You survive a tech bubble the same way with a lumber bubble, or an oil bubble, or a tourism bubble. You diversify your investments, and insure yourself against losses and unexpected events. Instead of relying on the government or a severance package, keep 6 months of living expenses stored up in an emergency fund in case you get laid off. Invest your income into a diversified portfolio, using something like Vanguard. Have adequate insurance on your property and health.
As far as the meat of your question with regards to what path to take in your career to somehow minimize the damage a tech bubble can do to you, I think this is something you can't really plan for in this regard. Focus on doing the best job you can at the subfields that interest you in your career. Gain reputation for doing good work. Excellence is always rewarded in the long run.
Give them a conventional laptop, install Linux and Octave on it, and bam, you've got the most powerful calculator you can get for zero software spending.
But these sorts of common sense approaches don't result in money being spent, so they never seem to come up in educational policy discussions.
Tyson is wrong in his belief that free market capitalism abhors risky investments. On the contrary, the free market scenario minimizes risk for any investment, simply by ensuring government will not interfere and change the rulebook during halftime. Sure, there are substantial risks in space travel. But as has been discussed at length in these comments already, risk is only one-third of the equation:
Payoff = (1 - Risk) x Reward + Risk x Loss
There is no way to dismiss an investment purely on risk. If the Reward and the Loss are in alignment, any risk can possibly be worth it. Heck, what if the lottery was free to play - what idiot wouldn't play each week?
To be blunt, there are terrestrial ventures that seem riskier than space mining. Heck, look at Afghanistan. That country isn't poor - its filthy rich. There are over $1 trillion in minerals beneath the feet of those backwards Pashtuns. Their mineral wealth could pave their streets with gold, send every child to school, modernize (or render extant) their food, health, and transportation sectors.
But it borders on impossible. First, the Taliban have fought the mightiest army in the world to a standstill. Any mining venture would be subjected to relentless and bloody attacks, as well as sabotage. To them, Afghanistan's greatest resource isn't minerals, oil, or anything else earthly - it is Islam. Large-scale mining would need roads to be built pretty much everywhere, since much of the country has none. Despite the enormous benefits mining could bring to their country, Afghanistan has a corrupt government, riven by tribal and family squabbles. Much like Africa and Iran, it is not difficult to foresee corruption leading to a small number of connected tribesmen becoming multi-billionaires, while the rest of the country wears sandals.
Space mining at least doesn't require miners to duke it out with decapitation-happy, Third-world savages.
Another argument against Tyson's claim is that, quite simply, we do not practice free market capitalism in America (nearly any Western country) anymore. We practice crony capitalism, where huge swaths of production are controlled of a few powerful men, with loyal (or, if nothing else, frightened) men filling legislatures and working on their behalf. Instead of focusing on improving the productivity of their industries, their main pursuit becomes rent-seeking. Regulations are applied stringently to those outside of the inner circle, to raise the barrier-to-entry. Inside players are allowed to skate.
Here is a general, dismal scenario:
1. Some company shoulders enormous financial risk at developing space technologies. 2. After much hardship, this company actually pulls it off, e.g. a working mining pipeline from the Moon or Mars. 3. Stakeholders in the current economic landscape view this activity as a threat, and dispatch their political Sardaukar. 3. Laws are passed plunder the company, and/or take over administration of their operations.
One can easily envision some slimy future President lecturing the American public on how regulation of space mining is necessary to prevent the sale of yellowcake to terrorists.
Someone else noted that the music industry typically sues people for downloading 10 songs or 20 songs. But why do they never sue anyone for downloading thousands of songs, who are ostensibly "damaging" their industry the most? The answer is that the music industry knows that the big fines are not there as a deterrent to actual crime, but psychological warfare. I am sure there is more than one person in the world who has a 1-TB drive full of songs. According to my calculations, someone could be sued for $35 billion. The public would either laugh, or be outraged.
