According to the article, you could still bias the toss. For example, let's say you're trying to get heads, which in your system is "first heads, then tails". You would hold the coin heads up on the first toss, and tails up on the second toss.
1,470 karma · joined November 23, 2008
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_...
Atul Gawande argues that the problem with healthcare in the US is overutilization.
The surgeon gave me an example. General surgeons are often asked to see patients with pain from gallstones. If there aren’t any complications—and there usually aren’t—the pain goes away on its own or with pain medication. With instruction on eating a lower-fat diet, most patients experience no further difficulties. But some have recurrent episodes, and need surgery to remove their gallbladder.
Seeing a patient who has had uncomplicated, first-time gallstone pain requires some judgment. A surgeon has to provide reassurance (people are often scared and want to go straight to surgery), some education about gallstone disease and diet, perhaps a prescription for pain; in a few weeks, the surgeon might follow up. But increasingly, I was told, McAllen surgeons simply operate. The patient wasn’t going to moderate her diet, they tell themselves. The pain was just going to come back. And by operating they happen to make an extra seven hundred dollars.
Apple had 14% of the US retail PC market in Feb. 2008 -
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/17/apple_snags_14...
This article claims the number was 8.7% in the 2nd quarter of 2009 -
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/07/15/single_digit_g...
According to this article on theappleblog.com, Apple has 4% of the global PC market as of July 2009 -
http://theappleblog.com/2009/07/25/does-apple-have-a-91-perc...
If anyone has more, I'd be very curious to see them (especially the ratio of sub-$1000 retail PC sales to $1000+ retail PC sales).
More serious for China's long-term prospects is that the expansion was so fast, and the pressures to pay off the debts so intense, that many of the schools turned into diploma mills, churning out poorly qualified students. Mr. Zhang got his degree from a school of traditional Chinese medicine with no history of teaching computer sciences. He looks back ruefully, recalling overcrowded classrooms and a lack of materials: "I wonder if this education was of any value?"
It sounds like there is a huge opportunity here. If open-sourced course materials (such as MIT's OCW) could be combined with a degree-granting mechanism that had credibility with employers, then ad hoc schools, study groups, online communities, and even lone inviduals could succeed where these hastily retooled "universities" seem to have failed.
http://techxav.com/2009/06/11/opera-will-re-invent-the-web-3...
If you'd like to discuss it in-depth, Ryan, feel free to contact me via email or Gtalk.
http://www.parrotsecrets.com/Parrot/index1.php?page=training...
On that page you can buy the ebook set for $40.
What exactly would "evidence" of something as subjective as "elegance" look like?
If you're looking for some insight into what makes it so beautiful, The Selfish Gene is an excellent place to start.
"Sutter was dismayed by this, and wanted to keep the news quiet because he feared what would happen to his plans for an agricultural empire if there were a mass search for gold. However, rumors soon started to spread and were confirmed in March 1848 by San Francisco newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan. The most famous quote of the California Gold Rush was by Brannan; after he had hurriedly set up a store to sell gold prospecting supplies, Brannan strode through the streets of San Francisco, holding aloft a vial of gold, shouting "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!" With the news of gold, many families trying their luck at Californian farming decided to go for the gold, becoming some of California’s first miners."
Also, chicks dig it (when you're a programmer, you have to snatch those points wherever you can ;-).