Wasn't there a US company, Williams Energy, Inc. that was planning to do something like this - run internet cabling through its gas pipes in the US. They weren't planning to be last mile providers, tho.
Most? As in > 50%. I doubt that. It's mostly MBA types.
If you really want to apply your math, go the bioinformatics route or biostatistics. Want to trade, go trade.
The exams are not as trivial as made out here. There are competitive exams with many bright people taking them.
An actuary has access to a wide variety of mathematical techniques, but isn't necessarily deep in any one of them.
People who are really good at math can be surprised at how hard the exams can be. You are covering large amounts of material - it's like taking a final exam for all your semester courses in one exam.
It's great if we can begin to measure objectively what ADHD is. However, some of these posts take the attitude that ADHD isn't real and it's just a socially imposed disease without a well defined symptomology. I don't think this is true. The ability to pay attention is greatly enhanced by proper medication and support. I resent the tone of people suggesting that ADHD patients are just glorified drug addicts. You should know that pulling children off ADHD medicine in cases where it is indicated can lead to depression in adults. Furthermore, there are well defined protocols for separating normal child oriented behavior from ADHD cases. It's not perfect because the science is still evolving, but it is not merely based on guesswork.
We always think our lies are victimless crimes. But the accumulation of lies leads to terrible inconvenience. The breakdown of trust has a certain hurt factor, even if it's not something that can be reported to the crime bureau's.
Kant's categorial imperative is a useful tool for avoiding such moral pitfalls. Maybe it should be required reading in white collar prisons.
Correct me if I am mistaken, of course, but there was always a lab component of this course - at least back in 1985. What is being replaced is the recitations with even more hands on stuff.
The article makes it sound like 6.002 was always pure theory, which IMHO, was never the case.
I remember once I played civ for an entire weekend without talking to my girlfriend (now my wife). I was addicted to Descent to the extent that my brain would play sections in my mind as I went off to go to sleep. And don't get me started on X-Com. Interesting, all my addictions were in the DOS era. Out of curiosity, Anyone remember a game called ASYLUM?
At other times, I was addicted to the Internet Chess Server, in the days before it split off into the ICS adn the FICS. My socialization time there seemed more important that spending time with my girlfriend (yes, still the same one).
Computer games are extremely engaging, and there is very little physical stimulus telling you to stop. Kind of reminds me of the Victorian arguments against masturbation.
When it gets too much? When it negatively impacts your ability to earn a living. When you have no RL friends. When the game is your only solid topic of conversation in a crowd where not everybody plays.
Of course, I also remember meeting a friend during a class who introduced himself as liking games and particularly civilization. So yes, games can be the bridge to satisfying RL relationships.
At some point in a friendship you have to render aid, and then it helps to have local friends when you're in a spot!
Remember too, that even relationships aren't everything. YOu've got to be able to entertain yourself, too.
One day I asked myself what I will remember about my life if a significant portion of it would be spent playing civ. And that was the end of my addiction.
Without meaning to cram my values down other's throats, I do think it is important to exercise and be outdoors. Our bodies were designed for hunting, after all. Activities that energize the senses are healthy.
On the other hand, I would like just one weekend and get into a real interesting game.
Just so long as you don't get fanatical and say there is only one way to "Get a life" What's "A (good) life" anyway?
The Iraqi children who died during the sanctions are the solely the responsibility of Saddam Hussein. He broke the treaty and brought the sanctions and the suffering of his people upon himself. He can end the suffering at any time by adhering to the treaty that he signed.
It just just politically more expedient for him to gratify is ego at the expense of his people.
Actually, Curl looks pretty nice and clean. But does it stand a chance? And is going with something new, untried like this better than going with mature, widely understood technology?"
I can photocopy a page from any book right now
for my personal use and this is fair use.
I object to the restrictions on fair use
created by these e-publishers. ---
advertisers will have power because they
are willing to pay while customers are not.
When you are willing to pay $50 a year or whatever
for membership in a search engine that promises no ads, then you can talk. I might. I'm getting sick of businesses paying their way to the front in search engines.
How much would you pay yearly for membership in something like slashdot? Might even be fewer trolls.
I would argue that the fundamental question should be developer expectations.
An expectation is a requirement to use a certain library, or programming methodology to get the job done. If I am contemplating creating an open source application, what am I required to know to run under OpenBSD? FreeBSD? GNOME? KDE?
Self contained environments such as LispWorks?
Two 'Operating System' are sufficiently different/fragmented if there are sufficiently different expectations and requirements to make a running applications under them. If it requires a full time job to resolve the differences, then they are fragmented as far as I am concerned.
