I live in Vancouver, where Kim Rossmo got his Ph.d and started his geoprofiling.
He was very successful, and it led to his rapid advancement in the Vancouver Police Department. But like most police departments, it's still old-boys, and alot of them resented an educated individual rising through the ranks so quickly.
Finally, they told him they weren't extending his contract when he was promoted too far. He sued. During the trial, the senior VPD members were made to look like fools for lying under oath.
One of the interesting things that came out was that he suspected (back in June, 2001) that a serial killer was involved in the disappearance of 20 to 30 Vancouver women. Well, he was right. The Vancouver police are conducting a huge investigation at a pig farm in the Vancouver area, and Robert William Pickton is now Canada's most prolific known serial killer with 16 or so charges in the works, and more pending as they find more DNA at the farm.
I don't know much about the technology (or psychology) involved, but I do know that when he applied his software to some of Canada's other serial killers (Paul Bernardo, Cliffard Olsen, etc) his software picked a 4-block area which included the killer's home. It was also used to catch a killer in Abbotsford.
Thanks to a bunch of fat old men who's ego has extended past their intelligence, Vancouver has lost what appears to be a top-rate talent.
of this thing in Canada - $99 US, $169 CDN at Future Shop.
But I can get the Sony Clie PEG-SL10 with 4x the RAM, Palm OS 4.1, and a 320x320 screen (the Zire is 160x160) for $60 CDN more, plus a way nicer layout, etc.
This thing needs to be $60 US, $100 CDN. It's a rip-off at this price.
We just saw a story on the collapse of 3dfx. One thing the story didn't mention was Glide, and 3dfx pushing it down the throats of game developers to try to get a monopoly on the market. Thank God for John Carmack, Id Software, and OpenGL.
Now nVidia is doing the following: "This comes on the heels of another story involving Square partnering with nVidia, in which certain aspects/details in Final Fantasy XI will only be able to be accomplished with a geForce4 card"
Now a geForce4 is a nice card, but the ATI 9700 is the only card that fully supports DirectX 9. You would think the 9700 would be better for Final Fantasy.
There is probably a chunk of code that says,
if (card_manufacturer = nVidia) {
frame_rate=fast;
colors=vibrant;
special_effects=on; }
It seems like nVidia is going the 3dfx route. Too bad; competition in the graphics card market is good for the consumer.
There are diamond mines in Northern Canada (http://www.wholesalecanadiandiamonds.com/ - you can browse and buy online), and you won't be supporting terrorists, slave labour, civil war, etc, etc (though you will be supporting our socialist health-care system).
Of course, that doesn't help if you think we are being force-fed a useless commodity.
For that, go for a small diamond set with other stones (rubies, emeralds, etc). Or go for a small ring and get a pearl necklace.
Or go to your mother and see if she has any jewelry that she would donate and that you could have remade into an engagement ring.
My mother passed away four years before I got engaged. My sister inherited her large jewelry selection, but honoured my mother's request that my brother and I be able to pick out a ring for our future spouses.
"Good morning, Mrs. Smith, I'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Little Johnny? Is that you?"
"No, Mrs Smith, I'm doing a study on coffee and Altzheimers..."
"What did you do with my cat?"
"Uh.. right... anyway..."
"Who are you? Why are you in my room..."
Yah - like I trust the memory of people with Altzheimers.
My grandmother had it. My grandparents would pick me up, and we would head off somewhere. She would ask about 4 times where we were going. She confused me with my dad constantly.
Come on - that's one of his complaints - lack of objectivity, with people thinking your only cool if you use Mandrake/Debian/SuSe/Red Hat.
A lot of his points were valid.
I have a laser printer that doesn't have Linux drivers. I have a CD-Rom that is capable of burning safe-disk protected games under CloneCD, but wouldn't be able to use it to it's full extent under Linux. I can't play NeverWinter Nights, Dark Age of Camelot, or Warcraft 3 currently under Linux.
Yet I do run Linux on a development server, and at work most of our servers run Linux.
I don't agree with his complaint about applications - Windows has nothing over Linux there. But I hate having to memorize different locations for configuration files, and for using the crash-prone config tools (at least under Red Hat). Configuration should be easier. I shouldn't have to go to a telnet prompt to do half the things I need to do.
