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  1. Re:His concept idea also works for dating advice on Judge (Tech) Advice By Results · · Score: 1
    I know that women, for the most part, care a LOT more about superficial stuff than they admit - studies say height is the single most important factor.

    But I do believe my alternative advice does help at least a little bit. Among other things, the advice to talk to women you don't want to date may end up introducing you to someone that, while not preferable, after you get to know her you may decided she is acceptable.

  2. Re:Won't work on Australia May 'Pause' Trades To Tackle High-Frequency Trading · · Score: 1
    Because you are trying to force the guy doing a market order to instead take a limit order, and allowing the guy who is claiming to be do a limit order to actually be doing a market order. There are advantages to doing a market order - instant sale (liquidity). When I do market orders that is what I get.. There are advantages to doing a limit order - guaranteed price - at the cost of liquidity.

    Your method is designed to let an unethical criminal who happens to spend a lot of money to create a HFT trading platform get to create a new kind of order that has the advantages of both a market order AND a limit order. He is NOT entitled to that liquidity. He traded it away in order to get the better price.

    And that advantage is ONLY available to wealthy unethical criminals that have access to HFT. (note I am not saying that all HFT are unethical criminals, just that some of them are.).

    What I am saying is that if you want the liquidity fine, you have to pay the price of liquidity - a lack of control over price. If you want control over price, you have

    Markets are by law AND by theory supposed to be fair. It is not ethical, nor right to let the wealthy people and ONLY the wealthy people get a certain kind of special order type that grants both liquidity and also guaranteed price.

    In my example if the guy is not willing to offer 500,000 shares total at that price, then he doesn't have to. It was perfectly legal for him to offer 20,000 shares at 35.2 on 5 different markets.

    I am not taking advantage of the HFT - he is taking advantage of me. He SOLD his liquidity to get the slightly better price, he is NOT allowed to sneakily steal that liquidity back after he sold it.

    I bought liquidity that he offered for sale. that is MY profit, not his to steal back.

  3. Re:Phones yeah on Nanodot-Based Smartphone Battery Recharges In 30 Seconds · · Score: 1
    Actually it is VERY important. If your battery takes 4 hours to charge, it effectively limits your range for long road trips and also pretty much prevents short road trips.

    If it takes an hour to recharge a battery, you can stop for lunch, recharge, travel till dinner, then stop again, travel on to your motel, then sleep for the night. Repeat.

    If it takes four hours, then you ride in the morning, run out of power, stop for half the day, eat lunch, then are forced to wait 3 hour while you finish recharging. Then , travel on, stop for dinner the night. In effect, each day you travel 2/3 of the distance as compared to a one hour recharge.

    As for short trips, it means that if you run out of power, a mere 15 minute partial recharge should be enough to get you back home where you can complete the full recharge. Compare this with a oh crap, I need to wait an hour at the seven-eleven to get enough of a partial recharge to get home.

  4. His concept idea also works for dating advice on Judge (Tech) Advice By Results · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Time and time again, people give crappy dating advice. not because their advice is wrong perse, but because it is worded in a way so as to ensure that the person is LEAST likely to actually do it correctly.

    Prime example is 'be yourself'. Most people who are still dating don't know who they are. Saying be yourself is not in any way helpful. The proper way to word that bit of advice is do not try to be something you are not. The advice is at hear the same, but the second way is fundamentally better advice because it is far more likely to be understood and used.

    Another example from the dating world is "Be confident". That is about the worst possible advice possible, because 1) confidence, like height, weight, your bank account, etc. is something not under your direct, immediate control. You can't decided to be confident anymore than you can decide to be tall, thin, or wealthy. Yes, with years of hard work, you can become those things (tall requires HGH injections before your bones close - but it still takes years of work). and also 2) Most women are incredibly bad at detecting confidence, often mistaking disinterest, a slight alcohol buzz, practiced smoothness, ignorance or mere blind chance for confidence. Here, the proper advice is not to 'be confident', but instead practice with girls you don't want to date before you ask the girl you want to date out. That method helps a lot with the behaviors that women mistake for a lack of confidence.

