This is something from Slashdot but it’s an important issue for me so I’m posting it:

But an analysis of the publicly funded spy network, which is owned and controlled by local authorities and Transport for London, has cast doubt on its ability to help solve crime.

A comparison of the number of cameras in each London borough with the proportion of crimes solved there found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any.

Even though these are the type of results I want I still have to point out that I have some serious issues with the study itself:

• They are using the absolute number of cameras in a region rather than some more objective measure that accounts for the size of the region like cameras/sq-ft.
• They are using the ratio of crimes stopped but we shouldn’t be as interested in that number (in isolation) if we’re trying to see the effectiveness of the cameras. We have to compare the ratio of crimes stopped before versus the ratio of crimes stopped after the cameras were installed while controlling for things like police force size, population in the region, etc.

Anyways… I like the conclusions of the study but I don’t like the study itself.

Many of you know that my favorite commercial is the “BFF Jill” commercial as shown below:

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Well, AT&T released a new updated one that sucks:

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