They do think before they pass the laws. The problem is, their goals are rarely ever include what is best for the citizens living in the country/state/city. I would love to corner a senator and ask: "Do you really think dialing a phone number is any more distracting than setting fire to something sticking out of one's mouth?"
The thing is, if they pass a law banning handset use by the driver, you cannot have it struck down by saying there are other more dangerous activities that aren't banned.
Well, the value of the option is completely independent of the expected return on the stock. The option is an insurance policy, and its value depends almost entirely on the volatility of the stock price, the prevailing interest rate on the 90 day T-bill, the strike price of the option (i.e., how much it costs to exercise one option) and the current price of the stock.
This was the crux of the work of Black and Scholes (and Merton) for which a Nobel Prize was awarded in economics.
Basically, options are insurance policies because instead of you having to lay out the money now to buy 1,000 shares, the company basically does. The company assumes all the risk, and as the expiration date nears, if the option is still underwater (i.e., the value of the stock is worth less than the strike price), then you lose nothing. On the other hand, if the option is above water, you gain (potentially a lot) risk free.
Also, the executives (i.e., decision-makers) have substantially greater stock exposure than the lower ranking employees. They have actual stock, and lots and lots of options (both qualified and non-qualified ISOs). If they start "printing more stock" then they will immediately have a significant negative impact on their own wealth. Furthermore, their options (i.e., future wealth) will be significantly reduced.
Finally, there are two main reasons why options are becoming rarer. First of all, they have lost their appeal as a means of buying loyalty since the stock bubble of the late 90's burst. Second, the FASB is now requiring all publicly held companies to include their ISOs (incentive stock options) on their balance sheet. This directly effects the company's bottom line and more easily translates (negatively) into the stock price.
Note: privately held companies do not have to adhere to the FASB policy, so in theory this could give a slight edge to smaller companies looking to hire qualified people.
Is it possible that an otherwise healthy brain runs out of space for memories after, say, 300 years worth? Then, since natural selection never had to deal with this problem, maybe we wouldn't be able to influence which memories get "over-written", or maybe we would be unable to commit any memories to our long-term memory.
Do they think you won't do it? No. But burning the CD once and copying it arbitrarily many times is something you would with or without iTunes. And maybe, just maybe, you will buy more stuff through the iTunes distribution channel than other channels.
Ok, first, I am not a lawyer. However, I recently paid a lawyer a decent sum of money to correct a credit card company's mistake. In my case, I could not (in any easy way) prove criminal fraud, and the best I could have hoped for was negligence, and that was not easy to prove.
Anyway, the problem I had was that in order to sue the credit card company, I had to prove I was wronged and that was hard to do because their mistake had not cost me any money (legal expenses don't count unless there is a criminal statute involved).
From my experience, the best thing to do is to try to call the credit card company and get them to cancel the card and remove your name from their telemarketing lists. If they do not cooperate, get a lawyer to write them a letter on your behalf quoting any consumer protection law that applies. This will probably cost you a few hundred dollars, but usually it will scare the credit card company into doing the right thing.
If that doesn't work, then you have a lawyer to give you any further advice.
Also, remember that Law != Logic. Just because you are right, do not expect that you will win (easily, at least).
First off, I am an MIT alumnus, so there may be some biases.
That aside, I now teach at another university. I find the OCW material extremely helpful because I can use some of it as supplemental material in my class. For example, if I teach a class that requires linear algebra as a prerequisite, then I can refer any students who are rusty to the wonderful, indexed lecture videos that are available online in OCW (18.06 is the course).
Also, it is a two-way street. If I find that there is a particularly effective method for teaching or demonstrating a concept, I can share it with the OCW people. It goes without saying in this forum that the "Open" part of OCW can be a very good way of developing an effective curriculum. In this particular case, MIT is acting like the benign dictator.
The EECS department is bigger than the entire school of engineering at many other schools. They have the resources to be very broad in their definition of "EECS".
is that they will become smart and read the "lift latch to open" sign on their cages. Then there will be a little paw sticking out of a cage and opening it. Next thing you know, you'll have a race of intelligent rats and mice living in your rose bush stealing electricity from your house, causing all kinds of trouble for you and your cat Dragon. It's all prophesized here.
Aren't there things one can do to prevent them from using the IDs to track you? For example, after the cashier takes your cash and hands you your merchandise, stick it in your own bag with a built-in Faraday cage to block the signal.
