July 2005 Archives

The Optimus Keyboard. I can't wait until this comes out. According to the website: "It will cost less than a good mobile phone."

Found via Metafilter.

I found these weird symbols spray-painted all over Shinjuku. The first one is in 2-chome of Kabukicho, across from the 7-11 near Meiji-doori. The second one is near the Mister Donuts by the entrance to the wooded path between Shinjuku station and Kabukicho via - and I'm not kidding here - "Piss Alley."

What could they mean? Are they some sort of gang symbols? Kabukicho is a major gang area, after all. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Have you heard of FutureMAP?

FutureMAP, or Futures Markets Applied to Prediction (a DARPA project), is a method of creating and applying market-driven distributed intelligence in order to better predict crucial world events. In other words, various experts of many different disciplines all over the world would buy certain events, signaling their taking stock in the probability of those events happening. Each trader naturally has a limited supply of "money," so he has to pick and choose which events are most likely, in his or her opinion. Then, the theory goes, DARPA can analyze what events on what day had the most active trading, which had the highest and lowest prices, etc. to help predict future events. I can't find a whole lot about the project but there's one useful article I found:

IWS - DARPA - The FutureMAP Program

Of particular interest are the application screenshots near the bottom of the page. Some of the sample events include "North Korea Missile Attack" and "Arafat Assassinated."

Congress didn't like the program at all - the project was cancelled very soon after legislators got wind of it. I searched the web for any more opinions about this program and they're similarly overwhelmingly negative. I couldn't determine why people didn't like this program, though. It seems like a tool like this could be extremely useful and effective!

I'd really like to know the inner mechanics of the program. Did the traders use real money, so that there was much greater incentive to do well and apply one's knowledge in the interest of selfishness? If it wasn't money, was it some sort of expendible capital? If a trader did well, was he allowed to reinvest the proceeds into other investments - thus giving over more influence to the best traders? How did DARPA envision using the outputs from the application? Did they run it through a neural network or similar pattern-analysis algorithm?

Of the criticisms that I've seen so far, the only one that's really worrysome is the prospect of market manipulation (discussed very briefly in the above article). In other words, what if a trader, in order to make the most money (or "money"), invested heavily in an event and then caused that event to happen? I think there's certainly an ethical component akin to traditional markets that should be considered. On the other hand, such manipulation certainly wouldn't decrease the efficacy of the prediction ability of the program; in fact, it would greatly increase it, [theoretically] promoting national security! It's a little ethically murky here, isn't it?

What about commercial applications like this? Do any exist? Anyone know anything more about FutureMAP or similar applications?

Heather got back from Hong Kong yesterday at around 5:00. She had a great time. She also had an opportunity to visit Macao while she was there. This area is more off of the beaten track. She's glad she went; she has some really marvelous photos of Chinese-Portuguese architecture. I'm sure she'll put them on her site when she gets time.

Before Heather arrived, I went with some friends to The New Sanno hotel to see a good friend perform. This is a hotel primarily for military men and women, and it makes that clear. Case in point, the official seal of the United States - or something very close to it - is incorporated in some logos representing the hotel.

Our group consisted of four Americans men, a Japanese woman, and a Chinese man. The Americans and Japanese had no problem getting in, but our Chinese friend was questioned for about fifteen minutes. It's really not so bad, and I'm fully aware that this is a measure to promote national security, but I felt bad that he had to be subjected to that. He was really cool about it, though.

Anyway, our friend's playing the piano and singing were great. There was also a big buffet of all sorts of food there, so we went crazy. I went home looking and feeling like an over-inflated balloon.

Measurement Techniques for Game Designers is one of the best articles I've read on game development.