Fifth Ward Ald. Leslie Hairston wants Chicago to reintroduce the Shotspotter gunshot location technology. After all, Shotspotter's web site says it can reduce crime. So why isn't the CPD using it? Don't they care?
The city conducted three separate tests of gunshot sensors between 2003 and 2007 in the West Side’s Harrison Police District. Only on one occasion did the detection system send a warning prior to a person calling 911 to report the shooting. As a result, the city felt the gunshot detection systems were too expensive at a cost of $200,000 a square mile.
The city is going forward with installing the technology in the Loop. However, Shotspotter is an expensive technology and the CPD decided it wasn't the best use of their scare resources. The city of Chicago is approximately 227 square miles, so to cover the entire city would cost close to $50 million.
The Shotspotter technology locates gunshots. In a dense city, 911 calls often serve the same function. Gunshot location is a useful piece of information for police officers, but it is not a silver bullet. It cannot by itself reduce crime. If the system is reliable and works well with officers, it could lead to less shootings (but not necessarily less crime). The independent studies I have seen show the results are quite mixed.
In Chicago, there has been a rash of shootings in Chicago were no regard for the police or cameras. Shotspotter is now the silver bullet. I am concerned that Shotspotter is seen as the answer because people are scared. It doesn't make sense to spend money on technology that makes us feel better, but is ineffective. The city can address this by making public its tests of Shotspotter. I would like more details about the tests, for example: How many gunshots were there during the tests? How accurate was the system?
The cameras currently cover a very small part of the city. The stated goal of Daley is to cover the city in cameras.
If a camera can only cover 50 yards, this means you need at least 1200 cameras per square mile. Keep in mind the city of Chicago is on the size of 227 square miles. Theoretically to blanket the city, you need at least 272,400 cameras. The city has at most 15,000 cameras at its disposal, so at best 5%.
The camera network would have to be greatly expanded before there would be good coverage of the entire city. Also, remember the new cameras the city uses cost at least $5,000 each. (So adding another 100,000 cameras would cost 500 million dollars - that is just the physical cost of the cameras.)
from http://www.smartcamerasblog.com/2009/02/surveillance-cameras-911/
Chicago is going to link 4,500 school cameras to police districts, squad cars, and the 911 emergency center. This Sun-Times notes that the existing network includes more than 10,000 public and private cameras. So this means, the 911 center will be capable of monitoring 15,000 cameras. The half million dollar upgrade will be paid for with Homeland Security funds.
School cameras go from cameras viewable only by school security to cameras viewable by 911 dispatchers, squad cars, and police districts. The article notes that the cameras will be accessible only when needed (whatever that means).
15,000 cameras is enormous. I am really curious about the technical infrastructure to integrate those feed and archive them.
There are a whole host of issues with cameras in schools, a previous post on cameras in NYC schools considers some of them.
Update: I confirmed the 10,000 cameras with Fran Spielman, the Sun-Times reporter. "The 10,000 figure includes CTA, airport, city, Park District, McCormick Place cameras, as well as private cameras hooked up to the city network."
For some criticism see Nikolai Bezroukov, Open Source Software Development as a Special Type of Academic Research (Critique
of Vulgar Raymondism), FIRST MONDAY, Oct. 1999 at http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_10/bezrouk ov
Abstract: Eric Raymond's bazaar model provides a too simplistic view of the open source software (OSS) development process. This paper tries to explore links between open source software development and academic research as a better paradigm for OSS development. Open source software development should better be viewed as a special case of academic research. Viewing OSS this way probably can lead to a better understanding of open source phenomena.
Recently, as part of the seminar I saw M.S. Swaminathan (father of "Green Revolution') and Timothy Reeves (Director of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)). They both spoke on agriculture technology in developing nations. First, they noted the large impact agriculture has on society; especially in developing countries where most of the population consists of farmers. They noted how improvements in wheat seeds have resulted in changing wheat production by an order of magnitude. For example, in just a few years India was able to increase its wheat production four-fold. Today, India is one of the largest exporters of wheat. This ability for developing countries to produce sufficient food is important to their own security and well-being.