I know that sounds kind of far fetched, but aren't there steps that can be taken to effectively neutralize any threats to privacy resulting from RFID tags? Don't you think it would be fun for some big chain to throw lots of money into some technology like that to find that it can be trivialized easily by customers exercising their rights.
Interesting yet irrelevant math exercise
on
Making Change
·
· Score: 1
Doesn't this solution assume that people's spending habits as well as the cost of vending machine goods is relatively static? I remember $0.25 sodas. Also, there is a feedback loop between denomination and the cost of a bottle of soda. Perhaps the optimal cost is $1.07 for a bottle, but the loss in efficiency is too much to be balanced by the $0.07, so they just charge $1.
There are a lot of reasons why this is an interesting mathematical exercise, but really nothing more.
To me, this appears to be a specific instance of a general phenomenon. Throughout literature, you see examples of a few visionaries pushing ahead of society and forming something utopian (whether it be a new society or something on a much smaller scale). Then, when this new advance becomes available to the general public, control is wrestled from the hands of the creators and given to the uninformed public. All of the vices that inevitably seem to be a part of human nature show themselves when such a large population sample is considered, and these vices are the downfall of the innovation.
This happens in the Rama series, when the humans wage war against the octospiders. This happens in Brave New World, as well as in Red/Green/Blue Mars. There must be a tremendous number of examples, and not nearly as many counter-examples.
When (if) the internet ceases to be what it was intended to be, will the creators "leave" and "colonize" somewhere else? If this cycle is an unavoidable result of mankind's shortcomings, why bother to continue to innovate?
I am sorry about the pessimistic tone. The above questions are not intended to be rhetorical, and I hope there are optimistic answers to them.
I had the distinct pleasure of taking a class taught by Minsky (as well as another course taught by Rod Brooks). Although Minsky's class was a survey-type class on his book The Society of Mind, he never missed an opportunity to stand on a soap box. One quote I remembered in particular was as follows:
"There is a lot of work to do in applied science if you don't mind that what you do doesn't matter."
As an applied mathematician, I found that a bit disagreeable, but after finishing graduate school I developed a greater respect for the balance and interdependence between applied and pure science.
What about the issues of privacy of personal medical data? This is particularly timely, due to the law recently passed (in the US). If my child were genetically modified to cure some disease such as hemophilia, no one could legally have access to that information (within the US). Therefore if his high school decided to prohibit him from playing on the basketball team, they would have to cite a reason other than the GM info. Otherwise, I'd press charges and people would go to jail.
I am not so naive to think that GM people would not face a glass ceiling in the workforce, where it is easy to justify not promoting or not hiring someone with other reasons. However, I think if given the choice of having childhood diabetes but no glass ceiling (if I make it to adulthood) or being healthy and having to live with a glass ceiling, I'd take the latter.
However, that would be a personal choice and I would respect the rights of others to reach their own conclusions about their own situations.
If they were mailing and calling him with political or commercial requests, they probably cannot be stopped
In that case, I would like to announce the founding of a new political party called "The Right to a Quiet Uninterrupted Dinner at Home" party. Our party platform consists of two items: the criminalization of unsolicitied phone calls, mail and email, and the creation of a federal opt-in list with harsh criminal (i.e., jail time) penalties for violation.
Now any member of my party can call his home to "campaign" for our political cause.
6n (not prime of course)
6n+1
6n+2 (not prime of course)
6n+3 (not prime of course)
6n+4 (not prime of course)
6n+5
Do you mean for all integers n = 1, 2, 3,... or do you start at zero? Either way, what about the number 3? If you start at n=0, then 6n+3 = 3, but you claim that 6n+3 is "not prime of course," so your claims need to be checked more carefully.
However, I agree with the overall point of your post.
I think there really should be a criminal penalty for attempting to patent something for which you know prior art exists. A common sense standard could be applied. People get convicted of criminal negligence because they did something (or failed to not do something) that was contrary to common sense and as a result hurt someone. Applying for a patent that you are pretty sure you will get (even though anyone with any common sense knows prior art exists) because the PTO is overwhelmed and you have lots of money should be criminal negligence. Put Bezos in jail (general lockup) for 3 days and see how many more bogus patents he applies for in the future. Use the fines he pays to help fund the PTO.
I think a lot hinges on your interpretation of what a grade should mean. For instance, should a C mean an average performance compared to other students in the class, or some more absolute scale?
Certainly, if you consider an absolute scale, I don't think that "skewed" grade distributions are statistical anomolies. Given 10 semesters (and hence 10 grade distributions), you should expect that some of them are going to be top heavy, and some are going to be bottom heavy.
