IN SOVIET RUSSIA . . . (Score:-1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 05, @02:23AM (#5018350)

IN SOVIET RUSSIA, data mining is explained AT GREAT LENGTH!

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Re:Michael Sims (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @03:56PM (#5015539)

Oh come on, Timothy - no need to mod this down so quickly - You have to work with the communist fuckwit, you should appreciate this little-known fact being brought to light.

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Re:Michael Sims (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @10:56PM (#5017489)

stop slandering people or you will die a slander

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Mine This California: +1, Unpatriotic (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @04:04PM (#5015573)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w # 531-byte qrpff-fast, Keith Winstein and Marc Horowitz # MPEG 2 PS VOB file on stdin -> descrambled output on stdout # arguments: title key bytes in least to most-significant order $_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;$ t=255;@t=map{$_%16or$t^=$c^=( $m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])$t^=(72, @z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%16 -2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)[$_%8]}(16..271);if ((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h =5;$_=unxb24,join"",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--$ h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$ d=unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])>8^($f=$t&($d>>12^ $d>>4^ $d^$d/8))>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*8^$q>=8)+= $f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/p ack+/g;eval

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No.. (Score:1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @04:21PM (#5015654)

There is a redhat sticker in the top-left corner of the picture.

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Re:No.. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @05:16PM (#5015872)

Yeah, where can I get a sticker like that?

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Re:No.. (Score:1) by Eric Wayte (4583) on Saturday January 04, @05:45PM (#5015995) (http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ewayte)

Buy a boxed version of Red Hat 8 Personal or Professional.

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Re:No.. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @05:52PM (#5016034)

Cool, how many are in the box, just the one?

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Re:No.. (Score:1) by Eric Wayte (4583) on Saturday January 04, @06:12PM (#5016102) (http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ewayte)

One large (as seen in the Time photo) plus 3 smaller ones that read "Powered by Red Hat Linux."

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Re:No.. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @05:46PM (#5016002)

Inside a boxed edition of Red Hat Linux

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Tony Soprano in the mines (Score:1) by nrobert (605941) on Saturday January 04, @05:50PM (#5016023)

This guy in the photo looks like Tony Soprano. Maybe the Mob uses RedHat Linux for data mining. I missed the episode with T in the server room. "Hey, Jackie, whatta these computahs for?"

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Open Source DateMining! (Score:4, Interesting) by cosmosis (221542) on Saturday January 04, @04:20PM (#5015649) (http://planetp.cc/)

Ok, I've been annoyed for years at the disparity between corporations and customers in who knows what about who. I think its time someone came up with a P2p, open source, reputation system in which we can turn the lens of datamining back on them. Technologies like Cuejack [rtmark.com] combined with the efforts of groups like Transparency International [transparency.org], can help bring about Participitory Capitalism [floatingplanet.net]. Power to the people! Planet P Blog [planetp.cc] - Liberty with Technology.

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Re:.a (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @05:44PM (#5015992)

Hey, how's that mafia case working out? Had Superjew arrested yet?

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The Beast (Score:3, Interesting) by macdaddy357 (582412) <mbrown_work&hotmail,com> on Saturday January 04, @07:16PM (#5016417)

Does this data mining stuff remind anyone of the old urban legend about "The Beast?" A super computer in Antwerp of Brussels that knows everythin about everyone? Is that idea still as ridiculous as it was back in the day?

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Re:The Beast (Score:1, Flamebait) by Lord Omlette (124579) <ajain@NosPam.digink.com> on Sunday January 05, @02:51PM (#5020884) (http://www.omlettesoft.com/)

Someone's signature out there still holds my question stupidly posted to usenet back in the day: Was Shub-Internet a real Lovecraft character?

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Obligatory X/1999 reference. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06, @01:40PM (#5026690)

I thought that The Beast was in Tokyo and some chick named Satsuki was it's sysadmin.

