The nature of computer system penetration (hacking) is that it takes a great deal of time and patience. The attacker will put a lot of effort into learning everything they can about the system and then more time in probing possible vulnerabilities.
Linux and Unix systems in general have a better underlying security model than Windows (e.g., the way root/administrator vs. user is handled). Unix architectures also had years of students attacking them (back before this was a serious crime). However, if those of us who are Linux fans are honest we know that the reason we don't have to worry as much about Linux attacks is that hackers target Windows because it is more pervasive.
The Greenhills operating system has never been exposed to a large group of people who are willing to spend a lot of time penetrating it. The idea that you can just label a system as secure seems questionable. You always get attacked via means that you didn't expect. What they're really saying is that the system implements a security model that they believe to be secure. But B1 bombers are not placed on the Internet protecting large amounts of money, so they are unlikely to attract hackers.
I'm sure that the parent was meant as satire. But the problem is, the satire will not stick because the Chinese are far beyond needing any World Bank funding. They hold a vast amount of US debt. It seems quite possible that China, as a major creditor of the US might be on the creditor side of the satirical scenario you outline above. The US is headed toward a debt situation that is more akin to a South American country than a first world financial and military power.
I have not seen any open source projects that you can use as a platform for building a trading system.
I have built an intraday (within one day) trading system in Java. I'm afraid that this system is not open source either. This system runs one or more models that look for intraday trading signals. The Java software submits buy and sell orders. It is multi-threaded and runs one thread per stock. I have been very happy with the software performance. A long running "server" like this seems to benefit from Sun's HotSpot compiler. The system is web services based (e.g., it runs on Tomcat).
I used Interactive Brokers for my market data and order infrastructure. I was concerned about the quality of the Interactive Brokers tick data (the trade by trade data). Interactive Brokers consolidates their tick data feed so you get a consolidated tick about ever 250 msec. For my system this has been adequate. If you want to run on Linux or use Java there are few inexpensive options for real time data feeds. Information may way to be free, but market data is expensive.
I have some web pages on the alternatives that I explored as platforms for a Java/Linux based trading system. These notes can be found on my web page Software for Constructing a Market Trading System
I'm surprised that I didn't notice a comment about the perfect response to this scam:
Dear Mr. Hitman:
Please do not kill me. I am the sole means of support for my family, who will be left destitute if I am killed. I will be happy to pay you once I retrieve 10,000,000 (ten million) dollars US which is deposited in the Netherlands. This money is deposited in a locked box in storage and has been left to me by my Uncle who was unexpectedly killed in an airplane crash. If you help be get this money I will gladly pay you thirty percent (3,000,000). Please send me your contact information so we can arrange to get this money.
Which will, of course require paying a storage fee of several thousand dollars. Since I am supporting my family and parents, I don't have this money, but perhaps the spammer can help me out...
All these scams involve foreign money. I'm still waiting for one based on US embezzlement. Something like:
I have been referred to you because I am told that you are a trustworthy person who can help someone with no one else to turn to in their time of need.
My name is Rebecca Skilling. My husband, Jeff Skilling was the Chief Executive of Enron Corporation. Jeff has been unfairly imprisoned for crimes he did not commit. Before Jeff was sent to jail he deposited 30,000,000 in a Bahamas offshore bank account. I am unable to access this money and I am looking for someone who can transfer it for me. There is no risk on your part and I will pay you 30 percent (9,000,000) if you help me obtain these funds. I am planning to use this money to free Jeff from his unfair imprisonment and to help disabled orphans. I know that God has sent you to me. I look forward to your help. Yours, Rebecca.
The Netflix competition, in principle, is an example of an interesting class of prediction algorithms. There is a lot of good work in academia in this area and on the face of it one might be surprised that no one has beat Netflix yet.
Unfortunately Netflix restricts the data that can be applied to prediction. You have to use their data which includes only movie title and genre. A much better job could be done if something like the Internet Movie Database were fused with the title selection information. This would allow the algorithm to predict based on actors, directors and detailed genre. For example, I see all movies directed by John Woo. Given that I've seen all of his movies, it's not hard to predict that I'm going to see his next movie.
If Google, or any other search engine, hammers home the idea that they keep track of your IP address and past searches it could cause an outcry and a demand for privacy. Connecting ad content to past searches is exactly such a hammer. A significant number of internet searches involve sex. If a user starts getting ads for duct tape because they previously did searches for "hamster duct tape sex" they might suddenly get behind regulations that would control the way Google used information.
