SOPA/UBB and NDAA
-
It's pretty awesome to see ordinary people speak up for the Internet to prevent
the passage of SOPA. The whole "black-out" campaigns and boycotts were
quit...
1 month ago
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Friday, August 12, 2011
Exam 4 - Operating Systems
Ah, the dreaded OS - the epitome of CS and UW.
First off, the course basically deals with operating system construction and functionality. It's one of those courses that teaches theory and forces you to heavily learn (via assignments) from practice.
Overall, the course wasn't nearly as terrible as many people seemed to describe (sleepless nights doing assignments, etc..). The disconnect, however, between the classroom content and the assignments (where we're given a half-baked OS and forced to implement bits and pieces) was a bit annoying since the half-baked OS came with very, very limited documentation.
I would've preferred a more....experienced prof I guess (he was a grad student who seemed like he came from India recently). While you could understand the gist of what he says, the broken English was annoying at times (and for an important course like this, would've been nice to have someone more experienced).
The exam was LONG and focused on crap we briefly touched on in class/in the notes. Not the ideal way of evaluating shit, but not terribly unreasonable I guess.
Course: B+
Prof: B-
...and then 4A was over.
-End of Entry-
First off, the course basically deals with operating system construction and functionality. It's one of those courses that teaches theory and forces you to heavily learn (via assignments) from practice.
Overall, the course wasn't nearly as terrible as many people seemed to describe (sleepless nights doing assignments, etc..). The disconnect, however, between the classroom content and the assignments (where we're given a half-baked OS and forced to implement bits and pieces) was a bit annoying since the half-baked OS came with very, very limited documentation.
I would've preferred a more....experienced prof I guess (he was a grad student who seemed like he came from India recently). While you could understand the gist of what he says, the broken English was annoying at times (and for an important course like this, would've been nice to have someone more experienced).
The exam was LONG and focused on crap we briefly touched on in class/in the notes. Not the ideal way of evaluating shit, but not terribly unreasonable I guess.
Course: B+
Prof: B-
...and then 4A was over.
-End of Entry-
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Exam 3 - Economics
To put it plainly: a waste of a course. Not much real info or enlightening material here. Just some stupid graphs and equations that shift whenever the government (or BOC) decides to make some sort of change...and you determine how that change affects everything else. In short, blah.
I give the prof. kudos for using her insane life-experience antics to try and liven up the class in what would otherwise be a tremendously mundane classroom experience.
The exam was pretty standard. 60MC followed by some short answer nonsense. I don't think I did much justice to the short answers, but hell, I don't really care at this point.
1 more to go.
Course: C-
Prof: C+
-End of Entry-
I give the prof. kudos for using her insane life-experience antics to try and liven up the class in what would otherwise be a tremendously mundane classroom experience.
The exam was pretty standard. 60MC followed by some short answer nonsense. I don't think I did much justice to the short answers, but hell, I don't really care at this point.
1 more to go.
Course: C-
Prof: C+
-End of Entry-
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Exam 2 - Critical Thinking
May very well be the course I most enjoyed this term. Essentially, it dived into aspects of arguments, what makes up arguments, what makes arguments sound, valid, etc... and dabbled a bit into the first order logic stuff that was done with Shai in CS245. Then, moved onto how whacky statistics are fudged in making arguments, and summed up with some other argument-related stuff.
It was interesting stuff to thinking about in terms of identifying fallacies related to acceptability, relevance, and grounding and the whole notion of how to decipher bullshit arguments from genuine ones.
The prof came across as a real laid-back fellow who, while not incredibly entertaining or engaging, did manage to maintain my attention for most of the 3hr weekly class. Assignments were straight-forward and tests were reasonable.
Prof: B+
Course: A-
-End of Entry-
It was interesting stuff to thinking about in terms of identifying fallacies related to acceptability, relevance, and grounding and the whole notion of how to decipher bullshit arguments from genuine ones.
The prof came across as a real laid-back fellow who, while not incredibly entertaining or engaging, did manage to maintain my attention for most of the 3hr weekly class. Assignments were straight-forward and tests were reasonable.
Prof: B+
Course: A-
-End of Entry-
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Exam 1 - Derivatives
So at first, this seemed like it would be an enjoyable course where there would be tons of new and interesting things to learn.................boy was I wrong.
Don't get me wrong, the subject matter IS an interesting area of study, especially when you start combining derivatives with other exotic securities and determining how things are fit nicely together. There are a lot of 'eureka' moments throughout the course.
Unfortunately, the course was being taught by someone straight out of industry who would drive down from Toronto every Monday to lecture us for 3 hours at a time. Now, I got nothing against profs from industry. What I do take issue with is when a prof acts in a condescending manner towards students, purposefully calling out on students for the sake of embarrassing them, and fails to post necessary course material even based on their own proposed timelines. Even if we disregard the unprofessional manner in which this course was conducted, the missing exam booklets and formula sheets during the final exam kind-of capped off a terrible classroom experience in an almost poetic manner.
