Monday, July 31, 2006
Oh, right...
You know, I was just thinking that it seemed like there was some corner of the globe not engulfed in flame yet...
Penny Arcade on E3
As you would expect, Tycho has managed to wax eloquent on the announcement of the down-sizing of E3 (not to mention the genius accompanying comic):
I swear to god...the fact that Tycho is a writer of such genius and yet never even attended a day of college boggles my mind...
"All it really means for gamers in general is more news more often, outside of arbitrary dates. I knew a Jehovah's Witness named Hannah in gradeschool, and after learning that she didn't celebrate birthdays or Christmas as the rest of the class did I imagined her life a miserable parched desert, barren of gifts. She looked at me like I was an idiot and informed me that she got presents all throughout the year.
If you thought I couldn't tie Jehovah's Witnesses into this shit, well, you were wrong.
There must have been a time before there was an E3, but that's not really a part of my experience. Hearing that it's cancelled, or at any rate will be altered in "format and scale" (read: cancelled) is like hearing that Australia has been cancelled, or that the weak gravitational force is being temporarily suspended. It's not an event anymore, I don't even remember how many I've been to. It's like something that cracks through the asphalt and then grows upward. I make it a point to avoid Los Angeles the rest of the year, so it's always been my presumption that the entire Staples Center recedes below the Earth's mantle, there to sleep until the warm pavement buckles again in early May."
I swear to god...the fact that Tycho is a writer of such genius and yet never even attended a day of college boggles my mind...
Conservative boot camp
I'm torn. On the one hand, I take conservative boot camp to be just another way in which the Right is far, far more organized than the Left. I'm tempted to say, "Why is it so hard for liberals to do this?" On the other hand, there's something anathema about it. After all, it's really indoctrination under the guise of healthy debate.
I guess the problem is that conservatives have long viewed themselves as an oppressed minority, and as such to give theoretical underpinnings to your biases is viewed less as indoctrination and more as providing a healthy alternative viewpoint to a presumed inherent liberal bias in, well, everything. In contrast, liberals are only now beginning to feel like an oppressed minority. The more they feel this way, the more they may start acting in the same manner and thus trying to create an organized and fiercely loyal resistence (didn't we already do this in the 60's?).
(incidentally, the idea that conservatives rely more on a theoretical underpinning than liberals is unsubstantiated horse shit. Rationalization of your inherently held biases is not the same thing as arriving at your "enlightened" views through intellectually honest debate.)
While we're on the topic, I am increasingly of the opinion that what liberals should be doing is creating programs to ship kids from red states into either coastal blue states or even internationally for summers and such. Not into ideological camps where they're told why they should be liberal. Just any kind of camp where they're forced to interact with people from different places and different views on life. After all, a lot of the ignorant conservative philosophies are bred from living an utterly insular existence, and the solution is not to yell at people and tell them they're dumb but instead expose them to different people, cultures, etc. Why is this such a difficult concept? The blue states are blue largely because they _are_ on the coast and thus have more interaction with the outside world. Has no one ever watched "30 Days"???
I guess the problem is that conservatives have long viewed themselves as an oppressed minority, and as such to give theoretical underpinnings to your biases is viewed less as indoctrination and more as providing a healthy alternative viewpoint to a presumed inherent liberal bias in, well, everything. In contrast, liberals are only now beginning to feel like an oppressed minority. The more they feel this way, the more they may start acting in the same manner and thus trying to create an organized and fiercely loyal resistence (didn't we already do this in the 60's?).
(incidentally, the idea that conservatives rely more on a theoretical underpinning than liberals is unsubstantiated horse shit. Rationalization of your inherently held biases is not the same thing as arriving at your "enlightened" views through intellectually honest debate.)
While we're on the topic, I am increasingly of the opinion that what liberals should be doing is creating programs to ship kids from red states into either coastal blue states or even internationally for summers and such. Not into ideological camps where they're told why they should be liberal. Just any kind of camp where they're forced to interact with people from different places and different views on life. After all, a lot of the ignorant conservative philosophies are bred from living an utterly insular existence, and the solution is not to yell at people and tell them they're dumb but instead expose them to different people, cultures, etc. Why is this such a difficult concept? The blue states are blue largely because they _are_ on the coast and thus have more interaction with the outside world. Has no one ever watched "30 Days"???
