I'll admit that I only read the abstract and not the whole article but it suggests that while socioeconomic factors may be relevant, the US still has a much higher rate of firearms related deaths than other developed countries.
Americans are probably more likely to shoot someone with a gun when they have one but I would be hesitant to estimate how much more likely.
I would think it's mostly because of Germany's restrictions on the types of guns you can get and the laws around carrying them.
The US has more guns than people and (from personal anecdotes) gun owners typically own more than one gun. From what I've seen in Germany people who do own guns also own more than one. I know people in Germany who own a few different rifles and shotguns depending on what they're hunting. In the US it's that plus semi-auto rifles and handguns.
From that same link you can see that the per capita firearms related homicide rate in the US is 3.43 vs 0.07 in Germany. That's nearly 50 times as high.
I have not been able to find data on how many of those are intentional or unjustified. If that data is available it would for very small sample sizes and wide open to interpretation since we can never truly know the intent of a shooter and justifiability is highly subjective (as you can see from the from the debates on many of the recent high profile firearms deaths in the US).
But if we were to assume that every single firearms death in Germany was unjustified (ie only outlaws have guns) you would still need need nearly 98% of firearms related homicides in the US to be justified (ie almost only good guys are shooting people) to get down to Germany's level. Possible but not very likely.
being able to break the circuit when desired is better than nothing at all.
Not much. If you assume that your phone has been compromised to the point that you can't trust the indicator that says that you're radio is turned off then it would be trivial to just log your route and upload it whenever you turn the physical circuit back on.
The difficulty seems to be that they're trying to hack privacy onto phones that are not really designed for it. The vast majority of phones seem to be designed around the idea of apps, particularly social apps. The hardware on these phones are typically black boxes and the software is designed in the interests of the vendors.
It's not difficult to make your computer private. You can build it from component pieces and put an open source OS on it. In contrast, I've found a little information on building your own phone. https://www.raspberrypi.org/bl... That's the best I could find and it's a long way from being a practical phone. For starters I can't find any CDMA circuit boards so you can't use it with Verizon. As bad as they are they have the best network in the US.
But ultimately being able to really own our phones is the only way to insure privacy on them.
If subprime auto lending is really so profitable why aren't there more people doing it? Given the small amounts of money that are involved any tiny bank or hedge fund could get into. At the prices you're talking about even a small investment club could make these loans. I suggest it's because the risks are much higher than you assume they are. Take your first example. How much do you think it costs to repossess a car? Of course there are legal fees and court fees. Then you have to pay a guy to go and get the car to some holding area (which you also have to pay for). Then you need to arrange to sell it and unless the bank is going to open it's own used car lot (which costs money) they need to pay someone to sell it for them (which costs money). Finally how much do you think the bank can get for a car that's, in theory, worth $4000. I'm guessing it's less than $4000.
Also, if a bank repossess a car and somehow manages to sell it for more than the outstanding value of the loan plus expenses they don't get to keep the difference.
It would be interesting to see what the net effect of these devices is.
Did it just move a bunch of people from the category of "You can have a car loan and if you don't pay we will go through a long process to repossess your car." to "You can have a car loan but we can shut it off as soon as you miss a payment." Or did it move people from the category of "You don't get a car loan at all." to "You can have a car loan but we can shut it off as soon as you miss a payment."
I suspect it's both but it would be interesting to know what happens in aggregate.
That's the question every employer is asking themselves about you. They may not ask you directly but that's what they're trying to find out so you need to be able to answer it. Keep in mind that the things that you are best at providing may not be the things that all or most companies need.
Start by figuring out what you can bring to the table and then look for companies that need that. In my experience the thing that a PhD shows is that you can successfully complete a research project on your own. If you want to leverage that then you need to find a company that is trying to get research done. This doesn't need to be academic type research but it really only makes sense to hire research experts if you're doing something new.
While many programming jobs require you to be smart you don't necessarily need to be able to find new ways of doing things. In fact, finding a new way of doing something is usually pretty stupid since chances are pretty good that someone else already figured out a way to do whatever it is well enough that it's not worth wasting time finding a new way to do it. But sometimes there isn't a good solution to a problem and if you find a company that is trying to solve a problem like that they'll be more likely to want to hire someone with a track record of being able to solve problems that they can't look up the answer to.
This would go really well with a wearable computer and a HUD. If I could get one of these and a set of Meta Space Glasses I'd have one more really awesome project that I never got around to working on.
