All of these are fascinating reading, and highly recommended. Certainly anyone who pays attention to CNNfn and the rest should read Taleb; anyone who's trading options (and relying on an option pricing model) should read Taleb and Mandelbrot; and anyone who still thinks that investing in mutual funds is a good idea should read all three. The parent's remark about survivorship bias is right on target, and that's by no means the only pitfall out there.
OK, we've heard that in Manila you can be happy with $450; in Canada with $3900. In New York or London you'd probably need lots more, etc. All relative, right? Well, not quite.
First, there's travel. If our friend in Manila wants to go skiing in Whistler, then he's going to have to save his spare cash for a long time. On the other hand, if the Canadian guy goes diving in the Philippines, he's going to be amazed at how far his money goes.
Then there are imported goods. If you have a taste for French wine, or Japanese electronics, or Italian furniture, the price may vary a bit due to shipping, exchange rates, import duties, etc., but there's a fixed minimum amount that you're going to have to pay, no matter how low the rest of your cost of living may be.
Finally, you have to ask whether you're really planning to stay in the same place forever. That may be the case for a lot of people; but if you dream about living in another country one day, then you also need to consider the cost of living there. It works both ways, obviously: plenty of North American retirees move to Mexico, Singaporeans go to Malaysia, and so on, partly in order to make their savings go farther. But if you're picturing a villa on the Côte d'Azur, you won't get there by working at a relatively well-paid job in a less expensive country.
You might want to try The Economist, then. Despite the dry title, it's a weekly magazine that covers everything from current events to business to science and technology to the arts. (No sports, thankfully.)
The thing I like most is that, when they write about technology, the articles are (in almost all cases) timely and accurate, written for a reader who is presumed to be not especially well acquainted with the subject at hand, but intelligent nonetheless. This makes it much easier to trust them when they write about subjects about which I know little or nothing.
(Compare that with drivel like Time, whose shameful "Cyberporn" issue was the last I ever bought from them. Written for twelve-year-olds, and possibly by them.)
Probably for their former supplier, Lucas Electrics, whose founder, Joseph Lucas, became fondly known to British car fans (and their detractors) as the "Prince of Darkness".
George Bernard Shaw made this same point very eloquently: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Uh huh. Try searching Google for "quantitative finance jobs". Many require Ph.D. degrees in math (or other numerical fields such as physics) -- and starting salaries for "junior" positions tend to be around the £50-75K range. Experienced people make much, much more.
And on a slightly unrelated note, a lot of people still prefer regular calculators over the ones in their PCs.
If you're an HP calculator fan like me, you'll go nuts over Nonpareil. Actual HP microcode, believe it or not; and very realistic images of (almost) all of your old favourites. GPL code, runs on Linux/OSX/Windows, etc. Couldn't ask for more!
Yes, that's right: RedHat was involved at one point, but I guess the embedded software arena wasn't exactly their main interest. They ended up giving their copyrights to the FSF a few years ago; here's the press release.
Also, yes, it's an RTOS, though maybe not the most sophisticated one out there. The idea seems to be to provide something that's very small, lightweight, and fast, with absolutely minimal interrupt handling times, etc.
A lightweight, open-source OS for embedded applications already exists: it's called eCos. Haven't used it myself, but from what I've read, it looks promising. YMMV, etc.
Well, you'd have to get very close to the other person's phone in order to be able to take a sufficiently detailed picture of the barcode, so presumably this would be done with his consent. No different, really, than if he had just forwarded you the SMS in the first place.
Problem is, the barcodes are scanned at the door. What happens if your buddy gets to the show before you do? One of you won't be allowed in.
Furthermore, if the designers of this system know the first thing about cryptography, they'll have encoded the phone number to which the legitimate SMS was sent into the barcode itself. So it'll be no problem for the event organizers to figure out which one of you is the scammer.
Every time a similar subject comes up on/. I think of Umberto Eco's essay, "Lumbar Thought", in which he argues that wearing tight or otherwise uncomfortable clothing interferes with the life of the mind, discusses the effect of clothing on various cultures and famous individuals, and so on. Entertaining reading -- and as usual he makes some interesting points.
Can't find it online, but it's in the book "Travels in Hyperreality", a collection of miscellaneous essays. Postmodernism at its best, or worst, depending on your tastes. A brief sample ("fair use", I hope!):
I thought then about how much, in the history of civilization, dress as armor has influenced behavior and, in consequence, exterior morality. The Victorian bourgeois was stiff and formal because of stiff collars; the nineteeth-century gentleman was constrained by his tight redingotes, boots, and top hats that didn't allow brusque movements of the head. If Vienna had been on the equator and its bourgeoisie had gone around in Bermuda shorts, would Freud have described the same neurotic symptoms, the same Oedipal triangles? And would he have described them the same way if he, the doctor, had been a Scot, in a kilt (under which, as everyone knows, the rule is to wear nothing)?