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Gay marriage op-ed
Just in case you haven't been following, several state courts have proposed an utterly ridiculous rationale for banning same-sex marriage (though, of course, that's sort of redundant...).
This shouldn't be surprising, of course. People will rationalize their biases and prejudices no matter how nonsensical the rationalizations turn out to be. Savage does a nice job of explaining why the rationale makes so little sense.
This shouldn't be surprising, of course. People will rationalize their biases and prejudices no matter how nonsensical the rationalizations turn out to be. Savage does a nice job of explaining why the rationale makes so little sense.
Totally the wrong question
This NYT op-ed on the insanity defense is infuriating precisely because it so completely misses the issue. The point of a criminal justice system explicitly should not be to determine who does and does not deserve punishment.
Let me say that again because it's important: The point of a criminal justice system explicitly should not be to determine who does and does not deserve punishment.
...and, in fact, attempts to the contrary are exactly what results in such a screwed up system of justice.
What the criminal justice system should be concerned with is creating a system of deterrents to behaviors that are deemed socially undesirable. Note how different that is from trying to tease apart the motivations of defendents: in the former case, it's vitally important to understand whether someone is acting as a rational agent when committing a crime, for we deem it "immoral" to punish someone who isn't acting rationally. But in the latter case, that distinction is secondary. More immediately important is whether the prospect of being captured and punished would dissuade someone from committing the act. Whether or not they are acting rationally is utterly irrelevent. It's a judgment on the effects rather than the causes, which means a) it's ultimately much more effective in achieving concrete ends like reducing crime, and b) it's far less subjective, both of which we can all hopefully agree are desirable.
Think about it: in the latter case, you could have someone who thought that angry pink unicorns were terrorizing a victims head and decided to rid that person of said malicious unicorns by bashing them over the head. If the prospect of being thrown in jail for actually going through with the bashing is compelling, you don't care how fucked up the logic the attacker is using is. You just care that the victim lives. At trial, you don't spend weeks upon weeks trying to tease apart whether the attacker really thought there were unicorns, whether it was reasonable to think there were unicorns, etc. You just care about the effects. If it's the case that someone can be prevented from trying to bash unicorns by threat of jail time, then bashing someone over the head, regardless of unicorns, is a crime. All you have to determine is whether the crime was committed or not by the defendant.
You might be inclined to object, "But it seems so unfair to throw someone who was just trying to help in jail!" You're missing the point. What I'm proposing is a framework of law that cares only about pragmatic implications instead of arbitrary moral judgments. Define your goals. If you care a lot about not sending unicorn bashers to jail who were, in their own minds, just trying to help, fine. Legislate to that effect. Bear in mind that you may have to balance that desire against the desire not to have random bystanders beaten senseless by unicorn hunters. But once you determine the balance between those, and no doubt a variety of other factors, you encode that balance into law, and at that point, law becomes largely deterministic rather than subjective. Granted, you no doubt still have the ambiguities in verbiage and other such imperfections in the process of encoding the law, but you no longer are teasing apart intent because it's totally irrelevent.
In a world where it's increasingly clear that nobody acts entirely rationally...ever...laws based on the faulty assumption of the Rational Man seem utterly outdated and, more than simply useless, actively detrimental. There is a line between regarding people as agents of their own rational and free will and as agents of environmental forces beyond their control that we will likely never fully nail down, so it seems stupid to try to legislate based on those fatally obscure motivations. Legislate instead on the things that are readily visible and trivially agreed upon: objective, tangible outcomes.
Let me say that again because it's important: The point of a criminal justice system explicitly should not be to determine who does and does not deserve punishment.
...and, in fact, attempts to the contrary are exactly what results in such a screwed up system of justice.
