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1076

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CHS v2.42.0 April 20, 2017 (Beta) portable

« Last post by IainB on April 19, 2017, 11:19 PM »

@mouser: Thanks. I have downloaded it - CHS v2.42.0 April 20, 2017 (Beta) portable - and the SQL generation for the Virtual Folder works just fine now you have increased the field's max size limit. (What is the limit now, by the way?)
I saw there were only two files you had changed - the .EXE and the Help file.

1077

UrlSnooper / Re: Help find a feed link to Radio CKKS - this might help (a bit).

« Last post by IainB on April 19, 2017, 05:04 AM »

@alanradio: I'm certainly no "expert", but, as no-one has answered your Q yet, I did some fossicking about and came up with the following. I hope it helps or is of use.

For information on CKKS-FM Kiss Radio 107.5, see:

• top-radio.org - https://top-radio.or...-fm-kiss-radio-1075/
• Interestingly, that site has a vanilla web player that is getting its feed via:
• http://195.10.36.180...an1049?akacasthops=1
• - which is exactly the same as that used (see below) by the proprietary Akamai Media Player on the CKKS website.

Note: I presume this is standard (I wouldn't know) - CKKS seems to be a "canned radio" station, which feeds/streams pre-prepared .mp3 files (scheduled and played according to a pre-prepared playlist).
Pasting the above "akacasthops" URL into the browser plays the 1st .mp3 file in the playlist, and changing the variable to 2, or 3, etc., plays the 2nd, 3rd, etc. .mp3 file in the playlist. The .mp3 files are quite lengthy, with music tracks interspersed with advertising tracks.
What this means is that one can listen to the radio station by just incrementing the last number on the right of the URL.

Once could thus listen to the radio station that way. Automating it using (say) an Autohotkey script could be useful, if one wanted to make it simpler and less tedious for the user.
Pressing the little download symbol on the player starts to save the continuous stream to a file named van1049.mp3
Whilst I have been writing this comment in CHS (Clipboard Help & Spell), I have had the download running on the 2nd .mp3 and it has so far accumulated >40Mb - and is still going strong! eventually stopped at 74.5Mb and started playing automatically in my Winamp player. It's not bad either. My 6 y/o son likes the music too.
It's a bit slow to download, probably because it's throttled to streaming speed. Probably not much use unless one is able to gracefully close the file at some point. It closed itself when download finished.
The URL I used was: http://edge13647.ice...an1049?akacasthops=2
I tried downloading that URL with GetRight, but GR couldn't do it as it was not being told how big the file was, so I would guess that the file van1049.mp3 could be a consolidated file of several .mp3 files, with interstitial sub-headers, numbered consecutively 1, 2, 3. etc., or something.(?)
________________________________________________

There appears to be no published or findable feed. I tried to get my old free copy of Rarma Radio to find a feed, but it couldn't either.
The only way to listen to it is via something like the vanilla player at top-radio.org (above) or the proprietary player (it's the Akamai Media Player) on the CKKS' own website:

• http://player.kissradio.ca/
• The latter player seems to be getting its feed via (exactly the same as the top-radio.org site, above):
  http://195.10.36.180...an1049?akacasthops=1

That webpage seems to access:

• http://radio_cfun-lh...@183214/manifest.f4m - (I would guess this could probably be the feed definition)
• http://radio_cfun-lh...1@183214/master.m3u8 - (I would guess this could probably be a playlist)

- but one cannot independently access those as one does not have the requisite authority (key), so presumably the javascript on the web page passes the appropriate key, but I did not try to figure out the protocol for how it might do that. Somebody who understood these things would probably know how to do that though!
It's an interesting puzzle.

Akamai is an Internet advertising/media publications company, so the motivation for the proprietary player is presumably to force and monitor clicks for webpage advertising revenue, by controlling/compelling the user to interact with the player on the CKKS webpage.
This seems a tad excessive as the CKKS audio stream is interspersed with local advertising anyway.

I guess this might be yet another indication of what the marketing folk would call "Conditioning", or "Improving the user experience" or "Engaging the user in the message", which is apparently (so I have been told) an approach derived mainly from the Soviet Union's exemplary marketing methodology - perfected during the period 1930-1955 - of sending people off to the Gulags to "get the message", so that they could "right-think" (think the right way), ha-ha.
Some people (not me, you understand) might say that "those were the days" and that life was so much simpler and happier then, when the USSR was "great", but I couldn't possibly comment.

1078

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: When you delete a clip, the scroll bar goes all the way down losign focus

« Last post by IainB on April 19, 2017, 12:07 AM »

Thanks @mouser.   
I am glad you have addressed this.
My apologies - I had always put up with this slightly annoying ergonomic behaviour in CHS, supposing it to be a CHS "foible" that you would have known all about and would have fixed if you had thought it was a problem, and so I never thought to mention it, but just worked around it.
I guess the lesson there is, don't make assumptions...   

EDIT: Just some quick feedback. I confirm that, now, after deleting a clip (a row in the Grid pane), the selector rests one clip forwards - i.e., on the next clip down - which is probably what one would intuitively expect to happen.

If the clip being deleted is the last (bottom-most) clip in the Grid, then, after deletion, the selector rests on the immediately preceding clip - which again is probably what one would intuitively expect to happen.
(In both cases, the context is when the Grid is currently sorted in Modified date order - which is what I usually have it in. I have not yet tested it in the contexts of differently-ordered states.)

NB: As an observation, I would point out that this behaviour is not what seems to have been requested in the OP, where the expectation there seems to be that, after clip 40 in a list of 100 was deleted, the selector would be positioned on clip 39, one clip back (i.e., on the preceding clip, not the following clip), after the deletion.

