I tell my team "in your pocket or on silent" is the rule for all cell phones. Anyone in violation of this rule that receives a call returns to their desk to find their phone turned off and the battery removed if possible. If they find their phone at all. I've hidden them in the ceiling before.
Anyone can occassionally forget to put their phone on silent, but as a rule (and I've never known an exeception) the folks who never put their phone on silent are managers. This just reinforces my belief that managers don't do any work, therefor have no work to interupt.
And better (worse) than the person using a speaker phone in an open floor plan or amongst cubes, is the person using a speaker phone when on a call with someone in the same area. If I can hear a person at their desk and their voice coming out of a speak phone at another desk, why the frak are you two on the phone? Just walk over and talk! Or better yet, move to a conference room.
I learned to turn the volume way down and not answer the phone at all.
Other than people coming by your office/cube/burrow, all our modern communication methods work asynchronously. The phone has voice mail, IM windows can be minmized, email is email, etc.
When my phone rings, I will check the caller ID, but CID + VM means never speaking with someone I don't wish to speak with at that moment. No VM means it wasn't important.
Wasn't the ending of BSG--that we are descendants of an advanced alien culture whose last survivors crashed on Earth and started over without the advanced technology--basically a rip off of HHGTTG?
Er, no.
You say no, but nothing you list contradicts what I've said. Yes, the Earth is a manufactured planet, a large computer build to calculate the answer to the ultimate question. But Aurther Dent (and other modern day humans) are not OEM parts. They're decedants of the Golgafrinchams on the B-ark.
I must have freak ears. Any ear buds I've tried either fell out after 5 seconds or hurt because they had to be jammed in so as to not fall out after 5 seconds.
I know a lot of people disagree, but I loved the finale. It's grown on me more since it aired too. There is something about that conclusion that still really sticks in my mind and still pops up in my head sometimes when I read about advancements in A.I.--the idea that humanity is all but doomed to create the A.I. that will lead to its destruction, but that there is also somehow infinite hope that they won't make the same mistake THIS TIME.
Wasn't the ending of BSG--that we are descendants of an advanced alien culture whose last survivors crashed on Earth and started over without the advanced technology--basically a rip off of HHGTTG?
Anyway, I expect any new live action Star Wars show to be a Sith Lord secretly living with 2 Jedi. Yoda is the nosy landlord who's always one step behind their zany schemes.
Also without knowing the scale of the coding assignment, we can't know if 45 minutes is barely enough time or a very reasonable amount of time.
Even if 45 minutes isn't reasonable to complete code that compiles and runs, it is enough time to discuss an approach, sketch out an algorithm in pseudocode, note any 'gotchas' to check for, etc.
I'd say timed coding tests are valuable as long as the expectations are reasonable for the time allotted. I'll add timed tests are preferable in consideration of everyone's time. If the applicant doesn't offer a complete solution after a short time, so what? The goal isn't stable, running code, it's to get an idea of how this person thinks and solve problems.
In JavaScript, without using the reverse() method, reverse an array of numbers containing 1,2,3,4,5 in the most efficient way possible.
Semi-off topic question: really? I mean, are we (programming job seekers) as a group that dumb?
I recently went through searching for a programming job after 5 years in a position that mainly dealt with configuring off-the-shelf apps. Every single interview at some point had a question that required reversing an array without using Reverse(). (Only about half mentioned efficiency.)
I'm big into puzzles and logic games, and as long as I can use pseudocode and not stress syntax, technical interviews are truly fun. I enjoy coming up with algorithms to solve interesting problems. But reversing an array is not an interesting problem; it's trivial. It got the point where I felt like I should walk in to an interview, introduce myself to everyone in the room, and go right for the white board and put up an array-reversing function, just to get it out of the way.
That a significant number of applicants for a programming position couldn't (or wouldn't) solve this quickly is sad commentary. (It's even worse if you consider it's likely yours would not be the first position these folks have applied for. Based on my experience, they would have been asked the same question previously, and not only couldn't come up with a solution, but also didn't think, maybe I should figure this out before I send out any more resumes.)
So, yeah, if your economy is growing, then you can keep spending more than you make. Many growing companies do that all the time, as it's cheaper to take out debt then to make money in other ways.
But what if the economy isn't growing?
I recently heard an economist give a similar "deficits don't matter" talk with the explanation that at the individual level rising incomes cover the cost of debt.
Unfortunately the program wasn't being broadcast live and the presenter didn't ask the (to me) obvious follow up. What if incomes don't rise?
This isn't a theoretical question. In the US, incomes for 95% of us haven't gone up in 30 years. All the productivity gains from automation and technological advances have gone to the top of the economic food chain. And even the most optimistic forecasts are predicting minimal economic growth in the coming decades.
