decision-making
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In addition to the traditionalist-conservative view covered last time, the other anti-Enlightenment school the course explores is contemporary communitarianism. While Burke and Devlin appealed to tradition as the basis for our values, communitarians appeal to the community-accepted values as the basis for what should guide us. Communitarian Richard Rorty criticizes the Enlightenment endeavor of justifying philosophy from the ground up from...more
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A mortgage involves making a promise, backing it with collateral, and defining a way to dissolve the promise at prearranged terms in case you want to end it by prepaying. The option to prepay, the refinancing option, makes the mortgage much more complicated than a coupon bond, and therefore something that a hedge fund could make money trading. In this lecture we discuss how to build and calibrate a model to forecast prepayments in order to...more
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The historian Daniel Boorstin famously defined a celebrity as "a person who is well-known for his well-knownness." A person who is famous for simply being famous is hardly a modern phenomenon. On the publication of Childe Harold, Byron declared that he went to bed and woke up famous. However, Byron was a poet and subsequent celebrities generally had proven talent as well as the knack of achieving an exalted social status based on fame al...more
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May 30, 2008 lecture by Hiroshi Ishii for the Stanford University Human Computer Interaction Seminar (CS547). Tangible Bits seeks to realize seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment by giving physical form to digital information, making bits directly manipulable and perceptible. Their goal is to invent new design media for artistic expression as well as for scientific analysis, taking advantage...more
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The global AIDS pandemic furnishes a case study for many of the themes addressed throughout the course. While in the developed West the disease largely afflicts concentrated high-risk groups such as intravenous drug users and the sexually promiscuous, in Southern Africa it is much more a generalized disease of poverty. In countries such as Botswana and Swaziland, the economic and social consequences of the disease have created a vicious ci...more
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Estrin talks about the personal connectivity cycle. The cycle of connecting people is the notion of people being able to connect to each other and connect to information anywhere. This means true mobility and ubiquitous, high bandwidth connectivity, she says. The enablers of this cycle are economic and behavioral. From an IT demand perspective, she explains, the real win is in the consumer devices and services and not in the IT infrastruct...more
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Bush and 9/11 Put AIDS on the Back Burner - And a New Social Venture is Born
Stanford / Entrepreneurship
Francis talks about how after 9/11, the government became interested in vaccines. Vaxgen shifted to making a small pox vaccine and an anthrax vaccine and has been very successful in these pursuits. Unfortunately, AIDS was not named as an immediate concern and was but on the back burner. Due to the unwillingness of both the government and private businesses to provide funding, Francis has now decided that the AIDS vaccine cannot be develo...more
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May 2, 2008 lecture by Krzysztof Gajos for the Stanford University Human Computer Interaction Seminar (CS547). User Interfaces delivered with today's software are usually created in a one-size-fits-all manner, making implicit assumptions about the needs, abilities, and preferences of the "average user" and the characteristics of the "average device." Krzysztof Gajos argues that personalized user interfaces, which are adapted to a persons ...more
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The bubonic plague is the measure by which succeeding epidemics have long been measured. Its extreme virulence, horrible symptoms, and indiscriminate victim profile all contributed to making plague the archetypical worst-case scenario. For these same reasons, the plague is also an ideal test case for the thesis that epidemic diseases play a major role in shaping human history. Over the course of its three pandemics, the plague had major ec...more
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Google Analytics' Group Product Marketing Manager Brett Crosby recalls how two brutal blows to his enterprise - losing a huge client in the 11th hour and the tragedy of 9/11 - forced him to reevaluate and streamline. Offices closed, jobs were cut, and salaries were strapped for maximum efficiency. Having the wind knocked out of them also simplified overblown contracts and software, and switched their strategy from making money to market ...more
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Loss of sensory or behavioural functions as a result of brain damage or dysfunction can clearly have a significant negative impact on quality of life. What progress are we making towards repairing damaged brains and sense organs and treating mental disorders? This lecture will consider what therapeutic promise is currently offered by pharamacological, brain stimulation, brain training, neuroprosthetic (connecting artificial sensors to...more
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eBay is in 28 countries and the company is looking into cost effective ways to enter new markets, says Reedy. PayPal will attack Europe next year. Typically, eBay, being global, can enter new countries easily; in the case of PayPal it will take more effort. When making an acquisition eBay lets the business strategy define the process or platform. Over time they look for ways to move the country onto the platform as long as it does not put ...more