I would thus consider this OP request to be incorrect - ergonomically counter-intuitive - and that you have fixed it to work in a more ideal ergonomically intuitive manner that would make sense in the context where you were (say) deleting clips successively, one by one, in the Grid. That is, you would want the selector to rest on each one to be deleted in turn - downwards - rather than skipping back to the penultimate one selected but not deleted. Again, the context of the sort order might be relevant here. Quite tricky really.

1079

DC Gamer Club / Re: Fallout 3 (GOTYE) on Windows 10 Pro - Problem FIXED!

« Last post by IainB on April 14, 2017, 07:36 AM »

I sat down today (Good Friday) determined to have a crack at solving the "brick wall" problem of the unworkable Fallout 3 in Windows 10, post the Anniversary Update. I did some more searching, and nobody seemed to have a solution, but then I saw some clues - interesting reference to the NVSE (New Vegas Script Extender) and its potential relevance to helping fix the crashing and quality problems in Fallout 3 and other Bethesda games.
I am very pleased to say that I have now identified, implemented and tested the FIX to this problem.

My notes about this are below - from my OneNoter Notebook. They are largely self-explanatory and posted for posterity and for other Fallout 3 gamers who may have been equally frustrated by this brick wall.
Hats off to the developers of FOSE and NVSE (see below).
The image below has a spoiler below it, containing the text (links etc.) in the image.

Spoiler

2017-04-14 2157hrs: Found the key to the solution to FIX Fallout 3 perpetually crashing on game start, under Win10 - use FOSE with the NVSE plugin NVAC .dll plugin.

NB:
   • FOSE = Fallout Script Extender: http://fose.silverlock.org/
      The Fallout Script Extender, or FOSE for short, is a modder's resource that expands the scripting capabilities of Fallout 3. It does so without modifying the Fallout3.exe or the G.E.C.K. files on disk, so there are no permanent side effects.(Source: fose_readme.txt)I already had FOSE installed in:C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Fallout 3 goty
   • NVSE = New Vegas Script Extender: http://nvse.silverlock.org/
      The New Vegas Script Extender, or NVSE for short, is a modder's resource that expands the scripting capabilities of Fallout: NV. It does so without modifying the executable files on disk, so there are no permanent side effects.(Source: nvse_readme.txt)I installed NVSE today in:C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Fallout New Vegas
   • NVAC = New Vegas Anti-Crash (a Plugin for NVSE) http://www.nexusmods...newvegas/mods/53635/
   Those with Windows 10 Anniversary Update and certain Nvidia Drivers may experience the game not load for them. You can use NVAC (New Vegas Anti Crash) in most cases to fix this issue. Although this mod is listed as for New Vegas, it will work with Fallout 3. You can get it here - http://www.nexusmods...newvegas/mods/53635/
   (Source: https://www.reddit.c...utMods/wiki/fixguide)
   1. NVAC 7.5.0.0 fixes the Windows 10 Anniversary Update + up-to-date Nvidia / AMD video driver crashes / issues for the following:
           • Fallout New Vegas
           • Fallout New Vegas No Gore (German)
           • Fallout 3
           • Fallout 3 No Gore (German)
           • Oblivion
           • GECK (New Vegas)
           • GECK (Fallout 3)
           • Construction Set (Oblivion)

It should also be installable via mod manager for New Vegas, Fallout 3, and Skyrim; would like confirmation that installing it via NMM, etc. works correctly for all 3 games (I only did minimal testing). Oblivion users will need to install manually (in Data\OBSE\Plugins).

To clarify, if you're using NVAC 7.4.0.0 or older and New Vegas crashes when loading a game, and nvac.log contains 00B57AA9, you're affected by the Win10AU issue.
   
   From <http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/53635/?tab=4&&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fnewvegas%2Fajax%2Fcomments%2F%3Fmod_id%3D53635%26page%3D1%26sort%3DDESC%26pid%3D0%26thread_id%3D1197661&pUp=1>
   
   • Refer also:
      ? HTML Scrapbook\How to install mods for Fallout 3 - Nexus Wiki.mhtml
      ? HTML Scrapbook\NVAC - New Vegas Anti Crash at Fallout New Vegas - mods and community.mhtml

______________________________________
QUESTION - https://www.reddit.c...utMods/wiki/fixguide
[Question] Downloaded NVAC, can't figure out what to do with it (self.Fallout)
https://www.reddit.c..._figure_out_what_to/

submitted 5 months ago by jtierney50We rule
Sorry if this a noob question, but I'm not exactly a computer person. I tried to restart playing New Vegas yesterday, but after the intro cinematic, the game crashed. The same problem occurred after restarting Fallout 3, but because there is no intro cinematic, it crashed soon after I started a new game.
Anyway, I looked up solutions and downloaded NVAC. In the "read me" file, it tells me to put nvac.dll in my Data\NVSE\Plugins folder. However, I can find no such folder in the Data files for New Vegas. Am I supposed to create these folders? I tried copying the NVSE folder (which contained the Plugins folder, which contained nvac.dll) from the ZIP file to the New Vegas Data folder, but that didn't change anything.
Sorry if this a dumb question, but I have a seven hour train ride on Friday and I really would like to have something to do then.
_________________________

ALL 10 COMMENTS
SORTED BY: BEST
[–]Mys-Brotherhood 4 points 5 months ago
You'll need to download New Vegas Script Extender.
Here is a video on how to install it. The version numbers will be different, but the steps are exactly the same.
_________________________

[–]jtierney50We rule 1 point 5 months ago
Thank you, I installed NVSE but I still can't find the folder it says to put it in.
_________________________

[–]Mys-Brotherhood 2 points 5 months ago
You'll have to make them manually. In the Data folder for New Vegas make a folder called NVSE, open the folder you just made then make a new folder inside called plugins. Place the BETA VERSION of NVAC in the plugins folder. The file path will look like this:
   C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Fallout New Vegas\Data\NVSE\plugins
   