Of course, I shouldn't complain - it's not like I've donated my time to making it better.
Well, they haven't claimed that - they've just said that they are getting close to Soviet-era crop yields.
I did a degree in political studies, emphasis on Communism and development politics. The Soviets, China, and all satellites, used to make that claim, but I've never heard it from Cuba.
I just spent 2 weeks backpacking in Cuba, and found that capitalisim is doing well, and there is lots of food.
Yes, there are very bad things out there that are natural (lions, tigers and bears, and so on).
I don't know about farms->forests, but modern-farming has been accused of causing soil erosion, the lowering of the water table (just look at California - whole rivers disappearing to irrigate farmlands), and the contamination of ground water.
As for cancer-in-the-thirties, if you look at breast cancer rates in the US, you'll find that breast cancer is consistently highest in the mid point between two nuclear reactors. And it's a cancer that can strike in the 30's.
You don't have to be rich to eat organics - we get them delivered to our house. $1 Canadian for a mango, $2 Canadian for 2 zucchini, etc. It actually approaches grocery store prices.
Cuba has gone almost entirely organic/green (mostly due to lack of hard currency/access to modern chemicals). They claim that their organic yeilds are starting to approach what they were getting when they received pesticides and fertilizers from the Soviets.
Yes, there is alot of crap out there on the environment. Apparently forests can actually increase the global temperature, as they are dark, and absorb heat, increasing the planets temperature. But so does an ashphalt parking lot.
You're right - I've heard that potatoes and pepper both have natural pesticides.
But as Richard Dawkin (The Blind Watchmaker) said, preditors and prey are in a constant arms race, evolving alongside one another. Plants often behave as prey. They develop a new defense, and the preditor develops a new attack (or visa versa). The difference between natural and artificial pesticides is that we have evolved along with natural pesticides, and thus may have a natural defense.
And I've never heard of a natural pesticide that is as dangerous as man-made ones.
There are molds and other things you can find on wheat, peanuts, bread, etc that are bad for you (even ordinary house-hold mold can make you quite sick). But spraying things with pesticides isn't necessarily the answer. Man-made pesticides do awful things to your body and the environment.
Organic standards mean that farmers have to practice sustainable farming. They can't add fertilizers, etc, that speed up the growth of the plant/fruit/vegetable, but often leave them tastless. Organics have also been shown to be more nutritious, and have higher levels of trace minerals and vitamins.
I'm looking at being healthy through out my entire life. Proper eating, exercise, and the right attitude. My wife had a friend who died in his thirties of a cancer that is usually considered to be triggered by environmental/lifestyle factors.
Right - the vitamin might not be the whole story. It may be the delivery system, or what comes with the vitamin (trace minerals that may activate or increase effectiveness).
Yes, wild animals are healthy. If you set 300 million people out hunting, not many will be left (unless you like squirrel).
As for my vegan-PETA FUD, I'm neither a vegan or member of PETA. Here's a link and quote on Beluga whale corpses being so polluted that they are classified as toxic waste:
"Of even greater concern, belugas inhabiting the St. Lawrence River have been called one of the most polluted mammals on earth along with orcas. Over 24 contaminants have been found in their bodies including PCBs, DDT, and heavy metals such as mercury. Their PCB levels are so high that, according to Canadian regulations, their bodies should be treated as toxic waste upon death."
Both are healthier (I think) varients on Atkin's diet.
Higher fat, healty protien, and carbs from non-refined sources makes sense. It more closely follows the diet that we've evolved to do well on.
I don't believe in saturated fat. And I don't believe in most animal protien.
I've never seen a study that says vegetables cause cancer, and meat prevents it. It's always been the reverse. Most meat is stuffed with antibiotics (which most experts believe is helping create antibiotic-resistent super bugs) and pesticides (the higher up the food chain you go, the more pesticides you will see, as it is stored in body fat; dead whales in the St Laurence are have toxicity levels high enough to get them classified as toxic waste). The meat industry also creates alot of pollution (mostly due to the size of sed industry); manure poisons ground water, etc. In Canada, we had a case in Walkerton were a bunch of people died after cow shit got into the drinking water during a flood.
