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User: mathgenius

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  1. Did anyone else see the Philip Seymour Hoffman movie "The Master" and
    think scientology? It's a great movie, and seems to parallel the post WWII
    development of scientology. Fascinating stuff.

  2. Re:Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt with Joe Sa on And Now, the Cartoon News · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I'm reading this now.. I'm not really a fan of comics, they generally overload my brain or something. But this book seems much more powerful with the graphical element. I'm so impressed. Hedges always complains that contemporary society has gone too far "visual" so i guess this is his response to that.

  3. Global Cooperative Forum on Could Crowd-Sourced Direct Democracy Work? · · Score: 1
    If you see humanity as a collection of separate automata then this is not going to work. But is this true? Are we really all a bunch of self-optimizing machines?

    My teacher Adi Da points to what he calls "prior unity", and indicates that some global internet based approach to decision making could arise virtually overnight if we got our shit together.

    From the book "Not-Two Is Peace":

    ... no global organization presently
    is equipped to deal with the complexity of the world situation,
    in a way that accounts for the whole, because of the
    prevailing paradigm--which is that of separate interests
    negotiating toward settlements that are most advantageous
    for themselves. The global good (both human and non-
    human) is thereby subordinated to the aims of the separate
    interests.
    In the current world, human beings are simply suffering
    this situation, or exploiting it, or both. Therefore, a shift of
    consciousness is essential, from the mind of "tribalism" to
    taking responsibility for the whole. A new global institution
    needs to emerge--one which genuinely represents humakind
    altogether, or "everybody-all-at-once", and, thus, empowers
    the human population as a totality.
    Such a forum would allow humankind to become conscious
    of itself as one great coherent force--the only force
    capable of requiring and implementing systemic change
    that takes all factors into account. The purpose of the
    Global Cooperative Forum is to create the context for a new
    cooperatively-based global civilization to emerge, rather
    than the current "non-civilization" that is being imposed
    worldwide by exploitative, consumer-driven economics and
    related military agendas.

  4. Re:Quantum Theory + Chaos Theory = Consciousness on Does Quantum Theory Explain Consciousness? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, cool. I have often wondered about this, when quantum effects are "amplified" by a chaotic hamiltonian. But whenever I read about quantum chaos, they start going on about random matrices and billiard balls. Very strange, i don't get it at all. Thanks for the name, do you have a link to his work?

  5. Re:Not good for the market: need synchronous clock on Contemplating Financial Trading At Picosecond Resolution · · Score: 1

    The exchange will also need to shuffle the incoming messages (order place/cancel etc.)
    Otherwise it is still a speed game: who can respond the fastest to the update (even if it happens only once a second).
    This is actually really easy to do, or legislate. They could even do it on the millisecond scale and it would kill this insane quest for "zero" latency.
    Suddenly a whole lot of businesses would go kaput (the HFT scene probably is worth billions btw.)

  6. Re:I work in finance.... on High-Frequency Programmers Revolt Over Pay · · Score: 1

    If you have money in a financial firm -- take it out and invest it on your own.

    I'm not sure what you are saying here. Are you suggesting that I invest in my own portfolio, or that I invest in a fund ?

  7. Re:None of them should be making any money on High-Frequency Programmers Revolt Over Pay · · Score: 1

    Awesome! Someone here with a sense of humour.

  8. Ordinal numbers and game theory on Sudden Demand For Logicians On Wall Street · · Score: 1

    Does anyone actually have anything to say about TFA ?

    It seems to be more "game theoretic", (looking at the graph of possible moves and inferring value back to the root) which makes me think about the connection between ordinal numbers and game theory that John Conway wrote about in his 1970 book "on numbers and games".

  9. Re:Funny thing about these trades on Sudden Demand For Logicians On Wall Street · · Score: 1

    Amen to that. I see this every day, it's also referred to as "picking up pennies in front of a bulldozer". Although I think that quote was originally referring to the act of selling cheap options.

  10. remote squid proxy on Hulu Blocks International Access Via Witopia · · Score: 1

    I tried accessing hulu through a squid proxy in the US. It get's to the "loading video", but then "we are unable to stream this video. please check your internet connection and try again". I wonder if it's a bandwidth issue, or perhaps squid is doing something weird.

  11. Symmetry: A Journey into patterns of nature on Mathematics Reading List For High School Students? · · Score: 1

    also by Marcus du Sautoy, is the best "easy read" mathematics book i have ever found. I was truly surprised at how literate a mathematician could be. This book also introduces group theory and goes into the story of the classification of finite groups (fascinating!!) and some bio of John Conway, and other funny stories.

  12. Re:The Book of Numbers on Mathematics Reading List For High School Students? · · Score: 1

    Yes, this is mind expanding stuff. Conway has a fiendish habit of introducing advanced mathematics before the reader has a chance to notice!!
    I would also recommend his book "On Numbers and Games" although it is not particularly main-stream mathematics (but why should that matter?)