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Re:you'd be amazed... (Score:1) by brodin (200847) on Saturday January 04, @07:27PM (#5016464)

>an offer to increase my bust size (I'm a guy), Yeah, but you're a slashdot reader so you probably have a man-bust. I know I do (!@#$%! New Year's Resolution)...

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Re:you'd be amazed... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 05, @12:14AM (#5017867)

Actually, with the card they can do two things. 1. Devolp a history of "bad" checks etc. 2. Get a whole lot more time to check your history. 3. Target their most profitable customers.     That of course doesn't mean they do this. I sadly was a consultant who helped a company devolp one of these systems.     For a while the stores most profitable customers (and 20% of the customers generate the bulk of profits) were getting targeted promitions.       And the stores were targeting the needs of those customers via the data. Managers would call some customers who where the most profitable if they left to see if what had happened, and we tried to listen much more to the sugestions of those customers.     However, that all got pulled within a year once another consultant came in. Now it is just a personal harazment and privacy price gouging system. And yes I am ashamed for birthing this.

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Re:you'd be amazed... (Score:2) by geekoid (135745) <notities@yahoo.com> on Sunday January 05, @03:28AM (#5018623) (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday February 21, @04:37PM)

" an offer to increase my bust size (I'm a guy)" Then I take it your wife is getting the emails to increase the size of her penis! thank you, I'm here all week!

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Re:Scoring 4 points (Score:1) by EugeneK (50783) on Sunday January 05, @10:48AM (#5019689) (http://edg.sourceforge.net/)

That was interesting; where's the next chapter?

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The data gnomes are stealing my data! (Score:2) by SHEENmaster (581283) <sheenmaster@NosPam.flame.dnsart.com> on Saturday January 04, @04:01PM (#5015560) (http://flame.dnsart.com/ | Last Journal: Friday December 27, @04:50AM)

Why doesn't anyone else see them!?

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*sigh* (Score:3, Funny) by Chester K (145560) on Saturday January 04, @04:11PM (#5015610) (http://www.evercrest.com/)

Ok let's get this out of our system now:   Imagine a beowulf cluster of these things!....mining...data... yeah. In Soviet Russia, data mines YOU! It's official, Data Mining is DEAD. You don't have to be Kreskin to figure it out. Hey! I just found this site all about data mining here [goatse.cx]!!!!! Come on, really, is this News for Nerds or Stuff That Matters? You could probably use data mining to determine how many hot grits Natalie Portman actually eats.   Alright. That should do it. Carry on with the discussion.

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down my pants! (Score:0, Offtopic) by SweetAndSourJesus (555410) <JesusAndTheRobot@yahoo.com> on Saturday January 04, @04:30PM (#5015686) (http://www.hotnutmachines.com/images/hot-nut-vending/hot-nut-xl.jpg)

The important thing about Natalie Portman's grits isn't that she eat them, it's that she pour them down my pants. If she wants to eat them after that, well, that's fine, but any pleasure derived from that would be purely auxiliary. In conclusion, I would be delighted if Miss Portman would be so kind as to pour some hot, steamy grits down the front of my trousers. Thank you for your time, and have a pleasant day.

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Re:down my pants! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @06:56PM (#5016323)

You stupid FAGG0T. Once she pours them down your pants, then she eats them... Real slow... But you wouldn't know that, would you, A$$M0NK3y!

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Re:Data Mining Briefly Explained (Score:2) by Lucas Membrane (524640) on Saturday January 04, @11:36PM (#5017667)

You have hit the nail on the head. The ??? is the problem. The link or leap between knowledge and action is the hard part. Data mining can 'identify' 'profitable' and 'unprofitable' customers, but it can't tell you if your expense and profit allocations are right or if you should want to 'get rid' of 'unprofitable' customers or should want to try to turn them into profitable customers. The classic data mining result is diapers and beer. People who buy beer at convenience stores are also likely to buy diapers. Great. Given that bit of intelligence, do we: Put diapers and beer in close proximity so that people who buy diapers can easily pick up beer and vice versa, or Put diapers and beer at opposite ends of the store so that people who buy both diapers and beer must travel through the store and have a chance to buy everything else? The data seldom tell you what to do. Taking the data too seriously leads to treating customers like numbers, predictable statistical entities to be manipulated for profit's sake. This is not healthy for most businesses. Most of the important things that the data tell you, you could learn better by simply listening to customers respectfully.

