I was going to say the same thing. 43 Folders is a great blog for implementing GTD, the guy has a lot of great insight. Plus a lot of good info about integrating GTD with computer use, especially on the mac.
When I was still in college I was doing contracting work for a small company that sold things over the web. I'm not going to name names even though they don't exist any more. I did all the coding work and a friend of mine did the design. They would pay us willy-nilly, $200 here, $200 there, on no set plan. This was all done on a handshake agreement with the understanding that the payments would eventually add up to a fee we had settled on in the beginning. Not a smart move but hey, I was young. So eight or nine months after the work had been completed I still hadn't seen the last bit of money they owed me. Repeated attempts to call and try to settle the matter got me nowhere. So seeing how I they didn't have a backup of the source and I still had the password to the site I nuked it; didn't leave a trace. They got a hold of me really quick after that. I didn't tell them I did it but that I'd restore the site if I get the cash. After I had the check in my hand I told them it was me. The guy I originally contracted with actually threatened to break my legs although I didn't let that scare me. If they beat me up they'd have some nice jail time on their hands and they still wouldn't have a site. The way I saw it, no money, no site. In retrospect I probably shouldn't have let it get that far. Web development should never lead to threats of bodily harm. I should have warned them that I would do it if I didn't get the rest of my money. I remember I was afraid at the time that they'd just change the password, I'd have no control over the situation any more, and I'd never see another cent. There was a lot of things I could have done to get the rest of my money without resorting to extortion. The lesson learned is to always have a solid contract before any work gets completed.
(sun won its suit against microsoft that it was unfairly squeezing out the java vm - then promptly sued microsoft for posting the microsoft jvm on windowsupdate.com because the license from sun didn't explicitly allow that. they won the suit and for some time windows users just couldn't get their hands on a vm. and if that doesn't decimate any gains from using java, i don't know what does)
What are you talking about? Windows users have always been able to get their hands on a JVM, just not the Microsoft one because of the lawsuit. Nothing stopping users from downloading one of the manyotherimplementations of the JVM on Windows.
I used Borland's JBuilder 4 on Linux at my last job four years ago for all of my developement with fantastic results. Most of the developers at my company use Eclipse for their development, a pure java IDE that beats the pants off of any other IDE I've used or seen. The only reason I don't use it is because of the lack of VI keybindings, I use good ol' Vim instead.
The point it moot anyway, Java really shines in the Enterprise side.
I would say always make your fears known. It's called CYA (Cover Yer Ass), you don't want to be blamed when what you feared comes to pass.
If for whatever reason you can't then it's tough luck for the customer. Any company that doesn't keep an open dialog is doomed to failure I would think.
I agree with your appraisal of her cuteness though;) Plus she's a damn fine actress. If you have a chance you should check out the Farscape episode The Way We Weren't, one of my faves. She's spectactular in it.
I love these books. The robot drawings in the margins were the best. I probably still have copies stashed away somewhere in my parent's house... Any idea who did those original drawings?
I used to work quite a bit in Windowmaker at my old job and this functionality was quite a wonderful eye-opener. Luckily there's a few windows versions of this for us poor saps who have to use 2k at work. This one is my favorite and I've used it for a few years now.
My mother works for a national cable provider involved in this exact process and I've talked to her at some length about it. It's interesting and not as simple as it sounds. One of the big problems is that each region in the United States has their own agenda and needs for what channel belongs to what number. This is why Fox is channel 31 in some places, 11 in others and 13 in yet another. Each area in the states has to be dealt with individually and that takes time. The same is true for Digital Cable and Satellite; they have to squeeze the local channels in there somehow. My mother's company has a database setup to speed this process along so every point in the path that needs to change all has up-to-date information. Another company I know of perhaps I shouldn't mention has the same problem as a national cable provider except without the database backend. The whole process is done on Excel spreadsheets/faxa requiring signatures from VPs up and down the lines. To change one channel from one number to another could take many months.
I'm sometimes amazed that anything ever gets done.
GEO-PROFILING: POTENT NEW POLICE TECHNIQUE Cracking the Toughest Serial Criminal Cases Dec. 31, 1998
By Jim Krane
SAN DIEGO (APBnews.com) -- Picture a small city in eastern Canada whose residents were rarely touched by violent crime. Then, startlingly, a serial rapist began attacking women, injecting a dose of fear into a normally tranquil community.
