Allocator2008

Huey Newton predicted the collapse of the nation state long ago, since he correctly foresaw that the global economy would become more important than particular nations. I live in Texas now, but I may well move to California, in light of all this. A China controlled California would be economically better off I would think than a Mexico controlled Texas Republic. Nothing against Mexico, but I am just thinking in which of these new Republics I can get iPods at a reasonable cost.

Really I think the "game" so to speak is to move from being a programmer or development engineer into things like project management or solution modeling. Sure, the point is valid that hiring is "biased" towards kids in their early twenties who are really good programmers. But the idea I would think is to progress up the ladder so that when one is in mid-career, one is not doing the day-to-day programming so much as more management type of tasks. Myself, right now I do test automation, and so spend my days mostly writing test suites using the silktest language and the like. But I don't plan to be still doing that years from now. Hopefully I can sort of move up the ladder a bit into being like a test lead or something. So instead of leaving the industry, I recommend people look to see about ways of climbing the proverbial ladder.

Oh, I just had another thought here. I would so very much prefer it if the Hoyle steady state theory were correct, the idea that as galaxies expand, new matter is created in the inter-galactic spaces formed by the expansions, and this new matter makes new galaxies, ad infinitum, so there would not be a big bang (a beginning) or a final state of dissolution into radiation that one finds in the eternal expansion model (an end).Also it is a clean, beautiful theory mathematically. But as Kepler found, when discovering that the planets use ellipses and not circles when orbiting the sun (circles were thought more "perfect" aesthetically at the time), the universe might not much care what we like or prefer or find to be beautiful or aesthetically pleasing. :-) In the case of steady state, it is hard to see how that can still be viable, given the microwave background radiation discovered in the early 60's, and the more recent discoveries of quantum density perturbations in the background, which is consistent with the big bang model.

I did not read that book, though I do know prevailing cosmological models say that the universe is expanding continually. If it keeps it up, eventually, no galaxy will be able to see any other galaxy, because the distances between them have increased so much. Later, galaxies all collapse into mega black holes. Still later, these mega black holes all evaporate over a very long epoch (10^60 years or something like that) via the process of Hawking Radiation. Once this happens, there is nothing left in the universe except radiation, and various short-lived "quantum vacuum" particles perhaps. Nothing but a homogeneous soup of particles that are not even atoms. Penrose has recently argued that this state could trigger another big bang, and start another "cycle" but I don't know that that view is very much accepted presently. The general thinking is that this final state of scattered radiation is all the fat lady sings.

The author is completely wrong about "client v. customer". Your "customers" should be "clients", because it instills confidence. The difference is the country doctor versus the highly payed surgeon. A country doctor pokes around and asks "where does it hurt". The highly payed surgeon goes in to the situation and says, OK, this is your problem, I have performed this procedure 100 times, this is what we need to do. So if your client's pain is not having a good website, you go in there and say, OK, this is what we need to do, wether that be the look and feel, optimizing it for search, adding video, whatever. Don't say "what do you want me to do", say, "this is my recommendation based on my knowledge of the problem you are having and my experience in that problem's solution".

The principle underlying this, is you want your revenue curve to be linear as you add more customers, but you want your cost curve to be logarithmic, that is, you want to do LESS work for the next customer than you did for your last customer, and still get the same payment. What I mean by less work, is basically provide the same solution for the same problem, but since you have done it before, it is easier the next time. Have a basic approach for the problems your clients have, so, for example, if they need their website optimized for search, have a basic strategy for doing this, and apply that for each new customer with this same problem.

Kissing the customer's behind and re-inventing the wheel for each new customer doesn't do anybody any good. It reduces the consultant's profit by requiring more time, and it reduces the efficiency with which the customer gets their solution, because the consultant is being a short-order cook with them and re-inventing solutions for every new problem, which takes a lot longer.

So if you want to slave away re-doing the same thing over and over again for each new customer, by all means, treat the client as a "customer", but if you want to provide timely solutions for the client, and not have to re-invent the wheel all of the time, then take the "surgeon" based approach and not the "country doctor" based approach.

The client pays you to know the solution to their problem. So don't ask them what solution would they like, rather, tell them the recommended solution that you know works. Kind of like you don't want your doctor asking you which treatment for your brain tumor you most prefer. Rather, you want your doctor telling you which treatment for your brain tumor is going to the most effective, based on how that treatment has worked for others. Sure be nice and respectful to the client, but inspire confidence in having a good grasp on what will work for them and what will not.

I am not a doctor, but I did a quick google search on this, and came up with this article, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080628155300.ht... relating to white blood cell therapy, whereby the immune system is stimulated to try and counteract the cancer. Such avenues could be worth looking into, though again, I am not an expert.