You'll want to do the same for Fallout 3. You can go here for Fallout 3 Script Extender. You'll be making similar folders for this as well. The file path looks like this:
   C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Fallout 3 goty\Data\fose\plugins
Place the nvac.dll in the plugins folder here as well.
_________________________

[–]jtierney50We rule 1 point 5 months ago
Hmm. Tried that, opened through NVSE, still doesn't work.
_________________________

[–]Mys-Brotherhood 1 point 5 months ago
Okay, what kind of graphics card do you have?
_________________________

[–]jtierney50We rule 1 point 5 months ago
Graphics card shouldn't matter, should it? I've played New Vegas before, in fact I've beaten the game, but now that I'm trying to restart it keeps crashing.
_________________________

[–]Mys-Brotherhood 1 point 5 months ago
The Windows 10 Anniversary update for AMD and Nvidia has been breaking Fallout 3 and New Vegas.
_________________________

[–]jtierney50We rule 1 point 5 months ago
Okay, I do have an NVidia card, but I've had Windows 10 since before I bought and played NV, so it shouldn't have anything to do with that, right?
_________________________

[–]Mys-Brotherhood 2 points 5 months ago
It was a driver update for the graphics card that came with the Windows 10 Anniversary update. Driver 372.+ has been breaking Fallout 3 and New Vegas. It's a problem that has been ongoing for quite some time now. Sometimes the only fix is rolling back to driver 368.81.
I have to leave now, but I'll leave you with these instructions:
You can go here for Nvidia's instructions on rolling back drivers via device manager. Just use the Windows 7 instructions for Windows 10.

If rolling back via device manager doesn't work, use the "Search NVIDIA" bar at the top right of that page to look for "368.81" - just read the descriptions. Windows 10 64bit should be the top one, though.
OR top left under the Nvidia logo, select "Drivers". You can manually search or have it auto detect your configuration.
Once you download the driver, install. I recommend selecting the box that says "clean install".
_________________________

[–]jtierney50We rule 1 point 5 months ago*
I don't think that's the problem. I went to the device manager and clicked on the Nvidia card, and it says that the most recent driver version was from August 1, which was before the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, and in any case the "roll back drive" button is grayed out and unclickable.
EDIT: Never mind, that fixed it! Thanks for the help! <-- Interesting.

From <https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/5a7ys4/question_downloaded_nvac_cant_figure_out_what_to/>
_______________________________________

1080

Living Room / Re: Arizona sunsets

« Last post by IainB on April 14, 2017, 12:35 AM »

^^ Well, I thinks some of those may be suffering from a lack of light - a bit grainy - but also the haze across the distant scene probably isn't helping in the low light either. A 900mm telephoto lens would likely run into similar problems.

1081

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: CintaNotes Pro with 50% discount

« Last post by IainB on April 11, 2017, 11:31 AM »

Just to avoid duplication/repetition:
PIM-related Mini-Reviews ("also-ran") - CintaNotes PRO.

I keep my eye on it, but that project still seems to be moving forwards in Beta with small incremental and unplanned steps, not going anywhere in particular. Lots of potential, but apparently still a fizzle?
Pity.   

1082

Living Room / Re: What are your favorite movies? - A Man Called Horse.

« Last post by IainB on April 11, 2017, 02:14 AM »

A Man Called Horse (1970) - IMDb
I thought this was a great film. A sort of Wild West equivalent of the African Tarzan.

I watched the sequel last night - The Return of A Man Called Horse. Not so good. Predictable.

(There was a sequel book to Tarzan - The Return of Tarzan - which was a very good story IMHO - at least, i thought it was when I read all the Tarzan tales at age 12 or so.)   

1083

Living Room / Re: how to learn finance - Digit (digit.co) - an algorithmic savings manager.

« Last post by IainB on April 11, 2017, 12:33 AM »

I had meant to post about this brilliant service here, earlier. I think it is potentially the most useful service for bank account holders that I have come across in years. I once drew up a design for a similar service in NZ, as I saw that it was sadly lacking and was something that the NZ banks could have offered, but weren't about to offer anything like it to their customers, as it would reduce the free marginal profits they made of customers' credit account balances on the overnight money markets. In fact, if someone tried to introduce such a service in NZ, it would probably be blocked at every single turn, as the trading banks effectively have an oligopoly and probably aren't about to relinquish their grip on that anytime soon and certainly not without a fight. The Royal Bank of Scotland introduced something similar when they bought out the NZ Countrywide Bank, but the Countrywide Bank was bought out by The National Bank (a wholly-owned Lloyd's Bank subsidiary), who unsurprisingly expunged the service.

These are not statements of opinion but pragmatic observations drawn from experience of working at the heart of things in the finance/insurance/banking sector in NZ/Oz for some years, where they generally have excellent banking systems that serve the banks very well indeed.

Digit: (digit.co) - an algorithmic savings manager.
A potentially seriously useful service.   

(FAQ copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Frequently Asked Questions

[Select]

https://digit.co/about/faq

How does Digit work?
Every day, Digit checks your spending habits and moves money from your checking account to your Digit account, if you can afford it. Easily withdraw your money any time.

What makes Digit different than a recurring bank savings transfer?
Digit automatically figures out when and how much is safe to save based on your lifestyle. Digit doesn't require you to figure out an arbitrary amount to transfer every month.

Is Digit safe?
Yes. Digit uses state-of-the-art security measures. Your personal information is anonymized, encrypted and securely stored. All funds held within Digit are FDIC insured up to a balance of $250,000.

