Actually, the fact that you're even asking this question shows that you're enough out of touch with the reality of the situation that you probably shouldn't be looking at VC funding at all.
Actually, the fact he is asking the question shows he is in touch with reality- its a good question and one that comes from seeing previous examples of founders losing their companies.
Speaking of reality, your statement shows that you probably aren't tactful enough to answer questions without slipping in some sort of insult.
The vast majority of founders have never had to deal with VC before, which isn't too surprising as they have been busy forming a company. Its only natural that they will ask questions like this. Obviously, asking questions is a good way to learn more about dealing with VC's.
It's a great, FREE, little app that will also allow you to remap any of your others keys, so if you don't like the Windows key or have a hatred for the number 9, you can remap them to whatever you want.
A lot of the comments here are about financial related jobs, but no one has mentioned economics-especially if you go to graduate school and get at least a masters.
Its unfortunately true, but many economics majors are unable to pursue further study in econ because they don't have the math skills. Most econ departments want maths majors for their graduate program, figuring they can teach them the econ if necessary. Besides, the econ taught at most undergraduate programs is so simplified that its not a really useful platform for graduate economic work.
Getting a job working in a financial field is a great idea and if you want to pursue things further, consider graduate school in some field related to finance.
Also, econ isn't the only field that is business oriented, you could consider a PhD in business (no MBA required or even preferred), with a PhD in business you can become a business professor (teach MBA's and do fun and expensive consulting gigs!) or you could go off to Wall Street or some other firm with a nice job and salary.
With maths, you won't find many jobs that are pure maths related, but you will find a lot of jobs and fields that need it as a preequisite or where knowledge of maths is a considerable advantage.
I have a few regrets about my time in college, one is that I didn't take more maths classes, another is that I didn't take more English classes with a lot of cute women.
Further, after you spend a few years working as an actuary (and pass a decent number of the nine exams) and provided you show some managerial promise, its not too hard to become a manager of actuaries. Being a manager of actuaries isn't so different from being a manager in a lot of other financial businesses, like banking.
So being an actuary is not as bad or boring as a lot of people make it out to be.
Your clarification about Vinge's Singularity is correct, but I think the grandparent post was making a point that this sort of artificial intelligence amplification won't be as extreme (or steep on the curve) as Vinge postulates.
I like Vinge as an author and his thoughts on various subjects are interesting, but I think he doesn't do himself a service by referring to the singularity with such ominous language like the end of the human race will occur shortly after the discovery of strong AI or some sort of intelligence amplication. He might be correct, but without describing what he thinks will happen to us, he makes it seem that we all die a la Terminator.
Really, the idea is that we will all become Transhuman (well at least those that can afford it...), although I suppose it might be reasonable to consider that with the discovery of strong AI, the machines might really attack. Still, the point is that the language used to describe the Singularity is too terse to give a good idea of what they mean by it.
While the rate of technological advance is steadily increasing, I wonder if we can really extrapolate that to a vertical line sometime within the next hundred years. The Singularity folks are making some big assumptions beyond the rate of technological innovation, such as Strong AI is possible and it is possible to amplify a human's intelligence to a point where it is exponentially beyond the smartest human. I think it is worthwhile to consider these questions, especially as we engage in research that might lead us to that point, but it is important to realize that they are basing their theory on a lot of conjecture.
Heh. I actually did play with both Duke's undergrad and MBA rugby teams, usually they are a great group of guys.
Hooker is a position in rugby whose main job is to hook the ball back with his feet for his team when they are in the scrum (that big pushing match they get into every few minutes). So it was even funnier seeing this guy hooking back with his good leg, balancing on his fake leg and the two props (whose job is to support the hooker, hence the rugby bumper sticker: "Support your local hooker").