On the other hand, with the vast number of programmers willing to tweak my brilliant program:-) to run on their favorite *nix variant, perhaps the differences aren't so great in terms of cost after all. So this is really subjective, and I do realize this.
Thus, what is 'sufficient' is deliberately left vague. Or perhaps we can define a metric - the distance between two operating systems is the amount of work required to get a program running identically on both OSes.
The verification of the Triangle Inequality is left as an exercise for the reader.
I would be the first to admit there are some problems with the above way of thinking, but as with many questions involving language, they will never really be resolved satisfactorily.
---
I don't buy this at all. It's mostly true, but it's not a mantra, and it doesn't happen automatically.
In particular this 'local not global' doesn't address the issue of supporters of an idea scattered all about.
I can imagine ideas and files dissipating prior to attaining critical local mass, although its supporters may attempt to contact one another and set up such a node where their ideas would be popular. So the idea of popularity being local has merit, but its attainment is not automatic - that is to say a desirable equilibrium might not be reached except by considerable effort. It's not an 'invisible hand' kind of equilibrium.
There may indeed be enough demand for a file, but maybe it will disappear before the demand coalesces
---
Yes....this is a very good point, and one that has been echoed elsewhere. If you are a graduate student, you can perhaps argue that your code is not within your customary duties.
Your customary duties are those you are paid to do, such as grade papers, see students, prepare lecture.
Your student program should not be covered by employment. Thus any efforts expended here should be considered yours, or at least should be for the public good of humankind and must not be restricted!
---
It really irritates me that I have to pay more for my products and services because the people who make them insist on living on more than bread and water.
I live my life perfectly as a robot, and If I don't need useful human services, well then, neither should you.
My feeling is still that if somebody next to me at Wal-Mart asked me if Linux was right for them, I would tell them (although not using these words, of course) that if they had to ask, they didn't really want to know.
If people know enough about what they want to accomplish and know why they want linux, then they should jump in. There are all sorts of good reasons. I'm not trying to be elitist here. Getting out of paying M$, not wanting to install service packs, enhanced reliability (be it perceived or real), keeping an old computer productive are among the many reasons I would recommend an average consumer buy linux.
I would still send him to a local installfest, though.
---
Open source
is not controlled by a single company and
therefore standardizing on an open
source distribution is not as inimical to
the ideals of a university as selling out
to microsoft.
For instance, there is nothing stopping
anyone at the university from modifying
the system to suit its own purposes, or
poke around to learn what's going on. Thus
open source software promotes, rather
than inhibits the ideals of a university.
Even standardizing on a single distro like RH cannot heavyhandledly control its destiny.
---
<rant>
Public officials want to do anything that appears
to be a magic bullet. I'd much rather subsidize
teacher salaries than forced laptop purchases. Sounds like some nice deals were made under the
table with some laptop manufacturers, who will
now make out big time.
</rant>
Not to mention a certain company in Redmond. After all, teachers will no doubt insist that
everybody have the same software. Will that
software be Mathematica or Excel?
Something is rotten in the state of Massachusetts.
Actually, I probably shouldn't have said 'fad' since it is unlikely this regrettable trend will
abate soon. Dell Stock (recalls notwithstanding) anybody?
---
Enough name calling here. I do know how many of you feel. I remember
when William Bennett, the self-appointed values
guru at the time said that college students
were basically spending all their time and money on their stereos. I was furious for weeks.
However, social criticism of web culture demonstrated recently is not as extreme as that example, although many here clearly feel as though it is. There is a need in society to occasionally slow down and ask if we are headed in the right direction.
I often wonder, as is the case with the idiotic D&D scandals, that perhaps part of this is
the failure of the young to adequately communicate with their elders. People are afraid of what they don't understand or what they can't control. Communication can alleviate this fear.
I am reminded of a Stanislaw Lem story in Cyberiad where Trurl and Klapaucius (sp?) come
across a society in which everybody spends all
day indoors doing all commerce, learning, and
socialization via computers. Production is via robotic factories. I can understand if some are afraid we are headed this way.
Fact is, both politicians and certain journalists
who post regular features here might be overgeneralizing to prove a point. I presume
it is our responsibility to filter accordingly.
In other words,there is some truth to what
these politicians are saying about the web
culture, notable exceptions notwithstanding.
Now mind you, I might be tempted to spend a lot
more time indoors if our winter season lasted 5+ months, as in Scandinavia:-)
---
The major unknown in insurance is the possibility of a catastrophic (well above the expected value) claims. Variance, that is uncertainty, not simply claims amount, is the risk that is assumed when you insure.
