Though arguably this is precisely the root of the problem. As the post above you mentions, many quants build their software around nonparametric statistics or statistical (machine) learning, without deeply understanding the domain.
This can lead to an over-reliance on historical data, which in turn leads to a failure to predict rare but significant events, like, say, the current crisis. Now, I'm totally unqualified to pronounce that if only we'd had more quants who richly understood finance and economics we could have avoided the worst of current events. But I'm aware that there are those who make that claim...
...and there's someone that they pay to translate phrases into Pig Latin? (a) couldn't that be done by computer, (b) how the heck do you get that job? Document your extensive travel and work experience in Pig Latin America?
They seem to be very sure that an ISP keeps accurate IP address records. Why do I feel that this will result in a semi-technical employee of the ISP pulling up who the IP Address is currently leased to?
I served on a grand jury that saw several fraud cases that involved the use of ISP IP lease records, and the employees that testified were very knowledgeable and diligent. That's not to say that they would be in every case, of course, but what direct experience I do have suggests that your concerns are misplaced.
Funny you should mention that -- I had a dream last night in which I was looking at a bookshelf, trying to find the printed edition of Wikipedia. I think I was in the jungle somewhere, or at any rate there was no Internet and no electricity. But I really wanted Wikipedia and not a regular encyclopedia, for reasons that made sense in the dream but I can't remember now...
If only this technology had been introduced in 2000 -- Enron could have announced a deal for Broadband Over Gas, immediately booked anticipated profits of $47 billion, and been saved from bankruptcy. Or maybe not.
When I'm reading through new mail, every message has one of four fates:
Deleted, if it's useless
Archived, where I can find it if I need to later
Replied to or handled, if I can do so in 2 minutes or less
Transformed into a todo -- either to do later in the day, or on a specific date -- and archived
That way I don't have to wonder, "Say, I think there was some email I was meaning to deal with, where was it, somewhere in here, was it last week?
And it's such a joy to have a perfectly empty It really is a great methodology / philosophy, and I heartily recommend it.
Of course, I'd have more cred as a gettting-things-done wizard if I weren't reading Slashdot at the moment...
Well, Parallels and VMWare are pulling it off, right? And you have to assume they're reusing plenty of code from their Windows and Linux products. Presumably, most of the hard work is in the actual virtualization engine, not the presentation UI.
How does this differ from Andrew McCallum at UMass Amherst's work on AT (Author-Topic) and ART (Author-Recipient-Topic) models? I think he uses a generative model assuming each document has a Dirichlet distribution over topics, and uses Gibbs sampling to infer the parameters. I'll have to read the paper, obviously, but some plain explanation would be useful.
cheers
The article takes this totally on the wrong tangent: the only fact at the basis of this claim is that ARDA, a government funding agency linked to the NSA, funded a couple of University professors with a grant, and those professors did a study on gleaning information from social networking sites.
Let me explain: The government gives these people money because they want to advance the state of the art in this field. These professors look around for a dataset to use, and think, "hey! stuff on MySpace is publically available, and there's lots of data. Why don't we do a study on that, and publish it in a scientific journal?"
This is like DARPA funding robotics researchers who build robots that play soccer -- followed by a headline, "US Army Building Massive Force Of Killer Soccer Robots!!!!" No, they're not; they just want robotics to be advanced, so they can take advantage of the smart stuff that these researchers dream up.
To put it plainly: These researchers are not feeding this data directly to the NSA, nor is the NSA interested in reading MySpace.
Discussing "better living conditions" without accounting for condition of servitude, violability of family ties, or community structure is a poor joke.
Innocent giant pacific octopus residing off Vancouver Island in Cascadia suffer malicious attack by remotely operated human submarine.
Octopus find nice metal box left on sea floor. Box contain valuable information revealing whereabouts of tasty salmon. Law of the ocean: Finders keepers (see: Hermit v. Fiddler, 1987).
Human submarine stealing box. Octopus protecting property. Human submarine blast octopus with mechanical siphons, rip two arms off octopus, steal box. Octopus pale with distress. Octopus demand restitution.
Human submarine operators record crime, post crime video to Internet, make false accusations, show no shame.
All octopus protest human crime. Will bite transoceanic Internet cables unless salmon information box returned to rightful octopus owner. Octopus lose salmon information, humans lose celebrity gossip.
I think that optimizes for the number of transfers (log n), but not the total distance travelled. It'd be interesting to work out the average wait to get to your floor, though.
No, I think the analogous observation is that Microsoft must be doing something right, because they've created the most popular operating system software (and probably software, period) ever. Which is true: they are doing something right. That something might be nefarious business practices and ruthless leveraging of a monopoly, but they're obviously doing a good job of it.
