  From recent CMB and Large Scale Structure observations the value of the
equation of state of dark energy, assuming it to be constant in time, is
constrained to be -1.3<w<-0.7 at the 95% confidence level: consistent with dark
energy being a classical vacuum term. Here we describe two novel and
independent methods, sensitive to different systematics, that give the same
value for w and similar confidence regions. This suggests that systematics are
not an issue in current determinations of w. The first method yields a
measurement of $w$ that relies on the minimum number of model-dependent
parameters; the second method is a non-parametric measurement of the time
dependence of w(z). We also present a method to statistically determine the
edge of a distribution.
