+1 What is fantastic about the times we live in is that finally we have companies out there having both really big data sets and hardware infrastructure allowi

+1 What is fantastic about the times we live in is that finally we have companies out there having both really big data sets and hardware infrastructure allowing them to apply all these soft computing algorithms we used to learn. Google, Facebook, Apple (iTunes), Amazon, etc. they all have amazingly deep real world data sets just begging for multidimensional analysis. What is close to insane is that practical analysis of big data is not even restricted to these top companies only, as any one of us can set up one own's computing cluster with EC2 and e.g. open-source Weka. I'm sure the next decades will surprise us with many breakthroughs and discussions on data privacy will be moving us closer and closer to total surrender...