Mandelbrot talks about avoiding crises and hence the need for better risk models.
Risk models always existed and they have become more and more sophisticated over the last 100 years. Funny enough crises in markets haven't become less.
E.g. In 1987 a lot of people were using portfolio "insurance" where stock-market portfolios were protected by selling futures dynamically against their positions. After the crash those very "insurances" were blamed for the crash because they increased the selling.
Similary crises such in Russia 98 spilled over to other markets in other countries simply because the same market participants were geared to those diverse markets and had to wind down positions.
Even if there isn't an immediate need to go into cash to cover losses elsewhere the risk models will kick in because those those models advise to reduce exposure because overall volatility is increasing.
I expect that the more sophisticated the models become to iron out short term market glitches the bigger the damage will be when one of those rare events hits which are believed to be so unlikely. That is simply so because all events will be interconnected due to financial modelling.
In any case, in an overall evolutionary perspective it doesn't make sense that risks are always correctly judged otherwise no one would invest in novel ideas or markets.
Some markets do have an overall negative return across the whole industry. E.g. mining. If people were rational there wouldn't be any exploration for natural resources at all. But because some hope to strike it rich with their gold or oil stock tons of money are still invested - and that is very usefull for society overall.
BTW, I am intruiged that Mandelbrot mentions the mapping of the human genome. Surely if the human genome is ultimately fully understood and any disease can be treated then most likely the development of the human genome will come to a standstill.
Cheers
And then there is Turkmenistan
on
The Last Place
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· Score: 1
Turkmenistan is taking new steps to limit the amount of information coming into the country from the outside world. President Saparmurat Niyazov said this week that law enforcement agencies need to work toward shutting down what Niyazov said were "illegal" cable hook-ups. Niyazov also said satellite dishes on rooftops in the capital Ashgabat make the city look ugly and ordered they be removed. Central Asia Times
Plotnikov, Podkletnov. Why is it that the sirname of this Russian scientist is so remarkably similar to that of the scientist who recently claimed P=NP - He was finally refuted after a huge number of scientists, journalists and unsuspecting readers had sacrificed a considerable amount of brain cells on the problem Four NP-Complete Problems
I suspect some PLOT from the Russian FSB which is apparently churning out half-baked, highly convoluted theories on cutting-edge subjects to keep western brains occupied.
MS contracts encourage as well to upgrade permanently even if you dont need it. Users who skip upgrades are penalised by the contract structures. I would be rather interested which negotiation techniques have been found useful to get costs down - we are currently in talks with MS for a company wide license. TIA
We do some heavy matrix FP computations in our software and looked at various options. IN THEORY optimisation to certain processors should bring speed improvements. However, is it really worthwhile to throw a few programmers at it to really squeeze the last bit out of it while processors get faster by the day ?
I have never heard a customer complain about speed - I assume that they blame any speed deficiencies on their hardware. So where is the problem - and incentive for us to improve speed ?
A successful widespread virus attack proves that there are actually.NET users out there. If no one attacks or cracks a software it's mostly not worth anything. To believe that it can't be successfully attacked is naive anyway.
Overall, viruses bring free publicity and prove the point that the product is a roaring success. BTW: Who wants to be left out when all your friends have been hit by the new naughty Kournikova virus? There will be little left to discuss over a few beers.
Alan: "When the prime minister is appearing at product launches by a company twice found by courts to be abusing a monopoly, and facing billions of dollars in lawsuits you have to ask questions."
Oh really ? And what about Linux gurus being on the payroll of the hyperlink "inventors" ? Or is this ok because he exploits them ?
"Alan Cox will be conducting the BT sponsored Public Lecture at the Taliesen Theatre in Swansea, Wales, U.K. on the 5th March."
We are running SuSE 7.0 on file servers and workstations and there is absolutely no trivial way to upgrade without breaking the system. I even went as far as creating an identical copy of the running system on fresh hard disks on a different machine to migrate while the old system keeps running. No way could I get it to work without investing a week to get into every issue which needs to be solved on upgrade.
