I would be astonished if it was close enough to 100% accurate on free-form translation on 170 languages with no need for training to each individual's speech to provide useful translations on open ended questions. However I assume that this works through a decision tree process with limited options at each step and using diagrams to help; 'Point on the screen to the part of your body where it hurts the most" etc.

Yes, far better to toe the line on some ignorant managers directive about HIPAA than concentrate of the well being of the patients.

It is not clear from your post if the providers are violating HIPAA or violating management directives, which are often not the same thing. Especially when HIPAA first came out there was a lot of confusion about what could or could not be done, and, at least from what I have seen, the lawyers would err on the side of caution towards breaking HIPAA, often imposing rules far exceeding those required by HIPAA. HIPAA is also a good way to kill projects you don't like while appearing to support them.

Exactly.

22 Murders out of 50,000,000 craigslist users in the USA - rate per 100,000 of about 0.044, which is about one one-hundredth of the going USA homicide rate. If Craigslist were a city it would be an uncommonly safe place to live.

Sure, it means that he aircraft is larger and heavier than an average hummingbird, but is smaller and lighter than the largest hummingbird currently found in nature.

For starters it is a very convenient laboratory to test social networking theories. Do current theories about social networks in the real world apply in the virtual world? What aspects of virtual social networks apply to the real world? Theories about those aspects that do apply can potentially be tested much more easily in the virtual world than the real world.

It's a great place to make predictions, for example, about anxiety. Do we know how social networks effect our health? Good place to try and differentiate between effects of face-to-face contact and friendship.

What can virtual social networks tell us about the real world? Can they be used to predict disease outbreaks?

People studying facebook for these kinds of things are usually not interested in facebook, but rather using it because it is a convenient way to examine social networks. Kind of like examining Drosophila in biology.

I'm guessing that they meant "teaching interactivity to mathematics and computer science students".

I've always wondered... can you sue someone for the harm done to your reputation that was caused by the public's reaction to your suing them in the first place?

Dear Non-Obama Health Care Customer

We have identified you as a high risk patient.

Good bye.

Roads just don't change that frequently.

That is true, but whether or not they are passable does, especially in remote areas.

Bing sidebar extracts list of unique words appearing on each site user goes to and feeds back to MS. MS correlates keywords to the next site that the user visits.

Google honeytrap employees search for trap term on google, click on the returned link which goes to an unrelated site. Since the honeytrap term is unique and no site contains this word, the only data the MS has that relates to this word comes from the sidebar data stream which shows that when a user visits a page containing this word, the next page they go to is the unrelated site. Thus the make the connection that that page is relevant.

I would have thought however that MS would have put a check in to not pull data from the sidebar when the user is visiting Google to precisely avoid this kind of accusation. Since Google found the issue for some of the words in the honeytrap but not all of the words suggests that something more subtle is happening. For example, some of the honeytrap employees might have checked their email using an online hosting service (e.g. gmail etc) to find out what the honeytrap word is before proceeding. The sidebar extracts the unique words from the email and sends to MS. Two or three clicks later the employee is at the unrelated site. Suppose the sidebar is setup to ignoring Google searches. If MS correlates to a few links out it will see the honeytrap word from the email related to the unrelated site without observing the Google results.

Doing so might violate Google's terms of service, but there are no copyright issues involved, so the only recall Google would have is to block you from their services. Once you have the image it is yours to do what you please with, though IANAL.

Which is not to say the whole thing isn't still really cool.

don't you understand?