You make a great point. Exactly. Gun owners kill people.
So could you americans please the fuck stop selling so many guns? It would automatically lead to fewer gun owners. My sister lives in your country and this shit scares me.
I'm a voracious reader and used to buy from bookstores on a weekly basis. Over the last few years I switched almost entirely to getting books online, and of late, more and more, that means buying them on amazon.
The reason for the shift has primarily been availability of the books I want to read in stores.
Now I understand that there are millions of books out there with thousands more getting added everyday, so decentralized bookstores are inherently at a huge disadvantage to centralized means like amazon. The amount of unproductive working capital tied up in store inventory will ensure this, leave alone rent, staff and utilities of a brick and mortar establishment.
But, assuming many other people have a similar story, what continues to surprise me is how little or how poorly bookstores seem to have adapted to this. If I were a bookstore owner I would try one of these things, none of which I have seen evidence of any bookstores here trying in a meaningful or impactful way:
1. Aggressively analyze traffic and tweak the assortment continuously
2. Track what I read, suggest books, inform me when they get related stuff in-store
3. If they don't have a book I want, promise to send it home the next day or later the same day
4. Reward my loyalty and value to them meaningfully. By that I mean that if I'm the kind of guy who buys regularly and from a predictable set then invest a significant portion of their margins on my purchases back into growing their relationship with me
5. Start 'membership programs' that help me get control over my spend on books
6. Make bookstores a really pleasant place for me and my family to spend time in
8. Support the physical book ecosystem.. start a program to take back books and free up precious shelf space in my home
9. Specialize.. trying to keep all the books relevant to everyone is a recipe for disaster imho, will end up keeping a bare minimum in any area and leave everyone dissatisfied
To folks in the bookstore business and slashdotters in other countries (I'm in India) - Do you feel nearly enough is being done?
Anyone seen this pathetic scifi movie starring Pamela Anderson? The whole movie revolves around a pair of contacfts than can help to fool iris scans at an emigration checkpoint. Interesting that the same situation has happened, wonder when the contacts will follow.
In an unrelated development, mysterious walking trees were found wandering the norwegian woods.
Experts predict they are an evolutionary response by the earth to substitute petroleum, just in time for copenhagen.
'The more atoms you have to push your information through the more amperage it takes to overcome the resistance'.
Interesting??? Patently false!!
Consider:
1. Thicker wire means less resistance, not more
2. EM radiation does not experience resistance at all!! Only reflection or refraction or absorption
3. You seem to imply that all atoms are alike. not true.
4. Amperage to overcome resistance??? please...
5. why are you comparing the 'resistance' or whatever of a PCB to the (patently dissimilar, but to give you a head) path from cellphone to cell tower?
Colling molecules together? Sounds like utter bunkum...
All molecules in a liquid are perpetually in motion and colliding against each other and the walls of the container. If it's about colliding molecules together, microwaving or conventional heating would have the same effect.. increasing the rate and energy of collisions between molecules as you increase their kinetic energy. If it's about 'colliding' without heating, any increase in pressure (by either pressurizing or just centrifuging or good old shaking around) would accomplish the same purpose, ultrasound or not. If it's about modifying chemical reactions, there's a few ways you could do that - heating or introducing a catalyst (to speed up irreversible reactions or shift the balance for reversible ones). I am not aware of pressure waves (i.e. ultrasound, in air or fluid) acting as a catalyst or doing anything special besides creating heat.
Some enlightened chemical engineer here who could throw light on what ultrasound could be reasonably considered to be accomplishing here?
I read TFA, and it doesn't really talk too much about exactly what the simulation achieves or could be used for.
They talk of 'danger recognition' - surely that's not possible without a simulation of the rest of the brain as well? To make the logical connections between what the eyes see and what the implication is in terms of 'danger'? And they mention cars that could drive themselves.
Can someone in the know explain if this is really a big deal - or just a really really great picture matching program?
