Supposedly, people who invest into stock bubbles at some point mostly know that it is going to crash, but they just
think that they can sell to a greater fool and get out in time. These investments tend not to end well.
These pump and dump scams also sound like a greater fool theory, for everyone except for the spammers. I think you would be a fool to invest in
a pump and dump stock.
Now, what if you were the founder of one of these companies ? That might be a tough choice. Sell, and risk investigation by the SEC, or hold tight, and loose what might be your last chance to
benefit from your start-up.
I think that the article is overdramatic, and maybe a bit of self-promoting.
According to
ALexa
(look at Reach), they dropped by roughly a factor of 2 to 3, from 100 to 150 per million, depending on the base period chosen, to
about 50 per million. A factor of three variation in site traffic over a few weeks is large, but it's not the end of the world.
and if I was Chairman of his board he would be fired.
Nevermind how much Peter Jackson was paid - how much did he make for them ? Yes, I am
sure he can be replaced - after all, movies of the quality and popularity of LOTR are so common.
My guess is that they will introduce Indy Jr. He can do the running and romancing while Harrison and Sean sit and
reminisce (and, maybe, save the day with their superior wisdom).
To stop SPAM, make the sellers of the SPAM payload legally responsible, start putting them in jail or fining them, and I think it would mostly stop. The tidal wave of SPAM we see now is a commerical enterprise - spammers are selling something for someone, and that someone has a bank account. Attack those bank accounts, and I think SPAM would go down by orders of magnitude.
If you want to do your part, stop running Windows, for pete's sake. All of those botnets are Windows machines.
I think that there should be an open commercial ID (maybe a frame with certain properties, like a specific color or shade of grey - it
should be very easy to pick out.
If there was one, we
(AmericaFree.TV) would use it, and I suspect other Internet television broadcasters would too. Why ? Because in the long run commercials
(as opposed to product placements, sponsored events, etc.) will only work if people want to receive them, and because
people will just fast forward through them anyway.
This was the problem with hovercraft (as a replacement for cars - I remember articles
from 40 years ago claiming that roads would soon be obsolete).
Precise steering is tough, and emergency stopping is really tough, if all you have is thrust from a fan.
Not so bad if you are crossing a lake or the Channel, bad if you want to use it in traffic.
I think that the large market share for Microsoft arose basically because of fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of the different is how it got started - that's why the IBM PC got such a large market share. Microsoft just rode on IBM's coat-tails.
Now, although IBM has faded in this market, the MS OS has continued its market lead primarily, I think, both through the fear of being different and the convenience of sticking with a known quantity. But, at the present, I think the situation is meta-stable. (In 1980, IBM mainframes were as dominant in computing as Windows is now, and I can remember being involved in frequent "it is useless to struggle" arguments about IBM then, which gives me a smile when people make the exact same arguments about Windows today.)
I think that Microsoft is unnecessary, and have never used it (except for MS Office on my Mac).
I run a Mac / Linux shop, and the amount of crap I don't have to deal with is astounding.
That other people chose differently is not really my concern; although I will note that I generally
don't find their reasons for doing so to be convincing.
I fly at least weekly; it's not random. Although at least flying open jaw no longer is an automatic SSSS.
What it curious to me is that being "random" is supposed to make it OK. I don't get this. It's
either good or bad; being random is irrelevant. I would rather they just say I match certain factors used in screening...
The Russian / Verona one time pads were generated by Secretaries typing on typewriters, and so were not entirely random. For example, the British found that a number on the pad from the range [1-5] was more than 50% likely to be followed by one from the range [6-0]. I wonder if there were not more breaks in these codes than have been reported.
Multicast has developed to the point where there is little doubt that one service model, Single Source Multicast
(SSM, explained further at the Multicast FAQ file) could serve
unlimited numbers of receivers with a stream, even in the commodity Internet. And Multicast is powering most new
IPTV deployments - see the U Wisconsin DATN for a cool example. BUT, content
providers do not want to supply their content with global SSM multicast, and there is no strong demand yet for sourcing niche video channels. (Existing deployments use multicast to get from a local POP to the user, but do not allow multicasts in from outside.)
BTW, 3GPP MBMS and 3GPP2 BCMCS now allow for true multicast to wireless phones, but there is as yet little use of it.
The BBC is trying to change this with their Multicast trials, and I think it almost inevitable that multicast channels will be allowed into the "walled gardens," but end users are only likely to get this
ability if there is strong customer demand for it.
Note, BTW, that multicast in practice won't help an ISP that has severely underprovisioned their edge circuits, at least if there is a typical distribution of channels being watched.
There were pressures on the flight schedule, but none of any recognizable political origin.
