The only novel I've seen this in is Forge of the Elders by L. Neil Smith. Awesome book, if, like me, you don't mind the libertarian propaganda.:)
Re:Abuse of the term "Darwinism"
on
Subatomic Darwinism
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
If a quantum state changes upon being observed, and it does, then it has a 'successor' state. The 'stable' states are actually the ones which have 'successor' states that are very similar to themselves, no matter what type of observation is made. This makes a state appear stable, as observation only changes it to another copy of itself. This basically allows for states to 'evolve' into stable states.
Think of Conway's Game of Life. You can start with a bunch of random cells, and eventually they'll "evolve," according to rules much simpler than those of quantum mechanics, to either stable structures or structures that move/change in stable ways.
If you look at the actual vulnerability, the problem is when a frame number in an animated cursor file is set to zero. Therefore, the article is still wrong.
According to a report on eWeek.com, one of the three vulnerabilities involves image handling, which has posed problems for Windows and Unix systems in the past. The other two vulnerabilities involve Windows' Help system and its.hlp files, and Windows' ANI (Automatic Number Identification) authentication capabilities.
That's what ANI is in the context of telephone networks. In the context of a Windows system, it's an animated mouse cursor.
Besides, these vulnerabilities were announced yesterday morning on Slashdot!
Check out (in the Group Policy editor) "Software Settings." You can set software up to either be available for the user to install through Control Panel|Add/Remove Software, or to push it so it installs for the user automatically.
Sure, until some script kiddie breaks into the car of the 'h0t b4b3x0r' two blocks over and has it deliver her to some place where he and his greasy-faced little friends can do what they want with her.
For that, I will refer you to the FairTax FAQ. The short explanation is that there's a "prebate" equal to the taxes that would be paid on spending up to the poverty level, to make the tax progressive and make it so that those who earn/spend less pay no (or negative) taxes. In addition, used goods are not taxed; therefore, those who wish to can lessen their taxes this way as well (especially on things like cars and homes).
Of course! I've always wanted a bunch of people I don't know to look at their screens and say "Wow, that guy's in Mensa." Who knows, maybe I can score a girlfriend off Slashdot!
They've been putting puzzles on the inside front cover of the Mensa Bulletin for at least the past few months (I just joined). This month, the GLAT was stapled to the inside instead of the inside cover puzzles I'd been seeing.
New Hampshire actually has no mandatory liability insurance law. Virginia has a "bond" option - you could deposit a certain amount of money with the state in lieu of insurance coverage.
That makes me think. I was in Kentucky last year and got a ticket for driving without proof of insurance (I'm from VA and plan on moving to NH in a few years). Now I have insurance, just didn't have proof on me at the time, so I'm all right, but what if I didn't have it but it was legal in my state for me not to? Would they still penalize me?
Also, when I move to NH, I'm going to make sure and get good uninsured motorist insurance. It's good not only for being hit by someone without insurance, but, as I found out a couple of years ago, for hit-and-run situations. Someone smacked into my rear bumper and then went right on going, and uninsured motorist covered it (minus my deductible).
To clarify one thing, the risk models that people use won't prevent crashes. They prevent the people using the risk models from being burned by the crashes, thus burning others even more.
Simple example -
I buy 100 shares of IBM stock, and a protective put option on that stock. If IBM goes bankrupt and its price goes down to something like 14 cents a share, everyone who owned IBM stock lost big. But I didn't. That put, which I purchased as part of my risk management model, allows me to sell my IBM shares at the strike price of the put, and whoever sold it to me pays me a crapload of money for 100 worthless shares.
Thus, my risk model did well. I'm still around to invest or trade another day. But I've possibly put someone else out of business by protecting my own ass.
The risk models Mandelbrot is referring to are more systemic ones, such as the ones that are used by the Federal Reserve to manage monetary policy in order to (try to) keep the economy growing smoothly with a minimum of downward cycles. Some argue (Hayek, for example, and Mises) that state interference in the money supply for the ostensible purpose of trying to control economic cycles actually makes them worse, and eventually leads to a complete breakdown of the entire nation and, in this globalized economy, possibly world.
The Fed does definitely use fairly sophisticated risk models in order to help them with their policy decisions. They have data mining tools (check out Salford Systems' CART and MARS, they're pretty sweet and used by the Fed and big firms like AMEX), and are doing what Mandelbrot suggested to some extent.
