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Building better minds together…
“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.”
“If you ask a philosopher to produce a handbook of well-established and unchallengeable philosophical truths, there’s nothing to show. I think that is because philosophy is not a quest for knowledge about the world, but rather a quest for understanding the conceptual scheme in terms of which we conceive of the knowledge we achieve about the world. One of the rewards of doing philosophy is a clearer understanding of the way we think about ourselves and about the world we live in, not fresh facts about reality.”////Peter Hacker
headline:::tvtropes
“Transhumanism is about how technology will eventually help us overcome the problems that have, up until now, been endemic to human nature. Cyberpunk is about how technology won’t.”
“And the indigenous, in addition to not speaking Spanish, do not want credit cards, they do not produce, they are involved in planting maize, beans, chile, coffee, and they think about dancing to a marimba rather than using a computer. They are neither consumers nor producers. They are superfluous. And everything that is superfluous is expendable. But they do not want to go, and they do not want to stop being indigenous. There is more: their struggle is not to take over power. There struggle is to be recognized as Indian peoples, that their right to exist is recognized, without having to turn into other people.”//informationclearinghouse
“Why do I always find something in the last place that I look?” After a brief reflection the answer is obvious: once someone finds sometimes they stop looking. Therefore they will always find that which is being sought in the last place they look.”//taser.com
"There is no 'movement' of 'radical hard SF' writers threatening to 'reinvent science fiction from an eighties perspective.' It was only hype and everyone can relax. "However, the joke is on the hoaxsters. Although there is no such thing as an actual cyperbunk 'ideology,' the term itself has become a viable subgeneric marketing category. Our sources in publishing assure us that the use of the term 'cyberbunk' in cover blurbs guarantees a modest, but solid sales increase, which may well be useful to younger, less established writers."//cheapTruth"While some see cyberpunk to be a long-since dead relic of the 80s,
I consider it to be alive and well...Its meanings vary"//CyberpunkReview
"Cyberpunk literature, in general, deals with marginalized people in
technologically advanced hierarchical societies. In cyberpunk milieux,
there are usually powerful elites, be they oppressive governments,
paternalistic multinational corporations or fundamentalist religions,
who dominate the lives of the mass population. These regimes are aided
and distorted by artificial intelligence, electronic media and
information technology, resulting in an unusually subdued and
compliant citizenry. Often this technological reliance extends to the
very bodies of citizens themselves, via brain implants, prosthetic
limbs, cloned or genetically engineered organs, etc. In this way human
beings literally become part of ‘The Machine’. This is the 'cyber'
aspect of cyberpunk.
However, as in any society, there are those either unable or unwilling
to conform to cultural norms. Living out on the edge at the margins of
an alienating system, are the criminals, outcasts, visionaries,
dissenters and misfits. Cyberpunk literature focuses on these people,
and often on how they turn the system's technological tools to their
own ends. This is the 'punk' aspect of cyberpunk."//Iain//solcrux
Welcome to The Future. The Future is Dark. In the Sprawl, you look out for your own. In times of emergency, people watch out for one another.
“Cyberpunk is concurrently concerned with actual and imaginary metamorphoses of biological organisms into machines, and of mechanical apparatuses into living entities.”//sciencedirect
“Another dimension of cyberspace are the simstims. These are a futuristic version of today’s soap operas, made possible by the same technology that created the matrix. Simstims, or “simulated stimuli” are viewed as if the viewer was the star, Tally Isham: . These two dimensions of cyberspace come from advances in bio-technology and use simulation to draw the subject in.”//ogamu
“Simstim– Essentially the Sony Walkman™ unit of the future. Simstim performers, or “stars,” have recording devices implanted in their eyes, ears, etc. They then record their exciting, action-filled life experiences (sky diving, for example) on disk for sale to the general public. The unit is able to give the wearer the exact same sensual experience; escapism to the nth degree.”//burningcity
“In Neuromancer, the simstim star of the day is a young girl named Tally Isham. Kids line up and wait for hours just to catch a glimpse of her. She’s the Britney Spears of simstim. “The commercial stuff was edited, of course, so that if Tally Isham got a headache in the course of a segment, you didn’t feel it,” Gibson explains.”//macworld
“Cowboys didn’t get into simstim, he thought, because it was basically a meat toy. He knew that the trodes he used and the little plastic tiara dangling from a simstim deck were basically the same, and that the cyberspace matrix was basically a drastic simplification of the human sensorium, at least in terms of presentation, but the simstim itself struck him as a gratuitous multiplication of flesh input. The commercial stuff was edited, of course, so that if Tally Isham got a headache in the course of a segment, you didn’t feel it.”//virtualwordlets
“Rikki is tearing a picture out of one of the magazines. She holds it up to her face, covering her eyes. The perfect azure blues of Tally Isham.”//otakuhouse
“She had a glossy brochure spread open on the table, Tally Isham smiling up from a dozen photographs, the Girl with the Zeiss Ikon Eyes.
