MATLAB has loads of neat stuff python does not, but the same is now also true the other way around. On a par depends on what you want to do. I never use MATLAB now-a-days, numpy, scipy, matplotlibs and the yaml libraries do 95% of what I need to do for data processing.

The most difficult thing about using python rather than MATLAB is most of my colleagues use MATLAB, but academics are geeks, and they are generally arrogant geeks. If they need to do something which only python has code for (often specialised code another academic has written) then they will just learn python well enough to use it. Long term I think this is going to kill MATLAB because too many then start using python for other things.

Another factor which is slowly killing MATLAB is the presence of R in the academic sphere. MATLAB's stats package sucks hard (most people supplement it with SPSS), but R does pretty much everything academics need.

The major, major, major advantage MATLAB has at the moment is Simulink. Nothing like that in the open source realm. Simulink is a little niche though so I do think that is going to save it.

You do known Satan was given permission by Elohim? And remind me, the children that Satan killed with Elohim's permission, were they raised from the dead?

I clearly haven't communicated my point very well. I hold formal instruction in the rules of English in disdain, not effective communication. I'm well aware of how you would check what effective communication is, there are even a small number of studies (done by people in Communication Sciences rather than the English faculty) which are very helpful in this regard. They follow exactly the experimental paradigm you suggest.

"This is the experiment that will back up the idea that people in general can evaluate the quality of somebody's writing -- generally an uncontroversial statement. Having established that, guidelines (much more common than "rules") for effective writing can be established by people who specialize in the field on the weight of their own experience."

No, this experiment wont back this up. It will back up whatever rule or guideline was being tested (say 'use a small number of words on a presentation slide') and only if the metric of quality applies. There is no such thing as /*the*/ quality of somebody's writing in general so there is no way to judge it. You can judge my writing by how well I communicate my ideas because I have told you I am explicitly interested in and trying to convey ideas, but it is not a general property. Sometimes we value writing for its obtuseness. Art which conveys layers of meaning subtly for example. To judge my writing style in such a way that I care you need to know my intent (a fact which flies directly in the face of the ever popular New Criticism and other post modernist bullshit which permeates the English academy).

You judge writing style in couple of ways, you can relay your experience, which is fine but only matters if I care about communicating to you in particular, or you can relate my writing style to some generalisable epistemology. The only one of those we have is the scientific method. English does not use the scientific method, as far as I can tell it uses no effective epistemology what-so-ever. If anything those who study English (rather than communication) are more disinterested in effective communication than most scientists.

I never said I was disinterested in effective communication. I said English majors and people who adhere to rules about how writing should be done can fuck off. While the statistics and experimental methods of communication science might be a bit dodgy at times I have nothing but respect for that endeavour and have used the fruits of that particular scientific process to improve my own writing and presentation.

The rest of your post I largely agree with. You outline a collection of nuances and particulars which would impact a careful, scientific study of science communication. Something which people who complain about how I end this sentence would have trouble getting at. People who study English are doing a bad job because they think there is an objectively correct way to write. They are doing such a bad job I just praised Communication Science as a discipline in comparison.

You clearly misunderstood. I don't consider myself bad at something for which there is no acceptable standard.

So what metric are you using to claim they are writing poorly?

Arbitrary rules about how writing should be structured are just one more reason much of English is a waste of time. If they don't do the psychology experiment to show that some particular rule of the English language facilitates communication then I have no motivation to obey it.

I will try (and generally fail) to obey the rules because I don't know which ones make communication more effective, if all I have is the witchdoctor then to the witchdoctor I will go. That said sanctimonious English majors can fuck right off if they want to lecture me without actual science backing up their judgemental attitude.

The two examples I gave are of things for which there are definitely laws against, and HSBC were let of with a slap on the wrist. That is why I listen them. We have probable cause, they misfiled their reports to the SEC, the value they claimed their assets had they didn't. I happy to let the few banks which didn't require bailout money go, for the rest we have a reasonable suspicion they mislead the regulator and can search their records.

Lets ignore the fact that your words ring hollow because they bribed and bought the system to make their acts legal. There were things which should at least result in a court case.

Improper reporting of their assets. They claimed their collateralised debt obligations were worth more than they were on their balance sheets and there is clear evidence they knew they were worth less than they claimed. How about Merril Lynch selling CDOs to Lonestar, claiming it was for 22% of the face value when the terms of the deal made it clear they were only selling them for about 6% of the face value.

Or for a more recent example HSBC acting as banker for the worlds terrorists and getting a slap on the wrist.

These people are scum, and some of them did illegal things. We should be going through our banking system one banker at a time searching all their records and looking for anything they may have done which was complicit in causing the crash and going after each and every one of them personally, no point in going after the banks themselves if we are just going to bail them out.

I noticed you didn't deny that you were doing this because of your uncontrollable lust for little children. Before you respond I want you to keep in mind this theory isn't one I've crafted myself for the purposes of making a point on Slashdot. I mean don't get me wrong I seriously doubt that is your reason for doing this, I think the probability is very low. But I notice you haven't denied it.

Again, I didn't ask for evidence and a contradictory view point, I asked for proof.

Have you gone line by line through say 10% of the HFT algorithms used and formally demonstrated that there are no common hidden assumptions.