I don't disagree with the premise, that it can make great sense to use the (relatively) cheap money of tomorrow to cover the debts of yesterday. But what if there's no reasonable expectation that money will be cheap tomorrow?
This all sounds too much like the thinking during inflation of the housing bubble. Buy the biggest house you can find, mortgage debt doesn't matter. You'll be able to afford it tomorrow. And if not, worst case scenario is you have to sell and take a huge profit.
Except the worse case was you can't afford it tomorrow, housing prices go down instead of up, and even at a loss you can't find a buyer.
So yes, if we grant on principle that with a growing economy and rising personal incomes federal government debt is a minor concern, what about our current real world where the economy is barely growing and personal incomes are not rising?
A +1 for the Harvard University Extension. They don't offer the AB or SB from Harvard College, but they do offer classes from instructors from the College, School or Engineering and Applied Sciences, and other H schools.
As for the degree, it is worth heavy consideration. I'll use my imaginary Canadian wife as an example. With less than a semester of college, she was an admin assistant at a dot-com era start-up. She volunteered to work on the office intranet and worked up to javascript and other light programming.
The start-up crashed, as most did, but wifey had made an impression. She got an offer to join a software QA group and worked her way up to management. So lack of a degree can be overcome.
That is not to say it is immaterial. My wife did spend a couple years under a VP who who was hung up on degrees. Folks with a degree (any degree) from the right school got fast tracked. Folks with no degree had no chance for promotion. After 4 promotions in 5 years, she struggled until an position opened for transfer within the company.
I also see her struggle with a lot of things she could have covered in school. Not that she doesn't figure it out in the end, but she works a lot harder than she should need to. The business world does not grade on a curve. I am constantly amazed at what she able to figure out on her own, but the customer doesn't care where it comes from--are you clever? are you just regurgitating what was fed you at school?--they just care that the job gets done.
So why work harder than you need to? Or rather why handicap yourself? Yes, a lot of what you cover in school will be either stuff you already know or not interesting. But you will learn interesting stuff that you will need in your professional life. And taking a course based on mistakes made by others is easier than making those mistakes yourself.
I'll start by admitting there's a lot of that I didn't understand. I think that's because a lot of it is gibberish.
There are some strange ideas as to what constitutes "manipulation". If I go to a store and purchase an item, I've decreased the inventory of that item at that store. That's not manipulation, that's using the market as designed. If I make a bet and the odds adjust to encourage betting against me, that's not manipulation. That's the way the system is designed. Unless the game is fixed, the house doesn't care who wins. The odds are calculated to encourage equality in wagers, so the losers pay the winners and the house takes the vig, no matter what the outcome. Changing odds isn't manipulation.
To think a prediction market would influence the outcome of a presidential election--what, because no money depends on election results now? You've been reading too many comic books or seen too many Bond films if you're worried about a US election being affected by a villain looking to win a bet. How about a villain looking to win a defense contract, get foreign aid, get a military base relocated to/from his country?
You don't have issue with a Saudi prince picking the next president of the US, but do have issue if the pick is to win a bet in a prediction market? How is that any better or worse than a Saudi prince picking picking the next president of the US to keep arm sales to the Middle East flowing, or keep aid going to Israel?
I think the above ramblings fit in to the "navel gazing" category. That you wrote about two markets with different prices for the same wager/good and didn't immediately address the opportunity for arbitrage makes me think the odds for an insightful conclusion are low.
Everyone relies on luck to some extent. Just some successful people use their own success as an excuse to deny their own luck.
To a certain extent, that is true. For example, for a Facebook to take off, you need the internet, and the web on top of that, and platforms that allows for rapid development. Only then can a single person turn an idea in to a prototype people can see and use and a small team turn that prototype into a business.
If Zuckerberg is at Harvard 2 or 3 decades sooner, he doesn't come up with Facebook. Is he equally successful with some other idea using the technology of that time? Maybe he becomes the guy to invent the web.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of college students had the same access as Zuckerberg. Thousands of those at Harvard. Yet, none of them (or very, very, very few) were billionaires before turning 30.
The more I get around, the more I think we are on the shores of a sea of opportunities. Is it luck to have the skill and foresight to take advantage of those opportunities?
Put in more concrete terms, anyone in their 40s in the North America or Europe had the luck to be around when the web was invented, to be old enough to use it and build a business on it yet young enough to take that risk on a new platform.
How many forty-somethings are self-made millionaires? Very few. Is the difference luck?
(For the record, I am not a self-made web millionaire.)