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Re:Data Mining Briefly Explained (Score:2) by scubacuda (411898) <scubacudaNO@SPAMiname.com> on Sunday January 05, @02:26AM (#5018367) (http://www.kernel32.org/)

Based on my experience, people who likely to buy beer and liquor are much more likely to buy toilet paper than diapers... :b

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Re:Data Mining Briefly Explained (Score:2) by Exantrius (43176) on Sunday January 05, @01:21AM (#5018152) (http://slashdot.org/)

Actually, step three could be explicated as: 3. Sell derivative information to people who want it, i.e. the people you *DON'T* want to have it. This includes, as others said, life insurance companies teaming up with grocery stores to find out what you eat, thus raising rates for people who eat "bad" stuff. Or phone spam companies buying info from phone companies-- Consumer A contacts consumer B, and A bought our stuff, therefore you should call B. Or, perhaps radio stations selling the numbers of people who request songs to the Wherehouse, so the Wherehouse can call you and say that you can buy the cd. Or, maybe the police decide to track where you go by reading license plates off of each of the cameras that they have up to detect speeders or light runners. Just some thoughts. This isn't a joke-- They know exactly how to get money from mining-- It depends on what data you have to who you can sell it to. Noone buys data for no reason-- And the only two reasons to buy data is to target for selling other stuff, or to "find people who don't want to be found"-- Whether it be to find terrorists, criminals, or theoretically people that make x hundred thousand/million a year, so that they can rob you. Of course, most of this stuff happens every day, and noone realizes. /ex.

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Re:Data Mining Briefly Explained (Score:1) by Ed Random (27877) on Sunday January 05, @07:30AM (#5019114) (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday July 06, @01:45PM)

Or, maybe the police decide to track where you go by reading license plates off of each of the cameras that they have up to detect speeders or light runners. In fact, we have a licenseplate-reading system like this in .nl Video cameras record your license plate when you pass a portal, then record it again when you pass the next portal, say after 1 km. The images are stored and processed electronically. Your average speed is calculated and you're fined if you were speeding. Some argue that this system is fairer than using speedtrap cameras that record only 'an incident', not 'your general behaviour'. Others argue that "traject-controle" as the system is called here is a clear invasion of privacy (since they necessarily need to keep a record of your license plate during the 1km you're driving). The same system can be used to check for people without valid insurance, who 'forgot' the mandatory APK car checkup or those who neglected to pay their road taxes. The possibilities are endless... In other words, where willl this end?

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Re:Data Mining Briefly Explained-cause-effect. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 05, @08:22AM (#5019263)

"The possibilities are endless... In other words, where willl this end?" When people stop: Driving without insurance. Forgetting their timely APK car checkups. Forgetting to pay their road taxes. In other words. The few have spoiled it for the many, and the many stayed silent while the few did it. Welcome to the world that silence built.

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Re:Well.. so? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @06:01PM (#5016065)

Get over it? You must be French.

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Re:Well.. so? (Score:3) by symbolic (11752) on Saturday January 04, @06:42PM (#5016257)

Atleast it is a good thing that companies are making good money in the process. Your privacy? That was lost long ago. Oh, the irony. They call themselves patriotic, and yet they're supplying the very means that are slowly turning the U.S. into a police state. Sorry, but I seriously doubt that this is what the U.S. founders had in mind, and it's certainly not the reason that U.S. war veterans both risked and sacrificed their lives. Patriots aren't sheep that blindly follow the government, they are the ones who fight to maintain the fundamental (constitutional) precepts upon which the United States were built.

