"Fibonacci-based fractal waves of human social behavior"?? I guess that's just one reason why no refereed journal has published this load of crap, and the author (I would guess, a "free-thinker," "oppressed" by the "establishment") had to publish it as a book instead. There is a whole branch of economics (behavioral economics and finance) devoted to boundedly rational/irrational behavior, and in addition, there is the whole science of sociology.
They are in entirely different leagues. Bill Joy is a rare genius, creating incredible things one after another. Marc Andreesen, while definitely a smart guy, just happened to be lucky and stumbled upon a good idea.
India has a billion people. IIT accepts maybe 10,000 student per year (I'm making this up). So, less than.05% of that billion has studied at IIT. Just think about the numbers --- IIT has the top.05% of the distrubution! And they don't care about "diversity" or "legacy" or "money" --- they just rank order everyone and take the best.
And another difference is that while in the US you have places like Ivy league, etc. where many smart kids go, in India IIT is clearly the most prestigious. Hence, I wouldn't be surprised if the average IIT student was in fact better than the average MIT student. Actually, I have worked with both IIT and MIT alumni, and they were all brilliant, so making comparisons is hard.
That's not quite right, or at least not the full story. In fact, there are more studios competing in Hollywood than software firms producing tax software. The difference is that while tax software programs are close substitutes (I mean, personally, it makes no difference to me which one I use, and I have used both TaxCut and TurboTax in the past), movies are definitely not -- suppose (just for the sake of the argument) the Matrix trilogy is released on DRM-protected DVD. You're not going to just switch to Gone with the Wind; you'll still want the Matrix. In the lingo of economics, movie studios have "local monopolies"/"differentiated products", whereas tax software firms do not. Thus, it's easier for Hollywood to do nasty things like DRM.
If a significant (more than one) number of people in the Russian government gets access to the Windows code, then, knowing the mentality of people in the country, I can assure you that you'll be able to buy CDs with the source code for 5 bucks anywhere in Moscow within a few weeks, and will also be able to download the code from all the file-sharing networks.
Exactly. I could never understand why the same thing didn't happen in Silicon Valley in the '90s---there were many people who could've afforded helicopters, and they could've placed landing spots on the tops of their companies' buildings. Instead, you saw them in their Ferraris and Mercedes S600s in the daily morning traffic jams on hwy 101.
This book and its rebuttals remind me of a book called "The Bell Curve" published several years ago. A scientist (or two) publishes a book in which he expresses certain views, and suddenly becomes a target of ignorant media whose arguments are "he is a racists pig" or "he is a soulless statistician". Interesting how scientific debates suddenly become personal and pointless... I hope this guy reacts as professionally as the Bell Curve authors.
From a military standpoint (at least at the time of World War II), one could say with conviction that Hitler was stupid to invade Russia.
Unfortunately for Hitler, Russia was planning to invade Germany later that summer (various archives opened recently, also most military equipment on the Russian side of the border was "offensive", not "defensive" weapons), so he pretty much didn't have a choice.
I'm happy to say I rode the internet wave by staying by the sidelines.
I do not understand this attitude. About a year and a half ago I started a company with my buddies. We got initial funding, things were getting along, then times got tough, funding was cut off, the company died. I still think the idea was great (simply because I would be a happily paying user of our product), but that's beyond the point.
We got burnt - true. But do we regret it? Well, I don't know about the other guys, but I definitely don't. Why should I? I got absolutely amazing experience with more stuff than I could've imagined (from configuring Linux/Apache/MySQL/Oracle/NT network/you_name_it to writing code and designing databases and XML specs to writing business plans and estimating costs/prices to bullshitting to clients and VCs to listening to bullshit from potential suppliers), I worked with great people, I got to see for myself how hard (but doable!) it is to actually create something on your own, I had fun, for god's sake!
If I had to choose again, would I do the same thing again? Absolutely!!! Well... maybe not - I would've probably joined my friend's start-up, which was bought by a stable public company a few days ago:)
So then how do you explain the fact that the US has the highest GDP per capita in the world (well, occasionally surpassed by the United Arab Emirates or Luxembourg for brief periods of time)?
i've been very idealistic for a long time, switching lots of jobs looking for "the perfect one" - i.e. as little testing, paperwork, etc. as possible, smart people around, interesting projects, and so on. some places were better than others, but in every single one of them i felt exactly as you describe - repetitive tasks, huge underutilization of my potential, and so on... so i said "fuck it" and went to grad. school. you don't make much money in academia, but everything else is great. i'm sure there are other solutions, or maybe i just hadn't been looking long enough, but it seems to me i made a pretty good choice. science is much more fun than the real world...