Her little simstim deck was one of the things I’d stacked under my bench the night before, the one I’d fixed for her the day after I’d first seen her. She spent hours jacked into that unit, the contact band across her forehead like a gray plastic tiara. Tally Isham was her favorite, and with the contact band on, she was gone, off somewhere in the recorded sensorium of simstims biggest star. Simulated stimuli: the world all the interesting parts, anyway as perceived by Tally Isham.
Tally raced a black Fokker ground-effect plane across Arizona mesa tops. Tally dived the Truk Island preserves. Tally partied with the superrich on private Greek islands, heartbreaking purity of those tiny white seaports at dawn.”//Burning Chrome
“She was twenty, four years his junior, and earned roughly nine times his annual salary in a given week. She was blonde, her hair cropped short for the series role, deeply tanned, and looked as if she was illuminated from within by sunlamps. The blue eyes were inhumanly perfect optical instruments, grown in vats in Japan. She was both actress and camera, her eyes worth several million New Yen, and in the hierarchy of Sense/Net stars, she barely rated.”//Xirdal
“Blue. Tally Isham blue. The clear trademark blue they’re famous for, Zeiss Ikon ringing each iris in tiny capitals, the letters suspended there like flecks of gold.”//200ok
“Look, Turner, here’s your leading lady.” The man smiled up at Jane Hamilton, who smiled back, her wide blue eyes clear and perfect, each iris ringed with the minute gold lettering of the Zeiss Ikon logo. Turner froze, caught in a split-second lock of indecision. The star was close, too close, and the pale man was rising.”//Xirdal
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
“The first media celebrity Tally Isham even though an unapproachable star was still human which is why she had to be replaced by Angie Mitchell, the chosen one: ‘ Legba, after all, had orchestrated her debut in the industry and the subsequent rise that had seen her eclipse Tally Isham’ s fifteen-year career as Net megastar’ ). The world was growing more unstable by the minute and hence there was a need for a much more intangible, inhuman star, one directly connected to cyberspace.”//crimeculture
The Colony//(quelle)
Der US Discovery Channel startet am 21 Juli eine Show, bzw. ein kontrolliertes Experiment in dem 10 Menschen, die einen Querschnitt durch die moderne Gesellschaft repräsentieren sollen, in einem post- katastrophalen Szenario ausgesetzt werden. Die öffentliche Versorgung ist zusammengebrochen, Verwüstung beherrscht das Bild der menschenleeren Strassen in dem Areal, das im Umfeld des LA-sprawls von Disasterexperten,u.a. der Homelandsecurity, nach besten Wissen und düsteren Vorahnung bereitet wurde, den freiwilligen Teilnehmern die kommenden 10 Wochen möglichst unbehaglich zu gestalten.
Nachdem sie ihren Unterschlupf in einem verkommenen Lagerhaus bezogen haben, wird es die Aufgabe der Kandidaten sein die Umgebung zu durchstreifen, um in den Trümmern der Zivilisation Hilfsmittel zu finden, die es ihnen ermöglichen eine rudimentäre Infrastruktur wiederherzustellen, Kaffee zu kochen und Kontakt mit weiteren Überlebenden aufzunehmen, die ihnen freundlicher gesinnt sind, als die, yay, Motorradgangs!!