AFAIK, for this reason, insurers who cover ordinary care (wellness) have lower claims costs, than they would if they didn't. So, these things do affect the loss distribution, and it is not 'completely wrong' nor is it 'against the point' of insurance to cover ordinary care.
Look at dental insurance. Most dental plans cover nearly 100% of all routine care, but only 50% of major procedures, since the correlation between routine care and low claims costs is even more pronounced in this area.
---
When I first got linux, I used Redhat since
they were local to our area, and felt a certain
loyalty bond. Well, perhaps I may go back one day - I won't rule it out.
After spending countless man-hours trying
to figure out why I couldn't get XFree86 to install
on my laptop (this was early 1998 - I forgot which version or why) I gave up and went back to windows. Later, I thought I'd give SuSE a try. The install went considerably more smoothly, and
I got X up at the desired resolution. Now mind you, RH might have had a better install by early 1999 as well, but I wanted to try something new.
SuSE has been a dream for me since then, although
I have had to tell it to not overwrite my hand-altered config files. With a modem hookup, it is far easier to buy a SuSE distro and have all
my software updated at once than to download..download...download. Although I favor
a do-it yourself approach, it was nice to at least
have a GUI right off the bat - I'd explore later.
My main complaint with SuSE was that Yast2 will
not run on my machine, even though it has 48M of memory, and I suspect if this trend continues it will become progressively harder to make full use of new features until I upgrade.
I realize that a more sophisticated reader can
find fault with many of the things I have said here today, but that is my experience and opinion.
I like SuSE - it is manageable and IMO fun to use.
I plan to buy 7.0.
---
As long as were talking economics (which I never
found 'simple', btw), there are basically three
degrees of price discrimnation
Charge each individual customer the highest he will pay.
Give quantity discounts
Charge different prices in different markets
Second and third degree price discrimination does happen all the time. First degree often violates our notions of fair treatment, and that is what we have here.
These issues are generally mitigated by competition, as other posters have mentioned, and
are serious issues primarily for monopolies. Thus when it happens, we complain that companies are abusing their market power, and acting like monopolies, which we largely distrust.
Even though corporations are in business to make money, this does not relieve them of their social obligation to treat customers fairly.
You can see how vitrolic the market response has been when such activities are exposed. Which brings me to my main point. It's not simple economics, it's also society and culture. We in the US live in a culture where we expect not to have to negotiate for retail goods. (Cars are a bit of an exception to this). Companies who violate expectation do so at their own peril.
Just as companies have the right to charge as much as they can get away with, we would like the right to try to pay as little as the company will tolerate. However, we give up this right in exchange for fair, fixed prices and convenience of not having to negotiate every day.
Thus, companies who engage in first degree price discrimination without giving the customer the right to negotiate on price are acting unfairly.
---
Actually, you're right. Maybe it is a hopeless
battle but it's worth fighting. My insurance
comment was meant to be a short term solution only.
Opt-out is wrong because it forces every individual to negotiate their own fate, at
a high cost (of time). ---
Slashdot Mirror
Wasn't there a US company, Williams Energy, Inc. that was planning to do something like this - run internet cabling through its gas pipes in the US. They weren't planning to be last mile providers, tho.
Re: Insurance
That reminds me - Reinsurance is a different world - often the more interesting studies are done at reinsurance companies.
Most? As in > 50%. I doubt that. It's mostly MBA types.
If you really want to apply your math, go the bioinformatics route or biostatistics. Want to trade, go trade.
The exams are not as trivial as made out here. There are competitive exams with many bright people taking them.
An actuary has access to a wide variety of mathematical techniques, but isn't necessarily deep in any one of them.
People who are really good at math can be surprised at how hard the exams can be. You are covering large amounts of material - it's like taking a final exam for all your semester courses in one exam.
It's great if we can begin to measure objectively what ADHD is. However, some of these posts take the attitude that ADHD isn't real and it's just a socially imposed disease without a well defined symptomology. I don't think this is true. The ability to pay attention is greatly enhanced by proper medication and support. I resent the tone of people suggesting that ADHD patients are just glorified drug addicts. You should know that pulling children off ADHD medicine in cases where it is indicated can lead to depression in adults. Furthermore, there are well defined protocols for separating normal child oriented behavior from ADHD cases. It's not perfect because the science is still evolving, but it is not merely based on guesswork.
Proving once and for all that the C.P. is a real dinosaur in China
We always think our lies are victimless crimes. But the accumulation of lies leads to terrible inconvenience. The breakdown of trust has a certain hurt factor, even if it's not something that can be reported to the crime bureau's.
Kant's categorial imperative is a useful tool for avoiding such moral pitfalls. Maybe it should be required reading in white collar prisons.