Rugby is an absolutely brilliant game. To many people it looks a lot more unorganized and violent than it really it. It is most definitely not "american football without pads". The way you tackle is quite different and it avoids the sorts of injuries you get when you charge into someone full speed. In fact, I reckon that the lack of pads reduces some injuries- getting hit in the knee with a helmet seems more dangerous than most situations in rugby. In rugby, the vast majority of injuries are bruises and scrapes. Sometimes black eyes or bloody noses. But you get a wonderful release of aggression and energy in a manner that is much safer than hitting someone with a frying pan.
On top of the contact, there is a lot of running and sprinting, teamwork and coordination is required for some positions. I could see why these might put off some nerds, but I think that these guys would benefit from something rigourous. I do not consider hitting someone for a few minutes with a pillowcase with a coke in it very rigourous. Most fights at these fight clubs is more just people flailing away without any control. Maybe that is carthartic, but I think if they were able to channel that energy into something more constructive, they would find it more theraputic. Just my opinion.
One of the nice things about rugby is that there is a position for practically every conceivable body type (from the short fat guys to the tall skinny guys). Heck, I remember playing a match where the other team's hooker had a prosthetic leg. Frecked the crap out of us when he called for a minute before a scrum and sat down and removed his leg!
And kendo seems like it might be another good exercise- hitting someone with a stick while shouting should be pretty enjoyable. It does require discipline and has a significant component that is spiritual, but I think that forces you to focus on improvement. It seems to me that after a year of fighting in a techie fight club, I would want to feel like I have improved and gotten fitter and stronger. I don't think that will necessarily happen unless I participate in something that is organized.
Perhaps these techies are so fed up with corporate life that they are rejecting things that feel organized and by extension, restrictive. That is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There is something rotten with corporate culture in many companies, but that doesn't mean that organizations are all rotten.
Everytime I step onto a rugby pitch, I view it as another character test- will I play 100% without slacking off? Will I support my teammates to the best of my ability, in spite of how tired I feel?
He probably wasn't referring directly to the bigoted part of your journal comment, again, you need to stop and think more deeply about things before posting, because it you are certainly not engaging your brain before using the keyboard (wasn't that something else in your journal?)
Anyway, I think that he was referring to your comments about holding slashdot users as more intelligent than the rest of the population and that you were shocked to see immaturity and ignorance displayed here. The vehicle that was used to display the ignorance and immaturity is immaterial here. I think that he was just thinking on a deeper level than you....and if are shocked to see bigotry on display on slashdot, then you simply havent been here long enough.
Congrats LordKazan, you have obviously made some fine friends today with your witty, erudite and insightful commentary on the subject of text browsers. I am sure that the slashdot community is now painfully aware of your knowledge of the subject. Now go away and post somewhere more appropiate, say perhaps myspace?
You are only continuing to embarrass yourself. My comment was in response to your comment:
"oh FFS - text based browsers in 2006? absofuckinglutely stupid unless you're blind and using a screen reader"
Which implied that you failed to see how there could be a use for them aside from being blind.
Clearly, there are many uses for text based browsers even in 2006; others responding to you have pointed out some of these uses. The real problem is not only were you quick to display your ignorance, but you did so in an obnoxious and insulting manner. Your subsequent comments have only reinforced the impression that you are someone with anger problems, poor impulse control and a surprising humourous lack of ability to reason.
Next time you decide to share your thoughts, calm yourself down, take a few deep breathes, repeat to yourself "Everybody does not hate me" and post without using unnecessary profanities. You will make yourself look like a big boy then!
Sad to see that this type of person has become so much more common on slashdot these days: People who can't look at something beyond what their tiny brain can come up with after 2 seconds of thought.
Text browsing is still useful nowadays for a multitude of reasons. But having said that, I wouldn't assume that just because they are redesigning the default format for slashdot that they are removing the light UI option, which is much better when using a text browser.
I agree heartily with your comments. And I don't think these issues just affect newcomers to linux. I am sure many of us have run into RPM dependency hell or screwed up our OS by manually compiling software which screwed up whatever package manager we used.
To be honest, I really don't understand why linux does not have a standard packaging system. And I don't understand why packaging formats need to be so complicated either.