Does Digit cost anything?
Digit is completely free. You will see "Hello Digit Inc" transactions in your checking account but these transactions are just transfers to and from Digit.

What are Savings Bonuses?
Make money for saving money! Every 3 months Digit will automatically pay you a Savings Bonus (currently 0.20% annually). No fine print, no account minimums. Just sit back and collect your bonuses.

What is the Digit no-overdraft guarantee?
We believe so strongly in our math and our ability to safely identify money you can afford to save that if we overdraft your account, we'll cover the fee, up to two times per customer.

Where is Digit currently available?
At this time, Digit supports over 2,500 banks and credit unions within the United States.

Does Digit have an app?
Yes, we have an iPhone app and an Android app.

Does Digit work with banks located outside the United States?
Unfortunately, Digit is U.S.-only right now. We have hopes to expand internationally in the future.

Do I need a savings account?
No. When you signup for Digit you get your own Digit account which will hold any Digit savings until withdrawn. Any funds held in your Digit account are FDIC insured up to a balance of $250,000.

How do I access my Digit savings?
You can withdraw your savings 24/7/365 and as many times as you want per month. You can access your Digit savings by messaging Digit 'Withdraw' whenever you'd like to move money to your checking account.

What should I do with my Digit savings?
Some of our users have started a fund for emergencies, splurged on a trip, or paid down debt. You can also move your savings to other accounts (for investments or retirement) as often as you wish.

Have other questions?
We are always here to answer them. Please visit the Help
_____________________________

See also: The startup had helped users save $75 million around this time last year.

-IainB (April 01, 2017, 01:06 AM)

1084

Living Room / Re: how to learn finance - The futility of active fund management.

« Last post by IainB on April 10, 2017, 11:11 PM »

...most of the big gains happen in VERY VERY short windows of stock price jumps, so that if you try to get out when prices are falling and get in as they are rising, it's already too late and you've missed the significant rises...
________________________

-mouser (April 10, 2017, 05:18 PM)

Yes, timing is all. Sadlement, in my experience it seems to me that, when I make a buy of a stock at what I reckon is a cheap price, then the whole market takes that as an indication to drop the price of that particular stock, and when I make a sell of a stock at what I reckon is a high price, then the whole market takes that as an indication to raise the price of that particular stock.   

But yes, joking aside, it is a potentially very useful article and for the investor it provides a much-needed and pretty definitive explanation as to why active fund management performance is typically so bad and such a gamble.
It also cuts through all the BS that fund managers are fond of spouting.

Talking of BS in the financial market, if you listened to the audio, and kept listening after it finished, there's another audio - I think, immediately following - where some idiot with a South African accent talks about the market having a "headwind". The only "wind" about it is the blowhard who is uttering that phrase. If you listen to how he speaks, he has the annoying habit of raising the tone upwards at the end of a sentence, as though he's asking a question rather than making a statement. This can often be a dead giveaway that the person speaking variously lacks certainty/self-confidence, or lacks competence, and/or lacks knowledge of what they are talking about and is thus unconsciously appealing to the listener to accept what they say. It can be like a professional stigma - the sort of thing that will get one rejected when being interviewed for a job (but nobody will tell the applicant that is why they were rejected).

The TV cartoon series of Family Guy made a somewhat unkind joke about this particular characteristic/habit:

Family Guy - Season: 5 Episode: 5 - Whistle While Your Wife Works (first aired November 2006)
(The "Jillian syndrome".)
In this episode, Peter badly injures his hand while Brian gets a new girlfriend.
When Peter gets hurt and cannot work, his boss tells him that he needs to speed things up.
Brian brings his "idiot" (per Stewie) blonde girlfriend, Jillian (a photographer) home to meet the family. Stewie is not impressed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stewie: All right, Brian, you can do this. You can dump her, because once it's done, never again will you have to listen to her talk like [this?] You know, where everything has a [question mark at the end of it?] With an upward [inflection?] At the end of [every sentence?]

Brian: Yeah, I don't know what I was [thinking?] Oh, dammit, now I'm doing it too!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1085

Living Room / Re: how to learn finance - The futility of active fund management.

« Last post by IainB on April 10, 2017, 04:48 PM »

Came across this interesting article today. There's also an audio at the link - an interview. It's all very interesting because it discusses some of the maths behind the apparently empiric reality that the majority of active fund management decisions are likely to turn out to be futile in terms of making any advantage (good fund performance) from stock-picking, and are more likely to result in a disadvantage (poor fund performance). It's seems that the odds are against success.
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images, with my emphasis.)

The Math Behind Futility
An overlooked statistical concept shows why it’s so hard to beat a benchmark.
by Oliver Renick
April 10, 2017, 11:00 AM GMT+12
Interview audio Duration Time 3:22

J.B. Heaton is an unlikely stock market revolutionary. He doesn’t work in investing, his academic research focuses on legal aspects of insolvency, and most of his holdings are index funds. Yet thanks to his intellectual wanderings, Heaton today finds himself championing a slightly different take on active management’s decline—and, as it turns out, one that three professors advanced almost 20 years ago to scant recognition. Not only can’t humans outdo benchmarks, they all say, we can’t even fight them to a draw.

Let’s begin with the simple coin flip. You’ll call it correctly about half the time, right? Well, the collective efforts of active fund managers around the world come nowhere near even that, with the proportion besting benchmarks lately hovering around 19 percent, according to Bank of America. “How are so many smart people bad at their job?” asks Heaton, a lawyer with dual doctorates from the University of Chicago. “We’ve always known in our gut that active managers aren’t losing to the S&P because they’re monkeys. What we haven’t ­understood is just how hard it is to beat passive investing because of this effect.”