OK, first, what's the big deal? What NEW information can they get? When you apply for a credit card, you give out your yearly income and number of people in the family anyway, and if you apply for a mortgage the bank knows everything about you.
On the other hand, why is everyone so pissed at marketers? As long as I can "opt out" (and I should be allowed to do that, I agree), I'm fine with customized advertisements. They are great! Take, for example, Amazon - I spend quite a bit of time there, searching for books on technical and non-technical subjects, music, and so on, and after a while they know me so well that they point me to lots of stuff that I like but would've never known existed without them telling me. What's wrong with that?! Why is everyone so f%^&ing paranoid?
So why are all "energy drinks" sold in cans of the same size and weight as "Red Bull." Is that OK? If yes, what's the difference? If no, are they paying royalties to "Red Bull?" Should they expect to get sued? I'm just curious...
The best thing you can do to this kid (apart from teaching him social skills, which many other posters mentioned) is to teach him math. He might never need number theory, but he will learn to THINK. That's by far more important than learning Java, which he'll be able to learn in no time when he needs to. It makes no sense to teach him "cutting-edge technology" (unless, of course, you want to employ him right away) - it will be gone in three days anyway. But teach him good old math, physics, chemistry - and he'll always use these skills no matter what he does.
I would recommend teaching him fun stuff in math - group and number theory, for example, and various cute problems from competitions. If you can't do that, find some prof. or a math Ph.D. at a nearby good university.
Get him this book this Christmas - it's just ten bucks.
I started using google long ago, when it was still.stanford.edu. I guess they had only 4 or 5, or maybe even just 2 people at that point. Since then, from my end-user perspective, almost nothing changed (which is, by the way, a GOOD thing - the site's just as awesome as it used to be). So what the fuck do these 100 people (including 30 PhDs) in the research department work on? The only thing that comes to mind is scalability, but 100 people.....
Just why do the companies, even the great ones, think that their headcount MUST grow?
Slashdot Mirror
wtf?
"Fibonacci-based fractal waves of human social behavior"?? I guess that's just one reason why no refereed journal has published this load of crap, and the author (I would guess, a "free-thinker," "oppressed" by the "establishment") had to publish it as a book instead. There is a whole branch of economics (behavioral economics and finance) devoted to boundedly rational/irrational behavior, and in addition, there is the whole science of sociology.
They are in entirely different leagues. Bill Joy is a rare genius, creating incredible things one after another. Marc Andreesen, while definitely a smart guy, just happened to be lucky and stumbled upon a good idea.
Why did you quit your math Ph.D. and switch to journalism? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a journalist vs. a scientist?
India has a billion people. IIT accepts maybe 10,000 student per year (I'm making this up). So, less than .05% of that billion has studied at IIT. Just think about the numbers --- IIT has the top .05% of the distrubution! And they don't care about "diversity" or "legacy" or "money" --- they just rank order everyone and take the best.
And another difference is that while in the US you have places like Ivy league, etc. where many smart kids go, in India IIT is clearly the most prestigious. Hence, I wouldn't be surprised if the average IIT student was in fact better than the average MIT student. Actually, I have worked with both IIT and MIT alumni, and they were all brilliant, so making comparisons is hard.
That's not quite right, or at least not the full story. In fact, there are more studios competing in Hollywood than software firms producing tax software. The difference is that while tax software programs are close substitutes (I mean, personally, it makes no difference to me which one I use, and I have used both TaxCut and TurboTax in the past), movies are definitely not -- suppose (just for the sake of the argument) the Matrix trilogy is released on DRM-protected DVD. You're not going to just switch to Gone with the Wind; you'll still want the Matrix. In the lingo of economics, movie studios have "local monopolies"/"differentiated products", whereas tax software firms do not. Thus, it's easier for Hollywood to do nasty things like DRM.
Thanks. By the way, I'd appreciate any feedback, especially critical.
Anyone who is interested can take a look at two economists' (I am one of them) view of grade inflation, as well as a little bit of data:
r s/ HIER1996.pdf
http://post.economics.harvard.edu/hier/2003pape
If a significant (more than one) number of people in the Russian government gets access to the Windows code, then, knowing the mentality of people in the country, I can assure you that you'll be able to buy CDs with the source code for 5 bucks anywhere in Moscow within a few weeks, and will also be able to download the code from all the file-sharing networks.
Oracle has had something very similar for a long while, with awesome features (like running SQL queries to find a set of files).
Are there any reliable statistics on the decline of quality?
Exactly. I could never understand why the same thing didn't happen in Silicon Valley in the '90s---there were many people who could've afforded helicopters, and they could've placed landing spots on the tops of their companies' buildings. Instead, you saw them in their Ferraris and Mercedes S600s in the daily morning traffic jams on hwy 101.
