stock markets and 9/11

Stumbled upon a very interesting piece of news today.....
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/august2007/270807_market_crash.htm.
Allegedly someone is betting a lot of money (almost a billion USD) on a stock market crash within the next month. A more interesting bit of information from the article was that similar activities were observed a few days before 9/11.

I'm not sure of the authenticity of any of these information. They might just be another angle to 9/11 conspiracy theories. But sure enough, makes for interesting reading.

recursion....... with photoshop

Woman spotted yesterday reading today's paper.

Need for speed..... in Paris.

Source: http://ironruby.org/traceway.html

"On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris.

No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit."

Visit the original page for a neat video+maps mashup.

Confident of your software?

20 CEOs board an airplane and are told that the flight they are about to take is the first-ever to feature pilotless technology. It is an uncrewed aircraft. Each one of the CEO’s is then told, privately, that their company’s software is running the aircraft’s automatic pilot system. Nineteen of the CEOs promptly leave the aircraft, each offering a different type of excuse.

One CEO alone remains on board the jet, seeming very calm indeed. Asked why he is so confident in this first uncrewed flight, he replies : “If it is the same software that runs my company’s IT systems, this plane won’t even take off.” !!!!

That is called Confidence!!!

Source: http://www.fortunewatch.com/category/humor/

don't mess with grandma

awesome photo

Google local referral

http://www.google.com/services/local-business-referrals/about.html
Just read about google's local business referral scheme. Its a brilliant marketing idea. The idea is to get the public to contribute information to their database and the public get paid for it. The beauty of it is, Google, now has access to information that wasn't previously on the internet... essentially they are creating content on the web. Of course, Google will try to sell AdWords to all the shops and increase their customer base and, thereby add to their already overflowing bank account. Obviously somebody has done the math and figured out that a one time payment of 10$ per business can still make the whole thing profitable. This whole exercise goes to show the power of money and "it takes money to make more money".

The Monty Hall problem

Read this interesting math problem with a very counter-intuitive solution: For full details refer to wikipedia

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

Because there is no way for the player to know which of the two unopened doors is the winning door, many people assume that each door has an equal probability and conclude that switching does not matter. However, as long as the host knows what is behind each door, always opens a door revealing a goat, and always makes the offer to switch, opening a losing door does not change the probability of 1/3 that the car is behind the player's initially chosen door. As there is only one other unopened door, the probability that this door conceals the car must be 2/3.