The effect Heaton is referring to is the subject of a five-page paper he published in 2015 with colleagues Nicholas Polson and Jan Hendrik Witte; Hendrik Bessembinder of Arizona State University recently expanded their findings. In short: The distribution of returns in the stock market is bizarrely lopsided. Often, equity benchmarks are so reliant on gigantic gains in just a handful of stocks that missing them—as most managers do—consigns the majority to futility. “Your intuition is that you can randomly pick stocks and start at zero,” Heaton says. “But the empirical fact is if you randomly pick, you are starting behind zero.”

What Heaton and his colleagues didn’t realize when trying to solve the riddle of chronic underperformance is that someone already had done it, for the most part, in a 1998 study, “Why Active Managers Underperform the S&P 500: The Impact of Size and Skewness,” published in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Private Portfolio Management. One of the original authors of the study is Richard Shockley, an associate professor of finance at Indiana University. At the time of publication, Shockley and his colleagues were investigating their observation that the drag from manager fees and the cost of managing a portfolio didn’t explain the degree of consistent underperformance by mutual funds to their benchmarks. The culprit as they saw it: the concept known as positive skew.

The implication, like it or not, is that a concentration of outsize gains in a minority of index members is tantamount to a death sentence for anyone who gets paid for beating a benchmark. It’s a pattern of returns that virtually ensures everyone outside of an indexer owns mostly deadbeat stocks. “It gets very little attention,” says Rob Arnott, the Research Affiliates co-founder and smart-beta pioneer who’s no stranger to pontificating in the academic realm. “The focus is often on the random walk and the coin toss analogy, and the impact of skewness is overlooked.”

The findings have implications for everything from how active funds are judged to whether the explosion in passive investing will ever subside. It also offers insight into the number of stocks a manager can own before becoming a “closet indexer”—a term used to refer to stockpickers who choose enough stocks to essentially replicate an index. Seldom is the concept trotted out in the debate over investing styles, and you hardly hear “skewness” as a reason for a money manager’s bad year.

Dozens of interviews with fund managers showed that few were familiar with the equity market’s degree of skewness and its impact on performance relative to a benchmark. “The paper didn’t get read,” Shockley concedes. “We undersold it. We thought it was going to be a bang-up journal, and they didn’t market it very well.” Part of the problem, he says, is that the math isn’t terribly easy to understand. And that’s where Heaton comes in.

Heaton, Polson, and Witte distill the statistical argument into a straightforward five-page paper that uses a simple illustration, adapted here to a bag of poker chips: Say you have five poker chips, four worth $10 and one worth $100. The five chips have an average value of $28, but what if you reach into the bag and pull out two chips over and over? That’s roughly how mutual funds approach stocks, with managers picking portfolios that are subsets of the broader group. The problem is, the majority of selections will fail to snag the $100 chip. Mathematically, there is an average value of $56 across the 10 two-chip combinations—the problem is, 6 of 10 times you’ll grab a pair with a sum of $20. The same thing happens with stocks chosen from a benchmark. Only a few managers will own the biggies, relegating the rest of the industry to mediocrity—or worse.

The ratios in the above example are a generous illustration of what happens in the market. In reality, there are thousands more combinations, and the number of outcomes that will trail the average far outnumber those that will beat it. As a result, waiting to catch the winners over time becomes an impractical strategy. Sure, a couple of funds will own the flavor of the week (or month, or quarter) and rise above the benchmark, but for most the result will be far less than the average. And the poker chip illustration leaves out a key fact—that some stocks will fall in a given quarter, offsetting the influence of the gainers. While that’s true, Bessembinder’s study, expanding on Polson and Witte’s work, found that over time, instances of outsize declines in most indexes are much lower than instances of eye-popping gains.

Of course, part of the reason is there’s a limit to how far stocks can drop: 100 percent. But beyond that, what stood out to Bessembinder is how lopsided returns really are. Indeed, according to his work, so precious is the performance of the tiny cohort of gainers that it masks that your average stock historically has been a worse investment choice than a one-month Treasury bill.

“At a practical level, skewness matters,” Bessembinder says by phone. “The underlying statistical issue is underappreciated. Even if there weren’t fees and expenses, the odds are you’ll underperform.” According to his findings, roughly 70 percent of stocks will do worse than the Treasury bill, with the rate of performance improving directly with company size. Yet even in the top decile of market capitalization, 30 percent still offer smaller gains than the T-bill.

By itself, the observation that you need to pick winners to beat the benchmark isn’t news. What else are fund managers paid for? The point of this vein of research is that the contours of the market itself make the odds against picking winners prohibitively long. Active managers may be doomed, but that doesn’t make them idiots. With investor cash pouring out of actively managed strategies and into passive ones, the stakes for stockpickers have rarely been higher. Even as individual stock returns show more variation since last year’s U.S. presidential election—a characteristic active managers often hail as crucial to selecting stocks—investors have taken money out of mutual funds and piled into exchange-traded funds this year. On a personal level, fund managers might find some solace in the ­research. The degree of skewness changes in any given year, and 2016 was an unfavorable one for stockpickers, according to Heaton. Put one way, the average stock in the S&P 500 returned 1.5 percentage points more than the median one, creating a scenario akin to the poker chip narrative.

Despite all the academic evidence, some on Wall Street expect the tide to turn back to active management. A December note from David Kostin, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s chief U.S. equity strategist, hailed the return of a stockpicker’s market as imminent. “I think they’re flat-out wrong in saying it’s a stockpicker’s market,” says Research Affiliates’ Arnott, referring to Goldman. “Wider dispersion increases the opportunity set, yes. But it also increases the opportunity to get it wrong, and the active manager will get it wrong as often as they get it right.”

While the notion of a stockpicker’s market can surely be debated, Heaton, Shockley, and Bessembinder would probably take a bigger issue with the wording of the latter part of Arnott’s statement: “as often as they get it right.”

