C# vs. C

So how efficient is C# really?? In relation to a language like C. Well the answer is, that there is no conclusive answer, yet a set of features of C# where performance matters is investigated in this nice MSDN article.

The article was written back in 2004, and much has improved in the C# world, and not just in terms of VM performance but the language capabilities aswell.

Large Search-Querry datasets

On a blog I recently visited, it was pointed out in context of a web search analysis study that: "This study also highlights the current situation in web-scale research: that only companies like Microsoft, Google or Yahoo! have access to the sheer volume of data needed to do such an analaysis." (sorry I do not remember the source of this, if it is ur blog please let me know, so I can reference you) This has been brought up numerous times in the past and I couldnt agree more. What is really very important is for society (/ internet users) to realise that they are the creators of the content and they should demand access to the agregatted datasets [Tapscott&Williams in Wikinomics - How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything]. Or in other words (since most people wouldnt know what to do with the datasets) some kind of compensation. This applies less to search engines, since they provide a free service, and applies more to other collaborative web 2.0 apps. However, search engines make money on advertising, so thats the reason why they are free to use, not because users are being compensated for the datasets that these search companies decide to store and aggregate.

My criticism is that search engines shouldn't keep the raw data hidden behind proprietary domains but open up to the world research community.

Submit your video into space

A pretty cool and interesting PR project launched by NASA, where you can submit a video clip on the topic of why you think space research is important!

check it out under:
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/myexploration/index2.html

Defending your digital freedom

We are overwhelmed by technology these days. Our lives evolve around going through our days being exposed to one or the other technical gadget or application. Without even realising it these collect all kinds of sensitive usage patterns about us.

There is an advancement in technology that has not yet been mirrored by appropriate and highly necessary legislation. Groups such as the ElectronicFrontierFoundation (see http://www.eff.org/about), which is an organisation dedicated to protect freedom of speech. Also backed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

Savers Prefer to Invest themselves!

An article that appeared today in the FT, according to an FT poll, savers feel safer and prefer to invest themselves rather than putting their money into investment banks.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0e13ea70-aba7-11de-9be4-00144feabdc0.html
(you might need to register in order to see the article)

Crisis Sentiments - pretty cool!!

BBC has made a google map that maps to opinions and comments relating to the crisis kicked off by the Lehman Brother collapse (various dates are associated with the crisis start thought). It is an interesting interactive World Wide Map, location point & click & read interface, pretty neat web 2.0 idea, so make sure to check it out!!!

check out my customised adds and comments

Intuition and Trading

There are numerous problems system designers face when tasked with developing IT Expert Based Systems. Such systems have to rely on a rule base from which inferences are made about a problem area(s), this is in a way the core idea behing an Expert System (ES). However the main problem is the acquirement of expertise or knowledge, if you like, into the rule base.

Numerous academic projects point out the fact that when traders were tasked with explaining some of their trading decision making processes, they were useless. The traders often explain that much of their decision making is based on intuition and that pin pointing explicitly, lhow they arrive to trading decisions is very difficult.

In a recent scientific experiment, two men with amnesia were asked to remember pairs of 8 objects (Nature July 28iss). Each man was shown the 8 pairs 5 times a day for numerous days. The man eventhought they could not remember why, learned to distibguish the pairs.

An excerpt follows:

When one of the men was asked if he picked an object because he remembered seeing it before, he said, "No. It just seems that's the one. It's here [pointing to his head] somehow or another and the hand goes for it."

Without being aware of it, the men learned the task after approximately 1,000 trials. This is about the same number of trials needed by monkeys with similar lesions in the medial temporal lobe. Normal monkeys take about 500 trials to learn the task.

The implication is that humans have an unconscious ability -- comparable to that in animals -- to mold our behavior in response to a consistent stimulus. "Habit learning is going on all the time. All of us are acquiring habits, " Squire said. "What this is showing is that habit learning is well-developed in humans, and that it works independent of consciousness."

This seems to indicate a strong relationship to intuitive learning, such knowledge that is acquired by traders via repetitive trading behaviour and performance feedback. In fact this is feedback learning and in IT terms it is synonymous with Unsupervised Learning, for cluster detection of patterns and inference. At least this is my interpretation, I am quite interested into past research of this kind... anybody who has a valuable opinion please bring your comments to the table :-)

Correlation

I just noticed today how good the wikipedia article on correlation is. This is worth a read, if not only for nice concise expressions, of the form such as "correlation or co-relation refers to the departure of two random variables from independence" and many others. Anyway, as we are talking statistics, do check out the highly related articles on Pearson's Correlation, and Standard Score.

