Slashdot Mirror

Cringley may show up.

Basically it is an idea stock market. When you become a member, you receive a small amount of fake investment money. You can then buy and sell against ideas posted by other members. The premise is the the closer an idea is to being true/possible, the higher its value will be in the market. Ideas do have adjudicators who are responsible for judging when and if a stock has met its criteria and can be pulled off the exchange.

Here is an example of the top 10 traded ideas on Foresight Exchange now:

Rank Volume % Symbol Short Description

1 26234 83.4% T2007 True on Jan 1 2007

2 1034 3.3% BBRP Bal Bdgt 2002 w/2000 GOP Pres

3 803 2.6% USIraq US attacks Iraq in a year.

4 437 1.4% HURR02 Atlantic Tropical Storms 2002

5 371 1.2% ObL1yr Osama bin Laden 1 year after

6 275 0.9% $bill U.S. Prints New Dollar Bill

7 222 0.7% SCHRDR Schröder Remains Chancelor

8 193 0.6% Clone Human Clone before 2005

9 160 0.5% King Prince Charles remains heir

10 154 0.5% SLvl 1 m rise in Sea Level

Sorry, blew that first link -- it's Ideosphere

According to the current price on Ideosphere, the X-prize will be won around Feb 2005. See the XPRIZE claim for the full bidding history.

I personally think Feb 2005 is way optimistic, especially given the reusability requirement: the same craft must fly twice in a 14-day period. A private effort to get a single manned launch is tough enough -- 14 days to test, re-prep, and relaunch? Even NASA would have a tough time.

try the foresight exchange to make money off your predictions.

MICROSOFT:
Here's one.

APPLE:
I'm not dead!

CART MASTER:
'Ere. He says he's not dead!

MICROSOFT:
Yes, he is.

APPLE:
I'm not! I had a 40 million dollar profit last quarter!

CART MASTER:
He isn't?

MICROSOFT:
Well, he will be soon. He's very ill.

APPLE:
I'm getting better!

MICROSOFT:
No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment.

To see the original: Bring out your dead.

Seriously, I think I made a bad bet.

Hypersonic air cargo systems are unlikely to beat reuseable suborbital cargo systems such as those that have been proposed by Bob Truax.

See Idea Futures claim symbol "Sorb" for details.

PS: The same probably applies to passenger transport, despite the high accellerations at the ends of potentially nausea-inducing zero-G travel.

The odds of a Nuclear weapon being used by 2010 are about 45% and an armed conflict between US and China by 2010 are about 34% according to Ideosphere, a reputational betting pool.

The odds of a Nuclear weapon being used by 2010 are about 45% and an armed conflict between US and China by 2010 are about 34% according to Ideosphere, a reputational betting pool.

The odds of a Nuclear weapon being used by 2010 are about 45% and an armed conflict between US and China by 2010 are about 34% according to Ideosphere, a reputational betting pool.

Foresight Exchange is an online "stock market" game in which players trade claims about what might happen in the future (who becomes the next U.S. president, how long Apple Computer will survive, etc.) Participants compete with play money. The 2GHz claim currently predicts a 2GHz CPU by Oct. 2001.

Foresight Exchange is an online "stock market" game in which players trade claims about what might happen in the future (who becomes the next U.S. president, how long Apple Computer will survive, etc.) Participants compete with play money. The 2GHz claim currently predicts a 2GHz CPU by Oct. 2001.

In August of 1998, while at the first open source conference, I briefly talked with Tim O'Reilly about approaching Paul Allen's Interval Research concerning open source strategies. I had a few well placed contacts at Interval and I figured if Linus would go work for Allen, maybe it was appropriate that Allen's think tank get in the act. However, it turned out that my contact with Joe was more important than my contact with Interval.

Joe Ellsworth's foresignt at HP turned out to be critical to HP's participation with open source -- something I think he should have received more credit for initiating. Joe knew it would be very difficult if not impossible to get Idea Futures set up as an executive decision support system within HP, so predictions like my (his) LibmUX claim weren't enough to establish priority for open source ideas within HP.