The current account balance on a country describes whether it is a net importer or a net exporter of goods. Similarly, the current account balance of Canada with the US describes whether Canada is relatively a net exporter or net importer of goods from the USA.
Now, Canada has a net positive current account balance of around 2% GDP (IMF 2005) which means, overall, a stronger Canadian currency is a good thing for Canada (compared to the rest of the world).
However, the situation here is more about the dollar falling vis-a-vis all other currencies. And since the USA is the world's biggest net importer of goods with a current account balance of -6% (deficit) (IMF 2005), a weaker US currency is bad for the US, leading to inflationary pressure (All things become more expensive), which is further exacerbated by profligate spending by the government (essentially, the government prints money to spend, which reduces the value of ALL dollars).
At the same time, the natural correction is (as some readers point out), more manufacturing being done inside the USA to counter the current account imbalance. Less imports to the US, more exports from the US, more jobs in the US etc. etc. The challenge is to keep inflation in control at the same time.
The US is, however, exceptional in the global macro-economic context because it has the largest economy, and the de-facto world standard currency. The US currency is heavily supported by Asian banks which moderates the drop in it's value somewhat. All in all, a very interesting and complicated situation to learn about - you may wish to start with these:
I'm surprised not to find shock and outrage reflected amongst the comments below.
Is there anything more the man could have done to speak the truth before dying? And if you believe his word, does no-one find the non-disclosure a breach of trust?
It should have gone - My friend Cmdr Gravy - doesn't often take time out blah blah... CmdrGravy, an excellent choice blah... Blah no finer employee than him blah.. hehehehe you get my drift
While previous comments about how computers are 'meant' to remember, and sometimes how we 'want' them to remember things are valid - The prof.'s observations strike me as very insightful..
I think he's got a valid point - because today 'data' is not a cold hard silicon number inside the machine anymore.. Data is coming closer and closer to our everyday life, getting enmeshed into our societal networks, becoming richer and closer to omnipresence.
I feel that the human brain's habit of 'forgetting' in this context - is akin to forgiving (sins, crimes, sharp comments, mistakes, hurts), overcoming, healing (trauma, abuse, extreme emotions, stress), refreshing (what makes every meal a joy, every orgasm a pleasure or every waft of cool air on hot skin so nice), evolving (views, outlooks, understanding, positions).
As information in a machine comes closer and closer to becoming our sensory inputs, records of our society and lives, of our behavior and views, our crimes and grievances, what have you - isn't it important that there be ways to forgive, overcome, heal, refresh and evolve without the same information coming back into our lives again and again and again...?
Dunno if i've been able to convey what I feel.. a distinct chill when I think of not being able to (or allowed to) forget..
I felt quite horrified reading the news this morning. Even here, the incident is frontpage news.
The fact that my sister and her husband are both medical school students in the US brings the incident even closer home.
Having never visited or lived in the US, I have a question in mind (which perhaps many other asian/other nationals also wonder)..
Is the picture of school and college life in the US, painted in Hollywood movies, really a reflection of reality?
Now, India itself is probably one of the world's worst countries to grow up in for children. (Yes, it is, ok? I'm not being anti-national when I say that!). In terms of health, nutrition, child labor and other measures of human development, we pretty much scrape the bottom of the barrel over and over every year.
Even so, I have never seen or felt the kind of hostility, peer pressure to conform and mental stress that, going by movie/TV standards, children in the US seem to be subjected to. I mean a social tension, although I'm sure economical disparities and dynamics must contribute in many ways... Is it for real? Are families irrelevant, or a source of negative rather than positive emotion for a lot of young people? Do kids really grow up too early, too fast? (atleast, that's the way it looks to me on TV, maybe my outlook is provincial by world standards..). And is it really easy to get your hands on a gun? I'm sure I couldn't even find one today in Delhi (I'm 25 now) even if I tried hard, and I'm pretty sure I'm better off for it. Can you guys from the states give your perspective? And, indeed, how it's different in Europe and other developed nations?
