Dvorak News Blog

Pre-Crime Technology to be Developed and Used in Washington, D.C.

By John C Dvorak Tuesday August 24, 2010

The technology sifts through a database of thousands of crimes and uses algorithms and different variables, such as geographical location, criminal records and ages of previous offenders, to come up with predictions of where, when, and how a crime could possibly be committed and by who.

The program operates without any direct evidence that a crime will be committed, it simply takes datasets and computes possibilities.

“People assume that if someone murdered then they will murder in the future,” Berk also states, “But what really matters is what that person did as a young individual. If they committed armed robbery at age 14 that’s a good predictor.

Found by Joe Petrides.

Judge Stops Embryonic Stem Cell Federal Research Funding

By Uncle Dave Monday August 23, 2010

102 Comments

Funny how the same people who don’t want a mosque in New York because, among other things, they are afraid of Muslim Sharia law eventually being enacted here have no problem imposing their religion-based laws on us.

A U.S. district judge on Monday blocked the federal government from funding all research involving human embryonic stem cells on the grounds that it violates a 1996 law intended to prevent the destruction of of human embryos.

The ruling came in the form of a preliminary injunction in a case involving two scientists who challenged the Obama administration’s stem cell funding policy, which was designed to expand federal support for the controversial research.

Embryonic stem cell researchers said the decision would throw the field into turmoil.

“The long-term practical impact is a massive halt to most embryonic stem cell research in the U.S.” said Dr. Irving Weissman, director of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.
[…]
The scientists who challenged the guidelines argued that Dickey-Wicker also forbids the use of federal funds for any subsequent research on those stem cells, even if the embryos they came from had been destroyed years before.
[…]
Advanced Cell Technology Inc. is using the cells to grow retinal pigment epithelium cells that restored vision in rats and mice with a rare childhood disease called Stargardt’s macular dystrophy. […] “This is criminal,” Lanza said. “We are talking about people going blind, people who are dying from a terrifying array of diseases.”

Wouldn’t it make sense for the people who now won’t be helped by this research be taken care of financially and otherwise by those who oppose this research?

Tiffany High: LA Public School Unveiled…A Bargain at Over a Half BILLION Dollars

By McCullough Monday August 23, 2010

37 Comments

LOS ANGELES – Next month’s opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools will be auspicious for a reason other than its both storied and infamous history as the former Ambassador Hotel, where the Democratic presidential contender was assassinated in 1968.

With an eye-popping price tag of $578 million, it will mark the inauguration of the nation’s most expensive public school ever. The K-12 complex to house 4,200 students has raised eyebrows across the country as the creme de la creme of “Taj Mahal” schools, $100 million-plus campuses boasting both architectural panache and deluxe amenities.

“There’s no more of the old, windowless cinderblock schools of the ’70s where kids felt, ‘Oh, back to jail,'” said Joe Agron, editor-in-chief of American School & University, a school construction journal. “Districts want a showpiece for the community, a really impressive environment for learning.” Not everyone is similarly enthusiastic.

“New buildings are nice, but when they’re run by the same people who’ve given us a 50 percent dropout rate, they’re a big waste of taxpayer money,” said Ben Austin, executive director of Parent Revolution who sits on the California Board of Education. “Parents aren’t fooled.” At RFK, the features include fine art murals and a marble memorial depicting the complex’s namesake, a manicured public park, a state-of-the-art swimming pool and preservation of pieces of the original hotel.

Partly by circumstance and partly by design, the Los Angeles Unified School District has emerged as the mogul of Taj Mahals. The RFK complex follows on the heels of two other LA schools among the nation’s costliest — the $377 million Edward R. Roybal Learning Center, which opened in 2008, and the $232 million Visual and Performing Arts High School that debuted in 2009.

If I lived in California…I think I would just leave.

China Traffic Jam 60 Miles, 9 Days Long

By McCullough Monday August 23, 2010

23 Comments

A nine-day traffic jam in China is now more than 100 kilometres long and could last for weeks, state media reported Monday. Thousands of trucks en route to Beijing from Huai’an in the southeast have been backed up since Aug. 14, making the National Expressway 100 impassable, Xinhua News reported.