Nevertheless, we did discuss the idea of setting up prize awards for achievement of various open source objectives and after the first open source conference, Joe took that idea and ran with it within HP management, as well as contacting O'Reilly. The end result of his effort was a meeting with representatives of O'Reilly Associates on the same day that I departed for Russia. In fact, I walked Joe to the first meeting with Brian Behlendorf on my way out to catch Aeroflot. Joe thought he had convinced key managers of the HP-UX division to put up almost $10 million in a variety of open source awards that would have systematically converted all of HP-UX's administrative utilities to Linux as a way of channeling the growing base of Apache servers into the HP family of large servers. It was a great positive sum vision that I still think would have worked. In fact, I was convinced enough of its merit that I was traveling to Russia, on my own nickle, to discover what the impediments might be from the perspective of the Russian Academy of Sciences, to distributing prize awards in Russia for open source projects should HP actually come through with some major award money. The RAS desperately needed (and still needs) hard cash for their programming teams. That meeting with O'Reilly went well and my meeting with the RAS folks got their interest up and exposed some of the pragmatics of distributing such prize awards in Russia.

Fortunately, I presented the Russians with a lot of caveats, knowing how often they have been let down by Americans before. I say "fortunately" because support within HP with O'Reilly quickly went a fairly different direction than Joe (or I) had envisioned. For some reason, HP decided not to fund prizes for the massive translation of HP-UX utilities to Linux, and what money was available for prize awards was limited to US participants. Also, for some reason, Joe was not kept as the lead representative in the relationship with O'Reilly Associates and the rules governing the Open Awards program were substantially altered from the original internal white paper on the concept.

I don't know the status of all of this, lo these 2 years later, but its pretty clear to me the entire open source community could benefit from a way to set up objective prize awards, with provision for second and third place contenders. That way programming teams in developing (or recovering) economies can eat and (in the case of Russia) keep from freezing in the winter as they bring their manifest skills to bear on open source.

In August of 1998, while at the first open source conference, I briefly talked with Tim O'Reilly about approaching Paul Allen's Interval Research concerning open source strategies. I had a few well placed contacts at Interval and I figured if Linus would go work for Allen, maybe it was appropriate that Allen's think tank get in the act. However, it turned out that my contact with Joe was more important than my contact with Interval.

Joe Ellsworth's foresignt at HP turned out to be critical to HP's participation with open source -- something I think he should have received more credit for initiating. Joe knew it would be very difficult if not impossible to get Idea Futures set up as an executive decision support system within HP, so predictions like my (his) LibmUX claim weren't enough to establish priority for open source ideas within HP.

Nevertheless, we did discuss the idea of setting up prize awards for achievement of various open source objectives and after the first open source conference, Joe took that idea and ran with it within HP management, as well as contacting O'Reilly. The end result of his effort was a meeting with representatives of O'Reilly Associates on the same day that I departed for Russia. In fact, I walked Joe to the first meeting with Brian Behlendorf on my way out to catch Aeroflot. Joe thought he had convinced key managers of the HP-UX division to put up almost $10 million in a variety of open source awards that would have systematically converted all of HP-UX's administrative utilities to Linux as a way of channeling the growing base of Apache servers into the HP family of large servers. It was a great positive sum vision that I still think would have worked. In fact, I was convinced enough of its merit that I was traveling to Russia, on my own nickle, to discover what the impediments might be from the perspective of the Russian Academy of Sciences, to distributing prize awards in Russia for open source projects should HP actually come through with some major award money. The RAS desperately needed (and still needs) hard cash for their programming teams. That meeting with O'Reilly went well and my meeting with the RAS folks got their interest up and exposed some of the pragmatics of distributing such prize awards in Russia.

