The Personality Forge AI- Artificial Intelligence Chat Bots: “The Personality Forge, the world’s first community of living people and artificial intelligence entities called bots. Come on in, and chat with bots and botmasters, then create your own artificial intelligence personality, and turn it loose to chat with both real people and other chat bots. Here you’ll find thousands of AI personalities, including bartenders, college students, flirts, rebels, adventurers, fairies, gods, aliens, reconstructions of real people, cartoon characters, and even an AI hamster.

All of these chat bots form emotional relationships with and memories about both people and other bots. Personality Forge bots are pushing the frontiers of artificial intelligence (AI) by incorporating memories and emotions into their makeup. True language comprehension is in constant development, as is a customizable Flash interface. Transcripts of every bot’s conversations are kept so you can read what your bot has said, and see their emotional relationships with other people and other bots. See if you can tell who is real! Then discuss your successes and failures in our forums. “

Biomes are defined as ‘the world’s major communities, classified according to the predominant vegetation and characterized by adaptations of organisms to that particular environment’

Biomes are classified in various ways.

Aquatic

Deserts

Forests

Grasslands

Tundra

These exhibits explore the ancestor/descendant relationships which connect all organisms, past and present.

The importance of biomes cannot be overestimated. Biomes have changed and moved many times during the history of life on Earth. More recently, human activities have drastically altered these communities. Thus, conservation and preservation of biomes should be a major concern to all.

How Mutual Fund Managers Exploit Opportunities to Maximize Fees

How can anyone serve two masters? It’s hard enough when the two want the same thing. But when the masters’ interests conflict, the servant’s position is untenable.

That’s the view of the mutual fund industry’s harshest critics. Fund managers, they say, cannot properly serve fund investors when they must also serve their own bosses, the management companies’ owners, public or private. Fund company owners make bigger profits when investors are charged high fees; investors get higher returns when fees are low.

“The question is: whom are they serving?” asks Wharton management professor Nicolaj Siggelkow. “Which boss are they serving more, and what influences this balance?”

Industry defenders have long rejected the critics’ charges, arguing that fund-company owners do best when their funds attract as many investors as possible. The need to compete puts a natural brake on the impulse to maximize fees, they contend.

Who’s right? New research by Siggelkow, reported in a paper titled, Caught Between Two Principals, supports the industry’s critics. After examining thousands of funds, Siggelkow concluded that fund managers do exploit opportunities to maximize fees, often using techniques that make fees virtually invisible to investors.

Legally, a fund is a corporation with a board of directors charged with looking after investors’ interests and hiring a firm to manage the fund. In practice, it is the management company that sets a fund up, appoints itself manager and selects the directors. Some management companies are publicly traded, others are held privately. The management company’s profits come from fees charged investors – primarily the “expense ratio” expressed as a percentage of assets and approved by the directors.

According to Siggelkow, securities regulations allow fund companies to shift research and distribution expenses from themselves to the fund investors. “I test whether fund providers take advantage of these opportunities … choose to maximize profits for their owners, rather than maximize the returns for their fund shareholders,” Siggelkow writes. “Moreover, I test whether better informed fund shareholders and fund shareholders with more buyer power, such as institutional investors, are able to reduce the ability for fund providers to shift expenses.”

“One out of every eight Americans now lives below the poverty line, as the percentage of the US population living in poverty rose for the third consecutive year in 2003, the US Census Bureau reported Thursday.

The Bureau said in its annual poverty report that the number of Americans living in poverty last year increased by 1.3 million to 35.8 million, accounting for about 12.5 percent of the nation’s population, 0.4 percentage points more than the previous year. The rise is particularly noticeable among children, with 12.9 million living in poverty last year, or 17.6 percent of the under-18 population. That represented an increase of about 800,000 from 2002, when 16.7 percent of children lived in poverty.

The poverty line varies according to the size of household. According to the Census Bureau, the threshold for a family of four was 18,810 US dollars, for a family of two it was 12,015 dollars. The median household income, when adjusted for inflation, remained basically flat last year at 43,318 dollars.