Here's to hoping I never get the displeasure of studying ANYTHING finance related under this 'industry professional' ever....again.
Prof: F--
Course: B+
-End of Entry-
Don't get me wrong, the subject matter IS an interesting area of study, especially when you start combining derivatives with other exotic securities and determining how things are fit nicely together. There are a lot of 'eureka' moments throughout the course.
Unfortunately, the course was being taught by someone straight out of industry who would drive down from Toronto every Monday to lecture us for 3 hours at a time. Now, I got nothing against profs from industry. What I do take issue with is when a prof acts in a condescending manner towards students, purposefully calling out on students for the sake of embarrassing them, and fails to post necessary course material even based on their own proposed timelines. Even if we disregard the unprofessional manner in which this course was conducted, the missing exam booklets and formula sheets during the final exam kind-of capped off a terrible classroom experience in an almost poetic manner.
Here's to hoping I never get the displeasure of studying ANYTHING finance related under this 'industry professional' ever....again.
Prof: F--
Course: B+
-End of Entry-
Thursday, July 28, 2011
UBB - Round 2
As requested by Liz:
Alright so about a week ago, the CRTC hearing surrounding wholesale internet billing methodologies wrapped up with some pretty interesting developments.
To bring everyone up to speed, back in February, Bell was able to get the CRTC to approve the ability to start charging its wholesale customers based on the volume of internet packets it sends through its network (i.e. usage-based billing). What ensued was a massive online protest with 400,000+ people signing a petition started by OpenMedia. This in turn prompted at-the-time Industry Minister Tony Clement to call for the CRTC to review its decision since UBB was not considered appropriate. Players in the market appeared before a Standing Committee on Science & Technology, were grilled about why UBB was good, bad, how to deal with pipe congestion, etc...
And that's where we stood until last week when new proposals for wholesale billing models were put forward.
Not to get too wrapped up in the details of the hearings (or list off the ludicrous number of analogies put forward to try and get the CRTC to understand how a fucking network works), the crux of the hearing boiled down to two competing views:
Bell - given the disaster that UBB caused, they came forward with a new model known as AVP (Aggregate Volume Pricing). Essentially, it's UBB but instead of billing on an individual customer basis, they'd bill each ISP based on the aggregate amount of data used. In addition, ISPs can buy data in bulk up front (at something like $200/TB) and any overage charges would be extra (don't remember the exact rate, think it was $0.1768/GB or something).
CNOC - the group of individual ISPs have said they should be billed based on the peak capacity (measured in MBps, not GB) that they cause on the incumbents network. Measurements of their capacity (not volume) usage would be measured at 5-minute increments over the month and the 95th percentile would determine the level at which the ISP would be charged for the month. Brief description of 95th percentile is here.
Other players in the market has suggested slight modifications of the two above approaches (95th percentile with commitments, average AVP over the month, etc..).
Personally, I think Bell's AVP is the same wolf that UBB was, just with a pretty pink tutu put on it. The basic problem is that AVP measures the wrong metric when determining costs associated with a network. It was made pretty clear during the UBB uproar that the cost of transporting a GB across a network cost pennies (if that) and Bell is charging rates that are at least 10x higher. Not only that, when networks are built out and created, they're created on the basis of the capacity usage, not how much volume goes through.
CNOC's proposal does attempt to measure the appropriate metric when determining cost and it pointed out that other regimes around the world that have wholesale internet access policies use 95th percentile to compensate incumbents. That being said, it's pretty clear that building out networks (as Bell, Rogers, Telus, Shaw, Videotron have done) is bloody expensive. Using simply 95th percentile may not be sharing enough of the business risk associated with expanding the facilities, especially given the CRTCs decision on speed matching that says incumbents can't offer speeds in retail for some services unless they're also offered in wholesale.
So where does that leave us? Well, my feeling is that the model put forward by MTS/Andrew Moore [slight alterations of each other] makes the most sense. Essentially, usage would be billed on the 95th percentile, but commitments/access charges on how much capacity the ISP wants on a monthly basis would be charged up front. What this allows is for the incumbents to use that money to provision the appropriate size of the pipe to be given to the ISP. Once that's been done, the ISP is able to use as much of that pipe as possible and would be billed on the 95th percentile. In addition, if the ISP begins to exceed the capacity they've been allocated, their customers would experience packet loss, slow down, etc...Why this makes sense is it forces ISPs to make judgements on the amount of capacity they wish to purchase up front and compensates the incumbents for that cost, while still billing on capacity basis [which is the appropriate usage metric for networks].
The CRTC is scheduled to render a decision sometime in November and my hope is that they see the MTS model as a good compromise between the two polar opposite views of Bell v.s. CNOC. It's important that we measure internet usage on the appropriate metric, but incumbents must be adequately compensated for the investments that they do make in their networks (on a cost + small markup basis).
"The more you limit my tubes, the more time I have to protest" - Unknown Protester
-End of Entry-
Alright so about a week ago, the CRTC hearing surrounding wholesale internet billing methodologies wrapped up with some pretty interesting developments.
