I had to laugh when I read the quoted students reponse to the wrong output. Just introduce a simple correction that fulfills the requirement for his particular test case. Why you'd wonder what the academic standards are in a univesity that even allows such people to enter the door, this modus operandi is even encouraged the 'industry' under the moniker of 'test-driven development'.
The article complains about 'gimmicks'. People around here believe in producing tangible prototypes for $15,000 in three months, what can you expect but gimmicks?
This is pretty much what universities do, especially the more elitist kind. Alumni don't have a contractual obligation to pay x% of their income, but in practice they end up making donations to their alma mater for the rest of their life.
However I don't like this idea at all, it's what creates elitism and closed circles in the first place. Our society already is institutionalized to the hilt, I wished people again found their natural ability to create trust relationships, from scratch.
"I wished people again found their natural ability to create trust relationships, from scratch."
I completely agree with this. I don't honestly feel people of good faith need to deal with complicated rules or institutions. But not everyone is willing to go that route, so this is an idea which might serve the other 99%.
First off, it might be the case that anyone could be worth investing in (in time, money, energy, expertise, caring). I think if done right, it's true for everyone. I don't really have it as a goal that just the "talented" people are invested in. Just that that is the obvious place to start.
And I think that if someone who is talented is already well-connected or has a rich family, this would probably have little use for them. But, for someone who is ambitious and hard-working but starting out from a low place, this would be a boon- they need some kind of support, more than anyone else. If they could find others willing to create "trust relationships", presumably they would do it, since that is obviously a better deal. But few seem to manage it :/.
> I completely agree with this. I don't honestly feel people of good faith need to deal with complicated rules or institutions. But not everyone is willing to go that route, so this is an idea which might serve the other 99%.
I sometimes wonder whether it isn't that 1% that carries the weight of society. And the Internet lowers the barrier to creating new trust relationships from scratch. If you were interested in that sort of thing, be my friend.
Yes, let's be friends :). I'm grateful somebody mentioned "trust relationships". That's a good start. My email address is ben dott seeley att gmail dott com. Email me some contact info, and I'll mail you mine.
I disagree with you and I want to say most elite universities have done a bad job except Standford. Elite universities just can't give what market wants because of politics. But unfortunately the only thing matter for a startup to survive is demand and supply of market.
While a startup for startup has to meet what market wants, instead of protecting alumni, professors and students.
A bad job in my own ideology. It just creates a system for elites and let them inbreed. While I prefer a system for anyone has a chance to beat the house or lose their pants fairly based on his/her contribution to market.
If a startup for startups to serve their needs will be successful, it will not be like an elite club (because as a young startup, it wants all old businesses out and be replaced by it and it will be there until it will be replaced by other startups). But a new business that requires much lower fee like recruiters/VCs but provide better benefit/cost for startups to acquire resources.
Ok, objection noted. The name isn't important- you can call it "Pie Love" if you want.
In case you couldn't tell from the post, I was talking about investing in the talent people have. I'm not talking about slave labor, I'm talking about doing the kind of stuff Y Combinator does, and making it even more personal and supportive over the long haul. A real partnership, so that people are even more likely to succeed in the long run.
No I couldn't tell, because I stopped reading at "human resources". But since you stand corrected I'll stand corrected too and wrote a thoughtful reply above.
> some sort of trading system that mixed FX with a whole bunch of wacky synthetics to allow you to easily take positions on things which are normally more complicated
Heh, what's this? I worked in FX at one point in time and found the whole thing very intriguing and inspiring. Maybe you can elaborate? There could be an overlap of interests.
Hmm. At the moment there seems to be a pattern creeping in of some of the majors allowing people to do non-deliverable trades against metal prices on futures exchanges (and for that matter NDFs on currencies which aren't liquid, I think it's the same trick underneath). I think this is very cool and wonder whether it could be slowly expanded further. For example - people could instead take holdings into funds linked to diversified investments in specific investments or currency pairs in online games.
