Okay, I got suckered. The Andrew Carlssin insider trading story is an Internet urban legend, which I would have known had I read the Slashdot discussions before posting to my weblog! [Times Online][Slashdot]. I rarely get caught by urban legends, but this one got me 100%. Arrrgh! 5:56:31 PM    comment []  

I first heard about this story a week or so ago, but thought I would post it since it seems to continue circling around and, today, made its way to Slashdot [Yahoo! TV].

First of all, ask yourself this question; if someone were to come to you and inform you that they were born in the future, but had travelled through time to our time, how could you verify their claim? Most people would immediately discount such a claim because it seems impossible to us. The most likely scenario is that the person is either lying or not sane. However, just because it seems impossible, that is not a sufficient condition to completely rule out the possibility.

So, this guy named Andrew Carlssin took $800, bought some high-risk stocks and in two weeks was able to make $350 million! He was arrested and is currently being charged with insider trading because, after all, how could anyone possibly make so much money legitimately? Mr. Carlssin's explanation? He is from the future.

In general, such a claim would be completely ridiculous, but when put in the context that such a huge windfall was earned at a time when the stock market completely sucks, I think his claim has a little more credibility. Either he was extremely lucky (highly improbable), he performed insider trading on a large scale (improbable) or he travelled in time from the future and brought with him specific knowledge of how the stock markets had behaved in his past (highly improbably). Now, if we were to apply Occam's Razor, I suppose we would still favor the insider trading explanation, but not by much.

"It was just too tempting to resist," Carlssin allegedly said in his videotaped confession. "I had planned to make it look natural, you know, lose a little here and there so it doesn't look too perfect. But I just got caught in the moment."

In a bid for leniency, Carlssin has reportedly offered to divulge "historical facts" such as the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden and a cure for AIDS.

In the end, I, like the rest of you skeptics out there, don't really believe this man's story. But, I am more than willing to play along for a little while if only because it is a fun real life story in the midst of so much terrible news. And who knows? Maybe he does know where Osama is... 5:38:15 PM    comment []  

I've been thinking for a while that the time is ripe for the open-source community to start building software to compete with TiVo. Even though the cost of a PC is high compared to most consumer electronics, the total cost of a DVD player, TiVo unit and some type of MP3/music player would definitely put a PC solution on firm economic grounds. Add to that the features that could be provided by a PC that would not be provided by those consumer electronics: games, Web surfing and even productivity tools. Not that the TV is the best place to do all those things, but the possibility is certainly there.

The Freevo project is building a clean, easy to use interface for viewing DVD's, TV, digital video and audio files and more [Freevo]. It looks like the project has reached a level of maturity that would make it appealing to early adopters like myself and it doesn't appear to be too far from being accessible to a much wider public. I plan on setting a system up at home in the near future and I will get back to you on my experience. 10:57:44 AM    comment []