OK - I'll admit it - I did engage in a little bit of hyperbole.
But you have to admit that "at best worthless" has a better ring to it than "at best, when combined with a qualitative analysis of the model itself, and some testing with out of sample data, can be a useful tool in decision making".
You are right that no investment bank will go anywhere near this.
When I used to work in the financial services industry we used to call this "data mining". The result is usually at best worthless and at worst dangerous as it is so often misused.
It's worth remembering the saying with data: "if you look hard enough, you can find anything you want to".
I am amazed that in the US anyone has any control over caller ID other than the telcos.
Here in the UK as far as I'm aware your exchange transmits details (which it knows - it knows your number!) about the caller to the recipient's exchange which then transmits it on to the recipient's caller ID equipment (if they subscribe to the service). If you are behind a PBX then tough, the receiver gets the "switchboard number" or number withheld.
Because in fact the 9-11 hijackers were already on various watch lists, which, had they been operated properly, combined with proper ID, might have prevented them from boarding the aircraft. It's ALWAYS going to be a good thing to know who someone really is from a security point of view.
You might want to let people like all the large cinema chains know who charge less for a ticket for a student, child or OAP even though that ticket gives them access to exactly the same product, which costs the cinema exactly the same to "produce".
Price discrimination tends to assist the poorer consumer - if cinemas were unable to discriminate between students and adults the catch-all price would likely be unpalatably high for students.
However, as you do rightly point out this is all irrelevant because Starter Edition is NOT an example of price discrimination - it is an entirely different (crippled) product.
I keep hearing that mail servers should be modified so as to ask the sending server a difficult computational question, which would prevent them from sending mail out too quickly, and possibly make spam not profit effective.
If this would work, would an easier yet identically working solution just be to say that all mail servers (on major ISPs, etc) from now on introduce a 10 second delay after the MAIL FROM statement? This would also prevent spammers from setting up p2p grids of drone machines to do their calculating.
What am I missing? Why do we need some complicated calculation to be done by the client simply to delay the transaction?
While I can see there are privacy implications with the storing of this data (especially with name/address data stored for billing purposes), it seems to me there are also fairly large advantages in using such a system, both to the operators and passengers.
Firstly, readers should remember that Transport for London, who currently operate the tube network are a publically run company whose sole aim is to provide cheap and efficient travel for Londoners and visitors. Even if the Tube did move to a public-private-partnership type set up, I doubt individual operators would have serious access to this data.
It seems to me that decent statistics on the routes that people take through the network could provide a gold mine of information for transport planners to further improve transport in London.
A secondary benefit is that it also ensures that London buses can slowly move towards being cashless (when prepay cards are introduced later this year), which helps prevent petty theft and assaults on bus drivers. Furthermore, bus drivers need waste less time at stops counting cash and giving change.
I would say that I'd rather have less theft from buses and a better planned transport network than an ability (which using prepay you'll still have anyway) to travel on a season ticket anonymously and (more, not fully) untraceably. Yes there are privacy implications, but I'm more than happy to put up with them for the possible benefits.
That they are sending a message that disobeying ambulance rules (allowing 20 mph leeway over standard speed limits) is dangerous, and that the risk of a 10 car pile up at 104 mph is not worth the possible saving of one life?
Seems to me that if you have a reasoned rule about how fast emergency vehicles may travel to balance the risk of the patient's health with the risk of harming other road users, the driver in question should be arguing to have it modified, not taking everyone else's life into his own hands by driving so recklessly.
"How trains in the SE compete with trains in the NW is unclear to me"
- contestability: even without direct competition you get the advantages of competition because there is always the chance that next time the SE franchise is up for grabs the more efficient company that runs the NW routes will get it and the inefficient SE company will lose it
Kudos to Nationwide (UK Building Society), whose online banking site I've successfully used with Mozilla and Konqueror (3.0) as well as IE. Everything seems to work as it should.