The US has military satellites for a reason. Given that the US has a reputation for invading countries they don't like it only makes sense to defend against them and there are several potential strategies for doing so. I feel much better about China going the defensive route (get ready to blow up the satellites) rather than the MAD route (start stockpiling nukes).
I love seeing documents like this. A lot of cool stuff gets built because someone has a need for it. My current employer (cloudant.com) got started the same way. A couple of LHC researchers couldn't get the data storage throughput levels they needed with existing solutions so they built a new one. I'm sure if you look around you can find tons of stuff that comes from papers like this.
Space war would probably involve less bang and more planning. If you had a problem with an other planet/colony/civilization you would start your attack well before the shooting starts. Maybe you would introduce some sort of nanite or pathogen that activates on command. Then, when your negotiations go to hell you send the signal and, poof, the guys who would have pushed the buttons just fall over.
"Economist: To limit supply and create more demand for the product" This might be why a marketing guy would do it but an economist would probably disagree. A firm should not be able to affect demand by limiting supply. At best they can affect the price and quantity demanded, and that's only if it's a monopoly good. Demand is a function of consumer choice. If you imagine the econ 101 supply-demand picture it's the convex, downward sloping curve. If a single manufacturer of a commodity good reduces supply the marginal increase in price should incentivize other manufacturers to supply more. Now a monopoly supplier can reduce supply to maximize their profits but that's only because they move the price-supply point farther to the left (up) of the demand curve. Caveat: This is the basic supply-demand model. It does not take into account things like luxury goods (which have demand curves with upward sloping portions) or more advanced models that start throwing in all kinds of other factors and interactions.
"Economist: To limit supply and create more demand for the product" The might be why a marketing guy would do it but an economist would probably disagree. A firm should not be able to affect demand by limiting supply. At best they can affect the price and quantity demanded, and that's only if it's a monopoly good. Demand is a function of consumer choice. If you imagine the econ 101 supply-demand picture it's the convex, downward sloping curve. If a single manufacturer of a commodity good reduces supply the marginal increase in price should incentivize other manufacturers to supply more. Now a monopoly supplier can reduce supply to maximize their profits but that's only because they move the price-supply point farther to the left (up) of the demand curve. Caveat: This is the basic supply-demand model. It does not take into account things like luxury goods (which have demand curves with upward sloping portions) or more advanced models that start throwing in all kinds of other factors and interactions.
So you acknowledge that you have no proof to fight solipsism yet you insist that rejecting it is not an act of faith. You claim that the probability of existence of a Matrix scenario is negligible (and I agree) but can you provide scientific evidence of it? Can you even postulate a testable value for this probability? You are angry at me for assaulting science but I have done no such thing. I practice a science in my day to day life because I have faith that my senses reflect reality. I just don't pretend my faith in science is anything other than faith. Maybe it is a misunderstanding. What is the difference between Faith and taking some faith? As I see it either way I end up believing something that I can't prove.
That's what I'm trying to say. If there is an underlying reality we can't (or at least haven't) proven it. However we assume it exists in some form and that it influences our perceptions. Take statistics for example. It is quite common to take some sample and test it for mean and standard deviation. However when most people test for these things they assume that the underlying distribution is normally distributed.
I see what you're saying but my point is that the faith element is actually fairly important. How many people would bother with the enormous effort involved in science if they didn't think it enlightened us about some underlying reality. Even if that reality is as vague as "If I see something happen many times under certain conditions, it will probably happen again."
I actually have "gotten over [my] solipsism". I do so through faith. I believe that the world around me exists and that it is at least somewhat reflected in my senses. If you have proof I'd love to know what it is.
If we're dreaming science is much less useful. I've had many dreams where there is little consistency of natural law. I can fly one moment and then I start falling the next. Any model of the universe I can come up with can be invalid the next second. And when I wake up they all go out the window. And that's only if I know I'm dreaming. If I don't even know that then I have no reason to believe that my models will have any meaning at all.
1) You don't know that. You could wake up and realize that you've been dreaming. 2) You don't know that either. You may believe that there is some consistent pattern to your senses but you can't prove it so it's a matter of faith.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a study looking at firearms related deaths controlled for income.
http://www.amjmed.com/article/...
I'll admit that I only read the abstract and not the whole article but it suggests that while socioeconomic factors may be relevant, the US still has a much higher rate of firearms related deaths than other developed countries.
I wouldn't draw that conclusion.