CIMMYT is a center that is devoted to creating and improving sustainable agriculture technology for developing countries. These goals are in stark contrast to those of developed countries, for example such as creating another more tasty variety of tomatoes. Instead, CIMMYT is focused on developing wheat and corn strains that are more nutritious and drought resistant. Two specific technologies that CIMMYT is focused on are asexual reproduction (apomixis) and no-till seeds. The use of apomixis would allow farmers to use the seeds from the last season's crop to plant for the next season, thus allowing farmers a measure of self-reliance. This contrasts with developments by multinational corporate agriculture companies who are designing plants that cannot reproduce, so new seeds must be purchased every year. Another important technology is the use of no-till seeds. This would allow people to grow their own food without having to rely on mechanized plows, instead they could just scatter the seeds. Thus, CIMMYT has developed agriculture technologies for people that conventional market economics would not serve. Moreover, it is difficult to see CIMMYT technologies, which are based upon empowerment and sustainability, in the same way Heidegger viewed technologies such as the power plant. Thus I think it is important for us to remember that humans can change technology for positive outcomes.
What iS CIMMYT
Your position inside the FCC should provide considerable insight into how government agencies and personnel deal with new technology. For example, how independent are their technical judgments or are they easily manipulated by what powerful interest?
Finally, government is widely seen as incapable of dealing with the advances of new technology. Do you think this is the case?
The definitive site to learn how to build your own arcade machine, such as a MAME arcade machine which will allow you to play the classic 80s games:
Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Not mentioning third parties who have access to data in privacy policies is old hat. As this CNET Article notes, this is not uncommon. According to the article of August 1999, privacy policies of major sites often fail to mention third party cookies and that this data is available to third parties.
What we need is a page that publicly lists all the submissions to Slashdot. That way anyone can browse the list of submissions to see if there is anything they are interested in.
The point of here is not that you can totally stop the information from flowing, but by aggressively policing the net, you can stop the average web surfing person from easily downloading the information
The other point I would like to make is that ISPs are probably the next ones to feel the heat. If they are notified there is a violation, they are supposed to "monitor" that user to ensure that they don't put up the infringing material. Also I bet after a few ISPs spend a couple of thousands or tens of thousands losing a court case, they will quickly shut down any infringing material (and unfortunately they will probably start shutting down people for the weakest reasons, look at whats happened to anonymous postings)
There are some variations by race or cultural groups. Last year I heard a lecture by Jorge Reina Schement of Penn State that discussed differences in usage of computers among whites, hispanics, and blacks. He said that his research showed that hispanics, blacks, and whites have different reasons for getting a computer (for example, as a tool for work vs. for the kids), he also noted that groups spend their dollars differently. For example, blacks were much more likely to spend their money on premium cable than on computers. (Probably, because cable keeps your kids inside at home)
While I agree that Income is Totally the Biggest factor, it doesn't explain everything. Moreover, I agree that these are generalizations, but they may held in an aggregate analysis.
Actually frequent flyer plans serve their purpose of ensuring customer loyalty. The latest issue of Wired magazine has an article on "hyperfliers" and states that the typical free flight costs the airline only about $20, but that frequent fliers waste hundreds and thousands of dollars by trying to build up the miles on an airline frequent flier plan instead of flying on the cheapest flight.
From: Seth Finkelstein Subject: Re: UN Proposes Global Email Tax Posted to Cyberia-L ---------------------- From: Seth Finkelstein Subject: Re: UN Proposes Global Email Tax
THERE IS NO GLOBAL EMAIL TAX IN THE WORKS!
This looks likes the sort of thing which will get vectored by the Libertarian and the gullible (by no means disjoint sets!), and receive lots of help from hype-mongering "reporters" who seem to have invented the Internet's own particular version of yellow journalism (instead of *pedophiles* lurking in the Net to _molest_ *your children*, it's the *UN* trying to _tax_ *your email*). There is a report dozens and dozens of pages long, http://www.undp.org/hdro/contents.html on all sorts of weighty topics having to do with world populations, globalization and the Internet. In it, there are A FEW SENTENCES, which read as follows:
"There is an urgent need to find the resources to fund the global communications revolution -- to ensure that it is truly global. One proposal is a "bit tax" -- a very small tax on the amount of data sent through the Internet. The costs for users would be negligible: sending 100 emails a day, each containing a 10-kilobyte document (a very long one), would raise a tax of just 1 cent. Yet with email booming worldwide, the total would be substantial. In Belgium in 1998, such a tax would have yielded $10 billion. Globally in 1996, it would have yielded $70 billion -- more than total official development assistance that year."
