Abusive digging is somewhat self-correcting - as soon as an article reaches prominence thanks to the mass diggs, a lot more people will see it and attempt to bury it - but abusive burying fundamentally can't self-correct even if the site did allow it to be counteracted in theory.
Isn't this a bit like abusive modding on slashdot? Fewer people (even mods, unfortunately) read at -1, and once upon a time it was technically possible to get a post modded below -1 so that nobody would ever see it, even if they wanted to. These posts would not get modded back up, while posts that were spurilously modded up off the bat would eventually get modded back down.
At least that's the theory. In practice, spurious up-mods seem to be met by further up-mods...this is/. after all.
So no, there's no difference between Facebook and the Internet. It's "I'm seeing what my friends are doing."
That's like saying there's no difference between the car and the road, because everyone I know drives a car. They've been around cars and paved roads all their life, so they take them for granted, and, therefore, there is no road to these people. Am I right?
They don't differentiate between "The Internet" and a service. To them, FaceBook is the internet.
While I agree with the rest of what you said, here I have to boggle. I don't know any single person to whom Facebook is the internet. Hopefully you're being hyperbolic.
E-mail is pretty much dead because E-mail was being forced to do things that E-mail wasn't designed to do and was only hacked on with HTML-Email.
Since when is email dead? I use email several times daily, for work, school, and amusement. And I'm no isolated case; every professional I know, across all professions, depends on email for work these days. As far as doing things email wasn't designed to do, most users don't care, they just want to send plain text 99 times out of 100 anyway.
But not by much, certainly not enough to count as "ancient". And you probably have to leave a lead time of about 20-30 years from the time the device was made 'til the time the skill of typing was truly developed, by which time electricity was commonplace in large cities.
if you had changed the password yourself, this wouldn't have happened.
I like how the fourth, fifth, tenth, whatever, redundant post saying this same sentiment STILL gets modded insightful. You know, mods, we DO have a '-1 Redundant' mod.
The programmer who writes the algorithm is, in many of these firms, the main driver of profits
Incorrect, and this is the reason you (and several others) are missing the point. You are assuming (with no evidence to back up your claim) that these algorithms are essentially the "machine" that makes the money.
Not really. I'm treating the algorithm like the engine of a car. The whole car is the "machine". Without the other parts (chassis, wheels, etc.) you don't have a car. But you still can't argue that it's not the engine that makes the car move. I'm arguing that the algorithm is not the entire machine but a crucial part, whereas a bank teller is like the backseat upholstery.
You're completely overlooking the various infrastructure and investment that it takes to make these things happen. I don't have the energy to list the many, many components that must exist to have a successful brokerage firm, but suffice to say, it's far more than just algorithms, otherwise any programmer worth his/her salt would be making a killing on Wall Street.
I'm not overlooking any such thing. My point was that you could replace nearly any bank teller with nearly any other (barring absurdities like hiring a chronic drunk who insults and abuses customers) and make roughly the same level of profits, whereas you can't replace the algorithm with any old algorithm off the shelf without causing great changes (perhaps orders of magnitude) in profits. Yes, all that infrastructure is necessary. But all that infrastructure does not create profit by itself. The infrastructure is built to enable the use of the algorithm. So it would be absurd to say that the programmer deserves 100% of the profit, because they couldn't make the profit without that infrastructure, but equally absurd to say they deserve no higher share than a bank teller, because the programmer's work is far less replaceable than the bank teller's is.
The programmer, on the other hand, still gets his(her) paycheque regardless.
Because companies have never gone out of business and been unable to pay their employees for time they've already worked. That's never happened in the history of corporations.
If the company folds, it's the CEO that has to pay off the investors.
Wait...since when do CEOs have to pay investors when a company goes under? I'm pretty sure the investors are just out whatever they invested, and that's that. The CEO is hired and collects a paycheck just like any other employee. Sometimes, if they get out after the damage is done but before the company goes all the way under, CEOs even get golden parachutes.
Factory workers have had this same experience for centuries. Most factory workers for most of the history of industry have earned a bare subsistence wage. They work hard all day making products worth several dozen times what they are paid to make them. Meanwhile the owner of the factory will collect the lion's share of what his products sell for even if he never lifts another finger for his entire life. In the modern age, ownership of the factory is usually split up into millions of shares and distributed among thousands of individuals or other corporations, so people don't even have to know what factory they're earning money from while not lifting a finger.
Sure, the factory owners (or shareholders) say that they had to invest in the factory, which was taking a risk for them, and therefore deserve the reward...but all they did was trade on their pre-existing ownership of capital which was unjustly accumulated in the first place, and the ONLY THING they were risking was a chance of ending up in the same wretched position that all their employees were already in, guaranteed, regardless of hard work or the success or failure of the enterprise. Somehow that risk justifies reaping all the benefits.
This story is just about the same situation in the high-tech segment of the finance sector. Fortunately these programmers are rare enough that they can command salaries far above subsistence, but it's not fundamentally different from what factory workers, indeed all workers, go through, and will continue to go through as long as capitalism is the world's dominant economic system. Those who produce value get a tiny share of the proceeds.