For the humor impaired: I utterly abhor the abuse of animals. This is a reference to the joke discussion group of long ago alt.sex.hamsters.duct.tape.
I read The Children of Hurin soon after it was released. As the reviewer and others have commented, it's not an easy read. I was deeply disappointed in the book because I found it extremely dark, depressing and pointless. The main characters are doomed by the curse. As I recall, everyone dies. I finished the book and regretted reading it. The only high point were the lovely illustrations. I used to work with a guy who was a big fan of dark Russian novels, especially the work of Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, etc...) He probably would have liked Children of Hurin too.
Thanks for the informative post
on
Geekonomics
·
· Score: 1
I don't have any moderation points to add to Helevius' karma, but I can send my things for posting an informative article.
Its pretty clear to anyone paying attention that the fact that software vendors like Microsoft pay no price for security failures in their products means that they don't have much incentive to fix them (see Why are there still e-mail viruses?). So I was inclined to agree with what seemed to be the theme of Geekonomics. But from looking at the quotes above and the authors blog, it's pretty clear that the author doesn't have much of a clue. He tries to excuse this by stating that, well, he's writing for executives, so he can't go into technical detail. This is really just an excuse for not putting the effort in to completely explain the problem. I am in the middle of reading David Leavitt's excellent novel The Indian Clerk, about the Indian number theorist Ramanujan. Leavitt manages to clearly portray pre-World War I England, number theory and academic mathematics. The author of Geekonomics really comes off as yet another consultant whose writing a book to get those hourly fees from those very same clueless executives. I am glad that Helevius has saved me from buying this turkey of a book.
Yeah, this discussion is pretty much Slashdot at it's worst. I suppose that if you wanted to answer the question of why there are so few women in software engineering you could use this thread as exhibit A. The posts make me wonder what the average age is for slashdot readers. I would like to think that we can forgive some of these posters because they are just young and don't know any better.
As I understand it, because of the high unemployment in many European Union countries, it is very difficult for a citizen of a country outside the EU (e.g., a US citizen) to get a job in an EU country. The exceptions seem to be jobs that cannot be filled from within the country. Unfortunately software engineering no longer seems to be an area where there is a shortage (despite what the industry in the US claims to justify H1-B visas).
The GSM networks are indeed more limited (T-Mobil and Cingular are the ones I've accessed) and the reception is not as good perhaps. However, you can buy very reasonably priced unlocked phones. I bought an unlocked from from Telestial in San Diego three years ago. I think that it cost around $100 US. I've used it in Spain, and twice in Italy. I now have a US SIM chip for it. I feed it T-Mobil cards every once in a while.
I hope you're able to take care of that smoke coming out of the ears problem. It sounds painful.
Some of the reasons that people hate cell phone companies have to do with the abusive service contracts which are difficult or impossible to get out of. One way to avoid this is to buy a GSM cell phone with a US SIM chip. This has a side advantage that you can easily use the phone overseas by buying a SIM chip for the country you're visiting. You buy prepaid cards for these phones. Calling is a little more expensive, but you don't have a contract to deal with. There is also much less information about you as a cell phone user, since the only way to track you back to your phone is through the company you bought it from.
In theory if more people used GSM phones and phone cards, there would be more competition since the cell providers can't lock you in to a contract. This is, by the way, the situation in Europe where GSM is the standard.
I've been to Venice, Italy once for six days. I still dream of going back. Venice is one of the great jewels of humanity, a place like no other. Assuming that the Italian government and regulations didn't drive me crazy, I'd love to love in Venice.
This train of through seems to have been the logic behind ProtoLife. The company has been founded and run by a group of Americans without any particular experience in molecular biology or any other kind of biology. The closest they seem to get is an organic chemist. The whole motivo esistere (reason to exist) seems to be "lets do something that sounds cool in the coolest city in the world". Given their backgrounds, I think that there are serious questions about whether some of the people involved have any real understanding of experimental method (and instrumenting a roulette wheel doesn't count), much less the "wet lab" work of biology.
In short, this is not a serious company and they don't deserve to have any claims they make taken seriously. If artificial life is created in ten years it seems very unlikely that this will have been done at ProtoLife.
In theory this is a start-up company that is supposed to have some prospect of making money. Artificial life, which really amounts to assembling pieces (enzymes and organelles from cells, along with selected genes). This doesn't mean that the assembled organism is of any use from a commercial stand point. This just reinforced the idea that this company is nothing more than a hobby.
