Posts Tagged ‘Bets’
The Bing operating system: Microsoft bets on deep search integration to beat Google
Author: Dave Adams
“A massive transformation of search as a product is playing out in very profound ways,” says Microsoft’s Bing chief, Qi Lu. Speaking at TechForum last week, the unassuming president of Microsoft’s search efforts revealed a new approach Redmond is betting on to compete against Google. “As we build our product, we’re converting the Bing technology stack into an information platform,” says Lu. This new platform can then be embedded into any devices and services, pushing Bing directly into Microsoft’s products.
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Place Your Bets (Oh Wait, You Can’t)
Author: Markus Smith
Why can't we bet on whatever we want? The death of the most infamous predictions market in the U.S.
Source: shutterstock.com
The future: let’s bet on it! There are so many ways to pretend you have a crystal ball and then put money on your misty prognostications. Wall Street. Prediction markets. Office pools. Vegas.
In this week's New Yorker, James Surowiecki argues in favor of legalized sports betting, which is now permitted in only four states (Nevada, Delaware, Oregon, and Montana). New Jersey voters approved an amendment in 2011 to make sports betting legal, and the DOJ, the NCAA and the four pro sports leagues have taken to the courts to stop them. He writes:
Of course, politicians are also responding to the influence of the major professional sports leagues. The leagues insist that legalized betting will make people suspect that games are fixed, thus harming their brands. Yet in Vegas billions are wagered legally on sports every year, apparently without ill effect, and legal sports betting in Great Britain doesn't seem to dim anyone's passion for Premier League soccer. Moreover, as Drazin said to me, betting is already an integral part of sports in the U.S.: “If gambling is really hurting the leagues, why does every sports show talk about point spreads and favorites and underdogs? And why does every office in America have a pool on the N.C.A.A. tournament?”
In Surowiecki's 2004 bestseller, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, he offers a primer on behavioral economics and game theory that draws on gambling, Wall Street and other large crowdsourced systems to develop the idea that crowdsourcing information results in high predictive successes.
The potential pitfalls of giving this idea too much credence were evident during the last presidential election, in the provocative tale of the London traders who made a small killing off the unwarranted hopes (or, possibly, the bought-and-paid-for shenanigans) of Republicans in our recent Presidential election, during the course of which free money was handed out for a number of weeks in the commercial prediction markets. Yes! Real live cash dollars. That is because a rock-solid riskless profit opportunity (“arbitrage” in Wall Street lingo) mysteriously emerged in the form of a discrepancy in the odds on the U.S. presidential election between the UK-only prediction markets (e.g. Betfair and Pinnacle), and Intrade, the Dublin-based market which until very recently also operated in the U.S.
As the elections approached, forums all over the Internet lit up with discussion as to how best to exploit this inexplicable opportunity, which worked like this:
Question for gambling experts
[...] So here is my strategy: Sell $ 1,000 against Obama on Betfair, and immediately hedge the potential payout by buying $ 1440 worth of Obama contracts at the price of $ 1440*0.635 = $ 914.40 So, right now, I pocket $ 1,000-$ 914.40 = $ 85.60 I also know Betfair takes 5% of the profits, while Intrade charges a very small fixed monthly fee, but no profit cuts (I think it's $ 20, but I'll consider it a sunk cost of being on Intrade, and probably trading like crazy). If Obama wins: I make loss with Betfair (so no payment to them), and I pay the Betfair counterparty with my $ 1440 I won on Intrade. I keep the 85.60 I made today.
If Romney wins: I make $ 1,000 profit with Betfair, they take 5% ($ 50), I am thus left with $ 85.60-$ 50 = $ 35.60. Either way, I make a pretax return between 8.56% (if Obama wins) and 3.56% (if Romney wins) – risk free, instantaneously. With the possibility of repeating, until [the] prices converge. Even if I have to keep my money deposited, that market will close very soon, with elections one week away.
In other words, because there was a spread between Intrade's odds on Obama (around 65 percent to win) and those offered by the far larger UK sites (Betfair consistently hovered around 75 percent), it was possible to arrange for a small but guaranteed return. Clearly, this guy should be running a hedge fund.
As it happens, however, Americans will no longer be allowed easy pickings such as these, because Intrade closed up shop here on December 23, 2012. This was in response to a lawsuit filed by U.S. regulatory authorities, a move some have attributed to political motivations.
On Nov. 26, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (yes, the same U.S. government agency that failed to regulate the market in exotic credit derivatives) filed a suit against Intrade to enjoin it from further activity in the U.S. Bloomberg Businessweek reported that some 10,000 American punters would henceforth be unable to make (or lose) real simoleons betting on election outcomes, Oscar winners and so on, though the action in the UK will remain unaffected (with Argo heavily tipped to win Best Picture at current odds).
