Kevin Marks has a very nice post relating the theme of power laws, much cited here as a model for attention distribution, to the motions of the financial markets. He also cites the work of Nasim Taleb, who has made a business of trading on infrequent, severe downside events. I've previously mentioned that I admire Taleb's book. It's an elaboration of the thesis which is pretty well described in the web page, but with intellectual romps and wanderings that are worth the money. I notice that its Amazon sales rank is just over 500 right now, so it's definitely got some word of mouth. Took me parts of two evenings to consume. I recommend a good single malt Scotch as accompaniment.
5:05:21 PM    

Keep an eye on this set of proposed EU directives re Internet privacy practices. It's grown beyond the domain of spam into cookies, location information, and some more. Good luck with the enforcement.
10:11:01 AM    

A European pollster studies public knowledge of the term 'WiFi hotpot', on commission from Packard-Bell (they still exist !?). The results are both humbling and amusing - apparently someone with a good sense of humor wrote the questionnaire. The choice " having trouble with the wife" seems to evoke entirely new ranges of product possibilities....

Hat tip to Xeni @ BoingBoing
9:55:28 AM    

1. You can always see them coming.
2. They never get it right the first time.
3. They never go away (unless the market is proven not to exist).

9:47:57 AM