Microsoft Patents Bad Neighborhood Detection 317
PolygamousRanchKid writes with these lines culled from InformationWeek: "With the grant of their US Patent #8090532 Microsoft may be attempting to corner the market on GPS systems for use by pedestrians, or they may have opened a fertile ground for discrimination lawsuits. ... Described as a patent on pedestrian route production, the patent describes a two-way system of building navigation devices targeted at people who are not in vehicles, but still require the use of such a device to most efficiently route to their destination. ... For example, the user inputs their destination and any constraints or requirements they might have, such as a wheelchair accessible route, types of terrain they are willing to cross, the option of public transportation, and a way point such as the nearest Starbucks on the route. Any previously configured preferences are also considered, such as avoiding neighborhoods that exceed a certain threshold of violent crime statistics (hence the description of this as the 'avoid bad neighborhoods' patent), fastest route, most scenic, etc." Having lived in some high-crime neighborhoods, the actual feature (versus the patent) sounds like a great idea to me.
Very subjective (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Very subjective (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Very subjective (Score:5, Funny)
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Add accelerometers and detect "GPS A approaches GPS B - sudden impact accelerations - GPS B begins sharing coordinates with GPS A". Block GPS A and update violent crimes map (also, call 911).
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Hehe, want a toke on this?
Something along that line. Or maybe prostitutes. Or really cheap kebaps. Or every inner city bus stop that's ever been in existence since the history of forever.
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For all intents
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I don't think there's an app for that.
Yes there is. A whole operating system in fact. [wikipedia.org]
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But I do remember being surprised since it sounded so plausible.
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I don't know if the broken window theory has any merit. And frankly that's besides the point.
As a matter of fact it is a good idea to keep an area clean and well maintained. And I'm not talking about sidewalks and crumbling facades. I'm talking about sending building inspectors into the houses and taking a good look at business papers from local shop owners.
Also misdemeanors should result in local community service. If you are caught urinating next to some house then you
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...might as well hold up a billboard saying "You can has Win7 tablet"...
That should stop them dead in their tracks.
There should be an app that can make your Android tab look like a Win7 tablet.
Re:Very subjective (Score:5, Insightful)
Crime rates don't care what you call home, and if I'm travelling _I_ don't care what you call home.
If you live in a high crime area, you don't need me as a visitor. You have no complaint.
Re:Very subjective (Score:5, Insightful)
If you live in a high crime area, you don't need me as a visitor. You have no complaint.
Well, unless he is a criminal, in which case he does want you as a visitor.
On a more serious note though, shying folks away from certain neighborhoods will decrease business to those areas, depressing them even further and, well, encouraging more crime. If this ever caught on, it would open a basket of crap. What if Bing goofed and blacklisted the wrong neighborhood? What if the bad neighborhood is trying to get some kind of renewal going, and businesses there desperately need the income? This would only delay things further, perhaps to the point of failure.
I get the whole safety concept of it, but honestly, this begins to meddle in a lot of things that really shouldn't be meddled in.
Okay, case in point: Highway 71 through Kansas City. Going southbound, it is very easy to miss a vital turn-off, and get deposited into one very rotten neighborhood. OTOH, during the day the folks are friendly enough, and I was able to ask directions, get gas, buy snacks, and one time to get a bad tire replaced. Once the sun went down, that place was not where you wanted to be (nearly everyone I spoke to there said as much), but during the day it was no problem. It eventually got so that I intentionally made stops there if I was passing through during the day, because quite a few of the business owners were very glad to see a stranger's face, the prices were reasonable, and they were a hell of a lot friendlier than the ones in better neighborhoods (let alone the truck stops).
As someone who spent a good share of his childhood living in such areas, I'm not put off by the fact that often I was often the only caucasian-skinned guy in some of the establishments, so I guess my lack of anxiety may be a factor in all of this.
In all though, that's a whole lot of subtle nuances that I sincerely doubt an algorithm could pick up on, and I suspect that a lot of otherwise good people are going to get screwed over by this thing.
