Quora monetization strategy and the surveillance state?

How deeply connected is Quora to our government's intelligence agencies?

I'm going to answer this question seriously, even though it makes me laugh a little.

The context topic is "Quora Business Model and Monetization". There would be no reason for Quora to have any connection with U.S. government intelligence agencies in order to sustain itself as a viable business, i.e. a going concern.

In the somewhat implausible scenario that the U.S. government wanted to use Quora content or user data for national security purposes, or even law enforcement purposes as needed (e.g. for collecting evidence in the course of a criminal investigation), there would be no need to pay Quora. Quora is a U.S.-domiciled company, and it uses Amazon Web Services to store its data. Both Quora and AWS must comply with U.S. government requests for data. If necessary, the U.S. government could compel Quora to cooperate by a wide variety of entirely legal means.[1] 

It isn't a quid pro quo relationship. That is to say, the following scenario would NOT be a monetization or business model for Quora:

NSA/CIA/FBI:  

Give us your user data and let us interact with your users as we see fit.

 
Quora:  

Okay! How much will you pay us?

 
NSA/CIA/FBI:  

We'll pay you $12 million dollars per year.

 
Quora:  

Sounds good. Deposit a million dollars on the third Thursday of every month in Marc Bodnick's checking account.

 
NSA/CIA/FBI:  

Okay!

 
Quora

   😀 

 
NSA/CIA/FBI 

   😀

 
There are some other possibilities worth considering. The question doesn't actually specify "US government", only "our government", although the topic tags do include the NSA, DHS, FBI, and CIA.

What percentage of physicians have not yet transitioned to EMRs?

What percentage of physicians still use paper medical records instead of digital? Why haven't they switched?

My answer as of 2015

In 2008, 4% of U.S. physicians reported having an extensive, fully functional electronic-records system, and 13% reported having a basic system, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, see Common Examples of Healthcare IT Failure (Drexel University).

By May 2013, approximately 90% of health care facilities had implemented an electronic health record (EHR) system although only 56% of long-term care facilities had done so, see Long-term care facilities lag behind on EHR adoption.

As for physicians, CDC Releases Report on Physician EHR Adoption in 2014  indicated an EHR adoption rate of 78%. Here is some data about physicians' usage of digital records and technology via Survey shows EHR skepticism increasing among U.S. doctors published 15 April 2015.

The number of U.S. doctors who routinely use digital tools, such as secure email, for communicating with patients is 30% now versus 13% in 2012.

The five IT capabilities that U.S. doctors use the most are:

• entering patient notes electronically (82%); 
• prescribing drugs electronically (72%); 
• receiving clinical results directly into a patient’s EMR (65%); 
• using electronic administration tools (63%); 
• sending e-order requests to labs (62%). 

I don't know the composition of the complementary data. It depends on the number of N/A or "didn't know" or "didn't respond to that question" versus "I use paper" responses.

A note about terminology

An EMR is an Electronic Medical Record. An EHR (Electronic Health Record) system consists of either EMRs or EHRs, i.e. they are used interchangeably. I don't often see "EMR systems". I'm unsure why "EHR systems" is the more common term.  Often, context is necessary to determine whether "EHR" refers to an EHR system or an EHR.

 

How to increase the US prison population

How can the percentage of the population that the United States of America incarcerates be increased?

Start by using funds intended for Social Security to construct more privately-built and operated prisons. I'm certain that other New Deal programs like Medicare could be rolled back too.

Set policy goals for incarcerating more highly educated and skilled people. Prison labor costs cents on the dollar, e.g. convicts often must work for 15 cents per hour doing work that is compensated at $7 to $10 per hour at market rates. Incarcerated physicians, software engineers, electricians, and skilled tradesmen would offer remarkable savings as part of supervised work-release programs. They could also serve as domestic servants to the political elite and ruling classes! 

Alternatively, immigration status could be expanded to include indentured servitude. How to get them incarcerated? That's a more challenging problem. Impose some draconian and opaque taxes on the bond holder; if not paid properly and on time, the indentured servant is incarcerated not the owner uh bond holder. 

If there is public outcry about an increasingly totalitarian state, solve the problem by making FEMA death camps a reality for any who object.

Ellie on Yahoo! Answers

Which Quora Users use Yahoo! answers?

I do! I have answered questions on Yahoo! Answers since 2007. I am not a frequent user, i.e. I have almost made it to Level 3. I am Javelina on Yahoo! Answers. I like the user interface, and I like Yahoo! Avatars, which are visible on Yahoo! Answers. Moderation is responsive.

There is a surprising amount of accumulated information on Yahoo! Answers. I do worry about its longevity. This is why I believe that Yahoo! Answers, silly as some content may be, is an important repository of (online) knowledge. 

Me with a sweet piggy friend
with help from Yahoo! Avatars

Much of our web of knowledge has grown around Wikipedia. It is primarily due to the fact that Wikipedia is free to access, I suspect. That sounds harsh, but it isn't intended to be. This is my reasoning: It is well and good to cite Royal Society proceedings, or journal articles published by Elsevier or the ACM, but it really isn't of much help to people who cannot access them without an Athens or Shibboleth (academic or other institutional) login access.

Why would it have been important to emphasize Hammurabi's connection to divinity?

Hammurabi was the sixth king of the Amorite Dynasty of Old Babylon, in the 18th century B.C. The Code of Hammurabi is one of the most famous legal codes surviving from the ancient Middle East.

It would have been important for Hammurabi to emphasize his connection to divinity primarily for reasons of credibility. He needed credibility to establish the legitimacy of his seminal Code of Law to gain acceptance by the people of Babylon. This concept is referred to as divine election[1]:

While there is no doubt that these claims represent royal self-promotion in an attempt to increase legitimacy, the general population of a given country presumably gave some credence to this brand of political theology.

Divine election in the context of the reign of King Hammurabi has received relatively little attention. Better known ancient and modern instances of divine election are the Pharaonic dynasties of ancient Egypt, the Emperor of Japan, and Queen Elizabeth II of England as head of the Anglican Church.

The Code of Hammurabi consisted of laws that had evolved over generations[2].

Hammurabi receives his Code directly from the god of justice at the Louvre 
Photo: Christian Larrieu, Réunion des Musées Nationaux via Art Resource, New York.

How to represent database schemas?

What is the best way to visually share and communicate database schemas?

This is my new user name and profile picture on Quora! 

I chose an image from my laptop at random

I am Math Troll. They got rid of the 'real names policy' in 2018 or so.

An Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) will capture:

• the contents of each table,
• the relationships between tables: primary keys, foreign keys,
• some exogenous information such as input data source.

I've become fond of Toad for Oracle as a tool for visually describing existing database schema. Toad could be described as an applications development environment, but it has an ERD creation function, which can be used to generate a nicely portable diagram in a choice of formats, certainly XLS and PNG, and possibly PDF.

In addition to the ERD, it is helpful to have a corresponding data dictionary in document form that lists, by table, the fields (and what they represent as descriptive naming isn't usually an option when field names are restricted to only 8 characters or similarly few bytes), field type and length. Toad generates such a document.

For a quick layout of something conceptual, try using MS Visio, or even MS Excel.