If it helps to know, I'm about to buy a Mac Mini, but have no desire to own an iPod. Currently at home I have 3 Windows boxes and two Linux boxes. I want to get to know the Mac, and possibly use it as my main box eventually (of course, also eventually upgrading to a higher end Mac).
I'll then demote the Windows boxes to development platforms... at least that's the plan.
I write code for the local county, and work in the county civil courts building. As an employee, I have a badge to bypass the metal detectors.
Here in this county, attorneys can also get these badges, as some of them are in and out of the building very often. However, they must pay a fee (I believe it's $120) and submit to an extensive background check, which delays the delivery of the badge. Some attorneys choose not to go through the hassle, but some do. It's just the way most court buildings work.
I do not believe you actually have to be an attorney to apply for these badges, by the way.
I agree with you 100%, which is why I mentioned I'm full time now. As a contract programmer, I always had unlimited overtime, and of course I do now, though I don't get paid for it.
In the past, it almost always made more sense to pay someone else to work on my car, house, whatever. Now it's a completely different story. However, with three kids, I would still rather pay someone else to do my dirty work so I'm not spending my "free" time doing it.
In the past 9 years as a contractor/self employed, I began to look at everything through cost/benefit colored glasses. I even began applying it to my life outside of work. If it were going to take me 5 hours to replace an alternator (in a minivan... hard to get to) and cost me $275 to have a mechanic replace it, I would benefit by taking it to the mechanic as long as I were making at least $55/hr.
Of course, I'm a fulltime W2 these days, so I'm trying to get out of that mindset.
It's really one of the gods of thrifty-can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees managers, regardless of their political leanings. Just because Kerry said he didn't like outsourcing doesn't at all mean there aren't liberal or democratic CEO's/Managers sending work offshore. It's typically the less experienced MBA type that thinks if something works on paper, then it works IRL.
It's ok, I hear the weather down there is nice this time of year... who are those guys in the black suburban waiting by my car?
Anything I know about the NSA is from a former employee of theirs who I happened to be in contact with for some time. What I told here was 100% of the information I could ever get out of him regarding working there.
Now, maybe after reading this, they'll do a background check, cross reference, find him, and he'll be the one hanging out at Club Gitmo.
what real ideas have they come up with in the past many years? Everything they make is a bit shinier and fatter than the previous versions but where is the innovation?
This is certainly not meant to be a troll, so take it with a grain of salt. Really, what innovations do typical home users need? MS has added nice integration between it's own products (have you ever tried to c/p a table from Firefox to Word?). They've added functionality that typical home users ask for in products like Excel. These are the things the majority of home computer users see.
I know their file system flat out sucks, but I'm a programmer, and have come across issues with NTFS in the past. My mother, however, could care less. My sister, the mainframe programmer, could also care less. My father, the retired mainfra.... you see where I'm going.
MS does just enough to keep the minions happy, IMHO. If not, they have a fully staffed marketing department to put the right spin on it.
This, of course, was typed on a WinXP Pro box (I'm at work) but with Firefox (only because I have admin rights to this box). I have two WinXP boxes and two Linux boxes at home.. my family won't even look at Linux, and I'm not going to be the evil father that forced them too. I think once they see me on it enough without any problems they'll start to come around a little bit.
At the NSA, there are two pc's on every desk. One connects to the local, classified network. The other connects to the outside world for research, or goofing off and reading/., or whatever. It would be entireley possible to farm out the work on the outside network and never have to worry about that networks admin even knowing who the people are that are hitting it, much less give them access to any sensitive information at all.
The folks at my ISP have no idea what's behind my router and firewall at home, and have no credentials on my network. However, they do have access to the fileshare on their network where some of my test websites are hosted.
Did I understand your post correctly? You should re-read it and see if it makes sense to you:)
Yes, but no ability to copy/move files from one to the other, at least with regards to the NSA, means no floppies, no USB, etc... Really, meaning no ability at all.
The key phrases are run by a private company and We use these accounts to communicate with you folks, view internet sites, and conduct other non-sensitive bureau business such as sending out press releases.
I'm sure, like the NSA, that the FBI has (at least) two networks. One that is internal only for confidential/sensitive communication/files, and one for outside communication such as this one. At the NSA, they are completely seperate, with no ability to copy/move files from one to the other.