Correct me if I am mistaken, of course, but there was always a lab component of this course - at least back in 1985. What is being replaced is the recitations with even more hands on stuff.
The article makes it sound like 6.002 was always pure theory, which IMHO, was never the case.
I remember once I played civ for an entire weekend without talking to my girlfriend (now my wife). I was addicted to Descent to the extent that my brain would play sections in my mind as I went off to go to sleep. And don't get me started on X-Com. Interesting, all my addictions were in the DOS era. Out of curiosity, Anyone remember a game called ASYLUM?
At other times, I was addicted to the Internet Chess Server, in the days before it split off into the ICS adn the FICS. My socialization time there seemed more important that spending time with my girlfriend (yes, still the same one).
Computer games are extremely engaging, and there is very little physical stimulus telling you to stop. Kind of reminds me of the Victorian arguments against masturbation.
When it gets too much? When it negatively impacts your ability to earn a living. When you have no RL friends. When the game is your only solid topic of conversation in a crowd where not everybody plays.
Of course, I also remember meeting a friend during a class who introduced himself as liking games and particularly civilization. So yes, games can be the bridge to satisfying RL relationships.
At some point in a friendship you have to render aid, and then it helps to have local friends when you're in a spot!
Remember too, that even relationships aren't everything. YOu've got to be able to entertain yourself, too.
One day I asked myself what I will remember about my life if a significant portion of it would be spent playing civ. And that was the end of my addiction.
Without meaning to cram my values down other's throats, I do think it is important to exercise and be outdoors. Our bodies were designed for hunting, after all. Activities that energize the senses are healthy.
On the other hand, I would like just one weekend and get into a real interesting game.
Just so long as you don't get fanatical and say there is only one way to "Get a life" What's "A (good) life" anyway?
The Iraqi children who died during the sanctions are the solely the responsibility of Saddam Hussein. He broke the treaty and brought the sanctions and the suffering of his people upon himself. He can end the suffering at any time by adhering to the treaty that he signed.
It just just politically more expedient for him to gratify is ego at the expense of his people.
Answers:
Oh wait. You wanted well reasoned answers :-)
---
I can photocopy a page from any book right now for my personal use and this is fair use. I object to the restrictions on fair use created by these e-publishers.
---
When you are willing to pay $50 a year or whatever for membership in a search engine that promises no ads, then you can talk. I might. I'm getting sick of businesses paying their way to the front in search engines.
How much would you pay yearly for membership in something like slashdot? Might even be fewer trolls.
People need to be paid for valuable work.
---
An expectation is a requirement to use a certain library, or programming methodology to get the job done. If I am contemplating creating an open source application, what am I required to know to run under OpenBSD? FreeBSD? GNOME? KDE? Self contained environments such as LispWorks?
Two 'Operating System' are sufficiently different/fragmented if there are sufficiently different expectations and requirements to make a running applications under them. If it requires a full time job to resolve the differences, then they are fragmented as far as I am concerned.
On the other hand, with the vast number of programmers willing to tweak my brilliant program :-) to run on their favorite *nix variant, perhaps the differences aren't so great in terms of cost after all. So this is really subjective, and I do realize this.
Thus, what is 'sufficient' is deliberately left vague. Or perhaps we can define a metric - the distance between two operating systems is the amount of work required to get a program running identically on both OSes.
The verification of the Triangle Inequality is left as an exercise for the reader.
I would be the first to admit there are some problems with the above way of thinking, but as with many questions involving language, they will never really be resolved satisfactorily.
---
In particular this 'local not global' doesn't address the issue of supporters of an idea scattered all about.
I can imagine ideas and files dissipating prior to attaining critical local mass, although its supporters may attempt to contact one another and set up such a node where their ideas would be popular. So the idea of popularity being local has merit, but its attainment is not automatic - that is to say a desirable equilibrium might not be reached except by considerable effort. It's not an 'invisible hand' kind of equilibrium.
There may indeed be enough demand for a file, but maybe it will disappear before the demand coalesces
---
Your customary duties are those you are paid to do, such as grade papers, see students, prepare lecture.
Your student program should not be covered by employment. Thus any efforts expended here should be considered yours, or at least should be for the public good of humankind and must not be restricted!
---
I live my life perfectly as a robot, and If I don't need useful human services, well then, neither should you.
---
If people know enough about what they want to accomplish and know why they want linux, then they should jump in. There are all sorts of good reasons. I'm not trying to be elitist here. Getting out of paying M$, not wanting to install service packs, enhanced reliability (be it perceived or real), keeping an old computer productive are among the many reasons I would recommend an average consumer buy linux.
I would still send him to a local installfest, though.