I know people have already commented on the cars not changing lanes or turning, and the possibility of breakdown, but this system would be easy to exploit maliciously. If an agent didn't slow down the car, or misreported its speed/location, that could make for a lot of... er... amusement?
I really do not recommend Prophet's historical options data. I just arranged for a refund, for the following reasons:
-There is no way to tell which stocks the majority of the option roots are for. This is particularly irritating, because if you can't match them, they're useless.
-Quite a few of the files are misnumbered when it comes to the year (possibly more, but I didn't look that closely once I got to the problems that it was already having). That's more trouble to figure out how to relabel thousands if not millions of files.
-The data's not very clean. They basically take what the CBOE reports and pass it on to the customer. There are missed decimal points, missed dates, seemingly incorrect volumes and open interest totals, etc. I didn't investigate it very far once I saw some of the errors.
-They will not go back and try to fix historical data. I asked the tech support people, and they said that once a mistake makes it into historical data, it stays there and they won't try to fix it.
In short, I definitely don't recommend their historical options data. I have also had experience with their charting app (through my broker, thinkorswim, which uses Prophet's Java charting application in its trading software) and am quite satisfied with that. They seem to be a good company, but historical options data is not their strong point.
Aside from the fact that expensing options makes for more accurate financial statements, it reduces a company's tax burden, thus making them more profitable in reality (rather than just on paper).
I think it's a horribly dumb idea to pump up corporate profit on paper just so the tax man can take a bite bigger than your real profit out of your fake profit. I guess that's one of the problems with publicly traded corporations though - shareholders are often too uneducated to realize that long-term gain is more important than short-term illusion of profit.
It's not tick data, it's end of day data and no synchronous stock prices. However, it's very easy to write a quick Perl script to download stock/split/dividend data from Yahoo, and the data is better quality than the stuff you can get from a lot of vendors.
The data I bought from Prophet contains volume and open interest data for options. It's not completely clean, so I'm going to have to scrub some of it, and it's a bit of a pain to work with, but I'm getting there.
If you have more questions, by all means e-mail me. alex[at]ultracheapstuff[dot]com.:)
Actually, I bought $500 worth of data (4.5 years) from Prophet.net. The package is supposed to make simulations possible against real historical options data like what I bought.
Other than that it'll be just like stock trading. If you want to simulate gamma scalping, you'll be able to. If you want to simulate trading various spreads under different market conditions, you'll be able to do that too. I don't foresee the toolkit doing any kind of calculations on options other than what price they're bought and sold at - that part will be up to whatever strategy you decide to test. I have some strategies that I'd like to backtest now, but they need a good collection of real historical options data (not theoretic) and a set of tools for using it effectively. That's what we're trying to build.
First, check out GeniusTrader, which is a very usable tool for backtesting strategies.
A friend of mine and I are writing software for backtesting options trading strategies. It will also be GPLed and some of the architecture is based on the way GeniusTrader did things. GeniusTrader is written in Perl and optsys is being written in C++.
optsys, or what's been done of it (it's in maaaaaaaajor pre-alpha state right now, most features aren't even working yet) is available here, but since I'm running the server on my home PC, it's only up about 14-18 hours a day. GeniusTrader, however, is immediately usable and they have quite a developer/user community now.
A) It's awesome that equipment you designed is in there and even more awesome that you got to go and look at the plant. B) I don't think they ever opened it up to small investors. It's been the big boys and the fedgov the whole time. Still, I do wish I could invest in it. When are they going public dammit?!:)
Corporate "immunity" has more to do with the shareholders than the employees or management. It simply means that people who bought stock in the corporation and don't oversee/participate in day-to-day functions of the corporation, meaning they had no say in the wrongdoings of people within and on behalf of the corporation, can't be sued for misconduct that they weren't part of. It also means that, should the corporation go into horrible debt, etc. the shareholders can't lose more than they put into the company - their stock value can go no lower than 0.
Slashdot Mirror
seeds that sprout into treehouses
:)
The only novel I've seen this in is Forge of the Elders by L. Neil Smith. Awesome book, if, like me, you don't mind the libertarian propaganda.
