laser-lovers@uw-beaver (05/20/85)
From: Les Earnest <LES@SU-AI.ARPA> [In reply to your message of 19 May 1985 1435-PDT (Sunday)] Hush, Brian! Let's not talk about commercial enterprises arising in the bowels of Stanford, lest we set off a purgative chain reaction! (Actually, the founding of Imagen was all pretty straight. The founders were Luis Trabb Pardo from the TeX Project and me from the AI Lab. We signed an agreement with Stanford to do a technology transfer in return for royalties on the product. Stanford has been and is being well-rewarded for nurturing that spinoff.) As for the questioned impartiality of the Lunch Bunch, Chuck Bigelow *was* there but he was the one who said he recognized the sources and disqualified himself. There were no Imagen employees present. There was one Imagen shareholder who participated but I am quite sure he didn't recognize either source. (His last name begins with "K"). (Remember that my message to Laser-Lovers identifying the source of one sample and my intention to give a tasting was not received by the participants until after it was over.) As for other "connections," bribery doesn't work well at Stanford -- too much Government money around. The friendships and associations with outside companies are sufficiently diverse that there is little systematic bias, I believe. There may have been a few ringers from other local organizations there -- I didn't know everyone -- but I don't think it matters a lot. The people who are either honest enough to disqualify themselves or who have insufficient knowledge to identify sources are numerous enough to statistically swamp any ringers. Consider your challenge challenged. If you wish to proctor the next one, you are invited to do so! I do have some reservations about the range of applicability of taste judgements by panels of "experts" or "common persons," but I will bring them up later. (Cultural note: it is no longer acceptable to refer to "common men" and references to "common women" have always been dangerous.) Cheers, Les Earnest