Does depression provide cognitive advantages, or does having a cognitive advantage make you more likely to be depressed?
Our society wants to call everything a disease, probably because nobody wants to take responsibility for their own problems. But, sometimes, depression is simply a natural reaction to what's happening around you.
Personally, I consider anyone who doesn't think the world is in big trouble to be mentally defective. I think there are two reasonable reactions for those of us who do realize we're in trouble. One, be depressed. Two, stop feeling crappy and do something about our problems. However, the vast majority of our society is either depressed for completely selfish reasons (e.g. my wife is humping the UPS guy), or happy for completely selfish reasons (e.g. I have a big house).
But for the crowd that likes to pretend we're not making our planet less inhabitable, that we're making progress towards world peace, and that we're not slaves to the world's bankers, Depression is a great way to marginalize the response of those who're actually bright enough to realize what's happening.
In general, I'm certainly of the opinion that Americans (being one myself) are a rather pompous lot of ignoramuses... but, when it comes to security, I think we're ahead of most of the world.
I worked for multiple years on an IT project for a branch of the Australian military (in the US and Oz), and I have to say that their idea of security is a total joke. Sorry, Aussies. You guys rock in almost every other area, but security (especially computing) is just not taken seriously.
So, this really doesn't come as much of a surprise to me.
2)When there's an accident on a bridge, I can take 2 hours to drive home. I wouldn't trust it to keep a charge for that long idling.
Uh, dude, electric cars don't idle.
Second of all, what if you "forget" to put gas in your car? Between the time your car tells you it's necessary, and when you run out, is only like a day anyway. You've probably adjusted. I'm sure you've figured out a way to remember to plug your smartphone in after using it all day. Stop coming up with all these "I'm lazy and can't be bothered" reasons why we should keep polluting the planet at an exponential rate.
In a slowly-moving traffic, a running A/C will really eat into battery life.
In slowly moving traffic, you should open the bloody windows! This analysis has been done over and over again... using A/C is more efficient at highway speeds, opening the windows is better in traffic. Do we have to choose the most wasteful option at every decision node?
Why the confusion? Is there really any doubt that one side of the climate debate has more to gain/lose financially than the other?
The last time I checked, Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon were among the world's largest companies (measured in dollars, or whatever currency you like). The last time I checked, General Motors was orders of magnitude larger than Tesla Motors. I don't recall any "climate scientists" pulling down the kind of money that oil and gas execs do. Of course, both sides have a financial interest, but the only meaningful question to ask yourself is "which side has MORE at stake?"
If you can't answer that question correctly, perhaps you should consider the words of the great Scotty, when he said "a billion's more than a million, Numbnuts".
Are you implying that nothing really should be allowed to happen unless it benefits society as a whole rather than a single or few individuals?
I don't know what he/she was implying, but my guess is that they believe that when you sell something to someone, you are supposed to provide them something of value in return. As the profits of high-frequency traders come out of the profits of "slow money" traders (please don't try to refute this!), you could argue that high-frequency traders should be providing something of value to the slow money.
In this context, high-frequency means milliseconds. I would agree that the super-fast money does make securities more liquid when talking about millisecond time scales. The question is "does this provide anything of value to slow money?", and the answer is "No!". Small investors in the stock market like being able to sell their assets on June 10th, as opposed to waiting until July. The liquidity required to make that happen at a reasonable price has NOTHING to do with high-frequency traders. They could all go away tomorrow, and I could still unload my shares within minutes of placing my order, which is all most investors need. So, while HFT provides liquidity, it is not of any particular value to the people whose money they're siphoning off.
As most of society qualifies as "investors" in some way, shape or form, I think you can roughly equate "slow money" with "society", and per my previous argument, say that HFT should be returning something of value to society. Otherwise, it's just arbitrage.
The economist's job is to spot and analyze trends. Since global warming has everything to do with trend analysis, I think an economist is the perfect person to evaluate the data.
Economists aren't even the perfect people to analyze economics. Seriously. Have you been in hibernation for the last 9 months?
Economics is closer to a religion (or group of religions) than it is to science. You latch on to a philosophy espoused by someone you think has good ideas, then spend your career looking for "evidence" that supports your newfound ideology. There are no "laws of economics", no "first principles" actually at work. And the "experiments" don't even resemble experiments run in the hard sciences.
