It is interesting how he answered the question, very carefully inserting a strategic, "if discovered" in the sentence. Looks like he is already abusing the system, or aware of people abusing it or could imagine people abusing it.
No matter what happens, some one else faces the consequences, when it comes to these banks. There is bad security, bad implementation, total lack of understanding of how their systems could be breached. They will fire a few techies, for poor security. But the bigwigs drawing big salary, even their bonus would not be touched. May be they will get more bonus for taking a firm stand and firing these techies who show up to work in jeans and ear rings.
Even when they lie through their teeth to sell junk as gold to others they don't end up in jail. We all will pay, through more bank fees, more insurance costs, more taxes to bail them out. And they will dance all the way to their own private bank.
The idea of making computers understand humans is like using vernier calipers to measure the thickness of cotton candy. The yardstick is too precise for the quantity being measured. Just look how horrible and convoluted things get when some one human being tries to define some unambiguously for another human being. This is the situation in legislation, tax code, insurance contracts and wills and testament. Harder you try to define it without doubt or ambiguity, harder it gets, and creates more "loopholes". Fixing loop holes creates more loop holes. The imprecision of human language is like a mandlebrot set, zoom in and zoom in again and again, and still things are as imprecise as the previous levels.
Student loans are not forgiven in bankrupcy.
on
The College-Loan Scandal
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Exactly like the housing bubble. Then they gave out loans to people clearly unqualified, clearly unable to pay back the loan, low-documentation loans, no-documentation loans, interest only loans, negative amortization loans, etc etc. Now they colleges are egging on the students to assume enormous loans for useless degrees that will never get the student a job that could pay back the loan.
We should put the onus on the universities, to certify that if the student completes the degree he/she is seeking, there is at least some reasonable chance the loan will be paid back. They universities should disclose the mean and median starting salaries of the majors they are offering. Like the home loans used to have some basic rules like, "not more than 27% of gross for mortgage, not more than 34% for all loan payments, 20% down". Similar easy to grasp metrics should be made available.
But in a free market economy, if some people want to shoot themselves in their foot, there is nothing to stop them. But at least we someone should be telling them, they have a gun in their hand pointing to their feet and if they squeeze the trigger they will get hurt. Instead we are incentivising the bullet peddlers .
Blythe believes the long term success of Hyperloop will lie in its ability to be powered entirely by solar panels. "The compelling argument today is that the energy to run this could be generated from renewable resources, so the energy cost and the CO2 emissions are low - that probably gives it a bit more of an interesting argument whereas 15 years ago we didn't care about stuff like that.
But it far cheaper to electrify a conventional train track. And far cheaper to install just solar panels on top of all highways and rail tracks. In fact if we put a "roof" over all the highways in the northeast and install solar panels on them, the savings in snow removal costs in winter and the electricity generated in summer could pay for the whole project. Putting gables over highways and directing the snow to fall on the sides instead of on the lanes is a far cheaper project than this.
The home construction industry still reeling from the 2008 financial shock could use a shot in the arm. Regular conventional structures, gables and trusses, oriented to face the South, over I-90 between NewYork and Boston. Why not? We shoveled 800 billion dollars to the greedy banksters in just three months in 2008. A steady 10 billion dollar a year to put roof over highways is probably a better idea.
The researchers obtained permission from Twitter to conduct the research but were denied by Google, Yahoo and Facebook to conduct an investigation into scam accounts over their respective networks.
So only Twitter cooperated with an independent researcher trying to identify fake accounts. There is conflict of interest here, big companies have no real incentive to crack down on fake accounts. We should really commend Twitter for being open.
Almost all the tech companies in Bangalore, Chennai, Bombay and Pune do this. Not just for top techies, for their entire work force. This practice started ages ago when factories were built far from the city but with major work force coming from the city. So factories would build "quarters" for essential staff who had to come at all odd hours, and bus the workers in for day shifts. The bus fleets of big public sector companies in Bangalore like BEL, HMT, ITT, HAL etc used to be comparable or even bigger than the city bus systems. Further the city bus systems are notoriously over crowded and wont be able to handle peak loads of shift changes in big factories.
The problem with these class action lawsuits is that, it is mostly started by lawyers. If they win or settle, they first take out all their, "costs" which is highly inflated. Wish some of the class members would sue their own lawyers for malpractice when the costs are inflated, fraudulently. That is a different line. But then they take their fee of 30% or 40% of the total award, regardless of how much is actually distributed to the claimants.