But always using the FX approach to trading: Buy/sell, base/terms, three-letter-code currencies, spot/fwd and swap.
If liquidity emerged for more markets from user requests on the site, you could add them later. To be honest, it's such an obvious idea that there's either something wrong with it, or someone is doing it already, or both.
Huh, wouldn't be able to comment on that. Of course this being Hacker News my interest lies more in changing the way things work through technology, I thought you had ideas that way. I was fascinated by "straight through processing" which can basically cause chains of deals to be executed automatically. It lowers the cost of transactions dramatically, and lowering the cost of transactions has had a broad effect in many other businesses.
I have found the term "Straight-through processing" to be quite ambiguous in the way that it is commonly used. It gets used as a synonym for just the post-trade process where messages are send from the trading platform into a customers' RMS whereas - as you say - the term actually means more than that.
Virtually all of my current work is with that goal (logicscope.com). The group took a dirty problem - integrating dispirate banking systems - and wrote a cool abstraction that lets it work as a multiadapter. Plus support, configuration management, etc, etc. By accident, the system also turns out to be a not-entirely-elegant but much cheaper and easier-to-work-with replacement for MQ for many settings.
The idea of queueing and releasing a chain of transactions on the trading side of the transaction may be interesting but I can't see it yet. Are you referring to situations in which you do a single "trade" but with a complex series of legs? If so - this already exists in some organisations but is not widely supported by APIs or major GUI interfaces yet. Or are you thinking more of forming a position across a range of positions and then unleashing it? This could be useful, but I'm not sure who you'd target it at. The banks are likely to have internal software teams doing a mixed job of delivering this sort of fn already, and I'm not sure how you could base a startup on it. I expect there would be some hedge funds that could do this to come up with interesting situations - for example - setting up pricing queues for stocks floated on multiple exchanges and currencies and then doing automatic arbitrage based on this. Algorithmic trading isn't my speciality though, and I'm sure there are smart people doing this already :)
Hm, I said I found FX 'inspiring', but didn't say 'inspiring for a startup'. As I mentioned elsewhere my interest is more in P2P networks, and those elude classic funding strategies.
The STP I'm referring to relates to automatic roundtrips including request for quote > pricing engine > quote > order > confirmation > TMS but the real interesting part is when banks automatically back their orders with purchases from yet other banks, intra-bank. Exotic currencies add an additional dimension, as no immediate pricing for e.g. Mexican pesos in Norwegian kronors is available and the trade needs to be 'routed' through an intermediate currency, usually USD or EUR.
My view of the system didn't go beyond two banks at the time but in theory there could be a long chain. That way the banks would be forming a financial P2P network. In reality it's a pretty hierarchical network as not all banks are created equal, but it'd be interesting if you could come up with financial routing mechanisms that would find the cheapest route in a hypothetical more dense banking network and what you can learn from that for poor man's P2P networks.
I read this to be the use-case you're aiming to satisfy: (1) getting access to a range of exotics which are only available through certain providers in addition to (2) also getting the best rate available for all ccy pairs. I think this is currently provided by 'portals' like fxall and currenex (bloomberg now too I think) where majors competitively bid on quotes when they want to and the buyer buys that which best suits them.
There's a couple of problem with deliberate chaining of interbank trades in that if the market moves far you might not get your countertrade (the quote will be rejected on the trade attempt - it's more common for quotes to be non-guaranteed than for them to be guaranteed, presumably because it's easier to build and avoids the situation where hedge funds start gaming you); and - irrespective of that - prices tend to get naturally stale fairly quickly (every few seconds but it's usually inconsistent) which means that latency is a factor.
Aims (1) and (2) are correct. If there are more 'exotics' to go around and they become more easily accessbile (i.e. low transaction fees), wouldn't there be more competition on the currency market? Online retailers could quote prices in the currency of their choice and you'd get an instant quote in the currency of your choice out of that. As for the non-guaranteed quotes and the latency, I'm not sure whether someone has seriously tried to get their head wrapped around that, so there's room for innovative routing mechanisms. As for me it'd be fine to just do this as a thought experiment and then apply the results to poor man's P2P networks which are more accessible in the first place and see what comes out of that.