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Re:Reminds me of... (Score:2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @06:06PM (#5016083)

With a spam filter, the penalty for false positive is perhaps a lost sale or an annoyed friend/coworker. With a terrorist classification filter, the penalty for a false positive could cost some innocent person days/weeks in prison and thousands of dollars in lost wages and legal fees. And thats assuming they are a US citizen. A non-citizen could be held indefinitely complely destroying any career they might have.

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Re:Reminds me of... (Score:3, Interesting) by gpinzone (531794) on Saturday January 04, @08:35PM (#5016823) (http://slashdot.org/)

Yes, but remember that the current methods aren't much better. I mean, right now there's lots of complaints about how the USA is racially profiling Middle Eastern men. Whether or not this profiling is justified could be based on a report of such a filter. The issue isn't whether or not we should use data mining to profile individuals or groups. Profilling will occur no matter what. What these methods do are help find parameters that more accurately identify candidates rather than just assume all Middle Easterners are automatically guilty until proven otherwise.

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Re:Reminds me of... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 05, @06:31AM (#5018980)

At least, until the 0.000001% slips by and causes a lawsuit for wrongful arrest. How do you launch a lawsuit when you're in an Army "detention camp" like the 550 or so "suspected terrorists" stuck down near Cuba? A US Judge said they didn't fall under US juristicion because they weren't on Mainland US soil, despite being on a US Army compound. Three English Judges overturned her decision... yet they stay confined (2 x 15 minutes excerise/week, for example) You can start counting how long before you guys have NO rights left anymore. Oh, and Fuck America.

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Re:Reminds me of... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06, @02:59AM (#5024018)

Data mining can be quite different. Bayesian methods used in the spam filters are supervised, which means that you show it examples of spam vs non-spam data and the system will learn the tell the difference between the two. It is "supervised" because you act as the teacher. Data mining methods can be unsupervised, which means no teacher exists. These methods learn to spot correlations in the data. Eg a supermarket data mining system may find that people who buy milk often buy oranges too. The supermarket relies on the data mining system to discover interesting info like this that it didn't know before. It will then use this to some advantage. Eg it could place milk and oranges next to each other to make it convenient for customers. Or it could intentionally put them far apart in the attempt to get customers to buy other items as well.

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hrm (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @04:34PM (#5015703)

strings: can't map file: /dev/mem ((os/kern) invalid argument)

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Re:hrm (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @05:02PM (#5015821)

does your system have a /proc file system? use /proc/kcore instead

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This is why browsing at -1 is worthwhile (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @11:01PM (#5017519)

funny, technical comments like these makes me forget all about that goatse.cx website. oh wait...

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Re:profiteering? (Score:2, Informative) by acidfast7 (551610) on Saturday January 04, @04:45PM (#5015759) (http://fastlink.to/Draheim)

In fact, I haven't heard of a single terrorist act averted since 9/11. With the current sensationalized state of mass media, would one hear of a terrorist act if it was avoided?

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don't forget NIH (Score:3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @05:14PM (#5015861)

At the end of the article, it mentions data mining helping to catch the DC snipers. Whoooooooa. The cops had profiled a white male Christian terrorist, and that's all they were looking for. You didn't catch the article, but the real perps were stopped **10** times at roadblocks, they were in custody that many times. And they were let go, their skin color contradicted what the data mining told them. They weren't caught until a Maryland state trooper leaked the license plate, then a trucker at a rest stop made the collar. Data mining won't solve the stupidity of leaders like Chief Moose.

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I don't believe (Score:2) by SHEENmaster (581283) <sheenmaster@NosPam.flame.dnsart.com> on Saturday January 04, @06:00PM (#5016062) (http://flame.dnsart.com/ | Last Journal: Friday December 27, @04:50AM)

that any true Christian could do this anymore than I believe a true Jew or a true Muslim could have done it., mod parent [slashdot.org] up

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Re:I don't believe (Score:2) by Xerithane (13482) <xerithane AT nerdfarm DOT org> on Saturday January 04, @09:28PM (#5017052) (http://xerithane.nerdfarm.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday January 04, @10:23PM)

that any true Christian could do this anymore than I believe a true Jew or a true Muslim could have done it., No, of course not. Because we all know that the most wars have not been fought in the name of opposing religious beliefs...

