After skimming that report, and comparing it with what's on the Cryptohippie website - it looks to me that the document is more of a marketing tool to promote their company. Am I the only one who thinks this?

Here's what the group claims to do: "Cryptohippie USA, Inc. exists to protect individuals and organizations against attacks on privacy by agents of industrial and competitive espionage, organized crime, oppressive governments and even hired hackers. We do this with the best of encryption technologies and a closed group of highly protected networks - for your peace of mind and safety."

Here's what the report posits:

* "In an Electronic Police State...[every electronic flotsam you produce is] criminal evidence, and they are held in searchable databases, for a long long time."
* "Whoever holds this evidence can make you look very, very bad"
* The State knows everything you do, a-la Big Brother

They are trying to frame this paranoia into a neat little package, which sets you in the right mood to accept what they have to sell - which is protection against attacks on your privacy.

Classic marketing technique? Sorry, it just looks like another insurance agent to me.

From TFA: "Now, I realize this is a far stretch from a working model to predict epidemics. But, it sure does look cool. I also I think it will be a good base for some more interesting work."

Yes, you are right. But I don't think we should be dissing the chap for trying something new. Yes, maybe the the author was trying to up his coolness factor, but kudos to the guy for putting the two disparate pieces of technology together to visualize something about H1N1.

Two years of work experience will do more for you in the long run. Plus, you could always take the masters at some later point in time.

Also, if you're up to it, there's plenty of colleges that'd let you do your MBA on a part-time basis, or at least schedule your classes around your work requirements.

Back when I was doing my Bachelor's degree (full-time course), I also had a regular 40-hour-per-week day job, and was also raising a baby daughter at the same time.

Two words: time management.

Disclaimer: I work for a cellphone operator.

Ok, TFA has some valid points on the endless annoyance that we know as voicemail. But for mobile operators, at least, there's really no reason for them to kill this service.

And do you know why? Voicemail is considered, from a telco point of view, as a Call Completion Service. This allows the operator to generate revenue by forwarding a call that was destined for termination (B-party hung up, rejected etc) into a service that answers the call. At which point, they can charge the caller for this "previlege".

Let's say operator X has 100 million calls per month on its network where the called party has rejected the call or is unavailable. Assuming that:

* a chargeable block of 0.10 per minute
* everyone leaves a short message that's less than one minute long

The operator stands to make $10,000,000 a month in call completion revenue. By providing a simple voicemail service. Which no-one really cares about anyways. Of course, there'd be interconnect charges from other operators, but the gist is the same.

If voicemail was removed, the operator would lose this significant chunk of revenue, just because there was nothing to complete the calls. Which is why you'll never get existing operators who already provide voicemail removing it.

Voicemail == Call Completion == Cash Cow

Where I'm working, revenue from this call completion bit contributes around 20% of the monthly voice traffic revenue.

Another fun factoid: voicemail retrieval stands at 10% of those deposited.

How about this one:

Who is Pamela Anderson's mother?

Some results:

* Her mother Carol is a waitress
* Pamela Anderson's mother wishes she was gay
* Pamela Anderson's mother doesn't mind the Playboy pictures
* Pamela Anderson's mother was so distraught about her daughter's wedding to rocker TOMMY LEE - she starved herself
* Pamela Anderson's controlling mother is driving her crazy

Just based on TFA, it looks like Wolfram could be a fun search tool, if you're looking for facts and trivia. Seems like most of the searches turned up facts as opposed to Google, which returns links to pages.

At the very least it might help in the "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader" part..

Well, at least Mr. Ballmer has a clue. Too bad this this contest is over and done with in most third world countries. Where pirated Windows is worth less than a pirated DVD copy of Faster and Furiouser part 13.