Spring, Struts, Ruby on Rails, AJAX, JavaServer Faces and on and on. I'm starting to feel framework fatigue. Yet another book, on yet another framework. Before you've even mastered the current frameworks, there's another one. Sorry, I'm suffering from framework fatigue.
Very few people can really do subtle humorous satire. I really enjoyed this. One hallmark of really
good satire (a la Onion) is that when you start reading it you think
that the author is serious. As you continue you realize that it's satire.
I'm using Firefox under Windoz and I could not access the article either. It's a bad URL.
Re:You can't force people to keep salaries secret.
on
Google's Evil NDA
·
· Score: 1
I am a University of California employee. As an employee of a California state organization, salaries
are public information under the California public records act. I can find out the salaries of everyone in
the organization I work for. Chaos has not ensued.
This said, I also agree that fixating on your co-workers salaries is a path to madness, or at least
unhappiness. Although I have access to the salary data, I choose not to look at it. I still believe,
however, that transparency is a good thing. It helps keep people honest and helps promote fairness.
If an organization cannot defend what it is paying some employees, then something is wrong. There is
sure to be a certain amount of grumbling from people who do choose to fixate on salaries, but from what
I can see, this has not been a big problem.
I will also point out that public companies have to disclose
the salaries of their executive staff, above a certain level. In many cases these salaries are grossly
out of line with any contribution that these executives could make to the organization. The fact that
these salaries are public information has not stopped these organizations from functioning (or, sadly,
resulted in any change in bloated executive compensation).
Re:Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
on
Google's Evil NDA
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps this is just an off-topic post. One of those "this reminds me of" sorts of things. But the inclusion
in this tread implies a comparison between Jim Jones cult and Google.
Much as I have my reservations about Google, I think that comparing them to Jim Jones and the mass murder/suicide
at Jonestown is a bit over the top. Google is an increasingly egotistical organization, convinced of its own
Master of the Universe status. "Pride goeth before the fall" and all that. But I don't think that the Google cafeteria is going to branch out into cyanide treats.
Predictive networks and markets may reflect the "wisdom of crowds", but this "wisdom" is just
the current consensus view. There are times when the consensus view is very wrong, even when
it comes to predicting what masses of people will do.
For some time leading up to the 2006 mid-term elections in the United States I followed the
Intrade and Iowa Electronic markets which were real money futures markets for, among other things,
the US House and Senate races. The idea is that because these markets attract thousands of people
and because they trade real money futures, they may be accurate predictors of future political events.
This speculation has been born out in the past.
Leading up to the mid-term elections the Intrade and Iowa Electronic markets had more or less the
same prediction: that the Democrats would talk control of the House. But the chance given for
the Democrats taking the Senate was only about 33%. There were a couple of close elections (Webb in
Virginia and Tester in Montana), but the Democrats ended with with a very thin majority in the Senate.
In retrospect the political markets seem to have underestimated the wave of discontent among voters.
The "wisdom" of crowds can be useful, but it is not always accurate, as the last election showed.
People naturally tend to think that tomorrow will be like today, which was like
yesterday. In general this view is correct. But extreme events take place (market crashes and
extreme economic declines or bubbles or even wars). The "wisdom of crowds" is very bad at
predicting drastic change.
The "crowd" just goes along placidly while extreme events lurk on the horizon. In fact, if anything
crowds tend to ignore evidence that change is coming, until the change is upon them.
Most of the "stocks" that are pumped and dumped are "pink sheet" (over the counter) stocks. As far as I know, there is not much of an infrastructure for options and shorting in this market. When you short a stock you borrow the stock, agreeing to replace the stock at some time in the future, at some future price. The people who lend the stock are brokerage houses. Brokerage houses don't deal with over the counter stocks much (or at all). Even if you could short these stocks, they tend to have a low trading volume, with a relatively small number of shares in the market (which is why the pump and dump works). The pump and dump, coupled with shorting, could create a temporary shortage of the stock (a so called short squeeze). The timing would have to be just right to make a profit. As some have pointed out, the down side of shorting a stock is, in a theoretical sense, unlimited financial loss.
Would Microsoft consider a more open source oriented approach to a web browser application on Windows?
Internet Explorer does not deliver any particular advantage to Microsoft. Browsers are largely interchangable because of the standard nature of web page markup languages (HTML, CSS, etc..)