My question is this: where would the $35 billion in damage be? The punishment is supposed to fit the crime. Ostensibly, if someone is being fined a huge amount of money, they should have caused a proportional amount of harm. In the case of the lowly music downloader, there is no physical or financial harm caused to anyone.
The hypocrisy comes from the cozy treatment of Wall Street, who caused trillions of dollars with risky subprime mortgage speculation. No fines. No jail time. No electric chair. In fact, they were rewarded by Congress with a bailout for their good work and years of service to the party apparatus.
The take home message from Congress: Anger the 1st Estate (the political class), and you're going to jail. Anger the 2nd estate (the corporate elite), and you'll be fined into oblivion. Anger the 3rd estate (the sheeple), and riches will be yours.
I personally have never had any problems whatsoever getting my hands (err... eyes rather) on pr0n, without any sort of virus nonsense. It still amazes me how gullible are, installing those bullshit porno-dialers on their computers and getting a $500 phone bill the next month for calling long distance to Christmas Island or some damned place.
For all intents and purposes, the pornography-access problem is solved - there is no incentive for anyone would pay for pornography anymore. Even if you locked-down every leaked porno video from a paysite, there are still tons of insanely hot (and stupid) girlfriends, hood rats, and drunk chicks willing to get nekkid for the testosterone-charged 4chan hordes - completely free of charge. Some even fuck on camera and let their boyfriends upload it to youporn. And there is always beloved Bittorrent and Usenet.
Just be sure to have NoScript (and maybe RequestPolicy too) on to be safe. TrueCrypt is also handy for securely storing the hit parade.
I agree that Windows is a major security problem, not just for end-users but the United States as a whole. Having a single dominant platform makes life much easier for hackers, since it allows them to focus their efforts much more narrowly. Switching completely over to Linux however, is not a panacea, since well just have the same problem - a single platform (yeah yeah, there are lots of distributions of Linux, but its Linux ffs). I completely disagree with Clarke's call for monitoring of net traffic for "malware", since I don't trust the federal government to define "malware" in the way a normal person would. Even if he is sincere in his claim that this monitoring would help, it would eventually devolve into an end-run around the 4th Amendment.
A better plan is to let the free market take its course, allowing a spectrum of operating systems to appear. Obviously, it will take a while since MS is so dominant, and people are generally scared of trying new things (like Linux), but eventually consumers will figure out that Microsoft's stuff is lower in quality-per-cost compared to other alternatives, and switch over.
As an aside, has anyone seen the prices on Microsoft's Office 2007 stuff? They were selling it for like, $400 at Office Depot a few days ago. And OpenOffice is free and has ~95% of the functionality o_O. I can only imagine how much money my local government (school board, etc.) would save by switching over to open-source programs.
I am still amazed at the over-the-barrel reaming that scientists tolerate just for a publication.
How can people who are amazingly brilliant at mathematics, engineering, and science be completely unable to think critically about the scientific publishing process?
I actually liked the Prince of Persia movie.
Obviously its different from the games, but that's not exactly a bad thing, since if you already played the games, why come to see the same plot again?
It definitely followed the games more closely than pretty much any other video game movie.
My only real complaint is that I thought the chick wasn't that hot.
This paper is nothing but an oozing mass of doublethink.
"While absorbing good experiences of other countries in developing and controlling the Internet, China is prepared to work with them for the further progress of the Internet."
How can you expect progress if your goal is to CONTROL THE FUCKING THING?!
In my senior year of engineering, I had to work with a team on a design project, and we presented it not only to the faculty, but the industrial advisory board - big shots at companies. The sole purpose was to prove to the employers that the department was producing engineers worth hiring.
I was visiting schools for doctoral programs this past spring, and met many graduate students whose professors had lined up a job or good post-doc for them afterward. That's one of the things that made the programs I visited so popular - they don't leave you hanging on welfare after you blow 5 years of your life on an advanced engineering degree. A good school helps you get a job - either by the prestige of the degree, or direct intervention by faculty and staff. This is the 21st-century, not the 16th.
