thomnific
Just my own opinion, but I wish mods would delete posts that did such things.
Perhaps the analogy works better if the barber is a friendly, honest person, who takes professional umbrage when they see other people with longer hair :)
I don't believe ML researchers are unqualified -- it's more of a potential incentive problem. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that people involved with / employed by a technology may have a tendency to exaggerate its benefits.
Ideally I'd trust the numbers here more if there was at least a cross-section of knowledgeable people being surveyed across a few different disciplines (or at least more than one).
What does the superhi...way have to do with online learning specifically? Even if you paid a consultant to tell you otherwise, it's still not the greatest name ..
It also depends on what you mean by "advanced degree". I have an undergraduate degree in physics/math and a master's in economics/finance, and I find between those two things I've been able to follow developments in machine learning and also to apply them to my work. In fact, I used to get a bit annoyed with those who would imply that I "must" do a PhD ... I would say that's certainly true if I wanted to invent new estimators etc., but otherwise not so much. A PhD can be great for other reasons but it's not the sort of thing required for actually doing my job.
(Disclaimer: I used to hate 1-based indexing, for reasons similar to what you are saying, but I'm brainwashed by R these days and now rather like it.)
However -- I just remember, when Homebrew was getting started, all the supercilious (dare I say arrogant?) advice in the docs ... oh, just install to /usr/local, "seriously", etc. (Looking for a reference in archive.org right now ...) Even their whole "Macports driving you to drink?" thing rubbed me the wrong way -- maybe I'm humour-deficient, but I think to criticize another project when your alternative isn't clearly better is just bad taste.
That being said, I am genuinely curious: is there any one awesome thing is that Homebrew does that Macports can't do? Or better, what kind of problems arise from using Macports? I recognize that packaging in Ruby is probably more convenient than in TCL, but other than that? It seems to me that Homebrew is just getting closer to what Macports did (correctly) in the first place. The only way Macports has ever inconvenienced me is requiring a fresh install from time to time when Apple updates their OS, which (for my use case) is minor.
Maybe it's just that Homebrew turned me off right away. Back in the bad old days, when the Python 2/3 split was more serious than it is now, I had a heck of a time trying to get pandas and scipy running with Homebrew. I haven't given it a try lately so perhaps things are better now.
(I am probably also the kind of person where all the hectoring the Homebrew docs would do about installing to /usr/local eventually got on my nerves ... )
That being said, I don't use MacPorts versions of things like TeX or Ruby (I prefer MacTeX and plain old rvm).
I think a better explanation is hidden in this phrase. The authour writes:
>> Trading is very stressful. I hate it. I would make a bad trade and I would feel my blood pumping all over my body all day long. And then if the trade was a loss I would cry at night. I was so scared all the time. I hated it.
On one hand it makes me feel a little better that this happens to even successful people. But on the other hand, you cannot be a trader with this kind of attitude.
Suffice to say that not everyone has the same problem. Sounds to me like he's justifying his own actions in retrospect, at least a little. Does recounting a grab-bag of fun anecdotes say anything about the real problems in finance? I like James Altucher a lot, but I expected more here!
There will always be a need for people lending money to have salespeople, loan adjudicators etc. But interacting with the teller is only necessary (or enjoyable) for certain demographics. For most people it is no fun to wait in line to get your $100 while the tellers chat away ("quill and pen" indeed).
As far as the cashless society goes, I reckon the effect on the poor would/will be far worse than the effect on consumers of retail banking services.
It's small and family-owned -- two brothers based out of Hong Kong, but travelling around constantly. You meet them in a hotel room, get your measurements taken, and a few weeks later you get beautiful suits in the mail. (At least I've always had good luck!) They're tailor-made, nice quality, and inexpensive. They do shirts too but I prefer their suits myself.
Long story short ... it's about really, really poor prospects for the oilsands going forward, added to a very uncertain fiscal situation:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-budget-debt-wi...
For what it's worth, yes, this is what we get for being hewers of wood, drawers of water, etc. Traders don't call CAD a commodity currency for nothing.
Edit: wrong link!
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6612009/macports-port-sel...