Nature was established in 1869. Science in 1880. To state that it "would take a while" to beat that prestige comes off as slightly naive (I offer a litotes to your understatement).
But what Amazon is doing is not free market economics- they are using their previously accumulated profits to artificially distort the market by selling at a loss and not taking a profit. This doesn't encourage competition, it stifles it. The French government is essentially reacting to ensure that some semblance of a well-regulated free market is preserved by compensating for Amazon's chicanery.
Parisian book stores (Gibert Jeune, Shakespeare and Co) are not ridiculously expensive. When I was a student at Paris 3 I was able to buy all of my textbooks for under 100 euros (compare to prices paid for American textbooks; also note that some of those textbooks were unnecessary supplements that I bought out of curiosity). Most individual books range between 5-10 euros, and, scaled for the cost of living, most bouquinistes (you know, the people who sell used books) had decent prices (especially considering that some of the books in their selection were rare and/or out of print). The used bookstores that you speak of very much have an analogue in the bouquinistes.
If you want to stay out of France, France will not miss you.
Whatever. I'm personally a fan of a lot of the hip-hop coming out of the Bay Area these days. It's definitely qualitatively different from the stuff you find in New York though- I would never really compare the two. This stuff's pretty good. Same with the Crown City Rockers.
Okay. Maybe it's not always *directly* funded by the US government, but I wonder where most of its other clients get *their* funding. I know MDA for sure has won some major contracts from NASA in the past, and they definitely get quite a few contracts for the CSA. How many of these SpaceX missions would continue to exist feasibly without funding from NASA, the CSA, and the ESA? Maybe SpaceX is not a contractor for a single government, but I can easily see it working for multiple governments (in the same manner as Lockheed Martin).
Bell Labs being part of a government-supported natural monopoly that has languished miserably in the post-Ma Bell world. Not the example I would choose if you were trying to make the case for private enterprise. The Bell system seemed non-governmental in only a nominal sense.
Once you know someone is a liberal Subaru driving lesbian with a soft spot for abused animals, a keen interest in Sara Maclaughlin and a $1500.00 a year wardrobe budget where is there to go for the next 50 years with this person ?
Hey mate, that's 75k in revenue. Time to get on 1500dollarwardrobe.com. Did I mention that we plan to have deliveries made personally by Sara McLachlan for an extra $3000 fee?
Read the subject title. Memorize it. Meditate upon it. Realize that even if people are watching you, they are probably bored stiff because you aren't actually that interesting. Move on with your life.
I've had posts disappear too, but I don't believe it to always be a matter of censorship. From what I understand, all of Facebook's user data is stored in a SQL database of some flavour (or several databases); it's possible (nay, even probable) that between the Facebook frontend and their database(s), some wonky software component refuses to forward post data to the frontend.
FWIW, one of my disappeared posts was a video of me drinking O'Doul's (you know, the non-alcoholic beer- the one that you drink when you want to be drinking beer but can't). It was a fairly innocuous inside joke, and I'm sad that I now have to admit on Slashdot to having drunk that crap in order to make a point.
I mean, we shouldn't forget that Latin (and inflected languages more generally) also has the advantage of making you think about relations more explicitly. When word order is not a primary way of organizing meaning, you're forced to think in paradigms.
If labels are superior to folders, then why haven't database filesystems caught on yet for desktop OSs? Why are we still using all that old hierarchical crap?
This isn't to decry data mining completely- it did, after all, uncover my interest in foreign cultures. But not in quite the right way... I feel like the advertising that is informed by data mining is like that party guest that no one invited. He seems like he belongs, he could be fun but there's still something a bit off and nobody really knows where he came from.
Data mining is overrated for anything more than exploratory analyses though. If your data collection process is so canned that you can accumulate the troves of data necessary for mining, you can't really make much more than the most general of statements. This is why I am besieged by ads in Norweigan on a daily basis. I have a vague interest in foreign cultures, yes, but do I care much for Norway? Not really (it's not a bad place; I'm just ambivalent about it).
Perhaps this has been asked already (throughout the various interviews, engagements, etc that you have had hitherto), but what are your general thoughts on the Singularity movement, transhumanism, and Ray Kurzweil's overall philosophy on human progress? Are these folks realistic, optimistic, or pessimistic? What are your beliefs about the current state of human advancement, and what we must work on as we careen toward the future?
Slashdot Mirror
Correction: Science is not an Elsevier publication. Seems like I'm slightly naive as well...
Nature was established in 1869. Science in 1880. To state that it "would take a while" to beat that prestige comes off as slightly naive (I offer a litotes to your understatement).
Mais maintenant j'ai Google.
