Tue, Nov 11 2008
GOOGLE will launch a new tool that will help federal officials "track sickness"."Flu Trends" uses search terms that people put into the web giant to figure out where influenza is heating up, and will notify the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in real time!
GOOGLE, continuing to work closely with government, claims it would keep individual user data confidential: "GOOGLE FLU TRENDS can never be used to identify individual users because we rely on anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur each week."
Engineers will capture keywords and phrases related to the flu, including thermometer, flu symptoms, muscle aches, chest congestion and others. Dr. Lyn Finelli, chief of influenza surveillance at CDC: "One thing we found last year when we validated this model is it tended to predict surveillance data. The data are really, really timely. They were able to tell us on a day-to-day basis the relative direction of flu activity for a given area. They were about a week ahead of us. They could be used... as early warning signal for flu activity."Thomas Malone, professor at M.I.T.: "I think we are just scratching the surface of what's possible with collective intelligence."Eric Schmidt, GOOGLE's chief executive vows: "From a technological perspective, it is the beginning."
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My dear friendly Losercrats -
I understand you will all be going through a series of withdrawals soon enough. When President Bush leaves office, you will not have any bogeymen to use as straw men in any of your irrationally devised and illogically presented arguments or claims. I am sorry.
It gets worse.
Over the last eight years, according to you - MOST of your civil liberties have been taken away. I will be very eager to watch as Obama reverses all those nefarious acts Bush perpetrated, and gives back to the American people all the civil liberties Bush took away.
I will be VERY eager to receive all those rights back and following your delusional vitriol, HE WILL RETURN ALL liberties taken away. How soon after January 20th should I expect the rescission to go into effect and a full restoration of civil liberties occur?
He was the candidate of change ... and this would be serious change, and the Congress if all Democratic and they care about civil liberties ... I will be very eager to find out when we can expect a return!
In the meantime, not to ruffle what feathers you have left, but the bigger issue has always been the private sector - NOT THE GOVERNMENT.
The above article is not in and of itself an issue, it is extrapolating from what we now know, to what could very well happen with just as few strokes of the keyboard!
Have a nice day.
You may now return the tin foil to its appropriate place.
Obama
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