If a quantum state changes upon being observed, and it does, then it has a 'successor' state. The 'stable' states are actually the ones which have 'successor' states that are very similar to themselves, no matter what type of observation is made. This makes a state appear stable, as observation only changes it to another copy of itself. This basically allows for states to 'evolve' into stable states.
Think of Conway's Game of Life. You can start with a bunch of random cells, and eventually they'll "evolve," according to rules much simpler than those of quantum mechanics, to either stable structures or structures that move/change in stable ways.
If you look at the actual vulnerability, the problem is when a frame number in an animated cursor file is set to zero. Therefore, the article is still wrong.
According to a report on eWeek.com, one of the three vulnerabilities involves image handling, which has posed problems for Windows and Unix systems in the past. The other two vulnerabilities involve Windows' Help system and its .hlp files, and Windows' ANI (Automatic Number Identification) authentication capabilities.
That's what ANI is in the context of telephone networks. In the context of a Windows system, it's an animated mouse cursor.
Besides, these vulnerabilities were announced yesterday morning on Slashdot!
Check out (in the Group Policy editor) "Software Settings." You can set software up to either be available for the user to install through Control Panel|Add/Remove Software, or to push it so it installs for the user automatically.
...fraternities and secret societies work so well!
I'm off to join the Freemasons. Be back in a few.
Ashcroft was one of the lead opponents of the movement for key escrow/Clipper chip when he was a Senator. Kerry was one of the lead proponents of it.
Ashcroft had a great pro-privacy record in the Senate; now that he's AG, a different faction pulls his strings.
Sure, until some script kiddie breaks into the car of the 'h0t b4b3x0r' two blocks over and has it deliver her to some place where he and his greasy-faced little friends can do what they want with her.
I like this idea already!
For that, I will refer you to the FairTax FAQ. The short explanation is that there's a "prebate" equal to the taxes that would be paid on spending up to the poverty level, to make the tax progressive and make it so that those who earn/spend less pay no (or negative) taxes. In addition, used goods are not taxed; therefore, those who wish to can lessen their taxes this way as well (especially on things like cars and homes).
Better yet, Asia Carrera is a member.
Roar.
Of course! I've always wanted a bunch of people I don't know to look at their screens and say "Wow, that guy's in Mensa." Who knows, maybe I can score a girlfriend off Slashdot!
They've been putting puzzles on the inside front cover of the Mensa Bulletin for at least the past few months (I just joined). This month, the GLAT was stapled to the inside instead of the inside cover puzzles I'd been seeing.
It actually has some neat questions. Lots of fun!
New Hampshire actually has no mandatory liability insurance law. Virginia has a "bond" option - you could deposit a certain amount of money with the state in lieu of insurance coverage.
That makes me think. I was in Kentucky last year and got a ticket for driving without proof of insurance (I'm from VA and plan on moving to NH in a few years). Now I have insurance, just didn't have proof on me at the time, so I'm all right, but what if I didn't have it but it was legal in my state for me not to? Would they still penalize me?
Also, when I move to NH, I'm going to make sure and get good uninsured motorist insurance. It's good not only for being hit by someone without insurance, but, as I found out a couple of years ago, for hit-and-run situations. Someone smacked into my rear bumper and then went right on going, and uninsured motorist covered it (minus my deductible).
To clarify one thing, the risk models that people use won't prevent crashes. They prevent the people using the risk models from being burned by the crashes, thus burning others even more.
Simple example -
I buy 100 shares of IBM stock, and a protective put option on that stock. If IBM goes bankrupt and its price goes down to something like 14 cents a share, everyone who owned IBM stock lost big. But I didn't. That put, which I purchased as part of my risk management model, allows me to sell my IBM shares at the strike price of the put, and whoever sold it to me pays me a crapload of money for 100 worthless shares.
Thus, my risk model did well. I'm still around to invest or trade another day. But I've possibly put someone else out of business by protecting my own ass.
The risk models Mandelbrot is referring to are more systemic ones, such as the ones that are used by the Federal Reserve to manage monetary policy in order to (try to) keep the economy growing smoothly with a minimum of downward cycles. Some argue (Hayek, for example, and Mises) that state interference in the money supply for the ostensible purpose of trying to control economic cycles actually makes them worse, and eventually leads to a complete breakdown of the entire nation and, in this globalized economy, possibly world.
