Plenty of finance jobs are ethical. Work for fraud or anti-money laundering (plenty of high-intensity data work there). Or work for risk management and stop the bad guys.
At lots of institutions risk management is a joke (see JPM's CIO blow-up). But at the GOOD ones, risk management has a seat at every table. It's up to YOU to make sure those a**hole traders aren't going to explode the bank and lose their client's money. Not to mention the shareholders.
Seems pretty ethical to me.
If you still feel bad, decide what an "appropriate" amount of money is for yourself, and give the rest to charity every month.
Kickstarter was not originally meant to sell real 'products' as far as I can tell. But they don't turn people away who use it for that purpose. Felix Salmon covered the the 'mission creep' of kickstarter quite well last month on his blog.
Actually Felix's blog is a great place for coverage on Kickstarter and the recently-passed JOBS act, which seems awesome on the surface but actually is filled with some quite terrible things.
The bigger risk, however, is on the side of the funder - and that's the risk that the project will get funded, you will spend your money, and you will end up getting nothing in return. For original-concept Kickstarter projects, that's probably OK: you supported the arts by funding an artist, and you hoped to get a memento of that funding, but the reward was just a reward, and not necessarily the main reason you funded the project. For things like bars of soap and iPhone docks, however, the great majority of the funders are thinking of themselves as buying a thing. And they're not properly discounting the very real risk that they will end up with nothing at all.
Expose yourself to as many useful languages as you can. Learn a bit about the (business-wise) useless ones too -- they can still teach you a thing or two. The really important thing to learn in school is the theory of developing systems that work, and doing so as simply and elegantly as possible. Any company worth working for will pick up on that. If you really learned from your CS degree, learning a new language will simply be a study in syntax. For a true nerd, it is easy enough to "master" the nuances of a specific language in your free time; learn as much of the hard stuff in school while you can!
I still remember the first time I accidentally stumbled onto MUDs (MUSHes in particular) via gopher on CapAccess (a sort of proto-internet service run by the local PBS station in Virginia).
That's when I discovered Transformer: 2005 MUSH. Aaaaaaaaaaand... 13 years later, yeah, I still play. A lot. There's just something about a text-based game that you don't get from this modern fancy-pants MMOs. There, I said it!
tf2005.net 5555 for those that are curious to see one of the longest-running PennMUSH games in existence.:)
I also appreciate all the awesome MUDs being posted here... I think it's time I revisited that particular part of the MU* universe.
In his book, The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb calls this the "narrative fallacy". Interesting stuff. Especially when you consider it specifically in realms of (seeming) randomness like finance. Who knows why the market fell yesterday? No one. But you can bet the front page of the Wall Street Journal will have a nice little blurb explaining the cause behind the effect. This little 'narrative' is not easily disprovable and our brains love it! It requires conscious thought and force of will to unlink these types of things and approach them with the level of respect that such unpredictability deserves.
I have been using ActivePerl for 5 years now, and ActivePython for 1.5. Komodo is a great IDE, but what makes ActiveState great is basically just the fact that they are ActiveState.
In a corporate environment, using software from an actual company makes managers and IT folk feel warm and fuzzy. And yes, I realize that ActiveState is just mostly just nicely packaging up available open source software... but I don't tell anyone that. Corporate types tend to like it when they can buy something from someone, or at least point to a (stable) company that sells the product. Saying I'm using ActivePython goes over much better than saying I downloaded something from community-based python.org. And no, I'm not saying any of this makes sense, but it has been my experience for the past five years.
If it weren't for ActiveState, I would be forced to write in VC++ or VBA. Thanks to them, I'm using perl and python for my job every day. And that is pretty awesome.
Lamely replying to my own post. I read TFA and I understand the continued support of 1.7. For whatever reason there are plenty of people that haven't switched to firefox. But a -new- release that will not be supported by Mozilla? I'm not sure if i understand that.
1. Can someone explain why this exists? I thought Firefox/Thunderbird/Sunbird[/Nvu] were basically better versions of what existed in the original Mozilla platform? Why is this continuing to be developed? Who is their target audience here?