And, especially for Slashdotters, don't use vitamin suppliments. Two studies just came out that said vitamin E (and, to a lesser extent, vitamin C) reduce the chances of getting Alzheimers; lesions relating to free radicals are found on most Alzheimer patients, and thus anti-oxidants are being viewed as a potential salvation. But only if you get it from natural sources. Pills had no effect.
And then there was the study on smokers who took beta carotene in pill form. They had a higher incidence of lung cancer than those who didn't take the vitamin pills.
Soy has been shown to have many benefits - lowering cancer risks in both men and women. There are alot of great soy analogues out there for hot dogs, hamburgers, ground beef, etc. Try a few - some are pretty good.
I hate to be derisive on this, America's day of Independance, but American's couldn't grasp metric on the gas pump, on the thermometer, even though the rest of the world did.
Something as so deeply ingrained as time would cause a mess beyond belief. Meetings missed, favorite television programs not seen. Chaos and the downfall of American culture. When do we start:).
Really, I'm just trying to be funny. Stop pointing that gun at me.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in Vancouver, where Kim Rossmo got his Ph.d and started his geoprofiling.
He was very successful, and it led to his rapid advancement in the Vancouver Police Department. But like most police departments, it's still old-boys, and alot of them resented an educated individual rising through the ranks so quickly.
Finally, they told him they weren't extending his contract when he was promoted too far. He sued. During the trial, the senior VPD members were made to look like fools for lying under oath.
One of the interesting things that came out was that he suspected (back in June, 2001) that a serial killer was involved in the disappearance of 20 to 30 Vancouver women. Well, he was right. The Vancouver police are conducting a huge investigation at a pig farm in the Vancouver area, and Robert William Pickton is now Canada's most prolific known serial killer with 16 or so charges in the works, and more pending as they find more DNA at the farm.
I don't know much about the technology (or psychology) involved, but I do know that when he applied his software to some of Canada's other serial killers (Paul Bernardo, Cliffard Olsen, etc) his software picked a 4-block area which included the killer's home. It was also used to catch a killer in Abbotsford.
Thanks to a bunch of fat old men who's ego has extended past their intelligence, Vancouver has lost what appears to be a top-rate talent.
Well, geoprofiling narrows it down to a few blocks.
Pushing stickpins into a map rarely allows such insight.
of this thing in Canada - $99 US, $169 CDN at Future Shop.
But I can get the Sony Clie PEG-SL10 with 4x the RAM, Palm OS 4.1, and a 320x320 screen (the Zire is 160x160) for $60 CDN more, plus a way nicer layout, etc.
This thing needs to be $60 US, $100 CDN. It's a rip-off at this price.
We just saw a story on the collapse of 3dfx. One thing the story didn't mention was Glide, and 3dfx pushing it down the throats of game developers to try to get a monopoly on the market. Thank God for John Carmack, Id Software, and OpenGL.
Now nVidia is doing the following: "This comes on the heels of another story involving Square partnering with nVidia, in which certain aspects/details in Final Fantasy XI will only be able to be accomplished with a geForce4 card"
Now a geForce4 is a nice card, but the ATI 9700 is the only card that fully supports DirectX 9. You would think the 9700 would be better for Final Fantasy.
There is probably a chunk of code that says,
if (card_manufacturer = nVidia)
{
frame_rate=fast;
colors=vibrant;
special_effects=on;
}
It seems like nVidia is going the 3dfx route. Too bad; competition in the graphics card market is good for the consumer.
We've been running with Weblogic for about 4 years now. We are currently looking at moving to Resin, for the same cost-per-licence issue.
Weblogic is a great App server, but the costs are ridiculous. Oracle is a great database, but ditto on the price.
PostgresQL or MySQL, and Resin hopefully in 2 years.
ATI didn't want pictures taken (maybe ATI does more hardware dev at Thornhill than NVidia does in Santa Clara?).
But giving access to the chip architects (more than a lunch meeting anyway) is cooler than a bunch of fuzzy pictures with Anand's thumb in front.
after all, they make all that stylish-but-cheap pine furniture that you have to put together once you return home from Ikea.
I either praise those clever Swedish designers or curse them as dirty little reindeer eaters.
What else can I say?
Years ago, I read that Microsoft invests more in Waterloo than in any other university in North America.
Waterloo is the top comp sci school in Canada (no, I went to the University of Victoria, so pretty objective), and in the top 5 in North America.