John Forelli, a vice presicent at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City NJ demonstrates a new in-room gambling system Monday Feb. 11, 2013 in Atlantic City. The system will be available to guests starting Feb. 18. The casino says it is the first in the nation to offer this technology, which is says can be expanded to encompass hand-held gambling devices and even Internet betting once it is legalized.
Image by Wayne Parry / AP
What, you may ask, is the harm in betting on any old thing you like? In England they can pretty much bet on whether or not your toast will land buttered-side down. Are they the crazy ones, or are we?
The history of “novelty” or “proposition” betting in the U.S. has been a vexed one, despite the recent passage of laws intended to relax restrictions against it. Unlike ordinary bets on games of chance or sporting events, which have had fixed regulations in place for about forever, betting on the outcomes of dog shows or celebrity pregnancies is vulnerable to the participation of those in possession of inside information. How to ensure that the interests of fairness will prevail? In 1980, for example, the Castaways casino offered odds on the outcome of the popular TV show Dallas. But it quickly emerged that altogether too many people knew Who had Shot J.R., and were not unwilling to profit by their knowledge; the Nevada Gaming Control Board intervened, and all stakes had to be refunded. Difficulties like these have generally meant that spoilsport gaming control boards charged with regulating gambling have turned down attempt after attempt to book such bets.
According to vegasinc.com, the last legal novelty wager in the U.S. was placed in 1979, when the onetime El Cortez casino took bets on where bits of the Skylab satellite would crash to earth (the eventual winner, Australia, paid out at 30-1.)
If insider betting is an issue with the gaming regulators, betting on politics complicates matters still further — there’s the potential for corruption, the weight of ideological imperatives and so on. (If you're interested in the details regarding betting on elections, Paul W. Rhode of the Univ. of Arizona and NBER and Koleman S. Strumpf of the Univ. of Kansas School of Business wrote a most fascinating paper, “Manipulating Political Stock Markets” analyzing a century's worth of data on this subject. It turns out that you could make legal bets on Presidental elections right on Wall Street between 1880 and 1944. Who knew?)
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Europe Bets EUR1BN And 10 Years On “Marvel Product” Graphene As A Silicon Replacement
Author: Randy Miller
A graphene research effort has been selected by the European Commission as one of two champions of its Future and Arising Technologies (FET) multi-billion euro research excellence award competition. Each job will get EUR1 billionto fund 10 years of research “ at the crossroads of science and technology ” — the greatest research grant ever before awarded by the Commission. The second champion of the FET award is a task that aims to establish a model of the human brain. The Graphene project will “ investigate and exploit the unique properties of an innovative
carbon-based product ” — checking out the physical and chemical properties of a material that is simply one-atom thick; carries out electrical power much better than copper; is 100 to 300 times more powerful than steel; and has “ special optical homes ”. Analysts have currently been considering how graphene might enhance battery capability and discovering its water-repelling
properties. But the EC is wagering on graphene coming to be “ the wonder material of the 21st century ” — replacing silicon in ICT items and coming to be as important as plastics were to the 20th century: Graphene: this product plannings to come to beas important as steel or plastics in the long-term. Research on graphene is an instance of an emerging translational nanotechnology where discoveries in scholastic laboratories are rapidly transferred to applications and commercial items. Graphene and related materials have the capacity to make a profound impact in ICT in the short and long term: integrating graphene components with silicon-based electronic devices, and slowly replacing silicon or making it possible for totally brand-new applications. Beyond ICT, graphene research will substantially impact energy and transportation, as well as wellness. The Graphene FET flagship task will be led by Professor Jari Kinaret, from Sweden ’ s Chalmers College, and will include more than 100 research teams, with 136 primary detectives, consisting of four Nobel laureates. The consortium of research partners also includes industry members from a variety of sectors. One industry partner in the graphene consortium, mobile maker Nokia, said it is “ flying the flag for the electronic devices corner, along with the mobile one, with practical dreams of enhancing the sector ”.
