Once a ravine, now a ditch

I also discovered that Enron experimented with trading in weather and I’m not sure what they did, but its reminiscent of some ideas expressed in James Surowiecki’s “Wisdom of Crowds” where he explored the remarkable prescience of the University of Iowa’s Electronic Markets for the prediction of political events, most obviously elections but also other political futures. I read somewhere, during the last general election, that the most effective forecast for the result was the bookmaker’s odds, this must be very disappointing to the polling organisations, but it seems a financial interest sharpens the mind.  …

A visit to the Sun Labs open day(s)

My reason for being in Ca, is to visit the Sun Labs Open House. The day was opened by Bob Sproull, the Labs Director and Greg Papadopolous, Sun’s EVP for R&D and CTO. They both spoke about the goals and accountability of Sun Labs. They look to create new technologies, improve our current technologies or occasionally improve Sun. They are beginning to look at Sun Labs with a venturer’s view and no longer measure the output of white papers, books and conference speeches. Greg Popadopolous said, “these things are better done in Universities”. After the speeches I wandered over to the main building and …