It would be unfair to grade relative to the others in a particular class. Especially when you consider situations like the following. At MIT, most sophomores take 18.03 (Diff eq) in the fall semester. Those who take it in the spring tend to do so because they either failed it in the fall, or struggled with prereqs. There are also some very bright freshmen who take it in the spring. Thus, the ability distribution in the fall and spring classes could be quite different. Why should they be graded only relative to the others in the class that semester?
Unfortunately, grading on an absolute scale tends to lead to grade inflation.
Non-exclusive transfer of copyright is not unheard of in the world of peer-reviewed journals. Personally, I am an applied mathematician, and I (and many colleagues) have had articles published in the SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) journals. They have a simple non-exclusive transfer of copyright that allows the authors to retain all their copyright priviledges, including the right to make your work publicly available. Furthermore, the SIAM people provide editing services, and send you back the LaTeX source for the final draft, which you can then compile (to pdf, ps, dvi, etc) and post on your web site.
Of course, SIAM is a nonprofit research and teaching professional organization. All journals are peer-reviewed, at very little cost to the society. However, since I completed my Ph. D., I have been strongly considering refusing to submit my original research to any journals that do not offer similar non-exclusive copyright transfers. While I was working on my Ph. D., my advisor had a great deal of say as to which journals we submitted.
It may seem like an obvious thing to do (i.e., submit to an "open" peer-reviewed journal). However, most young researchers are looking for tenure, and get tenure (at predominantly research oriented schools) by having many of their articles published in top-tier journals. Unfortunately, this openness is rare among the top-tier journals. (SIAM is an exception.)
Are you kidding me? REITs tend to make a fairly steady 5-10% a year.
If you expect that REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) are going to continue to make a healthy profit, then you have learned nothing from the equities phenomenon in the late 90's.
Here's a news flash to the AC. Interest rates cannot go much lower. There is only one direction they can go, and that is up. When interest rates go up (particularly the yields on the 10 year treasury), mortgage rates (commercial and personal) will go up. When mortgage rates go up, the demand in the real estate market will go down, and so, too, will the return on your REITs.
Common sense has to tell you that it is not reasonable to expect REITs to continue to perform this well. If the case were otherwise, then everyone (including some very very smart people) would be soley invested in REITs.
I will reiterate. There are no short-term investments that will give you a reliable, consistent 5-10% annual profit. Yes, you might be able to get 5% on a long-term treasury, but not on a short-term one.
So, when Big Media says "We should be making a 5-10% profit, but we aren't. It must be because of file swapping and those pesky fair-use people," they are completely wrong.
Well, the idea of complete mutual accountability does seem to be an interesting social paradigm. Arthur C. Clarke and Steven Baxter discuss this in The Light of Other Days. I'd argue that we are in a transition period from an era of Big Media, where the means are in the hands of a few large media corporations to an era in which every individual has the same means. I think the latter is good because coruption and other wrongdoing would be mitigated moreso than today.
If you produce a product, and you don't make a small profit... why woudl you produce the product? I mean ford wouldn't build cars if they didn't make money on them. Why should Hollywood make movies if they lose money on them? When you produce a product for which there is a demand, then expecting to make money on it is more than reasonable.
Are you suggesting that the only way for hollywood to be noble, good citizen is to produce movies that they won't make any money on? That they should give their product away for free... I mean come on, be serious. We aren't IN SOVIET RUSSIA you know.
There are two points I am trying to make. First, in the current business/economic environment, a 5-10% return on any investment is very good. Second, one should not ever expect (i.e., no risk of falling short) to make a very good return.
Effectively, the RIAA/MPAA is saying "We are entitled to a profit. If we aren't making one, it must be someone else's fault. We need the government to help us get the profit to which we are entitled."
It is quite reasonable for the RIAA/MPAA to expect to have the right to attempt to earn a 5-10% profit. However, they have no entitlement to a profit.
As has been pointed out in this discussion, if you are already boycotting the MPAA/RIAA (or any other anit-geek evil entity), your opinion doesn't count to them. They have written you off. To a certain extent, most geeks have been marginalized by Big Media.
However, you could attempt to educate the less-enlightened about the evils of Big Media, Microsoft, or your favorite evil empire. But, do so calmly and logically. Frothing at the mouth about not being allowed to download music for free is only going to get a reasonable person to doubt your cause or intent. And, above all, don't be condescending.
If there were a serious, organized effort put forth to educate the mainstream about such things, you would really get the attention of Big Media.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing is, if they pass a law banning handset use by the driver, you cannot have it struck down by saying there are other more dangerous activities that aren't banned.
