Recently I’ve been immersed daily in both reading and watching of early 20th century american history. Notably 1920′s-1950′s.

WWII:

Watching a 12 part series on WWII (in Color), amazing how ‘day-to-day/homevideo/newsreel’ the footage looks when it is colorized. Among other things: women stepping up into jobs traditionally thought were only done by men. The Spanish Civil War. Malthusian scenarios of debt/hyperinflation.  The genuine debate whether democracy or fascism was the best course for societies. German engineering, American Industry, British perseverance. Postwar companies and industries which developed. In a lot of the footage, people were still using horses for military operations! Amazing to think how much technical innovation came out of that period. In that time, Europe was a garble of turbulent states, very similar it can be said to present day dynamics in the middle east. By the end of the war there was:

Technologies from WWII
-Computers (Independently invented by Attansoff, Turing/Bletchley Park team, Konrad Zuse)
-Radar
-Subs
-Jet Propulsion
-Rockets (eg. v1/v2 Werner Von Braun)
-Nuclear Power
-Planned Stealth Bomber (see the Horten Ho 229).

War brought out some of the best (and obviously the worst) traits of human character. Ingenuity, Achievement & Sacrifice, Barbarism, Genocide. Seeing several documentaries now on the war (from different perspectives), technological, political etc. It is unreal that the world got into such a place.

Bell Labs:

Reading a history of Bell Labs. “Idea Factory: The Great Age of American Innovation, Jon Gertner”.
Bell Lab’s inventions can be summed up by one larger invention: the modern day communications satellite (conceived by John Pierce).

Almost all (if not all) the inventions needed to get a communications satellite working were invented at Bell Labs:

-Solidstate Transistors
-Unix
-Solar Panels (an offshoot of semi-conductor research
-Digital Communication Theory and Protocols (Claude Shannon)
-Various Antennae (Horn and Standing Wave)
-Lasers/Fiber-Optics/Optical Communication
-Modems/Modulator-Demodulators
-Mobile Networks
-Aeronautics Apparatus (through Sandia a branch of Bell)
-Digital Photography (CCD Sensors)
-Polaroids
and a whole lot more..

Some notable names mentioned in the book were Mervin Kelly, Jim Fisk, Claude Shannon, William Shockley and my favorite John Pierce. Pierce was an ‘idea man’ and provides a model/path to the application of my own temperament (IMO). He was all over the place, a bit of a romantic, musical, focused on pragmatics, a writer and altruistic. He was a conceiver and connector, considered valuable in this role, who initiated and collaborated with others to get things done. He gave the name ‘transistor’ to the new invention and wrote a treatise on music and glider building  among other things.

As an UX/IA specialist – essentially an ‘idea person’ – it provides a model for how one like this can contribute to a larger organization.

*It’s also interesting to see how so many of the great inventors and engineers at Bell Labs came from small towns. Both Edison and Bell himself were other examples.

Big Bands – Artie Shaw, Helen Forrest

The Jewish heartbeat of Jazz. Jewish musicians played great. Their lives were as crazy, restless as the rest of the people in this era it seems. There was a lot of anti-antisemitism during that time. It probably made them stronger. Artie Shaw had Billie Holiday as his first singer, which was truly notable (a color-blind meritocracy) ahead of his time. Helen Forrest, born Foger had a great voice… The whole thing is a jumble and connects with all the other parts of the technology/u.s. life/society during the war that i’ve been reading about. Fascinating.

Enjoy!

By Alwin Tong, for Wall Street Survivor University, published February 18, 2009

Looking to maximize growth in your WSS portfolio? The Kelly Criterion gives a mathematically secure method of establishing a betting scheme which maximizes the growth of your portfolio.

The Kelly Criterion – Introduction

Looking to maximize growth in your WSS portfolio? The Kelly Criterion gives a mathematically secure method of establishing a betting scheme which maximizes the growth of your portfolio.

The world is full of serendipitous discoveries from the grand to the banal.  An apple falls and inspires Newton, Columbus goes west and finds the people of America. Toxin is injected under the skin near the eyes and Botox treatments arrive.

The world of investing is not much different than this admittedly. It was in 1956 that J.L. Kelly, a member of the AT&T Bell Labs team, was assigned to find a way to figure out what to do with information that is passed through noisy telephone lines. Figure out phone lines, that was his job. What the world we got was a formula that described the mathematically perfect wagering algorithm of repeated games, which has been used in situations of betting known as the Kelly Criterion.

In about the equivalent realm of serendipity as the discover of using pantyhose as a fan belt, The Kelly formula which was original used to deal with long distance phone lines for AT&T and fate conspired to allow the clever Kelly to realize that this same formula could be used for many wagering games, including the financial markets.

The system of betting was first modelled as a game theory problem involving how to bet over time on horse races given that you were tipped off to the winner beforehand and looks like this:

• f* is the fraction of the current bankroll to wager;
• b is the odds received on the wager;
• p is the probability of winning;
• q is the probability of losing, (written as 1 − p.)