I'd gladly take a practicing physicist's interpretation of economics over an economist's interpretation of real science.
the cheapest way to do code reviews is for a manager to just scan submitted code from time to time and send out polite emails if they see something amiss.
If this works for you, then you've got a hell of a lot better managers than most of the software world. I'm not sure I'd want to leave this responsibility to the guys with pointy hair.
Let's also not forget the positive social value of financial innovation. It helps you borrow at lower rates, pay less for insurance, etc.
What? Positive social value of financial innovation? What are you referring to, exactly? Those wonderful CDS we were introduced to in the nineties? Option ARMs? Maybe you were talking about online banking. Ok, I like that part.
These derivatives DO NOT bring down the cost of borrowing for retail consumers. They simply add another sub-sector of an already bloated sector of our economy that creates no wealth, only redistributes it, and at its peak a couple of years ago, accounted for 25% of the market cap of the S&P 500 and 40% of all our corporate profits. That's not bringing down societal costs, that's pumping them up.
Go look for data on historical lending rates. Recent innovations have not lowered the "cost of money".
And when you talk about the cost of insurance, I hope you're factoring in the hundreds of billions of dollars we're now forking over because we decided to let real insurance companies (and investment banks) issue this "bootleg insurance" called Credit Default Swaps, that 1) wasn't properly backstopped with reserves, and 2) probably inherently can never be adequately provisioned for on the scale ($50 trillion) that they achieved. Just because you don't see the costs up front, doesn't mean they're not there.
Huh? How do you get rid of source IP addresses? How do replies get returned properly without them? Or do you just mean, "don't propagate source IP addresses for more than one network hop, performing NAT at every single router?" At least your closest router should know the client's IP address.
And what is a connection? A connection is a TCP abstraction that encapsulates... IP addresses and ports. Under the hood, everything is connectionless. Without knowing the precise endpoint for a response, the router has to blast the whole subnet with your porn, just so you can feel good that your IP address has been kept "secret".
Who cares if their IP address gets passed to the server? If you want an anonymous IP address, go to a coffee shop, or reset your cable modem a couple times.
Let's not move the other way.
Slashdot Mirror
Does depression provide cognitive advantages, or does having a cognitive advantage make you more likely to be depressed?
Our society wants to call everything a disease, probably because nobody wants to take responsibility for their own problems. But, sometimes, depression is simply a natural reaction to what's happening around you.
Personally, I consider anyone who doesn't think the world is in big trouble to be mentally defective. I think there are two reasonable reactions for those of us who do realize we're in trouble. One, be depressed. Two, stop feeling crappy and do something about our problems. However, the vast majority of our society is either depressed for completely selfish reasons (e.g. my wife is humping the UPS guy), or happy for completely selfish reasons (e.g. I have a big house).
But for the crowd that likes to pretend we're not making our planet less inhabitable, that we're making progress towards world peace, and that we're not slaves to the world's bankers, Depression is a great way to marginalize the response of those who're actually bright enough to realize what's happening.
In general, I'm certainly of the opinion that Americans (being one myself) are a rather pompous lot of ignoramuses ... but, when it comes to security, I think we're ahead of most of the world.
I worked for multiple years on an IT project for a branch of the Australian military (in the US and Oz), and I have to say that their idea of security is a total joke. Sorry, Aussies. You guys rock in almost every other area, but security (especially computing) is just not taken seriously.
So, this really doesn't come as much of a surprise to me.
Uh, dude, electric cars don't idle.
Second of all, what if you "forget" to put gas in your car? Between the time your car tells you it's necessary, and when you run out, is only like a day anyway. You've probably adjusted. I'm sure you've figured out a way to remember to plug your smartphone in after using it all day. Stop coming up with all these "I'm lazy and can't be bothered" reasons why we should keep polluting the planet at an exponential rate.
In slowly moving traffic, you should open the bloody windows! This analysis has been done over and over again ... using A/C is more efficient at highway speeds, opening the windows is better in traffic. Do we have to choose the most wasteful option at every decision node?