Re:Did Zuckerberg ever have to get past HR?
on
Just Say No To College
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
First of all, most of those "billionaire dropouts" were dropouts from Ivy League schools with plenty of startup money from daddy already at their disposal, not dipshits coming out of no-name-high-school. Secondly, most of them only left college when they already had contacts and solid plans (and financing) in place for starting their own businesses. They didn't need degrees because they were going to be hiring *themselves*, not having to worry about some HR department that will toss any non-degree applicants right into the trash.
For most of the non-rich, non-Ivy League assholes like the rest of us--we still need a college degree if we're going to get beyond the front door to any stable job. We're not Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates.
Your first point is important. Going to college (particularly a well-networked one like Harvard) and dropping out is not the same as never attending. The reason is your second point. You can get what you need from a college without getting a diploma. It is much less likely you'll get what you need (or even know what you can get) if you never attend. It's the old "how do you know you won't like like/need it if you've never tried it?"
To your last point, a kid saying 'I don't need college, look at Zuckerberg,' is kinda like me saying, 'I don't need to work, look at the lady who just won millions playing the lottery.' You may say, the Zuckerbergs of the world are in control of their destiny, the lottery winners rely on luck. I'll say, there are more lottery winners who've won enough to live off the rest of their life (if managed properly) than there are billionaire drop outs.
Nobody ever said that. What we do say is that known programming errors get fixed, known human issues do not.
While coming back from lunch today I saw somebody go through a stop sign at 40 mph and t-boning another car. Luckily everyone walked away (go modern cars and their crumple zones), and while I'm sure that particular driver will be more careful in the future, other human drivers are going to be making the same mistake forever.
A programming error causes something like this and the fix for it will be on an update for every single other car out there. It will never happen again. Other mistakes will happen, sure, but that one is fixed forever.
*facepalm*
1) Not every known programming error gets fixed prior to release.
2) Even if 1 were not true, it's the unknown errors that will get you.
Stock exchanges have been electronic for quite some. And they process quite a large number of transactions. I did some back of envelope googling. The average trading volume of the NYSE is 700 million. Figure they're open 200 days per year, electronic trading been around maybe 20 years, maybe NYSE is 25% of the world trading (yes, I know the volume of trading the amount electronic trading has been increasing over that time, but I'm not counting other forms of electronic trading (e.g. bonds, commodities)), puts us north of 11 quadrillion trading transactions.
Not illegal, but no longer done. Welding and painting in automobile assembly lines, railroad spike driving machines, even computers -- a computer used to be a human being who worked out firing tables and scientific computations.
Are doctors forbidden to diagnose because now we have Watson?
Watson is no replacement for a doctor; that was an incredibly stupid question.
You're making my point. The examples you give--auto assembly, driving spikes, calculations--are all deterministic activities that are relatively easy to reduce to repeatable actions performed by machine.
Traffic on the roads is a complex system with potentially chaotic behavior. There are posts suggesting we are heading to the point that driving your own car will be illegal because people will be a danger to computer-controlled vehicles. That we can program a computer to control a robotic arm to repeatably weld the same spot on an auto body does not suggest we are close programming a computer to drive a car in traffic.
As I said in another reply, are you ready to let Amazon send you what their suggestion system picks out for you? Only watch what TiVo records as a suggestion? Let iTunes pick what podcasts to download?
In my experience those systems are wrong more often than they are right, and I am not ready to substitute the result of the program for my own judgement. I am all for tools to help me--whether it's suggestions from a retailer or a blind spot warning on a car--but I am not ready to turn over complete control.
Most serious accidents are caused by driver error.
Doesn't jive with this:
If a computer-controlled car did it, it would be corrected and shouldn't happen in the future ever again. (Regardless of the fact that it seems remarkably unlikely to happen in the first place).
What I think I'm reading in a lot of these comments is, people behind the wheel cannot be trusted. They are prone to mistakes. But people at a keyboard are perfect and produce perfect software that will drive those cars for us!
Why is it unlikely a computer-controlled car would make a mistake or get into an accident? Are you trying to claim it is unlikely a program will have bugs? Because the converse is true. It is a virtual certitude that the software controlling the driverless car will have bugs.
Don't you get it? The people who will be programming these computer-controller cars are the same people we don't want driving their own cars.
I am all for letting the technology assist me. I have the rear view camera on my car. I have the blind spot warning system. I am glad to have those tools assist me when I am driving. But I don't want the tools doing the driving.
I think of a Google search. I like the "did you mean B?" when I do a search for A. I hate the "we returned the results for B" when I searched for A. I know what I'm searching for better than the developers at Google.
Take the suggestion feature at your favorite online retailer as an example. Do you want them just automatically sending you whatever they think you'll like? I know I certainly don't. Yes, Amazon gives me some good suggestions, but most of their suggestions are things I'd hate to have them send me.
