Slashdot Mirror

And no government official would every request a kill switch option.

Coming to a cell phone near you next year and in your car just a few years from now. lol

According to this, it is already a "feature" of OnStar, just like the LEO ability to SILENTLY turn on the cabin microphone, which was (supposedly) outlawed by a Court decision, NOT because of privacy concerns, of course, (afterall, why should there be an "expectation of privacy" when having a conversation in your car with the windows up and the doors locked?), but because the designers of OnStar were so stupid they couldn't make the system do a manual override by the occupants in an emergency...

Don't forget Magic Jack. I hear that is untraceable.

I find it highly suspect that the most damage being done to Assanges reputation is by his erstwhile friends and colleges.

"Wikileaks.org uses trust as a center of gravity by assuring insiders, leakers, and whistleblowers who pass information to Wikileaks.org personnel or who post information to the Web site that they will remain anonymous. The identification, exposure, or termination of employment of or legal actions against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others from using Wikileaks.org to make such information public." ref

"Some enemies of WikiLeaks are not afraid to play dirty. Pro-WikiLeaks hackers (but not the organization itself) gained access to internal e-mails from HBGary Federal, a California-based security company that was allegedly offering to help companies like Bank of America (the rumored target of the next WikiLeaks dump) discredit the organization through falsified documents .. The e-mails also suggested that the company could pressure some of WikiLeaks' more public and vocal supporters (primarily journalists) by threatening to sabotage their careers." ref

One thing you have to remember is people are STUPID.

Looks like since 2009, so three years.

It does not matter if the bomb or missile is fired from a drone or a human piloted aircraft - the pilot has a bad direct view of the target and relies upon indirect views - GPS information, video from a camera mounted on the bottom of the aircraft, or ground guidance. Bombs and missiles are inherently imprecise -- we brag about being able to hit targets like "a window" or "a car" -- sounds precise right -- except that a car is about 6 x 15' - so the "target" is about 90 square feet of space. Your "high valued target" is in that space, but if the munition is even a foot off he's alive unless it explodes. So bombs and missiles are designed to explode. In particular they are designed to explode in a messy way that sprays lots of shrapnel around - because it is the shrapnel that kills, not the heat and blast force of the bomb. Now -- that bomb is made to kill the target if it lands "close" to him or her, as in - within a 15-30 foot radius. And we're dropping these into towns and cities.

So, yes, bombs and missiles are messy. They kill lots of people, do lots of damage to the surrounding area, rip up the roads, knock down buildings. It's not the use of /drones/ that leads to high civilian casualties, its the use of drones dropping bombs and missiles. If we switched to drones that fired large caliber bullets precisely enough to hit a target, that problem would be lessened. Hey, guess what: we want to be able to do that.

So, yeah, there's nothing wrong with using drones instead of risking American lives to accomplish the same bad results. Maybe my fellow gamers thought about all this, maybe they thought about how useful (read broken) it is to have the use of an unmanned aircraft in the few games that allow them - in order to sight enemy troops and avoid risking your "life," or maybe they just though "WOOH! Gaming with real blood." I don't know -- but the underlying conceit of this post is that these gamers are morally wrong somehow for choosing to support drone strikes because drone strikes are inherently bad. It's BS.

You sure are snarky for someone who is seemingly incapable of using a search engine.

Google: "site:techdirt.com apple arbitrary" They've done a fairly thorough job of documenting Apple's arbitrary policies. Of course, Apple is free to be as arbitrary as they wish, as are the fanboys free to defend them blindly (thanks for your shining example!). And the rest of us are free to criticize their silly approach and enjoy a superior product.

For the lazy ones:
http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2009/04/24/crudebox-becomes-prudebox-to-make-it-into-the-app-store/
http://almerica.blogspot.ca/2008/09/podcaster-rejeceted-because-it.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10042127-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?59,651569
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/91508-Apple-Blocks-Obscene-Newsreader-App
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/may/21/apple-iphone
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/09/apple-imposes-n/
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/36946/Interview_Molleindustria_On_Phone_Storys_Objectionable_Message.php

I await your apology with bated breath.