Few people make the decision of which operating system to buy on the basis of the web browser. Nor
do they decide to purchase other software (web page design software or web server software) on this
basis.
If IE is delivering at most a modest competitive edge to Microsoft, why not consider a more open
source oriented approach to the IE project? This could involve using components from the Firefox
release (like some of the rendering software) or making Microsoft components open source. By
turning any special interfaces between the IE and the operating system into a public API, Microsoft
would also be one step closer to addressing some of the objections raised by the European Union.
Making IE open source could make some IE components a standard in the same way that Eclipse
has become a widely adopted standard.
Actually, what you described reminds me a of eXtreme Programming and the projects that were actually undertaken by Kent Beck and his eXtreme Programming colleagues. Constant "refactoring", never delivering software that met the customer needs, until finally the project was canceled (for example, the infamous GM Payroll project which supposedly launched eXtreme Programming into the world).
Regarding the "manual" for the "C Compiler": one of the attractions of C was the thin book by Kernigan and Ritchie. Even the ANSI standard for C is not that thick. Perhaps a better analogy would be the infamous Ada specification, which is large and defines a language that almost no one uses by choice.
IANAL, but as I understand it, in California the anti-wiretapping law states
that they can only read the email if it is on their server. It is simply
crosses their network it may run afowl of the California ant-wiretapping law.
If Patricia Dunn had thought of these things she would not be known on
Slashdot.
You certainly have a right to your opinion. It's great that there's a match between employers who
do this sort of thing and people who like that sort of interview. I wrote a web page, Calculating Permutations and Job Interview Questions on this topic. What do I suggest for interview questions instead? How about detailed
questions about the projects that the applicant has worked on, what exactly they did on these
projects, how the solved the problems they encountered, how the software they wrote was structured,
how they worked with other members of the team, how they dealt with conflict...
I will note, just in passing, that Soviet Russia has not existed for some time so the
present tense of the sentence below seems misplaced.
In Soviet Russia, the government controls the commerce.
I used to be a big fan of fundamental investing and Graham (I've read the Intelligent Investor).
I'm sure that this is a good approach if you have a big research department or can afford to
subscribe to the results published by a research department. But in the modern market
the Graham and Dodd approach is much harder.
With Graham you have to consider historical context. Graham came along after the second world
war and the end of the depression. Because of the carnage wrought by the Great Depression many
people would have nothing to do with the stock market or stock market funds. At the same time,
the United States was the only industrial country that had not been damaged by the war. The post
war period was one of great economic growth and there were lots of under priced stocks. So
Graham's approach to finding under priced assets worked well. It is much harder now.
My own favorite approach is statistical arbitrage or similar techniques of using computer
data mining and modeling. And even this is not easy. Look, the truth is that profitable
investment, beyond Capital Asset Pricing Theory (e.g., diversified portfolios of index funds
and bonds) is not easy.
Slashdot Mirror
The nature of computer system penetration (hacking) is that it takes a great deal of time and patience. The attacker will put a lot of effort into learning everything they can about the system and then more time in probing possible vulnerabilities.
Linux and Unix systems in general have a better underlying security model than Windows (e.g., the way root/administrator vs. user is handled). Unix architectures also had years of students attacking them (back before this was a serious crime). However, if those of us who are Linux fans are honest we know that the reason we don't have to worry as much about Linux attacks is that hackers target Windows because it is more pervasive.
The Greenhills operating system has never been exposed to a large group of people who are willing to spend a lot of time penetrating it. The idea that you can just label a system as secure seems questionable. You always get attacked via means that you didn't expect. What they're really saying is that the system implements a security model that they believe to be secure. But B1 bombers are not placed on the Internet protecting large amounts of money, so they are unlikely to attract hackers.
I'm sure that the parent was meant as satire. But the problem is, the satire will not stick because the Chinese are far beyond needing any World Bank funding. They hold a vast amount of US debt. It seems quite possible that China, as a major creditor of the US might be on the creditor side of the satirical scenario you outline above. The US is headed toward a debt situation that is more akin to a South American country than a first world financial and military power.
I have not seen any open source projects that you can use as a platform for building a trading system.