A spokesman for the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau reportedly told China’s Global Times newspaper that the backup was due to “insufficient traffic capacity … caused by maintenance construction.” The construction is scheduled to last until Sept. 13. Stranded drivers appear to have few options when it comes to dealing with the jam.

At least some drivers have complained that roadside vendors have increased their prices to take advantage of the traffic jam. One truck driver said he bought instant noodles from one vendor for four times the original price. Another driver, Wang, told Xinhua he’d been stuck in the traffic jam for three days and two nights. “We are advised to take detours, but I would rather stay here since I will travel more distance and increase my costs,” Wang said. This is not the first time the highway has faced such congestion.

A similar backup in July kept traffic to a crawl for nearly a month, Xinhua reported.

This is insane! What are they doing, passing out Pampers along the way like their trains? I won’t even go to a movie if the line has more than 10 people in it. Sheesh!

Who is 3Par?

By John C Dvorak Monday August 23, 2010

2 Comments

3Par stories abound.
MSFT pushes Win Phone 7. I’m predicting them becoming the odd man out.
Apple patent rationalized. I find it onerous. Find out what I mean.
New Kindle about to blow doors off the place. And now we are seeing sub-$100 e-readers too.
Verizon getting into the act.
Google buys Like.com.
New pocket camcorder from Kodak sounds like a winner.
Do we need an FM radio in all devices? No.

click to listen:

Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.

Wow Video of the Day. Bull Charges Patrons.

By John C Dvorak Monday August 23, 2010

26 Comments

No Agenda Show
Gassed in Boston

By John C Dvorak Monday August 23, 2010

2 Comments

This Episode’s Executive Producer: Sir Paul Couture
Associate Excutive Producer: Jacob Smith
Art By: Randy Asher

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Philly Out to Gouge Bloggers by Requiring a License to Blog

By John C Dvorak Monday August 23, 2010

30 Comments

For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.

In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.

“The real kick in the pants is that I don’t even have a full-time job, so for the city to tell me to pony up $300 for a business privilege license, pay wage tax, business privilege tax, net profits tax on a handful of money is outrageous,” Bess says.

Apparently even a cat blog would be subject to a fee. Do these politicians even know what a blog is?

Found by Eddie DaRoza.

National Lampoon’s LA Vacation

By McCullough Sunday August 22, 2010

32 Comments

Talk about a vacation story! A family heading out of town to go camping this morning was pulled over by police who believed their van was stolen. But what they and police eventually figured out was that the license plate had been unknowingly swapped.

At about 5:45 a.m., the LAPD saw the white van and ran its license plate, finding it was reported to be stolen. They soon pulled the car over on the 405 freeway near the Rinaldi Avenue exit. “One-by-one, family members got out of the car with their hands in the air and were instructed to lie face down in the middle of the freeway,” reported KTLA. “They were placed in handcuffs and taken into custody for questioning.”

Once everyone realized the license plate had been switched with a stolen vehicle’s one, they family was released. KTLA caught the whole thing on video.

Is that grandma on the roof?

Did a Trojan Virus Take Down Airliner?

By McCullough Sunday August 22, 2010

32 Comments

Authorities investigating the 2008 crash of Spanair flight 5022 have discovered a central computer system used to monitor technical problems in the aircraft was infected with malware.
An internal report issued by the airline revealed the infected computer failed to detect three technical problems with the aircraft, which if detected, may have prevented the plane from taking off, according to reports in the Spanish newspaper, El Pais. Flight 5022 crashed just after takeoff from Madrid-Barajas International Airport two years ago today, killing 154 and leaving only 18 survivors.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board reported in a preliminary investigation that the plane had taken off with its flaps and slats retracted — and that no audible alarm had been heard to warn of this because the systems delivering power to the take-off warning system failed. Two earlier events had not been reported by the automated system.

The malware on the Spanair computer has been identified as a type of Trojan horse. It could have entered the airline’s system in a number of ways, according to Jamz Yaneeza, head threat researcher at Trend Micro. Some of the most likely ways are through third party devices such as USB sticks, Yaneeza said, which were responsible for the International Space Station virus infection in 2008, or through a remote VPN connection that may not have the same protection as a computer within the enterprise network. Opening just one malicious file on a single computer is all it takes to infect an entire system.