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Sauron commands you (Score:3, Funny) by SHEENmaster (581283) <sheenmaster@NosPam.flame.dnsart.com> on Saturday January 04, @09:52PM (#5017167) (http://flame.dnsart.com/ | Last Journal: Friday December 27, @04:50AM)

to murder all Harry Potter fans!

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Re:Sauron commands you (Score:2) by Xerithane (13482) <xerithane AT nerdfarm DOT org> on Saturday January 04, @10:07PM (#5017261) (http://xerithane.nerdfarm.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday January 04, @10:23PM)

Sauron commands you to murder all Harry Potter fans! Damn man, I don't need Sauron or anyone to command me to do that...

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Re:don't forget NIH (Score:2) by vrmlguy (120854) <mailto:samwyse@3.1415926email.com%20minus%20pi> on Monday January 06, @05:05PM (#5028408) (http://www.crosswinds.net/~samwyse/ | Last Journal: Wednesday October 02, @04:19PM)

Did you read (as opposed to glance over) the article? Data mining was *NOT* used during the DC sniper case, only after the fact: The system was set up in Montgomery County, Md., only a day before the arrests were made, so it did not play a role in solving the shootings. Working through the hundreds of thousands of leads that were entered into various police computer systems, however, Coplink noted that witnesses reported seeing John Muhammad's blue Chevrolet Caprice near two of the Washington-area shootings, and local police ran computer checks on his license plate at least three times during the killing spree. The profiling was done entirely by humans, with no computer assistance.

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Plots that have been averted... (Score:5, Insightful) by MyNameIsFred (543994) on Saturday January 04, @05:15PM (#5015864)

...I haven't heard of a single terrorist act averted since 9/11... You haven't been paying much attention to the news have you. Let's see, we had the plot to attack ships in the Straits of Gilbrater that was averted, the possibly overblown Jose Padilla - Dirty Bomb case, and the capture of key operatives such as Abu Zubaydah, which surely put a dent in al-Qaida's plans. Frankly the problem is attacks such as the Twin Towers are always going to stick in your mind more than a brief news report that Abu Zubaydah was captured. Also there is always more skepticism that capturing some guy actually averted a plot -- see Jose Padilla. We will never know whether he would have actually done something. There will always be second guessing on whether a plot was really averted.

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Re:profiteering? (Score:2, Insightful) by RDPIII (586736) on Saturday January 04, @06:13PM (#5016106)

It couldn't hurt to inform us when the spending pays off; could it? But would you believe it if your government told you "23 terrorist plots foiled this month"? They probably couldn't be more specific than that, and without any details or corroboration, who's to say. I'm all for openness and accountability, but if it's unlikely that one would get these here (there are better areas for this, like public health care), then I can do without monthly statistics that one would have to take on faith. In Soviet Russia official statistics were made up all the time, and dismissed just as often or more.

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data is useless by itself unless it can be used appropriately.

sort of like the list on conservative site NewsMax that finds that the vast majority of truly corrupt politicians in the past year were democrats [newsmax.com]. What a coincidence!

What are the odds of finding out more things like this, like at the office of Total information Awareness? Or the Transport Security Agencies list of people who cannot fly [interventionmag.com]

You guys wanted information to be free. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @04:13PM (#5015623)

Well you're getting EXACTLY what you want. Don't cry and complain, data is data. To complain is to be a hypocrite. After all everything should be Open Source, eh? The moral: beware of what you ask for, you may just get it.

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Re:Print Link (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @05:19PM (#5015890)

Oh but with the print link you can't see the picture and if you can't see the picture you can't see the sticker, which seems to be the only reason this article was posted.