Writing on the Nokia Conversations blog site, Henry Tirri, EVP, CTO of Nokia, stated the brand began investigating graphene in 2006, including: “ Ever since, we have pertained to determine multiple areas where this product could be applied in modern-day computing environments. We’ve done some extremely promising work so far, but I believe the best advancements have yet to be found.” Nokia ’ s Tapani Ryhänen, Head of the Sensor and Material Technologies Lab at Nokia, added that graphene ’ s influence will not simply be in the future, through the advancement of brand-new products, but that graphene will be able to enhance existing materials and products in the near term. “We have actually kept our eyes open, and believe that this will bring instant impact to our products over the coming years in some method or another,” he wrote. The 2nd FET competitors winner, called the Human Brain Job, will create the word ’ s biggest experimental center for establishing the most detailed design of the brain. The design will be used to research how the
human brain works — with the utmost aim of establishing personalised treatment of neurological and relevant conditions. The job includes experts from 87 institutions and is led by Teacher Henry Markram of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. The EC said sustained financing for the complete duration of the tasks will come from the EU ’ s research framework programs — principally the Horizon 2020 program, which kicks off next year and is presently having its budget plan negotiated in the European Parliament and Council. The ambitious scope and scale of FET — both in the level of funding however also the length of the research period — was created to raise the level of science in the research tasks, to try for “ higher perks to Europe over the lasting, consisting of new innovations and faster advancement ”, according to the EC. Commenting on the two champions, EC Vice President Neelie Kroes said in a declaration: “ Europe ’ s position as an expertise superpower relies on thinking the unthinkable and exploiting the best ideas. This multi-billion competition incentives home-grown scientific developments and shows that when we are ambitious we could establish the very best research in Europe. ” Speaking at journalism conference announcing the winners, Kroes added that she wanted the job to result in “ graphene valley ” being located in Europe — “ the home to the successor to Silicon Valley ”. “ The tale of graphene shows there is still question in science, ” she included. Last week, Cambridge College revealed it would be opening a new ₤ 25 million Graphene Research Centre, backed by government financing grants and industry support, consisting of from Nokia, Plastic Logic, Philips, Dyson and BaE systems. [ Image by CORE-Materials by means of Flickr ]Related Posts:
Microsoft Research bets on a ‘no-touch’ future of wearable devices
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Microsoft’s Research team in Cambridge opened its doors last week to offer a sneak peek at the future. Microsoft has spent nearly $ 30 billion on research and development over the past three years, and this particular lab — consisting of over 100 researchers mainly from Europe — has contributed to Bing, Xbox Kinect, and the functional programming language F#.
Microsoft is now looking well ahead into the future of computing and how user interfaces and the way we interact with machines will change. During an open house, the software maker demonstrated a variety of ways that the company is looking to improve its Kinect sensor and use it for an augmented reality future. From Kinect Fusion, that creates an interactive real-time 3D model…
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Microsoft Research bets on a ‘no-touch’ future of wearable devices
Author:
Microsoft’s Research team in Cambridge opened its doors last week to offer a sneak peek at the future. Microsoft has spent nearly $ 30 billion on research and development over the past three years, and this particular lab — consisting of over 100 researchers mainly from Europe — has contributed to Bing, Xbox Kinect, and the functional programming language F#.
Microsoft is now looking well ahead into the future of computing and how user interfaces and the way we interact with machines will change. During an open house, the software maker demonstrated a variety of ways that the company is looking to improve its Kinect sensor and use it for an augmented reality future. From Kinect Fusion, that creates an interactive real-time 3D model…
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Toshiba Satellite U925t review: with its first Windows 8 convertible, Toshiba bets big on the slider
Author: Heather Brown
You can’t see our New York Urban area office today, but it’s something of a laptop menagerie. We simply finished evaluating a laptop computer whose screen flips inside its hinge, and now we’re checking an Ultrabook with a touchscreen, along with a note pad whose display folds all the method back. The Toshiba Satellite U925t ($ 1,150) is yet an additional type of Windows 8 hardware. It’s a slider, to be precise, which is to state its 12.5-inch screen slides out and up to reveal a full-sized keyboard. It’s good, in theory, because you could use it as a tablet without having to worry about packing a different keyboard. However unlike the Dell XPS 12 or Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13, which can easily additionally be used in tablet mode, the screen here is always exposed. As you could picture, too, that propped-up show has a really real impact on the typing experience. Provided all that, is there any sort of reason to consider this over other, similarly priced Windows 8 convertibles? Could there maybe be any performance benefits, or advantages in screen quality? Fulfill us after the break where we’ll hash it out.
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Toshiba Satellite U925t review: with its first Windows 8 convertible, Toshiba bets big on the slider
Author: Janet Odell
You can’t see our New York City office right now, but it’s something of a laptop menagerie. We just finished reviewing a laptop whose screen flips inside its hinge, and now we’re testing an Ultrabook with a touchscreen, along with a notebook whose screen folds all the way back. The Toshiba Satellite U925t ($ 1,150) is yet another breed of Windows 8 hardware. It’s a slider, to be exact, which is to say its 12.5-inch screen slides out and up to reveal a full-sized keyboard. It’s nice, in theory, because you can use it as a tablet without having to worry about packing a separate keyboard. But unlike the Dell XPS 12 or Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13, which can also be used in tablet mode, the screen here is always exposed. As you can imagine, too, that propped-up display has a very real effect on the typing experience. Given all that, is there any reason to consider this over other, similarly priced Windows 8 convertibles? Could there perhaps be any performance benefits, or advantages in screen quality? Meet us after the break where we’ll hash it out.