Since I don't value liquidity in the stock market and believe in democratisation of access (that is abolishing special privileged access to stock and commodities markets via financial barriers and requiring markets to trade with a single percentage price per trade, essentially abolishing brokers, HFT, the whole swathe of middle men) on moral grounds it doesn't really matter what evidence you present that HFT improves liquidity. You aren't going to convince me it is a good thing by that route. As such I invite you to stop trying to convince me HFT is a good thing. I believe anyone should simply be able to go and put an order on the stock market via the internet under the same terms. There should be no middle men. Or we could abolish limited liability and associated government interventions in the market, either is fine with me, although I think the first idea is a better idea if we want companies larger than a grapefruit.

I also don't care much about volatility, I would rather a volatile market in which the mean price reflected the long term value (which I know is discounting short term information) better than a stable price which is reflective of the true day to day value with rapid but stable short term correction but does not force people to think long term. I know this will discourage people investing in the stock market, I would offset this by changing the way we tax shares and reduce taxation on real long term investment. Basically if you can show that you have held a share for over six months, a year, multiple years I would make cap gain and dividend taxes on those shares much lower than they currently are.

It isn't that your case isn't plausible. Nor am I convinced either way on HFT effect on liquidity or the spread. From what I can tell with enough players in the market they do increase the information reflected in the price. That isn't what I'm calling you on.

I suggest instead of trying to convincing me that HFT is a good thing (which will never work) you focus on giving me proof that a large subset of HFT are not making the same assumptions. After all that is what I'm actually calling you on. Otherwise I am just going to assume you are one of the middle men acting as a parasite on the rest of us.

The SEC report on the May 6th crash said the exact opposite to what you have just said.

www.sec.gov/news/studies/2010/marketevents-report.pdf

So now you are just being dishonest. What exactly is the dog that you have in this race? Who pays your wages?

Evidence is insufficient, your have made statements that are so confident you need proof. Your position may be correct but the confidence with which you have stated it is simply too strong. You are running counter to the position of the regulators and economists and doing so while supremely confident.

You didn't demonstrate what I asked you to demonstrate. You just listed a bunch of ways HFT might be beneficial. Demonstrate that it cannot and will not amplify a crash like you claim.

"The key fact of the story is that the 'tech bubble' component of HFT is over"

I see you posting this kind of thing left right and center on this story and it makes me think you have some dog in this race because there is absolutely no way you can know this, even if you have access to the highly guarded information that goes into building HFT systems.

How can you possibly know that there wont be another such glitch?

Please present proof that matches the categorical and unambiguous nature of your claims. Demonstrate that there isn't some seemingly reasonable common but catastrophic assumption built into a large number of the HFT systems in existence. A study where researchers have been given access to the source code and surveyed say a couple of hundred such traders would be a nice start, but your claims are absolute so I would like to see proof.

All actions are equally trivial for a deity because they are supremely powerful. The only thing a deity cannot do is the logically impossible. Since typically a deity is also the creator that makes them responsible for every single event that occurs. That is what being a deity means, to be able to do anything short of create rocks they cant lift or destroy themselves.

"Once again, experience belies this."

You are not a deity, you are not supremely powerful. You can therefore be benevolent within the bounds of what you are able to do. No logical contradiction is implied if you don't do the absolute maximal amount of good.

Further you can be benevolent some of the time and not benevolent at other time, your benevolence can change through time. A deity is a timeless entity, a single instance of lacking in benevolence means the deity is not benevolent because a deities actions cannot be thought of as temporally localised.

You cannot take examples of what is possible and impossible for you and apply it to a deity, it just does not work. If you want to claim a benevolent deity exists you have to show it is reasonable such a concept is not self contradictory working from the definition itself, not from your experiences because you are a very different entity from that deity. You could punch someone in the mouth for no reason (or even for fun and profit), a benevolent deity cannot because it implies a logical contradiction.

It isn't that the deity has an obligation. It is that it is logically contradictory for a benevolent deity to act in an evil manner or fail to act in a good one. A benevolent deity isn't obliged to do good, it is logically contradictory for them to fail to.

"The deity, however, is bound to a singular course of action, predetermined by myself, my wife, and the other party."

Yes exactly. But they are not bound by moral obligation, they are bound by the requirement that their own nature be internally consistent. The only way around this is to argue that gods notion of benevolence is so alien to our own that rape, torture, death and genocide somehow working for the greater good can be considered benevolence.

Free will is a self contradictory concept whoever it is applied to but in this case that has precisely zero impact. A benevolent deity can only chose between the maximally good actions (or inactions) available to it, not because it lacks free will (however you define it), and not because it experiences a moral obligation, but for the same reason it cannot create square circles. You cant choose to be a married bachelor and a benevolent deity cant choose to fail to do good or to do evil.

Because all actions are equally trivial for a deity and they are the root cause of all actions there is no distinction between action and inaction. A benevolent deity has virtually no choice in their actions because they can only pick from the set of maximally good actions (because the only way to make benevolence make sense in this context is as I suggested before making benevolence a property of the deities nature, and any violation of this nature is a grave indiscretion). There is no difference between a deity failing to prevent genocide and a deity failing to blow the wind so the smallest number of people experience an eggy fart. As a result all that is necessary to show such a deity does not exist is to find a preventable instance of suffering, it helps to find an extreme case because it prevents the 'greater good' rebuff, but frankly the time I stubbed my toe with no purpose does the job.
This is precisely the problem with deities, because they dabble in the infinite they end up with a whole bunch of properties which are extreme on one axis or another.