Steven Pinker's statistics very clearly show the violence has gone down steadily over the millennia. By orders of magnitude. Steadily. His range goes from incessant tribal warfare, inter societal plunder and robbery, national wars, global wars, regular crime,... and extends it to racial discrimination, gender discrimination, acceptance of gays... etc etc.
Pinker only briefly touches upon the reduction in violence before recorded history. For that we can look at Nicholas Wade in "Before the Dawn". The gradual thinning of human skull from 200000 years ago to 75000 years ago shows the reduction in violence. (The older skulls were "robust" and the modern skulls were "gracile"). Basically skulls less able to withstand thumping blows from clubs and stones actually survived and thrived.
So the general arc of violence has been on the downward path. There would be short term fluctuations. But 2020s will not be like 1970s. No way. Steven Levitt first broke the taboo and mentioned the link between legalization of abortion in 1970 and the reduction in violence in 1990s. 2020s will be when the grand children of unwanted babies aborted in 1970s will be missing from the crime age pool. Very unlikely we are going to see any spike in violence in 2020.
If you guys are surprised by the low price tag of 90m USD for a mars mission, wait till you see the break down. 66% of it is for a dedicated powerplant for the mission control and an undersea power cable to Singapore for the back up power supply.
So many people spend so much of time furiously scribbling away and not paying attention to what the lecturer is saying. Just jot down the URLs, journal article ref numbers, anything that is a pointer to an resource you need to look up later. Otherwise listen carefully. Try not to get distracted no matter how boring the material is. Always review take 15 minutes to summarize what you have listened as soon as the class is over or as soon as possible. Then read this summary before the next class. Look up the URL, read the journal papers and do some work before coming to the next class. Do not confuse the time spent on project work, or home work with prep work for the class. Whether or not you do the home work, whether or not you procrastinate about the project work, preparing for the class is urgent and important.
I was bad in undergrad, furious notes scribbler I was. I got better in Masters, and listened more. By the time I learnt all these l lessons in Grad School, my diagnostics exam was over, and I did not have to take classes anymore:-)
Is it possible at least some companies have money due to bugs? Even in this case, it is a zero sum game. Every trade has a counter party. So some group of traders collectively made 440 million due to this bug. If there is any reason to ban such high frequency algorithmic trading this is it. How long will it be before the programmers who are familiar with the behavior of the code in simulations, use their knowledge of bugs and failure modes, and collude with the counter parties to profit? How do we know it is not already happening?
I am not a frequent trader. And I always submit limit orders. Usually good for 30 days or good for 60 days order, or even good until canceled orders. Usually a stock option black out period will intervene and cancel my unfilled orders.
I have seen my sell orders execute at a higher price than my limit price. Also my rare limit buy orders have also executed at less than my limit price. I am not a trader so I don't know if this is the law and this is how they should operate, or my company has special agreements with our market maker and stock option managing company not to screw the inexperienced geeks like me.
The corruption in India (and Pakistan, China and Bangladesh etc) is different from the corruption in the western countries. In the west, corrupt officials do illegal things for bribes of money or power or women. In the East corrupt officials demand money to do their regular job for which they get paid salaries. Simple things like getting a driver's license or getting fitness certificate for your bus/truck, or getting a residency certificate to apply for a bank loan, or getting a legal heir certificate to probate a will, or to register a property deed, or police verification report to apply for passport or no objection certificate from the Urban Development Authority for something or the other, or from the water board for something else.... any thing you need to do, there are two things that are certain:
1. You will need certificates. No matter what you do. Anything you do must have an application, usually in triplicate, and it should be accompanied by certificates. Tons and tons of certificates.
2. All these certificates must be obtained by bribing some official or another.
Hey, Mitt Romney, how did you find time off from your campaign to post on slash dot? Shouldn't you be insulting Syrians or Egyptians today, according to your campaign schedule?
My small team is managing some 600K lines of code all C++, (no graphics no gui), which is a silly measure anyway. Source code for a typical engineering design analysis tool can easily top 10 million loc. And add to this material property libraries, model libraries, part libraries, abstracted behavioral model data, etc etc. These are not source code, but data files, with every number carefully verified ( for example: the coefficient of viscosity of hydraulic fluid brand XYZ at 250 degree c or the impact strength of ALCOA AL 75032 alloy at STP) And many companies own/develop/ship multiple products in diverse physics realms (thermal, fluids, electronics, mechanical, civil, electrical etc) with very little overlap.