If consumers REALLY cared about targeted ads, they wouldn't happily post every details of their lives on facebook.

Most people have no idea about what Facebook is collecting about that, which is part of the problem. Even highly educated people are shocked to learn about this:

http://www.switched.com/2009/09/21/gaydar-experiment-uses-facebook-to-find-your-sexual-orientatio/

It is the responsibility of browser makers to provide for user security. We cannot stop people from giving their information away voluntarily; we can include ABP or similar software in all browsers, and thus remove the incentive to create invasive advertising.

WTF are you talking about? The "star" you're talking about does not pop up a bookmarks menu, it pops up the ability to add the URL to your bookmarks. This is effectively what you get as of Google Chrome 20.0.1132.47m:

http://www.technipages.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Chrome-save-new-bookmark.png

While this is what I was referring to, re: how to access your bookmarks menu, and how the --bookmarks-menu flag was removed:

http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/07/02/google-chrome-bookmark-menu-drop-down/
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/chromium-discuss/d2FEBGdVKv0

Presently in Chrome, the menu I'm referring to requires you to:

1. Click on the wrench icon
2. Scroll down to Bookmarks
3. Click on the Bookmarks menu entry (or wait for it to expand)
4. There's all your bookmarks; pick one.

So that's 3 clicks, or 2 if you choose wait-to-expand.

Don't mention the "Bookmarks Bar" because that DOES NOT provide a menu interface of all your bookmarks. People in the aforementioned threads also complained about this. There are "hacks" you can do to add a bookmark to your bookmark bar that results in a bookmark menu (recursive anyone?), but as I said that's a horrible hack for something that used to Just Work(tm) until it was removed.

After the removal of --bookmarks-menu, there was an extension called "Neat Bookmarks" which did what people wanted. However, it turns out that extension was spying on people and Google quickly removed it from their extensions store. Here's the analysis that lead to its removal:

http://stopmalvertising.com/malvertisements/beware-of-the-google-chrome-extension-neat-bookmarks.html

"Neat Bookmarks" looked like this (very Firefox-like, yes?):

http://www.ghacks.net/2010/10/17/neat-bookmarks-for-chrome-search-and-access-bookmarks-faster/

Furthermore, Google apparently keeps moving the "bookmark this page" star you refer to:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/KPW3FwZkd0Q

I'll keep piling on the evidence if this isn't sufficient...

It's already been done

Or another popular one, that TL lights are healthy and generally good, especially CFL bulbs. We all know you get headaches from them

Wait, what? Do you get headaches from wi-fi networks, too?

Ahem, and for the record, I'm only allergic to to pink wifi networks, the blue ones are fine.

It's not the conviction that needs to be repealed here, it's the sentence itself. Had he been sentenced with half the character reference he deserved, he could easily have been sentenced to a smack on his limp wrist rather than chemical castration. I find it hard to imagine an ace pilot from the Battle of Britain being sentenced to chemical castration had he raped a member of the royal family (good grief, you idiot, why didn't you ask? Well, now you've gone and done it, we're going to have to send you to Ireland until this cools off.)

What Roman Polansky did was illegal too, and unlike Turing, continues to be illegal in most of the free world. Yet half of Hollywood attests to his character and accomplishments. Certainly Polansky had a rough go during the war. In a completely different way, so did Turing. What amazes me about Bletchley is how they broke so many codes suffering from sleep deprivation and double-vision. The stress must have been unbelievable.

OK, let's not leave out the Americans, either.

Limewire Cruft Leads to Jail Time for Matthew White

In the event you ever accidentally download child pornography, the FBI advises you to immediately notify it. The Bureau admits that there is a chance your computer would be confiscated, but when your other option is facing 20 years in prison, that seems like a small price to pay.