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Re:Print Link (Score:2) by echucker (570962) on Saturday January 04, @05:35PM (#5015957) (http://reefs.org/)

But at least with the revised print link, cnn.com doesn't get credit for the referral. If you still want the pretty picture, use http://www.time.com/time/globalbusiness/article/0, 9171,1101021223-400017,00.html [time.com], leaving off the original ?cnn=yes portion.

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Re:Print Link (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @11:45PM (#5017713)

"I don't care for all the ads..." So get rid of them. [adsubtract.com]

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

In related news: Seeking Sperm, Not Sex, Online [xnewswire.com]

You may want to read this book [aaai.org] and see it yourself whether data mining would make a breakthrough in the future.

Re:Before You Jeer... (Score:2, Interesting) by arasinen (22038) on Saturday January 04, @05:17PM (#5015875)

Another good book that explains the basics of data mining is Principles of Data Mining by Hand et al. It is perhaps not the most simple book around, but it covers a lot of important issues. Furthermore it doesn't ignore the role of computer science, as two of the authors have a CS background. You won't find explicit instructions about how to build your own Google, but it surely does wonders for your insight.

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Good excuse for porn! (Score:1) by MadAnthony02 (626886) on Saturday January 04, @07:45PM (#5016574) (http://www.madanthony.net/)

A major hotel chain discovered that guests who opted for X-rated flicks spent more money and were less likely to make demands on the hotel staff, according to privacy consultant Larry Ponemon. These low-maintenance customers were rewarded with special frequent-traveler promotions. Cool. Next time I go on a trip I can order some in room porn and justify it because I'll get better deals in the future!

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In the movie 'Bowling For Columbine' Michael Moore speculates that one of the root causes of gun violence in the US is the type of fearmongering the US media engages in in an effort to keep their sales/ratings up.

It looks like Time.com's gratuitous exploitation of US fears of crime and terrorism might be an example of this.

Re:Makes me think of Bowling For Columbine (Score:2) by BWJones (18351) on Saturday January 04, @08:35PM (#5016824) (Last Journal: Thursday January 02, @05:41PM)

I couldn't help noticing the Time.com article made reference to crime and terrorism, ....in spite of the fact that this article would have been jst as fascinating if they had simply used the business examples as illustration. Sure, fear sells lots of stuff. MRE's, guns, ammo, radiation pills (iodine), bomb shelters etc.... The thing that people should realize with data mining software though is that its application to terrorism and consumer tracking is new but the technology is not. In fact, people have been using it in remote sensing to prospect for gold and oil among other things from space, it has been used since the late 70's to interpret satellite images for the CIA and NRO, it has been used for psychological research etc...etc...etc... and I use a form of it for retinal research. What should not happen with the fear mongering is that the technology be given a bad name from those who want to abuse the technology. Like many technologies, data mining is a tool that can be mis-used, but its application can also do tremendous good.

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As for datamining itself: more power to them. The government gaining the ability to mine the data it already have should mean that we don't need more organizations, more intrusive investigations, etc. Every report or credible news item about post-9/11 studies indicates that we already had enough information, so there should be no need to create new laws that allow for more information to be collected. Just use what you have already, kthx.
What would be nice is if this data-mining allowed Muslims living in the U.S. to stop having to wrry whenever they go outside. Look at the information publicly available, that may provide patterns of "nonobvious" connections, and let people live thier lives in peace, regardless of background.

As a consumer, everything I do in public I consider public information. If a business uses this to better serve me, all the better. Maybe this will mean I don't have to watch feminine ads on TV, or the phone gets answered faster when I call. Maybe it just means that the customer rep knows my name and what I bought already.

is a size-32 bra an indication of something? (Score:0, Offtopic) by kfg (145172) on Saturday January 04, @05:47PM (#5016009)

Yes. KFG

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WHAT?!? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @06:06PM (#5016079)

SSIA

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Re:WHAT?!? (Score:2) by kfg (145172) on Saturday January 04, @08:13PM (#5016724)

A small chest. KFG

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Re:question from non-american (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @07:38PM (#5016521)

is a size-32 bra an indication of something? Small tits. Maybe they work out more there.

