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yes. Spirit will rove farther than Opportunity.

I find it funny that companies that are paid big money to forecast the future are so often wrong.

However, there are virtual stock markets where people predict the future in regards to news, sports, movies, etc. More often than not, these are correct.

http://www.ideosphere.com/
http://www.hsx.com/
http://blogshares.com/
http://us.newsfutures.com/

You can try your skill at predicting the release date of the XBox

All have hard drive?

All use Blue Ray DVD?

Home entertaininment capability (MythTv like)?

All run Linux?

DRM-disabled, I mean enabled?

Which one out first?

Which one has highest first year sales?

Real name of X-Box next?

X-Box ignored in Japan?

New console manufacturer enters market by 2010?

Existing manufacturer leaves market by 2010?

At least one manufacturer sued by SCO? Place your bets before the window closes!

Predictive markets is actually a pretty interesting passtime. Take a look at Newsfutures, which is currently indicating that Google has a 27% chance of being worth at least $25 billion It's a great game, and doesn't use real money. (and for them, it's a great market research tool)

The jist of the theory is, a panel of experts would make a educated "bet" based soley on intuition, and the average of their guesses usually came up with "close" answers. That is what these two project are hoping to achieve, a cummulative, and perdictive, "best guess".

...and, the more participants you have, the more accurate the consensus is likely to be. While newsfutures has ~12,000 registered (but not necessarily active) users, the sports betting industry is huge.

I tested this in the sports section of newsfutures.com.. Hypothesis: in general, the Vegas lines will be more accurate than the "going rate" on newsfutures. Fast-forward a year or so, and I reached as high as #7 in the rankings and never fell out of the top 20 thereafter. (Note: I turned the initial $10,000 into $4 million using this simple concept)

On a side note, is picking games in today's NFL any more scientific than finding a lost submarine? :)

The jist of the theory is, a panel of experts would make a educated "bet" based soley on intuition, and the average of their guesses usually came up with "close" answers. That is what these two project are hoping to achieve, a cummulative, and perdictive, "best guess".

...and, the more participants you have, the more accurate the consensus is likely to be. While newsfutures has ~12,000 registered (but not necessarily active) users, the sports betting industry is huge.

I tested this in the sports section of newsfutures.com.. Hypothesis: in general, the Vegas lines will be more accurate than the "going rate" on newsfutures. Fast-forward a year or so, and I reached as high as #7 in the rankings and never fell out of the top 20 thereafter. (Note: I turned the initial $10,000 into $4 million using this simple concept)

On a side note, is picking games in today's NFL any more scientific than finding a lost submarine? :)

Seemed like the whole system was developed by MIT students and/or faculty, but it was not.

Ok, I started on this page, which was linked in the story. I found this link, which is presented as a link to registration in the section labeled "How can I get x$ to start playing?". Interestingly, this link is to an outside domain, nf4.newsfutures.com. More interestingly, nf4.newsfutures.com presents a self-issued SSL certificate with a common name of www.snakeoil.dom and issuing CA of Snake Oil CA.

Ok, so I start to think this is all an elaborate hoax. However, when I click through the link at the top of the left-side navigation bar labeled Trading Account(s), I get sent to a Technology Review registration page, after which I am asked for a trading name in order to setup a trading account. It appears that it is not a hox after all.

So WTF is this link to nf4.newsfutures.com? It's obviously not a placeholder, as it points to an existing domain with a joke certificate. I don't get it.

This is already being done.

The second is the Registered Traveler ID.
I wonder how this will affect the market over at newsfutures.com where you can buy and sell futures on real life events, like whether there will be a national "Registered Travelers" system in place by 4/1/03.