Friends of Rohit Jnagal

onigame

06:05 pm - Guess the graph: Puzzle #2

rileen

10:04 pm - Perception ..........

"........ Then after a few months of total emptiness start again to look for true love, desperately look everywhere and after two years of loneliness meet a new love and swear it is the one, until that one is gone as well. There's a moment in life where you can't recover any more from another break-up. And even if this person bugs you sixty percent of the time, well you still can’t live without him. And even if he wakes you up every day by sneezing right in your face, well you love his sneezes more than anyone else's kisses."

- Marion (Julie Delpy's character in "2 days in Paris")

Perceptive, what?

*****************************************************************************

And something off the top of my crazy head :-p :

Tum paas aaye
yun muskuraye
jiya bole jaldi
koi doctor bulaaye

Current Mood: calm

arvindn

11:09 pm - The socialite game

Socialites are often famous for being famous. Although this description is used pejoratively, a variety of human activities center around social games where one gains power by associating with those who are already powerful. Power is defined purely in terms of the network of relationships, with no inherent measure of skill, quality or worth of an individual.

I will try to formulate this game mathematically. The hope is that the analysis will have some ability to predict and/or explain human social structures and behavior.

Consider a graph with N nodes or players. Players compete by creating or destroying edges in the graph. Mutual agreement is required for an edge to exist. Players have limited social capital, i.e., there is a bound on the degree of each node. All players have the same degree bound, which captures the fact that there is no intrinsic measure of strength of a node.

The goal of each player is to maximize their (relative) centrality in the network. This can be captured in various ways, but a natural measure is Eigenvector centrality, which is basically PageRank.

Unfortunately, as presented, the game is trivial because of the algebraic fact that the only Eigenvector with no negative values of the adjacency matrix of a regular connected graph is (1, 1, ... 1). Therefore socialites cannot exist—everyone is equally popular.

I see two main ways to make the model more realistic and make socialites possible: one is to make edges directional (and weighted.) This captures asymmetric power relationships between individuals, and enables hierarchical tree structures, among other things. The other is to remove the restriction that every player has the same degree bound. This would let us ask, "if some people have more social capital than others, can they leverage it to become vastly more influential?"

I played around with these alternatives for a few hours, but couldn't find what I wanted—a model that is halfway between the studies of game theorists such as a network creation game (which is too abstract to imply anything about human networks) and the techniques of social anthropologists, such as the well known 1977 Karate Club study by Zachary (which is not abstract enough to prove anything of general importance).

So I'm just going to leave this here on the off chance that it might inspire someone to take it forward.

[P.S. Two concepts that I think are important are stability and connectedness. A graph is k-stable if no k players can collude to improve each of their scores. By connectedness I refer to the standard graph-theoretic concept; I think it is important to study which types of of initial conditions result in connected vs. disconnected social graphs, i.e., co-operative vs. competing power structures.]

arvindn

04:21 pm - The death of the printed book is closer than you think

I've been saying for a while that the e-books are going to take over soon. Let me elaborate on that, now that I have some data to back up my claims.

First, let's get the obvious stuff out of the way. The Kindle seems to be following roughly the same adoption curve as the iPod. Barely two years after it was first released, everyone my age has at least played with one or knows someone who has one. Amazon has been pushing it massively and adoption is only going to accelerate with the recent price cut, international availability, and the emergence of serious competition.

Bezos announced back in May that 35% of book sales are on the Kindle when a Kindle version is available. How can that be, when penetration is still small in absolute terms? It's because Kindle owners are disproportionately voracious readers.

But my real point is about digital-only books. Let's ponder the consequence of the above 35% figure. An author reveals her numbers from being on the NYTimes bestseller list. The most striking number to me is the fact that her royalties are only 6-8%. I assume that the number is roughly the same for sales of the Kindle version. (If anyone knows otherwise, please let me know.)

On the other hand, Amazon shares 35% of revenue with the author for self-published books. In one sense that's unfairly low: Apple for instance shares 70% of revenue with app publishers. Still, it is five times higher than royalties from a traditional book publisher.

Let's do some math. Consider a typical book that sells for $14.99 in print and $9.99 on the Kindle (the only thing that matters here is the ratio of 3:2. If the ratio is closer to 1, then my argument is even stronger.) Let's assume that half of all sales are via Amazon, and the rest are through physical bookstores. That means that Kindle sales are 35% × ½ = 17.5% of the total. Let's say an author were to self-publish digitally with Amazon, and thus forgo all non-Kindle sales, but maintain the same volume of Kindle sales as they would get with a publisher. Their revenue with the self-publishing route would be 0.175 N * 9.99 * 0.35 = $ 0.61 N. With the traditional route, the revenue would be (0.175 N * 9.99 + 0.825N * 14.99) * 0.07 = $ 0.99 N.

