- had to do some whitepaper analysis of late. I've had a heap of other stuff to do though so decided to create a script/program to look for 'key differences'. You can download it here:
- description is as follow:
# Ever get sick of trying to examine whitepapers! I have. That's the
# purpose of this particular script/program. Drop in a bunch of
# whitepapers (in PDF format), then run the script and wait while
# they are analysed.
#
# I've obviously done some sample analysis. Got all sample data from:
# https://icoranker.com/ico/category/banking/
#
# Script was run as follows:
# ./whitepaper_examine.sh cleanup
# ./whitepaper_examine.sh > results
#
# Results are obviously in 'results' file
# error files contain errors during conversion from PDF files
# spell files contain misspelt words
# txt files contain converted PDF files in TXT format
# word files contain word frequencies
# summary files contain summary of documents being examined
#
# I've deleted all the scanned PDF content to ensure a small archive
# download as well as converted JPG files. Word of warning, if you have
# a large number of files to deal with execution of this script/program
# may take a long time. There are feedback mechanisms included though.
#
# This script clearly isn't perfect and is basically meant to confirm
# problems and/or bias.
#
# As this is the very first version of the program it may be VERY buggy.
# Please test prior to deployment in a production environment.
# purpose of this particular script/program. Drop in a bunch of
# whitepapers (in PDF format), then run the script and wait while
# they are analysed.
#
# I've obviously done some sample analysis. Got all sample data from:
# https://icoranker.com/ico/category/banking/
#
# Script was run as follows:
# ./whitepaper_examine.sh cleanup
# ./whitepaper_examine.sh > results
#
# Results are obviously in 'results' file
# error files contain errors during conversion from PDF files
# spell files contain misspelt words
# txt files contain converted PDF files in TXT format
# word files contain word frequencies
# summary files contain summary of documents being examined
#
# I've deleted all the scanned PDF content to ensure a small archive
# download as well as converted JPG files. Word of warning, if you have
# a large number of files to deal with execution of this script/program
# may take a long time. There are feedback mechanisms included though.
#
# This script clearly isn't perfect and is basically meant to confirm
# problems and/or bias.
#
# As this is the very first version of the program it may be VERY buggy.
# Please test prior to deployment in a production environment.
Random Stuff:
- as usual thanks to all of the individuals and groups who purchase and use my goods and services
- latest in science and technology
- latest in finance and politics
- latest in defense and intelligence
- latest in animal news
- latest in music and entertainment
Random Quotes:
- Years before he was supreme leader, Xi was on an international tour at a time when China was accused of manipulating its currency and distorting world trade.
In Mexico, Xi lashed out: "China does not export revolution, hunger or poverty … there are a few foreigners, with full bellies, who have nothing better to do than try to point fingers at our country."
Now, Xi is perhaps the most powerful man in the world, and pointing his own finger.
- GPA may be a more accurate measure of how well students comply with rules.
Almost everyone, at one point or another, has wondered what really successful people do differently from the rest of us. Perhaps surprisingly, on average, millionaires have a mean college GPA of 2.9, which is slightly below the national average of 3.0. Human behavior expert Eric Barker, author of Barking Up the Wrong Tree, discusses why this is, based on Karen Arnold’s research conducted at Boston College, which looks at the success of class valedictorians.
The study found that American schools teach students to comply with rules, and those who are good at functioning within the system become part of the system, not change it. While valedictorians generally score high when it comes to conscientiousness, those who are more likely to become millionaires are the ones with “grit.” They might not be very good at following the rules, but they do not lose sight of their long-term goals.
“And that’s how they do really well,” Barker says. “And sometimes they don’t play by the rules, Sometimes they do things differently. Because in school, rules are very clear. In life rules are not so clear. So a certain amount of not playing by the rules is advantageous once you get out of a closed system like education.”
- We know now that there are many different types of intelligences and grades only measure a select few, and poorly at that. A GPA does not measure a person's emotional intelligence, it does not measure their leadership ability, it does not necessarily measure their ability to think outside of the box and solve problems. It does nothing to evaluate a person's ability to predict the needs of society or consumers. It does nothing to illuminate the ability of an individual to work with others and find middle ground in standoffs or conflicts. All of these things are vitally important to an individual's success in life and almost none of them are measured by grades. Grades, GPAs and standardized test scores largely measure one's ability to answer questions and regurgitate information and not much else.
This is why our world isn't run by valedictorians and straight A students. For every CEO of a major company that graduated with a 4.0 GPA, there are scores more who did not. What matters in business, and in life, is pursuing goals with a sense of purpose. Having ambition and directing that ambition toward a problem. If a person is not ambitious about doing well in school, that person will not do well in school. School is hard and takes a lot of time and effort. However, that doesn't mean that person isn't ambitious and full of talent. We all choose to apply ourselves differently and to different things and in an ideal world that is how we would be measured. Not by the letters on a piece of paper from our time in school.
- Research into Alzheimer's treatment had been "disappointedly slow", Professor Masters said. Alzheimer's research had suffered monumental setbacks in the past few years, with none of the three drugs now available effective at treating the underlying disease.
