ON TOPIC: what will be the effect of Obama's victory on programming? - Programming Languages

On Nov 5, 9:12 pm, p...@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
wrote:[color=blue]
> Basically, the crisis is due to the fact that they still used the old
> brownian movement model to evaluate risks, which underevaluated them,
> while the new chaotic model gives results closer to the reality.  The
> point is that they won't switch to the right model, they will just
> keep doing more of the wrong.[/color]

My guess is that most of the disastrous risk-assessment decisions
were made by people who wouldn't have a clue what either
Brownian motion or chaotic processes are. BTW, wouldn't
spectral ****ysis (or fractals!) be a clearer model here than some
"Brownian-vs-chaos" distinction?

The sudden explosion in "credit swaps" was a major cause of
this crisis. I think the general public might be trying
literally to lynch Wall Street figures if the nature of this
business was understood. Let me offer a *very* crude summary.
First note that "credit swap" is really just a type of
insurance, about which Warren Buffet wrote in 2002:[color=blue]
> "I view derivatives as time bombs, both for the
> parties that deal in them and the economic system."[/color]

By 2008, the nominal value of credit swaps was about
40 trillion dollars! ($ 40,000,000,000,000.00 , the total
would be even more mind-boggling if "interest rate swaps"
are included).
That's a lot of money, perhaps even more than the
total commercial debt on which such swaps were written.
That's because many of these derivatives were *not*
purchased by debt holders -- that would be like *me*
buying fire insurance on *your* house to profit when
your house burns down!
Now even a smallish player in this 40 trillion (nominal)
dollar market seems to be risking a big chunk of change.
The key to insurance companines is that ships' sinkings
are uncorrelated, but obviously this would be a foolish
principle to apply to credit defaults!

By 2008, AIG insured, in very round figures, close to a
trillion dollars of debt, for which it received many $billions
of premiums, most of which was pure profit. The fact that
premiums far exceeded payouts would hardly be surprising,
even assuming the market was operating efficiently: if you
ensure against a "100-year storm", you figure to make big
bucks 99 years out of a hundred.

But obviously the big bucks should be stashed somewhere
safe, at least if the insurance company has any intention of
making good on its obligations when the 100-year storm
comes!

Now here's what should be very annoying: Almost 20%
of the "profit" from AIG's credit swaps were paid out to the
swap unit's managers! The bonuses just to this unit totalled
at least 4 billion dollars during the GWB era! In other words,
the high corporate official, if any, in charge of assessing
risk didn't seem to grasp that default rates might vary year
to year! And ... let me repeat it again ... the nominal
total exposure of AIG, when related derivatives are included,
was in the TRillions of dollars!

Summary: The risk takers didn't make bad decisions.
To the contrary they're enjoying life on yachts and private
jets, and no one's foreclosing on *their* homes.

I've guesstimated some of the numbers here (anyone have better
numbers?), but I didn't just "pull them out of my ear", see
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/business/28melt.html[/url]

James Dow Allen

spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> writes:
[color=blue]
> On Nov 5, 10:12 pm, p...@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
> wrote:[color=green]
>> spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> writes:[color=darkred]
>> > (2) Will Obama's victory result in a greater emphasis on transparency
>> > and reliability of code as opposed to raw "speed", itself a metaphor
>> > such that blind "speed" merely exacerbated the Wall Street crash, as
>> > automated systems took linked derivatives down at warp speed?[/color]
>>
>> My bet is: NO.
>>
>> Basically, the crisis is due to the fact that they still used the old
>> brownian movement model to evaluate risks, which underevaluated them,
>> while the new chaotic model gives results closer to the reality.  The
>> point is that they won't switch to the right model, they will just
>> keep doing more of the wrong.[/color]
>
> Cf. "Chaos: a Very Short Introduction", Leonard Smith, Oxford Univ
> Press. Computers cannot do chaos because computers are finite state
> machines in the last ****ysis.[/color]

Computer programs are not the main component of the stock exchange
markets. And I've never seen a human draw a Mandelbrot or Julia set.

[color=blue][color=green]
>> Which is not to say that we wouldn't see more programmer job
>> opportunities in using computer technology for justice and human
>> needs, not as opposed, but thanks to increasing the gains of rich
>> illuminaries.
>>
>> Who makes sun or hand powered cheap PCs available to third world
>> countries?  Not lefties, but rich people and capitalistic industries.[/color]
>
> Excuse me. That's wrong. The "sun or hand powered cheap PC" was
> developed at the nonprofit MIT Media Lab.[/color]

What university, financed by some non-capitalistic society (Cuba?
North Korea?), did develop such a product?