Big Brother meets Survivor meets finstere Visionen
headline:::ZDnet
“The current race among security vendors is tying identity management to data loss prevention. The logic behind combining these two technologies is crystal clear: by knowing who is doing what, you can apply granular polices against the data the user accesses and transmit. And, if the user does something malicious or inappropriate, it’s much easier to prove the act.The current race among security vendors is tying identity management to data loss prevention. The logic behind combining these two technologies is crystal clear: by knowing who is doing what, you can apply granular polices against the data the user accesses and transmit. And, if the user does something malicious or inappropriate, it’s much easier to prove the act.”//channelinsider
“And maybe we can’t stop it, but we should at least know where it’s all going.”//Matt Taibbi
“That they’re going to get away with it is bad enough — that they’re getting praised for it, for being such smart guys, is damn near intolerable.”//trueslant
In Goldman Sachs We Trust
“With Goldman Sachs at the heart of Wall Street, and Wall Street at the heart of the US economy, few expects its power to wane. Indeed, The New York Times columnist David Brooks noted that Goldman Sachs employees have given more money to Barack Obama’s campaign for president than workers of any other employer in the US. “Over the past few years, people from Goldman Sachs have assumed control over large parts of the federal government,” Brooks noted grimly. “Over the next few they might just take over the whole darn thing.””//independent
“ABC News reported recently that since just 1989 Goldman employees have spent more than $43 million dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions to cultivate friends in Washington.”//seekingalpha
“In recent years the powerhouse bank Goldman Sachs has supplied Treasury secretaries to both Republican and Democratic administrations.”//capitalresearch
“Check back here in ten years to see how wise the US FED proves to have been, and how foolish some of the rest of us feel by then.”//forestpolicy
“Power alters the basic neurological processes in the brain and inhibits those parts of the brain that would allow a person to show restraint,” he said. “It allows them to systematically ignore the consequences of their actions.”//reuters
“But there is also a more plausible and prosaic explanation for Goldman’s success: it is damn good at what it does.”//telegraph
“GOLDMAN SACHS’S announcement this week of record quarterly profits has thankfully overshadowed another news event there earlier this month….Goldman’s announcement of record earnings, a mere month after the bank paid back $10 billion in federal aid, strikes me as much more offensive than this programmer’s bungled attempt to copy code.”//nytimes::steal this code
“On the week ending June 19, Goldman, for instance, was ranked first on the NYSE program trading list. But on the week of June 22, Goldman mysteriously didn’t appear on the list of the top 15 firms at all. It simply vanished without any explanation. Then the NYSE announced it would change some of the data for calculating the trading report.”//Karl Denninger
“GS has been a suspect for a long time, from conspiracy advocates to main street investors, of somehow manipulating markets.”//inthecrosswalk
“Still, the special moxie of Goldman’s culture is to respond boldly and brilliantly to crises that threaten the franchise, and move through them to higher ground, more resolute and inner directed. This is a paean to its leadership.”//forbes
“With respect to Goldman Sachs, the test determined that the firm does not require further capital.”//GS
“With the good times rolling again on Wall Street, Goldman repaid its $10 billion taxpayer bailout and now plans to dole out the biggest bonuses in its 140-year history.”//commondreams
“Perhaps. But this year, appearances matter. And this is the year that has seen $10 billion of TARP money and $13 billion of AIG money and who knows what amount of additional Federal Reserve funds or federal guarantee benefits flow into the coffers of Goldman Sachs.”//HuPo
“The NYSE has taken action to make sure that nobody will henceforth be able to keep track of the complete dominance that Goldman Sachs exerts over the New York Stock Exchange.”//zerohedge
“What this means, in short, is that the ability of people (like you and I) to see the fact that a handful of banks, most specifically Goldman Sachs, constitute the majority of NYSE trading volume – and they’re trading for their own book, not for customers, will no longer be disclosed. This “back and forth trade” between a handful of institutions is nothing more than the old “pump and dump” game that has been played in the OTC market forever – and almost always screws the individual investor.”