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Re:question from non-american (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @08:36PM (#5016835)

'Maybe they work out more there.' or maybe they have less implants there.

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Re:question from non-american (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 05, @12:27AM (#5017935)

or maybe they have less implants there. Can't we have a serious discussion about tits without violating the rules of grammar? Perhaps you mean "or maybe they have fewer implants there."

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

Yes, it means I will not e visiting New York (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @11:07PM (#5017544)

Hooters would be lying to me about New York. That or maybe the Size-32 braws are seasonal...kinda like Hooters' beer fountain always filling up and we all suck it dry and they gotta fill it back up again. ok, bad mental picture, sorry.

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

So, I decided to mine almost 200 by-State demographic variables for correlates to autism by running through every combination of 2 variables via multiplication or division under a polynomial, exponential or null transformation -- then sorted them by their correlation to autism in the year 2000 [clanarchy.com].

This is a case where what was "mined" was not just the raw data but various arithmetic combinations of statistical variables derived from the data. There needs to be some additional work to make the figure of merit, not just correlation but statistical significance. I couldn't find Perl modules that provide "alpha" (probability the null hypothesis is true) for correlations.

Re:Uber Loyalty Card in the UK (Nectar) (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @06:01PM (#5016066)

Hey, at least they're being honest with the name. Nectar, the substance, is a tempation (sweet), the ulterior motive for which is the spread of pollen. Nectar, the card, is a tempation (free!), the ulterior motive for which is profiling and... yes, data mining.

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

Re:Uber Loyalty Card in the UK (Nectar) (Score:1) by josey_whale (538254) on Saturday January 04, @09:43PM (#5017112)

You for got to mention that Debenhams was also a member of this allience. ( http://media.guardian.co.uk/advertising/story/0,74 92,798841,00.html ). My question is, what else will they do with this data?

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In the last page, this Fayyad of digiMine claims that he doesn't want to work with the govt because the 'Bush administration' hasn't clearly enough articulated its vision of what it wants.

I hope he was misquoted. There may be some legit reasons not to work with the US Govt. on anti-terrorism technology, but Mr. Fayadd is being either overly dismissive or just immune to opportunity by saying what he's quoted as saying. It sure is nice when the client comes to you with a fully articulated vision for the solution he needs, but most just start out with stated or even just perceived needs and leave it to the, ahem, vendors to provide the solution/vision.

On another note, it would be interesting to read an article with some technical detail beyond a generic reference to XML. Maybe someone can post a link.

Why (Re:Fayyad) (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @07:34PM (#5016497)

digiMine sell many different types of data mining solutions, but i believe their main focus is customer relationship management and customer segmentation. These areas apply to business more than they apply to Govt's...

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If you want valuable information and you know what you're looking for, you just query. Find X in pile of data. That's mining. I know it's a semantic comment, but mining's not what we're talking about doing here.

Data mining is more like what geneticists searching for a genetic cause for a cancer are doing. Finding usable correlations and meaningful precursors. We don't call cancer-fighting biologists 'gene miners'. I think the term mining belittles a more complicated activity.

A better term? Data Correlating? Mining also just sounds brutish.

Re:Data Mining is the wrong term (Score:2) by geekoid (135745) <notities@yahoo.com> on Sunday January 05, @03:36AM (#5018655) (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday February 21, @04:37PM)

No, its mining, not coralating. If I have a cube of date, I can find things outside of how the data is orginazed. Data mining is not finding X in data, its finding X in data when X isn't nessarily an hard value.