Meanwhile, nearly 45 million people lacked health insurance –or 15.6 percent of the population — up from 43.5 million in 2002,or 15.2 percent of the population, the Bureau said.

The number of those who lacked health insurance also rose for three consecutive years.

The Census Bureau normally releases these reports in late September. Some Democrats have claimed this year’s early release is an attempt by the Bush administration to play down the negative effect of the report in an election year.”

Exploding the Myths of Offshoring

Far from damaging the economy of the United States, offshoring should enable its companies to direct resources to next-generation technologies and ideas — if public policy doesn’t get in the way.

……The current debate is misplaced, however, because the problem is neither trade itself nor globalization more broadly but rather the question of how the country should allocate the benefits of global trade. Trade in services, like other forms of international trade, benefits the United States as a whole by making the economic pie bigger and raising the standard of living. Outsourcing jobs abroad can help keep companies profitable, thereby preserving other US jobs. The cost savings can be used to lower prices and to offer consumers new and better types of services. By raising productivity, offshoring enables companies to invest more in the next-generation technologies and business ideas that create new jobs. And with the world’s most flexible and innovative economy, the United States is uniquely positioned to benefit from the trend. After all, despite a large overall trade deficit, the country has consistently run a surplus in its international trade in services.

“A convergence of market forces has altered the competitive landscape in which private equity firms have thrived. More and more, they are encountering heavier competition for opportunities to invest, often against new competitors. The rise of the auction sales process is eroding the buyout players’ ability to gain privileged access to investments from their once-legendary networks of relationships. The creative financial-engineering skills once guarded by a few top practitioners have become commodities, and a tougher stock market has worked against players looking to purchase, restructure, and then quickly sell a company. Taken together, these changes threaten to lower median returns over the next five to ten years, compared with the public equity markets, and could make standout performance considerably more difficult.”

Knowledge@Wharton: “The sports business is unlike any other. In traditional businesses, for example, cooperation among competitors is regarded as collusion and is illegal, but in the multi-billion-dollar sports industry, rivals must cooperate in order to make profits. In The Business of Sports, Wharton professors Scott R. Rosner and Kenneth L. Shropshire present a range of readings about such issues and highlight the unique challenges that leaders of the sports industry face.”

Most of the time we ignore so much of the world around us. We are sleepwalkers in our own lives, relying upon crib sheets and lecture notes in place of the full spectrum of experience. We walk through the world and don’t pay attention to it. We see without seeing. We quickly classify others as “others� and don’t see them as individuals. We classify new ideas as “crazy� and don’t give them a second thought. In The Power of Impossible Thinking, Yoram (Jerry) Wind and Colin Crook explain how to realize the wonders and perils of operating outside our old mental models.

Knowledge@Wharton: “Some industries are just better for starting new firms than others. This, of course, means that you need to understand the characteristics of industries that make some of them better for starting firms than others if you want to increase your chances of success. In Finding Fertile Ground, Scott Shane says research has shown that four different dimensions matter: knowledge conditions, demand conditions, industry life cycles, and industry structure.”

For more than 50 years, the World Bank, donor nations, various aid agencies, national governments, and, lately, civil society organizations have all tried, but failed, to eradicate poverty. The adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by the United Nations only underscores the reality that in the 21st century, poverty — and the disenfranchisement that accompanies it — remains one of the world’s most daunting problems. In The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, C. K. Prahalad argues that the typical pictures of poverty mask the fact that the very poor represent resilient entrepreneurs and value-conscious consumers. What is needed is a better approach to help the poor, an approach that involves partnering with them to innovate and achieve sustainable win–win scenarios. Collaboration between the poor, civil society organizations, governments, and large firms can create the largest and fastest growing markets in the world.