“It’s possible Goldman asked the NYSE to alter some of its reporting methodology after the firm discovered that someone may have infiltrated the proprietary computer codes it uses.”//Rick Reuben Master of Cunnilingus//electrical
“Last week, the FBI arrested Sergey Aleynikov, a former VP at Goldman Sachs. Aleynikov uploaded secret algorithms used by Goldman Sachs that run automated stock and commodities trading. The data was uploaded to a server in Europe [svn.xp-dev.].”//pulse2
“The local authorities had to take all the server hard drives for examination, and I was told that someone will be in contact with me the following day”//alea
“Private is the default,” he said. “You then have the option … You can explicitly either share it (or keep it private).”//reuters
“Having said that, any service on the internet is exposed to this risk where certain users upload/share information that they do not own.”//xpdev
“The allegations, if true, are big news because the codes the accused man, Sergey Aleynikov, tried to steal is the secret code to unlocking Goldman’s automated stocks and commodities trading businesses. Federal authorities allege the computer codes and related-trading files that Aleynikov uploaded to a German-based website help this major “financial institution” generate millions of dollars in profits each year.”//CEOworld
“Sabrina Shroff, a lawyer for Aleynikov, said at a July 4 court appearance that the government’s allegations are “preposterous.” She said her client was downloading programs to his personal computer to work at home and hasn’t disseminated the code.”//bloomberg
“I thought I was uploading open source files.”….
- Mr. Aleynikov engages in at least 4 uploads of files in the range of 32mb.
- Mr. Aleynikov decrypts his development files.
- Mr. Aleynikov uploads those files to a server domiciled in Germany.
- Mr. Aleynikov deletes his bash files.
- Mr. Aleynikov erases the encrypt/decrypt logs on the original server.”//fineextra
“He said that on June 5 he “created a tarball in an effort to collect open source work on Goldman Sachs server to which I had an account.” A tar file, which is sometimes called a tarball, is a compressed file. “I had previously worked on the files,” he said. He said he encrypted the files, then erased the encryption software and the tarball. “I then erased the bash history,” he said, referring to a method of recalling commands used in previous computer sessions. ..Aleynikov said in his statement that he downloaded the Goldman software to his home computer, his laptop computer and his thumb drive. “The reason I uploaded to svn.xp-dev.com was because it was not blocked by Goldman Sachs security policy,” Aleynikov wrote. The phrase, “not blocked by Goldman Sachs security policy,” was crossed out and he added: “I wanted to inspect the work later in a more usable environment.” Aleynikov said that he later opened the files to inspect them. “At that point I realized that I downloaded more files than I intended,” he said.”//aleynikov-transcript
“Federal authorities say the platform quickly processes rapid developments in the markets and using secret mathematical formulas, allows the firm to make highly-profitable automated trades. The criminal case has the potential to shed a light on the inner workings of an important profit center for Goldman and other Wall Street firms…The case against Aleynikov may explain why the New York Stock Exchange moved quickly last week to stop reporting program stock trading for its most active firms..”/Matthew Goldstein//reuters
“The questions being asked are pointed and terrific. For example, is the recent downturn in volume because Goldman’s computers were shut down for fear they were compromised? Of greater importance to average investors is a dirty truth is revealed.”//dailymarket
“Goldman always seems to be one step ahead of the game…“[T]here is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways.””//urantiansojourn
“During the bail hearing that occured just three days after Goldman Sachs allegedly called the FBI, Facciponti argued that Aleynikov should not be released because there was a chance that Aleynikov might release code that, according to Facciponti but which Goldman Sachs claims is a lie, “would be a substantial loss” to Goldman Sachs.”//federalism
“What’s the punk’s name?) Sergey Aleynikov. (Lloyd, I know this guy.) Yeah, we know him too. He used to be one of ours. A friend of ours, you understand? Now we don’t know what he’s up to. (But he’s connected, Lloyd.) Connected?”//moneyistheway
“Serge displays a lot of enthusiasm in his work and is very eager to share his knowledge with others.””//ft_alphaville
“Now, alarmingly, the audio’s been stripped, supposedly over copyright infringement”//dealbreaker