[color=blue]
> In fine, as soon as the Yuppies saw something meant not for them but
> for the poor, they took it away for precisely the same reason they
> destroy neighborhoods, replacing them by House of Blues (which my son
> says should be called House of White People) and soul food and
> Ethiopian restaurants.[/color]

They didn't take away anything. Having hundreds of millions of
yuppies buying a product is the best way to make the prices drop down,
so they can be afforded by the third world.


--
__Pascal Bourguignon__

On Nov 6, 7:24 pm, p...@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
wrote:[color=blue]
> spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> writes:[color=green]
> > On Nov 5, 10:12 pm, p...@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
> > wrote:[color=darkred]
> >> spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> writes:
> >> > (2) Will Obama's victory result in a greater emphasis on transparency
> >> > and reliability of code as opposed to raw "speed", itself a metaphor
> >> > such that blind "speed" merely exacerbated the Wall Street crash, as
> >> > automated systems took linked derivatives down at warp speed?[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> >> My bet is: NO.[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> >> Basically, the crisis is due to the fact that they still used the old
> >> brownian movement model to evaluate risks, which underevaluated them,
> >> while the new chaotic model gives results closer to the reality.  The
> >> point is that they won't switch to the right model, they will just
> >> keep doing more of the wrong.[/color][/color]
>[color=green]
> > Cf. "Chaos: a Very Short Introduction", Leonard Smith, Oxford Univ
> > Press. Computers cannot do chaos because computers are finite state
> > machines in the last ****ysis.[/color]
>
> Computer programs are not the main component of the stock exchange
> markets.  And I've never seen a human draw a Mandelbrot or Julia set.[/color]

According to Smith's very interesting little book, the sets are not
drawn because the computer gives up past about 1/72nd of an inch. The
"drawings" are but approximations.

In terms of "beautiful" curves and Chinese calligraphy, humans are
indeed better at real chaos.

It appears to me that you don't understand chaos at all.[color=blue]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> >> Which is not to say that we wouldn't see more programmer job
> >> opportunities in using computer technology for justice and human
> >> needs, not as opposed, but thanks to increasing the gains of rich
> >> illuminaries.[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> >> Who makes sun or hand powered cheap PCs available to third world
> >> countries?  Not lefties, but rich people and capitalistic industries..[/color][/color]
>[color=green]
> > Excuse me. That's wrong. The "sun or hand powered cheap PC" was
> > developed at the nonprofit MIT Media Lab.[/color]
>
> What university, financed by some non-capitalistic society (Cuba?
> North Korea?), did develop such a product?[/color]

Cuba is a world leader in biotechnology and affordable health care.
"Products" considered as things that people buy and own are by
definition not affordable by poor people, because the definition of
"poor" is "not having the necessities of life", ergo, the poor are NOT
the market for "products", they are in the market for perishable food
and minimal shelter! Cuban doctors and scientists have developed
affordable "products", but vastly more importantly they have developed
resources and practices that have worldwide made a positive difference
in people's lives.

Whereas the United States prefers for the most part to rain expensive
products, mostly ordnance, on poor people.

Furthermore, in all cases of computer "products" the prototype is made
not for profit as a part of university research. Microcomputers did
not represent a "new" type of computer architecture: I was there: they
were the primitive architecture of 1950s computers reintroduced in the
1970s in a miniaturized form, with real cute features such as 4 bit
word lengths forced upon them by the limitations of miniaturization.

The fundamentals were developed at not for profit university centers
and at defense companies doing government research.

[color=blue]
>[color=green]
> > In fine, as soon as the Yuppies saw something meant not for them but
> > for the poor, they took it away for precisely the same reason they
> > destroy neighborhoods, replacing them by House of Blues (which my son
> > says should be called House of White People) and soul food and
> > Ethiopian restaurants.[/color]
>
> They didn't take away anything.  Having hundreds of millions of
> yuppies buying a product is the best way to make the prices drop down,
> so they can be afforded by the third world.[/color]

You need to get out more.

In Russia, the Yuppie products are sold exclusively in the major
cities, mostly Moscow, as luxury goods to gangsters and billionaires
enriched not by capitalist competition but by a criminal yard sale of
infrastructure built by Communism. Old-age pensioners and teachers
CANNOT afford computers in Russia.

The only Yuppie product to penetrate the Third World to date has been
the cellphone. This has done so because the criminal regimes created
by Western powers when they decolonized were for the most part unable
to either install land line networks or maintain existing networks,
and a company not in the USA but in Finland, using a workforce
educated by a communitarian, "socialist" system, took the opportunity
to create a market...in this one area, which doesn't have all that
much to do with basic human needs.