Ever used the suggestion feature from TiVo? It sucks. I mean it records some good stuff, and I've seen some stuff I never would have known existed without the suggestion, but 75% of the stuff my TiVo records I delete without ever watching. It does stupid things like records reruns for shows I've told TiVo I only want new episodes. The developers at TiVo don't know what I want to watch better than I do.
iTunes is another great example. I've had iTunes unsubscribe to podcasts without telling me, because I hadn't listened to that podcast in a while. Would you want your car doing that? 'I'm going to erase the roads that lead to grandma's house because you haven't visited in a while.' I know what I want to download better than the programmers at Apple.
So looking at Apple, Google, Amazon...some of the most successful companies in the world (of all companies, not just in the realm digital technology) with some of the best developers in the world. And I would not trust any of them driving my car.
The suggestions are great. They are helpful. Perhaps even insightful. But when providing assistance , not when taking control.
I don't want iTunes to only download podcasts based on what the software calculates I like. I don't want Amazon to only send me what their suggestion algorithm thinks I will want. I don't want my TiVo to record only it's suggestions.
Do you? Are you ready to hand over control to the machines? I say, let the machines assist us, but no more.
No, but I can imagine a change to the legal system limiting the liability of the manufacturers of self-driving cars.
If we could know that self-driving cars reduce accidents by 95% (a not unrealistic amount), it would be morally wrong for us to not put them on the road. If the only hurdle the manufacturers had left was the liability issue, then it would be morally wrong for Congress to not change the laws.
Of course, Congress has been morally bankrupt since, oh, about 1789, so I doubt that they'll see this as an imperative. On the other hand, I do imagine the car makers paying lobbyists and making campaign contributions to ensure that self-driving car manufacturers are exempted from these lawsuits, so it could still happen.
Wow. You are nuts. Not only will computer-controlled cars not reduce accidents by 95%, but overall damage from accidents will increase.
The number of accidents will go down, but many of those are minor--such as backing out of a parking spot and tapping the car behind you. Pretty all minor accidents may be eliminated. But in their place we'll see more serious accidents. So instead of one person hitting the gas instead of the break, you'll have every car of a particular make or model hitting the gas instead of the break.
This idea that the perfect designer or perfect programmer is just waiting for Detroit or Google to come calling is fantasy. We don't have the perfect driver, so why do you expect we'd be able to program one?
And the idea that manufacturers should have special liability protection is fascism. I go out and break the law, I go to jail. If someone suspects I've harmed them, I--as an individual--am open to a civil suit. But if I'm acting on behalf of the McMonkey Motors Co, suddenly I'm above the law?
I agree the US Congress is morally bankrupt, but precisely because they've been passing the type of law you suggest.
I see nothing fundamental in the concept of the computer-driven car that requires a change in law for dealing with faulty products.
Hell, just this morning on the news they showed a car crashing through a store, barely missing a toddler -- the idiot driver thought the car was in reverse. Had he been driving a computer-controlled car, that would have never happened.
I see you've 1) never programmed, and 2) never seen Windows, or any other modern operating system.
The idea of the driverless car is real and coming to a road near you soon (as in a decade or two). But the idea that a computer-controlled car will be so much better than human-driven that you'll be forbidden to drive your own car is pure cow patties being peddled by the companies who stand to make billions off of computer-controller cars.
Will computer control eliminate some of the stupid mistakes people make behind the wheel? Yes. Does that mean computers (on behalf of the people who program and build them) won't make mistakes of their own? Heck no.
By show of hands, who here knows a programmer who claims to make bug-free software? *sees many hands* OK. Now who here has actually seen perfect, bug-free code for any non-trivial task? *sees no hands*
Perfect programmers don't exist any more than perfect drivers exist.
Are there any examples, ever, of what is being supposed here? Any activity that people used to do that is now illegal because machines (designed and built by people) are so much better?
Are doctors forbidden to diagnose because now we have Watson?
vlm's comment is already at +5, so I'll just ride those coat tails.
Facebook is not the web. The web is not the internet. You can see a lot more than cartoon nipples on the internet without too much effort.
I don't think it's a problem that some small percentage of the web is devoted to something other than pr0n. It's only an issue if those companies with restrictive policies get to decide the standards for the web and/or internet as a whole.
Slashdot Mirror
I tell my team "in your pocket or on silent" is the rule for all cell phones. Anyone in violation of this rule that receives a call returns to their desk to find their phone turned off and the battery removed if possible. If they find their phone at all. I've hidden them in the ceiling before.
Anyone can occassionally forget to put their phone on silent, but as a rule (and I've never known an exeception) the folks who never put their phone on silent are managers. This just reinforces my belief that managers don't do any work, therefor have no work to interupt.