  13. Re:The Problem is Data on Trading the Markets With FOSS Software? · · Score: 1

    A bloomberg terminal costs around $2000 a month. Don't know where you got the extra zero from.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_Terminal

    As for market data, try this: http://www.opentick.com/

    We do automated trading, but don't use a bloomberg terminal.. I don't think it's particularly essential. But you may need to get creative about how you source info, it depends what you are doing.

    As for "millions to get of the ground" that is total BS also. Check out:
    http://limebrokerage.com/

    (this is the same company that does limewire)

    You could probably get started on 150k. That includes investment capital (minimum 100k), servers, and subscription costs.

  14. Job in NY, using python/cython/c on linux on Trading the Markets With FOSS Software? · · Score: 1

    Job Description: Help develop real-time, network driven systems, using python/cython/c.

    You will be working with a small team of programmers, network engineers
    and traders, to develop a lightning fast trading platform.

    Experience in one or more of the following is desirable:
      * real-time systems, real-time memory management
      * network programming, network protocols
      * distributed computing
      * gui programming, rpc

    Experience in the following is helpful but not essential:
      * financial protocols
      * experience trading equities, futures or forex products

    Zone Holdings is a proprietary trading firm located at the New York Mercantile Exchange.

    E-mail contact: resumes@zonellc.com

  15. duh: thinkgeek on Christmas Shopping For Your Nephew · · Score: 1

    This rube-goldberg marble machine construction kit looks awesome!! Does anyone have a spare nephew I could borrow ?

  16. Open Source Software in Machine Learning on Open Source Math · · Score: 3, Interesting

    These guys are advocating setting up a peer-review process for open source software in machine learning. The idea is that this would encourage researchers to spend more time on the software component of the publication, and perhaps produce something that others can use aswell.
    The article is in the Journal of Machine Learning Research.

  17. losing the print statement on Guido and Bruce Eckel Discuss Python 3000 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My main problem with python 3.0 is the loss of the print statement! I have pestered Guido about it (including booing his talk on python3000 at europython this year) and, he said "well i brought this up last year and nobody seemed to object" and then to me personally "well no other language has a print statement".. I think the dumb simplicity of python's print statement is one of my favourite python things. It makes the language friendly (and I am a pepper-print debugger). As Mr. Hettinger says "you can't break 'hello world!'".

    I also think, more generally, that people are in for a world of pain, converting to python 3000. There needs to be tools that are %100 reliable that can convert code from 2.6->3.0. Otherwise, there will just be too much code mass, and it will take a long long time for 3.0 to be accepted. Such a stall is bad news for an OSS project.

    Simon.

  18. Re:A lot of good "Linux" IDEs exist on Linux Programmer's Toolbox · · Score: 1

    Bravo! What more is there to say ?

  19. Tau Zero on Scientifically Accurate Sci-Fi for High-Schoolers? · · Score: 1

    Very exciting SF book that uses relativistic time/length contraction. Mind-blowing.
    Simon.

  20. Adobe's Adam and Eve on Software Engineering of GUI Programming? · · Score: 1

    This looks really interesting: Adam and Eve
    Has Anyone tried it out ?
    It looks like they take the approach of using a domain specific language for building the GUI.

    Simon.

  21. Re:Would an easier idea be... on Hardware for Homebrew Motion Capture? · · Score: 1

    No cameras. Use accelerometers. Lots of them (20-40?). I guess this is a bit of a research project, but a small prototype (eg. one arm) would not cost much. Accelerometers are surprisingly accurate. However this would require some reasonably clever physics algorithms to recover body position (eg. gravity provides a constant 1g downwards acceleration).

    Simon.

  22. Re:Try a laptop mouse on Ergonomic Mice Reviewed · · Score: 1

    the smaller the better.

    Dude, This is such a common misconception! RSI is a problem with the fine motor control; it's the small muscles that become damaged. So in fact: the bigger the better.

    Having said that, every RSI sufferer is different; injuries can happen in the strangest places, even having seemingly nothing to do with the muscles involved. eg. getting problems in the hip or leg muscles from using a computer. But even in that example it's more the fine layer of muscles that are effected and become inflamed.

    I speak from many years of experience :)

    Simon.

  23. Make your own on Ergonomic Mice Reviewed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For less than $20 I modded a cheap mouse so that I can have one of these "vertical" mice at home. It's a lot cheaper than the 3M model. Also you can adjust it to fit your hand exactly.

    Simon.

  24. Time Machine on Geeky Gadgets for Halloween Parties? · · Score: 5, Interesting


    Get a strobe onto some dripping milk. When the strobe is flicking at the same frequency as the driping it looks like the drops are suspended in time. Adjust the strobe frequency and you can watch the splashes form back into droplets and move back up into the spout they came from. I built something like this at a party once, in a darkened room, it was a big hit. Called it a "time machine".

    Simon.

  25. Re:Pretty Damn Impressive on The New C Standard · · Score: 1

    Yes, it seems most of slashdot has missed the point, yet again.

    This book is a whopper, and a boon to free C-language tool-writers like me (the C standard itself is a reasonably pricey document).

    Simon.