It’s not surprising that Internet-based mechanisms can be found to tap into the wisdom of the masses. What’s surprising is that there’s a way to draw it out so quickly and efficiently. And that it works so well.

IEEE covers prediction markets. Toward the end of the article, they discuss FutureMAP:

FutureMAP quickly ran afoul of public opinion. Members of Congress found it offensive and ghoulish, and they quickly terminated the program.

This statement is immediately followed by a pull-quote:

“Maybe it won’t work this time; maybe the crowd will be stupid”

Bet on It!

Good morning and please listen to me: Denis Johnson is a true American artist, and “Tree of Smoke” is a tremendous book, a strange entertainment, very long but very fast, a great whirly ride that starts out sad and gets sadder and sadder, loops unpredictably out and around, and then lurches down so suddenly at the very end that it will make your stomach flop.

See also coverage in the LA Times, where David Ulin is less effusive, though still impressed:

He's not bad at heart, not exactly; perhaps a more accurate way of putting it is that standard considerations of good and evil do not apply.

This is writing that takes us right up to the edge and, indeed, beyond it, that casts us past the boundaries of ourselves.

The Revelator

Microorganisms such as bacteria enjoy swapping genes, and the trades have made a big difference in how they've evolved. Now new research suggests that bacteria are also easygoing about passing genes on to more complex organisms. The findings have researchers rethinking the prevalence of interspecies gene transfer and its role in evolution; they may also change the way geneticists filter out bacterial "contamination" when they sequence a new genome.

Fukatsu calls the paper "exciting" but questions whether the Wolbachia genes are active because they didn't display any biological function. However, if future experiments confirm that expression really is occurring, he adds that it's an "unprecedented insight" into the process of evolution.

See also coverage in American Scientist.

(Note to authors: Whatever you do, don't write a children's book about this! Microbiology is rated NC-17!)

Bacteria Get Promiscuous

Algorithmic trading in the U.S. futures industry is well past its infancy, with a host of tools available for use in a wide range of markets. Traders and vendors are now increasingly looking for ways to sharpen their edge, either by making their already fast trading engines interact with the market even more rapidly, or by tailoring their algorithms ever more closely to the specific characteristics of individual futures markets. In fact, there are signs that some traders are beginning to design algorithms that prey on other algorithms, or hide their presence from other algorithms behind a flurry of order messages never meant to be executed.

Algorithmic Trading: Seeking an Edge

To elucidate the impact of polarization on the daily lives of U.S. citizens, the research community may need to modify its benchmarks for what constitutes a successful public policy. The authors suggest that we need a better understanding of how polarization affects the quantity and substance of rulemaking, regulations, and judicial decisions. We also need to examine the effects of partisan polarization at the state and local levels of government, how much polarization complicates the conduct of defense and foreign policy, and precisely how polarization affects different policy areas. The publication should be of interest to members of Congress, presidential candidates, civil servants, political scientists, reporters, and stakeholders seeking to influence public policy.

Polarized Politics and Policy Consequences | RAND

Hacker Jeopardy To Become Annual Corporate Training

Well, not really. But maybe something like it. (One can hope ...)

Author and prominent IT security expert Winn Schwartau has formed a nonprofit organization to provide cybersecurity certification programs for end-users.

The nonprofit has satellite offices in Old Hickory, Tenn., Hong Kong and London.

Can someone please explain the logic of a certification program for "self employed end users"? (Who are they trying to impress?)

Email junkies

According to a study, more than a third of office workers suffer from "email stress", with 34% saying they checked their email every 15 minutes.

Monitoring software showed they were seriously underestimating.

This latest study doesn't really show that we get too many emails. What it shows is that we're addicted to checking.

Accounting For Human Error

When the Anna Kournikova virus was spreading wildly in 2001, it infected millions of computers and clogged e-mail servers by offering a racy picture of the teen tennis star to unsuspecting e-mailers. Or, in some cases, not so unsuspecting.

"A big proportion of the infections we saw were coming from people who had actually gone out searching for the virus because they wanted to see Anna Kournikova," says David Perry, global director of education for Trend Micro. "We didn't see this happening two times. We saw it thousands of times."

Today, some security professionals say, enterprise computer users haven't gotten much savvier. Perry says he still sees as many as one in five virus infections coming from users who purposefully infect themselves out of curiosity, just one of the many practices that undermine information technology security with varying combinations of naiveté and carelessness. And as cyber-criminals become more sophisticated and networks more intricately connected, that human element leaves companies vulnerable to data leaks and intrusion in spite of billions spent on electronic

Blogs have realised that old wisecracking twist on an Andy Warhol aphorism: that, someday, everyone will be famous for 15 people.

Blog haters, raging

The last sentence caught my eye:

Software development project failures have become commonplace. With almost daily frequency these failures are reported in newspapers, journal articles, or popular books. These failures are defined in terms of cost and schedule over-runs, project cancellations, and lost opportunities for the organizations that embark on the difficult journey of software development. Rarely do these accounts include perspectives from the software developers that worked on these projects.

This case study provides an in-depth look at software development project failure through the eyes of the software developers. The researcher used structured interviews, project documentation reviews, and survey instruments to gather a rich description of a software development project failure.

The results of the study identify a large gap between how a team of software developers defined project success and the popular definition of project success. This study also revealed that a team of software developers maintained a high-level of job satisfaction despite their failure to meet schedule and cost goals of the organization.

Subscription required for access to full text, but there are at least 4 versions of the paper available.

And here are two versions of a video you're sure to enjoy (again, and again, and again):

Software developer perceptions about software project failure

Claims that homeownership is beneficial to both owners and society have not been examined empirically. This article explores evidence from the General Social Survey and the National Survey of Families and Households, supple­mented by data from the American National Election Studies and several small but highly relevant researches, to determine whether owners and renters differ in a variety of ways.

Strong differences in demographics were found. Small differences were found in some respects: Owners tended to be higher in life satisfaction and self­ esteem and more likely to be members of community improvement groups. On a wide variety of social issues---from political partisanship to ethnocentric views---owners and renters were essentially alike. Thus, it appears that the claims for some social and individual benefits from homeownership are supported, but only weakly. Recognizing that the exploratory analyses pre­sented are not definitive, several strategies for more definitive future research are recommended.

The Social Benefits of Homeownership: Empirical Evidence

Echochrome is a videogame adaptation of the drawings of MC Escher. When it's released for the PlayStation Portable later this year, you'll be taking care of a tireless little marionette as he trudges through a series of paradoxical staircases and impossible corridors. At the end of the last level, the camera will no doubt zoom in on the marionette's hands and you'll realise that he is actually playing you.

Although Echochrome looks like it might be one of the most infuriating games ever devised, it does make you wonder why more video games don't plunder the world of visual arts.

This news is a few months old now. The game won't be out until March 2008, according to reports. See the trailer from E3 and other videos.

Echochrome