To bring everyone up to speed, back in February, Bell was able to get the CRTC to approve the ability to start charging its wholesale customers based on the volume of internet packets it sends through its network (i.e. usage-based billing). What ensued was a massive online protest with 400,000+ people signing a petition started by OpenMedia. This in turn prompted at-the-time Industry Minister Tony Clement to call for the CRTC to review its decision since UBB was not considered appropriate. Players in the market appeared before a Standing Committee on Science & Technology, were grilled about why UBB was good, bad, how to deal with pipe congestion, etc...
And that's where we stood until last week when new proposals for wholesale billing models were put forward.
Not to get too wrapped up in the details of the hearings (or list off the ludicrous number of analogies put forward to try and get the CRTC to understand how a fucking network works), the crux of the hearing boiled down to two competing views:
Bell - given the disaster that UBB caused, they came forward with a new model known as AVP (Aggregate Volume Pricing). Essentially, it's UBB but instead of billing on an individual customer basis, they'd bill each ISP based on the aggregate amount of data used. In addition, ISPs can buy data in bulk up front (at something like $200/TB) and any overage charges would be extra (don't remember the exact rate, think it was $0.1768/GB or something).
CNOC - the group of individual ISPs have said they should be billed based on the peak capacity (measured in MBps, not GB) that they cause on the incumbents network. Measurements of their capacity (not volume) usage would be measured at 5-minute increments over the month and the 95th percentile would determine the level at which the ISP would be charged for the month. Brief description of 95th percentile is here.
Other players in the market has suggested slight modifications of the two above approaches (95th percentile with commitments, average AVP over the month, etc..).
Personally, I think Bell's AVP is the same wolf that UBB was, just with a pretty pink tutu put on it. The basic problem is that AVP measures the wrong metric when determining costs associated with a network. It was made pretty clear during the UBB uproar that the cost of transporting a GB across a network cost pennies (if that) and Bell is charging rates that are at least 10x higher. Not only that, when networks are built out and created, they're created on the basis of the capacity usage, not how much volume goes through.
CNOC's proposal does attempt to measure the appropriate metric when determining cost and it pointed out that other regimes around the world that have wholesale internet access policies use 95th percentile to compensate incumbents. That being said, it's pretty clear that building out networks (as Bell, Rogers, Telus, Shaw, Videotron have done) is bloody expensive. Using simply 95th percentile may not be sharing enough of the business risk associated with expanding the facilities, especially given the CRTCs decision on speed matching that says incumbents can't offer speeds in retail for some services unless they're also offered in wholesale.
So where does that leave us? Well, my feeling is that the model put forward by MTS/Andrew Moore [slight alterations of each other] makes the most sense. Essentially, usage would be billed on the 95th percentile, but commitments/access charges on how much capacity the ISP wants on a monthly basis would be charged up front. What this allows is for the incumbents to use that money to provision the appropriate size of the pipe to be given to the ISP. Once that's been done, the ISP is able to use as much of that pipe as possible and would be billed on the 95th percentile. In addition, if the ISP begins to exceed the capacity they've been allocated, their customers would experience packet loss, slow down, etc...Why this makes sense is it forces ISPs to make judgements on the amount of capacity they wish to purchase up front and compensates the incumbents for that cost, while still billing on capacity basis [which is the appropriate usage metric for networks].
The CRTC is scheduled to render a decision sometime in November and my hope is that they see the MTS model as a good compromise between the two polar opposite views of Bell v.s. CNOC. It's important that we measure internet usage on the appropriate metric, but incumbents must be adequately compensated for the investments that they do make in their networks (on a cost + small markup basis).
"The more you limit my tubes, the more time I have to protest" - Unknown Protester
-End of Entry-
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Exam 0 - Financial Statement Analysis
Blah, it's once again time for the semi-annual course/prof evals.
I wasn't particularly looking forward to this course, given the bad rap it got from upper years as being mind-numbingly boring and atrociously hard. To be honest, I thought it was a relatively fair course. Just goes through the basics of company valuations, methodologies, considerations, corporate governance, etc...
I guess the only complaint I'd have is how stringently the textbook 'key' was used to mark assignments, presentations, and the midterm (no final for this course). It's an analysis course and to merely award marks based off of whether or not student mentioned points outlined in the key instead of the merit of their arguments was a bit disappointing.
Excellent use of IClickers and class participation though, I must say.
Course: B-
Prof: A-
-End of Entry-
I wasn't particularly looking forward to this course, given the bad rap it got from upper years as being mind-numbingly boring and atrociously hard. To be honest, I thought it was a relatively fair course. Just goes through the basics of company valuations, methodologies, considerations, corporate governance, etc...
I guess the only complaint I'd have is how stringently the textbook 'key' was used to mark assignments, presentations, and the midterm (no final for this course). It's an analysis course and to merely award marks based off of whether or not student mentioned points outlined in the key instead of the merit of their arguments was a bit disappointing.
Excellent use of IClickers and class participation though, I must say.
Course: B-
Prof: A-
-End of Entry-
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