What the criminal justice system should be concerned with is creating a system of deterrents to behaviors that are deemed socially undesirable. Note how different that is from trying to tease apart the motivations of defendents: in the former case, it's vitally important to understand whether someone is acting as a rational agent when committing a crime, for we deem it "immoral" to punish someone who isn't acting rationally. But in the latter case, that distinction is secondary. More immediately important is whether the prospect of being captured and punished would dissuade someone from committing the act. Whether or not they are acting rationally is utterly irrelevent. It's a judgment on the effects rather than the causes, which means a) it's ultimately much more effective in achieving concrete ends like reducing crime, and b) it's far less subjective, both of which we can all hopefully agree are desirable.
Think about it: in the latter case, you could have someone who thought that angry pink unicorns were terrorizing a victims head and decided to rid that person of said malicious unicorns by bashing them over the head. If the prospect of being thrown in jail for actually going through with the bashing is compelling, you don't care how fucked up the logic the attacker is using is. You just care that the victim lives. At trial, you don't spend weeks upon weeks trying to tease apart whether the attacker really thought there were unicorns, whether it was reasonable to think there were unicorns, etc. You just care about the effects. If it's the case that someone can be prevented from trying to bash unicorns by threat of jail time, then bashing someone over the head, regardless of unicorns, is a crime. All you have to determine is whether the crime was committed or not by the defendant.
You might be inclined to object, "But it seems so unfair to throw someone who was just trying to help in jail!" You're missing the point. What I'm proposing is a framework of law that cares only about pragmatic implications instead of arbitrary moral judgments. Define your goals. If you care a lot about not sending unicorn bashers to jail who were, in their own minds, just trying to help, fine. Legislate to that effect. Bear in mind that you may have to balance that desire against the desire not to have random bystanders beaten senseless by unicorn hunters. But once you determine the balance between those, and no doubt a variety of other factors, you encode that balance into law, and at that point, law becomes largely deterministic rather than subjective. Granted, you no doubt still have the ambiguities in verbiage and other such imperfections in the process of encoding the law, but you no longer are teasing apart intent because it's totally irrelevent.
In a world where it's increasingly clear that nobody acts entirely rationally...ever...laws based on the faulty assumption of the Rational Man seem utterly outdated and, more than simply useless, actively detrimental. There is a line between regarding people as agents of their own rational and free will and as agents of environmental forces beyond their control that we will likely never fully nail down, so it seems stupid to try to legislate based on those fatally obscure motivations. Legislate instead on the things that are readily visible and trivially agreed upon: objective, tangible outcomes.
Fuck Lieberman
Granted, this op-ed, and much of the support for Ned Lamont, is clearly more of a negative vote against Lieberman than it is an endorsement for Lamont (who, frankly, I know nothing about). Nonetheless, Lieberman has been a douche. As the NYT says, he's been an enabler. Bi-partisanship is a two-way street, and the Republican party of the past, oh, decade have gone out of their way to exclude the opposition and ram through their own agenda. Being a patsy for that effort is much, much different than reaching across the aisle. After all, show me one reciprocal piece of legislation that Lieberman got in exchange for his kow-towing.
The Democratic party needs new blood willing to actually stand up to the Republican majority and, moreover, offer a concrete and coherent alternative. And that's not Lieberman.
The Democratic party needs new blood willing to actually stand up to the Republican majority and, moreover, offer a concrete and coherent alternative. And that's not Lieberman.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Some people are really fucking stupid
I try to differentiate between ignorance and stupidity. I think these web support requests to ComputerWorld fall safely on the side of stupidity.
Friday, July 28, 2006
Reading between the lines
You don't think the fact that one of the Shiite leaders wants the US to hand over internal security to Iraqis has anything to do with the fact that the Shiites have finally organized militias and vastly outnumber the Sunnis, do you?
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Nick answers your "Ask Slashdot" questions
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/28/0051241
The question is, "What pure research labs are left out there?"
Basically, for CS, the answer is Microsoft Research and no one else. IBM does have Watson labs, but researchers get their funding entirely from product groups, which means that if no product group sees potential benefit from the work you want to do, you ain't getting funded. Google doesn't have anything close to a pure research labs. Google has "Google Labs," which isn't exactly the same thing. Google labs kind of dicks around with things that don't have a concrete plan to be productized but are nonetheless aimed at something Google wants to do. There's a strong undercurrent of near-term applicability of those projects. Sun...well, Sun barely exists any more. How would you feel if you got laid off and found out your employer hadn't scaled back it's "blue sky" R&D?