As far as I am concerned money invested in a new SuSE distros is wasted - the 7.1 is sitting here idle already.
With the same time effort one might as well install everything from scratch from any distro to stay reasonably uptodate with Linux.
On the Linux based firewall we have now switched to IPCop, after running briefly Mandrage SNF and discovering that it stops the intrusion detection every other day and is impossible to update too. On the Mandrake forum the developer even went as far as saying that the 8.1 SNF will be a completely new product and not some update of the current version. This is fucking great - another reinstall from scratch.
One really has to wonder what some of these Linux distributors are up to these days. One gets the distinct impression that they are more interested in churning out a fresh release every other month than getting their systems stable and serviceable.
The attitude is already worse than Microsoft's - at least their updates don't usually screw up the system.
Rob McCready, an electrical and computer engineering grad student at the University of Toronto has developed the first face-detection program that uses programmable hardware - which is much faster and more accurate at discerning faces than any existing software programs http://www.nce.gc.ca/en/success/9920/micronet3_e.h tm
I asked VA a year ago to provide this service for us. For two months no one answered my emails apparently because they did not have anyone to look after european customers. After TWO months someone replied to me that they were just setting up their european office. When they finally got the office working someone called me to offer their "onsite" service for mega-bucks. I declined. Not that anyone has called me or emailed me now to offer this service. I guess their European office has been closed again:-)
The really appealing aspect about the cargolifter is that you can fulfill tasks unimaginable with any kind of aircraft.
Imagine you can get your stone house built in Russia, Indonesia or any other place with cheap labor and just plug it into it's place in America or Europe. With this kind of technology you can envisage huge wharfs for houses, factories in low-cost labor countries.
I am impressed - how did they got those mainframes into the i-mode phones ?
Re:You mean they use real guns with real bullets?!
on
MilSpec Biotech
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· Score: 1
"I think the US has done it's share of good in shortening conflicts by intervening,"
With Nagasaki and Hiroshima being the prime examples on how to cut short the agony.
VAlinux service is unprofessional
on
VA Layoff Rumors
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· Score: 2
I had the pleasure of dealing VA. I was exploring whether we could employ OnSite or an offsite closed-source Sourceforge version. To start with it was extremely hard at the time to find anyone with VA who would deal with this at all. My emails were disappearing in some VA black-hole. It took them several weeks (after bouncing my messages through various incompetent employees) to actually deal with it. It looks to me as if they have too much money there and need to do zilch to support themselves.
We are getting there slowly - Soon IE will hopefully know where I can buy that product cheaper that I was just about to buy - go there, fill-in my cached credit card details and make me happy.
Even better - it can analyze my behaviour patterns - suggest products I never thought about. Arrange credit lines automatically since my credit worthness can be verified objectively.
And in case I forget to renew my microsoft subscriptions it will look after that too.
Why shouldnt American citizens be put on trial elsewhere ? We all know that the sun is shining out of America's backside anyway but others seem to disagree sometime. I think it is far more relevant to US citizens whether those court judgements can be enforced in the US.
Coming to Gutnick - since I had the "pleasure" to see Gutnick in action I can only say so much: Even if Gutnick isnt legally guilty of some misdoings he is a very sharp operator who is walking a fine line. All he can achieve with this court case is to get his point of view across in Aussieland - and this all what counts to him.
If Dell and others can survive selling relatively low-end machines based on Intel/MS/Linux etc. Why shouldnt SGI be able to do it for the high-end ?
There are actually customers around who love to talk to some technician if something goes wrong - rather than fiddling around with some high-end home-brew server by oneself.
Slashdot Mirror
Mandelbrot talks about avoiding crises and hence the need for better risk models.
Risk models always existed and they have become more and more sophisticated over the last 100 years. Funny enough crises in markets haven't become less.