Bummer that they've sold out.
There are diamond mines in Northern Canada (http://www.wholesalecanadiandiamonds.com/ - you can browse and buy online), and you won't be supporting terrorists, slave labour, civil war, etc, etc (though you will be supporting our socialist health-care system).
Of course, that doesn't help if you think we are being force-fed a useless commodity.
For that, go for a small diamond set with other stones (rubies, emeralds, etc). Or go for a small ring and get a pearl necklace.
Or go to your mother and see if she has any jewelry that she would donate and that you could have remade into an engagement ring.
My mother passed away four years before I got engaged. My sister inherited her large jewelry selection, but honoured my mother's request that my brother and I be able to pick out a ring for our future spouses.
Long and irrelevant? Nah. Kind of interesting. A little slice of life.
If someone had put a scene like that in a movie, it would have been called "over the top" and "cliche".
If you edit this down to the best 10 minutes every week, post it somewhere and then post the URL.
I would suggest you get frequent blood-pressure and cholesterol tests.
Stock up on Clearasil.
Get pants with an elastic waist.
And remember, it's never too early to start saving for your quadruple-bypass and an electric scooter with a shopping basket on the front.
These days Tim Hortons is a much stronger national brand.
Tim Hortons is owned by Wendys. No longer Canadian, eh?
Link.
Now, with no claims of being objective, go buy a 9700 for yourself, and show your family how much you care by buying one for all your family members.
If the stock triples, I might be able to afford a 1987 Honda Civic with only 200,000 kilometres on the engine.
Right. Here's how it goes.
"Good morning, Mrs. Smith, I'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Little Johnny? Is that you?"
"No, Mrs Smith, I'm doing a study on coffee and Altzheimers..."
"What did you do with my cat?"
"Uh.. right... anyway..."
"Who are you? Why are you in my room..."
Yah - like I trust the memory of people with Altzheimers.
My grandmother had it. My grandparents would pick me up, and we would head off somewhere. She would ask about 4 times where we were going. She confused me with my dad constantly.
Come on - that's one of his complaints - lack of objectivity, with people thinking your only cool if you use Mandrake/Debian/SuSe/Red Hat.
A lot of his points were valid.
I have a laser printer that doesn't have Linux drivers. I have a CD-Rom that is capable of burning safe-disk protected games under CloneCD, but wouldn't be able to use it to it's full extent under Linux. I can't play NeverWinter Nights, Dark Age of Camelot, or Warcraft 3 currently under Linux.
Yet I do run Linux on a development server, and at work most of our servers run Linux.
I don't agree with his complaint about applications - Windows has nothing over Linux there. But I hate having to memorize different locations for configuration files, and for using the crash-prone config tools (at least under Red Hat). Configuration should be easier. I shouldn't have to go to a telnet prompt to do half the things I need to do.
Of course, I shouldn't complain - it's not like I've donated my time to making it better.
Well, they haven't claimed that - they've just said that they are getting close to Soviet-era crop yields.
I did a degree in political studies, emphasis on Communism and development politics. The Soviets, China, and all satellites, used to make that claim, but I've never heard it from Cuba.
I just spent 2 weeks backpacking in Cuba, and found that capitalisim is doing well, and there is lots of food.
Sorry - forgot to mention that they would study areas where there were a few nuclear power plants.
We could go on like this for a while....
Yes, there are very bad things out there that are natural (lions, tigers and bears, and so on).
I don't know about farms->forests, but modern-farming has been accused of causing soil erosion, the lowering of the water table (just look at California - whole rivers disappearing to irrigate farmlands), and the contamination of ground water.
As for cancer-in-the-thirties, if you look at breast cancer rates in the US, you'll find that breast cancer is consistently highest in the mid point between two nuclear reactors. And it's a cancer that can strike in the 30's.
You don't have to be rich to eat organics - we get them delivered to our house. $1 Canadian for a mango, $2 Canadian for 2 zucchini, etc. It actually approaches grocery store prices.
Cuba has gone almost entirely organic/green (mostly due to lack of hard currency/access to modern chemicals). They claim that their organic yeilds are starting to approach what they were getting when they received pesticides and fertilizers from the Soviets.