Microsoft, on the other hand, has a fuckload of money, and are actively engaged in pure research for a variety of reasons. Contrary to popular belief, the research division is not accountable to any product unit and has an entirely independent budget. They are interested in a long-term productization of some of their research efforts, yes, but just as much if not more they also want to foster relationships with universities, be visible at major academic conferences, etc. They've had an historically rocky relationship with academia, and Microsoft Research is as much about fixing that relationship as it is about directly making money off of inventions.
The question is, "What pure research labs are left out there?"
Basically, for CS, the answer is Microsoft Research and no one else. IBM does have Watson labs, but researchers get their funding entirely from product groups, which means that if no product group sees potential benefit from the work you want to do, you ain't getting funded. Google doesn't have anything close to a pure research labs. Google has "Google Labs," which isn't exactly the same thing. Google labs kind of dicks around with things that don't have a concrete plan to be productized but are nonetheless aimed at something Google wants to do. There's a strong undercurrent of near-term applicability of those projects. Sun...well, Sun barely exists any more. How would you feel if you got laid off and found out your employer hadn't scaled back it's "blue sky" R&D?
Microsoft, on the other hand, has a fuckload of money, and are actively engaged in pure research for a variety of reasons. Contrary to popular belief, the research division is not accountable to any product unit and has an entirely independent budget. They are interested in a long-term productization of some of their research efforts, yes, but just as much if not more they also want to foster relationships with universities, be visible at major academic conferences, etc. They've had an historically rocky relationship with academia, and Microsoft Research is as much about fixing that relationship as it is about directly making money off of inventions.
Did the world really need this?
Did the world really need an online repository of cats that look like Hitler?
Indecency fines are so goddamn stupid
Indecency laws lead to shit like this, which pisses me off.
I say they just fucking air it, and then publicize the fuck out of the fact that they were fined for trying to celebrate World War II veterans. It will spur donations that, I'll bet, will more than cover the fines.
I say they just fucking air it, and then publicize the fuck out of the fact that they were fined for trying to celebrate World War II veterans. It will spur donations that, I'll bet, will more than cover the fines.
Overzealous posting
Huh. 9 posts in the past 24 hours.
Sometimes I'm amazed I actually still get paid.
Sometimes I'm amazed I actually still get paid.
How to fuck with your neighbors
Neighbors stealing your internet? You could just lock them out. Or, you could do something more interesting...
You've seen Rube Goldberg devices
...but have you seen virtual Rube Goldberg devices made out of explosives and flying bodies?
I didn't think so.
I didn't think so.
The Amazing Screw-On Head
Hey...ever wondered why there weren't more shows involving Abraham Lincoln, a metallic head with interchangable bodies, a werewolf, a monkey with a crown and a gatling gun, and David Hyde Pierce wise-cracking as a decomposing zombie in a tuxedo?
No?
Hmm.
Yeah, I guess I can see how that might not have been the first thing to leap to mind.
Watch the pilot anyway if for no other reason than it contains the highest concentration of utterly unlikely phrases you'll ever encounter (see above).
No?
Hmm.
Yeah, I guess I can see how that might not have been the first thing to leap to mind.
Watch the pilot anyway if for no other reason than it contains the highest concentration of utterly unlikely phrases you'll ever encounter (see above).
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
You can't handle the Hulk!
I'm not quite sure why I find this so amusing, but I do: the MPAA is suing Hulk Hogan.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Actual electoral college reform...
I actually find this article on electoral college reform rather fascinating.
It's less an idea about how to restructure the electoral college than it is an idea about how to short circuit the electoral college if you want to make the electoral college reflect the popular vote. The idea is simple: have a set of states that constitute a electoral majority pass laws that mandate throwing all of their electoral votes behind the winner of the national popular election. It's fucking ingenious. I just don't know if it's legally feasible to have states enter into legally binding contracts to this effect. I mean, it amounts to saying, "Regardless of how people in the state vote, all of the state's electoral votes are going to be decided by my friend Ed here..." That seems like it should violate some state constitutions...
