http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=12856
It’s not just the police: Auto finance companies probe state restrictions on GPS tracking
August 14, 2010 by Dissent
Mal Leary reports from Maine:
Those handy GPS devices that help you find a restaurant while driving around on vacation can also be used to track your car wherever it goes. Who has access to that tracking ability is of growing concern to state officials in the wake of a query by a finance company to put GPS devices in vehicles it finances.
The State Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection confirmed that it recently received a query from an out of state finance company about placing GPS devices in financed vehicles.
“We were asked by an out of state lawyer representing an auto finance company whether we would object to installation of GPS units on cars that serve as collateral,” bureau of consumer credit protection superintendent Will Lund said last week. He said the purpose cited by the lawyer was for the secondary finance market for car loans to help determine whether a loan contract was a good credit risk for the finance company. [Isn't that electronic “Red Lining?” Bob]
Read more in the Bangor Daily News to find out what Maine officials think of the legality and privacy implications of this type of practice.
It's not just your personal information, it's also your ancestors. Churchill's father had syphilis and it didn't seem to reduce his effectiveness...
http://www.phiprivacy.net/?p=3344
Your Great Granddaddy Had Syphilis And Now Everyone Knows It
By Dissent, August 14, 2010
Harley Geiger writes about an issue I’ve discussed on this blog in the past: the privacy of the deceased’s medical records:
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) wants to remove health information privacy protections from people who have been dead for 50 years. [Should we protect health records as long as we protect the Mickey Mouse Copyright? Bob] HHS issued a proposed rule to update health privacy regulations, and most of their modifications were quite positive from a privacy perspective. However, this idea is as weird and terrible as the logo for the scrapped Total Information Awareness Office.
Currently, the law requires that the health information of the dead be protected in the same manner as that of the living. Generally speaking, health care organizations can use patient data for treatment, payment and operations purposes without the consent of the patient, but must get the consent of the patient for most other purposes, like marketing or research. When the patient is deceased, health care companies must seek consent from the dead person’s personal representative, like the executor of the estate.
In the proposed rule, HHS states that the plan stems from the difficulty of locating personal representatives to obtain authorizations to use the health data of the deceased. Specifically, HHS refers to the frustrations of historians, biographers and archivists. (At last, the true might of the archivists’ lobby is revealed to us all.) HHS reasons that waiting until 50 years after death would protect the privacy of the deceased and their relatives.
CDT disagrees. We believe this proposed modification would be significantly more detrimental to patient privacy than it may seem. There are just too many unknowns to make this modification for the sake of posterity.
Read more on CDT.
While I have always appreciated the interest of historians and biographers, and would be fascinated to see the medical records of Edgar Allan Poe’s last hospitalization, I am more concerned about the impact of disclosure on descendants who may find that their forefathers had genetically linked mental health disorders. Could we argue that they are better off knowing than not knowing? Sure, but that would be presumptuous on our part. If new regulations can make it acceptable for records to be released with a personal representative’s approval after 50 years, what about after 10 years? 5? 2? If we can trace someone’s genes back thousands of years to a particular tribe in Israel, is 50 years really long enough to protect those alive today from potentially embarrassing or upsetting revelations? I don’t think so. So as sad as I would be to lose interesting historical data and insights, I think we need to preserve the status quo of requiring the consent of a personal representative to release medical records of the deceased.
What is “exclusive” worth? (and what does it cost?) Apple must be seeing not just those abandoning ship, but those using other carriers who will report themselves likely to buy an iPhone.
http://www.intomobile.com/2010/08/13/1-out-of-3-att-iphone-customers-will-switch-to-verizon/
1 out of 3 AT&T iPhone customers will switch to Verizon
… According to the study from research firm Morpace, something like 1 out of every 3 AT&T iPhone customers are waiting for the handset launch on another carrier
… Among T-Mobile customers, 20% are “Somewhat” or “Very Likely” to go to Verizon for an Apple smartphone. Sprint and AT&T have 22% and 23%, respectively, of their current subscriber base thinking the same thing. And, the icing on this cake is the 51% of current Verizon customers that have their sights set on a handset powered by iOS. Can you say, “high demand”?
Amen!
http://chronicle.com/article/Reaching-the-Last-Technology/123659/
Reaching the Last Technology Holdouts at the Front of the Classroom
Every semester a lot of professors' lectures are essentially reruns because many instructors are too busy to upgrade their classroom methods.
That frustrates Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at Harvard University, who argues that clinging to outdated teaching practices amounts to educational malpractice.
"If you were going to see a doctor and the doctor said, 'I've been really busy since I got out of medical school, and so I'm going to treat you with the techniques I learned back then,' you'd be rightly incensed," he told me recently. "Yet there are a lot of faculty who say with a straight face, 'I don't need to change my teaching,' as if nothing has been learned about teaching since they had been prepared to do it—if they've ever been prepared to."
I like to add cross-cultural influences to my class.
A Chinese Red Army tribute to Michael Jackson
I had to burn an ISO image yesterday and found this tool. It is dirt simple. After installing the software, run Windows Explorer, right-click on the ISO file, and then click “Copy image to CD” That's it!
http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm
ISO Recorder
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