2. Do they really expect Netscape users (e.g. people on AOL that don't know any better) to download something called seamonkey?
I was in the same situation you are once. Then I found Mantis! It's basically everything you would think to code yourself, except it's already done! Very nicely documented (and customizable) php code & mysql code as well.
For those that are interested, another great linguistics/language (English, mostly) site is Literal Minded. He gets into backformation and all sorts of weird language phenomenon. The author often uses google to justify (or disprove) his theories.
And no, I'm not him... just an avid reader!
Those of us intelligent enough to purchase an Archos Jukebox, this is old news. I took my original 20GB out and replaced it with an 80GB drive long ago. Also, for an added bonus there is an excellent open source firmware project.
I can't believe they left out the ENTIRE hammock district.
Hank: "Homer, there's four places. There's the Hammock Hut, (that's on 3rd), there's Hammocks-R-Us, (that's on 3rd too). You got
Put-Your-Butt-There. That's on 3rd. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot... Matter of fact, they're all in the same complex... it's the hammock complex on third."
Homer: "Oh, the hammock district!!"
Hank: "That's right. "
"I am like the ice cream man, but with no music and I deliver free wireless access and not ice cream"
So, in other words... he is actually nothing like the ice cream man.
This is a brilliant idea.
Think of all of those professors and random FBI desk jockeys who proclaimed after Sept. 11th that we should've seen the signs. That one FBI woman (name escapes me) even tried to tell her boss, yadda yadda. You all remember that.
Well, this is the best way possible to sift through all that information. It's a well understood element of Game Theory, and it's quite frankly one of the coolest ideas I've seen the government do in a while (followed by the no-call list =)
This site is not about making money off of atrocities ($100 per bet), it's about getting people who know what they are talking about to talk, and filtering out the noise. Do you really think they are going to let joe al-queida terrorist set up an account with his hotmail address or whatever? Please.
This will be highly regulated. Washington insiders, foreign analysts/investors, professors, intelligence analysts. This is not the kind of place where joe dude off the street logs in and slaps down 5 bucks on King Hussien getting shot. This is an awesome concept, and honestly, they should've had it much much sooner.
Slashdot Mirror
Plenty of finance jobs are ethical. Work for fraud or anti-money laundering (plenty of high-intensity data work there). Or work for risk management and stop the bad guys.
At lots of institutions risk management is a joke (see JPM's CIO blow-up). But at the GOOD ones, risk management has a seat at every table. It's up to YOU to make sure those a**hole traders aren't going to explode the bank and lose their client's money. Not to mention the shareholders.
Seems pretty ethical to me.
If you still feel bad, decide what an "appropriate" amount of money is for yourself, and give the rest to charity every month.
Is there something similar out there, in google-land or elsewhere?
Expose yourself to as many useful languages as you can. Learn a bit about the (business-wise) useless ones too -- they can still teach you a thing or two. The really important thing to learn in school is the theory of developing systems that work, and doing so as simply and elegantly as possible. Any company worth working for will pick up on that. If you really learned from your CS degree, learning a new language will simply be a study in syntax. For a true nerd, it is easy enough to "master" the nuances of a specific language in your free time; learn as much of the hard stuff in school while you can!
Didn't we already cover this in the original Transformers the Movie??
"Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong"
I still remember the first time I accidentally stumbled onto MUDs (MUSHes in particular) via gopher on CapAccess (a sort of proto-internet service run by the local PBS station in Virginia).
:)
That's when I discovered Transformer: 2005 MUSH. Aaaaaaaaaaand... 13 years later, yeah, I still play. A lot. There's just something about a text-based game that you don't get from this modern fancy-pants MMOs. There, I said it!
tf2005.net 5555 for those that are curious to see one of the longest-running PennMUSH games in existence.
I also appreciate all the awesome MUDs being posted here... I think it's time I revisited that particular part of the MU* universe.