Somehow you have to make a discrimination of what is child porn and what isn't. If this human discrimination could be coded into an algorithm, this algorithm could [ignoring run time] be used to manufacture child porn from a dead pixel stew (just keep changing random pixels until the klaxon sounds) without ever involving a child or a camera or human genitals. If the discriminator returns a continuous hot-cold signal, you can iterate to illegality through efficient steepest descent. Is it illegal to harbour this algorithm? Stay tuned, someday we'll find out.

With this in hand you could break a nearly-illegal image into three chunks which must be combined and then iterated by the algorithm into the fully illegal state. We're well on our way to a distributed Trojan horse by which you can summon the FBI to perform a DOS attack on any old chump you don't like (not without risk, since it does involve hacking and wire fraud, but fortunately for your purpose the FBI considers this extremely incidental to their suburban assault).

Aside from the stupidity of volunteering your computer for confiscation because some image on the internet wasn't what you expected, this also nicely illustrates that apart from conviction, the sentencing process can independently be riddled with horrific bugs.

"I asked them, 'Where did you get that? I don't remember that.' I asked them, 'Could I access that if I wanted to?' They said no."

In this case the image was so deeply buried within his file system, the FBI doubted this particular Girls Gone Wild aficionado had the technical ability to even find the file for which he was convicted.

But let's return to the British. They have a long history of treating secrecy as a curse for anyone who enters into it. The Peter Wright story was not to their credit, either. As far as I can tell, all he really wanted was a decent retirement pension. Yet for the same reason Turing received no character support, Mr Wright had no avenue to appeal his pension claim to the Ministry of Brazil. So he wrote a book instead. How did that work out for MI5 and MI6? Just wondering. I wonder if Mr Wright considered the Turing story when deciding how to wear his fate? Had Turing merely broken his security restriction, the British would have had to hang him (try playing that down fifty years later) or send him off into exile, where he would have done just fine in the court of public opinion, as his heroism came into proper focus.

Maybe

Look at it from a different angle; maybe it was his own fault. Maybe he forgot to lock the door.

"...by objects re-entering from space."

Except for these people:
http://www.switched.com/2009/06/15/german-boy-hit-by-meteorite-lives-to-tell-about-it/

http://www.newschannel9.com/news/meteorite-996599-human-first.html

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/8289863.Sussex_man_hit_by_meteorite/

What about all the Firefox specific pages out there?

That's a pretty bold accusation. First time I ever heard of something like that. Do you have any example?

Or the addons that ONLY work with Firefox?

Are you being deliberately obtuse, or did you just hope no one would click on your link and notice you totally misrepresented what the article is about? It's an article about addons that only work with Firefox 4, written back in February when it was the fresh version, to give examples of the new capabilities of the browser. What the fuck does this have to do with standard compliance and compatibility of websites? If you had an example of, say, a website that would require a specific Firefox add-on to work, that would be relevant to the discussion. The article you linked mentions nothing like that.

Then there is that pesky Chrome License which is, - wait, MORE permissive than Firefox's!!!

Come on! This BSD vs. GPL debate is getting old...

I have no problem with browsers stealing features from one another as Nightingale seems to lament.

Where the hell have you seen him lament about that? That would be completely contradictory to everything Mozilla stands for!

Little one sided don't you think?

That you can find an obscure site that works only in a specific browser, means nothing. What about all the Firefox specific pages out there? Or the addons that ONLY work with Firefox?

Then there is that pesky Chrome License which is, - wait, MORE permissive than Firefox's!!!

The site you mention was NOT written by google contrary to your assertion. And Chrome is open source.

I have no problem with browsers stealing features from one another as Nightingale seems to lament. In fact he can't cling to standards and abhor copying features and maintain a straight face.

I'm waiting eagerly for Firefox to catch up to and surpass Chrome again. I enjoy the leap-frog game played by these companies. I use them both. Its just that, today, chrome is my favorite and does more for me than Firefox.

but you're still the one operating the car and presumably won't follow instructions to drive into another car.