Universities and colleges exist to educate people and hand them a piece of paper letting them get a job.
No, they exist to educate people and hand them a piece of paper certifying that they successfully studied there. It happens that this paper helps them to find a job, and surely many want it only for that purpose, but it's not what the paper is for. It's up to the employers to decide whether they care about the paper or not.
While you are technically correct, you are ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the public believes that is what a university is for.
99.9% of people you were to ask "What is the purpose in getting a college degree?" would answer "To get a better job."
The balance would say "To learn something new."
Hell, I sure as hell didn't go through all those years in engineering to not be able to apply the knowledge. Nobody would spend the gobs of money and time a college degree demands if they didn't anticipate a payoff. The de facto purpose of a university is to prepare its students succeed in a competitive job market.
Sadly, the politicians have learned to use "child porn" like they use "terrorism", a convenient handle by which they are able to manipulate the masses.
Thank you. I mean really, thank you. This hit the nail on the head. Age-of-consent laws are the sex equivalent of terrorism and drug laws - they're a tool for social control.
If authorities were truly interested in protecting children from "sexual predators", the law would require that the participants be mutually consenting, and have reached puberty.
It really is a case of the boy who cried wolf. You can find people in sex offender registries for mealy-mouthed crimes such as "sexual battery on a child." Was he just a guy sleeping with his underage girlfriend, or an actual pedophile that committed forcible rape? There's not much point in even paying attention to the names of sex crime charges anymore - there's just so much white noise in the signal, you can't tell which cases matter and which ones don't.
Personally, I think child pornography is a FUD used to justify massive cutbacks on the 4th Amendment on the internet, just as drug and terrorism laws have done in the real world.
"Hello citizen, Congress requires your vote on the matter of Bill XYZ. As required by The Constitution, all bills that pass Congress must possess at least 40% of the popular vote. The full text of the bill is available here. It is 5 pages long. When you are ready to vote, dial this number and press "1" three times for yea, "2" three times for nay, or "3" at any time to cancel. Deadline is in 48 hours. Have a good day sir! -The United States Congress"
Completely agree.
The state I live in has a law which requires that any state bill must focus on solely one topic, and no other.
None of this "bridge to nowhere" stuff being snuck in with insurance reform or something like that.
Mr. Sheep,
I find it ironic that you blam Fox News, when it's CNN and NBC pushing for more shiny trinkets, and Fox shilling for the deficit reduction.
I agree.
Glenn Beck might be nutty at times, and Bill O'Reilly a little annoying, but they are right on-target when it comes to how large and wasteful the government is, and how exacerbated the problem is by pork.
Hell, its not like the Fox pundits are any more extreme. Hell, MSNBC has Olberman AND Maddow on their network O_o.
Hollywood will probably do an unbelievably shitty job. It will just be like all the other drivel they make - dumbed down for the masses, filled with fake-looking CG special effects, and T&A.
The free market isn't the problem. The free market (in Texas) is just giving the people what they want - drivel. However, if the population in other states demand fact-based education, they will benefit from it. Since the Texan kids are not being taught truth, they will not be competitive in the job market (or college applications) with kids coming from a more "concrete" educational background. The end result will be Texas being left behind intellectually, and hence economically.
The free market always catches up - its just a matter of how quickly.
We didn't like the way the school newspaper was being run, so we started printing and distributing our own newspaper. The assistant principal told us to stop, saying we're not allowed to do it on school time. So, we just started distributing the paper on the down-low.
Hard to believe some ideas require an underground press, even here in America. If that's not a complete slap in the face to the 1st amendment, I don't know what is.
In reference to the original article, I think the whole situation is a symptom of a greater ill - that people are helpless and stupid, and that government is needed to manage all of their affairs - even their diet.