I'm a bit sad to see that the majority of comments here are looking at the downside/impracticality of Citi's initiative - not to mention conspiracy theories about biometric trials and ripoffs.
Sure, it's not philanthropy. But it may well do a lot of good. I'd like to make a couple of points and ask a few questions:
1. 'Slum Dwellers' are poor. But they can still own televisions and radios. They do spend considerable sums when getting married/on special occasions. Giving them banking facilities makes sense. 2. A slum is not the safest and most secure place in the world. Why shouldn't they want to keep whatever little they have in a bank? 3. Consider women who want to save money, and not let their husbands drink it away. Makes sense for them? 4. Thumb-ectomies? How's that so different from a neck-ectomy by a robber intent on stealing your money? 5. Will the biometrics work? Why not? And if there are snafus and security glitches - they'll get worked out. Why should a thumbprint in any case be less secure than a signature or a four digit number? 6. Is citi using this as a low risk experiment? Maybe they are. What's wrong with that motivation (amongst others), as long as something useful comes out of it for the customer?
At the end of the day, these are people with very very VERY little access to banking services. Most of the time the best they can do is their local post office (Our post offices have savings account facilities) which are slow, close early and on weekends, and are not always convenient. Something which brings some promise of convenience, security and value addition to people's lives should be given a fair hearing.
As a mechanical engineer, I have some idea of what this means.. Fluid dynamics is a fairly pervasive subject which goes into the design of airplanes, irrigation canals, industrial machinery, turbines and a lot of other places. The solution of the navier stokes' equation in three dimensions is quite fabulous, since without such a mathematical tool it's not possible to estimate how a fluid will flow in three dimensions.. Till now, we typically use either special conditions (ex. along a turbine blade, constant pressure) or fractional element methods (think of fluid as lots of tiny balls) or physical modelling for such problems.
To put some perspective, it's about as cool as being able to determine the movement of n planets simultaneously attracting each other gravitationally.. quite tough!
If anything, this will raise the value of existing non-RFID passports, since they are more easily modified to indentify someone else
Doesn't that, like, highlight the effectiveness of the measure?
A photo, copy protection printing, implanted chip, what-have-you.. they just make copying progressively harder as criminals catch up. A natural evolution to stay ahead.
Amen!
"You cannot predict the next value of a stock simply using past and current information from within the stock exchange."
This is not just common sense, but based on sound scientific principles. Stock markets (as, supposedly all markets) operate on a law: If there's sure-shot money to be made, it will be made as soon as the opportunity opens, and as much money will be made on that opportunity as it takes to make that opportunity worthless, and this will happen (almost) instantaneously
Excuse my ridiculous paraphrasing of the law-whose-name-I-forget, but it is true. Information is the currency of the stock market, it's what makes the markets move. How you interpret the information is the human element that makes the stock market inherently random. How fast you interpret and use the information is, possibly, the place where a computer can give you an advantage. If you have information that others don't, then you're probably doing something illegal.
Furthermore, the time element becomes progressively less important as futures and options trading happens, and traders (many of whom can be reasonably expected to be in the know, i.e. experts) express their sentiments in contracts - This inherently smoothen stock movement based on future news.
There _is_ no sure-shot method of guessing stock movements.
A small correction there.
'Technical Investing' or 'Technical Analysis' is a bit different from just algorithmic decision making on stock trades. Technical Analysis has some precepts, revolving around concepts of market 'floors', 'ceilings', as also a lot about moving averages, esp. Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD). Essentially, technical analysts try to spot patterns in market and share price movements and capitalize upon them. I remember being taught about 'saddles', 'double humps' etc.:D
My professors used to think it's a load of bunkum, and I tend to agree.
Slashdot Mirror
My body is available as a host
You make a great point. Exactly. Gun owners kill people. So could you americans please the fuck stop selling so many guns? It would automatically lead to fewer gun owners. My sister lives in your country and this shit scares me.