But what Amazon is doing is not free market economics- they are using their previously accumulated profits to artificially distort the market by selling at a loss and not taking a profit. This doesn't encourage competition, it stifles it. The French government is essentially reacting to ensure that some semblance of a well-regulated free market is preserved by compensating for Amazon's chicanery.
Parisian book stores (Gibert Jeune, Shakespeare and Co) are not ridiculously expensive. When I was a student at Paris 3 I was able to buy all of my textbooks for under 100 euros (compare to prices paid for American textbooks; also note that some of those textbooks were unnecessary supplements that I bought out of curiosity). Most individual books range between 5-10 euros, and, scaled for the cost of living, most bouquinistes (you know, the people who sell used books) had decent prices (especially considering that some of the books in their selection were rare and/or out of print). The used bookstores that you speak of very much have an analogue in the bouquinistes.
If you want to stay out of France, France will not miss you.
Whatever. I'm personally a fan of a lot of the hip-hop coming out of the Bay Area these days. It's definitely qualitatively different from the stuff you find in New York though- I would never really compare the two. This stuff's pretty good. Same with the Crown City Rockers.
Otherwise, I have seen plenty of rich people who were also pretty bad with money.
Namely Donald Trump. Who is revered by American society for... absolutely no good reason whatsoever.
Okay. Maybe it's not always *directly* funded by the US government, but I wonder where most of its other clients get *their* funding. I know MDA for sure has won some major contracts from NASA in the past, and they definitely get quite a few contracts for the CSA. How many of these SpaceX missions would continue to exist feasibly without funding from NASA, the CSA, and the ESA? Maybe SpaceX is not a contractor for a single government, but I can easily see it working for multiple governments (in the same manner as Lockheed Martin).
Bell Labs being part of a government-supported natural monopoly that has languished miserably in the post-Ma Bell world. Not the example I would choose if you were trying to make the case for private enterprise. The Bell system seemed non-governmental in only a nominal sense.
Once you know someone is a liberal Subaru driving lesbian with a soft spot for abused animals, a keen interest in Sara Maclaughlin and a $1500.00 a year wardrobe budget where is there to go for the next 50 years with this person ?
Hey mate, that's 75k in revenue. Time to get on 1500dollarwardrobe.com. Did I mention that we plan to have deliveries made personally by Sara McLachlan for an extra $3000 fee?
Now we just need to clone a keyboard too.
Read the subject title. Memorize it. Meditate upon it. Realize that even if people are watching you, they are probably bored stiff because you aren't actually that interesting. Move on with your life.
Put more succinctly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
Also, for our edification and amusement: http://www.infoworld.com/t/sql/mr-sulu-steers-facebook-mysql-solution-188269
I've had posts disappear too, but I don't believe it to always be a matter of censorship. From what I understand, all of Facebook's user data is stored in a SQL database of some flavour (or several databases); it's possible (nay, even probable) that between the Facebook frontend and their database(s), some wonky software component refuses to forward post data to the frontend. FWIW, one of my disappeared posts was a video of me drinking O'Doul's (you know, the non-alcoholic beer- the one that you drink when you want to be drinking beer but can't). It was a fairly innocuous inside joke, and I'm sad that I now have to admit on Slashdot to having drunk that crap in order to make a point.
I mean, we shouldn't forget that Latin (and inflected languages more generally) also has the advantage of making you think about relations more explicitly. When word order is not a primary way of organizing meaning, you're forced to think in paradigms.
If labels are superior to folders, then why haven't database filesystems caught on yet for desktop OSs? Why are we still using all that old hierarchical crap?
This isn't to decry data mining completely- it did, after all, uncover my interest in foreign cultures. But not in quite the right way... I feel like the advertising that is informed by data mining is like that party guest that no one invited. He seems like he belongs, he could be fun but there's still something a bit off and nobody really knows where he came from.
Data mining is overrated for anything more than exploratory analyses though. If your data collection process is so canned that you can accumulate the troves of data necessary for mining, you can't really make much more than the most general of statements. This is why I am besieged by ads in Norweigan on a daily basis. I have a vague interest in foreign cultures, yes, but do I care much for Norway? Not really (it's not a bad place; I'm just ambivalent about it).
So sayeth the Anonymous Coward.
Although if you really do believe in ending the shitshow that is the military-industrial complex as it is today, you have my support.
Spoken like a true Scotsman amidst many imitators.
MATLAB is inappropriate for any field.
Perhaps this has been asked already (throughout the various interviews, engagements, etc that you have had hitherto), but what are your general thoughts on the Singularity movement, transhumanism, and Ray Kurzweil's overall philosophy on human progress? Are these folks realistic, optimistic, or pessimistic? What are your beliefs about the current state of human advancement, and what we must work on as we careen toward the future?
Who will ever be able to forget the 21st century's greatest porno hit- "Google Asses"?
Don't want your paycheck taken? Move to Antarctica and telecommute.