P.S. The portals (I worked for one of those) are a step in the right direction as their convenient UI and STP lowers the cost of a transaction in terms of human effort, but other than that add little value on top of what's offered by the banks. They are at most leaf nodes in the networks as they can't hold money even intermittently and the actual settlement still takes place through the banks. So they cannot open 'new routes' in the network.
I've sometimes wondered whether IT isn't becoming the 'core' part of a business. I.e. the one that's most complex and drives the competitive edge and success of a business. I have worked in IT in many different industries and often enough found the 'business' part of the business to be easy to pick up while it sometimes took ages and a lot of brainpower to get on top of the technology. In other words, IT people can understand 'businesss' but business people can't understand IT. So, in the future, instead of having a bank with an IT department, we'd have an IT company with a bank department. They'd probably switch sooner from banking to insurance than from one IT infrastructure to another.
I think amazon is a good prototype for this. It's a tech company that also sells books. They later added all sorts of other crap like electronics, then stuff that they don't even deliver but where they just act as a front for other retailers and finally they are now offering their IT services purely by themselves (S3, EC2).
I don't think IT will ever become that important. IT will just take its rightful place next to Law Firms and Accounting Firms as a necessary part of the business but not the core.
It is kind of surprising that IT, with its self references as fast-paced and innovative has taken so long to realize its own inefficiencies. IT (in the sense of internal computer systems for businesses) was greatly over invested starting in the 90s because the executives of the time were so scared. I remember stories of Hollywood executives who would ask their assistants to surf websites they were going to invest in and videotape it. They would take these video tapes home for 'research' the same way they would research actors, directors and movies to invest in. They completely didn't get it. So what did they do? They did what most people do when they are scared, they try to buy insurance. This insurance came in over-investment in all things technology both externally and internally, leading to huge IT departments that then used their bulk to buy more technology and increase their internal political might until all this over investment corrected itself in the legendary bubble pop.
I think when all is said and done, IT will be just like Payroll. When was the last time you met a person who works 40 hours a week processing payroll? They used to exist at every company - now everyone's checks come from ADP or PayChex. IT will be done by an outside company and will part of the budget for each person on the payroll. But of course I am a little biased...
Hmm, payroll - There is an industry to be disrupted...
I have a vague idea what you mean by the 'inefficiencies'. I am wondering whether these would have manifested in the first place if IT had been given a more central role. It's a lot about motivation too, the 'central' people in a business are usually motivated by being shareholders as well as employees at the same time. If you treat IT as just another accountant they will find endless means and ways to drag their feet and just generally pursue their own interests which are generally opposed to that of the business. Being linked into the flow of information, i.e. high level senior management decisions, is important too for efficiency.
I totally agree that things could always be better and that incentives are the key to this. There is a business concept from the 80s called 'open book management' where everyone in the company sees where all the money goes. This is more transparency than even public companies have.
I think it could be a technique that would get everyone from accounting to IT more involved in the business. I also think there needs to be much shorter expectations of how long someone will work for a company. Hollywood is on to something with the way they bring together small teams to make a film that then disband and reform in a new configuration for the next film. I wonder what would happen if every person in the company had to choose each year whether they want to continue with the company. They would in effect have a one year job. This might make their sense of urgency and priority for the 52 weeks within that year much more focused. It might also form a company with much more dedicated people who really want to be there.
Hm, seems like pg & co. want to have all the big problems of business and the economy solved for $15,000. I guess if you're only funding kiddies with amounts equivalent to the allowance they get from their parents, all you get is kiddie solutions. As soon as $15m are on the table, call me.
(Catfish Jerry?) You know they get you started then put you in front of the right people to get the 15m. But there are too many people beating down the door to get in, but email me I have several things going on that can provide you with more income then you can spend.
As for my personal projects, see the answer to rms below.