After all, skewness says otherwise.
_____________________________
 Renick is a stock markets reporter for Bloomberg News in New York. With Chris Nagi.
This story appears in the April/May 2017 issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine.

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.  LEARN MORE

1086

Living Room / Re: Arizona sunsets

« Last post by IainB on April 10, 2017, 02:24 AM »

@Arizona Hot: Hey don't knock your own photos! The panoramic one "Sunrise-shadowed mountains" looked almost like a screen print, but, unlike most screen-prints, it was quite beautiful.
And that latest pic has a beautiful collection of different-coloured clouds/sky.
Nature won't allow you to take a bad shot, because there are none.   

I just wish I could see those scenes with my own eyeballs though, because I bet they'd look even more beautiful to the human eye, as they are happening.

1087

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a new browser

« Last post by IainB on April 09, 2017, 11:25 AM »

Sorry, but which rant is that?

-IainB (April 08, 2017, 07:21 PM)

Mozilla basically killed off Firefox.

-Tuxman (April 09, 2017, 04:19 AM)

Sorry, I was joking. Yes, I know that rant. I have the same rant. Actually, they've arguably not quite killed it off, but they do seem to be very busy killing it at present. Or maybe we haven't all figured out (or don't want to see it) that they have already killed it off?
Either way, I jumped ship a while back.

1088

General Software Discussion / Re: Chrome Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by IainB on April 09, 2017, 01:27 AM »

Cross-posted as relevant.

Just discovered this today. I was adding the Chrome Simple Gmail Notes extension to Slimjet and noticed that they had a Firefox version too.

I didn't know it existed until today. Looks potentially very handy.

-IainB (April 09, 2017, 01:24 AM)

1089

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Simple Gmail Notes.

« Last post by IainB on April 09, 2017, 01:24 AM »

Just discovered this today. I was adding the Chrome Simple Gmail Notes extension to Slimjet and noticed that they had a Firefox version too.

I didn't know it existed until today. Looks potentially very handy.

1090

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Sunset of Googlebar Lite.

« Last post by IainB on April 09, 2017, 01:12 AM »

Another one bites the dust.
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Sunset of Googlebar Lite
April 6, 2017.
As of today, I am officially withdrawing my development support for the Googlebar Lite Firefox extension. I’m aware that the extension no longer works well in the latest builds of Firefox, and I have absolutely no desire to fix them. Mozilla’s development environment has gotten pretty irritating as of late, and I just don’t have the cycles (or the drive) to fix the issues that exist.
The future of Firefox add-ons lies in WebExtensions, and toolbar support in that arena is pretty bare-bones (last I looked). The default Firefox search box meets most needs, which has motivated me to drop this extension.
For those that are so-inclined, I will accept pull requests at the official googlebarlite repo. Or, you can fork the project and roll your own.

1091

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a new browser

« Last post by IainB on April 08, 2017, 07:21 PM »

@Tuxman:

Also, insert my usual rant about the stupidity that Mozilla has become here.
__________________________ 

-Tuxman (April 08, 2017, 06:15 PM)

Sorry, but which rant is that? I am not sure, there are so many. If you inserted it in a "Spoiler" thingy, it would help - then those of us who wanted to could read it and compare it with our own Mozilla rants and see if we (or you) had missed any rant points out about Mozilla. That could be quite a fun thing to do and would keep us on our mettle and lift the game across the whole forum - no sloppy critiquing here!   
I think I had a set of 58½ rant points last time I checked, but some of those were arguably duplicates - i.e., same general meaning/intent, but just using different words. I had intended to put some time aside to sit down and rationalise the list at some point, but this (your rant) could be the stimulus I needed to do just that.

1092

ProcessTamer / Re: Process Tamer - New 2.14 Beta (win32 AND x64 version) - Feedback wanted

« Last post by IainB on April 08, 2017, 07:33 AM »

@mouser:
Well, if you wanted to minimise changes/work and keep PT small and fast - AS-IS - then adding the parameter functionality could possibly obviate 2 of the 3 things I requested above:

• Start-up PT in quiescent (Inactive) mode.
• Configuration saves (and loads).
  ___________________
  

- as they could then perhaps be done via an AHK interface.

However the third:

• Restart specified processes at timed/periodic intervals.

- would not be quite so simple, though again, it could probably be achieved with AHK in some way.

1093

Living Room / Re: silly humor - death by fishbite

« Last post by IainB on April 08, 2017, 06:47 AM »

Trigger Warning!: - a public health initiative sponsored by LLF (Live Life Fully) and the RSHHJJCCU (Ren & Stimpy Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy Consortium for Career Underachievers).

This post and the image depicted:

• May make you wish you had never seen this as you may be unable to forget having seen it.
• May cause feelings of fear or danger as the scene includes a crocodile and the article is about the death of the man depicted in the photo.
• May make you feel that it is morbid (though it is not).
• May cause feelings of agoraphobia as the photo depicts the wide open space of a beachfront.
• May cause feelings of claustrophobia if you find beaches physically confining and restrictive places.
• May cause feelings of hydrophobia as the photo depicts a lot of water.
• May cause feelings of eremikophobia as the photo depicts a lot of sand.
• May cause feelings of eremophobia as the photo depicts an otherwise apparently deserted and large beach.
• May cause feelings of fear or danger for those who never learned to swim, as the photo depicts a seascape in the background and you feel that you might fall in and drown.
• May seem to be suggesting that crocodiles are cute, when in fact they are not - they are dangerous!
• May surprise you with the realisation that the subject has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with crocodiles, and you may thus feel that your expectations have not been met and you have been misled.
• May give rise to feelings that the image is racist or lacks social diversity, or (worse) both, or (even worse) depicts cruelty to animals.
• May induce feelings of inadequacy in that your hairstyle could be deemed unfashionable.
• May induce unwelcome/unwanted morbid or sad thoughts.
• May induce unwelcome/unwanted happy or strangely erotic  thoughts.
• May seem to be unnecessarily silly.
• May seem to be insufficiently silly.
• May contain "adult content".
• May not be safe to view at the workplace.
• May not be safe and may be disturbing to view at home or with family and/or children.
  