By the time the assailant sexually assaulted his 11th victim, police were desperate. They compiled a list of 300 possible suspects and prepared to conduct expensive, laborious DNA tests on each one, hoping to match DNA residue taken from victims.
Vancouver Police Detective Kim Rossmo That's when Det. Kim Rossmo got a call.
Rossmo, a detective inspector with the Vancouver Police Department, developed an investigative technique called geographic profiling. Using geo-profiling, police try to trace a serial criminal to his home or workplace by computing distances with geographic clues he's left -- such as dead bodies, sites of attacks and other known locations the lawbreaker visited.
Rossmo explained geographic profiling to attendees at the International Association of Crime Analysts here recently, giving criminal analysts a window into one of law enforcement's newest and least-known investigative techniques.
Rossmo's methodology would come in handy on the serial rapist case and many others.
Valuable search tool
As part of his doctoral research at British Columbia's Simon Fraser University, Rossmo developed an algorithm -- a mathematical model of repeated calculations -- that targets serial criminals by the spatial patterns they produce.
Since then, Rossmo's algorithm has been computerized, allowing it to make hundreds of thousands of calculations that pinpoint a criminal's hideout within a fraction of the crime site area.
Priority: danger
Rossmo most often gets a call when a serial criminal is on the loose. Since many agencies -- in Canada, the United States and Europe -- seek his services simultaneously, Rossmo said he gauges which community is most at risk.
In the eastern Canadian sexual assault case -- Rossmo didn't want to divulge the location -- his geographic profile turned out to be remarkably accurate. With 300 suspects on their hands, the local police could only look forward to a lengthy period of laboratory testing.
The red peaks in this image identify the probable location of an offender's residence in Vancouver, British Columbia. But Rossmo's geo-profiling technique helped the police get their man much more quickly. The Vancouver detective visited crime scenes, read reports, and talked to victims and investigators. He analyzed the data using his computerized algorithm and found a neighborhood hot spot to focus on.
Seventh time's a charm
Instead of hauling suspects in alphabetically by last name, police matched suspects' addresses against Rossmo's findings and tested those who lived nearest the hot spot's peak. The seventh suspect lawmen tested was a positive DNA match. Police arrested the man and cracked the case.
"If they didn't have geographic profile prioritization, they might've started with Archer and ended with Young," Rossmo said.
Lazy to a fault
Despite its complicated mathematical calculations, geographic profiling is based on a simple theory. Criminologists say most humans -- criminals included -- are inherently lazy. Just as a person will shop in the grocery store nearest his or her home, a predatory criminal usually picks his victims in familiar areas -- except for a small buffer zone around his home, says Rossmo.
Thus, when an arsonist sets a series of fires, police can estimate his whereabouts (usually a residence) by dumping the addresses of buildings burned into the computer and calculating the location most central to the crime scenes.
Crime as topography
In reality, Rossmo's crime-busting technique is more complex. He walks through crime scenes, conducts interviews and reads police reports. With years of investigative experience under his belt, Rossmo puts emphasis on certain locations based on his psychological assumptions about the quarry. At the same time, he discards or discounts other locations that he believes might skew his findings.
Rossmo then keys his data into the computer. The machine converts street addresses into latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates and creates a three-dimensional "jeopardy surface" or topographical model of the data. The jeopardy surface looks like a mountain range, with colored bands of peaks and valleys that show where the addresses converge -- the peaks -- and where they don't -- the valleys.
When Rossmo superimposes the jeopardy surface onto a street grid, the result isn't an exact map to the killer's house, but it's something close to it.
Method used in 80 cases
Since 1990, Rossmo has used his geo-profiling technique in more than 80 cases, representing 1,800 crime locations. He believes his work helped crack about half of those cases.
But Rossmo doesn't measure his success only by cases cleared. He's interested in geographic accuracy.
In cases where an arrest has been made, Rossmo's been able to estimate the location of the offender's home within the top five percent of the search area. That means, if police believe the offender lives somewhere within a 10-square-mile area, Rossmo can tell investigators which half-square-mile section to search.
In some cases, he's more accurate. In the Canadian rapist investigation described above, Rossmo's suspect lived within the first 2.2 percent of the area searched.
The more a criminal strikes, the more clues Rossmo can enter into his computer. Theoretically, that makes his predictions more accurate. But Rossmo's computer doesn't spit out a name and address. After the computer does its thing, Rossmo writes a report suggesting strategies for capture.
"It's the investigator that solves the case. Our role is to support him or her," Rossmo said.
