yariang

At the risk of being meta; I think you should vote up when someone contributes to a discussion in a meaningful way, regardless of server you agree or not.

From the article: "We already have contracts with NASA, some private companies, and even a few private individuals."

Why did you stop there though?

"...in the startup world..."

In fact, I am surprised to see a lot of non-startup companies like Nokia listed quite highly.

I don't, but I can intuitively grasp that a 5-star item with 2 reviews is not reliable. Since I understand how the sorting works, I know I have to jump to the 4.5 star items in order and check how many reviews that item has and if it also has a small number then I will jump to the 4 star items.

The point is, I understand the sorting order and can manipulate them if I am not satisfied with what is presented to me. Having a very esoteric algorithm is a risk. Maybe you'll present just what the user really wanted. But if you get it wrong they will be lost to do anything about it. I tend to dislike systems that leave users helpless when something goes wrong.

While it is good to look at these sorts of mathematically rigorous algorithms, I think I would be frustrated if it was used everywhere. Or, well, maybe not me perhaps, but a non technical user.

The beauty of the second algorithm for rating products is that it is straightforward. Having never seen it before I can deduce that 5 stars come before 4 stars and more reviews come before fewer. If I want to skip ahead to the 4 stars I know what to do. I can internalize the sorting algorithm easily. And as a user, understanding the order items are presented to me is important.

If Amazon were to use the last algorithm and present items in that order (assuming we accounted for the 5 star vs positive/negative issue), it would like a random order to most users and would be frustrating.

So I guess what I am saying is that this algorithm is very clever, but in some cases, it may be too clever. Sometimes you just want to keep it Simple Stupid.

Not to detract from your main point, but I don't think Siesta is very common in Mexico and most other Latin American countries. I was born in Cuba, lived there for five years and lived in Mexico for about three or four. I don't know of a single person who regularly slept after noon.

In fact, I had an opportunity to live in Barcelona for three months and while a lot of businesses do close down from noon to three, I got the impression that people were not using that time to sleep, and that the idea of siesta in Catalunya is on the decline.

I couldn't help but notice a resemblance between what you are describing and a lot of machine learning algorithms.

It seems like the most successful ML algorithms are self-correcting ones, rather than ones that attempt to calculate the exact correct answer in one go.

Coincidence?

The 25% he alludes to is your recurring mortgage payment, which also happens annually--monthly, actually. What he means here is that a discount of 5% in your mortgage negotiations is much less than an increase of 5% in your salary. So he is right, for the right reason.

The sort of animations intended to teach remind me of the RSA animation which are excellent and I highly recommend them: http://www.youtube.com/user/theRSAorg

+1 for wording it so well. I might add that it also takes a person who is willing to accept full responsibility for his actions and the actions of others in his group since nature takes no excuses.

I agree. I've also found people with hobbies that are dangerous tend to be more mature. For example, people that go hiking, rock climbing, etc... I am not sure why and I am wary of saying it is because stupidity will get you killed in those situations and a more serious outlook serves you well, but that is one possible reason.

That's an entirely different issue than the one I was responding to. In that case, it would be rational if your actions could reasonably affect change, which in this case I don't think they would.

First, I don't see an obvious need for theaters to keep track of who purchased tickets--save the case of online transactions obviously. Granted, the whole example is contrived--but I don't see the utmost need for it.

And, even if they had a moral imperative to do so and didn't, this would mostly affect people--by definition--who purchased a ticket already, and either lost it or want to return it or something of that nature. It is safe to assume few people lose their tickets and of those that do, not all of them protest by not buying another one. Protests are usually only effective if they hurt the company in terms of reputation or money. Since that is unlikely (given the vague probabilities I mentioned and specially because you already paid for one ticket), your protest will most likely be in vain.

We could of course get into a philosophical debate over the worth of such protest, but this is neither the time or place. Protesting the theater record-keeping policies in the way you mention and for the reasons you mention would probably be, in my opinion and with all the information you provided, rationally irrational.

If most people answered all or most of the questions correctly, it would be disproving Kahneman and Tverksy's theory of how people think.

The title assumes they would hate to be proven wrong, but makes sense.

I would dare say unless you're rational, not necessarily an economist. Most of us are not rational all the time, and the whole point of the question is to show an instance where we are not.

You would be correct if there were not other tickets available; in that case, the ticket truly is unique. But in the example given you could acquire another one. In that case the ticket is not unique and is equivalent to the cost of acquiring another one, which is $10.

There's many small banks like you say, but the impression I get (I have not done the research to back this up) is that the few really major banks (i.e. Bank of America) have a huge market share. Again, I have not researched this, but just from day-to-day experience, it sure seems that way.

Edit: http://www.cardhub.com/edu/bank-market-share-by-deposits/ According to this site, the market share of the top 10 banks is about 45%. Those statistics are not highly precise but it illustrates the point I am trying to make.

If we were talking about the general population, I would agree with you. Something tells me that actuaries are quite rational actors though.

Unless of course the banks agree--off-the-record if need be--to not undercut each other because they realize they will all lose by doing so.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the security question system used by Ally Bank recently. They let you enter your own security question.

Why haven't they thought of this before!? I can come up with very good security questions that incorporate inside jokes with knowledge only I know and things I know I wouldn't share with anyone publicly.

These are things I will remember all my life and that nobody else will know (unlike say, my father's middle name). Unfortunately, Ally asked me for answers to three pre-determined security questions right after.

But there is hope!

That's a problem with cell-phone providers who overcharge for SMS. An SMS is almost free nowadays, in some cases it actually is free since it goes over channels that would otherwise go unused. SMS seems like a good, cheap, ubiquitous solution for most of the developed world.