Wow…thats insightful! (smirk in my face

M.B.A. Programs Switch To Big-Picture Approach: “For years graduate programs have focused on training students to excel in specialized areas such as finance, operations management, information technology or marketing. ‘But you end up seeing a problem as about technology or marketing or an international issue,’……… ‘Our goal is to get students…to think more broadly about how things come together.’”

Micro Flying Robots Everywhere

“A recent press release from Epson about the FR-II micro robot has generated a lot of story submissions lately. The FR-II is powered by two ultrasonic motors which drive opposing rotors. The tiny robot is just 136mm x 85mm, weigh 12.3 grams including two gyros, batteries, bluetooth link, and a digital camera. It has a flight time of about 3 minutes. You can see photos and read more about the robot at the BBC, space.com, and Slashdot. Meanwhile, Gizmodo reminds us of the Pixelito which, while it is an R/C helicopter and not a true robot, weighs in at only 6.9 grams.”

One of the thigh-thumping songs I love….

Billy Joel’s: We didn’t start the fire: “Billy Joel

We Didn’t Start the Fire

1949 Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray,

South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe Dimaggio,

1950 Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television,

North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe,

1951 Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom,

Brando, The King and I and The Catcher in the Rye

1952 Eisenhower, Vaccine, England’s got a new Queen,

Marciano, Liberace, Santayana good-bye .

CHORUS

We didn’t start the fire

It was always burning,

Since the world’s been turning.

We didn’t start the fire

Well we didn’t light it,

But we tried to fight it.

1953 Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev

Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist bloc,

1954 Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Tosconini, Dacron,

Dien Bien Phu falls, Rock Around the Clock,

1955 Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn’s got a winning team,

Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland,

1956 Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev,

Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez.

CHORUS

We didn’t start the fire

It was always burning,

Since the world’s been turning.

We didn’t start the fire

Well we didn’t light it,

But we tried to fight it.

1957 Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac,

Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, Bridge on the River Kwai,

1958 Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball,

Starkweather homicide, Children of Thalidomide,

1959 Buddy Holly, Ben Hur, Space Monkey, Mafia,

Hula Hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no go,

1960 U-2, Syngman Rhee, Payola, and Kennedy,

Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo.

CHORUS

We didn’t start the fire

It was always burning,

Since the world’s been turning.

We didn’t start the fire

Well we didn’t light it,

But we tried to fight it.

1961 Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land,

Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs Invasion,

1962 Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania,

Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson,

1963 Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex,

JFK blown away, What else do I have to say?

CHORUS

We didn’t start the fire

It was always burning,

Since the world’s been turning.

We didn’t start the fire

Well we didn’t light it,

But we tried to fight it.

1964

to

1989 Birth control, Ho Chi-Minh, Richard Nixon back again,

Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate,Punk Rock,

Begin, Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airlines

Ayatollahs in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan,

Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, Heavy metal, Suicide,

Foreign debts, Homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz,

Hypodermics on the shore, China’s Under Martial Law,

Rock and Roller Cola Wars, I can’t take it any more!

We didn’t start the fire

It was always burning,

Since the world’s been turning.

We didn’t start the fire

But when we are gone

It will still burn on and on and on and on…..

CHORUS”

(Building on a joke from author Bill Bryson) Never forget that of 400 million or so of your father’s spermatozoa that scrambled for courtship in your mother’s uterus, you survived a 1 in 400 million chance of being born. The chance that your mother was ovulating that day: about 2 in 28. The chance that your father was going to get lucky that night: 1 in 10. The chance that they would meet in a world of 5 billion people: 1 in 3 million. The chance that in the entire history of all homo sapiens they would be born in the same timeframe to permit childbirth: 1 in 4 billion. The chance that homo sapiens would evolve from primordial gas: 1 in 45 trillion. The chance that earth would permit life altogether in a universe of uninhabitable planets: 1 in 750 quadrillion.

In the end, you might have had a 1 in 500 trillion gazillion chance of being born. Congratulations. Good show. Bravo. The chance of you now having a resplendent life is singularly up to you.