Imagine if there was a unified packaging system- you could install fedora on your system, then as time went on, start installing debian versions of packages, eventually you could end up with a system that had no fedora installed packages. Would this mean that the idea of a distrubtion would become redundant? I don't think so, different distros could create packages with different defaults, compilation options, etc.
What would be really neat is if there was a way to ensure compilation options don't have an affect on the interface of the package from a software point of view (thus you can still install some packages optimized for your specific architecture, mixed in with packages compiled for generic architecture) AND a way to separate the defaults and options from the software. So presumably you could get your package updates from fedora but use the suse defaults (and options, themes, etc) for some packages and so on.
The point is, Linux (the community, the distros, whatever) need to decide on some unifying designs for handling software management and follow them.
There is a fourth edition, with a different subtitle, 'Using SQL variants', it was published in 2001 (as opposed to the 3rd edition in 96). Also, the same authors have a second book, called Practical SQL: The Sequel. Haven't looked at it, but it might be worth looking at. Often with technology books, I find there are a decent number of introductory books, but a dearth of intermediate books. Economically it makes sense, but still frustrates me.
You are not alone, I have the same problem. It's one of those little problems that annoys far more than it should but its not bad enough to make me look for a solution.
I agree with the gist of what you have said, but EULA's arent really necessary. yet- they haven't been really tested in court, so the exact legal ground they occupy is similar to a contract, but not quite. Although that could all change once they are tested in court.
Actually, I disagree, people are far less rational than you believe. People can feel perfectly fine saying that something is important to them yet fail to move past a preliminary investigatory stage. Often the sheer amount of choice and information that threatens to overwhelm a user keeps them in the same place- this is the status quo bias referred to in behavioural decision theory. There are numerous other systematic decision making biases that occur in addition to this, which often result in non-rational behaviour.
Consider someone who has two level 60 characters in WoW and realizes that they want to play a game where they can have their own property. Most likely, they are going to focus on the sunk costs of creating those characters, the non-negligible social network they probably have in WoW and the effort required to find and level up characters in a game that matches their TOS. Provided they can find a game that has a TOS they prefer.
No, if they were rational and decided to stick with WoW we could assume that their preferences for playing WoW were greater than their preferences for a better TOS. But people weigh options differently at different times and have trouble accounting for events that might or might not happen or will happen in the future (e.g. hyperbolic time discounting). In this case, they have to make a subjective assessment of the probability that they will get banned under the TOS and use that in helping guide their decision. Depending on how they frame the argument and their reference point, their decision will differ. Cue further discussion of Prospect theory here, I can't be bothered.
The point is, people can still prefer to own their own toons yet fail to act on that preference. And whether or not that is rational can be argued depending on how closely you expect a person's actions to be in line with their preferences.
Making statements like: "If you're not competant to understand a contract like this, and yet you're an adult, then you need to be in an institution."- really inhibits a constructive discussion of differing viewpoints, doesn't it?
How about trying to present your point of view without the hyperbole?
Stop being melodramatic. I am not talking about any of those things you mentioned and it should have been clear to you that I wasn't- by referring to virtual worlds, I was referring to MMORPG's and similar games. It would probably be more accurate to think about other types of rights than citizenship.
Given the amount of time that people put into these games, I am sure that people will begin to consider legal remedies outside of appeals to the game publisher if they get banned. Perhaps they have no recourse, but as these games grow in popularity, I wonder if we might see legal chances in the future.
I think that its more a case of ignorance than a deliberate choice. I have only heard of Second Life spoken of like its more of a mmorpg version of The Sims for example. I bet most WoW players haven't ever heard of it.
Further, I bet most people either don't understand the TOS or ignore the finer grained differences between paying to have exclusive access to a set of data and actually owning the data.
From an economic view, your ideas about markets makes sense, however, since both humans and organizations are not fully rational, we can't expect a perfectly responsive market.
Incidents like this remind me that when you play WoW or other mmorpg's, you don't own your character, despite the often thousand of man-hours people put into them.
