Having spent some time in the academia sausage factory, I think this guy is fairly close to the mark. A lot of time and effort is consumed simply writing grants and genuflecting for government money. A perpetual stream of cheap labor (postdocs) is necessary to keep the cash spigot flowing, even though many of them have zero chance for a real career in their chosen field. I've seen incredibly petty behavior over attribution and credit on papers.
I think most scientific progress happens in spite of the academic system, and not because of it. In some ways the old system of patronage was superior -- you had a direct connection between a king or wealthy merchant who had an interest in something, and the scientists who needed funding to investigate it, instead of a vast bureaucracy that probably consumes more than the total amount it exists to allocate.
"Parasite" may be an unkind word for them, but there are certainly people who produce nothing but expect to be kept in a high standard of living at the expense of those who are productive. This arrangement is not sustainable, despite people thinking that California somehow has a monopoly on tech startups.
The problem with asking a financial advisor is finding a good one. By the time you've learned enough to know the good from the bad, you may as well DIY and save the fees.
Although, there's definitely value in getting help from specialists in certain areas (estate planning, taxes).
There's no substitute for doing your own reading and research. Some good authors to start with are John Bogle, Larry Swedroe, Rick Ferri, Peter Bernstein, Nassim Taleb, William Bernstein, Burton Malkiel, Harry Browne. Don't invest in anything you don't understand, and don't trust any investing concept that can't be explained to you in 5-10 minutes.
The learning process should take you at least 6 months. Whenever you think you've got it figured out (most financial authors present their ideas in a very convincing, absolutist way), keep reading, because the next book might change your mind. In the meantime, put your money in a safe place -- bank CDs or short-term Treasurys -- and don't touch it.
I think the uncertainties inherent in writing software that depends on many other complex libraries/frameworks will tend to discourage strong liability for bugs. The average Win32 program or Java web app has a dizzying list of dependencies and it would be impossible for the programmer sitting on top of that software stack to make any guarantees about the stuff underneath.
In certain highly restricted domains (typically embedded systems), liability for bugs becomes somewhat more realistic.
The average Win32 program or Java web app has a dizzying list of dependencies and it would be impossible for the programmer sitting on top of that software stack to make any guarantees about the stuff underneath.
That, divorced from further arguments, is not an extraordinarily strong argument against liability for defects. After all: the engineer who builds upon such a stack has presumably, more or less consciously, made the decision that defects are acceptable - otherwise they would have chosen something less complex. Is there any particular reason someone should not be held accountable for that decision?
You don't get to blame civil engineers for structure failure if the steel provided had material faults (that couldn't be detected by said engineers exercising due diligence).
Depends on the product - this pitch is aimed at 'cool new web framework' type opensource projects.
If I'm looking for a heavy duty technical library, say 3D mesh generation or image processing I want someone serious behind - preferably with a full time academic job in the field and some papers, more than a twitter account and a cool logo.
nod -- I appreciate you posting this link. I forgot about it. It seems to me the single greatest failure of acme, inferno, etc. is a lack of mainstream support. We have vim vs emacs today, but part of me always wonders about what the landscape would look like if acme was taken seriously by the programming community and actively maintained. It's too bad Limbo is so archaic.
Apparently Limbo wasn't too archaic for the Go guys--take a look at Limbo, then take a look at Go, and you'll find that the two are incredibly similar. Of course, if you consider the people who started Go in the first place, it's not that surprising!
I think one reason Acme never really took off was the same reason people go around using xterms with green text on a black background--sure, it's not especially easy to read, but by god it is haxxor l33t. Acme has about two keyboard combo commands (^a and ^e, to go to the start or end of a line) and expects you to select text, move frames, and set the insertion point with the mouse, and the mouse is definitely Not Cool, even if it means you have to hammer on C-n, C-p, C-f, C-b to get that cursor where you want it.
Bruce Schneier wrote an excellent article on PKI risks (http://www.schneier.com/paper-pki-ft.txt). Should be interesting to see how many of those are addressed as this scheme comes to fruition. It has the potential to become a highly useful backdoor intelligence gathering mechanism. This is a honeypot that the three letter agencies won't be able to resist.
Exactly. It will also make Id theft more easy because there will be a single point of failure. This is like one password for the web. I don't like this at google. It is easier but much less safe.
Problem is, precious metals have an expected return of 0%. One gold bar sitting on a shelf is still one gold bar ten years later. Commodities are not necessarily a bad idea to own in moderation, but stocks and bonds are what allow your portfolio to benefit from economic growth.
For those who are enamored with gold and want to invest conservatively, I would look at something like the Permanent Portfolio (http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2008/12/22/permanent-portfolio-...) Not how I would invest personally, but the PP isn't an unreasonable approach.
I know a guy who's really, really into football. Watches hours of games every other night or so, has a "fantasy" team that he's constantly fretting over and checking online stats for, etc.
As far as I can tell, the only thing that distinguishes this obsession from a WoW habit is that more people like to watch football, so it's accepted.
People who get seriously addicted to WoW are usually either looking for any escape from reality, or they have the type of personality which tends to get addicted to something, whether it's online games, math puzzles, tracking railroad schedules, or whatever. There's no question that these people might act in unhealthy ways, but WoW is the symptom of their problems, not the cause.
>People who get seriously addicted to WoW are usually either looking for any escape from reality, or they have the type of personality which tends to get addicted to something, whether it's online games, math puzzles, tracking railroad schedules, or whatever. There's no question that these people might act in unhealthy ways, but WoW is the symptom of their problems, not the cause.
Do you agree that more people get addicted to playing WoW than tracking railroad schedules? If so, what are some of your hypotheses for what is causing this discrepancy?
I think most scientific progress happens in spite of the academic system, and not because of it. In some ways the old system of patronage was superior -- you had a direct connection between a king or wealthy merchant who had an interest in something, and the scientists who needed funding to investigate it, instead of a vast bureaucracy that probably consumes more than the total amount it exists to allocate.