Athletes may be the center of attention at the Olympic Games, but don’t expect to hear directly from them online — or see snapshots or video they’ve taken.

The International Olympic Committee is barring competitors, as well as coaches, support personnel and other officials, from writing firsthand accounts for news and other websites. An exception is if an athlete has a personal website that was not set up specifically for the Games.

The IOC’s rationale for the restrictions is that athletes and their coaches should not serve as journalists — and that the interests of broadcast rightsholders and accredited media come first.

Participants in the games may respond to written questions from reporters or participate in online chat sessions — akin to a face-to-face or telephone interview — but they may not post journals or blogs until the Games end Aug. 29.

To protect lucrative broadcast contracts, athletes and other participants are also prohibited from posting any video, audio or still photos they take themselves, even after the Games, unless they get permission ahead of time. (Photos taken by accredited journalists are allowed on the personal sites.”

Gmail notifier is a downloadable Windows application from Google that alerts Gmail users to the presence of new incoming messages. The app displays an icon in your system tray to let you know if you have unread Gmail messages, and shows you their subjects, senders and snippets — without your having to open a web browser.

There has been no growth in pumping and refining capacity since the 1970s; all the growth in output of the past three decades has come from squeezing more oil out of existing fields. Last year, growth in demand outstripped growth in refining capacity by 15:1. The rise in the oil price is both a reflection of past under-investment and, of course, a spur to future investment. It will, however, need oil to stay above $30 a barrel for several years to solve these supply problems.

Money: the best thing that could happen to civilisation, the worst thing that could happen to humanity.

Here is an excerpt of an email I wrote to one of my friends today

As far as b-plans are concerned, here are some pointers. Keep you idea ridiculously simple. The thumb rule I use is, “Will my grandmother understand it if I am selling this b-plan to her?” I am actually serious when I say this! A simple Google search can get you lots of guidelines on b-plans but common sense is paramount at every step. Every line in your b-plan should percolate through the common sense filter. You idea will either create a market need where none existed before, else it will serve an existing unmet need. A b-plan is a fuzzy and hazy blueprint where you demonstrate your ability to think through all the extraneous situations that would bankrupt you, if you started the business. Any Tom can wring a cashflow and project a profit three years after a business lays its nose against the grindstone. Pedigree counts, at every step, more than even the idea. So your team is more important than the idea you want to sell. Ideas come and go based on multiple interacting variables, but they will be dead even as they incubate if you don’t have the right team. Harp home on this fact throughout the b-plan. Your background is in technology (atleast your work experience). If you claim business expertise in fisheries, or agriculture (or any other extraneous industry), then you, (as the CEO) and your idea, (as your baby) will swipe out through the open door. Be careful what idea you choose. It need not be earth-shattering. It can quite possibly be someone already tried and gave up on. Business ideas rise again and again, like a phoenix, and have a life of their own based on broader economic forces, demographical changes, technology trends, market structure, and industry movements.

Anyway, I was recently helping a startup in IIT (some months ago) build their b-plan. Let me know if you need more help.

A very long time ago (12 years ago), in a country very far away across many seas and hills (India), there was one small boy who studied under the shade of a tree during summer months, who literally used candles regularly to study at nights (lack of reliable electricity), had a small table and chair under a thatched hut built in the terrace of a house, who managed his monthly expenses within $20 (thats right, dollar 20 only), whose only companion were books written by renowned authors (many of which were borrowed from the local library), who bristled with ambition to better himself, dreamt the big dreams and envisioned a brighter future. He was from a relatively semi-rural town, in the outskirts of a big city, cuccooned in rural honesty and wary of urban cunningness. All he got from his guardians was the unfettered freedom to pursue his education, the opportunity to seek out his name in the multitudes of masses. What did he have? Nothing. Well, he literally had ‘nothing’ to lose. His worldly possessions were a few books. He knew that knowledge, (and the ability to use, market, and continuously add to it) were the key to redemption.

Where is he now?

Thats yours truly!