As a result, people in Baghdad can SMS texts such as "hurry up before
he's dead". This is OBSCENE and UNSUSTAINABLE economics.

The cellphone was a "product" but man does not live by products alone.
Up until about 1750 there were no "products" in the modern
sense...only practices and the seasons. Even when I was a kid in the
1950s, our "products" consisted of a list that would fit on half a
sheet of paper: my dad's car, a few kitchen appliances, our shortlist
of toys, school books, and school supplies. The Hula Hoop was a big
deal as was the Davy Crockett cap precisely because so little of
life's meaning had been reified, hardened, and turned to stone.
[color=blue]
>
> --
> __Pascal Bourguignon__- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -[/color]

On Nov 6, 7:52 pm, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> On Nov 6, 7:24 pm, p...@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>[color=green]
> > spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> writes:[color=darkred]
> > > On Nov 5, 10:12 pm, p...@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
> > > wrote:
> > >> spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> writes:
> > >> > (2) Will Obama's victory result in a greater emphasis on transparency
> > >> > and reliability of code as opposed to raw "speed", itself a metaphor
> > >> > such that blind "speed" merely exacerbated the Wall Street crash, as
> > >> > automated systems took linked derivatives down at warp speed?[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> > >> My bet is: NO.[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> > >> Basically, the crisis is due to the fact that they still used the old
> > >> brownian movement model to evaluate risks, which underevaluated them,
> > >> while the new chaotic model gives results closer to the reality.  The
> > >> point is that they won't switch to the right model, they will just
> > >> keep doing more of the wrong.[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> > > Cf. "Chaos: a Very Short Introduction", Leonard Smith, Oxford Univ
> > > Press. Computers cannot do chaos because computers are finite state
> > > machines in the last ****ysis.[/color][/color]
>[color=green]
> > Computer programs are not the main component of the stock exchange
> > markets.  And I've never seen a human draw a Mandelbrot or Julia set.[/color]
>
> According to Smith's very interesting little book, the sets are not
> drawn because the computer gives up past about 1/72nd of an inch. The
> "drawings" are but approximations.
>
> In terms of "beautiful" curves and Chinese calligraphy, humans are
> indeed better at real chaos.
>
> It appears to me that you don't understand chaos at all.
>
>
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> > >> Which is not to say that we wouldn't see more programmer job
> > >> opportunities in using computer technology for justice and human
> > >> needs, not as opposed, but thanks to increasing the gains of rich
> > >> illuminaries.[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> > >> Who makes sun or hand powered cheap PCs available to third world
> > >> countries?  Not lefties, but rich people and capitalistic industries.[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> > > Excuse me. That's wrong. The "sun or hand powered cheap PC" was
> > > developed at the nonprofit MIT Media Lab.[/color][/color]
>[color=green]
> > What university, financed by some non-capitalistic society (Cuba?
> > North Korea?), did develop such a product?[/color]
>
> Cuba is a world leader in biotechnology and affordable health care.
> "Products" considered as things that people buy and own are by
> definition not affordable by poor people, because the definition of
> "poor" is "not having the necessities of life", ergo, the poor are NOT
> the market for "products", they are in the market for perishable food
> and minimal shelter! Cuban doctors and scientists have developed
> affordable "products", but vastly more importantly they have developed
> resources and practices that have worldwide made a positive difference
> in people's lives.
>
> Whereas the United States prefers for the most part to rain expensive
> products, mostly ordnance, on poor people.
>
> Furthermore, in all cases of computer "products" the prototype is made
> not for profit as a part of university research. Microcomputers did
> not represent a "new" type of computer architecture: I was there: they
> were the primitive architecture of 1950s computers reintroduced in the
> 1970s in a miniaturized form, with real cute features such as 4 bit
> word lengths forced upon them by the limitations of miniaturization.
>
> The fundamentals were developed at not for profit university centers
> and at defense companies doing government research.
>
>
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> > > In fine, as soon as the Yuppies saw something meant not for them but
> > > for the poor, they took it away for precisely the same reason they
> > > destroy neighborhoods, replacing them by House of Blues (which my son
> > > says should be called House of White People) and soul food and
> > > Ethiopian restaurants.[/color][/color]
>[color=green]
> > They didn't take away anything.  Having hundreds of millions of
> > yuppies buying a product is the best way to make the prices drop down,
> > so they can be afforded by the third world.[/color]
>
> You need to get out more.
>
> In Russia, the Yuppie products are sold exclusively in the major
> cities, mostly Moscow, as luxury goods to gangsters and billionaires
> enriched not by capitalist competition but by a criminal yard sale of
> infrastructure built by Communism. Old-age pensioners and teachers
> CANNOT afford computers in Russia.
>
> The only Yuppie product to penetrate the Third World to date has been
> the cellphone. This has done so because the criminal regimes created
> by Western powers when they decolonized were for the most part unable
> to either install land line networks or maintain existing networks,
> and a company not in the USA but in Finland, using a workforce
> educated by a communitarian, "socialist" system, took the opportunity
> to create a market...in this one area, which doesn't have all that
> much to do with basic human needs.
>
> As a result, people in Baghdad can SMS texts such as "hurry up before
> he's dead". This is OBSCENE and UNSUSTAINABLE economics.
>
> The cellphone was a "product" but man does not live by products alone.
> Up until about 1750 there were no "products" in the modern
> sense...only practices and the seasons. Even when I was a kid in the
> 1950s, our "products" consisted of a list that would fit on half a
> sheet of paper: my dad's car, a few kitchen appliances, our shortlist
> of toys, school books, and school supplies. The Hula Hoop was a big
> deal as was the Davy Crockett cap precisely because so little of
> life's meaning had been reified, hardened, and turned to stone.
>
>
>
>
>[color=green]
> > --
> > __Pascal Bourguignon__- Hide quoted text -[/color]
>[color=green]
> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -[/color]
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -[/color]

