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Submission + - Software To Predict Potential Murderers

Submitted by phookz
phookz writes: The Philadelphia probation department is set to receive software next year that will predict future lethality by using probation case collected from 2002 to 2004. The idea is to use this data to identify the high risk cases to focus on.

From the article:

"If we have 100 probationers I can accurately find the one murderer who statistically will be in that group if I devote resources to all 100 as if they are murderers. The problem is that for that one murderer who is a 'true positive,' I have 99 false positives. We all would agree that's not a good use of resources.

"Now suppose I can identify the 10 at highest risk. For that one true positive I now have nine false positives," Berk said, "and that may be something we choose to live with."
Straight out of Minority Report without the use of psychics, Big Brother is watching, and soon will know what you're up to even before you do.
Software

Submission + - Origin of Quake3's Fast InvSqrt()

Submitted by
geo
geo writes: "Beyond3D.com's Ryszard Sommefeldt dons his seersucker hunting jacket and meerschaum pipe to take on his secret identity as graphics code sleuth extraordinaire. In today's thrilling installment, the origins of one of the more famous snippets of graphics code in recent years is under the microscope — Quake3's Fast InvSqrt(), which has been known to cause strong geeks to go wobbly in the knees while contemplating its simple beauty and power. Enter the puzzle palace here."
Announcements

Submission + - Controversial New Theory on Building the Pyramids

Submitted by ziggyguy
ziggyguy writes: Dr. Michel Barsoum of Drexel University in Philadelphia claims to have confirmed a very controversial theory on how the pyramids were built. The whole structure of each pyramid was not made of 40 ton bricks dragged into place and carved with supernatural precision, but with cast "concrete" limestone blocks as well. This ancient concrete would not only be the first of its kind, but would pre-date Roman cement by 2500 years. This theory may change the way we look at ancient Egyptian society. 26 million limestone blocks in 26 years? Maybe if they were cast into place.

Dr. Barsoum's work is described in yesterday's New York Times article, "Scientist Says Concrete Was Used in Pyramids."

"They used concrete blocks, [Dr. Barsoum] said, on the outer and inner casings and probably on the upper levels, where it would have been difficult to hoist carved stone.

"The sophistication and endurance of this ancient concrete technology is simply astounding," Dr. Barsoum wrote in a report in the December issue of The Journal of the American Ceramic Society. Dr. Barsoum and his co-workers analyzed the mineralogy of samples from several parts of the Khufu pyramid, and said they found mineral ratios that do not exist in any of the known limestone sources. From the geochemical mix of lime, sand and clay, they concluded, "the simplest explanation" is that it was cast concrete."
Linux Business

Submission + - OSDL shutting down?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Well I see the hand writing on the wall for this one. It looks like ODSL is in the process of shutting down. They just had a 60% layoff happen. This has turned in to such an unfulfilled promise to the open source community. It looks like it is morphing itself into a marketing and Linus employment organization. Did anything of significance to the open source community come out of the lab?
The Courts

SCO Having a Hard Time In Court 120

Posted by Zonk from the buy-a-helmet dept.
jamienk writes "The beginning of the end is in sight. SCO has been reprimanded for the second day in a row by a second judge in their campaign against Linux. Basically, Judge Wells ruled that SCO's vague claims of IP infringement will not be allowed to be heard in court, since it was all clearly a poor attempt at avoiding showing any evidence. Next, SCO will face compelling counterclaims against it by IBM." From the article: "At issue was whether SCO would be allowed to sneak in new allegations and evidence in its experts' reports that it failed to put on the table openly in its Final Disclosures, in effect, as IBM described it, reinventing its case at the eleventh hour. The answer today was no, it won't be allowed to do that. IBM had asked for this relief: 'Insofar as SCO's proposed expert reports exceed the Final Disclosures, they should be stricken.' More details will be arriving in a while, but assuming the early reports are accurate, we may assume that this is what the Judge has ordered." This is a follow-up to a story we discussed yesterday.
Censorship

Submission + - Chinese Wikipedia Content differs from English

Submitted by
bulled
bulled writes: "news.com is running a story on differences found in Wikipedia's Chinese site content from content on the same subjects from the Enlish site. The article goes into a discussion about how the "sanitized" information is so prevalent in Chinese education that it is seen as the "truth"."
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Gamers Rally to Save Online World

Submitted by
CleverNickName
CleverNickName writes: "BBC says, "A collective of online gaming fans is making a bid to buy an online world and hand it over to the players.

