Perhaps you should have
someone from Security in those planning meetings? (Or take a :How to
think like a thief” class)
Department-store chain
JC Penney, already hurting financially from a misguided plan to end
price promotions, was so plagued by shoplifters in the third quarter
of this year that it lost a full percentage point of
profit margin to theft, says the Wall Street Journal. When thieves
learned that Penney had removed sensor security tags as part of the
transition to a new type of inventory tracking, they targeted the
company’s stores. At the same time, Penney stopped requiring
customers to provide receipts with returned merchandise, so shoppers
grabbed merchandise and “returned” it at cash registers without
leaving the stores, the Journal says.
SOURCE: Jump
in Shoplifting Hurt Penney
Not only the next
thing, but a whole Internet of Things (IoT). Pick a small area, like
household things and try not to be overwhelmed.
Richard Santalesa
writes:
The
Federal Trade Commission’s long awaited “Internet
of Things” public workshop was held Nov. 19, 2013, and webcast
live (with presentations, transcripts and videos to be archived
for ready access at http://www.ftc.gov/video)
to explore a wide range of potential privacy and security issues
associated with Internet-connected devices everywhere – at home,
work and in the car.
Read more on
InformationLawGroup.
(Related) I think this
is partly enabled by the IoT. It could confirm that each panel
exists and even report the energy generated.
Wall
Street's New Cash Cow: Your Roof
SolarCity raised $54.4
million this week. It didn't do it, though, by selling a lot of
solar panels or stock. Instead, the Silicon Valley company bundled up
a bunch of residential leases for the photovoltaic arrays it
installed on suburban rooftops—and then sold them to pension funds,
hedge funds, and other high-rolling investors.
By extension, anything
written, spoken or done within range of a camera is also public,
unless it is encrypted – in which case it is probable cause for a
warrant.
Nick Divito reports:
Since
Americans expect their phone companies to keep records of their
calls, they have no basis to challenge the National Security Agency’s
mass collection of that data, a lawyer for the government argued
Friday.
Americans
have “no reasonable expectation” to privacy when it comes to the
telephone calls they make, Assistant Attorney General Stuart Delery
said at a packed hearing in federal court.
“People
assume that phone companies are recording phone numbers and how long
the call lasted,” he said. “We know that because all of us get
the bills with those details.”
U.S.
District Judge William Pauley III is presiding over the trial
stemming from the revelation of a then-classified court order that
compelled Verizon to turn over domestic phone records for millions of
Americans.
Read more on Courthouse
News.
An example of home
grown drones. NOTE: 4 cm resolution should be enough to allow you to
identify individuals. (...and target them?)
Drone
Imagery for OpenStreetMap
Last weekend we
captured 100 acres of aerial imagery at 4cm resolution. It took less
than an hour to fly, and it was easy to publish the imagery on the
web using TileMill
and then trace in OpenStreetMap.
Autonomous flying platforms like Sensefly's
eBee paired up with a nimble software stack are changing aerial
mapping. Drones like the eBee can cheaply and accurately photograph
medium-sized areas, and then the imagery can be made immediately
available to everyone.
Interesting resource.
Hundreds of “privacy debates” for example.
Canadian
Parliament’s Historical Debates are now available online
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on November 22, 2013
“The
Library of Parliament, in collaboration with Canadiana.org,
is launching its Historical
Debates of the Parliament of Canada
digital portal. The
portal provides free public access to digital versions of the
historical debates of the Parliament of Canada in both official
languages. It includes all published debates of both the Senate and
the House of Commons from Parliament 1, Session 1* until coverage on
parl.gc.ca
begins. This
initiative significantly increases access to Parliament’s
documentary history and heritage. The portal can be browsed by
Chamber, Parliament, Session, and volume, and is full-text searchable
with a number of search filters available. The digital page images
were produced by Library and Archives Canada, and the portal
developed in collaboration with Canadiana.org, a membership alliance
dedicated to building Canada’s digital preservation infrastructure
and providing wide-ranging access to Canadian documentary heritage.
Questions, comments and feedback can be directed to: Sonia
Bebbington, Director Knowledge Management and Preservation,
Information and Document Resource Service, Library of Parliament.
sonia.bebbington@parl.gc.ca“
[via Martha Foote]
Convergence and tools
for teachers. (does not work on PCs without Bluetooth)
Office
Remote Helps You Control Microsoft Office Docs On Your PC with A
Windows Phone
… The Office
Remote has been spawned from the minds of the Microsoft Research
team and the Microsoft Office engineering team. Bert Van Hoof, an
Office group program manager elaborated on its utility.
“With
Office Remote, you can start your PowerPoint presentation, advance
the slides, see your speaker notes, and control an on-screen laser
pointer with a touch of your finger—all from your phone. You can
also navigate between Excel worksheets and graphs, and control data
slicers from the palm of your hand. And you can scroll through a
Word document or quickly jump to specific sections or comments.”
Assumes you are not
wandering aimlessly?
– is an automated and
curated record of the best content you experience on your web
browser. It replaces your history and bookmarks while maintaining a
stunning summary of your insights and influences. Navigate as
usual and it takes care of organizing your favorite content
seamlessly. Its algorithms create collections of interesting
articles, videos, images and maps based on how deeply you investigate
a particular subject.
Sometimes I just amuse
myself...
… According
to a survey undertaken by the University
of Pennsylvania of
students enrolled in its Coursera
classes, 80% of respondents already had a 4-year degree.
44% had some graduate education. You can read the full study here.
… The
Texas State Board of
Education gave
preliminary approval this week to dropping Algebra
II as a requirement
for high school students in the state to graduate. [How
does this improve education? Bob]
… Manitoba
Government’s Early Learning and Child Care fined
mother Kristen Bartkiw $10 because she neglected to include a grain
in her child’s lunch. She packed roast beef, potatoes, carrots,
and orange and some milk. To make up for the deficiency, the
school served the kid Ritz crackers.
So important it
deserves a whole new word? I'm hoping it will ensmarten some of my
students! They already love WolframAlpha.com, and I'm hoping a few
of them will learn this new language.
Stephen
Wolfram ensmartens all the things
“It's hard to foresee
the ultimate consequences of what we're doing. But the beginning is
to provide a way to inject sophisticated computation and knowledge
into everything — and to make it universally accessible to humans,
programs and machines, in a way that lets all of them interact at a
vastly richer and higher level than ever before."
It's a
grandiose-sounding mission statement, that, like so many others that
flood from the startup-scene hype factories — though with far fewer
buzzwords — and therefore easy to ignore. Except for one little
thing.
It was written by
Stephen
Wolfram.
Wolfram is the chief
designer of Mathematica,
a comprehensive computation platform for science, engineering,
advanced mathematics and other grunty stuff, and of Wolfram
Alpha, the computational knowledge engine that
helps power Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Bing, amongst others.
He's also the author of
A
New Kind of Science, a book which some — me
included — think has the potential to revolutionise scientific
thinking as much as Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ
Naturalis Principia Mathematica of 1687 did.
And just like Newton's book, it'll take a century for the
implications to be understood.
… Which brings me
to Wolfram's recent announcements.
That grand mission
statement is from Wolfram's blog
post of last week announcing the Wolfram
Language, which he describes as a general-purpose knowledge-based
language that covers all forms of computing in a new way.
… But wait, there's
more.
On Thursday Wolfram
announced
that Wolfram Language and Mathematica would be bundled free with
every Raspberry Pi. It's an unfinished technology preview right now,
but the implications are breathtaking.
[Read
the book online:
http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/toc.html
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