It's less an idea about how to restructure the electoral college than it is an idea about how to short circuit the electoral college if you want to make the electoral college reflect the popular vote. The idea is simple: have a set of states that constitute a electoral majority pass laws that mandate throwing all of their electoral votes behind the winner of the national popular election. It's fucking ingenious. I just don't know if it's legally feasible to have states enter into legally binding contracts to this effect. I mean, it amounts to saying, "Regardless of how people in the state vote, all of the state's electoral votes are going to be decided by my friend Ed here..." That seems like it should violate some state constitutions...
Fuck New York
My state, run by a goddamn braindead member of the cast of Predator, gutted by the fuckers at Enron not five years ago, and faced with air conditioners across the third largest area in the nation fighting temperatures approaching 110, manages to keep all the power on at a peak usage 11% higher than the previous record.
New York, on the other hand, can't even keep the lights on in part of one city in temperatures that aren't even triple digits.
New York sucks. West coast, bitches!
(side note: whose fucking genius idea was it to have next day spot markets for energy?! Why was it such a difficult supply-and-demand calculation to realize that some dumbfuck jackass like Ken Lay would come in and price gouge at the first heat wave forecast?)
New York, on the other hand, can't even keep the lights on in part of one city in temperatures that aren't even triple digits.
New York sucks. West coast, bitches!
(side note: whose fucking genius idea was it to have next day spot markets for energy?! Why was it such a difficult supply-and-demand calculation to realize that some dumbfuck jackass like Ken Lay would come in and price gouge at the first heat wave forecast?)
Monday, July 24, 2006
Misuse of "literally"
I heard a misuse of the word "literally" on a BBC report on Lebanon today (I know...absolutely shocking to hear the British misuse their own language!):
"I talked to a farmer in northern Israel...where the fighting is taking place literally on his doorstep..."
Really? Literally on the doorstep? Like, Hezbollah and Israeli forces are standing in front of his door and beating the shit out of each other? 'Cause that would actually be kind of funny...
"I talked to a farmer in northern Israel...where the fighting is taking place literally on his doorstep..."
Really? Literally on the doorstep? Like, Hezbollah and Israeli forces are standing in front of his door and beating the shit out of each other? 'Cause that would actually be kind of funny...
Sunday, July 23, 2006
No global warming
Apparently this shit is just normal geologic fluctuations. (Horse. Shit.)
109?! In the bay area? Are you kidding me? We beat the previous high for the day by 15 goddamn degrees! And the low was only six degrees below the _average high_. _Fuck_.
(if that link is broken, which it almost certainly is, try to find the weather report for July 22nd, 2006 in zip code 94403)
109?! In the bay area? Are you kidding me? We beat the previous high for the day by 15 goddamn degrees! And the low was only six degrees below the _average high_. _Fuck_.
(if that link is broken, which it almost certainly is, try to find the weather report for July 22nd, 2006 in zip code 94403)
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Fucking inexcusable
This administration is fucking shameless. They can't change the law, so they're going to undercut enforcement.
We don't need to protect the planet, apparently
Latest neocon jackass move: changing the mission statement of NASA.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Portal
I found this here video at Penny Arcade, and I must say I'm intrigued.
At first, the idea seems kind of boring. And depending on what the ultimate game ends up being, that may in fact be the case. But still...though simple at first, by the end of the video you begin to grasp the kind of really weird shit the game concept could allow you to do.
Apparently the basic idea came out of an experimental design called Narbacular Drop. One of the more interesting things about Narbacular Drop is that it arose out of DigiPen. Which, you'll remember, is a video game university.
At first, the idea seems kind of boring. And depending on what the ultimate game ends up being, that may in fact be the case. But still...though simple at first, by the end of the video you begin to grasp the kind of really weird shit the game concept could allow you to do.
Apparently the basic idea came out of an experimental design called Narbacular Drop. One of the more interesting things about Narbacular Drop is that it arose out of DigiPen. Which, you'll remember, is a video game university.
Ow.
Perhaps the most appropriate headline ever.