I get why the programmers are disgruntled, the code they write makes a lot of money and they aren't getting a huge cut, but it seems like the algorithm the program is based on would be the most important aspect.
These guys both design the algorithm and write the code implementing the algorithm. Often they have PhDs. They are using their knowledge of economics and statistics to basically write the entire plan for picking trades, then using their knowledge of programming to build the software to implement the same plan. Not just using knowledge of programming to implement an already existing algorithm.
But I doubt the programmer here added more value than most other normally competent programmers would do.
True, but they added far more value than their bosses did. I think I see the solution: kick out all the business-school grads and let competent programmers take over Wall Street.
It's been my experience that pay is not as negotiable as everyone thinks it is.
Yes and no. Simply going to your boss and demanding a raise likely won't get you anywhere.
However, going to your boss saying "company X made me an offer for $Y" (where $Y > $CURRENT_SALARY), then you have a greater chance of getting that raise (assuming they want to keep you onboard). It's a sad fact, but in this day in age it's pretty much what you have to do.
Yeah, until they figure out you're full of shit because they know no other company in the industry is making better offers. If you believe the finance industry isn't set up like an informal cartel, then I've got a bridge to sell you for $Y (where $Y > $CURRENT_SALARY)
Option Three:
Write a subroutine that takes the fractions of cents usually rounded off and tallied up later, and deposit them into an account of your own. Then sit back as the money trickles into your account. What could possibly go wrong?
By their rationale, every teller at a bank should have salaries commensurate with that bank's revenue, since they're an element in processing deposits/checks/payments/etc.
Not really. The programmer who writes the algorithm is, in many of these firms, the main driver of profits. The teller is just an accessory. Tellers are largely interchangeable but the algorithm, if even slightly different, might make 0 profit instead of millions. Your logic is like telling Edison he doesn't deserve the bulk of profits from the light bulb, because then you'd have to split the profits evenly with all the factory workers in the bulb factory, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Abusive digging is somewhat self-correcting - as soon as an article reaches prominence thanks to the mass diggs, a lot more people will see it and attempt to bury it - but abusive burying fundamentally can't self-correct even if the site did allow it to be counteracted in theory.
Isn't this a bit like abusive modding on slashdot? Fewer people (even mods, unfortunately) read at -1, and once upon a time it was technically possible to get a post modded below -1 so that nobody would ever see it, even if they wanted to. These posts would not get modded back up, while posts that were spurilously modded up off the bat would eventually get modded back down.
/. after all.
At least that's the theory. In practice, spurious up-mods seem to be met by further up-mods...this is
So no, there's no difference between Facebook and the Internet. It's "I'm seeing what my friends are doing."
That's like saying there's no difference between the car and the road, because everyone I know drives a car. They've been around cars and paved roads all their life, so they take them for granted, and, therefore, there is no road to these people. Am I right?
I'm not always interesting in embedding video, pictures, or Mafia Wars invites in all of my communications.
What?? You mean you don't want all your associates to know how many hits you've taken out and the status of your front night club at all times?
They don't differentiate between "The Internet" and a service. To them, FaceBook is the internet.
While I agree with the rest of what you said, here I have to boggle. I don't know any single person to whom Facebook is the internet. Hopefully you're being hyperbolic.
E-mail is pretty much dead because E-mail was being forced to do things that E-mail wasn't designed to do and was only hacked on with HTML-Email.
Since when is email dead? I use email several times daily, for work, school, and amusement. And I'm no isolated case; every professional I know, across all professions, depends on email for work these days. As far as doing things email wasn't designed to do, most users don't care, they just want to send plain text 99 times out of 100 anyway.
But not by much, certainly not enough to count as "ancient". And you probably have to leave a lead time of about 20-30 years from the time the device was made 'til the time the skill of typing was truly developed, by which time electricity was commonplace in large cities.
...and typing is an ancient skill that existed before electricity became commonplace.
When do you think typewriters were invented?
You get paid to shit and you say it like it's a bad thing.
I didn't mean me! Either way, it's like they say, it's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.
I just love how the first dozen posts are either mom jokes or sex jokes. I don't look forward to the day when they're both at once, though.
Sad to say, we can't all get paid to surf /.
Somebody has to make things and grow food and shit.
You should have just told her it's a style of Ramen...
Yeah, Alanis, it would be like rain on your wedding day.
if you had changed the password yourself, this wouldn't have happened.
I like how the fourth, fifth, tenth, whatever, redundant post saying this same sentiment STILL gets modded insightful. You know, mods, we DO have a '-1 Redundant' mod.
Guess "YOU'RE" college didn't require Freshman English.
Go easy on him. He was probably a football player.
The programmer who writes the algorithm is, in many of these firms, the main driver of profits
Incorrect, and this is the reason you (and several others) are missing the point. You are assuming (with no evidence to back up your claim) that these algorithms are essentially the "machine" that makes the money.
Not really. I'm treating the algorithm like the engine of a car. The whole car is the "machine". Without the other parts (chassis, wheels, etc.) you don't have a car. But you still can't argue that it's not the engine that makes the car move. I'm arguing that the algorithm is not the entire machine but a crucial part, whereas a bank teller is like the backseat upholstery.