Don’t let this math scare you. What the formula states in a nutshell, is that you bet proportionally to your chances of winning.  Before I go on, I should say that there are some caveats that I’ll mention later on in this article, but let’s take a look at some features and examples of pure betting under the Kelly Criterion. Let’s take a look at some everyday examples first.

An Example: Basketball Game

If I go to a basketball game and know that the Knicks and Lakers are playing a best of 7 series. For hypothetical ease you only play only against each other and match bets. (equal payoffs of 1:1).

When the Knicks are playing at home, they have a 75% percent chance of winning, which means (without ties) that the Lakers are only at 25% chance of winning.

When the Knicks play away in L.A. they still have an advantage though let’s say the odds lower for the Knicks to 55% while the Lakers are at 45%.

Your Kelly Bet’s across the games should be like this.

If a third L.A. Lakers fan joins the wager, then the payoff will change, affecting the B value of your formula. The payoff odds are now 2:1 Knicks to Lakers, under this scenario B will be equal 2, because for every amount you wager, you’ll receive twice that on a winning bet against the 2 others.

Those would be the growth optimal bets, taking into account both wins and losses. That’s Betting under the Kelly Criterion. It is also known by several other names such as: Geometric Mean Maximizing Portfolio Strategy and Fortune’s Formula. Pretty Simple right.

Features of the Kelly Criterion

There are several nice features of Kelly betting that stand out.

• This Betting Scheme will not allow you to lose all of your money, be­­­cause you would never bet all your money except in a 100% true win probability.  In a true mathematical 100% win situation, a loss is not allowed in this case by definition. So the formula (in theory) does not allow you to go broke.
• Is optimized for growth allowing your growth profile to sit along a Logarithmic curve.
• States that you should not bet in any scenario that is less than 50%

In Practice

The Kelly Criterion is a great theoretical tool for investors. However in Practice, following the strict criterion is often considered aggressive because it is maximized for making the largest fortune you can. It doesn’t take into account some findings of utility theory, where the same 100$ maybe more valuable to a person with very little money versus a person with already a vast sum. Also it doesn’t take into the increased benefit of portfolio diversification. Rather it is a tool in the mix of these others that will allow you make a decision in respect to your portfolio.

It is also very difficult to ascertain true odds of an event.  And transaction costs.

Looking at some great investors, for example the legendary value investor Warren Buffet, we can see an asset allocation that is very close to following this criterion. (quote: www.wilmott.com/pdfs/050316_ziemba.pdf)

Also, to prevent the heavy swings associated with it, the amount invested can be scaled to a fraction. This is known as half-Kellying or third-Kellying. The rule to take away is simply to invest proportionally to your chances.

On WallStreetSurvivor.com because the portfolio you are dealing with is composed of fantasy dollars, the downside risk of losing real money is eliminated while the upside risk if you do well can be real cash. For this reason I would recommend betting with a Full Kelly implementation. Good Luck out there!

Does this technology make captcha irrelevant now (at least with the listen features).

a. hook up voice recognition to any audio stream.
b. take output of voice recognition and port as a variable into automation software.
c. beat captcha.

Check it out

http://www.charlierose.com/view/content/11097

Just like all his series: the sunflowers, potato eaters, violets, fields, shoes, etc. all seem to be shown in singles. Single ones, because they are so valuable and are spread everywhere. Like a deck of cards or a calendar, make much more sense when part of a suite or series.

The Mme Roulin, is a perfect example. Each great museum seems to own just one. much of the meaning however seem to be aesthetic beauty from the variations on a theme that he uses.

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10129

You are 2 companies kinda sorta on the brink. Where once you were young and sexy, now you’re tattered and on the edge of a chasm, a couple stains on those suits and ties from 2000., If this sounds familiar – and coming from the music business – it does ring a familiar tune… rest safely in the arms of  the one and only She-Ra of Song + Dance. Express Yourself.

Microsoft: Your name might do better as a sexier simpler ‘M’. Not MS, Not Msoft. ‘M’ Corporation. Like if you came from a James Bond film, you would be top secret and cool. Your name would be a single letter. The letter M.

Take pop lessons from Madonna who went from Ciconne to only Madonna. Essence. Easier.

People might call you M-Co, which would be somewhat cooler. I have drawn up a logo of the new M-Co. (below). What do you think?

Just like RBC, RBS, HBO, MGM to peel back into a single unit of the greco-roman alphabet M.

Simple, straight. The new M Co.

RIM: What do you have going for you now that those upstarts are here. iPhone, Android, Tabs, Pads and even the M-phone. What there isn’t is a suite of business tools aimed at a group of RIM users. Like how office was for business, but now on the phone and now with Basecamp integrated into the shell. That would kick you ahead.

Good Luck out there. Even Britney Spears is old now.

Bloggers + Lawyer Disclaimer. PLEASE NOTE: Above are personal subjective opinions about Microsoft and RIM from myself no others. They are only to be tongue in cheek, that is a joke, but with some sage biz strat somewhere in there hopefully. We should all practice a good sense of humor sometimes. Healthy.