That's...that's just sad. Like, torturously sad. At what point is Wal-Mart going to figure out that the only things it's good for are selling things to poor people at low enough prices that they're able to afford them on their Wal-Mart salary, and serving as a place for bored, upper-middle class white kids to go late at night in order to ride the Power Wheels and play with the bouncy plastic balls until they get kicked out.
That's...that's just sad. Like, torturously sad. At what point is Wal-Mart going to figure out that the only things it's good for are selling things to poor people at low enough prices that they're able to afford them on their Wal-Mart salary, and serving as a place for bored, upper-middle class white kids to go late at night in order to ride the Power Wheels and play with the bouncy plastic balls until they get kicked out.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Of dubious utility
Look, I'm as eager as the next guy to pounce on news that objective studies have found CEOs a) useless, and b) overvalued, but this study seems, from what I can tell, to not say anything at all about the actual deservedness of executive pay. At the very least you should be grouping companies by market cap, and frankly companies like Microsoft are in a league of their own and shouldn't really be compared against other companies in this respect. Microsoft shares have dropped by 20% in the last 6 months. So? That doesn't mean Microsoft is doing _badly_, per se. They're fucking huge. They still make more money than Google does in a day (I'm talking about revenues here, people...not imaginary, stock market, "we're going to buy Google's overvalued stock because we didn't learn a goddamn thing from the tech bubble" money). Do you really think you can get significant growth out of a company that already makes money on nearly every computer sold anywhere in the world? No. Frankly, you're doing well if you maintain your position in the market.
I'm sure CEOs _are_ largely overpaid. Their judgment is questionable, and company boards are both nepotistic and don't get objective guidance (I can't find that link about how firms that recommend CEO salary are often in a position to then get lucrative contracts from the CEO). But this study doesn't tell me anything useful.
I'm sure CEOs _are_ largely overpaid. Their judgment is questionable, and company boards are both nepotistic and don't get objective guidance (I can't find that link about how firms that recommend CEO salary are often in a position to then get lucrative contracts from the CEO). But this study doesn't tell me anything useful.
Monday, July 17, 2006
There goes my retirement plan
Goddamn government red tape...what happened to good old fashioned entrepreneurialism?!
Just in case you were running low on reasons to despise Bush and the religious right
Here ya go!
(That's just fucking appalling...there's no greater sin in my book than providing purposefully inaccurate health information. Also: go Waxman! It's nice to see someone in government doing something actually useful!)
(That's just fucking appalling...there's no greater sin in my book than providing purposefully inaccurate health information. Also: go Waxman! It's nice to see someone in government doing something actually useful!)
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Wikipedia vindication
Proof from the field that Wikipedia's claims of accuracy are, in practice, horse shit.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
My continued yuppification
I finally caved and bought a pretty new black 4GB iPod nano (one of the benefits of keeping only music you like rather than every piece of music you ever came across is that your library fits in under 2 GB). I found someone on Craigslist selling a new, unopened one for $200 (as opposed to the usual $250 the 4GB version usually is), so really, how could I pass that up? Especially with no tax.
I justified it to myself in two ways:
Apple really gets their UIs right. Why is this so goddamn hard for Microsoft?
I justified it to myself in two ways:
- I realized I could fairly easy hook the thing up to my car stereo and thus have my entire music library in my car so that I don't have to suffer through the shit that passes for modern music radio, and
- I'm less lazy about exercising if I have music. And I'm in danger of becoming fatass. So really, the iPod is an anti-fatass device. Wouldn't you pay $200 to not be a tub of lard?
Apple really gets their UIs right. Why is this so goddamn hard for Microsoft?
The state of our government
This is what we've been reduced to: a Republican President vetoing a bill signed by an overwhelmingly Repulican Congress.
Friday, July 14, 2006
On choosing to go to graduate school
I noticed this "Top 10 Reasons to go to Graduate School in the Modern World" thingy on Slashdot, and since my alternative is doing real work, I wanted to respond to it. I'll start by dealing with the points made individually:
- You get to meet and work with people who are pretty clear about what they want.
Utterly false. Most people in graduate school have no idea what they want. They're there because they couldn't think of anything better to do. - The rest of the world suddenly takes you more seriously.