You have a lot more faith in drivers than I have...

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/29/swiss-van-driver-gets-stuck-up-a-glorified-goat-track-blames/
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20101006/gps-swamp-101006/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/story/2011/03/03/nb-gps-driver-speaks.html
http://www.switched.com/2009/02/27/gps-Lihttp://www.switched.com/2009/02/27/gps-leads-truck-to-impassable-road-for-5-days/?icid=200100397x1219177496x1201334806

When's the last time Amazon offered you 13 games for just over half the price of a brand new game? When's the last time Amazon gave away a highly rated and reviewed game for free? When's the last time Amazon offered such amazing sales like this?

Don't get me wrong, I love Amazon, but Steam just loves to trade amazing deals for a little bit of patience.

Ironically it's the same app's OSS code that Apple used to implement the Readability function in Safari... http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/06/08/think-safari-reader-looks-familiar-thats-because-apple-used-op/

I guess no company is exempt from extreme corporate greed... sad to see other companies(especially little startups like Readability) get trampled on the way.

Ironically, readability can easily be had for free on the iPhone: http://hermgreider.posterous.com/use-readability-on-iphone-to-convert-web-page-0 - I guess you prefer readability.com's greed over Apple's greed that ultimately protects Apple's customers from rip-offs..

A feature I wish it didn't come with... 30% of subscription revenues from "publishers" like Netflix, Amazon Kindle etc.

See http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2011/02/apple_30_percent_subscription_tax.html

An app was already pulled for not paying up: http://blog.readability.com/2011/02/an-open-letter-to-apple/

Ironically it's the same app's OSS code that Apple used to implement the Readability function in Safari...
http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/06/08/think-safari-reader-looks-familiar-thats-because-apple-used-op/

I guess no company is exempt from extreme corporate greed... sad to see other companies(especially little startups like Readability) get trampled on the way.

1. High margin sales of iDevices to iUsers
2. 30% of all app sales on all the iDevices by iUsers
3. 30% of all subscription revenue that all iUsers pay on all iDevices (will be implemented soon)
4. ???
5. Overtake oil baron Exxon Mobil as the world's largest publicly traded company with most market capitalization (well, gas prices are going up too.. will be interesting to see who wins this one)

Exactly.
And the same congress grilling the State Department will have an Internet "Kill Switch" bill on the agenda soon. Don't expect any consistency in these congressmen's positions when it does.

Just using Tor doesn't grant you anonymity. It's an undertaking that requires a lot of of self-discipline and supreme vigilance to maintain. Humans, by nature, share information. That's just how it works. Most of it isn't direct - meta-information channels like times when you always "disappear," your route, choice of words, body language, everything. Controlling all of the things you say directly (despite your natural desire to boast of success), avoiding letting any information out through non-verbal channels, and also managing to never leak information to a weak link online (The first person you make privy to the truth who isn't as vigilant as you are is the end of it) is incredibly taxing personally.

I can certainly think of how I'd go about maintaining complete anonymity... and how slow, inefficient and agonizing it would be. Evan Ratliff played the "go into hiding" game; He was ultimately caught because doing all the thing it took to avoid being caught ground him down and he made a mistake.

http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2008/06/17/dont-think-the-firefox-3-awesome-bar-is-awesome-heres-how-t/ you tried that?

It's no use, they have Internet enabled cellphones.

The article is not particularly good, this one is better: http://www.switched.com/2010/12/02/bug-gathers-your-browsing-history-youporn-perez-hilton/ You can find the original study here: http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/users/lerner/papers/ccs10-jsc.pdf It is quite interesting, especially the list of sites is on page 9...

In which case Disapora is worth some effort even if all it does is motivate Appleseed back into life. I found this article after reading Tim Berners-Lee's recent article. On hiatus since 2007 is not exactly a reassuring release history either.

http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/05/21/diaspora-social-network-fail-kickstarter-facebook/

Other comments about the lardy nature of Diaspora have also convinced me to only try it if I can put it one someone else's server.