And later, reprised:
"* New funding mechanisms should be created to ensure that the information revolution leads to human development, not human polarization. Two proposals -- a bit tax and a patent tax -- would raise funds from those who already have access to technology and use them to help extend the benefits more widely."
That's it. Just a *mention* of a *proposal*, nothing more than the outline of a vague idea. There are plenty of other ideas mentioned in the report, e.g. "Alternatively, funding could be reallocated from the research subsidies, grants and tax breaks now given to industry." and "Citizens could be given tax credits for contributing care services that develop long-term relationships between individuals.".
I hope I've helped stop an urban-legend-in-the-making, but I'm scared that the meme is going to be just too attractive.
------------------------------------------------ --------------------- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Web Programmer sethf@mit.edu
First, I am glad someone else shares an interest in the development of the Internet in terms of its architecture. Second, I would suggest you do a little soul searching and preliminary research to decide what you want to focus on. Your initial topic is very broad (so broad not even my dissertation will cover it). I would suggest you think about some of the following issues: Decide do you want to look at the past development of the Internet or the future of the Internet? How technical do you want to get? Do you want to focus on the development/implementation/enforcement of technical standards? Do you want to focus on the government, academia, or the private sectors role? Do you want to look at social issues - privacy, pornography, security? Do want to emphasize economic or legal issues?
But if you just want a good topic with lots of information out there, how about software patents
Slashdot Mirror
Fifth Ward Ald. Leslie Hairston wants Chicago to reintroduce the Shotspotter gunshot location technology. After all, Shotspotter's web site says it can reduce crime. So why isn't the CPD using it? Don't they care?
The CPD did adopt Shotspotter and found mixed results in Chicago. Specifically:
The city is going forward with installing the technology in the Loop. However, Shotspotter is an expensive technology and the CPD decided it wasn't the best use of their scare resources. The city of Chicago is approximately 227 square miles, so to cover the entire city would cost close to $50 million.
The Shotspotter technology locates gunshots. In a dense city, 911 calls often serve the same function. Gunshot location is a useful piece of information for police officers, but it is not a silver bullet. It cannot by itself reduce crime. If the system is reliable and works well with officers, it could lead to less shootings (but not necessarily less crime). The independent studies I have seen show the results are quite mixed.
In Chicago, there has been a rash of shootings in Chicago were no regard for the police or cameras. Shotspotter is now the silver bullet. I am concerned that Shotspotter is seen as the answer because people are scared. It doesn't make sense to spend money on technology that makes us feel better, but is ineffective. The city can address this by making public its tests of Shotspotter. I would like more details about the tests, for example: How many gunshots were there during the tests? How accurate was the system?
Link
The cameras currently cover a very small part of the city. The stated goal of Daley is to cover the city in cameras. If a camera can only cover 50 yards, this means you need at least 1200 cameras per square mile. Keep in mind the city of Chicago is on the size of 227 square miles. Theoretically to blanket the city, you need at least 272,400 cameras. The city has at most 15,000 cameras at its disposal, so at best 5%. The camera network would have to be greatly expanded before there would be good coverage of the entire city. Also, remember the new cameras the city uses cost at least $5,000 each. (So adding another 100,000 cameras would cost 500 million dollars - that is just the physical cost of the cameras.) from http://www.smartcamerasblog.com/2009/02/surveillance-cameras-911/
Chicago is going to link 4,500 school cameras to police districts, squad cars, and the 911 emergency center. This Sun-Times notes that the existing network includes more than 10,000 public and private cameras. So this means, the 911 center will be capable of monitoring 15,000 cameras. The half million dollar upgrade will be paid for with Homeland Security funds.