If the lawyer fees are limited to 30% of the amount actually distributed to the claimants, it would go a long way in creating an incentive for the lawyers to actually make sure the claimants get some money. Right now, once the settlement is done, they lawyers collect all their money and send a form letter to claimants and move on to the next target.
I think we should make lawyers subject to malpractice laws too when they usurp the right to represent a class of claimants. Due diligence in locating all possible claimants to the class, making sure they all get due compensation, making sure the costs are not inflated etc all should come under malpractice provisions. If the lawyers screw up, the claimants should be able to sue them for malpractice.
To Congressdorks: Remember Arab Spring. It can happen here.
Really? The way Occupy Wall Street succeeded? One important characteristic of Arab spring is having a few leaders, self-appointed mostly, who are recognized by many followers. These leaders represent their followers by proxy and leaders accumulate followers. In OWS you had All-Chiefs-and-no-Indians problem. The congress critters know it. They are not scared. The NRA has stood by them election after election, turning out votes repeatedly. That is the kind of track record you have to rake up if you want to be taken seriously.
The electoral process must not only be fair, but also it should be very visibly fair. Otherwise the losing side will always accuse the other side of "fixing" elections. So the switch to e-voting requires the much harder work of persuading people that it is trustworthy. Other technical challenges are also very difficult. The voter should be able to verify that his/her vote is cast correctly and counted correctly. At the same time no one else, even with the cooperation of the voter, should be able to connect the vote cast to the voter. Voter not being able to prove how he/she voted is a fundamental requirement, without it people would buy/sell votes with confidence.
Strangely some people do lock up jewellery and other valuables in a safe inside the house too. In fact most states require you to lock the gun cabinets. (No requirement to lock the house though;-))
Any one who can log in to your unix/linux account, (or any one who can read your ~/.ssh folder, if you are dumb enough to leave it group/world readable) can steal your ssh keys and pretend to be you and log in to all machines in the known hosts file.
The quality of Indians applying for H1B positions from India has changed a lot in the last decade. The opportunities have expanded a lot in India, they get very good salary and they hire cooks and maids for a pittance over there. So most top quality engineers do not want to leave India. Real high quality ones from IITs and Regional Engineering Colleges (whatever they are called now) etc go into management and if at all they come to USA, it is to Wharton, Kelloggs and such brandname MBA programs. Some high quality engineers come to USA to do Masters and they are usually good. Also a big factor is USA has lost its charm in the eyes of most young women in India. They are used to having maids and cooks. They go, "what? do the dishes, cook the dinner, wash the clothes, and gasp, clean the bathrooms? Are you crazy I am not coming there". So they high quality applicant stream has dwindled. I have not seen an IIT resume cross my desk in the last 10 years.
On the other hand there are plenty of second, some third or even fourth grade engineers still enchanted by USA. They still apply and they are the ones most slashdotters disdainfully make fun of as poor quality desi programmers.
I would not go back, no matter what pay they offer and how many cooks, drivers and maids I could afford over there. Once you get used to the clean water and clean air, and reliable electric grid, it is difficult to readjust. But next generation of me are not coming here. Sadly. It would benefit both USA and them. And those who are still willing to come damage USA and damage the reputation of all Indians, all for a fistful of dollars.
Well, the dictionaries constantly add new words and new meanings and usages for old words. My pet peeve: pretty soon "begs the question" will have an accepted definition "raises the question" instead of circular argument fallacy . Insecticide is something that kills insects. It need not be insect on insect violence. So it is time we expand the meaning homicide to anything that kills humans.
BTW in most barbershops in the USA they have a jar of disinfectant where they soak the combs, brushes and clippers, brandname "Barbicide". Shhh, don't tell them it is a liquid that kills barbers.
Yeah, never miss an opportunity to blame the government and the bureaucracy. All that fracking and all that cheap natural gas flooding the market has no bearing on the decision. Most energy experts predicting USA to become a net exporter of petroleum products in the coming years did not affect the decision. 25 billion dollars is a pittance for Duke Energy and the only reason they scuttled the project was because of bureaucracy and regulation and delays.