As for anyone else's projects, even though they promise to put you in front of the right people eventually, you have to have some small-time prototype to show before they put you through to the bigwigs. Whether you use the $15,000 offered to create that prototype or already have one doesn't matter I guess, however what does matter is that for improvements in ERP/CRM/WebOS/somebigtech there aren't any small prototypes that could represent the idea's viability better than a PowerPoint presentation already does.
So how about judging the idea just by its presentation itself? The other problem is that PG/RTM/TB aren't exactly industry veterans themselves. Any Dilbert in the country has a better clue of how things work in, say, the corporate world than a painter and a university prof. They wouldn't recognize a better CRM solution if they sat on it, and neither, I am assuming, have friends in the right places that they could consult on the matter.
So seems like inventors would be better off beating down the door to the real guys.
Just put the offer on ycombinator's - or another reputable entity's - web site for everyone to see. However the "call me" part is half joking; while I have ideas to tackle some of those problems, especially the economic foundations of them, they are not amenable to funding by ycombinator or similar entities. The smaller problems being purely practical such as not being - or wanting to be - in that funny country of yours over there, the larger ones being that it's a contradiction in terms to use an old economic model (invenstments, corporate structures, sell-outs) to create a new economic model. Look at the file-sharing example quoted: A P2P network technology, even one that created economic benefits for its participants, such as musicians and listeners, would never get VC funding since there's no central entity to siphon the profits off.
I was so sick and tiered of hearing that capitalism is the best system we have, "theres nothing better", that I designed a new world order. It is better than capitalism by a very long way. It's a complicated idea, slightly difficult to grasp, but given any problem it will robustly yield the best result for the community. You can read it if your interested on the wayback. http://web.archive.org/web/20060613054329/http://creatocracy...
To give you one idea about the design and how it would treat people like you within it, (I notice that your kama on HN (jerry5) is -10) The creatocracy recognizes that one size does not fit all, treats all according to their history and respect. You would find that your voice counted less with regards voting rights and you may well find that if your attitude became a burden on others that your tax level would rise higher than others.
Self organizing self regulating. Feedback is an essential component!
clearly if your thoughts are to pollute or exploit nature or others - you should be treated accordingly. This fuckfest that capitalism has become allows companies who exploit etc. to be treated the same as mum and pop biz's who really care to do a good job. That is insane.
The karma system is a popularity contest as discussed in the various Hacker-News-is-going-down-the-drain discussions that have been popping up here a lot as of late. To any one who grew up with /. that's not a surprise.
In that respect I found kuro5hin quite interesting in, as it seperates out how many people voted the post/comment up or down. I wrote posts that had a lot of people agree (5 points) and a lot disagree (1 point) with very few in the middle ground, i.e. the audience was divided. I loved that. It means you are not sucking up to the majority yet not writing utter crap. Had you just computed the point average then that information would've gotten lost.
kuro5hin is an interesting site thank you for that tip. That said the concept of feedback from ones peers and past business transactions is of significant magnitude better than to that of no data whatsoever!
And from what little you have said I get the distinct impression that you would be all up for the creatocracy when you realized that you would not be lumped in with everyone else and your voice was counted according to the merits of your history as well as your arguments.
it seems to me that you have really nothing to offer, considering you can only manage 10 pages and a one line comment. If you only want the design and not the reasons for it then you can start here, http://web.archive.org/web/20060615193321/creatocracy.com/pr...
No one needs the reasons spelt out for them. That the current system has deficiencies is more or less painfully obvious to everyone. I may read some of your stuff later.
strangely, this seems to be a new awaking, when originally written and project started in about 2002, it was painful how ignorant people were in general of the impending doom. That said I take on board your point that there is no longer need for an introduction.
P.S. This seems right out of the mouth of Ron Paul, who to my amazement seemed to have developed some following on reddit. 'Amazing' because his ideas don't even withstand superficial scrutiny, the kind of scrutiny that forums like this apply to ideas.