Xix.

Many people have gotten fines from evidence collected on google earth. Specifically swimming pools that don't meet zoning, that would not be visible from public view (only satellite or airplane).

http://www.switched.com/2010/08/02/long-island-town-uses-google-earth-to-find-rogue-swimming-pools/

It's not illegal to blog about how you're going to shoot up the school; you're only committing a crime if you actually do it.

Hmmmm

Unless you live in Pennsylvania, USA

York Canada
Lancashire, UK

We're more alike than you think.

You asked for "remotely exploitable", so I gave you "remotely exploitable"

Fair enough. You successfully got me a little off-topic and I over-reached. Good job on that. You have a future in marketing. Still doesn't negate my central point that market share means jack shit when judging relative security.

I've always limited my argument to client machines. Marketshare is a valid reason for targetting client machines, but not an established reason for targetting server machines. Stop generalising.

It's not the kind of machines you're arguing about that is the source of your fallaciousness. It's the argument itself. Maybe you'll figure that out. Maybe you already have and are just trying to save face. It's cool.

I'm done with you. You maintained my interest for a while (thank you!), but you're veering off into jumping up and down with random "See and that means I've won the argument!!!!" and it makes you look silly. Quit while you're not ahead ;-).

Yeah, party on, dude. Just make sure to keep that McAfee updated. Oh, my bad, too soon?

The bill is already written. http://www.switched.com/2010/05/27/proposed-bill-would-require-ids-for-prepaid-cell-phones/

No, see, they just redefine malware. Even if it looks like malware, walks like malware, and quacks like malware, if Apple allows it, it's clearly not malware.

Already being done: http://gizmodo.com/5139211/3d-porn-is-coming-three-guesses-as-to-what-will-be-sticking-straight-off-the-screen http://www.switched.com/2009/01/21/porn-star-belladonna-picks-top-sex-tech-3d-adult-films/ I'm personally waiting for smellovision to make a comeback.

In Fritz Lang's movie Metropolis Feder talks with the worker over a video telephone. The technology was operational in the thirties and presented, it just didn't happen. When cable TV was introduced the concept of a return channel was discussed, e.g. for home shopping.

Most of Maine suffered a massive ice storm in 1998. I was without power in Souther Maine for 11 days. My sister in Coastal Maine was without power for 17 days.

Verizon succeded in maintaining telephone service wherever there were wires up by swapping batteries in the SLCs and recharging them as needed.I wrote about this here.

Even a VOIP system requires wiring. Battery *could* be provided, since PoE is used successfully, but frankly the telephone company is probably glad to get rid of battery. Hey, if you're devious, this would be a way to take advantage of that battery voltage, another reason for telcos to get out of the DC business. ps- If you're thinking of converting your datacenter to DC voltage, ask the telcos how large-scale DC voltage service works. pps- I wonder how hard it would be to rig a cell phone charger like that? Not too hard, I think.

But VOIP could be supported during power outages. It would take cooperation and better hardware from the telco, and they would need to be prodded. Is the FCC considering this as a solution to lost 911 service in outages? Is the FCC considering this at all?

Me, I think I could keep a VOIP phone going for a while with a decent UPS. A 600VA unit should do for a while. Might be a nice business to get into.

I'm trying to figure out if I'll get a "woosh". Can you cite anything about China's once booming recording industry that's now died? The facts are that pirates (and I'm not one) spend more on music than non-pirates. Here are some citations:
http://www.switched.com/2009/11/03/music-pirates-also-buy-more-tunes-than-others-poll-finds/
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Pirate-Fileshare-Music-Download-Illegal,news-5001.html
http://www.mixx.com/stories/9014955/music_pirates_spend_more_on_tunes_than_non_pirates_finds_poll
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=27090916
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/11/02/music-pirates-spend-more-on-music-than-their-legal-law-abiding/
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/04/study-pirates-buy-tons-more-music-than-average-folks.ars

In the US it is generally known that almost everyone speeds and have for 80 years or so

In some places where it's obvious that the speed limit for the road conditions are way too low. Especially during the '70s when the national speed limit was 55 and had been reduced from 70 or higher in most places. here in town I notice that people drive well UNDER the limit most of the time; the speeding is mostly on straight interstates.