Re:Very subjective (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF? My ignorance of crime rates is something that shouldn't be meddled in, because I have an imagined obligation to support businesses I know nothing about? Your choice to support businesses in what you describe as "one very rotten neighborhood" is *your* choice. I'd like to have access to crime data, if available, before I walk through an area that I'm unfamiliar with. If, as you suggest, there is some significant difference in crime incidence during daylight hours as opposed to darkness, I'd like to know that, also. The idea that merchants who are unknown to me are somehow entitled to my ignorance of crime rates, though, is bizarre.
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I'm talking about meddling in areas such as renewal projects, shopping patterns/habits, and in general helping folks who live in that neighborhood rise above the bad situation they're in. Consider also this: What if the system were abused? What if neighborhoods (or rather, townships) were offered an 'out' from the blacklisting for a fee?
Also, what of the opposite? I can tell you right now that a black man in Harrison, Arkansas [pbs.org] after dark is in greater physical danger than he would ever be in Compton, Califo
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Most "bad neighborhoods" have an improvement plan. Especially after the local council deems it might have not been wise to have a whole neighbourhood consisting purely of council housing with no rozzers anywhere neare there at night because it might be a bit tedious. Having those places blacklisted by some idiotic scheme won't help one jot.
Need I point out that intently staring at a brightly lit mobile studying how bad your surroundings are might not be such a good idea? Hell, I'd even mug you myse
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Indeed
Need I point out that intently staring at a brightly lit mobile studying how bad your surroundings are might not be such a good idea? Hell, I'd even mug you myself even if I can't fathom why I would want a Windows phone. Might as well nail your ears to your knees just to make sure you get a better view of your bum.
Ah, no wonder you folks don't need guns in the UK - you've got Windows Phones as a deterrent.
I bow to your superior defenses.
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I'm talking about meddling in areas such as renewal projects, shopping patterns/habits, and in general helping folks who live in that neighborhood rise above the bad situation they're in. Consider also this: What if the system were abused? What if neighborhoods (or rather, townships) were offered an 'out' from the blacklisting for a fee?
Then this information also should be publicized. Preferably with list of of places that used that opt-out. Sorry, you are not going to convince me that ignorance is better than knowledge.
Also, what of the opposite? I can tell you right now that a black man in Harrison, Arkansas [pbs.org] after dark is in greater physical danger than he would ever be in Compton, California. Would his particular GPS indicate that maybe he should keep driving until he sees a safer town for him (say, Sprinfgield, MO)?
Hey, here is your idea for a patent and app. Go for it.
Finally, since crime statistics are compiled on an annual basis, and often change from area to area each year, what you'd get is outdated at best, so it may well be useless to you in either event.
There are many places that stay bad for decades. And I don't think there is so much fluctuation month-to-month to invalidate the idea.
If, as you suggest, there is some significant difference in crime incidence during daylight hours as opposed to darkness, I'd like to know that, also.
Indeed, but I doubt the patent's stated goal would cover that, which is why I mentioned it.
So because it is not perfect and does not provide every possible information, the idea is worthless?
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Gah, the irony, it burns.
You (and others) do realize that by saying that ranking neighborhoods by _crime_ levels is _racist_, you're implying "It's racist, because crime is for nig^W^W^Wrates are correlated to racial composition"? There's enough examples of racism here, idea in the original article isn't one.
As a side note, "Born in slums, achieved everything by his willpower and intellect" is not a bad image for a politician.
Re:Very subjective (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a similar story only slightly more idiotic.
A colleage and I had a had a 6 months gig in Derby. Since Nottingham is only a stone throw away we decided to have a night-out in this astonishing but also slightly infamous city. Now, I wouldn't call my colleage street-smart. So there we were. At 10pm in some dark inner city alley in Notts sometimes November. And we were a bit lost.So he unfolds right then and there, I kid you not, a street plan. In the dark alley. 10 metres away from two shady figures hanging out in a dark doorway. As I inched away from my colleague fully prepared to leg it and leave him to his Darwin award they started to saunter towards us.
