I read chapters of it a few years back, too, but forgotten the details. All in all, I was pretty convinced of the soundness of the approach at the time.
My recollection is that this framework of causal inference allows one to ask questions about a probabilistic model that one can then try and measure to test causality.
These questions are interventions or assertions (the do operators) that something happened.
So one would start out with a Graphical Model like in the smoking example which defines a probability model, and then make do assertions on the model for various candidate causes and see what that would imply about the change in probabilities and then design an experiment to measure them and confirm them.
I thought it was a good approach as well, but I have a hard time fitting it into the math I know. I've been learning category theory so I may take another stab at placing it. But this all takes time.
And the book's layout is fairly disjointed.
I may just begin experimenting with the theory, rather than placing it, my life is short.
If an individual is concerned with privacy they should probably take matters into their own hands and use encryption, cash, bitcoin and other tools to protect their identity and leave as little private information online as possible.
Lanier sounds like the anti-Kurzweil. Like others, I find his vision of the future too pessimistic and his proposed solution not workable.
He rightly raises concerns about how our roles/jobs/lives will change in the future.
But, I am much more bullish with developments like decentralized currencies, micro loans and other new banking models, advances in clean energy technology, and possibly even remote space colonies in the not too far distant future.
In this future, I imagine more opportunities for individuals.
Have to agree with the above. The problem with relational databases isn't the relational model, per se, but the complexity and cost of maintaining a relational database.
Typically, they require specialized database administrators whose primary job is to tune the database and keep it running.
Many businesses, even of moderate size, reach point where they will need to purchase expensive hardware (million dollar RamSans and expensive servers) to optimize the performance of their database because partitioning databases is challenging.
So the overhead of running an Oracle or Sql Server database is quite high.
There is huge room for improvement with these traditional database products. If someone made a good cloud database that supported the same feature set but with lower administration and maintenance costs then that might be a better option.
Now that is a reasonable concern. Keeping db hardware happy is certainly an expensive undertaking. I think I'm more used to the arguments like the one from Sauce Labs, where the VP whines, "What are schemas even for? They just make things hard to change for no reason. Sometimes you do need to enforce constraints on your data, but schemas go way too far," [1] and then goes on to say that his company is moving from using CouchDB to using MySQL as a key-value store with serialized JSON (data integrity and performance be damned -- I mean, really, the thought of converting millions of values in a table to objects just to run a home-grown MapReduce function on them when you could just LEARN HOW TO USE MySQL is pretty much the most insane thing I've ever heard lol).
Do you have any experience with Amazon RDS? I haven't tried it; I guess my concern would be the same as any other AWS product--they tend to fail catastrophically from time to time. Then again, if you're doing cloud NoSQL through Amazon, you're going to run into the same issues (see: Reddit).
The problem of complexity has less to do with being relational and more to do with the data just being large and complex. Relational or not doesn't change that much. If anything, by not keeping it relational, you are much more likely to have a disorganized database that isn't normalized.
This whole "specialized database administrator" point just seems moot considering the equivalent for that are the so-called Big Data developers.
Interesting take that gets to the heart of the matter but my
interpretation is different.
Like you say, the genius of Apple and Jobs is an incredible focus on
the simplicity and intuitiveness of their products. I have seen two
year old kids able to use ipads. This was their innovation and it has
won them millions (billions?) of loyal fans.
This was so radically different than the prevailing ethos in the tech
industry at the time that their supporters feel they should be
protected or rewarded for changing the industry.
However, there is a problem in granting protection for these types of
innovations, in that we are setting a dangerous precedent for patents
and innovation. The individual user interface elements that make up
the iPhone, by themselves, are all relatively obvious. Swiping to turn
a page is the natural evolution of the book. Movies like Minority
Report suggest the range of gestures we can imagine given the
appropriate technology. It's quite a stretch to suggest that something
so similar to what we have done all our lives should be protected by
law and in effect create a protected monoply and prevent others from
using these ideas in their products.
Instead those that admire Apple and what they have done should
continue to do what they have been doing, buy their
products.
As someone who has owned multiple ipads, ipods, iphones, and mac
books, I know how compelling their products are and the loyalty it
breeds in their users. Therefore, I think it is unlikely that many
will step back and think whether this really is the best result for
our industry.
The part that hit home for me was his description of the Prof's frustration with the speed at which he was implementing the enhancement to Klee and the fact that most grad students are not as smart as their advisors.
Most grad students are exhilarated to work with a brilliant researcher but it can crushing when one learns his or her own limitations.
Like the author says, probably 1 in 100 are the equal of their advisor and capable of becoming a professor at a comparable university.
Different strokes for different folks. It takes a special kind of person to be a professor, but this doesn't have so much to do with aptitude. There are many ways to contribute to the world, getting a PhD is useful even if you are not dreaming of being a professor.
Spencer's comments are generally accurate. I might quibble with some of them or say that they vary from team to team. For instance, I have used R, Python, Java, and Sawzall in my work at Google and have had freedom to choose technologies on some of my projects with input from team members.
It is true that most of the larger production systems like the Search Engine are mainly written in C++ and Java and that functional programming isn't widespread, yet.
But you are free to take on a 20% project to show the value of other ideas.
I would also challenge technology cons #2, #10, and #11. I think a lot of Google Engineers do tackle fundamental problems.
As someone else mentioned, I find the signal to noise ratio to be much higher on G+ than facebook or twitter. I mainly use these tools for two purposes, keeping in touch with friends and following interesting people and topics.
Facebook wins for the former as most of my friends still aren't on G+ or twitter, however, most of the activity is uninteresting checkins and the like.
With twitter, I have followed people I am interested in for topical content, but I mostly see personal tweets and find myself quickly scrolling through them for an occasional interesting link. Also, the interaction is next to zero except for retweets. I don't think the medium lends itself to much more than light banter.
In contrast, on plus, the topical content is more informative often with interesting comments.
At my last company I had 20 days vacation and about to transition to 25 days. However, work was so busy that I had to plan and request my vacations 3-6 mos in advance. I now have less vacation but more freedom to take it when i want.
If one really wants to maximize free time contract work is where its at.