Cops, meet Rigel
Rossmo's algorithm has been incorporated into a software program called Rigel, manufactured by the Vancouver firm Environmental Criminology Research Inc. (ECRI). Rossmo is a member of ECRI's board of directors and acts as the company's chief scientist.
Currently, Rigel runs only on a Sun Microsystems UltraSparc workstation. But ECRI is reprogramming it for use on Windows NT workstations and servers.
The software isn't cheap -- ECRI president Barry Dalziel priced a copy at $70,000, which includes some training and help with installation.
Rigel, emphasized Dalziel, isn't perfect. For best results, it should be used by a police investigator or crime analyst who undergoes a year of training, some of it under Rossmo's personal tutelage.
"If it sends them off on a wild goose chase, police investigators aren't likely to use the system again," said Dalziel.
It's a Canadian thing
Besides Rossmo's Vancouver Police, two other agencies have been trained in geographic profiling with Rigel: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada's national police force, and the Ontario Provincial Police. Rossmo said the British National Crime Faculty, another national law enforcement agency, will be certified in 1999.
No U.S. law enforcement agencies are on Rossmo's training list -- even though he's been invited to help crack dozens of cases in the States.
The real Robocop
If its geo-profiling uses weren't enough, Dalziel said investigators will be able to use a new version of Rigel to predict a serial criminal's next crimes, including dates and crime locations.
And cops will be able to predict and monitor the likely "hunting grounds" of paroled sex offenders by plotting past crime data and behavioral traits into Rigel, said Dalziel.
"Say there were crimes in that area that matched [a parolee's] M.O., his name would pop up," Dalziel said.
Jim Krane is APB News staff writer (jimk@apbnews.com).
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I was going to say the same thing. 43 Folders is a great blog for implementing GTD, the guy has a lot of great insight. Plus a lot of good info about integrating GTD with computer use, especially on the mac.
Quick! Contact Bruce Willis!
When I was still in college I was doing contracting work for a small company that sold things over the web. I'm not going to name names even though they don't exist any more.
I did all the coding work and a friend of mine did the design. They would pay us willy-nilly, $200 here, $200 there, on no set plan. This was all done on a handshake agreement with the understanding that the payments would eventually add up to a fee we had settled on in the beginning. Not a smart move but hey, I was young.
So eight or nine months after the work had been completed I still hadn't seen the last bit of money they owed me. Repeated attempts to call and try to settle the matter got me nowhere. So seeing how I they didn't have a backup of the source and I still had the password to the site I nuked it; didn't leave a trace.
They got a hold of me really quick after that. I didn't tell them I did it but that I'd restore the site if I get the cash. After I had the check in my hand I told them it was me. The guy I originally contracted with actually threatened to break my legs although I didn't let that scare me. If they beat me up they'd have some nice jail time on their hands and they still wouldn't have a site. The way I saw it, no money, no site.
In retrospect I probably shouldn't have let it get that far. Web development should never lead to threats of bodily harm. I should have warned them that I would do it if I didn't get the rest of my money. I remember I was afraid at the time that they'd just change the password, I'd have no control over the situation any more, and I'd never see another cent. There was a lot of things I could have done to get the rest of my money without resorting to extortion.
The lesson learned is to always have a solid contract before any work gets completed.
Thanks!
Oh I've heard of Oliver Brown. Anywhere I can get MP3s? The links on the page there don't seem to have anything...
Of course playing Quake would be out of the question I would think
(sun won its suit against microsoft that it was unfairly squeezing out the java vm - then promptly sued microsoft for posting the microsoft jvm on windowsupdate.com because the license from sun didn't explicitly allow that. they won the suit and for some time windows users just couldn't get their hands on a vm. and if that doesn't decimate any gains from using java, i don't know what does)
What are you talking about? Windows users have always been able to get their hands on a JVM, just not the Microsoft one because of the lawsuit. Nothing stopping users from downloading one of the many other implementations of the JVM on Windows.
What apps have you been using?
I used Borland's JBuilder 4 on Linux at my last job four years ago for all of my developement with fantastic results.
Most of the developers at my company use Eclipse for their development, a pure java IDE that beats the pants off of any other IDE I've used or seen. The only reason I don't use it is because of the lack of VI keybindings, I use good ol' Vim instead.
The point it moot anyway, Java really shines in the Enterprise side.
not a gripe, just a humorous observation...as I said it's a boring day ;)
Make up your mind people.