Americans are probably more likely to shoot someone with a gun when they have one but I would be hesitant to estimate how much more likely.
I would think it's mostly because of Germany's restrictions on the types of guns you can get and the laws around carrying them.
The US has more guns than people and (from personal anecdotes) gun owners typically own more than one gun. From what I've seen in Germany people who do own guns also own more than one. I know people in Germany who own a few different rifles and shotguns depending on what they're hunting. In the US it's that plus semi-auto rifles and handguns.
From that same link you can see that the per capita firearms related homicide rate in the US is 3.43 vs 0.07 in Germany.
That's nearly 50 times as high.
I have not been able to find data on how many of those are intentional or unjustified.
If that data is available it would for very small sample sizes and wide open to interpretation since we can never truly know the intent of a shooter and justifiability is highly subjective (as you can see from the from the debates on many of the recent high profile firearms deaths in the US).
But if we were to assume that every single firearms death in Germany was unjustified (ie only outlaws have guns) you would still need need nearly 98% of firearms related homicides in the US to be justified (ie almost only good guys are shooting people) to get down to Germany's level. Possible but not very likely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There you go. The US is ahead by almost 3:1.
Germany's per capita firearms related death rate is about 10% that of the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
being able to break the circuit when desired is better than nothing at all.
Not much.
If you assume that your phone has been compromised to the point that you can't trust the indicator that says that you're radio is turned off then it would be trivial to just log your route and upload it whenever you turn the physical circuit back on.
The difficulty seems to be that they're trying to hack privacy onto phones that are not really designed for it.
The vast majority of phones seem to be designed around the idea of apps, particularly social apps.
The hardware on these phones are typically black boxes and the software is designed in the interests of the vendors.
It's not difficult to make your computer private. You can build it from component pieces and put an open source OS on it.
In contrast, I've found a little information on building your own phone.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/bl...
That's the best I could find and it's a long way from being a practical phone.
For starters I can't find any CDMA circuit boards so you can't use it with Verizon. As bad as they are they have the best network in the US.
But ultimately being able to really own our phones is the only way to insure privacy on them.
You don't think it would be interesting to find out if the evidence actually supports your hypothesis?
If subprime auto lending is really so profitable why aren't there more people doing it?
Given the small amounts of money that are involved any tiny bank or hedge fund could get into. At the prices you're talking about even a small investment club could make these loans.
I suggest it's because the risks are much higher than you assume they are.
Take your first example. How much do you think it costs to repossess a car? Of course there are legal fees and court fees. Then you have to pay a guy to go and get the car to some holding area (which you also have to pay for). Then you need to arrange to sell it and unless the bank is going to open it's own used car lot (which costs money) they need to pay someone to sell it for them (which costs money).
Finally how much do you think the bank can get for a car that's, in theory, worth $4000. I'm guessing it's less than $4000.
Also, if a bank repossess a car and somehow manages to sell it for more than the outstanding value of the loan plus expenses they don't get to keep the difference.
It would be interesting to see what the net effect of these devices is.
Did it just move a bunch of people from the category of "You can have a car loan and if you don't pay we will go through a long process to repossess your car." to "You can have a car loan but we can shut it off as soon as you miss a payment."
Or did it move people from the category of "You don't get a car loan at all." to "You can have a car loan but we can shut it off as soon as you miss a payment."
I suspect it's both but it would be interesting to know what happens in aggregate.
That's the question every employer is asking themselves about you.
They may not ask you directly but that's what they're trying to find out so you need to be able to answer it.
Keep in mind that the things that you are best at providing may not be the things that all or most companies need.
Start by figuring out what you can bring to the table and then look for companies that need that.
In my experience the thing that a PhD shows is that you can successfully complete a research project on your own. If you want to leverage that then you need to find a company that is trying to get research done. This doesn't need to be academic type research but it really only makes sense to hire research experts if you're doing something new.
While many programming jobs require you to be smart you don't necessarily need to be able to find new ways of doing things. In fact, finding a new way of doing something is usually pretty stupid since chances are pretty good that someone else already figured out a way to do whatever it is well enough that it's not worth wasting time finding a new way to do it.
But sometimes there isn't a good solution to a problem and if you find a company that is trying to solve a problem like that they'll be more likely to want to hire someone with a track record of being able to solve problems that they can't look up the answer to.
This would go really well with a wearable computer and a HUD.