On the mutual fund side of things, there comes a point where you can no longer advance without an advanced degree from a "prestigious" school. Around here (Houston) that's most Ivy League schools (Wharton school of business being the top), UT, and Rice. I didn't want to go to grad school, and was having more fun solving problems with code. I had been a programmer for 8 years when I started at AIM, and acidentally fell back into it there.
There was a little bit more that helped my decision. Our manager left, and I was passed up on the position (no grad degree) even though I had tenure and was running the group anyway. The new manager really didn't have a clue, and put more pressure on me to handle his tasks as well as team lead. He created Supervisor position, dangled it in front of me for 6 months, then pretended we'd never discussed my moving into the position. The very next morning, I turned in my two weeks.... even leaving a copy of my letter with Ted Bauer, then CEO (when I started it was a pretty small company).
Here's the funny part. The offered me an additional $1500/year to stay, rather than the $8000 promotion I would have recieved. Of course I declined. When I left, the calls poured in.. how do you do this/that? After a week I told them any more calls would require a contract at $100/hr with a 3 hour minimum per call. So they offered me the $8000 without the promotion. I told them no, I wanted $13000... that they should have done it a month ago. Three weeks later, they offered me the $13000, and I told them no, they should have done that three weeks earlier. They called two weeks later and offered the promotion with a $13000 raise, but I had already found a programming gig making much more... so I just told them to stop calling. It was nice to know I did add value to the group, and that AIM finally realized it.
Mostly what we did were linear stochastic models... autoregression, r^2 trends, etc, probably low level compared to what you're doing. I worked a bit on NN and applying chaos theory to some of the models, but none were accepted as they were "unproven" models. I'll call a few friends and see if anything new is going on over there.
I laughed out loud here when I read your comment on Sharpe ratios... I had almost the same conversation with our VP at the time:)
I was a quantitative analyst... just a programmer with number skills now. My team was actually awarded by Steve Lipper (Lipper Analytics) as the most advanced of its kind at the time (it's been a while now). Maybe things have changed considerably in the last 8 years, but the contacts that I still have aren't using any really advanced modeling. Rather, they (sadly) are counting on the "expertise" of their Wharton/Harvard MBA's to pull the trigger.
I actually tried to use more advanced stochastic modeling, but there wasn't a single economist or portfolio manager that would even look at the data. I got the feeling that they took it as job competition. Oh well.
It's nice to hear there are other companies using modeling like that to, at the very least, get a better top down picture.
Having been in the financial industry for some time, I can say most don't use neural nets. They would rather count on the expertise of the Harvard graduates they paid a ton of money to decipher the market (the best fund manager I saw at AIM, where I worked, had an undergrad from SFA though). I'm sure there are a few that use them, but they would be in the minority.
I'm sure you're right about the rest though. But there are tons of other industries outside that list. Retail, real estate, engineering (mostly CAD), municipalities (run like a business anyway), wholesalers, logistics companies, etc... That was a partial list of the companies I can think of that won't have any use for grid computing.
After reading your comment, I was reminded of a law in Arkansas that states a person who, while driving in the passing lane, forces another driver to pass them on the right, can be ticketed. Apparently it's regardless of speed, though I wouldn't test the law by passing them doing 90.
Most companies, unless they are pharm or bio, won't really have any use for this. It's the labs that are folding DNA or running weather pattern predicitons that would have use for Sun's service.
That's pretty much the climate on here... reactionary... isn't it? What would an article on/. be like if everyone said something to the effect of "this is a great idea" or "agreed."
I'd imagine it would be time to start betting on the Cubs at that point:)
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If it helps to know, I'm about to buy a Mac Mini, but have no desire to own an iPod. Currently at home I have 3 Windows boxes and two Linux boxes. I want to get to know the Mac, and possibly use it as my main box eventually (of course, also eventually upgrading to a higher end Mac).
I'll then demote the Windows boxes to development platforms... at least that's the plan.
I write code for the local county, and work in the county civil courts building. As an employee, I have a badge to bypass the metal detectors.