It seems to me that if there was a similar real-world analogue, the account holder would be able to get some sort of redress to his losses in a court of law, or at least reinstatement. In these virtual worlds, the game company is able to rule by diktat and is able to twist the TOS to suit their needs. Indeed, they can change the TOS at will and if you don't agree to the new terms, then you forfeit your right to your account.
Eventually, the legalities of virtual worlds will need to be addressed.
Remember that Ubuntu is a South African distribution, thus Ubuntu and other African language based words are much more common. Also, naming a release after an animal isn't that unprofessional- think of OS X Tiger for example. I think the name Hoary Hedgehog sounds dodgy to Americans because they might see 'Horny Hedgehog'. I don't if there is actually a hoary hedgehog, but I do know that hoary is an adjective used in the common names of a fox and marmot.
Still, Hoary Hedgehog sounds whimsical, but does that necessarily mean it is unprofessional?
Wouldn't it be much more impressive if he actually tried to live out the themes in Star Wars that he admires? Sitting on a coach on a sidewalk for months isn't very heroic. Oh and in the article he talks about how he sees the growth from childhood to adult- looks like this guy still hasn't taken that to heart.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of reality, your statement shows that you probably aren't tactful enough to answer questions without slipping in some sort of insult.
The vast majority of founders have never had to deal with VC before, which isn't too surprising as they have been busy forming a company. Its only natural that they will ask questions like this. Obviously, asking questions is a good way to learn more about dealing with VC's.
It's a great, FREE, little app that will also allow you to remap any of your others keys, so if you don't like the Windows key or have a hatred for the number 9, you can remap them to whatever you want.
Its unfortunately true, but many economics majors are unable to pursue further study in econ because they don't have the math skills. Most econ departments want maths majors for their graduate program, figuring they can teach them the econ if necessary. Besides, the econ taught at most undergraduate programs is so simplified that its not a really useful platform for graduate economic work.
Getting a job working in a financial field is a great idea and if you want to pursue things further, consider graduate school in some field related to finance.
Also, econ isn't the only field that is business oriented, you could consider a PhD in business (no MBA required or even preferred), with a PhD in business you can become a business professor (teach MBA's and do fun and expensive consulting gigs!) or you could go off to Wall Street or some other firm with a nice job and salary.
With maths, you won't find many jobs that are pure maths related, but you will find a lot of jobs and fields that need it as a preequisite or where knowledge of maths is a considerable advantage.
I have a few regrets about my time in college, one is that I didn't take more maths classes, another is that I didn't take more English classes with a lot of cute women.
Further, after you spend a few years working as an actuary (and pass a decent number of the nine exams) and provided you show some managerial promise, its not too hard to become a manager of actuaries. Being a manager of actuaries isn't so different from being a manager in a lot of other financial businesses, like banking.
So being an actuary is not as bad or boring as a lot of people make it out to be.
I like Vinge as an author and his thoughts on various subjects are interesting, but I think he doesn't do himself a service by referring to the singularity with such ominous language like the end of the human race will occur shortly after the discovery of strong AI or some sort of intelligence amplication. He might be correct, but without describing what he thinks will happen to us, he makes it seem that we all die a la Terminator.
Really, the idea is that we will all become Transhuman (well at least those that can afford it...), although I suppose it might be reasonable to consider that with the discovery of strong AI, the machines might really attack. Still, the point is that the language used to describe the Singularity is too terse to give a good idea of what they mean by it.
While the rate of technological advance is steadily increasing, I wonder if we can really extrapolate that to a vertical line sometime within the next hundred years. The Singularity folks are making some big assumptions beyond the rate of technological innovation, such as Strong AI is possible and it is possible to amplify a human's intelligence to a point where it is exponentially beyond the smartest human. I think it is worthwhile to consider these questions, especially as we engage in research that might lead us to that point, but it is important to realize that they are basing their theory on a lot of conjecture.
