Virtual Shield will capture, monitor, and "fully index" video from the Windy City's surveillance cameras. The software used to run the system will be able to recognize specific license plates, vehicle descriptions, and even patterns of behavior. If someone drops a briefcase on the El platform and it stays unattended for more than a minute, the system could alert the OEMC, which could then dispatch police officers to the scene.
Though shopping with Amazon is like dancing with a hungry wolf, for now they may be one of the best places to get music content. Certainly if you had a choice between iTunes and Amazon for the same music, Amazon would be the better choice.
Vista has been a rough release for Windows. I would say that it's probably the first time since Windows 95 that a new system wasn't better than the previous (other than ME, but that didn't last long). Some people think Microsoft's mistakes with Vista are such that they should just abandon it and move on.
Much talk has been given to Service Pack 1 and how this update should address many of the issues users have with Vista, but I simply don't agree. Will SP1 eliminate the ridiculous Microsoft licensing schemes? Will SP1 drop the price on the higher-end versions? Will SP1 eliminate the need for users to buy a new computer just to use the faulty OS?
The credit and financial industries have aggressively lobbied against credit freeze laws, claiming they would reduce the availability of credit and discourage shoppers from making big-ticket purchases due to the time spent unlocking a credit account.
And that's bad how? If people have to spend $10 or so to unlock credit and have to spend more time to do it, maybe they won't be so quick to get into credit card debt. Anyway, with so many states having already passed freeze laws, I guess the credit reporting companies are trying to preempt the states that haven't by offering it first.
Either way, it's good news for everyone. Hopefully, the states will still pass regulation requiring fast and easy access to unlocking credit and a lower fee as well, but it's a dang good start. Now let's see if Experian follows the other two.
I was presented with an offer to have my charges dropped in exchange for signing a document which asked the following of me:
I would not file a Section 1983 civil suit against the Brooklyn police department for infringing on my civil rights.
I would not make any disparaging remarks about the police department, with financial repercussions for doing so.
I would not discuss the details of this agreement.
These conditions were completely unacceptable to me.
Unfortunately, Michael and his family could not afford the time, effort, and money involved with a legal battle with the state. He accepted a deal where he gave up his right to sue them in exchange for immediate dismissal of the charges.
Thankfully, he is not under a gag order and can tell us how this turned out, but it's a shame and a crime that the court system is such that only those with enough money get justice.
Speaking of, people have been complaining to Michael about asking for donations such that he's decided to give away all the money donated even though it's $2000 short of what he's paid in legal fees so far. He says he can afford up to $10,000 to protect his rights and wants to remove all doubts about his intentions.
Let me say it again: it's a shame and a crime that the court system is such that only those with enough money get justice
The saddest part of this story is that Harvard's bookstore is so desperate to prevent students from shopping online that they kicked out a student who was writing down the prices to compare them online later. They claimed that the pricing is copyrighted, which, of course, it's not.
Face it: if you charge more for a book in your store than I can get it online, there's a really good chance I'll get it there. If these stores are so desperate for the business, they should have a terminal in their store and referral programs set up with all the major online retailers. That's about the only way it would work for them.
TransUnion becomes the first credit reporting company committed to providing U.S. consumers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia with the ability to freeze their credit files, should they feel that step is warranted.
The pricing is as follows:
– Free to add, lift or remove for all ID theft victims
– $10 to add, lift or remove for non victims
That's a surprising move. With this, they've basically vonluntarily shot themselves in the foot as far as selling credit monitoring services.
This is probably some kind of public relations "first strike", but as long as there aren't any scary drawbacks or fine print (and it doesn't appear there are any so far), this is awesome. Let's hope the others follow suit.
In some slightly overblown reporting online, Microsoft has been caught downloading updates to its software without user knowledge or consent. In this case, they were just updating the Windows Updater, but the key complaint here is that the users didn't get to choose.
In the past many people delay updating (or avoid it altogether) because the updates can sometimes cause less security or add features that we don't want.
Google, trying to hold up their former image of being a rebel company who "doesn't do evil", has proposed a universal privacy standard that they say all companies should follow. The main idea is that there should be a minimum set of standards that everyone agrees to follow when dealing with private user data.
Rather than try to prevent people from copying or sharing music with drm, Microsoft has patented a watermarking procedure that will allow them to tag music with IDs that are very hard to remove.
First take: this is bad, bad news. While Ars Technica believes that this could help to get rid of the much hated DRM, I believe the replacement is far worse. Now instead of merely being annoying in preventing you from copying a CD, the RIAA will be able to track music by ID to see where (and who) it came from. If your son shares a song online that's from your CD collection, you will be much easier to find and prosecute.
How many years has it been since America's Funniest Home Videos came around? How many videos do you still see of some dad somewhere teaching his kid to swing a bat, but he stands behind him and gets nailed in the crotch? You think they'd learn.
Remember the article about the activation servers failing and disabling thousands of computers a week or two ago? Combine that with this new policy and things should get pretty interesting. Does it seem to anyone that Microsoft is starting to go a little crazy in the head? It's like a paranoid king who starts killing off the subjects thinking they're going to turn on him.
The scary thing (if I hadn't seen it coming) is that this "feature" was built in to Vista and just needed to be remotely activated by Microsoft. Right now it's an hour then a black screen, but I wonder how far it can go? 10 minutes then self destruction?