Slashdot Mirror
You survive a tech bubble the same way with a lumber bubble, or an oil bubble, or a tourism bubble. You diversify your investments, and insure yourself against losses and unexpected events. Instead of relying on the government or a severance package, keep 6 months of living expenses stored up in an emergency fund in case you get laid off. Invest your income into a diversified portfolio, using something like Vanguard. Have adequate insurance on your property and health.
As far as the meat of your question with regards to what path to take in your career to somehow minimize the damage a tech bubble can do to you, I think this is something you can't really plan for in this regard. Focus on doing the best job you can at the subfields that interest you in your career. Gain reputation for doing good work. Excellence is always rewarded in the long run.
Give them a conventional laptop, install Linux and Octave on it, and bam, you've got the most powerful calculator you can get for zero software spending.
But these sorts of common sense approaches don't result in money being spent, so they never seem to come up in educational policy discussions.
Tyson is wrong in his belief that free market capitalism abhors risky investments. On the contrary, the free market scenario minimizes risk for any investment, simply by ensuring government will not interfere and change the rulebook during halftime. Sure, there are substantial risks in space travel. But as has been discussed at length in these comments already, risk is only one-third of the equation:
Payoff = (1 - Risk) x Reward + Risk x Loss
There is no way to dismiss an investment purely on risk. If the Reward and the Loss are in alignment, any risk can possibly be worth it. Heck, what if the lottery was free to play - what idiot wouldn't play each week?
To be blunt, there are terrestrial ventures that seem riskier than space mining. Heck, look at Afghanistan. That country isn't poor - its filthy rich. There are over $1 trillion in minerals beneath the feet of those backwards Pashtuns. Their mineral wealth could pave their streets with gold, send every child to school, modernize (or render extant) their food, health, and transportation sectors.
But it borders on impossible. First, the Taliban have fought the mightiest army in the world to a standstill. Any mining venture would be subjected to relentless and bloody attacks, as well as sabotage. To them, Afghanistan's greatest resource isn't minerals, oil, or anything else earthly - it is Islam. Large-scale mining would need roads to be built pretty much everywhere, since much of the country has none. Despite the enormous benefits mining could bring to their country, Afghanistan has a corrupt government, riven by tribal and family squabbles. Much like Africa and Iran, it is not difficult to foresee corruption leading to a small number of connected tribesmen becoming multi-billionaires, while the rest of the country wears sandals.
Space mining at least doesn't require miners to duke it out with decapitation-happy, Third-world savages.
Another argument against Tyson's claim is that, quite simply, we do not practice free market capitalism in America (nearly any Western country) anymore. We practice crony capitalism, where huge swaths of production are controlled of a few powerful men, with loyal (or, if nothing else, frightened) men filling legislatures and working on their behalf. Instead of focusing on improving the productivity of their industries, their main pursuit becomes rent-seeking. Regulations are applied stringently to those outside of the inner circle, to raise the barrier-to-entry. Inside players are allowed to skate.
Here is a general, dismal scenario:
1. Some company shoulders enormous financial risk at developing space technologies.
2. After much hardship, this company actually pulls it off, e.g. a working mining pipeline from the Moon or Mars.
3. Stakeholders in the current economic landscape view this activity as a threat, and dispatch their political Sardaukar.
3. Laws are passed plunder the company, and/or take over administration of their operations.
One can easily envision some slimy future President lecturing the American public on how regulation of space mining is necessary to prevent the sale of yellowcake to terrorists.
Someone else noted that the music industry typically sues people for downloading 10 songs or 20 songs. But why do they never sue anyone for downloading thousands of songs, who are ostensibly "damaging" their industry the most? The answer is that the music industry knows that the big fines are not there as a deterrent to actual crime, but psychological warfare. I am sure there is more than one person in the world who has a 1-TB drive full of songs. According to my calculations, someone could be sued for $35 billion. The public would either laugh, or be outraged.
My question is this: where would the $35 billion in damage be? The punishment is supposed to fit the crime. Ostensibly, if someone is being fined a huge amount of money, they should have caused a proportional amount of harm. In the case of the lowly music downloader, there is no physical or financial harm caused to anyone.