E.g. In 1987 a lot of people were using portfolio "insurance" where stock-market portfolios were protected by selling futures dynamically against their positions. After the crash those very "insurances" were blamed for the crash because they increased the selling.
Similary crises such in Russia 98 spilled over to other markets in other countries simply because the same market participants were geared to those diverse markets and had to wind down positions.
Even if there isn't an immediate need to go into cash to cover losses elsewhere the risk models will kick in because those those models advise to reduce exposure because overall volatility is increasing.
I expect that the more sophisticated the models become to iron out short term market glitches the bigger the damage will be when one of those rare events hits which are believed to be so unlikely. That is simply so because all events will be interconnected due to financial modelling.
In any case, in an overall evolutionary perspective it doesn't make sense that risks are always correctly judged otherwise no one would invest in novel ideas or markets.
Some markets do have an overall negative return across the whole industry. E.g. mining. If people were rational there wouldn't be any exploration for natural resources at all. But because some hope to strike it rich with their gold or oil stock tons of money are still invested - and that is very usefull for society overall.
BTW, I am intruiged that Mandelbrot mentions the mapping of the human genome. Surely if the human genome is ultimately fully understood and any disease can be treated then most likely the development of the human genome will come to a standstill.
Cheers
Turkmenistan is taking new steps to limit the amount of information coming into the country from the outside world. President Saparmurat Niyazov said this week that law enforcement agencies need to work toward shutting down what Niyazov said were "illegal" cable hook-ups. Niyazov also said satellite dishes on rooftops in the capital Ashgabat make the city look ugly and ordered they be removed.
Central Asia Times
Israeli sapper robot in action.
I suspect some PLOT from the Russian FSB which is apparently churning out half-baked, highly convoluted theories on cutting-edge subjects to keep western brains occupied.
C-Builder has STL support and is fully compliant otherwise. Your comment suggests that you touched C-Builder extremely briefly.
MS contracts encourage as well to upgrade permanently even if you dont need it. Users who skip upgrades are penalised by the contract structures. I would be rather interested which negotiation techniques have been found useful to get costs down - we are currently in talks with MS for a company wide license. TIA
We do some heavy matrix FP computations in our software and looked at various options. IN THEORY optimisation to certain processors should bring speed improvements. However, is it really worthwhile to throw a few programmers at it to really squeeze the last bit out of it while processors get faster by the day ?
I have never heard a customer complain about speed - I assume that they blame any speed deficiencies on their hardware. So where is the problem - and incentive for us to improve speed ?
A successful widespread virus attack proves that there are actually .NET users out there.
If no one attacks or cracks a software it's mostly not worth anything. To believe that it can't be successfully attacked is naive anyway.
Overall, viruses bring free publicity and prove the point that the product is a roaring success.
BTW: Who wants to be left out when all your friends have been hit by the new naughty Kournikova virus? There will be little left to discuss over a few beers.
"a distribution designed to allow the signing and encrypting of documents with the utmost in security"
I guess this is why it is called "Tinfoil Hat" and not "Wet Paper Bag Hat".
What argument is that ? Is Blair getting paid by Microsoft ?
I am just judging Cox by his own claimed moral standards.
I personally wouldn't mind if Cox would receive a salary from the devil himself - provided he doesn't air such moral BS and keeps working on Linux.
Alan: "When the prime minister is appearing at product launches by a company twice found by courts to be abusing a monopoly, and facing billions of dollars in lawsuits you have to ask questions."
Oh really ? And what about Linux gurus being on the payroll of the hyperlink "inventors" ? Or is this ok because he exploits them ?
"Alan Cox will be conducting the BT sponsored Public Lecture at the Taliesen Theatre in Swansea, Wales, U.K. on the 5th March."
This comment is right on the spot.
We are running SuSE 7.0 on file servers and workstations and there is absolutely no trivial way to upgrade without breaking the system. I even went as far as creating an identical copy of the running system on fresh hard disks on a different machine to migrate while the old system keeps running. No way could I get it to work without investing a week to get into every issue which needs to be solved on upgrade.