Let us say you design a curriculum designed to teach logic, critical thinking, problem solving skills etc. Further you require that at the end the students should learn these skills at a fairly significant levels. No matter what you subject you teach to instill the students with these skills, it would be difficult and most students would struggle with it. These skills are highly non-intuitive. These are not skills needed to survive in a jungle or semi arid desert with hunter-gatherer life style. Nature would not endow us with these skills through evolution. They have to be acquired with lots of hard work and dedication. Blaming algebra is stupid. Even if you use "How I met your mother" episodes to teach these skills, to take it to the level algebra takes you to, it would have become painful drudgery most students will fail.
I find people behave so differently when they are driving a car than in person. People who are courteous, who would apologize hastily if stepped on someone's toe or bumped into someone, who easily let another person go ahead of them in the check out line, suddenly become these monsters who honk, who flip the bird and shout angry obscenities when they are behind the wheel.
The basic reason for that is that, there is no way for someone to apologize for a minor infraction. If I cut some one off unintentionally, it would help me if I could flash sorry to the driver. Or to say thank you to a fellow motorist. If this car to car wifi would send quick messages like "sorry" or "thank you" or "excuse me", it would improve the behavior of people tremendously. Would it happen with car to car wifi?
May be because most game developers are men and have not found what it takes to engage women in games. May be women could be lured in by cow clicker and its clones. But that as of now, using games to understand the human psyche is likely to leave half of human race as inscrutable. But that is just the status quo. Nothing new.
There is not test or proof that they are 100% virus free. The test can only show that there is a high STATISTICAL probability that they MIGHT be virus free.
It reminds of the story about three professors walking down a country lane in Scotland. They see a black cow. The astrophysicist immediately declares, "All the cows in Scotland are black!". The professor of statistics interjects, "You are generalizing too much. All you can say is, the statistical probability of finding a black cow in Scotland is above zero. That is all."
The professor of mathematics looks at them and says, "That is also a generalization, my friend. All we can say now is, this side of that cow is black".
If you listen to the conservatives, it is all, "Govt is useless", "Govt steals money from hard working citizens by calling it a tax and provides nothing in return", "Government is the parasite", "It is all individual effort and government sponges off John Galts of the world".
If that is true, the lawless governmentless lands of Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan all should be humming with economic activity. Without the yoke of the government, they should be enjoying all the fruits of the free market capitalism. The United Socialistic States of America and the Ununited Socialistic Republics of Europe should be left in the dust, begging for hand outs and charities from these countries. I wonder why it has not yet happened.
Most people misunderstand Gordon Crovitz. They all assume he want to show that Xerox paid for the internet, not the government. That is not true. His main purpose is to provide a reference. Now many people will quote Crovitz to claim that it was private companies that built the internet. Initially it will be of the form, "there are some people who hold the view that the internet was built primarily by private companies". Slowly as it gets retold, and referenced and cited and sliced and diced, it will eventually morph into, "it is the private companies that built the internet". Any scholarly argument rebutting the original claim will be added to the "controversy" surrounding it.
Make any claim you want. If there is no attempt to disprove the original claim, it will be declared the winner by default. If there is any attempt to prove how stupid the original claim is, it will be used to prove the claim "there is controversy surrounding the original claim". This is a tried and true technique in misdirection. Most of the time it is not even meant to convince the other side or to attract followers to your point of view. It is simply a method to hold people who already believe in your claims to continue the belief even when reality comes in, strikes them on the face and tells them their belief is wrong.
No way buddy. If all (or most) of your income comes from one single source, and the reason for the income is your labor, IRS will treat you as an employee and the income as W2 wages. Have you tried incorporating yourself and selling your services as a contractor to your employer? My brother is an independent contractor. Real one, with a company, actively seeking short projects 3 to 6 months duration. He mentioned some rules that could make his income w2 wages.
That is the institutional advantage richer people get. They can choose to take their income in many forms, defer it, hide it abroad, launder it through IRAs or partnerships, or insane insurance policies where the benefit is less than the premium. Poor sods who work for a living and get a W2, the government seems to go after them with vehemence. But their anger is very cleverly manipulated by the rich to get even more tax breaks for capital gains, retained interest, reciprocal tax treaties with foreign governments, etc etc.
We must save the American capitalism from these capitalists. I think a U Chicago economist wrote a book with a similar title. "save capitalism from capitalists".
Either via HDMI out or VGA out? Does bluetooth have enough bandwidth to support video out? Are there bluetooth monitors out there? Bluetooth key board/mouse would be a great accessory for a tablet.