Hooker is a position in rugby whose main job is to hook the ball back with his feet for his team when they are in the scrum (that big pushing match they get into every few minutes). So it was even funnier seeing this guy hooking back with his good leg, balancing on his fake leg and the two props (whose job is to support the hooker, hence the rugby bumper sticker: "Support your local hooker").
On top of the contact, there is a lot of running and sprinting, teamwork and coordination is required for some positions. I could see why these might put off some nerds, but I think that these guys would benefit from something rigourous. I do not consider hitting someone for a few minutes with a pillowcase with a coke in it very rigourous. Most fights at these fight clubs is more just people flailing away without any control. Maybe that is carthartic, but I think if they were able to channel that energy into something more constructive, they would find it more theraputic. Just my opinion.
One of the nice things about rugby is that there is a position for practically every conceivable body type (from the short fat guys to the tall skinny guys). Heck, I remember playing a match where the other team's hooker had a prosthetic leg. Frecked the crap out of us when he called for a minute before a scrum and sat down and removed his leg!
And kendo seems like it might be another good exercise- hitting someone with a stick while shouting should be pretty enjoyable. It does require discipline and has a significant component that is spiritual, but I think that forces you to focus on improvement. It seems to me that after a year of fighting in a techie fight club, I would want to feel like I have improved and gotten fitter and stronger. I don't think that will necessarily happen unless I participate in something that is organized.
Perhaps these techies are so fed up with corporate life that they are rejecting things that feel organized and by extension, restrictive. That is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There is something rotten with corporate culture in many companies, but that doesn't mean that organizations are all rotten.
Everytime I step onto a rugby pitch, I view it as another character test- will I play 100% without slacking off? Will I support my teammates to the best of my ability, in spite of how tired I feel?
Anyway, I think that he was referring to your comments about holding slashdot users as more intelligent than the rest of the population and that you were shocked to see immaturity and ignorance displayed here. The vehicle that was used to display the ignorance and immaturity is immaterial here. I think that he was just thinking on a deeper level than you....and if are shocked to see bigotry on display on slashdot, then you simply havent been here long enough.
Congrats LordKazan, you have obviously made some fine friends today with your witty, erudite and insightful commentary on the subject of text browsers. I am sure that the slashdot community is now painfully aware of your knowledge of the subject. Now go away and post somewhere more appropiate, say perhaps myspace?
"oh FFS - text based browsers in 2006? absofuckinglutely stupid unless you're blind and using a screen reader"
Which implied that you failed to see how there could be a use for them aside from being blind.
Clearly, there are many uses for text based browsers even in 2006; others responding to you have pointed out some of these uses. The real problem is not only were you quick to display your ignorance, but you did so in an obnoxious and insulting manner. Your subsequent comments have only reinforced the impression that you are someone with anger problems, poor impulse control and a surprising humourous lack of ability to reason. Next time you decide to share your thoughts, calm yourself down, take a few deep breathes, repeat to yourself "Everybody does not hate me" and post without using unnecessary profanities. You will make yourself look like a big boy then!
Sad to see that this type of person has become so much more common on slashdot these days: People who can't look at something beyond what their tiny brain can come up with after 2 seconds of thought. Text browsing is still useful nowadays for a multitude of reasons. But having said that, I wouldn't assume that just because they are redesigning the default format for slashdot that they are removing the light UI option, which is much better when using a text browser.
To be honest, I really don't understand why linux does not have a standard packaging system. And I don't understand why packaging formats need to be so complicated either.
Imagine if there was a unified packaging system- you could install fedora on your system, then as time went on, start installing debian versions of packages, eventually you could end up with a system that had no fedora installed packages. Would this mean that the idea of a distrubtion would become redundant? I don't think so, different distros could create packages with different defaults, compilation options, etc.
What would be really neat is if there was a way to ensure compilation options don't have an affect on the interface of the package from a software point of view (thus you can still install some packages optimized for your specific architecture, mixed in with packages compiled for generic architecture) AND a way to separate the defaults and options from the software. So presumably you could get your package updates from fedora but use the suse defaults (and options, themes, etc) for some packages and so on.
