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Rochester, NY uses ShotSpotter with a lot of success. It is really useful in downtown, heavily populated areas as the price per square milage of coverage makes it less attractive to implement in a sparsely populated area. But Rochester has the most crime of all the cities in NY (if it were the same size as NYC it would have almost twice as much crime.

I know that the 911 center here likes ShotSpotter. Once it has enough data collected from the sounds of crime and accidents (gun shots, car crashes, etc) it becomes very helpful. It doesn't help lower crime, but it helps in the responsiveness of law enforcement and emergency units, which ultimately saves lives. And I suppose the flashing blue lights that indicate a shotspotter camera/mic are a deterrent after having it around for so many years.

Mountain View is not that wet, getting on average around 15 inches of rain per year. While I can't find Mountain View, Sunnyvale isn't that far away.

Most of the weeds and grass grow during the winter and spring then the grass dries out and turns brown during the summer and fall, since it rarely rains between June and October.

They used to bring in goats from time to time to mow the grass in a park next to the last place I worked, which was fairly successful, especially since the goats could easily reach many places too small for the mower to get to or with a lot of rocks.

Learning to use the traditional remailer network takes some time and effort. And this time and effort pays off handsomely by providing the user with a highly secure method to communicate privately and anonymously. But many privacy-minded folks (and their ranks are increasing daily!) are looking for an easier and less time-intensive approach. Some are even willing to pay for it. To satisfy this niche there have arrived many new products and services that provide various combinations of anonymous email, newsgroup posting and Web-surfing with varying degrees of anonymity.

I have provided URLs for some of these services below. I have categorized them into two groups: free of charge and fee-based. Noteworthy amongst these is the fee-based Freedom Software by the Montreal-based Zero Knowledge Systems (ZKS). Launched in December 1999, Freedom is a 'privacy system' not unlike the traditional remailer network . It allows users to send email, post to newsgroups, chat and surf the Web in total privacy without having to trust third parties with their personal information. Freedom users create multiple digital identities - "nyms" - with which their online activities are associated. All data packets Freedom users send are encrypted and routed through a global privacy infrastructure called the Freedom Network, which is hosted by participating ISPs and other independent server operators. A 30-day free trial is available.

The package has been criticized <http://cryptome.org/zks-v-tcm.htm> for not being open-source. But that is changing. The source code of the kernel module of the Linux version of Freedom <http://opensource.zeroknowledge.com/> has been released; and the release of the Windows version source code is "coming soon."

Free of Charge
GILC Web-Based Remailer <http://www.gilc.org/speech/anonymous/remailer. html>
Hushmail <http://www.hushmail.com>
Safeweb <http://www.safeweb.com>
Zixmail <http://www.zixmail.com>
Anonymouse <http://anonymouse.is4u.de/>
COTSE <http://www.cotse.com/home.html>
Somebody.net <http://somebody.net/>
ANON.XG.NU's Web-Based Remailer <http://anon.xg.nu/remailer.html>
Chicago <http://xenophon.r0x.net/cgi-bin/mixnews-user.c gi>

Fee-Based
ZKS Freedom <http://www.freedom.net>
SkuzNET's The Internet Mail Network <http://www.theinternet.cc/ http://www.mailanon. com/>
IDcide <http://www.idcide.com>

The number of newly registered privacy-related trademarks and patents has risen dramatically in the past few years; they include everything from banking services and computer technologies to window treatments and even an independent software agent ("for protecting consumers' privacy") called Privacy Just Got Cool. Anonymous Web-browsing and e-mailing services are available from companies called Anonymizer, Hushmail, IDcide, PrivacyX, and ZipLip. An outfit called Disappearing has developed an e-mail system that allows users to send messages that permanently unwrite themselves after a previously specified amount of time. Sales of personal paper shredders are up. Personal bodyguards are increasingly in demand. American Express has just unveiled a system called Private Payments, which generates a random, unique card number for each online purchase. A California law firm now offers to prepare something it calls The Privacy Trust, which, it claims, "successfully conceals ownership of bank and brokerage accounts, the family home, rental properties, and interests in other entities." Money may soon begin to be "minted" solely in electronic form, creating "digital cash" that could make credit cards (and the data gathering they make possible) obsolete. There is serious talk of building privacy protection into the infrastructure of the Internet, and of using such protection, paradoxically, to make the flow of information freer than ever before.

And the snippet I gave above is only the smallest fraction of the content of the article. It isn't even a primary point. It is just a part of the introduction.

I'm going to have to bookmark this mag, just because it helps excercise my brain cell.

;-)

For Windows users, there is a program called Idcide that will block out 3rd party cookies from banner companies, such as the ones this article talks about.

You can find it at http://www.idcide.com.

There was an article about this program a few months ago on Slashdot. I've been using it for a few months now, and love it. The only drawbacks are that it's for Windows/Internet Explorer users only (the Netscape version is in beta testing now).

For Windows users, there is a program called Idcide that will block out 3rd party cookies from banner companies, such as the ones this article talks about.

You can find it at http://www.idcide.com.

There was an article about this program a few months ago on Slashdot. I've been using it for a few months now, and love it. The only drawbacks are that it's for Windows/Internet Explorer users only (the Netscape version is in beta testing now).

You mean you don't preview before you post?!

But beyond amusement, this wouldn't serve much purpose IF you could pull it off. On a large enough scale, it might amount to a form of protest, but why? Okay...Doubleclick has become the poster child of the profiling evil empire. And now Coremetrics has received the brunt of the privacy policy ignorance of its clients, putting the spotlight on third party data-mining. In either case, cookies represent an essential tool to get their jobs done. If you don't like it...your options are simple:

• Configure your browser.
• Use a local proxy or filter. Adsubtract is a good one. I like Proxomitron.
• Use a browser "companion". IDcide works well. It's free.
• Use a proxy service that manages cookies like Privada or Freedom (yep, sneaking my affiliate ID in that URL). Zapada is a clever Java applet approach to keeping Doubleclick et.al. out.
• Periodically clean out your cookie files, either manually or using any number of file tools like Webroot's WindowWasher.
• Just install Doubleclick's opt-out cookie. I've assembled the URLs in one convenient location at http://webveil.com/optout.html.
• Or physically edit your cookie file/directory to be read only...after installing the cookies you want in order to get personalized service...like here at Slashdot.

Other options:

1. Use another browser. I recommend Opera.
   
2. Install IDcide. Seems to work for me.
   
3. Use a "cookie managing" anonymizer like PrivadaProxy or Freedom. They aren't free...I prefer Freedom...and not just because the link includes my affiliate ID :-)
   
4. Use a "cookie managing" Web-based proxy. If you are going to surf promiscuously (whatever that means) where this exploit might rear its head, you can use The Cloak which is distinguished from Anonymizer et. al. in that it caches cookies remotely. Bandwidth limiting and you have to remember to use it, but it's free of charge.
   
5. Live with it until the fix is in.

   A proxy comparison chart
   

I noticed that when running IDcide w/ IE that the bug wouldn't work. I tested it on and off, and it seems to protect against the bug.

If you don't want to turn off javascript, try using IDcide. This is the sort of thing I think it was made for.

If you're using Win (and many of us have to on at least some of our machines), have a look at IDcide. It's in beta right now (I'm a tester) and only runs with IE right now, but has many possibilities. I'm hoping they'll go Open Source, but if not, I'm sure the functionality (and more) can be recreated.

woof.

Experience is what you've got when you didn't get what you wanted.