Well, it says 5 years ago, they would not be a team you would expect. I still say it's the Cubs, and yeah, this is just a guess. But I really can't think who else would have a reason to do it.

When I go down the list, here's the teams that have a front office with a strong, expressed interest in Big Data.

- Athletics
- Red Sox
- Cubs
- Padres (Jed Hoyer legacy)

Here are the clubs that are known to have been investing in advanced metrics previously, in some cases at a limited scale.

- Nationals
- Dodgers
- Rays
- Phillies
- Yankees
- Mets

Out of the teams listed above, the Cubs stand out as the one with the strongest support for big data from the front office, and the biggest gap in terms of what they have now. There was an article about Theo recently that talked about the fact they had someone on payroll who would print emails and web pages out for scouts to read, since they were not reading them online. Five years ago, they are one of the last teams I would expect to use metrics in a meaningful way.

I discount the other teams based on the following factors:

- If it was the Yankees, the price tag would be more like $13 million. They don't spend cheap period.

- If it was the Nationals, Davey Johnson would not be in the front office. He has been vocal about not using advanced stats in game-time decisions.

- If it was the Phillies, the system would be less about game time decisions and more about scouting. Their issues with their scouting system are well-known.

- The Rays are all about efficiency and doing the most with what they have. They don't like to acquire free agents, they are about building from within. They are not going to have a lot of historical data about their players for a system like this to chew on. It would not make sense for them to invest in one.

- I could almost see it being the Dodgers, but the Dodgers have a lot on their hands with new television contracts. I doubt they have the bandwidth for an organizational overhaul on top of that. They are focused on marketing, and this plays a role in how they make decisions.

- The Mets continue to struggle financially, and I am not sure they are entirely solvent. I am sure a capital expenditure like this would be something people would have already heard about through the media. It's possible it's something that would need to be approved by a bankruptcy judge.

The teams I simply discount are as follows. I don't see where big data fits into what they are doing. A $500,000 investment in winning requires some kind of organizational commitment to transforming the club overall, which just doesn't jive with the way these teams spend money. They either have systems that already work, or the markets they operate in allow them to make money without winning. I don't see where the impetus for a big, organizational change comes from with these ones.

- Orioles
- Indians
- Twins
- Mariners
- Angels
- Rangers
- Astros
- Marlins
- Pittsburgh
- Braves

That leaves about 11 teams to think about. If there was a wildcard, I would say it's the Twins, simply because Selig owns them and is aware of what Big Data can do.

Yeah, and the Red Sox has Tessie. I don't think they are in the market for a replacement.

Think of God as a libertarian. He gives us freedom to make choices. If the only option is the "right" choice, are you truly free? Success doesn't exist without the opportunity of failure. Thus, God expects us to be responsible for our actions as there is no freedom without responsibility.

Well, that is certainly possible if that's important to you. .

You also could have clicked the link I provided,l and perhaps typed the word "ethernet"... There are lots of models covering many different use cases. My unit works great over wifi, which is great since I have no Ethernet in my bedroom...

Google TV isn't a failure, it's just not the only success.

I have a Google TV stick and I love it! It is just a tablet that uses my TV as its screen and a wireless keyboard as its input. It is about the size of a thumb drive. It cost $40 on Amazon (.search for mk808b to get the exact model I'm watching Hulu+ on as I write this)

See my post history for details: this is quite successful. I have no idea what Google would want to improve...

Play store: no problem. How else do you think I installed Netflix, CBS.com, Hulu, uTorrent, and all the other apps?

Seriously, just imagine a tablet running on your TV using a mouse/remote instead of a touch screen. That's what I use every day. (And what is currently playing Sherlock Holmes a la Hulu; my wife loves that show)

I have a "Google TV" and I love it! Also called a "TV Stick" they are best sellers on Amazon with many models to choose from starting at around $25. I bought an MK808B for my bedroom TV and it's hard not to love.

1) It cost $40.

2) It uses my already existing TV

3) It streams Hulu, Netflix, CBS, NBC, and any other TV network that bothers with an Android app over wifi.

4) It uses about 2.5 watts of power.

5) It's not much bigger than a thumb stick.

6) It works seamlessly with an "air mouse" wireless remote.

7) It plays MP4 videos fluidly and runs uTorrent without issue.

8) It has room for two USB devices and an SD card.

9) Effortless support for 1080p resolution.

What more do you want from set top box that actually hides behind the TV?

My best guess is it's the Cubs.

They are looking for minority investors in the club right now, and the cost of ballpark improvements is a smoke screen for taking on the cost of big data. Theo has not been the same without Tessie, and it's not cheap to recreate the analysis that system is capable of performing.

I really wonder what the value of such a system is compared to updating / refining Nate Silver's PECOTA odds to play out hypothetical teams and transactions over a 5 year period. There is so much data available about players at this point, it's almost possible to predict regressions on a macro level.

Seriously: a major airplane "disappears" despite evidence that it wasn't really crashed. Everybody's wondering who dunnit and how, and whether or not it will become another impromptu bomb.

There's a *lot* you can carry on a 777. $50 mil is a lot, but the amount of damage such a plane could do with a little direction makes $50 mil look like peanuts. And it's pretty clear that anybody with the skills to make it disappear as completely as it did is capable of more than just a little direction.

You know, it could be that Tesla enlists the help of elite hackers who have compromised other high-flying products to harden their systems before somebody gets killed?

Foreground, I'll accept. Background is huge whether IE or Chrome on Windows with 32 GB physical and around 67 GB total virtual memory just over 50% utilization.

I don't have any trouble remapping who's going where, why, and when and my setup is as you describe save a couple of misses most anyone might make. You have to make sure that the RAM disk is properly saved and restored across restart/shutdown cycles otherwise you'll see some bizarre software post-installation behaviors. The other miss is RAID 0 and SSD's. If you do a serious testing regime, you have to reduce stripe length (4K here), use more than two drives and forget using any controllers except the motherboard directly connected drives. I'm seeing all the usual SSD benefits with 5.6 GBps (yes Bytes) transfer rates. YMMV. And no, I didn't believe it either which why I tested real-world and benchmarks, cache/nocache, ....

Any unices are far easier to deal with allowing you to map the filetree as suits. Windows needs a whip hand, the right tools, and really good backups as you climb one hell of a learning curve.

The problem here is that the product has no specific point to it - it exists *solely to produce vendor lock in*. Since it's little more than a re-badged Android TV stick there's really nothing special at all about it. This, in a market space that's saturated with me-too also-rans.

It's not that Amazon's offering is horrible, it's that it's not notable in a field littered with the corpses of other not-notable failed products.

BTW: Very few "normal" people are actually aware of hypermiling. Techies/nerds more so.

You can pretty significantly improve your fuel economy by using a "hybrid" approach, which I do to raise the average fuel economy of my car by about 20%, which is significant. This, by the way, includes enough "pedal to the medal" incidents that I do get to enjoy the 200 HP engine in my beautiful convertible!

Simple things, like trailing cars going through timed lights, letting off the gas a mile or so before your turn off so you bleed speed from 65 to 50 or so before exiting and watching a half mile ahead for red lights can improve fuel economy significantly without pissing people off. If you were in the car while I drove, it's likely you wouldn't notice unless I said something.

Bezos isn't crazy? How much do you want to bet on that?

The Drones idea has more holes in it than an R/O water filter....