• May be emotionally disturbing and cause feelings of regret if viewed by elderly Australian grandparents who used to keep pet saltwater crocodiles.
• May cause said elderly grandparents to go sit on the beach and stare wistfully at the horizon.
• May not be safe to view in a public place.
• May not be safe to view in a private place.
• May not be safe to view in a pet shop.
• May not be safe to view on a stile.
• May not be safe to view with a crocodile.
• May not be safe to view on a smartphone whilst driving a motor vehicle.
• May not be safe to view on a smartphone whilst swimming or having a bath or in the rain, especially if a power charger is plugged-in to the smartphone.
• May make you think you have gone totally deaf or the volume is turned down, until you realise that there is no soundtrack accompanying the image being displayed.
• May make you feel fearful of stingrays, though that might be a wise thing to feel.
• May make you feel emotionally upset or disturbed in ways that are hard to describe, though the words to do so may be on the tip of your tongue.
• May make you feel funny inside.
• May make you feel funny on the outside.
• May make you want to sigh.
• May make you want to cry.
• May make you want to go out and kill someone or rip their eyes out.
• May make you want to kill yourself or rip your own eyes out.
• May cause you to question the existence of God.
• May cause you to question the existence of The Great Spaghetti Monster.
• May cause you to question your own existence.
• May cause you to question the meaning of Life.
• May cause you to question whether the bears really will come and get you if you tread on the cracks in the pavement.
• May cause you to scratch your head in puzzlement.
• May cause sores on the head from too much puzzled scratching.
• May cause mental confusion or anguish because the image as depicted has little to do with the text and you just don't get it.
• May cause uncomfortable feelings of ego-hurt or inferiority because you are unsure what "irony" is.
• May make you to want to look up the definition of the words "irony" or "humour" or "lethalogica" in the dictionary.
• May cause concern in case the scene photographed contains residual particles of peanuts, or seeds containing gluten, or traces of dairy products, or monosodium glutamate or dihydrogen monoxide, or excessive salt, or genetically modified organisms.
• May make you wish there was a Down Vote or Burn button to press.
• May make you wish that the trigger warnings would please, please, just STOP.

Don't worry. All of the above concerns and feelings and any other feelings that you may be experiencing at this moment are perfectly valid and in no way indicative that you are screwed-up or anything less than perfect. They are your feelings and they are right and correct. So, don't let that nasty little voice in your head or that loud-mouthed opinionated, pointy-headed #sshole sat in the next cubicle or bus seat try to tell you any different. Just loudly speak the soothing magic invocation "Shut up, racist!" to them, to make them go away, and then embrace your feelings and thus embrace yourself. Give yourself a really good-feeling real or mental hug - in an entirely altruistic and non-sensuous way, of course (especially if you are in a public place, but it's OK if you are in private or your bedroom - you can knock yourself out then!).   

Thank you for helping to make this forum a Safe Space™, where our feelings are always validated.
_____________________________
From: http://innov8tiv.com...ing-film-production/
9 Famous Actors Who Died on Sets During Film Production
 - by Fahad Saleem  April 7, 2017

Number 7: Steve Irwin
Steve Irwin was a famous wild life presenter. He died in 2006 while filming his documentary “The Crocodile Hunter: Ocean’s Deadliest”. He died when a Stingray fish bit him.

1094

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on April 08, 2017, 04:40 AM »

@panzer:

-panzer (March 21, 2017, 04:04 AM)

I reckon that is a seriously good .gif!
Very amusing. My 6 y/o son thought it was good too.
Thanks.

1095

ProcessTamer / Re: Process Tamer - further feedback on v2.14.01 x64

« Last post by IainB on April 07, 2017, 09:32 PM »

This feedback is for ProcessTamer v2.14.01 x64 (per "About"), comprising:

• ProcessTamerConfigurator.exe (is v2.14.1.0)
• ProcessTamerTray.exe (is v2.0.14.1)

Since my previous feedback of 2017-03-30, PT has been running pretty much continuously on my laptop. In that time, as far as I am aware, PT has been running perfectly and doing exactly what is expected of it (I have it set so that it pops up an alert each time it does something), though I have not tested the full functionality of the software.

It is a real pleasure to have PT back from the grave, up and running so nicely on my laptop. It's like the return of the prodigal son. In future, I might need to shut PT down under certain circumstances that I am yet to experience, but until then it will probably usually be constantly "ON" after boot-up, though I have not tested it yet as "Start with Windows", preferring so far to start it manually after boot-up, so as to avoid potential conflict at boot-up time.

By the way, I have a workaround for the "Configuration saves" requirement I mentioned above: I save different versions of ProcessTamer.ini and manually load/rename the one I want, prior to starting-up PT. I will probably automate this using AHK when I settle on the best approach for me. Either way, it's a kludge, but it does/will work.

Related question: Is it possible to run PT with a parameter that tells it the filename of the .ini file to use, or is the filename ProcessTamer.ini fixed as the default?   