Slashdot Mirror
The (Mis)Behavior of Markets, by Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard L. Hudson.
Fooled by Randomness, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
A Random Walk Down Wall Street, by Burton G. Malkiel.
All of these are fascinating reading, and highly recommended. Certainly anyone who pays attention to CNNfn and the rest should read Taleb; anyone who's trading options (and relying on an option pricing model) should read Taleb and Mandelbrot; and anyone who still thinks that investing in mutual funds is a good idea should read all three. The parent's remark about survivorship bias is right on target, and that's by no means the only pitfall out there.
First, there's travel. If our friend in Manila wants to go skiing in Whistler, then he's going to have to save his spare cash for a long time. On the other hand, if the Canadian guy goes diving in the Philippines, he's going to be amazed at how far his money goes.
Then there are imported goods. If you have a taste for French wine, or Japanese electronics, or Italian furniture, the price may vary a bit due to shipping, exchange rates, import duties, etc., but there's a fixed minimum amount that you're going to have to pay, no matter how low the rest of your cost of living may be.
Finally, you have to ask whether you're really planning to stay in the same place forever. That may be the case for a lot of people; but if you dream about living in another country one day, then you also need to consider the cost of living there. It works both ways, obviously: plenty of North American retirees move to Mexico, Singaporeans go to Malaysia, and so on, partly in order to make their savings go farther. But if you're picturing a villa on the Côte d'Azur, you won't get there by working at a relatively well-paid job in a less expensive country.
Quantitative finance.
The thing I like most is that, when they write about technology, the articles are (in almost all cases) timely and accurate, written for a reader who is presumed to be not especially well acquainted with the subject at hand, but intelligent nonetheless. This makes it much easier to trust them when they write about subjects about which I know little or nothing.
(Compare that with drivel like Time, whose shameful "Cyberporn" issue was the last I ever bought from them. Written for twelve-year-olds, and possibly by them.)
Oops, you're right. Clearly my caffeine level is dangerously low today...
Ok, it's modded Funny, but you do realize that 1 yen is about 1.17 US cents, right? Are you trying to leave the machine a tip?
Yup. Time to post the ACLU pizza link again...
Probably for their former supplier, Lucas Electrics, whose founder, Joseph Lucas, became fondly known to British car fans (and their detractors) as the "Prince of Darkness".
George Bernard Shaw made this same point very eloquently: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Uh huh. Try searching Google for "quantitative finance jobs". Many require Ph.D. degrees in math (or other numerical fields such as physics) -- and starting salaries for "junior" positions tend to be around the £50-75K range. Experienced people make much, much more.
Didn't I just read about this in JPod? That Coupland guy is behind this, I'm sure of it...
I particularly liked the part about how this giant bag of hydrogen came equipped with a smoking room...
Try proving the non-existence of just about anything, for that matter. (See Karl Popper's "The Logic of Scientific Discovery", and the black swans...)
If you're an HP calculator fan like me, you'll go nuts over Nonpareil. Actual HP microcode, believe it or not; and very realistic images of (almost) all of your old favourites. GPL code, runs on Linux/OSX/Windows, etc. Couldn't ask for more!
Also, yes, it's an RTOS, though maybe not the most sophisticated one out there. The idea seems to be to provide something that's very small, lightweight, and fast, with absolutely minimal interrupt handling times, etc.
In case you're interested, here's a link to a book, Embedded Software Development with eCos, which describes the thing.
Er, unless there's a Uruguayan Linux distribution of which I am currently unaware, I think that should be MontaVista Linux.
A lightweight, open-source OS for embedded applications already exists: it's called eCos. Haven't used it myself, but from what I've read, it looks promising. YMMV, etc.
Well, you'd have to get very close to the other person's phone in order to be able to take a sufficiently detailed picture of the barcode, so presumably this would be done with his consent. No different, really, than if he had just forwarded you the SMS in the first place.
Problem is, the barcodes are scanned at the door. What happens if your buddy gets to the show before you do? One of you won't be allowed in.
Furthermore, if the designers of this system know the first thing about cryptography, they'll have encoded the phone number to which the legitimate SMS was sent into the barcode itself. So it'll be no problem for the event organizers to figure out which one of you is the scammer.
Can't find it online, but it's in the book "Travels in Hyperreality", a collection of miscellaneous essays. Postmodernism at its best, or worst, depending on your tastes. A brief sample ("fair use", I hope!):