Furthermore, your Holy Products weren't even affordable, we now find,
to American consumers. These "yuppies" have used credit unsustainably
to buy laptops, coffeemakers, and other "products", and the
availability of this credit resulted from China's willingness to hold
dollars.

During the period when human calculation and writing was monetized and
made into a product we all must now have, the laptop, the necessities
of life began slowly to be less and less affordable to these credit-
based yuppies of whom you speak: apartment rentals in major cities
where the jobs are are now consistently more than their optimal level
(25% of net pay) and in hot real estate markets you need nearly
perfect credit to get a lease. Home prices went through the roof but
their decline provides no relief since credit is suddenly
unaffordable, the "bailout" having been money poured into a rathole
where the rats (the bankers) hang on to it.

Not only that: the laptop is effectively donated in part to the
employer whenever the employee uses it for work.

Food prices are still rising, but even before that time, nobody
noticed that many of the Yuppies were eating food that historically
has fed marginal groups...some of the fashionable fish we eat,
especially crustacaen, is being eaten because traditional fish
(notably cod) has disappeared.

It turns out that even Americans could not afford these "products" of
which you speak and that long-term the quality of life is in decline
even for your "yuppies". It's increasingly dependent on increasingly
temporary and marginalized labor.

To paraphrase Bob Marley, they bellyfull but they hungry.

On Nov 6, 4:24 pm, James Dow Allen <jdallen2...@yahoo.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> On Nov 5, 9:12 pm, p...@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
> wrote:
>[color=green]
> > Basically, the crisis is due to the fact that they still used the old
> > brownian movement model to evaluate risks, which underevaluated them,
> > while the new chaotic model gives results closer to the reality.  The
> > point is that they won't switch to the right model, they will just
> > keep doing more of the wrong.[/color]
>
> My guess is that most of the disastrous risk-assessment decisions
> were made by people who wouldn't have a clue what either
> Brownian motion or chaotic processes are.  BTW, wouldn't
> spectral ****ysis (or fractals!)  be a clearer model here than some
> "Brownian-vs-chaos" distinction?
>
> The sudden explosion in "credit swaps" was a major cause of
> this crisis.  I think the general public might be trying
> literally to lynch Wall Street figures if the nature of this
> business was understood.  Let me offer a *very* crude summary.
> First note that "credit swap" is really just a type of
> insurance, about which Warren Buffet wrote in 2002:
>[color=green]
> > "I view derivatives as time bombs, both for the
> > parties that deal in them and the economic system."[/color]
>
> By 2008, the nominal value of credit swaps was about
> 40 trillion dollars!  ($ 40,000,000,000,000.00 , the total
> would be even more mind-boggling if "interest rate swaps"
> are included).
> That's a lot of money, perhaps even more than the
> total commercial debt on which such swaps were written.
> That's because many of these derivatives were *not*
> purchased by debt holders -- that would be like *me*
> buying fire insurance on *your* house to profit when
> your house burns down!
> Now even a smallish player in this 40 trillion (nominal)
> dollar market seems to be risking a big chunk of change.
> The key to insurance companines is that ships' sinkings
> are uncorrelated, but obviously this would be a foolish
> principle to apply to credit defaults!
>
> By 2008, AIG insured, in very round figures, close to a
> trillion dollars of debt, for which it received many $billions
> of premiums, most of which was pure profit.  The fact that
> premiums far exceeded payouts would hardly be surprising,
> even assuming the market was operating efficiently: if you
> ensure against a "100-year storm", you figure to make big
> bucks 99 years out of a hundred.
>
> But obviously the big bucks should be stashed somewhere
> safe, at least if the insurance company has any intention of
> making good on its obligations when the 100-year storm
> comes!
>
> Now here's what should be very annoying: Almost 20%
> of the "profit" from AIG's credit swaps were paid out to the
> swap unit's managers!  The bonuses just to this unit totalled
> at least 4 billion dollars during the GWB era!  In other words,
> the high corporate official, if any, in charge of assessing
> risk didn't seem to grasp that default rates might vary year
> to year!  And ... let me repeat it again ... the nominal
> total exposure of AIG, when related derivatives are included,
> was in the TRillions of dollars!
>
> Summary: The risk takers didn't make bad decisions.
> To the contrary they're enjoying life on yachts and private
> jets, and no one's foreclosing on *their* homes.
>
> I've guesstimated some of the numbers here (anyone have better
> numbers?), but I didn't just "pull them out of my ear", seehttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/business/28melt.html
>
> James Dow Allen[/color]