  5. Very nice article on Judge (Tech) Advice By Results · · Score: 1
    Long winded, but nice.

    It reminds me of the "coffee is for closers" scene in Glengary, Glen Ross.

    There you have Alec Baldwin, yelling and insulting salesmen, telling them they are crap and they should only get paid for results. That companies hire people to do things, not to 'try' and fail, and they should get no 'good' leads' and no coffee because they are incompetent closers.

    The problem is he himself is NOT doing a job. Alec Baldwin - despite his claim to be rich and successful - may or may not be telling the truth, but his obnoxious, insulting manner is designed to drive a point home to the movie viewers, NOT to actually do the job he was supposed to be doing - getting the salesmen to be better at their job.

    Because both salesmen and motivational speakers (Alec's current job) 'catch more flies with honey'. Being nice AFFECTS how well you sell, and how well you motivate.

    The media is the message, and his media sucked.

  6. Re:Won't work on Australia May 'Pause' Trades To Tackle High-Frequency Trading · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Incorrect. One of the major issues is that HFT look at multiple markets. They see a trade go down in market a, than instantly - in less than 100 ms, change their own order in market b.

    By putting in a delay of 500 ms, you prevent this kind of behavior.

    Why is that behavior bad? Because for high volume traders they have to split a single order over multiple markets - mainly because others are ALSO splitting among multiple markets.

    That is, say I have 500,000 shares to sell. Currently 5 different markets all show a price of 35.2, at 100,000 shares being offered

    Moreover, all 5 markets offers are from you, as you are the main guy buying right now.

    It is NOT fair for you to take 100,000 of my order at 35.2, then instantly cancel your four other 100,000 orders and replace them at 35.4

    You offered to buy all 500,000 at 35.2, not just that 100,000 and should not be allowed to cheat me by raising your price for the remaining 400,000.

    A delay of 500 ms means you can't see that your first order is executed until after all your other orders are ALSO executed.

    This is one simple example of how HFT try to unethically game the system.

  7. Stupid theory on How Many People Does It Take To Colonize Another Star System? · · Score: 2
    1) It ignores the possibility of storing DNA. In vials. 40,000 sperm samples and the equipment to store it frozen can fit in less space than 10 people. Not to mention a nice electronic record can hold the DNA of millions yet fit in my pocket.

    2) It assumes that transportation will take 100's of years. Within 100 years, our space technology should be able to deliver 10 people 4 light years away (one way trip), in no more than 50 years travel time. That is two generations.

    3) There is no reason to select people 'randomly', we can easily intentionally select people non-randomly, making sure that they have minimal DNA in common. Often 'random' ensures that weird coincidences happen.

    4) The Toba theory claims that humans had a bottleneck of 3,000-10,000 individuals. 10,000 is a HIGH end, not a low end of what we need.

  8. Re:Still made their manpower problem worse. on Algorithm Challenge: Burning Man Vehicle Exodus · · Score: 1
    Like I said, probably not an acceptable solution.

    Of course, it also points out the flaws in Burning Man.

    If you don't want to do X, then you look stupid complaining about Y when X is an obvious solution.

  9. Still made their manpower problem worse. on Algorithm Challenge: Burning Man Vehicle Exodus · · Score: 1
    Your system has the disadvantage of requiring at least three more people as manpower - a spotter to spot issues, and a two stoppers - with a vehicle to block the cheater. They mentioned having problems filling the bare necessity of flaggers, so this won't work.

    Another issue is what happens when people cheat. Pretty much the only punishment the blockers can do is to physically prevent anyone at all from using the fast exit lane.

    My best suggestion to deal with this issue is simple - money. That is, tell people that they can in fact either use the proper license plate timed exist OR buy their way into the express lane via an excessive charge. Call it $500.

    Just a few people buying this would put some money into the system, letting them pay people to act as flaggers, spotters and stoppers. You could also offer cheaters a way to continue on their way - just pay the $500 fee.

    There is of course a single major problem with my addendum to your idea: The philosophical bent of Burning Man is probably against this monetary solution.