If I could get one of these and a set of Meta Space Glasses I'd have one more really awesome project that I never got around to working on.
The US has military satellites for a reason.
Given that the US has a reputation for invading countries they don't like it only makes sense to defend against them and there are several potential strategies for doing so.
I feel much better about China going the defensive route (get ready to blow up the satellites) rather than the MAD route (start stockpiling nukes).
One of our clients does exactly this.
https://www.fidsafe.com/
I love seeing documents like this.
A lot of cool stuff gets built because someone has a need for it.
My current employer (cloudant.com) got started the same way. A couple of LHC researchers couldn't get the data storage throughput levels they needed with existing solutions so they built a new one.
I'm sure if you look around you can find tons of stuff that comes from papers like this.
Space war would probably involve less bang and more planning.
If you had a problem with an other planet/colony/civilization you would start your attack well before the shooting starts.
Maybe you would introduce some sort of nanite or pathogen that activates on command. Then, when your negotiations go to hell you send the signal and, poof, the guys who would have pushed the buttons just fall over.
"Economist: To limit supply and create more demand for the product"
This might be why a marketing guy would do it but an economist would probably disagree.
A firm should not be able to affect demand by limiting supply. At best they can affect the price and quantity demanded, and that's only if it's a monopoly good.
Demand is a function of consumer choice. If you imagine the econ 101 supply-demand picture it's the convex, downward sloping curve.
If a single manufacturer of a commodity good reduces supply the marginal increase in price should incentivize other manufacturers to supply more. Now a monopoly supplier can reduce supply to maximize their profits but that's only because they move the price-supply point farther to the left (up) of the demand curve.
Caveat: This is the basic supply-demand model. It does not take into account things like luxury goods (which have demand curves with upward sloping portions) or more advanced models that start throwing in all kinds of other factors and interactions.
"Economist: To limit supply and create more demand for the product"
The might be why a marketing guy would do it but an economist would probably disagree.
A firm should not be able to affect demand by limiting supply. At best they can affect the price and quantity demanded, and that's only if it's a monopoly good.
Demand is a function of consumer choice. If you imagine the econ 101 supply-demand picture it's the convex, downward sloping curve.
If a single manufacturer of a commodity good reduces supply the marginal increase in price should incentivize other manufacturers to supply more. Now a monopoly supplier can reduce supply to maximize their profits but that's only because they move the price-supply point farther to the left (up) of the demand curve.
Caveat: This is the basic supply-demand model. It does not take into account things like luxury goods (which have demand curves with upward sloping portions) or more advanced models that start throwing in all kinds of other factors and interactions.
Your are quite skilled in the arts of evasive answers, ad hominem attacks, straw man defense and circular logic. I can not argue with this.
So you acknowledge that you have no proof to fight solipsism yet you insist that rejecting it is not an act of faith. You claim that the probability of existence of a Matrix scenario is negligible (and I agree) but can you provide scientific evidence of it? Can you even postulate a testable value for this probability?
You are angry at me for assaulting science but I have done no such thing. I practice a science in my day to day life because I have faith that my senses reflect reality. I just don't pretend my faith in science is anything other than faith.
Maybe it is a misunderstanding. What is the difference between Faith and taking some faith? As I see it either way I end up believing something that I can't prove.
That's what I'm trying to say. If there is an underlying reality we can't (or at least haven't) proven it. However we assume it exists in some form and that it influences our perceptions.
Take statistics for example. It is quite common to take some sample and test it for mean and standard deviation. However when most people test for these things they assume that the underlying distribution is normally distributed.
I see what you're saying but my point is that the faith element is actually fairly important. How many people would bother with the enormous effort involved in science if they didn't think it enlightened us about some underlying reality. Even if that reality is as vague as "If I see something happen many times under certain conditions, it will probably happen again."
I actually have "gotten over [my] solipsism".
I do so through faith. I believe that the world around me exists and that it is at least somewhat reflected in my senses.
If you have proof I'd love to know what it is.
If we're dreaming science is much less useful.
I've had many dreams where there is little consistency of natural law. I can fly one moment and then I start falling the next. Any model of the universe I can come up with can be invalid the next second. And when I wake up they all go out the window.
And that's only if I know I'm dreaming. If I don't even know that then I have no reason to believe that my models will have any meaning at all.
1) You don't know that. You could wake up and realize that you've been dreaming.
2) You don't know that either. You may believe that there is some consistent pattern to your senses but you can't prove it so it's a matter of faith.