Joe85 - Slashdot User

Comment Why the hate? (Score 1) 377

by Joe85 on Friday July 08, 2011 @03:53PM (#36698958) Attached to: Law Enforcement Wants To Try 'Predictive Policing'

Did anyone actually RTFA? Or even the summary? You sound like you all read 'predictive policing' and jumped straight to Minority Report.

"it is possible to forecast patterns of where and when homes are likely to be burgled or cars stolen by analyzing truckloads of past crime reports and other data with sophisticated computer algorithms."

They're talking about using statistics on crime history to figure out where future crimes may happen. Also,

"That information can give police an edge in figuring out where to deploy extra cars and cops to catch bad guys, or, better yet, keep them from opening that unlocked window in the first place. The process is not meant to finger specific individuals. “We focus on the likelihood of a crime being committed, not on who would commit it,” says Martin Short, a young mathematics professor who works with Brantingham."

We aren't talking about arresting people for crimes they haven't yet committed. deploying extra cars to high crime areas sounds like something police departments are, or should be, already doing.

Comment Re:Military flights (Score 1) 264

by Joe85 on Sunday June 12, 2011 @05:03PM (#36419714) Attached to: My last airplane flight ...

Show up at the PAX ...

What does Penny Arcade have to do with military flights?

Google Incrementally Dropping Support For Older Browsers 353

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 02, 2011 @04:56PM from the hey-3.5-isn't-that-old dept.

AmiMoJo writes "Google announced on its blog that it is dropping support for Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7 and Safari 3 from the 1st of August. In these older browsers you may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites, and eventually these apps may stop working entirely."

Comment Re:Technically... (Score 1) 1277

by Joe85 on Wednesday March 09, 2011 @05:53PM (#35435910) Attached to: Utah To Teach USA is a Republic, Not a Democracy

I'm glad you can look up the definition for democracy, but you forgot to do the other half of your research. Merriam-Webster Definition for Republic: b (1) : a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law (2) : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government. Turns out they're the same thing worded differently, at least according to these relatively simple definitions. Don't worry, as of the writing of this comment over 1000 other people are just as convinced that they're just as right as you(and that everyone on the other side is wrong).

Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday November 26, 2009 @12:41PM from the four-out-of-five-ain't-bad dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"

Comment Re:Throttled how far down? (Score 1) 698

by Joe85 on Wednesday November 04, 2009 @04:51PM (#29985232) Attached to: Comcast's New Throttling Plan Uses Trigger Conditions, Not Silent Blocking

I don't think they would throttle it to below 50% capacity, else why add the condition to return it to normal if bandwidth use stays under 50% for 15 minutes.

SOE Also Making a New Star Wars MMOG? 49

Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 04, 2009 @10:45PM from the empire-strikes-back dept.

Hand Solo writes 'Ten Ton Hammer has an inside scoop on SOE making a new browser-based MMOG based on Star Wars. Rumor is that it will be run on the Free Realms platform. This is generating a lot of buzz around the net. Quoting: 'Former and current Star Wars Galaxies players can still remember the sting of the 'New Game Experience' that changed the face of that game for everyone. SOE has repeatedly said that they have learned from their mistakes, and plan to not repeat them. If SOE isn't expressly targeting the hardcore segment this time around, they (unlike BioWare) won't have quite the same initial level of expectations to deal with. Don't let us give you the impression that SOE plans to take on BioWare, and their highly anticipated MMOG debut, The Old Republic, particularly given the engine the game is rumored to be based on. More plausible is that it will be based off the Clone Wars CGI animated film, offering a more stylized approach to the universe. "

Pain-Free Animals Could Take Suffering Out of Farming 429

Posted by samzenpus on Friday September 04, 2009 @11:04AM from the go-ahead-and-take-a-bite dept.

Philosopher Adam Shriver suggested that genetically engineering cows to feel no pain could be an acceptable alternative to eliminating factory farming in a paper published in Neuroscience. Work by neuroscientist Zhou-Feng Chen at Washington University may turn Shriver's suggestion a reality. Chen has been working on identifying the genes that control "affective" pain, the unpleasantness part of a painful sensation. He has managed to isolate a gene called P311, and has found that mice who do not have P311 don't have negative associations with pain, although they do react negatively to heat and pressure. This could end much of the concern about cruel farming practices, but unfortunately still leaves my design for the fiery hamburger punch in the unethical column.

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