An incident like this could happen again, and most likely will, according to Saydjari.

Sounds sketchy to me. Trains good, planes bad? Any pilots here like to refute this?

In India, You Can Be Arrested For Proving Voter Machine Fraud

By Uncle Dave Sunday August 22, 2010

11 Comments

Coming soon to an election near you?

Today, at wee hours Maharashtra police landed up at the residence of Hari Prasad in Hyderabad, a technologist and Technical coordinator of VeTA to arrest him. The arrest was made on the flimsy charge of ‘theft of EVM’ used for vulnerability demonstration by Hari Prasad and a team of security researchers that included Alex Halderman, professor of computer science, University of Michigan and Rop Gonggrijp, a security researcher from Netherlands along with a team of their colleagues.

Earlier, police came to Hyderabad in the first week of August and recorded a statement on the EVM they had used for exposing the vulnerability of EVMs. They summoned him to Mumbai for further questioning. Hari Prasad could not go as he was busy with his professional work. Then, the sudden arrest happened this morning.

Over the past one year, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has been lying blatantly and willfully to ensure continued use of EVMs at all costs. It attributed all kinds of qualities to its EVMs: “totally tamper proof, perfect, fail safe and requiring no improvement” etc. etc. When Hari Prasad agreed to meet the ECI’s challenge to demonstrate tamperability of EVMs, the ECI backed out imposing silly, unscientific restrictions.

Pic of the Day. Fort Worden, WA

By John C Dvorak Sunday August 22, 2010

17 Comments

Click to embiggen.

Driving 6 MPH Under The Limit? That Calls For A Ticket, Lady!

By Uncle Dave Sunday August 22, 2010

48 Comments

To make up for huge budget shortfalls, police will shortly start ticketing people for not committing murder, for buying things in stores instead of stealing them, for not taking pictures of cops doing illegal things, …

A Valencia County woman who was pulled over for driving too slow said state police went too far.

Jeanette Sedillo said was driving on Reinken Road in Belen, N.M., after 10 p.m. Wednesday when a state police officer pulled beside her and told her to get off the road. Sedillo pulled into a parking lot, questioning what she did wrong. Apparently, going too fast was not the problem: the officer wrote her a ticket for driving 6 mph under the speed limit.

“He said, ‘You were going 34 in a 40,'” said Sedillo.

The citation said she violated the statute for minimum speed. Now, she has to pay a $70 fine for what she thought was careful driving.

Sedillo said there was little traffic in the area at the time and that she wasn’t putting drivers in danger. She said state police went too far with the citation and that officers should be going after more serious offenders.

The Real Reason For The “Ground Zero Mosque” Outcry Isn’t About Ground Zero

By Uncle Dave Sunday August 22, 2010

73 Comments

The “ground zero mosque,” as you may well know by now, is not at ground zero. It’s not a mosque but an Islamic cultural center containing a prayer room. It’s not going to determine President Obama’s political future or the elections of 2010 or 2012. Still, the battle that has broken out over this project in Lower Manhattan — on the “hallowed ground” of a shuttered Burlington Coat Factory store one block from the New York Dolls Gentlemen’s Club — will prove eventful all the same. And the consequences will be far more profound than any midterm election results or any of the grand debates now raging 24/7 over the parameters of tolerance, religious freedom, and the real estate gospel of location, location, location.

Here’s what’s been lost in all the screaming. The prime movers in the campaign against the “ground zero mosque” just happen to be among the last cheerleaders for America’s nine-year war in Afghanistan. The wrecking ball they’re wielding is not merely pounding Park51, as the project is known, but is demolishing America’s already frail support for that war, which is dedicated to nation-building in a nation whose most conspicuous asset besides opium is actual mosques.

So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right — abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats — that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus’s last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?

You’d think that American hawks invested in the Afghanistan “surge” would not act against their own professed interests. But they couldn’t stop themselves from placing cynical domestic politics over country. The ginned-up rage over the “ground zero mosque” was not motivated by a serious desire to protect America from the real threat of terrorists lurking at home and abroad — a threat this furor has in all likelihood exacerbated — but by the potential short-term rewards of winning votes by pandering to fear during an election season.

Are any of you in New York planning to go to the rallies to be a part of the manipulated, “look over there” crowd?