  10. Not true on Scientists Solve the Mystery of Why Zebras Have Stripes · · Score: 1
    The zebra hid from leopards among forests and developed stripes to make it easier to hide among the "stripy, speckly, patchy-blatchy shadows".

    I was told 'Just So' by Rudyard Kipling:

    How the Leopard got his spots

  11. Human vs computer on Data Mining the Web Reveals What Makes Puzzles Hard For Humans · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Computers do certain things very very well - in depth repetition, aka recursive.

    People do not do well with recursive. People do well with hidden simple pattern recognition. Give us a simple pattern, and we can recognize it everywhere. The simplest example of this is optical character recognition, i.e. recognizing letters in a picture. In part because there are infinite number of fonts, but humans can recognize them all, because we look for the pattern. Computers have major issues with this - and to get any real accuracy, do it slower than people do.

  12. Re:Dish/Direct TV should offer free basic channels on Ask Slashdot: Experiences With Free To Air Satellite TV? · · Score: 2

    That is a good idea - especially if they include access to pay per view. A lot of people can't afford $100/month but can afford $10 for a special occasion.

  13. Re:Limit order? on Adaptation From Flash Boys Offers Inside Look at High-Frequency Trading · · Score: 1
    You sound a lot like a guy saying "technically I didn't steal the car, I stole the check you sent it before it was cashed and then repossessed your car because technically you didn't pay for it on time.

    The multiple market system was created on the assumption that people could not react fast enough to see your trade being sent on one market and cancel their orders on the others. Honestly all the technical crap you described boils down to "They saw you order before they were executed and cancelled their bids." The fact that the orders they saw went to different markets is irrelevant - you gave multiple orders because you saw their offer, but due to technicalities they saw your order and used that information to cancel their offers. That is directly against the theory of how open offers are supposed to work The mere fact that the multiple market system is how it happened does not in any way change the fact their business practices are corrupt - they undermine the integrity of the markets.

    Again, what I said about limit orders stands completely true. While it is true that they trade immediately when the price hits, in practice this means that they are in fact MUCH slower to execute than market orders. This also makes them WORTHLESS to do what the original poster claimed - preventing corrupt HFT from screwing over honest medium to large investors.

    You stand their arguing technicality which legally prevent the corrupt SOB's from going to jail, but I am not talking about technicalities, I am talking about practicalities and corruption. Just because something is technically legal does not mean it is not morally corrupt.

  14. Re:Climate change conferences in 2014 on UN Report: Climate Changes Overwhelming · · Score: 1

    True. But I was pointing out that in reality, anyone that wants to do that and isn't a fool does so for the denier side. The people that actually believe in what they are saying are on the pro-climate side.

  15. Re:Where are the farmers? on UN Report: Climate Changes Overwhelming · · Score: 1
    Our food crops are all massively bio-engineered. If it wasn't gene-tinkered, it was bred selectively for thousands of years.

    They are all optimized for colder temperatures. We will may end up with greater biomass, but with less food.

    As for why the agri-business isn't complaining is that it hasn't started affecting them yet. They have never been very good at long-term thinking.

  16. Re:Climate change conferences in 2014 on UN Report: Climate Changes Overwhelming · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Who exactly do you think gets 'expenses'?

    I will give you a hint, pro-climate change scientists tend to be funded by universities and in some cases governments.

    Deniers tend to be funded by Exxon, and their like.

    So tell, me who gets tot see the world on expenses - the deniers or the scientists?

    If you can't see the answer than that tells me who is funding your internet connection. After all the deniers have expressly admitted paying people to spread lies.

  17. Re:Limit order? on Adaptation From Flash Boys Offers Inside Look at High-Frequency Trading · · Score: 3, Informative
    Did you read the article? It doesn't sound like you did?

    Because nothing you said focused on the problems the article discussed.

    One of them was the ability for people to see your trade and then cancel their own order, all before your trade was executed. All made possible because the HFTers were located fiber-optic-distance closer to the exchange servers

    Limit orders work fine for small investors, but don't work on high trade situations - you end up ensuring that you get the worst possible price. That is, you only get executed after the price has moved in the wrong direction.

