http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/ Engadget Comments for Real-life Minority Report: software for predicting murderers http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/Dec 4th 2006 8:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/Dec 4th 2006 8:48PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/Dec 4th 2006 9:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/Have you been thinking of murder?
a) yes
b) no
c) you'll never catch me coppers!]]>Dec 4th 2006 9:38PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/Dec 4th 2006 9:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/Dec 4th 2006 9:09PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/Dec 5th 2006 2:04AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/Dec 4th 2006 9:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/1) Do you read engadget?
2) Regularly?
3) Did you really think we wouldn't know..?]]>Dec 4th 2006 10:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/ Well, don't criminal profilers already try to predict future crimes, as a way of preventing them, based on past activities and psychological information ? I suppose it's not so far fetched to have a machine do it.

But yeah, I think it's best used as a guide not a rule so to speak. I'd hate to go to prison just because I happen to have watched 'A Clockwork Orange' 327 times between the ages of 13 and 18 and that sent up a flag on some gizmo...

For example I mean...]]>Dec 4th 2006 10:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/Dec 4th 2006 11:40PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/
Here all this time I thought that the least punishment for taking away someone else's life is to take away the perpetrator's freedom forever. You can rest assured that the victim has FAR less even than that, but I bet you don't think about THAT a lot, do you? Does anyone believe that, if there were a better way of determining someone's guilt with much greater certainty, that we wouldn't be putting A LOT more people to death for murder?

Until we can resequence the DNA of of murderers, we owe it to the victims and society at large to put them away FOREVER.]]>Dec 5th 2006 12:25AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/
i absolutely agree. but you're presupposing that we know who the guilty people are. think of all the innocent black people that got jailed during the civil rights movement in the 60s.

but that's the past you say...
that shit is still going on. the legal system we have is imperfect. we catch some bad guys, but mistakenly jail good guys too. and in some circumstances, we sentence good guys to death. for that reason alone, there shouldn't be a death penalty. yeah the bad guys might deserve death, but the good guys don't. and since we have to assume that our system is imperfect, the death penalty is a just a vehicle for killing innocent lives.]]>Dec 5th 2006 1:24AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/
One was this software that you would plug all of these random variables into such as whether a knife, gun, poison, etc was used, whether the body was moved after the crime, whether the weapon was brought to the scene etc. It was a list of around 30 different variables that detectives could easily determine.

Anyways, they ended up determining what these variables were for a bunch of actual murder cases in the past and put them into a matrix. From this they found certain patterns.

Then they put the system up to the test. They would give it murder cases that were already solved (such that they knew who the killer was and all of his characteristics) and would put all of the background variables of the murder into the system. It would then spit out stuff like male, age 27-30, married, tall, white, etc...For all of the cases that were thrown at it, the algorithms had high success rates with good confidence intervals. I thought it was impressive at least.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/10559/33412/01582571.pdf?arnumber=1582571

There is a link to one of the papers that she published.

apc

]]>Dec 5th 2006 1:22AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/
The point, as you've said, is that people that are truly guilty of murder should forfeit their lives. Instead, we have Engadget saying that imprisoning murders for the rest of their natural lives in cruel and unusual. So why aren't you decrying Evan and Engadget for being soft or murder?

They didn't say that because we sometimes convict innocent people (something I agree is wrong and never said otherwise) that it's cruel and unusual to put them in jail for the rest of their lives. No, Engadget said it's cruel and unusual to to put MURDERERS in jail for live. Not the wrongly accused, but those that are actually guilty of killing someone.

The fact that such a statement doesn't cause visceral revulsion in people speaks to the sickness of our society in my opinion. "Hey, they snuffed-out someone's life, that person is gone forever but, hey, to remove them forever from the population, as punishment and for everyone else's protection, is cruel and unusual. The victim probably had it coming anyway, right? I mean, if somebody's willing to commit the ultimate transgression they must have had a good reason. Right?"]]>Dec 5th 2006 2:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/
That's right. THey compiled stats from a specific area, and were literally able to predict WHEN and WHERE the next crime would happen, and WELL in advance. This isn't bullshit. If anyone seriously thinks I'm making this up I suppose I could be compelled to Google it but, regardless, nothing about how I described their system is hyperbole.

I hate to tell you, but people aren't special. They are profileable and predictable.]]>Dec 5th 2006 2:24AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/
The world is changing quickly and ever quicklier pal, my grandma still has trouble understanding homossexuals aren't crazy. People start supporting some dumb scholar like Mr. Berk there, and rehabilitation will be stricken right off the dictionary.]]>Dec 5th 2006 7:28AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/Dec 5th 2006 8:22AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/04/real-life-minority-report-software-for-predicting-murderers/Dec 5th 2006 8:54AM