Unless you twist it once and reattach the two ends to form a Mobius strip. Then it only has one side, which is both light and dark!
This was the crux of the work of Black and Scholes (and Merton) for which a Nobel Prize was awarded in economics.
Basically, options are insurance policies because instead of you having to lay out the money now to buy 1,000 shares, the company basically does. The company assumes all the risk, and as the expiration date nears, if the option is still underwater (i.e., the value of the stock is worth less than the strike price), then you lose nothing. On the other hand, if the option is above water, you gain (potentially a lot) risk free.
Finally, there are two main reasons why options are becoming rarer. First of all, they have lost their appeal as a means of buying loyalty since the stock bubble of the late 90's burst. Second, the FASB is now requiring all publicly held companies to include their ISOs (incentive stock options) on their balance sheet. This directly effects the company's bottom line and more easily translates (negatively) into the stock price.
Note: privately held companies do not have to adhere to the FASB policy, so in theory this could give a slight edge to smaller companies looking to hire qualified people.
Kim Stanley Robinson deals with this a little bit in the Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy.
Do they think you won't do it? No. But burning the CD once and copying it arbitrarily many times is something you would with or without iTunes. And maybe, just maybe, you will buy more stuff through the iTunes distribution channel than other channels.
I don't think DRM is the purpose of iTunes.
Anyway, the problem I had was that in order to sue the credit card company, I had to prove I was wronged and that was hard to do because their mistake had not cost me any money (legal expenses don't count unless there is a criminal statute involved).
From my experience, the best thing to do is to try to call the credit card company and get them to cancel the card and remove your name from their telemarketing lists. If they do not cooperate, get a lawyer to write them a letter on your behalf quoting any consumer protection law that applies. This will probably cost you a few hundred dollars, but usually it will scare the credit card company into doing the right thing.
If that doesn't work, then you have a lawyer to give you any further advice.
Also, remember that Law != Logic. Just because you are right, do not expect that you will win (easily, at least).
That aside, I now teach at another university. I find the OCW material extremely helpful because I can use some of it as supplemental material in my class. For example, if I teach a class that requires linear algebra as a prerequisite, then I can refer any students who are rusty to the wonderful, indexed lecture videos that are available online in OCW (18.06 is the course).
Also, it is a two-way street. If I find that there is a particularly effective method for teaching or demonstrating a concept, I can share it with the OCW people. It goes without saying in this forum that the "Open" part of OCW can be a very good way of developing an effective curriculum. In this particular case, MIT is acting like the benign dictator.
The EECS department is bigger than the entire school of engineering at many other schools. They have the resources to be very broad in their definition of "EECS".
is that they will become smart and read the "lift latch to open" sign on their cages. Then there will be a little paw sticking out of a cage and opening it. Next thing you know, you'll have a race of intelligent rats and mice living in your rose bush stealing electricity from your house, causing all kinds of trouble for you and your cat Dragon. It's all prophesized here.
I know that sounds kind of far fetched, but aren't there steps that can be taken to effectively neutralize any threats to privacy resulting from RFID tags? Don't you think it would be fun for some big chain to throw lots of money into some technology like that to find that it can be trivialized easily by customers exercising their rights.
There are a lot of reasons why this is an interesting mathematical exercise, but really nothing more.
This happens in the Rama series, when the humans wage war against the octospiders. This happens in Brave New World, as well as in Red/Green/Blue Mars. There must be a tremendous number of examples, and not nearly as many counter-examples.
When (if) the internet ceases to be what it was intended to be, will the creators "leave" and "colonize" somewhere else? If this cycle is an unavoidable result of mankind's shortcomings, why bother to continue to innovate?
I am sorry about the pessimistic tone. The above questions are not intended to be rhetorical, and I hope there are optimistic answers to them.
"There is a lot of work to do in applied science if you don't mind that what you do doesn't matter."
As an applied mathematician, I found that a bit disagreeable, but after finishing graduate school I developed a greater respect for the balance and interdependence between applied and pure science.
I am not so naive to think that GM people would not face a glass ceiling in the workforce, where it is easy to justify not promoting or not hiring someone with other reasons. However, I think if given the choice of having childhood diabetes but no glass ceiling (if I make it to adulthood) or being healthy and having to live with a glass ceiling, I'd take the latter.
However, that would be a personal choice and I would respect the rights of others to reach their own conclusions about their own situations.