  18. Re:It's a barter transaction on If Ridesharing Is Banned, What About Ride-Trading? · · Score: 1
    This is not plumber for dentist. It is dentist for dentist.

    That is not an insignificant difference.

    If I give you a pineapple and you return me a pineapple, that is called lending, not a sale. Among other things it means that ZERO profit is made and government treats non-profit things very differently.

    The difference is that

  19. The guy describes gives some bad advice on Security Evaluation of the Tesla Model S · · Score: 1
    He makes some good points, but his suggestions are honestly not that relevant.

    His major mistake is not comparing the electronic security to current security.

    He complains about static, short complexity passwords, but does not recognize that most of the time longer, more complex passwords decrease security.

    Many current car locks can be picked by by a guy with a bump key. The electronic security he lists is in fact far more secure than the standard key lock/ignition. More importantly, cars have side windows that can all be easily broken.

    Locating and breaking into cars is not and has never been that difficult, and Tesla's methods are not significantly less secure than methods used by other people.

    Particularly because the real owner can always tell where the car is.

    In fact, I would suggest you remove the lock entirely, and simply put a camera viewing the driver seat.

    Someone takes your car, track down the GPS location, check the video on who stole it, and arrest them.

    Won't stop joyriding fools, or vandalism, but unless you lock the car up in manned garage everywhere you go, you can't do that anyway.

  20. Fed Ex and Amazon on AT&T Exec Calls Netflix "Arrogant" For Expecting Net Neutrality · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Using the same logic, Fed Ex is slowing down my Amazon purchases over $25, because while Amazon pays for the shipping, I have refused to tip them.

    Oh wait, no they are not, because Fed Ex is not run by greedy idiots trying to charge twice for one service.

  21. I already pay you AT&T on AT&T Exec Calls Netflix "Arrogant" For Expecting Net Neutrality · · Score: 2
    When I pay you to provide me internet service I am paying you to do a service.

    I don't pay you to provide me only the cheap internet, I pay you to provide me the entire internet. I don't pay Netflix to do that, I pay YOU to do that.

    So YOU are the one that has to build the internet to provide me the service that YOU pro missed to supply me. No, you can't blackmail other people I do business with to help out. I have already paid you, you can't charge them for services I already paid for.

  22. Re:Yeah, too bad there's no real reason to do so.. on Back To the Moon — In Four Years · · Score: 1
    The moon consists of a large amount of helium 3, a wonderful fuel source that can easily be used to go pretty much everywhere else in the solar system.

    Most current space ships have to lift the fuel out of the earth's gravity well, which means they have practically none left to go anywhere at speed. instead they drift along without any engine providing thrust.

    So yes there ARE practical reasons to go to the moon.

    P.S. Your argument itself is flawed. People said the same thing about the Louisiana purchase, California, Alaska, etc. It is only after we actually go places and spend time there that we discover the many many resources that make going there worthwhile.

  23. Re:I can barely make ends meet on Back To the Moon — In Four Years · · Score: 1
    Facts:

    1) A trip to the moon costs about $150 million dollars. (http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/45399-how-much-would-it-cost-to-go-to-the-moon-and-live-there-as-a-civilian/)

    2) There are over 300 million people in the US today.

    Conclusions: Either

    a) You are woefully uniformed economically which probably explains why you can't afford to save for your kids college.

    b) You realize a mission to the moon would cost you about 50cents but are so cheap you won't spend it.

    or most likely c) You are the kind of idiot that thinks buying overpriced coffee is fine, but won't spend that same amount of cash on the moon.

  24. Shortage of genius. on The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage · · Score: 1
    Why less than 1% of Americans have an IQ over 140. And not all of them go into STEM.

    So of course we must import more geniuses because clearly there is a shortage.

    There is no shortage of STEM workers, just the basic fact that all businesses want to hire geniuses - for standard pay of course.

  25. Why Yes Sir. on NSA General Counsel Insists US Companies Assisted In Data Collection · · Score: 1
    Of course we believe you.

    Because your reputation for truth and veracity is so well established. Why you would never think of lying to the public. You treat us almost as well as you treat Congress :D