9 Types of Intelligence – Improving
Al Qaeda Brits Fighting in Syria – Interview
Big Data: Resist the Siren Song
Pakistani Nukes — Bhutto Kept in the Dark
Radicalization in the Digital Era (15 cases)
Jean Lievens: Michael Porter on Businesses Solving Problems, Profit as Sign of Sustainable Solution — Never Mind the Details (e.g. True Cost Economics)
Commercial Intelligence
Michael Porter: Why business can be good at solving social problems
Robert Jones
It appears that Michael Porter is having an attack of conscience after recognizing the results of his life's work. “Where are all the resources?” he asks, and then answers, “In business.” Well, ummm…DUHHH! It took him his whole career to figure this out? After his entire life of saying, “Profit is the magic” for business, suddenly he thinks that “business profit from solving social problems” ‘s the answer for mankind's social problems. “Take all this profit and redeploy it into social problems…” vs. “Take the massive social issues and make them profitable to solve…” Right. I don't suppose Porter has looked at the private prison industry lately. Businesses don't solve problems. They manage problems, and treat problems (like cancer), but solving problems is a one-and-done, and that's just not what business does.
Stephen E. Arnold: SAIL LABS Media Mining Indexer Updated
IO Technologies, IO Tools
New Version of Media Mining Indexer (6.2) from SAIL LABS Technology
The release titled SAIL LABS Announces New Release Of Media Mining Indexer 6.2 from SAIL LABS Technology on August 5, 2013 provides some insight into the latest version of the Media Mining Indexer. SAIL LABS Technology considers itself as an innovator in creating solutions for vertical markets, and enhancing technologies surrounding advanced language understanding abilities. The newest release offers such features as,
“Improved named entity detection of names via unified lists across languages… improved topic models for all languages… improved text preprocessing for Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Frasi, US and international English…support of further languages: Catalan, Swedish, Portuguese, Bahasa (Indonesia), Italian, Farsi and Romanian…improved communication with Media Mining Server to relate recognized speakers to their respective profiles.”
Gerhard Backfried, Head of Research at SAIL LABS, called the latest release a “quantum leap forward” considering the system’s tractability, constancy and ability to respond to clients needs. The flagship product is based on SAIL LABS speech recognition technology, which as won awards, and offers a suite of ideal components for multimedia processing, and the transformation of audio and video data into searchable information. The features boast the ability to convert speech to text accurately with Automatic Speech Recognition and the ability to detect different speakers with Speaker Change Detection.
Chelsea Kerwin, November 09, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Penguin: South Africa Opts Out of Predatory IMF/WTO System
01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, was Chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. His most recent book is The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers our Future.
NEW YORK – International investment agreements are once again in the news. The United States is trying to impose a strong investment pact within the two big so-called “partnership” agreements, one bridging the Atlantic, the other the Pacific, that are now being negotiated. But there is growing opposition to such moves.
South Africa has decided to stop the automatic renewal of investment agreements that it signed in the early post-apartheid period, and has announced that some will be terminated. Ecuador and Venezuela have already terminated theirs. India says that it will sign an investment agreement with the US only if the dispute-resolution mechanism is changed. For its part, Brazil has never had one at all.
There is good reason for the resistance. Even in the US, labor unions and environmental, health, development, and other nongovernmental organizations have objected to the agreements that the US is proposing.
Continue reading “Penguin: South Africa Opts Out of Predatory IMF/WTO System”
Eagle: Google Testing Program To Track Everyone Everywhere
Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption
Google Is Testing A Program That Tracks You Everywhere You Go
Google wants to know your every move
Google is beta-testing a program that tracks users’ purchasing habits by registering brick-and-mortar store visits via smartphones, according to a report from Digiday.
Google can access user data via Android apps or their Apple iOS apps, like Google search, Gmail, Chrome, or Google Maps.
If a customer is using these apps while he shops or has them still running in the background, Google’s new program pinpoints the origin of the user data and determines if the customer is in a place of business.
Google gets permission to do this kind of tracking when Android users opt in to the “location services” option in their smartphone’s options menu and when iOS users agree to allow “location services” for Google apps like Gmail and Google Maps.
The program was hinted at in an AdWords blog post from Oct. 1 regarding Google’s new “estimated total conversions” initiative. A “conversion” in this sense is a purchase, and Google is developing ways to track users across desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Google also mentioned that tracking conversions via phone calls is in the works, but has yet to release details.
Business Insider has reported on how Google is using cross-device conversion measurements in its war with Facebook for advertising supremacy. When advertisers are allowed to know as much as possible about users’ purchasing habits, they can target their ads more efficiently and reap the benefits. Measuring conversions is also important because it assures advertisers that their purchases are resulting in increased product sales.
Mobile users who search for products on their phones buy quickly after researching them, according to a Google/Nielsen report released on Tuesday. Consumers spend 15+ hours every week researching products, and more than half make their purchase within an hour after looking it up.
SchwartzReport: Truths That Matter
Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth IntelligenceThis is excellent news. The cost of solar is coming down like a skier on a slope. If we took the same money we have willingly been spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, to no good purpose whatever, and put it to work converting the entire country off of carbon energy, we would create enormous prosperity. Unemployment would drop to 3-4%. Every energy conversion — animals and wind to coal, coal to petroleum — has created enormous wealth from the top down. We should be embracing this transformation not resisting it. And that's without even considering the effect on climate change. The struggle is not going to be technological, but how old forms die.
First Solar Reports Largest Quarterly Decline In CdTe Module Cost Per-Watt Since 2007
Clean Technica
Click through and look at the geographical distribution of poverty in the U.S. You will see on the maps that persistent poverty exists overwhelmingly in Red value states. I think this is happening because the white minority has made their retaining power their first priority, easily trumping social wellness. These are also the most violent, and the most religious states. They are controlled by the Caucasian Theocratic Ri! ght. The failure of the Right's social policies is glaringly obvious by any social measure one chooses. Why is almost no one talking about this?
Geography of Poverty
USDA Economic Research Service
This is the latest on the Prison Privatization trend showing how it is creating the New American Slavery. I find it amazing that this is going on, and nobody talks about it. Two years ago when I first really saw this trend, and wrote about it, I thought people would be outraged. (See: The New American Slavery. http://www.explorejournal.com/
Non-Violent Offenders Fill Jails in Prison Nation’s Worst State: Louisiana
STEVEN ROSENFELD – AlterNet (U.S.)
Once again: Water is destiny. This excellent report spells out just what we face. Click through to see the charts and maps.
No Water, No Life
VL BAKER – Daily Kos
Chuck Spinney: Bill Polk Primer on Syria
Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
Below is an excellent primer on Syria — its history, culture, and the ongoing civil war. It is written by my friend and historian William R. Polk. He has given his correspondents permission to distribute it … I strongly recommend it.
PDF (21 Pages): UNDERSTANDING SYRIA -PART I – POLK
William R. Polk was a Member of the Policy Planning Council, responsible for North Africa, the Middle East and West Asia, for 4 years under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Professor of History at the University of Chicago and President of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. He is the author of some 17 books on world affairs, including The United States and the Arab World; The Elusive Peace, the Middle East in the Twentieth Century; Understanding Iraq; Understanding Iran; Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency and Terrorism; Neighbors and Strangers: The Fundamentals of Foreign Affairs and numerous articles in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Harpers, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and Le Monde Diplomatique . He has lectured at many universities and at the Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, Sciences Po, the Soviet Academy of Sciences and has appeared frequently on NPR, the BBC, CBS and other networks.