-Hey there, mate!
-Goot evenink(My colleage had a very thick German accent. The thing is, Germans are not as popular in England as you might think. Shocking, I know...)
-You lost? That's where I took over. Survival instincts, I guess.
-Actually yes. There's supposed to be a place that has live music at this hour but we can't quite locate it. *shows the name that I had written down*
-Yep, I know it. It's a cool place.
-Say, you lot look bored. Come with us. My treat.
-Ok.By the way, mate, unfolding a map like you just did is not very clever.
Turned out they too had watched the latest episode of Top Gear and we prepared a list of preopsterous complaints the BBC would get for JC driving that Range Rover up that hill. Bullshit bingo British. The complaints turned out to be even beyond our wits having been sharpend by multiple pints of bitter.
Easy as that. They could also have been 'orrible muggers and I swear to god, I was prepared to run as hell. Might have had to if we had mentioned that we quite liked Derby and wanted to see how the other half lives.
tl;dr:
Don't do anything idiotic.Be relaxed but watchful. Bring a mate and make sure you get a head start in case you have to leg it. As my dad used to say: Son, If you go on a journey, don't bring anything you aren't prepared to lose.
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You really care more about the business owner in a bad neighborhood who will lose out on some customers than the people who unknowingly go into that bad neighborhood and *not* have the good fortune you had?
One guy loses a few dollars. The other guy becomes the victim of a crime.
I'm very much pro-business but this is insane. You don't hide information and lead people into life threatening situations to make a buck!
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"If you live in a high crime area"
Welcome to America. The country of natural-born terrorists.
Fuck you and your ignorance.
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Nobody has ever won an argument on the internet and it is completely valid to walk away when somebody comes over as a bit of a prat.
.
Mr Coward, eh? I once watched a movie starring Noel Coward. Are you by chance related?
Re:Very subjective (Score:5, Funny)
You live in Baltimore?
Re:Very subjective (Score:4, Funny)
Modded funny, but as someone who just recently moved to BalDimore from the midwest, this is more insightful.
My wife and I relied heavily on our GPS units to find places when we first got here. We would joke that the software seemed to have a "get crack" option enabled, as it routed us through some fairly scary neighborhoods.
Doesn't this count as being too broad? (Score:2)
Philadelphia (Score:3)
Instead of a dot representing the city on a map it should be a skull and crossbones.
Re:Philadelphia (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry, but Detroit called 'dibs'.
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Man, I grew up in Philly, and even 30 years ago I remember kids getting shot and killed at the playground near my house over their fucking shoes, crack pipes in the gutters on the way to school...
I can't even imagine what things are like now. Glad I got out of there...
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Actually, Philly would probably be the killer app (ha) for this app, since it's not really neighborhoods so much as specific blocks and street corners where you're likely to get jacked. It would be even better if the app would ring in your pocket and say, "Hi--it looks like you're headed towards the projects. Are you sure you want to continue?"
Political Correctness? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should we all have to suffer at the hands of being politically correct? A bad neighborhood is what it is - BAD! It So that someone in that "bad" neighborhood isn't "offended" why should I have to risk my safety?
I wish something like this would have existed when I chose my current house. The neighborhood looks great during the day but once it becomes dark all the bums and the freaks come out. They are all drunk or high and they do things out of "boredom" (as a police officer told me). Like vandalize my car and leave bloody handprints on the glass.
Re:Political Correctness? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its because those indicators will often fall along racial lines, and for a while now here in America you have been forbidden to tell the truth.
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Crime is crime. If your little pocket of town has higher crime than another then it's not somewhere I want to walk. When I travel, I don't know what areas to avoid.
Give you a couple of examples from business trips. In Baltimore, driving thank god, I see these row houses up on a hill. Looks nice from where I am, so I exit the freeway to go take a look. Whoa. Crack house city. Another time, in Memphis, on foot. Looking for a restaraunt do
Re:Political Correctness? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if any cities have been sued for not putting up warning signs for these areas. It's really no different than not putting up a "caution - wet floor" sign in a supermarket. The city knows certain areas are bad, and they have a duty to let people know.