School cameras go from cameras viewable only by school security to cameras viewable by 911 dispatchers, squad cars, and police districts. The article notes that the cameras will be accessible only when needed (whatever that means).
15,000 cameras is enormous. I am really curious about the technical infrastructure to integrate those feed and archive them.
There are a whole host of issues with cameras in schools, a previous post on cameras in NYC schools considers some of them.
Update: I confirmed the 10,000 cameras with Fran Spielman, the Sun-Times reporter. "The 10,000 figure includes CTA, airport, city, Park District, McCormick Place cameras, as well as private cameras hooked up to the city network."
http://www.rajivshah.com/camera/archives/2008/03/chicago_to_expa.html
For some criticism see Nikolai Bezroukov, Open Source Software Development as a Special Type of Academic Research (Critique of Vulgar Raymondism), FIRST MONDAY, Oct. 1999 at http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_10/bezrouk ov
Abstract: Eric Raymond's bazaar model provides a too simplistic view of the open source software (OSS) development process. This paper tries to explore links between open source software development and academic research as a better paradigm for OSS development. Open source software development should better be viewed as a special case of academic research. Viewing OSS this way probably can lead to a better understanding of open source phenomena.
Recently, as part of the seminar I saw M.S. Swaminathan (father of "Green Revolution') and Timothy Reeves (Director of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)). They both spoke on agriculture technology in developing nations. First, they noted the large impact agriculture has on society; especially in developing countries where most of the population consists of farmers. They noted how improvements in wheat seeds have resulted in changing wheat production by an order of magnitude. For example, in just a few years India was able to increase its wheat production four-fold. Today, India is one of the largest exporters of wheat. This ability for developing countries to produce sufficient food is important to their own security and well-being. CIMMYT is a center that is devoted to creating and improving sustainable agriculture technology for developing countries. These goals are in stark contrast to those of developed countries, for example such as creating another more tasty variety of tomatoes. Instead, CIMMYT is focused on developing wheat and corn strains that are more nutritious and drought resistant. Two specific technologies that CIMMYT is focused on are asexual reproduction (apomixis) and no-till seeds. The use of apomixis would allow farmers to use the seeds from the last season's crop to plant for the next season, thus allowing farmers a measure of self-reliance. This contrasts with developments by multinational corporate agriculture companies who are designing plants that cannot reproduce, so new seeds must be purchased every year. Another important technology is the use of no-till seeds. This would allow people to grow their own food without having to rely on mechanized plows, instead they could just scatter the seeds. Thus, CIMMYT has developed agriculture technologies for people that conventional market economics would not serve. Moreover, it is difficult to see CIMMYT technologies, which are based upon empowerment and sustainability, in the same way Heidegger viewed technologies such as the power plant. Thus I think it is important for us to remember that humans can change technology for positive outcomes. What iS CIMMYT
Your position inside the FCC should provide considerable insight into how government agencies and personnel deal with new technology. For example, how independent are their technical judgments or are they easily manipulated by what powerful interest?
Finally, government is widely seen as incapable of dealing with the advances of new technology. Do you think this is the case?
The definitive site to learn how to build your own arcade machine, such as a MAME arcade machine which will allow you to play the classic 80s games:
Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Not mentioning third parties who have access to data in privacy policies is old hat. As this CNET Article notes, this is not uncommon. According to the article of August 1999, privacy policies of major sites often fail to mention third party cookies and that this data is available to third parties.
What we need is a page that publicly lists all the submissions to Slashdot. That way anyone can browse the list of submissions to see if there is anything they are interested in.
http ://www.techserver.com/noframes/story/0,2294,91180- 144345-1010275-0,00.html
The point of here is not that you can totally stop the information from flowing, but by aggressively policing the net, you can stop the average web surfing person from easily downloading the information
The other point I would like to make is that ISPs are probably the next ones to feel the heat. If they are notified there is a violation, they are supposed to "monitor" that user to ensure that they don't put up the infringing material.
Also I bet after a few ISPs spend a couple of thousands or tens of thousands losing a court case, they will quickly shut down any infringing material (and unfortunately they will probably start shutting down people for the weakest reasons, look at whats happened to anonymous postings)
Does anyone have any information about the prices of ISDN, T1, and T3 lines over the last 5 years, (or even the last 10)?