And better (worse) than the person using a speaker phone in an open floor plan or amongst cubes, is the person using a speaker phone when on a call with someone in the same area. If I can hear a person at their desk and their voice coming out of a speak phone at another desk, why the frak are you two on the phone? Just walk over and talk! Or better yet, move to a conference room.
I learned to turn the volume way down and not answer the phone at all.
Other than people coming by your office/cube/burrow, all our modern communication methods work asynchronously. The phone has voice mail, IM windows can be minmized, email is email, etc.
When my phone rings, I will check the caller ID, but CID + VM means never speaking with someone I don't wish to speak with at that moment. No VM means it wasn't important.
What pants were they wearing when they hit the moon?
Yes, the Earth is a manufactured planet, a large computer build to calculate the answer to the ultimate question.
I thought Deep Thought was created to find the answer and that Earth was created to find the question....
D'oh. You are correct.
Wasn't the ending of BSG--that we are descendants of an advanced alien culture whose last survivors crashed on Earth and started over without the advanced technology--basically a rip off of HHGTTG?
Er, no.
You say no, but nothing you list contradicts what I've said. Yes, the Earth is a manufactured planet, a large computer build to calculate the answer to the ultimate question. But Aurther Dent (and other modern day humans) are not OEM parts. They're decedants of the Golgafrinchams on the B-ark.
I must have freak ears. Any ear buds I've tried either fell out after 5 seconds or hurt because they had to be jammed in so as to not fall out after 5 seconds.
I know a lot of people disagree, but I loved the finale. It's grown on me more since it aired too. There is something about that conclusion that still really sticks in my mind and still pops up in my head sometimes when I read about advancements in A.I.--the idea that humanity is all but doomed to create the A.I. that will lead to its destruction, but that there is also somehow infinite hope that they won't make the same mistake THIS TIME.
Wasn't the ending of BSG--that we are descendants of an advanced alien culture whose last survivors crashed on Earth and started over without the advanced technology--basically a rip off of HHGTTG?
Anyway, I expect any new live action Star Wars show to be a Sith Lord secretly living with 2 Jedi. Yoda is the nosy landlord who's always one step behind their zany schemes.
If you can't program, you probably shouldn't touch the code of those who can.
Nonsense. Programming ability is not a binary function--either you're a god or illiterate.
Pairing experienced programmers with acolytes is an excellent idea, to the benfit of both parties.
Also without knowing the scale of the coding assignment, we can't know if 45 minutes is barely enough time or a very reasonable amount of time.
Even if 45 minutes isn't reasonable to complete code that compiles and runs, it is enough time to discuss an approach, sketch out an algorithm in pseudocode, note any 'gotchas' to check for, etc.
I'd say timed coding tests are valuable as long as the expectations are reasonable for the time allotted. I'll add timed tests are preferable in consideration of everyone's time. If the applicant doesn't offer a complete solution after a short time, so what? The goal isn't stable, running code, it's to get an idea of how this person thinks and solve problems.
In JavaScript, without using the reverse() method, reverse an array of numbers containing 1,2,3,4,5 in the most efficient way possible.
Semi-off topic question: really? I mean, are we (programming job seekers) as a group that dumb?
I recently went through searching for a programming job after 5 years in a position that mainly dealt with configuring off-the-shelf apps. Every single interview at some point had a question that required reversing an array without using Reverse(). (Only about half mentioned efficiency.)
I'm big into puzzles and logic games, and as long as I can use pseudocode and not stress syntax, technical interviews are truly fun. I enjoy coming up with algorithms to solve interesting problems. But reversing an array is not an interesting problem; it's trivial. It got the point where I felt like I should walk in to an interview, introduce myself to everyone in the room, and go right for the white board and put up an array-reversing function, just to get it out of the way.
That a significant number of applicants for a programming position couldn't (or wouldn't) solve this quickly is sad commentary. (It's even worse if you consider it's likely yours would not be the first position these folks have applied for. Based on my experience, they would have been asked the same question previously, and not only couldn't come up with a solution, but also didn't think, maybe I should figure this out before I send out any more resumes.)
So in essence, a port-a-potty is a toilet who's plumbing is truck based instead of pipe based.
So basically, sneakernet?
So, yeah, if your economy is growing, then you can keep spending more than you make. Many growing companies do that all the time, as it's cheaper to take out debt then to make money in other ways.
But what if the economy isn't growing?
I recently heard an economist give a similar "deficits don't matter" talk with the explanation that at the individual level rising incomes cover the cost of debt.
Unfortunately the program wasn't being broadcast live and the presenter didn't ask the (to me) obvious follow up. What if incomes don't rise?
This isn't a theoretical question. In the US, incomes for 95% of us haven't gone up in 30 years. All the productivity gains from automation and technological advances have gone to the top of the economic food chain. And even the most optimistic forecasts are predicting minimal economic growth in the coming decades.