“We don’t deal with speculation when we come to court,” Fox said. “We deal with facts.”//bloomberg
“..high frequency trading is an indication of the behavior of money and a measure of market risk..high-turnover buying and selling with real-time data to control risk while generating returns from minute change..high-frequency trading means that much of the money moving your price and volume sees high equity risk and studies equity-markets behavior, not business fundamentals….there are changes at work in the broad markets…//.Tim Quast
The battlebots of Wall Street
“Increasingly, algorithmic trading programs automatically execute the trade orders that result. With the growing adoption of the AMD Opteron™ processor, high performance computing for quantitative modeling and algorithmic trading in the financial markets likely will increase.”//toomre
“…speed is critical and fractions of seconds loom large. Tradebot’s computers are programmed to detect, among other things, tiny, fleeting differences between bid and offer prices of stocks, then to pounce, buying stocks at one price and almost immediately reselling them for a fraction more.”//mangans
“[High frequency trading firms] typically employ trading strategies that are based not on company earnings prospects and other fundamentals, but on arbitraging minute differences in share prices and trading speeds — known as latency — between exchanges and other trading venues.”//salon
“Volatility increases and prices distort to the point where the underlying value of a thing gets lost in all the noise. This isn’t a free market; it’s a black magic trick, involving supercomputers, psychological operations and lots and lots of leverage.”//cryptogon
“The proprietary code lets the firm do “sophisticated, high-speed and high-volume trades on various stock and commodities markets,” prosecutors said in court papers. The trades generate “many millions of dollars” each year.”//zerohedge
“Goldman uses algorithms and a high frequency trading platform software to buy stock within a few milliseconds of company news being released and then selling a few moments later when other financial companies receive the company news.”//pulse2
“High frequency trading strategies have become a stealth tax on retail and institutional investors. While stock prices will probably go where they would have gone anyway, toxic trading takes money from real investors and gives it to the high frequency trader who has the best computer.”//correntewire.
“Tradebot’s algorithms are extremely efficient and operate on razor thin margins. In the “good old days” the specialist margins were much, much fatter (and the public footed the bill). With these ultra-slim margins, the only way to stay in business is to make it up on volume – huge volume.”//tradebotsystems
“These programs are taking advantage of real order flow and are siphoning off small profits throughout the day that belong in the pockets of the retail investor and the traditional money manager.”//mistrading
“Front-running, or trading ahead of executing a customer’s order, is a prohibited activity.”//Herald Tribune
“While the Street is percolating with anger and curiosity about ‘High Frequency Trading’ there is also frustration and astonishment that the media, regulators and our duly elected are not addressing what could be the biggest financial abuse story of our times, if not history. Though the blagoshpere is all over the ‘HFT’ trading story an important piece of the puzzle has not been publicized enough.”//Ritholtz
“. . . there are a lot of people that claim they are Mad As Hell And Are Not Going To Take It Anymore . . . but there are very few people that are going to do anything about it..”//goldmansachs666
“VP, Equity Strategy
Goldman Sachs (Public Company; GS; Investment Banking industry)
May 2007 — Present (2 years 3 months)• Lead development of a distributed real-time co-located high-frequency trading (HFT) platform. The main objective was to engineer a very low latency (microseconds) event-driven market data processing, strategy, and order submission engine. The system was obtaining multicast market data from Nasdaq, Arca/NYSE, CME and running trading algorithms with low latency requirements responsive to changes in market conditions.”//linkedin
“Supposedly a gaggle of Goldmans will be shown the door next week, though it’s unclear if the reduction in headcount is part of the cuts that were mentioned for January back in December, or just Blankfein flying by the seat of his pants. An additional round is also rumored to be in the works for April.”//dealbreaker
“The deed was allegedly done in the space of three minutes between 5.21 and 5.24 on the afternoon of June 5.”//FT_alphaville