Schoolboy's asteroid-strike sums are wrong: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german_schoolboy_apophis_denial/
In his book, The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb calls this the "narrative fallacy". Interesting stuff. Especially when you consider it specifically in realms of (seeming) randomness like finance. Who knows why the market fell yesterday? No one. But you can bet the front page of the Wall Street Journal will have a nice little blurb explaining the cause behind the effect. This little 'narrative' is not easily disprovable and our brains love it! It requires conscious thought and force of will to unlink these types of things and approach them with the level of respect that such unpredictability deserves.
There goes WOXY... Again.
Maybe we should go to the source... http://www.blogmaverick.com/2006/11/16/is-this-bus inessweek-or-the-enquirer/
I have been using ActivePerl for 5 years now, and ActivePython for 1.5. Komodo is a great IDE, but what makes ActiveState great is basically just the fact that they are ActiveState.
In a corporate environment, using software from an actual company makes managers and IT folk feel warm and fuzzy. And yes, I realize that ActiveState is just mostly just nicely packaging up available open source software... but I don't tell anyone that. Corporate types tend to like it when they can buy something from someone, or at least point to a (stable) company that sells the product. Saying I'm using ActivePython goes over much better than saying I downloaded something from community-based python.org. And no, I'm not saying any of this makes sense, but it has been my experience for the past five years.
If it weren't for ActiveState, I would be forced to write in VC++ or VBA. Thanks to them, I'm using perl and python for my job every day. And that is pretty awesome.
So, keep up the good work, ActiveState!
Lamely replying to my own post. I read TFA and I understand the continued support of 1.7. For whatever reason there are plenty of people that haven't switched to firefox. But a -new- release that will not be supported by Mozilla? I'm not sure if i understand that.
Someone enlighten me.
1. Can someone explain why this exists? I thought Firefox/Thunderbird/Sunbird[/Nvu] were basically better versions of what existed in the original Mozilla platform? Why is this continuing to be developed? Who is their target audience here?
2. Do they really expect Netscape users (e.g. people on AOL that don't know any better) to download something called seamonkey?
I was in the same situation you are once. Then I found Mantis! It's basically everything you would think to code yourself, except it's already done! Very nicely documented (and customizable) php code & mysql code as well.
For those that are interested, another great linguistics/language (English, mostly) site is Literal Minded. He gets into backformation and all sorts of weird language phenomenon. The author often uses google to justify (or disprove) his theories. And no, I'm not him... just an avid reader!
Greatest. Department. Ever.
Those of us intelligent enough to purchase an Archos Jukebox, this is old news. I took my original 20GB out and replaced it with an 80GB drive long ago. Also, for an added bonus there is an excellent open source firmware project.
I can't believe they left out the ENTIRE hammock district.
Hank: "Homer, there's four places. There's the Hammock Hut, (that's on 3rd), there's Hammocks-R-Us, (that's on 3rd too). You got Put-Your-Butt-There. That's on 3rd. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot... Matter of fact, they're all in the same complex... it's the hammock complex on third."
Homer: "Oh, the hammock district!!"
Hank: "That's right. "
"I am like the ice cream man, but with no music and I deliver free wireless access and not ice cream" So, in other words... he is actually nothing like the ice cream man.
This is a brilliant idea.
Think of all of those professors and random FBI desk jockeys who proclaimed after Sept. 11th that we should've seen the signs. That one FBI woman (name escapes me) even tried to tell her boss, yadda yadda. You all remember that.
Well, this is the best way possible to sift through all that information. It's a well understood element of Game Theory, and it's quite frankly one of the coolest ideas I've seen the government do in a while (followed by the no-call list =)
This site is not about making money off of atrocities ($100 per bet), it's about getting people who know what they are talking about to talk, and filtering out the noise. Do you really think they are going to let joe al-queida terrorist set up an account with his hotmail address or whatever? Please.
This will be highly regulated. Washington insiders, foreign analysts/investors, professors, intelligence analysts. This is not the kind of place where joe dude off the street logs in and slaps down 5 bucks on King Hussien getting shot. This is an awesome concept, and honestly, they should've had it much much sooner.