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Domain: cityofchicago.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to cityofchicago.org.
Comments · 20
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Need analytic tools to make sense of the data
A lot of government sites currently publish data that can be easily downloaded, but the average user has trouble making sense of it. For example, the city of Chicago has a website where you can download crime data https://data.cityofchicago.org... for the last 18 years. You can pick from formats like CSV or XML (but they don't have Json yet) to download. Their website visualization tools are getting better, but I wish they were much more flexible.
I am building an analytic tool that makes it really easy to create relational tables from CSV or Json files and do all kinds of analytics using it. See a quick 4 minute demo video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?... to see a few things we can do with that Chicago data. It is just as easy to do similar things against any data you can download. In this instance, trying to load the 6.5 million row table into Excel is not very practical. -
Denial isn't just a river in Egypt
I'll choose an option where I don't have to worry about being cheated by the driver, and he won't have to worry about me robbing him.
Boystown: Facing 20 Felonies, Uber Driver Accused Of Sexually Molesting Man In 2014 Gets Probation
2 women sue Uber, alleging sexual assault by drivers
Man Robbed At Gunpoint By Fake Uber Driver In Lincoln Park; Woman, Two Juveniles Charged
NEW: Fake Uber Driver Robbed Second Man Last Weekend; Pile Of Robbery Proceeds Found
Ride Share Driver Pulled Gun On Boystown Couple, Cops Say
Prosecutors: Lyft driver accused of zip-tying, sexually assaulting passenger
Couple Robbed After Taking "Fake Uber Ride" From Boystown Club
I'll choose an option where I can hop into the car and hop out with payment handled electronically instead of actual money or credit cards changing hands.
Taxis are required to take credit card where I live, there's a reader in the back seat of each car.
I'll choose an option where the vehicle will be clean and reasonably well maintained, and the driver reasonably courteous.
Usually not a problem with taxis either.
I'll choose an option where the names of both parties involved are known, and all details of the ride can be recovered in case something goes wrong.
Every taxi I've been in lately has video and audio surveillance and the taxi number and driver's license are posted in the back seat.
And most of all, I'll choose Uber because I know that if they ever start to go bad, another ride sharing company can compete with them, instead of them being protected as a government-regulated monopoly.
You think there's a taxi monopoly?! There's more than 20 companies operating in my city!
You've clearly drunk the "ride-sharing" Kool-Aid, but taxis are not nearly as awful as you make them out to be.
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Re:Evolution and natural selection
Wow you actually bothered to create an account, just to reply.
City of Chicago ordinances:
https://www.cityofchicago.org/...
https://chicagocode.org/9-8-02...
Even Pedestrians have to obey traffic signals, which was my point. They also are not allowed to just blindly cross where it's not marked to do so.
Furthermore. When push-comes-to-shove, you can be fully in the right and still fully dead.
Arrogantly walking through a red light is still against the law for a pedestrian.
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Coming from the advocate of $13 minimum wage
We don't need any lectures from Chicago public school system on educating coders when the city passed an ordinance to raise minimum wage to $13 by 2019.
The city cries about lack of qualified labor while mandating a minimum wage that drives away jobs. Offshoring doesn't happen due to lack of qualified labor it happens because cheaper labor is readily available elsewhere. Chicago has a wage competition problem not a labor pool problem. -
Re:Stupid
Why change the red light grace period? Red light is red light.
If you want to reduce accidents, increase the yellow period. People who push the limits of an extended yellow don't deserve grace. All this is going to do is now make people more comfortable running a little bit of red.
From the summary: "following recommendations part of a recent study of its red-light cameras. " https://www.documentcloud.org/...
or, short version here: https://www.cityofchicago.org/...
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Re: This thought just occured to me
Some more for different cities...
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Re: This thought just occured to me
Some more for different cities...
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Re: This thought just occured to me
Some more for different cities...
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Re:All branches of the government are corrupt
Chicago has a streamlined form of government, having one branch: finance.
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Re:two sides to this coin
Also, as I searched a bit, there is precedent for making this information publicly available. If you look at http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/cpb/auto_generated/police_discipline_archives.html you will find the equivalent information from the Chicago Police Department - a record of findings and decisions made by the Chicago Police board with respect to police discipline.
So what is new here is not the fact that this information is being made publicly available (it already has, if not in Dallas, in other jurisdictions), but that the information is being made public via Facebook and Twitter.
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Re:Unintended Consequences? Unfortunately - Not!
Are you sure about that? I'm positive that the prevailing protesters intentionally set up their protests as to break the law and draw the attention of police. After all, what kind of story is "peaceful protest held, dissent expressed"? A much better story is "protesters arrested, pigs held responsible" when the protesters intentionally violate the law in order to generate a news story. After years of such stories, told by sympathetic journalists in a slanted and biased fashion, viewpoints such as yours can become common. Think about it: why did OWS intentionally set up their protests in public parks? It certainly wasn't out of any sort of commonality with the contemptible ordinary Americans from flyover territory. It was so that at some point, the police would be forced to come in and clean up all the feces, purely on public health grounds. Seriously, fuck Americans who want to walk their dogs in the park, or have their kids play? We've got something More Important[tm] to do.
