Dartmouth engineers George Cybenko and Vincent Berk think that PQS, or process query systems, are the way to go to make sense of the huge volume of data we collect each day from computer network monitors, video surveillance cameras, financial transaction records, databases of email exchanges, etc. The duo present their case in a paper published [download 1.6mb .pdf] in this month’s IEEE Computer.
“PQS closes the gap between gathering a tremendous amount of valuable data and figuring out what the data means,” says Cybenko.
It is based on the premise that sensed environments, be they computer networks, email traffic, or high-security buildings, all consist of processes with distinct states, dynamics, and observables. PQS works to detect and understand the changes or irregularities in these processes. The PQS software is easily installed with the sensor equipment to collect, monitor, and sort out a great deal of data.
Yes, they’re funded by all the usual suspects and then some.
Probably a productive addition to methods of computational analysis; but — do you think the current crop of Homeland Insecurity bureaucrats will manage a “flood” of data any better than, say, hurricane floodwaters?
sensed environments, be they computer networks, email traffic, or high-security buildings, all consist of processes with distinct states, dynamics, and observables. PQS works to detect and understand the changes or irregularities in these processes. The PQS software is easily installed with the sensor equipment to collect, monitor, and sort out a great deal of data.
Sounds like an explanation from “Charlie Epps” from NUMB3RS.
Also, in a TWiT, didn’t John say that large amounts of data can be processed more easily than smaller databases?
J/P=?
I don’t think the “current crop of Homeland Insecurity bureaucrats” can make sense of anything much, apart from their personal career plans.
#2 — And at the moment, those career paths only include just under 2 years of playing kissy-kissy with Pentagon vendors, etc. — to be followed shortly thereafter by cushy jobs as lobbyists playing kissy-kissy with Congress and the Pentagon.
I’d prefer to live in a society where the government doesn’t view us all as potential criminals, and therefore needing to collect all this data on us.
Too much data, insufficient cerebral mass to assimilate it all, wet-ware overwhelmed by the software. Actually, there’s not that much to worry about.
Kind of like the over hyped computer virus scam; deploy a sturdy in/out firewall, use common sense while connected to the internet, and keep the good stuff backed up so reinstalls ain’t that big a deal. Anti-virus sunscriptions cost too much, and the last two I used fubarred my computer.
If you think the government is fielding brains big enough to sift through all the incoming data and draw any meaningful conclusions then you are buying into all the modern iconic scams that seem to be achieving sentiency; things like the global warming mythos, massive consumption is patriotic, American democracy/religion is what the world needs, fossil fuels will last forever, conspiracies are, like dirty bathrooms, inherently evil and governments actually care about their people.
#5 – the danger is not that someone will get something meaningful out of investigating such big piles of data with less-than-big brains, but that they will THINK they’ve gotten something and act, when nothing meaningful is really there.