Conclusion: Kindle penetration is already three-fifths of the way to the crucial tipping point, where kicking out your publisher generates more royalties. This is no doubt a simplified model, and ignores several factors:

• The publisher gives you an advance, which might make it attractive to authors without a financial cushion.
• The publisher has an advertising budget to spend on your book.
• On the other hand, without a publisher, web-savvy authors would be better able to leverage social media to get the word out about their books.
• Amazon will probably start sharing more revenue with authors, making the self-publishing route even more attractive.
• On the other hand, publishers will probably increase royalties for Kindle sales, due to the same pressures.
• I've ignored the fact that you can self-publish on multiple platforms, although none are as yet competitive with the Kindle.

I don't think I'll ever take a print contract for less than $30,000 per book, because I'm confident I could make more money [with ebooks] over the course of six years than I could with a publisher over six years.

Isn't that bizarre?

For the bestselling author, this is all still very trivial. These numbers are chump change compared to the advances they get.

But for the midlist author, I'm beginning to think it's possible to make a living without print contracts.

I've struggled mightily to break into print. And I've made a nice chunk of change on my print novels.

Now I'm hoping those novels go out of print, so I can get my rights back.

I never would have guessed my mindset would change so dramatically in so short a time.

onigame

02:13 am - Hlywod

A rather easy, but hopefully entertaining, puzzle.

I've taken the titles of 23 famous movies and removed all punctuation and spaces. Then, whenever I saw a letter that appeared more than once, I removed all but one instance of that letter (but I never changed the order of any of the letters). Can you figure out what movies these are?

1. KILB
   
2. EMNTO
   
3. INKOG
   
4. ASBLNC
   
5. NIEHAL
   
6. TLEPHAMN
   
7. SGNITHERA
   
8. LOCKWRANGE
   
9. OTBYNRHWES
   
10. HMURANCDITE
    
11. MERICNBAUTY
    
12. IDRSFHELOTAK
    
13. NCOUTRYFLDME
    
14. SUDOGMLINARE
    
15. TILNCEOFHAMBS
    
16. HELDOTGSURFKIN
    
17. THESWANKRDMPIO
    
18. MOPTHNADELYGRI
    
19. OFLWVERHUCKSNT
    
20. RALUSHNFTEPOMID
    
21. THEURISCAFBJMON
    
22. TRWAPODVHEMIKSBC
    
23. SNEVORWIATPYGDLHBM
    

11:43 pm - I've begun writing emms-lastfm-client.el at last

A while ago we reached an understanding with the Last.fm people about how to access their new API while preserving the freedoms of the GPL. Now I've finally started writing the code.

You can't play anything with it yet but you can get a session token, which is the end result of their authentication system and the basis for any and all interactions with their API.

I'll do the development as emms-lastfm-client.el in a git repo accessible with:

  $ git clone http://yrk.nfshost.com/repos/emms-yrk.git

pavelmachek

09:51 am - Analyzing zaurus voltage tables

I tried analyzing scary-looking spitz_battery_levels_noac and _acin tables... only to realize that _acin is actually noac+3 in <45% charge rates, and that _noac is actually trivial linear function. Oops.

Unfortunately, dependency between voltage and capacity left is actually more complex for li-ion battery, so better tables will be neccessary...

bramcohen

03:22 pm - Threading in web forums

Threading in web forums isn't hard to get right, but it continues to be done right approximately nowhere. In the interests of helping to improve the situation, I will now explain the right way to do things.

When returning to a web forum, what should be displayed are either all posts which are either new, or which are immediate ancestors to a new post. The non-new posts should be displayed grayed out, since they're there for context, to avoid the annoying practice of people having to manually edit quoting in improperly threaded systems.

Posts should be displayed properly threaded, with indenting used to indicate responses. But the standard simple way of indenting each response one level more isn't quite right, because it leads to way too much indenting. What should happen is that if there is more than one response to a post currently displayed then the responses get extra indentation, but if there's only one displayed then it gets the same level, with a graphic included to indicate that it's a response rather than a separate post. Note that this only takes into account posts which are currently displayed. Not currently displayed posts are irrelevant and shouldn't affect formatting.

There should of course be indicators and expanders for ancestors and undisplayed responses to displayed posts, and those should change the formatting of everything appropriately when hit.

If someone views a thread which has no new posts, they should simply be shown the entire thread.