Gallery: Toshiba Satellite U925t review
Filed under: Laptops
Toshiba Satellite U925t review: with its first Windows 8 convertible, Toshiba bets big on the slider originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Nov 2012 11:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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HTC rekindles its old Microsoft romance and bets on Windows Phone 8
Author: Nancy Kennedy
High Tech Computer (HTC) has grown up with Microsoft, from the old HTC-built iPAQ’s running on Microsoft’s Pocket PC operating system, to the Orange SPV — Microsoft’s first Windows smartphone. The Taiwanese company has always been a loyal aid to the software giant, but lately that close relationship has started to feel a little dated. HTC’s investment in Android and its Sense user interface has taken precedent over its initial work with Windows Mobile, and the company’s Windows Phone flagships have been impressive, but overshadowed by Nokia’s colorful Lumia range and partnership with Microsoft. That all appears to be changing though.
“We’re super excited about being there for the next launch.”
Speaking to The Verge recently, HTC’s…
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Samsung Bets Big On Mirrorless Digital Cameras While Reducing Focus On Point-And-Shoot Models
Author: Tiffany Shoman
In the riveting story of consumer electronics, the lowly point-and-shoot camera is about to be cut. Its days are numbered and cheap cameras are becoming increasingly less relevant as smartphones steal the limelight. The point-and-shoot camera will soon be just a supporting character.
Samsung sees the writing on the wall, too. Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Han Myoung-sup, head of the company’s digital imaging division, indicated that the massive Korean empire will shift away from “low-end compact cameras” in an effort to concentrate on mirrorless cameras. This bet, which is the correct move by the way, shows the company’s foresight as it’s very similar to the one Samsung made several years ago when it decided to shift away from its own smartphone platforms and instead concentrate on Android. This will pay off big for Sammy.
Mirrorless cameras have so far seen a slow start. The technology forgoes the tradition bulky and complex mirror system found in digital SLR cameras. A properly named mirrorless system sits in its place, allowing the camera body to be significantly smaller than DSLR. In most cases, mirrorless camera bodies are as thin as the compact cameras they’re attempting to replace. The redesigned camera sensor is then paired with an interchangeable lens system, which allows camera makers to deploy higher quality (high margin) glass lenses.
As the WSJ points out, Samsung currently holds just 5% of this growing market, which is projected to rise 60% this year while point-and-shoot sales are decreasing. This focus shift should allow the company the freedom to further explore the market and position their mirrorless cameras as lovely companions for their widely popular Android smartphones.
Samsung’s current mirrorless camera lineup employs several smart features that make the models a compelling companion for current Samsung customers. Samsung is building around a single platform that leverages proprietary sharing functions. A Samsung smartphone can easily share pics to a Samsung TV while a Samsung mirrorless camera is using the smartphone’s wireless connectivity. It’s a family built on sharing and Samsung is the only company with the customer and product base large enough to pull off such a hat trick.
Samsung moved 20 million Galaxy S II smartphones in 2011. Samsung is the leader in TVs for six years running and sold two HDTVs every second last November. Much to Sony’s chagrin, consumers have been latching onto Samsung for the last several years and then just a few months back at CES 2012, the company unveiled its latest innovation that essentially connects all its products. Mirrorless cameras are a big part of that push.
For the most part mirrorless cameras can command a higher margin than point-and-shoots. They’re positioned as a premium product even if the manufacturing cost is similar to cheap p&s models. But right now, the models are still somewhat rare and stuck in a niche spot between the low-end budget cameras and pricy DSLR. Samsung is attempting to break it out and own the market.
This is the right move for Samsung. Moving away from budget cell phones paid off big time. Samsung is in a dominant position in smartphones. Doing the same with digital cameras will likely yield the same result. Look for Samsung to use similar tactics and flood the market with mirrorless cameras targeting different price points. But this is just part of a larger quest for Samsung. The company is attempting (and arguably succeeding) at becoming the global leader in consumer electronics. John put it correctly at CES: Samsung is the next Apple.
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No Comments »Multi Bets Software
Author: Tyler Evans
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Money Management, Winning Software, That Can Be Used In Any Country, For Horses, Dogs Or Sports. Back Up To 3 Per Race. More Advanced Than Dutch Betting. Life Time Access. Plus Bonus Ebooks That You Can Use With The Software.
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