As far as I am concerned money invested in a new SuSE distros is wasted - the 7.1 is sitting here idle already.
With the same time effort one might as well install everything from scratch from any distro to stay reasonably uptodate with Linux.
On the Linux based firewall we have now switched to IPCop, after running briefly Mandrage SNF and discovering that it stops the intrusion detection every other day and is impossible to update too. On the Mandrake forum the developer even went as far as saying that the 8.1 SNF will be a completely new product and not some update of the current version. This is fucking great - another reinstall from scratch.
One really has to wonder what some of these Linux distributors are up to these days. One gets the distinct impression that they are more interested in churning out a fresh release every other month than getting their systems stable and serviceable.
The attitude is already worse than Microsoft's - at least their updates don't usually screw up the system.
This is so incredibly cool - and cheap in comparison:
Nixie-Chronometer 01
I would be most grateful if someone could send me the advertising rates for these kind of adverts.
TIA
I am so glad about this article since my bad conscience was already haunting me that we did not upgrade to 2.4.
Rob McCready, an electrical and computer engineering grad student at the University of Toronto has developed the first face-detection program that uses programmable hardware - which is much faster and more accurate at discerning faces than any existing software programs http://www.nce.gc.ca/en/success/9920/micronet3_e.h tm
I asked VA a year ago to provide this service for us. For two months no one answered my emails apparently because they did not have anyone to look after european customers. After TWO months someone replied to me that they were just setting up their european office. When they finally got the office working someone called me to offer their "onsite" service for mega-bucks. I declined. :-)
Not that anyone has called me or emailed me now to offer this service. I guess their European office has been closed again
The really appealing aspect about the cargolifter is that you can fulfill tasks unimaginable with any kind of aircraft.
Imagine you can get your stone house built in Russia, Indonesia or any other place with cheap labor and just plug it into it's place in America or Europe. With this kind of technology you can envisage huge wharfs for houses, factories in low-cost labor countries.
I am impressed - how did they got those mainframes into the i-mode phones ?
"I think the US has done it's share of good in shortening conflicts by intervening,"
With Nagasaki and Hiroshima being the prime examples on how to cut short the agony.
I had the pleasure of dealing VA. I was exploring whether we could employ OnSite or an offsite closed-source Sourceforge version. To start with it was extremely hard at the time to find anyone with VA who would deal with this at all. My emails were disappearing in some VA black-hole. It took them several weeks (after bouncing my messages through various incompetent employees) to actually deal with it. It looks to me as if they have too much money there and need to do zilch to support themselves.
Last time I rented a car in Austria I enquired at the agent what the speed limit was on motorways.
....
The agent looked at my passport and said that there wasnt any speed limit for me because Austrian police wouldnt send tickets after me to my country.
And they always tell you that Europe is bad on services
We are getting there slowly - Soon IE will hopefully know where I can buy that product cheaper that I was just about to buy - go there, fill-in my cached credit card details and make me happy.
Even better - it can analyze my behaviour patterns - suggest products I never thought about. Arrange credit lines automatically since my credit worthness can be verified objectively.
And in case I forget to renew my microsoft subscriptions it will look after that too.
Why shouldnt American citizens be put on trial elsewhere ? We all know that the sun is shining out of America's backside anyway but others seem to disagree sometime. I think it is far more relevant to US citizens whether those court judgements can be enforced in the US.
Coming to Gutnick - since I had the "pleasure" to see Gutnick in action I can only say so much: Even if Gutnick isnt legally guilty of some misdoings he is a very sharp operator who is walking a fine line. All he can achieve with this court case is to get his point of view across in Aussieland - and this all what counts to him.
If Dell and others can survive selling relatively low-end machines based on Intel/MS/Linux etc. Why shouldnt SGI be able to do it for the high-end ?
There are actually customers around who love to talk to some technician if something goes wrong - rather than fiddling around with some high-end home-brew server by oneself.