Here in this county, attorneys can also get these badges, as some of them are in and out of the building very often. However, they must pay a fee (I believe it's $120) and submit to an extensive background check, which delays the delivery of the badge. Some attorneys choose not to go through the hassle, but some do. It's just the way most court buildings work.
I do not believe you actually have to be an attorney to apply for these badges, by the way.
Wow, his name isn't Tom Barr is it? I worked for a guy JUST LIKE THAT at JPMorganChase a few years ago. He was fired two weeks after I quit.
I agree with you 100%, which is why I mentioned I'm full time now. As a contract programmer, I always had unlimited overtime, and of course I do now, though I don't get paid for it.
In the past, it almost always made more sense to pay someone else to work on my car, house, whatever. Now it's a completely different story. However, with three kids, I would still rather pay someone else to do my dirty work so I'm not spending my "free" time doing it.
Well said... er, typed.
In the past 9 years as a contractor/self employed, I began to look at everything through cost/benefit colored glasses. I even began applying it to my life outside of work. If it were going to take me 5 hours to replace an alternator (in a minivan... hard to get to) and cost me $275 to have a mechanic replace it, I would benefit by taking it to the mechanic as long as I were making at least $55/hr.
Of course, I'm a fulltime W2 these days, so I'm trying to get out of that mindset.
It's really one of the gods of thrifty-can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees managers, regardless of their political leanings. Just because Kerry said he didn't like outsourcing doesn't at all mean there aren't liberal or democratic CEO's/Managers sending work offshore. It's typically the less experienced MBA type that thinks if something works on paper, then it works IRL.
It's ok, I hear the weather down there is nice this time of year... who are those guys in the black suburban waiting by my car?
Anything I know about the NSA is from a former employee of theirs who I happened to be in contact with for some time. What I told here was 100% of the information I could ever get out of him regarding working there.
Now, maybe after reading this, they'll do a background check, cross reference, find him, and he'll be the one hanging out at Club Gitmo.
"Garcon, another Mai Tai please?"
what real ideas have they come up with in the past many years? Everything they make is a bit shinier and fatter than the previous versions but where is the innovation?
This is certainly not meant to be a troll, so take it with a grain of salt. Really, what innovations do typical home users need? MS has added nice integration between it's own products (have you ever tried to c/p a table from Firefox to Word?). They've added functionality that typical home users ask for in products like Excel. These are the things the majority of home computer users see.
I know their file system flat out sucks, but I'm a programmer, and have come across issues with NTFS in the past. My mother, however, could care less. My sister, the mainframe programmer, could also care less. My father, the retired mainfra.... you see where I'm going.
MS does just enough to keep the minions happy, IMHO. If not, they have a fully staffed marketing department to put the right spin on it.
This, of course, was typed on a WinXP Pro box (I'm at work) but with Firefox (only because I have admin rights to this box). I have two WinXP boxes and two Linux boxes at home.. my family won't even look at Linux, and I'm not going to be the evil father that forced them too. I think once they see me on it enough without any problems they'll start to come around a little bit.
Not really, if I understand it correctly.
/., or whatever. It would be entireley possible to farm out the work on the outside network and never have to worry about that networks admin even knowing who the people are that are hitting it, much less give them access to any sensitive information at all.
:)
At the NSA, there are two pc's on every desk. One connects to the local, classified network. The other connects to the outside world for research, or goofing off and reading
The folks at my ISP have no idea what's behind my router and firewall at home, and have no credentials on my network. However, they do have access to the fileshare on their network where some of my test websites are hosted.
Did I understand your post correctly? You should re-read it and see if it makes sense to you
with appropriate Republican political connections
Why in the world would you try to turn this into a partisan issue? Are you suggesting that democrats/libertarians/independants wouldn't farm out work?
Gheez, the things people will do for mod points...
Yes, but no ability to copy/move files from one to the other, at least with regards to the NSA, means no floppies, no USB, etc... Really, meaning no ability at all.
The key phrases are run by a private company and We use these accounts to communicate with you folks, view internet sites, and conduct other non-sensitive bureau business such as sending out press releases.
I'm sure, like the NSA, that the FBI has (at least) two networks. One that is internal only for confidential/sensitive communication/files, and one for outside communication such as this one. At the NSA, they are completely seperate, with no ability to copy/move files from one to the other.
