XPost: rec.arts.comics.strips   
   From: kludge@panix.com   
      
   Cryptoengineer   wrote:   
   >A few years ago we had a guy on here who did that. He claimed he was   
   >about to become rich playing the stock market, using technical   
   >analysis to predict short term changes (ie, he was like most "day   
   >traders").   
      
   Years ago we had an engineer who basically wasted the branch's annual   
   computer budget to buy an SGI Crimson computer in order to run FFTs on   
   Standard and Poors data.  He was convinced he could tease out repeating   
   patterns in the market in isolation with no need to examine external   
   influences.   
      
   >Every example he used to 'prove' it would work involved cherry picked   
   >examples where the result had already occurred. Challenged to predict   
   >an event that hadn't actually happened yet, he failed miserably.   
      
   The good news is that the engineer in my example lost a lot of money and   
   had to sell his boat.  The bad news is that he was not put into jail for   
   misappropriation of funds.  The intermediate news is that it did introduce   
   Matlab to the organization.   
   --scott   
   --   
   "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)