Only partially true. Yes, having letters after your name potentially makes people not immediately blow you off, but that's about it. It generally doesn't translate into more money or help you in any way when it comes to actually getting people to do stuff that involves resources or money. Moreover, we're in the midst of an anti-intellectual backlash, and in a lot of circles, having a PhD = "being out of touch with the real world." People holding this opinion are often referred to as "conservatives." (I'll resist the urge to digress into another rant here...I will say that, at the very least, the non PhDs have proved that they, too, have no concept of how the real world works. See Iraq.) - You can use graduate school as an ideal environment for beginning work on a startup.
Horse puckey. Yahoo, Google, and Sun were given as examples of startups started by graduate students. Let me point out that 1) all of those were in the lead up to or in the midst of the dot-com era, and as such shouldn't be taken as general examples of, well, anything, and 2) I suspect those startups were started in part because their founders were fed up with grad school and wanted to do something "real."
Most good startup ideas in tech don't require state of the art research. They just require applying known techniques in a clever way and presenting them in a compelling, useful-to-business light. If you want to do a startup, go do a startup. Grad school isn't "pre-startup" world. (An exception to this is biotech, where almost all novel research can end up being applicable to somebody, somewhere with a lot of VC funding). - You can use graduate school as a pivot to change your career.
True insofar as you want to pivot towards something vaguely academic (i.e., either academia itself or an industrial research lab). Won't help you much elsewhere. Some people will, in fact, not hire you in lower-level technical positions because you'll suddenly be overqualified. - You get to pick your choice of work and your work hours.
Ha! Not quite. More flexibility than a corporate job, perhaps, but come a paper deadline, your "choice" of hours will amount to choosing whether to sleep between 4 and 6 am or between 5 an 7 am. - You can get involved in projects that can actually impact the real world.
Utter horse shit (most of the time). Research is about exploring "what-if's." There's a reason those are what-if's, and it's because they're ostensibly _not_ "actually-are's." Studies occasionally have impact (UWashington's spyware study, UCSD's Diebold security analysis, etc.), but most of the time the path from research to something that vaguely even touches reality is very long and very winding, and quite often doesn't even connect. This is one of the fundamental things you need to be at peace with before even considering a graduate degree. :) - You can get involved in projects that have absolutely no impact on the real world.
There we go. Much better. This one I wholeheartedly agree with. Not having to deal with idiot business-folk is fan-fucking-tastic. - You can do things that you missed out on in your undergraduate school. It’s a second chance.
No, it's not. It really isn't. If you're expecting this, you will be disappointed. Graduate school is a very, very different endeavor. Undergrad is about giving you a base of knowledge and a basic set of analytical tools. It's about breadth. It's also, in the US at least, an exposure to peers who come from wildly different backgrounds and have wildly different interests. Graduate school is about depth. You try to learn as much as you possibly can about a particular area, and you even try to push the boundaries of knowledge within that area. You are surrounded by other people who are interested in roughly the same thing you are, and those people have much more varied ages. They may not interact with you at all if they have families. - If you’re good at what you do, you can count on being invited to travel around the world to conferences and seminars.
If you're good at what you do, _and_ you're lucky, your papers will get into prestigious conferences, and then you'll spend your time scrambling to find the money to actually attend said conference. Also, once you get there, you'll likely spend all your time in a windowless conference room being bored by most of the other work presented.
(depressed yet? :)) - You get to be the TA this time around.
Alternatively: you _have_ to be a TA this time around. It's fucking hard work, man!
All that said, I'm really, really looking forward to grad school. You're surrounded by really bright people, not weighted down by business demands, PR departments, and assinine corporate policies. You can study whatever you want to, and you have the freedom to tell the rest of the world they're full of shit (just don't say that to your advisor). And to some degree, yes, you can just get up on a Wednesday and decide, "You know what? I don't fell like working today. Fuck it. I'm spending the day in front of the xbox." Now, that might mean you spend your weekend making up for that sloth. But hey, at least you can do it.
Basically, you just have to know why you're going and what to expect. If you do, it can be a fantastic experience.
Grrr.
How fucking stupid and brainwashed do you have to be to pull this sophomoric shit? What exactly was the thought process?