I have built an intraday (within one day) trading system in Java. I'm afraid that this system is not open source either. This system runs one or more models that look for intraday trading signals. The Java software submits buy and sell orders. It is multi-threaded and runs one thread per stock. I have been very happy with the software performance. A long running "server" like this seems to benefit from Sun's HotSpot compiler. The system is web services based (e.g., it runs on Tomcat).
I used Interactive Brokers for my market data and order infrastructure. I was concerned about the quality of the Interactive Brokers tick data (the trade by trade data). Interactive Brokers consolidates their tick data feed so you get a consolidated tick about ever 250 msec. For my system this has been adequate. If you want to run on Linux or use Java there are few inexpensive options for real time data feeds. Information may way to be free, but market data is expensive.
I have some web pages on the alternatives that I explored as platforms for a Java/Linux based trading system. These notes can be found on my web page Software for Constructing a Market Trading System
I'm surprised that I didn't notice a comment about the perfect response to this scam:
Which will, of course require paying a storage fee of several thousand dollars. Since I am supporting my family and parents, I don't have this money, but perhaps the spammer can help me out...
All these scams involve foreign money. I'm still waiting for one based on US embezzlement. Something like:
The Netflix competition, in principle, is an example of an interesting class of prediction algorithms. There is a lot of good work in academia in this area and on the face of it one might be surprised that no one has beat Netflix yet.
Unfortunately Netflix restricts the data that can be applied to prediction. You have to use their data which includes only movie title and genre. A much better job could be done if something like the Internet Movie Database were fused with the title selection information. This would allow the algorithm to predict based on actors, directors and detailed genre. For example, I see all movies directed by John Woo. Given that I've seen all of his movies, it's not hard to predict that I'm going to see his next movie.
If Google, or any other search engine, hammers home the idea that they keep track of your IP address and past searches it could cause an outcry and a demand for privacy. Connecting ad content to past searches is exactly such a hammer. A significant number of internet searches involve sex. If a user starts getting ads for duct tape because they previously did searches for "hamster duct tape sex" they might suddenly get behind regulations that would control the way Google used information.
For the humor impaired: I utterly abhor the abuse of animals. This is a reference to the joke discussion group of long ago alt.sex.hamsters.duct.tape.
I read The Children of Hurin soon after it was released. As the reviewer and others have commented, it's not an easy read. I was deeply disappointed in the book because I found it extremely dark, depressing and pointless. The main characters are doomed by the curse. As I recall, everyone dies. I finished the book and regretted reading it. The only high point were the lovely illustrations. I used to work with a guy who was a big fan of dark Russian novels, especially the work of Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, etc...) He probably would have liked Children of Hurin too.
I don't have any moderation points to add to Helevius' karma, but I can send my things for posting an informative article.
Its pretty clear to anyone paying attention that the fact that software vendors like Microsoft pay no price for security failures in their products means that they don't have much incentive to fix them (see Why are there still e-mail viruses? ). So I was inclined to agree with what seemed to be the theme of Geekonomics. But from looking at the quotes above and the authors blog, it's pretty clear that the author doesn't have much of a clue. He tries to excuse this by stating that, well, he's writing for executives, so he can't go into technical detail. This is really just an excuse for not putting the effort in to completely explain the problem. I am in the middle of reading David Leavitt's excellent novel The Indian Clerk , about the Indian number theorist Ramanujan. Leavitt manages to clearly portray pre-World War I England, number theory and academic mathematics. The author of Geekonomics really comes off as yet another consultant whose writing a book to get those hourly fees from those very same clueless executives. I am glad that Helevius has saved me from buying this turkey of a book.
Yeah, this discussion is pretty much Slashdot at it's worst. I suppose that if you wanted to answer the question of why there are so few women in software engineering you could use this thread as exhibit A. The posts make me wonder what the average age is for slashdot readers. I would like to think that we can forgive some of these posters because they are just young and don't know any better.
As I understand it, because of the high unemployment in many European Union countries, it is very difficult for a citizen of a country outside the EU (e.g., a US citizen) to get a job in an EU country. The exceptions seem to be jobs that cannot be filled from within the country. Unfortunately software engineering no longer seems to be an area where there is a shortage (despite what the industry in the US claims to justify H1-B visas).
The GSM networks are indeed more limited (T-Mobil and Cingular are the ones I've accessed) and the reception is not as good perhaps. However, you can buy very reasonably priced unlocked phones. I bought an unlocked from from Telestial in San Diego three years ago. I think that it cost around $100 US. I've used it in Spain, and twice in Italy. I now have a US SIM chip for it. I feed it T-Mobil cards every once in a while.