---
For instance, there is nothing stopping anyone at the university from modifying the system to suit its own purposes, or poke around to learn what's going on. Thus open source software promotes, rather than inhibits the ideals of a university. Even standardizing on a single distro like RH cannot heavyhandledly control its destiny.
---
Public officials want to do anything that appears to be a magic bullet. I'd much rather subsidize teacher salaries than forced laptop purchases. Sounds like some nice deals were made under the table with some laptop manufacturers, who will now make out big time.
</rant>
Not to mention a certain company in Redmond. After all, teachers will no doubt insist that everybody have the same software. Will that software be Mathematica or Excel?
Something is rotten in the state of Massachusetts.
Actually, I probably shouldn't have said 'fad' since it is unlikely this regrettable trend will abate soon. Dell Stock (recalls notwithstanding) anybody?
---
<Humor>
So that's why I can't connect our mainframe today
</Humor>
---
However, social criticism of web culture demonstrated recently is not as extreme as that example, although many here clearly feel as though it is. There is a need in society to occasionally slow down and ask if we are headed in the right direction.
I often wonder, as is the case with the idiotic D&D scandals, that perhaps part of this is the failure of the young to adequately communicate with their elders. People are afraid of what they don't understand or what they can't control. Communication can alleviate this fear.
I am reminded of a Stanislaw Lem story in Cyberiad where Trurl and Klapaucius (sp?) come across a society in which everybody spends all day indoors doing all commerce, learning, and socialization via computers. Production is via robotic factories. I can understand if some are afraid we are headed this way.
Fact is, both politicians and certain journalists who post regular features here might be overgeneralizing to prove a point. I presume it is our responsibility to filter accordingly.
In other words,there is some truth to what these politicians are saying about the web culture, notable exceptions notwithstanding.
Now mind you, I might be tempted to spend a lot more time indoors if our winter season lasted 5+ months, as in Scandinavia :-)
---
AFAIK, for this reason, insurers who cover ordinary care (wellness) have lower claims costs, than they would if they didn't. So, these things do affect the loss distribution, and it is not 'completely wrong' nor is it 'against the point' of insurance to cover ordinary care.
Look at dental insurance. Most dental plans cover nearly 100% of all routine care, but only 50% of major procedures, since the correlation between routine care and low claims costs is even more pronounced in this area.
---
When I first got linux, I used Redhat since they were local to our area, and felt a certain loyalty bond. Well, perhaps I may go back one day - I won't rule it out.
After spending countless man-hours trying to figure out why I couldn't get XFree86 to install on my laptop (this was early 1998 - I forgot which version or why) I gave up and went back to windows. Later, I thought I'd give SuSE a try. The install went considerably more smoothly, and I got X up at the desired resolution. Now mind you, RH might have had a better install by early 1999 as well, but I wanted to try something new.
SuSE has been a dream for me since then, although I have had to tell it to not overwrite my hand-altered config files. With a modem hookup, it is far easier to buy a SuSE distro and have all my software updated at once than to download..download...download. Although I favor a do-it yourself approach, it was nice to at least have a GUI right off the bat - I'd explore later.
My main complaint with SuSE was that Yast2 will not run on my machine, even though it has 48M of memory, and I suspect if this trend continues it will become progressively harder to make full use of new features until I upgrade.
I realize that a more sophisticated reader can find fault with many of the things I have said here today, but that is my experience and opinion. I like SuSE - it is manageable and IMO fun to use. I plan to buy 7.0.
---
Second and third degree price discrimination does happen all the time. First degree often violates our notions of fair treatment, and that is what we have here.
These issues are generally mitigated by competition, as other posters have mentioned, and are serious issues primarily for monopolies. Thus when it happens, we complain that companies are abusing their market power, and acting like monopolies, which we largely distrust.
Even though corporations are in business to make money, this does not relieve them of their social obligation to treat customers fairly.
You can see how vitrolic the market response has been when such activities are exposed. Which brings me to my main point. It's not simple economics, it's also society and culture. We in the US live in a culture where we expect not to have to negotiate for retail goods. (Cars are a bit of an exception to this). Companies who violate expectation do so at their own peril.
Just as companies have the right to charge as much as they can get away with, we would like the right to try to pay as little as the company will tolerate. However, we give up this right in exchange for fair, fixed prices and convenience of not having to negotiate every day.
Thus, companies who engage in first degree price discrimination without giving the customer the right to negotiate on price are acting unfairly.
---
Actually, you're right. Maybe it is a hopeless battle but it's worth fighting. My insurance comment was meant to be a short term solution only. Opt-out is wrong because it forces every individual to negotiate their own fate, at a high cost (of time).
---