waveman - Slashdot User

Comment: Re:I am an HFT programmer (Score 1) 791

by waveman on Sunday July 31 2011, @05:01PM (#36941644) Attached to: How and Why Wall Street Programmers Earn Top Salaries

1. Can you offer any insights into what happens with these meltdowns? If that actually HFT related and what goes wrong? Is it amateurs in action of is there a more fundamental issue with market structure? Eg http://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-hft-quote-stuffing-caused-market-crash-may-6-and-threatens-destroy-entire-market-any-mom

2. Can you offer any suggestions as to how a retail investor might deal with the presence of HFTs and not get taken to the cleaners? Eg in the light of things like this "Evaluation of the 'Adaptive-Aggressive' Trading-Agent Strategy Against Human Traders in CDA: AA Wins" at http://lscits.cs.bris.ac.uk/docs/AAMAS_CAMERA_READY.pdf

Singularity Summit Australia-> 0

Submitted by waveman on Wednesday June 29 2011, @08:11PM

waveman writes "Held on August 20-21 2011 in Melbourne Australia.

Last day for early bird tickets $78 / $48 concession."
Link to Original Source

Could Amazon Reviews Be Corrupt? 0

Submitted by adeelarshad82 on Wednesday June 29 2011, @04:16PM

adeelarshad82 writes "In the first academic study of its kind, Trevor Pinch, Cornell University professor of sociology and of science and technology studies, independently surveyed 166 of Amazon's top 1,000 reviewers, examining everything from demographics to motives. What he discovered was 85 percent of those surveyed had been approached with free merchandise from authors, agents or publishers. Amazon is encouraging reviewers to receive free products through Amazon Vine, an invitation-only program in which the top 1,000 reviewers are offered a catalog of free products to review. John Dvorak puts up an argument which hints that some of these Amazon reviews may be corrupt."

Irish judge orders 13-year old to surrender XBOX-> 0

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 29 2011, @03:07PM

An anonymous reader writes "In Belfast a High Court judge has ordered a 13 year old to surrender his XBOX to the authorities. The boy was charged with a series of robberies and in the bail application the judge asked the boy what he owned that meant a lot to him. The teenager said it was his XBOX games system. The judge told the youth that the surrender of the XBOX would show him what it was like to have something he really valued taken from him."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:HA fail (Score 1) 190

by waveman on Friday September 03 2010, @04:21PM (#33470080) Attached to: State of Virginia Technology Centers Down

> Why the rage? Just spell out very clearly (and in writing) exactly what will happen if component X fails, and the cost to implement redundancy now. When component X fails and the company loses Y dollars of revenue and the CEO comes to you, just pull out the email and say "I tried to design redundancy but he wouldn't spend the money".

This happened to a friend of mine. The internal "customer" raged about the waste and cost of the proposed redundant network infrastructure. He insisted on having it removed. My friend agreed but insisted on the "customer" signing off on the risks involved and acknowledging it was he who made the decision.

In due course the network failed and due to lack of redundancy it was out for about 1/2 a day. The "customer" then came for my friend's head, demanding that the person responsible for this disaster be fired.

My friend produced the documentation and asked the "customer" if he wanted this forwarded to his boss so he could be fired. The issue suddenly went very quiet. Without this documentation my friend would have been fired.

SCO v. Novell Goes To the Jury 67

Posted by timothy on Friday March 26 2010, @07:30PM
from the perhaps-it's-the-oj-jury dept.

Excelcia writes "Closing arguments in the six and a bit year old slander of title case between SCO and Novell occurred today and the case is finally in the hands of the jury. It's been an interesting case, with SCO alternately claiming that the copyrights to UNIX did get transferred to them, and that the copyrights should have been transferred to them. 'Judge Ted Stewart said, after the jury left to begin to deliberate, that in all his years on the bench, he's never seen such fine lawyering as in this case.' We're not going to find out the results until at least Tuesday, however, as one juror is taking a long weekend. Great lawyering notwithstanding, we can all hope next week that the Energizer bunny of all spurious lawsuits will finally go away."

Comment: Re:Science or Religion? (Score 2, Funny) 1136

by waveman on Wednesday February 17 2010, @12:04AM (#31165090) Attached to: A Warming Planet Can Mean More Snow

You are absolutely right. And on the other hand, there are no financial interests at all among the oil, coal, auto and gas companies in keeping the current emissions regime going as long as possible.

Comment: Re:Cause or effect? (Score 1) 438

by waveman on Wednesday August 05 2009, @08:33AM (#28956245) Attached to: Psychopaths Have Brain Structure Abnormality

> Our legal system is based on the concept of choice; when you commit a crime, you are assumed to be making a conscious choice, and the fact of your doing it proves the choice that you made, and thus your guilt. The laws themselves read this way: part of the definition of a crime in California is that you must INTENTIONALLY perform the illegal act, but this is almost meaningless since it's assumed that you mean to do what you do.

> However, it's my belief that ultimately, there is no real choice.

Nietzsche pointed this out in the nineteenth century (Human All Too Human). He also pointed out that we may have to pretend there is free will so as to maintain order, at least temporarily.