Aug. 19th, 2006

birdwatcher: (Default)
- Because AT&T was a regulated utility, forbidden from making a profit by selling software in competition with IBM and Digital, the [Bell] Labs distributed these tools [UNIX] freely to universities. This dissemination produced an entire generation of programmers who thought of programming not as a chore, but as a literary endeavor with the computer as medium.

- On Wall Street until the late 1990s, PhDs rarely listed their degrees on their business cards, because to do so would have outed them immediately as nonbusiness people. For the same reason, it took a long time before quants and programmers routinely put their email addresses on their business cards. A rise in the prestige of PhD degrees occurred slowly but steadily between 1996 and 1999 as dot-coms prospered.

- In 1985 when I entered Wall Street it was amateur heaven, a fluidly makeshift field filled with retreads from other disciplines who could learn quickly, solve equations, and write their own programs. [...] By the late 1990s, there were scores of master's programs, hundreds of conferences, and thousands of books. Physicists and mathematicians, either unable to find academic positions or, grown weary of academic politics and pay, increasingly sought out Wall Street jobs. The quantitative life of practitioners, formerly the happily casual domain of self-taught amateurs, was becoming a discipline, a business, and a profession. It was simultaneously becoming a little less fun, too.

Emanuel Derman, "My Life as a Quant. Reflections on Physics and Finance" (2004).
birdwatcher: (Default)
- Because AT&T was a regulated utility, forbidden from making a profit by selling software in competition with IBM and Digital, the [Bell] Labs distributed these tools [UNIX] freely to universities. This dissemination produced an entire generation of programmers who thought of programming not as a chore, but as a literary endeavor with the computer as medium.

- On Wall Street until the late 1990s, PhDs rarely listed their degrees on their business cards, because to do so would have outed them immediately as nonbusiness people. For the same reason, it took a long time before quants and programmers routinely put their email addresses on their business cards. A rise in the prestige of PhD degrees occurred slowly but steadily between 1996 and 1999 as dot-coms prospered.

- In 1985 when I entered Wall Street it was amateur heaven, a fluidly makeshift field filled with retreads from other disciplines who could learn quickly, solve equations, and write their own programs. [...] By the late 1990s, there were scores of master's programs, hundreds of conferences, and thousands of books. Physicists and mathematicians, either unable to find academic positions or, grown weary of academic politics and pay, increasingly sought out Wall Street jobs. The quantitative life of practitioners, formerly the happily casual domain of self-taught amateurs, was becoming a discipline, a business, and a profession. It was simultaneously becoming a little less fun, too.

Emanuel Derman, "My Life as a Quant. Reflections on Physics and Finance" (2004).
birdwatcher: (Спартак)
Roman Polanski, Death and the Maiden (1994) - совершенно не заинтересовало. Ворота Расемон про латиноамериканские пытки. По одноименной пьесе Ариеля Дорфмана. Recently, Dorfman has signed a public statement by the anti-Bush Maoist front group The World Can't Wait.
birdwatcher: (Спартак)
Roman Polanski, Death and the Maiden (1994) - совершенно не заинтересовало. Ворота Расемон про латиноамериканские пытки. По одноименной пьесе Ариеля Дорфмана. Recently, Dorfman has signed a public statement by the anti-Bush Maoist front group The World Can't Wait.

Ха!

Aug. 19th, 2006 06:24 pm
birdwatcher: (Default)
The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union saw the return to private landownership. Most dachas have since been privatized and Russia is now the nation with the largest number of owners of second homes.

Ха!

Aug. 19th, 2006 06:24 pm
birdwatcher: (Default)
The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union saw the return to private landownership. Most dachas have since been privatized and Russia is now the nation with the largest number of owners of second homes.