I'm a voracious reader and used to buy from bookstores on a weekly basis. Over the last few years I switched almost entirely to getting books online, and of late, more and more, that means buying them on amazon. The reason for the shift has primarily been availability of the books I want to read in stores. Now I understand that there are millions of books out there with thousands more getting added everyday, so decentralized bookstores are inherently at a huge disadvantage to centralized means like amazon. The amount of unproductive working capital tied up in store inventory will ensure this, leave alone rent, staff and utilities of a brick and mortar establishment.
But, assuming many other people have a similar story, what continues to surprise me is how little or how poorly bookstores seem to have adapted to this. If I were a bookstore owner I would try one of these things, none of which I have seen evidence of any bookstores here trying in a meaningful or impactful way:
1. Aggressively analyze traffic and tweak the assortment continuously
2. Track what I read, suggest books, inform me when they get related stuff in-store
3. If they don't have a book I want, promise to send it home the next day or later the same day
4. Reward my loyalty and value to them meaningfully. By that I mean that if I'm the kind of guy who buys regularly and from a predictable set then invest a significant portion of their margins on my purchases back into growing their relationship with me
5. Start 'membership programs' that help me get control over my spend on books
6. Make bookstores a really pleasant place for me and my family to spend time in
8. Support the physical book ecosystem.. start a program to take back books and free up precious shelf space in my home
9. Specialize.. trying to keep all the books relevant to everyone is a recipe for disaster imho, will end up keeping a bare minimum in any area and leave everyone dissatisfied
To folks in the bookstore business and slashdotters in other countries (I'm in India) - Do you feel nearly enough is being done?
Anyone seen this pathetic scifi movie starring Pamela Anderson? The whole movie revolves around a pair of contacfts than can help to fool iris scans at an emigration checkpoint. Interesting that the same situation has happened, wonder when the contacts will follow.
scale!
In an unrelated development, mysterious walking trees were found wandering the norwegian woods.
Experts predict they are an evolutionary response by the earth to substitute petroleum, just in time for copenhagen.
'The more atoms you have to push your information through the more amperage it takes to overcome the resistance'.
Interesting??? Patently false!!
Consider:
1. Thicker wire means less resistance, not more
2. EM radiation does not experience resistance at all!! Only reflection or refraction or absorption
3. You seem to imply that all atoms are alike. not true.
4. Amperage to overcome resistance??? please...
5. why are you comparing the 'resistance' or whatever of a PCB to the (patently dissimilar, but to give you a head) path from cellphone to cell tower?
Colling molecules together? Sounds like utter bunkum...
All molecules in a liquid are perpetually in motion and colliding against each other and the walls of the container. If it's about colliding molecules together, microwaving or conventional heating would have the same effect.. increasing the rate and energy of collisions between molecules as you increase their kinetic energy. If it's about 'colliding' without heating, any increase in pressure (by either pressurizing or just centrifuging or good old shaking around) would accomplish the same purpose, ultrasound or not. If it's about modifying chemical reactions, there's a few ways you could do that - heating or introducing a catalyst (to speed up irreversible reactions or shift the balance for reversible ones). I am not aware of pressure waves (i.e. ultrasound, in air or fluid) acting as a catalyst or doing anything special besides creating heat.
Some enlightened chemical engineer here who could throw light on what ultrasound could be reasonably considered to be accomplishing here?
I read TFA, and it doesn't really talk too much about exactly what the simulation achieves or could be used for. They talk of 'danger recognition' - surely that's not possible without a simulation of the rest of the brain as well? To make the logical connections between what the eyes see and what the implication is in terms of 'danger'? And they mention cars that could drive themselves. Can someone in the know explain if this is really a big deal - or just a really really great picture matching program?