I've written a PHP based web client that uses a MySQL backend DB to store all the messages. Useful for all those who have a machine at home running 24/7 on DSL and can therefore pick up _all_ your mail from wherever you can find an internet connection. It currently imports from POP, I would like to write a sendmail plugin that allows sendmail to deliver direct to the database. I have written a PHP/Xinetd based POP3 daemon for it if you need to get your mail to another client.
It also does contacts, tasks, filters, multiple pop accounts, multiple smtp identities, stripping of html attachments, mime, etc etc
The authentication relies totally on MySQL, you are prompted (HTTP Auth) for a specially constructed username which consists of a database host, database name and mysql username. This also allows multiple users on the same system; just create them their own mysql account and db.
Download at http://jayjayem.d2g.com:3353/timd/ (latest version ALPHA6.1a).
Dunno about Australia, but in the UK there are several companies that will set you up as a virtual ISP. You provide a Radius server to do authentication, and a mail/web server, they provide backbone internet connection, space, electricity, and modem racks. This cuts down on the maintenance for a small ISP severely, but will reduce your flexibility.
An example is UK Linux, whose servers run from the WorldOnline (formerly Telinco) premises.
I've always liked the idea of getting the CPU itself to spin (on at least 2 axes), rather than having a fan. You'd still get efficient air flow across the CPU core, and it would look pretty good. The only problem I can envisage would be the connector getting twisted. I'm sure I've seen electric toothbrushes that alternate rather than just spin, so this may not be such a hurdle...
Having just got my aged P90 to compile 2.4.2, I was slightly disappointed to find that support for its equally aging SCSI card (AIC7xxx onboard) seems to have been broken.
Because I have upgraded straight from 2.4.0 (which worked fine) I am not sure whether this problem first surfaced in 2.4.1, because I can't find anything particularly SCSI controller specific in the.2 changelog.
It claims my controller is "disabled" during bootup (although it finds its IRQ), and then kernel panics with lack of a root file system.
I've never had compatibility problems with kernels before - where is the best place to report this issue?
I understand that Cuba would pose serious logistical problems. However, as I mentioned in my other reply, there must be jurisdictions where Napster's server activity would not be illegal. What happens if they just relocate there?
Fair enough, but my point was that there must be jurisdictions around where Napster isn't illegal, and since the only thing you can leverage against Napster is physically shutting down the servers, what could the RIAA do?
Gnutella will never scale truly with the abundance of low speed connections and all the overheads of a true peer to peer network.
However, I think it could be used for specified servers to talk to one another. A client would therefore only have to know the address of one server in a server pool, which could search the other servers in the pool. Users would log on to one server, but because of the server peer-to-peer architecture, users on other servers could be connected to them, as the servers would query each other (like the current Napster servers).
Servers then only need stay up for a day or two, as long as the pool stays big enough, clients can get bounced along the pool. They could receive a message saying their server is stopping, but their server would pass them on to another pooled server and so on. If the user used their client reasonably often, they could maintain a constant connection to the 'network' even if in a few weeks time none of the same servers were serving the network.
One burning question: why can Napster not move to Cuba? What do the US government do then? I can't see Fidel refusing the investment. Any thoughts?
...or has openh.org already been/.ed. It looked interesting while it lasted.
I signed up a project, and after having been warned during the sign up process I was in for a massive terms of conditions to read and sign, was pleasantly surprised by the "We haven't thought of these yet, we may do in the future" notice. I'm not sure how that would stand up in court, but it is an alternative approach to the legal minefield.
I never managed to finish the sign up though, and now the site seems completely dead. It had a slight whiff of burning 486 about it...
You may think that those restrictions are a bit over the top but we have restrictions at my UK school that make them look paltry.
All web based email is banned, forcing us to use the school's exchange system (via Outlook) which is basically read by members of the teaching staff in transit. The excuse given is that web based email uses too much bandwidth (the entire school of approx 150 machines is running off 128k ISDN).
Just as we get home, they shut down the school's mail server so we can't check our school accounts from home.
Oh, and deja.com and all the useful sites on the internet are blocked by the aptly titled "Smart Filter".
Slashdot Mirror
OK - I'll admit it - I did engage in a little bit of hyperbole.