In that case, I would like to announce the founding of a new political party called "The Right to a Quiet Uninterrupted Dinner at Home" party. Our party platform consists of two items: the criminalization of unsolicitied phone calls, mail and email, and the creation of a federal opt-in list with harsh criminal (i.e., jail time) penalties for violation.
Now any member of my party can call his home to "campaign" for our political cause.
6n (not prime of course)
6n+1
6n+2 (not prime of course)
6n+3 (not prime of course)
6n+4 (not prime of course)
6n+5
Do you mean for all integers n = 1, 2, 3, ... or do you start at zero? Either way, what about the number 3? If you start at n=0, then 6n+3 = 3, but you claim that 6n+3 is "not prime of course," so your claims need to be checked more carefully.
However, I agree with the overall point of your post.
I think there really should be a criminal penalty for attempting to patent something for which you know prior art exists. A common sense standard could be applied. People get convicted of criminal negligence because they did something (or failed to not do something) that was contrary to common sense and as a result hurt someone. Applying for a patent that you are pretty sure you will get (even though anyone with any common sense knows prior art exists) because the PTO is overwhelmed and you have lots of money should be criminal negligence. Put Bezos in jail (general lockup) for 3 days and see how many more bogus patents he applies for in the future. Use the fines he pays to help fund the PTO.
Are they going to patent the /. effect?
Certainly, if you consider an absolute scale, I don't think that "skewed" grade distributions are statistical anomolies. Given 10 semesters (and hence 10 grade distributions), you should expect that some of them are going to be top heavy, and some are going to be bottom heavy.
It would be unfair to grade relative to the others in a particular class. Especially when you consider situations like the following. At MIT, most sophomores take 18.03 (Diff eq) in the fall semester. Those who take it in the spring tend to do so because they either failed it in the fall, or struggled with prereqs. There are also some very bright freshmen who take it in the spring. Thus, the ability distribution in the fall and spring classes could be quite different. Why should they be graded only relative to the others in the class that semester?
Unfortunately, grading on an absolute scale tends to lead to grade inflation.
Of course, SIAM is a nonprofit research and teaching professional organization. All journals are peer-reviewed, at very little cost to the society. However, since I completed my Ph. D., I have been strongly considering refusing to submit my original research to any journals that do not offer similar non-exclusive copyright transfers. While I was working on my Ph. D., my advisor had a great deal of say as to which journals we submitted.
It may seem like an obvious thing to do (i.e., submit to an "open" peer-reviewed journal). However, most young researchers are looking for tenure, and get tenure (at predominantly research oriented schools) by having many of their articles published in top-tier journals. Unfortunately, this openness is rare among the top-tier journals. (SIAM is an exception.)
If you expect that REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) are going to continue to make a healthy profit, then you have learned nothing from the equities phenomenon in the late 90's.
Here's a news flash to the AC. Interest rates cannot go much lower. There is only one direction they can go, and that is up. When interest rates go up (particularly the yields on the 10 year treasury), mortgage rates (commercial and personal) will go up. When mortgage rates go up, the demand in the real estate market will go down, and so, too, will the return on your REITs.
Common sense has to tell you that it is not reasonable to expect REITs to continue to perform this well. If the case were otherwise, then everyone (including some very very smart people) would be soley invested in REITs.
I will reiterate. There are no short-term investments that will give you a reliable, consistent 5-10% annual profit. Yes, you might be able to get 5% on a long-term treasury, but not on a short-term one.
So, when Big Media says "We should be making a 5-10% profit, but we aren't. It must be because of file swapping and those pesky fair-use people," they are completely wrong.
Well, the idea of complete mutual accountability does seem to be an interesting social paradigm. Arthur C. Clarke and Steven Baxter discuss this in The Light of Other Days. I'd argue that we are in a transition period from an era of Big Media, where the means are in the hands of a few large media corporations to an era in which every individual has the same means. I think the latter is good because coruption and other wrongdoing would be mitigated moreso than today.
There are two points I am trying to make. First, in the current business/economic environment, a 5-10% return on any investment is very good. Second, one should not ever expect (i.e., no risk of falling short) to make a very good return.
Effectively, the RIAA/MPAA is saying "We are entitled to a profit. If we aren't making one, it must be someone else's fault. We need the government to help us get the profit to which we are entitled."
It is quite reasonable for the RIAA/MPAA to expect to have the right to attempt to earn a 5-10% profit. However, they have no entitlement to a profit.
If there were a serious, organized effort put forth to educate the mainstream about such things, you would really get the attention of Big Media.