Admittedly, I still get a warm-fuzzy when I tell the story. I do wonder what I'd be up to if I were still there though.
Have you looked into CPM (Certified Portfolio Manager) at all? It looks interesting, and at least isn't filled with as much GAAP CRAAP as the CFA.
Though it's hardly *fair*, more units are typically sold in the US than Europe, and there's no way Sony is going to push back a local release.
Haha... charade is a good word for it....
On the mutual fund side of things, there comes a point where you can no longer advance without an advanced degree from a "prestigious" school. Around here (Houston) that's most Ivy League schools (Wharton school of business being the top), UT, and Rice. I didn't want to go to grad school, and was having more fun solving problems with code. I had been a programmer for 8 years when I started at AIM, and acidentally fell back into it there.
There was a little bit more that helped my decision. Our manager left, and I was passed up on the position (no grad degree) even though I had tenure and was running the group anyway. The new manager really didn't have a clue, and put more pressure on me to handle his tasks as well as team lead. He created Supervisor position, dangled it in front of me for 6 months, then pretended we'd never discussed my moving into the position. The very next morning, I turned in my two weeks.... even leaving a copy of my letter with Ted Bauer, then CEO (when I started it was a pretty small company).
Here's the funny part. The offered me an additional $1500/year to stay, rather than the $8000 promotion I would have recieved. Of course I declined. When I left, the calls poured in.. how do you do this/that? After a week I told them any more calls would require a contract at $100/hr with a 3 hour minimum per call. So they offered me the $8000 without the promotion. I told them no, I wanted $13000... that they should have done it a month ago. Three weeks later, they offered me the $13000, and I told them no, they should have done that three weeks earlier. They called two weeks later and offered the promotion with a $13000 raise, but I had already found a programming gig making much more... so I just told them to stop calling. It was nice to know I did add value to the group, and that AIM finally realized it.
Mostly what we did were linear stochastic models... autoregression, r^2 trends, etc, probably low level compared to what you're doing. I worked a bit on NN and applying chaos theory to some of the models, but none were accepted as they were "unproven" models. I'll call a few friends and see if anything new is going on over there.
:)
I laughed out loud here when I read your comment on Sharpe ratios... I had almost the same conversation with our VP at the time
... ain't.
I was a quantitative analyst... just a programmer with number skills now. My team was actually awarded by Steve Lipper (Lipper Analytics) as the most advanced of its kind at the time (it's been a while now). Maybe things have changed considerably in the last 8 years, but the contacts that I still have aren't using any really advanced modeling. Rather, they (sadly) are counting on the "expertise" of their Wharton/Harvard MBA's to pull the trigger.
I actually tried to use more advanced stochastic modeling, but there wasn't a single economist or portfolio manager that would even look at the data. I got the feeling that they took it as job competition. Oh well.
It's nice to hear there are other companies using modeling like that to, at the very least, get a better top down picture.
A p.s. to the person who modded this down.. it was in response to a request for exactly this.
Having been in the financial industry for some time, I can say most don't use neural nets. They would rather count on the expertise of the Harvard graduates they paid a ton of money to decipher the market (the best fund manager I saw at AIM, where I worked, had an undergrad from SFA though). I'm sure there are a few that use them, but they would be in the minority.
I'm sure you're right about the rest though. But there are tons of other industries outside that list. Retail, real estate, engineering (mostly CAD), municipalities (run like a business anyway), wholesalers, logistics companies, etc... That was a partial list of the companies I can think of that won't have any use for grid computing.
That must be nice :)
After reading your comment, I was reminded of a law in Arkansas that states a person who, while driving in the passing lane, forces another driver to pass them on the right, can be ticketed. Apparently it's regardless of speed, though I wouldn't test the law by passing them doing 90.
I think the whole post was based on a bet to see who could use the word "standard(s)" the greatest number of times in one sentence.
True that... I didn't think about rendering farms.
Most companies, unless they are pharm or bio, won't really have any use for this. It's the labs that are folding DNA or running weather pattern predicitons that would have use for Sun's service.
That's pretty much the climate on here... reactionary... isn't it? What would an article on /. be like if everyone said something to the effect of "this is a great idea" or "agreed."
:)
I'd imagine it would be time to start betting on the Cubs at that point