This book and its rebuttals remind me of a book called "The Bell Curve" published several years ago. A scientist (or two) publishes a book in which he expresses certain views, and suddenly becomes a target of ignorant media whose arguments are "he is a racists pig" or "he is a soulless statistician". Interesting how scientific debates suddenly become personal and pointless... I hope this guy reacts as professionally as the Bell Curve authors.
From a military standpoint (at least at the time of World War II), one could say with conviction that Hitler was stupid to invade Russia.
Unfortunately for Hitler, Russia was planning to invade Germany later that summer (various archives opened recently, also most military equipment on the Russian side of the border was "offensive", not "defensive" weapons), so he pretty much didn't have a choice.
I'm happy to say I rode the internet wave by staying by the sidelines.
:)
I do not understand this attitude. About a year and a half ago I started a company with my buddies. We got initial funding, things were getting along, then times got tough, funding was cut off, the company died. I still think the idea was great (simply because I would be a happily paying user of our product), but that's beyond the point.
We got burnt - true. But do we regret it? Well, I don't know about the other guys, but I definitely don't. Why should I? I got absolutely amazing experience with more stuff than I could've imagined (from configuring Linux/Apache/MySQL/Oracle/NT network/you_name_it to writing code and designing databases and XML specs to writing business plans and estimating costs/prices to bullshitting to clients and VCs to listening to bullshit from potential suppliers), I worked with great people, I got to see for myself how hard (but doable!) it is to actually create something on your own, I had fun, for god's sake!
If I had to choose again, would I do the same thing again? Absolutely!!! Well... maybe not - I would've probably joined my friend's start-up, which was bought by a stable public company a few days ago
Unfortunately, Carrie Johnson seem to be no James Joyce... Any takers?
So then how do you explain the fact that the US has the highest GDP per capita in the world (well, occasionally surpassed by the United Arab Emirates or Luxembourg for brief periods of time)?
So, in 25 years, how are you going to buy milk and bread?
i've been very idealistic for a long time, switching lots of jobs looking for "the perfect one" - i.e. as little testing, paperwork, etc. as possible, smart people around, interesting projects, and so on. some places were better than others, but in every single one of them i felt exactly as you describe - repetitive tasks, huge underutilization of my potential, and so on... so i said "fuck it" and went to grad. school. you don't make much money in academia, but everything else is great. i'm sure there are other solutions, or maybe i just hadn't been looking long enough, but it seems to me i made a pretty good choice. science is much more fun than the real world...
OK, first, what's the big deal? What NEW information can they get? When you apply for a credit card, you give out your yearly income and number of people in the family anyway, and if you apply for a mortgage the bank knows everything about you.
On the other hand, why is everyone so pissed at marketers? As long as I can "opt out" (and I should be allowed to do that, I agree), I'm fine with customized advertisements. They are great! Take, for example, Amazon - I spend quite a bit of time there, searching for books on technical and non-technical subjects, music, and so on, and after a while they know me so well that they point me to lots of stuff that I like but would've never known existed without them telling me. What's wrong with that?! Why is everyone so f%^&ing paranoid?
Big consulting firm --> whorehouse (how true, how true...)
So why are all "energy drinks" sold in cans of the same size and weight as "Red Bull." Is that OK? If yes, what's the difference? If no, are they paying royalties to "Red Bull?" Should they expect to get sued? I'm just curious...
Doesn't seem to work anymore. I guess some of the suits at google found out about it. Too bad.
The best thing you can do to this kid (apart from teaching him social skills, which many other posters mentioned) is to teach him math. He might never need number theory, but he will learn to THINK. That's by far more important than learning Java, which he'll be able to learn in no time when he needs to. It makes no sense to teach him "cutting-edge technology" (unless, of course, you want to employ him right away) - it will be gone in three days anyway. But teach him good old math, physics, chemistry - and he'll always use these skills no matter what he does.
I would recommend teaching him fun stuff in math - group and number theory, for example, and various cute problems from competitions. If you can't do that, find some prof. or a math Ph.D. at a nearby good university.
Get him this book this Christmas - it's just ten bucks.
I started using google long ago, when it was still .stanford.edu. I guess they had only 4 or 5, or maybe even just 2 people at that point. Since then, from my end-user perspective, almost nothing changed (which is, by the way, a GOOD thing - the site's just as awesome as it used to be). So what the fuck do these 100 people (including 30 PhDs) in the research department work on? The only thing that comes to mind is scalability, but 100 people.....
Just why do the companies, even the great ones, think that their headcount MUST grow?