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There was. It's called "why this house was cheaper than the other same sized ones a couple miles down". The market has accounted for crime and "ghetto-ness" of a neighborhood long before this or Redfin or Zillow or the Internet.
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I wish something like this would have existed when I chose my current house.
Crime statistics have been google-able since, before yahoo was a search engine. So I guess they were Altavista-able.
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In the meantime, if all you do with those figures is planning routes and determine housing prices then the country goes to hell in a handbasket. And rightfully so. But it might cost a bit of money spent on poor people and landlords might be forced to paint the facades and do something about the plumbing. So the same people
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I select realtors of similar demographics to myself, and bluntly inform them I want "no/few fucking neighbors, and none who are poor, and none who don't look like me".
Since we are being politically incorrect, let me just say that you are part of the problem, you are not the solution. And you aren't even unique. Living in a small town in NC, I see plenty of assholes just like you. You can call it "Voluntary Segregation" all you want, but it simply boils down to bigotry. You think your race is better than
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You think your race is better than any other race.
you simply hate everyone who isn't exactly like you
You seem to be reading a whole lot into a situation that probably doesn't exist. A religious analogy would be those who think people are either evangelical Christians or judeo-christian tradition satanists and anywhere in between is not allowed, and the though of someone not even playing on that continuum is not permitted to be thought about.
Its possible, in fact normal, to not want to live in Mexico or not want to live in Somalia without hating Mexico or Somalia.
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He obviously doesn't like .... solely because they are different than he is. That is pretty much the de facto definition of bigotry.
Um, no, not at all. Sorry. I've checked. For example, according to the wikipedia entry, bigotry requires intolerance, animosity, hostility, and mostly comes with world views and ideologies. In stark contrast he has the ultra watered down, borderline unrelated "he obviously doesn't like".
Now don't go getting cause and effect all backwards here. I agree it is quite possible that if someone feels intolerance, animosity, hostility, due to some kind of ideology, it is quite possible they also do not like be
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I harm no one. I look out for MY advantage. My advantage doesn't require someone else be DIS-advantaged.
Explain what problem that creates. I suggest, "none". I deny no one habitation. I don't exclude anyone. At all. I move where I am welcome. High-crime areas have different demographics than low-crime areas.
If I select by demographics, I win. It's, as I said, about me. I'm spending money I earn to live where I like. If you like spending your money differently, then buy differently as you are free to
Re:Political Correctness? (Score:4, Insightful)
Crack a book. Certain demographics are more likely to get arrested for crimes, even when they are no more likely to commit the crime. Drug usage is a prime example of having the same percentage of black and white abusers, yet blacks have an arrest rate of 4x that of whites.
Re:Political Correctness? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not our job to bring money to businesses in Ghettos. Change comes from within.
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Seems like you're contradicting yourself. First you don't want to scare people away. But then you say people should *always* be cautious.
In a bad neighborhood, I wouldn't park and start window shopping. So you're saying I shouldn't do that in a good neighborhood. Fine. So what's the difference in terms of "how are those neighborhoods supposed to clean up if people are being constantly scared away"? Either way I'm not window shopping in bad neighborhoods, I'm just also not window shopping in good neighborhoo
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Yes, but that's a good thing. So-called "white flight" (stupid term) means successful people cluster together and make really nice neighborhoods. It's not just white people, it's all successful people. You won't find a surgeon from India (not white) living in a ghetto, he'll be in a nice affluent neighborhood. Why should everyone suffer?
Reality: there will always be bad people, and generally all you can do is avoid them by choosing to live around good people.
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Re:Cyber-white flight (Score:5, Informative)
What we have is a legal requirement to not choose who we buy our goods from based on race or minority status of the owner/employees.
That's not true, you're allowed to buy your goods from whoever you choose, for any reason you choose. That is freedom of association.
Prior Art? (Score:2)
An Iphone app called Trapster goes beyond just speed traps to cover other sorts of police activity that may cause closed roads and delay. Could archives of this data set up similar "bad area" avoidances?