Fortunately, I presented the Russians with a lot of caveats, knowing how often they have been let down by Americans before. I say "fortunately" because support within HP with O'Reilly quickly went a fairly different direction than Joe (or I) had envisioned. For some reason, HP decided not to fund prizes for the massive translation of HP-UX utilities to Linux, and what money was available for prize awards was limited to US participants. Also, for some reason, Joe was not kept as the lead representative in the relationship with O'Reilly Associates and the rules governing the Open Awards program were substantially altered from the original internal white paper on the concept.

I don't know the status of all of this, lo these 2 years later, but its pretty clear to me the entire open source community could benefit from a way to set up objective prize awards, with provision for second and third place contenders. That way programming teams in developing (or recovering) economies can eat and (in the case of Russia) keep from freezing in the winter as they bring their manifest skills to bear on open source.

I think the real question here: What would it take to improve the odds of private space development happening in a significant way? What are the kind of events that could lead up to creation of a real frontier in space? I would sincerely appreciate if some folks would participate in creating some more space claims on Ideosphere. This tool isn't perfect, but it is a reasonable pass at giving folks a realistic idea of the odds of uncertain events. I'd be happy to help judge these claims and help write them if necessary(my e-mail is randall_burns@hotmail.com).

I think the real question here: What would it take to improve the odds of private space development happening in a significant way? What are the kind of events that could lead up to creation of a real frontier in space? I would sincerely appreciate if some folks would participate in creating some more space claims on Ideosphere. This tool isn't perfect, but it is a reasonable pass at giving folks a realistic idea of the odds of uncertain events. I'd be happy to help judge these claims and help write them if necessary(my e-mail is randall_burns@hotmail.com).

When is Slashdot going to make its archives accessible?

Perhaps an Idea Futures claim may be in order that says "Deja, Inc. will make its full archives accessible sooner than will Slashdot." It sure would be nice to be able to write a present day article and link back to comments/articles in the Slashdot archives.

Over a year ago there was a post on Slashdot about the origin of Deja News and its plausible connection to the NSA. That post is no longer accessible via the web. Deja, Inc., having started in the "Echelon II" building within walking distance of top NSA spook Bobby Ray Inman's MCC and its linguistic data mining spin-off Cycorp in Austin is a story to which comments in this article might like to link if we are to discuss the value of the 1981 Usenet archive in context of the larger problem it is trying to solve:

How to decentralize control of history.

Check out the claim here.

Check out the claim here.

As someone who has fielded around 100,000 lines of Perl, among the many "Real Soon Now" options for cross-platform web software development, I side with the strategy exemplified by Tibet 's approach to cross-browser compatiblity.

The difficulty of writing an application that will run on a variety of web browsers is already a primary challenge of software development. Adding more languages to the mix will only make things worse. Adding the relatively static Java to the dynamic Self-like Javascript was one of the biggest mistakes in the short history of the web (one for which Steve Jobs must accept a lot of the blame, but that is another story). By biasing toward installed language multiplicity rather than downloaded compatability-layer consistency, Komodo is in danger of becoming another, albiet lesser, mistake. IE isn't going to relinquish its dominance for a long time to come, not even with the US Federal Goverment fighting it.

IMNSHO, on the strength of environments like Tibet, demand for programmers of Javascript will beat Java "real soon now".

Watch this site for developments.

Want to bet? Take it to The Foresight Exchange.

Idea Futures Exchange is one good place.

I made that claim after a conversation with an employee of one of the industry giants who had a Linux business plan he was pushing back in early 1998. Rather than being vindicated and being given a position with strategic planning, this employee's plan was not only ignored, but he is now being edged out.

PS: While I was off by about 10% on the exact date of shipment, when I first proposed the above linked claim on Idea Futures (months in advance of the Forbes magazine article on open source), the very idea was considered so preposterous that I had trouble even getting anyone to offer to act as judge it.

I know an employee at one of the non-IBM companies mentioned above, I won't say which, who had a Linux business plan he was pushing within the company.