I don't disagree with the premise, that it can make great sense to use the (relatively) cheap money of tomorrow to cover the debts of yesterday. But what if there's no reasonable expectation that money will be cheap tomorrow?
This all sounds too much like the thinking during inflation of the housing bubble. Buy the biggest house you can find, mortgage debt doesn't matter. You'll be able to afford it tomorrow. And if not, worst case scenario is you have to sell and take a huge profit.
Except the worse case was you can't afford it tomorrow, housing prices go down instead of up, and even at a loss you can't find a buyer.
So yes, if we grant on principle that with a growing economy and rising personal incomes federal government debt is a minor concern, what about our current real world where the economy is barely growing and personal incomes are not rising?
I'll just scan the story and send out an email.
Wait...what?
A +1 for the Harvard University Extension. They don't offer the AB or SB from Harvard College, but they do offer classes from instructors from the College, School or Engineering and Applied Sciences, and other H schools.
As for the degree, it is worth heavy consideration. I'll use my imaginary Canadian wife as an example. With less than a semester of college, she was an admin assistant at a dot-com era start-up. She volunteered to work on the office intranet and worked up to javascript and other light programming.
The start-up crashed, as most did, but wifey had made an impression. She got an offer to join a software QA group and worked her way up to management. So lack of a degree can be overcome.
That is not to say it is immaterial. My wife did spend a couple years under a VP who who was hung up on degrees. Folks with a degree (any degree) from the right school got fast tracked. Folks with no degree had no chance for promotion. After 4 promotions in 5 years, she struggled until an position opened for transfer within the company.
I also see her struggle with a lot of things she could have covered in school. Not that she doesn't figure it out in the end, but she works a lot harder than she should need to. The business world does not grade on a curve. I am constantly amazed at what she able to figure out on her own, but the customer doesn't care where it comes from--are you clever? are you just regurgitating what was fed you at school?--they just care that the job gets done.
So why work harder than you need to? Or rather why handicap yourself? Yes, a lot of what you cover in school will be either stuff you already know or not interesting. But you will learn interesting stuff that you will need in your professional life. And taking a course based on mistakes made by others is easier than making those mistakes yourself.
No, but I wish they could. Oprah and Jenny McCarthy should be sent to prison for mans laughter.
What's wrong with making guys laugh?
And I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss anything Denis Kucinich says, as he's obviously got somethings figured out.
I'll start by admitting there's a lot of that I didn't understand. I think that's because a lot of it is gibberish.
There are some strange ideas as to what constitutes "manipulation". If I go to a store and purchase an item, I've decreased the inventory of that item at that store. That's not manipulation, that's using the market as designed. If I make a bet and the odds adjust to encourage betting against me, that's not manipulation. That's the way the system is designed. Unless the game is fixed, the house doesn't care who wins. The odds are calculated to encourage equality in wagers, so the losers pay the winners and the house takes the vig, no matter what the outcome. Changing odds isn't manipulation.
To think a prediction market would influence the outcome of a presidential election--what, because no money depends on election results now? You've been reading too many comic books or seen too many Bond films if you're worried about a US election being affected by a villain looking to win a bet. How about a villain looking to win a defense contract, get foreign aid, get a military base relocated to/from his country?
You don't have issue with a Saudi prince picking the next president of the US, but do have issue if the pick is to win a bet in a prediction market? How is that any better or worse than a Saudi prince picking picking the next president of the US to keep arm sales to the Middle East flowing, or keep aid going to Israel?
I think the above ramblings fit in to the "navel gazing" category. That you wrote about two markets with different prices for the same wager/good and didn't immediately address the opportunity for arbitrage makes me think the odds for an insightful conclusion are low.
Everyone relies on luck to some extent. Just some successful people use their own success as an excuse to deny their own luck.
To a certain extent, that is true. For example, for a Facebook to take off, you need the internet, and the web on top of that, and platforms that allows for rapid development. Only then can a single person turn an idea in to a prototype people can see and use and a small team turn that prototype into a business.
If Zuckerberg is at Harvard 2 or 3 decades sooner, he doesn't come up with Facebook. Is he equally successful with some other idea using the technology of that time? Maybe he becomes the guy to invent the web.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of college students had the same access as Zuckerberg. Thousands of those at Harvard. Yet, none of them (or very, very, very few) were billionaires before turning 30.
The more I get around, the more I think we are on the shores of a sea of opportunities. Is it luck to have the skill and foresight to take advantage of those opportunities?
Put in more concrete terms, anyone in their 40s in the North America or Europe had the luck to be around when the web was invented, to be old enough to use it and build a business on it yet young enough to take that risk on a new platform.