Expect the same thing to be repeated in West Virginia and South Western Pennsylvania coal belts. They will blame the government, onerous regulations, etc etc and claim "clean coal" was killed by enviro nazis. All the while the natural gas is getting cheaper than even the dirty coal. If you spend more money on cleaning up dirty coal how can you compete with another thing that burns more easily, transports more easily and costs less?
We may disagree whether this boom in fracking and natural gas abundance is a good or bad. But one thing we can be sure is, these entrenched interests would blame the government at every opportunity even when the true cause is thumping its chest like an 800 lb gorilla right on their faces.
You don't understand. Telling the policemen off, calling the FBI jackbooted thugs, firing warning shots at the police under castle doctrine, killing teens in hoodies armed with skittles and ice tea are are the rights Pakistanis would never have in America.
Their no-contract plans are good. Despite a strong smear job by some Attorney General, (probably paid under the table by the big carriers), their phones are not locked once they are paid for. Unlimited talk, text and data, throttle down to 120 kbps after 500 MB, (10 Mbps before). 2GB more for 10$/month/line. 10 more for unlimited. When I got my nexus 4 from Google directly they gave me a micro simcard for free in their kiosk. Another nexus4 I saw from the store did not have as much junk pre loaded. No surprises so far.
My brother was saying that T-mobile benefited immensely in the failed take over big by AT&T. Apparently they had fine print, saying AT&T should give T-Mobile some 3 billion dollars and access to its network, if the deal was stopped by the Feds. So suddenly T-Mobile's coverage area increased tremendously and got some money too. But other are saying that still, T-mobile's coverage is its weak spot.
It is very telling there is no obfuscated FORTRAN coding contests. I think most carefully written lucid code in FORTRAN will beat the winner of this obfuscated c code winner handily.
Cost of using computer or phone includes things other than just money. Speaker's time is valuable too. That is what limiting infinite consumption. But in corporations such things can take a completely surreal turns. There was the apocryphal story about the build group of a major software vendor that was doing daily builds on products (both release and debug, mind you) on branches way after the end of life of products. The product teams had been disbanded but none of them issued "stop build" request and the scripts were faithfully rebuilding a frozen code branch for more than a decade.
How many people laughed at all the rednecks creating weird contraptions to hurl pumpkins down a harvested field in Discovery channel? Now who is laughing, eh?
When space travel is commercialized and you are crammed into the economy class seat of the commuter plane to mars, you may have to thank Bill "1 gallon" Schwarzenhammer, winner of Pumkin Chunkin 2021, who was the first one to hurl a pumpkin all the way to Moon, more known for his ability to gulp down 1 gallon of beer without pausing for breath.
It is not your father's fortran buddy! The highly optimized procedures, oops sorry subroutines, are in FORTRAN, But the simulation runs on huge high performance clusters with a mix of GPU, CPU and FPU. You might get a different result if you replace all he 3 meter ethernet cables in the cluster with 10meter cables.
Navier-Stokes equations come under continuum mechanics. Fundamental assumption is even at infinitely small control volumes the field quantities like mass, momentum and pressure are continuous. But we know the fluids are made up of molecules. These quantities are not really continuous when the control volumes are comparable to atomic/molecular dimensions. These molecules undergo random motion induced by temperature (Brownian motion). These are supposed to be the fundamental reason for turbulence. So you can not use N-S to predict the fluid flow far into the future. These things are known even before computers were even invented.
But instead of expecting perfect weather forecast if you are willing to settle for reasonable accurate over reasonable periods of time, yes, it could be done.
Another problem with weather forecasting is communicating the massive data that emerges from these simulations to the masses. Listeners want to know if they have to pack an umbrella. How are you going to tell thousands of users with million different daily routines, whether it would rain long enough when and where they are outside vehicles or buildings to require an umbrella, over a few sentences in radio?
Slashdot Mirror
It is interesting how he answered the question, very carefully inserting a strategic, "if discovered" in the sentence. Looks like he is already abusing the system, or aware of people abusing it or could imagine people abusing it.
Even when they lie through their teeth to sell junk as gold to others they don't end up in jail. We all will pay, through more bank fees, more insurance costs, more taxes to bail them out. And they will dance all the way to their own private bank.