Another stupid patent (Score:5, Informative)
Google maps already has a feature that allows you to avoid tolls or "by foot" versions.
Add info from stuff like this:
http://www.nwgangs.com/gang-territory-maps.html [nwgangs.com]
http://maps.google.com/maps/user?uid=200807321660978094818&hl=en&gl=us&ptab=2 [google.com]
And so where's the innovation?
I personally think patents are costing society more than the benefit they provide. Sure a few patents might be worthwhile, but when most of them are crap, what's the point? It's as stupid as throwing money at a game which provides worse odds than most casinos. A few wins don't make up for all the losses.
You want to reward and encourage _people_ for innovating? Award Prizes for Innovation instead. It's always easier to see if something was innovative and valid from hindsight than from an overworked patent examiner's POV. You could have different areas and different categories, some chosen by "randomly selected citizens", and some chosen by "experts in the field". A bit like the Hugo and Nebula awards. That way you get some balance.
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Oops the first link should be: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=109207396431294085739.00000112583e7047c0070 [google.com]
Copy and paste fail...
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Re:Another stupid patent (Score:4)
Developing routing algorithms to adjust based on public crime reports
If you understand routing algorithms you'd know that there's no big difference between avoiding X because it's blocked and avoiding Y because "it's in a bad neighbourhood" or "has a huge traffic jam" or "a crime just occurred" or whatever. Plenty of algorithms and even code written years ago.
So tell me again what innovation Microsoft came up with? Fooling patent examiners doesn't count.
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The "innovation" is applying it to public crime data, which functions quite a bit differently from traffic/construction avoidance which is much more discrete in nature.
So tell me how's it actually going to be different when it comes to the algorithm? Have you never heard of "weighting"? Have you never seen Google maps provide multiple alternative routes from A to B? Go think how they might do that.
Have you never seen stuff in games navigate across different types of terrain through different types of obstacles?
why has no device or online mapping tool provided the functionality?
1) The difficulty is getting real-time or timely enough crime statistics. If you don't have good crime statistics you might as well fall-back to the gang territory
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apply historical data of clustered activities rather than current data of discrete activities to impact that weighting?
And you call that innovation worthy of a government granted monopoly? Method of making a sandwich with aged cheese instead of sliced fresh tomato. So the next patent could be on a cheese and tomato sandwich (using both historical data AND current data)? Ridiculous.
Do you still not get it? "historical data of clustered activities" is the same thing as "obstacle"/"terrain" once you've collected that data. You add and weight the numbers up however you think fit, plonk the results on a map.
Any intelligent progr
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No it's not working. What I see is a system that rewards people/companies who patent obvious crap.
Jim gets a monopoly on cheese sandwiches, Jane gets a monopoly on tomato sandwiches, Joe licenses from both and gets a monopoly on cheese and tomato sandwiches. They cross license with each other, and nobody else gets to sell those sandwiches. For what benefit to society? All when any cook could come up with the idea and make any of those sandwiches if the situation ever demanded it.
Any intelligent programmer, with the idea, could probably do it pretty easily.
So which is it:
a) Patents dr
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Sure, but that's what prizes like the Nobel prize are for.
They don't do the same thing. Go ask Obama what Nobel prizes are for. He should know. He got one.
They've already innovated by the time they apply for a patent
In so many cases that's not true. Just go look at the Slashdot stories every now and then.
Patents drive innovation because, by encouraging disclosure, other innovators don't have to waste time re-inventing the same things over and over.
So which is it:
a) Patents drive innovation because, by encouraging disclosure, other innovators don't have to waste time re-inventing the same things over and over.
b) Patents stop the evil chinese and others from copying our stuff so _easily_.
Nowadays it seems for most patents, the actual technical cost (time+money) of rein
Exploitable (Score:5, Insightful)
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The problem is the "good" neighborhoods are good because of local environmental factors, more or less, not just random distribution of muggers.