But you have to admit that "at best worthless" has a better ring to it than "at best, when combined with a qualitative analysis of the model itself, and some testing with out of sample data, can be a useful tool in decision making".
You are right that no investment bank will go anywhere near this.
When I used to work in the financial services industry we used to call this "data mining". The result is usually at best worthless and at worst dangerous as it is so often misused.
It's worth remembering the saying with data: "if you look hard enough, you can find anything you want to".
Why not mount the switches so they are flush with the edge of the case rather than having that unslighly mess of millions of cables?
I am amazed that in the US anyone has any control over caller ID other than the telcos.
Here in the UK as far as I'm aware your exchange transmits details (which it knows - it knows your number!) about the caller to the recipient's exchange which then transmits it on to the recipient's caller ID equipment (if they subscribe to the service). If you are behind a PBX then tough, the receiver gets the "switchboard number" or number withheld.
Is it just me or is this far more sensible?
Because in fact the 9-11 hijackers were already on various watch lists, which, had they been operated properly, combined with proper ID, might have prevented them from boarding the aircraft. It's ALWAYS going to be a good thing to know who someone really is from a security point of view.
Since when is price discrimination illegal?
You might want to let people like all the large cinema chains know who charge less for a ticket for a student, child or OAP even though that ticket gives them access to exactly the same product, which costs the cinema exactly the same to "produce".
Price discrimination tends to assist the poorer consumer - if cinemas were unable to discriminate between students and adults the catch-all price would likely be unpalatably high for students.
However, as you do rightly point out this is all irrelevant because Starter Edition is NOT an example of price discrimination - it is an entirely different (crippled) product.
I keep hearing that mail servers should be modified so as to ask the sending server a difficult computational question, which would prevent them from sending mail out too quickly, and possibly make spam not profit effective.
If this would work, would an easier yet identically working solution just be to say that all mail servers (on major ISPs, etc) from now on introduce a 10 second delay after the MAIL FROM statement? This would also prevent spammers from setting up p2p grids of drone machines to do their calculating.
What am I missing? Why do we need some complicated calculation to be done by the client simply to delay the transaction?
Firstly, readers should remember that Transport for London, who currently operate the tube network are a publically run company whose sole aim is to provide cheap and efficient travel for Londoners and visitors. Even if the Tube did move to a public-private-partnership type set up, I doubt individual operators would have serious access to this data.
It seems to me that decent statistics on the routes that people take through the network could provide a gold mine of information for transport planners to further improve transport in London.
A secondary benefit is that it also ensures that London buses can slowly move towards being cashless (when prepay cards are introduced later this year), which helps prevent petty theft and assaults on bus drivers. Furthermore, bus drivers need waste less time at stops counting cash and giving change.
I would say that I'd rather have less theft from buses and a better planned transport network than an ability (which using prepay you'll still have anyway) to travel on a season ticket anonymously and (more, not fully) untraceably. Yes there are privacy implications, but I'm more than happy to put up with them for the possible benefits.
You should be able to extract the word document using a zip utility.
It describes in quite a lot of detail how they reduced boot time in XP (not only starting stuff in parallel but also prefetching and other tricks).
A search on msn.com also brings up the rather amusing
http://tech.msn.com/software/OS/Linux/
section of the MSN website. Watch MS try and sell you boxed RedHat!
That they are sending a message that disobeying ambulance rules (allowing 20 mph leeway over standard speed limits) is dangerous, and that the risk of a 10 car pile up at 104 mph is not worth the possible saving of one life?
Seems to me that if you have a reasoned rule about how fast emergency vehicles may travel to balance the risk of the patient's health with the risk of harming other road users, the driver in question should be arguing to have it modified, not taking everyone else's life into his own hands by driving so recklessly.
"How trains in the SE compete with trains in the NW is unclear to me"
- contestability: even without direct competition you get the advantages of competition because there is always the chance that next time the SE franchise is up for grabs the more efficient company that runs the NW routes will get it and the inefficient SE company will lose it
Kudos to Nationwide (UK Building Society), whose online banking site I've successfully used with Mozilla and Konqueror (3.0) as well as IE. Everything seems to work as it should.