Couple of early mods thought it was a troll or something in cursory reading. Usually meta moderation catches it. But no matter, partly it is my fault, I dashed it off in a hurry. Any way I have karma to burn, and I will rewrite it with more citations and explanations and in a less inflammatory language.
American diplomats have been courting the Arabs since early 1800s. One of them inserted a clause:
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
in the Treaty of Tripoly > and aggressively promoted secular America as an alternative to Christian Europe. When the world energy shifted from coal to oil, America was well positioned to get preferential treatment from the Arabs. American oil companies getting better deals than Dutch and Brit companies owes much to this ground laid by foresighted American diplomats
After World War II, Europe did not really want the displaced Jews to come back, and Jews also did not really want to go back to their homes in lands liberated from Nazi occupation. Half of them ended up in USA and the rest in a newly created Israel. That is the start of bad blood between the Arabs and the Americans. Still most Muslim tribes and nations were engaged in internecine warfare and they never unified to fight off the Americans or the Europeans.
In what can only be described as monumental lack of foresight, Reagan authorized CIA to arm the Muslim terrorists, teach Pakistanis how to fight proxy war using non uniformed combatants, to fight off the Russians in Afghanistan. Communism and central planning never had the ideological fervor or support among the Russians. That regime was ripe for collapse. But the Muslims are motivated by ideology and they have strong affinity. Like Prometheus bringing fire from the Gods, CIA taught the Muslims to unify, collect money, recruit volunteers and taught Pakistan to use them effective.
Slashdot Mirror
Pinker only briefly touches upon the reduction in violence before recorded history. For that we can look at Nicholas Wade in "Before the Dawn". The gradual thinning of human skull from 200000 years ago to 75000 years ago shows the reduction in violence. (The older skulls were "robust" and the modern skulls were "gracile"). Basically skulls less able to withstand thumping blows from clubs and stones actually survived and thrived.
So the general arc of violence has been on the downward path. There would be short term fluctuations. But 2020s will not be like 1970s. No way. Steven Levitt first broke the taboo and mentioned the link between legalization of abortion in 1970 and the reduction in violence in 1990s. 2020s will be when the grand children of unwanted babies aborted in 1970s will be missing from the crime age pool. Very unlikely we are going to see any spike in violence in 2020.
If you guys are surprised by the low price tag of 90m USD for a mars mission, wait till you see the break down. 66% of it is for a dedicated powerplant for the mission control and an undersea power cable to Singapore for the back up power supply.
Was it something like millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced?
I was bad in undergrad, furious notes scribbler I was. I got better in Masters, and listened more. By the time I learnt all these l lessons in Grad School, my diagnostics exam was over, and I did not have to take classes anymore :-)
Is it possible at least some companies have money due to bugs? Even in this case, it is a zero sum game. Every trade has a counter party. So some group of traders collectively made 440 million due to this bug. If there is any reason to ban such high frequency algorithmic trading this is it. How long will it be before the programmers who are familiar with the behavior of the code in simulations, use their knowledge of bugs and failure modes, and collude with the counter parties to profit? How do we know it is not already happening?
I have seen my sell orders execute at a higher price than my limit price. Also my rare limit buy orders have also executed at less than my limit price. I am not a trader so I don't know if this is the law and this is how they should operate, or my company has special agreements with our market maker and stock option managing company not to screw the inexperienced geeks like me.
1. You will need certificates. No matter what you do. Anything you do must have an application, usually in triplicate, and it should be accompanied by certificates. Tons and tons of certificates.
2. All these certificates must be obtained by bribing some official or another.
Hey, Mitt Romney, how did you find time off from your campaign to post on slash dot? Shouldn't you be insulting Syrians or Egyptians today, according to your campaign schedule?
Cant decide if it is funny or informative or insightful.
So 10 million LOC? meh! seen that. INBD.
Let us say you design a curriculum designed to teach logic, critical thinking, problem solving skills etc. Further you require that at the end the students should learn these skills at a fairly significant levels. No matter what you subject you teach to instill the students with these skills, it would be difficult and most students would struggle with it. These skills are highly non-intuitive. These are not skills needed to survive in a jungle or semi arid desert with hunter-gatherer life style. Nature would not endow us with these skills through evolution. They have to be acquired with lots of hard work and dedication. Blaming algebra is stupid. Even if you use "How I met your mother" episodes to teach these skills, to take it to the level algebra takes you to, it would have become painful drudgery most students will fail.