My neighborhood superficially would appear to be a great empty hunting ground based on violent crime stats. However, its across the street from the local PD and is the closest subdivision thus many of my neighbors are off-duty cops. A mugger literally wouldn't live very long around here...
On the "food source" side, my city is big enough that people lock their doors
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But that's not what irrational humans really do. They go after people they know, in their own neighborhoods.
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A gang of 6 muggers walking through a neighborhood with million dollar houses is going to stick out like a sore thumb. A gang of 6 muggers walking through a neighborhood where everybody is dressed like them and sounds like them, they're fine. Fish in a school.
So how is that irrational?
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As a resident of a boring, low-crime suburb, I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty that none of the upper-middle-class, professional-job-working, 100-lbs-overweight people in this suburb have ever shot a gun.
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This patent can be extended. (Score:2)
Only As Good As The Data (Score:4, Informative)
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More than that, you don't have the granularity to make those sorts of decisions with any accuracy. Just because a neighborhood has a lot of crime doesn't mean that all points during the day and all parts of the neighborhood are equally likely to have violent crime. Around here the peak time in one of our bad neighborhoods is just after the bars close in the morning and the violence is mostly centered around the bars.
Likewise, lighting and landscaping or lack thereof make for places that are more easily used
Unintended effects? (Score:2)
If most travelers stop taking their trips through "bad neighborhoods"; e.g. almost everyone starts avoiding so called bad neighborhoods, even the criminals, it's possible this will create more traffic and therefore more crime for so called "good neighborhoods"
Which as a result, become "less good". Also, if the pedestrian travelers who need GPS to navigate the city are seen as the ideal target/mark (they don't know the lay of the land), then that means criminals have incentive to pick new stomping gro
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Crime rates in bad neighborhoods are based on the people there already, and what they're doing. Not the occasional traveler. This is why in turn deghettoification can happen too, when people buy up a whole pile of shitty places in an area and push those people out.
A few possible problems (Score:2)
I can see a few possible problems with this.
1) Lag/delay in statistics. If the feature is abused as described in some of the posts above, an area considered safe can be unsafe for a while before the statistics catches up with reality. The opposite is also true; an area that has been "cleaned up" may be considered unsafe for a while.
2) Different types of violent crime. Not all violent crimes occur in the streets; domnestic violence is (at least where I live) considered a violent crime, and it is also a lot m
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1) Lag/delay in statistics. If the feature is abused as described in some of the posts above, an area considered safe can be unsafe for a while before the statistics catches up with reality.
I don't think that will make a difference. The point of this is that you don't want to be routed through the bad section of town, which has been bad for 40 years and will be bad for another 40. All the local residents know it, but the guy visiting for a weekend and relying on his phone to route from A to B has no clue. The city governments don't put up warning signs or anything.
I still remember one year my family took a road trip and we passed through Detroit. I'm sure there are nice parts of Detroit. We ha
They amended the hell out of those claims (Score:2)
The original independent claims looked like this:
After prosecution, this is what they ended up with. Try rendering this mess legally obvious:
police-as-crooks hellholes (Score:2)
Damn (Score:2)
Re:Patents on Algorithms (Score:5, Informative)
Also, they're patenting the idea of the algorithm "that say don't go this way... etc." Not an actual algorithm. No methods were harmed during the making of this filing. I would call that worse. Here's the patent [uspto.gov] so you can wince for yourself.
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Re:Patents on Algorithms (Score:4, Informative)
It is, of course, not possible to describe every conceivable combination of components or methodologies for purposes of describing the subject specification, but one of ordinary skill in the art can recognize that many further combinations and permutations of the subject specification are possible. Accordingly, the subject specification is intended to embrace all such alterations, modifications and variations that fall within the spirit and scope of the appended claims.
That little section there takes the rest of the cake with them.
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The last time I spoke to an IP lawyer for my university's technology transfer office, he made the following point: when you patent someth
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... various broad based silly statements ... eg..
"7. Computer storage media having embodied thereon computer-useable instructions that, when executed, perform a method, the method comprising:
collecting a request from a pedestrian that a route includes a waypoint to a general location;" ...
