http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20090404142336477
Ca: ParkPlus may not be just irritating, it may also be violating privacy laws
Saturday, April 04 2009 @ 02:23 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews
... Now we hear ParkPlus, the city's spiffy and expensive pay-for-parking system, could face a legal challenge over whether it violates privacy laws.
You see, an undisclosed client recently hired Miller Thomson, a well-respected national law firm, expert in matters of business, to look over ParkPlus and its practice of snapping photos of all parked vehicles whether or not the owners have broken the law.
The legal opinion, obtained by the Sun, holds the Park Plus system is "not compliant with privacy legislation in Alberta."
Source - Calgary Sun hat-tip, Privacy Lives
[From the article:
For Miller Thomson, the law is clear and "there must be an existing fine or debt owed to the government of Alberta or a public body prior to the information being collected."
… As one lawyer put it, are everyone's fingerprints collected just in case you break the law?
Even with speed-on-green or photo radar, the cameras only click when you've done wrong.
… Yes, some folks just don't like the idea of the parking authority having a record of where people have and have not been, however temporary.
“Defiance-R-Us” At some point, they will reach the tipping point and even their most tolerant neighbors will stomp on them. An interesting test for Obama.
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/05/0412228&from=rss
North Korea Launches "Communication Satellite" Rocket
Posted by timothy on Sunday April 05, @01:33AM from the transmitting-a-message-of-sorts dept. Space The Military Politics
Mad Ivan writes
"The BBC has just reported that North Korea has launched a long-range rocket, which they say is a communications satellite, but that the US and Japan fear may actually be a ballistic missile. Details are still arriving; the rocket passed over northern Japan on its way up." [Apparently, it never made orbit. Bob]
This is getting lots of play on the Blogs. Perhaps not the best possible strategy?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/04/1515239&from=rss
Phoenix Police Seize PCs of a Blogger Critical of the Department
Posted by Soulskill on Saturday April 04, @12:03PM from the check-and-mate dept.
logicassasin sends in a story about a blogger in Phoenix, AZ, who runs a site that is critical of the local police department. The police recently raided his home and seized his computer hardware. "Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging. The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment — which he says makes it obvious the raid was an act of retaliation." A local publication quotes Pataky saying, "We have heard internally from our police sources that they purposefully did this to stop me... They took my cable modem and wireless router. Anyone worth their salt knows nothing is stored in the cable modem."
[From the article:
The search warrant lists “petty theft” and “computer tampering with the intent to harass” as probable causes. He has yet to see an actual affidavit that lists in detail the probable cause and is skeptical that one even exists.
“They say everything has been sealed,” he said.
Dealing with the Change-Phobic. (Because change isn't in their job description.)
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/021021.html
April 04, 2009
Challenges of Bringing Web 2.0 to Washington Government Are Considerable
The Register: "My story is the story of a [San Francisco] Bay Area nerd who goes to Washington and encounters some rather surprising obstacles - surprising in the sense that they are more tenacious and more obscure than you might think," Google's director of global public policy [Andrew McLaughlin] told Tim Reilly's Web 2.0 Expo [April 3, 2009]. The kind of things that we were trying to do would be regarded as kindergarten-level, rudimentary technology implementations in the Silicon Valley, private-sector, tech-startup kind of world. But in government, they're viewed as a massive revolution in both form and approach."
[From the article:
In theory, the so-called Web 2.0 puts technological power in the hands of world+dog. It takes traditionally complicated and expensive tasks - broadcasting video, for instance - and simplifies them so that anyone can instantly partake. But that doesn't include the federal government, which has extreme problems dealing with simplicity.
The first thing McLaughlin ran into was the government's acquisition and procurement rules, which apply to almost anything the government might purchase or make use of. The rules require competitive bidding. "It raises the question: 'If the government wants to use a free online service like Flicker or Facebook or YouTube, does it have to go through a competitive bidding process?'" McLaughlin says.
… The Presidential Records Act requires that all documentary materials related to the presidential office must be saved for posterity.
"The problem is that everything must be kept on paper," [Upgraded from papyrus only a few years ago. Bob] McLaughlin says. "So, government web masters have to sit and print snapshots of their websites on paper. If you do a blog post, you have to print it. This is a real pain, particularly if the site does comments. You have to print out all the comments too."
Does this provide a faster way to alert your Security Manager?
Twitter for Security: Vendors Tweet their Updates
Bob Brown, Network World Apr 4, 2009 11:15 am
Probably no need to dump the stock, but this has to hurt.
Second Circuit Expands Trademark Rights, Restricts Consumer Search Options
Legal Analysis by Corynne McSherry April 3rd, 2009
In a what could be a potentially serious blow to Google's AdWords business, and to consumers’ ability to find information about competing offerings on the Internet, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that a trademark owner can sue Google for trademark infringement for selling its mark as a keyword as part of the AdWords program. This is likely to have a chilling effect on Internet intermediaries generally, as they will likely fear the costs of trademark litigation if they use marks to help speakers find their audiences.