CreditCard Industry - is it Rotten?!?

An amazing documentary I just watched yesterday - when I couldn't fall asleep! It explains what credit card industry really is about. The documentary is high profile, senators, top lobbyists and law academics are interviewed. Extremely well structured storyline illustrates the history and current problems with the industry.

please watch it in your free time, really CHECK IT OUT, it is EYE OPENING and comment and discuss (check out my customised adds as well :-) )

I will probably post more on the industry. Credit Card industry is fascinatingly interesting because it really applies to everyone but is a shady, and I meaaan, veeery shady industry! stay tuned...

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

I went to see this new movie (Inglourious Basterds (2009)) yesterday and I have to say I was impressed with the storyline. Set in the 2nd world war it follows a group of american nazi fighters and a jewish girl Shosanna on the run from the nazis, it paints a semi-fictional picture and shows what could have been an outcome in the world war.

The movie made me interested into possible war related scenarious and especially the controversial Munich agreement just before the war in 1939 that really triggered germany's power and fascinatingly enough, historians debate that the war (Blitz Krieg) might have had never been so successfull for Hitler.

what follows are experts from wikipedia article:

Czechoslovakia might have prevented the war

On August 4, 1938, a secret Army meeting was held at which Beck read his report. They agreed something had to be done to prevent certain disaster. Beck hoped they would all resign together but no one resigned except Beck. However his replacement, General Franz Halder, sympathised with Beck and together they conspired with several top generals, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris (Chief of German Intelligence), and Graf von Helldorf (Berlin's Police Chief) to arrest Hitler the moment he gave the invasion order. However the plan would only work if both Britain and France made it known to the world that they would fight to preserve Czechoslovakia. This would help to convince the German people that certain defeat awaited Germany. Agents were therefore sent to England to tell Chamberlain that an attack Czechoslovakia was planned and their intentions to overthrow Hitler if this occurred. However the messengers were not taken seriously by the British. In September, Chamberlain and Daladier decided not to threaten a war over Czechoslovakia and so the planned removal of Hitler could not be justified.^[153] The Munich Agreement therefore preserved Hitler in power.

Hitler has not enough Commodities for a war

Germany lacked sufficient supplies of oil and other crucial raw materials (the plants that would produce the synthetic oil for the German war effort were not in operation yet), and was highly dependent upon imports from abroad.^[175] The Kriegsmarine reported that should war come with Britain, it could not break a British blockade, and since Germany had hardly any oil stocks, Germany would be defeated for no other reason than a shortage of oil.^[176] The Economics Ministry told Hitler that Germany had only 2.6 million tons of oil at hand, and should war with Britain and France, would require 7.6 million tons of oil. Starting on 18 September 1938, the British refused to supply metals to Germany, and on 24 September the Admiralty forbade British ships to sail to Germany.

Czechoslovakia was Given away and Hitler got his Commodities and more armament

On 30 September 1938, a one-day conference was held in Munich attended by Hitler, Chamberlain, Daladier and Mussolini that led to the Munich Agreement, which gave to Hitler's ostensible demands by handing over the Sudetenland districts to Germany.^[179] Since London and Paris had already agreed to the idea of a transfer of the disputed territory in mid-September, the Munich Conference mostly comprised discussions in one day of talks on technical questions about how the transfer of the Sudetenland would take place, and featured the relatively minor concessions from Hitler that the transfer would take place over a ten day period in October, overseen by an international commission, and Germany would wait until Hungarian andPolish claims were settled.^[180] At the end of the conference, Chamberlain had Hitler sign a declaration of Anglo-German friendship, to which Chamberlain attached great importance and Hitler none at all.^[181] Though Chamberlain was well-satisfied with the Munich conference, leading to his infamous claim to have secured “peace in our time”, Hitler was privately furious about being “cheated” out of the war he was desperate to have in 1938.^[182][183] As a result of the summit, Hitler was TIME magazine's Man of the Year for 1938.

As can be seen, european powers wanted to avoid war at all cost, especially Britain. It is ironic of an opposite effect and commodities and armaments that were hence secured. The invasion of Czechoslovakia without fighting was a disgrace, what was more that Britain and France even found such an arrangement of europe acceptable without a twitch on their eyes.