I hope you're able to take care of that smoke coming out of the ears problem. It sounds painful.
Some of the reasons that people hate cell phone companies have to do with the abusive service contracts which are difficult or impossible to get out of. One way to avoid this is to buy a GSM cell phone with a US SIM chip. This has a side advantage that you can easily use the phone overseas by buying a SIM chip for the country you're visiting. You buy prepaid cards for these phones. Calling is a little more expensive, but you don't have a contract to deal with. There is also much less information about you as a cell phone user, since the only way to track you back to your phone is through the company you bought it from.
In theory if more people used GSM phones and phone cards, there would be more competition since the cell providers can't lock you in to a contract. This is, by the way, the situation in Europe where GSM is the standard.
I've been to Venice, Italy once for six days. I still dream of going back. Venice is one of the great jewels of humanity, a place like no other. Assuming that the Italian government and regulations didn't drive me crazy, I'd love to love in Venice.
This train of through seems to have been the logic behind ProtoLife. The company has been founded and run by a group of Americans without any particular experience in molecular biology or any other kind of biology. The closest they seem to get is an organic chemist. The whole motivo esistere (reason to exist) seems to be "lets do something that sounds cool in the coolest city in the world". Given their backgrounds, I think that there are serious questions about whether some of the people involved have any real understanding of experimental method (and instrumenting a roulette wheel doesn't count), much less the "wet lab" work of biology.
In short, this is not a serious company and they don't deserve to have any claims they make taken seriously. If artificial life is created in ten years it seems very unlikely that this will have been done at ProtoLife.
In theory this is a start-up company that is supposed to have some prospect of making money. Artificial life, which really amounts to assembling pieces (enzymes and organelles from cells, along with selected genes). This doesn't mean that the assembled organism is of any use from a commercial stand point. This just reinforced the idea that this company is nothing more than a hobby.
Spring, Struts, Ruby on Rails, AJAX, JavaServer Faces and on and on. I'm starting to feel framework fatigue. Yet another book, on yet another framework. Before you've even mastered the current frameworks, there's another one. Sorry, I'm suffering from framework fatigue.
Great post!
Very few people can really do subtle humorous satire. I really enjoyed this. One hallmark of really good satire (a la Onion) is that when you start reading it you think that the author is serious. As you continue you realize that it's satire.
I'm using Firefox under Windoz and I could not access the article either. It's a bad URL.
I am a University of California employee. As an employee of a California state organization, salaries are public information under the California public records act. I can find out the salaries of everyone in the organization I work for. Chaos has not ensued.
This said, I also agree that fixating on your co-workers salaries is a path to madness, or at least unhappiness. Although I have access to the salary data, I choose not to look at it. I still believe, however, that transparency is a good thing. It helps keep people honest and helps promote fairness. If an organization cannot defend what it is paying some employees, then something is wrong. There is sure to be a certain amount of grumbling from people who do choose to fixate on salaries, but from what I can see, this has not been a big problem.
I will also point out that public companies have to disclose the salaries of their executive staff, above a certain level. In many cases these salaries are grossly out of line with any contribution that these executives could make to the organization. The fact that these salaries are public information has not stopped these organizations from functioning (or, sadly, resulted in any change in bloated executive compensation).
Perhaps this is just an off-topic post. One of those "this reminds me of" sorts of things. But the inclusion in this tread implies a comparison between Jim Jones cult and Google. Much as I have my reservations about Google, I think that comparing them to Jim Jones and the mass murder/suicide at Jonestown is a bit over the top. Google is an increasingly egotistical organization, convinced of its own Master of the Universe status. "Pride goeth before the fall" and all that. But I don't think that the Google cafeteria is going to branch out into cyanide treats.
Predictive networks and markets may reflect the "wisdom of crowds", but this "wisdom" is just the current consensus view. There are times when the consensus view is very wrong, even when it comes to predicting what masses of people will do.
For some time leading up to the 2006 mid-term elections in the United States I followed the Intrade and Iowa Electronic markets which were real money futures markets for, among other things, the US House and Senate races. The idea is that because these markets attract thousands of people and because they trade real money futures, they may be accurate predictors of future political events. This speculation has been born out in the past.Leading up to the mid-term elections the Intrade and Iowa Electronic markets had more or less the same prediction: that the Democrats would talk control of the House. But the chance given for the Democrats taking the Senate was only about 33%. There were a couple of close elections (Webb in Virginia and Tester in Montana), but the Democrats ended with with a very thin majority in the Senate. In retrospect the political markets seem to have underestimated the wave of discontent among voters.