Why the confusion? Is there really any doubt that one side of the climate debate has more to gain/lose financially than the other?
The last time I checked, Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon were among the world's largest companies (measured in dollars, or whatever currency you like). The last time I checked, General Motors was orders of magnitude larger than Tesla Motors. I don't recall any "climate scientists" pulling down the kind of money that oil and gas execs do. Of course, both sides have a financial interest, but the only meaningful question to ask yourself is "which side has MORE at stake?"
If you can't answer that question correctly, perhaps you should consider the words of the great Scotty, when he said "a billion's more than a million, Numbnuts".
What? So, I shouldn't care if somebody steals from me, as long as it's only 1%?
I sure as hell do care!
I don't know what he/she was implying, but my guess is that they believe that when you sell something to someone, you are supposed to provide them something of value in return. As the profits of high-frequency traders come out of the profits of "slow money" traders (please don't try to refute this!), you could argue that high-frequency traders should be providing something of value to the slow money.
In this context, high-frequency means milliseconds. I would agree that the super-fast money does make securities more liquid when talking about millisecond time scales. The question is "does this provide anything of value to slow money?", and the answer is "No!". Small investors in the stock market like being able to sell their assets on June 10th, as opposed to waiting until July. The liquidity required to make that happen at a reasonable price has NOTHING to do with high-frequency traders. They could all go away tomorrow, and I could still unload my shares within minutes of placing my order, which is all most investors need. So, while HFT provides liquidity, it is not of any particular value to the people whose money they're siphoning off.
As most of society qualifies as "investors" in some way, shape or form, I think you can roughly equate "slow money" with "society", and per my previous argument, say that HFT should be returning something of value to society. Otherwise, it's just arbitrage.
The economist's job is to spot and analyze trends. Since global warming has everything to do with trend analysis, I think an economist is the perfect person to evaluate the data.
Economists aren't even the perfect people to analyze economics. Seriously. Have you been in hibernation for the last 9 months?
Economics is closer to a religion (or group of religions) than it is to science. You latch on to a philosophy espoused by someone you think has good ideas, then spend your career looking for "evidence" that supports your newfound ideology. There are no "laws of economics", no "first principles" actually at work. And the "experiments" don't even resemble experiments run in the hard sciences.
I'd gladly take a practicing physicist's interpretation of economics over an economist's interpretation of real science.
If this works for you, then you've got a hell of a lot better managers than most of the software world. I'm not sure I'd want to leave this responsibility to the guys with pointy hair.
Let's also not forget the positive social value of financial innovation. It helps you borrow at lower rates, pay less for insurance, etc.
What? Positive social value of financial innovation? What are you referring to, exactly? Those wonderful CDS we were introduced to in the nineties? Option ARMs? Maybe you were talking about online banking. Ok, I like that part. These derivatives DO NOT bring down the cost of borrowing for retail consumers. They simply add another sub-sector of an already bloated sector of our economy that creates no wealth, only redistributes it, and at its peak a couple of years ago, accounted for 25% of the market cap of the S&P 500 and 40% of all our corporate profits. That's not bringing down societal costs, that's pumping them up. Go look for data on historical lending rates. Recent innovations have not lowered the "cost of money". And when you talk about the cost of insurance, I hope you're factoring in the hundreds of billions of dollars we're now forking over because we decided to let real insurance companies (and investment banks) issue this "bootleg insurance" called Credit Default Swaps, that 1) wasn't properly backstopped with reserves, and 2) probably inherently can never be adequately provisioned for on the scale ($50 trillion) that they achieved. Just because you don't see the costs up front, doesn't mean they're not there.
Huh? How do you get rid of source IP addresses? How do replies get returned properly without them? Or do you just mean, "don't propagate source IP addresses for more than one network hop, performing NAT at every single router?" At least your closest router should know the client's IP address.
... IP addresses and ports. Under the hood, everything is connectionless. Without knowing the precise endpoint for a response, the router has to blast the whole subnet with your porn, just so you can feel good that your IP address has been kept "secret".
And what is a connection? A connection is a TCP abstraction that encapsulates
Who cares if their IP address gets passed to the server? If you want an anonymous IP address, go to a coffee shop, or reset your cable modem a couple times. Let's not move the other way.