p2pnet news | Products:- Bill and the Boyz are already in your home.

Now they want to climb into your car as they figure out how to cash in on traffic jams.

Microsoft Clearflow, “was developed over the last five years by a group of artificial-intelligence researchers at the company’s Microsoft Research laboratories,” says the New York Times.

“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.”

Great idea.

But with Microsoft and the other biggies, selling you something isn’t enough. They also want to know everything there is to know about you and your private life so they, and the people they’ll sell your data to, can use increasingly shady practises and techniques designed to force stuff you don’t want and don’t need down your throat.

“The Clearflow system will be freely available as part of the company’s Live.com site (maps.live.com) for 72 cities in the United States,” says the story adding:

“Microsoft says it will give drivers alternative route information that is more accurate and attuned to current traffic patterns on both freeways and side streets.”

Traffic updates, “have recently become a standard feature offered by the major Web portals as well as a number of specialized services that send the information to cars or to smartphones and other portable devices,” says the NTY.

“… specialized services that send the information to cars or to smartphones and other portable devices”.

Hmmmm

Slashdot it!

New York Times - Microsoft Introduces Tool for Avoiding Traffic Jams , April 10, 2008

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 9:23 am and is filed under Freedom, Product News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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