The hypocrisy comes from the cozy treatment of Wall Street, who caused trillions of dollars with risky subprime mortgage speculation. No fines. No jail time. No electric chair. In fact, they were rewarded by Congress with a bailout for their good work and years of service to the party apparatus.
The take home message from Congress: Anger the 1st Estate (the political class), and you're going to jail. Anger the 2nd estate (the corporate elite), and you'll be fined into oblivion. Anger the 3rd estate (the sheeple), and riches will be yours.
That's balls-out hilarious.
Totally agree.
I personally have never had any problems whatsoever getting my hands (err... eyes rather) on pr0n, without any sort of virus nonsense. It still amazes me how gullible are, installing those bullshit porno-dialers on their computers and getting a $500 phone bill the next month for calling long distance to Christmas Island or some damned place.
For all intents and purposes, the pornography-access problem is solved - there is no incentive for anyone would pay for pornography anymore. Even if you locked-down every leaked porno video from a paysite, there are still tons of insanely hot (and stupid) girlfriends, hood rats, and drunk chicks willing to get nekkid for the testosterone-charged 4chan hordes - completely free of charge. Some even fuck on camera and let their boyfriends upload it to youporn. And there is always beloved Bittorrent and Usenet.
Just be sure to have NoScript (and maybe RequestPolicy too) on to be safe. TrueCrypt is also handy for securely storing the hit parade.
Oh come on.
You know he got lost once in his own museum.
I like the article.
I agree that Windows is a major security problem, not just for end-users but the United States as a whole. Having a single dominant platform makes life much easier for hackers, since it allows them to focus their efforts much more narrowly. Switching completely over to Linux however, is not a panacea, since well just have the same problem - a single platform (yeah yeah, there are lots of distributions of Linux, but its Linux ffs). I completely disagree with Clarke's call for monitoring of net traffic for "malware", since I don't trust the federal government to define "malware" in the way a normal person would. Even if he is sincere in his claim that this monitoring would help, it would eventually devolve into an end-run around the 4th Amendment.
A better plan is to let the free market take its course, allowing a spectrum of operating systems to appear. Obviously, it will take a while since MS is so dominant, and people are generally scared of trying new things (like Linux), but eventually consumers will figure out that Microsoft's stuff is lower in quality-per-cost compared to other alternatives, and switch over.
As an aside, has anyone seen the prices on Microsoft's Office 2007 stuff? They were selling it for like, $400 at Office Depot a few days ago. And OpenOffice is free and has ~95% of the functionality o_O. I can only imagine how much money my local government (school board, etc.) would save by switching over to open-source programs.
I am still amazed at the over-the-barrel reaming that scientists tolerate just for a publication.
How can people who are amazingly brilliant at mathematics, engineering, and science be completely unable to think critically about the scientific publishing process?
I actually liked the Prince of Persia movie. Obviously its different from the games, but that's not exactly a bad thing, since if you already played the games, why come to see the same plot again? It definitely followed the games more closely than pretty much any other video game movie. My only real complaint is that I thought the chick wasn't that hot.
This paper is nothing but an oozing mass of doublethink.
"While absorbing good experiences of other countries in developing and controlling the Internet, China is prepared to work with them for the further progress of the Internet."
How can you expect progress if your goal is to CONTROL THE FUCKING THING?!
What in god's name are you talking about?
In my senior year of engineering, I had to work with a team on a design project, and we presented it not only to the faculty, but the industrial advisory board - big shots at companies. The sole purpose was to prove to the employers that the department was producing engineers worth hiring.
I was visiting schools for doctoral programs this past spring, and met many graduate students whose professors had lined up a job or good post-doc for them afterward. That's one of the things that made the programs I visited so popular - they don't leave you hanging on welfare after you blow 5 years of your life on an advanced engineering degree. A good school helps you get a job - either by the prestige of the degree, or direct intervention by faculty and staff. This is the 21st-century, not the 16th.