The point is, Linux (the community, the distros, whatever) need to decide on some unifying designs for handling software management and follow them.
There is a fourth edition, with a different subtitle, 'Using SQL variants', it was published in 2001 (as opposed to the 3rd edition in 96). Also, the same authors have a second book, called Practical SQL: The Sequel. Haven't looked at it, but it might be worth looking at. Often with technology books, I find there are a decent number of introductory books, but a dearth of intermediate books. Economically it makes sense, but still frustrates me.
You are not alone, I have the same problem. It's one of those little problems that annoys far more than it should but its not bad enough to make me look for a solution.
Sorry, I think Hiro Protaganist is one step ahead of you.
I agree with the gist of what you have said, but EULA's arent really necessary. yet- they haven't been really tested in court, so the exact legal ground they occupy is similar to a contract, but not quite. Although that could all change once they are tested in court.
Consider someone who has two level 60 characters in WoW and realizes that they want to play a game where they can have their own property. Most likely, they are going to focus on the sunk costs of creating those characters, the non-negligible social network they probably have in WoW and the effort required to find and level up characters in a game that matches their TOS. Provided they can find a game that has a TOS they prefer.
No, if they were rational and decided to stick with WoW we could assume that their preferences for playing WoW were greater than their preferences for a better TOS. But people weigh options differently at different times and have trouble accounting for events that might or might not happen or will happen in the future (e.g. hyperbolic time discounting). In this case, they have to make a subjective assessment of the probability that they will get banned under the TOS and use that in helping guide their decision. Depending on how they frame the argument and their reference point, their decision will differ. Cue further discussion of Prospect theory here, I can't be bothered.
The point is, people can still prefer to own their own toons yet fail to act on that preference. And whether or not that is rational can be argued depending on how closely you expect a person's actions to be in line with their preferences.
How about trying to present your point of view without the hyperbole?
Given the amount of time that people put into these games, I am sure that people will begin to consider legal remedies outside of appeals to the game publisher if they get banned. Perhaps they have no recourse, but as these games grow in popularity, I wonder if we might see legal chances in the future.
Further, I bet most people either don't understand the TOS or ignore the finer grained differences between paying to have exclusive access to a set of data and actually owning the data. From an economic view, your ideas about markets makes sense, however, since both humans and organizations are not fully rational, we can't expect a perfectly responsive market.
Incidents like this remind me that when you play WoW or other mmorpg's, you don't own your character, despite the often thousand of man-hours people put into them. It seems to me that if there was a similar real-world analogue, the account holder would be able to get some sort of redress to his losses in a court of law, or at least reinstatement. In these virtual worlds, the game company is able to rule by diktat and is able to twist the TOS to suit their needs. Indeed, they can change the TOS at will and if you don't agree to the new terms, then you forfeit your right to your account. Eventually, the legalities of virtual worlds will need to be addressed.
Remember that Ubuntu is a South African distribution, thus Ubuntu and other African language based words are much more common. Also, naming a release after an animal isn't that unprofessional- think of OS X Tiger for example. I think the name Hoary Hedgehog sounds dodgy to Americans because they might see 'Horny Hedgehog'. I don't if there is actually a hoary hedgehog, but I do know that hoary is an adjective used in the common names of a fox and marmot.
Still, Hoary Hedgehog sounds whimsical, but does that necessarily mean it is unprofessional?
That's a great reply, I am going to make sure I write that down to use in future. Thanks!
Wouldn't it be much more impressive if he actually tried to live out the themes in Star Wars that he admires? Sitting on a coach on a sidewalk for months isn't very heroic. Oh and in the article he talks about how he sees the growth from childhood to adult- looks like this guy still hasn't taken that to heart.
That Martian is going to get pissed when the probe doesn't give him a tip.
That has got to be one of the funniest reviews on Amazon. Thanks for pointing it out.