I wonder if Paul Allen thinks having a gene map of the human brain will help him get reservations to Dorsia.

(Also, even if he can get into Dorsia, he should stay away from that bimbo Allison Poole, whose liason with Sen. Edwards caused such a fuss...)

I think I agree and also disagree here.

Richard Dawkins talk about how genes suited to doing well "in average" environments tend to be the ones preserved. In other words, evolution produces people good at whatever the average tasks are in their environment, so "super heroes" are unlikely to emerge from evolution, but, say, "cubicle drones" are. Mediocrity, or being able to "fit in" in the "mean" environment, is a good survival-predictor for genes.

So, to VC. "Super hero" VC's will indeed go away. Meaning the "I'm investing in the latest dotcom craze and I am getting 25% or more annual returns" sort is indeed perhaps nearly extinct. But the VC types that looks at the market demand and diversifies his investments for more modest (average) returns, is going to survive. For example, a VC firm heavy in high tech could well collapse in a tech recession. But a diversified VC firm that invests in "essentials", like say, natural gas, that is still going to be needed even in a recession, is probably going to ride out the recession.

So, if I am in VC, which I am not, but if I were, I would look at building a diverse portfolio heavily weighted towards things like natural gas, utilities in general, that kind of thing, stuff that won't go away easily. I would, in other words, try to be an "average gene", not a "super hero gene" because per Dawkins, the average gene will be more likely to survive. Stay diversified, stay conservative, tack towards utilities and "essentials" if in a recession, and you might be "mediocre", but at least you'll survive as a VC firm.

In a word Superman may be dead, but the selfish gene of mediocrity is alive and well. :-)

Dude, that's just like wrong, on so many levels...

Let me suggest "The Road Ahead" by Bill Gates. It was one of the first computer/software related books I ever read, and I think it is a classic in the field of software business kind of reads. It is accessible by anyone, even non-techie types, and its vision remains important for understanding where we are heading.

If anyone here might remember, in 90210, Steve Sanders' father gives this book to him as a graduation present. That in itself should be endorsement enough!

Beautifully said. Elton John sings, "there's more to be seen than can ever be seen, more to do than can ever be done". As long as there are more things to discover, life is a proposition worth having.

Though, not to be a wet blanket, even the computers, trans-human intelligences, etc. won't be "immortal" in the sense of living forever. The universe herself will expand so much that her galaxies will all collapse into mega-black holes, which, over the eons, will decay via Hawking radiation, until there will be nothing at all anywhere except photons, at which point time itself will cease since there will be no material particles to measure it, time effectively becomes spacelike at that point.

But between now and that doubtful date, I do wish the transhumanists and their robot companions all the best of luck! :-)

I think this is great confirmation of Dan Dennett's "becoming famous" model of consciousness, that various "threads", much like program threads, are happening and competing all of the time in the brain, and the ones that "become famous", i.e. a thread that can be seen or accessed by broad areas of the brain, is what is consciousness, i.e., a famous thread does not correspond to consciousness, but rather is consciousness.

In this case, the thread of the visual stimuli became only famous enough to control the subjects feet and so forth to help him avoid the obstacles, but did not become sufficiently famous to be recorded or reported by the subject as a "conscious experience". This is because the visual stimuli did get passed to the extrastriate visual cortical areas but not to the primary visual cortex.

So this perfectly fits Dennett's model: a signal becomes famous enough to control muscles, but, because of injury, does not become so famous (or so globalized a thread, in programming terms) that the subject is able to report an experience of it.

For my money, qualia does not exist. It is a remnant of Cartesian dualism that has no place in the 21st century. Here the subject did not "miss out" on some hocus pocus qualia, rather, the visual stimuli simply did not become famous enough to be able to be reported by him, but, it did become famous enough for him to be able to avoid the objects in his visual path.

Dennet 1; Dualist Philosophers 0

:-)

Quite simply because if they cut wages, those people with cut wages would just leave. And then they would have a mass walk-out on their hands.

"You can stand out here playing basketball, or you come come inside [to play World of Warcraft] and do something that matters."

- Cartman

A friend of mine who I won't name here is an accomplished sci-fi writer/critic of no little repute whose "day job" is technical writing/documentation, which is how I know him, since we worked for the same company at one point. I wonder if you have ever considered technical writing? If one is really good at/enjoys writing but also knows how to program, this seems like it would be a good fit. A strong technical knowledge combined with strong writing skills makes for a good technical writer I think. The downside is that during layoffs, the documentation department is the first to go it seems like, but the upside is that advanced writers can really make a lot of money, especially if you develop skills in the tools of that field, such as RoboHelp. Just a thought.

Eliot Carver of the newspaper 'Tomorrow' said that as I recall. I heartily concur!