New drugs were urgently needed "and the only way to do that is to speed up the whole process", he said.
The technique is currently only performed in a laboratory at Shimadzu Corporation in Japan, though the researchers were confident they would be able to roll out the technology.
"It's highly finicky at the moment," Professor Masters said, but could could be automated and adapted for clinical practice, and used in every major city in the world "within a reasonable period of time".
The technique was spearheaded by Japanese researcher Dr Kiochi Tanaka at Shimadzu Corporation, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002 for the work.
- "The big difference between China and US consumer finance is the Chinese have implicit faith that someone in government will step in if any products or companies default," said Andrew Collier, founder of research firm Orient Capital Research.
- It's hard to believe that, over three years, with 2,400 bombs, we allegedly took the lives of only eight people, including two children, and devastated their immediate family and friends.
It is worth noting the report published by NPR on 19 December 2017 that
'... figures obtained by NPR from the Mosul morgue put the number of civilians killed [by the coalition, Iraqi forces or ISIS] at over 5,000. That is likely more than the number of ISIS fighters believed to have been in Mosul and presumed dead.'
The report also noted that
'... months of vicious fighting – the battle started in October 2016 and ended in July 2017 – left destruction so extensive that U.S. commanders compare it to the World War II battle for Stalingrad.'
- In my address, I stressed how important it was to see the US-led attacks, interventions and destabilization campaigns against sovereign states of the past 20 years as part of the same war, one waged for total global domination. Independent, resource-rich countries usually with socialist/socialistic governments and economies which weren’t controlled by global corporations, have been targeted, one-by-one. In each case, the leaders of the countries concerned were relentlessly demonized. They were called dictators, even though in the case of Hugo Chavez and Slobodan Milosevic they had won numerous democratic elections and operated in countries where opposition parties freely operated.
The ‘target states’ were subject to draconian sanctions which created economic hardship and a ‘pressure cooker’ environment, which usually resulted in street protests against the government, egged on by the US. The governments were then told ‘the world is watching you’ and ordered not to respond, even when violence was used by protestors. The same strategy was deployed in Yugoslavia in 2000, Ukraine in 2014, and Venezuela in 2017. In Afghanistan and Iraq, we had a full-scale invasion (based on the ‘fake news’ that Saddam possessed WMDs) and in Libya (and Yugoslavia) a NATO bombing campaign.
There has been endless war for the past twenty years and it won’t end until we understand what’s been going on and demand a new foreign policy in place of the current racist one which holds that the US and its closest allies have the right to say who should or shouldn’t be in charge of other countries, but denies the same rights to the ‘inferior’ countries targeted.
Intrepid journalist Eva Bartlett, who had travelled all the way from Canada, came next and began by describing her experiences in the DPRK, another country that’s under threat of attack from the US.
“Many people believe that what is happening in North Korea is about a madman with a bad haircut and an itchy finger on the nuclear button. But no, it’s not about Trump,” she said to laughter from the hall.
Bartlett told how we’re encouraged to see North Korea as a threat but no context is usually given, nor is there mention of the utter devastation caused by US bombing back in the 1950s. Down the decades, there have been regular threats from leading US figures to obliterate North Korea.
“What the North Koreans are doing is defending themselves,” Bartlett said.
Having seen what has happened to Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and other countries targeted by the US in recent years, who can possibly blame them?
- LONDON — A blind investment in every initial coin offering (ICO) to date, including those that have failed, would have generated an average return of 1,320% for investors, according to a new report.
Venture capital firm Mangrove Capital Partners claims that: “If one had blindly invested €10,000 in every ICO, including the significant number of ICOs that failed, this would have delivered a +13.2x return.”
Michael Jackson, the former COO of Skype and a partner at Mangrove, authored the report and looked at data on 204 ICOs with “known outcomes” — ones where tokens are now being actively traded on exchanges or have failed since issue.
Jackson’s findings highlight why many institutional investors — from hedge funds to investment banks — are now waking up to the cryptocurrency space.
- Falcon Heavy is designed to place up to 64 tonnes into standard low-Earth orbit at a cost of US$90 million per launch. That is twice the lift capacity of the biggest existing rocket in America’s space fleet – the Delta 4 Heavy of rival United Launch Alliance (ULA), a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co – for about a fourth the cost.
The demonstration flight put the Falcon Heavy into the annals of space flight as the world’s most powerful rocket in operation, with more lift capacity than any space vehicle to fly since NASA’s Saturn 5, which was retired in 1973, or the Soviet-era Energia, which flew its last mission in 1988.
[The crowd cheers at Playalinda Beach in the Canaveral National Seashore, just north of the Kennedy Space Center, during the successful launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on Tuesday. Photo: AP]
Propelled by 27 rocket engines, the Falcon Heavy packs more than 2,200 tonnes of thrust at launch, roughly three times the force of the Falcon 9 booster rocket that until now has been the workhorse of the SpaceX fleet. The new heavy-lift rocket is essentially constructed from three Falcon 9s harnessed together side by side.