The idea of making computers understand humans is like using vernier calipers to measure the thickness of cotton candy. The yardstick is too precise for the quantity being measured. Just look how horrible and convoluted things get when some one human being tries to define some unambiguously for another human being. This is the situation in legislation, tax code, insurance contracts and wills and testament. Harder you try to define it without doubt or ambiguity, harder it gets, and creates more "loopholes". Fixing loop holes creates more loop holes. The imprecision of human language is like a mandlebrot set, zoom in and zoom in again and again, and still things are as imprecise as the previous levels.
We should put the onus on the universities, to certify that if the student completes the degree he/she is seeking, there is at least some reasonable chance the loan will be paid back. They universities should disclose the mean and median starting salaries of the majors they are offering. Like the home loans used to have some basic rules like, "not more than 27% of gross for mortgage, not more than 34% for all loan payments, 20% down". Similar easy to grasp metrics should be made available.
But in a free market economy, if some people want to shoot themselves in their foot, there is nothing to stop them. But at least we someone should be telling them, they have a gun in their hand pointing to their feet and if they squeeze the trigger they will get hurt. Instead we are incentivising the bullet peddlers .
Blythe believes the long term success of Hyperloop will lie in its ability to be powered entirely by solar panels. "The compelling argument today is that the energy to run this could be generated from renewable resources, so the energy cost and the CO2 emissions are low - that probably gives it a bit more of an interesting argument whereas 15 years ago we didn't care about stuff like that.
But it far cheaper to electrify a conventional train track. And far cheaper to install just solar panels on top of all highways and rail tracks. In fact if we put a "roof" over all the highways in the northeast and install solar panels on them, the savings in snow removal costs in winter and the electricity generated in summer could pay for the whole project. Putting gables over highways and directing the snow to fall on the sides instead of on the lanes is a far cheaper project than this.
The home construction industry still reeling from the 2008 financial shock could use a shot in the arm. Regular conventional structures, gables and trusses, oriented to face the South, over I-90 between NewYork and Boston. Why not? We shoveled 800 billion dollars to the greedy banksters in just three months in 2008. A steady 10 billion dollar a year to put roof over highways is probably a better idea.
The researchers obtained permission from Twitter to conduct the research but were denied by Google, Yahoo and Facebook to conduct an investigation into scam accounts over their respective networks.
So only Twitter cooperated with an independent researcher trying to identify fake accounts. There is conflict of interest here, big companies have no real incentive to crack down on fake accounts. We should really commend Twitter for being open.
Almost all the tech companies in Bangalore, Chennai, Bombay and Pune do this. Not just for top techies, for their entire work force. This practice started ages ago when factories were built far from the city but with major work force coming from the city. So factories would build "quarters" for essential staff who had to come at all odd hours, and bus the workers in for day shifts. The bus fleets of big public sector companies in Bangalore like BEL, HMT, ITT, HAL etc used to be comparable or even bigger than the city bus systems. Further the city bus systems are notoriously over crowded and wont be able to handle peak loads of shift changes in big factories.
If the lawyer fees are limited to 30% of the amount actually distributed to the claimants, it would go a long way in creating an incentive for the lawyers to actually make sure the claimants get some money. Right now, once the settlement is done, they lawyers collect all their money and send a form letter to claimants and move on to the next target.
I think we should make lawyers subject to malpractice laws too when they usurp the right to represent a class of claimants. Due diligence in locating all possible claimants to the class, making sure they all get due compensation, making sure the costs are not inflated etc all should come under malpractice provisions. If the lawyers screw up, the claimants should be able to sue them for malpractice.
He got his MBA from Donald Trump himself, and the course work consisted of watching the reruns of Apprentice.
To Congressdorks: Remember Arab Spring. It can happen here.
Really? The way Occupy Wall Street succeeded? One important characteristic of Arab spring is having a few leaders, self-appointed mostly, who are recognized by many followers. These leaders represent their followers by proxy and leaders accumulate followers. In OWS you had All-Chiefs-and-no-Indians problem. The congress critters know it. They are not scared. The NRA has stood by them election after election, turning out votes repeatedly. That is the kind of track record you have to rake up if you want to be taken seriously.
The electoral process must not only be fair, but also it should be very visibly fair. Otherwise the losing side will always accuse the other side of "fixing" elections. So the switch to e-voting requires the much harder work of persuading people that it is trustworthy. Other technical challenges are also very difficult. The voter should be able to verify that his/her vote is cast correctly and counted correctly. At the same time no one else, even with the cooperation of the voter, should be able to connect the vote cast to the voter. Voter not being able to prove how he/she voted is a fundamental requirement, without it people would buy/sell votes with confidence.