The "wisdom" of crowds can be useful, but it is not always accurate, as the last election showed. People naturally tend to think that tomorrow will be like today, which was like yesterday. In general this view is correct. But extreme events take place (market crashes and extreme economic declines or bubbles or even wars). The "wisdom of crowds" is very bad at predicting drastic change. The "crowd" just goes along placidly while extreme events lurk on the horizon. In fact, if anything crowds tend to ignore evidence that change is coming, until the change is upon them.
Most of the "stocks" that are pumped and dumped are "pink sheet" (over the counter) stocks. As far as I know, there is not much of an infrastructure for options and shorting in this market. When you short a stock you borrow the stock, agreeing to replace the stock at some time in the future, at some future price. The people who lend the stock are brokerage houses. Brokerage houses don't deal with over the counter stocks much (or at all). Even if you could short these stocks, they tend to have a low trading volume, with a relatively small number of shares in the market (which is why the pump and dump works). The pump and dump, coupled with shorting, could create a temporary shortage of the stock (a so called short squeeze). The timing would have to be just right to make a profit. As some have pointed out, the down side of shorting a stock is, in a theoretical sense, unlimited financial loss.
Would Microsoft consider a more open source oriented approach to a web browser application on Windows?
Internet Explorer does not deliver any particular advantage to Microsoft. Browsers are largely interchangable because of the standard nature of web page markup languages (HTML, CSS, etc..) Few people make the decision of which operating system to buy on the basis of the web browser. Nor do they decide to purchase other software (web page design software or web server software) on this basis.
If IE is delivering at most a modest competitive edge to Microsoft, why not consider a more open source oriented approach to the IE project? This could involve using components from the Firefox release (like some of the rendering software) or making Microsoft components open source. By turning any special interfaces between the IE and the operating system into a public API, Microsoft would also be one step closer to addressing some of the objections raised by the European Union. Making IE open source could make some IE components a standard in the same way that Eclipse has become a widely adopted standard.
Actually, what you described reminds me a of eXtreme Programming and the projects that were actually undertaken by Kent Beck and his eXtreme Programming colleagues. Constant "refactoring", never delivering software that met the customer needs, until finally the project was canceled (for example, the infamous GM Payroll project which supposedly launched eXtreme Programming into the world).
Regarding the "manual" for the "C Compiler": one of the attractions of C was the thin book by Kernigan and Ritchie. Even the ANSI standard for C is not that thick. Perhaps a better analogy would be the infamous Ada specification, which is large and defines a language that almost no one uses by choice.
IANAL, but as I understand it, in California the anti-wiretapping law states that they can only read the email if it is on their server. It is simply crosses their network it may run afowl of the California ant-wiretapping law. If Patricia Dunn had thought of these things she would not be known on Slashdot.
You certainly have a right to your opinion. It's great that there's a match between employers who do this sort of thing and people who like that sort of interview. I wrote a web page, Calculating Permutations and Job Interview Questions on this topic. What do I suggest for interview questions instead? How about detailed questions about the projects that the applicant has worked on, what exactly they did on these projects, how the solved the problems they encountered, how the software they wrote was structured, how they worked with other members of the team, how they dealt with conflict...
I will note, just in passing, that Soviet Russia has not existed for some time so the present tense of the sentence below seems misplaced.
In Soviet Russia, the government controls the commerce.
I used to be a big fan of fundamental investing and Graham (I've read the Intelligent Investor). I'm sure that this is a good approach if you have a big research department or can afford to subscribe to the results published by a research department. But in the modern market the Graham and Dodd approach is much harder. With Graham you have to consider historical context. Graham came along after the second world war and the end of the depression. Because of the carnage wrought by the Great Depression many people would have nothing to do with the stock market or stock market funds. At the same time, the United States was the only industrial country that had not been damaged by the war. The post war period was one of great economic growth and there were lots of under priced stocks. So Graham's approach to finding under priced assets worked well. It is much harder now. My own favorite approach is statistical arbitrage or similar techniques of using computer data mining and modeling. And even this is not easy. Look, the truth is that profitable investment, beyond Capital Asset Pricing Theory (e.g., diversified portfolios of index funds and bonds) is not easy.