Law enforcement has been "cracking down" and imposing draconian penalties on speeders since the beginning of the automobile era.

A hundred dollar fine is a draconian penalty? When I'm travelling I notice that the speeders are all driving Hummers and Escalades and the like -- to these people, a hundred bucks is NOTHING.

Are you trolling, joking, or just ignorant?

Geocities was very popular with phishers who needed hosting on a domain too popular to blacklist. We maintain a list of major domains being exploited by active phishing scams, and Geocities is in the #2 position for length of time on the list. Over the last few months, the number of phishing sites hosted on Geocities has slowly declined. Today, on Geocities' last day, there is only one left.

With Geocities out of action, Piczo.com (hosting/social networking for teens) and Fortunecity.com (general-purpose free hosting) become the top hosting services favored by phishers. Most of the Piczo phishing sites seem to be aimed at getting Habbo login credentials. There is apparently a whole racket which breaks into Habbo accounts to steal virtual furniture.

(We finally have all the big players off that list. When we started, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and eBay were all on that list. They've all been fixed. The "short URL" sites are now all very aggressive about killing off phishing links; they don't want to get on spam blacklists. Most of the remaining sites on the list are modest sites run by people who have no idea what's going on with their site. The oldest entry on that list, hoseo.ac.kr, is a Korean university. Someone broke into their email system last year and put a phishing site on port 8080. Their webmaster mailbox is full, but we've tried to reach them by other means and may eventually reach someone with a clue.)

The parent made a bunch of strong claims, without any data reference or argument to back them up. He contradicts the findings of EPOCA, BIOACID and the Royal Society in the UK, the NERC and various other organisations directly tasked with evaluating the situation. Moreover he claims these organisations essentially lie in order to get research money, without as much as a shred of evidence to back up his claims, and this is moderated insightful?

Sure, the appeal to authority is one route you can take; indeed people like you always do that when you want to close down any debate. I don't know if you're aware of Professor Wegman's criticism of the Peer Review process in Climate Science? If not, I think you should read it. Or perhaps you'd prefer an expert opinion on the predictive capabilities of Computer Models? I don't know about you, but I raised an eyebrow when I found out Briffa's "hockey stick" turned out to have been generated from a whole 12 tree cores, or that the recent UN report stating that 300,000 people have died already due to "Climate Change" was a complete load of bollocks? Perhaps the American Chemical Society recently in uproar over it's Chairman's uncritical endorsement of "Global Warming" doesn't make you think twice? Or what about the EPA in the US suppressing a report from one of its own scientists? Does that make you feel uneasy at all?

So, follow the money. Who's going to benefit from Cap and Trade? Who's already benefiting from Carbon Offsetting? Hmmmmmmm.

Call me a heretic, if you like. I'm in good company.

Speaking of efficiency, how does the new VW's 235 mpg sound? It makes a prius look like a fleet of hummers: http://www.switched.com/2008/05/10/volkswagen-to-produce-1-liter-car-in-2010-should-get-over-200mp/

Like this guy?

Yes, here is a place in Iowa that has done this.
http://www.switched.com/tag/911+text+messages/

Analysts keep suggesting that the mouse is nearing obsolescence, and that in less than five years, it'll look about as natural in your hand as a buggy whip. However, I remain unconvinced.

That said, if and when Toyota or anybody else figures out how to port their brain-controlled wheelchair tech to the PC, the mouse may indeed become one of those things your future grandkids will see in photos and ask, "Did you really ever use one of those things?! It's so weird looking!!!"