How many forty-somethings are self-made millionaires? Very few. Is the difference luck?
(For the record, I am not a self-made web millionaire.)
First of all, most of those "billionaire dropouts" were dropouts from Ivy League schools with plenty of startup money from daddy already at their disposal, not dipshits coming out of no-name-high-school. Secondly, most of them only left college when they already had contacts and solid plans (and financing) in place for starting their own businesses. They didn't need degrees because they were going to be hiring *themselves*, not having to worry about some HR department that will toss any non-degree applicants right into the trash.
For most of the non-rich, non-Ivy League assholes like the rest of us--we still need a college degree if we're going to get beyond the front door to any stable job. We're not Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates.
Your first point is important. Going to college (particularly a well-networked one like Harvard) and dropping out is not the same as never attending. The reason is your second point. You can get what you need from a college without getting a diploma. It is much less likely you'll get what you need (or even know what you can get) if you never attend. It's the old "how do you know you won't like like/need it if you've never tried it?"
To your last point, a kid saying 'I don't need college, look at Zuckerberg,' is kinda like me saying, 'I don't need to work, look at the lady who just won millions playing the lottery.' You may say, the Zuckerbergs of the world are in control of their destiny, the lottery winners rely on luck. I'll say, there are more lottery winners who've won enough to live off the rest of their life (if managed properly) than there are billionaire drop outs.
Nobody ever said that. What we do say is that known programming errors get fixed, known human issues do not.
While coming back from lunch today I saw somebody go through a stop sign at 40 mph and t-boning another car. Luckily everyone walked away (go modern cars and their crumple zones), and while I'm sure that particular driver will be more careful in the future, other human drivers are going to be making the same mistake forever.
A programming error causes something like this and the fix for it will be on an update for every single other car out there. It will never happen again. Other mistakes will happen, sure, but that one is fixed forever.
*facepalm*
1) Not every known programming error gets fixed prior to release.
2) Even if 1 were not true, it's the unknown errors that will get you.
Stock exchanges have been electronic for quite some. And they process quite a large number of transactions. I did some back of envelope googling. The average trading volume of the NYSE is 700 million. Figure they're open 200 days per year, electronic trading been around maybe 20 years, maybe NYSE is 25% of the world trading (yes, I know the volume of trading the amount electronic trading has been increasing over that time, but I'm not counting other forms of electronic trading (e.g. bonds, commodities)), puts us north of 11 quadrillion trading transactions.
And yet there are still bugs in that system.
According to most of the folks posting in another thread about computer-driven cars, programming errors rarely make it out in to the world.
Is there was an issue, it must be user error. Programmers aren't supposed to make mistakes!
<snark/>
Not illegal, but no longer done. Welding and painting in automobile assembly lines, railroad spike driving machines, even computers -- a computer used to be a human being who worked out firing tables and scientific computations.
Are doctors forbidden to diagnose because now we have Watson?
Watson is no replacement for a doctor; that was an incredibly stupid question.
You're making my point. The examples you give--auto assembly, driving spikes, calculations--are all deterministic activities that are relatively easy to reduce to repeatable actions performed by machine.
Traffic on the roads is a complex system with potentially chaotic behavior. There are posts suggesting we are heading to the point that driving your own car will be illegal because people will be a danger to computer-controlled vehicles. That we can program a computer to control a robotic arm to repeatably weld the same spot on an auto body does not suggest we are close programming a computer to drive a car in traffic.
As I said in another reply, are you ready to let Amazon send you what their suggestion system picks out for you? Only watch what TiVo records as a suggestion? Let iTunes pick what podcasts to download?
In my experience those systems are wrong more often than they are right, and I am not ready to substitute the result of the program for my own judgement. I am all for tools to help me--whether it's suggestions from a retailer or a blind spot warning on a car--but I am not ready to turn over complete control.
You need to rethink this line of reasoning.
This:
Most serious accidents are caused by driver error.
Doesn't jive with this:
If a computer-controlled car did it, it would be corrected and shouldn't happen in the future ever again. (Regardless of the fact that it seems remarkably unlikely to happen in the first place).
What I think I'm reading in a lot of these comments is, people behind the wheel cannot be trusted. They are prone to mistakes. But people at a keyboard are perfect and produce perfect software that will drive those cars for us!
Why is it unlikely a computer-controlled car would make a mistake or get into an accident? Are you trying to claim it is unlikely a program will have bugs? Because the converse is true. It is a virtual certitude that the software controlling the driverless car will have bugs.
Don't you get it? The people who will be programming these computer-controller cars are the same people we don't want driving their own cars.
I am all for letting the technology assist me. I have the rear view camera on my car. I have the blind spot warning system. I am glad to have those tools assist me when I am driving. But I don't want the tools doing the driving.