An excuse for wearing your ear-phones in class? I don't think so... You could use it as a Forrest Gump-like voice over.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/021020.html
April 04, 2009
Complete Nixon Cabinet Room Tapes Can Be Heard Online For The First Time
nixontapes.org: "For the first time, the recordings from the Nixon White House Cabinet Room are made available to the public in an accessible format. These recordings include every meeting, tour group, briefing, and private conversation that occurred in the Cabinet Room, as captured on the Nixon recording system between February 16, 1971, and July 11, 1973. Remarkably, these audio files were originally released by the National Archives and Records Administration's (NARA) Archives II at College Park, Maryland, in 2002, but were made available to onsite researchers only, and only in analog cassette format. With the assistance of the National Security Archive, these files are now available here, on nixontapes.org, and at the time of the creation of this page, these tapes, in whole or in part, are not available anywhere else outside of the reading room at NARA's Archives II."
The computing world is changing and a down economy can only increase the number of companies who look at free software.
Forrester Surveyed Lots of Room for Open-Source Growth
4 April 2009
Technology.am (Apr. 4, 2009) — Forrester Research suggests that we’re at the front end of a long cycle of open-source infrastructure and application adoption.
Related The only constant is change. You knew this, right? Probably 90% of users don't need any more computing power, and the remaining 10% don't need it half the time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/technology/02netbooks.html
Light and Cheap, Netbooks Are Poised to Reshape PC Industry
By ASHLEE VANCE and MATT RICHTEL Published: April 1, 2009
… Personal computers — and the companies that make their crucial components — are about to go through their biggest upheaval since the rise of the laptop. By the end of the year, consumers are likely to see laptops the size of thin paperback books that can run all day on a single charge and are equipped with touch screens or slide-out keyboards.
… Microsoft is particularly vulnerable, since many of the new netbooks use Linux software instead of Windows.
… Netbooks have trouble running demanding software like games and photo-editing programs. They cater instead to people who spend most of their time dealing with online services and want a cheap, light device they can use on the go
Related A change we'd like to see.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/the-cost-to-offer-the-worlds-fastest-broadband-20-per-home/
World’s Fastest Broadband at $20 Per Home
By Saul Hansell April 3, 2009, 5:01 pm
If you get excited about the prospect of really, really fast broadband Internet service, here’s a statistic that will make heart race. Or your blood boil. Or both.
Pretty much the fastest consumer broadband in the world is the 160-megabit-per-second service offered by J:Com, the largest cable company in Japan. Here’s how much the company had to invest to upgrade its network to provide that speed: $20 per home passed.
… By contrast, Verizon is spending an average of $817 per home passed to wire neighborhoods for its FiOS fiber optic network and another $716 for equipment and labor in each home that subscribes, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. [Bribes are expensive! Bob]
… The experience in Japan suggests that the major cable systems in the United States might be able to increase the speed of their broadband service by five to 10 times right away. They might not need to charge much more for it than they do now and they’d still make as much money.
The cable industry here uses the same technology as J:Com.
Geek Alert! Now they make it simple. Think of this as an emergency backup if when Windows crashes...
Portable Ubuntu Runs Ubuntu Inside Windows
By Kevin Purdy, 3:00 PM on Fri Apr 3 2009
… Built from the same guts as the andLinux system that lets you seamlessly run Linux apps on your Windows desktop, Portable Ubuntu is a stand-alone package that runs a fairly standard (i.e. orange-colored, GNOME-based) version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. It just doesn't bother creating its own desktop, and puts all its windows inside your Windows, er, windows.
It can work on, and save to, your Windows folders and files.
It's persistent, so changes you make and apps you install are carried around with you.
It's easily manageable from Windows, and works great on dual monitors.
If I was inclined to evil, I might offer to test your Credit Card Security for a nominal fee (say $19.95) then program my iPhone to read your RFID enabled card as you walked by... I won't even need to email you the results since my terms of service (clearly printed on my T-shirt) will state that the charge itself is proof of my successful penetration of your security. (If we fail, it's free!) I wager this will be interesting to my Hacking students – or Assistant Security Testers as they will henceforth be known.
http://www.killerstartups.com/Mobile/transactionsapp-com-turn-your-iphone-into-a-register
TransactionsApp.com - Turn Your iPhone Into a Register
http://www.transactionsapp.com/
Ever since the first mobile phone, people have been dreaming of using them for transactions. Wouldn’t it be cool to pay everything with your phone? The dream of the digital wallet comes one step closer in the form of Transactionsapp.com.
With it, you’ll be able to turn your iPhone into a cash register, allowing you to charge people for purchases using your iPhone. For example, if you have a pizza delivery service, you’ll be able to charge your costumers using your iPhone
… The app is useful for anyone that’s trying to set up their own business, but isn’t able to set up a fixed location in which to charge people.
I'm teaching Advanced Website this quarter, so articles like this are like chum to my student sharks...
40 Excellent Free WordPress Themes
April 4th, 2009 by Mirko Humbert
Do NOT tell my math students about this!
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10212170-71.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
To get better at math, gorge on chocolate
by Chris Matyszczyk April 3, 2009 4:40 PM PDT
I'll need a bigger monitor (or the poster sized printer at school)
http://digg.com/tech_news/Ultimate_Web_Trend_Map_4
Ultimate Web Trend Map 4
flickr.com — The web trend map is a yearly publication by iA inc. It maps the 333 most influential web domains...
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