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Comment Re:a collision wouldn't surprise me (Score 4, Informative) 65

You have no idea about how big the vastness of space is. The chance of them colliding is like the chance of two bullets being fired in a high arc across New York city, and them colliding. Sure that chance happens once per orbit, but its simply not going to happen especially as they both will eventually establish stable orbits that simply will never cross.

Comment Re:Bad Analogy (Score 1) 64

If you have a small enough town with a small enough cell size, it should be blindingly obvious which handset IMSI numbers where usually in the area when a crime was committed.

With enough data, you can simply map out the handset IMSI of the most probable perpetrators. There were 5 instances of a street robbery, at night, and the only common denominator is IMSI xyz that has been in the vicinity and moving around the time of all 5 robberies. It either is a totally unlucky individual or the most likely suspect.

Follow that IMSI with a drone for a few nights, record evidence and then lock these people away.

Note that I don't mind any and all police activity directed against common street thugs, as long as they have reliable evidence against them. (not dealers, not pimps, not smugglers, maybe not even thieves - but violent criminals that assault and rob innocent people or even invade their homes deserve absolutely no mercy.)

Comment Algorithms are not hindered by wishful thinking (Score 1) 64

We know that people that commit crimes are much more often from certain social and cultural backgrounds. There are untold numbers of "anecdotal evidence" around, but we don't want that to be true. So we tell ourselves white lies, blame victims, discount hundreds of incidents as "anecdotal evidence", pinpoint the few cases outside the norm and fabricate elaborate excuses about why such and such were practically forced to commit crime. We are constantly telling ourselves how we are to blame for not paying enough welfare, not enough education, not giving enough leeway while conveniently ignoring millions of people of other social and cultural backgrounds that simply don't commit any more crime than everyone else, being good people despite being poor and uneducated.

Choices of cellphone contracts and handset make and models are similar along cultural and social bonds. An algorithm will never know about that but detect the significance.

But anyway, even among the groups with the highest part in crime, only a few select individuals are responsible for a large percentage of crime.

Algorithms will find that when IMSI xyz is in the general area, people will get robbed. It will also find that when expensive handsets with IMSI abc where in the area when a phone robbery happened, they will probably be around the next crime area as well, since the thief will either have it now or sold it to a pawn shop in the high crime area.

Comment Re:Simple Answers to Simple Questions (Score 1) 246

As you don't know the details you simply stop reading. There could be any number of "irregularities in the pension fund", maybe a transaction was reversed or a simple typo, it happens all the time. Unless you continue reading to know the full details such a headline means nothing. In reality pretty much no matter what you accidentally read, most "small snippets" are almost never accurate towards the full content.

Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 139

There is a difference between regulation and anti-corruption.

Uber is showing that a deregulated system can work. You need true competition though and a government to enforce anti-monopoly policies and crack down on mafia corruption. Many cities over regulate the taxi industry and limit the number of cabs to a ridiculously low number to keep prices high. In your other case a mafia (a semi governmental entity in itself) is doing the same thing. //Randians are crazy, but there certainly is room for balance.

Comment Re:Touch Server (Score 1) 681

An interesting sidenote. There is "some" advantage to Metro for 2013 Server. Its lighter weight than the full desktop. If you have a suite of custom .NET management apps, 2013 Metro will run those apps and be much lighter weight than a full desktop. //MS does advertise this idea, I have no idea why.

Comment One switch to rule them all? (Score 1) 681

Microsoft made it quite clear that much of the "issue" is that there are now simply too many options in Office. They tried to make a menu structure for 2007 and would have had to make several menus multiple submenus deep. They couldn't design a classic menu interface that they felt was workable for the features they added.

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