I don't understand this. Which part of the linked page outlaws paid over time? As a college student I don't have a lot of experience a) reading legalese and b) with getting paid.

Also, what are the benefits of laws that outlaw overtime? Is it a form of income redistribution? Why computer professionals specifically? Is it because the jobs are not physical and overtime is thus supposedly less taxing?

Few thoughts.

"Another problem he encountered: there are few incentives for law professors to excel at teaching."

As a college student I can attest that this is not just law professors. This is the case in any research-centric university.

The rest of the article reminds me of the debate surrounding Computer Science and Software Engineering. Many people feel that CS degrees do not prepare you to actually code, and that a lot of CS graduates do so without knowing how to write any good code.

If looked at in that light, is it really a problem? The specifics of how law is done might change, the deep insights and theoretical knowledge will always be useful at some level.

To frame it in the computer-science context, which I am more familiar with, if a schools pends four years teaching practical applications of Java and the specifics of the Hadoop framework, the graduates will surely have a lot more practical knowledge right as soon as they begin working. But in ten years if Java is no longer used and Hadoop was superseded by something else, all that knowledge is now useless. In contrast, knowledge of Turing Machines and automata will still be useful, if not for its practical application, for its cultural value and the ability it has to change your thinking about problems.

I think the best way to deal with the lack of practical knowledge is to combine it with actual practice. At Northeastern University, a large percentage of the students do six-month coops where you work full time for those months. It's a way to deliver the best of both worlds. Deep theoretical lecturing mixed with actual real-world work. I have yet to find a downside to it for the average student.

I like this. As someone said, normalizing locations like the 3 variations of Boston would be a plus.

Also, The locations could be refined. I see a lot of them being listed under the header "Boston" when they really happen "King of Prussia, PA", Burlington MA, or "West Newburry, MA". Those locations are not Boston. They're close, but not quite (and in the case of the PA one not even close). There's some value to the grouping things under Boston but I would prefer granularity in location headers.

Definitely see this as being very helpful though.

I think the best part of it is the car at the top. I can easily play with that for a few minutes. They do say 80% of the gains come from 20% of the effort right? :)

We're not disagreeing on Siri. The problem is there's a difference between it driving some business away and it removing the need for Google entirely, as your article first claimed. And then, once it's established that it will remove some business, comes the question of how much business, in numbers.

As I said before, "Siri-like features" already exist, and they're out there--used by a lot of people.

Besides, you claim the article is about cultural-relevance but you spend half the time talking about sales and possible lost advertising-revenue in the future.

Last thing, I didn't know what also-ran so I looked it up:

American Heritage Dictionary: al·so-ran A horse that does not win, place, or show in a race. A loser in a competition, as in an election: "had enough support to place him in the middle of the also-rans" (George F. Will). One that has little talent or success: just an also-ran in the art world.

The first and last don't really apply. As for the second, only time will tell I presume, but right now, my money is with Google. And although you claim the tech community has written Google off, I don't see that happening. The brightest software engineers who are not doing startups tend to view Google in a positive light or as a place they'd like to work. In fact, it's become so positive that the default in college campuses has become everyone wanting to work for Google (or at least saying so). Not to mention Google has their hand on a number of future-facing projects like the self-driving cars.

I would focus such articles more if I were you. If you're talking about cultural-relevance, do so. If it's bad business forecasts, then do that. If your prediction is for 10 years from now make that clear, and don't use a title phrased in the present tense.

I took the overly sensational title as a warning flag and I was right. The article seems to take weak premises and then founds size-able claims on them.

For example:

"Mean­while, Apple may obvi­ate the need for Google alto­gether with Siri as it intro­duced a rad­i­cal new way to han­dle search on a mobile device (and with the major­ity of Google mobile searches com­ing from iOS devices, the search giant has to worry about this intrusion)."

That Siri utterly kills the need for Google on a mobile device (not even on iPhones, on mobile devices) is complete lunacy. Not to mention that Siri is not a radical way to handle search. Voice search has been around for a while--see Vlingo and Google Voice Commands.

The rest of the article is just as bad about making tall claims with weak evidence.

Another quote: "Mean­while, Google will con­tinue mak­ing large amounts of money (prob­a­bly bil­lions) on its cur­rent offer­ing but may find it hard to show the gen­eral pub­lic how it is rel­e­vant today."

Let's analyse a typical day in my life. (Although I will add, that I don't think this behavior is limited to power users, but I'm sure plenty of non-geek users share similar behavior.)

Wake up and check gmail. Use my Android phone to track my bike to work Check Google calendar for any appointments Look up a good barbershop on Google Maps after work Video chat with my mom using google chat at night

Maybe the article is right...Google is so irrelevant.

Edit: Wanted to add a link re: the article's last point http://venturebeat.com/2010/10/14/google-earnings-q3/

A thought, it would be great if it could explain what mistakes you made. Knowing I got a 0/100 is great but I'd really like to know why :) That would turn it from leaning through trial and error into a very useful learning tool.

" The equivalent of Aston Martin releasing a competitor to the smartcar."

Hmmm.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aston_Martin_Cygnet Bad example. I know the underlying motivation for Aston wasn't to compete with Smartcar, but that's what they released nonetheless.

I agree with the spirit of your post but realize that selling patents is one way inventors can realize value. If companies couldn't use them as commodities, their value might be diminished.

The trading may pose some downsides, but it's not all bad.

Hmm since when did my tablet grow a cursor? Are you using hacks? :)

For those interested, there's another account of the ArsDigita story via interviews with Phillip Greenspun in Jessica Livington's Founders at Work.