I think of a Google search. I like the "did you mean B?" when I do a search for A. I hate the "we returned the results for B" when I searched for A. I know what I'm searching for better than the developers at Google.
Take the suggestion feature at your favorite online retailer as an example. Do you want them just automatically sending you whatever they think you'll like? I know I certainly don't. Yes, Amazon gives me some good suggestions, but most of their suggestions are things I'd hate to have them send me.
Ever used the suggestion feature from TiVo? It sucks. I mean it records some good stuff, and I've seen some stuff I never would have known existed without the suggestion, but 75% of the stuff my TiVo records I delete without ever watching. It does stupid things like records reruns for shows I've told TiVo I only want new episodes. The developers at TiVo don't know what I want to watch better than I do.
iTunes is another great example. I've had iTunes unsubscribe to podcasts without telling me, because I hadn't listened to that podcast in a while. Would you want your car doing that? 'I'm going to erase the roads that lead to grandma's house because you haven't visited in a while.' I know what I want to download better than the programmers at Apple.
So looking at Apple, Google, Amazon...some of the most successful companies in the world (of all companies, not just in the realm digital technology) with some of the best developers in the world. And I would not trust any of them driving my car.
The suggestions are great. They are helpful. Perhaps even insightful. But when providing assistance , not when taking control.
I don't want iTunes to only download podcasts based on what the software calculates I like. I don't want Amazon to only send me what their suggestion algorithm thinks I will want. I don't want my TiVo to record only it's suggestions.
Do you? Are you ready to hand over control to the machines? I say, let the machines assist us, but no more.
No, but I can imagine a change to the legal system limiting the liability of the manufacturers of self-driving cars.
If we could know that self-driving cars reduce accidents by 95% (a not unrealistic amount), it would be morally wrong for us to not put them on the road. If the only hurdle the manufacturers had left was the liability issue, then it would be morally wrong for Congress to not change the laws.
Of course, Congress has been morally bankrupt since, oh, about 1789, so I doubt that they'll see this as an imperative. On the other hand, I do imagine the car makers paying lobbyists and making campaign contributions to ensure that self-driving car manufacturers are exempted from these lawsuits, so it could still happen.
Wow. You are nuts. Not only will computer-controlled cars not reduce accidents by 95%, but overall damage from accidents will increase.
The number of accidents will go down, but many of those are minor--such as backing out of a parking spot and tapping the car behind you. Pretty all minor accidents may be eliminated. But in their place we'll see more serious accidents. So instead of one person hitting the gas instead of the break, you'll have every car of a particular make or model hitting the gas instead of the break.
This idea that the perfect designer or perfect programmer is just waiting for Detroit or Google to come calling is fantasy. We don't have the perfect driver, so why do you expect we'd be able to program one?
And the idea that manufacturers should have special liability protection is fascism. I go out and break the law, I go to jail. If someone suspects I've harmed them, I--as an individual--am open to a civil suit. But if I'm acting on behalf of the McMonkey Motors Co, suddenly I'm above the law?
I agree the US Congress is morally bankrupt, but precisely because they've been passing the type of law you suggest.
I see nothing fundamental in the concept of the computer-driven car that requires a change in law for dealing with faulty products.
Hell, just this morning on the news they showed a car crashing through a store, barely missing a toddler -- the idiot driver thought the car was in reverse. Had he been driving a computer-controlled car, that would have never happened.
I see you've 1) never programmed, and 2) never seen Windows, or any other modern operating system.
The idea of the driverless car is real and coming to a road near you soon (as in a decade or two). But the idea that a computer-controlled car will be so much better than human-driven that you'll be forbidden to drive your own car is pure cow patties being peddled by the companies who stand to make billions off of computer-controller cars.
Will computer control eliminate some of the stupid mistakes people make behind the wheel? Yes. Does that mean computers (on behalf of the people who program and build them) won't make mistakes of their own? Heck no.
By show of hands, who here knows a programmer who claims to make bug-free software? *sees many hands* OK. Now who here has actually seen perfect, bug-free code for any non-trivial task? *sees no hands*
Perfect programmers don't exist any more than perfect drivers exist.
Are there any examples, ever, of what is being supposed here? Any activity that people used to do that is now illegal because machines (designed and built by people) are so much better?
Are doctors forbidden to diagnose because now we have Watson?
vlm's comment is already at +5, so I'll just ride those coat tails.
Facebook is not the web. The web is not the internet. You can see a lot more than cartoon nipples on the internet without too much effort.
I don't think it's a problem that some small percentage of the web is devoted to something other than pr0n. It's only an issue if those companies with restrictive policies get to decide the standards for the web and/or internet as a whole.