On business

I saw the new Army recruiting TV spots. I must say they are truly brilliant; they are some of the best ads I have ever seen. I mean like I wanted to go join up good. To the Army people if you read this, kudos on an excellent ad campaign!

New topic:
I was at the post office and I saw a wanted poster for a guy who looks like a guy I work with, and that made me think. Why are wanted posters for people in the Northeast put up in Coppell? It seems like with a little thought someone could put together a computer program that would analyze a series of variables about the person and historical data on where that type of person hides out and then target those areas. Seriously, a white supremacist on the run after a lone wolf killing isn’t likely to hide out in a small Black or Hispanic community and if he is seen there will stick out anyways. It is a matter of targeting resources; if you can put info in the right people’s hands then you are more likely to get results. The same is true for kidnapped children, if we can make it harder for criminals to hide by targeting the obvious places they might go then only the smart ones, who can break the pattern will be successful in hiding, but we will at least make it more difficult by forcing them to stay on their toes.

New topic:
Another idea is to put dumb GPS units in people’s cars, and then tracked them anonymously, like Neilson cars. Give them free satellite radio or OnStar service, (actually come to think of it OnStar cars already have the unit in them, hmmm) to encourage people to join up. The real money is from selling real time traffic info to people and companies. Imagine if you were driving along and your NAV system warned you that all the cars that were monitored up head were only going 10 mph when the speed limit was 70 mph then suggested an alternate route. It could work for cities too, they would pay good money to have this kind of traffic info, imagine if the DoT people knew that traffic had doubled on a surface road because of an unknown problem on a freeway, assistance could be dispatched and traffic light patterns altered to keep the traffic moving.
I have lots of ideas for improving traffic flow (and as a side project the economic state of a region/company) based on a hybrid of the field of behavior analysis designed for the fishing industry to reduce by-catch, computational fluid dynamics and anthropology. Those ideas are duh grade so if you have a NDA or a check, I will be happy to talk about them. (If you don’t know why duh grade is good, it is an idea that when you hear, you go "duh, why didn’t I think of that" like peanut butter and chocolate.)