The Fed does definitely use fairly sophisticated risk models in order to help them with their policy decisions. They have data mining tools (check out Salford Systems' CART and MARS, they're pretty sweet and used by the Fed and big firms like AMEX), and are doing what Mandelbrot suggested to some extent.
I know people have already commented on the cars not changing lanes or turning, and the possibility of breakdown, but this system would be easy to exploit maliciously. If an agent didn't slow down the car, or misreported its speed/location, that could make for a lot of... er... amusement?
The Libertarian presidential candidate's websites are running FreeBSD and Windows 2003. Interesting. :>
I really do not recommend Prophet's historical options data. I just arranged for a refund, for the following reasons:
-There is no way to tell which stocks the majority of the option roots are for. This is particularly irritating, because if you can't match them, they're useless.
-Quite a few of the files are misnumbered when it comes to the year (possibly more, but I didn't look that closely once I got to the problems that it was already having). That's more trouble to figure out how to relabel thousands if not millions of files.
-The data's not very clean. They basically take what the CBOE reports and pass it on to the customer. There are missed decimal points, missed dates, seemingly incorrect volumes and open interest totals, etc. I didn't investigate it very far once I saw some of the errors.
-They will not go back and try to fix historical data. I asked the tech support people, and they said that once a mistake makes it into historical data, it stays there and they won't try to fix it.
In short, I definitely don't recommend their historical options data. I have also had experience with their charting app (through my broker, thinkorswim, which uses Prophet's Java charting application in its trading software) and am quite satisfied with that. They seem to be a good company, but historical options data is not their strong point.
Aside from the fact that expensing options makes for more accurate financial statements, it reduces a company's tax burden, thus making them more profitable in reality (rather than just on paper).
I think it's a horribly dumb idea to pump up corporate profit on paper just so the tax man can take a bite bigger than your real profit out of your fake profit. I guess that's one of the problems with publicly traded corporations though - shareholders are often too uneducated to realize that long-term gain is more important than short-term illusion of profit.
It's not tick data, it's end of day data and no synchronous stock prices. However, it's very easy to write a quick Perl script to download stock/split/dividend data from Yahoo, and the data is better quality than the stuff you can get from a lot of vendors.
:)
The data I bought from Prophet contains volume and open interest data for options. It's not completely clean, so I'm going to have to scrub some of it, and it's a bit of a pain to work with, but I'm getting there.
If you have more questions, by all means e-mail me. alex[at]ultracheapstuff[dot]com.
Actually, I bought $500 worth of data (4.5 years) from Prophet.net. The package is supposed to make simulations possible against real historical options data like what I bought.
Other than that it'll be just like stock trading. If you want to simulate gamma scalping, you'll be able to. If you want to simulate trading various spreads under different market conditions, you'll be able to do that too. I don't foresee the toolkit doing any kind of calculations on options other than what price they're bought and sold at - that part will be up to whatever strategy you decide to test. I have some strategies that I'd like to backtest now, but they need a good collection of real historical options data (not theoretic) and a set of tools for using it effectively. That's what we're trying to build.
I'm glad I saw this thread.
First, check out GeniusTrader, which is a very usable tool for backtesting strategies.
A friend of mine and I are writing software for backtesting options trading strategies. It will also be GPLed and some of the architecture is based on the way GeniusTrader did things. GeniusTrader is written in Perl and optsys is being written in C++.
optsys, or what's been done of it (it's in maaaaaaaajor pre-alpha state right now, most features aren't even working yet) is available here, but since I'm running the server on my home PC, it's only up about 14-18 hours a day. GeniusTrader, however, is immediately usable and they have quite a developer/user community now.
A) It's awesome that equipment you designed is in there and even more awesome that you got to go and look at the plant. :)
B) I don't think they ever opened it up to small investors. It's been the big boys and the fedgov the whole time. Still, I do wish I could invest in it. When are they going public dammit?!
Corporate "immunity" has more to do with the shareholders than the employees or management. It simply means that people who bought stock in the corporation and don't oversee/participate in day-to-day functions of the corporation, meaning they had no say in the wrongdoings of people within and on behalf of the corporation, can't be sued for misconduct that they weren't part of. It also means that, should the corporation go into horrible debt, etc. the shareholders can't lose more than they put into the company - their stock value can go no lower than 0.
And then VT will add more nodes to their G5 cluster. :P
Actually, some people that live long enough do get a third set of teeth naturally.