No, they exist to educate people and hand them a piece of paper certifying that they successfully studied there. It happens that this paper helps them to find a job, and surely many want it only for that purpose, but it's not what the paper is for. It's up to the employers to decide whether they care about the paper or not.
While you are technically correct, you are ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the public believes that is what a university is for. 99.9% of people you were to ask "What is the purpose in getting a college degree?" would answer "To get a better job." The balance would say "To learn something new." Hell, I sure as hell didn't go through all those years in engineering to not be able to apply the knowledge. Nobody would spend the gobs of money and time a college degree demands if they didn't anticipate a payoff. The de facto purpose of a university is to prepare its students succeed in a competitive job market.
wtf does "IANAC" mean?
Sadly, the politicians have learned to use "child porn" like they use "terrorism", a convenient handle by which they are able to manipulate the masses.
Thank you. I mean really, thank you. This hit the nail on the head. Age-of-consent laws are the sex equivalent of terrorism and drug laws - they're a tool for social control.
If authorities were truly interested in protecting children from "sexual predators", the law would require that the participants be mutually consenting, and have reached puberty.
It really is a case of the boy who cried wolf. You can find people in sex offender registries for mealy-mouthed crimes such as "sexual battery on a child." Was he just a guy sleeping with his underage girlfriend, or an actual pedophile that committed forcible rape? There's not much point in even paying attention to the names of sex crime charges anymore - there's just so much white noise in the signal, you can't tell which cases matter and which ones don't.
Personally, I think child pornography is a FUD used to justify massive cutbacks on the 4th Amendment on the internet, just as drug and terrorism laws have done in the real world.
"Hello citizen, Congress requires your vote on the matter of Bill XYZ. As required by The Constitution, all bills that pass Congress must possess at least 40% of the popular vote. The full text of the bill is available here. It is 5 pages long. When you are ready to vote, dial this number and press "1" three times for yea, "2" three times for nay, or "3" at any time to cancel. Deadline is in 48 hours. Have a good day sir! -The United States Congress"
Completely agree. The state I live in has a law which requires that any state bill must focus on solely one topic, and no other. None of this "bridge to nowhere" stuff being snuck in with insurance reform or something like that.
Mr. Sheep, I find it ironic that you blam Fox News, when it's CNN and NBC pushing for more shiny trinkets, and Fox shilling for the deficit reduction.
I agree. Glenn Beck might be nutty at times, and Bill O'Reilly a little annoying, but they are right on-target when it comes to how large and wasteful the government is, and how exacerbated the problem is by pork. Hell, its not like the Fox pundits are any more extreme. Hell, MSNBC has Olberman AND Maddow on their network O_o.
Hollywood will probably do an unbelievably shitty job. It will just be like all the other drivel they make - dumbed down for the masses, filled with fake-looking CG special effects, and T&A.
If it is, then http://pfam.sanger.ac.uk/ is the Little Red Book.
Oh.my.god. You're my clone :(
The free market isn't the problem. The free market (in Texas) is just giving the people what they want - drivel. However, if the population in other states demand fact-based education, they will benefit from it. Since the Texan kids are not being taught truth, they will not be competitive in the job market (or college applications) with kids coming from a more "concrete" educational background. The end result will be Texas being left behind intellectually, and hence economically. The free market always catches up - its just a matter of how quickly.
We had the same problem at my high school.
We didn't like the way the school newspaper was being run, so we started printing and distributing our own newspaper. The assistant principal told us to stop, saying we're not allowed to do it on school time. So, we just started distributing the paper on the down-low.
Hard to believe some ideas require an underground press, even here in America. If that's not a complete slap in the face to the 1st amendment, I don't know what is.
In reference to the original article, I think the whole situation is a symptom of a greater ill - that people are helpless and stupid, and that government is needed to manage all of their affairs - even their diet.