To put this in perspective,
The current account balance on a country describes whether it is a net importer or a net exporter of goods. Similarly, the current account balance of Canada with the US describes whether Canada is relatively a net exporter or net importer of goods from the USA.
Now, Canada has a net positive current account balance of around 2% GDP (IMF 2005) which means, overall, a stronger Canadian currency is a good thing for Canada (compared to the rest of the world).
However, the situation here is more about the dollar falling vis-a-vis all other currencies. And since the USA is the world's biggest net importer of goods with a current account balance of -6% (deficit) (IMF 2005), a weaker US currency is bad for the US, leading to inflationary pressure (All things become more expensive), which is further exacerbated by profligate spending by the government (essentially, the government prints money to spend, which reduces the value of ALL dollars).
At the same time, the natural correction is (as some readers point out), more manufacturing being done inside the USA to counter the current account imbalance. Less imports to the US, more exports from the US, more jobs in the US etc. etc. The challenge is to keep inflation in control at the same time.
The US is, however, exceptional in the global macro-economic context because it has the largest economy, and the de-facto world standard currency. The US currency is heavily supported by Asian banks which moderates the drop in it's value somewhat. All in all, a very interesting and complicated situation to learn about - you may wish to start with these:
http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/cda/doc/content/dtt_GlobEcon07_091506.pdf
http://www.jcif.or.jp/pdf/e_outlook2006.pdf
I'm surprised not to find shock and outrage reflected amongst the comments below.
Is there anything more the man could have done to speak the truth before dying? And if you believe his word, does no-one find the non-disclosure a breach of trust?
:D
I think you messed up there, mate..
It should have gone - My friend Cmdr Gravy - doesn't often take time out blah blah... CmdrGravy, an excellent choice blah... Blah no finer employee than him blah.. hehehehe you get my drift
While previous comments about how computers are 'meant' to remember, and sometimes how we 'want' them to remember things are valid - The prof.'s observations strike me as very insightful.. I think he's got a valid point - because today 'data' is not a cold hard silicon number inside the machine anymore.. Data is coming closer and closer to our everyday life, getting enmeshed into our societal networks, becoming richer and closer to omnipresence. I feel that the human brain's habit of 'forgetting' in this context - is akin to forgiving (sins, crimes, sharp comments, mistakes, hurts), overcoming, healing (trauma, abuse, extreme emotions, stress), refreshing (what makes every meal a joy, every orgasm a pleasure or every waft of cool air on hot skin so nice), evolving (views, outlooks, understanding, positions). As information in a machine comes closer and closer to becoming our sensory inputs, records of our society and lives, of our behavior and views, our crimes and grievances, what have you - isn't it important that there be ways to forgive, overcome, heal, refresh and evolve without the same information coming back into our lives again and again and again...? Dunno if i've been able to convey what I feel.. a distinct chill when I think of not being able to (or allowed to) forget..
I felt quite horrified reading the news this morning. Even here, the incident is frontpage news. The fact that my sister and her husband are both medical school students in the US brings the incident even closer home. Having never visited or lived in the US, I have a question in mind (which perhaps many other asian/other nationals also wonder).. Is the picture of school and college life in the US, painted in Hollywood movies, really a reflection of reality? Now, India itself is probably one of the world's worst countries to grow up in for children. (Yes, it is, ok? I'm not being anti-national when I say that!). In terms of health, nutrition, child labor and other measures of human development, we pretty much scrape the bottom of the barrel over and over every year. Even so, I have never seen or felt the kind of hostility, peer pressure to conform and mental stress that, going by movie/TV standards, children in the US seem to be subjected to. I mean a social tension, although I'm sure economical disparities and dynamics must contribute in many ways... Is it for real? Are families irrelevant, or a source of negative rather than positive emotion for a lot of young people? Do kids really grow up too early, too fast? (atleast, that's the way it looks to me on TV, maybe my outlook is provincial by world standards..). And is it really easy to get your hands on a gun? I'm sure I couldn't even find one today in Delhi (I'm 25 now) even if I tried hard, and I'm pretty sure I'm better off for it. Can you guys from the states give your perspective? And, indeed, how it's different in Europe and other developed nations?