There, that wasn't so complicated. Now please get it right!

swatisani

08:30 pm - Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-22

• @chiefsanjay When is your trip to wadi happening? in reply to chiefsanjay #
• @chiefsanjay Envy you… I so want to get out of my routine. in reply to chiefsanjay #
• @chiefsanjay Do not know much details except that he had developed some lung infection. Veena just called and informed. in reply to chiefsanjay #
• Am shocked & sad beyond words. Rohan Suchanti, the young ED of Pressman and son of my mentor Dr. Niren Suchanti passed away. RIP Rohan. #
• @spbuty Yeah 'i'll do my crying in the rain' #a-ha in reply to spbuty #
• @yuhuh leaving for bangalore today to participate in interschool athletic meet.
  

  Read the rest of this entry »

  Originally published at Swati Sani. Please leave any comments there.

jnagal

10:08 am - FLL fun

Lots of fun judging robot designs at First Lego League yesterday.
Great designs and some very nifty ideas and strategies.

Congrats to Mach5, Robochicks, Lucky10, Tech Warriors, Vipors,
Phantom Riders, and all other qualifiers.

All the best for the next round.

steelehearts

09:59 pm - Yuletide Request Specifications

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Current Mood: relaxed

10:02 am - CamelHumpSupportForEmacsMovement

I'mVeryHappyToSeeThisIncludedInEmacsForThoseTimesINeedToEditStuffLikeJavaScript.

talash

04:25 pm - רוצח תמיד חוזר

06:08 pm - There is Very Little Good on the Web; Keep it Alive

I don't think that Wikipedia is particularly accurate or run by saints but it is an important part of what makes the Web useful. So I donated 10 bucks as a part of their new fund drive and I think that you should too.

steelehearts

12:44 pm

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Current Mood: amused

talash

01:39 am - About the lack of updates in this journal

I haven't written for a long time; this is because I'm very very busy those days with my studies of comp. engineering in huji occupying all my time and I have absolutely none left to write any sort of coherent entries. I do, however, update my facebook with short status messageses a lot and so whoever isn't there yet is welcome to join and add me.

Sometime, when I'll have the time to breathe I might post a longer update.

Also, I don't have time to read my friends page, so if there's something you want me to see, post a comment in my journal in the always-on-top entry, or email me.

mulix

09:38 pm - interesting call for papers

I have been remiss in updating this thing recently. In penance, I offer you these interesting call for papers from conferences that you should, without a doubt, submit your best papers to:

The 2nd Workshop on I/O Virtualization, which I will be co-chairing, will be co-located with ASPLOS 2010 and VEE 2010 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in March 2010. Once again we will be looking for ground-breaking and thought-provoking papers in I/O virtualization, although if your paper is only ground-breaking or only thought provoking, that's fine too.

The 24th International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS'10) will be held in Japan (Japan!) in June 2010. We are soliciting papers on all aspects of research, development, and application of high-performance experimental and commercial systems. This will be my first time on the ICS PC, and I am looking forward to the experience.

Last but certainly not least, SYSTOR 2010---The 3rd Annual Haifa Experimental Systems Conference, will be held once again in Haifa in May, 2010, and you should all come visit.

More later.

Current Mood: tired

01:06 pm - Google is now a bit more accurate thanks to me

The most popular item off my personal Web site is the PDF which accompanied my lecture about "The Digital Darkroom and the Gimp" (*). The lecture was given in 2004 and the state of the GIMP and photography has changed since then. I don't feel comfortable distributing something that is probably increasingly irrelevant so I've removed the PDF from the site altogether. I'll keep making the Tex source available though.

* the PDF turns up on the first page of results for queries like "gimp white balance color temperature"

07:00 am - Speaking at San Francisco MySQL Meetup

http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/011426.html

arvindn

01:22 pm - Putting your money where your mouth is

I often marvel at the human capacity for self-deception, one aspect of which is the fact that people often haven't a clue what they really believe. There's no better way to demonstrate this than to get them to bet on something they claim to be a sure thing.

Dick Lipton tells the depressing story of trying to get another prominent computer scientist (Ken Steiglitz) to bet on P != NP. Steiglitz started out claiming the odds were a million to one, but when forced to bet, he wouldn't take odds longer than two to one.

Two to one. So a respected scientist was 500,000 times less certain of his opinion than he claimed to be — on a question that was within his sphere of competence. What does that tell us about the certitude that we each feel on issues relating to the economy or the environment? We're simply lying to ourselves.

A few years ago, when intrade was popular, I went around asking people why they weren't cashing in by betting on their 'sure' beliefs. If they were right, they could double their money in mere months. It was amusing to listen to people's rationalizations and excuses.

I think it would be fun exercise to bet on one's views, regardless of whether one feels certain of them or not.