I've written a PHP based web client that uses a MySQL backend DB to store all the messages. Useful for all those who have a machine at home running 24/7 on DSL and can therefore pick up _all_ your mail from wherever you can find an internet connection. It currently imports from POP, I would like to write a sendmail plugin that allows sendmail to deliver direct to the database. I have written a PHP/Xinetd based POP3 daemon for it if you need to get your mail to another client.
It also does contacts, tasks, filters, multiple pop accounts, multiple smtp identities, stripping of html attachments, mime, etc etc
The authentication relies totally on MySQL, you are prompted (HTTP Auth) for a specially constructed username which consists of a database host, database name and mysql username. This also allows multiple users on the same system; just create them their own mysql account and db.
Download at http://jayjayem.d2g.com:3353/timd/ (latest version ALPHA6.1a).
For another (earlier by > 24 hrs) take on this same story, see http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23548.html.
Dunno about Australia, but in the UK there are several companies that will set you up as a virtual ISP. You provide a Radius server to do authentication, and a mail/web server, they provide backbone internet connection, space, electricity, and modem racks. This cuts down on the maintenance for a small ISP severely, but will reduce your flexibility. An example is UK Linux, whose servers run from the WorldOnline (formerly Telinco) premises.
I've always liked the idea of getting the CPU itself to spin (on at least 2 axes), rather than having a fan. You'd still get efficient air flow across the CPU core, and it would look pretty good. The only problem I can envisage would be the connector getting twisted. I'm sure I've seen electric toothbrushes that alternate rather than just spin, so this may not be such a hurdle...
Having just got my aged P90 to compile 2.4.2, I was slightly disappointed to find that support for its equally aging SCSI card (AIC7xxx onboard) seems to have been broken.
.2 changelog.
Because I have upgraded straight from 2.4.0 (which worked fine) I am not sure whether this problem first surfaced in 2.4.1, because I can't find anything particularly SCSI controller specific in the
It claims my controller is "disabled" during bootup (although it finds its IRQ), and then kernel panics with lack of a root file system.
I've never had compatibility problems with kernels before - where is the best place to report this issue?
I understand that Cuba would pose serious logistical problems. However, as I mentioned in my other reply, there must be jurisdictions where Napster's server activity would not be illegal. What happens if they just relocate there?
Fair enough, but my point was that there must be jurisdictions around where Napster isn't illegal, and since the only thing you can leverage against Napster is physically shutting down the servers, what could the RIAA do?
However, I think it could be used for specified servers to talk to one another. A client would therefore only have to know the address of one server in a server pool, which could search the other servers in the pool. Users would log on to one server, but because of the server peer-to-peer architecture, users on other servers could be connected to them, as the servers would query each other (like the current Napster servers).
Servers then only need stay up for a day or two, as long as the pool stays big enough, clients can get bounced along the pool. They could receive a message saying their server is stopping, but their server would pass them on to another pooled server and so on. If the user used their client reasonably often, they could maintain a constant connection to the 'network' even if in a few weeks time none of the same servers were serving the network.
One burning question: why can Napster not move to Cuba? What do the US government do then? I can't see Fidel refusing the investment. Any thoughts?
I signed up a project, and after having been warned during the sign up process I was in for a massive terms of conditions to read and sign, was pleasantly surprised by the "We haven't thought of these yet, we may do in the future" notice. I'm not sure how that would stand up in court, but it is an alternative approach to the legal minefield.
I never managed to finish the sign up though, and now the site seems completely dead. It had a slight whiff of burning 486 about it...
You may think that those restrictions are a bit over the top but we have restrictions at my UK school that make them look paltry.
All web based email is banned, forcing us to use the school's exchange system (via Outlook) which is basically read by members of the teaching staff in transit. The excuse given is that web based email uses too much bandwidth (the entire school of approx 150 machines is running off 128k ISDN).
Just as we get home, they shut down the school's mail server so we can't check our school accounts from home.
Oh, and deja.com and all the useful sites on the internet are blocked by the aptly titled "Smart Filter".
UK library users should count themselves lucky...