Can I have 5 of those, please? or maybe 10...
I'm a bit sad to see that the majority of comments here are looking at the downside/impracticality of Citi's initiative - not to mention conspiracy theories about biometric trials and ripoffs.
Sure, it's not philanthropy. But it may well do a lot of good. I'd like to make a couple of points and ask a few questions:
1. 'Slum Dwellers' are poor. But they can still own televisions and radios. They do spend considerable sums when getting married/on special occasions. Giving them banking facilities makes sense.
2. A slum is not the safest and most secure place in the world. Why shouldn't they want to keep whatever little they have in a bank?
3. Consider women who want to save money, and not let their husbands drink it away. Makes sense for them?
4. Thumb-ectomies? How's that so different from a neck-ectomy by a robber intent on stealing your money?
5. Will the biometrics work? Why not? And if there are snafus and security glitches - they'll get worked out. Why should a thumbprint in any case be less secure than a signature or a four digit number?
6. Is citi using this as a low risk experiment? Maybe they are. What's wrong with that motivation (amongst others), as long as something useful comes out of it for the customer?
At the end of the day, these are people with very very VERY little access to banking services. Most of the time the best they can do is their local post office (Our post offices have savings account facilities) which are slow, close early and on weekends, and are not always convenient. Something which brings some promise of convenience, security and value addition to people's lives should be given a fair hearing.
As a mechanical engineer, I have some idea of what this means.. Fluid dynamics is a fairly pervasive subject which goes into the design of airplanes, irrigation canals, industrial machinery, turbines and a lot of other places. The solution of the navier stokes' equation in three dimensions is quite fabulous, since without such a mathematical tool it's not possible to estimate how a fluid will flow in three dimensions.. Till now, we typically use either special conditions (ex. along a turbine blade, constant pressure) or fractional element methods (think of fluid as lots of tiny balls) or physical modelling for such problems. To put some perspective, it's about as cool as being able to determine the movement of n planets simultaneously attracting each other gravitationally.. quite tough!
If anything, this will raise the value of existing non-RFID passports, since they are more easily modified to indentify someone else
Doesn't that, like, highlight the effectiveness of the measure?
A photo, copy protection printing, implanted chip, what-have-you.. they just make copying progressively harder as criminals catch up. A natural evolution to stay ahead.
Amen! "You cannot predict the next value of a stock simply using past and current information from within the stock exchange." This is not just common sense, but based on sound scientific principles. Stock markets (as, supposedly all markets) operate on a law: If there's sure-shot money to be made, it will be made as soon as the opportunity opens, and as much money will be made on that opportunity as it takes to make that opportunity worthless, and this will happen (almost) instantaneously Excuse my ridiculous paraphrasing of the law-whose-name-I-forget, but it is true. Information is the currency of the stock market, it's what makes the markets move. How you interpret the information is the human element that makes the stock market inherently random. How fast you interpret and use the information is, possibly, the place where a computer can give you an advantage. If you have information that others don't, then you're probably doing something illegal. Furthermore, the time element becomes progressively less important as futures and options trading happens, and traders (many of whom can be reasonably expected to be in the know, i.e. experts) express their sentiments in contracts - This inherently smoothen stock movement based on future news. There _is_ no sure-shot method of guessing stock movements.
A small correction there. 'Technical Investing' or 'Technical Analysis' is a bit different from just algorithmic decision making on stock trades. Technical Analysis has some precepts, revolving around concepts of market 'floors', 'ceilings', as also a lot about moving averages, esp. Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD). Essentially, technical analysts try to spot patterns in market and share price movements and capitalize upon them. I remember being taught about 'saddles', 'double humps' etc. :D
My professors used to think it's a load of bunkum, and I tend to agree.