"Well, if I send them something that looks like anthrax, then they'll realize that they could get anthrax, and then they won't talk about the government, and then there won't be any more anthrax!"
Idiots.
"Well, if I send them something that looks like anthrax, then they'll realize that they could get anthrax, and then they won't talk about the government, and then there won't be any more anthrax!"
Idiots.
Bye bye Bruthe!
Bruthe hath been thummarily dithmithed.
You had to see that coming.
Random me trivia: long, long ago, I went to Arena's soccer camp at UVA. I got the "most improved" award.
Yeah.
There's a reason I don't talk about that much...
You had to see that coming.
Random me trivia: long, long ago, I went to Arena's soccer camp at UVA. I got the "most improved" award.
Yeah.
There's a reason I don't talk about that much...
Thursday, July 13, 2006
You've got crabs!
Why is this a problem? Fish the fuckers! They're overpopulated, and they're delicious. I would think the solution is fairly obvious.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Poor India
Really not a good day for them...blown up bus, failed missile test, botched satellite launch...
Santorum
Aww...Santorum's having trouble being re-elected?
Ask me how bad I feel for him.
Ask me how much of a crock of shit his "I'm a moderate, really!" campaign is.
Ask me if I think he's a hypocrite and a douchebag.
Ask me if, as a founding member of the K-street Project along with his good buddy Tom DeLay, he's one of the most poisonous influences on Capitol Hill.
Ask me how bad I feel for him.
Ask me how much of a crock of shit his "I'm a moderate, really!" campaign is.
Ask me if I think he's a hypocrite and a douchebag.
Ask me if, as a founding member of the K-street Project along with his good buddy Tom DeLay, he's one of the most poisonous influences on Capitol Hill.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Not only are Republicans douchebags, they're hypocrites! Yay!
States rights is apparently only a useful principle when it doesn't interfere with your legislative agenda.
Monday, July 03, 2006
Quotes of jaded idealism
Was reading something that evoked several quotes from different sources to similar effect...thought I would jot them down:
We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.-- Hunter Thompson via Raoul Duke
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
...San Francisco and its ghosts. San Francisco and its frozen revolution. Once again a time in San Francisco, the city of all excesses and the wildest orgies -- the city, too, it should be said in passing, where, in one night, in a former garage at the intersection of Union and Fillmore, the literary generation was born that, from Kerouac to Lamantia, from Michale McClure to Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder, most transformed America, and thus the world, for half a century. Now this city has become a conservatory of audacity, a museum of successful liberations, a tomb for 300,000 activists, escapes from the merry apocalypse of the sixties -- the proof, again, that the time has come in America to choose between reality and commemoration, between the position of the living and that of the survivor.-- Bernard-Henri Levy
American Vertigo
What I feel is a sense of betrayal by my species and by my culture -- that they lost their way and misled me, too, to a degree.
-- George Carlin, interview with Salon
Top 99 Most Desirable Women
Some of the orderings here are very weird. Kournikova as 99?! Please.
I gotta say, very few of the women really took my breath away. More often, the reaction was, "Eww." I bet they'd all look better with some less ridiculous clothing and hair. And some of them, frankly, need to _gain_ weight.
I gotta say, very few of the women really took my breath away. More often, the reaction was, "Eww." I bet they'd all look better with some less ridiculous clothing and hair. And some of them, frankly, need to _gain_ weight.
Indirect fame
In a NYT article on Google's infrastructure:
"Mr. Gates acknowledged that MapReduce was a significant technology, but he asserted that Microsoft was building its own parallel processing software, opening another front in the technological war between the two companies.
"Mr. Gates acknowledged that MapReduce was a significant technology, but he asserted that Microsoft was building its own parallel processing software, opening another front in the technological war between the two companies.
"They did MapReduce; we have this thing called Driad that's better," Mr. Gates said. "But they'll do one that's better."
Woo hoo! Dryad (they spelled it wrong) is a project started in my lab, and I was the one who named it! Wheeee!
A good idea from our government?!
I suspect this is the only piece of legislation sponsored by Coburn that I'll ever think is a good idea.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Freedom of the press
Kind of sad that the American public has to be reminded why freedom of the press is a good thing.
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