In July of 1998, as a result of a conversation with him, I posted a claim on Idea Futures Exchange predicting that IBM would come out with a web server by July of 1999. This was before Forbes magazine had their cover story about open source. At the time I posted the claim I had trouble even getting anyone to take it seriously enough to volunteer to judge it.

This major industry player failed to heed their own internal prophet but worse, rather than giving him authority in strategic planning however belatedly, he has now been edged out of the company entirely.

PS: Although my date for actual shipment was off slightly, IBM did announce they were coming out with a Linux-based web server in March of 1999 and actually came out with one shortly after July of 1999.

However, you are correct that I place a high value on honor and believe single combat has an appropriate place in some human societies (not ones like the present politically driven civilization -- it would be akin to unleashing nuclear holocaust). Further, you are also correct that I would probably get along with our great great grandfathers better than you. Call me "old fashioned." My attitude toward single combat is pretty close to that available from ISBN 0-914752-18-9 "Valoric Fire and a Working Plan for Individual Sovereignty" by the Valorian Society near page 93.

But it is certainly interesting that among the more honorable societies remaining, such as the insular Japan and Finland, suicide of CEO's is common place -- and those societies do seem to contribute more than their fair share of technology to the world.

Among many other cultures perhaps Idea futures are a better option.

On the other hand, maybe there's a better way. Perhaps we might rest, for a precious few femtoseconds, and consider that there is more to prediction than pontification -- that testable, quantifiable hypotheses are the cornerstone of the age of enlightenment. Perhaps we should, therefore consider putting our credibility where our keyboards are.

NNAAHHH

As a first step, I have a grammar-sensitive JavaScript compressor which I'm releasing into open source.

Since the Kasparov v. World game has several fundamental flaws (Windows only voting, insecure balloting, champion directed moves, arbitrary ballot disqualification, etc), this game should be considered moot.

I doubt Kasparov will be lured into another one of these games. Instead, it would be a much more interesting proposition to have a World v. World match to investigate the Many_Minds_Cooperating = Greater_Intelligence proposition.

Suggestions for a World v. World match:
- Give each participant a unique registered voter ID
- Set up a move market exchange instead of pure voting for moves, ala the Foresight Idea Exchange
- Do not allow mixing between sides. Market exchange is split into two seperate exchanges.
- Restrict players to only one side. No spying. (Q: how to implement to eliminate spying and sandbagging? This is a problem analogous to secure credit-card transactions, only worse.)
- Have GrandMasters do a postmortem analysis of the game, but no live analysis of moves.


IV

This is a fundamental ethical question of the modern era.

Before answering a sardonic "yes", thereby demonstrating how sophisticated you are in your own eyes, consider this:

Have you demanded that guys like Katz, Clarke, Sterling, etc. put their credibility where their mouth is?

If not, perhaps this is because you are a superman of the post-Nietzsche era -- and therefore you abide civilization's replacement of the heathen "might makes right" with the literati's "sophistry makes right". But are you really that much of a wise guy?

There is a reason false prophets were stoned:

There wasn't any other way to hold them accountable for the damage they did to gullible people.

So if you aren't entirely certain you can con the con artists, perhaps you should consider insisting, rather relentlessly, that these inspirational futurists put something on the line other than their promiscuous words.

For instance, has Katz ever made odds on the viability of the Princeton Tokamak?

If there had been bets placed on the viability of geosynchronous satellites back in the 1940's would the odds have been as biased against Clarke's predictions as his fans would lead us to believe?

And what ever happened to HAL, Art?

Guys like Alvin Toffler will continue to publish wave after wave of best-selling bogus prophecy while NCAR continues to spend our money running the same old models on bigger and bigger machines. Consequently, I'm sure they are highly appreciative when folks insult systems that "put your credibility where your mouth is" like weather futures or Idea Futures.

And don't even get me started on The Digerati.

/me rushes to Foresight Exchange to check the ticker for activity on claim Neut....

What happens when religion collides with reality?