1096

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: An Idea: Providing some small funding for a yearly (or 6 month) regular coder

« Last post by IainB on April 07, 2017, 06:49 AM »

It seems an interesting idea. Lots of questions come to mind.
For example:

• Is "Thoughts?" the right question to ask? Depends, I suppose, on what one hopes to get in response.
• I don't know whether it would be a good or a bad idea, but, if implemented, then wouldn't it potentially be somewhat of a change to the ethos of DC.com?
• And if it is/would be changing it, then what might be the implications of that?
• Does there need to be such a change, and if so, then why/why not?
• If such a change were made, then what could be the potential effect on the existing structure and/or "business model" of DC.com?
• What might be the perception of the external community, and would it matter?
• What might be the specific objectives and outcomes of this? What costs, risks, dependencies and constraints might be involved?
• ...etc.

I'm sure we could think of more questions.

I personally wouldn't attempt to offer any suggestions or answers to such questions at this point, but I would suggest that maybe this would be an opportune time to conduct a PMI (one of De Bono's thinking tools) - a systematic analysis of the Plus, Minus, and Interesting points about the idea, from several different perspectives.

Collectively, we could surely contribute constructively towards such an analysis if we were organised to do so in the role of a kind of distributed "Brains Trust" for that exercise. There is such a diverse collection of minds in the DC forum that we could well run the risk of a synergistic outcome if we were organised by The Project Manager to do that.   

I would recommend the use of a computer tool to collect the PMIs from the audience.
An affinity diagramming tool may be the ideal. The MS Labs Sticky Sorter comes to mind. That can interchange data between the SS tool and a spreadsheet - which could be handy.
But this is getting ahead of ourselves and is just some of my thoughts.

Falling back on my professional training, I'd usually recommend a structured approach. In that case, the first thing required would be to draft up a TOR - Terms of Reference - for a small project to research and implement such an idea, or one similar. The TOR would need to be approved by a Sponsor and/or a Steering Committee before any work started. If one did not do that, then the thing might skitter all over the place like a blob of mercury.

1097

General Software Discussion / Re: Python 3 - advice required on installing appropriate system/interpreter.

« Last post by IainB on April 06, 2017, 05:25 PM »

@Mark0: Thanks. The version 3 is necessary only because that is the version my daughter is being taught with at school.

@Tuxman:

I miss the good old times when Pascal was the de-facto learning/teaching language. There was Borland's product and it had anything you needed. Sigh!
________________________

-Tuxman (April 06, 2017, 01:41 PM)

I know very little about Pascal either. Why is it not taught now? Maybe you could set up a "Pascal reminiscences" (or something) thread on DC Forum? Or are there lots of those on the Internet already?
I'm sure you are not alone in this.

1098

Living Room / Re: silly humor - nursery rhyme: I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.

« Last post by IainB on April 06, 2017, 05:04 PM »

If you have come across the children's nursery rhyme "I do not like thee, Doctor Fell", you might have wondered what it was about. It's an odd, but simple rhyme:

• I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,
  The reason why - I cannot tell;
  But this I know, and know full well,
  I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.

This rhyme is said to have been written by the satirical English poet Tom Brown in 1680.
There is an anecdote associated with the origin of the rhyme: apparently, when Brown was a student at the Christ Church, Oxford, he was caught doing mischief. The dean of Christ Church, John Fell (1625–1686), who later went on to become the Bishop of Oxford, expelled Brown, but offered to take him back if he passed a test.
The test Fell set was to see if Brown could extemporaneously (i.e., spoken or done without preparation) translate the thirty-second epigram (a short witty poem) of Martial (who was a well-known Roman epigramist).
If Brown could do that, then his expulsion would be lifted.
The epigram in Latin is as follows:

• Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare;
  Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te.

The English for which is:

• I do not like you, Sabidius, but I can not say why;
  This much only I can say, I do not like you.

However, Brown apparently made the very witty and satirical impromptu English mis-translation above, which became the verse we know today.   
______________________________
Source: Wikipedia

1099

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on April 06, 2017, 04:10 PM »

On TV shows for decades I have always seen the dialog, when they could not get someone to go where they wanted, that "if we can't get Muhammed to go to the mountain, we'll have to bring the mountain to Muhammed." I have never seen it the other way around. What would be noteworthy about making some guy go to a mountain?
_____________________

-MilesAhead (April 06, 2017, 09:01 AM)

That doesn't surprise me.
Bit of a digression:

Spoiler

It doesn't surprise me because it would seem to be an example from a collection of bits of colloquial American speech where the original English usage has been warped out of shape, or reversed, almost beyond recognition.
A common one is "I could care less" (sic), which I gather means the opposite of what it says - i.e., "I don't give a damn" (OWTTE) - whereas the correct English for this would be "I couldn't care less".

I once came across a website whose author (an American) apparently held, as one of his life's ambitions, the objective of "translating" the works of Shakespeare into his version of modern colloquial American. That would seem to be about as useful as translating them into French, or (say) translating a program from FORTRAN to BASIC for the heck of it.

I say this based on the experience of my education at a Welsh grammar school, where we were introduced to Shakespeare and Chaucer by the age of 12. At that point, we had to study their texts in the original Medieval/Old English they were written in, so that we could converse relatively fluently in the colloquial English of their era. We were also taught and had to be fluent in modern English and Welsh, with modern French as an extra language where we had to be able to read Les Misérables in French (no English translation provided).

So, to me, the idea of "translating" the works of Shakespeare into someone's version of modern colloquial American seemed laughably like an antithesis to, and an unwittingly crass rejection of, the classical education. A seemingly ignorant approach and an indictment of the prevailing educational system that spawned it.

1100

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on April 06, 2017, 08:54 AM »

@MilesAhead: Regarding "motion elements", thanks for trying anyway. Looks like you saw just as confusing a mess as I saw then.

I gather the correct expression was/is:

"If the mountain won't come to Muhammad then Muhammad must go to the mountain."

- and has to do with not being able to always get one's way in life, when things may be, quite literally, immovable, so one has to compromise.
- possibly from a Turkish proverb?