The Free Ryzom Campaign is hoping to purchase the online fantasy game Ryzom from current owners Nevrax who will go into receivership in December."

The Free Ryzom guys are following in the footsteps of the people who bought Blender a few years ago. They have raised a significant amount of money — over 63,000 Euros as of this morning — toward their effort to purchase the game from Nevrax and make it free and open to all. Time is running out, though: on December 4, a judge and the liquidators will decide if the game can keep running or not. Depending on their decision, the Free Ryzom guys would then make their offer to buy the artwork, code, and game data. They think they could get it for as little as 10,000 Euros, but it's unlikely that their bid for the material will be unopposed, hence the need for a large war chest."
Operating Systems

Fighting Claims That Open Source Is Insecure? 84

Posted by Cliff from the ways-to-counter-the-fud dept.
Lumpy asks: "Lately there has been a HUGE push by Certified Microsoft Professionals and their companies to call clients and warn them of the dangers of open source. This week I received calls from 4 different customers that they were warned that they are dangerously insecure because they run Open Source Operating systems or Software because 'anyone can read the code and hack you with ease' they are being told. Other colleagues in the area also have noticed this about 3 Microsoft Partners or so they claim have been going out of their way to strike fear of OSS in companies that respond with 'yes we use Open source or Linux' when the sales call comes in. I know this is simply a sales tactic by these companies that will remain nameless, but how do I fix the damage caused by these sales tactics? I have several customers that now want more than my word about the security of the systems that have worked for them flawlessly for over 5-6 years now with minimal expense outside of upgrades and patching for security. Does anyone have a good plan or sources of reliable information that can be used to inform the customer?"
Caldera

Submission + - More trouble for SCO

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After the recent rulings against SCO in their crock-of-a-case against IBM SCO's stock price is down 36% today already. Just another 64% to go.
Displays

Submission + - One Widescreen LCD or Two Square LCDs for gaming?

Submitted by
brobak
brobak writes: "I haven't owned a pure gaming machine in several years, but the recent release of some of the consoles has gotten me interested in gaming again, and I've decided to build a solidly performing workstation with an eye to playing PC games. To that end, I've ended up with a video card that has dual DVI outputs, and is capable of driving a resolution of up to 2560x1024. While I find the use of two monitors at work to be extremely productive, I was wondering if Slashdot had any insight as to a monitor setup for this gaming PC. Would I be crazy to get two 17" 1280x1024 capable LCD panels, rip the bezel off of them and 'make' myself a widescreen monitor, or should I just go with a more standard 'widescreen' LCD with 1680x1050? Are there other options I should consider? Money of course, is a large consideration, but I can see myself spending somewhere around the $350 mark to get this acomplished."
Windows

Microsoft Makes Testing IE6 and 7 Easier 167

Posted by Zonk from the was-keeping-me-up-at-night dept.
davidmcg writes "Finally, Microsoft has made steps to make testing IE6 and IE7 easier for Windows users. Previously, you had to pay for an additional Windows license to legally run both versions of IE for testing purposes. Now Microsoft is making available free Windows XP/IE6 images available for VirtualPC (also free as MS is competing with VMWare). This means that you can run IE6 in a virtual machine while running IE7 on your host machine. The drawback is that the download is set to expire April 2007 ... although we are promised new versions will be released. What Microsoft doesn't mention is that Virtual PC also runs on Windows 2000 (and IE7 doesn't). Therefore it's possible to install this Windows XP VPC image on your Win2k machine. You can then update IE6 on the XP image to IE7, testing IE7 without upgrading from Win2k. This is all-around excellent news for web developers."
Music

Submission + - Warner Makes Money Through Kazaa

Submitted by
TerminalWriter
TerminalWriter writes: "Warner Music made a profit this quarter. However, it only did so due to the Kazaa litigation gain.

Also the artical mentions, "Digital sales of music nearly doubled to $104 million both in online downloads and mobile music sales and now accounts for 12.2 percent of total revenue."

Now it got $13 million from suing Kazaa and got $104 million for selling digital music legitimately. You'd think they'd realize where the money is."

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