It would be nice if some enterprising smart people could make AI to stop dictatorial nation states & political parties, stop big corruption, stop large-scale brain washing, etc. I am sure there are currently at least some people of that caliber. Because there may be huge efforts already underway in the opposite direction.

How would that work exactly?

To be fair, allowing such an AI to single-handedly launch nuclear weapons would technically make it more effective.

In utmost secrecy? Somewhat like Morpheus:)

Correct! Repeatedly slapping Japan was reasonable because of Japan's imperial ambitions, e.g. Taiwan(1895), Manchuria(1905), Korea(1910) etc. And, England and some other European countries were not 'repeatedly slapped', even though they were also imperialist, may be far longer, may be far worse!

Japan was also promised the world for their support of the Entente in World War I - and, much like Italy, received nothing for its efforts.

Let's not forget the context of their imperial ambitions - in the first half of the twentieth century, most of the world was still ruled by empires.

Actually Japan was mandated large amounts of German New Guinea by the Treaty of Versailles and the South Pacific Mandate; Palau, almost all of Micronesia, and parts of Papua New Guinea. Other parts of German New Guinea were ceded to Australia, New Zealand, the US, and Britain. France of course kept their South Pacific colonies.

Yes. Among the US States, life expectancy generally seems like this:

a) Asian American > Latino > White > African American and

b) Blue States > Red States (2012 presidential)

If getting VC funding is considered partly as a sales job, then Bill Porter's story may be interesting. Consistency in 'top selling' requires qualities like determination & efforts. Natural born 'attractive people' generally are not inclined to put in that extra effort just because they, in their lives so far, probably didn't need to.

Wiki: Bill Porter born with cerebral palsy, was unable to gain employment, but refused to go on disability. Porter eventually convinced Watkins Incorporated to give him a door-to-door salesman job, selling its products on a seven-mile route in the Portland area. He eventually became the top seller for the company.

Porter also likely benefited from emotionally manipulating his clients to buy stuff out of a sense of charity. That works on the general public face to face, but not other parts of industry.

DMV/Police could benefit by buying a few of these cars to monitor traffic. Good cost/benefit for 24 hour untiring watch.

According to the site, for the 'Certificate of need', the main arguments seems to be following: "A number of factors spurred states to require certificates of need in the health care industry. Chief among these was the concern that the construction of excess hospital capacity would cause competitors in an oversaturated field to cover the costs of a diluted patient pool by over-charging, or by convincing patients to accept hospitalization unnecessarily."

I couldn't understand this argument. Something seems to be wrong.

The argument for CON is that if a new facility came in and charged less, then the existing facilities would have to charge more to cover the patients they lost which would adversely affect their remaining patients. So a new facility would need to show the need of non-served patients - ie that they wouldn't take away patients from existing facilities.

It is of course hogwash, but is a nice way for existing facilities to have a monopoly, prevent competition, and not have pricing pressure. Standard rent seeking/corruption that exists in the US.

IMHO, the guts, the brain, the heart must be tough but also flexible enough to avoid damage & to adapt. The api needs to be user-friendly and soft(most of the time).

Here is a question from a layman's (Stat 101) perspective: Why don't we see many Statistics PhDs, armed only with with a computer, access to free public data and some programming skills, CONSISTENTLY make a killing on Wall St?

Is it because Statistics fails once the number of variables & complexities increase to reflect the real life?

They are making a killing, they just don't talk about it. I know several people who are doing this. Currency trading, predicting dog & horse races, options trading - all one man shows with a tiny little grasp that nobody else has. Each making a couple million a year trying to figure out the next little trick (all the straightforward tricks are owned by Goldman's super fast computers). More than once I have seen 1 second of lag cost them big, but overall they are maxing out the opportunities their little (< 20k loc, usually in vb of all things, sometimes in python or ruby) stats programs have found.

Furthermore, I work as a business intelligence quant for the online tech space. I've DRASTICALLY increased ROI rates for online ads, as well as conversion metrics, with my formulas and clustering models. There is so much low hanging fruit out there it is crazy.

If anyone wants to get into this field I'd be more than happy to point you in the right direction.

I would too. I think it's best you make a public post about this, I think a lot of people will be interested in this.

I would be interested in hearing more about how you've done this with online ads.

As would I. Email sent.

Oh.. but we have:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...

Just from the description in the Wikipedia this is how I read Ray.

He is excellent in marketing, in sales, in networking & as an overall promoter. All qualities we hackers need to cultivate as long as we control ourselves & avoid pitching any vapor-ware.

Some examples of him promoting his product or himself. 1. At 17, appeared on the CBS television program I've Got a Secret - showed off software that composed piano music 2. International Science Fair, first prize for the same. 3. Recognized by the Westinghouse Talent Search 4. Personally congratulated by President Lyndon B. Johnson during a White House ceremony. ... Incredibly, it goes on and on. Very fascinating, if read with the heart of an entrepreneur. His whole life seems to be a chain of fantastic promotions.