Looks like an algorithm to me. Maybe not the most clever idea ever invented, but it . . . actually does something. I don't see how you could say they've patented the "idea of the algorithm" here.
Looks like pseudo-code.
I say we award them a pseudo patent.
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Which it will, assuming the minority neighborhood in question has a statistically higher crime rate. The pocket of Indian and Chinese professionals down the street from me are a "minority neighborhood." Crime rates there are not exceptionally high. Crime correlates with poverty, not flavor.
Re:Good idea, if it's never been done before. (Score:5, Interesting)
People have tried that for years with pizza delivery services. We had a large map on the wall, with several areas blocked off. If you live in that area..no pizza for you. The store simply says "We don't deliver to that neighborhood." Discrimination, racism, lawsuit ensues.
If you're aware of any lawsuits that have been successful, I'd like to hear about them.
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If pressed, we simply said "There is too much crime in that area. We've had too many robberies. Sorry." It wasn't a matter of distance, that was an area closer to the store than other places we delivered to. Simply too much risk of the driver getting robbed. Even a few specific addresses were blackballed. If I were the manager, it would be the same for an urban crackhouse, or a rural meth lab, if my guys were ge
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Hmm I'm thinking crime rate influencing real estate prices is not exactly new. If not, there's some great homes in Detroit I could buy for $1 and flip to you for $100K if you'd like.
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If TomTom or some other competing GPS device manufacturer wants to implement identical functionality without running afoul of the patent, they can simply use demographic data rather than crime data. Since blacks are at least seven times more likely to commit a violent crime and Hispanics three times more likely [colorofcrime.com], it would be just as good to use neighborhood demographic data as a basis for plotting a safer route.
Of course, it would not be as politically correct to admit that race and crime have such a strong correlation. Perhaps a Chinese GPS manufacturer could capitalize on this and sell into the Western market. The Chinese don't give a rat's ass about PC!
Why not suggest using income data instead. That way you don't come off as a racist scumbag. Just sayin'.
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Why not suggest using income data instead. That way you don't come off as a racist scumbag. Just sayin'.
That strategy does not work, you end up avoiding mostly harmless low income areas, like university student areas and old folks homes where the income level almost by definition is nothing but SS checks.
Also both race and income are kind of meaningless in the office park neighborhood where I work, but crime rates DO vary heavily based on location (probably because one border is on the bar scene, and the other border is basically completely uninhabited industrial buildings)
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I was mugged by an old person you insensitive clod.
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Against MS not people driving. It's one thing to observe that a neighborhood has a disproportionate number of muggings and individually opt not to go there and quite another to publish that without any of the statistics for the use of other people.
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Ummm....so you are advocating forcing White people to sell houses for less than they are worth? There are already laws prohibiting people selling homes based on race. So if a White neighborhood is "too white" for your tastes, then it's most like
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So, lets say I have my house on the market for 6 months, and in the time only 3 families come and offer the price I want. But they all happen to be White. Are you suggesting that I should be forced to keep my house on the market even longer until a family of a race that you approve of comes along?
"And BTW, did it occur to you that if black people can't afford your prices, there might be a reason for that?"
I don't see your point
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Eh they already do that in some places. I forget the term for it but when new developments are being planned there's a requirement for a certain percentage of units being "affordable", and in any urban environment in the US that's got a decent enough correlation with race that IS a quota.
It wouldn't be a big deal except that there's not enough police presence to patrol so many different neighborhoods. You really need constant vigilance and harsh consequences to keep a small section of bad houses from ruinin
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Careful. Under what you were proposing under previous posts, you'd end up with the whites resenting the blacks for forcing them to sell homes below what they are worth, or forcing them to not be able to sell their home until one of "them" came along. You're not going to end up with the civil society you are hoping for that way.
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Affirmative action is the opposite, it is based on the idea (flawed or not) that 1) groups should be treated the same, 2) the current situation is that they are not, and 3) the most effective way to move things toward equal treatment
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