Until then, a laser mouse that can be used on transparent glass surfaces still has a certain wow factor.

I am not sure whether tracking your child is a good idea or not.
I don't tell other people how to raise their children.

If you wish to buy a tracker in a phone, here is some information.
Good Housekeeping expressed opinions
http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/product-testing/reviews-tests/appliances-electronics/kid-cell-phones-0306
loc8u ofers a GPS Watch
http://www.switched.com/2009/01/07/lok8u-launches-gps-child-locator-watch-at-ces/
Wherify has one
http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/wherify-wherifone-cell-phone-with-gps-locator-lets-you-gps-track-your-kids/
AT&T has one
http://www.gpsbusinessnews.com/AT-T-launches-child-locator-service_a1470.html
Here is a discussion of short and long range child locators
http://www.gpsfortoday.com/child-locators/
Amber Alert has one
http://www.gpschildtracker.net/child-gps-devices-systems-tracking-phone-chip-child-location

However, if you don't want to use a phone
and build more of it yourself,
here are some websites that may be useful:
http://www.tradekey.com/selloffer_view/id/2924121.htm
http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/gps-tracking-server.html
http://forums.coolest-gadgets.com/showthread.php?t=4079
http://www.ecplaza.net/search/0s1nf20sell/gps_tracker_%20gps_tracking_gps.html
http://5thirtyone.com/archives/876/comment-page-1

I mean its like they think you are borrowing their computers?

Even when you aren't, I know, crazy!

No chance of that. And their response. :)

Ad agencies have used photos without model releases in the past. See Virgin Mobile and the Flickr photo: http://www.switched.com/2007/09/21/virgin-mobile-steals-teens-flickr-photo-for-ad/ If they're caught, they'll settle for some undisclosed sum and then go right back to buying photos from Facebook.

The first thing I thought of when I heard that Facebook was giving themselves the right to "sublicense" the content was the Virgin Mobile ad awhile back. An ad agency took a photo from Flickr without the user's permission and without a consent from the girl in the photo. They then used it in a series of ads that the girl and her family found offensive. Virgin Mobile was sued as a result.

Now, supposed this happened with Facebook under the new TOS. I take a photo of someone and post it on my Facebook page. Company X decides that's the perfect photo for their upcoming ads. They license the photo from Facebook and use it in their ads. I and the person in my photo find out about it and we are offended (me that my photo is being used without permission/compensation and the photo subject because they appear in the ads).

What our options be? I, being a Facebook user who has agreed to the TOS, have mandatory arbitration as my only option (another TOS clause). The arbitrator does what arbitrators do over 90% of the time and rules for the company (Facebook) who hired them. The person in the photo can go to the courts, but it would be a lengthy, costly battle whose outcome would be uncertain.

The Virgin Mobile case was clear. The company was wrong to lift the Flickr ad. My Facebook hypothetical situation wouldn't have been so clear.

... given the fact that they treat their customers like criminals. Besides which, my local electronics place usually beats them on price -- and there's always online shopping.

It sounds like he was nothing more then some smug jerk who was too infatuated with gloating about his rights and showing them off. He shouldn't have refused to show the officer his ID. The security staff blocking the car is one thing and could have lead to a fine on their part. He did nothing wrong by refusing to show a receipt. He did nothing wrong by refusing to obey the security guard and manager. He did something wrong when he refused to show ID to the police officer. I'm not familiar on Ohio law, but in many places it's illegal to not have some form of ID when over 18.

I'd like to see this guy to a BJ's or Costco in the US and try to walk past the person checking receipts, which is standard at those stores.

And I have a feeling I'll get modded troll for this post.

... given the fact that they treat their customers like criminals

Best Buy has the same policy. After a confrontation with one of their rent-a-cops, I no longer shop there.

... given the fact that they treat their customers like criminals. Besides which, my local electronics place usually beats them on price -- and there's always online shopping.