Cartoons
Thursday, April 10th, 2008
Archive for April 10th, 2008
Microsoft Introduces Tool for Avoiding Traffic Jams
Thursday, April 10th, 2008[Quote:]
Microsoft on Thursday plans to introduce a Web-based service for driving directions that incorporates complex software models to help users avoid traffic jams.
The new service’s software technology, called Clearflow, was developed over the last five years by a group of artificial-intelligence researchers at the company’s Microsoft Research laboratories. It is an ambitious attempt to apply machine-learning techniques to the problem of traffic congestion. The system is intended to reflect the complex traffic interactions that occur as traffic backs up on freeways and spills over onto city streets.
Given what Microsoft has been doing with drivers on their software platform, I hope I’m forgiven if I wait a bit with this new technology..
For Many, a Boom That Wasn’t
Thursday, April 10th, 2008[Quote:]
In 2000, at the end of the previous economic expansion, the median American family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less — about $60,500.
This has never happened before, at least not for as long as the government has been keeping records. In every other expansion since World War II, the buying power of most American families grew while the economy did. You can think of this as the most basic test of an economy’s health: does it produce ever-rising living standards for its citizens?
Fokke & Sukke
Thursday, April 10th, 2008