The basic reason for that is that, there is no way for someone to apologize for a minor infraction. If I cut some one off unintentionally, it would help me if I could flash sorry to the driver. Or to say thank you to a fellow motorist. If this car to car wifi would send quick messages like "sorry" or "thank you" or "excuse me", it would improve the behavior of people tremendously. Would it happen with car to car wifi?
May be because most game developers are men and have not found what it takes to engage women in games. May be women could be lured in by cow clicker and its clones. But that as of now, using games to understand the human psyche is likely to leave half of human race as inscrutable. But that is just the status quo. Nothing new.
It could be just 10 years in human life, but in dog years it is 70 and in cyber dog year it is (2^10 - 1) that is 1023 years.
There is not test or proof that they are 100% virus free. The test can only show that there is a high STATISTICAL probability that they MIGHT be virus free.
It reminds of the story about three professors walking down a country lane in Scotland. They see a black cow. The astrophysicist immediately declares, "All the cows in Scotland are black!". The professor of statistics interjects, "You are generalizing too much. All you can say is, the statistical probability of finding a black cow in Scotland is above zero. That is all."
The professor of mathematics looks at them and says, "That is also a generalization, my friend. All we can say now is, this side of that cow is black".
If that is true, the lawless governmentless lands of Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan all should be humming with economic activity. Without the yoke of the government, they should be enjoying all the fruits of the free market capitalism. The United Socialistic States of America and the Ununited Socialistic Republics of Europe should be left in the dust, begging for hand outs and charities from these countries. I wonder why it has not yet happened.
Make any claim you want. If there is no attempt to disprove the original claim, it will be declared the winner by default. If there is any attempt to prove how stupid the original claim is, it will be used to prove the claim "there is controversy surrounding the original claim". This is a tried and true technique in misdirection. Most of the time it is not even meant to convince the other side or to attract followers to your point of view. It is simply a method to hold people who already believe in your claims to continue the belief even when reality comes in, strikes them on the face and tells them their belief is wrong.
So instead of crude blasters and guns, they are going to use an elegant weapon for more civilized ages? Like what this woman is showing off?
Cats always had self cleaning technology. Are they adopting it for car use? Would it mean the car could cough up dirt balls?
No way buddy. If all (or most) of your income comes from one single source, and the reason for the income is your labor, IRS will treat you as an employee and the income as W2 wages. Have you tried incorporating yourself and selling your services as a contractor to your employer? My brother is an independent contractor. Real one, with a company, actively seeking short projects 3 to 6 months duration. He mentioned some rules that could make his income w2 wages.
We must save the American capitalism from these capitalists. I think a U Chicago economist wrote a book with a similar title. "save capitalism from capitalists".
Either via HDMI out or VGA out? Does bluetooth have enough bandwidth to support video out? Are there bluetooth monitors out there? Bluetooth key board/mouse would be a great accessory for a tablet.
Couple of early mods thought it was a troll or something in cursory reading. Usually meta moderation catches it. But no matter, partly it is my fault, I dashed it off in a hurry. Any way I have karma to burn, and I will rewrite it with more citations and explanations and in a less inflammatory language.
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
in the Treaty of Tripoly > and aggressively promoted secular America as an alternative to Christian Europe. When the world energy shifted from coal to oil, America was well positioned to get preferential treatment from the Arabs. American oil companies getting better deals than Dutch and Brit companies owes much to this ground laid by foresighted American diplomats
After World War II, Europe did not really want the displaced Jews to come back, and Jews also did not really want to go back to their homes in lands liberated from Nazi occupation. Half of them ended up in USA and the rest in a newly created Israel. That is the start of bad blood between the Arabs and the Americans. Still most Muslim tribes and nations were engaged in internecine warfare and they never unified to fight off the Americans or the Europeans.
In what can only be described as monumental lack of foresight, Reagan authorized CIA to arm the Muslim terrorists, teach Pakistanis how to fight proxy war using non uniformed combatants, to fight off the Russians in Afghanistan. Communism and central planning never had the ideological fervor or support among the Russians. That regime was ripe for collapse. But the Muslims are motivated by ideology and they have strong affinity. Like Prometheus bringing fire from the Gods, CIA taught the Muslims to unify, collect money, recruit volunteers and taught Pakistan to use them effective.
Typo: meant to type now ended up typing not, confusing the last sentence. Not that my English was great to begin with, this is too stupid even for me.