There's a simple, proven method of avoiding this: Public meetings. That's something our police are dead-set on preventing.
Again: what country do you live in? Every major American city has public meetings, especially regarding the police. Heck, even those cesspools of corruption, Chicago and Detroit, have such public meetings. If you bother to attend you'll find a lot of people there much like yourself. You could even coordinate with them to attend distant public meetings and disrupt them. Just make sure to bring a journalist who shares your political views (and what journalist doesn't?) and you'll get a pre-made story of "police bad" just like in your hometown newspaper.
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Chicago has 15,000 cameras networked
"The city links the 1,500 cameras that police have placed in trouble spots with thousands more... Even home owners can contribute camera feeds....
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704538404574539910412824756.htmlIf you link your camera to the city "highly trained crime surveillance specialists will have access"
http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/oem/provdrs/tech/svcs/link_your_cameras.htmlIBM press release about it's Chicago's video analysis software that "detects suspicious activity and potential public safety concerns "
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22385.wss -
Re:Well that's shweet and all
Chicago has these on some street corners already.
For curious readers, it is Chicago's Citizen Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting (CLEAR) program. Wired had a really interesting article on it back in May of 2005.
As much as police the whole camera surveillance thing creeps me out, I seem to recall that there were significant improvements in crime rates after the program began (causal or not I do not know). You can look at the Department's statistics for yourself: CPD Site (follow Reports & Statistics link on the left). -
Re:Paper ballots makes dead people voting difficul
Actually, the current Mayor of Chicago is named Daley. You found his father who gave JFK Chicago in 1960 which some say is why JFK flew to Nixon rather than vice versa.
There was a question as to whether votes for Kerry were on machines before the polls opened in 2004. If you've been in this city you know that Unions only protect one ticket and either scare or beat up the other.
Philadelphia has a lot of things - a two party system isn't one of them.
What's most amusing about Democrat charges is that they try to blame Governor's or the Federal system whereas vote control occurs at the local level.
(And I won't even get into the NJSC replacing Torch with Lautenberg.) -
Re:Larger house on smaller salary, huh?
I think it's pretty convenient to go downstairs and walk 100 feet to get all the basics that I need, rather than driving.
Nowadays, driving is horribly inconvenient with gas prices.
Not to mention the incredble public funded programs that the City of Chicago puts together, like Millenium Park, movies in the park, and summerdance. If i don't want to drive, I don't have to. Biking is easy, too.
So yes, I think living in a city is incredibly convenient. More than in the summer, by a matter of degrees. -
Re:Right.
CityOfChicago.Org would be better as CityOfChicago.gov
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Re:LondonThis needs to be qualified with an article or two.
There are currently three kinds of cameras in Chicago. The ones they installed after 9/11 (there's a random rant here), and the ones used by the CPD in high-crime neighborhoods. (google cache: here. There's also red-light cameras, which they say haven't been used for speeding, which has caused far more controversy here than the previous two mentioned above.
I would be more concerned about the use of cameras for "presumed safety" (this is the most basic privacy issue), "only low-income people need to be watched 24/7" (that's a dangerous precedent), and "misuse and abuse of police powers" (even though accidents have dropped close to 50% where cameras have been installed) in that order.
Anyways, so far the city has done a decent job informing people where these cameras are, but I stumbled into this website that lets you know what cameras are in the loop -- there's a few dozen private cameras out there, which I found interesting.
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A better way to reduce crime...
According to this document, there were a grand total of 237,706 crimes in Chicago in 2002.
Of those, 172,812 (~73%) were 'non indexed' crimes. Of that total, nearly 60,000 (nearly 35%) were either narcotics violations, or prostitution.
Want to reduce non indexed crime by 35%? Make drugs and hooking legal.
Want to reduce overall crime by over 25%? Make drugs and hooking legal.
This doesn't even take into account the intangible reductions in "drug-related" crimes (i.e. gang bang murders over sales territories, deals gone bad, etc). Not only that, but it doesn't require a $45 million database, or three years to build. Just take two laws off the books. (yes, I know about all the attendant time and effort required to do such a thing...and I am blatantly ignoring it)
Just an alternate viewpoint. Flame away. -
Re:Midwest?
Chicago is Midwest now? I must have missed something here...
Perhaps it was geography class.
Visit their website and type midwest in the search box. Enjoy several hundred references to Chicago being in the midwest.
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Xybernaut to be used by COMDEX Chicago next week
According to this story at Wired, Xybernaut's Mobile Assistant® V product will be used at COMDEX Chicago by the event staff to reduce queues. I could envision two different ways that slashdotters could protest. If they are actually going to attend, they could wear something that states their position about the company and its practices. If they are not going to attend, but live in or near Chicago (big place, should be a few around somewhere), they could do the usual protest thing on public property at the border of the convention (I'm sure the COMDEX people would never allow them in the convention area).