1) carton of camels 2) a few dozen energy drinks 3) iPod with my elton john and barabara streisand

This relates to software development, how?

"The Thirteenth Floor" should be on this list. Came out around the same time as "The Matrix" and got sort of overshadowed by it, but was better for my money. Gretchen Mol is the daughter of a murdered computer programmer of a virtual reality world, and has to "go into" the virtual reality world to find a clue as to the killer. Also stars Vincent D'Onofrio as a character in the virtual reality world, which is based on 1930's LA (the "real" sequence of events is in present day LA).

Not as much "action" as the Matrix, but it does not spoon feed the viewer. Actually forces the viewer to think. Maybe not a good idea for box office receipts after all.

Extending the standard model to include gravity, and thereby creating a "TOE" (Theory of Everything), is not I think going to be hurt by Godel. Because for TOE to work, all it need do is make predictions over and above the standard model, which can be verified by experiment, but also be consistent with all predictions of the standard model. If it can do this, it will stand as a TOE, at least until it disagrees with prediction, if and when that would happen. In other words, a TOE need not be "provable to be consistent in all it axioms". All it needs to do is include the Standard Model's predictions, then, make a few new ones to include gravity. Like one nice prediction would be to have the value of 10^-120 plank units for the energy density of "dark energy" arising naturally and nicely from someplace. That would be a good prediction, just as an example. If a TOE (inclusive of the standard model, plus a description of gravitons which delt with infinities), could regurgitate all standard model predictions, plus just make one prediction more (like setting the energy density of dark energy without having to appeal to the anthropic principle, mind you), then we got a good TOE. "Provable?" No. But it lives to fight another day, which is the best we can ask of a theory anyway.

I worked for a company like that. They had a whole department dedicated to analyzing customer (or rather, prospective customers) data and feeding it into a system to generate metrics of how much the company's product could save for the prospective customer.

Only trouble was, they did not charge for this, and often times failed to close the deal, and the entire operation just became a drag on profitability.

Were I the CEO of this company, I'd fire whoever came up with this scheme. If the company were based in, say, some heathen place in sub-Saharan Africa, I'd hire a tribe of native barbarians to stone his children for good measure.

(Yeah, I feel strongly about this one!)

My position is the government should make things neither easier nor harder for startups. Let natural selection do its thing. Startups that have marketable memes will raise the capital they need. Startups without such memes will not. The extremes of dishing out tax payer money on grants to questionable startups often just wastes money the government could otherwise use for things like paying down the deficit. The extremes of "squelching" business works in a negative direction as well, because it hurts the GNP. I think the government should neither give hand-outs to startups, nor should they work against business, such as in the anti-trust suit against Microsoft. The government should live and let live when it comes to startups and software companies in general, and let natural selection do its thing.

More emphasis on training, and less on education per ce, would be more helpful for economic growth. So, instead of various loans and so on to help people get a four year degree in say, ancient Sumerian languages, offer loans for people to get tech certifications in things like networking and so on, things, in other words, that actually benefit the economy. If the United States wants to compete in technology and engineering, a greater emphasis on tech training and certifications is needed. Higher education still applies as a need in things like chemistry, medicine, and physics, and so on, but in the engineering fields, tech certifications could fill a void.

We have two problems: a lack of prowess in sciences and maths, and a lack of prowess in engineering. More opportunities for tech training by way of trade schools, certification programs and the like, can fill a void in engineering. However quality degree programs are still needed to fill the gap in producing people skilled at the maths and sciences. Basically, the chief scientist of your company still benefits I would say from having a Ph.D, but your average Joe-hacker probably only needs a few training courses in whatever language he is working on. So there is some truth to the "faking it" idea, but not complete truth I think.

For my money it is the only IO API one need ever learn.

Good point on signed/unsigned. I think in most cases char is unisgned, i.e., in most environments, so this is not a problem. But can't you do something like:

char c

while( (c = getchar() & 0xff) != EOF) { //Do something }

if you are in a signed environment?

I think really stdio is rather like my experience with mexican food. I live in Austin, Texas now, and I love mexican food, the hotter the better, but as a kid I lived in eldritch New England, not far from the Miskatonic river, and felt I didn't "like" spicey food, being more used to lobster, clam chowder, and so forth. Now they can't put enough jalepenos in a burger for my liking. Similarly, being 27, and thus living in the "java age", I first taught myself to program with the Java SDK, which spares one from alot of these "pitfalls". But now I like the control, and also the relative simplicity of the API, that stdio gives one, arguably more intuitive and easier to remember than in Java, and given a choice between Java and C, I would go with the later. It is an acquired taste.

To paraphrase Charleton Heston:

"They will take my [stdio] away out my cold, dead hands!"

