I'd just like to encourage people to apply. I work with @cbanek on the LSST EPO team. Working on a large science project is amazing. Every day is interesting. There is a shared goal beyond just making money, similar to a startup with traction. The environment is pseudo-academic, which combines the best of academia and working for a national lab. The portal already has some design work done but is generally greenfield for technology choices. And last but not least Tucson is great and quite affordable.
Actually, pg was on the leaderboard for years. But, yes, his name was eventually removed, and while it was on the leaderboard, it was typically the top username by a very wide margin.
Oh, sorry, I was thinking of nickb. :) Thank you for checking the Wayback Machine. I must have been aware of pg's karma totals by looking at his individual profile.
Norvig's "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" is also worth reading and covers the higher level problem of bad research and results. Including mentioning bad statistics.
MinGW comes with an installer that gives you GCC. Make sure you install MSYS as well (comes with bash, etc). Add the bin directories to your %PATH% when you're done. Then set Console to use bash as your default shell, and you have a pretty close setup to the command-line experience of Linux/Mac.
Unless they have credit for writing the song, or self publish, the band makes most of their money from touring and merchandise.
BitTorrent isn't a zero sum game. It's difficult to prevent and any action upsets fans. Why not embrace it and get free PR. Meanwhile, the people that will buy it (or request it on a radio station, or listen on Spotify) need to be aware of the music. And both groups end up attending concerts. So it's really a win for the bands. It's the labels that are at risk.
David Lowery says that's not true. He says that your idea of how much artists make from touring suffers from cognitive bias: we pay attention to the anomalously successful huge touring acts, but that the reality is bimodal: a very few major touring acts, and then a huge cluster of artists who make less than minimum wage from even respectably attended club shows.
Neko Case made some comments to the effect of how much her returns were from touring _Middle Cyclone_. I went to that show in Chicago, which packed the large Chicago Theater. Neko Case was repeatedly featured on NPR and other media venues. She is anomalously successful. How amazingly lucrative do you think that tour was for her? Hint: if you're picking between being Neko Case and a senior engineer at Google just based on the money...
Of course, Steve Albini's famous "Some Of Your Friends May Already Be This Fucked" made much the same point about touring. He'd put it this way: if you're picking between being a midlist touring act and a senior manager at Wendy's just based on the money...
Meanwhile, the popular conception of how lucrative a label recording contract was is also mistaken, because it failed to take into account recoup rates and automatic per-sales royalties that are paid out even when albums don't recoup. In reality, the recording contract alone both financed the (very expensive) professional-quality recording of music and provided musicians with a base-level middle class income.
I like how one simple succinct relevant question can say so much about Norvig's claims. It seems appropriate coming from the creator of LISP. And, of course, the mutual respect, professionalism they both had to leave it at that.
I really shouldn't admit this but /cough circa 1997 I had abandoned Apple. I had a PC and Linux box at home and Unix terminal at school. I remember being impressed by this campaign and hopeful that Jobs would fix Apple. But I couldn't have imagined what Apple and Steve Jobs had in store for the world. What a remarkable recovery. Thanks Steve.
