owner.
The site works like this: they have a number of products that they sell on timed auctions, to be able to bid on an action you need to buy “bids”, every time you or anyone else add a bid (raises the price with 0.10 Skr – approx 1.5 cent) the remaining time for the auction is increased with a predetermined number of seconds.
So when you see that the timer comes close to 0 seconds you press the button, raise the price with 0.10 Skr and the remaining time is increased with for example 15 seconds. Got it.
To avoid that people would miss their chance to bid (and for the owners to lose money) there is a “Bid Agent” that automatically bids on item for you (the Bid Agents seem to take a round robin turn of bidding).
This is pure genius, those involved in the bidding pays 5kr for each bid and there is no upper limit on how long an auction can continue. If you somehow manage to win an auction you’re very very happy because the final bids are quite low – you can get good stuff very cheaply – but I guess that the owners of the site are even happier!!
Let’s make a calculation based on an actual item, an iPod Touch 32 GB which costs, according to the site, 2995 Skr. It was sold for 80.70 … so if you managed to win the auction you’re very happy!!
But wait!! This means that there was 806 bids each costing 5 Skr (assuming that none of the bids were automatic to raise the price) which means that the owners of the site got 4030 Skr for selling that Touch. That’s 1035 Skr over the recommended price !!!
So instead of selling the Touch in a shop for 2995 Skr they actually sold it for 4030 Skr. Not bad !!! If I read the information on the site correctly the buyer for this made 221 bids which means that he/she spent 1105 + 80.70 = 1185.70 to get it. So I assume the buyer is happy.
And those who lost probably think that the whole thing was exciting and that they will win the next time. So everybody is happy … it’s such a good idea to get money (if you’re the owner of the site).
Another example, a Canon EOS 50 with a 18-200 lens sold for 651.90 SKr. That means 6518 bids, each costing 5 Skr. That means that the auction gave the owners 32590 Skr. The listed “recommened price”?? 13 799 SKr (this auction took 17 hours to complete)
Pure genius
Some students are taking their morning break at the University
Tags: break, coffee, umeå university
Posted in Snapshots | Comments
I have to admit that I’ve never had the pleasure to use PL/1 but I’ve seen it and I can understand Dijkstras opinion:
Finally, although the subject is not a pleasant one, I must mention PL/1, a programming language for which the defining documentation is of a frightening size and complexity. Using PL/1 must be like flying a piano with 7,000 buttons, switches. and handles to manipulate in the cockpit. I absolutely fail to see how we can keep our growing programs firmly within our intellectual grip when by its sheer baroqueness the programming language – our basic tool, mind you! – already escapes our intellectual control. And if I have to describe the influence PL/l can have on its users, the closest metaphor that comes to my mind is that of a drug. I remember from a symposium on higher level programming languages a lecture given in defense of PL/I by a man who described himself as one of its devoted users. But within a one-hour lecture in praise of PL/L he managed to ask for the addition of about 50 new “features,” little supposing that the main source of his problems could very well be that it contained already far too many “features.” The speaker displayed all the depressing symptoms of addiction, reduced as he was to the state of mental stagnation in which he could only ask for more, more, more….
When FORTRAN has been called an infantile disorder, full PL/1, with its growth characteristics of a dangerous tumor, could turn out to be a fatal disease
Tags: dijkstra, funny, language, pl/1, programming
Posted in Computers | Comments
I’m currently in the process of reading CS Education papers and I’m getting quite fed up with papers that basically says “Students have a problem understanding X” – “It’s probably because of Y” – “Let’s build of software tool to teach them X”
And they do this without actually trying to understand why the students have difficulties learning about X. I just can’t believe it – the first thing you should when you see that something is wrong is to try to understand why it’s wrong, not just build a tool and hope that is fixes everything.
It’s seem that CS Educators have their own mantra when it comes to teaching and learning: “The students have problems with this, let’s build a tool”
Or to paraphrase another paper “The students find this difficult so you have to talk slower” … SIGH
(Ohh, did I mention that it’s quite common that no evaluation of the tool is done – except “We asked the students if they liked it and they said yes”.)
Tags: csed, frustrated, mantra
Posted in Research | Comments
I spent most of friday, saturday and sunday at a jutsu training camp here in Umeå … together with a few hundred others. Since I’m a member of the club who organize the whole event it means a lot of extra work for us. All in all it was a nice weekend that mixed Ju-Jutsu Kai, Brazilian Ju-Jutsu, Aikido and Iaido in a very nice way.
Here are a few pictures from my weekend
I was waiting for my son to leave and decided to take a photo of him getting on the bus … but instead I got a rather colorful photo of him, myself and my wife 
Tags: bus, colors, reflections
Posted in Snapshots | Comments
Yesterday I was a bit disappointed because it looked like everybody else except us were getting snow – I really dislike dark wet autumns/winters (and it can’t be winter without snow) – so it was a really nice surprise this morning when there was a very thin layer of snow outside.
It’s not much but I do appreciate that Mother Natures tried to comfort me in some way.
There was a deadly accident at home. Early in the morning we could here a thud coming from the living room … but since it was so early we didn’t bother to get up.
A few hours later we could see that there had been a deadly accident.
Apparently the bird had crashed into one of the windows, so hard that it died.
Summer is now officially over, at least here in Yttersjö. Today was the day when we pulled up the bridge from the lake. This may sound like a simple task … and it would probably have been so if it hadn’t been for those pipes.
You see, they have used a sledgehammer to drive those pipes into the sand/clay/mud at the bottom of the lake and now we need to try to get them loose again. And this, my friends, is not something that is easily done.
Anyway, after some work we finally managed to get them loose again. After that we divided the bridge into sections and lifted it onto the beach.
Done. Now the snow and the ice can come.