You're completely overlooking the various infrastructure and investment that it takes to make these things happen. I don't have the energy to list the many, many components that must exist to have a successful brokerage firm, but suffice to say, it's far more than just algorithms, otherwise any programmer worth his/her salt would be making a killing on Wall Street.
I'm not overlooking any such thing. My point was that you could replace nearly any bank teller with nearly any other (barring absurdities like hiring a chronic drunk who insults and abuses customers) and make roughly the same level of profits, whereas you can't replace the algorithm with any old algorithm off the shelf without causing great changes (perhaps orders of magnitude) in profits. Yes, all that infrastructure is necessary. But all that infrastructure does not create profit by itself. The infrastructure is built to enable the use of the algorithm. So it would be absurd to say that the programmer deserves 100% of the profit, because they couldn't make the profit without that infrastructure, but equally absurd to say they deserve no higher share than a bank teller, because the programmer's work is far less replaceable than the bank teller's is.
The programmer, on the other hand, still gets his(her) paycheque regardless.
Because companies have never gone out of business and been unable to pay their employees for time they've already worked. That's never happened in the history of corporations.
If the company folds, it's the CEO that has to pay off the investors.
Wait...since when do CEOs have to pay investors when a company goes under? I'm pretty sure the investors are just out whatever they invested, and that's that. The CEO is hired and collects a paycheck just like any other employee. Sometimes, if they get out after the damage is done but before the company goes all the way under, CEOs even get golden parachutes.
Factory workers have had this same experience for centuries. Most factory workers for most of the history of industry have earned a bare subsistence wage. They work hard all day making products worth several dozen times what they are paid to make them. Meanwhile the owner of the factory will collect the lion's share of what his products sell for even if he never lifts another finger for his entire life. In the modern age, ownership of the factory is usually split up into millions of shares and distributed among thousands of individuals or other corporations, so people don't even have to know what factory they're earning money from while not lifting a finger.
Sure, the factory owners (or shareholders) say that they had to invest in the factory, which was taking a risk for them, and therefore deserve the reward...but all they did was trade on their pre-existing ownership of capital which was unjustly accumulated in the first place, and the ONLY THING they were risking was a chance of ending up in the same wretched position that all their employees were already in, guaranteed, regardless of hard work or the success or failure of the enterprise. Somehow that risk justifies reaping all the benefits.
This story is just about the same situation in the high-tech segment of the finance sector. Fortunately these programmers are rare enough that they can command salaries far above subsistence, but it's not fundamentally different from what factory workers, indeed all workers, go through, and will continue to go through as long as capitalism is the world's dominant economic system. Those who produce value get a tiny share of the proceeds.
So how do the people in Harlem afford to live there?
Some by foregoing health care, some by foregoing food, you know, the usual.
I get why the programmers are disgruntled, the code they write makes a lot of money and they aren't getting a huge cut, but it seems like the algorithm the program is based on would be the most important aspect.
These guys both design the algorithm and write the code implementing the algorithm. Often they have PhDs. They are using their knowledge of economics and statistics to basically write the entire plan for picking trades, then using their knowledge of programming to build the software to implement the same plan. Not just using knowledge of programming to implement an already existing algorithm.
But I doubt the programmer here added more value than most other normally competent programmers would do.
True, but they added far more value than their bosses did. I think I see the solution: kick out all the business-school grads and let competent programmers take over Wall Street.
It's been my experience that pay is not as negotiable as everyone thinks it is.
Yes and no. Simply going to your boss and demanding a raise likely won't get you anywhere. However, going to your boss saying "company X made me an offer for $Y" (where $Y > $CURRENT_SALARY), then you have a greater chance of getting that raise (assuming they want to keep you onboard). It's a sad fact, but in this day in age it's pretty much what you have to do.
Yeah, until they figure out you're full of shit because they know no other company in the industry is making better offers. If you believe the finance industry isn't set up like an informal cartel, then I've got a bridge to sell you for $Y (where $Y > $CURRENT_SALARY)
Option Three: Write a subroutine that takes the fractions of cents usually rounded off and tallied up later, and deposit them into an account of your own. Then sit back as the money trickles into your account. What could possibly go wrong?
Yeah, they did it in Superman 3.
If you don't like it that someone else is making more money than you are, well, maybe you should have taken the tougher classes in school.
Yeah, because someone with just an MBA totally took a tougher road than someone with both an econ PhD and the equivalent of a CS Masters.
If being an "idiot stock trader" who makes millions is so easy, why aren't you doing it? You can push a few buttons, right?
Because profiting off the act of raping the real sector of the economy is unethical? Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
By their rationale, every teller at a bank should have salaries commensurate with that bank's revenue, since they're an element in processing deposits/checks/payments/etc.
Not really. The programmer who writes the algorithm is, in many of these firms, the main driver of profits. The teller is just an accessory. Tellers are largely interchangeable but the algorithm, if even slightly different, might make 0 profit instead of millions. Your logic is like telling Edison he doesn't deserve the bulk of profits from the light bulb, because then you'd have to split the profits evenly with all the factory workers in the bulb factory, too.