In a message dated 99-09-06 11:00:41 EDT, bradbury@www.aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) wrote:
> Ok, well that's fine then. A little competition in providing "government"
Jumping in in the middle here on only this one point (right . . .) . . .
Proposals to address this problem have been made. The one I find most intriguing is the idea of various levels of rating agencies: There could be low-level, specialized rating agencies, and then an arbitrarily large hierarchy of agencies that rate agencies. Different levels of consumer interest could be accommodated by subscription to whatever level of agency-rating best fits one's personal inclination. Thus, you might well never check beyond a very high level of filtered rating for, say automobiles, while I would pour over reports and ratings from the lowest level. When purchasing bioinformatic services, our use of rating agencies would likely be reversed. Employing collaborative filtering, you might well be unkowingly guided by my analysis of automobiles and I might be guided by your analysis of biotechnology even though we never meet or communicate directly.
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
"Civilization is protest against nature;
progress requires us to take control of evolution."
-- Thomas Huxley