BS. I worked at NASA at the time, and I knew that there were politcal pressures on the flight schedule before the launch.
One thing that he conveniently doesn't mention is that the State of the Union address was that night. It is a
fact that Reagan wanted to salute the first teacher in space. That was common knowledge. Only an idiot would think that the NASA higher-ups would not feel pressure to launch in those circumstances. (I never heard of any plans to link the flight crew to the speach, which I cannot recall being done for any SOTU with anyone; this sounds like a straw man to me).
What I will give him is that I personally doubt that this pressure took the form of the White House calling up Houston. (There is certainly no evidence of that.) But they didn't have to.
Not true, or not exactly. They are sold that way (to prevent third party damage). However, if you follow the The Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University paper trail ( a worse bunch of pseudo-scientific hacks would be hard to find), the actual reason is to get people to stop smoking, by making it more inconvenient. A prediction of this is what actually drives the statistics of claimed benefits, by a factor of 100 to 1000 to 1.
Oh, and in this country, the lawyers have prevented any real work on safer cigarettes since the 1960's, as that is viewed as an admission of negligance.
This could really hurt conference proceedings, which may only have one or two really worthwhile new papers.
If you can buy those separately, why spend $ 120 for the full book ?
I don't think they'll ever get there. I would argue that the exponential increase of information and Google's indexing are both paced by Moore's law. As Google's indexing ability increases, the amount of information created will also increase, at least as fast, and probably faster. Unless you believe (and, who knows, the Googlites might, and that may be where the 300 years comes from) that Google will expand to fill the human universe, then Google will be able to keep up, never really get ahead.
I distinctly remember a lecture by Feynman at Caltech in the early 1980's where he talked about negative information (probability). I am sure I still have notes for it somewhere. Of course, you can never see negative information; any actual measurement has to have positive probility. But it can give quantum interference effects in measured quantities.
Feynman presented it as just a different way of having quantum interference, from negative probability instead of complex amplitudes.
Slashdot Mirror
Supposedly, people who invest into stock bubbles at some point mostly know that it is going to crash, but they just think that they can sell to a greater fool and get out in time. These investments tend not to end well.
These pump and dump scams also sound like a greater fool theory, for everyone except for the spammers. I think you would be a fool to invest in a pump and dump stock.
Now, what if you were the founder of one of these companies ? That might be a tough choice. Sell, and risk investigation by the SEC, or hold tight, and loose what might be your last chance to benefit from your start-up.
I think that the article is overdramatic, and maybe a bit of self-promoting.
According to ALexa (look at Reach), they dropped by roughly a factor of 2 to 3, from 100 to 150 per million, depending on the base period chosen, to about 50 per million. A factor of three variation in site traffic over a few weeks is large, but it's not the end of the world.
and if I was Chairman of his board he would be fired.
Nevermind how much Peter Jackson was paid - how much did he make for them ? Yes, I am sure he can be replaced - after all, movies of the quality and popularity of LOTR are so common.
I had a job cleaning pools when I was a kid. I would worry about algae and other slime. It grows everywhere and needs to be cleaned out regularly.
My guess is that they will introduce Indy Jr. He can do the running and romancing while Harrison and Sean sit and reminisce (and, maybe, save the day with their superior wisdom).
In other words (if it works) New Franchise!
And neither is any job.
I find it very hard to respect anyone who submits to random drug tests.
To stop SPAM, make the sellers of the SPAM payload legally responsible, start putting them in jail or fining them, and I think it would mostly stop. The tidal wave of SPAM we see now is a commerical enterprise - spammers are selling something for someone, and that someone has a bank account. Attack those bank accounts, and I think SPAM would go down by orders of magnitude.
If you want to do your part, stop running Windows, for pete's sake. All of those botnets are Windows machines.
I think that there should be an open commercial ID (maybe a frame with certain properties, like a specific color or shade of grey - it should be very easy to pick out.
If there was one, we (AmericaFree.TV) would use it, and I suspect other Internet television broadcasters would too. Why ? Because in the long run commercials (as opposed to product placements, sponsored events, etc.) will only work if people want to receive them, and because people will just fast forward through them anyway.
In much of Europe they distinguish between "English" and "American" as spoken tongues - you can study either.
Makes a lot of sense to me, actually. If you don't speak a language well, it can be hard to understand a dialect.
as I understand that 10/10 is the equivalent for them.
... but is from a March, 2005 article in Science magazine. Interesting, but still kind of old news here...
This was the problem with hovercraft (as a replacement for cars - I remember articles from 40 years ago claiming that roads would soon be obsolete). Precise steering is tough, and emergency stopping is really tough, if all you have is thrust from a fan. Not so bad if you are crossing a lake or the Channel, bad if you want to use it in traffic.