No feedback mechanism though, right? And nobody to go complain to when a seller (or buyer) fleeces you? Sounds like a haven for fraud, even worse than eBay...
Slashdot Mirror
Though arguably this is precisely the root of the problem. As the post above you mentions, many quants build their software around nonparametric statistics or statistical (machine) learning, without deeply understanding the domain. This can lead to an over-reliance on historical data, which in turn leads to a failure to predict rare but significant events, like, say, the current crisis. Now, I'm totally unqualified to pronounce that if only we'd had more quants who richly understood finance and economics we could have avoided the worst of current events. But I'm aware that there are those who make that claim...
I took it to mean not that 1380 is the average for the worst 25%, but that 25% of students had a score of 1380 or below.
...and there's someone that they pay to translate phrases into Pig Latin? (a) couldn't that be done by computer, (b) how the heck do you get that job? Document your extensive travel and work experience in Pig Latin America?
I served on a grand jury that saw several fraud cases that involved the use of ISP IP lease records, and the employees that testified were very knowledgeable and diligent. That's not to say that they would be in every case, of course, but what direct experience I do have suggests that your concerns are misplaced.
How can I search the iTunes Store by label? I don't have the foggiest idea who is and who is not on EMI...
It's called democracy.
Your book looks nice, but apparently some part of the toolchain scrambled all the text into some kind of indecipherable gibberish. ;)
The Mac version includes the Compressor, which otherwise sells separately for $50.
Funny you should mention that -- I had a dream last night in which I was looking at a bookshelf, trying to find the printed edition of Wikipedia. I think I was in the jungle somewhere, or at any rate there was no Internet and no electricity. But I really wanted Wikipedia and not a regular encyclopedia, for reasons that made sense in the dream but I can't remember now...
I graduated in 1999, but I'm not well-entrenched in my career, you insensitive clod! :)
I agree that Ruby makes a great learning language. Thanks for the pointer to the "Learn to Program" page -- it's quite lovely.
If only this technology had been introduced in 2000 -- Enron could have announced a deal for Broadband Over Gas, immediately booked anticipated profits of $47 billion, and been saved from bankruptcy. Or maybe not.
Ever since discovering Inbox Zero, I am a happier man.
For me, this means:
That way I don't have to wonder, "Say, I think there was some email I was meaning to deal with, where was it, somewhere in here, was it last week? And it's such a joy to have a perfectly empty It really is a great methodology / philosophy, and I heartily recommend it.
Of course, I'd have more cred as a gettting-things-done wizard if I weren't reading Slashdot at the moment...
Well, Parallels and VMWare are pulling it off, right? And you have to assume they're reusing plenty of code from their Windows and Linux products. Presumably, most of the hard work is in the actual virtualization engine, not the presentation UI.
How does this differ from Andrew McCallum at UMass Amherst's work on AT (Author-Topic) and ART (Author-Recipient-Topic) models? I think he uses a generative model assuming each document has a Dirichlet distribution over topics, and uses Gibbs sampling to infer the parameters. I'll have to read the paper, obviously, but some plain explanation would be useful. cheers
The article takes this totally on the wrong tangent: the only fact at the basis of this claim is that ARDA, a government funding agency linked to the NSA, funded a couple of University professors with a grant, and those professors did a study on gleaning information from social networking sites.
Let me explain: The government gives these people money because they want to advance the state of the art in this field. These professors look around for a dataset to use, and think, "hey! stuff on MySpace is publically available, and there's lots of data. Why don't we do a study on that, and publish it in a scientific journal?"
This is like DARPA funding robotics researchers who build robots that play soccer -- followed by a headline, "US Army Building Massive Force Of Killer Soccer Robots!!!!" No, they're not; they just want robotics to be advanced, so they can take advantage of the smart stuff that these researchers dream up.
To put it plainly: These researchers are not feeding this data directly to the NSA, nor is the NSA interested in reading MySpace.
methinks you missed the joke: every official report confirmed the findings...
Spiffy software there.
Sure there is; it's called "the center." It's where most of us are, fortunately.
Discussing "better living conditions" without accounting for condition of servitude, violability of family ties, or community structure is a poor joke.
I think that optimizes for the number of transfers (log n), but not the total distance travelled. It'd be interesting to work out the average wait to get to your floor, though.
No, I think the analogous observation is that Microsoft must be doing something right, because they've created the most popular operating system software (and probably software, period) ever. Which is true: they are doing something right. That something might be nefarious business practices and ruthless leveraging of a monopoly, but they're obviously doing a good job of it.
No feedback mechanism though, right? And nobody to go complain to when a seller (or buyer) fleeces you? Sounds like a haven for fraud, even worse than eBay...