/. Nothing to see, move along :)
Just pointing out the humor of two (sorta) contridictory stories here on
OK it's a boring day
I would say always make your fears known. It's called CYA (Cover Yer Ass), you don't want to be blamed when what you feared comes to pass.
If for whatever reason you can't then it's tough luck for the customer. Any company that doesn't keep an open dialog is doomed to failure I would think.
That chilling effect you feel is not your lack of trousers...
Thank you!
Death is the only thing you can compare Life to, and by contrast it makes Life way more attractive.
Isn't John already a blonde?
Only if the game is Paperboy.
She's only 29. At least according to IMDB.
;) Plus she's a damn fine actress. If you have a chance you should check out the Farscape episode The Way We Weren't, one of my faves. She's spectactular in it.
I agree with your appraisal of her cuteness though
...the kind who are likely to go out and earn $80,000/yr in a post-90s economy.
Do you take 27 year old students?
You must be thinking of LEXX
I love these books. The robot drawings in the margins were the best. I probably still have copies stashed away somewhere in my parent's house...
Any idea who did those original drawings?
D00d that's nuts. *drool*
I'd also be interested in getting one of those laptops...do you know their stats? I'm not too worried about speed either.
I used to work quite a bit in Windowmaker at my old job and this functionality was quite a wonderful eye-opener. Luckily there's a few windows versions of this for us poor saps who have to use 2k at work.
This one is my favorite and I've used it for a few years now.
My mother works for a national cable provider involved in this exact process and I've talked to her at some length about it. It's interesting and not as simple as it sounds.
One of the big problems is that each region in the United States has their own agenda and needs for what channel belongs to what number. This is why Fox is channel 31 in some places, 11 in others and 13 in yet another. Each area in the states has to be dealt with individually and that takes time.
The same is true for Digital Cable and Satellite; they have to squeeze the local channels in there somehow.
My mother's company has a database setup to speed this process along so every point in the path that needs to change all has up-to-date information.
Another company I know of perhaps I shouldn't mention has the same problem as a national cable provider except without the database backend. The whole process is done on Excel spreadsheets/faxa requiring signatures from VPs up and down the lines. To change one channel from one number to another could take many months.
I'm sometimes amazed that anything ever gets done.
For a couple of seconds I thought this story read "Science: Build Your Own Cyclon" and I got really excited...
GEO-PROFILING: POTENT NEW POLICE TECHNIQUE
Cracking the Toughest Serial Criminal Cases
Dec. 31, 1998
By Jim Krane
SAN DIEGO (APBnews.com) -- Picture a small city in eastern Canada whose residents were rarely touched by violent crime. Then, startlingly, a serial rapist began attacking women, injecting a dose of fear into a normally tranquil community.
By the time the assailant sexually assaulted his 11th victim, police were desperate. They compiled a list of 300 possible suspects and prepared to conduct expensive, laborious DNA tests on each one, hoping to match DNA residue taken from victims.
Vancouver Police Detective Kim Rossmo
That's when Det. Kim Rossmo got a call.
Rossmo, a detective inspector with the Vancouver Police Department, developed an investigative technique called geographic profiling. Using geo-profiling, police try to trace a serial criminal to his home or workplace by computing distances with geographic clues he's left -- such as dead bodies, sites of attacks and other known locations the lawbreaker visited.
Rossmo explained geographic profiling to attendees at the International Association of Crime Analysts here recently, giving criminal analysts a window into one of law enforcement's newest and least-known investigative techniques.
Rossmo's methodology would come in handy on the serial rapist case and many others.
Valuable search tool
As part of his doctoral research at British Columbia's Simon Fraser University, Rossmo developed an algorithm -- a mathematical model of repeated calculations -- that targets serial criminals by the spatial patterns they produce.
Since then, Rossmo's algorithm has been computerized, allowing it to make hundreds of thousands of calculations that pinpoint a criminal's hideout within a fraction of the crime site area.
Priority: danger
Rossmo most often gets a call when a serial criminal is on the loose. Since many agencies -- in Canada, the United States and Europe -- seek his services simultaneously, Rossmo said he gauges which community is most at risk.
In the eastern Canadian sexual assault case -- Rossmo didn't want to divulge the location -- his geographic profile turned out to be remarkably accurate. With 300 suspects on their hands, the local police could only look forward to a lengthy period of laboratory testing.
The red peaks in this image identify the probable location of an offender's residence in Vancouver, British Columbia.