Excellent work, thank you.The only part I didn't like was "the risk
takers didn't make bad decisions". You see, the shell game is getting
the ordinary slob to use the pseudo-tough, pseudo-shrewd language of
the winners and to take a completely vicarious spectator satisfaction
in the rewards going to the "risk" takers...who based on your work
didn't take risks at all. Instead they made a bet with a sure payoff
99 times out of 100 ninety-nine times, and assumed that the game would
continue after the ninety-ninth bottle of beer on the wall.

Programmers should refuse to work for such people, who made bad, in
the sense of evil and stupid, decisions. As to even the shrewdness of
their decisions, a progressive income tax with justifiably high rates
(ninety cents on the last dollar) will take away those yachts, and
make them into floating schools, and those jets, and make them medical
evacuation craft.

The real smart guys who got out when the getting out was good are
merely shrewd criminals who need to lose their licenses and charged
with insider trading. At a minimum, their children should curse them
for using their talents in such a shabby enterprise.

spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> writes:
[color=blue]
> As a result, people in Baghdad can SMS texts such as "hurry up before
> he's dead". This is OBSCENE and UNSUSTAINABLE economics.[/color]

Yes, Communism, mafias, and criminals in general produce obscene and
unsustainable economics.

You don't have a case against capitalism.


--
__Pascal Bourguignon__

"[Jongware]" <sorry@no.spam.net> writes:[color=blue]
> CBFalconer wrote:[color=green]
>> "[Jongware]" wrote:
>> ... snip ...[color=darkred]
>>> Today I found out that Obama's election did not make the trains run
>>> on time. Again. Well, perhaps that's because I'm not in the US.[/color]
>> No, it is due to the absence of Benito Mussolini.[/color]
>
> Now THERE's someone who made the trains run on time.[/color]
[...]

No, actually he didn't.

[url]http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.asp[/url]

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) [email]kst-u@mib.org[/email] <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"

On Nov 7, 1:22 am, p...@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
wrote:[color=blue]
> spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> writes:[color=green]
> > As a result, people in Baghdad can SMS texts such as "hurry up before
> > he's dead". This is OBSCENE and UNSUSTAINABLE economics.[/color]
>
> Yes, Communism, mafias, and criminals in general produce obscene and
> unsustainable economics.  
>
> You don't have a case against capitalism.[/color]

That's easy for you to say...you haven't proven it. You've been sold a
reductionist, monolithic view of communism, socialism and economic
planning.

But how's that working out for you? Do you have health insurance? Did
you get any of that money transferred to banks in the bailout, which
is now sitting in effect in vaults and being grabbed by bank
executives while credit collapses?

[color=blue]
>
> --
> __Pascal Bourguignon__[/color]

"CBFalconer" <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:4911CBB2.8120D26E@yahoo.com...[color=blue]
> "Pascal J. Bourguignon" wrote:[color=green]
>> spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> writes:
>>[/color]
> ... snip ...[color=green]
>>[color=darkred]
>>> (4) World-wide, and not just in America and throughout the
>>> Internet, won't Obama's victory reduce the childish negativity,
>>> personal destruction, bullying, ill-concealed racial assumptions
>>> and out and out racism, and dishonesty so rife on usenet?[/color]
>>
>> Mu. On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.[/color]
>
> On the contrary, on the Internet everyone knows spinnie is a dog.[/color]

AFAICT, he is a moron socialist hippie with raw racist tendencies who
contributes little to nothing wrt actual programming.