New device for cars allow drivers to make the road their own, reports the Detroit News:
Tired of sitting at endless red lights? Frustrated by lights that turn from green to red too quickly, trapping you in traffic?
Now anyone can breeze through congested intersections just like the police, thanks to a $300 dashboard device that changes traffic lights from red to green, making nasty commutes a thing of the past and leaving other drivers open-mouthed at your ability to manipulate traffic.
But what if everyone had one?
Devices green, hacking, red, stoplights, traffic
Estimated to be an event of medium seriousness, strong solar flares are headed our way today. This story warns that cell phones, networks, and all forms of electromagnetics are likely to be affected.
Satellites are perhaps most affected by the solar activity.
‘Satellites live and breathe in space; they are very vulnerable to solar activity,’ said Larry Combs, NOAA space weather forecaster. ‘They affect our banking systems, our TVs and cell phones, all the luxuries of life.’
Devices, Network cell phones, electromagnetic, interference, SOHO Nets, solar
Celldar is the latest thing: can track moving vehicles in a way similar to radar–even if that vehicle doesn’t have a cell phone inside.
Yet some people are appalled that their cell phone will always give away where they are. That makes it possible to compile a ‘road map’ of a user’s movements. So imagine the outcry when privacy worriers learn that cell-phone systems can be used to locate and track a car, boat, or plane — even if no one inside is carrying a wireless phone. But outcry or not, the technology seems certain to be deployed, given its myriad civilian and military applications.
Network, Policy cell phone, GPS, location, movement, privacy, radar, tracking, wireless
Ah, unintended consequences. Just as the long arm of the law helped support prohibition some years ago, a new form of speakeasy is now cropping up to assist information and file sharers, who are widely seen as being under attack.
Internet file-sharers are operating much like any society that falls under attack. And the very technologies they are using as shields have long been employed by legitimate businesses to protect their data from prying eyes and hackers.
‘The software that users are moving toward, it has characteristics that businesses need — which is a high degree of privacy, a high degree of security and the ability to handle large files,’ said Clay Shirky, a professor of interactive telecommunications at New York University.
Three years after the Recording Industry Association of America’s lawyers succeeded in shutting down the Napster file-trading service, the music industry’s jihad against unauthorized digital music distribution is reaping an unintended consequence: better, easier-to-use software for exchanging data securely — and even anonymously — on the Internet.
‘Thanks to the RIAA, ease of use surrounding encryption technologies, which was never a big deal before, is a big deal now,’ Shirky said.
Content anonymous, encryption, file sharing, knowledge management, P2P, privacy, RIAA, security
IBM announces new safety measures for their laptops.
Big Blue is releasing the R50 and T41 models, both of which come with a new Active Protection System that is designed to better protect hard drives.
Comparing APS to automobile air bags, IBM officials explained that the system can detect sudden motion–such as the notebook being dropped or jerked because of a kicked power cord–and react by stabilizing the head of the hard drive.
Devices drop, hard drives, laptop, protection, safety, stablize
RFID chips now moving into libraries!
A civil liberties watchdog group is expressing concern over the San Francisco Public Library’s plans to track books by inserting computer chips into each tome.
They say the chips will be deactivated when they leave the library so as to prevent outside tracking, but EFF (the civil liberties group mentioned above) is concerned that reactivation will be the next social challenge. Then what happens?
Content, Devices, Policy , chip, EFF, library, RFID, SOHO nets, tracking