Or take this "IBM Institute for Advanced Commerce Best Thesis Proposal
Contest." Lured by a lust for the Thinkpad 600, I entered, but I didn't
really actually expect to win anything. Dugsong, ever heard of Peter
Wurman? His Michigan Internet AuctionBot won the grand prize:
http://auction.eecs.umich.edu/
I include the rest of the results of the contest as an attachment below.
Hey, now that Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, IBM, and the U.S. federal
government have all paid for part of my education, I am going to have to
stop talking about dropping out and actually complete the degree, right?
BTW, lately, I've been fork-archiving stuff without forking it, because
I've been feeling guilty about contaminating peoples' inboxes, delete
key notwithstanding. Therefore, feel free to pull any of the following
unpushed posts:
"Being 23, in the FoRKa's Paradise"
http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/july98/0268.html
"[NYT] The War Inside Bill Clinton"
http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/august98/0077.html
"Cameron Diaz Advises Women on Body Image"
http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/august98/0078.html
"Re: Ode to Losing Virginity"
http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/august98/0079.html
"[Anchordesk] Natural Born KillerApp"
http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/august98/0080.html
Don't know why I haven't felt like pushing information lately. Example:
John Regher forwarded me Noam Chomsky's comments about Microsoft, which
I have been thinking about forwarding to FoRK for several weeks now.
Why have I waited so long? [John, maybe you want to post the article?]
Oh well. I have several uncompleted things I'm working on that I'd like
to finish before IETF Chicago, so I'd better get back to them. I've
tried calling Rohit like 100 times today to resynch with him, and
everytime but one I got a busy signal or a "this is Sprint, you cannot
connect right now" message. Like in "Saving Private Ryan," my world has
definitely taken a turn toward the surreal.
The results of the IBM Institute for Advanced Commerce Best Thesis
Proposal Contest...
> From iac-contest@us.ibm.com Wed Aug 5 11:40:48 1998
> X-Lotus-Fromdomain: IBMUS
> To: IAC_Contest_Entrants@us.ibm.com
> Subject: Results of IBM Institute for Advanced Commerce Best Thesis
> Proposal Contest
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Content-Disposition: inline
>
> My apologies for not getting this sent out sooner, it was supposed to
> be on our web site two weeks ago but has not gotten posted yet so I am
> personally mailing it to each entrant.
>
> Thank you for entering the IBM Institute for Advanced Commerce's Best
> Thesis Proposal contest. Here is the official announcement of the
> results of the contest. Thanks very much to all of you for submitting
> your entries and making the contest a success.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> We are delighted to announce the results of the Institute for Advanced
> Commerce contest for Best Thesis Proposal in E-Commerce.
>
> We are awarding the grand prize, a one-year fellowship including
> stipend, tuition, and an offer of a summer position at IBM Research,
> to Peter F. Wurman <http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~pwurman> of
> the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The planned dissertation is
> entitled "Multidimensional Auction Design for Computational Economies"
> and is being supervised by Professor Michael Wellman. The research
> includes a blend of sophisticated economic theory with powerful
> algorithmic analysis and protocol design.
>
> In addition, there are three other prize winners, and we are awarding
> each an IBM Thinkpad. They each submitted a very impressive research
> proposal:
>
> - Otto Koppius of the Erasmus University Rotterdam School of
> Management, with a dissertation entitled "Multidimensional
> Auctions: Trading Mechanisms and Applications."
>
> - Adam Rifkin of the California Institute of Technology, with a
> dissertation entitled "Using a Global Event Model in Distributed
> Resource Management Algorithms."
>
> - Victoria Ungureanu of Rutgers University, with a dissertation
> entitled "The Formulation of Policies for Electronic Commerce, and
> their Enforcement."
>
> We received 28 complete entries. Twenty were from the US
> institutions, the remaining 8 were from around the globe. Fifteen
> came from departments of computer science, information science, or
> engineering; the other thirteen were from economics, business or
> marketing departments. Research approaches include economic theory,
> empirical experiments, market models, formal models, and system
> building. Each thesis was read by at least two specialists in IBM
> Research, and were scored on the basis of originality and potential
> impact. We found many to be excellent and worthy of commendation. On
> the basis of this set of proposals, the future of research in
> e-commerce is bright.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> Stuart Feldman,
> Director
> Bill Rubin
> Operations Manager,
> IBM Institute for Advanced Commerce
> IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
> 30 Saw Mill River Road
> Hawthorne, NY 10532
----
adam@cs.caltech.edu
Thus, we can go through the entire movie pretty sure that Forrest Gump
and Good Will Hunting are going to run into each other at some point and
discuss the finer points of advanced math or chocolates or war morality.
-- Mr. Cranky reviews "Saving Private Ryan"