:-)

Prof. Dawkins is possibly one of the few sane people left on this planet. Cool video.

Lately I have wondered about the "arms race" as Susan Blackmore calls it, between the gene and the meme. The genes want us to have small, efficient brains, capable of survival but not much else, whereas the meme wants us to have big brains because the bigger the brain, the more memes can get into it. This study, if confirmed, would seem to provide an interesting example of how bigger brains do not necessarily correspond to greater survival advantage. When viewed from the gene/meme perspective, this makes sense. The mortality associated with bigger brains is good for the gene, albeit bad for the meme, but not all that bad, because memes are not dependent on their host's surviving to make offspring. In short, memes don't care so much about our survival, only genes do. Genes, in turn, don't care so much about big brains, only memes do. Accordingly, that a bigger brain seems not to afford survival advantage in warfare is no surprise. When the war is finished, there will be plenty of smaller brain people out there left to continue to copy the gene. And as for the meme, as long as they were written down/persisted somewhere, they will get copied along too.

I think one thing similar to one of the things he said is to limit the amount of tax free equity one can hold in a 401K plan. Like say if you hold more than 50% of your 401K as equity, there will be a tax incurrance. That way, government is not "dictating" your portfolio, but it is "encouraging" you to have a well-balanced, more conservative portfolio. Dictation by the government on one's portfolio I don't think would work any better than prohibition worked, but small things here and there I think can be done to encourage people to have more conservative holdings, and therefore keep a lid on market "bubbles".

That said, I think I have concluded that capitalism will never go away, simply because we are the "gene machines", programmed towards the best interest of the "selfish gene", and therefore, we will always have a "greed is good" mindset. It is in our DNA. We can't escape it. A socialist society would never happen in the long run, because quite simply the competition of genes would not allow it. No political or economic theorist can beat natural selection. Survival of the fittest is universal, it created us, and our markets, and will continue to shape our lives, like it or not. My opinion anyway.

Borland SilkTest (4-Test) uses indentation instead of brackets. Otherwise it is similar to c/c++. I don't know though. I still kind of like the curly brace, aesthetically speaking!

I have a few ideas:

1) Raise the retirement age to 70, that way people have to pay more into the system before they can benefit.

2) Expand work training programs for college age kids so instead of going to college, kids have a choice to learn skills, like tech certifications for example. These programs could even be funded by tech companies, who would get a tax benefit perhaps for doing it, and also would have the benefit of having a ready-made pool of interns, and competent interns are nearly impossible to get these days I have noticed. This way, kids could go right into the workforce, and not be burdened by loans from a worthless degree.

3) Move away from the model of getting a 30 year mortgage, which over-burdens young people. Rather, develop low-cost, pre-frame housing, and make that as an available alternative to the traditional mortgage. It is easier to finance a 30K pre-frame home, then a 150K fossil that may or may not appreciate in value over the decades.

4) Re-work tax shelters like the 401K and the ROTH IRA to compell people to have at least 25% of their contributions into money market accounts. This keeps liquidity in the markets, and makes sure people don't completely shoot themselves in the foot with risky investments. If people want to forgo the 25% short-term investment rule, then they get to forgo the tax benefits too.

5) Shift the focus in medicine from long-term care to prevention. For example instead of millions going into experimental chemotherapy drugs that may or may not work, shift at least some of that into gene research which could highlight the risk factors for things like cancer, and so on. For example, certain countries in Asia like Japan are known for their longevity, and probably don't put more into healthcare costs than we do, but their nutrition is far better - sushi is healthier than pizza, bottom line. Focus on prevention saves lives, keeps people healthy, and lowers costs of geriatric care.

6) Get over the western suspicion of robots. Robots can be great for low-wage jobs that we might not have the manpower to fill as people age, and also can be great caregivers for the elderly. Japan knows these things: they use robots in place of factory workers if they cannot find people for those roles, and also, they are moving towards using robots for caring for the shut-in elderly. Again, this is cost effective. Forget the Hollywood crap about robots and realize they are an economically practical tool to serve man.

7) Have an age-indexed social security tax, so people in their 20's and 30's pay less, but this increases in one's 40's and 50's and up until retirement. This keeps the tax burden off the young when they are getting started but ultimately brings in more revenue to the system, if properly indexed.

8) Don't stiff NASA. Going to the moon, mars, and beyond stimulates technological advances, which stimulates industry, which stimulates jobs and opportunities. Ultimately the solution for the burden on the young lies in opportunities. Howard Roark can save his generation, but only if he is in an environment that rewards, rather than stifles, creativity and innovation.

Oh, one other comment regarding population explosions in general. I just got a tip from an inside source at the government that is top-secret classified information:

"SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE! SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!"