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Re:The problem with automatic identification (Score:2, Interesting) by nrobert (605941) on Saturday January 04, @06:30PM (#5016200)

I'm not sure the goal is to have the miner spit out names of confirmable terrorists with that kind of accuracy. You're comment is fair if you're looking for that kind of entirely automated solution, but that's not the goal. It doesn't need to be 100% accurate in order to mitigate risk and pay for itself. Neither does the J Crew web site product predictor. The goal is definitely to help single out people that are worth further investigation. By motivated, thinking, observant humans. That's all. I also think you might be a little bit reductionist in your estimate of 100 terrorists. It's quite possible that there are many more, though I suppose it doesn't matter because even if you're looking for just one person, it's still worth doing. Given that you're looking for a reasonably good filter to find qualifiers for a round of investigation, a better metric to use might be the number of people you're willing to investigate as a ratio against those you hope to positively I.D. You might argue that you'd be happy to investigate 5,000 people just to find one 'terrorist'. If so, and you're looking for an estimated 100 terrorists, you can multiply to get the number of 'persons of interest' of 500,000 or .19% of the USA population. This % is much more achievable, and besides, then you use a different algo to ID which of these you should interview first or do MORE research on first. It seems pretty managable to me. I also think your assessment of the 50% false negative rate is too rosy. It seems to me that the risks would be serious enough of even 1 getting away (as in scanning baggage for instance) that you'd want to cast the widest net possible and then narrow those carefully. False negatives may be more costly than you are suggesting.

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I also take issue with the statement
a customer whose IT ineptitude is matched only by its means
which is clearly a jab at the hard working professionals of the US government and an effort to push privatization of IT functions. I have work with IT professionals in Academic, Industrial, Commercial, and Government settings. I will tell you that IT professionals in all these setting range from incompetent to brilliant. The difference is that, until recently, US employees have not had to live with the fear of random layoffs or arbitrary insurance reductions. I often wonder why it is unpatriotic to insult policemen, firemen, or military officers, but when it comes to the professionals that allow these people to work, no insult is severe enough.

Re:an advertisement for privatization of security? (Score:2) by scubacuda (411898) <scubacudaNO@SPAMiname.com> on Sunday January 05, @02:30AM (#5018382) (http://www.kernel32.org/)

Not that I advocate insulting "policemen, firemen, or military officers"... ...but I'd say that the difference is that these people are on the "front lines", so to speak. I'd rather have an IT job where I can surf /. on my spare time rather than have to investigate shootings, put out fires, or make strategy decisions that could potentially costs millions of lives.

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Re:Nice story but (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, @07:40PM (#5016537)

According to Fayyad, "Data mining is the nontrivial process of identifying valid, novel, potentially useful, and ultimately understandable patterns in data [1]". Basically it involves AI, machine learning and statistics amoung other things... [1] Fayyad, U., G. Piatetsky-Shapiro, and P. Smyth, From Data Mining to Knowledge Discovery in Databases. AI Magazine, 1996. 17: p. 37--54.

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How it works (Score:1) by tqft (619476) <ianburrows_auNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Sunday January 05, @04:22AM (#5018765)

The best device I know of for turning data into information is the human visual cortex. Forget AI use HI (Human Intelligence). The trick is to reduce the vast amount of data to something that can be scanned at a glance. Typically produce a list of relevant items (eg by grabbing the doc ids based on keywords from the source data), sorting by most relevant (the scoring system). So if three keywords match in a single doc, score it high. If those three keywords appear in another doc, score both high and set the both flag. The sorted list from high score to low is then scanned. Experience soon tells you if your scoring system is working. The list you now have (electronically hopefully), has links to the original docs, the anlayst then clicks and reads. If relevant - act. If not, go to next item.

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Re:Nice story but (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 05, @06:54PM (#5022195)

Data mining is a kind of umbrella term for a load of different machine learning and statistical techniques, when applied to a fuck-ton of data. Yes, there's some bits from AI in there, and neural nets do get used, but there's also statistical stuff like k-means clustering. Basically, any technique that can be used to form a model of all of your data, and then apply it to some more, can be used for data mining.

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

First of all, read what is data mining in the FOLDOC (Free On-Line Dictionary Of Computing) [ic.ac.uk], if you don't know.