Yes, there is alot of crap out there on the environment. Apparently forests can actually increase the global temperature, as they are dark, and absorb heat, increasing the planets temperature. But so does an ashphalt parking lot.
You're right - I've heard that potatoes and pepper both have natural pesticides.
But as Richard Dawkin (The Blind Watchmaker) said, preditors and prey are in a constant arms race, evolving alongside one another. Plants often behave as prey. They develop a new defense, and the preditor develops a new attack (or visa versa). The difference between natural and artificial pesticides is that we have evolved along with natural pesticides, and thus may have a natural defense.
And I've never heard of a natural pesticide that is as dangerous as man-made ones.
There are molds and other things you can find on wheat, peanuts, bread, etc that are bad for you (even ordinary house-hold mold can make you quite sick). But spraying things with pesticides isn't necessarily the answer. Man-made pesticides do awful things to your body and the environment.
Organic standards mean that farmers have to practice sustainable farming. They can't add fertilizers, etc, that speed up the growth of the plant/fruit/vegetable, but often leave them tastless. Organics have also been shown to be more nutritious, and have higher levels of trace minerals and vitamins.
I'm looking at being healthy through out my entire life. Proper eating, exercise, and the right attitude. My wife had a friend who died in his thirties of a cancer that is usually considered to be triggered by environmental/lifestyle factors.
Right - the vitamin might not be the whole story. It may be the delivery system, or what comes with the vitamin (trace minerals that may activate or increase effectiveness).
Yes, wild animals are healthy. If you set 300 million people out hunting, not many will be left (unless you like squirrel).
As for my vegan-PETA FUD, I'm neither a vegan or member of PETA. Here's a link and quote on Beluga whale corpses being so polluted that they are classified as toxic waste:
"Of even greater concern, belugas inhabiting the St. Lawrence River have been called one of the most polluted mammals on earth along with orcas. Over 24 contaminants have been found in their bodies including PCBs, DDT, and heavy metals such as mercury. Their PCB levels are so high that, according to Canadian regulations, their bodies should be treated as toxic waste upon death."
Here's the link
And another
That was nice, just slamming me for being some sort of radical without knowing anything about the subject.
Both are healthier (I think) varients on Atkin's diet.
Higher fat, healty protien, and carbs from non-refined sources makes sense. It more closely follows the diet that we've evolved to do well on.
I don't believe in saturated fat. And I don't believe in most animal protien.
I've never seen a study that says vegetables cause cancer, and meat prevents it. It's always been the reverse. Most meat is stuffed with antibiotics (which most experts believe is helping create antibiotic-resistent super bugs) and pesticides (the higher up the food chain you go, the more pesticides you will see, as it is stored in body fat; dead whales in the St Laurence are have toxicity levels high enough to get them classified as toxic waste). The meat industry also creates alot of pollution (mostly due to the size of sed industry); manure poisons ground water, etc. In Canada, we had a case in Walkerton were a bunch of people died after cow shit got into the drinking water during a flood.
And, especially for Slashdotters, don't use vitamin suppliments. Two studies just came out that said vitamin E (and, to a lesser extent, vitamin C) reduce the chances of getting Alzheimers; lesions relating to free radicals are found on most Alzheimer patients, and thus anti-oxidants are being viewed as a potential salvation. But only if you get it from natural sources. Pills had no effect.
And then there was the study on smokers who took beta carotene in pill form. They had a higher incidence of lung cancer than those who didn't take the vitamin pills.
Soy has been shown to have many benefits - lowering cancer risks in both men and women. There are alot of great soy analogues out there for hot dogs, hamburgers, ground beef, etc. Try a few - some are pretty good.
I hate to be derisive on this, America's day of Independance, but American's couldn't grasp metric on the gas pump, on the thermometer, even though the rest of the world did.
:).
Something as so deeply ingrained as time would cause a mess beyond belief. Meetings missed, favorite television programs not seen. Chaos and the downfall of American culture. When do we start
Really, I'm just trying to be funny. Stop pointing that gun at me.
I used to be a huge blizzard fan, but the game market is so much bigger now, and there are more great games.
I plunked $90 for Neverwinter Nights, no questions asked. NWN for RPG, Tribes 2 for FPS, and Starcraft/AoE 2 for RTS.
I'm all out of three-letter acronyms.