Strangely some people do lock up jewellery and other valuables in a safe inside the house too. In fact most states require you to lock the gun cabinets. (No requirement to lock the house though ;-))
Any one who can log in to your unix/linux account, (or any one who can read your ~/.ssh folder, if you are dumb enough to leave it group/world readable) can steal your ssh keys and pretend to be you and log in to all machines in the known hosts file.
On the other hand there are plenty of second, some third or even fourth grade engineers still enchanted by USA. They still apply and they are the ones most slashdotters disdainfully make fun of as poor quality desi programmers.
I would not go back, no matter what pay they offer and how many cooks, drivers and maids I could afford over there. Once you get used to the clean water and clean air, and reliable electric grid, it is difficult to readjust. But next generation of me are not coming here. Sadly. It would benefit both USA and them. And those who are still willing to come damage USA and damage the reputation of all Indians, all for a fistful of dollars.
Pretty soon the Arctic will be ice free round the year and ice breakers will be scrapped and may be one or two saved as curiosities in museums.
BTW in most barbershops in the USA they have a jar of disinfectant where they soak the combs, brushes and clippers, brandname "Barbicide". Shhh, don't tell them it is a liquid that kills barbers.
It is marketing bullshit. It is not supposed to make sense.
Expect the same thing to be repeated in West Virginia and South Western Pennsylvania coal belts. They will blame the government, onerous regulations, etc etc and claim "clean coal" was killed by enviro nazis. All the while the natural gas is getting cheaper than even the dirty coal. If you spend more money on cleaning up dirty coal how can you compete with another thing that burns more easily, transports more easily and costs less?
We may disagree whether this boom in fracking and natural gas abundance is a good or bad. But one thing we can be sure is, these entrenched interests would blame the government at every opportunity even when the true cause is thumping its chest like an 800 lb gorilla right on their faces.
You don't understand. Telling the policemen off, calling the FBI jackbooted thugs, firing warning shots at the police under castle doctrine, killing teens in hoodies armed with skittles and ice tea are are the rights Pakistanis would never have in America.
My brother was saying that T-mobile benefited immensely in the failed take over big by AT&T. Apparently they had fine print, saying AT&T should give T-Mobile some 3 billion dollars and access to its network, if the deal was stopped by the Feds. So suddenly T-Mobile's coverage area increased tremendously and got some money too. But other are saying that still, T-mobile's coverage is its weak spot.
It is very telling there is no obfuscated FORTRAN coding contests. I think most carefully written lucid code in FORTRAN will beat the winner of this obfuscated c code winner handily.
Cost of using computer or phone includes things other than just money. Speaker's time is valuable too. That is what limiting infinite consumption. But in corporations such things can take a completely surreal turns. There was the apocryphal story about the build group of a major software vendor that was doing daily builds on products (both release and debug, mind you) on branches way after the end of life of products. The product teams had been disbanded but none of them issued "stop build" request and the scripts were faithfully rebuilding a frozen code branch for more than a decade.
How many people laughed at all the rednecks creating weird contraptions to hurl pumpkins down a harvested field in Discovery channel? Now who is laughing, eh? When space travel is commercialized and you are crammed into the economy class seat of the commuter plane to mars, you may have to thank Bill "1 gallon" Schwarzenhammer, winner of Pumkin Chunkin 2021, who was the first one to hurl a pumpkin all the way to Moon, more known for his ability to gulp down 1 gallon of beer without pausing for breath.
It is not your father's fortran buddy! The highly optimized procedures, oops sorry subroutines, are in FORTRAN, But the simulation runs on huge high performance clusters with a mix of GPU, CPU and FPU. You might get a different result if you replace all he 3 meter ethernet cables in the cluster with 10meter cables.
But instead of expecting perfect weather forecast if you are willing to settle for reasonable accurate over reasonable periods of time, yes, it could be done.
Another problem with weather forecasting is communicating the massive data that emerges from these simulations to the masses. Listeners want to know if they have to pack an umbrella. How are you going to tell thousands of users with million different daily routines, whether it would rain long enough when and where they are outside vehicles or buildings to require an umbrella, over a few sentences in radio?