Cool. He sounds like my kind of guy.
I think that the large market share for Microsoft arose basically because of fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of the different is how it got started - that's why the IBM PC got such a large market share. Microsoft just rode on IBM's coat-tails.
Now, although IBM has faded in this market, the MS OS has continued its market lead primarily, I think, both through the fear of being different and the convenience of sticking with a known quantity. But, at the present, I think the situation is meta-stable. (In 1980, IBM mainframes were as dominant in computing as Windows is now, and I can remember being involved in frequent "it is useless to struggle" arguments about IBM then, which gives me a smile when people make the exact same arguments about Windows today.)
I think that Microsoft is unnecessary, and have never used it (except for MS Office on my Mac).
I run a Mac / Linux shop, and the amount of crap I don't have to deal with is astounding. That other people chose differently is not really my concern; although I will note that I generally don't find their reasons for doing so to be convincing.
Well, you asked what I think.
I fly at least weekly; it's not random. Although at least flying open jaw no longer is an automatic SSSS.
What it curious to me is that being "random" is supposed to make it OK. I don't get this. It's either good or bad; being random is irrelevant. I would rather they just say I match certain factors used in screening...
The Russian / Verona one time pads were generated by Secretaries typing on typewriters, and so were not entirely random. For example, the British found that a number on the pad from the range [1-5] was more than 50% likely to be followed by one from the range [6-0]. I wonder if there were not more breaks in these codes than have been reported.
True and not true.
Multicast has developed to the point where there is little doubt that one service model, Single Source Multicast (SSM, explained further at the Multicast FAQ file) could serve unlimited numbers of receivers with a stream, even in the commodity Internet. And Multicast is powering most new IPTV deployments - see the U Wisconsin DATN for a cool example. BUT, content providers do not want to supply their content with global SSM multicast, and there is no strong demand yet for sourcing niche video channels. (Existing deployments use multicast to get from a local POP to the user, but do not allow multicasts in from outside.)
BTW, 3GPP MBMS and 3GPP2 BCMCS now allow for true multicast to wireless phones, but there is as yet little use of it.
The BBC is trying to change this with their Multicast trials, and I think it almost inevitable that multicast channels will be allowed into the "walled gardens," but end users are only likely to get this ability if there is strong customer demand for it.
Note, BTW, that multicast in practice won't help an ISP that has severely underprovisioned their edge circuits, at least if there is a typical distribution of channels being watched.
the Constitution and the Bill of Rights only apply to technologies present in 1789.
All the leading justices say so.
I take exception to this one
There were pressures on the flight schedule, but none of any recognizable political origin.
BS. I worked at NASA at the time, and I knew that there were politcal pressures on the flight schedule before the launch. One thing that he conveniently doesn't mention is that the State of the Union address was that night. It is a fact that Reagan wanted to salute the first teacher in space. That was common knowledge. Only an idiot would think that the NASA higher-ups would not feel pressure to launch in those circumstances. (I never heard of any plans to link the flight crew to the speach, which I cannot recall being done for any SOTU with anyone; this sounds like a straw man to me).
What I will give him is that I personally doubt that this pressure took the form of the White House calling up Houston. (There is certainly no evidence of that.) But they didn't have to.
If Apple donates, say, $2.1 million, I suspect that OS X would be made available.
I also suspect that this may be part of the, ah, negotiations around such a donation.
Still, on its face, it's a cool offer.
Not true, or not exactly. They are sold that way (to prevent third party damage). However, if you follow the The Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University paper trail ( a worse bunch of pseudo-scientific hacks would be hard to find), the actual reason is to get people to stop smoking, by making it more inconvenient. A prediction of this is what actually drives the statistics of claimed benefits, by a factor of 100 to 1000 to 1.
Oh, and in this country, the lawyers have prevented any real work on safer cigarettes since the 1960's, as that is viewed as an admission of negligance.
This could really hurt conference proceedings, which may only have one or two really worthwhile new papers. If you can buy those separately, why spend $ 120 for the full book ?
I don't think they'll ever get there. I would argue that the exponential increase of information and Google's indexing are both paced by Moore's law. As Google's indexing ability increases, the amount of information created will also increase, at least as fast, and probably faster. Unless you believe (and, who knows, the Googlites might, and that may be where the 300 years comes from) that Google will expand to fill the human universe, then Google will be able to keep up, never really get ahead.
I distinctly remember a lecture by Feynman at Caltech in the early 1980's where he talked about negative information (probability). I am sure I still have notes for it somewhere. Of course, you can never see negative information; any actual measurement has to have positive probility. But it can give quantum interference effects in measured quantities.
Feynman presented it as just a different way of having quantum interference, from negative probability instead of complex amplitudes.