But Rossmo's geo-profiling technique helped the police get their man much more quickly. The Vancouver detective visited crime scenes, read reports, and talked to victims and investigators. He analyzed the data using his computerized algorithm and found a neighborhood hot spot to focus on.
Seventh time's a charm
Instead of hauling suspects in alphabetically by last name, police matched suspects' addresses against Rossmo's findings and tested those who lived nearest the hot spot's peak. The seventh suspect lawmen tested was a positive DNA match. Police arrested the man and cracked the case.
"If they didn't have geographic profile prioritization, they might've started with Archer and ended with Young," Rossmo said.
Lazy to a fault
Despite its complicated mathematical calculations, geographic profiling is based on a simple theory. Criminologists say most humans -- criminals included -- are inherently lazy. Just as a person will shop in the grocery store nearest his or her home, a predatory criminal usually picks his victims in familiar areas -- except for a small buffer zone around his home, says Rossmo.
Thus, when an arsonist sets a series of fires, police can estimate his whereabouts (usually a residence) by dumping the addresses of buildings burned into the computer and calculating the location most central to the crime scenes.
Crime as topography
In reality, Rossmo's crime-busting technique is more complex. He walks through crime scenes, conducts interviews and reads police reports. With years of investigative experience under his belt, Rossmo puts emphasis on certain locations based on his psychological assumptions about the quarry. At the same time, he discards or discounts other locations that he believes might skew his findings.
Rossmo then keys his data into the computer. The machine converts street addresses into latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates and creates a three-dimensional "jeopardy surface" or topographical model of the data. The jeopardy surface looks like a mountain range, with colored bands of peaks and valleys that show where the addresses converge -- the peaks -- and where they don't -- the valleys.
When Rossmo superimposes the jeopardy surface onto a street grid, the result isn't an exact map to the killer's house, but it's something close to it.
Method used in 80 cases
Since 1990, Rossmo has used his geo-profiling technique in more than 80 cases, representing 1,800 crime locations. He believes his work helped crack about half of those cases.
But Rossmo doesn't measure his success only by cases cleared. He's interested in geographic accuracy.
In cases where an arrest has been made, Rossmo's been able to estimate the location of the offender's home within the top five percent of the search area. That means, if police believe the offender lives somewhere within a 10-square-mile area, Rossmo can tell investigators which half-square-mile section to search.
In some cases, he's more accurate. In the Canadian rapist investigation described above, Rossmo's suspect lived within the first 2.2 percent of the area searched.
The more a criminal strikes, the more clues Rossmo can enter into his computer. Theoretically, that makes his predictions more accurate. But Rossmo's computer doesn't spit out a name and address. After the computer does its thing, Rossmo writes a report suggesting strategies for capture.
"It's the investigator that solves the case. Our role is to support him or her," Rossmo said.
Cops, meet Rigel
Rossmo's algorithm has been incorporated into a software program called Rigel, manufactured by the Vancouver firm Environmental Criminology Research Inc. (ECRI). Rossmo is a member of ECRI's board of directors and acts as the company's chief scientist.
Currently, Rigel runs only on a Sun Microsystems UltraSparc workstation. But ECRI is reprogramming it for use on Windows NT workstations and servers.
The software isn't cheap -- ECRI president Barry Dalziel priced a copy at $70,000, which includes some training and help with installation.
Rigel, emphasized Dalziel, isn't perfect. For best results, it should be used by a police investigator or crime analyst who undergoes a year of training, some of it under Rossmo's personal tutelage.
"If it sends them off on a wild goose chase, police investigators aren't likely to use the system again," said Dalziel.
It's a Canadian thing
Besides Rossmo's Vancouver Police, two other agencies have been trained in geographic profiling with Rigel: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada's national police force, and the Ontario Provincial Police. Rossmo said the British National Crime Faculty, another national law enforcement agency, will be certified in 1999.
No U.S. law enforcement agencies are on Rossmo's training list -- even though he's been invited to help crack dozens of cases in the States.
The real Robocop
If its geo-profiling uses weren't enough, Dalziel said investigators will be able to use a new version of Rigel to predict a serial criminal's next crimes, including dates and crime locations.
And cops will be able to predict and monitor the likely "hunting grounds" of paroled sex offenders by plotting past crime data and behavioral traits into Rigel, said Dalziel.
"Say there were crimes in that area that matched [a parolee's] M.O., his name would pop up," Dalziel said.
Jim Krane is APB News staff writer (jimk@apbnews.com).