“Sergey allegedly downloaded 32 megs of ultra top-secret quant trading proprietary code, that, according to Special Agent McSwain’s affidavit, he then proceeded to encrypt and upload to a website in Germany, with a UK owner…Needless to say, many others are now also likely hot on the trail of the code…Certainly this seems like a material piece of information: given that program trading accounted for 49% of all NYSE trading last week, and Goldman as recently as one week ago represented about 60% of all principal program trading..”//Tyler Durden/Zero Hedge
“The FBI says Aleynikov quit his $400,000 a year job last month, moving to a new company in Chicago that “intended to engage in high-volume automated trading” and that paid him around three times his old salary. In June, whilst monitoring the uploads of data from its computer system via https, the financial institution noticed that Aleynikov’s work desktop was used at least four times to transfer a total of 32 megabytes of information to an external Web site.”//fineextra
In the investment industry, people who perform quantitative analysis are frequently called quants.//wiki
“Wow, he don’t look like a programmer dude.”//TiredOldFart@saleyn:youtube
“An experienced programmer is expected to bring his expertise to a new job. The programmer might be tempted to take a copy of his just-completed task with him. It is not unusual for a programmer to spend years working on a piece of software. He begins to feel that the code he has written belongs to him. The bonding between a programmer and his code becomes especially intense when the application goes from the testing stage and “into production,” a process almost as painful as giving birth.”//nytimes
“Aleynikov,39, a citizen of the U.S. and Russia, left his $400,000-a-year salary at Goldman for a chance to triple his pay at a start-up firm ,Teza Technologies LLC, in Chicago co- founded by Misha Malyshev, a former Citadel Investment Group LLC high-frequency trader. “//bloomberg
“Malyshev, a Russian emigre with a doctorate in astrophysics from Princeton, left Citadel’s quantitative trading unit in February after the funds he helped run returned about 40 percent last year. Their performance stood out at a time when most hedge funds lost money and Citadel’s flagship portfolios tumbled 50 percent.”//amconmag
“Apparently Aleynikov was recruited to join Teza Technologies LLC by an outside headhunter..Supposedly Aleynikov was moving from Goldman Sachs where he was making $400,000 per year to Teza Technologies where his annual compensation was said to be $1.2 million.”//toomre.
Sergey Aleynikov Fan Club
Welcome! Selamat Datang! 欢迎! Nalvaravu! 歡迎! 歓迎! 환영! ต้อนรับ! Bienvenue! Willkommen! Benvenuto! boa vinda! добро пожаловать! Bienvenido! Velkommen! vítejte! tere tulemast! tervetuloa! καλώς όρισες! Isten hozta! bun venit! Het welkom!أهلا وسَهْلا! välkommen!//HFT
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btw. this Sergey Aleynikov, producer of fine graFX, is a different one…
At Zen, we have a philosophy of continuous improvement.
more open to the changes that are happening
Submit Your Top Web Hacking Techniques for 2008//GNUcitizen
“Der CAPCo.de geht endlich in seine fünfte Runde. Dieses Jahr starten 12 Stories Rund um das Thema: Urban Life / Leben in der Stadt.”//CPC
“MagCloud enables you to publish your own magazines. All you have to do is upload a PDF and we’ll take care of the rest: printing, mailing, subscription management, and more.”
“Tim Devin, a conceptual artist based in Boston is producing one of the most striking magazines in the world… About once a month, a new issue is printed of just fifty copies, and, thanks to a network of volunteers, is distributed in 25 cities across the USA and Canada. These copies are left in public spaces; you might find one on a park bench or on a bus seat. Those who find them can take and enjoy the exclusive pleasure of reading them.”//neural.it
“According to Aristotle, the hierarchy of human purposes aim at eudaimonia as the highest, most inclusive end. This is the end to which everyone in fact aims. Further, it is the only end towards which it is worth undertaking a means. Eudaimonia is constituted, according to Aristotle, not by honor, or wealth, or power, but by rational activity in accordance with virtù over a complete life. Such activity manifests the virtues of character, including, honesty, pride, friendliness, and wittiness; the intellectual virtues, such as rationality in judgment; and non-sacrificial (i.e. mutually beneficial) friendships and scientific knowledge (knowledge of things that are fundamental and/or unchanging is the best).”//wiki::eudaimonia
Optimism is the cure
fields of serenity 