I was wondering if prices have really gone down for bandwidth. Any pointers or references would be appreciated.
There are some variations by race or cultural groups. Last year I heard a lecture by Jorge Reina Schement of Penn State that discussed differences in usage of computers among whites, hispanics, and blacks. He said that his research showed that hispanics, blacks, and whites have different reasons for getting a computer (for example, as a tool for work vs. for the kids), he also noted that groups spend their dollars differently. For example, blacks were much more likely to spend their money on premium cable than on computers. (Probably, because cable keeps your kids inside at home)
While I agree that Income is Totally the Biggest factor, it doesn't explain everything. Moreover, I agree that these are generalizations, but they may held in an aggregate analysis.
(Is it me or is slashdot getting faster?)
Actually frequent flyer plans serve their purpose of ensuring customer loyalty. The latest issue of Wired magazine has an article on "hyperfliers" and states that the typical free flight costs the airline only about $20, but that frequent fliers waste hundreds and thousands of dollars by trying to build up the miles on an airline frequent flier plan instead of flying on the cheapest flight.
or for a lengthy critique of ICANN see Gordon Cook's report on ICANN at http://www.cookreport.com/icannregulate.shtml
From: Seth Finkelstein
- --------------------- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Web Programmer sethf@mit.edu
Subject: Re: UN Proposes Global Email Tax
Posted to Cyberia-L
----------------------
From: Seth Finkelstein Subject: Re: UN Proposes Global Email Tax
THERE IS NO GLOBAL EMAIL TAX IN THE WORKS!
This looks likes the sort of thing which will get vectored by the Libertarian and the gullible (by no means disjoint sets!), and receive lots of help from hype-mongering "reporters" who seem to have invented the Internet's own particular version of yellow journalism (instead of *pedophiles* lurking in the Net to _molest_ *your children*, it's the *UN* trying to _tax_ *your email*). There is a report dozens and dozens of pages long, http://www.undp.org/hdro/contents.html on all sorts of weighty topics having to do with world populations, globalization and the Internet. In it, there are A FEW SENTENCES, which read as follows:
"There is an urgent need to find the resources to fund the global communications revolution -- to ensure that it is truly global. One proposal is a "bit tax" -- a very small tax on the amount of data sent through the Internet. The costs for users would be negligible: sending 100 emails a day, each containing a 10-kilobyte document (a very long one), would raise a tax of just 1 cent. Yet with email booming worldwide, the total would be substantial. In Belgium in 1998, such a tax would have yielded $10 billion. Globally in 1996, it would have yielded $70 billion -- more than total official development assistance that year."
And later, reprised:
"* New funding mechanisms should be created to ensure that the information revolution leads to human development, not human polarization. Two proposals -- a bit tax and a patent tax -- would raise funds from those who already have access to technology and use them to help extend the benefits more widely."
That's it. Just a *mention* of a *proposal*, nothing more than the outline of a vague idea. There are plenty of other ideas mentioned in the report, e.g. "Alternatively, funding could be reallocated from the research subsidies, grants and tax breaks now given to industry." and "Citizens could be given tax credits for contributing care services that develop long-term relationships between individuals.".
I hope I've helped stop an urban-legend-in-the-making, but I'm scared that the meme is going to be just too attractive.
-----------------------------------------------
98 Results
99 IEEE Paper
First, I am glad someone else shares an interest in the development of the Internet in terms of its architecture. Second, I would suggest you do a little soul searching and preliminary research to decide what you want to focus on. Your initial topic is very broad (so broad not even my dissertation will cover it). I would suggest you think about some of the following issues:
Decide do you want to look at the past development of the Internet or the future of the Internet?
How technical do you want to get?
Do you want to focus on the development/implementation/enforcement of technical standards?
Do you want to focus on the government, academia, or the private sectors role?
Do you want to look at social issues - privacy, pornography, security?
Do want to emphasize economic or legal issues?
But if you just want a good topic with lots of information out there, how about software patents